Pigyournament Ban History

July 2018 - Wave 1: Rowan Mato collaborated with ShockSlayer to create the initial banlist: Snorlax, Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres, Mewtwo, Mew, Blissey, Raikou, Entei, Suicune, Lugia, Ho-Oh, Celebi. The aim was to remove the top threats in GSC OU as well as legendary Pokemon to create a more balanced and interesting metagame. After July 2018's tournament, Articuno, Moltres and Entei would be unbanned, as none of them were deemed to be too powerful or centralizing.

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August 2018 - Rest, Evasion, and Brightpowder: After August 2018's tournament, a few options were considered banworthy. The tournament had many Vaporeon, and it created very long, drawn-out games. Vaporeon was on the chopping block, but I came up with a better idea: ban Rest. Vaporeon isn't broken, it was Rest that was dragging our games out. Vaporeon just happened to be the most common user of it in that tournament. Rest was banned, and immediately the game became faster and less stall-oriented.

Brightpowder and Evasion-increasing moves were removed because they're completely uncompetitive and drive games to be far more luck based and far less skill based.

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October 2018 - Umbreon ban #1: In October 2018 after much debate, it was decided that Umbreon should be banned. I spearheaded this one because Umbreon's entire role in GSC is stall and especially before the battle tutor, the options to actually beat it were so few and so specific that it bent the metagame around it. Stall is not something we want in these tournaments, so Umbreon was banned.

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November 2018 - Misdreavus?: After November of 2018, following many discussions, Misdreavus was banned. This decision would eventually be reversed, but the theory at the time was that Perish Trapping in 3v3 was far too effective, especially on a bulky Ghost type. Keep in mind that there was no Battle Tutor back then, we were running with vanilla GSC Pokemon and the power level was generally lower, so Misdreavus was found to be too powerful during testing.

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May 2019 - Starmie: I proposed a ban on Starmie, due to very, very little being able to switch into Hydro Pump, Psychic, Thunderbolt/Thunder, and Ice Beam without being 2HKO'd if they read the switch correctly, and it even had Recover and Thunder Wave as well if it wanted to slot them in. It'd become an auto-inclusion on every team due to how versatile and powerful it was in our metagame, and with Umbreon being removed, the good Pokemon that could switch into it safely and potentially beat it became limited to Chansey, Hypno, Lanturn. It was far too powerful, versatile, and centralizing to the metagame to be kept around.

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July 2019 - The return of Umbreon & Misdreavus; Curse and Mean Look banned: After I'd left the community for a while, Curse was banned and Umbreon was unbanned. The community begged for Umbreon to be unbanned, and after some consideration, it was. I believe the thought process here was that without a way to boost Umbreon's Defense stat it wouldn't be powerful. Meditate and Sharpen were also given out to many Pokemon via the Battle Tutor to make up for this loss, but ultimately the Curse ban did nothing to prevent Umbreon from beating many physical attackers with Charm.

Misdreavus was unbanned with the caveat being that Mean Look was banned instead. This is something I never considered when calling for Misdreavus's ban, and this one I definitely agree with. Always better to get rid of a move than a Pokemon if possible, especially when there are only 2 fully-evolved Ghost types in the game.

After this tournament, another would not be held until...

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July 2022 - Curse unbanned, Sleep banned: Upon returning to Crystal Clear's community, I discussed with both ShockSlayer and Cedsi why Curse was not only unproblematic, but beneficial for the metagame as a whole and it was agreed to bring it back.

Following the tournament, however, Sleep was banned and this was one I was very adamant about. Sleep in 3v3 is far too powerful, as it allows the user of the Sleep move to swing momentum completely in their favor with no real drawback whatsoever and too often the opponent's best response was to switch the Sleeping Pokemon out to trigger Sleep Clause, effectively making the battle a 2v3. In our metagame, this is just too strong, it effectively gives many Pokemon access to a OHKO status effect and that's simply not healthy in 3v3. Jumpluff especially could abuse this by using Sleep Powder, Substitute as the opponent switched out, Leech Seed as they broke the Sub, then spam Substitute until the opponent died from Leech Seed. The snowball effect from Sleep was entirely too much and I think most people would agree that removing Sleep has made the game healthier.

