Metagame Ubers Tiering Policy Review: Final Stage (Definitions)

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Moving on from part 1, we now have an Overview that I'll repost below that we can use to uniquely identify ourselves. As I mentioned in one of the posts there, I said that the Ubers tiering policy would make use of the standard policy framework, but edit the assumptions and definitions to better fit Ubers's identity. Keep reading to get the general idea of what this final part is meant to achieve.

Here is the Overview again:

Ubers's Tier Policy (Overview) said:
Ubers's Identity and Purpose

Ubers is defined as the Smogon tier that aims to create a competitively playable metagame with the least amount of bans. As part of an overall goal Smogon has that aims to create a fun and competitive format for every Pokemon within reasonable boundaries, Ubers exists above Smogon's flagship tier, OU, while operating on the earlier noted definition in order to fulfill this objective. As part of our position in the tiering system, we have to consider many different valid points of view - purity, competitiveness, and even the aspects of enjoyment derived from our tier when making decisions.

Ubers's Stances

For Ubers to maintain its status as a competitively playable tier, history has taught us that bans are sometimes unavoidable. Our tiering actions in the past tend to come as a result of new elements breaking the status quo of what Ubers once accepted and thought of as normal, meaning a small degree of flexibility has to be kept in mind when enforcing our tiering policy.

Ubers will take actions that are deemed suitable by the Tiering Council and wider community if they are believed to benefit or harm the ideals of Ubers play, as discussed in the first section. It should be noted that the desire for Ubers to maintain its status as a competitively playable metagame takes priority over our desire to avoid bans, however, unbanning elements will always be on the table for discussion should we believe they are worthwhile.

Ubers's Tiering Actions

Ubers aims to start every metagame that results from a new game release with a fresh banlist, taking only the standard Smogon singles clauses and working from there, with no Pokemon bans. Our standard method for making a ban or unban decision on an element in Ubers will be through suspect testing, where we use a 66.6% vote against the current status quo to make the final decision. Our Tiering Council will be responsible for determining suspect tests with consideration for community input and with consideration to our philosophy and policy definitions.

Quickbans are reserved for extreme cases, something we cannot accurately define until they happen due to their nature and the nature of Ubers as a tier, but any ban of this type should have close to zero doubts about its legitimacy, and should only be the result of a community-wide discussion.

Ubers will also make use of complex bans to help reach our goal of creating a format where we ban as little as possible, even though this may come at the cost of purity and simplicity. As a general guideline, Ubers will be much more comfortable using complex bans in cases of avoiding collateral damage to the metagame, rather than aiming to "nerf" something in particular.

Finally, this tiering policy may be considered for retroactive use in older generations for exclusive cases involving extreme demand from its active community. This scenario is expected to be exceedingly rare and is mainly left open to avoid closing doors unnecessarily.
When we made the Overview internally, I mentioned in the last thread that we made some quick definitions during that discussion that we aim to get a consensus on the definitions behind with this thread. Here they are:

"Competitive": A metagame that is free of "uncompetitive" elements such as those in our clauses - OHKO moves, Moody, Sleep Clause, etc.

"(Competitively) Playable": A metagame that allows a player to show their skill as Smogon defines in its assumptions. There should be interaction between the players with a degree of consistency being possible in such a metagame.

"Purity": The idea of sticking to the game of Pokemon as designed by its developers and not altering it ourselves. Think along the lines of the AG format where no bans exist at all.

"Complex Bans": The idea of a conditional ban such as the use of "X is prevented with Y", as opposed to an outright ban of an element.

"Element": Used in reference to describe things at a barebones level. This can refer to moves, Pokemon, abilities, or anything in particular at its lowest form.

