i often wonder where people’s thoughts sit on what “justifies” a ban.
I am of the opinion that a ban is justified when something is just “too good” at fulfilling its purpose.
an example of something good at fulfilling its purpose is cinderace, it can reliably dissuade hazards and court change away the hazards most of the time. It also hits decently hard and can pivot.
an example of something that really feels borderline “too good” at its purpose is kingambit, if it’s preserved right and the opponent isn’t forced to Tera anything else, it just wins end games on coin flips.
meanwhile I look at ting Lu and sneasler and they just don’t seem to be too overbearing at their purpose.
and most definitely not Ursaluna, it’s strong and hits hard, but is being excellent at stallbreaking really overbearing? I have seen
Highv0ltag3 adapt to ursaluna with fast corviknight for example. Ursaluna is good at trading, similar to Melmetal. It doesn’t have as much defensive utility tho, that’s traded for more intense offensive pressure.
For me its justified to ban something when:
- it has no clear counterplay,
- warps the meta in a way where you can't teambuild unless its to team build against it/use it yourself,
- overall makes the tier a better place when gone which is very subjective to think about but ultimately I think the one everyone will hold onto on a personal level more than anything. No matter how professional you look at it, there's always a hint of bias in someone's vote that will look for reasons to defend/remove something.
Ex; Zama-H feels like this to me,
- counterplay is very limited to non-existant, as it can muscle anything the tier throws at it and hit harder back, if it doesn't just hit first with its high speed stat. If you do take it down, you're suffering losses to deal with its allies.
- the meta doesn't seem warped around it to be fair but it heavily punishes more physical-oriented teams with its defensive bulk, while slotting it on your team is very rewarding in checking physical mons and still being an offensive threat. You can run it on HO/balance and still fucking tank opposing HO/balance while dealing the damage, just is too much.
- Zama-H removal makes the tier balanced, I still standby a mon that can setup that fast, have those stats, and not even be revenge killable is just ridiculous to play around.
I don't feel volc falls in my justification in that cause;
- There was clear counterplay to various volc sets, the only inconsistency is which set it was running but each set had a large pool of checks/counters. I actually didn't see volc that often, i would browse live battles to see if i could find a volc game and i found 2 in the 15 i tried (above 1500 elo) so clearly it wasn't as desired as made out to be.
- It didn't warp the meta, you may argue that you'd have to run volc checks to not get swept and rely on matchup fishing, but all the volc 'checks' were very viable pokemon you still are using now with volc gone. I'm not seeing heatran in UU now that volc is gone.
- Whether the tier is a better place without it is subjective and anyone can voice their opinion on that, but IME and IMO; the removal of volc I genuinely don't notice a difference in the meta besides zama-h is even stronger and kingambit is the 'new volc' now that volc itself isn't checking it or there to be gaslit instead. It's hard to argue if the tier got better, it doesn't feel like the tier has changed besides I can't use volc but other mons doing the same thing (abusing tera to get a free turn to reverse shit on a game) still exist so personally I don't find it a better place now. I stand by suspect testing volc isn't nearly as important as suspect testing tera cause volc's impact was highly overstated (evident now, tell me what meaningful changes the ban impacted on the meta) and there'd be no question about dropping it if the tera test goes ban.
Ursaluna doesn't feel that way to me either.
- There's counterplay in ursaluna, its slow and you can stall out its trick room turns. Its just a really hard hitting mon, frankly rampardos could do it if it was around ursaluna is just the best version of it we got.
- You're not running shitmons for counters, being slow there's a good natural pool of pokemon that can check/kill it, it might make priority more important since that's the best anti-trick room answer, but overall it hasn't warped much besides making trick room better.
- I don't think it makes OU a worse place being here cause its pretty cool trick room is viable again, it always felt like a cheesey playstyle that wasn't worth the effort to do but now we're seeing trick room success and unless trick room is a bad thing all of a sudden I don't see luna as an unwelcome guest.
core. Washtom can switch into ice and water attacks directed at landorus and volt switch out, procing another debuff. Yea sure it gets crippled by passive damage, but GameFreak made sure it no longer fills like 15 roles on a single team and now has its strengths and weaknesses.