Discussion Revisiting ADV UU

[rs]

app by August

Recently in the ADV UU playerbase, there has been increasing group opinion that the tier is too centralized. As of now, there's almost little to no reason to run 4-5 of the most defining Pokemon over options because of what they bring to a team. These pokemon (being Kangaskhan, Omastar, Scyther, Vileplume, Walrein/Tentacruel) have completely taken over the meta and are on a majority of teams as the glue. With that said, the tier has been recognized as "solved" or "stale" in a lot players' eyes and would like to see some change happen.

While change usually doesn't happen in old gen lower tiers, we believe it could easily happen in ADV UU. With the history of being one of the worst-tiered lower tiers in the history of Smogon, the playerbase believes that we can suspect a few things to bring to the metagame without having ADV UU lose its identity. The first slate for us was the NFE clause and Armaldo. The NFE clause has always been a horrible and out of the ordinary clause set by old Smogon (especially when Scyther is allowed and no other NFEs are?) and we're hoping to abolish it with this first test. This would bring mons like Haunter(!), Metang, and Pupitar into the fray. As for Armaldo, it would bring diversity to the tier in the form of a spinner, Kanga check, and Knock Off user. It's worth noting that Knock Off and Rapid Spin are incompatible with eachother, which could lower the concern of some users thinking that Armaldo would be the perfect utility mon. There has also been concern about SD sets, which with its typing and coverage, could also pose a potential issue. Anyways, we believe these 2 (NFE clause + Armaldo) are a perfect place to start to 'fix' ADV UU. I've attached below in the hide tab some results of a poll we put out in our discord to ADV players regarding the clause, Armaldo, and even potential future tests that could happen assuming this one goes well.

Hide

Ordered results of other UUBL Pokemon that players would like to test per poll

Arcanine – 15
Ninjask – 12
Swellow – 11
Donphan – 5
Jumpluff – 5
Scizor – 4
Zangoose – 4
Lapras - 3
Miltank – 3
Smeargle – 3
Typhlosion – 3
Crobat – 2
Porygon2 – 2
Slowbro – 2
Ursaring – 2
Dodrio – 1
Houndoom - 1
Regice – 1
Regirock - 1
Sceptile – 1
Steelix – 1
Vaporeon - 1
Weezing – 1

As you can see, there's almost no opposition to testing NFE clause/Armaldo among ADV players. This is why as a playerbase, we'd like to proceed with the testing period as well as the voting period slightly after. For testing, UUFPL (a side UU team tournament) has already announced that they will have all ADV players play under suspect conditions. This will be valuable to see what kind of effect the two changes will have on the tier. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get a suspect slot into ADVPL, but UUFPL is a good first start. As for other ways to get data, there will probably be some sort of tournament/live tournaments with the changes.

Ultimately, this is where the playerbase would like to start, and we thought a Policy Review thread would be the best way to officially get the ball rolling on revisiting ADV UU.

 

[McMeghan]

I'm writing this as an ADV enjoyer but not a UU player:

How would the ADV UU playerbase feel about just "properly" using the BL Pokemons as UU and basically start from scratch? Just a genuine question because I reckon it'd be a completely different tier if all BLs were freed, but at the same time, from my perspective, it'd look more natural and better if ADV Low Tiers were carved out of usage like in the future gens and not how people handpicked Pokemons years ago.
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And just so the thread doesn't go in a completely different direction, I see no problem with the OP's suggestion. Especially freeing NFEs as they have been freed in NU anyway.

 

[fatty]

I'm writing this as an ADV enjoyer but not a UU player:

How would the ADV UU playerbase feel about just "properly" using the BL Pokemons as UU and basically start from scratch? Just a genuine question because I reckon it'd be a completely different tier if all BLs were freed, but at the same time, from my perspective, it'd look more natural and better if ADV Low Tiers were carved out of usage like in the future gens and not how people handpicked Pokemons years ago.
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And just so the thread doesn't go in a completely different direction, I see no problem with the OP's suggestion. Especially freeing NFEs as they have been freed in NU anyway.

I’ve brought this up a couple times and personally believe this is overall the best route if we are truly trying to right the tiering wrongs of the past. This clearly takes way more effort, though, as it would be uprooting everything ADV UU has stood for since it’s inception and I wouldn’t say this tier has the largest/ most avid fan base to make this feasible. As you alluded to, I also don’t know if the majority of the fan base would even want this, not only from an effort standpoint but also because despite its issues current ADV UU does have a fairly entrenched metagame with solidified team archetypes and notable players. Personally, I’d be willing to put the effort in if enough people felt like this was the right direction. ADV has some of the best mechanics when it comes to old gens and having essentially a whole other tier of mons in limbo in UUBL, most of them being unusable in OU or having extremely limited niches, has always just seemed wrong. I also believe that the recent trends in opening up old gen tiering has shown that old gen low tiers are certainly not “dead” and interest can easily be reinvigorated through changes like this, if done properly and for the right reasons. Again, it would take a core of dedicated people and most likely an overwhelming majority of current adv uu player support, but just wanted to throw my hat in the ring to support where I can in that endeavor, if we chose to go that route.

As of now, this seems like a good starting point to help remedy certain issues in ADV UUs current state and I appreciate the effort it took to even make this relatively small test possible. At the very least it alleviates some arbitrary decisions of the past and allows the use of some mons that deal with aspects of the tier that could be deemed unhealthy by some. I’ll let other people weigh in on the options we have to help “fix” adv uu, but either way I’m just happy to see this tier get some deserved attention.

 

[JabbaTheGriffin]

I'm writing this as an ADV enjoyer but not a UU player:

How would the ADV UU playerbase feel about just "properly" using the BL Pokemons as UU and basically start from scratch? Just a genuine question because I reckon it'd be a completely different tier if all BLs were freed, but at the same time, from my perspective, it'd look more natural and better if ADV Low Tiers were carved out of usage like in the future gens and not how people handpicked Pokemons years ago.
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And just so the thread doesn't go in a completely different direction, I see no problem with the OP's suggestion. Especially freeing NFEs as they have been freed in NU anyway.

I have always been a huge proponent of this and when I saw this thread title I was hopeful for a second that this is what was being proposed.

I have always hated how incorrectly ADV UU was done. We obviously did not have the most sound tiering practices back in the day, nor did we have the benefit of comprehensive usage statistics. But ADV UU was by far the worst victim of that. The BL list is the size of an entire tier and includes some of the most fun and interesting mons in ADV that are pretty much now completely unusable unless you play the one or two BL tournaments per year.

My position is that we shift current UU down to RU, untouched. This preserves the metagame for the ADV UU enjoyers who now only need to come to terms with the fact that a letter in the tier name has changed (tough pill to swallow, I know). Then we take BL and make it UU and really roll our sleeves up and do what we can to balance it with a fair and reasoned UUBL list (a spotlight ladder, badge incentives, a few tournaments, etc).

I know we’re very late into the game to fix a 15+ year old gen’s lower tier but I just hate to look back and see the blight that is ADV BL staining our tiering history.

 

[Heysup]

All my teams got deleted a few weeks ago so I'm fine with this. But in all seriousness, this always bugged me even though I really enjoy the tier as is.

That being said, I am having a hard time following the logic of unbanning random mons that for lack of a better phrase "look fun". I completely agree we should be removing the NFE clause because it makes no sense, even before, but especially after we removed it in Adv NU.

If we really want to unban the BL mons, even though their process (if you can call it that) was lacking it kind of seems like we would just be repeating what they did unless we re-did the tier from scratch, properly this time. I think there are some mons that are pretty well OU that are in BL though (smeargle, donphan(?), Ninjask (unless BP Clause changed that?)) and probably a few others. The problem of course with this is that we don't have usage stats or a real solid outlet to play the tier unless we think the ladder would be active enough.

In short, we should either drop everything that isn't OU or just drop NFEs only.

 

[Lily]

I mentioned this on Discord a while ago but in a nutshell, here's what would be my preferred process if the general ADV UU playerbase would like to retest every UUBL Pokemon:

• Create a tier list of sorts either via suspect tours or theorymon; this doesn't need to be exact, it just needs to be ~kind of~ accurate. Sort each UUBL mon into tiers that are relative to the current ADV UU power level. For example, Armaldo might be D tier, since it's (presumably?) very close to the current list of ADV UU Pokemon in terms of strength. Something else that's most likely hopelessly broken like Alakazam would be S tier.
• Free Pokemon from these tiers in batches at regular intervals and then vote on them after their time period has passed.
• Move on to the next tier when every Pokemon from one tier is covered.

