Metagame Metagame Discussion Thread

[Schmedly]

While everyone is either...
1. Leaving LC because of the Porygon ban, or
2. Staying in LC and trying to convince people to also stay
...I'm just thinking about how the meta will develope. The best theory I have is that people will look for a new tank, so there will be increase Spritzee and/or Chinchou and/or Lickitung usage.

 

[ddhelmet]

When will the ban implemented and is it for both the Pre and post-bank meta?

 

[Kavatika]

When will the ban implemented and is it for both the Pre and post-bank meta?

It is already implemented, and there is no pre-bank meta on the PS ladder afaik.

 

[Fresher Than You]

Can't say I like this decision but I do completely understand why it was made. So rather than get salty and butthurt or even leave the tier about it I'm just going to adapt and have fun. But hey fuck me right?

 

[Drew]

Although I wish I could vote, Quote saying that banning Conversion would set a bad example for future votes changed my opinion completely. Although I believe Pory isn't OP on its own, I agree that banning just Conversion would set a precedent for banning what makes a Pokémon OP and not the mon itself which would quickly result in a strange meta that probably wouldn't be as fun. Also fuck T-Wave.

Also would be interested in LC Ubers or maybe even LC AG with all these bans this gen.

 

[John76]

And now we pronounce TR dead. You're all invited to the funeral.

 

[Xayah]

And now we pronounce TR dead. You're all invited to the funeral.

Whismur will replace Porygon as a normal type for TR! (or you know, Munchlax. Too bad neither of them can set it)

 

[Kavatika]

tr was shit to begin with. the big thing lost from porygon leaving (aside from z-conversion sets) is we are down one really good bulky attacker. munchlax may be able to replace porygon, at least somewhat, but once cutiefly is gone munchlax's usage will probably drop. stuff like shellder, diglett, abra, carvanha, will definitely appreciate having porygon gone.

a few other random thoughts based on what little i've played so far:
snivy + doduo is a pretty sweet core. each of them tend to attract a lot of steel types and can weaken them for things like shellder/cutiefly to sweep.
hail (specifically alolan sandshrew + hail setter) seems really anti-meta. alolan sandshrew is just super powerful with awesome coverage, especially with life orb or a SD boost, and from what i've seen it doesn't seem like a lot of teams are super well equipped to handle it.
with whirlwind munchlax and haze mareanie being two of better ways of handling bp, i could expect to see qdpass receivers like taunt snivy/gastly or psyshock abra becoming a thing. most cutiefly teams should probably run something similar to keep sweeps from being cut short.

 

[fatty]

we definitely made the right move with pory, my only concern is that people think our only course of action from now on can be to ban a mon. i don't think this should be the case. sure, most of the time the quickest, easiest, and cleanest way to go about things is exactly that, ban the mon, but sometimes you have to get dirty. cutiefly is not the problem in my opinion, baton pass is. it has been a problem in lc before, it has been a problem consistently throughout smogon's history. i keep hearing that "we don't ban moves", but it's not like we haven't gone against precedence in the past, that's the whole point in our growth as a metagame and community as a whole. not to mention, there have been instances where baton pass has been banned or severly nerfed, so it's not like this is coming completely out of the blue. baton pass cutiefly is the only set that is broken on it, i would argue other users of bp are rather uncompetitive as well, although this definitely more of an opinion shared by me than the rest of the community it seems. going even further, i would argue that the reason bp is different than any other move is because it really isn't breaking the pokemon that has access to it, it is allowing a user to break another pokemon in the middle of a battle, and then using bp as a scapegoat as to why that is allowed. continually, while the entire strategy of bp may not be broken per se, it is very matchup reliant and even skewed towards the users advantage, and is incredibly potent against those teams that don't stack up well against it. i relate this slightly to bw ou and the sun ban, where drought teams were objectively worse than rain / sand, although the builds of such teams turned matchup into too much of a problem for the metagame, and thus it was banned.

i am not saying we should ban bp entirely per what uu did last gen, i would much rather implement the bp clause or something of the like. i have been told that that is "dumb" and "stupid" tho so idk. apparently we here in lc must adhere to what the other metas do in precedence when it comes to banning mons, yet when it comes to other stuff that other metas do such as bp clause we're too good for that? sounds to me like we're picking and choosing shit rather than sticking to "policy". again, i might be the only one who feels this way, but this is not a cut-and-dry situation when it comes to cutiefly, so please don't try and make it out to be one.

