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DP Tier Discussion - BL and UU (mark 2)

and floatzal is the fastest pokemon in the game in the rain, isn't rain broken enough, and kabutops should really get the boot, or rain made harder to set up.
UU needs no more pokes, it needs a clean out, no one is playing UU anymore because of the latest inclusions, aero, weezing? there were a few WTF'S when they first appeared, sort out the upper UU rather then throwing in stuff similar to the already upper UU's (crobat... no...)
we are just throwing things into UU it seems, we should be testing via BL ladder first IMO
 
Phalanx-- when I talked about Floatzel, I didn't mean reasons to bring Floatzel down. I meant to use Floatzel as a banned pokemon to show why aero also does not belong in UU. IE, since floatzel is banned, what the hell is aero doing here?
 
and floatzal is the fastest pokemon in the game in the rain, isn't rain broken enough, and kabutops should really get the boot, or rain made harder to set up.
UU needs no more pokes, it needs a clean out, no one is playing UU anymore because of the latest inclusions, aero, weezing? there were a few WTF'S when they first appeared, sort out the upper UU rather then throwing in stuff similar to the already upper UU's (crobat... no...)
we are just throwing things into UU it seems, we should be testing via BL ladder first IMO
I agree that kabutops is a bit too good for uu. kabutops and damp rock makes rain teams so good/overpowered.
 
Most NFE Pokemon have a different Speed than their FE counterpart. Those that have more Speed have the obvious advantage of outspeeding their FE form. Those with less Speed have the less obvious advantage of going before their FE counterpart in Trick Room. Another advantage of being slower is that the opponent can use Baton Pass or U-turn and you can still hit the recipient more often. Pursuit is also going to be doubled in power vs. U-turners more with slower Pokemon.

If you reject the argument of less Speed sometimes being good (I don't see why, other than the vague "not important enough"), then consider the case of Unown. Unown has the same type and ability as Azelf. Its movepool is strictly inferior. Its stats are less in every place. If Azelf is OU, should Unown be banned from UU?

If Unown shouldn't be banned, the argument isn't "OU-lite", it's "the in-game status of evolvability should be given importance in our tier system", which is similar to "the in-game status of catchability should be given importance in our tier system" (a ban on legends).
 
I'm personally not against banning legends but that's another issue.

You don't even have to properly quote for me to recognize Obi's shpeal. While I agree with his logic (mostly), I question his common sense. Having infernape in OU and Monferno in UU makes the two more similar no matter how you look at it.

Besides, Golbat has the option to "take advantage of its lower speed" by not evolving or get better speed by evolving. Show me an unown who can evolve into azelf and maybe I'll by into it.

IE-- What's wrong with in-game status of evolvibility being given importance to the tier system? We give in-game status of move learnability importance, correct? Moreover, note the use of the word "similar" and not "the same" in his last sentance. Besides, even if we were to give importance to "in-game status of catchability" I don't see the connection to legend banning. I own the legends (legitly) to make almost all the smogon sets through trading or my own SRing.
 
"not important enough" can be a valid reply, whether or not it is vague. Does it matter that Sneasel gets hit by a less powerful Gyro Ball when it's slaughtered by the attack anyways? Does it matter that it's faster in Trick Room if it's still one of the slowest UU Pokemon in Trick Room?

There are instances where it matters, but when it's just a matter of going from a base 100 Speed to a Base 85 Speed where it's "not important enough". It just makes it inferior to the final product, the same as a change from 125 SpA to 115.
 
Logic = Common Sense IMO However...

Chou@ The reason I chose OBI's "spheal" was simply to show another person's view point on a similar topic. At least that was my own interpretation of it. Legends rolled with the whole quote so I decided to not take them out. However, you have to realize the Unown + Azelf thing was kind of a "what if" to put help place things in a better perspective.

