Smogon Grand Slam XI Tier Discussion

[Boat]

With Ubers being brought back into the official tournament circuit (SCL), the question of what to do about Grand Slam is inevitable. We now have six viable choices for a five tier Slam, and obviously every tier wants to be included. The TD team is currently agreed that UU, RU, and NU should be sure locks. The only other tiers we will consider are PU, LC, and Ubers.

- This thread will be closely moderated; tier bashing will be deleted and potentially infracted if toxic enough. Use this thread to argue the merits of a tier, not to push others down.
- Remember that the primary goal is to have a competitive tournament, not necessary an inclusive one. Solutions that attempt to create a compromise may be feasible, but ensure that they are motivated by us having six solid choices, rather than trying avoid the issue in the name in inclusivity.

 

[Tony]

Thank you for making this thread. Unsurprisingly, I'm posting in support of Ubers and I want to start by thanking Nayrz for his incredible work in bringing the Ubers community back to where it is now. Icemaster and I didn't have to initiate anything on that front when we took over, so I want to give him the credit he's due. It's important to touch on this, as community based problems and widespread cheating were the reasons Ubers was removed from Grand Slam in the first place. The metagame was never the problem. As evidenced by the decision to include Ubers in SCL earlier this year, the TD team already acknowledges this issue has officially been resolved. Keeping that in mind, there is no real reason Ubers couldn't return to Grand Slam as well. The community and the metagame will both be ready for it.

Now, how do we make that happen? First, let me reiterate something ABR mentioned in the thread Luthier started last weekend:

The tournaments community and its leadership should be concerned with improving tournaments. This is the primary goal or agenda of people like myself. Secondarily, the question then becomes which tiers benefit the tours community. I and many others don’t care what tours do for different tiers, just the reverse. If that’s LC, cool. If that’s not LC, also cool. There is nothing inherently wrong with “tier bashing” or pitting tiers against each other.

It's bluntly put, but exactly right. This thread will be another instance of pitting tiers against each other and the respective mains making arguments in defense of their metagame, and that's okay, even if it can be contentious. We should not make our official tournaments worse to appease everyone's communities equally. Frankly, no tier that isn't current generation OU is owed any representation in an official setting by default. Obviously, lower tiers are very much a part of the official circuit right now through both Grand Slam and SCL, but that doesn't mean change can't be made within that fabric. Sadly, Ubers was rightfully removed from official tournaments too at the time, despite being one of the original Grand Slam tiers.

Like others have already stated, my ideal format would also be Ubers / UU / RU / NU / PU. Five non-OU tiers that function similarly in terms of mechanics, with a logical decrease in Pokemon viability as you go down the list. LC being played at level 5 warps these otherwise consistent basics vastly, especially EVs, damage rolls/calcs, Berry Juice existing and speed tiers. Meanwhile, expanding Grand Slam back to the dreaded 6 or even 7 Open format would not only complicate the playoff stage, but player burnout is already an existing issue as it is with 'just' 5 qualifying tournaments. Dropping Little Cup for Ubers definitely makes the most sense for Grand Slam right now, in my opinion.

 

[avarice]

PU during SCL wasn't its best. The Drampa suspect (as said by TL) was overdue and the late action kept Drampa in the tier throughout the entire tournament. That said, I think the tier is only going to be improving and it'd be really strange for PU to be excluded when it's an official usage tier just the same as the others locked in. It just happens to be lower on the totem pole, not that it would be logical to exclude RU but include NU etc. but I fail to see why PU isn't locked in as is really. I don't think you can really only talk about x tier's merits without at least implying the other tiers are doing it worse but /shrug. PU is mostly balance and bulky offense right now given how bad cheese is in the tier so it leads to many fun games, encourage people to try it out or watch some of the ongoing puwc games

 

[soulgazer]

In class so I refuse to write a massive paragraph that means nothing ( Finchinator ).

PU has been a good tier, is easy to pick up because its NU lite, and is quite popular... which means more signups, more competition, more new blood.

Alternatively, and possibly the better idea, is to make each cup a trophy. If you take a look at ABR's banner, we already have too many trophies anyway so why not add more?

