2020 continues on its wild path...
As I went over in the "On the Ubers Radar" thread the goal between then and now was to increase the council size and do a vote on a "Dynamax Banlist" of some sort.
Let's start with the new Ubers Council. The intent with the council selection was to provide a range of forum backgrounds and opinions, from those known for their faces in our tournaments to others known for their forum contributions, and those in between. On top of that, experience within Ubers and how we operate in the grand scheme of things is also important so that we can maintain our identity as the tier that aims to preserve as much as competitively possible - with priority given to Pokemon if we can afford to. With all that in mind, the following nine users will be our starting SS Ubers Council:
Cynara
dream
Hack
Manaphy
Minority
Mysterious M
Nayrz (Leader)
Reje
Terracotta
Now for the real topic - Dynamax in Ubers. Why are we at this point, anyway?
Prior to Pokemon Home's release, Dynamax was regarded as a fine mechanic by the community, balanced by the centralization of Zacian and Eternatus and their inability to use the mechanic themselves. When Pokemon Home released, it came with legalizing various Ubers present in the SS code. There was one catch though - they could Dynamax. This has drastically thrown off the balance in the metagame to the point almost everyone has expressed discontent with it - games often centralize directly around certain Dynamax-boosted threats and how they are abused or nullified to the point little else matters. This pressure the various Dynamax-powered Ubers Pokemon have also extends to the teambuilder, reducing the interesting choices available both to use and to play around opposing threats compared to the general expectations our metagame has. Before Home, Dynamax was viewed as a cool way for lower tier Pokemon to stand out in Ubers, but now the Ubers themselves with access to the mechanic are the ones in full oppressive control of the metagame.
The council discussions led most of us to believe that the proposal of a complex ban on Dynamax as an initial starting point is the right way to begin - Ubers has the unique ability to pursue complex bans in our efforts to preserve elements in the metagame provided they are grounded in logic. There is a limit to how complex things can be dealt with when we consider the wider tiering system and ease of community understanding, but we know that any complex ban comes with an added knowledge burden to our players. We also have to accept that tiering in Ubers will come with some controversial and messy decisions when compared to other tiers in order to fit our goals. Still, the complex banlist needs something solid to operate from, something that makes a level of sense or we spend all day nitpicking. Question is then, what fits that description?
There are a few options that floated around in the previous discussion - a BST limit to Dynamax, ban all Ubers from Dynamax, ban the mechanic itself, to name some. The community felt that a full ban was too extreme at this point in time, and banning by BST introduces a large amount of collateral if used to solve the current problems, while also setting a poor precedent. Using Ubers as a hard baseline of what can't Dynamax would mean anything OU does would affect our banlist too, so we're using it as a basic idea of what to look at instead. The SS Council felt that using everything currently Ubers as the idea would cover too many things that are not problems with Dynamax, so we decided to go by the idea that anything that found itself being automatically placed in Ubers is a good starting point.
That left one issue out - Ditto. Ditto being able to circumvent the purpose of the banlist by turning into something on that banlist and then using Dynamax is something that just doesn't make much sense to allow. There are some differences between the imposter and the original forme, but in practice Ditto will violate the premise of the banlist and take direct unintentional advantage of a tiering decision - thinking in reverse, Ditto is being buffed by the effects of a ban on those it can copy. There are two ways this can be dealt with; one is that the clause can cover transformations but this also means the clause has increased complexity. It's a nightmare to enforce transformations combined with Dynamax in practice as it requires a further convoluted in-battle alteration to prevent Ditto using Dynamax when it's transformed into a Pokemon on the banlist, and its even less clear to players. Why can Ditto Dynamax sometimes and not others? There are limits to how complex a ban should be, and in this case it's better to take the simple solution and prevent Ditto from using Dynamax altogether.
With all of this in mind, the following solution was concluded and ready to be voted on:
Ubers Dynamax Clause: Pokemon on the Ubers Dynamax Banlist cannot Dynamax.
Ditto
Kyurem-W
Lunala
Marshadow
Mewtwo
Necrozma-DM
Necrozma-DW
Reshiram
Solgaleo
Zekrom
Kyurem-W
Lunala
Marshadow
Mewtwo
Necrozma-DM
Necrozma-DW
Reshiram
Solgaleo
Zekrom
And the council voted as follows:
Here's why we all voted this way - feel free to read!
My thoughts on Dynamaxing on Ubers haven't changed since my post in the Ubers: On The Radar. I am however in strong disagreement that a specific dynamax banlist is the way to handle it, especially in the near future with DLC releases. This proposed Dynamax banlist offers a short-term solution which will be hit with a considerable amount of challenges for us, forcing us to constantly evaluate the release(s) of the additional pokemon through extra suspect testing and / or council votes.
