The problem with more granular rules is that shit breaks down at a frightening speed because then everyone has their own idea of a Perfect Meta, and people will get into spats over their pet pokemon or move combo being banned. Then people just refuse to participate because you banned/didn't ban stealth rock and it just isn't a good time.
With other, pre-established formats, you remove the bickering over 50 finer points which also removes a lot of headaches. Not that people won't still argue, mind.
The problem with more granular rules is that shit breaks down at a frightening speed because then every has their own idea of a Perfect Meta, and people will get into spats over their pet pokemon or move combo being banned. Then people just refuse to participate because you banned/didn't ban stealth rock and it just isn't a good time.
With other, pre-established formats, you remove the bickering over 50 finer points which removes a lot of headaches. Not that people won't still argue, mind.
I mean if you go with smogon rules I won't play because it doesn't fit my idea of a perfect meta, so damned if you do damned if you don't :P
we could have an entry clause where your team can only have one entry hazard. So stealth rock is still in play, but only one guy on a team will have it, and it might not even see play because a lot of us are weirdos.
The question arises from a conversation SilverWind and I were having while taking a drive
If we monotyped them then Link, Ganon, and Zelda would probably be Fighting, Dark, and Psychic respectively
But Zelda really feels like a Psychic/Fairy
And if we put him in a vaccum, Ganondorf feels like a Dark/Fairy, though SilverWind argues he's Dark/Ghost since he's got the whole deathless thing going on
Link is definitely fightman, but Fighting/Fairy also feels appropriate, possibly with a Hidden Ability where his attacks ignore immunities???
If consider steel for Link for the same reason I gave Vega steel (the weapon)
stealth rock was the start of me losing interest in competitive pokemon, it's just so fucking annoying to deal with since there's so few spinners to choose from and saying defog is a counter feels dumb when most defoggers lose most of their health coming in to deal with it
and yes, it is possible to have more granular systems than just "smogon or nintendo"; my old PO server was its own community with its own forums, and while it started from Smogon rules they diversified and made further balance decisions on their own, like banning Shadow Tag Chandelure but still letting you use Flash Fire Chandelure and the like (and made these decisions quicker than Smogon because we had a smaller council & community to consult) and also we had the item clause which I've shown a bias towards before
like, it's not EASY to maintain your own tierlist, but if you really want a better experience than what Smogon can provide it is possible
that said my baseline for any league to actually be enjoyable is just immediately ban all pokemon with a BST > 550. They're just too far above curve, a you-can-only-fight-fire-with-fire thing because they're too good and too well rounded for anything but mirror matches and hyper specific counters with lower stat totals to counter them. There's always going to be an upper tier, but when you lower the top tier so that it doesn't include those that are great at everything, there's a better flow because counters are easier to come across.
and then you spot ban the things that are still particularly problematic and every team is better off with it than without it, like aegislash
I'm also a big fan of the metagame balance philosophy of "if this mechanic invalidates an entire set of options when team/deck/whatever building it's a bad mechanic", so boot out stealth rock since it just means only the best bug and fire types can even be considered an option
Eh, just doing 550 still leaves out a few pokemon that are hardly a problem. Like, Goodra is at 600, but I don't think anyone considers it OP? (It's fun as hell to assault vest it against special attackers, but...)
I'm....I don't know how I feel about Smogon's Tiers.
I feel very strongly that a simple "No legendaries, period of any kind" rule would go a long way towards balancing the metagame without upsetting things too much.
It's not going to suddenly make, say, non-mega beedrill viable, but at least I don't have to eyeroll when I see someone with a bunch of the therian forme genies on their team hitting me on Showdown.
Then again, even Official Tournaments allow some legendary pokemon, but....I don't like that either.
I don't know. It gets really confusing having to memorize a couple different metagames (like, a strategy or pokemon that's really strong in OU might use a different moveset in UUs because a lot of different threats are there that just don't make it to OU).
I feel like every time a new gen comes out, they invent a new tier. The latest ones I don't understand are "BL" and "PU"- and these tiers seem like they are, as someone else said, tiers defined by "we removed this handful of pokemon from the available pool and felt the metagame without them was pretty stable and had promise."
It just seems like a bunch of dudes who only sort of know something about balancing a metagame using simultaneously a brute force method of balancing, but also making these weird incremental slices of available pokemon in the various "tiers".
Then again, I like just taking a mono bug type team into "Anything Goes" and seeing what happens. I kind of know I'm gonna get rolled by the team with Mega-Rayquazaa, Groudon, Kyogre, etc but I still have fun.
History of Smogon Tiers:
Alright so Smogon is based off of OU, or OverUsed, Pokemon. In RBY there were some Pokemon who were real good. These were OU. The rest of the Pokemon were call UU, or UnderUsed.
Mew and Mewtwo were seen as too strong so they got put into their own tier, Ubers.
At this point in time, there are about 20 pokes in OU and whatever, 50 in UU. Nobody really played UU as a metagame, it was just a list of pokes not quite as good as the OU dudes. Similarly nobody played Uber because it had two Pokemon in it.
