Announcement Ubers tiering: going forward

Status
Not open for further replies.
Hello, I wrote this in the google translator so that the idea is better to understand, from my point of view and from what I have seen of several players in the tier, including the criticism of people who have tried to play the tier but do not like it , we all agree that Ubers is bored by the following threats:

Geomancy: This movement requires to always have 2 checks at least on every team, in several cases it is Magearna + Groudon or Ho-Oh + Steel due to the fact that it leaves Xerneas incredibly powerful offensively, allowing it to get rid of everything in late game, if this already forces you to play with caution even in the "Stall" teams imagine how dramatic it is to play vs the Z-Geomancy, all this causes some disgust, yet there are several things that stop it, including: Toxapex Haze, Clefable, Roar if Xerneas does not carry Ingrain, Celesteela if Xerneas does not wear Thunder, Primal Groudon, Scizor, Ho-Oh, Magearna, Ferrothorn and even Ditto.

Marshadow: another major problem of the tier, is this little demon, I call it that because it forces you to use something to stop it, in my case I always play HO, I must use Arceus Chople Berry and a Scarf like Xerneas or Yveltal, for the reason that Marshadow can carry Bulk Up Z Move, it can be Life Orb, it can be Scarf or it can be Band, it has varieties of items, the movements are always the same and that in a certain way forces you to use lures or in different cases use defensive elements, such as Yveltal Def, Xerneas with a little invest in def, Celesteela, Marshadow, Arceus-Fairy or Zygarde, as with Xerneas this pokemon forces you to take care of yourself and forces you to carry one of the pokemon already mentioned. Primal Groudon: I have seen many people complain about this pokemon and I agree with what Hack says, Groudon Primal has many possibilities and many combinations that are useful, among them his work as SR setter, Offense SR, Special Defense, Late Game Sweeper, etc, this pokemon should NOT be banned, because as it has several uses, it has several checks that stop it, especially in the current metagame.

Necrozma Ultra:
It has a lot of hype this pokemon, I've seen several complaining but I do not think it should be banned as several ask, this Pokemon is fast and has bestial status, but you can stop with Dark Types, Gengar Mega badly damages it (Shadow Ball It's not KO), among other things like Marshadow again, quick threats like Mewtwo, Xerneas Scarf, even the attacks with priority of Arceus or Scizor, the main problem of why Necrozma is broken, I think it's because of its versatility in its movements, it can be Sweeper or Special Defensive, all thanks to its wide range of movements, in addition to a very dangerous Z-Move,
anyways this pokemon should not be banned, thanks to the fact that it allows the Stall not to be a threat and it really gets boring a metagame of only stall or balance, I think the HO is being lost in use due to the existence of Marshadow and that gave chances to the Stall, but with Necrozma that does not happen much.

Bans: I think the list is fine as well, possibly the Hypnosis + Shadow Tag theme should be unbanked because it would help a lot with different threats and Gengar is no longer so viable due to Marshadow, it could be put to the test 1-2 weeks.
About Mega Rayquaza, No, DO NOT UNBANQUE that, it's too broken and you've seen that too much.

Species Clause: I agree with Magsy, in AG is used to stop Rayquaza Mega and other threats, but in Ubers should not be eliminated by the fact that no one would like to face a team full of Xerneas Geomancy, if Magearna can hardly defeat to one, it will not be easy to defeat 2 Xerneas boosted.

This analysis I have been able to do studying and compiling responses from different players, tournament players mainly and seeing the behavior of the community mainly, may not many feel identified with this analysis as it may be that others, I am not very experienced in Ubers even though I've been playing the tier for years, I still want to help the tier and any constructive criticism is good, as long as it does not go on to offend others or with good arguments.

Excellent Post Hack
.
 
I feel like jhonx's post is only from a HO point of view. For a metagame to be healthy, all playstyles should be playable and equally strong.

In fact, that's not possible and there is quite often 1 or 2 dominant playstyles, but i dont feel like buffing HO with mega rayquaza/marshadow ban for example is healthy at all. In my opinion, HO should be webs or should not be, it's a bit sad but standard deo-s HO can't prevent defog enough (especially with yveltal and xerneas having access to it) for it to be very good !
 
