So Kyogre is well-countered (or at least checked) by a lot of shit that's not named Groudon. Seriously. Those C&C scores are great. Note that 80% of Kyogres run Blue Orb (at the 1630 baseline).Kyogre checks & counters said:+----------------------------------------+
| Checks and Counters |
| Ferrothorn 61.999 (69.09±1.77) |
| (7.0% KOed / 62.1% switched out) |
| Zekrom 60.876 (71.39±2.63) |
| (38.4% KOed / 33.0% switched out)|
| Chansey 60.199 (71.11±2.73) |
| (7.7% KOed / 63.5% switched out) |
| Kangaskhan 58.863 (68.00±2.28) |
| (42.4% KOed / 25.6% switched out)|
| Palkia 55.792 (66.62±2.71) |
| (30.1% KOed / 36.5% switched out)|
| Arceus 55.636 (61.14±1.37) |
| (46.9% KOed / 14.2% switched out)|
| Xerneas 55.306 (60.09±1.20) |
| (48.7% KOed / 11.4% switched out)|
| Blissey 54.799 (67.80±3.25) |
| (9.8% KOed / 58.0% switched out) |
| Kyurem-Black 51.713 (82.32±7.65) |
| (51.0% KOed / 31.3% switched out)|
| Mewtwo 50.773 (57.58±1.70) |
| (45.6% KOed / 12.0% switched out)|
+----------------------------------------+
with all due respect, I am leery of any method of finding "checks and counters" that fails to find Primal Groudon as a top counter to Primal Kyogre
Because Ubers comes from a fundamentally different place than OU+ does. It's neither usage based or balanced based, and no there's no question of it becoming "obsolete". Banning philosophy is the only factor that distinguishes Ubers from other tiers. Seriously this isn't hard to understand and many earlier posters have already emphasized on this point. I don't see what's so difficult to grasp. This isn't "tradition for tradition's sake". Minority Suspect's post already excellently deals with this aspect.steelphoenix asked me to post for him the following:
What is the actual reason for Ubers having this philosophy in the first place? Why do our moderators still feel the need for Ubers to be the tier that bans as little as possible? Is there a legitimate reason for this besides preserving some perceived integrity of the tier and holding on to a banning philosophy that might well have become obsolete? If the majority of a community wants a change, it seems logical that this change should happen. I don't see why it has to be more complex than that. If you can't give me a reason for Ubers holding on to the philosophy of banning as little as possible aside from "it's tradition", then I'd seriously question why we still hold on to this philosophy. As brokenwings pointed out, we've already adopted (or been forced to adopt) some of OU's banning ideals. Why don't we go the next step and take it to the whole community regarding what should/shouldn't be banned?
No there's nothing wrong with it. Even if there is according to you, unless you can justify it in the logical space of the Ubers philosophy, then too bad. Unlike OU etc, Ubers isn't a popularity contest. The change was to keep a tier playable and not turn into a M-Rayquaza clickfest. Centralization is not a consideration. Earlier a clutch of pkmn used to centralize, now 2 do, maybe in future 1 pokemon will without being god-tier like M-Rayquaza, as long as it adheres to Fireburn's checklist then there shouldn't be an issue.I mean, it's pretty apparent this issue is causing a large rift in the community and I think something with such huge importance should be dealt with in a more logical manner. I'm just using an example here, but if everyone who played Ubers in SPL aside from one of its tier leaders and an old Ubers moderator dislikes the tier, then I think something's wrong with it.
Re-check the part about Ubers not being a popularity contest.I also think we should put it to a formal poll to decide who dislikes Ubers in its current form and who wants it to change. This, on its own, would not be used to decide anything. But it could give us real stats on who is/isn't unhappy with the tier as it is now, something I think could be a valuable tool in this argument.
