Little Cup - Order of Operations

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bugmaniacbob

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Order of Operations
Portrait of an Uber

Suspect Stages:

Stage 1: Analysis of a single Suspect in a suspect-free standard metagame.

Stage 2: Our assessment of Uber or OU for any Suspect's impact on a suspect-free metagame, following the respective Suspect's completion of Stage 1.

Stage 3: Analysis of all the Suspects in the standard metagame with the knowledge of which are considered Uber and OU in a Suspect-free metagame.
Suspect Definition:

Suspect: Any Pokémon, move or clause that respectively may benefit competitive standard or uber battle if moved or implemented elsewhere.
Uber Characteristics:

Offensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it is capable of sweeping through a significant portion of teams in the metagame with little effort.

Defensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it is able to wall and stall out a significant portion of the metagame.

Support Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it can consistently set up a situation in which it makes it substantially easier for other Pokémon to sweep.
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PLEASE NOTE THAT ANY TESTING IS NOT BEING CONSIDERED TO ACTUALLY TAKE PLACE UNTIL SHODDY BATTLE 2 IS RELEASED. HOWEVER, IN THE INTERESTS OF SMOOTHNESS I WOULD THINK IT HELPFUL IF THIS WERE FINALISED SOONER RATHER THAN LATER. THIS IS ALSO ASSUMING THAT THE LITTLE CUP TIER SHOULD FOLLOW THE SMOGON REGULATIONS FOR THE TESTING OF ANY POSSIBLE SUSPECTS.




3 questions to be addressed before we begin:
  1. Is the current Little Cup player base sufficient to warrant testing of potential Little Cup Suspects? By which I mean, are we confident that the boost to numbers provided when Shoddy Battle 2 comes out will provide us with an overflow of casual players so as to determine results thoroughly?
  2. Are the current suspect criteria valid in Little Cup? If they are not, what would be an ideal set of alternative characteristics that could be used? (May require some discussion)
  3. What are, currently, the Pokemon eligible for possible Suspect testing/retesting?
Introduction: The Little Cup tier is currently thriving, and has a remarkably diverse metagame. It is still, currently, settling in from the great effects that HGSS has had on the metagame, as well as the newly approved Pomeg Glitch. Of great excitement in the near future is the implementation of the Little Cup ladder on the Smogon server of Shoddy Battle 2, which should hopefully increase awareness and therefore the player base as a whole. Until this time most activities in the shaping of the Little Cup tier will be slowed, however I believe that sooner rather than later is the best time to get organised in anticipation of the start of suspect testing.

Correct me if I have missed anything, I have compiled a list of aspects of Pokemon that have been banned or are close to banned at this point in time:

Murkrow
Yanma
Tangela
DeepSeaTooth
Meditite
Gligar
Misdreavus
(Berry Juice)

Scyther and Sneasel are, as I am sure you are aware, absent from this list; I imagine that there are very few members who would seriously advocate their testing. Berry Juice is in brackets, since it is perhaps the most controversial suspect on the list, and is also difficult to test in the same manner as a Pokemon would be. Therefore, if it is to be tested afterwards, there is no reason to include it for the forseeable future.

A list of things that should be completed before Suspect testing can be considered:

1. The Suspect Stages, Definition, Critical Ratio and Characteristics of an Uber should be discussed to determine whether they hold true for Little Cup, and should they prove false, be rewritten.

Here is the crucial point - Suspects in Little Cup are still not, at this point, defined by any written means. Testing simply cannot be contemplated until this is sorted out. Hell, we may decide that it is too much hassle to test all the suspects in isolation, and just go straight to Stage 3, but I don't have an opinion in that respect at this point.

2. The suspects need to be decided upon, ordered in degrees of importance, and confirmed as a course of action.

This bit is pretty self-explanatory, as those that are worthy of testing, or simply cannot be considered to have been voted Uber based on definable characteristics and according to Smogon's ruling.

