Lower Tiers RBY UU Suspect Test Community Pulse

[NotVeryCake]

Test Partial trapping moves like I've been saying years ago otherwise the complex ban needs to pretty much stay in place to avoid the formats previous degeneracy. Dragonite is a good part of the metagame especially when you have the broken Kadabra and Dugtrio being free we don't need to basically make these two mons stronger. By the logic of number 3 we should bring back Hypno before we bring back APT.

If Dugtrio becomes problematic after a Dragonite ban, then ban it too. I'm not arguing on how this would affect the metagame, I'm arguing for a retest on a needlessly complex ban that exists solely because people don't want to see significant change in how a tier is played. And on point three, the ban on APT and the ban on Lapras + Hypno took place an entire year apart from each other (APT in 2022, Lapras + Hypno in 2023, I also don't see how its relevant to the direct point at hand, since I'm not arguing on whether to or to not retest Hypno.

 

[Sabelette]

send dnite to ubers where it belongs so it can click agiliwrap in peace, let the dragon god reign

 

[Sabelette]

I am doing a survey on partial trapping in UU so the council and I can better understand where people's opinions lie on partial trapping as a whole and in individual parts, to help guide any potential future action:

https://forms.gle/dMshuoB5xZAEmxGF6

Gonna tag a lot of people for this one, basically anyone who has had reqs for the Cuno vote or is playing UU in a teamtour or making a good C+ run rn, but anyone should feel free to do the survey and/or give opinions in here:
Amaranth Cao Jie Dawn Dreams Fc Gangsta Spongebob gastlies Ice Yazu Maris Bonibell Melbelle MrSoup Nikebeamz NotVeryCake pac royzin SANKE CARP Shellnuts Slip Torchic Tree69420 Unowndragon Volk YBW magialice Eeveeto Soda_Eesti AM GirlsSeeGhosts Toxin Boost Eeveeto violet river PKMN Master™ AsmiRedx Charmriah Mrbanana45 DiannieRatson Alice Kazumi

 

[Sabelette]

For my part, I think partial trapping is fundamentally uncompetitive in lower tiers, denying a turn here is just so ridiculously broken compared to OU because there are far fewer chances to recover, far worse bulk, and a far faster pace in the average game. In UU the one Recover user also dies to a light breeze and clicking Rest is extremely dangerous bar specific endgames. We already had to ban Agility + Partial Trapping for being uncompetitive, Tentacruel fundamentally invalidates a lot of teams and turns a lot of games into wrap wars, and Twave + Wrap remains as stupid as ever. I think if we had to do a complex ban just to protect Wrap, that demonstrates it is too much. I think C+ and Wrapless UU are both more fun and interactive metagames than "hope I predict the Wrap turn correctly or I'm absurdly far behind off this one interaction." I don't think Fire Spin or Bind fishing are any better, even if they're less consistent; that just makes them even more of a luck fish and less good at doing the thing they're meant to do, but the fundamental issue of clicking a luck-based button that denies the opponent the opportunity to play the game remains. I don't care if Clamp goes or not, Shellder is obviously irrelevant, but Tangela, Moltres, Rapidash, Ninetales are all relevant to UU games so I don't think they should get a pass for having the worse PT move when 2 of them have Agility (which was deemed so problematic it got a complex ban) and one has Stun Spore.

 

[Amaranth]

i don't see any evidence of wrap being problematic anywhere really. wrap is one of the *least* likely clicks to set you "hopelessly far behind" in UU and one of the only ways for players to actually control the positioning of the game through means other than Just Guessing. you're getting wrapped and you need to get a read right to escape with your life? GOOD! that means you fucked up somewhere positionally and you gave your opponent a situation where they strangle you unless you hit some very unfavorable odds. as opposed to the normal play pattern where the odds are in the hands of 50/50 mindgames, or just sheer RNG, this is an advantage that is gained through positional play (AND intelligent teambuilding).

against wrap in OU i can see some arguments - the metagame already allows a lot of positional play without wrap, and if anything wrap restricts it. and as for agility + partial trapping, sure, that's not interactive really anywhere, fine. but everything else i see as a clear active positive to gameplay

UU is the way it is because a lot of its best mons (kadabra, persian, dugtrio etc) are fast frail fucks. turns out removing wrap does not really make these pokemon any less necessary, because being fast and hitting hard and critting often is really good in any metagame without significant defensive counterplay, which current UU definitely is
seeing a little bit of wrapless UU is only making me more convinced of this. the metagame is obviously Playable without wrap, but it doesn't really fix the main issues making UU a crapshoot - volatile high critrate pokemon all over the place etc
C+ does fix that issue by bringing back the boys hypno and lapras and the likes. and in THAT tier i can see the arguments for banning wrap, the same way i see them in OU - you won't necessarily have as many fast pokemon to play against the wrappers, because you want to use those teamslots on slower mons instead. but then again that metagame adds jolteon into the mix.

i think something along the lines of C+ could be the future. i don't really think wrapless UU is any better or worse than normal UU, just arbitrarily different. a metagame with a slightly higher power level where you can run hypno and fight it with things that are not another hypno would be ideal. whether that metagame has wrap or not i'm indifferent to it really, but the issues with UU lie elsewhere and i think making it a hypno-centric metagame is the answer

 

[AM]

RBY C+ meta is superior to current RBY UU in large part due to trapping moves being removed and the return of some fatter mons to curb some of the power that stuff like Kanga, Kadabra, Dugtrio have who can normally fire off their stabs with little cost and some cases swingy crits to push through would be counterplay. Partial Trapping is uncompetitive and non-engaging I have said so for years but it's yelling at a wall at this point and I will accept to agree to disagree based on what I've seen others mention.

I share mostly Sab's opinion above, barring the fact that if C+ officially becomes UU we would need to remove Slowbro for being broken, but that's a whole other discussion.

