Metagame Misdreavus and Sleep Moves in BW LC

[Coconut]

Misdreavus, for quite a long time has been a dominant force in the metagame. Before any changes to the metagame, Misdreavus was considered to be very overcentralizing, sometimes considered to be warping the metagame. Since the banning of various things around it, Misdreavus has become an overwheming presence that not only limits options, but has the potential to break, or severely cripple nearly all of its potential checks and counters. Its Nasty Plot set can potentially break nearly every single threat with its powerful Shadow Ball and coverage between Thunderbolt, Hidden Power Fighting and Psychic. Misdreavus also has the ability to burn potential threats with Will-O-Wisp, which could not only make it impossible to check Misdreavus, but can cripple several mons in the process. Misdreavus also has options to beat Sucker Punch users, in Shadow Sneak and Substitute, meaning the only option to reliably check it is to outspeed it. Misdreavus, however; is blessed with the second-highest speed tier in the metagame, which is only matched by a few Pokemon and the mons that do outspeed Misdreavus cannot OHKO it, because of it's superior natural bulk (beefed up by the Eviolite that it often runs), and it's inherently good defensive typing (since Knock Off is not nearly as powerful as it is in more recent generations).

Misdreavus will often take more than one to properly handle, or potentially make the player decide whether they want to risk their own Misdreavus to beat the opposing Misdreavus, as it is a potential speedtie, which could result in the outcome of the game being heavily influenced by a coinflip.

Sleep in BW is an extremely powerful mechanic which has the ability to not only limit player options, but potentially completely remove an entire Pokemon from the battle. In the fast-paced tier that is Little Cup, providing free turns is already a very strong mechanic, but the fact that sleep turns are reset upon switching out means that it is more likely than not that this Pokemon either becomes setup bait or is absolutely useless for the rest of the game. As grass types do not block Spore in this generation, your only viable options are to run an Early Bird mon or run a Sleep Talk user, both of which are rather undesirable for an overwhelming majority of teams.

This was mainly sparked into action due to BW OU banning sleep moves, you can read more about that here. The primary Pokemon that this affects is Foongus, with noticeably less usage in Drifloon and Shroomish. The only Pokemon I could see potentially being hurt is Shroomish, who since 2011, has fallen out of favor drastically anyway.

We tested this metagame in the most recent Oldgens league, which an overwhelming majority of the BW playerbase enjoyed, so we are going to vote on moving forward with this metagame with the current bans into LCPL; the most important tournament for the community. We will be voting on Sunday, if you have something to contribute or add, please feel free to do so in this thread. I am excited to see what we do moving forward!

 

[dcae]

I am not managing nor playing in this current LCPL. I make this post as one of the people most heavily involved in BW LC for all my time as an LC player and as someone who cares about what happens to this tier.

The last time Missy got voted on, a vocal minority argued that bias due to the timing of the suspect (immediately prior to last LCPL) was the main factor in the votes. This argument was used to delegitimize a quite decisive do not ban vote, with a final tally of 6-2. I have linked it here for everyone's convenience:

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/bw-little-cup.3647698/#post-8086578

Here we are yet again, a vote held on the day of the first week of LCPL. What makes this vote any more legitimate than last year's?

I tried searching for a list of the council members but as usual there is no transparency and no list to be found. I had to ask a couple people who used to be on the council to see who was there, and finally found the following names:

levi, Serene Grace, Ninjadog, Joltage, fitzy, Starmaster, Coconut, fatty

Nothing personal, but the extent of Ninja's official BW experience is playing in this oldgen tour (a non Missy meta) and tests during Missy meta; Joltage has 0 games of BW, given he hosted this oldgen tour and did not play any BW tours during my past 2 years of activity; Levi has played 1 game of BW LC in 3 years and has vocally attempted to delete this tier as a whole from LCPL. Given this handpicked council is extremely small and 1 or 2 votes can completely change the shape of the meta, this vote could go in a completely different direction had, for example, Kaboom, a user with extensive historical involvement with BW, been picked instead.

It's a serious problem that a decision on the scale of banning a mon thats receives 100% usage in an oldgen that ended 7 years ago is going to be made by an arbitrarily picked council in which a quarter of the players have hardly any experience whatsoever.

You may argue that the oldgen tour that's finishing up right now was a good test run for the meta and that "the overwhelming majority of the BW playerbase enjoyed". First of all, this was a small sample size of roughly 40 games. In the playoffs, over half the games involved fatty, a BW player I respect a lot and one who knows the tier well. However, non-fatty games in the playoffs involved teams such as the following:

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5lc-486260

Both teams have approximately 0 ways to handle Magnemite and in general are lacking in many other ways. This is not an attack on either player but rather to show that people have no clue how to build in this meta and that there is a ton of development to be had in this tier. Games in the group stages often involved the repeated use of a single team. Seeing such raw teams at such a late stage in the tour is a clearly indicator that this meta is nowhere near developed and with how little play BW receives outside of LCPL, it will take years for it to develop and balance.

Missy is probably broken in a modern sense but this is an oldgen and we can't overlook the other factors involved. The current metagame is developed and, with the banning of Sleep (which hugely affects Drifloon), very much playable. Are people going to ban Snorlax in GSC because it receives near 100% usage? No, because the metagame is skillful and playable. We have that kind of meta on our hands in BW right now and it's not worth sacrificing that on the off chance we have a more diverse and equally playable meta 2-3 years down the road.

The methodology of this suspect is a sham. It's a small handpicked council pushing through a close vote for a meta that died 8 years ago. It's not that some people are objectively more qualified than others, but it shows how sensitive the vote is to the voterbase, and that drastic changes to a tier should not be decided simply by who gets hand picked for a contested council spot.

The only difference between this year and last is who's on the council. In essence, we are picking the council to generate a desired vote. This vote is illegitimate and should be canceled. While I do not personally support a Missy ban, the only solution is to vote after LCPL so we can actually generate a voter pool instead of handpicking votes that agree with a couple people's opinions.

 

[Coconut]

The last time Missy got voted on, a vocal minority argued that bias due to the timing of the suspect (immediately prior to last LCPL) was the main factor in the votes. This argument was used to delegitimize a quite decisive do not ban vote, with a final tally of 6-2. I have linked it here for everyone's convenience:

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/bw-little-cup.3647698/#post-8086578

Here we are yet again, a vote held on the day of the first week of LCPL. What makes this vote any more legitimate than last year's?

This is a fair point, as this vote would have been more fleshed out if we did it a month ago. The reason this vote is different however is that we have actually played, theorized, and observed the metagame, instead of going in completely blind to it.

As for the legitimacy of the council, the council was chosen based on people who visibly still gave a shit about the metagame, and were actively interested in the advancement of said metagame. Sure, there are other qualified people that could have been on this council, such as zf, tcr (who was invited but declined), but the people chosen actively cared about the metagame that people have been arguing to just delete. Calling them unqualified because they're playing test games instead of tour games and theorizing outside of your bubble doesn't make them unviable picks for a vote. We did our best to create a balance of fresh players and newer blood, people who could vote either way and people who could be swayed to another direction. I firmly believe that the council chosen was a solid group of players who don't actively proclaim that this metagame is terrible and not salvageable.

Both teams have approximately 0 ways to handle Magnemite and in general are lacking in many other ways. This is not an attack on either player but rather to show that people have no clue how to build in this meta and that there is a ton of development to be had in this tier.

Magnemite is a top tier threat in the metagame that is not only handled wonderfully by fitzy, but goao also had his own measures to counteract it. And while neither team is perfect, plenty of games show that there is significant room for development.

Missy is probably broken in a modern sense but this is an oldgen and we can't overlook the other factors involved. The current metagame is developed and, with the banning of Sleep (which hugely affects Drifloon), very much playable.

This is the single-worst bad faith argument and you know it. Considering that the [formerly] current, BW LC is just over a year old, claiming that it's perfectly balanced and developed is, by all measures, a lie. And if it isn't a lie, by your very own logic, this metagame can be developed in a year and won't take

years for it to develop and balance.

Even moreso because moving forward we're going to have more of a focus on the older generations of LC, which means this tier will not only be receiving more attention, but more development and opportunity for it to grow into its new shape.

through a close vote for a meta that died 8 years ago.

I'm sorry, but this just isn't true anymore. We were voting on BW LC as early as 2014, a point where no one currently in LC had any point of administration in the tier. From that point moving forward, we changed the tier. We can't just have things the same old way they used to be because that's now 5 decisions removed.

