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Personally I'd like to thank LosetoRU. They saw the objectively best choice and made the correct vote in paving the way for a better future. They voted not for themselves, but the metagame at large, which is very admirable in these trying times where users are focused on their own self-interest in the metagame. I have no doubt LosetoRU will be a valuable ally in saving Kyurem again should a third suspect come (which it never will).
sorry if this is some joke, but didnt losetoru make that vote out of a joke? Like they thought that kyurem would be a landslide ban. That is definitely NOT the objectively best choice nor the correct vote if they really thought it would be for the best
God. I will be deleting any posts regarding further discussion of dropping ubers down to OU. Yes, that means lugia, solgaleo, giratina??? ffs
I already made a post on palafin here, please stop comparing this mon to waterpon. As if we need two of those.
Further topics not up for debate: a stored power ban to free magearna? lmao
We have enough ubers in this tier as is
Friendly reminder that an unserious one-off "free x uber" tour would prove absolutely nothing about how healthy that mon would be in the tier. It has also proven nothing in the past. For example, free darkrai slots in last year's OUPL fooled many into thinking it would be totally fine. Then it started using hypnosis like I said it would, months before it was even legal, and we had to ban sleep as a result.
Good topics to discuss: DD kyurem has been rising in popularity, and sets like tb fire/elec have been tearing teams up. I've seen tera elec kyurem dd twice in front of araquanid and 6-0, on 3 separate occasions, involving the same 2 players
Enamorus has fallen off quite a bit in usage. Specs stellar blast is an excellent set on webs, but I think there's a lot more room for exploration than just that and scarf. Floating above webs and soft checking id zama+tusk are also good qualities, but my favorite is probably being able to switch in and threaten standard eq/ruination ting-lu multiple times, limiting the amount of health your team loses trying to take down the ubermoose.
It's quite disappointing to see that we've come back to Palafin unban discussion. AK made a great post months ago that most probably forgot, but I'll pick up the mantle this time. Let's walk through how, like many other mons that the community has already banned from this tier, Palafin has no defined counterplay.
Band sets under rain and boots pivot sets are probably the tamer and more balanced sets that may offer the positive benefits of having more priority and what not. Those aren't the sets I have an issue with. I am going to be specifically talking about how BU+Taunt can work around basically all of its counterplay simply by using different tera types, information which your opponent will almost never be able to predict and prepare for. First, let's get on the same page:
BU Taunt OU (Palafin-Hero) (F) @ Punching Glove
Ability: Zero to Hero
Tera Type: Fighting / Fire / Ghost / Poison
EVs: 248 HP / 204 SpD / 56 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Bulk Up
- Jet Punch
- Drain Punch
- Taunt / Substitute / Ice Punch
56 speed hits 250 to outpace modest bolt at 249 and that's all you really need. Adamant nature to capitalize on the massive base 160 attack, max hp rest in sdef. Simple. Maybe this can be optimized further, but this is good enough to crush OU.
Raging bolt, waterpon, rillaboom, grasspon, dondozo, hydrapple, and toxapex would all lose to BU Tera fighting + taunt + drain punch + jet punch. This mon is free to invest heavily into bulk since its main stab is priority, and you'd likely see enough sdef investment to shrug off even raging bolt damage factoring in drain punch recovery. Here's our scenario:
Turn 1: Palafin got an opening to Bulk Up and the opponent swaps into Raging Bolt with booster intact. Now it's +1/+1 healthy palafin vs booster SpA healthy raging bolt.
Turn 2: Palafin uses Tera and Bulks up again as raging bolt attacks:
252+ SpA Protosynthesis Raging Bolt Dragon Pulse vs. 248 HP / 204 SpD Tera Fighting Palafin-Hero: 186-220 (46.1 - 54.5%) -- 59% chance to 2HKO
252+ SpA Protosynthesis Raging Bolt Thunderclap vs. 248 HP / 204 SpD Tera Fighting Palafin-Hero: 154-183 (38.2 - 45.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
Won't kill unless absolute max roll both, so palafin is safe to Drain Punch the next turn:
Turn 3: Palafin uses Drain Punch and survives whatever Raging Bolt does next.
Turn 4: Palafin can safely Jet Punch which outspeeds Thunderclap and eliminate Raging Bolt, regardless of whether or not it Tera Fairy'd the previous turn. The only difference will be Palafin's health at the end being lower if the opponent used tera, but it will still be +2/+2 with Stab Jet Punch prio and potentially sweep from here.
