OU BW OU Tiering Discussion

I think a lot of the issues within the community fall on two groups:
- leadership, myself most notably
- the personnel involved with the cheating

It is on me to not be as distanced and set the right example. A lot of the time I am not in touch with newer players or groups. I think we can work together and things will naturally come together a lot better.

Obviously the people who cheated have some stake in this, too. They shouldn’t have acted this way.

I do not think a few first-time bad actors should ruin laddering reqs for everyone. I think ladder reqs can be good and offer an opportunity to a lot of people who maybe don’t play specific tournaments to get reqs.

Inclusivity is a good thing when done properly. We should be a welcoming community with ground for opportunity. Ladder reqs permit that.
 
I broadly agree with Finch.

Ladder reqs were a positive step in the last suspect. It gave players including ABR, excal, and luck>skill the ability to vote, who clearly should be part of the voter pool, as well as several of our ladder community who are knowledgeable but dont always have the availability to play in tournaments. The second clause of our tiering policy also says we should be catering to both tournament players and ladder players, so it feels like ladder inclusion should be continued.

There are some flaws that have been exposed this time around but I hope we can try to improve the system rather than get rid of it altogether.
 
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i've always had gripes with the way we do tiering suspects on this website. but no matter how you spin it, any methods are going to come with crippling flaws. ladder requirements are remarkably easy to obtain; it's mainly a time commitment situation. and most people aren't gonna bother putting in the time to ladder for a bw suspect unless they care enough about the test's outcome.

as someone who recently benefited from the ladder suspect format, i have to agree with gtg/others that ladder suspects in old gens are not the best way to go about being a catch all to include voters who may have missed x, y, z tournament but have enough knowledge/skill to vote. this is not a knock on anyone btw (nor am i claiming that those who've gotten requirements for this test do not deserve to vote). rather than having a ladder, council should have x number of slots of knowledgeable players that they can nominate to have voting rights (with approval from ogc leader/administration). there's always gonna be a couple of edge cases, and the council will have better judgment over who should vote than an open ladder.

on another note, having observed the bw community discord over a decent amt of time, i would say it's more toxic than that of dpp/adv/rby and other old gens, but consists of a lot of genuine & nice people. the group that participated in larger scale cheating has contributed to the toxicity by demonstrating childish behavior in the community discord, on the forums, and most definitely in their cheating server. their overall behavior, and especially what we saw in this suspect test, is nothing short of unacceptable and admonishable to a high degree. their names and punishment should be publicized in an administrative decision thread somewhere, and concerns about this suspect test's legitimacy should be heightened. this isn't just one person asking someone to throw them a bone and forfeit -- this is significantly larger scale cheating considering the suspect test's size.

tl;dr
- consider alternatives to ladder reqs, like council voting nomination process
- those who cheated should have their names and punishment publicized due to the operation's severity
 
Cloyster has been banned a few weeks now. The tier is still settling of course, but if people have thoughts on the metagame, it would be good to begin any future discussion whenever players see fit. I personally do not feel a huge need for action, but do not want people to be silenced, so speak up if you feel an urge to!
 
dawnbuster said:
I think we need to have a look into Reuniclus now. This Pokemon is incredibly oppressive and has been for years and always props up broken when we think the tier is settled. I really dislike its presence tbqh and I think finally testing it is the move
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My problem with it is how it kinda forces you to have a really strong physical wallbreaker otherwise you get sweep by it. Some sand mirrors coming down to which reun gets parad , who gets crit first isnt fun and also makes stuff like rain alot harder to use because reuniclus can just set up in ferro to become unstoppable and doesnt matter if poli has encore reuniclus has good coverage for it like thunder, just psy still works and is kinda hard to fit good rain physical wallbreakers to check reuniclus theres some like (garchomp,mamoswine , kyurem-black and others that are alot more niche like gyarados,azumarill,feraligatr but in general isnt easy to fit those) . But also stuff like psyspam makes ttar life alot harder to check latios if u add reuniclus to that because ttar often gets chipped alot while trying to check it and very few things can actually okho reun. While i do agree rain is strong i dont think reuniclus is a healthy way to punish that kind of playstyle. I do think is better we wait till next Spl ends so we can see if reuniclus truly a problem now.
 
