Victini in BW UU

Victini became a dominant force in the BW UU metagame the moment it got V-Create and many considered it "broken". At the end of BW Victini was suspected and voters decided to keep it in the tier, which realistically doesn't help what I'm trying to do with this thread, but that's relevant info.

However, some things changed after that suspect. Physical Scarf and Choice Band Victini stopped being virtually the only sets used; sets like Special Scarf, fully Special Victini and OTR became much more common in tournaments, including SPL 5 and unofficial UU tournaments. Chandelure was banned after SPL 5, which means Victini lost one of its most relevant offensive checks and shitty niche Pokemon, like Houndoom, are significantly less useful / viable. Victini didn't really get any major improvement in UU ORAS or UU SM, and yet it's banned in both and widely agreed to be broken; needless to say, it's rather "odd" that Victini is banned from tiers with much higher power creep than BW UU. Lastly, Victini being allowed generates controversy in every single UU tournament that includes BW UU.

The last point is more important than what it sounds. BW UU right now is only played in tournaments like UUPL and UU Classics (important tournaments in the UU community), and minor side tournaments; in all of them is very common to see players / managers agreeing to play without Victini. BW UU might be a "dead tier", but people still play it and some of them want us to deal with Victini.

I want to use this thread to discuss the possibility of banning Victini from BW UU, likely via blind vote with "x" requirements to qualify as a voter. This OP is meant to list reasons to consider voting on Victini again and nothing else.
 
I think giving the axe to Victini is a good idea. like Hikari said, Victini being banned in gens that follow BW is kind of weird especially considering it faces more problems in ORAS / SM than it did at that time (better Pursuit trappers, better V-create switchins, basically power creep as a whole). I dont think I need to explain in detail why its so good, because anyone who has played more than 10 games of BW UU, or even ORAS / SM UU when it was allowed, already knows its just a really fucking good nuke lol. V-Create switchins aren't necessarily limited in the tier, but it has its ways of beating them 1v1 (coverage moves on mixed sets for things like bulky Waters, Snorlax, and Druddigon come to mind), and all of them are worn down by Spikes (not exactly a commodity aside from Qwilfish and Roserade, but the former is one of the best and one of the most used defensive Pokemon in the tier anyway) aside from Slowbro and Rest Snorlax which is notable since hazard control in the tier is pretty scarce barring Stoise and Hitmontop, the latter of which isnt even that good outside of stall teams since its complete setup bait for things like Mew and Togekiss.

The hazard cleaning bit goes both ways though i guess, since Victini is a bit more limited in being able to switch in safely since it has the SR weakness and, again, there are about 2 viable mons that get rid of them...that's the main argument i can see against banning it.

There is probably someone out there who believes that touching a tier that isn't really played outside of the tours br listed (kokoloko didnt wanna suspect anything else after the Snow Warning and Chandy ban in 2014 i think), but not changing a tier because its "dead" seems like a shitty argument to me. i think its best to hold a vote on it before UUPL comes around in the next month, especially considering that people have been asking for one since basically after the last round of suspects lol (probably before, I wasn't really around back then so I wouldn't really know).

This post is a little different than most PR posts from what I've seen but its probably best to kinda treat this like an np thread, so whatever lol
 

Kink

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Considering we're certainly allowed to revisit older metas, I think it makes sense to relook at BW and the other former UU tiers in order to ensure they stay competitive for tours such as UUPL and Classic.

Down the road, BW UU will definitely be used, regardless by how many. So we definitely have some sort of obligation to make sure it's playable. This said, I agree that Victini is a big problem in BW UU, and I agree with bouff that banning Victini is a good call. It can take advantage of so many different situations, and almost always win a one-on-one scenario unless you're running something left field like Scarf Blastoise.

As far as the backlash goes, I really couldn't care at all about it. Like I said, we need to ensure that this tier remains competitive for those that will continue to use it.
 

Bughouse

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relevant thread: http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/uu-stage-13-suspect-voting.3489822/

I wanted to get reqs but tyrant kokoloko didn't let me via very difficult reqs that many players missed out on (see low voter pool)... I remember that coolstorybrobat just narrowly missed out too. I would have voted no ban anyway.

That said, look at the actual votes. Victini plainly was not broken. Only one person voted to ban. This was not a borderline decision.

