Discussion The pattern of more rises than drops in usage-based lower tiers

[missangelic]

It feels like every so often a post like this is made begging lower tiers to become these stable places where nothing ever rises and you can develop that one same meta to your heart's content.

Guess what guys OU, Ubers, past gens exist. Ever since lower tiers started tiering by usage in gen 5 it's been a feature that each shift (3 months, enough time to run a full tournament) you get a slightly different meta. Sure this can cause problems but it can also solve problems. Lower tiers get away with less bans because usage brings up the problematic mons.

Councils can do whatever they want to mitigate these issues. Faster suspects, Koko method, quickbans are all valid strategies. Additionally if the concern is about tournaments, then simply freeze the tier for the course of the tournament or even better, schedule your tournaments so they happen between tier shifts.

Apologies for the dismmissive tone but it really just feels like these posts take 1000 words in order to say "I choose to play a tier with shifts but would prefer for there to be no shifts"

“Begging” is a pretty uncharitable way to describe this discussion, especially when I’ve mentioned several times across this thread that the goal of tweaking policy would not be to block rises or changes entirely. My own proposal even aims to keep rises. The whole point of having this PR thread now rather than the end of the Generation is so that we don’t have to have a last-minute fix policy that freezes rises altogether like in SS.

You’re right that it is very dismissive to enter a discussion of possible tiering modification and say “well if you don’t like it, play another tier”. It’s just as tone-deaf as entering a ban discussion or suspect thread and saying “well if you don’t like this element, play a different tier”. I actually have and still do play Ubers, non-lower tiers formats, and old gens that dont have tiering updates anymore, and they’re fun. I and many others tune into current gen tiering partly BECAUSE the metagames stay fresh with updates. That doesn’t mean these updates have to be majorly disruptive, which is the point of reform.

I already explained in my last post that just because rises can remove problematic Pokemon - a job that’s actually the responsibility of tiering councils - doesn’t mean they’re above reform, especially when they’re creating problems more than solving them. I recommend more closely reading other posts in this thread, especially ishtar’s.

 

[Bice]

hi, i know i'm necroing this thread but since the issues with usage-based tiering have been a hot topic as of late i wanted to revive this thread, especially given the state of sv lower tiers (specifically uu/ru).
coming from someone who used to play sv uu and ru, there has been a culture of low player morale among people who play these tiers, as every three months they lose more and more staples. more guys become overwhelming and end up getting banned, and the metagames become sterile and boring with little innovation and player engagement. in both uu and ru's subforums, activity has largely dried up outside of tournaments and the occassional post asking why a specific mon is/isn't viable. there's spikes in activity around tier shifts and suspect tests, and even then the former is mostly lamenting that we lost yet another staple mon. the ru discord server's activity is largely comprised of people lamenting the state of the meta and the lack of activity on the forums, while uu discord doesn't have much activity outside of using a fishing bot.
i know that there are unique issues relating to sv that contribute to this environment (particularly the sheer amount of power creep this gen), but i feel like this gen has exposed the cracks in usage-based tiering. in particular, tiering is vulnerable to being manipulated by bad actors; this has historically happened with ambipom in gen 7 and hitmontop in gen 8 (before tier rises were frozen near the end of gen 8 as a direct result of this). however, as discussed in this thread, advancements in artificial intelligence and its increasing accessibility has made this problem much worse, and it's likely going to worsen further before it gets better. i know there's work being done behind the scenes to curb these ladder bots, but this feels like a bandaid solution to a fundamentally flawed system.
i'm aware that i'm not speaking for nu and below (if any players of those tiers want to chime in then i'd love to hear your thoughts) and that i'm no expert on tiering systems, but i wanted to give input as a former player of two tiers that have suffered from this pattern, and who ultimately stopped playing because of it.

 

[Tuthur]

hi, i know i'm necroing this thread but since the issues with usage-based tiering have been a hot topic as of late i wanted to revive this thread, especially given the state of sv lower tiers (specifically uu/ru).
coming from someone who used to play sv uu and ru, there has been a culture of low player morale among people who play these tiers, as every three months they lose more and more staples. more guys become overwhelming and end up getting banned, and the metagames become sterile and boring with little innovation and player engagement. in both uu and ru's subforums, activity has largely dried up outside of tournaments and the occassional post asking why a specific mon is/isn't viable. there's spikes in activity around tier shifts and suspect tests, and even then the former is mostly lamenting that we lost yet another staple mon. the ru discord server's activity is largely comprised of people lamenting the state of the meta and the lack of activity on the forums, while uu discord doesn't have much activity outside of using a fishing bot.
i know that there are unique issues relating to sv that contribute to this environment (particularly the sheer amount of power creep this gen), but i feel like this gen has exposed the cracks in usage-based tiering. in particular, tiering is vulnerable to being manipulated by bad actors; this has historically happened with ambipom in gen 7 and hitmontop in gen 8 (before tier rises were frozen near the end of gen 8 as a direct result of this). however, as discussed in this thread, advancements in artificial intelligence and its increasing accessibility has made this problem much worse, and it's likely going to worsen further before it gets better. i know there's work being done behind the scenes to curb these ladder bots, but this feels like a bandaid solution to a fundamentally flawed system.
i'm aware that i'm not speaking for nu and below (if any players of those tiers want to chime in then i'd love to hear your thoughts) and that i'm no expert on tiering systems, but i wanted to give input as a former player of two tiers that have suffered from this pattern, and who ultimately stopped playing because of it.

I'd like to share my two cents as an active community member in NU and ZU (and somewhat PU if we consider yapping). Your post iniated a discussion in PU server, as the situation below RU is much different from what you described. I'm not gonna lie, at first I just thought you were some random mainer who complained about non-issue and would get shut down immediatly by UU/RU staff. However, I was wrong; it's been almost 2 weeks; nobody has objected and many seem to relate, even among UU/RU auth, given the reactions on the post. So this is just to say, that my post is not here to deny or confirm there are problems with UU or RU, but to point out why usage stats tiering isn't the problem, by using the NU, PU, and ZU examples.