(If Bolt did not tera 81.3+32.2 kills. If Bolt did tera 40.6+64.7 kills.)
No predictions, damage ranges, or gimmicks here. You just tera in front of your best answer, beat it even if it tera's back, and go on to sweep a team.
Encore Wellspring is promising, but yet again, it also cannot switch in safely:
0+ Atk Punching Glove Palafin-Hero Drain Punch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Ogerpon-Wellspring: 114-135 (37.8 - 44.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 Atk Wellspring Mask Ogerpon-Wellspring Power Whip vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Tera Fighting Palafin-Hero: 229-270 (56.8 - 66.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
0+ Atk Punching Glove Tera Fighting Palafin-Hero Drain Punch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Ogerpon-Wellspring: 171-202 (56.8 - 67.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO (21.3 - 25% recovered)
It's not even safe to just attack because Palafin can just stay in and out damage+out heal.
Scald Alo vs Tera Fire Palafin btw
0 SpA Alomomola Scald vs. 248 HP / 204 SpD Tera Fire Palafin-Hero: 78-92 (19.3 - 22.8%) -- possible 5HKO
+2 0+ Atk Punching Glove Tera Fire Palafin-Hero Drain Punch vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Alomomola: 164-193 (30.7 - 36.1%) -- 50.7% chance to 3HKO (20.3 - 24% recovered)
Only needs 2 Bulk ups to out heal scald damage lmao. We'd need to go back to Chilling Water or Tickle...until Palafin decides to use Sub over Taunt.
Tera Fire can foil wisp pult, sinistcha, and Scald Alo, Tera Ghost+Taunt can beat out even Idef Roar zama, and Poison can handle Primarina, Toxapex, Pecharunt, Amoonguss, whatever else we want to pretend would work. Dragon Tail dnite is probably the best check to this set...until people feel like slotting in Ice Punch over Taunt.
We just finished banning Gouging Fire, a pokemon that wanted hazard control and had offensive/defensive checks on paper but could work around them and snowball with a huge variety of tera sets+DD, to the point that it had no defined counterplay. Are we really dumb enough to unban another Uber that wants hazard control but has a huge variety of tera sets+BU+Stab Priority to get around its checks and snowball out of control to the point where it has no defined counterplay? Again??
We already decided to lock ourselves into a cycle of banning the next strongest tera abuser every few months, we really don't need to shoot ourselves in the foot by undoing our minimal progress and dropping the next strongest tera abuser instead of banning it.
because its in an activity supported by the tier leader? I don't even necessarily think Palafin being in OU is ideal, and I'm likely not yet consistently good enough to vote (we played like twice recently ggs by the way but my 1600 ass is not gonna be able to vote) but its not like Palafin meeting the like total is an instant pass for it to terrorize the tier. It'll still need to go through the suspect process.
I fully agree that (barring specific hype building circumstances like this) random posts just deciding to like brigade for Lugia or Solgaleo and derailing discussion should be moderated perhaps more heavily than it is now, but what we have is something roughly analogous to the Council talking about dropping an Uber (given Finch is almost 40% of the completed fund on his own) for a test themselves, so I feel like discussion on that specific thing is sort of inherently on the table for now.
How does one build a balance team with Weezing-Galar in mind? It has a lot of cool traits I want to see, but i'm not really going anywhere with it. It feels like no matter what i'm always using it wrong. What does it even like to be paired with? I read the Analysis, but I get the feeling i'm not getting the full story.
I rocked this as a starting point for reference. Either i'm playing like crap, or this team is flawed as hell. Any help is appreciated https://pokepast.es/1ad1bcd8b489769f
It depends on what you are trying to do with it. A NG Geezing plays a bit differently from Levitate. There is also Misty Surge, but it isn't really viable. Anyways, it depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
It seems like you are trying Defog Geezing on a hazard stack team, which is a little bit conflicting since Defog clears hazards from both sides. You would probably want to spin on such a team if possible, right? This problem is further exacerbated by running 4 boots. Why bother with the most reliable Defog in the game if you were just gonna boots spam?
