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Metagame np: SM UU Stage 10.5 - Water Me (weather test)

Giving my semi-worthless thoughts on the matter:

Instead of suspecting blissey, how about we run something like the infamous New Meta Tour, but remove Blissey to see what it would be like?

Another route would be to suspect Alomomola to nerf stall, and if Blissey is still an issue, then free the fish and suspect blissey.

Lot of potential probs here but it's an idea, isn't it?
 
Sickist said:
Instead of suspecting blissey, how about we run something like the infamous New Meta Tour, but remove Blissey to see what it would be like?
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Falls short on determining whether it's banworthy, which is the key factor when it comes to deciding to suspect something. Not to mention that tours (at least, of the single elimination kind) are small sample size, so the information you can infer would be limited.

Sickist said:
Another route would be to suspect Alomomola to nerf stall, and if Blissey is still an issue, then free the fish and suspect blissey.
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This idea implies that Alomomola will be banned upon suspect. Does that mean you think Alomomola is banworthy? I think that's a much more worthwhile discussion than doing the tiering gymnastics that you're describing.
 
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don't we deserve a response by now? I don't even mind if you don't want to suspect anything at all. I just want to know what.
 
I feel that suspecting blissey is the best approach to nerf stall in UU. I also feel that nerfing stall in UU is not needed.

Why nerf stall?
I'm not too sure about the competitive scene but i feel that stall is not at all dominating on ladder. The usage of stall pokemon, like blissey and quag, are relatively low(as warzoid said) although they have a high winrate (as eaglehawk said). Stall is strong in uu as it has a high winrate and has only some specific bad MUs which does not guarantee you lose on MU also (as stall players can also make predictions and doubles to control hazards or get toxics/scald burns to help their bad MU), so if it is a viable playstyle with an incredible winrate, why is it being used so little compared to other playstyles (like balance/offense/HO).

I think that it is a social issue. Stall is not fun for the average pokemon player. When you go on pokemon showdown as a casual player, you want to fight other people with your Sharp beak Wing attack pidgeot or try out a shiny latias with max sp.atk Draco meteor, because you can't bother to grind it out on your 3ds or you don't have money for a 3ds or want to try pokemon battling as a game.When you meet the first player that runs stall or a bulky pokemon (like hippowdon) your unviable team would probably lose but that would introduce a new playstyle of stall to you. For the average player (those that aren't that involved in competitive pokemon or play competitive pokemon casually (looking at VR rankings and making legit teams but not really playing tournaments)) the idea of stall as a playstyle is basically walling you opponent and healing it back while chipping it slowly ,with moves like toxic or scald. You are slowly waiting for your opponent to get chipped out and lose; this playstyle is conservative in nature and you don't feel like you are making the first move or the attacking move and that's not how you beat Cynthia on you DPP playthrough. Also stall is consider "cheap" and "no skill" in the community.

Stall being not fun implying low use rates does not imply that stall is unhealthy and broken in uu? I feel that stall being not fun does imply that it is healthy in uu; as warzoid said, if there is a sticky web playstyle that is totally overpowered but no one uses it, its not broken because it does not affect the metagame much. Another example would be the dual screen HO team amane misa made and shared to Pokeaim where it was largely popular, at that point, dual screen + BD linoone + SD scizor + DD feraligatr was quite overpowered and beat many teams in the metagame and because it was a HO team, many people liked it and played it(easier playstyle to play and sweeping people with 1 pokemon is fun). That team became a problem to many players in uu and people started looking for pokemons to fix their teams against new threats like DD Gatr or SD Scizor. It turned out that pokemon existed and are viable to play against these pokemon (like Coballion and Rotom-H) and none of the pokemon in that team was banned to UUBL (although feraligatr rose to UU). If Stall was to rise to popularity people would be finding pokemon to fix their teams against it (like volt turn, Stall breakers like crawdaunt and haxorus, or taunt users) which would require a discussion to be what these pokemons are (as esche and pif tried to start listing). But the problem is that Stall won't rise to popularity due to it being not fun and won't pose much harm to the metagame.

