Announcement RU Community Surveys & Results

[Feliburn]

Hey all. Following last gen's tradition, we'll start implementing community surveys that will help the council see how the players feel about the metagame, and take appropriate steps moving forward. We'll also be sharing a summary of the results, so keep an eye on this thread.

Starting with our first survey of the generation following the Flamigo ban. You can find it HERE.

We've decided to take a look at a few mons that have been talked about in recent times, including both popular Oricorio forms (mainly Pom-Pom, and Sensu to a lesser degree), Cetitan (and snow in general), Weavile, and Slowbro. These mons are all defining pieces in today's RU metagame, and they warrant a further look into their effect on the tier. We've also included a general Terastalization question just to get an idea of how the community feels about it, as we are rather curious, but there's no immediate action on it anytime soon.

This poll will be open until the 29th or the 30th, depending on when the replies stop coming. Thanks in advance for participating!

 

[Feliburn]

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER.

I'll be focusing on the main points of the survey. Just to get it out of the way, people did not feel very strongly about Slowbro (RIP), Weavile and Oricorio Sensu.

Replies

Next, it seems people find the current RU tier enjoyable, and I'm guessing it only got better with the newest tier shifts (at least I feel that way). Slowbro rising, and Iron Thorns and Grafaiai dropping give the meta a new level of complexity, and it becomes less reliant on fat cores to win games.

Now for the big bad bullies of the metagame. People feel pretty strongly about doing something about Cetitan and Oricorio Pom-Pom. In Cetitan's case, people mentioned how the Pokémon itself is the issue rather than Snow itself, which seems accurate. The RU council has already discussed the next steps, and we'll be posting an update on this shortly!

Replies

When asked about other problematic Pokémon, we got maybe every single RU tiered Pokémon mentioned ROFL. The most common answers were Krookodile, Cloyster and Revavroom, but none was common enough to warrant any side discussion. Also, shoutout to this one guy:

And finally, it seems the most common thought about Beraldo is that he is... bald? But that he is generally a nice guy!!

 

[EviGaro]

The second RU survey of the gen is out!

There are a lot of options available that we would like everyone to consider, but to be clear this isn't anywhere close to a voting slate for us. We would just rather have as much opinions on as many points as possible. Hence also a question about the remaining RUBL that we did not vote unban on as Home drops happened. For somewhat obvious reasons, we not going to vote on the other RUBL mons - Gyarados and such - for the time being, so they are not included.

Survey should be open for the week!

 

[EviGaro]

Alright, here are the results of the last survey:

Replies

- People seem to mostly enjoy the metagame, which considering how few bans we made and a new DLC is encouraging. Competitive level is lower though but not by much.
- Interestingly, no option really stands out. Armarouge and Bisharp both have near 70% of the replies within the 3-5 range, which makes some sense according to a lot of discussion being held, but neither really gain a lot of traction in the five range. Therefore it's very difficult to see either as a valid option towards speedy action.
- On the opposite end, Diancie and Wo-Chien find themselves with near 60% of the voters in the 1-2 range. This might related to the idea that people are generally more lukewarm to target balance staples, as they're more required to give the tier some structure than the big offensive threats. However, Wo-Chien also gets the highest proportion of "5" votes. While it's still fairly small, it does speak of some polarization in how the mon is viewed.
- On the "something else" spectrum, Kilowattrel and nothing lol were tied for the lead. Kilowattrel had a fairly good post about it, so it's not that surprising. An option that garnered less interest, Thundurus-I, did get a major buff in the DLC. Does that change minds? In the other options, both Slither Wing and Typhlosion-Hisui got three votes. Those are all very small numbers, however.
- On RUBL:

Not everyone voted (COULD SOMEONE HAVE TOLD ME I FORGOT TO MAKE THE QUESTION MANDATORY) but Zarude ran away with it, Should this be retested?
- With regards to Pentathlon, I did see some concerns about the tour, and other options suggested, like one Ubers is doing or the way UU makes their players remove a gen. I think on the latter this already happens in Generations though, and the point of this tour wasn't necessarily to get to an optimal format that we already have somewhere else, but to make it something else that makes all the gens unavoidable. Of course, it's very similar to Generations, more specifically the older version of it when current gen had to be included, but out of the options we had it was the most popular and easiest to fit. I am not sure if it will be back in the same way, since it fit a very specific need for this year, but there was also some positive feedback. Though one user said it favours dinosaurs, but like a lot of zoomers did very well in that tour? Ok Ajna won but like
- Wally is still searching for the users who called him "lame" and a "fraud". Anyone who has seen them is suggested to enter contact with the offended party.

In general though, we did speak about this survey in RU Council for the last two days. Like most of the playerbase though, we don't particularly feel strongly about anything so far, except maybe some push on Armarouge too. If you did feel strongly enough on some mons that you put them drastically above the mean, I do encourage you to talk about it in the metagame discussion thread! Also, I did mention it with Thundurus-I, but has the DLC changed your answers?

 

[EviGaro]

The third survey is out!

