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Hey what's up guys,

\o/

I agree with basically all of the criticism in this thread, and I already ditched the TC a couple months ago because I don't foresee the TC getting fixed anytime soon (or ever). However, I think a good amount of solutions in this thread are missing the mark to some extent, which is reasonable, since I don't think people realize how deeply fucked the TC currently is. So, let me go into it: First of all, I'm going to go ahead and point out the system is structured in such a way that makes it heavily resistant to change. To be frank, tiering is extra work, and the staff seem significantly more interested in having the formats be literally playable with all pokemon at least theoretically usable than actually making competitive, you know, good. Notice the operative word here is "staff"; for a while, the TC has been basically hammered into complete non-choices, as tiering decisions have been basically made by higher staff. The obvious example is the individual pokemon changes, the first notable one being removing Draco Meteor from Hydreigon's movepool. You could say the TC made that decision, sure, but the answer is not really. A more accurate breakdown is we were told we 100% shouldn't let Hydreigon be banned, and they don't want to remove Draco from Hydreigon later if they add it and it ends up broken. So, we were forced to agree "okay, yeah, don't release draco on it". In a technical manner, we made the judgment call that Draco Meteor Hydreigon would be too much, but in reality, we really had no choice in the matter. The limitations we were handed down basically made it the only possible option, and negotiating other solutions (just ban hydreigon/add it and remove it later if it's a problem) were basically no sold as possible options. This trend of "Yeah, you guys decide, but there is literally only 1 conceivable choice" has resulted in basically every single OU related decision since Unova, and quite frankly, kills any drive to actually care about anything tiering related. If there's only 1 option that's even being considered, why even have a TC to make that decision? This is obviously exacerbated by the fact that banning is something to be avoided whenever possible, and bans are typical placed with the idea that at some point an update/nerf will be released to undo the ban at some point. Of course, this only really addresses the issues plaguing OU tiering, not the rest of the tiers. To go into that, we have to go over the fact the TC is basically unchanged in policies and structure despite being like, half a decade old. The biggest issue is the massive emphasis on forum engagement and participation; discussions take place on the forums, when adding TC members, some level of involvement on the forums is preferred/expected, etc. This might have been fine before, but quite frankly, the forums here are extremely dead. Forums (no, reddit doesn't count) just aren't really used anymore, and making them so integral to the tiering process is a ridiculous oversight. The fact you basically can't get involved in tiering in any meaningful way other than messaging TC members without getting on the forums is absolutely ridiculous in current year. TC and tiering communication in general is awful, and it's caused partially by apathy on the TC's side (massive inactivity btw, but this is an old horse), but also by the fact policies basically push communication to threads in a forum people who play the game don't even use. It's pretty telling that a lot of the people I'm seeing in this thread are people who were using the forums years ago, when it was actually, uh, useful. Even ignoring that, there is basically no meaningful structure to the tiering process itself. The definitions of banworthy are literally irrelevant, since the rules for banning have heavily changed since staff became more involved, and the process of requiring a forum thread for suspects and such is literally laughably pointless. At present, it's just whoever actually cares to say or do anything throwing out a vote on things people are mildly vocal about. The literal 2.13 active TC members scream about something that they want banned ASAP, and bring it up every month until something changes. That's about it. It's not like there's much structure on what to do, and most people just aren't involved enough to generate structure. There's not really any guidelines on what's considered acceptable to ban other than "try not to touch OU", so the discussions quickly turn circular with only 2 or 3 people actively participating to any extent, and none of them really agreeing on the line for banworthy, even if half the time they agree something might be strong. Ultimately, all of these things are only issues as long as they persist. If they can be fixed, there isn't a problem, but as I said originally, the system is heavily resistant to change. Removing old, irrelevant TC members is more work for staff (read: Munya), and quite frankly, from their perspective, isn't even necessary if the TC is still working "fine" (which it isn't). To be fair, I'm sympathetic to Munya & staff in general on this point, since the way the system is structured and the fact staff hide in a brimstone bunker as far away from the playerbase as possible makes picking out new TC members a huge hassle. Not only that, but in all the time TC has been around, it's absolutely been common that someone new is added to the TC to replace an inactive/quit/removed member, and then proceeds to just not participate at all. At a certain point, cycling through TC members can feel pointless, when you end up replacing an inactive player with an active player who doesn't participate, and then turns inactive. However, ignoring this doesn't make it not an issue, it just guarantees it will literally never get fixed. Since TC inevitably ends up clogged with inactives who can't be bothered to do anything, and replacing them with active members is an exercise in futility, nothing meaningful gets changed since the TC itself isn't willing to instigate any change. Not to mention that actually enacting meaningful change requires active discussion and cooperation with higher staff, which effectively makes doing anything