One thing im worried about post hilli ban (which is a good riddance, tier is better off without it) is that HO will kind of be left without a popular ground resist/immune, as ever since I've joined we've lost a surprising amount from rises and bans alike (thudy 1 and 2, revavroom, yanmega, pom pom, enam, gapdos, gyarados, salamence, iron leaves all with at least some HO uses) and it's getting to a point where our options, while not terrible, are very rarely seen mons on ho, basically balloon gengar, sensu, torna and flygon, they're not the worst things ever but on that list tornadus is kind of the only one i would see myself running even if i didnt need any flying resist/immune, all the other ones are mediocre at best, so much so that i started building without ground immune, just relying on tera or winning first to deal with krook and the likes, can anything be done? Probably not really, do i feel its good to at least bring it up? Yes
There's an interesting tiering discussion going on so I would like to participate in it, starting with the state of HO post-Lilligant ban.
As a heads up, keep in mind I haven't played the tier in, like, a year.
This is a short rant, the rest of this post isn't one I promise:
HO has always been, since day 1 of SV RU, the easiest, most dominant, reliable archetype both in tours and ladder, not necessarily in usage, but most definitely in just winning. Times and times again, the broken of the month would be suspected, and you would be met with HO mains fear mongering about "The Death Of HO and Why Its Players Are Being Oppressed", just for the archetype to still be the best no contest after each and every ban, while the elitist playerbase would tell you how actually Slowbro should be banned and Blastoise/Yanmega/Revavroom meta is perfectly fine just git gud bro, while getting 6-0d by the broken of the month in tour. And here we are more than a year later with HO being on the top, and another broken HO goon being suspected (because I do believe it is broken but I have no authority as a spectator), rising the primordial fears of HO mains. So once and for all I would like for everyone to chill out: Hilligant being banned isn't targeted at anyone or any archetype in general, it's just a classic case of setup sweepers being overtuned for the tier, exacerbated by SV's Tera problem. HO is going to be perfectly fine after the ban just like the 14 previous times, I promise you.
I will say, there is something odd about elitists downplaying HO for some reason ouf of, idk, pride? like "I don't lose to a setup sweeper on preview I'm better than that, look at how I outplay it!"? It's been ongoing forever and I'm not too sure why is that. But that's a discussion for another day.
Ok, now onto the tiering philosophy part.
Any good nerf to hyper offense is a good one.
This is the part of the post that stirred the discussion, I'll just address it very quickly and say that MrAldo probably meant this for SV RU in particular - and he is correct for it.
1)
I spoke in the rucord about this earlier but I believe Canard's post has a lot more merit than meets the eye. SV and tera has brought a lot of discussion around how tiering should be done, a lot of which is brought up in the policy review forum, and i think a lot of that discussion, while being centered around OU, does have implications in the current suspect test of hlili. The thread I specifically have in mind is
this one. This post calls for what is in essence, a more pragmatic approach to tiering that has more focus on outcomes rather than process. Its a large post, worth reading no doubt, but the central point is in essence that volcarona should be freed to create less centralization around gholdengo, darkrai, and zamazenta. The rest of the thread is mostly bashing CTC's call for pragmatism, claiming that is an upheaval of the current tiering policy, of which it is, but there is also some, albeit minimal, support for it. The underlying point is that there is some sympathy for this type of approach, and what i find a great deal of reason to it.
I position myself against tiering done with impact on the tier in mind. I won't explain why again, just read the first part of my post and you'll have my opinion, for every tier, in every gen, in every suspect test. Also trust in tiering process.
When does this domino effect of bans end?
The domino effect of bans is an odd concept to bring up since it criticizes the concept of suspects and bans itself. Smogon is built on usage first, and suspects/bans on the other hand to try and have the most competitive tiers possible. Suspecting stuff outside of OU goes directly against usage-based tiering since you "manipulate" usage stats directly by banning stuff, stepping on the usage based tiering's concept, but we gotta make a choice at some point. Either say that UU and under shouldn't have bans regardless of competitiveness to have a purely usage based game, or try and make those tiers competitive by banning stuff. You can't just go half way, ban a few mons, and then say "actually that's too many bans so let's stop trying to balance the tier". We chose to adopt a suspect/ban approach, why do we need a reason to stop midway through? Out of tiering purity? We gave up on that idea from the get go! At the end of the day, we try to make a tier that as many people enjoy and find competitive as possible, and choosing not to pursue this because of "too many bans" comes out of nowhere. This mentality has caused the tiering process to go extremely slowly in RU, only re-ignited sometimes when big tournaments came around so we can suspect or quickban obvious brokens to pretend that we did something (hi Volcanion/Gyarados QB). meanwhine, it has been a very, VERY slow process, but the tier has been growing in enjoyement from the players and competitive integrity after each and every step on our way, as shown by tiering surveys, so again, why just... give up???
And you can apply this to pretty much any meta in any gen.
When does ru accept that the tier is in a good place
When it actually becomes good. Or, to be more precise: when the majority... I mean, 40% of the player base believes so.
This point isn't specifically citing hlilli as where ru draws the line, but a line is eventually going to have to be drawn.
Why do we need a line to be drawn? Genuine question.
The idea that any nerf to HO is inherently good tiering is a truly terrible one.
This is more of a general take on what we think a competitive 6v6 Smogon singles game is and, um, yea, you could argue about this forever. The fact of the matter is that HO is usually seen as a lesser skill expressive archetype due to shorter games and often one side getting stomped more than for other archetypes, among many MANY other factors. You can have your own opinion on the question, personally I do agree that HO tends to be less skill expressive but whatever. SM OU has shown that even HO mirrors can offer longer, more skill intensive games, but it is an exception, and can only really happen in established, fixed metagames (it's previous gens OUs). and even then, some tiers don't abide by this (ORAS OU HO is braindead). But to get back to the point, yes, saying that any and all HO-targeted bans without exception is short-sighted, but let's give our guy MrAldo here some leeway and assume that he did not mean that (he did, in fact, not mean it, and was talking about SV RU exclusively).
Another example is what when I called for a hawlucha unban a year ago, many claimed that it would just introduce another HO element to the tier and not contribute towards the metagame in a meaningful way. I despise this logic and I believe it to be some of the most destructive rationale for tiering.
Ok let's not bring that up again, the tier is currently struggling with a near-perfect coverage, +1/+1 threat. Let's not bring a faster, +2/+2, bulkier, better typing, perfect coverage threat, with even more options to beat its """""counters""""". People weren't against the idea of Hawlucha because HO bad, people were against it because of Hawlucha.
That being said, a competitive metagame can coexist with a metagame where offense is favored.
This is very true, but pretty much every tier already fits this description imo. Proactive play is almost always the best way to play, and balance/BO already do that. Just switching once into your regenerator mon doesn't make the archetypes any less offense based where proactive plays are reawrded, heck even Stall is at its best when playing aggressive and proactively. We shouldn't let this ideal of a offense-driven metagame prevent us from getting rid of overtuned elements for the sake of offense: It will do just fine as it has always done.
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