Announcement SV OU Tiering Surveys

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone. This thread will be used to post and log results of our SV OU tiering surveys. We used this thread for this last generation.

With regards to OU playerbase surveys, the OU council values the input of its playerbase and feels that this input can be used to help guide them throughout the decision making process. The OU council is able to ask questions about topics they are discussing and potentially gain a greater understanding on the perception of other players who frequent the metagame. These surveys allow for the OU council to gain information pertinent to the tiering process from both the general playerbase and specific individuals with more proven degrees of competency due to success on the ladder or in tournaments.

If you have any questions, feel free to shoot Ruft or me a PM!

 

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone, the OU Council is putting out a survey to gauge public opinion on the current metagame. Anyone with Smogon account may respond and we will be taking a particularly close look on those who have experience on the ladder or in tournaments.

We will keep this open through 10:00 PM GMT-5 of Friday, December 9th, but the council will be reading responses as they come in, so respond when possible. It only takes a few minutes to respond, so please do so if you are invested in our metagame!

HERE is the first ever SV OU tiering survey. Please respond!!!

 

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone, thank you for responding to the survey! For the first time in the history of Smogon, we have hit over 4000 individual responses to one of our tiering surveys! Today we have a set of data that tells us how the community as a whole and the group of higher ladder and successful tournament players feel.

Let's get started with the question everyone cares about the most: Do you feel any tiering action at all is needed on the topic of Terastallization?

Of the qualified (top 250 on ladder OR made round 3 of the No Johns Release Tournament) responses, 62% favored acting on Terastallization while 38% did not. This sample consisted of 143 people and was heavily vetted due to an abundance of repeat responses, people claiming they qualified despite not having alts within the top 250 at any point, and people claiming they made the third round of the tournament despite not doing so or not even having a forum account.

Of the general responses, 57% favored not acting on Terastallization while 43% favored acting. This sample consisted of 4100 people and is entirely unvetted due to the fact that we received such a large quantity of responses, so we have dozens of duplicates, people who said they have not played or play primarily on cartridge with their own rulesets, and so on.

Note

For normal surveys, I am able to go through and remove responses of people who do not meet requirements (see: not having a forum account), but this would have been a full-time job with so many responses (esp. with how many where done without following the rules) and I already work one of those, so I left it largely unfiltered.

There was also a very amusing phenomenon with these. Historically in the first 12-16 hours we get at least half of our total responses as most people who are invested respond quickly due to it being spread throughout places they frequent. In this range, we had 1300ish responses and 58% in favor of acting. Within the next few hours, Joey uploaded a video and suddenly the survey absolutely blew up, which is cool in one right but also the way it blew up was a little demoralizing from my end as an organizer because nobody actually followed instructions about having a Smogon account or answering the question about restrict vs. outright ban only if you favor action since there's obviously an inherent, so suddenly it became an impossibility trying to meet the standards for quality-of-results that we had reached last generation. This breakneck pace continued for that entire day as well, which is when I ultimately decided I could no longer vet things on a response-by-response basis and just let it rip with what we had.

Please note that if any action does happen, it will be done via public suspect, NOT council vote!

The follow-up question was as follows: If you answered yes, do you believe it should be restricted or outright banned?

Of the qualified responses, 53% favored restricting Terastallization over outright banning while 47% favored outright banning over restricting.

Of the general responses, 74% favored restricting Terastallization over outright banning while 26% favored outright banning over restricting. I also want to note that over 200 people failed to follow instructions as they voted on this prompt while responding "no tiering action" to the first question, which distorts this demographic's responses a great deal. With this said, the number would clearly favor restricting regardless.

The final question on Terastallization is as follows: If you answered restricted, which of the following restrictions do you find to be the most appropriate? (You can select multiple)

Of the qualified responses, we had the above distribution of opinions on the various options for how to restrict Terastallization.

Of the general responses, we had the above distribution of opinions on the various options for how to restrict Terastallization.

This wraps up the portion of the tiering survey on Terastallization.

Regarding Pokemon, we had questions on five individual Pokemon in alphabetical order. The scale for ranking each Pokemon was provided and is as follows: 1 indicates balanced, 3 indicates potentially banworthy, and 5 indicates banworthy. Let's delve into the responses on each!

Annihilape

The average qualified response of the 143 responses was roughly a 3.5 out of 5 and over 110 of the 143 total responses where 3 or higher on the scale.

The average general response was roughly a 3.08 out of 5.

Chi-Yu

The average qualified response of the 143 responses was roughly a 3.5 out of 5 and over 105 of the 143 total responses where 3 or higher on the scale.

The average general response was roughly 3.14 out of 5.

