PU Council Updates

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The survey results are in! As always, thank you to everyone that took time to fill our survey out.

This time, we got 80 responses, which is slightly more than we got last time. That's probably due to Google Forms being more accessible than Smogon surveys, so maybe we'll stick with Google Forms going forward? We'll see.

Enjoyment and competitiveness

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The average enjoyment score is 6.98, down from last time. Tier enjoyment could certainly be a lot lower with how radically things have changed, but it's clear that action could certainly be taken to get that score up. More on that later.

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In another noticeable dip from before, perceived competitiveness ranks at 6.5 on average. This does make sense; people have pointed out how difficult building a consistent team can be with how many versatile offensive threats are running around. It's not exactly an unpopular opinion that matchup is a massive factor in plenty of games right now (more so than in previous iterations of the tier), at varying levels of play too.

Pokemon and tier elements

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As for the Pokemon that received substantial support for action... none of them did, really. Zoroark and Toxtricity got the most votes for action, but only 35% and 33.8% of respondents deem them an issue, respectively. Meloetta receiving the least backlash here makes sense, but Scyther ranks as the most broken Pokemon in the tier for multiple players and builders, so seeing it only hit 32.5% support is odd. In any case, there's no clear culprit we can identify this time, which makes it tricky to decide what to do going forward. Jumping straight into another suspect test doesn't seem too popular, so maybe it's time to let the tier breathe as SCL wraps up and PUWC continues?

In the "other concerns" section, Arcanine and Florges were brought up the most. These two Pokemon have been consistently excellent in the new meta, so it makes sense that people are worried they might be too good. Past that, Tornadus and Decidueye were mentioned some. We've seen Tornadus reach some really high highs with its monstrous Choice Specs set, while Decidueye's been quieter after it stopped dominating the tier but remains deadly. While none of these four Pokemon were on the council's radar for action, we'll be sure to keep an eye on them (and the other four Pokemon that got their own questions) and see how they develop in the near future.

~~~​

With a lack of clear support to act on the big threats, we'd really like for people to share their thoughts on things. The council is not necessarily against suspect testing anything in the near future, but right now it's difficult to pick out just one element to look at. Even in the case of Pokemon like Zoroark and Scyther, we've only really started seeing them shine again recently. Who's to say that the tier won't adapt to them, especially with multiple ongoing tournaments that will almost certain encourage metagame development? We'll have to see going forward, but the plan for now is to let things sit.

Everyone's feedback is appreciated, have a great rest of your day :heart:
 
For transparency, there is an ongoing tiering survey being conducted with PU players that...

  • ... qualified for the playoffs stage of PU Swiss III.
  • ... are starting in PU for SCL IV or have started in previous weeks.
  • ... OR are managing in SCL IV and regularly engaged with the community.

PU's council members are also all taking part, though most of us fall under one or more the above groups anyway. We missed out on doing a qualified survey this time around; this is us making up for that and trying to directly reach out to those involved with the tier at the highest level. Like before, the questions are exactly the same as those on the general tiering survey. Expect a post detailing the responses and more by Sunday afternoon/evening.
 
Hello, PoggersUsed players, qualified survey results are out!

We got 35 votes from Swiss qualifiers, SCL starters and some managers involved with the community. Thank you all who contributed to it!

Enjoyment and competitiveness

Gráfico de las respuestas de Formularios. Título de la pregunta: How much do you enjoy current SV PU right now?. Número de respuestas: 35 respuestas.
A very similar average to the regular survey, this one being only .1 point lower, 6.88. We will hopefully be able to address these numbers with things coming up in the near future.

Gráfico de las respuestas de Formularios. Título de la pregunta: How competitive do you find SV PU right now?. Número de respuestas: 35 respuestas.
Wow! Numbers are amazing, just like with the last one, there's only a difference a .1 in the vote with the regular survey test. 6.4 is not even a passing grade, so we will be working on improving these numbers!

Pokemon and tier elements

Gráfico de las respuestas de Formularios. Título de la pregunta: How do you feel about Scyther in the current meta?. Número de respuestas: 35 respuestas.

Gráfico de las respuestas de Formularios. Título de la pregunta: How do you feel about Zoroark in the current meta?. Número de respuestas: 35 respuestas.
Gráfico de las respuestas de Formularios. Título de la pregunta: How do you feel about Meloetta in the current meta?. Número de respuestas: 35 respuestas.

Gráfico de las respuestas de Formularios. Título de la pregunta: How do you feel about Toxtricity in the current meta?. Número de respuestas: 35 respuestas.

Here's where the main discrepancies start to show. A massive chunky 51.4% of the qualified playerbase wants action on Scyther and only a 20% does not. These huge numbers will definitely lead to us doing something about it, right?
As for the other mons, the closest second vote is Meloetta, with 31.4%. Definitely not enough for immediate action, but we will keep a close eye on it as the meta moves forward. Zoroark and Toxtricity come third and fourth, though it must be noted that 60% of people do not mind action of Zoroark or outright want it, so it deserves a similar amount of attention to Meloetta. Feel free to share your thoughts on these two Pokemon as things change!

Apart from this, some people brought up the likes of Salazzle and Arcanine as well as a few mentions of Tauros-Paldea-Blaze. We will keep these in mind moving forward too.

~~~​

With these results set and done, the PU Council is now deciding to suspect test Scyther. Expect the suspect test process to start tomorrow and thank you once again for contributing to the discussion. See ya tomorrow!
 