Well, I've tried as hard as I'm willing to place Golbat into the UU tier. Aside from Eo Ut Mortos [who is neutral], everyone seems to be against the movement of Golbat and therefore I will have to wait until later when everyone is done crying about Aero, Vena, and the likes.

- When is the Statistics coming out?
-I remember seeing something about us needing 3 months of Statistics to completely determine what we are going to do with these UU/ BL's. Is that correct?
- Obviously a majority of regular UU players are against these BL's so is a 3 month wait needed?
- Man, I would just really like to know what the FULL plan of action is for the next couple of months...
 
There is absolutely no justification to ban the NFEs of BL Pokemon. There is no "OU-lite" argument because BLs are not OU.
 
I don't know of any UU player opposed to BL, they may have misrepresented their argument but if flat-out asked "would you mind the NFE of BLs being in UU" they probably wouldn't mind.
 
Woah, woah, woah. NFE's are being discussed for UU now, like officially?


also
and floatzal is the fastest pokemon in the game in the rain, isn't rain broken enough, and kabutops should really get the boot, or rain made harder to set up.
UU needs no more pokes, it needs a clean out, no one is playing UU anymore because of the latest inclusions, aero, weezing? there were a few WTF'S when they first appeared, sort out the upper UU rather then throwing in stuff similar to the already upper UU's (crobat... no...)
we are just throwing things into UU it seems, we should be testing via BL ladder first IMO

Rain isn't really that easy to set up, if it was you'd see a crap lot more of them. If it was easy and broken to do you'd see it as often as you see Yache-Chomp. I think I've seen maybe two rain teams ever in UU. I used to be big into them on OU, but it's just not worth it to devote most of your team to one thing like the rain not stopping.

I did stop playing UU once Aero and Weezing joined it though. After 5 battles in a row of dealing with Steelix/Weezing/Clefable combo I decided to go back to OU. If they ever got booted out, I'll prolly start playing again.
 
Rain isn't really that easy to set up.

The only way I can think of stopping a leading Electrode from setting up RD is to scarf a Ninetales/Persian/ random sleep inducer and have it put the Electrode to sleep. You're risking the chance that said sleep move will miss and that Electrode gets the required 3 turns of sleep to kill it before it sets up Rain (1st switch, 2nd attack it with something but Trode will live due to sash and 3rd finish it off, although the process can be cut down to 2 turns if you use a priority user/ scarfer). You could also use a scarfer with Taunt buts that's pretty janky.

Yeah, it seems pretty easy to set up considering the way to stop it is so luck reliant on a certain method.
 
Aside from Eo Ut Mortos [who is neutral], everyone seems to be against the movement of Golbat and therefore I will have to wait until later when everyone is done crying about Aero, Vena, and the likes.

No. Whilst some posters may have expressed direct opposition to Golbat, others simply stated that they believed there were more pressing issues to deal with than a single NFE, which is neither supportive, nor a refusal.

Whilst your idea might not have been met with the rapturous reception you, there is no need to trivialise the quite legitimate concerns of others.

@ Automatic

Can I suggest that you start playing "UU" and you will see 1) How easy Rain Dance can be to set up 2) How common it is at the moment 3) How broken it can be unless your team is packed with counters.
 
I did stop playing UU once Aero and Weezing joined it though. After 5 battles in a row of dealing with Steelix/Weezing/Clefable combo I decided to go back to OU. If they ever got booted out, I'll prolly start playing again.
Ditto. Battles ceased being fun, in a tier that, imo, is supposed to be fun to play.
 
I didn't want to read through the entire thread again (I did once but I don't remember this being addressed) so I apologize if this has already been answered. Once the "testing" has reached a certain point in time and once stats are available and so on, how exactly is the new BL tier being decided on? What I'm really asking, is this going to be a voting process like the Garchomp issue or will this be handled differently?
 
@Syberia-- aren't they all supposed to be fun to play? O.o I certainly don't treat OU as work.