Cyclizar

The average qualified response of the 143 responses was roughly a 3.3 out of 5 and over 100 of the 143 total responses where 3 or higher on the scale.

The average general response was roughly 3.15 out of 5.

Espathra

The average qualified response of the 143 responses was roughly a 3.0 out of 5 and over 90 of the 143 total responses where 3 or higher on the scale.

The average general response was roughly 2.56 out of 5.

Gholdengo

The average qualified response of the 143 responses was roughly a 3.0 out of 5 and over 90 of the 143 total responses where 3 or higher on the scale.

The average general response was roughly 3.04 out of 5.

This wraps up the portion of the tiering survey on Pokemon in the metagame and the entire survey itself. Thanks to everyone for responding and reading. I am tired, so I'm going to let this sit for a little, but you can expect more news on tiering very soon!

 

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone, the OU Council is putting out a survey to gauge public opinion on the current metagame. Anyone with Smogon account may respond and we will be taking a particularly close look on those who have experience on the ladder or in tournaments.

We will keep this open through 10:00 PM GMT-5 of Friday, January 27th, but the council will be reading responses as they come in, so respond when possible. It only takes a few minutes to respond, so please do so if you are invested in our metagame!

HERE is the second ever SV OU tiering survey. Please respond!!!

 

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone, thank you for responding to the survey! We have hit over 1600 individual responses, which shows a LOT of retained interest in our metagame! Today we have a set of data that tells us how the community as a whole (general -- 1637 unfiltered responses) and the group of higher ladder and successful tournament players (qualified -- 153 responses who meet these parameters) feel.

On a scale of 1-10, how enjoyable do you find the current metagame?

Response data:

• Qualified: 7.052/10
• General: 7.205/10

It appears that the entire playerbase finds the metagame quite enjoyable, but there may still be room to improve on this front.

On a scale of 1-10, how competitive and balanced do you find the current metagame?

Response data:

• Qualified: 6.039/10
• General: 6.374/10

It appears that the entire playerbase finds the metagame somewhat competitive and balanced, but there is still a lot of room to improve on this front.

For the following, rate how worthy of tiering action you feel these Pokemon are in the current metagame (listed alphabetically).

On a scale of 1-5, how do you feel about Chien-Pao?

Response data:

• Qualified: 4.105/5
• General: 3.461/5

It appears that the qualified playerbase expresses overwhelming support to act on Chien-Pao while the general playerbase expresses a good amount of support, but to a lesser extent.

On a scale of 1-5, how do you feel about Garganacl?

Response data:

• Qualified: 3.059/5
• General: 3.228/5

It appears that the entire playerbase expresses some support to act on Garganacl, but by no means a substantial amount of support.

On a scale of 1-5, how do you feel about Gholdengo?

Response data:

• Qualified: 2.536/5
• General: 2.497/5

It appears that the entire playerbase expresses much more support to act on other Pokemon than Gholdengo right now, but sporadic support is present and could lead to future inclusion in tiering inquiries.

On a scale of 1-5, how do you feel about Espathra?

Response data:

• Qualified: 2.980/5
• General: 2.607/5

It appears that the entire playerbase expresses more support to act on other Pokemon than Espathra right now, but support is present and could lead to future inclusion in tiering inquires.

 

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone, the OU Council is putting out a survey to gauge public opinion on the current metagame.

We are aware that this is the middle of the Chien-Pao suspect, but we feel there are other matters that may be pressing and we want to see how people feel we should proceed. Please note that there is a likelihood that some tiering action will be undone after Pokemon Home, but it is important to balance the current metagame in front of us nonetheless.

Anyone with Smogon account may respond and we will be taking a particularly close look on those who have experience on the ladder or in tournaments. We will keep this open through 9:00 PM GMT-5 of Sunday, February 12th, but the council will be reading responses as they come in, so respond when possible. It only takes a few minutes to respond, so please do so if you are invested in our metagame!

HERE is the third ever SV OU tiering survey. Please respond!!!

 

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone, thank you for responding to the survey! We have hit over 975 individual responses, which shows a LOT of retained interest in our metagame considering how close it was to last survey (we normally like 1-2 months between, but this was just a few weeks)! Today we have a set of data that tells us how the community as a whole (general -- 976 unfiltered responses) and the group of higher ladder and successful tournament players (qualified -- 144 responses who meet these parameters) feel.

On a scale of 1-10, how enjoyable do you find the current metagame?

Response data:

• Qualified: 6.82/10
• General: 6.78/10

It appears that the entire playerbase finds the metagame enjoyable, but there may still be room to improve on this front. This went down since the last survey, but it is within the margin of error and this took place before the recent bans of Chien-Pao and Espathra.

On a scale of 1-10, how competitive and balanced do you find the current metagame?

