Resource Council Minutes

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Camden

Hey, it's me!
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In an effort to maintain transparency and keep the community up-to-date on our discussions we have decided we'll be releasing logs and summaries from the council chat on the LC Discord server. These will be posted on a fluctuating basis depending on the state of the metagame, but we'll give an approximate date for when the next minutes will be posted.

I don't have the entire set of logs for the first edition due to the sheer amount of them, but I wanted to provide a summary of the recent discussions. A snippet of logs will be provided below.

- Potential suspects and overall issues with the metagame have been discussed at length. The major issues brought up were Sun, Cutiefly, Vullaby, Munchlax, Drifloon, and Arena Trap. I will break down the council's feelings on each.

- Opinions on Sun are mixed. Some members feel that Sun in its current state is still a problem. Those feeling that way cite the potency of Oddish as a Sun sweeper combined with Arena Trap removing common checks. Opponents of this feel that Arena Trap is the true culprit of Sun's power and not the core strategy itself. Regardless, with Pokemon HOME arriving this month it is expected that Vulpix will be banned to coincide with Bulbasaur's release, assuming HOME allows us to transfer Pokemon as expected.

- Cutiefly has been brought up by name but not given a lot of discussion, though associated discussion cites Sticky Web strategies as being a future issue as well as it own ability to set up and sweep.

- Vullaby was mentioned a few times as a continued problem, as it continues to have strong potency as a breaker in addition to its sweeping abilities with its Nasty Plot set. Some council members responded to this by saying that removing Vullaby from the metagame isn't solving the problem and would have the least impact compared to other possible suspects.

- Munchlax was discussed very early on but over time the overall opinion shifted. Originally it was felt to be a very limiting presence, forcing undesirable tech choices in order to combat, but now it is seen as more manageable and more of a symptom of the current metagame rather than being a core problem.

- Despite surviving the suspect, the majority of the council feels Drifloon is still one of the largest issues in the metagame and is an overall detriment to it. With that in mind, the feeling is similar to Vulpix, that with the release of Pokemon HOME, Drifloon will be given its moveset back (Recycle) and that it will be seen as quickban-worthy again.

- Arena Trap has been the most discussed issue of any listed here. It is frequently sighted as the core issue affecting the rest of the metagame. It has been proposed that strategies such as Sun, Cutiefly, Vullaby, etc. are much stronger than they should be because of the unparalleled support of Arena Trap. A suspect for Arena Trap is very likely in the coming weeks based on increased support for it. Included here are some logs from recent discussion: https://pastebin.com/wizy36UJ

- We discussed the effect Pokemon HOME would have on our metagame. The feeling within Council is that if HOME allows us to transfer Galar Dex Pokemon with their previous movesets available (barring unavailable moves like Hidden Power, etc.) then this will give Drifloon access to Recycle, making it quickban-worthy. If Pokemon programmed in the game but currently unreleased become available, this would give us Bulbasaur, prompting a change in our original approach to limiting Sun, and we would more than likely ban Vulpix in place of Cherubi. Pokemon HOME has also become a burden on us because some of us feel like running a suspect now would be risky given that it could drop at any moment and completely change our meta, thus making our suspect flawed.

- Though not directly related to metagame, the council also discussed our threshold for quickbanning and autobanning. We agreed that a topic would only be quickbanned if at least 80% of the council votes in favour of it, and a Pokemon would only be autobanned if the entire council agrees to it before quickban discussions begin.

- We also talked about the creation of this thread and who would be responsible for updating it. I agreed to be that person.


The next council minutes will be posted within the next three weeks at the latest.
 
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Corporal Levi

ninjadog of the decade
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Hi all! Sorry for the delay, but Quote ended up losing interest so I'll be taking over. I'll first be playing catchup from post-home onward (Feb12th) for completeness.