@Rain Issue-- IMO, if you want to sacrifice one whole pokemon just to set up a weather condition that will last for just 3 turns of attacking (in case of focus sash trode who still gets screwed by SR/steelix) or 5 turns (in case of easily 1hko'd wet rock trode) be my guest. While rain is certainly a powerful strategy, I hardly regard it as the end-all. This is wandering off topic though.

@Caelum/Exclamation Point/How to deal with BLs-- as with all the prior decisions to this, it'll probably just come down to a kind of general consensus of those posting in this thread. Yeah, not as direct as OU but that's how we've been doing things and probably how we'll continue to do them.
 
5 turns (in case of easily 1hko'd wet rock trode)

That'd be 7 turns actually....

Either way, I think we desperately need to address the issue of UU stall teams. With Weezing, Venusaur and Articuno added to the already stall-icious line up of Hypno, Blastoise, Steelix, Clefable, Quagsire, etc., you can easily make a legal UU team that's completely impenetrable because of a shortage of really effective wall breakers. They severly reduce the pace and creativity of any and all UU team.
 
Either way, I think we desperately need to address the issue of UU stall teams. With Weezing, Venusaur and Articuno added to the already stall-icious line up of Hypno, Blastoise, Steelix, Clefable, Quagsire, etc., you can easily make a legal UU team that's completely impenetrable because of a shortage of really effective wall breakers. They severly reduce the pace and creativity of any and all UU team.

This has happened because most of those BL Pokemon that are very capable of wall-breaking (Tauros, Zangoose, Marowak, Rampardos etc) have been dismissed with wide opposition as 'completely broken and unbalancing', in the most part because of that very fact, whereas more defensive threats have received somewhat less opposition, leading to mostly walls being brought down.

The only one that has managed to slip through is Aerodactyl, and just look at the controversy that has caused despite the fact that UU is considered to be very defensive atm. I have noticed some people that have complained about both the stall nature of UU and Aero at the same time, which screams of contradiction. The former implies that UU is too defensively oriented, whilst the latter implies that UU isn't defensively oriented enough.

My stance on the problem? I agree with you, UU is too defensive for its own good. Forget Aero, that thing is quite easily played around with a mixture of sturdy defensive Pokemon (no shortage there obviously), priority moves (no shortage there either), perhaps the odd scarfer (plenty of viable candidates) and most importantly Stealth Rock (every team should have this anyway). It has never been a big threat to me.

The big problem I've noticed is that I have often found it difficult to break down a well built stall team, and there are far too few viable options for getting around it. Clefable is still the biggest problem IMO, followed by Venusaur then Miltank. Those three in particular are incredibly versatile, wall plenty by themselves and are very difficult to take advantage of from an offensive standpoint. Clefable is the worst because there is no backdoor way of taking it out and can effortlessly support a team of walls who have otherwise no form of recovery with Wish, making UU stall so viable. Steelix/Weezing is very overrated IMO and easily exploited by themselves, they owe their success mostly to the more problematic Pokemon already mentioned.

Many people want to resolve this by going back to the time when these Pokemon were still BL, but to be honest with you I wasn't particularly fond of that metagame either. I am more of an optimist who thinks that more Pokemon should be given a try in UU, not less, as unpopular as that stance may be. Apparently we need to whole community's attention before we even get started on Obi's proposal, which is preposterous if you ask me, but as a second choice I'd prefer to try something new rather than reverting back to the old ways.
 
Well actually wanting to ban Aerodactyl is not a contradiction to claiming that BL is too defensive because Aerodactyl runs through offensive teams with that blazing speed, but can be walled by a slow bulky team, which furthers the need for stall.

Although I personally think you are being melodramatic. When people claimed that the new Pokemon plunged UU into a stallfest, I made an all-out offensive team that had a ~70% win rate. It wasn't nearly as good as my more defensive team, but I think it helped to show that all-out offense isn't hopeless.
 
