Do we need a tier between OU and Ubers?

[Chevaleresse]

There are a few pokemon that I see in almost every team. They have earned their places by being incredibly useful, but they probably aren't up to Ubers levels of power. However, they still feel too strong for OU. Thoughts?

[Shanco]

It'd be pretty redundant...when we have the BorderLine tier. Take everything that just isn't strong enough to keep up (ex. Tornadus) and place it there

[Dark Desire]

Ubers wasn't made to be a competitive tier, it was made as a ban list for OU so anything that's to good for OU should go to Ubers. But since we are Reborn, i'd be possible but i just don't think we'd have enough pokes in that tier to make it a good idea for us

[Summer]

We already had this discussion last year and the answer was

"if you can't handle all these mons you aren't playing right"

Stuff like Gliscor and Heatran may seem to fit in this OU Ubers in between but honestly, they aren't hard to deal with at all.

[Tomas Elliot]

We already had this discussion last year and the answer was

"if you can't handle all these mons you aren't playing right"

Stuff like Gliscor and Heatran may seem to fit in this OU Ubers in between but honestly, they aren't hard to deal with at all.

/thread

[Summer]

there is a thread, but i'm lazy to link so

[Neo]

So what you want is a banlist in between the banlist and OU? That's a little excessive, no? You don't take the best of a tier in any sport and separate them into their own tier. Then take the ones below that an separate that into its own tier. Pokemon's the same way. Just gotta deal with the top tier stuff, and keep the metagame fluid through thought. Bans, in the long term, lead to the watering down of a tier.

[Sapphire]

Murdoc-Having an Akira Avatar and Asha'man as a title seems to clash a bit...

On topic, as said above, if you can't deal with the top-tier threats then you either a) aren't playing right or have a team that's weak against them. They don't require their own tier.

[Cowtao]

Each threat in OU has it's own set of Checks and Counters. Some however may remain questionable like Mega Gengar or commonly known as That Purple Bastard that keeps destorying teams. >>; will most likely be judged upon the high mod staff of Reborn and will be opted to be suspect tested.

In other words, there are ones that are probably going to be banned but if you can't quite win against a pokemon either you did a bad play or there is something wrong with your team chemistry.

[Nyrias]

Each threat in OU has it's own set of Checks and Counters. Some however may remain questionable like Mega Gengar or commonly known as That Purple Bastard that keeps destorying teams. >>; will most likely be judged upon the high mod staff of Reborn and will be opted to be suspect tested.

In other words, there are ones that are probably going to be banned but if you can't quite win against a pokemon either you did a bad play or there is something wrong with your team chemistry.

We already have plans on what we're doing with tiers, at this point we're just waiting for Bank to be released so that we'll have eggmoves for all previous generation pokemon set in stone and we can judge where they deserve to be in the tiers based on what buffs they may receive through the eggmoves.

[Cowtao]

We already have plans on what we're doing with tiers, at this point we're just waiting for Bank to be released so that we'll have eggmoves for all previous generation pokemon set in stone and we can judge where they deserve to be in the tiers based on what buffs they may receive through the eggmoves.

Uhm. >>; The bank IS live. In fact it's been out for quite some time how.

Even before the delay some few people got ahold of the Japanese version of it and most if not all the egg moves were already leaked out via Serebii, Smogon, and Bulbapedia. The US release is yet to be released as I recently checked over and the site was fake. However other countries in the world have fixed copies of Poke Bank intact like Japan.

Edited January 5, 2014 by Cowtao

[Nyrias]

Then I'll tell Amethyst and we'll get to work on the tiers, then. Wasn't aware, so thanks.

[Sapphire]

Cowtao-where do you get the 26th thing from?

[Wes]

There are a few pokemon that I see in almost every team. They have earned their places by being incredibly useful, but they probably aren't up to Ubers levels of power. However, they still feel too strong for OU. Thoughts?

Do you know what OU stands for? Overused. Meaning that it's the tier for mons that have the highest usage stats overall once Ubers are taken away. As for what Ubers is, Ubers is a banlist, not a tier. It doesn't matter if something is good in Ubers, if it's too good for OU, it's put into Uber. If you think something is used too much, play a lower tier.

[Cowtao]

Then I'll tell Amethyst and we'll get to work on the tiers, then. Wasn't aware, so thanks.

No problem. Sorry if I was a bit crude with my response. ^^; Hope you can make the tiers the best you can~

Also the information for the US release is a bit farce @Secundum. I actually rechecked and the release is yet to be shown so I wrote off as the site I saw it from was fake. Sorry. But the part of Japan and the other countries from what I've seen seems to be true.

NOW, Let's not derail this any further and continue on with this general discussion. The talk of Poke Bank and everything to do with PokeBank is over~

Edited January 5, 2014 by Cowtao

[Chevaleresse]

Do you know what OU stands for? Overused. Meaning that it's the tier for mons that have the highest usage stats overall once Ubers are taken away. As for what Ubers is, Ubers is a banlist, not a tier. It doesn't matter if something is good in Ubers, if it's too good for OU, it's put into Uber. If you think something is used too much, play a lower tier.

What I'm saying is that you see some things like Gliscor (who doesn't give me many issues, btw) way, WAY more than you see things like Jolteon, which also happens to be OU. If it's based on usage, then I should see Blissey and Skarmory almost as often as Heatran or Gliscor.

[Sapphire]

Jolteon will likely be moved out of OU soon, due to declining usage. And I see way more skarmbliss than HeatCore.