From what I understood from your post, the issues RU and UU face are

• Subforum and discord activity being low outside tournaments
• Tier shifts removing stapples, causing low morale on the playerbase
• Bad actors manipulating stats

The first point is also fair for NU, PU, and ZU; team tour seasons are when there is peak activity in the discord server. Some users only interact and play for these teamtours and I don't think there is anything wrong with this. Some stick after the tour, join some individual tournaments and keep interacting in the server, at a lower pace. I looked at linecounts for 2025 in the different lower tiers servers, to see if PU or NU servers were much active than UU and RU; UU - 363 533 (15k from fish bot), RU - 480 450, NU - 421 790, PU - 384 306, and ZU - 220 819. I'm aware this is not the best indicator to measure activity, but these numbers all seem quite good to me. As a comparison, smogtours server has about 540k lines in 2025 and is what I'd consider an active server at any time of the year. Downtimes are important so players don't get burned out from playing all year long and are usually enjoyed as far as I know. I would say NU, PU, and ZU players are happy with the state of their discord servers, and I would like to know what prevents UUers and RUers from having discussions outside tournaments. As for forum projects and activity, I believe it's just a thing overall on the site; discord has become the premier communication network due its higher interactivity. I can't comment much on NU and PU, as I don't really read their forums, but for ZU, we have active forum posters and people willing to host and take part to forum projects. I've been a ZU forum mod for 4 years now and no forum project has been denied in ZU, and I'm pretty sure it's the same for other tiers. Be the change you want to be on forums and start hosting projects and writing posts. The forum is ultimately shaped by its users, wanting changes is not enough, you need to formulate how things need to change.

The tier shifts argument is what initially drove me to write this post. Unlike the first section, which is mostly me arguing based on vibes; this one is gonna more factual. I've looked at the tier shifts between January 2025 and 2026, UU lost 11 Pokémon, 2 of which weren't even UU by usage (Tyranitar, Deoxys-Speed, Scizor, Weezing-Galar, Heatran, Tornadus-Therian, Tinkaton, Weavile, Blissey, Pecharunt, and Araquanid), RU lost 8 Pokémon, 1 wasn't RU by usage (Hippowdon, Weezing-Galar, Fezandipiti, Slither Wing, Zapdos-Galar, Araquanid, Conkeldurr, Revavroom), NU lost 8 Pokémon, 1 wasn't NU by usage (Breloom, Ribombee, Torterra, Gastrodon, Muk Alola, Diancie, Registeel, Araquanid), PU lost 19 Pokémon, 5 weren't PU by usage (Articuno Galar, Houndstone, Slowbro Galar, Wo Chien, Thwackey, Dudunsparce, Espeon, Goodra, Grafaiai, Braviary (twice), Bellibolt, Scrafty, Copperajah, Toxtricity, Porygon2, Decidueye, Gastrodon, Meloetta, Tornadus), and ZU lost 16 Pokémon (Braviary (twice), Brute Bonnet, Grafaiai (twice), Thwackey, Qwilfish-Hisui, Mismagius, Porygon2, Hitmonlee, Palossand, Qwilfish, Avalugg-Hisui, Cramorant, Frosmoth, Decidueye-Hisui, Lycanroc, and Rhydon). I've never seen NU, PU, and ZU players being unmotivated to build new teams and throw away old teams after every tier shifts, and PU and ZU have it much harder than RU and UU players who usually only lose one or two Pokémon each time. I've been building UU occasionally when playing in tournaments and I don't remember it being that bad between tier shifts, especially in comparison to ZU, and certainly not worse than during SM or SS. If there is a problem of motivation with UU and RU, it's not certaintly not caused by tier shifts; past gens UU and RU players didn't have this issue and NU and below players don't have it either, despite facing harder shifts.

Now onto bad actors. Historically some Pokémon have been placed in tiers where they are unviable thanks to the effort one or multiple people. There is BW RU Metang, SM UU Ambipom, and SS NU Hitmontop. I can't talk about Metang because this was much before my time, but I can talk about the other two. Ambipom was a D rank Pokémon in NU, just like it was in RU in ORAS, because ladder used to have far less competitive teams and it was the perfect noob trap Pokémon. NU and RU players didn't care about Ambipom rising to UU, because they weren't using it. The only people who got mad at it where some UU players, but at the end of the day it really wasn't such a problem and it drop back on the next month. SS Hitmontop (and SV Braviary by extansion) is also not a bad actor; Uberfiend, the one player who spams this Pokémon on NU ladder, really uses them because he believes they are NU viable Pokémon. The real problem is not that Uberfiend has too much time to use bad Pokémon on the NU ladder, but it's that better players than Uberfiend aren't laddering anymore. UU and RU don't even have these problems and the new veto policy also ensures real bad actors (i.e. bots) won't mess up tiering.

Your frustrations seem to be guided towards the wrong thing. Usage tier shifts surely has its weaknesses nowadays where laddering is not attractive anymore, but it's not the root of all evil in lower tiers.

 

[missangelic]

I'm glad to see this thread is getting traction again. I've been wanting to make a follow-up to it, and now that we're nine months deeper into SV, both with no confirmation on when the successive format is releasing and a lack of any change to the tiering system, it seems like now is a good time to get tiering reform back in discussion.

I'm going to split my follow-up into three sections so it's easier to look through. The "past" section will go over the changes of the last 9 months and the entire stable DLC2 era, the "present" section will diagnose tiering issues and our system's current state, and the "future" section will go over some potential outcomes of choosing or not choosing to change tiering policy.

Past

My original post in this thread looked at the 3 full tier shifts from July 2024 to January 2025, and my biggest follow-up gave a look at how the April 2025 tier shifts changed things. There's been 3 full tier shifts since then, and we're due to have 3 more this year. Now that SV's DLC2 period has gone on for as long as the entire SS DLC2 period, which implemented its policy on freezing rises just 2 tier shifts before SV released. I'd like to suggest that lower tier councils should more seriously look at freezing rises, just like in SS. Ideally, this would go into effect before the April 2026 tier shifts.

