Discussion RE: Tiering "Dying" Metagames

[Finchinator]

The second DLC of this generation is set to be released on the 14th of December, which is just under three weeks from now. There is technically time for another suspect test, which takes about two weeks, but there is also a sentiment that this would generate diminished returns as any potential suspect would end up back in OU upon the release of DLC 2.

SV OU will undergo what some can call a "partial reset" at this time. We will evaluate some potential Ubers to drop down and examine the status of the Pokemon being added to the game that may have been Uber in the prior generation, too. This post is not about that metagame, however, which we will deal with once we have more confirmed information. It is about the current metagame, which has an expiration date within the next month.

Our tiering system has evolved to focus more on data and addressing the evolving needs of the community, which includes the practice of regular community surveys on the metagame. Pokemon that receive high amounts of support within the surveys end up as potential subjects of tiering action. Pokemon like Baxcalibur and Sneasler received overwhelming support and got quickbanned, but other Pokemon received good, but not overwhelming, amounts of support, leading to suspect tests of Pokemon like Roaring Moon or Gliscor.

Currently Gholdengo is comfortably within the margin of support that something would get to be a potential suspect -- it is at a 3.8 out of 5, which is on par with or higher than various prior suspects. There has also been a large outcry about it throughout the community, which you can see across thousands of posts on the forum and discord in recent weeks.

If we had a more permanent metagame state, a suspect would likely be up already (although there is some dispute within the council, this data would be hard to ignore I would personally say) given the uptick in recent support. However, suspecting Gholdengo could be seen as pointless as the verdict would only be in place for about a week before DLC2. This leads me to the point of this thread: when do we draw the line to stop tiering action prior to a release? Is it 2 weeks? A month? 2 months? Situationally dependent?

We have had various suspects and bans recently that are able to help people play a more balanced metagame on the ladder and in tournaments, and this feeling of the metagame improving is reflected in survey results, too. However, players would hardly be able to experience a post-Gholdengo metagame, if it even were to get banned, and with Gholdengo being such a major presence in the metagame, it seems like we would be flirting with futility by suspecting it -- or anything -- this late in the game.

The natural counter to this is that the support is there, there is no precedent or guideline that says when to stop, and we just went ahead on various other suspects/bans that could very well be undone with DLC2 as well, so where do we truly draw the line? We should focus on the current metagame while it is current as it is true that everything else is speculative and unconfirmed until it becomes the current, real metagame in the future post-release. And I personally understand and resonate with this side as we have been focusing on the current metagame for months, so this would be a bit of an abrupt stop. However, I also feel a line needs to be drawn somewhere and now may be the ideal time for that...hence this discussion

I am curious on what the community feels on this. I am ok to go forwawrd with a suspect to give the people what they support, but I also feel that it could be a waste at this point in our timeline and the results would not actually have any longstanding impact.

 

[Magcargo]

We've only got 3 weeks remaining in this metagame, and dealing with the ramifications of a monumental shift that will be caused by banning a highly influential Pokemon like Gholdengo will take a great deal of time, far greater than a week, to fully experience and comprehend. I'd argue that there hasn't been enough time to see the consequences of a Gliscor or Sneasler ban yet, both of which were highly influencial Pokemon in the metagame. The only benefit of a suspect would be to have an excuse to quickban Gholdengo in the post-DLC metagame, but we don't know what that metagame will necessarily include so even this logic is faulty.

If Gholdengo is deemed a problem by the council and playerbase, I would rather a vote be conducted by the council to quickban it and see the ramifications on the metagame rather than wait two weeks for a suspect to occur & conclude. That way, at least more data can be collected about the effects of its ban and the subsequent effects on the metagame.

As for a timeline, I'm not sure I have the answer to that. In the pre-DLC metagame, I would argue it was very clear that Baxcalibur was overwhelming in the last month, but there wasn't enough time for a suspect. Rather, maintaining the status quo made it more clear that Baxcalibur was an issue. On the flipside, very little was actually banned via suspects in the pre-DLC metagame, hence the feeling of "understanding the metagame" was more clear. In the post DLC metagame, we are barely off the heels of multiple bans, so I'd argue the metagame hasn't stabilized fully to paint a clear picture of the metagame as it is currently.

