RBY OU Reflections on the Current State of RBY

So a few of you saw my post in the Vermillion tour thread following my loss to Marcoasd, but for those who haven't, the tl;dr is that I'm extremely frustrated by the fact that the tier that I've devoted so much time to mastering has evolved to become incessant Reflect stallwars and I think overall RBY's in an extremely toxic state atm. What follows are my thoughts on Reflect and what players can do to combat it.

What makes Reflect so good?
Reflect is an interesting issue in that neither Chansey nor Snorlax create issues without it, but it's not even particularly good on most other pokemon. I'll ignore Zam since although it can theoretically be broken due to winning or trading practically every non-Bro matchup in a 1v1 setting, we all know it's not currently an issue. Anyone who knows anything about RBY will be able to tell you that Chansey and Snorlax's inability to be paralysed is the driving force behind them spamming Reflect, as they become extremely difficult for Lax, and to a lesser extent Tauros and GolDon, to break. There's two things I want to note here- Lax is the biggest force driving this trend, as Reflect offers maximum benefits here (by contrast Tauros' speed and crit rate make setting up Reflect slightly more risky, especially for Chansey, while GolDon outspeed Lax and hit harder than the Normals with STAB EQ). Also, although Reflect shuts down physical attackers, it's difficult for special attackers to step up because they all get walled to some extent by Chansey.

Reflect Chansey is broken as fuck. If one gets in and sets up Reflect your options are basically limited to either stalling it out or accumulating numerous stat boost or special drops. To consistently stall out Reflect Chansey you basically need a Rest pokemon, which is incredibly exploitable, especially if it's anything besides Lax. Meanwhile accumulating stat changes requires multiple turns, allowing Chansey ample time to paralyse and chip your pokemon down, limiting its potential and often forcing a Rest.

ReflectLax does have a weakness in that strong special attackers can always threaten it. The trouble is that none of them come in easily due to lack of recovery and the damage and paralysis chance of Body Slam, while Chansey is always there to snuff their attacks. Furthermore, similar troubles do not exist for Lax, as with para support it can comfortably set up on a number of pokemon.

Fight cancer with cancer
Freeze
Freezes are one of the tools that teams can use to combat Reflect spam, as Ice Beam Reflect users are rare so this threat is not usually reciprocated and the whole point of Reflect Normals is that they're hard to paralyse. Unfortunately, one of the main reasons they're rare is because playing for the freeze is generally an inferior strategy. It depends on your opponent not being paralysed, which means you're restricting all of your non-freeze channels of offensive output by not spreading para. It's an unreliable strategy, obviously. And it also demands that you play in an extremely passive manner- the best candidate for landing a freeze, BoltBeam Chansey, is an invitation for Lax to switch in and start pounding your team, while most other Ice attackers are restricted to a hit and run style of play. Overall I don't think playing for a freeze is a particularly good strategy and that wouldn't change unless possibly freeze clause was removed

PP Stall
As with Freeze, this is mostly useful as a response to Chansey. It also benefits immensely from the opposing Chansey being unparalysed. You can try stalling Chansey out with one or more Recover users, but they sacrifice a lot of their utility in absorbing paralysis as a result. Alternatively, a Rest mon such as Lax works here, but Rest is of course exploitable.

If you're looking for a solution to Reflect stallwars, these strategies are not that, as they're just stall with a slightly different angle to them. It's also worth pointing out that these strategies should be implemented with a view to beating paralysed Chansey, even though they work better without paralysis. Spreading paralysis simply increases your options and if your opponent is committed to keeping Chansey free of para the threat of para will be enough to force Chansey out, which is honestly half the battle in dealing with this shit.