I can get behind revisiting old tiers in iffy cases (scoli/jynx) or on things where smogon philosophy has changed over time (ie sand veil/baton pass type things). But not here.
 

destinyunknown

Banned deucer.
Everyone knows that I have always been quite vocal against the Chandelure ban, due to how the vote was set up. The voters were handpicked from a small IRC group (pretty much), as it took place in the middle of the summer and with short notice (when a lot of people dont pay much attention to smogon), which meant that many of the 'iconic' BW UU players such as reachzero, kd24, PK Gaming, Upstart and me didnt even get the chance to vote. The group of people that brought up the suspect vote was small and I feel like that skewed opinions in an incestuous way. No offense meant to the people involved, but I think Chandelure deserves a proper retest.

Chandelure's ban was also negative to the tier for the reasons outlined in the OP (making Victini much more strong), so I won't go into that. However, before we decide to suspect/ban Victini, I think we should also consider unbanning Chandelure instead. Interesting points to consider before taking a decision:

  • Victini didn't really get any major improvement in UU ORAS or UU SM, and yet it's banned in both: There have been cases in competitive pokemon history in which a pokemon that hasn't received any direct improvement has become much stronger due to how the environment has changed around it. As examples, we can look at Slowbro (UU in BW, OU in ORAS), Blissey (niche pick in GSC, but a staple in ADV), or if we want more recent examples, Durant (RU in BW, banned from RU in XY/ORAS) or Flygon (RU in ORAS, now a decent UU pokemon in SM). Reasons for a pokemon increasing their value in a metagame (and even potentially becoming broken) can be varied, so I do not think it's fair to compare BW Victini to ORAS Victini. By the way, some reasons why Victini got better are Defog and Fairy-types: which Fire resists and which make Steel pokemon more common and Dragon pokemon less common (guess who benefits from this)

  • Chandelure and Victini shaped the BW UU metagame we know today: And we can't predict how much the metagame will change if both are removed. Chandelure's ban didn't change the metagame substantially because Victini is the better pokemon, so it can replace Chandelure in pretty much any team. However, removing both would change the way the teams are built and the metagame is shaped a lot. The BW UU that we all know and love (and the reason why we continue to play it) has been almost the same since late 2012 (SPL4), with only Chansey (quickban) and Froslass getting banned in 2013. Removing 2 of the pokemon that shaped the metagame can have disastrous consequences because, simply put, the metagame will not be similar at all to the one we have played for the last 4 years. In short: will BW UU still be BW UU without Chandelure and Victini?

  • Victini was almost unanimously considered balanced the last time it was voted (which was also when Chandelure was around), as we can see in Bughouse's post. Also must be noted that Chandelure didn't even get suspected along with Victini, and that the last time Chandelure was suspected was around February 2013 (and was not banned). Additionally, one of the arguments brought up when banning Chandelure was that it ''makes spikestacking too strong''. This hasn't changed at all after Chandelure's ban (Spikestacking teams are roughly as common), and the reason is that hazard removers are just pretty bad.
 
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Kink

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relevant thread: http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/uu-stage-13-suspect-voting.3489822/

I wanted to get reqs but tyrant kokoloko didn't let me via very difficult reqs that many players missed out on (see low voter pool)... I remember that coolstorybrobat just narrowly missed out too. I would have voted no ban anyway.

That said, look at the actual votes. Victini plainly was not broken. Only one person voted to ban. This was not a borderline decision.

I can get behind revisiting old tiers in iffy cases (scoli/jynx) or on things where smogon philosophy has changed over time (ie sand veil/baton pass type things). But not here.
I fail to understand why or how a thread from 2013 has any bearing to today's perception of the meta, and those that are involved in playing it. I was just coming into the UU scene, so myself and many others that are now qualified to judge Victini's standing (Hikari included, he wasn't around in 2013) definitely want the opportunity to ensure that the tier remains healthy.

As of right now, there is no real governance over BW UU simply because it's only really used in UU Circuit Tours/UUPL, but point being that it is being used. And those that use it are finding that Tini is fairly unhealthy for the current metagame. As of right now, you have 3 of the current council members saying there's an issue (and I can only imagine more will make their voices heard before long). And considering we all play BW UU, have over two generations each of tiering policy under our belt (Hikari even longer, considering he was a PO admin), I think it's safe to say that this certainly deserves the platform to be addressed.

What does an 'iffy case' even mean? We have an obligation, as a community, to review any element that suggests a broken, unhealthy, or uncompetitive component. These elements need to be looked at and addressed so that we can provide the highest calibre games for our community members. I think that definitely warrants a conversation.
 

