Blissey is "OU By Technicality" in Competitive Gen 5 Pokemon. Here's Why. 

So they can't ban pokemons in older gens, even if they make the meta cancer?

Altough in practice they're the same as "UUBL", literally unusable in UU, figuratively unusable in OU for the most part, but for entirely different reasons... for the most part. Also, both Chansey and Blissey fell out of favour due to Spike stacking ferrothorn, Secret sword Keldeo and Specs Latios; maybe Chansey is better but better than underwhelming isn't necesarily good.

@@usernametaken017 They can still ban. They banned Arceus in Gen 4 Ubers once they found it to be too strong, and as covered in the previous analysis on this channel, they banned Quagsire from Gen 7 UU. Though most of the time, it's pretty obvious well before a generation is over which Pokemon are way too good for a tier

Not to mention the Baton Pass hits...

@@usernametaken017 they can and they will

Which pokemon are you talking about, and in which gen?

kyruem black is shit lmao

@@hangfire5944 is shit compared to the Ubers that have the same stats, but compared to Haxorus, Kyurem-B is just better at everything. In Gen-8 Kyurem-B finally returned to Ubers though

really thats just haxorus being bad. kyruem b has a terrible physical movepool in gen 5, basically forcing it to use a special set. Kyruem b has 120 base special attack. Haxorus has 146 base attack. If haxorus cant deal with that then its just not good.

Garchomp generally outclasses them since they are in a better speed tier, sword dance and eq stab. Gen 7 Kyurem b with z Freeze shock is funny though, but that didn't exist in previous gens.

"Mega Garchomp isn't very usable in OU, but UNFORTUNATELY normal Garchomp IS OU tier, and thus Mega Chomp is locked in OU by technicality limbo"

@@hmalba7864 I actually read this with Kellen's voice.

@@ArceusX300 FSG doesn’t chase watch time. He is just very detailed in his videos as he should be

@@jayvgc420 bloated

@@Lathburn not really bloated, fsg goes really in-depth about the metas they cover

only used for dragon dance sets, which is a lot more then mega garchomp

@@SantosOverlord You wouldn’t really need to mega evolve it for anything else since its base form is already good at doing anything else you’d use mega ttar for either.

It's not BAD, but losing an item and a more viable mega stone on the team is not ideal.

@@glumreaper8885 Yeah and other than ddance regular Ttar does everything you’d want out of a Ttar just fine

@@glumreaper8885 I think the point is that it is competitive, but not to the extent it should be in the tier. Think of stuff like rotom-w and excadrill in SS OU, not actually "in" the tier but _very_ much viable options.

And in the case of Electivire, everyone knew it was bad at the time but it was still OU by usage anyway

@@catandfishfc too many lower ladder noobs kept spamming him on the ladder

I am in pokemon since gen 4, is it still veteran?

@@blackwaterd4277 Sure, whatever you want to consider yourself as.

same other competitive videos are too long for me

blissey ultimately just gets outclassed by chansey in gen 5 ou, so in the situation where you'd use blissey, most of the time chansey is more favorable anyways. that's why blissey gets low usage, and is ou by technicality

Usage. It's saying "This pokemon would probably drop into UU if we let it but the tiers are locked so it's stuck in OU"

You may think we were crazy or dumb back them, but the issue most of us saw with chansey was the lack of passive recovery made it too prone to be worn down to entry hazards (and look, what blissey uses nowadays? We werent that dumb, huh?). Team preview, powercreep making the even higher spdef necessary and after that defog made chansey clearly better, and in the end having to softboiled a bit more wasnt the end of the world.

