UU Tier Discussion Request Thread

[gbwead]

3 hours ago, OrangeManiac said:

So what's up with quickbanning

If you think Feraligatr or any other BL pokemons are not broken, please let us know why. I recently took a close look at Hariyama, Linoone, Ursaring and Fera; they all have way too much ease at sweeping/wallbreaking and I strongly believe they would walk all over the UU tier. However, I am open minded and so is the rest of the TC - I think - when it comes to reassessing old and new bans. 

 

Kanga has been the most used pokemon in UU since December 2015 and it has been discussed several times already. Granted, Kanga has not been discussed recently, but I doubt this test comes as a surprise. 

 

As for Typhlosion, UU might have the tools to handle it. The UU tier has not seen a strong fire type pokemon since the Houndoom ban, so it is pretty obvious that the tier is not prepared for something as scary as Typhlosion. However, that doesn't mean the players won't be able to restructure the tier in order to deal with Typhlosion and if they fail to do so, it will get banned.

 

Careful Miltank has already mentionned as one of the viable counters to Typhlosion. I think something like defensive Rapidash could also be a viable counter and it's also a good switch in against big powerhouse like Scizor or Absol. Calm Grumpig could also work, but I wonder how it would do in UU. 

 

 

 

[RysPicz]

6 minutes ago, gbwead said:

I think something like defensive Rapidash could also be a viable counter

You know it's rare for me to disagree with you, but if you mention a defensive Rapidash, a poke with 65/70/80 defensive stats, as a defensive counter for Typhlosion, this only shows how broken it will be in UU.

Edited October 3, 2016 by RysPicz

[pachima]

Ninetales anyone?

[OrangeManiac]

@gbwead

 

It's not that I actually disagree with any of your actual decisions you were doing there tiering policy wise. This time. What I have a problem with is the message this is sending to the community. It's the fact you just remove Sceptile and Kangaskhan, two main faces of current metagame with exactly zero discussion at all while there has barely been any community outcry to ban neither, heck I was literally the only person in the whole forums to say "hey, maybe Sceptile is banworthy guise?" Which makes me feel like you aren't acting as 'tier leaders' now, as the competitive experts who will make the difficult decisions when there's no clear community consensus about something. You've basically got this whole Tier Council thing in the way of thinking your 7 votes are the control of the metagame that is played by hundreds if not thousands of players. That is just wrong and never the aim of the council from the begin with. I remember when ThinkNice went against NU council back in the day for wanting to instaban Zangoose (especially me) and ThinkNice was like "guys, you just can't do that shit like that no questions asked" and I sure as hell later realized why even though we might have been talking about even more banworthy thing than Sceptile and Kanga in our past UU.

 

What I'm saying is that this pretty much kills any community input what comes to tiering by making huge decisions like that without basically any questions asked. If you can make controversial decisions that easily, well.. Why even bother commenting as a member of the community. Community should be a source of knowledge to the council, not vice versa. That's how I felt about it back in my day. I didn't feel banning anything that the community was against as long as their arguments were legitimate. (I think Gengar was my only exception to this).

 

Ps. As much as I agree Fera probs being Offensive Uber in UU, just saying that it's a better version of Crawdaunt (Pokemon with sub 7% usage) and it gets Ice Punch is just really... really lazy analysis for a quickban Pokemon.

 

Edit: tfw I forgot to even add my initial reason I wanted to reply to this post. 

 

There is no way past Kangaskhan discussion in any way are relatable to this day. Pretty sure the last time everyone were really complaining about it was when Specs and Orb didn't exist and the metagame was enough different. I don't really understand this just like many BL Pokemon are BL because they were that way before (in a different metagame). No Pokemon by nature is banworthy. Anyways, looking forward to see what happens when Cradily skyrockets in usage because everyone loves specwalls.

Edited October 4, 2016 by OrangeManiac

[Gunthug]

4 minutes ago, OrangeManiac said:

 

heck I was literally the only person in the whole forums to say "hey, maybe Sceptile is banworthy guise?"

I saw quite a lot of people complaining about sceptile over the last few weeks

[DoubleJ]

Ok, I've been at work all day and had some time to ruminate on this. I'll share my thoughts now.

 

1. Kangaskhan

It has been heavily debated that Kangaskhan is too much for the UU tier, being able to check most offensive threats and stall defensive cores with Rest + Early Bird along with a powerful STAB and coverage. It also has incredible synergy with most defensive cores and can support via Body Slam paralysis, Wish passing, Toxic spam, and the aforementioned Double-Edge. Most counters are simply options to stall it out of PP such as Cradily, Vileplume, Exeggutor, Quagsire, and other Kangaskhan. While I feel Kangaskhan is a decent fit for UU and players are being able to break cores reliant on Kangaskhan a lot better than before, I am not opposed to a suspect ban because it honestly deserves to be questioned. 