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To start off the discussion:

Personally I think that the Suspect Definition, Stages and Critical Ratio can all stay the same as their counterparts for OU and UU, given that Little Cup is not radically different in that area. On the subject of the Suspect Clauses, I cannot see defensive clause as being necessary, given the overall offensive nature of the metagame. Even if there is a Pokemon pre-evo introduced in generation 4 that can actually wall most of the Little Cup metagame, then surely the support clause can be tweaked to accomodate the defensive aspect in this nature, as this walling is tantamount to weakening the opponent's team in a way that allows another Pokemon to sweep. However, if we're going to be technical here, it is almost as difficult at the other end, to "sweep the majority of teams" at any rate. The only non-Uber Pokemon I can think of that usually function as sweepers at all in Little Cup are DD Dratini and possibly RP Gligar. To be honest, the single support clause could probably suffice for all situations at present: A Pokémon is Uber if, in common battle conditions, it can consistently set up a situation in which it makes it substantially easier for other Pokémon to sweep. Obviously if Berry Juice is allowed and Dratini subsequently tested, the offensive clause would have to come back or else this single clause edited to reflect the change. I would probably put it as: A Pokémon is Uber if, in common battle conditions, it can consistently set up a situation in which it or other Pokémon on its team can defeat the opponent with substantial ease.



As for the Order of Operations:
  1. Gligar
  2. Misdreavus
  3. Tangela
  4. Meditite
  5. Yanma
  6. (Murkrow)
  7. DeepSeaTooth
Personally I would advocate a final decision being made on those Pokemon already considered to be OU, Gligar and Misdreavus, before bringing back the current Ubers, to avoid unnecessary complications when Stage 3 is upon us. When they have been tested the metagame should hopefully have stabilised, or at least to the extent that it is is possible to go down that route, and then naturally the order will have to be rethought if something like Machop becomes a near-suspect. When it comes to the reintroductions of Ubers, I would have to put Tangela first, mainly because it was one of those put into Ubers after more time than the other Ubers, and therefore experienced what could possibly be described as a greater test experience, picking it out as a good guinea pig for later tests. Meditite and Yanma come next as more well-accepted, though nonetheless controversial Ubers, especially Yanma, who has been hit fairly hard by Platinum especially with regards to Hypnosis. From what I could find in the old LCF Policy threads about Murkrow, it seemed to have been judged pretty fairly, and I don't know whether a second test is absolutely necessary from that point. On the subject of DeepSeaTooth, I would view it in the same light as Tangela, but I am still slightly unsure of where to put it given its 'different' nature to the other suspects.

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Thank you for reading. Comments and Concerns appreciated.
 
Is the current Little Cup player base sufficient to warrant testing of potential Little Cup Suspects? By which I mean, are we confident that the boost to numbers provided when Shoddy Battle 2 comes out will provide us with an overflow of casual players so as to determine results thoroughly?

I think we have more than enough players to be able to make a "justified" decision. If a flow of casual players flow it, it only helps to point out the good players that would be able to give us an accurate description of the metagame, and make a choice based on that point.

Are the current suspect criteria valid in Little Cup? If they are not, what would be an ideal set of alternative characteristics that could be used? (May require some discussion)

I think the offensive and support characteristics are fine as is. However, the defensive one is a bit more.... difficult to accomplish in little cup battles. It could be altogether removed, but I think that the other two are sufficient enough.

What are, currently, the Pokemon eligible for possible Suspect testing/retesting?

When you think of testing for uberness, the pokemon that come to mind are Misdreavus and Gligar for centralizing the metagame, essentially being able to "counter their counters" while not deriving too far from their original intentions.

When it comes to retesting, the only things that come to mind are Meditite, DeepSeaTooth, and Berry Juice. So if I had to put all of this in order, I'd go:

1. Meditite (Misdreavus + Gligar's Centralization needs to be there for this to be attempted)
2. Misdreavus(only ahead of gligar on my list because of usage)
3. Gligar
4. DeepSeaTooth
5. Berry Juice
 

eric the espeon

maybe I just misunderstood
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Good that this thread was made, we should have a plan out in the open and discussed before SB2 arrives and everything kicks off.

For your three questions:


Is the current Little Cup player base sufficient to warrant testing of potential Little Cup Suspects? By which I mean, are we confident that the boost to numbers provided when Shoddy Battle 2 comes out will provide us with an overflow of casual players so as to determine results thoroughly?
Considering our playerbase is a tiny fraction of any other tier (though it is growing fast and will surely get a massive boost with everything that SB2 will bring) realistically, it will be impractical to do the scale of testing that for example the OU tests get (the last vote for example had 131 top level battlers, each of whom had great experience with each suspect). However I believe that even with a significantly smaller userbase we can still do adequate testing if managed correctly, and come to decisions that should improve the game we play.

