Lower Tiers RBY NU Hub

I guess I should do the typical thing of posting tier lists whenever I feel like it as if I'm actually a proper RBYer. I posted one before about three months ago and that is largely accurate, however time and the metagame has moved on a bit since then and my opinions have shifted. This is what I will be submitting for the VR Update which is likely to take place in around three weeks. I did do a video for this but most people don't have the time to watch some random person rant incoherently for over an hour so here we are. List is slightly different than there, merely my list there was made on the fly and I forgot some things and made some tweaks to the lower tiers. These are all ordered within tiers.

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1. Mr Mime
2. Charizard
3. Clefable
4. Blastoise
5. Poliwhirl
6. Nidoking
7. Kabutops
8. Golem
9. Venomoth
10. Moltres
11. Kingler
12. Exeggcute
13. Seadra
14. Ninetales
15. Raticate
16. Porygon
17. Wigglytuff
18. Pinsir
19. Primeape
20. Arcanine
21. Fearow
22. Sandslash
23. Rapidash
24. Electrode
25. Dragonair
26. Abra
27. Slowpoke
28. Gastly
29. Drowzee
30. Scyther
31. Muk
32. Seaking
33. Magneton
34. Weepinbell

S Tier:

- You could drop Mr Mime, but at the end of the day assuming you are wanting to build a competitive team, I'd ask yourself why? Mime is the best revenge killer in the tier, best status spreader in the tier, Mime's psychic is arguably the hardest move in the tier to switch into to the point you have some people arguing a group of psychic eggs is better than a flaming legendary bird. If Mimeless was a pokemon I put it towards the bottom of C2 Tier as I have admittedly done it enough times and won games but it does get into the territory of winning because the opponents team is also bad or I just have far more experience.

A1 Tier:

- If you dropped all three of these, I'd tell you that you were mad, you generally want at least one of Clefable or Blastoise, my personal preference is to have all three of these Pokémon on my team, I see them as 80% usage mons.

- Charizard, probably the one I use the least of the three and I think is the most droppable but Swords Dance Charizard is undoubtedly meta warping and affects pokemon and moveset viabilities and needs multiple checks. Lead Charizard is a fine consistent lead, but if that was all that Charizard did, then it would not be in A1 Tier. SD Charizard has this X factor like the Sword of Damocles where at any point if you misplay it can take over a game, it can be a bit daunting for new players I feel. As I have played more and more, I see it as less and less of an issue, I am always cognizant of where I am at when Charizard is concerned. I personally think non-spin movesets are still underutilized on SD.

- Clefable I've always seen as the swiss army knife and I still see it that way. It is the best scrapper in the tier bar none. I think often when you are feeling stuck within a game, throw clef into battle is generally a reasonable answer even if it isn't the optimal one in that situation. Generally the best answer to Clefable in lots of situations as well is Clefable, the hallmark sign of a strong pokemon. It's adaptability to the gamestate is unparalleled and I think there's quite a bit of skill expression in using Clefable. Clefable does have this weakness of getting chipped down, but it really doesn't matter too much when Clefable is nearly always taking at least one Pokemon down with it. You can run a variety of sets but you generally won't go wrong with Body Slam, Twave, Blizzard, Thunderbolt, though feel free to run Hyper Beam, Sing or Counter to randomly trip up your opponent.

- Blastoise is the best defensive water in the tier, responsible for ruining many a Poliwhirls dream and reminding Charizard lovers why their rival went Squirtle line. Blastoise I think is in a better position than it has ever been as far as move choice is concerned. When I started playing, Rest was almost mandatory on Blastoise but nowadays you can see a lot of four attack Blastoise with Surf plus any number of moves. Other Waters are either less bulky, aren't resistant to water and therefore cannot take on +2 Poliwhirl or lack the physical coverage. Blastoise can also if need be trade surprisingly well with stuff like Clefable or Mr Mime although you won't win. It takes a few hits for even Pokemon with super effective moves to KO Blastoise.

A2 Tier:

- This is where you are starting to get into goodstuffs teams, if you have merely chosen from S, A1 and A2 tier. You'd probably have a decent team as well. The pokemon here either have significant niches or broken attributes that allow them to be here. I'd say with the possible exception of Moltres, you need to have all these Pokemon in your repertoire if you want to play Tournament Level NU.

- Poliwhirl, as much as I hate to say it, is the 5th best Pokemon in NU. It is very inconsistent, but when it goes off, boy does it get annoying to deal with if you don't have a Blastoise or an Exeggcute or something faster. Sometimes though Poliwhirl will die doing nothing, as it is hampered by its mediocre NFE stats despite having both Amnesia and Hypnosis. An extremely punishing pokemon in the same vein as Charizard, you can't really afford to make misplays around this pokemon. I think there is more to be pushed from this pokemon, especially from Back Poliwhirl as well as some of the more unorthodox movesets such as Blizzard Psychic specifically for fighting its primary switch ins. On the same angle, I think some anti-leads becoming more popular will hamper Poliwhirl in general as it can be difficult to find positions good for Poliwhirl in the late game if the opponent is cognizant of the fact you haven't get gotten sleep yet and chooses to cheekily just make sure you never get it for the entire game.

- Nidoking is the second best revenge killer after Mr. Mime and a large force that hampers some of the pokemon below it such as Kabutops, Golem and Kingler which it threatens heavily. It isn't the greatest at switching into things. A common line is to switch it into Twave such as from Clefable, I'm not personally a fan of this line. Its better to get Nidoking in as a revenge killer as its coverage is really difficult to deal with. Once it is in, it can trade with nearly everything just like Clefable. Clefable is the only thing I can think of that can switch into Nidoking and then beat it 1v1 (perhaps moltres if EQ is selected or Mime if no EQ selection), though you wouldn't really want to do it. Nidoking especially benefits from double paralysis so you should run it on every nidoking team.

- Kabutops would be even higher if not for the fact that it can sometimes be a questionable check to SD Charizard. Slash hits pretty damn hard, has Surf for Fires and Golem and can even put on offensive pressure with Swords Dance. Rest as a set has largely died with Fire Spam. Kabutops is when you want a Rock that won't roll over to every water type or be outsped by everything. It doesn't even mind being burnt that much either by the Fire Blasts it may have to switch into. I'd say the fact it is worse vs. Charizard and that its easier to revenge kill with Mr Mime which just has less switchins than say Blastoise, makes it not definitively better than Golem.

- Golem is a cool pokemon. Hits very hard, can switch into Twave from Mr. Mime at least, best done when it is unrevealed. It does have a problem with its lack of speed and the number of water types in the tier. Kingler in particular is a menace that loves seeing Golem on the field since it tanks Golem hits and then hits back even harder. Strong players can use Golem's weaknesses against it and not even give it time to boom, which is why I think I have it lower than Kabutops despites its myriad of strengths. Technically it is also a window for Egg to get off sleep which can be rare some games if Mime isn't hitting the field until late game. Despite everything, it is still the single best Charizard check in the tier.

- Venomoth may even be underrated at the 9th Slot, being the best overall sleeper in the tier and the second best when including other attributes, it is definitely a pokemon you will be wanting to consider for a lot of teams. Moth gets a bad reputation of only being good at getting off sleep, perhaps a paralysis and otherwise being dead weight. If we are looking at pure chess value, a 100% Poliwhirl is generally worth more than a 100% Venomoth, but a 50% Moth is worth more than a 50% Poliwhirl, Moth's value as a lead extends into the late game a lot better than Whirl which you generally ride or die on the lead slot. Moth can do these cheeky moves where you trade for a bit and then at the end of the game, you come in after a kill trade and win a dirty stun spore speed tie with Mime or Psychic their Nidoking that allows you to win the game.

- Moltres, clearly the worst of these lot but with its power I couldn't really justify putting it any lower. It's main issue is not being SD Charizard and not being able to KO it easily. How good Moltres is depends on how many times you can click Fire Blast in a game. Ideally you want to play a bit more aggressive with Moltres than I think some people do. Click less spin imo, just click Fire Blast on Resists, Kabutops is the only thing that can really switch in, anything else is in danger of getting heavily chipped or burned or crit which because of how absurdly strong Moltres is can lead to KOs on resists. Crit on Golem can lead to a KO with Blast for example. Also one of the few pokemon (along with Ninetales) that Clefable and Mime can just not deal with very well.

B1 Tier:

- Here you kind of start getting into Niche Pokemon that can be put in a wide variety of teams but have more pronounced flaws. Still strong pokemon in here that need to be prepped for heavily in the builder.

- Kingler is probably the best of these and I was tempted to even put it in the bottom of A2 (or alternatively put Moltres in B1). A lot of teams are for whatever reason pitifully weak to Kingler once Mr Mime is paralyzed. Perhaps it is because people do not quite understand how absurdly powerful +2 Kingler is or have forgotten it exists or something. It comes in, punches holes in your team and that's all it needs to do. People using this mon as a sweeper will not find that much success, it guarantees a kill against some fat thing and then you might get another hit in if they have a Blastoise or a Golem. Also nothing can switch into Crabhammer either despite Kingler having 50 Special. Also lives +4 Charizard Move.

- Exeggcute kinda does nothing but the right kind of nothing. If you are looking for the tiers single viable Mime Psychic switch in not called Mime, here it is. It will do that and then get off sleep powder and then perhaps a stun spore if you are lucky. Want something to switch in on Poliwhirl and put it to sleep making you not need to worry about it for the rest of the game? Egg is your mon. If you are really lucky it will get off a boom. Beyond that though it loses to everything, it's bizarre matchup spread makes it useful in any game though.

- Seadra has a case of the Zapdos syndrome. Realistically it beats most of the tier and gets easy setup opportunities to outspeed a potential Charizard/Mr Mime revenge kill, it just has one big turtle in its way. Blastoise at 30% can bring it back vs. Seadra and to add insult to injury, Seadra isn't even bad defensively but Blastoise outdoes it there thoroughly too. As soon as Blastoise is gone though, the hands are coming off and you better be ready for the pain and misery this pokemon can inflict. In the late late game, it can actually beat Blastoise through freezing or rest stalling it out of PP, something to note but SD Zard has to be out of the picture there.

