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Lower Tiers GSC Lower Tier Tiering Hub

GSC PU and GSC UU both plan on collecting samples soon, since UUBD and Aurist's GSC PU tournament will be ending relatively soon. I am sending this as a heads-up and an invitation for people to send samples in! Sending them in their respective channels in GSC cord would be best, but you can also send them in a dm or smogon pm. You can also send PU submissions to Aurist.
 
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MrSoup said:
GSC PU has banned Trap + Baton Pass here.

Next Steps

The posts above by Aurist and BeeOrSomething do a good job explaining what some view as issues in the PU metagame. To remain brief, the primary issues of note for PU include:
  • Rest looping being common place due to a lack of consistent 3 hit-KOs
    • A lack of strong breakers to punish rest loops
    • Reliance on critical hits or full paralysis to break a core
    • Offensive threats packing rest because it is currently optimal to do so (e.g. Elekid, Seadra, Cubone) instead of coverage
  • Building constraints caused by Seadra and Elekid
  • A lack of Spikes abusers and strong Spikes builds
It is for these reasons that several tiering options for moving forward post-trap-pass ban have been floated. This is a good summary of the currently proposed option:


As it stands, Discord discussion has reached an impasse on the next course of action. There are three main options that can be taken in any order, and I will try to summarize various users' opinions on them:

1. Test Arbok and Azumarill

This has been the most widely discussed option. Azumarill and Arbok are the only two 'E' rank Pokemon in NU's current VR that are still considered not PU. This is well below the viability level of all other NU Pokemon. Community members have weighed different opinions on the effects these two Pokemon may have. It is clear there is no current consensus; both have community members which believe they will be positive or negative presences in the metagame.

Arbok appears to be the more interesting and polarizing option. It's offensive prowess, STAB Sludge Bomb, great physical coverage, and utility options like Glare and Haze make it an attractive option for breaking cores after a single Curse boost. It is also a Pokemon that is unlikely to run rest due to its fantastic moveset options. However, Arbok may also be too strong, especially as a Hitmontop check and paralysis spreader against Pokemon like Venomoth.

Opinions on Azumarill are less polarizing. It is likely a great Seadra check with HP Electric or Light Screen. It also may provide breaking power with Belly Drum sets. However, Azumarill also may be able to utilize sets that can grow problematic, such as Whirlpool Perish Song or another mono-normal Curse set. As such, some community members believe it may add bulk to an already bulky tier and make issues worse. Others argue it would be a passive piece that makes breaking easier.

If testing these Pokemon is the direction the community decides to take, there has also been heavy discussion about the process for doing so. There is no clear consensus here, as there are many options for moving forward. Questions that would need to be answered here are, but are not limited to:
  • Would both be tested at the same time?
  • Would both drop directly from NU into PU and then be voted on banning to PUBL or not? Or would they drop to PUBL and be voted into PU?
  • How many tournaments would be necessary to test them?
  • Would the influence of Arbok's presence in the tier affect the healthiness of Azumarill and vice versa?
If we go down this route, it would be important to solidly establish a clear game plan on this front. However, I want to stress that it is more important to decide which option the community wants to take before arguing about a game plan. The community may decide that options 2 or 3 are better routes for the health of PU.

2. Suspect Seadra and/or Elekid

Seadra has an amazing combination of immaculate power and coverage combined with high speed and good enough bulk to dodge 3HKOes from crucial targets like Hitmontop and Non-Giga Drain Venomoth. Seadra can sit on the field and fire off attacks without being significantly threatened out by most things due to RestTalk, or it can serve as a wall to opposing progress makers like Seaking and Noctowl with Haze while also expanding its by forgoing RestTalk. It can be argued that Seadra has no actual answers and is too strong and too difficult to kill. However, it can also be argued that while Seadra is strong, it’s not quite strong enough to be deemed broken, and aggressive teams stacking threats like Elekid and their own Seadra can limit its entry and switch around its coverage. Some also find Seadra difficult to fit on a team, as with Haze, it has limited longevity, and with RestTalk, it has limited coverage and cannot Haze.

Elekid meanwhile is pure speed and offense, often barely having enough bulk to survive a 2HKO from most things if it even can at all. Elekid makes up for this by being the second fastest common Pokemon behind Voltorb and the fastest Pokemon that shows up at least every couple games. Elekid can 3HKO a variety of Pokemon with Thunder and Psychic, and it can use Ice Punch to lay more hurt on Grass and Ground types and even potentially freeze them. Elekid is often sighted with Thief too, enabling it and its team’s offenses. Elekid can also instead use its barely-good-enough bulk to run RestTalk, providing a decent secondary switch-in/pivot to Venomoth, Seadra, and more. RestTalk also lets it wall Gastly, and perhaps even more importantly, itself (and Flaaffy). Elekid’s switch-ins are quite limited, with some being less common choices and others being openly flawed in some way. And since every team might not be able to fit one of these, Elekid quite often ends up dueling with itself or Flaaffy in atrocious RestTalk mirrors fishing for crits or Psychic drops. Some argue this pushes Elekid over the line into being at the very least unhealthy for the tier and arguably broken, while others would say Elekid is too fragile and many teams can fit an answer or combination of checks to it.

Both of these Pokemon, but moreso Seadra, have gained traction as ban candidates. Suspecting Elekid and/or Seadra before or after options 1 or 3 is a route some players believe is best for the tier.

3. Do Nothing

It is also an option to do nothing, see how the recent trap pass ban affects things, and move forward from there. Players like BigFatMantis believe that the tier is currently fine as it is and does not require further attention. Others point to the fact that the tier could use quality of life improvements, but further change may disrupt the tier in a big way. This option does not mean that options 1 or 2 are not possible, but that we can wait things out.

