Freeroamer said: I'm glad that the council are posting their opinions as much as I am in favour of the opinions presented thus far in this thread and do not have much to add to them. While I am also glad a vote is being held just before UU open, I have to question the logic of the timing of the vote. Why hold it literally the day before UU open and not a week before or some similar timeframe? Im glad potentially broken threats are being voted on before the biggest free for all tournament, but is the day before round 1 really the best time to announce results? These are obviously meta game defining threats, otherwise they wouldn't been voted on, and their absence or lack of will shape the metagame that is played so I don't really understand this. Click to expand...

Not council or anything, but I really got your sentiments from the post and thought the same thing initially when they decided to suspect Weavile over other things. I'm not upset at the decision they made about Weavile, I just don't think it was the correct thing to do from a time aspect or tier related aspect. There are many other things as shown with the current suspects that I, along with some other people, thought would better suit testing the time they had before the tour. However, I completely understand why they did make that decision and waited awhile before retesting some of these threats. They had just recently tested 2 of these mons, Xurkitree and Buzzwole, less than a month ago in relatively the same metagame, except now they have the addition of Weavile and loss of Mega-Swampert, which I don't think would change the voting much on these specific mons. It would just be in bad taste to vote on these mons again so soon after being initially tested when the metagame itself had changed so little in comparison. The other conclusion I came to is that their lives might've just come up. I mean, Hogg has a kid and was out of town or something for a week and I'm sure Hikari and the council have been busy with other things, so it wouldn't surprise me that some life events came up that made the Weavile test take 2 1/2 weeks forcing them to postpone this until later. Personal lives should come before pokemon, which is not even something that should really be questioned unless your life is this game at which point I suggest you take a good hard look in the mirror, scrape those dorito stains off your face and maybe get some therapy. Additionally, the reason I think they don't wait until after and just lock the current metagame in for open is because the metagame is just really bland right now. Building isn't that creative because of the current threats, while playing the same few top mons over and over again isn't really that fun either. I could be completely wrong on that one, but I'd rather take a chance on getting rid of these things and figuring some of the new metagame changes out than play what is currently available. I'm just saying this cause I thought the same thing you did at first and just wanted to say the conclusion of what I thought was their decision on the way things played out is all.Anyways, as for the suspects I think Buzzwole's going to get a sizable ban vote from what has already been said and there would be no changing that with valid points already being made, Latias will get a sizable no ban vote because it wasn't banned prior to the tier shifts and these shifts have been more detrimental to it than anything, and Xurkitree will be the major topic of discussion. A lot of offense players in general believe that Xurkitree isn't really that big of a problem and honestly vs most offense I don't see it as a problem, however, when you step into different playstyles, this is probably where it gets a little more questionable. Overall, balance is what I consider to be the weakest current playstyle with the large amount of drops from Mamoswine to Mega-Pidgeot and, while I didn't talk about it in my previous Weavile post as I didn't think I had enough experience with the playstyle and didn't want to overstep my boundaries, I really do believe its worth taking a look at how all playstyles are effected by a certain mon before making a decision and not just the playstyle you mostly use or have been using in a certain metagame. Xurkitree allows balance little breathing room in the form of choice specs and tail glow sets both of which pressure the playstyle immensely. Dealing with Xurkitree along with the majority of other threats such as Mamoswine, Mega Pidgeot, Weavile, Crawdaunt, etc. just feels like an extremely over the top problem for balance in its current state. I don't really feel like I would be the best person to defend balance, however I really do think it needs some sort of help in this metagame. I also agree with Sacri's previous post that it can pressure certain mons on offense enough with its variety of sets to warrant a check such as Latias, Hydreigon, etc. on most teams and, while I think the checks are relatively easy fits on a lot of teams, I believe being able to threaten bulky offense even with those checks while also causing major issues for balance and stall is enough to put Xurkitree over the edge even if it has little viability vs Hyper Offense. However, at the end of the day, the only poor way I see this vote turning out is keeping the metagame as is, as I think the current metagame just centralizes around a few threats, majorly buzzwole, with little to no room for building variety, so I do think some additional change would lead the metagame in the right direction.