Gorilla Tactics



Aesf: Right out the gates, we've seen tons of gorilla tactics and intrepid sword users emerge, all extremely threatening (Dragapult, mamoswine, dracovish, cinderace, weavile, etc). [For those unaware, the viable pool of flexible offensively boosting AAA abilities excluding these two is generally in the 1.3X range (adapt, tough claws, sheer force, etc.).] 50% is a pretty noticeable power difference over 30% (Choice Band --> Life orb is an okay analogy), and threats in AAA are strong enough as is that a small boost in the long run has a great chance of unbalancing the metagame. It's also much harder to justify using other abilities when you're choosing between 2 abilities most of the time. But at the same time, it's difficult to say which users of these abilities are broken, and whether they'd still be broken without the ability. Having dauntless shield this gen does help ever so slightly, and we didn't ban adaptability before, despite having relatively similar arguments. This is a hard grey line, I think I'm slightly leaning ban but I'll abstain. UPDATE: Teambuilding gets restricted quite a bit while offense still has tons of options, and differentiating gorilla tactics and intrepid sword because of unaware/prankhaze seems unnecessary since they're effectively the same thing as abilities.

Funbot: Gorilla Tactics / Intrepid Sword: Grouping these two together since they pretty much function the same but with some differences that I feel can let me come to different conclusions. To me, Gorilla Tactics is just too much in the current meta with mons such as Dragapult, Weavile, Mamoswine, and Haxorus really pushing the power level to extremes and letting opposing counterplay solely be relied on niche picks or Dauntless Shield / Intimidate mons. The ability also largely outclasses many other offensive abilities for physical attackers which also attributes to centralization which I don't personally deem desirable. Intrepid Sword is a bit less problematic to me as the stat buff appears in battle and can be "counteracted" with stuff like Prankster Haze (s/o to Pex). The ability still functions extremely similar to Gorilla Tactics of course, but for now I would just like to ban the former and see how the meta stabilizes with defensive counterplay / abusers and then hopefully comeback with a more solid stance in short time. Therefore, I would vote to ban Gorilla Tactics and abstain from Intrepid Sword.

Geerat: Gorilla Tactics -  Ban, its basically hustle without the accuracy drop, and what makes gorilla tactics broken is the surprise factor in my opinion. Its not just a eally strong mon you are facing but at the same time, you have absoltely no idea if its gorilla tactics or not.

Jrdn: Gorilla Tactics/Intrepid Sword:I think that GT is the better of the two, since the aspect of surprise is a very prevalent in Pokemon, and that surprise being 50% more damage is devastating to a broken extent. That said I do think that Isword is still too overwhelming for teams to handle consistently enough. The thought process is this: In the 2 generations of AAA I have been a part of, Adaptability has been the MOST used offensive ability (there's no stat here but I'm pretty positive in this assertion) With many pokemon in both gens being banned as a result of the ability pushing it over the edge (Mamoswine, Bisharp, Terrakion in Gen 6. Hoopa, Terrak, Weavile in Gen 7). This led to some people talking about the ban of Adapt, which although I didn't agree with, it was still a reasonable debate. Now we have something with a sizeable leap in power of adapt and in the game i've played, it's been extremely strong. ISword Bisharp and TTar are amazing etc etc. And obviously at the base level of it, Isword and GT are the same boost, and that boost is too strong for AAA.

Racool:  just not a fan of this ability at all, its overshadows so many abilities now and its sheer power is nuts. like literally any choiced mon has no reason not to run it, as it does barely less damage than tinted on resists, and nukes everything else too, makes hardly any sense to keep it, think again everything on this has been said already.