 

[Tree69420]

i mostly agree with sab, wrap is stupid esp with like para and even without apt ive built teams to abuse this by stacking wrappers but even just tent + nite can be strong and having to hit a lot of wraps just to do anything u want makes it uncompetitive imo
fire spin is kinda wrap lite (more damage with stab and stuff but less accuracy, same fundamental problems)
bind is kinda just ass man there arent fast mons with bind and the accuracy is so dogshit that the only thing u can do with it is pivot and even that is extremely questionable, i feel like its kinda useless so i wouldnt mind seeing it gone but doesnt need action, also pinsir is a funny guy so anything that helps him is cool
shell is a non point that guy is so irrelevant shouldnt matter if its banned or not

 

[Toxin Boost]

I would really like to see wrap get banned, because as it stands, I have zero passion for UU and try my best to avoid it. You can definitely disregard my opinion as I haven't played a lot of uu recently, however the reason I haven't played it a lot is because of how luck based it feels, and I believe a large part of that to be attributable to wrap. Wrap isn't just a horrendously uncompetitive move that prevents your opponent from moving most of the time, it's a meta warping force that speeds up the pace of the game and phases out defensive strategies.

Amaranth mentions how UU has numerous fast threats that crit often and raise luck in the game and how they don't go aways if wrap goes, I could not disagree more. While it is true that being fast and strong is a desirable trait to have even if we don't have wrap, simply having wrap makes it the only viable option. For example, Vaporeon is a good check to dugtrio and Ninetales and has solid 1v1s vs other mons like dodrio, dragonite, and kangaskahn, however all of this is completely overshadowed by the fact that it's complete tentacruel fodder. It's not even the fact that tentacruel switches into it and wraps it, It's the fact of why use a slow fodder pokemon that gives your opponent free turns when you could use something faster that doesn't give these free opportunities? UU has been getting faster and faster paced and the main factor as to why is tentacruel, even though tentacruel isn't at 100% usage these days it still has a strangling effect on teambuilding, it's not like you can just bring a slow bulky team and hope to not run into tentacruel, you'd be foolish to do so. I can't say for sure that banning wrap will fix all of these issues but given what I've seen this is the best path forward. I think most people agree that UU needs to change and has needed to change for a long time, and while we were banning hypno, lapras, agiliwrap, and friends, tentacruel has been there warping the tier and ushering in offence this whole time.

This is all on top of how inherently uncompetitive this move truly is, many games come down to if tentacruel lands multiple wraps, or tentacruel mirrors. As for other partial trapping moves, I'd like to see them go but not as much as wrap. Also please do not reply to me with a load of wrap vs tentacruel policy review nonsense, thank you.

 

[Melbelle]

Tired of tent's effect on the meta really. Can't believe this tier has been loved for so long like this and testing it without wrap hasn't been that messed around with.

Think it should either be all PT or just Wrap with no inbetween. Wrap is the only real problem move but if we decide to remove more than the main issue, we should just go all the way for consistency. Just unban APT if we only ban Wrap (Allow Agility + Fire Spin).
It's a minor detail but if we ban more than Wrap, Clamp should be included. the moves are uninteractive and we're targeting moves at that point, so regardless of Clamp having 1 user it fits the bill for the moves we're targeting. We're saying the moves are problems if we go this far, not the users, so Shellder being the only user isn't really a factor at that point.

I think all PT should go since they all are uncompetitive. People will often say pivoting with them is healthy but I simply don't agree, Pinsir using Bind to pivot is still an accuracy check then RPS-esque the turn after it lands. What about this is healthy? It's at best, neutral health-wise but I would argue it is still unhealthy.

Alternatively banning just Tent and Nite and unbanning APT would fix most of the issues but I think most people are on board to just get rid of their problem move altogether which is probably for the better.



If/when UU bans wrap i believe all the UUBLs should be retested effective immediately(/after Alt PL ends. Let that end with the ruleset as is). Then once the OU vr is released also test whatever drops (if anything). I don't believe we need to wait for the OU vr to drop to retest them.

I don't think Lapras(/Articuno)/Hypno's effect on the meta hinges on anything needing to drop (maybe Hypno appreciates lack of Slowbro to an extent). So I don't see the point in not dropping them ASAP especially when we already have a tournament showing these mons have promise to be healthy, and will also have tour replays of the meta without them to compare. The spotlight for RBY UU should be in April I believe, by then we should use the opportunity to start retesting the UUBLs and within 1.5 months should also see what OU ends up dropping, if anything.

Conveniently this way we'd see data on:
UU without Wrap/PT
UUBLs + Jolt,Slowbro,Victreebel
UUBLs alone

This would help show how the meta looks without certain factors. If Bro and/or Jolt drop we'd have some data on how the meta looks without them and can use the info as a guide on whether any suspects would be wise.

Essentially to me, the ruleset in Alt PL should only end up coming to fruition as the real UU after we give the UUBLs another fair chance, not giving them another chance regardless of what OU drops would simply be unfair given the starkly different conditions and a whole tournament now showing promise for these mons to be healthy.

 

[Shellnuts]

Don't have a ton of time so I'll be writing this in point form to keep this brief.

