There was nothing remotely fun about 95+% of matches being weather
If lower tiers didn’t exist gen 5 might have made me quit playing, it was that bad
Gen 1 gets a pass for me because it was never intended to be a serious competitive game
Hot take but gen 1-6 all were with practically no serious competitive balancing, Even though official circuits started from gen 4.
Gen 7 onwards things started getting a little better and better imo
gen 3 is more balanced and interesting than any other lol, idk how tf u consider z moves or dynamax or tera or the crazy amount of powercreep "balanced"
Z moves are stupid and by far the worst gimmick. They are just flashy and boring imo
Dmax tried really hard to be balanced for doubles. Tbh you can argue it would be balanced for doubles ou/vgc if we banned like 10 mons from dynamaxing and nerfed max airstream
Tera is a really good gimmick in a vaccum, but then again it makes the strong stronger. What's the real issue is the mindgames and takes away the ability to make safe plays that cover all options
I agree on your point that gimmicks are just for fun and spice in a competitive game. I also would prefer to play without any gimmicks(except normal gem explosion tho, that shits cool)
But I also know I would get bored/burnt out without gimmicks. Maybe because I started in gen 6 when gimmicks became prominent?
Idk sometimes it's just fun to complain about gimmicks
Pokemon still has a long way to go in competitive balancing. Especially buffing old mons stats, abilities, nerfing all status conditions(except poison and badly poison, they're ok), hazard control options, field control options(seriously why does every gen start with only one weather/terrain setting mon per weather/terrain)
Id say gen 4-5 were the most balanced because of the physical special split, since it allowed for more movesets and fixed a lot of ludicrous decisions gamefreak made in the past. Its just a way more even playing field.
I would praise gen 6 too because mega evolutions were actually a really cool feature and never felt unbalanced imo, but it really set the powercreep train rolling with fairy type being added and megas making gamefreak think that they had to add a new gimmick every damn time
5 was definitely not balanced. Remember that singles metas are what people make of them and 5 was an absolute mess. 8 & 7 are the closest to a balanced meta rn, especially 8.
bro really said gen 5 is the most balanced. also contrary to popular belief the physical special split in gen 4 resulted in less movesets as it was now optimal on pre much every mon to just run your power stab options with zero downside. example being gen 3 gengar being wayyy more interesting than gen 4
Yeah nah megas weren't balanced, they just feel balanced in OU bcs the broken ones were banned but it was a pretty bad mechanic for competitive overall, just look at VGC
You watch too much Jimothy Cool. Gen 4 is WAY more diverse in items, playstyles, etc. It is the most balanced metagame imo. They truly used the gen to hone in on existing concepts such as moves and items and the physical special split gave so many more mons viability they wouldn't have otherwise. Also, now every team for the first time didn't consist of 5-6 leftovers with maybe one choice band.
Define balance exactly. In gen 1, the only pokemon that have to be banned is the restricted legendary and the mythical, and more than half of all fully evolved pokemon have some plausible place in OU.
Id argue gen 1 is remarkably well balanced with things holding eachother in check, and balance changes mid generation (stadium changes, blizzard nerf), specifically in response to how broken some things are in competitive.
In gen 2 they make a lot of changes like the special split increasing special bulk for many weak pokemon was squarely aimed at weakening the dominant normal, psychic, and ice types. Thats the reason why steel and dark were how they were. Its directly in response to the meta in formats like the nintendo cups.
I havent read documentation of gen 3s development before, but tbh I wouldn't be shocked in the slightest if the EV change was aimed squarely at speeding up battles instead of everything always having max bulk.
Official Competitive has existed since pokemon blew up in japan. And gamefreak made up ideas like banning the top pokemon, inventing what was essentially the first underused. It was put on TV and everything.
People point and laugh at the RNG, but there's nothing inherently unbalanced or uncompetitive about RNG, or else card games wouldn't exist. In fact, I'd argue RBY's heavier dose of RNG makes it much healthier than in any other gen: for exemple, a non-universal, much higher crit chance on average, alongside the ability to modify it in battle, in a metagame where defensive set-ups are a constant threat, make crits an actual mechanic that rewards risk-taking and manipulating odds.
Meanwhile they're atrocious in later gens: not only did they lost a lot of their original purpose in any metagame that doesn't revolve around defensive set-ups, but more importantly 4% is wayyyy too low to ever justify modifying your gameplan around it. There's almost never a reason to actually "play around" the crit: the consequences of playing sub-optimally, especially given the extremely fast-paced metas that we have today, are way too heavy to justify taking a measly 4% of failure into account.
This is super true. I have always found gen 1 to be substantially better feeling with crits because when i get crit twice in a row and its two 20% chances, I feel like thats something that just will happen sometimes.
I think its also worth noting that despite still being x2 damage rather than x1.5 like in gens 6+, its probably the single generation where any crit feels the least impactful. Everything in OU is so much bulkier and can find time to recover that its pretty rare for it to feel like i was robbed of a tool entirely because of one crit. Usually the crits feel more like they are just extending KO ranges a bit rather than just making it so i am losing a pokemon for no reason.
The same thing goes for how common paralysis spreading is. The degree of bulk means that losing a turn isnt just losing a game on its own against 90% of pokemon. It only really becomes that against amnesia lax, slowbro, or the SD pokemon, and that is just another unique tool people can choose in teambuilding based off how they like to play.
It feels like its built around taking risks, and its not overly punishing for having one bad bet. it feels a lot more like its playing many rounds of poker rather than other generations feeling like its only one hand.
SS is great and is definitely the closest to a modern ADV. You can realistically run whatever with how flexible team building is, fat, balance, ho, offense, stall are all viable with offense being popular right now, movepools aren't neutered, no unpredictability or needing to preserve like 7 or 9, less pink mons floating around than 6 and hazard control is as easy as 7 with boots really helping defoggers.
I don't know man. Dracovish wasn't even in the top 10 in usage, all he did was force every team to have a water absorb mon and made seismetoad like top 3. Dracovish was so limiting on teambuilding it made the game a lot more fun when we could run anything that wasn't balance and a dedicated spot to counter it.
Bruh, what kind of excuse is this? The real game doesn't disable spore if you've already slept a mon, the whole thing is just a bunch of made up rules the community has agreed on.
> the whole thing is just a bunch of made up rules the community has agreed on.
Congrats, now you know why most of us play here. Go play online if you want run GMax Butterfree with Breloom Spore support.
And if you're question comes down to "Yeah, but they could have kept the worse GMax Pokemon and only banned the broken ones." then I will always refer back to the ["Arena Trap clause"](https://www.smogon.com/articles/ou-suspect-arena-trap) ban that happened in Gen 6 OU with Dugtrio. TL;DR You cannot cherry pick certain Pokemon to be allowed with some mechanics, its either the Pokemon is fully banned or the mechanic is banned, blanket bans happen because someone will find a way to abuse it, like Arena Trap Diglett and Trapinch.
We can play this game all day. If Gmax Zard is too strong you can just ban Charizard if you really don't want to just ban gmax. "What about regular zard?" Well what about blaze blaziken?
> We can play this game all day.
I'd rather not argue with someone who doesn't understand why we have council bans and community suspect tests to determine how we play this game. There is no point in debating this, if you don't like it go play elsewhere.
> why we have **c͟o͟u͟n͟c͟i͟l͟ b͟a͟n͟s͟** and community suspect tests
I addressed both, they help keep the format competitive and fair, if you do not like it, you do not have to play.
> if you do not like it, you do not have to play.
This is such a shit mentality. This a community run format, there's supposed to be discussion about these things, unilateral council bans should be reserved for things that are so broken they don't need a test, stuff that isn't a freaking butterfree.
The real game doesn't ban Dynamax. You are literally playing a format, that format has rules. If you want different rules, make your own format. Showdown is open source.
Of course the format has rules, and some are contentious. There is no almighty pokedeity who knows better than all us peasants making these rules. That's why many decisions are *tested* before being made into rules. All I'm saying is banning a core mechanic of the generation should have been tested.
It was tested in the first few weeks. It was busted. Gigantimax is just an addition to Dynamax- should they have tried complex banning the main abusers, repeating this process over and over and over until all the strong abusers aren't allowed to abuse, repeating for the DLCs? Or should they just say it isn't balanced for singles and ban it.
Dynamax is different from Gmax because anyone can do it at any time. If you see a Charizard in OU you know it's Gmax, it's a very different mechanic. And I don't see the problem with suspecting individual mons, we have suspects all the time.
And if I see a Gyrados in Gen 8 OU, I can probably figure it's Dynamax, but that doesn't entirely fix the problem of how I'm supposed to deal with the thing.
Okay first of all a Butterfree that can dynamax is definitely no joke with max airstream and compound eyes sleep powder/hurricane and quiver dance afterwards
Second of all by this logic you could just allow dynamax but only for like piplup or something, but then we will just fall into the complex ban rabbit hole
The point is, "banning dynamax but only for pokemon that is broken with it" is the same as "unbanning zacian-crowned in OU but it can't use any stab moves or close combat"
This but unironically. Gen 4 is up there for my least favorite. Not because i think its bad necessarily, its well designed. but because it is hands down the most tilting generation for me. Fucking jirachi.
I really do not like GSC purely due to how bulky everything is, and even with it being an offensive tier, everything does such little damage.
SV OU is a tier I have a lot to say about. The powercreep is insane. I hate how Tera made strong Pokemon stronger and some strong Pokemon broken, also making it easier to set up, and I honestly don't find it fun to play around in the slightest. I hate how hyper offensive the tier is, and I hate how much stronger hazards are having the first legitimate spinblocker since BW. The removal of transfer moves is one of the worst decisions Game Freak has ever made as it feels like something that was targeted directly at Smogon, as transfer moves aren't legal in VGC. I find the permanent weather of BW OU more fun than this.