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Waiting until after next SPL is not the answer, the can has been kicked down the road long enough. This is not some unknown quantity; at that point, Reuniclus will have been a controversial presence for doing the same exact thing for a decade. Cloyster's removal means it is no longer as easy to cheese/rip through standard Reuni teams. It does not change anything about Reuni's fundamental brokenness (makes it more busted if anything). Please do not wait for any tournament to get more information which we already know. I support a Reuniclus test. (Or Spikes! But Reun is the most widely agreed-upon issue so that seems most realistic)
 
when soulwind reopened this discussion, he stated that the metagame was terrible and even joked about cloyster being suspected before all the other brokens. as a result, we suspected cloyster, which is fine, but stopping there will inevitably lead to the same complaints being made until we do something to actually improve the metagame.

i've played bw for a long time and support a major change by suspecting something that is broken. (sand force) excadrill, reuniclus, magic guard, whatever the community desires most. but please don't sit back and do nothing. do something to improve this tier, please.
 
I would not have bumped a dormant thread if I thought waiting until SPL made any sense. “Begin future discussion now” means we can tackle things this Summer, not in a year.

While I don’t personally view Reuniclus as a problem, I implore people on both sides to discuss it. And if more support is there, I’ll make sure the appropriate action happens.
 
reuniclus is a contributor to serious balance issues. it's too bulky, too strong even without setup, too versatile, and has a broken ability. tyranitar is not sufficient to shut it down because of magic guard and the demand to run a ton of bulk on ttar. reuniclus abuses everything degenerate about this tier -- spikes being broken, immunity to sand and passive damage, the power creep issue, and it synergizes with unbalanced pokemon like latios (psyspam), and excadrill.

nerfing psyspam/magic guard spam is likely to improve balance issues and overstrained teambuilding. each of the prominent psyspam pokemon (latios, reuniclus, alakazam) comes with its own set of teambuilding restrictions and problematic overlapping pressure on common checks. with clefable rising in viability as a result of the gems ban, another pokemon covers many of reuniclus's positive attributes. additionally, with key offensive tools like gems and cloyster banned, there are fewer options for offense to overcome reuniclus.

reuniclus is not a healthy force in the tier and banning it is likely to result in improved balance. you can point to different threats like excadrill, latios, thundurus-t as main imbalance offenders but we need to start somewhere and this is one of our viable courses of action.
 
I'm usually one known to clamor for as few bans as possible but the Cloysterban was definitely a step in the right direction. Cloyster after 1 turn of setup was always a threat to steal the game without needing a complicated setup (easy setup on Lando/Glis for example who are somewhat needed on many teams to check a lot of BW-mons). Good riddance!

Now while i dont believe that current BW is utterly terrible and I would question a lot of other bans I am fully in board with a Reuniclus suspect. Reuni has been in my opinion the single most broken Mon in BW OU for a long ass time (basically until we caught on w Cloy on HO). It needs incredibly specific counterplay and even that counterplay isnt guaranteed to beat it. Like even a chople-Ttar that is facing a Reuniclus without any additional support that would lower Ttars HP (Spikes, Latios, Psyspam) can lose to Reuniclus 1v1 because of the Crunch vs Pursuit mindgame and in effect Reuniclus can wear down Ttar on its own. Not to mention that a lot of Reuni-Checks are invalidated by it just running different moveset options (HP[Ice] vs Gliscor; Thunder vs Jirachi/Poli). And that is just Cm-Reuni. TR-Reuni is also a scary endgame sweeper that many times requires different counterplay and that counterplay is also highly dependent on it facing the right TR-Reuni moveset (like Recover on TR-Reuni just beats some would be-checks or HP[Ice] vs SBall).
Magic Guard is just broken but Reuni also has a good stat distribution + moveset and decent BST. Just a crazy mon overall.

And Reuni isnt even needed defensively in this tier to check something of importance. It can check a lot of shit due to its impeccable bulk but the general metagame would not miss its presence to check stuff. Reuni is just there and puts a huge strain on the teambuilder - many teams way of counterplay Reuni is yellow magic, roaring it and/or trying to 1v1 it with their own Reuniclus in the endgame and hopefully being ahead in boosts (+ getting the crit). That's usually not a good sign.

