Metagame np: SM UU Stage 10.1 - Things That Scare Me (Mega Sableye remains banned, see post 37)

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I haven't played that many games for this tier yet, but I have been lurking here and watching battles regularly for well over 2 months now. One of the things that pulls me here is how balanced this meta is as is, I realize that the high Scizor usage is unhealthy on some level but it really does balance the tier really well. From my, perhaps naive, perspective, y'all have already achieved the balanced meta, even if at the cost of half the teams having the same Pokemon.

(idk if I am using the technical term "balanced" correctly here, if it is wrong you can equally put that your UU has good charka, aura, vibes, or something)
 
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If we talking about scizor being banned, I disagree. Scizor is a nice mon in the tier and Scizor has quite a lot of adequate checks in the tier. Steels in general if no superpower and it has the cost of lowering its defense and attack, fire types, unaware users, and physically bulky water types. Fire types in the tier could be afraid of scizors other coverage moves however the set that scizor can run is usually easy to to find out. SD set usually means it is running bp u-turn roost, knock off usually means CB or LO and they could be soft-hard checked by the many many waters in the tier. Just like everyone has mentioned in here, other mons such as m-alt and terrakion would be borderline/broken because of scizor gone and with both of them gone, it would destabilize the tier a lot. Now I know that given enough time, the tier will be able to adjust and USUM can just have previous gen shifts like some mons from lower tiers could rise with the three of them gone but I feel as if that losing them would give more bad than good. Lets say scizor is banned. Hooray. It might cause the lower tiers mons to rise like maybe Palossand to counter terrak. But this causes the NU tier to lose a balanced mon in their tier just because scizor is gone. This also happened before with Seismitoad being taken by UU help to fend off rotom-wash. However this caused NU to lose an amazing mon that helps NU enjoyable. Then when rotom-wash rose, seismitoad flailed around UU for a while and being outclassed in most cases by pert. Only returning back in NU after i dont know how many months. Banning scizor now would definitely change the tier and I dont think its for the better.
 

Freeroamer

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Is there really though? Let’s look at it this way, the absolute earliest a Scizor suspect would happen is start of next week because this would mean it doesn’t affect the UUPL playoffs as the games would be played in a Scizor metagame while the suspect is ongoing. Let’s say that process takes 2-3 weeks. I’m assuming worst case scenario here that it gets banned. We’d then want to wait another couple of weeks to at least get some semblance of what the post suspect metagame looks like. We’re now at mid to late June, we’ve just banned one of if not the most influential pokemon in the tier, a decision that might cause other very strong pokemon to feel overwhelming (the Altaria, Latias and Terrakion examples spring to mind).

But what starts on June 17th? Grand Slam, where UU Open is always the first Open. So right on the cusp of the single biggest gen 7 UU tournament of the tour cycle we’ve potentially made the metagame very unbalanced and are facing the possibility of having to run multiple suspects during its course. There’s no option to wait until open is over because then we really are running right into the end of the gen. Does anyone remember how aids it was testing Venu during open last year? This has the potential to be much much worse in terms of disruption and playability due to the amount of mons and individual knock on effects of each suspect. Because of how many tours a year there are in the cycle there’s never an ideal time to handle something like this but I think the best shot would’ve been at the end of UU Championship where if memory serves me correctly, there was a small break til the start of the new cycle, and we had a lot more time until the end of the gen to get stuff under control. I just don’t see a way with this where if Scizor does get banned that it doesn’t do more harm than good in the long run.
 

Hogg

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Everything Hogg and others have said on concerns about only 6 months left for the tier is valid and I agree with.

Nevertheless, it rings hollow because it lacks the context that we have been asking Scizor suspects for over a year, with the only response being "wait longer (for legit reasons)." And now when it comes to it, you are going to tell us there's no time left?

Hmm...
...OK? I'm not sure what I'm supposed to have said here. I didn't say we can't run the suspect because there's no time left; in fact I said exactly the opposite: that if we are going to run a Scizor suspect, this is our last opportunity to do so and still have a realistic chance at addressing any potential ramifications. I'm also pretty sure I never told anyone to "wait longer (for legit reasons)" on a Scizor suspect before, and I don't recall Pearl or anyone on the council doing so either. I've had a lot of reasons for opposing a Scizor suspect in the past, but a concern about timing has never been one of them.

Again, to me, the fundamental question is whether we want a Scizor suspect at all. If we do, then let's do it. We are past the point where we can keep kicking this can down the road. On the other hand, if we are happy with the current state of the metagame or we believe that for all its flaws, Scizor brings more positives than negatives to the meta, then we can focus on other things to tighten up UU over these last ~6 months.

As for timing, I've plotted it out, and I do think that we have sufficient time even if we do end up having to suspect test all of Scizor, Mega Altaria, Latias and Terrakion (which isn't necessarily a given—it's possible that some of those will not end up needing a test). We'd start with a two-week suspect beginning on the 20th and ending on June 2. If Scizor ended up getting banned, we'd likely hold an Altaria test in quick succession, to run from 6/7 to 6/16 and conclude before the start of UU Open. Then we'd take a couple of weeks off for the early rounds to let things settle and decide where to go from there. I actually have no issue with running tests during Grand Slam itself, though; UU Open is actually a great way to see a metagame develop quickly, and it's possible to stagger the timing of tests so that a ban happens in the beginning of a round rather than getting announced right before the next round goes up, giving players a chance to prepare. We've literally held suspect tests during every single UU Open in recent memory without destroying the sanctity of the tour, and I'm confident we can do so again.