This Dynamax list solution is prone to cherry-picking from the community constantly debating what Pokemon should and should not be able to Dynamax is dangerous and uncharted ground and in my opinion a controversial direction of how we handle the tiering of a mechanic such as Dynamax.It also challenges the scrutiny of our tiering and how we handle this going forward feels very unclear to me.
I feel the simplest solution to all of this is to test the Dynamax mechanic as a whole and I would support the idea of a full Dynamax ban in Ubers, I do not feel the mechanic itself should have any place in the metagame but a complex solution which raises a lot of questions and redefines how we have to look at things, is not the way to handle it just for the sake of preserving purity in Ubers tiering and retaining a unbalanced mechanic.
This Dynamax list solution is prone to cherry-picking from the community constantly debating what Pokemon should and should not be able to Dynamax is dangerous and uncharted ground and in my opinion a controversial direction of how we handle the tiering of a mechanic such as Dynamax.It also challenges the scrutiny of our tiering and how we handle this going forward feels very unclear to me.
I feel the simplest solution to all of this is to test the Dynamax mechanic as a whole and I would support the idea of a full Dynamax ban in Ubers, I do not feel the mechanic itself should have any place in the metagame but a complex solution which raises a lot of questions and redefines how we have to look at things, is not the way to handle it just for the sake of preserving purity in Ubers tiering and retaining a unbalanced mechanic.
I do not believe that maintaining the status quo is a realistic path, given that the current state of the tier is far from ideal, and removing the mechanic in it's entirety would strip Ubers not only of a feature that isn't necessarily inherently problematic (as seen by the pre-Home metagame) but also adds another layer to our competitive metagame that can be viewed as positive. In a tier that aims to provide its players with the largest array of elements and strategies as possible, there's clear upside to erring on the side of caution with this and avoiding as much collateral damage, initially limiting the mechanic to a smaller pool of users that aren’t viewed as problematic.
With that in mind, this route should opt for something that can deal with not only our current pool of Pokemon but also minimally look forward to what's inevitably coming, avoiding ridiculous "maintenance" and cherrypicking, while still keeping our complex solution as simple and justifiable as possible. By following an established framework to how new Pokemon are treated regarding dynamax, you avoid issues of having to individually tackle every new element and can justify having “x user unable to dynamax over y user”, which allows our community to understand the backing behind our bans as well as setting a physical baseline that blankets everything we consider problematic.
Initially clausing out dynamax on any "natural ubers" (any Pokemon that is automatically placed into the Ubers tier) + ditto (considering it can just copy these now-limited Pokemon) seems to cover those bases for the most part and is, in my eyes, the most justifiable and least messy solution to this. With that you're ensuring that the most "powerful" elements introduced into the tier with Home (such as Dusk-Mane or Zekrom) as well as with any future DLCs are brought back down while dynamax can continue to be a positive wrinkle in the tier, allowing for even more options when playing and teambuilding.
With that in mind, this route should opt for something that can deal with not only our current pool of Pokemon but also minimally look forward to what's inevitably coming, avoiding ridiculous "maintenance" and cherrypicking, while still keeping our complex solution as simple and justifiable as possible. By following an established framework to how new Pokemon are treated regarding dynamax, you avoid issues of having to individually tackle every new element and can justify having “x user unable to dynamax over y user”, which allows our community to understand the backing behind our bans as well as setting a physical baseline that blankets everything we consider problematic.
Initially clausing out dynamax on any "natural ubers" (any Pokemon that is automatically placed into the Ubers tier) + ditto (considering it can just copy these now-limited Pokemon) seems to cover those bases for the most part and is, in my eyes, the most justifiable and least messy solution to this. With that you're ensuring that the most "powerful" elements introduced into the tier with Home (such as Dusk-Mane or Zekrom) as well as with any future DLCs are brought back down while dynamax can continue to be a positive wrinkle in the tier, allowing for even more options when playing and teambuilding.
This clause should be seen as a good starting point for further evaluating the tier. Ubers pkmn being able to dynamax makes it impossible to understand and analyze the 1v1 match-ups between mons in the tier since anything can now live a hit from anything. It is flexible to start with the Ubers alone as pre-home displayed great competitiveness in the tier as a whole (which was partly due to the big guns not being able to dynamax), meaning there is potential in salvaging some of this generation's core mechanic.
