I think that making UUBL a temporary tier could be interesting It would be much faster at testing out if Pokémon in the tier are UU material or OU material
Why not just turn Gen 3 UUBL into the new UU, and move all current UU Pokemon to a new RU? Old tier stays, UUBL mons can be used, and tiers can balance themselves out with weak mons from the old UUBL moving down and strong mons from the old UU moving up.
100% agree. Trialing mons from UUBL in small segments fails to take into account all the checks to those mons that may also be trapped in UUBL. Its like not making ubers a tier and trying out each OU banlist mon in OU to see if theyre strong.
I support the complete BL to UU move because it just seems like the best way and quickest way. Think about the start of any meta like Gen 8 OU. Sure Dracovish and Darmanitan Galar were incredibly busted but that was figured out within the first month if not the first week. All it takes is a few quickbans to weed out the bad mons. I’m in the minority with this debate but I have always found a variety of mons to be more fun and it encourages more on the fly strategies.
I disagree, ADV UU is not played enough for stuff like that to be banned quickly, and these pokemon arent going to be hilariously overpowered like dracovish and darm. Also many uubl pokemon actually are good or decent in ou, but not as good as some other ou pokemon, I mean just look at lanturn in ou.
It's not as clean cut. Gen 8 OU could do that because it's current gen _and_ OU, hence it has a lot of players. These players can give you a large and diverse group to provide input on the issue, and help you to quickly and easily identify broken mons. ADV UU is an old and barely played tier where there is an extremely small community. It's much harder to gain proper info on like 15+ mons all at the same time when you don't even have a ladder on Showdown. It'd be extremely messy, so while the selective testing approach is slow and pretty blatantly cherrypicked, it's better than just dumping a whole bunch of potentially broken mons onto tier with a tiny playerbase and having at it.
@@mattzr1550 If it's not played a lot, why does it matter so much then? Does it really matter if a powerful pokemon only gets banned after a long time, even if almost no one plays it?
@@mattzr1550 even if thats the case so what? They could do a tier shift every 6 months with quick shifts being every 2-3 months while also looking at something like at least 1000 total battles and 300 different unique players or something. If anything is blatantly overpowered that should be where the council comes in. If its a very niche amount people who play this tier consistently something like 200 players they can suck a dick they shouldn't be making tier choices they should just move on.
@@teeweezeven because people who want to play it and tournaments that allow gen 3 uu have people who want to enjoy the tier. It matters to keep the tier fun for them
Testing UUBL Pokemon in parts makes zero sense. What if a Pokemon tested is overpowered but gets balanced out by other Pokemon waiting to be tested? This kind of stupid idea will only lead to several Pokemon not seeing the light of day in Gen 3, just let them all out and ban them individually afterwards.
I think people are overlooking/oversimplifying the unbanning process. Like let's look at how these Pokemon ended up in UUBL in the first place. One situation is that these pokemon were banned in waves alongside the other broken Pokemon, so they were likely already banned even in the presence of other Pokémon that would "supposedly balance them". Another scenario is that one Mon gets banned for being too overpowered, but then the absence of that Pokémon makes other Pokémon too broken as a result so they end up getting banned as well. Alternatively, there may even be cases where a Pokémon is banned BECAUSE of the presence of a fellow broken Pokémon, and may not actually be OP on its own. This is why bans/unbans are usually done one at a time to better assess the impact of each individual Pokémon to determine whether they are actually broken on their own for the tier's current standards.
@@Macaulyn_97 the NFEs are free to release, I was more referring to the "true" UUBL mons that are banned for their demonstrated power instead of just being part of a clause
@@breloommaster12 I know that, but some NFE mons could be good enough counters/checks that would make those UUBL mons no longer too overpowered for UU.
From the perspective of someone who rarely plays older tiers, it feels so weird to me how afraid of change people are, not just for gen 3 but also in general. It feels like smogon would rather let the tier stagnate then to continually update, balance and improve them. That said, I guess the kinds of players that play older gens in the first place are those who really really like it and miss it, so they wouldnt want to change it? That kinda makes sense, but personally I still think we should fix problems rather than ignore them for legacy
In this case, was it really a problem if the tier itself wasn't broken ? Should a bad decision from a long time ago be unmade even if said decision has since sprouted a stable and healthy situation and by undoing it, you are putting all of that at risk ? Is change for change's sake a good thing ? Those are the type of questions that should be asked before taking such massive decisions. I am not opposed to undoing the NFE clause and even testing every BL pokemon at once ..... but only if it's basically a separate tier/the current UU is preserved so that the legacy ADV UU is still playable
@@sephikong8323 you know of all the people who have made this point i think you have made the best version of it that makes the most sense and i 100% agree with this while i disagree with the other version i have seen. That said i think a compromise could be made. Give old most iconic version of a tiers a legacy server on showdown or their own tiers (preferably this one). And have all tiers constantly changing and morphing in the normal version. Then tell legacy tiers that they can make votes on if or how they want to change that version of the tier anytime they want.
