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Ability Tiering Thread and General Ability Discussion (Final Check)

Flare Boost should be moved from B Tier to A Tier in my opinion. In essence it's Life Orb that can be a big asset to you if you Trick away Flame Orb (you maintain the boost unless your status is healed), however the damage output is wayyyyyy higher than Life Orb - it's like Choice Specs, but can status physical attackers if tricked, and allows you to switch moves. It's A-Tier material in my opinion.

In addition to this, Serene Grace should be moved from A-Tier to S-Tier. It's a HUGE asset, especially since there are moves such as Ancientpower that become suddenly more viable for Baton Pass, and Iron Head / Air Slash / Headbutt flinching is always a bitch to play against.
 
I have to agree with the steadfast nomination and other nominations so far pertaining to the C tier, outside of Klutz and maybe rockhead. Im kinda on the border for rock head, my main problem is the aweful distribution of recoil moves. I could be convinced though with more discussion.

On the topic of Zen mode, I honestly think we need to discussing putting Zen Mode in a limbo tier or something while where on it. We really don't know what zen mode would do on other pokemon, sure it might flip the stats like the relation to Darmanitan to Darmanitan-Z, but for all we know it could turn Gastrodon-east into Gastrodon-west, Shaymin into Skymin, and do nothing for everything else. Heck as far as current game coding, I think it might even turn everything into Darmanitan-Z at the moment.
 
"Everything to Darmanitan-Z" would be my guess. Well, it's probably coded to do nothing on any other Pokemon, but given that most other Pokemon don't have other forms and the transformation from Darmanitan to D-Z's stats is far more complicated than "flipping attacking stats with defensive stats" (it's currently "go from amazing Atk, bad Def, horrid SpAtk, bad SpDef, solid Speed to horrid Atk, good Def, amazing SpAtk, good SpDef, bad Speed"), I'd say that any other explanation besides "do nothing" or "turn into Darmanitan-Z" wouldn't really make much sense. And really, that's what Zen Mode does; it takes Darmanitan and turns it into a totally different Pokemon.
 
In looking around trying to figure out what Zen Mode would do on another Pokemon, I saw the theory that, based on how the ability works, it would turn you into a Darmanitan-Z if you dropped below half health and then turn you into Darmanitan if your HP rose above 50% again (effectively turning anything into a Darmanitan with Zen Mode). If that's actually the case, it's possible that a few things with really bad stats and the ability to get their HP back above half would appreciate the ability to turn into a less bad Pokemon (or to effectively be three different Pokemon over the course of the battle).

Regardless, the fact is Zen Mode really makes no sense on anything other than Darmanitan, and really doesn't behave like any other ability. All we know is that it essentially replaces a certain Fire Type on your team with 105/140/55/30/55/95 stats with a Fire-Psychic Type with 2(approximately)/30/105/140/105/55 stats when it reaches half health. I can certainly see the merit for reserving a special tier for something as weird as that.
 
Hustle is a good ability. A 50% increase to Attack is completely game-changing, and should therefore move from C to B Tier. Durant without a band or Swords Dance can run over Skarmory using Hone Claws, which is a boosting move so lame Flygon won`t touch it.

The accuracy drop is bad, but running a Gravity team would easily remedy this, and if it had a better distribution it would be THE reason you won or lost a match. (Aside from letting that enemy Volcarona get to plus 6 of course :D) Looking for thoughts on this, otherwise I`ll nominate it.

(Edit) Just throwing something else out there. Why is Liquid Ooze C-tier?? It`s pretty much like not running an ability, since the benefit`s of the ability are rare so it could drop one tier and I would`nt mind. Hey if Overgrow is D, why not Liquid Ooze? They`re both pretty useless.
 
Pride, NP celebi, CM virizion, Sun growth venusaur, Sun growth Tangrowth, Sun growth victreebell, Sun SD sawsbuck, DD scrafty BU scrafty, BU conkeldurr, BU toxicroak, Leech seed shaymin, Leech seed celebi, Leech seed Breloom, and leech seed ferrothorn.Liquid ooze is useful in many different situations to many different pokemon, while overgrow is just for users of grass-type moves.
 