Response data:

• Qualified: 5.73/10
• General: 6.07/10

It appears that the entire playerbase finds the metagame somewhat competitive and balanced, but there is still a lot of room to improve on this front. It is worth noting that the general demographic improved within the margin of error while the qualified demographic went down slightly, but this was all prior to the recent bans of Chien-Pao and Espathra.

For the following, rate how worthy of tiering action you feel these Pokemon are in the current metagame.

On a scale of 1-5, how do you feel about Espathra?

Response data:

• Qualified: 4.25/5
• General: 3.67/5

It appears that the qualified playerbase expresses overwhelming support to act on Espathra to the point that nothing has registered higher than this in the history of our surveys while the general playerbase expressed an alarming deal of support, but to a slightly lesser extent. This outcry led to the SV OU council voting on Espathra, which ultimately got quickbanned here.

On a scale of 1-5, how do you feel about Garganacl?

Response data:

• Qualified: 3.44/5
• General: 3.38/5

It appears that the entire playerbase continues to express some support to act on Garganacl, but by no means a substantial amount of support and much less than Espathra received, which is a large part of why we elected to act on Espathra.

On a scale of 1-5, how do you feel about Gholdengo?

Response data:

• Qualified: 2.09/5
• General: 2.11/5

It appears that the entire playerbase continues to express much more support to act on other Pokemon than Gholdengo right now, which led to the suspect of Chien-Pao last time and ban of Espathra this time. However, minimal support is present and could lead to future inclusion in tiering inquiries depending on the development of the metagame. It is not currently being looked at for action though.

ok Garrett

also Da Pizza Man's response was amusing

goodnight

 

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone, the OU Council is putting out a survey to gauge public opinion on the current metagame.

Anyone with Smogon account may respond and we will be taking a particularly close look on those who have experience on the ladder or in tournaments. We will keep this open through 10:00 PM GMT-5 of Wednesday, February 22nd, but the council will be reading responses as they come in, so respond when possible. It only takes a few minutes to respond, so please do so if you are invested in our metagame! Please note we have a slightly shorter deadline on this one as we want to act in accordance with what the tier needs and we have received lesser numbers during the final days of prior surveys.

HERE is the fourth ever SV OU tiering survey. Please respond!!!

 

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone, thank you for responding to the survey! We have hit over 775 individual responses, which shows a LOT of retained interest in our metagame considering how close it was to last survey (we normally like 1-2 months between, but this was just a couple of weeks)! Today we have a set of data that tells us how the community as a whole (general -- 781 unfiltered responses) and the group of higher ladder and successful tournament players (qualified -- 122 responses who meet these parameters) feel.

On a scale of 1-10, how enjoyable do you find the current metagame?

Response data:

• Qualified: 7.02/10
• General: 7.01/10

It appears that the entire playerbase finds the metagame quite enjoyable; both demographics went up a good amount with the recent bans.

On a scale of 1-10, how competitive and balanced do you find the current metagame?

Response data:

• Qualified: 6.46/10
• General: 6.68/10

While there is still some work to do, the playerbase is beginning to view the metagame as competitive; both demographics went up a good amount with the recent bans.

On a scale of 1-5, how do you feel about Garganacl?

Response data:

• Qualified: 3.29/5
• General: 3.43/5

It appears that the playerbase continues to express some support to act on Garganacl, but this support still trails well behind suspects and bans from prior points this generation or of a similar time last generation. It is also worth noting that the qualified support of Garganacl declined for the first time. Overall, Garganacl is at the forefront of many council discussions and action is very possible, but for now we will continue to monitor the situation and work to find the optimal timeline for the metagame.

On a scale of 1-5, how do you feel about Volcarona?

Response data:

• Qualified: 2.97/5
• General: 2.44/5

Volcarona's first time on the survey indicates that there is support to act on it, but it does not measure up to the support needed for action quite yet. The disparity between the qualified and general responses is also worth noting as perception of Volcarona seems to differ quite a bit. For now, we will continue to monitor Volcarona closely.

On a scale of 1-5, how do you feel about Shed Tail?

Response data:

• Qualified: 3.10/5
• General: 3.03/5

Similarly to Volcarona, Shed Tail's first time on the survey indicates that there is support to act on it, but it does not measure up to the support needed for action quite yet. Shed Tail is clearly quite controversial, but it is also limited. We will keep monitoring it closely as we discuss and proceed.

 

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone, the OU Council is putting out a survey to gauge public opinion on the current metagame.

Anyone with Smogon account may respond and we will be taking a particularly close look on those who have experience on the ladder or in tournaments. We will keep this open through 11:00 PM GMT-4 of Saturday, April 15th, but the council will be reading responses as they come in, so respond when possible. It only takes a few minutes to respond, so please do so if you are invested in our metagame! Please note we have a slightly shorter deadline on this one as we want to act in accordance with what the tier needs and we have received lesser numbers during the final days of prior surveys.

