Announcement Ubers tiering: going forward

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EternalSnowman

DPL Champion
I'm really happy you brought this up, because I do think that Ubers needs to start looking at banning stuff or at least suspecting things, because in my opinion post-Marshadow SM and onwards has become so dangerously matchup reliant and many times the game is out of your control from the get go because of how many threats you have to prep for. Anyway, some things that we could look at suspecting imo:

Pdon: Definitely NOT a good thing to ban, it helps keep a lot of the tier in check and while it has a high usage I never did think it was overpowered, as its answers still come in spades and its very good mainly because of its defensive utility and merits. Offensively it is still potent, but I don't think that's why its so good.

Geomancy: While I think the tier has definitely evolved to deal with Xerneas better, I think that Geomancy is very dangerous still and in centralizes teambuilding because standard fairy resists like Ho-oh and Celesteela aren't good enough to check it, this is definitely something worth looking at because it is one of the main issues right now with teambuilding restrictions. Xerneas I also believe to be too good right now, especially with its 4 or 5 really amazing sets, each one with different checks and counters. That said, it may not be broken enough to ban, but banning it would definitely create a healthier metagame.

Stag: I don't think Stag is the problem at all, as MGar has never been a banworthy mon since the beginning of SM imo, it has too many weaknesses that are abusable (Pursuit, has to mega, frail) that can prevent it from always trapping in a game, however we definitely should look at banning Goth. Goth traps much of what answers common pokemon, and makes a lot of the bulkier teams obsolete because it can invalidate them. I personally think that this is absolutely ridiculous and mainly unhealthy because of the lack of counterplay, even if you outplay your opponent 4 times, they can outplay you once with goth and still win. Trapping has always been unhealthy for a competitive environment and numerous ones have been banned in the past (Duggy, Stag etc.) and Goth is coming to that point with the new sets people have been using.

There are also things potentially to look at in the usm environment, I can't really say right now because I haven't played it extensively, but tl;dr, I would like to see a suspect of goth and geomancy if we do look at suspecting and banning things looking forward.
 

Ropalme1914

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I have one question: if we think that a Pokémon is broken, but also at the same time it also keep other things from being broken, should we vote ban it or not? On other tiers the answer is easy, since it always was pretty clear that if something is broken, just ban it, it does not matter if it also make more things banworthy, but with our policy of keeping the least amount of things banned, this could be controversial. Let's make an example: Pdon is being suspected and I think that it should be banned (not that I really think that), but I also know that with its banning, Primal Kyogre and Xerneas also have great changes to become broken, maybe leading to a domino effect. In a OU mindset, we would for sure vote ban for Pdon and after that, we would just ban those who also became broken, but what should we prioritize here? From what I understood, we probably should lead to a no ban vote to keep the least amount of things banned?
 
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I think that it's a far better idea to unban more broken threat to create a new centralized meta rather than trying to weaken current threats from minimal banlist perspective.
 
As someone who possesses extensive experience in both Übers and Anything Goes, I would like to bring up some stuff in this thread to aid decision-making, mostly by clearing up uncertainties regarding what would happen to the Übers metagame if certain clauses, such as the Species Clause and the Mega Rayquaza Clause, were to be lifted:

Regarding Mega Rayquaza:

1. In the opening post of this thread, the following is written regarding what the Übers metagame (the ORAS iteration of such, to be precise) would look like if Mega Rayquaza was allowed:

Mega Rayquaza was a terrific Pokémon due to its amazing offensive stats. In terms of damage output it was the undisputed best. Its qualities were undoubtedly best utilized on offensive teams. Using an offensively based team with Mega Rayquaza was considered superior to not using it. Hence, the only rational choice for players was to adopt it, making every viable team in the tier some sort of Mega Rayquaza offense. While both players could use it a make gradual optimizations in this pseudo mirror-match up, Ubers was deemed unenjoyable to play. Using the specified criteria for banning Pokémon from Ubers, it is clear that Mega Rayquaza was broken, thus it was ban-worthy.
I would like to point out that not only is Mega Rayquaza hardly a necessity in Anything Goes (in ORAS, SM, as well as USUM), but even among teams that contain Mega Rayquaza, not all of them fall under the playstyle of offense. In fact, in pre-Marshadow SM Anything Goes, Thimo and I even made a quite decent stall team with Mega Rayquaza on it. With or without Mega Rayquaza, every single playstyle has always been viable in Anything Goes.

2. However, it should be noted that I am unable to perfectly quantify exactly how much the managability of Mega Rayquaza in Anything Goes is correlated with the absence of the Species Clause in that metagame, most notably in the way that it enables teams to contain two or more Arceus. In other words, I am unsure of exactly how much less manageable Mega Rayquaza would be if a Species Clause was suddenly implemented in Anything Goes, or if Mega Rayquaza was unbanned in Übers without the Species Clause being lifted at the same time. However, it should be noted that, in both ORAS as well as pre-Marshadow SM, I have, on at least one instance, created an extremely solid stall team that was actually Übers-legal (in other words, it broke neither the Species Clause nor the Mega Rayquaza Clause).

3. At the end of the day, there is, however, no denying that Mega Rayquaza is insanely powerful, and there is no doubt that existing Übers teams would need to be reconfigured if this Pokémon were to be unbanned, regardless of whether or not the Species Clause is lifted.

For example, in a metagame in which Mega Rayquaza exists, Lugia would be forced to run 252 HP and 252 Defense EVs, along with a Defense-boosting Nature. This is because a Lugia that runs 252 HP and 160 Defense EVs, which is standard in Übers at the moment, would not be able to switch into an Adamant Life Orb Mega Rayquaza, even with Stealth Rock off the field. This is because a Lugia with such EVs would be taking 27.6 - 32.4% damage from a Multiscale-weakened Dragon Ascent on the switch, before it is outsped and pummeled by a second Dragon Ascent, which deals 55.2 - 64.9% damage. Over time, the Dragon Ascents would be outdamaging Lugia's Roost + Leftovers recovery, resulting in it eventually defeated. However, choosing to run no Speed on Lugia would make it weaker to other Pokémon, such as certain Ho-Oh, Primal Kyogre and Primal Groudon sets.

It should also be noted that in a metagame with Mega Rayquaza, defensive teams that run Lugia would need to have a specific switch-in to Choice Band Dragon Ascent, since even a Lugia with 252 HP and 252 Defense EVs cannot switch into that move, even with Stealth Rock off the field.

4. However, it should also be noted that if Mega Rayquaza was usable, then Mega Lucario - currently a prominent threat in the Übers metagame - would see almost no usage, especially if the Species Clause also happens to be lifted (just imagine Mega Lucario, a sweeper slower than Arceus, in a metagame in which teams can have multiple Arceus, most or all of which would most likely be EV'd to outun Mega Rayquaza). So the introduction of Mega Rayquaza (and if not that, then the lifting of the Species Clause) would result in teams not needing to be prepared for Mega Lucario, creating less restraint for teambuilding in a way.

Regarding the Species Clause:

In Anything Goes, the only common way by which the Species Clause is broken is when teams contain more than one Arceus. Sometimes, people use teams with six Arceus, but more often than not, teams do not include more than three, with most teams using two, from my experience. Teams that break the Species Clause in other ways, such as containing six Xerneas or Primal Groudon (as I have seen some people on Discord or Pokémon Showdown! talking about) are suboptimal. In any case, I personally see absolutely no reason to not lift the Species Clause, and I have yet to see anyone coming up with any objective argument for keeping it. This also leads to my next point...

Regarding Primal Groudon:

Primal Groudon is a Pokémon whose usage and dominance would decrease dramatically if the Species Clause were to be lifted. This is because Arceus Formes can do many of the things Primal Groudon can do, such as setting and keeping Stealth Rock up, better, while at the same time being faster and having access to instant recovery. Perhaps the biggest reason why Primal Groudon is by far the most commonly-used Stealth Rock user in Übers is not because it is particularly good at this role, but simply because of the fact that it is by far the most splashable, since teams can only have one Arceus, which is usually used for another role, such as Defog, Swords Dance or Calm Mind. However, if teams could have more than one Arceus, then this completely changes. Primal Groudon would still have uses though, such as for checking Primal Kyogre (something it can do better than any Arceus Forme, especially if it knows Rest) and checking Xerneas (which only Arceus-Poison can really do, among Arceus Formes).