• I am completely against banning Wrap or any form of partial trapping in UU generally. It is a fair tool that rewards skilled predictions and enables players to position themselves in ways that physically are not possible given the tools available to us. If you screw up your prediction then you deserve to lose the game (and you rightfully should lose the game).
• The person using Wrap is just as limited in their options as the target of Wrap (they get a small amount of chip sure but that's not much), it doesn't remove one player's ability to play the game while the other is able to, so it cannot be uncompetitive (by definition).
  • If you are relying on hitting Wrap (or any partial trapping move) in order to pivot then you are playing sub optimally and making it worse for you (in addition to making games feel more volatile) since you are adding an extra accuracy check you don't need to hit, the threat of it is enough to bait things out which you can exploit by correctly predicting the double switch.
  • Nor is it less competitive in endgame positions than other things such as crits, the odds of a game being robbed by a crit is around the same as the odds of losing a game to being repeatedly wrapped to death with a team that has nothing capable of handling Tentacruel. It takes longer sure but the amount of counterplay you have is the same.
• From both historical precedent and evidence from ALTPL, we know that banning Wrap doesn't solve the problems that UU has (as Amaranth has said).
  • From historical precedent, we know as a fact that the thing that made it harder to run slower teams in RBY UU is how optimized play with other physical attackers (especially Kangaskhan) got, not because of Wrap being a problem, it was instead stuff like Kangaskhan hitting like a nuclear warhead that made defensive teams unviable.
  • If you look through the ALTPL replays, you see that the same things that make the tier volatile and makes defensive play impossible is spammed even without Wrap, if anything I see even less ways to play around stuff without it from skimming through the replays, since you lose basically every way to try and outposition your opponent since every hit is a KO (essentially). You are not seeing teams with much defensive ability since the normals still nuke everything, we still see everyone spamming Kangaskhan, Kadabra, Persian, Dugtrio a lot. By my count (from the games played so far), there was at least 23 Kangaskhans, 10 Persians, 11 Dugtrios, and 19 Kadabras out of 28 teams, with over half of teams running at least 2 of Kadabra, Persian, or Dugtrio (out of the mons revealed that is). These mons aren't less commonly used now, they are still absurdly common and spammed a ton.
• The fact that we banned Agility + Partial Trapping is not at all a good a reason to ban Wrap; we banned Agility + Partial Trapping because that combination specifically removed practically all counterplay to Partial Trapping. On it's own then Partial Trapping has enough counterplay that it isn't a problem, same with Agility. The problem is that combining them removes all counterplay to it, so we decided to ban them. It were not banned because it made offense too strong (at the time the metagame was fairly balanced with stuff like VapNite still around), it was banned for being fundamentally uncompetitive as a strategy. I don't think being dogmatic and saying that complex bans should be avoided at all costs is a good idea when they can be the best way to solve a problem without collateral damage.
• I agree UU has issues with the lack of defensive tools the tier has, but Wrap isn't the cause of it and there isn't any good reason to ban something that is completely fine and adds a lot of depth to the tier positionally.

On a more personal note, I understand why people might not like Wrap, I'll agree playing around it isn't something everyone likes, that's fine everyone has their own tastes. However, what I am against is just banning something because you don't like it personally, it isn't uncompetitive or overpowered at all, it's something that adds to the tier in a way some people like and others don't. The problems UU currently has aren't fixed by it nor made any better (out of the games reviewed in ALTPL I would say the problems with outplaying the super strong offensive mons in the tier have gotten worse without it). If you want to fix the problems UU currently has then you don't ban the main element of positional play in the tier, that is purely nonsensical.

 

[Sabelette]

I think it is worth considering with all of the anti ban arguments that we could also simply unban the UUBLs and drop whatever drops from OU, and then there actually are meaningful slow defensive presences that are only ruined by the fact that wrap beats literally every single one of them with no counterplay

In a sense, Wrap is part of the reason that those slow presences aren't healthy in the tier because centralizing the tier around a bunch of things that are slow as fuck means Dnite/Tent dictate the game, which is what happened constantly in Lap meta, so I think that is yet another point against Wrap

 

[Mrbanana45]

Free partial trap moves, make a partial clause when only one partial move can be used per team.

UU has some real issue with pivoting around threats, makes unlike other low tiers, you can't really aford losing a tie or even risk getting your mons to suffer some chip.

I been playing some UU lately without partial trap on the atpl

It's alomost impossible to pivot around kang, zam or gyara safely without partial trap, you can't aford to take slams, psy or even surf/tbolt coverage without risking mirrors, these Mons can win 1v1 against almost everything else (without mention these three adobe) and still have some hp left to chip another thing.

You rather use ur zam to take on the opp zam, kang to trade into de opps kang, gyara can be more manageable since has a x4 weakness but still an issue when you are forced to bring the electric mon/coverage safely, pump 2HKOs everything, tbolt gyara takes on opps waters and prob you ended up sacking something just to bring the electric mon/coverage and scare the gyara out.

These Big 3 mentioned above are just and example of how complex, overwhelming and brutal can be some series of UU, partial trap users slow down those aspects, wrap tent pivots on gyara and allows save switching into the electric users, powerfull special attackers (such as tales, dash or molt) scare out kangas and doesnt lose momentum since they can fire spin and switch out safely without predicting a double or try to catch the kang switching out or Even without rising a crazy stay and getting slam parad and lose the Game for that mind game.

Partial trapping moves, used as a way of safe pivoting it's one of my favorite mechanics of RBY cuz of how rewarding can be when used correctly. The only real problem on partial trap moves is when are getting stacked on some teams as a way of wincon, lots of useful Mons can be users of partial trap and you can't really notice if it's the regular set or of it's partial trap stacking until it's too late.

Partial trap moves never had been an issue cuz usually the users are dogshit on the meta, and endedup with al least one or two viable users of partial trap un every meta and they are alright (like cloy on OU or molt in RU).UU it's different cuz almost every users of these moves are meta, can be viable and can be stacked really easily. The solution it's really simple, just allows one partial move users per team and suddendly building becomes funnier, the matchs became more skilled based around defining the partial users of the rival's team and play around them, and Even better; being able to use your partial trapping move to pivot safely and try to never lose again into and unfortunate mirror.

I have no opinnion on droping the UUBLs since I never played with C+

 

[Melbelle]

The solution it's really simple, just allows one partial move users per team and suddendly building becomes funnier

i hope this is a troll post because 2+ partial trapping users is literally not the thing anyone has an issue with and this is dumb and wont happen

 

[YBW]

i hope this is a troll post because 2+ partial trapping users is literally not the thing anyone has an issue with and this is dumb and wont happen

Yeah can we not publicly troll when someone spent the time to express their genuine opinion please. It is an attitude like that that will deter people from giving their input, wether you agree with it or not. Banana spent time writing out his thoughts and they are immediately dismissed as a joke.

Imo banning wrap from UU is the latest in a long line of mistakes going back years that have led to this tier being in a constant state of flux with little time to breathe and reflect. Like what is the goal here? Just keep throwing darts at the board until you hit a T20? This is a wider criticism firstly of the decision making of this tier, and those involved in it. Be it tournament hosts, the council or people with influence in the tier idk who is responsible but I played the tier for the first time in Summer 2022 and it is in worse shape now than it was back then.