Oh and for the record, regardless of what we decide today, we are definitely NOT going to just crack open UUBL and start re-testing stuff willy-nilly. You wouldn't believe it from looking at the size of UUBL, but UU has in general kept a fairly light hand regarding bans this gen, and most of UUBL is just not worth retesting. If we decide not to pursue a Scizor suspect, there are a couple of other potential suspects that I think I'd like to see before the end of gen 7: in particular, I think weather setting abilities could do with a full suspect rather than the quick divided council vote they got way back in Beta, and Mega Altaria might still be worth testing even if Scizor does stick around.
 

Kink

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Is there really though? Let’s look at it this way, the absolute earliest a Scizor suspect would happen is start of next week because this would mean it doesn’t affect the UUPL playoffs as the games would be played in a Scizor metagame while the suspect is ongoing.
We're not basing the timeline of a Scizor suspect based on UUPL Playoffs. UUPL is a fun team-tour and is unofficial. It's obviously not ideal to make large tiering decisions during UUPL, but I don't think this is even worthy of consideration.

Let’s say that process takes 2-3 weeks. I’m assuming worst case scenario here that it gets banned. We’d then want to wait another couple of weeks to at least get some semblance of what the post suspect metagame looks like. We’re now at mid to late June, we’ve just banned one of if not the most influential pokemon in the tier, a decision that might cause other very strong pokemon to feel overwhelming (the Altaria, Latias and Terrakion examples spring to mind).
It takes, at most, two weeks to conduct a suspect. We're still in early June based on this timeline. This gives us enough time to suspect Mega-Alt, which I anticipate will be immediately problematic post-Scizor ban.

But what starts on June 17th? Grand Slam, where UU Open is always the first Open. So right on the cusp of the single biggest gen 7 UU tournament of the tour cycle we’ve potentially made the metagame very unbalanced and are facing the possibility of having to run multiple suspects during its course.
Our timeline allows for a suspect of the two largest threats prior to UU Open, and we can then subsequently use UU Open to help evaluate where the tier lies. UU runs constant tournaments throughout the year, and a suspect will typically always affect one of those tours. While a negative outlook suggests that UU Open will be a clusterfuck since two of the largest threats are potentially gone, I think it's an opportunity to gauge high-level play with our adjusted tier, and can help us use the last few months of SM to make the proper decisions.

There’s no option to wait until open is over because then we really are running right into the end of the gen. Does anyone remember how aids it was testing Venu during open last year? This has the potential to be much much worse in terms of disruption and playability due to the amount of mons and individual knock on effects of each suspect. Because of how many tours a year there are in the cycle there’s never an ideal time to handle something like this but I think the best shot would’ve been at the end of UU Championship where if memory serves me correctly, there was a small break til the start of the new cycle, and we had a lot more time until the end of the gen to get stuff under control.
There wasn't really an issue with the meta at that time, whereas now there potentially is. I don't understand why this argument is relevant. If there was a reason to suspect Scizor after UU Championships 2018, we would have. To echo Hogg, concern about timing has never been my reason to oppose a Scizor suspect.

I just don’t see a way with this where if Scizor does get banned that it doesn’t do more harm than good in the long run.
Really? Out of all possible options, including the departure of Mega-Alt and the adjustments of using other Steel-types to cover the gaps Scizor's departure creates, you can't envision a single positive outlook? Are you suggesting we just end the discussion now then and enjoy what's left of SM?
 

Freeroamer

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i just think a potential departure of Scizor and almost certainly Altaria by extension of that is essentially creating an entirely new metagame and I’m not sure the time to adequately balance it is there, even with the accelerated timeframe for the suspects of both that has been proposed should we find ourselves in that scenario. It’s already been acknowledged that Latias and Terrakion have the potential to become noticeably more dangerous but it would be naive to think that there aren’t more threats that are going to become more problematic down that line. I have said that I think Scizor is broken in this thread already and I’m happy to stand by that, but with the time to the next generation considered I would rather live with this current iteration of UU with Scizor that we know is playable than risk ending it with a metagame that we haven’t properly balanced and can’t continue to balance due to Smogon’s policy on tiering old gen lower tiers. I would rather play a tier like this than risk it ending up like ORAS, a metagame the majority consider to be unbalanced and just generally terrible. That is all there it to it honestly. In my mind you’d only do this at this time if the metagame was so awful that risking putting it on that path is worth it. I really can’t see it with this present metagame so I find it hard to justify.

Can you please explain to me what the problem with the metagame right now is that has prompted this? You say there wasn’t a problem in the metagame post-championship, but now there might be so that suggests to me that something has changed to make Scizor more of a problem than ever but to me it feels completely different, I feel like this is the least threatening it’s been. You’ve talked about movements in the past to ask for a Scizor suspect from different members in the community that have been knocked back, but I haven’t seen those in a while yet now there’s a council driven discussion on the fate of Scizor in UU? All I can see is a theoretical question asking if the balance has been tipped among the top threats in UU, not any mention of a hard change that would justify potentially tearing this metagame apart.
 

