All Gens Do You Think The Ubers Tier Is Broken In Most Generations?

[Disaster Area]

This is what should probably be kind of an obvious question (in theory most people would say yes in most if not all generations) but I want to guage where everyone else is at.

When I say broken I mean by whatever we think 1Us standard ought to be I guess. To say an ubers meta is "broken" doesnt mean that it's not fun or not playable, but it is to say that there are Pokemon or other things that are too imbalanced that if you wanted to start tiering from the top down u would very likely do at least 1 ban.

 

[Heroic Troller]

The only "healthy" ubers is gen 4
Gen 1 Mewtwo...
Gen 2 Too much Curse wars+crit oriented
Gen 3 Latios and Deoxys-Attack are damn overpower
Gen 4 Balanced
Gen 5 Arceus "Extreme Killer" and Water Spout Kyogre too
Gen 6 Fuck Geomancy
Gen 7 Fuck Z-Geomancy, and Psychic Terrain Deoxys too

 

[Disaster Area]

My views
Gen 1 - Mewtwo definitely broken af
Gen 2 - I genuinely cannot comprehend this metagame
Gen 3 - Kyogre Soul Dew & Groudon clearly broken af, and probably the least of it
Gen 6 - Primals/Mega Mence/Geomancy/Shadow Tag all broken and that's it
Gen 4/5/7 - Idk haven't even tried to play them

 

[Chrysalis]

I think 1U should have way more diversity than actual Ubers does. A good example is SM, where almost every Ubers team currently runs at least 4 of the 5 following: Groudon-Primal, Arceus, Xerneas, Yveltal, Necrozma.
However, if the A-ranks are banned we can definitely get a healthy meta, as the SM 1U tests have shown. Of course we can make it even _more_ healthy (ban Kyogre ffs), but overall that level of health is already close to the Smogon newgen OU metas, which means sufficient diversity while nothing is clearly mandatory or broken.

Another thing I want to mention here is something that often gets proposed on Smogon, namely banning only the cover legends (which would massively reduce the power level in the never 1U tiers because we've still got everything running around that wasn't affected by the Gen 6 power creep). That would make the meta really bad though, like really bad, because everything between cover legends and OU is basically hyper-offense (Mega Luke comes to mind). Lugia and Giratina are our tier's saviours while still being pretty manageable by threats like Rayquaza. Maybe ban some more stuff, probably ban Arceus too because Ekiller really isn't healthy, but only ban as long as there's stuff that can break stall afterwards, because if stall goes away we might as well use Smogon OU as a starting point.

 

[The Idiot Ninja]

i only really know gens 1/3/6

1: mega ultra broken yeah

3: definitely playable and fun. i disagree that latios/kyogre/anything else is too overpowered - it's definitely a "broken checks broken" tier, but from playing it i really felt like the better player won more often because every mon can be answered. it's by no means perfect, but neither is rby1U and we don't seem to have many issues with that garbage being our main tier for more than a decade so why not lol

6: mega rayquay needs to get banned, everything else is pretty fair. sure, geomancy is stupid, and sure, p-groudon is everywhere, but in terms of balance this is at the very least playable and i don't think banning things from here makes much sense. i could maybe see a xerneas ban but i'm scared of what yveltal and darkrai can do without him around.

 

[Isa]

gsc ubers is the best metagame i know

 

[Disaster Area]

I think 1U should have way more diversity than actual Ubers does. A good example is SM, where almost every Ubers team currently runs at least 4 of the 5 following: Groudon-Primal, Arceus, Xerneas, Yveltal, Necrozma.
However, if the A-ranks are banned we can definitely get a healthy meta, as the SM 1U tests have shown. Of course we can make it even _more_ healthy (ban Kyogre ffs), but overall that level of health is already close to the Smogon newgen OU metas, which means sufficient diversity while nothing is clearly mandatory or broken.