Disaster Area has made something like this, along with a few others. PP ORAS Ubers. After playing it for a while I can honestly say it's very fun to play, much more so than ORAS Ubers (for me and many others who've played it.) I'm not saying this is a good idea for ORAS Ubers but I just thought I'd state that I've had some experience playing with those exact bans and can say I thoroughly enjoyed it more than ORAS Ubers, and enjoyment is the primary reason to play any tier. I don't think straight up banning these things is a good idea but I do think that some kind of Primal-free (and Mega Mence?) ladder might work just to get a general reaction from the Ubers community as a whole. If it fails, so be it. Just remove the ladder and carry on as before. If people like it then we can act accordingly and think about a potential suspect test. I say we but realistically a 'random' like me isn't gonna be doing jack shit lol.I mean, has anyone considered the possibility that ORAS Ubers is just going to suck? Let's face facts, it sounds like from the feel of this thread that there's too much "wrong" with the metagame to even attempt to "fix" it. So ok, let's ban all of P-don, MegaMence, GeoXern, Shadow Tag, and probably P-ogre seeing as how they seem to be what's causing the metagame to become "unfun" to many. But are you even playing ORAS Ubers then? And also, is it really going to make the metagame better or any more balanced if you remove those elements?
If something's unfun then what's the point in playing? People will lose all motivation to play the tier if we just give up on it and end up making Ubers look like a joke. The general attitude among a lot of players about ORAS Ubers is already bad, a lot of people mock the tier or just state flat out that it's 'shit'. Which is quite disappointing considering that most of them have hardly even played the tier but that's another issue. How are Ubers players going to be motivated to play the tier if people just give up on it and they're supposed to accept that their tier is 'unfun'In the end though I think some in this community are going to have to face the reality that ORAS Ubers is just going to be unfun for them, despite Ubers being a great metagame in DPP and ok BW. Maybe it'll be better in Gen 7 with some new balancing features that aren't quite as overpowered as the Primal shit ORAS introduced.
I think this point is super good, and worth emphasizing. I know there are some players who were immediately wary of the Mega Rayquaza ban, not because the ban itself was unjustified, but because there's a perception that sooner or later we "couldn't resist" going deeper down the rabbit hole and banning other threats like Primal Groudon. I think this proposed change in banlist philosophy is basically a worst-case-scenario for those people; for them, Ubers is a 'safe haven' where the constant threat of a banlist change isn't present like it is in every other current metagame. That's an important part of the format's identity and appeals to a unique subset of the community that isn't necessarily interested in regular testing periods or perfect balance.Minority Suspect said:There are already 5 official tiers that ban in order to balance and promote a more enjoyable metagame. Why take away the only tier that is different just to have one more of what is already available?
hello :]"fun" was never a reason to ban something and it never will be.
Why must you always need a reason to be innovative and creative? I don't know about everyone else, but I feel that this is a really negative attitude that you can't be innovative because you don't stand to gain anything out of it. You're not spending millions of dollars in a damn research project when you're playing Pokemon, so you do not need to see clear benefits from time used to be creative in this game. Can we not be creative just because we are curious human beings and seeing new things (that might or might not work) teases our imagination? A lot of new sets and builds come through failure, like all research. I used to think of new sets to try every day before I got bogged down irl. Most of them failed. If you're too afraid to get your hands dirty trying out things that you are afraid might fail, then you shouldn't complain about metagames taking away creativity. There is no such thing as an un-creative metagame, only an un-creative player.Going to go off on a bit of a tangent here to all the people using the “get creative” argument- When the most consistent team in tournaments by a decent margin has been the Deo-S sample team, what’s the point of trying to innovate? It completely kills my motivation and interest to play this tier when I see basically the exact same 5-6 mons in literally every other game I play or watch.
Name 5.Some people found the Rayquaza metagame completely playable and fun, yet it was still banned for being a horrendously broken piece of shit, regardless of how you want to phrase it.
I was one, and judging by his post, Conflict did also. That isn't five, but that is a couple of us. My own personal thoughts is that the Mega Ray meta wasn't fully explored, but that isn't what this thread is about.Name 5.
Absolutely, assuming ORAS Ubers is a competitive metagame where the superior player will be able to beat the inferior player the majority of the time. I am not currently convinced that Primal Groudon or Mega Salamence are so overpowered that they "level the playing field" for lesser players to win consistently at the tournament level.SPL was brought up in the OP, but I think the actual question is should ORAS Ubers be included in SPL (or any official tournament for that matter) if this is the tier leaders' vision of the metagame?
I know that this thread is generally about these two, but I was coming from my own observation (one that says that these two aren't broken, it is the meta in general) which I posted:Absolutely, assuming ORAS Ubers is a competitive metagame where the superior player will be able to beat the inferior player the majority of the time. I am not currently convinced that Primal Groudon or Mega Salamence are so overpowered that they "level the playing field" for lesser players to win consistently at the tournament level.