Last edited:

The Dovahneer

UPL Champion
HO is still perfectly viable with marshadow and shit being around considering anything that it doesn't 2hko/ohko soft checks it to an extent and it can't come in on anything with a speed boost unless it's either sash or scarf (which means you lose out a lot of power with both and lose the ability to switch moves with scarf, which is big considering both of your stabs have immunities.) Sure its certainly worse but you can build around it using scarfers or a bunch of those soft checks like i mentioned earlier. Also I'm gonna disagree with Kyogre, you don't need hazard stacking to have a functional ho team but i do agree that standard deos lead is getting worse and that people should innovate ho teams a bit more.
 
That's right, I gave my opinion around HO view, forgot some stuff but dont have good arguments now, also I dont want this thread being locked, so..
 
Haven't posted in sometime, but still play the tier. Should be interesting to see how things change from this point out. My only fear with suspect test are a "slippery slope" effect i.e we ban PDon, then causes Xer to get banned then POger, ect.
 

kilometerman

Banned deucer.
I feel like jhonx's post is only from a HO point of view. For a metagame to be healthy, all playstyles should be playable and equally strong.

In fact, that's not possible and there is quite often 1 or 2 dominant playstyles, but i dont feel like buffing HO with mega rayquaza/marshadow ban for example is healthy at all. In my opinion, HO should be webs or should not be, it's a bit sad but standard deo-s HO can't prevent defog enough (especially with yveltal and xerneas having access to it) for it to be very good !
Do we want a "healthy" meta or a playable meta? "Healthy" sounds like it's a good thing but by your definition it isn't. Certain playstyles (you know what I'm talking about) promote skill-less wins that result more from matchups and frustrating your opponent than playing a fair and fun game. I (and I'm assuming most players) would rather play in a meta focused more around offensive teams and matches won by good plays/predictions rather than a meta focused around "defensive" teams (you know what I'm talking about) and matches won by whoever brought the right walls and stallbreakers.
 

mags

Banned deucer.
That's a dumb perspective on what a healthy meta or a playable meta is. A healthy meta would be almost all playstyles would be viable with some being more stronger but not to the point where you are at a disadvantage by bringing one of the weaker playstyles. Offense needs skill to beat defensive teams while defensive teams need skill to beat an offensive team. A stall doesn't rely on making doubles as much as an offensive team so sure it's more passive but that doesn't mean it's skill-less. It can win on preview if the player decides to bring a team that can't break stall but that's on the builders fault not stall being broken or matchup reliant to win. Stall teams vs teams that can actually pressure it will still need to know when to stop being passive and click an att or toxic instead of recover then find a way to recover said mon later if it's too low etc. Matchups will always be around no matter what because people will bring bad teams that work well vs certain teams but that shouldn't reflect on how the tier playability or healthiness. A team can have many stallbreakers but lack ways to beat offense. Offensive teams can punish balance but not be able to break stall. Stall can beat offense but struggles vs balance with dedicated breakers. I think that's what you think a healthy meta looks like but in reality a healthy meta would be stall can beat offense and balance if the stall player is better than the player wielding offense/balance. And vice versa with the other playstyles. We shouldn't gravitate towards making 1 playstyle work better than the others and we shouldn't try to make a playstyle thats unviable somehow viable again. It just happens to do with how the meta works so obviously some playstyles will be better than others but no playstyles are skill-less.
 
jhonx, sleep trap wont be unbanned since it violates sleep clause (it wasnt banned for being broken, it was banned because it violates a clause). it isnt something you can suspect test unless you're asking for a sleep clause suspect? and edgar, experience in other gens of ubers doesnt give greater weight to an opinion. you only need to have played usm ubers and be knowledgeable about how ubers tiering works to form an accurate opinion on tiering decisions in usm ubers.
 
