GSC OU Viability Rankings

[nicky]

With and without sprites - Album on Imgur
Fairly certain high power (both offensive and defensive) is more valued in the gsc meta, so the colors reflect that, making those mons in the top-left midsection closer to the green. My expectation was not to take over the thread with this, but to add a new perspective & dimension to tiering.
It may look 'sloppy' at first glance, but it actually looks better this way than with smaller icons + a bigger grid; I tried it both ways. Plus, it's the way the other games do it.

 

[Lojh]

You could make a new thread, I’m sure most people prefer the simpler viability rankings and then analysises of the specific pokemon, which does take longer but is more informative.

 

[nicky]

Yeah, the chart way might be more for newer players because it is visually telling what parts of mons are good for what reasons, which can help their starting point.

 

[asbdsp]

Cool concept nicky. It really helps give an intuitive idea, which just reading lists can not help you with. Drawing helps me, but I don't think anyone wants to see my abstract art looking charts, lol.

 

[Lojh]

I find the axis to be slightly too subjective.

 

[Disaster Area]

viability rankings are inherently subjective, you should debate where you think various pokemon belong

 

[Lojh]

It could maybe become an alternate vr system just for looking at things, but i feel a one variable system is more useful for beginners and also what most people are used to.

 

[magic9mushroom]

Tentacruel has a big advantage over Starmie, Cloyster, Forretress, Donphan and Golem as a spinner - it beats any set of both of the usable spikers. None of the others achieve this. This means that if you use Tentacruel as a spinner, Spikes will be out of the field if you want them to be. Period.

This is not quite true. Tentacruel certainly prevents either Spiker from re-laying Spikes as it Spins them, is immune to Toxic, and doesn't really care about Pursuit, but it can be spinblocked and as such it is possible to keep Spikes against Tentacruel in at least the short term.

Spiker only vs. Tentacruel = no Spikes ever
Spiker + Pursuit vs. Tentacruel = no Spikes ever
Spiker + Ghost vs. Tentacruel = probably Spikes in short term, depends on sets for long term
Spiker + Ghost vs. Tentacruel + Pursuit = maybe Spikes in short term, but not in long term

 

[Lojh]

There is no such thing as a “perfect spinner.” Tentacruel just happens to be one of the better ones. The reason starmie sees slightly more usage as a spinner is that it can 2hko gengar and has recover, which is actually a big thing.

 

[Roostur]

I've said this before, and I guess I'll say it again, I've never seen the point of these. What you guys should do is make a list of the most popular teams used, and rank those instead. It would be way more useful.

 

[nicky]

Gengar is too highly used for Tenta to be the best spinner, from what I've seen.

Agree with Roostur too. A teams ranking would be interesting for a lot of reasons. It'd hopefully spark more talk too, because while standard tier lists are good for what they are, the conversations can be short, and decisive or dismissive. The board could use something fresh.

 

[Lojh]

There are SOO many teams to consider when making a ranking like that. Breaking teams down into cores makes the rankings a lot more subjective than we want them to be.

 

[Roostur]

There are SOO many teams to consider when making a ranking like that. Breaking teams down into cores makes the rankings a lot more subjective than we want them to be.

Absolutely untrue. This way of doing things is subjective. For example you guys will undoubtedly rank ampharos low. Yet, I've used Ampharos on a team to beat many top players of the time that I was playing. It was very successful for me. What we have right now is what Nobel Prize winning economist, Milton Friedman, called "Tyranny of the status quo". This often irrational way of keeping things the same when there are better alternatives.

 

[Ortheore]

Absolutely untrue. This way of doing things is subjective. For example you guys will undoubtedly rank ampharos low. Yet, I've used Ampharos on a team to beat many top players of the time that I was playing. It was very successful for me. What we have right now is what Nobel Prize winning economist, Milton Friedman, called "Tyranny of the status quo". This often irrational way of keeping things the same when there are better alternatives.

I mean rankings of any sort are subjective, but when ranking individual pokemon, the thing you are ranking is objective- there's nothing subjective about Ampharos existing. When ranking teams/cores I believe you'll often run into issues surrounding what the team/core you're discussing should actually be, before you even consider where it should be ranked relative to everything else.

In any case, I don't see how this would be feasible due to the sheer quantity of things to be considered, not to mention the fact that assessing entire cores/teams is both difficult to do through experience, and difficult in terms of the complexity involved, making it harder to theorise as well.

 

[Roostur]

I mean rankings of any sort are subjective, but when ranking individual pokemon, the thing you are ranking is objective- there's nothing subjective about Ampharos existing. When ranking teams/cores I believe you'll often run into issues surrounding what the team/core you're discussing should actually be, before you even consider where it should be ranked relative to everything else.

