Is it really just one guy spamming Hitmontop on the ladder?
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Data Usage-Based Tier Update for April 2022 (May @ #40) (June @ #92)
- Thread starter Marty
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a couple people with too much free time, yes
also its pu material, not zu
| 39 | Hitmontop | 4.455% |
Is somebody actually trying to troll Hitmontop all the way up to OU or something?
Is somebody actually trying to troll Hitmontop all the way up to OU or something?
doc1203
Banned deucer.
On today's episode of "How Will ZU Get Messed Up This Time?":
Uxie has consistently been a very solid and easy-to-use defensive pivot, crucially being one of the hardest Sawk counters. Losing it would really hurt, as it's the literal only Stealth Rock user in ZU that also pivots. On the offensive side, Thwackey's been one of the most essential parts of the meta for the past year. Its use of priority, pivoting, item removal, and Grassy Terrain has made it THE bulky offense Pokémon. Losing Thwackey would be a devastating loss.
With the loss of bulky Water-types like Jellicent and Wishiwashi, Glastrier would be absolutely broken in ZU. Its switch-ins include Poliwrath, and ... that's it. Silvally-Ghost dropping is extremely odd to me, because it already is an A-tier threat in PU. That said, the presence of Miltank, Alolan Persian, and Tangela will make Silvally-Ghost not entirely busted. It definitely will be a massive threat though, similar to how it was last year (when it actually was in ZU for a period).
It was already established that Frosmoth was fine in ZU, and with many of its biggest counters remaining (Coalossal, Rapidash, Miltank, etc), it would be pretty balanced if it were to return. I actually would like Ninjask in ZU a lot ~ it would be a great revenge killer, but it has very obvious counters in Stunfisk and Rhydon.
I think overall, ZU would hate losing Thwackey and Uxie, and two of the four drops could potentially be busted, but it's not as massive of a loss as it could be.
Edit: I've been talking to council members & they think that Ninjask would be broken due to having virtually no offensive counters. Fair enough
Uxie has consistently been a very solid and easy-to-use defensive pivot, crucially being one of the hardest Sawk counters. Losing it would really hurt, as it's the literal only Stealth Rock user in ZU that also pivots. On the offensive side, Thwackey's been one of the most essential parts of the meta for the past year. Its use of priority, pivoting, item removal, and Grassy Terrain has made it THE bulky offense Pokémon. Losing Thwackey would be a devastating loss.
With the loss of bulky Water-types like Jellicent and Wishiwashi, Glastrier would be absolutely broken in ZU. Its switch-ins include Poliwrath, and ... that's it. Silvally-Ghost dropping is extremely odd to me, because it already is an A-tier threat in PU. That said, the presence of Miltank, Alolan Persian, and Tangela will make Silvally-Ghost not entirely busted. It definitely will be a massive threat though, similar to how it was last year (when it actually was in ZU for a period).
It was already established that Frosmoth was fine in ZU, and with many of its biggest counters remaining (Coalossal, Rapidash, Miltank, etc), it would be pretty balanced if it were to return. I actually would like Ninjask in ZU a lot ~ it would be a great revenge killer, but it has very obvious counters in Stunfisk and Rhydon.
I think overall, ZU would hate losing Thwackey and Uxie, and two of the four drops could potentially be busted, but it's not as massive of a loss as it could be.
Edit: I've been talking to council members & they think that Ninjask would be broken due to having virtually no offensive counters. Fair enough
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Apologies for the double posting, but I think this is a conversation worth having. Also, I hope I don't come off as super elitist with this post. At the end of the day, this is just a fun little game we play, and I'd love for the fun game to be as fun as it can be. No hard feelings towards anyone
The Hitmontop Fiasco, and the Bigger Implications
We're seeing the rise of Hitmontop right before our eyes, and it's for a strange reason. Despite being a B-tier Pokémon in PU, and a completely unviable mon everywhere else, Hitmontop's popularity on ladder has made it rise to NU. Furthermore, it's looking like it may even rise to RU, despite still being completely outclassed by a laundry list of Pokémon. It's a bit of a tiering disaster ... how can such a mediocre, underwhelming Pokémon rise so high? It seems like it'll be stuck in purgatory for a while, and it comes at the cost of metagames like PU and ZU, which genuinely would enjoy its presence.
The reality is that this is a byproduct of a much bigger issue. While ladder-usage-based tiering has been the standard for who knows how long, tier rankings are ultimately arbitrary to an extent. Although viability rankings can slightly influence who doesn't and doesn't get used, it doesn't have a direct stake in where Pokémon end up going.
