Metagame np: Stage 9: Teenage Riot (Toxtricity Suspect Test)

[ishtar]

​

Toxtricity is one of the most potent sweepers and breakers in PU. It’s nearly perfect coverage in Electric/Normal/Poison with the added boosted damage of its sound moves thanks to Punk Rock makes Toxtricity one of the strongest Special Attackers in the tier.

Toxtricity’s main problematic set is Shift Gear, which takes advantage of its ability to force switch-ins to gain Speed on potential revenge killers and scarfers. As it stands, a +2 Modest Toxtricity has no reliable Choice Scarf revenge killers, and its use of Throat Spray in conjunction with its powerful moves allows it to set up quickly on weakened threats that struggle to deal with its move combination. Sets such as Specs, Boots, Scarf are more linear since they threaten the meta in a more linear fashion, making use of its coverage options to either nuke a specific target, function as a pivoting mon or revenge kill would-be-checks.

Its most common Tera type is Normal, which boosts the damage of Boomburst to gigantic levels, but Teras such as Ghost have been utilized to flip matchups on revenge killers such as Arcanine with Extreme Speed, works as a reliable spinblocker, flips matchup on Fighting-types expecting Tera Normal, and allow it to use Tera Blast Ghost vs. threats like Golurk and Palossand.

This does not mean that Toxtricity is unbeatable though, a big portion of the meta is able to hit it for reliable damage due to its awkward typing. It’s also easily revengeable prior to Tera by a plethora of faster mons due to its mediocre speed before setup. Defensive Tera such as Ghost and Steel, which are used on many Pokemon in the tier are able to take a hit and revenge Toxtricity. All in all, Toxtricity is a potential sweeper that requires solid positional play, or a powerful breaker with a decent number of stops, but its offensive potential, ability to flip matchups and different sets make it a worthy candidate for a suspect test.

The voting requirements are a minimum GXE of 78 with at least 50 games played. In addition, you may play 1 less game for every 0.2 GXE you have above 78 GXE, down to a minimum of 30 games at a GXE of 82. As always, needing more than 50 games to 78 GXE is fine.

minimum games needed

GXE	minimum games
78	50
78.2	49
78.4	48
78.6	47
78.8	46
79	45
79.2	44
79.4	43
79.6	42
79.8	41
80	40
80.2	39
80.4	38
80.6	37
80.8	36
81	35
81.2	34
81.4	33
81.6	32
81.8	31
82	30

Suspect information:

• There will be no draws allowed for any potential qualifiers. If you qualify with draws, your suspect requirements will not count, and you will not be allowed to vote. There is no way to actively enforce ties to prevent abuse, so they will be disallowed. Use stall at your own risk.
• All games must be played on the Pokémon Showdown! PU ladder on a new alt with the following format: "PUTC (nickname)”. For example, PUTC asa or PUTC shitar.
• Do NOT impersonate other people in your ladder alt, do NOT use any usernames which are offensive, flame-baiting, or targeting specific users, and do NOT use usernames which could be interpreted as breaking any of the username rules on Pokémon Showdown! Failure to abide to this will result in you being barred from voting in this suspect, and potential infractions.
• The suspect test will last for 16 days, ending on May, 27th 11:59pm GMT -4.

/!\ NOTICE /!\ PU will not be tolerating any form of voting manipulation. Any attempt to manipulate votes can result in an infraction, loss of eligibility to vote in the current test, and loss of the Tiering Contributor badge. While we won't necessarily enforce super strict punishment, this won't be tolerated and will be handled accordingly. Voting manipulation can simply be described as attempting to get people to vote a way on the test in inappropriate manners. Bribing with teams to vote a certain way, directly messaging people to vote a certain way, publicly announcing "vote this way" all fall under voting manipulation. For more query, feel free to PM me or asa.

 

[ishtar]

We will be doing two suspect test tournaments this weekend! Hop in the PU room for a competitive fiery fuego extravaganza experience on the battlefield against your fellow PUers for a chance at Toxtricity reqs!

