Announcement DPP OU Post-SPL XIII Survey Results and Discussion

Hello, the DPP council sent out a survey after SPL to all DPP players involved with the tournament in a significant capacity. We asked questions geared towards finding out how they feel about the current metagame. We received 20/24 responses. Thank you to all those who responded: Excal ABR mael BKC johnnyg2 Malekith Christo Jirachee snøfall Emeral Sakito PDC Kristyl SFG crayon pop august BIHI M Dragon DeepBlueC and Tamahome! We will show highlights from each question, as well as show each council member's thoughts. Without further ado, let's get into it!

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Enjoyment and quality of the tier is generally appraised to be roughly a 7-8/10, which is a pretty decent result! People participating in SPL are enjoying the tier and finding it to be a decent metagame. As for teambuilding, the results are quite mixed and it's hard to see any trends in the data. There are mixed opinions on how easy it is to teambuild and how much people enjoy it, which is to be expected.

Next, we asked people the biggest question right up front: "Which statement most accurately describes how you feel about Jirachi in DPP OU?"
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Some noteworthy statistics:
- 0% of people consider Jirachi to be balanced
- 50% of people consider Jirachi to be borderline
- 50% of people consider Jirachi to be problematic
- 80% of people think that no tiering action should take place

Council member responses:
Jirachi is on the verge of being broken but is manageable. Random hax from serene grace iron head, fire punch, ice punch, body slam has limited counterplay and can swing games uncontrollably. The limited counterplay stems from bad distribution of abilities like static and flame body and other elements of good pokemon synergize too well with it (Clefable Knock Off and Tyranitar Sand). The metagame has reached a decent state and there is no need to do anything extremely drastic tiering-wise, especially right now.
i think that the time of pretending that overcentralization in the metagame is healthy (i.e., saying that jirachi is a necessary evil) needs to come to an end. i would like to see what the community thinks about 3 things: sleep, jirachi, and latias. i think that all 3 of these are potentially problematic for the long term health of the tier.
Consider iron head ban as we already discussed, if we can't ban it keep jira
I think that Jirachi is the best pokemon in DPP OU atm, and that 60% iron head flinch is very annoying. However, I think that it holds everything together, and that the meta without Jira would be much worse.
Iron Head is the biggest issue with Jirachi. 60% chance to flinch every turn, with each turn being an independent event, it's problematic to me. Jirachi also has moves like Body Slam + Thunder Wave to enable it to outspeed the metagame and proceed to flinch. Given Jirachi's bulk, most pokemon need to be able to hit it twice in a span of 1-4 turns, otherwise all the damage inflicted on Jirachi in the first turn would be negated by all the leftovers recovery it would have gained by the time you land the second hit. Moves like Fire Punch and Ice Punch with their additional hax odds is an issue.

If banning Jirachi entirely is on the table, then I'm up for it. I don't believe that Jirachi is this special mon that holds everything together. We just haven't had a metagame without Jirachi to be able to easily conclude that without it the meta would crumble.
The consensus on Jirachi is that it's not balanced and (potentially) problematic, but that the metagame with it is in a decent-good enough state to where people do not want action taken on it. We discussed Iron Head in council, despite it not being a feasible option due to tiering policy. Although some council members like DeepBlueC and BIHI think an Iron Head ban would improve the tier, council members such as myself had different opinions. I think that it would not fully solve the Jirachi issue, as other aspects of Serene Grace like Fire Punch, Body Slam, and Ice Punch are still issues. It could also exacerbate issues with other Pokemon like Clefable. The tl;dr for me is that it's a bandaid that wouldn't fully solve the problem and I am not 100% convinced that it would even improve the metagame.

We had conversations about what would need to happen if Jirachi were to leave the metagame, and we are going to continue to keep an eye on this Pokemon, but it was made very clear in the survey that Latias would need to leave alongside Jirachi. It's also a tremendous risk given this tier's decade-plus-long history with the Pokemon, and no one can truly predict how the tier would end up with it removed.