 

[1LDK]

I think this could go on a case to case basis, It's hard to say because the one triggering this discussion is gholdengo. I want to point out some trends gamefreak has done

1) increase the pool of hazard users, not just in the move, but stuff like Kleavor or Samurrot Hisui making magic bounce useless
2) reduce the pool of rapid spin and defog users, and the majority of mons who gets those 2 moves has a bad matchup against gholdengo (corviknight, mandibuzz, quaquaval) itself OR don't work in the metagame either at all or in specific playstyles (oricorio, talonflame)

Is gamefreak gonna change the pattern to give us some salvation? I find very hard to believe so. They care about VGC and BSS, they will keep giving us low distribution on mons with these moves because gholdengo is the new toy. And here is the problem, Gholdengo is a case on his own because of Good as Gold, but not all Pokémon are gonna be as hard to decide as him

For this particular case: I would still go with this suspect, if it gets banned, great, and he is not allowed to come back. I know I'm being speculative, but let's be honest it's fucking gamefreak, expect the worst case scenario

We've only got 3 weeks remaining in this metagame, and dealing with the ramifications of a monumental shift that will be caused by banning a highly influential Pokemon like Gholdengo will take a great deal of time, far greater than a week, to fully experience and comprehend.

While this is 100% true, assuming ghold doesn't come back after its ban, since after those 3 weeks, we are gonna get hit by DLC2, and some unbans/rebans for the fun, it's 2-3 massive tiering shifts together, but they are so together, that I would actually just call it one huge wave. If you look at it this way, it's easier to manage out in the long term

If gamefreak doesn't release anymore DLC content, once Indigo Disk comes out, we will have the time to work things slowly, for now, I would prepare for the zombie invasion outside my garden rather than the one happening in a year

 

[Lily]

for a quick rundown:

The topic of Gholdengo's survey results comes up in council. Finch mentions that they're incredibly high in support of suspecting it (nearing a 4 on average). NJNP agrees that this is too high a number to ignore. I answer by saying I feel a suspect test right now would be doing a disservice to the community because Gholdengo is extremely polarising and would almost certainly be unbanned a week after its result, assuming its gets banned to begin with. TPP and later Star agree with me. Finch and NJNP still feel it'd be wrong to ignore community outcry on something that a suspect test is so clearly wanted for. Finch mentions that there's no set "expiration date" on metagames in this way and that we kinda need something to point to if we're going to say "hey, we're not doing this because the timeframe is bad". DLC is still a fairly new concept for mons so there's no precedent for Smogon. Thus this thread.

That paragraph should about sum up my thoughts. Idk when metagames should be considered "dead" or when we should stop tiering them but I do know a week before a new DLC drop is just instinctively not a great idea. My suggestion is that we just go on a case by case basis and use as much common sense as we can, bc these scenarios are few and far between and we can't realistically prepare for all of them. IMO if tiering action is going to happen and will only last, like, two weeks tops before being rendered useless, that's where the line is in my head. But that's gonna be different for everyone and idk if we can codify it, or if we need to. We'll (presumably) have all of DLC2 to make a more stable metagame where we can take our time with things.

Disclaimer that my own opinion on Gholdengo did not motivate this at all, I said the same thing about a suspect for Sneasler being pointless and still voted QB on that.

 

[shnowshner]

speaking from experience with smaller metas, i think it's way easier to justify "waiting periods" on tiering when your meta doesn't have a whole heap of activity and any changes you do make would end up affecting like, maybe a hundred actually competitive games that happen. on a scale like ou however with its incredibly popular ladder and active tourbase i do not know if this same train of thought really applies. even though dlc is going to drop soon after a suspect ends, and it's quite likely gholdengo returns to ou if it is banned after dlc2 is implemented, there's still thousands of ou ladder games that are going to happen in that small window, and ongoing tours like oupl will have to finish the week off on the old metagame and potentially a bit longer if deemed necessary by hosts/playerbase.

suffice to say this feels like a judgement call on behalf of tier leaders and community as a whole. it's easier to justify a suspect test this close to a huge metagame shift when there's a lot of games taking place in that meta, while smaller communities can say, "yeah let's just wait and not mess with any of the teams we built" (we are lazy and do not like making new teams when you can load test ho for the 5th time). i think the only hard rule needed is like, if the time it would take a suspect test to conclude is beyond the release date for a dlc, don't bother? which i doubt anyone has considered ever.

 

[pulsar512b]

In my opinion, if a suspect's ruling would be in place for something like 2 weeks, I think it would be correct to hold said suspect. If a suspect's ruling would be in place for, say, 4 days, then it's much less clear, and if you were ever gonna not hold a suspect then that would be a situation where you do that. The current spot w this suspect having a ruling that would only be in place for about a week is right on the line imo.