In just the last 9 months of tier shifts and tiering action (April 2025 to present), these are the new vacuums that have opened up:

UU net: -4
Lost: -7

Deoxys-Speed, Heatran, Ogerpon-Cornerstone, Tornadus-Therian, Tyranitar, Weezing-Galar, Zarude
Gained: +3

Araquanid, Tinkaton, Weavile

RU net: -10
Lost: -12

Fezandipiti, Gyarados, Hippowdon, Lilligant-Hisui, Mamoswine, Oricorio-Pom-Pom, Salamence, Slither Wing, Volcanion, Weezing-Galar, Zapdos-Galar, Zoroark-Hisui
Gained: +2

Araquanid, Blissey

NU net: -1
Lost: -6

Breloom, Diancie, Gastrodon, Muk-Alola, Porygon-Z, Torterra
Gained: +5

Araquanid, Barraskewda, Chansey, Reuniclus, Rhyperior

PU net: -9
Lost: -14

Altaria, Articuno-Galar, Bellibolt, Braviary, Dudunsparce, Espeon, Frosmoth, Goodra, Grafaiai, Houndstone, Scrafty, Slowbro-Galar, Thwackey, Wo-Chien
Gained: +5

Amoonguss, Galvantula, Ninetales-Alola, Porygon2, Toxicroak

ZU net: -4
Lost: -6

Bellossom, Braviary, Grafaiai, Mismagius, Qwilfish-Hisui, Thwackey
Gained: +2

Toxicroak, Venusaur

Like I outlined and predicted in the OP, tiering changes have been weighted heavily towards losses and instability in lower tiers. Nitpicking a little bit, but UU and RU didn't gain much from Araquanid, ZU isn't poised to hang onto Toxicroak, and Blissey squeezed Chansey out of RU more than it added diversity to the tier. Lower tiers could expect to lose a net average of 6 more Pokemon each going into the end of Scarlet and Violet. That might not sound like a lot, but a lot of the Pokemon that are lost from tiers tend to be more influential.

For the big picture, here's the accumulation of net changes across lower tiers from July 2024 to January 2026:

UU 2024-2026 net: -5
Lost: -14

Hoopa-Unbound, Iron Crown, Moltres, Ogerpon-Cornerstone, Okidogi, Pecharunt, Polteageist, Quaquaval, Tornadus-Therian, Tyranitar, Ursaluna, Weezing-Galar, Zapdos, Zarude
Gained: +9

Blissey, Clodsire, Ribombee, Scizor, Serperior, Skarmory, Tinkaton, Torkoal, Weavile

RU 2024-2026 net: -11
Lost: -17

Blastoise, Cobalion, Conkeldurr, Fezandipiti, Gyarados, Hippowdon, Lilligant-Hisui, Moltres, Oricorio-Pom-Pom, Revavroom, Salamence, Slither Wing, Thundurus, Volcanion, Yanmega, Zapdos-Galar, Zoroark-Hisui
Gained: +6

Blissey, Goodra-Hisui, Indeedee, Ninetales-Alola, Ribombee, Torkoal

NU 2024-2026 net: -16
Lost: -25

Cetitan, Cloyster, Cresselia, Deoxys-Defense, Diancie, Feraligatr, Gallade, Gastrodon, Iron Thorns, Krookodile, Lucario, Lycanroc-Dusk, Magnezone, Mienshao, Muk-Alola, Noivern, Oricorio-Pom-Pom, Oricorio-Sensu, Porygon-Z, Quagsire, Registeel, Slowbro, Talonflame, Torterra, Umbreon (-25)
Gained: +9

Araquanid, Barraskewda, Chansey, Cinccino, Indeedee, Ninetales-Alola, Overqwil, Reuniclus, Torkoal

PU 2024-2026 net: -25
Lost: -30

Altaria, Articuno-Galar, Bellibolt, Braviary, Bronzong, Decidueye, Dudunsparce, Duraludon, Flamigo, Gastrodon, Gligar, Goodra, Grafaiai, Heracross, Houndstone, Inteleon, Kilowattrel, Meloetta, Oricorio-Sensu, Raikou, Scrafty, Scream Tail, Scyther, Slowbro-Galar, Staraptor, Tauros-Paldea-Aqua, Thwackey, Tornadus, Toxtricity, Wo-Chien
Gained: +5

Amoonguss, Galvantula, Ninetales-Alola, Torkoal, Typhlosion-Hisui

ZU 2024-2026 net: -15
Lost: -24

Lost: Alcremie, Avalugg-Hisui, Bellossom, Bombirdier, Braviary, Bruxish, Cramorant, Decidueye-Hisui, Dudunsparce, Electrode-Hisui, Floatzel, Grafaiai, Hitmonlee, Hoopa, Mismagius, Oricorio-Sensu, Palossand, Porygon2, Qwilfish, Qwilfish-Hisui, Rhydon, Thwackey, Venomoth
Gained: +9

Brute Bonnet, Froslass, Hitmontop, Lycanroc, Minior, Rotom-Mow, Torkoal, Venusaur, Whimsicott (+9)

Sadly, a lot of the tiers have suffered even more than I'm outlining here. I counted drops that have little to no impact on a tier, so Torkoal, Ninetales-Alola, Araquanid, and other Pokemon that didn't make usage in the tiers they dropped to are actually making lower tiers look like they got off better. I'm also excluding Pokemon that dropped and ended up being banned or rising back up from this analysis even though they do have effects on usage stats and often occupy keystone spots in tiers and stats. Gen 9 DLC2 going on for a year longer than Gen 8 DLC2 did a number on the lower tiers.

Present


It's pretty clear to see that this pattern has not stopped, and it will continue to cause upheaval over the next nine month period unless there's a change to the current tiering policy.

Lower tiers have more to lose, and this is even with the buffers of BLs for higher tiers to draw from. Tyranitar's recent rise to OU risks driving more interest in Excadrill, a long-term top tier UU Pokemon that came very close to moving from UU to OU in the January 2026 shifts. Excadrill was the type of Pokemon whose potential rise helped mobilize the Sword and Shield tiering policy on freezing rises in the first place. If anything justifies implementing a freeze for the sake of stability, it really should be staples like UU Excadrill. Considering UU is the tier least impacted by the tiering vacuum, it should also be clear that freezing rises would be a stabilizing avenue for all the other lower tiers.

How many more tier shifts need to happen where lower tiers get their staples taken? Do we need to keep going until every RU Hippowdon or PU Goodra gets snapped up? How many more times do we need to see Scizor, Slowbro-Galar, or Brute Bonnet play jumprope with the tier cutoffs? It's tiring seeing two of RU, NU, PU, and ZU have to go through these painful cycles every three months. There's the rises that upend a tier, contentious quickban slates that were already attempting to balance between tournament schedules and playerbase opinions (forget about surveying regularly outside of OU), suspects in the period after quickbans, and then the dread of projected rises upsetting lower tiers more.

Multiple users have already spoken up about how this affects things like motivation, tournament and forum interest, and site work, and this is already a difficult thing to be open about because there's stigma surrounding discussion of things like burnout and demotivation, especially in competitive settings. This is compounded on the existing issues that current gen tiering has, but we don't have to choose make it harder on ourselves.