In the last two and a half years alone this tier has:

- Banned sleep (lolwut?)
- dropped Vic and had a quickban on Slowbro/Lapras
- Lapras returns then it and Hypno are banned
- Overwhelmingly reinstated Sleep
- Banned Cuno
- Banned wrap

All of this could've been avoided if we simply banned Hypnosis on Hypno specifically in Summer 2022 imo but a knee jerk reaction transpired. Hypno was perhaps the only great historical defensive stalwart of UU and the removal of it in a meta where crit heavy physical attackers like Dodrio, Dugtrio and Kangaskhan have been dominant was a mistake. Tentacruel and Hypno should be the core of UU.

It is for similar reason I would urge Wrap to be reinstated. Wrap on its own is not a problem in this tier. Not with Tent and certainly not with Dragonite after the APT ban (which was a good change imo). Nor are Fire Spin Ninetales or Bind Tangela a problem. The only thing I'd go as far as being annoyed at is in the Tent mirror on the rare occasion one Tent dominates the other, but if it's a necessary evil then so be it, and it is a conscious and risky choice while the other Tent could be freeze fishing, setting up Swords Dance or getting damage off with Surf. Removal of wrap has neutered Tentacruel a lot and Tent has a healthy influence on the meta. I too enjoyed the nuance of positional pivots around Wrap, there was a skill and prediction element to it. Wrapless has given Kadabra in particular a much safer entry. Tent was the fastest most relevant special attacker and it kept major threats like Dragonite under control, and helped pressure Dodrio and Kanga. Without Wrap it has began to drop and the replacement Special attackers are not as efficient nor fast enough at handling the physical beasts. I agree with Shellnuts a lot in this respect. It is not like Tent outspeeds a vast portion of the meta also. Over indulgence on wrap, missing or gambling on staying in on the likes of Electabuzz, Kadabra, Persian or Dugtrio can put you in a tough spot.
Wraps interactions and mindgames with sleepers was also a positive aspect of UU. In the current meta good luck waking a slept mon.

An example provided of it being egregious

For example, Vaporeon is a good check to dugtrio and Ninetales and has solid 1v1s vs other mons like dodrio, dragonite, and kangaskahn, however all of this is completely overshadowed by the fact that it's complete tentacruel fodder

Vaporeon has access to Quick Attack, Body Slam, Rest and Acid Armour. Can even sauce with Sand Attack. I don't think Vaporeon is a good example of a slow mon being choked in a 1v1 here. Tentacruel hates paralysis and QA chip stacks up

I see Clamp mentioned by others too.. why? I have never once seen Clamp used in UU

The only times I dislike wrap on the whole is if it is stacked by multiple mons and I don't think this is a problem in UU. Dragonites most common set is Twave, Agility, Blizzard + 1, usually hyper beam. Is Dragonite abusing wrap a lot lately? I have not seen much evidence of this.
The tradeoff of accuracy and potential for inviting faster mons in keeps wrap balanced on singular mons like Tent

RBY UU has been pulled from pillar to post more than any other tier I have seen on this site. Too many suspects and pulses are based on nothing more than a whim for years now.
The community propose a change > 'This will fix RBY UU' > It gets tested > It does not > They propose a change.. repeat cycle
I've seen it in tiering and the countless calls to ban mons like Persian, Dragonite and even Kanga based on how the meta at the time is unfolding. But Pokemon meta's ebb and flow. What is great in the current meta spawns a counter meta that handles it, and on and on the circle goes. What is not good for the tier is systematically destroying the few defensive and positional capabilities that were available.
Please reinstate wrap, bring Hypno back and ban Hypnosis on it. The tier will be much the better for it. And if that is not popular then just make this shit C+ and be done with whatever tf this increasing Tentless meta is entirely

 

[Maris Bonibell]

• I am completely against banning Wrap or any form of partial trapping in UU generally. It is a fair tool that rewards skilled predictions and enables players to position themselves in ways that physically are not possible given the tools available to us. If you screw up your prediction then you deserve to lose the game (and you rightfully should lose the game).

You are not going to get most of your predictions right when using partial trapping. Is your opponent going to switch out after 1 turn of wrapping? 2? 4? Will your opponent switch out after that many turns of you using wrap? Predictions based around partial trapping pivots are as far removed from skill based as you can get. Losing the game off of getting a prediction wrong is already a reductive idea, even more so with predictions that are closer to playing rock paper scissors than ones grounded in actual in-game positioning.

Amaranth mentions how UU has numerous fast threats that crit often and raise luck in the game and how they don't go aways if wrap goes, I could not disagree more. While it is true that being fast and strong is a desirable trait to have even if we don't have wrap, simply having wrap makes it the only viable option. For example, Vaporeon is a good check to dugtrio and Ninetales and has solid 1v1s vs other mons like dodrio, dragonite, and kangaskahn, however all of this is completely overshadowed by the fact that it's complete tentacruel fodder. It's not even the fact that tentacruel switches into it and wraps it, It's the fact of why use a slow fodder pokemon that gives your opponent free turns when you could use something faster that doesn't give these free opportunities? UU has been getting faster and faster paced and the main factor as to why is tentacruel, even though tentacruel isn't at 100% usage these days it still has a strangling effect on teambuilding, it's not like you can just bring a slow bulky team and hope to not run into tentacruel, you'd be foolish to do so. I can't say for sure that banning wrap will fix all of these issues but given what I've seen this is the best path forward. I think most people agree that UU needs to change and has needed to change for a long time, and while we were banning hypno, lapras, agiliwrap, and friends, tentacruel has been there warping the tier and ushering in offence this whole time.

This is the one post here that elaborates on Tentacruel's effect on the tier in practice and I agree with it, and would like to expand on this point. RBY UU is full of strong, fast attackers with few overlapping checks, and mercifully, Tentacruel relies on water STAB to do most of it's damage, so Gyarados, Vaporeon and Dewgong would theoretically do a good job of trading with it, Vaporeon possibly even setting up on it. Wrap instead gives the fast powerful attacker the option to turn it's actual defensive checks into free switches. It's worsens the drought of defensive play this tier already has.

