RBY 2U General Discussion Thread

[marcoasd]

I understand the point. But I personally am opposed to something like "ban Wrap on Dnite and Tenta", because then you can also say similar things for Ubers/OU such as "ban Soft-Boiled on Mew" or (probably a bit more relevant) "ban Reflect on Snorlax and Chansey".
Once again, I get the point, but it just leaves too much room for ambiguity for my taste.

Before the argument "Wrap is special/boring" or whatever and thus it is not comparable to something like Reflect comes:
Yes, I compare them and do in fact believe they are comparable, simply because they both are moves that, while doing completely different things, are (and this is questionable if you want) "broken" on certain Pokemon in a tier [Snorlax and Chansey in 1U, Tentacruel and Dragonite in 2U] while being totally fine on other Pokemon in said tiers [Alakazam in 1U, Victreebel in 2U]. So yea... I in fact believe this is a comparable situation to 1U and for the sake of consistency, if we leave one thing untouched in terms of banning moves, we should not open that can of worms for the other tier.

That comparison doesn't make any sense at all:
1) Softboiled won't stop you from effectively trying to take Mew out; against Wrap you're not getting to move unless RNG decides to allow you to
which leads to 2) there are many pokemon that can deal with Mew, while you're forced to use fast pokemon as the only way in the tier to deal with wrappers somewhat reliably and pokemon aren't nearly as bulky as OU pokemon (Hypno is the best you can get and that's it)
3) Mew can be used in Ubers and Mewbers, Dnite barely makes an appeareance in OU and Tentacruel is nowhere to be seen

Reflect isn't the problem with RBY OU right now, Reflect isn't even broken, who said that? PhysLax is still fine...
The problem is that normal-types are tough to be dealt with to the point that even something like Porygon can be an annoyance to the point you want to blow Snorlax on it.
Tauros winning dittos are guaranteed to be unstatused.
We're not even talking about Reflect anymore (at least, I won't) because we figured that this is the best we can get out of RBY OU and we will live with that awful IceLax thing.
No reason to bring Reflect up, on the other hand we have more options for 2U and to tell the whole story we had a great 2U tier in the past until the moment we realized that we overlooked Tentacruel.

Wrap isn't boring, it's just bad for the game when it can't be answered reasonably - you will have fun building teams for a month or so, you'll figure out teams that win more and you will be eventually left with nothing but a horrible tier.

The point of "having consistency with tiering" has always been the issue with the process because the leaders decided to enforce it to make this thing looking like Smogon tiering gen 7, 8 or 9000.
You have a problem? Solve it instead of tying your hands behind the back. "You're not running a multinational", what kind of reputation are you trying to save?
I really hope Sceptross will do something here, because we're running into the same issues and discussions over and over with no will to solve them.

 

[Lusch]

Okay... probably should not have added the Mew part. I tried to get you to not focus (not answer) on that particular part by adding the bit in the parenthesises, but it should have been clear to me that you'd beat on it anyway. The point of that is, that I wanted to name examples to make a point: It is not the raw Pokemon (Stats and Typing of a Pokemon) that make a given Pokemon broken, it is the combination of those things with its moveset.

So my whole point was: We can make literally everything that we consider broken in any given tier "not broken" by banning as many moves on that Mon as we like, until the point where we don't consider that Pokemon broken anymore, even Mew. That is why I brought up the Mew example.

About the Reflect bit... Well your goal is to have a more enjoyable 2U tier or playable or whatever adjective you wanna use. I could very well imagine that a 1U without Reflect on Snorlax and Chansey would equally result in a more enjoyable or playable [or insert your fitting description here, please for once don't take everything literal but the way it is meant]. And that is why the situations are comparable.

Yea. Consistency in tiering is something that I personally prefer. You want to tier however you like without set rules in order to be more free when it comes to fixing things that you see as problematic. Understood. That is fine, once more. No need to always defend like a lion, when you weren't even attacked. I merely stated my point of view without denying the legitimacy of your view. It's two different philosophies and democracy may decide what the people interested in this are more in favour of.

 

[marcoasd]

Movesets mean a lot, but it's mostly the environment making a pokemon broken.
Also, I forgot to mention that we're talking about 2U: an "U" tier has different standards compared to an "Uber of" tier simply because it has different purposes - Ubers are meant for fanatics, regular tiers are meant for tournaments and ladder.

Back to your point, I widely considered that thing: I'm not trying to ban moves in order to make everything viable for the sake of doing so - I'm asking to ban specific moves because these pokemon won't see play otherwise.
Under the current circumstances, we're either pushed into allowing pokemon into a tier in spite of them being broken or at least extremely unhealthy, or we're flat out eliminating them.

I don't think RBY OU would be better with Reflect banned: it's a balancing factor as you need ways to deal with Snorlax and non-Normal types are bad at switching into it.
That's why I don't agree, I just think Reflect is a good thing. Yeah, it's boring but it's a good thing.

Well yeah, I'm getting a bit upset at times because the last time I spent hours explaining things and we're into the same stuff (and the tier is stuck instead of being completed and put on the ladder...): I never said Reflect is broken, I never said that I want to dismantle the tier (just leave it as an Uber tier), I said multiple times that we shouldn't be comparing Uber tiers with U tiers...

I think we should consider what we need to do with Golem, it doesn't see play.