 

[Spider-Gray]

Thanks for the ban, much needed

 

[Sablenite]

we definitely made the right move with pory, my only concern is that people think our only course of action from now on can be to ban a mon. i don't think this should be the case. sure, most of the time the quickest, easiest, and cleanest way to go about things is exactly that, ban the mon, but sometimes you have to get dirty. cutiefly is not the problem in my opinion, baton pass is. it has been a problem in lc before, it has been a problem consistently throughout smogon's history. i keep hearing that "we don't ban moves", but it's not like we haven't gone against precedence in the past, that's the whole point in our growth as a metagame and community as a whole. not to mention, there have been instances where baton pass has been banned or severly nerfed, so it's not like this is coming completely out of the blue. baton pass cutiefly is the only set that is broken on it, i would argue other users of bp are rather uncompetitive as well, although this definitely more of an opinion shared by me than the rest of the community it seems. going even further, i would argue that the reason bp is different than any other move is because it really isn't breaking the pokemon that has access to it, it is allowing a user to break another pokemon in the middle of a battle, and then using bp as a scapegoat as to why that is allowed. continually, while the entire strategy of bp may not be broken per se, it is very matchup reliant and even skewed towards the users advantage, and is incredibly potent against those teams that don't stack up well against it. i relate this slightly to bw ou and the sun ban, where drought teams were objectively worse than rain / sand, although the builds of such teams turned matchup into too much of a problem for the metagame, and thus it was banned.

i am not saying we should ban bp entirely per what uu did last gen, i would much rather implement the bp clause or something of the like. i have been told that that is "dumb" and "stupid" tho so idk. apparently we here in lc must adhere to what the other metas do in precedence when it comes to banning mons, yet when it comes to other stuff that other metas do such as bp clause we're too good for that? sounds to me like we're picking and choosing shit rather than sticking to "policy". again, i might be the only one who feels this way, but this is not a cut-and-dry situation when it comes to cutiefly, so please don't try and make it out to be one.

Well, looking into the past BP clauses, there was:
The OU, 1 per team limit
Spe+Other Stat ban (OU banning sd/id scolipass and quiverpass)
UU complete ban on BP
and the RU banning of Speedpass

I have one more idea that has never been implemented, but a Drypass only (no boosts) clause would let you keep momentum.
I honestly think the complete removal of BP is wasteful, but lets leave it to council.

 

[Camden]

So just to update everyone, the council is currently discussing Cutiefly, and by the sounds of things, we'll be voting on it this week. Naturally we encourage discussion on it, but seeing as how we were discussing it before Porygon, I think most of us have made up our minds.

 

[ChrystalFalchion]

Yeah I think banning Porygon was the right decision. Personally I think LC should implement the same Baton Pass clause as the standard tiers, but that's just my opinion.

Also, what about giving Drifloon a retest? With Burn now dealing much less damage, the SubRecycle set can't stall nearly as effectively.

 

[Altariel von Sweep]

Cutiefly is very good at its work, which is pass the QD boosts to a special attacker and sweep with it. It has a very nice Speed tier, and a reliable recovery with Roost. Still, I don't think that Cutiefly is so dangerous, because of the existance of Munchlax, which it stops it phazing with Whirlwind, and tanking many special hits. There is also Mareanie, which can reset the stats boosts with Haze, making it a reliable option to stop Cutiefly.

 

[Kavatika]

Cutiefly is very good at its work, which is pass the QD boosts to a special attacker and sweep with it. It has a very nice Speed tier, and a reliable recovery with Roost. Still, I don't think that Cutiefly is so dangerous, because of the existance of Munchlax, which it stops it phazing with Whirlwind, and tanking many special hits. There is also Mareanie, which can reset the stats boosts with Haze, making it a reliable option to stop Cutiefly.

You say that Cutiefly isn't dangerous because of the existence of Whirlwind Munchlax and Haze Mareanie, but those are moves that would otherwise be suboptimal on those mons. The fact that the presence of Cutiefly forces people to run suboptimal sets to beat whatever it passes to is not a characteristic of a healthy mon.

Other sets like Pawniard running Brick Break/Rock Tomb to beat Pawniard/Ponyta, Mienfoo running Poison Jab/Acrobatics to beat Cottonee/other Fighting-types, or Drilbur running Poison Jab/Rock Tomb to beat Cottonee or Ponyta, are not similar to Munchlax running Whirlwind/Mareanie running Haze, as they are just niche moves that can be run to surprise a potential check.

