Hey guys!
I open this thread because I want to discuss the topic of tiering RBY lower tiers once again. I am not sure if this decision has been made already or if it's up for discussion. But here it goes:
The viability rankings of RBY OU are getting an update currently. Some people are posting their rankings and the tendency is visible that Victreebel and Lapras will get placed quite low in the rankings, maybe even below Articuno. We need to await the final ranking of course, but it might turn out that way.
Now I have seen a lot of discussion in the discord about this, but I want to get it here where it does not get lost as easily. Basically people discuss if Victreebel and Lapras drop down from OU to UU after this update (and by extension, maybe Articuno rises to OU?)
Firstly, I want to pose the question wether or not we procede like that (dropping or promoting Pokemon based on VR shifts)? There's a case for doing so because that's how the initial UU tierlist has come to life after all. But there's also a case to be made that UU could be locked the way it is now (no promotions, demotions of any sort, no matter how the OU VR looks).
This is a question not only for this iteration of the VR, but also for the years to come. Who says that Lapras', Victreebels's or Articono's places in the list might not shift back in the future and revert the whole process?
So, I want to present three options I personally see with respect to this. Feel free to discuss them or add other methods as you wish.
This is what people believe is the status quo from how I understand their discussion in the discord server. I am not sure if it has been stated that this is how things get done but it is of course an option. The downside to this in my eyes is that UU (and NU) will likely shift every other year, because of OU trends. I personally do not know what changed in OU that people like Articuno (maybe) more than they do Lapras or Victreebel, but if that is the case by this method UU has to react to it and lose Articuno while getting Lapras and Vic. A completely new UU would emerge from this. Lapras especially would be huge. It would be hard to get some stability in those tiers in that case. This, of course, does not need to be a downside. It can be refreshing to have to adapt to whatever flavour the higher tier comes along with from time to time.
Basically, I personally am not fond of the lower tier(s) changing every other year when OU decides "hey Pokemon X is not bad after all" or "Pokemon Y actually sucks now". I want to give concrete examples of what could happen this time around:
Let's say Victreebel drops to UU. In my eyes (others may disagree) this means that Venusaur (which is currently considered UU) would probably fall down to NU. Now, NU might like that very much, because there is no sleeper of Venusaur's calibre in the tier as it stands and they might like to have it around for electric and water type threats as well. Good or bad change however, it is quite clear that this would turn NU into a completely different tier.
Let's take Lapras as a potentiol drop. Lapras bulk and typing is something UU has never seen before. top threats like Dugtrio, Articuno, Kanagskhan, Vaporeon (to name a few) would become much worse, maybe even completely drop out of the tier. UU would likely not be recognizable.
Let's take Articuno. If it rises, UU loses one of it's most potent late-game threats and generally one of the strongest bulky attacker, which would have a massive impact on how the tier is played as well.
Now... all of this is not necessarily a bad thing either. But in my eyes it is a bad thing if those huge shifts happen basically regularly (every year or maybe every two years) and there's a good chance they will if we were to use method 1 as outlined above.
Method 2 as outlined above (simply lock the current status of lower tiers (UU)) also is not exactly satisfying imo because the beauty of not having the lower tiers locked as of now under smogon policy is that we actually can (and should) tier them "correctly" and somewhat up-to-date with what is considered OU, UU, NU... and end up with naturally grown tiers whithout artificial rules like other old gen low tiers.
I am searching for a solution to this and I would like to suggest one, but don't hesitate to make your own proposals and disagree with me.
I think it would be the best idea if we were more inclusive in our tiering decisions concerning which Pokemon belong to the higher tier. If a Pokemon is "usable enough" in the higher tier, it could belong there via tiering. Simply put: We lower the cutoff that has been used to determine OU/UU from "everything C-ranked and lower is UU" to "everything D-ranked and lower is UU" (both lines are arbitrary anyway). And we keep updating the tiers based on those thresholds. This allows the tiers to be dynamic in case something changes, but the change would naturally concern Pokemon that are probably less influential and powerful in the lower tier (read: No Lapras). This would still change UU as it currently is, because UU might lose stuff like Articuno and Dragonite (which might leave anayway). But future changes would likely be less drastic and thus people would not need to adapt in lower tiers as much. If we are talking NU, this would likely place Poliwrath and Raichu comfortably in UU such that NU won't have to worry about them as well.
Regardless of wether or not you agree with me, I think an "official" decision has to be made on how we proceed with things, because at the moment, I don't believe we actually have that, because frankly at the time UU was tiered we did not think that something like a Lapras-drop would be likely at all, we thought things were stable so we did not really clarify wether or not lower tiers keep changing with higher tier-viability or not.
I open this thread because I want to discuss the topic of tiering RBY lower tiers once again. I am not sure if this decision has been made already or if it's up for discussion. But here it goes:
The viability rankings of RBY OU are getting an update currently. Some people are posting their rankings and the tendency is visible that Victreebel and Lapras will get placed quite low in the rankings, maybe even below Articuno. We need to await the final ranking of course, but it might turn out that way.
