The problem with releasing all of them at once is like I said earlier: we won't be playing with OU as we know it anymore.
I don't see how that's a problem. That's actually the point. Any change would lead to it not being OU as we know it. Unbanning Deoxys-S changes things. Even banning Moltres would change things (not much, but it would still be a change).
What we need is a non-subjective way to test whether one metagame is better than another. Because there are so many pokemon, we can create very well balanced metagames changing only some 5 to 15 pokemon at a time. Adding just 5 of these "possible Ubers" to OU, or subtracting ~10 members of the 600 Club from OU... both will clearly create a balanced metagame (eventually with testing).
There is no such thing as an objective way to measure this, and if you say so you are just fooling yourself. Give me any methodology and I'll explain its inherent subjectiveness.
With that in mind, I ask, what do you want by adding these pokemon to Ubers? Not just to Obi, but to everyone. We really need to know _what_ kind of game we are looking for before changing the metagame, else it may just get worse.
I don't presume to know what the effects will be. That's the entire point of testing. OU ought to have as many Pokemon allowed as possible. If you really wanted to have the largest number of viable Pokemon, you should have been speaking out against the tiers for quite some time now. Any diverse attacker, any fast attacker, or any attacker that can raise its Speed is worthy of banning. By allowing Garchomp, every team must have a Pokemon that resists Ground and Dragon (and your resistance to either probably shouldn't be weak to the other, or you are in trouble with Swords Dancers... too bad only 2 Pokemon fit the bill for that double resist!). If Infernape weren't kicking around, I wouldn't need to have Tentacruel, Slowking, or Dugtrio on most every team or risk annihilation. Gyarados means Starmie, Celebi, or HP Electric Waters need to be there. For more defensive Pokemon, you have a lot more options to win against them, in part because they give you more time to do something. If you mispredict (or, to use terms that actually mean what they say against Pokemon where you have to make a snap judgment with no information, "guess wrong") against an offensive Pokemon, that's often it. Against a defensive Pokemon, you still have a shot.
Why I think adding powerful pokemon is a bad thing: Everyone loves using UU and NU pokemon in OU, especially if they are well played and possible. In fact, many people openly try to avoid blatantly OU pokemon to come up with unique teams. By adding clearly powerful Pokemon to OU, this is far less possible. The UU metagame, as awesome as it is shaping up to be right now, is not played, nor is it standardized. Right now, GameFAQs, Smogon, Serebii and for the most part ShoddyBattle all agree on practically the same OU metagame. But there is no standard on any site what is and isn't UU.
I've personally found more room for innovation in my uber teams. Now, dedicating 2, 3, or even 4 of my team slots primarily to stopping Rayquaza and / or Deoxys-A means I don't have room for all of them, but the idea is still there. The only reason we see a lower overall level of innovation in the uber tier is because not as many people play it.
I advocate small testing, doing it one at a time. We should see if single Pokemon adversely effects the metagame, never releasing them all at once.
But by doing that, you are testing the Pokemon in an environment which may not necessarily mimic how it actually ends up. Then, when you eliminate one Pokemon in the first round of testing, it will be almost impossible to overcome the inertia to retest it once you find that four others are OK. When a Pokemon is truly broken, it forces you to change. Unbroken Pokemon force nothing.
if we add half of the ubers to standard, why have two seperate metagames? Honestly, Obi get on with your real point of making our current Uber game the Standard game. It's obvious this is what you want, so why don't you say it?
OK, this is the last post I'm going to say this. Future violations of this rule will result in infractions.
If you don't understand what my position is, don't loudly proclaim this fact to the world by misrepresenting it. It's fine to disagree with me, but to disagree with me and then claim that my position is something that it isn't is pure dishonesty when I've clearly layed out my views.
Let's consider this conspiracy theory of yours piece by piece.
1) My goal is to make ubers the standard method of playing.
2) I am not an idiot (I'm assuming you agree with this one?)
3) I layed out my reasoning for why certain Pokemon, such as Rayquaza, Deoxys-A, and others should
always be considered uber
4) ???
5) Everyone plays ubers (including Rayquaza, Deoxys-A, and probably Arceus)
Is this about right?
As Obi suggested, moving ubers and their uber counters into the OU tier means that OU would become Ubers-lite, not become more diverse.
When?
It forces even more of people's favorite Pokes into BL where they are unusable due to the influx of uber powerhouses, because they simply don't stand up to base 680 monsters and those monsters will steal the jobs of most OU Pokemon in their type (Kyogre is the best water special attacker, best water special wall, best water CMer, etc so you replace 10 water types with 1). If you allow Ho-oh, but also Kyogre to counter it and pretend that makes them balance out, there is no way you can run a team without one or both; OU teams without them would be fodder.
Smeargle is my favorite Pokemon (after Mewtwo). It becomes far more usable with Kyogre around to remove the Hail and Sandstorm. I like Scizor. It's a good bet to take on Darkrai and others. Tyranitar is really cool, and it does about as well as usual. Garchomp is a punk, and these changes would make Garchomp not as much of a punk. Ludicolo, Poliwrath, Lapras, Quagsire, and Lanturn all benefit, and I like all of them. Even Parasect gets a use as a Specs / Scarf / CB Kyogre counter, as long as you keep it out of Ice moves.
