Discussion Impact of (potential) Tera Blast ban in OU on lower tiers

[Django]

I'm making this thread on the assumption that Tera Blast gets banned - if not all of this is moot and we can ignore it.

We recently froze rises as we are reaching the end of the generation. Usually this would coincide with a period of stability and tiering action slowing down relatively speaking. However at the moment we have a potentially huge suspect in Tera Blast which could have long reaching ripple effects throughout lower tiers. We can already see potential arguments for multiple unbans in OU, UU, and RU - all of which will have further impacts on usage and Pokemon changing tiers.

While Gen10 is not expected until late 2027 (so ~5-6 drops?), there is still a potentially long reaching impact here. We've seen ladder decline month on month as interest in SV wanes, and I don't think anyone expects that to meaningfully pick up. Assuming Tera Blast is banned, we're also going to see more suspect tests on the back of it, which will result in spikes in ladder activity with teams optimised for suspect runs, not regular ladder play. We're also going to see peaks and troughs as new mons move around tiers and interest shifts - all of this is to say a Tera Blast ban would be very destabilising to lower tiers and spikes in ladder activity might have outsized impact during a period of lower activity generally.

What I would like to avoid is a situation where we spend another year or two dealing with multiple big shifts and moving slowly to address issues. As Gen10 creeps closer and closer these issues will get worse, and you can very easily imagine a scenario where the tiers we end up locked with at the end of SV are neither stable nor representative of the metagames longer term. Even the most recent shift has seen big changes to PU - the effects of something changing in OU can take almost a year to reach there.

So a few suggestions on how to deal with this:
1. Tier leaders and councils of lower tiers commit to being as active as possible and dealing with tiering issues as soon as they come up. This sounds easy but we've seen it not quite be the case across the generation. Time is of the essence and waiting weeks-months to deal with something will have bigger impacts the higher up it starts
2. Do we consider unfreezing rises? I know this sounds strange, but entering a period where lots of changes are going to happen on the back of a Tera Blast ban with rises also frozen feels very strange to me. Situations almost certainly will arise where a niche mon (maybe something like a Gastrodon?) will have OU usage but remain in a lower tier. That seems very anti usage based tiering in general.
3. Do we move to 1 month shifts? Similar to early DLC cycles, this could help us move things through tiers faster and avoid it taking years for changes to be stabalised
4. Do we look at the rise and drop %'s again? There's been a few discussions on this and I think it's worth exploring whether these could help mitigate the effect of a late generation change like this.

Overall I want to discuss how we can best handle the (potential) upcoming instability and make sure we don't lose more time by discussing this only after it has happened. It feels prudent to talk about it now pending the result of the suspect.

Note: I don't want to discuss the Tera Blast suspect itself. That's an OU decision and not something for here.

 

[BigFatMantis]

I think a lot of this depends on what OU does really - but in theory you would unfreeze rises but keep 3 month shifts, and then freeze rises again at the very end like last gen. But I wouldn’t do it for next shift - there’s too much stuff going to be happening to make it accurate - keep the next shift as drops only and then at the subsequent shift allow rises again. That will probably get people mad but like if we are potentially unbanning some things and changing the tier fairly significantly then it’s the only way to remain accurate

 

[ThatOneApple]

I feel like the prospect of unfreezing rises completely misses the point of why they were frozen in the first place. Ladders have had increasingly lowered interest with the gen being years old at this point and all unfreezing them does is reintroduce the lower tiers eating each other alive. Functionally I struggle to see what the benefit of unfreezing the rises is because the idea that something "should" rise to a tier but cant due to freezes is just a consequence of needing to patch an already broken system. You can call it "anti-usage" but again, we really can't let tiers tear each other apart if we want these metagames to have any longevity, and no matter how late into the gen rise freezing happens, something gets left behind when in theory it "should" rise. Primary example I can think of is Diggesrby in SS UU, but last gen probably had a bunch more.

TLDR: Do not unfreeze rises, not only is there no way a TB ban causes enough of a shift to make it worth and even if it somehow did, we're far better off having some misplaced mons than to have LTs get ripped apart further.

