Stall in SM UU (was: SM UU Blissey)

[pokemonisfun]

your reasoning (and others in this thread) essentially boils down to this: banning other stall staples would have too large of an effect on the metagame but a stall nerf is still desired, therefore quagsire should be suspected since it would have the least effect on an old gen.

this literally goes against smogon tiering philosophy ESPECIALLY in the case of old gens where bans should only happen in extreme cases where changes are deemed necessary to properly balance a metagame. you yourself admit that quagsire was selected bc it "wouldnt have too much of an effect". im not sure if smogon has ever banned a mon that wasnt broken just because a stall in general was considered to be too difficult to play against lol

maybe arbitrary was the wrong word to use here but my point was that the reason for picking quagsire is weak and just comes down to "stall needs a nerf, lets do anything about it" instead of actually working to find the issue (which may not be stall at all!)

quick aside, i WAS engaging in the previous discussion but i suppose it wasnt clear enough. i dont have a stake in this since i dont main sm uu nor play it regularly in tournament but i do regularly watch the tier and have played it and prepped for it as a manager and teammate while sm uu was the main gen. it would be sad to see a tiering mistake on this level for tier with a decently large playerbase

You are correct when you say this vote goes against traditional Smogon policy/philosophy and I make that point clear here: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/voting-threshold-for-past-gen-votes.3686591/#post-8896290

However I disagree when you say this policy needs to be followed especially in old gens. In my view, it should be relaxed in old gens because we do not want to shake the metagame too much. We do not want to change the metagame too much, so we ban Quagsire instead of Blissey. Isn't this logical?

Thank you for conceding arbitrary wasn't the right word.

By the way, I agree with you Scizor should have been banned. I voted to ban in a few years ago. We chose not to make a thread since it received a public vote unlike stall. I would still like Scizor to be suspected again, depending on the outcome of the thread I linked above in this post.

Thank you for caring about this tier.

 

[Finchinator]

I dislike how our playerbase as a whole (very much not a UU specific topic) isolates stall as much as it does. I feel this self-induced stigma has led to certain fallout that is less-than-optimal, warping our perception on proper tiering practices. This is especially applicable to OU when the "omg we must nerf stall, Smogon only bans offense" posters come in higher volumes, but I'll spare you guys from that for the time.

I believe we should be having threads dedicated to what truly constitutes a banworthy defensive presence before proceeding with these discussions in the future. In my eyes, Quagsire is largely a scapegoat ban for the archetype, minimizing collateral, and this does not inspire much confidence in me personally. It was clear that Blissey was the predominant focus, but banning it would have been too controversial, so you found this as a quick, secondary option. Because of this and the fact that I could not in good conscious deem Quagsire banworthy, I voted to keep Quagsire UU without any hesitation whatsoever. Feel free to haha react me now if you wish, Shiba, but I very much resonate with the points of TDK, obii, Christo, and bugzinator here. While I do not necessarily enjoy the stall in the SM UU metagame and I understand how we reached this point, I am not content with this solution and the precedent it sets. I am understanding if it sticks -- be it ban or stay -- due to the timing of this coming after the vote began. However, I implore us to find a better tiering practice for like situations moving forward at the very least.

 

[bugzinator]

in recent uupls i've noticed a trend of sm uu players actively choosing to ignore stall in most of their matches; you'll often see phrases in the team chat like "he never stalls" and so on as people look for the best matchup possible each week. all stall can do is play on the trend of people ignoring it & try to catch them unprepared, yet using it in sm uu still remains an extremely risky strategy. there are no players who can abuse how "broken" stall is or frequently get wins that way, because once you're known as a stall player people will prepare for it adequately & you'll face losing battles.

the issue to me is undoubtedly in the restrictive nature of the tier. people are unwilling to forgo certain aspects of their teams in order to make their stall matchups more winnable when there are much more common and far bigger threats to account for. most players don't even use stall, however everyone's using scizor, latias, malt & co - this justifies people choosing to ignore it often, but in no way does it make stall a broken or unhealthy aspect of the tier.

the quagsire ban is about people simply trying to remove an element of risk from the equation so they can have a team that wont face unwinnable matchups. it's nothing to do with quagsire being too good at stopping sweepers or being broken in any way. all quagsire does in sm uu is the same thing it does in every tier.

i understand this vote is happening because people know the tier is restricting & they don't like building/preparing in the way described, however i strongly disagree with the logic behind drastically weakening an entire playstyle & removing a non problematic pokemon in order to plaster over the issue. the annoying thing to me is that the playstyle itself is being viewed as unhealthy just because it's doing what it has always done. the type of risk/reward you get in sm uu is one of the things i enjoy about the tier, and nerfing stall in this way would probably leave a sour taste & put me off from playing it in the future. obviously everyone has their own preferences, but whatever the playerbase votes for i don't think that's going to change for me.

and you know what pif? i didn't see your offer to post on behalf of other people whether you believe it or not. i saw that blissey was being discussed and switched off from the entire thing because i didn't have permission to post in the thread & i didn't feel too strongly on it anyway - that's my own mistake i'll admit, but even without keeping track i think there should have been far more notice to voters like me who only found out that quagsire was being talked about when we were tagged to cast our votes. i can't help but feel the entire quagsire thing has been poorly handled at the very least.

 

[Corazan]

(besides that ugly ass mismag team cora uses).

yep thats another victim

 

[Pearl]

I originally refrained from voicing my dissatisfaction with the way this whole debate was going because I figured that it would be awkward to get in the way of a movement that seemed to have almost unanimous support from the community (and on top of that, I'll admit that as one of the primary "abusers" of the stall archetype in this tier, my point of view is definitely biased in its favor). Upon seeing that this is in fact not true and that there are players who share the same point of view as I do, I believe that I'd be doing people a disservice by remaining (mostly) silent on this topic, especially when considering that I'm arguably one of the main culprits behind why the tier ended up the way it did, for better or worse.

For reference, I'll be repeating a lot of what TDK and bugzinator have said already. In spite of the latter's abrasive tone towards the "anti stall" side of the community, I do believe that basically all of the concerns he's pointed out are extremely valid. Basically, the fact that people are upset that the metagame is stale doesn't justify action against stall on its own, because stall isn't the sole culprit behind this and nerfing it as a playstyle won't suddenly make whole new frameworks flourish. I know that talking about "what ifs" is discouraged in debates about tiering policy, but I trust my knowledge of the tier enough to have an idea about how things would look like in a metagame without stall (or with extremely nerfed stall), and my primary concern is that, at this point in time, stall's existence is one of the main deterrents to some of the tier's most threatening Pokemon. What I'm trying to get to here is that stall has to exist in the metagame in some capacity in order to make people think twice before slapping Primarina, Terrakion, Latias, Mega Altaria and other offensive threats with very limited counterplay onto the same team, especially when taking into account how close some of the tier's best Pokemon are to the textbook definition of broken. This goes back to one of the points I cited in my first post in this thread, which can be summed up as "stall ban/nerf isn't guaranteed to improve the metagame", which I still firmly believe even now.

"But Pearl, we shouldn't be making tiering decisions based on hypothetical scenarios! If we nerf stall and x, y and z Pokémon turn out to be too much we can suspect test them afterwards!"

Or, something else that was actually posted in this thread:

It should not be our tiering goal to minimize impact on the tier with a ban. Bans are inherent metagame shifters, as the targeted Pokemon are really, really good. If they weren't, they would not be tested. If they are really good, then they are going to be used a lot and affect a lot of teams when they leave. Why is Blissey unique, compared to other Pokemon we banned? Blissey checks Primarina, but Buzzwole checked Scizor and Mamoswine and Terrakion. Maybe we should unban it and look at Buzzwole's best partners to ban instead? Latias was one of SS UU's top used Pokemon and checked so many building boxes, yet we banned it anyway. If Blissey's ban makes a bunch of special attackers unmanageable, then we can target them after (although I severely doubt that there exist Pokemon that are "not broken" solely because of Blissey's presence).

If we're looking at things that way, then why don't we target the root of the problem instead of trying to put an adhesive on the tier? "It should not be our tiering goal to minimize impact on the tier with a ban" and a "stall ban/nerf" are not compatible thoughts when the latter is quite literally an attempt to fix a tier that has much more deeply rooted problems than stall's strength, and even though it might come across as condescending, if you genuinely believe that stall is everything that's wrong with SM UU then I can't help but feel that there's something off with your metagame knowledge in the first place. I'm not going to go on a whole tirade about it right now (I might in the future if going down that direction gets pondered as a viable course of action), but the fact that some Pokemon (namely Scizor, Latias and Mega Altaria to a smaller extent) have such a tight grip on the metagame and invalidate a lot of frameworks that would be able to fit better stall counterplay is a big part of why the playstyle is so strong at this moment in time, and once again, looking at stall's strength as the sum of its components exclusively is very dismissive of the state of the SM UU metagame.

