In Game Tiering Threads List

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No, it's a different issue.

Due to the nature of the encounters in those games (on overworld, you can pick what to use, on top of candies in Let's go and raids in SwSh) it's much more difficult to make a "tierlist" due to the fact honestly everything is usable.

We had some chat about SwSh tierlist, and the biggest barrier to make one is the fact the Wild Area offers an *absurd* amount of pokemon right away, and that's not even factoring time manipulation or raid usage.
Part of the "tiering" system was due to the rarity and position of the pokemon (es, if a pokemon stomps the game but it's a 1% spawn in a backtrack area, say Salamence in USUM), it'd be low tier due to the time investment required. This is nearly nonexistant in SwSh, partly due to overworld encounters (allowing you to see the spawns so not requiring to waste time running in grass), and partly due to the insane amount of available pokemon early in the game, even in the first half of the wild area itself.
fwiw i think even with that aspect, it's not blending the lines that much.
While you get to see all the spawns at once, they stick around for a while so you either have ot routinely burn through the encounters, wait for them to despawn or constantly reload the area. It was easier for me to find that 2% Drakloak encounter at lake of outrage, but ti still took a fair amount of shuffling them in & out of the spawn radius.

There's also the encounters that don't spawn on the overworld, like the 2% encounters from hell that litter the routes & wild area that only spawn in shaking grass. But routes still have their own set of pokemon that show up there specifically in general.

Other considerations:
-Weather, though we've talked about that in the other thread. There's overlap between pokemon, areas and weathers and some weathers are purposely later in the game (or post game!) and probably rarer in general, especially if we dont account for day manipulation. That'll definitely affect rankings.
-Here's a quirky one: size of the pokemon. Smaller pokemon especially blend in with the grass. One time I ran into a salandit and didn't even realize it and wasn't able to find another one because it blended in. Mimikyu is tiny and only shows on the overworld in one specific patch of grass in the fog.

And this is all just focusing on availability and not the other factors in tiering like how useful it is, movepool considerations, direct competition, dead periods, etc
 
I'll post a few thoughts here, in case anyone cares. These are mostly based on my solos, but you can modify the concepts for team playthroughs if you wish.


-Most of the grinding in Sword and Shield is based on getting Watts and candies in the Wild Area, and maybe TR drops from the weaker Max Raids if you're lucky. This means your team will have fewer EVs compared to earlier games, so be sure to buy vitamins in Wyndon with your spare cash!


-There will probably be fewer S rank monsters because the boss battles are harder than in earlier games. Even a "good" Pokemon like my solo Galvantula had to be at Level 82 to beat Leon, and that was with TRs, making sure to buy Carbos and Calcium, etc.


-Fire resistance or weakness might be a factor in tiering. The NPCs aren't kidding when they say Kabu is a difficult opponent relative to earlier Gym Leaders. Eternatus can be troublesome with Flamethower in its base form or Max Flare in its Gigantamax form. All the hype from the characters is for Leon's Charizard, but the real Fire threat is from Dragapult's Flamethrower. Cinderace is another one for slower Pokemon to watch out for if you picked Grookey.


(Then again, team playthroughs have Eternatus just before Leon, so earlier Pokemon may not have to participate in the final battle to get a decent grade.)


-Be sure to qualify whether the tiering applies to Sword or Shield, due to the version exclusive Gym Leaders and Champion's Cup finals. This is important when considering monsters who are good or bad against the following types: Fighting, Ghost, Rock, and Ice.


-Physical attackers will have a hard time, especially those that depend on contact moves. Kabu has Will o Wisp and Intimidate. Bea can Counter with her Hitmontop if you fail to KO it in one move. Allister's Ghosts are immune to Normal and Fighting, and his Cursola has Strength Sap in the rematch. Opal's Mawile has Intimidate too, but the quiz can make up for it. If you're playing Shield, Melony's Eiscue can block the 1st physical attack. Obstagoon's Obstruct in the Piers battle debuffs Defense upon contact, and Skuntank has Aftermath. Raihan likes to debuff Attack with Flygon's Breaking Swipe, and Sandaconda's Fire Fang Burn if you're unlucky. And Leon's Aegislash has King's Shield, which doesn't seem to have a predictable AI pattern. Some of this can be mitigated by switching Pokemon, but it's still worth noting.