Next, we asked people about some other Pokemon in the tier: "Which statement most accurately describes how you feel about Clefable in DPP OU?"
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Noteworthy statistics:
- 55% of people consider Clefable to be balanced
- 85% of people think no tiering action should take place
- 0% of people think Clefable is problematic and that no tiering action should take place

Council member responses:
We cannot get rid of Clefable in any capacity because it is our only defensive mixgon check and counterplay to hazards and a variety of special attackers. It is balanced, with the exception of Knock Off being overwhelming to deal with.
clefable is really good in spikes wars for obvious reasons. i think that the type of teams that just get murdered by clefable these days are few and far between though. i don't see it as much of a problem after the dugtrio ban
almost op but we can't ban it anyway since it's one of the things that keep the tier balanced imo
Clefable being immune to sand, burn / toxic and especially hazards is what make stall vs stall games more annoying, especially with its ability to remove leftovers with knock off. If there was something to change in current DPP OU atm, in my opinion it would be something related with Clefable for sure, but since I like current DPP OU I think that no tiering action should take place atm.
Clef is excellent with Magic Guard + Knock Off + Support moves. Magic guard gives it immunity to so many things like sand + status (no sleep). It's also able to spam Knock Off much more freely than any other Knock Off user. The support moves like thunder wave or encore prevent pokemon from being able to set up vs it. It's borderline to me and no tiering action should take place because Clefable can be beaten easily, but because we make sacrifices in the builder for other problematic pokemon, Clefable poses a bigger threat. For example, something like Taunt set up users like Tyranitar or Gyarados could have a better chance at beating Clefable if they didn't also need to run coverage for mons like Breloom (TTar needs Fire or Ice Punch) or Jirachi (Gyara's biggest benefit for running EQ is hitting Jirachi imo).

A lot of people find Clefable to be balanced and consider it a glue for the tier thanks to its Spikes immunity and flexible defensive capabilities. Knock Off was highlighted several times to be extremely strong/overwhelming. Some people who think tiering action should take place on Clefable cite that it would make Jirachi significantly less oppressive, which is an argument that has merit. For now, however, the council unanimously thinks Clefable is fine as-is in the metagame.

"Which statement most accurately describes how you feel about Latias in DPP OU?"
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Some noteworthy statistics:
- 50% of people think Latias is balanced and 50% of people think that it's borderline or problematic
- 5% of people (only 1 person in this instance) think tiering action should take place

Council member responses:
Although I can't say for sure if it was a good idea for Latias to be freed into DPP OU, it's a balanced Pokemon that strongly centralizes the metagame. It is not likely to be feasible to justify getting rid of it and leaving another Pokemon like Jirachi completely alone.
i'm torn here. latias provides a nice weapon to offensive teams, but its main sets these days are not offensive. it has, in my opinion, really homogenized the metagame. i don't necessarily think thats a bad thing, but the cost of adding it to teams is basically 0. at the end of the day it gives resists to crucial typings, has access to a huge support movepool, and is spikes immune and rocks neutral
tias brings a good balance to the tier imo
While it is true that Latias is great at keeping a lot of threats in check, It also has some clear weakness to keep it balanced. I think that its presence in the meta these years has been positive overall
I find Specs Latias to be a healthy addition to the tier. Zapdos and Heatran seemed incredibly strong, and it's nice for offensive teams to have some defensive answer other than TTar for special attackers.

The defensive set is probably an issue because of the variety of moves + spreads Lati can have. Thunder Wave / Thunderbolt / Ice Beam / Reflect / Roar / Grass Knot / Dragon Pulse / Wish / Protect can be a bit too much for offensive teams to handle. I do think people are now teching mons to handle Latias better, like Outrage Gyara or Dragon Pulse Heatran.
People seem very divided and uncertain of Latias overall. Some think it has been a good influence on the metagame, others are not sure, and some also think it has not been a good influence. Latias has very much homogenized DPP and has strongly altered the types of structures we see today, but is this all because of Latias's influence or perhaps because it influenced tier growth at a faster rate for other reasons?