@@kjbi430 Gatekeeping like this isn't the way to go. Simply putting the spotlight like this on Gen 3 UU is going to encourage more people to try it, especially if they modernize it.
@@Sleeper800 This is not gatekeeping. You can play 3g UU anytime and make you own opinion on this tier if you want to. It doesn't change the fact that people that play the tier should have the final decision, because they know how to improve it and know what is need to be keep. The mentality to destroy entire tier with a playerbase only because you want something new or exciting is way worse.
I think target testing mons from the UUBL is comically unintelligent. There's a whole tier worth of mons there. 'Mons like Entei are mever going to be strong enough for OU pre-phys/spec split, why should they never be given the light of day because they're essentially fighting a RU tier when tested.
The point is that introducing all of them in would completely transform a tier that many people like. Assuming the community wants to keep this tier somewhat similar, there’s no easy solution.
@@HeruCSGO the current tier is essentially RU. How the hell is Fearow in over Dodrio. Just move everything down a tier, and nothing changes. Except the name.
@@HeruCSGO did you not even read the post you replied to? There is an easy solution and it was just explained to you - UUBL becomes UU, current UU becomes RU. People who enjoy the current metagame get to keep their metagame exactly as is and the banlist becomes a new playable tier.
@@HeruCSGO if there is that many people they should be able to properly fix a tier the natural way the normal tier fixes itself if not fuck them they should not be able to just shape a tier the way they want it to look
Tbh Dry Passing has always been my favourite way of using Baton Pass so I strongly dislike rulesets that ban Baton Pass outright. Can they not adjust the clause and have it so that Baton Pass can only be used for Dry Passing?
@Le Spoje For the same reason switch moves are popular: They let you keep momentum. For example, if they happen to switch as you hit BP, then you can switch into a counter, or even a sweeper, for free.
Even stat passing in gen 3 wasn't close to overpowered. The ban for baton pass reeks of people using the ruleset not as a failsafe, but as an arbitrary list of things they don't want to play against.
@Ian Taakalla I still don't get it. If you're fast passing+dry passing it's the exact same as if you switch normally. Only slow pass has a different function in this scenario
Randomly banning baton pass in a generation and tier where it wasn't overpowered just because it's an inherently strong move sounds scrubby. Passing in UU wasn't even close to a degenerate strategy outside of dedicated passing teams. Those were already claused out of the gen by then, so it was a non-issue. I would find decisions like this frustrating if I was still laddering. The original intent of UUBL was that there were a lot of pokemon that were niche/only slightly outclassed in OU, and allowing them in UU would just turn UU into OU with a small ban list. The power level of gen 3 OU was low enough that you could find ladder success from time to time by considering BL options. That said, having a little overlap in the tiers is probably better than having a bloated banlist of pokemon that are between tiers, so this overall sounds like a good experiment to unban the BL and start over.
I think asking a bunch of people who don’t play Gen III UU about issues concerning that format is a flawed approach. Let those who understand and care about a format make decisions about it.
With so many Pokémons banned it might be better to simply rename uubl to uu and uu to ru. ->Nothing gets banned or released, but you can still use the previosely unusable mons.
I prefer the first approach. A lot of pokemon will be good in vacuum and BL will still have more pokemon than future UUBLs. Imagine a hypothetical scenario where Ninjask is tested before Armaldo and is too good in the meta without Armaldo, but if Armaldo drops, the meta is fine for Ninjask as well. That would mean Ninjask is banned for nothing. I am a Hitmontop to Ubers diehard fan, but this isn't a meme. It's just a poor decision. I I think that one month of chaos is worth it and if people don't like it, they could give them the option of playing old UU as a compromise.
