Something thats been bugging me for a while now is the ADV tier list we have here. While it doesn't affect gameplay most of the time, since pokes in BL are, for all intents and purposes, OU, its just so... wrong, and it arguably sends out a false impression of the meta for new players choosing to get involved with it. Also, there are some people out there who like to play ADV BL as an actual tier (I mention no names :p). Heres my two cents on what it should look like- Pokes that are OU and are undeniably OU- -Aerodactyl -Blissey -Celebi -Claydol -Dugtrio -Flygon -Forretress -Gengar -Gyarados -Heracross -Jirachi -Magneton -Metagross -Milotic -Raikou -Regice -Salamence -Skarmory -Snorlax -Starmie -Suicune -Swampert -Tyranitar -Vaporeon -Zapdos Pokes that are currently OU and could swing both ways- -Breloom -Dusclops -Jolteon -Medicham -Umbreon Pokes that are currently OU yet aren't used nearly as much to be warranted that title and consequently belong in BL- -Alakazam -Articuno -Blaziken -Charizard -Dodrio (who the hell decided this was OU) -Dragonite -Entei (again, since when has Entei even been remotely popular) -Espeon -Exeggutor -Gardevoir -Kingdra -Ludicolo -Marowak -Miltank -Moltres -Ninjask -Regirock -Registeel(lol) -Rhydon -Sceptile -Slaking -Smeargle -Tauros -Venusaur -Weezing Now, some of these being placed in OU I can understand- Slaking, Sceptile, and Blaziken are examples- because this list was made before smogon updated their Adv tiers and said pokes were OU on that list. But Registeel? Dodrio? Entei? Who uses those? They're so far from OU its not even funny... Now for the BLs- BLs which are undoubtedly BLs- -Arcanine -Armaldo -Chansey -Crobat -Jumpluff -Jynx -Machamp -Scizor -Slowbro -Steelix -Swellow -Typhlosion -Ursaring -Zangoose Most of the BL list is fine, however there are 3 mons I'd like to point out -Cloyster is undoubtedly OU and has been for a long time -Porygon2 is (imo) undoubtedly OU, its been gaining a lot in popularity and it functions too consistently well in the tier to be BL, checking mence and gyara amongst other things, spreading status, being the only pokemon capable of reliably revenging duggy and by being ridiculously resilient. -Houndoom could be argued for OU, but its role as a pursuiter has been shadowed by ttar of recent months And, to round it off, I noticed Hariyama is UU. Now, I'm not amazingly versed in the ways of Adv UU, so I'd be interested to know- is it broken there? At first glance it looks like it might be too much and thats why Smogon has it as BL, but I don't personally know. So I though I'd put it out there. Note- while it may seem slightly pretentious that I've ordered this whole thing by myself, I feel totally confident that the vast majority of what I've put will be agreed upon by other players.
Weren't ADV tiers not made from usage back in the day? This is really more of a general question than anything, since that's what I've been told.
They're not, but they are decided by a common consensus over what is and isn't OU. And I feel 100% confident that anyone who has played ADV a lot recently will agree with me on everything I listed as "definitely OU" and "definitely BL" because the difference in usage between them is considerably more than marginal.
why not vote. get a couple of people who play adv and vote it out i think jolteon and medicham belong in ou. other than that everything but the ous listed @ the top should be bl.
The fact of the matter is that PO is using Pokerealm's tier list which borrowed UUStadium's UU and BL lists. UUStadium developed its UU and BL lists without any consideration for OU though. The BL list was made 100% as a ban list for UU, as in, it's comprised of pokemon that were deemed a bit too good for UU. When the ADV tiers were made up by smogon and admittedly by uusf as well, the cutoff for UU was rather arbitrary and the BL tier was generally something people didn't really give a shit about (It's not meant to be used for it's own metagame. It's STILL not meant to be used for its own metagame...). UUStadium made use of it's BL tier though in that there was a somewhat popular UUBL metagame which allowed players to use up to 2 BL Pokemon on their UU teams, which is why the ban list was so small and didn't include some scary things like Alakazam and Moltres. Smogon had a UU tournament called Summer Freedom that employed a similar banlist and I believe allowed the use of 1 BL (or banned) pokemon. It I still don't really think the BL list matters that much but if it helps decrease the number of bad players at all then why not fix it I suppose, since UUBL is a completely dead metagame (and UU is a completely under-appreciated metagame I might add). If we're going to fix the OU and BL tiers we should also bump Hariyama up to BL though because I believe it is UU at the moment in accordance with an outdated UUStadium list... Lapras is also arguably BL but most UUSFers even today only look at it as a bad mix of Walrein and Lanturn (it is somewhat scary with a dd set though imo). blah blah blah a history lesson + sure why not fix it.