The reason I suggest doing things this way is best explained via example.
Lapras is most likely broken in current ADV UU. As Shiba's OP states, Walrein is already a super good mon that centralises the tier; Lapras is Walrein that trades a tiny bit of power and speed for a massive bulk boost, better abilities (within the context of current ADV UU anyway since there are no common Fire-types), and it also has the benefit of learning Thunderbolt. If Lapras were to be dropped right now, it'd most likely be a bit too much for the tier given Walrein is already quite contested.
However, in a hypothetical ADV UU where we might have Pokemon like (just for the sake of example - I have no opinion on whether or not these mons would be balanced or not) Articuno, Chansey, Dusclops, Jynx, Miltank, Porygon2, Ludicolo, Regice... well, Lapras might be a bit more manageable, and maybe it'd be fine to drop it then.

I think freeing all the mons at once will lead to a regressive state where we ban the obviously broken things and then are kind of left picking up the scraps and screwing over the tier for most likely years. We'd probably end up with a balanced tier eventually since ADV's mechanics in general are very balanced, but ADV UU doesn't get played that often; it does get enough opportunities now to be tiered thanks to an increase in UU team tours & RoA spotlight tours as well as ADV UU Cup, but it's not played as actively as a current gen tier and I fear that adding 49 new mons to the tier might be too much damage for it to recover. I don't think the idea I have is flawless though! If someone has something better I'd love to hear it.

With that said, I won't be too upset if we do just drop every BL. Maybe as a trial run in team tours first rather than an official tiering decision, though. Also yes please just nuke the stupid NFE clause and ban the individual mons if they're busted. Kadabra's already banned anyway, I really don't think Haunter will be that noteworthy and everything else is likely to be unviable bar the trappers.

 

[Amaranth]

I think freeing all the mons at once will lead to a regressive state where we ban the obviously broken things and then are kind of left picking up the scraps and screwing over the tier for most likely years. We'd probably end up with a balanced tier eventually since ADV's mechanics in general are very balanced, but ADV UU doesn't get played that often; it does get enough opportunities now to be tiered thanks to an increase in UU team tours & RoA spotlight tours as well as ADV UU Cup, but it's not played as actively as a current gen tier and I fear that adding 49 new mons to the tier might be too much damage for it to recover.

FWIW I've seen first hand that RBYUU & NU were built from the ground up and into a decent state in just a couple years (UU especially, NU maybe is a bit rough around the edges, but it's getting there)
If a community is there it definitely can be done, it just takes some proactivity. Spotlight tours, whatever PLs, even hosting a simple single elim tournament just to explore things - if enough dedicated people want it to happen it totally can happen. Interest should be gauged before going ahead naturally, but I don't buy the idea that it's unfeasible at all. I have no horse in this race otherwise.

 

[Plague von Karma]

How would the ADV UU playerbase feel about just "properly" using the BL Pokemons as UU and basically start from scratch? Just a genuine question because I reckon it'd be a completely different tier if all BLs were freed, but at the same time, from my perspective, it'd look more natural and better if ADV Low Tiers were carved out of usage like in the future gens and not how people handpicked Pokemons years ago.

I think freeing all the mons at once will lead to a regressive state where we ban the obviously broken things and then are kind of left picking up the scraps and screwing over the tier for most likely years. We'd probably end up with a balanced tier eventually since ADV's mechanics in general are very balanced, but ADV UU doesn't get played that often; it does get enough opportunities now to be tiered thanks to an increase in UU team tours & RoA spotlight tours as well as ADV UU Cup, but it's not played as actively as a current gen tier and I fear that adding 49 new mons to the tier might be too much damage for it to recover. I don't think the idea I have is flawless though! If someone has something better I'd love to hear it.

Not an ADV player - moreso an onlooker that ladders sometimes - but given RBY did exactly this, I want to share how the nuclear approach went for us. I personally think it was exceedingly successful, but the success absolutely came down to circumstance.

Retiering a generation is hard. Very hard. Despite that, RBY has done this not once, not twice, but thrice; RBY 2k10, Pokemon Perfect, and 2016 Smogon all retiered the chromatic generation and saw success doing so. All the while, we used the same ancient Viability-based Tiering. I think RBY was very lucky to not have anything egregiously broken when BL got cast out, and I don't think it's easy to repeat. While people may argue that Pokemon like Tentacruel are ridiculous, the community has come to love it, and that's fantastic. The reason GSC and ADV would have issues doing what we did is because the power level of the Pokemon is generally higher, and thus the Pokemon with niches in higher tiers that became BL are much better than Pokemon that had niches in the pre-Paraslam OU metagame of RBY. Ergo, I can clearly see why people would be averse to using our scorched earth methodology.

The way we retiered RBY every time was simple: doing the handpicking again via Viability Rankings, rising and dropping Pokemon that go below B-. In 2k10, this was just shifts, while PP and 2016 Smogon just nuked it and went from there. The latter cases became very successful, with PP making tiers from 1U down to 6U - all loved metagames prior to going defunct - while Smogon's is becoming extremely refined. We essentially run the VRs on the trust that the playerbase is intelligent, and have formalised the process through players with tournament results submitting them, and it's worked perfectly. We have avoided kneejerk reactions excellently, and our tiering has become much more valid for it. I see this working fine for ADV. See here and here for some info on the matter. Surely dropping Ninjask like a stone down to NU like god intended is a good enough motivator?

While the playerbase may be small, if people have cared enough to discuss this for literal years, both in play and in policy, I don't see how this is unfeasible at all. Hell, "ADV BL" has been a ladder twice. In fact, given these factors, I think it's an opportunity to draw in new blood and have people explore a now-open tier. Isn't that amazing? RBY's population exploded because of this exact trait: it's the only old gen with tier shifts being "active", and every rise/drop sends ripples throughout the community. However, this goes without saying: what matters is if you can keep the flames burning. If a tier is stagnant and losing players, adding Pokemon itself is not damaging: failing to be proactive with tiering is. Handpicking what drops with concerns about damage is doing exactly what people did in the past with RBY, GSC, and ADV's BL lists.

People play old gens for the history factor, let them make history themselves. Let it grow.

My position is that we shift current UU down to RU, untouched. This preserves the metagame for the ADV UU enjoyers who now only need to come to terms with the fact that a letter in the tier name has changed (tough pill to swallow, I know). Then we take BL and make it UU and really roll our sleeves up and do what we can to balance it with a fair and reasoned UUBL list (a spotlight ladder, badge incentives, a few tournaments, etc).

I think Jabba and Heysup have the right idea, given the prior points about BL being played at least a few times over the years. Keep in mind, this is the exact approach RBY took, down to our new badge incentives, that being Community Contributor for qualified VR submissions, and Contributor for analysis development. If you're so concerned about preservation and potential damage, then shifting everything down a notch seems right. However, there will be a trickle-down effect as the unviable new-UU Pokemon enter the new-RU. This is great if you want to take the "re-open the tiering run" approach, but bad if you're concerned about the work that goes into re-tiering...which, you shouldn't be, that work is a good thing.

So if you took Jabba's route, how do you fan the flames?

Initially, RBY worked with RoA to run spotlight tours, then we branched out into tournaments such as RBYPL and UUFPL to keep everything burning. I think the timeline just happened to be perfect for this, everything practically fell on our lap. For ADV, you'll likely have to do a similar thing. Run one big tournament with a cash prize, then ride the waves and make use of the connections the tier currently has with team tours. Have it get special treatment, stuff like that. We essentially treated RBY like a new generation when retiering it, you'll want to do this with ADV too. Ensure every tournament has a ripple effect, the post-tournament evaluation / VR posts are kind of a ritual out in the RBY community, you could probably do that here too.

But what really did it for RBY was our monstrous C&C efforts. It's no secret that the RBY community is extremely passionate, and it reflects in how over 70 analyses were made in a year attempting to revamp our strategy dex. Every single Pokemon's page has been changed in the past few years, with the exception of just a few OU Pokemon, but even those saw CMS edits to reflect modern usage. You'll want to open the floodgates for ADV too, and frankly, I think that's for the best. Assemble a new QC team, and let the new writers become tier community figureheads. That's a massive part of what helped this tier maintain relevance. Interact with C&C, fuel the discussion, keep it going, fix that dex. Hell, some of the current ADV BL enthusiasts, like Wenderz and BT89, have a storied history of analysis development. Why not cooperate with them? In my Past Gens C&C tenure, I even set up a system for getting tiers analyses, check it out!

These obviously aren't instructions for success; again, RBY UU's cambrian explosion comes down to sheer happenstance. However, there's probably at least a nugget you can take from this. Just know that when doing this, you should dedicate a significant amount of time to paying attention to your tier. For scale, RBY UU sees about as much play as OU on a good week.