I think BL should just be its own official tier. Make the current UU into RU and let BL become the new UU. There are enough Pokemon to make a full tier and it's more simplistic to do so to my eyes. I've seen several BL tournaments in G3 and it's a very balanced and healthy metagame in its own right.
@@pmnt_ We already have a full-fledged G3 NU and have had successful launches for G3 PU and G3 Ubers as periodic unofficial tiers in the past, so yes, I am absolutely saying there's enough of a playerbase to at least make BL its own tier informally if not formally.
I'm the kind of guy that, when I need to start something over, I go completely blank slate. So I would had dropped every UUBL Pokémon to UU and watch what happened. Like you said, things would balance themselves out with time.
Starmie's rise in Gen 1 was relatively recent considering the age of Gen 1. Same with Cloyster in Gen 2, which is almost as old. It's never too late for a metagame to evolve, it's never too late for new tech to be discovered. Just watch any Summoning Salt video. All things like the NFE Clause does is lock everyone into a certain mentality of what MIGHT happen, rather than what will, rather than actually running the tests and see what happens. It's an incredibly regressive mindset and I'm glad Smogon has finally pulled their head out of their ass and revoked it.
I will not stand for this Trapinch slander. It's stronger than Dugtrio with the same coverage and is a legitimate niche threat on paraspam teams even in OU, as it is fast enough to outspeed the entire paralyzed metagame bar Ninjask with 176 Speed EVs and a neutral nature. The only difference is that Trapinch would need 196 EVs to creep electrode instead of +2 tar and meta built to outspeed Aero and Jolt. And even if you need more to creep mons creeping Electrode, you still have more than enough EVs to work with that you'll never have to touch Trapinch's damage output. And while the difference between Dugtrio and Trapinch is only 20 Base Attack, the difference between Diglett and Trapinch is 45 Base Attack. Diglett barely has half the attack stat of Trapinch. I believe that in a UU, be it UUBL as the new UU or current UU, Trapinch with para support is just as viable if not more so than Diglett.
@@PRAISENOBEASTHAN The only niche it's got over the Diglett family is being a trapper with a priority move but it'll get out-prioritied by everything so the point is kind of moot. It's also frail which is a death sentence on a slow Pokemon.
Will Kadabra be OP on UU? That's honestly a good question. Remember that Kadabra has the psychical bulk of a Pikachu and priority is common in UU due to reversal/flail strats. Maybe if Swellow and Ninjask are also unbanned so it becomes easier to revenge kill.
@@darthhydreigon820 is that still the case in the role of a revenge killer? Ninjask pretty much outspeeds anything and gets to use higher base power moves than quick attack, no?
The thing is that Swellow just shreds the tier with it's boosted Guts strats, and Ninjask can Baton Pass Speed boosts to partners and end games easily. About Kadabra being OP... It's speed tier is phenomenal as it only can be outsped by Electrode, Persian and Sneasel, but there are many sturdy special walls in the tier, such as Grumpig, Hypno, Slowking or Cradily.
The issue with 'Drop a few at a time' is a Mon might seem overpowered, but if all the mons on the UUBL are added, then they will perhaps deal with the stronger threats
Gen III UU has one of the most bizarre tier distributions of any game. It's UUBL tier can be a tier on it's own. The NFE clause is very similar to weather clause in future tiers, overall limiting team building options. Armaldo and Hariyama I believe were banned to UUBL for their access to knock off alone. Swellow is not a monstrous threat as long as it isn't statused. I hope such ideas can also be revisited in Gen IV (which also has a huge BL list) and Gen V.
Gen IV UU's BL was made via actual bans & suspect tests. It started off with the old gen 3 rules (massive BL tier, no NFEs), then merged with BL and allowed NFEs. All the Pokemon in BL now were banned normally. In any case, Gen 4 UU is basically the closest Pokemon has gotten to a perfect metagame, so no, don't do that
I think they should just drop all of BL since they’re basically reinventing the tier already. If people really want to keep things as they were then maybe they should make a Historical UU tier which has all the setup of the old one
It's nice to hear that changes are actually being made to older generations, now. Of course, the way it's being done is one of the worst ways possible, but it gives me hope that maybe the older gens will actually get some kind of support for once, and horrible systems like tier freezing might someday be fixed.
