I'd like to precursor this by saying that, like most of you, I am not content with the current state of the metagame due to pokemon like Sneasel and Gallade restricting gameplay, teambuilding, etc. With that being said, I strongly disagree with some assertions, points, and overall arguments that have been made on the subject of a potential Knock Off suspect.
I want to touch both sides of the argument in a comprehensive post because there are disgusting amounts of strawmanning going on. Not picking on anyone but just as an example, "Knock Off doesn't rely on luck, therefore, it shouldn't be suspected." Yes, the first part of your argument is correct: knock off does not rely on luck. But that's not the reason why we would ever suspect knock off for. Hopefully this post helps weed out all these terrible arguments, for or against.
hjad said:
be careful with what is a top tier Mon that requires some centralization, and a Mon that is centralising because its broken
Let's start with this. Yes, this is in fact a great philosophy. We should just ban the broken mons, and keep the top tier mons. In reality, this isn't so easy. How can you distinguish between just a top tier mon, and a broken mon? Unless we're talking in terms of like, something blatantly broken, it's literally "just like, your opinion, man". The reality is that the distinction between the two can be very minute, which makes this a lot harder to implement. By extension, we should consider looking at this threshold with an open mind and heart ;) I feel that people have already picked a side and is not willing to think twice, but this isn't a helpful way to think about things. Now that we're covered on this, lets look at the discussion going on in this thread, lol.
On validity of a potential Knock Off suspect:
If we end up suspecting knock off or not is a completely different matter - it's irrelevant in this discussion, in fact, but I don't see the need for the allergic reaction of "knock off suspect is stupid." You can disagree with it, yes feel free to state your own opinion instead of circlejerking. But the argument of "we shouldn't ban knock off. why? because that's stupid!" isn't helping your cause. In this theoretical assumption of a Knock Off suspect, you don't want Knock Off banned, do yourself a favor, and put out real arguments because I also hate the 'argument' of (or rather, the fallacy fallacy of) "look, the anti-ban arguments are full of fallacies, they don't have a good reason, so we should ban it." If enough people have a valid reason for believing that a suspect could potentially solve some of the many problems in the tier, then we should by all means consider it a real possibility and it would be completely valid to have a knock off suspect. There are indeed valid reasons and valid counterarguments, so please let's deal with them instead of nitpicking about how your definition of suspectability are different or about simple typos, sigh.
On Spammability and splashability:
First, Knock Off isn't like any other ~100 and above power moves. No recoil, no repercussion, no defense drops, no miss chance, no immunity, and a great side effect. Heck, there aren't many valid resists to knock off in the first place. I don't think comparisons to Earthquake or other moves are not valid at all. On the other hand, Spammability =/= brokenness. I mean, Scyther basically spams U-turn every time, there's a very spammable move if you look at it! The way how if you are out against something that dies to knock, you'll click knock every time and you'll make free progress, if you're out against something that dies / gets crippled by U-turn, you'll click U-turn every time and you'll make free progress. If your opponent doesn't have a spinner, you put SR up, and hey, free progress! Though it is false that Knock Off is just as spammable as any high powered move, the spammability of a move does not imply brokenness. Similarly, just because a move is splashable on a generally any mon that get it, given that it already does well with 3 moves, doesn't mean the move is broken. Thunder Wave is one such move: if you are fully functional with 3 moves, you might as well put it on! And Gen 1 Blizzard is another such example given that almost everything that got it used it. Are they broken? This is just my opinion, man, but they don't seem to be blatently broken, which means there's room for argument.
Why would we ever suspect Knock Off in NU, when no other tier does it?
This reason why Knock Off is stronger than NU than in other tiers is threefold. First, there are bunch of viable Mega Evolutions in higher tiers, but this isn't so in NU. Mega Audino doesn't fit on every team nor does it make every team better (and if it did, it would also be suspect worthy, lol), so a lot of teams have a good reason for not having a mega. Second, there are very little viable Dark-type resists in NU. There are no bulky Dark-types that don't rely on eviolite. There's 1 bulky Fighting-type without Eviolite. Then there's like 3 Fairy types that don't carry Eviolite. That's literally 5 Knock Off switch-ins in the whole tier that don't utterly get crippled by the move. Third, the fighting-type conundrum. As there is literally 1 Pokemon that resist the Close Combat / Knock Off coverage, it makes it insanely hard to check Fighting-types. If you think Gallade is trouble, you should try facing non-choiced Sawk with a balance team: it's equally a nightmare unless you have that 1 Close Combat / Knock Off resist in Granbull. Best you can do otherwise are the Fighting resists that are neutral to Knock like Garbodor, but most Fighting-types have a way to hit those super effectively, even if you're not Gallade. This puts Knock Off in a very unique situation in NU than it is put in any other Smogon usage tier. Personally, having a NU Knock Offless Ladder could be interesting to see.
Shouldn't we just Gallade and Sneasel instead?:
According to the pro-Knock Off suspecter's perspectives, it sounds like the current state of Sawk, Gurdurr, and Malamar are also OP because of Knock Off, on top of Gallade and Sneasel. So why aren't we suspecting all these? Knock Off defensive Mawile isn't broken, Knock Off Carracosta isn't broken, it's that Knock Off on Fighting types have like, 2 real checks. So let's say Knock Off suspect doesn't happen, then Gallade / Sneasel gets banned. Great! But would the same arguments for Knock Off suspect mean that the current state of Knock Off Sawk is suspect worthy on top of all this? I think so. Are we gonna suspect that? Or is the Knock Off suspect a way to circumvent saying we want to suspect Sawk or god forbid, Gurdurr? Knock Off ban may let us keep as much of NU while balancing the tier, but can we really say that when 5+ mons will be a shell of their former selves with a single Knock Off ban? It might as well be better to just suspect Sneasel given that no ones gonna use Sneasel without knock off, lol, especially if you believe Knock Off Sawk / Gurdurr / Malamar are healthy.
Overall, I understand the reasons why someone might want a Knock Off suspect, and I also understand the reasons why someone might not. I simply feel that a lot of reasoning made against Knock Off suspect are questionable. Yet, even if the suspect were to happen, I'm not convinced that Knock Off is really the problem and whether if banning it would make the meta better. Haha I guess I'm just rambling at this point but I just want better discussions, delete my post if u want to, lmao.