• Smogon Premier League is here and the team collection is now available. Support your team!

OU BW OU Tiering Discussion [ SURVEY POST 97 ]

Since the volc/cloy suspect that was clearly flawed, we came around on cloyster. Not really sure why we couldnt do the same thing to volc and had to wait a few years to even just get the discussion going. Would be cool to avoid a reuniclus situation in which a small vocal minority thought its out of place, but the majority of the tier's active playerbase knew it was an important mon for the tier, pretty similar to the zam arguments above in the thread. To do this I have a proposal on how to conduct a survey in a strictly informative non-biased way :

First question : Which of the following OU pokemon do you find problematic in BW OU? Elaborate if possible

Here just list every single OU pokemon, its not like there's that many. Add a text box after you tick a mon to possibly elaborate on why. You can feel free to add mons outside of OU, I just dont find it necessary

Second question : Did you participate in the previous suspect?
Simple, its just there to separate experienced players who did the previous suspect and the rest of the playerbase. I think its important to know the difference of opinion between your average player and someone who can get suspect recs through any mean. I also highly encourage adding a ladder reach clause or something of the kind, something like 1750 elo 88 gxe or something (before you find that too high and completely unacceptable, Id argue any player who participated in the last suspect is capable of that, its just an addendum so that, in case you didnt make it to the last suspect now you have a way to be included in this one).

Seems pretty simple to me. Resuls from this will show the average and experienced playerbase thoughts on the OU mons. Imo you then take every single mon that received at least 50% "votes" through the survey :
If >50% of the experienced players mention volcarona, alakazam or any other pokemon, we should discuss it.
If >50% of the average players mention any mon, same scenario.

This is useful as I believe there might be a lot of misconceptions about BW OU, especially if you look at the average playerbase discussing reuniclus last suspect. Nothing wrong with that, but I think this might be a good occasion to debunk stuff so we dont end up in another reuniclus loop, and can use our time to look at the potentially problematic mons. I also think its a good occasion for players who dont reach suspect recs to voice their thoughts, and above all, a good occasion to get stuff moving in BW OU. This thread has been active but nothing of relevance has happened though spl has been over for a long period of time now. I would really like to avoid the whole "lets not do something before spl" scenario by delaying this. Though I am proposing this, Im unsure if it is feasible. To me it seems a pretty reasonable thing to do, not hard to organize either (its making a gform w boxes to tick and text boxes). Id however like to hear what people think, do you think this is feasible? If not, what else do you have to put on the table? Id love to hear other people's thoughts :D
 
I support a player survey. A permanent source of frustration to me on Smogon, either in tiering or in Policy Review threads, is the lack of effective way to gauge support on a post. If you just "like" a post then people say reacts don't count for anything. If you just post and echo the same opinions already posted then you get told not to just repost the same points over and over, and this happened as recently as this week. Sometimes all the discussion points are made and there's no longer a way to show support for a movement in a way that counts. I am sure that is what happened above and why there were no new posts since March, as Volc remains a controversial topic, just the major points had already been made.

If it was up to me I think we should just survey annually, a few weeks after SPL. I get that these surveys aren't trivial and are a lot of work for council, but between 5 council members I don't think its too crazy an expectation. I don't want to be an "xyz shouldn't be on council" person here (and I tend to shut down this discussion where I can) but it feels that the workload still falls to the same couple of people who are already overstretched - council could surely run annual surveys with ease with some recruitment. Plenty of engaged and talented players in the community who I think could be considered to spread that workload out.

Otherwise this will just go round in circles. The same big name players make posts about Volcarona. Nobody else chips in because they it looks silly to just go over the same points. Then there's no numbers to suggest which way the community leans. Discussion dies off and mod says its evidence of lack of appetite for a suspect. Its not evidence, its exhaustion.

------

My actual volc opinions are the same as in my earlier post. I think you can tech most teams to be good vs him and those techs reduce the power level of the game's other scary team archtypes, like PsySpam (can't do scar-less/sashzam-less) and rain (can't do Specs Keld + ScarfRachi/Scizor). examples of the best techs: Careful Tyranitar, TWave or Leech Seed or Explosion Ferrothorn. More Scarf Lando. Scarf or TWave or Roar or White Herb Latios on PsySpam. I think this makes for a good dynamic. I think Heatran, Scarf Garchomp, and Scarf Keldeo are all a bit underrated and that the meta should turn towards them. My stalls run Heatran, Blissey, or Chansey frequently. I think Hippo Clef is just a bit outdated and risky now. None of this is particularly selective towards Volcarona - I make these exact changes to cover LO Alakazam too.

