(Gen 2) I redid the GSC tiers

[Charlie Brown]

If anyone can clarify:

Some time in my absence (end of '04 to about beginning of '06), both Celebi and HP legends were banned (along with DT and the other luck items, but that's irrelevant). My question is: which came first?

[Torchic]

IMO,Charizard or Dragonite is more common than Porygon2.
Vaporeon is OU for sure because it is so common, you can play NB for weeks and you will know that.
Smeargle should be moved back to BL because Spore and Baton Pass Agility to Belly Drum Quansire is too powerful.

[Nitro.]

Espeon and Vaporeon should both definitely be OU.

[gene]

if the sole distinction between bl and ou is usage, then there is no way espeon is ou. then again, it probably isn't worthwhile to try to readjust tiers in a metagame very few people play until we have some real support for it (new sim and tours).

[Nitro.]

Well, (unfortunately) I can say pretty confidently that nobody has played as much GSC as me over the past couple of months, and I'm certainly seeing both Vaporeon and Espeon used as much if not more than a few of the pokes already considered OU (Zam, Rhydon, Missy).

I don't really like putting the value on how commonly used it is, though. From a viability standpoint, Espeon and Vaporeon are both potent sweepers. In fact, with the word being out now on how good Vaporeon can be, plus hp legends making marowak less common and machamp more common, Espeon may be even better than Vaporeon right now. It's major advantage over Vaporeon is that it's a good BPer (Vap is pretty bad as a BPer imo) along with being able to beat down electrics instead of dance around them like Vap does. It's hard to really wall or stop Espeon without Lax (Roar ttar I guess?) unless you're going to eventually explode on it with something like egg or steelix. But in addition to the extra hurdle of dealing with Electrics, Vap can be walled pretty hard by some additional stuff that I'm seeing more commonly right now (Egg, Suicune).

[Torchic]

I agree with Nitro, he plays GSC almost everyday since I began to play GSC months ago.
Vaporeon is OU, that's true definitely. Espeon is less common than Vaporeon but it is more than Porygon2, however.

[Mr.E]

Originally Posted by Fat Nitro.

I don't really like putting the value on how commonly used it is, though

Well, me neither but that's the route the community at large has chosen to take since we've started collecting usage stats en masse. Pokémon is the only competitive game ever to base tiering status on usage rather than power, which is silly. It does avoid the subjectivity of the imperfect science of "rating" individual pokémon but that's never stopped players of other competitive games, or even our community in the past (before gross usage stats were available).

At any rate, excuse for me to point out that Alakazam rapes Espeon in the bum. By which I mean, you should've mentioned it as a good option at completely stunting its Growth. *rimshot* On its own merits, Espeon is a little less frail but it can't exactly Growth up and sweep freely. Lack of Encore makes it unable to force the switches and deter Cursers the way Alakazam does. Morning Sun runs out of PP too easily to readily boost up against near-2HKOs or make more than a couple attempts in a given battle. It's slower + weaker at a base level and lacks the bulk to truly abuse Growth on its own, so the best you'll usually get out of it is taking +1 potshots at things... not terrible but the turn lost for the initial boost, not to mention the moveslot itself, is not always easy to give up.

As far as Baton Pass is concerned, which is the only definitive thing Espeon offers over 'Zam, there's only so many things to which you can pass. Even with a Growth under your belt, you're not exactly going to want to BP off to something like Zapdos or Gengar against your opponent's Snorlax or Tyranitar, whatever they bring in to combat Espeon. Your fourth moveslot basically has to go to stopping a small subset of the many things that can make Espeon useless, meanwhile the rest of those things still do... Alakazam can never rendered so worthless because Encore has such amazing defensive utilities.

[Borat]

I remember when Alakazam used to matter. I remember the World Trade Center.

Anyway, on the topic of "usage", how many GSC games have you played in say... the past two months to validate such a bold claim?

Just food for thought.

[Jorgen]

From a practical standpoint, usage seems to be the only way to tier pokemon. I mean, most other tiered games are either fighting or strategy games where there aren't nearly as many characters or 'civilizations' from which to choose. This allows in-depth analyses of each possible matchup, therefore allowing somewhat empirical determination of tiers based on power. Pokemon, on the other hand, just has far too many creatures, and therefore far too many possible matchups and situations, to make an exhaustive study of each pokemon's power. Besides, usage often dictates tiering even in games tiered by power, where better matchups against more oft-used characters contribute more to a character's viability than matchups against less-used characters. Also, usage is very often correlated with power-based tiers, at least in the higher tiers (lower tiers are always harder to determine because, heh, nobody ever uses those clowns), so usage-based tiers are likely to be in line with power-based tiers, anyway.

So, in summation, usage is a sufficient tiering mechanism for pokemon, with power being a good indicator for the banlist in the OU and UU metas (power is more feasible a criterion for tiering the short list of pokemon that might warrant a ban in each meta.)

[[AEC] Fantomon]

Snorlax must be uber in GSC I think because it's better than ubers.

[Alan]

Originally Posted by Fat [AEC] Fantomon

Snorlax must be uber in GSC I think because it's better than ubers.

See everyone, this is a perfect argument, we can learn a thing or two from [AEC] Fantomon about the finer points of bending your opponents will in a battle of persuasion.

[Torchic]

Originally Posted by Fat [AEC] Fantomon

Snorlax must be uber in GSC I think because it's better than ubers.

If Snorlax goes to Uber, this game will be totally changed.