 

2. Sceptile

Sceptile is arguably the best offensive weapon in UU right now. It has the versatility to break nearly any defensive core, it has very few safe switch ins, and it scares other offensive pokemon with its incredible speed. Banning Sceptile to BL was fair, but banning Sceptile in conjunction with the beginning of a test ban does not seem appropriate. I would have suggested being far more patient in the manner and first banning Sceptile, waiting a few weeks and several UU tournaments before suspect banning Kangaskhan. This would have provided some time for our slow-to-develop meta to stabilize, and it would have given a better picture of Kangaskhan's affect on the tier during its suspect ban.

 

3. Typhlosion

With usage based tiering we simply just run the risk of seeing powerful threats drop down from OU to UU, or even UU to NU. We've seen it time and time again, think Charizard, Rhydon, Machamp, Espeon, etc. Recently though, tiering protocol has been to allow the pokemon to drop down and be tested for several tournaments before making a decision on a quick ban. With this in mind, having Typhlosion in UU makes sense. The trouble I'm having with this is the fact that we started a suspect "test" ban of Kangaskhan at the same time we introduced a very powerful offensive pokemon (Typhlosion). 

 

Summary: The TC really looks like they rushed decisions in UU in an attempt to make it better for everyone. While I agree with everything that was done, I really don't agree with how it was done. Sceptile should have been banned to BL after a discussion thread was opened  in order to consult the community, as this is protocol. I think there is even guidelines written that state no pokemon shall be quick banned unless a discussion thread has been open for at least one week. Typhlosion being introduced was inevitable due to our usage based system. Considering this, the TC should have been patient with their Kangaskhan suspect test and allowed for several tournaments to pass by in order to assess the following: First, is Typhlosion too strong for the UU tier and deservant of a quick ban? Second, is Kangaskhan unhealthy/uncompetitive for the tier and deservant of a suspect test ban. Once a decision was made on Typhlosion, we could then proceed with a suspect ban on Kanga. That just makes sense, but currently we have a drastically different meta that removed its top offensive threat and top defensive threat all while introducing a type of pokemon we have never seen in UU before, and that's an extremely fast, potential Specs user with a base 150 STAB attack to go along with amazing coverage moves. 

 

tl;dr The TC should have opened a discussion thread on Sceptile and proceeded to make that decision as soon as possible. The TC should have introduced Typhlosion with the intent to quick ban it if need be after several tournaments. The TC should have suspect banned Kangaskhan once the tier was stabilized from removing Sceptile and once a decision was made on Typhlosion.

 

They rushed things and the UU tier looks really, really sloppy. The order of decisions is going to make a suspect ban on Kangaskhan very difficult to assess. 

[KingBowser]

Tbh, im glad. UU was the lamest thing to watch since 2013 vap teams.

[fredrichnietze]

39 minutes ago, KingBowser said:

Tbh, im glad. UU was the lamest thing to watch since 2013 vap teams.

[Kizhaz]

I don't see why all the Typhlosion hate. Specs eruption is like the only thing it does, and it's not like eruption is an easy spammable move. We have flash fire mons, spikes and scarf pursuit mons that punish any typhlosion. And if you're not running specs, well then Typhlosion is piss weak, it's like jolly scarf flygon weak. I 100% agree with it moved to UU.

 

Kanga test ban i can understand, I was one of the ones that wanted it gone quite a while back (b4 specs/orb iirc). I think it was prob a poorly timed test ban but I get the feeling it will come back, mostly for pokemon like manectric who got the buff after those items.

 

Sceptile I'm not so sure on, I think some sort of discussion might have been better. Personally I didn't think it needed to be banned but I know there are arguments in favor of the ban so it could've gone either way

[Spaintakula]

1 minute ago, Kizhaz said:

I don't see why all the Typhlosion hate. Specs eruption is like the only thing it does, and it's not like eruption is an easy spammable move. We have flash fire mons, spikes and scarf pursuit mons that punish any typhlosion. And if you're not running specs, well then Typhlosion is piss weak, it's like jolly scarf flygon weak. I 100% agree with it moved to UU.

Plus the fact it depends very badly on HP as coverage, so it can't really cover everything at once

[DoubleJ]

5 minutes ago, Spaintakula said:

Plus the fact it depends very badly on HP as coverage, so it can't really cover everything at once

I mean you can scroll back a page or two and see the +SpAtt Specs Eruption calcs at full health. Pretty fucking rude if you ask me. 

[Spaintakula]

8 minutes ago, DoubleJ said:

I mean you can scroll back a page or two and see the +SpAtt Specs Eruption calcs at full health. Pretty fucking rude if you ask me. 

Yeah, and I was gonna say how +spatt nature would hinder it's capabilities, but then realized it's uu and 152 is enough speed

252+ SpA Choice Specs Typhlosion Eruption (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Kabutops: 119-140 (36.7 - 43.2%) -- 98.9% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

y-yes?

