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For a while now I've been holding myself back from this topic as to not be too pushy and annoying, and now it is time I be pushy and annoying.
GSC RU has had 2 successful tours recently, and taking a step back from both the Kickoff tour and the Discord tour that were successfully completed, we can take a look at what it has so far in it's very short maturity date.
1. A complete list of samples that is still growing and being updated by the day.
2. A valid push for it to be included in RU forum Team Tournaments, which even though albeit at the time of writing was unsuccessful, was met with backlash from those outside of the GSC orbit and garnered some support for GSC RU.
3. An active community surrounding it with high level matchmaking available to all whom choose to converse within it.
4. A metagame that has succeeded in framing itself between UU and NU in a way where it not only infringes on neither, but develops it's own identity.
5. A metagame where there are clear and strong threats that serve as foundations to glue the metagame together, while also having a variety of smaller and more niche threats that can attach themselves to the foundation, creating not only stable but diverse gameplay.
With these 5 milestones I can't see a future where it is ignored any further. By this I mean it is time to host a GSC RU Open. It will not be part of the slam that is already underway this year obviously, but it will serve to cement RU's existence in GSC. Right now, GSC LTs have a breath of life to it. UU has seen a lot of love with the recent GSC UUPL, NU has been developing at a stable and large rate since late 2023, PU has completely turned its course and begun what I wish to be a blossoming of development, and although ZU has gone through a litany of changes it still holds a very devout player base to it, with attraction through the ZU forums as well.
I think of all times, now is the best time to consider a tournament like this. I believe RU has a high potential as a strong LT for GSC, and has accomplished a lot in it's very short duration thus far. I think now is the best time that GSC recognizes this metagame and chooses to host an Open in it's name, of course after the Slam goes through a few more rounds.
I'm open to discussion about this and will be on here and Discord to discuss.
Completely agree with this. Despite me having a huge bias as an RU mainer, obviously, I feel like this is the right time to ask this even though it's sort of a last minute type of request.
The main reason that makes me want GSC RU to be pushed further although I'm not much of a player is the recent non-inclusion in RUGL. I haven't been vocal about it at all, but it made me really confused and disappointed as to why the tier's inclusion was not even given a chance to be discussed, whereas the last two editions literally had it. (for context: RUGL is the "farmer league" edition of RUPL. Each year we discuss the format and all but for some reason there was no format discussion opened this year, which closed the door to GSC without even being able to discuss whether or not it should be included. There's 99% chance that this thread exists because of that.)
Even though it may not count for the Slam, I dont think it would hurt to have an Open (would we even call that an Open though?). The tier is growing, but with its rejection from RUGL I'm a bit scared that it slowly kills the general interest for it.
It was mentioned with the "5 milestones" thing, but the GSC RU council is very serious and passionate about their tier. I mean, it's normal lmao, but what I'm saying is that starting a new metagame and putting such a fast team work in it to the point that it's likely to be more updated and complete than some other RU old gens (:skull:) in just 5 months (yes, the tier is literally 5 months old lmao) is some type of hustle that needs to be rewarded sooner or later imo. The metagame is pretty fun and diverse and I'm thinking that, if we give it another solo tournament with the actual GSC community pushing it (and not just us innocently asking RUers to play different gens), this might really help getting the legitimacy it needs to stop being ignored in future RU tournaments, and being considered in the GSC ones.
The fact that you guys could even manage to have a goddamn GSC UUPL blew my mind. I dont know much about the GSC community but the hope it gives me is incredible, as in this doesnt really make me think that people won't be interested in playing such a new and unofficial metagame as GSC RU if they were given the chance to.
I don't know if this will be considered whatsoever but I'm obviously completely supporting the idea of an RU Open here. Thanks for reading :]
You are welcome to host the mentioned tournament as an unofficial one and any future GSC RU tournaments in this forum, provided that you consult the mod team first. However, we don't want to give you false hope. We don't foresee including GSC RU in our "official" tournaments, such as GSC Slam or GSCPL. In our view, GSC RU falls into the "other tiers" category, similar to GSC UUBL. RarelyUsed as a tier was introduced in generation 5 to address the continuous addition of Pokemon. Personally, I'm not sure why it was added between UU and NU, but doing so makes creating an RU tier for older generations difficult. Tiers like PU and ZU had it much easier because they could start at the bottom of the higher tier and develop their own metagame. We don't agree that GSC RU currently has a metagame that carves out its own niche between UU and NU.
The only way we can envision a future for GSC RU is if there were a complete retiering of all lower tiers, starting with GSC UU and UUBL. We are not aware of any official plans for this. Such a change would require the cooperation of the leadership and communities of all the lower tiers, as well as GSC. Realistically, it would take months, if not years, to complete, and it would be very risky.