Right now, SV is also in a more unstable spot tiering-wise than in SS. There were only 5 tier shifts in SS between the first 3-month usage tier shifts (April 2021) and the last tier shifts with unfrozen rises (April 2022), while SV has had 7 (from July 2024 to January 2026) and counting with no freezing forecasted. Unless something changes, the vacuum is only going to grow even worse than it already is.

Future


Scarlet and Violet and its DLC2 era is going to be actively tiered for longer than any other recent format, and we've seen just how much of an effect that 9 months or 3 tier shifts can have on the whole of lower tiers. Things are not looking like they are going to get better without some kind of intervention in the tiering system.

The generation stretching out means that it's also having a longer period of lower ladder activity and lower ladder quality, which is relevant to tiering. If it's a concern that ladder quality is declining in the gen to the point that usage is no longer a good or accurate tool for rising Pokemon from lower tiers, then the response should be to change tiering policy to account for that. I know others in this thread have gone into topics like bots and "bad actors". Even though I support reforming those aspects of the tiering system, neither of those avenues address the subject of this thread, which is that rises are happening with greater frequency, regardless of Braviary going from ZU to NU.

Right now, the way that tiering is set up is poised to make the end of SV unnecessarily extra challenging for tiering councils, playerbases, and site creators who support lower tiers. Putting off dealing with SV's tiering issues does a disservice to lower tiers, especially if they're having to look into tiering action after the Generation ends (looking at both of you, SS PU and ZU, and they could have been even worse with rises in the equation). The way that tiering is done should serve lower tiers, not the other way around.

In my last post, I suggested that rises and drops could be decoupled for current gen tiering, but tiering in SV lower tiers is reaching a point that I think it's better just to implement last gen's freeze policy than to come up with a better system for tiering on the spot. If we end up seeing some kind of new format release before the end of the year (already making SV 4 years old and longer-lived than any other format), then freezing rises is going to give lower tiers their best opportunity to stabilize before activity and interest decline even further.

If nothing is done, then you can expect to see the same pattern of destabilizing rises go on. Scizor or Blissey or something else can keep threatening to go back to OU, UU could potentially give up Excadrill and Hydrapple, and since there's about a net loss of 5 Pokemon per tier that can be expected, these guesses might not even cover what actually happens. NU, PU, and ZU can keep looking forward to tier shifts where top tiers leave, quickban slates, and constant moaning about suspect tests.

Tl;dr: Freeze rises from SV lower tiers, look for more ways to reform usage-based tiering, and hope that February's stats aren't dire.

 

[LBN]

(This is going to be a lower-effort post since I work a double today and I'm tired)
I'm going to throw my hat into the ring here as well. In a matter of 8 hours since the last post (as of writing this, im a procrastinating twat), we've learned what the projected shifts are and.. oh boy. Let me just list off some particular offenders here just in general.

UU losing Excadrill; Top 1 mon in usage and critical hazard removal.
UU Keeping Azumarill; A man that has been in C rank since February of last year has not been even projected to drop once.
RU Losing Talonflame; a mon that is not on UU's VR whatsoever nor on any samples, while also being RU's most used removal and 3rd most used mon overall
RU Keeping Forretress; a mon that has hugged D rank since November 2024 and is holding 12% usage at 15th overall.
NU Keeping Braviary; Pokemon used by literally 1 person who ladders alot. D ranked overall I think this one speaks for itself.
ZU Losing Snorlax, Mesprit and Venusaur; ZU has two S tiers and its set to lose both, and Snorlax is the best special sponge in the tier by a mile and losing it would have catastrophic damages.
NDUU Ladder In General; God where do I even begin? Last shifts saw 1 man ladder with mono water and rise 5 water types out of NDRU, and not a single one of them landed outside D tier. And now it's gonna be six! Cloyster at 8% usage baby! More than Aegislash by the way! Kill me!

For OU tiers, usage based tiering works great! But for the lower tiers, pokemon that are, strictly speaking, profusely dogshit, do not drop and mons that are dogshit, like mesprit in SV NU when Uxie is just Mesprit deluxe edition (who is ALSO projected to rise), rise for no reason due to low game count. I don't necessarily agree with the idea of a full-on change to rises' percent req, but I do agree that something can and really should be done to make improvements so tiers aren't losing out on pokemon that frankly have no business rising to begin with. I'm not talking like, Snorlax because that pokemon is actually good in PU. I'm talkin Braviary cases or the entirety of the NDUU ladder yoinking meme at best picks every 3 months on a roulette wheel.

 

[Sputnik]

I'm speaking from the perspective of the NDUU situation that was mentioned above, as that is the meta that I am most familiar with.

While not a perfect solution to the issues that have been outlined above in this thread, I do believe that some form of restriction on one singular user causing a Pokemon to rise would be beneficial, especially for much smaller ladders like NDUU. NDRU lost the vast majority of its good Water-types because of a singular user spamming a Mono-Water team on the NDUU ladder, and this all happened as a major team tournament (NDCL) was getting started, throwing the metagame into chaos in like Week Two of the tournament.

I am unsure if it is possible for this to be implemented/tracked on the simulator side of things, but I would propose some sort of restriction on how many users must use a Pokemon before it is considered for a rise. This would likely be proportional based off of the size of the ladder; maybe a certain percentage threshold of the user base must use it first. I don't think the threshold should be very high, to be clear; if a few people consider something good, and are getting the ladder stats to prove it, then I don't want their opinions/results to be discounted. But if its literally just one or two users spamming a team that they like and screwing over an entire metagame below it then I think some sort of restriction should be in place, especially for the benefit of smaller ladder communities like the NDUU one.

 

[R8]

I am unsure if it is possible for this to be implemented/tracked on the simulator side of things, but I would propose some sort of restriction on how many users must use a Pokemon before it is considered for a rise. This would likely be proportional based off of the size of the ladder; maybe a certain percentage threshold of the user base must use it first. I don't think the threshold should be very high, to be clear; if a few people consider something good, and are getting the ladder stats to prove it, then I don't want their opinions/results to be discounted. But if its literally just one or two users spamming a team that they like and screwing over an entire metagame below it then I think some sort of restriction should be in place, especially for the benefit of smaller ladder communities like the NDUU one.

I feel like this is the right idea, although there might be other possible ways to execute it. Teammates statistics are tracked (https://www.smogon.com/stats/2026-01/moveset/ for ex), and in some instances you can even recognise ladder teams in them. If the variance of usage among the 5 most common teammates is low, and the difference of usage between the 5th and 6th most used teammates is high, it may strongly suggest the pokemon was just part of a spammed team, and this comes with the benefit of catching alts or bots (that use alts).

