Shy Glizzy said: The game is changing. And Salamence, I feel, is going to act as a weather vane in regards to which direction this tier will be heading to in the future. Power creep has been ratcheting up for years now, and UU has felt the weight of it as much as anyone. Looking purely on paper, I can see why Salamence has to leave. There are just too many threats right now, and there is simply no way to prepare for all of them. Salamence contributes to this. Guess wrong between MixMence and DD and your answer could lose 60%, or worse.



So kick these guys out, right? Keep paring a way at the edges until we can get back into the old days, when you could just switch in your "answer" to a certain Pokemon and breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe.



Yeah, we could ban Mence, suspect others like Hydra, and generally keep working down until we have our ideal metagame, where you have threats, and their counters(or "Hard Checks" lol). The question is, such a thing even possible? Is there actually a core of Pokemon in our tier that would lead to this type of metagame? Borderline is now the largest it's been since it was it's own playable tier. Undoubtedly, Gen 7's BL will be even larger. How far are we willing to search for something that may not even be there anymore?



Back in DPP, even a top threat like Venusaur had pokemon you could by and large switch in an answer without much, in any risk. For every enemy mon there was a mon you could add to your team to by and large neutralize it. The edge case that was Heracross was even banned at the final hour, just to maintain this delicate balance the tiering leaders felt they had achieved. GenIV UU is by and large looked upon favorably, as a metagame that has acheived near perfect balance. As we have progressed through the years since then, it seems as if that is still the gold standard that these bans are trying to work forward. It has led to ever-widening banlists, and various horrors like the UU Council, the UU Senate(lol) and the Kokoloko plan. What it hasn't led to, however, is a DPP-esque "perfectly balanced" metagame.



It is looking more and more that such a thing is no longer possible. The era of Pokemon having counters is largely over. Movepools are too wide, and stats have climbed too high for that to be a viable strategy any more. The focus should now switch to counterplay. A broken pokemon has no counterplay, not "no counters". "You can't switch in safely" should not be a valid reason for a ban. These type of bans haven't gotten us anywhere in a long while.



No more blocks of damage calcs. You want something banned, we need replays and examples of where worse players consistently beat better battlers due to this broken mon. Otherwise, if the better player still wins, what's the issue?







TLDR: This is Melee, not Smash 4. Act accordingly. Click to expand...

I mean, speaking like PDC as someone who isn't particularly good at UU, several things in this post annoy me somewhat. First of all, the Kokoloko plan was a bad thing? Again, as at best a casual observer of UU, Kokoloko's UU seemed pretty damn great, and had a reputation of being one of the best metagames in 6th gen, creating a good metagame quickly and then retesting potentially non-broken elements to get the best possible tier.As for tiering as a general, there's no change that you're on about. It is about little counterplay and not no counters. If it was the latter, why would people have let Crawdaunt into the tier? But, while no counters does not necessarily mean that there is little counterplay, having available counters is a sign of some counterplay (although the extent of which this is the case is debatable as to whether or not it is enough), so people discussing whether or not there are counters is actually relevant to the discussion and you should not dismiss it out of hand.As for BL getting too large, so what? There are a number of broken things that need to be banned to create a healthy tier. I dont see you being overly upset over OU banning double what UU have to make a healthy tier. And while one of those formats deals with banning the Rayquazas and the Mega Kangaskhans of the world while the other bans the Terrakions and Togekisses, the principle is the same in that it does not matter if you ban numerous broken things, because they are broken, and we dont like having a broken checks broken metagame. It is not like there is a great mix in what is banned from UU, everything that is banned is incredibly offensive with very little counterplay and would not make the tier healthy if it were to be reintroduced. But more importantly, that is all irrelevant. The size of BL should not impact UU's tiering one bit, because they have no effect on the metagame in which you are trying to decide if something is broken or not.Now moving back a little, if something has No Counterplay, it is likely already banned or being used in OU because it's that good. No counterplay is a huge extreme, hell even stuff like Mega Hera and Terrakion had counterplay. The important part is determining if the counterplay that is available to the player is enough for something to be considered healthy or otherwise. I'm not going to say if that is or is not the case for Salamence, I dont know the tier well enough. But implying that something has to have no counterplay in order to be banworthy is as ludicrous as saying something that has no counters needs to be banned. And you cant switch in safely is a valid aspect of a ban argument when combined with the other aspects of a suspect (you cant switch in safely, it outspeeds most of the tier and can come in repeatedly, while the counterplay to this is limited and easy to exploit, for example). It isn't something to be a reason on its own, of course, but implying that it is irrelevant information is dishonest.Finally, you need replays and examples where worse players beat better ones. A few things I find really wrong with this bit, so lets go through it. First of all, how do you objectively determine how good a player is? What if that player was just having an off day, or was trying out a new team and hadn't prepared as well for Salamence as he needed to? How big must the difference between the two players be for the replay to be valid? What if there was a big misplay somewhere in the game that effected the result, or does it have to be 100% because of Salamence?Now that's just why I dont like the whole worse vs better thing, but my real problem with that part is that you're mixing up broken and uncompetitive. Uncompetitive things can clearly demonstrate 'worse' players beating 'better' players, but broken does not need to do this. The best players can be the best at abusing a broken pokemon and at playing around it with the remainder of their team. Ubers is filled with broken pokemon, but there are clearly best players in the tier who will almost never find themselves losing to a 'broken' pokemon because they are the most capable of using and playing around it. That doesn't mean those pokemon are any less broken, it just means that the players are good. A similar principle applies here. If I were to be playing against Teal6 or someone with a team where I can use any one BL mon and he could only use UU mons, I would still say he would come out on top, because he is the better player and will be able to play around my threats more effectively. That doesn't mean that whatever BL mon I chose isn't broken, it just means he's a good player. The issue is where the Broken pokemon is an unhealthy influence on the metagame and as a result makes it so that teambuilding and playing choices are limited to an extreme that wouldn't be present without the broken pokemon in the metagame. Where you draw the line on this is subjective, obviously, and if you feel Salamence does not cross that line, that's fine. But it does not need to be uncompetitive to be broken.