As I stated 24 hours ago, we were going to hold a vote on whether to immediately remove Baile Oricorio from the tier. We are permitted to do this as PU is not in an alpha period, following a
recent policy review decision. Nonetheless, we only wanted to go ahead with this if we got a unanimous council vote, due to it being so early in the tier's lifespan.
Baile Oricorio has been quickbanned from SV PU.
Tagging
Kris &
Marty to implement please!
Baile Oricorio's presence in the tier has, to put it extremely lightly, been felt over the duration of the tier so far. Its ability to Quiver Dance with extreme ease, and sweep through the vast majority of the tier with its STABs alone cannot be understated. Quiver Dance as a whole is an invaluable move in tiers such as these due to the lower power level, but Oricorio especially has incredible tools that the others do not possess. Its STAB combination is only really walled by Rock-types, where we only have a couple viable ones. These Pokemon however, are not enough to wall Oricorio.
Where Oricorio becomes overwhelmingly broken is its ability to terastallize and change its primary STAB to any type it pleases. This allows it to get around the already limited list of checks it has, and take the game. This is arguably broken on a fundamental level, usually Pokemon are held back by either accounting for their Tera Type with slots in their movepool; however, Oricorio doesn't have to worry about that as Revelation Dance changes type following terastallization. Notably, Ground-type Terastal options have proven already to be unwallable, as its best defensive answers require mounds of prediction and generally two teamslots in order to adequately check typewise. Oricorio is sufficiently powerful following a single Quiver Dance however, thus this rarely matters anyway. It can and does also use alternate Tera Types to circumvent this issue, such as Water, Fighting or Steel.
Its unfortunate that its ban comes with the loss of one of our two Defog options; however, this unfortunately is not justification to keep it around in the tier.
Why now?
The PU Council unanimously agrees that Oricorio is extremely unhealthy for the tier, and that even with substantial meta development, this will be unaffected. We want to see the metagame develop properly without this overbearing threat, that in our collective opinion, has no chance of being balanced in the metagame we have. We want to see other threats develop, and how the decision of Baile Oricorio leaving affects the tier. Will other Quiver Dance users feel as potent without having to account for Baile Oricorio in the builder? Will Pa'u Oricorio also prove broken? These are important questions that must be answered as time goes on.
We're also going to see a lot of examples of the PU format in action as our PU Kickoff tournament commences later today. We know Baile Oricorio is broken, but what about our remaining threats? I'm extremely interested to see how they develop in a post Baile Oricorio metagame.
Why not remove Vivillon or Oricorio-Pa'u or whatever else?
We wanted to avoid quickbanning anything this early on given it's only been just under a week; however, Baile Oricorio has felt incredibly oppressive beyond any other threat. It's the only Pokemon the council has unanimously agreed upon being absolutely definitely broken, and we can't see it improving as time goes on. We also want to see how Pa'u Oricorio develops without Baile overshadowing it, so that we can have an adequate measure of just how good it is, after a few rounds of the PU Kickoff tournament.
Why not ban Quiver Dance?
Quiver Dance would have to be unjustifiably broken on every Pokemon that gets it, in order to ban it. As I said, we wanted to avoid other bans this early on as we really do believe meta development is important prior to our first proper slate. It would also require a thread in policy review, which would end up taking a while. It's also just a messy ban which, in my opinion, is not remotely warranted; however, if we do want to tackle that obstacle down the road we can always address it then.
Will we have a chance to reintroduce it to the tier, once the metagame settles?
Yes. If the demand is there, or if metagame shifts severely hinder Oricorio, we can absolutely hold a re-suspect test down the line.
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Thank you for reading, and I look forward to seeing the metagame develop as the tier's lifespan continues.