Not hugely passionate about what happens here but always supportive of community surveys
 
Last edited:
Gypsy said:
bumping this because i have been told there was not enough obvious support for a suspect by the playerbase, kindly requesting BW OU Council to roll out a Tiering Survey so we have concrete numbers regarding support for a Volcarona suspect, and also gauge an understanding on what other elements of the tier could be seen as problematic

I would say that I'm interested in more discussion on this thread, but I feel there's little point going around in circles about things we have discussed a million times, let's just get some data and go from there.

Finchinator dice Raiza elodin M Dragon
Click to expand...
I like the current state of BW but I see no downside of a survey. There's always talk of a few different mons being ban worthy, even if they are wrong or right the talk is still in most BW discords. It can be healthy to keep the whole community in touch with metagame even if nothing comes off it.
 
kind of just echoing the points of others here, me personally im not swayed to either side of volc/zam ban but the playerbase does need their voice heard. viewing discussions in the bw discord and speaking to players its clear people do have an issue with these 2. even if no action comes off a survey its still better than nothing.

as for the metagame itself, its better than what its been in recent times. the builder still feels restricted with the oppression of Life Orb Alakazam basically having to pick which match up to sacrifice. i think rain’s in a good place but mainly carried by how good scarf keldeo is at the moment into the trending zam and volc tendencies. ho as a whole is kind of restricting some of the freedom sand once had with the “new” conkvolc, is that a bad thing im not totally sure in all honesty but i will say if a metagame every feels risky to use sand in theres probably some sort of issue.

tldr yes i support survey and any suspect that would come from it
 
I am a shitter, but I also support a tiering survey-- it would be good to understand how community sentiment has changed since the last survey at least. I definitely support a suspect of volcarona and potentially alakazam (this is a rather large stretch though)
 
Disclaimer: I don't really want to ban anything.
After seeing this thread reemerge, I was going to wait for the possible future survey to say this, but nah:

I don’t want to sound like BKC’s long-lost cousin, but it’s crazy how people who are unhappy with the state of the metagame keep looking for scapegoats just so they can keep the most-used Pokémon in the tier. One day, 30 years from now, BW OU will just be Latios + Tyranitar + the current BW UU roster. The player base just keeps flopping around until something sticks, giving them the illusion that they’re more satisfied with the tier.
  • It started with Latios, Excadrill, Thundurus-Therian, and Keldeo, but they were “main characters” that gave the metagame its identity, so there was always a big portion of the community that didn’t want to see them go.
  • So it turned into Cloyster and Volcarona, the cheese mons, so you could alleviate builder pressure and better accommodate the “main characters” existing.
  • Then people turned to Reuniclus, but some people didn’t want to ban Reuniclus, so they tried to push for a Magic Guard ban, and because of that, Alakazam started gaining traction.
This is a bit exaggerated, but you get the point. Like, either accept the metagame as it is or just rebuild it. My problem isn’t bans, it’s the blatant non-compliance with tiering policy (why is there still Drizzle or non-Sand Rush Excadrill?).
 
Last edited:
Hydrametr0nice said:
Disclaimer: I don't really want to ban anything.
After seeing this thread reemerge, I was going to wait for the possible future survey to say this, but nah:

I don’t want to sound like BKC’s long-lost cousin, but it’s crazy how people who are unhappy with the state of the metagame keep looking for scapegoats just so they can keep the most-used Pokémon in the tier. One day, 30 years from now, BW OU will just be Latios + Tyranitar + the current BW UU roster. The player base just keeps flopping around until something sticks, giving them the illusion that they’re more satisfied with the tier.
  • It started with Latios, Excadrill, Thundurus-Therian, and Keldeo, but they were “main characters” that gave the metagame its identity, so there was always a big portion of the community that didn’t want to see them go.
  • So it turned into Cloyster and Volcarona, the cheese mons, so you could alleviate builder pressure and better accommodate the “main characters” existing.
  • Then people turned to Reuniclus, but some people didn’t want to ban Reuniclus, so they tried to push for a Magic Guard ban, and because of that, Alakazam started gaining traction.
This is a bit exaggerated, but you get the point. Like, either accept the metagame as it is or just rebuild it. My problem isn’t bans, it’s the blatant non-compliance with tiering policy (why do we still have Drizzle or non-Sand Rush Excadrill?). Are Alakazam or Volcarona more broken than the "main characters" I mentioned? If your answer is no, you’ve proved my point.
Click to expand...
post elo

would also appreciate a survey because why not right
 
Hydrametr0nice said:
Disclaimer: I don't really want to ban anything.
After seeing this thread reemerge, I was going to wait for the possible future survey to say this, but nah:

I don’t want to sound like BKC’s long-lost cousin, but it’s crazy how people who are unhappy with the state of the metagame keep looking for scapegoats just so they can keep the most-used Pokémon in the tier. One day, 30 years from now, BW OU will just be Latios + Tyranitar + the current BW UU roster. The player base just keeps flopping around until something sticks, giving them the illusion that they’re more satisfied with the tier.
  • It started with Latios, Excadrill, Thundurus-Therian, and Keldeo, but they were “main characters” that gave the metagame its identity, so there was always a big portion of the community that didn’t want to see them go.
  • So it turned into Cloyster and Volcarona, the cheese mons, so you could alleviate builder pressure and better accommodate the “main characters” existing.
  • Then people turned to Reuniclus, but some people didn’t want to ban Reuniclus, so they tried to push for a Magic Guard ban, and because of that, Alakazam started gaining traction.
This is a bit exaggerated, but you get the point. Like, either accept the metagame as it is or just rebuild it. My problem isn’t bans, it’s the blatant non-compliance with tiering policy (why do we still have Drizzle or non-Sand Rush Excadrill?). Are Alakazam or Volcarona more broken than the "main characters" I mentioned? If your answer is no, you’ve proved my point.
Click to expand...
why does this happen every time hahahaha
 
Volcarona exists as a punish to long-established trends around Latios Spikes LandoT TTar Politoed Jirachi Excadrill and so on. The people who want to ban Volcarona enjoy that bit of the game and think Volcarona is needlessly strong at abusing the best mons in the game + having coverage to beat selective counters. Why do people insist on trying to beat the Volcarona argument with "just ban Latios" as if they aren't two entirely different schools of thought.

Also super annoying that people don't make Latios posts until someone posts about a different suspect lol

I think the lens to view this through is: all of the tiering action in the last 3 years is the same issue. This is not banning completely unrelated stuff over and over and over and refusing to tackle the root cause. This is the playerbase voting to tweak the power of hyper offense because the Ttar ferro skarmory landot latios drill bit is generally considered the good bit. Its been a dragged out process, because the Gem ban didn't nerf Cloyster hard enough and possibly didn't solve the Volcarona problem either. We then performed a Volc suspect 18 months ago with a flawed format that wasn't revisited (50% ban vote btw).This this is all an interconnected thing, possibly correcting Volc nerfs not going far enough, flawed tiering formats - its not progressive "scapegoating", its all the same thing.

So no, lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater. BW OU is a super fun metagame with Volcarona just on the fence of maybe being too restrictive for teams to be expected to cover. He's not a new scapegoat, he's been a topic of discussion since literally the day the BW statspreads were leaked in 2010, has been targeted for nerfing with Gems ban, and is still bordering on problematic.

Can we not make this into another drawn-out "stop banning and reset BW!" argument - it entirely misses the point.

edit:

  • Then people turned to Reuniclus, but some people didn’t want to ban Reuniclus, so they tried to push for a Magic Guard ban, and because of that, Alakazam started gaining traction.
Click to expand...