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So, the purpose of this final part is threefold:

- To flesh out the ideas expressed in the overview in detail to avoid confusion (see above)
- To decide what to keep and / or edit from the standard policy framework and incorporate into our own policy
- To decide what (if anything) the standard policy is missing that would be beneficial to cover in the context of Ubers


Here are the parts in question we will be looking at in the below hide tags:

(taken from here)

Assumptions in Tiering Policy:


I.) We play, to the best of our simulator's capabilities, with the mechanics given to us on the cartridge.
  • Some exceptions exist, such Sleep Clause and Freeze Clause (RBY / GSC), but they are to be avoided as much as possible.
  • Suggestions to "remove critical hits" or "make Baton Pass fail in battle" are not valid tiering proposals.
II.) We cater to both ladder players (the higher end of the ladder) and tournament players.
  • For actions to be taken in tiering policy, it is important to show how that action affects BOTH the ladder scene and the tournament scene.
  • Stats for both will be highly emphasized but not a sole determining factor.
III.) The onus of providing justification is on the side changing the status quo.
  • The status quo can be changed in certain cases, such as new game releases. This is the situation with Hoopa-U in ORAS, which started directly in OU, unlike other 680-BST legendaries, which start in Ubers and then potentially get suspected to drop to OU.
  • If a proposal is made to ban or unban a Pokemon, ability, item, or move, the side suggesting this must demonstrate why this is necessary and how it affects the ladder and the tournament scene, as well as provide evidence for both.
IV.) Probability management is a part of the game.

  • This means we have to accept that moves have secondary effects, that moves can miss, that moves can critical hit, and that managing all these potential probability points is a part of skill.
  • This does NOT mean that we will accept every probability factor introduced to the game. Evasion, OHKO moves, and Moody all affected the outcome "too much", and we removed them.
  • "Too much" is if a particular factor has the more skilled player at a disadvantage a considerable amount of the time against a less skilled player, regardless of what they do.
V.) Team matchup management is a part of the game.
  • This means we have to accept that it's possible we will be at an advantage or disadvantage from the very beginning.
  • With optimal team building skills, the pool of options (Pokemon, moves, items) present in the tier should allow you to build teams addressing the different team archetypes at least decently and offer a solution in-battle to a large majority of the principle threats of the metagame.
VI.) Even though some of these assumptions limit us, we will, within those limitations, work to maximize the concept of "player skill" determining the result of a match the majority of the time.

  • The majority of our potential suspect discussion will center around the defined versions of uncompetitive, broken, and unhealthy and how a particular suspect element lowers some component of player skill within those three constructs.
  • Any of the subsections in skill can be emphasized for a potential suspect.
    • If Shadow Tag reduces the battling skill component too much via removing smart switching and reducing the ability to assess risk, these should be mentioned when stating Shadow Tag is uncompetitive, broken, or unhealthy.
    • If Toxapex is uncompetitive, broken, or unhealthy, point out how it reduces player skill from being the major determining factor in a match and which component of skill it drastically takes away from.

taken from here

Definitions for Tiering Policy:


I.) Skill - the subjective metric we use to judge player worth in competitive Pokemon.
  • Team Building Skill - the part of skill that is involved in the preparation for a battle
    • Assessing and Dealing with Threats
    • Building Towards a Strategy (or Strategies)
    • Creativity
    • Catering to Metagame / Opponents
  • Battling Skill - the part of skill involved in actually battling
    • Picking the Right Lead
    • Recognizing the Win Condition
    • Picking the Right Move
    • Smart Switching
    • Gathering Information and Making Assumptions
    • Long-term vs. Short-term Goals
    • Assessing Risk
    • Probability Management
    • Prediction
II.) Uncompetitive - elements that reduce the effect of player choice / interaction on the end result to an extreme degree, such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant.

  • This can be matchup related; think the determination that Baton Pass took the battling skill aspect out of the player's hands and made it overwhelmingly a team matchup issue, where even the best moves made each time by a standard team often were not enough.
  • This can be external factors; think Endless Battle Clause, where the determining factor became internet connection over playing skill.
  • This can be probability management issues; think OHKOs, evasion, or Moody, all of which turned the battle from emphasizing battling skill to emphasizing the result of the RNG more often than not.
III.) Broken - elements that are too good relative to the rest of the metagame such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant.