Ok Ok!! Liquid Ooze is not totally useless. I still think it could merit a drop, as most pokemon would prefer another ability if they had a choice. It`s too situational. But I can let it go if I must. (Oh the injustice in the world!)
 
Ok time do some nominations (if these have already been nominated, no problem, just read my explanation):

Hustle to B tier

Hustle is a very good ability. It has the potential to make anything with 60 Base Attack or more a physical juggernaut. Hell even Togekiss can go physical with only 50 Base Attack. The accuracy drop is of 'course unfortunate, but most of the times it is worth it. Ask Durant... Also with the introduction of Hone Claws, many pokes could get the equvalent of a 2.25x boost to their attack after just one HC, in combination with Hustle.

Insomnia and Vital Spirit to B tier

We all know how deadly the sleep condition has became in BW. When one poke is asleep, it is as good as dead, most of the times. And it isn't like we don't have many viable Sleep inducers in our meta. Breloom, Roserade, Tangrowth, Venusaur, Smeargle and even Politoed all use sleeping moves. Being able to block sleep, instead of needing to waste 1 of your pokes is very useful and thus Insomnia deserves the B tier status.

Shield Dust to A tier

What the fuck is this wonderfull ability doing down here? As many others have mentioned, Shield Dust is the best anit-hax ability. And we have lots of hax in our meta, such as Scald, Jirachi, Waterfall flinches, Def drops from that damn Ttar, SpD drops from that damn Gengar and the list goes on. Many pokes would love this ability for the ability to completely shut down Jirachi and Scald users, such as Ferrothorn, Haxorus, Lati@s, and Virizion.

Snow Cloak to B tier

Just for the sake of consistence, as Sand Veil is in tier B also.

Unburden to B tier

Unburden is a very useful ability, that fits like a glove to many sweepers. Which sweeper wouldn't love a free Agility boost, when using an elemental Gem. Imagine freaking Terrakion with it! It would be absolutely fucking broken! Or Gliscor and Tornadus... And now that the pinch berries are confirmed to be in B2W2, the ability gets even better. On a good day, this ability good even be low A-tier, but for now B-tier is a must. The only reason it is not sure A-tier is because it is a one time use ability, which is somewhat limiting. (Imagine a physically strong Flying/Fighting poke with a moveset of Acrobatics / Close Combat / Swords Dance / Recycle, holding a Flying Gem and having Unburden!!!)

Suction Cups to B tier

Being immune to phazing is nice! I mean really nice! If more viable pokes had this move, we could as well be proposing a Baton Pass ban, since many Baton Pass teams would become unbreakable without being able to phaze its members, not even with D-Tail. Also many bulky boosters would become really difficult to deal with, since you wound't be able to phaze them anymore. Imagine for example Bulk Up / Sub / EQ / SE Landorus with Suction Cups and Leftovers. Skarmory comes in to wall you? No big deal he can't do anything, since it can't damage you nor phaze you.

Wonder Skin to B tier

Many walls and sweepers would love the ability to evade status moves, Taunt and phazing. You thought that a 75% chance to stop a physical sweeper was unreliable (WoW)? Let's see you using the same move with 50% accuracy... Many physical attackers that can 2hko Skarmory at +2 (Haxorus and SD Landorus in sand) would also love the ability since they would be able to beat their best counter 50% of the time. Many slow stat-uppers or hazard layers would adore the ability to dodge a faster Taunt 50% of the time.


forestflamerunner said:
Harvest, No Guard, Compound Eyes, and Multitype(know Typing) will be moved to A tier While Multitype (Do Not know Typing will be moved to S Tier. The Next Phase is C Tier Nomination and Discussion. This phase will last five days. Bold Your Nominations and have fun!
Click to expand...
While you have moved most of these abilities, you haven't deleted them from the B tier. Also Multitype (know typing) is still in B tier, while it should be in A tier.
 
I agree with Scarfwynaut. Rain Dish should be moved up. Tentacruel runs Rain Dish far more than Ooze, and if Ooze won`t be moved down, than Rain Dish should definitely be moved up.
 
I'd still prefer the ability to counter many threatening, powerful sweepers in the OU metagame to 6% healing a turn in a certain kind of weather.

