DP Tier Discussion Thread - BL and UU

[Gmax]

I am one against Honchkrow in UU, but I think that you're stopped by any fighting pokemon ever. Let me remind you HONCHKROW IS AS SLOW AS PASTE. meaning that any pokemon that outruns your bird will probably eat it for breakfast.

Or what about a sub-puncher? What about Sub-Seeders?

What about any pokemon who can set up on this set? This isn't that exciting to me. This doesn't seem broken.

SubPunchers in UU:Aggron and Kangaskhan.

HP Fighting ruins them both.

Subseeders in UU will be loath to switch in for fear of Drill Peck, and even if they do switch in on a screech, you can deal with them...

They're not going to stay in and seed, plus the subs are easily broken by Pursuit once you've screeched them. And they really aren't going to be healing enough from Honchkrow's HP to last forever. And most of them use Energy Ball as their main attack. Just how much is that going to do to Honchkrow? They're not getting around it any time soon. The defense is halved for God's sake, and you have a 120 BP Priority attack if they're attacking.

And lol@Pneuma.

EDIT:@Thunderpup Orly? They're setting up on you with half their defense? And which part of Sucker Punch is a priority attack allows faster pokemon to eat it for breakfast?

 

[Sir Spanky]

Sucker Punch fails against any non-attacking move, so of course anything that resists/is immune to HP Fighting, or anything with good special defence (as HP is special and your main attack is SP, Honchkrow won't have any Special EV's) can easily stat up/sub/status Honchkrow without fear.

 

[Thunderpup]

SubPunchers in UU:Aggron and Kangaskhan.

HP Fighting ruins them both.

Subseeders in UU will be loath to switch in for fear of Drill Peck, and even if they do switch in on a screech, you can deal with them...

They're not going to stay in and seed, plus the subs are easily broken by Pursuit once you've screeched them. And they really aren't going to be healing enough from Honchkrow's HP to last forever. And most of them use Energy Ball as their main attack. Just how much is that going to do to Honchkrow? They're not getting around it any time soon. The defense is halved for God's sake, and you have a 120 BP Priority attack if they're attacking.

And lol@Pneuma.

EDIT:@Thunderpup Orly? They're setting up on you with half their defense? And which part of Sucker Punch is a priority attack allows faster pokemon to eat it for breakfast?

Hitmonlee resists sucker punch, and outruns, so does chan and top. So do most of the fighting types. And also they have like, what? base 100 special defense too? Yeah.

And idiot, if they aren't attacking, you can't suckerpunch, and last time I checked, screech doesn't effect hidden power. And as long as they don't attack (by the way, they'd see it coming from a mile away because of screech), most subseeders are bulky in special defense.

And not every single battle is them switching in you. You do realize your krow is pretty sad if they switch in for revenge kill or they've set up.

What about a pokemon that comes out to burn you?

Your pokemon is not unbeatable.

 

[Fishin]

Hitmonlee resists sucker punch, and outruns

You seem to be forgetting Hitmonlee's base defense of 53. If it comes in on a Screech, Sucker Punch does 95.87% - 112.81% to it.

To be fair, the other Hitmons would probably work a bit better.

 

[Mercenary Raven]

Hitmonlee resists sucker punch, and outruns, so does chan and top. So do most of the fighting types. And also they have like, what? base 100 special defense too? Yeah.

Factor in how Sucker Punch is physical, then try again.

And idiot, if they aren't attacking, you can't suckerpunch, and last time I checked, screech doesn't effect hidden power. And as long as they don't attack (by the way, they'd see it coming from a mile away because of screech), most subseeders are bulky in special defense.

Except the point of Hidden Power was to attack Pokemon like Probopass who had a 4x weakness to Fighting or whatever.

And not every single battle is them switching in you. You do realize your krow is pretty sad if they switch in for revenge kill or they've set up.

Care to make sense?

What about a pokemon that comes out to burn you?

Same applies to EVERY SWEEPER EXCEPT ONE WITH GUTS.

 

[Bologo]

And not every single battle is them switching in you. You do realize your krow is pretty sad if they switch in for revenge kill or they've set up.

