The definition of "Uber"

[Byrn Dragonstone]

The definition of an Uber.

Since Smogon basically began the characteristics of what make a pokemon Uber quality have often come under scrutinization. Many arguments for certain traits and against certain traits have come and gone. Often times the basis for what makes one pokemon Uber doesn't hold up under another. "Overcentrilizing", "Overpowered", and "Broken" are thrown around a lot, causing and starting many arguments over the validity of the claims. Then back in 2008 a thread was started by Jumpman16 that tried to define the characteristics of an Uber pokemon. This thread did something that many people had tried to do before, put a definition to the concept of an Uber pokemon. Quoting from the thread (Which can be found here)

As with art, we shouldn't kid ourselves and believe that a hard-and-fast definition of "uber" exists, one that everyone versed well enough in art will doubtless agree upon. As soon as we accept this, we can safely shoot for the sky and end up somewhere that is good enough for a definition of uber to be understood and accepted by the majority of people who understand competitive pokemon.

This lead to major discussion and through lots of effort on many peoples part the Characteristics of an Uber were born. They are as follows:
Offensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it is capable of sweeping through a significant portion of teams in the metagame with little effort.

Defensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it is able to wall and stall out a significant portion of the metagame.

Support Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it can consistently set up a situation in which it makes it substantially easier for other pokemon to sweep.

These characteristics were to be the forefront for any argument, for or against, about a pokemon being Uber. These characteristics in essence defined the metagame of Generation 4.

With the advent of Gen V though these characteristics were no longer of such import. 643 pokemon are now around to give battle, and the metagame became a whirling vortex of chaos. Rain and Sun made an appearance in OU for the first time, causing the metagame to be dominated by forces such as SwSw Kingdra and Excadrill. Power levels overall rose with several new pokemon have 140+ base attacking stats. The former characteristics were shattered. In the right conditions many of the pokemon were able to sweep entire teams with little to no trouble. Supporting became easier with things like Deoxys-s and Ferrothorn taking up residence in OU.

So arguments have again sprung up as to what constitutes an Uber pokemon.
Does being Uber mean that you have no counters? No because even Kyorge has counters.
Does it mean you can sweep teams by yourself if given the chance? No Dragonite/Volcarona/Ect. are all capable of sweeping much of OU if given the chance.
Does it entail being able to bust through walls with ease? No because little to nothing is able to stand up to the likes of Banded Terrakion or Haxorus.

So what makes a pokemon Uber?

I would like to propose a simple definition, to be picked apart and torn to pieces by those of you who know better, and that definition is this:

A Pokemon is Uber if, in a given metagame, it is a dominating force and dictates playstyles to such an extent as to be majorly centralizing.

I believe that this covers most of the essence of what an Uber is, a pokemon that by itself is capable of making a significant enough of an impact to start to dictate peoples play styles. Excadrill is one such example. When it was in OU Gliscor was a pokemon that was #5 on the ladder, after Excadrill left OU Gliscor dropped quickly eventually dropping completely out of the top 10. Excadrill thus influenced players to utilize Gliscor. If Kyorge was to drop down to OU Gastrodon/Laturn would take a massive leap, and teams would be highly centralized around encountering Kyorge.

Now I know that this definition isn't perfect, but I believe that it provides a good baseline, something that can become a fully formed and complete idea and definition for Gen V Ubers.

Anyways post away and discuss, the more people that work together the better the end result.


P.S(If you notice a grammar mistake somewhere please point it out, I will fix it ASAP)

 

[gali]

This is an excellent definition, but there's one glaring flaw-the part about overcentralization. By that definition, a strategy like Volturn, which is in no way broken, would be Uber. I think a better definition is "In order for a team to be sucessful in a given metagame, it has to either run Pokemon X and/or at least one team member with the ability to check/counter Pokemon X."

 

[Drifblim]

Zekrom/Reshiram seem to contradict this statement a bit. While they have that stats of a standard Uber, their movepools and general possibilities aren't as huge as other Ubers. It makes sense that they both are Uber, yet just aren't quite as broken as something like Kyogre or Mewtwo. I'm not really sure what to think

 

[doughboy]

The problem with defining an uber as centralizing the metagame is that forces that are centralizing aren't necessarily overpowered. As an example let's look at Scizor. In the last batch of usage statistics, Scizor was found on an astonishing +30% teams. Surely a pokemon that is being used to such an extent must be overpowered? Well, not really. Scizor's centralizing presence isn't due to its ability to win games singlehandedly, but rather that it can deal with a large amount very powerful threats , ie Terrakion and Dragons, and also give you switch advantage. Since Scizor is used so much I have to dictate my style of play to it. But is it overpowering? No. This thread of thought doesn't apply just apply to Scizor, but pretty much all popular "top ten" pokemon.

