Drought in Lower Tiers

[EviGaro]

This is doesn't make sense to me. What resources do we have that every other tier doesn't? Is NU/PU given a pass to ban abilities at will cause it doesn't affect RU? We all follow the same tiering philosophy and it's confusing when half of the lower tiers banned Drought and the other half banned the abusers.

Isn't this exactly what UU did last gen though? After every lower tier banned Veil, UU declined and opted to ban Ninetales-Alola instead. It wasn't confusing in the slightest, the pokemon was the issue in UU, not the playstyle. UU / RU having to ban the abusers while NU / PU have to ban the playstyle due to too much going on isn't confusing, it's literally how the transitive system is supposed to work. To paraphrase Hogg in why transitivity is so important, it's too make sure a lower tiers team isn't "illegal" in an higher tier. If NU decides to ban Drought, it doesn't actively shake our system because higher tiers have different resources and issues and if it can solve them more easily, then of course it should take that route.

I find it interesting that the subject is brought back by UU due to another tier though. The position against a sweeping Drought ban was never that UU should not in any situation pull the trigger, what we wanted was that UU actually shows that simply banning a Pokemon doesn't solve the problem. So far, discussion on Drought in UU has sharply declined with the Venusaur ban. That to me is what should matter going forward, if that traction keeps up, and not if another tier with far less resources to handle it the way we both can decides it has to take more sweeping actions.

 

[Finchinator]

We are holding a vote among tier leaders to determine the fate of Drought in lower tiers. Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about Sun teams being problematic in each lower tier, which has led to various bans being implemented ranging from PU to UU. Banning Drought throughout all lower tiers has been a recent topic for discussion within this thread and it could create a uniform solution. In order for Drought to be banned from lower tiers, at least three out of four tiers must vote ban. You guys have the weekend to consult among your councils and come to a verdict for what your tier will be voting!

Handling Drought across all lower tiers covers the issue universally instead of creating a mess like we did last generation, which is what spurred this vote. Given recent tiering action and the PR thread, it is clear to us that Sun teams are problematic to some degree across lower tiers. Moreover, having a uniform policy strikes could be the most organized and simplified approach moving forward. With that said, it is true that this may have some collateral in metagames that were attempting to implement workaround tiering actions in order to preserve Drought; if tiers believe that it is best to avoid the universal approach because of this, then they can vote accordingly.

The deadline to vote for each tier is May 17th at 11:59pm GMT-4. Tagging: Hogg TDK phantom EviGaro Finchinator Eternally Megazard Akir

 

[Akir]

PU's stance is clear enough that we are confident in putting in an immediate vote. Sun has been a thorn in PU's side for every generation in its history. We even already banned Drought from SS PU. So PU would be voting to ban Drought. Most niche sun abusers find their way to PU and the added benefits of Sun usually make them notably more powerful than the rest of the tier can handle so this is pretty cut and dried from our perspective. I personally don't really agree with the point of this vote, but there's PU's stance on it.

 

[atomicllamas]

Apologies, but I literally don't understand how this is the logical conclusion of this thread. This thread was started because UU had issues with sun teams after Venusaur and Darmanitan dropped and was looking at potentially banning drought as one of the possible solutions. Since then, UU has banned Venusaur and (my potentially flawed) understanding is, it no longer has any issues with drought teams. Unrelated to the UU situation, PU banned drought AND heat rock because it is a tier with many good (broken) sun abusers and very limited counterplay to sun teams - regardless of whether or not they have an auto-sun setter. NU has also banned Drought, because again, they have many good (broken) sun abusers, and to a lesser extent than PU, limited counterplay to sun. At this point in time, with the tiers as they stand I think its fair to say that all of the tiers talked about in this thread have solved their issues with Sun teams. RU and UU, tiers with much more viable counterplay to drought and drought abusers simply banned the one abuser that is problematic in their tier, which is in line with one of the main aspects of Smogon's tiering, when possible prefer banning pokemon over items / abilities. NU and PU which both have many more problematic abusers, and much less counterplay have addressed sun by banning drought, rather than the myriad of problematic abusers. There were different conditions causing the problems so they were addressed differently - this is how it should work. The counter argument seems to be "it's too confusing for users to understand differences in approaches to banning drought and a uniform solution is better for PR". Except even if drought is banned from every lower tier, it still isn't uniform, the framing in this thread has been that "drought has been problematic in every lower tier", but it hasn't been a problem in OU. Banning drought from every lower tier just changes the line from "drought is banned in every tier below RU" to "drought is banned in every tier below OU". And even if the latter was different than the former, it still wouldn't be uniform for lower tiers, because PU banned heat rock.