a million times more difficult and frustrating. It's not uncommon that we had to force Munya to float an idea higher up the river, just to get told a flat "no" with little else. I'm also gonna throw a disclaimer here; it's not that higher staff never engage or discuss with the TC. For example, Kyu would frequently show up whenever we had to discuss something related to an ingame change he'd have to push (ie, modifying how an ability/move works) that had relevant competitive impact. However, normally these discussions are instigated by the higher staff themselves, and things as vague and open ended as "The TC is completely broken and needs to be changed completely" isn't going to garner much traction. So, what are we left with? A system that, as is, is broken in the following ways: Communicates through an irrelevant channel (Forums) for announcements, community engagement, and identifying potential members. Ends up clogged with inactive users without any failsafes to handle them, so that even when they are replaced, the issue quickly repeats. Has rules and guidelines, but basically none of them are followed due to being some combination of outdated, wrong, or bad. Is extremely resistant to change, due to being comprised of inactive users, the difficulty of pushing forth actual change, and lack of receptiveness/attentiveness to these problems by staff. Is left with extremely little freedom in making independent decisions, due to constant (generally poorly defined & understood by the TC) restrictions imposed by higher staff. Lacks any drive, ability, or function with which to push back and address any of these issues. Ultimately, splitting up the TC into subdivisions of ideally more informed/active players won't fix anything in the long term. Even if it temporarily helps address the stagnant state of the TC, it doesn't fix any of the other fundamental problems. While something like the activity checker ThinkNice mentioned would ideally help combat the inevitable stagnation issue, in practice, I see it requiring too much staff involvement/effort, since any member purged by this system must then be replaced by someone staff deems "acceptable" and meets stringent activity requirements. There's just like 0% chance something like that would really get enforced long term, if at all; it's just too much of a hassle for them to upkeep. So, in order for a proposed TC rework to be viable imo, it would need to meet these requirements: Deal with not only the current TC stagnation of inactive users, but provide a method of cycling out inactive ones in the future. The system needs to be flexible enough to not just remove inactive users, but easily be able to replace them. The second part is both extremely important to actually making it feasible long term, and also probably the most difficult required change tbh. Actually allow/give the TC more meaningful/varied options for dealing with tiering policies independently. I legitimately don't think there's much point in having a TC if a lot of decisions end up being made half by default due to restrictions imposed on how we can/can't handle potential or currently problematic pokemon. Stuff like "Suspect Tests" as done in PokeMMO where someone throws up a thread and says "we might ban this, discuss" are so pointless that I can't even fathom why we still bother, a far cry from suspects performed by Smogon. This doesn't just have to mean being more open to just banning pokemon (since I sincerely doubt anyone high up will change their mind on this for some reason), but having actual tools to make better tiering decisions would be a significant boon. Completely rework the currently written/codified TC guidelines. And by "rework" I mean literally delete every tiering policy thread I've ever written, they're like half a decade old and nobody follows them anymore, write something else ffs. Especially regarding the vague guidelines brought down by higher staff, since even looking back I'm still not 100% sure on what we were/weren't allowed to do. SIGNIFICANTLY IMPROVE COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT AND INTERACTION. This is literally the most important thing, and I wouldn't really give a shit about anything else if this could get fixed. The forums are not a good way of involving the community in tiering anymore, because the game playing community largely doesn't give a shit about this place. I am 100% convinced the best way of handling this would be having Smogon style Suspect Tests where players who meet specific requirements could vote on proposed suspects, but the last time this was suggested, I was hit with a pretty fat "no". I don't expect this to ever be compromised on, but it is such a fucking good idea holy shit just do it already ffs. If staff is still insistent on being against this, then come up with something else, but the current system of sitting in a shitty chat on the PokeMMO discord and memeing once a month before writing up garbage and posting it in a thread nobody cares about is terrible for getting people to actually care about tiering. Some of these have some proposed solutions already in the thread (and in the bullet points themselves), but not all solutions are perfect. Either way, these are all major, fundamental flaws with the TC that need to be addressed to have any hope of it not being completely worthless garbage. I probably missed some stuff in writing out this post, but I think these four bullet points succinctly cover the current issues that need to be addressed. If you get nothing else out of this post, at least read those four bullets. Frankly, I don't have super high hopes for most of this, but I saw this thread and figured I should probably comment on the issue, since the sad state of the TC has been apparent for a while, and I don't see anyone from the TC saying or doing much about it. Also, I'm gonna throw out a disclaimer. I left the TC a few months ago, and it's entirely possible some of this has been addressed since I've been gone. I HEAVILY doubt it, especially given the existence of this thread, but it's worth mentioning before I get dogpiled for outdated information. tl;dr: haha no, read it. alternatively, read everything starting from the sentence above the last set of bullet points.

