DP Tier Discussion - BL and UU (mark 2)

[Age of Kings]

To address the topic of Rain Dance, I think that in addition to debating about Kabutops and Omastar, the topic of Shedinja should be revisited. Shedinja would do an excellent job of balancing out whatever's left of rain teams in UU should the former two be banned. I'm not exactly sure about Froslass usage, but it gets Shadow Sneak to dispatch it properly. It could force Clefable to carry Flamethrower or Fire Blast or some odd Hidden Power, losing its versatility somewhat and making it easier to deal with. Again, it's easily dealt with. Plenty of things kill it, and it is affected by status and Leech Seed. Some can argue that it takes at least 2 turns to kill due to Focus Sash and lack of auto-weather, but remember that it also has "spectacular" base 40 speed that can only be boosted by Agility, but it will lose effectiveness in some way if it runs it. Any Steel type (as well as Swellow) completely walls it, although they stand a risk of being burned.

EDIT: Also, non-rain Kabutops is dangerous, I agree. I ran a Scarf one as a lead, and it, by god, was extremely effective, because people think you're going to set off RD.

 

[Slickee]

lol I spoke up on Jumpluff earlier, but they said it was only annoying and not much of a threat. Figures the moment I want to make a team starring Jump in it you guys want it shipped off... ;-;

 

[gengod]

To be honest there was hardly ever any resistance to moving Shedinja down to UU. As for Rain Dance teams, I find that they really can be overpowering at times.

Gorebyss, Omastar and Kabutops are all hard to deal with but if I had to ban any of them it would be Kabutops. In Rain it's just really damn hard to stop and unless you are carrying Poliwrath or Toxicroak, it can really run through teams. Even with no Rain in effect Kabutops is quite the terror, as it's pretty fast has Swords Dance and a STAB priority move.

Omastar and Gorebyss I don't mind as much, since they lack ways of boosting their Special attack aside from Life Orb and it's even possible to outspeed them in Rain with an abundance of Choice Scarfers. My opinion would be to just let those 2 sit in UU but Kabutops is starting to push it's toes over the BL line.

i also agree with jumpluff, I can stop it as a lead only, and that's only because I set up my sub pass driftblim to lum+ unburden. so it being incorporated inside a team where it can come out encore a random set-up, sucker punch, sub, then sit and sub seed off that
I dont agree with steelix either, seems to have a lot going with that defence *stealth rocks + STAB earthquake roar if you even consider setting up anything to kill it*

Man I swear everytime i face you on ladder under my alias and beat you with something you come straight to this thread and suggest it should be banned. First Steelix then Jumpluff and your reasons for banning them always stems from the fact that they are "annoying" to you or give your team some trouble.

On the subject of Jumpluff, I don't really think it should be banned, all it's really got going for it is Sub Seed, Sleep Powder and Encore. It's weak to Stealth Rock, it's offenses are down the gutter and it has an abundance of weaknesses. Sure it can be annoying at times but it's hardly anything more.

 

[phalanx]

well its not my place to comment on things like clefable and kabutops which have hardly given me trouble, if it doesn't give me trouble I wont make up stuff.
i find other things annoying in UU but that doesn't mean I want them banned, jumpluff has been said multiple times here before I said a word, and the steelix is just something to throw into the mix, get views from other people on it, i just think it should be put in borderline UU rather then where it is now, we have no basis, properly as of yet to see what and what isn't broken, we haven't had the ladder a week and I personally want to wait for statistics and ask for views on top 5 or 10.

 

[Age of Kings]

If there was barely any resistance, why isn't Shedinja inching down to UU yet? =/ Maybe because no one is really pushing it? I think it would be a useful addition to UU.

 

[gengod]

It's unlikely anything will be added or removed until the end of the month, after we've seen the first set of usage statistics.

 

[evolutia]

If there was barely any resistance, why isn't Shedinja inching down to UU yet? =/ Maybe because no one is really pushing it? I think it would be a useful addition to UU.

I almost completely forgot about that thing, I was surprised that it wasn't UU already. I do wonder how "useful" it's really going to be with spikes on every single team unlike in ADV. We'll see though!

 

[phalanx]

I thought it was UU, especially with the amount of spikes, rocks will-o-wisp floating around.

 

[gengod]

I almost completely forgot about that thing, I was surprised that it wasn't UU already.

I'd say the same for Venusaur and Articuno as well.

