[Discussion] Salamence [Remains in Ubers]

[Senile]

Alright, so, let me go ahead and say that saying "Well, x is banned, and y is like x, so y should be banned/x should be unbanned" is not a valid argument. 

 

Why? Because similar =\= the same. You can ramble on about the similarities between Salamence and Dragonite all day, but they are ultimately not the same pokemon. Not only are they not the same, but the other problem with the "comparison" argument is that beyond ignoring the differences in the two pokemon, it also ignores the differences in the metagames between then and now. (Also, for the record, saying "Gyarados is a better DDer than Salamence!" isn't a good argument, because Salamence is less predictable, but I digress)

 

In this case, the biggest thing you're forgetting is the metagame difference. Why was Salamence banned and Dragonite wasn't? Because at the time when Salamence was banned, Dragonite wasn't an issue. Why? Because instead of running Dragonite, everyone was running Salamence. Salamence checked Dragonite incredibly effectively as it was faster, while still doing roughly the same role with a few upsides. So, because of this, you were better off running Salamence; Not to check Dragonites, as those weren't really around, but just so people can't get a free switchin with their own Salamence every time your Dragonite KOs something. If you ran a Salamence instead, the would at least always have to chance a speedtie, making it much more difficult to punish you. People agreed Salamence was problematic, and so it was banned. However, as Dragonite was a non-issue during this time, it was not banned. As I said, you can argue all day about how similar Salamence/Dragonite are, but Dragonite was not a problem when Salamence was banned, and so one was banned and the other was not. It's that simple. Even ignoring the differences between the two pokemon, that is the flaw with your argument that makes it non-valid.

 

So, now that it's (hopefully) clear what the problem with the "these 2 things are similar" argument, I'm going to address the points of Salamence and Dragonite.

 

Will Salamence be unbanned? Well, people seemed to agree it was banworthy back when it was banned, based on this thread it STILL seems banworthy, and I'm still convinced it's banworthy, so I'm gonna go ahead and say I don't see it being unbanned anytime soon.

 

Will Dragonite be banned? Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but as it turns out we have a handy dandy discussion thread about it if you want to give your input.

[Noad]

As Senile has said that he doesn't see Salamence being unbanned any time soon, I will close this thread. Perhaps if we have any further meta changes we can revisit this discussion.