I don't have too much to say because I think I laid out a lot of my thoughts in the discussion thread before, and I mostly agree with what others have said here. As I said in my 2nd post in the previous thread, I was somewhat torn between trying to do a banlist option and just outright banning the mechanic, but I've come back around to my first post in that thread which supported keeping dynamax around. Logically speaking, between banning dynamax outright and keeping it around, we can always ban it later, so I think we don't have that much to lose as a tier when it comes to trying this out. Creating a group of players as we have done here will allow us to quickly and efficiently manage the list of banned dynamaxes without any of the previous drawbacks such as being reliant on OU tiering or anything like that. Of course, down the road the more controversial mons can have their own suspects, but I doubt anyone will have much problems with the pokemon on the current list.
I agree with dream in how we shouldn't have to have too much cherrypicking of the banlist to keeps things at least somewhat simple and straightforward. While I still think the dynamax mechanic is a fundamentally broken one, it does have it's benefits in providing more diverse options and making somewhat obscure pokemon more viable which leads to a more interesting metagame, and it's negative traits are mitigated by being usable on the less strong pokemon; the pre-DLC Sword and Shield metagame was a proven example of how it was balanced. It's bound to be a bumpy road but I think this is the right path to go to keep Ubers fresh and exciting for the long run.
I agree with dream in how we shouldn't have to have too much cherrypicking of the banlist to keeps things at least somewhat simple and straightforward. While I still think the dynamax mechanic is a fundamentally broken one, it does have it's benefits in providing more diverse options and making somewhat obscure pokemon more viable which leads to a more interesting metagame, and it's negative traits are mitigated by being usable on the less strong pokemon; the pre-DLC Sword and Shield metagame was a proven example of how it was balanced. It's bound to be a bumpy road but I think this is the right path to go to keep Ubers fresh and exciting for the long run.
I want to preface my reasoning by stating that I have seen few posts which discuss the problem of dynamax from the fundamentals of Ubers' tiering policy. Most discussion on dynamax so far has simply been about acknowledging or characterizing the phenomena, rather than explaining how in certain contexts it can fundamentally oppose what tiering policy seeks to promote.
The central issue of dynamax is that certain Pokemon such as Necrozma-DM and Lunala can exploit it to substantially alter the premise on which players make interesting choices, both in builder and during play. Just like many other competitive tiers, Ubers' has historically been a 6v6 Pokemon challenge where interesting choices in regards to this dynamic are made in the builder and during play. While matches can and often do come down to a singular Pokemon or strategy, the context of the entire 6v6 is ultimately what led to that outcome. In contrast, when dynamax is used on certain Pokemon, there is a considerable shift in emphasis away from the 6v6 dynamic and toward a nuanced and situational exploitation of the dynamax mechanic. In builder, a player is highly limited in the number of interesting choices they can demonstrate due to the overall lack of options and situational nature of checks for certain dynamax abusers. In battle, a player is highly limited in the number of interesting choices they can demonstrate due to the overall lack of options caused by the short-term pressure and situational nature imposed by certain dynamax abusers. Games are often no longer a 6v6 strategy contest in building and play, but rather a contest of leveraging odds against dynamax situations. In short, dynamax on certain Pokemon is a problem because it both reduces the amount of interesting choices available to players and alters the premise of strategy on which the game is played.
It must be acknowledged that in a vacuum, a shift away from the 6v6 Pokemon contest is not inherently bad. However, Ubers is not a vacuum and there are expectations held by players, both familiar to the tier and coming from other competitive tiers. One of the most fundamental expectations in Pokemon is the preservation of interesting choice in context of the 6v6 contest. Ubers could be a contest of leveraging odds against dynamax situations, and there are no available statistics that indicate the contrary or lack of competitive edge; however, it was not to be. The widespread dissatisfaction of the playerbase cannot be ignored, especially when weighed against the positive perception of dynamax prior to the Home releases. It was not until dynamax was available on certain Home release Pokemon that the mechanic was able to cause a substantial shift in the premise of strategy, and subsequently cause widespread dissatisfaction with the playerbase.
Ultimately what matters is that a ban of dynamax on certain Pokemon is warranted by Ubers' tiering policy and is further reinforced by several precedents. Endless battle is an extreme case of altering game premise and is banned in all competitive tiers. Mega Rayquaza was banned due to a convergence in player interesting choice, thereby both substantially nullifying the capacity for players to demonstrate interesting choice and altering the premise away from a 6v6 Pokemon contest toward leveraging options in a solved path against a central threat in Mega Rayquaza. To some extent it could be argued that sleep clause is primarily an exercise in preserving player choice, as sleep has both few and situational counterplay options as dynamax does when exploited by certain users.