Bah, balanced teams were always over-rated anyway . . .

Anyway OU has been Bulky-Sweep (heatran, celebi, zapdos, vaporeon, bronzong and gliscor seem the staples of almost all teams) for a while, much in part because of Deoxys - S.

I'd say Aero's great speed, coverage, and utility moves make it a similar presence in UU. Just as unbarsc said, rather than being an enemy of stall, it has made bulky pokemon even more prevalant.

@Buckles-- Ah, I guess you're right, as Electrode'll probably be 1hko'd on the spot, leaving 7 turns.

edit: Ah, I'd also like to mention that I have a much harder time dealing with milktank than clefable. Respectable speed and attack stats make it quite the nuisance.
 
Uh... I don't mean to rain on some people's parade but Life Orb Aerodactyl can 2HKO Steelix with Fire Blast. And Ice Fang would at least make a dent on Claydol.
 
There are better choices to counter Aerodactyl though. Sandslash, Quagsire, Meganium, Gastrodon, Poliwrath and (Intimidate) Hitmontop all are decent general switch-ins (though worn down by repeated Double-edges). And with proper prediction it can easily be worn down by Life Orb and Stealth Rock. Many Pokemon also force it out, while not exactly countering him. If Steelix comes in on Double-edge/Stone Edge/Crunch, who cares if you 2HKO with Fire Blast? It's going to OHKO you with Gyro Ball.

In my opinion, the most dangerous set is Roost/Earthquake/Stone Edge/Double-edge because that hits everything fairly hard while recovering recoil damage, which makes it a devastating late-game cleaner.
 
You're list of switch ins, umbarsc, while true, also helps to prove my point. They would all fit in very well on a stall team and would shut down an offensive team. The combination of Aero and the latest bulkier UUs forces pokemon like NP Persian, Jumpluff, Manectric, Scyther and Jynx (to name a few) closer to obsoletion than ever. While it seems like I'm repeating myself, variety and creativity, formerly the big selling points of UU, are crippled by the latest additions. We have to either move some out of UU, or move down more BLs that can compete.
 
Uh... I don't mean to rain on some people's parade but Life Orb Aerodactyl can 2HKO Steelix with Fire Blast. And Ice Fang would at least make a dent on Claydol.
When did anyone say otherwise?

Anyway, I get what people are saying in that Aerodactyl is like the Deoxys-S of UU, i.e. the bane of offensive teams. However, I have always seen that as a flimsy argument and actually more of a good thing than a bad thing.

In an ideal metagame, no particular strategy should be completely dominant or infallible. That way there will be a wider range of viable strategies and Pokemon. Now I know that isn't completely plausible with the highly unbalanced range of Pokemon that Gamefreak has given us to work with, but nevertheless we should strive to get as close to that ideal scenario as possible, with the fewest possible bannings.

At the moment though, there is a real problem, and I've noticed that the main culprit is stall as opposed to offense. When comparing overall offensive quality to overall defensive quality (did that make any sense?), it seems that Aero is pretty much the only one that matches up to the numerous defensive powerhouses in UU. And with only one offensive threat on an equal footing, it is very easy for teams filled with defensive pokes to come out on top. IMO UU desperately needs more strong offensive Pokemon to prevent stall from being so dominant, and there are plenty of Pokemon already mentioned that I always thought should have come down for testing alongside the others. It is still far inferior to the 'test everything' option though.
 
You're list of switch ins, umbarsc, while true, also helps to prove my point. They would all fit in very well on a stall team and would shut down an offensive team. The combination of Aero and the latest bulkier UUs forces pokemon like NP Persian, Jumpluff, Manectric, Scyther and Jynx (to name a few) closer to obsoletion than ever. While it seems like I'm repeating myself, variety and creativity, formerly the big selling points of UU, are crippled by the latest additions. We have to either move some out of UU, or move down more BLs that can compete.

And I also proved my own point? ?_?
 
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