Official Serebii 5th Gen Tier List & Standard Rules Discussion Thread

[Eaglehawk]

As for Tornadus, bar Zapdos and maybe Snorlax not much can avoid a 2KO from it's attacks. Not to mention his blazing speed and Prankster Rain Dance. Not sure how that'll play out but he is very easy to revenge kill.

I don't know. Tornadus was also droppedd to UU when Thundurus-I was around, and it didn't have a really good run, but then again, Hail was still unbanned, so we can't actually say anything about its performance yet. From my judgment, Tornadus is definitely going to cause problems, but none that would possibly deem it broken. In fact, it would make a really nice anti-meta pokemon. It's one of the better counters to Sableye, being able to Taunt him before it can taunt Tornadus. It also counters Spikes or T-Spikes Roserade and Heracross (though the increasing popularity of ScarfMoxie kinda nullifies that in a way). Furthermore, it becomes an great check to the huge amount of fighting-types now present in UU. While walling it is kinda hard (Snorlax/Umbreon/Zapdos are your best bets, a lot of top tier stuff can kill it. Raikou, ScarfManitan, ScarfMoxie Heracross, Zapdos, Honchkrow, Sharpedo, and ScarfGon, Imposter Ditto, and the up-and-coming Skill Link Cincinno are some of the many things that can revenge kill it. Furthermore, most Tornadus will need Rain to operate correctly and not have Hurricane miss a lot, which also means Swift Swimmers, such as Kingdra, Revenge Kill it pretty well. To be completely honest here, the only thing that can hold Tornadus back is his reliance on rain for an accurate powerful STAB. Without rain, he is essentially running two moves with Focus miss accuracy (and we all know we all hate Focus Miss when it misses), giving it a good chance to miss and suffer a hit from the opponent. It can run the terrible STAB in the form of Air Slash, which is generally weaker and can't get the necessary KO's against stuff. UU is also a pretty hazard stacked metagame where spinning is slightly harder than before, so Tornadus doesn't fare well with hazards.

btw does anyone know what's the cutoff point for all of the tiers so we can make more accurate predictions. Oh and Stoutland fell off and Bisharp dipped below the top 50. I'm predicting a even lower dip in the coming months.

[kaiser soze]

btw does anyone know what's the cutoff point for all of the tiers so we can make more accurate predictions. Oh and Stoutland fell off and Bisharp dipped below the top 50. I'm predicting a even lower dip in the coming months.

I believe it's 3%.

[complete legitimacy]

A Pokemon is OU (or whatever tier) if you have a 50% chance of seeing it in 1 out of every 20 battles, which translates to approximately 3.41%.

Also, to contradict a previous post, this month has barely any effect on the new tiers, the formula being ((1*1st month) + (3*2nd month) + (21*3rd month)) / 24

[Eaglehawk]

A Pokemon is OU (or whatever tier) if you have a 50% chance of seeing it in 1 out of every 20 battles, which translates to approximately 3.41%.

Also, to contradict a previous post, this month has barely any effect on the new tiers, the formula being ((1*1st month) + (3*2nd month) + (21*3rd month)) / 24

It's still a decent predictor of months to come.

[tokyo/seven]

Meloetta hasn't been legal for long, however, so I think July's usage stats are biased. I've been using it a bit, and Pirouette forme can hit like a motherlover. It's probably best to wait until after August to see where it stays.

Meloetta is really good. I'm not surprised to see it's OU. I mean it's special stats are crazy, and it hits hard even without a Calm Mind boost. If it got a recovery move to compliment that it would only be even more dangerous. This one time I tried running Meloetta with just Relic song and Last Resort and even THAT ran very well...

[Eaglehawk]

Meloetta is really good. I'm not surprised to see it's OU. I mean it's special stats are crazy, and it hits hard even without a Calm Mind boost. If it got a recovery move to compliment that it would only be even more dangerous. This one time I tried running Meloetta with just Relic song and Last Resort and even THAT ran very well...

The reason it's not OU is because it was released in the middle of July, so the stats are heavily biased.

[jesusfreak94]

Well, Zangoose, Amoonguss, and Cinccino have all been voted not broken. Amoonguss I definitely saw coming, since it's really rare for a support or defensive Pokemon to be banned. You'd have to really flip the metagame on its head to banned on defensive characteristics, and Amoonguss just didn't have that. Besides, it'll be OU in a month and a half anyways. Cinccino was pretty obvious as well. It 2HKOs a ton of NU, but that's just it. It 2HKOs. All it takes is something with decent power to survive an attack and hit back and Cinccino is pretty much a gonner. Maybe if it has enough power to OHKO a lot more stuff, but that's just not the case, so it's checked by half the metagame.

