Concession? Pfft. I just don't feel like arguing with someone that will stick their fingers in their ears and whine for four entire pages despite being shot down by no less than 5 people.
You literally had mods called on you, but sure, nothing wrong.
aren't you the one whining about me here, though? you and your buddies also whined plenty there - even when i tried to change the topic.
i didn't ''have mods called on me'', mods were called on all of us and in fact your bud
who went after me was told to stop flaming by others.
I'll use my RBY Bulbasaur example.
In a vacuum, it starts off nice, falls off badly until Razor Leaf, then it turns out rather mediocre
no...it doesn't? rby bulbasaur can power through stuff with swords dance + body slam that resist grass - not all stuff but quite a few, and razor leaf's sheer power combined with sleep powder's utility allows him to power through lorelei and bruno while also doing well against some of agatha's pokemon (poke flute negs sleep if it's on you) and lance (admittedly his tendency to spam barrier against venusaur due to flawed ai helps).
that's an easy a-tier pokemon, solid in the beginning and in the end as well. you might need some healing but who doesn't really against the e4?
I think the important difference is less about whether those trainers are
optional and more about whether they're
out of the way. I do not play GSC, so I'll use Emerald as my example.
Let's say you're on Roue 110. You just defeated Brendan/May, so your next major fight is Wattson. If you completely avoid all the spinners on Route 110 and walk around the gym trainers in Wattson's gym, and your Marshtomp can still solo Wattson, then that's great.
Another Pokemon, like Shroomish, probably can't do that. But if it can solo Wattson after you get experience from just approaching all the trainers that are already on your way to Wattson (which is probably easier than avoiding all of them), then I'd argue that Shroomish is just as useful against Wattson compared to Marshtomp. I'd even say that it's fine to fight trainers on routes 111 or 118. You have to visit those routes, fight those trainers, and take that experience at some point, so why not do it before Wattson?
On the other hand, let's say your third Pokemon is Kirlia, you have already defeated those technically optional trainers, and Kirlia still can't solo Wattson. If soloing Wattson with Kirlia requires sidetracking to places like Trick House or Route 117, backtracking to the bikers on Route 110, or generally defeating trainers that are obviously
out of the way, then Kirlia's matchup against Wattson should be considered worse than Marshtomp's or Shroomish's, even if both Shroomish and Kirlia require defeating trainers that are technically optional. I do it by reading
this table to see what their levels should be, and then putting those levels in Showdown!'s damage calculator. There might be an easier way that I don't know about.
this is far more reasonable and i can agree with this in most games.
the thing is that gsc is so bad with its level curve that the tier list policy is to assume a standard team size of 4 mons. indeed, it's very easy to be underleveled during the mid-game and e4 with 6 mons
even if you go out of your way to fight out-of-the-way trainers. even with 4 mons, it's far from guaranteed you'll be in shape in time,
Random Passerby, the person in charge of that tier list, even with 4 mons somehow ended up with pokemon at only l37 tops by the elite four's door (the final gym leader has a l40 pokemon, in contrast) and he thinks detours are fine if they're not too out-of-the-way, pretty much like you do. no game really comes close to gsc in terms of having a broken level curve for four mons, forget six.
in emerald, your strategy would likely be fine. gsc, not so much...
I wanted to pick out this line in particular because it brings up a dilemma I am facing now I am focusing on BW2 Tiering at the moment.
Let's take BW2 Magnemite for example. In a vacuum, it is probably not S-Rank efficient, because while it walls 80% of the game, its lack of actually good offensive options to deal with major trainers for quite a sizeable portion of the game. On the other hand, because of its resists and Eviolite Magneton being a viable strategy in that game, it offers a team extremely useful support. Because it can wall things, it means you can afford to use turns to heal teammates and not have to use a HM Slave or something as death fodder. Furthermore, it's capable of crippling dangerous threats with Thunder Wave, and can win matchups against dangerous threats at lower levels relative to other Pokémon, allowing you to get away with doing things at lower levels than normal. Based on that, an argument could be made that it could be S-Rank because of the support and defensive backbone it provides an ingame team (whether you stick with Eviolite Magneton or evolving it into Magnezone for the extra power).
Essentially what I am asking is this: Should we be looking at tiering these Pokémon purely in a vacuum, or should we also be taking into account what a Pokémon has to offer for a team? Noting that isn't to say that Magnemite is definitively S-Rank or A-Rank in BW2 with or without considering its support, but it is going to be important nevertheless as I go through the list with a fine comb.
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As for the topic of trainer fights, I'm not too worried with fighting optionals. In general it would be inefficient, but in some cases, it would be efficient to do so as that extra level could make the difference between winning and losing a critical fight. After all, there is nothing more inefficient than losing a fight. Even some speedruns might go out of their way to fight optionals for a long term time save (e.g. the Charmander Route in FRLG Speedruns fights most trainers in Viridian Forest so you can get Metal Claw for Brock and have an easier time on Route 3).
very good question. i personally think that as contributors to a tier list, we should encourage people on how best to optimize their teams without having to go
really out of the way to do it. for instance, most people - i think it's fair to say, anyway - don't have any intention of speedrunning or solo running. most people generally fight trainers when they can and grind in the wild at least a little bit (i do both of these things in most runs), although they may or may not fight every out-of-the-way trainer. i'm almost certain that most people plan on having multiple pokemon in their team, 4 probably being the lowest common number in any game and most likely aiming for 5-6 outright. therefore, we need to advise players in a way that helps them optimize their gameplay in a way that doesn't
tremendously change their normal gameplay behavior.
what does that mean? to me personally, that means we shouldn't be asking people to skip trainer battles or (slight) wild grinding, given that those are kinda the point of the game. yes, the less training required, the better - and mons that require less training to be awesome can refer to that as a plus point. however, the vast majority of mons
will require some training to keep up with or surpass opponents, and when that's the norm and not the exception they shouldn't be penalized for it unless they're something truly awful like a l10 tyrogue from an endgame trainer. that means we shouldn't be asking people to speedrun or solo run. we can
recommend a team size of 4 pokemon minimum - this is a good team size in any game and arguably even necessary in gsc/hgss, and a (mostly) happy compromise between having 6 underleveled mons and 1-2 overleveled mons.
now, to answer your question more directly -
yes. as you said, magnemite isn't capable of reliably taking down a good number of trainers, but they do have excellent support options, very good resistances, and can be surprisingly good at defeating higher leveled opponents. these are all magnemite's own qualities making it excellent, not those of other mons. we have
spearow as s-tier in the gsc tier list and while he also lacks the ability to take down a good number of trainers (probably even
worse at the job than the magnet pokemon - few defensive benefits either), they benefit from normal + flying stabs in a game that hands you normal-type tms like swift and return early on, give you 24% boosts to both stabs by the 3rd badge, pit spearow against a lot of early foes that they have some advantage against - sprout tower, bugsy, and to a small extent falkner.
in keeping with that, i also am of the belief that slow growth pokemon that don't serve some important purpose or aren't particularly relevant against major ingame opponents should be penalized, while fast growth pokemon that aren't trash should be rewarded.