Regarding "uncompetitive" or "luck-based" elements of the game:

Many things are banned from Übers on the grounds of being "uncompetitive" or "luck-based." These include things that introduce a large amount of RNG-based luck into the game, such as one-hit KO moves, Moody, Hypnosis Mega Gengar, and evasion-boosting techniques. But these also include things that make the game more team matchups-based, and therefore luck-based, by creating common situations in which teams either win or lose at Team Preview. The latter category includes Baton Pass-based teams, while many people also seem to be wanting Gothitelle to be banned for very similar reasons.

Firstly, before I get to the main point, I would like to point out that absolutely none of the things that are banned from Übers for being "uncompetitive" or "luck-based" see common usage in Anything Goes. The amount of usage Mega Gengar gets in Anything Goes already pales in comparison to the amount of usage Mega Rayquaza gets, but even when looking at the Anything Goes teams that do run Mega Gengar over Mega Rayquaza, the Mega Gengar rarely run Hypnosis. One-hit KO moves see almost no usage, and most of the usage that it gets comes from people tacking Sheer Cold onto Choice Scarf Kyogre (which itself is already incredibly rare) on the off-chance that they need the move when facing a bad team matchup. Moody and evasion-boosting moves also see almost no usage outside of Baton Pass teams. And regarding Baton Pass in Anything Goes, there is a total of one prominent player who uses Eeveepass, as well as a total of one prominent player who uses full Baton Pass teams.

Why do such things have such low usage? The simple answer is because they are inconsistent. What good would something that allows you to defeat even the best player easily, given the right RNG and/or team matchup, if you cannot win consistently with it, and can easily lose to anyone with it, which leads to you attaining an unsatisfactory win-loss record in the long run? Maybe for the purpose of cheesing a much more skilled trainer in a single battle in tournament play? Well, that leads to my main point, which is also by far the most interesting point I intend to bring up in this post:

Is it actually logical to ban things for the luck and randomness that they introduce into the game? Think about this:

It is true that, either with or without one-hit KO moves, Moody, Baton Pass, or any of that luck-based stuff... Pokémon is a game in which anyone holds the possibility of defeating anyone else in a single battle, or a best-of-three set, as even without the aforementioned factors, this game still has a massive amount of random factors in it, such as RNG (freezes, critical hits, fully paralyses, etc) and team matchups (say a stall team VS. a Gothitelle, or a Whirlpool + Perish Song Arceus-Dark). But at the same time, in a scenario in which skill is attempted to be measured not in a single battle or best-of-three set, but rather, based on each trainer's consistency, embodied by their win-loss record over, say, a thousand battles against many different trainers and teams in the whole metagame (which I honestly believe to be the only real way to measure skill in Pokémon, but that's another story), then even with one-hit KO moves, Moody, Baton Pass, and all that stuff allowed... the better players would still almost always end up with better win-loss records than the worse players, since all forms of luck (RNG + team matchups + possibly more) more or less even out over such an incredibly large sample size, due to the law of large numbers.

So since the better players are going to get better win-loss records than the worse players over incredibly large sample sizes, such as a thousand battles, regardless of how much luck and randomness exists in the game... then why would there be any need to ban anything on the grounds that it makes the game more luck-based and random?

I can only think of one reason, and that is to cater to tournament play, in which skill is attempted to be measured not through an absolutely gigantic sample size, but rather, in best-of-three or five sets, in which luck plays a far larger factor in deciding who wins or loses, and overall consistency in the long run can easily be rendered irrelevant. However, even without one-hit KO moves, Baton Pass and other similar stuff... tournament results, as they are, are already extremely easily influenced by luck, in terms of both RNG and team matchups, and this especially held true in post-Marshadow SM Ubers, in which Gothitelle was everywhere, and made team matchups an extremely important deciding factor in battles - probably even moreso than hax/RNG.

So... if the logical conclusion is that Pokémon is a game in which skill can only be determined over a large sample size, and yet a large sample size would result in the better players attaining better win-loss records anyway even in spite of the existence of luck-based elements... then what exactly would be the point in banning luck-based elements in the first place?

A general note (which does not reflect my own point of view):

My general observation of the Anything Goes community tells me that Baton Pass (especially full Baton Pass teams) and Gothitelle are really the only things people commonly complain about in that metagame. I have never heard any complaints about Mega Rayquaza, multiple Arceus, or even one-hit KO moves, Moody, and other luck-based stuff in that metagame.
 
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hyw

Banned deucer.
Anything Goes should be functioning as Ubers' banlist, and yet the tiers are much more closely linked than they should be. Ubers is currently Anything Goes with Smogon restrictions, rather than Anything Goes being Ubers without restrictions, if this makes sense.
For me, this quote captures the essence of my personal relationship with Ubers as a tier since the introduction of Anything Goes.

Upon my initial discovery of simulators and my first arrival to the competitive scene of this game back in mid-BW2 (early 2013), my choice of which “tier” to “learn” was guided by the sole philosophy that Pokémon is funnest to play when least restricted. Since I had not been aware of either pure or balanced hackmons then, naturally, Ubers had been the the tier that I picked up.

Looking at the set of rules governing Ubers then, every one of them made sense to me. For your opponent to have the freedom to spam a 30-accuracy instant-kill move or a pseudo-freeze status from which you have a 1/3 probability of thawing from in subsequent turns would have effectively lowered the skill variance in the game.

That is, every rule except for one: Species Clause. It has never been even remotely clear to me why this rule is viewed as obligatory in Ubers. Not only do I question the idea that the freedom to use multiple iterations of a single Pokémon leads to imbalance on the battlefield, on the contrary, I believe that such a freedom has the potential to contribute to its stability.

Furthermore, Species Clause has a much greater affect unique to the Ubers tier in that it restricts the use of varying Arceus forms; in my opinion, a clearly negative side effect to metagame stability. Albeit intuitive, I think that this is a side effect of the clause people tend to forget about in such discussions.

With Sleep Clause being tested in BW2 and Species Clause being lifted in Anything Goes, I think that both in the context of history and the present, it is none other than Species Clause that deserves close scrutiny of its legitimacy in Ubers as a potential point of improvement. To me, it is obvious that Species Clause requires a quick-unban, much like Swagger had warranted it on day one of Sun and Moon’s release. However, this issue is contentious among the player-base, so a suspect test would be a healthier route, it seems.

I think that the greatest source of friction to the idea of unbanning Species Clause may come from its unfamiliarity. Not only has Ubers as a tier never seen a day without it implemented, nevertheless have it suspected, the ultimate consequences of unbanning Species Clause are as ambiguous as what USM Ubers will look like a year from now.

With that said, I hope that everyone can set aside preconceived notions to try at a sober reconsideration of the legitimacy of Species Clause in Ubers. Perhaps its positive, nevermind neutral or otherwise negative, effect of its lift from Anything Goes can act as a hint of what it could mean for Ubers.

Having remained faithful to Ubers as my main tier for five years, and with extensive experience dappling in Balanced Hackmons and Anything Goes for reasons mentioned in the beginning, I strongly believe that if we are to strive for an improvemet to Ubers as a tier, this reformation would result in the greatest change for the better.

The impetus behind my posting now rather than later is because if an unban is to be implemented, it is important for the progression of metagame stability that it happens sooner rather than later as well. The earlier that we organize a suspect test for Species Clause, the greater time we have to experiment with such an environment. As an example, I propose a hypotheical scenario: the suspect test is decided to be conducted in a short time prior to the next SPL, a more volatile Species Clause-version of USM is turned down for SPL participation, and the Species Clause-less USM turns out to be much higher in quality. I cannot see how such a hypothetical could be refuted and the risk of such scenarios should be of grave concern to the player-base given the now second rejection.

I hope that, at the very least, this post ignites a more prolific discussion regarding Species Clause in Ubers, and I hope that certain members of the Ubers authority (it is firey obvious who the usual suspects are) acts more decisively than what we saw in the poor handling of Swagger Clause and the Shadow Tag suspect.