Yeah I think banning Porygon was the right decision. Personally I think LC should implement the same Baton Pass clause as the standard tiers, but that's just my opinion.

Also, what about giving Drifloon a retest? With Burn now dealing much less damage, the SubRecycle set can't stall nearly as effectively.

I doubt Drifloon should be retested in the current meta. Even with the burn nerf, it will be just as frustrating to deal with, as it still has both a physical and special set with different counters and the ridiculous SubRecycle + Unburden combo. Unless we get several new good mons that can handle both sets(i.e. more than just Larvitar), I doubt we will see Drifloon returning to the meta any time soon.

 

[fatty]

still maintain that there is no good reason for us not to implement the bp clause. i guess the only reason would be that we didn't do it last gen, which is a bad reason imo. bp has been a problem before, whether it be torchpass or fullpass, and now we have cutie making it worse. we didn't ban any trappers either last gen, so using that reasoning i don't see why we would ever even suspect either dig or goth, which a majority of the council think should happen anyways. this logic makes no sense to me. i will admit that all of them can be dealt with (i would even venture to say cutie is easier to deal with than torch, but i digress) yet the matchup problems they incur create a bad competitive environment, and the sheer brainless / simplistic arche-type of those teams help to further this case. again, this is not me saying that the entirety of bp is broken, but that's not the point of the bp ban in the other tiers either. it helps to create the most competitive environment possible and limit dumb options you might have to run, or the idea of matches coming down to 2-3 turns of whether you can stop the pass or not.

again tho, all i continue to keep hearing from the council despite posting nothing in this thread is that we need to ban cutie because we banned pory. well ok awesome looks like diglett can never be banned because we suspected it twice last gen and nothing came of it, and you cannot convince me that diglett has gotten that much better or the meta has changed enough to warrant a complete change in policy. the only mon that rly benefits from dig that is new is cutie, and we're probs going to end up neutering or banning it in some capacity anyways lol. not to mention, fletchling is p ass right now other than when it has an immense amount of support, thus its best abuser last gen is essentially gone. i know this is slightly a tangent, but i would just like people to stop worrying so much about precedence and lean more towards doing what is better for the meta in the long run.

so, please, can someone actually explain to me why bp clause is so dumb lol. i literally see nothing but good coming from it.

 

[Corporal Levi]

I don't think the ORAS Baton Pass suspect should be used in favour of BP clause now, seeing the huge amount of ridicule it continues to get within the community. In fact, it was a factor in the council having more say over the general public this gen because of how silly some people felt the BP suspect was.

Torchic was used five times in SPL, once in the second half of LC Open, and frequently dropped to LC UU usage on the ladder in ORAS. It has always been considered a viable but niche Pokemon, certainly nowhere near suspect worthy; even those of us who wanted BP gone during the BP suspect agreed that only BP chains should get nerfed. TorchPass appreciates Fletchling being weakened, but Whirlwind Munchlax and Haze Mareanie are more popular and more reliably than Fletchling ever did. Diglett was used in half of all the SPL games, nearly half of the games in the second half of LC Open, has never been anywhere near LC UU, and though the opinions on whether it's ban-worthy are split, almost all of us will agree that it's suspect-worthy, so we're dealing with something completely different there. ChainPass has gone the route of most of what infamy does and is now a meme

In a vacuum, I personally would not as opposed to BP clause or even banning QD to save Cutiefly, but the fact of the matter is that by banning Conversion over Porygon, we have set precedence that we should always ban the Pokemon, no matter the alternatives, unless banning the move is the only possible solution. Banning Cutiefly would almost certainly solve the issue regarding broken BP users, so it makes the most sense to me that we don't break a precedence that we literally just set, and give Cutiefly the boot.

 

[sam-testings]

Even without BP, QDfly is still really really strong. Its speed tier makes it so that you pretty much have to risk a speed tie with scarf doduo or run psych up abra and risk another speed tie. It has pretty much unresisted coverage with Moonblast/Psychic/HP Ground and can sweep teams pretty easily, even with its low spa. Even if BP was banned, I think QDfly would still be super strong.