HERE is the fifth ever SV OU tiering survey. Please respond!!!

 

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone, thank you for responding to the survey! We have hit 808 individual responses, which shows a LOT of retained and even increased interest in our metagame over time! Today we have a set of data that tells us how the community as a whole (general -- 808 unfiltered responses) and the group of higher ladder and successful tournament players (qualified -- 129 responses who meet these parameters) feel.

On a scale of 1-10, how enjoyable do you find the current metagame?

Response data:

• Qualified: 6.19/10
• General: 6.57/10

It appears that the entire playerbase finds the metagame somewhat enjoyable, but there is a lot of room for improvement; both demographics went down slightly, but this was prior to the recent ban.

On a scale of 1-10, how competitive and balanced do you find the current metagame?

Response data:

• Qualified: 5.75/10
• General: 6.15/10

The playerbase is beginning to view the metagame as slightly less competitive; both demographics hit a low point for the generation prior to the Shed Tail ban.

On a scale of 1-5, how do you feel about Shed Tail?

Response data:

• Qualified: 4.30/5
• General: 3.92/5

This is why we were able to vote on a quickban; this support was greater than that of any survey item prior across both this and last generation. It was clear our playerbase wanted us to act on Shed Tail, so we did.

On a scale of 1-5, how do you feel about Volcarona?

Response data:

• Qualified: 3.05/5
• General: 2.91/5

Volcarona's support is significant, but not quite enough to warrant immediate action. We will continue to patrol it as the metagame shifts.

On a scale of 1-5, how do you feel about Kingambit?

Response data:

• Qualified: 2.92/5
• General: 2.85/5

Kingambit had some support and it continues to rise as it just recently surfaced in surveys, but it certainly does not warrant immediate action. We will continue to patrol it as the metagame shifts.

On a scale of 1-5, how do you feel about Garganacl?

Response data:

• Qualified: 2.41/5
• General: 2.64/5

Garganacl support continues to fall, reaching a point where it is no longer close to being worthy of tiering action. We may continue to patrol it as the metagame shifts, but Garganacl is not deemed a priority at this time.

 

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone, the OU Council is putting out a survey to gauge public opinion on the current metagame. We intend to vote once more this weekend on potential quickbans and your input would be more valuable than ever!

Anyone with Smogon account may respond and we will be taking a particularly close look on those who have experience on the ladder or in tournaments. We will keep this open through 5:00 PM GMT-4 of Wednesday, June 7th, but the council will be reading responses as they come in to potentially act sooner, so respond when possible. It only takes a few minutes to respond, so please do so if you are invested in our metagame! Please note we have a slightly shorter deadline on this one as we want to act in accordance with what the tier needs and we have received lesser numbers during the final days of prior surveys.

HERE is the sixth ever SV OU tiering survey. Please respond!!!

 

[Finchinator]

The responses to this survey were a bit alarming, which prompted an emergency vote earlier this week. This led to Zamazenta-Crowned and Chien-Pao getting banned unanimously.

While players found the novel metagame to be enjoyable, ranking it a 6.44/10 on the whole and 6.37/10 among the qualified respondents, this was not a big departure from previous points. In fact, a couple of months ago we were above this by a decent margin.

Players found the metagame less competitive than any point prior by a decisive margin, which is likely a testament to all of the new Pokemon that got released so recently. This response was one of the factors into holding an emergency vote earlier in the week as well as the radar vote we had earlier this weekend, which results to will be up later today. On the whole, the players voted the metagame's competitiveness a 4.65/10 and the qualified players came in at 4.73/10.

A large part of the lead-up to Chien-Pao's ban can be found here! This is the most support any Pokemon in tiering survey history has received, so it is no shock that we banned it unanimously from here. 4.26/6 for the whole playerbase, but a crazy 4.63/5 for the qualified.

Zamazenta-Hero received less support than Zamazenta-Crowned across the board, but both registered noticeably. Zamazenta-Hero was around a 3.7 on both metrics while Zamazenta-Crowned was a whopping 4.4 among qualified players and a 3.93 overall! Zamazenta-Crowned was voted on and banned unanimously after this result was found.

Nothing else came close to registering for the emergency vote Wednesday, but everything carried over to the radar this weekend. Zamazenta-Hero was well under a 4 and below any prior quickban survey result, so we naturally carried it over while was the first individual Pokemon in survey history to have over 50 written-in mentions and Tera soared above this with over 200 written-in mentions of its own, indicating that more work may need to be done on this front.