Opinions on further options not mentioned here are also welcome. While we cannot test things out of order, some have touted the potential benefits of 'D' tier NU drops like Exeggcute as well. Others have floated the idea of banning Baton Pass outright. Please provide opinions and thoughts on which (if any) of these options you believe is best.
Click to expand...
After helping build and test PU in GSCPL I'd like to reiterate my thoughts on this tier's health briefly. I find PU to be in a not great spot, but not terrible to the point that its easy to identify why. My main issue with this tier is still that hardly anything checks the main offensive threats -- mainly Venomoth, Cubone, Seadra -- leading to stuff just Rest looping and praying to not get some unfortunate luck. The tier is full of blanket checks like Hitmontop, Seaking, and Noctowl that don't tend to do their job particularly effectively but are pretty essential to the builder. On the other hand, heavily offense-leaning builds aren't the best either, mainly due to a lack of boosting moves, raw breaking power, and Explosion/Self Destruct.

I don't think banning anything (except for maybe Seadra) is likely to produce positive effects for the tier right now, unless we ban like, 5+ Pokemon, which wouldn't be my desired course of action. I'd like to push for drops, particularly things that have no chance of being NU in the future. My previous post sort of outlined the different ways to go about this. I still think Azumarill and Arbok should be the first to be looked at purely from a tiering philosophy standpoint, but many in Discord are allured by the potential of an Exeggcute drop. I agree an actual boom in this tier (as well as Top check with Psychic STAB) would probably be the biggest possible benefit, but Farfetch'd, Houndour, and Ledian sit between Azu and Eggs on the VR currently.

I'll make my stance clear that I believe this tier should pursue some sort of testing on Arbok and Azumarill. Arbok I believe provides raw breaking power that can enable teams to forgo 5 Restalkers in favor of stronger offense. Azu will be the only thing that checks Seadra and has some nice move set options. I think neither are likely to hurt the tier and both are likely to help it, even if they're not S-tier. I'm also not against banning BP outright if people desire. These are my current thoughts.
 
Hello again. PU Open and PUBD are both finished and VR submissions have opened. I would like to reignite discussion on whether or not we should proceed with changes to the tier or not.

As a reminder, the main 3 options were:
- Test the very bottom of the NU VR (currently Arbok and Azumarill)
- suspect some of the more problematic PU pokemon. May include but is not limited to: Elekid, Seadra, Venomoth
- do nothing

I want to make it very clear that the NU VR will be changing again quite soon, which could possibly shift what we are "allowing" ourselves to consider for a drop to PU.

-----

Personally, I'm mostly fine with the tier as is. Most pokemon already in the tier do not feel problematic and the metagame is in a fine and enjoyable state. I don't see much of a reason to test out things from NU.

-----

As an aside, I do think Flaaffy in particular is very problematic. It's extraordinarily difficult to switch into and handle in many games due to its very high power and solid bulk, as opposed to Elekid which is much more fragile and hits less hard. This has resulted in many games recently coming down to electric resttalk stall dittos, which while already present before to a degree with Elekid mirrors, is more of an issue and happens more frequently with Flaaffy. Common switch-ins like Top, Choke, grasses, Cubone, and Rhyhorn are inconsistent due to how hard Flaaffy hits and sleep talk RNG and may often be stopped anyways by one of Flaaffy's teammates.

I understand that my stance may be controversial, but I do not believe Flaaffy has very much to add to the tier that is positive, and it often degrades gamestates and makes building in and playing the tier much less enjoyable and dynamic to me.
 
There's definitely no way to justify any action whatsoever on Flaaffy in PU, that would be absurd on many levels.

As for changes, I thought we were already dropping down the bottom of NU VRs, what's the hold up. Nothing in the tier itself needs to change re: action on anything specific, but I'd welcome some new mons from NU just because that's how VR tiering should be done here.
 
BigFatMantis said:
There's definitely no way to justify any action whatsoever on Flaaffy in PU, that would be absurd on many levels.

As for changes, I thought we were already dropping down the bottom of NU VRs, what's the hold up. Nothing in the tier itself needs to change re: action on anything specific, but I'd welcome some new mons from NU just because that's how VR tiering should be done here.
Click to expand...
It has been many months and two whole team tours + another individual since we last seriously discussed this topic. It's a good idea to ask again first if people still want it rather than going forward regardless.
 
Just wanted to pop in and commentate a little on the state of GSC PU currently as well as Poliwhirl. Mainly want to summarize thoughts from various discord discussions and expand a bit, as well as make it more of a "formality" by putting it here on the forums.

First, about Poliwhirl.
:gs/poliwhirl:

Poliwhirl is an extremely cancerous and straight up unfun presence in the metagame. It's faster than most viable Pokemon and has enough bulk after a Belly Drum to where if it's given free setup, really only an Elekid Thunder or Venomoth Sleep Powder/Stun Spore will stop it in many situations. It does have some limits, as it cannot OHKO Hitmontop, Seadra, or Tangela from full HP and usually cannot OHKO Venomoth, but the ability to Lovely Kiss anything and force things asleep as well as the fact that usually multiple Pokemon on the opponent's team are asleep after having clicked Rest or have been chipped makes dealing with Poliwhirl extremely unreliable and often game losing. Of course, the most straightforward way to deal with Poliwhirl is to use Elekid, but Thunder has a 30% miss chance, Thunderbolt is quite bad, and it's not uncommon for Elekid to run RestTalk sets. Voltorb can also deal with Poliwhirl with Thunder Wave or Explosion (in addition to Thunder), but Voltorb is significantly less common and often uses Explosion early in the game. Most times, Poliwhirl being in a game either reduces it to a gamble on whether or not it can cheese through Elekid or it just completely dominating, especially if the opponent doesn't have Tangela.