This might come with the drawback of false positives though (popular teams, natural instances of low variance in centralised tiers or specific teams), but i believe those might be avoidable if the maths are done right, as we can compute what rises / drops would have happened in the past with this system to see if it works.

This might seem wonky but i'd argue perhaps part of the issue here is trying to work with weighted usage alone + a fixed arbitrary threshold instead of a combination of statistics aiming to make shifts more "healthy" for lower tiers (if a consensus is reached on what makes shifts "good" or "bad")

 

[Elec-ant1234]

Am I sorry for reviving this thread after it's already been shocked by the defibrillator twice before? Hell no I'm passionate about this Pokemon shit, get ready to die behind it
And ready to die I am, because the 2nd month of usage has dropped, and it's getting to the point where I am heavily disillusioned with the tiering system as a whole, but mostly the main issue I have is with UU; particularly in the fact that it's pretty much guaranteed and mathematically improbable to fail, that Talonflame is going to rise from RU to UU.

We have also received news that Pokemon Winds and Waves is releasing new year, and with that knowledge, and with general anger over the trends of too many rises from RU to UU, that I request that we freeze rises for the rest of the generation.

Basically my gripe is thus: UU keeps stealing important defensive mons that have been in the tier for AGES. Last time it was Hippowdon, which completely broke the tier and started making bullshit way harder to deal with. Hippowdon had been in the tier for over a year, and was 100% a consistent, important cornerstone of the tier, and yet it was stolen from RU by UU and it's looking like it's not going to drop at all. Certain mons like Kleavor suddenly became 10x stronger overnight, and in general teams and team structures that had been working perfectly fine beforehand suddenly became worse without one of the best physical walls in the tier gone. This isn't even accounting for stuff like Slither Wing (used to be a goated glue mon for balance teams), Fezendipiti (also used to be a goated glue mon for BO and Balance), and Geezing (rose to OU, but also used to be a goated glue mon; to the point of being top 5 used consistently for the year or so it was in the tier)
And now it's looking like it's going to be the same deal again; with Talonflame now being the target of UU's wrath. Talonflame is currently is a top 3 used mon, and last month was a top 1 used mon for its amazing defensive capabilities into the tier, and for the ability to remove hazards. Basically, it's used everywhere and a lot of teams rely on it to handle mons like Bisharp, Mimikyu, and other physical attackers that hate being burned by Flame Body, and the same teams rely on it to remove hazards in the tier with very, VERY weak hazard removal overall (frankly it's the best hazard removal, cyclizar for all it's traits is not the best hazard remover). To lose Talonflame would genuinely be disastrous, like we would have to ban SO much and the tier would become SO much worse to the point of being unplayable in terms of any archetypes other than HO. Like I cannot stress just how important Talonflame is to the structure of the tier. Talon's sheer presence nerfs physical attackers by forcing them to run tools to beat it / deal with it, which obviously makes them worse into the rest of the tier. Without Talonflame nerfing those physical attackers, they would run wild and just do whatever they want. When Talonflame leaves, we're left with Tera Ghost Mimikyu and Tera Fairy Blast Bisharp farming the tier with zero counterplay, and with pretty much zero viable hazard removal because again, Cyclizar is OK at best nowadays.
The other thing this contributes to is a further polarization of the tier's archetypes, in a tier that already heavily favors stall and HO (which is because of previous tier shifts!), Talon leaving means that these archetypes will get pushed to genuinely ridiculous degrees.

And you want to know the worst part? This is ONLY happening because of a stall team being popular on the UU ladder. To add insult to injury, Talonflame isn't even ranked on UU's VR. This isn't some "Talonflame is rising, and so it's strong enough to be in UU and thusly should be in the tier" or some bullshit like that, it's literally just a ladder trend that popped up recently, so recently that Talonflame hasn't even been considered yet in any kind of VR update, a VR that is being determined by the best players of UU. This kinda goes into the realm of a rant on usage based tiering, but like this far into the generation, this close to the next generation, why is this still happening? In the era that's supposed to be "stable", with "3 months between shifts", why are the tiers that we've been playing for so long still being upheaved and destabilized?
I wish I could add more to say, but it's really just kinda as simple as: UU is taking important defensive mons from RU and destabilizing the tier, and if rises aren't frozen by next month, then the tier as we've known it, the tier that some of us have been playing for years, will be changed to the point of being completely unrecognizable, and completely ruin our enjoyment of the game. Plus this whole debacle is happening IN THE MIDDLE OF RUPL. IF THIS MON LEAVES THEN WE PLAY LIKE 3 WEEKS OF BULLSHIT. THIS AIN'T WHAT ANYONE SIGNED UP TO PLAY. Like this is THE biggest team tour in RU, and we're having half of the games played per week going into the shitter. This is like if Great Tusk left during week 3 of SCL, if Corviknight or Clodsire or some other important defensive mon was suddenly wrenched from UU in the middle of UUPL. People would obviously riot right? That's basically whats going to happen to RU, and it's painful but the only way that anything can change our fate is if someone else cares.

If no one is going to decouple the rise threshold from the drop threshold, then this is the only thing that RU as a tier can do to protect the tier's stability, so before you get on your high horse, and try to pull any sort of "it's tradition" or "it's too early" card, just find it in your heart for a second to have some empathy for the people who have their joy directly impacted by these things. It's not too early, because given the trend of mons Rising from UU and not Dropping at all, it's likely that we never get Talonflame back, so this is the time for action. This is when we have to make a decision. Not later. Not next year, not even after any tour or anything finishes. It's gotta happen this month, so think about it. Freeze Rises for the rest of the generation.

 

[BigFatMantis]

At this point any change like this to official tiering should not really be considered for this gen. Think it’s fair to talk about how we want to do it for Gen 10 though. I will say that simply changing the threshold of drops from rises does not ultimately solve the issue most people have with usage based tiering, and it’s quite a possible a bigger rework is needed if people do indeed want to change the way we tier our tiers.

 

[Elec-ant1234]

At this point any change like this to official tiering should not really be considered for this gen. Think it’s fair to talk about how we want to do it for Gen 10 though. I will say that simply changing the threshold of drops from rises does not ultimately solve the issue most people have with usage based tiering, and it’s quite a possible a bigger rework is needed if people do indeed want to change the way we tier our tiers.