B2 Tier:

- This is basically where the stuff that is kinda good but has significant stuff holding it back from really making a case to be put up further. Some of these pokemon have it worse than others due to the metagame but I've ordered them so you should know.

- Ninetales is a really good pokemon that is cursed by the fact that SD Charizard exists and its crappy typing. Ninetales is that sweet middleground between Charizards and Moltres's Fire Blast where its Blast doesn't hit like a wet noodle like Charizard but it has more tools and speed to annoy the opponent than Moltres. Watching Poliwhirl, an already infamous misser of sleep try to hit hypnosis through confuse ray is just sad and even if you were to get that 30% chance, you'd probably hit yourself trying to set up amnesia. Venomoth lead obviously hates seeing Tales, so does Mime, you can Twave for sure, but then you are taking a Fire Blast which OHKOs on a crit and say goodbye to ever getting sleep with Egg if you have that. This mon I think is underrated.

- Raticate is another underrated mon that mainly just uses Super Fang on fat stuff to break through teams. Its speed tier is super good though and has good enough coverage and stab normal type, probably the second best normal after Clef. You can often KO a pokemon at least if you play well with Raticate and generally these pokemon are ones that are annoying to get rid of like Clefable, Blastoise and Golem. Hard to get in on anything though and has nothing going for it defensively.

- Porygon is just...there I guess. It just kinda sits there and recovers. Sometimes it gets a matchup where it is just utterly unkillable demon king switching in on blastoise all day, spreading the twaves, other times it just dies in one hit and you cry. I think after rat, you start getting to really inconsistent pokemon though that are matchup dependent, this is one of them.

- Wigglytuff is just a budget Clefable, which isn't a bad thing at all. It isn't quite as bulky, its slower so it speed ties with Golem, it hits like a wet noodle on the special side so it can't trade with certain things as well as Clefable. It's passable at many things, but a master of nothing which can hurt it in a tier where being good at something is valued.

- Pinsir is the first of the shitty SD pokemon which generally have trouble switching into any special move ever. Pinsir for what its worth can in fact take two Psychics, doesn't really matter though when you cant take a single fire blast from even Charizard. I think a big mistake is using bind, if you miss Bind as they go Charizard its sadtimes. Just use SD Normal attack, Submission, Hyper Beam.

- Primeape you can kinda use as an anti lead, I'm not sure if I am being too kind to it here putting it over Arcanine. What differentiates it from other anti leads is it can hit everything hard rather than like a few things hard. It does however hate Mime lead, but then your opponent has led mime so its a win or it would be a win except you led Primeape.

- Arcanine is probably the last of what I would say is clearly useable without any stupidly big flaws in NU. Its problem is that its fire blast doesn't hit hard and it doesn't even get the x-factor of spin. It's not bulky to wall other fire types since the main one you want to wall is Charizard which will SD over your face and then destroy your whole team. I could see a world where Arcanine balances are used, but its not this meta.

C1 Tier:

- Reserved for pokemon that generally have offensive menace but have crippling matchup depression.

- Fearow I think is low key actually a big pain to deal with when you dont have Kabutops or Golem. When Golem/Kabutops exist, Id rather even have Wigglytuff despite thinking that pokemon is overall a bigger waste of space. If you are a doubling god you can make Fearow work vs. Rocks, when you are vs. Nidoking Fearow will be likely KOing at least 1 pokemon. Surprisingly ok antilead that can just click buttons vs. anything too.

- Sandslash is just so slow and hates blizzard and surf which are everywhere. If I wanted a Golem Switchin, I'd just add a Water. May swears by it so I give it the respect of this placing over Rapidash.

- Rapidash is a lot better in theorymon than in practice. It is however better than some people give it credit for, being able to Fire Spin other Fire Spinners that are toxiced guaranteed providing you are hitting, however low of a niche, is a niche.

- Electrode really isn't as good as some people think, if you are a doubling god you can say this is as good as Raticate or Porygon. It does have good matchup vs waterspam, eggy isn't a great check since you can just bait chip on egg easy by going mime. Vs Nidoking/Golem you have to outplay in order to win.

- Dragonair I've put here as I think its somewhat underexplored and every time I've used it it has done decent when it hasn't gotten haxed. Of course trying to wrap to win in NU, which is all Dragonair can do is pretty bad since you have to hard commit to it and one wrap miss = dead and with Golem/Kabutops you can never do enough damage. Surf/Tbolt/Agility/Wrap probably the best set.

C2 Tier:

- Pokemon with the odd niche, memes kinda here too.

- Abra is a crappy mime with no coverage and no bulk. The fact that this mon gets 2hko by blastoise body slam says it all.

- Slowpoke is potentially interesting but slower than everything and can't rest stall pokemon like its bigger badder cousin since SD anything destroys it so it won't ever get setup. Twave keeps it here on its own.

- Gastly is another theorymon, it can switch into normal type attacks, I could see it even being in C1 but I find the most common mons have some sorta coverage that would smack it anyways and its weak to mime.

- Drowzee is the very marginally bulkier and far slower mime with hypnosis and still no coverage. Doesn't really do anything and too slow to revenge anything.

- Scyther cries whenever there is a fire type or a rock type or the similarly rare gastly.

- Muk kinda just exists, I've tried to make this pokemon work but here we are.

- Seaking is just a worse Seadra that doesn't outspeed anything other than clef before setting up and you want special rather than attack.

- Magneton theoretically would do ok vs. waterspam, problem is most those waters can trade cause they faster, you'd rather have trode.

- Weepinbell can theoretically come in and sleep pokemon and then be similarly useless to egg, but it cant switch into psychic or blizzard so ye.

D Tier

- Wont be talking about these, kinda ordered other pokemon I've tried.
 
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Serpi

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Some updated thoughts since my last VR:
Blastoise has experienced kind of a paradigm shift in how it's used since RBY PL. It now uses Seismic Toss as a consistent source of damage vs the other pure water types. This shuts down any attempts from cheeky Poliwhirl, Seadra, and Kingler to abuse the old Blastoise sets via Substitute and it makes those matchups more consistent in general but, potentially even more importantly, this move allows Blastoise to drop Rest without being annoyed by opposing Rest Blastoise. As a result, Blastoise can now run a moveset of Surf, Seismic Toss + 2 of Body Slam, Counter and Hyper Beam which turns it from a decent defensive piece into an absolute trading machine, which is exactly what you need in this tier. Personally I always run Counter, and I'm a big fan of Hyper Beam alongside a Zard lead (Slash + Seismic Toss + Hyper Beam KO's Whirl, which makes this potentially the best anti-Whirl lead set-up) while Body Slam is a good move in general and will turn out to be useful once in a while, mainly when having to fight a healthy Whirl.

Kabutops has solidified itself as one of the best mons to just bring again and again, as predicted by Hipmonlee back at the start of RBY PL. Looking at my builder, this guy has to be one of my top 5 usage mons, beating out Blastoise and Venomoth. Kabutops can be seen as the heart of any waterspam strategy while also sporting great synergy with back Moltres, as these 2 mons work together to make the situation very awkward and dangerous for SD Zard, which is usually regarded as Moltres' biggest weakness. Those 2 archetypes are among the best teams to use rn imo and Kabutops makes them work. Also sometimes this mon just goes berserk, clapping fools with +2 Hyper Beams.

Lately, Golem has surpassed Nidoking in my opinion, as the extra security vs Mime, Zard, and Hyper Beams in general is very nice for a lot of teams. Using Golem teams is a blast rn, as those teams give you lots of options in terms of pivots, and they abuse the current Zard hype the best. Nidoking on the other hand is a pretty consistent offensive trading tool. The main advantage over Golem is that this guy can fight water types head on rather than having to run from them, however he does have to run from an unparalyzed Mime and doesn't offer a lot of defensive synergy to a team. In the end, Nidoking is still a super solid pick, especially if you can sense Golem or one of the slow SD users coming. I gushed a lot about Kabutops above, but one of the worst things about it is Nidoking coming in on SD and beating you 1-on-1.

Charizard is a little overrated atm honestly. At top level, there's a clear gap between the should-be-on-every-team mons Mime and Clef and this guy. SD sets tend to just trade negatively every time unless they get an easy opening (which is kind of a depressing thought) while Zard's place as the most consistent lead has been questioned by the new Counter Whirl leads, much to my annoyance in the later rounds of NUSD. At the end of the day, there's always a special top-tier seat reserved for the dangerous mon with the uncontested speed tier, but I definitely don't think this guy is S rn and could even see some of the other A+ mons passing Zard on my VR in the near future, as they might simply be more practical. Still, you need to show some respect to SD Zard in the builder as well as in-game or it will simply sweep you.

Raticate is an interesting thought rn. It's kind of like Wigglytuff in the sense that it has a very impressive spread of 1v1 matchups but doesn't offer a lot of defensive synergy as it minds TWave very much and doesn't have any resistances. However, it can switch in on Whirl as it uses Amnesia and beat it 1v1 with Super Fang + Hyper Beam, which can be very valuable to a team. I'm excited to see if Raticate will prove to be effective in actual tournament matches.
My D-Rank means "These mons could potentially be useful, but not in this meta" while my C-Rank means "These mons have some unique traits and can be useful for a team, i.e. fill out a slot perfectly on a team, synergy-wise - but they're still bad mons". So when you compare this to my last NUVR, basically Pinsir, Abra, and Dragonair left the "real" VR (bc they're bad) while Raticate entered, with some opinions about bad mons sprinkled into the VR via C- and D-Ranks.
 