I wholeheartedly agree with the OP about what should go OU and BL definitely, and my opinion on the marginal stuff is that Medicham and Jolteon should be OU, whereas the other three should go BL. All three of the BLs that meteor64 outlined in the OP are OU definitely in my opinion, especially Cloyster. As Sir said earlier, the decision about ths matter should be made via a vote.
Didn't even notice Lapras languishing in UU, but again I don't know enough of UU to give an opinion of it. As for the whole "its not a tier and shouldn't be played as such" thing, well, Ubers isn't a tier, but its still played. Think of it as UUbers. Obviously I'm not suggesting its going to be common or anything, but its programmed as a playable format in the server, so we might as well make it... right. But yeah, I was pretty much hoping we'd end up having a vote and stuff.
A lot of this depends on what application we're using the tier list for. Either way I believe the one we're using to be less than accurate but we have to consider its purpose. Are we creating a tier list with the mindset of "OU is BL's ban list" or are we trying to categorize Pokemon by usage and viability as with traditional tier lists? If we're specifically creating a list as to what is ADV BL legal and what isn't I think the only thing that makes logical sense is to use the cut and dry criteria of something is either of acceptable power level for BL or it isn't. If it isn't it shouldn't be allowed. People get stuck on the word game and it drives me insane. Pokemon not allowed in BL don't have to be called OU if you don't like the terminology and want to be super technical. Just call it the BL ban list (which will happen to have most OU Pokemon on it...). For specifics- Cloyster is currently legal for ADV BL and it should not be. It's too good in the format as the only spiker/spinner and a lot of the format revolves around it. A point I DON'T want made is that while it was good in OU for a long time it has drastically declined in usage/popularity recently. This is 100% true but that's not at all the purpose of this thread or of the BL tier list. This is about if something should be legal in BL or not, period. So, starting again now that I've explained that... ALL POKES ON THE OP UNDENIABLY OU LIST- Are banned as they should be. Why- They're simply too powerful for the tier. CLOYSTER- Is currently BL legal and should not be. Why- It's the only Pokemon in the format that can Spike and Rapid Spin and the format very much revolves around this. The ability to do both is a tad too powerful for this format so it makes many other Pokes that do these things obsolete. Also, its offensive stats/typing are actually quite good in this format. Grasses and random Flying types are everywhere and STAB Ice Beam is extremely difficult to deal with as almost all good Water and Steel types are stuck in OU. PORYGON2- Is currently BL legal and should not be. Why- It's probably the best overall Pokemon in the entire tier. Bolt/Beam/Recover is wayyyy too powerful for most of the Pokemon in this tier to handle. It's used on virtually every team as you're simply putting yourself at a disadvantage otherwise and when something is so overpowered and over-centralized as this Pokemon is it needs to be banned. HOUNDOOM Is currently BL legal and should not be. Why- It hits too hard and it takes all the Ghosts in the format completely out of the game. BRELOOM- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- It's not used hardly at all in OU. THAT'S NOT THE POINT OF THIS BAN LIST. The point, and the reason why it should be banned, is simply because it is too powerful for the tier. The tier cannot handle a Sub/Seed Mon with STAB Focus Punch. There was a time period when Breloom and Alakazam were both legal and they were both way too good. Defensive cores just couldn't handle them. There is no doubt in my mind that this Mon should stay banned. DUSCLOPS- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- The Ghosts in the current format, Misdreavus, Banette and Sableye respectively all see a fair and balanced amount of play. They all have pros and cons and it's not set in stone which is right for any given team. In almost all cases Dusclops would be flat out better than any of these other choices and it'd make the other three unplayed. Also, BL is far more stallish than OU and Dusclops accels in a heavy stall environment. I think it'd be too good. JOLTEON- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- Too powerful etc etc. Nothing in the tier has that kind of Special Attack stat nevermind the speed + ability to Baton Pass. You guys need to keep in perspective where the power level of this tier is. Electabuzz is good in this tier so think about Jolteon... MEDICHAM- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- Lol? UMBREON- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- None of the offensive threats can match its defensive abilities. It'd never die and it'd be on every team. It's above the acceptable power level for the tier. ALAKAZAM- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- If it were legal it'd be far and away the best Pokemon in the tier. It's