While we do encourage the enthusiasm and reading everyone's opinion's (which we do our best to consider going forward), the thread has seemingly derailed into discussion on what test - and even worse people have already started with the horrible slippery slope arguments and alternative solutions that will never happen (Ubers UU cmon dude).

We will keep this thread open for a while longer but remember this isn't exactly the place to discuss what to suspect or re-test - the thread exists for clarifying if there is support for actually committing to a new tiering policy which involves more active attempts to optimize through community involvement. If your post needlessly goes into detail about testing X, no harm done, but you will have better threads for debating these things. The most valuable posts are those explaining why/why not going forward with the new policy is a good idea.
I get what you mean. However, I was trying to use examples to support my opinion. If I wasn't clear I think that going forward I wouldn't want to change ubers in such a way that it becomes an evolving smogon tier as the others (to put it very simply).
 
I've been reflecting on the connection between Ubers tiering philosophy and the two ideological camps. I've reached the conclusion that it's a result of philosophical interpretation of tiering. The 'make ubers ag' is a result of taking the logic of ubers tiering philosophy of minimal ban list to its logical conclusion. While, 'keep our ubers banlist and maybe unban or ban few stuff' is a result of preferring observed metagame with maybe few modifications. Of course there's stronger and weaker perspectives of both sides, but generally, everyone's view falls in the spectrum of this philosophy division.

Generally in smogon history, the vision of philosophy is decided by tier leaders and then the people leads the route of it. I argue that now is the crucial time- we can change or affirm this precedent. So, my view of how this should change is rather radical:

Now, I think that current ubers tiering philosophy is a total hogwash. What do I mean? Let me ask, do smogon actually even follow their tiering definitions? The answer is clearly no.

This image is taken from an ORAS analysis here. So here, we can few interesting things. OU supposedly tiers for diversity, yet PU is more diverse. Under that tiering logic, OU ought ban until it reaches PU diversity level. This is obviously something that OU community will never allow or want to do even if it's explicitly spelled out in their tiering philosophy to do so.

So, with that thought, I reached the conclusion that metrics such as "centralization", "diversity", "competitiveness", and "playability" are all spooks. Smogon pretends to care about these words yet tiers by not adhering to these principles. So what is my point? My point is that we should discard our current tiering philosophy and go with the philosophy that we actually tier by.

My opinion is that we actually tier by this:
We create an arbitrary filter of pokemon, moves, and items bans to create a metagame that we consider fun to play.

So, with this tiering defintion - OU's tiering process suddenly become a lot more logical. Their seemingly only consistency is to keep Tyranitar in the tier becomes rational. Additionally, this clarifies what Ubers should do. We can safely say that we want to keep x, y, and z elements and make it fun. We can easily hold votes for maximum fun. I believe that this is far more honest than pretending that we actually care about the spooks that I listed above.

While we do encourage the enthusiasm and reading everyone's opinion's (which we do our best to consider going forward), the thread has seemingly derailed into discussion on what test - and even worse people have already started with the horrible slippery slope arguments and alternative solutions that will never happen (Ubers UU cmon dude).
"cmon dude" is not a counterargument. UUU is the pragmatically best solution that resolves what current tiering spooks compel us to do. The only reasons I can see being argued against UUU are smogon politics and optics of smogon. Maybe, I'm wrong. Can you expand on exactly why UUU is not on the table?
 
I've already mentioned that I think no species clause would be unhealthy for Ubers (you can account for P.don and Xerneas in one team, but you can't feasibly account for six of either in one), very unhealthy, and I've already suggested we suspect a 'Forme Clause' to replace species clause, which I think could be healthy for a number of reasons ('worse' formes might still be better than other options for a team, so we could see presently underused mons a little more which might alleviate the dominance of current top threats, it would be most in line with Ubers' minimalist banning philosophy, et cetera), but I want to comment on the ideas of 'Ubers UU':

I think, in reality, Ubers UU would really be Ubers NU; in the current Ubers climate there are Pokemon in the tier that see literally next to no usage. I'm going to use this as an opportunity to go off on a bit of a rant, so apologies in advance, but it's all relevant:

Ubers, up until the release of Mega-Ray, was just OU's banlist; and to this day it is still treated like OU's banlist. It's treated like OU's banlist, but it isn't. This very thread has signified the beginning of a (long overdue) review of Ubers as a tier, a tier with a philosophy and a methodology moving forward, and I am very glad for this change. But it worries me when, in this same thread, people are immediately squashing thoughts of Ubers UU, just because they don't like the idea or they think it's silly. I'll admit, having Ubers UU would open the floodgates for later generations and metas to have "Ubers NU" and then end up with a whole tier of tiers unto itself, which I think creates more problems than it solves. However, disregarding these ideas without proper consideration is harmful for Ubers moving forward. But, before I continue, I think it's important to say something explicitly: I don't think all that is wrong with Ubers is on our heads.

Again, I have never been active on these boards but I have been playing on-and-off primarily in Ubers and OU since the start of Gen 4. Never, in my experience, has OU been particularly interested in testing what Pokemon aren't broken - all of their focus is on banning overcentralising threats or anything really broken. Once something is banned from OU, it is left to Ubers essentially forever - there are a few exceptions, like Mew and Excadril I think, but they are very few and far between. This has left us with Pokemon in the tier that really, really don't belong here (don't worry, I'm almost at the crux of my argument). There are a few Pokemon I could use here, and I almost used Blaziken for my example (normal or Mega, it doesn't even matter), but there's an even worse offender, a Pokemon which really should not be in Ubers: Deoxys-D. With a great movepool and solid defensive stats, Deo-D would seem like a prime candidate for an Ubers utility/wall - that is, of course, until you notice its awful defensive typing. It's mono-psychic. Yay, fighting resistance is cool, but not when it comes with weaknesses to Bug, Dark, and Ghost! All three are really common offensive types in Ubers, and Bug/Dark are prevalent in OU as well - I'm not even strictly sure it would survive in OU to be honest - I mean, Scizor, king of DPPtOU, isn't even in OU anymore, and this useless blob of bad typing was banned in Gen 3. Of course, we have no authority over OU, but some of the Pokemon in Ubers just shouldn't be in Ubers - but now that we're officially a tier of our own, and no longer a banlist, they don't have to be!

CONCLUSION (finally):

Ubers UU would be a slippery slope for future generations and metas, and in all honesty, might not work very well as a playable tier; however, there are Pokemon still banned from OU that simply do not belong in Ubers. So what should we do? We should do what literally every other tier does with Pokemon that don't survive in their tier but are 'too good' for the tier below; we stick them in Borderline.

What I think we need, is BL0. That is, BorderLine 0 (since 'BorderLine' has always been between OU and UU, and honestly Borderline Zero sounds cooler anyway); I wouldn't suggest that we should pick the members of this list (since it's not so much a tier as OU's banlist lol) hastily, but I think it's worth doing, not only to separate what really is and isn't Ubers, but also to give OU a nudge and say "seriously, get your act together, these guys really shouldn't be banned". I imagine it would look something like this:

Blaziken
Deoxys
Deoxys-D
Pheromosa

at least initially, though honestly there are other Pokemon that could readily join them. But either way, I think having this list not only makes a statement about not being OU's banlist, but is also conducive to treating Ubers like a proper tier, as we should be doing moving forward.
 

Deleted User 400951

Banned deucer.
I've already mentioned that I think no species clause would be unhealthy for Ubers (you can account for P.don and Xerneas in one team, but you can't feasibly account for six of either in one), very unhealthy, and I've already suggested we suspect a 'Forme Clause' to replace species clause, which I think could be healthy for a number of reasons ('worse' formes might still be better than other options for a team, so we could see presently underused mons a little more which might alleviate the dominance of current top threats, it would be most in line with Ubers' minimalist banning philosophy, et cetera), but I want to comment on the ideas of 'Ubers UU':

I think, in reality, Ubers UU would really be Ubers NU; in the current Ubers climate there are Pokemon in the tier that see literally next to no usage. I'm going to use this as an opportunity to go off on a bit of a rant, so apologies in advance, but it's all relevant:

Ubers, up until the release of Mega-Ray, was just OU's banlist; and to this day it is still treated like OU's banlist. It's treated like OU's banlist, but it isn't. This very thread has signified the beginning of a (long overdue) review of Ubers as a tier, a tier with a philosophy and a methodology moving forward, and I am very glad for this change. But it worries me when, in this same thread, people are immediately squashing thoughts of Ubers UU, just because they don't like the idea or they think it's silly. I'll admit, having Ubers UU would open the floodgates for later generations and metas to have "Ubers NU" and then end up with a whole tier of tiers unto itself, which I think creates more problems than it solves. However, disregarding these ideas without proper consideration is harmful for Ubers moving forward. But, before I continue, I think it's important to say something explicitly: I don't think all that is wrong with Ubers is on our heads.

Again, I have never been active on these boards but I have been playing on-and-off primarily in Ubers and OU since the start of Gen 4. Never, in my experience, has OU been particularly interested in testing what Pokemon aren't broken - all of their focus is on banning overcentralising threats or anything really broken. Once something is banned from OU, it is left to Ubers essentially forever - there are a few exceptions, like Mew and Excadril I think, but they are very few and far between. This has left us with Pokemon in the tier that really, really don't belong here (don't worry, I'm almost at the crux of my argument). There are a few Pokemon I could use here, and I almost used Blaziken for my example (normal or Mega, it doesn't even matter), but there's an even worse offender, a Pokemon which really should not be in Ubers: Deoxys-D. With a great movepool and solid defensive stats, Deo-D would seem like a prime candidate for an Ubers utility/wall - that is, of course, until you notice its awful defensive typing. It's mono-psychic. Yay, fighting resistance is cool, but not when it comes with weaknesses to Bug, Dark, and Ghost! All three are really common offensive types in Ubers, and Bug/Dark are prevalent in OU as well - I'm not even strictly sure it would survive in OU to be honest - I mean, Scizor, king of DPPtOU, isn't even in OU anymore, and this useless blob of bad typing was banned in Gen 3. Of course, we have no authority over OU, but some of the Pokemon in Ubers just shouldn't be in Ubers - but now that we're officially a tier of our own, and no longer a banlist, they don't have to be!

CONCLUSION (finally):

Ubers UU would be a slippery slope for future generations and metas, and in all honesty, might not work very well as a playable tier; however, there are Pokemon still banned from OU that simply do not belong in Ubers. So what should we do? We should do what literally every other tier does with Pokemon that don't survive in their tier but are 'too good' for the tier below; we stick them in Borderline.

What I think we need, is BL0. That is, BorderLine 0 (since 'BorderLine' has always been between OU and UU, and honestly Borderline Zero sounds cooler anyway); I wouldn't suggest that we should pick the members of this list (since it's not so much a tier as OU's banlist lol) hastily, but I think it's worth doing, not only to separate what really is and isn't Ubers, but also to give OU a nudge and say "seriously, get your act together, these guys really shouldn't be banned". I imagine it would look something like this:

Blaziken
Deoxys
Deoxys-D
Pheromosa

at least initially, though honestly there are other Pokemon that could readily join them. But either way, I think having this list not only makes a statement about not being OU's banlist, but is also conducive to treating Ubers like a proper tier, as we should be doing moving forward.
I feel as though making a BL0, however cool it sounds, is definitely not the way to go. There's no reason to do this because:

-It's pretty common knowledge that those mons are shit in Ubers anyways

-Just because they're shit in ubers has no bearing on how good they are in ou. they're two different metagames lol. I cannot imagine Deoxys-N seriously being allowed in ou, nor Blaze. I am in support of a Deoxys-Defense ban but Ubers isn't in charge of that lol.

I don't want to derail the thread further so I won't make this post any longer. However, I do want to say that I think the purpose of this thread has already been fulfilled and imo it should be locked.
 