But maybe that's just me.
 
Well considering that Tenta is a spinner, survivability is at a premium so that 6% plus leftovers comes in handy. Politoed is still the most common lead, and you can play in the rain almost 100% of the time if you run Politoed, so it`s definitely game-changing more consistently than Liquid Ooze and has spurred on Tenta`s success.

I prefer Ooze myself, but I do think Rain Dish is more popular for good reason.
 
This generation, if one Of your mons winds up asleep, it essentially becomes deathfodder. Therefore, i can understand why some may believe insomnia and bital spirit would be B tier abilities. However, only 25% of the metagame uses speep inducing moves which is rather a middling portion, and to get any sort of function Out of insomnia, you need spot on prediction when switching into whatever it is that is using the sleep move, since it is unlikely that your opponent will attempt to spore you if they know your packin insomnia. The level of prediction required to properly use these abilities is what holds back the usefulness of all status immunity abilities. In a way, i also feel that limber is more useful than insomnia because while paralysis isnt as devestating as sleep, it is way more likely for limber to activate, especially since your opponent can paralyze more than one poke on your team. Just my opinion.
 
I vote for Hustle to be increased to B tier, considering that it gives Zweilous the strongest physical Dragon attack and it gives Durant the highest immediate Attack stat in the game

aesoft said:
1: Ineffective
An ability that has a minimal effect. Should never be chosen over
any other ability.
ex. Pressure, Damp
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You heard it from PS folks, Pressure should never be chosen over any other ability, such as Dialga's or Palkia's Telepathy, Spiritomb's Infiltrator, Vespiquen's or Mewtwo's Unnerve, or Weavile's Pickpocket. Also you gave no description for the 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, or 4.5 categories
 
The C tier discussion and nomination period is now over, and the voting period for C tier abilities will now start. Like before, for each ability you have the option of voting "Change Tier", "DO Not Change Tier", or "Abstain". Your vote must be in bold or I WILL NOT COUNT IT. The abilities we will be voting on are
Shield Dust, Klutz, Normalize, Rain Dish, Ice Body, Defiant, Effect Spore, Reckless, Rock Head, Hustle, Snow Cloak, Suction Cups, Unburden, Insomnia, Vital Spirit, and Wonder Skin. This period will last 48 Hours. Have fun.

My Votes


Shield Dust: Change Tier
Klutz: No not Do Not Change Tier
Normalize: Change Tier
Rain Dish: Change Tier
Ice Body: Do Not Change Tier
Defiant: Change Tier
Effect Spore: Change Tier
Reckless: Change Tier
Rock Head: Do Not Change Tier
Hustle: Do Not Change Tier
Snow Cloak: Do Not Change Tier
Suction Cups: Change Tier
Unburden: Change Tier
Insomnia:Do Not Change Tier
Vital Spirit: Do Not Change Tier
Wonder Skin: Change Tier
 
Im rather disappointed that steadfast and inner focus aren't making the ballot, but whatever, there are enough abilities I guess.

Shield Dust: Change Tier
Klutz: No not Change Tier
Normalize: Change Tier
Rain Dish: Change Tier
Ice Body: Change Tier
Defiant: Change Tier
Effect Spore: Change Tier
Reckless: Change Tier
Rock Head: Abstain
Hustle: Change Tier
Snow Cloak: Change Tier
Suction Cups: Change Tier
Unburden: Change Tier
Insomnia: Change Tier
Vital Spirit:Change Tier
Wonder Skin: Do Not Change Tier

I noticed I haven't talked about wonder skin, honestly I don't think turning some status moves to 50% accuracy is good enough for B tier, but that's just me.
 
Added unburden to the ballot. As for insomnia and vital spirit, it seems to be just alexwolf who feels they need a tier change and i really dont see being able to stop one attack that one in 24 pokemon will carry being as game changing as b tier abilities should be
 
Why does it matter if only i, nominated it? If people don't want it moved, they will vote for it... And anyway wasn't the only necessity to nominate something, to give your explanation, which i did?
 
If only 1 in 24 pokemon carry it, then 1 in 4 teams will be able to basically OHKO one of your mons. Blocking that is pretty sweet, IMO.
 