This wouldn't really be anything new, like, we did this last generation. They made the decision that no more mons would rise until the end of the generation, which is what I'm advocating for to happen to Gen 9. I know it's realistically going to happen eventually, but I'm asking for the health of RU that this freeze be implemented by the end of the week. Any type of rework or anything would be cool to happen, but again I'm asking just for Rises to be frozen until the end of the gen.

 

[hex]

WIth Gen 10 slated to release in 2027 (it was not specified whether it would be early 2027 or late) it's probably time that someone more privy to tiering such as a Super Moderator or Tiering Admin lets us know there's some work going on, or maybe none at all and they're still thinking how to go about things. If Smogon tiering were to change I would not expect it to be a quick nor easy process, but I do think we need to start talking about freezing low tiers. In the case of RU it's been pretty talked through that specific actors spamming a mon could(?) be filtered through so I would hope that tiering admins/kris/marty could be approached and see if there's something they can do about Talonflame.

At first I felt like there weren't any stakes in this thread for me because I'm going to play my main tier (PU) regardless of the state of the tier. But missangelic's post put this into a much broader perspective for me which made me realize low tiers really do just get shafted permanently.

From all the shifts, excluding bans we've lost plenty of meta staples. Bronzong + Copperajah (it wasn't listed here but it was not banned from PU so I assume it was accidentally unlisted) were the best Steels in the tier by far. Altaria, Belli, Gastro, Gligar, Goodra, Houndstone, Kilowattrel, Scream Tail, Wo-Chien were all great glue mons in the tier and losing them was pretty frustrating each shift. Losing our defensive glue mons was already a bummer, but then we lost even speed control in the form of Kilo + Scream (Scream being a more niche pick I suppose). Houndstone was already quite niche in PU so it begs the question of what purpose does usage-based tiering serve if a mon that isn't even that good in PU is rising to NU where it filled a completely different niche since obviously usage =/= viability. We also recently lost Espeon, one of our better forms of hazard control and are now stuck with basically 3 forms of removal and that's it. 2 Spinners (Avalugg isn't the most splashable) and 1 Defogger who is struggling to find his place in our current metagame but certainly not unusable. The quality of drops haven't even been good either. It wouldn't be an issue if the drops were of equal quality but that's obviously not the case for most/all tiers. Typhlosion-H has been whatever / bad for a long time, Torkoal is unusable, Galv is the epitome of midburger, Alolatales and Amoonguss are fine though. So we've exchanged basically an entire tier for 2 usable mons.

I purposely left out mons that were banned (obviously) or teetering a suspect anyway so those rises materially didn't mean much besides the fact that it took away the process of giving us a vote but meh high chances those mons were banned anyway. I specifically didn't mention Glowbro because he's bounced between PU and NU a couple of times now, and every time he drops to PU he basically warps the tier around himself and it's really lame to deal with. He is basically the prime reason as to why freezing tiers at this point is probably necessary, but I don't want to speak in such absolutes so disclaimer that this is obviously just my opinion.

Bouff sent a projected shifts thing in a shared server and:

If PU loses Uxie and Arcanine, those are 2 insanely good glue mons that we're losing again. We have access to very limited steels (the viable ones being and , who isn't very good) so we're having to use Fires like Arcanine as Fairy-resists. There's been a lot of mons right now that make PU to be quite the tumultuous tier and we probably require 1-2 suspects before PUPL to get the tier moving in a better direction. If Arcanine rises that means Florges, an already lowkey borderline mon is going to become even better. Then maybe we'll need 3 suspects. Maybe the original mons we wanted/needed to suspect are going to get swept under the rug because Florges will become too oppressive, etc. Not to mention, PU would be taking a good chunk of good mons from ZU (one of the projected rises being an S tier and another an A+ tier on their VR).

I'm not sure how you would approach tiering on Smogon otherwise if it's not usage tho. A few rounds of usage stats in a new gen/dlc is probably necessary to settle tiers, then freezing them soon after seems to me like a relatively easy and efficient way to go about it. Tiers get settled (extremely arbitrary metric ik) and then once that happens just freeze rises. Drops are important to bring life into a meta which is why competitive games like League / Overwatch / etc. stay alive is because meta-games are ever-changing which keeps engagement. Tiers can still run into dead patches where they feel and look the same which could be a cause for concern but idk the rate at which usage based tiering changes tiers is too extreme.

All of this is to say I think tiers would benefit from rises being frozen especially with the delayed release of Gen 10. In SS people moved on quickly to SV because they were finally ready to play the new generation after like 3 years which left tiers in not ideal states and with the next game coming out later than usual we have time to make sure our tiers won't deteriorate before the next gen as I think SV burnout is starting to hit a lot of people.

 

[Karxrida]

Plus this whole debacle is happening IN THE MIDDLE OF RUPL. IF THIS MON LEAVES THEN WE PLAY LIKE 3 WEEKS OF BULLSHIT. THIS AIN'T WHAT ANYONE SIGNED UP TO PLAY.

Tournaments should probably lock in their legality list when announced/started/idk to prevent this kind of situation. It obviously won't fix all the problems brought up here, but should at least keep these lower tier tournaments playable irrespective of what solution we go with (or don't) in the future.

 

[Marty]

Get in line, people!

I don't think knowing a Gen 10 release date matters at all, Champions releasing on mobile platforms within 3-6 months is going to tank whatever remaining interest there is in SV, and probably as soon as next month because all focus is going to be on the Switch 2 version to figure out how the game works.

 

[shnowshner]

I think this thread has long overstayed its welcome. You cannot fully remove unwanted shifts without removing rises from the picture, end of story. We either need to reform how tiering is done or accept that our system has drawbacks like any other would. Trying to tack on policy changes to keep usage-based tiering as it is while giving more autonomy to tiers will invariably overcomplicate tiering matters, and devalues the goal of such tiering as "objective," which brings into question why we're taking all these extra steps and compiling massive datasheets if the council or whoever can decide what goes or not regardless of data.

I'm going to outline what I find to be the easiest way to remove rises and solve the issue this thread initially set out, but ultimately such a proposal is only valuable if this is something the site even wants to entertain.



The biggest issue usage-based tiers has is that the higher you go up the tiering rungs the less the system really matters. Nothing ever gets removed from OU without a council vote, so being declared OU is functionally a fancy way of being on the UU banlist. If some niche mon suddenly becomes popular and rises to OU, what does that actually accomplish for the makeup of the tier? It was just as selectable on the builder before as it is now. The only changes relate to that Pokemon's status and visibility for players who don't follow the scene.