 

[obi]

Now that we have a UU ladder, can I safely move everything down from BL at the end of the month?

 

[gengod]

Now that we have a UU ladder, can I safely move everything down from BL at the end of the month?

I'd strongly oppose it.

Personally I don't like the concept and wouldn't like to see it implemented at all, but for what its worth what you suggested takes an extremely long time and even after we add everything to BL we have no way of deciding wheter something should be banned from this "new UU" or not. I'm sure we're not going to be relying only on usage statistics least we end up with another Garchomp like situation in UU with significantly more pokemon.

In my opinion the pokemon that were suggested for movedown (Shedinja, Venusaur...etc) should be the ones tested at the end of the month, and we should then go from there. If you'd like to implement this concept I would suggest trying to do it on another separate ladder so as to not disturb the actual UU ladder that people are comfortable playing at the moment.

 

[Tangerine]

Considering the current version of UU developed into a pretty solid metagame, I don't see why you would completely overturn it just when it is beginning to be defined.

As much as I do agree with your preposition that this is what SHOULD have been done, it's probably a better idea to just set up a new metagame (meaning create a "new OU" with very little "ubers", then a new "UU", etc, and separate it from the current tier system people are playing with now)

 

[obi]

In other words it's exactly like I predicted (twice, first for OU and now for UU... I'm judging from the current thread, NU, too). First people say "It's too soon wait for things to stabilize before you try mixing it up." then they say "It's too late things have already stabilized no point changing it now.".

It seemed to be getting massive support, and now that we actually have a way to measure just what's happening it's too late?

 

[Tangerine]

Well, if you can convince the "players", whom the game is made for that this is the case then I don't see why it shouldn't be done since it is what should have happened to begin with.

Maybe another voting poll, lol

 

[SHUCKLE MAN]

Couldn't you have two different ladders for each of the UUs?

 

[lilyhollow]

What exactly are the arguments against proper testing of the UU tier (ie: bringing down all the BLs), besides "it will take too long" or "I'm accustomed to the current metagame"? I'm confused because it looks like everyone just "likes what we're doing right now" and that's it, and if that's the case, I wouldn't really give any of that opposition any merit at all.

 

[Tangerine]

What exactly are the arguments against proper testing of the UU tier (ie: bringing down all the BLs), besides "it will take too long" or "I'm accustomed to the current metagame"? I'm confused because it looks like everyone just "likes what we're doing right now" and that's it, and if that's the case, I wouldn't really give any of that opposition any merit at all.

I would argue in the end it doesn't matter.

The current metagame tiers are based on usage - with the underlying assumption that we cannot quantify power and must rely on a related variable such as usage in order to measure it. So we have cut off points at 75% of the Pokemon allowed in the OU metagame as "OU" and the rest as BL and lower.

The argument now is that there is so many BL Pokemon that unbanning all of them will simply create a new tier based on a new cut off point - and it will be nothing like the UU metagame that is currently in practice. This is the biggest objection to it really. Arguably BL will then be it's own Tier (BL) and UU will be it's own tier. Because we are doing this by usage however, there may be some overlaps, and if BL is actually more varied than it intended to be a lot of the current Pokemon wont be UU anymore with this system (Tentacruel isnt' allowed in UU simply because it is OU at the moment in terms of usage)

I would say the arguments against it is that the "usage = power" and cutting off tiers based on usage does feel a bit out of place especially in the case of DP considering the power of niche Pokemon due to powerful powerful threats such as heracross/SD Lucario and Infernape / Toxic Spikers/Absorbers (hi Nidoqueen and Tentacruel). This is why the best thing to do at the moment is to leave things alone and just create a new metagame to experiment with considering the issue of how Smogon tiers their metagame hasn't been brought up much.

 

[Aldaron]

I have absolutely no issues with unbanning all BL Pokemon.

Also, I find Maniac's concern about "people comfortable with playing the ladder" to be ridiculous, as it has been open for what, five days now? People can adapt.

It's about time we have actual reasoning for banning this, other than baseless theorymon. Note I did not say I had a problem with theorymon, just baseless theorymon.

I won't even ask for an objective reason to ban the Pokemon in the future; if the general consensus of the better players is that X is broken, and theorymon is being used to support it, as long as the usage somewhat agree, I won't argue too much.

Let's get some experience playing Alakazam in UU to say it is broken, instead of our purely speculative fears.

 

[gengod]

Also, I find Maniac's concern about "people comfortable with playing the ladder" to be ridiculous, as it has been open for what, five days now? People can adapt.

