Project Draft Tiering Council

[Tjb145]

With a new year comes a new initiative in the Draft League sub-forum: establishing a fully formed tiering council! This council will exist to tier every format offered in our 2024 circuit calendar, and each individual who has a say in tiering decisions will be annotated in this thread for accountability and visibility amongst the community. This thread will be used to post updates to tiers as they occur (a change-log) but please feel free to discuss any of the changes in the general discussion thread!

The tiering administrator and individual responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the official Draft League sub-forum's tier lists is Tjb145 . Any questions about the tier lists produced by the tiering council should be addressed to the individuals below, but may also be directed to Tjb145 if desired. Any tournament ran by the sub-forum that will incorporate any below tier will also be overseen by the below individuals (Draft Champions League will incorporate ORAS, USUM, SS, SV, and VGC for example):

ORAS: Almighty Rye, JCMShadow, King L5, SkyhorseTamer
USUM: King L5, GeniusX, Hacker, vmnunes, OdinRM
SS: SkyhorseTamer, Habaduh, King L5, Hacker, GeniusX
SV: OdinRM, Habaduh, Dartrix - Joker, sablolol , Techno6377 , JCMShadow, Hacker , Nyx
Ubers (National Dex): Aberforth, Nyx, vmnunes, abriel, Celestiial
Draft Factory: No tiering will be needed for this format as teams will be provided by the other SV tournaments.
National Dex: Nyx, Techno, Bash11, takuaa, OdinRM, TRowePrice667, vmnunes
Low Tier: Tiering council will be identified and tiering will take place closer to the start of this tournament.

 

[Tjb145]

Winter Seasonal

The Winter Seasonal Draft Board can be seen here

We are kicking the year off with one of our biggest solo tour events. With the release of the Indigo Disk DLC last month, change of the metagame was inevitable. However, we felt that now was a good time to introduce further alterations that were fresh on the brain following last year's Draft Champions League team tour event unfold and how the SV draft meta was evolving. Without further ado, here are some of the key points I wanted to discuss about the approach to tiering for this event.

SV Draft Meta- A Brief Overview.

The draft meta we have in this generation is the most offensive meta we have ever seen. There are a plethora of reasons as to why this is the case. The introduction of terastalisation as a mechanic, the reduction of the pp on recovery moves, the removal of heal bell, I could give a ton of reasons as to why this is the case. The moral of the story is, this meta is very offensive and has a few key trends associated with it.

• Hazards and hazard control: One is widely abundant, the other is not. A lot of mons gained access to Spikes whilst a lot of mons lost Defog. For the old timers, the state of hazards in this meta is somewhat reminiscent of the current ORAS draft meta, just with the addition of Heavy Duty Boots if required. For the newer players amongst ye, I would recommend trying to secure elite hazard control to prevent over-reliant on the Boots we all know and love/despise but at the same time trying to give yourself access to those sweet, sweet hazards to those who are not quite in the same situation.
• Speed control/Natural speed: This is such an important aspect to have for any draft and generation 9 makes it an even bigger deal. With the metagame being faster than ever, it is important to ensure that you do not draft a team that gives the opponent freedom to run an attack boosting nature or to have greater bulk investment that could become crucial later in the game. However, taking speed for the sake of speed is a dangerous game, try to minimise exploitable speed gaps if possible and give yourself the best possible chance to win the offence onslaught. At the end of the day speed is key.
• Priority: Strong priority is everywhere in this metagame and it is borderline essential. As I mentioned earlier, speed is key but priority is a wonderful thing that can help in a pinch in instances where your speed may not be up to it. Having the ability to revenge kill key threats is sometimes the only thing preventing you from staring defeat in the face. A more offensive metagame makes living hits, particularly from setup sweepers that bit less likely and in a metagame like that, priorities effectiveness skyrockets!

These key aspects, as well as others that I may get into another time are what shape the draft metagame as we see it. The tiers we generate for our events emulate the metagame trends as we deem appropriate.

As a final point/ reminder for this section, Draft format is not the same as standard play. The ability of foresight of the Pokémon your opponent has access to leads to some key differences. Some Pokémon can be seen as too much for this format due to their versatility (eg: Dragapult) or can be seen as too overbearing and is deemed too forcing both drafting and prepping habits (eg: Zamazenta-Crowned, a recent addition to our banlist). Both of these examples are seen as healthy for the standard play metagame. The contrary is also true, where there are some Pokémon that are deemed ban worthy in standard play but are not seen in the same vein in draft. The best example of this is Espathra,sometimes all you need is the benefit of foresight and specific counterplay preparation to make an emu that can be so broken so middling.

