I don’t have a lot of time so I’ll keep this brief:PUPL has concluded, and with it a lot of high level OldGens games were played. As this was ADV's first year included in the tour, I want to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has been involved with developing the tier and helping me get it to where it is today. I truly couldn't have done it without you all. I'm making this post because even though the tier has come a long way, we still have plenty of room for improvement. I have a short list of things that I want to accomplish over the next few weeks/months regarding the tier and today begins the first of those.
Hopefully these changes will improve the tier a bit and get us set up for success in the next big tour ADV is involved in, whether that ends up being PUWC or the next installment of the ADV PU TOURNAMENT. I've always been very proud of this community and can't wait to see PU Old Gens improve in the future.
- Tiering Discussion:Now that PUPL has concluded, we have decided on a couple of things that we feel need to be discussed more before we take tiering action on them. We could have made potential bans and had votes on them but decided that we would like a little more community input before making decisions. The main two ticket items are;
- Baton Pass: BP has been talked about before, and even now is limited to one user per team and limiting users to not be able to pass Speed with another stat. However, this is still a very dominant move and many teams function based on Pokemon like SD Mawile or Tail Glow Volbeat passing their boosts to stronger, faster Pokemon as cleaners that can potentially end games easily which can be very difficult for many teams to prepare for. There are ways around this such as aggressive switching and fast speed control like TWave Minun, but in the right setting these Baton Passers can devastate a team. However, the move also has some good merits, being the only switching move in the generation makes it extremely effective on pivots like Minun and Togetic, which while they are able to pass boosts, don't always have to. We are asking for more community feedback to decide what action to take. Is Baton Pass balanced? Is it outright broken? Is it just that a couple of the users are unbalanced and need a closer look?
- Swalot: While not inherently broken at a glance, Swalot does provide some pretty hard teambuilding pressure. Not only does it have some pretty immense bulk for the tier with 100/83/83, but it also has an extremely wide array of coverage moves and set variability that it can use to pick apart potential threats. Switch in a Ground-type like Marshtomp or Vibrava and you might get OHKO'd by a Giga Drain/HP Grass or Ice Beam. Send in your Mawile expecting the Sludge Bomb and you might get 2HKO'd by Fire Punch. Defensive Duskull even gets 2HKO'd by CB Shadow Ball. Not to mention Explosion's ability to completely wipe out something that doesn't KO it first (which is likely since it is so bulky) makes Swalot a big threat to many teams. So what do we do with it? Is Swalot banworthy or does it just need some more time to settle in the meta? How do you deal with Swalot both in games and in the builder?
- Viability Rankings Update: Once we handle the matters above and decide whether or not tiering action needs to be taken, we'll be reassessing the VR. Obviously, the tiering action could greatly shake things up in the tier so we'll be taking our time when reworking the rankings.
- Analysis Writing: Once we have taken care of any necessary tiering action and redone the VR accordingly, we'll finally open up analyses for reservation. This will take place in the Past Generations PU Analyses of the C&C subforum and will only be mini-analyses at this point. While the VR may chance slightly, the overall standings will still likely be similar at least, so if you're interested in writing, start thinking about some ideas!
- New Art: A rather minor note, but I'm planning on getting some new art for the tier! While HotFuzzBall's design is great and has held up for a very long time, the tier has changed a lot and the art should reflect that (Mightyena and Dragonair aren't nearly as dominant as they once were and when was the last time someone used Beedrill?)
Tagging Medeia Lunala Bouff Jisoo SuperEpicAmpharos Lily MrSoup LBN as people who played a lot of ADV during PUPL I'd love your feedback on the tiering discussion!
I really don’t like the idea of touching Swalot. It’s one of the few reliable minun switchins that isn’t incredibly passive like tuff or licki. It also has extreme risk of getting trapped with only a few outs, like sing or just exploding. It helps glue team building a lot and isn’t overly pressuring or constraining team building IMO. In fact, I think it relieves pressure.
Baton pass I’m more iffy on. I really do not like it’s presence and how it currently necessitates a complex ban (one that I find myself easily breaking on accident when building bc of how many mons just want to dry pass naturally). I think its current state makes the tier more inaccessible. I’d prefer to completely axe the move as my first choice. There’s a lot of untapped cheese out there rn with pinch berry passing and I think overall the mons who would lose the ability to dry pass are already incredibly strong rn. This would make trapinch better against mawile and minun but I think a little risk in using great mons might be a good thing. My second option would be to remove the team limit and completely disallow stat passing. This would gut thing like volbeat and sd pass mawile but I think removing that restriction would actually free the builder a lot. It would also keep arena trap more in check.
Fun meta and I think it honestly doesn’t need many changes. Thanks Sergio!