IMHO, if really wanted to summarize the definition of an uber Pokemon is, it would follow this idea: "A Pokemon is uber when it can consistently perform an intended goal that is exceedingly difficult to prevent or stop and there is an extremely limited amount of viable options to prevent or stop said Pokemon."

In the context of Excadrill it possessed both of these properties. When it set up a Swords Dance, it could easily sweep teams due to having a massive attack stat and jaw-dropping speed. It could consistently perform its goal of sweeping teams. Meanwhile, it had a very small pool of Pokemon that could check or counter it. Gliscor, Brongzong, and Skarmory were three defensive options for dealing with Excadrill; while CB Mach Punch Connkledurr, Iron Fist Mach Punch Infernape, Azumarill, and ahem opposing Excadrill were the offensive options of dealing with it. Deoxys-S was in a similar vein, consistent performance of screens/hazards and a very small pool of pokes could stop it from performing its goal.

While centralization is apart of being an Uber poke, its not what makes them uber, it's their characteristic of consistently performing a goal with a very small amount of viable Pokemon to stop it.

 

[Benny in a Jet]

Something that we should consider when making the new Gen V definition of Uber is the Pokemon that we have banned and discuss the rationale why. Ones I can recall are:

• Blaziken
• Darkrai
• Manaphy
• Garchomp
• Deoxys-S
• Thundurus
• Excadrill
• Drizzle + Swift Swim

(Not neccesarily in that order but you get the idea) I might have missed a couple btw.

 

[DetroitLolcat]

In the darkest corner of Smogon University, far past the "Participate!", "Train and Battle...", and "Learn..." tabs, is the top of the screen next to the logo. Right next to that Koffing that rests atop the screen is a little blue word that says "About".

If one were to dare to click on that long forgotten button, a page would pop up. The smogon logo still stood there, a fixed point in this mysterious, varying site. Just below this logo lie four words, "Home", "About", "Credits", and "Philosophy". Clicking that fourth link would lead to a long, in-depth document detailing Smogon's outlook towards competitive Pokemon, including Smogon's policy on banning things from the Overused tier. Reading that document would reveal thirty-eight words that define the thin white line between OU and Uber:

Smogon attempts to avoid bans as much as possible—only when it becomes very apparent that a Pokémon is far too powerful to be in line with a balanced metagame is it banished permanently from the standard arena.

.

(This is not against the OP, but bans in general.)

I feel that every few months a thread like this pops up, detailing what Smogon should do next to separate OU from Uber. We already have a definition of Uber, and we don't need a new definition until we prove that the old one isn't any good. We had "Portrait of an Uber", "Characteristics of a Desirable Metagame", "The Definition of 'Uber'", and countless other posts that attempt to define Smogon's vision, but we already have a document that defines our vision. It's short and contains one criterion (in three parts) that is pretty difficult to misinterpret. It says that is must be very apparent that the Pokemon is far too powerful to exist in a balanced metagame. That means for a Pokemon to be moved to the Uber tier, these two criteria should be met:

1. This Pokemon is way too strong to be in OU
2. This Pokemon unbalances the OU metagame


As far as I'm concerned, we have two questions to ask about a Pokemon that will determine which tier it belongs in. Thanks to "Characteristics of a Desirable Pokemon Metagame", we have an accepted definition of "balance" to use:

All viable playing options and strategies should be as competitively balanced as possible, in relation to each other.

.

For example, here's (my interpretation of) Smogon's Philosophy on luck aspects:

Notice the lack of the word "competitiveness", "luck", or "centralizing" in Smogon's Philosophy. A second thing we need to understand is that things don't have to prove their worth to stay in OU. Just because something "sucks", is "gay", or involves "bs luck hax", doesn't mean it has to leave. For example, we've banned two luck aspects in Pokemon before: Moody and Brightpowder/Lax Incense. One of these warranted a ban, the other didn't.

When people discovered that Moody was practically unbeatable, they realized that it both unbalanced the metagame to be a Moody vs. Moody war, and that it was too powerful when combined with Baton Pass and Stored Power. Therefore, it was banned.

