Hi everyone With the recent tier editing that Smogon has been doing, I thought it high time to open a discussion of the tiers and the pokemon they contain. You can post anything from pure speculation to suggestions, but keep it respectful (e.g. no anti-smogon banter). Okay now that that is out of the way, I will start. After the controversial suspect test, used for pokemon such as Latias & Garchomp, Smogon has since decided to trial a new testing & voting procedure for the undergoing test on Salamence - you can read the full details here: http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=72048 It seems we will find out Salamence's fate within the next month or so, and considering the impact the vote will have on the OU metagame it is a case of watch this space.
I think they should choose more than 9 people, who are going to end up deciding something that is going to impact a battling community of thousands (including wifi), but what do I know.
I could not agree with you more zeroality, 9 people is a little thin considering the decision. Though I think Smogon's intention is that the selected 9 are the best of the best. I still don't know if Salamence will be voted Uber though, there are alot of good arguments against it.
Well, Salamence will not voted in Uber. He is not much strong to it, in actually metagame with a lot of priority attacks and scarfers, great strategys... buts it's my opinion.
Beware, you'll be hit by Oak saying a pokémons uberness is not decided by how it fares in uber, but by how it owns other OU pokémons.
I must say I would consider the old process to be overall better. It couldn't get more fair than letting people gain their voting rights simply by proving themselves. Then again, I can see flaws of that system. It's simply slow - we're slowly reaching gen 5, with new pokemon being revealed once every couple of weeks, and gen 4 OU is not even done yet. The Skymin vote was pretty interesting to say at least as well (link here), with neither option reaching majority of votes. My main concern is that council will cling too much to already existing metagame when gen 5 is released. I don't think it's a great idea to make council this small, especially that while in old system nearly anyone with bit of creativity (or just good team, no matter if it was them who build it or not) and battling ability was able to gain voting rights. In the new one, well, chances that someone who's not a 'big name' on smogon will be chosen are fairly small, and it might put off fairly good players from even trying to be chosen in first place. Either way, we'll see, I suppose. I expect mence to be banned. While it indeed is worn down by SR, sand, and usually LO fast, it does 2HKO everything in the game bar cress (Edit: Turns out adamant CBmence can 2hko even it). Without Latias around to check it, mence's more dangerous than ever before.
I think this whole discussion points to the flaws of the dragon type as currently designed as a whole. One of the things that I'm really hoping for (and will probably be let down on) is for another UU or clearly OU dragon to enter the mix as something other than an irresistible sweeper that destroys the meta-game because they had to create a whole new type just to come up with counters. The thing that's hilarious is that Outrage is a Dragon-type PETAL DANCE. The problem is that it's attached to a type that has exactly 1 resistance, and pokemon with BSTs at or above 600. Outrage is pretty much a farce on pokemon who don't have STAB for it. Similarly, there's the comparison between Leaf Storm and Draco Meteor. Same move, different type and availability, yet one is so much more irresistible and to be feared. I think if we're lucky we'll find Water resisting Dragon next generation, as it would give them a type they resist and resists them, like their STAB is weak to... their own STAB. It would allow some pokemon to revenge kill easier with Ice Beam and eat Draco meteors better, especially Empoleon and Kingdra.
HEY DARKON, A POKEMON THAT IS UB-goddamn it coyotte, stop warning people :( But yeah, a Pokemon is defined Uber if it is too strong in OU only (to keep it very short). Ubers is a ban list from OU, much like BL is a ban list from UU. Choice Specs Sceptile's Leaf Storm is just as powerful as Choice Specs Salamence's (and Specs Latias') Draco Meteor. Of course, that singular resistance to Steel is the main problem, seeing as Grass is resisted by a few more types. Discounting Steel, as Dragon moves are resisted by Steel also, Grass is not very effective on Fire, Grass, Flying, Poison, Bug and (amusingly) Dragon. As for Petal Dance, that is only Base 90 power, in comparison to Outrage's 120. On top of that, Petal Dance is Special. Thrash is also only Base 90, just for the record. I dunno if they are going to change any resistances in the next gen. Hell, I doubt they'll even add another type to help counter Dragons. It's a shame. As for the actual topic of this thread, meh. Salamence's absense seems to have hurt a lot of offensive teams, although there's still a lot of debate as to whether it is OU or Uber. I dunno which it is in my opinion. My rear end is sore from sitting on this fence for so long. That being said, I think a lot of people are being overly defensive over Salamence because it's Salamence, and it's always been OU. I don't see it being a bigger problem than Garchomp was (don't even think about making this a FREE GARCHOMP thread), but it COULD be Uber. We'll see how the Smogon Council thing works. I'll judge it once I've seen it properly. At least it'll be quicker than the old Suspect test process.
Classic 4drag2mag is already threatened. If Salamence is brought over, it'd be forced to adapt to the Ubers environment.
