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

[Aurath8]

Floatzel for Mid [1/3]. Very similar to Simipour, but it does come a bit later.
Oh and Brick Break is PWT TM, so you can't list it amongst notable moves.

Zebstrika - Low/Bottom
Availability - Midgame(Route 7)
Notable Moves - Wild Charge, Flame Charge, Return, Signal Beam
Stats - Good Atk, Average HP and spatk, Bad defences and great speed


-Horrid movepool consists of Electric STAB, Return and numerous weak moves.
-Stuck with Spark until lvl 47.

tbh, the only thing that could keep this out of Bottom would be its half-decent stats. I'd welcome anyone having a good pro for this, because I can't really think of any.

[edonub]

Zebstrika is horrible, it had a purpose on B/W being the first electric available with earlygame STAB shockwave/spark and "coverage" on flame charge (nothing you wouldn't ditch when hitting level 30ish, but it HAD some use). Now it's just garbage

Bottom [1/3]

[pokemonsquared]

The only real pro for Zekstrika was that it was available early and had a monopoly on electric types until chargestone cave. Both no longer apply

[Aurath8]

Claydol - Low tier
Availability - Midgame (Relic Castle)
Notable Moves - Psychic, Psyshock, Earth Power, Signal Beam, Shadow Ball, Reflect, Light Screen, Zen Headbutt, Drill Run and Rock Slide, Power Trick, Power Split
Stats - Bad HP, average offences and speed, great defence and brilliant spdef

+High defences and access to dual screens make it a great supporting pokemon.
+Can use Power Trick/Power Split, to patch up its offences.
-Offences are subpar, and like most walls it struggles to do much for the team beyond support until it gets Toxic much later in Seaside Cave.
-Baltoy remains a dead weight until around Lentimas Town because of its horrid stats.
-Power Trick does lower Defence drastically, while Power Split is unreliable as it depends on the opponent.

Like other walls, this can't do much damage to the opponent until it gets Toxic much later. Claydol does have the benefit of dual screens until then, but still has little offensive presence.
EDIT: Power Trick/Split do improve it marginally. They do have their drawbacks, but unlike other walls this actually makes Claydol a viable offensive threat before Seaside Cave. I'm not sure exactly how well it functions with Power Trick/Split, so I still suggest Low for now.


Oh, and 3 pokemon left. Driflblim, Drapion and Wailord.

[amittal12]

^You can mention Power Trick as an option if its to be used more offensively.

[Aurath8]

^You can mention Power Trick as an option if its to be used more offensively.

Well, it's physical movepool is alright actually: Zen Headbutt, Drill Run and Rock Slide, cover most of what you could possibly want. There's also Power Split that allows it to take hits better, deal more damage and allow it to go mixed. I'll add them in.

[Zhanton]

It's been pretty quiet here as of late :s

[1/3] Mantine for Bottom.

[2/3] Floatzel for Mid. As Aurath8 said, it's pretty much a purely physical Simipour that comes a bit later.

[2/3] Zebstrika for Bottom. I guess its speed could be mentioned as a positive, or the fact that it has decent abilities but yeah it's pretty bad.

[1/3] Claydol for Low. I don't really have any experience with Claydol or Power Split/Trick but the time spent as Baltoy plus its sub-par stats make me feel that Low is the right place for him.


Wailord - Low tier
Availability - Late (Undella Bay)
Notable Moves - Surf, Waterfall, Water Spout, Bounce, Return, Blizzard, Ice Beam, Bulldoze, Dive, Rest, Toxic
Stats - Huge HP, decent offenses, poor defences and sub-par speed

+ Huge HP means Water Spout will often be very powerful
+ Gets a well-rounded movepool shortly after you obtain Wailmer/Wailord
+ One of the few Pokemon to learn Dive naturally, which can be coupled with Bounce and Toxic for stalling
- Offences are only decent, not amazing
- Very fragile
- Not overly useful against remaining gyms/elite 4

I don't really know what to say about this guy. Water Spout + his colossal HP look pretty powerful on paper, but I don't have any experience with Wailord so can't say for sure. Not really sure if the third pro is applicable given its frailty. idk