The only OU/UU Pokemon that would benefit are niche Pokemon and for every 1 of those you lose 5 regular OU who just don't measure up anymore. So, the choice of available Pokemon constricts, people like me who use half BL Pokemon on their OU teams will be forced to use only high tier OU and ubers to see any success, and now only UU looks worth playing. No thanks.
Every Pokemon are "niche" Pokemon. For Pokemon like Garchomp, their niche (overpowering attacker that KOs stuff that resists it) is a pretty large and useful niche. For others, like Quagsire, that niche is currently pretty small. I find it highly likely that Kyogre alone would be a
decentralizing force, not an overcentralizing one. If nothing else, it lets you counter Garchomp a lot easier.
There's already too many good Pokemon stuck in BL thanks to the likes of Blissey and Garchomp, adding 10 ubers into OU just makes that list gigantic. Letting them in with testing one at a time is one thing, because I seriously doubt much beyond Deoxys-S is going to fit into OU.
And letting some of these dudes in will bring up several of them as well. This street runs both ways.
Look Obi, if you want Kyogre and Giratina (but not Groudon and Rayquaza for some absurd reason), just play Ubers.
I was going to reply to this with a simple "Look, Deck Knight, if you want X but not Y, how about you get Z that includes X and Y!", but I couldn't think of an example dumb enough. You just answered your own question. Rayquaza and Groudon are uber. I'm not convinced on the others, so of course I'm not going to want to play in a tier where those Pokemon are allowed.
Name one instance where someone would choose any other wall when they could choose Giratina or Lugia? Lugia is like Cresselia on Steroids, with a reliable recovery move and true Boltbeam to boot. Giratina isn't particularly great at eating Outrage or Draco Meteor, but walls the hell out of Gyarados and Heracross.
Name on instance where anyone would choose any other attacker when they could choose Garchomp or Togekiss? Garchomp is like Flygon on steriods, with Swords Dance and Outrage to boot. Togekiss isn't particularly great at eating Outrage or Draco Meteor, but it can easily get a bit of luck to win, or Baton Pass Nasty Plots.
Lets face it, a metagame with any of these beasts down is completely different from OU. Every since team will have one of Lugia, Giratina, or Kyogre if those 3 are brought down.
Yes it is different. Yet my opponents are advocating an OU tier in which just about as many teams carry Blissey, Garchomp, or Gengar, and no one seems to mention it.
Ummm.......
In case I'm missing something, shouldn't we start with the Uber metagame as is? Then we can use results from the existing Uber metagame to figure out what to ban out to "Ultra-Uber" or "Legendary". This lets you create a middle ground between OU and Uber that could replace OU naturally if it really is that much better.
Yeah, it's called the uber tier. We've already played with everything allowed.
Why not make a Borderline Uber (BLU) tier? It'd allow some ubers in OU while keeping the original OU tier intact.
Nobody would play that, so it would never get tested. In the end, people will play whatever the Shoddy ladder and the (Smogon) tournaments are.
It would hurt more than help. To me, they're Uber for a reason, and should generally stay that way.
They are uber because we say they are. The tiering of uber vs. not uber was decided before English DP was even released.
Unless they rework the tier definitions, that'd be by accident. BL isn't meant to be a balanced tier on its own apart from OU. OU is basically a glorified 'threat list' for the standard 'tier', which is OU+BL.
Actually, it's impossible. If BL were balanced, BL would be a tier consisting of 0 Pokemon and all the Pokemon that were "BL" would be UU. BL is by definition unbalanced, just like ubers is, by definition, unbalanced. If ubers is balanced, it ought to be OU, because the sole purpose of the uber tier is to ban unbalancing Pokemon. However, this isn't the case.
I agree with Obi in that everything should be tested, but you have to realize that testing, say, Deoxys-E in a tournament won't give you a perfect look at his power. Reading the posts in some kinds of threads discussing the aftermath of the tourney, you'll see that some people didn't even change their teams for the tournaments
[here]. A few may have had experience with that Pokemon in a different tier, but no one, going into a tourney like that, has had experience
in that environment, as one Pokemon can so drastically change it.
That's precisely my point! The only truly valid test would be to make this the standard (as in ladder on Shoddy). In fact, any other test is far more plagued by bias. If we rely on subjective reports from tournament participants, it's going to be biased toward the Pokemon being uber. If you play a game and the Pokemon either doesn't show up or doesn't do anything special, then that's nothing to report. Could you imagine someone making a thread "I didn't fight Azelf my last battle!" or "Gengar seems to fit in OU"? That's not noteworthy. If you lose to Deoxys-S and therefore think it's broken, you are far more likely to report this datum.
A tourney like that could be compared to everyone making a DP OU team before the game is released/any simulator made, testing it for 5 games, and using that information to create your banned/unbanned lists. There should be more than just a 64 man tournament required to make a change to the tier list, as a metagame needs time to settle.
And that would still be better than how it was done (based mostly on ADV knowledge). It was decided back when it was Cresseria, Gablias, and Grass Rope.
