Since it is mere weeks untill DLC 1 ends and DLC 2 drops, im going to drop my thoughts on how SV has been going for me,
After the banning of sneasler there has been a sour taste that has been developing for me, i was an avid sneasler ban enjoyer, i thought it was busted but upon retrospect i think there is a problem with this generation.
The bans are happening way too fast and there physically isn't enough time to let the meta settle to make balance changes. the speed of which things are getting banned, and how many pokemon ARE banned (which can be its own tier and metagame) is a bit concerning.
i'm going to take a few examples between
Baxcalibur, Walking Wake, Garganacl (Pre Home), Sneaseler, Roaring Moon and Volcarona.
Baxcalibur i think is a perfect ban, it has marinated in the metagame for a long while and we have seen the positives and the negatives it brings.
Pros
-Big Attacker with decent speed and good bulk
-Great defensive utility for offense
-Fixes many holes on teams
Cons
-Dondozo is almost forced on a lot of fat teams
-Can set up and win way too easily
-it can pick its counters very easily with tera, and with just 1 misplay, it can snowball
We had it in the tier for months and after exhausting everything that we can do with it, the verdict is made that it is
Broken.
Garganacl was in the opposite side of the spectrum, where in pre home, it garnered a lot of support for a ban due to how dominant and slappable it was, at points gaining a 3/5 points in favor of suspect but it never got it and guess what? People adapted, people started using more knock off, Covert Cloak pex and dengo, Bulk Up great tusk, spikes spam, etc. After a while, garg just became a great, but not broken mon, the opposite of Baxcalibur before falling off a bit once Home dropped.
These two are perfect examples of how letting the meta adapt can show the true colors of a pokemon and truly see if they are just good, or broken.
However, those are just 2 rare cases, and i think this is the main problem for current tiering for SV OU, Actions are being taken way too quickly before the meta can even develop and marinate.
Walking Wake, Roaring Moon, Volcarona and Sneaseler didn't have enough time for the meta to settle to see if theyre truly broken or not.
Walking wake is a perfect example of a pokemon that was thought to be broken at the beginning and ended up being fine additions to the metagame. Walking Wake suspect in my opinion, was still one of the worst choice for suspect we have had, it was barely released in 4 days, in a meta where the scariest water type was rotom wash, and people were still comfortably using teams with no water resist, so if we just take those 3 days where people haven't adapted, Walking Wake is going to look like Dracovish-Incarnate, but after the suspect was over, people quickly realized that it was very mid, it did get better during home meta but at the time, we were about to suspect and potentially ban a pokemon that is mid, there was even rumors about a quick ban for it although i cant confirm it.
Blood Moon was a very centralizing pokemon that forced people to run stuff like Spdef Unaware Clefable that got banned in 7th of october 2023, then roaring moon was suspected 10 days later, the threshold for people making new teams and getting rid of old ones after a ban is usually around 3-5 days, arbitrary but its what i notice from friends who are good players as well. Taking this into account, we only have 5 Days to play in a roaring moon meta, a pokemon who is powerful, but is deeply flawed like only being able to sweep once, heavy 4MSS, before it was suspect tested and resulted in a ban. This ban opened the floodgates to the dreadful meta that was Rillaboom Sneaseler Gliscor Heatran meta, where it revolves around Gliscor Spikestack teams and Rillaboom Sneaseler, why? because the breaker that checked these pokemon got banned, and gliscor at this time held a monopoly on defensive pokemon which unintentionally made fatter teams worse and offensive teams better, once it got banned, Sneasler rose to power... for 2 days... before the meta can settle and potentially find a counter play to it and build the meta around it.
Now the meta is dominated by
double ground zapdos, very static reliant, rillaboom is even more powerful, ogerpon is more dominant than ever and one can only be happy that it will only last a few days.