 

[Sabella]

I think Tony's post encompasses everything most people would say so I don't have much to add really besides that I agree that LC should be removed from the current grand slam format and replaced with Ubers. I see no reason to question or remove PU as tony said its inline with the rest of the tiers and the pokemon decrease in viability as you go down in tier. LC doesn't follow the same consistency as the other 5 tiers. The calcs are crazy the items used are different and I think with ubers back in its current state LC just seems like a huge outlier in this tournament. I don't like the idea of 7 tier slam its just too much to try and schedule in one week especially if you are playing other tournaments too. To summarize UU NU PU Ubers and RU in and LC out.

 

[Star]

As someone who’s number 1 in the lc hof (by far) and also been on the council for over half a decade, I endorse this proposal.

Imo LC in slam makes absolutely no sense and the only reason it’s really there over Ubers is bc it was somehow decided that LC should be included a decade ago and Ubers had a mazar/stag problem a few years ago. No matter how much people try to spin it, level 5 is certainly fundamentally different from the other slam tiers and ubers is a much more coherent fit, with a far easier learning curve for those who play normal metagames.

quoting my post in the other thread to not repeat myself.

Given that PU is also up for discussion, I do just want to add a few words about that. The cohesion argument is even stronger for PU than it is for Ubers given that PU operates the exact same way as UU/RU/NU. Having all 5 tiers in slam played at level 100 and with no weird distinct mechanics (lc evs, speed tiers, items etc.) is the most friendly to newer players and literally anybody trying to pick up the tiers and compete.

 

[Coconut]

If you want the best competitive format for your tournaments, Little Cup is by far the best of the allotted tiers, and even matches up to the "locked" tiers. Including Little Cup as one of the tiers is the best choice to meet the goal stated in the OP, which is to have the best competitive tournaments moving forward. Mechanical uniformity has never been and should not be Grand Slam's intention. Ubers was never removed because of its metagame, it was removed due to questions of the competitive player base. Little Cup has an extremely talented competitive player base along with a format that consistently gives solid results. If we're going to look at numbers, as seen in the post by soulgazer, then let's do some due diligence. Ladder stats simply aren't relevant when we're talking about tournaments. Competitive events on Smogon are. Here are the most recent seasonal sign-ups for Ubers, PU, and LC.

The difference between LC and these tiers is massive. Here are circuit tours around the same time as the listed ones above for UU, RU, and NU.

Now, this might be a little unfair as some of these tournaments are a little more prestigious than others, but just from looking throughout the year, LC has been among the strongest of all circuit tournaments throughout the year. We're not just talking about circuit though, let's talk about slam as well.

PU upon its original inception had a very popular open, but the new car smell has quickly expired, and it has become the least popular Open, and based on trends, will continue to decline. On the other hand, LC Open signups have been consistent year to year and have shown more prestige, despite being constantly thrown to the last week of the year. Note the decline in 2021 due to the change in timing of the tournament. My apologies to dark mode users.

PU vs. LC Opens 2019-2021

PU's had a stark dropoff in the number of signups year after year, to the point where LC completely eclipsed them in the previous year.

I very much understand that we cannot include everyone in 2021, but the crux of ABR's post which Tony wonderfully cites, is that we are looking for the most competitive format. By raw numbers and by top-level players, this is LC until someone shows me otherwise. LC has a top-level player base that absolutely dwarfs PU. A Little Cup player has won the Little Cup open every single year for a long time. A PU main has not won the PU Open since its inception. Additionally, we can talk about the most recent SCL, where the majority of people on the positive half of this list would not even consider themselves to be PU mains. The Little Cup community has a strong playerbase, where I said in the previous thread that the 15th best LCer is SCL ready. Ninjadog and freezai, two of the strongest LC players also didn't play in LC in SCL opting to manage and play other tiers respectively, to show the depth of the playerbase. And it's not like this tier is completely foreign to the outsiders, an extremely high amount of non-mainers get really far in the LC Open every single year. The LC Open has been won by non-mainers before (shoutouts PDC). And players from other communities pick up LC and work hard to become top players very quickly. kythr and Expulso over the course of one to two tournaments have become some of the highest level players in Little Cup. This tier is not hard to play. EVs are standardized, rolls are less random, items are very predictable. All of these points genuinely make no sense if you have an understanding of how Little Cup works.