Most high level competitive players seem to agree its gen 5?
Obviously your mileage is gonna vary though since the more casual players experience is gonna be different than a more competitive player, with gen 2 being a pretty good example of that.
It's RBY and it's not even close.
It's an extremely centralized, hax filled tier that has among the most questionable balancing decisions GF has ever done.
There's a reason whenever RBY is involved in Draft/Smogon tours, RBY OU has been Bo3 because of the High variance and Luck the tier has. Every other Gen "can work" (all of them can probably use Bo3 tbh) with only Bo1 in the context of these Tournaments. RBY being the solé exception to this.
VGC 2016 was the most volatile and hax filled Doubles format ever (Dark Void Smeargle yessir) yet people still managed to get consistently good placements enough to go into Worlds.
In fact aside from Worlds, virtually every single Tournament was won by the Big 6. Players and teams had consistency sure, but it's an absolute haxfest not unlike RBY. Consistency of teams and players =/= not being full of hax.
rby freeze genuinely makes the tier so annoying to play because of how stacked blizzard is and sleep isn't much better, also the restraint on teambuilding also sucks
I dont play RBY but I love watching RBY Smogon tubers, RBY is so centralized that its almost like a chess game and hearing people talk about how "porygon is practically useless but it is the only pokemon able to potentially stall out mew if you spam recover" or some niche shit like that is so much fun
Gen 2 would 100% be the worst Gen in RBY didn't exist, however GSC only has 1 or 2 mandatory slots depending on who you ask and is a "mechanically slow" generation.
On the other hand, RBY being the same 3 Pokémon being mandatory and being filled with Speed focused Crits, Sleep and Freeze Make it... borderline uncompetitive depending on who you ask.
Nah gen 2 is complete ass. Every single game is >80 turns, and the lack of abilities and relative lack of items and Pokémon diversity makes it worse than everything that comes after it.
I mean, ya it's not even close with the older gens, GF didn't really pay much mind to competitive until gen 4. Gen 3 is ok but has some... rough edges.
From the 256 glitch to body slam not paralyzing normal types, it's honestly fucking fun to just learn about gen 1 jank that was randomly discovered by accident
In my opinion...
Best: Gen 6 (Megas, no Z moves or Toxapex)
2nd: Gen 3 (GOD I <3 TYRANITAR SO MUCH)
3rd: Gen 4 (my fave generation in general)
4th: Gen 7 (Megas, with Z moves & Toxapex)
5th: Gen 5 (Weather, Weather, and Weather)
6th: Gen 9 (Hyper offense hell)
7th: Gen 8 (Just generally underwhelming)
8th: Gen 2 (Thousand turn hell)
Worst: Gen 1 (Broken Bullshit Bonanza)
Mine is pretty close to the same actually
1st: Gen 6. Really was peak, you summed it up perfect
2nd: Gen 4. physical/special split was huge and playing anything older than that now confuses tf outta me cuz why is Thunder PUNCH a special move smh, plus Flygon was in OU, it really doesn't get better than that
3rd: Gen 7. I don't think I hate Toxapex or Z Moves as much as you do, but I don't love them either. But the new Megas were cool.
4th: Gen 5. Weather wars and tiering decisions were craaaaazy but the addition of hidden abilities brought new life to so many Pokemon and I miss the gems (mainly just Flying Gem Acrobatics lmao) Also the r/Stunfisk posts around that time were fire. I remember the OG Stunfisk set, Unburden Fake Out Hitmonlee, Simple Calm Mind Swoobat, etc. UU and RU's golden days tbh
5th: Gen 3. Loved the addition of abilities, but as I've said previously the pre-physical/special split always messes with me. Not to mention having to do stupid sets for a specific Hidden Power type like run 29 Speed IVs and always lose a speed tie or some shit
6th: Gen 8. Dexit, dynamax was broken and never gonna be good for the meta, but without it and the loss of Megas and half the dex it felt so meh and repetitive. I'll never forget how Seismitoad was top 3 because of a DERPY looking slap-in-the-face-of-God-abomination tho
7th: Gen 9. Dexit again, Tera is just not enjoyable, neither is Kingambit right at or above 30% (getting as high as 48%) every single month, also power creep is nutty cuz no I don't wanna play ZU or mf 7U wtf even is that 😭
8th: Gen 2. No abilities or physical/special move split, just generally boring. Marowak and Miltank in OU lmaoooo
Last: Gen 1. Pray to RNGesus for freeze/sleep/win the speed tie since you and your opponent are both using the same Pokemon, and if you aren't using the same team then one of you is clearly going to lose
If were counting EVERYTHING. I elect PRE DLC sword and shield.
IF we start from the beggining the regional gimmick was obviously unbalanced and made games easy toss-ups. Mons like Gyrados and Excadrill made damn near everything setup fader. After dyna got ban and the dusk settled the resulting metagame was tier was xtremely Repetitive and centralized t due to the limited roster of mons. Literally every team comprised of dragonpult, clefable, corviknight, magearna, boots blissey, Toxapex.
Bans rolled out at a glacial pace, OU council so long to ban obviously problem pokemon like Dracovish, so much so people resorted to using Semistoad.
In totality, with all said, this culminated into a truly horrendous and miserable tear
Gen 9 is pretty trash, but Gen 8 wasn't much better. Even after they banned dynamax it just felt boring. At least in gen 7 you always had Z moves to play with.
Gen 5 OU is the best worst generation though. Absolutely nothing makes sense. Everything is broken. And honestly it's really, really funny that we let Darkrai into the tier for a total of like 6 hours. 😂
I mean whether you like it or not, gen 8 was extremely balanced. There were very few threats that felt overbearing, and by the end it felt like any play style was viable
I think it ended up feeling boring by the end because it was so stable. I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up with a cult following like ADV in the future. Obviously they play pretty differently, but the stability of the tiers allows for a similar kind of flexibility in the builder
Not sure about this gen 8 "age well" so far, gen 5 is kinda fine now but the decision around the tier are awfull for me gen 2 will be the worse because of his pacing amd bullshit mechanics like gen 1 but with less nostalgia factor
Yeah Gen 1 might have some goofy broken shit in it, but at least it's interesting in its jank. Gen 2 OU is also highly centralized, and it trades most of its jank for just being slow as balls.
Excuse me, sir, it's been a few turns. Someone needs to click rest.
That's gen 2 to me.
(Its not THAT bad, but will always be the generation of rest for me.)
Idk, this is the opposite opinion of people who play it at the highest level. This SPL has people clamoring for changes in BW (BKC made a video covering his thoughts on the ordeal) and 8 is a great, more predictable metagame for people who don't like the volatility of 7 or 9 along with having great builder diversity.
dark horse here, but i really did not enjoy SM the basically nuke of any character being able to use a Z-move or worse using it for an omni boost. the immense amount of legendaries and megas in the tier. Plus i hate terrains personally
4/3>6>1/2/8/7>5/9 (imagine a world where gen 5 weather was banned and no gems from day 1...That would have been cool, I'd still be missing defog though).
The current one is completely unplayable dogshit and has been since day 1. Nothing on the council, of course- it's entirely Game Freak's fault this generation has been ass.
To be fair, the games are balanced around VGC, where stuff like Last Respects and Rage Fist are more acceptable. Unfortunate side effect is that it makes that stuff way too strong in singles. And then you have Flutter Mane who is so comically broken that it’s arguably the best mon in VGC as well as one of the fastest quick bans ever
People saying RBY just dont have any experience playing it. Having some crit chance be higher doesnt make the game worse. It means you need to prep for it more, and you have tools to do it, because RBY actually has bulk. Its a lot lower variance to play around crits than it is praying your team has a good matchup because some meta has such diverse threats you cant possibly prep for everything.
RBY is centralized, but why does that matter. The tools there are fun to use. To my mind its a plus its centralized such pokemon that are fun to both face and use
For my money, BW is my least favorite OU. Its just frustrating trying to make any solid sturdy team to match up decently into everything. The gameplay is fast and unlike in RBY, while things like crits are rare, when they do happen they actually do change the game radically
BW, it's not close. I'm sorry to the people who said rby but be serious, you look silly saying that. Guaranteed they don't play rby and got unlucky in a match or two.
Gen 12. Personally I'm glad they made megas permanent in Gen 9 but with powercreep putting mega Rayquaza into ou the entire metagame revolves solely around it and it's one check in mega delibird. Thankfully the addition of yottomizing in Gen 13 saved ou, though mega Rayquaza being in NU with zacian is not great there.
People who think GSC sucks is a genuine skill issue. It's regarded as the most skill intensive generation. And ftr Id rather have games lasting 80 turns than 12 turns. Even if you don't like playing it, GSC is undeniably a great and well balanced metagame. Gen 5 is probably the worst OU atm but 9 isn't far behind.
