Tiering councils are expected to be the best players, the most knowledgeable metagamers, and the most involved community members of their tiers and are usually handpicked by their tier leaders for having these qualities. Within the past few years, the idea of "council reqs" has become more and more popular among tiering councils, with the idea that since council members are already proven within their tiers, they shouldn't have to grind through a suspect ladder to achieve full reqs. Instead, council members are usually allowed to play fewer games. This practice is a problem and needs to be eliminated.
The majority of laddering done to get council reqs involves playing the low ladder on a brand new suspect test ladder, which does not represent the actual metagame. A common council requirement for UU and probably other tiers used to be simply playing 30 games, which is barely enough to get the person out of the low ladder on a fresh suspect ladder. Even as requirements have become more complex recently (often involving GXE), the number of non-retarded games needed to get council reqs is still extremely low. For the last UU suspect test, I remember playing a mono-bug dude TWO times, one of them being on game number 32.
This problem is exacerbated by the fact that many tiers, especially lower tiers, often change rather quickly (due to tier shifts and frequent bans/unbans). This allows council members who are semi-active to inactive even for a couple months to grow quickly out of touch with their tier, and there's hardly any turnover on the councils that I'm familiar with (UU through NU), so it's not like new council members are picked with every suspect test to ensure activity. Council members aren't even required to participate in suspect tests; there is a UU council member right now that to this day hasn't gotten reqs, neither normal nor council, a SINGLE time in gen 7.
Most importantly, why should people, often hand-picked by their friends, not have to demonstrate that they can achieve the same requirements on a ladder as the other voters? If you can't even get normal reqs, then what are you doing on council? It's not that hard for a decent player to get normal reqs, and council reqs are even easier. meeps told me he got his NU council reqs in under 40 minutes and knew of other council members who used bullshit meme teams and still got them easily. I know that some UU council members just load up stall and breeze through their reqs with no thought involved whatsoever and usually only 0-1 instances of encountering the suspected Pokemon. Not trying to call anyone out, but these are some recent ladder runs that have qualified for council reqs:
https://prnt.sc/j4148x
https://prnt.sc/j414gu
https://prnt.sc/j41chn
These are frankly embarrassing GXEs, W/L's, and ELOs and if it weren't council members posting these, I would think the person trying to vote is uninformed or bad.
This lazy and unacceptable practice needs to be removed from the site. Tiering councils are necessary to evaluate when suspects are needed and to lead suspect tests when they happen, but there's no good reason for them to get out of getting reqs that every other voter has to get. I would go a step further and force councils to kick members when they do not participate in a suspect test, but at the very least, the idea of "council reqs" needs to be eliminated.
The majority of laddering done to get council reqs involves playing the low ladder on a brand new suspect test ladder, which does not represent the actual metagame. A common council requirement for UU and probably other tiers used to be simply playing 30 games, which is barely enough to get the person out of the low ladder on a fresh suspect ladder. Even as requirements have become more complex recently (often involving GXE), the number of non-retarded games needed to get council reqs is still extremely low. For the last UU suspect test, I remember playing a mono-bug dude TWO times, one of them being on game number 32.
This problem is exacerbated by the fact that many tiers, especially lower tiers, often change rather quickly (due to tier shifts and frequent bans/unbans). This allows council members who are semi-active to inactive even for a couple months to grow quickly out of touch with their tier, and there's hardly any turnover on the councils that I'm familiar with (UU through NU), so it's not like new council members are picked with every suspect test to ensure activity. Council members aren't even required to participate in suspect tests; there is a UU council member right now that to this day hasn't gotten reqs, neither normal nor council, a SINGLE time in gen 7.
Most importantly, why should people, often hand-picked by their friends, not have to demonstrate that they can achieve the same requirements on a ladder as the other voters? If you can't even get normal reqs, then what are you doing on council? It's not that hard for a decent player to get normal reqs, and council reqs are even easier. meeps told me he got his NU council reqs in under 40 minutes and knew of other council members who used bullshit meme teams and still got them easily. I know that some UU council members just load up stall and breeze through their reqs with no thought involved whatsoever and usually only 0-1 instances of encountering the suspected Pokemon. Not trying to call anyone out, but these are some recent ladder runs that have qualified for council reqs:
https://prnt.sc/j4148x
https://prnt.sc/j414gu
https://prnt.sc/j41chn
These are frankly embarrassing GXEs, W/L's, and ELOs and if it weren't council members posting these, I would think the person trying to vote is uninformed or bad.
This lazy and unacceptable practice needs to be removed from the site. Tiering councils are necessary to evaluate when suspects are needed and to lead suspect tests when they happen, but there's no good reason for them to get out of getting reqs that every other voter has to get. I would go a step further and force councils to kick members when they do not participate in a suspect test, but at the very least, the idea of "council reqs" needs to be eliminated.