Is it really just one guy spamming Hitmontop on the ladder?Can we actually ban the Hitmontop guy from laddering? Seriously, NU now RU, the way thing is going its prob rising to OU by usage despite being ZU material
Is it really just one guy spamming Hitmontop on the ladder?Can we actually ban the Hitmontop guy from laddering? Seriously, NU now RU, the way thing is going its prob rising to OU by usage despite being ZU material
a couple people with too much free time, yesIs it really just one guy spamming Hitmontop on the ladder?
Quagsire could move from PU to NU
This really ceases to be funny when you realize how many actually good Pokemon see less usage than it and ones that are actually staples of the tier don't have as much. Ladder is a joke| 20 | Rillaboom | 9.045% |
| 21 | Slowbro | 8.511% |
| 22 | Zeraora | 7.992% |
| 23 | Dragonite | 7.477% |
The ZU-related shifts have been discussed a plenty, but these seem to be interesting shifts too. Its kind of ironic that Inteleon drops below the cutoff in a month where Starmie's above the RU cutoff. If Starmie does keep up this usage, and thus leaves NU, will Inteleon actually have a chance at being more viable in that tier?Togekiss could move from RU to UU
Diancie could move from NU to RU
Starmie could move from NU to RU
Gastrodon could move from RU to NU
Marowak-Alola could move from RU to NU
Espeon could move from PUBL to NU
Quagsire could move from PU to NU
Weezing could move from PU to NU
Guzzlord could move from NU to PU
Inteleon could move from NU to PU
I generally agree with the sentiment but this one isn't really fair since Eleki is actually solid in OU these days. It isn't stuck there.This is present with stuff like Regieleki being stuck in OU, but it gets even more ergregious when the ratio of dedicated to casual players grow smaller by tier.
At this point ZU should become an official tiering status.Glastrier in ZU...
I didn't think it was good when they revealed it, but I didn't see it finishing the gen in Untiered either...
he's coming home (maybe)Excadrill could move from UU to OU
if they can get results with hitmontop let it riseCan we actually ban the Hitmontop guy from laddering? Seriously, NU now RU, the way thing is going its prob rising to OU by usage despite being ZU material
hitmontop was a valuable spinner in pu, and if it wouldve dropped to zu, it could have been a vital pokemon in the tier. the situation only serves to disproportionately harm lower tiersI think hitmontop rising is funny af and it really doesn’t effect any tiers at all since hitmontop is bad in all of them. Let the man ladder
lowering the threshold only extrapolates the issue. the reason why the threshold rose was because there were too many unviable pokemon (donphan, ambipom, etc) that were stuck in higher tiers, incapable of making an impact on a lower tier that would've appreciated their presence.Hitmontop - A Solution
First of all I just wanna say that this situation is very funny and i'm all for Hitmontop rising to whichever tier it wants to be in, even if councils/general playerbases feel it's univable there. I actually think a great part of ladder-usage based usage stats is that it's unaffected by council bias, and encourages innovation and meta variance even if unsuccessful. Himontop is an example of this system working at its best, actually, and overall it just feels like the most democratic approach.
Anyways, this debate aside I wanna bring up an idea to discuss how a different approach going forward may end up with better tiers.
Because, right now, I see a few problems which I think could be easily solved in the leadup to a new generation of tiering.
>Low tiers' playerbases and communities are very small relative to tiers like OU, UU and National Dex (which allows individuals to have much more of an impact on a tier than intended, and leads to dead ladders)
>There are 145 fully evolved ZU (unranked) pokemon
>Some pokemon have niches in higher tiers that don't see enough usage to make the cutoff despite being viable likely due to player's teambuilding preferences, and vice versa.
Changing the rise/drop cutoff.
Currently it's at 4.52% for Gen 8 (despite being historically lower) and I feel tiering as a whole could benefit from being lowered again. As someone who plays a lot of OU, it feels off to me that A- and B+ ranked mons like Rotom-Wash, Nihilego, Slowking do not qualify for OU despite not only being niche but having significant impacts on the tier. I'm sure there are many other similar cases in lower tiers - Hitmontop getting higher usage than the majority of the VRs, for example...
And so, a lowered threshold would allow for these overused pokemon to reach the tier they deserve to be in, expanding the tier and every other tier below it, too. This could mean we could reduce the quantitity of lower tiers - I wouldn't go to the extreme and say just to have OU and UU but realistically just having 3 tiers outside of Ubers would end up with more active ladders and also more consistent representation of all of a tier's viable pokemon. only 37 pokemon being OU out of a possible ~700 usable pokemon (5.3% of the dex) is clearly not great and, in my opinion, adding more lower tiers to categorise everything isn't the best approach due to 'dead ladders'. Compare this to Gen 4 OU where 49 out of 493, almost exactly 10% of the dex, are classed as OU. Clearly this generations' approach of increasing the cutoff doesn't scale too well with dex expansion over time. There's no objective reason why "1 in 15 games" is the number chosen, and I don't have an exact value - that's up to people more knowledgeable than I am to discuss and decide - but I feel more discussion needs to be had about the positives of having a lower threshold.
Cutting the number of tiers down would solve 1 without 2 or 3.
Adding more, lower tiers would solve 2 without 1 or 3.
