Gen 1 RBY UU - Tier Discussion and Evaluation v2

[Oglemi]

Prior reading: http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/rby-uu.3447138/

Smogon's RBY BL list used to be gigantic, 22 mons in total. http://web.archive.org/web/20091221110358/http://www.smogon.com/rb/tiers/bl

Right now the "accepted" tier list is this: http://pokemon-online.eu/threads/rby-tier-list.28328/. There, the BL list is nearly identical to what the old Smogon one was, but only 15 mons in total.

What I want to talk about:
- Should Smogon adopt the current accepted tier list?
- Is Smogon's current UU actually bad, if it's bad would only a few changes fix the issues it has?
- Are there any Pokemon that could be moved out of BL and into UU to shrink the BL list a bit?
- Is there anything currently listed as UU on Smogon that should be listed as OU and vice versa?

Finally, I won't be adding an RBY NU tier right now, I think that's pushing it a bit and dipping into RBY LC territory. Save discussion for it later.


Let's get this figured out.

 

[Joim]

I think we should adapt the RBY tiers to those the RBY community plays and like. The tiers have been Ubers - OU - BL - UU - LC for them for ages, including NU sometimes. Right now we lack BL on implementation and I think it's key, having both BL and UU metas. UU meta with BL in place is simply better, also we do have more knowledge of those metas and there are more analyses on those metas, allowing new players to pick them up.

The thing with RBY is that the OU mons are incredibly good, while the BL mons are simply superior to those just UU. One could see as OU - UU - RU of the modern gens, only there is no RU for RBY.

 

[Crystal_]

We've been playing RBY UU with PO/RBY2k10 tiering for around 5 years now, so making a playable UU tier than looks exactly like BL would feel nothing but weird. We've already have plenty of discussion in PO about the tiering so I think Smogon should stick to PO's UU and not just be different for the sake of being different. I thought that what Hip did back in the day was a good idea because nobody used the Smogon tiers so it was better to just group any non-OU mon in the same class rather than keep an outdated tiering that could be misleading. But if we actually want to turn Smogon's tiers into something playable, I believe we should just stick to PO tiers because the work has already been done there.

Also RBY NU is perfectly fine imo, and both PO and RBY2k10 have their own tier for it. I understand it doesn't have the same priority as UU right now, but it's still a pretty cool and balanced tier imo. Much better than that RBY LC UU nonsense for that matter.

 

[Isa]

I could write something but it'd only mirror what Crystal_ already said.

 

[Jellicent]

For the things listed as UU that should be OU, my first thought was Victreebel. I could've sworn Jolteon was already OU, but apparently that's not either. Looking at PO's list, they add those two and Articuno, all of which I agree with.

As for UU, I'm also cool with using PO's tiering on this. We already use it for the only RBY UU resource on-site, and I don't actually know anyone that uses Smogon's current list. I know we've used RBY2k10's list for tours in the past as well, but PO's seems to account for Wrap mechanics while RBY2k10's doesn't (Dragonite, Cloyster, and Victreebel are BL rather than OU. Everything else is the same.) Technically that leaves UU the same either way, but those three should definitely be OU.

 

[Disaster Area]

http://www.pokemonperfect.com/forums/showthread.php?3015-Pokemon-Perfect-Server-Tiers
this is probably the most recently compiled tierlist, credits mostly to Lutra (I don't remember if I played a part but we do discuss PP tiering on occasion)
Alakazam, Chansey, Cloyster, Dragonite, Exeggutor, Gengar, Golem, Jynx, Lapras, Rhydon, Slowbro, Snorlax, Starmie, Tauros, Victreebel and Zapdos is the banlist (no Jolteon/Articuno, but Dragonite, Cloyster, and Victreebel)

 

[Lutra]

Alakazam, Chansey, Cloyster, Dragonite, Exeggutor, Gengar, Golem, Jynx, Lapras, Rhydon, Slowbro, Snorlax, Starmie, Tauros, Victreebel and Zapdos is the banlist (no Jolteon/Articuno, but Dragonite, Cloyster, and Victreebel)

I also dropped Persian from OU, because of two factors: usage on PO and in tournaments indicating it wasn't OU; and various players considering it not viable enough for OU, less than even some borderline OUs that have more of a reputation of being dropped to BL. Personally, I think it definitely has a good clean-up niche, but I just think it's very hard to fit onto a reliable OU team.