I have had quite a few complaints overall in regards to abilities i did not slate. There is a method to how i decide what abilities to slate. I Will try to explain my reasoning in this post.
I’ll start off with what I have to take into account when I look at ability nominations. I believe you can agree, for obvious reasons, that I can’t just slate every ability that is nominated because some asshole could just nominate every ability(this isn’t you, I’m just giving an example) and I would be forced to slate it and that would ultimately lead to a waste in everybody’s time. Now when I made the original tier list, I put quite a bit of thought into it and I placed each specific ability in a tier after seriously considering the pros and cons of each ability. After I posted the tier list, some large blunders I made were corrected, and we were left with a fairly accurate tier list that just needed some fine tuning, and that’s when I started the voting phases. Now, during these voting phases, people nominate abilities to be moved and reasons why. When I go through and read these explanations, I’m looking for information that I hadn’t previously considered. When someone brings up points about an ability that I hadn’t thought about, I generally immediately decide to slate it, because there was something about that ability I overlooked when tiering it. A great example of this would be with sand force. I had assumed every pokemoon had some rock or ground attacks at its disposal, which wasn’t true and made me reconsider Sand Forces placement. Another thing I look for is the number of people who believe an ability should have its tier changed. I do not assume to be perfect and I may under/overvalue certain aspects of certain abilities. When I do this, people often call me out for it. A lot of people. This volume tells me that at least part of the population believes I’m flat out wrong about something, and in that case I slate an ability. An example of this would be Contrary. I believed, and still believe, that this ability is S tier worthy, but because so many people thought it is not, the ability was slated and moved to A tier. So those are basically the two ways that I end up slating certain abilities for votes.

I recognize that sometimes certain abilities dont get the time of day because others are hogging the spotlight, and this does lead to biases. However, i do have a plan to addresa this which I will unveil at the beginning of the D tier discussion phase, but in the meantime I ask that you dont chastise me for not slating an ability that you so passionately beleive is misplaced
 
Since the next two days are just going to be voting, we may as well discuss something else. I was thinking what the future of this thread will be, we only have 2 tiers left to go. I was thinking that at the end we may want to do an overall general vote for the whole thing. After all of this most abilities will be tiered correctly, but I am sure that there are still some odd ones in some peoples eyes, as noted by the amount of random S, A, and B tier suggestions. Also what is the final goal of all this, are we going to put it up on the site, in a smog article, or just let the thread rot.
 
But the point of this thread is to let the community categorize the abilities, not categorize whatever they can convince you to. According to your logic, you could believe that an ability deserves to be in the B-tier, where most of the people would believe that it deserves to be in the A-tier. Does this mean that this ability shouldn't be nominated, because all the reasons as to why the ability should be moved had already crossed your mind? You may simply not agree, even if you have already thought all of the points made for each ability's moving.

So yeah as long as a basic explanation as to why the ability should be moved has been made, you should accept the nomination. And for what trouble are you talking about? Each tier has 15-25 abilities, and even if you include them all, it will take you like 1 min more...
 
@ Scarfwynaut

I had a similar idea of having a "Final Changes Period" after we go finish F Tier. this will allow certain abilities, such as download and insomnia, to be given time to be discussed. I will explain my plan completely at a later time, but expect something of that nature in the future. After this is done, I had originally planned on retiring the thread, since we would have set out to do what we planned to do. However, I like the idea of creating a Smog Article, as it provide a better sense of closure for the thread. It is something to consider.

@ Alex Wolf

I agree that the point of this thread is to allow the community to categorize abilities, but i disagree with your statement that you have to convince me that an ability is misplaced to have it voted upon. If that were the case, there would be no point in voting because I would have the final say so on every ability. If I disagree with you on an abilities tiering because we disagree on the usefulness of its effects, you just have to prove to me that its not just you that has this opinion before the nomination period ends, which really isn't too much to ask. Slating and counting up the votes for every ability nominated isn't as much of a hastle as I may have insinuated, but it is unneccessary and i feel overall a waste of time and an abuse of the nomination system. I'd like to point out When I first created the voting process for this thread, I stated that if you don't like the way I am conducting the voting, nominations, slating, etc. PM me and i will consider changing the practice. I have been choosing to not slate abilities that were nominated since the beginning of this thread for every single tier. I feel that if you had such a big problem with this process, you should have let me know earlier when abilities like Solar Power and Huge Power weren't slated, and not once one of the abilities you nominated wasn't slated. However, like I said, I will give you a chance to bring up Insomnia once again before we finalize the list, but I will not be slating it for this phase. At the very least, I would like some more discussion of the ability before we vote on it. I promise you will get your chance though.
 