And with that, I leave you all with a quote from one of my favorite political figures in recent memory, Roland Reagan: “...government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”
 
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Fireburn

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ag has been historically rather balanced. that being said, it makes the most sense to adopt it as a base and work from there given the working definition of ubers.

right?
No, we are going to be using our existing banlist as a starting point. Our goal is not pure minimization (if that was our goal, then AG has already accomplished this and we don't need to do anything), but rather minimization under the constraint that we preserve a playable competitive metagame. It thus doesn't make sense to use AG as a base since it is uncompetitive by definition. We believe it would be better for the tier to make changes starting from something closer to a "known good" (aka what we have now) so that we can both more accurately measure the impact of individual factors and not waste time unnecessarily.

While we don't have a set order planned in what we're going to do, we do plan on a mix of suspects in our quest to optimize our banlist, so I don't think there is cause to worry about anything getting overlooked.
 

MZ

And now for something completely different
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This thread is cool and I like that Ubers is getting some real tiering from a spectator/casual dabbler's perspective. That being said, since AG has come up a few times with regard to reviewing species clause, I wanted to give my two cents. Honestly, I'm not entirely buying it. It would drastically change the Ubers metagame into something incredibly different, and is that a good thing? It might improve the metagame for sure, but if you're changing the metagame based on views of what ubers is meant to be and not something like playability, it seems to me like that entirely goes against the thread. This is about changing the tiering principles of Ubers to creating a more competitive metagame, so why is minimal banlist a reason to look at species clause? People are using AG as an example because it turned out alright, and I kind of agree with that. But, at the same time, AG hasn't gone under the same kind of competitive scrutiny and rigor that ubers has. Luck based strategies don't pop up because there hasn't really been a stage where people want to turn games into total coinflips, but it's not unheard of. I mean people here have said things like "AG has been historically rather balanced" and like, no. ORAS AG, while I loved that metagame, was a total shitshow because you get things like Darkrai spam, or Klefki spam, or Ekiller spam (to be fair though, mostly Darkrai). I don't think AG looks anything like what Ubers does, not because of things like Mega Rayquaza or Sleep Clause, but because species clause is a massive and metagame defining change, and that's just not something worth looking at purely based on tiering principles. The only reason I'd look at species clause is if leaders really want to completely change the meta in the hopes that it becomes better, and if ubers is finally going to begin to suspect things to improve the tier then that just isn't a necessary step.
 
No, we are going to be using our existing banlist as a starting point. Our goal is not pure minimization (if that was our goal, then AG has already accomplished this and we don't need to do anything), but rather minimization under the constraint that we preserve a playable competitive metagame.
See lance's ending note. AG players are complaining about Gothitelle and Baton pass! The point is that, the competitiveness of AG can be increased with minimal bans (BP and Goth). When we do that, then "AG" is no longer AG, but definitely an Ubers tier.
It thus doesn't make sense to use AG as a base since it is uncompetitive by definition.
AG is not uncompetitive by definition. It is only defined as a banlist for ubers. That's it. Indeed, you're using the exact same logic fallacy that OU players used to use to deride ubers as a tier. How ironic.
We believe it would be better for the tier to make changes starting from something closer to a "known good" (aka what we have now) so that we can both more accurately measure the impact of individual factors and not waste time unnecessarily.
A matter of opinion, and I hope that you would follow the will of ubers community rather than your preconceived notions.
While we don't have a set order planned in what we're going to do, we do plan on a mix of suspects in our quest to optimize our banlist, so I don't think there is cause to worry about anything getting overlooked.
Order matters. A lot. So, it would be nice to know in advance.
 

Aberforth

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First of all, Lance, did you seriously suggest teambuilding will be less restricted in a Mega Ray meta cause there is no Mega Lucario in the way? That's the way point 4 of unban mega ray reads. If so, that's laughably false for very obvious reasons.

Secondly, as for the aspect of your post that irked me most, the luck based part. Not wanting to make knockout tournaments more luck-based is not something that should just be handwaved away. It's fine to claim that luck based elements even out over a long time, which is fine and true for the ladder, however in tournaments like Ubers Seasonal, Snake and SPL, games are decided in bo1 or bo3 games, and increasing the amount of luck subject in those games could very well have a meaningful impact, especially as in things like seasonal, if you get unlucky in two game 3s, you're out, and there is no law of large numbers to make up for this. And meaningfully increasing the amount of luck that one can be subject to, especially in environments like tours where people would look to make teams that can exploit luck based elements more, is not something that is likely to benefit the tier in any meaningful way. And often, people's reputations is not based on 'thousands of battles' but rather performance in a few specific tours, where luck has a much larger effect, as it's no longer '1000 battles' but '10 battles'. The law of big numbers does not apply in smogon tournaments.

Thirdly, on species clause, the burden of proof is on the one proposing a change. You cant say that species clause should be adopted without any claim to back that up aside from, effectively 'why not'. Making Pdon less necessary does not make species clause a good thing.

Also species clause would be a massive massive change, with next to no guarantee that it would actually benefit the metagame, and it would be a change large enough that even a long suspect would probably not be enough for people to fully realise the effects of such a change. It being fine in a metagame where you need to check Mega Ray does not automatically make it fine for Ubers to adopt it, especially given that so far, nobody has actually explained why it would be a good thing for ubers aside from trying to minimalise the banlist. Now that's a perfectly reasonable goal, but when there are issues that already exist, it makes more sense to address those first before unbanning something for the potential that, in a year, maybe it makes the meta a bit better, but could equally make the meta significantly worse. Especially, as I already said, given that it would be unlikely to be fully evaluated in a suspect given how drastic the change would be.

Starting from where we have makes sense, and I cannot see how people can seriously suggest we start from what AG has, and then work backwards to make an ubers metagame. For one, there are plenty of ubers players who do not play/know AG, who would not just have one new element to inspect, but seven (baton pass, moody, evasion, OHKO, species, sleep and MRay), and working in such an environment would punish ubers players, who know the ubers tier, by forcing them to learn a new tier with big differences in a few weeks to prevent the tier they enjoy becoming it permanently. And it would create a bias among those who can achieve the requirements, as those are likely to be the players more familiar with AG, who would implicitly like it more and likely want to make ubers more like it. For another, it makes much more sense to suspect individual elements on a tier that we know one by one, rather than start from an unfamiliar starting point with numerous new things which each can have an unknown impact, where people are meant to isolate one of the new impacts incredibly hastily, where the potential for error is much higher.
 

Inspirited

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It looks like you two put lots of thought into this and I love the result. This is a fantastic baseline for isolating metagame problems in order to to put them under suspect, but I couldn't help but think that there was something missing when I read the last few lines.

OU has a simple initial train of thought when what they believe to be metagame problem has been identified with the banning of a greater gameplay clause > Pokemon > form > ability > move being what they look at in rough order (this is based on rough observation over the years). This order is not solid and has been broken a number of time with judgements being made on a case by case basis, but there is still evidence that it (or some order) exists. The order exists partially because of OU's investment in not only playability but diversity. Ubers shouldn't care nearly as much about diversity (we should care a little bit due to the by far best duck vs identical by far best duck case and the like being possible), so we have less restriction when deciding how to tackle metagame problems.

As far as I know, it is up to the tier leaders to decide what solutions are put forward to metagame problems with there being no organized avenues for community input on the matter. This tends to lead to wall spamming (baton pass was a very, very clear example of this), people who are loud in chat rooms to the point of being rude about there stance because of the lack of good communication / organized discussion options, and other various kinds of obnoxious behavior in PMs / DMs and other places all on the internet all because people believe they don't have sufficient tools to have a side of a problem seen and considered. Better tools shouldn't necessarily solve these behaviors and they will persist, but the goal and organized communication path would be to minimize them in order to isolate those who want to be unbearable or those simply want to dictate instead of look around, discuss, or even think at all about other ways a metagame issue can be resolved. Hugendugen made an attempt to have discussion on these sorts of subjects, but it was ultimately disorganized due to there being no baseline for identifying a metagame problem and people developing their own personal baseline that needed to be argued for as a result. We have a baseline now, and an organized voting process to work with rather than just disorganized community feedback.

