eric the espeon
maybe I just misunderstood
This thread will serve as a discussion of how to define what we should define as "Uber" in the Little Cup metagame. We may choose to directly use the definition arrived at in the Portrait of an Uber thread (makes for good background reading), but it would still be good to consider how they apply to the hyper offensive and revenge killing centric metagame of Little Cup.
Offensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it is capable of sweeping through a significant portion of teams in the metagame with little effort.
Two potential difficulties with this, first very few Pokemon can get anything like a true sweep going in Little Cup because so much effort is put into being able to revenge kill threats. Second if you allow things like cleaning up 2-3 Pokemon at the end of a game to count as a sweep.. a large portion, probably a majority, of the LC OU Pokemon are capable of this reasonably consistently.
Defensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it is able to wall and stall out a significant portion of the metagame.
The only Pokemon I have seen that actually attempts to "Stall Out" foes (with some success) in Little Cup is Stockpile Lileep, all other LC "Walls" act by switching into a move that is only a 3-4 KO and either hitting back hard (Munchlax, Gligar, Slowpoke) or setting something up that makes up for the damage you are taking (Bronzor, bulky SR users). In Little Cup walls are all but non-existent, maybe this simply means that the defensive characteristic will never be used as an argument here, or maybe we can interpret it in a way so it is useful.
Support Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it can consistently set up a situation in which it makes it substantially easier for other pokemon to sweep.
While this applies reasonably well to Little Cup, but when using it we have to take note of the massively increased general power of Rain, Sun and Trick Room teams. Any Pokemon capable of setting those effects up can make it "substantially easier" for other Pokemon to sweep (fell like facing Kabuto under the rain, Bellsprout under the sun or Cubone/Cranidos under Trick Room?). The consistently part is also not hard to achieve. Basically, unless we want to ban most Pokemon who learn Rain Dance or Trick Room we need to be careful when applying this characteristic.
I remember an old thread in the staff forum of LCF in which I proposed the following:
Offensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it is capable of sweeping through a significant portion of teams in the metagame with little effort.
Two potential difficulties with this, first very few Pokemon can get anything like a true sweep going in Little Cup because so much effort is put into being able to revenge kill threats. Second if you allow things like cleaning up 2-3 Pokemon at the end of a game to count as a sweep.. a large portion, probably a majority, of the LC OU Pokemon are capable of this reasonably consistently.
Defensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it is able to wall and stall out a significant portion of the metagame.
The only Pokemon I have seen that actually attempts to "Stall Out" foes (with some success) in Little Cup is Stockpile Lileep, all other LC "Walls" act by switching into a move that is only a 3-4 KO and either hitting back hard (Munchlax, Gligar, Slowpoke) or setting something up that makes up for the damage you are taking (Bronzor, bulky SR users). In Little Cup walls are all but non-existent, maybe this simply means that the defensive characteristic will never be used as an argument here, or maybe we can interpret it in a way so it is useful.
Support Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it can consistently set up a situation in which it makes it substantially easier for other pokemon to sweep.
While this applies reasonably well to Little Cup, but when using it we have to take note of the massively increased general power of Rain, Sun and Trick Room teams. Any Pokemon capable of setting those effects up can make it "substantially easier" for other Pokemon to sweep (fell like facing Kabuto under the rain, Bellsprout under the sun or Cubone/Cranidos under Trick Room?). The consistently part is also not hard to achieve. Basically, unless we want to ban most Pokemon who learn Rain Dance or Trick Room we need to be careful when applying this characteristic.
I remember an old thread in the staff forum of LCF in which I proposed the following:
But now I think it is probably better to interpret the existing and very good Smogon definition of an Uber in a way that suits Little Cup.In LC I do not think there is a real defensive characteristic for Uberness, more a general one which can be classified as:
A Pokemon is Uber if it is unreasonably hard to counter or revenge kill with other common Pokemon under common battle conditions, or can revenge kill or counter an unreasonable number of common threats.
This leaves it open for interpretation, much like the Smogon characteristics.
And a support section:
A Pokemon is Uber if it can consistently provide support which allows other Pokemon to reach the other characteristic.
But we should bear in mind if it's a suicide rain lead or the like that the "reasonable" power of the supported Pokemon is significantly higher, as it must make up for the loss of another as well as its own place on the team.