Zangoose was definitely the toughest call here. Up until about the end of the suspect discussion, most people were on the "ban it" bandwagon. I personally wanted it banned, not because I could say definitely that it was broken, but just because my prediction sucks and I kept losing to it, lol. I probably would have abstained from a vote on it myself, though. It's no secret that without any boosting move, Zangoose 2HKOs most of NU. With SD, Zangoose OHKOs a ton of NU. It even has great speed to compliment its power. However, I think the real deciding factor was its staying power. Let's face it, it's very frail, and it's constantly on a timer with its Toxic Orb. If it doesn't OHKO whatever's in front of it, it risks taking a hit that might be its last. It's still an incredible offensive threat, probably the closest thing to broken in NU right now, but the NU metagame is just not that kind to it.

I'm pretty happy with the RU decisions on Nidoqueen and Moltres as well. I just think that we should have waited a little while longer before suspecting Pokemon new to an environment. It seems that nearly every time we test a new threat close to its introduction to a metagame, it ends up being voted not broken. The only Pokemon usually voted broken seem to be the ones that have been a part of the metagame for quite some time (i.e. Excadrill, Jynx, Cresselia, etc.).

[tokyo/seven]

The reason it's not OU is because it was released in the middle of July, so the stats are heavily biased.

Huhwhaa?? But....it is OU...that's what I said haha...

[dewhinifier]

Eh, I'm way late.

UU had a couple suspect discussions...kingdra (which was recently declared not broken) and gothitelle (still in session). I haven't had access to any of my teams, but I can say this. Kingdra is a huge threat in that tier and probably at some point will go BL, but who knows. I'm also happy to see gothitelle being used to a greater potential.

[jesusfreak94]

Yay, big news!

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3471600

Everyone make sure you participate in this testing period. For those to lazy to click the link, this weekend a ladder will be used to test a metagame with Garchomp unbanned and instead a ban on Sand Veil. The results will be discussed and could affect future tiering.

Personally, I've been looking forward to something like this for a while. Sand Veil has been debated for a while whether or not it should be banned, being a hax based ability and perhaps the breaking point for Garchomp's ban. The positive of a ban like this would be the unbanning of Garchomp, which might be a welcome addition to OU if it is proven unbroken without Sand Veil. The negative would be a loss of one set on Gliscor, the SubSD set, which is designed to abuse Sand Veil misses to obtain boosts. Personally, I think the positive here far outweighs the negative, and maybe we can have another useful member of OU.

There's also inevitably a couple of people questioning if we could do a Blaziken + Speed Boost ban, but that's another story.

[Wishing Star]

Yay, big news!

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3471600

Everyone make sure you participate in this testing period. For those to lazy to click the link, this weekend a ladder will be used to test a metagame with Garchomp unbanned and instead a ban on Sand Veil. The results will be discussed and could affect future tiering.

Personally, I've been looking forward to something like this for a while. Sand Veil has been debated for a while whether or not it should be banned, being a hax based ability and perhaps the breaking point for Garchomp's ban. The positive of a ban like this would be the unbanning of Garchomp, which might be a welcome addition to OU if it is proven unbroken without Sand Veil. The negative would be a loss of one set on Gliscor, the SubSD set, which is designed to abuse Sand Veil misses to obtain boosts. Personally, I think the positive here far outweighs the negative, and maybe we can have another useful member of OU.

Personally, I'm in favor of a ban on Sand Veil. Moody is already banned, and it's because it's a luck-based ability; Sand Veil is too, with the evasion increase in a sandstorm (although to a lesser degree).

There's also inevitably a couple of people questioning if we could do a Blaziken + Speed Boost ban, but that's another story.

While many people say Blaziken + Speed Boost is broken, Speed Boost isn't a luck-based ability. If they were to do more suspect testing on this combo, I'd rather they put Blaziken + Speed Boost into ubers. This would make Blaziken + Blaze and ____ + Speed Boost stay at wherever they need to be instead of a ban on the ability entirely.

[Shadow♠]

Yay, big news!

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3471600

Everyone make sure you participate in this testing period. For those to lazy to click the link, this weekend a ladder will be used to test a metagame with Garchomp unbanned and instead a ban on Sand Veil. The results will be discussed and could affect future tiering.

Personally, I've been looking forward to something like this for a while. Sand Veil has been debated for a while whether or not it should be banned, being a hax based ability and perhaps the breaking point for Garchomp's ban. The positive of a ban like this would be the unbanning of Garchomp, which might be a welcome addition to OU if it is proven unbroken without Sand Veil. The negative would be a loss of one set on Gliscor, the SubSD set, which is designed to abuse Sand Veil misses to obtain boosts. Personally, I think the positive here far outweighs the negative, and maybe we can have another useful member of OU.