  • These aren't necessarily completely uncompetitive because they don't take the determining factor out of the player's hands; both can use these elements and both probably have a fair chance to win. They are broken because they almost dictate / require usage, and a standard team without one of them facing a standard team with one of them would be at a drastic disadvantage.
  • These also include elements whose only counters or checks are extraordinarily niche Pokemon that would put the team at a large disadvantage elsewhere.
  • Uncompetitive and Broken defined like this tend to be mutually exclusive in practice, but they aren't necessarily entirely so.
    • Baton Pass was deemed uncompetitive because of how drastically it removed battling skill's effects and brought the battle down to matchup, but it could also be deemed broken because of the unique ways in which you had to deal with it.
    • While this isn't always the case, an uncompetitive thing probably isn't broken, but a broken thing is more likely to be uncompetitive simply due to the unique counter / check component. For example, Mega Kangaskhan was deemed broken because it was simply too good relative to the rest of the metagame and caused the tier to centralize around it, but it could also be labeled as uncompetitive because of the severe team matchup restriction it caused by punishing players if they did not pack one of the few obscure counters or checks for it.
IV.) Unhealthy - elements that are neither uncompetitive nor broken yet are deemed undesirable for the metagame such that they inhibit "skillful play" to a large extent.
  • These are elements that may not limit either team building or battling skill enough individually but combine to cause an effect that is undesirable for the metagame.
  • This can also be a state of the metagame. If the metagame has too much diversity wherein team building ability is greatly hampered and battling skill is drastically reduced, we may seek to reduce the number of good-to-great threats. This can also work in reverse; if the metagame is too centralized around a particular set of Pokemon, none of which are broken on their own, we may seek to add Pokemon to increase diversity.
  • This is the most controversial and subjective one and will therefore be used the most sparingly. The Tiering Councils will only use this amidst drastic community outcry and a conviction that the move will noticeably result in the better player winning over the lesser player.
  • When trying to argue a particular element's suspect status, please avoid this category unless absolutely necessary. This is a last-ditch, subjective catch-all, and tiering arguments should focus on uncompetitive or broken first. We are coming to a point in the generations where the number of threats is close to overwhelming, so we may touch upon this more often, but please try to focus on uncompetitive and broken first.


Let's get started!
 
I think, overall, everything in the standard policy applies except for the broken/unhealthy sections. Details of some other things are obvs gonna differ some, though.

Assumption V is one that I initially feel needs the most analysis for an Ubers context. Obviously, the general idea that we accept that team matchup will be present in Pokemon. We also would obviously like a metagame that isn’t littered with excessive matchup problems because of how that can contradict the idea of being playable and skillful. To what degree is that true however?

If Ubers were to ever end up like OU was (is?) where there are just too many good, commonplace Pokemon demanding seperate individual answers that just simply can’t be covered by a single set of 6 mons BUT none of these good Pokemon are individually qualified for a ban under Ubers’s guidelines (too many « good but not broken » I believe the OU issue was); what would we do? Would we accept a fundamentally, excessively match-up based metagame or just start banning Pokemon from the top? In lesser examples, how do we feel about Pokemon or other elements that are overall inconsistent but are still potentially very effective at match-up fishing? What about Pokemon / elements that are so good they demand a choice between a small few of specific counters to avoid just outright losing? To what extent does the individual quality and other general applications each of those counters may have, matter?

I’ll probably come back to post other thoughts. For now, I’ m curious about the general opinion of what I brought up above. I think the remainder of this policy construction will be stretching out the limits behind the definitions we want to introduce into the policy as well as nitpicking some of the examples and details present in the rest.
 