Feb 12 - we led off by agreeing that both floon (now with Recycle) and sun (now with bulbasaur) were banworthy. There was some discussion on what to ban to remove Sun, and we ended up agreeing on vulpix on the grounds that we would revisit this if manual Sun turned out to be broken.
https://pastebin.com/Tbrn51xF

Feb 13 - we had a brief discussion on what to suspect/ban if veils did turn out to be an issue: the move Aurora Veil or Alolan Vulpix. Not everyone gave their input on this, but it seemed pretty clear-cut that apix should be the target since there were non-broken Aurora Veil users.
https://pastebin.com/0461kAVw

We then discussed the possibility of either apix or ziggy being broken. Both seemed pretty strong on paper at this point, but we agreed that it was still a bit early. We also established that there was the possibility of one being independently broken of the other - ziggy could still have setup opportunities without apix and apix could still support abusers other than ziggy.
https://pastebin.com/2ePucaW8

Feb 14-16 - this is where the bulk of the pre week 7 of SPL took place. Drifloon and Vulpix were banned on Friday Feb 14th. The majority of the council believed that the core of apix + ziggy was broken in some form, but this wasn't clear-cut, and there was also debate as to what the problematic element was between the two. Several council members pushed for banning one of apix or ziggy immediately for SPL week 7 beginning on the following Monday and then retesting them later, but we ended up not going through with this because we would only have had a single weekend in the post-floon/vulpix meta; apix and ziggy were still quite unfamiliar after just two days of testing, so we chose to have them remain free for the week.
https://pastebin.com/nGnvJjPS

Feb 17-20 - some more similar discussion, as well as some talk about Arena Trap after dealing with apix + zig.
https://pastebin.com/sirE1q4v

Feb 22-24 - SPL weekend was at this point and some of the games had happened, so our discussion on suspects continued in earnest. At this point, the consensus was clear that ziggy was NOT broken or even the strongest veils abuser; the problematic mon was apix, and apix was surely at least problematic enough for a suspect. The reasoning behind the apix suspect was basically just the degree to which it forced matchup issues. There was a split between whether apix should be suspected or quickbanned; a small majority of us believed that apix's uncompetitiveness for the teambuilder was already clear-cut enough to warrant a quickban, while the rest were either unsure about the degree of its banworthiness after only a week or simply felt that uncompetitiveness in the teambuilder shouldn't lead to quickbans. In the end, we didn't reach the 80% threshold needed to quickban a mon and went with a suspect instead.
https://pastebin.com/vFg20pGM

We then had a quick discussion on Rufflet. The main arguments were related to its combination of versatility and inconsistent but enormous damage output. The council was pretty split on whether it was actually broken, but we ended up moving on from Rufflet for the time being since apix was the more pressing issue.
https://pastebin.com/0HyvkmAW

Since we were all on agreement that apix was suspect-worthy, we discussed what we wanted to reqs to be and settled on making them much easier than last time (80 gxe to qualify with 50 games).
https://pastebin.com/h966EMdz

Feb 26-March 4 - The discussion during the suspect; the council members who were initially hesitant to see apix as banworthy came around over the course of the suspect. There was a lot of discussion on who was laddering, encouraging people to get reqs, and internal council affairs that I've cut out. https://pastebin.com/EnnPaBY5


=========================


With that out of the way, we can move onto post-apix discussion:

March 7-9 - Here we discussed the potential next suspect after apix. A couple of users believed that Diglett or Arena Trap should be the next suspect, and that it potentially broke threats like Cutiefly/Rufflet/Vullaby. However, a large majority of the council believed that Cutiefly should be the next suspect; at least one of its sweeping sets (bulky QD) and most of its supporting sets were broken fairly independently of Diglett, and to us comprised of the majority of Cutiefly's banworthiness. There was some debate on how important Cutiefly's offensive sets actually were compared to its support sets, with some of us believing that they were evenly split and others feeling that the ease with which Cutie could set webs or screens was more important. There was also some discussion on Cutiefly's general effect on the metagame.
https://pastebin.com/unUxQSAx

March 13 - Some discussion on SM that nothing is probably going to come out of, mostly on banning webs and possibly reverting Wingull/Trapinch.
https://pastebin.com/iUtcF6dA

March 14-18 - Scattered discussion that generally favoured a cutie ban.
https://pastebin.com/WNa4Ttms

March 22 - This was yesterday - a ton of discussion happened on Cutiefly, Rufflet, and how we plan to carry out their suspects/bans, so I'll summarize it below as a statement of the council's current thoughts on where to go from here.
https://pastebin.com/7rirKRGL