[amittal12]

Drapion - Middle Tier
Availability - Mid Late (Reversal Mountain Outer)
Notable Moves - Night Slash,Crunch,Cross Poison,Rock Slide,X-Scissor,Bulldoze,Aqua Tail,Ice Fang,Fire Fang
Stats - Great Defense,Good Attack and Speed,Average HP,Sp.Defense and Sp.Attack

+Sniper and Battle Armor are good ingame abilities.
+Great offensive movepool giving it quite a few variations.
+One of the few defensive Pokemon able to deal decent damage.
+Useful against Shuantal and Caitlin.
-Lacks a good physical Poison STAB until Lv.57(or 49 if kept as Skorupi).
-Available a bit late.
-Not very useful in the remaining gyms and against Colress.

[Zhanton]

Mid seems about right for Drapion given its good movepool, solid stats and good abilities; [1/3] Mid. Maybe add Acupressure to its notable moves? Yes the fact that it's completely random is annoying, but I sort of like the move :P

Also edited Wailord's tiering with info regarding the remaining gyms (knew I was forgetting something significant hahaha).

[Aurath8]

It's been pretty quiet here as of late :s

The thread as whole seems to follow a sine wave of activity. One week we can get 20 tierings done, next we only do 4 or something.

Regarding Wailord, it's not as frail as you make it out to be. It's defences are analogous to something like 77/77 defences. It's not particularly dependable, but not incredibly frail like Ninjask or something. Still what is essentially 77/90/77/90/7/60 stats deserve Low [1/3].

Drapion for Mid [2/3].

[Excitable Boy]

I realize I haven't existed for a while, real life sucks, so...

[2/3] Bottom Mantine. Nothing to add here.
[3/3] Mid Floatzel. Guy wishes its Attack and Special Attack were swapped, as well as being available for the Clay fight.
[1/3] Low Zebstrika. The reason I say Low and not Bottom is because you can basically catch any Zebstrika on Route 7 and just solo Mistralton Gym with it immediately, then ditch it just as immediately once it's done so, and all you lose out on is maybe some Exp. and EVs (but you get Lucky Egg at this point anyway and you should have Exp. Share, so not-as-biggie). It's arguably the easiest way to do so for teams without Rock or other Electric moves, and while Spark may suck, it's backed up by a base 100 Atk stat as soon as you get it, which is actually better than Drapion, a Pokemon being considered for Mid, which uses a STAB move with 5 more base power off of 10 less Attack (7670 Statistical Damage from Zebstrika vs. 7560 Statistical Damage from Drapion). While it's bad, it's not -as- bad as it's made out to be here.
[2/3] Low Claydol. It gets cool moves, but its offenses suck and its good defenses are undermined by bad HP.
[3/3] Mid Drapion. It doesn't get too many good STAB moves before end-game, it's kinda weak without Hone Claws, and it has 70/75 Special Defense. Elemental Fangs are mildly cool for Drayden and Marlon (as this is one of the few instances in which they're significantly better than STAB), though, and it's a decent choice during most of the E4.
[2/3] Low Wailord. I should point out that Water Spout is calc'd as (150 x current HP / max HP), meaning Wailord's huge HP is kinda irrelevant in terms of using the move because of its crap defenses. 3811.5 Statistical Defense is a little better than Dunsparce, worse than Arcanine, not too terribly bad. It's got okay power for its defenses, though, and gets good STAB moves. Maybe Bottom, but Low is okay.

And just to finish it off:

Drifblim - Low Tier
Availability - Late-game (Reversal Mountain Exterior)
Notable Moves - Acrobatics, Shadow Ball, Fly, Payback, Psychic, Will-o-Wisp, Hex, Stockpile, Amnesia, Baton Pass, Thunder, Thunderbolt
Stats - Passable mixed offenses, decent mixed defenses, mediocre Speed

+ Shows up evolved, and has its best STAB moves accessible to it almost immediately
+ Can do well against Caitlin and Marshal thanks to its typing, and can use Baton Pass + defense-boosting move and Will-o-Wisp in the end-game as well
- Doesn't learn a lot of good coverage moves; utterly walled by any Steel-types
- Mediocre stats and poor moves prevent it from being useful against many of the remaining bosses
- Comes late, and Baton Pass isn't available until end-game, meaning it can't support too well
- Typing leaves it vulnerable to coverage moves from nearly every boss, limiting its use

That should be it. now to do those retierings so tsumiki doesn't beat me up over the internet

[Tsumiki]

Sorry for not updating for the past week or two. I was sick for a week right after exams ended and was pretty much bedridden during that period. Afterwards, I've been overloaded with studying. Yes, being Asian sucks.