I love it when metagames evolve despite their age. Isn't evoling one of the main points of pokemon? Like when porygon found some kind of use in OU after years of being bad. I personally always hated the NFE clause, because some pokemon definitely didn't deserve it. Sure, SOME pokemon might be overpowered for the tier, but the fact that the idea of UU being mini OU was such a mob mentality that I found it stupid when I first heard about it. There's nothing wrong with trying to keep things as they are, but when rulings etc start to fall apart, you need to see the bigger picture and accept that some things don't make any sort of sense. Kakuna being banned? Hah that's funny But as for the UUBL, I saw a few comments saying it sould be their own tier, or the UU tier entirely considering the amount of mons there are. Then, the old UU mons would be used in conjuction with the new UU. The old UU would be RU, and things can go from there. I like this idea rather than simply having 2-3 mons released from BL, because some mons could be countered by other BL pokemon. I get that things can get shaken up too much, but honestly? It's exciting when older gens have new metas. Don't knock it until you try it.
Gonna be really disappointed if Gen 3 UU isn't the Ruins of Alph meta for the coming month. This is really exciting, but it'll feel kinda pointless if there's not as much play as possible, as immediately as possible.
Without looking too closely at the UUBL tier it seems to me that the Armaldo test was inherently flawed by only testing one pokemon. If they want to test incrementally that's fine but it should be at least 3 or 4 pokemon who get tested to see how they affect each other. A physically defensive Lapras set might counter the very same Armaldo set that was tested. In contrast that Laura's set would likely be countered by something else in UUBL. Introducing a single new pokemon into the tier without considering what potential counters it may have within the UUBL tier is plain idiotic. Also Justice for Trapinch he could easily be a bigger threat than Diglett.
It’s always funny how mfs in freezai comment sections give input on metagames they’ve barely even heard of as if they’re multi-year tournament veterans and then criticize the people who actually play the tiers for not just fucking up the whole tier for the other people who actually care enough to play LOL
@Mn M Eh, I don’t think it’s that difficult to deduce who knows what in this comments section. Only someone that has never seriously played ADV UU (or any other old gen lower tier for that matter) would seriously suggest something as completely insane as freeing all the BLs into a nearly 15 year old metagame that has a small, tight-knit community of dedicated players who have liked it the way it is since it’s inception.
Baton Pass... if certain tiers were willing to not ban but limit it due to it being used solely to switch out on mond by mons that don't ramp up boosts, why not just unban it completely but limit the move itself to not pass on stat boosts/debuffs? Do they just feel that changing how a move works is heresy??
Why not just make UUBL the new UU, Current UU is RU, and NU is NU. Makes the most sense to me. If Pokemon are still overpowered, they go to UUBL, if too weak, they go to RU, or RUBL, and some pokemon in RU may go to UU, or at least RUBL
If gen 3 UU players like the tier and they dont want massive changes, moving everything from UUBL back to UU is not the way to go. If gradual moves are not possible they should just create a new tier and let gen 3 UU coexist with it
It seems stupid to me to hard ban baton pass, especially when its not even the setup > pass strat thats the reason. Sry passing is just playing smart. Have a slow, tanky baton passer that you can switch to, tank a couple hits and baton pass after the opponent moves to switch in a strong pokemon completely safely. Thats just playing smart. As stated, arena trap is banned because switching and team synergy are a large part of singles, and baton pass is a move based on team synergy and switching. Its fundamental! Just seems dumb to me. Also i honestly like the idea of unbanning the full ban list and seeing what gets rebanned and what stays allowed. Honestly i feel it should be done for ALL older gens, in every tier. Some of those decisions are over a decade old, and with modern knowledge having evolved so much, and even the meta in those tiers changing over time, not all of those bans are entirely necessary anymore, but itd be impossible to know which ones will be healthy to unban and which arent, and so a soft reset of each tier would actually be pretty healthy. Id say gen 6 and older should get that treatment, and should be an every other generation thing, so when whatever gen comes after scarlet and violet is released we soft reset gen 8 and older, and so on into the future.
Testing UUBL Pokemon individually in UU makes no sense, imo. It's like you said, you might find counters to certain strong UUBL Pokemon within other UUBL Pokemon but not from UU because the UUBL list is so long. Besides, it seems much slower and tedious testing individual Pokemon instead of just "resetting" UU and simply quickbanning obvious op Pokemon.