• From both historical precedent and evidence from ALTPL, we know that banning Wrap doesn't solve the problems that UU has (as Amaranth has said).
  • From historical precedent, we know as a fact that the thing that made it harder to run slower teams in RBY UU is how optimized play with other physical attackers (especially Kangaskhan) got, not because of Wrap being a problem, it was instead stuff like Kangaskhan hitting like a nuclear warhead that made defensive teams unviable.
  • If you look through the ALTPL replays, you see that the same things that make the tier volatile and makes defensive play impossible is spammed even without Wrap, if anything I see even less ways to play around stuff without it from skimming through the replays, since you lose basically every way to try and outposition your opponent since every hit is a KO (essentially). You are not seeing teams with much defensive ability since the normals still nuke everything, we still see everyone spamming Kangaskhan, Kadabra, Persian, Dugtrio a lot. By my count (from the games played so far), there was at least 23 Kangaskhans, 10 Persians, 11 Dugtrios, and 19 Kadabras out of 28 teams, with over half of teams running at least 2 of Kadabra, Persian, or Dugtrio (out of the mons revealed that is). These mons aren't less commonly used now, they are still absurdly common and spammed a ton.

I agree that Tentacruel isn't even the biggest offender of overwhelming offensive play in this tier : it has notably been a weaker option in the meta since the Articuno ban and I hovered around a total 16% usage in RBYPL, speaking for myself. The altpl games show that this is still a problem with a partial trapping ban. Even still, the "skilled predictions" that Tentacruel theoretically provides don't outweigh the fact we're making one of the few powerful attackers with more than a single check use said checks as free pivots.

As others have mentioned, this tournament has already shown some promise for a uu with actual defensive play, and while partial trapping is not as broken in the current uu ruleset, outside of overwhelming builder pressure, it would absolutely be an issue in that potential future meta. We already have Tentacruel clicking wrap on Clefable and Gyarados in current UU: i would not be a fan clicking that in front of Lapras and Hypno

In summary, partial trapping is arguably the weakest it has been in a while, but remains just as uncompetitive as ever and I feel a lot of the playerbase are simply used to it's overwhelming impact on the builder. Ban partial trapping.

 

[Amaranth]

I think it is worth considering with all of the anti ban arguments that we could also simply unban the UUBLs and drop whatever drops from OU, and then there actually are meaningful slow defensive presences that are only ruined by the fact that wrap beats literally every single one of them with no counterplay

In a sense, Wrap is part of the reason that those slow presences aren't healthy in the tier because centralizing the tier around a bunch of things that are slow as fuck means Dnite/Tent dictate the game, which is what happened constantly in Lap meta, so I think that is yet another point against Wrap

yes i mentioned this in my post :)

C+ does fix that issue by bringing back the boys hypno and lapras and the likes. and in THAT tier i can see the arguments for banning wrap, the same way i see them in OU - you won't necessarily have as many fast pokemon to play against the wrappers, because you want to use those teamslots on slower mons instead.

i'm pretty adamant that if the goal is to 'fix' UU in the shortest time possible, we should start by making something like C+ the new standard first, and then see from there. i do realize this goes against most standard procedures, but the no lapras, no hypno UU that is currently being played is terrible with wrap or without it, and small single pokemon tweaks will not fix it in any way either. practically speaking this is the best way forward; if you have a decent theoretical justification such as "we're reflecting the new ou VRs and retesting all the UUBLs :)" that's nice too

UU's identity is fundamentally determined by a lack of effective defensive options, and somehow the few that were available were banned (lol). the grave has been dug pretty deep and the way out is not going to be partial trapping or sleep or the banning of any individual pokemon, if we want a playable UU we need to scrap everything and start anew, with tighter drop lines (higher in the VR of each tier starting from OU and all the way down) to keep the power levels a bit more sensible all around. THEN in the new uu we could evaluate partial trapping.

my advice would still be to not mess with the mechanics of the game (sleep, pt). they're a little wonky but that's rby. balance is achievable without messing with them. i'm not opposed to evaluating them in the future but the core problem of current UU is something much more fundamental that will not be helped by these changes, we've tried like seven thousand different iterations of UU and they all suck lol. HEAVILY echo YBW's post in this regard, these tiering changes are chasing a fuzzy unachievable idea of "perfect UU" that has never and will never come to pass.

take things back to a sensible "fresh" ruleset, bring everyone back in. ban ONLY the things that are giga busted, not the things that the community speculates might lead to a better experience later (we've tried, they don't. INCLUDING WRAP. the altpl meta is not better). it may be the case that tentacruel is gigabusted and warping once you add more slow mons into the field, or it might be the case that stalling out wrap PPs from weaksauce limpdick tentacruel is not a problem at all when you have pokemon with actual defensive capabilities. we'll figure that out afterwards. but in general ESPECIALLY with the idea of 'rebooting' UU being seemingly something that is considered acceptable right now, i don't see why we don't go for that first, and then try to settle on a more sensible and stable UU that doesn't change every 6 months on a dim vague hope of things magically getting fixed, and then if tentacruel is gigadominant we can do something about it

 

[AM]

Yeah can we not publicly troll when someone spent the time to express their genuine opinion please. It is an attitude like that that will deter people from giving their input, wether you agree with it or not. Banana spent time writing out his thoughts and they are immediately dismissed as a joke.

Imo banning wrap from UU is the latest in a long line of mistakes going back years that have led to this tier being in a constant state of flux with little time to breathe and reflect. Like what is the goal here? Just keep throwing darts at the board until you hit a T20? This is a wider criticism firstly of the decision making of this tier, and those involved in it. Be it tournament hosts, the council or people with influence in the tier idk who is responsible but I played the tier for the first time in Summer 2022 and it is in worse shape now than it was back then.

In the last two and a half years alone this tier has:

- Banned sleep (lolwut?)
- dropped Vic and had a quickban on Slowbro/Lapras
- Lapras returns then it and Hypno are banned
- Overwhelmingly reinstated Sleep
- Banned Cuno
- Banned wrap

All of this could've been avoided if we simply banned Hypnosis on Hypno specifically in Summer 2022 imo but a knee jerk reaction transpired. Hypno was perhaps the only great historical defensive stalwart of UU and the removal of it in a meta where crit heavy physical attackers like Dodrio, Dugtrio and Kangaskhan have been dominant was a mistake. Tentacruel and Hypno should be the core of UU.