Yung Dramps

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Can you please explain to me what the problem with the metagame right now is that has prompted this? You say there wasn’t a problem in the metagame post-championship, but now there might be so that suggests to me that something has changed to make Scizor more of a problem than ever but to me it feels completely different, I feel like this is the least threatening it’s been. You’ve talked about movements in the past to ask for a Scizor suspect from different members in the community that have been knocked back, but I haven’t seen those in a while yet now there’s a council driven discussion on the fate of Scizor in UU? All I can see is a theoretical question asking if the balance has been tipped among the top threats in UU, not any mention of a hard change that would justify potentially tearing this metagame apart.
That's not the point. The point is that we've been putting off the Scizor issue for eons now. Scheduling is irrelevant because Hogg already has all of that figured out, and the question of Scizor itself is far more important. Again, if we have to extend suspects and post-scizor/altaria/whatever metagame development into Gen 8 (which I doubt will have to happen if we act fast), it's really not a big deal. Old gen tournaments and communities are a thing you know.

Here's some advice for everyone involved: If you don't want a Scizor suspect, instead of arguing semantics over scheduling and making dumb comparisons to previous metas, how about actually discussing whether Scizor is broken or not? At this stage, Freeroamer's argument where he actually agrees Scizor needs to go but doesn't want to see it through because "muh scheduling" falls flat on its face. Focus on the mon itself, not the repercussions of a potential ban.
 
Removing Sciz at this point is a bad idea as far as I see it because of the greater ramifications of a potential ban. People have recognized that other mons would probably have to go after a hypothetical ban (primarily Alt but also Lati and Terrak) and at that point you’re potentially making a tier that looks entirely different than it has for the entirety of the generation. Which is all fine and good if we were talking about this last year but with only six months left in the tier’s lifespan it’s just a very weird decision to make. I also think that having a centralizing force in a meta isn’t necessarily a bad thing; pretty much every tier this gen has had one of those mons (Lando, Slowbro in NU, ZyDog in RU) and so have many metas in the past (ADV Ttar, GSC Lax, etc.) and they are generally lauded in the tier for helping keep the meta healthier and more diverse then it would be without them. I recognize that SM UU is different from these tiers but at the end of the day it’s a tier and is still affected by the same general trends that all other tiers witnesses (no one would argue, for example, that UU being a unique tier would mean rocks aren’t a necessary component of UU teams).

Also I think retesting UUBL mons is a bad idea. P much every mon in UUBL is either totally busted or has been tested like 2-3 times and at that point we can pretty much already guess what the outcome’s gonna be. It just seems like a big waste of time especially if we’re gonna be testing Scizor and dealing with all the fallout from that.
 

Freeroamer

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That's not the point. The point is that we've been putting off the Scizor issue for eons now. Scheduling is irrelevant because Hogg already has all of that figured out, and the question of Scizor itself is far more important. Again, if we have to extend suspects and post-scizor/altaria/whatever metagame development into Gen 8 (which I doubt will have to happen if we act fast), it's really not a big deal. Old gen tournaments and communities are a thing you know.

Here's some advice for everyone involved: If you don't want a Scizor suspect, instead of arguing semantics over scheduling and making dumb comparisons to previous metas, how about actually discussing whether Scizor is broken or not? At this stage, Freeroamer's argument where he actually agrees Scizor needs to go but doesn't want to see it through because "muh scheduling" falls flat on its face. Focus on the mon itself, not the repercussions of a potential ban.
It’s entirely relevant if council members have said in this thread we didn’t suspect it then because it wasn’t considered a problem, or that timing wasn’t considered an issue, but we want to suspect it now.

It’s my understanding that Smogon seriously frowns on tiering old gen lower tiers, and we will have gen 8 UU to deal with in terms of tiering so again afaik there isn’t really that safety net of we can just keep trying to deal with gen 7 problems once generation 8 gets going. We have 6 months or whatever to get it right before USUM UU gets locked. If I’m wrong on this then I’ll be a lot more relaxed to this whole issue overall.

Just saying my argument falls flat on its face without providing any real insight yourself is pretty arrogant. I’m concerned that the removal of Scizor and potentially others will present issues that can’t be fixed in the remaining time we have, and which outweighs any issues I personally currently have with the metagame.

e: I’ve posted enough but I just wanted to say I appreciate that a ton Kink. It still doesn’t alleviate my concerns about potentially leaving gen 7 uu unbalanced when the time comes to leave it behind, but it’s great to see more in depth reasoning as to why this was brought up.
 
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Adaam

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Echoing Freeroamer here, I am skeptical of the benefits this test will bring. Scizor is obviously the biggest strain on teambuilding, but I do not believe it is so oppressive that we should risk destroying the metagame. I might be in the minority here but I like the current state of UU and don’t think Scizor is making it unplayable.

The domino effect of its departure is a weak argument for keeping it, but this is a unique case where Scizor’s effect on UU is unparalleled to previous suspects and the lack of time till the generation ends. There is no doubt Alt goes if Scizor goes, and we can only theorize what happens to Latias if it loses two big Draco sponges. Then, if Latias goes, what happens to Terrakion? Infernape? Celebi already possesses an insane winrate in tours. If Latias AND Scizor go, what stops the Z-Leaf Storm set? What about Togekiss? Are we left with Aero as the only offensive check to it without Lati, Sciz, and Terrak? Again, this is all theory, but if this is right then we’ll be introducing Cane Toads to Australia and calling it a day when Sword/Shield come out.

The crux of my argument against banning Scizor is I do not think we benefit from it leaving more than we do keeping it. Suspects should be done to improve the state of the metagame, and UU right now is good in my eyes. Forgive my wildlife references, but killing the top predator isn’t gonna fix the ecosystem when the next animal up takes its place.
 