When people saw that Garchomp was broken, they used Brightpowder as the scapegoat for Garchomp's brokenness and banned both of them.

Notice the difference? Luck aspects can be banned, but shouldn't be banned just because they don't bring anything to the metagame.

/rant about Smogon's Worst Decision 2011.

Moving on, I think people have forgotten that we already have a perfectly working definition of an Uber, and we shouldn't forget it. I like the definition proposed in the OP, but I think it's unnecessary since we have a good one already.

 

[Byrn Dragonstone]

The problem with defining an uber as centralizing the metagame is that forces that are centralizing aren't necessarily overpowered. As an example let's look at Scizor. In the last batch of usage statistics, Scizor was found on an astonishing +30% teams. Surely a pokemon that is being used to such an extent must be overpowered? Well, not really. Scizor's centralizing presence isn't due to its ability to win games singlehandedly, but rather that it can deal with a large amount very powerful threats , ie Terrakion and Dragons, and also give you switch advantage. Since Scizor is used so much I have to dictate my style of play to it. But is it overpowering? No. This thread of thought doesn't apply just apply to Scizor, but pretty much all popular "top ten" pokemon.

IMHO, if really wanted to summarize the definition of an uber Pokemon is, it would follow this idea: "A Pokemon is uber when it can consistently perform an intended goal that is exceedingly difficult to prevent or stop and there is an extremely limited amount of viable options to prevent or stop said Pokemon."

In the context of Excadrill it possessed both of these properties. When it set up a Swords Dance, it could easily sweep teams due to having a massive attack stat and jaw-dropping speed. It could consistently perform its goal of sweeping teams. Meanwhile, it had a very small pool of Pokemon that could check or counter it. Gliscor, Brongzong, and Skarmory were three defensive options for dealing with Excadrill; while CB Mach Punch Connkledurr, Iron Fist Mach Punch Infernape, Azumarill, and ahem opposing Excadrill were the offensive options of dealing with it. Deoxys-S was in a similar vein, consistent performance of screens/hazards and a very small pool of pokes could stop it from performing its goal.

While centralization is apart of being an Uber poke, its not what makes them uber, it's their characteristic of consistently performing a goal with a very small amount of viable Pokemon to stop it.

In my opinion simple usage doesn't make a pokemon "centralizing". I believe that a pokemon that dictates how the metagame works is Centralizing. Using scizor as an example, it is used 30% of the time, but within the top 20 pokemon are several pokemon that are severely weak to it. This leads me to the fact that Scizor isn't itself the centralizing force, but more of a check/counter to the other pokemon that reside in the top 10 or 20. And such it can check or counter so many pokemon it naturally finds its way onto more teams then say Celebi who doesn't check as many threats. As such usage in my opinion isn't how a centralized metagame should be figured on.

If we were to go back a couple months to when Excadrill was still in OU you would have found a very different metagame. Excadrill pretty much required something to check it on your team. Also the presence of it made running scarfed pokemon a disadvantage to your team, as Excadrill was able to use the turn of switching it out to set-up and because of his speed was unable to be revenge killed. Even with such a massive presence in OU excadrill still remained far from being #1. Instead that spot was take by Tyranitar whos use was higher due to being able to counter/check certain threats, and his ability to support the team. Gliscor also sat above Excadrill, simply because outside of being ably to counter Excadrill, Gliscor was also able to wall other physical threats. Tyranitar was far from broken yet Excadrill, who had noticeably less usage in that stats was considered too powerful for OU.

So when I say that it centralizes the metagame I don't mean that its usage stats are massive. Centralizing the metagame means that it influences the choices of a team to certain pokemon/playstyles, and using things other than those puts players at a sever disadvantage.

 

[shrang]

I think the bit on "overcentralising" is a bit out of place. There are plenty of Pokemon that overcentralise the metagame but are reasonably balanced. What I think though, is that we should still keep the Uber characteristics, while modifying them slightly by changing "with little to no effort" to "even when the metagame attempts to adapt itself to it". So, for example:

Offensive Characteristic:
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it is capable of sweeping through a significant portion of teams in the metagame easily even when the metagame has attempted to counter it.

Another way could be:

Offensive Characteristic:
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, the metagame has to spend excessive effort to stop it sweeping.

