Metagame SV Ubers UU Metagame Discussion (Ditto, Lunala, Iron Treads and Terapagos Dropped)

[Leo Justice]

That just isn't what the playerbase who made the tier made it for.

The goal was never to make Ubers Jr., as in a tier tiered like Ubers but lesser, it was to make a tier between OU and Ubers where Pokemon not good enough for Ubers and way too good for OU would have a home.

That is 99% of the reason the idea of the tier got traction in the first place, and why you can play a UUbers ladder right now.

On the matter of tiering action, I think that calling this tier a "a tier between OU and Ubers" is fundamentally wrong and it fails to realize why this tier worked after many attempts at trying it out.

Most of the attempts chose to focus on the OUBL and bad ubers, basically making up the tier based on low viability ubers + all of OU, but this ended up in an environment where you had to ban most OUBL mons due to them being overpowered and centralizing. Having OU but one or two more pokemon are in it is just not a stable tier as these threats were banned for a reason.

However, UUbers was the one who tried something completely different. It took the idea of usage based tiers, the method smogon had been using since generation 4, and then rolled with whatever was left. This created a very unique environment where you had a lot of the glue mons of the OU tier removed, like Great Tusk or Landorus-T, meaning that some of your only glue mons left were needed to be used. Pokemon like Magearna had to be used as it was arguably your only mon that could check the many boxes needed. In any other metagame, you'd have more glue pokemon and thus offensive Magearna would be more prevalent. But because Magearna was almost required to play a support role in any team that wasn't hyper offense, it was never a problem.

This usage stats was a double edge sword, don't get me wrong. November was a brutal month to play this tier, and it was arguably only kept playable due to the low playerbase not experimenting enough (This was also the month where we became smogon official so it was a bad time! The week after the tier became official was brutal to play due to the ladder spamming Ekiller Arceus all over the place). The main reason why is that Giratina and Dondozo had both left us due to an Ubers trend, something that happens to lower tiers (Like Iron Treads in OU when Archaludon was legal), meaning that the hazard control was none existent. Another bad thing that happened is that some bad pokemon in ubers had more than 4.52 usage for the time and couldn't be used. Annihilape was illegal for the longest time because it was always used by lower ladder players, basically putting the Ape in jail.

I think that we have to be close to Ubers, but we have to also be realistic and say that we will ban more things Ubers does. Thinking that 'Chien-Pao wouldn't be banned in Ubers' to me is not really that good of an argument, because this isn't just Ubers. This will have a lower power level and thus what is overpowered will be different from what is overpowered in Ubers.

There are a lot of questions in my mind on what the correct tiering action would be. I have three pokemon in my mind - Lunala, Arceus-Ghost, and Shaymin-Sky. There is the question if these three are worthy of a Quickban, or if a suspect test would be better. I think that they did not get quite enough support for the quickban in terms of the survey results (Which will be posted later today), but they have more than enough support to go into a suspect test. No other pokemon had enough support for either a suspect or a quickban so those three are the ones that currently have the attention of the council. Necrozma Dawn wings, Terapagos, Chien-Pao and Shed tail all had around the same amount of support which is not enough for a suspect test.

In my opinion, Lunala and Ghostceus both have to kick the bucket. They both are overpowered and not fun to play against. It doesn't matter if you know what they are going to tera to, they are going to sweep you unless you run some niche options. On the topic of Shaymin-Sky, I don't think its quickban worthy. Its annoying for sure, but it is really, really, REALLY inconsistent, and it is not easy to fit in teams. It can sweep unprepared teams, yes, but it can also just die to a predicted sludge wave. It can flinch you 5 times in a row, but it can also miss one and then it just blows up. Every time it seed flares it is risking their opponent using a move that kills it. It oftentimes needs boots as otherwise it is far too squishy without being at full HP. Additionally, with less ghosts being around, its better answers will be able to rise back to their spots. I've used it a lot, and I've only felt it being overpowered one time, where it reverse swept a team with Ghostceus Excadrill and NDW after a tera ghost thanks to leech seed and landing a critical hit.


There is also the question if even unbanning Arceus-Flying would be a good idea, considering that just freeing Arceus-Ghost and Arceus-Electric had drastically different effects, and Arceus-Flying is somewhere inbetween these two in terms of brokenness in my opinion. I'd love for a splashable flying-type option, but it can have the problem of being too much for the tier.