The proposal is that tiers should all work like OU. If a Pokemon is an issue, it should be banned or suspected. If it stops being viable and loses popularity, it should fall down to the tier below. Once there, that Pokemon should be considered less as a part of said tier, but rather not a part of the tiers below.

What does all this look like then? Ideally we want to have the tiering status of a Pokemon be determined by objective metrics, but we also don't want the destabilizing and frustrating effects of rises, but then there are people wary of removing rises as a function. It seems a main argument for keeping rises is that they are an intrinsic part of usage-based tiering, and their removal would delegitimize the system, i.e. "how can a Pokemon be UU if it's receiving OU-level usage?" I find this to be a poor argument. As far as tiering is concerned, we do not need rises to generate tiers, we only need drops. Tiers are still being formed and influenced as a result of usage, it's just that increases in usage would no longer have any effect. A more pressing problem that question highlights, however, is that a Pokemon which is labeled as UU could end up a top pick in OU, and this aspect not being reflected in its tiering status would be unintuitive for new players and misrepresent the tier.

The simplest change I can fathom is making drops permanent, and rises are only "virtual" for a given tier. If an OU mon falls to UU, it can't physically rise back to OU without getting banned from UU as a result of tiering action. So what happens if said Pokemon crosses the OU threshold again? That Pokemon will be given a special distinction as being part of OU in spite of its placement below OU - you can denote this by using paratheses, (OU), which is something we already do for edgecases like Mega Garchomp in SM.

The best implementation would be to dynamically show a Pokemon within whatever tier it has enough usage for when you are building in that tier. For example, when making an OU team, the list of OU Pokemon includes the lower-tier Pokemon with OU-level usage denoted as (OU), while having those same Pokemon show up in their home tiers elsewhere. So a Pokemon that's all the way down in PU, but managed to eek out enough UU play to rise, will show up as (UU) in UU, and PU everywhere else (thus excluding it from appearing in the list of Pokemon in OU, RU, NU, etc).

I've made a visual mockup to explain this in practice:

Spoiler

Ftr you don't need to use parentheses, they are already used in a number of other ways such as marking a mon as Untiered. Anything from [brackets] or {braces} would do.

What's great about this framework is it already exists in some fashion, from what I can tell. Doubles OU and National Dex have their own unique tiering brackets on the builder. Same goes for Little Cup, which is always visible but occasionally has mons in the usage-based tiers, such as with Gen 8 where Ferroseed is tiered as PU while still being allowed in LC. This change would benefit a lot of other tiers as well. Ubers frequently has a number of Pokemon from OU and below which fit well into the metagame, but do not show up when building a team for Ubers since they aren't a part of Ubers as a banlist. What I am suggesting is different from what's going on in those examples, but I do hope it's not a technical nightmare to introduce on the site.

Now this is not a perfect solution to the problem. You could run into a situation where a Pokemon in NU is reasonably fine but somehow breaking RU in half; can you ban a lower tier Pokemon from a higher tier? I don't have a good answer for that. Additionally, to some, there is no problem at all: the way usage-based tiering causes metagames to shift is actually a selling point, providing a new version of a tier every couple months that encourages flexibility in building habits and drives development, whilst potentially removing problem Pokemon in a natural way. But discourse and reactions in this thread seems mostly antagonistic towards the effect of rises, and I personally believe that tiers don't need outside influence to generate interest and change, that's what their community is for, so that aspect feels rather moot.

If this proposal isn't deemed as appropriate to handle the problem then I'm honestly unsure what can even be done while allowing usage-based tiering to work as desired.

 

[Tuthur]

I'm surprised by the amount of support towards freezing rises. So here is my attempt at keeping our system for the reminder of the generation.

First of all, I've to reiterate the feeling I had in my original post that nothing has changed compared to how shifts impacted tiers compared to the past gens. The above posts all fail to address what has changed compared to previous gens, only dramatically highlighting the impact of the loss of their favorite Fire-type. Don't you all worry, your tier will adapt like tiers always do, Talonflame was also the premier removal in NU and main check to a lot of physical threats, before it rose to RU one year and half ago. PU hasn't had a suspect test in a while, so affirming that Arcanine leaving would cause 3 suspect tests to happen before PUPL is quite surprising and even if it happens to be true, it would average to 1 suspect test a month which is not crazy. Don't take I bad, but if you hate having to adapt "constantly" to tier shifts, you probably shouldn't be playing current gen lower tiers; you've a lot to pick from between 99% of Old Gen tiers, OU, Ubers, LC, Monotype, 1v1, NFE, Draft, DOU, most OMs, etc...

Assuming WW comes out on November 2027 and Champions doesn't impact our tiering system, there are still almost 2 years of SV and 6 shifts remaining (assuming last one doesn't happen because of freeze during 6 last months). A lot can change in a tier, even without rises, and it would inevitably lead to some Pokémon being top tiers in multiple lower tiers akin to what we can see in some old gens like DPP Clefable or SM Torterra. If Talonflame becomes a top threat in UU during those 19 months, RU won't really be RU anymore as it features a Pokémon that is clearly UU. That's ok with old gens, since it would be a tiering nightmare to constantly balance so many tiers, and since current gen should always be the priority in lower tiers. However, it really isn't a gargantuan task for your current gen tier which is getting all the attention in the official circuit and the ribbon circuit. I know some people are doubtful of Talonflame being viable in UU, so I would like to illustrate my point with an example from the SM era. Serperior had been UU for basically the whole gen and was ranked as C+ on the VR and considered to be quite bad as explained by Finchinator. However it got really popular following a RMT and rose to OU in July 2018. At the end of the gen, it was ranked in A- and nowadays it's ranked in A+. This is not some edge case like Clefable being slept on for years in DPP or Torterra happening to fall from NU to ZU in the last shift and never getting the chance to rise to PU where it was immediatly recknognized as an amazing Pokémon; this is just players figuring out the metagame better. While every Pokémon rising to an above tier isn't the next Serperior, some certainly are and SV would look like a silly gen where there are multiple Clefable / Torterra like oddities in every tier if tiers are frozen in a near future.