 

[Django]

I feel like the prospect of unfreezing rises completely misses the point of why they were frozen in the first place. Ladders have had increasingly lowered interest with the gen being years old at this point and all unfreezing them does is reintroduce the lower tiers eating each other alive. Functionally I struggle to see what the benefit of unfreezing the rises is because the idea that something "should" rise to a tier but cant due to freezes is just a consequence of needing to patch an already broken system. You can call it "anti-usage" but again, we really can't let tiers tear each other apart if we want these metagames to have any longevity, and no matter how late into the gen rise freezing happens, something gets left behind when in theory it "should" rise. Primary example I can think of is Diggesrby in SS UU, but last gen probably had a bunch more.

TLDR: Do not unfreeze rises, not only is there no way a TB ban causes enough of a shift to make it worth and even if it somehow did, we're far better off having some misplaced mons than to have LTs get ripped apart further.

Rises aren't all bad. We recently saw a suspected mon rise from NU to RU (Toxtricity). While it didn't get enough votes to be banned, it certainly was controversial and it leaving the tier opens up the builder a little bit. There's shifts like this which perhaps go unnoticed but are an important part of usage based tiering. It makes little sense to me to continue down the the usage based tiering path while also freezing rises for ~18 months during one of the potentially biggest upheavals in the whole gen. Without rises it's not really usage based, and if we're that unhappy with it we should do something else.

I do concede that rises have more risk of removing a core part of a tier (obviously). I think if we were to unfreeze rises we should do it alongside either shorter shift windows or changing thresholds to reduce some of that risk. But taking it off the table entirely feels premature

 

[ThatOneApple]

Rises aren't all bad. We recently saw a suspected mon rise from NU to RU (Toxtricity). While it didn't get enough votes to be banned, it certainly was controversial and it leaving the tier opens up the builder a little bit. There's shifts like this which perhaps go unnoticed but are an important part of usage based tiering. It makes little sense to me to continue down the the usage based tiering path while also freezing rises for ~18 months during one of the potentially biggest upheavals in the whole gen. Without rises it's not really usage based, and if we're that unhappy with it we should do something else.

I do concede that rises have more risk of removing a core part of a tier (obviously). I think if we were to unfreeze rises we should do it alongside either shorter shift windows or changing thresholds to reduce some of that risk. But taking it off the table entirely feels premature

I struggle to see many players wanting this, one case of the builder being opened up after a rise doesnt really match the loads of cases of LTs having severe builder issues from core pieces being removed (Also, if Tox was just a builder constraint, who the hell voted dnb?). Additionally, as I said in the initial thread, it not being truly usage based isnt a bad thing either, because as we've seen the system we used is flawed to hell and back. As such, I believe the discussion should be how we can alter the system as a whole rather than ripping off the band-aid we put on it and watching tiers cannibalize each other.

 

[BigFatMantis]

But taking it off the table entirely feels premature

Generally agree with this. There is no reason to take anything off the table, but also I think there isn’t much at all that should be done at the moment. We should definitely not rise anything on the next shift, mostly because we already said we weren’t but also because it’s wildly unpredictable what it would look like.

The best assessment would be to wait and see if Tera Blast is even banned in the first place, not speculate whatsoever on what effects that would have for now, and just see what “could have rose” when shifts happen. If the meta looks incredibly inaccurate, I.e. multiple mons OU by usage that are still UU, then yes we should absolutely unfreeze rises to have accurate tiers. But it’s a bit silly to even argue the point atm because it’s very possible nothing significant will change in rises anyways. We really just don’t know

 

[sugar ovens]

A Tera Blast ban would be a major shake-up across all lower tiers, changing viability of several Pokémon and providing the opportunity for multiple resuspects. Keeping rises frozen in this environment would be absolutely pointless, if they were frozen for "stability" - all that would do is artificially keep tiers at higher power levels and enable Pokémon to be highly viable (and with high usage) in more tiers.

Rises are an important part of the system, and both drops and rises can have positive and negative effects on metagames. Rises make it possible for Pokémon at the bottom of the system to have a metagame where they can be viable. They can remove unhealthy, pressuring, or just simply annoying elements, the kinds that don't ever justify a ban. They lower power levels, allowing previously too weak, niche options to become vital defensive, support pieces and glues, or allowing healthier offensive threats to shine. If there isn't a reason to remove them - as there would no longer be after a Tera Blast ban - we should keep them.