Here is my personal VR, feel free to ask about anything

Leo's VR

 

[IcyScream]

While having a splashable flying type would be nice, the answer is not freeing arceus flying. Arceus Flying had no defensive answers, the only pokemon that resisted flying were special attackers that were shut down by calm mind + taunt, with a couple notable exceptions, garganacl, who could force it to recover with salt cure, arceus electric who couldn't fit taunt, and was therefore shut down by tera, and arc steel who was also incredibly broken. the only notable flying resists who dropped since its ban are, archaludon, who is niche at best, and also a special attacker, solgelao, who is very good, and a physical attacker, but would lose out on a lot by using a set that can help with arc flying, corviknight who is far to passive and specially frail to deal with arc flying, skarmory, who deals with all the same issues as corviknight but worse, and regieleki, who *technically* resists electric but can't deal with an arc that got one calm mind, and can never switch in. Freeing arc flying to deal with lando i would be similar to freeing dialga in ou to deal with ogerpon.

 

[BigFatMantis]

I think we definitely should have freed Arceus-Flying back when we unbanned Ghost, but the time for that has passed and there’s no point to free it now, especially since we should be taking the opposite route and banning Lunala/Arc-Ghost.

If there’s really three things that got enough support to ban, I think we need to ban the worst offender immediately via quick ban. We can’t really suspect three things at once and suspecting one at a time is such a waste of time when the support is clear to remove things from the tier. Personally I think Lunala should be the highest priority for a quickban, then Arc-Ghost. Skymin is probably the most appropriate target for a suspect instead of quickban since it’s really more of a question of do we as a community want to accept this kind of Pokémon in the tier

 

[ant4456]

On the matter of tiering action, I think that calling this tier a "a tier between OU and Ubers" is fundamentally wrong and it fails to realize why this tier worked after many attempts at trying it out.

Most of the attempts chose to focus on the OUBL and bad ubers, basically making up the tier based on low viability ubers + all of OU, but this ended up in an environment where you had to ban most OUBL mons due to them being overpowered and centralizing. Having OU but one or two more pokemon are in it is just not a stable tier as these threats were banned for a reason.

I think I didn't realize the actual progression of the tier and how this attempt, specifically was made. I was not informed on that, and I apologize. I am from an outsider perspective, and from that perspective it felt like for years people were chirping about wanting a tier for the bad Ubers, and one day I logged on and UUbers was there.

I concluded that that it mainly got there due to the popularity of the idea in OU circles, and thus my post was that naturally, a lot of people who aren't really Ubers players will bring a more OU mindset to it. I'm still not sure if that is wrong per se (I do think it still is appealing to a lot of that crowd), but I did not understand the backdrop of UUbers creation itself, and for that I apologize.

 

[FluffyPets]

I suppose I will throw my hat into the Skymin ring. From what I have seen so far it seems that the consensus on what kind of tiering philosophy we should have here is something closer to Ubers but more lenient for absurdly broken things (like Zekrom). With that philosophy, I do not believe Skymin is anywhere close to being broken in this tier on strength alone. We can name a number of mons that are more impactful in the builder and in games than Skymin. That's not why everyone wants Skymin gone, of course - this thing removes fun like nothing else. Can Ubers tiering ban things because they're not fun? Prior to this generation, I would have said no. However, in the pre-Home iteration of this gen, Ubers banned Moody with a 77% vote (34/44). Notably, Ubers can only ban things via suspect - so the Ubers playerbase decided that Moody Scovillain, a gimmick at best even in a time when Koraidon commonly used Flame Charge, was annoying enough to get rid of. The pro-ban reasonings from the suspect thread are extremely similar to what has been said about Skymin in this tier. They all seem to agree that Moody Scovillain wasn't really broken, and not even all that strong, but it was uncompetitive to the extreme and the very fact that it was even half viable was a huge detriment. Ubers tiering philosophy in gen9, which is what is relevant to this discussion, would have us ban Skymin from Ubers UU for the same reasons that Moody was banned from actual Ubers. Ban Skymin.

 

[DinoTheGoat]

While having a splashable flying type would be nice, the answer is not freeing arceus flying. Arceus Flying had no defensive answers, the only pokemon that resisted flying were special attackers that were shut down by calm mind + taunt, with a couple notable exceptions, garganacl, who could force it to recover with salt cure, arceus electric who couldn't fit taunt, and was therefore shut down by tera, and arc steel who was also incredibly broken. the only notable flying resists who dropped since its ban are, archaludon, who is niche at best, and also a special attacker, solgelao

I disagree about the lack of arceus flying answer, the problem at the time was we were testing the water, flying has glaring weakness to stealth rock and phazing(which no one phazed during early meta game), The set limits it self to one move which can be played around easily. The set can be punished by just by breaking it with physical sets or just taunting it.