Honestly I think the Blissey/Chansey distinction didn’t really go in depth enough. In context of the gen, in a vacuum Chansey was better and the only real reason to use Blissey was on sand stall, in fairness one of the most popular team styles. However it wasn’t the realization that Eviolite Chansey was absurdly bulky that killed Blissey’s viability on everything that wasn’t a sand stall team; it was the release of Keldeo that killed BOTH of their viabilities. People moved on to other walls that could better slow it down, like Tentacruel (which was already annoyingly difficult to bring down before Keldeo with rain up), Jellicent, a slow twin, bulky Starmie, physically defensive Gastrodon, etc. No point in having a special wall that was threatened by the two most prominent special attackers in the meta, as Keldeo would just secret sword them to death and Latios could trick its specs on them.

the smogon flying press has some articles on old metagames

Not enough people play the old tiers to get accurate usage stats

People playing retro metagames is a big reason to keep them locked, actually. If you really enjoy casually playing BW UU, it might be a bit of a shock to your system if suddenly Lucario, Haxorus, and Jolteon become legal in it, with no mass audience to experiment and test if they're broken or to properly evolve the meta around them. Locking tiers is a way to keep the metagame as-is so that you can continue enjoying it for years to come without worry that it'll suddenly get screwed over because of a decision by the OU council.

@@Celia_Dawn oh, do you mean like what happened when the OU council of Gen 4 decided that latias should be legal again? Years after the tier should have been locked? Or when they made excadrill legal again in gen 5? This kind of meddling continually takes place even when there is not a sufficient player pool to test it. Now the Gen 4 meta is more centralized than ever around jirachi, thanks to latias being reintroduced. And no one is going to fix it. Wonderful. I agree with you, by the way. The above examples are exactly why you are correct.

trust me, you would not want to play early gen-4 before garchomp was banned. Swords dance Yache chomp everywhere, games coming down to garchomp mirrors, people running choice band weavile or ice shard mamoswine for the soul purpose of not immediately losing to garchomp... believe it or not it was controversial at the time to even propose banning a non-legendary, but in retrospect that was the correct thing to do.

Why don't they change though? Aren't older generations just mean a different format?

@@raeryuko Not enough people play them to get accurate usage data

@@mr.potato but there is still some developments on competitive even after years of releasing the next gen, it's curious really

yeah i mean its the same for many pokemon that aren't in ou. you can still get value from say an ru pokemon because the other player may not know how to play against it, and these pokemon can sometimes bring things to the table that aren't present in ou pokemon

Yes, many UU and other lower tier mons also find a legitimate OU niche, even if not one large enough to rise. It's a similar story.

@@IanMalcolm99 I always like it when there are Pokemon who are in a low tier but have a niche almost everywhere. Things like Tangrowth and Kabutops had a niche in pretty much every tier they could be used in.

mega garchomp has a legitimate place on sand teams due to sand force letting it wallbreak better than regular chomp (sand force boosted eq 2khoes unaware quagsire and +2 sand force eq okhoes every non-resist/immunity)

Didn't it basically just get outshone by Kyurem Black? Also, it would probably get banned from UU if it ever dropped by usage. After all, you aren't gonna be seeing any ferrothorn or skarmory in UU.

It's not harsh. It's representative of its usage. It's not a bad mon, but it's got low enough usage it would fall out of OU if the tier wasn't locked. That's pretty much all of what OU by technicality means on pre-Mega metas

@@henriquepacheco7473 Even if the tiers weren't locked, Hippowdon got banned from UU on account of it basically sitting on the entire metagame.

@@emmetstanevich2121 That doesn't really matter, it never became proper UU in order to be banned to UUBL. If they did suspect test it after the gen was over, it's news to me.

2:47 "dusknoir is too slow and has too weak of an hp stat, it's good movepool does not help it very much"

Dusknoir has a good movepool but his stats are awfull. The hp is to low to become a defensive mon and his attack ir horrendous to be offensive treatening. Gengar and Rotom-Forms are better Ghost type in gen IV

Dusknoirs movepool is pretty solid other than not having a real physical ghost STAB other than shadow sneak until gen 8

@@troublewakingup I think he disagrees with the premise that dusknoir has a good movepool (no good physical ghost moves, no reliable recovery, no good setup moves)

so does smeargle doesn't make a great mon overall. dusknoir movepool on something like kyurem-b would be excellent but the movepool doesn't really matter because its on an almost unviable mon

Yeah, it's really straddling the line in a wishful way. Especially with bans often significantly altering the meta in similar ways.