So given that I am all on board for a Reuniclus suspect.
 
We are going to be rolling out a tiering survey in the near/immediate future. Pokemon discussed regularly here, including Reuniclus, will be included. Everyone will be able to respond and certain qualified responders will have their own demographic (I’ll try to read each response though).
 
I am in agreement that Reuniclus is a broken Pokemon in BW OU.

Throughout BW's tenure, players have always known it to be a massive threat. It was originally slated alongside Pokemon like Thundurus-I and Deoxys-N as a suspect in the olden days of BW. And as the metagame has developed, so has Reuniclus.

McMeghan was one of the first users to begin divesting from standard Reuniclus; he brought to light the potency of BoltBeam Reuniclus in 2018/2019 as a way of circumventing standard checks and acting as an answer to offensive threats like Garchomp and Dragonite. At this point in the metagame, SpDef Gliscor was a common and frequent Reuniclus 'counter'. Thereafter, the playerbase learned that balanced teams with secondary win conditions can opt for funkier coverage on Reuniclus, expanding with all of HP Ice + Focus Blast, Psychic + HP Ice, Psychic + Thunder, etc. We began to realize how you could customize the Pokemon, and standard PsyFight coverage wasn't always optimal depending on its support and purpose on a team.

More recently, teams such as ABR's popularized using Thunder Wave Latios in tandem with Reuniclus which renders Tyranitar miserable. Other threats, even Steel-types like Ferrothorn and Skarmory, don't appreciate being paralyzed during a 1v1 matchup later in the game. We have also come to realize hail as a legitimate threat, again buffing Reuniclus even further by allowing it to chip away at Steel and Ground-types with weather, acting similarly to a Spike.

In addition, we have also seen a new iteration of sand balance, with Clefable being at the forefront of Reuniclus teams. The discovery of Clefable being a legitimate defensive lynchpin has only bolstered the efficacy of Reuniclus (and other Magic Guard users at large). Clefable is able to soft pivot against a lot of annoying things that Reuniclus would have to otherwise (think: bulky waters, Ferrothorn, etc) allowing Reuniclus more breathing room to wreak havoc and do damage.

There are other moves which haven't even been tapped into at a high enough frequency—Signal Beam, for instance, provides similar coverage to Focus Blast with also a practically guaranteed victory in a Reuniclus ditto. I can only imagine how utterly nonsense it could be for two Signal Beam Reuniclus to vye for victory in a big tournament match. I hope we don't see that come to light, yikes.

I historicize this is all to say: the playerbase has found how to optimize this Pokemon more and more each year because it's recognized as one of the most consistently easy-to-win-with Pokemon. It's strong, can find entries in any matchup, and its bulk along with Magic Guard allows it to soft check and push through so much of the tier. I fully believe that removing it will be a step in the right direction. I urge the playerbase at large to push for a Reuniclus ban. I believe that we will have much more player expression, autonomy, and creativity moving forward.
 
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Thanks to dice for handling the survey. Here are the results!


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Of all 79 unfiltered responses, the average was a 4.44 out of 7 while the 19 "qualified" responses averaged out to 4.74 out of 7.

This indicates that the metagame is in a good place, but there is still room for improvement. These scores are slightly above historical averages if you look at it proportionately to the 1-10 scale used in some prior surveys, but close enough to norms so that you do not consider this an overwhelmingly positive outlier response. A reassuring note is only 2 qualified responses had the metagame at a 3 or lower (one being a 2 and one being a 3) with the vast majority giving it a 4, 5, or 6.

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Of all 79 responses, 80.2% supported a Reuniclus suspect test. Of all 19 qualified responses, 73.7% supported a Reuniclus suspect test.

This is a clear supermajority supporting a Reuniclus suspect both throughout the general playerbase and those who have achieved good results on the ladder or in tournaments. Our priority will be discussing this within the council, but we also encourage people to continue discussing Reuniclus in public, too. I am not committing to anything now as we are just getting this up, but I do not personally take this level of support lightly. I also appreciate those who write their justification, which helped me understand everyone's feelings and gave some valuable context to this support.