Aldertz not having a reason to do something isn't a reason not to do it, although I would disagree; there is definitely a reason to do it. The other tiers work by usage, so BL are Pokemon banned from UU but not OU by usage; BL0 would be functionally the same, except without having a specific usage cutoff (not that it would make much sense to have this in Ubers with so many Pokemon having multiple viable formes). Pokemon in BL0 should be the Pokemon banned by OU but not Uber by 'usage', although for Ubers this should less be a statistic and more be 'do these mons function in Ubers?'. To say that there is "no reason to do this" is to say that there is no reason to have any of the BLX tiers. However, we do, and I think it's important that one exists between OU and Uber, as does between all other adjacent tiers; if we're going to be serious about making Ubers a proper tier (as is the primary topic of this thread, tyvm), we need to do it properly, and we can't be cutting corners with easy stuff like this.
 

shrang

General Kenobi
is a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
Tbh, I've always been of the opinion that OU should start their tiering with minimalist bans, and then whatever they end up banning becomes Ubers, rather than starting with an initial banlist at the start of every gen. OU is by definition (or at least it used to be), the metagame that is most inclusive without being broken or overcentralised or whatever. It makes sense that they'd start with a clean slate and Ubers is the banlist. However, with the power creep that's been going on for the past 3-4 generations, there's been a disparity between what is viable in Ubers and what is allowed in OU. Honestly, if we end up creating a "balanced Ubers", there really isn't any reason why that tier shouldn't just become OU. This is in theory anyway.

Unfortunately, this stance is not supported by the vast majority of OU players, who would prefer to see that their metagame has Tyranitar as a top 10 Pokemon forever. That is the level of power that they seem to be most comfortable with, and don't want to see massive change. That is up to them, and unfortunately, seeing as OU is the flagship tier of Smogon, there's pretty much no arguing with that. All we can do in Ubers is suck it up, really. Otherwise, we can create a BL equivalent between Ubers and OU, but it really shouldn't need to happen if we've had proper tiering in the first place.
 
tfw enlightened to realize that shrang 's post is a spook.

Taking tiering definition rationalism to its logic conclusion is to realize that current Ubers tier is OU-like (is Ubers not balanced? Isn't AG more Ubers-like than Ubers is Ubers-like? Answer this honestly). Therefore, there is no harm in creating more OU-like tiers, since we already have two of them.
 
Alright, so I’m going to open this post with a scathing criticism of smogon tiering policy. Smogon tiering policy is incoherent. It’s a vestige of years of cumulative fuck ups. I’m not going to get into the history and I’m not blaming anyone specifically. Let’s start a clean slate here and right now. There’s no need to cling on this system when we have this opportunity right now.

I want to thank to Merritt for bringing this info to my attention. Firstly, let’s see what started this all.

http://www.smogon.com/philosophy

Wow, we have a website page dedicated to philosophy of Smogon! It was written really long time ago. Please read through it yourself and have your own interpretation. I’ll admit that its poorly written, so I’ll pick out pieces that I think are relevant. Here’s my interpretation of this page:

Why, they wonder, is Beautifly or Flareon not represented as well as others like Tyranitar or Hydreigon? The simple response, which has been touched on, is that Pokémon has tiers. In the competitive arena, victory is paramount—and against high-tier Pokémon, lesser Pokémon are simply shut out by the virtue of poor moves, poor stats, or both—or, sometimes, simply the fact that another Pokémon is a superior choice. Consider Whiscash as opposed to Swampert—you can compare them in virtually any way and see that Swampert performs better or similarly in all cases. The UU (and RU and NU) metagames exist to mitigate this problem by creating an arena where lesser Pokémon can be used while still following the competitive ideal, but this is not perfect, and many Pokémon simply find themselves never used.
My interpretation is that Smogon creates lower tiers to create metagames so that worse/better Pokemon can be used in them. “many Pokemon simply find themselves never used” is an interesting line and I personally disagree with it. There’s no reason to not create more tiers so that we can use these pokemon! I believe that PU/FU were created for that exact reason.

