The Official Tier Thread

[Crystal_]

UU = Underused, aka nothing to do with power/potential in a lower tier. Golem is OU because of what the word "overused" means and implies.

What's more, the underused tier has been working as an underused tier for +10 years now. No need to change that in 2012.

Also, Dre what you are saying would lead to around 15 different tiers. You take Tauors/Snorlax/Chansey/Zam/Starm/Egg out to make the tier below OU. Then you take the next 4-8 to make the next tier. And so on. It's just basic math.

[hipmonlee]

Feb 23, 2012 11:42:00 GMT -8 Crystal_ said:

What's more, the underused tier has been working as an underused tier for +10 years now. No need to change that in 2012.

That's really not true.. If your tiers are based on smogons old ones, then they were around like 6 years ish, and they havent really been used much during that time..

[Dre]

Crystal- Those pokes don't warrant their own tier above lesser ous though. If they did, lesser ous would never be used in standard play. Lesser ous should still be ous because they're viable in ou, the top ous usually lose to one or two lesser ous 1v1, and the lesser ous are op in uu.

I'm not saying to make a million tiers, so that every poke is a standard in their own tier. The method I suggested still allows for standards and non-standards in the respective tiers.

I still don't see how golem is op in uu though. Being ohkod by a lot of things that outspeed him (including nus) means he loses many 1v1s and gets scared out alot. Rocks are really only there to take waves, normal attacks, and wall certain pokemon, and apart from buzz in uu he doesn't really wall too many uu standards, and even buzz can hurt him on the switch in with psychic.

Mewtwo probably wouldn't be uber if there was 1 or 2 pokes that outsped him and ohkod him without blowing themselves up, or any other kind of drawback.

It's not like the mg would change too much either, because everything that counters graveler counters golem, so most teams are already prepared for golem to begin with.

[t3h Icy]

I'd suggest playing Isa, WaterWizard and Zilch in UU, and then your opinion will probably change. The problem is you're theorycrafting a lot and it doesn't quite work that way in actual matches.

Graveler may be OHKO'd by several Pokemon as well, but a smart player will avoid letting that happen, while Graveler hit almost anything hard, and Explosion puts dents in teams. RBY UU (here anyway) plays in similar switching fashion with GSC, by having most Pokemon stay alive for awhile, and then one team slowly falls apart. At least when playing defensively.

[Dre]

I know no one would be keeping Golem in against waters and grasses etc. but being forced to switch out most of the time means he's about just as useful as he is in ou, seeing as he is doing almost the same job.

Mewtwo is uber because he can beat pretty much any poke 1v1, and can usually take out more than that. That's what I'd say defines op.

He basically would do the same job as graveler, just take less damage from hits, and deal more damage with hits, I don't see how that's game-breaking.

UU teams are likely to have at least 2 waters, tangela, and probably another sleeper like venomoth who outspeeds him. That's already 4 pokemon on the one potential team that threaten him. You also have sandslash, who has the same role as he does, yet beats him 1v1. I'm not sure if sandslash can switch into eq and then still beat golem, but I wouldn't be surprised if he can seeing as he has good defence. So that team has around 5 or so pokes that threaten golem. Those are pretty much all uu standards too, so there isn't that much theorycraft involved there.

Honest question, if buzz wasn't so popular in uu, would golem still justify a slot on the team? He's useful in ou because two of the biggest offensive threats are physical sweepers and golem can resist their attacks. Explosion and hbeam are common, and he beats physically frail pokes if he's fresh and they're para. And of course he walls electrics and has twave immunity.

A lot of that is different in uu. The main sweepers are waters and electrics, former ohkos him even if they're paralysed, and if he switches into a bslam he still has to switch out straight away unless they're parad and he can finish them off in one hit. He doesn't even like switching in on buzz's psychic. Not many standard uus explode either.

I'm not saying he's bad in uu, he'd definitely be a standard, but I don't see how he's op, or how teams have to change to accommodate his threat, when they already accommodated graveler to begin with.

[Isa]

What you're talking about is metagame dependent. It doesn't accurately reflect the strength of an individual Pokémon.

These Pokémon are put in the tiers they're in because of how many of their matchups they win or lose. As long as you can win matchups just as extremely as you lose them (Golem vs Zapdos compared to Golem vs. Lapras), the Pokémon is in a good tier. Golem would run rampant through UU because he suddenly lives through 3 Psychics from Buzz guaranteed, deals more damage per hit (and in UU, every hit counts - chip damage is super important due to lack of recovery outside of Rest), starts to beat his walls after fewer hits, etc. You can try to get Golem down to UU or Rhydon down to NU just because their pre-evolution is there and they're OHKO'd by Surfs, but not all Pokémon carry surf.