Finally, the results on the remaining Pokemon go as follows:

• was a 3.15 overall and a 3.17 for the qualified playerbase
• was a a 2.66 overall and a 3 for the qualified playerbase
• was a 2.86 overall and a 2.68 for the qualified playerbase
• Light Clay was a 2.26 overall and a 2.18 for the qualified playerbase

 

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone, the OU Council is putting out a survey to gauge public opinion on the current metagame. We intend to vote once more this weekend on potential quickbans and your input would be more valuable than ever!

Anyone with Smogon account may respond and we will be taking a particularly close look on those who have experience on the ladder or in tournaments. We will keep this open through 11:59 PM GMT-4 of Sunday, July 2nd, but the council will be reading responses as they come in to potentially act sooner, so respond when possible. It only takes a few minutes to respond, so please do so if you are invested in our metagame! Please note we have a slightly shorter deadline on this one as we want to act in accordance with what the tier needs and we have received lesser numbers during the final days of prior surveys.

HERE is the seventh ever SV OU tiering survey. Please respond!!!

 

[Finchinator]

Players found the metagame to be enjoyable, ranking it a 6.67/10 on the whole and 6.38/10 among the qualified. This was a slight improvement from last time.

Players found the metagame to be much more competitive than before, but there is still room to improve. They ranked it a 5.99/10 on the whole and 5.43/10 among the qualified. This is the biggest improvement we have ever seen between two surveys, but this is at least partially due to how hectic the post-release format was, which led to a less competitive metagame.

Terastallization is one of the most important and controversial topics in competitive Pokemon history; after letting it settle following the initial suspect of it, we included it on this survey once again.

62.3% of the whole playerbase and 64.7% of the qualified playerbase support some form of tiering action on Terastallization as of the time of this survey. We are not yet at the point where a suspect is immediately imminent, but a discussion thread is likely to take place in the near future.

Quick Claw teams have become popular. Only 33.7% of the whole playerbase wants to ban Quick Claw, but 55.2% of qualified players do. This is a substantial difference and we will continue to monitor the topic.

Volcarona's ban received a lot of negative attention pertaining to the process used, so we agreed to include it on the next survey. The whole playerbase gave it a 3.3, but the qualified playerbase only gave it a 2.89. We have never suspected or retested anything below a 3, so it is quite unlikely we will retest it immediately. It is close enough that future inclusion in surveys is possible though.

In all honesty, I feel a bit liberated over this as these results are pretty underwhelming relative to the absurd amount of noise people made after the banning of Volcarona. It makes a lot of sense that people who oppose the status quo have more reason to speak up than those who agree with it. I will say that I think next time around we will be running more surveys immediately after a release so that we can better gauge things on the fringe like Volcarona (or maybe sequence votes/bans differently), and I hope this helps with procedural concerns.

Finally, I do want to note that a lot of people chimed in to say that Volcarona should be retested or unbanned if something happened to Terastallization, citing that this is what pushed it over in their opinion.

Kingambit has recently surfaced as a big problem later in games in the eyes of some players. The whole playerbase gave it a 3.09, but the qualified players gave it a 3.46. This is a noteworthy amount of support and the council is discussing how to proceed internally now.

Garganacl is back and better than ever arguably; it's antics have become especially annoying in a metagame where Covert Cloak is harder to fit and longevity is at a premium. The whole playerbase gave it only a 2.49 while the qualified players got up to a 2.98. This is still below the threshold for action without a doubt, but it is in a similar territory to Volcarona in that we may continue to monitor it.

Iron Valiant and Sneasler are two strong Fighting types that have surfaced on surveys and tiering discussions recently. Neither has received enough support for a suspect currently, but let's see where they fall.

Iron Valiant: 2.42 whole playerbase / 2.73 qualified playerbase
Sneasler: 3.05 whole playerbase / 2.49 qualified playerbase

We will continue to follow their progression in the metagame.

Baxcalibur and Samurott-Hisui finished out the tiering survey. They did not register in the same stratosphere as some of the aforementioned Pokemon, but let's see how much support they received on the whole.

Baxcalbur: 1.86 whole playerbase / 2.13 qualified playerbase
Samurott-Hisui: 1.77 whole playerbase / 1.89 qualified playerbase

These Pokemon are not likely to be acted on in the near future unless something drastic changes.

Some other notes:

• Enamorus received over 30 written mentions, and many of these came from qualified players.
• Many people who did not vote to retest Volcarona or did vote to act on Kingambit noted Terastallization as a way to potentially salvage these Pokemon in OU. They also trended towards supporting action on Terastallization, but I have not conducted a formal correlation analysis at this time.
• A lot of people wanted to see aim, BKC, Blimax, blunder, Finchinator, Freezai, JimothyCool, Joe Biden, MudkipNerd, NathanLikesChicken, RedEmption, Storm Zone, and temp6t in the next edition of Smogon Fight Night per the written-in responses.