I absolutely respect your opinons; I hope you know that. But this is something that will be reviewed post-LCPL. My goal is to try and make games enjoyable and fun, not to have people be miserable playing the tier. If you have comments on the actual metagame, I am all for hearing them, but if you're going to claim that Misdreavus is broken, then 8 sentences later say that you don't support a Misdreavus ban, then you aren't really arguing for the betterment of the tier as a whole. You're worried about time constraints like the metagame will disappear in a year's time. You're arguing to keep the tier that you once knew alive, when in reality it's quite different, and will continue to be different.

If people are going to write their opinions on the actual metagame, either former or new, I am open to hearing them in this thread.

 

[dcae]

As for the legitimacy of the council, the council was chosen based on people who visibly still gave a shit about the metagame, and were actively interested in the advancement of said metagame. Sure, there are other qualified people that could have been on this council, such as zf, tcr (who was invited but declined), but the people chosen actively cared about the metagame that people have been arguing to just delete. Calling them unqualified because they're playing test games instead of tour games and theorizing outside of your bubble doesn't make them unviable picks for a vote. We did our best to create a balance of fresh players and newer blood, people who could vote either way and people who could be swayed to another direction. I firmly believe that the council chosen was a solid group of players who don't actively proclaim that this metagame is terrible and not salvageable.

If you firmly believe this you're sorely mistaken. I don't know about the rest but levi mainly has led the "delete BW" people for a good year now. He has vocally claimed to not give a fuck about the tier and has considered trying to delete the tier from LCPL. This is the polar opposite of someone who "gives a shit about the metagame" and is "actively interested". In fact, he is one of those people who has been "arguing to just delete". It is hypocritical and quite frankly terrible judgment on your part to claim this when levi is one of the members of your council.

I am fully open to new members of the council. I also believe that newer blood with less experience shouldn't have such a massive influence on such a crucial vote. Given this is a discussion on the most impactful oldgen ban since like 2015, I don't think that a small group of 8 people, including one who publicly disparages the tier and some who may not have played much of the tier, should be deciding it completely. I propose a larger voterbase, one that includes people who have played games in previous team tours and people who you believe qualified, such as zf, but are not on this council at the moment. In this manner, the entire BW playerbase is involved in something this significant.

Magnemite is a top tier threat in the metagame that is not only handled wonderfully by fitzy, but goao also had his own measures to counteract it. And while neither team is perfect, plenty of games show that there is significant room for development.

This honestly should not even be dignified with a response, but I will anyways. Goao's team's measures to counteract Magnemite are either clicking the x button or praying to win the speed tie and trap it with his own Mag. And if you think fitzy handled it wonderfully, I'm genuinely not sure we watched the same replay. The reason he lost that game is because his team got abused by Magnemite. I'm shocked he wasn't running HP Ground on the Drifloon. It is goao who played wonderfully with his Mag, because he could tell that fitzy had nothing for it.

Furthermore, this game is a perfect example of why this oldgen tour is a bad sample size. I won't comment on fitzy's because I'm not aware of how old it is, but goao's is a modified team from sand meta (Drifloon over Misdreavus), which was weak to Mag in a meta that did not use it. Many of the teams used in this tour were similarly teams from older metas with a Missy swapped out and maybe a couple spread changes, which is objectively not developing a metagame but merely what people do for minitours where 1 random mon is banned.

This is the single-worst bad faith argument and you know it. Considering that the [formerly] current, BW LC is just over a year old, claiming that it's perfectly balanced and developed is, by all measures, a lie. And if it isn't a lie, by your very own logic, this metagame can be developed in a year and won't take

At no point did I say it is "perfectly balanced". It is a fully developed and playable metagame. I am the first to admit that the meta had some balance issues. I also firmly believe that the banning of Sleep will make a big impact on those very balance issues. Ghostspam teams that dominated the metagame did so in large part because Drifloon was virtually uncounterable when you had to account for other threats and pack two answers to it when Hypnosis was the equivalent of an OHKO.

The reason why the last metagame developed so quickly was heavily due to the fact that Sand was an independent archetype in the BW metagame. In fact, it was one of the major reasons why we suspected and banned Sand but not Missy at the end of LCPL 7. We acknowledged the fact that removing Sand would not drastically shift the metagame but simply remove the Sand offense and Sand stall teams. As a result, the BW metagame developed into a stable metagame incredibly fast, ideal for an oldgen. Removing Missy is a completely different situation, as it has shaped the meta thoroughly around it over the past years.

Even moreso because moving forward we're going to have more of a focus on the older generations of LC, which means this tier will not only be receiving more attention, but more development and opportunity for it to grow into its new shape.

I hope this is true, but until I see significantly more games played and at a genuine high level, unlike many of the games from this past oldgen tour, I do not see how the meta can be developed properly. Regardless, I am in full support of this.

I'm sorry, but this just isn't true anymore. We were voting on BW LC as early as 2014, a point where no one currently in LC had any point of administration in the tier. From that point moving forward, we changed the tier. We can't just have things the same old way they used to be because that's now 5 decisions removed.

You are correct, and I disagree with those initial bans as well. However, I think we should learn from that and stop messing with the tier. As we can see through historical experience now, every time we've banned something, there's been something else. The current Missy meta is stable enough. Maybe we can even revert back to the Sand/Missy meta of LCPL 7, which most people enjoyed and was fairly balanced and diverse. These are both known quantities. Is it worth going through this suspect process every year? I don't believe so.

I absolutely respect your opinons; I hope you know that. But this is something that will be reviewed post-LCPL. My goal is to try and make games enjoyable and fun, not to have people be miserable playing the tier. If you have comments on the actual metagame, I am all for hearing them, but if you're going to claim that Misdreavus is broken, then 8 sentences later say that you don't support a Misdreavus ban, then you aren't really arguing for the betterment of the tier as a whole. You're worried about time constraints like the metagame will disappear in a year's time. You're arguing to keep the tier that you once knew alive, when in reality it's quite different, and will continue to be different.

If we want an enjoyable meta, the metagame that even levi, who heavily dislikes BW, enjoyed was the Sand meta of LCPL 7. I believe that there is merit to revert to that meta as a known quantity.

If we were in current gen, I would likely support banning Missy, with the knowledge that there would be time and thousands of games played to fully develop the meta and ban everything causing issues. The fact is we are limited by BW being an oldgen, whether you like it or not. We may not reach a thousand games of BW played in 5 years. We may never finish developing this meta. I do not believe this is a risk worth taking. Tiering oldgens is a slippery slope and there is no precedent for banning an oldgen mon with 100% usage.


I reiterate that I believe that if this vote is still something you seek to go forward with, it is imperative that the council is not limited to such a small size. Everyone who is invested in BW or has been a part of it recently should be involved for something this drastic. A rushed small council and a 3 day vote is absurd for a mon this influential.

 

[Joltage]

So, I feel the need to defend myself a little bit here. While it is true that I have not historically been a BW player, I would argue that's mostly because the opportunities to play BW have been very limited since I started playing at all in XY.

Side Bar

Which is the whole reason I ran the old gens tour in the first place. I strongly believe that people will want to play things more if given the opportunity to do so. Now obviously, my tour wasn't perfect, but I think it can be a starting point for us trying to support our old gens more.

Though I have played BW in the past during LC Tour II, back when Scraggy was allowed, since then, there have not been many opportunities to play the tier. Especially when you take into account that your past 2 years of activity happened to coincide with a 2-year hiatus from me. So, obviously I didn't play any BW tours while you were active. I wasn't playing at all. I do want to note, however, that your argument for a larger council is definitely valid, and something I would support.

But regarding the actual topic at hand, I have yet to see an argument on the anti-ban side that can't be summed up as "BW shouldn't change because it's old and nobody plays it, and we shouldn't change old gens that nobody plays" Which would be a lot more credible of an argument if we hadn't already changed BW LC so much posthumously. Since the gen ended, we've banned Murkrow, Scraggy, and Sand Rush, and we've unbanned Carvahna. I fail to see why Missy is this arbitrary line in the sand for people now with it being, as Brewfasa has put it, "the last big broken" No one has even tried to argue that Missy isn't actually broken and overcentralizing. Missy is too strong, too fast, and too bulky, it can get past/severely neuter would be checks fairly easily, and it is plainly required to be on any and every viable team. From a metagame standpoint, there's no argument that we shouldn't ban it.

Regarding Sleep, I don't think it's super controversial to follow BW OU's lead on this. Sleep as a mechanic in BW is pretty decidedly uncompetitive and I don't believe its subtraction from the meta will negatively impact the quality of the meta.