I'm also in support of in the dying phases of a metagame leaning towards quickbans rather than suspects to just get action out the door quicker.

edit: I know lily said 2 weeks is her personal line - that's also completely fair & subjective. if thats your line its your line and I don't really have any strong reason to justify my choice of 1 week as my line

edit edit: 'dying' isn't the word id use for this - this is very pedantic but i'd prefer something like 'ephemeral' or 'temporary'

 

[Alternator]

Without commenting on Gholdengo itself, because this is a general policy thread and opinions on the mon prompting it shouldn't decide policy for future generations:

In Teal Mask, the de facto benchmark for when a metagame has settled enough after tiering action has been about a week before starting a survey, then another week while the survey is conducted. I haven't seen many complaints that this is moving too fast, so two weeks as the minimum for a metagame to stabilize appears to have community support, so I'd formalize it into the standard policy:

No tiering action will be taken before DLC unless at least two weeks would pass between the action and the DLC release.

In this instance, a suspect test would only allow a week, so no suspect of Gholdengo, but had there been enough support on the survey for a quick ban, then it would have been allowed.

I'll reinforce this by calling back to the Walking Wake release, where the first week there was an uproar about how it was broken and needed to be banned, but by the end of week two opinions had changed and the majority felt it was fine for the tier. Banning anything and giving it only a week before undoing the ban will at best be useless for future comparison, and at worst actively misleading and harm future tiering choices for a much more permanent tier.

 

[KaenSoul]

There will be people will be complaining regardless of what decision is taken either way, but I do think suspects with results that will be undone in less than a month are more likely to cause discomfort, as suspects require people to expend their free time, and they may feel like they are being disrespected if what they worked for has no real impact, as a format that will last for a week will not feel like it was worth it for most people, specially if there is need to do the suspect again soon after, as that will just make the previous decision seem quite pointless.
If there is big support for action, I think the best is to just go with a quick ban, pro ban people get what they want and anti ban people will know it is only for a few days, so there shouldn't be that many complaints and in the worst case people get to learn the true impact the target had in the format and may be useful knowledge in the next one.
There is no real answer to the question in the op though, it should be a case by case thing, quick bans at least shouldn't need a deadline, you may want to remove something clearly broken from a tournament before the next round go live, but suspects tests meanwhile, I think anything that gives you less than two weeks to actually play the resulting format just seem like a bad idea.

 

[Karxrida]

Something else to consider with having a suspect too close to a DLC drop is that the vote could be skewed in unintended ways. I know people have accused the Kingambit voterbase of cutting the mon some slack because Teal Mask was coming up a month after the suspect. (Can't remember if we had a hard date back then but it was probably a factor.)

I think if we get a date then we should probably avoid suspect tests within a month of that date. Maybe longer. A date gives the future DLC some tangibility and it will be in the back of people's minds. Quickbans should still implemented if the community/council deems them necessary, of course.

 

[Dead by Daylight]

Honestly, the point of a suspect is to see if the community is wishing to ban something and is willing to have a long, at-length discussion about it, not to rush something that is obviously broken in the eyes of the community. This particular situation should definitely be on a case-by-case basis, but in general I'd lean towards not having any suspects a month before any major metagame shifts. The real issue with bans is that the meta directly afterwards can take up to 2 weeks to settle, and once that happens, there's 1 real week of metagame play before we move to the big thing. Additionally, in a case like this, we're likely going to unban Ghold straight away once DLC2 drops. Like many others have said, we should probably quickban it for now and revisit it at DLC2's beginning. Also, I wouldn't label OU as "dying" by any means.

Something else to consider with having a suspect too close to a DLC drop is that the vote could be skewed in unintended ways. I know people have accused the Kingambit voterbase of cutting the mon some slack because Teal Mask was coming up a month after the suspect. (Can't remember if we had a hard date back then but it was probably a factor.)

The issue with this is that, as seen with things like NatDex's 1st Terastallization vote, that people may believe that the vote itself is too rushed and vote DNB to see how the meta shakes out. I do agree, though, that having a suspect now is probably not in the community's best interest. Either we quickban it or we let it be into DLC2.