With a ban of dynamax on certain Pokemon established as warranted, next it becomes an issue of enforcement. A complete ban on dynamax would be in fundamental opposition to the core identity of Ubers' tiering policy: maximize competitive edge while minimizing the number of banned elements. There is an enormous collateral associated with banning all of dynamax, nor is that ban warranted as demonstrated by pre-Home Ubers. The only rational conclusion is therefore to only ban dynamax on Pokemon which are able to cause a substantial alteration in game premise away from a contest of interesting choices in the context of a 6v6 Pokemon battle.
The central issue of dynamax is that certain Pokemon such as Necrozma-DM and Lunala can exploit it to substantially alter the premise on which players make interesting choices, both in builder and during play. Just like many other competitive tiers, Ubers' has historically been a 6v6 Pokemon challenge where interesting choices in regards to this dynamic are made in the builder and during play. While matches can and often do come down to a singular Pokemon or strategy, the context of the entire 6v6 is ultimately what led to that outcome. In contrast, when dynamax is used on certain Pokemon, there is a considerable shift in emphasis away from the 6v6 dynamic and toward a nuanced and situational exploitation of the dynamax mechanic. In builder, a player is highly limited in the number of interesting choices they can demonstrate due to the overall lack of options and situational nature of checks for certain dynamax abusers. In battle, a player is highly limited in the number of interesting choices they can demonstrate due to the overall lack of options caused by the short-term pressure and situational nature imposed by certain dynamax abusers. Games are often no longer a 6v6 strategy contest in building and play, but rather a contest of leveraging odds against dynamax situations. In short, dynamax on certain Pokemon is a problem because it both reduces the amount of interesting choices available to players and alters the premise of strategy on which the game is played.
It must be acknowledged that in a vacuum, a shift away from the 6v6 Pokemon contest is not inherently bad. However, Ubers is not a vacuum and there are expectations held by players, both familiar to the tier and coming from other competitive tiers. One of the most fundamental expectations in Pokemon is the preservation of interesting choice in context of the 6v6 contest. Ubers could be a contest of leveraging odds against dynamax situations, and there are no available statistics that indicate the contrary or lack of competitive edge; however, it was not to be. The widespread dissatisfaction of the playerbase cannot be ignored, especially when weighed against the positive perception of dynamax prior to the Home releases. It was not until dynamax was available on certain Home release Pokemon that the mechanic was able to cause a substantial shift in the premise of strategy, and subsequently cause widespread dissatisfaction with the playerbase.
Ultimately what matters is that a ban of dynamax on certain Pokemon is warranted by Ubers' tiering policy and is further reinforced by several precedents. Endless battle is an extreme case of altering game premise and is banned in all competitive tiers. Mega Rayquaza was banned due to a convergence in player interesting choice, thereby both substantially nullifying the capacity for players to demonstrate interesting choice and altering the premise away from a 6v6 Pokemon contest toward leveraging options in a solved path against a central threat in Mega Rayquaza. To some extent it could be argued that sleep clause is primarily an exercise in preserving player choice, as sleep has both few and situational counterplay options as dynamax does when exploited by certain users.
With a ban of dynamax on certain Pokemon established as warranted, next it becomes an issue of enforcement. A complete ban on dynamax would be in fundamental opposition to the core identity of Ubers' tiering policy: maximize competitive edge while minimizing the number of banned elements. There is an enormous collateral associated with banning all of dynamax, nor is that ban warranted as demonstrated by pre-Home Ubers. The only rational conclusion is therefore to only ban dynamax on Pokemon which are able to cause a substantial alteration in game premise away from a contest of interesting choices in the context of a 6v6 Pokemon battle.
I feel like we have taken the correct line of action by choosing to go with a dynamax clause. Pre-Home, the meta was a lot more balanced than it is right now. When the usual Ubers came in the tier actually broke. Removing the ability of the mons of this list to Dynamax is something that will definately help balance the tier. All the mons in our list, are straight away broken and make the tier currently unplayable and not fun to play. As Nayrz already mentioned, we can try and have some suspects about removing or adding some mons such as Solgaleo or Kyurem-B. The line we followed actually is an immidiate way to deal with the broken meta and help it stabilize. Once we have the brokens out, we deal with each case slowly and thoroughly we will make Ubers a solid metagame to play. Dealing like that with dlc 2, is going to help Ubers be a healthy metagame.