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Nothing else received majority support on this survey. Volcarona (45.7% general and 47.4% qualified), Latios (38.3% general and 36.8% qualified), and Gems (46.9% general wanting a retest and 52.6% qualified wanting a retest) were closest with Gems even getting there among qualified. Excadrill finished in last across the board with 27.2% general and 15.8% qualified as well. My main takeaway is it is worth discussing Gems (and perhaps Volcarona in some similar contexts) in the future, but perhaps not prioritizing them over Reuniclus.

Thanks to everyone who responded!
 
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The BW OU metagame be like:

It’s no surprise this got over 75% of votes to suspect. Reuniclus abuses the biggest gameplay aspects of the tier, Psyspam, Sand, and Spikes while also being completely immune to the latter two. Because of Magic Guard, Reuniclus can outlast its checks like Rachi, Scarf Trickers, Ttar, Encore Politoed, etc and secure a clean up. CM Roar Latias is a check until Reuniclus is the last mon on the field. The only mon that can 1v1 Reuniclus while having longevity besides itself is Scizor and even that can get crippled by random Thunder paras. I’m gonna just leave it up to here cause the experienced playerbase has a lot more to say about it than I do.
 
The metagame is fine and I don’t see a need for immediate change. We had a few suspects, we had another ban, and we are in a place where I don’t find anything egregious. I plan on stepping down from BW Council if I don’t play BW in SPL to give way for those more regular in the tier, but I may change my mind and play BW — we will see.

As for the specifics of the tier: Latios is broken, but it is so baked-in to our tier with teambuilding conventions and understanding of the metagame that removing it will send things into disarray. If this were CG OU, I would be all for acting on it, but now we lose the identity of the metagame of 13+ years while risking not returning to a stable point for many more cycles of the metagame.

Old generations don’t exactly rebound like CG tiers with active ladders, frequent official tournaments, and so on. BW has a fraction of high-level reps and the same goes for other older generations. Naturally they respond slower and over various tournament cycles, which is fine, but being able to rebound from a generation being defaced would be tough. I never liked this prospect logistically and still do not support it despite it being apparent how much weight Latios has in team construction and how disproportionately strong it can be. BW cup building made this especially damning as Tyranitar or certain hyper-specific combinations felt more forced than ever, but I do not personally see centralization and emphasis as a bad thing. It arguably is better to have some identifying factor to a tier and more structure in how we devote teambuilding energy, especially as this doesn’t stifle innovation as we still see creativity in many structures.

Alakazam is a menace and people have finally begun running better sets/moves with LO popping up more, Signal Beam seeing usage to stifle Celebi trends, and there being good usage of both Psychic and Psyshock. I do not think it is broken despite hearing a number of people approach me on suspecting it. I think Alakazam is actually pretty perfect and healthy in its role as a stopper and as a cleaner. You do have to play moveset roulette around it with certain counters and lines, but a lot of healthy inferring and proactive plays can limit it like many other top threats. I am happy with its presence right now.

I do not think Spikes are broken. I actually am very glad they are in the tier. I will expand on this if requested.

If anything is to change in the immediate future, I would welcome a discussion of Gems on the premise that Volcarona goes if they return, but this feels unnecessary to me and could potentially have ugly collateral + be challenging logistically as it’s a two-pronged operation, since Volcarona with Gems would be awful to have back. I do not feel passionate or strongly about this movement, so I am not going to spark the fire on it and will defer to the community on this front.
 
Was wondering what the wider community's thoughts are on Volcarona at the moment? Had a few conversations in BW Discord and the sidecord, a lot of the people I've spoken to, myself included, still believe it's problematic.

The mon is inherently a bit fishy, sets can decide games sometimes, whether that be Lum eating a Twave or LO Modest Bug Buzz one shotting standard ttar after rocks, which is normally a lot of team's sole Volc check.

Keeping it brief, but the main things I take issue with are:
  • Life Orb set popping up a bit more which can overwhelm checks (reminiscent of Cloyster)
  • Variance in 3rd move, Psychic, HP Ice, Giga Drain, HP Ground also overpowering checks
  • Variance in held item, speed tier etc.
  • Flame body crippling revenge killers
I do also believe the previous suspect which included Volcarona was a flawed format, understandably Cloyster was recognised to be more problematic thus had a retest, but I wanted to open up a conversation and see what others thought.