Even if Drifloon was retested, I doubt it would be let back into lc. The reason it was so good was because it just sat there and sub/recycled while the opponent slowly died to burn. All the burn nerf does is make it take longer for the opponent to die. While the burn nerf might make Drifloon slightly worse it is still banworthy and will not be unbanned even if it is retested. If Diglett was banned it would have a better chance of being let back in, but right now it would still be way too strong

Edit: after talking to levi, I believe that Drifloon will probably actually be let back in. The burn nerf hurt it more than I previously thought as it only has enough pp to outstall 1-2 mons now, and theres a lot more recovery being run in the tier like analytic staryu and resttalk mudbray. Diglett/goth will still need to be banned first though imo

 

[fatty]

Corporal Levi: i get what you're saying, but no where does it say when we banned porygon that "due to this decision, we cannot ban anything else other than pokemon." clauses have been implemented despite this being essentially a fundamental smogon guideline simply because clauses aren't meant to be treated like banning a specific mon. they are introduced to help create a better metagame, and i personally believe such a clause would benefit this metagame, as it has with other metagames imo. porygon was a very unique situation, so much so in fact that we had a huge internal debate about it ever since its inception. no one could really without a shadow of a doubt pin-point whether it was the move, the item, or the sheer attributes of pory that was making it broken, all that we knew was the combination was broken. i don't think the porygon situation should necessarily set a precedent for every single mon from now on. simply put, yes we should lean towards banning the mon over anything else, but in a situation where we can much more easily see the root of a problem, i think options should be possibly looked at to tackle things from another perspective. i don't think porygon should be the benchmark, but rather a possible reference point.

now, having said that, i do think an argument can be made that bp isn't broken or unhealthy, or cutiefly is broken itself. i don't personally subscribe by these sentiments, but i can see them being made. my problem is that it seems we're rushing towards banning cutiefly, and yet nobody has actually argued this shit lol. even levi's response mentions that he would be possibly up for a bp clause if not for the porygon decision, and again if you truly want to ban cutiefly this is the wrong tactic to take, at least to me. it's lazy tbh.

Sam-testings in reference to what i take as an attempt to prove / show cutie is broken even without bp, i really don't get where you're going with that, at least in what you said at this point. yes, sweeper cutie is strong, good mon, 10/10. i could say literally the same thing about scraggy, vullaby, shellder lol. and your reference to how "you pretty much have to run scarf doduo or psych up abra" couldn't be farther from the truth. your "broken" set of 3atk, 18 spe, and 16 spa (what I can only reasonably assume you're running if you're truly attempting to sweep) is left with 20 hp / 10 def / 10 def. that's complete shit when it comes to bulk, not to mention cutie is weak to rocks + poison, fire, rock, and steel, making it at least exploitable. even after that, after a qd it still doesn't have the power to break past a lot of its checks. even stuff like spdef mudbray eats up a +1 moonblast and easily ohkos back with heavy slam. i get that in-game situations are much harder to account for, but the same can be said for cutiefly because 3 atk cutie is much harder to set up than people make it out to be.

 

[groundCTRL]

In a vacuum, I personally would not as opposed to BP clause or even banning QD to save Cutiefly, but the fact of the matter is that by banning Conversion over Porygon, we have set precedence that we should always ban the Pokemon, no matter the alternatives, unless banning the move is the only possible solution. Banning Cutiefly would almost certainly solve the issue regarding broken BP users, so it makes the most sense to me that we don't break a precedence that we literally just set, and give Cutiefly the boot.

It's kind of concerning that the prevailing sentiment among the reduced set of people making decisions for the community seems to be that strictly following precedent should be more of a factor in ban decisions than making the best decision for the metagame. What was so special about Porygon, compared to all other banned mons, that invokes so much talk about precedent? Why is the LC council so suddenly concerned about precedent when other tiers have banned mon, items, moves, and abilities without rejecting out of hand the option to ban things in any of those categories based on their first decision of each gen? I'm not suggesting that implementing the Baton Pass clause would necessarily be the better choice; it could be, but we don't know, it hasn't been tested in LC. Concern over whether or not suspect test data will ever be used this gen aside, reasoning that we have to ban Cutiefly because we banned Porygon essentially absolves the council of the responsibility of looking at each issue as its own case and dealing with it in the way that best impacts the metagame.