I don't think Blissey being bad in gen 5 is based on sample size at all though, nor do I believe that they claim it as such. It's OU by technicality because an objectively better option exists (Chansey), not based on usage. You can define whether a Pokémon is good or not beyond it's usage statistics, and Chansey is better than Blissey in almost every scenario. They make the distinction so that people understand that for one reason or another that particular Pokémon is not as good as the alternatives. I think the system is a little confusing, but it serves it's purpose and it's not like you can't still bring Blissey into OU anyway. The main reason that they don't update old tiers is so that older players can come back to a meta that at least somewhat resembles what was there when they left it, not because they don't have a large enough sample size. If their only excuse was lack of a large enough sample size I'd be agreeing with you but that isn't the only reason.

@@jacobesterson ok, the point isn't Blissey in particular... Blissey is only one of dozens of mons that are "OU by technicality" and that reasoning isn't true for most of them. Mega Garchomp, ok, I can see why "OU by technicality" makes sense for the reasons stated in the video. That's one of the few where it seems justified. But, to list just one example, Gen 6 Volcanion? It's just because someone decided "it's not good enough"; it's not a Blissey-Chansey situation. And even if they DID still re-do Gen 6 OU tiering by usage, I'm sure Volcanion would be close to OU if not over the line; it's not like it's an NU mon. So my reasoning stands.

@@jacobesterson also, if Smogon mods really are claiming that "they don't want to update old tiers so people can come back to a meta that resembles what they left", uhhh, doing things like banning Sun + Chlorophyll years after gen 5 ended, or banning Baton Pass years later, or banning Arena Trap, is going to do far more to change the tier than any tiering updates would. They also literally unbanned Excadrill from gen 5 OU years after it ended... So that justification also falls totally flat.

@@drunyon214 Yep. 100% I've wondered what they're on because of things like this. Old Gen councils, man. It took them years to unban Froslass, and that after banning her by consequence of collateral years after dpp had concluded too. There are so many shenanigans. No common sense reigns there.

Yeah I helped to accidently get hitmontop into ou

permanent sand and hail chipping into chansey’s bulk (chansey has to hold eviolite otherwise it’s worse blissey) was a major factor in blissey’s usage, leftovers negating that was just too useful at the time

@@TheDunsparceGames That's what people said. But as stated above, even with sand/hail, Blissey really can't compete. 3 turns of leftovers for Blissey to catch up to Chansey's special bulk, 6 on physical. And the bulk advantage resets after a softboiled/wish. They permanent sandstorm argument is fundamentally wrong. Chansey has superior bulk, physically and specially in almost all situations. Including sand/hail. Find a situation where Blissey is sitting around for 3 consecutive turns against a special attacker recovering with leftovers every turn. Leftovers Blissey is better then. Or after a knockoff (which was uncommon in gen 5 since it was base 20 power.) The reality is that most people were playing dumb.

One problem with both pink blobs in BW is that nowadays a lot of Sanx and Rain teams are content to throw down Spikes and Stealth Rocks, and since it's annoying to heal that off (giving an opposing attacker a free turn in the high-powered BW OU metagame is scary), eventually strategies moved away from both Chansey and Blissey. In Gens 6 and 7 Chansey is in OU and Blissey isn't because, as you said, Chansey's pure bulk is just better, and in Gen 8, Boots gave Blissey an item that was worth as much as Eviolite.

Ambipom has the same issue. Its Smogon analysis in XY is literally titled DON'T USE AMBIPOM lmao

Not enough people play the old tier to get usage that represent accurately how good the Pokemons are

OU is not affected by tiering at all. You can still use UU mons in it, and OU by technicality status is only a suggestion for newbies. On the other hand, rising-dropping mons would impact the lower tiers a lot, radically changing the viability of entire teams. The idea is: your community (ex. gen5 OU) can make decision for themselves (as listing blissey as OU by technicality), but can't make decision that would intefere with other communities (like sending blissey to UU, or taking pokèmon away from UU)

The "U" in "OU" and "UU" and so on stands for "used", it wouldn't make sense to then tier based off of viability and not usage

@@asepsisaficionado7376 When the tiers were created it was based on viability. Changing to usage-based came a long time later.

