Smogon Usage-Based Tier Update: September 2014

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Cuz Eggplane has a godly typing in UU?
Godly typing that now leaves it at the mercy of thr Nidos now that mew is gone.Toge has to invest 248/252+ to barely survive a LO sludge wave from king with SR on the field (40%chance to survive mas o menos) and LO Queen just blows it away. Queen barely needs to invedt in speed to speed creep 0 speed toge to avoid being haxed. Lets not forget that electric types are immune to paralysis and resist flying. You have a solid counter in rotom h snd good check in mega amphy. Lets not forget strong physical attackers that will take advantage of bro being gone like mega aero, darm and tini. Toge will be good, but i dont think itll be banned
 
I swear to GOD mew is cancerous

And Yay! My fave poke is now OU (heracross). I know this is due to the mega but im still using my scarfcross :p
 
Quagsire deserves better than this. Unaware and Stockpile is a fun niche.

Heck no, Espeon will wreck unprepared UU teams.
 
Shiftry is listed as NU on the teambuilder, even though it hasn't dropped from RU (Still above that tier's cutoff). I do think it's because it was still above the NU cutoff on August's stats.
 
This has been discussed. The ideal solution is simply not to have a suspect test in the month before a usage-based tier update. But especially in the early stages of a generation, asking a tier council to postpone making crucial decisions like this would lead to more harm than good.
As someone who never took part in any tier-related (or any at all) decision on this site, may I try to come up with something? Would a rule like this work?

"If during a single month a Pokémon gets exceptionally low usage in a tier, directly drop it one tier below."

No idea about what the actual threshold should be, possibly much lower than the usual 3.41%. In addition to the regular tri-monthly update, this would essentially create a "fast lane down" for cases like this when a "part of a Pokémon" (item/ability/move) gets banned and what remains is most likely unfit for its current environment. This would also be just an acceleration of the regular updating process, without any assumption on the Pokémon's final tiering: if Mawile were to actually end up in NU we'd find out in one third of the time.

Sensible? Baseless? An useless overcomplication of the current system, especially due to how rare these cases would be?
 
Menshay, proposals along that line have been discussed, but the whole point of doing tiers every three months is to protect them from the volatility of short-term trends.
 
protect them from the volatility of short-term trends.
Which is exactly why I emphasized the "exceptionally low" part: this isn't for cases which keep teetering on the edge, but for stuff which is clearly taking a hard dive for clearly visible reasons. Plus the tiering directors would have the final say on the matter anyway.
(Granted, I still realize this is likely unneeded.)
 
Menshay, now I'm not saying this is true, but let's say, for the sake of argument, that no one uses Mawile this month. Because they assume it's crap. Now let's say that next month, some previously minor threat rises and starts getting crazy high usage. And then someone realizes, "holy crap--Mawile has the BEST TYPING and COMPLETELY walls this threat." Suddenly Mawile's viable again. Clearly not all the way back to the level where Mega-Mawile was, but high enough to be OU.

Well, under what you're saying, Mawile would already be in UU, since it got crap usage in September.

Now, you might say, so what? It spends two months having high enough usage in both tiers. Come December, it's back to OU. Well, here's the problem: people don't consult viability rankings when constructing teams--they consult the tier lists (this is largely Showdown's fault, but it's the lesser of two evils that things are sorted that way). So even if non-Mega Mawile is absurdly the best thing ever, it doesn't guarantee it'll return to OU, because people just naturally assume it sucks (because we put it in UU). This kind of thing happens all the time, though usually it's the other way around--drops that should happen don't because people see the Pokemon in their tier list and assume it's good to use.

My point is that labels matter--and so we should always tread with caution, lest we create self-fulfilling prophecies (by declaring Mawile to be UU or NU, it will become such, whether it deserves to be or not).
 
Sneasel and Pawniard don't enjoy switching into Heat Wave, Dazzling Gleam or Psycho Shift, though they should be considered checks atleast. Or maybe Sigilyph is just that broken
 
I'd always pronounced PU as Poo in my head, not Pee Ew. Can we officially change it? I think Poo works much better.

If people insist on sticking to something disyllabic (to stick with the OU, UU, etc. rhyming), I would be okay with Poo-oh. Like Winnie the Pooh but drawn out.
 
| 60 | Houndoom | 3.532% |
Lot less use lately, it used to be very high iirc, but has dropped to 60 in UU.
 
(This post is intended to be the first of a new page, not sure how the deletion of nancyrodriiguez's post will affect this)

December is the next tier update month, right after ORAS releases. So I propose that December tiers are based off XY metagame usage, and ORAS metagame usage becomes official for tiering purposes on December 1.

The reason I think November ORAS stats should not be counted is that we're likely to have at least one of the new megas be quickbanned, and if we count the pre-quickban ORAS stats the "base" form of the mega will jump to OU for three months, similar to what we went through with Kangaskhan and are currently going through with Mawile.
 
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