 

[Drew]

It's kind of concerning that the prevailing sentiment among the reduced set of people making decisions for the community seems to be that strictly following precedent should be more of a factor in ban decisions than making the best decision for the metagame. What was so special about Porygon, compared to all other banned mons, that invokes so much talk about precedent? Why is the LC council so suddenly concerned about precedent when other tiers have banned mon, items, moves, and abilities without rejecting out of hand the option to ban things in any of those categories based on their first decision of each gen? I'm not suggesting that implementing the Baton Pass clause would necessarily be the better choice; it could be, but we don't know, it hasn't been tested in LC. Concern over whether or not suspect test data will ever be used this gen aside, reasoning that we have to ban Cutiefly because we banned Porygon essentially absolves the council of the responsibility of looking at each issue as its own case and dealing with it in the way that best impacts the metagame.

Well I want you to think about something. If we start banning what makes something OP, even if it's exclusive, we will have an obligation to do the same for other Pokémon. For example let's say Snivy becomes OP in this meta, so much so that we want to ban it. Since Snivy itself is not the problem, we'd ban Contrary or Leaf Storm based on the established precedent of banning moves or abilities over mons, and, since less mons utilize Contrary we'd probably decide on that. As a result of this, not only Snivy, but Fomantis and Inkay would lose both of their extremely small niches. Since we ban a fair amount in one gen, by gen 8 our meta would be revolved around jack-of-all-trade mons like Mienfoo which would then in turn be possiblely ban-worthy and on and on.

Hope I explained that well.

 

[fatty]

Well I want you to think about something. If we start banning what makes something OP, even if it's exclusive, we will have an obligation to do the same for other Pokémon. For example let's say Snivy becomes OP in this meta, so much so that we want to ban it. Since Snivy itself is not the problem, we'd ban Contrary or Leaf Storm based on the established precedent of banning moves or abilities over mons, and, since less mons utilize Contrary we'd probably decide on that. As a result of this, not only Snivy, but Fomantis and Inkay would lose both of their extremely small niches. Since we ban a fair amount in one gen, by gen 8 our meta would be revolved around jack-of-all-trade mons like Mienfoo which would then in turn be possiblely ban-worthy and on and on.

Hope I explained that well.

I think he understands this. From what I gathered, he is not necessarily advocating that we ban specific attributes of mons, but rather pointing out some flaws in the radical view that was supposedly made with the Porygon ban. And tbh, these are all fair points that I've failed to bring up prior to this. All you hear from people's mouth is "precedence, precedence, precedence." The whole point of having suspects is that each and every Pokemon is unique, and quite frankly it's dumb to automatically try and equate all future suspect worthy Pokemon to Porygon. Continually, if you really look at it, what you're saying is that we can't look at any Pokemon in any other way, shape, or form. Again, this isn't the point of a precedence, and we shouldn't be deciding our entire tiering policy around one Pokemon who was probably broken for a multitude of reasons at the very beginning of a young metagame. It should merely be used as a guideline, not a law. This stagnates discussion and really ties our hands in how we can handle things in the future, and actually does diminish what the council means.

AND AGAIN neither myself or, from what it seems,groundCTRL are saying banning the attributes of said mon is the best course of action. It's just dumb to completely rule them out due to the Porygon decision. We're just asking people to be a little more open minded.

 

[tcr]

It's kind of concerning that the prevailing sentiment among the reduced set of people making decisions for the community seems to be that strictly following precedent should be more of a factor in ban decisions than making the best decision for the metagame. What was so special about Porygon, compared to all other banned mons, that invokes so much talk about precedent? Why is the LC council so suddenly concerned about precedent when other tiers have banned mon, items, moves, and abilities without rejecting out of hand the option to ban things in any of those categories based on their first decision of each gen? I'm not suggesting that implementing the Baton Pass clause would necessarily be the better choice; it could be, but we don't know, it hasn't been tested in LC. Concern over whether or not suspect test data will ever be used this gen aside, reasoning that we have to ban Cutiefly because we banned Porygon essentially absolves the council of the responsibility of looking at each issue as its own case and dealing with it in the way that best impacts the metagame.