We are holding a vote among tier leaders to determine the fate of Drought in lower tiers.

What I also would like clarification on is, if for some reason 2/4 tiers voted DNB, would Drought be unbanned from NU and PU? Like if UU and RU vote DNB NU and PU are forced to free drought? How does that make any logical sense? And how does it not lead to PU and NU automatically voting ban. In which case PU and NU tier leaders are voting to ban Drought from RU w/o playing the tier?

If UU wants to ban Drought that bad, in order to preserve Venusaur, a Pokémon I'm willing to bet will end up below UU by the end of the generation, in spite of the fact that Drought is not even a problem w/o it, then just do it. Its not good tiering policy, and it is not in line with what this site aims to do (tier pokemon, not abilities), but at least the process of that makes sense. Instead we're having PU tier leaders vote to ban drought in RU or RU tier leaders vote to unban Drought in PU. That's the dumbest shit I've ever seen.

Question, will this "lower tier uniformity for good PR" policy be applied to all decisions going forward. RU, NU, and PU voted to ban Aurora Veil in gen 7, while UU did not, if that happens in gen 8, will UU be forced to ban Veil as well as it was banned by 3/4 lower tiers? Or is this specific policy of making sure there is no confusion (but only for lower tiers because they still don't align with OU) just for drought? Cause that seems confusing.

 

[Hogg]

Sorry for the delay. We had a lengthy discussion on this among community leaders, and are not going to move forward with the vote at this time.

For some background, I asked Finchinator to organize something among the tier leaders because I didn't feel comfortable making the decision on my own. As someone wearing two hats, both as a tier leader and tiering admin, I didn't think it was fair to be the one making the final call. However, as llamas and others have pointed out, it doesn't really make sense to make this a tier leader vote. TLs are naturally going to be more concerned with their own tier than overall policy, and asking the NU tier leader to help dictate UU tiering policy isn't an ideal solution. Going this route was a bit hasty, so I apologize.

Regarding Drought itself, my own opinion is still that it deserves an overall ban. While I understand that there are problems with any one size fits all tiering approach, I also value consistency whenever possible, and we currently have all four lower tiers addressing Drought in four different ways. Again, considering that two tiers have banned it outright and the other two have both required Drought-related bans just to be semi-functional, it feels like we're putting a lot of effort into preserving a playstyle that has done nothing but cause problems this generation. UU has mostly settled since banning Venusaur - Drought teams still exist, but they are far less reliable - but they're still yet another form of matchup fishy HO that does no favors to the tier, even if removing Venusaur makes it less reliable than, say, Screens HO. In any sort of vacuum, I believe that a UU where Drought is banned and Venusaur is legal is a healthier one than a UU where Venusaur is banned and Drought is legal. But at the same time, I think anyone who plays UU regularly could attest to the fact that Drought teams have dropped off considerably since the Venu ban, to the point where calling it broken seems almost silly.

Anyhow, the TL;DR is that at this point in time, rather than trying to shift the burden elsewhere, UU will take a long hard look at the tier following the Venusaur ban and decide for ourselves if a Drought ban is necessary. We've got some other things on our plate first, and Venusaur's ban has at least settled things enough that we can focus our tiering efforts on those for the time being, so this is something we can take our time with a bit.