Metagame On The Ubers Radar

[Terracotta]

Hello there, a long time passed since my intial post and as I am one of the players that argued to preserve Dynamax as a mechanic I will try to elaborate on why and how we should keep it.
Let’s start with the pros for the metagame that dynamax has once we remove the big threats:
1) A lot of Pokémon are able to blanket check some really dangerous threats late game by dynamaxing without losing momentum or being forced to run multiple checks for some cores that otherwise overlap (zacianc+any physical attacker for example) , this makes the game somewhat less matchup dependant and allows the better user to gain a real advantage in the long term.
2) Offensive pressure: Excadrill, Hatterne, Charizard, Gyarados but also some other mons that are less used can break defensive cores thanks to dynamax especially late game, so by no means is dynamax only defensive or slows down the meta.
As pre home showed, the meta was balanced and a lot of playstyles were viable , so it’s not really a broken ability in itself.

Now why am I opposed to a clean ban of dynamax as it is, to just have a retest post dlc? Altough there were some holes on how to preserve dynamax in the first posts we can all (or nearly all) agree that this mechanic isn’t broken or unhealthy. If we outright ban it now, it will make things even harder to retest properly later cause we will have at least 5 broken ou or lower tiered mons that can abuse it plus the last uber mons that will come in dlc2. This will make retesting even harder because it will be just pure theorizing. Even worse the time in a suspect test to build and really test the problems would be limited after losing 6 months of building with the dynamax mechanic. The vote would be totally unbalanced because new players would have a very hard time adapting to dynamax.

Now how can we preserve the mechanic while respecting the definition of the tier as much as possible?
As the last posts said it’s time for ubers to move forward. We are a tier, not a banlist anymore and it’s time to use this in a good way because there isn’t only black and white in the world, and if a situation like this ever happens we wouldn’t need a similar long and exhausting war between the ban and no ban factions.
I propose to make a customized banlist based on the Ubers mons ( not the one that are so by technicality as gmax,stag mons and in the near future arena trap mons) and have a council of influent and active players interested in developing the meta to ban further big threats.
Suspects should be limited to controversial decisions. After all making a post to explain the council decisions isn’t hard and it’s what every other tier does with the quickbans after all.
I will not argue on the ditto/transform mew situation cause it was already explained by ballfire, but I want to repeat that I really think it is time for Ubers to move forward!

 

[Nayrz]

I'll be making a decision on this by the end of the week. Those keen to post their thoughts on the two solutions proposed should do so by then.

 

[Jaajgko]

I think that we should have a council vote on dynamax, and hold a suspect test later with dynamax banned on certain mons, while allowing some mons to dynamax, or with all mons banned from dynamaxing, and have a vote about wether we should have a custom ban list or a full ban. That way, we get quickly rid of a mechanic that has been deemed broken in all standard single tiers (OU + all lower tiers, LC, Nat Dex OU), which are relatively similar to post-Home Ubers. Dynamax has been banned so often that I don't think further discussion about its healthiness is necessary, I know some players think that we should keep dynamax entirely, but they are a minority. I want to add something about Ditto which I think is a non-issue. If it can't dynamax when copying Zacian, Eternatus and Zamazenta, then it shouldn't be able to dynamax when copying a mon that isn't allowed to dynamax. It's as simple as that, not complicated at all and rather intuitive, if you know which mons can dynamax and which can't. If we do end up having a custom dynamax ban list, I don't think Ditto should ever be on it.

 

[dumbbutt2252]

Dynamax, in my opinion, needs to be banned altogether. With extreme unpredictability, snowball potential with the set up boosts moves like airstream and knuckle give, and the fact that it renders encore sets almost completely useless now, as well as having no solid counter, it has no place in a competitive setting.

Now, every time I give those reasons in a public chat, the one thing that I keep hearing is "what do you mean it has no counter, just dyna in return!" And while that is true, the fact that the only counter that people can think of is itself just proves that it is overpowered in its current state. Consider this scenario: A mon is so powerful in OU that the only way to beat it is to have the same mon on your team. This would make it a necessity on every team, as the only counter is itself. Obviously, it would be banned to ubers, and if it continues to have no counter except for itself, it would most likely get the mega rayquaza treatment.

Another thing that I hear often, is that dynamax is no more overpowered than mega evolutions or Z-moves, and that is simply incorrect. For starters, neither Z moves nor mega evolutions were able to hold an item for before/after they did their mega/z-move. Megas also were limited to a specific list of mons that would narrow the possible megas on a team to 1-2. The easiest way I can compare dyna to megas and Z-moves is that when you dynamax, you turn into a mega that has +2def and +2spdef, with nothing but z moves for 3 turns, as well as immunity to encore and weight moves.