@@Math.Bandit I think it's also due to the lower tiers of old gens being created well after the fact, so they literally CAN'T take a usage-based approach due to it already being an "old gen".

Exactly. If a pokemon is in a certain tier, its mega evolution has to be at least that high pretty much by definition, although I could see an argument to tier it separately as an "itemless" mon, but that sounds WAY too much like a complex ban, and I don't think holding an item (or lack thereof) is enough for it to be allowed in a lower tier. It would basically be like if your pokemon got their item knocked off immediately (without taking damage), and at the end of the day, an itemless garchomp in UU is still a garchomp in UU.

that is why they dont drop to uu

Mostly because you can't jump from OU to UUBL, you need to jump to UU first, then be banned from UU. The only exceptions are when mons have already been banned from UU before, then they end up in UUBL instantly when they drop.

The fact they refer to themselves as "the council" as so laughable and cringey

There are BL tiers, and they're actually almost the exact opposite thing, where the pokemon is banned from the lower tier but not used enough to be in the higher tier.

also dracovish in swsh

im planning on it

just dont mega evolve :tf:

that's the main problem about it though, in order to use it you'd have to use a regular Garchomp first, which you could just choose to not evolve until you need the extra power.

The only way to even somewhat allow that would be to have a complex ban wherein garchomp has to hold the mega stone, and cannot be used in multi-mega teams. Else, it's just OU garchomp after being hit with knock off. Besides that fact, it would likely end up in BL, not UU anyway.

The main issue with competitive Pokémon is the rather large barrier to entry so good luck. You have hundreds of fully evolved Pokémon to choose from, dozens of metagames to pick, and billions of potential team combinations to theorycraft. 18 different types and hundreds of different duo type combinations, and roughly 800 moves to learn. Needless to say it can be a bit much for those who want to simply jump into it, but it's also far less daunting than it sounds because you only really need to learn how to build and play around OU Pokémon if you're boring like that. It's a good place to start though.

The one nerfing terrain was Gamefreak, maybe because they wanted to add expanding force etc and also item such as seed that activate at the battle cant be mitigated by changing terrain.

It might be because of how much more common it was getting. Rillaboom, Indeedee, and Pincurchin can set terrain now, meaning more Pokémon than just the Tapus have access to such abilities. Certain Dynamax moves also trigger terrain instantly. Maybe they were trying to prevent something like the Gen 5 weather wars, which I believe largely happened due to drought and drizzle being not locked to Groudon and Kyogre anymore

Terrain was nerfed because the Tapus dominated a lot of gen 7 VGC due to the sheer power of their terrain deployment abilities.

because the terrains have additional extremely powerful effects

From what i know, when a comp generation "ends", the tiers are locked.

Which is really dumb since they are only applying it to half the gens

Not enough people play them. Tier shifts are based on usage, but if not enough games are being played then it just starts to look more like a popularity contest. They also cannot do tournament usage since old gen tiers that are not OU don't get played often in tournaments ether.

BW2 OU refers to the gen 5 metagame that developed after the release of Black 2/White 2. There were some Pokemon made available then (namely Genesect, Keldeo, the Therians and the Kyurem forms) and some hidden abilities (namely Technician Breloom and Sheer Force Landorus).

Yeah this video made me lose a lot of respect for smogon because their shit seems so arbitrary

Dugtrio is broken with Arena Trap but useless without it? Clearly OU with Arena Trap banned -Some moron at Smogon

@@TunaBear64 did you, watch the video?

@@Kingolimar354 go on the site and go post about it then, smogon isnt some company, its just a bunch of dudes playing pokemon

why would you ever use dugtrio in any tier

I lost a lot of respect for smogon from this video. Their rules seem so arbitrary now. "We don't change the meta game after a generation is over." Proceeds to ban Arena trap...

Because you could just not mega evolve and basically be using a itemless garchomp in uu

Base Garchomp is faster so any set where you could run a Mega you'd often be better off just choosing not to transform and make the most of the faster speed (especially with the lower average speed tier of UU compared to OU)

@@saltynope4819 Forgot you can do that. That makes sense now!