Saturday 10am GMT -4, hosted by Melt Gibson
Sunday 5pm GMT -4, hosted by Bella

Good luck and may your Statics proc every single time!

 

[DugZa]

Just wanted to share some quick thoughts regarding Toxtricity. While I did vote for it to be suspect tested, I don't necessarily think its broken or banworthy. Its defensive typing isn't particularly great and its defensive stats are average at best too so it can't really take hits that well. Its best set is by far the Shift Gear set but that needs one turn for SG and another turn to activate Throat Spray which it really can't afford to do in most matchups without taking significant damage most of the time. Even if it does setup we have a bunch of Pokemon like Sandslash-A, Milotic, Florges, AV Glowbro, (AV) Golurk, Coalossal, Bronzong, Gastrodon, Goodra and AV Meloetta that can comfortably take a hit or two and KO, haze or phaze it out; some of them need tera to do this while the others don't even need to dedicate tera to deal with it. We also have strong priority users like Arcanine, Bombirdier, Grimmsnarl, Emboar, Skuntank, Decidueye, Zoroark, Ambipom and Lycanroc that can RK it if chipped; yes, some of them have trouble depending on if its tera Normal/Ghost but most of the time they are good enough to deal with it. Not to mention, even a random tera can just catch it off guard sometimes; for instance, I've used tera Ghost on Kilowattrel and it checks tera Normal Toxtricity quite well. I do think tera Ghost Toxtricity might be slightly better than tera Normal right now but the drop in power from STAB-boosted Boomburst vs. STAB Tera Blast is so so noticeable and is a massive letdown sometimes. The choiced sets are decent too but they are very prediction reliant and the Choice Specs set in particularly leaves it very easy to revenge kill considering its lackluster speed tier. All in all, I don't think its ban-worthy right now.

 

[UberSkitty]

Hot take: Lets just ban high-key since low-key doesn't get Shift Gear (has Magnetic Flux instead!)

abolish not tiering Toxtricity differently!

edit: I just realized I could've made some low-key amazing puns...

 

[sufys]

not a toxtricity post, but i was surprised to see that staraptor of all things got the most support for action in the survey, when it's actually pretty underwhelming in practice, so wanted to address that.





while undoubtedly a potent presence in pu, staraptor has numerous flaws that prevent it from being an overwhelming presence, aside from the rocks weakness and the heavy recoil damage it takes. band sets are oftentimes pretty prediction-reliant and are fairly easy to revenge kill. while band doesn't have much in the way of defensive answers, its rocks weakness in conjunction with the heavy recoil damage it takes + potentially helmet damage typically limits it to trading 1-for-1 at best. regardless, there are still defensive counterplay options such as coalossal, bronzong, and houndstone that avoid being 2hkoed by band staraptor's stabs. choice scarf staraptor retains much of its strength while being a lot harder to revenge kill, making it have a pretty strong match-up into offense. however this is mitigated by the fact that offense typically gets rocks up early and carries priority which staraptor gets in range of very easily. the choice scarf set also has a lot more defensive counterplay in addition to what I've mentioned prior, pokemon such as mudsdale, bellibolt, and gligar all handle scarf variants fairly well. skuntank also effectively trades with any staraptor set with helmet + aftermath.



overall staraptor is not even particularly close to broken, i'd sooner ban bellibolt.

as for toxt, it requires pretty good positioning to successfully shift gear due to its awkward defensive typing, and with tera its always choosing between having a stronger boomburst + being more vulnerable to prio , or doing better into prio w/ tera ghost and having an arguably lacklustre damage output, this on top of the decent pool of checks dugza listed above makes me lean dnb

 

[Bella]

Congrats to.. myself actually! for winning the first suspect tour and thus qualifying for reqs! Apologies for the tour not starting earlier, melt had missed so I had to start the tour an hour later
Replays:
Semifinals #1 - Namelessinseattle vs Bella
Semifinals #2 - real ryan gosling vs Scarf Kricketune
Finals - real ryan gosling vs Bella

Bracket

 

[Bella]

Apologies for double posting, but I wanted to express my opinion on Toxtricity since I already got reqs.