For tiers like OU and UU, this doesn't matter as much. There's enough of a quantitative amount of passionate players who follow meta trends and stay in-touch with the state of the game. However, in lower tiers, especially with ZU and PU, ladder-usage-based tiering inflicts a disproportionately negative effect on these metagames.
We see how in PU, C-tier Pokémon like Claydol and Aromatisse still get quite a bit of usage, letting ZU miss out on valuable defensive mons & making said Pokémon stay stuck in a purgatory of poor viability. The Hitmontop dilemma is simply a bigger representation of this ~ ultimately, a Pokémon's viability does not DIRECTLY matter at all in where they land. This is present with stuff like Regieleki being stuck in OU, but it gets even more ergregious when the ratio of dedicated to casual players grow smaller by tier.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with using whatever Pokémon you want. That's what makes the game so fun! On a competitive level, though, it's at least a tiny bit concerning that we let that have such an influence on our metagames (especially for lower tiers).
I don't have all the answers as to how to solve this issue, but there are some ideas worth at least thinking about. Using tournament statistics, win rates, or even the VR's themselves, can all theoretically be used to sort the tiers. With all of that out of the way, I love playing competitive Pokémon, and I think introducing new ideas to the tiering system could potentially make this fun game more fun for everyone involved!
The Hitmontop Fiasco, and the Bigger Implications
We're seeing the rise of Hitmontop right before our eyes, and it's for a strange reason. Despite being a B-tier Pokémon in PU, and a completely unviable mon everywhere else, Hitmontop's popularity on ladder has made it rise to NU. Furthermore, it's looking like it may even rise to RU, despite still being completely outclassed by a laundry list of Pokémon. It's a bit of a tiering disaster ... how can such a mediocre, underwhelming Pokémon rise so high? It seems like it'll be stuck in purgatory for a while, and it comes at the cost of metagames like PU and ZU, which genuinely would enjoy its presence.
The reality is that this is a byproduct of a much bigger issue. While ladder-usage-based tiering has been the standard for who knows how long, tier rankings are ultimately arbitrary to an extent. Although viability rankings can slightly influence who doesn't and doesn't get used, it doesn't have a direct stake in where Pokémon end up going.
For tiers like OU and UU, this doesn't matter as much. There's enough of a quantitative amount of passionate players who follow meta trends and stay in-touch with the state of the game. However, in lower tiers, especially with ZU and PU, ladder-usage-based tiering inflicts a disproportionately negative effect on these metagames.
We see how in PU, C-tier Pokémon like Claydol and Aromatisse still get quite a bit of usage, letting ZU miss out on valuable defensive mons & making said Pokémon stay stuck in a purgatory of poor viability. The Hitmontop dilemma is simply a bigger representation of this ~ ultimately, a Pokémon's viability does not DIRECTLY matter at all in where they land. This is present with stuff like Regieleki being stuck in OU, but it gets even more ergregious when the ratio of dedicated to casual players grow smaller by tier.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with using whatever Pokémon you want. That's what makes the game so fun! On a competitive level, though, it's at least a tiny bit concerning that we let that have such an influence on our metagames (especially for lower tiers).
I don't have all the answers as to how to solve this issue, but there are some ideas worth at least thinking about. Using tournament statistics, win rates, or even the VR's themselves, can all theoretically be used to sort the tiers. With all of that out of the way, I love playing competitive Pokémon, and I think introducing new ideas to the tiering system could potentially make this fun game more fun for everyone involved!
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This really ceases to be funny when you realize how many actually good Pokemon see less usage than it and ones that are actually staples of the tier don't have as much. Ladder is a joke
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The ZU-related shifts have been discussed a plenty, but these seem to be interesting shifts too. Its kind of ironic that Inteleon drops below the cutoff in a month where Starmie's above the RU cutoff. If Starmie does keep up this usage, and thus leaves NU, will Inteleon actually have a chance at being more viable in that tier?
Alolawak failed to drop in April but its below the cutoff once again. Will it succeed in dropping in say July? Unlikely but who knows what'll happen. Gastro coming back to NU will be nice as another bulky Water with reliable recovery, and unlike Mantine it doesn't need Boots. Starmie has been dropping off but I still think it leaving would impact NU a lot. Diancie is a similar case. Guzzlord dropping back to PU was a long time coming considering its been on a decline for a while now.
Quag and Weezing have been on the rise on the contrary, both being considered by top players to be high B to even A tier material. Which is quite impressive. Espeon is w/e, PU ain't likely to retest it in the future anyway, people who want to use it only have one tier where it really can be used.
Togekiss leaving RU would have a good impact too. By far the tier's best Fairy-type and as such kept mons like Heracross and Flygon in check. Definitely not saying these mons would become broken if Kiss leaves, heaven's no, but in general solid glue Pokemon like Togekiss leaving a tier will have an impact.