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Volk

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So I'm in a pretty awkward position where I want to talk about RBY, but I'm in the middle of a Tournament for UU so I don't exactly want to spill my thoughts about that right now. So instead, I'll keep myself busy with some NU stuff. I've only played a dozen or so games in the last couple of months, so feel free to take what I say with a grain of salt, but I've watched a lot of matches recently and have been writing some analyses, so I don't think I'm totally lost. So anyway, some thoughts.

Charizard is the best Pokemon in NU.
This is a semi-controversial opinion right now, as I think most people have settled on Mr. Mime and the rest of the people have been arguing for Clefable instead. Despite this, I firmly hold that Charizard is the best Pokemon in the tier. Mr. Mime and Clefable are both incredible Pokemon and very easily right by Charizard's side in S Rank. What makes the two of them good is that they shake up the otherwise streamlined gameplay loop of NU. The modern NU is a rather aggressive metagame that runs on a very tit for tat style. Mr. Mime and Clefable have decent bulk and Thunder Wave, so they can actually motivate switches and enable attackers that aren't naturally fast, like Nidoking, Golem, and Kingler. Both of them also have a pretty limited pool of checks outside of themselves, so adding them to a team is easy and often necessary. Charizard, on the other hand, effectively is the offense of NU. Its great Speed and coverage means it doesn't really need any support to function. It also means Charizard is one of the best Pokemon at racking up multiple KOes over the course of a single match. I ultimately believe Charizard shapes gameplay more than any other Pokemon. It completely invalidates some flavors of defensive play, it needs to be acknowledged as a possible threat throughout the entire game, and it is by far the easiest offensive Pokemon with which to build a team.
The main criticism I hear towards #1 Charizard is that, compared to Mr. Mime and Clefable, it is a lot more droppable. I kind of take issue with this because I honestly don't know why you'd drop Charizard. Like sure, you can do it, but usually you may as well at least use it as a lead or something. And every team needs offense, so you may as well use Charizard. And even if you do build a team without Charizard, you still need to constantly respect it, arguably as much as you need to respect Mr. Mime or Clefable. Maybe I'm just biased towards offense, but Charizard consistently appears to influence games more than anything else, even when it isn't even on the field yet.

Poliwhirl is still egregious.
I don't think Poliwhirl is a healthy presence in RBY NU. I don't want to go digging up replays right now, but I have seen many a match where Poliwhirl connects Hypnosis, uses Amnesia, and just claims like two or three KOes. It's incredibly simplistic and uninvolved and negatively affects the creativity of the tier. I think it crunches the lead metagame a lot, as running something slower than it is extremely risky. I've been seeing a lot of Charizard leads lately, and I presume it is for the extra Speed over Poliwhirl, as I'm really not sure why else you'd want to throw away your Charizard so quickly. Aside from the lead metagame, I think the fact that it kind of necessitates Blastoise (usually Seismic Toss, nonetheless) is just restrictive and uninteresting. I really don't know why players tolerate Poliwhirl and why so few people seem to take issue with it. Maybe I'm just bad? I don't know.
As far as addressing this goes, I'd really like to see a suspect on Poliwhirl, Amnesia, or Sleep moves. Poliwhirl is the most immediate issue and the easiest to eliminate. Banning Amnesia keeps Poliwhirl around and opens up the doors for Poliwrath and Golduck again, which could be interesting. Banning Sleep also solves the Poliwhirl problem while allowing players to build with a broader variety of Pokemon and develop strategies that involve a full set of six Pokemon, as staying in with a sleeping Pokemon is usually a horrific idea in NU.

Golem is better than Nidoking.
Serpi already introduced this point and, while I was reluctant at first, I agree. I was (and am) a pretty big fan of Nidoking in NU, but I think it is just a little awkward to build with right now. It is still the same offensive behemoth, but I think more players have committed to very fast teams and have gotten better at handling paralysis, so getting Nidoking in and keeping it from being revenge killed has gotten a bit harder lately. I wouldn't entirely discount Nidoking yet, and it could still easily overtake Golem in the near future, but the meta right now is definitely favoring Golem. While Golem is also slow, much slower in fact, it ultimately hits harder and has real defensive utility. Getting Golem in right now is easier and typically more rewarding compared to Nidoking.

Wigglytuff is very good.
I think Wigglytuff has gotten a lot more attention lately, and I think it is entirely deserved. I think a lot of people operated with the logic of, "Clefable is good, Wigglytuff is basically a second Clefable, so it is probably okay so I'll go with B- or C+." In other words, people viewed it similarly to something like Persian (v. Tauros) or Golem (v. Rhydon) in OU. However, unlike other twin Pokemon pairs, Wigglytuff is much easier to justify on a team, as its role is very valuable and really not redundant at all. As I said before, what makes Clefable (and Mr. Mime) interesting and good is their ability to actually control the pace of the game, and not simply attack and move on. Wigglytuff comes with more or less the same power, which means it is another very dynamic Pokemon that can enable all kinds of builds. Wigglytuff and Clefable can also run two completely different sets, which further limits the risk of redundancy. I think Wigglytuff is firmly a B+ Pokemon, and I honestly don't think A- is out of the question.
Additionally, I think Porygon is still a bit underutilized. I will say the meta isn't too kind to it right now, but I still think there is value in yet another Normal-type Pokemon with status moves. Recover is also always an incredible move. I would really like to see players experiment a little more with this Pokemon. Raticate is another Normal-type Pokemon that I think is really good right now, though for slightly different reasons. It is also getting more attention these days, which I think it should. It's nice for shaking up the lead meta a little bit and it is still relevant as a wall breaker or sweeper.

Pinsir doesn't really have anything to do.
Pinsir seems to have found itself in the same spot in both UU and NU. In UU, Pinsir is just kind of abstractly good. Like in a vacuum and in a good number of head-to-heads, Pinsir is solid. Despite this, it kind of struggles because it doesn't really fit anywhere. It doesn't really have particularly good synergy with anything and it doesn't really hit any of the essential roles you need to fill when building a UU team. Often when I do try to build with it, I find myself scrapping it for something more standard because something else just fits a bit better. Pinsir is in a similar but different spot here. It's pretty quick, but still below that crucial base 90 line, so it isn't exactly reliable speed control. Among Swords Dancers, it has a tough time distinguishing itself. Charizard is incredibly quick and has Earthquake, Kabutops has a great typing and Surf, and Kingler has slightly more immediate power thanks to its Attack and Defense stats and Crabhammer. Even if you ignore Swords Dance, it's kind of hard to justify Pinsir over Raticate or even more uncommon stuff like Fearow and Primeape. I haven't quite lost faith in Pinsir yet, but it needs some help to get going again. Oh yeah, I would also probably say that Sandslash it better too, but I haven't seen much of it lately either.

Rapidash really isn't that bad.
I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of Rapidash, but I think people are just a little too harsh with it. I know the meta is pretty anti-Fire Spin right now, which is fair, but I think Rapidash still has some utility beyond that. The extra Speed versus stuff like Charizard is a pretty big deal and I really don't think anyone is taking advantage of it. Rapidash is still probably like a C Rank Pokemon or something sure, but it seems a little too low on the last couple of VRs.

The lead metagame seems underdeveloped.
This is less of a claim and more of an observation. I haven't really been able to make much of an assessment of NU's lead meta because I don't really know if anyone fully understands it. All I know is that Poliwhirl seems to be constricting it a lot and that it might be nice if slower and bulkier leads like Blastoise or Clefable were actually viable. Regardless, I think figuring out this meta is "where the money is," meaning it'll probably be a good way to get ahead in your matches until everyone else also catches on. Out of everything I posed here, the lead meta is probably what I am most curious to hear the thoughts thereon of others. So please feel free to reply if you have a lead VR or something or have any other views on what I posted.

If you stuck around to the end, thanks for reading my ramblings on a tier I don't really play. Please feel free to tell me how wrong I am, as I fully accept that as a likely possibility. Cheers!
 
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phoopes

I did it again
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Hello friends! With the conclusion of NUSD and the RBY NU Spotlight tournament, it's time for the first official RBY NU Viability Rankings update! As a reminder to everyone, this update will be done using a method introduced to us by vapicuno and McMeghan, details of which can be found in this thread. As this is an official Viability Rankings update, the NU Council has determined that the following requirements be met in order to submit a VR:

-played at least one game of RBY NU in RBYPL II AND/OR
-played at least one game of RBY NU in NUSD II AND/OR
-placed in the top 4 of the NU Spotlight Tournament

This means that the following 18 players have qualified to submit a VR: (in no particular order):

Mikon
Serpi
BT89
juoean
Enigami
Khaetis
shiloh
Oathkeeper
LpZ
pac
Koalacance
Ika Ika Musume
Oiseau Bleu
Thor
May
S1nn0hC0nfirm3d
phoopes
Sevi 7

To the above players, please (if you want, you're not required to) submit a numerical VR to me via PM on Smogon forums. An example of this would be...

1. Magikarp
2. Caterpie
3. Weedle
...
30. Hitmonchan

where in this case you think that Magikarp is the best Pokemon in the tier, Caterpie is the second-best, Weedle is third-best, and so on all the way until you rank the last Pokemon that you think is relevant in the tier (in this example list, Hitmonchan).

To the above players, I will give a deadline of March 31st (about two weeks from now) to submit your list. From there, the data will be analyzed and I will hope to have the rankings up at the beginning of April (and it won't be an April Fool's joke lol).

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to PM me on either the Smogon forums or on Discord (@phoopes#0001). Thanks to everyone in advance!
 