Basically, I think if a Pokemon can still perform the job with ease even if the metagame is put on its head to try and stop it, it's probably too good.

 

[WinstonShnozwick]

As argued for already, "overly centralizing" is not a characteristic that makes a pokemon Uber. Scizor and Ferrothorn have been consistently in the top ten, and hugely hyped for as long as I can remember, but they are in no way overpowered. They both have a huge glaring fire weakness, which is a common attack type. With being so popular, they become predictable, and predictability is a weakness. People prepare for extremely common pokemon. I never have trouble with these two because of my fire attacks on my team.

I think that one of the better definitions for Uber is if a pokemon performs it's task in the battlefield so well that it is more often than not impossible to stop. Being that the given task is something that majorly changes the outcome of the battle. (Offensive pokemon sweeping half a team, defensive pokemon walling to hell and back most of a team and wearing down many pokemon so you are fresh and able to kill them all off later, support pokemon giving full hazards/screens etc.)

 

[Matthew]

In my time in pokemon I've seen only two situations in which I'd call something completely broken, both of those happened in the DPP era. Both Garchomp and Deoxys-S in this time period were something that were 100% broken, simply because of how the metagame literally revolved around them. When Garchomp was allowed a good team consisted of:
Garchomp
Garchomp counter 1
Garchomp counter 2
Counter to the counter 1
Counter to the counter 2
Stealth Rock lead

That was basically how it shaped up to be. Certainly there were a few other teams that worked well (heavy offense of all sweepers and SR lead was pretty sweet too), but nothing really matched teams that followed those archetypes.

The second time, as I stated earlier, where something was 100% broken was Deoxys-S. Deoxys-S forced the lead metagame to always be Deoxys-S vs Deoxys-S. The game, right from the start was almost decided by who would win the Speed tie and Taunt the other Deoxys-S. It was almost unbearable at the time.

I think putting objective terms to ban something is a bit silly, since we're banning on subjective use. I don't necessarily agree with the Excadrill ban for instance, but that doesn't mean removing it had a negative effect on the metagame (in fact it had quite the opposite). The metagame didn't really revolve around Excadrill, it was just probably the best sweeper there was (also a pretty stellar Rapid Spin user). But herein lies the problem. Who am I to say this metagame is more healthy than the one with Excadrill in it? Excadrill had a few solid counters and a pretty healthy number of checks, it wasn't completely unstoppable by any means (though I do find it funny Conkeldurr's usage has dropped a lot).

So I guess what I'm eventually getting at is objective terms to ban something are kind of silly. It either comes down to whether it is so clearly broken it needs to be removed (like my two examples above), or the majority of people see the metagame being hindered by it. I don't feel one way or another about banning in itself, I always try to assume everything is OU until someone can convince me that it isn't.

 

[Raikaria]

In my time in pokemon I've seen only two situations in which I'd call something completely broken, both of those happened in the DPP era. Both Garchomp and Deoxys-S in this time period were something that were 100% broken, simply because of how the metagame literally revolved around them.

What about the DarkSky Era of B/W? Skymin was banned with a 100% vote...

Anyway, I actually agree with the OP's definition, however, one thing has to be made clear, actual useage of the suspect is not an indicator of over-centralisation. Useage of their checks and counters is.

It's also one of the reasons why I think we should bring back something we did in the 4th Gen Garchomp Era, a suspect Ladder, so we can see beforehand how the metagame would change, better or worse. And we would need useage statistics for it, for a reason detailed below.

Scizor is currently sitting pretty at 30.2%. However, this is reasonable when you realise the VoltSwitch Core [And how high Rotom-W is on he same list, who deals with different things, like Rain], and things like Tyranitar and Dragonite are Top-5.

Now, an example of where the suspect ladder wpould be useful would be the metagame before the banning of Salamence in Gen 4. When Salamence was banned, Scizor's useage dropped a good 10%, despite things like Dragonite rising to replace it. In general, the useage of most Steels, bar Heatran, fell. It was pretty clear that the metagame was saturateing itself with Steels to hold back Salamence, particually Scizor.


Another example would be the Lati@s metagame, or even the Latias meta. Tyranitar useage plummetted after their banning, and Scarftar became virtually non-existant, when it was previously the set of choice.

In addittion, if you brought down most Ubers, you would likly see the metagame shift like this. Please note that these are not minor shifts. These are like Gastrodon moving comfortably to OU from RU.