 

[gali]

I don't play BW, but why do we feel the need to keep tinkering with old metas? BW LC as it exists right now is already an artificial meta that is very different from the tier as it was played when it was the current gen, and I don't really see what continuing to reexamine it accomplishes, especially when a decent chunk of its already small player base is against this vote. Not to mention the timing right before the only serious tournament where the meta is played is going to force everyone to learn a whole new meta on the fly, which will make the games less enjoyable. Having this vote right now seems very misguided right now, and I think it should wait until at least after LCPL.

Edit: Didn't see that the vote already happened, but my point still stands. I think this should be reexamined after the tournament is over.

 

[tko]

But regarding the actual topic at hand, I have yet to see an argument on the anti-ban side that can't be summed up as "BW shouldn't change because it's old and nobody plays it, and we shouldn't change old gens that nobody plays" Which would be a lot more credible of an argument if we hadn't already changed BW LC so much posthumously. Since the gen ended, we've banned Murkrow, Scraggy, and Sand Rush, and we've unbanned Carvahna. I fail to see why Missy is this arbitrary line in the sand for people now with it being, as Brewfasa has put it, "the last big broken" No one has even tried to argue that Missy isn't actually broken and overcentralizing. Missy is too strong, too fast, and too bulky, it can get past/severely neuter would be checks fairly easily, and it is plainly required to be on any and every viable team. From a metagame standpoint, there's no argument that we shouldn't ban it.

I don't really have much to add to this thread, but I just wanted to clarify something about this point. First, I'm gonna echo what dcae said,

You are correct, and I disagree with those initial bans as well. However, I think we should learn from that and stop messing with the tier. As we can see through historical experience now, every time we've banned something, there's been something else. The current Missy meta is stable enough. Maybe we can even revert back to the Sand/Missy meta of LCPL 7, which most people enjoyed and was fairly balanced and diverse. These are both known quantities. Is it worth going through this suspect process every year? I don't believe so.

There are two things wrong with banning Misdreaveus, the first being what dcae said in the above quote. As the years go on, and less people play the metagame, if there was another problematic mon to emerge from Misdreaveus' ban, then there would be even less people down the line qualified enough to make a decision on a suspect then.

Another point is that Misdreaveus isn't an unbalanced mon. No one has played a BW game and been like "the opponent has a Misdreaveus, so perdemos"; in fact, most good games of BW LC exhibit quite a good amount of skill on both players parts. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely the best mon in the BW LC metagame, but I'd like to compare this to GSC Snorlax. Snorlax is also "too bulky" and "too fast," to a much greater extent in that metagame than Missy in this metagame. However, GSC players understand the importance of Snorlax in the metagame, and to preserve a quality, skill based generation they haven't touched Snorlax at all.

Maybe there'd be no argument to ban this from a metagame perspective if we were still in the year 2012. Suspect testing Misdreaveus in a current metagame would make so much more sense because there would be a big enough (and well informed) player base to determine how the metagame would look with vs without Missy. However, this is an old gen, and changing old gens is akin to walking on a tightrope. Whether we like it or not, the fact of the matter is that there hasn't been enough high quality BW LC games in the past few years. And with this in mind, why change a beyond functional metagame? There hasn't been much arguments to suggest that Misdreaveus is broken enough to the point where we need to alter our metagame; if this were the case, then we would be seeing much less wins based off skill and much more wins based off team preview. Based off what I see, this is not the case.

A good thing to note is that most old gen changes happen to OU tiers. However, if something ever gets suspected in a previous gen OU, such as letting Excadrill back in, or the recent BW OU sleep changes, they have a much better process of going about the test. They have suspect tours, prerequisites that can be fulfilled by past tour experience, and PLENTY of discussion in Policy Review before anything happens. Besides that, no other tier really touches their old gens. Have you seen BW RU? That tier is awful, but even that isn't touched LOOOOL

The main problem I have with this suspect is the manner in which this suspect was done. This suspect was too rushed, and our concerns neeed to be revisited now, not after LCPL ends. This thread was posted a day before signups closed, and honestly seems like it was a formality in the first place. Not much community input was put on this vote, and a good amount of BW LC players seemed to have disagreed with this vote as well. The council could have also included more players who have performed well in this metagame in the past year or so. Changing old gens with perfectly fine gameplay seems like a wrong thing to do, especially with these time constraints.

No comment on sleep.

I haven't made a post like this on smogon for years, I hate yall for doing this to me.

 

[iss]

First of all, I want to thank all of you who still play BW and DPP. Back in 2013, even DPP was pretty much a dead metagame- if you had told me that people would still be playing BW in 2020, I would've been shocked. I still think it's a fun and surprisingly diverse format and I'm always happy to discuss or play it.

I don't think I have much to say about the suspect process itself; I've been out of the loop for long enough, and I tend to believe that TLs mean well for their tiers. I do empathize with dcae / tko on the awkward timing and length of the vote; I had been planning to post here earlier in hopes of having a discussion, but the vote had already been concluded by then.

I've personally never considered Misdreavus to be broken. It's true that it's got a ton of good matchups and is splashable on basically any team. But at least to me, it has a hard time finding truly free switch-ins given that it lacks recovery, hates chip from hazards and weather, and is pretty vulnerable to status. Even at +2, it doesn't find many OHKOs on bulkier opponents, and while there's plenty of stuff it can run to beat typical checks, it does suffer somewhat from 4MSS in that regard. Granted, that's emphasizing its weaknesses- I do think it is very good and the best mon in format.

It's possible that I'm just approaching this from an older view of tiering. Our last vote in BW was on Murkrow and Drilbur (back when Sand Rush was legal); we voted 5-2 to keep Murkrow and 7-0 to keep Drilbur. It's probably crazy to some of you that we kept Murkrow when LO Krow had no counters, and that we kept Drilbur when a majority of non-Sand teams ran Snover as an answer, but that's how things were. It was fine to me (and others) that Murkrow had no true counters because it relied heavily on prediction and was weak to chip, and it was fine that Sand was "overcentralizing" because it was tough contemplating using Sand when Snover was around every corner. From what I understand, I think those votes would have gone very differently today.

I'm not a big fan of the Sleep ban because Foongus isn't anywhere as bad as Breloom / Amoonguss were in BW OU, but I can understand the arguments against it. (I just have a soft spot for Hypnosis Drifloon, you know?)

 

[tcr]

I've personally never considered Misdreavus to be broken. It's true that it's got a ton of good matchups and is splashable on basically any team. But at least to me, it has a hard time finding truly free switch-ins given that it lacks recovery, hates chip from hazards and weather, and is pretty vulnerable to status. Even at +2, it doesn't find many OHKOs on bulkier opponents, and while there's plenty of stuff it can run to beat typical checks, it does suffer somewhat from 4MSS in that regard. Granted, that's emphasizing its weaknesses- I do think it is very good and the best mon in format.

It's possible that I'm just approaching this from an older view of tiering. Our last vote in BW was on Murkrow and Drilbur (back when Sand Rush was legal); we voted 5-2 to keep Murkrow and 7-0 to keep Drilbur. It's probably crazy to some of you that we kept Murkrow when LO Krow had no counters, and that we kept Drilbur when a majority of non-Sand teams ran Snover as an answer, but that's how things were. It was fine to me (and others) that Murkrow had no true counters because it relied heavily on prediction and was weak to chip, and it was fine that Sand was "overcentralizing" because it was tough contemplating using Sand when Snover was around every corner. From what I understand, I think those votes would have gone very differently today.

I think that this post is super insightful and a very good way at taking a look at tiering philosophy changes throughout the ages.

Missy is "broken" in the sense it has the de facto fastest speed tier, overwhelming SpA, a boosting move, and versatility of moveslot choices. It is a centralizing aspect of the game, for sure. People commonly draw comparisons to Snorlax in GSC, Tyranitar in ADV, Gligar or Munchlax in DPP LC. I do think that on paper Misdreavus is on a higher power level than other Pokemon in the tier, but I also don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

The way I see it, a tier should be changed insofar that the community is willing to develop a prosperous metagame. The reason there is a certain level of "brokenness" that people can get away with for suspect tests in a current gen is because there is an enthused element of the community that is willing to develop the metagame and take it steps further. This is why suspecting Wingull for its accuracy issues and chance elements it introduces to the game is fine in the moment, or why suspecting a broken strategy is fine (like Aurora Veils, Sun). There is a community that is willing to very quickly, over the course of several weeks, reshape the metagame and try to perfect it.

