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Defining the NU Tier

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UU/BL isn't the same as NU/UU because of how the tiers are set up. There isn't any tier to put in Pokemon that are below the usage mark, but still too powerful for NU.

Then we can just make one. You seem to be implying that a new tier requires some special intervention from the community to be put into place, whereas in fact we could just give it a name, put some Pokemon in it and nobody would be bothered in the slightest. It is not a question of officiality as there is currently nothing official about NU anyway.

NU looks fairly offensive

I'm not convinced by this, mainly due to the lack of Stealth Rock. With it I'd probably agree, as many of the decent walls are crippled by it, at least those with reliable recovery, but without it those walls could very well benefit a lot more than any of the more offensive Pokemon. With a strong defensive base of say Bastiodon/Magcargo + Tropius + Whiscash + Xatu or Chimecho for Wish support there is plenty of potential for switching around and walling teams, which is made so much easier if your constant switching goes unpunished. There is also the fact that preventing a sweep from a problem threat is so much easier by throwing a random Sash on something for an easy revenge kill, safe in the knowledge that it won't be ruined upon switching in.

This is all just speculation right now of course, and it is likely that the starting pool of Pokemon will be much greater than that initial list. Whatever NU ends up being, I'll be eager to give it a try.
 
Spikes and Toxic Spikes are allowed though, so it's not completely devoid of entry hazards.

True, but Flying and Levitating Pokemon are definitely safe, and there's no shortage of those. Plus there is a general lack of Pokemon that can actually set them up well. Glalie seems to be the only decent Spikes user, and would probably make a fine lead with all the right moves and trait, but again they are likely to be far more beneficial to defensive teams than offensive ones.
 
If we include Cloyster in our test, there's another one.

The good thing about Spikes especially is that Bastiodon/Wormadam-S (people should stop forgetting about the latter's slightly better typing so it doesn't die to a random HP Ground from a sweeper) are controlled a bit more so they don't wall entire teams without any effort. The same goes for Magcargo, especially with the utter shortage of bulky Grassers/Waters.
 
There has been an official ruling on this?

Not yet, but it seems almost certain they will be. http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43157

As said in that thread, the arguement that NFE Pokemon make other tiers 'OU-lite' is very flawed, Pokemon like Shelgon shouldn't be disallowed, when Pokemon such as Unown are allowed, Pokemon like Sableye are almost completely usurped by Pokemon like Spiritomb, and could very well evolve into it, but it doesn't. They've deduced that every Pokemon is a Pokemon, and that we're letting in-game status affect our competitive battling again. This is almost as stupid as banning all legendaries, just because they're legendaries.
 
Your idea is, no offense, absolutely terrible. Why wouldn't we use the 75% cut-off point? It's completely arbitrary but it works. And banning Pokemon before anyone has evened played this new metagame? We did that with UU and look where that's gotten us. Why wouldn't we just create our tier in a fundamentally correct way from the start? We have a fresh start, unlike with OU/UU so you can't say "the metagame has settled" or words to that effect.

I think just putting in everything that hasn't made the 75% cut is being a little bit ahead of ourselves, because we don't even have a metagame to speak of. How do we know something is balanced or unbalanced right now?

That's precisely why we should include everything below the 75% cut. We don't know how the metagame will shape up, so we're going to ban a bunch of Pokemon why exactly?
 
So then NU would initially include all the Pokemon in UU minus the ones listed here

Claydol -
Steelix -
Clefable -
Rotom -
Hitmontop -
Ninetales -
Aerodactyl -
Weezing -
Venusaur -
Hitmonlee -
Hypno -
Poliwrath -
Swellow -
Absol -
Toxicroak -
Altaria -
Leafeon -
Blastoise -
Lanturn -
Froslass -
Persian -
Sharpedo -
Primeape -
Scyther -
Manectric -
Miltank -
Venomoth -
Nidoqueen -
Drapion -
Drifblim -
Glaceon -
Nidoking -
Jynx -
Rapidash -
Mantine -
Meganium -
Electrode -
Gastrodon -
Kangaskhan -
Probopass -
Banette -
Lopunny -
Jumpluff -
Kabutops -
Omastar -
Lapras -
Vileplume -

Similar to our list, but with some differences. Note that less than 20 usages seperate Vileplume and Articuno, where the cutoff point lies, which is a small amount. I'm not sure I want to autoban Bannete while allowing Gorebyss in, it just seems stupid. However, if people simply demand NU be based off of usage rather than sense so be it.​
 
However, if people simply demand NU be based off of usage rather than sense so be it.

That's not us "demanding" anything, it's just how it works. It's the way the tier system is already set up. Why would we allow Bannete in NU if we're not allowing Tentacruel in UU? If you'd like it to change you can start a discussion, but as of now that's just indisputibly the way it works.


Anyways, so here is the official NU tier list as of now.