-Whenever I look at the index for the tier threads, I see multiple threads for the same game. It may be a good idea to start a thread soon and make another one later if you need to make revisions, because this has already happened for other installments. Maybe availability shouldn't matter as much for the initial tier list, and instead have it be like "If you happen to get this Pokemon on the first trip to the Wild Area, how does it perform"?
 
I might be getting ahead of myself here but you are like the only person I've seen talk about grinding in any real aspect with building up watts and vitamins and so on. And honestly I'd say Leon is about the only real hard battle provided you have a balanced team (& even then an unbalanced team will probably do fine).

Like I guess if you're specifically soloing, sure, but...
 
I might be getting ahead of myself here but you are like the only person I've seen talk about grinding in any real aspect with building up watts and vitamins and so on. And honestly I'd say Leon is about the only real hard battle provided you have a balanced team (& even then an unbalanced team will probably do fine).

Like I guess if you're specifically soloing, sure, but...

My playthroughs so far have been solos. Galvantula won without having to use any Battle Items (e.g. Full Restores, X items), but Wooloo choked at the last minute and had to resort to X Attack and X Speed during the Leon fight. I guess I have the most fun when I try to push a Pokemon to its limits. Are there any kind of Battle Item rules as far as the rankings go?


Grinding for Watts or fighting Raids repeatedly is necessary for certain Pokemon to find their best moves, and will harm their "efficiency" score. Galvantula happens to be one of these, since it's so dependent on TRs. It doesn't get Thunderbolt, Thunder, Leech Life, or Energy Ball through levels. And Galvantula needs Thunder to make certain KOs. Players will no doubt find other examples when they do their test playthroughs.
 
My playthroughs so far have been solos. Galvantula won without having to use any Battle Items (e.g. Full Restores, X items), but Wooloo choked at the last minute and had to resort to X Attack and X Speed during the Leon fight. I guess I have the most fun when I try to push a Pokemon to its limits. Are there any kind of Battle Item rules as far as the rankings go?
it's been a while since I really dug into rankings but I think the general idea is they're tiered without respect for battle items because they can be applied to any pokemon and make things a relative cake walk. Rankings always walk a fine line on what they're actually ranking if i'm being honest.
Grinding for Watts or fighting Raids repeatedly is necessary for certain Pokemon to find their best moves, and will harm their "efficiency" score. Galvantula happens to be one of these, since it's so dependent on TRs. It doesn't get Thunderbolt, Thunder, Leech Life, or Energy Ball through levels. And Galvantula needs Thunder to make certain KOs. Players will no doubt find other examples when they do their test playthroughs.
Now that's a good point I wasn't thinking about. I ignored these things the whole game out of a grim necessity of trying to squeeze any form of difficulty (I skiped a lot of pokemon and even trainers after a certain point). Some pokemon I think will still rank highly even with lower tier moves (lord knows drednaw is still putting in good work) but others really need it to thrive.
 

Celever

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I think the main issue surrounding Sword and Shield tier lists is that availability is time-based and therefore individual from player to player. The in-game tier lists are intended to be used as a guide to future players, but we don't know what the weather conditions in the Wild Area will be when they boot up their game. Perhaps they have a hail storm early on and therefore can get a Sneasel really early, which would be great for many of the gym leaders, or perhaps they don't get a hail storm for their entire playthrough and never get the opportunity to catch a Sneasel. That'd mess with their teambuilding plans based on our viability rankings.

