Tiers in DP

While I can appreciate the effort to be open and inclusive, I´m really not up for wasting 2 months discussing why Groudon and Kyogre really might be okay in the same game with Flygon and Steelix. Not that much has changed; can we please stop pretending like we know nothing about the game and get real?

Take a look at the D/P Analyses board... assumptions have already been made about what is going to be allowed and what isn´t, so I don´t think it is going to be difficult to build consensus on banning the majority of the eventual uber metagame right now.

Mewtwo, Mew, Wobbuffet, Lugia, Kyogre, Groudon, Rayquaza, Palkia, Dialga, Giratina, Darkrai, Arceus, Deoxys (all forms), and Soul Dew Lati@s

Should all be clearly be disallowed.

In my mind, the only Pokemon that require debate are:

Celebi, Shaymin, Manaphy, Ho-oh, and Non-SD Lati@s.

While I think it will become apparent very quickly after the release of Competitor that Manaphy, Ho-oh, Latios, and Latias are unbalancing forces... I´m not opposed to allowing them from the start. The silly thing to do would be to pretend like we know nothing of the game we´ve been playing for years and start with a completely clean slate.
 
Yet Salamence and Tyranitar are allowed in the same game as Meganium and Fearow. My point is that the ADV uber metagame was actually fairly close to being balanced. With the addition of even more Pokemon on that level, the odds of it being a balanced metagame increases. The point of the "uber" tier is a ban tier, to ban unbalanced Pokemon, and thus a balanced uber metagame is contradictory.

Secondly, I still don't see how Wobbuffet is so "obvious" as a ban candidate. The single largest argument for its banning in ADV was that Wobbuffet + Wobbuffet forces a PP stall, and if they have Leftovers, it never ends. Now Wobbuffet can switch out of Wobbuffet, and Struggle does 25% of your own health as recoil.

/edit: Ironically enough, Flygon is a decent Groudon counter, provided it doesn't have Dragon Claw.
 
The whole beauty of D/P is looking to be that there are so many usable pokemon...even if the uber metagame would be balanced, there would be about as many usable pokemon as gsc which is actually taking a step back from adv and not a step forward.
 
My point is that the ADV uber metagame was actually fairly close to being balanced.
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A balanced uber metagame is contradictory.
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You may want to clarify what you are trying to say there... I´m confused.

To be quite blunt, I think you are being a tad ridiculous, Obi. And I think you are doing it for the sake of being contrarian... or maybe because you like to play "ubers" and you want the rest to play it too. I can´t think of any other reason that a rational person would attempt to persuade a group of Pokemon experts that Kyogre, Groudon, and others of their caliber should be allowed in the standard metagame.

I´m sorry if that was harsh, but I really find it wasteful to spend time debating something so obvious when there is so much other work to be done and real debates to be had.
 
I'm saying that the purpose of the uber tier is to ban Pokemon that cannot exist in a balanced metagame. ADV ubers was close to being balanced, but a few Pokemon upset this balance.

I never argue just for the sake of arguing, I do so when I am trying to make a point. I did enjoy playing ADV ubers, yes, but no, I'm not trying to "make" anyone like anything.

And where our viewpoints diverge is that you consider the metagame in which certain Pokemon are banned as the baseline, and thus anything that changes that status quo is bad. I consider the best way the way in which there are the most allowed Pokemon such that it's not unbalanced. You are starting from the assumption of the power level of OUs in ADV, I am not, which is the origin of our disagreement.

If I really is that obvious, then I suppose I am just dense, as I don't see this as a clear-cut issue.

Basically, my view is this: imagine that DP is the only generation. Would we start out banning things? Of course, you would then say "But why would we pretend we don't know things when we obviously do?" My point is that after a year of just DP, I'd imagine a much different ban tier would be in place than what we would get by starting out with the ban of Pokemon that were banned before just because they were banned before.
 
