•Official B2/W2 In-Game Tiers• * READ THE OP *

[Tsumiki]

[1/3] Low Swoobat, Decent Movepool and Typing save it from bottom imo

[1/3] Lower Middle Flareon

[1/3] High Espeon. I'd like to point out that Espeon is better than Starmie if you're looking for a Psychic type in general. It's more outmaneuvered than outclassed.

I'd like to actually suggest going low for Whimsicott; the lack of an offensive presence really harms it ingame. Also, the mentioned Sleep Power (or the lack of thereof) really cripples it as a Grass Type Annoyer Pokemon.*

[edonub]

[1/3] High Espeon. I'd like to point out that Espeon is better than Starmie if you're looking for a Psychic type in general. It's more outmaneuvered than outclassed.

Bear with me not being english, that's what I meant xD. Starmie has a lot more options, I DID mention that Espy's Psychic is still way stronger.

I'd like to actually suggest going low for Whimsicott; the lack of an offensive presence really harms it ingame. Also, the mentioned Sleep Power (or the lack of thereof) really cripples it as a Grass Type Annoyer Pokemon.*

Uhm after looking at the current tiers again, lower middle is packed with actually decent pokes... so yeah by those standards Whimsicott should go low. Fixing that.

[azeem40]

Meh, cute shouldn't be a positive. That is subjective.

[Dragoniteftw]

[2/3] Low Swoobat - foldingscreen, dragoniteftw

[2/3] Lower Middle Flareon - foldingscreen, dragoniteftw

[2/3] High Espeon (I wish you could get magic bounce before E4 and it'd definitely be top) - foldingscreen, dragoniteftw

[1/3] Low whimsicott - dragoniteftw

[azeem40]

I 2/3 Whimsicott in low. He may be fast, but lack of coverage in its moves makes it a bad choice.

[Aurath8]

Confirm ALL the tierings!

Swoobat for Low [3/3]. Unless it has Simple(+2/+2 Calm Minds ftw) it's terrible.

Whimsicott for Low[3/3]. No offensive presence.

Flareon for Lower-Middle [3/3]. It just about scrapes Lower-Middle because of its sheer power.

Espeon for High [3/3]. Its ridiculous in the mid-game with Psybeam, hitting harder than anything until you reach the mid 30s where tons of pokemon reach their final stage.

Stoutland for Upper-Middle [2/3]. STAB Takedown is pretty cool but its somewhat lacking in sheer stats towards the endgame.

[Tsumiki]

Edtted the OP. And just so it doesn't feel like a glorified bump...

Banette - Bottom Tier
Availability - Mid Late (Strange House)
Notable Moves - Shadow Sneak, Shadow Claw, Return, Sucker Punch, Will-O-Wisp, Thunderbolt
Stats - Great Atk, Average SpA. Lacking elsewhere

+ It... Has great Atk
- Has no Physical moves save it's STAB and Return (Dark gets pretty much the same coverage so..)
- Walled by both Rock and Steels types for the most part
- Frail on both sides of the spectrum

[azeem40]

I 2/3 Banette in low. It can't even take a neutral hit.

[Aurath8]

I 2/3 Banette in low. It can't even take a neutral hit.

Don't you mean [1/3]? Anyway, Banette has worse defences than Cincinno and its speed is pretty bad too. Bad defences and speed are the worst combo you could hope for. It doesn't even deserve Low because, if it manges to get off an attack it won't be the most powerful in the world as Shadow Claw isn't the strongest move ever. He'll just KOed next turn meaning all he does is sometimes manage to dent the opponent.
Banette for Bottom [1/3].

[azeem40]

Don't you mean [1/3]? Anyway, Banette has worse defences than Cincinno and its speed is pretty bad too. Bad defences and speed are the worst combo you could hope for. It doesn't even deserve Low because, if it manges to get off an attack it won't be the most powerful in the world as Shadow Claw isn't the strongest move ever. He'll just KOed next turn meaning all he does is sometimes manage to dent the opponent.
Banette for Bottom [1/3].

I meant to say Bottom lol. Guess it is 2/3 now.

[edonub]

Banette 3/3 bottom, the only high stat is its attack which doesn't matter as its physical movepool suck with the strongest move being STAB shadow claw. It's just plain bad, both slow and frail.