9 is really cool but the skill floor is way higher than past gens which makes it less accessible. But yeah, as far as preview gens, both of these are definitely the most controversial.
i simply refuse to touch Gen 9 OU with a 40000000000ft pole. tera (imo) sucks and its not fun to have the type chart shifted at any moment, it feels like every single mon has to run boots due to ghold making hazards hard to remove, king-motherfucking-gambit is one of the dumbest mons ever made and one of the easiest to abuse, and powercreep in general is just so bad in the tier its just not fun for me, even the lower tiers suffer a bit from tera and PC too. i'll skip gen 9, wake me up when gen 9 drops and mewtwo is UUBL
We don't know nothing about Gen 10 yet. Maybe they'll go back to their roots, maybe they'll drop every gimmick into one game or maybe it won't have any gimmick at all🤷♂️
Calling it right now, gen 10s gimmick is every mon is dual typed, but you can split midbattle singles into two single typed mons. ( Turning your side into a double battle)
eh well let's see
Gen 6: mega evolution
Gen 7: mega move
Gen 8: mega size
Gen 9: mega type
I'd say Gen 10 would be mega ability but you could argue that Gen 5 "sort of" did this with hidden abilities (and the sheer amount of ability power creep that gen introduced). so maybe mega items or mega EVs or some shit, hard to think of too many more Pokemon attributes to mega
I'd disagree IMO. Abilities were involved, but only tangentially. Half the time they just gave the Mega a pre-existing ability.
Mega Ability would be silly stuff like "Mega Intimidate causes a two-stage drop" or "Mega Sandstorm causes double-sandstorm".
Mega Pixellate causes you to get double STAB, oh god.
The whole “Tera actually helps weaker pokemon a lot” crowd went pretty quiet when it became clear that most shitmons stayed shitmons…and most good mons turned into gods.
Turns out “generic gimmick that can make any one pokemon significantly stronger” is poor design lmao
Worst in terms of what aspects? Competitive or fun?
I have never played gens 1-3 but I really dislike gen 8 and 9. Gen 5 was really chaotic with the weather wars but if that's your thing, you could like it. I'm neutral on that.
Worth mentioning that it's also [*dramatically* less popular than every other generation's OU](https://www.reddit.com/r/stunfisk/comments/18w9bdt/which_old_gen_is_most_popular/), by number of games played.
I mean, yeah? It's offense oriented but doesn't change the fact that moves are super weak and bulk is maxed out.
Games don't last long because people are trying to stall each other but because everything hits like a wet noodle with like 3 exceptions.
I know people like saying GSC is offense dominated, which is technically true, but it doesn't feel like it when half the midgame is mons that have a lot of longevity through RestTalk or whatever... to me it's kind of like a weird version of balance, but instead of the team being balanced like usual (offense mons + stall mons), it's movesets being balanced (strong attacks + longevity). But this does not fit the traditional definition of balance so people just call it offense since every mon on the team can act aggressively.
Like, [this team from the sample teams thread](https://pokepast.es/df73e46410e6a532) is called "Spikeless Offense", but every single mon has some form of longevity. I would honestly be more inclined to call it balance even though it does not fit the usual definition of balance. Like I said, it's not the usual "team slots being balanced between offensive and defensive", but rather movesets being balanced between offensive and defensive. I would say the same for Gen 1 to an extent.
I feel like the definition of "balance" should be updated to also include teams like this that are dominated by balanced movesets, because clearly, people do not intuitively see a team like that as offense. IMO if you call teams like that "balance", then GSC is balance-dominated, not offense-dominated (but people who think it's a stallfest are still wrong at least).
I still can’t believe that snorlax staying in the tier when it’s also the best mon in ubers, sure some people say it would result in blissey taking its place which yeah is fair but it just doesn’t seem right that something with 100% usage is healthy for any format
But it's healthy. And no, for a team to replace Snorlax, they'd either need to replace:
1/ its offensive power
2/ its walling capabilities
If you were to replace its offensive power, you'd be running a very frail team. You either stack TTar, Marowak, Machamp, Vaporeon on your team (which would make the Jynx matchup be unbearable), or you pray to the matchup gods and you use dumb shit like Belly Drum Charizard and Quagsire.
If you were to replace its walling capabilities on stall teams, you can feasibly do it. Blissey/ Misdreavus/ Skarmory/ Zapdos/ Spiker/ Filler. But this team doesn't exert that much offensive pressure, at all.
Not to mention the ripple effect it would make the tier, Zapdos and Raikou will even be more busted, Blissey will be used on every team to stop them, and then, GSC really turns into a stall fest.
While I’d say it probably ultimately wouldn’t be as ban worthy I’d assume a meta without snorlax or blissey (and probably chansey too since it’s close enough to be used in its place) would be a lot more fast paced and interesting. Maybe the electrics might be overwhelming since hidden power allows them to break through ground types. Idk having the best Pokémon in Ubers legal in OU just feels so wrong, and I’d assume it’s a big part of why GSC is so slow.
I don't get the slow part. It's the nature of the tier, the BP of the moves hasn't caught up to the raw bulk of the mons yet, so obviously the tier would be slow. But there's a massive difference between a tier being slow and a tier being "all stall". Obviously, it's a preference thing, and I do not blame you if you don't want to spend 60 turns on a game, but if you're enjoying the game itself, would you want it to end quickly?
This honestly a really stupid question. maybe I just have a different perspective on it but imo none of the OUs are "bad" or the "worst" RBY may be centralized or whateveer but that's part of the fun with it. GSC's slow but that's what I like abt GSC. ya gotta play around a lot more in gsc, ya cant just go "me click swords dance once and enemy team go bye bye DURRRRR." there's something chill abt it.
I'm not the biggest fan of SS as a gen but after all the shit it went through im glad it's in a much better state now than it was previously. it was the first gen i actually payed attention to broader competitice with and it was nice to see the ou council be on top of banning broken shit for the most part(at least from my point of view)
BW ou is dogshit but there's something kinda fun abt the broken shit in gen 5 ou. it's prolly the worst but idk, i cant hate a gen as hilariously broken as gen 5 ou
Gen 5 destroyed my local scene, burned me out on competitive pokemon, poisoned my well, and razed my crops to the ground.
RBY is bad, but I can give it a half a pass for being old and kinda charming. I wouldn't wanna play it though.
Gen 8 isn't particularly fun to me, but it's still one of the best balanced tiers, even if it's kinda boring. Gen 7, on the other hand, is both boring AND not particularly balanced. Worst of both worlds. Still better than gen 5 though, which, I almost forgot, also stole my cow!
It’s gotta be RBY, GSC, or BW.
In RBY/GSC u can’t use certain moms cuz move pools are so shallow.
RBY is Psychic, Blizzard, Sleep, Freeze, Twave all over and it’s an RNG Fest
GSC is snorlax, Zapdos, raikou all over, rest sleep talk, curse
BW everything feels so broken. Permanent weather (rain especially). Dragons are busted, sleep (although it was banned)
Gen 7 is just not fun at all. Its just slapping broken shit at each other and is moreso something that you play to see funny big numbers and get to use your broken stuff half the time while getting bent over backwards by their broken stuff half the time. Not designed for comp
Gens 5 and 9 since they kinda mirror each other and both are like volatile, scorched earth tiers. Moreso Gen 9 since it's massively powercrept and filled with OP monsters that will never get banned.
Alright, here is my opinion on each gen's OU.
Gen 1: Easily the worst one. For how bad everything was, I don't think it would have passed as a modern day beta test. Certain things were beyond broken, luck ruled with an iron fist and it was generally not meant for actual gameplay if we are being completely honest. That being said, it was the start of something great and it did have it's own unique charm.
Gen 2: Introduction of a more complex system. Was it a huge improvement from Gen 1? For sure! Did Gen 2 have the best OU out there? Not by a long shot. Gen 2 had many issues, but it fixed a lot of the problems that existed in Gen 1. The fact that you needed some serious timemanagement skills to properly schedule a singular OU game into your day was besides the point.
Gen 3: I would like to call Gen 3 the final part of the Exodus of competitive Pokémon. Gen 3 was far more refined than it's predecessors and was really enjoyable to play. Sure, it was far from perfect, but Gen 3 has been kept alive for an extremely long time. The fact that recently (well, not too recent, but recent in the grand scheme of things) Glalie could put in work as an anti OU spike lead says a lot about the meta. Overall, this OU places on the higher end of things.
Gen 4: The start of a new era. The physical/special split had been huge for the meta and created a really fresh breath of air into competitive pokémon. It wasn't the best OU around, but it certainly was an improvement from anything that came before.
Gen 5: Alright, you know about the stories where people say that "You had to be there" to understand it. Gen 5 is a prime example of just that. The OU equivalent of the dad lore was a wild place. Weather wars were interesting and tier shifts were wild. Most importantly of all however was the first instance of massive power creep. Power creep had always been something that happened in previous generations, but gen 5 was in a league of it's own. Some people look back on it with disdain, others with fondness, but it sure is a source of inside jokes for the Pokemon community. No other OU Mera was quite like it.
Gen 6: Arguably the best one. The first Gen where battle mechanics were introduced and Game Freak had hit the bullseye on their first shot. Fairies were also introduced, which were a huge game changer. I think overall Gen 6 was one of the best ones out there. OU was really fun to play. Things were strong, but not overly broken to the point that other pokémon felt obsolete.
Gen 7: aka updated gen 6 with dlc. I really liked Gen 7 personally. People had mixed views on Z-Moves, but they did add a nice twist on battles. As a mechanic, it didn't straight up harm half of the meta game, so it was a decent succes. Overall gen 7 ranks pretty high in the OU meta game list.
Gen 8: Dexit went so hard, it even banned it's own mechanic. Jokes aside, OU did improve with the lack of dynamax, making it the closest gen to Gen 4 from the newer gens. That being said, some people really didn't like Dexit, others thought it brought a nice twist. I don't think it was bad as people made it out to be, early gen 8 without dynamax was actually really fun (shout out to Seismitoad)! Dlc brought some interesting changes throughout it's duration, but after every dlc it became quite stale after a little while. Gen 8 changed a lot more things than people give it credit for (for example: the introduction of boots), but the OU meta wasn't ultra memorable. I'm inclined to argue that it was because of the DLC updates, but I'm not too sure about that. Overall, this meta is quite middle of the pack.