Some Poliwhirl replays I've found:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen2pu-2406178046-iae2heexyi7wdmawaig94eue8an4cuypw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen2pu-843117
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen2pu-828519
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen2pu-2319928862-bgimphf7hnio6m9298syl5okpa2pm15pw?p2
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen2pu-2403797997-hxyfh1sx86hka5wsn5tf34bqiruya35pw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen2pu-859073

The other point I wanted to talk about is the general state of progress in battles. In many cases, it's not too difficult to build a team that is extremely defensively sturdy against most common Pokemon and is generally very difficult to break through without a specific threat, strong play, or hax. For the most part, I don't mind this, as I see it as rewarding good building and play and there's usually a way to break through. Others don't agree with me, but that's fine. What is more troubling is how while the majority of Pokemon you can deal with just fine, there are a few specific offensive monsters that are just impossible to deal with reliably. Poliwhirl is one of them, but to a lesser degree Substitute Seaking, Screech Venomoth, and 3 attacks Seadra can just run through defensive teams with little trouble and still don't have very good counterplay on more aggressive teams. The dichotomy feels very strong and it's not uncommon to see a pretty normal game get completely flipped on its head when something stupid like Sub Seaking comes out when your Seaking check is Tangela, and many teams can't afford to account for these threats in the builder since it will make your Pokemon so much worse against everything else.

In general, Venomoth especially feels extraordinarily oppressive, as it's faster than most Pokemon, is versatile to the point where it has a ton of different sets it can run (RestTalk, Curse Pass, Status + 3 attacks, 3 attacks + Screech/Whirlwind/Thief, Status + 2 attacks + Screech/Whirlwind/Thief) that are all extremely effective and each have little downside to be using. At any point it may or may not have the perfect set or coverage move to beat your checks, and even if it doesn't, it might run you over anyways because it's so demanding in the builder and in battle and has just enough power to muscle through, especially when factoring in Spikes or RNG.

I'm not entirely sure what the fix to these problems would be. The first thing I would do is ban Poliwhirl, but largely that doesn't fix the second issue I outlined. I would also ban Venomoth, but I understand that's a fairly controversial idea and I'm not sure if the following metagame would be any better, especially with Hitmontop and Machoke instantly becoming so much more powerful. Ironically enough, Venomoth going would likely make Seaking even better, as despite grasses benefitting heavily from the lack of Moth, non-RestTalk Seaking loses one of its best checks (Status Moth) and Substitute still farms Tangela. Seadra would also have even greater freedom to run 3 attacks without desiring RestTalk to stave off non-Giga Drain Venomoth and its Sludge Bomb Poison or status moves. Another "fix" could be to ban even more things like Elekid, Seadra, or Seaking, but I don't really know how to feel about these, and in general I don't think GSC PU has any one singular issue that can be fixed with one change (except Poliwhirl, but again, metagame still has issues).

Freeing Arbok also doesn't really change the metagame significantly. From the games I saw of it in GSC Slam League, it tended to be somewhat low-impact and often really held back by power issues, mainly when it came to trying to break through Venomoth/Seadra/Cubone. However, I'm fine with it dropping, as its power level is very reasonable for the tier to handle and it wouldn't be an amazing or metagame-transforming Pokemon.

Active VR tiering with more drops from NU (likely below C+) would certainly shake up the metagame and transform it, giving it a fresh start. However, we don't really have a stable playerbase to do that, let alone a playerbase that will consistently be active and driven, participate in discussion, and continue growing. Too many of us who play don't participate in discussion, or are forced to play these tiers for a single team tour due to poor drafting, or play once or twice a year for the tier's generational classic or GSC Slam, or simply aren't interested in playing GSC PU. There is also no council for specific GSC Lower Tiers or even just a general GSC LT Council to keep things going at a steady rate. This also applies to GSC UU and NU, but it feels most applicable to PU since the tier has more issues. I am not faulting anyone for things being this way, nor do I think people should be obligated to participate in discussion or even just stay active and keep coming back to play GSC PU. But I hope you understand how I feel.

As it is now, forgetting the idea of active tiering, even just the other things would likely improve the state of GSC PU and GSC Lower Tiers so much. Unfortunately, that is not how it is now, so the idea of "wiping" PU by doing a mass drop sounds like a pretty bad idea for sustaining the metagame, let alone that we'd be erasing the past ~1 and a half years of this tier's history and many may not even want active tiering in the first place (myself included honestly).

I'm largely just venting my frustrations, but maybe some of this reached you. I am not asking you to do anything necessarily, just to read and understand. That's about all. Ban Poliwhirl, and if anyone else happens to be interested in pursuing a vote, please please make your voice heard so that we can justify starting one and getting rid of this cancer.
 
BeeOrSomething said:
Just wanted to pop in and commentate a little on the state of GSC PU currently as well as Poliwhirl. Mainly want to summarize thoughts from various discord discussions and expand a bit, as well as make it more of a "formality" by putting it here on the forums.

First, about Poliwhirl.
:gs/poliwhirl:

Poliwhirl is an extremely cancerous and straight up unfun presence in the metagame. It's faster than most viable Pokemon and has enough bulk after a Belly Drum to where if it's given free setup, really only an Elekid Thunder or Venomoth Sleep Powder/Stun Spore will stop it in many situations. It does have some limits, as it cannot OHKO Hitmontop, Seadra, or Tangela from full HP and usually cannot OHKO Venomoth, but the ability to Lovely Kiss anything and force things asleep as well as the fact that usually multiple Pokemon on the opponent's team are asleep after having clicked Rest or have been chipped makes dealing with Poliwhirl extremely unreliable and often game losing. Of course, the most straightforward way to deal with Poliwhirl is to use Elekid, but Thunder has a 30% miss chance, Thunderbolt is quite bad, and it's not uncommon for Elekid to run RestTalk sets. Voltorb can also deal with Poliwhirl with Thunder Wave or Explosion (in addition to Thunder), but Voltorb is significantly less common and often uses Explosion early in the game. Most times, Poliwhirl being in a game either reduces it to a gamble on whether or not it can cheese through Elekid or it just completely dominating, especially if the opponent doesn't have Tangela.

