| SteelBallRun wrote: |
| Salamence and Garchomp are allowed in virtually every other tournament out there including Nintendo's own world tournament. |
It actually depends on the server you are on if these two are banned or not.
Most servers ban Garchomp because SD Garchomp is crazy hard to revenge kill, especially with Sandstorm up, and nothing likes taking a 2+ Outrage.
Less servers ban Mence, but for those that do, it is because he was deemed to centralizing to the metagame. Many players argued that he forced teams to use two or more steel types, and pending on the set could be threatening towards all styles of play.
In addition, Latias (without Soul Dew, those that do carry Soul Dew are banned on all servers) is banned on some servers and not on others. Those that ban her say she is too centralizing like Mence, because she can play the part of a powerful sweeper (Choice Specs or Calm Mind), revenge killer (Choice Scarf), or Support
Personally, I think Garchomp should be banned, while Mence and Latias should be allowed, but I don't run a server.
| Quote: |
| What limits are set on evasion boost? With the nature of the battles revolving around maximizing on 1 shotting opposing pokemon, how often is this going to be an issue? Not one professional match I've watched featured a strategy based around building up massive evasion. |
Most people play with an assumed evasion clause. This also ties into your next question.
| Quote: |
| Quick Claw happens at random. Banning an item over what amounts to a coin flip seems like a crybaby clause from somebody that had their Crobat get smoked by a Quick Claw-aided Rock Slide. |
Most of the top tier players try to minimize the amount of luck involved in a match. It is why people get so frustrated over things like Fire Blast missing at a key time, or Gengar critting at just the right time, or Jirachi wrecking people Iron Head and its 60% flinch rate.
| Quote: |
| Shoddy Battle doesn't function on Mac last I checked, otherwise I think it would be fun to play in something like this. |
See the FAQ
Also, there is a lot more to tier than what SM went into.
According to
Smogon, currently thought of as the best competitive pokemon site out there, there are five tiers:
NU
UU
BL
OU
Uber
Technically, BL and Uber aren't even really tiers, just a place pokemon deemed too damaging to their respective tiers go. Furthermore, you can use pokemon from lower tiers in the higher ones, it just doesn't make sense too most of the time.
NU is a tier filled with pokemon people basically don't use for whatever reason. Sometimes you will see a Nidoqueen or something pop up in standard play, but it is so infrequent that they are often disregarded when one is thinking about building a team.
UU is a tier for pokemon who see usage more often than those in NU, but not seen enough to make it to the high tiers of play. Pokemon in this tier are popular enough for pokemon to host tournaments and such using pokemon only from this tier and below.
BL or Borderline is the tier where pokemon who don't seen enough usage, but are just too centralizing to be in UU go. A good example would be Cresselia, who dropped out of favor early this year because of all the Bug, Dark, and Ghost moves flying around OU, but was disrupting the UU metagame when everyone and their mother started using her within the tier.
OU tends to be the standard tier. Pokemon from here are seen the most often, and tend to be were they are for good reason.
Uber is the tier where everything just too powerful goes. Pokemon like Palkia go up there because they can destroy teams without any set up, while pokemon like Manaphy end up there do to how little set up they need in order to single handedly win games, and pokemon like Lugia end up there because of their awe inspiring support skills.