The ignoring of encore effects is one of my biggest issues with dynamax, as it has made prankster encores effectively useless. The argument that I often hear when I give this point is that you can force your opponent to dynamax early, or when they don't want to, but I'm not sure if that matters. Consider this scenario: you have a prankster liepard on the field. your opponent gets a clean swap due to a KO into a hawlucha. you correctly predict the SD and hit the hawlucha for 75-80% with a play rough. Immediately following you encore the hawlucha into SD, so it is now at +4. The hawlucha now can easily dynamax, hit your liepard with max knuckle and grow to +5 attack, and max airstream whatever you send out next to outspeed everything, and easily sweep. This is just one of several ways that dynamax can make competitive and strategic plays turn into hinderances. It actually punishes you for correctly predicting your opponent, as I described above.

In conclusion, the only way to regain a truly competitive atmosphere is to fully and unconditionally ban the most uncompetitive feature I've ever seen in a Pokemon game.

 

[Hogg]

I've been following this and similar conversations with interest for a while now, and I think it's fair to put in my own thoughts. Tiering is always going to be controversial and messy in a metagame like Ubers, just by its very nature. There is absolutely no perfect solution here, and certainly not anything that will please the whole community.

All of this talk really comes down to three options: do nothing, ban dynamax altogether or create some kind of a custom banlist. From what I've seen, I think that "do nothing" isn't really a viable option at this point if you want any sort of competitive metagame. It's really clear that dynamax has already gotten out of hand since the release of Home, and with two DLCs on the horizon, I suspect the problem will be worse, not better.

As for a custom banlist, that gets a bit complicated. I think pretty much all of the proposed solutions for where to draw an arbitrary line on a custom banlist are problematic. It seems like the discussion has moved away from ideas like disallowing dynamax on 'mons tiered as Ubers or with >600 BST or whatever, so I'm not going to spend much time focusing on why those have issues. At the same time, adjudicating everything on a 'mon by 'mon basis can become extremely messy, and makes the metagame more forbidding to outsiders.

I remain pretty skeptical that dynamax is worth saving at all, because I think that the mechanic is inherently uncompetitive in singles formats across the board. I think that frankly if you just remove it outright, you won't be doing the metagame a disservice. That being said, I appreciate that the Ubers community wants to proceed with caution before making such a dramatic change to a metagame that is by its very nature meant to be as permissive as possible. So, if there isn't a community consensus at this point that dynamax isn't worth saving, my personal suggestion for how to move forward is to take a two-stage approach: start with a relatively minimal curated dynamax banlist to see if that is sufficient to address the problem, and then have a community-wide test to discuss banning dynamax overall.

As to how this would work in practice, my thought would be to begin by clausing out dynamax on any 'mon that has been quickbanned or placed immediately into the Ubers tier. This would cover many of the initial drops from Home, including the particularly dangerous options such as Dusk Mane, but would keep those 'mons that spent some time in OU such as Kyurem-B and Melmetal. This would similarly give Ubers a framework for how to handle anything new that comes in from the June DLC. Ideally this will be enough of a quick fix that it keeps the Ubers circuit from being completely derailed by an unbalanced meta, and give everyone time to really explore whether dynamax is worth preserving at all.

From there, schedule a full community dynamax test to occur some time after the first DLC. Since that drops in June, July seems like a good month to shoot for. That will give the community three months of exploring the proposed limited dynamax metagame as thoroughly as possible, plus an idea of whether this limited solution will be sustainable as new 'mons continue to be released. I'd also recommend that you continue to have this discussion in the interim, with the full understanding that there WILL be a community test at whatever date the Ubers council decides is appropriate.

Finally, re: Ditto, if you restrict dynamax at all with any sort of custom list, I think you pretty much have to just add Ditto to that list. I don't see any other way to reasonably handle that particular issue without complicated in-battle clauses. Just include Ditto on whatever list of pokemon not allowed to dynamax you create and walk away from the headache it otherwise creates altogether.

This isn't an edict being dropped on your from me as tiering admin, by the way. This is just my own recommendation for how to move forward. I trust the community and Ubers leadership to come to a solution that works best for you, regardless of whether or not that involves a two-stage approach like I've suggested. However you all decide to move forward, I'll be watching eagerly.

 

[theotherguytm]

Finally, re: Ditto, if you restrict dynamax at all with any sort of custom list, I think you pretty much have to just add Ditto to that list. I don't see any other way to reasonably handle that particular issue without complicated in-battle clauses. Just include Ditto on whatever list of pokemon not allowed to dynamax you create and walk away from the headache it otherwise creates altogether.