It has taken into account many rules—some of them subscribed to by Game Freak itself in its Battle Towers, as well as various rules that were designed in the Stadium series. The "OU metagame" is the result of a search for a balanced game, where player skill, teambuilding skill, and a certain amount of luck combine to execute victory. The "OU metagame" is in no ways perfect, but it should be pointed out that 99% of multiplayer games are often plagued by imbalance and the resulting "tiers", and it is fortunate that Pokémon's detailed depth, combined with the intelligent minds of its players, working to prevent various abuses, is capable of producing a diverse and enjoyable arena. However, there is still a search for betterment—the "UU metagame" is an attempt to give a more interesting look at Pokémon that may not compete well with the stronger Pokémon of the game; on the other side of the spectrum, the "Ubers metagame" exists to develop an understanding of Pokémon's strongest and most brutal combatants. However, the "OU metagame", an entity that has existed in an official state since Pokémon Stadium's Poke Cup, is the main concentration of this document.
What I took from this passage is we should create tiers to be enjoyable and host different pokemons. You may will point out that we should adhere to this line: ‘However, there is still a search for betterment—the "UU metagame" is an attempt to give a more interesting look at Pokémon that may not compete well with the stronger Pokémon of the game; on the other side of the spectrum, the "Ubers metagame" exists to develop an understanding of Pokémon's strongest and most brutal combatants.’ My opinion is that the wording of “search for betterment” shows that we do need to better the tiers itself. It also means that we do not simply blindly follow the tier definitions. My opinion is this page is outdated since the introduction of AG. AG is what Ubers should be. Ubers should be simply other OU-like tier.

So, now what? Ubers is OU-like. What does this change? Firstly, it must be recognized that the current Ubers tiering definition is wrong. We should adhere to OU’s definitions - Enjoyment and Diversity. Hence, this is where my previous post comes in the play. I suggest that we discard “diversity” metric, since it’s a spook and tiers have never truly followed the goal of diversity. If the tier is fun to play regardless the diversity level, then we should just keep it as it is rather than trying to increase diversity. So, now we are left with “enjoyment” metric.

So yes, we should strive to work together to create an enjoyable Ubers tier according to the fundamental philosophy of smogon. I am ignoring current definitions because imo, its clear that modern tiering doesn’t care about logically adhering to the definitions.

There’s two different directions that we can take:

1) We can simply tier Ubers as we tier OU.
2) We split up Ubers into two tiers: One that is OU-like and other one that is Ubers-like.

#1 is the easy and lazy way to do this. We just keep what we’re doing with different tiering definition and fix nothing. The concept of Ubers also disappears.
#2 is the hard way so that we can keep the concept of Ubers. It also gives us opportunity to create new tier(s) to accommodate currently unused Uber pokemons.

I’m going to hold off on expanding on #2 because it’s unclear whether if its even possible.
 

kilometerman

Banned deucer.
I think idea #2 might be a good idea but if you think that the ubers auth is going to do all that then you're seriously mistaken
 
What I think we need, is BL0. That is, BorderLine 0 (since 'BorderLine' has always been between OU and UU, and honestly Borderline Zero sounds cooler anyway); I wouldn't suggest that we should pick the members of this list (since it's not so much a tier as OU's banlist lol) hastily, but I think it's worth doing, not only to separate what really is and isn't Ubers, but also to give OU a nudge and say "seriously, get your act together, these guys really shouldn't be banned". I imagine it would look something like this:

Blaziken
Deoxys
Deoxys-D
Pheromosa

at least initially, though honestly there are other Pokemon that could readily join them. But either way, I think having this list not only makes a statement about not being OU's banlist, but is also conducive to treating Ubers like a proper tier, as we should be doing moving forward.
I'm as frustrated with the OU playerbase as you are, but Ubers itself is BL0. Membership in Ubers is determined by bans, not usage, and it's OU's responsibility to add or remove mons from it. Even if a BL0 did exist, it would need to be based off usage, not viability, because otherwise what purpose would it serve that a D rank on the viability rankings wouldn't?
 