Says a lot when an itemless Garchomp can dominate a tier where his Mega is decent ain't it XD.

Let's think about the process that happens for both tiering placements: For OU by technicality, the Pokemon had usage in OU significant enough to rise it into OU/keep it in the tier during when that was current-gen OU. However, the metagame doesn't stop evolving after that gen's OU ends, and if a Pokemon that was in OU is shown to not be good anymore, it will be designated to be OU by technicality; "sure, it's an OU Pokemon, but we wouldn't recommend using it." For a UUBL Pokemon, they failed to get sufficient usage during the current gen to drop from OU to UU, but while they were in UU, they were found to be too much for the tier, and were banned from UU. They can still move up from UUBL to OU during the current-gen if they find a good niche in OU. The main difference is that Pokemon in UUBL are too much for the UU tier, but Pokemon that are OU by Technicality are not good in OU despite being tiered there, irrespective of whether they may or may note be good in UU. One case study that is interesting is Gen 5 Hippowdon. Hippowdon in BW was initially not favored in the initially unbalanced BW OU metagame, and so it fell to UU. In UU, Hippowdon was an unbreakable wall and eventually banned to UUBL (just called BL at the time). However, later in BW, Hippowdon became a great OU Pokemon because it was a Sand Stream Pokemon with access to instant recovery, and rose into OU as a result. However, the rise of Sand teams that stacked Psychic types in addition to Spikes made a lot of Sand teams really need Tyranitar, who can Pursuit trap the Psychics, and so Hippo became a lot less popular and became an OU by Technicality Pokemon.

Usage does determine the placement now (ever since maybe Gen 5?)

@@Math.Bandit Yes, but the tiers are in effect before the generation is solidified? I don't know what's going on in this mess. Smoggon Strangeness is not kind to outsiders.

usage does determine placement

@@nullpoint3346 The tiers are in constant flux throughout the generations based on usage. It is only once a generation becomes obsolete that the tiers become locked.

@@Math.Bandit So at least part of it makes sense.

the main reason Blissey dropped isn't quite that though, it's that Blissey couldn't be trapped with Shed Shell, the leftovers on sand are an added bonus but would still leave it vulnerable to trapping. Since trapping in both Arena Trap and Shadow Tag forms are now completely banned Blissey has a very small niche that isn't particularly worth over the added defences

@@Baasudei that was actually only Blissey's Uber reasoning in Gen6 and Gen7 (Shed Shell so Mega Gengar can't trap it). Dugtrio actually struggles more with beating Chansey than with beating Blissey (Chansey has the physical bulk of Swampert after all and could take moves like HJK from Mega-Lopunny or LO CC from Infernape, an EQ from Dugtrio is doing laughable damage and it needs Screech or Reversal to even trap a damaged Chansey if there are no hazards out). It really came down to sand and hazards, and the belief that a potential base 18% hp loss on every switch alongside the move damage taken wasn't worth the added physical bulk on a primarily special wall. In the end it was though.

@@nicolaistuhlmuller8718 Well, there's also the fact that knock off got buffed in gen 6, and it's completely reasonable to expect that your wall won't be able to dodge every knock off while still doing its job, and an itemless blissey is strictly better than an itemless chansey.

@@emmetstanevich2121 that is a pro Blissey argument though. This here is why in gen 5-7 Blissey was always considered weaker than Chansey except for the Gen 6-7 Ubers tier, where Blissey had a better matchup against Mega Gengar thanks to Shed Shell.

PU doesn't mean anything. Its literally the sound you make when something stinks and you cover your nose.

@@HowlingOneify google says it means Partially used

@@Ultra289 Yeah but that's not the actual name. The smogon post where they actually introduce it says that.