The problem is not rises, it's the ladder. It's no secret that ladder has been dropping in popularity for the past years, only getting more tractions with new games releases. Adding medals didn't change anything and with the way the community has turned, I really struggle to see a way for ladder to become as attractive as it used to be. Smogon has grown into a tournament community, where are there are at least a dozen team tournaments running constantly and every tier has its own circuit running individual tournaments continuously. Tournaments have been portrayed as the highest level of play, are at the center of social interactions in every subcommunity, and award the most rewards (custom avatars, ribbons, trophies, etc). There is most likely no going back without entshitifying our tournaments; which are just too attractive in comparison to ladder. There have been numerous threads over the years asking to shift the suspect format from ladder to tournaments; but with how things are going, the whole tiering system needs to be reformed to account for the cultural shifts that has operated from ladder to tournaments.

tldr; dont freeze SV tiers early, and reform tiering for WW

 

[ishtar]

I'm chiming in here after months of posting in this thread and seeing discussions brewing to ask tiering leaders about the plan to change the tiering system in WW. I understand that this is very preemptive still with SV still existing for quite a while, but me and other leaders put in a lot of work (before I stepped down from PUTL) to improve on the system. This improved system was never discussed publicly and after I stepped down the discussion was taken over by another TL who ended up getting perma'd. I'd hope that meaningful progress made in good faith by many of us didn't get totally lost in these changes.

Months after this discussion, the conversation of people wanting changes would randomly pop up, and I always had to give the answer: "stuff was being worked on behind the scenes", which was true while I was TL and allegedly after too. I feel like the common user has been left in the dark about this and seeing so many posts still looking for solutions while there was already a framework in place in regards to these changes seems bad. For that reason I'm asking whoever runs this nowadays if we can please get an update on my thread and the changes coming to tiering come WW, and to also consider a lot of the points here in regards to stopping individual account's influence to the process.

Even just knowing that these changes are actually still coming, even if too vague for my liking, would serve of great help to anyone wanting change in this thread I'm sure!

 

[quziel]

1) Ladder doesn't really matter as much as it used to, so there's less good games happening on ladder.
2) Usage stats require a large number of high-elo games to really function.
3) Usage stats offer smogon "legitimacy" as they cannot be argued with. NU leadership deciding that Noivern is NU is a lot easier for a random to argue against than Noivern dropping below 4.5% usage and becoming NU that way.
4) End of gen lower tier ladders are particularly horrible, especially as the new gen approaches.
5) End of gen lower tier ladders determine the makeup of the tier for any post-gen team tournaments, making end of gen usage stats extremely important to get right.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Basically get all the councils of all the lower tiers together to hash out what their end of gen "tier makeup" should be. I contributed to freezing usage last gen, and in retrospect it was a mistake; we had mons sticking around that really really should have risen, and made the tiers look a lot goofier than they used to. The end of gen makeup of a tier is really important to get right, and having council be allowed to force drop Noivern to NU at the end of gen is both something nobody really cares about, and could help ensure that old-gens are more playable. Involve a tiering admin somewhere so you don't get nonsense happening.

In the future we need to get better statistics involved in the usage stats. We need to down-weight high game players, we need to incorporate tournament usage stats somehow, we probably need to figure out how to deal with low-game ladders.

some ideas on that front

Downweighting Players:
Weight each player's games so that only up to 1,000 effective games per user count. Downside is that this is pretty trivially gamed by just playing on alts. Also this requires storing the individual users a game is played under in usage stats. I suppose you could change what usage "means", eg what percentage of unique team-comps does this mon appear in, though that's equally easy to game.

Low-Game Ladders: Rather than using a variable 1630/1760/etc cutoff, count the X top games of each format. This means we get more data for ladders that are in truly dire states, although that data is not guaranteed to really be that good. I don't have a great number here, but it in theory is pretty trivial to implement, and would at least help the data issue.

Tournament stats: Use some kinda weighting function between tournament usage based on recency and ladder stats. Tours typically have more centered usage, and are very vulnerable to indvidual player trends, but the data there is in theory a lot more reliable. Still, there's a relationship between tour and ladder usage, even if a lot of it is ladder catching up to tours a month or three after them. This is realistically the future here, and getting the statistical framework ironed out is probably quite important.

------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm using Noivern and NU as an example for completely arbitrary reasons, and don't have any reason to want this to happen, its just nice alliteration.

 

[LORD SAGIS]

View attachment 813710
Get in line, people!

I don't think knowing a Gen 10 release date matters at all, Champions releasing on mobile platforms within 3-6 months is going to tank whatever remaining interest there is in SV, and probably as soon as next month because all focus is going to be on the Switch 2 version to figure out how the game works.

If you are going to freeze shifts then can a exception be made for OU? It feels wrong to rob Tealpon from its OU spot when its been a constant this SCL/SPL. The OU ladder surely still has enough activity to justify this and shes crossed the threshold both times since the new year.

I agree with Tuthur btw.

 

[Canard]

If you are going to freeze shifts then can a exception be made for OU? It feels wrong to rob Tealpon from its OU spot when its been a constant this SCL/SPL. The OU ladder surely still has enough activity to justify this and shes crossed the threshold both times since the new year.

I agree with Tuthur btw.

why would we do an exception to purposefully remove a mon from another tier (uu) (reminder mons that rise are lost from their original tier) so it looks pretty in the builder

 

[LORD SAGIS]

why would we do an exception to purposefully remove a mon from another tier (uu) (reminder mons that rise are lost from their original tier) so it looks pretty in the builder

I explained why. The OU ladder is the popular (non-randbats) ladder and still gets plenty of activity. This means its not affected by the issues stated above.

Tiering should be about accurately showcasing whats good in a format. If you don't want something to rise because it effects another tier then you're not tiering anymore.

 

[Canard]

I explained why. The OU ladder is the popular (non-randbats) ladder and still gets plenty of activity. This means its not affected by the issues stated above.

Tiering should be about accurately showcasing whats good in a format. If you don't want something to rise because it affects another tier then you're not tiering anymore.

in case you haven't read the thread, the problem highlighted is that mons rising messes up tiers too much (this having happened historically doesn't make it better, just because it was bad before doesn't make it okay that it's bad now), the whole thread was about the vaccums created by a tier losing a mon and taking others to compensate in a constant loop and destroying the health of multiple metas over literally nothing

also if you defend the system being as rigid as it is so it has "legitimacy" you should probably not argue for exceptions for purely cosmetic changes, you will be able to use grasspon just fine in OU no one is taking it from you dw, after all you play the only tier not affected by shifts

there is also no real reason why tiering should be rigid like that, your only reason for rises to ruin the tier they originated from is "because it has to be this way" "because it has always been this way", you want exceptions in your favor over things that literally change nothing but refuse categorically to have a system, let alone exceptions, that guarantees the health of lower tiers constantly losing key pieces (we could go back to ru losing slither gapdos fez hippo etc) because you don't really play any other tier nor care about how they're doing you just want your mon to look pretty in the OU builder