All Gens Tiering of Formes

This topic has been discussed in great detail before in this thread on Shiny Tiering.

Tagging Ed to explain how Zygarde-Complete works.

Later I'll do some digging and re-reading of the thread I linked so that we can review and finalise our policy on formes and consider how to tier Zygarde.

 

Regarding Zyg-C I personally don't see it as being substantially different from Darm-Z, with the obvious difference being that Zyg-C is actually good.

In order to tier two forms separately there are two factors that need to be considered imo: significance of difference and separability. Alternatively, "is it meaningful to tier them separately?" and "can we reasonably tier them separately?".

Regarding separability, this is really I think a non-issue for form changes that occur outside battle. Those are obviously separable for the purposes of tiering. Where it gets interesting is in mid-battle form changes, which is further complicated by the fact that often the mid-battle form change requires a signature item/ability/move that is otherwise of little to no competitive use. For instance, Darm and Zygarde are separable from Darm-Z and Zyg-C, but the reverse is not true... or it wouldn't be true were it not for the fact that in each case the form change is dependent on a signature ability that serves literally no other purpose than to cause the change. This means that although you're technically making use of their original forms prior to transformation, there's some opportunity cost in doing so. I guess the next question becomes "is this opportunity cost significant?"

The question of significance is without easy answers I think. We obviously want to tier Rotom forms separately, but there's no point in tiering Vivillon's forms separately. And there's a whole spectrum of niche cases- Pikachu's forms all receive a unique coverage move (doesn't one of them get a Z-move now as well?), Basculin's forms receive different abilities and so on. I'm not sure it's a great idea to draw hard lines for what constitutes significant, but I'd say that BST/typing changes are generally significant, while movepool and ability changes are not. However those rules are very rough and there should be plenty of room to make exceptions.

 

Zygarde-10% or Zygarde-50% change into Zygarde-C upon activation of Power Construct (akin to Darmanitan's Zen Mode). To prevent confusion, Zygarde-10% is obtained as a seperate form outside of battle via Key Item. Furthermore, both 10% and 50% have access to Aura Break and Power Construct.

From the discussions that took place in the Shiny tiering thread, the two important criteria from Disaster Area's form tiering policy for tiering in-battle forms such as Zygarde-C are the first and the last (Do you have the ability to change forme in battle and Do they have different (base) stats, respectively).With Zygarde-C, those criteria come in conflict with each other since it is dependent on an ability to change forms, while also having different base stats from its original form(s). That is where Ortheore's points become of utmost importance because of one question he brings up:

To which the answer is yes (trade in half HP for superior stats). The BST change from Zygarde-50% to Zygarde-C is drastic due to the immense increase in HP, with some slight differences in Special Attack and Speed. The sole reason that Zygarde-C has a significant BST change from its base form should warrant for it to be tiered differently.

 

So can Zygarde-10% become Zygarde-100%?

 

Yes, via Power Construct.

 

This isn't quite what I was getting at when I meant opportunity cost. Though the loss of 50% HP is an obvious cost of the form change, it's not something we can really tier for since what would we do- allow Zygarde unless its HP drops below 50%? I'd also argue it's not really an opportunity cost, but I don't really care to pursue that since it just leads to irrelevant semantics surrounding definitions. Anyway, what I really meant was that when teambuilding the player decides that they're going to forgo Aura Break in favour of Power Construct. Aura Break has real benefits to Zygarde, whereas Power Construct does literally nothing besides offering the ability to transform into Zyg-C (I know Aura Break is actually really shitty, but it does something for regular Zyg, where Power Construct does nothing beyond the form change).

Fwiw I've completely lost the train of thought I had when I made that post. Looking back now, I kinda think my opportunity cost point might be a bit of a red herring. In any case, if we were to tier Zyg-C, Darm-Z and the like separately from their base forms, we need to settle on how we feel about tiering non-pokemon, since that's what something like this amounts to in practice. Based on the policy surrounding bans I think it could go either way, since we do allow for non-pokemon bans, but on the other hand they're treated differently from regular bans, so I think that extending this to general tiering could justify either position.