I also don't really see what you want your team wants to do to win besides maybe hazard stack chip and clean. That's fine. But then why Geezing? It doesn't look particularly like a Geezing team because there is nothing you are really enabling by having it do that role. The only hazard weak mon I see, kind of, is Wellspring.
If you want to build a team around NG Geezing, you should think about what you are enabling by using it. Are you running hazard weak mons like Moltres or Kyurem? Are you trying to run less boots? Are you trying to play balance? What is your win condition?
Neutralizing Gas also has several other niche uses to keep in mind, like disrupting weather leads or annoying Gliscor. It's important to consider every use of the mon, such as absorbing T-spikes or double resisting Body Press.
First of all, the warped speed tiers impact the entire metagame. Not just individual mons. You can find that problematic or not, but there is at least an argument to be made that it goes beyond the individual mons.
I also don't see the just one mon narrative when banned Paradox mons like Gouging Fire have been broken by BE. For the sake of discussion, let's be generous and say that only Gouging Fire formerly and currently Roaring Moon were problematic because of BE specifically. So what? That's still multiple mons. Sleep only broke Darkrai and Valiant, but we entirely did away with it for being inherently problematic. There wasn't even a vote. The mods made this decision on an in game mechanic. Yes, there are some differences between these scenarios. The point is that game mechanics are different from mons because they tend to have more nuanced consequences.
Alternatively, we could look at Roaring Moon. We could say this is the only problematic BE mon left and suspect it. But there doesn't seem to be support for that, either. In fact, the most support I tend to see for Roaring Moon being broken tends to come in posts that don't think we should look at BE. Outside of this, there is the occasional rant from people like myself. Not much actually seems to happen, though. Punish the few abusers, not the mechanic. This only works if you actually do that.
Okay to address the reply to my section in particular, there are some serious contentions I have here
First of all, speed tier argument only applies significantly to Iron Valiant and Iron Moth (Boulder uses it but it's not much of a Meta influencer atm), who are good but not exactly short of viable counterplay considering they've been off the radar for a while. Every other BE user applies it to an offensive stat (Moon, Bolt) or has to make notable concessions (Tusk takes a power hit by not investing in ATK to make Speed its stat, for example). If the game's speeding up, that impact where Booster is concerned is on a couple mons, not the item, and mostly affects Valiant against HO considering 116 Speed is already a tier where Bulky/Balance/Stall teams have to assume it's getting a hit or two in when responding to it.
There's no "let's be generous" about it with Booster Energy. Roaring Moon is the only mon in OU were BE plays the majority role in its most controversial set (and I'm assuming I'm not out of the loop on people trying other stuff like Choice band more or even some funky Bulky Set or some shit).
Gouging Fire was a combination of its monstrously min-maxed stats and moves that BE certainly played well with... because much like Roaring Moon it plays well as a Win Condition that doesn't pivot around (on said BE sets, it certainly did a lot of other things). If you took away its Corviknight level defenses, the reliable Recovery options, or its spammable 120 BP good-coverage STAB options (to compensate the "eh" 115 Base ATK), the kit that gave it 15 ways to overwhelm the tier is a lot less sturdy. Heck it might fare differently next Gen where it doesn't have Tera to shrug off its set-up turn survival.
Flutter Mane was banned when Booster Energy was thought to be 50% on non-Speed stats, but my memory is it using Booster speed if any regardless, and the power drop only takes it from "absolutely hilariously broken" to "absolutely broken" in an OU context.
Iron Bundle barely used it but I doubt a mon with perfect 2-move STAB coverage is reliant specifically on a one-time boost to scare the tier
Attributing "Broken with, not without" to Gouging Fire and Roaring Moon isn't being "generous," it's literally the furthest the tier history actually allows you to take the argument on its effect on mons.
The Sleep comparison is a non-starter because that was not remotely the same. Yes, sleep is "inherently problematic," which is why it's had a Clause for the entire lifespan of competitive Pokemon (look at Gen 5's version and that nonsense). Booster Energy mons are not remotely in the same echelon of uncompetitive, and the reason Sleep Move clause was implemented was because old Sleep Clause altered mechanics for a purpose it wasn't even serving in SV. "There are some differences" yeah of course there are, like Booster Energy being an item, not a game mechanic!