[DoubleJ]

1 minute ago, Spaintakula said:

Yeah, and I was gonna say how +spatt nature would hinder it's capabilities, but then realized it's uu and 152 is enough speed

252+ SpA Choice Specs Typhlosion Eruption (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Kabutops: 119-140 (36.7 - 43.2%) -- 98.9% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

y-yes?

Almost as good as defensive Rapidash

[gbwead]

Rapidash @ Leftovers  
Ability: Flash Fire  
EVs: 228 HP / 252 Def / 28 Spe  
Bold/Impish Nature  
- Morning Sun  
- Charm  
- Toxic/Return/Low Kick
- Flamethrower

 

This might sound ridiculous to a lot of people, but this thing got a decent defensive niche imo:

• It seems to be able to counter Ninetales without HP water - or Substitute if Rapidash can only Toxic.
• It can switch on Vileplume despite taking distasful dmg from Sludge Bomb. Not all Vileplume run Sludge Bomb tho.
• Meganium can't do much against it.
• Rapidash is a great switch on Choice Spec Typhlosion and doesn't get 2HKO by non fully invested Typhlosion EQ.
• The only Scizor that can beat this Rapidash on a first encounter is CB Scizor locked on Return. SD Scizor is walled completly.
• Rapidash stops Sneasel pretty consistently.
• Curse Miltank can't do much beside trying to paralyse Rapidash with Body Slam.
• Cradily doesn't do enough dmg to Rapidash with Rock Slide. This implies that the only thing Cradily can do is Toxic Rapidash.
• The only Absol that can defeat Rapidash on a first encounter is SD Jolly Absol. Adamant SD Absol loses because of Charm.

I realise that Rapidash is a gimmick, but it is far from useless. I guess it gets walled easily by stuff like Altaria, but so does Nidoqueen and that doesn't stop anyone from running it.

 

 

As for the timing of the Kangaskhan test ban, I think right now is makes a lot of sense. Since Kangaskhan is suspected of being unhealthy, why would we want to observe Typhlosion in UU while Kangaskhan is here? If Typhlosion is acceptable in the Kangaskhan meta, but unacceptable in the non Kangaskhan meta, this implies that Typhlosion should be banned since it increases the necessity to run Kangaskhan, a pokemon that would therefore become even more centralising. In this case, Kangaskhan would be at a even higher risk of getting banned and Typhlosion would follow directly after. If Typhlosion is manageable in the non Kangaskhan meta, Typhlosion would remain UU no matter what. 

 

Edited October 4, 2016 by gbwead

[Laz]

1 hour ago, gbwead said:

Since Kangaskhan is suspected of being unhealthy, why would we want to observe Typhlosion in UU while Kangaskhan is here? If Typhlosion is acceptable in the Kangaskhan meta, but unacceptable in the non Kangaskhan meta, this implies that Typhlosion should be banned since it increases the necessity to run Kangaskhan, a pokemon that would therefore become even more centralising.

Even Kangaskhan can't stop Typhlosion

252 SpA Choice Specs Typhlosion Eruption (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Kangaskhan: 141-166 (66.5 - 78.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

252+ SpA Choice Specs Typhlosion Eruption (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Kangaskhan: 154-183 (72.6 - 86.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

Rapidash..?

252 SpA Typhlosion Hidden Power Ground vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Rapidash: 86-102 (50 - 59.3%) -- 76.6% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

68 Atk Life Orb Typhlosion Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Rapidash: 84-100 (48.8 - 58.1%) -- 66.8% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

 

Now let's assume that Rapidash can win against Typhlosion while using Toxic and Morning sun combo ( Once it goes +1 due to Flash fire Typhlosion will obviously switch )
Now, having to use Rapidash for the sole purpose of stopping Typhlosion is called centralizing, why should we always waste a slot and use Rapidash for the only purpose of trying to stop a powerful monster such as Typh ? 
 

1 hour ago, gbwead said:

• Curse Miltank can't do much beside trying to paralyse Rapidash with Body Slam.

4 Atk Rapidash Low Kick (80 BP) vs. +1 252 HP / 4 Def Miltank: 40-48 (19.8 - 23.7%) -- possible 6HKO after Leftovers recovery

+1 4 Atk Miltank Body Slam vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Rapidash: 55-66 (31.9 - 38.3%) -- 2.1% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

Who wins ?
 

1 hour ago, gbwead said:

• Cradily doesn't do enough dmg to Rapidash with Rock Slide. This implies that the only thing Cradily can do is Toxic Rapidash.

4 Atk Cradily Rock Slide vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Rapidash: 66-80 (38.3 - 46.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

+1 4 Atk Cradily Rock Slide vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Rapidash: 98-116 (56.9 - 67.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

Not enough damage, the only way is to toxic rapidash ? Nope, Cradily can just curse once and 2hko.