I don't think that same philosophy applies to older generations because there is no longer an expectation of the community rebuilding the tier and pressing forward to create their most ideal metagame. That stage already happened in its time. The fact is there is currently one singular tournament that holds any amount of weight to BW LC's status as a "real metagame" (with a comparison of ADV LC as a "non-real metagame"). There are always supplementary tournaments that might appear here and then but they are always supplementary, that is, they are usually exclusively held before the wake of LCPL to test the tier's capabilities. There is no true development happening anymore sans whatever shakeup happens each year. People aren't adapting strategies anymore to counter what's "meta" they are simply building standard teams. The last time any shakeup happened was, in my opinion, the LCPL before we tested Scraggy, when it became quickly apparant that old playstyles of Eo stall or double rush Sand was not as powerful as previously perceived, that there were strategies people could use to circumvent that.

Iss' post made me realize that I regret pushing so hard for tier change several years ago. While at the time I think it might have saved the tier from simply being cast away, instead of on the fringes as it stands right now, I do think that it was the start of a few dominos which have led us to where we are right now. I think people should ask themselves what the end-game is with this Missy vote. Is it just to get rid of Misdreavus? What are the faults surrounding people's perceptions of BW? Will there be a second suspect test, to potentially address Snover or Abra if either of them start getting too popular, or whatever threat crops up? Part of Carvanha's unbanning was specifically tied to its ability to check Misdreavus. Is Carvanha going to be looked at, that decision reversed, or do we just wait until next year? Is the goal of this just to get rid of the big bad ghost so newer players flock to the meta? Was Misdreavus the only thing keeping people from enjoying the metagame, or was it mechanics, new or lack thereof, that kept people to enjoy their home tier?

I do think on some abstract level that BW LC has lost the identity that first attracted me to it. This worries me because there is not much reason to play a metagame that has no cohesive sense of "self." Why do you think people always deride the metagames previous to the current generation? When SM came out people quickly started remarking on the "staleness" of XY; when SS came out the same derision was cast to SM, and this is because the same cast of Pokemon quickly rise to the top with very few exceptions, little to no new mechanics, and the current gen just becomes "better previous gen." The only identity I can find for SM is the inclusion of Z-moves, whereas the identity of XY is "Fletchling" and trapping. For BW that "identity" was, in my opinion, chip damage. A slow whittle of opponents to deal with things like Misdreavus. Perma-weather, toxic spikes being one of the best moves, hazard layers and lack of Defog and 12% Burn made chip the king, along with bulky threats like Slowpoke, Lileep, Porygon, etc. (and in this case this chip is part of the reason I think a lot of the newer players don't enjoy BW, because it is a slow burn rather than over in 5 minutes). I don't think that can be preserved when Misdreavus was such a core part of the game, though it is nothing more than a feeling.

One thing I very much take issue with, regardless of tiering decisions or my personal stance on Misdreavus, is the selection of the council. Personally, I find it very controversial to include people on council who have outright, and blatantly, expressed their desires to remove BW LC from LCPL. That is a death sentence for the tier, one of the only exposures it actually gets, cherry picked from the only tour it is in due to personal disdain. Claim that it is an argument out of passion and not anger all one wants, I fail to see how that removal would be in the tier's best interest. Especially when you want to make our already shitty in skill PL "more skillful" by adding, what, LC UU? I don't think people who don't have the tier's best interests at heart should make their voices heard on that issue. I also think there were several people who should have been added to the council, or have the community as a whole vote on it. If the purpose of the vote is to draw more attention to the tier then have it be a community discussion, a BW LC missyless (only bw) tour with some incentive to participate. Throughout the tournament have community leader (the colloquial term not the actual forum role) led discussion, asking newer players their thoughts and feelings from the tour, their likes and dislikes. I think I agree heavily with the inputs of dcae and tko that the whole process was rushed, there were council additions that probably shouldn't have been on council, and that there was a small pool of people voting on an issue that had already been voted on twice

 

[GOAO]

been meaning to post itt for some time and got the chance to do so. i think the no missy meta could be fine and totally playable, perhaps better than the missy meta, but what is wrong about the ban in my opinion is that bwlc hasnt had a chance to develop well in the past 5 years. we don't have a little cup oldgens circuit, we dont have tours for bwlc (and other oldgens) every year, basically the one place we have to play bwlc is lcpl which happens once a year, but when an oldgen that is only played once a year has a different meta every year, it is impossible to develop the tier and make it as good as it could be. 2015 lcpl had murkrow, 2016 lcpl had scraggy, 2017 had vanha freed, 2018 had sand up, 2019 had missy available and now in 2020 we banned missy. this is 6 different metagames in 6 different years and everytime we ban something it feels like some of the most active bwers just go after the next problem and do something to ban it as soon as possible in order to create "the perfect metagame", possibly with budew and purloin being usable I think?

regardless of what is done from here I'd like to make a few suggestions: 1)reverting bw back to the october 2013 meta and locking it from further interactions. this is what bw needs in my opinion, the tier as it is now has absolutely nothing of a oldgen because it has had SIX changes since it stopped being a current gen, and, unlike bw ou for example, isnt played nearly enough for the metagames to be ok. if we go back to 2013 it'll be an oldgen again and then we can develop it as a metagame from there instead of the domino effects that started with the murkrow ban all the way back to 2015 or 2)lock bw until next lcpl. 2 lcpls sounds like good enough time to let a metagame develop and even though some members of the community claim the council was handpicked and the suspect was not handled well, in this scenario we should now bite the bullet and let the no missy meta develop, then after time is done we can see what we do.

tldr revert back to 2013 (ideal) >>>>>>>>>> lock until next lcpl is over > review missy after this lcpl

 

[tcr]

I discussed this in the #oldgens discord with coconut for a bit and I'd like to posit a proposal.

The issues I see as outlined in this thread are as follows:

• BW LC has a lack of development
  • This is illustrated from a constantly changing metagame as outlined by GOAO . Every LCPL since we started tinkering with the tier has had some huge change. In terms of sheer number of games played in an official capacity, these 5 or 6 years have been the equivalent of doing about one suspect every month in a current gen, an absurd pace that does not allow for any development. dcae gives his own arguments to show a lack of development in the tier. You have people just slightly tweaking ages old teams for the Miss Missy tour, you have people reusing years old teams. No development comes from this, there's no attempts to flip the meta on its head or to address common issues. What instead happens is people (including myself and especially myself), overreact and try to fix the next immediately broken thing in a domino effect that is far more pronounced than in a current gen due to the lack of this testing.
• Old players get alienated from the tier
  • This is something that has been a criticism since the beginning of fiddling with the tier. People can claim that it's always the same people making noise but I've personally talked with a great many players since 2012 who I grew up playing Pokemon with. BW LC is just not the same thing anymore, it's too far removed. Parallel this to something like ADV OU, which has been around about twice as long as BW LC and has not changed at all. There is an element of stability that is preferred in metagames, people enjoy things like ADV OU or older generations because they can leave for a decade and come back to play it in SPL (Hipmonlee).
• There is an importance of preserving Smogon history
  • This is something far more important to me than prevalent in previous arguments of people in this thread. I think there is a logical argument to be made for keeping Smogon history relevant due to constantly shaping tiering philosophies. Iss above illustrates this point to me, with a much more radical thinking of Murkrow and Misdreavus and Sand Rush than the thinking I've heard in the past few years. I do think that there is not just one singular way of thinking about the game and tiering process has been homogenized over the years with sparse differences based on personal Pokemon preference. Preserving the history of tiering is important to respect the wishes of the previous playerbase (an argument brought up previously in regards to Diglett in XY and in this thread with Misdreavus in BW) and to allow for different thinking. In the case of extremely radical scenarios this could be foregone to allow changes to the official version of the tier, as in letting Swagger be banned or shifting opinions on other uncompetitive mechanics.