 

[OceanicGamer]

Uncompetitive. Broken.


Two words that can be used to describe the state of Pokémon. However, there is a difference between these two words that may or may not be easy to understand.

Broken is when a Pokémon is unhealthy for the tier. Consider Lunala. This is a broken mon because it abuses Tera so well, as well as having a very good ability and a decent movepool. It is broken because has limited counters, and even those can lose because of a button that lets one shed their weakness faster than Cyclizar shedding his tail for Terapagos.

Uncompetitive is less about counters and more about gameplay. This is stuff like Moody Pokémon. At the very best, it's a gimmick. Broken? No. But it was banned, and you want to know why? It was annoying aka uncompetitive.

Shaymin-Sky, also known as Skymin. Is skymin broken? Probably not, but is it uncompetitive? For sure. It is annoying to play against, it is annoying with the flinches and the SubSeed sets. And we must remember, what is broken is uncompetitive, but what is uncompetitive may not be broken. However, bans happens to unhealthy Pokémon, and unhealthy is uncompetitive, and since Skymin is uncompetitive, it's also unhealthy, meaning it should be banned.


Ban Skymin. (Also I was inspired by fwuffy to write this lol)

 

[IcyScream]

I disagree about the lack of arceus flying answer, the problem at the time was we were testing the water, flying has glaring weakness to stealth rock and phazing(which no one phazed during early meta game), The set limits it self to one move which can be played around easily. The set can be punished by just by breaking it with physical sets or just taunting it.

People did run phazing in early meta, along with this, tera fairy + taunt shuts down all attempts at phazing, something i mentioned in an earlier post. i also deliberately did not talk about how easy or not it is to offensively check, pokemon like pao and mewtwo can deal respectable damage before fainting, but dont fit on every architype. also taunting it isn't always an option, as faster taunts will either get shut down by a taunt on the switch, require masterful positioning, or require a sac, slower taunts get shut down by taunt, speed tie taunts aren't reliable, and prankster taunt isn't viable. also my post references every viable pokemon that resists flying and why they aren't reliable answers to it, limiting yourself to just flying as an attacking type is fine when the flying resits cant threaten you.

 

[DinoTheGoat]

1. I disagree about the phazing, yes it was run in the early metagame but not to the amount of today, Yes tera fairy can stop dragon tail, but Its still weak to phazing chains with stealth rocks, you can tera fairy but you burn your tera on a giratina,dialga or skarm without threatening them back.

2.It still gets offensively checked by them even to the point of getting ohko by chien pao(37.5% with stealth rock)

3. Yes you can breakthrough the defensive checks but it takes a person not playing correctly and letting you set up.

4. Im saying its still good around poisonceus in january viability it is still good but theres better forms right now.

 

[DinoTheGoat]

Also flyingceus can't switch in easily without masterful positioning, sacing a mon or switching into lando

 

[Leo Justice]

1. I disagree about the phazing, yes it was run in the early metagame but not to the amount of today, Yes tera fairy can stop dragon tail, but Its still weak to phazing chains with stealth rocks, you can tera fairy but you burn your tera on a giratina,dialga or skarm without threatening them back.

2.It still gets offensively checked by them even to the point of getting ohko by chien pao(37.5% with stealth rock)

3. Yes you can breakthrough the defensive checks but it takes a person not playing correctly and letting you set up.

4. Im saying its still good around poisonceus in january viability it is still good but theres better forms right now.

1. I used to run dragon tail Dialga back in the day because it was one of the few good stealth rockers, and that was before the tera fairy tech was discovered. Yes, phasing was less used before, but it doesn't matter because you'd be more common than either. Why would you blow your tera on Skarmory? Skarmory doesn't get dragon tail. And even if you do use your tera on Giratina or Dialga, what are they gonna do? They're probably taunted and their only attacking move doesn't hit you. Dialga would need to run iron head for a somewhat good chance to 3HKO you

2. Refer to my previous point on why Chien-Pao shouldn't be counted as a reason.

3. Except setting up with an Arceus with an immunity to one of the strongest attacking types in the tier is not that hard. They'd need to be using one of the most common pokemon in the metagame, Landorus (both forms)
4. I don't really get this so i won't comment

 

[Poosh_i]

I disagree about the lack of arceus flying answer, the problem at the time was we were testing the water, flying has glaring weakness to stealth rock and phazing(which no one phazed during early meta game), The set limits it self to one move which can be played around easily. The set can be punished by just by breaking it with physical sets or just taunting it.