Anyway this took an hour and I'm sick so I shall now lay down in a dark room.

Diolch am eich amser.
~ Gwraig â meddwl dirdro

 

[Wenderz]

I have already shared some of my thoughts on discord, and I will echo them hear as well.

As maybe the person who took the initiative to bring appeal on the current ADV UUBL list as a tier of its own, I think the metagame, so basically the resulting metagame of ADV UU if you were to unban the entirety of UUBL and NFEs, is surprisingly very fun and balanced. I'd even want it to become a "frozen" tier unaffected by potential further tier shifts between OU and UUBL (like the most recent rise of Charizard and P2 drop) out of fear of losing healthy, if not essential, Pokemon such as Hariyama, Venusaur, and Vaporeon which have been glanced at in OU.

With that being said, I'd want to keep the current ADV UUBL and ADV UU lists as two distinct tier. Therefore, I'd be in favor of JabbaTheGriffin's idea of turning the current UUBL list into a tier called "ADV UU" and renaming the current ADV UU tier to "ADV RU". I talked to Shiba a bit on Discord and there was a desire to keep current ADV UU's identity as a tier. I don't think it'd come as a surprise that dropping nearly 50 Pokemon to ADV UU would have a massive impact on the metagame and make it completely different, and even foreign to its current playerbase. Speaking from experience with ADV UUBL as a playable metagame: Kangaskhan would no longer be as big and centralizing, SD Tentacruel would not be nearly as big of a threat with stuff like Registeel around and better Pokemon that can survive a boosted hit/outspeed it and kill/cripple it afterwards (Dragonite, Alakazam, Raikou, Regice, etc.), and the list of impacts goes on.

As much as I enjoy ADV UUBL, I'd also like the current ADV UU metagame to keep its identity. I'd be all for testing Armaldo, which isn't too good in ADV UUBL, in current ADV UU since it could very well be an healthy addition to the metagame. However, I'm more inclined to make any potential drops from ADV UUBL if they are supposedly favorable to the ADV UU metagame instead of adding every single 50 Pokemon which would change the tier beyond recognition.

Another thing I'd like to point out is the merit of dropping all of ADV UUBL into ADV UU if one of the main reason to do so is to make currently irrelevant Pokemon in the ADV generation that have little to no niche in their playable tier (Zangoose, Typhlosion, etc.) usable in at least one ADV metagame.

Simply put: I think this would be straight up counterproductive, if ADV UUBL and ADV UU were to be mixed together. Basically, I think it would just shift the irrelevance of the aforementioned UUBL Pokemon into ADV UU Pokemon that would become completely outclassed if they were to share the exact same playable metagames, including the one they belong to, with Pokemon that are simply better versions of them in many if not all ways. Lily brought up ealier the comparison between Lapras and Walrein, the second of which would suffer from that competition and even moreso from Vaporeon which is a better Pokemon than Lapras, to the point that Walrein would go from a ADV UU staple to completely outclassed in every ADV tier including its own. This is far from being the only case of a UU Pokemon losing its niche in UU. Why would people use Fearow if Dodrio was available ? Would people still consider the currently great Vileplume for Chlorophyll sets and slightly higher physical bulk if they could just use the superior Venusaur instead ? Would people still play Magmar if they could choose Typhlosion which already competes hard with Blaziken in UUBL ? Would you still consider Nientales if Houndoom was available ?

I'm only using very obvious examples and comparisons here, and while I have not tested every single UU Pokemon in UUBL, I can safely guarantee that a ton of them would lose their merit if the two metagames were to be fused together. You'd shift from a UUBL list where like 20 Pokemon have little to no relevance in any ADV metagame to a ADV UU metagme with over 80 Pokemon with like 30 of them that have little to no niche in this entire generation. I don't think this is a desirable outcome for what was intended to narrow down the number of irrelevant Pokemon in ADV.

As a side note, I'll just add that if in spite of all that, UUBL ends up getting nuked and everything falls into ADV UU, I advise taking a look at Baton Pass ASAP afterwards. In my experience with UUBL following the same clause as OU on the move is good enough, but it is probably something you'd want to discuss regardless.

Thank you for reading if you did.

 

[LBN]

I'm writing this as an ADV enjoyer but not a UU player:

How would the ADV UU playerbase feel about just "properly" using the BL Pokemons as UU and basically start from scratch? Just a genuine question because I reckon it'd be a completely different tier if all BLs were freed, but at the same time, from my perspective, it'd look more natural and better if ADV Low Tiers were carved out of usage like in the future gens and not how people handpicked Pokemons years ago.
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And just so the thread doesn't go in a completely different direction, I see no problem with the OP's suggestion. Especially freeing NFEs as they have been freed in NU anyway.

For me, i think the only way i'd support this over whats being suggested right now is, allowing say, NU to take entirely outclassed pokemon off our hands. For example, pokemon like Vileplume, Fearow and Sandslash and a ton more would be literally worthless from adding Venusaur Dodrio and Donphan to the tier. Honestly i think this should be doable in all gens with certain criteria to be met, but thats besides the point. Alot of tiers have way too many filler D tiers due to ladder incompetency, and basically nuking all of UUs pokemon without any way for them to properly trickle down seems both hasty and just a bad idea, and the slow approach seems much better to me

 

[AM]

Dropping all the UUBLs to UU is too much. In May's example in comparing to RBY its tiering structure for lower tiers is that the pool of mons is much smaller. It's easier to formulate a gameplan with the limited amount of RBY mons (good ones) compared to the ADV ones, numbers alone. I've talked a bit with some people in our UUFPL chat, others in the past, and we're pretty convinced that most of the NFEs allowed in the current iteration of the tour are probably not that good or at least worst than most of the NU mons you could already use. You'd only see change with some of the BL stuff, Armaldo being the one allowed in UUFPL.

Tier is mega-centralized as Shiba pointed out, but tiers where over 30+ things are viable are normally not good and usually too hard to account for everything. Some centralization should be encourage but obviously not at the level it's at now and possibly just test down in batches?

 

[fatty]

The problem with tiering in batches is that you’d still be looking at the tier through the lens of the previous ADV UU meta, which wouldn’t and shouldn’t be the end goal. What needs to be answered by the community is if we want to keep to the status quo as much as possible or truly tier ADV UU how smogon has grown accustomed to. You can’t half ass this, you have to go all in. Now, there’s definitely mons that would most likely need to be banned right off the bat or not allowed at all (Zam for example) but having the majority of UUBL would still be the move. As I mentioned previously, this still comes down to what the goal is for the ADV UU community and the amount of effort people are willing to put in. I can stand by people wanting to maintain ADV UU’s current integrity, but after further discussion I feel like that sounds more and more like just keeping the tier as is. I’d personally prefer to try our hand at retiering BL.

 

[Hogg]

Crap, you’re really gonna change things so I can’t just show up and randomly play in Adv UU tours once or twice a year without paying attention to the overall meta, aren’t you?

So like, the problem with doing any tiering at all in Adv UU is that its original tiering process was so outdated and subjective and terrible that doing ANY tiering calls the whole thing into question. I feel like you either accept it as a flawed (but fun) product of a very different time, or you revamp the whole thing from the ground up. Doing piecemeal changes just feels really weird, because like… if we have the ability to make changes, how do we decide where to stop?

I’m not opposed to making changes, mind. I just think if you’re going to do it, you should do it properly, making a timeline and plan to fully revamp the tier from the ground up rather than freeing one BL at a time. This is mostly re: the idea of testing Armaldo, rather than revisiting NFEs, by the way. NFEs are relatively low impact and the fact that they’re allowed in NU but not UU is stupid enough that I think it’s OK to just “fix” that issue without worrying about precedent. (Ban Diglett first, though. I will put money down right now that Diglett will be stupid in UU despite its terrible stats.)

Anyhow, on Armaldo and other UUBLs. This is going back 5-6 years but I actually ran a series of Adv UU Revamped tours. Each tour looked at a batch of UUBL ‘mons and how they fit into the meta. The tours were super fun (tagging CrashinBoomBang because he helped me come up with the list each time and also won at least two of the tours). I’ll comment on the various ‘mons we looked at, running off of memory from tours that were half a decade ago:

UUBL mons that I’ve got opinions on

Arcanine: Overall positive presence. Intimidate is incredible and the stats are great, but never felt remotely overwhelming because Fire is still such a terrible typing in this tier. Nice balance pick, with viable priority and good mixed attacking stats but nothing that will break the world with its introduction. Intimidate cores in testing were nice because they allowed for softer defensive backbones on teams.