Sorry for not making myself clear. I was mostly speaking to the "official tournament" side of the OP, not the Primal Groudon and Mega Salamence side.Hmm, the way I see this is that no one threat puts Ubers over the edge. Instead, it seems that the quantity of threats that are all of ridiculous strength (the strength isn't the problem, the numbers of these pokemon with this sort of strength is). We are all Ubers players and have learned to adapt and play with very centralizing threats, but when the centralization is spread the way it is over many Pokemon, one team just has a whole lot of trouble trying to do the impossible in preparing for them all. Mega Salamence and Primal Groudon are scapegoated because they are easily the most powerful of these threats, but like Fireburn said, The are very manageable in the metagame in theory. What breaks the theory is the sheer amount of other threats that come with the tier that a team needs to prepare for. Say we remove Geomancy or Xerneas altogether, you could play around with new ways to handle Don and Mence because you don't need a Geoxern check and can use mons that Geoxern would usually like to set up on to check these two. Moves like Rest on Giratina-O would start to appear and faster Steel-types would start to gain popularity and would now have room for EVs and moves to help with Salamence. I realize this example is entirely theory, at this point, but it makes so much sense that I cannot ignore it. It definitely deserves looking into and I will do it myself if necessary.
This is the way I see the "power levels" and where the centralizing cut off is:Keep in mind that none of these Pokemon are game breaking on their own, but when thrown into an environment where they can be paired with the rest of tier 0, 1, and 2, the combinations possible are impossible to prepare for because of just how many centralizing threats and how much diversity there is. Too much diversity among powerful threats is actually very unhealthy for a metagame when being able to prepare for such diversity is left in the dust. The easiest way to "solve" the problem is banning threats of a certain tier, but none of them are powerful enough to warrant a ban is the problem. I am not saying that we should ban a certain power tier, but we should review our tiering policy and adapt because this problem will only grow worse as more Pokemon are created in generations to come.*** WARNING: THIS WILL LOOK ALMOST IDENTICLE TO THE VIABILITY RANKINGS THREAD ***
(this is a more accurate list of what I think of when teambuilding)
Tier 0:
- Primal Groudon
- Mega Salamence
Tier 1:
- Xerneas
- Arceus-Ghost
- Arceus
- Ho-Oh
- Primal Kyogre
- Darkrai
- Mewtwo
- Mega Mewtwo Y
- Mega Gengar
- Lugia
=== Arbitrary Centralization Cutoff ===
If you have plans against the above mons and all of their potential viable partners, you will more than likely get donked at team preview by one of these mons bellow or if they are partnered with a centralizing mon above.
Tier 2:
- Latios
- Latias
- Klefki
- Yveltal
- Arceus-Ground
- Deoxys-A
- Deoxys-S
- Arceus-Water
- Mega Sableye
- Dialga
- Mega Mewtwo X
- Excadrill
- Tyranitar
- Giratina-O
- Mega Diancie
- Rayquaza
- Arceus-Rock
- Ferrothorn
- Blissey
- Wobbuffet
Tier 3:
- Arceus-Dark
- Arceus-Fairy
- Kyurem-W
- Palkia
- Mega Kangaskhan
- Mega Lucario
- Ditto
- Genesect
- Arceus-Fighting
- Arceus-Ice
- Mega Metagross
- more that are forgotten about
no, this is up to the ubers tier leadersCould an admin or something actually give me permission to pursue this issue because none of the tier leaders actually want to do anything about this.
There is nothing wrong with the ORAS UBERS metagame. Proof: Good players ALWAYS make it far in official UBERS tournaments.so we are just all going to ignore the fact this is the biggest problem within the tier which is the soul reason UBERS wasn't in SPL? Could an admin or something actually give me permission to pursue this issue because none of the tier leaders actually want to do anything about this.
ubers is a tier; however, there is a rigid dichotomy between it and other tiers. succinctly put, we ban for playability and other tiers ban for balance.dice
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ubers-is-now-a-tier-a-new-metagame-called-anything-goes-is-added-m-ray-is-banned-from-ubers.3523205/