 

[longhiep341]

This is actually somewhat related to what I have been wanting to post, but I'm coming at this from partly OM perspective. Tiering a dying metagame is a thing, but remember the dying metagame might persist for tours as well. For big changes like DLC or a lot more from OM (like Balanced Hackmons and Godly Gift redefinition), tours can be locked into old meta for as long as a month after new meta, or even more in the case of BH. Considering this tour element, is it fair to extend the tiering period if there's a big tour involved that will be stuck in old meta? Is it possible to even do quickban exclusive for tour purpose, meaning tiering for a dead meta that only exists in tour should a very problematic element arise in that environment? Should it require a special council consisting of said tour players of some kind, since most council members shouldn't be required to revisit a dead meta when they already have new meta on their plate unless they are in tour themselves? I myself lean towards yes to the first 2 questions, but don't know about the last.

 

[Moutemoute]

Hey, UU council member here, I'd like to share my thoughts on this thread based on what we are dealing with in Underused because I think we may have the same kind of temporal issue. I think the biggest issue we're facing is the lack of transparency by Nintendo/TPCi on the calender schedule of DLCs. Like there wasn't a precise date for when DLCs will be released. This doesn't help us whatsoever because we can't really schedule a plan of action (what are we doing + when are we doing it) because informations are unclear (fall 2023 and winter 2023, this is like a 6 months span). Even for the release date of the second DLC, there wasn't a great announcement, just a random post on social media, without any trailer and prior information. I feel like this doesn't help us to manage tiers as councils because while we have to listen to our community, look at what's happening during tournaments but also trust our feelings when we're thinking something might be bannable/suspectable, we also have to take into account the fact that we can't really do something if the tier is changing massively really soon. I don't think it's a good idea to ban/suspect something if it leads to 2-3 weeks of anarchy before the DLC release, it's not worth the effort.

While we do not have an issue such as Gholdengo, we have people in UU complaining about some threats, notably Tornadus-T which is really centralizing in the metagame and quite tough to not use (alongside Iron Treads) due to how versatile and dangerous it is. However, with the release of the DLC in less than 3 weeks, we decided (as a council) to not push a suspect because we deem it not worth it (because this would change a shit ton the metagame if Tornadus-T had to be banned). With that in mind, I think we should "lock" tiers like 2 week / a month before big changes such as DLC release. I think this rule should apply to every tier and non only to OU (even tho it's the tier which will be the more affected by DLC at first).

 

[VicBossMG]

I believe a suspect should be placed on Gholdengo, seeing how dengo has done the same thing since the beginning and it has gotten better with more Pokémon being added for more HO styles like ribombee being the fastest webs setter while threatening the best spinner in the tier and dengo making it hard to get rid of webs and can Tera out of its weakness to beat tusk and forcing cinderace as the best cp to that style unless stun spored and with the ban of gliscor other mons just took its place tung Lu, rockpon, samm-h and in dlc 2 gliscor will return bringing this annoying duo back to do the same thing once again. Knowing GF favoring VGC we can’t really count our changes of getting defog back so I purpose we still suspect Gholdengo and not let it return, for the health of the Meta game in the long term.

 

[Dead by Daylight]

I believe a suspect should be placed on Gholdengo, seeing how dengo has done the same thing since the beginning and it has gotten better with more Pokémon being added for more HO styles like ribombee being the fastest webs setter while threatening the best spinner in the tier and dengo making it hard to get rid of webs and can Tera out of its weakness to beat tusk and forcing cinderace as the best cp to that style unless stun spored and with the ban of gliscor other mons just took its place tung Lu, rockpon, samm-h and in dlc 2 gliscor will return bringing this annoying duo back to do the same thing once again. Knowing GF favoring VGC we can’t really count our changes of getting defog back so I purpose we still suspect Gholdengo and not let it return, for the health of the Meta game in the long term.

I feel like this post misses the point a little bit. The point of this talk is to discuss whether or not the tiering policy towards the end of a generation should change, not if Gholdengo itself should change. Sure, I'll agree that it overcentralizes the hazard meta, but that's not the point of this discussion. As for suspecting Gholdengo, with such limited time left, I don't think that's a good move for the future of the tier. We definitely do not want to see the suspect drag on past DLC2, nor do we want it to end abruptly, say, a couple of days before DLC2 drops and have no time to play the tier. I'd be in support of a quickban for now, with the intention of retesting Gholdengo to well and truly move it to Ubers or back down to OU about a month or so into DLC2. This would make it so that we could see the Gholdengo-less metagame and make a decision of whether or not we want it in OU. If the metagame turns out to be unplayable without Gholdengo around, then we can certainly retest Gholdengo earlier and drop it; if the metagame proves to be more enjoyable and stable with Gholdengo gone, then we can keep it banned.