Armaldo: Not too bad, less impactful than you’d think. Amazing movepool (Knock Off and Rapid Spin are illegal on the same set though) and great typing for the meta, but the Speed and fact that it’s 3HKO’d by a lot really keep it in check. It also absolutely hates status. The first time we freed it we did so alongside some really strong physical attackers (Machamp, Rhydon) that ate its lunch, so it ended up being pretty bad. The second time it was better but still not actually that great. I doubt it would cause anything close to problems if freed.

Articuno: I hated this thing, it never dies and strong Ice Beams + amazing support movepool (Roar/Haze/Bell) + pressure for SubTect nonsense makes it just a really obnoxious presence. Keep it banned.

Kadabra: It wasn’t, like, broken broken, but I really didn’t like having it around. I mean, it is as fast as the Electrics with MUCH better coverage and +25 Special Attack. It does have answers but I personally found that it really restricted building, even if it rarely swept.

Machamp: lol no. This thing was just behind Rhydon as the most broken thing we tested. The Speed tier isn’t bad for the meta and it hits insanely hard and Guts is really really good. Definitely do not free.

Miltank: This was really good and definitely gave Kanga a run for its money. It didn’t completely outclass Kanga (it’s weaker and Kanga has better special bulk), but it’s very very good. Heal Bell and Milk Drink are amazing and it had a bunch of sets. Is it broken? I didn’t really love its presence, and it was uncontestedly a top tier ‘mon, but it didn’t even feel as centralizing as, say, Kanga does now.

Rhydon: Literally the stupidest thing we tested and it wasn’t a close contest. Absurdly strong and good movepool and surprisingly bulky.

Slowbro: I absolutely loved Slowbro’s presence in UU. It didn’t feel broken or overwhelming at all, but it was quite good and got a decent amount of play. It felt like exactly the right balance of viable and interesting without being busted. Did a nice job tempering a lot of the broken physical attackers but wasn’t unbreakable and wasn’t just a passive wall. I’d 100% recommend freeing if you’re doing any real tiering in UU.

Swellow: This one surprised me. I thought it would be really obnoxious, but I actually really enjoyed its presence. It discouraged the brainless Tox spam without being a ridiculous threat (CB Guts Façade is stupid strong, but without Guts activated it’s weaker than Fearow and fails to break through even mediocre neutral targets). Having something viable that broke past the crowded 105 Speed tier is quite nice. I didn’t expect to love this one but it really felt like it made the tier better every time we tested it.

Typhlosion: This one was weird. It’s insanely strong, but Fire types still kinda suck in UU. Blaze-boosted Fire Blast is bananas, but… you know, Fire type. It didn’t feel broken but I subjectively didn’t really enjoy it being around. It lacked the utility of Ninetales or defensive usefulness of Arcanine, so it ended up just being this big obnoxious threat that failed to do anything in a lot of games but randomly swept in others.

Venusaur: Pretty good! But irrelevant because it’s OU now.

NFEs: Other than Kadabra (see above), mostly pretty low impact. I don’t think Haunter is going to suddenly reshape the tier but people will toss it on offensive Spikes teams sometimes and it’ll be OK. Diglett never really got any play, but I bet it’s just as stupid as it was in Adv NU, so maybe leave that one alone. I tried to make Vigoroth work but it wasn’t really worth it.

There were a bunch of things we didn’t bother testing, some of which probably could be decent (especially now that BP is banned… a lot of things didn’t get touched because they would make BP absolutely unbearable). Regirock, Ninjask and Sceptile are likely worth looking into. Maybe Vaporeon, too. Scizor is probably still busted even without Baton Pass, since it’s Tox-immune and sets up on basically everything.

Also, I’m pretty sure I’m missing things? Like, I have clear memories of testing out Regirock, but I can’t find it having ever been used in one of the tours I ran, so either I’m bad at searching or it was just something I tested casually rather than as part of the Revamped tours. But these tours were from like 2016 to 2018 and I’m old, I can’t be expected to remember all of this crap.

Overall thoughts: you could probably free Arcanine, Armaldo, Slowbro, Swellow and the NFEs, and end up with a very fun tier. Arguments could be made for freeing Typhlosion and Miltank, too, but even if they didn’t feel broken per se, I didn’t enjoy their presences as much.

Anyhow, I’m skeptical of the claim that the meta has fully metastasized, because I feel like I’ve seen it settle into states where there are like five “good” decks half a dozen times at this point. Eventually people remember that there are anti-meta threats, and then the anti-meta threats become the new meta, and things settle down and get stale again, and we rinse and repeat. The same thing happens with all tiers, but most modern tiers have enough activity that the cycle happens very quickly, whereas in Adv UU it takes like a year or more to really see major metagame shifts. That being said, as much as I love the tier, I’d be lying to myself if I said it didn’t have quite a few issues, and I’m not opposed to seeing changes. I just don’t think you should go down that road unless you’ve got dedicated folks willing to put in the work and oversee a lot of changes over a long stretch of time.

So yeah, free NFEs but don’t just unban Armaldo to “fix” the tier, not because Armaldo would be broken but because it’s slapping a bandaid on a big gaping wound. If you want more substantial changes I’m all for it, but I’d recommend against starting the process unless you’re confident you can finish it.

Oh, and ban Linoone.

 

[Glue]

As much I enjoy the current ADV UU metagame, I am open to testing out the NFEs and Armaldo.
The NFEs are perfectly fine in NU and shouldn't cause any major metagame change bar Haunter, however I think we should be cautious freeing Armaldo & future the UUBL mons.
Armaldo could be a fun normal resist with rapid spin but then it could be too much for the tier with it's Sword Dance set, for example I can see it being very good with twave support to negate its slow speed.
I can also see Knock Off being huge on its own as ADV UU has 0 good knock off users outside of Sableye on Stall.
With that being said, I am pretty excited to see how people push the limits with Armaldo and the NFEs while we can see what they offer for the metagame for better or worse.

On the topic of freeing UUBLs, I think freeing all the UUBLs is a big task and I don't think we have a big enough community to pull this off.
As much I love the idea, It would take years and a lot of effort from a lot of people to make this a reality.

If the Armaldo + NFEs testing goes well I think we should set a Suspect Test Road Map for the future suspect tests.
I think my biggest issue right now is that we have a lot of pokemon that could be considered worthy of a suspect test but if we do the suspect testing 1 by 1, this format will take years and I think people would eventually lose interest in this project.
I have made a Road map to help make the suspect testing process more easy and more fun after we have done suspect testing Armaldo & the NFEs

Roadmap

Arcanine + Swellow + Ninjask
Donphan + Jumpluff
Scizor
Zangoose
Etc

My reasoning for this format is that Arcanine, Swellow and Ninjask all have at least 10 or more people interested in freeing these 3 mons.
Not only that 2 of the 3 mons are already similar to current UU mons being Fearow (Swellow) and Scyther (Ninjask) you can pretty much already prep for these mons without having to adapt too hard.
As for Arcanine it was the mon who recieved the most votes from the ADV UU community to be freed and of course would be interesting to see Arcanine in an ADV UU setting.
Then after these 3 mons, this is when people started to get more cautious on who should be suspect tested into ADV UU as the next set of mons have no more than 5 votes.

The next 2 mons that should be tested is Donphan and Jumpluff.
Donphan would be a very exciting and interesting addition to UU as not only we get another Rapid Spin user but we also get another real good ground type that isn't Gligar.
As for Jumpluff, I don't think anyone in the world would care if Jumpluff was the only lone suspect, you are better off pairing Donphan in the next the suspect test after the proposed Swellow + Ninjask + Arcanine suspect.

After Donphan we should only do singular mons suspect tests, I think it would get way too much if we tested Scizor and Zangoose at the same time just as an example.

 

[LBN]

So like, the problem with doing any tiering at all in Adv UU is that its original tiering process was so outdated and subjective and terrible that doing ANY tiering calls the whole thing into question. I feel like you either accept it as a flawed (but fun) product of a very different time, or you revamp the whole thing from the ground up. Doing piecemeal changes just feels really weird, because like… if we have the ability to make changes, how do we decide where to stop?

I’m not opposed to making changes, mind. I just think if you’re going to do it, you should do it properly, making a timeline and plan to fully revamp the tier from the ground up rather than freeing one BL at a time. This is mostly re: the idea of testing Armaldo, rather than revisiting NFEs, by the way. NFEs are relatively low impact and the fact that they’re allowed in NU but not UU is stupid enough that I think it’s OK to just “fix” that issue without worrying about precedent. (Ban Diglett first, though. I will put money down right now that Diglett will be stupid in UU despite its terrible stats.)

So yeah, free NFEs but don’t just unban Armaldo to “fix” the tier, not because Armaldo would be broken but because it’s slapping a bandaid on a big gaping wound. If you want more substantial changes I’m all for it, but I’d recommend against starting the process unless you’re confident you can finish it.