Playing with stats
Boosting (Amnesia)
Boosting a pokemon's stats is the most obvious solution for dealing with Reflect. There's a lot of boosters out there and all of them are complete rubbish here except for two of them- Lax and Bro. Bro's ability to muscle through Reflect users shouldn't need explaining. Lax's position is... interesting. With Blizzard it gains an advantage against ReflectLax, but it needs luck to break through Chansey, which is a risky bet when Blizz only has 8 PP. On the other hand, Rest means it should be able to stall Chansey out. It functions best when it's forcing Chansey out into Lax. Honestly, people need to use AmnesiaLax more, it's one of the few options I'll discuss here that I actually think is good, primarily because of that aforementioned use case.

The issue I have in this case is that setting up on either pokemon allows them plenty of opportunity to paralyse and/or wear you down, potentially forcing a Rest. Either way, your supposed counter to Reflect fails to generate any sort of momentum.

Spec drops
Firstly, if your pokemon is not Zam or Starmie (or Bro, but that's in the above category), it has no business trying to break through Chansey with Psychic, because Chansey will always win. As for Zam and Star, they are able to stall Chansey and eventually force it out with Spec drops. Though this will force a switch, it's not really very threatening, as it's rare that a Chansey will fail to find an opening to switch out. After that point it comes in, heals and sets up far too easily for this to be any more than a band-aid solution. Note that I haven't even gone into what this will cost you- at the very least your Zam/Star is getting paralysed, and thus losing a lot of its utility, far more than what Chansey loses if it gets paralysed. In Zam's case it becomes a lot weaker to physical attackers, while Star is more difficult to generate momentum against, but it's just sooooo much more ineffective when paralysed, on top of which it's a lot less effective against Chansey.

ATTACK!
Special attackers
One of Snorlax's more obvious weaknesses is that its special bulk is merely decent in the face of the potent special attacks that get thrown around in RBY. So, logically, powerful special attackers make pretty decent responses to ReflectLax. However, as I alluded to above, coming in on Lax can be extremely costly due to its good damage and paralysis chance, while the existence of Chansey limits the kind of reward that players can expect to receive for taking this kind of risk. So if you're looking to use special attackers, you should consider how they're able to threaten Chansey. In my opinion there are only two decent pokemon (excluding Amnesia) that take on Lax and threaten Chansey sufficiently to be effective in this role- Zapdos and Cloyster. Zapdos is pretty obvious, having decent bulk and a potent dual STAB to take on Normal types. Cloyster is able to threaten Lax with its great bulk and STAB Blizzard, while Clamp, although not super threatening to Chansey, enables you to keep the opponent on the back foot. Also considered for this list was Lapras (parafusion is too unreliable) and Moltres (bad).

That covers dealing damage, but what about switching in? The obvious thing is that you want to switch in on anything besides Body Slam, even EQ is more palatable by an enormous margin. Normal resistors aren't the solution since they don't really threaten ReflectLax. Fortunately there's one attack that can solve this conundrum- Counter. Obviously there's the potential for surprise KOs, but even revealing it and forcing the opponent to fire off EQs is enough for it to achieve its function- getting relatively clean switches into ReflectLax checks. An important point to consider is which pokemon will run Counter (usually Lax or Chansey), and you then need to consider how to force the opponent to play Lax in the matchup you want.

Conclusion
Are there potential metagame developments that could serve to mitigate the impact of Reflect? In my opinion, yes. Counter is promising, Amnesia is promising, especially on Lax. Greater consciousness of Reflect when teambuilding could help. Will it make Reflect go away? Probably not. Half the reason it's so good is that it's difficult to exploit. I've whipped together a couple teams built around the ideas I've mentioned and I really felt like I was bending over backwards to try and "counter" Reflect, to such an extent that I think clearly indicates its brokenness. Frankly, it's unclear whether or not it will actually work, and with the small risk and massive reward to running Reflect, it could well be that it's simply easier to run Reflect yourself and try to beat the opponent at their own game (assuming they're running Reflect).

What are your thoughts on potentially ending the dominance of Reflect?

 

I'm not quite sure where I stand in all of this. I play the game very differently and in a different way to most players... I rarely use Reflect (I almost never use Reflect on Snorlax) and I play very aggressively, and I try to take advantage of freezes more than most players do I think.