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If Ubers were to ever end up like OU was (is?) where there are just too many good, commonplace Pokemon demanding seperate individual answers that just simply can’t be covered by a single set of 6 mons BUT none of these good Pokemon are individually qualified for a ban under Ubers’s guidelines (too many « good but not broken » I believe the OU issue was); what would we do?
The fact that Ubers is a metagame not subject to OU's constraints opens up a few solutions here. By its very nature as a metagame that accepts overcentralisation, this problem is less likely to occur because an overcentralised meta will by definition have fewer relevant threats to deal with. (If Ubers were to become balanced and non-centralised, as unlikely as it is, it might as well *become* OU.) But it also means that making the metagame *more* centralised by unbanning an element is an option. This does raise the question of what happens if AG were to become as balanced a metagame as OU currently is, but that's sufficiently far off being a practical consideration that it doesn't merit worrying about.

I suppose it's possible to envisage a rock-paper-scissors scenario, similar to what often happens in high level CCG play when the meta gets bad -- the choices are the dominant deck which hoses most of the meta, the dedicated counter to that dominant deck (which beats that dominant deck reliably but is sufficiently specialised to do so that it loses to everything else), or something else, and every match is either a mirror match or has an outcome determined before play starts. So you could have a Pokemon that isn't overwhelming in normal play, but becomes so in the context of limited ability to carry answers because doing so will mean being underprepared for the dominant threat. In this case the obvious answer is that the dominant threat has become overwhelming because of its interaction with the meta rather than by itself, and that's when it's worth considering a suspect test of some sort. Limiting ability to deal with other threats is just as valid a ban criterion as overpowering the meta by itself, in my opinion.

I'm partial to Ubers being more open to complex bans, personally. I think minimalism in banning (or, equivalently, maximum freedom to use what you want to, insofar as this doesn't create a meta players consider unfun) is important to Ubers' identity. I can see the value of trying to keep an objective standard of "how to ban things simply", but realistically there is still subjectivity in the process of defining which of the "simple bans" is desirable, and I simply don't see that principle as equally important to Ubers relative to OU. Nor do I think violating the policy is as much of a rabbit hole in Ubers, because the possibility space of complex bans we might *want* to stabilise the meta is so much smaller. Ubers has already introduced a complex ban (Shadow Tag and sleep moves) with little controversy, and I'd like to see this expanded to better preserve Ubers' identity.

I admit I haven't completely thought this through, and I won't claim to be an expert Ubers player (I follow the meta quite carefully but rarely actually play it), so there may be some obvious flaw in this argument that I'm overlooking.

EDIT: I also think it's worth introducing a difference between types of overcentralising threat into the discussion. Primal Groudon, Necrozma and Xerneas are all centralising threats, but they are fundamentally different classes of threat. Primal Groudon simply does a lot of things very well without being overwhelming in any specific way, Necrozma has an overwhelming array of options while being very punishing if players guess incorrectly, and Xerneas presents a potentially instantly game-ending threat in one or two specific ways that are predictable but still overwhelmingly punishing if you don't make sure every move leaves you well-positioned to immediately respond to it (i.e. counterplay is primarily proactive rather than reactive). A policy to determine what is banworthy should probably be informed by that distinction.
 
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I think that you guys are missing an important idea: aesthetics.

The only thing that really matters is that the metagame appears enjoyable and convinces people to play it. Ubers' appeal is to play with big, bad, and legendary pokemons. Everything else is secondary to this goal. I believe that if there are strategies that breach this aesthetics, then we should nerf them. For example, baton pass strategies generally use tiny and cute pokemon such as Eevee and that's rather unaesthetic for Ubers.
 
I think that having the chance to review the standard framework shows us that the assumptions made for a Smogon tier closely apply to Ubers as it is, something that might have been seen as a surprise. I don't think anything actually needs to be changed in that category to be a fit for us, which makes me think - is it necessary to mention them at all? If we say that Ubers follows the same assumptions as any other Smogon tier, we save a lot of unnecessary coverage in the policy. If we were to include the assumptions, I think it would just mean changing some examples around, with the exception of V, and I think that's been touched on very well by MM2 and Rarycaris's posts - if things become "too balanced" to the point that team matchup is the most prevalent issue, we should try looking the other direction to see if something can pull the metagame a bit tighter. Judging this becomes the hard part, as such a conversation is difficult to predict. It's a bridge we would have to cross when we come to it due to the number of variables that potential metagame might have. So for the rest of my post, I'm going to go with the reasoning that only the definitions require any real review and go from there.