A Quick Claw user is currently #1 in Doubles ladder. I guess we can bury the myth that this item is only used by 450 ELOs. Does Quick Claw improve anything in the experience of competitive battling? No. It doesn't change how a player will play a single game of Pokemon. Quick Claw is only a last-ditch effort to save a game you know you have lost. Quick Claw may technically add a strategic element to how you team build into a long set of games, but that's not how people view the game of Pokemon. Even less in an environment where the standard in tournament play is Single Elimination. Remove this item, no one is going to miss it. Even the players who are using it know that they didn't deserve to proceed further in a tournament.

大家好，这里是 CN 公会。 公会简介 我们全称「Champion 公会」，以在游戏相关的各个领域装大逼为宗旨，努力成为游戏第一华人装逼公会。 加入我们 我会采取邀请制，加入我会，须： 无游戏违规记录 在某方面有特长，且长期活跃（>1500小时，且日常在线） 得到一位成员的邀请，得到至少三位成员的赞成，且不为会长/副会长一票否决 以「实习会员」身份加入后，经过一段时间考察，由会长确认是否转正 对于正式成员，以下情况会被强制退会，否则即便是退坑，也永久保留成员资格： 违反游戏规则而封号 违反公会内部管理制度 加入前，请仔细阅读如下可对外披露的公会制度部分： 公会成员和他们的签名 按加入公会的时间排序 Ryu 会长 1天1M，10天10M，100天100M，1年365M，10年3650M，100年36500M。 YIBU 曾梦想仗剑走天涯。 Oak 该主人很懒，没有留下任何个性签名。 Viogss [暂无] OuCat [暂无] GapBear 刷闪狂魔。 April 有钱能使我推磨。 Riesz 你必须很努力，才能做到看起来毫不费力。 Sha [暂无] Myhold 这个签名贼帅！ IronFat [暂无] Lyue 不该下凡！ Deviluke First, listen with an open heart. Second, see with unclouded eyes. Third, think with an unbiased mind. Lastly, act with respect and modesty knowing that you can still be wrong. Illya 游戏就像一场旅途，路过的风景留下的是…… Ka cuz love. TMXI 副会长 全心全意为玩家服务。 CristianoLan 在蛋闪的边缘疯狂试探。 shenhaikinglo 为玩家创造快乐。 WurenBB 凭什么别人能出闪？！ bigstew 年轻人不要害怕走错路，以免错过隐藏道具和支线剧情。 StJohnYolanda [·_·]我只是个萌新智能聊天百科脚本而已（滑稽。 Luckbabya 佛系养生。

Thank you to all players who participated to this event ! Here are the winners : 1st Place Prize YUNMAO with 20 points caught at 03:22:52 PM UTC  2nd Place Prize kindergartener with 20 points caught at 03:32:01 PM UTC 3rd Place Prize laopiaj with 21 points And a special thanks to my beautiful refs: @Deviluke, @MPDH, @Sethsen, @BrokenBulb and @Revz!

