For those of you who saw my post joking about nominating Phione for B- before it got deleted (I was making fun of all the random lower tier nominations), dont take it the wrong way. I actually believe that we should rank many lower tier mons and not just remove everything that "isnt the greatest" from the list altogether. I mean, this is the viability ranking thread, right? So anything and everything that is viable and has a decent niche should be ranked. That's why we have divisions such as S, A, B etc. to show what is better. To remove many of the pokemon in the lower ranks just because they arent top threats is stupid and not the point of this thread. As long as these pokemon have some certain niche that would make them useful on a certain team is reason enough to rank them. Take Manatine for example. Sure, it might be outclassed for the most part by Skarmory or the Lati@s. However, Manatine has a few perks over them. For one, it can wall all common Keldeo sets and can even switch into pretty much every common move. The Lati@s both get beat by specs Icy Wind which is standard for Keldeo. Secondly, Manatine has Scald and Defog, which means that it can scare many hazard setters out (Hippowdon, Tyranitar, Heatran, both Landorus's, Garchomp, Terrakion, Mamoswine, etc.) besides Ferrothorn and proceed to defog. Finally, it doesnt lose to the Zard Y, Keldeo, Bisharp cores as it walls the first two and isnt pursuit trapped by Bisharp (if your team happens to struggle with this). In general, most teams are better off going with one of the Lati@s or Skarmory. However, Manatine has its uses over them for some teams which makes it perfectly viable and thus deserving of a rank. Notice how Manatine is ranked C- while the other three are A, A, and A- respectively. That means the viablity ranking thread shows that Manatine is viable (which is true), but you are usually better off using the pokemon I mentioned before as your defogger (which is also true). When taking this all into account, we probably have to rank Donphan and possibly others in the future somewhere as they do have a decent niche in the current metagame. I'm not going to elaborate on Donphan, but see Agent Gibbs post a page or two back for a good explanation.
Many people have recently been upset with many of the C and D rankings, some argue that they are flawed and others want to remove many of those pokemon altogether. I have already covered the latter part, but as for the first part I agree that there are some flaws. I honestly cant see how Blissey and Magnezone are in the same rank as Blissey is almost completely outclassed while Magnezone faces almost no competition and performs its role exceptionally. Rather than complain about this and the lower rankings altogether I'm simply going to nominate Blissey for D rank as it is almost completely outclassed and Magnezone for C+ rank because it is a lot more viable than anything in C rank (and probably C+ too). Another thing I find that people say is that Pokemon X is better than Pokemon Y so it should be a rank higher. For example, I could say Arcanine is generally better than Moltres as they perform similar roles but Arcanine is generally superior (i actually wouldnt object to Arcanine moving up to C but thats not the point). But does this argument really justify Arcanine moving up? Not really, as we have a lot more pokemon than ranks so some pokemon are gonna have to be in the same rank as pokemon they are slightly better than. Just because Aegislash is generally better than Landorus doesnt mean Landorus should go to A+.
Anyways, I believe that we should rank all pokemon that have a usable niche, there is a reason we have C and D ranks and we have always done this. Also rather than destroy the lower rankings and complain we should fix them, as Magnezone is clearly way more viable than Blissey.