 

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone! DLC will be dropping on September 13th, meaning we are beginning to shift our focus to this metagame rather than the current one. The OU Council is putting out a survey to gauge public opinion on the potential Uber drops to the post-DLC metagame. We intend to vote early next week on potential drops and your input would be more valuable than ever!

Anyone with Smogon account may respond and we will be taking a particularly close look on those who have experience on the ladder or in tournaments. We will keep this open through 11:59 PM GMT-4 of Sunday, September 10th, but the council will be reading responses as they come in to potentially act sooner, so respond when possible. It only takes a few minutes to respond, so please do so if you are invested in our metagame! Please note we have a slightly shorter deadline on this one as we want to act in accordance with what the tier needs and we have received lesser numbers during the final days of prior surveys.

HERE is the eighth ever SV OU tiering survey. Please respond!!!

 

[Finchinator]

Hello, I do not currently have time to make this post "pretty" by incorporating graphics as I have to be awake in 5 hours. I will try to edit them in after the fact.

Volcarona was the only Pokemon who registered significant desire to be reintroduced to OU, getting a 3.83 from the general population and a 3.51 from the qualified playerbase. Keep in mind that the scale had 1 indicate definitely remaining Uber while 5 was definitely dropping to OU, making a 3.51 noteworthy suport.

Urshifu-Rapid-Strike was a 2.49 from the general population, but only a 2.12 from the qualified playerbase. Similarly Zamazenta-Crowned had a 2.21 from the general population and a 2.51 from the qualified playerbase, leaving both to clearly remain in Ubers. Finally, Palafin bottomed out further with a 2.22 from the general population and a 1.89 from the qualified playerbase.

Moreover, the SV OU tiering council will be voting on Volcarona in the near future once DLC information is fully available. For more, check out this post.

 

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone! DLC was released on September 13th, meaning we have a brand new metagame! The OU Council is putting out a survey to gauge public opinion on the potential for some tiering action in post-DLC metagame. We intend to vote early next week on potential drops and your input would be more valuable than ever!

Anyone with Smogon account may respond and we will be taking a particularly close look on those who have experience on the ladder or in tournaments. We will keep this open through 11:59 PM GMT-4 of Sunday, September 17th, but the council will be reading responses as they come in to potentially act sooner, so respond when possible. It only takes a few minutes to respond, so please do so if you are invested in our metagame! Please note we have a slightly shorter deadline on this one as we want to act in accordance with what the tier needs and we have received lesser numbers during the final days of prior surveys.

HERE is the ninth ever SV OU tiering survey. Please respond!!!

 

[Finchinator]

Baxcalibur had a 4.28/5 score from the entire playerbase, but the qualified playerbase bumped it up to slightly over 4.64/5. These are the highest we have ever seen and this undeniable support helped us quickban Baxcalibur.

Manaphy had a 3.31/5 score from the entire playerbase while the qualified playerbase was a similar 3.34/5. These are numbers to monitor and could easily be parlayed into a suspect, but are not quite at the point we would be comfortable quickbanning. In the next survey, a step up could lead to a serious vote on Manaphy, a similar response could lead to a suspect, and a step down could lead to us waiting on it altogether.

Ogerpon-Hearthflame had a 3.15/5 score from the entire playerbase, but the qualified playerbse bumped it up significantly to a 3.69/5. This is a lot of support and it leaves us wondering if we should consider a quickban, but it is not quite on par with some other margins quickbanned Pokemon have received.

The main thing here is that this survey took place before we banned Baxcalibur and it also opened up 5 days ago, meaning that we had a big shift from the ban and natural shifts from all of this time in such a new metagame. Because of this, we are not willing to make final decisions on if we want to vote to QB (or potentially defer to suspect or no action) on Pokemon who are on the fringes. As I touched on here, we intend to put out another survey to gain more recent information and then make a determination later this week.

Stay tuned for that and more tomorrow.

 

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone! DLC was released on September 13th, meaning we have a brand new metagame! With Baxcalibur now out of the way, we want to sort through how this updated tier looks and what we may need to address next. The OU Council is putting out a survey to gauge public opinion on the potential for some tiering action in post-DLC metagame. We may vote later this week on potential bans and value your input.

Anyone with Smogon account may respond and we will be taking a particularly close look on those who have experience on the ladder or in tournaments. We will keep this open through 11:59 PM GMT-4 of Friday, September 22nd, but the council will be reading responses as they come in to potentially act sooner, so respond when possible. It only takes a few minutes to respond, so please do so if you are invested in our metagame! Please note we have a slightly shorter deadline on this one as we want to act in accordance with what the tier needs and we have received lesser numbers during the final days of prior surveys.