As for Quagsire vs. Blissey, I originally vouched for Quagsire > Blissey as a way of "nerfing" stall (relucantly, but I did express this opinion regardless, so I do believe it's necessary to clear things up) because of my belief that stall has to exist in some capacity for the metagame's sake, and a Blissey ban would quite literally make the playstyle unusable in SM UU. On top of that, this change would not only end stall, but it would also target a lot of other frameworks that are closer to balance and bulky offense that make use of Blissey's defensive utility in a way that frankly doesn't feel "broken" to me in any capacity. Now that the focus of the discussion has shifted away from stall in a vacuum, I'd like to add that a Quagsire ban definitely makes very little sense in the grand scope of things when we get rid of the notion that stall is the most problematic thing about the tier and that it would be better off without the playstyle's existence.

Lastly, can we stop asking people for lists on how to beat things? I feel like this a horse that has been kicked into the ground and murdered at this point, but like TDK said, you don't beat stall by slapping a sole Pokemon on your team and expecting it to beat down a whole team of 6 Pokemon. Hell, you don't beat HO or any other team archetype that way, why should you obligatorily be able to do it with stall? Besides that, and to further reiterate my previous point, I bet that the list of things that beat stall is way longer than the list of Pokemon you can use to reliably handle Scizor/Latias, or even some other top tier offensive threats that the metagame has, like Terrakion, Primarina, Mega Sharpedo and so on. Checklists are cool to aid teambuilding and all, but basing whole tiering decisions on those is absolutely not the way to go.

tl;dr Let's either get out of our asses and attempt to fix everything that is wrong with the tier, even if such process involves a crapton of changes or leave the tier as it is instead of threatening its already frail balance with band-aid fixes

 

[Charmflash]

I'm not exactly known for SM UU, and the fact that I vanished for a year won't help, but back during current gen SM I was actually extremely involved with this tier. My SM UU resume is basically this: I watched TDK/bugzi build and play it during SPL X, chimed in at times learning the basics this way, then played it in grand slam, UUPL until finals including the pl deciding tiebreaker game, played it some during Snake III, and finally built every single team Corazan brought in the UU slot besides one pretty much entirely on my own. Yes, including the Sharpedo Mismag balance, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time spent playing/building in this tier.

I think that stall is a flawed term, something like control would be way more fitting since the win condition isn't to literally drag the game on for as long as you can, or grind your opponent out of pp in most cases. Unfortunately that ship has sailed long before I even got on board, so I shall be calling it stall as well, at least in this discussion.

I will be structuring my arguments into two main parts.
1) How viable is stall allowed to become? Is it good to have powerful stall options within a metagame?
2) How powerful is stall in SM UU?

1)
Stall is a legitimate playstyle. It's the furthest away from other strats people consider "cheese", because it simply focuses a lot on defensive stats rather than having a specific gimmick it tries to abuse, making it a very honest playstyle. The most unbalanced metagames occur when there aren't enough options available to hold off the offensive threats. DPP and LC are some primary examples of this, and RBY mechanics also include RBY, although in a very weird way (you usually cant do full stall because you'll get crit and frozen/parad/spd-dropped/lose a Pokemon by default to sleep). Meanwhile some of the most competitive metagames, where managers are willing to spend a fortune have very robust defensive structures at their disposal: GSC, ADV; After that it's the metagames with less of a stall presence, but where it can still be done. The parallels are honestly fascinating.

I was involved in choosing other people's teams many times, and stall was the one playstyle certain people were just completely unable to pilot. It takes a lot of long-term planning and honest skill to pilot it against any team that didn't completely ignore the stall matchup in builder. It is actually pretty well known that you can't give just about anybody stall and expect a win in the tournament community.

Keeping all of that in mind, I sympathize with your point of view. While I love what stall, or even just the option to stall brings to a competitive environment, not even I always wanna sit through 1000 moves. Especially not in a random game that doesn't matter for anything when I could be earning some mythic loot in WoW instead. It can be annoying to have to play a long game when you don't want to, and it doesn't help that it's enough for 1 player to consent to the game being long for exactly that to happen. Ultimately tho, I do believe that keeping the metagame as complex and competitive is worth the trade-off in the long run.

2)
I was initially hesitant to add to the discussion at all because TDK did such a fantastic job sniping all of my concerns one by one. The main reason I am adding (or let's be honest, I am simply reinforcing/agreeing with them for the most part) arguments here is because I've seen the notion be brought up that TDK is an edge case.

SM UU is one of the best tiers to use stall in. You do usually not lose to any "anti-stall" Pokemon 6-0, which in my opinion is a desirable situation to be in. Why is it an expectation that you should be able to bring a Pokemon and beat any variant of a whole playstyle on the basis of bringing one Pokemon alone? You have six Pokemon. There are many combinations of Pokemon that are able to pressure stall a great deal, and the list TDK provided was really good, although a bit short since there are many more options available. BoltBeam Rocks Blissey for example was one of my favorite ones, because it makes for a very consistent setter against most stalls. Natural Cure is preferable for the stall matchup but you could do without depending on your team. The list is honestly humungous and problematic moves range from Stealth Rock to Block with all of Trick, Volt Switch, and Pursuit in between.

In conclusion, I feel pretty strongly about my opinions in this case, but I am not opposed to well structured arguments against either of the two points I am making here, especially against my stance of Stall in SM UU specifically. Sadly, many of the arguments in this thread which are in favor of eradicating stall from the tier remind me of a time where I was moderating Charizardlover3000 in the OU room, who was (very) mad about losing 6-0 to lead Mega-Sableye because he didn't think of adding a fairy type. This type of rhetoric might make for some fun memes on discord, but is honestly extremely worrying coming from people at the forefront of leading an official tier, and doesn't lead to what I, or what I believe to be many others, like about playing the official smogon tiers.

 

[Lily]

in an effort to engage with the (mostly good!) dnb arguments as someone who's on the fence (I have not casted my vote yet) I've been trying to think of things to say, I'm not really great at wording these types of posts usually but I'll do my best regardless

I'm not gonna go through tdk's whole list of things with good stall matchups, it should be obvious to anyone who's played any significant amount of SM UU that having a good stall matchup is not possible with just 1 pokemon, 1 specific set or whatever else. no, not even shit like haxorus or heracross or whatever else is traditionally a wrecking ball against these teams. with that said, I do want to make one thing abundantly clear: fitting stallbreakers is really hard, not because these pokemon are good against x stall variant but bad against y or whatever, but because of how they perform against something else. to take one example:

Spikes Chesnaught with Taunt or an offensive Spikes set

i found this to be such a cool idea that i ended up exploring a few different variants and even talked with tdk about it for a bit. it's actually really effective against certain things but there is a pretty big problem - let's look at the first three pokemon on the sm uu vr

I would argue that this is out of date to some degree for sure, malt has definitely seen better days, but here we see what are currently considered to be the three best mons in the tier - bulky SD scizor avoids the KO from 2 superpowers after rocks more often than not, latias takes a pretty big chunk from superpower or wood hammer but it can switch in even w/ rocks up and heal it off without much issue, and malt laughs at you. this results in chesnaught being good against these stall teams (i'd assume, i haven't seen it in practice) but pretty poor against the "standard" meta, which is why it isn't seen. for that reason I don't like that people bring up "you're just not prepping well enough!" as an argument - nobody ever preps perfectly, but we all know how tiers work here, some things are just not good if they tunnel on specific matchups and they make things difficult to compensate otherwise; to go back to the chesnaught example, using it means you're using a grass type that isn't amoonguss, which forfeits your scizor and mega altaria matchup pretty significantly and ofc you're still weak to latias - these pokemon are not easy to prepare for, and filling in such massive holes created by tunneling on the stall matchup can result in overall weaker teams and makes sm uu a "matchup meta", a term i don't really like but it feels appropriate here.

this can also be applied to pokemon like heracross (struggles pretty significantly with mega altaria, latias, aerodactyl etc. while facing massive competition from terrakion, infernape, cobalion which are all better mons outside of the stall matchup and sometimes better mons inside it too), bewear (same applies really minus not caring about aero as much but struggling more w/ its speed tier into stuff like offensive prim and togekiss), haxorus (not even very reliable against scizor / malt stalls, dead weight against offense beyond maybe trading on a good day, opportunity cost of not being able to fit something like latias or mega altaria if you choose to use it). this tier also suffers with the fact that lots of mons like togekiss (which isn't even good vs modern stall anyway) and beedrill have their viability cut down so much by how weak they are to literally just bullet punch. that's only covering the three s ranks lol it's not even scratching the surface of the a+ ranks that are just as restrictive (hydreigon, terrak, prim, aero etc)

so what does this all mean? it means that bugzinator (i think he's the one who made this point, apologies if not) is absolutely right. stall on its own merits is probably not broken, but rather it takes advantage of the fact that this tier is warped around the top tiers to such an extent that using pokemon that struggle against them can be such a deficit that it is more often than not worth ignoring the stall matchup because going out of your way to work on it usually sacrifices something else. so why not go after the top tiers? bc as tdk says, this tier fucked up. we tested scizor, it stayed, we tested malt, it stayed. it sucks ass now and people are trying to salvage the tier they love. i highly dislike the attitude in some above posts that can essentially be boiled down to "l2p" when multiple of the most successful and proven sm uu players ever, who do actually know how to play pokemon, are of the opinion that something must be done.