This pretty much stayed the same for GSC.
In RSE, the number of Pokemon in UU was quite a lot. People said 'hey we can play our own mini meta outside of the OU meta.'
This, however meant that some Pokemon in UU (Butterfree for example) were never actually used on UU teams. A new tier was created, NU, or NeverUsed. I'm pretty sure NU wasn't an actual meta at this point so much as the chaff of UU.
During DPPt, they decided 'okay we need a more objective way of deciding who is in what tier other than what we feel is right.' They decided that for a Pokemon to be OU, it should be seen on one out of every 20 top level teams.
Armed with this, the DPPt meta was the first to experience Usage-Based Tiers. If your Pokemon was on 1/20 top level teams, it was OU. If it was on 1/20 UU teams, it was UU. Failing this, it was NU. Anything that was an unbalancing force in OU was banished to Ubers, which also started to see play as an actual Metagame around this time.
Keep in mind though that Ubers isn't a Usage-Based Tier, it's just the stuff that was agreed upon by a council of prominent users to be too unbalancing. Ubers was still subject to a few restrictions, notably Sleep Clause (you can't put more than one enemy pokemon to sleep at a time) and a ban on the ability Moody, a ban on the move Swagger, and so on. These rules are known as 'Smogon-Wide Clauses.'
If a Pokemon in UU suddenly started being used in OU (someone discovered a great new moveset for example), and broke the 1/20 baseline, that Pokemon would leave UU and join OU, no longer being available for use by UU teams.
Here's where BL comes in. What if a Pokemon is not good enough to be on 1/20 OU teams, but is a really oppressive force in UU? You create a new Tier, BorderLine, where you can toss that stuff and forget about it. BL isn't a 'real' tier, inasmuch as there's no BL meta, since BL is just the inbetween stuff that doesn't fit into more established tiers. A BL pokemon can move up into OU, but it can't move back down into UU without another council decision.
With BL came BL2, which is simply the same concept but for pokemon trapped between UU and NU. Once again not a usage-based tier and not a tier with an actual meta.
As the number of pokemon increased, people started creating new unofficial tiers. In the BW meta, one of these new tiers, RU, standing for RarelyUsed, became an official meta. It comes between UU and NU.
Finally, in the XY meta, because people catagorize things compulsively, yet another new tier was constructed, PU. PU doesn't stand for anything it's just a pun about how the pokemon in this tier are terrible. PU stands below NU.
Also at this time Mega-Rayquaza became a thing. Because the Uber metagame (which is still not based on Usage, remember) has become a larger community, there was some backlash about just how broken this thing was. It utterly dominated a whole tier based on broken shit. As such, Smogon banned Mega Rayquaza from Ubers and made AG, or Anything Goes. The only restriction on AG battles is you can't cause an infinite loop. Other than that, Anything Goes!
tl;dr
OU is the main Smogon Tier and it ultimately takes precedence over any other tier. Any pokemon seen on 1/20 OU teams is considered an OU pokemon, unless it has been specifically banned by the OU Council.
All other Usage Based Tiers fall in descending order of precedence. If a pokemon is used in over 1/20 teams in a higher tier, it moves up to that tier and becomes unavailable in all lower tiers.
Usage Based Tiers in Decending Order:
OU
UU
RU
NU
PU
Non Usage Based Tiers:
These tiers are not based on Usage, but simply due to the banning process of the Usage Based Tiers.
Tiers with a Meta:
Anything Goes
Ubers (Bans Mega Rayquaza and a couple other things)
These tiers don't have a Meta, Pokemon here are 'trapped in between tiers' as it were, and don't normally see play in any tier:
BL (Not good enough for OU, but too good for UU)
BL2 (Not good enough for UU, but too good for RU)
BL3 (Not good enough for RU, but too good for NU)
BL4 (Not good enough for NU, but too good for PU)
Posts
Oh and since we're doing this
Aang: Lugia
Toph: Aggron
Katara: Greninja
Zuko: Infernape
Sokka: Gallade
With other, pre-established formats, you remove the bickering over 50 finer points which also removes a lot of headaches. Not that people won't still argue, mind.
Very clearly all Fighting/Fairy due to surviving on the power of positivity and Unicorn magic
I mean if you go with smogon rules I won't play because it doesn't fit my idea of a perfect meta, so damned if you do damned if you don't :P
I fucking wish
It deals more damage against sinners.
smogon is a fun place
My Steam
At least there's no worries of 6 mewtwos.
every team must consist of 6 pyukumus
But what if this time it's fully evolved new crab.
crab competition, teams are kingler/clawitzer/crabominable/crustle/crawdaunt
edit: maybe barbaracle as a 6th?
Gonna have to catch another dragon to breed Outrage onto them eventually; maybe iron head too since I guess that also has some niche uses.
Only attack allies.
Heihachi is just Pikachu. Or vice versa.