Now my proposal is this:

1. Lock the tiers as is end of generation.
   • This would promote active participation in the current generation and dissuade rash decisions. Locking the tiers as is preserves the tiering history and allows players who are removed from the 'process' to be able to return during important times (LCPL) and jump in. This would promote a stable metagame with a playerlist that is equally as stable, rather than having people to play a guessing game as to whos gonna adapt the best to whatever new change appeared.
2. Set up an alternate, 'unofficial' mirror tier
   • In terms of BW LC, there would be an unofficial BW LC that runs parallel in tournaments to the originalist version. This tier would be subject to changes. In all intent and purposes it would be the same process that currently exists. Analyzing the metagame trends, discussing changes, implementing them. This would extend not just to BW LC but to all oldgens, so at the end of a generation a tier is locked in and any continuances are made in a parallel tier (which does not have to be implemented on Showdown but simply has to adhere to gentlemen rules).
3. Set up tournaments for both of these. LCPL for the historical originalist version and side tours for the metagame trending version
   • The reason you would want LCPL to host the originalist version is so that people can have a completely stable version to test and adapt their own metagame. LCPL will always, as it stands right now, have small sample sizes of games. You would want your biggest 'face' for the old gen, the spotlight, to not be volatile. When I posited this to Coconut, the response I got was that the people who would play the original, locked in tier have activity issues. My rebuttal is that those people, me, zf, tko, goao, etc all only show up for LCPL anyway and get bought anyway. Having the tier be stable (with the easy ability for newer players to enter the tier and quickly find the best strategies and adapt to those strategies) rather than constantly developing would be more beneficial to LCPL and the oldgen community.
   • You would also want side tours, such as Joltage's oldgen tour, to host these new changing metagames. It is best to have these type of tours to host the changing metagames because they get a lot of new traffic. As they are more unofficial, tiering decisions don't have to revolve around their placement (as they would in the case of LCPL). They are minute environments to grab small samples of 40 games or so, generate interest in the tier, and allow players who want to shift the tiers to theorymon and craft teams in that specific environment.

I think this method would be ideal compared to other suggestions. It preserves both the revisionist camps and the originalist camps allowing both to have their forms of play, while mitigating criticisms of lack of development. Another alternative would be to just revert the decisions made and start over, this time with actual tournaments to cultivate development. An oldgen circuit in particular would do amazing to help out all of these old gens, something more official than just Joltage's tour. As I don't see activity superseding current gen at any time I think locking it in where development won't happen would be the most ideal. I don't see this requiring much actual effort on anyone's part aside from maybe creating an old gen circuit.

I'd be interested in discussing more on the topic of what to do with old gens in particular, I don't think that debating on Misdreavus is fruitful and really misses the point of the past few policy decisions in BW, and in particular the point of this post. For the record I would be down with playing and participating in both of the suggestions

 

[Joltage]

As a very strong supporter of us starting an LC Old Gens Tour Circuit, I agree that having such a setup would be ideal both for the continued play and development of the old gens, BW included. I think that creating meaningful and regular opportunities to play these metagames is a necessary step in actually creating interest for the continued play of our old gens.

However, I feel that your proposal is trying to have your cake and eat it too, so to speak. In an effort to appease all sides, by effectively giving each side what they ostensibly want, I think you weaken the legitimacy and the efficacy of both solutions. I personally, can't see mirror tiers working because I don't see there being enough value and incentive available for enough people to maintain both. Why would a player want to play in this unofficial version of the tier? Sure, it might grant them points in the assumed old gens circuit, but the tier they're playing wouldn't even be represented in LC's most important tour, LCPL. What's the point in learning and developing skill in a meta that effectively doesn't matter? And on the other side, what message does it send that our 'official version' of the tier isn't represented in every situation? Having two versions of the tier undermines the legitimacy of both of them.

I don't believe that parts of your proposal aren't without merit. As I've said, I absolutely feel that we could and should take more of an effort to promote and support our old gens. An official old gen circuit is something that we have lacked for far too long in my opinion. I think we're the only tier that doesn't have one, in fact. But creating 2 versions of BW seems entirely too idealistic. I don't even think current-gen LC has the player-base to support 2 separate metagames, much less the most maligned lc old gen.

I have a separate proposal to make. And that is to create a formalized LC Old Gens Council where we can officially work through our policies and procedures regarding our old gens. I feel that having such a body will prove valuable in preventing situations like our current one from occurring in the future and provide a venue for the continued support of our old gens.

 

[tcr]

However, I feel that your proposal is trying to have your cake and eat it too, so to speak. In an effort to appease all sides, by effectively giving each side what they ostensibly want, I think you weaken the legitimacy and the efficacy of both solutions. I personally, can't see mirror tiers working because I don't see there being enough value and incentive available for enough people to maintain both. Why would a player want to play in this unofficial version of the tier? Sure, it might grant them points in the assumed old gens circuit, but the tier they're playing wouldn't even be represented in LC's most important tour, LCPL. What's the point in learning and developing skill in a meta that effectively doesn't matter? And on the other side, what message does it send that our 'official version' of the tier isn't represented in every situation? Having two versions of the tier undermines the legitimacy of both of them.

Your argument can be traced as follows:

Cutting oldgens into two separate thought strands threatens its status as a "legitimate" tier.

1) A tier is 'legitimate' when it has inherent value for people to play it.
2) A tier's value comes from the tournaments it can be a part of.
3) In the absence of "official" tournaments a tier has no value
4) As a tier has no official tournaments it thus has no intrinsic value and thus is not "legitimate"

I see your argument as this and I fail to see the logic in it. It presupposes that people play BW LC in some capacity because of its "official" status, as if it wasn't official people wouldn't play it all, it structures tournaments like LCPL as somehow more "official" than other tours, and then you question why one would even attempt to learn or develop skill in this meta when it "effectively doesn't matter."

Posit this: What purpose does LCPL serve? What makes it 'official?' The only answer that comes to mind is the ability to use skill level in PL as a catalyst to propel oneself to 'higher' more 'official' tournaments like SPL. This doesn't work for old gens. No one is going to draft me to the Raiders because I go 6-1 in BW LC, or because I go 7-0 in DPP LC. These tours exist in some official capacity because they are the only time those old gens get played (a situation that is prevented by the inclusion of more old gen tours).

People would play BW LC, both versions, because they want to or have an interest in the tiering of such or hosting of such. Contributions to them would, ideally, count towards forum badges, a process that seems severely lacking in today's forum culture. IDK your specific motivations for wanting to learn BW LC but I guarantee you that the reason people like me, dcae, fatty, tko, zf, whoever play BW LC right now is because we enjoy the tier and for no other reason. We are not motivated by some extrinsic factor like tournaments because extrinsic motivation is a poor excuse to generate productivity.

It doesn't send any message. I guarantee you no one has looked at BW LC in the past decade and truly cared if it was "official" or "unofficial," that is some smogon bureaucratic nonsense. Official status of a tier is only important when the tier in question requires some playerbase to motivate it, which can be artificially generated through tournament status (which is part of the reason that something like ADV LC is unofficial while something like DPP, equally similar, is official).

I think you need to stop thinking in terms of "legitimacy", these ideas that hold no meaning. BW LC is no more "legitimate" than any other tier since what is legitimate is just what is played in tournaments that are superficially determined to be more "official" than others. What matters right now is there is always a core section of BWers (and any old gen player) that feels alienated from the tier upon returns, a lack of development in general that does not substantiate changes to these tiers, and an erasure of history for all except those who dare to venture into the cryo storage on smogon, or those who were around in the first place

 

[fran17]

As a bw player in the last 3/4 lcpl I'd like to share some of my thoughts.

• Renewing a meta every year is a really bad idea, especially because the bans usually happen a bit earlier than the start of the lcpl, I remember voting for a ban 1 day before week 1 came out some PLs ago, and there is anyway a lack of bw tours, so there is no way the tier is developing, you probably will see some good builds in the semis and finals, that will be useless anyway the next year. If you look a the first bw battles at the start of every lcpl in the last 2/3 years you will find almost everytime some outdated teams with just the banned mon changed, this happened this year as well with random floons/gastly/frillish in some old teams.
• Even if you give time to the people to keep up with the new metas, who is going to keep updated the old resources? The VR has still Murkrow, Scraggy and Missy in it, and still Drilbur at S which wouldn't be in the actual meta. I'm sure the sample sets are outdated as well but I didn't bother to check. This makes impossible to start playing bw lc for whoever is interested in it.
• Going back to the 2013 meta isn't such a bad idea and is what I would go for. I played some games in that meta and it was quite enjoyable, even if there were obviously some concerns about some overpowered mons, but they still could be played around because the meta was still more fast-paced and more offensive than the one we are playing right now. And if the old TLs and council in 2013 didn't do anything to change the tier means that it probably wasn't so much unplayable.

Tl;dr I think the optimal choice is to go back to the old meta and start some more old gen tour in order to keep the community updated on the old gens so in the case something really looks too much overpowered for the tierbadge there will actually be people who plays the tier discussing about it, although I think retroactive banning shouldn't be made

 

[jake]

There are two distinct parts to this conversation. One is about the philosophy and the future of oldgens tiering in LC, and one is about what we are doing about the Misdreavus and sleep vote. Pardon the tl;dr of this. I'll try to keep it organized.

