mp to Shiloh

Hey Shiloh!

I learned on Smogon that you're the current Tiering Admin on Smogon. Thus, I would like to know your thoughts on some tiering decisions linked to a metagame that you're not playing but still, due to your experience and your little knowledge of OMs as an AAA player, I think it will be useful for us.

First do not hesitate to tell me if you're not interested in answering for absolutely any reason, I will perfectly understand! Just let me know!

I will try to make this as short as possible (edit: I failed) while giving you all the information you have to know to get an idea.

So here we go! My question is about Camomons, an Other Meta which was in OMPL or WCoOMs the last 2 years and of which I was a player. The particular mecanic of Camomons is to change your typing according to your 2 first moveslots. For example, a Porygon-Z with Ice Beam and Thunderbolt on first 2 moveslots will be Ice/Elec. This mecanic allows mon to get better offensive and defensive typing and is therefore intrisically quite balanced.

But there's actually a problem which is pointed out by the council and me, Calm Minders. Actually, due to the fact that mon can change their typing in Camomons, it becomes easy to get more efficient typing for setup with Toxic immunity or few weaknesses. To give you a better idea of the problem, let me take Clefable, the pink demon of ORAS OU, as an example to show my point.

Clefable has in Camomons many possibilities. Fairy/Elec gives you an additionnal weakness to Ground but the additional resists and immunity to para is really helpful. But still, Clefable isn't able to deal with Steel/Ground like Heatran (Taunt) or Melmetal or Ground/Fire Volcanion. But what's about Fairy/Fire Clefable? Well, Tran and Volca are still answer but Melmetal isn't able to check it now. But Clefable is also played with the Fairy/Ghost typing. Now, Clefable can pressure every Steel mons with Sball and is immune to trap that partially remove this kind of counterplay. But finally, what's about Fairy/Water Clef? While Water Pulse is a bad move (in general we search to optimize usefulness of the moves while trying to get a good typing), Fairy/Water is great and actually completely change the way to check it. All this versions are viable meaning that, in practise, it's particularly hard to prep against Clef and it often introduces a excessive importance of the MU.

But what are you going to tell me? Ban Clefable if it's a problem no? And indeed, that's a way to solve the problem. And that's what we did with the Camomons council during this time. We banned Latias, Latios, Reuniclus, Slowking-G due to CM and partially Spectrier and Mew due to CM. But the problem is still there with many other borderline (can appear broken or too unhealthy in the future) CM users like Clefable, Magearna or Necrozma for example. There's also Cresselia, Sigilyph, Slowbro-Galar, etc. An important point is that all make them broken or unhealthy is CM. Clefable without CM keep the utility of the defensive sets like Knock, Wish, Trick, SR, etc but isn't able to press a magic button to win instantly the game depending on the MU.

We think that we reached a point where we cannot continue to ban mon after mon and just see new Calm Minders apear because they were just overshadowed by the others. Then, the council and me seriously put on the table the idea to get rid of CM or introduce a complex ban that prevents CM + recovery. But OM leaderships have forbidden us to take this path due to the fact that banning CM is somehow against Smogon tiering policy.

Regarding the recent decisions made in ADV OU such as the complex ban linked to Baton Pass, walls are not fixed anymore and in some specific cases, we can eventually do complex or unclassical ban (ban a move for instance) if that's the best way to lead the metagame.
And that's where I want to know your thoughts. Do you also think that this path is forbidden even if it's actually probably the best way to lead the meta in our opinion? Is banning CM from Camo is like openning a Pandora's box that would allow to do anything?

Indeed some others counter-arguments advanced by OM leaders are the fact that, banning CM will then open the path to ban other moves like Nasty Plot for instance. Indeed, Hydreigon, Tornadus-Therian and Naganadel are banned due to NP (mainly) so, is NP the problem or is the mons themselves? The fact is, having banned these mons ended up the "issue of NP". There's no more annoying NP mon in the metagame, the problem was resolved. The difference with CM is, Calm Minders are still a problem while we already ban a bunch of them.

People also argue that Calm Minders isn't the root of the problem but that's bulky setup in Camomons which is a problem (and there's nothing to do with that). We disagree with that because, for instance, Bulk Up, the physical equivalent to CM, has only like 3 viable users (Buzzwole, Zarude and Urshifu, whose are perfectly fine btw) while viable Calm Minders are like about twenty? That's essentially due to the fact that there's definitely more CM mons than BU mons in game. And especially CM+recovery is much more common than BU+revovery. There's also a big difference between BU, Curse or SD (physical setup) and CM, NP (special setup) which is burn. There's many viable Scald users and Flame Body Coalossal and Heatran are among the best mons in the meta meaning that we can generate more counterplay to physical bulky setup unlike special setup.

This are the additionnal two points supported by OM leadership in addition to the fact that, banning again will resolve the problem at some point.

There's also additionnal point in the pro-ban side.

First CM is wrapping arround all the teambuilding process due to the fact that the good CM user can automatically win the game if you're not prep against it. I generally think that, in ORAS OU for instance, if a Clefable, Suicune or Reuniclus end up sweeping, that's a demonstration of skill and the way you played to make the counterplay of your oppo fall and get rewarded. That's not the case in Camomons. There's just too much viable options to take into account and, while skill may be the dominant factor in a CM sweep, MU is a much more important component to take into account which definitely not good for the competitiveness of the meta.

Due to how strong CM is, Camomons is often the theater of CM war, knew as particularly uncompetitive. Simply because sometimes, trying a CM war is your only way to win praying for a crit before the oppo crit or kill you with his own Calm Minder.

Finally, there's also the fact that hazards (many Spikers are viable). You may not see directly the link to CM but the fact is, hazards spam paired excessively well with some Calm Minders. One of the arguments of the pro-ban side is the positive impact that a CM ban will induce on the hazards stacking. Indeed, Latias is banned only because of CM but it will definitely be the best way to reduce the domination of hazard spam in Camo (with Mew and TornaT being banned, almost all the Defogger lose the 1v1 against the Spikers). That's why banning CM is often counted as freeing Latias and then nerf hazards stacking. While we want to take into account only the state of the metagame right now and not what it could be, being able to nerf hazards spam which are somehow another issue, is something that we're also looking for with this ban.