Shield Dust: Change Tier
Klutz: Change Tier
Normalize: Change Tier
Rain Dish: Change Tier
Ice Body: Do Not Change Tier
Defiant: Change Tier
Effect Spore: Change Tier
Reckless: Change Tier
Rock Head: Change Tier
Hustle: Change Tier
Snow Cloak: Change Tier
Suction Cups: Change Tier
Unburden: Change Tier
Wonder Skin: Change Tier
Vital Spirit: Do Not Change Tier
Insomnia: Do Not Change Tier

Yes, I think Ice Body is worse than Rain Dish and Snow Cloak. Again, it comes down to the fact that running Hail on your team is usually a detriment. Snow Cloak is good enough for me to consider it B tier, because a 20% chance of a free turn (higher, if the opponent use a move without 100% accuracy) can be game-breaking. A little bit of recovery just isn't as powerful as that, and often isn't worth the cost of running Hail, IMO.
 
Shield Dust: Change Tier
Klutz: Change Tier
Normalize: Change Tier
Rain Dish: Change Tier
Ice Body: Change Tier
Defiant: Change Tier
Effect Spore: Change Tier
Reckless: Abstain (Also this isn't in C Tier)
Rock Head: Abstain
Hustle: Change Tier
Snow Cloak: Change Tier
Suction Cups: Change Tier
Unburden: Abstain
Wonder Skin: Change Tier
Vital Spirit: Abstain
Insomnia: Abstain

Scarfwynaut said:
I noticed I haven't talked about wonder skin, honestly I don't think turning some status moves to 50% accuracy is good enough for B tier, but that's just me.
Click to expand...

But it isn't just some status move. It's any status move with an accuracy stat that targets you. It's such a wide category of moves ranging from Disable to Roar to Toxic. C Tier abilities are supposed to be ones that "oftentimes [aren't] even game changing" and that "have some niche uses but superior options are available." Stopping all that stuff half the time doesn't exactly seem to fit under that definition.

forestflamerunner said:
However, only 25% of the metagame uses speep inducing moves which is rather a middling portion, and to get any sort of function Out of insomnia, you need spot on prediction when switching into whatever it is that is using the sleep move, since it is unlikely that your opponent will attempt to spore you if they know your packin insomnia.
Click to expand...

I'm not saying it's wrong, but where exactly are you getting that 25% statistic? I'm just curious.

Also, wouldn't the very fact they aren't using their sleep inducing move count as the ability doing something? Sure it's not as large an effect as them wasting a turn using a sleep inducing move on you to no avail, but it does make them do something instead of putting you to sleep (for instance, if you brought in Skarmory against Breloom with nothing asleep, it wouldn't be able to take you out with Spore and you'd counter it much better even if it knew Spore wouldn't work on you).

Look at it this way, suppose your in an election with two possible options A and B. Suppose you like A more than B but you don't really like either of them very much. You're probably not going to vote for B, but you might just not vote. The problem is you'll still benefit B either way. Sure the difference isn't as big (+1 net vote vs +2 net votes), but either way you're helping the option you like less. It's the same with abilities like Insomnia and Vital Spirit. Sure they're not going to Spore you mindlessly once something with the ability comes into battle (just like you probably aren't going to vote for B), but you are going to be forced to make a less advantageous move than if the other Pokemon didn't have the ability or one that gives your opponent the advantage (like how not voting, somewhat counter-intuitively, still benefits B). The point is, just because they aren't using their Sleep move, doesn't mean the ability isn't having an affect on the battle.

Just putting these out there for future reference. If we're going to have one final vote to make sure the list is perfect, I feel like we should keep things like this in mind for when we get to that.
 
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