I believe we should be having threads dedicated to what truly constitutes a banworthy defensive presence before proceeding with these discussions in the future.

i don't think this is the case - nor should it be the case - when tackling situations like this. stall is different (at least in this tier, but arguably in many others as well) because of how it is virtually impossible to pin down one specific issue, and there are so many subjective issues and arguments to be made. blissey was the original focus of this thread so i'll use that as an example. the amount of disagreement at that time that stall was broken was pretty low - in fact, a lot of people, even those who don't want to ban blissey, agreed that it is arguably broken specifically when supported by the likes of alo and blissey. blissey on balances and stuff is very far from broken though. even still, it is not a broken pokemon, and while you could argue that its performance on stall teams specifically makes it worth looking at (similar to venusaur in sun in early ss uu, for example, despite the fact that it was borderline unviable outside of the sun) it was successfully argued that it is worth preserving. if there isn't a single defensive presence that is overbearing then i would argue that it's incredibly silly to just go "ah well ggs" and not act on anything at all, there are always backup routes worth considering.

for anyone who still doubts, i really recommend you actually try to build modern sm uu and come up with something that you can confidently say has a swathe of good matchups against each common playstyle (balance/bo, spikes ho, stall). it's borderline impossible, this tier sucks ass to build, and in christo's post he mentions enjoying the dynamic that is brought apart by these three styles being good against one of the others and poor against the last; while it's completely fine to enjoy this ofc, i don't personally enjoy that it makes the tier feel like a glorified game of rock paper scissors.

---

it's pretty clear that this quagsire vote was fumbled to an extent.

i will be first to admit i put pressure on to get it up. a few people had been asking me to do something about it since hogg had given approval, while tdk felt that it wasn't ready, that he hadn't gotten the opportunity to respond the way he wanted to for personal reasons, and as he mentioned, that it hadn't been approved by him. to that end i was kind of caught between a rock and a hard place and i just didn't want to deal with disappointing people or not handling this without any way to explain why.

with that said, i am kind of disappointed with how late these posts are coming in. i understand in bugzi's case that he wasn't able to post (though i do have reason to believe he was perfectly aware that pif was willing to post on his behalf but that's neither here nor there ig), the rest of you have had posting privileges from the start, and let's not act like this was completely rushed - this thread has been up for over a month. i get not wanting to go against the grain but please, if you have something to say, just say it. the situation is now pretty awkward and while i'm willing to take a chunk of the blame for that, i don't think the posters itt handled it well either.

now with all this said, i'd personally be willing to cancel the quagsire vote and give this a more thorough discussion. i don't even know if that's allowed but still. I brought up the idea of opening up a separate channel for it in the uu discord that people can request access to; i'd need to flesh out how that would work, but maybe that'd be more effective than solely using this thread? it seems clear to me that *most* people agree that stall is either overbearing or close to it and that some form of action should be taken. if that's not quagsire, that's fine, but considering how the current vote is going it really, really should be something, bc a majority is already convinced that stall is busted.

Secondly, why is the threshold 50+1%? We just for the first time in years lifted the lock on old gen lower tiers, because we didn't want to actively tier them, and now we want just want a decision of 25 vs 24 to determine the whole thing?

would like to touch on this finally bc it's pretty much my fault. when tiering old gens like this, the decision is usually unanimous (see: oras conk) so I didn't even think to change the threshold when I copied an SS UU blind voting post to make the conk one. it obviously wasn't an issue there since it was like 95% pro-ban or some shit but it's clearly more contentious here. having thought about it more I completely agree that it should be 60% and I'd like to apologise for that one, it did just slip through the cracks as you said and hogg's new thread is addressing it quite well but it was definitely something I should've been more conscious of.

ty all for responding, I fear we have a lot more to do here but SM UU is a tier that certainly can be a lot better even if it's in dire straits right now. I hope that we can restore it so that it's something good and enjoyable rather than a matchup mess, and if quagsire isn't the appropriate place to look then we should explore other avenues, but I strongly believe that leaving it as is would be a massive mistake.

 

[Wanka]

vivalospride asked me to give whatever thoughts I have so here goes.

I don't have much to add because I never really played sm uu at a very high level, but I've been watching our best players duke it out for a few years now. I genuinely have no fucking clue as to what should be done in terms of what should be voted on, but I think Lily's analysis of sm uu being dogshit is pretty accurate and anybody whose been watching games played in uupl or any other official tour can notice this. I've been apart of teams where anyone building for the tier more or less just throws their hands up in terms of not being able to cover every archetype and it just seems pretty apparent that the "rock paper scissors" mentality lily mentioned truly does exist to a somewhat alarming sense. I think denying this is pretty foolish imo.

That being said, if there is any way you guys can put a hold on this vote and discuss this more I think that would be the best course of action. If you can't I honestly think you have to cancel the vote and just accept this meta because I also don't really agree with having an imbalance in archetypes either and if that happens by banning quag/unaware or blissey or mola or whatever, than that's pretty fucking shitty as well even if the majority wouldn't care. Unfortunately the window to ban scizor was wiffed on and I would've loved to see a meta where it was gone and how every archetype could have potentially co existed and I personally think that plays a massive role in why this debate is even happening atm. Pointless saying that I know, but I say it because that's what's driving my opinion on just leaving shit the way it is if a consensus can't be met.

Kind of a pointless post overall, but my TL instincts do think more thought needs to be put into this now that both sides have strong arguments.

 

[Morsel]

Posting on behalf of Smallsmallrose (these are her thoughts):


The one thing Stall-Nerfers and Anti-Stall-Nerfers can agree on is that this tier has been absolutely terrible since end of the gen last gen, and most people who used to enjoy the tier want to see it thrive. One thing that has been pointed out as a flaw of the tier is it feels like rock paper scissors, where the tier's main threats punish teams for good stall prep because their answers to said threats are shaky at most. If you bring a team with a good stall gameplan, you could get punished by something more offensive being thrown in your face. No one mon should be able to beat an archetype on it's own but you also shouldn't be 6-0ed at preview by stall bc you wanted to prep for offensive staples or vice versa. But if you bring a team prepped for the top threats, you often have to forgo the stall matchup. I've seen arguments for whether this the fault of stall itself or the top threats of the tier, and I can see solid reasonings for both. We can go back and forth all day, and point fingers. "It's Blissey's fault, it's Scizor's fault, lets ban this that the other thing etc." but this kind of circle jerking is giving me flashbacks to the end of last gen where we didn't do anything about it. If you don't want to put Quagsire on the cross for another pokemon's sins, that's fine. But I extend this question to those who opposed ban: What do we do? How do we go forth in fixing the tier? People proposed Quagsire as a simple solution because frankly we don't have the playerbase oldgen OUs have, and making decisions won't be as easy as throwing out bans/unbans left and right, whatever decision we make, we'll likely have to live with. So I ask, what do we do? How do we fix the tier without accidentally breaking it? Do we want to move forward with a low impact ban or is kicking the metaphorical hornet's nest of banning a metagame staple the only option? I'd support either or as long as something is done.

 

[pokemonisfun]

Lilburr and Wanka have both suggested cancelling the ongoing vote or otherwise nullifying it.

I'd suggest this badly damages the integrity of the suspect process and is unfair to everyone involved who wanted a vote on Quagsire. I think this is a reasonable statement.

Nevertheless, I think we should entertain this idea in good faith, because it's just another idea, with the goal of having more discussion, which is something I think is also very reasonable.

To cancel a vote, I'd propose: 1) an element of the suspect process has to be drastically incorrect, 2) the error has to be in favor of changing the status quo, and 3) the error cannot be remedied in any other reasonable way.

Let me list out what I believe are the potential errors in our suspect process. If you agree with my framework, feel free to add other errors you see.

1. People against voting did not have a chance to speak out until after the vote
2. The vote, designed with secondary metagame effects in mind, goes against Smogon philosophy where secondary metagame effects should not be considered.
   • In other words, Smogon has generally held we should ban broken Pokemon, even if it damages the metagame, because the damaged metagame will then be fixed. We are trying to ban Quagsire, to nerf a broken playstyle, because did not want to ban Blissey, which might damage the metagame.
3. The voting threshold to change the status quo is too low - it is 50% + 1 instead of 60% or higher
4. Scizor, Latias, Mega-Altaria should have been suspected first
5. Stall is not overpowered and does not need to be nerfed
6. TDK, the tier leader and old gen leader, was not contacted prior to this vote

For these six potential errors, I would like to go through the framework I suggested above: 1) is this actually a drastic process error, 2) was this error helping push the vote forward/changing status quo, 3) can this error be fixed in any other way?