The only missing piece is identifying how solutions are developed before the suspect test begins and after the metagame problem is identified. I read somewhere that testing the same problem twice or more with a different way of solving it each time is not allowed in some cases, so it is pretty important that it is performed with as much care as possible the first time around. I am fine with tier leaders pitching the solutions to problems, but I don't know about others.

AM and orch did a very good job of covering my concerns with the suspect process itself.

TL DR:... dunno. I can't think of any clear math imbalance examples without a boat load of variables that people wouldn't understand. This sounds stupid but I'll say it anyways: Read it if you want to know what it says.
 
pretty sure ag has been just as 'competitive' as this tier since its conception...

suspect tests and their ordering will massively affect the impact of how we navigate the tier from its current conceptualization. if we're gonna bite the bullet and embrace a truly Balanced Ubers, let's start from the basis that has been tried and true, has arguably more diversity and balance, and is way better at addressing an identity for ubers.

megazard's post is a total red herring-- u got cheesed bro it happens.
 
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hyw

Banned deucer.
Thirdly, on species clause, the burden of proof is on the one proposing a change. You cant say that species clause should be adopted without any claim to back that up aside from, effectively 'why not'. Making Pdon less necessary does not make species clause a good thing.

Also species clause would be a massive massive change, with next to no guarantee that it would actually benefit the metagame, and it would be a change large enough that even a long suspect would probably not be enough for people to fully realise the effects of such a change.
Although I disagree regarding upon which party the burden of proof lies, more funamentally, I disagree with your assumption that any proofing can be conducted in the first place. Without a suspect test having been conducted, what evidence does either party have in order to argue for either lifting or keeping the ban?

All that the pro-unban camp is proposing at this point is that we provide an environment for the Clause to be tested for its validity and legitimacy. Then and only then, evidence can be collected from which informed opinions can transpire and subsequently collide with one another to ultimately synthesize an informed collective decision made by the comminity. However, until that environment is given existence, everyone remains in the dark. As much as I may be wholly wrong in my belief that unbanning Species Clause would improve the health and competitiveness of the Ubers metagame, it is currently equally as likely that you are wholly wrong in your belief that unbanning the clause would degrade Ubers’ quality. In other words, a philosophical 50-50: “your word against mine.” Yet by opting to not conduct a suspect test, you are effectively turning a 50-50 difference of philosophies into a lose-lose result for all of Ubers. Concerns that games will end up being 6 GeoXern versus 6 GeoXern and being decided by speed ties and such are valid, in which case I will change my opinion upon reception of evidence that Species Clause should remain if things turn out this way. However my concerns are that Ubers has the potential to become more competitive thanks to the unban of Species Clause, where the metagame acquires depth and skill variance through, for example, the possibility of using Arceus-Ground and Arceus-Fairy on the same team to check a plethora of threats, despite this currently not being possible as it would violate the Species Clause. What if this latter scenario is the case? This much is true: the against-unban camp cannot provide any proof arguing such a hypothetical, as currently, even that is withheld. With the opening up of possibilities to use various Arceus forms on one team, the positive outcome of the lifting of Species Clause in Anything Goes, and the voices of concern about the legitimacy of the clause in Ubers by veteran users such as Hack, dice, Lance, my clan’s recently innovated metagame-development-simulator, myself, and plenty others, I believe that there is more than enough precedent to conduct a Species Clause suspect test, from angles both logically deduced and democratically warranted. In summation, I hope to speak for all in the pro-unban camp when I say that it is not the immediate unban of Species Clause we seek, but rather, giving Ubers a chance to improve by analyzing the end product of a reformation in a potential room for improvement.

On a side note, I 100% agree with dice’s proposal that the correct way to approach USM Ubers tiering is to install the Anything Goes ruleset. With 80-accuracy Dark Void no longer existant and no viable Spore users in Ubers, how is Sleep Clause relevant to Ubers anymore? What viable Pokémon would thrive in Ubers that learn OHKO moves, of which there seem to be none? I believe that by proposing a suspect test of an unban of Species Clause, instead of a quick-unban or a full installation of the AG ruleset in Ubers, the pro-unban camp is making all the concessions it can possibly make in our collective strive towards a betterment of Ubers. Ultimately, the fate of whether the correct decision to conduct either of these options lies in the hands of the Ubers authority. Since certain members of the authority have proven incompetence to the greatest extreme in the Shadow Tag scandal, and seeing how the most recent unban of the Swagger Clause had been conducted, I hope that the discussion in this thread can make it as plainly obvious as possible as to just how necessary an unban of Species Clause is, or at least, a suspect of it.
 
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First of all, Lance, did you seriously suggest teambuilding will be less restricted in a Mega Ray meta cause there is no Mega Lucario in the way? That's the way point 4 of unban mega ray reads. If so, that's laughably false for very obvious reasons.

Secondly, as for the aspect of your post that irked me most, the luck based part. Not wanting to make knockout tournaments more luck-based is not something that should just be handwaved away. It's fine to claim that luck based elements even out over a long time, which is fine and true for the ladder, however in tournaments like Ubers Seasonal, Snake and SPL, games are decided in bo1 or bo3 games, and increasing the amount of luck subject in those games could very well have a meaningful impact, especially as in things like seasonal, if you get unlucky in two game 3s, you're out, and there is no law of large numbers to make up for this. And meaningfully increasing the amount of luck that one can be subject to, especially in environments like tours where people would look to make teams that can exploit luck based elements more, is not something that is likely to benefit the tier in any meaningful way. And often, people's reputations is not based on 'thousands of battles' but rather performance in a few specific tours, where luck has a much larger effect, as it's no longer '1000 battles' but '10 battles'. The law of big numbers does not apply in smogon tournaments.

Thirdly, on species clause, the burden of proof is on the one proposing a change. You cant say that species clause should be adopted without any claim to back that up aside from, effectively 'why not'. Making Pdon less necessary does not make species clause a good thing.

Also species clause would be a massive massive change, with next to no guarantee that it would actually benefit the metagame, and it would be a change large enough that even a long suspect would probably not be enough for people to fully realise the effects of such a change. It being fine in a metagame where you need to check Mega Ray does not automatically make it fine for Ubers to adopt it, especially given that so far, nobody has actually explained why it would be a good thing for ubers aside from trying to minimalise the banlist. Now that's a perfectly reasonable goal, but when there are issues that already exist, it makes more sense to address those first before unbanning something for the potential that, in a year, maybe it makes the meta a bit better, but could equally make the meta significantly worse. Especially, as I already said, given that it would be unlikely to be fully evaluated in a suspect given how drastic the change would be.

Starting from where we have makes sense, and I cannot see how people can seriously suggest we start from what AG has, and then work backwards to make an ubers metagame. For one, there are plenty of ubers players who do not play/know AG, who would not just have one new element to inspect, but seven (baton pass, moody, evasion, OHKO, species, sleep and MRay), and working in such an environment would punish ubers players, who know the ubers tier, by forcing them to learn a new tier with big differences in a few weeks to prevent the tier they enjoy becoming it permanently. And it would create a bias among those who can achieve the requirements, as those are likely to be the players more familiar with AG, who would implicitly like it more and likely want to make ubers more like it. For another, it makes much more sense to suspect individual elements on a tier that we know one by one, rather than start from an unfamiliar starting point with numerous new things which each can have an unknown impact, where people are meant to isolate one of the new impacts incredibly hastily, where the potential for error is much higher.
First of all, I would have appreciated it if you did not make the assumption that the purpose of my previous post was to basically turn Übers into Anything Goes. While I did call for certain rules to be lifted from Übers every here and there in my previous post (based on my own personal opinions)... in its entirety, the main purpose of my post was to give people a better understanding of what the Übers metagame would look like if this or that ban or clause were to be lifted from it, with my understanding of such originating from my experience with the Anything Goes metagame. The reason why I am doing this is because I do not wish to see people making decisions in the upcoming suspect tests that are based on ignorance, misinformation or prejudice, because my experience with the Pokémon community (especially with suspect tests in general) tells me that people are often very eager to draw conclusions about things based on little experience, or believe certain things just because many other people believe the same.