Finchinator

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Victini is something that has, in my opinion, stood out as too much offensively for the BW UU tier for a while. I'll be the first to admit that a lot of players of the tier might have overlooked that prospect for a while back during generation five itself -- hell, I was among that group for a while -- but I think that after seeing the metagame settle and playing it throughout the past few years consistently in UUPL and other UU tournaments after taking a brief break from it once generation six took off, it's safe to say that Victini is nearly impossible to counter and, therefore, broken.

There are various sets people use that can be added to the discussion, as Hikari alluded to in the OP, but I think the most noteworthy ones are the Choice Banded and four attacks, non-choiced (either fully special or mixed, special based) variants. The Choice Banded set probably has the greater amount of counterplay in the tier as things like Rhyperior can keep it in check relatively comfortably while Swampert, Slowbro, Qwilfish, Arcanine, and a few others provide various degrees of situational safety due to the likelihood of V-Create or U-turn being frequented by the Victini user and the general nature of Choice locked Pokemon (which isn't a great argument against Victin in itself due to prediction being a complete two-way street, but it still makes it manageable to a degree and you can afford to take one hit with a few things). With this said, there is still a fairly limited amount of answers to Choice Banded Victini and even with just 100 base Attack, V Create is insanely strong and proves to be a major hindrance to stall and slower balanced teams that are far from a rarity in the tier. Below I will show some calculations of Choice Banded Victini against some common threats it will encounter in the tier.

252 Atk Choice Band Victini V-create vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Gligar: 171-202 (51.1 - 60.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Choice Band Victini V-create vs. 0 HP / 52 Def Thick Fat Snorlax: 243-286 (52.7 - 62%) -- guaranteed 2HKO -- not a fan of the spread the calc uses, but too lazy to dig up my personal spread, which it still 2HKOs quite often
252 Atk Choice Band Victini V-create vs. 248 HP / 244+ Def Slowbro: 124-147 (31.5 - 37.4%) -- 0% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Victini Bolt Strike vs. 248 HP / 244+ Def Slowbro: 240-284 (61 - 72.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
-1 252 Atk Choice Band Victini V-create vs. 252 HP / 204+ Def Qwilfish: 111-131 (33.2 - 39.2%) -- 14.9% chance to 3HKO after Black Sludge recovery
-1 252 Atk Choice Band Victini Bolt Strike vs. 252 HP / 204+ Def Qwilfish: 214-254 (64 - 76%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Black Sludge recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Victini V-create vs. 240 HP / 252+ Def Swampert: 141-167 (35.1 - 41.6%) -- 79.6% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Victini V-create vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Rhyperior: 146-172 (33.7 - 39.7%) -- 24.5% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Victini V-create vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Druddigon: 200-236 (56 - 66.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO


The mixed set is probably the one that truly pushes it over the edge if the former fails to do so. Grass Knot is an insanely helpful addition due to it letting you pick off Rhyperior and Swampert off with ease while also 2HKOing Slowbro and Blastoise. Additionally, Psychic is often used to assure you can still handle the aforementioned Gligar, Qwilfish, and others. Rounding out the set with a Fire move (some people still opt to run V Create on the special oriented sets while others go with Blue Flare -- both have merits depending on the team and the ultimate objective of the set) and, usually, Focus Blast (for Snorlax, Umbreon, etc.) generally gives you enough coverage to hit everything on stall and balanced, which is simply terrifying due to being able to outrun everything besides random Scarfers they throw on and likely being able to 2HKO entire teams, especially if any form of entry hazard is in play, which isn't too hard to do given how this metagame plays. To round out discussion of what it uses, Thunder has been used sporadically and I guess throwing on Glaciate for Flygon/Gligar paranoia and U-turn if you opt to bluff choice and not run Life Orb are also options, but generally not preferred unless specifically needed given the context of your team. I'd say that, right now, this is the best 'breaker' in the tier and the amount of counteplay to it is much lower than that of various banned Pokemon throughout BW UU's past and, also, throughout XY/ORAS UU. I'm not going to go too in-depth or thorough with the specific analysis as this seems to be fairly straightforward and the calcs can detail various important things, but I think that this surely puts Victini over the threshold for 'broken' in the BW UU metagame and it should be banned.