When we simplify the issue to "Dynamax was fine pre-Home and not fine post-Home" the picture becomes clearer as to why a complex ban aimed at the stuff Home brought to us is a good starting point. It walks the fine line between the preservation policy in Ubers and maintaining competitive edge. My viewpoints were mostly laid out in the radar thread, but at the moment I'm willing to see how this goes.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little apprehensive about all this. This is our first time making real use of the complex ban freedom modern Ubers has and for a mechanic controversial across the entire site and generation at large, to boot.
This solution works in the short term and we justified the route we chose as best as we could, but it would be foolish to call it perfect when it's our first crack at balancing Dynamax around this tier and genuinely using complex bans to preserve elements. We have to be vigilant about future issues and complaints in order to keep this solution working as intended while staying true to Ubers and I think that's going to be a good challenge that this community can take on. Hopefully this new road is met with positivity and understanding.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little apprehensive about all this. This is our first time making real use of the complex ban freedom modern Ubers has and for a mechanic controversial across the entire site and generation at large, to boot.
This solution works in the short term and we justified the route we chose as best as we could, but it would be foolish to call it perfect when it's our first crack at balancing Dynamax around this tier and genuinely using complex bans to preserve elements. We have to be vigilant about future issues and complaints in order to keep this solution working as intended while staying true to Ubers and I think that's going to be a good challenge that this community can take on. Hopefully this new road is met with positivity and understanding.
Making a decision on this whole thing is rather hard I feel, but my personal opinion is that a Dynamax Clause is not the perfect solution, as by discussing the options with fellow council members it became evident that no perfect solution exists at the moment. That being said, it is a good idea to start with this kind of Dynamax Clause nonetheless. It is able to be worked on in the future with both DLCs and can further be changed currently as well with controversial Pokémon such as Kyurem-Black and Solgaleo. I am still of the opinion that we will have severe issues going forward with Dynamax as a whole, but the community standing up and working to keep the mechanic for now goes to show that we will eventually solve those as well. Even if by the end of the DLCs we have to ban the mechanic entirely.
I still think a complex ban is the best option. Before Home, no one would've seriously argued for a full ban on Dynamax. It's been shown that Dynamax isn't too broken for Ubers as long as big legendaries can't abuse it. Dynamax also has the benefit of enabling unique strategies when it's balanced.
Another point is that Ubers as a Tier should try to preserve the moves/Pokémon/mechanics that Gamefreak created, within reason of course. With a council that includes enough members the meta can be consistently healthy without the need of a total ban of the so said mechanics and we are also able to not cherrypick too much.
Of course if things will be harder and this solution will become too hard to manage properly in dlc2 we can go for a full ban , but for the next months this gives the best playability and healthy meta for the players while also respecting the Ubers philosophy.
Another point is that Ubers as a Tier should try to preserve the moves/Pokémon/mechanics that Gamefreak created, within reason of course. With a council that includes enough members the meta can be consistently healthy without the need of a total ban of the so said mechanics and we are also able to not cherrypick too much.
Of course if things will be harder and this solution will become too hard to manage properly in dlc2 we can go for a full ban , but for the next months this gives the best playability and healthy meta for the players while also respecting the Ubers philosophy.
This means the Ubers Dynamax Clause will be enabled - tagging The Immortal to implement this on PS - thanks in advance! The aim is to have the banlist on our format page and have said page hyperlinked into every Ubers battle through the clause list that notes the ban in effect to add visibility to it for all our players.
So let's talk the implications of this in both the present and future. The council recognized two things about this baseline that's worth further community investigation and discussion in the present day - Solgaleo could be taken off the list, and Kyurem-Black could be added to it. This is something we're interested in holding suspect tests on in near future to further refine the banlist. The direction this goes can be helped through community discussion as the metagame settles down.
In terms of the future, this is still very uncharted territory and I hope we all keep this in mind. The time between now and the DLCs may change our opinion on the idea of using complex bans as a way to balance the Dynamax mechanic, and the DLCs themselves will test this strategy considerably, especially DLC 2. The current status quo is prone to change as we adapt to the needs of a healthy metagame.
This thread will be used as the place to discuss the new metagame. Let us know how you feel about it!
OU's top abuser returns. In Ubers it finds setting up much harder, so sacrificing Moxie and the potential snowballing off that for Intimidate is one way to set up. Or it can just dump Dragon Dance and just try and snowball off Dmax alone. However:
You always forget this until it steamrolls you. And Dual STAB sets are not the way to go. Instead:
Yeah, ban this from Dmaxing. The ability to consistently fire off a 130 BP physical Ice STAB off the same Attack stat as Zacian-C is just too much. Its speed after a DD is beyond all non-scarfed counterplay, and it has niche options like Roost, Earth Power, Weakness Policy and Power Herb Freeze Shock to bring the pain.