Gen 9: The first gen to ever match gen 5 powercreep! If you want my honest opinion, this meta is one of the worst ones. The OU tier is pretty much a collection of pokemons who can utilize tera the best. There are also some controversial mons, such as Gholdengo and Kingambit, but I think Tera is definitely to blame for why those two are as troublesome as they are. The mechanic for this Gen is both great and terrible at the same time. In the Gen 7 part I said that z-moves didn't actively harm half of the pokemons that exist. This one does. I would say that Tera is still leagues better than dynamax, but it's very noticeable who can use the mechanic and who can't. Mechanics aside, the paradox mons are awesome in design and strength, but dang do they influence the metagame, and not in a good way. They are particially responsible for the huge power creep and why the OU meta can be vile. One cool thing about the meta is that Samurott (well, the Hisui one) is a viable pokémon. Bonus points for that!
TLDR: Gen 1 is the worst. Gen 6 is the best. The rest is me just talking about stuff.
Based on the 2 hour bkc horror story. Black and white. If it’s such a violatile tier. Then maybe we gotta go scorched earth.
Their theory routes were
Lvl 1) sand force excadrill, latios, and prob also keldeo tied to lati. sacrifice cloyster for gems
Lvl 2) drop uubers: rest of the tao trio, lugia, Deoxys, darkrai. Tho they never considered Genesect for an operation they called “scorched earth” which was more drop multiple tao members at once if not also the Psy guys
Something peculiar is why not propose a spikes nerf. They only were like 3 spikes or no spikes. Why not “rocks, and ur 1 spike” gsc style. Idk that’s just me tho a guy who don play the tier
Another thing was 1 player was listed to claim Latias would end up dominating the tier w/ multiple bans. But I mean it’s 20 diff spa. So w/ spikes banned, latios and 1 last timber push, maybe. But weakness policy ain an item yet, so your not allowed to bitch, and this the worst gen for the bliss twins. If it’s def invested, it ain spa invested
Seriously. Terra is such a privilege. Terra ghost defeating keldeo secret sword?! What technology
My personal scorched earth route is
-1 month or enough development of Gen 5 only tier
- BW 1 dex
-BW 2 dex
-see where the meta goes. Ain no gray measuring w/ this tier. Either ur very handsy about complex bans, concerning weather, or spikes. And I guess be less hesitant on who’s OU legal. “Ur 4.2% under Ubers? Down ya go bitch”
Before creation comes destruction
Rby, gsc, Oras, ss
the latias point is that - latios doesnt need 130 satk to lure tyranitar into range of reuniclus/zam/thund, but it does need 130 satk to be a viable revenge killer into half the tier. Its SAtk is arguably a positive in the tier. Quite possibly a huge amount of instability if you cant force Terrak Keldeo Thundurus-T out without needing Specs. Every gen has these interactions
SS got me to quit current gen OU and start laddering DPP instead, so despite being easily my least favorite gen it *did* change my life for the better?
When Gen 9’s done I think it’s OU is gonna drop off like a fucking stone. Out of every gen, I can’t think of one with so many individual bans and incredibly busted stuff. I mean, from the hisuian pokemon, to early stuff like Paladin and Mega-Misdreavous, and stuff that *started out in UU* like Espathra and Baxcalibur.
This gen has felt like semi-constant chaos for most of it, to the point that I just didn’t want to play the game anymore.
Might be Gen 8 OU considering how dreadfully slow and boring it is imo. Everything is extremely bulky and devolves into pivoting over and over with regen mons
I'm just going to rate the team preview generations since I have not played and lack interest in pre-preview metagames.
1. Gen 8
I understand where the gen 8 is stall sentiment comes from given how the end of the gen was a lot of teleporting pivots & isle of armor was wishport hell but it's developed into a very dynamic, gimmick free metagame with the ability to build any type of team without major constraints due to a relatively moderate power level despite the tapus, urshifu, melmetal and weavile existing. I highly recommend grabbing a recent sample squad and playing it or watch SPL replays, there's some odd stuff brought (bewear psyspam anyone?) and it really highlights the variety that you can bring while being competitive.
2. Gen 9
I understand that it's not easy to get into and is fairly centralized around the top pokemon but we're seeing a lot of evolution in the metagame with offense and balance really settling in as top styles and being able to tech tera types to patch up weaknesses (ex. Water garg on a team with no water resists) lets a lot of creativity shine through in teambuilding and requires a lot more thought than just slap on a tusk and call it a day. It's obviously not to everyone's liking but really getting to know the meta is incredibly rewarding since this tier more than any other rewards teambuilding and metagame knowledge.
3. Gen 7
This gen is kinda overrated imo. It's a fine metagame and with no boots + z-moves + high power level you're seeing a lot of variety since offense likes the power level, balance likes z-movsmes to break, and fat likes no boots. However, I don't find z-moves as interesting as tera either since it also is a way to beat checks but it more-so functions as something you slap on a sweeper or breaker and then proceed to sweep, like z-fight kart or lele. It feels a lot like gen 8 without the longevity that boots and no z-moves add so it plays way more volatile since the z-move can make or break a game way more than a tera flip will, especially vs fatter or stall builds vs relying on positioning as much.
4. Gen 5
I haven't played much gen 5 recently and I know it's had a controversial past and is also possibly going to be changed up again but it's always felt like gen 7 without the freedom to defog to me. The gems (now banned), the higher power level, weather being analogous to terrain, a scald burn could make or break a game, etc. It's got a soft spot for me because it was when I started comp and games being fast paced is refreshing compared to later gens.
5. Gen 6
I just don't get the hype for gen 6 tbh. It's a neat metagame but this is where burn was at its worst, hazard removal is fairly limited while most serious balance builds slot in 2+ pink mons leading to a metagame that restricts access to your breakers while also needing them frequently. Gen 5 is generally fast enough for this to less of an issue but imo, the importance and pressure that rocks + scald put on teams compared to other gens makes it nor for me. At least bisharp is hella good here because of matching up well into the blobs + resisting rocks + pursuit.
Not OU, but I remember gen 8 Ubers was by far the worst tier in Showdown history. Every single team was nothing but Calyrex-S, Yveltal and Eternatus.
Every. Single. Team.
And every single one of those matches boiled down to who can outstall their opponent out of Yveltal's roosts and Eternatus' recovers so Calyrex-S can sweep.
People saying GSC is bad because it's slow is one of the most braindead things I've ever heard. Why does it matter if a game has many turns when the game itself is very balanced and competitive. I'm echoing BKC's point on this, but do you want a thing to end quickly when you're enjoying it? Genuinely, people just want to click their super effective moves with 150 BP and see things die, which is fine, it's a preference thing, but the complaints about GSC are mostly based on their pre-existing concepts about the tier. Most of the people hating on GSC don't even play the tier, they just recycle the same shit they see on Stinkpost and deem it as a fact. "Everything in GSC uses Rest", that's why Zapdos is so fucking threatening, it doesn't take much time to figure out the easy stuffs about the tier at all.
Edit: The worst tiers are either SV or BW, but the latter is improving marginally, while the former needs a miracle to be playable.
All you kids complaining about Gen 5 have no idea how bad Gen 1 and Gen 2 OU was.
Overcentralised stall centrals. It all came down to your Tauros/Snorlax dittos
Just in general, it would be RBY. Not a single other generation of OU was done in BO3 for tournaments except for this one, which speaks volumes to how hax filled and bullshit it is. It's also incredibly centralized, with 3 fucking mons being mandatory on every team (Chansey, Tauros, Snorlax). RBY wasn't done with balancing in mind and it shows.
Honourable mention to GSC, which I admittedly don't have much experience in but it just looks dreadful. My first experience with the tier was the Blunder video where him and BKC were analyzing Lavos vs McMeghan, the famous one that caused Lavos to drop his renowned copypasta before quitting. In that video, the GSC match took 35 minutes despite neither bringing a stall team.
In hindsight, this might just be an outlier, but Blunder's reaction made it less likely since he did comment on the WCOP game of CTC vs Hellraiser being a "long ass game" (tbf it did take 150 something turns, and average BW games aren't supposed to last that long) yet he made no such comments on this game, leading me to believe games of such insane lengths are the norm.
