Here is a thought experiment. Suppose there were 6 Pokémon with high usage like Lando-T has in gens 6, 7, and 8. (as much as 70% at one point in USUM). They are not broken or overwhelming, just very good like Lando-T. For the sake of argument, suppose they have great synergy together, and you see all 6 on the same team as much as 20% of the time. Would you not ban any of them for the same reasons you wouldn’t ban lando-t? Or would you ban one or all of them due to staleness reasons?
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Usage and Lando-T
- Thread starter Xufactor
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He might be on to something
No, because:
The nice thing about Pokémon and Smogon’s balancing is that people generally try to make sure there is counterplay to everything; mons/items that don’t have sufficient counterplay tend to get banned. Luckily for us, Landorus-T has plenty of counterplay in SS OU from Knock Off to status to common offensive Pokémon like Weavile and Urshifu. Your example of a “best six” is unrealistic at best; there’s always ways to counter your opponent when building.
people would certainly call for a ban due to staleness reasons, sure
but fundamentally, if something is not broken or uncompetitive, i dont think it ought to be banned and i think thats that & that's generally how smogon tiering works
(this thought experiment is extremely extremely unlikely as others have said but that inherently doesn't mean it doesnt deserve an answer)
No one else has said it was unlikely, although I won’t argue that it isn’t unlikely. But GameFreak could make more mons like Lando-t or Great Tusk if they wanted.
One person said it was not possible due to not having counterplay when I already said the mons are not broken or overwhelming.
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To be consistent with keeping Lando-T legal, you'd have to potentially keep all 6 mons legal, including the case where they are all worse than Lando-T and have less usage. This scenario is still possible, as they just need to have less than Lando-T's max usage percent (around 70%) since it was never banned. But clearly staleness is an issue, even if you say you wouldn't do anything.
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If something is not broken or overwhelming then there is no point in banning them. This is a dumb thing to even make a thread about, and staleness isn't factored in at all when it comes to healthy tiering. If you want something fresh go back to playing every other FPS or turn based strategy game, this is not the place for that conversation. Why hasn't this thread been locked and deleted yet?
To get people thinking about tiering philosophy. The main point of a game is enjoyment, even if the rules don’t say anything about it.
I play gen 7 and 8. I don’t need Lando banned. Over half my teams have Lando. I’m making a logical case and that’s irrelevant to anything I talked about.
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High usage =/= being banworthy. The only reason lando is so high usage because it’s insane role compression (such as providing a ground and electric immunity in one slot) and utility (knock,toxic Defog etc) it’s just a very good Mon. I think casual players outside looking in bypass that and just look at the usage. I think people also tend to say the meta is stale but I believe that’s false there is plenty of mons useable in ou most uubls are ranked bar probably 3. This meta is extremely balanced but somehow still receive hate for that.
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