Kyogre: Shedinja useage would spike, and so would Spinner useage. Scarfed Thunder users might be used as well, or specially defensive Volt Absorb Lanturn.

Groundon: Rise in Chlorophill sweepers, to use the sun to outspeed. Rise in Politoad. Probobly a rise in Toxic Spikes.

Rayquaza: Mamoswine/Weavile useage would increase, so would Scizor and probobly Metagross, who can withstand a Fire-type attack from Ray.

The thing with over-centralisation, is that it's subjective. What one person thinks is over-centralising is not to another. In addittion, centralisation isn't always a sign of things being broken. OU is arguably centralised to a degree around Hazards. Should we ban them? Or Dragonite could be argued centralising, or, hell, even Ferrothorn, seeing as you need a strong Fighting or Fire move to beat it, or it'll do it's job and then some.

However, the more specialised the counter/check, the more likly it is evidence of centralisation.

 

[Matthew]

The suspect ladder was a really bad way to see if something was broken. Since we're really not dropping any pokemon down anymore, how would it be helpful? The suspect ladder would be without any current suspects, meaning how could we know if they were broken if we don't get to play with them?

It'd be like driving a car without an engine. Sure it's there, but it doesn't do exactly what it should.

EDIT:
I also wouldn't call Shaymin-S obviously uber compared to Garchomp and Deoxys-S either. It induces a lot of luck into a game, however the metagame itself didn't completely revolve around it I think. My memory of that time (ironically) is a little fuzzy.

 

[Taylor]

The suspect ladder was a really bad way to see if something was broken. Since we're really not dropping any pokemon down anymore, how would it be helpful? The suspect ladder would be without any current suspects, meaning how could we know if they were broken if we don't get to play with them?

It'd be like driving a car without an engine. Sure it's there, but it doesn't do exactly what it should.

EDIT:
I also wouldn't call Shaymin-S obviously uber compared to Garchomp and Deoxys-S either. It induces a lot of luck into a game, however the metagame itself didn't completely revolve around it I think. My memory of that time (ironically) is a little fuzzy.

Shaymin-S was considered Uber because amongst its ability to hax through the opponent's team effortlessly, its stats and movepool was shared out evenly so that it was capable of dealing damage to a majority of the metagame. Compared to Garchomp, who needs Tyranitar by its side for Sand Veil to be in effect, was a Dragon-type first and foremost with its trollish Speed stat.

We got to a point in BW OU where each team was uniquely constructed to suit its own playstyle and how it used weather to its advantage. Blaziken in sun competed with Garchomp in sand, who had Thundurus to deal with in rain.

There were just so many options you didn't know where to start. It may seem we were in termoil ever since BW OU was released because every once in a while, someone with an open mind to team building is likely to influence the metagame one way or another.

We could go forever in this thread so I'll wait to see how people take their OWN personal opinions as to what they desire in Standard OU, etc.

 

[Vein]

How 'bout this? What will make the current Ubers go down to OU? One i could think of is when Technician Breloom is out, which will make Excadrill a lot counterable with the strongest Mach Punch ever. Will Excadrill go down? Do any definitions of Ubers cover this?

 

[AasTmO]

Excadrill's list of counters will still be immensely short, and revenge killing it is only possible with Mach Punches, or Aqua Jets. If Excadrill is released, you'll still need to run one of the former counters (Skarm, Zong, Gliscor) to have something that can take an attack, or one of the attacking counters (Azumarill, Conk, Iron Fist Nape, or now, Breloom) to have something that can take it out before being taken out. It's speed is high enough to really not have any viable revenge killers apart from the ones listed here and Ninetales, so you're limited to run 1 of 8 pokemon, or get swept. Not the metagame I think we want.

 

[Taylor]

Why do people always forget NP Lucario ?

In most cases, SDLuke is just far superior with CC/Crunch and priority. Sure, it's base Special Attack is higher than its Attack, but Close Combat is much stronger than Aura Sphere. Also I don't think Vacuum Wave OHKOed fully health Excadrill? So Air Balloon springs to mind yet you realise its standard set, perhaps with Ice Punch instead of Crunch, still falls physically because you can penetrate the bulkiest of Pokemon; though still not all at the same time.