I understand that you want to prove that while using gimmicks you can come up with some unexpected checks for Typhlosion, but I don't understand why you want to force us to run them gimmicks and to adapt to a future broken monster.

E: I forgot that you mentioned the move charm which cuts attack, but that really isn't an answer imo as all you will be doing is stalling your opponent, and not winning 1v1.

Edited October 4, 2016 by Lazaro23

[gbwead]

@Lazaro23

HP Ground Typhlosion, that is just awful. It won't be able to hit Altaria or hit water types (unless Solarbeam) without HP Ice or Grass.

 

Charm + Toxic + Morning will beat Curse Cradily or Curse Miltank. Charm is also what helps beat Scizor or Absol SD.

 

You do realise that a banded Typhlosion is a double-edge sword like any other banded pokemon that choose to lock themselves on a move in order to wallbreak. Typhlosion is indeed more scary that other banded pokemons, but Kangaskhan remains an important of a specially defensive core that could potentially stop Typhlosion.

 

 

[Laz]

You said that if Kangaskhan remains in UU, it will be centralizing since it will stop Typhlosion ( which won't, first mistake )
Then you suggest running Rapidash to try to stop Typhlosion, and forget the fact that this is also called centralizing.
Idk.

[gbwead]

4 hours ago, Lazaro23 said:

You said that if Kangaskhan remains in UU, it will be centralizing since it will stop Typhlosion ( which won't, first mistake )
Then you suggest running Rapidash to try to stop Typhlosion, and forget the fact that this is also called centralizing.
Idk.

I am talking about Typhlosion in general. There is more to Typhlosion than locking itself on Eruption at full HP. Kangaskhan is a top tier special wall and the fact that it can't switch in on a full health Typhlosion Eruption does not mean it can't with other Typhlosion movesets or other Choice Spec moves. This is how Kangaskhan would undeniably participate in stopping Typhlosion. I never said that Kangaskhan was a direct counter to Typhlosion, so I have absolutely no clue what the hell you are talking about. If Typhlosion is acceptable in the Kanga meta, but not in the non Kanga meta, Kanga will obviously be more used when Typhlosion is in the tier. This is rudimentary logic.

 

Sorry for suggesting ways to deal with UU threaths. We should probably ban Exeggutor too since at one point everyone thought it was Offensive Uber .Let's just disregard the fact that the tier is capable of adapting and that we now see old gimmicks like Hypno become reliable answers to threaths like Exeggutor.

 

Typhlosion centralising? Really? We didn't even have a single UU tournament yet. What will be next? Typhlosion will be called unhealthy for UU before that first tournament too. If you want to argue that Typhlosion is Offensive Uber go ahead, but to insinuate that Typhlosion is unhealthy this early is uterly ridiculous. 

 

Some are complaining that TC quick ban too much and others complaining that we don't quick ban enough. What a joke...

 

 

[KingBowser]

Who is still using kingdra in OU, would have been nice if it finally dropped this usage month.

[LifeStyle]

3 minutes ago, KingBowser said:

Who is still using kingdra in OU, would have been nice if it finally dropped this usage month.

Blame @NikhilR hue

[DoubleJ]

@gbwead

 

The reason why I'd prefer to have Typhlosion decided upon before Kangaskhan is banned is b/c Kanga is our dominant defensive force, that is better than anything else. If Typhlosion can beat it, as well as everything else, I'd know for sure it were broken and banworthy. 

 

Banning kanga and adding Typhlo just skews the results of the kanga suspect test. This is b/c the meta isn't just focusing on the absence of kanga but also the addition of typhlo. How can we say kanga is truly banworthy if we aren't looking at the meta it was presumably broken in? Just food for thought. 

 

Defensive Dash is meh. Free switch in for Tenta. If you run return its stalled out by cradily, which can go +6 def without any threat aside from a lucky burn. SD Scizor have been known to run de+super rather than steel wing to hit exegg and slowking. Imo it's an ok pivot at best and a good attempt at diversity. 

[Laz]

JJ, please apply for TC, we need more logic and less aids in TC nowadays..
ffs.

[BlackJovi]

8 minutes ago, Lazaro23 said:

JJ, please apply for TC, we need more logic and less aids in TC nowadays..
ffs.

he aint about that life

[Gunthug]

15 minutes ago, Lazaro23 said:

JJ, please apply for TC, we need more logic and less aids in TC nowadays..
ffs.

actually I think we could really use some aides in TC, the paperwork is piling up

[Rigamorty]

@DoubleJ 

 

the thing about it in this case is that typhlosion dropped to UU by usage, so it's not like we'd put that off by a month for the sake of testing kanga, and leaving kanga around another month based on a usage drop would involve hoping something else doesn't drop again a month later to raise the same speculation