Overall, we can break it down very simply like this, based on survey responses:

Positives:
- Blessing for offense, helps a lot against Zapdos/Infernape/Swampert/Suicune among others
- Great utility options to support teams in unique ways
- Increased homogeneity emphasizes skill among more seasoned playerbase
- Nice defensive glue that can be said to have balanced the tier more

Negatives:
- Unclear to many if its reintroduction was a net positive
- Defensive set can be too overbearing and might have made defensive teams too strong
- Homogeneity can be perceived as a negative influence to make tier more "boring" and more of a chore to build
- Forcing more grounded structures with 2x steels almost always + slower teams exacerbates other metagame issues like hazards

For our purposes, the council will keep an eye on Latias, but nothing too unexpected came up from the survey.

"Which statement most accurately describes how you feel about Flygon in DPP OU?"
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Some noteworthy statistics:
- 20% of people think Flygon is borderline
- 100% of people do not think that tiering action should take place

Council member responses:
Mixed Flygon in combination with Spikes has extremely limited defensive checks, and its speed tier and perfect coverage coupled with its longevity makes it a nuisance to deal with ingame and in the builder. It is on the verge, like Jirachi, of borderline and problematic, but no tiering action should be done as Flygon contributes a great deal to the metagame.
N/A (thinks Flygon is not even close to an issue)
LO is very good but not broken, people just need to adapt
I think that Flygon is far from being broken or uncompetitive
Mixed Flygon is probably what was being referred to here, but it's not an issue unless it is paired with spikes. I don't think the problem is Mixed Flygon here. I will admit that it doesn't help that most pokemon that are meant to deal with specs draco from Latias, are consequently weak to Mixed Flygon.
Almost everyone considers Flygon to be absolutely not problematic in the slightest. This was 100% anticipated, but we wanted to see how people felt about Mixed Flygon because the metagame this SPL was more favorable to it than any previous DPP metagame. I'm in the minority in thinking the Pokemon is borderline. I would say that my opinion since I filled out the survey has shifted a bit. At most it's borderline to me, but it's manageable with more respect and adaptation to the Pokemon. One thing we saw come up in the survey a lot was that people considered MixGon to be "weak" power-wise, which I completely disagree with. Its hazard resistance, sand immunity, and great longevity allow it to be one of the few Pokemon to reliably run Life Orb, which more than compensates for its lack of power. Spikes definitely exacerbate MixGon's effectiveness, and perhaps MixGon is just a symptom of Spikes being overbearing more so than the Pokemon itself being very cumbersome. Either way, very interesting to see peoples' opinion on the Pokemon, but naturally the council never anticipates to have to take any tiering action on Flygon.

"Which statement most accurately describes how you feel about Spore/Sleep in DPP OU?"
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Some noteworthy statistics:
- 20% of people think Sleep is balanced, but 65% do not support any tiering action
- 80% of people think Sleep is borderline or problematic

Additional note: Several people mentioned in their responses that they wish they had more nuanced options to fill for this part of the survey, will touch on that more below.

Council member responses:
Breloom is not problematic whatsoever. Sleep serves as a chaotically healthy means of breaking defensive teams and targeting Jirachi, Skarmory, Latias, and Clefable who are very difficult Pokemon to overcome in the builder. There is more than enough sufficient counterplay to sleep, both via ingame strategies and sleep absorbers.
sleep adds an unnecessary element of RNG to the game, and should be banned in all gens 3-5 (imo)
spore is broken but we shouldn't ban it if we don't nerf stall in some way at the same time
I think that sleep is generally balanced, since there is solid counterplay in the form of sleep talk. The only form of sleep that could be problematic is Spore Breloom, so I would rather say that "Spore Breloom" than "Sleep" in general. I think that Spore Breloom is one of those things that you need to be prepared for, and that its annoying and limiting, but that it is not "strong enough" or "broken enough" to justify a ban in my eyes. I think that sleep is a core mechanic and part of the game we play, and unless extreme circumstances (like gen 5 sleep) it shouldnt be banned.
Sleep just generates way too many free turns for your opponent to completely turn the game around in their favor. Hypnosis Zong and Spore Loom are issues imo. I would very much like to run pokemon like CB TTar or CB Swampert, but the paranoia of running into spore loom dissuades me from using those pokemon. When taking a spore vs a loom, you also don't know if you are facing a subpunch set or a spore + 3 attack set. The tier doesn't have a reliable way of dealing with sleep rather than running surprise sleep-talk pokemon. And Breloom is a pokemon that will be capable finding a way to spore or set up even vs offense.