I don't think anybody got around to doing this, so below are the usage stats for the spotlight tour that ended a few weeks ago.
Moves and Teammates / Combos
:mr. mime: Usage :mr. mime:
Code:
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| Rank | Pokemon            | Use  | Usage % |  Win %  |
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| 1    | Mr. Mime           |  154 |  96.25% |  49.35% |
| 2    | Clefable           |  121 |  75.62% |  46.28% |
| 3    | Blastoise          |  116 |  72.50% |  45.26% |
| 4    | Charizard          |  107 |  66.88% |  50.93% |
| 5    | Nidoking           |   67 |  41.88% |  42.54% |
| 6    | Poliwhirl          |   56 |  35.00% |  59.82% |
| 7    | Venomoth           |   53 |  33.12% |  54.72% |
| 8    | Golem              |   51 |  31.88% |  48.04% |
| 9    | Kabutops           |   29 |  18.12% |  53.45% |
| 10   | Kingler            |   27 |  16.88% |  42.59% |
| 11   | Moltres            |   20 |  12.50% |  52.50% |
| 11   | Exeggcute          |   20 |  12.50% |  42.50% |
| 13   | Wigglytuff         |   16 |  10.00% |  46.88% |
| 14   | Raticate           |   15 |   9.38% |  80.00% |
| 15   | Seadra             |   13 |   8.12% |  61.54% |
| 16   | Abra               |    8 |   5.00% |  37.50% |
| 17   | Pinsir             |    7 |   4.38% |  14.29% |
| 17   | Ninetales          |    7 |   4.38% |  14.29% |
| 19   | Arcanine           |    5 |   3.12% |  20.00% |
| 19   | Rapidash           |    5 |   3.12% |  20.00% |
| 21   | Drowzee            |    4 |   2.50% |  50.00% |
| 21   | Electrode          |    4 |   2.50% |  25.00% |
| 23   | Primeape           |    2 |   1.25% | 100.00% |
| 23   | Porygon            |    2 |   1.25% |  50.00% |
| 23   | Fearow             |    2 |   1.25% |   0.00% |
| 26   | Nidoqueen          |    1 |   0.62% | 100.00% |
| 26   | Dragonair          |    1 |   0.62% |   0.00% |
| 26   | Gastly             |    1 |   0.62% |   0.00% |
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from SIFICON~.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from PHOOPES.
  • Missing 2 Pokemon from PHOOPES.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from IKA IKA MUSUME.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from VIZARPKMN.
  • Missing 3 Pokemon from JULIAN113.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from VIZARPKMN.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from JULIAN113.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from TRANQUILITYY.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from OATHKEEPER.
  • Missing 2 Pokemon from BT89.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from ARA ARA<3.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from MELANIE RBY.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from ARA ARA<3.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from MIKONN.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from ENIGAMI.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from BT89.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from JUOEAN.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from MELANIE RBY.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from KAMENTORCHICV3.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from MELANIE RBY.
  • Missing 3 Pokemon from MELANIE RBY.
  • Missing 3 Pokemon from SERPI N_N.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from ENIGAMI.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from GASTALIES.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from ARA ARA<3.
  • Missing 2 Pokemon from GASTALIES.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from ARA ARA<3.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from DELPHI RIDDLE ❤.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from STUNNER047.
  • Missing 2 Pokemon from SERPI N_N.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from NESSA NWN~✿.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from CB AARON JUDGE.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from B T 8 9.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from JUOEAN.
  • Missing 1 Pokemon from DELPHI RIDDLE ✿.
:charizard: Leads :charizard:
Code:
+ ---- + ----------------------- + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| Rank | Leads                   | Use  | Usage % |  Win %  |
+ ---- + ----------------------- + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| 1    | Charizard               |   48 |  30.00% |  48.96% |
| 2    | Venomoth                |   33 |  20.62% |  60.61% |
| 3    | Poliwhirl               |   32 |  20.00% |  53.12% |
| 4    | Mr. Mime                |   13 |   8.12% |  30.77% |
| 5    | Raticate                |    6 |   3.75% |  66.67% |
| 6    | Abra                    |    5 |   3.12% |  40.00% |
| 6    | Blastoise               |    5 |   3.12% |  30.00% |
| 6    | Rapidash                |    5 |   3.12% |  20.00% |
| 6    | Ninetales               |    5 |   3.12% |  20.00% |
| 10   | Clefable                |    3 |   1.88% |  66.67% |
| 11   | Primeape                |    2 |   1.25% | 100.00% |
| 11   | Golem                   |    2 |   1.25% | 100.00% |
| 13   | Electrode               |    1 |   0.62% |   0.00% |
 

phoopes

I did it again
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
Mikon
Serpi
BT89
juoean
Enigami
Khaetis
shiloh
Oathkeeper
LpZ
pac
Koalacance
Ika Ika Musume
Oiseau Bleu
Thor
May
S1nn0hC0nfirm3d
phoopes
Sevi 7

Hey folks, two days until the deadline so I thought I’d give a bump because to this point I’ve only received 6 VRs. I’d definitely like to get more!
Just wanted to give an update on this, we've received 10 VRs now so I decided to go forward with the process. Sent the data to someone who knows more about statistics/coding and such than me so we should have a new VR soon! Thanks to everyone who has participated!
 

phoopes

I did it again
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
Hello friends, time for the long-awaited VR update!

First of all, massive thanks to Shellnuts for helping with all of this! And another thanks goes to Ika Ika Musume, Enigami, Serpi, May, phoopes, Oathkeeper, Mikon, BT89, juoean, and Khaetis for sending in their rankings. For this Viability Rankings update the tiers and rankings were formed using the statistical analysis tools by vapicuno and McMeghan, which have been described in this thread. All of the data is publicly available and can be consulted here.

As a reminder, players were asked to submit a numerical Viability Ranking where the first-ranked Pokemon was the strongest Pokemon in the tier in the player's opinion, the second-ranked Pokemon was the second-strongest Pokemon in the tier, etc. until the last-ranked Pokemon, which was the weakest Pokemon in the tier that was still viable in the player's opinion.

---

Now into what you've all been waiting for: the numerical rankings of the Pokemon and how the tiers shake out!

Considering only the Pokemon that were ranked by two or more players, we get the following list:

1. Mr. Mime
2. Clefable
3. Charizard
4. Blastoise
5. Poliwhirl
6. Kabutops
7. Nidoking
8. Golem
9. Venomoth
10. Moltres
11. Exeggcute
12. Kingler
13. Raticate
14. Seadra
15. Wigglytuff
16. Porygon
17. Ninetales
18. Primeape
19. Fearow
20. Pinsir
21. Electrode
22. Rapidash
23. Arcanine
24. Sandslash
25. Dragonair
26. Gastly
27. Scyther
28. Abra
29. Machamp
30. Nidoqueen
31. Slowpoke
32. Drowzee
33. Magneton
34. Magmar
35. Seaking
36. Muk
37. Poliwag
38. Ponyta

From the data collected, the following tiers were obtained:

S: :Mr. Mime: :Clefable: :Charizard:
A1: :Blastoise: :Poliwhirl:
A2: :Kabutops: :Nidoking: :Golem: :Venomoth:
A3: :Moltres:
B1: :Exeggcute: :Kingler:
B2: :Raticate: :Seadra: :Wigglytuff:
B3: :Porygon: :Ninetales:
--NU/PU Cutoff Line--
C1 :Primeape: :Fearow:
C2: :Pinsir: :Electrode: :Rapidash: :Arcanine: :Sandslash:
C3: :Dragonair: :Gastly: :Scyther:
D: :Abra: :Machamp: :Nidoqueen: :Slowpoke: :Drowzee: :Magneton: :Magmar:
E: :Seaking: :Muk: :Poliwag: :Ponyta:

---

I will update the OP with the new VR shortly (i.e. like a few minutes from now). The big post with all the graphs and methodology and whatnot will be coming from Shellnuts or myself at some point soon-ish. Thanks again to everyone who helped out with this! Much appreciated.
 

Plague von Karma

Banned deucer.
Ayup, I did a thing. This is for all tiers but Raticate is specifically NU so I'm putting it here.

After nearly 2 years of existence, I've updated The Raticate Bible.
020.png


For those who don't know, this spreadsheet contains calculations for what to do after Raticate's Super Fang. I've used it to optimise my coverage choices and stuff for each tier as it can sometimes get a little weird, this rat really struggles to hit everything in every given situation. It's also helpful in general as you don't have to suffer with the damage calculator for more than 5 seconds. This sheet considers everything feasible, down to a transformed Ditto. I didn't include every Reflect user or anything, though, I tried to stay realistic.

Over the course of this sheet's existence, at least a few players have thanked me for making this, and I felt that its continuing decline in "up-to-date-ness" was beginning to poorly represent this beautiful mess of a Pokemon. I'm glad that this sheet has continued to find its way into people's bookmarks, despite being made when I was very bored (and very, very stoned), goes to show what crackhead determination does to a motherfucker.

Changelog
  • Sheets for UU and NU have been added, with OU also being updated.
  • Sheets now use Viability Rankings to order calculations.
    • The most recent ones are used, obviously. If they're outdated, that's the tier's problem, not mine!
    • UU recently had Victreebel drop, which I put next to Venusaur. I don't know if this will end up being its place, but it's literally a better Venusaur in most ways so it seems about right.
    • Oh, and I removed Dragonair from UU on account of it being an AgiliWrap bot. That's banned now, so it's like Dragonair is banned, y'know?
  • Calculations for Reflect Charizard, Drowzee, Slowpoke, Poliwag, and a few others ended up being added for various tiers, which this sheet previously lacked overall.
  • Renamed Mewtwo Reflect(???) to Barrier +2 which is accurate for reasons that should be obvious.
  • LC Rattata stuff is now available, which used an experimental presentation format. I think it's worse, but it's...there. This is what inspired me to update the rest, s/o ClairDeLuna.
  • Old exhaustive sheet has been renamed and kept for archival purposes, as well as containing calcs for Pokemon not in a higher tier, such as Ditto.
More calcs can be added on request.
 

Sabelette

from the river to the sea
is a Site Content Manageris a Community Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Forum Moderator Alumnus
Random current NU thoughts, pls take with a grain of salt cause I’m not good. I’ll do a more thorough post after NU Cup and/or possible RBYPL if somehow I sneak onto a team, I still have some things I want to try out before I can speak on them.