I understand the concept of wanting to make everything look the same but frankly, that isn't the highest level of competition. The current Grand Slam format is fine as is; there is no need to adjust it to make it more approachable to new players. If you would like to prove otherwise, you cannot use both the standardization of tiers while also making the claim that we want tournaments to be at the highest level. Prove that the current system is not working and that we need to change to a format where all of the tiers are connected to each other, and when you do, there's no solution to somehow include Ubers but exclude ZU following this logic. Prove that the current format has failed and that this would lead to a better solution.

 

[Corporal Levi]

Like others have already stated, my ideal format would also be Ubers / UU / RU / NU / PU. Five non-OU tiers that function similarly in terms of mechanics, with a logical decrease in Pokemon viability as you go down the list. LC being played at level 5 warps these otherwise consistent basics vastly, especially EVs, damage rolls/calcs, Berry Juice existing and speed tiers.

I don't think this frame of reference is correct. LC does hold moderate mechanical differences from level 100 tiers, but this is irrelevant to grand slam's original vision, which is described in the original thread as so:

The Smogon Grand Slam is a new tournament designed to ensure every Smogon-supported Gen V tier is represented in an official tournament. While the decision to return the Smogon Tour back to its multi-generation origins caused quite the stir, the Smogon Grand Slam will allow players of the UU, Ubers, RU, NU, and LC metagames to test their skills in a high-level tournament setting with a trophy on the line.

Mechanical similarity isn't grand slam's goal, and adapting to more than one metagame is a skill.

The same idea applies to classic, which has much less mechanical uniformity than grand slam. The 30 second bullet list of mechanical differences arising from level 5 (EVs, itemization, roll distribution) is totally incomparable to the mechanical differences that any one of the first four generational shifts brings.

The fundamental difference between what is and isn't a grand slam tier, or more generally, a Smogon-supported tier as the introductory grand slam post words it, is competitive quality, and in this regard, LC completely dwarfs PU and Ubers.

I don't see why ladder popularity should even be considered when tour popularity is measurable (and the current slam tiers already largely disregard ladder popularity). From the seasonal signups coco screened, LC has far more signups than either PU or Ubers. For opens, LC Open has more consistent signups than PU Open, which has steadily decreased since its inception.

These stats do disfavour Ubers a bit compared to LC and PU because simply not being a slam tier could lower interest in their seasonals. The LC and Ubers playerbases, when the latter saw consistent inclusion, both produced players who have seen success in other tiers. The PU playerbase, despite its consistent inclusion, has been much less capable of succeeding outside of PU.

So going by competitive strength as the important metric, I think it makes sense that LC and Ubers should be included in slam.

 

[Vulpix03]

I want to respond to coco's post as there are some very obvious flaws in their arguments when addressing pu and its place in the tournament scene.

Gunna start by addressing total sign ups for PU open and Grand Slam as a whole.

Grand Slam overall has seen a significant decline in total sign ups over the past 5 years. Every year each individual open has seen a steady decrease in sign ups, with the 2021 season being the sharpest decline yet. Each open saw a decline of a couple hundred sign ups, with RU open dropping a total of 321 sign ups from 2020-2021. This decline is not an individual tier's problem, but a smogon wide problem.

On the other hand, LC Open signups have been consistent year to year

This is simply false. For reference:

• LC open 2018: 740 sign ups
• LC open 2019: 517 sign ups
• LC open 2020: 540 sign ups
• LC open 2021: 382 sign ups

Yes, LC open this year did have more total sign ups than PU open did however the following statement is just false:

to the point where LC completely eclipsed them in the previous year.

The word "eclipsed" is misleading and flat out incorrect. The sign up difference between the two opens this year was 27 sign ups (382 v 355). This is a normal number when comparing sign up counts for opens.

Now, on to the tiers playerbase.

A PU main has not won the PU Open since its inception

Yes, but they have come damn close. In the most recent PU open, 4 out of 6 of the semifinalists were "mainers". Termi and Greybaum are members of the PU council and Lockjaw and Mushamu are active members of the community. Now, Watashi, who is one of the best players on this website, happened to beat Termi and Mushamu in finals, however that should not be used against the playerbase.