As SCL nears its end, the survey is a bit more focused on trends that ended up concerning to those builders in the later stages. As such, the combo of Magnezone and Fezandipiti took off during that tour, and both mons offer qualities that make them worthy of a closer look, with Magnezone's incredible power boosted by specs or Fezandipiti's bulk and ability to set up with an incredible ability. Iron Jugulis and Lycanroc-Dusk were recently unbanned, and both have been excellent since. Zoroark-Hisui and Maushold were both voted on by the Council, and we would like to ask others for their opinion on them.

I'll try to collect responses next Friday!!!!

 

[Yourwelcomethanku]

Here are the results of the survey that was released on the twenty fifth of November

Most users seem to find the metagame fairly competitive and generally enjoyable, with most results for enjoyability at an eight and competitiveness generally being six or higher.

Enjoyability and Competitiveness

To summarize the ranks: Fezandipiti and Magnezone are the lowest, Lycanroc-Dusk is kind of in the middle, Horoark is ranked highly, and Iron Jugulis and Maushold are the highest. I will also note that Yanmega got an additional 19 votes as an other pick.

As for speculation on why people may have answered the way they did: Magnezone and Fezandipiti kind of go together, with Magnezone trapping Tinkaton for Fezandipiti and allowing it to sweep. However, outside of trapping Magnezone is an alright wallbreaker with decent defensive utility. It can even fail in its goal of trapping if its main target, Tinkaton, elects for Bulldoze. Fezandipiti getting ranked lowly may be a result of people seeing Magnezone as the perpetrator by enabling Fezandipiti. Fezandipiti can thrive against bulky teams with a physically defensive Taunt Calm Mind set but it's also not invincible, may need to commit to terastallization to sweep, and it isn't super immediately threatening in of itself.

Lycanroc-Dusk got decent support but not enough to support any action. It's pretty straightforward as a really strong wallbreaker or sweeper but it does have checks like Hippowdon and Quagsire, and on Choice Band sets, it may need to predict, while Swords Dance could struggle to set up.

Horoark is a fast and powerful wallbreaker that causes mindgames with Illusion, so it's unsurprising to see it with high support.

The highest is Maushold, then Iron Jugulis. Maushold is extremely annoying since it sort of obligates you to run a Rocky Helmet or Ghost, else you suffer against its powerful boosted Population Bombs. Iron Jugulis is extremely fast and powerful; with Booster Energy and being able to resist Accelerock by terastallizing, few Pokemon can outspeed and revenge kill it. Between its STAB moves and Earth Power, it threatens just about everything from Chesnaught, to Slither Wing, to Magnezone, to Slowbro, and it's extremely difficult to wall. On top of this, its forth moveslot can make it even more difficult to handle. Taunt can prevent Waters from recovering or clicking Toxic against it, and Charge Beam or Work Up can give Iron Jugulis a boost. Iron Jugulis is probably the single best late game cleaner in the metagame, and it can be a potent wallbreaker too.

The survey results + the opinions of the council have culminated in the Iron Jugulis suspect test that is already up.

Ninetales, Torterra, Politoed, and Yanmega all got decent to high (in Yanmega's case) amounts of votes but these results aren't really relevant. Nothing very notable in the something else answers either.

Ranking of Pokemon

The support to unban Zarude was really split, and it's likely that Zarude is going to stay banned until the shifts hit RU in February. We didn't use the qualified users thing this time around, but a decent amount of qualified users seem to have participated.

Zarude and Qualified Users

 

[Feliburn]

Is that our FOURTH SURVEY OF THE GEN?!?!?!?!

Following Zarude's ban, we wanted to gauge the community's opinion on the current top threats in the metagame. The mons listed in this survey have been deemed by the council to be the top breakers in the current meta, and as such we'd like to know how everyone feels about these mons, so we can see what the appropriate course of action is.

We are hosting a separate survey with the recent high placing tournament players to kind of see how the current meta differentiates in both tour play and ladder.

Thanks for voting!

 

[Feliburn]

Alright, so here are the results of the survey. For some context, we hosted a separate form for "qualified players". These players are those who have qualified for the RULT playoffs, or made it to the top 16 of the ongoing RU seasonal.

Qualified Voters

Non-Qualified Voters

• On average, the tier seems to be considered a 7 in both competitiveness and enjoyable.
• Hoopa-Unbound was considered the biggest issue in both the qualified and nonqualified forms. Instant action has been taken already, and you can see the result here.
• Following Hoopa-Unbound, the qualified voters had Enamorus-Therian ranked as the second most dangerous mon, while the nonqualified had Iron Leaves. It's still up in the air what the right course of action moving forward is, but just know that we have our eyes on these mons.
• Thundurus-Therian and Revavroom received very mixed votes, with the average being a 3/5 by the qualified players, and a 4/ by the nonqualified players.
• Besides these mons, people also put Blastoise listed a lot under other threats to keep an eye on. We also had other votes like the fat psychic types and stuff like Maushold and Cobalion, but Blastoise was mentioned the most.
• Feliburn-Hisui is either considered an upgrade or a fraud, there was no in between.