My Personal Tiering Thoughts / Approach with ORAs

[Aldaron]

Note, this is PURELY theorymon and PURELY my own thoughts, not the thoughts of the council.

Theorymon-wise (in addition to some experience on the ORAs ladder), I believe OU kind of "lucked" out here, in that I don't think a lot of the new stuff will be broken. Almost every new Mega is good to great, but I don't see most of them as gamebreakingly broken.

Obviously introducing a ton of new, strong variables will change the metagame in terms of secondary / tertiary effects that aren't predictable, but my immediate thoughts are that Mega Salamence (lol) will be broken, the Hoopa form (dark / psychic giving stab on the new dark move + its ridiculous offensive stats + ability to have any item) will be broken, and Greninja (getting low kick and gunk shot) will have to be suspected.

So basically, I'm assuming I will support a Mega Salamence / Hoopa form (not regular Hoopa) quickban, and a Greninja suspecting.

I won't make a decision until after release so there is some brief, actual real time experience (probably a week or a little less), but that is where I stand at the moment.

You're welcome to mention anything you want really; just keep it civil.

 

[dekzeh]

Agree with everything said here, I'd just like to add another concern though, do you/other council members/tier leaders have a stance on lower tiers being affected by new megas? Important mostly for SPL, I guess cause I don't think theres time for new usage stats.

I assume there's no ideas of playing the old XY lower tiers but at the same time we cant have NU with Mega Beedrill or RU with Mega Gallade, where do the lower tiers leaders stand on this?

 

[Aldaron]

Regarding SPL and lower tiers: I've contacted some of the lower tier leaders and asked them to make quick decisions with the obvious megas.

For example, I think it's clear Mega Altaria / Mega Beedrill / Mega Gallade have no place in NU or RU, so hopefully they ban them quickly.

I'll also ask antar to make 1 month stats from Nov 22 - Dec 22 that we can use to usage-remove a lot of these megas quickly as well.

Basically, just move quickly :P

 

[Jukain]

Agree with Mence and Greninja of course, but the Hoopa form is not a concern for now because it won't be released -- at least afaik (correct me if I'm wrong).

 

[Clone]

Ok heres a serious question since I know literally everyone who's played on the ORAS ladder is thinking about this: can't you just base your decision on mence through the ORAS OU Ladder? I know it's not official or anything, but it still gets a lot of traffic and people are playing it religiously, including the normal ladder heroes. I think its safe to say that what we see on the ORAS ladder will be the same as what we'll get once the official ladder updates come the 21st. It's pretty blatantly obvious that Mence is broken, and the sooner he leaves the sooner the meta can develop without every team bringing Mamoswine / Weavile + Rotom W / Zapdos / Skarm + Scarf Ninja.

 

[Enki]

While I seriously doubt that we may get something that can "balance" Salamence we should remember that all the data we have at the moment, is from a Beta, there might be a chance (just like there might not be) that we may get some other megas/alternative formes that could change the metagame.
No need to rush about it.

 

[Clone]

While I seriously doubt that we may get something that can "balance" Salamence we should remember that all the data we have at the moment, is from a Beta, there might be a chance (just like there might not be) that we may get some other megas/alternative formes that could change the metagame.
No need to rush about it.

The problem with this, though, is that Mence is unquestionably broken. Youd definitely have an argument if there was doubt about Mence being broken, but aside from noobs who say "Choice Band Mamoswine OHKOes Mence with Ice Shard d0nt ban pl0x," I, as well as many others, have seen very little to zero evidence of Mence being even remotely balanced. The sooner we get rid of this problem, the sooner we can work on balancing out the rest of the Meta through suspect tests. For example there is zero reason to consider suspecting Greninja while Mence is in the tier. Now, Ninja is obviously a problem and deserves to be looked at, but we cant do so untill we remove the stuff thats more broken first, which in this case is undoubtedly Mega Salamence.

 

[Jukain]

The reason not to be rushed about banning Mega Salamence has nothing to do with data we haven't gotten from the game yet, but more that it hasn't actually been released yet. You can't just ban something; there is a procedure to go along with that including a proper discussion thread, despite how pointless that might seem in this instance. And I mean if people want to have fun with their broken Mega then let them. The ORAS ladder is just a 'for fun' thing anyways and a perk we've never gotten to have before. But banning stuff at this stage, when it's not even our official metagame or released, just looks bad on the outside.

 

[Enki]

No, but I totally agree with you on the issue, I think Megamence should be quickbanned, it's just that, we're talking about a "beta Metagame" one who is not official by any means at the moment, come ORAS we may (or may not, of course) get a different Metagame from what we have right now, just like Salamenceite getting officially released.

 

[Clone]

The reason not to be rushed about banning Mega Salamence has nothing to do with data we haven't gotten from the game yet, but more that it hasn't actually been released yet. You can't just ban something; there is a procedure to go along with that including a proper discussion thread, despite how pointless that might seem in this instance. And I mean if people want to have fun with their broken Mega then let them. The ORAS ladder is just a 'for fun' thing anyways and a perk we've never gotten to have before. But banning stuff at this stage, when it's not even our official metagame or released, just looks bad on the outside.

Im not saying to ban Mence on this ladder. Im simply suggesting that the OU Council use this ladder to decide Mence's fate on the official ladder when its released, rather than wait however long it takes for the entire process to go down. Its pretty clear that what we are playing now will be very similar to what we will see once the official ladder is implemented, so Im just saying that using this ladder as a "guideline" (for lack of a better term :/) for his fate is not a bad option. I just think its a good idea for us to get a head start on this process so we're not stuck with the same team archetypes we run into 8/10 ORAS ladder games on the official ladder.

 

[X5Dragon]

We should definitely open a discussion thread about how to deal with Mega Salamence (with the preference being quick banning it) and also giving people more time to play the metagame before said thread, say like 2 more weeks so then we can have people who have played for a month on ORAS ladder and those who waited until the game was released before playing competitively and jumped in for the remainder of the month on PS.

Remember we have holidays coming in soon...

How we are perceived by others is a very important aspect and it has shown in many instances, for example in the Mega Gengar suspect thread where people fought about the wording of his ban and where to place the blame (offensiveness vs. overpowered ability) more than whether or not it was broken. Lengthy discussions, open forum for opinions and arguments before making the final decision no matter how clear the decision is will ensure that no matter others say, they will always label the decisions as community based.

 

[Aldaron]

If the actual games are EXACTLY the same as the demo dumps, I'll probably personally take the ORAS ladder into account pretty highly.

However, if there is a competitive difference, like another mega, or additions to learnsets, I probably won't because as I mentioned, secondary / tertiary effects are hard to predict / model.