Another thing I want to mention here is something that often gets proposed on Smogon, namely banning only the cover legends (which would massively reduce the power level in the never 1U tiers because we've still got everything running around that wasn't affected by the Gen 6 power creep). That would make the meta really bad though, like really bad, because everything between cover legends and OU is basically hyper-offense (Mega Luke comes to mind). Lugia and Giratina are our tier's saviours while still being pretty manageable by threats like Rayquaza. Maybe ban some more stuff, probably ban Arceus too because Ekiller really isn't healthy, but only ban as long as there's stuff that can break stall afterwards, because if stall goes away we might as well use Smogon OU as a starting point.

Even banning just cover legends doesn't make much sense... Kyurem-Black is not even broken in Smogon's BW OU lmao. I guess I don't really have to say why though that just banning the cover legends is a bad approach.

Yea SM 1U is definitely not done testing but I appreciate your first paragraph at least.

3: definitely playable and fun. i disagree that latios/kyogre/anything else is too overpowered - it's definitely a "broken checks broken" tier, but from playing it i really felt like the better player won more often because every mon can be answered. it's by no means perfect, but neither is rby1U and we don't seem to have many issues with that garbage being our main tier for more than a decade so why not lol

1. if RBY 1U is that bad we can do something about it :thinking: of course things seem to have gotten "worse" over the past couple of years, chansey is definitely more broken than it was 2 years ago, whether or not it is actually broken.
2."broken checks broken" is the most nonsense term lol. In RBY Ubers (which you agree is broken) the better player wins more often and every Pokemon & set can be answered. That's evidently not enough, though?

 

[The Idiot Ninja]

1. if RBY 1U is that bad we can do something about it :thinking: of course things seem to have gotten "worse" over the past couple of years, chansey is definitely more broken than it was 2 years ago, whether or not it is actually broken.
2."broken checks broken" is the most nonsense term lol. In RBY Ubers (which you agree is broken) the better player wins more often and every Pokemon & set can be answered. That's evidently not enough, though?

1. it was more of a general point to say that i think you're being way too strict if you think the balance levels in ADV Ubers are bad. there's a very similar small number of really overpowered pokes dominating every other option and dictating what other things have a niche - if it's bad in adv ubers, throw everything in the first two gens in the garbage lol
2. "broken checks broken" is how a ton of tiers work. it's a somewhat legitimate way of balancing when you have a decent number of broken mons checking each other. is it enough for variety? no, but is it enough for very balanced matches and not forcing you to run any given mon in particular? yeah, easily. try running a rby ubers team without mewtwo and/or mew, good luck getting anywhere. adv ubers without latios or kyogre or whoever else? yeah you can make a competitive team easily

 

[Ortheore]

So I think anyone who knows my general perspective on tiering will know my opinion on this. The only generation where a healthy environment cannot be found in either ubers or some derivative thereof is gen 1, primarily because you have a grand total of one option (mewbers) that isn't ubers or ou, and we all know Mew's borked as well.

Gen 2 is great without any bans. There are a host of different strategic options to try and matches can span a wide variety of different dynamics.

Gen 3 is summed up pretty well by TIN- broken checks broken. Looking back on the Ogre suspect I realise it wasn't quite broken in the context of Lati@s being a thing, but there are practically no reliable checks to it beyond that. At least one of Lati@s is an absolute necessity, which by definition makes it broken, but I can totally see the argument that in spite of that the tier is healthy, as Ogre is sufficiently negated by Lati@s so that it doesn't make an excessive impact. This one's really dependent on what standard you expect from a tier. The more I think on it, the more I realise that my role in the Ogre suspect was a bit of a mistake since I think it's important to identify whether or not a metagame is healthy before banning anything, even if it's technically broken.