Regarding oldgens tiering (mostly my opinions, here):

​

I think oldgens tiering is frustrating, especially in a tier that does not see as much consistent activity as other oldgen tiers (mostly just OU). There are limited opportunities to play the tier in tournaments, which means that there are equally limited opportunities to attract new players who might be interested in playing an oldgen. With low activity, it is also hard to identify qualified voters.​

​

The resources argument is fair. The OU oldgens can slide by this argument because the comparatively large playerbase and consistent involvement in official tournaments creates a demand for updated analyses and other resources. In comparison, we can hardly keep our SS LC C&C going. The lack of potential resources for adjusted oldgens does make it more challenging for new players to learn oldgen LC.​

​

Player alienation is also understandable, although it is a weaker argument. It is my belief that tiering decisions should not cater to players that do not currently play the tier.​

​

That said, I believe that there are valid reasons to want to tier oldgens. The primary one is this: metagames do, in fact, continue to develop beyond their expiry date. Truthfully, I know nothing about BW LC itself and am thus speaking strictly about policy, but fran’s point about old council not doing anything about the old meta is not valid because things have, objectively, changed since then.​

​

As an example, I play(ed) BW NU. I also led the tier for the vast majority of its existence. In today’s BW NU, there is significantly more Alomomola and Gothorita than there was at the transition into XY NU, and both Pokemon (I think) are much stronger now than they were at the end of the tier. Metagames do shift over time, and there is potential that a Pokemon or a strategy can be become overpowered, even if it was not acknowledged during its time in the spotlight.​

​

As an extension of that, as long as the tier is being played competitively, metagame development will continue to happen, if at a much slower rate. This includes the Missy-less meta. Despite that, drastically altering the tier on a frequent basis (yearly) without giving it time to grow and change is not good. GOAO’s point about the BW metagame being different every year is fair, and while I may not agree with removing all bans to a relatively arbitrary point in time, I do think that potential future oldgen tiering decisions should be gone over with a fine-toothed comb before they are ever implemented.​

​

I agree with a lot of Joltage’s post, regarding both the idea of mirror tiers and the inclusion of an oldgens circuit. (IDK about the details so don’t take this as confirmation it will but I would love if we could include an oldgens circuit within our current ribbon circuit.)​

​

I don’t think mirrored oldgens will be effective, and that’s mostly because they will not be sustainable. tcr, a lot of your rebuttal was focused on the concept of legitimacy, but the crucial part of the argument is that it splits the playerbase of an already small tier and introduces a lot of potential logistical issues in the future. For example, which version of BW LC is played for LCPL?​

​

I don’t believe that a formalized LC oldgens council will exist. I could be convinced otherwise, probably, but I think it is just as viable for this policy to be discussed out here in the public domain, and we move forward with it from there. I think there has been a lot of valuable discussion here and in #oldgens on Discord, and I doubt that all of the contributing voices would have been included in such a council.​

​

My opinion is that we should continue to tier oldgens LC for the current playerbase of those tiers. I think that we should absolutely be much more selective regarding suspects, and that we should be much more open about the process. With that said, that’s my personal opinion. I’d like to see continued discussion, if anyone else has something to contribute to it.​

​

(If there is one bright side to pull from this whole thing, it’s that we started a good and necessary conversation about how we will tier oldgens LC. I’m super appreciative of this.)​

Regarding this vote:

​

The issues with the vote have been laid out numerous times. It was made in haste and there were concerns with council selections. It is clear to me that we need to revisit the vote; however, the question is when to do so. There are advantages and disadvantages to every possible option moving forward. I understand and acknowledge that, and I went as far as contacting multiple tiering admins and leaders to get their thoughts because I believe this decision needs to be as fair as possible.​

​

Here is what we are going to do moving forward: The Misdreavus and sleep vote will be kept intact throughout LCPL, and a revote will be held after the tournament. We will keep this thread open for discussion over the course of LCPL and adjust the voter pool as necessary based on the activity of this continued conversation and the players who have played a significant amount of BW LC games in this LCPL.​

​

Before-and-after-tournament votes have been held before in other oldgens; notably, this exact situation has come up before in BW OU, including the relative speed of the vote, the vote impacting tournaments, and a revote following said tournaments.​

​

I know that the decision does not assuage all of the concerns that have been brought up in this thread and in other channels, but it’s the most fair way for all involved parties. Thanks for your contributions to this thread and to the discussion, all.​

 

[iss]

In an effort to keep discussion going here, I'm going to try to post some thoughts on the metagame plus a current VR and whatever I play in LCPL (if any). I think this is a pretty cool and underdeveloped metagame, and I'm curious what other people think about it. (Feel free to ping me on Discord if you'd like a game!)

Rough VR + thoughts

VR

S
Mienfoo

A+
Drifloon
Magnemite
Diglett
Drilbur

A
Abra
Snover
Staryu
Timburr
Gastly
Porygon

A-
Carvanha
Vullaby
Foongus
Ferroseed
Frillish
Hippopotas
Archen

B+
Pawniard
Tirtouga
Riolu
Slowpoke
Clamperl
Omanyte
Tentacool

B
Lileep
Shellder
Natu
Aipom

B-
Cottonee
Taillow
Ponyta
Croagunk
Chinchou
Darumaka
Doduo

C
Bronzor
Budew
Dwebble
Houndour
Koffing
Larvesta
Lickitung
Munchlax
Shelmet
Shroomish
Stunky
Sandshrew
Teddiursa
Trapinch
Wynaut
Zigzagoon

(I'm sure you disagree with at least some of this- I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.)

Interestingly, I don't think any really dominant styles or cores have emerged so far. Magnemite continues to be really strong, but with Diglett / Drilbur usage high it feels controllable as long as you're willing to predict a bit. Diglett has been a lot better than I initially expected; there's a good number of directly trappable threats, and lots of things that get chipped into range (Drilbur, Staryu, Mienfoo in some situations, etc.). Strong special attacking cores (e.g. Gastly + Abra) have felt relatively weak; the rise of Diglett and Vullaby (which I'm surprised by) also don't help.

Sand teams still seem good; I particularly liked brewfasa's team this week, although I'm not a huge fan of the Natu. Sand Force Drilbur is tough to switch into. I'm curious if we'll see some lagged inverse correlation with Snover usage. Speaking of Snover, I still like it a lot, but there's a lot of things that force it out (e.g. Magnemite). Finding solid defensive pivots to pair it with might be the next step.

This week's team

Importable

Snover @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Snow Warning
Level: 5
EVs: 100 Atk / 184 SpA / 200 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Blizzard
- Giga Drain
- Ice Shard
- Hidden Power [Fighting]

Drilbur @ Eviolite
Ability: Mold Breaker
Level: 5
EVs: 36 HP / 236 Atk / 212 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- Toxic
- Rapid Spin

Drifloon @ Flying Gem
Ability: Unburden
Level: 5
EVs: 36 HP / 196 Atk / 4 Def / 120 SpA / 8 SpD / 116 Spe
Lonely Nature
- Acrobatics
- Shadow Ball
- Will-O-Wisp
- Hidden Power [Ground]

Pawniard @ Eviolite
Ability: Defiant
Level: 5
EVs: 156 Atk / 36 Def / 116 SpD / 196 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Iron Head
- Sucker Punch
- Thunder Wave
- Stealth Rock

Magnemite @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Magnet Pull
Level: 5
EVs: 240 SpA / 240 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 3 Atk / 30 Def / 30 SpA / 30 SpD / 30 Spe
- Volt Switch
- Flash Cannon
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Fighting]

Mienfoo @ Flying Gem
Ability: Regenerator
Level: 5
EVs: 76 HP / 156 Atk / 36 Def / 236 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Fake Out
- High Jump Kick
- U-turn
- Acrobatics

Replay (vs. Corporal Levi)

I felt like there were a bunch of good ideas here and am a little sad that they didn't work out. The basic idea is to do well against teams that use Fighting- / Steel-types to deal with Snover. Acrobatics Mienfoo was a good way to get a large advantage on turn two given trends in Mienfoo mirror leads, and Toxic Drilbur helps out against some common bulkier switchins (Porygon, Slowpoke, Frillish). Pawniard patches up a weakness to Shell Smashers and provides SR to boot.