We don't want to discourage your enthusiasm or the incredible work you've done over the past few months. However, we want to be open and realistic about the future of GSC RU in this community. Ultimately, we participate in this hobby on this site for fun, and we won't stand in your way. You are welcome to continue hosting regular tournaments in this forum. We are also happy to give you a channel on our Discord server if you'd like.
hi, I'm one of the current GSC RUTLs and would like to give my two cents and clear up a few things:
How would this affect GSC NU?
It basically wouldn't. It would be helpful to familiarize yourself with the existence of ADV RU and its place in ADV tiering. ADV RU operates under the philosophy that Pokemon cannot rise into it but can drop from UU. The only way for something to rise out of NU and into RU would be if NU happened to ban it. This lets NU exist untouched without RU completely upending it. GSC NU is a well-liked metagame in a great spot right now, and our mission is absolutely not to step on their toes.
What makes this meaningfully different from UU and NU?
Let's start with UU. In the ongoing GSC UUPL, the combined usage of every UU Pokemon that is allowed in GSC RU is currently 3 Sandslash, 4 Crobat, 2 Politoed, 2 Dodrio, and 1 Pikachu. 3/4 of the Crobat uses were part of the same team being played multiple times, as well. GSCPL had 3 Politoed, 3 Omastar, 3 Sandslash, 2 Victreebel, and 1 Crobat (again on the same stall team as above). This would put the use counts for both entire tours currently for all the Pokemon allowed from UU and NUBL into GSC RU as the following:
Sandslash - 6
Politoed - 5
Crobat - 5 (with 4 uses being on the same team being used four times)
Omastar - 3
Dodrio - 2
Victreebel - 2
Pikachu - 1
Kabutops - 0
Vileplume - 0
Golduck - 0
Arcanine - 0
Raichu - 0
There's also Kadabra, who was within the group we dropped into RU but was banned. Kadabra was used once.
While I will concede choosing B3 and below on the current GSC UU VR doesn't entirely mesh with GSC's math based tiering, it does give us approximately the same level of passable-to-bad-uu mon that ADV has. Taking all of B rank would have cut into a lot of Pokemon with very strong UU niches and performances and basically just created UU lite, while C and below left us with a restrictively low pool of Pokemon. The two best Pokemon in GSC RU, Raichu and Arcanine, are sitting at an incredible 0% combined usage off of 12 weeks so far, and even Sandslash is only being brought once every two weeks. I think it would be fair to say these Pokemon are at best, barely part of GSC UU's metagame and at worst completely irrelevant to it.
This gives GSC RU a very different pace of play compared to UU, as it results in a noticeably less bulky metagame among fully evolved Pokemon. While we do have shuckle and crobat, the lack of Chansey or Granbull to use heal bell has generally kept stall teams down so far. We don't have Qwilfish either, which puts GSC RU in the unusual position of being a tier where the majority or entireity of teams will be fully evolved, but you still have to use Pineco or Delibird for spikers, who otherwise get massively stat checked by everything. This makes spikes not as mission critical as they are in UU, NU, or PU and there's an honest argument as to wether spikes or spikeless is better, even on offensive teams. RU also has only a single fully evolved electric type and (real) fully evolved psychic type atm, compared to UU's huge variety of both, and thus RU is somewhat lighter on the moves associated with those Pokemon, most notably thunder wave. Baton Pass is also somewhat worse in RU for the same reasons as spikes are considered by some to be inconsistent - there's a real opportunity cost for jank in this tier because the top tiers stat check your BP mons very hard. RU is very heavy on FWG cores thanks to Arcanine and Plume/Vic being a lot better in RU than any fire types or Bellossom are proportionally in UU, completely reshaping the scale of importance for coverage compared to UU.
As for NU, while I will concede that it's superficially similar, it's actually been somewhat of a trap in both our forum tournament and discord tournament so far for people to treat the tier like it's NU or even directly load NU teams and immediately lose. The main reason? Stats. NU isn't a tier dominated by NFEs like PU and ZU, but it is somewhat reliant on them, and a significant amount of NU's better Pokemon cannot hang in RU specifically because of the new mons from UU. Here's some examples:
- NU's electric pool is all NFEs, with both Magnemite and Chinchou being relatively slow and reliant on their typings more than their bulk to sponge attacks. Raichu obviously blows them all out of the water, being only slightly weaker than magnemite while being faster and having better actual bulk, alongside a much wider pool of coverage and utility moves. While having 0-1 electric resists on a team in NU isn't the worst thing ever, having anything less than 2 is usually a death sentence for a team in RU on account of Raichu's very existence, as it's the face of the tier and on nearly every team. This also makes the grasses and grounds better. Of particular note is Dugtrio, who is probably a lot higher up than 26th best in RU on account of its typing and speed tier suddenly becoming a lot more important.