In other words, it would be more appropriate to see my previous post in this thread as a discussion, rather than an argument supporting anything, which is why, in Mega Rayquaza's section of my post, you can see that I have clearly brought up points both in favor of and against keeping Mega Rayquaza banned. I want to try my best to give people a good understanding of what implications unbanning Mega Rayquaza would have on the Übers metagame, and then let them make their own judgments. This is because to my understanding, most Übers players who have not played Anything Goes before probably hold extremely inaccurate beliefs about what Mega Rayquaza is really like, such as the idea that it will make every playstyle except hyper-offense unviable (which is completely questionable), the idea that its presence in the metagame will make Gothitelle completely unviable (an idea I've seen being presented in the Ubers Kingdom Discord server before, which also doesn't seem to be right, especially since, if Anything Goes is anything to go by, Gothitelle and Mega Rayquaza actually make an extremely threatening combo when used on the same team), the idea that it will have 100% usage, and other things like that.

In the section of my previous post pertaining to luck-based elements of the game, I can understand how it may have appeared that I was strongly promoting the unbanning of all luck-based elements. But note that ultimately, I was merely asking a question, in order to promote discussion about an issue which I personally believe to be extremely fundamental to the nature of competitive Pokémon battling in general.

Yes, I understand that adding more luck elements to the game would certainly make the results of Smogon tournaments, which are in best-of-three or best-of-five formats, more random than they currently are, since the law of large numbers does not apply to those situations. But the question is, even though one-hit KO moves, Moody, and other luck-based elements are currently banned from Übers... is it not true that attempts to measure skill in a game that's as fundamentally luck-infested as Pokémon using a small sample size are still more or less random? Take a look at the image below:



The above image consists of 32x32, or 1024, squares. Imagine if each square represented a single battle of a certain Pokémon trainer, with each black square representing a win, and each white square representing a loss. Now, note that on the right side of the image, there are two 3x3 squares, one outlined in yellow, and the other outlined in purple. Can you not see how over a small sample size of nine battles, a person can feasibly attain a win-loss record of either 4-5 or 9-0, and yet neither 4-5 nor 9-0 accurately depicts the trainer's actual level of consistency over 1024 battles? How can you make it possible to accurately measure skill over a small sample size in a game that's as fundamentally random as Pokémon is, then? Why should one-hit KO moves, Moody, Baton Pass, Evasion-boosting moves and Hypnosis Mega Gengar be banned, while existing elements of luck in the game, such as moves with side effects or imperfect accuracy, as well as team matchups, should remain?

Considering the fact that reducing the amount of randomness in the game enough to the point where a sample size of 10 battles or less can accurately measure skill in Pokémon would require changing many fundamental aspects of this game, such as team matchups, as well as core game mechanics such as critical hits and the way Speed-ties and paralysis work, would it perhaps not be more beneficial for players in the Pokémon community to step outside of the trap embodied by their mindset according to which skill must be attempted to be measured in a small sample size? Considering the fundamental way by which the game of Pokémon has been designed by Game Freak, with the deliberate inclusion of inescapable forms of RNG in the game, as well as the inextricable element of team matchups... perhaps the time has come for the Pokémon community to finally accept the idea that Pokémon has always, all along, been a game in which only the results over the long run were supposed to matter when measuring skill, and that any attempt to deny this will ultimately be in vain.

If players can finally escape from the aforementioned mindset-induced trap, then my question regarding the point of banning luck-based elements from the game when the best players still get better win-loss records over a large sample is still open for discussion in this thread.

Also, in regards to the Species Clause, I believe that the burden of proof lies on the ones who want it to exist, since every clause needs a reason to exist in the first place in a metagame. Just like your previous argument regarding luck-based elements being undesirable because of their extreme likelihood of ruining best-of-three or best-of-five sets, due to them being currently and traditionally seen by the majority of people to be the main test of skill in Pokémon, your current argument regarding how much the Übers metagame would change if the Species Clause were to be lifted is the commission of the appeal to tradition logical fallacy.
 
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Aberforth

is a Top Social Media Contributoris a Member of Senior Staffis a Community Contributoris a Tiering Contributoris a Contributor to Smogon
Ubers Leader
First of all, I would have appreciated it if you did not make the assumption that the purpose of my previous post was to basically turn Übers into Anything Goes. While I did call for certain rules to be lifted from Übers every here and there in my previous post (based on my own personal opinions)... in its entirety, the main purpose of my post was to give people a better understanding of what the Übers metagame would look like if this or that ban or clause were to be lifted from it, with my understanding of such originating from my experience with the Anything Goes metagame. The reason why I am doing this is because I do not wish to see people making decisions in the upcoming suspect tests that are based on ignorance, misinformation or prejudice, because my experience with the Pokémon community (especially with suspect tests in general) tells me that people are often very eager to draw conclusions about things based on little experience, or believe certain things just because many other people believe the same.

In other words, it would be more appropriate to see my previous post in this thread as a discussion, rather than an argument supporting anything, which is why, in Mega Rayquaza's section of my post, you can see that I have clearly brought up points both in favor of and against banning Mega Rayquaza. I want to try my best to give people a good understanding of what implications unbanning Mega Rayquaza would have on the Übers metagame, and then let them make their own judgments. This is because to my understanding, most Übers players who have not played Anything Goes before probably hold extremely inaccurate beliefs about what Mega Rayquaza is really like, such as the idea that it will make every playstyle except hyper-offense unviable (which is completely questionable), the idea that its presence in the metagame will make Gothitelle completely unviable (an idea I've seen being presented in the Ubers Kingdom Discord server before, which also doesn't seem to be right, especially since, if Anything Goes is anything to go by, Gothitelle and Mega Rayquaza actually make an extremely threatening combo when used on the same team), the idea that it will have 100% usage, and other things like that.
My apologies, that is indeed the way that I had read it. Although I do stand by what I said when I said that your point 4 made no sense, and that it implied that Lucario is more of a hindrance on teambuilding than Mega Ray.

In the section of my previous post pertaining to luck-based elements of the game, I can understand how it may have appeared that I was strongly promoting the unbanning of all luck-based elements. But note that ultimately, I was merely asking a question, in order to promote discussion about an issue which I personally believe to be extremely fundamental to the nature of competitive Pokémon battling in general.

Yes, I understand that adding more luck elements to the game would certainly make the results of Smogon tournaments, which are in best-of-three or best-of-five formats, more random than they currently are, since the law of large numbers does not apply to those situations. But the question is, even though one-hit KO moves, Moody, and other luck-based elements are currently banned from Übers... is it not true that attempts to measure skill in a game that's as fundamentally luck-infested as Pokémon using a small sample size are still more or less random? Take a look at the image below:

The above image consists of 32x32, or 1024, squares. Imagine if each square represented a single battle of a certain Pokémon trainer, with each black square representing a win, and each white square representing a loss. Now, note that on the right side of the image, there are two 3x3 squares, one outlined in yellow, and the other outlined in purple. Can you not see how over a small sample size of nine battles, a person can feasibly attain a win-loss record of either 4-5 or 9-0, and yet neither 4-5 nor 9-0 accurately depicts the trainer's actual level of consistency over 1024 battles? How can you make it possible to accurately measure skill over a small sample size in a game that's as fundamentally random as Pokémon is, then? Why should one-hit KO moves, Moody, Baton Pass, Evasion-boosting moves and Hypnosis Mega Gengar be banned, while existing elements of luck in the game, such as moves with side effects or imperfect accuracy, as well as team matchups, should remain?

Considering the fact that reducing the amount of randomness in the game enough to the point where a sample size of 10 battles or less can accurately measure skill in Pokémon would require changing many fundamental aspects of this game, such as team matchups, as well as core game mechanics such as critical hits and the way Speed-ties and paralysis work, would it perhaps not be more beneficial for players in the Pokémon community to step outside of the trap embodied by their mindset according to which skill must be attempted to be measured in a small sample size? Considering the fundamental way by which the game of Pokémon has been designed by Game Freak, with the deliberate inclusion of inescapable forms of RNG in the game, as well as the inextricable element of team matchups... perhaps the time has come for the Pokémon community to finally accept the idea that Pokémon has always, all along, been a game in which only the results over the long run were supposed to matter when measuring skill, and that any attempt to deny this will ultimately be in vain.