Date & Time Saturday 10th October , 6PM UTC Location Pokemon Showdown + Discord Server of Phoenix How to enter The event is only for players who are in ENIX Discord server. All matches will be played on gen 6 OU. We are following the showdown rules. Players need to share the replays in #showdown-replays in the ENIX discord. Registrations will be opened 2 hours before the event. The registrations need to be sent in discord at #pokemmo-events. To prevent toxic behaviour the players are needed to send an invite to the assigned host to let them watch the battle LIVE. Rewards For each [ENIX] team member present, the total prize pool will increase by $75k. for each friends of [ENIX] that are present, increases total prize pool by $25k. First Prize winners will take home 70% of this total. Second Prize winners will take home 20% of this total. Third Prize winners will take home 10% of this total. More Participants Means Bigger Prizes! Hosts DemonBone Khasyotic Commissar

Lëmonadës only + Lottery is Free Expiring date: Friday 9th of October 2020 Prize Custom signature (example underneath) Details After the expering date ill put all of your names in a name generator. Ill make a gif from the winning spin. Reply on this post to enter the lottery. The winner can give me the signature details like: What pokemon(s) would you like in the signature? What kind of style does the signature need to be? Do you have a colour preference for the background? How many moving elements would you like? * NOTE: if you have your own background you want to use, you can send that and i will use that image. Registered Lëmonadës hannahtaylor MoxieMozzie Poufilou Fixedgaming Powerdrib Sethsen DarkxAkira noomuch OldenMan Kuplion TheAlmightyKreed WINNER @MoxieMozzie

This dude took around 100k, but hey another turtle in my family

Bump to steal all of Bali's customers.

op beard and great service

那块盖板微微颤动了些许

希望cn越走越远

好，我鼓掌

gg dude!

vs UmbraMol in 20

THE COMEBACK IS REAL!

srif Also cute charm worked this time jaja

Hello there, I made this service thread to find people who want their mons trained. I do them for a price cheaper than the ones other trainers usually charge. One disclaimer, however, is that I do not dedicate most of my time on this business since it's merely past time for me. So it might take me longer than the usual, and I may sometimes decline some orders. Nonetheless, feel free to order below or mail me in game. Now remember, if you want cheap service, gimme a beep :D COMPLETE EV TRAIN: 30k EV + LVL 50: 40k IGN: iMarco

~ 3.027.000 ~ or 2 Breeds 5×31 & 1×25+ Contact IGN: SharpBlue Discord: Just A Guy#9470

[Adu]Hairless 工匠之穴工会 会长是内心想要女装但一直不好意思表达出来的狗副 (小声逼逼：他真的想女装) 公会情况： 公会大多都是学生党 pvp大佬不多，欢迎各位pvp大佬 欢迎各路大佬和萌新 公会是小公会，活动会比较随缘 当然人多了会举办更多的活动了 公会群;1062268526 记得备注来自论坛啊 进公会一定会出闪图图

That's not how it works. It's always going to remain as an independent 1/30k chance, You won't be guaranteed to find a shiny upon meeting 30k pokémon. It's just like rolling a dice, you'd need to keep rolling it until you get the right side, it doesn't stack up. You could find a shiny at the encounter nº30.000 or the encounter nº750.000. So, There's nothing counting at all, your odds always remain the same. You can freely leave your hunting area and your chances won't change

Stronger!

Welcome back! Let me know if you have any questions. :)

very fast service. Highly recommend

pro evier :p great job

Bump :] I'll be opening my EV shop to a select group of people who have been regular customers to my shop. I do not want to open my shop to the public just yet. So, I'll send a personal message to the people who can use my EV services. Cheers :)

来了宝贝

全体起立

This isn't the right section for that. Go here instead: https://forums.pokemmo.eu/index.php?/forum/28-player-reports/

@Laz owes me 100k paid off all bets and am -3M on the season, @drdray would be proud

It's so nice of Daryl to not crush his opponents every week.