In any case, I don't see how this would be feasible due to the sheer quantity of things to be considered, not to mention the fact that assessing entire cores/teams is both difficult to do through experience, and difficult in terms of the complexity involved, making it harder to theorise as well.

Ideally we would only rank teams that were popular. Instead of looking at pokemon usage in tournaments, we would look at team usage instead and only rank teams that were above a certain threshold of usage. Unless of course a team happened to be the most successful team in the tournament, then it would of course be helpful to rank it too, even if it’s usage was low. In fact a combination of usage and success in determining which teams were ranked would be ideal. I don't think an increase in difficulty is a good reason for not adopting this system. It will be a far better way of theorizing how we actually play the game.

 

[Lojh]

What’s a “core”
is Zap + Lax a core?
There isnt a definition of what a core is


Is kou/skarm/lax/cune/umb/cloy a different team than kou/skarm/lax/cune/umb/forry? Possibly, and possibly not. Viability rankings will always be a subjective thing, but making them on “teams” or “cores” magnifies the inherent problem.

(Because of a few conversations with many great gscers cloyster has achieved its own subrank under the electrics)

 

[asbdsp]

Ranking Cloy and electrics is exactly where you can see the inherent subjectivity of all of this.

Cloy consistently gets better usage than both electrics for only one reason, and that is the limited distribution of the move spikes. If we look at it on the basis of opportunity cost, then I think that makes perfect sense. Spikes is more essential to more "conventional" team builds than running either legendary electric, in my personal opinion. If you don't run cloy, you take a step down in utility by picking forretress. If you don't pick one electric, you have the other. So for that reason alone, you could say that cloy is more viable than either electric.

Another opinion is that Zapdos is above Raikou. For it's usage, and utility to a variety of standard offense builds, I think you can make that case as well. But their roles do not completely overlap, and it's not a 1 to 1 comparison of one mon outclassing the other.

TLDR: You can make a very good case for flipping how these 3 mons are currently displayed in our viability rankings, but ultimately the classification is subjective and requires nuanced understanding to interpret.

 

[magic9mushroom]

Ranking Cloy and electrics is exactly where you can see the inherent subjectivity of all of this.

Cloy consistently gets better usage than both electrics for only one reason, and that is the limited distribution of the move spikes. If we look at it on the basis of opportunity cost, then I think that makes perfect sense. Spikes is more essential to more "conventional" team builds than running either legendary electric, in my personal opinion. If you don't run cloy, you take a step down in utility by picking forretress. If you don't pick one electric, you have the other. So for that reason alone, you could say that cloy is more viable than either electric.

Another opinion is that Zapdos is above Raikou. For it's usage, and utility to a variety of standard offense builds, I think you can make that case as well. But their roles do not completely overlap, and it's not a 1 to 1 comparison of one mon outclassing the other.

TLDR: You can make a very good case for flipping how these 3 mons are currently displayed in our viability rankings, but ultimately the classification is subjective and requires nuanced understanding to interpret.

Raikou is above Zapdos in the list because R is before Z in the alphabet. All the ranks are sorted alphabetically.

There are decent teams that use Forry - Giga Drain lets it beat Cloyster and it's not susceptible to Umbreon's Pursuit spam, so if you have a solid plan for Grounds already it's arguably better than Spin Cloy. And then there's the subtle distinction between power and equilibrium usage.

 

[Lojh]

Usage stats != viability rankings

Cloy is not over electrics because spikes are not mandatory, there is another viable spiker, and electrics often affect games more than cloyster does.

 

[asbdsp]

Well, I do think in a meta as mapped out as GSC there can be some overlap between the abstract forms of concepts like viability and high level usage, but I will cede the point.

Now for the things that pop at me from this list. I think Marowak

could be too high. It's a great mon which I like a lot, but it really needs support due to that lack of speed. To me, it looks a bit out of place, when the rest of the A- rank (other than Steelix) is splashable, self sufficient offense mons, which will be effective with less support than Marowak.

I think that Jynx

is definitely too low. It's proven itself too much in high level matches in the last few years, with it's usage only growing (and effectiveness not really declining as you might think when a threat becomes more popular). It doesn't belong in the same rank as a rather niche spinner like Tentacruel. To me it looks to comfortably fit in with the utility of mons in the rank above it.

To me B- rank and below seems to be a veritable minefield of subjectivity, mostly because there isn't sustained usage of these mons in enough high level matches to get a clear idea. So, just to pull an example out of my butt, one might say that Kindra

is trash, and really shouldn't be used and that opinion would be supported. But then if Lavos decides to build a team around it and win high profile matches, then the conventional wisdom will magically shift in the favor of the mon. I think that distinguishing between the mons at these levels is likely to be more trouble than its worth, but it's just my 2 p.