1. People against voting did not have a chance to speak out until after the vote

I don't think this is at all the case so it fails on the account it's not a drastic process error - it's not even an error at all. This thread was posted on May 16th, 2021. Every UUPL gen7uu player, the most recent gen7uu tournament was contacted of the vote on May 25th. There was only one post in opposition until June 21st. Preliminary discussion on drafting a voting list began on June 9th. The vote was announced to be approved on June 19th. The voting thread was posted on June 21st. Two hours later, a second post opposing the vote was made and since then several more have been made.

It's unfortunate that people did not choose to speak out until after the vote was posted, with the sole exception of TDK's first post. But seeing as there was over 1 month of discussion, there was no error in the suspect process here and this cannot be used as grounds for cancelling a vote.

2. The vote, designed with secondary metagame effects in mind, goes against Smogon philosophy where secondary metagame effects should not be considered.

As just posted by Hogg, this Smogon tiering philosophy is an ideal, not a hard and fast policy. Furthermore, this vote and discussion was extremely clear. Nobody has argued that Quagsire is broken, everyone acknowledges that this was a practical (or done to be practical) fix. There was also discussion earlier on how to justify this (well actually just me posting and nobody being able to follow my convoluted reasoning I suppose...).

Although I disagreed with it (and still do), I said the best argument to include secondary effects when tiering is that we are suspecting a playstyle right now, not Quagsire. A nerf is inherently a secondary effect because it's impossible or at least extremely impractical to ban "stall" (or "control" as Charmflash would call it).

Since this was already discussed previously in the thread and Hogg has just confirmed there is no official Smogon policy of not allowing secondary metagame effects, there is no drastic error here. Indeed, there is no error at all.

See Hogg's post below to be perfectly clear on this point: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/stall-in-sm-uu-was-sm-uu-blissey.3684458/page-3#post-8897575

3. The voting threshold to change the status quo is too low - it is 50% + 1 instead of 60% or 2/3 or higher

This would only be a drastic error if we had a policy of 60% votes. This policy is still being decided so clearly at the time of the vote, there was no such policy and as such there is no drastic error.

I understand if you think I'm trying to find a loophole here. Even if you think I'm just finding a loophole, there is no need to cancel the vote. We just have to make the policy retroactive or change the threshold to 60% after the vote. I think this still badly damages the integrity of the vote - you shouldn't change the rules in the middle of the vote - but it's obviously more desirable than entirely cancelling the vote. Again, changing the threshold midvote would still damage the vote's integrity so I would like much more discussion and agreement on it before accepting it (and I'd disagree with it because you shouldn't change the rules in the middle of a vote).

4. Scizor, Latias, Mega-Altaria should have been suspected first

This is not a process error, even if it true. It's just an opinion on the metagame. As discussed earlier, there was time to raise metagame opinions and those opposed to Quagsire vote neglected to do so. Additionally, as mentioned in this thread, Scizor already had a public test. Not mentioned in this thread but also true, Mega-Altaria already had a public test. I supposed we could have tried to ban Latias first, but then, this is a point someone could have raised during the month of discussion.

(FYI, I voted to ban both Scizor and Mega Alt as well as Mimikyu...I mention this not to say "I told you so" but to show I'm coming in good faith - I do agree this tier can be changed for the better without touching stall, but doing stall makes the most sense to me since it's extremely broken and we already tried to test other aspects and now, banning Quagsire, is "safe" since it doesn't affect much else of the metagame).

5. Stall is not overpowered and does not need to be nerfed

This is not a process error, even if it is true. It's just an opinion on the metagame. Once again in good faith, the evidence that would convince me this is true is if people showed me teams that have a reasonable stall MU and a reasonable MU with the rest of the metagame. This echoes on vivalospride's point that he felt stressed in the builder when having to deal with both. Tagging Christo if he wants to share as I know he's one of the more capable people in building/playing vs stall while keeping a reasonable MU with stall.

I still think stall is overpowered but I promise to be open-minded on this if someone wants to keep discussing.

6. TDK, the CG UU tier leader and old gen leader, was not contacted for approval prior to this vote

I agree this is a process error but I think he also needs to take responsibility for it, which he has (he should have been more active or if his life prevents you from that, it's the fault of life not of people on Smogon). In any case, I don't think this is a drastic error. There was no formal process outlined on how to proceed with an old gen low tier vote. As far as I know, Adaam contacted the current gen TL (Lilburr) and the policy admin (Hogg) just prior to the vote for approval. That seemed like a reasonable thing to do.

I don't think this is Lilburr's or Hogg's fault either - when the thread had only one post against a vote compared to a dozen or so in favor, I would expect them both to approve. Particularly after no opposition was raised for a week after a voting list was generated, which indicated a vote was a possibility.

Frankly, I think this is mainly the fault of not having a formalized old gen low tier process. If we had an active council, then this wouldn't have happened.

But again, this isn't a drastic process error as TDK indicated to me he wouldn't have vetoed anyways unless there was more support against the vote in this thread, which there wasn't.

I listed 6 potential process errors with this suspect. I suggested that we cancel the vote if and only if the error met three criteria: 1) Is the error drastic, 2) does the error favor the vote, 3) can the error not be fixed in any other way? None of the errors I listed met all three criteria. I propose we move forward with this vote as is, and after we know the results, continue to tier from there.

Thank you for your consideration.

 

[Hogg]

Since this was already discussed previously in the thread and Hogg has just confirmed there is no official Smogon policy of not allowing secondary metagame effects, there is no drastic error here. Indeed, there is no error at all.

Just to make sure it’s clear for those who didn’t read the other thread, I said that it was more of a guiding principle than a hard and fast rule. It doesn’t mean that we should ignore it entirely, but rather that it’s a goal that requires a certain amount of discretion and judgment in how it’s implemented/approached.

Not bringing this up really to weigh in on this particular vote. I just want to make sure that’s clear so I don’t see an onslaught of “Hogg said we can ignore the policy about secondary effects!!” during future tiering discussions.

 

[peng]

Not got any skin in the game re: SM UU stall but this issue of posting rights in important old gen PR threads has gone on for years, and will only continue as the idea of badge-chasing on smogon seems to dwindle among top players.

Not going to go on some tirade about the way the Smogon badge system works but I think the idea of needing badges to have auto-access to speak in these threads is outdated. Every one of these old gen "is x broken" threads is a mix of Artist / Social Media / 2007 alumni badge folk playing Devil's advocate about tiers they don't play, whilst a handful of important players sit and look at that "you don't have permission to post here" box on the bottom of their screen. PR is a weird concept for a subforum whereby people who have contributed anything, ever can forever comment on anything irrespective of what their badge was for, and I think the tiering proposal threads suffer immensely for it.

I understand that having these threads completely accessible to anyone also isn't ideal but Smogon shouldn't be having votes in places where notable players can't even make their voices heard, and the idea of "badge = important player" has been outdated since 2012 at least. Increasingly, top tournament players don't write analyses or contribute to the Facebook page or any of that stuff. There's only really 1 badge that active players would pick up without going out of their way for and thats Tiering Contributor but in a lot of old gens, tiering is so infrequent that its near impossible to get this. Reaching out to locked-out players on discord to post on their behalf is a makeshift work-around that shouldn't be necessary, and unfortunately opens things up to "do you have badged friends who care enough to do that for you". Similarly, I know mods are happy to give out posting perms to people who they think should be in the discussion (I'm a beneficiary of this kindness) but this clearly isn't ideal either - it puts us in a position where staff decides whose opinions matter on very precise and niche subjects like old gen lower tiers.

The solution is less clear. I would probably say there should be an "On The Radar" thread in an open subforum whenever something is considered for a ban, and only a PR thread made later into the process. E.g. SS OU would never jump straight to a suspect discussion thread in a private subforum, not sure why old gens would differ. If visibility is an issue, can always still post a PR thread who's purpose is to link to the open discussion thread. If Quagsire had an On The Radar thread, very likely we would've heard the criticisms far earlier than we did.