Good games all around. Here is how we finish week 2: The Rotoms show great form as the first team to take 6 points. Leading the pack by 2 points. The Sailors were looking incredibly good this week, but the Taillows managed to claw themselves back into another tie. Nincadas have been performing surprisingly poor. We're also seeing how the Devil Bats are struggling to keep up with the competition, as this is the second week of catastrophic failure from them. Their beacon of hope; the most expensive player Frags, is sitting on a sour 0-2. Will a win from their all star player improve moral and lead them to victory? Who knows! Good luck in week 3 everyone.

Finally Opening a shop here :D

1) Depends on the tier 2)It's better to go with budget comps (2x31 3x25+ natured or 3x31 2x25+ natured, 31s in the ev investing stats) 3)

OU1: Bluebreath vs Zokuru LC: PoseidonWrath vs TheDH OU1: CristhianArce vs Schuchty UU: tmoi vs MadaraSixSix 500k each

no bro in the first one i wasnt eligble either

for me it said im not eligble lmao

我帮你稍微修改了帖子的格式 比如奖品必须写精灵全名且居中填写 标题一定要按照改过后的标准 帖子中空格过多 已经帮你删除 以后如果要办活动也请这样撰写 祝你们活动愉快！

quick claw rng is something impossible to learn because it is entirely uncontrollable. The amount of players using quick claw is entirely irrelevant to the discussion and doesn't make the item any more or less healthy competitively. Idk why I'm even replying to you when you have already proven you are completely out of your depth on a topic like this. Onto the real issues with the item: For the most part the item is just mathematically bad and anyone with a brain can realise that. The issue is that if a bad player vs a good player realises they are doomed and only have a 10% chance to win the match anyway then what is stopping them from just throwing a random quick claw on an offensive mon and hoping they get there 20% chance at a victory? They haven't learned anything from this experience, they didn't win because they improved at the game all they did is realise that they are bad and try to fuck over someone else's day. Imagine being in a situation where you wait months for a tournament with a prize you really want just to get rnged out by some random using a quick claw, they didn't win that battle by being more skilled and they sure as fuck won't win the entire tournament doing that. All they did is skew the result of the tournament in a less competitive way by removing one potential competitor. There is absolutely no positive aspect to these items being in the game. When you compare it to other aspects of the game with rng elements such as moves with secondary effects, these are often tied to moves which are already strong (tbolt and ice beam being 90bp for example), this gives a reason for the move to be used even outside of the rng element. Quick claw has no beneficial aspect and no merit to it outside of strictly making the game more rng based than it already is. From a game design perspective I see no reason for this to still be in the game. We have set the precedent for things like this with evasion clause being a thing and the recent removal of the weather evasion abilities. Please can we continue in the direction of working towards healthy game design and see things like this banned from pvp.