Zoroark - Top
Availability - midgame (Driftveil City)
Notable Moves - Dark Pulse/Night Daze, Nasty Plot, Hidden Power Fighting, Flamethrower, Return, Grass Knot, U-Turn, Night Slash, Focus Blast, Low Kick
Stats - Awesome Special Attack, very high Attack and Speed, frail on both defenses and HP.

- Description -
N's Zorua comes with a lot of advantages and it has definitely improved since B/W for a lot of reasons. Its unique ability, Illusion, can let you fool the AI very easily, it has the stats and movepool of an excellent sweeper as well.

+ Always comes with near perfect IVs (all 30s) and an useful Nature for a mixed sweeper (Hasty = +Speed, -Def), meaning you will always end up with a solid poke without any effort
+ the original trainer is N, meaning this is considered a traded pokemon. Faster growth.
+ All 30 IVs means max powered Hidden Power Fighting, making this move highly recommended for almost perfect coverage with a Dark type STAB. If you really can't bother with PWT, Focus Blast and Low Kick are both vaild alternatives.
+ If running a Nasty Plot set, it's very easy to setup with it thanks to Illusion. If your opponent sees a Psychic weak poke it will spam Psychic type moves doing nothing to you and allowing multiple boosts. Illusion in general is awesome for screwing up with the enemy AI.
+ Not many moves, but they're just the right ones. Dark move/Fighting move/Flamethrower/Filler grants very wide coverage and a lot of super-effective hits
+ Instantly gets a special STAB thanks to the Snarl TM, comes 5 levels from being evolved so it will hardly be a burden as Zorua
- Very frail. Requires some thinking with Illusion to be used properly
- Not very useful against Team Plasma and the E4 Champion (does well against anything else though)

EDIT:
+ It comes with max happiness as well, so Return is a solid option from the beginning

[Tsumiki]

I'm going to say High for Zoroark tbh. The above mentioned fraility really cuts down on reliability. Even NVE hits still manage to deal skme amount of damage to it. Plus, it only has STAB to work with for quite a while iirc (correct me if i'm wrong in this regard)

Edit : [3/3] Top, full powered Return and Snarl does it great.

[edonub]

You get a full powered Return right off the bat, then you can learn U-Turn with a Heart Scale once it evolves at level 30, as well as Low Kick at the Tutor in Driftveil.
The thing is, its frailty is almost entirely compensated by the AI's lack of "intelligence". Put a poison type last in your teamslot, and it's granted you won't get hit by bug/fighting types, and so on. Not to mention Psychic type moves... I went to +4 Sp. att against Chauntal's cofagrigus as it tried to psychic me twice, then swept the rest of the team. Very high IVs are a huge plus as well.
That's what I noticed anyway, it's very fun to use but not gimmicky because Illusion actually works and 105/120/105 are very good offensive stats to back the ability up.

[Noctourniquet]

i would say high due to the fact that its most useful special moves are late-game and it's quite restricted at first, but then i noticed that it has a base atk of 105 as opposed to 85 which i originally thought it was for some reason, so that compensates it slightly. it's got so much otherwise going for it... the frailty is a problem though if you're not in just the right circumstances to pull of illusion abuse. it's all well and good having a poison type to soak up nve psychic attacks and all that but it's the neutral hits that are bothering me. i'm cringing just thinking of this thing trying to take on anything which can hit neutral and hit hard.

...but then i keep coming back to how it's got a great nature, great ivs, and boosted exp behind it. basically it's late movepool and fragility vs ease of training and instant advantages over other pokémon.

edit: just saw that it gets snarl and a full-power return quickly. that's good enough for me. top [1/3].

[Aurath8]

I'm going to [2/3] Zoroark for Top. It is very frail and has a lot of trouble taking neutral attacks. You can fool the AI with Illusion, but its effectiveness varies depending on your team's synergy, so this is anywhere for from near useless to an excellent ability. Apart from the E4 its also fairly average in major battles.
On the other hand, it is ridiculously convenient to raise. You get a good Nature, IVs, full power Return and a decent STAB in Snarl immediately, boosted exp, early evolution and even its Hidden Power is Fighting. It would be hard to make a more attractive offer than that unless it had a unique move like Aura Sphere and they gave it to you after Cheren.