When looking to the definitions, the idea of "Skill" makes good sense to me. Wouldn't change anything there and it fits what we go over when we mention skill with the Overview anyway. That takes us to our favorite three words in tiering: Uncompetitive, Broken, and Unhealthy. Due to the large amount of discussion that can come from each category, I'm going to suggest we focus on one at a time. I'm going to start with "Broken", because it has the most room for discussion and has many examples and theoreticals to draw ideas from:
Broken in the standard framework said:
III.) Broken - elements that are too good relative to the rest of the metagame such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant.

  • These aren't necessarily completely uncompetitive because they don't take the determining factor out of the player's hands; both can use these elements and both probably have a fair chance to win. They are broken because they almost dictate / require usage, and a standard team without one of them facing a standard team with one of them would be at a drastic disadvantage.
  • These also include elements whose only counters or checks are extraordinarily niche Pokemon that would put the team at a large disadvantage elsewhere.
  • Uncompetitive and Broken defined like this tend to be mutually exclusive in practice, but they aren't necessarily entirely so.
    • Baton Pass was deemed uncompetitive because of how drastically it removed battling skill's effects and brought the battle down to matchup, but it could also be deemed broken because of the unique ways in which you had to deal with it.
    • While this isn't always the case, an uncompetitive thing probably isn't broken, but a broken thing is more likely to be uncompetitive simply due to the unique counter / check component. For example, Mega Kangaskhan was deemed broken because it was simply too good relative to the rest of the metagame and caused the tier to centralize around it, but it could also be labeled as uncompetitive because of the severe team matchup restriction it caused by punishing players if they did not pack one of the few obscure counters or checks for it.
I think the very first line does hint at what it means for essentially every tier, specifically "relative to the rest of the metagame", which I think is the biggest factor here. If we look at Mega Rayquaza's ban in ORAS, it was simply too good compared to anything else in the game, even for our elevated standards as Ubers. Defensive answers simply didn't exist in any reliable way and all counterplay was therefore proactive in nature, even to the point of "set up your own Rayquaza first" so that it never took over your ability to play the game. I mentioned this in the Overview thread, but I think that if some other Pokemon or formes came along with the same power level as Mega Rayquaza and they happen to cancel each other out to a degree, Ubers would just move up in power level perceptions to accomodate for it rather than ban things at a baseline level (like OU tends to do).

The other thing that line mentions is "more skillful play is almost always rendered irrelevant". If we go back to Mega Rayquaza, that's exactly what happened. Set up your own Rayquaza first and the opponent is in a terrible position just from that alone. If your opponent does it first, you are in a terrible position. These extreme situations it forced rendered skillful play irrelevant, which goes against Ubers's view of a competitively playable metagame (see our Overview). In my opinion, for Mega Rayquaza to properly exist in the tier, the metagame should be at a point where reactive and defensive counterplay is possible to it and without suffocating the opponent's ability to show their skills. However, I don't think this means that Mega Rayquaza should ever be regarded as a "baseline" of what is broken in Ubers. Something can violate these principles without being as overwhelmingly strong as it was.

The first bullet point stands out to me as something that just isn't very compatible with how I see Ubers. The main thing I see as wrong is the idea of usage being a factor and the idea of not using an element leading to a drastic disadvantage, but I stand behind the former idea more than the latter. Usage in general is a poor marker for something problematic, especially on its own - I think its generally agreed that Primal Groudon's very high usage isn't a problem to the tier for example. Following up regarding Primal Groudon, I don't believe teams without it are at a drastic disadvantage - many teams have been built without seeing it featured. The viability of these teams relative to other teams is definitely something to consider, but that seems more of a "currently in the metagame" idea than something to base tiering ideas around, which aim to cover the future as well as the present. I think that bullet point should be replaced with something else. I like what Rarycaris's post touches on in regards to "different types of centralizing threats". If we can refine that point, it could see some sort of coverage in this category.