It is for similar reason I would urge Wrap to be reinstated. Wrap on its own is not a problem in this tier. Not with Tent and certainly not with Dragonite after the APT ban (which was a good change imo). Nor are Fire Spin Ninetales or Bind Tangela a problem. The only thing I'd go as far as being annoyed at is in the Tent mirror on the rare occasion one Tent dominates the other, but if it's a necessary evil then so be it, and it is a conscious and risky choice while the other Tent could be freeze fishing, setting up Swords Dance or getting damage off with Surf. Removal of wrap has neutered Tentacruel a lot and Tent has a healthy influence on the meta. I too enjoyed the nuance of positional pivots around Wrap, there was a skill and prediction element to it. Wrapless has given Kadabra in particular a much safer entry. Tent was the fastest most relevant special attacker and it kept major threats like Dragonite under control, and helped pressure Dodrio and Kanga. Without Wrap it has began to drop and the replacement Special attackers are not as efficient nor fast enough at handling the physical beasts. I agree with Shellnuts a lot in this respect. It is not like Tent outspeeds a vast portion of the meta also. Over indulgence on wrap, missing or gambling on staying in on the likes of Electabuzz, Kadabra, Persian or Dugtrio can put you in a tough spot.
Wraps interactions and mindgames with sleepers was also a positive aspect of UU. In the current meta good luck waking a slept mon.

An example provided of it being egregious


Vaporeon has access to Quick Attack, Body Slam, Rest and Acid Armour. Can even sauce with Sand Attack. I don't think Vaporeon is a good example of a slow mon being choked in a 1v1 here. Tentacruel hates paralysis and QA chip stacks up

I see Clamp mentioned by others too.. why? I have never once seen Clamp used in UU

The only times I dislike wrap on the whole is if it is stacked by multiple mons and I don't think this is a problem in UU. Dragonites most common set is Twave, Agility, Blizzard + 1, usually hyper beam. Is Dragonite abusing wrap a lot lately? I have not seen much evidence of this.
The tradeoff of accuracy and potential for inviting faster mons in keeps wrap balanced on singular mons like Tent

RBY UU has been pulled from pillar to post more than any other tier I have seen on this site. Too many suspects and pulses are based on nothing more than a whim for years now.
The community propose a change > 'This will fix RBY UU' > It gets tested > It does not > They propose a change.. repeat cycle
I've seen it in tiering and the countless calls to ban mons like Persian, Dragonite and even Kanga based on how the meta at the time is unfolding. But Pokemon meta's ebb and flow. What is great in the current meta spawns a counter meta that handles it, and on and on the circle goes. What is not good for the tier is systematically destroying the few defensive and positional capabilities that were available.
Please reinstate wrap, bring Hypno back and ban Hypnosis on it. The tier will be much the better for it. And if that is not popular then just make this shit C+ and be done with whatever tf this increasing Tentless meta is entirely

Wrap isnt banned. I know this post was with good intention but it's being "tested" via ATPL tour but half the stuff in here isn't relevant because it's based on the banning of something that isnt actually banned yet. Banning Hypnosis on one specific mon isn't even part of tiering policy so that part we can throw out to it being a complex ban. I agree with mostly the Hypno point that removing it made the format worse. The other stuff seems a bit of a tangent and subjective.

 

[YBW]

Wrap isnt banned. I know this post was with good intention but it's being "tested" via ATPL tour but half the stuff in here isn't relevant because it's based on the banning of something that isnt actually banned yet. Banning Hypnosis on one specific mon isn't even part of tiering policy so that part we can throw out to it being a complex ban. I agree with mostly the Hypno point that removing it made the format worse. The other stuff seems a bit of a tangent and subjective.

Semantics. Both with use of word ban and the complex ban of Hynosis Hypno. PT ban and discussion of it is on the agenda so idt it changes any point I made here. And I disagree entirely about the relevance of the 'tangent' I embarked on when calling out the near constant upheaval of this tier which includes core mechanics of RBY being either removed, reinstated or being on the table for future change. A lot of these changes have led to a chain reaction that spawned further changes. That is the point and it has relevance here imo, because the tier has never been allowed to settle for almost 3 years now.
Sleep, a fundamental part of Pokemon, being banned because lead Hypno mirrors spammed Hypnosis and the victor was often decisive was a prime example of that kneejerk reaction I was critical of. In one fell swoop a number of Mons, such as Tangela and Haunter, which both have useful defensive and positional capabilities, were made mostly irrelevant. This led to a time where Dugtrio, Perisan and Kangaskhan were even more dominant.
This PT ban if it transpires will only have a similar outcome. A chain reaction that will only lead to another Pulse in 6 months time

 

[Sabelette]

Free partial trap moves, make a partial clause when only one partial move can be used per team.

Will not happen, we aren't doing even more complex bans, and while mel was rude about it she is correct that multiple trapping moves isn't the issue here, it's Tentacruel dictating the tier and Dragonite also being really stupid with Twave-Wrap shenanigans in slower metagames. Both of these function independently, it's not like OU wrap spam.

All of this could've been avoided if we simply banned Hypnosis on Hypno specifically in Summer 2022 imo but a knee jerk reaction transpired.

That was never going to happen and still will not, we are not going to complex ban specific moves on specific mons, ever.

Hypno was perhaps the only great historical defensive stalwart of UU and the removal of it in a meta where crit heavy physical attackers like Dodrio, Dugtrio and Kangaskhan have been dominant was a mistake. Tentacruel and Hypno should be the core of UU.

Hypno is not a good defensive answer to crit-heavy physical attackers at all, I don't know what this is about. It's a check to special attackers but switch it into any of the 3 you mentioned and see what happens, or have it 1v1 Dodrio or Kang. We have strong defensive pieces in current uu with very good bulk like Gyarados, Dragonite, Golem, Vaporeon, but what do the first 3 all share in common? Getting owned by Tentacruel, except Vaporeon, which is also by far the most passive one.

Vaporeon has access to Quick Attack, Body Slam, Rest and Acid Armour. Can even sauce with Sand Attack. I don't think Vaporeon is a good example of a slow mon being choked in a 1v1 here. Tentacruel hates paralysis and QA chip stacks up

Yes, the problem with Vap isn't losing the 1v1 to Tent, it's how easy it is to switch around QA and Rest and how absurdly passive it makes you in exchange for a 12HKO on Tent.