At first, the council seemed quite divided on sleep as an issue. However, as we dug into survey responses and discussed sleep more, the perspective seemed to shift in favor of not doing anything about sleep for the moment at least (besides DBC). When you look at the individual responses, they tell a different story from the chart. A lot of the pro-ban sleep arguments had vernacular which was unspecific to DPP (sleep as a mechanic across more than 1 generation for example). People also mentioned that sleep shouldn't be our main focus right now, even if they did not deem it as balanced.

BIHI, M Dragon, and I felt that the arguments against banning sleep were stronger in the survey than those that favored tiering action, and august later changed his perspective that he "couldn't care less" about sleep and that there are "bigger fish to fry". Additionally, people mentioned that they would have preferred options like "sleep is problematic and tiering action should be considered". Personally, I think sleep is an easy thing to look at and say "this should be banned" because it feels significantly less consequential to outright ban than a Pokemon like Jirachi or Latias. Maybe down the line we would redo the sleep question under different criteria, however for now the council does not think sleep is an issue overall.

After we finished asking about all these Pokemon and sleep, we asked a few more questions to wrap up the survey.

"Are there any other potential issues with the tier that the survey did not necessarily cover? (Write N/A if no)"

Most people wrote N/A, but we got a few interesting mentions that could definitely be great discussion points in this thread:
- Knock Off
- Spikes
- Unbanning a Pokemon (Salamence/Mew)
- Copycat

"What, if anything, would you do to improve DPP OU?"


People mainly discussed things like (Iron Head) Jirachi, Latias, and sleep, which is why we went for these removed from the metagame in the DPP OU suspect slot in DPP PL. Very interesting to see how this metagame will shape up!

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That's pretty much it! If anyone is interested in hearing additional information that was in the survey, feel free to post about it here. I encourage all those who filled out the survey as well as anyone reading to post your thoughts on everything here. Thank you for reading, and a special thank you to everyone on the DPP council for contributing to this post as well as the discussions we had about the results.
 
Hey guys!

Just wanted to start by saying thanks to the DPP council for hearing my opinion on the current metagame! I've been building and playing a lot more dpp recently, so wanted to talk a bit about the last part of the survey, different than rachi/lati/clef/flygon/sleep questions (which are all excellent points). I was one of the people who talked about a spikes ban. I know this option isn't on the table at the moment, but I wanted to discuss why exactly I said this and what I think it could accomplish.

tl;dr The reason why to suspect spikes is to help slow the pace that stall can wear down grounded stallbreakers such as :Breloom: and :Heatran: while helping defensive counterplay to mixed sweepers such as :flygon: and :jirachi:. With this, teams don't need such a breakneck pace to beat stall and can help even out what is often a polar metagame between HO and Stall.

Spikes play an incredibly important part in the metagame and their feature on a team arguably is the dividing factor between different archetypes. With only stealth rock, the defensive synergy of big 5 stall teams (scarf :tyranitar:, fast :jirachi:, :clefable:, :skarmory:, :latias: + x, typically a ground such as :hippowdon: or :quagsire:) as well as other stall teams built around wishtect :jirachi: can feel suffocating without the offensive synergy of multiple dragon dance sweepers, multiple trick users, or explosion that we see on spikeless hyper offense teams. With spikes (most commonly due to :skarmory: due to the ease of fit on both offensive and defensive teams, but also :roserade:, :forretress:, :qwilfish:, and :froslass: among others), pokemon such as choice specs lati, dd tar, and mixed flygon become much more effective, as their answers are primarily grounded walls and spikes can help overwhelm these defensive pieces.