Some Poliwhirl replays I've found:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen2pu-2406178046-iae2heexyi7wdmawaig94eue8an4cuypw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen2pu-843117
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen2pu-828519
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen2pu-2319928862-bgimphf7hnio6m9298syl5okpa2pm15pw?p2
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen2pu-2403797997-hxyfh1sx86hka5wsn5tf34bqiruya35pw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen2pu-859073

The other point I wanted to talk about is the general state of progress in battles. In many cases, it's not too difficult to build a team that is extremely defensively sturdy against most common Pokemon and is generally very difficult to break through without a specific threat, strong play, or hax. For the most part, I don't mind this, as I see it as rewarding good building and play and there's usually a way to break through. Others don't agree with me, but that's fine. What is more troubling is how while the majority of Pokemon you can deal with just fine, there are a few specific offensive monsters that are just impossible to deal with reliably. Poliwhirl is one of them, but to a lesser degree Substitute Seaking, Screech Venomoth, and 3 attacks Seadra can just run through defensive teams with little trouble and still don't have very good counterplay on more aggressive teams. The dichotomy feels very strong and it's not uncommon to see a pretty normal game get completely flipped on its head when something stupid like Sub Seaking comes out when your Seaking check is Tangela, and many teams can't afford to account for these threats in the builder since it will make your Pokemon so much worse against everything else.

In general, Venomoth especially feels extraordinarily oppressive, as it's faster than most Pokemon, is versatile to the point where it has a ton of different sets it can run (RestTalk, Curse Pass, Status + 3 attacks, 3 attacks + Screech/Whirlwind/Thief, Status + 2 attacks + Screech/Whirlwind/Thief) that are all extremely effective and each have little downside to be using. At any point it may or may not have the perfect set or coverage move to beat your checks, and even if it doesn't, it might run you over anyways because it's so demanding in the builder and in battle and has just enough power to muscle through, especially when factoring in Spikes or RNG.

I'm not entirely sure what the fix to these problems would be. The first thing I would do is ban Poliwhirl, but largely that doesn't fix the second issue I outlined. I would also ban Venomoth, but I understand that's a fairly controversial idea and I'm not sure if the following metagame would be any better, especially with Hitmontop and Machoke instantly becoming so much more powerful. Ironically enough, Venomoth going would likely make Seaking even better, as despite grasses benefitting heavily from the lack of Moth, non-RestTalk Seaking loses one of its best checks (Status Moth) and Substitute still farms Tangela. Seadra would also have even greater freedom to run 3 attacks without desiring RestTalk to stave off non-Giga Drain Venomoth and its Sludge Bomb Poison or status moves. Another "fix" could be to ban even more things like Elekid, Seadra, or Seaking, but I don't really know how to feel about these, and in general I don't think GSC PU has any one singular issue that can be fixed with one change (except Poliwhirl, but again, metagame still has issues).

Freeing Arbok also doesn't really change the metagame significantly. From the games I saw of it in GSC Slam League, it tended to be somewhat low-impact and often really held back by power issues, mainly when it came to trying to break through Venomoth/Seadra/Cubone. However, I'm fine with it dropping, as its power level is very reasonable for the tier to handle and it wouldn't be an amazing or metagame-transforming Pokemon.

Active VR tiering with more drops from NU (likely below C+) would certainly shake up the metagame and transform it, giving it a fresh start. However, we don't really have a stable playerbase to do that, let alone a playerbase that will consistently be active and driven, participate in discussion, and continue growing. Too many of us who play don't participate in discussion, or are forced to play these tiers for a single team tour due to poor drafting, or play once or twice a year for the tier's generational classic or GSC Slam, or simply aren't interested in playing GSC PU. There is also no council for specific GSC Lower Tiers or even just a general GSC LT Council to keep things going at a steady rate. This also applies to GSC UU and NU, but it feels most applicable to PU since the tier has more issues. I am not faulting anyone for things being this way, nor do I think people should be obligated to participate in discussion or even just stay active and keep coming back to play GSC PU. But I hope you understand how I feel.

As it is now, forgetting the idea of active tiering, even just the other things would likely improve the state of GSC PU and GSC Lower Tiers so much. Unfortunately, that is not how it is now, so the idea of "wiping" PU by doing a mass drop sounds like a pretty bad idea for sustaining the metagame, let alone that we'd be erasing the past ~1 and a half years of this tier's history and many may not even want active tiering in the first place (myself included honestly).

I'm largely just venting my frustrations, but maybe some of this reached you. I am not asking you to do anything necessarily, just to read and understand. That's about all. Ban Poliwhirl, and if anyone else happens to be interested in pursuing a vote, please please make your voice heard so that we can justify starting one and getting rid of this cancer.
Click to expand...
I’m an advocate for active tiering in GSC, particularly with regards to NU to PU drops, and I’m also involved in RBY, the only old gen that engages in active tiering for non-ZU tiers, so I feel compelled to respond to the latter part of this post, as I have personal insights to share on the active tiering process.

Bee’s first point was that GSC PU lacks a stable and active playerbase to justify these changes, but based on my experience in the RBY community and following the post-Furret ban PU changes, I’ve seen that such updates tend to boost player activity, at least in the short term, as people are eager to experiment with new Pokemon and are generally interested when the status quo of the tier is altered. It also makes the tier more inviting for new players as the floor is basically reset. For example, I entered the tier after the Aurist Furret-banned tour and learned how to build in the relatively new meta alongside the community, which was only possible because the tier was still in its discovery phase. Although I understand Bee’s hesitation, I believe that if PU actually implemented the drops, the player base would temporarily become more active, making the inactive player base point less of a problem.

In my opinion, Bee is absolutely right that active tiering with drops and rises requires a council with real authority, such as the power to issue quickbans, to make the tiering process more efficient and faster. Unlike OU and ZU, PU and other GSC lower tiers lack this authority, but I don’t think PU needs to engage in active tiering anyway. Currently, my vision for the future of PU is a one-drop phase where we test the Pokémon that years of NU development have pushed out of the tier, without considering potential rises or future Pokémon that NU will push out, as I don’t see PU tiering being streamlined enough to make true active tiering possible unless PU gets its own council or active tiering begins from the higher tiers.