Chiming in on this as well - the rocks weakness is hardly relevant when you can still easily live a hit from just about everything in the tier and click recover. This is also ignoring that while you're rocks weak, you are Spikes (and Toxic Spikes/Webs) IMMUNE. Being rocks weak did not stop Arceus-Fire from being broken, and that one still took damage from the other hazards. The complete lack of viable physical attackers that can actually dent arceus flying (and ones that aren't punished by trying to hard switch in, meaning you are almost forced to sack) is not healthy. Flying + Ground is absurdly strong coverage, and introducing more overwhelming arceus formes like this means that you need to consider the mirror matchup- in which Arceus-flying is going to encourage degenerate CM wars with crit fishing.

 

[Dorron]

Following these last bans, I'll be posting my views as a council member.

As already mentioned, the tier is in a "weird" state, where it's neither Ubers nor OU. Some claim that, given we are an "Ubers low tier", it should be more like Ubers, requiring our bans only be on absolutely and undeniably broken mons/elements (see Last Respects). Others claim it should be like OU and other official tiers, where broken mons are simply banned, no matter if they are as broken as Flutter Mane or Archaludon. There's been this debate since the very beginning and it will never end since I don't think we can reach a consensus we all will agree with. I'll explain why viewpoint, however, since I really believe it's the most fitting for the tier and the community.

To begin with, why does Ubers require a higher threshold to ban things? Simple, because it's meant meant to allow everything that isn't tipically banned by Smogon clauses like Evasion. Bans in Ubers are the exception, the tier isn't meant to ban any element but they resort to them as a last resort. Another fact that supports dealing with stronger threats is the fact that Ubers tends to have a much more stable meta. Ubers don't have drops and don't usually have unbans. The meta evolves with no drastic changes, adapting to the stronger threats. I haven't played Ubers for the whole generation, but I did when it released and in UWC, and the meta had evolved a lot, specially thanks to the new DLCs. People adapted to things Miraidon and Last Respects thanks to the meta not constantly getting and losing elements every month. Even if you could argue they are broken, people could still build teams knowing that they wouldn't become unviable next month since the mons were going nowhere. Ting-Lu and Clodsire, for example, are mainly used to keep Miraidon at bay. You can slot them in any team, try new sets and new team structures with them since Miraidon is staying forever (I wished it got banned in the last suspect ngl). Who knows, maybe people start using new cool sets that not only deal with Miraidon but with other mons so these don't become a dead slot. That's the whole thing, Ubers elements are constant througout the months. I could write many more paragraphs about this, but I think the point is clear: the metagame can evolve to deal with these threats thanks to it not being volatile.

Now, what's the matter with Ubers UU? In terms of power, we are between Ubers and OU, but as how the tier works, we look more like an UU than an Ubers, and let me explain. We are a usage based tier that has no control over what drops and what rises, meaning we have a very different meta from in two consecutive months. This leads to teams becoming unusable for an indefinite time, hell, I remember playing the Swiss in October and being handed a Sun team with Hatterene by Taka. Hatterene rose like next month, then it dropped again, then it rose again, then it dropped... I don't even know how many times it dropped and rose. In Feb/March I did a cool team featuring Ekiller Poisonceus with Gunk and Espeed, no EQ, and Arena Trap Dugtrios as the only Uber elements. But Hatterene rose the next month and fuck that team I loved, and who knows when it will be usable again. The same happens with Kingambit, it's been rising and dropping many times. It would have been a blessing to have Kingambit in the Ghostceus, Lunala, NDW and Skymin meta, but it's literally something we don't have any control on. We can't rely on certain Pokemon to deal with specific threats since we don't know if we might lose any of them in the next shifts. If Giratina hadn't left the tier when Shaymin-Sky rose up in popularity, it's very likely that the latter would have been banned much later. My point is that Ubers UU is, like any other lower tier, constantly changing, which makes it way harder to adapt to big threats the tier might receive at any point. This is something we have to accept as a community.

I could write countless paragraphs about the topic, but I think this has been enough. For me, it's more than obvious that we can't have an Ubers philosophy for the good of the tier.

 

[BolTingBlazie]

Following these last bans, I'll be posting my views as a council member.

As already mentioned, the tier is in a "weird" state, where it's neither Ubers nor OU. Some claim that, given we are an "Ubers low tier", it should be more like Ubers, requiring our bans only be on absolutely and undeniably broken mons/elements (see Last Respects). Others claim it should be like OU and other official tiers, where broken mons are simply banned, no matter if they are as broken as Flutter Mane or Archaludon. There's been this debate since the very beginning and it will never end since I don't think we can reach a consensus we all will agree with. I'll explain why viewpoint, however, since I really believe it's the most fitting for the tier and the community.