=========================


So to summarize where the council is at right now, there are three things that everyone in the council can collectively agree upon:
1. Cutiefly is certainly banworthy. It is able to support teams too effectively with webs and screens on top of its threatening offensive sets. If a quickban vote were to happen for it right now, it would almost surely be banned.
2. Rufflet's banworthiness isn't 100%, but it's certainly suspect-worthy. A combination of its versatility and the immediate threat level of its individual sets - Band, Scarf, set-up sets with Agility/Bulk Up/Substitute, either Eviolite or Berry Juice, and unpredictable spreads - makes it impossible to outright counter and extremely difficult to check.
3. Cutiefly is a higher priority than Rufflet.

Where we don't agree upon is how to approach Cutiefly and Rufflet.
- Some council members believe that Cutiefly is autobanworthy. The council is in complete consensus that it's broken right now, and the recent discussions in the LC discord have generally been in favour of a Cutiefly ban as well.
- On the other hand, other council members point out that Cutiefly has been in the metagame since the start of the gen. While it did get better over the course of the gen as its best sets were fleshed out, and home dropped a few new tools, we didn't see Cutiefly as being clearly broken until after the apix suspect, which might not be considered a major metagame shift. Previous metagame discussion posts were anti-Cutiefly ban but may be somewhat dated. On these grounds, we should wait for around a week after Shrug's metagame discussion post to give time for more opinions before putting it to a formal quickban vote.

The main benefit to voting on and banning Cutiefly now, rather than delaying it for a week, relates to the timing of a follow-up Rufflet suspect test with LCPL.
- Some council members are fine with immediately suspecting Rufflet after a Cutiefly ban, as we've been aware of Rufflet's strength for a while now. - However, Cutiefly being banned does have a small chance of affecting Rufflet's viability, at least its band and offensive BU sets; on these grounds, the other council members believe that it would be better to give a week or two for the metagame to settle after a Cutiefly ban.
- The timing of this and LCPL means that if we both wait a week to vote on Cutiefly and give another week for the metagame to settle, then a Rufflet suspect would drag into the LCPL season as planned. Having a suspect going on during the first week of LCPL carries its own problems, as would delaying LCPL by a week.
 
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Corporal Levi

ninjadog of the decade
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This is going to become a regular thing, I promise.

March 23-28 - Following up on where I left off, we briefly discussed the policy repercussions of quickbanning Cutiefly so late after Home and decided that given our recent apix ban coupled with our tournament schedule, it would be justified as long as there was enough community support. Disagreements with cutiefly's quickban ended up being pretty limited and, following a 14-0 vote, we decided to quickban Cutiefly.
https://pastebin.com/fdDcTzDf

March 30-April 1 - After Cutiefly's ban, we began discussing the timing of the Rufflet suspect again. Some of us felt that Rufflet was immediately suspectable because we were already very familiar with what it did and its combination of brokenness/reliance on luck; an immediate suspect would be better for timing the suspect with respect to LCPL and minimizing the amount of overlap. However, several council members brought up issues with suspecting Rufflet so soon after Cutiefly's ban, which might impact Rufflet's viability, and no consensus was reached, so we let it sit for a bit.
https://pastebin.com/eJMJ01tb

April 9 - We revisited pushing the Rufflet ban forward after a week. At this point, only week 1 of LCPL would overlap with the suspect, which meant that there would still be time to begin laddering before the tour. Some of the council members were still hesitant as they weren't yet confident as to whether Rufflet was banworthy, but enough of us were either already decided on Rufflet, or were fine with using the suspect to decide, for the council to vote to start the suspect.
https://pastebin.com/1FhrF7Sq

April 10 - We also briefly discussed the potential banning of webs in SM, though it would be after LCPL. Most of us agreed that it could be worth looking into given that a large portion of the playerbase considered it broken, and unlike Vullaby, it would be of fairly low collateral. Some disagreement was brought up on the grounds that it wouldn't make sense to put webs to a council vote after it failed to see a suspect during the actual gen, and there was discussion on potentially hosting a suspect for webs, either instead of or alongside a council vote based on SM tour results, given SM LC's relative continued popularity.
https://pastebin.com/94QnfZdz
 

Corporal Levi

ninjadog of the decade
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LCPL's regular season is coming to a close and we're looking into another suspect if necessary. I delayed this a bit because we were still discussing in the council chat and I wanted to include that as well.

