LOL @ “encouraging variety…” Human nature dictates that people will always gravitate towards the strongest available characters and tactics… You ban those and they will gravitate towards the next strongest and so forth in perpetuity…
Hence why I hold my position on not banning things simply on basis that it is “currently too strong” or “centralizing,” because something else will come and take its place and then that thing will be the new “strongest” and “centralizing.”
The only exceptions to this are the outliers and hyper-competitive types who will rise to the challenge to beat the unbeatable… Who the fuck was running Torment Heatran in Gen IV before Infernoman took it to Smogon? Bulky Thundurus was only a thing after Wolfey busted it out at VGC 2012(?) and took down the competition. The Japanese turned Swagger Cresselia into a ridiculous Doubles threat that was still getting play at the most recent Worlds event.
For all their claims of being great battlers, it is always the Smogon set that does the most crying and bitch fitting when something doesn’t go their way. People want to eliminate critical hits, for crying out loud… I still lol when I think back to 2007-08 when Smogon hero Skarm got beat by Hyper Beam and Fly Rayquaza, and all the salt and shade they threw on the kid that beat him by playing outside of Smogon’s thought-sphere.
My point being that the only way to know if something is truly broken is to play against it and exhaust all your resources and strategies. Then and only then can it be proven to be “broken.”
…and someone will probably still find a way to fight it and beat it.
also "Because it’s been proven that banning straight out everything just because of it’s name (IE legendaries) is an arbitrary and archaic way of doing things. you’re being too black and white about it. You cannot tell me that Articuno should be banned over say…Tyranitar? The reasoning for Articuno staying in is despite it’s stats being at that “legendary” status, it’s typing, the metagame and its distribution of said stats are poor and not doing it any favors. hence it’s not seen as a threat much less centralizing tactics to take it out.
as for the reason for a ban list, that’s not the point. I fyou can tell me why Exadrill in Gen 5 should stay while Moltress be banned, I’d love to hear it! "
Banning anything is arbitrary. Woop woop. But banning based on competitive strength is more arbitrary than banning a set in stone group of pokemon. This same group just so happens to include many pokemon that are already banned and are extremely powerful in the Ubers tier; Mewtwo, Deoxys, Kyogre, whatever. And then there are pokemon that dominated OU for a while before being moved to ubers. And then there are pokemon that dominated OU and were never banned, but still dominated OU like keldeo ;_________________;
So yes, banning legendaries only is arbitrary, but not as arbitrary as metagame/competitive strength, and archaicness has nothing to do with competitive whatever.
point of the ban list being NOT giving more pokemon more chances? i’m sure it is at least one of the points of the banlist. the root cause is just making a “good competitive environment” (which is always going to be difficult, probably impossible, and stupid to try to optimize, but i can’t disrespect people for trying)
I still vote that if there are going to be bans, make it Pokemon that aren’t allowed in the Battle Institutes and such. Namely, Mewtwo, Xerneas, Yveltal, and Zygarde for now.
Why are these two things mutually exclusive in your mind?
What’s wrong with Bidoof(a Pokemon long lauded as terrible), Glalie, and Octillery(mons that don’t fare much better if you read their Smogon analyses) being able to win a few matches?
Because they’re not “supposed” to be able to win? Why?