TL;DR Stall not fun, stall not used much, stall does not make metagame bad, don't need to nerf/ban stall

Why suspect blissey?
Assuming somehow we need to nerf stall, the best way would be to Vault blissey.

To me, a stall team is divided into 2 parts, the part that is Sp Def bulky and the Def bulky part. Under the Sp.def part, you would have Blissey. Under the Def part you would have Gligar,Mega Alt,Quagsire,Alomomola,Aggron-mega etc. For the most part when fighting stall, the moment Blissey goes down you have much more opportunities to break the other mons 1 by 1. This is assuming You don't consider other lower Sp.def mons like pyukumuku,Sp.def gligar,nihilego,umbreon, as in stall teams usually blissey is the No.1 switchin with the best sp.def (even thought its Hp and Def invested) and access to instant recovery in softboiled(and wish protect).

Banning blissey would force stall teams to rely on more unconventional pokemons for a sp.def wall but there are big downsides to this. First would be to fit in heal bell or stealth rocks in another pokemon. Rocks on the opponents side is one of the big methods in stall to weaken the opponent and prevent them from switching while status control prevents you from losing to balance or offense teams as you can't outheal them with status like badly poisoned. Second would be weakness and resistance, Blissey is great with a pure normal typing that is only weak to fighting, other pokemon like pyukumu or sp.def gligar are have weaknesses to strong sp.atkers with coverage like mega manectric and primarina. Banning blissey would severely weaken stall as they need to spread out more roles and have probably 3 dedicated sp.def walls(or 1 sp.def and 2 mixed for type coverage) in order to not die to sp.atkers

TL;DR Blissey strong,role of blissey hard to replicate, nerf blissey = nerf stall

sorry if the flow is messy
 
pokeisfun said:
View attachment 193724

don't we deserve a response by now? I don't even mind if you don't want to suspect anything at all. I just want to know what.
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I will be extremely abrupt pif, I would like to say that I am sorry, but I am not.


First point:
You create a poll where 1000 people vote. 63% believe that Stall in UU is unhealthy.
And you conclude that we need to make a suspect about Stall in UU with this poll.

This is an aberrant conclusion. Among this 1000 players, how many know UU ? How many will make a potential suspect ? Less than 100.
You just prove that noobs hate stall and want to nerf it.
If you made the same poll in the lobby Overused, you will see the same despise against stall. Maybe OU needs to ban Chansey ....
(It is a reasoning by contradiction for all the morons who think that I want to ban Chansey in OU ...)

Second point:
I wanted to know if stall is too strong in UU. I ask to someone the last high level tournament with UU games, he responds the snake: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/smogon-snake-draft-iii-replays.3653850/

For now, there is 10 teams. 10% of stall team(~like the ladder) for a winrate of 0%.
The tournament is not finish, but I believe that the usage of stall will be below 30% and the winrate of stall will be below 70%.
If these predictions are corrects, then Stall doesn't deserve any nerf in UU.
 
Have to agree with Stall is coming on that one. I do believe that those kind of poll are really shakky example and shouldn't be used as an illustration of global thinking. Anyone can put whatever answer he wants even if he doesn't know anything about the tier. Plus those kind of statistics are easy to biaised if you have some influence or a community following you since you don't have to argue.

Moreover as I said before, a Blissey suspect is in my opinion the wrong way to look at a potential suspect test. I do believe in this "hate of the stall" and I trully think a lot of players are influenced by this thought.
 
I was planning on waiting until the vote results were concluded before posting, but just for transparency’s sake: Pearl and I asked the council members to vote on this issue early this week, and I’m just waiting on the final vote before posting. With Sage on LoA, we’ve had Corazan fill in as a temporary council member, so thanks to Corazan for assisting us with this!