Kink

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Can you please explain to me what the problem with the metagame right now is that has prompted this? You say there wasn’t a problem in the metagame post-championship, but now there might be so that suggests to me that something has changed to make Scizor more of a problem than ever but to me it feels completely different, I feel like this is the least threatening it’s been. You’ve talked about movements in the past to ask for a Scizor suspect from different members in the community that have been knocked back, but I haven’t seen those in a while yet now there’s a council driven discussion on the fate of Scizor in UU? All I can see is a theoretical question asking if the balance has been tipped among the top threats in UU, not any mention of a hard change that would justify potentially tearing this metagame apart.
We recently had a long-winded discussion and I'm going to bring up the talking points of my comrades Sage and Hogg here. The latter has given me permission to quote him and the former is my child so I feel it's ok to partially speak for her (please correct me if I'm wrong Sage). I'm going to be very forthcoming and share our concerns over a Scizor suspect as well as reasons why we think now is the time.

By pretty much any basic definition, Scizor is probably broken. It's just incredibly dangerous as a sweeper. The only thing in the tier that comes close to being able to just turn games around as reliably as Sciz does is Mega Altaria. It's big and fat and has ridiculous usage and skews the whole tier around itself and can completely sweep teams. So why not ban it? Because frankly, most of us are scared that banning Scizor will make the rest of the tier complete shit.

We all stand by the logic of "broken checking broken is not a valid reason to unban something" or whatever. But UU really is balanced on the edge of a sword. For as much as people talk about how huge UUBL is, this UU leadership has pushed pretty hard to have a super light hand with bans. I think we've done a pretty good job with that, though we struggled pretty hard to come up with anything close to a slate of UUBL 'mons that were even worth retesting.

This is where your argumentation has merit. Part of why we've been able to have a fairly light hand on a lot of stuff is because while there's a whole crap-ton of stuff in UU that's next to impossible to reliably hard counter, the tier as a whole is strong enough that offensive pressure is a fairly reliable way to deal with stuff. It's pretty much impossible to have reliable defensive answers to the top threats in UU without going full stall or super boring do-nothing balance, but you can still run an effective team regardless by focusing on having decent offensive counterplay and just playing better than your opponent. Removing Scizor alone turns all of that on its head. We're not just talking one or two 'mons. Scizor keeps the other three scariest 'mons in UU (Latias, Mega Alt and Terrak) in check, and also is just a blanket revenge killer for, you know, basically everything else. Yeah, most of these things can be checked in other ways, but there is no better blanket check around. For all that it heavily centralizes the tier around itself, it also makes bulky offense and balance teams more diverse by handling such broad offensive utility in a single slot.

I know that the official stance is generally "ban what's broken, and if that makes other stuff broken, ban that stuff too," but there's a rule zero when it comes to tiering too: try not to make decisions that are going to make things actively shittier. So any talks of banning Scizor get weighed against that metric: is removing Scizor going to make the rest of the tier collapse as a result? Are Scizor's negative aspects (and it definitely has negative aspects) worth the instability that banning it would bring about?

Scizor has always been an integral force to SM UU, similar to Landorus-T in ORAS OU, if you catch my comparison. It's not uncommon to consider using Scizor on each and every team ever created ever because it really is that good. Recently, something strange has happened to the meta where I'm noticing a slightly unhealthy centralization over a few focal-point mons. Up until recently, mons like Mega Alt and Scizor were mons that set the overall pace of the tier, and now have become the mons that define the tier. In a recent UUPL series, I was forced to use a Scizor set to counter 90% of all other Scizor sets, because nothing else worked for the team. I found that strangely concerning, but I think I had the right reasons for it. I think there's a notable difference between setting pace vs defining the tier. I think that game was an example of the latter. Nothing else would work because nothing else could work for the strategy I was going for. To me that's red flag.

First, if we're going to do a suspect we pretty much HAVE to do it now or else we won't have time to deal with the repercussions, and second, way more people have finally cottoned on to exactly how threatening bulky Adamant SD Scizor is (whereas for a while you mostly saw either fully bulky sets, which give up any real ability to be immediately threatening and struggled to offensively check what Scizor needed to check, or fully offensive sets, which lacked the ability to pivot into common attacks and found it way more difficult to reliably set up—both sets definitely still have a place, but they are way easier to deal with in general than SD Iron Plate/Buginium). This disparity is my primary example of the focal change you asked me for. The innovation of some now core sets like SD Buginium and SD LO Bug Bite has made it much harder to scout and less one dimensional, as well as lesser common sets like Choice Scarf and Assault Vest that still add a degree of unpredictability and usefulness.

UU staff has a fundamental responsibility to ensuring that the tier is in the best state possible prior to SM ending. If suspecting Scizor illuminates a path where the tier will be better, we will take it. The question we're asking here is: is there such a path? Can the tier be in a better spot if we move in this direction? A reminder that suspects do not mean something will be banned.
 

Wanka

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Well this seems like a cool spot...

I’ve been lurking and playing uu more nowadays and while I understand where a lot of the hesitation to go for a scizor suspect in the near future, I honestly think the wrong discussion is being brought up here. I personally would love to see a scizor suspect and feel this is actually the only time you can/could pull one off. I’m sitting lurking seeing a lot of, “well we asked so long ago and now you want to destabilize the meta?” Type deals. Yes, if there is a time you can destabilize the meta it’s right now. And that’s not necessarily a function off uu only either. For any tier dealing with an issue like this, the time would be now. I can’t really fathom how people would have rather pulled the trigger earlier as it’s imperative that you keep a tier as stable as you can for as long as you can through a gen and that’s exactly what has been done so as far as I’m concerned. Everything leading up until this stage of the meta has been fine even if scizor has been broken the whole time, which it probably has.