Good lord... that makes so much more sense now. I thought it was 90... the whole time. Freaking Dragon-type close-combat with a draw-back that's fixable with a lum berry.... *grumble*
Honestly, I think Mence would be CRUSHED in Ubers. With the prevalence of Dialga/Palkia, Lati@s, and other Ubers dragons, Salamence will be like a small child going against an ape in a Judo tournament.
Generally if it's not overcentralizing (see the VGC stats for why Kyogre is Uber). Some other characteristics that would apply to him is if he is guaranteed to take out one pokemon on a team 99% of the time.
As much as I love the idea of making Empoleon and Kingdra better, I absolutely abhor the thought of making Suicune and Swampert better. As it is, Suicune downright ignores the fact that it's supposed to be weak against electric attacks, and Outrage is still one of the only ways to get rid of the lanky jerk. Besides, Water's ALREADY a brutally defensive type (hence "Bulky Water.") Even their sweepers are bulky (just look at Starmie's stats again if you've forgotten.) I'd much rather give the resistance to a type that isn't already used to wall basically everything. How about... oh, I dunno... Fire? :3 Dragons spit fire, Fire is weak against Dragon. You'd think their inherent relation to Fire would make them similar to being Fire-types, hence a Fire resistance to Dragon would make sense. And since 5th gen seems to be bringing us more viable Fire-types (though it's too early to say,) that could atone for the Fire-type's absolutely appalling treatment in 4th-gen. The only conflict there seems to be giving Fuzzy Lugia an unfair advantage over Black Palkia, you know? Oh, wait, you mean like Breloom? *shot*
Fire types having a resistance wouldn't affect anything, except making Heatran the ultimate Outrage switch-in. The reason Water is a good choice is because it is, in fact, capable of doing what it needs to do to threaten dragon types spamming Outrage. Suicune's ignorance of electric attacks is a function of the lack of Electric types in general, there are only a few and only a couple I can think of that are viable. More diversity that way would help alot. I highly doubt any of that will happen though.
In that case, wouldn't Ice make more sense? Besides, Ice is already s-e against Dragon, and a lot of the common Ice-types wouldn't fall to Mixmence that way either due to their dual Ice/Water typing... Water is a type that does NOT need any help. If you give Water a Dragon resistance, Water will become just as overpowered as Dragon was. -.-
Smogon is doing the Salamence tiering the way they are because of time constraints. The old processes, while giving an accurate portrayal of the whole site, or at least the part that cares enough to participate, is very long. Now, I'm not saying that time trumps the views of many, but we have to realize that Gen 5 will be upon us in about 3 months (man, so soon!). Salamence, like many of the other borderline ubers, will almost certainly be tested again because of the large tier upheavals that will inevitably happen. I believe there is a thread in the Policy Review that sums this up better than I could. Also, for the record, Salamence actually does quite well in ubers when paired with Rayquaza. You essentially get two DD Dragon sweeps, which can wreck many opponents :3 You can see the analysis for more details, but Salamence is not dead weight in ubers (not that this matters for its tiering).
To many walls in Uber to make Salamence useful, although it may be a tad more useful in Rayquaza in regards to sweeping because of higher speed but the lack of power is eh. Thats why people use Ray, and Sala as dual DD'ers to compensate for the lacking tendencies of the other. However there are many counters to Salamence for it to be banned to Uber, I can think of a really good one. Porygon2.
Porygon2 only counters DD, which is run about 50% of the time. Draco Meteor + another Attack always KOs.
That's the thing about Mixmence... Unless it's dumb enough to come in on something that can kill it, it's more or less guaranteed a kill because you have to fodder something to kill it. Then, unless your revenge killer isn't exactly obvious or Mence is locked into Outrage, it can just switch out and it's almost guaranteed ANOTHER kill when it returns. Then, it can do this three times against any team that doesn't have a strong priority attacker and good prediction, and UNLIMITED times if it can successfully prevent or spin away Stealth Rocks. Mence is one of the biggest reasons it's become such a force of habit to ensure SR gets planted ASAP, after all. Of course, you could argue that you can predict it and switch something in safely. Sure, but A) you'll let it set up DD that way if it isn't mixmence, and B) All of the Pokemon that can do this are either fairly easy to remove or wall with other Pokemon, or C) they risk taking huge damage on the switch-in and will be left vulnerable to a 2HKO if they're slower. After all, Draco Meteor at least deals ridiculous damage even to many of the Pokemon that resist it. Quite simply, Mixmence can deal incredible amounts of damage to teams when it isn't predicted with 100% perfect accuracy, at hardly any risk to itself.
I've swept two full teams of ubers with mence after one DD. I don't think it would do bad in Ubers. That irrelavent though since it goes by power in OU which I really can't decide. I never seem to have trouble with it with the team I use most often.