I should have the final vote by this evening, and can post results then. Thanks to all for your patience.
 
pokeisfun said:
What’s the point of having a poll if you’re always going to say people are biased against stall and the results are invalid?

Please tell us why we had a poll and how it was interpreted in the final results
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Stall is coming or Moutemoute didn’t have anything to do with the creation of the room poll, so I don’t really know what your point is. They’re saying they don’t agree with its results or think that it should result in action, which is fine. They didn’t make it. I did.

I made a roompoll because I wanted to see if people in general supported the idea of pursuing some sort of stall suspect, or if it was an opinion mostly confined to the handful of people in the thread who have been pushing for one. That’s something I wanted to establish before I even opened the door for one with the council. That’s why I opened it up to a council vote once the poll results were finalized.
 
Hogg said:
Stall is coming or Moutemoute didn’t have anything to do with the creation of the room poll, so I don’t really know what your point is. They’re saying they don’t agree with its results or think that it should result in action, which is fine. They didn’t make it. I did.

I made a roompoll because I wanted to see if people in general supported the idea of pursuing some sort of stall suspect, or if it was an opinion mostly confined to the handful of people in the thread who have been pushing for one. That’s something I wanted to establish before I even opened the door for one with the council. That’s why I opened it up to a council vote once the poll results were finalized.
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There point wasn’t they disagree, their point was the poll was biased and can’t be used as evidence. I disagreed, respectfully, and told them their interpretion means do not nerf would always be supported.

You also agree with me apparently and consider the poll in your thoughts. Idk why you’re singling me out when your disagreement is with moute and stall is coming.
 
Sorry for the delay. As I mentioned above, I asked the council members to vote on this issue at the beginning of the week and we just got the results in. Here are the questions I posed to the council:

I think the debates are kind of getting circular at this point, so let’s put it to an official council vote. To reiterate, there’s a strong push to do something about stall on the NP thread and in the UU room, with pif largely leading the charge. Not going to reiterate all of the pros and cons, but if you haven’t already, read his posts and the various responses. The basic argument is that stall is simply too consistent and reliable now, and that there are very few drawbacks to running it versus other playstyles.

However we vote, we are not going to consider complex bans or ability bans (which are outside the scope of what we can address as council), nor should the aim be to demolish stall as an archetype. Any end-goal would NOT be to make stall unplayable or bad. If we do act, we will hold a full suspect test for one of two elements: either Alomomola or Blissey. Yes, I’m aware that there are excellent stall teams lacking one or both elements, and I’m aware that non-stall playstyles use these elements as well. Again, we’re not trying to nerf stall into oblivion, even if we do decide that something needs to be done. Also, even if there is full consensus that we should move forward, the end result will be a public test, not a council ban.

So, two questions:

1. SHOULD WE HOLD A PUBLIC SUSPECT TEST TO POTENTIALLY NERF/LIMIT STALL?

2. IF THE MAJORITY VOTES YES TO QUESTION ONE, SHOULD WE SUSPECT TEST ALOMOMOLA OR BLISSEY?

Please PM me with your answers.

As mentioned, with Sage on leave of absence, we asked Corazan to fill in as a temporary council member.

All in all, the Council voted 7-6 in favor of NOT holding a “stall” test. Council members as always are encouraged to post their reasoning for why they voted the way they did here but I’m also specifically tagging Pearl to summarize the majority opinion; he’s given some explanation as to why he is opposed to a stall suspect on the Discord but I think it makes sense to have it here as well.

Council votes are as follows:

Screenshot_20190905-170659.png

Does this mean that there are no avenues for change? Not necessarily. One point that was brought up several times earlier in the discussion was on suspect testing Regenerator. This is something outside the bounds of the UU council, but if you feel that Regenerator is independently unhealthy, I recommend you take this issue to the Policy Review forum to see if it’s something worth addressing with our overall tiering policy. Standards for banning an ability are significantly higher than those for banning a single ‘mon, so I’m not going to pretend that such an argument will be anything other than an uphill battle, but that is the proper avenue for such a ban.
 