As for the game itself, I'm a bit saddened by how I played it. Given the setup, I think I looked too hard for a way to break the game open for Snover when I should've looked harder at setting up Drifloon. Some of the early-game turns also kind of sucked; on turn 4, I was expecting to take a Magnemite - Tentacool trade to open up Snover a bit more, but was caught out instead. On turn 8, I should've Earthquaked on the switch; this was mostly an error of not knowing the roll on Frillish. (And, obviously, there's the Carvanha weakness to consider; the endgame could have possibly been played better with some clever prediction.)

 

[Artemisa]

People are really still arguing about centralization.

LC doesn't have the pokemon pool that other tiers have which is LC UU barely exist. If you ban one mon people are going to spam another set of pokemon. Shit's happening right now in the current gen.... Onix, Vulla, rock type, grass type, timburr, ponyta. I've never had a problem dealing with missy when I was playing early BW as well and I haven't often seen Missy downright sweep a whole team after a nasty plot. A lot of other pokemon gained roles due to missy that weren't so obscure either. Stunky was good for trapping psychic types in general not just missy and it gave it a hard time, Porygon was a nice check on it and can wear it down, Vullaby is in the same boat, etc. You pretty much knew it's running NP + Shadow ball so it's not like it could run all these amazing combinations. People were pretty creative w/ the last two slots, but you can get an idea by looking at the structure of someone's team what other attack it has. Team structures such as Sand Rush, Volt Switch, Regen (haha), and others all found ways to wear it down... you don't really have to build a crazy core to counter missy. I think people are blowing it out of proportion.

My roost archen fucked up all LO krows and hit hard as hell to.

 

[fatty]

welcome back Artemisa happy to see all the old faces showing up lately. just some rebuttals with some of your points tho:

- centralization is not a good sole reason to ban something, as always, missy is just broken. if something’s getting 100% usage you gotta ask why, might be because it’s too good not to use

- lc uu doesn’t exist because lc is already niche as is, lack of support, and overall disinterest. pool of mons has very little if anything to do with it.

- I don’t subscribe to the idea that another mon will fill missys place and I think that’s bad reasoning anyways. I think the slippery slope argument is way outta bounds here, there’s nothing that compares to missy

- missy doesn’t have to sweep a whole team to be broken

- early bw was a completely different meta than we have now.

- missy doesn’t have different sets because it doesn’t need them. np + 2 take + last move tbolt / taunt / heal bell / wow let’s it beat everything it needs with room to fuck with the opponent even more

- unfortunately some of these sentiments, like “your” roost archen, are exactly why bw was left in such a shit show

———

also some solid observations iss rly glad to see the interest bw has had thus far, hopefully we can keep it going.

magnemite and mienfoo are probably the strongest mons right now, or at least most influential, as you touched upon. mienfoo usage is dwarfing Timburr at this point 11-4 but I don’t see that disparity continuing, timb is simply too strong to be the 10th most used mon and that large of a gap between foo. I can maybe chalk it up to mienfoo being as splashable as always and people becoming accustomed to the new meta, but we’ll see. Obviously mienfoo is still great and can do so many things such as bulky knock off pivot, bp, and even go a more offensive route.

Magnemite is just the perfect splashable scarfer in this meta. It provides useful resistances to get in safely, especially being one of the only things that can take a gem boosted acro without much worry. It’s obviously strong af and volt switch is the exact reason almost all teams need a ground at this point. cherry on top it traps ferro and pawn in certain situations, opening up other offensive options.

sand is maybe not as good as it once was, but I think there’s still plenty of potential. hippo is just a great mon I general, being just a fat blob and soaking up hits, handling the aforementioned mag, and providing a phazer that can sometimes be hard to fit into bw squads. after that you can abuse sand in multiple ways such as rock type smashers like oma / tirt to ease setup, lileep being a special sponge like no other, boosted drilbur attacks through sand force, and even using the extra sand chip for something like carvahna. it’s also the easiest way to stall in bw if you’re into that shit.

something I’m very interested to see is how the 19 speed tier plays out. in the previous meta you already knew you were using your own missy and your opponent had one, so I felt as though the incentive to use these mons was pretty negligible in most cases. with missy gone, I feel like mons like Staryu, abra, Aipom, and possibly ponyta have a new lease on life and I think you can already see that in the usage.

lastly, I’m very interested in the variety we have in spikestack options rn. while it seemed in the previous meta that double ghost + dweb/ ferro was the easiest and best arch, the variety you can have in this type of meta is definitely noticeable. alongside dweb / ferro, I feel like budew and shelmet are easier to fit into teams right now, and with the lack of missy I find choosing between floon, gastly, and frill can change up your team flow very much. the best abuser is probably carvahna right now but I’m sure some other things will emerge.

oh almost forgot, please bring ur riolu counters. Ik it’s annoying af but even throwing protect on rando mons is helpful.

 

[iss]

This week's update:

VR + thoughts

Notable changes:

Up
Timburr: A -> A+
Carvanha: A- -> A+
Lileep: B -> B+
Ponyta: B- -> B+
Croagunk: B- -> B

Down
Snover: A -> A-
Vullaby: A- -> B+
Clamperl: B+ -> B
Slowpoke: B+ -> B

VR

S
Mienfoo

A+
Drifloon
Drilbur
Carvanha
Magnemite
Diglett
Timburr

A
Staryu
Gastly
Abra
Porygon

A-
Ferroseed
Snover
Frillish
Foongus
Archen
Hippopotas

B+
Omanyte
Riolu
Pawniard
Vullaby
Tirtouga
Lileep
Tentacool
Ponyta

B
Slowpoke
Clamperl
Natu
Aipom
Shellder
Croagunk

B-
Taillow
Budew
Chinchou
Darumaka
Dwebble
Doduo

C
Bronzor
Cottonee
Houndour
Koffing
Larvesta
Lickitung
Munchlax
Shelmet
Shroomish
Stunky
Sandshrew
Teddiursa
Trapinch
Wingull
Wynaut
Zigzagoon

Magnemite dropped of the face of the earth this week, seeing zero usage! I'm a little surprised, but not overly so- with every team packing a Ground-type except for fran17's, it has become a somewhat riskier proposition. Zero is probably too low given its utility, but I'm curious whether Diglett usage will keep up- trapping is great, obviously, but this is a very bulky metagame. (Vullaby usage was also zero, but that's much less weird to me.) We also saw more diversity in Fighting-types, with two each of Riolu and Croagunk (and two Fighting-type-less teams to boot). These all seem healthy and interesting.

I think the dynamic that will wind up defining this metagame is the interplay between hazard stacking and Rapid Spin users. Carvanha feels very strong at the moment, but there are plenty of other offensive threats (plus Riolu) that work well. The thing that is weird to me is that hazard setters (Ferroseed, Drilbur, etc.) mostly beat spinners (Staryu, Drilbur) on the switch, but spinners mostly beat Ghost-types. I think the net effect is that it is hard to reliably keep hazards down- it is very easy in some matchups and very hard in others. tko vs levi was a cool game for mostly unrelated reasons, but I do think it demonstrates the risk in bringing something like Shelmet- it's either going to be awesome or useless.

This week's team

https://pokepast.es/c1044e694088ca21 (note that Carvanha was 31 HP in the replay)
Replay (vs. Void)

I wanted to try Ponyta, given its ability to 2HKO most top-tier threats between Flare Blitz and Wild Charge while having some playability against Diglett by way of Flame Charge. Flying Gem Archen (h/t Fiend) was a cool lure against teams that rely on bulkier Pokemon (e.g. Porygon, Lileep, Frillish) to deal with Archen, as it actually picks up 2HKOes on all unresisted targets. (Notably, Ponyta struggles against these threats.) Scarf Diglett + Timburr patch up a perceived weakness to Shell Smashers, and Carvanha is here because I think it's pretty good.

The game itself was pretty interesting. I expected Archen to do really well given the lack of Flying resists on Void's team, and it did show off its power with a relatively unexpected KO on Lickitung on turn 8. Viewers were critical of the choice to Drain Punch on turn 12 (instead of using U-turn), and I think I agree, although I perhaps wouldn't couch it in such game-defining terms; none of the prospective switch-ins were very appealing. The threat Carvanha poses against more offensive teams was also on full display here, as the game came down to an apparent 50/50 [1] despite what seemed like a significant advantage for me. I think sacrificing Ponyta instead of Staryu would've eased prediction in the endgame, although losing the Frillish-Timburr speed tie was also painful and would've sealed the game immediately had it gone the other way.