Personally I'm against tiering abilities/items etc, and think we ought to stick to pokemon as much as possible. The reasons I hold this position are for the sake of consistency and also due to collateral, since generally non-pokemon bans have a much broader impact and are just a really crude method of altering a metagame imo. The latter argument doesn't quite hold true here though, since I think in every case where there's a form altering ability/item, it's specific to that one pokemon... I guess the one exception is Meloetta-P, since Smeargle can learn Relic Song.

 

I think what makes this case peculiar is you can ban power construct to effectively ban Zygarde-C if that were a problem, but if you were tiering and Zygarde with the ability Power Construct is S Rank... do we allow Power Construct-less Zygarde into 2U? What about Zygarde-10% with Power Construct?

This is a strange case. I think we have to look at why we tier, and figure out intuitively what makes sense, and what the general rule is that brings us to that conclusion.

One thought is to treat Power Construct like a Mega Stone, but taking up the ability slot instead of an item or move slot.

 

I think this will ultimately come down to two decisions:
1. Make an exception for an in-battle, form-change ability to be treated as a Mega Stone factor.
2. Tier the altered form together with the base form and ignore the altered form.

The former, while effectively tiering Zygarde-C separately, would require for a Power Construct ban from 2U/lower tiers. The latter becomes a complex issue for Zygarde-C since it can be derived from two base forms. Having two forms sharing one in-battle altered form make this strange.

 

Ok so I've had a bit of a look through the Tiering System post and the idea that we primarily tier Pokemon separately is at best implicit in there. So I don't see any reason why we can't do the same thing with Power Construct as we do with mega stones. On the Tiers thread if Zygarde-Complete is a part of 1U, then I'll add a footnote noting that it means that Power Construct is banned in all tiers below.

 

I've brought this up before, but if we're going at tiering Zygarde-C via Power Construct, is it worth looking at replacing Mega Rayquaza Cancer Clause with a Dragon Ascent ban?

(Also, how do they compare in power, and how does Zygarde-C compare in power to the Primals? Was there some reason only three of the four were pre-banned?)

 

No, because you can use Dragon Ascent without Mega Evolving. You just don't select the Mega Evolve button when you use Dragon Ascent if you play on cartridge - PS doesn't give you the option to press it if you have the clause. That's why we have it as a clause rather than a ban on the move.

 

And I'm saying a ban on the move would be neater, due to being a team restriction rather than a mid-game button-choice restriction. It'd be equivalent to how we ban Mega Stones rather than clause other Mega Evolutions.

Fair point on Power Construct not giving you the option, though.

 

Yeah it would be neater, but what we do on the simulators doesn't differ really from what can be done in-game, just the clause would in-game require a person not to press a button. Fwiw it would make a competitive difference if we banned the move versus clausing out the mega, since Rayquaza itself appreciates the strong flying stab that Dragon Ascent provides.

 

Yes, I know, but is that necessarily bad?

 

Well on the cartridge they've never wanted to ban Mega Rayquaza and keep Rayquaza.

This clause literally does not break cartridge mechanics. It's more like how you'd do sleep clause on cartridge [not clicking a sleep move when you've slept something already] than how sleep clause is on sims.

This is a clause which:
- Does not break cartridge mechanics
- Bans a forme of a Pokemon: we primarily aim to tier Pokemon
- Does not ban anything other than the primary target. If we ban Dragon Ascent on top of that, then you ban a move that Rayquaza can (and wants to) use without mega evolving. Mega Rayauza Clause is a collateral-less clause.
- Is very simple. In battle on simulator you cannot break the clause and this is done by the simulator not providing a button where there normally would be to mega evolve mega rayquaza. On cartridge, all you have to do is not press a button in game when you make a move.

There's nothing difficult or unsensible about it.

 

You can explain the rule like this:
You cannot Mega Evolve Rayquaza

if you want I can just rewrite it like that in the Tiers list, probably a good idea now that it's been thought of

and there's no reason not to deny pressing that button because the only thing that button does is let you instantly forfeit the game lol. It's like bringing a mewtwo to an rby 1u game: it's just an instant forfeit because it's breaking the rules.

 

Btw I updated All Gens - Pokemon Perfect Main Tiers | Pokémon Perfect