Revisiting ADV UU

UUSD has concluded the Lapras test, and a vote is due to go up soon. Before it does though, I am pinging everyone who participated to share their thoughts if they so choose. And ofc anyone else should share their thoughts if they have any on Lapras specifically. Normally I would post all the relevant Lapras replays here but uhhhhh..... you know why that's not happening. The only saved replay is the Heysup v. Xrn game from Finals but I would urge everyone not to vote based on that one game since 1 replay is a very poor sample size.

Tagging everyone who won at least one game in UUSD and played at least 4 (though the actual voter list is much larger):

Xrn Heysup Chaos23333 gorex Sirwings HANTSUKI col49 SEA

My personal thoughts on Lapras:

I think it's fine. I don't consider it a negative presence, and it does give some more variety in the team options/building. Curse Lapras is kind of oppressive because it can't get crit, but if your team loses to Curse Lapras you probably also lose to Curse Walrein without a crit anyways. No other Lapras set is even close to problematic/oppressive and the non-Curse versions give you another Beller that isn't Amph (or Alt) or an offensive water with TBolt which is nice. I would vote to free it.
Lmao at that being the one game we have to look at.

Overall, I used Lapras almost every game in UUSD for the sake of variability since I was/am arguably the most scoutable adv uu player, not specifically because I think it is as good as Arcanine or Kanga (I really don't think it is). That being said, I would rank Lapras in the top 5 mons or at least top 10 simply because of its variability, bulk and extremely solid movepool (though it's physical move pool is limited).

I would say that overall people did not prepare for it enough unless they were overpreparing for Arcanine/Kanga by using Lanturn or Focus Punch/EQ Blastoise. I think it does not work as a Walrein replacement, but more so a different but kind of better Ampharos that covers off more threats than I think Ampharos does. That being said it can't blow through Kanga like Focus Punch Amph or counter CM Rest King or (ironically) curse Lapras like Amph can.

Curse Lapras ('SlaprasTM) is not nearly as problematic as it looked imo. In the one replay we have, I think it becomes a different game if a spike goes up and I can't just freely switch it in. People were not preparing for it at all. I think people relying on just critting Curse Walrein, Muk, and CM Slowking would have lost to those as well.

I know others have the philosophy is that we shouldn't free it unless it "makes the metagame better" but I can't really identify with that level of subjectivity. If you think we should just stop messing with the meta, I do get that though.

I would probably vote to free it.
 

EllingtonReborn

I'm Amity
is a Pre-Contributor
Now that we have made a proper tiering decision on Lapras, me and BigFatMantis held another survey just to check in with the playerbase again about how to continue the tiering process. I have received 16 votes, 3 less than last time, but the results are still just as helpful, and interesting changes have occured with the opinions of these questions over the span of half a year. I will be going over them and new questions given to me to ask.

Q1: On a scale of 1 to 5, how much do you enjoy the current ADV UU metagame?

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People are still fond of the metagame even with the addition of Lapras; no better, no worse.

Q2: How satisfied are you with the current tiering process being used to handle BL drops?

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Things still seem to be generally positive with the way the tiering process is going. Compared to the last survey, more people have voted on heavy satisfaction and no votes towards heavy dissatisfaction.

Q3: Do you think Kadabra should be revisited for a potential future drop?

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Kadabra has more votes in opposition to revisiting it compared to the previous survey where it was 15.8% "No", but the majority still lies in positive, albeit reluctant, favor. Kadabra can still be a worthy candidate to give another suspect towards.

Q4: We previously "unofficially" tested Armaldo but found it to be too strong at the time. Do you think we should look at Armaldo again now that the tier has added Arcanine and Lapras since then?

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Armaldo has a heavier amount of opposition compared to Kadabra, with the majority in negative favor. It doesn't seem worth our time right now to give it a further look even with "changes" to the meta compared to when it was suspect tested in early 2022.

Q5: How interested are you in a potential grand scale UUBL drop at once?