HERE is the tenth ever SV OU tiering survey. Please respond!!!

 

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone! We are having another community survey. In addition, I will be posting some side-by-side, comparative looks into the responses to certain questions in the future, so if you are looking for results to the last survey, then worry not as some will come.

Anyone with Smogon account may respond and we will be taking a particularly close look on those who have experience on the ladder or in tournaments. We will keep this open through 10:59 PM GMT-4 of Tuesday, October 17th, but the council will be reading responses as they come in to potentially act sooner, so respond when possible. It only takes a few minutes to respond, so please do so if you are invested in our metagame!

Please note we have a slightly shorter deadline on this one as we want to act in accordance with what the tier needs and we have received lesser numbers during the final days of prior surveys.

HERE is the eleventh ever SV OU tiering survey. Please respond!!!

 

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone! We are having another community survey. In addition, I will be posting some side-by-side, comparative looks into the responses to certain questions in the near future (Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday night of this week), so if you are looking for results to the last survey, then worry not as some will come.

Anyone with Smogon account may respond and we will be taking a particularly close look on those who have experience on the ladder or in tournaments. We will keep this open through 10:00 PM GMT-4 of Tuesday, October 31st, but the council will be reading responses as they come in to potentially act sooner, so respond when possible. It only takes a few minutes to respond, so please do so if you are invested in our metagame!

Please note we have a slightly shorter deadline on this one as we want to act in accordance with what the tier needs and we have received lesser numbers during the final days of prior surveys.

HERE is the 12th ever SV OU tiering survey. Please respond!!!

 

[Finchinator]

Let's start with some comparative metrics to see how the metagame has evolved!

Competitiveness started at an all-time low point when DLC was released due to the influx of new, potentially unbalanced Pokemon and standards not yet being formed. However, with each piece of tiering action and as time elapsed, the metrics grew closer to generational norms, reaching roughly that point in the most recent survey.

It is worth noting that the qualified playerbase is slightly below the general playerbase on this metric across each survey, but the same progression is plotted.

This shows some things to me as tier leader:

• Releases like Home and DLC continue to leave the tier "reset" to a lower point in terms of overall competitivenss
• These circumstances demand prompt council attention and tiering action
  • We addressed during DLC this with more frequent surveys than Home and more organization/communication than ever before, which avoided a disconnect between the playerbase and the council like we had with Volcarona
  • We also came up with some "creative" solutions like the shorter deadlines for surveys and suspects, which were previously unprecedented and allowed us to get more things accomplished in less time as the tier shifted rapidly
• There is a correlation between our tiering actions and an improved perception of the metagame
• However, there is still a lot of work to do and more improvement to come across, meaning our job is still ongoing and you should expect more tiering action (more on this later)

 

[Finchinator]

Enjoyability is an interesting metric as it is not the true goal of tiering, but it is what many people desire out of the game as a hobby, so I like seeing these numbers improve personally.

I am not going to provide as much commentary on them, but I did make progressive charts to show how it shifted and they can be seen below. It looks like the numbers followed the historic trend of starting decently due to all of the new toys and fun strategies to try out, but then dipping as people run into frustrations about repetition and imbalance. Finally, they tend to approach a more respectable number once some tiering intervention occurs and they still have some new toys while also a better product within the metagame.

 

[Finchinator]

Finally, I just want to log the numbers (on the 1-5 scale) of the specific tiering target questions (i.e: when we list Pokemon we are focusing on) and provide some context as well!

• 3.79 / 5 from the general playerbase as a part of the September 20th survey
• 4.02 / 5 from the qualified playerbase as a part of the September 20th survey

Ogerpon-Hearthflame was quickbanned via 7-2 council vote on September 22nd as a result of this survey. You can see this here

We have probable cause to believe this contributed to the first improvement in metagame competitiveness scores.

• 2.5 / 5 from the general playerbase as a part of the September 20th survey
• 2.79 / 5 from the qualified playerbase as as part of the September 20th survey

This was not enough support to quickban it despite there being enough council support, but we figured the community would catch-up to the metagame, which was evolving rapidly, within a matter of time. After the survey on September 22nd and the Ogerpon-Hearthflame ban on September 22nd, we did a tiering radar of everything discussion worthy on September 26th here, which had Ursaluna-Bloodmoon at the forefront of discussion as it began to surge in popularity and people began to use the better sets on it. Finally, it was suspected on September 27th here after support continued.

We could not justify quickbanning it with such low survey scores -- this would be even worse than something like the Volcarona situation, and we saw how that went. However, we felt strongly, so we pushed hard for the radar and eventual suspect. In addition, we got creative with a new, abbreviated suspect to save it from being in tours for an additional week and on the ladder for an additional 4-5 days. The rest is history with one of the biggest suspect ban margins ever here.