April 19-April 27 - As the Rufflet suspect ended, we began discussing what else was problematic in the current metagame, and manual sun came up as the foremost issue. There was some contention as to whether manual sun was problematic to begin with, though the majority of the council believed that it was at least worth discussing. Trapping was also discussed, but the general consensus was that Trapinch almost certainly wasn't banworthy, and Diglett was borderline mainly for how well it could support Bulbasaur. The main point of contention was what to suspect if manual sun was indeed problematic.

Some users believed that Bulbasaur should be targeted, seeing how it is the currently problematic abuser, and Cherubi/Charmander are generally considered less effective. Several options to nerf Bulbasaur directly were brought up, including banning Bulbasaur itself, Heat Rock, Growth, and Chlorophyll. Others believed that Diglett should be targeted, as it is comfortably the most reliable sun setter due to its speed and trapping, and Bulbasaur would be much more difficult to abuse Chlorophyll with if Diglett was banned. There was disagreement as to whether banning Diglett would actually balance manual sun, however, as there are still plenty of other setters, even if they were less effective, as well as whether banning Diglett would be the best choice with regard to collateral if Bulbasaur-Diglett is the only broken Diglett core.

https://pastebin.com/WHsenPTp

April 29-May 9 - We continued to discuss trapping and manual sun here, and at this point, there was a clearer consensus that targeting Bulbasaur would be a bit better. Banning Cherubi and freeing Vulpix was discussed in the scenario that Bulbasaur was banned. There was also discussion on the timing of a potential suspect. The DLC is slated to drop soon, and the changes it brings could impact how we feel about either suspect at hand. There was some debate as to whether this should impact how we carry out our suspects - for example, whether we should just delay suspects until after the DLC at the cost of the current metagame. It was also mentioned that a manual sun suspect would likely be lower impact than an arena trap ban if we were worried about affecting the post-DLC metagame.

https://pastebin.com/Ay9Jft30

May 10 - Here, the debate was mainly between banning Bulbasaur and banning Heat Rock. This was partly a policy discussion - whether banning a mon would be better policy-wise than banning an item, with some users feeling that we should lean toward mon bans where possible for simplicity, and others feeling that this wasn't important to do seeing how other tiers would often go against banning the mon as well. There was also a discussion on whether banning Bulbasaur would solve the issue at hand - that is, whether Cherubi manual sun would be broken as well, in which case banning Bulbasaur wouldn't really be a serious option. There was also some discussion on whether we could free Vulpix if Heat Rock was banned - that is, if autosun with Cherubi but not Bulbasaur would still be broken with boots or eject pack Vulpix.

https://pastebin.com/jUNtuQK7

May 15-18 - The discussion here was on the topic of what element to suspect between Bulbasaur, Chlorophyll, Heat Rock, and to a small extent Sunny Day. Much of the discussion centered around whether Cherubi sun is also problematic. Some users argued that a great deal differentiates Bulbasaur and Cherubi such that Bulbasaur is drastically more viable than Cherubi, and manual Cherubi sun isn't an immediate issue, or at least should be given thought independently of Bulbasaur sun; others argued that Cherubi still has Weather Ball and is suspect-worthy as well. Part of this was whether Chlorophyll sun as a whole could be seen as unhealthy; some users felt that it would always be an issue. Others felt that it was just specific abusers, and that sun isn't inherently worse than other archetypes like webs or other weather. When this was put to a vote, there was for the most part a divide between council members who felt that Cherubi sun is problematic and those who did not. Users who felt that it was problematic were split between suspecting Chlorophyll and Heat Rock, depending on which they felt offered less collateral. Users who felt that it wasn't problematic leaned Bulbasaur, since banning it and only having its non-Sun sets as collateral would be obviously be pretty minimal collateral compared to sun archetypes with Cherubi, Charmander, and so on. A Vulpix retest (not necessarily immediate unban) was discussed as almost surely an option if Bulbasaur or Chlorophyll was banned, but more difficult to justify if Heat Rock was banned.

https://pastebin.com/2NpzWZY7
 

Corporal Levi

ninjadog of the decade
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I stopped doing these for some time because from what I saw there wasn't any interest, but I did get some questions about council minutes during the Vullaby suspect so I'll try to go through our recent council discussion.