The second point is... difficult to say much of. I don't think any examples exist but the premise is probably ok to keep in mind for the future. If the only check to something is something awful against everything else, it's probably a viable argument to say that element checked by one irrelevant thing is broken.

I also agree with the last point's idea of uncompetitive and broken being mutually exclusive at times. The BP mention is a good example due to it reducing games to simple flowcharts and hoping you had the right luck (in some cases) or specific counterplay option before starting the game, which pulls us back to the statements outlined in the definition of skill and how it reduces it. Ignoring the example given in the second point for obvious reasons, the idea of a broken element having better odds likely to be uncompetitive as well due to the limited counterplay is something I agree with in an Ubers context as well - just look again at Mega Rayquaza in ORAS.

So with all that said I'd like to repeat myself and suggest that we focus on the "Broken" category first to get the ball rolling and see how we feel about this area. Where do you stand?

and no, aesthetics is not a consideration in reality...
 
I'm partial to Ubers being more open to complex bans, personally. I think minimalism in banning (or, equivalently, maximum freedom to use what you want to, insofar as this doesn't create a meta players consider unfun) is important to Ubers' identity. I can see the value of trying to keep an objective standard of "how to ban things simply", but realistically there is still subjectivity in the process of defining which of the "simple bans" is desirable, and I simply don't see that principle as equally important to Ubers relative to OU. Nor do I think violating the policy is as much of a rabbit hole in Ubers, because the possibility space of complex bans we might *want* to stabilise the meta is so much smaller. Ubers has already introduced a complex ban (Shadow Tag and sleep moves) with little controversy, and I'd like to see this expanded to better preserve Ubers' identity.
STag+Sleep already has a precedent in the form of SleepTrapping in GSC, furthermore it's justifiable in that it's a combo that violates the spirit of sleep clause. For both those reasons, I don't believe it should be used as a precedent for other complex bans. Although I can agree with the slippery slope argument not really being effective, complex bans nonetheless undermine the legitimacy of a game's ruleset- I think many people when they see a ruleset that utilises complex bans, would view that as bs.

Also your point regarding objectivity/subjectivity doesn't seem right to me. I don't think anyone would rationally claim that describing standards for banworthiness eliminates subjectivity, only that it limits it somewhat, while it also attempts to build a consistent vision of what a tier would ideally look like. I don't really see how complex bans would eliminate the need for such standards, which is the impression I got from your post. Furthermore, I don't see why the issue of subjectivity would negatively impact simple bans more than complex ones and I'd like to hear your reasoning. Complex bans don't really make anything less subjective, if anything they muddy the waters further by introducing more elements to evaluate and presenting a wider possible range of interpretations of whatever standards the community uses

Fwiw I would dispense with sleeptrap bans in both gsc and ubers and replace them with a ban on trapping/STag, but hey, I don't make the rules.

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Regarding brokenness, I think the first line is an excellent summary of what we should be aiming for, but the dot points are a bit useless tbh. A given element being required (or approaching such status) on viable teams is an indication that something might be problematic, but it should in no way be used as a major criterion for banworthiness, as there are many examples where this dynamic exists but the respective tier is nonetheless sufficiently deep to justify not doing anything about it. iirc someone mentioned PDon as being something ubiquitous but not really problematic, which I agree with, however many past gens are also notable- just look at GSC OU, where one pokemon is required (Lax) and a further two categories approach that status (Electrics and Spikers), but none of the most commonly cited issues with GSC have to do with that element of centralisation.

The second dot point regarding obscure C&Cs I think is a legitimate point, but it's also very niche in practice imo. I think in a majority of cases where pokemon are banned, their checks are usually already relevant pokemon in the tier, but they're just insufficient or there's some other dynamic in play that means that pokemon is nonetheless problematic. That said, I could be wrong on this one, I haven't exactly researched it so feel free to correct me here.