I agree with this, but unfortunately, Ditto is the solution as well as the problem here. There's a reason Ditto had 40% usage in high ladder in the first month of SS OU, and the first month of UU was total chaos without Ditto to keep sweepers in check. Ditto is the main counterbalance to Dynamax in singles, and without it the whole mechanic is a mess. Argueably, part of the reason that Dynamax was so well-behaved pre-HOME was Ditto already being an auto-include on several teams to keep Zacian in check. I'm hoping I'm wrong here, but I cannot see Dynamax being balanced if Ditto cannot Dynamax.

 

[Reje]

I agree with this, but unfortunately, Ditto is the solution as well as the problem here. There's a reason Ditto had 40% usage in high ladder in the first month of SS OU, and the first month of UU was total chaos without Ditto to keep sweepers in check. Ditto is the main counterbalance to Dynamax in singles, and without it the whole mechanic is a mess. Argueably, part of the reason that Dynamax was so well-behaved pre-HOME was Ditto already being an auto-include on several teams to keep Zacian in check. I'm hoping I'm wrong here, but I cannot see Dynamax being balanced if Ditto cannot Dynamax.

what you are saying is definitely wrong, seeing as ditto wasn't the primary means of dealing with zacian by the end of pre-home at all.
in fact, you didn't particularly need ditto to check pokemon that dynamaxed . it was nice to have, yes. it was a good pokemon but not nearly as good as it is right now. dynamax pre-home was kept in check by virtue of there not being strong enough abusers such as dusk-mane and lunala and the mons that could dynamax still being checkable by stronger pokemon in eternatus and zacian especially, but also through defensive means.
because defensive pokemon were able to tank hits, dynamax didn't just punch entire holes into teams as much as it does now and thus was way more managable than the powerhouses using it now and making ditto not needed pre-home

 

[LBDC]

I'm writing this pretty late, but I want to express my opinion before the end of week. For starters, I agree, with pretty much everyone, that something should do about Dynamax in Ubers. Many people has already said why it's broken, unhealthy and uncompetitive, but there is something that I don't have see brought so far, it is that Dynamax allows Pokémon to broke the universal concept of "Pokémon X check Pokémon Y".
For instance, boosted Dynamaxed Zekrom can 2HKO Max Def Hippowdon with Max Wyrmwind, avoid phaze, and easily tank Earthquake. And Hippowdon is normally a very good check to Zekrom. It lead to a situation where you need to have more efficient checks to avoid to lose against the Dynamaxed Pokémon, when they exists lol. Think Corviknight for Excadrill. And that apply to non Ubers Pokémon as well. I have talked only of Excadrill so far as potentiel broken non-ubers , but thing Blastoise or Gengar might need dedicated checks due to Dynamax too. And even with a "month of Dynamax" it may be hard to find that they are broken, because we will focus on stuff more broken.

So in my opinion, ban dynamax as whole is a better solution that create a invidual banlist, that may be unreliable in the long terme. Even, the main thing is still that we eliminate the possibilty to Dynamax with broken sweeper like Zekrom, the way to do is much less important imo ;-;

 

[dumbbutt2252]

For instance, boosted Dynamaxed Zekrom can 2HKO Max Def Hippowdon with Max Wyrmwind, avoid phaze, and easily tank Earthquake. And Hippowdon is normally a very good check to Zekrom.

That is a very good example of how dynamax removes competitive elements of the game. swapping to a good counter means nothing if the good counter gets destroyed by a move it would normally tank

 

[Nayrz]

Alright so let's semi-conclude this thread. There is an overwhelming feeling from everyone as shown by this thread that something needs to be done about Dynamax in the tier, the details are the point of discussion. On one hand we have removing Dynamax entirely, on the other we have restricting it from a baseline deemed immediately problematic and seeing how things fare beyond that.

To me that means that both sides can at least agree that starting with a complex restriction is a step towards a better metagame, so that's what we'll do. Due to the overwhelming consensus, I don't believe a suspect test is necessary and this can be resolved through a decision by the Ubers Council. This is why I said "semi-conclude" - the Ubers Council is currently in need of a refreshing to be more fitting for SS decision making before making such a call. You could see this as just kicking the can down the road for a foregone conclusion when I could technically do this myself right now, but there needs to be a bigger democratic element in play than just my own opinion for the sake of formality, if nothing else. There are the finer details of the complex banlist to decide on and it's better for everyone that there is more input than just my own deciding what the end result is.

Hogg's post touches on a good baseline that I discussed with him already that I'll refer to as the "natural Ubers". If we target those Pokemon as a starting point we reduce the number of things swept up in a complex banlist without being too prone to nitpicks. The new Ubers Council will be discussing with that in mind, but also discussing what this means for the future. I need a very short period to bring new people up first though, so hang tight. A thread will cover the new SS Ubers Council when it's ready, and a vote should follow shortly after.

I appreciate everyone's thoughts in this thread and outside of it. We've went through the pros and cons of various ideas and hopefully reached a conclusion that the majority can agree is a good step forward for Ubers. I'll be closing this now.