 

[LBN]

On the assumption that Tera blast does get banned, I was actually gonna make a thread discussing the unfreezing of rises to begin with. Speaking as an RU council member and as an active player there, Tera blast banned would shake a lot of things up. Torterra and Entei will take a colossal hit and both of them have become staples of archetypes, Porygon-Z would go from suspect candidate to fraud in 1 hour, and others like Magnezone and Gastrodon would see their viability fluctuate. This would also enable quite a few Pokemon to be unbanned. Comfey and Yanmega are practically 100% to drop without question, while considerations for Volcanion, Gyarados, and potentially others are expected.

To be clear, let's just go on an assumption that Volcanion + Yanmega/Comfey, this would impact Suicune tremendously as well. The snowball effect would be strong, and its not unreasonably to expect a large swath of drops but.. rises wouldn't be happening. Mew for instance rose to UU and I've been smiling a lot more recently for that reason I hated that guy lmao. I'm sure a lot of tiers have had guys taken that arguably shouldn't have cough cough hippowdon, but they've definitely also had guys taken that they didn't care much for as well. Toxtricity and Mew, for instance. Same with Revavroom. The sentiment that rises are all bad is strictly nonsense, and I do think tiers would be best off when they are more close to what's actually viable within them. If this ban does go through, please re-instate rises until the beginning of 2027.

This is a complete side tangent, but I really hope we could just allow BL Pokemon to rise with impunity. 98% of the time these Pokemon are not genuine resuspect candidates for the tier below and it was really silly being an SS RU player seeing both Bewear and Pangoro sitting in NUBL despite both of them being A ranks caliber Pokemon for example. It's not allowed for what is simply speaking a fringe case scenario and frankly having viable mons be represented as "X tier by usage" is more beneficial to me than that.

 

[missangelic]

Unfreezing rises should be avoided. Having rises frozen gives lower tiers the privilege of greater stability in the event of a Tera Blast ban causing upheaval. Even without a Tera Blast ban, it's clear that most lower tiers are in more unstable states - UU, RU, NU, and ZU are all holding suspect tests, and PU unbanned Heracross on top of taking controversial drops like Scrafty and Slowbro-G. Rises being frozen gives these tiers more breathing room to have gaps of development in between suspects.

Ladder declines as the generation goes on, and lower ladder activity means that there's more skew in usage stats. As mentioned above, ladders with suspect tests ongoing are already going to be less representative of the typical ladder metagame because players are trying to get suspect reqs with teams designed to do so efficiently. This is even more reason to stop rises. We might see ladder activity get a nice spike for April thanks to the suspect tests, but activity will decline and become less representative of competitive play the longer Champions is out and the more SV drags on.

Do we consider unfreezing rises? I know this sounds strange, but entering a period where lots of changes are going to happen on the back of a Tera Blast ban with rises also frozen feels very strange to me. Situations almost certainly will arise where a niche mon (maybe something like a Gastrodon?) will have OU usage but remain in a lower tier. That seems very anti usage based tiering in general.

Keeping rises frozen promotes stability during a potential period of instability, which would work to the advantage of tiering. Councils get to keep track of fewer moving targets between tier shifts, tournament players could more deeply develop their metagames without the pressure of rises upending teams/structures/trends, and ladder usage would serve as a more accurate snapshot of metagame trends instead of reactions to staples rising and chains of suspect tests.

Pokemon having usage in a higher tier and remaining in a lower tier is baked into the usage-based tiering system. It can't really be anti-usage when it's part of the way it works. Clefable can't move from UU to OU in DPP despite its position as one of the best Pokemon in both tiers, and these two tiers are the ur-examples of usage-based tiering. Even when we try really hard in the present to make sure that the snapshots of our tiers are as accurate to the metagames as possible, they end up becoming inaccurate through age and development, and that's totally fine! If we're going to make choices about how our present decisions impact tiering long-term, I'd rather have it so that the focus is on wrapping up tiering for the generation neatly instead of dogmatically trying to preserve rises because they're the status quo. We can't really see what's going to be good in the future, but we can tier things as they are now to ensure that the playerbase isn't left with a rotten hand at the worst possible time in a generation.