I don't think Toxtricity is bannable. Simply put: The meta is too unkind to it offensively and defensively checking it and it feels so tera reliant to get going. For starters, priority is everywhere in this tier. Be it Arc Espeed, Sneaks from Houndstone and Deci, Aqua Jet from Tauros, Suckers from the likes of Skunk, Zoro, or Emboar, and Fake Outs from Ambipom, Hitmons, etc theres alot of perfectly good ways to beat Toxtricity just with Priority and it forces you to either have the right tera and burn that tera type or just get easily revenge killed. Thats not to say Toxtricity is only offensively checked either. Golurk, AV Glowbro, Bronzong, Alolan Sandslash, Palossand, Gastrodon, and more all force Toxtricity out, ruin its boosts, or force it to burn Tera which is not always favorable. Plus, Toxtricity relies on Shift Gear Throat Spray sets HARD to get going, and its defenses aren't great and you basically spend 2 turns just attempting to set up a sweep that is not always confirmed, and if the opponent as a sweeper of their own already on the field set up that is basically impossible to do. I also think Toxtricity struggles mightly with what Tera type it wants. It wants Ghost for Espeed and the Tera Blast Ghost for hitting Glowbro, but it also wants Normal for strong Boomburst and immunity to Sneaks. It oftentimes makes it difficult for Toxtricity as it needs to pick what top tiers it wants to lose to with the tera type. This is not even to mention how stray Tera Ghosts, Grounds, or Steels can screw it over big time and make it a momentum sink for a team. All in all, do i think Toxtricity is bad? No. I think its top 10 in the tier, but to say its more broken than the likes of Pokemon like Delphox, Zoroark, or Staraptor is wrong. As such, I'll be voting DNB.

 

[Bella]

Not Me Triple Posting

Anyways, congrats to eggselente (Onionlicker88) for winning the second suspect tour!!
Semifinals #1 - Poyo005 vs Onionlicker88
Semifinals #2 - Leoperi99 vs Claramelo
Finals - Leoperi99 vs Onionlicker88

Bracket

 

[ishtar]

Due to the server shutdown, we're extending suspect test by 2 days, meaning that the new deadline is May, 27th 11:59pm GMT -4. Good luck laddering!

 

[ishtar]

There are two more suspect test tournaments coming up:

-Saturday 10am -4, hosted by Melt Gibson (this time fr)
-Sunday 5pm -4, hosted by Hera
See y'all then, bring your best game nyeheheheh

 

[gulch]

congrats to Hera for winning the third suspect tour!!
semis 1 - Hera vs 495colon
semis 2 - Bert C vs OnlineOE
finals - Hera vs OnlineOE

bracket

 

[asa]

And congratulations to MZ for winning the fourth and final Toxtricity suspect tour!

Semifinals - beefdreams vs 26 yertee
Semifinals - MZ vs zoowi
Finals - MZ vs beefdreams

bracket

 

[asa]

Toxtricity remains legal in SV PU! Feel free to discuss your thoughts and concerns as well as how you think this will impact June's metagame, which is on the horizon.

 

[fish anemometer]

With the recent DNB verdict on toxtricity, the SV PU tier's next step is mostly unknown, with only some murmurs about Scrafty, but for the most part the playerbase won't find enough support for any other direction, as proven by a recent tiering survey. However, since the final wave of DLC in April, there has been one tiering "mistake" that should long be fixed. I hate to use the word mistake, it was the council and TLs being rightfully cautious in a turbulent early metagame with 50+ new pokemon. I think we should properly revisit the ban on damp rock.

We first and foremost tier Pokemon before non Pokemon elements. Non pokemon elements needing drastic reasonings to be considered, and while our reasoning were understandable and had some precedent, I think some additional context slipped through. The reasonings to ban damp rock currently stand on very flimsy ground, nowhere near drastic enough to warrant a ban that destroys the entire playstyle.