 

[Nachos]

There is no for sure definition of an Uber. I mean, all it takes is to play a couple of games for you to realise that something is notably better than the majority of the entire game, an example being Darkrai and the ability Moody in Round 1. Metagame shifts also have a part to play. Deo-S got banned recently only because Excadrill was banned a few weeks earlier. Prior to that, it was a minority of voters who wanted it gone. Shaymin-S in DPP was narrowly voted Uber on a 54-51 vote first time round iirc. Come Stage 3, it got a supermajority Round 1, even though the Latis and Garchomp were also in the fray. One reason for this is probably that ScarfTran and Bronzong were popular Pokemon in DPP when Skymin first entered in Stage 2, arguably the best Skymin counters out there. Offensive Zapdos was also popular at the time. The decline of these Pokemon in Stage 3 led to the Skymin vote that put away in Ubers for the rest of DPP.

There's also the fact that people lie on different sides of the pokepolitical scale. Some people are more ban happy than others, Reuniclus and Latios were previously suspects, although it's pretty much agreed that they're OU for sure. Others like myself who are more conservative consider many bans done to be 'unjust'. One person may interpret a written definition of an uber to someone else. Example: banning DPP Latias under the Support clause, which some found to be reasonable, and others found to be ridiculous (myself included!). One person might see something in a different light than another.

In my time in pokemon I've seen only two situations in which I'd call something completely broken, both of those happened in the DPP era. Both Garchomp and Deoxys-S in this time period were something that were 100% broken, simply because of how the metagame literally revolved around them. When Garchomp was allowed a good team consisted of:
Garchomp
Garchomp counter 1
Garchomp counter 2
Counter to the counter 1
Counter to the counter 2
Stealth Rock lead

That was basically how it shaped up to be. Certainly there were a few other teams that worked well (heavy offense of all sweepers and SR lead was pretty sweet too), but nothing really matched teams that followed those archetypes.

Just gonna highlight this for my own reasons. DP OU was never like this, it's a myth that "the game revolved around Garchomp". Garchomp (and Deo-S) were the biggest threats, yes, but many Pokemon were used that didn't necessarily have Garchomp as the reason for using them. An example being SD Lucario, who tended to sweep more often than Garchomp (unless you missed because of Sand Veil or something...) If anything, DP revolved around getting up SR as soon as you could and just weakening the opponent's team until it came to the point where you could sweep with something like Gyarados or Garchomp. Choice Scarfers were kind of a big deal too (Gengar, Heatran). Also, none of them even came close to the guys we saw in Round 1 of BW lol.

 

[AasTmO]

With Air Balloon attached, yes, Lucario can do the trick too. The problem with excadrill however was that he was very easy to set up, as he has a shot at OHKOing part of the meta at +0. Vs Most counters, he could just switch out and set up again later on... Which is something chomp could do, and other ubers don't even need to do. Come in on something unable to kill you, and start killing stuff.
Nearly nothing will become uber merely for defensive merit. Taunt entirely shuts down all attempts at defense, and as such said pokemon would need some sort of offensive presence to be dominant; for reference, see DeoD, blissey and, to a lesser extent, Skarm. Near perfect defensive movepools and stats, but not enough offensive presence. Ferrothorn, or moreso, Ho-Oh is on the other end of this, being a strong wall, but with a hella lot of firepower.

 

[New World Order]

Why is this thread degenerating into a "can Air Balloon Luke check Excadrill" thread? With regards to the OP, I don't believe that a Pokemon needs to be dominant in itself to be an Uber. A Pokemon could be Uber because of other Pokemon allowed in the tier. Lets take a hypothetical example, lets say that Aldaron's proposal was never passed, and the Swift Swim+Drizzle ban was never implemented. Politoed would be termed as "Uber" even though its really Kingdra, Manaphy, Ludicolo, Kabutops, and Thundurus that are dominating the metagame. If those Pokemon did not exist, Politoed would just be something that counteracts Sand or something. Similarly, in the case of Deoxys-S, it would likely not have been deemed Uber had Dragonite, Cloyseter, Terrakion and the like did not exist. The "Uber" often has as much to do with what other Pokemon are present than the abilities of the Pokemon in question.

Another way of saying this is if the burger didn't come with fries and a drink, your happy meal just wouldn't be as appetizing.