All [freezing rises] would do is artificially keep tiers at higher power levels and enable Pokémon to be highly viable (and with high usage) in more tiers.

Putting aside that the whole tiering system is artificial, the situation of Pokemon from lower tiers being viable in higher tiers isn't new (DPP Clefable), and it's not bad either. Blissey having niches in UU and OU doesn't have to take away from its role in RU, and Pokemon like it that can healthily exist in multiple tiers. These Pokemon are frequently inoffensive defensive Pokemon like Blissey, Gastrodon, and Quagsire that serve as glue or help to rein in more offensive threats that would verge on banworthy without them.

Plenty of players specifically enjoy being able to viably use lower tier Pokemon in higher tiers, so any argument of tiering identity/distinctiveness being critical wouldn't hold here either.

[Rises] can remove unhealthy, pressuring, or just simply annoying elements, the kinds that don't ever justify a ban.

I'm sure a lot of tiers have had guys taken that arguably shouldn't have cough cough hippowdon, but they've definitely also had guys taken that they didn't care much for as well. Toxtricity and Mew, for instance. Same with Revavroom. The sentiment that rises are all bad is strictly nonsense

If there are identifiably unhealthy elements in a tier, it's the responsibility of the leadership of that tier to take action, not tier shifts. Rises might be neutral in the types of Pokemon they remove by taking Pokemon that are healthy and unhealthy, but the consequences of rises that remove healthy, staple Pokemon are going to be negative if the goal is to promote stability / manage instability to wrap the gen up. Rises being frozen doesn't take away the ability (or responsibility) of tiering leadership to act on things that are unhealthy.

This is a complete side tangent, but I really hope we could just allow BL Pokemon to rise with impunity. 98% of the time these Pokemon are not genuine resuspect candidates for the tier below and it was really silly being an SS RU player seeing both Bewear and Pangoro sitting in NUBL despite both of them being A ranks caliber Pokemon for example. It's not allowed for what is simply speaking a fringe case scenario and frankly having viable mons be represented as "X tier by usage" is more beneficial to me than that.

Not only would this violate tiering policy by arbitrarily exempting Pokemon just because they're not usable in a separate tier, but it would also actually remove the flexibility of lower tier councils to adjust to new tiering developments (cough cough, potential Tera Blast ban, cough cough) and changes in playerbase opinions by resuspecting elements of their banlist. Banned Pokemon aren't meaningfully distinct from the other Pokemon in pick up in usage in a higher tier, and they should be tiered the same way, even if the tag of UUBL doesn't capture Volcarona's viability in ORAS OU.

 

[sugar ovens]

Putting aside that the whole tiering system is artificial, the situation of Pokemon from lower tiers being viable in higher tiers isn't new (DPP Clefable), and it's not bad either. Blissey having niches in UU and OU doesn't have to take away from its role in RU, and Pokemon like it that can healthily exist in multiple tiers. These Pokemon are frequently inoffensive defensive Pokemon like Blissey, Gastrodon, and Quagsire that serve as glue or help to rein in more offensive threats that would verge on banworthy without them.

The distinctive features of lower tiers are diferent Pokémon pools and tier shifts. The reason why a casual ladder player tries out a lower tier over the far less dead OU ladder is to be able to play with wacky unmons, or to participate in Smogon's quite cool and interesting way of "ranking" the mons, not because a friend invites them to play for them in PUCL. This is something that only lower tiers offer, and the reason why we should try having the metagames as distinct as possible over having them blur together, with a massive pool of hopelessly unviable Pokémon unranked below the system. It's not just inherently good, it's key to future activity, and preservation of lower tiers. And yes, the tiers that need active ladders to survive should cater to the ladder player.

The viability development after the gen ends is completely irrelevant, the playerbases are different, ways people discover them are somewhat different, and the activity in them is not as important.

If there are identifiably unhealthy elements in a tier, it's the responsibility of the leadership of that tier to take action, not tier shifts. Rises might be neutral in the types of Pokemon they remove by taking Pokemon that are healthy and unhealthy, but the consequences of rises that remove healthy, staple Pokemon are going to be negative if the goal is to promote stability / manage instability to wrap the gen up. Rises being frozen doesn't take away the ability (or responsibility) of tiering leadership to act on things that are unhealthy.