I would have posted this as a PR thread in its own right but I don't have perms lol

 

[Christo]

Pif requested an example of a team that is properly prepped for the metagame while also posing a reasonable match up vs stall. I picked a team in my builder that is intended to combat the general metagame while also having some form of counterplay for a stall matchup. The team I selected contains movesets that are better suited to match up well vs common archetypes such as Rotom-H bulky offense rather than stall, but the team is still capable to create counterplay vs stall.

https://pokepast.es/0d8140a10500bc3c

Notes on the team:

• The main "tech" that would catch an opponent off guard on the team is Life Orb Stone Edge Krookodile, with the intention of luring in Rotom-H. The combo of Manec/Scizor/Togekiss should overwhelm a Rotom-H balance/offense if Rotom was successfully removed/weakened. While the main tech on this team intended to combat offenses, not stall, the set still has side effect counterplay vs stall by getting Rocks up easily and doing over 50% to Blissey. Typically Blissey can spam softboiled vs Krook but Life Orb forces Blissey to switch out at low HP.
• Togekiss is Scarf which is also suited to do well vs offense, but Trick + Roost forcibly cripples one of the stall player's pokemon. If Blissey gets Tricked the stall will fall apart, and if they allow for another pokemon to absorb the Trick, the stall player will have to predict well to avoid Blissey being over-worked by CM Lati/ Toge Flinches/Stealth Rock+Manec Volt Switch.
• CB Scizor gets free turns vs Blissey, threatening Pursuit and Superpower, and forces Alomomola in to absorb U-Turn. Scizor also causes problems to Togekiss checks such as Articuno and Nihilego, while also getting free turns vs Pyuku.
• Manectric gets free Volt Switches vs non-Quagsire stalls, and Quag stalls still need to scout for HP Grass, allowing you turns to gain momentum and force chip on Blissey.
• Tentacruel can guarantee to Knock off (at least) Blissey and Alomomola, making Togekiss flinches very potent and Scizor becoming more of an issue. Sludge Bomb fishes for poisons on Alomomola which opens up Scizor, and prevents Mega Altaria from Roosting as well.
• The Lati set is intended as an all-purpose breaker vs balances/offenses but can also be used vs stall to force a 1-for-1 trade as well as a launching pad for momentum vs Alo/quagsire/gligar.

This shows how a team that is not built with stall in mind is not automatically lost vs stall. If you wanted the team to be more prepared for stall, you could go Nasty Plot > Thunder Wave on Scarf Togekiss for example. There is a Rock-Paper-Scissors element as was alluded to in this thread, and frankly that is how Pokemon works in fully developed metagames. With that being said, there are ways to hedge your loses in the builder if you are given an unfavorable matchup. The team I posted is objectively not incredible vs stall, but is in no way lost simply on matchup.

The reality of the situation with the SM UU metagame is that since it has been fully developed over the course of a few years, there is little room for creativity in the builder. I was able to have success in SM UU tournaments because I stuck with what worked and used the best pokemon. Notice the team I posted had 0 pokemon under A- on the viability rankings. Many people view this as a problem because it is enjoyable to be creative and use less common pokemon like offensive Spikes Chesnaught, but this is just how Old Gens work. The meta is old, and the best strategies have already been "solved". This is the same for mostly every Old gen from RBY-SM. There is no good reason to completely change an old gen because you find it stale.

tldr: it is possible to build teams that are flexible enough to have winning chances vs all playstyles, but you will be limited in creativity/originality. I do not think its a bad thing because thats how more or less all Old Gens work.

 

[Wigglytuff]

Proxyposting for Smallsmallrose, copied from uu disc oldgens channel:

Hide

I am someone of the genuine belief
That we could ban Latias in SMUU without breaking the tier
People most of the time don't use Latias as their main anything check unless teambuilding gets desperate because Pursuit + the mon you're using Lati to check just mows you over
And if there's anything stall has shown us
Is that there's a shit ton of creative ways to counter mons like Terrakion and Celebi and Infernape and w/e
And I feel like the teambuilding checkboxes that we lose with getting rid of Lati are made up for in how many avenues are opened up
Megalix (Which was a fucking joke early gen) is considered just as good as if not better than Mega Aggron because it's a better Lati answer.
You need Steel + Boltbeam counter or steel + pursuit or w/e to feel entirely safe vs Lati
Or one of the select mons that at least softchecks every Lati set (Which even then, there's no mon that 100% beats every set. The best you have is Blissey which can eat a specs or +1 Psyshock when trying to scout it.)

 

[Morsel]

Proxy posting on behalf of Sickist, who does not have access to Policy Review:


First off, thanks to Panther for proxy posting for me. Anyways, I played SM UU since its creation after ORAS rounded to a close, through many huge changes and into USUM, which I really stepped up my presence as a forum contributor. While I wish I and people that weren't tour players had more of a say, Lily made a decent point to me that tours are basically the only place SM UU is played on a non-private match basis, unfortunately. So, I'm voicing my piece here in hopes that it has some effect on the outcome of this event. I've jumped positions several times, I must admit, but something that's really stuck with me is the fact that this metagame needs to undergo serious change. I hate all of this discussion about "avoiding collateral" because that's the exact excuse a decent amount of people used for not banning Scizor when we had a suspect for it. Now, I can't help but feel the underlying reason was the fear of change, but I'm sure there's a group of people who feel Scizor was legitimately not broken to which I disagree, but to each their own. However, now that we've unlocked the tiers, this is our time to amend the not-so-great handling of the tier, at least in my opinion, at the very end of the generation. I can't remember who made the point, but I really would like to entertain the thought process that stall itself isn't entirely broken, but warped around to strength by the huge dominating offensive threats that shape SM UU: Latias, Scizor, MAlt (kinda skeptical this is broke, but w/e Scizor I'm fine with it being gone), Terrakion, and Primarina. These huge threats are kinda all agreed upon being unhealthy or outright broken. I believe we should re-suspect Scizor and Latias first, and take it from there. Assuming they get banned (Scizor first, then Latias), we would ideally let the metagame develop for a bit, and move on to the next 2 or 3. Rounding off here, I hope I haven't made it appear that I'm attacking anyone, I just want a better SM UU for all of us to play.


Thank you for hearing me out, have a good day all.

 

[Tony]

I think the first thing we need to do right now is cancel the current vote and take a step back to evaluate. This is a past generation tiering decision and it isn't as time sensitive as a current gen suspect test would be. The discussion on the metagame and its issues is actively ongoing and there's clearly a strong divide on where to take things from here. I don't mind that we're taking a hard look at the tier and as a very motivated competitor in UUPL, I'm already looking forward to a Conkeldurr-less ORAS UU in next year's tournament. This decision isn't anywhere near as clear cut as the ORAS one, though. Let's make sure we get it right.

The voting requirements need another close look, too. The 50% ban threshold was already touched on and is currently being worked on, which is great, but the prerequisites to actually cast a vote are off as well. To use Pearl as an example, him not being able to vote on this matter is downright criminal. He started in SM UU during multiple official team tournaments, won Grand Slam during this time, lead the tier when SM was the current generation and built the very stall teams that lead to this discussion in the first place. Pearl can't vote, yet playing SM UU in one UUWC is apparently sufficient. We should take another look at this before voting continues.

As for the metagame, I personally lean towards the bugzinator, Christo, Pearl and TDK side of the argument in this thread. Quagsire isn't the problem and I'm honestly not sure if a solution to anything is even required. I'm apparently in the minority, but I still quite like SM UU. If anything, though, I'd agree with the sentiment that the Scizor, Latias, Sharpedo-Mega and Mimikyu type offense structures are harder to prepare for than stall. What's more important to me is not rushing into a regrettable tiering decision. The floodgates have opened in Policy Review after we've gotten the green light to revisit old generation tiering, and I wouldn't want that enthusiasm to result in a needless overreaction here. I hope we can keep discussing the topic while working this out. There is no shame in stopping the voting process for now; all that matters is having as good of a metagame as we can get.

 

[Freeroamer]

In my opinion, cancelling a vote that has started after a month of near unanimous discussion is absurd quite frankly. I saw somewhere in this thread that it’s baffling that Quagsire was chosen as the subject of this vote, however I find it equally baffling that we are willing to establish a precedent where people can blow up a vote after it’s started, it seems like a serious slap in the face to the integrity of the tiering system. There has been more than enough time for people to discuss with others about this issue, realise that actually they don’t like where this has been headed and make a post about it. I get that people can struggle to post because of irl and other issues but we are talking over a month here and every single one of the people that posted in the last few days couldn’t find time to write something?? I personally think that the correct course of action now is to proceed with the vote and re-evaluate in a fixed amount of time, say 6 months or so. If that’s not possible and it’s decided that the vote has to be cancelled, I think we should seriously discuss how we prevent this from happening in the future because this to me is ridiculous and is something we need to prevent reoccurring.

 

[vivalospride]

prolly gonna be my last post on the matter and hopefully will address everything I want to here, will probably echo a fair amount of shit that's alrdy been said but I find this thread in general frustrating for probably everyone that's paid any attention to it

first of all it fuckin blows my mind that this is how this situation has played out in general, I literally made the below post after a full week of dead silence where everything already existing on the thread bar a post from TDK was overwhelmingly in favor of voting. So anyone that did not speak up about their distaste in voting on quag should be blaming themselves, as has been highlighted by like 12 other people in this thread, just wanted to point out that there was deadass a full week of dust collecting on this thread before we actually decided to go through with voting, idk what y'all were doing during that time.

so uhhh we tryna vote or uhhh... aha View attachment 350648

I think anyone talking about how "lazy" testing quag is has an understandable point but ignores a lot of baggage that goes with taking the "not lazy" route in this scenario.