I see Clamp mentioned by others too.. why? I have never once seen Clamp used in UU

Nobody has mentioned Clamp except in the context of whether we should ban all PT or just target specific ones, since yes, obviously Shellder is irrelevant. My position is if we say PT as a whole is uncompetitive we should just ban all of it, and if we say specifically Wrap is uncompetitive then obviously we shouldn't.

RBY UU has been pulled from pillar to post more than any other tier I have seen on this site. Too many suspects and pulses are based on nothing more than a whim for years now.

Polling about a change and testing it in a singular tour is not the same thing as actually doing it, and things like the OU drops should absolutely be tested every time, not just relegated to BL on a whim. In your big list of changes, the only actually bad thing to do was the sleep ban, which got undone; I've come around that Lapras Hypno should not be banned, but also sometimes developing tiers have a skill issue and need a ban while people catch up (see NU, where Golduck/Poliwrath had to be banned because people simply did not consider not using Rest and ToxSpin on most of their mons and putting Seismic Toss on Water-types). I am a firm believer that it is fine to ban things that are making the meta miserable for the very few people playing it and revisit the ban later when the metagame changes, and at the time Lapras and Hypno were banned, the games were glorified coinflips. We have to have some pragmatism about not having a completely dead tier because "in 2 more years everyone will have figured out how to address this centralizing threat if they just keep playing more miserable games" IMO.

The community propose a change > 'This will fix RBY UU' > It gets tested > It does not > They propose a change.. repeat cycle

I think most people would agree banning Articuno was a good change given the state of the tier, and that's the first suspect to happen under my tenure.

Please reinstate wrap, bring Hypno back and ban Hypnosis on it. The tier will be much the better for it. And if that is not popular then just make this shit C+ and be done with whatever tf this increasing Tentless meta is entirely

I am in favor of C+ happening, but that depends on what OU does. Trust me, I will be the biggest proponent of it. But we are not banning Hypnosis on Hypno, never happening.

snip

Agree with all of what Maris said, including that Wrap is the weakest it's ever been and it's still uncompetitive, and it would make C+ unbearable to play when every good defensive piece - Slowbro, Lapras, Hypno - is also slower than all 3 of Victreebel, Dragonite, and Tentacruel - good luck dealing with that when your only recourse is sending Jolteon into them to Twave and hit Golem/Nidoking or get paralysis-traded with one of the former two and then wrapped down by the others.

i'm pretty adamant that if the goal is to 'fix' UU in the shortest time possible, we should start by making something like C+ the new standard first, and then see from there. i do realize this goes against most standard procedures, but the no lapras, no hypno UU that is currently being played is terrible with wrap or without it, and small single pokemon tweaks will not fix it in any way either. practically speaking this is the best way forward; if you have a decent theoretical justification such as "we're reflecting the new ou VRs and retesting all the UUBLs :)" that's nice too

I agree with this, but I figure it cannot hurt to start polling about people's general thoughts from right now. I'm not suggesting that we immediately do a suspect with an OU VR approaching fast anyway. The only tournament going on before SPL ends is the current ALTPL I believe, which is already into week 3/5 of regular season, so I think we can simply wait and see, or use the UU ladder as an additional testing ground for this metagame and hope that the OU VR pans out and doesn't randomly designate C1 as OU again.

UU's identity is fundamentally determined by a lack of effective defensive options, and somehow the few that were available were banned (lol). the grave has been dug pretty deep and the way out is not going to be partial trapping or sleep or the banning of any individual pokemon, if we want a playable UU we need to scrap everything and start anew, with tighter drop lines (higher in the VR of each tier starting from OU and all the way down) to keep the power levels a bit more sensible all around. THEN in the new uu we could evaluate partial trapping.

I'm good with this as well - I'm having a bit of a laugh remembering that in 2022 when I was a complete scrub I suggested that higher cutoffs would actually benefit lower tiers and people said I was stupid for it :D At the time it would've dropped Gengar Lapras Jolteon Slowbro (and Vic was already not in OU) which is like, almost current C+, and it's not like Gengar can't simply be banned

(we've tried, they don't. INCLUDING WRAP. the altpl meta is not better).

I want to say here that I don't think banning Wrap is ever the endpoint of making this tier good. Regardless of that we WILL need more meaningful defensive/bulky presences. ALTPL is showing a metagame that I do not think is remotely the end goal here, but I do think a Wrap ban is probably part of making a good metagame; the current C+ tournament shows what a tier with actual bulky mons that aren't getting choked to death by Wrap can do for the tier. I am perfectly fine with going clean slate and dropping everyone in and then when Wrap inevitably shows itself to be ridiculously centralizing with Vic Nite able to trade paralysis onto fast mons or just wrap Lap Hypno/Bro teams down forever we can go ahead and ban it. Works for me, a meta with zero mon bans and a single move ban.

it may be the case that tentacruel is gigabusted and warping once you add more slow mons into the field, or it might be the case that stalling out wrap PPs from weaksauce limpdick tentacruel is not a problem at all when you have pokemon with actual defensive capabilities. we'll figure that out afterwards. but in general ESPECIALLY with the idea of 'rebooting' UU being seemingly something that is considered acceptable right now, i don't see why we don't go for that first, and then try to settle on a more sensible and stable UU that doesn't change every 6 months on a dim vague hope of things magically getting fixed, and then if tentacruel is gigadominant we can do something about it

Yet again gonna say I agree with this as well, fine by me, but what OU drops isn't in our control and what we do with banning stuff is, hence polling on the thing I can do

That said, it seems like you want to talk about disregarding the OU cutoff and setting our own or something on those lines, which tbh I'd rather do this the "official" way, all RBY low tiers have been getting increasing tour representation and inclusion and I don't want them kicked out for being even more unofficial than before

 

[Amaranth]

That said, it seems like you want to talk about disregarding the OU cutoff and setting our own or something on those lines, which tbh I'd rather do this the "official" way, all RBY low tiers have been getting increasing tour representation and inclusion and I don't want them kicked out for being even more unofficial than before

OU does not care about the OU cutoff for obvious reasons, the OU cutoff (and every other cutoff) is something lowtiers decide for themselves. Placing that cutoff differently does not make lowtiers any less or any more official than they currently are, and it probably will make them better

 

[Sabelette]

OU does not care about the OU cutoff for obvious reasons, the OU cutoff (and every other cutoff) is something lowtiers decide for themselves. Placing that cutoff differently does not make lowtiers any less or any more official than they currently are, and it probably will make them better

In that case I will talk to some people and see about going fuck it we ball on this, and prob do another survey after the C+ tour on people's feelings about it

 

[Eeveeto]

Haven,t played UU with Wrap. Liked the C+ meta so far, but don,t see how Wrap and other partial trapping moves would break the meta. So, I support No Action (though I am open to some Unbans from OU, all of Slowbro, Jolteon, Victreebel, Articuno, Lapras and Hypno have been looking healthy in UU. By power level, Jolteon and Victreebel do belong to OU, but strictly speaking, they are not broken in UU.