Meta Centralization - People are really doom and gloom rn about how many mons belong in the tier but I think there's a lot of viable outside picks. That said, Mime Clef Zard Toise Whirl +1 (ground/tops/water/random fast mon/honestly anything) is such a good team it's easy to just get sucked into running it over and over with some varying sets and call it a day. I still think there's solidly like 16-19 mons in this tier though and think people are sleeping on some viable leads (more on this after I either kick ass or go out round 1 in the NU Cup).

Leads - There is so much room to develop here, it feels like everyone defaults to Zard or Moth or sometimes Whirl but there are so many other options. Again I'll say more post-Cup but for now like, just look how many >90 speed mons exist and go run some calcs, I think there's at least a solid 3 mons that are underexplored as leads if not more.

Electrode - a lot of people are using water spam and a ton more are using at least 2 waters per team, and a good number of teams are either groundless or trade their ground quite early. Trode is definitely NU at worst just for how many mons it can obliterate at the end of a game. Firmly believe its a B- mon in NU, every good team has minimum 2 and often 3-4 things weak to Trode and just having a Golem or Nido doesn't fix that, given the propensity of grounds to get revealed early and trade early + overloading Golem by forcing it to check Zard and Mime while somehow still having juice in the tank for Trode at the end.

Ninetales - I used Ninetales lead 6 times in the Open mainly cause it just stomped people who didn't know how to handle it and especially the many newer people using sleep leads. Zard usually only 3hkos it and I was cool with dying for para attempts/chip on Zard to set up an easier endgame later. That said I think it's not very good and carried by people misplaying cause of Cray tilt; 100 speed lead is nice and it's certainly not PU but it's not the future of NU leads IMO.

Rest - Rest is not good IMO, it has a niche use in endgames as a surprise 4th to stall out certain things and win but most of these things are “your opponent didn’t run Stoss Blastoise and your own toise walls it” types of bad teambuilding. It still can do funny things with surprise Moltres rest to stall out another toxic tick or two but honestly just going offensive is more consistent than trying to set up endgames where Rest wins you the game. You just can’t afford to do it earlier in the game with the prevalence of Swords Dance or just how hard it can be punished in general. For analyses in general I expect it to be more of an “other options” than a second move choice divided by a slash on standard sets, if that makes sense. Yes, I just wrote a Molt analysis with a Rest set, but tbh I think rest Molt is an anti-Zard gimmick that isn’t hard to scout and beat, I mostly included it because it’s been popular and should be accounted for.

Sleep - Literally just ban sleep and this tier becomes better instantly, Poliwhirl Russian Roulette is terrible even if it’s overstated how often it happens. Sleep breaks every team wide open and contributes to the supposedly “too fast” nature of the tier; kill it and let’s let things develop more openly without the 60% chance of getting 2 for 1’d by Poliwhirl loom over everything.

Raticate - Incredibly based mon with enough speed and power to surprise sweep an endgame - honestly the rat gets away with so much bullshit because of how quickly people lie to trade, I think if people start respecting >90 speeds more (besides Zard) then it won’t be as powerful but will still be good.

Primeape - Idk how such a serviceable NU lead is currently sitting in ZU, it has great coverage and outspeeds everything common but Zard who really can’t risk Rock Slide at all. Mime doesn’t want to eat 2 Bslams to remove it and it can chunk either sleep lead before getting slept, idk I think it’s decent so long as sleep leads remain so popular.

I’ll save the basic thoughts on established mons, hotter takes on viability, and potentially unexplored or underexplored mons for after I finish trying some stuff in tours, maybe I just get stomped and no longer feel qualified to even give grain-of-salt opinions lmao. Anyway I’m writing this at 2am so it’s a mess, if I do another post it’ll be better-organized and have better grammar. Hope someone finds this helpful
 

Ema Skye

Work!
Random NU thoughts after playing before and in the tour. Tier is really fun, dynamic and fast-paced, but there's a few things I want to bring up. Take these with a grain of salt.

:rb/charizard: While not being the best mon in the tier, this mon is centralizing as fuck. It has Tentacruel like vibes due to its speed tier and sometimes it just clicks buttons and wins because Fire Spins connect (I've KOed a Clef from full using just Fire Spin as well as chipped Golems down to 50% using spin) or the Blastoise was chipped into Hyper Beam range. SD+Hyper Beam Zard deletes Blastoise from 60%ish, which is a trivial amount of chip damage on Toise because Toise is pressured to check a lot of things in the meta rn. The versatility between spin pivots and SD sets generally means you don't know what you're playing against as the movesets usually overlap (Spin, FBlast, BSlam, EQ and Beam are good on both sets). It's also the speed ceiling of the meta unless you run Rapidash (bad Zard) or Electrode (see Clair's post above but this mon is viable), which generally means you have to take a hit to cripple it, and between spin pivots and/or SD, that is a harder task than most of the tier is capable of because it can be so hard to nail down as long as the spins connect.

:rb/poliwhirl: I know Clair talked about sleep but I think Poliwhirl is really just the issue here. Whirl capitalizes on sleep and, together with Zard, puts substantial pressure on Blastoise that it just can't deal with. While Hypnosis is low accuracy, it's generally scary enough that it doesn't really care. Sleeping a Blastoise basically wins Whirl+Zard builds the game, but even a Blastoise coming in on Amnesia takes enough from Psychic that Zard can beat it now, and it forces a lot of chip on Mime/Clef as they TWave it, and Psychic drops just generally exacerbate this problem. Moth and Egg lack Whirl's offensive power and generally don't enable their teammates to the extent Whirl does. I don't think any lead slower than Whirl is viable because Whirl can just force you into such a bad scenario Turn 1 if it sleeps first.

:rb/blastoise: This feels like the most important mon in the tier right now solely because it's the only thing that can attempt to stop Zard+Whirl cores. Counter is cool to get chip on Zards lacking EQ, no Tbolt Clef, as well as in the Toise mirror. Clair talked about why Rest is bad on it and I'm inclined to agree, but it also puts Blastoise in a weird spot where it really hates taking damage because it needs to be at full to take on Whirl+Zard, but other options like Tops and Molt also put pressure on Toise to check them.

:rb/clefable: This mon is so versatile and there's been lots said about its options (Sing and Counter have had lots of interest). I want to particularly talk about Hyper Beam because of its ability to delete Mr. Mime from 60%, which the other Mime check (Egg) can't do without booming. Double Edge+Hyper Beam in particular does a minimum of 99.6% to Mime which is an effective way to delete it and create space for your own Mime to go to work, while still ensuring you have Blizzard to cover Golem/Nidoking.

:rb/electrode: This mon is cool and preys on the common Mime+Clef+Whirl+Toise+Zard core but completely loses momentum against grounds. That said, Grounds are usually under pressure from Toise+Whirl and spin chip (as well as Mime vs Nido) so it can put in some work in the right situations. Mon is NU at worst right now as it capitalizes on the meta right now.

:rb/kingler: This mon is very underrated right now and helps alleviate the defensive pressure on Blastoise which is phenomenal. Its bulk is enough that +2 Whirl cannot 2HKO it without a crit or Psychic drop, and it's generally good vs Zard as long as you don't get spun on forever. Toise matchup is kinda shaky due to Counter sets, but it generally needs Counter to threaten you so you can set up on it as +4 HBeam always KOs. Also does well against Clefs lacking Tbolt but that feels more niche. Definitely worth exploring further!
 

Plague von Karma

Banned deucer.
Hello! I got knocked out of NU Classic and wanna share with you the teams I built for the tournament.

Going into this tournament, I had a lot of ideas in NUSD that weren't quite fleshed out. I still think that this tier has a lot of viable Pokemon that a lot of people aren't considering, namely; Raticate, Fearow, Sandslash, and Muk. I think Butterfree also has some minor potential. I had numerous stuff down but lacked the smarts to do it, as tier staples like CounterToise were not yet fleshed out. Now that they are, I think I can do a lot. I, unfortunately, didn't manage to build as much as I liked given I was knocked out so early, but hey, let's get these shared.

Thanks to Crunter and ClairDeLuna for helping me bounce ideas off them.

Also, here's my VR, because you all like this sort of thing.
1662202669321.png

Generally, I believe you should use at least three of the S Rank on most teams, as long as you hit the quota most teams tend to function well. You can use only stuff from B+ and up and find success. It's a more top-heavy tier than people think.

ClefRat + ToiseWhirl
:poliwhirl::raticate::clefable::charizard::mr-mime::blastoise:
This team actualises a lot of theories I have about the way NU operates. It isn't just a simple positioning-based tier, but a momentum-based one. I designed this team to make use of that alongside Clair de Lune, aiming to make the best use of Raticate. As people who saw my UU Team Dump a while ago, I enjoy trying to "solve" certain Pokemon, and the one I wanted to solve the most was Raticate.

I've seen some people claim Raticate doesn't need Super Fang or even contemplate it being an "OO" move. I agree that Raticate probably doesn't need Super Fang, but I also think not using it is like buying a pet without the extras. Super Fang is incredibly helpful in a tier where you're often forced to sit down and attack, and in this case, it means you can chip hit traders like Clefable and Blastoise without compromising your heavy hitters. I don't think it is possible for Raticate to sweep in a Charizard tier, so identifying it as a mid-game battering ram feels very appropriate. I actively love seeing Raticate take paralysis in exchange for a Super Fang, as it means it still has HP and thus still has gas in it to swing for another. Current play trends heavily benefit Raticate and I think it's in a fantastic spot. Changing Super Fang for Thunderbolt is foolhardy. It'll function, but it'll be so much worse.

I used this team here:

Agility Arcanine (AgiliCi)
:venomoth::kingler::clefable::arcanine::blastoise::mr-mime:
This team is unfinished. It's been in the tank since NUSD, going through several curious iterations, but I struggle to make it work. It's not that the idea is bad, it's just very hard to fit Arcanine onto teams, as team slots themselves are quite tight. I feel like Mr. Mime, Clefable, Counter Blastoise, and Charizard are all near-mandatory picks (but can be dropped individually at a price) and this is part of that conception. Arcanine has historically been used as a defensive piece on teams back when Venusaur was in the tier...but fell to the wayside as everyone realised the metagame is an offence-fest with everyone in nicotine shot. I think if sleep were to be banned, this set would become far more affordable, as Venomoth could easily be dropped for something great; it would look something like this.