I generally agree with the sentiment but this one isn't really fair since Eleki is actually solid in OU these days. It isn't stuck there.
I've been beginning to lean towards the idea of tournament-based tiering because the fear of a bad mon getting spammed on a higher tier's ladder, causing a lower tier to lose out on a potentially good mon healthy to its meta isn't just something possible in theory, it literally happens. I do think the issue though is that the sample size is a lot smaller and there's still the fact that lower tiers aren't a 1:1 reflection of power level because mons can be good in multiple tiers at a time and if it rises to a higher one definitively, it can't be used in the lower one even if said mon would be healthy in that tier. That also introduces a lot of complexity into tiering though and I think there's value in keeping things simple even if it can't please every potential situation. Also, once again, no more calling Regieleki bad when it's actually pretty good and at least puts more pressure on teams than a certain drummer Catarrhine >_> (and even then Boom is probably better in OU than it would be in UU lol)
At this point ZU should become an official tiering status.
he's coming home (maybe)
Also, while I do think the Hitmontop debacle is really funny, I can't deny that it is potentially worrying. Theoretically, a few high-ladder players could decide to use, say, Magikarp, and with some luck, get it to PU. Even still, I don't think tournament-based tiering is a good idea since that would mean only people who are actually skilled in their metagame could influence tiering, which would spread the "high ladder players influence tier placements" issue to every usage-based tier. I think everybody deserves to have a say in what Pokemon are in what tier. That's why we have the weighing system, after all.
if they can get results with hitmontop let it rise
I think hitmontop rising is funny af and it really doesn’t effect any tiers at all since hitmontop is bad in all of them. Let the man ladder
Hitmontop - A Solution
First of all I just wanna say that this situation is very funny and i'm all for Hitmontop rising to whichever tier it wants to be in, even if councils/general playerbases feel it's univable there. I actually think a great part of ladder-usage based usage stats is that it's unaffected by council bias, and encourages innovation and meta variance even if unsuccessful. Himontop is an example of this system working at its best, actually, and overall it just feels like the most democratic approach.
Anyways, this debate aside I wanna bring up an idea to discuss how a different approach going forward may end up with better tiers.
Because, right now, I see a few problems which I think could be easily solved in the leadup to a new generation of tiering.
>Low tiers' playerbases and communities are very small relative to tiers like OU, UU and National Dex (which allows individuals to have much more of an impact on a tier than intended, and leads to dead ladders)
>There are 145 fully evolved ZU (unranked) pokemon
>Some pokemon have niches in higher tiers that don't see enough usage to make the cutoff despite being viable likely due to player's teambuilding preferences, and vice versa.
Changing the rise/drop cutoff.
Currently it's at 4.52% for Gen 8 (despite being historically lower) and I feel tiering as a whole could benefit from being lowered again. As someone who plays a lot of OU, it feels off to me that A- and B+ ranked mons like Rotom-Wash, Nihilego, Slowking do not qualify for OU despite not only being niche but having significant impacts on the tier. I'm sure there are many other similar cases in lower tiers - Hitmontop getting higher usage than the majority of the VRs, for example...
And so, a lowered threshold would allow for these overused pokemon to reach the tier they deserve to be in, expanding the tier and every other tier below it, too. This could mean we could reduce the quantitity of lower tiers - I wouldn't go to the extreme and say just to have OU and UU but realistically just having 3 tiers outside of Ubers would end up with more active ladders and also more consistent representation of all of a tier's viable pokemon. only 37 pokemon being OU out of a possible ~700 usable pokemon (5.3% of the dex) is clearly not great and, in my opinion, adding more lower tiers to categorise everything isn't the best approach due to 'dead ladders'. Compare this to Gen 4 OU where 49 out of 493, almost exactly 10% of the dex, are classed as OU. Clearly this generations' approach of increasing the cutoff doesn't scale too well with dex expansion over time. There's no objective reason why "1 in 15 games" is the number chosen, and I don't have an exact value - that's up to people more knowledgeable than I am to discuss and decide - but I feel more discussion needs to be had about the positives of having a lower threshold.
Cutting the number of tiers down would solve 1 without 2 or 3.
Adding more, lower tiers would solve 2 without 1 or 3.
Having council votes determine exceptions due to viability could solve 3 without 1 and 2.
I believe we should lower the rise/drop threshold for Gen 9 in order to create bigger tiers that more closesly represent the entire range of a tier's viability and to concentrate the playerbases of lower tier players into fewer ladders. I recognise doing this retroactively in Gen 8 would cause a lot of problems in terms of redefining low tier metagames completely but with Gen 9 being not too far away I feel now is a good time to have this disussion before we go another gen with a threshold as high as 4.52.