252 SpA Life Orb Victini Grass Knot (80 BP) vs. 248 HP / 0 SpD Slowbro: 229-270 (58.2 - 68.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Life Orb Victini Grass Knot (80 BP) vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Blastoise: 182-216 (50.2 - 59.6%) -- 81.6% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Life Orb Victini Grass Knot (120 BP) vs. 248 HP / 244 SpD Solid Rock Rhyperior: 484-573 (111.7 - 132.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 SpA Life Orb Victini Grass Knot (80 BP) vs. 240 HP / 0 SpD Swampert: 416-494 (103.7 - 123.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 SpA Life Orb Victini Psychic vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Eviolite Gligar: 152-179 (45.5 - 53.5%) -- 36.3% chance to 2HKO
252 SpA Life Orb Victini Blue Flare vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Eviolite Gligar: 220-259 (65.8 - 77.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
4 Atk Life Orb Victini V-create vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Gligar: 118-140 (35.3 - 41.9%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 SpA Life Orb Victini Focus Blast vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Umbreon: 172-203 (43.6 - 51.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
4 Atk Life Orb Victini V-create vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Umbreon: 231-274 (58.6 - 69.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Life Orb Victini Focus Blast vs. 0 HP / 200 SpD Snorlax: 221-260 (47.9 - 56.3%) -- 86.7% chance to 2HKO
252 SpA Life Orb Victini Grass Knot (100 BP) vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Suicune: 211-250 (52.2 - 61.8%) -- 97.7% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Life Orb Victini Psychic vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Kingdra: 165-196 (56.7 - 67.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO


pls ban n_n
 

reachzero

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I just want to mention here that I'm of the opinion that in BW UU, Victini is and has been broken for a long time. Stuff like Charcoal MixTini is stupidly hard to switch anything into. Yes, it's Stealth Rock weak and no, it's not usually practical to run one of the (terrible) Rapid Spinners, but even so you just blow things up every time you're in. At the time people left it in the metagame, they were saying things like, "oh, I never have problems with ScarfTini" or "CBTini is manageable", and I remember being so frustrated that such a powerful Pokemon was being evaluated on the basis of its worst sets.
 
I know it's pointless to talk about it now and I frankly don't care if you guys ban Tini (I must've played like three games since we banned Chandy and Aboma, so I can't say if it's OK now or not), but I think at least someone who voted on it should comment something.

reach was always the biggest proponent of a Tini ban and I respect that, and he even got koko to suspect it on the final days of BW so he definitely wasn't alone. I honestly never found it that bad and not because nobody used the mixed set, heck I even used Charcoal Tini to win my only mini-tourney. While it can obviously be deadly by catching people by surprise (I should know, I doubt I had 1 team not weak to Thunder Tini since I spammed Slowbro all the time), I think most people would agree that if any one part of Tini was unhealthy, it was CB V-create—or even, the threat of. As in, I doubt anybody could make a solid case of Tini being borked if it could only use its special set. I've seen someone get demolished by it, but I could never say that it was because it was unmanageable.
I'd also like to say that we did a cast before the vote, with koko, RT., Ace Emerald, and Idr who else (PK maybe??), and nobody there thought it deserved to be banned. It wasn't done on purpose, we would've loved to have reach there but he went AWOL, probably because of IRL stuff which is obviously more important than this lol. I'm not calling him out or anything like that, just a comment. Not sure what happened with it, I think Ace didn't like the sound or something like that.

Finally, a comment on what Dunk said. I agree that we could've handled the voting differently, although koko wanted to get that over with quickly and that's why he used that method (we had to answer why we thought we deserved to be on the council, lol). Specifically regarding Chandy, when we first tested it I argued it wasn't broken because, even though people felt forced to run Snorlax to handle it, I said that since Snorlax was such a good check to the Electrics, we weren't actually losing anything by running it. I also added that you could use niche stuff like Houndoom or Miltank if for some reason you didn't like Lax, but well, let's just say I wasn't particularly good neither at mons nor at making a point back then lol. Later on, and particularly after Snow Warning was allowed after the Snow Cloak ban, I felt that Chandy was much more constricting than I thought before—especially if you didn't run Lax o.O

I guess at the end of the day we can find different things being worse depending on our playstyle, and that's why we have votes with as many people as possible. Something like this will prolly happen in ORAS with Hydra, on which I also voted UU so at this point you can probably know for sure that I must be bananas.