So why not use Agility? Many say Moltres does it better, but allow me to confidently express a bad opinion like every other internet idiot: y ci yn dda. You see, Arcanine, unlike Moltres, isn't weak to Mr. Mime's Thunderbolt, beats base-90s in Speed, and, crucially has better Attack alongside Body Slam. These traits make me very much prefer it in the current metagame, as it isn't set-up fodder for Charizard, and can take two Earthquakes despite the weakness. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is for Charizard to swap in on your Moltres's Fire Blast, get a free Swords Dance, and go off? Christ, I don't care if it does like 25%, Arcanine can do that with a 30.1% chance to OHKO it with paralysis. What I have learned is that Rest Arcanine missed the mark a bit: it shouldn't defensively check Charizard; it should do so offensively.

Crunter gave me the idea of putting Kingler with Arcanine. I like this idea, as Kingler can switch into Golem and force a 50/50 between picking up a Swords Dance and going to town or slapping it with a Crabhammer. The positions Kingler forces itself into are very commanding and allow the team to auto-win if Kingler guesses correctly and lands its +2 Hyper Beams. Thus, the Golem matchup for this team, despite Arcanine's presence, is actually very precarious, solely because Kingler exists.

Muk Offence
:poliwhirl::clefable::muk::golem::mr-mime::charizard:
This team had one iteration I had with Crunter, which you can find here, and it ended up going Zardless. However, Toiseless was better, because, well, look at the team. I ended up compressing the Counter role to Charizard, which is risky given CounterToise's role, but it's probably for the best.

I want to like Muk so badly. Every time I look at it, I see potential, it has so many good moves but just somehow manages to miss the mark somewhere. It's a Normal attacker and Explosion user with coverage for Kabutops and Golem, which is fantastic. Unfortunately, its Special is low enough to the point it really needs Thunder to hit KO ranges, but that's fine, if I'm using Muk it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. I treat Muk like a second, weird sister to Golem on this team, using it to clear the way for a Charizard or Poliwhirl sweep depending on what happens. It's viable, but Muk isn't.

Honestly, I think this team is unfinished. As you can see, it has many, many flaws, and most of them come from having to fit a sleeper onto the team. The problem? Sing Clefable sucks too much, and I'd rather use a good sleeper like Poliwhirl than compress it on a team like this.

The Annoying Porygon
:poliwhirl::porygon::blastoise::charizard::clefable::mr-mime:
This was the last team I built before getting knocked out. Frankly, I think you can use almost any Pokemon over Porygon here and it'd perform the same. ToiseWhirl + Zard/Clef/Mime feels like some sort of Big 5 sometimes in how consistent a team composition it is. I used Porygon here as a way to annoy Blastoise a bit more, but honestly, I think it was a little ill-thought. It's very unfinished theory-wise and I think someone else could take it further. A while after I built it I heard an idea that Reflect Porygon may be the way for beating Charizard and I think that's probably true as people keep swearing off Fire Spin and scratching their heads wondering why they're losing.
 
Inherent Variance and Sleep in RBY NU

Since this was too long to really get into in a Discord debate and I'm not really the best at these anyways, I thought I would discuss a bit about the potential sleep ban and the ramifications it has on NU. I've very much been one to consider banning sleep, so take the below with a grain of salt.

I've seen a lot of people complain about sleep, whether it be Hypno in UU or Poliwhirl in NU and call for its ban. This has already happened in UU and is likely to happen in NU as well. For one, it has been already banned in NUSD and I expect this to follow suit in future NU tournaments. This is because Sleep in a vacuum is uncompetitive in lower tiers, a sentiment I agree with but want to kind of delve into more what is competitive and what is not.

When we define what a competitive match is, one might look towards a metagame where the more skilled player who plays better nearly always wins the game/match, where variance is minimal and getting lucky is an oddity rather than a common occurrence. Personally, I consider a Tier like NU to be anathema to most typical people's definition of a competitive match. Variance is rife in lower tiers due to the inherent RNG of RBY critical hits, paralysis, move accuracy, speed tie wins as well as the lack of tools present to mitigate the destructive nature of variance when it happens, causing it to have a larger impact on the overall game. The variance is actually so high that forms of variance commonly used to up odds of victory in OU/Ubers such as Freeze fishing are far less commonly used since these methods are too slow pace wise to be an effective tool especially in NU. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since with enough data points, probability can even out and that is why you can see some players consistently perform in NU and I've never personally had an issue with the variance.

I make the above point because I expect Sleep, an undoubtedly high variance status especially given the accuracy of Hypnosis, to be banned without getting to the crux of the issue and complaint in NU, that being variance itself and what level there should be in NU. I've played enough Sleepless to understand that it is, in my opinion, a significantly more toxic metagame than the current one (ie. it sucks in its current form). Poliwhirl always had a factor where if you positioned well in the late game, you could come back from poor early luck with Whirl, same with Charizard which was better able to accomplish this because Poliwhirl, Egg or Venomoth had to be on every team. There are far less comeback mechanics when you get lucked in current Sleepless NU asides from getting extremely lucky yourself and I couldn't see that changing unless there were tier changes.

How I see it is there are kind of two ways to go about things IMO when it comes to variance:

A) you raise variance to the limit, which is what current NU is
B) you have less variance but ways to mitigate it which is kind of how the higher tiers operate
C) you have very little variance.

What Sleepless NU is at its current state is slightly less variance but it just changes one variance game winner with another, the main culprit in this case being the result of the Clefable Mirror. A 50% Clefable that wins the mirror with one turn of good fortune whether that be a Crit or a Full Para is worth near enough an entire Pokemon since you are unable to revenge kill it and it is able to Twave another Pokemon and its movepool is a nightmare to deal with, essentially getting a two for one. You cannot avoid this mirror in the majority of positions if it is offered because declining the mirror puts you significantly behind because you have to then switch into Clefable and would be considered a throw in most situations. Some toxic elements in the current meta are easy to miss since Poliwhirl Sleep is just more obvious to the outsider, it is only when you start to think of taking it away you just notice it is variance layered on variance with a side of variance. With significantly less variance (Ie. no sleep) what happens is Full Paras and Crits become more important. You trade one demon for another. That isn't even to talk about newer burger flips like Counter which is just thrown out undeliberately (see RBYPL for examples of excessive counter usage that is less predictive/intentional and more just playing several 50/50s in a row).

In conclusion if you couldn't be bothered reading a really badly constructed rant, I think sleep ban in NU doesn't really get to crux of issue in NU which is how much variance to put in the tier and what healthy interactions/gameplay is and rather is just a kneejerk reaction to not being able to handle Poliwhirl similar to how people wanted to ban Charizard and if Sleep would be banned then I think it would be wise to consider looking at methods to control the overall variance in the tier.
 
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MrSoup

my gf broke up with me again
is a Tiering Contributor
RBTT Champion
I want to give short insight into the whirl-less meta we've seen in NUSD as someone active on my team's RBY NU roster and who made finals of RBY NU cup with whirl still in the meta.

I understand the frustrations that come with sleep in RBY and the variance it brings to the game, especially when the two premier sleepers of the tier speed tie and are often leads for both opponents. I think trying a whirl-less meta was a valiant effort and something that could of worked. But in reality, this removal has lead to an awful meta.

Fire lead becomes extremely dominant without the presence of whirl in order to suppress potential venomoth leads. Stoise is sometimes used to counter lead, and in turn, moth can be used to counter-counter lead. It's a game of rock paper scissors, but in most cases Zard lead is the dominant strategy because of the ease with which it can pivot off of stoise. And this leads to my main gripe about this meta: there is no variety whatsoever.

In the prior meta, there were several pokemon with lead niches, including primeape, mr mime, and even electrode, that are no longer viable. Moreover, the tier has turned into a big 5 + 1 tier, with blastoise, charizard, mr mime, clefable, and a sleeper being necessary on every team. No seriously almost every team -- check the usage stats for NUSD thus far and it's entirely centralized. The issue is not that there are less viable mons; the same ones for the most part are all largely viable. The issue is that instead of creating unique team synergies and team compositions, all of the extra mons in the tier fight for the +1 slot. This is in heavy contrast to before when mime, clefable, and a sleeper were the only absolute necessities on a team. There was room for water choices and the exclusion of zard in order to, for example, run double sleep or normal spam.

The removal of the other strong water and the threat of moth lead now makes Zard and Stoise mandatory in addition to what was already centralizing.

I am heavily advocating to not move forward with this NUSD meta. I personally liked the pervious iteration, but if community sentiment is still negative around sleep, I strongly advise for a different solution. RBY NU went from one of my favorite tiers to perhaps one of the worst I've ever played. This new meta is extremely stale and not conducive to strategic team building.
 

pac

pay 5000, gg?
is a Contributor Alumnus
I want to give short insight into the whirl-less meta we've seen in NUSD as someone active on my team's RBY NU roster and who made finals of RBY NU cup with whirl still in the meta.

I understand the frustrations that come with sleep in RBY and the variance it brings to the game, especially when the two premier sleepers of the tier speed tie and are often leads for both opponents. I think trying a whirl-less meta was a valiant effort and something that could of worked. But in reality, this removal has lead to an awful meta.

Fire lead becomes extremely dominant without the presence of whirl in order to suppress potential venomoth leads. Stoise is sometimes used to counter lead, and in turn, moth can be used to counter-counter lead. It's a game of rock paper scissors, but in most cases Zard lead is the dominant strategy because of the ease with which it can pivot off of stoise. And this leads to my main gripe about this meta: there is no variety whatsoever.