I actually find the point regarding the whole mutual exclusiveness of broken and uncompetitive to be a dumb point. There's absolutely no reason they should be mutually exclusive, so saying they are is just false. If you're just noting a tendency that's fine, but don't then say they're mutually exclusive because that's just wrong (if it were, something being broken would remove it from discussion surrounding uncompetitiveness, which would be stupid, e.g. MRay is uncompetitive because it's stupidly broken), it'd be much less illogical to say that they don't necessarily converge or something along those lines. But this point does actually tie in to my overall stance on things- bans should be implemented when something is sufficiently broken that it undermines the depth of the metagame it is in, such as by making things uncompetitive. By evaluating elements in terms of how they impact the depth of the metagame you directly address the main reason you would ban things in the first place, while you also have a core criterion that is far more tolerant of "imbalance" and is overall in keeping with the spirit of ubers imo.

I think identifying different possible unhealthy dynamics is useful if your primary criteria are somewhat abstract (you'll notice I harp on about depth, which I think is relatively abstract), in which case they can form a link between observed dynamics in the metagame and that more abstract ideal. However I don't think they should EVER be used as criteria in their own right. For starters, I don't believe such a list can ever be exhaustive, but the more important issue is that if you rely on such categories you set yourself up for situations where people argue that threat X is broken and they're technically right based on the criteria, but the reality is that X doesn't compromise the integrity of the tier.

I also wrote a post on PP a while back on this kind of topic if anyone's interested, but it's not as though I'm about to call it required reading lol
 
I like what Rarycaris's post touches on in regards to "different types of centralizing threats". If we can refine that point, it could see some sort of coverage in this category.
I'll try to expound on this a little. Again, this will mostly just be me writing my thoughts down. I won't pretend this is a carefully considered thesis, and I could very well be wrong on points of fact regarding the current metagame. Hopefully it will be interesting regardless.

A lot of the reason Primal Groudon isn't an issue is that omnipresence is not, according to Ubers philosophy, a problem. It's not an issue for Primal Groudon to be on every team even if we accept that that is the case, because Primal Groudon's function on those teams is vastly different. It's excellent at role compression, which means that it can fulfil a different role on every team without being dead weight if that role is not needed. But in none of those roles is it overwhelming to the point of requiring specialised answers, meaning that it does not massively limit an opponent's play either in the teambuilding phase or during play. This is important because a misprediction of Primal Groudon's role will very rarely cost you the game by itself unless the game was already very closely matched, which in turn allows for many reactive play options.

Another point worth mentioning about Primal Groudon is that unlike other types of overcentralising Pokemon in Ubers, its dominance is largely caused by the environment around it rather than primarily by inherent traits that it has. A lot of the roles Primal Groudon fills involve being answers to specific metagame-defining threats that are otherwise quite difficult to deal with (such as Xerneas, Necrozma-DM and Kyogre), and in the absence of those threats it would be a lot less necessary to have it on your team. The fact that its centralisation is more meta-dependent than the other types of centralisation I'll mention is a big part of why it has less potential to be problematic -- in a sense, Primal Groudon itself is reactive rather than proactive.

So how can a threat that centralises in the way that Primal Groudon does potentially become problematic in the ubers metagame? I guess this would be either if too many other (individually non-problematic) threats existed whose answers were countered by Primal Groudon, such that it was reponsible for causing an overload of good threats. Or if it became so good at a role that it became the one and only "face" of that role, and dealing with an entire archetype became synonymous with dealing with Primal Groudon. Or if it became good enough somehow to come under one of the other classes of centralising threat that I'll mention.

Moving on, Necrozma-DM is a fundamentally different type of threat because it offers greater potential to be overcentralising to a problematic degree in a vacuum. and the reason for that is a combination of power and unpredictability. It's powerful enough to limit the pool of answers to any given set (though not to the degree of requiring specialised counters), and has enough options with different answers that you can't be sure your counter is the correct one. What this means in practice is that if you guess incorrectly, your opponent will gain an overwhelming advantage that will have a disproportionate advantage compared to any other misplay. I don't think this removes skillful play, because there is still skill in analysing the opponent's team and figuring out which Necrozma option they're likely to have chosen, but it does make that decision disproportionately important, both in absolute terms and compared to the amount of information you have to make it.

