Recently the SS NU tiering council voted to ban Slush Rush with a strong majority of support. In short, Hail teams featuring Slush Rush users such as Sandslash-Alola and Beartic proved to be very threatening, limiting teambuilding and invalidating certain archetypes.
This ban created a unique situation where Sandslash-Alola was (practically) relegated directly to NUBL due to both of Sandslash-Alola's abilities being banned thanks to this and OU banning Snow Cloak. Players from other communities wished for the ban to be discussed further than just the NU council due to it impacting their tiers as well with Sandslash-Alola effectively being banned.
Ultimately there were a few options for NU:
Going off of that, Beartic became a staple on Hail teams with Slush Rush and had limited counterplay, causing major headache for offensive teams and forcing one of a limited pool of checks/counters. Sandslash-Alola was the more consistent of the two due its Swords Dance set and better typing, but banning it alone would have left Beartic Hail in the tier and there were many complaints about this among the playerbase. We did not believe banning Sandslash-Alola alone, thus leaving Slush Rush and Beartic unbanned, would have been a sufficient solution.
NU had previously banned Snow Warning, but this took place in a very different metagame that included things like Aurora Veil and different counterplay to Slush Rush users. As it stands, Aurora Veil with Light Clay is no longer in the picture and, given the aforementioned points, Slush Rush abusers were proving to be too problematic. Snow Warning users such as Vanilluxe are not seen as problematic alone and actually provide valuable offensive presences to the tier when not paired with the problematic Slush Rush users. Given this, we did not feel the circumstances were similar to the past and we did not believe Snow Warning itself was the right ability to target here.
Ultimately, banning Slush Rush does effectively remove Sandslash-Alola from PU and below, but this is not the responsibility of the NU council and similar outcomes occur with tier shifts every few months. The intent of the NU council was to better its own metagame, not limit metagames below it, but the former took precedence over the latter in our eyes. With this said, the ban created a unique set of circumstances that understandably prompted discussion among players of those metagames, so we thought a thread would be appropriate to discuss proper handling of this situation.
This ban created a unique situation where Sandslash-Alola was (practically) relegated directly to NUBL due to both of Sandslash-Alola's abilities being banned thanks to this and OU banning Snow Cloak. Players from other communities wished for the ban to be discussed further than just the NU council due to it impacting their tiers as well with Sandslash-Alola effectively being banned.
Ultimately there were a few options for NU:
- ban Slush Rush
- ban Sandslash-Alola
- ban Snow Warning
Going off of that, Beartic became a staple on Hail teams with Slush Rush and had limited counterplay, causing major headache for offensive teams and forcing one of a limited pool of checks/counters. Sandslash-Alola was the more consistent of the two due its Swords Dance set and better typing, but banning it alone would have left Beartic Hail in the tier and there were many complaints about this among the playerbase. We did not believe banning Sandslash-Alola alone, thus leaving Slush Rush and Beartic unbanned, would have been a sufficient solution.
NU had previously banned Snow Warning, but this took place in a very different metagame that included things like Aurora Veil and different counterplay to Slush Rush users. As it stands, Aurora Veil with Light Clay is no longer in the picture and, given the aforementioned points, Slush Rush abusers were proving to be too problematic. Snow Warning users such as Vanilluxe are not seen as problematic alone and actually provide valuable offensive presences to the tier when not paired with the problematic Slush Rush users. Given this, we did not feel the circumstances were similar to the past and we did not believe Snow Warning itself was the right ability to target here.
Ultimately, banning Slush Rush does effectively remove Sandslash-Alola from PU and below, but this is not the responsibility of the NU council and similar outcomes occur with tier shifts every few months. The intent of the NU council was to better its own metagame, not limit metagames below it, but the former took precedence over the latter in our eyes. With this said, the ban created a unique set of circumstances that understandably prompted discussion among players of those metagames, so we thought a thread would be appropriate to discuss proper handling of this situation.