This was not the mods bonking a mechanic over 2 problem users, this was a long-standing band-aid on tiering policy being addressed when it wasn't treating the issue it was breaking the rules for. No case has been made for Booster Energy being an uncompetitive mechanic (as in taking skill vs chance out of the equation to achieve a winning advantage) that would justify addressing it the same way. Frankly at this point I prefer Sleep Move Clause's effect on the tier, but I lament it happening mid-gen because it keeps coming up as a terrible argument/attempted precedent for other proposed changes like this.
This is not intended as an attack on anyone, but rather as a personal observation. You are, of course, free to disagree with me. However, I must express my disappointment that the possibility of a Palafin suspect test could arise primarily from a meme thread. It seems that many of the individuals who supported this idea with likes are not actively involved in high level SV OU play or perhaps do not play SV at all (with some exception of course).
I would have been more understanding if this topic had been backed by well-reasoned arguments, including a thorough analysis of the pros and cons of a Palafin suspect test. Following the Gliscor suspect, I attempted to find evidence of surveys being conducted (I also tried to ask infos in this post) but found no indication that any had taken place. This lack of structured data collection is concerning because, if we aim to approach these matters seriously, we should base decisions on concrete data (such as surveys) rather than instances where popularity or clout (e.g., likes) play a deciding role.
I believe this approach undermines professionalism and fosters mediocrity over constructive discussion within the actual player base. From my perspective, I doubt that the majority of top SV players currently consider a Palafin suspect test a priority in the meta. I am happy to be proven wrong, but I firmly believe that we need a more professional approach to these decision, especially given that SV OU is the current generation's flagship tier on Smogon.
I sincerely hope that the meme thread in which the Palafin discussion took place is not genuinely considered relevant to the broader discussion surrounding Palafin. If it is, I believe this would set a concerning precedent for the tiering process. I think this also harms in some way the relevance of threads like OU Metagame Discussion thread.
Sorry if I sounded dramatic, have a good day
Post Scriptum:
Red = Top SV OU Players (So, this means it's legit to accept they have an impact on the future of the tier / qualified ) Blue = Not necessary SV OU mains, I think they have familiarity with the tier anyway and they're solid tour players (qualified) White = Council (qualified??) Green = Borderline, I think anyway not involved at all in SV OU (borderline qualified??)
Others = Sorry, I don't know you all, this does not mean you're bad etc. but I can't tell if everyone is necessary qualified (there is some exception like there is some exception of some solid ladder player I can recognize or some good new comer) because of poor presence in SV OU Ladder / Tours, so I can't tell if you're necessary qualified. For qualified I'm using the definition of OU Surveys like top 100 in ladder / Good Results across tournaments.
Oh obviously if you're not necessary qualified this does not mean that you are not entitled to have an opinion, but what worries me is the possibility of the future of the tier depending from the likeshop, like we for real lol?
But anyway it's still a small group of people that support this idea. I'm happy to change idea only if you do a survey as it has always happened
I refuse to believe and I feel really concerned that the future of the tier can depend from this small sample of people alone.
This is not intended as an attack on anyone, but rather as a personal observation. You are, of course, free to disagree with me. However, I must express my disappointment that the possibility of a Palafin suspect test could arise primarily from a meme thread. It seems that many of the individuals who supported this idea with likes are not actively involved in high level SV OU play or perhaps do not play SV at all (with some exception of course).
I would have been more understanding if this topic had been backed by well-reasoned arguments, including a thorough analysis of the pros and cons of a Palafin suspect test. Following the Gliscor suspect, I attempted to find evidence of surveys being conducted (I also tried to ask infos in this post) but found no indication that any had taken place. This lack of structured data collection is concerning because, if we aim to approach these matters seriously, we should base decisions on concrete data (such as surveys) rather than instances where popularity or clout (e.g., likes) play a deciding role.
Let’s be real here, and while I have to admit I’m not the best player of all time (my peak is top 15 on the ladder, and while I qualify for suspects it takes effort for me to do it) I don’t see how someone that actively plays the tier and/or has current knowledge of it can make a deep analysis about Palafin and say “yeah this is it, this will fix everything”.
The tier right now is really delicate. We don’t have an Ursaluna Bloodmoon running around, but instead a lot of bordeline broken things that check each other barely . When discussing about Palafin on threads or youtube videos, it has only been discussed on isolated matchups, which is extremely bad as an argument.
Oh Alolan Muk checks Calyrex Shadow Rider, bring it to OU!