 

[zannty]

I wanted to write out my thoughts on the process. Looking back at the suspects we have had since the second DLC came out (of which there were 3) 2 of them (the most recent 2 roaring moon and gliscor) where posted the day after the tiering surveys closed. Furthermore each of these suspects were 10 days long. The most recent tiering survey ended on the 17th. If a suspect where to have followed the same timeframe as the last 2 then this would have been suspect tested starting on the 18th and lasted 10 days until the 27th. That would of left 17 days for the results of the suspect test to have been seen. Furthermore as with DLC 1, the day the dlc is released does not mean OU will be immediately updated. I believe it took about 2 days for them to update this (if someone can find concrete data please let me know since I could not find anything and am going off of memory mostly). After that voting takes 2 days at most so that brings the total back to 17 days or 2 and a half weeks.

IMO if tiering action is going to happen and will only last, like, two weeks tops before being rendered useless, that's where the line is in my head.

I wanted to point out the time for 2 main reasons. Firstly I wanted to discuss the idea of these time limits. If this suspect was treated the same as the last 2 we would have had almost 2 and a half weeks with the results of the suspect test being seen. The second reason I wanted to mention this timeframe is that since the end of the tiering survey we had almost a month before the next dlc. This is a month where if nothing happens people who are unhappy with the metagame and want something done (which is clearly a lot looking at gholdengo's support) are going to lose interest in playing the metagame. This has already happened to me to an extent. I have been pretty active on the ladder for most of this generation since I started playing. Testing new teams, trying to peak with them, etc. However as DLC 1 has progressed I have been playing less and less. This is mostly because I have found the metagame has glaring problems and while we are addressing some of them we are not addressing enough quickly enough. If there were a suspect test or something else happening, it would give a reason to play the metagame and actively engage in it, but with the statement that nothing will be done to improve it coupled with my disenjoyment for the metagame I have pretty much completely stopped playing OU since I don't like it and have been told nothing will change. By giving the sentiment that nothing will change I have lost all interest in playing in the metagame to improve it since I was told that will not happen. So I feel that continuing to try to improve the metagame even when it might seem "pointless" from a timing perspective might actually help increase engagement (which to be honest I feel should be the main goal of smogon and to a lesser extent the council).

So to sum up all I said before, if we followed the timeframe from the last couple suspect tests we would have had about 17 days to experience the results of the suspect test. And while that might seem small and pointless I believe that continued action until the end of a metagame would cause for an increase in engagement during the end of the metagame, which I believe should be the main goal when making these kinds of discussions.

Edited: Bolded my last sentence that highlights my answer to the original question. A more specific answer is mentioned in my post below as well.

 

[Finchinator]

zannty the premise of your post and your understanding of the timeline are off since you did not mention the Sneasler quickban at all.

We quickbanned Sneasler on the 18th and you neglected to mention that whatsoever. We are not going to ban one thing and then suspect something metagame defining within a day or two from there; the plan was to give the metagame at least a week to settle. We also gave the metagame a week to settle after the Gliscor ban before touching Sneasler (and 5 days before the survey). What you’re suggesting would give the tier no time to settle and we have already pushed this to an unprecedented extreme with how many suspects and surveys we have had, so skipping steps altogether for more definitely is not within the realm of possibilities.

Even despite taking a brief period between suspects/quickbans months out from a new release — which is normally mandatory, we have crammed more tiering action into the last few months than any period (aside from the very start of generations) virtually ever with constant surveys, suspects, bans. We have bent classic practices to expedite the process, too, by doing things like shorter suspects. This first year of SV OU tiering in general has had more tiering action than any year in Smogon’s tiering history by a pretty considerable margin, so implying we acted too slowly or not aggressively enough is really unreasonable, in my opinion.

Finally, the OP is asking a specific question about where to draw a line and your post didn’t comment on that at all, instead opting to be critical of (the lack of) decisions that happened prior to this, so I am not sure why you posted this here and not somewhere like the metagame discussion thread to begin with.

 

[zannty]

zannty the premise of your post and your understanding of the timeline are off since you did not mention the Sneasler quickban at all.

