Rarely Used (RU) Tier
 

Well, we're here at last. With UU having been out for a month, I could piece together a banlist for UU that would create the tier below it for usage. There was some discussion in PR awhile back about what we would call a "fourthtier" if one would even exist, but there was really no clear consensus one way or the other. For that reason, I took it upon myself as head server administrator to make an executive decision on the matter. We now have the Rarely Used, or RU, tier available to us.

RU is the fourthtier for tiering based on usage. It exists as a result of there being so many Pokemon in the 5th generation that without it, NU would have easily more than 2/3 of the fully evolved Pokemon in the game among its ranks. In order to give players more freedom in tier choice and to give all of these Pokemon a chance in their power levels, like is the spirit of Smogon's tiers at all, the fourthtier RU was born.

The following Pokemon are banned from RU by usage, though this list excludes all of those Pokemon that are banned from UU (OU Pokemon and Ubers) despite that they too are banned:
I honestly am not sure how popular this tier will be, if at all. That said, it looks to me like it will be a lot of fun given what might be good in it and what isn't there to wreck everything. I won't push for a full forum for this tier... yet. Please feel free to discuss the tier in this thread at your leisure. Based on how excited people are for it and the clamor for a forum, I may get one made at a later date. Until then, enjoy! Let's see what cool stuff we can do in the new tier!

P.S. If you want to discuss RU on IRC, come join everyone on #rarelyused

Venomoth and Quiver Dance is gonna make it interesting, seeing as it failed to get into UU.

lol wobbuffet.
Gorebyss and Smeargle are down there too and I can picture SmashPassing being even more lethal in this tier. Snover is the only auto-weather starter so Hail might actually have a shot at being usable since there's no Drought to contend with, only really losing Kyurem and maybe Froslass from its list of benefitters.
Should be fun to try out RU, considering PO's LU tier was fun for a while.

Snover has a monopoly on weather, and most of the Blizzard spammers are down here. Hail and Baton Pass are gonna have a field day on this. QuiverPass, SmashPass and Hail are gonna be very common, period.

Yes! Finally a tier without the constant weather wars. Rarely Used (I assume it's a permanent name?) looks a lot like the 4th gen UU, with old favourites like Rhyperior, Yanmega, Alakazam, Moltres, Gallade, Cresselia and Honchkrow making into the list.

brb making a Cresselia team now

edit: shit, nvm the no weather wars part, snover is there

At least the snow tree has a monopoly on the auto-weather.

Sharpedo will wreck shit up in this tier without it's main check (Hitmontop) and main counter (Empoleon).

So NU will be below RU? And it will come about in about a month (if everything goes well)?

Talk about crazy, pokemon like Porygon Z, Evire, Krookodile, Sharpedo Moltres, Yanmega and Honchkrow are RU. I can't wait to see how this tier turns out.

Minor nitpick but Sharpedo gets EQ.

whoa RU ladder... gonna be interesting with possibly no one really enforcing it atm

Also, I look forward to this tier's banlist shifting wildly as UU settles... lol.

This could be fun now that Drought isn't present. I'll try it out later.

this looks fun, though I really wouldn't want to see this end up like gen 4 NU with it not being tiered officially or played too much either. Looks fun as of now, although even more centralized than UU.

From what I've seen so far, with little playing time and not much effort put into making a team: Yanmega and Venomoth destroy everything.

Lol, I don't think it was a good idea to make this tier now, considering UU is still a mess, but ok.

^Truth

I feel like once this tier settles, it will be quite similar to Gen 4 UU. It should be a lotta fun! Thanks go out to the minds who decided this is a good idea.

This is a fun tier. Really cool. I'm already #2 lol. Are we going to do suspect for it?

Hooray! A tier fit for my last gen favs like aggron and medicham and weezing. BTW Alakazam is OU.

Good Job, but I think you should've waited a bit.
Also why not NU for nostalgia's sake? ;o;

Couldn't Entei, Moltres, or (to a slightly lesser extent) Magmortar deal with these?

Great, that annoying liligant is RU, the good thing is that with the bans that this round should bring (vulpix already, and 6 other possible bans (from which i can easily see victini and kyurem banned) at least we'll get some new names on that list (probably enough to get venomoth - gorebyss out of it)

So what's the cut-off? And is Hippopotas RU or UU?

For what i can see is the same as UU (about 3.4%), and hippo is UU, just above raikou, crobat and aerodactyl

So is this ban list the UU tier or does RU follow the current tiering system?

OMG I'm sooooooo happy you did this R_D!!!!! I'm so excited!

Dibs on leading RU C&C when it happens....

Also, this tier is going to be so fun, lol.