No, this is all different groups of people. The people who recently brought up Alakazam ban (meessm, brine) were among the staunchest pro-OU Reuniclus voters. And in both cases, these are minority movements. Please stop misrepresenting the community as some permanently miserable, banhappy hivemind. The vast majority of whats been acted on in recent years is the specific issue of Volc/Cloy on HO, which has just unfortunately taken several rounds to find the best solution
 
Last edited:
If we were to do a survey, would people just want Volcarona on it or would people wish for us to reassess where people stand on things like Alakazam (or other topics that were brought up such as Gems)? Not promising anything at all yet, but just trying to get the feel of the room.

Thank you
 
I think also getting a gauge on things which were making noise earlier in the year like Thundurus and especially Alakazam would be a positive in my opinion. Also general metagame enjoyment would be nice as well.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Cow
second this, metagame enjoyment, alakazam, thundurus, and gems should get a mention even if nothing comes off of it just to gauge where the player base is at.

(on a side note i appreciate the work council is putting in at the moment)
 
I think a survey should include topics beyond Volcarona. Gems, Thundurus, Alakazam, metagame enjoyment, maybe Keldeo and Latios if we want to be generous.

Hydrametr0nice said:
Disclaimer: I don't really want to ban anything.
After seeing this thread reemerge, I was going to wait for the possible future survey to say this, but nah:

I don’t want to sound like BKC’s long-lost cousin, but it’s crazy how people who are unhappy with the state of the metagame keep looking for scapegoats just so they can keep the most-used Pokémon in the tier. One day, 30 years from now, BW OU will just be Latios + Tyranitar + the current BW UU roster. The player base just keeps flopping around until something sticks, giving them the illusion that they’re more satisfied with the tier.
  • It started with Latios, Excadrill, Thundurus-Therian, and Keldeo, but they were “main characters” that gave the metagame its identity, so there was always a big portion of the community that didn’t want to see them go.
  • So it turned into Cloyster and Volcarona, the cheese mons, so you could alleviate builder pressure and better accommodate the “main characters” existing.
  • Then people turned to Reuniclus, but some people didn’t want to ban Reuniclus, so they tried to push for a Magic Guard ban, and because of that, Alakazam started gaining traction.
This is a bit exaggerated, but you get the point. Like, either accept the metagame as it is or just rebuild it. My problem isn’t bans, it’s the blatant non-compliance with tiering policy (why is there still Drizzle or non-Sand Rush Excadrill?).
Click to expand...

BW has a weird reputation as a "shitty old gen" for one reason or another, but that's mostly limited to people who don't play it. I play BW because gen 5 is my favorite gen mechanically, so I have nothing against the idea of resetting BW or other drastic changes like that, but if there's little interest in that by the active playerbase, then that's that.

I'm sympathetic towards anyone that wants action on Latios or Alakazam or Thundurus-T or Keldeo or even Excadrill, but as far as I can tell, the people that come to these threads to mention this are not super active BW players. The opinion of people that constantly play the tier is usually "I like most (if not all) of the metagame", and many such people are also pretty content with Volc's presence in the tier.

If there's others like me who just enjoy gen 5 but are interested in an OU metagame that's different from what we have, there's other formats that deserve some love. There's a thread for DW OU that hasn't been touched, there's BW1, and if people really want to suggest "re-tiering", they should volunteer to try running such a thing on the side for those interested rather than pushing it in suspect threads when it's been made clear that many do not want such a large commitment to an old gen's OU. For the record, I would gladly run such a thing given permission from the moderating team and vocal interest from others, active BW players or not.
 
I think a survey would be cool so people get their opinions, but in mine:

I think the meta and bans are set and this should be the final version of BW, I think taking more things away will make the game less instead of improving it.

Id rather have Magnezone be looked, but thats just me, and that opinion is not one shared by many.
 
Id like to see survey to see thoughts in general of the community on the meta. Though something id be interested to be looked at even if may never happen would be on kyurem-black or maybe conkeldurr , magnezone and volcarona (not saying should ban all of them but i think atleast banning 1 of them would already make the tier better imo) i dont enjoy alot how those mons play on the tier and i belive theres healthier ways to punish rain and sand in ho than just trapping steels so a dragon can just spam outrage (or force steels run shed shell which is cringe) , even with psychic types which should beat conk can still fail if is healthy bc of the immense bulk it just ends up being hard to check it without something extreme like slowbro for example
 
I think that Volcarona has become quite a threat to team structures, especially with sets like Life Orb. When building a team, you always have to keep in mind: how do I beat Volcarona with this team without becoming too weak to other threats?
For example, if I include Explosion Ferrothorn as a "way to deal with volc (lol)", it makes me more vulnerable in the long run to Latios and other Dragon-types. That fact alone makes Volcarona a Pokémon worth considering in a survey.
Nonetheless, Volcarona isn't so broken that it's impossible to deal with. Team structures can still be adapted well enough. Hazards remain its biggest flaw in a meta without defog and punishable spinners there is enough counterplay.