I'm going to start from the end of the Vullaby suspect since I believe council opinions are already known on that, but to summarize, the council stances were evenly split as follows:

burntzebra - ban
coconut - ban
fiend - ban
ggggd - do not ban
ksg - do not ban
levi - ban
lilyac - do not ban
luthier - ban
plas - do not ban
shrug - do not ban
star - ban
tazz - do not ban

Vullaby was ultimately not banned.

Feb 9-Feb 22 - This covers all our post-Vullaby suspect discussion so far since it was pretty much all just working out what our next suspect should be. All of the council agrees that Woobat is problematic in some way, but there has been disagreement on how it should be approached.
https://pastebin.com/svNGkq7H

In summary, we can break this down into two discussions, the first of which is on the core of Grookey + Woobat.
- Given that Woobat is largely dependent on Grookey's support to use its potentially broken Grassy Seed sets, banning Grookey would largely neuter Woobat. Woobat with only manual Grassy Terrain support is certainly not immediately suspect-worthy as it doesn't belong in the same archetype; auto and manual variants of teams play very differently, and in fact we did see players like Jox use Cottonee + Woobat in pre-Grookey metagames to only limited success.
- With this in mind, the point of contention on what to suspect depends on whether Grookey itself is broken. If Grookey is broken on its own, then suspecting it of course makes more sense than suspecting Woobat, since we can tackle both problems at once. On the other hand, if Grookey is not broken, then the correct policy approach would be to suspect Woobat since it's the lower collateral ban - Woobat without Grookey is much less viable than Grookey without Woobat.
- It's worth noting that even if Woobat would get banned in an initial suspect, we can always resuspect it if Grookey gets banned at a later date.

The second discussion is on whether cheese as a whole (namely screens and webs) is too strong, rather than just the grookbat core.
- Several council members expressed their concerns on how we may simply not have reasonable tools to deal with matchup-fishing strategies this gen. Grookey and Woobat aren't the only prominent screen abusers; Scraggy, Tyrunt, and of course, Nasty Plot Vullaby are all very threatening in their own right. On these grounds, it would be more sensible that we tackle the strategies directly by addressing the supporters - the screen setters - or even screens itself.
- Other council members believe that, for various reasons, Woobat stands noticeably above other abusers in brokenness, and that banning it would likely bring cheese archetypes back in line with historically balanced archetypes like veils in SM or webs in XY.
- Another thing to consider is that if we deal with the supporters directly, we may have to follow through with multiple suspects anyways. Natu is the most popular screen setter right now, but the likes of Teleport/Taunt Abra and Flip Turn Staryu may be nearly as effective.
- Finally, there is the question of how much Woobat actually relies on these supporters to be broken, as it is already very strong with just Grookey support.
 

Fiend

someguy
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LC Leader
Here is a summary of the council's discussions following the Woobat ban, leading into the Vullaby Re-Suspect. Items are listed in chronological order.
[relevant logs]
  • Shared initial concerns about Scraggy; continued overperformance of screens.
    • Consensus has since shifted to understand these as not currently problematic.
    • Council repeatedly suggests screens are likely still good, but lacking a streamlined build they are not dominant.
  • Desires to readdress Sun teams cools off.
  • Initial frustrations with the immediate dynamics of the post-Woobat metagame are voiced.
    • These frustrations continue; later, primarily coalescing around Vullaby-Porygon within the council.
  • Tazz wants to retest Gothita still.
    • Someone wanted to retest Cutiefly and I continue to be unsure of their sincerity.
  • Porygon first gets brought up mid-June as a "wait and see."
    • Discussions ensue, mirroring much of what can be read in the metagame discussion page. [start here]
    • Focus narrows on Steels being much more necessary due to Porygon and exploited by Vullaby simply running Heatwave.
    • This seems important.
  • The majority of council suggests or supports the re-suspect of Vullaby.
    • Noting that Shrug and Tazz would have prefered a Porygon suspect.
 
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