New Toy Syndrome

The release of the DLC has brought the introduction of some new Pokémon to the format, as well as the return of some old friends with new toys to play with. This is always an exciting time for the player, but a time of uncertainty for people who tier for leagues or tours due to general fear of the unknown or the lack of time to truly dissect what every Pokémon might be capable of. There are always going to be decisions that you get wrong in early metagames (I don't think I'm going to forget about 13 point Annihilape anytime soon) so times like these are mostly about not being afraid to make mistakes and learning from them in hindsight. Here are a few highlights of these introductions that I would like to spend some time talking about, with some more of them appearing later on when it comes to the discussion of complex bans.

This is the first time that Darkrai has been made legal in a Smogon Draft event and it feels as though now is as good a time as any to introduce it into our metagame. Darkrai is the definition of powercreep catching up to a mon that was formerly seen on a pedestal, as its recent stint in the OU tier has shown. Unbanning Darkrai has become commonplace following the release of the DLC, and we felt that now was the time for us to join that movement.
One of the main beneficiaries of terastalisation that did not receive a complex ban for this event. This is a Pokémon that has not been well liked in previous metagames, with some people enjoying what it can provide to certain drafts while it is majority considered middling to terrible. Tera as a mechanic is of major benefit to Latias, as is the introduction of Draining Kiss to its arsenal, making it that bit more of a potent threat with the Calm Mind sets. This is probably the most talked about Latias has been in the draft metagame since the early ORAS days, and it should be interesting to see how it gets on in practice compared to what is hypothesised on paper.
Another major beneficiary of the Tera mechanic, especially with the introduction of Stellar type in The Indigo Disk. Leaf Storm +Stellar Tera Blast seems like a potentially potent combination for those who are ill prepared for it either with their draft and in play. Due to this,we decided to tier it slightly higher than most other places. This is due to a reduction of potential resources in 8 mon draft tournaments compared to 10/11 mon draft leagues play as well as a varying degree of player experience around these type of "anti-meta" Pokémon. This was a decison that I received questions on, and if people want to discuss this further with me I am more than happy to.
The boy with the long neck has made quite a splash since its introduction, and it has quite an interesting set of tools that could make it rather potent in the draft league format. Thunderclap is a majorly beneficial tool due to the current archetype of the metagame, especially with a lack of specially offensive priority in the metagame (the most common examples prior to this were Vacuum Wave Iron Valiant and Water Shuriken Greninja). The natural bulk and offensive prowess this mon provides would seem that it would thrive in the current metagame, but its flaws that including that low speed stat and high potency to easily bringable techs like Encore lead us to our pricing of 15 points, which we believe to be a fair reflection at this time.

A change in approach towards Terastalisation

Prior to the commencement of DCL, the idea of changing the policy of 1 Tera Captain to 2 Tera Captains with a 25 point budget was brought up by the tiering committee. This was a change that was positively received and subsequently implemented on a trial basis. This was deemed to be a success in retrospect resulting in its use for Circuit finals and its introduction for a Type A event for the first time. This should give greater flexibility in how coaches can use the mechanic, which should in turn produce a healthier, more diverse metagame.

The terms healthy and diverse are pretty ironic, as it led to us making another decision, this time about complex bans (ie: Pokémon that are not allowed to be tera captains.) It was made abundantly clear over the course of last years events that there were some Tera legal Pokémon that were overcentralising to the metagame beyond the key threats that were previously banned (if people have questions about these please let me know as I will not be addressing them here). For the sake of trying to maximise the current health of the metagame, a decision was made to reduce the current power level for these events and complex ban many of the top tier Tera captain threats observed in both the Summer Seasonal and in DCL.. These are listed and briefly described below.

This thing is quite stupid with Tera and wins too many endgames by itself, good riddance
I could honestly copy paste what I just said except this thing is even more versatile than Kingambit, a tera ban was well and truly deserved.
This mon became a major factor in both seasonal and DCL due to its sheer versatility and needing to cover both the choiced Tera Fairy sets and the alternative setup variations, causing many unhealthy headaches.
In the same boat as Enamorus except it was doing it by not even being Tera Legal in some cases. This Pokémon is really good with or without the mechanic, but with it is where the problems lie that we believe are best left banned for the time being.
This Pokémon had a quick rise to popularity in the draft format as a tera captain following its release and has not let up ever since. Tera allows for it to become a lethal breaker with very few switchins or alternatively a defensively equipped setup threat that becomes even harder to kill. Therefore we decided that it would be too unhealthy in the metagame we are trying to create and left it on the sidelines.
This mon has one tera type option and is still a force to be reckoned with. Initially due to the ruling around Ogerpon's legality in DCL we felt that this might be ok in the long run but it was decided that it was not worth trying to take this risk and the decision to complex ban was made.