Aight while this post isn't bad, im gonna use it as a basis to flame what its arguing for my convenience because frankly ive seen a lot of stupid suggestions being made here, and while this doesn't do that, any person speaking of ADV RU has.

For now though, let me touch on the NFEs real quick. While not many are going to make a splash yes, saying only really haunter is valuable i feel is understating a couple others. Besides Haunter we got 5 more worth looking at

I think Metang is actually really solid, not a metagame force but a solid B+ rank threat, it's coverage is the exact same as Metagross, including Meteor Mash, Earthquake, Explosion, Shadow Ball, Rock slide etc. Considering most of the waters in the tier are either not resisting steel (Omastar and Walrein) or weak to Earthquake/Rock Slide (Tentacruel, Lanturn and Mantine) and Fires are not that good, Metangs offensive capabilities are really solid here, I even used it vs Accel Here where Metang went Triple Platinum, showcasing just how nice it can be to use. I don't think its incredible, but it's definitely something i think is a relevant threat on Paraspam teams.

These 4 are more hypothetical, but Pikachu is still fairly fast at 306, while hitting significantly harder than its main competition in Electabuzz and Manectric, dealing 38% minimum to Spdef Vileplume, while Electabuzz does 29-35% with Ice punch. While definitely Niche, i think it has merit as an option. Golbat i think could be a decent Fat breaker with Toxic Taunt, using pokemon like Vileplume as fodder, or with a CB set as a secondary Gligar that trades an electric immunity for being Slightly faster and stronger. Not sure on Golbat being worth much but Pikachu can definitely do stuff. Other mons like Shelgon and Pupitar could be solid Dragon Dance sweepers on Screens HOs mainly Pupitar, but im not as confident on that. Anyways...

for everybody saying make an ADV RU, you guys do know we can just send the unviable garbage to NUBL and let ADV NU decide what they want from there right?

I seriously don't understand why you would want to make ADV RU when we don't even have a DPP RU either. Utilizing NUBL allows up to not screw over NU, give them a chance to grab mons they desire from our scraps, and go from there, instead of making a half baked metagame out of thin air that would require a whole new council, all the resources that'd come from a new tier that nobody tryna play anyway probably, and looks less stupid that trying to have RUPL look like 3 SS, SM XY BW and ADV. I understand that last part is less relevant and more petty that anything else, but it would just look so weird that i gotta mention it.

Lastly, for the Idea of nuking ADV UU to the ground, why. Why can we not simply do it this way, we don't have to go all out in one way or not at all, there's no reason we can't simply take it slow and methodical. Half the Pokemon in UUBL are very bombastically broken that we don't have to pull the classic OU Genesect game with them. Why waste our time with that with maybe a 64th of the current OU playerbase to try and test them all out, when the way its being done with UUFPL is honestly as good as you can ask for. If we had more people I'd maybe understand the nuke it to the ground approach tiers like UU did with the BLs upon DLC, but we don't have the people for that so just why.

Also finally for Hogg's thing about calling it all into question, no it really doesn't do that. Testing Armaldo down does not call into question how batshit broken Registeel would be. Freeing Jumpluff does not invalidate sending Articuno to the depths of hell either, and vice versa.

 

[Hipmonlee]

Also finally for Hogg's thing about calling it all into question, no it really doesn't do that. Testing Armaldo down does not call into question how batshit broken Registeel would be. Freeing Jumpluff does not invalidate sending Articuno to the depths of hell either, and vice versa.

ADV UU is currently a special-case in our tiering system, a protected meta, based on the idea that it is worth protecting. It doesnt make sense to maintain its privilege as a protected tier if you are going to change it. If you want to change it, do it properly: use a Viability ranking cutoff.

For the concerns about things that are obvious broken, you should put into place a system with quickbans, RBY has done this (RBY has done a lot of policy work on this stuff). You dont even need to wait for the metagame to start, you can absolutely say, before a game is even played "Registeel is laughably broken, we aren't gonna bother waiting to test that crap". If Lapras drops to RBY UU next year, we are very likely to pull the trigger on that.

You also get to choose where to place your viability ranking cutoff. RBY hasnt really come up with a perfect answer for dealing with that, and I suspect it will continue to cause us issues down the line. For now you can draw the line wherever you please.

Another thing that I think is worth mentioning about the RBY approach, is that we require a mon to be ranked below/above the cutoff for 2 VR cycles before it moves. So you get a fair amount of stability. It's not a case of wild changes based on the fashion trends in the tier above.

Retiering RBY lower tiers has been successful way beyond what we thought possible. I promise you you will have players for this if you do it right. People love to be involved with this stuff.

 

[Heysup]

At the end of the day in reading the posts and discord I am more and more convinced that we should do neither. The arguments for unbanning all are stronger, but still weak given the fact that we do not have an active ladder and it may be a bit difficult and onerous to generate the data we need to make decisions. The arguments for arbitrarily unbanning one at a time I just can't see how we can justify; it really does not make any sense to proceed that way (more on that below).

That being said, I don't think anyone disagrees with unbanning NFEs as the first step. Unlike the above options, it has a justifiable foundation: it makes no sense given the circumstances and is not actually followed (Scyther exhibit "A") in the tiering list. I think we should go ahead and do it after advpl/uupl.

for everybody saying make an ADV RU, you guys do know we can just send the unviable garbage to NUBL and let ADV NU decide what they want from there right?

I seriously don't understand why you would want to make ADV RU when we don't even have a DPP RU either. Utilizing NUBL allows up to not screw over NU, give them a chance to grab mons they desire from our scraps, and go from there, instead of making a half baked metagame out of thin air that would require a whole new council, all the resources that'd come from a new tier that nobody tryna play anyway probably, and looks less stupid that trying to have RUPL look like 3 SS, SM XY BW and ADV. I understand that last part is less relevant and more petty that anything else, but it would just look so weird that i gotta mention it.

I don't think I have considered the idea serious but I think the main point people are making, at least when I've mentioned an "awkward tier in between ADV UU and NU" is that it has been brought up that we have these mons in UUBL that basically have nowhere to be played, unlike most tiers which at least have a majority of the mons being playable (down to ZU if we consider that a real meta in adv etc.). The point being, we are just trading a group of mons in current UU to NUBL for playable mons in UUBL.

This is obviously more of a counterargument for nuking the tier rather than the slow arbitrary re-testing.

I also don't think we should completely ignore ADV NU as a tier. I don't think UU player base should change it but I think if we are touching gen 3 we do need to consider the big picture, even if it's just for perspective and nothing more.

LBN/Roseybear posts

Lastly, for the Idea of nuking ADV UU to the ground, why. Why can we not simply do it this way, we don't have to go all out in one way or not at all, there's no reason we can't simply take it slow and methodical. Half the Pokemon in UUBL are very bombastically broken that we don't have to pull the classic OU Genesect game with them. Why waste our time with that with maybe a 64th of the current OU playerbase to try and test them all out, when the way its being done with UUFPL is honestly as good as you can ask for. If we had more people I'd maybe understand the nuke it to the ground approach tiers like UU did with the BLs upon DLC, but we don't have the people for that so just why.

Also finally for Hogg's thing about calling it all into question, no it really doesn't do that. Testing Armaldo down does not call into question how batshit broken Registeel would be. Freeing Jumpluff does not invalidate sending Articuno to the depths of hell either, and vice versa.

As much I enjoy the current ADV UU metagame, I am open to testing out the NFEs and Armaldo.
The NFEs are perfectly fine in NU and shouldn't cause any major metagame change bar Haunter, however I think we should be cautious freeing Armaldo & future the UUBL mons.
Armaldo could be a fun normal resist with rapid spin but then it could be too much for the tier with it's Sword Dance set, for example I can see it being very good with twave support to negate its slow speed.
I can also see Knock Off being huge on its own as ADV UU has 0 good knock off users outside of Sableye on Stall.
With that being said, I am pretty excited to see how people push the limits with Armaldo and the NFEs while we can see what they offer for the metagame for better or worse.

On the topic of freeing UUBLs, I think freeing all the UUBLs is a big task and I don't think we have a big enough community to pull this off.
As much I love the idea, It would take years and a lot of effort from a lot of people to make this a reality.