In the prior meta, there were several pokemon with lead niches, including primeape, mr mime, and even electrode, that are no longer viable. Moreover, the tier has turned into a big 5 + 1 tier, with blastoise, charizard, mr mime, clefable, and a sleeper being necessary on every team. No seriously almost every team -- check the usage stats for NUSD thus far and it's entirely centralized. The issue is not that there are less viable mons; the same ones for the most part are all largely viable. The issue is that instead of creating unique team synergies and team compositions, all of the extra mons in the tier fight for the +1 slot. This is in heavy contrast to before when mime, clefable, and a sleeper were the only absolute necessities on a team. There was room for water choices and the exclusion of zard in order to, for example, run double sleep or normal spam.

The removal of the other strong water and the threat of moth lead now makes Zard and Stoise mandatory in addition to what was already centralizing.

I am heavily advocating to not move forward with this NUSD meta. I personally liked the pervious iteration, but if community sentiment is still negative around sleep, I strongly advise for a different solution. RBY NU went from one of my favorite tiers to perhaps one of the worst I've ever played. This new meta is extremely stale and not conducive to strategic team building.
Thoughts on trying out the idea of unbanning Golduck + Poliwrath, and having Amnesia banned?
 

Sabelette

from the river to the sea
is a Site Content Manageris a Community Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Forum Moderator Alumnus
I want to give short insight into the whirl-less meta we've seen in NUSD as someone active on my team's RBY NU roster and who made finals of RBY NU cup with whirl still in the meta.

I understand the frustrations that come with sleep in RBY and the variance it brings to the game, especially when the two premier sleepers of the tier speed tie and are often leads for both opponents. I think trying a whirl-less meta was a valiant effort and something that could of worked. But in reality, this removal has lead to an awful meta.

Fire lead becomes extremely dominant without the presence of whirl in order to suppress potential venomoth leads. Stoise is sometimes used to counter lead, and in turn, moth can be used to counter-counter lead. It's a game of rock paper scissors, but in most cases Zard lead is the dominant strategy because of the ease with which it can pivot off of stoise. And this leads to my main gripe about this meta: there is no variety whatsoever.

In the prior meta, there were several pokemon with lead niches, including primeape, mr mime, and even electrode, that are no longer viable. Moreover, the tier has turned into a big 5 + 1 tier, with blastoise, charizard, mr mime, clefable, and a sleeper being necessary on every team. No seriously almost every team -- check the usage stats for NUSD thus far and it's entirely centralized. The issue is not that there are less viable mons; the same ones for the most part are all largely viable. The issue is that instead of creating unique team synergies and team compositions, all of the extra mons in the tier fight for the +1 slot. This is in heavy contrast to before when mime, clefable, and a sleeper were the only absolute necessities on a team. There was room for water choices and the exclusion of zard in order to, for example, run double sleep or normal spam.

The removal of the other strong water and the threat of moth lead now makes Zard and Stoise mandatory in addition to what was already centralizing.

I am heavily advocating to not move forward with this NUSD meta. I personally liked the pervious iteration, but if community sentiment is still negative around sleep, I strongly advise for a different solution. RBY NU went from one of my favorite tiers to perhaps one of the worst I've ever played. This new meta is extremely stale and not conducive to strategic team building.
I actually disagree with almost everything in this post and I'll give my opinion below. I've played something like 45 tour games of NU this year across around 20 sets, including 3rd place in NU Open and starting every week of RBYPL and NUSD, so I think I've played enough to comment.

Fire lead becomes extremely dominant without the presence of whirl in order to suppress potential venomoth leads. Stoise is sometimes used to counter lead, and in turn, moth can be used to counter-counter lead. It's a game of rock paper scissors, but in most cases Zard lead is the dominant strategy because of the ease with which it can pivot off of stoise. And this leads to my main gripe about this meta: there is no variety whatsoever.
Fire leads were already good, whirl or not, and Zard 's options to switch out are very expoitable. Fire Spin is a 30.5% chance to lose half your HP for nothing and 69.5% chance to telegraph your intentions blatantly (and a loss of a moveslot), and hard switching is a pretty mediocre option, though definitely not likely to get punished incredibly hard. People really need to explore more leads, but I'll comment more on that in the next quote.

In the prior meta, there were several pokemon with lead niches, including primeape, mr mime, and even electrode, that are no longer viable. Moreover, the tier has turned into a big 5 + 1 tier, with blastoise, charizard, mr mime, clefable, and a sleeper being necessary on every team.
This has literally been the case since ever, Big 5 + 1 was always by far the best team in the meta, just "a sleeper" was usually Whirl. In fact, I've played *less* big 5 +1 teams during NUSD than I did before. Mr. Mime is very much a viable lead and Electrode was never a viable lead at any point; honestly only Primeape actually suffered here, and there's still room for interesting leads - wigglytuff has a 100% winrate for me in NUSD as a lead for example, Toise was never a lead till now (so there's some variety for you), Ninetales is much like Zard in that it very safely goes to Toise in a bad matchup, and even Fearow could probably abuse this trend of Bslam Zards that are still greedily slotting Swords Dance while still covering Moth (not that I think that will hold). TLDR it's really just Ape suffering from this and honestly it might still have a niche! It's faster than Moth, Rock Slide is still scary for Zard, Tbolt for Toise, Bslam for Mime.

No seriously almost every team -- check the usage stats for NUSD thus far and it's entirely centralized. The issue is not that there are less viable mons; the same ones for the most part are all largely viable. The issue is that instead of creating unique team synergies and team compositions, all of the extra mons in the tier fight for the +1 slot. This is in heavy contrast to before when mime, clefable, and a sleeper were the only absolute necessities on a team. There was room for water choices and the exclusion of zard in order to, for example, run double sleep or normal spam.
Mime Clef Toise Sleeper were always necessary and you always had to have Zard or a mon specifically to beat Zard on your team. This really has not changed; if you didn't run Zard you had a game plan to ensure you had a twave user to take it out, or something like Kingler that usually won the 1v1.

The removal of the other strong water and the threat of moth lead now makes Zard and Stoise mandatory in addition to what was already centralizing.

I am heavily advocating to not move forward with this NUSD meta. I personally liked the pervious iteration, but if community sentiment is still negative around sleep, I strongly advise for a different solution. RBY NU went from one of my favorite tiers to perhaps one of the worst I've ever played. This new meta is extremely stale and not conducive to strategic team building.
Zard was already practically mandatory and Toise definitely was mandatory, and all the things you say about this meta are how I felt about the last one, where Zard Toise Mime Clef Whirl +1 was by far the best team and also a coin flip fiesta to see who wins the game. Teambuilding feels slightly better to me now, and hopefully will improve more once UU drops happen, but I don't think unbanning Whirl makes the tier any more strategic, skill-based, or fun. Whirl being gone hasn't changed much except now instead of using Whirl as your sleeper 80% of the time and Moth 20% and maybe teching Egg once in a while, it's just Moth most times, Sing sometimes, Egg sometimes. It's a high variance slot machine that's slightly rigged in the user's favor and I'm glad to see it go.

Pre-NUSD it felt like you just hit stuff and hope you don't get crit or full para and switching was hilariously inadvisable in most cases; in NUSD I've seen far more strategic positioning, room for clever doubles, and Toise actually working as a defensive piece since it no longer has to switch into Whirl and Stoss it to death (plus Whirl being gone pushed people to run more Grounds which has allowed for actually switching into Tbolt/Wave more). IMO this is a better meta and will develop well when UU drops hit, so I will happily be voting to keep Whirl gone.

P.S. Hope this all is coherent (and doesn't come off hostile, lol, it's fine that Soup's opinion on meta quality is different but it's been Big 5 +1 forever) cause I have a terrible migraine but feel free to ask me about any of it
 
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Sabelette

from the river to the sea
is a Site Content Manageris a Community Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Forum Moderator Alumnus
Followup with stats:

NU Cup usage:
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| Rank | Pokemon | Use | Usage % | Win % |
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| 1 | Mr. Mime | 150 | 91.46% | 48.67% |
| 2 | Clefable | 133 | 81.10% | 52.63% |
| 3 | Charizard | 110 | 67.07% | 50.00% |
| 4 | Blastoise | 106 | 64.63% | 46.23% |
| 5 | Poliwhirl | 84 | 51.22% | 50.00% |
| 6 | Venomoth | 51 | 31.10% | 54.90% |
| 6 | Golem | 51 | 31.10% | 49.02% |
| 6 | Nidoking | 51 | 31.10% | 45.10% |
| 9 | Kabutops | 44 | 26.83% | 50.00% |

Among the combos, big 5+1 comprised every single team until the 23rd most popular, which was a Fire Spin spam team, and then there's like another 20 Big 5+1 combos after it.

RBYPL usage:

+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| Rank | Pokemon | Use | Usage % | Win % |
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| 1 | Mr. Mime | 74 | 97.37% | 48.65% |
| 2 | Clefable | 68 | 89.47% | 48.53% |
| 3 | Charizard | 60 | 78.95% | 53.33% |
| 4 | Blastoise | 59 | 77.63% | 50.85% |
| 5 | Poliwhirl | 46 | 60.53% | 47.83% |
| 6 | Nidoking | 25 | 32.89% | 48.00% |
| 7 | Golem | 23 | 30.26% | 52.17% |
| 8 | Kingler | 13 | 17.11% | 38.46% |
| 8 | Venomoth | 13 | 17.11% | 30.77% |
| 10 | Kabutops | 12 | 15.79% | 25.00% |
| 11 | Moltres | 10 | 13.16% | 60.00% |
| 11 | Exeggcute | 10 | 13.16% | 60.00% |

All Big 5 +1, check out the top combos of 5:

| 1 | Poliwhirl / Charizard / Clefable / Mr. Mime / Blastoise | 24 | 31.58% | 58.33% |
| 2 | Poliwhirl / Blastoise / Clefable / Mr. Mime / Nidoking | 17 | 22.37% | 47.06% |
| 3 | Blastoise / Charizard / Clefable / Mr. Mime / Nidoking | 16 | 21.05% | 50.00% |
| 4 | Poliwhirl / Blastoise / Charizard / Clefable / Nidoking | 12 | 15.79% | 58.33% |
| 4 | Poliwhirl / Charizard / Clefable / Mr. Mime / Nidoking | 12 | 15.79% | 58.33% |
| 4 | Poliwhirl / Blastoise / Charizard / Mr. Mime / Nidoking | 12 | 15.79% | 58.33% |
| 7 | Poliwhirl / Charizard / Clefable / Mr. Mime / Golem | 8 | 10.53% | 62.50% |
| 7 | Charizard / Clefable / Mr. Mime / Blastoise / Golem | 8 | 10.53% | 50.00% |
| 9 | Poliwhirl / Kingler / Clefable / Mr. Mime / Blastoise | 7 | 9.21% | 28.57% |
| 9 | Poliwhirl / Charizard / Clefable / Mr. Mime / Kabutops | 7 | 9.21% | 14.29% |

32% Usage on the Big 5 being revealed, and all of the 9 comboes after are also Big 5+1 95% of the time.