However, spikes are more common on stall teams, and their effectiveness is one of the big reason why stall is so prevalent in the metagame. Because of how excellent of a pokemon skarmory (to a lesser extent forre) is, spikes are very easy to fit for defensive teams. Spikes are incredibly effective in limiting how often offensive breakers such as :heatran:, :breloom:, and :swampert: can come in. Heatran's Magma Storm + Taunt or Explosion (provided it hits ... ) is very effective in removing clef and latias from play, while also using strong fire stab against the rest of the tier, especially jirachi. But if tran can only come in twice before it dies to hazards, which are quite easy to set up, how often can it break a defensive team if it misses a magma storm on defensive lati, for example. Loom, Swampert, machamp, choice band tyranitar, metagross, basically any grounded offensive poke without a recovery move is the same way -- how often can they come in and break stall if they only have 2 or 3 chances to do so? This often forces offense either into a breakneck pace and/or to use spikes themselves, most notably with mixed jirachi or flygon + copycat lucario to break open defensive teams.

In comparison to other gens, DPP has the least amount of viable hazard control, as compared to adv, all of the major spinners got worse and dpp didn't add any new spinners, mostly notably excadrill in BW. Defog doesn't exist in its current form and DPP added Rotom-A, probably the best spinblocker to ever exist while tyranitar got physical pursuit to harass starmie and claydol. The overall pace of the metagame is often too fast to afford forre on offense like in the last gen. Because of this, spinning is typically only found on specific archetypes (like zap star rachi bliss or on stall), and as such, can feel hard to fit on offensive teams built around a grounded breaker. Because of how easy it is to lay spikes and how they limit counterplay to mixed sweepers like flygon and jirachi, slower offensive teams (mag offense, tr zong stuff, tran loom, water spam (lol), rose tspikes/spikes offense) often find themselves both unable to keep up with the momentum of hyper offense teams and flygon spikes while also struggling to break stall. A spike ban might give these teams more breathing room in their stall mu as well as handling mix sweepers + copycat lucario so that they can better combat hyper offense.

There are definitely some downsides to suspecting spikes. Stall might need to go more in much more of a star zap bliss (bliss is almost certainly the biggest winner of a spikes ban) rachi style focusing more heavily on defensive redundancy rather than what we see in big 5 styles focused on a fast rachi as a sweeper (here is an example replay how a simple specs lati + gengar combo can bust open a big 5, imagine this without spikes to wear down the rest of blessy's team after gar went down). This might force the meta into a much slower state than it is now. also banning a move is against smogon policy

Hopefully this showed how maybe a spikes ban might help ease the issues of borderline threats such as jirachi, latias, and clefable in the metagame. Despite what I just said, i do enjoy playing and building in dpp; it can just sometimes be a challenge to prepare for another strong player without fishing due to the power of the tools available on stall and ho.
 
Jirachi

For those wondering why no tiering action is being taken for Jirachi, it's because of the tiering policy. The tiering policy states that if a move, as is, is not problematic, but rather it becomes an issue when used by a specific pokemon, then the problem lies with the specific pokemon, and not the move. In such a situation, the pokemon should be banned, and not the move. So in this situation, Iron Head would be the move that is at issue. Iron Head is accessible to pokemon like Metagross and Scizor, but Iron Head is never a problem when used by pokemon like Metagross or Scizor, but it is a problem when used by Jirachi, due to which the conclusion is that the problem is Jirachi due to its access to Serene Grace. So in this situation, the relevant tiering action would be to ban Jirachi entirely, which personally I am onboard with.

My main issue with Jirachi is that there's never a safe way to handle it. Unless you are running leftovers Heatran, almost every pokemon in the tier can lose to the standard physical set -> Iron Head / Fire Punch / Body Slam. Bulky water types like Quagsire or Swampert can resist Iron Head, but if they incur a timely Fire Punch burn, their chances of dealing with Jirachi reduces. You have to instead pray that you switch your Quag or Swamp into a body slam paralysis just so that you don't risk getting burnt. And if you end up getting a para, you could be worse against other threats like DD TTar where not landing an EQ could result in the DD TTar sweeping your team. The point I'm making here is that not only does Jirachi have this incredible ability of beating pokemon that possess the typing and bulk to deal with Jirachi's physical set, but it can also support so many of its teammates by wearing down the checks/counters for its teammates.