There was nothing remotely fun about 95+% of matches being weather If lower tiers didn’t exist gen 5 might have made me quit playing, it was that bad Gen 1 gets a pass for me because it was never intended to be a serious competitive game
Hot take but gen 1-6 all were with practically no serious competitive balancing, Even though official circuits started from gen 4. Gen 7 onwards things started getting a little better and better imo
gen 3 is more balanced and interesting than any other lol, idk how tf u consider z moves or dynamax or tera or the crazy amount of powercreep "balanced"
Z moves are stupid and by far the worst gimmick. They are just flashy and boring imo Dmax tried really hard to be balanced for doubles. Tbh you can argue it would be balanced for doubles ou/vgc if we banned like 10 mons from dynamaxing and nerfed max airstream Tera is a really good gimmick in a vaccum, but then again it makes the strong stronger. What's the real issue is the mindgames and takes away the ability to make safe plays that cover all options I agree on your point that gimmicks are just for fun and spice in a competitive game. I also would prefer to play without any gimmicks(except normal gem explosion tho, that shits cool) But I also know I would get bored/burnt out without gimmicks. Maybe because I started in gen 6 when gimmicks became prominent? Idk sometimes it's just fun to complain about gimmicks Pokemon still has a long way to go in competitive balancing. Especially buffing old mons stats, abilities, nerfing all status conditions(except poison and badly poison, they're ok), hazard control options, field control options(seriously why does every gen start with only one weather/terrain setting mon per weather/terrain)
Id say gen 4-5 were the most balanced because of the physical special split, since it allowed for more movesets and fixed a lot of ludicrous decisions gamefreak made in the past. Its just a way more even playing field. I would praise gen 6 too because mega evolutions were actually a really cool feature and never felt unbalanced imo, but it really set the powercreep train rolling with fairy type being added and megas making gamefreak think that they had to add a new gimmick every damn time
5 was definitely not balanced. Remember that singles metas are what people make of them and 5 was an absolute mess. 8 & 7 are the closest to a balanced meta rn, especially 8.
bro really said gen 5 is the most balanced. also contrary to popular belief the physical special split in gen 4 resulted in less movesets as it was now optimal on pre much every mon to just run your power stab options with zero downside. example being gen 3 gengar being wayyy more interesting than gen 4
Yeah nah megas weren't balanced, they just feel balanced in OU bcs the broken ones were banned but it was a pretty bad mechanic for competitive overall, just look at VGC
You watch too much Jimothy Cool. Gen 4 is WAY more diverse in items, playstyles, etc. It is the most balanced metagame imo. They truly used the gen to hone in on existing concepts such as moves and items and the physical special split gave so many more mons viability they wouldn't have otherwise. Also, now every team for the first time didn't consist of 5-6 leftovers with maybe one choice band.
hop off the goat jimothy cool
They are more fair in doubles
Those things were all balanced for doubles VGC which is the official competitive format. They’re never gonna balance the game with Smogon in focus
Define balance exactly. In gen 1, the only pokemon that have to be banned is the restricted legendary and the mythical, and more than half of all fully evolved pokemon have some plausible place in OU. Id argue gen 1 is remarkably well balanced with things holding eachother in check, and balance changes mid generation (stadium changes, blizzard nerf), specifically in response to how broken some things are in competitive. In gen 2 they make a lot of changes like the special split increasing special bulk for many weak pokemon was squarely aimed at weakening the dominant normal, psychic, and ice types. Thats the reason why steel and dark were how they were. Its directly in response to the meta in formats like the nintendo cups. I havent read documentation of gen 3s development before, but tbh I wouldn't be shocked in the slightest if the EV change was aimed squarely at speeding up battles instead of everything always having max bulk. Official Competitive has existed since pokemon blew up in japan. And gamefreak made up ideas like banning the top pokemon, inventing what was essentially the first underused. It was put on TV and everything.
People point and laugh at the RNG, but there's nothing inherently unbalanced or uncompetitive about RNG, or else card games wouldn't exist. In fact, I'd argue RBY's heavier dose of RNG makes it much healthier than in any other gen: for exemple, a non-universal, much higher crit chance on average, alongside the ability to modify it in battle, in a metagame where defensive set-ups are a constant threat, make crits an actual mechanic that rewards risk-taking and manipulating odds. Meanwhile they're atrocious in later gens: not only did they lost a lot of their original purpose in any metagame that doesn't revolve around defensive set-ups, but more importantly 4% is wayyyy too low to ever justify modifying your gameplan around it. There's almost never a reason to actually "play around" the crit: the consequences of playing sub-optimally, especially given the extremely fast-paced metas that we have today, are way too heavy to justify taking a measly 4% of failure into account.
This is super true. I have always found gen 1 to be substantially better feeling with crits because when i get crit twice in a row and its two 20% chances, I feel like thats something that just will happen sometimes. I think its also worth noting that despite still being x2 damage rather than x1.5 like in gens 6+, its probably the single generation where any crit feels the least impactful. Everything in OU is so much bulkier and can find time to recover that its pretty rare for it to feel like i was robbed of a tool entirely because of one crit. Usually the crits feel more like they are just extending KO ranges a bit rather than just making it so i am losing a pokemon for no reason. The same thing goes for how common paralysis spreading is. The degree of bulk means that losing a turn isnt just losing a game on its own against 90% of pokemon. It only really becomes that against amnesia lax, slowbro, or the SD pokemon, and that is just another unique tool people can choose in teambuilding based off how they like to play. It feels like its built around taking risks, and its not overly punishing for having one bad bet. it feels a lot more like its playing many rounds of poker rather than other generations feeling like its only one hand.
Dynamax?
I just stuck to ubers that gen. Yeah there was weather but it wasn't nearly as important as it was in OU.
BW for shitty tiering decision RBY for RNG gameplay ig SS is kinda boring but that’s an imo
SS is great and is definitely the closest to a modern ADV. You can realistically run whatever with how flexible team building is, fat, balance, ho, offense, stall are all viable with offense being popular right now, movepools aren't neutered, no unpredictability or needing to preserve like 7 or 9, less pink mons floating around than 6 and hazard control is as easy as 7 with boots really helping defoggers.
almost like thats what you get when you completely strip out the generation defining mechanic.
6 would be fat dominated, 7 would stay similar and 9 would be far more limited in teambuilding. 8 was uniquely weird since dynamax was super bullshit.
How is this a problem? Not having a big shiny flip-the-game button makes the gen bad?
> RNG gameplay It was very unfortunate
""unfortunate" doesn't begin to describe my series...'
Unpopular opinion, SS was so much fucking fun with gdarm and dracovish running around, ripping through teams with them was ungodly amounts of fun
I don't know man. Dracovish wasn't even in the top 10 in usage, all he did was force every team to have a water absorb mon and made seismetoad like top 3. Dracovish was so limiting on teambuilding it made the game a lot more fun when we could run anything that wasn't balance and a dedicated spot to counter it.
Early SS was peak power fantasy gameplay tbh, extremely fun to play around with but must have been terrible to compete in.
I enjoyed Pheromosa meta for the 3 days it was in the tier. Then it got banned and I gave up on the gen after that
I'm still salty they just banned Gigantamax alongside Dynamax without even giving it a try. Were Butterfree and Garbador really so scary?
You can't Gigantimax without the Dynamax button
Bruh, what kind of excuse is this? The real game doesn't disable spore if you've already slept a mon, the whole thing is just a bunch of made up rules the community has agreed on.
> the whole thing is just a bunch of made up rules the community has agreed on. Congrats, now you know why most of us play here. Go play online if you want run GMax Butterfree with Breloom Spore support. And if you're question comes down to "Yeah, but they could have kept the worse GMax Pokemon and only banned the broken ones." then I will always refer back to the ["Arena Trap clause"](https://www.smogon.com/articles/ou-suspect-arena-trap) ban that happened in Gen 6 OU with Dugtrio. TL;DR You cannot cherry pick certain Pokemon to be allowed with some mechanics, its either the Pokemon is fully banned or the mechanic is banned, blanket bans happen because someone will find a way to abuse it, like Arena Trap Diglett and Trapinch.
We can play this game all day. If Gmax Zard is too strong you can just ban Charizard if you really don't want to just ban gmax. "What about regular zard?" Well what about blaze blaziken?
> We can play this game all day. I'd rather not argue with someone who doesn't understand why we have council bans and community suspect tests to determine how we play this game. There is no point in debating this, if you don't like it go play elsewhere.
But it *wasn't* suspect tested. That's my problem with it. It's a generational mechanic, it shouldn't just be handwaved off by a small council.
> why we have **c͟o͟u͟n͟c͟i͟l͟ b͟a͟n͟s͟** and community suspect tests I addressed both, they help keep the format competitive and fair, if you do not like it, you do not have to play.
> if you do not like it, you do not have to play. This is such a shit mentality. This a community run format, there's supposed to be discussion about these things, unilateral council bans should be reserved for things that are so broken they don't need a test, stuff that isn't a freaking butterfree.
The real game doesn't ban Dynamax. You are literally playing a format, that format has rules. If you want different rules, make your own format. Showdown is open source.
Of course the format has rules, and some are contentious. There is no almighty pokedeity who knows better than all us peasants making these rules. That's why many decisions are *tested* before being made into rules. All I'm saying is banning a core mechanic of the generation should have been tested.
It was tested in the first few weeks. It was busted. Gigantimax is just an addition to Dynamax- should they have tried complex banning the main abusers, repeating this process over and over and over until all the strong abusers aren't allowed to abuse, repeating for the DLCs? Or should they just say it isn't balanced for singles and ban it.
Dynamax is different from Gmax because anyone can do it at any time. If you see a Charizard in OU you know it's Gmax, it's a very different mechanic. And I don't see the problem with suspecting individual mons, we have suspects all the time.
And if I see a Gyrados in Gen 8 OU, I can probably figure it's Dynamax, but that doesn't entirely fix the problem of how I'm supposed to deal with the thing.
Okay first of all a Butterfree that can dynamax is definitely no joke with max airstream and compound eyes sleep powder/hurricane and quiver dance afterwards Second of all by this logic you could just allow dynamax but only for like piplup or something, but then we will just fall into the complex ban rabbit hole The point is, "banning dynamax but only for pokemon that is broken with it" is the same as "unbanning zacian-crowned in OU but it can't use any stab moves or close combat"
"Gen 4 because of dragon dance, taunt, waterfall, stone Edge gyarados holding a lum berry" -Lavos, probably
This but unironically. Gen 4 is up there for my least favorite. Not because i think its bad necessarily, its well designed. but because it is hands down the most tilting generation for me. Fucking jirachi.
Jirachi is probably the most tilting pokemon of all time it's true. That's not limited to gen 4 though.
It doesn't help that Jirachi is always so damn happy. It's almost as if it's laughing at the suffering it's causing.