I support whatever you decide to do, specifically because I doubt I'll play BW anytime soon, but I just wanted to say those things. Peace

EDIT: Oh, Hogg's post reminded me that I forgot to mention that I definitely thought Tini improved a lot in the transition to XY, we'd talked about it at the time. Although I'm not sure if I would've voted ban the last time it was tested (it's true that this was before Crawdaunt was unbanned and we got Gyara, Mence, and Zam, but still), it felt like it had way more switchin opportunities so it was harder to keep up to it, even when pink core was a thing o.O
 
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Hogg

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I definitely don't disagree that Victini became better in later tiers - as scary as BW Victini was, it was even scarier in SM UU, with a much more useful defensive typing, significantly better hazard removal, and the diminished viability of several of its better answers (Snorlax and Rhyperior in particular). That doesn't take away from the fact that Victini is stupid good in BW UU, and that the meta has absolutely evolved since 2013. Ultimately I agree with Ernesto that the really unhealthy part of Victini was always the power of its CB V-Create. In fact, I'd argue that the reason sets like Charcoal with Grass Knot and special worked so well is because until Victini's set was revealed, the other team pretty much always had to worry about how they were going to tank a CB V-Create.

As far as the previous vote, I wasn't playing BW UU then, so I can't really speak to it. However, it's silly to say that tiers don't evolve, even after they close. Analogies are always a bit suspect but just look at Clefable in DPP for an example of a really major shift in usage and viability taking place long after the tier itself has "ended."

In terms of this particular question, it's kind of a weird gray area. On the one hand, ff BW UU was still an active tier, I'd 100% be in favor of a Victini suspect, and I'd almost certainly be voting ban. Even despite being hazard weak in what might be the most hazard-heavy tier of all time, it is absurd how consistently Victini breaks down even the bulkiest of teams. I don't think there's really another Pokemon that comes anywhere close to being as threatening (except Mew, but fuck that thing). I also don't buy the idea that this is a "dead" tier. At least on the UU side of things, we have both UUPL and an official circuit tour (one that counts toward SC) that incorporates BW UU, plus several subforum tours every year and countless roomtours. In some ways I feel like our BW UU playerbase is more active than our ORAS UU playerbase.

On the other hand, yeah, this does potentially open the door for other retroactive tier changes. I guess the question is: what threshold of "broken" does something have to hit before it's considered worth banning from a closed tier? And I think that, for me at least, Hikari kind of answered that question for me: if an element in a tier is so broken that many of the tier's top players clause it out as a gentleman's agreement even in competitive games, it's at least worth discussing getting rid of it officially.
 

r0ady

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Bump

I feel as if nothing ever gets done in this forum, which is why i tend to avoid it.

Anyway as for Victini pretty much everything has been said about it and how downright stupid of a pokemon is in bwuu, so im not gonna beat a dead horse. However both BW PU and DPP OU have held suspects this year and ended up changing the tier, one drastic (linoone being banned) and one simply adding fun new toys to the tier (froslass.)

With UUPL coming to a close this year and classics down the road it makes sense that something should be done now, and im sure there are plenty of people willing to participate in a suspect. With as many large BW UU names there are backing a suspect at the very least its about time this was pushed through.
 
Bump

I feel as if nothing ever gets done in this forum, which is why i tend to avoid it.

Anyway as for Victini pretty much everything has been said about it and how downright stupid of a pokemon is in bwuu, so im not gonna beat a dead horse. However both BW PU and DPP OU have held suspects this year and ended up changing the tier, one drastic (linoone being banned) and one simply adding fun new toys to the tier (froslass.)

With UUPL coming to a close this year and classics down the road it makes sense that something should be done now, and im sure there are plenty of people willing to participate in a suspect. With as many large BW UU names there are backing a suspect at the very least its about time this was pushed through.
BW PU is not a real tier; they can ban / unban whatever they want because no one cares. The initial evasion suspect in DPP OU discussion had 60~ replies, and the second thread was created to fix what people saw as a mayor flaw caused by the original ban. Victini was suspected and voted on in the past already. They are not remotely similar.

Nothing is getting done due to clear lack of support. Something I told you and everyone who keeps complaining without actually contributing anything. There is no "plenty of people willing to participate in a suspect", considering this thread has 5 decent posts and one of them is supporting a Chandelure unban, despite the fact I went out of my way to tell everyone to get involved if they wanted anything to get done. This is not enough to justify re-doing a suspect that was almost unanimous and had a 14 pages long suspect / metagame thread.

Man I really hate when the people who ask me to suspect something don't actually participate ...
 

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