That is hardly my main concern and you know that, my concern is the fact that we will be wasting enormous amounts of time adding all of these BL pokemon without a way with which to determine wheter something is "broken" in the new tier or not.

I won't even ask for an objective reason to ban the Pokemon in the future; if the general consensus of the better players is that X is broken, and theorymon is being used to support it, as long as the usage somewhat agree, I won't argue too much.

If this were the case i'm sure Garchomp would have been removed from OU by now. When we have decided on some way to determine if a something should be banned from a tier or not then by all means go through with Obi's proposal, but until then i see no reason to comprimise what UU is at the moment simply to test this new metagame. If you want to do it then do it seperatly from the current UU ladder.

 

[Lemmiwinks MkII]

my concern is the fact that we will be wasting enormous amounts of time adding all of these BL pokemon without a way with which to determine wheter something is "broken" in the new tier or not.

What do you mean by this? Surely we would decide on what should be banned via the same method we have used for any other tier, including the current UU. What would be so special about this new tier?

If you want to do it then do it seperatly from the current UU ladder.

I don't see why not. After all if there is a large enough userbase already it wouldn't hurt to keep it around to satisfy that userbase. We could set up the real UU whilst maintaining the fake UU as it is separately. Obviously it shouldn't be called 'fake UU', but maybe something like 'classic UU'. I think that's how Forsety labelled it anyway.

 

[phalanx]

it could just be a BL ladder, I don't see why not, i feel UU as a whole currently is only in need of minor tweaking rather then huge changes.

 

[Age of Kings]

I would welcome a permanent BL ladder, and if there is one, I'm quitting UU for good to play it (atm, the only reason I play it is due to the shortage of BL players and small popularity). So if you do something like that, please don't scrap it when testing is finished. That's all I have to say for right now.

 

[gengod]

What do you mean by this? Surely we would decide on what should be banned via the same method we have used for any other tier, including the current UU. What would be so special about this new tier?

Did you see how long it took Pinsir to be banned from UU, or Wobbuffet from OU? Garchomp is still heavily under debate and Deoxys S was also under debate until the recent poll, it's obvious that our current method isn't good enough. Now can you imagine that if we add 50+ BL pokemon to the mix?

I don't see why not. After all if there is a large enough userbase already it wouldn't hurt to keep it around to satisfy that userbase. We could set up the real UU whilst maintaining the fake UU as it is separately. Obviously it shouldn't be called 'fake UU', but maybe something like 'classic UU'. I think that's how Forsety labelled it anyway.

I agree with Age of Kings and phalanx, what Obi is proposing should be used to determine what the BL metagame should be, as the current UU to reinterate what phalanx said is only in need of minor tweaking before it can become a relatively stable metagame.

 

[mien]

When making every BL pokemon UU you basically create a BL/UU metagame.
If so the BL pokes will see a lot of usage while the former UU will become ignored or at least a majority

I'm not feared of seeing alakazam seeing in the UU metagame, i'm more afraid of Hailstormteams running havoc or Mismagius which can be surprisingly insane hard to counter with BL/UU pokes believe me

I do think the BL tier should be removed as it has no usefullness at all but move the ones that will CERTAINLY be overpowered to OU such as the examples i've mentioned above

 

[Age of Kings]

The BL metagame has already been long determined, but has largely been stagnant due to the lack of popularity like ubers enjoys; the only thing that's been changing is the introduction of a couple of old OU utilities like Weezing and Donphan, and no longer having to worry about stalling Spiritomb.
As an overview, and as I mentioned before, there's far more emphasis on executing a certain strategy and getting a big sweeper all ready to sweep away the opponent's team and the opponent doing everything in their power to ruin that set-up and render their team ineffective. Due to this set-up, Choice Scarf is extremely rare except on Flygon and Pinsir, and there is no speed war like there exists in OU. At the same time, I find UU to be somewhat limiting compared to the number of options available in BL for different roles, although most teams are in a ratio of ~50/50 anyways. Unbanning BLs would accomplish nothing for UU, because we'd be basing their performance against other BLs, not UU as it is.

What I have against it is that it would bring flawed results, and some things would have lower usage compared to others due to this. Some people would argue "oh, we're going to unban clearly unbalanced things along the way", but this would be messy and inconvenient, and eventually, we'll get right back to square one. I wasn't here when this was first proposed, but I would have certainly opposed it from day one.