​

I think there are a lot of different ways to tackle Reflect users, with varying degrees of efficacy and outside usefulness. One good & common route players should go by is using Psychic Alakazam / Psychic Starmie to force Chansey out if not outright beat it. You can paralyze Reflect chansey, force it out with enough specfalls, and use that to cause damage with a standard offensive snorlax. Stoss Reflect Chansey really makes Starmie so much greater and in addition the added power of Starmie's Psychic against Snorlax & Tauros is really useful too. Slowbro as well as AmneLax are fairly mainstream approaches to getting around Reflect abuse. It's not my cup of tea, I struggle to maintain tempo with those sorts of Pokemon but they're certainly not to be overlooked when looking for tools to counteract reflect users.

On the more gimmicky side of things, Pinsir is actually not that bad. Gengar is pretty uncommon these days, so you can at least be fairly sure of doing damage with Slash. Obviously it has its issues but it acts as a wallbreaker against paralyzed Chansey, at least forcing it out, enabling other attackers that struggle with Chansey more once it has a Reflect set up to do work. My personal Pinsir set up has been this, but it's worth experimenting with. It's not like it's a bad Pokemon it just struggles versus some common Pokemon [Gengar, then especially if not carrying Submission Golem/Rhydon, and then physically bulky special attackers like Lapras & Zapdos aren't great to come up against either], and is not a traditional choice at all, but its attacking power and physical bulk are pretty good and its typing isn't weak to Ice/Electric/Psychic/Ground/Water/Grass which does it some good, although its Special is pretty average [basically, don't let it eat strong STAB Special attacks and you can get good mileage out of it].

e: Also Leech Seed egg is a fun set, and this is the sort of environment it prospers in.
e2: Sing Chansey, use it

In addition, there is all the other stuff you mentioned. I find it hard to add more to the conversation than this because I don't have that many problems with Reflect abuse in my metatope. It's like I'd be trying to address a problem that affects most people but not me and I struggle to totally understand it because of it.

 

Gay Clause: Ban Reflect

Persian isnt so bad vs reflect Chansey, Amnesia lax can beat both(with enough support), i have some experimental teams, but used them together only in g1 of smogon wc vs TIN(won), but cant say that this way to counter cancer shit is stable enough

edit: slowbro also not bad counter, but this mon is more about late game

 

Amnesialax is dangerous and I see why it should be used at least as a bugbear, but it has major issues switching into Snorlax and Tauros (Reflect Snorlax is at risk as well when switching into Tauros, but it can turn the corner) - it basically wins you games where you have a good position already and won't help you when you're in need.
It has many of the same struggles as Slowbro (it can be slept most of the times or para'd and boomed on) - it has Blizzard to punish Egg's Sleep Powder misses and it isn't weak to electrics, but you're paying the price of losing your midgame firepower because that's not when you want to use Snorlax if that's your moveset.

Counter just isn't an answer for ReflectLax, especially if it's Earthquake. (Assuming SToss, as it would be awful in a lot of scenarios) it won't freeze, it won't crit, it won't deal with para'd Starmie... Sing and Counter are just suboptimal options for Chansey, which happen to be situationaly good, especially relying on the surprise factor.
Beambolt and ReflectToss are the dominant forces for a reason.

Yeah, that's why we see a lot of them as leads, so much for Slowbro's RIP.

Overall, the metagame still has trends but it looks kinda solved already - if you try to make adjustments to beat something specifically - Reflect in this case - chances are that an even bigger hole opens up and you lose consistency.
I think the only way to break that is trying to play RBY differently - which means sacrificing some of the S4 and going against the odds.