You also have the factor that gym leaders differ between versions. This makes some Pokémon decisively better or worse depending on which version you catch them in. Though personally I think it's a cool feature to have each version become more progressively distinct from its counterpart, it messes with in-game tier listing a lot because it leaves us with the option of having a separate tier list for Sword and Shield which is arguably unnecessary extra work because most Pokémon will remain in the same tier between both versions, or trying to average it out which is unsatisfactory because a Pokémon like Scrafty, who has a great matchup in Shield against Melody and Allister, may rank a tier below what it should in Shield because in Sword its matchup against Bea is terrible.

There's also the factor of compulsory Exp. All combined with lack of HMs. In previous generations we've tiered based on an "optimal" team -- that is, 4 Pokémon used in battle and 2 HM slaves. In Gens VI and VII, despite the lack of HMs, we stuck to this philosophy under the assumption that players would turn off Exp. All because it's less enjoyable so we could maintain the 4 Pokémon team philosophy due to the experience curve benefiting smaller teams. Now that SwSh has thrown all of that out the window, making it entirely optimal to use 6 Pokémon, our tiering philosophy has to change to 6 Pokémon teams too, which actually has pretty far-reaching implications.

The aforementioned point surrounding Pokémon's viability depending on TRs is also extremely valid and adds another spanner in the works.

Sword and Shield tier lists I'm sure will come at some point, but there are several new questions that the heads above us have to answer before it can come to fruition. Do we need separate Sword and Shield tier lists? Do we need to rank Pokémon found on routes separately to Pokémon dependent on weather conditions? If not, how large a detriment is being dependent on weather to a Pokémon, since some players may run into the Pokémon right away and others may not run into it until it's too late to viably run it on the team? Should raids (and therefore TRs) be factored into playthroughs at all and if so to what extent are they pertinent since they're also time-based? Does a Pokémon now need to perform well in fewer boss battles to be considered a higher tier since the optimal team size is now 6? These are all crucial questions that quite frankly we need to be told an answer to since I'm sure the community will be split on all of them.
 
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Short answers, imho:
Sw/Sh don’t need different lists, just the occasional note of:
“A-Rank: Butterfree (Sword)
B-Rank: Butterfree (Shield)”
We’ve done it before, when there were version differences between appearance rates or when you got evolution items. I doubt it will move most mons a full rank anyway, so the exceptions can just be that, exceptions.

Raid mons should probably not be tiered, or we should have a separate list for them. It’s not that hard to find and catch specific 1-star mons, but anything more than that becomes unreasonable fast. Maybe just “here’s a list of all raid mons sorted by when they become available, we put an * next to any that are really good, we will not be putting any more work than that into them.”

TRs seem similar to low encounter rates in previous gens. Yes, if you absolutely need a specific TR, it’ll be rough, but in a lot of cases it’s more “I need one of the 4 special Fire TRs for this mon, I’ll hit every fire-type raid I spot and see what I get”. It’s a time investment and should be taken into account, but it’s not an unreasonable one. I don’t think expecting 1-2 circuits of the wild area as soon as you can access it is excessive, especially given the quality of items etc you can get early on.

Weather absolutely needs to be taken into account. I don’t know if anyone has looked into the exact chance of specific weather in each area, but once we know that, we can decide the details. If someone can reasonably make 2 serious checks for a mon in the wild area on 2 different days and not find it, then that mon should be ranked pretty low. (Maybe with a note that it’s due to availability, not quality).
 
Short answers, imho:
Sw/Sh don’t need different lists, just the occasional note of:
“A-Rank: Butterfree (Sword)
B-Rank: Butterfree (Shield)”
We’ve done it before, when there were version differences between appearance rates or when you got evolution items. I doubt it will move most mons a full rank anyway, so the exceptions can just be that, exceptions.

Raid mons should probably not be tiered, or we should have a separate list for them. It’s not that hard to find and catch specific 1-star mons, but anything more than that becomes unreasonable fast. Maybe just “here’s a list of all raid mons sorted by when they become available, we put an * next to any that are really good, we will not be putting any more work than that into them.”