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August 2022 - Destiny Bond, Explosion, Self-Destruct banned; Umbreon rebanned: During the lead up to August 2022's tournament, I tested my team against ShockSlayer frequently and we discovered just how powerful Destiny Bond ends up being in a format like this. Destiny Bond Gengar allowed me to essentially choose a target on the opposing team to be removed at will to allow the rest of the team a more favorable matchup. The problem is that in gen 2 (and until gen 7, if you can believe that), there is no penalty for using Destiny Bond more than once in a row. In a game where you're restricted to 3 Pokemon per match and there's a time limit, this meant that if a Destiny Bond user got a lead, they could essentially force the user to keep the lead in most situations. Add in the fact that Gengar is immune to Toxic and the counterplay became much harder.

Following this, though, Explosion and Self-Destruct were discussed at length, with multiple members of staff on each side of the debate. Similar to Destiny Bond (and pairing very well with it to force the opponent into no-win situations), Explosion allowed the user with a lead to far too often just keep their lead for free. There is counterplay in having a Ghost type of your own, but because in gens 1-4 Explosion and Self-Destruct cut the enemy's Defense in half before damage is calculated, even resisted targets often took massive damage, often requiring only a minor amount of chip damage to ensure Explosion KO'd.

I fought back on banning both Explosion and Self-Destruct... until we discovered that if a faster Pokemon uses either move against a slower Pokemon, the turn ends immediately. The opponent doesn't get to use their move that turn, the turn just ends after the boom. This would be fixed in generation 3 onward, but here in 3v3 that was the tipping point for me in agreeing that both moves are too strong for the metagame. Even if you survive an Explosion with something like Porygon2 and click Recover, the Recover doesn't actually happen. You just lose a massive amount of health and the opponent is free to finish you off with something else.

In addition to these, Umbreon was rebanned following my win in August 2022's tournament. I wasn't the sole reason for this ban - there were 5 Umbreon total, and the Grand Finals culminated in 2 Umbreon stalling the opposing team out, eventually just using Toxic on each other, healing, and switching around to try to gain an advantage. Even in a tournament where we'd buffed every Fighting type, Umbreon saw use in almost every round where an entrant had one, and with smart team support it wasn't even threatened by Fighting types. Access to both Charm and/or Reflect made them a non-issue for Umbreon. This is exactly what I aimed to prevent in banning Umbreon years prior, and while winning with it wasn't fun, dropping the hammer on it a second time was. It was exactly as problematic as I'd been saying: it sponges damage easily from 99% of the metagame, Pursuit traps for free, heals with Moonlight and lets Toxic play the battle for it. It drags games to a crawl, and that's not something we want.

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October 2022 - Scope Lens, Focus Band, OHKO moves: Following October's tournament and a new patch for Crystal Clear, three bans were instituted. Scope Lens was banned for the unique way that generation 2's critical hit mechanics work. Effectively, high critical hit ratio moves have a 25% chance to land a critical hit in generation 2, rather than a 12.5% chance like in future generations. Scope Lens adds to this and causes them to have a 33% chance to land a critical hit. Since the metagame has become so dependent on moves like Cross Chop and Aeroblast as staples, we figured it would be better to ban Scope Lens than to remove moves from Pokemon that need them to thrive. Reducing RNG's influence was something we considered a lot for this patch, which also led to...

Focus Band was banned simply because it's uncompetitive. Surviving a hit on 1 HP due to luck is a bad mechanic, and gen 2 should feel bad for creating this item instead of something cool. Furthermore, it allows Substitutes to survive hits that would otherwise break them. Removing the impact of luck in Pokemon is not something we can ever do, luck is inherent in the very nature of the game, but reducing the amount of luck-based outcomes possible is in our best interest for the health of the metagame.

Which leads us to our final ban, and one that was a long time coming: OHKO moves. Early on these weren't banned due to the nature of how defensive generation 2 tends to be. It could have been seen as an equalizer for beating stall, however flawed that ideology is. However, as we've buffed so many Pokemon and the metagame has changed so much, there is no place for these moves anymore. They're uncompetitive and offer nothing beyond frustration for an opponent unlucky enough to lose to them. If you want to OHKO your opponent, you'll have to use strategy now, not blind luck.