Testing Pokemon shouldn’t be much more complicated than banning stuff in PU right now though, and I think it’s disingenuous to oppose the drops just because they would erase one and a half years of history, for multiple reasons. Firstly, the proposed tiering actions, particularly the Venomoth ban, would also erase tiering development. My other point is that a year and a half of tiering history is insufficient, and it feels strange to cite it as a valid reason to resist meta changes when we have the example of the RBY two-year plan, which allows RBY tiers to develop for two years in every active tiering cycle, and we don’t have major tier resources like analyses or set compendiums that require significant time investment to create. In my opinion, this is the best and only time to make this change, because if we wait too long, we risk erasing significant meta developments and possibly even resources. You could even say that right now is the perfect time to do the drops, as we both don’t have too much history and the community is disillusioned with the current state of the tier. This likely means that even without the drops, the tier will still be disrupted in addition. As NU just did a VR, the next VR, which would change what would drop, likely won’t happen in the middle of tiering PU, and GSC PU has an all-time high amount of tours now with GSC Slam PU, Classic GSC Slam, League GSC PL, PUPL, and PUBD.

Going back a bit, let’s discuss Arbok. I also feel that it’s a small, almost unimpactful Pokémon in the tier, which is a problem for me; looking back to when the GSC NU VR was released, the PU community was very excited about potential drops and tiering actions, and we even made all GSC PU slots in the Slam League Arbok slots. However, our enthusiasm quickly faded as Arbok’s minimal impact led to a significant decrease in hype, and for some, the hype even disappeared altogether. Currently, it feels like if tiering actions involving drops aren’t implemented very soon, they will no longer be possible.

Based on my experience in extremely low tiers, I believe that the potential of tiers to be good increases with the number of Pokémon they have. I’m not saying that the drops will directly improve PU, but I believe they will give PU a chance to become better than it is now, or even a future version of current PU with certain Pokemon and/or moves banned.
 
torkonpeter said:
I’m an advocate for active tiering in GSC, particularly with regards to NU to PU drops, and I’m also involved in RBY, the only old gen that engages in active tiering for non-ZU tiers, so I feel compelled to respond to the latter part of this post, as I have personal insights to share on the active tiering process.

Bee’s first point was that GSC PU lacks a stable and active playerbase to justify these changes, but based on my experience in the RBY community and following the post-Furret ban PU changes, I’ve seen that such updates tend to boost player activity, at least in the short term, as people are eager to experiment with new Pokemon and are generally interested when the status quo of the tier is altered. It also makes the tier more inviting for new players as the floor is basically reset. For example, I entered the tier after the Aurist Furret-banned tour and learned how to build in the relatively new meta alongside the community, which was only possible because the tier was still in its discovery phase. Although I understand Bee’s hesitation, I believe that if PU actually implemented the drops, the player base would temporarily become more active, making the inactive player base point less of a problem.

In my opinion, Bee is absolutely right that active tiering with drops and rises requires a council with real authority, such as the power to issue quickbans, to make the tiering process more efficient and faster. Unlike OU and ZU, PU and other GSC lower tiers lack this authority, but I don’t think PU needs to engage in active tiering anyway. Currently, my vision for the future of PU is a one-drop phase where we test the Pokémon that years of NU development have pushed out of the tier, without considering potential rises or future Pokémon that NU will push out, as I don’t see PU tiering being streamlined enough to make true active tiering possible unless PU gets its own council or active tiering begins from the higher tiers.

Testing Pokemon shouldn’t be much more complicated than banning stuff in PU right now though, and I think it’s disingenuous to oppose the drops just because they would erase one and a half years of history, for multiple reasons. Firstly, the proposed tiering actions, particularly the Venomoth ban, would also erase tiering development. My other point is that a year and a half of tiering history is insufficient, and it feels strange to cite it as a valid reason to resist meta changes when we have the example of the RBY two-year plan, which allows RBY tiers to develop for two years in every active tiering cycle, and we don’t have major tier resources like analyses or set compendiums that require significant time investment to create. In my opinion, this is the best and only time to make this change, because if we wait too long, we risk erasing significant meta developments and possibly even resources. You could even say that right now is the perfect time to do the drops, as we both don’t have too much history and the community is disillusioned with the current state of the tier. This likely means that even without the drops, the tier will still be disrupted in addition. As NU just did a VR, the next VR, which would change what would drop, likely won’t happen in the middle of tiering PU, and GSC PU has an all-time high amount of tours now with GSC Slam PU, Classic GSC Slam, League GSC PL, PUPL, and PUBD.

Going back a bit, let’s discuss Arbok. I also feel that it’s a small, almost unimpactful Pokémon in the tier, which is a problem for me; looking back to when the GSC NU VR was released, the PU community was very excited about potential drops and tiering actions, and we even made all GSC PU slots in the Slam League Arbok slots. However, our enthusiasm quickly faded as Arbok’s minimal impact led to a significant decrease in hype, and for some, the hype even disappeared altogether. Currently, it feels like if tiering actions involving drops aren’t implemented very soon, they will no longer be possible.

Based on my experience in extremely low tiers, I believe that the potential of tiers to be good increases with the number of Pokémon they have. I’m not saying that the drops will directly improve PU, but I believe they will give PU a chance to become better than it is now, or even a future version of current PU with certain Pokemon and/or moves banned.
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Great post. Keeping my add-on short and sweet, GSC PU being an unofficial tier that doesn't have "too" long of a competitive history means that if there is any time to try experimenting with this idea, it's right now.
BeeOrSomething said:
The other point I wanted to talk about is the general state of progress in battles. In many cases, it's not too difficult to build a team that is extremely defensively sturdy against most common Pokemon and is generally very difficult to break through without a specific threat, strong play, or hax.

As it is now, forgetting the idea of active tiering, even just the other things would likely improve the state of GSC PU and GSC Lower Tiers so much. Unfortunately, that is not how it is now, so the idea of "wiping" PU by doing a mass drop sounds like a pretty bad idea for sustaining the metagame, let alone that we'd be erasing the past ~1 and a half years of this tier's history and many may not even want active tiering in the first place (myself included honestly). For the most part, I don't mind this, as I see it as rewarding good building and play and there's usually a way to break through. Others don't agree with me, but that's fine.
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BeeOrSomething said:
Too many of us who play don't participate in discussion, or are forced to play these tiers for a single team tour due to poor drafting, or play once or twice a year for the tier's generational classic or GSC Slam, or simply aren't interested in playing GSC PU. There is also no council for specific GSC Lower Tiers or even just a general GSC LT Council to keep things going at a steady rate.
Click to expand...

