Data Usage-Based Tier Update for January 2018 (Feb @ #263) (Mar @ #696)

[Merritt]

Note: this is why usage based tiers were based around the weighted stats, so that something like this was less likely to occur. It requires a rather large number of "bad players" to actually move something up, and fewer "good" players.

If you want to stop something like this from happening, maybe instead of bitching about it in this thread and demanding that somebody else fix it, you go out and use good stuff to get to the top of the UU ladder to outweigh usage of bad mons.

Meanwhile since people seem to be panicking (really???) re: Mamoswine in OU, keep in mind that the OU had a) 2,041,895 battles vs UU's 323,483 battles and b) uses the 1695 stats instead of the 1630, which makes moving stuff up somewhat more difficult. Also, if you really want to avoid it, go fucking play some games and get towards the top of the ladder so your teams count more that don't use Mamoswine ffs.

 

[Ryolain]

EXACTLY fren. I personally don't really see how Ambipom will impact UU in a negative way. All the haters are just trashtalking Joey because he did something that is basically one of Smogon's main points: Prove that any Pokémon can work with the proper team support in higher tiers

Since when has that ever been one of Smogon’s main points...

 

[LBN]

Seriously, why the fuck is Ambipom being used in UU? What does it offer over Infernape? It can't scratch bulky Steel-types, is set up fodder for Scizor, it's frail, has crap offensive typing, and is deadweight against anything other than HO, which honestly isn't that good right now. Honestly I want to slam the people who use this shitty monkey's head into the table. Let this stupid thing fall to PU where it belongs.

i too love a fire punch ambipom being set up fodder for scizor, you clearly just are salty as fuck and are

Smeargle actually was pretty viable. Using Ambipom is just for the sake of using Ambipom.

Also, Mamoswine rising from this is crossing the border of acceptability. Mamoswine is a really good mon in UU, and if it were to rise just because one guy desperately wants some subs and ad revenue then that'd just be unfair. Like dealing with Gliscor isn't hard enough already.
And that Mamoswine WILL rise if it keeps going like this. I have experienced how easy it is to win low-ladder OU with some skill (I have a team using Parasect that succeeds low-ladder, which just proves this)

OK mamoswine isnt a bad mon in OU tho, with ambipom before it was trash, joey showed it was good. And you really think joey's doing this for money? bro he did it again only because everybody loved it, and it got as much attention as Road to top ten. And gliscor is hard to deal with now? We have AZU, we have Dragonium z Latias, we have fucking serp, hydreigon, its an amazing mon, but its not unbeatable by any means. You just need to over power it, or if you cant do that, play the long game and PP stall it

 

[Yahooboo]

Pewdiepie finding Showdown and attempting to mess with suspect tests is about as likely as a meteor hitting the earth

so I did a quick search and apparently this could happen like 18000 times a year so clearly there's a problem /s

 

[GustavoR]

Since when has that ever been one of Smogon’s main points...

The main idea WAS to promote creativity.
I am fully aware that there are Pokémon that are simply outclassed by others (Infernape is a better Ambipom and I know it)
But now someone made it work and a lot of people are salty.
Isn't the point of Smogon to promote creativity?

 

[Finchinator]

yo if nu cant ban sneasel, then can someone spam it in uu/ru so we don't have to deal w/ it anymore

 

[Competitively]

who gives a shit if ambipom is bad. The whole point of video games is too have fun lmao

 

[Ijkee]

The amount of salt in this thread is absurd. Ambipom rose to UU, what the fuck does that change. Is anyone in NU or RU complaining? If anything, it should make people who don't want it in UU happy because they get a "free kill" whenever its on the opponents team. Of course, ambipom does have uses, which is why it was able to preform in some circumstances. Can't wait to run this monkey with fire punch and cteam all these salty smogonbabies who think competitive pokemon is an artistic masterpiece not to be touched any way they don't like.

 

[LORD HELIX 65]

OK rant time.

I'm honestly kinda shocked that we let this Ambipom thing happen. I'm not trying to call out Joey or anything, cause whatever he doesn't care, but why did we let trolling this blatant on this scale impact tiering like this? I'm not saying hold anybody accountable, cause you can't really, but it's kinda ridiculous that any schmuck with enough subs can get power drunk one day and decide to fuck with Smogon and we'll just let it happen. What I am saying is that I think we should develop some sort of method to respond to trolling on this scale. I don't have an answer for exactly what that is, but Joey only gained more subs and made more money from this whole thing, and he's already up for round 2. People with just as, if not more influence than him are taking notes. It's worth thinking about. Smogon's only gonna get bigger and attract more attention, and with that are going to be more people like Joey who use their followers as their personal army. We can't stop that, but we can minimize its impact. This time it was pretty harmless, just some kids laddering with a monkey, but what if Pewdiepie or one of them makes a Showdown live one day and says "Hey bros vote no ban in this suspect". What'll we do then? It's unlikely, but it's only gonna become more likely as Smogon gets bigger.

why are people acting like this a travesty? People, especially this person, acts likes this worse than 9/11. Ambipom clearly has some sort of niche and people should stop being so salty about it. And smogon isn't attracting more attention really. It has a bad rep with most pokemon players. I think what he did was fine, but people like you are overreacting, Joey is trying to change the tier, that's all. No need to make such a big tantrum. Stop being so dramatic, and stop talking about Joey like he's an anime villain lmao. You don't have to like him but cmon.

