I'm sorry but I can't seem to understand why Iron Head can't be banned, while Baton Pass can. If we want to look at examples from other gens, Swagger and Assist are banned in multiple gens (RS, BW, XY) and Last Respects and Shed Tail are banned from the current SV.
Sure, Baton Pass is obviously broken and Iron Head is much more controversial, but the possibility of a ban should either exist for any move or for none.
That being said, I'm not a tiering expert so please let me know if there is a sensible explanation for this.
Tiering admins angle is that BP, Last Respects, Swagger and Shed Tail are moves that have multiple abusers while Iron Head has only one: Jirachi. This goes against their policy that has been colloquially referred to as "Build-A-Bear"ing to preserve a Pokemon. Agree or disagree with it, the council has their hands tied when it comes to complex banning Iron Head + Serene Grace, for which we'd def open up a greater conversation with the community if we had the ability to.
Since the DPP Council bend over backwards to ban Snow Cloak, I really would expect something to be done regarding Jirachi here.
Remember Froslass / Snow Cloak wasn't a problem and nobody wanted to ban it. Look at this thread is an overwhelming amount of people against the ban, and the council just did it anyway for some reason.
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/dpp-snow-cloak.3721756/#post-9898026
The only evidence of Snow Cloak being uncompetitive was submitted by Excal stomping some randoms on the ladder. The post by DeepBlueC did not explain anything and the whole DPP community was against it. Just read through the whole thread again, the whole Snow Cloak ban fiasco was a disaster
After SPL 2024, there are so many DPP players say how uncompetitive Jirachi is. If there are this many people against Jirachi, wanting to ban it or Iron Head, and the council does not do something, then one must wonder what are the councils doing?
DPP tiering decisions are starting to look like BW tiering decisions
The regurgitated argument that because we banned Snow Cloak, we should take action on Jirachi is misguided. Snow Cloak was some bullshit that changed basically nothing about the metagame. We wanted to improve the complex ban to prevent Froslass from being used alongside Snow Warning, but tiering policy administrators vetoed it.
"Remember Froslass / Snow Cloak wasn't a problem and nobody wanted to ban it. Look at this thread is an overwhelming amount of people against the ban, and the council just did it anyway for some reason." - The majority of complaints when it was revisited came after Froslass was banned, not before. Kristyl's post ending the thread gives a better picture of the situation.
Jirachi is a much more complicated topic that top DPP players have divisive opinions on. While many would be in favor of an IH complex ban if we had the choice, most would not be in favor of an outright Jirachi ban, which leads the council to take no action on Jirachi. We've conducted two surveys in a row consisting of the tier's best players that have demonstrated this, and we have no doubt that the result would be the same if/when we do another survey. The only way we consider taking action on Jirachi is if such a survey demonstrates an overwhelming amount of support for a Jirachi ban.
There's a lot of casual talk from players stating we must do something about Jirachi, Clefable, etc. However, there's a silent majority that really enjoys the tier and doesn't want to make a monumental change like banning any of these Pokemon. The surveys state everything we need to know, and just because some players who aren't as much in the weeds complain/discuss potential bans, does not mean there is an overwhelming demand for them that the council is ignoring.
The council serves the community. I would be against an IH complex ban personally but would be more than open to follow the community's wishes and pursue it if we had the option. At this point, discussing an Iron Head + Serene Grace complex ban in the DPP forums is unproductive. We've said on record so many times we can't do anything about it, and unless policy is changed that will remain the same. If you're not thrilled with that outcome, work to change the policy around it. I'm making this post to have this information readily available and clear the misconceptions around the tier's state & the council's role in this.
Please
do not bring up an Iron Head ban or anything related to that in this thread from here on out. For the reasons I outlined in this post, your post may be deleted and repeated offenders may be warned.
tl;dr
- Iron Head ban is completely off the table and discussion surrounding it in the DPP forum is unproductive -- such discussions belong in Policy Review
- Snow Cloak ban has exponentially less collateral than a Jirachi/Clefable/etc ban -- comparing these two scenarios is strawmanning and not in good faith
- The DPP council serves the community and guides their actions via curated community/SPL-oriented surveys to gauge tier satisfaction
- Blame tiering policy administration for Iron Head complex ban not being an option and for not being able to improve Snow Cloak complex ban at Froslass's expense. The DPP council took the best actions they could under the circumstances they were given and they are doing a good job