 

reflect chansey: paralyze -> spc drop to hell and force her to switch -> it's your supposed best snorlax switchin but now it can't do that anymore and the non-reflect chansey player is strongly favored if they position themselves well. reflect chansey is a strong set, but the counterplay against it is widespread to say the least (if it's not paralyzed you can always threaten sleep or freeze on it. or win the pp war using your own chansey as you let it get para'd.)

reflect lax is where the real issue lies. i'm tired as all hell, so i'll be brief: it's ridiculously powerful to the point where playing without reflect lax often feels like a straight up disadvantage. but there's plenty of counterplay here too, some of it we're only starting to explore (see: harden lax or ice beam lax starting to show up to win the mirrors, or even amnesia sets; counter chanseys being at the very least a threat although most definitely not a surefire answer, slowbro is super powerful and underrated atm, zapdos is much easier to answer with a boomlax than it is without one, and if you look lower in the viability rankings there's more stuff that gets a decent match up on snorlax, though i'm hesitant to bring them up because i really haven't tested them myself). and there's always the tried and tested solution of exploding, though of course doing it before reflect is set up can be a challenge - but it is an option if you put yourself in the right position. thing is, all of those checks are shaky at best, and more often than not the more reliable line of play is sending your own reflect lax and putting yourself in a neutral position, forcing rests and going from there.

overall i think reflect chansey is perfectly fine. reflect snorlax is blurring the line, it's not mandatory but at the same time it's certainly centralizing the way we play rby a lot. i'd like to try out a complex ban on snorlax with reflect before going for anything more substantial if we're arguing for any tiering changes.

 

I just want to ask a clarifying question for Disaster Area here. In the discord chat, Disaster Area has expressed discomfort with a ban on Reflect for the following reasons:

1) Reflect isn't broken in tiers other than 1U (whether it's broken in 1U or not is the discussion here, but he asserts it definitely isn't in the lower tiers)
2) A ban on Reflect on certain Pokemon is a complex ban and that should be avoided
3) Banning something like Chansey or Snorlax outright would be the only way to go and that's excessive

Personally, I don't care about complex bans (point 2 I stated above) so I don't consider that a "problem" per se. I definitely don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater (banning Chansey or Snorlax outright, point 3 I stated above). So I have a question on that first point:

When we tiered 1U, you kept saying, over and over and over:

But now that we're talking about Reflect you're all like

(From Discord)

So why are we forbidden from even mentioning a lower tier when discussing whether a Pokemon is appropriate in a tier, but when we're talking about whether a move is appropriate in a tier suddenly the lower tiers count? That doesn't make any sense to me at all.

It seems like banning Reflect because it causes issues in 1U - even if it doesn't in 2U or 3U or whatever - is a perfectly reasonable decision that in itself SHOULD align with our tiering philosophies, so assuming we all agree it should go (not saying we do, but just talking in principle here) a ban on the move doesn't seem to cause any philosophical tiering issues.

In your mind, why does banning Reflect because it's broken in 1U but not lower tiers go against your tiering principles? It seems like you've expressed the exact opposite principle in the past and I'm confused.

 

Golden Gyarados I didn't realise that was confusing for you and I'll try my best to clarify it here.

These are 2 fundamentally different situations:
- One is deciding upon whether a Pokemon should be permitted in a lower tier. The question in point is deciding whether or not it is sufficiently viable in a tier that we don't need a new tier where players can viably use it frequently without being put at a large disadvantage. The decision is not to ban something, it's to decide whether something is viable enough in one tier to not automatically permit it in a tier below.
- The other is deciding whether or not to ban a move from one tier. The way our system works is that if something is banned from one tier then it is banned from all tiers below it too. That goes for moves, Pokemon, and everything else.

So basically, the onus in one case is to prove that something is sufficiently viable that there is no need to allow it into a lower tier, whereas the other case is to prove that something is broken (you could, if you want, think of it as being too viable, although that's not strictly the case of course).