Your suggestion of creating tiers sounds to me like it'd keep all Pokémon with balanced matchups in one higher tier than the others, which would promply send down Chansey from OU due to losing to physical Pokémon. After all Chansey loses the 1v1 versus even Hitmonchan, arguably bottom 3 of all fully evolved Pokémon (after Golbat and Ditto, and Ditto may very well be better).

[Dre]

Well I wouldn't suggest sending chansey down if she's op in uu, but if she isn't, then I think she should be down there.

The chansey situation is different from the golem one because they're aren't that many physical sweepers in uu, although her inclusion might pokes like pinsir more standard. Chansey walls most uu standards, whereas golem loses to most uu standards.

I don't see how much diffference there is between golem and graveler besides surviving more psychics, and being a more threatening late game sweeper. But even then, kingler is probably still a better late game sweeper anyway.

I just can't shrug the feeling that the only reason why golem is banned in uu is because he's so popular in ou, rather than being op in uu.

For example if people started using poliwrath in ou to sleep slower pokes and beat normals so much that he became an ou standard, that wouldn't all of a sudden make him op in uu.

At the same time though, you guys would know better than me, so I probably shouldn't pull rank.

[t3h Icy]

...Now I'm just theorizing with this one...

...but I don't think Chansey is UU...

[LucasBM]

My opinion: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[David the Chansey]

The whole purpose of the creation of tiers was to make the game more fun. Firstly, Mewtwo and Mew were banned because they were too powerful, and so OU was created, which was much more diverse. Then the most popular/powerful pokemon in OU were banned to create BL, another diverse tier but with different pokemon. Thus every new tier created made different pokemon viable, making the game of pokemon as a whole more interesting. I guess we could make many more tiers to make every pokemon in the game viable, but having many tiers would mean less battles would be fought in each one.

Starting from the bottom would be difficult. There would be too many tiers, trying to make every pokemon in the game viable. We want to keep as few tiers as possible realistically, and so we don't mind ignoring pokemon like caterpie and weedle. That tier would also be boring, coming to think of it.

Also, Golem is clearly overpowered in uu...

[shadow]

Ubers = pokemon that are broken in OU
OU = pokemon that are common in OU + pokemon that are broken in BL (Jolteon and Articuno)
BL = pokemon that are common in BL + pokemon that are broken in UU
UU = pokemon that are common in UU + pokemon that are broken in NU
NU = leftovers

Sure you could argue about the definition of 'common', but as said earlier this has already been established. And Golem is definitely a staple.

Feel free to come up with some alternative system, though; those are always fun. However without a large number of people testing your tiers, you'll have a tough time determining what is 'common' and 'broken'.

[Isa]

My suggestion for now: Create your tier system. See how it ends up. Create a rough draft for us to understand.

[Dre]

Well my tier system would still end up being pretty similar to the standard one, except certain pokes like golem would be in lower tiers.

That's my only criticism of the current system, that because it's based on usage, or working from the top-down, pokemon that are standard in a higher tier are banned from lower tiers even though I don't necessarily think they're op there.

[Isa]

I disagree and think it would be vastly different. Some Pokémon are easily countered, some are not. Chansey is easily beat by a lot of Pokémon in NU (Hitmonlee, Hitmonchan, Primeape, Machamp, Scyther, LICKITUNG, FARFETCH'D! - hell, I wouldn't be surprised if Machoke beat it) - does that mean that she is NU material?

[Dre]

Well it depends on how op she'd be. Chansey basically walls all specials, and is scared out by physicals, so she probably has the same role in every tier.

It's different to a poke like zam, who has a different role in the lower tiers since he can sweep multiple pokemon and loses to pretty much none of them. He would be op because his role is enhanced too much.

Chansey wouldn't strike me as op because she's still scared out by a lot of pokes, the only thing I could think of possibly making her op is that her spc stat may be too strong offensively for something that sponges hits so well, as there isn't many pokes with good spc defence in nu except for things like mangeton and omastar.

I'm not sure if she'd be op or not in lower tiers, but I'm saying I don't think a poke is op in lower tiers simply because they're standard in ou.

[Isa]

Well then.

Chansey+Golem+Rhydon on every team in every tier. Now what?

[jorgen]

I thought the whole point of UU and the like was to make a metagame that was not only balanced, but also devoid of any of the common superstars of OU. Otherwise, you just end up with "OU Lite" where all but a couple of the beastliest OUs are removed.

[cheese]

There is a major flaw in making Golem UU that no-one seems to have mentioned. The arguement appears to be that water/grass types are more popular in UU and so Golem would still be reasonably balanced. Now some have argued that he would still be too powerful, but I don't really know enough about the UU metagame to comment.