It's important to set a certain precedent right now as that impacts future tiering policy for all of Generation 7 for most tiers. A large part of the decision behind Porygon's ban was setting policy towards Z-moves and other unique moves in a tier that had never really had that issue, i.e. whether a simplistic ban should be implemented or some form of complex ban to preserve the metagame. For the same reason that banning Conversion is a thinly veiled attempt at bailing Porygon out, banning Quiver Dance or complex banning Baton Pass is a thinly veiled attempt at keeping Cutiefly. Other tiers have not banned moves or abilities outside of either uncompetitive / violating Evasion Clause (In the case of Swagger, Shadow Tag and Sand Veil, Snow Cloak) or due to their extremely centralizing power (Drought / Drizzle). Baton Pass is none of those things in Little Cup, it doesn't warp the metagame around the move, it violates no existing clauses nor introduces unnecessary RNG, and it is arguably completely competitive in nature. Implementing Baton Pass clause in Little Cup is a complex answer to a fairly simple problem: Baton Pass was never the issue, it never HAS been an issue (in fact the mere existence of a Baton Pass suspect caused by the public was in large part responsible for our current council suspect testing), and it is ONLY a problem now with one new Pokemon: Cutiefly. I am very much against complex bans, and Baton Pass clause is for intents and purposes a complex clause intended to keep the strategy around but give it little chains to restrict too much. If we aren't going to complex ban any form of Z-conversion to save Porygon there is no reason to complex ban Baton Pass from the tier for the sole purpose of saving one Pokemon.

 

[groundCTRL]

Well I want you to think about something. If we start banning what makes something OP, even if it's exclusive, we will have an obligation to do the same for other Pokémon. For example let's say Snivy becomes OP in this meta, so much so that we want to ban it. Since Snivy itself is not the problem, we'd ban Contrary or Leaf Storm based on the established precedent of banning moves or abilities over mons, and, since less mons utilize Contrary we'd probably decide on that. As a result of this, not only Snivy, but Fomantis and Inkay would lose both of their extremely small niches. Since we ban a fair amount in one gen, by gen 8 our meta would be revolved around jack-of-all-trade mons like Mienfoo which would then in turn be possiblely ban-worthy and on and on.

Hope I explained that well.

That's not the issue I have. I have a problem with treating every suspect issue as if the precedent of the first ban decision of the gen is equally applicable, and I'm advocating for a mindset that appropriately and completely considers each issue and takes the best course of action for the state of metagame, which is not something that a "precedence first" mindset accomplishes. To illustrate: the hypothetical you provide is very clearly defined - despite multiple pokemon having access to Contrary and the tools to take advantage of it, the number of mon that become OP with them in this example meta is easily quantifiable: one (Snivy). A Snivy ban would be appropriate. The Porygon ban was not directly comparable to this hypothetical, since A) Conversion was exclusive to it in the metagame, and B) it was only the Z form of the exclusive move that pushed Porygon to OP levels, and it needed the kind of debate that it got to consider the unique aspects at play. The Baton Pass issue is comparable to neither of those two, since there isn't just one pokemon taking advantage of Baton Pass; rather, it has the potential to directly affect every pokemon in the meta. So it's not just the passer that has the potential to be overpowered, but also potential receivers, and looking at only one or the other is not addressing the issue completely, as the standard tiers recognized in implementing the Baton Pass clause instead of banning certain passers or receivers. Now that LC has the tools for BP to be considered an issue, the council has the obligation to look at that issue completely (as the standard tiers did) rather than relying on blind precedence of banning a Pokemon regardless of whether or not it's the best decision for the metagame.

In the mindset you claim is obligatory, gen 6 OU would have had to assign preference to banning pokemon over anything else since the precedent was to ban pokemon like Aegislash and Mega Gengar. Gothitelle would have been banned over Shadow Tag, as would Latios and Latias over Soul Dew, and the Baton Pass clause would not exist; but none of these situations were directly comparable to previous bans of specific pokemon and rightly weren't treated as such. I don't often play metas outside LC, but there seems to be little suggestion that these decisions that technically went against precedent adversely affected the metagame, and on the contrary seem to have been well received as positive decisions. The idea that the first decision of each gen necessarily sets the course of action for subsequent issues that have little or nothing to do with that first decision is detrimental to the health of the metagame and is something the council seems to be projecting at the moment.

 

[Merritt]

For those who think that BP should be claused/banned instead of taking action against Cutiefly, do you think that Baton Pass without Cutiefly is broken? If so, why, and if you can could you provide some replays or other solid evidence to help that conclusion?

If the answer to that first question is no, why should Cutiefly not be banned in favor of clausing/banning Baton Pass? Is it for some future reasoning that Baton Pass could prove problematic in the future even without Cutiefly? Is it personal reasoning, that you dislike playing against Baton Pass teams or you want to keep Cutiefly? Is it based on higher tiers - essentially reasoning that we should clause BP because standard tiers have?

These are the questions I really do want to know the answer to from the "clause/ban BP" group.