So. Lets first look at the ban. One thing that stands out is that Drednaw was voted on at the same time as damp rock. Drednaw was banned regardless of rain because of its Shell Smash sweeping potential, but it was also the main abuser of rain. No other rain abuser generated close to as much discussion. Rain was never given a fair chance to be tested without Drednaw. All the concerns regarding its competitiveness were purely theoretical, and done in a very early meta with a more naive understanding of the shaping tier. The circumstance of the damp rock ban were highly uncharitable to it. I admit I was part of the bandwagon at the time, but my understanding of the metagame has changed a so much, so regarding this I ask for some understanding.
What about the actual reasonings? The council usually lists Drednaw along with a few other rain abusers. At the time, we were cautious, and grasping for some short term solutions that would stabilize the meta. However, as mentioned previously - rain without drednaw is only known in theory. Additionally, as our meta progressed, I think it even became more adapted to the listed threats that appear in the council's reasonings. There were also some reasonings saying checking rain would make building awkward, but I don't think fitting a defensive tera water on a wall, amongst other ways to stifle hyper offensive teams is unreasonable at all. And other arguments like "too many sillies rn" don't hold weight anymore. As the only the only foreseeable tiering action in the future regard Scrafty, which is still at the murmurs stage.

Some rain abusers and setters include: Kingdra, Kilowattrel, Ludicolo, Floatzel, Poliwrath, Tauros-paldea-aqua, Inteleon, Tornadus, Grafaiai.
Now are any of these over the top with rain? Maybe? But I'm not convinced. And the few that might be broken, I'm ok with just banning individually. Killing the whole playstyle is unnecessary. These are not cornerstone mons, most of them are sitting in ZU and getting rid of them individually would most likely not have any negative effects on the rest of the metagame. We don't have drizzle in this tier. Setting up rain wastes a turn and then you still have to find a way to pivot these frail mons in to abuse the limited turns.
Now for some VR ranked mons that can counterplay rain. I will include common tera water stuff because tera water or dragon is a good tera type regardless of rain, proven by multiple metagames: Milotic, Bellibolt, Slowbro-galar, Arcanine (strong prio is scary for frail rain sweepers), Skuntank, Florges, Tauros-paldea-aqua, Gastrodon, Wo-chien, Bronzong, Tatsugiri, Ambipom, Decidueye, Goodra, Grimmsnarl: this is a lot of PU ranked mons and I'm not even going to explore below B+. So there are options. People saying they don't want to be forced to run X already get 6-0ed by Inteleon clicking hydro and not missing.

Tier leader's post regarding why damp rock was banned, and how it got approved.
Ishtar's intent is good here, but there are some things written that seem off. Firstly touching on something already previously touched on:

"Getting rid of mons like Kingdra, Kilowattrel, Tornadus, etc., for the sake of rain existing is even more damaging to all playstyles, creates a meta with much less individual variety, and inflates the PUBL list significantly for the sake of saving an archetype just cuz its "fun to play""

Torn and Kingdra are both ZU. Nobody is thinking about them. Getting rid of them would change absolutely nothing for most playstyles and I doubt diversity would be hampered. In fact, removing rain as a playstyle is more harmful than removing "fun to use" ZU pokemon. Also this post and a lot of our council reasonings are just slippery slope fallacy. It's unlikely all those mons would need a ban anyway.
And what precedent are we talking about exactly? Pellipper in UU? They elected to ban the pokemon, not the item or ability. NU who is having a PR thread? Older SV PU metas? If it's the older SV PU metas, I think the comparison is unfair. We had tier shifts every month, we had to stabilize things as fast as possible and avoid risk. Quick action and short term solutions were necessary because not all the DLC waves hit. Things are slower now. So I don't think the precedent argument stands on two legs.

I would like to give manual rain the fair chance that it never really got, and follow procedure properly. Ban individual elements based on their proven efficacy and not theorymon, and if it's way too many of them (whats our arbitrary number?) we can ban damp rock knowing fully well we've exhausted our other options and done everything we could to save the playstyle. Sooner rather than later, there will always be "another tour", after PUPL will be SCL then PUWC then circuit etc. delaying action.