the same problem as with Porygon2 only it has a better Special Attack stat, better movepool, STAB Psychic and access to Calm Mind. Zam is 10000x over the acceptable power level of the tier. This Pokemon alone would ruin the tier if it were legal. ARTICUNO- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- Again, it's defensive abilities are beyond the offensive capabilities of the tier. It's too powerful and wouldn't die. BLAZIKEN- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- The tier can't handle a mixed sweeper with Fire/Fighting STAB and it's kind of attacking stats. It'd over-centralize the metagame just like a lot of these other Pokes if it were allowed. CHARIZARD- Is currently BL banned and should not be. Why- I don't see any reason for this to be banned. It's not overpowered and it's easily exploitable defensive problems make up for its offensive abilities. It's a good Pokemon but it's not good enough to ban. DODRIO Is currently BL banned and should not be. Why- Because it sucks? It sees no play whatsoever in OU because it's far below the power level that it needs to be. If Ursaring and Zangoose are acceptable (which they are) then Dodrio is acceptable. It hits a tad harder (but doesn't have access to Swords Dance and Guts as Ursaring does) and has miserable defenses. Also, if it's not run as a Choice Band Poke it lacks the offensive power to be good enough. It's not even close to the power level of what should be banned. ENTEI- Is currently BL banned and should not be. Why- This one is outrageous to me. Entei is terrible. This Pokemon belongs in UU and it wouldn't even be good there. It should definitely be BL legal and it shouldn't see much use... ESPEON- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- Way too powerful both as a sweeper and an unstoppable Calm Mind passer. EXEGGUTOR- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- Too difficult to deal with and too good stats. It'd be good and used in OU if not for a certain legendary Pokemon with the same typing, better stats and Natural Cure. It's too much for the Pokes in this tier to handle. GARDEVOIR- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- Calm Mind + great movepool + great stats + recovery move (it gets Wish) = Banned. KINGDRA- Is currently BL banned and should not be. Why- The Flail set is not good and there are multiple choices that are legal that are far better and the only other set is fair, predictable, and walled without having to do ridiculous things. It's a solid Pokemon but I see no reason for it to be banned. LUDICOLO- Is currently BL banned and should not be. Why- It's obnoxious, but that's not a reason to ban it. It lacks offense pretty much no matter what and its weak points will always be there and be exploitable. I view this Pokemon, while annoying, as very fair and I see no reason why it shouldn't be allowed. MAROWAK- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- It'd be pretty much better than every Choice Band Pokemon in the format if it were legal. Nothing in the tier truly walls it the way Skarmory/Weezing can in OU. MILTANK- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- Again, STAB move + good stats + recovery move = banned. It's also very versatile. It's too powerful for the tier. MOLTRES- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- WAYYYYYY too powerful, not even close. It has outrageous firepower and it has Morning Sun, which is Recover or better in this tier, to stick around. NINJASK- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- I very well may be biased but I don't think this kind of Baton Pass belongs ANYWHERE. Baton Pass is so unfair/unfun/non-interactive and it's one of the best ways to ruin any format. REGIROCK/REGISTEEL- Are currently BL banned as they should be. Why- All three Regis are too powerful defensively for the tier to handle. RHYDON- Is currently BL banned and should not be. Why- Overpowered Pokemon should be banned. Good Pokemon should not be. Rhydon is good. Rhydon is not overpowered. It has enough negatives to balance out its positives and it should be allowed. SCEPTILE- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- Nothing deals with the Sub/Seed + special attacks set effectively enough. It's too fast/powerful to be handled. SLAKING- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- It'd be by far the best Choice Band Pokemon in the tier and make the others unused. Also, it hits wayyy too hard for the walls in the tier to withstand. SMEARGLE- Is currently BL banned and should not be. Why- As long as it's not allowed to have Ingrain I think Smeargle is fair game. Granted, it's an obnoxious Pokemon and I think sleep trapping is the lamest and crappiest tactic imaginable so I'd be very happy if it were banned but on power level it's probably fine to leave it legal. TAUROS- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- It'd be the best Choice Bander by far if it were legal. It is too fast and hits too hard to be legal. VENUSAUR- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- Too efficient, solid and powerful overall. It's just a step above the legal grasses. WEEZING- Is currently BL banned