On top of this, there was some Pokémon introduced to the generation 9 metagame via The Indigo Disk DLC that we felt vein as the aforementioned complex bans. As a result it was decided by the committee to complex ban them immediately.
A buffed Luster Purge and Flip Turn access make the mon naturally better, but the capability of increasing its offensively potency by use of double powered stabs or by gaining access to key coverage or power increase in coverage it may be lacking in a matchup due to Terastalisation was considered too healthy to allow for it to not be complexed right out the gate.
This mon is basically a slightly less potent but more versatile version of Baxcalibur, and that was not deemed something we deemed tolerable in this healthy metagame we are trying to create.
A Pokémon that has had issues with being a potent threat in the metagames it is legal in, we felt that the combination of Tera and its immense offensive potential would be of detriment to the metagame in the long term.
This mon seems to be a Draft league players dream on paper due to its stat distribution and wide array of options at its disposal. Its typing is naturally of benefit in this metagame, but the idea of introducing the potential this mon possesses from being able to terastalise was not one we believed to be of merit.
Due to its excellent speed tier, offensive potential, movepool and bulk Iron Boulder was always going to be considered a top tier, the flaw that is holding it back is its typing due to its weaknesses. Terastalising would remove this key flaw and would make it an overcentralising force to be reckoned with, a reckoning we decided to not let loose.
Duh

A huge thank you to my SV tiering committee GeniusX, 2playaLuffy, OdinRM, Almighty Rye, Habaduh, Dartrix - Joker and JCMShadow as well as to Nyx for all of the documentation support. All of your work is greatly appreciated!

 

[Nyx]

Ubers
The second tour of our circuit is here. Being our first Type C of the year, it's the inaugural NatDex Ubers tour! Since this format will be incredibly different to our usual tours, I'll be outlining the reasonings for not only tiering decisions within this thread but also the differing draft sizes. I'd highly recommend reading the spoilers in order, the latter ones will reference previous ones. For those who want the tl;dr though:

Every player will be allowed an Arceus forme if they'd like one.
Drafts will consist of 10-12 Pokémon and have a budget of 200 points, with draft pools having 10 players each.
Revival Blessing, Hidden Power and Refresh are banned.
Z-Moves are banned.
Terastallisation is banned.

I'll be referring to the format as both NatDex Ubers and Ubers throughout, unless explicitly stated otherwise, they're the same thing. Please note that this is a format that has been tested across multiple leagues, it isn't something we've come up with on a whim.

Arceus, the glue of the metagame

Now I can already hear people's complaints about "fighting the same Pokémon every game" but at the core of it, this simply isn't the case. While every (legal) forme has 120 in each of its base stats and a locked item slot, they all play incredibly differently, and play different roles within the metagame. For starters, not every Arceus can reliably get away with running Calm Mind/Dragon Dance/Swords Dance etc. sets, whether that be due to their poor natural typing or, for physical sets, a lack of usable STAB moves. While every Arceus does get access to the same pool of coverage, it runs into the issue of non-STAB moves not being strong enough to forgo a STAB attacks, there are always certain matchups where this isn't true but it stands true as a general rule of thumb, it's normal to see Arceus running Judgment/a physical alternative in most games.

To add to this, Arceus is also the format's primary glue mon. While each forme's different weaknesses mean that they don't necessarily wall all of the same Pokémon, they are able to soft check a majority of breakers and set-up sweepers in the format, thanks to its access to moves such as moves such as Thunder Wave, Will-O-Wisp and Dragon Tail. Its plethora of support options allow it to be the defensive backbone of a team, if that's what the player desires. It's certainly not the best at this, in fact, it'd absolutely be banworthy if it was. Instead, it is a strong defensive backbone that teams can use to keep the numerous offensive threats on most teams in check. Formes with better defensive typings will obviously be better at this.

Example

Arceus-Dark will undoubtedly be better than Arceus-Flying defensively (in most match-ups) due to their respective weaknesses/resistances, Arceus-Dark is immune to Psychic, one of the most common STAB-types amongst Ubers, compared to Arceus-Flying which is both weak to Stealth Rock and Ice Beam, an extremely common coverage move available to most Ubers.

With a rough idea of what Arceus is able to do, I can imagine a lot of you wonder what the benefits of allowing a Swiss army knife of sorts are in general. Firstly, it turns every match-up into less of a situation where "my Ubers are better than yours, therefore I win". The innate ability to soft check most Pokémon on your opponents draft, and vice versa, adds a balancing element to Pokémon that otherwise race to set-up first.