If players can finally escape from the aforementioned mindset-induced trap, then my question regarding the point of banning luck-based elements from the game when the best players still get better win-loss records over a large sample is still open for discussion in this thread.
This ignores that people do indeed judge based off of tournament performance, and that isn't going to change by ubers having a suspect test on evasion. Actively making the tournament scene more luck based is and should be a factor in our decisions, given that that is what people most consider the pinnacle of ubers skill. If we were in a scenario where the ladder was the thing that people viewed as being most impressive, yes unbanning luck based elements that even out over 1000 battles would make sence, however the tournament elements, which are and will remain bo3 mostly, if not bo1, are still the areas which will be respected most and are ones that should play a part in our reasoning. It seems to me more like you are encouraging a culture change, but I dont feel that that is likely, nor do i feel that this is an effective way to try to come about that goal. Given that we have not changed our culture to be less interested in tours, unbanning evasion because it evens out over the ladder does not have a net positive effect given the negative effect of when evasion used in a tournament game could knock a team out of SPL/Snake playoffs, or a player out of seasonal/trophy (given Grand Slam), due to the not-insignificant boost in luck elements. Evasion is but an example, this applies to all the luck based elements currently claused out of ubers.

Also, in regards to the Species Clause, I believe that the burden of proof lies on the ones who want it to exist, since every clause needs a reason to exist in the first place in a metagame. Just like your previous argument regarding luck-based elements being undesirable because of their extreme likelihood of ruining best-of-three or best-of-five sets, due to them being currently and traditionally seen by the majority of people to be the main test of skill in Pokémon, your current argument regarding how much the Übers metagame would change if the Species Clause were to be lifted is the commission of the appeal to tradition logical fallacy.
your link said:
An appeal to tradition is only a fallacious argument in itself if the argument is not developed further, for example by pointing out that the widespread acceptance of the practice means that there would be significant implications/disruption/cost involved in abandoning the tradition.
Appeal to tradition does not apply in this case, given that my specific point was that introducing such a thing would take significantly more time for people to be used to and evaluate properly, disadvantaging the current community that is not familiar with no-species clause based metagames (aka the not-ag players in the community), and that I was calling in that segment for other things to be tested first. If enough people wish to see species clause be suspected, ok then, but I do not believe it should be the priority for the first ubers suspect we've done since XY, and I would rather we fix what is currently a problem before introducing something that has no guarantee of fixing any problem.

In addition, the burden of proof is on those who wish to change the status quo. If there is no reason to do something, it should not be done. If the reason is to minimalise the banlist, then ok, but I'd prefer we tackle actual problems that exist before we move on to removing one of the staples of smogon play, and pokemon play in general. I do not like the abandoning of species clause for other reasons, but those would best be mentioned in an actual suspect thread, and should not be an argument against suspecting it at all.
 

hyw

Banned deucer.
It all comes down to how competent the Ubers authority is. If they are competent, at the very least, they will initiate a suspect test for Species Clause. Since its unban has vast potential to improve the tier, evidence for or against this can only be collected by introducing a suspect test in the first place, and the conducting of a suspect test poses no risk of loss in any form, the only conceivable reason for opposition at this point is because one feels as though keeping it banned is better but lacks the confidence to clear voting requirements. I think I summed up the last few posts in a paragraph.
 
My apologies, that is indeed the way that I had read it. Although I do stand by what I said when I said that your point 4 made no sense, and that it implied that Lucario is more of a hindrance on teambuilding than Mega Ray.
I did not imply that Mega Lucario is more of a hindrance on teambuilding than Mega Rayquaza is. As I pointed out in my previous post, I was discussing both the advantages as well as the disadvantages to unbanning Mega Rayquaza, in order to aid people in their decision-making in the upcoming suspect tests, and the fact that Mega Rayquaza's presence in the metagame makes it so that teams no longer need to care about preparing for Mega Lucario is just one of the points that I brought up, because I felt that it's not something that would be immediately obvious to people who have not played Anything Goes. I did not in any way state that teambuilding would be less restricted if Mega Rayquaza was unbanned.

This ignores that people do indeed judge based off of tournament performance, and that isn't going to change by ubers having a suspect test on evasion. Actively making the tournament scene more luck based is and should be a factor in our decisions, given that that is what people most consider the pinnacle of ubers skill. If we were in a scenario where the ladder was the thing that people viewed as being most impressive, yes unbanning luck based elements that even out over 1000 battles would make sence, however the tournament elements, which are and will remain bo3 mostly, if not bo1, are still the areas which will be respected most and are ones that should play a part in our reasoning. It seems to me more like you are encouraging a culture change, but I dont feel that that is likely, nor do i feel that this is an effective way to try to come about that goal. Given that we have not changed our culture to be less interested in tours, unbanning evasion because it evens out over the ladder does not have a net positive effect given the negative effect of when evasion used in a tournament game could knock a team out of SPL/Snake playoffs, or a player out of seasonal/trophy (given Grand Slam), due to the not-insignificant boost in luck elements. Evasion is but an example, this applies to all the luck based elements currently claused out of ubers.
OK, if you believe that acting according to the current culture takes priority over other things, then fair enough, even though I have personally always found the idea of attempting to use a small sample size to fairly measure skill in a game whose very creators have deliberately infested with an absolutely insane amount of inescapable luck to be completely impractical and meaningless. However, your belief that acting according to the current culture takes priority over other things is ultimately an opinion which no one else is guaranteed to agree with - hence the purpose of my original post, which was to bring various non-immediately-obvious points to the table, and allow others to judge and weigh the various points, in order to aid their decision-making in the coming suspect tests. This is because my understanding of this thread is that its purpose is to open all sorts of cans of worms and address each and every one of them, in order to collectively come up with the best decisions in improving this tier. And people's trapped mindset, taking the form of their inability to understand the true nature of how luck, skill and sample size work in the game of Pokémon (in my opinion) is one of the biggest cans of worms whose continuously-closed state contributes to poor decision-making on many different levels when it comes to competitive Pokémon, from my perspective.

Appeal to tradition does not apply in this case, given that my specific point was that introducing such a thing would take significantly more time for people to be used to and evaluate properly, disadvantaging the current community that is not familiar with no-species clause based metagames (aka the not-ag players in the community), and that I was calling in that segment for other things to be tested first. If enough people wish to see species clause be suspected, ok then, but I do not believe it should be the priority for the first ubers suspect we've done since XY, and I would rather we fix what is currently a problem before introducing something that has no guarantee of fixing any problem.

In addition, the burden of proof is on those who wish to change the status quo. If there is no reason to do something, it should not be done. If the reason is to minimalise the banlist, then ok, but I'd prefer we tackle actual problems that exist before we move on to removing one of the staples of smogon play, and pokemon play in general. I do not like the abandoning of species clause for other reasons, but those would best be mentioned in an actual suspect thread, and should not be an argument against suspecting it at all.
OK, but one thing to keep in mind is that something that is problematic in the current metagame may no longer be problematic if some clauses were lifted, meaning that banning something now and then lifting an existing clause later may not be a decision that makes sense in the end.
 
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Loloartsi

Banned deucer.
Damn I've been waiting for this..


First of all why hasnt anyone here discussed about the possible Trick Room suspect yet? I think I'm one of the few people who still have the guts to use this strategy on the Ubers ladder, and seems that people actually aren't relying on that scumbag strategy since it doesnt take skill at all to click gyro ball buttons with stakataka to win. Idk why even lower tiers havent brought this up on forums, guess it's so obvious that the suspect ladder down there will be up sooner than later. The biggest reason why Trick Room is deemed banworthy in USUM than before (should've been banned since XY hence) is Stakataka and Dusk Mane Necrozma. Stakataka's most broken aspect is Beast Boost combined with 150 stab gyro balls that practically deny any switch in especially on Bulky Offense and Balance teams. It has also just about enough coverage to hit it's checks when holding a z crystal. There are a couple of hard checks like Zygarde, but even that hardly wants to switch into a boosted stakataka. Also factually Stakataka learns the move Magnet Rise, which allows it to bypass its greatest weakness, ground types/coverage. Dusk Mane is easily the most unhealthy trick room setter we've ever seen, it has incredible bulk and typing to shrug off strong attacks and set up trick room whenever it wants to. These two pokemon patch up Trick Rooms biggest issues and make it unenjoyable and possibly even overcentralizing for an early metagame where HO and BO teams are prevalent and even the fact that it's more common in AG than Ubers just shows how broken this strategy is so that's why I'm happy to finally see the tier leaders open to moving this tier forward and getting this pest banned.

