Sun/Moon RarelyUsed Metagame Primer

Composition

RU (RarelyUsed) is Smogon's third usage-based tier. All Pokémon that are not OU or UU by usage and are not banned to Ubers, UUBL, or RUBL can be used in RU, including Pokémon from NU and PU. While any of the aforementioned Pokémon can be used in RU, only those Pokémon that make up at least ~3.41% of total weighted usage in the tier are designated 'RU.' A Pokémon is truly 'RU' if a typical competitive player is more than 50% likely to encounter that Pokémon at least once in a given day of playing (20 battles). In addition to its subforum and public room on Pokémon Showdown, RU also has a very active discord server.

A list of the current RU Pokémon and those with RU analyses for the SM era are found on the dex page.

Play Restrictions

Players cannot use Pokémon banned or designated to Uber, OU, UUBL, UU, or RUBL.

Players must abide by the following clauses:

Players cannot use the following moves:

Players cannot use the following items:

non-Transitive Bans

  • Despite the fact that Drought is banned from UU, Drought is not banned in RU because the ability is not overpowered in the RU tier. A precedent established here allows tiers to opt out of non-Pokémon bans a higher tier has made.
  • Unless otherwise specified, abilities, items, and moves banned from Uber, OU, UUBL, or UU, are also banned from RU.

The RU Forum

Learn

The SM RU Tiering info & Forum Rules thread contains information about the RU council as well as the results of the Suspect tests and quickbans of the RU metagame and contains a comprehensive list of rules to abide by when posting in the RarelyUsed forum.

The 2019 RU Tournament Circuit thread contains information regarding RU's official tournaments, including types of tours, tour dates, and official announcements for RU's circuit.

The RU Simple Questions, Simple Answers thread is a great place to ask any simple questions you might have relating to the RU metagame. Do not make new threads for questions that could be answered here.

The RU Analyses forum is the place to go for writing analyses. You may reserve an analysis in the Index Thread or comment on analyses that are in the QC stage.

Participate

The RU Metagame Discussion thread is where discussion on potential suspect tests takes place. This thread also houses other topics of interest such as general metagame observations and metagame trends.

The RU Viability Rankings shows how well every RU-viable Pokémon fares in the RU tier.