BW Ubers / 1U (Universal) Potential Suspects Discussion Thread

As the BW situation has now been resolved - BW 1U will start without any bans but BW 1X will exist and be an equivalent of Smogon OU which can be used in official tournaments if needs be before BW 1U is sufficiently balanced and diverse as to be tournament-ready - it's now time to start exploring, balancing, and refining our BW 1U tier.

The first thing to address is suspects: as it currently stands, players have spoken about potential suspects to Kyogre and Arceus-Ghost. In this thread I'd like to see some discussion about which players see as potentially the bigger issue, meriting being suspect tested first, if they feel that either should be suspect tested at all. Assuming it looks like people actually want either suspect tested, I will hold a vote on which to suspect first, and then the suspect will be discussed and then a vote will be had. Then after that vote is over, we will open up BW 1U New Frontiers to get people playing battles and testing the tier.

tl;dr: suspect Arc-Ghost or Kyogre first?

 

Damn, I swear I was going to post this soon (today) but you beat me to it I guess =/

Personally I think GhostCeus is the biggest priority in terms of suspects. It's just too hard to handle imo- it's too hard to kill due to its relative lack of weaknesses and solid offensive presence- being weak to only Ghost and Dark is a problem since Ghosts obviously lose due to also being weak to Ghost (and probably slower), while unless you're running a pure support set, GhostCeus will be running Fighting coverage and boosting moves if necessary, which makes Dark types unreliable, especially since the only viable one that outspeeds is Darkrai. Failing that, if you want to KO you just have to hope to outmuscle GhostCeus, which is a tall order thanks to its fast Recover and excellent bulk, with CM potentially making things even more difficult. Having said all that, status is a legit way to cripple GhostCeus I must admit. Lastly, one of the complaints that I've heard about BW2 ubers is that it's too hazard-heavy, and this is something I definitely think GhostCeus contributes to

edit: wait a minute, a vote on what we're going to vote on? That seems a bit much to me, we should get a clear idea from discussion anyway. Also I don't see any need to wait for New Frontiers, the whole point of that tour is to encourage testing so imo that comes first. I'll open signups now

 

Alright uhhh... we can see how this goes. You can effectively take over the thread anyway, I just posted it because nothing seemed to be happening yet

I guess although as it stands it's just BW Ubers which is why I suggested holding off until a suspect has happened and so the tier may be different

 

Wait, you wanna take kyogre and ghostceus to 1u?

 

no, we're not necessarily taking them, idk yet. This isn't a final ruleset, the whole point of the current tour is to test and work out what's broken and make bans if necessary

 

when banlist will be prepared?

 

when we've decided we're done testing it?

 

I'd say Kyogre purely for theoretical reasons, even tho I haven't played the new tier yet.

First off, we all know that there's no way those two aren't both going to get banned. However, if we ban Arceus-Ghost first, does it reshape the meta in a way that Kyogre is possibly suddenly going to be balanced? I don't see how that should work. One strong threat would be gone but otherwise the tier would remain the same. A Kyogre ban might fundamentally change the meta though. Arceus-Ghost is a late-game sweeper with wallbreaking capabilities. Kyogre is a wallbreaker, scarfer and a weather setter. The latter means that if Kyogre goes, a lot of other stuff will rise or fall in usage too due to the lack of viable Drizzle setters in the tier. There is a remote possibility that Arceus-Ghost might be slightly weaker in the new tier, while that possibility doesn't really exist the other way round.

We essentially have 3 options for the future of BW 1U (disregarding the ludicrous idea of both mons staying):
Ban Kyogre - Ban Arceus-Ghost
Allow Kyogre - Ban Arceus-Ghost
Ban Kyogre - Allow Arceus-Ghost

The second option has no chance of changing anything about Kyogre's supreme reign over the tier - it would just remove one additional threat to Kyogre, if anything. Hence to me it seems logical to test between options #1 and #3 by banning ("suspecting") Kyogre first, then Arceus-Ghost one week later.

(Actually Kyogre should be a quickban imo to set a precedent for the tier so we don't end up with 1U = Ubers, which is stable but lacks diversity.)

 

BW 1B, the testing phase of 1U, has no Pokemon banned to begin with and from there we do supect tests and so on, until we have a metagame without any broken Pokemon. For more information, read: BW - Introduction to BW Tiering Policy | Pokémon Perfect

 

Personally I strongly disagree with the concept of quickbanning, I think it's worthwhile to test everything bar things like MRay. I also strongly dispute the idea that ubers lacks diversity, as I think there are tons of different things to try.

Anyhow, after playing ORAS/SM 1u I've kinda moderated my stance on Arc-Ghost in that it's borderline in and of itself, as although KOing it is a challenge, it's not as hard to wall and status ruins it. Of course, in the context of a tier lacking in good hazard removers it still stands as a prime suspect candidate. However I'm kinda thinking Ogre might be the best choice to suspect first, just because if it were to be banned it would be a seismic upheaval and we want to give as much time for things to stabilise after that as possible. Arc-Ghost wouldn't have the same effect if it were removed from the tier imo

 

The mon most BW ubers players had a problem with in upl 3 was Darkrai oddly enough. It is a very high risk even higher reward pokemon that has coverage on every viable sleep absorber we know of. It can be reliably revenge killed with Genesect, priority, SS, drill and the like, but you generally sacrifice 2 pokemon and momentum to revenge kill it (one to sleep, the other to bring in the revenge killer). We have dealt with this mon for a long time, but it is definitely something to keep an eye on if we are using a more strict tiering policy. I can go into more detail if needed.