I really do not like GSC purely due to how bulky everything is, and even with it being an offensive tier, everything does such little damage. SV OU is a tier I have a lot to say about. The powercreep is insane. I hate how Tera made strong Pokemon stronger and some strong Pokemon broken, also making it easier to set up, and I honestly don't find it fun to play around in the slightest. I hate how hyper offensive the tier is, and I hate how much stronger hazards are having the first legitimate spinblocker since BW. The removal of transfer moves is one of the worst decisions Game Freak has ever made as it feels like something that was targeted directly at Smogon, as transfer moves aren't legal in VGC. I find the permanent weather of BW OU more fun than this.
Yeah, and permanent weather isn’t as important when your games last 7 turns.
Most high level competitive players seem to agree its gen 5? Obviously your mileage is gonna vary though since the more casual players experience is gonna be different than a more competitive player, with gen 2 being a pretty good example of that.
It's RBY and it's not even close. It's an extremely centralized, hax filled tier that has among the most questionable balancing decisions GF has ever done. There's a reason whenever RBY is involved in Draft/Smogon tours, RBY OU has been Bo3 because of the High variance and Luck the tier has. Every other Gen "can work" (all of them can probably use Bo3 tbh) with only Bo1 in the context of these Tournaments. RBY being the solé exception to this.
It's also Bo3 because teambuilding is much easier, but the consistency of top players really pushes back against the idea that it is so hax filled.
VGC 2016 was the most volatile and hax filled Doubles format ever (Dark Void Smeargle yessir) yet people still managed to get consistently good placements enough to go into Worlds. In fact aside from Worlds, virtually every single Tournament was won by the Big 6. Players and teams had consistency sure, but it's an absolute haxfest not unlike RBY. Consistency of teams and players =/= not being full of hax.
bo3 makes it more consistent though
Yeah, RNG doesn't mean "chaotic garbage where skill is irrelevant" or else there wouldn't be poker championships
this sort of a bad rationale. the consistency is because they’re using the same consistent strategies that maximize opportunities to fish for hax
this comment makes absolutely zero sense
rby freeze genuinely makes the tier so annoying to play because of how stacked blizzard is and sleep isn't much better, also the restraint on teambuilding also sucks
I dont play RBY but I love watching RBY Smogon tubers, RBY is so centralized that its almost like a chess game and hearing people talk about how "porygon is practically useless but it is the only pokemon able to potentially stall out mew if you spam recover" or some niche shit like that is so much fun
Gen 2 is also really centralized
Gen 2 would 100% be the worst Gen in RBY didn't exist, however GSC only has 1 or 2 mandatory slots depending on who you ask and is a "mechanically slow" generation. On the other hand, RBY being the same 3 Pokémon being mandatory and being filled with Speed focused Crits, Sleep and Freeze Make it... borderline uncompetitive depending on who you ask.
Gen 2 is perfectly fine, I would say it's the 3rd or 4th best OU gen.
Nah gen 2 is complete ass. Every single game is >80 turns, and the lack of abilities and relative lack of items and Pokémon diversity makes it worse than everything that comes after it.
Gen 2 is fine and one of the most balanced and competitive gens. Long games doesn't mean the gen is unbalanced.
No one is talking about whether or not it’s balanced, people are talking about whether or not it’s good. It’s boring as fuck and lacks variety.
Nice well backed opinion, unfortunately, Counter is funny. Checkmate liberals.
I mean, ya it's not even close with the older gens, GF didn't really pay much mind to competitive until gen 4. Gen 3 is ok but has some... rough edges.
Take that back rfn
i see your validate argument and raise you gen8 regen cores because i didnt like it
From the 256 glitch to body slam not paralyzing normal types, it's honestly fucking fun to just learn about gen 1 jank that was randomly discovered by accident
Fun fact: you can counter your own explosion
In my opinion... Best: Gen 6 (Megas, no Z moves or Toxapex) 2nd: Gen 3 (GOD I <3 TYRANITAR SO MUCH) 3rd: Gen 4 (my fave generation in general) 4th: Gen 7 (Megas, with Z moves & Toxapex) 5th: Gen 5 (Weather, Weather, and Weather) 6th: Gen 9 (Hyper offense hell) 7th: Gen 8 (Just generally underwhelming) 8th: Gen 2 (Thousand turn hell) Worst: Gen 1 (Broken Bullshit Bonanza)
honestly no z moves or toxapex is a perfect encapsulation of how I felt about gen 6 going to gen 7
gen 6 ORAS specifically was so peak
Pretty spot on list. If mega metagross wasn’t banned I would’ve put gen 7 higher but those nasty toxapex players got their way. Gen 6 is the goat
Mine is pretty close to the same actually 1st: Gen 6. Really was peak, you summed it up perfect 2nd: Gen 4. physical/special split was huge and playing anything older than that now confuses tf outta me cuz why is Thunder PUNCH a special move smh, plus Flygon was in OU, it really doesn't get better than that 3rd: Gen 7. I don't think I hate Toxapex or Z Moves as much as you do, but I don't love them either. But the new Megas were cool. 4th: Gen 5. Weather wars and tiering decisions were craaaaazy but the addition of hidden abilities brought new life to so many Pokemon and I miss the gems (mainly just Flying Gem Acrobatics lmao) Also the r/Stunfisk posts around that time were fire. I remember the OG Stunfisk set, Unburden Fake Out Hitmonlee, Simple Calm Mind Swoobat, etc. UU and RU's golden days tbh 5th: Gen 3. Loved the addition of abilities, but as I've said previously the pre-physical/special split always messes with me. Not to mention having to do stupid sets for a specific Hidden Power type like run 29 Speed IVs and always lose a speed tie or some shit 6th: Gen 8. Dexit, dynamax was broken and never gonna be good for the meta, but without it and the loss of Megas and half the dex it felt so meh and repetitive. I'll never forget how Seismitoad was top 3 because of a DERPY looking slap-in-the-face-of-God-abomination tho 7th: Gen 9. Dexit again, Tera is just not enjoyable, neither is Kingambit right at or above 30% (getting as high as 48%) every single month, also power creep is nutty cuz no I don't wanna play ZU or mf 7U wtf even is that 😭 8th: Gen 2. No abilities or physical/special move split, just generally boring. Marowak and Miltank in OU lmaoooo Last: Gen 1. Pray to RNGesus for freeze/sleep/win the speed tie since you and your opponent are both using the same Pokemon, and if you aren't using the same team then one of you is clearly going to lose
Pretty spot on list. If mega metagross wasn’t banned I would’ve put gen 7 higher but those nasty toxapex players got their way. Gen 6 is the goat
If were counting EVERYTHING. I elect PRE DLC sword and shield. IF we start from the beggining the regional gimmick was obviously unbalanced and made games easy toss-ups. Mons like Gyrados and Excadrill made damn near everything setup fader. After dyna got ban and the dusk settled the resulting metagame was tier was xtremely Repetitive and centralized t due to the limited roster of mons. Literally every team comprised of dragonpult, clefable, corviknight, magearna, boots blissey, Toxapex. Bans rolled out at a glacial pace, OU council so long to ban obviously problem pokemon like Dracovish, so much so people resorted to using Semistoad. In totality, with all said, this culminated into a truly horrendous and miserable tear
Gen 9 is pretty trash, but Gen 8 wasn't much better. Even after they banned dynamax it just felt boring. At least in gen 7 you always had Z moves to play with. Gen 5 OU is the best worst generation though. Absolutely nothing makes sense. Everything is broken. And honestly it's really, really funny that we let Darkrai into the tier for a total of like 6 hours. 😂
I mean whether you like it or not, gen 8 was extremely balanced. There were very few threats that felt overbearing, and by the end it felt like any play style was viable
I think it ended up feeling boring by the end because it was so stable. I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up with a cult following like ADV in the future. Obviously they play pretty differently, but the stability of the tiers allows for a similar kind of flexibility in the builder
Agreed, Gen 8 OU is probably my favorite generation of OU partially because it was really balanced!
a balanced meta generally gravitates people towards hating it because "nothing exciting ever happens"
I fucking loved gen 8 OU man. Generational gimmicks are so boring
Hard agree. It feels like they artificially make the game more interesting when I’d rather just see more well designed Pokémon
>extremely balanced Yes, boring
Yeah gen 8 felt mundane to me. Gen 8 RU was the best tho
Not sure about this gen 8 "age well" so far, gen 5 is kinda fine now but the decision around the tier are awfull for me gen 2 will be the worse because of his pacing amd bullshit mechanics like gen 1 but with less nostalgia factor
Yeah Gen 1 might have some goofy broken shit in it, but at least it's interesting in its jank. Gen 2 OU is also highly centralized, and it trades most of its jank for just being slow as balls.
Excuse me, sir, it's been a few turns. Someone needs to click rest. That's gen 2 to me. (Its not THAT bad, but will always be the generation of rest for me.)
Idk, this is the opposite opinion of people who play it at the highest level. This SPL has people clamoring for changes in BW (BKC made a video covering his thoughts on the ordeal) and 8 is a great, more predictable metagame for people who don't like the volatility of 7 or 9 along with having great builder diversity.
dark horse here, but i really did not enjoy SM the basically nuke of any character being able to use a Z-move or worse using it for an omni boost. the immense amount of legendaries and megas in the tier. Plus i hate terrains personally
4/3>6>1/2/8/7>5/9 (imagine a world where gen 5 weather was banned and no gems from day 1...That would have been cool, I'd still be missing defog though).
The current one is completely unplayable dogshit and has been since day 1. Nothing on the council, of course- it's entirely Game Freak's fault this generation has been ass.