 

[Ortheore]

The thing that's always appealed to me about old gens is the fact that practically all the time they have banlists/tiers that are consistent no matter what community you're playing with. Like RBY OU is the same anywhere you go (maybe wrap is an issue but still), compared to say, gen 4/5/6 NU where PO is very different to smogon. So normally I'd want to keep things the way they are, but since pokemon perfect and now smogon are re-examining the BL tier, that's a decent amount of momentum to shift the "accepted" tiers. So yeah, I'm in favour of giving RBY BL a try with Jolt/Cuno/Persian unbanned, just to see how it is.

Based on PO's tier list, I can't see anything dropping from BL to UU, Nidoqueen and Mr. Mime are the obvious ones, but Nidoqueen was apparently tested and Mr. Mime looks like it would wreck UU, being the only Psychic type in the tier.

In terms of things dropping from UU to NU, there's a lot of stuff I want to try, because in my limited experience in the tier there's a shitload of stuff that is straight up non-viable in UU due to either being bad (most fire types), being completely redundant (Every SDer that isn't Kingler) or both (again, most fire types). I'm tempted to just say start from scratch but idk.

I was gonna say to free NU, but after that last little bit I'm thinking it might need some work so I'm fine with it not being a thing for now.

I'm always up for playing these tiers so just let me know if you wanna play =]

 

[Disaster Area]

Based on PO's tier list, I can't see anything dropping from BL to UU, Nidoqueen and Mr. Mime are the obvious ones, but Nidoqueen was apparently tested and Mr. Mime looks like it would wreck UU, being the only Psychic type in the tier.

NFE Psychics

In terms of things dropping from UU to NU, there's a lot of stuff I want to try, because in my limited experience in the tier there's a shitload of stuff that is straight up non-viable in UU due to either being bad (most fire types), being completely redundant (Every SDer that isn't Kingler) or both (again, most fire types). I'm tempted to just say start from scratch but idk.

I was gonna say to free NU, but after that last little bit I'm thinking it might need some work so I'm fine with it not being a thing for now.

The first rule of RBY NU, do not talk about RBY NU. The second rule of RBY NU, do not talk about RBY NU. If you mention RBY NU your post will be deleted, unless it's the OP.

Anyway until someone creates an RBY NU thread I'll just mention what has been deleted that the stuff in UU that's rarely or never used is too good for NU. I would say more but Oglemi's in a high-sass state.

 

[Ortheore]

I was gonna reply with something like "Who uses NFE Psychics in UU" then I actually had a look and in terms of stats, Abra only loses to Mr. Mime in physical bulk, which isn't so relevant since neither should be taking a physical hit (unless Mr. Mime's boosted, whereas Abra is impossible to salvage). Ofc movepool's another matter but hey it's still notable. Can't see any of the other NFE Psychics justifying a presence in UU but now I'm in favour of giving Mr Mime a test in UU =]

As for the NU stuff, that was just me wondering if if we were to do NU all over by just playing UU and making everything that was garbage in UU NU, then started testing things would we end up making bans such that the tier lists are what they are now? I mean I get that we're talking about a tier where freaking Poliwhirl was broken, but there's just that much redundancy in UU that I can't help but wonder- so many Water/Fire types and SDers (Not to mention that fire types are already terrible). But yeah, if we were to test them 1 by 1 in NU I don't doubt that they'd all cause trouble

Edit @ Isa: yeah this is what happens when I start talking about a tier I've barely played lol. Fair enough

 

[Isa]

Jolteon should not be BL on the basis of being worthy of being in OU. Ask marcoasd, Raish or MetalGross what they think of Jolteon in the current meta
Articuno should not be BL for the same reason, it shreds people not using Lapras
Persian should not be BL for the same reason, it got buffed by the new mechanics and is the great response to any given Reflect Chansey variant (also pounds on paralyzed Reflect Alakazam)

Abra has NEVER been used in RBY UU and shouldn't be a reason to test Mr. Mime in UU.

 

[Jorgen]

Real talk: is BL ever played? I know there have at least been UU and NU tournaments lost to the sands of time on RBY2k10, but has BL ever been played to the same extent?