 

[Lusch]

That was never going to happen and still will not, we are not going to complex ban specific moves on specific mons, ever.

Just a reminder that UU banned Agility+Wrap. Yes, technically that is not a ban of a specific move on a specific Pokemon because not only Dragonite gets that combination (lol) but it is pretty clear that effectively it is the same. Not saying I think banning Hypnosis on Hypno is the way to go but at least we have to make ourselves honest.

Speaking of it, clean slate sounds alrightish. Especially if that means reversing the AgiliWrap ban. I don't understand why UU should include OU-Pokemon, though. Victreebel, Jolteon and Slowbro are deemed OU by the OU community, no?

I think fixing the tier can be made by unbanning AgiliWrap first (as a formality). Then ban a number of problematic Pokemon. Why not ban Lapras, Hypno, Articuno, Dragonite, Tentacruel. That seems like a good base of Pokemon that are too much for UU for different reasons. I read a lot of complaints about physical attackers. Why not ban Kangaskhan and Persian too?
Sure, it will result in a rather large BL but why is that not an option?

 

[juoean]

just posting to bring up the elephant in the room that hasnt been mentioned in this convo yet, showdown pt is completely different from the actual cartridge moves, and pt shouldnt be tiered based on some hypothetical future in which the moves get fixed, if or when that happens then we can revisit them but the decisions in the present need to be based on what we actually have.
showdown pt is a far bigger departure from cartridge than showdown counter which is already p egregious, also the thing that people argue is beneficial to gameplay about pt is precisely the aspect that is a complete departure from cart. (on showdown if u wrap twice then u are still in a very favorable position bc you know whether the move ended but opp doesnt, and 2/3 of the time it hasnt yet which means its not rly favorable for them to just always stay in and try to hit hoping for the 1/3. this fact shapes all pivoting interactions bc on showdown u can wrap a second time to cover switches with little to no risk.)
~ ~ ~

"putting that aside", i dont rly play uu anymore so not gonna comment there. going after solely wrap seems not the path to me tho given that most people seem to agree that nu fire spin is far more problematic than any pt in uu. theres nothing less problematic about fspin as a move, its just about the specific pokemon that happen to learn the moves. and rby has active tiering so, are we going to reevaluate which pt move(s) to ban every time the tier changes? eg fire blast being a much more desirable stab move in any meta where lapras is legal. to me, we can clearly see how problematic fire spin is in nu (on both users), thats more than enough reason to conclude that fire spin should be included in any tiering action on pt in lowtiers. (not counting the approach of j banning mons individually, then ofc u wouldnt need to group all pt together).

re C+ / potential future versions of uu, i wouldnt assume too much based off of old lapras uu it was super undeveloped (largely bc ppl lost interest in that version of the tier); nonetheless obv adding multiple slow top-tier mons makes pt more centralizing in the teambuilder, as well as increasing the variance of any wrap endgame bc the mons are bulkier so more chances for wrap to miss, so its def understandable to me to j want to keep pt away from any version of uu with multiple of lapras/slowbro/hypno etc.

the pt situation in nu is rly bad, molt has agil and steals sm games, while zard isnt outsped by anything and there rly arent good lines against it bc the waters are too exploitable and the other fires hate fighting zard (esp if other moves are unrevealed, if zard doesnt have fblast then fearow is okish vs it and if zard doesnt have sd then molt can be but these are awful options if zard does have the respective move.)
and yea^ at the timing, an ou vr is coming soon and uu is waiting for that so thats even more of a reason to go ahead with discussing pt in nu in the meantime
~ ~ ~

regarding the last couple posts, allowing the tier below rather than the tier above to set the cutoff is a lovely idea but it 100% completely flies in the face of how smogon does tiering. basically instead of the tier below being entirely decided by the tier above, we would be introducing a "negotiation" or "dialogue" idk wording between the two tiers, in amaranth's framing if i understand it correctly the tier above sets some constraints about what the tier below can do, but then the tier below can choose somewhat within those options. eg rby ou provides a vr and maybe says the S and A ranks are off the table for uu, the B ranks are up to uu's discretion whether uu wants to treat them as below or above the tier cutoff.
i think it is a wonderful suggestion and as always im happy to see creative tiering proposals. it is high time that we start to detach from the bizarre tiering philosophy that if the tier above does the "perfect job" of vring then this will magically produce a tier below that is in a great state. (the invisible hand of pokemon tiering)
and again uu is particularly vulnerable to being negatively impacted by this tiering philosophy because the desirable traits in uu are so completely different than in ou

 

[juoean]

If UU can decide anything is UU just because they want it how does this work in the teambuilder. If UU wants to drop Cloyster (Chosen example because some people say Cloyster would improve the tier) and other B2's do Marty and Kris just drop it despite it being clearly an OU worthy Pokemon in the eyes of the OU playerbase?

yea there are some practical obstacles for sure, bc showdown isnt set up for this. u potentially could just keep cloyster as OU in the teambuilder, but have all UU tournaments be played with a uu + cloyster command. but then during uu spotlights youd presumably still need to change the tiering label.
fwiw i dont think its 100% the first time a situation like that has come up? i believe that there have been times when a pokemon had its tiering label changed on showdown just for a spotlight ladder, even if the tiering label it was given for the duration of the ladder was objectively inaccurate