Well, no. Not only it is not the responsibility of the leadership of the tier to take action in these circumstances, but in fact doing so would directly violate the tiering policy. "Unhealthy" elements are the most vague and controversial thing to take tiering action against, and said tiering action is explicitly only meant to be taken in drastic circumstances. And even if someone actually decided to suspect test something like PU Bellibolt (a generally annoying defensive piece often fishing for Static procs, but not "uncompetitive" enough), the suspect would not result in a ban. They would get laughed at.

It also goes both ways, if there's a broken element that popped up as a result of a rise, the leadership should deal with it with tiering action - just in this case it's *actually* their responsibility to do so.


Really though, the whole framing of "promoting stability" in this whole rise business is just dishonest. There's no major practical difference between the instability caused by drops and rises (i can somewhat accept the argument that the development cause by rises can be a bit slower to bloom, but that's a matter of freezing rises for one shift, not one-and-a-half-year). You're just as guaranteed that your teams become unusable what a major element drops as when a major element rises, you are just as capable to take tiering action againsts broken elements that drop (besides the occasional quickban-worthy super-broken threat) as against broken elements that pop up after rises. New options can drop into the pond directly, or you can take them from the bottom after rises make space for them to be viable. And from a content creation perspective it's just flat out easier to take care of rises. The difference is in perception, drops are more fun and exciting, and the view of rises has grown toxic, the banter of "NU always stealing shit from us!" and annoyance of the higher tier dangling with the new toys at just enough usage became people unironically arguing that we should stop tiers "cannibalizing each other" as soon as possible, rises are seen as a pure negative now, even if the reality has always been that shifts are a neutral force, that can have positive and negative effect.

If stability was the priority, we would have a framework of preparing for the end of the gen - or be working on it. What's keeping us from a four- or six- month shifts period to accomodate for lower ladder activity, to have a larger sample size? How about a transition phase with separate cutoffs that not just stave off rises while not really doing anything to keep tiers stable, but that actually do keep the status quo outside of extreme cases - think quickshift cutoffs, passing a very low cutoff to drop, or a very high cutoff to rise in tier shifts. Or just freeze the tiers completely - that would be something applicable for this situation too, just keeping Tera Blast in lower tiers, nothing changes. Now, I personally don't want any of these solutions - just thinking of what a hypothetical person who would truly care to keep lower tiers stable and give council time to wrap up before the end of the generation (i don't remember seeing anyone like that between the recent policy threads, but, hypothetically) would argue for.

In the end, a Tera Blast ban would be a major jolt of activity - and instability - that would eradicate any last semblance of legitimacy behind the rise freeze, and tiers should be allowed to freely develop after the fact, at least for a period of time. Lower tiers just won't be stable after the fact for a while, unless some other solution is implemented to slow the changes. I don't see a reason to flip-flop between rises and no rises either just because something was previously decided - it's just extraordinary circumstances, things has changed now, happens. Skipping the tier shift completely is something that could be considered, but there will be a lot of time between the result of the suspect and the shift, so- not that needed i think.

 

[missangelic]

The distinctive features of lower tiers are diferent Pokémon pools and tier shifts. The reason why a casual ladder player tries out a lower tier over the far less dead OU ladder is to be able to play with wacky unmons, or to participate in Smogon's quite cool and interesting way of "ranking" the mons, not because a friend invites them to play for them in PUCL. This is something that only lower tiers offer, and the reason why we should try having the metagames as distinct as possible over having them blur together, with a massive pool of hopelessly unviable Pokémon unranked below the system. It's not just inherently good, it's key to future activity, and preservation of lower tiers. And yes, the tiers that need active ladders to survive should cater to the ladder player.

The viability development after the gen ends is completely irrelevant, the playerbases are different, ways people discover them are somewhat different, and the activity in them is not as important.

This isn't true, with usage-based old gens like DPP OU and DPP UU being examples of situations where an overlap in relevant Pokemon didn't kill future competitive activity or ruin the distinctiveness of each tier despite being played for years. Ladder players and casuals seeing that they can succeed with more diverse picks outside of the tier is also actually appealing and stimulates activity and interest, and preserving a higher diversity of options helps that too. If the goal was actually to make tiers as distinct as possible, the usage stat threshold wouldn't have been raised between Gens 7 and 8.