I'm too tired to grab NU Classic stats right nowv since I don't think there was a stats post, and NUSD is still mostly Big 5, but Moth over Whirl, but the centralization was there beforehand and hasn't increased, and in fact Moth usage has dropped off to quite a bit below how dominant Whirl used to be as more people are experimenting with Egg, Sing, or even Sleepless.
 

MrSoup

my gf broke up with me again
is a Tiering Contributor
RBTT Champion
I will reply in time to this post but I want to refute your claim that centralization is the same or even less bad now of the big 5. The prior stats were given by you, but:

In order of NUCup, RBYPL, NUSD

Mr mime: 91%, 97%, 98%
Clefable: 81%, 89%, 98%
Charizard: 67%, 79%, 90%
Blastoise: 65%, 78%, 90%
Poliwhirl: 51%, 60%, 62%(Venomoth)

Centralization is up dramatically for all of the big 5 (moth over whirl in SD). SD is also comprised of more experienced players in the tier, who are drifting to this centralized composition because it is the emergent dominant strategy. This is in contrast to cup for example where there were plenty of less experienced players.

I never claimed that there wasn’t centralization before. My claim is that now it is worse, which it is, and is therefore restricting.

Again, I think your opinions are valid and I enjoy the discussion, but this claim about centralization is incorrect.
 
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Sabelette

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NU Cup had less centralization in early rounds because it was full of inexperienced players using 3 fire spinners or similar; the experienced players were playing big 5, which supports my claim that the centralization was always there. RBYPL and NUSD stats look barely different. I don’t think the jump from 80% to 90% usage is significant, Clef/Mime were always mandatory and whether the next 2 mons are 80% or 90% usage that still is a super centralized meta.

Addendum cause DiannieRatson made a good point on discord: people are more likely to go back to the consistent good team (big 5) right after a ban given that it’s safer than getting experimental in a team tour where the consensus best sleeper and 5th best mon only just got banned as the tour started
 

MrSoup

my gf broke up with me again
is a Tiering Contributor
RBTT Champion
NU Cup had less centralization in early rounds because it was full of inexperienced players using 3 fire spinners or similar; the experienced players were playing big 5, which supports my claim that the centralization was always there. RBYPL and NUSD stats look barely different. I don’t think the jump from 80% to 90% usage is significant, Clef/Mime were always mandatory and whether the next 2 mons are 80% or 90% usage that still is a super centralized meta.
Like I said, it was a centralized meta before, which is the case for many RBY metas, but clearly it is more centralized now. This is not just a 10% increase in one mon, it is a 10% increase in 3 of the top 4 mons. That is HIGHLY significant. If we have the opportunity to increase team diversity (keep whirl) in an already centralized one, I am a big proponent.

Four mons have 90% usage. Around 9/10 teams will have four of the same Pokémon. This isn’t just centralized, it is centralized to an extreme degree.

Small note: we should definitely survey NUSD RBY players. This is just a sentiment I have and have heard from at least 3 or 4 of the SD players. From what discussions I’ve been a part of, there is a lot of dissatisfaction with this meta.
 
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dropping clefable was never remotely viable.

10% increases in usage arent “inherently” significant to anything. it can be due to many other factors such as who is playing / building in each tournament, people getting better at the tier / metagame development, total usage not adding up to 600% to begin with due to unrevealed mons, random variance since you have three relatively small-scale tournaments as the basis of these “statistical” comparisons.
also, usage stats for a tier that just changed its ruleset are extremely volatile to begin with.

as sabelette said above, if anything whirl is what forces stoise onto teams, none of the other waters can check whirl at all, while if whirl is banned stoiseless water spam works more consistently since for example kingler and seadra can function pretty well as zard checks.

i think sabelette pretty thoroughly went into responding to the metagame things u said, i would also add that i dont get your first sentence about venomoth leads being ‘suppressed’ by whirl leads as whirl was like, venomoth’s best lead matchup (due to its better accuracy). and i want to repeat again that with a new metagame, whirlless play is almost certainly not optimized yet. for example, everything youve said completely ignores the existence of sing clefable, which has picked up multiple wins basically by itself this tournament (just out of the games i have watched) and is unambiguously the most dangerous sleeper in the tier with whirl banned, its usage has been low so far but idt u can rly j assume that will remain the case, much less pretend sing clef doesnt exist at all. sing clef also undermines most of your claims about zard and stoise (if i understood them correctly), since sing clef structures generally dont rly care about opposing zard and therefore also arent dependent on stoise to check zard if that is the reason u are claiming stoise is more mandatory than it used to be.
(this is just one example of something that can change a lot with metagame development.)

i have barely played nu since last spotlight tho so my meta perspectives are likely to be more out of touch than others’, but my point is how problematic it is to draw conclusions solely or even primarily from usage stats esp with a new tier, and to assume a ~six week old tier is already near 100% optimization. (ofc still want to have metagame discussion even if it is tentative or ‘how things feel so far’ etc, but when u are talking about something like is zard or stoise droppable that type of question rly requires near-optimization to be answerable imo.
 

MrSoup

my gf broke up with me again
is a Tiering Contributor
RBTT Champion
Okay honestly posts like this are why I don’t add to meta game discussions often. I’m not drawing “problematic conclusions” I’m giving my opinion on a meta I’m familiar with. I don’t need to preface everything with “I know we have a small sample size but…”, “this is only my opinion…”, or “this is my take this far…” I get that you disagree with me but pointing out the silly AND OBVIOUS stuff like the fact that these are my opinions and not a conclusive fact is ridiculous. You say you want metagame discussion but this is anything but. We’re not gonna reach near-perfect optimization in RBY NU at this time so I am clearly — very clearly — giving my projections. And of course there’s error in statistics, but what else is there to go off of? We’re testing a new meta out and we have statistics to use for our test! My main thesis of my argument was that I’m unhappy with the meta bc teams are so similar, which is, inherently an opinion in that this can, evidently, make some people more happy.

Also I’m very aware of the rise of options like sing tuff and clef. Personally I don’t think they’re that great but definitely have room for growth. My short blurb with my dissatisfaction with the meta isn’t maliciously “ignoring” sing clef. This is a strange accusation. It also doesn’t really get at my argument. Sure sing clef is an interesting option but it’s still big 5 +1. Despite sing clef being used in NUSD and never before the whirl ban, centralization has gone up. Dispute the error on these numbers all you want but they’re the best we have right now. SD was supposed to be a testing ground for a whirl-less meta and quite honestly I’m not a fan.

Also also, I said fire leads suppress moth without the presence of whirl to check the fires.
 
I guess I should post now since I am involving myself in the discussing anyways. My bad if the points I am going to state here are incoherent. It's because I am really bad at explaining my thoughts.

First point - Personally, I don't want this discussion between whirl-less meta and with whirl meta because UU is expected to drop mons to us here in NU.

But that would be killing the discussion which is not good.

Second point - The stats leaning more towards the big 5 plus 1 comps may or may not necessarily mean that this metagame is more centralizing.

As mentioned in a post above, it may be because players in NUSD are using teams that are consistent thus the big 5 + 1 because NUSD is a high stake tour and not just a playground to test a new metagame.

Third point - The discussion should go around analyzing the lead metagame and the state of the mons. Not solely on stats imo.

Even if the stats are what we have for now for an objective point, the essence of the metagame is still in the state of the mons in the metagame. Although, I wouldn't delve on my thoughts about each mons for now because...

Fourth point - NUSD is still not over.

Some teams might be hiding strats for the playoffs. Week 7 will also be a good time for experimentation because some teams will have no stake at that point. I might play week 7 in rby slot again if my team will let me. I am not promising I'll come up with a new team that isn't big 5 plus 1 but I'll try.

We can start discussing these things though if the rby nu players are willing to share their analysis and the merits/demerits of each mon in the whirlless metagame. I'll hold off my thoughts about that for now.
 
okay, well neither fire lead cares particularly about poliwhirl lead. most players agree whirl was better in back anyway.

how is sing clef big 5 + 1? assuming u have mime zard sing clef and stoise, thats four mons. whats the “big 5” on a sing clef team. also, sing clef existed when whirl was legal also.

also sing tuff and sing clef are very different, and sing tuff is much less likely to be the sole sleeper.

soup u obv are encouraged to engage in metagame discussion and idk how my post is making u act like u cant do so. however u dont respond to any of the substantive points people are expressing, u just say “well we are wrong that stoise is less mandatory than before (for all the reasons that have been given), because #statistics.” or if u are trying to respond substantively, then i dont understand.
 
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ATTENTION TO ANYONE WHO IS IN SUPPORT OF A POLIWHIRL BAN: I do understand your points, but do you realize what people are gonna start using when Poliwhirl gets yeeted from the tier? They're gonna be using this little shitbaby right here.

poliwag-color.png

Yeah...Just think about how stupid that sounds.
 

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