Hogg has laid out his plan, questioning his plan right now isn’t particularly fair, what’s fair is that you trust your council members to execute their plan if it comes to it. If there are issues with this plan down the road, it’s not our responsibility, it’s hogg’s. Our job as a community is to figure out if we think it’s broken or not. If you think it’s broken, the time is now and there’s really no logical argument that should convince anyone otherwise imo.

Now to sciz itself. Again, I’d love to see a suspect. While the meta has been very stable, I love the potential idea of kicking it to the curb along with whatever follows to bring a refreshing vibe to the tier. I think there would be a whole lot to explore in terms of teambuilding and which archetypes get better and which ones get worse.

E: apologies for any grammar, mobile is hard
 

pokemonisfun

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...OK? I'm not sure what I'm supposed to have said here. I didn't say we can't run the suspect because there's no time left; in fact I said exactly the opposite: that if we are going to run a Scizor suspect, this is our last opportunity to do so and still have a realistic chance at addressing any potential ramifications. I'm also pretty sure I never told anyone to "wait longer (for legit reasons)" on a Scizor suspect before, and I don't recall Pearl or anyone on the council doing so either. I've had a lot of reasons for opposing a Scizor suspect in the past, but a concern about timing has never been one of them.

Again, to me, the fundamental question is whether we want a Scizor suspect at all. If we do, then let's do it. We are past the point where we can keep kicking this can down the road. On the other hand, if we are happy with the current state of the metagame or we believe that for all its flaws, Scizor brings more positives than negatives to the meta, then we can focus on other things to tighten up UU over these last ~6 months.

As for timing, I've plotted it out, and I do think that we have sufficient time even if we do end up having to suspect test all of Scizor, Mega Altaria, Latias and Terrakion (which isn't necessarily a given—it's possible that some of those will not end up needing a test). We'd start with a two-week suspect beginning on the 20th and ending on June 2. If Scizor ended up getting banned, we'd likely hold an Altaria test in quick succession, to run from 6/7 to 6/16 and conclude before the start of UU Open. Then we'd take a couple of weeks off for the early rounds to let things settle and decide where to go from there. I actually have no issue with running tests during Grand Slam itself, though; UU Open is actually a great way to see a metagame develop quickly, and it's possible to stagger the timing of tests so that a ban happens in the beginning of a round rather than getting announced right before the next round goes up, giving players a chance to prepare. We've literally held suspect tests during every single UU Open in recent memory without destroying the sanctity of the tour, and I'm confident we can do so again.

Oh and for the record, regardless of what we decide today, we are definitely NOT going to just crack open UUBL and start re-testing stuff willy-nilly. You wouldn't believe it from looking at the size of UUBL, but UU has in general kept a fairly light hand regarding bans this gen, and most of UUBL is just not worth retesting. If we decide not to pursue a Scizor suspect, there are a couple of other potential suspects that I think I'd like to see before the end of gen 7: in particular, I think weather setting abilities could do with a full suspect rather than the quick divided council vote they got way back in Beta, and Mega Altaria might still be worth testing even if Scizor does stick around.

You're absolutely right I don't know I think I'm just delirious in my posts, sorry for the derail. Absolutely people have made the argument "the timing is wrong for scizor suspect" for a year but that was never a real argument you made and not something you practiced as UU has had a very steady pace of suspects. I apologize for my delusions again.
 
Personally, it's not a question of whether Scizor is broken in terms of current UU tiering policy or not, as I'm quite sure we all know it is. The real question here is, will this positively affect UU as a whole?

Say we suspect Scizor, and it's banished to UUBL. Then Mega Altaria is kicked, then eventually Terrakion, so on and so fourth. We're basically playing dominoes and slowly knocking everything out of UU. At this rate, UU is so held together by Scizor, that if we were to ban it, we would legit end up banning half of the tier. But alas, finally UU is purged of anything unbalanced. But at what cost, I ask? We've at this point lost the majority of offensive powerhouses, such as Latias, Scizor, Terrakion, Celebi and probably Infernape. The meta then shifts towards fatter builds, and soon, stall. But where does that leave us? In the exact same spot as freeing Sableye would, or at least in theory.

Another alternative could be letting Scizor be, despite it's questionable influence, and looking at Mega Altaria. Mega Altaria is basically now the other face of the current generation of UU, and is considered by many players to be borderline unhealthy and broken in general. Now say we suspect it, and ban it. Where does that leave us in this scenario? Well, this may too lead to other suspects, but of different things. Crawdaunt comes to mind, as the only other real consistent answer to it is Chesnaught. Chesnaught isn't easy to slot into teams really anymore, so Crawdaunt would probably be looked at. I don't see anything else leaving after that besides maybe Terrakion. So we still have a relatively stable UU, with stall getting a little better with Altaria, Daunt, and Terrak leaving. However, it is not impossible to break, due to things like Infernape and Latias still being around.

Finally, the last option I see fitting, as I have seen this tossed around a little, maybe creating playable areas as "testing rooms" to see how the meta would be affected by changes before actually enacting them. This allows council members and players alike to see the results of what they are doing before they actually do something that could be harmful.

Overall, I believe these are the 3 possible ways that we could go, and I believe the 3rd option would be most beneficial to UU as a whole, as we are trying to make it as good as possible right before the generation ends. However, it isn't in my power to make any of these decisions, and I trust the council will take the best course of option for our tier.
 
