But that's just not true about mega evolutions. You still start as the base forme and have to actively choose to switch.
If they truly intended mega evolutions to be considered wholly separate things, then you would literally immediately transform. Not have to switch in as the base forme at least once first. GameFreak wanted it to be strategic on when you decide to mega evolve and to give some Pokemon the benefit of two abilities or typings.
We made an exception for megas because they are a large class, an important mechanic, and it was a practical thing to do. Not because of anything inherent about how the mechanic works. You choose to mega evolve just like you choose when to use Relic Song.
The key words here are
effortless and
unblockable.
Mega evolving can be done at any time the Pokémon uses a move, doesn't funge against anything (i.e. it doesn't replace a turn that you could have spent doing something else), and it's not something your opponent can prevent. In D&D terms, it's a free action.
You're right that we made an exception for megas because it's a unique flagship mechanic for gen 6, but honestly, if any other Pokémon could change formes as effortlessly as megaing, I'd probably consider tiering that forme separately, too.
But also, we don't need to argue because we agree on the important part: that mega evolving is an exception, and we should not treat other forme changes the same way.
Zarel, that's absolutely a logically consistent stance to take, though I disagree with it, primarily because tiering separately allows for greater stability and less reliance on complex bans.
Ultimately, this needs to be a call for the tier leaders, namely, I guess,
TDK? If there are other people with skin in the game, please tag them so we can get this decided.
You have greater reliance on other workarounds, though.
You have workarounds like "a base cannot be tiered higher than its forme-changing variant (to avoid situations such as forcing Darmanitan to run Zen Mode or Meloetta to run Relic Song in lower tiers)", and "OU could CHOOSE to unban Aegislash-with-no-attacking-moves, but if they want to keep all Aegislash banned, that's fine and not at all inconsistent".
OU isn't choosing to ban Aegislash-Shield-Only because it's overpowered; I suspect OU is choosing to ban Aegislash-Shield-Only because the vast majority of players intuitively dislike the idea that in-battle forme-change availability should be tiered separately.
The problem here is that in-battle forme changes work massively differently between Pokémon, and our intuitions work differently:
- Melo-P, Darm-Z: are bad, most people would rather tier them together because forcing a move/ability for lower-tier availability is weird
- Zygarde-C: is overpowered, and selectively banned to Ubers because OU loves complex bans (same reason Soul Dew was banned)
- Aegislash: does not make sense to tier separately depending on whether or not it has access to Aegislash-B
- Greninja-BB: is like Melo-P/Darm-Z, but some people want to tier it separately so they can have a Greninja outside of Ubers
I personally think that tiering non-Mega formes together best matches what people
want to do. This is maybe worth revisiting in the future, but for now I think the stability/banning issues are minor.
While I realize that treating Greninja(BB) and Greninja as the same Pokémon is the logical thing to do, I don't think stringently following protocol is the best idea here. I know that sounds like a completely ridiculous to suggest, but hear me out:
We didn't rigidly follow protocol when the Drizzle + Swift Swim ban was passed. Pushing that complex ban allowed us to experience Drizzle in the standard metagame, bringing forth a slew of insane, unpredictable, and memorable experiences. Some might say it was a terrible idea, but I feel that it helped give Gen V OU its own identity. And considering weather was nerfed in the subsequent gen, we were able to experience a once-in-lifetime metagame.
We didn't rigidly follow protocol when we complex banned Sand Veil + Sandstorm. Does anyone honestly think we did that for the sake of mitigating luck? Hell no. We did it to free Garchomp. And again, the result? A fantastic Pokemon that single-handedly help curb Volt-turning in addition to being a really solid Pokemon.
And the same damn thing happened again. We didn't rigidly follow protocol when we complex banned Sandstorm + Sandrush. That wasn't done because that combo was inherently broken, it was done to free Excadrill, another incredibly handy Pokemon to have in the OU metagame.
I think Ash-Greninja absolutely presents us with an amazing opportunity. The opportunity to finally make use out of Greninja in standard, after we were basically robbed of experiencing it in gen VI when move tutors pushed it over the edge. So again, while treating them as one Pokemon might be the logical choice, I think we'd sorely miss out if did that considering we'd basically be signing it off to Ubers. And that's not even factoring in the amazing PR we'd get for legalizing a variant of Greninja (a fan favorite Pokemon) after Protean Greninja inevitably gets banned.
And considering Zygarde (Power Core) was banned and Zygarde (Aura Break) was not, there's a precedence here. As previously mentioned, even the game treats Greninja(BB) as a seperate Pokemon from Greninja (it's banned on Battle Spot)
Treat Greninja (BB) and Greninja(regular) as seperate Pokemon.
For the record, I have no objections with complex banning Protean Greninja from OU (although I suspect a lot of other people would), and would prefer that instead of tiering Ash-Greninja separately.