The second key reason is a more ideological one. It'll be relevant to more than just Arceus so I'll put it in its own spoiler below.

How we ended up with the format that we have

Standard draft loosely mirrors OU, it allows Pokémon that OU does not, and in turn bans ones that it does, but it aims to keep a relatively arbitrary but similar feeling power level, with the aim of maximising playerbase enjoyment. In the same vein, a NatDex Ubers draft should aim to loosely mirror a NatDex Ubers format. We're taking a slightly different approach to Smogon's standard NatDex, and instead assuming that all Pokémon and moves are imported into SV, but not items and mechanics, because that's what's commonplace across the Draft community. Hidden Power is banned because most people in the Draft community agree that its best left in USUM. This is a decision made to appease our player base as a whole, just as how ADV OU complex bans Baton Pass to appease its player base. From this we then attempted to craft a Draft format centralised around NatDex Ubers. Any Ubers tier with Arceus legal has always led to it being on nearly 100% of teams, and the same principle should apply to a Draft format trying to mimic it. We explicitly did not aim to create standard Draft with a couple of Uber Pokémon added onto each draft, that's not an Ubers centric metagame, which is the point of Ubers. This is a format that aims to be centralised around Ubers, they should be the spotlight of the format, as its the only Draft format where they are legal.

Why Tera is banned

Tera, at a minimum, was always going to require an extensive Tera ban list, with all Arceus formes, Calyrex-I, Ho-Oh, Zygarde-C and Lunala. They all would otherwise be banned - it's akin to the Palafins and Iron Valiants of standard draft. The issue Ubers runs into is that the next tier of Tera abusers still becomes broken, the high variance in the builder just isn't something you can account for while having a cohesive build. This issue persists until you reach a power level where the best Tera abusers become your non-Ubers Pokémon. At this point, you have Tera Pokémon that are balanced, but it raises a new issue. These Pokémon are now able to go toe-to-toe with your high end Ubers, thanks to their ability to Tera, while the Ubers can't, they can escape a bad defensive matchup, or create a good offensive one, while the Ubers have no such tool to do so. It partly shifts the focus of the metagame onto the non-Ubers, which goes against our earlier stated tiering philosophy:

This is a format that aims to be centralised around Ubers, they should be the spotlight of the format, as its the only Draft format where they are legal.

For these reasons, we felt it was justified to ban Tera entirely, there are other more minor reasons but they didn't change our opinions, so I won't list them here for now.

Draft sizes

8 Pokémon Ubers leads to teams becoming too strong, or too constrained by points. There would either never be a reason to bring a Pokémon below your best six, or you'd end up with too tight a budget to have anything beyond 4 Ubers and 4 Pokémon below 5 points. 10-12 Pokémon allows for a larger budget while still making later picks more than usable. 10 coach draft pools also help with this, they allow us to maximise the number of legal Pokémon, while not overly favouring any singular draft position.

Banning of Revival Blessing, Hidden Power and Refresh

Going to run through these quickly, being able to revive Arceus formes, but also breakers such as Primal Kyogre, Deoxys-Attack and Rayquaza, which aim to go 1-1 every game so that their teammates can clean up, is broken. The trade off of drafting terrible Pokémon becomes worth it when they're able to revive significantly better Pokémon. Smeargle definitely makes this problem worse, love Smeargle.

Hidden Power's reasoning I outlined earlier:

Hidden Power is banned because most people in the Draft community agree that its best left in USUM. This is a decision made to appease our player base as a whole, just as how ADV OU complex bans Baton Pass to appease its player base.

Refresh is definitely the weirdest of these, it possibly could be fine, but is simply not something we've seen freed in any leagues running this kind of format. We didn't want to take any potential risks. As for why it's possibly not fine, Refresh enables multiple Arceus formes to reliably remove poison, burn and paralysis, some of the most reliable counterplay to them. It's most notable on formes that can run Dragon Dance 2 Attacks and afford to drop Recover. It can also enable Mono Judgment Calm Mind Arceus formes, while both are possibly too niche to justify a ban, we didn't want to take the risk of it potentially pushing formes like Ground, Fairy and Poison over the edge.