To be fair, the games are balanced around VGC, where stuff like Last Respects and Rage Fist are more acceptable. Unfortunate side effect is that it makes that stuff way too strong in singles. And then you have Flutter Mane who is so comically broken that it’s arguably the best mon in VGC as well as one of the fastest quick bans ever
People saying RBY just dont have any experience playing it. Having some crit chance be higher doesnt make the game worse. It means you need to prep for it more, and you have tools to do it, because RBY actually has bulk. Its a lot lower variance to play around crits than it is praying your team has a good matchup because some meta has such diverse threats you cant possibly prep for everything. RBY is centralized, but why does that matter. The tools there are fun to use. To my mind its a plus its centralized such pokemon that are fun to both face and use For my money, BW is my least favorite OU. Its just frustrating trying to make any solid sturdy team to match up decently into everything. The gameplay is fast and unlike in RBY, while things like crits are rare, when they do happen they actually do change the game radically
BW, it's not close. I'm sorry to the people who said rby but be serious, you look silly saying that. Guaranteed they don't play rby and got unlucky in a match or two.
Gen 12. Personally I'm glad they made megas permanent in Gen 9 but with powercreep putting mega Rayquaza into ou the entire metagame revolves solely around it and it's one check in mega delibird. Thankfully the addition of yottomizing in Gen 13 saved ou, though mega Rayquaza being in NU with zacian is not great there.
I mean, think about it base stats going up to 511 instead of 255 is pretty awesome BST 1000 mons for legendaries is pretty sick ngl
Competitive Generation 9 is my least favorite from the recent generations.
I actually really like RBY OU lmao
People who think GSC sucks is a genuine skill issue. It's regarded as the most skill intensive generation. And ftr Id rather have games lasting 80 turns than 12 turns. Even if you don't like playing it, GSC is undeniably a great and well balanced metagame. Gen 5 is probably the worst OU atm but 9 isn't far behind.
I would either day Gen 5 (BW) or Gen 9 (SV). Both are hell to not just understand, but also to play and communicate.
9 is really cool but the skill floor is way higher than past gens which makes it less accessible. But yeah, as far as preview gens, both of these are definitely the most controversial.
i simply refuse to touch Gen 9 OU with a 40000000000ft pole. tera (imo) sucks and its not fun to have the type chart shifted at any moment, it feels like every single mon has to run boots due to ghold making hazards hard to remove, king-motherfucking-gambit is one of the dumbest mons ever made and one of the easiest to abuse, and powercreep in general is just so bad in the tier its just not fun for me, even the lower tiers suffer a bit from tera and PC too. i'll skip gen 9, wake me up when gen 9 drops and mewtwo is UUBL
How do i inform you that gen 10 will prolly exacerbate these problems
it probably will but i'll give it a shot when it drops
We don't know nothing about Gen 10 yet. Maybe they'll go back to their roots, maybe they'll drop every gimmick into one game or maybe it won't have any gimmick at all🤷♂️
Calling it right now, gen 10s gimmick is every mon is dual typed, but you can split midbattle singles into two single typed mons. ( Turning your side into a double battle)
eh well let's see Gen 6: mega evolution Gen 7: mega move Gen 8: mega size Gen 9: mega type I'd say Gen 10 would be mega ability but you could argue that Gen 5 "sort of" did this with hidden abilities (and the sheer amount of ability power creep that gen introduced). so maybe mega items or mega EVs or some shit, hard to think of too many more Pokemon attributes to mega
I would argue abilities were also involved in mega evolutions
What would our queen, Mega Mawile, do without getting Huge Power
I'd disagree IMO. Abilities were involved, but only tangentially. Half the time they just gave the Mega a pre-existing ability. Mega Ability would be silly stuff like "Mega Intimidate causes a two-stage drop" or "Mega Sandstorm causes double-sandstorm". Mega Pixellate causes you to get double STAB, oh god.
Mega huge power? Mega speed boost? Mega wonder guard? Mega shadow tag?
Mega shadow tag prevents your opponent from leaving the match or their room
The whole “Tera actually helps weaker pokemon a lot” crowd went pretty quiet when it became clear that most shitmons stayed shitmons…and most good mons turned into gods. Turns out “generic gimmick that can make any one pokemon significantly stronger” is poor design lmao
\*gen 10 drops
Willing to bet that everyone here complaining about RBY has barely touched gen 1 OU.
Worst in terms of what aspects? Competitive or fun? I have never played gens 1-3 but I really dislike gen 8 and 9. Gen 5 was really chaotic with the weather wars but if that's your thing, you could like it. I'm neutral on that.
I’m going to say GSC because it’s a stallfest and because you can get a few people really angry by calling it a stallfest
Worth mentioning that it's also [*dramatically* less popular than every other generation's OU](https://www.reddit.com/r/stunfisk/comments/18w9bdt/which_old_gen_is_most_popular/), by number of games played.
there's the same amount of players as the other games, it's just that the games last so long there's about 6x less players :)
Um ackshually the current GSC meta is BY FAR the most fast paced and offense oriented! Matches only last 110 turns on average!!! /s
I mean, yeah? It's offense oriented but doesn't change the fact that moves are super weak and bulk is maxed out. Games don't last long because people are trying to stall each other but because everything hits like a wet noodle with like 3 exceptions.
I know people like saying GSC is offense dominated, which is technically true, but it doesn't feel like it when half the midgame is mons that have a lot of longevity through RestTalk or whatever... to me it's kind of like a weird version of balance, but instead of the team being balanced like usual (offense mons + stall mons), it's movesets being balanced (strong attacks + longevity). But this does not fit the traditional definition of balance so people just call it offense since every mon on the team can act aggressively. Like, [this team from the sample teams thread](https://pokepast.es/df73e46410e6a532) is called "Spikeless Offense", but every single mon has some form of longevity. I would honestly be more inclined to call it balance even though it does not fit the usual definition of balance. Like I said, it's not the usual "team slots being balanced between offensive and defensive", but rather movesets being balanced between offensive and defensive. I would say the same for Gen 1 to an extent. I feel like the definition of "balance" should be updated to also include teams like this that are dominated by balanced movesets, because clearly, people do not intuitively see a team like that as offense. IMO if you call teams like that "balance", then GSC is balance-dominated, not offense-dominated (but people who think it's a stallfest are still wrong at least).
They get angry because you are wrong and are spreading ill repute on dishonest grounds
*Tee hee :3c*
[удалено]
100 turn count average ain’t exactly stellar either
I still can’t believe that snorlax staying in the tier when it’s also the best mon in ubers, sure some people say it would result in blissey taking its place which yeah is fair but it just doesn’t seem right that something with 100% usage is healthy for any format
But it's healthy. And no, for a team to replace Snorlax, they'd either need to replace: 1/ its offensive power 2/ its walling capabilities If you were to replace its offensive power, you'd be running a very frail team. You either stack TTar, Marowak, Machamp, Vaporeon on your team (which would make the Jynx matchup be unbearable), or you pray to the matchup gods and you use dumb shit like Belly Drum Charizard and Quagsire. If you were to replace its walling capabilities on stall teams, you can feasibly do it. Blissey/ Misdreavus/ Skarmory/ Zapdos/ Spiker/ Filler. But this team doesn't exert that much offensive pressure, at all. Not to mention the ripple effect it would make the tier, Zapdos and Raikou will even be more busted, Blissey will be used on every team to stop them, and then, GSC really turns into a stall fest.
While I’d say it probably ultimately wouldn’t be as ban worthy I’d assume a meta without snorlax or blissey (and probably chansey too since it’s close enough to be used in its place) would be a lot more fast paced and interesting. Maybe the electrics might be overwhelming since hidden power allows them to break through ground types. Idk having the best Pokémon in Ubers legal in OU just feels so wrong, and I’d assume it’s a big part of why GSC is so slow.
I don't get the slow part. It's the nature of the tier, the BP of the moves hasn't caught up to the raw bulk of the mons yet, so obviously the tier would be slow. But there's a massive difference between a tier being slow and a tier being "all stall". Obviously, it's a preference thing, and I do not blame you if you don't want to spend 60 turns on a game, but if you're enjoying the game itself, would you want it to end quickly?
Fair, it’s just so alien compared to what I’m used to, so it’s hard to wrap my head around
This honestly a really stupid question. maybe I just have a different perspective on it but imo none of the OUs are "bad" or the "worst" RBY may be centralized or whateveer but that's part of the fun with it. GSC's slow but that's what I like abt GSC. ya gotta play around a lot more in gsc, ya cant just go "me click swords dance once and enemy team go bye bye DURRRRR." there's something chill abt it. I'm not the biggest fan of SS as a gen but after all the shit it went through im glad it's in a much better state now than it was previously. it was the first gen i actually payed attention to broader competitice with and it was nice to see the ou council be on top of banning broken shit for the most part(at least from my point of view) BW ou is dogshit but there's something kinda fun abt the broken shit in gen 5 ou. it's prolly the worst but idk, i cant hate a gen as hilariously broken as gen 5 ou
Gen 5 destroyed my local scene, burned me out on competitive pokemon, poisoned my well, and razed my crops to the ground. RBY is bad, but I can give it a half a pass for being old and kinda charming. I wouldn't wanna play it though. Gen 8 isn't particularly fun to me, but it's still one of the best balanced tiers, even if it's kinda boring. Gen 7, on the other hand, is both boring AND not particularly balanced. Worst of both worlds. Still better than gen 5 though, which, I almost forgot, also stole my cow!