Bad analogy and joke iirc..

I was gonna write longer opinions on the possible Primal Groudon, Geomancy and Shadow Tag suspects, but I feel like I'm a bit late with this anyway and people have written some good stuff in here, so just gonna summarize my own thoughts on the possible suspects that appear to be on everyones lips right now.


I always thought Primal Groudon was a huge buttress for the Ubers metagame and I still do. It never was overly broken in either ORAS or SM, and I feel its even less so on in USM. It has a ton of checks and people are running several ones to make sure they dont lose to any offensive pdon set whatsoever, and especially the defensive sr set is a bit worse now since we now have a lot of new defoggers and rockers like lugia, yveltal and dusk mane. Common uber mons adapted to have some way of chipping or dealing massive damage to pdon since the instance it was released, which means it was overcentralizing but fully manageable. Now people have adapted their sr pdons more offensive e.g chinese pdon that runs offensive evs and overheat which is made to threaten defoggers but it's by no means uncheckable and is even more vulnerable to toxic and chip. I think a Pdon suspect is a huge wild card and a risky take, since if it gets banned a floodgate will open on ubers and would almost certainly result in a geomancy, pogre and eventually goth ban. This would lead in a completely revamped ubers metagame, with completely new threats and we dont have literally any idea how that would look like and I dont think it'd be that good for this tier anyway since we're not going with an OU mindset on banning stuff but rather keeping the amount of bans minimal. Pdon is admittably still stupidly overcentralizing and in 99% of the serious teams, but I don't see how it's broken at all and it's important to keep it in ubers regardless since it still prevents many offensive threats from going ham and therefore upholds the metagame.


I'm not sure about this one tbh. It sucks to me how the meta could have so much potential if only geomancy didn't limit you to use like 3 checks to it. Its not broken by any means and never was and I'm actually seeing scarf xern and defog xern more than geoxern atm. The reason why I'm insecure about the geomancy ban? I've been told that playability is the ultimate goal of ubers, not diversity, and I partly agree and disagree with that. Honestly I feel like playability would be obtainable through a bit more diversity, however how the new diversity would look like? Unlike pdon, I dont think geoxern restricts any other threats from being broken at all, but defensive teams would completely revamp and it's impossible for a noob like me to predict if that would have any necessary benefit for the ubers metagame.


This one's by far the most likely candidate out of the 3 that I can see being suspected. PP stall goth is the reason of this, it has shadow tag from start, a far wider range of trapping than mgar has (hence it can even 50/50 a ttar) and pp stalling a mon (arguably making it good as dead) is way better than directly removing it. After I discussed about this with several people I came to the conclusion that goth was unenjoyable and unhealthy for late sm, and far more broken than stuff that got already banned such as baton pass. This is because balance and stall teams that goth preys on were abundant while HOs that goth was prey itself for were nearly nonexistant, and I can see this happening again after the metagame settles. It'll be a bit worse than in sm since people have adopted to running stuff like defog dtail lugia on balance/stall and yveltal is a lot more common. Goth has also a lot more longevity than mgar, meaning it will get a lot more chances to trap a mon and just because mgar has to remove its prey through attacks means they have always a way to remove it.


Anyway I'm so excited for the future! Glad to see tier leaders are finally open to change since tbh I disliked ubers since oras :D Right now I'll just wait and speculate until the metagame cements in a month or two. My english is ABSOLUTELY horrible, but I hope you all got my point :)
 

Nixon73

Scuttlebug Jamboree
Giving my admittedly humble opinion on the STag suspect, I think that doing so would take away from the tier overall. The main reason that I don’t think STag should be banned is that it is definitely not an uncompetitive element in the metagame – trapping things with goth and gengar indubitably takes skill and must be played deliberately and carefully (getting double-switched on is a risk for both sides when goth is involved, giving something that can handle it easily like Pdon a free turn is painful). Almost any mon can adapt its set or playstyle to avoid being trapped, and it doesn’t actually place all that big a constraint on teambuilding to run something that can take advantage of goth.

Goth adds a lot to the metagame as well. I kind of see it as indirectly bringing back the lost and fun mechanic of spinblocking, and its not like a pokemon that is stronger against balance and bulky playstyles than offensive ones is particularly unbalancing our balance and bulky meta. Goth is definitely a very good mon, but I don’t think it can really be called broken in a meta that reasonably adapts to it, which I would argue has definitely yet to happen, wouldn't restrain teambuilding that much overall, and would hugely change the nature of the question.
All in all, I feel like people want to ban goth is because its “boring” to play against. While that is by no means illegitimate, I would like to suggest that it's boring to get caught by, and not to play against. i.e. actually getting PP stalled sucks, but playing with that danger around feels more fun. This is a crucial distinction insofar as fun is being considered as a criterion.

I do see why people might want to restructure the tier a bit and balance out a few threats, especially as it does genuinely feel like there are a few too many threats lately to properly prepare for in any team and matchups are getting more important. I think the best kinds of things to ban would be things that force teams to run specific and otherwise less-appealing counters for specific sets. While people might oppose the idea of banning such a well-established element in the meta, I think Geomancy stands out the most in this criterion. It would also help out stall, which would have one less thing to prep for, and HO, which is forced to carry a way to revenge it and has several other options for sweepers, so it might balance out the meta more.

Before we do anything, though, maybe lets let the USM meta develop a bit (a lot) more.
 

shrang

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I used to have a lot of time to participate in these kinds of discussions (see previous S-tag suspect test), but that has now changed so I'm going to make things short. Basic thoughts:

S-tag
- I'm pretty sure this is the main reason people are hyped over this. We need to make sure again though, that this is what the community wants. Last time we had an S-tag suspect (twice!) was because a vocal minority (albeit mostly high level players) made a big fuss and tried to bully the rest of the community into getting rid of something that ultimately was not what the community wanted. This included both of the TLs, which really should be a big no-no since TLs are supposed to be impartial. In short though, if there were more votes against banning this even after 1) TLs were biased in the test itself and its discussions and had lower threshold of deleting posts that were against their view as compared to the opposite, 2) throwing out many anti-ban paragraphs/votes while keeping shit like MM2's one-liner pro-ban vote, then that says something about how a minority could lead to (potentially) wrong decisions.
- That being said, I have faith that our TLs now won't make that mistake so I can be hopeful this will be conducted properly, but please do not pressure TLs into making rash decisions. We all know where that led to last time. Please don't say stupid shit like "Hey Fireburn why the fuck isn't S-tag banned yet, you're not doing your job" because that shit is not helpful.
- As for reasons for/against S-tag ban itself, I'll put in more detail if and when we actually get a test.
Mega Ray
- While I think the decision to ban Mega Ray in ORAS led to a good result, I'm rather against the way it was handled. We literally quickbanned it 9 days after ORAS was released, which is in no way an appropriate amount of time to let a metagame settle. As Lance has noted, Mega Ray in AG is not particularly bad and it may be worth having another look down the line.
Species Clause
- As you all may or may not remember, we actually tested clauses in BW/BW2! Unfortunately, Species Clause was never tested (probably because we ran out of time). If you really ask yourselves though, in the spirit of what has been outlined in the OP and Ubers as a tier/metagame in general, what rule does Species Clause really break? Does the ability to run 6 Arceuses really make the game unplayable or uncompetitive? I really don't think so. That being said, going from game to game with multiple Arceuses or other Pokemon can be dry and boring, and I for one don't like seeing noobs using 6 Ekillers more than once a day. If totally removing Species Clause is too big a step for most players to digest, why not do it in small steps? I personally think that it would make the metagame very interesting if we relaxed the clause to letting you use 2 of the same Pokemon, or even 3. If that's even too much, how about 2 of the same Pokemon but different formes? Surely running Steelceus + Groundceus or Deo-A + Deo-S wouldn't look THAT out of place right? If small changes like this can make something like Mega Ray more playable, I'd be all for it.