Lots of people have put forward good arguments on both sides, covering a lot of the ground I might write about - clearly this isn't an easy decision, and I trust the tier leaders to make a good one, but I did want to bring up one point I haven't seen in the thread so far - lower tiers.

We'd probably have time to stabilize UU before generation end, but what about all the down-stream tiers?

While I agree that Scizor warps the entire tier around itself, I also don't want to see it banned at this late date. We could get UU into decent shape before generation end, but it would be an entirely different metagame. The one we have now is fun and in decent shape and I'd prefer to leave it as-is rather than mess around and destabilize not just UU but also RU and PU (since we'd take more of their mons).
 

Kink

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Lots of people have put forward good arguments on both sides, covering a lot of the ground I might write about - clearly this isn't an easy decision, and I trust the tier leaders to make a good one, but I did want to bring up one point I haven't seen in the thread so far - lower tiers.

We'd probably have time to stabilize UU before generation end, but what about all the down-stream tiers?

While I agree that Scizor warps the entire tier around itself, I also don't want to see it banned at this late date. We could get UU into decent shape before generation end, but it would be an entirely different metagame. The one we have now is fun and in decent shape and I'd prefer to leave it as-is rather than mess around and destabilize not just UU but also RU and PU (since we'd take more of their mons).
We don't make tiering decisions based on how they'll affect RU/NU/PU.
 
I've been reading these posts like a nerd and I've noticed one thing, everyone kinda assumed that Scizor would get banned if it was suspected. I realised this solely cuz of Kink's reminder that suspect testing is not equal to banning a mon, but if that's how everyone feels doesn't that automatically make Scizor ban-worthy¿
Oh and personally I'd like to see a Scizor-less meta in action before deciding rather than theorizing over it again and again and again
 
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DrReuniclus

Smogon's full of bullies.
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In ORAS, we had something occur around the same time as this scizor decision thing is happening, sylveon conkeldurr and celebi (returning), all came into the tier on around May 9th of the year when SM was being released. With a huge metagame shift of 3 major top tier pokemon, this lead onto multiple suspects/drops towards the end of ORAS's lifespan almost right until SM including:

Alakazam - May 28th
Salamence - July 6th
Hydreigon - Sept 17th
Baton Pass - Nov 3rd
Klefki - Nov 12th
(I may have forgotten stuff)

In this time in between ORAS and SM there were still a lot of conflicting views by the community on whether or not the right things were being suspected, things needed to go deeper or the right decisions were being made with the suspects/drops. This was all being done on a forced time crunch due to the new arrivals and what was happening in the tier. Overall, I believe this is what left the tier with some contention by a bit of the community along with a bit of inactivity in the council and lead to ORAS not being able to live up to its full potential. I do think wanka made an interesting statement when he said

Wankerson said:
Hogg has laid out his plan, questioning his plan right now isn’t particularly fair, what’s fair is that you trust your council members to execute their plan if it comes to it.
And I do think he touches on the issue. Assuming you ban scizor, if you trust your council members to execute the aftermath correctly then the suspect has the potential to make the overall tier better in the remaining time. I don't believe that it is necessarily "fair" to have trust forced to be given to the council based on what has happened in the past. I personally don't think the ending of ORAS was done justice and wasn't handled the greatest at the time, albeit it was a tricky situation, however that isn't to say I believe the same thing will happen all over again. I do have more faith in the activity of the current council than I do in the council uu had in ORAS, but I would be a bit scared it MIGHT happen again. I think it comes to if the uu community trusts that IF scizor gets banned, council will take the right steps in correcting the metagame. So, do you trust your council to take the right steps in a very tough situation with a large amount of activity and not repeat a past generation's mistakes? If so, I'd say advocate for the suspect and council to go for it. If not, take your chances with the uubl drops as a safer bet that you can test and ban again faster if necessary. Either way, like Freeroamer said, council ppl just don't let this happen like another ORAS please.

Also sorry if I missed a lot I've only really skimmed the convo/everything, I just really don't want another ORAS.
 
I personally don't think Scizor is ban worthy, or even suspect worthy. It's easily the best mon in the tier, but it has enough checks and counters to remain balanced. I personally think it's similar to Lando-T in OU. They both have insanely high usage, sub-optimal speed, x4 weaknesses, and keep many offensive threats in the tier in check. That said, its checks are otherwise good in the metagame even without Scizor. Rotom-H, Moltres, Mega-Steelix, Mega-Aggron, Bisharp, Infernape, Chandelure, Volcanion, Zeraora, Swampert, Suicune, and Doublade are all capable of checking it or countering it to some degree. These are all good mons regardless of whether or not Scizor is around. It's not like when Mega Venusaur dropped and Crobat usage went through the roof as a result. The variety of checks and counters I mentioned should show that it isn't super centralizing. What it offers is role compression. You need a check to fairies, Latias, Mega Altaria, Terrakion, Mega Aero, Mega Bee, Mamoswine, and Nihilego? CB Scizor has you covered while also allowing you to keep up momentum. You need a sweeper that can also be a revenge killer? SD Scizor has you covered.

I don't use Scizor most of the time on my own teams, and I also don't find it too cumbersome to deal with when I'm building a team either. I rarely lose to Scizor either. If you get swept by an SD Scizor, you should have kept your checks to it healthier most of the time.

I'm sorry if I repeated what someone else said. I browsed the comments, but didn't read all of them. This is just my 2 cents.
 