To begin with, why does Ubers require a higher threshold to ban things? Simple, because it's meant meant to allow everything that isn't tipically banned by Smogon clauses like Evasion. Bans in Ubers are the exception, the tier isn't meant to ban any element but they resort to them as a last resort. Another fact that supports dealing with stronger threats is the fact that Ubers tends to have a much more stable meta. Ubers don't have drops and don't usually have unbans. The meta evolves with no drastic changes, adapting to the stronger threats. I haven't played Ubers for the whole generation, but I did when it released and in UWC, and the meta had evolved a lot, specially thanks to the new DLCs. People adapted to things Miraidon and Last Respects thanks to the meta not constantly getting and losing elements every month. Even if you could argue they are broken, people could still build teams knowing that they wouldn't become unviable next month since the mons were going nowhere. Ting-Lu and Clodsire, for example, are mainly used to keep Miraidon at bay. You can slot them in any team, try new sets and new team structures with them since Miraidon is staying forever (I wished it got banned in the last suspect ngl). Who knows, maybe people start using new cool sets that not only deal with Miraidon but with other mons so these don't become a dead slot. That's the whole thing, Ubers elements are constant througout the months. I could write many more paragraphs about this, but I think the point is clear: the metagame can evolve to deal with these threats thanks to it not being volatile.

Now, what's the matter with Ubers UU? In terms of power, we are between Ubers and OU, but as how the tier works, we look more like an UU than an Ubers, and let me explain. We are a usage based tier that has no control over what drops and what rises, meaning we have a very different meta from in two consecutive months. This leads to teams becoming unusable for an indefinite time, hell, I remember playing the Swiss in October and being handed a Sun team with Hatterene by Taka. Hatterene rose like next month, then it dropped again, then it rose again, then it dropped... I don't even know how many times it dropped and rose. In Feb/March I did a cool team featuring Ekiller Poisonceus with Gunk and Espeed, no EQ, and Arena Trap Dugtrios as the only Uber elements. But Hatterene rose the next month and fuck that team I loved, and who knows when it will be usable again. The same happens with Kingambit, it's been rising and dropping many times. It would have been a blessing to have Kingambit in the Ghostceus, Lunala, NDW and Skymin meta, but it's literally something we don't have any control on. We can't rely on certain Pokemon to deal with specific threats since we don't know if we might lose any of them in the next shifts. If Giratina hadn't left the tier when Shaymin-Sky rose up in popularity, it's very likely that the latter would have been banned much later. My point is that Ubers UU is, like any other lower tier, constantly changing, which makes it way harder to adapt to big threats the tier might receive at any point. This is something we have to accept as a community.

I could write countless paragraphs about the topic, but I think this has been enough. For me, it's more than obvious that we can't have an Ubers philosophy for the good of the tier.

And it kind of feels like the current ubers philosophy is not always the best anyway even up in ubers, since Miradon definitely should have been removed but due to higher ban thresholds despite having over 60% it wasn’t removed

I do agree that we should tier more like any other tier with the same 60% threshold for ban votes as that seems best

 

[Zrp200]

And it kind of feels like the current ubers philosophy is not always the best anyway even up in ubers, since Miradon definitely should have been removed but due to higher ban thresholds despite having over 60% it wasn’t removed

I do agree that we should tier more like any other tier with the same 60% threshold for ban votes as that seems best

Actually, lower tiers use a 50%+1 margin for voting, since they're much more unstable due to monthly drops. That may be appropriate for this tier as well for the same reason.

 

[FluffyPets]

Actually, lower tiers use a 50%+1 margin for voting, since they're much more unstable due to monthly drops. That may be appropriate for this tier as well for the same reason.

Given that we no longer are doing monthly drops but rather 3-month cycles, I think we can do the usual 60% suspect rulings. The meta is pretty stable in any case, so if a suspect would happen it'd have to be about something that maybe should only be getting banned with 60%+ anyway.

 

[Leo Justice]

I personally think that 60% would be the sweet spot between an Ubers tier and a UU tier. Its not as much as Ubers itself (66%) but it is still bigger than the UU percentage (50%).

 

[BigFatMantis]

I think it's hard to justify 66% in this tier, just based on the likely number of voters for a suspect that's a near insurmountable hurdle other than near-consensus bans (which could get QB'd anyways). 60% seems fine. 50% +1 is not great imo since it still is an Ubers tier at heart and there should be some pause before banning anything really.

 

[Spyro]

I'm sorry we're in the multiverse