However, making Golem legal in UU also makes him legal in BL by default. If you're going to test Golem in UU he needs to be tested in BL too! Obviously you can't have a format where something is legal in UU and OU but banned in BL, because it makes the situation so much more complicated and by that point you're basically just grouping pokemon together that work as a metagame, which can be done hundreds of different ways.

[WaterWizard]

If you look in the archives, you will find that people have tried to reinvent tiering in the past. Underboss racked up more posts than any other user by posting about tiers so much.

Dre, you're misunderstanding how our tiering works.

First we create OU. OU is the standard metagame. It is the monsters that players use to win battles before there are any tiers.

Next, the pokemon that overcentralize OU are moved to a ban tier (ubers).

OU monsters are those that are both "useful" and "used."

So while Aerodactyl and Dugtrio are useful in OU, they are not used enough to be considered in OU with the 16 others. The reason they are not used is perhaps because they are not as useful. The two are interlinked.

Next, the remaining pokemon (not OU and not OUban) make a new tier, called UU.

The pokemon that are too good for UU are banned in to UUban (aka BL). Note that in RBY, the ban tier for UU is actually a well balanced metagame in itself, and thus we host tournaments for the UU ban tier, called BL.

Now, the pokemon that are not useful and used for UU create a new tier, called NU.

The pokmeon that are too good for NU are banned and put in a ban tier. However, there is no ban tier for NU because there are no pokemon in NU that are too good for NU but not good enough for UU (Poliwhirl and Ninetales are unique pokemon and thus useful in UU, technically).

You will note that we have asterisks by certain pokemon. See the explanation in the OP of this thread for my details.

~

Essentially, RBY has 5 distinct metagames that are all perfectly balanced. It's really quite wonderful.

Pokemon in lower tiers are allowed to play in upper tiers (think Kingler, Electrode, etc) but not vice versa.

However, if you look again in our archives, you will see that we have invented and played many different metagames here at RBY2K10 over the years, even for tournaments.

Feel free to create your own alternative system and coin it as a metagame, and we can check it out! If it's a fun and healthy metagame, we can even host a mini-tournament.

[jorgen]

I always figured NU never had a traditional ban tier because... c'mon, it's NU. Are we really gonna go through the effort of setting up a ban tier distinct from UU for such a niche metagame?

[WaterWizard]

Ninetales and Poliwhirl were banned from NU. But they are fairly unique in UU anyway, since Ninetales has Cray and Poliwhirl outspeeds Poliwrath. So really there is no ban tier, yes.

[Dre]

I did suggest an alternate metagame, where only damaging moves were allowed. So no status, recovery, cray, but counter could be used because it directly damages opponents. I played a game of it with Isa and it was pretty fun.

The term 'borderline' is pretty misleading then. BL implies that the pokemon is almost used frequently, but not enough to be considered ou, or that it's usefulness is just slightly too restricted to be deemed ou. That's different from being op in uu. A pokemon can be op in uu, yet not be borderline in terms of usage or usefulness. Nidoqueen is probably the best example.

[garrinred]

The most interesting point I've heard so far is that part of the purpose of the lower tiers is to allow non-OU pokemon to see play. Not all of them, of course, but a lot of them. I like this purpose a lot. Lets a lot of weaker pokemon shine. It also helps players because they have to practice with different pokemon than they're used to, often with different types, movesets, and strategies.

[WaterWizard]

That's right, Garrin. We have 5 metagames so pretty much every pokmemon can play. Theoretically we could even make a tier below NU. Maybe we will.

Dre, I think Zilch and I did that once. Cool. Make a thread about it and discuss it in order to develop interest, and I'll have to play it with ya sometime.

[Crystal_]

Articuno down to BL. I think I haven't seen it since 2011.
Discuss (again).

Oh, and Moltres down to UU. With so many waters it isn't going to be very good anyway. Not to mention arguably the next most common mons are either electric or rock type.

[GGFan]

^WaterWizard used Articuno against me a few months ago.

Also, in regard to UU tiers, there's been an UU metagame for over 10 years; however, tiers weren't promulgated in the early 2000s. For tournaments, we usually went by an understanding of what was OU and what wasn't.

[Crystal_]

Well, WaterWizard is actually the only player that uses it (at least he is the only one that uses it more than 5% of the times or so, everybody has used it sometime).

[jorgen]

Wasn't Arti just moved up to OU in the first place to balance the BL tier (which this site intends to be a playable tier), rather than because it got OU usage? If so, Arti's only allowed back if it doesn't break BL.

[Isa]

I wasn't around by then but I think that if you ask WW, you'll get a different response. Not sure though.

Moltres to UU would be lol

[redemption]

If I played pokemon I'd use arti.