We need serious arguments, posts and elaborated takes to allow a mon only checked by a bordeline broken mon, (kinda) by Raging Bolt, and in some sets by a stall mon hard to fit in any other style. And this is assuming, again, a 1v1 with no hazards, best case set. If this isn’t brought up, we should postponed any action until a survey is made and a cool headed, productive and HEALTHY discussion is made about which point, if any, should be tackled in the tier.
I think that the likeshop idea is really cool and that allowing people to to use their likes for something is a really cool and fun idea but one thing I want to say on the topic of some of the likeshop goals specifically:
I think that likes being usable to influence metagames is very strange. I understand that its a fun little thing for the holidays, but very recently there was a rather large scandal involving the integrity of ou tiering that involved putting a lot of people away for a long time. I think this is honestly a completely valid response IF the intent is to send a strong message that suspects are something that is held to the highest degree of sacredness, which is completely reasonable. After all, if suspects cant be trusted to be honest then why even bother having metagames in the first place?
I think that suspects being a likeshop reward completely spits in the face of this idea as a whole. Usually, suspect test are a response to metagame factors and a lot of hoops have to be jumped through with a lot of papers signed off for suspects to happen in a tier as developed as current ou. Surveys, council approvals, and tons of discussion before a suspect test is run. For palafin specifically, none of this happened. From what I gather, there arent really a huge amount of people who play the metagame who really care about palafin or think that it would be a good addition to add to the tier. I guess the one argument is it forces wellspring to run a grass move? Which does have a positive effect but its pretty minimal, especially when a lot of them run it anyway. Personally I think the whole thing makes a mockery of tiering. If you want to bring down ubers, why not give us another survey like when dlc 2 came out? It gave us pokemon like deo s and darkrai which... are fine in the current meta I guess, but they went through a real tiering process and the playerbase + council decided the risk of adding them was worth it. I just dont want the tier to look like an oupl suspect slot for 2 weeks with a hilarious broken running around and ruining the game before being banned for being obviously broken. And if people think that the risk is worth it and that it might genuinely be a good addition, then let them decide that with a survey, not with reactions lmao.
Following the Gliscor suspect, I attempted to find evidence of surveys being conducted (I also tried to ask infos in this post) but found no indication that any had taken place.
Gliscor received noteworthy support on a survey the same month as its suspect test here. The only Pokemon who received more support, Kyurem, was suspect tested before Gliscor was. One of the biggest pieces of constructive criticism during the Kyurem suspect test was many qualified players and voters wanted Gliscor looked at first.
Regarding more recent surveys, it has been made abundantly clear that doing surveys every few weeks or months isn’t popular and gets diminished returns. This has been posted about many times and reflected in surveys this year — March, June, September, etc. We have stuck to doing surveys every couple of months because many people said frequent surveys are too volatile and subject to flavor-of-the-month shifts in opinion, generating diminished returns and questionable quality.
The initial plan, which I posted about here numerous times, was to have a survey in early December. The updated plan, which I posted about in this thread literally yesterday, was to have a survey in early January (perhaps after SPL’s first week).
You can disagree with the Likeshop if you wish (although I find it hilarious this disagreement waited until the last day when it wasn’t Tera winning and anything still has to pass an actual suspect), but we have every right to do fun things to engage with the community.
It’s on you for not keeping up with frequent posts and communications on surveys. I have been transparent every step of the way and plan to continue to be. Why? Because the community deserves to know what’s going on with tiering! I don’t just post here for nothing after all.
Gliscor received noteworthy support on a survey the same month as its suspect test here. The only Pokemon who received more support, Kyurem, was suspect tested before Gliscor was. One of the biggest pieces of constructive criticism during the Kyurem suspect test was many qualified players and voters wanted Gliscor looked at first.
Regarding more recent surveys, it has been made abundantly clear that doing surveys every few weeks or months isn’t popular and gets diminished returns. This has been posted about many times and reflected in surveys this year — March, June, September, etc. We have stuck to doing surveys every couple of months because many people said frequent surveys are too volatile and subject to flavor-of-the-month shifts in opinion, generating diminished returns and questionable quality.
The initial plan, which I posted about here numerous times, was to have a survey in early December. The updated plan, which I posted about in this thread literally yesterday, was to have a survey in early January (perhaps after SPL’s first week).