And that's with DPP UU and OU Clefable being the most standout example of tiers having a Pokemon that's actually entrenched at top level in both of them in an old gen for years. Saying tiers would lose their identities in just a year if we don't observe rises is so overblown. The threshold for rising is having a coinflip of a chance to see a Pokemon once in a string of 15 games. There's a good chance to go 20 games without seeing Gastrodon in UU, so it's not going to kill RU if they also like using the slug in 2026 and 2027.

I do think there's room to adjust this system of frozen rises so that we can observe when lower tier Pokemon genuinely do reach staple-levels in higher tiers. One of my suggestions in the previous thread on the pattern of rises was to decouple the threshold for rises and drops, and the OP here mentions revisiting the threshold too. I think this type of change would be a good potential compromise to observe Pokemon legitimately becoming staples in higher tiers without causing the same levels of upheaval as we have with shifts now.

Really though, the whole framing of "promoting stability" in this whole rise business is just dishonest. There's no major practical difference between the instability caused by drops and rises (i can somewhat accept the argument that the development cause by rises can be a bit slower to bloom, but that's a matter of freezing rises for one shift, not one-and-a-half-year).

This just isn't true evidentially if you compare to SS and its period of freezing rises.

Post-Freeze SS Tier Shifts

July 2022 shifts
Gastrodon moved from RU to NU

Araquanid moved from NU to PU
Doublade moved from NU to PU
Guzzlord moved from NU to PU
Inteleon moved from NU to PU

Ninjask moved from PU to ZU
Palossand moved from PU to ZU

August 2022 Shifts
No quick drops

September 2022 Shifts
No quick drops

October 2022 Shifts
Zapdos-Galar moved from OU to UUBL
Regieleki moved from OU to UU
Tentacruel moved from UU to RU
Silvally-Steel moved from NU to PU
Zoroark moved from NU to PU
Cofagrigus moved from PU to ZU
Glastrier moved from PU to ZU
Perrserker moved from PU to ZU

November 2022 Shifts
No quick drops

Across all the frozen rise shifts in SS, the only drop UU got from OU was Regieleki and the only drop RU got was the middling Tentacruel. It should be obvious that this pattern would have extended to tiers below RU if there had been more than two tier shifts (OU-UU-RU) with frozen rises. When rises are frozen and ladder activity declines, it counterintuitively ends up with the situation where higher tiers finally cough up unviable Pokemon into tiers they were using, and said Pokemon aren't even showing that they're shaking up the tier below.

It's dishonest to pretend like the effects (really the lack of effects) of these Pokemon would have been on the same level as the canceled rises that would have taken place in the same period: Rotom-Wash, Excadrill, and Slowking were all top tier Pokemon that would have risen from UU to OU in just the July 2022 tier shifts.

Stability is explicitly mentioned as a priority in both the Tiering for Generation 8 thread and the end-of-gen policy update thread, which functionally are part of the tiering policy framework for how lower tiers are run. People don't even talk about how stats aren't even weighted by month anymore in the pursuit of stability, so the the opposition to reforms just comes off as reactionary against discussion of any attempt to reform the tiering system.

There still hasn't been an outline from leadership on what it takes to formalize this or further develop it, but it's not like planning tiering for lower tiers in Gen 9 was made easy by the way Game Freak has released updates and information (or more accurately, did not release updates and information) in both Gen 8 and Gen 9. I'm in agreement though that there should be some addendum to our current policy though, along with a much more open and forthright amount of communication from tiering leadership when before this comes up as an issue again for Gen 10.

Also, IF Tera Blast IS banned, then freezing rises isn't going to effect the pretty obvious cross-tier outcome where Pokemon that were banned because of Tera Blast will either stay in their home tier after being unbanned or decline further into even lower tiers. Be honest: Regieleki getting freed from Ubers and flopping out of OU would have no relationship to rises, just like in SS. Yanmega being more manageable in RU without Tera Blast would not make Talonflame's rise somehow a justifiable good for the tier. The direct ripple effects of a Tera Blast ban would not delegitimize freezing rises.