11
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7pokebankdoublesou-485414901
Mario Delfino Form: Water/Normal
Luigi: Fire/Dark
Luigi Mansion Form: Flying/Dark
Peach: Fairy
Peach Sports Form: Fairy/Fighting
Bowser: Dragon/Fire
Bowser Dry Bones Form: Ghost/Fire
no scizor, excadrill, tyranitar, hippowdon, politoed, vaporeon, wallrein, ferrothorn, garchomp
man sun teams still kinda sucked back then didn't they
dave: fire
rose: dark
jade: grass
wait this is too easy
B
But Teddiursa is real. Isn't he?
bewear is pretty cool
Eh, just doing 550 still leaves out a few pokemon that are hardly a problem. Like, Goodra is at 600, but I don't think anyone considers it OP? (It's fun as hell to assault vest it against special attackers, but...)
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History of Smogon Tiers:
Mew and Mewtwo were seen as too strong so they got put into their own tier, Ubers.
At this point in time, there are about 20 pokes in OU and whatever, 50 in UU. Nobody really played UU as a metagame, it was just a list of pokes not quite as good as the OU dudes. Similarly nobody played Uber because it had two Pokemon in it.
This pretty much stayed the same for GSC.
In RSE, the number of Pokemon in UU was quite a lot. People said 'hey we can play our own mini meta outside of the OU meta.'
This, however meant that some Pokemon in UU (Butterfree for example) were never actually used on UU teams. A new tier was created, NU, or NeverUsed. I'm pretty sure NU wasn't an actual meta at this point so much as the chaff of UU.
During DPPt, they decided 'okay we need a more objective way of deciding who is in what tier other than what we feel is right.' They decided that for a Pokemon to be OU, it should be seen on one out of every 20 top level teams.
Armed with this, the DPPt meta was the first to experience Usage-Based Tiers. If your Pokemon was on 1/20 top level teams, it was OU. If it was on 1/20 UU teams, it was UU. Failing this, it was NU. Anything that was an unbalancing force in OU was banished to Ubers, which also started to see play as an actual Metagame around this time.
Keep in mind though that Ubers isn't a Usage-Based Tier, it's just the stuff that was agreed upon by a council of prominent users to be too unbalancing. Ubers was still subject to a few restrictions, notably Sleep Clause (you can't put more than one enemy pokemon to sleep at a time) and a ban on the ability Moody, a ban on the move Swagger, and so on. These rules are known as 'Smogon-Wide Clauses.'
If a Pokemon in UU suddenly started being used in OU (someone discovered a great new moveset for example), and broke the 1/20 baseline, that Pokemon would leave UU and join OU, no longer being available for use by UU teams.
Here's where BL comes in. What if a Pokemon is not good enough to be on 1/20 OU teams, but is a really oppressive force in UU? You create a new Tier, BorderLine, where you can toss that stuff and forget about it. BL isn't a 'real' tier, inasmuch as there's no BL meta, since BL is just the inbetween stuff that doesn't fit into more established tiers. A BL pokemon can move up into OU, but it can't move back down into UU without another council decision.
With BL came BL2, which is simply the same concept but for pokemon trapped between UU and NU. Once again not a usage-based tier and not a tier with an actual meta.
As the number of pokemon increased, people started creating new unofficial tiers. In the BW meta, one of these new tiers, RU, standing for RarelyUsed, became an official meta. It comes between UU and NU.
Finally, in the XY meta, because people catagorize things compulsively, yet another new tier was constructed, PU. PU doesn't stand for anything it's just a pun about how the pokemon in this tier are terrible. PU stands below NU.
Also at this time Mega-Rayquaza became a thing. Because the Uber metagame (which is still not based on Usage, remember) has become a larger community, there was some backlash about just how broken this thing was. It utterly dominated a whole tier based on broken shit. As such, Smogon banned Mega Rayquaza from Ubers and made AG, or Anything Goes. The only restriction on AG battles is you can't cause an infinite loop. Other than that, Anything Goes!
tl;dr
OU is the main Smogon Tier and it ultimately takes precedence over any other tier. Any pokemon seen on 1/20 OU teams is considered an OU pokemon, unless it has been specifically banned by the OU Council.
All other Usage Based Tiers fall in descending order of precedence. If a pokemon is used in over 1/20 teams in a higher tier, it moves up to that tier and becomes unavailable in all lower tiers.
Usage Based Tiers in Decending Order:
OU
UU
RU
NU
PU
Non Usage Based Tiers:
These tiers are not based on Usage, but simply due to the banning process of the Usage Based Tiers.
Tiers with a Meta:
Anything Goes
Ubers (Bans Mega Rayquaza and a couple other things)
These tiers don't have a Meta, Pokemon here are 'trapped in between tiers' as it were, and don't normally see play in any tier:
BL (Not good enough for OU, but too good for UU)
BL2 (Not good enough for UU, but too good for RU)
BL3 (Not good enough for RU, but too good for NU)
BL4 (Not good enough for NU, but too good for PU)
Switch Friend Code: SW-1406-1275-7906