First of all I just wanna say that this situation is very funny and i'm all for Hitmontop rising to whichever tier it wants to be in, even if councils/general playerbases feel it's univable there. I actually think a great part of ladder-usage based usage stats is that it's unaffected by council bias, and encourages innovation and meta variance even if unsuccessful. Himontop is an example of this system working at its best, actually, and overall it just feels like the most democratic approach.
Anyways, this debate aside I wanna bring up an idea to discuss how a different approach going forward may end up with better tiers.
Because, right now, I see a few problems which I think could be easily solved in the leadup to a new generation of tiering.
>Low tiers' playerbases and communities are very small relative to tiers like OU, UU and National Dex (which allows individuals to have much more of an impact on a tier than intended, and leads to dead ladders)
>There are 145 fully evolved ZU (unranked) pokemon
>Some pokemon have niches in higher tiers that don't see enough usage to make the cutoff despite being viable likely due to player's teambuilding preferences, and vice versa.
Changing the rise/drop cutoff.
Currently it's at 4.52% for Gen 8 (despite being historically lower) and I feel tiering as a whole could benefit from being lowered again. As someone who plays a lot of OU, it feels off to me that A- and B+ ranked mons like Rotom-Wash, Nihilego, Slowking do not qualify for OU despite not only being niche but having significant impacts on the tier. I'm sure there are many other similar cases in lower tiers - Hitmontop getting higher usage than the majority of the VRs, for example...
And so, a lowered threshold would allow for these overused pokemon to reach the tier they deserve to be in, expanding the tier and every other tier below it, too. This could mean we could reduce the quantitity of lower tiers - I wouldn't go to the extreme and say just to have OU and UU but realistically just having 3 tiers outside of Ubers would end up with more active ladders and also more consistent representation of all of a tier's viable pokemon. only 37 pokemon being OU out of a possible ~700 usable pokemon (5.3% of the dex) is clearly not great and, in my opinion, adding more lower tiers to categorise everything isn't the best approach due to 'dead ladders'. Compare this to Gen 4 OU where 49 out of 493, almost exactly 10% of the dex, are classed as OU. Clearly this generations' approach of increasing the cutoff doesn't scale too well with dex expansion over time. There's no objective reason why "1 in 15 games" is the number chosen, and I don't have an exact value - that's up to people more knowledgeable than I am to discuss and decide - but I feel more discussion needs to be had about the positives of having a lower threshold.
Cutting the number of tiers down would solve 1 without 2 or 3.
Adding more, lower tiers would solve 2 without 1 or 3.
Having council votes determine exceptions due to viability could solve 3 without 1 and 2.
I believe we should lower the rise/drop threshold for Gen 9 in order to create bigger tiers that more closesly represent the entire range of a tier's viability and to concentrate the playerbases of lower tier players into fewer ladders. I recognise doing this retroactively in Gen 8 would cause a lot of problems in terms of redefining low tier metagames completely but with Gen 9 being not too far away I feel now is a good time to have this disussion before we go another gen with a threshold as high as 4.52.
hitmontop was a valuable spinner in pu, and if it wouldve dropped to zu, it could have been a vital pokemon in the tier. the situation only serves to disproportionately harm lower tiers
lowering the threshold only extrapolates the issue. the reason why the threshold rose was because there were too many unviable pokemon (donphan, ambipom, etc) that were stuck in higher tiers, incapable of making an impact on a lower tier that would've appreciated their presence.
this doesn't address the main issue ~ the metagames of lower tiers will continue to feel the impact of usage stats much more significantly than higher tiers.
nihilego and rotom-wash being uu does not impact their status as being really good in ou. you can still use it, and use it well. on the contrary, having hitmontop in nu/ru means it's stuck in a meta where it frankly doesn't fit in at all. furthermore, lower tiers miss out on a mon that could provide a positive impact
How is this possible? I don't recall Darkrai ever being legal in BDSP NU.BDSP NU Stats said:
April's fools
I thought that was only OU though?
The tiering threshold was raised specifically because of this problem. While things still aren't perfect right now, they are much better than they were back in Gen 7. I can count on my hand the number of Pokemon who aren't at least C Rank material in their tier for SS across all major tiers. Meanwhile in USUM it felt like all of the lower tiers individually had like half a dozen D rank mons.
No the cutoff was changed because Gen 8 was, pre-DLC, going to be a much smaller pool of pokemon and therefore the cutoff was changed to ensure lower tiers had enough. Now that DLC has made this generation on-par with recent generations we have an absolutely massive unranked list
The decision to raise the cutoff was made before Dexit was announced.
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