Sword/Shield RU 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 Pok&eascute;mon from NU and PU. While any of the aforementioned Pokémon can be used in RU, only those Pok&eascute;mon that make up at least ~4.52% 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 (15 battles).

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

Play Restrictions

Players cannot use Pokémon from the Uber tier, OU, UUBL, UU, or RUBL. Players must abide by the following clauses:

The RU Forum

Learn

The SS RU Tiering info & Forum Rules thread contains information about RU's tiering philosophy, RU's tiering council, as well as the results of the RU tier's suspect tests and quickbans. In addition, the thread contains a comprehensive list of rules to abide by when posting in the RarelyUsed forum.

The 2020 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 Short Questions, Short 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 Speed Tiers thread contains a detailed list of Speed benchmarks relevant to RU.

Participate

The RU NP/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.

The RU Analyses Forum is the place to go for writing RU analyses. You may reserve an analysis in the index thread or offer suggestions on analyses that are in the QC stage.

In addition to its subforum and public room on Pokemon Showdown, RU also has a very active discord server.