You can disagree with the Likeshop if you wish (although I find it hilarious this disagreement waited until the last day when it wasn’t Tera winning and anything still has to pass an actual suspect), but we have every right to do fun things to engage with the community.
It’s on you for not keeping up with frequent posts and communications on surveys. I have been transparent every step of the way and plan to continue to be. Why? Because the community deserves to know what’s going on with tiering! I don’t just post here for nothing after all.
I'm not talking directly about Gliscor, I meant that AFTER Gliscor suspect, I've not found enough evidence to support Palafin suspect.
Obviously you can all engage with the communities but I don't want randoms (except few exception as top sv players / qualified sv players that partecipated in that likeshop thing) spending their likes to decide about the future of the tier. It can be both Palafin, Tera, Kingambit or whatever (fun fact, I didn't spend a single like for Tera because I'm super coherent!), I think that using the Likeshop to decide on the tiering actions is just terrible. I've seen similiar posts like the heileone one sharing my exact same idea.
If you all want to suspect Palafin, it's fine, but do it with the regular process not the likeshop thing.
Obviously I'm nobody to stop you from doing this, but I'm not attacking anyone, I'm just pointing out my concerns on the methods used.
You can disagree with the Likeshop if you wish (although I find it hilarious this disagreement waited until the last day when it wasn’t Tera winning and anything still has to pass an actual suspect), but we have every right to do fun things to engage with the community.
Tera has not only a much bigger argument and has been discussed A LOT more, it also was an extremely close vote, the closest one in Smogon Story before Kyurem iirc.
So for example using the post I made an hour ago as reference, there a was a better reason (a much better one, imo) to push that suspect forward. Palafin’s suspect is, no offense, a waste of time
It’s gonna be a two week event of having a Pokemon that won’t even stay in the tier. Maybe that’s why the reactions are different imo
Or, maybe Palafin is fine and doesn’t belong in Ubers. Maybe Palafin is the missing piece that makes SV OU one of the greats.
Fact of the matter is the community, and more importantly the qualified player base had multiple chances of using bans to adjust, and better the metagame. Not only is the enjoyment and competitiveness still contentious(we’ll see what January brings), but if the last suspects have shown anything is that the qualified player base does not think any further bans on mons are needed. So maybe it is time to spend every month or so retesting things, and seeing if they’re worthwhile. Darkrai and Deo-S worked out so why not give Palafin, or Solgaleo, or Lugia a chance?
Or, maybe Palafin is fine and doesn’t belong in Ubers. Maybe Palafin is the missing piece that makes SV OU one of the greats.
Fact of the matter is the community, and more importantly the qualified player base had multiple chances of using bans to adjust, and better the metagame. Not only is the enjoyment and competitiveness still contentious(we’ll see what January brings), but if the last suspects have shown anything is that the qualified player base does not think any further bans on mons are needed. So maybe it is time to spend every month or so retesting things, and seeing if they’re worthwhile. Darkrai and Deo-S worked out so why not give Palafin, or Solgaleo, or Lugia a chance?
ye ofc why not giving Miraidon, Koraidon, Ho-Oh a chance? What a great idea! Looking forward to Ubers OU! I mean the tier is definitely not already broken and dead (play some high ladder, wait for 3 mins for a game and then get back to me) so why not adding some more def-not-broken-by-a-single-view-of-their-stats-and-pool mons?
People have every right to disagree with the Likeshop being used for tiering (not OU specific — two other formats are involved, too, with one of them hitting their goal already). There were no surveys (although the same can be said for some other suspects) attached to it, but we made it clear only a handful of metagame relevant targets could be suspected (no formal list, but if it was any of Wellspring/Gambit/Zama/Kyurem/Bolt/Tera Blast from the tier or Solgaleo/Palafin/Volc from Ubers, we probably would’ve let it happen). It was actually really fun to go through this and a nice break from the constant fighting (from every side of the spectrum) for any progress or leverage to get anywhere in tiering in places like this.
My main gripe is people waiting until the last second when it wasn’t what they wanted as the result. And no, I have no interest in changing course. I doubt it will hit 500k, but if it does, we will (happily) proceed. If you truly had an issue, you could’ve expressed it up front rather than after dozens of people got together to support their cause, many hours of counting and contribution were put in, etc.