TRs seem similar to low encounter rates in previous gens. Yes, if you absolutely need a specific TR, it’ll be rough, but in a lot of cases it’s more “I need one of the 4 special Fire TRs for this mon, I’ll hit every fire-type raid I spot and see what I get”. It’s a time investment and should be taken into account, but it’s not an unreasonable one. I don’t think expecting 1-2 circuits of the wild area as soon as you can access it is excessive, especially given the quality of items etc you can get early on.

Weather absolutely needs to be taken into account. I don’t know if anyone has looked into the exact chance of specific weather in each area, but once we know that, we can decide the details. If someone can reasonably make 2 serious checks for a mon in the wild area on 2 different days and not find it, then that mon should be ranked pretty low. (Maybe with a note that it’s due to availability, not quality).
The weather is not ramdom though. It can be predetermined purely based on the month and day. So the issue isn’t does weather matter, the current question is should we even allow date exploitation first. Then if the answer is no, we need to look at “random” dates probabilities.
 
Weather exploitation can be done even not knowing the month/day (just need to try a few times to get the weather you want) but does have its adverse effects - manipulating the time causes it to reset for a few days, preventing you from triggering other time-based Pokemon encounters and item rewards.

If weather exploitation can be done any time (even when Switch servers die down), I don't see why we should keep it banned in our tier lists. It comes at a cost however, which ought to be taken into account.
 
Weather exploitation can be done even not knowing the month/day (just need to try a few times to get the weather you want) but does have its adverse effects - manipulating the time causes it to reset for a few days, preventing you from triggering other time-based Pokemon encounters and item rewards.

If weather exploitation can be done any time (even when Switch servers die down), I don't see why we should keep it banned in our tier lists. It comes at a cost however, which ought to be taken into account.
It can be done without switch servers. Inviting others through local communication at a den and leaving is enough to trigger the glitch.
 

DHR-107

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I am incredibly hesitant about SwSh Tier lists for most of the points raised above.

After getting three badges you have something like 300 Pokemon available at the same time. In other lists, where you got Pokemon was a big hit to many Pokemon's viability and how it was ranked. SwSh essentially removes this entirely (and outside a handful of very strong encounters) there is going to be zero differential between various Pokemon.

The other thing is with more refined move lists, you'll be hard pressed to find something which can't pull its weight (unless it has truly awful stats) and that is almost nullified by the Party XP method. The only thing which pops into my head which might be "below grade B" would be Theivul, and that's just unlucky because its stats are so bad compared to the rest of its Galar kin.

Whilst I agree that we should ignore raids/XP candy/other boosts, I still think there just isn't enough differential between Pokemon for us to make realistic calls. Unless we are even harsher on stats (which we already are), basically everything in Galar is more than usable. Early raid mons break this further (looking at Sinistea in particular). We'd also need to massively penalize stuff for only being available in X rare weather. I'm not sure we can truly make a proper list. Kabu is the only really difficult fight in the game, with only the Champion Battle probably being on par. Kabu is easily walled by any bulky Water or Rock type you've got available to you (which is a number by this point) and Leon's match is only really difficult if you're severely underlevelled.

This isn't the same as say, Mudkip vs Chimecho in RSE for example. There is a clear, huge difference between availability and power levels. Granted, all of Galar's starters are usable, but so are a bunch of things you find almost immediately in the wild area (which is basically the fourth area of the game).

As Hugin said, we might just need to massively revamp the whole idea of the list specifically for SwSh, purely because of how "differently" the game gives you options.
 

Jerry the great

Banned deucer.
About the Swsh tierlists, I think when we do get one, we shouldn't count Pokemon you get from dynamax dens for the viability. Why? Simple. Because it allows you to get certain mons far earlier than you should, and it can give you a high level advantage, which gives Pokemon unfair advantages. For example, you could get Pawniard before you even get your first badge thank to these, when in reality, I don't think the game intends for you to have one before beating the 3rd gym leader. All it'll take is a wishing star and some luck. Trust me I have done it myself, having a pawniard before gym #1 proved to make the game far too easy. That's just an example though... I mean if you're getting Pokemon you shouldn't be obtaining until later on (via wishing stars) and they are at level 35/20 for respective points in the game, I say that is an unfair advantage. Again, just recommending though. If this idea doesn't get taken it's not like the end of the world would occur.
 