Additionally, we can talk about the most recent SCL, where the majority of people on the positive half of this list would not even consider themselves to be PU mains

To begin, PU lost a few mainstays this year. Ktut quit, Xiri played nu, etc. This led to lesser experienced players getting picked, and in some cases these picks did not work out. We also had some breakout stars, however, with the main one being xavgb . This past SCL also saw big name tour players fail. Bruno and Erz were both thrown into pu and went 0-5 combined, with all of their losses being to "mainers". For reference those mainers were Tj (x2), Termii and Tlenit. Bruno also lost to Excal who isn't a mainer but he was an active member of the community and was grinding PU all SCL.

The two points I made above should clarify that PU mains can in fact hold their own. Despite some of our biggest names leaving we have an abundance of up and coming players who will eventually fill those shoes. Our playerbase is not an issue.

Lastly, the PU community is united and we love our tier. I am not going to pretend that I know the politics of LC, or that I am familiar enough with the tier to have informed opinions on tiering issues and the like. That being said, when one of the most prominent and dominant tournament players over the past couple of years (Luthier), and someone who has been on the LC council for 5 years (Star) both come out and say they think LC is a mess and should not be included in SCL / Slam, then there is clearly some sort of issue with the tier. Now whether or not this issue can be fixed by the LC leaders is something I do not know. What I do know is that gen 8 PU is a great tier and we will continue in our efforts to make it even better. Excluding PU would be a waste of a wonderful tier.

 

[Vulpix03]

Double posting cuz I didn't see this while writing:

The PU playerbase, despite its consistent inclusion, has been much less capable of succeeding outside of PU.

Our very own chlo was the 14th seed of your circuit. Why the playoffs is top 12 and not top 16 is beyond me. TJ has won a SWSH smogon tour and has won an ORAS OU ssnl. Also has had incredible success in UbersPL and Ubers circuit tours. Ktütverde (rip) has made smogon tour and olt playoffs. Raiza has had plenty of success outside of PU. The list can continue.

 

[Specs]

Wanting to support PU getting in. SCL had good showings. Both in playing ability and building. The meta game requires some boxes to be checked in the builder however that doesn't stop us from seeing diverse teams. Centiskorch rose up, Gallade was a big rise during SCL and is still going strong now, Specs Guno (Galarian Articuno) skyrocketing up as a set. This tier is both competitive and diverse. Adaptations are made, new ideas are thrown around all the time, I don't think there are many issues wrt how competitive PU is. Our World Cup is going on right now, so if anyone is interested in checking out very recent games go ahead and check out some replays, and/or the usage stats!

If numbers are the reason PU isn't locked into this tour already, I don't really know what to say. They don't mean a whole lot to me either way. If our overall goal is for the most competitive tournament possible that doesn't seem like extremely concrete reasoning. If it's PU not having a mainer win Open, does this actually degrade our player base? The players winning are great, and we also have great mainers who are capable of winning. This most recent open saw termi, mushamu, lockjaw, Greybaum, and pattek (who was active in our tours at the time) all in Semi's. Finals were watashi, mushamu, and termi. Watashi won but, is this not proof we don't just have a bunch of random tour players running in to farm. This point seems extremely overblown. Not winning a tournament doesn't mean there isn't competition.

I'd love if all 3 of these tiers could be in ngl. lc is generally fun, I don't think its very hard to get into, ect. Ubers has improved a lot, I want them to have a shot here again. As such, no bashing from me. Just wanted to defend my tier a little bit.

I think PU should be locked in Slam. Either way I'm wanting the best for this tournament and will respect the decision made in the end. Thanks for reading!

Also thanks to everyone who has supported us, it's appreciated

 

[ABR]

Again, nothing to say about specific tiers here. However...

I really don't understand why people on any side of the argument are posting "this tier's playerbase is good" and "mainers do well in this tier's open" type of stuff. If this was for inclusion in a team tour, sure. A tier's 10 best players (roughly) are going to be the sole competitors throughout a tour in SCL. But for slam, you have hundreds of people playing all of the included tiers. How LC's top 10 fares vs PU's top 10 is entirely irrelevant. What does matter is how the general tours playerbase would fare in the respective tiers. I'm not claiming to know the answer to that question but nonetheless I believe that should be the framework for argumentation.

