Hi, me again. There's been some... feedback on this in Discord to say the least, lol. What I said above:
I think this would have been the right decision in an ideal world. However, it has come to my attention that not everyone was aware of "what to do" exactly with their VRs. Namely, some people did not order/rank within tiers, just placing the Pokemon kind of wherever within the tiers. Idk what Volk did exactly here (and this is not me passing the blame, don't take it that way please), but if he considered order when doing the aggregates then that would have affected the VR. Secondly, not everyone was aware of the standard of B-/C+ being the cutoff line for ZU. This means that, kind of similar to what happened with Slowbro in the OU/UU cutoff, some people felt that there are Pokemon that ended up in ZU on this VR that "should" be considered PU, and they would have ranked them as B- instead of C+ or something like that if they had known that was going to happen.
With that addressed, based off what I was reading in the Discord, I think community consensus is that we should redo the VR. Volk is currently taking some time away, so I'm going to ask that the same people who were asked to submit for the previous VR submit to me (please use Smogon PM) their lists with the following in mind:
1. Rank each Pokemon in order from top to bottom. You are not required to rank any one specific Pokemon, just rank what's viable. So your number one ranked Pokemon would be the most viable/best Pokemon in the PU metagame and your last ranked Pokemon would be the worst Pokemon that at least has some viability.
2. Mark tier cutoffs in your ranking, as well as where you would determine the PU/ZU cutoff to be in your rankings.
3. You can either give me a numbered list or use something like Tiermaker. If you use something like Tiermaker, please make sure they're in order within ranks.
Tagging people who are qualified to submit VRs via the kickoff tournament:
chub
chuva de perereca
Ctown6
Ema Skye
fatBatman
Hayburner
Ice Yazu
Lady Writer
Leru
MichaelderBeste2
MrSoup
nicole7735
royzin
stunner047
TehTayTeh
Torchic
I know it's annoying to have to do another one, but we're trying to get this right this time so if y'all could please submit a VR to me via Smogon PM under the above stipulations sooner rather than later I would very much appreciate that.
Now, for how this affects the ongoing ZU Tournament:
I don't really want to be like, "not my tour, not my problem," but I will say that I would feel bad making the decision for the ZU Tournament especially in a complicated situation like this. I will copy/paste this portion of the post in the relevant threads so it's more visible but with how I see it, there are a few options for the ZU tournament:
1. Keep the old list for the duration of the tournament. This way no one has to learn/adjust to a new meta mid-tournament. With everything going on, I think this might be the best option (but that's just personal opinion).
2. Take the VR that was posted by Volk for now and run with that the rest of the tournament. It is a community VR, even if it's in dispute right now. I don't particularly care for this option personally since people have to learn a completely new meta mid-tournament, but some have expressed support for this afaik
3. Scrap the VR that was posted by Volk and wait for the new and improved version to come out sometime soon (hopefully), then use that whenever it's posted. Personally, I feel like the same as above, because learning a new meta mid-tournament sucks, but some have expressed support for this afaik
4. Use the VR that was posted by Volk until the new and improved version comes out, then use that one instead. While this might be the most faithful to what is "truly" PU and what isn't (and even that's up for debate), I think making people learn three metas for one tournament would really suck and I would not recommend it.
5. Something else I'm not thinking of.
Ultimately, I think it's up to the hosts of the ZU Tournament to decide what to do. Sorry that this is a weird situation to put you in, but I think I laid out the options pretty well with reasonable (personal) opinions on what to do. Maybe do a poll of the ZU community/tournament players to see what they think? I know the next round is coming up soon but hopefully this can be resolved quickly. Sorry again, feel free to reach out to me with any questions/comments/concerns and I'll do my best to answer them.
Thanks for reading!
For consistency’s sake, I’m going to make the ruling that the line between B- and C+ is the cutoff… for now. There doesn’t appear to be a “Slowbro tier,” there’s a clear line. So to keep things in line with other tiers, unless there’s significant push from PU and/or ZU players, let’s go with B-/C+ as the cutoff line. Everything above the line is PU, everything below is ZU.
I think this would have been the right decision in an ideal world. However, it has come to my attention that not everyone was aware of "what to do" exactly with their VRs. Namely, some people did not order/rank within tiers, just placing the Pokemon kind of wherever within the tiers. Idk what Volk did exactly here (and this is not me passing the blame, don't take it that way please), but if he considered order when doing the aggregates then that would have affected the VR. Secondly, not everyone was aware of the standard of B-/C+ being the cutoff line for ZU. This means that, kind of similar to what happened with Slowbro in the OU/UU cutoff, some people felt that there are Pokemon that ended up in ZU on this VR that "should" be considered PU, and they would have ranked them as B- instead of C+ or something like that if they had known that was going to happen.
With that addressed, based off what I was reading in the Discord, I think community consensus is that we should redo the VR. Volk is currently taking some time away, so I'm going to ask that the same people who were asked to submit for the previous VR submit to me (please use Smogon PM) their lists with the following in mind:
1. Rank each Pokemon in order from top to bottom. You are not required to rank any one specific Pokemon, just rank what's viable. So your number one ranked Pokemon would be the most viable/best Pokemon in the PU metagame and your last ranked Pokemon would be the worst Pokemon that at least has some viability.
2. Mark tier cutoffs in your ranking, as well as where you would determine the PU/ZU cutoff to be in your rankings.
3. You can either give me a numbered list or use something like Tiermaker. If you use something like Tiermaker, please make sure they're in order within ranks.
Tagging people who are qualified to submit VRs via the kickoff tournament:
chub
chuva de perereca
Ctown6
Ema Skye
fatBatman
Hayburner
Ice Yazu
Lady Writer
Leru
MichaelderBeste2
MrSoup
nicole7735
royzin
stunner047
TehTayTeh
Torchic
I know it's annoying to have to do another one, but we're trying to get this right this time so if y'all could please submit a VR to me via Smogon PM under the above stipulations sooner rather than later I would very much appreciate that.
Now, for how this affects the ongoing ZU Tournament:
I don't really want to be like, "not my tour, not my problem," but I will say that I would feel bad making the decision for the ZU Tournament especially in a complicated situation like this. I will copy/paste this portion of the post in the relevant threads so it's more visible but with how I see it, there are a few options for the ZU tournament:
1. Keep the old list for the duration of the tournament. This way no one has to learn/adjust to a new meta mid-tournament. With everything going on, I think this might be the best option (but that's just personal opinion).
2. Take the VR that was posted by Volk for now and run with that the rest of the tournament. It is a community VR, even if it's in dispute right now. I don't particularly care for this option personally since people have to learn a completely new meta mid-tournament, but some have expressed support for this afaik
3. Scrap the VR that was posted by Volk and wait for the new and improved version to come out sometime soon (hopefully), then use that whenever it's posted. Personally, I feel like the same as above, because learning a new meta mid-tournament sucks, but some have expressed support for this afaik
4. Use the VR that was posted by Volk until the new and improved version comes out, then use that one instead. While this might be the most faithful to what is "truly" PU and what isn't (and even that's up for debate), I think making people learn three metas for one tournament would really suck and I would not recommend it.
5. Something else I'm not thinking of.
Ultimately, I think it's up to the hosts of the ZU Tournament to decide what to do. Sorry that this is a weird situation to put you in, but I think I laid out the options pretty well with reasonable (personal) opinions on what to do. Maybe do a poll of the ZU community/tournament players to see what they think? I know the next round is coming up soon but hopefully this can be resolved quickly. Sorry again, feel free to reach out to me with any questions/comments/concerns and I'll do my best to answer them.
Thanks for reading!