Look forward to reading your responses.
 
Modest is game changing for the orb set, its been used periodically before, I first heard of it from monai several months back and began using it myself.

It felt strong, very strong. And then over time I realized that if you are modest you may as well just drop way down on speed and invest almost purely in defense, and then I further realized you dont even need full spA invest for the tar one shot.

The result is a monstrous sweeper that can 1 shot tar with rocks while also living a max roll garchomp outrage after orb recoil.

I do think the extra bulk you get when modest is a seriously neglected aspect of this set, and when preparing for volc, some of the usual go-tos no longer work. Is this enough to make it suspect worthy? Im unsure, but it definitely adds to a potential case for one.
 
I think the advent of modest is very powerful, and I hope more people than just me meessm chomp and fakes help demonstrate how destructive it can be. Despite this I think Volc isn't necessarily more broken than gem meta, LOrb has significant longevity issues and if it takes a real hit on the setup it won't stick around between sand and lorb for more than 2 kills. Lum and Passho all have the same power issues as before, and Insect Plate with rocks isn't even a guaranteed OHKO on ttar after rocks. The new sets add a lot of volatility, but I think sand will adapt as usual if modest lorb picks up traction.
 
I think Volc being able to pick and choose what properly checks it is much more prominent than what was happening with Cloy, and it has much more set variety. The only real thing keeping it around historically IMO is the perception of rocks + other check deals with it, but I'm not sure if I subscribe to that argument. Volc gets to pick and choose what scarfers it loses to, if it loses to ttar or not, if it gets to be bulky and just muscle through would be checks with spin support thats going to often cripple would be volc checks with non spin moves. I think Volc not seeing more use is partially due to its perception of it being a cringe phish when in reality its just a mon that will almost allways trade at the very least and gets to tinker with its odds of a jackpot after that with coverage.

TLDR; fuck the moth the only thing we lose banning it is smurf
 
Monai said:
I think the advent of modest is very powerful, and I hope more people than just me meessm chomp and fakes help demonstrate how destructive it can be. Despite this I think Volc isn't necessarily more broken than gem meta, LOrb has significant longevity issues and if it takes a real hit on the setup it won't stick around between sand and lorb for more than 2 kills. Lum and Passho all have the same power issues as before, and Insect Plate with rocks isn't even a guaranteed OHKO on ttar after rocks. The new sets add a lot of volatility, but I think sand will adapt as usual if modest lorb picks up traction.
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The longevity issues are and will continue to its biggest problem absolutely. One thing I do is run anywhere between modest 204 and modest 216 depending on which tar I want a guaruntee on, and ive gone as low as 263 speed as well, altho ofc 276+ as well.

You get so many extra evs to slam in defense that you very frequently live an extra sand tick or orb recoil. I also think giga drain is overal the strongest on modest orb because it can prevent opponents from trying to "dance around," for recoil and sand chip.
 
Tiering isn’t a “net gain” vs “net loss” proposition. Otherwise, we would just ban everything that is annoying. Not saying this is anyone’s sole argument, but Volcarona “adding nothing” to the tier or “only losing Smurf” if it goes is kind of irrelevant.

Volcarona itself you can make a fair argument to be problematic. I do not subscribe to that now and I think the LO phase and Modest Volc just hitting really hard phase is just beginning, so I am curious to see sticking power and metagame reactions before jumping on a premature ban train.

To me, Volcarona without gems has to sacrifice survivability or rely a ton of support to hit the same consistency it had prior to the Gem ban. I agree it was broken than and it’s possible to get to that point again, but I don’t think we are there. Teams with Volcarona incur big risks now, Volcarona still can be revenge killed through all the normal means, and rockers that beat Drill/Starmie are more trendy than ever, which constantly leaves Volcarona limited.

Counterplay is limited in terms of hard counters for sure, especially when you factor in blobs only fitting on specific styles and all coverage options. However, we do play the game and in context I do not currently find Volcarona overbearing.
 
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