It seems like the ideal solution is disallowing mega pokemon from being tiered lower than their non-mega forms, regardless of how unorthodox this is in terms of policy. Click to expand...

1. If a Mega's base form does not receive the usage needed to remain in the tier, then its base form will drop to the lower tier but the Mega will remain



2. If a Mega subset of a mon does not receive the usage to remain in the tier but its base form does, then both the base form and the Mega will be excluded from the lower tier. Click to expand...

1. If a mon's Mega set does not receive the usage needed to remain in the tier, then the mon will drop to the lower tier but the Mega set will remain



2. If a mon's Mega set does not receive the usage needed to remain in the tier but the mon does, then both the Mega set of the mon and the mon will be excluded from the lower tier. Click to expand...

I don't really battle much anymore, but this part of the potential change in policy concerns me. For reference, for the sake of argument, when I refer to a "subset" of a mon, I am referring to a mon plus an item without taking into account moves or abilities.If we decide to tier Megas as their own mons and not just treat Megas as subsets of the base forms like at the beginning of XY, then that's fine, but then why can't a Mega drop lower than its base form? If a Mega is a truly independent mon and not just a subset, then it should be subject to tier drops from lack of use just like how Kyurem-B can remain OU when another of its forms, Kyurem, has dropped. As far as I can tell, the only counterargument to dropping the Megas to lower tiers when their base forms get more use is that we want to avoid the scenario of people essentially bringing the equivalent to itemless Garchomp into UU and other similiar scenarios. However, in these scenarios, the Mega, which should be treated as its own mon, is now being treated as a subset of the base form, which conflicts with the philosophy of the proposed change in the tiering policy.Now, the conflict is rather subtle and would be overlooked by many, but this brings up another issue. Using the newer policy, we now have two scenarios:Note that scenario 1 treats the Mega as a mon and that scenario 2 treats the Mega as a set of a mon. Simple enough, but if Megas by our tiering philosophy are being treated both as their own mons and sets, these scenarios can also be viewed as such:In both of these scenarios, the Mega is now being treated as subset. Further, the scenarios state that if the mon has a Mega subset that sees the required usage but also has other, inferior subsets that don't have the required usage, weaker subsets can drop to lower tiers, but if the Mega set sees less usage than other, superior subsets, its not allowed to dropped. If for any mon without a Mega stone, all subsets are treated equally (i.e. both Choice Band Clefable and Leftovers Clefable are OU regardless of one being the superior set) then why are a handful of mons being treated any differently?Perhaps I'm being too anal about this, but I think whatever policy we use, there should be a consistent stance on how Smogon views Megas. If we view Megas as just sets that the base form can run, then obviously the system shouldn't change. If we view Megas as their own forms, then they should be able to drop to lower tiers regardless of their base forms just like any other mon. Either way, I'm against having a policy with inconsistent philosophical views just for the sake of dropping more mons into the tiers, otherwise we could just as easily unban stuff like Torrent Greninja and Blaze Blaziken if it means adding a handful of mons to lower tiers. If we really want to start tiering Megas as their own mons, then their tiers should be 100% independent of their base forms.