Are the current suspect criteria valid in Little Cup? If they are not, what would be an ideal set of alternative characteristics that could be used? (May require some discussion)
As discussed before the Characteristics of an Uber do seem to be fully applicable to LC in their current form, they were seemingly designed intentionally to have some "flexibility". As a guide for voters, not a law which would determine from base principles what is broken. This allows us to interpret them in a way that may be slightly different from OU (something that can sweep like AgiliChin in OU would be horribly broken, but in LC its much closer to the norm of sweeping power).

What are, currently, the Pokemon eligible for possible Suspect testing/retesting?
I'm going to combine this answer with my OoO bit. The first point is that I, and from what I hear fro them the rest of the LC staffers, am convinced that Berry Juice should be tested right at the start. The reason for this is: Any testing we do in a Juiceless metagame will need to be redone if Juice is introduced. The impact is huge and metagamewide, anything we find in one ruleset is liable to be invalid in the other.

I also advocate going for a full "throw them all into the mixing pot" approach to testing the suspect Pokemon. With many of them having received only minimal testing by a much smaller community than we have now, before two significant sets of moves were introduced (Pt and HGSS), and in a very different environment, it seems the best and easiest way to find out how they all interact with eachother. Testing individually misses out the "what if Misdreavus is just a tiny bit too much, but if Meditite, Yanma and Murkrow are brought down it's just about ok" type effects which can't be effectively predicted without testing. It is also considerably slower and will require more votes and more testing. It may be the right way for the Lv. 100 tiers to go about things, but given the reasons above, for our first round of testing at least, I think it's not the best method for us to use.

My OoO would be either:

1. Berry Juice
2. "Stage Three" with Meditite, Yanma, Murkrow, DeepSeaTooth and any current LC-OUs (I am highly doubtful as of whether Tangela is worth testing, but it could be included). We would pereodically ban any overpowering suspects from this metagame, and continue the test with those remaining until we reach a point where we get through a vote without banning any Pokemon.
3. Consider reviewing any banned suspects, look for potential new ones.

Or combine the Berry Juice test with the mixing pot test.

I think that the main issue we need to get an understanding on is the philosophy of banning an item. I'm not entirely sure where I stand on this right now. On one hand I see the point that banning an item that can be used on any Pokemon is not the same as banning a single Pokemon. But, is it equivalent to a clause change (like Evasion or Sleep, both of which were added to supposedly improve the metagame, and affect many Pokemon both directly and indirectly) or a ban (like the banning of Garchomp, which removes one Pokemon and indirectly effects the rest of the metagame in a supposedly positive way)? Generally from what I have seen, Clauses should not be implemented to fix problems that a reasonable number of bans could be. You could implement a Yache Clause to cut Chompy down to size, but clauses llike that are unweildy. On the other side, a Sleep Clause is much nicer solution to sleep abuse than banning everything that can effectively abuse Sleep.

Maybe it is hard for some to see the distinction, it's not a practical issue like the Lv. 100 tests so far, for example "is Latias broken" is something that can be tested and to some extent verified, even though in some cases they are close to whenever you draw the line of "brokeness". "Should we ever ban an item" is much more subjective, and relies on what you think the basis of a metagame should be. Testing whether Berry Juice is "broken" is useless if you can't define when an item is broken, and pointless if you think that an item should never be banned due it its effect on the metagame. Species specific items have been banned several times, and other item restricting rules have been implemented (Sitrus Berry ban and Item clause were both used in ADV Little Cup), but species specific items are a different case (though they do sort of "break the taboo") and precedent is not always reliable and may not have been well backed up by reasoning.

As for Critical Ratio and the like, I think it would be best to follow the Smogon process as closely as is feasible. Voting rights may become an issue with a smaller ladder leading to lower points, but we can account for that.
 
We should probably test Berry Juice fully first since this has an effect on all the other suspects too, even if it will just confirm that it is broken. Then we can test the offensive suspects without the hypothetical issue of BJ.

I'd suggest Gligar should be tested at its possible removal would have the largest effect on the metagame followed by Misdreavus.

Out of Tangela, Murkrow, Meditite and Yanma, the one that would scare me least is Meditite. It's comparable to Cranidos in that it NEEDS Scarf or other speed support to be consistently threatening, it's fragile and lacks resists and if it uses Scarf its STABs have no effect on Ghosts and Dark types. I think it should be tested first out of those in terms of likelihood of being unbanned. Then I'd say Yanma, since Hypnosis' lower accuracy has made it less potent. Tangela and Murkrow have slim to no chance of being unbanned and should be very low priority, though you could make the argument of Tangela's possible effect on the metagame particularly as a Gligar counter to bump it up the order
 

Seven Deadly Sins

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I recall discussing this earlier with people.