Now, a better comparison would be considering whether say Mewtwo should be banned from RBY 1U. Mewtwo is clearly not only going to be broken in RBY 1U but will be broken in all tiers below it too. That's a very obvious case but I think it proves the point. We can theoretically do the same thought experiment with any Pokemon but it's virtually certain by the way that tiers work that if a Pokemon is broken in one tier it will automatically be broken in all tiers below it. A less obvious but still very clear case we can also use as a comparison is evasion moves: they're an example of a move that we ban; they're clearly broken in 1U and you can very reasonably assume that it will be broken in most if not all lower tiers also, and hence it's fine to ban them.

Does that make it clearer?

 

lmao I must be doing something wrong by running it in only like 2% of games.

 

Spoiler: Long version

Almost as i knew from the start.... The best thing would be a complex ban only for Chansey and Snorlax, Reflect Zam the and some gimmicks like Articuno should not be attacked. Reflect Snorlax is really obnoxious but broken is a very strong word, probably undeserved as it is very abusable when it comes to put some strong special attackers (especially Psychics) into his Rest. Chansey is scary, but we can't ban Chansey without RUINING the tier more. What do we do? Amnesia is not balacing alone, i wish we could see the tier with the complex ban, i really don't get why people is so afraid of complex banning, Sand Rush Excadrill is dumb? Why do you ban SANDSLASH too?

Short version about what i think of Reflect:

 

Here is a thought experiment: How can we prove that reflect is or isn't broken? If I were to challenge the best players on here to use reflect and still win at a rate of >40% longterm is that proof? At what point is it decided that something is broken?
I'm a very strong meta-game player within different gaming hierachy's. I would like to prove a point that "reflect" is in fact: not broken. How may I go about proving this? I would like some input because I have some free time and would like to disprove this. I understand the majority of people who post reguarly on here are objectively good at gen1 OU. I will challenge anyone on here to a series of 100 games, or any amount of games you think would be nessessary to disprove this.

I understand that I will get to know one of your move slots in advance before the battle even happens, however if it's so overpowered it shouldn't matter right? Example: If I was running Mewtwo and you got to know before the battle starts, that doesn't stop Mewtwo from being overpowered.

Any takers for my challenge? Or other ideas on an objective measurement on how to prove something is or isnt broken?

 

Reflect isn't broken - paraslam immunity is (but it can't be touched as it's part of this game's actual mechs), and Reflect wasn't even common before that. We're just claiming it's so unhealthy that we feel like we should take some kind of action (we can't think about anything better atm).

Many guys have a problem with the fact that the best play against Reflect Chansey is simply to ppstall with your own; are there ways around it? Of course, but this doesn't save us from seeing high-level matches turn to supreme boredom as soon as turn 2.

My problem is that Reflect getting common (as it should be) hurt diversity so much that we're losing on the part of having different strategies. You're just bringing a different filler (well, we have three very common ones at this time in Zapdos, Rhydon and Lapras), hoping you'll just get the edge Blue/Gary style.

 

Yeah, there's of course a difference between "broken" and "unhealthy" and just because something is unhealthy but doesn't necessarily meet the exact standards and specifications of "broken" doesn't mean it's not worth looking at.

 

Noone seems to have a clear opinion on what broken is anyway

please people also post in this thread: All Gens - What Makes Something Broken (To You)? | Pokémon Perfect

 

Yeah my bad for helping instigate that Reflect discussion. It was definitely not responsible of me, because although I support taking action against Reflectmons, that would come in the form of a ban on Lax and/or Chansey, not a ban on Reflect for a couple different reasons, but the biggest is that Reflect is not inherently broken, based on the mechanics of what it does, and the fact that shitloads of pokemon get it, but only two pokemon become broken with it (and you could make the case they're broken regardless, although I wouldn't agree).