 

[marcoasd]

Jolteon is pretty good in RBY OU at this time (mainly because right now rocks are dropping in usage, but i predict that the metagame will eventually find some balance and will find a lot more of diversity than it had before the Body Slam thing- at least among the 10-15 pokemon we know, with Slowbro being the only one struggling a little bit more).

Besides from that, I don't like this kind of approach: calling something "OU material" doesn't mean it's OP in BL.
You have to explain why something is OP/banned from BL, and I think that Jolteon and Articuno are both strong, but not OP... this is always going to be debatable, but you have some facts:

Articuno: can be dealt with (obviously) Articuno of your own, Jolteon or paralyzed and then hit in many ways- mainly Rock Slide from Kangaskhan or Nidoking.
Not to mention that Dewgong is an hard counter.

Jolteon: Nidoking is an hard counter. Once Jolteon is paralyzed, Earthquake from Nidoking or Kangaskhan does a lot of damage.

On the other hand, they hit very hard things like Hypno or Kadabra or whatever you want to bring into discussion, that's undeniable. Not enough for a ban IMO.

Persian in BL: I don't know, it was always banned when I played, but me and Lutra played a few matches with it: it looked good but not OP.

About Persian and Articuno in OU, they're not that good. Besides from Lapras, Articuno is outclassed by Cloyster, has difficult MU with the three stallers (Alakazam is maybe the easiest of the three) and is OHKO'd by Rock Slide once it's paralyzed. Finally, Snorlax can deal with it decently.
Persian is still frail. Besides from the Gengar argument, it's not Tauros: Bubble Beam is not Blizzard and the filler move (Thunderbolt) is not Earthquake. Outspeeding and revenge killing Tauros gained value, but Persian has the same old problems. To add more, Zam is used often as a lead at the moment (mainly because Psychic and SToss has a better coverage than Starmie, mainly vs Rest Jynx).

 

[Oglemi]

OU means it's used enough to be in OU

BL means it's too strong for UU

UU means it's not used enough to be in OU

 

[Isa]

There is no way to build a tier from the bottom-top approach. You cannot start with all 151 Pokémon, sort the weakest out and then do the same process again. That'd leave Caterpie and Kadabra in the same tier. Following that, we create tiers from the top-bottom approach. Is Pokémon X good enough to be used in the highest possible tier (Ubers not included)? If so, disallow it from tiers below.

2K10 oldies might remember Dre arguing for Golem to sink to UU, since Graveler was residing there and it'd not cause any upsets in the metagame. However, this is not how tiers are created, and shouldn't be considered either. Golem, Jolteon or whatever may not be too strong for a lower tier, but the point is if they're good enough for the tier above.

so yeah basically what oglemi said

edit: though in this particular context BL is a tier in its own right

 

[Disaster Area]

I wasn't around but I was amused by WW creating the 'Dre' tier of lvl100 mewtwo, and level 5 or w/e caterpie/weedle/metapod/kakuna/magikarp lol, fun read.

Anyway it suprises me when I talk about tiering in RBY how few of the players seem to understand how it actually works.

 

[marcoasd]

I don't agree entirely with that, as I recognize that criteria works well with the top ones shaping the OU (or given higher tier) but not with the borderline ones. Also, which is the usage threshold? A given %? A given top X? Things are never that easy in my opinion.

Back to RBY BL, Persian and Articuno are used so rarely in OU, that they should be out of that discussion; we are discussing about Jolteon I guess.
The recent change mixed things up, but Jolteon has this usage mainly as it's been considered the answer to Zapdos, the real OU of the two for both the staying power and the moveset, after the rocks dropped. Is this going to last, or is it just a trend?
Can't Jolteon be both a top BL and a marginal part of OU? It's something worth considering as we're not talking about raw power, but the result of Chansey being harder to paralyze.
And that is not something affecting BL.

About Golem and Rhydon: we're not going to see them disappear from RBY OU, but if this happens, are we going to move them to BL? Even if they were to be OP there (that they could never be due to their W4s, but you get the meaning)?
Bottom to top and top to bottom should coexist imo.

 

[Oglemi]

I don't agree entirely with that, as I recognize that criteria works well with the top ones shaping the OU (or given higher tier) but not with the borderline ones. Also, which is the usage threshold? A given %? A given top X? Things are never that easy in my opinion.

I don't care if you don't agree, that's how it works.