Gen 4 idk, need to play it. Strongly doubt that it's impossible to create a balanced tier before arriving at OU though, there's just too many pokemon and broadly speaking ubers has a great

Gen 5 is great. Firstly, to address the stuff Troller mentioned, I don't see EKA as being broken given that it (usually) doesn't have any recovery, lacks the raw power to muscle through many of its checks and brings nothing but a bit of revenge killing to the table defensively, while Kyogre's Water Spout is greatly limited by the abundance of hazards in the tier. Secondly, I don't know where I was going with this =P

Gen 6 I think our 1U tier is pretty great, tbh I'd rather see fewer bans than more. That said, I definitely think that for the foreseeable future, at least some bans will be necessary- MRay is obvious, but also stuff like Geomancy and STag I don't think are healthy

 

[Disaster Area]

Gen 3 is summed up pretty well by TIN- broken checks broken. Looking back on the Ogre suspect I realise it wasn't quite broken in the context of Lati@s being a thing, but there are practically no reliable checks to it beyond that. At least one of Lati@s is an absolute necessity, which by definition makes it broken, but I can totally see the argument that in spite of that the tier is healthy, as Ogre is sufficiently negated by Lati@s so that it doesn't make an excessive impact. This one's really dependent on what standard you expect from a tier. The more I think on it, the more I realise that my role in the Ogre suspect was a bit of a mistake since I think it's important to identify whether or not a metagame is healthy before banning anything, even if it's technically broken.

This is why it's so important to iron this sort of thing out and get discussion going. To me even if the ADV Ubers tier is fairly balanced, I 100% support a ban on soul dew and kyogre, they just feel incredibly broken to me. It also provides some clarity in that it does make me somewhat realise I don't really know how to draw the line on what is or isn't broken beyond a gut feeling, and I want to hear other people's thoughts so I can actually start to come to some sort of conclusion on that.

---

I think ORAS 1U also is an excellent example of the sort of thing Karp talked about - our expectations regarding diversity. The ORAS Ubers tier is fairly balanced, but you have a single form of a Pokemon (Primal Groudon) which singlehandedly has upwards of 80% usage. There's only a handful of good setups for offenses, balances, and stalls, compared to the variety in ORAS 1U or ORAS OU or any other tier in the generation. It drastically warps the metagame and almost entirely invalidates Water- and Electric-types as offensive threats (Kyogre kind of hangs on with its Primal but without Primal Groudon it's a comfortable S rank Pokemon even without its Primal form). If there was a Pokemon like this in RBY we would tolerate it (Nidoking in RBY 4U is actually the closest example given how it and Nidoqueen almost entirely invalidate the available Electric-types in the tier, but in almost if not every RBY tier you have a Pokemon or more than 1 with that sort of usage) but in ORAS to me it's unacceptable. If you do ban Primal Groudon then Mega Salamence and Primal Kyogre have to go straight afterwards because of how few and unreliable their answers are, I think Mega Gengar is clearly broken at that point then too and I think Geomancy is just a little bit too strong & restrictive. Shadow Tag is maybe overzealous and that's about the only thing in the ruleset I think really bears any questioning, but really fuck Gothitelle & also to a lesser extent Wobbuffet, I think they are broken though I could see myself being outnumbered on that one.

 

[magic9mushroom]

Gen 2 Too much Curse wars+crit oriented

Curse wars between, uh, what? I mean, yes, Curse is one of the signature moves of GSC, but if you mean opposing 'mons Cursing to max and waiting for a crit that's really rare in Ubers - Lugia, the most common Curser, usually runs Whirlwind, and Lax, the second most common, is usually running Selfdestruct rather than Rest (Curse is more of a boost for SD than a serious attempt to sweep).

Whether you consider GSC Ubers balanced is really a question of how you define balance - there's a set of four 'mons that are clearly the best in the tier (Mewtwo, Mew, Lugia, Snorlax), but all of those 'mons play very differently and counterplay exists against all of them.

 

[Heroic Troller]

When i used to play gsc ubers 80% of the games had Lugia vs Lugia or vs Ho-Oh trying to crit Aeroblast

 

[magic9mushroom]

When i used to play gsc ubers 80% of the games had Lugia vs Lugia or vs Ho-Oh trying to crit Aeroblast

That can only happen if neither Lugia runs Whirlwind (and Whirlwind's quite common on Lugia) and isn't particularly likely to actually KO due to GSC's more balanced crit mechanics compared to later gens. Are you sure these people knew what they were doing?