Tangela is COMPLETELY out of the question. No matter what. Not happening.

Berry Juice gets tested first. After that, depending on how Berry Juice falls...

  1. Misdreavus
  2. Gligar
  3. DeepSeaTooth Clamperl
  4. Yanma
  5. Meditite
  6. Murkrow (ONLY if Berry Juice is not banned.)
 

eric the espeon

maybe I just misunderstood
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While I am more skeptical of Tangela being worth retesting than the others, if other Pokemon in a somewhat similar situation (seemed pretty clearly broken in early LC, huge offensive power, outspeeds most things in certain conditions) are being placed on the table it is counterproductive not to at least consider it. I know you were heavily involved in the Tangela test, but many things have changed since then. That is why we are retesting things now.

If we do a mixing pot test then adding another suspect should not delay anything significantly, so while we are testing I think any Pokemon that we have any idea or intention of testing should be included. A few people have come out somewhat in favor of and against a Tangela test, and some like me are unconvinced either way, but blocking discussion by stating that "Tangela is COMPLETELY out of the question. No matter what. Not happening." is not at all helpful in my opinion.
 
I'm going to have to agree with SBC and say test Berry Juice "first"... because it has the largest impact on the metagame, as well as effecting the other suspects dramatically (it is possible that Meditite or Yanma or whatever isn't Uber with Berry Juice... or more Uber!)

However I think it may be best to test Missy/Gligar even before that. I could be wrong though...

I do not think Tangela deserves a test AT ALL. That could just be me, but when SDS gets to this thread I think he will agree. EDIT- oh he beat me to the punch by a long shot!

Other than that, this is my preferred order of testing:

Misdreavus
Gligar (really the order of these is irrelevant but I feel that Missy is more powerful in a Gligar-less metagame than vice-versa)
"Berry Juice"
Meditite
Yanma
DeepSeaTooth
Murkrow
(Tangela???)

After that, it would be best to combine all of these into one metagame, and do multiple rounds of "Stage 3" testing (if more than one round is needed!).


However.... testing Berry Juice needs to be discussed further. I do not think this thread is the place to do it though, and Gen said he was going to make another thread on Berry Juice. Let's just say, though, I think this testing is going to take a LOT longer than most of you guys realize.
 

Matthew

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I'm kind of worried that this thread was posted without consent of any of the mods here, I would prefer if anyone posts a PR of any kind that it is at least checked by SDS, me, or Eric, however the OP is very articulate and I'll 'approve' it now.

As for testing Berry Juice is going to be tested first without a doubt, and I've come up with a wonderful way to test it:

The test itself will be a month and a half long, every two week a nominations thread would be opened for you guys to suggest pokemon which are too over powering in the metagame. Though a month and a half seems a bit short to me, it was suggested I try to keep the test short enough so the players don't lose interest if Berry Juice is that bad, and long enough to get sufficent data. At the third and final vote the nominations will be posted and you guys will have your say at which pokemon are too strong, however there will be an additional paragraph(s) required on whether you believe Berry Juice should stay or if it should go. Before the testing starts I will try to nail down a defination of what makes an item broken, but this is a different challenge in itself.

As for the order of testing pokemon I believe it should go:

Misdreavus
Gligar
DST
Meditite
Yanma
Murkrow

As there has been much debate about the status on Murkrow I thought it would be nice as a final test to give everyone some sound mind, and if it is truly as strong as some of the older players say, then most will understand and will want it removed. Testing Murkrow is for more of completeness' sake.
 

cim

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We don't need a "stage 3" because basically LC metagame has been a "stage 3" test the entire time. We don't need to follow Smogon's OU testing process since that was kind of built around the idea that things were banned without testing.

What's the problem with just "unban it and see what happens" for any of these tests? and WHY do they need to be tested separately (the unbans i mean, banning one at a time makes sense)?
 

Seven Deadly Sins

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The Official Order Of Operations

Berry Juice
Misdreavus
Gligar
DeepSeaTooth
Yanma
Meditite
Murkrow

We will be adhering to the OU Suspect Test framework in its entirety.
 
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