Having council votes determine exceptions due to viability could solve 3 without 1 and 2.
I believe we should lower the rise/drop threshold for Gen 9 in order to create bigger tiers that more closesly represent the entire range of a tier's viability and to concentrate the playerbases of lower tier players into fewer ladders. I recognise doing this retroactively in Gen 8 would cause a lot of problems in terms of redefining low tier metagames completely but with Gen 9 being not too far away I feel now is a good time to have this disussion before we go another gen with a threshold as high as 4.52.
How is this possible? I don't recall Darkrai ever being legal in BDSP NU.BDSP NU Stats said:| 38 | Darkrai | 4.598% |
April's foolsHow is this possible? I don't recall Darkrai ever being legal in BDSP NU.
I thought that was only OU though?April's fools
The tiering threshold was raised specifically because of this problem. While things still aren't perfect right now, they are much better than they were back in Gen 7. I can count on my hand the number of Pokemon who aren't at least C Rank material in their tier for SS across all major tiers. Meanwhile in USUM it felt like all of the lower tiers individually had like half a dozen D rank mons.Hitmontop - A Solution
First of all I just wanna say that this situation is very funny and i'm all for Hitmontop rising to whichever tier it wants to be in, even if councils/general playerbases feel it's univable there. I actually think a great part of ladder-usage based usage stats is that it's unaffected by council bias, and encourages innovation and meta variance even if unsuccessful. Himontop is an example of this system working at its best, actually, and overall it just feels like the most democratic approach.
Anyways, this debate aside I wanna bring up an idea to discuss how a different approach going forward may end up with better tiers.
Because, right now, I see a few problems which I think could be easily solved in the leadup to a new generation of tiering.
>Low tiers' playerbases and communities are very small relative to tiers like OU, UU and National Dex (which allows individuals to have much more of an impact on a tier than intended, and leads to dead ladders)
>There are 145 fully evolved ZU (unranked) pokemon
>Some pokemon have niches in higher tiers that don't see enough usage to make the cutoff despite being viable likely due to player's teambuilding preferences, and vice versa.
Changing the rise/drop cutoff.
Currently it's at 4.52% for Gen 8 (despite being historically lower) and I feel tiering as a whole could benefit from being lowered again. As someone who plays a lot of OU, it feels off to me that A- and B+ ranked mons like Rotom-Wash, Nihilego, Slowking do not qualify for OU despite not only being niche but having significant impacts on the tier. I'm sure there are many other similar cases in lower tiers - Hitmontop getting higher usage than the majority of the VRs, for example...
And so, a lowered threshold would allow for these overused pokemon to reach the tier they deserve to be in, expanding the tier and every other tier below it, too. This could mean we could reduce the quantitity of lower tiers - I wouldn't go to the extreme and say just to have OU and UU but realistically just having 3 tiers outside of Ubers would end up with more active ladders and also more consistent representation of all of a tier's viable pokemon. only 37 pokemon being OU out of a possible ~700 usable pokemon (5.3% of the dex) is clearly not great and, in my opinion, adding more lower tiers to categorise everything isn't the best approach due to 'dead ladders'. Compare this to Gen 4 OU where 49 out of 493, almost exactly 10% of the dex, are classed as OU. Clearly this generations' approach of increasing the cutoff doesn't scale too well with dex expansion over time. There's no objective reason why "1 in 15 games" is the number chosen, and I don't have an exact value - that's up to people more knowledgeable than I am to discuss and decide - but I feel more discussion needs to be had about the positives of having a lower threshold.
Cutting the number of tiers down would solve 1 without 2 or 3.
Adding more, lower tiers would solve 2 without 1 or 3.
Having council votes determine exceptions due to viability could solve 3 without 1 and 2.
I believe we should lower the rise/drop threshold for Gen 9 in order to create bigger tiers that more closesly represent the entire range of a tier's viability and to concentrate the playerbases of lower tier players into fewer ladders. I recognise doing this retroactively in Gen 8 would cause a lot of problems in terms of redefining low tier metagames completely but with Gen 9 being not too far away I feel now is a good time to have this disussion before we go another gen with a threshold as high as 4.52.
No the cutoff was changed because Gen 8 was, pre-DLC, going to be a much smaller pool of pokemon and therefore the cutoff was changed to ensure lower tiers had enough. Now that DLC has made this generation on-par with recent generations we have an absolutely massive unranked listlowering the threshold only extrapolates the issue. the reason why the threshold rose was because there were too many unviable pokemon (donphan, ambipom, etc) that were stuck in higher tiers, incapable of making an impact on a lower tier that would've appreciated their presence.
this doesn't address the main issue ~ the metagames of lower tiers will continue to feel the impact of usage stats much more significantly than higher tiers.
nihilego and rotom-wash being uu does not impact their status as being really good in ou. you can still use it, and use it well. on the contrary, having hitmontop in nu/ru means it's stuck in a meta where it frankly doesn't fit in at all. furthermore, lower tiers miss out on a mon that could provide a positive impact
The decision to raise the cutoff was made before Dexit was announced.No the cutoff was changed because Gen 8 was, pre-DLC, going to be a much smaller pool of pokemon and therefore the cutoff was changed to ensure lower tiers had enough. Now that DLC has made this generation on-par with recent generations we have an absolutely massive unranked list