Scizor has become a cornerstone of a bunch of different playstyles and its influence has encouraged the use of several different checks and "counters" that have since proven that they're good in this tier for reasons beyond just threatening Scizor. As bizarre as this statement may seem, I'd argue that Scizor has more or less encouraged this tier to become more diverse because, as it turns out, there's a lot of viable stuff that actually beats it. Scizor is definitely extremely centralizing but I'd argue that it isn't overcentralizing to the point where it should be banned or even suspected. A few months isn't a lot of time for a tier to stabilize after a ban that would have as much impact as Scizor's would and in that time we'd effectively lose a huge offensive countermeasure to some of the tier's top threats. Banning Scizor would only realistically make sense if Mega Altaria and Terrakion at the very least were banned on sight immediately thereafter, and that wouldn't promote a particularly healthy tier either.

Is this tier so blatantly unbalanced that anything of note were to be gained by banning Scizor that would offset the loss of a mon that has proven that it is important time and time again? This thing doesn't warp the tier in the same sense that Mega Venusaur did, nor does it absolutely shit on everything in the tier with a single good read like Breloom and Azumarill did, nor does it effectively outclass something that is already one of the tier's biggest threats by scoring crucial 2HKOs over its sister as did Latios. This is something that just has a variety of good sets that sees use on different teams - many of which will give away what Scizor is running in the first place from the preview alone - for different reasons. Its defensive sets have a good amount of staying power but lack huge offensive presence, and its best offensive sets tend to get chipped away at eventually unless they choose to forego coverage that would drastically improve their matchup spreads by limiting their counters.

Edit: This doesn’t necessarily mean I’m an advocate for retesting anything in UUBL either, by the way. That shit was all banned from this tier for a reason and I think only Weavile would be a healthy addition. What even would you people test besides Weavile?
 
I've been playing a lot of SM UU lately and given how much I've come to enjoy this tier I figured that I'll throw in my 2 cents
Regarding Scizor:

Scizor is a very versatile Pokemon. He has access to Technician Bullet Punch, U-turn, Knock Off, Swords Dance, Pursuit, Roost and good coverage moves. His typing leaves him with one weakness only and his stats are nothing to complain about either. Therefore I too believe that Scizor is the "best" Pokemon in the current metagame.

But there must always be a top dog and Scizor is the single least intrusive "best" Pokemon in any tier that I have ever laid my hand on. There are clear-cut, extremely viable Pokemon that cover a multitude of Scizor's best sets and they can be found on completely different playstyles, doing entirely different things:

Hazard setter such as Mega-Aggron, Mega-Steelix, Hippowdon
Set-up sweeper in the form of Infernape, Cobalion, Moltres, Doublade
Removal namely Rotom-Heat, Empoleon and Tentacruel
Other defensive/offensive pivots like Mega-Manectric and Amoonguss
Unaware walls (both of them)

Moreover Scizor can specifically be targeted by just about any Pokemon due to its 4x weakness to fire and can also fall victim to the last standing trapper Magneton who can even go one step ahead and have a teammate bring it in safely via eject button. I get that offense can struggle against Scizor but offense is supposed to struggle against strong priority, that is moreso a drawback of the archetype as a whole and its not like they have no tools at their disposal either.

To sum up, I think that Scizor is very desirable and healthy for the UU metagame, it adds some of the most interesting dynamics such as this one
(Diancie/Moltres serve as placeholder for Rock- and Fire-types)

but at the end of the day I would be totally fine if Scizor were to be suspected, hell I even prefer a suspect test since it is the communities decision which direction we want to go, however, I will be voting in favor of Scizor staying unbanned and I hope I could make some people in favor of the ban think about the other side of the argument.

PS: Ban Terrakion :psysly:
 
I recently PMd the UU Tier Leaders about this, but prior to that point, I will admit that I was uneducated or not thinking a ton about how much Scizor held the tier together. I don't know if I'm in agreement that it is "worth" keeping Sciz, but it makes more sense then I had thought. I don't really care about Smogon's tiering purity, for me it has always been about if banning a mon would make the meta more fun, and my first instinct is that banning Sciz would make UU more fun. While I'll backtrack a bit on that now, here is what I originally wrote:

Hey team,

Please do not consider anything I write in here as a joke or anything to that effect, I am being genuinely very serious.

When I first played SM UU in tournament (SSD I) I quickly learned to despise Scizor. It's type, ability and sheer number of sets made it close to un-counterable aside from using Magneton, which tended to throw off the balance of a team quite a bit (it offers fairly poor utility, in my estimation, aside from trapping Scizor.) However, at that time as most of you will remember, we somehow had even more broken/annoying threats in the tier (remember banning Mega Latias, Mega Gardevoir, Jirachi and Weavile all in the span of like a month?) Scizor, of course, stayed more or less under the radar because of these threats.

I'll admit I've not been terribly active in the tier beyond spectating from then until SSD II and SPL, where I learned it to some extent to be able to help where I could (not much). One very consistent factor is how much of the tier is outrageously warped by this mon, however. Scizor's utility is, in my estimation, completely unmatched. You can use it for momentum, to trap, to sweep, to wall, all in one. Finding out the set it is using is difficult, and often an exercise in getting your team broken anyway.

The set I used in getting reqs was SD Iron Plate with BP, Superpower and Bug Bite. I found absolutely no consistent checks to this set, even going so far as to say to myself at the start over every match that my gameplan was just going to be "SR --> setup an SD". Pokemon like Rotom-H or Moltres are, in short, underwhelming to check Scizor due to their weakness from rocks. I imagine if I spent another half hour or so attempting to teambuild I could piece together an offensive core that takes advantage of broken Rotom-Hs and make the team even better.