I was pleased with how we handled this as there was clearly not enough support to quickban, but we thought we were ahead of the curve and used the system in our favor to act quickly so we were ready when the general playerbase caught on. It did involve a very busy schedule for me though as we had survey on Septembet 16, Baxcalibur ban on Septembet 17, survey results on September 19, survey #2 on September 20, Ogerpon-Hearthflame ban on September 22, radar on September 26, and Ogerpon-Bloodmoon suspect on September 27. That is 7 major tiering events that require hours of time across 11 days, which was a lot of fun, but also a ton of work.

• 3.28 / 5 in general and 3.3 / 5 qualified as a part of the September 20th survey
• 3.27 / 5 in general and 3.37 / 5 qualified as a part of the October 16th survey
• 3.11 / 5 in general and 3.19 / 5 qualified as a part of the October 30th survey

Normally this would be around suspect range, but with how much support some others have gotten, Manaphy has remained firmly entrnehced in the "stick around on the survey/radar" territory, but short of a quickban or suspect. We have seen some creative ways of handling Manaphy pop up, but it still can be a pest and seen as limiting, so I imagine it will remain present in these discussions.

• 2.23 / 5 in general and 2.71 / 5 qualified as a part of the September 20th survey
• 3.37 / 5 in general and 3.22 / 5 qualified as a part of the October 16th survey
• 3.09 / 5 in general and 3.18 / 5 qualified as a part of the October 30th survey

Similar to Manaphy, but it got off to a slower start as it may have been in the shadow of Ogerpon-Hearthflame at first (even if it arguably should not have been given how good it was). Ogerpon-Wellspring is a possible future suspect, but still not seen as a priority relative to a few more prominently supported options.

• 4.0 / 5 in general and 3.28 / 5 qualified as a part of the October 16th survey
• 3.93 / 5 in general and 3.62 / 5 qualified as a part of the October 30th survey

Kingambit has been an oddball as it has received a ton more general support than qualified.

This is partially because we have a problem with the general responses where people spam and abuse the system in ways we cannot always detect via Google Forms, so it is likely we shift to directly forum based surveys in the future in response to this bad faith behavior (good job guys, way to ruin something super convenient for everyone). A lot of these identical responses listed Kingambit as a 5 while the other Pokemon tended to be closer to their average. I was able to filter out a certain repeat spammer each time, but others did it with a bit more intelligence and it would have taken many hours of data sorting, so I cannot guarantee a perfect sample there. With this in mind, we almost exclusively focus on the qualified demographic and have been very transparent about this, so those numbers are really what we are focusing on here (and with other Pokemon).

Regardless, Kingambit is high and should be one of the primary suspect candidates moving forward. There are still multiple Pokemon coming that are higher now (and Roaring Moon was higher last time around, which we will get to), but a 3.6 is nothing to take lightly and we expect to be monitoring this very closely.

• 3.11 / 5 in general and 3.68 / 5 qualified as a part of the October 16th survey

Despite only being included for the first time, it was very clear that Roaring Moon demanded tiering action. We were not comfortable quickbanning it when it was this far below a 4, but there was internal support to do that probably. We settled for another quick suspect here on October 17th and it was banned with a 70% majority here.

• 3.33 / 5 in general and 3.11 / 5 qualified as a part of the October 16th survey
• 3.59 / 5 in general and 3.72 / 5 qualified as a part of the October 30th survey

Gholdengo has been one of the most discussed Pokemon, and this is for a very good reason. It is one of the most strong and practical options in our tiering with a presence many deem undesirable. I personally support us suspecting Gholdengo in the near future and I view that as a likely option if these results continue. It is not something we can ignore at this point. However, one Pokemon had even more support than this.

• 1.59 / 5 in general and 2.21 / 5 qualified as part of the September 20th survey
• 2.99 / 5 in general and 3.39 / 5 qualified as part of the October 16th survey
• 3.53 / 5 in general and 3.99 / 5 qualified as part of the October 30th survey

Gliscor has reached a point where we have to deliberate on it. Even if you are in the camp that prefers we prioritize Gholdengo, you cannot simply ignore these numbers -- it would be doing a disservice to the playerbase and making surveys pointless to ignore it when it is standing out to this extent. Both of these Pokemon should be addressed even if they are linked -- they are enormously impactful entities individually and not always paired at all.

As such, the SV OU tiering council voted today as to if we intended to quickban, suspect, or not act on Gliscor. Stay tuned elsewhere for results, but that gets us up to date with surveys besides the quickban question, which registered between 6 and 6.5 for both general and qualified responses.