Umm, if they come out to revenge kill you, they'll get sucker punched right in the face. Most of the time, when you're revenge killing, you're going to attack, which allows sucker punch to work off that 125 base attack. Also, if they've set-up, then chances are, you've had time to screech them while they've been trying to set-up on you, and then once they try to attack you with their boosts, they'll also get sucker punched...

I really don't understand if you were trying to say something else there or something, but what you did say didn't make much sense.

 

[Lemmiwinks MkII]

Same applies to EVERY SWEEPER EXCEPT ONE WITH GUTS.

No it doesn't. What was meant here was Sucker Punch is Honchkrow's only strong attack, meaning any decent wall that isn't weak to Fighting or Dark can come in easily to cripple it with status. I personally don't see what it is that makes Honchkrow too strong for UU. It has strong attacking stats yes, but it is too slow to sweep IMO whilst Sucker Punch is quite easy to bypass with the right moves, not to mention the terrible defenses and lack of decent resists. It would be hard pressed to switch in even in UU.

 

[Dragontamer]

I'd like to pause the argument and bring up a meta-argument point.

Where exactly is our measure for UU?

IMO, the goal for UU should be "To ban all OUs, and then to ban as few pokemon to BL as possible"... That is, if it isn't OU, it is potentially UU.

However, a good amount of yall seem to want "To emulate the Advance Generation UU environment". That is, if it is too powerful by the standard of the UU environment of Advance generation, then it is BL.

I'd like to make sure we're all thinking the same meta-argument, just to make sure we have some sort of idea to what kind of metagame we want.

EDIT: Examples where this may make a difference: as Alakazam is BL right now, I say unban him, but unban Ninjask as well. Alakazam is out-sped and at least forced out when Ninjask comes in. That is, we first DONT have any BLs, and then ban them when they are too powerful. On the other hand... even with Ninjask in, Alakazam may be too powerful... but I hope you get where I'm coming from. TrickSpecs for Sucker-Punchers and so forth...

That is, we ought to settle down on some sort of hard metric where we can truly measure BL vs UU.

 

[ODDish]

meaning any decent wall that isn't weak to Fighting or Dark can come in easily to cripple it with status.

Aren't the majority of UU's main physical walls weak to fighting?
Aren't it's two premier special walls both psychic types and therefore
Then of course there is STAB Drill Peck to contend with.

It would be hard pressed to switch in even in UU.

Ground attacks (which are plentiful), psychic attacks (which are more plentiful in UU than OU), dark attacks, ghost attacks, oh and sleep moves if your Murkrow happens to be imsoniac. That's more than what some have to work with ...

IMO, the goal for UU should be "To ban all OUs, and then to ban as few pokemon to BL as possible"...

The problem is a huge number of pokemon improved this gen and could now be considered "BL". You push the majority of them down into UU, what becomes of the real "UU" pokemon? They don't get used? They become NU?

Whilst I absolutely abhorred the "BL/UU" matches that were common on shoddy for a while, they did teach me one thing, most people who claimed to have BL/UU teams typically whored the BL pokemin and had maybe one token UU. You dump a large quantity of BL pokemon into the UU pool, your going to see the NU pool increase incredibly.

 

[Thunderpup]

You seem to be forgetting Hitmonlee's base defense of 53. If it comes in on a Screech, Sucker Punch does 95.87% - 112.81% to it.

To be fair, the other Hitmons would probably work a bit better.

In all fairness, I wasn't talking about switching in a frail little poke into a 130 base physical attacker.

Revenge-killing, I meant more.

Sorry if I've been a little messed up, I'm in class.

 

[Mercenary Raven]

No it doesn't. What was meant here was Sucker Punch is Honchkrow's only strong attack, meaning any decent wall that isn't weak to Fighting or Dark can come in easily to cripple it with status.

You're basically saying Heracross and someone else I don't recall, which don't exist in UU.

 

[Dragontamer]

The problem is a huge number of pokemon improved this gen and could now be considered "BL". You push the majority of them down into UU, what becomes of the real "UU" pokemon? They don't get used? They become NU?