I'd like to clarify an issue.
Obi said:
Secondly, I still don't see how Wobbuffet is so "obvious" as a ban candidate. The single largest argument for its banning in ADV was that Wobbuffet + Wobbuffet forces a PP stall, and if they have Leftovers, it never ends. Now Wobbuffet can switch out of Wobbuffet, and Struggle does 25% of your own health as recoil.
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That was the single largest argument? It seems to me that that was the absolute least of the arguments for throwing Wobbuffet to ubers, and a rather coincidental one at that. I always (and still do in DP) saw Wobbuffet as uber because it is nothing but free turns or free kills.
 
Whenever I brought up allowing it in ADV, the most common argument people used against it was that it just led to stupid stall wars. That may not have been the reasoning behind the original ban, and perhaps those people are just a more vocal minority, but that's how I saw most of the arguments against it going down.

With the much higher offense in DP, it seems to me that Wobbuffet can switch into even less, because even more Pokemon 2HKO it. This means it would have to be a revenge killer of Choice Pokemon, so they not only sacrifice one of their Pokemon, but you also get to do some damage to Wobbuffet.
 
I find the goal of maximizing the number of allowed pokemon in the Standard metagame a worthy one. And no, I´m not starting from the perspective of what we had in advance. I have considered, individually and carefully, each of the following: Mewtwo, Mew, Wobbuffet, Lugia, Kyogre, Groudon, Rayquaza, Palkia, Dialga, Giratina, Darkrai, Arceus, Latios with Soul Dew, Latias with Soul Dew, Deoxys-F, Deoxys-L, and Deoxys-E and decided that the only information I needed to decide that they are unbalancing forces in the standard metagame is what I´m able to read on their Serebii profile pages. All of them being allowed together clearly works... but that is called the Uber metagame, and we are all welcome to play that as well.

The pokemon I´m unsure about (each to widely varying degrees) are:

Celebi, Shaymin, Manaphy, Ho-oh, and Non-SD Lati@s.

Those are the pokemon that need debate; not the others.
 
If this is the power level we are going for, then I recommend adding Deoxys-E and Wobbuffet to the list of Pokemon that are borderline cases.
 
However you bend or turn it, the introduction of each of these (except Celebi and Shaymin imo) changes the metagame with quite a lot. I don't really like the idea of having to add these Pokemon to a gazillion of Pokemon's analyses as counters, not to mention having to take them into account in the analyses themselves. We made such a far progress. I realize this is a fairly low-priority complaint, but I like the theoretical metagame as it is assumed now. Though my voice should probably be turned down a little here, considering I don't play D/P. Yet.
 
Ok, I can agree to that for the sake of this old keyboard I´m using. Henceforth, let´s discuss the allowability of the following 8 pokemon, recognizing that the others should be banned.

1. Celebi
2. Shaymin
3. Non-Soul Dew Latios
4. Non-Soul Dew Latias
5. Ho-oh
6. Manaphy
7. Wobbufett
8. Deoxys-E

Personally, I think 4 of those (Ho-oh, Manaphy, Wobbufett, Deoxys-E) could (and probably should) be banned (for reasons that have been discussed hundreds of times, I´ll list them later if you guys want) before we even get Competitor... but I recognize that they are borderline enough to warrant discussion.

The first 4 need to be tested I think.
 
I'll go backwards!

I always thought that Deoxys-E was a piece of crap, but I'm not so sure about that anymore. If anything, I feel he is a lot better in DP than he was in Advance. He is faster than 95% of Choice Scarfers and, while his other stats aren't incredible, they are enough to allow him to switch in relatively safely on most of the speedy threats save Weavile. That said, while I wouldn't underestimate the damage he could do, his much-vaunted movepool isn't that incredible when you consider his stat spread. I'm really liking Taunt/CM, though!

As far as Wobbuffet goes: for all the much-vaunted offense increase in DP, teams still have many primarily defensive pokemon that aren't capable of hitting as hard as, say, Rhyperior. Wobbuffet is still free kills or free turns on any of these.

Soul-dewless Latis: Oh God please no. I think others like Jump and chaos are far better at enumerating this than I am though so I'll leave it to them.
 