I think the idea of proving a move broken is an interesting one. Most scenarios where moves (or abilities) are outright banned occur where a move has extremely limited distribution (e.g. Geomancy). Those cases are pretty cut and dry, but they're obviously not really the subject of the question. Baton Pass is the only real example here, as it's the only move that's both relatively widespread and has proven toxic to competitive play (thus I get to rule out Stealth Rock, which is obviously "broken" but isn't really unhealthy imo). Defining characteristics of this move are its recurrent nature and general inability to isolate single abusers. With the latter point I refer primarily to the Baton Pass teams that plagued gen 6 OU- those teams were obviously broken, but it was impossible to single out any specific member as being broken. With the former, there are two things I'd like to point out- the fact that bp causes issues to some extent in literally every generation besides GSC (notably this spans a wide range of different metagames), and that smogon's gen 6 ou is again a good example here as they implemented a succession of complex bans only for bp to persist in playing a toxic role in the tier before they eventually restricted it. At some point you've got to stop dancing around the evidence and accept it. From this, I'd watch out for the following trends:

• Difficult to identify specific broken pokemon associated with it
• Repeatedly causes problems despite attempts to limit it
• Repeatedly causes problems in a wide range of different metagames

That's not comprehensive though, and it doesn't describe where to draw the line

edit @ below: I thought you meant the discord discussion. Also I don't think encouraging bad tiering policy is helpful

 

?

discussion on the forum is ALWAYS good

 

I love old gens but I quit playing RBY after Reflect became common. GSC can also have long games but GSC very rarely stalls out until the lategame. On the other hand the best response to reflect mons is frequently pp stall. Commonly resorting to pp stall in the first 10 turns is not something I want to deal with.

I am not a RBY expert so I am not sure what to do. But I used to really enjoy the tier and I hope something is done to improve the gameplay.

 

I said this on discord but bringing it over into the forums: ignoring whatever personal tiering philosophy you might hold, if one were to ban Reflect on just Chansey and Snorlax, it would be a tweak that would cause virtually no significant changes to the metagame, while vastly increasing the enjoyment factor in its playability.

What I mean is, if you banned Chansey, or Snorlax, RBY OU becomes extremely, extraordinarily different. New viability rankings would be developed as new Pokemon and threats rise and fall, new teambuilding mindsets and strategies need to be developed, the way the game is played will change dramatically.

If you banned Reflect on those two Pokemon, RBY OU stays almost exactly the same. Before Reflect became super popular, Body Slam/Earthquake/Hyper Beam/Self Destruct was a super common Lax set. Now it will be again. Before Reflect became super popular, Ice Beam/Thunderbolt/Thunder Wave/Softboiled was the Chansey set. Now it will be again. To counter Reflect users, people tend to use their own Reflect users and PP stall, the rise in Reflect users didn't result in the rise of Reflect ANSWERS that didn't already exist in RBY OU. People don't run Slash. They might run another tank like Slowbro with Amnesia, but that's an A-tier Pokemon that people would run anyway. So if suddenly you couldn't use or face Reflect Chansey anymore, you would use BoltBeam Chansey or one of the many OTHER niche Chansey sets (Counter, Sing, etc), or if you couldn't use or face Reflect Snorlax anymore, you'd use the standard set or use Surf, or Counter, or one of the myriad other Snorlax sets, and you would play RBY OU *super comfortably* because this doesn't result in anyone needing to learn a new meta or approach anything really differently.

So, saying "Well, we can't ban just a move that isn't inherently broken, we'd HAVE to ban Chansey and Snorlax" is just ridiculous to me - that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater and creating an entirely new metagame, and the extra ridiculous thing is that this wouldn't ACTUALLY solve the problem, because the problem is "I want to play RBY the way we played it like, just one year ago before EVERYONE ran Reflect and the game became stally and frustrating and awful and the fun was sucked out of it" and the solution is NOT "Okay, let's ban Chansey and Snorlax and force the playerbase to create an entirely new metagame." The solution is "Ban Reflect on those two Pokemon."

If you went to McDonald's and said, "I would love a hamburger, but I'm not big on ketchup, so no ketchup please" and they said, "Well, I can't give you a hamburger without ketchup because that's complex, but I can get rid of the hamburger entirely and you can have some chicken nuggets, or a salad" that would be ridiculous. The solution is to make a hamburger and just hold the ketchup.