Whilst I absolutely abhorred the "BL/UU" matches that were common on shoddy for a while, they did teach me one thing, most people who claimed to have BL/UU teams typically whored the BL pokemin and had maybe one token UU. You dump a large quantity of BL pokemon into the UU pool, your going to see the NU pool increase incredibly.

Not only did the number of powerful pokemon increase, but the number of pokemon in general has increased. Needless to say, the number of NU pokemon will increase as UU pokemon got better or got evolutions (Roserade and Gliscor), or simply got better. I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing, and my gut feeling is that it better models what people expect.

The main problem with UU right now is that it is ill-defined. I don't really know what the best definition of it should be, but I know it should be defined before this argument goes further. That way, we will always have a reliable metric.

To answer your question. I'd say that the staples of the UU class are then banned from NU, and then NU staples can be banned from another tier. So on and so forth till Luvdisc has a tier it can play in. That, or we can be honest with ourselves and realize that no one really wants to play with Luvdisc anyway and just have a huge NU tier. :-p

---------

Another possible metric is: "We want UU as large as possible". This is hard to calculate, but it makes sense. If banning one pokemon (say Alakazam) makes 2 or more weaker pokemon to become usable in UU (Hypno or whatever) then it will be banned.

 

[Lemmiwinks MkII]

You're basically saying Heracross and someone else I don't recall, which don't exist in UU.

Since when do Heracross and Toxicroak (I think that is what you meant) carry status moves? I didn't say such Pokemon had to resist Fighting/Dark, just not to be weak to it. Besides, I wasn't criticizing Honchkrow in particular, just that particular set. I feel that any Honchkrow in UU must carry Drill Peck to fend off the numerous Fighting types there, especially Poliwrath as that set is as good an example of SubDrum bait as you are going to get.

@ Dragontamer: I think the most simple solution to that problem would be to play out UU on Shoddy for a few months based on the current Smogon tiers then decide what is too powerful, perhaps after a while giving suspect BL Pokemon such as Glaceon, Cloyster, Honchkrow etc a try, maybe even right from the beginning. We can argue all we want about these Pokemon, and there will still be people adamantly defending its position on both sides of the argument. There is no quicker and simpler way to come to a mutually agreeable conclusion than to test out everything in battle. That way the true powerhouses will stand out after mere weeks once everybody starts carrying them and their extremely specific counters.

 

[Forsety]

@ Dragontamer: I think the most simple solution to that problem would be to play out UU on Shoddy for a few months

Basing the metagame on a flawed and obviously bugged piece of software like Shoddy is a big mistake...there is alot of perfectly usuable/viable moves/traits in UU that plain do not work properly on Shoddy.

 

[Lemmiwinks MkII]

Basing the metagame on a flawed and obviously bugged piece of software like Shoddy is a big mistake...there is alot of perfectly usuable/viable moves/traits in UU that plain do not work properly on Shoddy.

Yeah, that's true. Guess we'll have to wait for Competitor then. However that doesn't detract from my main argument, which is that no amount of discussion will be enough to place each and every Pokemon in their rightful position on the tier list. It never was and never will be. A full metagame test is required.

 

[Dragontamer]

Basing the metagame on a flawed and obviously bugged piece of software like Shoddy is a big mistake...there is alot of perfectly usuable/viable moves/traits in UU that plain do not work properly on Shoddy.

Unimplemented intrinsic ability: Simple
Unimplemented intrinsic ability: Stall
Unimplemented intrinsic ability: Storm Drain
Unimplemented intrinsic ability: Unaware
Unimplemented move: Fling
Unimplemented move: Focus Energy
Unimplemented move: Natural Gift
Unimplemented move: Recycle
Unimplemented move: Transform

Bibarel probably needs its simple/unaware, but lets be honest: what can you do with stall? Storm Drain is only useful in double-battles.

As for the 5 attacks, I'm pretty sure no one has even mentioned them in this thread yet. Now, I think Fling would be nice, as well as Focus Energy and maybe Recycle... but Natural Gift probably doesn't have a use even in UU, and Ditto is NU anyway so I doubt we have to worry about transform.