Problems with voting on Scizor
1. Scizor leaving would completely abolish the foundation that the tier was built upon and the ramifications would be plentiful without question, using this as a reason not to ban something would traditionally be looked at, but things can't always be that black and white. In this scenario, I believe a line is crossed to where this line of thinking is okay, imo.

2. This one is the most relevant to this thread; this meta is not active currently. There is a grand total of 2 MAYBE 3 people that build this meta in 2021 and that's a rather ambitious stretch since UUPL is over. @ Everyone who truly believes banning Scizor is what we should do rn; are you really interested enough in SM UU to pick up the pieces and help put them back together after you push us to blow the meta up? It's not your responsibility, so why would you be?... And if y'all aren't down... who is? This player base is not poppin, UUPL is over and won't be back for a while, it is no longer SM. With this in mind, how can you reasonably sit here and scold people for not wanting to blow the meta up by banning Scizor simply because in your mind it's the "not lazy" route?

I am not putting words in your mouths by any means so if you truly feel like you'd be interested and would actively play and build this meta to make the "not lazy" option viable... then that's dope. But given the current state of the player base that is not something I can realistically assume would happen. ORAS even has a more invested player base by a fair margin and it's more than clear that's the case given the amount of inactive users in the current quag vote.

3. Scizor already got a public suspect and was decided to be kept. Yes, you can believe this was a poor decision but it was still a decision that was made. While that's completely fair, with the above points in mind I don't think it's a crime to look elsewhere.

IF YOU ARE OF THE BELIEF THAT STALL IS NOT SOMETHING WE SHOULD LOOK INTO THAT'S JIGGY W ME BRO BUT PLS DON'T SIT HERE AND TALK ABOUT SCIZOR, BECAUSE DOING NOTHING IS THE FAR BETTER ALTERNATIVE AND SUMMING IT UP AS LAZINESS IS IGNORING THE FACT THAT THIS IS INDEED A LOWER TIER OLD GEN W/O A FLOURISHING PLAYER BASE AND THERE'S NO DIRECT BEST OUTCOME TO THIS

The HO Comparison

While HO is extremely consistent and strong in this tier similar to stall, I don't think the reason we're looking at stall is as simple as "lol people don't like being stalled" and I think it's extremely ignorant to sum it up as that within the context of the tier SM UU. The thing that I can get behind with the statement of "HO is even harder to prep for than stall!!" is the fact that HO's countermeasures might be even grayer and less concrete than stall's.

When you're looking at a playstyle and not a specific mon in the builder, naturally what you consider counterplay will be less concrete because you're covering something that is simply broader. With stall, reliable hazards are a big deal, Knock Off users as well, those are some examples of counterplay to stall, but then you have the things that fall under the "stall-breaker" umbrella. Breakers that traditionally within the context of whatever tier have a good matchup vs stall, Celebi being one example.

While there're certainly mons like that in HO matchups, good examples in SM UU being fat steels, fat prim, mimikyu, etc. There're certainly fewer and there's more distance in-between. My counter-argument to this is that while I think both playstyles are way safer than we're used to in other metagames, HO consistently rolls winnable matchups a lot more frequently while stall feels a bit harsher in the positive direction. I believe HO rolls even matchups more frequently than stall in this tier, and on top of that I think other looser counterplay towards HO is a lot more natural than examples of that vs stall. Having good speed tiers in general as well as general speed control (scarfer/prio) being one of the best examples. I have a lot of experience using "stallbreaker Mew" in this tier and I've found that it probably has a more blatantly obnoxious mu vs HO > stall in all honesty, for example. It's neutral ass typing helps it generally stomach things from offensive threats when healthy but the big thing is it's solid speed tier in unison with wisp and taunt. Not super duper relevant but just an example of smth naturally rolling a good HO mu due to access to common and natural things like a base 100 speed tier and wisp.

I also think HO's strength doesn't directly have a ton to do with whether we should nerf stall or not in the grand scheme of things. I don't think stall's existence is the primary thing keeping it from being just absolutely disgustingly broken to the point where we have to do something about it and while I believe it plays a role I don't think there's a ton of weight to that argument given it's still hypothetical in the first place.

Everything else

I believe part of the disconnect between at least some of us is our opinions on whether it's worth it to look into stall in the first place, that the tier without stall might be even shittier than it is now, or whatever else. While I understand where these people are coming from because SM atm is as Christo said a pretty solved tier, little room for creativity... thus, shaking anything up might be messy in general. This traditionally is not something you put a lot of thought into when making decisions on whether a pokemon or whatever tf else needs to go, and I don't personally believe it crosses the hypothetical line I drew for Scizor's situation to where it's not worth, that's literally just my opinion though and at the end of the day that's all theorizing and I cant really fault anyone for feeling differently on something so flimsy.

I believe threats that could potentially get out of hand in this hypothetical stall-nerfed meta are both lati and malt who're already extremely strong in their own rights. Lati would have more freedom to run z moves that aren't drag z more often, and malt would have more freedom to run shit that isn't dd refresh/facade/etc more often. You could technically go down this tier and say this for a lot of diff threats as well, even including Scizor with lo ada bb being less necessary, to Togekiss being able to run NP w/o fight z or hb more often, etc etc etc. One good thing abt Lati and Scizor though in this scenario is that quite a fair amount of people prep for all the diff cm/sd variants regardless, not that this just makes all of the above nill but it's smth. All in all, I don't sit here pondering this for hours and come to the conclusion that nerfing stall just isn't realistic with the health of the tier in mind, but that's just me.

The fact of the matter is that people who have played this metagame in recent memory are dissatisfied with it, if you're not good for you but others are. "I kinda like this rock paper scissors shit actually" is literally not an arguing point, your feelings and opinion are valid but just say you're voting no ban and move on. Also, I certainly don't think it's just outright impossible by any means to concoct a team of six pokemon that has a winnable stall mu whilst being good in the rest of the metagame, but I don't think that nullifies anything that's been said. Actively building this metagame is helldick and the fact that it's possible doesn't take away from anything I said in my second post.

Sidenote: "Rock paper scissors" can hardly be labeled as a competitive game and a tier that draws direct comparisons to that as much as I've seen in this thread and otherwise is probably a bad one.

I understand looking at this quagsire vote like it's a shitty midground to fixing this tier and under the circumstances that this was cg or just more optimistic circumstances in general, I would personally have issue with this as well. I think stall's stranglehold on the tier is very real and even a fair amount of you in the dnb side of things have noted that, and while it might not be the crack or many fucking cracks in the foundation, it is something that at least a fair chunk of the player base feels strongly about, and under these circumstances I do not see an issue with the fact that Quagsire as a standalone mon is not breaking the tier/outright broken/etc.

If this vote must be stopped due to all of the shit that's piled up in this thread and summed up well by Tony, then so be it, point your frustration with this vote being "rushed" somewhere else though because honestly in real-time this vote was not rushed at all, it looks that way in the aftermath certainly but like I said there was literally a week of no posts whatsoever after the thread had been up for a fair amount of time already.

playstyle itself is being viewed as unhealthy just because it's doing what it has always done

This is also confusing because I don't know many (if any) tiers where stall is this objectively consistent and is safely spammed by the majority of relevant players. Stall as a playstyle is talked down on for being fishy in a large portion of existing metagames but it is rare that it ever roles unwinnable matchups in SM UU, which pokemonisfun has detailed in literally dozens of posts over time by now.

At the end of the day, I care about this tier more than any other tier I have played in my life by a rather large margin and just want it to be the best version of itself. If we can reasonably sit here and say "hey looking at Scizor again is realistic!" then ye bro sure fuck it if that's not a load of horseshit, which rn it, unfortunately, feels that way.

Would also like to applaud Lilburr for her general activity and performance as a figure of power on this site so far, posts like yours on this thread are refreshing.

where's m00la and bdhb when you need em man they'd surely put a stop to this tomfoolery

 

[pokemonisfun]

I promise, I always strive to be empathetic. That’s when we understand someone’s arguments, even if we disagree with them. In this sense, I’m not trying to pretend to be a nice guy on the Internet. I legitimately want to understand logic, point out flaws, and change someone’s mind.

But while on an arrogant quest for logic, I’ve stumbled into what I feel is an emotional argument, not just a logical one. I sense fear.

There is fear in our beautiful community. I don’t know why and I don’t know how, but it permeates our community like a thick noxious cloud.

There is fear of disagreement. Why else would Pearl say and TDK imply to me they didn’t want to “get in the way” of change?

There is fear of disappointment, anger, and resentment in our community. Why else would Lilburr express how downtrodden she is about our sorry suspect?

There is fear of being wrong and in the minority. How else can we explain a sudden avalanche of posts that fed on each other’s opinion, seemingly out of nowhere?

There is fear of being left out. Why else would Sickist post he wish he had more of a say despite not being a major tournament player?

And most of all, there is fear of change. Why else would we cancel a vote, that had followed correct suspect processes, that was just like every other suspect, save that it’s an old generation where even older egos still collide?