These are some recent replays (there are more replays I can provide) for your reference but just watch from the following turns to see how Jirachi can easily flinch past some bulky pokemon/resists:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-623720 (from turn 55)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-1560360838-wka913fdo0tfaj1hxpcwyqzvwh35cuopw (from turn 28)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-1491431613-7mddxa41y2w56bhpl7f3eukrr3bslk9pw (from turn 40)

In my week 2 SPL game vs Sakito, at the end of the game, I was at the mercy of Jirachi where if it landed a series of 4-5 consecutive flinches, I would lose. I admittedly did make my odds worse by making my Rotom take an additional 12% health damage when I didn't notice the Heatran's leftovers, but at that point to me, the outcome of the game was always going to come down to Jirachi vs Rotom. I was incredibly lucky to avoid a flinch and immediately thunderbolt to win the game. If this exact same scenario was replayed another time, I perhaps would not be so lucky. And so my issue is that vs Jirachi, you're almost always at the mercy of RNG, and you just hope that "may the odds be ever in your favor."

EDIT: For further clarification, I do not want it to sound like our hands are completely tied by the tiering policy. Even if we were permitted to ban Iron Head alone, we haven't had a discussion of whether we would all be in consensus of removing Iron Head alone while still keeping Jirachi in the tier. Excal points out in the OP that Jirachi has other problematic traits with Serene Grace, such as the odds of freezing (Ice Punch), burning (Fire Punch), and paralyzing (Body Slam), and that banning Iron Head alone would simply be a temporary solution.
 
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Jirachee

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I agree with BIHI's and DBC's position that the problematic element in Jirachi is mostly Iron Head.

I want to elaborate a bit on my survey responses; in my opinion Jirachi is at the root of all the problems in the metagame. I'd like to see tiering action taken on it. The problem with it, everyone knows about: nothing else has its ability to cleave through soft answers. How many times have you seen Jirachi beat Rotom, Hippowdon, Zapdos, Suicune, Gliscor, etc. with only Iron Head? All it realistically needs is Sand up, and with Tyranitar frequently sitting atop the usage lists your opponent might just be so kind to even set it up for you. Jirachi is unbelievably resilient; it's immune to both Sand and Toxic, resists Stealth Rock and a bunch of attacking moves, and even learns Refresh to get rid of paralysis and burn. As a result, it's very hard to tech for it, and you'll most likely need to pack a hard answer as well as a few soft checks if you don't want to give your opponent the free shot at flinching your whole team late game. This puts extreme strain on teambuilding as well as play.

This causes the metagame to become not just centralized but also predictable. There's a handful of Pokemon that reliably beat Jirachi one on one, examples being Swampert, Heatran, and Bronzong. There's also passive damage, but Jirachi is only vulnerable to Spikes. It also just so happens that a very large portion of Jirachi's answers are easy Spikes for Skarmory. An easy pairing for any shrewd builder to make would then be to pair Jirachi with Spikes, and hopefully then take advantage of the entire metagame. The reintroduction of Latias has also exacerbated that issue; it easily handles a lot of the threats that could take advantage of the turn Skarmory is using Spikes, such as Heatran or Zapdos. It's also made fat Steels close to mandatory, which are either easy prey for Skarmory, or vulnerable to Spikes themselves.

The counterargument often brought up to defend Jirachi's presence in the tier is that it holds everything together. I don't exactly buy that. Metagross and Bronzong are two amazing Pokemon that see less usage because they share Jirachi's exact typing. Scizor's another fantastic Pokemon that's held down by Jirachi at the moment. DPP's not exactly short on bulky offensive Steel types, so I think we could easily live without Jirachi. While we may have exacerbated the reliance on Jirachi by unbanning Latias, it's not too late to backtrack.

I appreciate the council for being transparent with the playerbase, surveys like this should be held more often. Cheers!

:toast:
 

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