Shoddy has gotten a lot better in a few months, and many bugs have been wiped off of it. So I don't see whats so bad about testing UU in it... it has already more or less defined an OU metagame for us. And now it has a ladder system IMO superior to GameWinners right now (in theory and implementation), and with the server enforcing the clauses, it is nearly impossible to break the rules.

You should give shoddy a go :-p

Yeah, that's true. Guess we'll have to wait for Competitor then. However that doesn't detract from my main argument, which is that no amount of discussion will be enough to place each and every Pokemon in their rightful position on the tier list. It never was and never will be. A full metagame test is required.

That is very true. However, I think we need a solid metric once testing begins to really discriminate between BL and UU pokemon." Too Strong for the metagame" can be easily solved by changing the metagame (Going with the absurd example: Alakazam is a problem? Unban Ninjask!). We really need to define UU first, before we start testing it.

For example, courts in the USA define "beyond a reasonable doubt" for guilty. Is there any real metric we can define the UU metagame to be?

 

[obi]

Ninjask isn't really a counter for Alakazam because it cannot switch into anything. This means it has to come in after Alakazam kills something. Alakazam switches out, and, because Ninjask isn't too offensive, their switch in isn't really threatened. They just switch to Roar Kangaskhan or Blastoise or whatever. Rinse, repeat.

 

[Dragontamer]

Meh, I knew it was a bad example >_>

Oh well, but I hope my core point still stands.

 

[glaceonkyle]

Glaceon, whom the official Shoddy tiers and the thread in this forum list as UU, needs bumped up to at least BL, if not OU. Here's why:

Glaceon, when equipped with Choice Specs, has a Blizzard attack that is capable of more damage than Heracross's Megahorn or Close Combat, even Choice Banded. Glaceon has 110/95 in defenses to boot, so, unlike Heracross, Glaceon can survive hits. Glaceon also lacks a 4x weakness, so you can't slap an unSTABed Aerial Ace/HP Flying on something to kill it. Nothing is immune to Ice either, unlike Close Combat who Gengar gets a free switch on. And, unlike Megahorn who Skarmory 4x resists, no common OU special wall 4x resists Ice. Nothing (even in OU with the exception of Blissey and Crescelia) can come in on it.

To whoever's idea it was to make this thing UU, I ask you why you put a special Heracross in UU.

 

[Bologo]

Glaceon, whom the official Shoddy tiers and the thread in this forum list as UU, needs bumped up to at least BL, if not OU. Here's why:

Glaceon, when equipped with Choice Specs, has a Blizzard attack that is capable of more damage than Heracross's Megahorn or Close Combat, even Choice Banded. Glaceon has 110/95 in defenses to boot, so, unlike Heracross, Glaceon can survive hits. Glaceon also lacks a 4x weakness, so you can't slap an unSTABed Aerial Ace/HP Flying on something to kill it. Nothing is immune to Ice either, unlike Close Combat who Gengar gets a free switch on. And, unlike Megahorn who Skarmory 4x resists, no common OU special wall 4x resists Ice. Nothing (even in OU with the exception of Blissey and Crescelia) can come in on it.

To whoever's idea it was to make this thing UU, I ask you why you put a special Heracross in UU.

Uhh, what? Why would anyone use a special Heracross in the first place? :S
EDIT: Sorry about this comment, that was a misunderstanding.

Why exactly are you comparing Heracross and Glaceon? They're two completely different pokemon...

You should probably read all of the other posts about Glaceon in this topic and add to that instead, because some people have already talked about the things you've mentioned in your post.

 

[Volteon]

I think he meant Glaceon is like a Heracross but in the special side... But that's just no... Glaceon can have the attack, but it sure doesn't have the speed to sweep (nor the movepool). Glaceon can have the defenses, but without good HP it goes nowhere receiving attacks... I think Glaceon can do nice in UU. I don't think Glaceon should be in the same tier with Pokémon like Snorlax and Scizor... or even Leafeon.

EDIT: I think Swellow is a big candidate for BL. Guts Choice Banded Facade HURTS.