Lugia is countered by Zapdos regardless of set, by Raikou, Jolteon or Steelix if it lacks Earthquake, or by opposing Whirlwind Lugia if it lacks Whirlwind (Curse, Recover and Aeroblast generally being invariant). You can also try for a burn with Ho-Oh I guess, and that can go dicey if they stay in and try to KO before they're burned, but that's far from the only way to answer Lugia.

 

[Heroic Troller]

I have no idea if i saw good players or bad players back then, probably bad if you tell me of Whirlwind being common

 

[Enigami]

So I think anyone who knows my general perspective on tiering will know my opinion on this. The only generation where a healthy environment cannot be found in either ubers or some derivative thereof is gen 1, primarily because you have a grand total of one option (mewbers) that isn't ubers or ou, and we all know Mew's borked as well.

Not completely sure about that... I think one could plausibly argue RBY Mewbers isn't broken. If Mew goes SD + 2 of Body Slam / Earthquake / Hyper Beam / Explosion, it is beaten by SD Reflect Mew (and walled by Reflect Aerodactyl/Porygon). and once paralyzed Explosions/Self-Destructs/120 BP STAB Attacks threaten it pretty strongly. If Mew goes SD Reflect, other SD Reflect Mew atleast check it, and with SD Reflect Mew typically carrying only Body Slam, it is completely blanked by Gengar and answered pretty strongly by Rocks (particularly Rest variants).

From what I've seen, thanks to SD Reflect Mew, Mewbers isn't dominated by Mew in the same way Ubers is dominated by Mewtwo since Mew can't hax through its counters with stat drops or freezes.

 

[Ortheore]

Not completely sure about that... I think one could plausibly argue RBY Mewbers isn't broken. If Mew goes SD + 2 of Body Slam / Earthquake / Hyper Beam / Explosion, it is beaten by SD Reflect Mew (and walled by Reflect Aerodactyl/Porygon). and once paralyzed Explosions/Self-Destructs/120 BP STAB Attacks threaten it pretty strongly. If Mew goes SD Reflect, other SD Reflect Mew atleast check it, and with SD Reflect Mew typically carrying only Body Slam, it is completely blanked by Gengar and answered pretty strongly by Rocks (particularly Rest variants).

From what I've seen, thanks to SD Reflect Mew, Mewbers isn't dominated by Mew in the same way Ubers is dominated by Mewtwo since Mew can't hax through its counters with stat drops or freezes.

Oh don't get me wrong, mewbers isn't even close to being on the same level as ubers. I think that rby ubers is totally unplayable, much the same way ORAS ubers was when MRay was around. Mewbers, by contrast, is still playable, I just think it's still broken. As I think you allude to in your post, SD/Reflect basically has no good answers, and last time we played mewbers that's what most games devolved to iirc. Gengar is obviously a flawed pokemon and has poor longevity, although I suppose there is some room for adjustment in that regard, while Rocks can't really do anything unless they run Rest, so basically RestDon (I guess you can run Rest Golem, but that's giving up a lot more and I don't think it's a very good idea). Even if you do run RestDon, that comes with its own flaws (waking would be difficult and costly). Overall there's just insufficient answers, and the only hard counters depend on stalling out Mew rather than actually beating it.

 

[Lojh]

Just like how there is “mewbers,” i feel like gsc with celebi isn’t broken per se, just different. Celebi mostly just prolongs games anyway. Definitely dont want it unbanned though.

 

[magic9mushroom]

Gen 4 Balanced
Gen 5 Arceus "Extreme Killer" and Water Spout Kyogre too

Why is Water Spout Kyogre a problem in gen 5 but not 4? I get why it's more of an issue in gen 4-5 than gen 3 (introduction of Choice Specs/Scarf and Life Orb), but not why it'd be better in gen 5 than 4.

 

[Heroic Troller]

Gen 4 had a much bigger use of Palkia (Scarf), Dialga (Scarf or defensive Stealth Rocks), Giratina-Origin (Bulky Attacker). All pokemons much harder to switch in to compared to bw2 having Arceus free, in fact Palkia is the only that survived bw2 making Kyogre much harder to deal with.

 

[Lojh]

Gsc Ubers > not gsc ubers