@@Kafstelle wow so Google useless once again ((

It's probably to reduce discussion threads about meta changes/potential bans for a tier hardly anyone plays anymore when they want to devote time towards the current ones. I don't see why they can't do updates maybe on a less often scale (like reviewing the meta every 3-6 months instead of a more constant rate for the current gens which have way more match data to pull from)

It's like preserving a history I think

Usage is not valuable data if the sample size is to low, which is true for these old gen lower tiers. It just would not make sense to keep making usage based tiering decisions for tier like BW NU that has less then 1000 games played a year.

When the game is no longer "The main" format, I believe theirs ate frozen to preserve the metagame. Exceptions occur if things like dugtrios areba trap get banned after the tiers are frozen

I think the only way to move for a pokemon in an old metagame is from the bl status to the tier above it and vice versa, like how Moltres raised from uubl to OU in Gen 3 well over a decade after it was no longer the current gen

Simply put it's usually just not worth the mega slot. Regular TTar is both the better sand supporter and the better Pursuit trapper, which leaves Mega-TTar to utility and DD. And while Mega-TTar is both a better utility mon and a better DD user than TTar, consider the abundance of strong DD users. Gyarados, Charizard-X and Dragonite all exist and are all faster and have less weaknesses, in Charizard's case more power and in Gyarados' and Dragonite's case a safer setup and the latter even lets you run an additional mega in your team. What it essentially boils down to is the following two questions: is the utility of the mega or the raw power or sand supporting capabilities of the regular form more important, and do you need to run another mega in your team. In Gen7 megas became less mandatory and sand got a lot weaker now that rain was a legit threat, so it ultimately came down to the utility of the mega vs. the raw power of the base form. Ultimately though Tyranitar is still used almost twice as much in its base form because of its synergy with special mega wallbreakers, mostly Charizard Y. However thanks to the Tapus you can now have a powerful special wallbreaker in your team without giving up your mega slot, so Mega Tyranitar can at least be used in similar strategies.

Nah, I'd argue the real OUBLs are Pokemon like Deoxys-Normal, Cinderace, Spectrier, Necrozma Dawn Wings, and Lugia, AKA the guys who would never fly in OU, but are garbage in Ubers. Of course, OUBL is not actually a thing, since Ubers is not a usage based tier, else Pokemon like Weavile, Slurpuff, and Ferrothorn would all reside there

@@grunkleg.3110 uh what are you talking about lugia is one of the best walls of all time

Why would smogon keep following the rules exactly as they set up in gen 3 though? Many of them are now just outdated and so they decided to just start ignoring some of them, like the rule of not changing a gen once it ended. You can call it arbitrary, but thats only a result of decades passing, to ask smogon to be exactly the same in over 15 years is just unrealistic. The reason some tiers stay frozen is that theres not enough lower tier games being played to make reasonable tier shifts, so the tiers are locked unless they are unlocked on purpose (right now its just gen 1 lower tiers that are unlocked, since those are considered "new" as people did not play them competitively in the past)

I tried to q into gen6 RU, 0 games and i waited hours

@@kingwailord4143 these people think smogon is a business building full of thousands ready to balance hundreds of tiers at all time, you cant use logic like that

Someone didn't pay attention to the video.

Mostly the fact that Thundurus-Therian outclasses it in Gen 5, and in Gen 4, Baton Pass is banned, so it can't replicate the pivoting power that Zapdos can, which is important when walls switch into Jolteon.

Yeah hippo and blissey are proper OUs now again. Its beautiful to see. Donphan is still ass tho

I think it's mainly due to the fact that mega evolution happens mid-battle, so you could just NOT mega evolve chomp and basically play as if you didn't have an item. For pokemon that get outclassed by their pre-evolved forms, they can be tiered lower because they can't just choose to not evolve, that decision has to be made before the battle starts. For all intents and purposes, chansey and blissey are entirely different pokemon, but one is able to run eviolite. If you want to run mega chomp, you have to bring regular chomp on your team, and it starts the battle as regular chomp with no requirement that it actually mega evolves at any point during the battle. Any game that mega garchomp appears in has a minimum of 1 turn that begins with regular garchomp on the field.

@@emmetstanevich2121 Ohh, makes sense. I've never actually had a gen 6 game, so I keep forgetting mega evolution is a command.