 

[Ryolain]

The main idea WAS to promote creativity.
I am fully aware that there are Pokémon that are simply outclassed by others (Infernape is a better Ambipom and I know it)
But now someone made it work and a lot of people are salty.
Isn't the point of Smogon to promote creativity?

No? I’m not sure where you got the impression that the point is to promote creativity. It’s meant to foster competitive play, which sometimes might mean exploring untested Pokémon and seeing if maybe something is being underrated, but it’s far from the point of the site. If anything I’d say Smogon is more about sticking to the standards that have proven to be most reliable.

 

[Escavalier Royale]

Ambipom isn't the problem. The problem will be other rises inspired by this. Ambipom's role in NU is replacable, it has enough wallbreakers and cleaners. Mamoswine is an important mon for a lot of players that has very specific niches and isn't as easy to replace. A lot of players risk losing it because one guy feels like letting it rise.

 

[GustavoR]

The amount of salt in this thread is absurd. Ambipom rose to UU, what the fuck does that change. Is anyone in NU or RU complaining? If anything, it should make people who don't want it in UU happy because they get a "free kill" whenever its on the opponents team. Of course, ambipom does have uses, which is why it was able to preform in some circumstances. Can't wait to run this monkey with fire punch and cteam all these salty smogonbabies who think competitive pokemon is an artistic masterpiece not to be touched any way they don't like.

Completely agree with you fren.
We want to support Smogon, but salty people like the ones who have commented before trashtalking Joey an Ambipom are one of the reasons why people tend to evade Smogon rules.

 

[GustavoR]

No? I’m not sure where you got the impression that the point is to promote creativity. It’s meant to foster competitive play, which sometimes might mean exploring untested Pokémon and seeing if maybe something is being underrated, but it’s far from the point of the site. If anything I’d say Smogon is more about sticking to the standards that have proven to be most reliable.

By only doing that, you're gonna get a plain and boring tier like USUM OU
Right?

 

[ehT]

To be completely frank fuck off. I don't really even play Pokemon anymore but I can't stand cancer like this. This is fucking Pokemon. It's never ever going to be an actual competitive game. Stop pretending like it is. If people want to fuck with the usage they have the right to fuck with the usage and you can't do anything about it. People are allowed to use whatever they like and you can't stop them. If measures were put it place to prevent stuff like this happening then it would hurt the integrity of smogon as a whole and make the tier council's and smogon leadership seem even more elitest and power hungry than they already are.
/Rant

I don't remember ever saying we could or should stop them. You're right, people can use whatever they want and it's dumb to try and do anything about it. I do disagree, though, that we should just let people with as much influence as Joey abuse that influence to have their way with tiering, suspect results, or anything Smogon-related. I don't even think the problem is with influence itself, cause that's what drives pretty much all meta/tier shifts, but with outside actors using their following to shape the community in their image. Joey's technically part of Smogon but he also has 160k subs and a business to run. He doesn't care about creativity or whichever argument people are using to say this is OK. Neither will the next guy who tries to pull something like this. If we let this trend continue long enough it'll just be 3 or 4 YouTubers vying for the most influence. I don't want to see that.

Note: this is why usage based tiers were based around the weighted stats, so that something like this was less likely to occur. It requires a rather large number of "bad players" to actually move something up, and fewer "good" players.

If you want to stop something like this from happening, maybe instead of bitching about it in this thread and demanding that somebody else fix it, you go out and use good stuff to get to the top of the UU ladder to outweigh usage of bad mons.

Meanwhile since people seem to be panicking (really???) re: Mamoswine in OU, keep in mind that the OU had a) 2,041,895 battles vs UU's 323,483 battles and b) uses the 1695 stats instead of the 1630, which makes moving stuff up somewhat more difficult. Also, if you really want to avoid it, go fucking play some games and get towards the top of the ladder so your teams count more that don't use Mamoswine ffs.

It's not about Ambipom and it's not about Mamoswine. Tiering can go whichever way it wants. That's not the problem. The problem is with bad actors basically trying to outmeme organic usage. There's nothing saying Joey or someone else won't do this again with something that's a bigger deal than a tier shift, like suspect results. As it stands there's currently nothing preventing this. That's what I take issue with.