Now I have seen a lot of discussion in the discord about this, but I want to get it here where it does not get lost as easily. Basically people discuss if Victreebel and Lapras drop down from OU to UU after this update (and by extension, maybe Articuno rises to OU?)
Firstly, I want to pose the question wether or not we procede like that (dropping or promoting Pokemon based on VR shifts)? There's a case for doing so because that's how the initial UU tierlist has come to life after all. But there's also a case to be made that UU could be locked the way it is now (no promotions, demotions of any sort, no matter how the OU VR looks).
This is a question not only for this iteration of the VR, but also for the years to come. Who says that Lapras', Victreebels's or Articono's places in the list might not shift back in the future and revert the whole process?
So, I want to present three options I personally see with respect to this. Feel free to discuss them or add other methods as you wish.
- We have (as it is now) regular updates of the OU VR and as it has been done in the past and everything ranked in C or lower (which is the current cutoff) is tiered as UU. We follow this rule strictly, even if this means changing UU every time the OU-meta shifts. By extension, we do the same for UU and everything C and lower is NU.
This is what people believe is the status quo from how I understand their discussion in the discord server. I am not sure if it has been stated that this is how things get done but it is of course an option. The downside to this in my eyes is that UU (and NU) will likely shift every other year, because of OU trends. I personally do not know what changed in OU that people like Articuno (maybe) more than they do Lapras or Victreebel, but if that is the case by this method UU has to react to it and lose Articuno while getting Lapras and Vic. A completely new UU would emerge from this. Lapras especially would be huge. It would be hard to get some stability in those tiers in that case. This, of course, does not need to be a downside. It can be refreshing to have to adapt to whatever flavour the higher tier comes along with from time to time.
- We lock UU as it is now and do not include Pokemon from above into the tier nor do we promote any Pokemon from UU to OU, no matter what metagame shifts OU undergoes. The same goes for a potential NU whenever we finalize the tierlist of UU and decide which Pokemon we consider part of UU and which not.
Basically, I personally am not fond of the lower tier(s) changing every other year when OU decides "hey Pokemon X is not bad after all" or "Pokemon Y actually sucks now". I want to give concrete examples of what could happen this time around:
Let's say Victreebel drops to UU. In my eyes (others may disagree) this means that Venusaur (which is currently considered UU) would probably fall down to NU. Now, NU might like that very much, because there is no sleeper of Venusaur's calibre in the tier as it stands and they might like to have it around for electric and water type threats as well. Good or bad change however, it is quite clear that this would turn NU into a completely different tier.
Let's take Lapras as a potentiol drop. Lapras bulk and typing is something UU has never seen before. top threats like Dugtrio, Articuno, Kanagskhan, Vaporeon (to name a few) would become much worse, maybe even completely drop out of the tier. UU would likely not be recognizable.
Let's take Articuno. If it rises, UU loses one of it's most potent late-game threats and generally one of the strongest bulky attacker, which would have a massive impact on how the tier is played as well.
Now... all of this is not necessarily a bad thing either. But in my eyes it is a bad thing if those huge shifts happen basically regularly (every year or maybe every two years) and there's a good chance they will if we were to use method 1 as outlined above.
Method 2 as outlined above (simply lock the current status of lower tiers (UU)) also is not exactly satisfying imo because the beauty of not having the lower tiers locked as of now under smogon policy is that we actually can (and should) tier them "correctly" and somewhat up-to-date with what is considered OU, UU, NU... and end up with naturally grown tiers whithout artificial rules like other old gen low tiers.
I am searching for a solution to this and I would like to suggest one, but don't hesitate to make your own proposals and disagree with me.
I think it would be the best idea if we were more inclusive in our tiering decisions concerning which Pokemon belong to the higher tier. If a Pokemon is "usable enough" in the higher tier, it could belong there via tiering. Simply put: We lower the cutoff that has been used to determine OU/UU from "everything C-ranked and lower is UU" to "everything D-ranked and lower is UU" (both lines are arbitrary anyway). And we keep updating the tiers based on those thresholds. This allows the tiers to be dynamic in case something changes, but the change would naturally concern Pokemon that are probably less influential and powerful in the lower tier (read: No Lapras). This would still change UU as it currently is, because UU might lose stuff like Articuno and Dragonite (which might leave anayway). But future changes would likely be less drastic and thus people would not need to adapt in lower tiers as much. If we are talking NU, this would likely place Poliwrath and Raichu comfortably in UU such that NU won't have to worry about them as well.
Regardless of wether or not you agree with me, I think an "official" decision has to be made on how we proceed with things, because at the moment, I don't believe we actually have that, because frankly at the time UU was tiered we did not think that something like a Lapras-drop would be likely at all, we thought things were stable so we did not really clarify wether or not lower tiers keep changing with higher tier-viability or not.
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