I think that we should suspect Alomomola at least. Alomomola helps in the strengthening of stall since players can just switch between amoonguss mola forever without any consequences while the non player stall feels like its effort is wasted in chunking the enemy down just because of switching in and out repeatedly until alomomola is full health and you have to go through the trouble of doing it again except maybe you have blown your z-move or that your special sweeper is now super low due to hazards being up almost always due to blisseys stupid special bulk and getting rocks up near indefinitely.
 
As I said before, im my opinion, it's not relevant to use those kind of statistics you can get on those kind of poll because people don't have to argue their choice and they can vote even if they don't know anything about the tier. You can make the numbers say anything you want and it's so easy to biaised a public poll like that (especially on a topic like "Stall" which is hated by a large part of the Pokemon playerbase).

While I do agree that some players have been asking for a suspect test around the Stall "issue", we can't deny that others players have also expressed their opinion against this possible issue. This situation is iffy, even within the council as we can see with the current result which is really close and shows that this is an issue for some players but not for others.

You can't say that this result is wrong just because you don't agree with it. Also, I would like to highlight another issue about the respect of each others because there is some players who have been harmful and disrespectful towards other players and/or the UU council and it's pretty damn sad to see those kind of things just because of this whole discussion around "Stall in UU".
 
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Moutemoute said:
As I said before, im my opinion, it's not relevant to use those kind of statistics you can get on those kind of poll because people don't have to argue their choice and they can vote even if they don't know anything about the tier. You can make the numbers say anything you want and it's so easy to biaised a public poll like that (especially on a topic like "Stall" which is hated by a large part of the Pokemon playerbase).

While I do agree that some players have been asking for a suspect test around the Stall "issue", we can't deny that others players have also expressed their opinion against this possible issue. This situation is iffy, even within the council as we can see with the current result which is really close and shows that this is an issue for some players but not for others.

You can't say that this result is wrong just because you don't agree with it. Also, I would like to highlight another issue about the respect of each others because there is some players who have been harmful and disrespectful towards other players and/or the UU council and it's pretty damn sad to see those kind of things just because of this whole discussion around "Stall in UU".
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Well we can bypass this whole "not trusting the pollvoter legitimacy" issue by simply having a suspect. A suspect lets people who can meet the criteria vote. Why not just simply have the suspect then? Idk about your whole point about ppl being mean to each other. I dont think this thread is any more toxic than other threads.
 
Moutemoute said:
Also, I would like to highlight another issue about the respect of each others because there is some players who have been harmful and disrespectful towards other players and/or the UU council and it's pretty damn sad to see those kind of things just because of this whole discussion around "Stall in UU".
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Stall is coming said:
You just prove that noobs hate stall and want to nerf it.
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Moutemoute said:
Have to agree with Stall is coming on that one.
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There’s clearly some issues among the entirety of this suspect thread but not sure why you would act on some moral high ground after agreeing with a post that only fed into said disrespect.

Anyway, this entire thread has just been an awful read. I found the poll to generally prove to be inconsistent as there’s a wide margin between the common player who has no clue how to break a stall team and the seasoned veteran. That’s why the poll is not an accurate representation of how the playerbase feels about Stall currently compared to the council. And it still seems that many in this thread are still in current unrest with the voting that the council went with. That being said, the council still displayed a very split vote of 7-6 in favor of not nerfing Stall. Yet it has been apparent that other suspects have shown very split decisions yet still suspecting elements (ie: Bisharp). Considering that many are still questioning Stall’s presence in the metagame, shouldn’t this be the tipping point in the vote, a figurative extra vote? If the consensus among most of the playerbase is that Stall is broken, shouldn’t the council still at least address their reasonings behind this vote especially since it was so split? It may be the end of a metagame, but shouldn’t we as the players and the council still make it our directive to put this metagame in the best state possible in order to preserve its legitimacy for future gens? ORAS UU was shown to have prevalent flaws even after the end of the generation and it would be a shame to see this metagame follow in its footsteps.

