Pokémon: Why was Aegislash banned?

Aegislash, who was first seen in Pokémon X and Y was banned from the OU and Ubers tier list by Smogon for its King’s Shield ability.

The Pokémon franchise revolves around fictional creatures called Pokémon. Trainers are people who catch, train, care for, and battle with Pokémon.

At the time of writing this, there are more than 1000 Pokémon species, which you can encounter in a range of series and video games.

One of the Pokémon that you may discover is Aegislash, however, it was recently banned and some players are curious to know why.

Who is Aegislash?

Aegislash is a Steel and Ghost type Pokémon introduced in Generation 6. This Pokémon is known as the Royal Sword Pokémon because of his 2 forms. His Shield Forme is a defensive build, whereas Blade Forme focuses on offence.

Similarly to other Pokémon, Aegislash has various abilities. The Stance Change ability causes Aegislash to transform into his Shield Forme when a defensive move is made, or into Blade Forme when an attacking move is used.

Pokémon: Why was Aegislash banned?

Aegislash is considered an overpowered Pokémon and therefore, the Pokémon franchise hosted a poll which allowed fans of the series to vote for whether he should be banned or not.

Unfortunately, the majority of players felt that Aegislash should be banned from OverUsed (OU) to Ubers, the tier of the most powerful Pokémon.

Pokémon: Why was Aegislash banned?
© Pokémon

Although the ban took place in 2014, several Pokémon fans still do not know why Aegislash was banned. According to an OU tier leader, Aegislash was banned for several reasons.

Aegislash is an extremely effective Pokémon with a very high risk-reward output. Moreover, this Pokémon has multiple unique sets that are all very effective against other Pokémon. Most of his sets are handled differently.

If you guessed the purpose wrong, players lost at least 1 Pokémon. Aegislash introduced literal arbitrary decisions in the form of frequent 50/50s with King’s Shield.

This is important to note, as the 50/50 decision is not an event trade for the user and the opponent, which people seem to be arguing it is.

Gamers have to remember that using King’s Shield gives Aegislash 150 defences, which means that the user has the 50/50 as well as 150 defences, while the opponent only has 50/50.

Furthermore, guessing between attacking and not attacking Aegislash has determined various high-level ladder matches.

However, there are no skills involved, as it is simply arbitrary guessing. Aegislash forces the opponent to guess its set, at the risk of losing a significant member.

Was Aegislash banned from competitive play?

It is worth noting that Aegislash was banned from OU to Ubers by a competitive community called Smogon. This community is known to be the center of competitive play and although it is not official, they banned Aegislash from their matches.

This means that you can still use Aegislash for competitive play, except if you are part of the Smogon community.

What is Smogon?

Smogon is the most comprehensive and accurate online resource for competitive Pokémon battling. They offer gamers articles and advice through their community forums to help them compete at every level.

Since its official release in 2004, they have evolved from a tiny group of gamers into a high association of Pokémon fans whose membership spans the globe.

This community commenced a poll in the hopes of banning Aegislash. Since they believe that the Pokémon community’s opinion matters, they counted on Pokémon fans to make the right decision about whether to ban Aegislash from the OU and the Uber tiers or not.

What are OU and Ubers?

OverUsed is Smogon’s fundamental usage-based tier, which is ruled by a council of high-level players.

A Pokémon is truly OU if a typical competitive player is more than 50 percent likely to encounter that Pokémon at least once on any given day of playing, which equates to roughly 15 battles.

A Pokémon is considered Uber if it is too powerful to be reasonably handled within the bounds of the standard metagame.

Uber status is determined by a single factor: it does not matter if a Pokémon is worthless in the Ubers tier or if it is outclassed by anything already in Ubers.

In Ubers, a Pokémon or a strategy may appear to be broken, but this does not matter as Ubers are essentially a ban list for OU and nothing is currently too broken to be used in Ubers.

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