For the Lati's, I'll just add this: I doubt you will be able to justify properly that the difference between them are so big that you can ban either and allow the other. You can't tell me the line of "this is uber and this is not" is drawn between having 20 more SpA and 20 less SpD with Wish vs Dragon Dance and Luster Purge vs Mist Ball or something.
 
Ho-oh isn't even remotely acceptable in standard play. Every team will be required to have Stealth Rock to combat it, and I'm sure every team will have Ho-oh if it is allowed.

I've already pointed out why Latis are way too much. I suggest you give up on the issue or feel the wrath of a Jumpman essay on the subject.
 
Awesome, looks like we can ban all the borderlines except the follow three:

1. Celebi
2. Shaymin
3. Manaphy

Let's talk about them.
 
I think pretty much everyone can agree that Shaymin is perfectly playable, or at worst worthy of testing.
 
i dont see shaymin as being even remotely usable in standard play, to be honest. granted its not as simple as him being 'a bad celebi' as so many have made him out to be, but he is not a solid pokemon i dont think. he gets access to a good move... and thats it. granted pure grass has nice resistances, but this thing honestly just doesnt DO anything. heal belling seems a bit less useful this generation, and he has essentially zero type coverage.

celebi is a tough one id say, and i havent played d/p enough to have an opinion one way or the other, so ill ask this question: can you honestly tell me that celebi got a boost in usefulness larger than tyranitar did this generation? celebi was fine last generation, and since EVERYTHING got better, i dont see how celebi became harder to counter or somethign like that. granted there is no more dugtrio, but the fact that pursuit is being used pretty much all the time makes celebi trickier to use. if i had to sway one way, id say it should stay in standard.

manaphy seems kind of scary in some ways. kinda because of the fact that he gets tail glow and owns shit up, kinda because of the fact that grass knot does absolutely nothing to him, but primarily because im scared of his ability. i havent seen any manaphies on wifi, but jesus christ, rain dance/rest/ice beam or something/surf with wet rock looks absolutely retarded. can heal 100% of its health whenever it wants to, and has the defenses to not have to do it every turn. oh, and rain dance makes gyarados funkier and nullifies sandstream? i think people are a little too OMG TAIL GLOW to realize how potential crazy this thing could actually be.

ho-oh, as misty said, is not debateable at all. i dont see why anyone would think its even close to allowable into standard play.
 
Tyranitar is a given test in DP. If it is too good, we can ban it later... but there is no way we can do that before Competitor is available.
 
ho-oh is a no brainer. sacred fire is physical, his stats are off the fucking chart. come on, 106 base hp and 154 base spdef coupled with 130 base attack and a respectable 90 speed? no.

latios makes salamence look retarded. awesome typing, levitate, better speed, 130 base spatk + draco meteor, a more balanced special movepool and recover. lets not forget calm mind? how are you going to kill it? nothing can switch in that can do any damage whatsoever, and you surely arent going to ice beam it i doubt that will even 2hko. if you are going to ban darkrai, this thing has to be banned.

i mentioned tail glowless rain dance manaphy in the strategy thread, nobody paid attention to me i dont think. i think it potentially could be a pain in the ass. even without taking advantage of hydration, 101 hp sub tail glow manaphy doesnt sound like something most teams can handle
 
About Shaymin, I think it is the epitome of what a standard Pokemon is. Good, but in no way broken. Seed Flare is kind of what lets it stand out, and it's held back by shaky accuracy and horrid attacking type. It's safer than Celebi due to lack of a Pursuit weakness, but I personally like Tangrowth a whole lot better.
 