The solution should always be: what's the least amount of change one can introduce to result in the most amount of benefit, even if that means introducing a "complex" ban (which I've always found a bit of an ironic name because the "complex" ban results in the LEAST complex changes to the meta, whereas a "simple" ban results in the MOST complex changes to the meta) or banning something that isn't "decidedly broken."

As for whether that would cause a schism as our ruleset diverges from Smogon's: there are plenty of arguments of whether Wrap is or isn't "broken," but RBY2k10 just said, "Nah ban Wrap it sucks to play" and people bounced between that community and Smogon and played just fine. If we decided "Nah ban Reflect on Chansey and Snorlax it sucks to play" people would still bounce between PP and Smogon just fine. Like I said, you could build a standard RBY team without using Reflect and bring it into a top-tier tournament under either ruleset and did fine. Or, you could have almost the exact same team built once with a BoltBeam Chansey and once with a Reflect Chansey and just swap out your Chansey depending on where you were playing the tour. Banning Reflect on these mons does not disrupt RBY OU, it doesn't change how you would learn how to play RBY OU, etc etc.

 

If the problem is that people want to play the old RBY metagame before the mechanics change, that's playable on the PP server already, and if people want it we can host tournaments, seasons, and so on for it. That is not an option for our RBY 1U ruleset however, obviously. So, you are right to point out that the two options, if we indeed agree on making any sort of change, are:
- Ban Lax and/or Chansey
- Ban Reflect on Lax and/or Chansey

There are costs to both options. The first is more elegant from the standpoint of:
- The ban is not complex, and the purpose of tiering primarily is to tier Pokemon. It provides a narrower precedent on when complex bans would be okay.
The second is more elegant from the standpoint of:
- It more directly targets the problem, with reduced collateral (fewer things being removed which aren't broken).

The question is, if you indeed believe that we need action on this (which I don't), is the reduced collateral worthwhile in exchange for the precedent that it sets, namely that we can ban a specific aspect of specific Pokemon which is not exclusive to that Pokemon and which is not broken on other Pokemon, because the Pokemon is only broken if that specific aspect of it is not banned.

(The "specific aspect" in this context is a move choice, but in the future it could well end up being, for example, a choice of ability, or even an item choice)

Hopefully that's clarifying for everyone that fundamentally that is the trade-off between the different options for dealing with this scenario within the context of PP's 1U tier.

I feel it's worth noting that even if we were to implement one of these possible rule changes, RBY OU would continue to have seasons and a place in team tournaments and so on, just as is the case with BW right now.

I don't care about potential "schisms" or anything like that. There is nothing wrong with us having our own alternative RBY ruleset. I disagree with banning Chansey/Snorlax/banning Reflect on Chansey/Snorlax because I don't think they're broken or ruin the game or anything, not because of any exterior reasons. Within the context of this discussion I hope that everyone shares the point of view that it doesn't matter whether or not there's a difference between PP's RBY tier and Smogon's, what matters is whether PP's RBY tier adequately satisfies PP's tiering goals (a tier without broken elements and as few bans & rules as possible to achieve it).

 

Bolding for emphasis because I think you might have mis-read. The problem of this entire thread is that Reflect is irritating, which arose in the last year or so, this isn't about the mechanics change from 3 or so years ago. I know some people do want to play the "old" metagame (props for Enigami for implementing, that's really neat), but some folks are looking for ways to improve the game that don't revolve around changing mechanics, and that's what I'm talking about here.

 

At this moment, I've been pretty disappointed with every solution involving bans on pokemon (whether they are any of Chansey, Tauros, Snorlax or any combination of them).

Options look pretty simple:
a) do nothing, which looks fair to me at this point.
b) take a look at what happens after banning Reflect, irritating the "no complex bans, I'm going to ban Reflect from lower tiers for no reason because our policy says so" party.
c) take a look at what happens after banning sleep-inducing moves, Reflect AND Amnesia - which erases Jynx, Gengar and Slowbro on the spot.