 

[ThatOneApple]

Ngl the more I read the "unfreeze rises" argument the more I think about how UU almost lost drill, and the clusterfuck that that would lead to on on the UU ladder. Ignoring the potential TB ban for a second, the entire purpose of freezing rises was resulting from the declining quality of ladder games that was only going to get worse as the next year went on, especially in LTs. Just looking at UU for a second, all we've done is steal meta staples that provided some stability when they arent even that good. Meanwhile, an actually good mon in UU, Gardevoir, remains in RU without ever getting super close to rising. So like... even the argument that rises allow mons to reach tiers they "belong" in doesnt make sense considering it doesnt seem to happen this late in the gen to begin with.

If stability was the priority, we would have a framework of preparing for the end of the gen - or be working on it

In the end, a Tera Blast ban would be a major jolt of activity - and instability - that would eradicate any last semblance of legitimacy behind the rise freeze, and tiers should be allowed to freely develop after the fact, at least for a period of time.

We had a whole discussion thread about this that lead to the freezing of rises. As misangelic said, Tera Blast being banned has like zero impact on the points made, and unfreezing them will just lead to the issues stated in that thread becoming worse and worse.

On the assumption that Tera blast does get banned, I was actually gonna make a thread discussing the unfreezing of rises to begin with. Speaking as an RU council member and as an active player there, Tera blast banned would shake a lot of things up.

An RU player cannot be sayin this yall are losing Slowbro if we unfreeze rises (/hj... well more like quarter joking because UU ladder is a bit weird at times)

 

[Heatranator]

I really do not see the point for a lot of the suggested proposals, as I feel like they either further increase the negative impacts from the shakeups tiers would have or are simply unable to happen.

The second option is honestly the single worst thing to do and I’m kinda shocked at how supported it is. There are two primary issues with implementing rises:

• The decrease in ladder activity due to Champions dropping
• The fact ladder stats do not accurately represent tiers

The first point is the primary one but lets go over it. While lower tier activity might not be so harshly affected by Champions, OU ladder activity most definitely will, with it allowing for usage stats to be much more manipulable by certain ladder players spamming teams. This is something that had its own thread with bots contaminating usage which luckily was resolved but if a popular RMT or sample is spammed a lot, then that can also force Pokemon to rise, see Talonflame rising to UU or Toxtricity rising to RU while being B- on the VR’s for the tiers they rose to. And reminder, this was before Champions dropped, including that it further increases the issue. Say for example, Excadrill rises to OU from UU, Excadrill is a staple piece of UU and is sure to have massive ramifications for the tier. As such, UU might look to some mons in RU, potentially something like Cyclizar may be used to try and deal with the hazard control issue they may have (could be another ground or a defogger but for the sake of this arguement lets say its cyclizar). Cyclizar rising to UU would heavily affect RU, which then might use Pokemon such as Tsareena as a spinner option to compensate, which then NU might try out some PU removal that could help with their removal being stolen. That sort of thing will basically massively affect tiers and further cannibalize them basically rendering the point of the proposal mute. It would not help stabilise tiers, but destabilise them further. Just because all rises are not horrible does not mean we should implement them this late into the gen where ladder activity is at its lowest, the potential for massive destabilizing shifts are big and would lead to tiers being in a very undesirable shape by the end of the gen, leading to less people desiring to play these tiers post gen.

The second point adds onto the first point, sometimes ladders just yoink things from lower tiers that do not ultimately deserve to be in said higher tiers. Both Talon and Hippo are great examples of this (B- in UU) while Mesprit and Toucannon were both projected to rise to NU at some point (both completely unviable in NU). Don't even get me started on how Braviary is still NU btw, thats a whole thing. With decreased activity, there is a higher chance for this to happen. Maybe Mandibuzz or something rises to OU, or Chesnaught rises to UU etc. These can occur as we have seen and serve to further destablise tiers. Missangelic has basically nailed the point, they further destabilise tiers and do not acheive the intended outcome.


1 month shifts (which I’m assuming would be just drops) is a bit more interesting but I think ultimately would not work as intended. It would still put a lot of pressure on councils to quickly fix metas, though ofc it would also make things easier to stabilise ig? Idk, I need to think further on this part before commenting further.

