I'm so sick and tiered.

[tada]

Allow for people to question why a pokemon is put into it's specific tier. Oh and stop basing tiers on usage. That's a retarded way of doing it.

[TheMantyke]

I'm no tiering contributor or OU moderator, but I believe the hold on tiering discussion was just so everyone in the OU forum wouldn't go around saying "Oh man, xxx is so uber in BW2". We've had this new metagame for just over two weeks and there isn't much reason to try banning things until the dust settles, beyond really obvious cases like the new Kyurem forms. After everything's settled down, then tiering discussion and such will probably resume, but until then, go out and get some hands on experience to back up your tiering arguments when the time comes.

Basing tiers on usage statistics has its flaws, but it's the best system we have at the moment. Considering the names of our tiers imply usage, it's doing a pretty nice job dividing things up.

[Birkal*]

Each on site analysis provides a pretty good reason as to why that Pokemon is placed in the tier it is in the form of describing the specific strengths and weaknesses of that Pokemon. If you want to get an in depth reason, you can ask it in the respective Simple Question, Simple Answer thread stickied at the top of each Smogon Metagame forum. If you have a specific Pokemon in mind, you're more than welcome to discuss it in the forum for the tier its currently placed.

Basing tiers off if usage seems pretty intelligent to me. What else would you suggest?

Also I agree with everything TheMantyke said. He is a wise man.

[tada]

Originally Posted by Fat TheMantyke

I'm no tiering contributor or OU moderator, but I believe the hold on tiering discussion was just so everyone in the OU forum wouldn't go around saying "Oh man, xxx is so uber in BW2". We've had this new metagame for just over two weeks and there isn't much reason to try banning things until the dust settles, beyond really obvious cases like the new Kyurem forms. After everything's settled down, then tiering discussion and such will probably resume, but until then, go out and get some hands on experience to back up your tiering arguments when the time comes.

Basing tiers on usage statistics has its flaws, but it's the best system we have at the moment. Considering the names of our tiers imply usage, it's doing a pretty nice job dividing things up.

Putting pokemon in tiers based on their base power would be a better idea. Oh and don't use the lol Regigas excuse. It won't work.

[Birkal*]

Originally Posted by Fat tada

Putting pokemon in tiers based on their base power would be a better idea. Oh and don't use the lol Regigas excuse. It won't work.

There's a lot more to a Pokemon that simply its BST. If we did base stat total, then stuff like Alakazam (490) and Bastiodon (495) would be in the same tier. The former has incredible speed, special attack, a great movepool, Magic Guard, recovery, and a moderately good typing with good STAB. That's why it's in OU; people use it for its plethora of strengths in order to win. The latter, however, has terrible offensive stats, a poor defensive typing (x4 weak to Ground and Fighting-type attacks), no form of recovery, and some pretty non-competitive abilities. That's why its in NU. If people used it in OU, they would probably end up losing quite a few of their matches.

It appears there is a lot of flaws with that system too, in my opinion. I could list more examples if you really needed me to.

[TheMantyke]

Originally Posted by Fat tada

Putting pokemon in tiers based on their base power would be a better idea. Oh and don't use the lol Regigas excuse. It won't work.

The thing is, power is a subjective term. Some pokemon with below average base stats make up for it with great abilities like Politoed or with great movepools like Infernape. There's no way to quantify power, as there are so many variables like movepool, ability, typing, (distribution of) base stats, use against other Pokemon, and combinations of all of those. While we can't quantify power, we can quantify the player base's perception of power through usage statistics. The perception of power is the closest substitute we have to basing tiers off of power we have at the moment.

[tada]

Originally Posted by Fat TheMantyke

The thing is, power is a subjective term. Some pokemon with below average base stats make up for it with great abilities like Politoed or with great movepools like Infernape. There's no way to quantify power, as there are so many variables like movepool, ability, typing, (distribution of) base stats, use against other Pokemon, and combinations of all of those. While we can't quantify power, we can quantify the player base's perception of power through usage statistics. The perception of power is the best thing to base tiers off of we have at the moment.

But smogon doesn't do that. It bases its tiers off of usage. What i'm suggesting is, keeping pokemon in a specific tier based off of their base stat and not banning anything. EVERY pokemon has it's weakness. It's up to the trainer to figure out what that is. Like with Blaziken, since most people like to put that towards the front an easy skill swap or role play will make that ability useless.

[Solace*]

The thing is, basing OU / UU / RU / NU off of usage is how we perceive their power. If a Pokemon is used a lot it's obviously bound to be pretty powerful.

Any way of tiering is bound to have its flaws, but we've found usage statistics to be the most accurate way of deciding where a Pokemon should be ranked.

Banning nothing and ranking Pokemon by base stats won't make for a more balanced metagame, OU will still play exactly the same whether we call Pikachu OU and Thundurus NU. The Pokemon are used a lot because of their niche in the metagame, not because we've deemed them OU and therefore the only usable Pokemon.

[RBG*]

People use pokemon because they believe they will make them more likely to win and thus, more powerful/better.

Usage correlates with power in a ladder setting.

[Arcticblast]

Skill Swap, Role Play, Simple Beam, Worry Seed and Entrainment (all of the ability-changing moves iirc) are not only poorly distributed, but bad moves in general.

Anyway, usage and perception of power are pretty much the same thing. Power doesn't necessarily correspond to utility, even if we disregard Regigigas and Slaking. Look at Rampardos - it has the highest non-Uber Attack in the game but wallows in the depths of NU because it can't utilize its Attack stat. Articuno and Regirock are both incredibly bulky walls stat-wise who sit in NU because they simply can't keep up with the more powerful threats. Meanwhile, Dugtrio, Politoed, Ninetales, Toxicroak, etc. have relatively low stats both overall and individually, but have a firm place in OU because of the roles they play.

EDIT: I need to make faster posts, Solace and RBG pretty much said what I did much more plainly...