Never thought I'd say that but I completely agree with daryl this needs to go

Yes, there is a reason for removing quick claw even if it does not allow the holder to move first - it does nothing but promote luck over skill. The entire premise behind creating a competitive environment was to foster the skillful strategies that Gamefreak offered us while at the same time not being held down by the luck-based elements that Gamefreak created as well. You sound like someone who has zero competitive experience, so let me inform you that we have clauses in PvP here. You can find a list of clauses in this thread: Some of these clauses would literally turn pokemon battles into a coinflip or just incredibly stupid battles, like if we didn't have sleep clause, evasion clause etc. In order to make the game more "fair" we have these clauses. You are not wrong regarding the part I bolded, but what you're missing is that Quick Claw's traditional function is in and of itself problematic. Quick Claw was once one of the items that was banned under the "Hax Items" clause that was listed in the thread because of its inherently luck-based feature, but it was then brought back, which is why this thread was created. Maybe you should realize that you're the one in the dark. There is a logical foundation for this change and I've explained it in the first post of my thread as well. The entire purpose of the suggestion box is to "bother" devs with potentially meaningful changes and it's a win-win situation because the changes we suggest would make us want to play the game more and that aligns with the devs' goals of wanting to maintain its existing playerbase. You're not the devs' spokesperson so I have no idea why you want to label someone's suggestion as "wasting the devs' time." None of us have the ability to stop someone else from using the item, hence why we're complaining about it. Why don't you show us the way then? In fact, why don't you choose a date and time of your convenience to challenge me to a game and if you beat me, I will listen to you. If there are much smarter + experienced competitive players that haven't figured out a way to counter quick-claw users, then you can see why I'd have difficulty in just taking your statement at face value. It's simply a dressed-up version of "Get good". So I'm giving you this opportunity of showing me how I can be a better player at a date and time of your choosing (you can PM me this if you wish). If you win, I'm all ears as to your strategy on how to beat quick-claw users. I can also provide you with a detailed battle-like scenario of why the item is problematic, but it'd be much better if I tried explaining this to you in practice. The reason we don't ban around every single thing that is luck-based is because 1) it would change the entire meaning of actually playing Pokemon because there are some luck-based elements we shouldn't remove and 2) not every randomisation takes away from player autonomy. I'm just going to focus on the last point because that is what is most important. If a pokemon is using Scald with 30% chance to burn, you can switch in your Natural Cure user to absorb the burn, a Magic Guard pokemon to absorb the burn, you can equip your pokemon with items like Lum Berry to heal the burn, or run moves such as Heal Bell or Aromatherapy to heal the burn. In other words, there is some control over these luck-based elements such that even if they do arise, there is a way to counter it or deal with it. The same goes with flinching. Rock Slide has a 30% chance to flinch, but the only way you will be flinching something is if you are slower than the rock-slide user. So we can avoid being flinched as long as our pokemon is faster than the rock-slide user, or run rock-resists such that even if flinches do occur, then it isn't game-changing. To repeat again, even though Rock Slide has the chance to flinch, I still have reasonable control over my choices in order to be prepared against it. This does not happen with Quick Claw users. Sometimes it is impossible to live an attack from a strong boosted pokemon, and so the only way to beat it is by outspeeding and killing it first. If your only, but reliable, way of defeating a +2 Rhyperior is by using a Surf Starmie, and it uses Quick Claw and attacks first, you then proceed to lose the game. You have no absolutely no control over this because you cannot pick and choose when Quick Claw will trigger, and you have no reasonable way to prepare for it. Simply put, my entire strategy was nullified by something that I have zero control over. This is why Quick Claw is problematic.