as it should be. Why- Too good of a wall/too hard to kill. It's better than virtually all the offensive threats in the tier. ARCANINE- Is currently BL legal as it should be. Why- It's not overpowered? ARMALDO- Is currently BL legal as it should be. Why- It's not overpowered. CHANSEY- Is currently BL legal as it should be. Why- It's worse than Miltank in this tier for sure as it has worse stats overall and doesn't have the same offensive power. Chansey does one thing only in this tier and has the bad stats to make it perfectly fine. Honestly I don't think it's even particularly good in this environment. CROBAT- Is currently BL legal as it should be. Why- It's a fair Choice Band Pokemon that isn't overpowered. JUMPLUFF- Is currently BL legal as it should be. Why- This Pokemon absolutely sucks and should be UU at best. JYNX- Is currently BL legal and should not be. Why- It's top three or four Pokemon in the tier and its way too overpowered offensively. It sets up with ease in this tier and wins the game by itself. MACHAMP- Is currently BL legal as it should be. Why- This one is questionable but I think it's just barely allowed to slide. It's definitely one of the better Pokemon in the tier and it has diversity (to a point) and raw power. SCIZOR- Is currently BL legal as it should be. Why- Again, this one is questionable as it's extremely difficult to stop with its typing and extremely high attack stat AND access to a good recovery move in Morning Sun but the fact that it takes multiple turns of set up and it's hard walled by Steelix keeps it on a mortal level. If Steelix were banned Scizor would definitely need to go. SLOWBRO- Is currently BL legal as it should be. Why- It's probably the best bulky water in the tier but it's not overpowered by any stretch. It's a solid mon that is correctly in BL and should remain a viable option there. STEELIX- Is currently BL legal as it should be. Why- It's a tremendous wall but its complete lack of offensive in such as stall heavy environment keeps it balanced. If this Pokemon were banned, which it should not be, several other Pokemon would need to be banned with it as this is a key wall that keeps many things in check. It's of Swampert in OU importance to BL. SWELLOW- Is currently BL banned and should not be. Why- Maybe I'm underrating this Pokemon but you're going to have a very difficult time convincing me that this is better than Ursaring or Machamp. It's comparable but I definitely don't see it as outright better. If those Pokemon are legal this one should be too. TYPHLOSION- Is currently BL legal as it should be. Why- See my Charizard explanation. URSARING/ZANGOOSE- Are currently BL legal as they should be. Why- Two viable, fair, not overpowered Choice Band Pokemon. So yeah, 36536543655466 words later this is what I'd do with the format. ADV BL is my favorite tier of all time and it's a tier that is severely underplayed and underappreciated. Feedback is always welcome though I would strongly assume I've played a lot more of this format than most people and I'm pretty adamant on my views.
I don't see how this is a viable project, with adv usage stats being as low as they are. If we do a vote, how do we determine a cutoff rating with such a small playerbase? And if we go by posting, then that's basically going by opinion. And whose opinion do we listen to? 4th gen OU has 2,000 battles for August. Adv has less than 600. Which means a few newbies using whatever will seriously skew the results.
I know Smogon recently updated this list in a vote I took part of. Are we using their current list or the older one for this?
Adv usage stats are only so low because you've had them down for the whole month, so every tier has less stats than it should. If you look at past stats its easily noticeable, Adv generally gets 4000 matches a month at least. In all honestly ladder rating is irrelevant in Adv because not only is the playerbase relatively small (its not totally dead), but because certain strategies that allow any random to easily accumulate ladder points are still allowed which means any random could get the points required (Yes I'm talking about BP chains). And I think we're all mature enough down here to decide who is capable of passing an accurate judgement on what's definitely OU and what definitely isn't. I'm 100% confident on that. Like I said, theres so much of a gap between them its not even slightly contestable. As far as I can tell theres only 6 pokemon that could possibly be argued for either tier and if I could predict the outcome of everyone elses opinion I'd say it'd end up something like- Breloom-BL Dusclops-BL Houndoom-OU Jolteon-OU Medicham-OU Umbreon-BL And I feel comfortable in saying that because its still fairly blatant where each Pokemon belongs (Houndoom is the shakiest bet). You can even hold me to this prediction. We're using UUStadiums list, which is pretty retarded to be using now, seeing as practically everyone who plays Adv comes from smogon and OU is far, far, far more popular as a metagame than BL (sorry CALLOUS). Smogons tier list is so much better, with only a few minor things I'd disagree with, like P2 as BL. Actually, thats it.