Volcarona was probably the most controversial ban in gen 9 ou, as before pokemon home dropped, volcarona was a fine setup sweeper, not too broken but still really good, it gives a great defensive utility for offense and can even be slotted into more balance teams, it is heavily flawed with pokemon like clodsire and ting-lu being able to counter it quite easily in pre-home meta. Once Home dropped, not many people were clammoring for its ban and it was just banned.
Now why am i posting about this?
If we take just this DLC meta right now, Ogerpon wouldn't have been as dominant if Sneaseler was around, and Sneaseler wouldn't have been as dominant had we have roaring moon and gliscor keeping it in check, and roaring moon was kept in check by pokemon like gliscor, zamazenta and kingambit. (Oh and if ur saying "but tera..." respectfully, learn how to deal with it, i am speaking from the perspective of a tera meta)
SV OU physically CANNOT function without being 'Broken checks broken' like SS OU or ORAS OU. Theres simply too many 'broken' pokemon, but those broken pokemon cancels eachother out. Iron Valiant loses to Dengo, which loses to gambit, which loses to valiant, which loses to moth, which loses to roaring moon, which loses to weavile, which loses to zamazenta, which loses to dondozo, which loses to rillaboom, which loses to volcarona and etc. We also have adequate defensive pokemon, stuff like Great Tusk, Ting-lu, Zapdos, Dondozo, Garganacl are amazing pokemon that can check pretty much anything in the metagame, at the start of dlc
Highv0ltag3 peaked on ladder with stall in a hearthflame meta using a Torn-t stall, and on high-ladder there was also a lot of balance teams that uses pokemon like defensive dragonite to check it, so we were at a precipice of people acclimating to the hearthflame meta before it got quickbanned.
I saw a lot of people here mentioning "why unban pokemon when its already banned? what purpose do they bring?" its to prevent stuff like this from happening, if Volcarona was here, Rillaboom wouldn't be this broken and so on. Having more variety is almost always better.
So heres my proposal,
Slow Down the bans, after the first few OBVIOUSLY brokens (Magearna, Chi-Yu, Landorus-I, etc) only do suspect tests, and have a longer gap between them and let the meta settle, maybe 3 weeks minimum. Then can we also not ban litterally everything? I know "Broken checks broken" is a no-go usually, but looking at how game freak is taking SV with the DLC, new broken moves, new broken pokemon, its impossible to make an ORAS or SS style balanced metagame. If we continue this meta and ban Gholdengo, it may fix the problem of hazards but then Iron-Valiant and Rillaboom becomes more broken, then we ban those and dark types become more broken, then if we ban too much the defensive pokemon like garg starts becoming broken again its a never ending cycle, and lets not forget that the defensive pokemon of this meta like Garganacl, Great Tusk, Ting-lu, Zapdos are excellent and can check pretty much every pokemon. SV is very similar to SM at how many broken things there are, and guess what? despite SM having so many downright broken pokemon, the meta thrives, the things that are thought to be broken have balanced out (Tapu Lele, Ash Gren, etc.) because the meta eventually settled. I think its just impossible for this meta to be completely balanced with how dominant hazards are, amount of broken pokemon, the defensive power creep, etc.
I am not againts bans, but i am very concerned at how fast the meta is going, there are so many surveys in a row, just one after another barely after a ban just happened and people don't have enough time to collect their thoughts and vote, which at that point why even have a survey?
Slow down the survey so people can collect their thoughts a vote with a full grasp on the meta, Slow down the bans and suspect so the meta can develop naturally and have people deal with the 'broken' pokemon like
Bax and
Garg in the past, Embrace the 'Broken checks broken' aspect of SV since it is the way game freak is going with the balancing and pokemon that are available, i know its very much so, not ideal but its just an idea. I know that Game Freak have moved from a Game to New Game basis to DLC to New DLC in a single gen, so the meta will be shorter than before. However, i dont think it is right to rush balancing just because a meta will only last 5 months. 2 Solid bans will always be better than a scattershot of 5 bans.