Fear can be positive. Our emotions have evolved with us and define humanity. Who among us can say they would want a fearless life?

But who among us can say our community’s fear has been positive?

Our fear is negative. Negative fear is when we fear each other.

Negative fear stifles the music of conversation. It sows the seeds of distrust which grow into a garden of animosity. That garden cannot produce fruitful tiering decisions. Because, official Smogon tiering philosophy aside, it’s never about just making a correct decision; for our smaller old gen community, it’s about satisfying the people in the community.

I always tell my friends: you are entitled to any emotion you have because it’s not something you can control. But you have to respect you live in a society and base your behaviors not just off your emotions.

I respectfully, humbly, and desperately ask us all to look at your own behavior. How do we act towards one another so we have less fear?

If fear in a community is when we are paralyzed, feeble, and divided, then the opposite of fear is not bravery. The opposite of fear is trust.

I trust bugzinator when he posts his frustrations of late notification and I believe it’s a real issue so I respectfully requested this never happen again.

I trust TDK, Christo, Pearl and others come from a genuine place and of great knowledge so I engage with the merits of their post

I trust Wanka, Lilburr and Tony act in good faith when they entertain the idea of cancelling the vote so I posted in good faith a suggestion of when to cancel votes.

I trust our community to make decisions.

I don't know what the results of the suspect decision is. For all I know, Quagsire was voted to stay.

But I do know, if I don't get the decision I want, if I desperately feel right but lose the vote process nonetheless, then I'll accept the decision as legitimate because I trusted the people involved. I know this is true because this happened before. When the council declined to give stall a suspect test in gen7uu in 2019, I did not write a thread in PR to overturn the vote, even though I thought the vote contradicted Smogon tiering philosophy, even though I thought the council process and reasoning were all flawed.

I just quit. Regrettably. But there was no drastic procedural error in their vote.

I do not and we should not question the legitimacy of our process because we don't get the outcome we desire. If that was the case, our process would have no meaning at all, except as an arena to shout into the void.

In my view, there was no drastic error in the suspect process. Every point Tony raised was addressed in this thread publicly with weeks for discussion, apart from a voting threshold, which isn't even a rule and regardless is no grounds to cancel a vote on.

I make no proposition here even if I made my preference clear. I expect Lilburr and the other powers that be have already decided.

But I do hope we trust each other to move forward with tiering, should we continue it, regardless of the forthcoming decision.

You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough.
-Frank Crane

 

[Pearl]

See, I don't really believe in blaming people for mistakes they're already aware they've made as long as they're willing to improve upon that. It's easy to point fingers at whoever "rushed" a vote on Quagsire. It's also easy to say "Pearl, if you got out of your ass while SM was the main generation we would literally never be having this whole debate right now" (if you can't tell, it's hard for me to engage in this discussion without feeling at least a little guilty that the tier is nowhere near as good as it could possibly be if better decisions were made during the time I was the tier leader), but ultimately I don't think it's necessary to go down that road, nor does it generate any positive results whatsoever.

What I'm trying to get to is that, while I might not be as adamant as some other dudes who've posted similar opinions in this thread, I don't think there is much wrong with cancelling a vote that has clear cut issues. Ultimately, while it is common for people who are out of the loop to put Smogon's tiering system on a pedestal (or not), the truth is that it's still a system ran by people, and as a consequence it is prone to having mistakes in some capacity, and I feel like being afraid of "undermining" the "integrity" of the system is a knee-jerk reaction by some users. Don't get me wrong, I think that it's a valid concern to some degree, but I don't believe it should be enough to keep the vote from being changed or even invalidated in its entirety. I can't think of any equivalent situations in tiering decisions off the top of my head, but Smogon's whole history is filled with events that nowadays we know are nonsense, such as an entire auction reset halfway through SPL V's auction (or, to be even more extreme, a person with authority on the website making an alt account and abusing their authority to make it all the way to the finals of OST), and in spite of those, the website still has a considerable amount of credibility as an outlet for us competitive Pokémon players, and I don't think cancelling the Quagsire vote is going to change that at the end of the day.

In my view, there was no drastic error in the suspect process. Every point Tony raised was addressed in this thread publicly with weeks for discussion, apart from a voting threshold, which isn't even a rule and regardless is no grounds to cancel a vote on.

Key words: In my view.

Also in your view:

To cancel a vote, I'd propose: 1) an element of the suspect process has to be drastically incorrect, 2) the error has to be in favor of changing the status quo, and 3) the error cannot be remedied in any other reasonable way.

And even though I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with your view by any means (as in, I can reason with it logically to a reasonable degree), I don't think these criteria hold absolute value because ultimately they're just your view, and while it is true that you're engaging in this debate in good faith, everyone will have different points of views on what consitutes a good reason to change/cancel the vote, and therefore looking at every single argument to cancel a vote under this criteria doesn't sit well with me. Personally, my only issue with the vote is the current threshold required for a ban to happen. No matter how I look at it, 51% is way too low of a value for a lower tier of an old generation, and that's the only thing I'm adamant about personally wanting to see changed. Either way, I trust whoever is in charge to make a sensible decision that takes people's posts into account. The main reason I'm making this post is not because of the vote in itself though. Honestly, I understand how taxing it is to be at the center of a decision other people consider to be "bad" and I don't mean to put pressure on the people in charge of this vote. I can reason with them and I have faith that they will make a sound decision, even if it's not a decision I can agree with in its entirety at the end of the day.

There is fear of disagreement. Why else would Pearl say and TDK imply to me they didn’t want to “get in the way” of change?

There is fear of being wrong and in the minority. How else can we explain a sudden avalanche of posts that fed on each other’s opinion, seemingly out of nowhere?

Quite frankly, and trust me; I have no ill intentions when I say what I'm about to write, but I don't understand the purpose of your last post. It strikes me as an emotional attempt to keep the vote going and it reads out more like a manifesto rather than a post on smogon.com about a tiering decision. I have already expressed my stance towards the voting process and feel like I'll be able to accept whatever the final decision towards it ends up being. However, I really don't want people to have any misconceptions regarding my stance on this whole matter, so I'll keep going from here as a reply to PIF's last post.

I don't have any fear of disagreeing with people and I don't really understand what this statement is supposed to imply. The reason why it took me so long to get my thoughts on the matter together is because (at the risk of undermining my own credibility) I honestly have no intentions of playing this game competitively again for the time being, and I don't really see this changing for a while. With that in mind, I'm of the opinion that people should shape this tier whichever way it feels right to them, and if I was literally the only person opposed to changing this tier in the way some of you guys want to, I would've never touched this thread again after my initial post. The fact that my post was made after a bunch of other people voiced their concerns with a stall nerf is not related to me not "wanting" to be in the minority. Seeing people with points of view very close to mine voicing their dissatisfaction compelled me to drop my own stance because those are dudes who are way more likely than me to revisit this tier than I am, and if my inertia caused the tier to change in a way that would displease a considerable amount of people then I wouldn't feel good about myself in that case. I am aware that not everyone will see this in a good light, but that's the justification for my lateness and I apologise for contributing to this awkward situation in the first place for being that way.

Contrary to what the tone of my first two posts might imply, I am not fully convinced that stall is a nonissue in SM UU. I acknowledge that its strength, regardless of the justification I gave for it in my last post (as in the whole thing about the top threats warping the metagame around them to an extent that invalidated a lot of potentially good stall counterplay) might be too much. At the same time, I also reason a lot with Christo's opinion that it's perfectly natural that an old metagame will eventually stagnate and that very few things will remain viable at a top level once people figure out what works and what doesn't. For me, current SM UU is a tier where even though building new stuff sucks a lot, playing it actually feels good (even though I no longer participate in tournaments, I was active in a team's UUPL chat and helped their SM UU starter through testing mostly). There is a couple teams I have that I feel have winning odds against basically everything the metagame throws at them (not gonna pull a Christo type of post, but Starmie/Aggron/Rotom-H/Krook/Amoonguss/Mienshao and Aggron/Amoonguss/Latias/Primarina/Bewear/Krookodile are two of the main non stall teams I trust the most in the current SM UU metagame, and I feel like neither of them is an autoloss into the stall match up). Ultimately, it's hard to reach a consensus on what is best for the tier due to a multitude of factors, and even I am unsure to a certain degree on what is the best thing that can be done with the resources that we currently have.

And most of all, there is fear of change. Why else would we cancel a vote, that had followed correct suspect processes, that was just like every other suspect, save that it’s an old generation where even older egos still collide?