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I said in the last survey that I would be giving this question a closer look, and the results are wildly different this time around. In the previous survey, there was a bimodal distribution between heavy interest and heavy disinterest, people leaned strongly towards what they felt but the graph ended up balancing out with no certain favor. Here, we have an inverse, where much more people are in the middle with less strong votes. The graph is mostly neutral but the disinterest votes lean more towards 1 than the interest votes do towards 5. This question still has no common consensus on how people feel about a grand scale UUBL drop.

Q6: Other mons such as Zangoose and Donphan have been mentioned as potential drops in the future. Do you have an opinion on Zangoose, Donphan, or any other mons that could drop by themselves (as in, not a group drop)?

This question was open-ended and many people gave varying answers on the subject of what else can we drop individually. Here are some of these responses:
Zangoose is a cool mon and might be ok as another Normal option for faster paced teams, not sure if it's ok but I'd like to take a look. Donphan can't really drop without Weezing and by then it's more of a grand scale drop than a single drop.
Honestly, Donphan is almost def too much for the tier imo, way too strong and way too bulky on the phys side to become realistically manageable, on top of adv uu not having the best in terms of ground immunes, some of the flyers being dealt with hp rock or ancient power while the levitaters such as Solrock and Misdreavus take a substantial amount from hp ghost or dislike getting poisoned, and im not planning on consider Meganium to account for it, its a shame cuz it has some very nice utility but the tier cant handle it, Zangoose is a more realistic case, very strong and only an ok speed tier, but i do worry that its banded dedges are too strong to handle, being considerably stronger than scyther ones, also zangoose doesnt really add much to the tier for me to be interested on it taking part
I think Zangoose would be too strong (even w/ an Armaldo drop preceding it). SD sets for example seem like they have very little reliable counterplay thanks to its speed tier. Donphan I actually believe would be a very solid addition to the meta.
I highly support testing donphan, idt zangoose would be balanced so maybe later. I would wanna start mentions of Venusaur and Weezing, especially Venusaur as it's not THAT much better than vileplume.
free everything and we'll see how it goes
don’t drop them
Drop Donphan, do not drop Zangoose

Q7: When would be your ideal stopping point for the tiering process?

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The amount of "unsure" votes has shocked me on this question. However, in the graph, more people have voted "Further date" than "immediately", which leads me to think we can probably continue. There is definitely less support for continuing compared to last survey though so I think we would need to trek very carefully.

Q8: Do you have any additional thoughts/comments/concerns about the future of this tier?

Here are some more thoughts of insight:
I'm pretty on the fence for the grand scale UUBL drop. A balance would definitely have to be found between offensive and defensive threats so as to not overly affect the meta in one direction. Things would certainly be different going forward, but I feel it would bring slightly more positives than negatives in the long run. At the same time, I like the current tiering process so it's hard to say for me really.
either we drop all or we stop here lol i am pretty exhausted and tired of the current process and i know multiple other players are as well. what we did now was good! i dont think we need to go any further unless we completely rework everything. i personally am willing to go with what the playerbase wants as long as it's not "drop 1 mon and d*ck around for a quarter of a year" anymore (or rebanning arcanine but i dont think this will happen anyway). this has reached a good stopping point.
We need to free almost everything from BL but obviously have to do so in a sustainable way
Either stop here or drop all UUBLs
We should let the lapras meta settle for a bit.
As for my thoughts?
I dont think we should entertain the retiering prospect anymore and keep testing things, but what we absolutely must do is be transparent about our intentions and next time find more of a common middle ground on how to go about this, or to set a better example for future fiascos like this. We should also work towards getting better resources worked out.

It's very hard to know what the future of this tier is going to be, we dont have as much of a consensus as we did with Lapras and people have wildly varying opinions on what to do and where to go. Besides the people that want Kadabra to be given another individual look, it seems we have two options:

A. We stay where we are with Lapras and Arcanine as the main UUBLs that joined the tier and revisit this at a much further time.
B. We do a grand scale UUBL drop and start with a whole new ADV UU from the ground up.


Thank you to all the people that participated in the survey, your input has been very valuable!
 

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