If the Armaldo + NFEs testing goes well I think we should set a Suspect Test Road Map for the future suspect tests.
I think my biggest issue right now is that we have a lot of pokemon that could be considered worthy of a suspect test but if we do the suspect testing 1 by 1, this format will take years and I think people would eventually lose interest in this project.
I have made a Road map to help make the suspect testing process more easy and more fun after we have done suspect testing Armaldo & the NFEs

Roadmap

Arcanine + Swellow + Ninjask
Donphan + Jumpluff
Scizor
Zangoose
Etc

My reasoning for this format is that Arcanine, Swellow and Ninjask all have at least 10 or more people interested in freeing these 3 mons.
Not only that 2 of the 3 mons are already similar to current UU mons being Fearow (Swellow) and Scyther (Ninjask) you can pretty much already prep for these mons without having to adapt too hard.
As for Arcanine it was the mon who recieved the most votes from the ADV UU community to be freed and of course would be interesting to see Arcanine in an ADV UU setting.
Then after these 3 mons, this is when people started to get more cautious on who should be suspect tested into ADV UU as the next set of mons have no more than 5 votes.

The next 2 mons that should be tested is Donphan and Jumpluff.
Donphan would be a very exciting and interesting addition to UU as not only we get another Rapid Spin user but we also get another real good ground type that isn't Gligar.
As for Jumpluff, I don't think anyone in the world would care if Jumpluff was the only lone suspect, you are better off pairing Donphan in the next the suspect test after the proposed Swellow + Ninjask + Arcanine suspect.

After Donphan we should only do singular mons suspect tests, I think it would get way too much if we tested Scizor and Zangoose at the same time just as an example.

I group these together because they both represent the main issues with the arbitrary re-test idea. I think the theme that is bugging a lot of the boomers here is the, I'm trying to think of a better word than "arbitrariness", in which we ban stuff in the current generations which is now being trying to be thrown into old gen tiering. If you think about it, it is kind of ironic given the fact that ADV UU is the tier which is the most in-line with the current "ban whatever you want to make the most fun and competitive metagame" which is a shift (not saying it is a bad shift) from the dpp/bw/xy "ban only what is too strong/broken" mentality.

The point is we would just be trading one arbitrary set of tiering for another person's (or group of people's) perspective on what is broken and what is not purely based on speculation without any true foundation to stand on. No offense intended at all to goat Roseybear, but that post is a good indicator of this in my view. It would be just as easy for me to say actually no SD Armaldo is broken it OHKOes common waters like Walrein and Tenta and isn't OHKOed by surf and it also beats Vileplume and Gligar (I assume) so lets not retest it. Let's unban Rhydon because even though it's got STAB EQ it's slower and is OHKOed by water/grass moves from Walrein, Tenta and Vileplume and also is weak to EQ. I'm sure you can raise counter points (I mean I can even raise counter points) but I think that only strengthens my original argument that truly none of us have any real idea what we're talking about when discussing UUBL and that this process is inherently lacking in any objective standard.

If we are re-tiering ADV UU we should not just be repeating the method used already which is the basis of why we have a problem with it in the first place. I think that's really hard to justify, logically.

Given that everything is either too onerous, impractical or lacks any justifiable basis for doing I think the solution is simply to unban NFEs which I don't think anyone disagrees with because it truly makes no sense, objectively.

 

[Bughouse]

Freeing the NFEs is absolutely the right course of action. It's been stupid as a matter of policy for a long time. NU freed them and I assure you none will be broken in UU since none that we freed (i.e. were not already in UU) are broken in NU. Some may have an impact and cause meta shifts, but that doesn't itself mean broken, and if they're not broken, and the rule makes no sense otherwise, the rule should vanish.

I do think there's some merit to even broader retiering because ADV UUBL is an insane tier of a banlist, and there's direct precedence doing something like this in RBY and GSC lower tiers too. However... RBY and GSC are comparably much smaller dexes and thus had much simpler tiering to figure out, and I think the magnitude of the changes discussed/made there were much smaller too than what is possibly being proposed here when you talk about attempting to retier the entirety of UUBL.

If you were to attempt this, the next logical step after UU has their best go at retiering would be to do what RBY and GSC did too, and then let the changes waterfall down to other lower tiers, which does concern me since ADV NU has been totally stable in terms of tiering for something like 6-8 years I think (I forget when exactly we freed NFEs, dropped Sableye and others, etc), and the current meta is great.

That said, NU always has the backstop to just put mons that UU believes should drop but that NU believes would be broken into NUBL (for example, I think the previously mentioned Sandslash-would-drop-if-Donphan-were-freed would be hilariously broken in current ADV NU considering it can fire off EQs from base 100 attack like Piloswine already currently can... but from base 65 speed, which is actually really good for ADV NU. It also has spin of course, and Sableye can't spinblock it due to aforementioned strong EQ). Still, even if NU rejects almost everything UU says it is dropping, I can't imagine that after the end of all this the total size of both BLs would be bigger than UUBL currently is, since it's so insanely massive, and NUBL literally doesn't even currently exist, as far as I know.

 

[rs]

Yo we're actually following through with this. Thank you everyone for the posts and ideas to how we should tier ADV; the original proposal is what we will proceeding with. Keeping the identity of current ADV UU will always be the priority and this is the way we thought was best instead of completely re-tiering from scratch.

We will be voting on:
- NFE Clause
- Arena Trap
- Swagger
- Bright Powder/Lax Incense
- Baton Pass (already banned in most tours anyway but for uniformity purposes we're gonna hold a vote)

The latter 3 options are seen as noncompetitive elements that have been abused in a good number of games in recent tours and we'd like to get rid of those elements completely. Regarding a vote on Armaldo, it will not be happening atm, most of us thought that it in the games it was on the field it would bring a more negative impact than positive impact to the tier. In the future this could change of course if we unban other BLs, but for now the consensus was that we wouldn't need a vote. For those wondering if we'd test any other mons, the next mons on the slate would be some order of Arcanine, Swellow, and Ninjask (all of which could be tested during the next UU team tour).

Voting reqs were:
- Anyone who played >50% of regular season games in the past ~year and a half of tours including UUSD, UUPL, or UUWC, UUFPL II, ADVPL with at least 1 win in this tier.
- Anyone who made semifinals of the most recent ADV UU Cup.

Final voter list:

Voters

A Hero's Destiny
Abyssal Ruins
Accel
Ark
BigFatMantis
Bouff
Cam
Christo
crayon pop
crying
eden
Expulso
fatty
Garay oak
gorex
Heysup
Hogg
Hyogafodex
innovamania
JabbaTheGriffin
kael
LpZ
Luna's Banned now
Melle2402
Micciu
Mr.378
Parpar
Plas
pokemonisfun
Quartosa
r0ady
Raichy
RampageWebber
Roseybear
Shiba
TSR
The Strap

The vote will happen in ~48 hours in case anyone has anything else to say regarding the voting slate.

 

[Heysup]

Yo we're actually following through with this. Thank you everyone for the posts and ideas to how we should tier ADV; the original proposal is what we will proceeding with. Keeping the identity of current ADV UU will always be the priority and this is the way we thought was best instead of completely re-tiering from scratch.

We will be voting on:
- NFE Clause
- Arena Trap
- Swagger
- Bright Powder/Lax Incense
- Baton Pass (already banned in most tours anyway but for uniformity purposes we're gonna hold a vote)

The vote will happen in ~48 hours in case anyone has anything else to say regarding the voting slate.

I'll bite. I don't have anything to say about NFE/Swagger/miss items/bp. I do not agree with banning BP, but I don't actually have a problem with it being on the slate since we've actually used it before.

I do have a problem with Arena Trap being on the slate because it is on there without any basis whatsoever. No one in discord has been able to explain (without just saying "I don't like it") why it makes sense to quick ban Arena Trap. Just to summarize my points here:

1. Arena Trap is available in every other ADV metagame and is not "problematic". I know there are people who think Dugtrio is stupid but that's not the same as thinking Arena Trap is broken as an ability, especially considering we are not dealing with Dugtrio in UU (see below).

2. While I could be convinced that they have a niche in ADV UU, Trapinch and Diglett are objectively terrible, C+ at best Pokemon. Diglett can't even 2HKO Tect Omastar. It doesn't trap anything relevant that has more than 50% of its HP left (40% maybe?), and it can't switch into anything so you are basically just playing 5v6 when you use it and we should note being locked into CB EQ is terrible because you're then dealing with +2 Gligar/Scyther/Xatu or giving free attacks to Solrock etc. It is in a decent speed tier but all notable electrics other than Amph (which can tank one fwiw) are faster so it can't trap them either. Let's keep in mind that Diglett is free in NU and is maybe an average performing mon there at best, and it actually traps and generally OHKOes or easily a ton of A+/S tier mons (Bellosom, Roselia, Flareon, Pikachu, ties Plusle/Minun, Mawile, Metang, Sudo etc.). It's almost a joke, but how do you justify saying that Diglett/Trapinch are Quick Ban worthy when considering how below average it is in a weaker metagame with more trappable Pokemon? You can't.