Usage in this instance is going to have to be a generalization. When preparing for a match, what Pokemon are on your mind? And when you play what do you actually see? And then you can look at past tournaments and look at what's been used recently, for example: http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/spl-6-weekly-usage-statistics.3527172/

And that's where the evaluation comes in, are the ones at the low end used enough to be considered OU, or is it too low and therefore they should be UU? And from there we can decide if they'd be too strong for UU.

 

[Disaster Area]

I don't agree entirely with that, as I recognize that criteria works well with the top ones shaping the OU (or given higher tier) but not with the borderline ones. Also, which is the usage threshold? A given %? A given top X? Things are never that easy in my opinion..

Just because it's not in OU doesn't mean you can't use it in OU.

BL is not meant to be a balanced playable meta; if it were we'd label it UU, and label that which was labelled UU as NU or something.

If you do want a %, there's a specific number that is used in later gens tiering with amounts to if you have 20 battles you're likely to meet this pokemon at least once, it's a little above 3% and I can find an exact number.

About Golem and Rhydon: we're not going to see them disappear from RBY OU, but if this happens, are we going to move them to BL? Even if they were to be OP there (that they could never be due to their W4s, but you get the meaning)?
Bottom to top and top to bottom should coexist imo.

If one or both of them were used very little and we felt that they're not that good (see: comparison with other pokemon that make OU, and those that don't, and look at up to date usage stats to get another perspective).

marcoasd this is how I would think about it.
When you prepare a team that's designed to be relatively timeless and not opponent-specific,do you consider preparation against this pokemon whilst building?
E.g. you prepare yourself consciously for zapdos by carrying Reflect Chansey, Goldon, Amnesia Restlax, Jolteon, Para Support+Ices etc. When you prepare for Dragonite you consider bringing a Gengar or Stun Egg and para support/ice moves on every mon, a rock type, that sort of stuff. You don't prepare so hard for Articuno since you usually carry something to cover for larger threats anyway (such as preparing for lapras), and it's a rare sight, so you usually don't think about it when preparing a team. When you prepare a team like this, how much do you prepare for, for example, tauros, cloyster, persian, jolteon, etc. Try and use thoughts like that to gain an opinion on what you feel should be 'OU' or not.

 

[Crystal_]

A common misconception is to think that BL is meant as playable tier. It's not. If it turns out to be something decent then that's that. But its only goal in life should be to make UU playable.

Same goes for Ubers in relation to OU but it's understandable that people find it more exciting than BL.

 

[marcoasd]

And that's where the evaluation comes in, are the ones at the low end used enough to be considered OU, or is it too low and therefore they should be UU? And from there we can decide if they'd be too strong for UU.

So, you DO agree with a good part.
You don't agree with the part where I say that Jolteon being used in OU after that Body Slam thing should not affect BL. But I can tell you I'm pretty sure that the only forum that actually organizes RBY BL tournaments at times, won't care. We know the tier, man.

http://www.pokemonperfect.com/forums/showthread.php?3015-Pokemon-Perfect-Server-Tiers

Just because it's not in OU doesn't mean you can't use it in OU.

marcoasd this is how I would think about it.
When you prepare a team that's designed to be relatively timeless and not opponent-specific,do you consider preparation against this pokemon whilst building?
E.g. you prepare yourself consciously for zapdos by carrying Reflect Chansey, Goldon, Amnesia Restlax, Jolteon, Para Support+Ices etc. When you prepare for Dragonite you consider bringing a Gengar or Stun Egg and para support/ice moves on every mon, a rock type, that sort of stuff. You don't prepare so hard for Articuno since you usually carry something to cover for larger threats anyway (such as preparing for lapras), and it's a rare sight, so you usually don't think about it when preparing a team. When you prepare a team like this, how much do you prepare for, for example, tauros, cloyster, persian, jolteon, etc. Try and use thoughts like that to gain an opinion on what you feel should be 'OU' or not.

You're right: Jolteon is an answer to Zapdos, it's not the question. And we can't even know what its usage will be once the metagame will be stable.
3% threshold looks low in a metagame with very few mons.

 

[Disaster Area]

I think the main issue is twofold:
1) people don't totally understand or don't totally agree upon the purpose of BL/UU; Crystal_'s post hits the nail on the head I guess though.
2) the tier is a little unstable atm; change in paraslam mechanics have shaken things up somewhat.