I think it would be good to allow Shaymin, Celebi, and Manaphy at the start... recognizing that Shaymin and Celebi will most likely be permanent fixtures on the standard scene while Manaphy will likely have to be banned to ubers after a respectable testing period.
 
guys i have a question for you. what exactly constitutes being 'uber' in the less obvious cases? this is kinda an extrapolation of mekkahs point. is it a pokemon that is too difficult to handle? if so, where do you draw the line between difficult and too difficult? if its because the pokemon heavily restricts the number of usable pokemon, then does something like tyranitar even need to be tested? tyranitar alone had control of the metagame in the third generation, and its even BETTER this generation. it now boosts its own sp def and boosts the sp def of any rock guys on your team. if that doesnt overcentralize, i dont know what does. i guess you can say 'oh well if you use rock guys then your opponents ttar helps you too! its not that bad', but then youre just proving that it really does overcentralize the metagame.

furthermore dugtrio is essentially shit now, and swampert does not like getting tis face crunched, so it doesnt have as many surefire counters as it used to. furthermore it can do pretty much anything. im honestly not sure if i want tyranitar banned, but im worried that were gonna end up banning shit thats far less metagame-centralizing than tyranitar is.
 
Looking at this whole thread, I have to say that I was shocked to see Obi arguing like that. I wasn't so much surprised because it was disagreeable. I was surprised because he posted my views on these issues nearly perfectly. "A balanced uber metagame is contradictory" is a perfect expression of how I view ubers.

I really don't see any harm in a fresh slate full metagame test approach. There seems to be a great antipathy toward the concept of testing something like Mewtwo. Really, what's the worst that could happen? The worst case scenario is that we spend two weeks arguing about how broken Mewtwo is, decide that Mewtwo is definitely totally broken, and lose two weeks. So what? That means that "real" DP starts two weeks later, and as a consequence, DP gets stale two weeks later than it would have otherwise. I really don't understand why we have to rush the issue. I don't see any other sites competing with Smogon to be the best at competitive battling (at least not with any hope of success), and I doubt it could hurt the goal of being the best at competitive battling to take debatably unnecessary action with the goal of being absolutely sure that we are structuring competitive battling in the best possible way.

The argument about allowing a greater degree of diversity really doesn't do it for me. Okay, you list 5-8 Pokemon that are so powerful that they centralize the whole metagame and limit diversity. We ban them, and we have a "50% uber" metagame. Now the game is somewhat more diverse, but 5-8 Pokemon centralize it and limit diverstiy. We ban them and we get to something remotely reminiscent of RS standard. However, we see that in this sort of metagame, 5-8 Pokemon centralize the metagame and limit diversity. Banning them expands it even more, but in the new "substandard" metagame, we have 5-8 Pokemon...

I'm pretty sure you could repeat that all the way down to a level of power around RSE UU before the number 5-8 would really begin to grow, and even then, I doubt it would be getting past 10-12 until NUish territory by which a point the Pokemon in general suck so much that the game isn't nearly as interesting. Sure, you get more usable but clearly lesser Pokemon at each step, but the basic idea is the same. You change one overpowered group for another, and each exchange somewhat increases the number of usable yet still inferior Pokemon and "support" Pokemon for your main 5-8 guys. Where you draw the line on which 5-8 group to accept is fairly arbitrary at some level. The approach that I advocate of a full metagame test and then banning those that cannot be a part of a balanced metagame at least removes the arbitrary factor. We're taking the top group that can balance at all. Taking the third group (which is, by my guesswork and estimation, about where so many people seem to want standard) doesn't make sense to me. Why not the second? Why not the fourth?

It's possible that an extensive metagame test will reveal serious flaws in my above theory, but I think the theory is at least reasonable and sound enough so that it would require such a test to be disproven. At the very least, I think most people here can agree that what Tyranitar does to the "third" group, old standard, is not too dissimilar to what Mewtwo does to the highest group, old uber. The best thing is that such a test provides a convenient opportunity to test other major concerns such as Double Team, extreme BP abuse, and OHKOs that were controversial in RSE and came with no clear answers in DP.

The only serious problem here is that we have to wait until the release of the Competitor to do this, but how far do we expect DP to go without the Competitor? I don't think we can really go very far at all without it, and it seems like prudence to me to wait to try to go very far at all before we are ready. I don't think we can even start making DP tiers yet, and I am concerned that we only risk causing damage to our credibility if we try.
 
Can we please prevent the consensus that was building from being undone by a wall of text? Seemingly everyone, except for a very small and vocal faction, is in relative agreement about how things should go forward... let us proceed in that direction.
 
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