Remember we are talking quick banning here. Not just suspecting. This is not supposed to be done lightly and it totally is being done here for no justifiable reason.

Let's let Arena Trap sit around and if it becomes a problem we can have a vote after Snake.

 

[LBN]

1. Arena Trap is available in every other ADV metagame and is not "problematic". I know there are people who think Dugtrio is stupid but that's not the same as thinking Arena Trap is broken as an ability, especially considering we are not dealing with Dugtrio in UU (see below).

2. While I could be convinced that they have a niche in ADV UU, Trapinch and Diglett are objectively terrible, C+ at best Pokemon. Diglett can't even 2HKO Tect Omastar. It doesn't trap anything relevant that has more than 50% of its HP left (40% maybe?), and it can't switch into anything so you are basically just playing 5v6 when you use it and we should note being locked into CB EQ is terrible because you're then dealing with +2 Gligar/Scyther/Xatu or giving free attacks to Solrock etc. It is in a decent speed tier but all notable electrics other than Amph (which can tank one fwiw) are faster so it can't trap them either. Let's keep in mind that Diglett is free in NU and is maybe an average performing mon there at best, and it actually traps and generally OHKOes or easily a ton of A+/S tier mons (Bellosom, Roselia, Flareon, Pikachu, ties Plusle/Minun, Mawile, Metang, Sudo etc.). It's almost a joke, but how do you justify saying that Diglett/Trapinch are Quick Ban worthy when considering how below average it is in a weaker metagame with more trappable Pokemon? You can't.
Let's let Arena Trap sit around and if it becomes a problem we can have a vote after Snake.

I'll get to my takes on the other voting but first off lemme start by saying just because a trapper can't ohko a mon doesnt mean it isn't trapping it. I didn't know BW2 dugtrio didn't trap tyranitar just because it didn't ohko it, that logic is beyond stupid. Alongside this, a trapper being worse in another tier doesn't mean it cannot be stupid in the tier above, look at DPP OU/UU Dugtrio. Trapping inherently is about the targets and beneficiaries and in the tier basically backpeddled by kangaskhan and other normal threats like Fearow, having an element that let's you just tap off it's main/most splashable checks is frankly not something anybody wants to put up with. And yes, we are all fully aware that banning off preference is silly, but i think in some cases like this, where we are effectively unbanning arena trap as it is because of removing the NFE clause, in a sense you can look at it as trying to unban it, and really arena trap is not something that belongs in this game. I think you are criminally underselling diglett and more notably have either a different or completely just incorrect view on what trapping really is. You don't need to OHKO to trap, you need to remove and/or pick off. Also people on dicord have told you the reasons why literally nobody else but you wants to not boot out arena trap, you just hard ignored it and had the entire argument loop around till people got bored of a looping discussion and stopped.

The argument about flying type setup threats is a valid one yes, and i would argue you can prep for them in the builder but scyther is broken as shit and has no true answers but RK9 is on the upcoming list so personally I'll let it slide. But overall i don't think that's enough to justify effectively freeing arena trap into the meta. One more aspect I will mention is removing the tier's main spiker is a terrible thing for the tier which has been bitching recently about wishpass Kangaskhan making games last 10 years.

As for the rest, Bright powder can go, swagger can go, Baton pass has no business being allowed on literally any tier on this website and should get the OHKO clause treatment but im not opening that can of worms here. NFE clause should go and it's been elaborated on enough.

Armaldo personally was an incredibly solid Pokemon in use, and I do think it's a shame that we didn't have it on the slate, as it's prospects of being another spinner option, kangaskhan check, and knock off opton weighs its benefits higher than it's supposed overbearing nature to me, which i don't really agree with, but i can see why with paraspam teams being so good for it.

As for the next pokemon, i absolutely think Arcanine should be next, based off what it brings to the tier. The other 2 don't really bring much and are regarded as a faster budget fearow/scyther respectfully, meanwhile nothing really does what arcanine does. First off its a fire type and if you look at the VR, yeah we don't have good fires, ninetales is niche and rapidash/magmar are just plain not great (charmeleon is fun though). Arcanine however has the capabilities to be a good pick both offensively and defensively, namely being an actual real scyther switchin oh my god i thought these didn't exist after seeing lanturn take 70% from double edge. Also being one of the few Intimidate pokemon can provide new counterplay options to some things, and priority espeed on a pokemon not named linoone will be a welcome addition.

TLDR
Remove NFE clause
Ban Swagger
Ban Bright powder
Ban Arena Trap
Keep BP gone
Should've had armaldo atleast on here and give it a DNB vote
Arcanine next

 

[Expulso]

I'll bite. I don't have anything to say about NFE/Swagger/miss items/bp. I do not agree with banning BP, but I don't actually have a problem with it being on the slate since we've actually used it before.

I do have a problem with Arena Trap being on the slate because it is on there without any basis whatsoever. No one in discord has been able to explain (without just saying "I don't like it") why it makes sense to quick ban Arena Trap. Just to summarize my points here:

1. Arena Trap is available in every other ADV metagame and is not "problematic". I know there are people who think Dugtrio is stupid but that's not the same as thinking Arena Trap is broken as an ability, especially considering we are not dealing with Dugtrio in UU (see below).

2. While I could be convinced that they have a niche in ADV UU, Trapinch and Diglett are objectively terrible, C+ at best Pokemon. Diglett can't even 2HKO Tect Omastar. It doesn't trap anything relevant that has more than 50% of its HP left (40% maybe?), and it can't switch into anything so you are basically just playing 5v6 when you use it and we should note being locked into CB EQ is terrible because you're then dealing with +2 Gligar/Scyther/Xatu or giving free attacks to Solrock etc. It is in a decent speed tier but all notable electrics other than Amph (which can tank one fwiw) are faster so it can't trap them either. Let's keep in mind that Diglett is free in NU and is maybe an average performing mon there at best, and it actually traps and generally OHKOes or easily a ton of A+/S tier mons (Bellosom, Roselia, Flareon, Pikachu, ties Plusle/Minun, Mawile, Metang, Sudo etc.). It's almost a joke, but how do you justify saying that Diglett/Trapinch are Quick Ban worthy when considering how below average it is in a weaker metagame with more trappable Pokemon? You can't.

Remember we are talking quick banning here. Not just suspecting. This is not supposed to be done lightly and it totally is being done here for no justifiable reason.

Let's let Arena Trap sit around and if it becomes a problem we can have a vote after Snake.

to respond to the point abt arena trap by giving an argument for it to be voted on:

- it introduces a new element to the metagame that is usually unhealthy. Adv ou acknowledges that dugtrio’s healthy state is an exception; the meta has had 10-15 years to evolve and properly balance the Arena Trapper. adding arena trap to adv uu, however, would simply force the post-vote metagame development to revolve around answering diglett and everything it enables (trapping Amphy/Oma for Scyther, weakening rest Kangas). I personally find this centralization undesirable and would rather this metagame develop around the new, healthy mons rather than a mechanic that has been unhealthy almost every time it has appeared. this would be relevant because…

- diglett would actually be useful and viable. I think dismissing it as a C-rank mon because it’s marginal in NU is wrong. ADV NU is much faster paced, making picking off weakened threats or walls less useful; in ADV UU, that attribute is an absolute game changer. Kanga’s catch-all defensive utility and the number of other good walls in the tier (glig, plume, walrein) make diglett less of a momentum suck because it’s hard to get instantly out-offensed after giving up one free turn here than it is in NU. Killing an Ampharos, forcing a Kanga to take ~85% from 2 Adamant EQs as it rests or preventing it from KOing if it would then drop below ~45%, and taking out Omastar from about 60% are extremely useful traits that would have a large impact on the metagame.

- i think diglett / arena trap should be re-tested after the meta develops around the other NFEs. it is not proven to be broken in my eyes; it mostly leads to what i view as an undesirable amt of centralization in the new metagame development we are aiming for, and we have ample evidence to suggest that it would have a relevant amount of impact on the meta. i think it’s perfectly fair for us to want the chance to vote on the addition of a strategy, trapping, that substantially alters how this metagame would be played.

 

[Heysup]

I'll get to my takes on the other voting but first off lemme start by saying just because a trapper can't ohko a mon doesnt mean it isn't trapping it. I didn't know BW2 dugtrio didn't trap tyranitar just because it didn't ohko it, that logic is beyond stupid. Alongside this, a trapper being worse in another tier doesn't mean it cannot be stupid in the tier above, look at DPP OU/UU Dugtrio. Trapping inherently is about the targets and beneficiaries and in the tier basically backpeddled by kangaskhan and other normal threats like Fearow, having an element that let's you just tap off it's main/most splashable checks is frankly not something anybody wants to put up with. And yes, we are all fully aware that banning off preference is silly, but i think in some cases like this, where we are effectively unbanning arena trap as it is because of removing the NFE clause, in a sense you can look at it as trying to unban it, and really arena trap is not something that belongs in this game. I think you are criminally underselling diglett and more notably have either a different or completely just incorrect view on what trapping really is. You don't need to OHKO to trap, you need to remove and/or pick off. Also people on dicord have told you the reasons why literally nobody else but you wants to not boot out arena trap, you just hard ignored it and had the entire argument loop around till people got bored of a looping discussion and stopped.