 

[Expulso]

I think that a 6 tier slam is the optimal choice by a huge margin. Playoffs should use a system where the higher seed picks the first tier, lower seed picks the second tier, higher seed picks 3rd, lower picks 4th, and then higher picks 5th. This leaves the only unpicked tier as the lower seed's 3rd choice (or lower). I don't see any competitive disruption caused by expanding to 6 tiers.

I know that people have raised objections to non-5 tier Slam in the past, saying that we used to have it and they hated it. To the best of my knowledge (and correct me if I am wrong), this version of slam had 7 tiers, including Doubles, which is far more mechanically different than LC or any of the tiers in Slam. Playing 7 opens also sounds impossible, whereas 6 feels a bit more realistic. If 2 opens go up per week, it would be similar to how it is now but if you had another open go up at the same time as UU. I'd hate playing in a Slam with 7 opens + Doubles, but I think that 6 tiers is perfectly reasonable.

Ubers seems to be almost 100% in, so i wont discuss them - the Ubers SCL pool was stacked, and I know that a ton of subs (or even undrafted players) for Ubers were high-level, very proven players (such as Aberforth who did an amazing job working with M Dragon). The community is very active and there's not really a compelling reason for Ubers to be the tier that is excluded.

LC and PU are thus the tiers realistically considered for possible removal from Slam.
The case for a Ubers-UU-RU-NU-PU Slam is that LC is more difficult to pick up and mechanically different from the level 100 tiers, so it is the logical choice for exclusion. It is true that there is a mechanical difference between LC and the level 100 tiers, but at the same time that feels like a really shitty reason to exclude LC. Picking it up requires more effort than the level 100 tiers but still doesnt require that much effort; I just had to explore the calcs for an hour or less, watch teammates' games in a teamtour to see how the standard sequences play out (i.e. what switches into what), and learn the standard spreads that LC mons run. It then felt the same as the level 100 tiers ... and when you pick up a level 100 tier doing the latter two things is good anyways. I couldnt tell u what to switch into Ho-Oh or how much speed Yveltal runs, for instance.

as a tl;dr - the level difference between LC and UU-PU is sort of "a distinction without a difference". Sure, it matters when you first open the calc, but it doesn't suddenly make LC an uncompetitive tier that has no merit. the LC community is really active, and every game I've had in LC teamtours has been competitive, engaging, and unique. (Yes, you can innovate in LC even tho everyone uses Mienfoo. Check out Yveltal's usage in Ubers -- that hasn't stopped them from coming up with lots of unique strategies/archetypes)


The case for a Ubers-UU-RU-NU-LC slam seems to be that PU is less competitive and active than LC; the most competitive tour consists of the five most competitive tiers, so LC should be in over PU. PU's SCL was kinda shaky but I find SCL playerbase quality to be a weird metric for making decisions about a whole tier's inclusion; the top 10 players only make up, what, 4% of the Open signups? (Sniped by ABR) I also cant help but feel that this would be a shitty reason to exclude PU. What could they have done differently: get more signups for their seasonals (which were on par with RU / NU)? Have a few more SCL-level players?

Remember that the primary goal is to have a competitive tournament, not necessary an inclusive one. Solutions that attempt to create a compromise may be feasible, but ensure that they are motivated by us having six solid choices, rather than trying avoid the issue in the name in inclusivity.

I think that we absolutely have 6 solid choices; all of the 5 tiers that were in Slam last year were fine inclusions, it was a competitive tour, and there isn't a justification to remove any one of them. Sure, LC is different, but I don't think that difference poses a meaningful barrier to the tour's competitiveness -- it isn't that hard to pick up. Sure, PU didn't look great in SCL, but I don't think the top 10 of the playerbase looking below average is a reason to completely cut off the tier's representation in an individual. All 5 tiers are proven to be competitive; the new addition, Ubers, is widely agreed to also be a competitive, worthy addition to the tour. 6 tier Slam wouldn't have any major problems; the picking system described above ensures it doesn't imbalance playoffs, and the complaints about how much 7 tier slam sucked arent rly valid since this doesn't have the albatross of Doubles in a singles tour.