- NU's best grass type is Gloom, while RU invested in some leaf stones and has both Vileplume and Victreebel. As mentioned in the UU section, FWG cores are very common in RU and Vileplume in particular is a top 5 Pokemon in the metagame. This has a much wider knock-on effect than you would think at first, besides the obvious gloom and exeggcute being completely outclassed. In particular, the fact that both our best grasses are half poison type means that in addition to blanking water and electric types, fighting types are siginificantly worse in RU than NU - Primeape goes from #3 to barely a consideration, and the job of stopping curse wigglytuff usually falls upon either the team's rock or Arcanine.
- Compared to NU's water types, most of RU's waters have much wider movepools and possible set variety as a result. While Dewgong defies this and isn't much worse in RU than NU, most of the waters aren't so lucky. While the standard rest/talk/surf/ice beam or hp elec water obviously functions just as well here, RU's bulky waters come equipped with wider coverage, better boosting moves, and even status spreading that Octillery and Dewgong just generally lack. This is probably the most uu-ey thing about RU, and water stacking is stronger here than it would be in NU on account of the better options, even in the face of Raichu and Grasses being better.
- Lastly, Arcanine itself stat checks a lot of NU Pokemon out of the format, even things you wouldn't expect like Persian are noticeably worse off with its ubiquity. Arcanine's combination of speed, bulk, and power essentially invalidates a lot of NU's lower-statted Pokemon singlehandedly, in addition to being part of the reason Spikes is in a weird place.
- Other minor and obvious stuff, such as Dodrio being a direct upgrade to Fearow, or Kabutops
The throughline here is stats. NU is missing a noticeable amount of fully-evolved Pokemon in certain types, and RU's pokemon generally do reshape NU in very noticeable ways, especially the more you play it. While some NU Pokemon are obviously still good (Xatu is about as good as it is in NU in RU for largely the same reasons, Dewgong's secondary ice typing helps it stand up to the grass types in the tier better than other waters, Sudowoodo counters Arcanine without getting gimped by random coverage), Reasonable picks (Weezing hard counters the grasses, although it does face competition with Crobat at doing this. Stantler is still the best normal in RU, but Arcanine is kind of a normal in all but name. Wigglytuff does what it always has but now with more and better rocks), or are required on a certain playstyle in spite of their flaws (Pineco, BP, Shuckle, etc). Of the 28 Pokemon ranked above C rank on NU's viability ranking, only 12 are ranked as such in RU - I would personally put that number at around 9. So not a complete overhaul, but still a very noticeable one.
I dunno. I've written a lot of words but nothing I can say is more important than "try it". GSC RU has gotten an incredibly positive reception from most people who have played it, including quite a few GSC NU mains or contributors, all of whom have been pretty unified on it not playing anything like NU does. If you're still unsure, our publicly available discord server has plenty of replays you can check out for yourself.
Official, Unofficial, and Officially Unofficial
It's worth noting ADV RU isn't an official tier either, in that it doesn't affect tiering of anything below it. Despite this, ADV RU still has a very noticeable presence in official tournaments. It's often in teamtours and I believe has its own spot in ADV Open, all while not compromising any preestablished ADV tiers and their long history. I think asking for all this up front would be a little much - I won't pretend that isn't the future the GSC RU community is hoping for, but I also do understand some possible skepticism and am willing to take time and put the effort in to let it happen naturally.
In the meantime, hope to catch you guys in our next tournament. Starting this journey into GSC RU has given me a much deeper appreciation for GSC as a generation, and I look forward to integrating myself in other GSCLT communities and tournaments in the future. Thanks for reading.