At this point, it's worth introducing a concept of concentration of skill. An element which makes certain decisions disproportionately important, if sufficiently problematic, concentrates skill at playing the tier into skill at making those decisions. This can also eliminate skill if the concentration presents in such a way that the decision isn't made based on much information. At that point, games are won and lost pretty much on luck, and I think this is fundamentally the same type of problem as OU's excessive matchup issues even if it presents differently.

The next type of overcentralising threat are things like Geomancy Xerneas, which are so overwhelmingly strong at one thing that opponents must constantly play around them. In the teambuilding phase, this manifests as making sure you always have a plan to deal with the Pokemon after it's set up, which will most of the time mean carrying dedicated counters. During play, this means that every move you make must be calculated with the element in mind, often to the extent that you should actively avoid fainting an opposing mon if doing so would give the overcentralising Pokemon a switch-in opportunity. If you don't have a specialised counter, or that counter is damaged, the game is pretty much over if the threatening Pokemon sets up.

This can at extremes be unhealthy because it concentrates skill in proactive play, and like Necrozma-class threats make that one turn disproportionately important -- skill demonstrated in the rest of the game can be made essentially irrelevant, and if one such threat becomes too dominant in the meta, the rest of the tier is reduced to a group of support Pokemon for that one threat. (This is pretty much what happened in the MRay meta.) Hax while this element in play will cross the line from "a moderate inconvenience" to "instantly decides the game in favour of whoever the hax benefits". This can also mean that other variants of the same Pokemon become much more threatening just by virtue of the main powerful set existing, because failure to play around the main set is so punishing; if you pretty much autolose unless you make one specific move, it's much easier for the opponent to make decisions assuming that you will make that move.

I would consider Mega Rayquaza to be essentially in this tier of threat aswell, insofar as counterplay is more or less exclusively proactive and it can be difficult to deal with even if you know exactly that it's doing. The need to play around physical setup sets makes it relatively easy for Rayquaza to build to counter its counters. It's different from something like Xerneas or ORAS Darkrai in that it has multiple different hyper-threatening sets, and it's not immediately obvious which set is the best, but the power is much more of a factor than the unpredictability, unlike Necrozma.

Now that I think of it, a fourth type of centralising threat should be mentioned, and that's threats that limit counterplay by their very nature. Mega Gengar and other trappers come into this category, and the fact they offer so many more choices to the user than to their opponent has effects that are fairly self-explanatory -- as are the possible reasons why such a threat might become excessively problematic.

The common thread here is that overcentralising elements that have the potential to be problematic do so by preventing reactive play, and thus preventing players from demonstrating skill in reactive play. I suppose a threat can also be a problem if it is so unpredictable that it effectively prevents proactive play entirely. At any rate, being able to demonstrate skill in a lot of aspects of the game, and in particular in both proactive and reactive play, seems to me to be a sign of a healthy or at least acceptable meta.
 
We've left this thread idle for quite a while hoping for further information on Sword and Shield before committing any further to the task of creating a policy, just so we know we would be making the right moves. As it stands, we don't know nearly enough details on Gen 8 to decide if the path we are taking is the right one, and the changes to Ubers are likely to be massively impactful with what we already know - this discussion was framed under the idea that we would be expecting a typical generation shift with the usual Pokemon featuring, and that is not going to be the case. There are too many variables at play to make any real moves, predictions, or discussions on the future of the tier right now.

We will be putting this discussion on hold until we have a solid idea of what Sword and Shield will do for the competitive scene and Ubers in particular, and if our idea of a policy can still be applied to whatever will come.

We also don't currently have any plans to do suspect testing for USM. From the looks and feelings gathered during the recent UPL, many are content with the state of USM Ubers to the point that we will leave things be for now. Generally a suspect test should have a reasonable majority feeling that something is wrong to start with, and that isn't currently the case in the eyes of the council and the general playerbase.

Let's sit tight, wait, and see.
 
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