The benefit to the tour of removing any one of these deserving tiers is far less than the cost of cutting off one of these tiers (which are proven to be competitive!) from representation in an official individual tournament. Because all these tiers are deserving and having 6>5 wouldn't affect the competitiveness of Slam, I strongly believe Slam should be 6 tiers: Ubers, UU, RU, NU, PU, and LC.

 

[eden]

is there a reason having say 6 or 7 cups and being locked to signing up for only 5 of them not an option to look into? counter player fatigue/end the jostling over spots to some degree

"locking a tour's formats" never seems to work long term anyway, there's always whining about it down the line

 

[freezai]

It does not matter who wins PU Open because there's a lot of variance that goes into a single-elimination bo3. In general, comparing the top players for a tier does not make sense when talking about Slam. When talking about SCL, yes it makes sense, but not for Grand Slam.

To me what's most compelling is the number of signups that little cup gets. Little cup circuit tours get anywhere from 150 to 200 signups while PU gets around 100 - 130. Obviously, signup count is not the end all be all, but it's very clear that Little Cup is more popular than PU at a tournament level. I discount ladder statistics because PU has high usage stats for the same reason AG has high usage, it's a magnet for low investment casual players.

My fundamental question is: How can you justify removing a tier that has successfully run for literally 10 years in favor of a tier that doesn't even have more people playing it?

 

[Boat]

is there a reason having say 6 or 7 cups and being locked to signing up for only 5 of them not an option to look into? counter player fatigue/end the jostling over spots to some degree

"locking a tour's formats" never seems to work long term anyway, there's always whining about it down the line

one concern about this is that one Open would get drastically lower signups due to it being the least popular. for example, if this was Classic, I think most people agree that we'd end up with a very very small RBY Cup. I do think that isn't quite as drastic in Slam, and I don't know which tier it would be, but it's a very real possibility.

 

[ninjadog]

Another thing that is in LC's favour (and Ubers though I'm not as familiar with it) that I would like to add is that due to not experiencing tier shifts it's more consistent year round so being more difficult to get into is offset by the fact that you can comfortably learn it in advance, the recent Vullaby ban is an exception to this but that's really the only major shift that has occurred in recent years.

Anyway whilst I think LC certainly deserves to be in I strongly agree with Expulso that we should consider a 6 tier format, all 3 tiers have legitimate cases for being included and every tier in SCL should receive some form of representation, but I think everyone would agree that any of these tiers having their own trophy tour would be stupid.

In terms of increased burnout most people are just going to be passed teams from friends and play their series so I don't really see that being a major issue, and in terms of learning tiers I think learning the 6 slam tiers is a lot easier than say each classic tier due to them having significantly more similarities. Another option to help with this is making it so only your top 5 runs count so you're not forced to tryhard every single tier if you don't want to.

A playoff format would be very simple, the higher seed chooses to lock a tier first followed by the lower seed until they have 5, this way each player gets to play at worst their best 2 tiers and could actually increase the quality of playoffs as we'll see less games where both players are unfamiliar with a tier.

edit: another playoff format merritt suggested that is prob better is: lower seed pick, higher seed pick, lower seed pick, higher seed pick 2 of remaining 3

I also think it's v dumb that these threads are set up and phrased in a way that encourage lower tiers to attack each other when the reasoning they can't all be included bc of 'prestige' or 'competitiveness' or whatever else is very arbitrary.

 

[Adaam]

Agree 100% with Expulso a - 6 tier slam should be the the clear decision. We had 7 tiers in Slam in its fifth rendition, where we counted a player's top 5 runs only. I see no reason why we cannot repeat this model with 6 tiers.

one concern about this is that one Open would get drastically lower signups due to it being the least popular. for example, if this was Classic, I think most people agree that we'd end up with a very very small RBY Cup. I do think that isn't quite as drastic in Slam, and I don't know which tier it would be, but it's a very real possibility.

Denying a tier entry into slam for this reason seems unnecessarily preemptive. It's impossible to prove this claim without first running a 6 tier slam. Even then, we have no current reason to believe one tier is going to have drastically less signups than the other. For reference, when we did have 7 tiers, signups were as follows:

UU - 601
RU - 484
NU - 448
PU - 367
Ubers - 387
LC - 396
DOU - 241

The outliers here are UU and DOU, the latter of which can be explained by the severe mechanical difference between singles and doubles. Besides that, the signup ranges of the remaining tiers are similar, especially the three on the chopping block.