Changing the threshold for rises/drops is one that I ultimately would be in support of, but as Marty stated here it is apparently a non starter. Perhaps you could try to get that changed for Gen 10 but thats outside the scope of this thread so yeah. Good solution unfortunately it is unviable.

Ultimately, I do think the best solution is to just let councils work out the shifts by being as active as possible. Implementing rises this late just fucks up tiers even further.

 

[BigFatMantis]

I really do not see the point for a lot of the suggested proposals, as I feel like they either further increase the negative impacts from the shakeups tiers would have or are simply unable to happen.

The second option is honestly the single worst thing to do and I’m kinda shocked at how supported it is. There are two primary issues with implementing rises:

• The decrease in ladder activity due to Champions dropping
• The fact ladder stats do not accurately represent tiers

The first point is the primary one but lets go over it. While lower tier activity might not be so harshly affected by Champions, OU ladder activity most definitely will, with it allowing for usage stats to be much more manipulable by certain ladder players spamming teams. This is something that had its own thread with bots contaminating usage which luckily was resolved but if a popular RMT or sample is spammed a lot, then that can also force Pokemon to rise, see Talonflame rising to UU or Toxtricity rising to RU while being B- on the VR’s for the tiers they rose to. And reminder, this was before Champions dropped, including that it further increases the issue. Say for example, Excadrill rises to OU from UU, Excadrill is a staple piece of UU and is sure to have massive ramifications for the tier. As such, UU might look to some mons in RU, potentially something like Cyclizar may be used to try and deal with the hazard control issue they may have (could be another ground or a defogger but for the sake of this arguement lets say its cyclizar). Cyclizar rising to UU would heavily affect RU, which then might use Pokemon such as Tsareena as a spinner option to compensate, which then NU might try out some PU removal that could help with their removal being stolen. That sort of thing will basically massively affect tiers and further cannibalize them basically rendering the point of the proposal mute. It would not help stabilise tiers, but destabilise them further. Just because all rises are not horrible does not mean we should implement them this late into the gen where ladder activity is at its lowest, the potential for massive destabilizing shifts are big and would lead to tiers being in a very undesirable shape by the end of the gen, leading to less people desiring to play these tiers post gen.

The second point adds onto the first point, sometimes ladders just yoink things from lower tiers that do not ultimately deserve to be in said higher tiers. Both Talon and Hippo are great examples of this (B- in UU) while Mesprit and Toucannon were both projected to rise to NU at some point (both completely unviable in NU). Don't even get me started on how Braviary is still NU btw, thats a whole thing. With decreased activity, there is a higher chance for this to happen. Maybe Mandibuzz or something rises to OU, or Chesnaught rises to UU etc. These can occur as we have seen and serve to further destablise tiers. Missangelic has basically nailed the point, they further destabilise tiers and do not acheive the intended outcome.


1 month shifts (which I’m assuming would be just drops) is a bit more interesting but I think ultimately would not work as intended. It would still put a lot of pressure on councils to quickly fix metas, though ofc it would also make things easier to stabilise ig? Idk, I need to think further on this part before commenting further.

Changing the threshold for rises/drops is one that I ultimately would be in support of, but as Marty stated here it is apparently a non starter. Perhaps you could try to get that changed for Gen 10 but thats outside the scope of this thread so yeah. Good solution unfortunately it is unviable.

Ultimately, I do think the best solution is to just let councils work out the shifts by being as active as possible. Implementing rises this late just fucks up tiers even further.

Just a quick question after reading all of this. Based on what you said, then wouldn’t you say unfreezing rises would be warranted if:

A) ladder activity increases following a Tera blast ban to the point accurate representations aof the meta are played and develops on the ladder, and

B) certain mons do in fact show higher usage in a tier above it by more than a marginal amount, in addition to being generally thought quite good in that tier

not saying this is happening, but I think saying it definitely won’t happen is very dismissive in the same regard that saying it will definitely happen is quite a guess. We should take a wait and see approach but trying to theory our way into this argument is not going to get very far until we see how in fact things do change and we should absolutely not rule anything in out to address it.