 

[Princess Bubblegum]

On the note of centralization, I do feel like it’s argument for a characteristic of an Uber is somewhat valid. Yes, Rotom-W and Scizor centralize the metagame, but I should note that few people are every getting swept by Rotom and Scizor, heck I can’t recall the last time I was ever really swept by a Scizor, a few 2 pokemon late game sweeps, but nothing more than that, same deal with Rotom. They simply have a crud load of counters and checks in OU, you should be able to get several of them on your OU team without even trying. It is when people have to use very specific pokemon to check and counter a threat that it might be considered Uber, essentially when your forced you use pokemon x to deal with pokemon y, or you lose always. Such was the case for Excadrill and Thundurus, while I am not justifying their ban, the effects of their centralization where apparent. So centralization alone is not a determining factor for Uber, but it is that in combination with the pokemon’s raw power/support characteristics decides if a pokemon is uber. The fine balance of these is something voters must consider when they ban or do not ban.

 

[AasTmO]

Sad thing about pokemon is that there aren't enough pokemon of round-about the same strength to fill up a tier with equal-choice pokemon.
In current OU, you'll have to go quite some lengths to climb the ladder high without using one of the top 10 pokemon. In UU, there is a similar, though slightly less strict situation going on. It's possible to climb a bit, but it's hard to do so.
The problem with banning OP things still is that there's usually some threat kept in check by said OP thing, which will become OP after the ban. I believe currently TTar is the topline of OU; if it can be checked by Ttar, or roughly has the same powerlevel as TTar, it's fine. If it becomes stronger, it's OP.

EDIT: Allow me to rephrase that to "something is OU if it can be solidly countered within OU. Blaziken couldn't, his counters where in UU, so he went out.

 

[Taylor]

The problem with banning OP things still is that there's usually some threat kept in check by said OP thing, which will become OP after the ban. I believe currently TTar is the topline of OU; if it can be checked by Ttar, or roughly has the same powerlevel as TTar, it's fine. If it becomes stronger, it's OP.

Not necessarily the case with Tyranitar, though he seems to shape the metagame into an equalibriium with sandstorm seemingly most present, balancing the minorly-strong from the "overpowered". It is the easiest weather in OU to summon considering the teams in rain are slowly-paced now that Swift Swim is banned when used with Politoed. It's just a blessing that Tyranitar offers your team so many advantages and disadvantages; that can, when Stealth Rock is heavily relied on, make "Wifi Clause/Team Preview" not the "worst" thing since Generation 5.

 

[UltiMario]

FINALLY this is starting to come back up in a serious discussion.

STANCE TIME

Banning something, and then having all of its counters drop a couple places isn't overcentralization, it's making other mons less useful. Of course Gliscor and Conkeldurr drop when Excadrill leaves. They're both good Pokemon, but they just lost a good reason to be used over alternates. It's not like Gen IV Chomp, where Cloyster ONLY existed in OU to beat Chomp, NOTHING else. These mons are still solidly OU, just less so. If you banned Chansey and Blissey, you'd see Fighting types drop and Special attackers explode, possibly even bringing Snorlax or even Regice to OU to try and hold back in place of the blobs. There's more than just 1 Pokemon and its counters to the metagame.

IMO there's no problem raising the bar for Gen V and letting back in some of the older bans like Drill, Thundurus, Deo-S, or Chomp. They're certainly on the higher end of things, but in themselves aren't comparable to other Ubers. Even Blaziken in scary compared to other Ubers, but you can't say the same for the ones listed.

So yeah, the big question is where the line should be drawn? Deo-S, Chomp, Drill, and Thundurus are certainly far below the bottom line compared to other Ubers, yet they're placed in the same category anyways. I know being Uber isn't effected by how the mon actually fares in Ubers, but with such a sharp power decline, you have to ask if we're drawing the line in the right place.

 

[AasTmO]

Allow me to make up a pokemon to avoid arguments that don't belong in this thread.
Take a pokemon called Steird. It's a really strong pokemon, and as such is only countered by 3 pokemon; it can take all others on in one set. The 3 pokemon that hard counter him are Scizor, Politoed and Tyranitar. I think that with the current mindset, a such pokemon would not be deemed OP, as his counters already are all over the place, and I reckon 60% of the teams already have a counter to it in their team.
What I'm trying to say is that the definition of something "too strong for the metagame" strongly depends on the current shape of the metagame, not just on the amount of counters(the portion of the metagame it can sweep/stall).

Regarding the post above me: Deo-S and Chomp at least have a fairly big niche.. But regardless, I don't think we should ban something from one meta just because it performs well in another. I made top 20 with a Golbat in OU, but I don't think Golbat should get banned from UU.