Lastly, I think the arguments on how "good" a tier's metagame are subjective and silly. Poek won UU open last year using solely screens, but nobody advocated for removing UU from all tournaments.

EDIT: Regarding burnout, this is also a silly argument as I'd argue Smogontour or OLT are more intense than a 6 cup slam. The former requires playing up to 2 live tournaments a weekend (!) for the entire regular season, while OLT can involve playing hundreds, even thousands of games for possibly no playoff entry. 1 extra cup is not going to be the straw that breaks the gamer's wrist.

 

[zee]

6 tier slam is getting a bit of hype so I'm going to bring up a best-finish limit (BFL)

BFLs are something that we use in vgc tournaments. you can play in 20 locals if you want but only your best 6 finishes go toward your point totals. i think applying something similar to a theoretical 6 tier slam that would be more beneficial than locking participants to 5 opens (i think it's totally fair to assume one open will drastically suffer in signups if you're locked to 5) while still not being as harshly punished for choosing to skip an open if 6 is really too many for you, while those that make the effort to play all 6 are rewarded by having their worst finish not counted against them.

just in case this gets asked: in the event where, say, someone's slam points are 5 3 3 1 1 1, you'd just remove one of the 1s, making their total 13.

i am Not A Qualified Person to talk about tiers in this tournament but just wanted to put that on the table. I'm indifferent on whether the tour ends up with 5 or 6 opens. no opinion on tier selection breakdown for playoffs either.

 

[Fiend]

There is one specific aspects of Grand Slam which are simply being overlooked when trying to force LC out of it: tournaments need to be as competitive as possible.

Following this, it seems absurd to seek to remove LC from this tournament given the player base. It’s not so much that LCers are good at LC, but instead that LC has shown to be a place where high level Pokemon is played. We have several examples of LC players doing great in other tiers, and a deep roster of top tier players doing well within LC too. LCers have shown up year after year and competed well since ORAS. As many people were exceptionally quick to point out, non-mainers do well in LC. Tour players have flaunted their abilities in the tier, making deep runs every Open and generally showing strong aptitude for the metagame every team tour. This is despite the differences harped on ad nauseum.

If you must cut a metagame, I sincerely struggle to understand why it would be LC. I get I’m a tier leader which has an obligation to argue this point regardless of legitimacy, but there’s really nothing about LC that demonstrates it as lesser than the other two choices. It just does not make sense. People show up and want to play our individuals. This has been true for a long time. And this is demonstrably truer for LC than it is for PU or Ubers. The LC Open has shown this despite being shuffled late into the tour (which has always wounded sign up counts). It is a significant issue for Slam if the decision of this thread results in an underwhelmingly small Open. This has always been a concern when deciding the Slam tiers.

Tour players and mainers alike do well in the tier. That’s to the benefit of Slam that LC is included. If you invest time into the tier, you start to get results. That’s part of what helps LC be a continually competitive space. The fundamentals of the tier are simply not the great barrier to entry that people are quick to claim they are. LC has shown year after year that it is a tier deserving representation within officials with a player base that has more than earned representation in Slam. Let’s focus on making a tournament that rewards competitive communities which have demonstrated their abilities. If that requires 6 tiers, so be it.

I am not going to pretend that I know the politics of LC, or that I am familiar enough with the tier to have informed opinions on tiering issues and the like. That being said, when one of the most prominent and dominant tournament players over the past couple of years (Luthier), and someone who has been on the LC council for 5 years (Star) both come out and say they think LC is a mess and should not be included in SCL / Slam, then there is clearly some sort of issue with the tier. Now whether or not this issue can be fixed by the LC leaders is something I do not know.

I wouldn’t usually respond to something like this, but I really feel like it is an affront to my players. I’m perfectly content with Star and Luthier having and voicing their own opinions. But I’ll be sure to ask them not to have opinions next time, to avoid the humiliation.