I wrote some of this in the GSC Discord but not sure if it was very visible, but here is a modified/expanded version of what I said:
As one of the founding members of ADV RU, I can tell you point blank this is not on the same course ADV RU went down to get more inclusion in tournaments. The right avenue to get this done is to talk to RU leaders mostly at first, but RoA/GSC subforum tours can easily include it as well if you talk to the right people. ALT PL is a good spot to petition to see it included as it would be a good flex slot option there to help it grow. Before that, GSC Slam League (the lower tiers GSC tournament) should be an easy inclusion if you petition for it correctly there. If you want an actual realistic roadmap:
1. Keep having side tours
2. Push for a new UU VR Update very soon so you can finalize what RU even is
3. Petition for inclusion in GSC Slam League
4. Make a real push for inclusion in ALT PL as the flex slot
5. If things go well, push for Slam inclusion next year
6. Push for inclusion in RUGL afterwards
7. RUPL/GSC PL will not realistically happen anytime soon so don't count on that, it's just reality
That's your most realistic roadmap, anything rushed sooner than this is imo not going to work and you'll hit walls and it may be counterproductive. You need to shoot for easy goals if you really want this to move along. The bottom line is this: if people enjoy the tier and want to play it more, then it will be included in more things. If people don't like the tier, then it won't be. That's how these things work - ADV RU was such an incredibly fun tier that, despite the optics not making much sense to include an ADV RU in things, people wanted to play it anyways so it started getting included into things. More importantly, the people who make decisions were the ones playing it and having fun with it. I don't think GSC RU is there right now, but that's what you have to shoot for. None of the resources/arguments matter if you don't have a solid playerbase comprised partially of big decision-makers wanting to play it.
What makes this meaningfully different from UU and NU?
Let's start with UU. In the ongoing GSC UUPL, the combined usage of every UU Pokemon that is allowed in GSC RU is currently 3 Sandslash, 4 Crobat, 2 Politoed, 2 Dodrio, and 1 Pikachu. 3/4 of the Crobat uses were part of the same team being played multiple times, as well. GSCPL had 3 Politoed, 3 Omastar, 3 Sandslash, 2 Victreebel, and 1 Crobat (again on the same stall team as above). This would put the use counts for both entire tours currently for all the Pokemon allowed from UU and NUBL into GSC RU as the following:
Sandslash - 6
Politoed - 5
Crobat - 5 (with 4 uses being on the same team being used four times)
Omastar - 3
Dodrio - 2
Victreebel - 2
Pikachu - 1
Kabutops - 0
Vileplume - 0
Golduck - 0
Arcanine - 0
Raichu - 0
There's also Kadabra, who was within the group we dropped into RU but was banned. Kadabra was used once.
I'm not sure this is the argument to be making here - especially if you are comparing it to ADV RU. In ADV RU you had quite literally 10+ UNUSABLE "UU" mons because of how awful and ridiculous ADV tiering was back in the day. You had things like Rapidash/Sharpedo/Politoed/Persian that would never really have a spot anywhere without an ADV RU being created. Additionally, since ADV tiers were sort of tier locked for movement, none of them could move to NU. This is different. None of the pokemon on this list are unusable in GSC UU except Vileplume, and additionally GSC is able to move mons to NU/UU like they did with Feraligatr earlier. Additionally, many of these pokemon are quite good in GSC UU like Slash/Toed/Crobat. The comparison to ADV RU that DOES matter though is simply this: ADV RU showed it is actually possible to have inclusion with this tiering premise. That's all. That means it IS possible with GSC RU, but it's frankly not there at the moment. Which brings me to another point:
The only way we can envision a future for GSC RU is if there were a complete retiering of all lower tiers, starting with GSC UU and UUBL. We are not aware of any official plans for this. Such a change would require the cooperation of the leadership and communities of all the lower tiers, as well as GSC. Realistically, it would take months, if not years, to complete, and it would be very risky.
This is simply not true and a bit exaggerated. GSC RU can, and should, be included in other tournaments if the metagame is popular enough that many many people are playing it and want to continue playing it. This kind of Smogon bureaucratic red taping is part of the worst aspect of Smogon when it tries to be pushed and it's almost always unnecessary but also almost always inaccurate. The way it always ACTUALLY works is quite simple: metagames that are popular, that people want to play, will get more inclusion, especially if the people who make the decisions are the ones who are playing and enjoying it. The only question that really matters for inclusion is, individually, for each tournament, does it make sense to include? I agree with you that, right now, for GSC PL and GSC Slam the answer is no, it does not make sense to include GSC RU. That would require removing slots or expanding slots which is just not really on the table atm for those two tours. Additionally, tiers like GSC ZU are far more likely to be included in GSC PL at the moment if there was any sort of expansion which, again, does not seem like the sensible move atm. That doesn't mean that things can't change in the future though. If GSC RU explodes popularity and starts having inclusion in various other tournaments, and successfully so, there is no reason not to include it in more tournaments as slots open and moves are made.
I hope everyone can continue being excited for more GSC tiers and not get discouraged. But quite honestly you gotta let these things happen naturally. If the meta is good, and truly good, people will play it, and people will want to play it more, and it will naturally be in more things. Right now it still has a ways to go but keep at it.
