Banning philosophy -keep it civil mates

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/banning-philosophy.3542168/

Every thread on our sub forums that is related to suspect threads or the various discussions on how some aspects of the current meta are broken and should be banned has posters who are unclear as to what exactly passes as ban-able. What is it that we are expecting from a perfect meta that deviates from ban all Mega's because that is as impractical as ..... Idk I don't have time to think these stuff up.
But yeah what do you guys think a perfect banning philosophy would be?
What are the criterial that should be met in order for something to be considered ban worthy?
Do you think the way things are run rn is ideal or needs drastic changes to achieve the ideal of a perfect meta as soon as possible?

Discuss~

I find 2 compelling cases for banning something on the cart side:

1. The Pokemon, ability, or move in question is completely unattainable to one player due to localized event distribution or changes in move sets between generations. We mitigate this to a degree with the blue pentagon rule and then cover everything else up with the title/event legend ban list. Because the meta is fluid and changes rapidly, players should have equal access to pivotal Pokes for the strategies they run.

2. The use of an item, move, or Pokemon is not competitive in that it takes no strategy to pull off, "Oh hey I outspeed my opponent I will just Rock Slide to victory." This creates a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario in the team building phase. I'm as much of an instigator for Rock Slide spam as anyone - as the commentators at the National and World Championship say, it's the best move in the current meta. But I would be all for a doubles meta that didn't have it.

That being said, I'd like to be able to find and run a Follow Me! Blastoise.

i think it's difficult to come up with an all-encompassing philosophy. for example, while i don't play gsc AT ALL and don't have a history of playing it, it seems like there is a consensus that the objectively broken snorlax should absolutely not be banned. a similar consensus emerges with stealth rock in gens 4, 5, and 6. thus, even a very simple criterion like "ban obviously broken stuff" can become thorny. these preferences ultimately come down to doctoring the metagame to what we "like" regardless of sweeping tiering principles, and i'm honestly ok with that. "oh, this is inconsistent/there's a double standard!" isn't wrong, but the pokemon metagame is too complex to actually apply a universal standard in practice anyway. i think consistency is a good ideal, but this is our game and we're playing it for fun. if people want to keep snorlax, why not?

i view luck as inherent to pokemon, so i think we should only ban luck-based elements when they are BOTH luck-based AND broken. this is clearly the case with ohko moves, which get free kills on a coin flip. i think this is true of scald as well, though i won't get into the details here. swagger strikes me as distinctly not broken at all, but specific abusers are extremely broken. i did not pay attention to its suspect test at all, but it seemed like the blanket ban was done to avoid a complex ban, and banning the move had very little collateral anyway? (rip psych up + swagger regirock.)

on that topic, i definitely agree with the principle of avoiding complex bans, though i think that sometimes they are more efficient than more generalized alternatives. i think baton pass is an example a lot of people would use for this.

i think the big thing is that tiering has to be dynamic and, ultimately, done case-by-case. any philosophy we came up with in dpp probably wouldn't have had any clue what to do about swagplay or scald. if something seems broken, suspect it, philosophy be damned. i think our intuition as battlers can sometimes be difficult to make coherent with actual words (which i think is a part of the reason scald, and on the opposite end, stealth rock, have been such under-the-radar cases) but that shouldn't be a reason not to do something.

(speaking of dpp, this is pretty random, but i would by lying if i said that i'm not extremely curious how dpp would look if, instead of banning the dragons, outrage and draco meteor got banned. sometimes i wish tiering was a little more creative in this way. those stabs are ludicrously broken--freaking flygon can mow down all non steels with outrage, even suicune and cresselia x_x--and greatly restrict team building by forcing multiple steels. i think letting the latis, salamence, and garchomp back in with nerfs would be a cool "alternate universe" of dpp!)

-has specific counters and checks that themselves might need support to work or is downright terrible in the metagame.
-limits team building as such and becomes an extreme match up based Pokemon.
-needs few to no turns for setting up to completely sweep common team Archtypes
-has a decent percentage for useful hax and has no downsides.
-makes matches one sided regardless of both the players skill level

These are what I think would make something broken and justified for either a suspect test or quick ban/ban.

I agree with Anti that banning philosophies should be "dynamic and, ultimately, done case-by-case." If something seems like it's broken / centralizing / uncompetitive then it should suspected, because banning something by virtue of theorymon and hypothetical arguments is a bad practice.

People really want to ban Reuni in BWOU? ummm... (Chlorophyll+Drought should be banned though)

anyway imo we should firt get rid of uncompetitive shit before looking at what might be broken stuff. I like that they got rid of Swagger and full BP in early XY before suspecting the deos and shit.