 

[sugar ovens]

honestly just go back to 7 tier slam and solve the weird Doubles OU situation, that tour should have been VGC fom the start.. count top 5 finishes, bo5 in the finals.. everyone who makes a serious attempt to win slam is being fed teams anyway and its not like you are forced to join every open

e: alternatively there is a certain official tournament that for some reason takes place two times a year that can accomodate 2-3 of these tiers.. given how some of the ou players seem to struggle with burnout, making one of the stours current gen would be a good deed

 

[ManOfMany]

Literally just hold all of the Slams and then have the players choose which one/two they want to cross off in the Playoffs stage. I don't see what all the drama is about

 

[tazz]

Again, nothing to say about specific tiers here. However...

I really don't understand why people on any side of the argument are posting "this tier's playerbase is good" and "mainers do well in this tier's open" type of stuff. If this was for inclusion in a team tour, sure. A tier's 10 best players (roughly) are going to be the sole competitors throughout a tour in SCL. But for slam, you have hundreds of people playing all of the included tiers. How LC's top 10 fares vs PU's top 10 is entirely irrelevant. What does matter is how the general tours playerbase would fare in the respective tiers. I'm not claiming to know the answer to that question but nonetheless I believe that should be the framework for argumentation.

I don't see why this arbitrary metric of how easily a tier can be picked up instantly by the general tours playerbase should be the primary grounds of discussion; it certainly hasn't dictated how we have picked slam tiers in the past, and it doesn't seem to be a factor in our other individuals that combine multiple metagames, like classic. The last time that a tier was removed from open in favor of another was Ubers for PU, and this was because a few toxic individuals effictely prevented Ubers from executing a competitive individual tournament. Slam has been and should be a tournament that crowns the best player of Smogon's most competitive non OU tiers, and under that definition these questions of how established a tier's playerbase is are absolutely relevant.

 

[Lily]

This is always gonna be a growing problem as the site continues to expand, not even exclusively in lower tiers; when Gen 9 hits we're gonna have awkward situations in SPL / Classic maybe? I don't actually know the logistics there but ORAS is gonna get kicked out of stour, so... Not sure what happens to it. Same thing is inevitable with lowers; the more mons get added to the game (and ways to improve older mons as well, eg eviolite) the more tiers you're going to get because people don't want to leave a random pool of 200 mons at the end of the rung doing nothing. I mean hell we're having this issue with PU now, what if ZU goes on to become a core meta down the line, and what if whatever's below it does as well?

As much as I want to buy into the argument of prestige being the most wholly important element of tournaments on a competitive Pokemon website I don't really think it is. I mean the prize for this tournament is a 16x16 square that says "you did it!" like... pokemon isn't an esport, people are competing because they want to have fun, it's a hobby not a job. Kicking out any sizable portion of the kumbaya mainers is just not a reasonable thing you can do when we have to "judge tiers based on their merits" - that statement has absolutely no meaning lol like there is absolutely 0 merit to UU over RU just because Crawdaunt's legal here or one of our council members won an indiv or whatever, they're just made up rulesets that people want to play and removing the one (!!) really good opportunity they have to do that all year is lame.

To that end I think it's sad that people have to grasp at whatever straws they can find for their tier's inclusion; it doesn't really matter if a main won an open or if one format gets 20 more signups than the other, and it doesn't matter if people have to learn the level 5 rolls (you have a calc at your disposal for that too!) or whatever else it is, that shits not hard at all for anyone who's taking the game seriously enough to go for a slam win. Certainly not more difficult than learning the various mechanics differences in 5 entirely different generations, but people would rightfully get clowned if they argued that that made Classic any less prestigious. It's a testament to the winner's skill if anything.

Take a step back and think about what you're talking about here. This isn't SPL with an incredible storied history and professional artwork/merchandise and it's not OST with a huge prize pool relative to anything else on the site. It's just the one (again, literally the only one) individual tour for lower tier players to have fun with. I've seen people throw around the idea that tier politics are necessary and that this can't be some hugboxy thing but in reality we're not at a point where that's true as a few people above have already outlined. Just increase it to 6 slots and let them have it.

 

[mael]

I'm in favour of a Best-finish Limit. It's inclusive, doesn't lead to fatigue, because you can simply drop 1 if you don't like the tier and/or want to play less and it compensates for incredibly unlucky r1 match ups and haxy losses. For play-offs you just allow the higher seed to strike one tier at the beginning of the round (if 6 tiers) so they pairing doesn't need to prepare for an additional tier. It seems by far the best option for me.