Tiering Etiquette: What is this? This is a guide on tiering policy and it will serve to provide rules for which the community and the tier council can abide by. it will cover the policies we have regarding tiering and how tiering decisions are made. What is tiering? Tiering is the system used for the regulation of the competitive aspects of PokeMMO and all aspects relating to them, including moves, items, abilities, and more. What is the purpose/goal of tiering? The goal of tiering is to create the most competitive battling environment possible. As pokemon is a game which is inherently full of aspects that are not conducive to the goal of creating a competitive game; such as heavily RNG based features, certain pokemon, abilities, or moves which have little to no real ways of being answered, and other similarly problematic qualities, tiering is necessary in order to prevent the game from being too heavily reliant on factors which are not related to the skills of either player. If the purpose of tiering is to remove elements which make the game less competitive, how do you determine what these elements are? There are 3 main categories which can result in a pokemon or other aspect being banned from a tier. These typically apply to Pokemon, but in special cases, can apply to moves or even abilities as well. These main categories are as follows: Uber, Uncompetitive, and Unhealthy. The First Category: The Characteristics of an Uber These characteristics define what makes a certain pokemon too powerful for a tier, or "overpowered". A pokemon which is overpowered naturally meets one of these characteristics, if not more. The amount of characteristics met is not relevant to whether or not it is moved up, if it meets any of them, it is considered uber-worthy and may be banned from that tier. Offensive Characteristic: Defensive Characteristic: Support Characteristic: The Second Category: Uncompetitive Pokemon, Moves, Abilities, etc. Something which is "Uncompetitive" is defined as this: (Credit to schmawgawn for the wording, concept, etc): "Uncompetitive game aspects (or strategies) are those that take away autonomy (control of the game's events), take it out of the hands of player's decisions-- and do so to a degree that can be considered uncompetitive." This can be luck-based, but doesn't have to be (see: 4th gen Wobb, who was effective enough then to remove the ability to "do anything about it" largely from the enemy player, and was banned for uncompetitive-ness); but most uncompetitive strategies that are banned usually have a high appeal to luck. While there is always luck involved in Pokemon, the problem is the degree to which control is taken away from the player. Removal of autonomy is the key to an uncompetitive tiering decision or clause. Note: the word "degree" as there are many game aspects that remove autonomy, but the problem is degree of removal (Moody / Double Team remove more autonomy than Quick Claw or fast U-Turn/Volt Switch). Whether the "degree" of autonomy removal is uncompetitive is debatable and subjective (based off of player experience). Note: Individual Pokemon can be banned for a combination of "overpowered" and "uncompetitive" characteristics-- see 4th Gen Deoxys-S and 4th Gen Shaymin-S ban[/spoiler] In other words, something that takes away options from the player, creating a lack of options which are unfavorable for a competitive game. This could fall from anywhere from RNG based aspects to aspects which simply remove or invalidate certain key elements of gameplay. With that being said, not everything which is uncompetitive is banworthy. Ultimately, there are too many aspects which do, in some capacity, remove options from the player, and attempting to remove all of them would simply cause the game to cease being Pokemon, in addition to some aspects which simply cannot be controlled; such as Freeze. An example of an RNG based aspect: Evasion Clause. So, why are Evasion moves banned but not accuracy lowering moves like Sand Attack or Muddy Water, and why is Confusion not banned? The reason is that it is possible to realistically play around these. If your accuracy is lowered or you are confused, you can switch out to remove this effect, allowing an easy and readily available method of stopping these RNG based elements from affecting you. An example of an aspect which invalidates certain elements of play: Trapping abilities. So, why aren't the moves Mean Look/Block banned even though they trap as well? The reason for this is that they are not instantaneous trapping like Shadow Tag and Arena Trap, the opponent still has a turn before they become incapable of switching. Due to this one turn "Grace Period", in addition to the fact they take up an entire moveslot and require 1 turn to actually use, the opponent is still very capable of playing around these moves. This means that their ability to remove an aspect of gameplay is crippled, and by extension makes them much, much more difficult to abuse. The Third Category: Unhealthy Aspects of Gameplay The third category is the one which is to be used the most sparingly, the one which is most subjective, and the reasoning for banning which 100% of the time results in the most controversial bans. This relates to pokemon or other aspects of gameplay which are unhealthy for the metagame, currently defined as "Things that restrict the metagame in ways which are unfavorable for an evolving competitive metagame". In other words, a pokemon which is unhealthy is something which heavily stagnates or centralizes the metagame in a way that is problematic for a healthy metagame. Note that it has to be in a way that is problematic for a healthy metagame. This is important to note, as being centralizing is not necessarily an indicator of a pokemon being unhealthy for the metagame. An unhealthy pokemon is one which makes the metagame worse with its presence, by stagnating the metagame in a large, negative way. Most pokemon which are overpowered or uncompetitive are typically also unhealthy, but they are not