Hello! It's been a fair amount time since the start of Stage 1, and I believe that thread has long served its purpose. With this thread, we (!) aim to gather community feedback on two potential avenues for the tier to go forward with for the remainder of USM.
But first, I have an important announcement - I am announcing the creation of our Ubers Tiering Council! This council aims to collaboratively aid with decision making and policy regarding the tiering actions we do as typical of a Smogon tier. We will start with 5 members that are trusted, willing, and able to conduct themselves as befitting of such an important role:
Nayrz
dream
Pohjis
Cynara
Melee Mewtwo
Our first action will be to have a relatively open ended conversation in this thread about Ubers and future tiering actions. We believe there are two possible paths, one to take Ubers towards the path of bans and the other unbans, as methods to achieve our main goal as Ubers: A tier with the least amount of bans to maintain competitive playability. The two paths are as follows:
This discussion is left open ended on purpose. The idea of looking to banned elements as both a way to balance our tier and also minimize our banlist has no clear answers available. We could look at the clause testing done in the BW era as an insight, but those ideas faded with newer generations. This type of discussion hasn't been had since AG's creation and our increased focus on tiering actions, so we are ok with allowing this discussion to take place in this thread.
As a reminder, keep things civil, and please bear in mind our tiering policy when making your arguments!
But first, I have an important announcement - I am announcing the creation of our Ubers Tiering Council! This council aims to collaboratively aid with decision making and policy regarding the tiering actions we do as typical of a Smogon tier. We will start with 5 members that are trusted, willing, and able to conduct themselves as befitting of such an important role:
Nayrz
dream
Pohjis
Cynara
Melee Mewtwo
Our first action will be to have a relatively open ended conversation in this thread about Ubers and future tiering actions. We believe there are two possible paths, one to take Ubers towards the path of bans and the other unbans, as methods to achieve our main goal as Ubers: A tier with the least amount of bans to maintain competitive playability. The two paths are as follows:
A suspect test of Ultra Necrozma (Ultranecrozium Z).
Ultra Necrozma's presence in the tier has been a bit of a divisive element in recent times, with posts at the end of the Stage 1 thread debating the potential idea of a suspect test on it. We believe that if anything is to be suspect tested for a ban, it would be Ultranecrozium Z. The Tiering Council does not currently plan to entertain any other option than Ultranecrozium Z for a suspect test at this time, so we are deliberately closing the viewpoint to a single element on this path in order to generate focused discussion. We aren't going to get anywhere by having smaller voices shouting out many different things when it comes to ban ideas, so please keep this in mind.
A more open-ended discussion that aims to consider the idea of unbanning an element.
This discussion is left open ended on purpose. The idea of looking to banned elements as both a way to balance our tier and also minimize our banlist has no clear answers available. We could look at the clause testing done in the BW era as an insight, but those ideas faded with newer generations. This type of discussion hasn't been had since AG's creation and our increased focus on tiering actions, so we are ok with allowing this discussion to take place in this thread.
As a reminder, keep things civil, and please bear in mind our tiering policy when making your arguments!