 

[Lutra]

A common misconception is to think that BL is meant as playable tier. It's not. If it turns out to be something decent then that's that. But its only goal in life should be to make UU playable.

Same goes for Ubers in relation to OU but it's understandable that people find it more exciting than BL.

To be more accurate, I'd say it's not meant as an end-goal tier, a tier which is established when its environment reaches balance (if it's not already balanced). BL is the initial environment of UU, as is Ubers of OU. It's meant to be played, in order to decide which Pokémon should be banned (balance is achieved by banning). It can then subsequently be consigned to history if it doesn't offer any value to players over UU's latest or final environment.

What makes it more complicated, is it may not be possible to ban everything at once. This results in UU environments that can't even be deduced by grouping the 151 Pokémon into tiers levels which are just split into broken and balanced tiers. You'd need to split the broken tier into several broken tiers. To equate this to the highest conventional level (staying far away from Anything Goes or Hackmons), you might need Mewtwo tier (Ubers), Mew tier (OU+Mew), OU tier.

 

[Ortheore]

Are we being serious with this BL isn't a playable tier stuff? Because as it stands BL doesn't come close to resembling something that's just a banlist.

Seriously, what kind of testing was used to determine what is BL and what's UU? Based on the PO tier list almost all of the BLs haven't been tested. Looking back through old RBY2K10 threads it looks like they've talked about having this philosophy, but even then they've only tested the various BL mons if they've been disputed. So afaik the BL tier has been formed based on a vague and highly subjective notion of what should be BL/UU that has been decided upon arbitrarily, which is definitely not the way a banlist is formed.

I mean if I'm wrong and people have tested with all of those BL mons, and somehow decided that all of those bans are necessary to create a balanced UU meta then feel free to correct me. But I strongly doubt it. Not to mention that implementing that many bans is ridiculously inconsistent with the line that's been drawn for OU- if we were to apply that kind of ban-happy approach to OU it would be unrecognisable, since Tauros, Chansey and Snorlax are all broken (just for starters).

Basically I don't see how you can be in favour of keeping the accepted tier list and still claim that BL is just a ban list, since it obviously isn't.

If you're determined to follow through with the "BL= banlist" philosophy, then the correct course of action is to decide what's to be excluded from OU, then run a series of tours to allow people to determine what is actually problematic (scrapping the accepted tier list in the process). Then probably repeat the process to form an NU tier (since by this point it wouldn't resemble what it is now and would be nowhere near "LC territory").

I mean I'm fine with either option, I just think it's a total joke to look at that list and say it's strictly a banlist

 

[Lutra]

1. I think we need to decide where the OU cut-off is. There's widespread agreement that Alakazam, Chansey, Exeggutor, Gengar, Golem, Jynx, Lapras, Rhydon, Slowbro, Snorlax, Starmie, Tauros and Zapdos are OU. That's 13 at the very least. Then there's the wrappers (Cloyster, Dragonite, Victreebel) and Articuno, Jolteon, Persian that all have varying degrees of at least decent support. So where do you draw the line? I think it's about finding the right balance between recognising what is and can be used in OU, what to prepare for etc. with getting a chance to actually use it frequently in a lower tier. There's something else to consider, if BL is meant to be a borderline, and not just the UU equivalent of Ubers, should the cut-off approximate something whereby if a OU Pokémon was dropped by itself into a UU environment, it'd actually at least be fairly dominant? A final thing, I often think about is: the difference between short-term and long-term success. The Pokémon that fit in the reliable jack of all trade kind of teams, you can label OU with ease, but what about those that have some great matchups, but sometimes make the team feel inferior?

In my opinion, we need to target improving an OU viability ranking to get the best kind of gist of what the environment of OU looks like. We can do a lot better than just sorting pokes from S to E with a loose category descriptions - I'd like relevant descriptions beside each Pokémon. Outlining the reasons for the bans at the top would also make it look more complete.

2. Once we've done 1., then I think a UU viability ranking is then needed for players to get a gist of UU. Over time, the UU viability ranking would then reflect the final UU, with or without additional bans. Certainly, we need all the tournaments, ladders we can get to help us make these decisions. I'm sorry but I cannot trust an old tier list which can't hook me in.