If anything, this is the only part of your post I could personally relate to. To be more precise, I am afraid of people mobilizing towards a decision that a part of the community might eventually regret due to the fact that this whole situation was handled with a sense of urgency that I personally find very hard to explain. Change can obviously be good, but at the same time we have to (funnily enough) keep in mind that we're talking about a lower tier of an old generation with a very reduced playerbase (which, as seen by the fact that I did not meet the criteria to vote on Quagsire, we could even argue that I'm not a part of anymore), and like I've said already, if people are willing to deal with the potential ramifications that a stall nerf would provoke, then wouldn't it just be better to just tackle the many elements that are actually agreed to be troublesome by a wider part of the community? This is a hypothetical question by the way. I've read all the concerns expressed towards taking a second look into Scizor and I honestly can't brush them aside, even if ultimately the decision to keep Scizor in the tier wasn't exclusively related to its impact when so many people on the No Ban side justified their stance due to the circumstances involving the suspect test. The point I'm trying to make is that the debate on how SM UU should be changed (if it should at all) can't be narrowed down to stall right off the bat, and I feel that was the first big mistake that lead up to the situation at hand.

A concrete suggestion that I brainstormed alongside another user that contacted me after my last post was, for example, using UU tournaments as an outlet to test potential changes to the tier (e.g. UUPL comes around, we contact the pool of SM UU players in advance and explore the possibility of playing the metagame without Scizor/Quagsire/Blissey/etc for example. In spite of the sample size still being small at the end of the day, we would at least have a better grasp of how the metagame would look like after some of the changes that were brainstormed by the users in this thread). Considering that the primary issue with shaking up the metagame from either side is the lack of an active playerbase, I honestly can't think of a better way to do things (unless it involves like creating a suspect ladder or even an unnoficial ladder tour, but I have no clue how sustainable that would be).

 

[Hogg]

So, this vote has been in limbo since it went up on Monday, and I think it needs some kind of resolution.

This has obviously been an ongoing and controversial topic for literally years (after all, we saw an almost perfectly split council vote when we voted on the issue in late SM). I don't think we're going to ever see a decision that makes both camps here happy, since this is clearly an issue that the playerbase has mixed feelings about as well.

As far as the current vote, however, I think that is something that can be ruled on. This has been an open topic for over a month, with minimal opposition until the vote went up. This wasn't from a lack of opportunity, either. As demonstrated above, pif actively reached out to stakeholders when the thread first went up, and I know that the discussion has come up several times in the UU discord as well. When Adaam approached me about initiating a vote on May 31, I told him to wait since the Quagsire proposal was relatively new, and to give the opposition (in particular TDK) a chance to respond. On June 9 I followed up to see if TDK was still planning on responding, and was told that he was, so requested that any vote be delayed yet again. On June 19 I talked to Lily about it, and she directly reached out to TDK as well, and his response was that he was still against it but it needed a response. She bumped the convo again on June 21, and he gave her a go ahead to move forward with a vote.

TDK and Lily convo

So I think at this point, the fact that opposition was finally raised after the vote went up shouldn't be enough of a call to negate or delay an active and ongoing vote. The nerf stall crowd made their case and gave the opposition several opportunities to respond and influence the vote itself, and got explicit approval to move forward. To then renege on that isn't fair.

Regarding the voting threshold, while ordinarily I am loath to change something significant mid-vote, I believe using the 60% figure is appropriate. For one thing, one of the main proponents (Adaam) actively sought to use a 60% threshold even before my thread from earlier this week went up, and Lily has said that the only reason she put it in as 50%+1 was because she assumed it was the same as current gen. For another, the vote is still "blind" (I have not looked at any potential results and they have not been made public), so this can't be viewed as an attempt to change the threshold post-results to get a different outcome.

Finally, because this is a significantly controversial topic, whatever the outcome of the current vote is, this will require some follow-up. Therefore, we will schedule a follow-up test to confirm whatever the voting results are in six months (using updated voting metrics so that we can incorporate results from the soon-to-start SM UU Cup from the ongoing UU Classic). This will allow players to either test a Quagsire-less metagame in a tournament setting (if the vote results are to ban Quagsire), or revisit whether adequate counterplay for stall exists (if the vote results are to keep Quagsire UU), and affirm or negate the results of the first vote. It will also give the opposition plenty of time to make their case. We can talk about incorporating other ways to garner voters as that date approaches; Pearl brought up some good ideas in his post.

TL;DR:

• The vote will move forward;
• The threshold for banning Quagsire will be 60%, not 50%+1; and
• Regardless of the results of this vote, there will be a follow up vote (tentatively scheduled for December 2021, but certainly at least after the conclusion of SM UU Cup) to revisit this issue.

I doubt this will make everyone happy, but I think this is the most fair way to move forward.

Also, regarding the issues with people not being able to make PR posts, we're working on a way to easily request PR access directly from the forum for those who do not currently have it, so hopefully that will be less of an issue in the near future.

 

[ABR]

genuine q, why weren’t officials used in voting criteria? ik 2019 but i imagine those have more importance than slightly more recent uusd and co

 

[Lily]

genuine q, why weren’t officials used in voting criteria? ik 2019 but i imagine those have more importance than slightly more recent uusd and co

it slipped my mind when generating the voting lists because I was focused on using things from after SM became an oldgen, primarily because I didn't want >50 starters of whatever UUPL to get a vote when they may not have played the tier in years and aren't guaranteed to be active anyway. when doing that I didn't think to bring up officials from when sm was current gen and by the time anyone mentioned it to me as an option, the vote had already gone live

i'll be revising the voter list for the followup vote whenever that happens (had to do this anyway for whichever new players go far in sm uu cup, potential new players in team tours etc) and ideally i plan to bring in anyone who had enough wins in the more recent snakes/spls, at the very least ssd3 and spl10 but also maybe spl9 if it's deemed that that should be included. i agree that the list that got used wasn't perfect at all so hopefully a more representative one can be made for next time.

 

[pokemonisfun]

genuine q, why weren’t officials used in voting criteria? ik 2019 but i imagine those have more importance than slightly more recent uusd and co

it slipped my mind when generating the voting lists because I was focused on using things from after SM became an oldgen, primarily because I didn't want >50 starters of whatever UUPL to get a vote when they may not have played the tier in years and aren't guaranteed to be active anyway. when doing that I didn't think to bring up officials from when sm was current gen and by the time anyone mentioned it to me as an option, the vote had already gone live

i'll be revising the voter list for the followup vote whenever that happens (had to do this anyway for whichever new players go far in sm uu cup, potential new players in team tours etc) and ideally i plan to bring in anyone who had enough wins in the more recent snakes/spls, at the very least ssd3 and spl10 but also maybe spl9 if it's deemed that that should be included. i agree that the list that got used wasn't perfect at all so hopefully a more representative one can be made for next time.

Note: speaking from my own curiosity and not from a TL perspective, still not even remotely sure if this will go ahead, this is just me wondering about logistics.

How would the voter list be determined this time if this were to go ahead? With ORAS Conk we had a pretty large amount of tournament results where ORAS UU was an oldgen, but we haven't had many with SM UU. For reference, we've had two UUPLs, one UUWC, one UUSD and one SM UU Cup with another SM UU Cup on the way in the near future. This means the voter list would look as follows, with the criteria being >50% of regular season games played with at least one win for team tours or a semis placement for SM UU Cup:

SM UU Cup

Highways
Pak
Adaam
Amukamara

UUPL

UUPL IX:
Xiri
Bushtush
HT
PinkDragonTamer
Gondra
shiloh
Finchinator
bugzinator
TDK
robjr
mncmt
Sacri'
CBU

UUPL VIII:
Christo
suapah
Empo
Shiba
Eternally

UUWC

Santu
Corazan
Spl4sh
SPACE FORCE meeps

UUSD

vivalospride

Totals to 27 voters, not even remotely close to the 48 Conk had. This isn't necessarily a problem per se but it makes me question whether or not this is an accurate enough representation of the SM UU playerbase - that said, if you guys feel this is enough then this is a moot point that just gives us the data we need for a potential future vote. If not, we could wait for future team tours / at least SM cup before finalising these votes or maybe consider taking in those who played in UUFPL? Dunno, any ideas are appreciated, it's very possible I miscounted a couple of people too since I'm running on very low sleep atm but yea.

really quick edit: I didn't want to include people voters from UUPLs where SM was the current gen because there are just way too many and it's very difficult to determine how to weed people out but if that's wanted I can try to figure it out

Not to simp but I'd add that Lilburr was pretty clear her list was preliminary, it had to get approval from Hogg as well, and I asked Adaam to check over it (for counting errors, not missing tournaments). And of course, there was an open 10 days when Lilburr asked for input on the voting list. And lastly, we used essentially the same criteria as an ORAS UU /gen6uu vote which in retrospect is of course different because that tier isn't represented in officials as recently.

I just wanted to be clear the responsibility for the voting list lies with many people - and if anyone in particular, it lies with me since only I framed my list as a possible final list. My apologies for missing official tournaments.

 

[ABR]

I appreciate the honesty in addressing how this came to be, but if there was an objective error (forgetfulness, and seemingly most of the ppl looking it over not noticing) then I feel like the vote can’t be seen as legitimate. Like it’s better than nothing to have it changed in December but if you acknowledge that it should be different then it should probably be retroactively fixed and re-voted on.