The argument about flying type setup threats is a valid one yes, and i would argue you can prep for them in the builder but scyther is broken as shit and has no true answers but RK9 is on the upcoming list so personally I'll let it slide. But overall i don't think that's enough to justify effectively freeing arena trap into the meta. One more aspect I will mention is removing the tier's main spiker is a terrible thing for the tier which has been bitching recently about wishpass Kangaskhan making games last 10 years.

I was tempted not to respond to this borderline inflammatory post but I am now therefore motivated to post calculations which you should have made before flinging terms like "beyond stupid" around. I never once said it needs to "OHKO to trap". I said it doesn't even 2HKO tect Omastar. It doesn't trap anything relevant without it already being in fodder range.

I started to calc and it's actually hard to find stuff it is faster than that are grounded and relevant but here:

252 Atk Choice Band Diglett Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Omastar: 178-210 (51.7 - 61%) -- 94.1% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
Possible damage amounts: (178, 180, 182, 184, 186, 189, 191, 193, 195, 197, 199, 201, 203, 205, 207, 210)

Not even Kanga EQ is enough chip for this to work on a predicted spike. "removing the tier's main spiker" that point holds no weight whatsoever. You can remove it when it's already spiked 2 times. Like, Diglett's ability to trap a spiker after it's spiked up twice and taken 2 Kanga EQ's is really the best argument you have and it's pathetic.

252 Atk Choice Band Diglett Earthquake vs. 212 HP / 0 Def Kangaskhan: 173-204 (42.8 - 50.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Diglett Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 240+ Def Vileplume: 117-138 (33 - 38.9%) -- 7.9% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Diglett Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Cradily: 147-174 (39 - 46.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Diglett Earthquake vs. 224 HP / 0 Def Walrein: 156-184 (37.4 - 44.1%) -- 100% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Diglett Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Hitmontop: 150-177 (49.3 - 58.2%) -- 63.7% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Diglett Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Qwilfish: 363-428 (108.6 - 128.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 Atk Choice Band Diglett Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 80 Def Ampharos: 328-386 (85.4 - 100.5%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO
252 Atk Choice Band Diglett Earthquake vs. 40 HP / 0 Def Lanturn: 443-522 (110.4 - 130.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 Atk Choice Band Diglett Rock Slide vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Pinsir: 144-170 (52.9 - 62.5%) -- 99.6% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Diglett Earthquake vs. 228 HP / 0 Def Aggron: 346-408 (102.3 - 120.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 Atk Choice Band Diglett Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Nidoqueen: 323-380 (84.1 - 98.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Diglett Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 216+ Def Granbull: 128-151 (33.3 - 39.3%) -- 12.6% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

Maybe I missed a few but this is the most embarrassing activity. I've been known not to articulate things very well on occasion. So let's listen to the calculator. There is no clearer message that Arena Trap needs to be off the slate than the calculations above. There are maybe 2 mons here that can be reasonably chipped into range, and it can trap 2-3 as long as you sacrifice something first. Just so you know, most everything are usually EV'd to take on Kanga, Phys tenta and scyther better. Bin it.

I did not ignore anyone on discord. Only a small handful of you tried to argue that Diglett was good, but most people just said "I don't want it in the metagame". I addressed that point in my post. Maybe if we were voting on Arena Trap as a suspect, sure. But this is a quick ban. it is not appropriate to say "QB it because I don't wanna deal with it".

Why are you raising BW and DPP Dugtrio/TTar mechanics which are completely irrelevant when we are talking about ADV, and those pokemon both exist in ADV OU and the metagame is competitive, arguably the most competitive? I suppose the question is rhetorical but it's quite telling.

Your last counter point is that Arkanine balances +2 Scyther which abuses Diglett's set up. Not sure if you're trying to make my argument for me but this kind of seems like an admission that Diglett is trash and there's nothing really to reliably stop scyther from plowing through teams with free set up turns every time Diglett forces you to sacrifice a mon to get it in then deal with +2 Scyther on repeat.

to respond to the point abt arena trap by giving an argument for it to be voted on:

- it introduces a new element to the metagame that is usually unhealthy. Adv ou acknowledges that dugtrio’s healthy state is an exception; the meta has had 10-15 years to evolve and properly balance the Arena Trapper. adding arena trap to adv uu, however, would simply force the post-vote metagame development to revolve around answering diglett and everything it enables (trapping Amphy/Oma for Scyther, weakening rest Kangas). I personally find this centralization undesirable and would rather this metagame develop around the new, healthy mons rather than a mechanic that has been unhealthy almost every time it has appeared. this would be relevant because…

- diglett would actually be useful and viable. I think dismissing it as a C-rank mon because it’s marginal in NU is wrong. ADV NU is much faster paced, making picking off weakened threats or walls less useful; in ADV UU, that attribute is an absolute game changer. Kanga’s catch-all defensive utility and the number of other good walls in the tier (glig, plume, walrein) make diglett less of a momentum suck because it’s hard to get instantly out-offensed after giving up one free turn here than it is in NU. Killing an Ampharos, forcing a Kanga to take ~85% from 2 Adamant EQs as it rests or preventing it from KOing if it would then drop below ~45%, and taking out Omastar from about 60% are extremely useful traits that would have a large impact on the metagame.

- i think diglett / arena trap should be re-tested after the meta develops around the other NFEs. it is not proven to be broken in my eyes; it mostly leads to what i view as an undesirable amt of centralization in the new metagame development we are aiming for, and we have ample evidence to suggest that it would have a relevant amount of impact on the meta. i think it’s perfectly fair for us to want the chance to vote on the addition of a strategy, trapping, that substantially alters how this metagame would be played.

1. I would buy this if Diglett wasn't demonstrably not good. You are operating on a completely false premise here.
2. I would concede that it can be useful and can have a niche. I wouldn't use the word "viable", but fine sure whatever. So can you help connect the dots for me - how do we get from "useful and viable" to super broken deserving of a quickban? Let's please follow the logical steps and, absent any facts someone has yet to pull out in all of this, actually address things that are broken or have the potential to be something more than "useful".
3. Ignoring the false premise that Diglett is even demonstrably useful and would impact the meta at all, it defies all logic that we ignore the evidence in front of us and then test Arena Trap later. It is not denying a vote. It is just doing it in a way that makes sense.

At the end of the day, it comes down to this: Trapping is fine in ADV and we have evidence, and there is no evidence to the contrary.

 

[BigFatMantis]

Just want to say that Heysup is not the only person that shares that stance on Arena Trap. I don't know if it's banworthy or not, and I don't really think anyone else knows either, so I think it makes perfect sense to not immediately ban it and see how it goes and if it's problematic then there's nothing wrong with banning it later. There's a decent chance that it has no effect whatsoever on the metagame, and I think we are jumping the gun by banning it without ever seeing it in action.

In fact, if the argument is that it DOES affect the metagame substantially, that seems like more reason to not ban it immediatly because you are then banning an actual useable element of the competitive metagame that is not proven to be problematic, so the proper procedure would seem to see it in action first. If it was totally useless it would make more sense to just say "whatever", but if there's any kind of a niche it provides then I think it's worth examining further in practice. I don't really think anyone actually believes it's busted, it's just generally not fun, which I get, but any arguments about it being broken are just theoretical and that shouldn't be what we are doing here. The entire ADV UU metagame was tiered incorrectly because people banned a bunch of mons based on theory and that's why we are in this situation today. Let's not do the same thing - let's actually see how things play out before making these decisions.

I understand Arena Trap is undesirable, so if people prefer to just see how NFEs play out without it then I agree with what Expulso said regarding a re-test later on it, at the very least, so that we can preserve the integrity of the entire re-tiering process we are aiming to achieve. I actually don't mind a tier where NFEs are freed but Arena Trap is banned, and that may even be the best outcome the end. But I want it to be done after at least some minimal examination of it in practice, and the preference would be to see how it plays out right now when/if we unban the NFEs. The idea of just banning something with 0 data on it whatsoever seems crazy.

 

[Delta 2777]

I know the voting already concluded on this but I wanted to post a video that I think really encapsulates the essence of the recent tiering changes