ALSO BAN SCRAFTY

 

[Aurist]

"Getting rid of mons like Kingdra, Kilowattrel, Tornadus, etc., for the sake of rain existing is even more damaging to all playstyles, creates a meta with much less individual variety, and inflates the PUBL list significantly for the sake of saving an archetype just cuz its "fun to play""

Torn and Kingdra are both ZU. Nobody is thinking about them. Getting rid of them would change absolutely nothing for most playstyles and I doubt diversity would be hampered. In fact, removing rain as a playstyle is more harmful than removing "fun to use" ZU pokemon. Also this post and a lot of our council reasonings are just slippery slope fallacy. It's unlikely all those mons would need a ban anyway.

For me, this rationale gets more into why Damp Rock was a successful and appropriate ban than it does support a Damp Rock unban. Tornadus and Kingdra might be ZU but they're both completely viable pokemon in the B tier of PU's VR list that have multiple sets they can use and bring much more to the tier than just their broken roles in rain. You just can't argue that Tornadus and Kingdra are precluded from consideration from any angle especially not in a tier that's only just begun to stabilise in the last month or so, especially not in a gen with this high cutoff. Every single rain threat mentioned in your post is currently on the PU Viability List with the most recent update being long after the Damp Rock ban.

Damp Rock ban successfully handled a broken element in the tier in the most efficient way it could, in a way that addressed the chief problematic nature of the playstyle - the extended number of turns allowed you to just spam any number of rain sweepers, which there are a number of as listed in your post, and overwhelm with the extreme variety in ways you need to check rain teams. Individual rain mons and small rain synergies are still possible to use in the tier. I don't see a reason to reapproach this completely successful tiering action, nor do I see a reason to seek an unban in PU which I already feel is oversaturated with threats.

I will say, I understand the idea behind reapproaching the process because it was ~technically theory~, but I honestly don't think it was remotely a leap to believe that rain was broken without Drednaw as I got into a bit above, and I don't feel that PU can benefit at all from engaging a process that would destabilise the tier and inevitably result in multiple avoidable bans (though maybe my pro "ban a bunch of stuff" position would benefit here :clowned:)

also low key support the scrafty sus tbh

 

[ishtar]

I have more than a few issues with the previous post regarding our ban reasoning with Rain at the time:

Fish points out that our decision regarding the Damp Rock ban was under a different set of circumstances that do not line up with our current tiering philosophy due to the way things were being handled at the time, 1-month shifts. I’m not gonna regurgitate what fish said since he pointed out the reasoning for this within the environment of needing a quicker development to actually get down to tiering the way we’ve been doing now.

I also agree that the meta has changed drastically since then which allows us to look at this decision much more handily. I am not even opposed to this idea if the rest of the council shares the sentiment, though I know that a few of them mentioned disagreeing with certain notions about what’s potentially broken in rain, the value of looking at individual Pokemon within the environment, the lengthiness of the potential tiering process, etc. Just today two council members expressed animosity towards the idea of reintroducing it due to these factors.

I feel like for this next portion I need to defend myself against certain points which were taken out of context:

"Getting rid of mons like Kingdra, Kilowattrel, Tornadus, etc., for the sake of rain existing is even more damaging to all playstyles, creates a meta with much less individual variety, and inflates the PUBL list significantly for the sake of saving an archetype just cuz its "fun to play""

Torn and Kingdra are both ZU. Nobody is thinking about them. Getting rid of them would change absolutely nothing for most playstyles and I doubt diversity would be hampered. In fact, removing rain as a playstyle is more harmful than removing "fun to use" ZU pokemon. Also this post and a lot of our council reasonings are just slippery slope fallacy. It's unlikely all those mons would need a ban anyway.

