Rant of the Week: Smogon’s Tiers are flawed

I have to admit, Smogon is the most informative website for competitive Pokémon battling. It’s a known fact that I use most of their suggested move sets and EV spreads on my Pokémon for use on Wifi battles, Battle Frontier and Battle Tower. However, there are two things that bother me about Smogon. They are banning Pokémon like Salamence to Ubers and the NU tier is flawed since it contain Pokémon that could destroy many of the very weak Pokémon like Plusle.

While I agree that Garchomp should be banned since it’s relatively difficult to counter/check without having a Weavile or bulky waters with Ice Beam. On the other hand, Salamence while strong is pretty fragile. Stuff like Stealth Rock, Ice Shard, Stone Edge, Ice Beam can OHKO or 2HKO Salamence easily. Most bulky waters like Vaporeon, Suicune, Milotic and sweepers like Weavile, Starmie could basically take Salamence out. To me, banning Pokémon with the exception of Garchomp to Ubers is not a solution, but a big cop out.  If you going to do it that way, you may as well ban Tryanitar, Dragonite, Scizor, etc. because they are too powerful and everyone’s using it.

This also brings up another point, battle emulators. With emulators, planning a good team takes knowledge, but it’s not difficult compared to breeding and training a mountain load of Pokémon. When you battle in game, the possibility of having perfect IVs doesn’t happen very often. Unless you spend the time breeding for IVs/moves, training for EVs and all that stuff, it’s going to be inconsistent. This is the main reason why I don’t battle with simulators, since they take the fun away. Doing battles over Nintendo DS or Pokémon Battle Revolution is the only genuine way to enjoy battles to the fullest.

Lastly, I feel that Smogon’s tiers for Generation IV are flawed since it’s not based on merit, but on popularity. In the past, tier lists were based on merits that depended on the Pokémon’s base stats, move pool, ability and typing. Nowadays, these lists are generated through the use of simulators like Shoddy Battle and Pokémon Online. The disadvantage of this method is that some of the good Pokémon will end up in the undesirable NU, the tier that screams horrible, novelty, and unwanted. As a result, you have some Pokémon like Espeon¹ that ends up NU, which makes the whole tier broken. Instead of shoving all the formerly powerful Pokémon in NU, UU should have two subsections. Upper UU for the Pokémon that is used frequently and Lower UU for the Pokémon that aren’t used that frequently, but too powerful. Then, reserve the NU for extremely flawed, weak and novelty Pokémon like Luvdisc, Castform and Plusle.