 

[Ortheore]

That comparison doesn't make any sense at all:
1) Softboiled won't stop you from effectively trying to take Mew out; against Wrap you're not getting to move unless RNG decides to allow you to
which leads to 2) there are many pokemon that can deal with Mew, while you're forced to use fast pokemon as the only way in the tier to deal with wrappers somewhat reliably and pokemon aren't nearly as bulky as OU pokemon (Hypno is the best you can get and that's it)
3) Mew can be used in Ubers and Mewbers, Dnite barely makes an appeareance in OU and Tentacruel is nowhere to be seen

I don't see what #3 has to do with anything, while #2 isn't arguing that Wrap is fundamentally different to any other move/pokemon combo. In order to make the case that we should consider a move/combo ban, you need to argue why this is fundamentally different to any other potentially broken combo such that we should make an exception to our rules and implement such a ban, and what this point represents is a typical "X is broken" argument, which doesn't cut it. #1 comes close, but this point is about Wrap in general, and we know that even though Wrap prevents you from attacking, it's usually not reliable enough to truly exploit its potential, in addition to the fact that it basically gives you an almost free switch in to something that checks the Wrapper.

If point #1 were strong enough to justify action, the correct response would be to ban Wrap entirely, but I think it's been resoundingly demonstrated at this point that Wrap is not broken in the majority of cases. If you think Tenta is a case where it is broken, that's fine, that's why we're likely to suspect Tenta. I don't see why there's any issue with that course of action? Just because we disagree with your move/pokemon combo ban, doesn't mean we're suggesting inaction, just that we think that any action ought to be different. Like I really can't stress enough that this is something we'll likely do something about and there's a pretty straightforward course of action to take. It seems to me that there are two questions- "should we do something about Tenta?" and "what should we do about it?". All the disagreement is over the latter question, but a lot of arguments I'm seeing from you revolve around the first question, which just doesn't lead anywhere.

The point of "having consistency with tiering" has always been the issue with the process because the leaders decided to enforce it to make this thing looking like Smogon tiering gen 7, 8 or 9000.
You have a problem? Solve it instead of tying your hands behind the back. "You're not running a multinational", what kind of reputation are you trying to save?
I really hope Sceptross will do something here, because we're running into the same issues and discussions over and over with no will to solve them.

Consistency is something that's absolutely critical to not just tiers, but rules of any kind. If they're not implemented in a consistent manner they lose all legitimacy and cease to function, as no-one will respect them. People expect consistency from these kinds of things, therefore in addition to undermining the legitimacy of any tier with an inconsistent rule, they also create precedent for implementing similar rules in other tiers, which is likely to lead to many undesired consequences. The need for consistency has nothing to do with smogon, and everything to do with maintaining the integrity of our own rulesets.

No-one's hands are tied behind their back, we're more than capable of solving the problem and I think it's likely that this solution comes to fruition (time will tell), it's just that the solution will differ from what you're proposing. As for reputation, the reputation we're maintaining is with literally everyone who would ever consider playing our tiers- if we have a bunch of inconsistent and/or complex bans they're far more likely to think "that's bs".

Regarding your most recent post, I'll say that the goal of the tiering project as I and I think most others see it, is to create a range of playable tiers and place every (or as many as is reasonably possible) pokemon somewhere within that framework. This does not mean that they're obliged to see a certain amount of play, just that they are placed somewhere in this system- if that means 2P, then that's absolutely fine. They'll remain playable within 2P. This isn't really any different from 1P, with the only difference that I can see being that 2U is smaller than 1U.

edit: wow I just reread this and I sound bloody stiff lol sorry

 

[marcoasd]

Don't worry about the stiffness, I take issue with the content - that's what scares me.

You said youself that the goal is to place every pokemon somewhere - that's just what point 3 has to do. Then, just seconds before or after, you throw that chance right down the WC to save some "consistency" shrine that isn't threatened at all - it's all about making an exception for functional purposes and actually I'm being consistent to the aforementioned rule which unfortunately clashes with another one.
Again, if you're coming to me saying that Dnite and Tentacruel are banned from 2U and they are 2P material, I'll be fine with that. Just ban pokemon from 2U and restore 2P and we have an agreement if that's what you mean, I'm not saying that you need to go my way.
You're just not moving on after months, 2U is supposed to be popular and played.

The move is different from other moves/combos due to the environment: this tier (no matter how you call it) doesn't have the answers for it when it's used by fast pokemon. RBY OU does: pokemon are either fast or bulky or even both - this tier doesn't.
What should I argue? Use pokemon showdown calculator and play a lot of games...
You get Kadabra/Electabuzz crippled and you're cooked.

I don't think we're being capable of solving problems, this tier has been put on a hold for half a year and random players don't like playing OU due to Recover, Softboiled, Reflect and OU stuff: if you come out with a well-paced 2U tier and put it on the ladder, it's likely to have at least mild success.

 

[Disaster Area]

I would argue that tentacruel/wrap possibly even increase the competitive depth of the tier, making it the antithesis of being broken. The way that wrap adjusts the pace of a game, and the ways in which it can be played, leaves more space for strategising and, furthermore, longer term planning. Whilst it may restrict the use of some Pokemon, that restrictiveness doesn't necessarily have any negative impact on the competitive depth. Having more options doesn't necessarily make the game more deep, because depth is very much about the interaction between teams in the metagame, as well as in the teambuilder.

I'm not sure tentacruel is broken in any sense at all, I just think people don't like playing with/against wrap. In my experience in RBY 5U, Wrap can add substantial depth to a game, when you start to really understand what's going on it turns from being a frustrating and tedious experience into a deep, strategic one.