My reply to the user in question in which I said this was written less than a week after we unanimously decided to ban Damp Rock. You said earlier that you agreed with that decision and your vote reflects that, but then mention the example of two Pokemon that were valid and perfectly viable in the PU environment at the time of the post. Yes, it does fall under what you call “the slippery slope fallacy”, but considering our same vote at the time, I think we accepted that reality within the context of the tier at the time as the best way to address weather to free up development. My issue with this use of a fragment is that you agreed with my point regarding how we approached weather at the time but respond to my reasoning within the context of now, which obviously does not still apply, and in turn simply makes me look like someone who has no idea wtf they’re doing. If you had the same reasoning as me about Damp Rock at the time, you could’ve utilized your own reasoning as excuse, and I would’ve considered it valid within the context of how we were tiering at the time.

I also wanna comment on what I meant by “precedent” on the subject of rain. Lower tiers have been known to target item bans for weather related reasons, mostly in turbulent one-month tiers. It’s the same reason why Light Clay is consistently banned in lower tiers, but it is also an unfair proposal to compare Damp Rock to tiers that have Ability-related self setters that are easier to remove like Pelipper and Ninetales. If you don’t believe that this is what I meant by precedent, here’s me asking in tiering discussion in the leaders section of Smogcord about this, since despite knowing how I wanted to approach this, at the time I had just become TL and I wanted to make sure that I was following the proper procedure, clearly no one had an issue with that either amongst our council:

damp

Secondly, I really wish more council members would’ve been allowed to discuss this issue in a timely manner since this was only brought up on council this morning and a few of us were asleep/unavailable, and the post reflects particularly bad on Council when its brought up in Policy Review, since it pertains to an issue that, as I’ve said before, we were meaning to engage in but weren’t given the time to.

I’m glad that this is a proper discussion at this point in time but I think its relevant to remember the context of our decisions and accept how our opinions can change over time, allowing for new and proper discussion about relevant matters. I’ll gladly continue engaging in this subject matter and I’m sure that the rest of the council will continue to share their thoughts as well, but there needs to be a level of communication to allow us to engage, and to expect others to also do it in good faith. I’m sorry I didn’t touch properly on my thoughts regarding rain at this point in time, but I’m exhausted and considering the nature of this post it felt wrong to leave it unanswered, but expect a post about that properly next week.

 

[Tuthur]

The biggest concerns about the Damp Rock ban is that it's based on Theorymoning only, and there was no Policy Review thread to back it up. Every non-Pokemon element ban needs to go through Policy Review, and that didn't happen here. It's not about to know who messed up, but about to fix what's not been handled properly.

- Damp Rock was banned on a hypothetical metagame, without any Rain abuser being considered first (Drednaw doesnt count it was broken outside rain too). Damp Rock wans't banned in the context of 1-month shift, it was banned on April 7 which coincides with the start of the 3-month shift.
- Damp Rock was banned without a PR thread, which is the norm for non-Pokemon elements ban. The Light Clay precedent got one, and more recently NU and ZU have had one to tier their issue with sun and Grassy Terrain, respectively.
- The precedent used to ban Damp Rock without a PR thread is Monotype. A tier that functions completely differently to lower tiers (idt I've to explain why), and that has had Damp Rock on its initial banlist at least since SS. The other history examples are from turbulent 1-month shift tier in-between DLC, which are not applicable anymore to SV PU. I don't know what Aberforth meant by lower tiers have a long history of banning Damp Rock, because it is factually wrong, only Monotype has. The only long history of weather related bans is Drizzle and Drought.
- Related to my 2nd point, but non-Pokemon bans =/= Pokemon bans. It's at the center of Smogon policy that we should only not tier Pokemon when it would result in many of them to conserve one non-Pokemon element (hence Drizzle, Drought, and Light Clay bans).

Let's not accuse fish of being in bad faith trying to bring up a Tiering Policy problem in Policy Review, when it's the place meant for it. fsh anemometer is not asking to bring back Damp Rock because he thinks the metagame is better for it (though I'm sure he does think it is), but because he thinks the reasoning to ban it went against tiering policy precedents, which is why PR was the right subforum for it.

 

[MZ]

The biggest concerns about the Damp Rock ban is that it's based on Theorymoning only, and there was no Policy Review thread to back it up. Every non-Pokemon element ban needs to go through Policy Review, and that didn't happen here. It's not about to know who messed up, but about to fix what's not been handled properly.