Also just a side note, even though Hack has repeatedly noted in his posts that we don't care about overcentralisation (provided it doesn't compromise playability and competitiveness), I still see lots of people still bring it up. That's kind of annoying. Ubers is a tier now, yes, but please don't bring OU criteria into Ubers when we have set goals that as Ubers we want to accomplish.
 
I also want to give my thoughts on Mega Rayquaza.

I remember being there at the beginning of ORAS and everybody (honestly, myself included) was going ballistic about the mon and how it invalidated just about every other Mega Pokémon in Ubers, and for the most part, they were right...at the time. Why use Mega Salamence when Mega Rayquaza was a better, stronger Dragon Dancer? Why use Mega Lucario when Mega Rayquaza had access to Swords Dance, a much more spammable STAB (Luke didn’t get Meteor Mash last gen) and a much better priority move in Extreme Speed? (Luke has it too but it needs Bullet Punch in its moveset.) This basically applied to every other Mega Pokemon in ORAS. It seemed like you were shooting yourself in the foot for NOT using Mega Ray, similar to the mentality of needing Primal Groudon on your team to, quote unquote, keep yourself advantaged in some way.

Considering the fact that it can hold whatever item it wants on top of gaining buffed stats and an ability that removes your flying weaknesses as long as Delta Stream remained active, people were right to fear it back then. The only “drawback” to Mega Rayquaza was it required Dragon Ascent to Mega Evolve, but that was hardly a negative as that’s one of its defining attacks, even on special/mixed sets. While I don’t really remember which of these following sets were its “best” sets at the very beginning of ORAS, it could run something like Choice Specs to get past its physical checks, Choice Scarf to outpace the entire unboosted meta and even slower scarfers, Focus Sash/Life Orb + SD/DD, etc. It was extremely unpredictable, no doubt.

However, I have to agree with Shrang on his stance of Mega Ray. It was banned way too soon, and it should have been given more time. At the same time, I disagree with his stance about how Mega Ray’s viability in AG should correlate to it being tested in Ubers. Just because something is either manageable or bad in the tier above it, doesn’t mean it should be unbanned if it’s still considered a broken mon. This is why we didn’t unban Mega Kangaskhan or Blaziken in OU at the beginning of SM. Besides, as it was stated before, Mega Ray is only manageable in AG due to Species Clause not being in affect, and having two Arceus forms on deck helps your matchup vs it, which is something you can’t do in the current Ubers metagame.

That being said, I’m actually down for a Mega Rayquaza suspect test sometime down the line, but not any time soon. USM just started last week, and the meta hasn’t come close to being settled yet. While we won’t know for sure until we actually undergo the suspect test, despite Mega Rayquaza’s overwhelming amount of positives, I believe other Mega Pokemon could still have niches even with Mega Ray’s supposed inclusion to the tier. The following is hardcore theorymoning, but here’s what I believe.

Mega Salamence is a much better switch in to Primal Groudon and Ho-Oh thanks to intimidate pre-mega than Rayquaza is pre-mega, is faster and bulkier than Mega Rayquaza despite having more weaknesses, and is able to find more set up opportunities and run support sets like Defog viably thanks to said intimidate support and having reliable recovery in Roost. Mega Lucario is able to revenge Xerneas a lot easier thanks to Adaptability Bullet Punch as well as being able to threaten out said Xerneas and the now-popular Arceus-Fairy thanks to it being able to run Meteor Mash over the inconsistent Iron Tail. Mega Gengar is able to trap and remove support Pokemon that would trouble other members of its team. Mega Diancie and Mega Sableye block hazard leads as well as status spam. Mega Slowbro can act as a fantastic defensive tank vs the many physical threats in the tier thanks to Iron Defense, reliably recovery, Toxic, Ice Beam, and an immunity to critical hits.

Other than the new addditions like Meteor Mash Lucario, we didn’t know about all of this in the beginning of ORAS because we didn’t give Mega Rayquaza a chance, and was banned in 9 days.

Outside of other Megas, there are other current metagame trends that could work against Mega Rayquaza. Arceus-Fairy is currently one of, if not the most popular support Arceus form. Choice Scarf is Xerneas’s most used and effective set right now. Marshadow, especially it’s Scarf set, threatens almost all of the set up sweepers in the tier by stealing their boosts with Spectral Thief. Zygarde-C walls almost any physical mon in the tier and Glares + Dragon Tails them out.

That being said, while Mega Rayquaza, in theory, has some defensive answers, they can be muscled past thanks to high power STABs and items like Life Orb and choice items. Said items also give it a power level that far exceeds its other mega counterparts.

So perhaps to allow Mega Rayquaza back in to Ubers even though the combination of Mega + Items makes it too much, could we potentially see another complex ban such as banning the combination of Mega Rayquaza + items? We already set a precedent with banning Hypnosis + Mega Gengar to keep it in the tier. I don’t see how this new scenario would be any different. If your Rayquaza holds an item, there would be no Mega Evolution check box available in the battle, but it would be there if your Rayquaza lacks an item. I feel itemless Mega Rayquaza would be nowhere near as threatening to the tier at that point, and its strength would be in line to that of the others megas like its Dragon/Flying counterpart Mega Salamence.

After all I said, regarding my theorymoning, itemless vs held item Mega Rayquaza, etc, we would never really know about any of this unless there’s an actual suspect test, but once again, now is simply not the time to do it. We need to wait until the meta settles months from now.
 
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Colonel M

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Really solid post. I think this is a great direction for Ubers going forward, and really hope for the best in the future between the players and the tier leaders on being able to make a solid metagame.

I'd like to inquire further about re-testing clauses (i.e. Species Clause, etc). If these are to be re-tested and then allowed, how would these carry over into previous generations? Would they also have Species Clause unlocked, barred as the test is held specifically for Generation 7, or tested in a different environment (unlikely, but figured I should ask this as well)? The reason I ask is Species Clause is one of the clauses that creates a major tiering impact upon the metagame. This is especially true for Ubers because multiple (2-3) Arceus can be run alongside a team in Gens 6 and 5 (to a lesser extent DPP Tournaments where Arceus is allowed).

I have some initial thoughts, but many have reflected what I would probably say and I feel that I would just clutter the topic further. The Species Clause unban is the one that makes me curious at this time because it creates a significantly different metagame in some of the very old (Gen 1 and 2) and newer Uber tiers.

Feel free to treat this question as a general old gens question as I would be curious on how certain suspects / bans would influence decisions (Geomancy and Primals in ORAS, Shadow Tag).
 
Dead Ubers tiers are barely played, so I think that it would be better to leave them alone. Legacy dpp Ubers is a good precedent. It's a fictional metagame that isn't based on cart yet it remains unchanged.
 
The Uber tier seems to to split into two ideological factions of players. One faction believes that the tier is an open tier for use. Of basically any Pokemon in the main games. Yet does not believe the excessive use of Legendary Pokemon. Is in the spirit of fair competition. This is solved somewhat by lesser tiers. Though there is still that thinking. That the tier should have less Legendary Pokemon. I'm using the early definition of Legendary Pokemon. Which originally included all Pokémon which are now called Mythic.The second thought faction which I belong to. Believes the tier is a testing ground. For all types of strategies. My most refined experience creating a viable team is in the Super Train in the fifth generation D's cartridge games. So I will speak to balance from that perspective. Eventually your team will reach a point. Where it's elemental disadvantages cease to be all that relevant in whether or not you win a match. Though critical hits still remain a danger. Though not in all cases. However, there are always non-stabbed coverage moves. Like Sigil using Focus Blast. Which can keep the game from being completely predictable and outright exploitable.
 
Well, it's interesting to see suspect tests come back, after that rather infamous S-Tag suspect, and all the stuff that came with it. I'll display my thoughts on PDon/Xern/Ray/etc. when/if those suspects happen. It would be nice for this tier to be in SPL again, if we can pull it off :D

Oh, and as for the discussion between Aberforth and Lance, I'm gonna suggest trial by combat(read: Quake 3 Arena) ;]
 
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