[1] My odds were slightly better than 50/50, as Carvanha damage rolls in the mirror meant that I had a 24.6% chance of winning even if Void had gotten the double Protect. That certainly isn't the best endgame to play for, of course.

 

[iss]

We're back again! This week was pretty fun- there were 28 unique Pokemon across 8 teams, which is astoundingly high.

VR + thoughts

Notable changes:

Up
Hippopotas: A- -> A
Lileep: B+ -> A-
Aipom: B -> B+
Wynaut: C -> B
Budew: B- -> B

Down
Timburr: A+ -> A
Magnemite: A+ -> A
Porygon: A -> A-
Archen: A- -> B+

VR

S
Mienfoo

A+
Drilbur
Carvanha
Diglett
Drifloon

A
Staryu
Timburr
Magnemite
Gastly
Abra
Hippopotas

A-
Ferroseed
Snover
Lileep
Frillish
Foongus
Porygon

B+
Vullaby
Omanyte
Riolu
Tentacool
Tirtouga
Aipom
Archen
Pawniard
Ponyta

B
Wynaut
Budew
Natu
Slowpoke
Clamperl
Croagunk
Shellder

B-
Shelmet
Dwebble
Darumaka
Taillow
Bronzor
Chinchou
Doduo

C
Cranidos
Cottonee
Houndour
Koffing
Larvesta
Lickitung
Munchlax
Shroomish
Stunky
Teddiursa
Trapinch
Wingull

There was a ton of variety this week- we even saw a Cranidos! Yet overall, I think "standard" bulky offense structures are starting to solidify- trash, Void, Levi, fran17, and zf (to an extent) all brought teams that play somewhat similarly in my view. The general theme of hazard setters, defensive pivots, and fast cleaners is pretty broad and simple, but it seems like there's still a lot of disagreement on the best role players. I'm interested in if we'll reach any sort of consensus by the end of the season.

The role of Ground-types is also pretty interesting. I feel like Drilbur is a really tough Pokemon for most teams to switch into, and between Swords Dance, Choice Scarf, and potentially Sand Force, I don't think a concrete answer exists. Hippopotas has also felt great to me, now that it doesn't have to worry about giving Misdreavus a free-ish switch-in. Of course, Diglett and Trapinch are still lurking for more offensively-minded teams. We saw one Magnemite this week as a result; we also saw a Snover, which won pretty convincingly. I'm super curious if we'll see more and more Snover- it's a solid Pokemon for sure, but it can sometimes feel very matchup-dependent, as teams heavy on hazards and Fighting- / Steel-types are super painful to play against.

This week's team

https://pokepast.es/a04d94da05f71bd0
Replay (vs. King Kdot)

I'm pretty proud of this team! You might think stall in team preview, but it's really a CM Bronzor team. While looking through the RestTalk + boost space, Bronzor really stood out to me- it only fears Mold Breaker Drilbur and Fire-types. (Dark-types are also somewhat problematic, as you need Psychic to beat Mienfoo / Timburr.) It switches in and sets up on an absurd number of things- plus, this team has the extra trick of defense-passing Shelmet to set up even more wins. The rest of the team is a solid defensive sand setup which felt nice to play. There are some bad matchups- NP + Taunt Vullaby, Taunt Mienfoo, SD Pawniard- but overall it feels great to play.

The game wound up being fairly straightforward; given Vullaby's presence, I considered this a somewhat bad matchup, but I was relieved to see U-turn on turn one. The Staryu sequence was kind of funny and I should've replaced at least some Thunderbolts with Scalds, but it worked out as expected. The one other misplay was using Whirlwind against Vullaby on turn 30; it would've been better to just leave Hippopotas out there and try to catch Roost / switches with Earthquake. Bronzor didn't get to be the star, but at the very least it showed off its natural bulk (and ability to KO Mienfoo) in the endgame.

Seriously, I think this team is awesome. I wish I could play it again.

 

[iss]

We've reached the end of our LCPL run, so it's time for an update.

VR

Lots of changes, as it's been several weeks.

Up
Abra: A -> A+
Staryu: A -> A+
Porygon: A- -> A+
Vullaby: B+ -> A-
Natu: B -> A-
Budew: B -> B+
Chinchou: B- -> B+
Larvesta: C -> B

Down
Carvanha: A+ -> A
Drilbur: A+ -> A
Drifloon: A+ -> A
Timburr: A -> A-
Aipom: B+ -> B
Riolu: B+ -> B

VR

S
Mienfoo

A+
Abra
Staryu
Diglett
Porygon

A
Carvanha
Drilbur
Magnemite
Hippopotas
Drifloon
Gastly

A-
Ferroseed
Foongus
Timburr
Vullaby
Lileep
Snover
Frillish
Natu

B+
Archen
Budew
Pawniard
Omanyte
Tentacool
Ponyta
Chinchou
Tirtouga

B
Clamperl
Larvesta
Slowpoke
Croagunk
Riolu
Wynaut
Shellder
Aipom

B-
Shelmet
Darumaka
Dwebble
Bronzor
Taillow
Trapinch
Doduo

C
Cranidos
Cottonee
Houndour
Koffing
Lickitung
Munchlax
Shroomish
Stunky
Teddiursa
Wingull
Zigzagoon

As with most metagames, there's been a slow trend towards somewhat bulkier teams, and I think that's contributed greatly to the drop-off in Carvanha and Drifloon usage. I think Porygon has proven itself to be really good after showing up just four times through week 5; it's just so splashable and helps a ton against more offensive teams. Sand usage has stayed surprisingly constant; there was a point in the middle of the season where I thought they would become dominant, but that never happened- increased Staryu and Natu usage might have been a factor.

Are things in a stable state? I think it's hard to say- I personally found teambuilding to be really hard at the end of the season, as covering the wide range of offensive teams and cheese was tough, but I did really, really like some of my teams this season. I found most even matchups to be quite enjoyable, and I thought there was a lot of room for cool techs and good plays to carry the day. There are some thoughts on the future of the tier below, but at least personally I wouldn't be opposed to playing this format again.

Teams: (click on the sprites for pastes!)

Ordered by how much I liked them, with brief notes.

(Semifinals, vs Void)
Toxic Orb Gastly is really, really fun- definitely give it a go. The idea is for Gastly to open holes for Abra to clean up; there are some other cool lures, like Toxic Chinchou. (Chinchou is awesome, by the way.)

(Week 6, vs tcr)
A pretty classic sand setup with a very strong Omanyte. Memento Drifloon is fun too. I'd probably replace Vullaby if I were using this today.

(Week 5, vs trash)
The Larvesta / Carvanha / Staryu core is a personal favorite. At the time, I thought dual spinners were necessary for consistency, but I think a single-spinner setup (or Natu) are also good choices.

(Week 3, vs King Kdot)
See the above post for more details.


I considered bringing this for several weeks; Darumaka is really strong, and the defensive core here is great.


A simple Carvanha team, although it struggles against faster teams. (Consider Scarf Mienfoo, perhaps?)

Thoughts on the future of BW

So, at the end of this, we're left with the question of where to go next. I'm surprised to find both that I rather enjoyed thinking about and playing this metagame, and that I'm in the seeming minority on this. I worry about inconsistency in teambuilding and running into bad matchups, but I really do think that the overall quality of games has been pretty good. Fewer speed ties and (somewhat) more variety are, in fact, good things. I retain my earlier doubts about Misdreavus being ban-worthy, but in a vacuum, I'd weakly favor keeping the current metagame.

One thing that I can't support is a full revert. I'm personally very enamored to 2013 BW2 (I hope that's obvious, at least) and have given it a lot of thought, but I really do think it'd be unworkable. It'd be really hard to find more than a couple of defensive cores with today's optimizations.

On the topic of Swagger, Sand Veil, and friends: I think it's plainly obvious that they should go. (I do think that people's opinions have been unduly swayed by the games where they've shown up; using those games as arguments for or against Misdreavus seems kind of silly, at least to me.)

One thing I've learned over the years is that it's futile to convince anyone of anything, so I have no desire to try. But if you'd like a game to think about this, or just for fun, I'm more than happy to oblige- just ping me on Discord or PS whenever.

A few thanks

Thanks to everyone who's played and watched BW LC this season. Special thanks to: Coconut, for drafting me, testing, and generally being a great manager; all of the Panchams, for being a great group of folks to work with; Corporal Levi, for so, so many games; and Fiend and tko, for some cool insights on the metagame. Hope you're all doing well; don't be a stranger.