About the Swsh tierlists, I think when we do get one, we shouldn't count Pokemon you get from dynamax dens for the viability. Why? Simple. Because it allows you to get certain mons far earlier than you should, and it can give you a high level advantage, which gives Pokemon unfair advantages. For example, you could get Pawniard before you even get your first badge thank to these, when in reality, I don't think the game intends for you to have one before beating the 3rd gym leader. All it'll take is a wishing star and some luck. Trust me I have done it myself, having a pawniard before gym #1 proved to make the game far too easy. That's just an example though... I mean if you're getting Pokemon you shouldn't be obtaining until later on (via wishing stars) and they are at level 35/20 for respective points in the game, I say that is an unfair advantage. Again, just recommending though. If this idea doesn't get taken it's not like the end of the world would occur.
That on its own isn't exactly a good reason; it simply puts them on par with stuff like XY's Mega Lucario. I think most of us though are considering just saying no to dens because it could potentially be anything randomly and it'd be virtually impossible to tier that normally; or at the very least would be its own very different type of tier list.
 
That on its own isn't exactly a good reason; it simply puts them on par with stuff like XY's Mega Lucario. I think most of us though are considering just saying no to dens because it could potentially be anything randomly and it'd be virtually impossible to tier that normally; or at the very least would be its own very different type of tier list.
Tecnically, a separate "den tier list" would make sense though.

As in "if I run into this mon in a den, is it worth fighting & catching it". Considering t1 and 2 dens (which are the ones you're bound to run into during the story without intentionally backtracking in the final parts & without joining other people's raids) don't actually have very huge den pools, it'd not be too big of a stretch.

The biggest issue with a "tierlist" remains the fact that the forced exp-share + the absurd amount of pokemon available from the getgo makes it very difficult to classify things besides an A or S level, since babysitting a pokemon till it evolves (say, Ralts) isn't exactly difficult or demanding.
 
Inquiring about the revival of an HGSS Tier List that I would like to head. There was some interest roughly around a year ago and in hopes that I would head it one day, I made my OP. When I last inquired, BW was being redone and that has finished up. RSE seems to have stagnated and barely has any activity, though I believe most testing is done and it is in its write-up phase? X and Y's activity has halted. Tomorrow marks 1 year since Random's last update. So is there anyway we can fit in HGSS at all? It needs to be modernized. Needs to be retested as well as some Mons are placed very highly when they may not have a case due to factors (Such as the Game Corner).
 
Inquiring about the revival of an HGSS Tier List that I would like to head. There was some interest roughly around a year ago and in hopes that I would head it one day, I made my OP. When I last inquired, BW was being redone and that has finished up. RSE seems to have stagnated and barely has any activity, though I believe most testing is done and it is in its write-up phase? X and Y's activity has halted. Tomorrow marks 1 year since Random's last update. So is there anyway we can fit in HGSS at all? It needs to be modernized. Needs to be retested as well as some Mons are placed very highly when they may not have a case due to factors (Such as the Game Corner).
Just want to make it heard that I’m interested in helping in whatever way that I can. HGSS deserves more attention.
 
Curious if there was ever a Sword/Shield in game tier list? Maybe I am missing something but couldn't find it in this forum.
 
Curious if there was ever a Sword/Shield in game tier list? Maybe I am missing something but couldn't find it in this forum.
We just didn’t bother with it due to many factors such as the wild area and dens making it much harder to pin things down mechanically.
 
Interesting! How are you taking DLC into account, if at all?
Not everyone is gonna have $30 to shell out for DLC and in reality that’s post game. With Tundra coming up, I may consider tiering those in a separate list maybe. I’m unsure right now as I’m doing the first play test of many. Once the guidelines get refined, I’m hoping I can start a thread with them with the intent that the community here can further develop them and we can get a tier list for SwSh, but that’s a long ways away.
 
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