- Damp Rock was banned on a hypothetical metagame, without any Rain abuser being considered first (Drednaw doesnt count it was broken outside rain too). Damp Rock wans't banned in the context of 1-month shift, it was banned on April 7 which coincides with the start of the 3-month shift.
- Damp Rock was banned without a PR thread, which is the norm for non-Pokemon elements ban. The Light Clay precedent got one, and more recently NU and ZU have had one to tier their issue with sun and Grassy Terrain, respectively.
- The precedent used to ban Damp Rock without a PR thread is Monotype. A tier that functions completely differently to lower tiers (idt I've to explain why), and that has had Damp Rock on its initial banlist at least since SS. The other history examples are from turbulent 1-month shift tier in-between DLC, which are not applicable anymore to SV PU. I don't know what Aberforth meant by lower tiers have a long history of banning Damp Rock, because it is factually wrong, only Monotype has. The only long history of weather related bans is Drizzle and Drought.
- Related to my 2nd point, but non-Pokemon bans =/= Pokemon bans. It's at the center of Smogon policy that we should only not tier Pokemon when it would result in many of them to conserve one non-Pokemon element (hence Drizzle, Drought, and Light Clay bans).

Let's not accuse fish of being in bad faith trying to bring up a Tiering Policy problem in Policy Review, when it's the place meant for it. fsh anemometer is not asking to bring back Damp Rock because he thinks the metagame is better for it (though I'm sure he does think it is), but because he thinks the reasoning to ban it went against tiering policy precedents, which is why PR was the right subforum for it.

This “pr thread being mandatory” is literally just false, and if there was any truth to it then there would’ve been issues at the time of the ban. Also there is a long history of banning items like this if you fold in Heat, Smooth and Icy Rocks instead of acting like Rain is the only weather. Also admin was consulted and said a pr thread wouldn’t be necessary, ishtar posted the screenshot. I feel like I’m going crazy here, y’all should know better.

Re: Scrafty - putting aside what we might get from tier shifts, I genuinely think it’s gonna be a case of us adapting to its presence and learning to beat it better. The fact that if often has to Tera, and usually into pretty predictable types for any significant benefit, is pretty big. I don’t exactly have a ton of evidence I can spin up for this, just a feeling of where the meta would go if we got more time.

 

[asa]

I've said on both PS and Discord that I wouldn't be against reintroducing Damp Rock in July, and I stand by that. It has less to do with tournaments and more to do with the fact that it would be a change that has next to no support among the playerbase and runs the real risk of ruining what's left of this meta. If the question, then, is why later and not now, we're past the point of drastic meta shifts, so chances are that the real meta developments we've seen that double as counterplay won't disappear overnight. If there's any shot at us getting even more rain counterplay, why not wait for it (and possible further metagame developments that happen to deal with rain) and then give rain as fair a shot as possible? You can maybe make a case that a Damp Rock resuspect should've happened already, especially since the ban was partially based "in theory," but there hasn't been much discussion on it until recently (in council chat and just in general), likely due to how no one seems to want it back. As such, it'd feel like we're bending over backwards out of nowhere to fix something that isn't broken.

I understand that fish's post was not made in bad faith and likely intends to start the discussion that I'm saying hasn't happened yet, I just don't agree with how it's framed. I wouldn't call our decision a "mistake," for example, especially since it's something members of the council are willing to undo. I also don't agree that removing a playstyle does more harm than removing several Pokemon, all of which are fine outside of rain and none of which are more broken than rain as a playstyle. Furthermore, I don't think the comparisons to older PU metas and Monotype/other lower tiers are as ludicrous as they're being made out to be. These are still instances where the ideal solution was to ban Damp Rock instead of going through a potentially lengthy list of Pokemon one-by-one while letting rain continue to dominate and possibly ruin a metagame. This is to say nothing about how the discussion absolutely should've started here or continued on Discord before going straight to PR, which ishtar and MZ (+ DugZa on Discord) already went into detail about.