There's also inevitably a couple of people questioning if we could do a Blaziken + Speed Boost ban, but that's another story.

This is great to here. I miss using Garchomp, I did get to early gen5 before it was banned again. Sand Veil is a hax ability like Moody, so it should be banned I think :P

[cascadethewarrior]

I disagree, I don't think Moody or Sand Veil should be banned. You rely on luck in battle anyway(By using moves with below 100 accuracy), it's not my fault if I get more lucky than you. I understand why Double team and other Self-raising evasion moves are banned, because to prevent people from setting up. With Moody you have no control over what stat gets raised, and with Sand Veil, it's always a set amount of raised evasion.

[Wishing Star]

I disagree, I don't think Moody or Sand Veil should be banned. You rely on luck in battle anyway(By using moves with below 100 accuracy), it's not my fault if I get more lucky than you. I understand why Double team and other Self-raising evasion moves are banned, because to prevent people from setting up. With Moody you have no control over what stat gets raised, and with Sand Veil, it's always a set amount of raised evasion.

Moody is banned because of its unpredictability; you don't know what stat is going to be raised after each turn. It's the epitome of luck-reliance mechanics, really. (Same with Acupressure).
If self-raising evasion moves are banned, why not self-raising evasion abilities? They both raise the user's evasion.

One of the differences between missing due to inherent accuracy and missing due to evasion is that with moves like Stone Edge, you generally trade accuracy for power (making what would otherwise be two-hit KO's with one-hit KO's), whereas with evasion, it's all dumb luck, hoping that your move hits regardless of the move's power. Critical hits and min-max damage differences can arguably be put into this category as well.

[cascadethewarrior]

Moody is banned because of its unpredictability; you don't know what stat is going to be raised after each turn. It's the epitome of luck-reliance mechanics, really. (Same with Acupressure).
If self-raising evasion moves are banned, why not self-raising evasion abilities? They both raise the user's evasion.

That's my point. With self-raising evasion moves, you CAN control how much your evasion raises so the user can be blamed for it and it's not entirely up to luck at this point. While with Self-raising abilities it's either situational(like Sand Veil and Snow Cloak) or completely up to luck, so why should the user have to suffer if they did not intentionally choose to raise evasion? That's why I compared it to hoping a move with less than 100% accuracy would hit.

Basically what I'm saying is if you can't control whether evasion is raised then it should not be banned but if you can control it than it should, but that's just my opinion after all.

[dewhinifier]

Yay, big news!

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3471600

Everyone make sure you participate in this testing period. For those to lazy to click the link, this weekend a ladder will be used to test a metagame with Garchomp unbanned and instead a ban on Sand Veil. The results will be discussed and could affect future tiering.

Personally, I've been looking forward to something like this for a while. Sand Veil has been debated for a while whether or not it should be banned, being a hax based ability and perhaps the breaking point for Garchomp's ban. The positive of a ban like this would be the unbanning of Garchomp, which might be a welcome addition to OU if it is proven unbroken without Sand Veil. The negative would be a loss of one set on Gliscor, the SubSD set, which is designed to abuse Sand Veil misses to obtain boosts. Personally, I think the positive here far outweighs the negative, and maybe we can have another useful member of OU.

There's also inevitably a couple of people questioning if we could do a Blaziken + Speed Boost ban, but that's another story.

This is going to be VERY interesting. However, I'm not looking forward to another discussion like the one over UU sand if it comes.

I personally think it stays. It seems like it'll fit with this meta...and that's the best explanation i have for myself right now.

[Wishing Star]

That's my point. With self-raising evasion moves, you CAN control how much your evasion raises so the user can be blamed for it and it's not entirely up to luck at this point. While with Self-raising abilities it's either situational(like Sand Veil and Snow Cloak) or completely up to luck, so why should the user have to suffer if they did not intentionally choose to raise evasion? That's why I compared it to hoping a move with less than 100% accuracy would hit.

Basically what I'm saying is if you can't control whether evasion is raised then it should not be banned but if you can control it than it should, but that's just my opinion after all.

But the point is that abilities and moves that make the game become more luck-reliant than skill-reliant are banned, and it's exactly because they make the game become more luck-reliant than skill-reliant. With Moody, you can ideally use whatever stalling technique you want, and all you have to do is keep stalling until you get the boosts you want, which makes the game much less interactive.