Lumping these quotes together just bc my response to them feels the same. I appreciate that you bring up points that you're not in favor of for the purpose of discussion, so building on this idea: I think that a vote on a potential testing of C+ would be a fair answer here. I'm also with Torkon that any prospective changes to a metagame open up the boundaries for more players to get their eyes on what might have previously been a stale, black sheep metagame. RBY UU's a really good example of this happening in real time as people are looking to see what happens after Slowbro was freed + trapping ban. This could be a shot in the arm that GSC PU could benefit from, even if I don't think it's necessarily 100% needed. It's more of a question of how the playerbase wants the tier's direction to go, which is why I would say best thing to do is a poll(maybe after GSCPL when the most attention is on the tier?).

However to be 100% fair and honest, I also agree that it would be tough to keep things going without a LT council. I see pros and cons to active tiering for this tier, and I'm not 100% sold that it would be the best thing to do, but I think if we risk kicking the can down the road then it may never actually be taken as a serious idea. And if it's found to be too excessive or tedious, we can always go from there.

Last thing. I just don't really think that removing some past tiering history is that big an issue if we find it to be in constructive efforts for the tier. But again, I don't think we'll get a true finger on the pulse of what people are thinking without a poll.

I also would ban Poliwhirl btw
 
BeeOrSomething said:
PU is establishing a council to expedite tiering processes and help come to collective decisions after deliberation within the community. The council will consist of myself, @SANKE CARP, @torkonpeter, @Aurist, and @Estarossa. It will be subject to change in the future if necessary.

If necessary, we can push towards forming a council for NU and UU, though currently it will just be PU considering the unique situation of the tier and metagame.

I hope this will mark a good first step towards solving issues with slowness and tiering within all GSC lower tiers. Thank you.
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From the "state of lower tiers" thread
 
Poliwhirl has been banned from GSC PU!
BeeOrSomething said:
1758850868075.png

Poliwhirl is now officially banned from GSC PU, as it has reached the 60% supermajority threshold. Tagging @dhelmise and @Marty to implement, and once again thank you to @asa for holding the blind vote.
Click to expand...
 
BeeOrSomething said:
Feraligatr has been officially risen from NUBL to UU!
Click to expand...

Does this imply that there can be movement between the lower tiers? If so I have a few questions:

Why is Vileplume not NU or NUBL? It's obviously not UU at all. It's the only UU mon I believe that is assuredly and absolutely not in any way UU and has no business being there. It doesn't matter if it's broken in NU or not (as it could just be NUBL like Feraligatr was), but if movement is allowed between tiers like this Feraligatr rise to UU, then there's no reason that Vileplume should be sitting in UU. All the other "ass" UU mons are at least somewhat usable but this one is not.

If there is somehow an actual plausible argument on why Vileplume is not UU (doubtful tbh), then what is the criteria that caused Feraligatr to rise here? Did someone vote on it? Was it simply based on the VR update for UU? If so, can actual NU mons rise to UU in that way? I just want to make sure this isn't being done sloppily and there's an actual process that is replicable across all scenarios and it is consistent.

Who made the decision suspect Poliwhirl in PU? Was there a poll/survey amongst PU players on if they thought Poliwhirl was problematic? Is there a GSC PU council that voted on it? It seems very strange to just spring up a suspect like this with little to no visibility on the forums about it. Typically there is a PR thread made for these types of things, even in the strangest of oldgen tiers that are far less played than GSC PU so that people can actually discuss it. What is the method moving forward in how to handle these suspects? Is it just up to one person to go ahead and do it? Does this lower tiers committee (which is not comprised of purely PU players) somehow make that decision without officially polling the playerbase? Again, I like the idea of having a body to handle these things but the actual process seems to have minimal transparency and I worry it will have even less consistenecy as such. I personally don't see how banning Poliwhirl did anything for the tier other than make it less annoying for 8% of the games - clearly a bigger endeavor has to happen to shake things up in PU.

Why hasn't there been any actual tiering in PU beyond the Poliwhirl suspect, as in, dropping actual "NU" mons that are obvioiusly not NU? If mons can change tiers from NUBL to UU, two tiers way more entrenched than PU, then surely PU can change based on updated NU VRs. Based on the last VR then Arbok is obviously the most non-NU mon (though I believe there's currently several less NU mons in NU atm like Raticate etc., but I'm just looking at the most recent VRs). There seemed to be basically no opposition to an Arbok drop so it feels liike something like this, which has almost unanimous support, could have been done a long time ago. Additionally, I would go further and just drop everything D1 or below which includes Ledian, Dunsparce, Farfetch'd, Azumarill, Houndour, Raticate, and of course Arbok. It has to be either just Arbok (in E Rank), or all of these at once. Anything other than those two options is just cherry picking and improper tiering.

*edit*: one other caveat I noticed:

In the event PU decides to either drop Arbok, not drop Arbok, or drop everything in D and below, that seems to have the following implications as well based on VR tiering:

Things don't just drop, they rise. So, if Arbok is dropped and/or the other D mons are dropped based on VR, then technically speaking if we are VR tiering then Delibird, Bayleef, Rhyhorn, Gastly, Tentacool (lol), Omanyte are technically NU and should rise. What is the explanation on why this shouldn't happen, based on the concepts, rules, and precedent of VR based tiering? Additionally, if only Arbok is dropped based on VR, then Cubone, Furret (PUBL), Ariados, Tangela, Hitmonchan (PUBL), Sneasel, Poliwhirl (NUBL), Corsola, Venomoth, Mantine should all technically rise based on VRs.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for this to happen. I'm simply looking for an explanation on how to justify doing VR drops in PU without rising mons that are also NU by VRs, just like we rose Feraligatr to UU.
 