entirely mutually exclusive. In general, the only time that the unhealthiness of a pokemon is evaluated is when a pokemon seems to be problematic, but simply does not fit in either of the other two categories for Ubers. Banning Types: Flat Bans and Complex Bans There are two types of bans, Flat Bans and Complex Bans. Flat bans are used for general situations, when a pokemon, move, ability, etc. meet some sort of banning criteria, at which point, they are banned in their entirety. However, in complex situations where a flat ban would be either ineffective or heavily unfavorable for some reason, complex bans can be used. Typically, these are used for a situation where one specific issue cannot be sorted out, such as with the Shell Smash + Baton Pass ban which took place in Generation 5 within lower tiers. In this case, there were multiple pokemon which could abuse this combination, meaning a flat ban on all of these pokemon was excessive. Likewise, Shell Smash itself wasn't a problem, as there were many legitimate users of it, and the same applied to Baton Pass. As this was a complex situation in which no Flat Ban method was ideal, a Complex Ban was used to ban the combination of Shell Smash + Baton Pass. How do usage statistics factor into tiering? Usage statistics are used to form the basis of lower tiers. The purpose of lower tiers such as UU and NU is that they provide an environment for pokemon which can't succeed in the standard tier, OU, a place to be used. However, how do you define a pokemon that can't succeed in OU? There's not really an objective way to determine viability, so we don't use that. Instead, we rely on usage; If a pokemon's usage is above the 4.36% cutoff point in a higher tier, they are considered to be in that tier. For example, if a Pokemon has 5% usage in OU, they would be considered an OU pokemon. Likewise, if a pokemon has 5% usage in UU, they are considered a UU pokemon, and are not allowed in NU. Likewise, a pokemon under the cutoff point, such as a pokemon with 3% usage in OU, would be considered UU. If that same pokemon is also below the cutoff percent in UU as well, then it would be considered NU. However, this system obviously isn't perfect; Just because a pokemon can't succeed in a higher tier doesn't mean they're balanced in the lower one. For this reason the tiers Borderline and Borderline2, or BL/BL2 exist. These tiers effectively serve as banlists for lower tiers, being tiers for the pokemon with too low usage for the higher tier but too powerful for the lower one. Usage for these changes are taken in 3 month intervals, with each month having different weighting in the final aggregate usage list. The 1st month has a weight of 1, 2nd has a weight of 3, and 3rd has a weight of 20. On the final month, pokemon are moved based on the previously stated 4.36% usage cutoff, however, during the 1st and 2nd months, it is still possible for pokemon to move up and down tiers if they meet "Quick Rise/Drop" % cutoff points. A quick rise occurs if a pokemon's usage in a tier exceeds 6.7%, while a quick drop occurs if their usage drops below 1.7%. Quick Rises/Drops occur at the end of the month, when monthly usage is collected. What if a Pokemon's usage drops below or increases past the cutoff? Every month, the cumulative usage within a certain tier is reviewed. If any pokemon have dropped below or moved above the cutoff, their tier is changed to reflect their new usage status. Are there any limits to bans? After any ban in a specific tier, that tier must wait at least 1 month before they can ban another pokemon. Likewise, before a pokemon can be banned, a discussion thread for that pokemon must have been open for at least one week. It is important to note that a discussion thread does not necessarily mean that pokemon must be suspect tested, which would be a temporary ban; simply a thread discussing the pokemon and informing people that the council are looking at the pokemon. Is there any way around the wait times? If the tier council feels that a ban is urgent or that further discussion/time is simply not needed, they can "Quick Ban" a pokemon or an aspect of the metagame, bypassing any wait times described above. Of note, Quick Bans are the exception, not the rule; they are to be used sparingly and only in extreme cases. How are [Discussion] threads made? Each tier has their own discussion request thread in Competition Alley. Through there, players may request the tier council to open up a discussion thread on something they feel is banworthy. The tier council will then discuss the pokemon, and decide whether or not to open up a public discussion thread. How do flat bans on moves such as Baton Pass work? If a move is banned from a tier, that ban affects all lower tiers as well. For example, if Baton Pass was banned from OU, it would be banned from UU and NU as well. However, if a Baton Pass ban was passed in NU, a ban for Baton Pass does not necessarily have to be present in higher tiers. (Currently, Baton Pass is banned from all tiers, it's just a really good example.) What is a suspect ban? A suspect ban is initiated if there is question whether a pokemon or an aspect of the competitive game meets banning criteria. A suspect ban will be held for at least one month or one tiering period (time between usage updates). During this time no changes can be made to the tier, aside from a Quick Ban. If a Quick Ban is made during a suspect test, the suspect test will be restarted in order to assess the suspected threat with the new tiering changes. A suspect ban can be extended by the tier council for another month, or tiering period, should they still feel that there isn't conclusive evidence that the suspected pokemon or aspect of the competitive game meets banning criteria. Anything else? Yes, I'd like to give credit to Smogon University for a majority, if not all of the concepts, principles, and ideas for which this tiering system and this portion of the guide are based on. This guide was written by Senile and updated by DoubleJ.