 

[GustavoR]

I don't remember ever saying we could or should stop them. You're right, people can use whatever they want and it's dumb to try and do anything about it. I do disagree, though, that we should just let people with as much influence as Joey abuse that influence to have their way with tiering, suspect results, or anything Smogon-related. I don't even think the problem is with influence itself, cause that's what drives pretty much all meta/tier shifts, but with outside actors (Joey's technically part of Smogon but he also has 160k subs and a business to run. He doesn't care about creativity or whichever argument people are using to say this is OK.) . If we let this trend continue long enough it'll just be 3 or 4 YouTubers vying for the most influence. The way it stands now there's nothing preventing that.

So now proving that Pokémon can work with the proper team support is now a meme?
He never abused of his influence, he just proved that a Pokémon that was considered bad can work in a tier even if it's outclassed by other top threats

 

[Luxuryball13]

People want a real challenge with real battles. we don't need some meme on it all the time.

There is a REAL challenge called suspect test in UU and only 19 people passed it, so i don't think is really about UU or the ladder, more so towards acting toxic to a user that was having fun and sharing his fun for a month while showing an exploit we all knew it could happen(and didnt molk did too for togetic)

"Hey bros vote no ban in this suspect". What'll we do then

Like i said, 19 people as of now, the day of the deadline none of those left any message in this thread commenting about it, and will it be so bad having some more players actually playing the tier? i found it ridiculous that the difference between #500 and #100 was 60 or so points, but with these type of community is understandable

 

[ChrystalFalchion]

Stuff like this hurts the lower tiers. I'll give you an example - bad or inexperienced RU players are still repeatedly using Donphan, Drapion, Golisopod and to a lesser extent Dhelmise, despite the fact that they are all at best thoroughly outclassed. Yes, they might occasionally do well in a match, but 4/5 times they'll be nothing but fodder. Donphan, Drapion and Dhelmise would all be great in NU (Drapion was NU for a time and did really well), but they don't get to drop.

Personally I think only usage stats above 1500 should be counted when doing the tiers, to prevent exactly this sort of thing happening.

 

[LBN]

Stuff like this hurts the lower tiers. I'll give you an example - bad or inexperienced RU players are still repeatedly using Donphan, Drapion, Golisopod and to a lesser extent Dhelmise, despite the fact that they are all at best thoroughly outclassed. Yes, they might occasionally do well in a match, but 4/5 times they'll be nothing but fodder. Donphan, Drapion and Dhelmise would all be great in NU (Drapion was NU for a time and did really well), but they don't get to drop.

Personally I think only usage stats above 1500 should be counted when doing the tiers.

yea this is why you arent a contributor anymore good god

 

[ChrystalFalchion]

yea this is why you arent a contributor anymore good god

The badge is literally right under my name, hold your mouse cursor over it. Anyway, you are in no position to talk shit about my posts (or indeed anyone else's ever) if your posts in this thread are typical for you.

 

[LORD HELIX 65]

The badge is literally right under my name, hold your mouse over it.

Anyway, you are in no position to talk shit about my posts (or indeed anyone else's ever).

Shut up. Stop being a power hungry contributor

 

[Rory Mercury]

I don't know how people can doubt Ambipom's viability after a guy that joined on Tuesday and has a low-quality Ambipom GIF said that it's actually good... Like what more proof could you possibly ask for?

 

[Escavalier Royale]

Shut up. Stop being a power hungry contributor

What, so he proves someone wrong and you just tell him to shut up without any arguments?

Although, only counting stats above 1500 seems a little too much... Maybe 1300? Although that won't make much difference since if you can succeed with mediocre mons like Ambipom you most likely have a decent ELO.

 

[tondas]

Can this thread not be a pissing contest to see who can get the most likes by trashing another post? This whole experience could be discussion to making needed changes to the tiering system js

 

[GustavoR]

I don't know how people can doubt Ambipom's viability after a guy that joined on Tuesday and has a low-quality Ambipom GIF said that it's actually good... Like what more proof could you possibly ask for?

PokeaimMD's Road To Top 10 only using teams with Ambipom
And for the next time please tag me in your comments. I preffer when people talk directly to me and not by any "darts"

I don't know how people can doubt Ambipom's viability after a guy that joined on Tuesday and has a low-quality Ambipom GIF said that it's actually good... Like what more proof could you possibly ask for?

And so what if I recently made my account here? And so what if I agree that Ambipom has a niche in UU?. I can comment whatever the hell I want and I can put whatever the hell I want as my avatar

 

[Escavalier Royale]

Okay, just gonna say it one more time:

The problem is not that Ambipom rose.
The problem is that other, more influential mons may rise in similar manners.

What if a mon that holds a tier together, like Mesprit in PU or Gligar in RU, were to rise just because one youtuber with a lot of subs feels like it? It would have a massive impact on the tier caused by one person. That's the problem. This Ambipom thing will likely be forgotten in some months.