Hey, I’m gonna post here in support of banning dynamax as whole. Let me give my take as a council member.
As one of the original people supporting the initial dynamax list, you have to understand I wanted this clause to work out, and it has worked to some degree. I think the DLC1 metagame could be somewhat balanced with a few more mons added to the dyna list. However, that doesn’t mean the system isn’t flawed and things are going to be complicated much more by the arrival of DLC2.
First and foremost though, I think I should remind everybody exactly why we had the dynamax clause in the first place. I mentioned back in the day that I think Dynamax is an inherently broken mechanic. Simply put, as Tony said, it’s not a mechanic that is intended to work well in smogon’s singles 6v6 format. The mechanic inherently gives a boost to offense, because a player who dynamaxes first will always have that surprise advantage which is taken advantage of the most by offensive teams. Defensive dynamaxing is certainly useful, but you still are at a disadvantage because you are reactively using it to stop a threat; usually your opponent will have gotten a KO with their own dynamax abuser before you dynamax to stop it. This is an effect we can certainly see in the current metagame, where, even ignoring the obvious threat of Kyurem-B, things like Urshifu, Gyarados, Cinderace, Charizard, Excadrill, Drednaw, etc have a super strong offensive presence that usually determines the course of the game; I think everyone can agree that the current metagame is definitely much more favored to offense. There’s a reason that those dumb easy Screens Hyper Offense teams have done so well in UPL.
I knew all of these things were possible back in the day, so why did I support the clause? Simply put, I thought the clause would allow for a greater diversity of Pokemon to be usable in the tier. Especially in vanilla SS, dynamax was one of the key things making so many Pokemon usable, and the 3 legendary Pokemon being unable to dynamax made the tier become very balanced. I think that type of metagame is simply unable to exist in our current times, and it has less need to exist when we are getting more and more new Pokemon with each DLC release. I certainly think that many of the Pokemon now that can dynamax would still be useful post-ban, and with the new DLC coming we’re going to have many new Pokemon to spice the tier up, such that the point of the dynamax clause becomes moot.
Another thing. One of the critical flaws with the clause is that, under Smogon’s tiering system we simply have no good method to quickly address problem Pokemon. Many people were complaining about Kyurem-B and other Pokemon during UPL, but there simply wasn’t much that we could do at the time. Essentially, each new Pokemon we add to the list has to have it’s own suspect test, which takes a lot of time. Especially going into DLC2, we are going to have LOADS of new Pokemon that will be very difficult to stop with dynamax, and by supporting the dynamax list, there is really no other way to go about than suspecting each one individually. It may be possible to get the new ubers banned right away, but even that is not a guarentee. And even if those mons got banned, there would still be many, many more Pokemon that could abuse dynamax very strongly. I would expect to have at least a few months, if not more, of a very unbalanced metagame to come when DLC2 comes out, should we continue with the dynamax clause. I wish the system was faster too, or there was a better way to do it, but even as a council member I don’t make the rules here. And if there were a faster way to do it, that method would surely raise questions about it’s legitimacy, and there would be countless debates about which Pokemon should be included or not. Even in our current DLC1 meta, I think most people would agree with Kyurem-B, but what about the other Pokemon? Dragapult can single-handedly destroy most teams lacking Mandibuzz, Volcarona is very hard to stop, Excadrill is very strong, etc etc. Even still, do you think people would be able to come to an agreement on dynamax banning these mons? It would surely be highly contentious. How about a playstyle like Rain which has several different abusers. Let say you hit Drednaw, which you also hit Seismitoad, Kingdra, and others too? Sun and Sand basically only have a one or two abusers in comparison. Everything about this process is highly contentious, prone to nitpicking, and will take a lot of time.
Another point is one that Tony made, and I think it has some relevancy here. Getting Ubers back into the official tournament circuits would certainly be great for the tier as a whole. It would bring a whole new level of interest and competition into the tier, and our Ubers metagames have been some of the most balanced and interesting metas for the past few generations. Most of the problematic users of the past are gone now as well, so I don’t see why we can’t try to get Ubers back into official play.
Overall, if we end up banning dynamax, I don’t think the attempt we made at dynamax clause was a wasted effort at all. As a tier that is known for having the least bans possible, we can honestly say we gave it our best try, and we made a somewhat playable meta with the mechanic in tact. Ultimately as an unbalanced mechanic, I think it should be left for the Anything Goes meta to have. Call me too speculatory, but I think DLC2 is really what is going to break the camel’s back here; there’s simply too many threats that are coming, in addition to the ones we already have, that it will be impossible to even remotely cover the myriad of threats there will be. Expect hyper offense to rule the meta should that happen.
Personally, I would like to see the Dynamax issue resolved before DLC2, because otherwise we are going to have a very bad metagame for awhile, but unfortunately that may not be possible. It depends entirely on how people feel about it. I would rather have the issue solved so people can enjoy the newly released Pokemon, rather than people complaining about how bad the tier is due to Dynamax and we have to wait until the mechanic can be handled properly.