Now for something very important! I need someone else to lead 2.0 of the project. As unfortunte as it is, I don't think I'll have the time to lead the project. I'll make posts every now and then, but that'll be about it. Hit me with a PM if you want to take the position.

[Zhanton]

[1/3] Low Drifblim for its poor stats and movepool.

[3/3] Absol in Middle.

What exactly is the next phase of the project going to entail? Are we making another thread (seems unnecessary imo but yeah)? Are we just going to casually discuss retierings and just throw around ideas ("I think Watchog should move up to Lower-mid because of x, y and z." "Ok that seems fair enough, let's vote on it."), or are we going to systematically go through each tier, one at a time? I would volunteer to lead the project but I'm going overseas in a few days and won't be online much if at all so :S

[Tsumiki]

I'm kind of hoping that 2.0 will be a complete rehash of the tier, using the current tier as a sleleton of sorts. This is why I've got people (Read: Person) working on rewriting the tiers. That being said, it'll probably be a discussion of Pokemon that need to be retiered once the rewrite portion is done.

[Zhanton]

So this thread has been dead for two weeks, and I'm not sure doing a complete rehash of the tiers would be a good move since it might just flop, so maybe we should just suggest retierings in this thread instead?

In that case, I'd like to suggest Watchog moves from Bottom to Low or Lower-mid for the reasons stated in this post.

[Noctourniquet]

In that case, I'd like to suggest Watchog moves from Bottom to Low or Lower-mid for the reasons stated in this post.

i'm convinced by your argument for moving watchog up. it's just about good enough to get into low imo. [1/3]

[Aurath8]

It depends on how much consistent activity we can get during the re-tier stage really. I am up for revising and refining the current tiers.

In that case, I'd like to suggest Watchog moves from Bottom to Low or Lower-mid for the reasons stated in this post.

Well early on Patrat is about as useful as any other Normal type you find for the first 10ish levels. I will admit that once it evolves it's quite good with Return, Crunch, Hypnosis, super Fang and generally better stats than most mid-evolutions. The only problem is that it quickly becomes obsolete as other pokemon evolve in about 10 levels time. All of its main coverage moves, like the elemental punches and Aqua Tail are also tutor moves, but since Watchog becomes terrible by the late 30s it's not really worth it. The bottom line is, he is pretty decent, but only for the next 15ish levels after evolution. Afterwards he really struggles to do anything that other pokemon do better because of stats that just outclass the standard mid-evolution.
A question remains: is 15 levels of good enough to get him out of Bottom?


Another pokemon I'd like to consider for re-tier is Emolga. I don't know why I suggested Low as at 75 offences even Monferno outpowers this thing. 55/60/60 defences are also horrid and speed won't stop it from KO'd by everything in sight. So yeah, Bottom for Emolga.

[fire r a g e]

I would agree with putting Emolga on bottom. It may be fast, but as you progress through the game, it becomes pretty useless. It has paper-thin defenses that even Quick Attack can 2HKO it.

[Tsumiki]

I'm all for Watchog being moved to Low [2/3]. It's useful at some point in the game, which more than just about anything else in Bottom can say.

bottom [1/3] for Emolga. Basically everything Aura said.

[[GS]]

[3/3] for Watchog moving up to Low, for reasons already stated.

[3/3] for Virizion and Cobalion for Upper-Middle simply because they are too good for Middle.

[3/3] for Steelix in Middle, good typing and Def make him a great choice.

[3/3] for Zebstrika in Bottom bcoz useless, and [2/3] for Emolga in Bottom for the same reasons.