[azeem40]

I thought it was 1/3 since the person who did the review doesn't count as a vote?

[Aurath8]

I thought it was 1/3 since the person who did the review doesn't count as a vote?

Noctourniquet also approved the tiering, so mine made it 2/3.

Umbreon - Bottom Tier
Availability - Early-Mid (Castelia City)
Notable Moves - Payback, Toxic, Moonlight, Heal Bell
Stats - Good HP, Great defence and excellent Spdef, low offences and speed.

- Description -

+95/110/130 defences are amongst the best mixed defences in the game.
-Has negative offensive presence.
-Relies on Toxic+Moonlight and its great defences to do damage.
-Until you get Toxic it will really Struggle to do anything without multiple Screeches.
-Cannot touch Steels or even most Poison types, because of its reliance on Toxic.


True, those defences look great initially, and its backed up by Moonlight at lvl 33. But, considering Umbreon can't do any substantial damage for much of the game and is very inefficient when it does gain the ability in the form of Toxic, and that Umbreon is still useless against Poison-immune pokemon,*deep breath* I think its worthy of Bottom.

[Tsumiki]

[1/3] Bottom Umbreon. It could potentially be Low if it got Curse. It doesn't so.. The fact that Foul Play will more often than not deal more damage that Dark Pulse is pretty sad.*

On the topic of traded Pokemon and HP, should HP be added to the other traded Pokemon? Asking this mostly because traded Lilligant can now hit Steels who otherwise wall it.*

[azeem40]

It does get Curse mate.

[azeem40]

For Zoroark, wouldn't it be good for Shauntal and Caitlin (sans Reuniclus)?

[edonub]

I specified that Zoroark can setup on anything that has a Psychic type move in its moveset. Just disguise it as a psychic-weak poke.
Chauntal's cofagrigus: give it a Rawst Berry if you care about burning, Nasty plot as much as you want since all it has to hurt you is Psychic and Shadow Ball, sweep the team.
Caitlin's Musharna: give it Chesto Berry to counter Yawn (or just wake it up manually), NP as much as you want, sweep the team. Heck you can sweep even Grimsley with HP Fighting, considering how weak Liepard is.
The thing is, except for Marshall which has strong pokes overall and a Sturdy Sawk, all the Elite 4 starts with setup fodders.

As for Umbreon, Curse is an egg move. This is ingame, and you have to wait until after you beat the champion to even be able to breed.
I [2/3] for bottom. Zero offensive presence is not tolerable ingame

About Liligant, specs on the traded one are:
Own Tempo
Timid nature
IVs are all 20, except SpA (31)
40 base power HP ground

This should be pretty reliable as I slapped my save file into pokegen to check its stats without error.
40 power HP ground is kind of weak. Resisted Petal Dance does more damage.

[Dragoniteftw]

Zoroark top [3/3] this is an example of an above average pokemon usually heading for HIGH boosted by its availability.

Umbreon [3/3] for bottom. Just nope.

[Aurath8]

Basculin - Lower-Middle Tier
Availability - Midgame (Route 6)
Notable Moves - Aqua Jet, Aqua Tail, Waterfall, Crunch, Superpower, Ice Beam, Return
Stats - Good attack and speed, low defences and HP

- Description -

+Gets x2 STAB with Adaptability.
+Gets Aqua Tail, Crunch and Aqua Jet immediately/very soon after capture.
-While its Water moves are strong, its coverage moves are much weaker by comparison.
-Generally lacking stats, particularly its defences, prevent it from really excelling in battle.



Yeah, Basculin doesn't have any crippling cons or great pros. Gamefreak really went out of their way to make such an incredibly, fantastically, undeniably average pokemon. It's really quite uncanny.

[Aura Sensai]

[1/3] Lower Tier Basculin. It's pretty much outclassed by every other Water Type available in BW2. Return could be another notable move though.

[Dragoniteftw]

low-mid [1/3] basculin gets 2* aqua jet and aqua tail, just average really.

I'm still butthurt that a starter - serperior is low-mid that really doesn't make sense to me.