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As mentioned here, the PU council voted on Torterra, Arcanine, Galarian Articuno, and Florges with the hope of stabilizing the tier as the new meta sets in and before tournaments like PUBD II and PU Winter Seasonal start. MZ and zS opted to abstain from this vote, so this time 4 ban votes will be required to quickban something to PUBL. With that said, here are the results:

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Following this post, Torterra is banned from SV PU. Tagging Marty and dhelmise to implement this change, thank you very much in advance. Below are the reasonings; DugZa will submit his at his earliest convenience.

:sv/torterra:
5/6 - Banned
asa - I don't like what Torterra does to building, even if it's inconsistent. Dipplin and Ditto are the only reliable countermeasures for it; Fake Out/ESpeed fail against Tera Ghost and only work after Torterra's been chipped, faster Choice Scarf users are circumvented with Sticky Web support (not a tall ask), and other walls like Wo-Chien, Orthworm, and Weezing are owned by Superpower/Tera Blast Fire.

ishtar - Easily the most broken of the bunch. It doesn't always outright win but its incredibly restricting in the builder and also manages to get away with different teras/coverage in practice. Thanks a lot NU!!!!!!!!!!!

Bouff - its not like, absolutely obscene or anything. there are a decent amount of options to deal with it defensively, and it gets rked by an equally decent amount of scarfers but i don't really think having mons that dictate the gameflow as much as it does (assuming it doesn't win on the spot) is beneficial for the tier

fish anemometer - outspeeds scarfers at +2, versatile tera, not much good defensive counterplay. ridiculous mon.

kyuss - Honestly i would not be against quickbanning, as i had no issues but i know those were most likely because of some building choices i've made. Anyways I don't feel like it's too much of an issue as to not hear the community regarding that, so Do not ban for now.

:sv/arcanine:
0/6 - Not banned
asa - Our options for dealing with Arcanine are worse now, but not so much worse that it autowins in a lot of games. I'd be okay with revisiting it after Torterra and (hopefully) Galarcuno, but I don't find Arcanine overwhelming and I think it deserves more time without Gastrodon to fairly assess how healthy it is.

ishtar - I think Arcanine is probably the most consistent offensive answer in the tier, without being automatically ridiculous. I would like to keep an eye on it and I believe it could be a good suspect test candidate down the line, but as it stands, and with the other current threats in the meta, some of which are less consistent but more volatile, I believe its probably better for it to stay.

Bouff - was pretty confident i would vote ban when shifts happened, obviously gastro is extremely good for it since it was like a top 2 at worst mon before shifts. the reason im not voting quickban is that there are over a dozen mons that ranged from mediocre to ass that are better right now, and id kind of prefer to wait to see how things will shift over the next however many weeks in team compositions before giving it the banhammer.

fish anemometer - doesnt seemed excessive just yet, would like to see it in tournaments first.

kyuss - Alongside Guno seems like the biggest winners of recent meta changes, but still not something so broken that we ban without a suspect IMO. Not as troublesome as Melo was and Melo ended up not banned.

:sv/articuno-galar:
3/6 - Not banned
asa - I want to suspect this rather than quickban it. Calm Mind sets run away with games very often, but it does have games where it can struggle to get much done and hates Steels becoming better.

ishtar - I was very torn on this decision, since Articuno is not a new Pokemon in the tier, but I believe a lot of trends have made it decently stronger, mainly the rise of certain Pokemon such as Meloetta and Tornadus. Articuno has been on an upside trend for quite a while and, while this offensive meta sometimes keeps it in check naturally with decently fast threats, I do not think that it is very competitive to play around. While I would normally find it ill adviced to ban a Pokemon that's been in our tier for a while, the truth is that our shifts have been simply too changing, and PU in 2025 is the wild west of tiering. Hopefully in 3 months we can have something that works before we lose it again! Hooray!

Bouff - honestly this thing has been broken for a while now and has slowly reared its head over the past like two months, and if shifts hadn't happened i think this would have ended up being suspected anyway. on one hand, it lost a decent check in meloetta, but physical darks are a lot better right now with gastros departure, which leads it to have to tera slightly more often in some situations. it runs away with games a LOT tbh and while it does provide some nice qualities to the builder sometimes you have to dedicate way more resources than you'd like to have a chance of dealing with it.

fish anemometer - not much has changed for it besides the departure of melo which it usually beat more than not from my experience. the steels that block it early game are still here.

kyuss - Too powerful of a wincon, anyone can check lots of tour replays that guno won singlehandely. Can easily get around it's checks and counters with tera mindgames/psychic move choice that even if you prepare well can be surprised and snowballed.

:sv/florges:
0/6 - Not banned
asa - Fires and Steels are eating right now, as are strong Psyshock users like Galarcuno and Hoopa, so Florges doesn't feel overbearing either offensively or defensively to me. If PU moves away from more offensive teams and Choice Specs/CM Florges starts dominating, then I'd be willing to consider tiering action on it, but for now it feels about as healthy as it did before.

ishtar - Incredibly strong and dominant, but not broken imo. Similarly to Arcanine, I think its consistency and ability to keep many threats in check sorta give it more value than the simply broken Pokemon that are otherwise in this slate. That is not to say that keeping a potentially broken element in the tier is viable, but that I would like to see a meta developing without those restrictions.

Bouff - back when the october shifts happened this thing was a slam dunk ban in my eyes because specs / tera fairy scarf seemed really ridiculous, but it hasn't been that overwhelming. honestly it's a good defensive piece for the tier, one of the few ones at that - like guno it can sometimes run away with games because cm ends up being immortal but it definitely doesnt reach any threshold for a quickban. the tier has an opportunity to become a lot more offensive with the shifts and i don't think that'll propel florges to a pokemon that needs to leave

fish anemometer - idk what this is doing on here tbh

kyuss - Really good but not broken slash centralizing enough

Thank you for your patience, and expect another update soon. Have a nice rest of your day :)
 
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