Why is THIS banned

I won't outline all of the banned Pokémon, at a certain point they become self explanatory but a few do warrant their own explanations,
It only has a handful of reliable defensive checks in the game as a whole, being Ting-Lu and Clodsire. It's able to tech for all its other checks with ease in a draft setting. This is coupled with its blistering speed tier, making it far too volatile.
Being able to eliminate Arceus with minimal ease kinda goes against the entire point of having Arceus legal in the first place. 130 Speed Encore with Shadow Tag will not be seeing the light of day.
It's one of the best breakers, cleaners, set-up sweepers and enablers. Not only does it hit incredibly hard, off a blistering speed tier, it also enables threats such as Flutter Mane, Walking Wake and Chi-Yu to wall break even harder than they already do.
Zacian-C is incredibly centralising, even with the nerfs it received in SV, it still ends up treading the line between balanced and broken. We didn't want to take that risk for this draft, especially when a majority of players haven't touched the format before.
MMY is incredibly strong, which alone isn't enough to ban it, but coupled with being one of the fastest mons in the format, and being able to set-up to live hits, deal even more damage or outspeed all Scarfers thanks to moves such as Calm Mind, Nasty Plot and Agility. Its natural power puts a tier above Mewtwo, which is still slower and has to take LO recoil to be able to dish out comparative damage, making it easier to revenge kill.
This thing is able to run offensive sets on both the physical and special side fantastically. There's very few reliable defensive checks, none of which are able to check both sets, from the builder alone, it becomes an almost coin flip as to which set you attempt to check, and even then, they can't deal with it running support options such as Taunt, Substitute or Will-O-Wisp. This alone would put it at the absolute top of the draft board, but its pushed over the edge with its equally viable defensive utility, thanks to its Fighting immunity in a metagame with a plethora of strong Fightings.

and why is THIS legal

These three tend to be banned in most Ubers draft leagues across the community, but from the testing we've seen with them, none seem to be too broken to justify banning. Arceus-Ground is absolutely one of the best Pokémon on the board, and of these three it possibly may be banned if we run this tour again, but as things stand, we believe it to be just about healthy enough to allow.
In generation 8, there was absolutely a strong argument to justify banning Eternatus. However, with the recovery PP nerf and the abundance of viable Spikers in SV, Eternatus runs into severe longevity issues on its bulkier sets and is easily revenge killed on its offensive sets due to the extra chip its forced to take in most games. It's still a premier threat, both offensively and defensively, but isn't close to broken anymore.
It's complex banned because this has been standard across draft for as long as Ubers draft leagues have existed. There's just no reason to remove it, even if it is a premier threat, since what it adds to the metagame is incredibly valuable.
These all are combined, allowing the drafter to use any of their formes. We felt that none of these were distinctly different enough to justify splitting the formes up and resulting with too many similar Pokémon. The most notable of these differences is with Palkia-O, it trades its item slot to be able to run a speed tie with Arceus. While this does seem drastic, this doesn't really change the prep you'd have by much, as all it forces is max Speed on Arceus if it wanted to speed tie Palkia-O, the defensive prep remains practically identical.
We chose not to combine the Deoxys formes as three of the four forms function incredibly differently. Deoxys is absolutely a budget Deoxys-A but Deoxys-Speed excels by being able to taunt a lot of +1 Speed Pokémon, or cripple them with Toxic/Thunder Wave while also being faster than all forms of removal. Deoxys-D on the other hand abuses its bulk to check offensive threats, and then Teleport out. The closest example to this in standard draft would be the Forces of Nature.

The tiering of Mega Evolutions

We chose to factor in opportunity cost when tiering Mega Evolutions, both relative to other Mega Evolutions, but also roles within the metagame. There are 7 (legal) Uber Megas, defined here as costing 21 points or more. These are the defining Mega Evolutions within the format, and by the far the most viable. Beyond this, we have the likes of Scizor, Alakazam, Lopunny, Diancie, Charizard-X, Garchomp and Aerodactyl, all of which fill various niches incredibly well, whether that be slow pivot, incredibly fast cleaners, Magic Bounce support or reliable breakers. Once you go below these, you run into Megas that may possibly be banned from standard draft, but are completely outclassed in an Ubers setting. The two key offenders of this are Latias and Latios. They have a dual typing of the two most prevalent typings amongst the Ubers, are slower than Arceus while simultaneously nor being bulky enough/strong enough to warrant being picked up given their item lock. Other Megas were tiered in a such way that if someone wanted to theoretically use them, they wouldn't be disproportionately punished for it.

I'll write a full disclaimer here, we absolutely will have mistiered some Pokémon, especially in tiers below 14, as most of them are simply not relevant enough to have any play for us to go off of.

A massive thanks to Aberforth, abriel, Celestiial, Fc, Frito and vmnunes for helping tier, as well as KingofKrook for also helping with this writeup.