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BigFatMantis said:
Does this imply that there can be movement between the lower tiers? If so I have a few questions:

Why is Vileplume not NU or NUBL? It's obviously not UU at all. It's the only UU mon I believe that is assuredly and absolutely not in any way UU and has no business being there. It doesn't matter if it's broken in NU or not (as it could just be NUBL like Feraligatr was), but if movement is allowed between tiers like this Feraligatr rise to UU, then there's no reason that Vileplume should be sitting in UU. All the other "ass" UU mons are at least somewhat usable but this one is not.

If there is somehow an actual plausible argument on why Vileplume is not UU (doubtful tbh), then what is the criteria that caused Feraligatr to rise here? Did someone vote on it? Was it simply based on the VR update for UU? If so, can actual NU mons rise to UU in that way? I just want to make sure this isn't being done sloppily and there's an actual process that is replicable across all scenarios and it is consistent.

Who made the decision suspect Poliwhirl in PU? Was there a poll/survey amongst PU players on if they thought Poliwhirl was problematic? Is there a GSC PU council that voted on it? It seems very strange to just spring up a suspect like this with little to no visibility on the forums about it. Typically there is a PR thread made for these types of things, even in the strangest of oldgen tiers that are far less played than GSC PU so that people can actually discuss it. What is the method moving forward in how to handle these suspects? Is it just up to one person to go ahead and do it? Does this lower tiers committee (which is not comprised of purely PU players) somehow make that decision without officially polling the playerbase? Again, I like the idea of having a body to handle these things but the actual process seems to have minimal transparency and I worry it will have even less consistenecy as such. I personally don't see how banning Poliwhirl did anything for the tier other than make it less annoying for 8% of the games - clearly a bigger endeavor has to happen to shake things up in PU.

Why hasn't there been any actual tiering in PU beyond the Poliwhirl suspect, as in, dropping actual "NU" mons that are obvioiusly not NU? If mons can change tiers from NUBL to UU, two tiers way more entrenched than PU, then surely PU can change based on updated NU VRs. Based on the last VR then Arbok is obviously the most non-NU mon (though I believe there's currently several less NU mons in NU atm like Raticate etc., but I'm just looking at the most recent VRs). There seemed to be basically no opposition to an Arbok drop so it feels liike something like this, which has almost unanimous support, could have been done a long time ago. Additionally, I would go further and just drop everything D1 or below which includes Ledian, Dunsparce, Farfetch'd, Azumarill, Houndour, Raticate, and of course Arbok. It has to be either just Arbok (in E Rank), or all of these at once. Anything other than those two options is just cherry picking and improper tiering.

*edit*: one other caveat I noticed:

In the event PU decides to either drop Arbok, not drop Arbok, or drop everything in D and below, that seems to have the following implications as well based on VR tiering:

Things don't just drop, they rise. So, if Arbok is dropped and/or the other D mons are dropped based on VR, then technically speaking if we are VR tiering then Delibird, Bayleef, Rhyhorn, Gastly, Tentacool (lol), Omanyte are technically NU and should rise. What is the explanation on why this shouldn't happen, based on the concepts, rules, and precedent of VR based tiering? Additionally, if only Arbok is dropped based on VR, then Cubone, Furret (PUBL), Ariados, Tangela, Hitmonchan (PUBL), Sneasel, Poliwhirl (NUBL), Corsola, Venomoth, Mantine should all technically rise based on VRs.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for this to happen. I'm simply looking for an explanation on how to justify doing VR drops in PU without rising mons that are also NU by VRs, just like we rose Feraligatr to UU.
Click to expand...
On Feraligatr:
- The idea was based on its ranking in the newest GSC UU VR
- Players have been requesting Gatr’s tiering status to be altered for multiple years
- I asked UU tier leaders first, and they asked dhelmise, and both said it was fine to do (NU is not an “official” tier like UU is and there is evidence to support the change)
- It was a rise, not a drop, and it made zero actual metagame difference
- Vileplume being placed in nubl is an inaccurate representation of its tiering status given how Non-UUBL BL tiers are ran
- Feraligatr, while it was banned from NU, is also essentially a true UU pokemon now. Two things can be true

On Poliwhirl:
- The vote was the result of widespread sentiment among active players and the near complete lack of opposition on both forums and discord
- PU tier leaders approved of the vote and said it did not need a PR thread to go through
 
BigFatMantis said:
Does this imply that there can be movement between the lower tiers? If so I have a few questions:

Why is Vileplume not NU or NUBL? It's obviously not UU at all. It's the only UU mon I believe that is assuredly and absolutely not in any way UU and has no business being there. It doesn't matter if it's broken in NU or not (as it could just be NUBL like Feraligatr was), but if movement is allowed between tiers like this Feraligatr rise to UU, then there's no reason that Vileplume should be sitting in UU. All the other "ass" UU mons are at least somewhat usable but this one is not.

If there is somehow an actual plausible argument on why Vileplume is not UU (doubtful tbh), then what is the criteria that caused Feraligatr to rise here? Did someone vote on it? Was it simply based on the VR update for UU? If so, can actual NU mons rise to UU in that way? I just want to make sure this isn't being done sloppily and there's an actual process that is replicable across all scenarios and it is consistent.

Who made the decision suspect Poliwhirl in PU? Was there a poll/survey amongst PU players on if they thought Poliwhirl was problematic? Is there a GSC PU council that voted on it? It seems very strange to just spring up a suspect like this with little to no visibility on the forums about it. Typically there is a PR thread made for these types of things, even in the strangest of oldgen tiers that are far less played than GSC PU so that people can actually discuss it. What is the method moving forward in how to handle these suspects? Is it just up to one person to go ahead and do it? Does this lower tiers committee (which is not comprised of purely PU players) somehow make that decision without officially polling the playerbase? Again, I like the idea of having a body to handle these things but the actual process seems to have minimal transparency and I worry it will have even less consistenecy as such. I personally don't see how banning Poliwhirl did anything for the tier other than make it less annoying for 8% of the games - clearly a bigger endeavor has to happen to shake things up in PU.