My personal opinion? It’s a fun community builder that still has the formal check of requiring an insane amount of likes and a formal suspect (re)test. We have never pooled together even 75k likes before this Likeshop, so if we are hitting 500k now, then I’m all for it. I still do not think we get there honestly (edit:now it seems more feasible with two recent posts), but either way it’s been one of the most unique experiences.
In the end, we do this for the community to be engaged with the game and, if anything, more things like this should be happening on smaller and different scales over time, too.
From what I gather, there arent really a huge amount of people who play the metagame who really care about palafin or think that it would be a good addition to add to the tier.
Speaking as someone who plays the metagame, cares about Palafin, and thought of it as an addition, I put my likes in for it because I believed it was the best retest option (and among the best test options alongside Tera Blast, Ogerpon-Wellspring, and Kingambit).
Palafin is definitely strong and could be too much, but we now have Raging Bolt, Ogerpon-Wellspring, Kyurem, Zamazenta, Sinistcha, Walking Wake, etc. all legal that were not previously. My guess is it doesn’t get unbanned via retest, but there’s absolutely logic that tracks — council members like Lily have even made long, public posts about it previously.
Including this is wild, by the way. Has nothing to do with any of this at all and just feels like a jab in the dark. We literally overhauled the entire suspect system and verification process to make this behavior impossible in the future, punished every offender harder than we typically would, and did an exhaustive check back across prior suspects to get past offenders, too. No mention of any of that here — just casually mentioning a “large scandal involving the integrity of OU” as a…reason not to do Likeshop?
I strongly disagree with a Palafin retest tbh, but will make a post as to why, if it gets suspected.
I don’t think using likeshop for a suspect is that bad even though it’s quite strange but fun at least. Thing is, I think we already have enough issues with the tier right now, let’s not make it even worse, else we are :
Or, maybe Palafin is fine and doesn’t belong in Ubers. Maybe Palafin is the missing piece that makes SV OU one of the greats.
Fact of the matter is the community, and more importantly the qualified player base had multiple chances of using bans to adjust, and better the metagame. Not only is the enjoyment and competitiveness still contentious(we’ll see what January brings), but if the last suspects have shown anything is that the qualified player base does not think any further bans on mons are needed. So maybe it is time to spend every month or so retesting things, and seeing if they’re worthwhile. Darkrai and Deo-S worked out so why not give Palafin, or Solgaleo, or Lugia a chance?
We banned sleep to make Darkrai less broken, it doesn’t mean it belongs to any OU tier, we just have more problematic mons right now. Deo-S is less good in SV but doesn’t mean Solgaleo and Lugia will be healthy at all. We already gave Palafin a chance at the beginning of the gen, it was broken. Yes there are more tools for it right now but let’s not see Waterpon 100% usage stats, Sinistcha mandatory in balance or idk what. Agree with Pais, heileone and Galatina posts also, won’t restate what they just said.
To be fair I think the fact that so many people are supporting this suspect on the likeshop does show that there is support for this suspect. I do agree that the reasoning behind most people wanting palafin down in ou mostly boils down to "we want change" and that is why I invite anyone who supports palafin to explain why they think it should drop to ou. I also agree that a tera blast suspect has had far more discussion and I...am not sure what to think of that. The point I am trying to make is that there is a pretty solid amount of support for a palafin suspect but I want to hear actual reasons besides wanting change.
I'm not talking directly about Gliscor, I meant that AFTER Gliscor suspect, I've not found enough evidence to support Palafin suspect.
Obviously you can all engage with the communities but I don't want randoms (except few exception as top sv players / qualified sv players that partecipated in that likeshop thing) spending their likes to decide about the future of the tier. It can be both Palafin, Tera, Kingambit or whatever (fun fact, I didn't spend a single like for Tera because I'm super coherent!), I think that using the Likeshop to decide on the tiering actions is just terrible. I've seen similiar posts like the heileone one sharing my exact same idea.
If you all want to suspect Palafin, it's fine, but do it with the regular process not the likeshop thing.
Obviously I'm nobody to stop you from doing this, but I'm not attacking anyone, I'm just pointing out my concerns on the methods used.
ultimately, our efforts to impose order and balance upon a generation that resists it by nature are a great big joke, and this meta is the punchline. what's the harm in introducing a little bit of whimsy into the process? if we're not gonna get the tier balanced, we might as well have some fun with it. embrace the chaos!