Overall, a public poll was an invalid and biased model to employ a conclusion between the playerbase. Hopefully, we can see more of the reasoning behind the council’s vote at the very least. Have a good day.
 
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Mysil said:
Well we can bypass this whole "not trusting the pollvoter legitimacy" issue by simply having a suspect. A suspect lets people who can meet the criteria vote. Why not just simply have the suspect then? Idk about your whole point about ppl being mean to each other. I dont think this thread is any more toxic than other threads.
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You have to ask yourself what the purpose of a council is, because I think that’s one thing that’s a) failing to be addressed with respect to the results of the vote versus the opinions of “the masses”, and b) what the standards are for someone to be on a council, compared with c) the need for council to exist at all.

The council is supposed to be a collection of some of the most knowledgeable and policy-oriented individuals in a selected tier. These are users that understand our tiering policies, have exemplified a high caliber of consistent play, and demonstrate masterful, theoretical knowledge that can be shared in public or private spheres.

The purpose of (a) Tier Leader(s) in this respect is to identify who those people are, and build a council team that can represent the best potential interests of UU as a whole (NOT the player base).

The purpose of a council member (including TLs) is to use this knowledge and attempt to guide the tier in a direction that conforms with a small combination of their own personal (mature) tiering values combined with their understanding of tiering metrics.

Councils exist so that an inner subjective consensus can be reached amongst the most qualified. In this case, that consensus was a 7-6 vote.

So what does this mean? Well this means that if Adaam (thanks for letting me use you as example friend) decides to vote “yes”, I (as Kink, the council member who voted no) have no personal vitriol against Adaam. He has/had good reasons for voting the way he did, and even though I disagree with him, I respect the process he took to get there. If I want to know more, the best idea is probably to reach out to him personally and figure out some kind of conceptual consensus; neither me or adaam are that far off, so reasonable discussion should illustrate why we felt this was our choice.

I voted no ban because there’s nothing that I’ve seen in my experience that justifies a suspect test. There have been no over-abundance or over-exemplifications of stall being too difficult to handle in any major competitive tour. Most of the games I witnessed were lost because of misplays on the part of the non-stall user. I will never support a test because users want it - the reasons need to demonstrable and consistent, which I don’t feel they are at all.

Now all these primary reasons aside, I have secondary reasons why I don’t thinks suspect tests are harmless. I think needless tests can derail the direction of a tier. This is based on me being involved in 3 generations of tiering. The wrong suspect test at the wrong time can “do wrong” in our attempt to demonstrate the true reality of the tier. And by virtue of my argumentation, I don’t think in the slightest think that a stall suspect test represents where our tier is at and what we’re expecting in terms of closing out SM UU.

I’d rather focus on our upcoming drops. It seems crazy to me to test a stall component when our tier will change radically, and very soon. I’m usually more pro-active when it comes to tests, as my voting record demonstrates, but in this case I think it’s the wrong time, for the wrong reasons.

Post-note: I also personally think pif is crying wolf. He has been offered many times to return to council and could have had his opinion hold true weight with respect to this process, and has rejected this avenue of participation. When a person is offered an opportunity to affect change when they want it and then refuse it, I also take their requests less seriously.
 
I am disappointed that council has elected not to host a suspect test. When the tier reaches a fork in the road, I believe the standard way of proceeding should be to host a public suspect test and implement changes based on the vote. A council vote to not host a suspect test locks the community out from contributing to tier decisions.