[cascadethewarrior]

But the point is that abilities and moves that make the game become more luck-reliant than skill-reliant are banned, and it's exactly because they make the game become more luck-reliant than skill-reliant. With Moody, you can ideally use whatever stalling technique you want, and all you have to do is keep stalling until you get the boosts you want, which makes the game much less interactive.

Well I never took into account Stalling moves....:/
With that you do have a point.

[jesusfreak94]

I disagree, I don't think Moody or Sand Veil should be banned. You rely on luck in battle anyway(By using moves with below 100 accuracy), it's not my fault if I get more lucky than you. I understand why Double team and other Self-raising evasion moves are banned, because to prevent people from setting up. With Moody you have no control over what stat gets raised, and with Sand Veil, it's always a set amount of raised evasion.

Using moves with lower accuracy and trying to fight a Moody Pokemon are in two completely different ballparks. Using, say, Hydro Pump over Surf is a risk that you take in exchange for a little more power. It's not luck that you try to take advantage of, but a slight luck factor that you offer your opponent in exchange for a boost. Moody, on the other hand, is something you take advantage of completely. Besides, sometimes low accuracy moves are completely necessary just for a Pokemon to have decent coverage, as is the case with Focus Blast and Stone Edge.

That said, Moody is probably the epitome of luck and hax. A Bidoof could sweep an Ubers team if it got lucky with boosts. When that kind of situation happens, the competitive aspect of the game has essentially died. You can be a skilled player with a completely solid team, but that Moody Octillery is going to probably sweep you if it gets an evasion boost and dodges all your attacks, or enough defense boosts so that you can't do significant damage, or special attack and speed boosts so that it just barrels through your team. Luck of that kind is completely uncompetitive, and the allowance of such a tool of hax in the standard metagame is out of the question.

That's my point. With self-raising evasion moves, you CAN control how much your evasion raises so the user can be blamed for it and it's not entirely up to luck at this point. While with Self-raising abilities it's either situational(like Sand Veil and Snow Cloak) or completely up to luck, so why should the user have to suffer if they did not intentionally choose to raise evasion? That's why I compared it to hoping a move with less than 100% accuracy would hit.

I don't think you understand why Sand Veil is a problem. It's because users of it DO abuse it intentionally. People never ran SubSD Chomp and hoped their opponent was running Sandstorm, they ran a Tyranitar or Hippowdon themselves. Not only that, but hitting Garchomp was usually crucial to the outcome of a match. When you're dealing with a Pokemon with excellent bulk, high Atk, almost unresisted and powerful dual STABs, a great boosting move in Swords Dance, and one of the trolliest speed stats available, you can't afford to miss. Even now, some people can have huge problems against SDAcro Gliscor if that Sand Veil hax kicks in and it gets a second boost or kills off one of its checks.

It's completely different from using a <100% accurate move. When you're using that move, you're not abusing hax as a weapon against you're opponent. In fact, you're hoping that hax won't happen, and usually there's a far greater chance that it will not. Sand Veil, on the other hand, is only a hax abusing ability.

Basically what I'm saying is if you can't control whether evasion is raised then it should not be banned but if you can control it than it should, but that's just my opinion after all.

But you can, easily. Wanna abuse Sand Veil hax on your SubSD Gliscor? Run a Tyranitar or Hippowdon. Wanna try to fish for some misses and Spike all over your opponent with Froslass? Run Abomasnow. Weather based hax abilities are completely in the user's control. The only real obstacle is opposing weather, but Sand Veil and Snow Cloak aren't the only abilities that have to contend with that.

[That Crazy Russian™]

speaking from first hand experience, sand veil is a b*tch to play against, but great if used in favor. suddenly, 100% accuracy moves are reduces to basically the equivalent of 80% accuracy moves. 90%-70%, and so on so on. its completely luck based. i gave arguments to my specific points on smogon, and i guess i might as well state mine here too.

i believe that neither the pokemon, nor the ability should be banned, but sandstorm+sand veil and clones should be banned. sand veil is an essentially useless ability without sand, snow cloak in the same boat. might as well nerf it instead of doing something drastic.

for example, drizzleswim is banned. swift swim in itself is not banned. for good reason too. the council should focus on doing a combo-specific ban as opposed to an ability ban. if you ban snow cloak+sand veil, essentially you are banning at least one pokemon to ubers(those who only get one of the above). im sure there are some out there.

ban the combination of tyranitar/hippowdon/hippopotas+sand veil, and the combination of abomasnow/snover+snow cloak.

i never fully understood why only drizzleswim is banned, and not chlorophyll+sun, or sand rush+sand, or whatever the hail equivalent is.