Last edited:

Aberforth

is a Top Social Media Contributoris a Member of Senior Staffis a Community Contributoris a Tiering Contributoris a Contributor to Smogon
Ubers Leader
orch that sort of proposal is also more suited for Policy Review or something. Hack and Fireburn literally do not have the authority to make Ubers-UU, and it's been said many many times that it wont happen. Putting it here instead of there wont do anything, as that would require SS to allow it.
 
orch that sort of proposal is also more suited for Policy Review or something. Hack and Fireburn literally do not have the authority to make Ubers-UU, and it's been said many many times that it wont happen. Putting it here instead of there wont do anything, as that would require SS to allow it.
Never said that I -wanted- Ubers UU. I explained the logic that I used to reach the conclusion of Ubers being not Uber and explained possible solutions for the problem. Believe it or not, tier leaders are part of SS, so yes, they are more than capable of acting on our behalf to make these changes. However, the question is whether if you guys agree with my analysis or not.
 
I think bashing the way OU is handled like this is not only inconsiderade and completely pointless, it's also being done in a way that shows people here clearly have no idea what they're talking about.

Making a list that simply consists of the 4 Pokemon ranked D in viabikity rankings thread that are not cover legendaries nor Arceus formes (as it would be complex to unban some of those) and implying that those should be unbanned pretty clearly shows lack of knowledge about the OU metagame. A Pokemon's viability in Ubers says nothing about its strength in OU. Look at Celesteela being ranked A- in Ubers and not at all being too strong for OU, while Pheromosa, something you mentioned should be banned, was literally just banned with a +90% majority for being way too good for OU. No offense but look stuff up before you criticise.

Same goes for saying OU simply wants a metagame where Tyranitar is top 10 each generation. Tyranitar has been quite consistant indeed, but lots of Pokemon that used to define OU is complete trash there now. They'r not making any decisions in order to keep Tyranitar good, it just is.

You can make an argument for Deoxys-D being alrighf in OU, but they have also actually been considering testing it. Now saying that it was simply banned in ADV and then never touched it again is simply incorrect. It has been unbanned at the start of every generation since except here in gen 7, but was too good every single time. Again, no offense, but look things up before bashing anyone.

With that said, all this is completely pointless because it doesn't matter anything how OU handles things for Ubers. The Ubers council can do what they want for the tier reagardless of how OU works, so the bottom line is basically asking people to stop derailing the thread by attacking OU's decisions. It's not constructive or useful in any way.
 
While I am happy that the uber tiers is being consistent with the rest of the tier and not just a ban list, I do have some issues I'd like to point out. One is I'm afraid that ubers tier would become a bit too defensive. I'm also curios if certain mons will be banned from lower tiers because of usage from ubers. For example klefki was once was used quite often in ubers.
 
While I am happy that the uber tiers is being consistent with the rest of the tier and not just a ban list, I do have some issues I'd like to point out. One is I'm afraid that ubers tier would become a bit too defensive. I'm also curios if certain mons will be banned from lower tiers because of usage from ubers. For example klefki was once was used quite often in ubers.
I, for one, doubt that anything will be banned from lower tiers because of uber; on some level, it will always be OU's banlist. Also, why would you think that ubers will get too defensive? Ubers has a ton of wallbreakers, including Groudon, Kyogre, Rayquaza, Arceus, Palkia, Gothitelle, Marshadow, and various Megas. It is highly unlikely that any of them, with the exception of Gothitelle, will be banned any time soon.
 
I, for one, doubt that anything will be banned from lower tiers because of uber; on some level, it will always be OU's banlist. Also, why would you think that ubers will get too defensive? Ubers has a ton of wallbreakers, including Groudon, Kyogre, Rayquaza, Arceus, Palkia, Gothitelle, Marshadow, and various Megas. It is highly unlikely that any of them, with the exception of Gothitelle, will be banned any time soon.
OU has usually always been against mons that could put a lot of offensive pressure against teams. So if someone wanted to play a meta around that concept, ubers would be the best tier to do so as it is the least restrictive. So I fear by tiering ubers in the same as others, this sort of play style will disappear.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 0)

Top