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Tiering Definitions


Munya

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 What is this?

This is a guide on tiering terms & definitions and it will serve as a reference point for the community and the tier council. It is not meant to serve as a second policy, all policy will be covered in the Tiering Policy thread.

 

 

What is tiering?
Tiering is the system used for the regulation of the competitive aspects of PokeMMO and all aspects relating to them, including moves, items, abilities, and more.

 

 

What is the purpose/goal of tiering?

The goal of tiering is to create, whenever possible, the most balanced competitive battling environment without straying away much from the source content. In Pokemon, there are plenty of aspects that oppose this idea, and while we can’t remove all of these (otherwise we wouldn’t be playing Pokemon anymore), it is possibly to limit and therefore control such elements, that include: RNG mechanics, specific Pokemon, abilities, or moves that have virtually no viable answers, as well as other similarly problematic qualities.

 

 

What are the aspects/elements that can lead to something being banned, Pokemon or otherwise?
There are 3 main categories which can result in a pokemon or other aspect being banned from a tier. These typically apply to Pokemon, but in special cases, can apply to moves or even abilities as well. These main categories are as follows: Uber, Uncompetitive, and Unhealthy.

 

A Pokemon, move, or ability may be banned if it meets one of the following 3 classifications,  (1) Uber, (2) Unhealthy, or (3) Uncompetitive.

 

1. Uber
An uber Pokemon will naturally meet one or more of the following characteristic. The amount of characteristics met is not relevant to whether or not it is moved up.

 

1 Offensive Uber

A Pokémon that in common battle conditions, is capable of sweeping or wall breaking through a significant portion of teams in the metagame with little effort.

 

2 Defensive Uber

A Pokémon that in common battle conditions is able to wall and stall out a significant portion of the metagame with little effort or compromise.

 

3 Support Uber

A Pokémon that in common battle conditions can consistently set up a situation in which it makes it substantially easier for other pokemon to sweep or stall.

 

2. Unhealthy

This relates to pokemon that restrict the metagame in ways which are unfavorable for an evolving competitive metagame. In other words, a pokemon which is unhealthy is something which heavily stagnates or centralizes the metagame in a way that is problematic for a healthy metagame. Note that it has to be in a way that is problematic for a healthy metagame. This is important to note, as being centralizing is not necessarily an indicator of a pokemon being unhealthy for the metagame.

 

An unhealthy pokemon is one which makes the metagame worse with its presence, by stagnating the metagame in a large, negative way. Most pokemon which are overpowered are typically also unhealthy, but they are not entirely mutually exclusive. In general, the only time that the unhealthiness of a pokemon is evaluated is when a pokemon seems to be problematic, but simply does not fit in either of the other two categories for Ubers.

 

 

 

3. Uncompetitive

Moves or abilities may be banned if they are deemed uncompetitive, based on one of the following aspects.

 

Luck based:

Uncompetitive Luck based Aspects are those that create unacceptable degrees of RNG that take away autonomy for the players. What may be considered an unacceptable degree is rather subjective, so it’s important to keep in mind that there is always luck involved in Pokemon, but not every luck based aspect needs to be removed.
 

Invalidation based 

Uncompetitive Invalidation based Aspects are those that take away autonomy from players by invalidating, to an unacceptable degree, key elements of gameplay. What may be considered an unacceptable degree is rather subjective, so it’s important to keep in mind that all moves and abilities can be restrictive to a certain extent. 

 

Since there is a lot of subjectivity involved to determine what is an acceptable degree of competitiveness and what isn’t, comparative coherence through all decisions regarding competitiveness is essential.

 

 

What is a suspect test?

A suspect test is when a pokemon is identified to potentially be a problem, but without practical evidence there is reasonable doubt. So a test period can be initiated to try the pokemon in a tier to find out.

 

 

What is Usage?

In short, usage is the amount of times a pokemon appears on teams within ranked/tournament play, calculated by dividing the amount of times a pokemon is used by the amount of teams that participated in play.  A relatively easy example to grasp is, if Pokemon A was used 25 times, and there are 50 teams in usage, that pokemon was on 50% of the teams.
 

 

What is "Theorymon"?:
Theorymon is essentially hypothetical situations in pokemon thought out. Pokemon sets/spreads, damage calculations, x vs y situations and even teambuilding are all essentially theorymon, as they're thought out, not actually done during battles. Teambuilding won't be delved into, however, as it's a whole other ball game compared to everything else.

 

What is a Counter?

A pokemon that can switch into any move from an opposing pokemon under normal conditions with little to no risk to itself, and can reliably beat the pokemon it is countering. Counters can typically switch into the same pokemon multiple times, assuming they remain healthy. 

 

What is a Check?

A pokemon that under normal conditions can beat the opposing pokemon before it is itself beaten. Switching into the opposing pokemon should usually be costly, risky or impossible depending on the situation.

 

 

Credits to Smogon, Senile, JJ, Gbwead, and whomever else may have helped in any small way when putting the original etiquette thread or this together.

 

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Unlike the old one, I am going to leave this thread open for feedback, if anyone thinks anything needs to be added or edited, feel free to voice your thoughts here.  Posts will be deleted after a period of about one week unless a discussion is sparked from something in particular, or I am away for a set amount of time and cannot do it.  

 

Keep in mind, unlike the old etiquette thread, this is not a secondary policy thread, all policy should be covered in the policy itself so I tried to cut as much of that out of here as possible, this is purely a reference point for terminology.  This is also not a guide to theorymoning so that entire section was removed, the old thread however can still be viewed here if anyone wishes to pull anything from it or reference it for something you think might still fit in this thread.

https://forums.pokemmo.eu/index.php?/topic/54045-tiering-etiquette-guide/

 

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