Let me be clear: voting not to have a suspect test at all is different from voting "no ban" if a suspect test does occur. I understand that some council members are adamantly opposed to the idea of a Blissey or Alomomola ban, and allowing either of these pokemon to come to a vote always leaves open the possibility of that ban happening. But, in my view, responsible leadership means acknowledging that if others disagree with you, the course of action you deem best might not be the right one overall.

I also recognize that if every potential suspect nomination automatically led to a full-blown test, the council would have limited capacity to lead the tier at all, so I think some compromise between council and community opinion is the correct course of action. The best way in my opinion to account for community opinion is to allow the council to decide on the parameters of a suspect such that either way the public votes, council accepts the outcome.

Here's a proposal for hosting suspects in a way that accounts for council opinion. Rather than asking the council "Should we vote on stall at all? If so, what?", perhaps it would be better to ask "Would you vote to ban Blissey" and "Would you ban Alomomola". Let's say that 3/13 vote to ban Blissey and 6/13 vote to ban Alomomola. Then, rather than not hosting a suspect at all, we could host a suspect in which a larger majority is required to overturn a council vote – say, a 70% majority for Blissey and a 60% majority for Alomomola (these numbers were just made up by me, council could decide on numbers that make them happy).

The point is, voting to not host a suspect at all means that the council is not giving itself the opportunity to gauge the community's opinion and allow its decision to be swayed in the face of heavy opposition, should it exist. I think that this is poor leadership practice and not in good faith with the council's obligation to the UU tier.

tl;dr deciding not to host a suspect shuts the door on compromise between council and community opinion
 
I never want to sit on the council because I’m far more outspoken than any of you and used to have complete respect for the council and the difficult and timely volunteer job you all have - I didn’t want to drown your voices out.

None of this is about me, it’s about our arguments and our tier.

I don’t hold it against anyone for voting do not nerf - it’s a valid position with strong arguments to be made for it.

I find you all ridiculous and pathetic for never apologizing once on your lack of engagement. Including some of you like Amane Misa who is my friend and I totally respect and I believe all 13 of you are better players than me, none of that is relevant.

What’s relevant is you ignored us despite me tagging you here and on discord and on PS. You have wonderful ideals that I agree with. You became elitist in the process and disrespected people
 
pokeisfun said:
I never want to sit on the council because I’m far more outspoken than any of you and used to have complete respect for the council and the difficult and timely volunteer job you all have - I didn’t want to drown your voices out.

None of this is about me, it’s about our arguments and our tier.

I don’t hold it against anyone for voting do not nerf - it’s a valid position with strong arguments to be made for it.

I find you all ridiculous and pathetic for never apologizing once on your lack of engagement. Including some of you like Amane Misa who is my friend and I totally respect and I believe all 13 of you are better players than me, none of that is relevant.

What’s relevant is you ignored us despite me tagging you here and on discord and on PS. You have wonderful ideals that I agree with. You became elitist in the process and disrespected people
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I’m confused as to what your outspokenness has to do with actively not putting yourself in the position to affect the change you posit. Again, you were offered to have your opinion hold weight on this issue and you refused. That’s your responsibility to bare and won’t be shifted to us regardless of how often the word pathetic or elitist is used. https://puu.sh/Eed7e/04a0ee04f7.png you responded to this several hours later. You know you could've had a council spot any time you wanted.

The second you tagged me in SMUU discord, I replied with as much information I could. It’s not my responsibility to comment on a potential suspect test. I’m not the leader of this tier. Communication is a two way street - you asked a question and I replied. I satisfied the expectation of that social interaction, and now you owe me and several others an apology for blatantly insulting us.

This is the last I’m commenting on this issue, and the only reason I didn’t delete your post for blatant disrespect is because this is a valuable learning opportunity for the rest of the users observing this thread. The only avenue that remains to you is to make a PR post and address your issue with the council system. Or, of course, you can reach out to any of us privately to discuss further, as always.

Should anyone have any questions as to how to position their PR post with respect to council systems, reach out and I’ll help you clarify your arguments in a constructive way.
 
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