I also agree that there should be a survey on Thundurus and Zam. I see Gems as too powerful, and they wouldn't solve the problems caused by offensive threats — in fact, they would only make the situation even harder. As much as I love Gems, they would be too much for the current metagame.
 
Im very strong against releasing gems btw. Cloyster was a overrated gem abuser.

Dragonite, Latios, Thundurus-T (ice gem), Garchomp, Terrakion, Keldeo (water gem on cm sets in rain moreso than fightinggem sets), Starmie (again water gym in rain) p sure ice gem is p good on starnie aswell, Scizor are all insanely good gem users on top of being more solid and well rounded pokemon

Breloom and Volcarona and more are just absurd offensive breaking tools esp if gems are around.
 
Last edited:
The BW OU tiering council is conducting a playerbase survey!

While most of the discussion directly above is on Volcarona, we included a couple of other topics that were brought up earlier this year as well. Additionally, we left an open-ended question for anything else people wish to bring to the attention of the council. I will personally read through the open-ended responses and provide a summary of overall responses from the general playerbase and the more qualified playerbase next week.

Please reply to the survey here! Deadline will be Sunday night GMT-4
 
Finchinator said:
The BW OU tiering council is conducting a playerbase survey!

While most of the discussion directly above is on Volcarona, we included a couple of other topics that were brought up earlier this year as well. Additionally, we left an open-ended question for anything else people wish to bring to the attention of the council. I will personally read through the open-ended responses and provide a summary of overall responses from the general playerbase and the more qualified playerbase next week.

Please reply to the survey here! Deadline will be Sunday night GMT-4
Click to expand...
I will be tabulating results tomorrow and/or Wednesday night in hopes of posting a full report of responses (both qualified and general) in this thread. We have almost 100 responses already, which is more than last survey -- thanks to everyone for your time and stay tuned for information later this week. Have a good day
 
Thanks to everyone for responding! We had a total of 97 responses with 24 of them being qualified. For those curious on the qualified metric, I took the parameters from the Reuniclus suspect test from last year and accounted for tournaments since then (Invitational, Circuit, SPL, etc.) -- the rough breakdown is that it includes SPLXVI, BW Cup X, 2025 BW Circuit tours, 2024 BW Circuit playoffs, and Monai's BW Invitational II.

:Tyranitar: What is your current evaluation of the BW OU metagame? (1-7 scale, 1 being bad and 7 being great) :Latios:

General: 4.91 / 7
Qualified: 4.67 / 7

Last survey, general was at 4.4 and qualified was at 4.7, so it seems like the overall sentiment slightly improved while experienced players remained unchanged. I consider these numbers as a good reflection of the metagame, but still indicating room for improvement. The vast majority of responses fell between 4-6, which feels like a range of "satisfactory" to "very good" to me personally.

:Volcarona: Would you support a suspect test on Volcarona in BW OU? :Volcarona:

General: 53.61%
Qualified: 45.83%

A slight majority of the overall playerbase supports a suspect of Volcarona while slightly less than the majority of qualified players support it. This is absolutely something for the BW Council to monitor moving forward and a potential suspect will have to be considered. However, it does not have as much support as many prior suspects and it is by no means a forgone conclusion that we will proceed. I would have personally liked to see a bit more, but at a bare mimumum Volcarona will remain on the next survey. Perhaps others feel differently and I have not begun discussing this with the rest of council yet, so stay tuned.

:Alakazam: Would you support a suspect test on Alakazam in BW OU? :Alakazam:

General: 34.02%
Qualified: 37.5%

Unlike Volcarona, Alakazam is not close to receiving majority support for a suspect test. Qualified did tick up slightly and this could keep it in discussions, but it is clear that there is not going to be an Alakazam suspect in BW OU in the immediate future given these results. The playerbase support simply is not there. I will note Alakazam is the only subject that received more qualified support for action than general support.

