* ShadowLugia is going to enjoy this
So, here we are. Thundurus and Excadrill got banned, possibly the most two powerful sweepers in the Over Used tier. Rain and Sand lost their most valuable offensive Pokes, although sand arguably got hit the hardest, since Excadrill can't function in other weather. I'm pretty sure that nobody here has any qualms with Thundurus getting banned. Being able to take down more that half of your opponent's team, along with the criteria stated above, is more than enough reasons to send his sorry cloud-thingy to ubers. Excadrill is the controversial ban here, ladies and gentlemen. As soon as Exca was released, teams were already trying to find ways to counter the guy, and thus, Pokemon like Gliscor, Bronzong, and Skarm were hastily added to teams in an effort to stop it, turning the meta into a more defensively-paced one, at least when it came to countering weather. Rain stall was one of the machinations created in an effort to stop it. Now, any smart player will know that Excadrill was bad for the metagame. You had to run the defensive walls mentioned above, or sand was going to wreck you. Simple as that. It's debatable as to whether being bad for the meta is a reasonable ground to banish a Pokemon to Ubers (where Excadrill is going to do bad anyways, not that that should be took into consideration when banning a Pokemon anyways), but the meta was shifting around these Pokemon, for sure. For example, Gastrodon. A Pokemon that had
never seen any competitive play whatsoever now began rising through usage stats like it was nothing, all in a effort to counter one, single, Pokemon. Now that I've thought about it, both bans were reasonable. I really don't want to play a game where if you use just 1 out of 2 things on a team, and not even using skill, you can still win. I think we'll be seeing much more varied teams now, and hey, maybe even some new creative sets. Excadrill and Thundurus centralized the metagame, and if you can't realize that, you really should be spending more time around here and not on the smogon server.
In summation, if banning either of these guys creates a
funner game to play, then I am all for it. Now I'm sure there are some holes in my argument, because you guys know I'm not good at making these ridiculously long posts. But this is my opinion on the matter, and I don't think it's really going to change, although I'd love to listen on the input on what I've had to say. And LOL to Volcarona, Deoxys, Mence, Dnite, or Latios centralizing the meta. That's just laughable.
Welp, that's all I have to say. Thanks for reading this giant wall of text.
