DPP OU Tiering Changes



The DPP council has agreed to knock the Pokemon currently in OU that haven't been used or considered usable in the tier for a decade down to BL. These Pokemon are:
Dusknoir, Electivire, Umbreon, Smeargle, Ninjask

Similarly, some BL Pokemon that are considered good and are seen in standard play are being brought up to OU to provide a fuller idea of the tier.
These Pokemon are:
Abomasnow, Cresselia, Crobat, Heracross, Raikou

Marty please implement these changes, thank you

For anyone wondering why Clefable and Nidoqueen aren't OU, it is because they reside in DPP's lower tiers that are still played in tournaments.

If you would like to suggest any currently OU Pokemon for BL and vice versa and are prepared to back this up with reasoning, you may do so here.
 

Hogg

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OK, I touched on this briefly with BKC in PMs, but while I didn't have a major issue with this happening in ADV and GSC, in DPP and on I do.

Having a small tiering council being able to determine that something is OU or BL irrespective of actual usage runs completely counter to our tiering process. Now, in ADV and previous generations, our tiering process was very different, and we tiered things more based on viability than on actual stats. But in DPP we adopted the stats-based approach to tiering that would come to define Smogon for the next decade. And we're pretty strict about how we enforce that approach. You can argue that it doesn't really change anything other than where a Pokemon appears on the smogdex and the PS builder, but we wouldn't let the current OU tier leaders just arbitrarily decide that Blacephalon or Hawlucha should move from OU to UUBL, or that Mega Latias should move from UUBL to OU, no matter how much that better represented their picture of the actual metagame.

I understand the counterargument. SM OU still has active usage stats to contradict the shift, so it's apples to oranges. But that apply to DPP as well. If this is solely an attempt to provide a "fuller idea of the tier," neither tournament nor ladder stats back these changes. All of the Pokemon you have listed as rising to OU sit between .5% and 1.67% usage on the DPP ladder and have extremely minimal tour presence (I don't have stats from this year's classic yet, but in SPL and WCOP their usage was almost non-existent - Aboma/Cress/Hera/Crobat have been used exactly once in WCOP this year, while in SPL Cress and Hera had 2.08% and 1.04% usage respectively and the other three didn't show up at all). OK, super small sample sizes, so maybe not relevant.... but small sample sizes are the whole reason why we freeze usage stats after a gen ends, rather than continuing to adjust for usage.

Basically, you're attempting to introduce viability-based tiering to a tier that was created based off of stats, and I think that is beyond the powers of a tiering council. I don't have an issue with fine-tuning the OU/UUBL list for ADV and previous generations, but I think it needs to stop there. If you want to provide a fuller and more accurate picture of the tier, I would instead look to revamping the dex for DPP and beyond, a project I'd happily assist with.
 

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