 

[iruchii]

In my opinion, Abomasnow makes Glacia (Glaceon yea whatever) a whole more useable, due to evasion hax. It cannot take hits that well, but when they miss everything, plus Leftovers-less walls due to Hail, it does pack a nice punch with Scarf + 100% accurate Blizzard.

Uhh, what? Why would anyone use a special Heracross in the first place? :S

Hey, SpecsCross can OHKO Gliscor with HP Ice!

 

[Deck Knight]

Glaceon, whom the official Shoddy tiers and the thread in this forum list as UU, needs bumped up to at least BL, if not OU. Here's why:

Glaceon, when equipped with Choice Specs, has a Blizzard attack that is capable of more damage than Heracross's Megahorn or Close Combat, even Choice Banded. Glaceon has 110/95 in defenses to boot, so, unlike Heracross, Glaceon can survive hits. Glaceon also lacks a 4x weakness, so you can't slap an unSTABed Aerial Ace/HP Flying on something to kill it. Nothing is immune to Ice either, unlike Close Combat who Gengar gets a free switch on. And, unlike Megahorn who Skarmory 4x resists, no common OU special wall 4x resists Ice. Nothing (even in OU with the exception of Blissey and Crescelia) can come in on it.

To whoever's idea it was to make this thing UU, I ask you why you put a special Heracross in UU.

I direct your attention to Walrein and Lapras, who do in fact 4x resist Ice (8x if its Thick Fat Walrein) and can take hits. But again, there's the HP you choose which should always hit those two SE.

As to the Speed? Hera only beats things for speed with the Scarf version, and Glaceon does the same for UU pokemon if it has a Scarf. There are a large degree of paralells between the two, although I must say, it needs something else to set up an Icy Rock Hail before it can use Blizzard to full effect.

 

[Pneuma]

and it needs specs just to kill even pokes it should pose the biggest threat to. (it's best case scenario)

It doesn't need specs, it loves specs. It requires you to OHKO it with a special fire or fighting or steel move (look at its defenses again) and that's just gravy.
It's pretty BL.

Hitmonlee resists sucker punch, and outruns, so does chan and top. So do most of the fighting types. And also they have like, what? base 100 special defense too? Yeah.

And idiot, if they aren't attacking, you can't suckerpunch, and last time I checked, screech doesn't effect hidden power. And as long as they don't attack (by the way, they'd see it coming from a mile away because of screech), most subseeders are bulky in special defense.

And not every single battle is them switching in you. You do realize your krow is pretty sad if they switch in for revenge kill or they've set up.

What about a pokemon that comes out to burn you?

Your pokemon is not unbeatable.

Yeah but no pokemon is unbeatable. Honchkrow just happens to be able to stomp all over the current UU with Sucker Punch and Screech.

 

[Deck Knight]

It doesn't need specs, it loves specs. It requires you to OHKO it with a special fire or fighting or steel move (look at its defenses again) and that's just gravy.
It's pretty BL.
Yeah but no pokemon is unbeatable. Honchkrow just happens to be able to stomp all over the current UU with Sucker Punch and Screech.

SubPetaya Manectric can give it a good go. Honchkrow really has to do a lot of outpredicting for it to win. Sub + TBolt from Manny ends it, Sucker Punch or no, and Drill Peck won't take it out unless Screech hit it before. There's the minor problem though of Manectric actually getting the Sub up. If it Thunderbolts while you Drill Peck it wins, if it Subs while you Sucker Punch it wins, but if it Subs while you Drill Peck it can lose. You really have to Drill Peck 4 times though for it to work, which is VERY risky, especially since if it outpredicts you on the Petaya Sub, it isn't just Honchrow that's in trouble. Sucker Punch falls short of OHKOing Manny without somethng like a Life Orb or Black Glasses Boost.

Either way, Honchkrow is a menace. Its like a Rampardos: It has crap defenses but the great base HP makes it stand up to a few attacks, and it can deal loads of damage as well.

Not to mention the fact this thing can also NP, CM, Perishtrap, and Sleep-Shift.

Honchkrow with:

~ Drill Peck
~ Sucker Punch
~ HP Fighting
~ Thunder Wave (Don't ask me to explain how it learns this in a logical universe)

Woould be a formidable force indeed.