Is there a reason that there seems to be no discussion surrounding suspecting this Pokemon? From the bottom of my heart it feels outrageously good for the tier, capable of winning games on its own over and over and over, even if the player against it plays well, it feels like if they lack a specific counter (and the right counter at that) then they will lose.

Please let me know any thoughts, or if I am just outside of the bounds here.
 

Jaajgko

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is a Tiering Contributor Alumnus
I've been playing a lot of SM UU lately and given how much I've come to enjoy this tier I figured that I'll throw in my 2 cents
Regarding Scizor:

Scizor is a very versatile Pokemon. He has access to Technician Bullet Punch, U-turn, Knock Off, Swords Dance, Pursuit, Roost and good coverage moves. His typing leaves him with one weakness only and his stats are nothing to complain about either. Therefore I too believe that Scizor is the "best" Pokemon in the current metagame.

But there must always be a top dog and Scizor is the single least intrusive "best" Pokemon in any tier that I have ever laid my hand on. There are clear-cut, extremely viable Pokemon that cover a multitude of Scizor's best sets and they can be found on completely different playstyles, doing entirely different things:

Hazard setter such as Mega-Aggron, Mega-Steelix, Hippowdon
Set-up sweeper in the form of Infernape, Cobalion, Moltres, Doublade
Removal namely Rotom-Heat, Empoleon and Tentacruel
Other defensive/offensive pivots like Mega-Manectric and Amoonguss
Unaware walls (both of them)

Moreover Scizor can specifically be targeted by just about any Pokemon due to its 4x weakness to fire and can also fall victim to the last standing trapper Magneton who can even go one step ahead and have a teammate bring it in safely via eject button. I get that offense can struggle against Scizor but offense is supposed to struggle against strong priority, that is moreso a drawback of the archetype as a whole and its not like they have no tools at their disposal either.

To sum up, I think that Scizor is very desirable and healthy for the UU metagame, it adds some of the most interesting dynamics such as this one
(Diancie/Moltres serve as placeholder for Rock- and Fire-types)

but at the end of the day I would be totally fine if Scizor were to be suspected, hell I even prefer a suspect test since it is the communities decision which direction we want to go, however, I will be voting in favor of Scizor staying unbanned and I hope I could make some people in favor of the ban think about the other side of the argument.

PS: Ban Terrakion :psysly:
The main issue with Scizor is that you almost always have to run two checks to it. Your list is accurate, but none of the mons can counter Scizor on their own. Steelix-Mega, Aggron-Mega, Infernape, Cobalion, Empoleon and Manectric-Mega don't switch into Band and SD Superpower, Hippowdon can only Roar Scizor, so if the phazed mon forces it out, Hippowdon has to come in at 60% next time, Amoonguss doesn't like LO Bug Bite at all, Tentacruel has no recovery so it will get quickly chipped aways, Defog Rotom-H is a shaky Scizor switch-in because if it faces a SR Setter that doesn't allow it to click defog like Swampert, Terrakion, Rhyperior, Head Smash Aggron, Blissey or Diancie, it will have to take rocks + U-Turn which chips it away very quickly, which is why you need defog support if you want your Rotom to check Scizor, Moltres is probably the best check since it punishes Scizor if it clicks a move but it needs very heavy hazard removal support, Doublade always has to click SD against roost Scizor to check it which is a huge momentum loss and Doublade pretty much needs wish support, Unaware mons are pretty difficult to justify on a build, except on stall and semi-stall and finally, Magneton is a pretty shaky mon because if your opponent doesn't run a Scizor, your strategy is ruined and you kinda have a team with 5 mons.

Building good teams while needing two Scizor checks is possible and most players dealt with it but it puts a huge lock on the teambuilder as I often had to give up teambuilding ideas because I had to include a second Scizor check on top of having to check all the other threats. And I don't really feel like having Scizor in the tier eases teambuilding that much, it sure is a great revenge killer but in terms of defensive abilities it doesn't safely check a lot of mons since everybody preps for Scizor. If you want to check Altaria, you'll have to fear Fire Blast, if you want to check Latias, you'll have to fear Z-Thunder, Aero can run Fire Fang, +2 Celebi's Shattered Psyche destroys Scizor if it took a little bit of chip damage, Kyurem can run HP Fire, so most of the time you'll just be able to safely check bulky mons and set up on them. I am not denying the pressure Bullet Punch can put on the opponent but you can't go away with "I'll add a Scizor in my build a now I have a check to Altaria, Latias, Celebi and Aero". Actually if you want Scizor to check the mons I stated you'll usually have to run a non-optimal set like 244 HP + 92 SpD or Scarf / Assault Vest.
So globally, Scizor makes teambuiling in UU pretty challenging and removes a lot of options while itself not providing much defensive utility to ease up builds, and actually lets potentially broken mons stay in UU because it stops them from sweeping while on top of that being one of the scariest end game sweeper in the metagame with its SD sets one of the strongest wallbreaker with its Choice Band set. I think Scizor has a negative impact on the metagame and should be banned along with the other problematic mons it keeps in check. And, regarding the "time issue" I think it is actually a good idea to give a fresh new start to the metagame so that players will keep being interested in building in this metagame even after gen 8 comes out, but the opposite may happen too (I hope not).
 
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