:Thundurus-Therian: Would you support a suspect test on Thundurus-Therian in BW OU? :Thundurus-Therian:

General: 28.87%
Qualified: 20.8%

Thundurus-Therian has even less support for a potential suspect test than Alakazam. It is below 30% overall support and qualified has it down near 20%. I do not forsee a Thundurus-Therian suspect test anytime soon and Rain would need to experience some type of resurgance for that narrative to change in the future probably. This is comfortably the least supported and controversial inclusion on the survey.

:Breloom: Would you support a retest on Gems in BW OU? :Volcarona:

General: 39.18%
Qualified: 33.33%

Gems have been a hot-button topic for a number of years now, but it still seems like a clear majority of the playerbase favors them remaining locked-up in Ubers. I will note we had two responses where players indicated that if Volcarona was banned, they would be more ok trying BW OU with gems -- one of them voted for Volcarona's suspect while another voted against it. This topic is a bit more nuanced as items are naturally only as effective as the Pokemon using them and the cast of characters in the metagame could dictate their status, but it does not seem action is imminent either way with the lack of overall support. Maybe something to keep on the radar for the (distant) future though.

Write-in response trends:
  • Numerous players (qualified and general) expressed frustration with a BW OU council member they believe to be inactive in the metagame. A couple of these responses were more general, going beyond just one member of the council, too
  • Four responses indicated they found Latios to be problematic
  • Three responses indicated they found Spikes to be problematic
  • Three responses indicated they found...Life Orb...to be problematic
  • Three responses indicate they support retesting Chlorophyll
  • Two responses indicated they found Excadrill to be problematic
  • Two responses indicated they found Keldeo to be problematic
  • One response indicated they support retesting...Lugia...while also indicating the "crybabies" caused the ban of Cloyster, which caused the metagame to lose its way
  • Conkeldurr, Magic Guard, Magnet Pull/Magnezone, and Paralysis were all mentioned as potential bans
  • Sleep inducing moves, Sand Rush and Arena Trap/Dugtrio were all mentioned as potential unbans
 
Unrelated, but I do think we should probably get in the practice of doing 2 of these a year (one post-SPL and one mid-late year) just to see where everyone is at. I will bring it up in council before SPL probably to see if we want to formalize it or play it by ear.
 
  • Volc not broken on its own but rly annoying in the builder, life orb pushes it
  • Zam busted with orb, ppl sleep on orb ice too much that set has no counters
  • Thund lol? Not broken and provides important defensive utility on rain
  • Gems would love to know who the ""qualified"" users are that voted for a gems retest have you ppl lost ur mind lmfao
  • Numerous players (qualified and general) expressed frustration with a BW OU council member they believe to be inactive in the metagame. A couple of these responses were more general, going beyond just one member of the council, too - elodin and mdragon on council is a pisstake, they are not qualified, but its also not that deep just a old gen council so do what u want
  • Four responses indicated they found Latios to be problematic clueless
  • Three responses indicated they found Spikes to be problematic based
  • Three responses indicated they found...Life Orb...to be problematic - dont think lorb itself is broken but orb zam orb volc are def broken, dont know what to do ab it tho
  • Three responses indicate they support retesting Chlorophyll this is bait
  • Two responses indicated they found Excadrill to be problematic learn to build idk
  • Two responses indicated they found Keldeo to be problematic learn to build idk
  • One response indicated they support retesting...Lugia...while also indicating the "crybabies" caused the ban of Cloyster, which caused the metagame to lose its way hahahahaha whoever this is please come forward
  • Conkeldurr, Magic Guard, Magnet Pull/Magnezone, and Paralysis were all mentioned as potential bans not sure if mguard ban is 9000iq, rest of these are stupid
  • Sleep inducing moves, Sand Rush and Arena Trap/Dugtrio were all mentioned as potential unbans bw sleep is cancer, dugtrio would be abused way harder by modern builders than the at best mediocre builders of the past, this should never be freed, i dont feel any particular way ab sand rush, could be okay, could not be okay, i have no idea.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top