Not sure yet. OK, but before we make changes I have a question. What's the benefit of all this? Why do we need to change? I know a couple things have been mentioned here and there but I'd like a succinct summary.
well, hariyama should be BL because that uustadium list is outdated. since i do not care about the rest i'm sure someone else would be happy to reiterate.
We don't need to change, but the OU list is so blatantly wrong because half of it is undeniably BL and it gives new players the impression a lot of pokemon are more viable than they are- Entei, Dodrio, Registeel, case and point. I think what CALLOUS is shooting for is a playable BL tier, which is practically what we have (with a few modifications), but it doesnt represent what is and is not BL. I feel we could work about this with some modifications but that would probably either involve creating a whole new tier between BL and OU or doing what was done in DPP by shafting BL down into UU and UU to NU and then consequently deciding whats broken in the new UU, although obviously that would be a fairly major upheaval. It would be interesting though, if it did indeed create a new meta.
I don't think that we should worry about BL being a good tier. BL exists simply as a ban list, just like Ubers. Things like Slaking and Venusaur are not good enough for OU so there's no reason to have them there. If this project starts getting support and goes through the motions i suggest that we treat BL more like a ban list and not like a tier.
I disagree completely. I'd like to make it into a playable and balanced tier. I get that it's just a UU banlist at this time but it does not need to be.
I feel like BL was supposed to be a banlist for UU, but so many ended up being banned that the banned mons ended up making a pretty playable metagame. Kinda like the sheer number of Ubers being barred from OU in Gens 4 and 5 to avoid having an OU tier populated by obvious super-mons, so many "BLs" got taken out to make room for a UU tier that felt truly "UU" and not populated by somewhat uncommon but still totally OU-viable Pokemon, thus resulting in a big banlist that actually delineated its own tier (which would probably go by the name of UU if today's tiering system were around when the UU tiers for Gens 3 and below were instituted). If you're already most of the way to a playable metagame with what may or may not have been "intended" to be a mere banlist, then I don't see why you wouldn't just tweak the tiers a bit to make BL playable. You only stand to gain something with it, really.
Amen to this. Also, BL is a really really enjoyable tier to play and I assure you that anyone who really enjoys Gen 3 OU will enjoy Gen 3 BL just as much if you give it a shot. It's a wonderful metagame.
smogon's banlist was initially really small and much like uustadium's. again, the uu cutoff was pretty arbitrary as far as i can tell, but also the ou metagame was much less standardized. as the game was more exhaustively played and explored usages naturally shifted, and things were moved DOWN from ou to bl to reflect usage and usefulness better. most of the things in the bl list were NEVER uu, and on smogon i'm not sure if any of them were ever uu actually. i do not see a problem in doing whatever to the bl list, but altering uu and nu at all should be out of the question (i'm not sure if meteor64's suggestion was serious or not or if i'm just misunderstanding it > _ >)
FWIW the BL tier in RBY is fun and completely playable, but because it is named BL, it's not featured on PO. (>_>) Just make BL stand for BorderLine instead of BanList if it is a problem.
I don't think that's the issue, since we have ADV BL as a tier. It was probably just someone being lazy~!
Okay, the reason for doing so makes sense and sounds good to me. Which moves us on to the next problem, how do we do it? Obviously we could nominate Pokemon to be moved down to BL but what if there are inconsistencies among the nominations? I mean, I don't think every single poster here is going to agree - as evidenced by some of the posts in Ingrain thread.
http://pokemon-online.eu/forums/showthread.php?11356-Tiers&p=133396&viewfull=1#post133396 This is me calling Lamperi out on being lazy, then. =p I'd love it if you featured this tier on PO.
just have a vote amongst competent adv players. a simple majority of the listed mons moves them to bl or uu