Well... the problem with dropping UUBL pokemon to test them one at a time is that they're being compared to the context of current UU power levels; doing it this way, chances are good that a lot of them are going to stay in the banlist (Presumably, they were put there in the first place for a reason). Also, I don't feel like the logic behind banning diglett tracks. It looks like Diglett straight up loses to most electric types, and it would need to find a way to safely switch in to any of the relevant rock and steel types because almost all of them can OHKO it with basically any move they click. I guess it could catch a chunk of them off-gaurd because team preview's not a thing in ADV, but I don't see it as a problem that can't be overcome in the team builder.
I think they should test them in batches. Choose a couple/randomise it and have them get tested for a week, based on what the community and tier managers say it will be decided if they can stay in the tier or not. I think it would be better to so it this way because it can better gauge what a meta game with multiple UUBL pokemon while not having every pokemon be tested at once. Also if a pokemon is deemed to stay in the tier before the testing is over, it will be there for the next round of testing, also could have pokemon who the tier managers feel could work if others drop can be moved over to join another testing cycle to get a real feel for how they actually would work
personally, i find the idea of not unbanning something to keep a " tier " mostly the same to be sort of a joke. if the pokemon isn't an issue or likely to be an issue what real reason is there to not give it a shot
I feel like the UUBL choice is tough because there’s a super small player base for Gen 3 UU. So it may take a whole decade to ban the correct mons through suspect
Wait hold up, Baton Pass is universally banned now?? Dayummm how long have I been away from Smogon? Last time I really tried to climb the Pokemon Online / Showdown ladder was Gen 5. Back then Baton Pass was seen as a nooby gimmick strat that could get a few cheesy wins here and there, but would just be utterly shut down by anyone who knew what they were doing. I remember trying to run a Baton Pass team for a while and it felt like my team was just hard countered by Roar and Whirlwind.
Isn’t a good idea to create a separate category of “UU + BL” or just a “UU experimental” to see both if it’s a good idea and if people like it. Even for a month, seeing how many people play it, or just to keep the format the same before you completely overhaul it. After all, these people have had the same rules for years. Not everyone wants to change, especially if they’re still playing gen 3
"A game with your entire strategy being build around luck isn't seen as competitive." Modern day competitive hearthstone: "Hold my one-card win conditions or bust...."
bro smogon absolutely loves to ban "non-competitive" strats instead of using the in-game workarounds. what's next, banning fire blast because it's a "dumb luck" strat? cmon.
Banning bright powder/swagger is why i dont like smogon, they remove any luck from the damn game sooner or later only moves with 100% accuracy will be allowed even though luck is also a skill
If arena trap is allowed Just spread toxic Get diglet in Use sub and protect holding leftovers Finish with earthquake fpr the last move maybe rock slide or rest (If using rest have another mon with heal bell) Need to have taunt on the team to stop opposing heal bell
target testing seems like a worse idea than starting from scratch or shifting uubl to be the new uu and the current uu shifting down, since as others have said you'll be leaving checks for the target tested mons in uubl. that could end up being more work than it first appears, something may seem op because there are check(s) that haven't been tested out of uubl yet, and things could end up being banned only to later be unbanned, which could be a discouraging waste of effort
Make a new tier for all the BL dudes then worry about balancing that. If everything fell at once, a lot of the threats would likely balance each other out in a way you can't see testing them one by one, but if they all fell at once, nothing resembling the current stable ADV UU that people have been enjoying for years now will come out on the other end. This massive ban list uniquely has enough pokemon to make a new tier, so why not take advantage of that and do so instead of overwriting an existing one?
The day you find a more creative and human way of asking me to subscribe is the day I do. No offense, I just don't like the graph script personally bc it tells me you don't care that much.
Old players complain about new features/metas only to be told to ‘just play the old games if you don’t like the new ones’ and now we can’t even have that.
Combine uubl and uu into a new separate tier so that you could experiment with all pokemon in context of each other, all while keeping uu meta as is untill a decision about uubl can be taken
"to remove things that rely on luck or dumb luck" Meanwhile: Serene Grace Para/Flinch Togekiss Meanwhile: Kings Rock Skill Link Cloyster Allowed. Aight.
Wait I don't get your point of dry passing Baton pass, maybe if it was on a slower Pokemon but you showed it with a Zapdos? Why not just switch normally and save the moveslot?
Because in case your opponent switches their pokemon out, you see what pokemon theyre switching in and then you get a free choice with which pokemon you wanna respond. It also shows whether your opponent is using focus punch (very common move in gen 3)