We quickbanned Sneasler on the 18th and you neglected to mention that whatsoever. We are not going to ban one thing and then suspect something metagame defining within a day or two from there; the plan was to give the metagame at least a week to settle.

I didn't mention the ban of snealser since I did not think it would impact the timeframe for gholdengo. I did not realize it was customary to wait a week before anything was done after something happens. I do feel that it the sneasler problem and ghold problem are pretty independent of one another so I thought that a QB and a suspect would be fine. This assumption was drawn from when I was looking at multiple pokemon getting banned at once ealier on. I figured they were independent of one another and since multiple bans have happened at once before this would also be find. If not thats ok, I just didn't know and looking back to check timeframes after your post I can see that after heartflame got qb you waited 5 days to post the luna supsect test.

Finally, the OP is asking a specific question about where to draw a line and your post didn’t comment on that at all, instead opting to be critical of (the lack of) decisions that happened prior to this, so I am not sure why you posted this here and not somewhere like the metagame discussion thread to begin with.

I didn't directly answer the question as I though my point was clear but I will answer it now. In my opinion where should have no dead line on when to stop action. If there will be anytime after a suspect test and there is support for a pokemon I feel we should do some action. So the deadline for me would be when the time for the suspect test (or action that will be taken) is greater than the time remaining in a metagame (and my arguments for this specific timeframe are in my post above).

I apologize for misunderstanding the impact of the sneasler QB on the suspect timeframe and not directly answering the question post (I thought my stance was clear but am happy to elaborate on it here). Lastly I do appreciate everything that has been done and do understand that more has been done in this timeframe then ever before. I think the council as a whole has done a great drop and thank you all for what you are doing.

 

[cityscapes]

i don't see why we need to draw a line in the first place. there will always be various cases where e.g. later stages of big tournaments are happening and the entire playerbase benefits from a problematic element being swiftly dealt with, even if this is only relevant for another week or two. i do think quickban>>>suspect for these cases, but again, no need to draw a hard line. a responsible council will consider the specifics of the state of the metagame/playerbase/tour scene and make informed decisions about when it's "too late" to tier things.

 

[pulsar512b]

i don't see why we need to draw a line in the first place. there will always be various cases where e.g. later stages of big tournaments are happening and the entire playerbase benefits from a problematic element being swiftly dealt with, even if this is only relevant for another week or two. i do think quickban>>>suspect for these cases, but again, no need to draw a hard line. a responsible council will consider the specifics of the state of the metagame/playerbase/tour scene and make informed decisions about when it's "too late" to tier things.

for what it's worth, OUPL is starting (week 1 just ended) and SCL is ending. dont believe any other major tournaments w SV OU are currently ongoing

 

[Finchinator]

Given the calendar and the lack of consensus, it is not feasible to suspect Gholdengo before DLC2. Numerous members of the council cited a belief to wait as well, which you can see specifics on within Lily's post above. For reference, a suspect today would at best leave us with results one day before DLC2, defeating the purpose of proceeding.

However, we will continue to include Gholdengo on our radars, within our surveys, and on top of mind when applicable. If deemed appropriate, we will happily suspect it in the future, but this hinges on community support -- if it sees as much as it has recently, then I would expect action, for example.

Finally, it is still important that we reach an eventual conclusion on this thread for similar situations in the future, which is why I did not set a deadline in the OP and left it open to general premises as opposed to strictly on Gholdengo. I implore people to continue to discussing.
---

I didn't mention the ban of snealser since I did not think it would impact the timeframe for gholdengo. I did not realize it was customary to wait a week before anything was done after something happens. I do feel that it the sneasler problem and ghold problem are pretty independent of one another so I thought that a QB and a suspect would be fine. This assumption was drawn from when I was looking at multiple pokemon getting banned at once ealier on. I figured they were independent of one another and since multiple bans have happened at once before this would also be find. If not thats ok, I just didn't know and looking back to check timeframes after your post I can see that after heartflame got qb you waited 5 days to post the luna supsect test.

Bans happening days after release before we get to suspecting or even regular survey/metagame settling are not really comparable to developed metagames past their infancy, who are months into their progression. As such, comparing bans "earlier on" like Baxcalibur or Ogerpon-Hearthflame, which happened in quick succession without suspects and based off of substantial community survey and internal council support, to Sneasler -> Gholdengo prospects here is not how we operate. I hope this clears things up, but I now entirely see where the confusion was and it is very easy to be confused by this as there's so many different factors of course.