Why hasn't there been any actual tiering in PU beyond the Poliwhirl suspect, as in, dropping actual "NU" mons that are obvioiusly not NU? If mons can change tiers from NUBL to UU, two tiers way more entrenched than PU, then surely PU can change based on updated NU VRs. Based on the last VR then Arbok is obviously the most non-NU mon (though I believe there's currently several less NU mons in NU atm like Raticate etc., but I'm just looking at the most recent VRs). There seemed to be basically no opposition to an Arbok drop so it feels liike something like this, which has almost unanimous support, could have been done a long time ago. Additionally, I would go further and just drop everything D1 or below which includes Ledian, Dunsparce, Farfetch'd, Azumarill, Houndour, Raticate, and of course Arbok. It has to be either just Arbok (in E Rank), or all of these at once. Anything other than those two options is just cherry picking and improper tiering.

*edit*: one other caveat I noticed:

In the event PU decides to either drop Arbok, not drop Arbok, or drop everything in D and below, that seems to have the following implications as well based on VR tiering:

Things don't just drop, they rise. So, if Arbok is dropped and/or the other D mons are dropped based on VR, then technically speaking if we are VR tiering then Delibird, Bayleef, Rhyhorn, Gastly, Tentacool (lol), Omanyte are technically NU and should rise. What is the explanation on why this shouldn't happen, based on the concepts, rules, and precedent of VR based tiering? Additionally, if only Arbok is dropped based on VR, then Cubone, Furret (PUBL), Ariados, Tangela, Hitmonchan (PUBL), Sneasel, Poliwhirl (NUBL), Corsola, Venomoth, Mantine should all technically rise based on VRs.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for this to happen. I'm simply looking for an explanation on how to justify doing VR drops in PU without rising mons that are also NU by VRs, just like we rose Feraligatr to UU.
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Pu will do further tiering actions thays the reason the pu council was created, its just that doing such big changes before the biggest gsc tournament of the year can create some problems
 
BeeOrSomething said:
- Vileplume being placed in nubl is an inaccurate representation of its tiering status given how Non-UUBL BL tiers are…


On Poliwhirl:
- The vote was the result of widespread sentiment among active players and the near complete lack of opposition on both forums
Click to expand...

Not sure I agree on both of these - if Vileplume is an NUBL Pokemon, then it should be in NUBL to most accurately represent how BL tiers are represented (note: they are represented and tiered based on the tiers below them), so how a BL tier operates has absolutely no bearing on whether or not a mon should be BL. This point you stated does not make sense. If mons are able to move through tiers, then Vileplume should be dropped to NUBL (or rather, dropped to NU and then banned to NUBL).

If your point is that you can’t drop a mon to NUBL, that’s true, it would drop to NU and then get banned immediately. But the point that it was ok to move mons because it has no actual effect on the metagame doesn’t seem to be a good basis to continue tiering. It’s not a consistent system that can be consistently applied and that’s my issue here and why I’m hoping there’s a better plan of action on how to deal with these things moving forward on all count.

And re: Poliwhirl, I don’t see widespread discontent on the forums, I just see the same council members posting. Discord is not a great indicator on how something is perceived, that’s why most tiers either open up discussion in a PR thread or send out a survey of sorts to gather data. Just because you are technically able to skirt this with TL approval does not mean it’s how it should continue to be done. It ended up getting banned which is fine, I’m not worried about Poliwhirl itself, I’m worried about the methods moving forward on this stuff.

I know this sounds very annoying but it just doesn’t seem like things are being done very systematically and I want it to be done properly for all of these tiers, as I enjoy all of them. I don’t want it to be a situation where a group of 3 people read a few discord messages and make swathing decisions without a consistent replicable method in place that takes into account reliable data and precedent on how these things should be accomplished.

Re: Torkon’s reply: thank you, I look forward to seeing what changes are coming, but I do hope it takes into account the concerns for consistency and what makes sense to do and not do that I laid out here
 
BigFatMantis said:
Not sure I agree on both of these - if Vileplume is an NUBL Pokemon, then it should be in NUBL to most accurately represent how BL tiers are represented (note: they are represented and tiered based on the tiers below them), so how a BL tier operates has absolutely no bearing on whether or not a mon should be BL. This point you stated does not make sense. If mons are able to move through tiers, then Vileplume should be dropped to NUBL (or rather, dropped to NU and then banned to NUBL).

If your point is that you can’t drop a mon to NUBL, that’s true, it would drop to NU and then get banned immediately. But the point that it was ok to move mons because it has no actual effect on the metagame doesn’t seem to be a good basis to continue tiering. It’s not a consistent system that can be consistently applied and that’s my issue here and why I’m hoping there’s a better plan of action on how to deal with these things moving forward on all count.

And re: Poliwhirl, I don’t see widespread discontent on the forums, I just see the same council members posting. Discord is not a great indicator on how something is perceived, that’s why most tiers either open up discussion in a PR thread or send out a survey of sorts to gather data. Just because you are technically able to skirt this with TL approval does not mean it’s how it should continue to be done. It ended up getting banned which is fine, I’m not worried about Poliwhirl itself, I’m worried about the methods moving forward on this stuff.

I know this sounds very annoying but it just doesn’t seem like things are being done very systematically and I want it to be done properly for all of these tiers, as I enjoy all of them. I don’t want it to be a situation where a group of 3 people read a few discord messages and make swathing decisions without a consistent replicable method in place that takes into account reliable data and precedent on how these things should be accomplished.

Re: Torkon’s reply: thank you, I look forward to seeing what changes are coming, but I do hope it takes into account the concerns for consistency and what makes sense to do and not do that I laid out here
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I understand your concerns that both of these may have been somewhat hasty decisions. On Feraligatr, I have nothing more to say. If you or others so desire, Vileplume can be considered for tiering changes in the future. It’s all up to who has the initiative to do it. On Poliwhirl, I wanted to push for action on it to be pursued and finished before GSCPL, and enduring a multi-month PR thread that might not even get many replies when there was satisfactory discontent (and clearly, enough ban votes) to open the suspect seemed like a waste and would very likely not be done before GSCPL Week 1. I understand these are somewhat arbitrary but what’s done is done. Future tiering action will be more organized, especially with the PU council. I hope this answers your questions.
 
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