Aggron
Ampharos
Arbok
Ariados
Armaldo
Articuno
Bastiodon
Beautifly
Beedrill
Bellossom
Bibarel
Butterfree
Cacturne
Camerupt
Carnivine
Castform
Chatot
Cherrim
Chimecho
Clamperl
Cloyster
Corsola
Cradily
Crawdaunt
Delcatty
Delibird
Dewgong
Ditto
Dodrio
Dunsparce
Dustox
Exploud
Farfetch'd
Fearow
Flareon
Furret
Girafarig
Glalie
Golduck
Golem
Granbull
Grumpig
Gorebyss
Hitmonchan
Huntail
Illumise
Kecleon
Kingler
Ledian
Linoone
Lumineon
Lunatone
Luvdisc
Luxray
Magcargo
Masquerain
Mawile
Mightyena
Minun
Mothim
Mr. Mime
Muk
Noctowl
Octillery
Pachirisu
Parasect
Pelipper
Phione
Pidgeot
Pikachu
Plusle
Politoed
Purugly
Quagsire
Qwilfish
Raichu
Raticate
Relicanth
Sableye
Sandslash
Seaking
Seviper
Shedinja
Shiftry
Shuckle
Skuntank
Solrock
Spinda
Stantler
Sudowoodo
Sunflora
Swalot
Trapinch
Torkoal
Tropius
Unown
Victreebel
Vigoroth
Vespiquen
Volbeat
Wailord
Walrein
Wigglytuff
Whiscash
Wormadam
Wormadam-s
Xatu

The following I think are "trouble Pokemon", but we shouldn't ban yet for the sake of accuracy.

Aggron
Articuno
Cacturne
Camerupt
Crawdaunt
Dodrio
Golem
Gorebyss
Hitmonchan
Mr. Mime
Pikachu
Raichu
Sudowoodo
Walrein
 
Similar to our list, but with some differences. Note that less than 20 usages seperate Vileplume and Articuno, where the cutoff point lies, which is a small amount. I'm not sure I want to autoban Bannete while allowing Gorebyss in, it just seems stupid. However, if people simply demand NU be based off of usage rather than sense so be it.​

I think your points demonstrate that usage alone should not be the determining factor.



umbersac
The following I think are "trouble Pokemon", but we shouldn't ban yet for the sake of accuracy.

Aggron - Articuno - Cacturne - Camerupt - Crawdaunt - Dodrio - Golem -
Gorebyss - Hitmonchan - Mr. Mime - Pikachu - Raichu - Sudowoodo -Walrein

However I think this demonstrates how difficult it is going to be to determine what constitutes troublesome .... personally I consider Golem, Mr. Mime and Sudowoodo to be far less threatening than Ampharos, Grumpig and Golduck.
 
I think Articuno*, Cacturne, Pikachu and Crawdaunt are pretty fearsome and shouldn't be dropped into NU.

We can test them, but I am 100% sure they will totally rape everything and get moved up.


*Articuno has 580 BST and if we're not allowing Stealth Rocks, it'll be unbeatable. It can even stall out weak rock attacks with Roost and Pressure.
 
I suppose we can start with the 75% cutoff and ban later, though I don't really see why the extra step in between is necessary. It's pretty obvious that Gorebyss rapes everything in the tier with a Rain Dance/Surf/Ice Beam/ Hp Grass set. I don't see why we need testing to show that.

Also, banning Stealth Rocks now becomes an issue since it makes Articuno too good. Grr, and it just missed the cutoff too.
 
We need to avoid autobanning too much though. If we autoban one Pokemon, we'll probably end up autobanning a number of them, even though none of them may actually need to be banned. I really thing we should include all Pokemon, including Articuno, Aggron, etc, and just see how things go from there. DP NU is going to be nowhere near as weak as RSE NU was.

And who knows. Maybe allowing all non-UU Pokemon in NU will provide us with a balanced, non-centralized metagame. I seriously doubt it, but we never know.
 
I suppose we can start with the 75% cutoff and ban later, though I don't really see why the extra step in between is necessary. It's pretty obvious that Gorebyss rapes everything in the tier with a Rain Dance/Surf/Ice Beam/ Hp Grass set. I don't see why we need testing to show that.

Except Golduck, Dewgong, Shedinja and Politoed but yeah that is obviously very centralizing so point taken.

Looking at the true NU list it seems to make more sense to ban weather than Stealth Rock, although then it comes to the question of whether we want to make all the weather strategies obsolete.
 
wer have to be careful, i'm worried things might end up in NU through usage because of the recent inclusions in UU (who is going to use things if they can use one of the "broken" new inclusions in there),
 
Lol nice try guys, but I assure you that Stealth Rock will NOT be banned for the first iteration of the official NU list.
 
wer have to be careful, i'm worried things might end up in NU through usage because of the recent inclusions in UU (who is going to use things if they can use one of the "broken" new inclusions in there),

New inclusions? There haven't been any this month yet, nor has there been any talk so far.
 
O, and I assure you we will NOT be auto banning ANYTHING.

What falls underneath the 75% cut off in UU will be considered NU.

We'll ban into the NU-ban tier after some generally accepted period of time (probably 1-3 months).
 
I'm kind of confused as to why this thread was allowed. It's been known for awhile that NU like all other real tiers will be determined by usage first, then bans for powerful Pokémon. So all this thread is doing is theory-monning at this point, with no battling or statistics.

Going a different way of calculating NU is off the table, I think. It's 75% with the powerful shit banned.
 
I'm kind of confused as to why this thread was allowed.

It was allowed because there were those of us tired of discussing a "UU tier" which essentially ignored the greater majority of its components.

It was envisioned as a stop gap, a suggested list for those who wanted to experiment with the lower tier pokemon, in a more beneficial environment until an official decision was made. Or at least that's how I saw it ...
 
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