[Bear]

A perfectly balanced tier is impossible due to the various playstyles available to players of OU. Some strong pokemon essentially become deadweight against these playstyles however. This may sound crap at first but its actually a good thing that players have various playstyles available to them and this ensure a healthy metagame. Some pokemon are simply more viable against popular threats then others and though the tiers are based on usage as long as we play competively we will favour mons that threaten popular mons the most. Mons like jolteon still have their place in OU as part of very specific hyper-offensive, volt-turn, screen setting or batton passing strategies despite it is a small niche.
Btw when i saw this post I literally just 6-0 someone on wifi with jolteon playing a key part of my volt-turn core so i know he may not be as threating as he used to be, he can still kick ass and threaten so many mons like Talonflame and Azumarill.

[Kiozo]

Ooooooh tier talk. Looks like my statement of the day is "This old song and dance".

Now, here's the thing. Tiering is a complicated, complicated thing. When you analyze things, and "some things are more or less used and somethings do this or that" it gets really grey. The following example is based on the "common mentality", and might not apply to everyone, but more people will say that this doesn't apply to them, while it does, than people who it does apply to that will say it does, or to people it doesn't apply to at all.

The Example

Trends tend to happen in the game. When the game is first going to be played, and I mean for the first time, the metagame is going to be created. Things will come into play based on two factors, somewhat equally at that time; power and attractiveness. When you first play a game, if you think it's powerful, you don't truly know yetif it's useful. You haven't tried it out, you don't know the potential, unless you have done stat calculations against confirmed sets. On the other hand, you'll go for Pokemon you like, because you don't inherently know what is going to be useful, so you might as well enjoy it.

Step two happens. The things chosen have already been established at this point, and different picks will come out; picks based on "how do I beat my opponents common and most potent threats" will happen. But that will come out prominent and dominant. After you realize that what you like might not be the best, you'll tend to drop the ineffective things you might like in order to counter the opponents picks. You'll test that, and use what opponents used that worked and suited the role you need. You'll find it working, not working, and you'll still experiment. You'll replace more things for the sense of "success", trying to replace the already successful with better.

Step three happens; a new game comes out. People at this point try to play like they once knew how; even though threats change, moves come out, sometimes new types come out. Things rise and fall; but people don't react flexibly to change unless they had to. They'll test things out, they will inevitably experiment with the new toys, try to learn. But that old standard will still be inevitable. They'll still use the same things they did last time without recreating knowledge from the ground up. They do react, but not flexibly.

Step x/y/z basically results in this reoccuring, time and again, without an inherent differentiation.

Now; why did I bring this up?

I brought it up, because we're at that step x/y/z in the game. While I do indeed see people playing with new toys, I don't see it inherent amongst everyone. I see an overwhelming amount go and say "this still works" even though it was a gen 3 strat, something made only for one purpose, but not inherently classified correctly. Yes, we have tiers with name based usage; but we hardly can justify that for a few reasons.

One of the reasons is that we're emulating another places basis for tiering, while not being that place. That inherently will influence the decisions made by our community directly. If people decide they will go out of their way in order to find something; it's their choice to make that decision. If we put it right in front of them, it strips them of the decision of how to improve, and will change what is used, rather than allow the user to make that decision independantly; even if they decide to go and emulate that place, it's the users decision, and that's the idea behind the metagame - to have the users decide how they want to play and what's best for them.

Another reason that we have trouble justifying it is that we have such a smaller base than what's normally a comfortable level to do this statistical gathering at. People that come and go battle just as frequently as the users that are here every day, and that's an issue. There's no way to seperate the people, and while this is the least problematic in theory, since we literally just have to deal with it, it stacks on with my following and final reason.

The final reason? We have too many people acting like they're making a metagame impact without willingly putting in time and effort to find out if they have valid reasoning, without testing solutions rather than "raging" at the thing they dislike, without typing more than two sentences and claiming they have all the proof they need, without being capable to make counterpoints and hold a conversation that moves in a forward direction, and/or without even being able to do so much as hear the words "tiering chat" and start complaining like a toddler because they "don't wanna hear it". I'm not trying to start anything, nor am I trying to belittle the community;...

...but we have far too high a majority of the people who try to make an impact, not even begin to make a good stride in the right direction.

It's true! I wouldn't dare say it otherwise. When it comes down to it; almost, if not all tiering discussions have resulted in something mentioned earlier - raging, scattered and flawed ideas about why something is so (just to be disproven yet the proof is ignored in favor of the opinion), or even as much as an auth not wanting to see it because it doesn't sit well with them. This is not only unintegral to what was at least supposed to be a Pokemon community, but instead it is inevitably toxic to the development and will push us in the direction of losing what was supposed to be the (general) focus all along.

Even though it might not be as long as my other points; I don't think I need to say anything else on the subject.

So, what's the solution?

Good question, imposed entity that's not supposed to be me typing but is! What the solution is, isn't concrete. Unfortunate, but true. The solution lies within the individuals...but that's the problem. Each individual needs to put in time nad effort to prove to themselves that the idea they have, is truly worth having. To some, this just proves itself in five seconds of a badly played matchup, which is erroneous, and to others, it happens based on theorycrafting.

For me, I've taken upon a project long ago, and will shortly resume it. (Some of you know that I've dealt with my computer not being around since late march until Christmas). So, when gen 6 settles, or I get my information more importantly, I'll try unvieling the prototype and we'll work through the details. It might not be the topic in this thread, but it is tiering. That's all I'll say about it though.

Overall, I hope that I got a point across and didn't waste my morning typing this. My points are valid; having participated and inherently studied metagame processes on both mechanical and psychological levels, for both communities and outside documentation, I do know what results provide fruitiful. As they say though... "You can lead a horse to water...but you can't make it drink".