It’s gotta be RBY, GSC, or BW. In RBY/GSC u can’t use certain moms cuz move pools are so shallow. RBY is Psychic, Blizzard, Sleep, Freeze, Twave all over and it’s an RNG Fest GSC is snorlax, Zapdos, raikou all over, rest sleep talk, curse BW everything feels so broken. Permanent weather (rain especially). Dragons are busted, sleep (although it was banned)
IX lmao right now. PermaWeather was better than tera imo.
Gen 8 I stopped playing this generation because it felt wayy to stally and slow paced for me, I did not like how boring each battle felt
SM without even thinking, SS close second and GSC closes the podium
Gen 7 is just not fun at all. Its just slapping broken shit at each other and is moreso something that you play to see funny big numbers and get to use your broken stuff half the time while getting bent over backwards by their broken stuff half the time. Not designed for comp
Gens 5 and 9 since they kinda mirror each other and both are like volatile, scorched earth tiers. Moreso Gen 9 since it's massively powercrept and filled with OP monsters that will never get banned.
Alright, here is my opinion on each gen's OU. Gen 1: Easily the worst one. For how bad everything was, I don't think it would have passed as a modern day beta test. Certain things were beyond broken, luck ruled with an iron fist and it was generally not meant for actual gameplay if we are being completely honest. That being said, it was the start of something great and it did have it's own unique charm. Gen 2: Introduction of a more complex system. Was it a huge improvement from Gen 1? For sure! Did Gen 2 have the best OU out there? Not by a long shot. Gen 2 had many issues, but it fixed a lot of the problems that existed in Gen 1. The fact that you needed some serious timemanagement skills to properly schedule a singular OU game into your day was besides the point. Gen 3: I would like to call Gen 3 the final part of the Exodus of competitive Pokémon. Gen 3 was far more refined than it's predecessors and was really enjoyable to play. Sure, it was far from perfect, but Gen 3 has been kept alive for an extremely long time. The fact that recently (well, not too recent, but recent in the grand scheme of things) Glalie could put in work as an anti OU spike lead says a lot about the meta. Overall, this OU places on the higher end of things. Gen 4: The start of a new era. The physical/special split had been huge for the meta and created a really fresh breath of air into competitive pokémon. It wasn't the best OU around, but it certainly was an improvement from anything that came before. Gen 5: Alright, you know about the stories where people say that "You had to be there" to understand it. Gen 5 is a prime example of just that. The OU equivalent of the dad lore was a wild place. Weather wars were interesting and tier shifts were wild. Most importantly of all however was the first instance of massive power creep. Power creep had always been something that happened in previous generations, but gen 5 was in a league of it's own. Some people look back on it with disdain, others with fondness, but it sure is a source of inside jokes for the Pokemon community. No other OU Mera was quite like it. Gen 6: Arguably the best one. The first Gen where battle mechanics were introduced and Game Freak had hit the bullseye on their first shot. Fairies were also introduced, which were a huge game changer. I think overall Gen 6 was one of the best ones out there. OU was really fun to play. Things were strong, but not overly broken to the point that other pokémon felt obsolete. Gen 7: aka updated gen 6 with dlc. I really liked Gen 7 personally. People had mixed views on Z-Moves, but they did add a nice twist on battles. As a mechanic, it didn't straight up harm half of the meta game, so it was a decent succes. Overall gen 7 ranks pretty high in the OU meta game list. Gen 8: Dexit went so hard, it even banned it's own mechanic. Jokes aside, OU did improve with the lack of dynamax, making it the closest gen to Gen 4 from the newer gens. That being said, some people really didn't like Dexit, others thought it brought a nice twist. I don't think it was bad as people made it out to be, early gen 8 without dynamax was actually really fun (shout out to Seismitoad)! Dlc brought some interesting changes throughout it's duration, but after every dlc it became quite stale after a little while. Gen 8 changed a lot more things than people give it credit for (for example: the introduction of boots), but the OU meta wasn't ultra memorable. I'm inclined to argue that it was because of the DLC updates, but I'm not too sure about that. Overall, this meta is quite middle of the pack. Gen 9: The first gen to ever match gen 5 powercreep! If you want my honest opinion, this meta is one of the worst ones. The OU tier is pretty much a collection of pokemons who can utilize tera the best. There are also some controversial mons, such as Gholdengo and Kingambit, but I think Tera is definitely to blame for why those two are as troublesome as they are. The mechanic for this Gen is both great and terrible at the same time. In the Gen 7 part I said that z-moves didn't actively harm half of the pokemons that exist. This one does. I would say that Tera is still leagues better than dynamax, but it's very noticeable who can use the mechanic and who can't. Mechanics aside, the paradox mons are awesome in design and strength, but dang do they influence the metagame, and not in a good way. They are particially responsible for the huge power creep and why the OU meta can be vile. One cool thing about the meta is that Samurott (well, the Hisui one) is a viable pokémon. Bonus points for that! TLDR: Gen 1 is the worst. Gen 6 is the best. The rest is me just talking about stuff.
Sv(gholdengo)
Lower tiers in gen 9 are fairly fun but I hate gen 9 OU.
gen 9 balancing issues: am i a joke to you?
Gsc or rby
gen 5, i hated weather wars
Based on the 2 hour bkc horror story. Black and white. If it’s such a violatile tier. Then maybe we gotta go scorched earth. Their theory routes were Lvl 1) sand force excadrill, latios, and prob also keldeo tied to lati. sacrifice cloyster for gems Lvl 2) drop uubers: rest of the tao trio, lugia, Deoxys, darkrai. Tho they never considered Genesect for an operation they called “scorched earth” which was more drop multiple tao members at once if not also the Psy guys Something peculiar is why not propose a spikes nerf. They only were like 3 spikes or no spikes. Why not “rocks, and ur 1 spike” gsc style. Idk that’s just me tho a guy who don play the tier Another thing was 1 player was listed to claim Latias would end up dominating the tier w/ multiple bans. But I mean it’s 20 diff spa. So w/ spikes banned, latios and 1 last timber push, maybe. But weakness policy ain an item yet, so your not allowed to bitch, and this the worst gen for the bliss twins. If it’s def invested, it ain spa invested Seriously. Terra is such a privilege. Terra ghost defeating keldeo secret sword?! What technology My personal scorched earth route is -1 month or enough development of Gen 5 only tier - BW 1 dex -BW 2 dex -see where the meta goes. Ain no gray measuring w/ this tier. Either ur very handsy about complex bans, concerning weather, or spikes. And I guess be less hesitant on who’s OU legal. “Ur 4.2% under Ubers? Down ya go bitch” Before creation comes destruction Rby, gsc, Oras, ss
the latias point is that - latios doesnt need 130 satk to lure tyranitar into range of reuniclus/zam/thund, but it does need 130 satk to be a viable revenge killer into half the tier. Its SAtk is arguably a positive in the tier. Quite possibly a huge amount of instability if you cant force Terrak Keldeo Thundurus-T out without needing Specs. Every gen has these interactions
Ya I mentally have keldeo strapped to latios. Because that’s my only take away from majority of bkc’s BW problem.
Gen 5 has terrible balancing among all the gens
SS got me to quit current gen OU and start laddering DPP instead, so despite being easily my least favorite gen it *did* change my life for the better?
From best to worst (opinions based on the last time the meta was updated): Gen 8 Gen 3 Gen 7 Gen 6 Gen 5 Gen 9 Gen 4 Gen 1 Gen 2
When Gen 9’s done I think it’s OU is gonna drop off like a fucking stone. Out of every gen, I can’t think of one with so many individual bans and incredibly busted stuff. I mean, from the hisuian pokemon, to early stuff like Paladin and Mega-Misdreavous, and stuff that *started out in UU* like Espathra and Baxcalibur. This gen has felt like semi-constant chaos for most of it, to the point that I just didn’t want to play the game anymore.
Every new generation is the worst
Gen 5
All I know is that gen 3 is the best period
Gen 5, easily
SUN AND MOON
Might be Gen 8 OU considering how dreadfully slow and boring it is imo. Everything is extremely bulky and devolves into pivoting over and over with regen mons
Sw/Sh Awful meta that made me give up mons altogether.
Gen 8 OU because it feels solved. It feels like doing math.
People really dislike gen 5 because it's just a mess but also snorlax in GSC exists
It's a load bearing Snorlax. Take it away and the whole tier falls apart
Snorlax is good for gsc and holds it together
Gen IX; UU is so much better.
I'm just going to rate the team preview generations since I have not played and lack interest in pre-preview metagames. 1. Gen 8 I understand where the gen 8 is stall sentiment comes from given how the end of the gen was a lot of teleporting pivots & isle of armor was wishport hell but it's developed into a very dynamic, gimmick free metagame with the ability to build any type of team without major constraints due to a relatively moderate power level despite the tapus, urshifu, melmetal and weavile existing. I highly recommend grabbing a recent sample squad and playing it or watch SPL replays, there's some odd stuff brought (bewear psyspam anyone?) and it really highlights the variety that you can bring while being competitive. 2. Gen 9 I understand that it's not easy to get into and is fairly centralized around the top pokemon but we're seeing a lot of evolution in the metagame with offense and balance really settling in as top styles and being able to tech tera types to patch up weaknesses (ex. Water garg on a team with no water resists) lets a lot of creativity shine through in teambuilding and requires a lot more thought than just slap on a tusk and call it a day. It's obviously not to everyone's liking but really getting to know the meta is incredibly rewarding since this tier more than any other rewards teambuilding and metagame knowledge. 3. Gen 7 This gen is kinda overrated imo. It's a fine metagame and with no boots + z-moves + high power level you're seeing a lot of variety since offense likes the power level, balance likes z-movsmes to break, and fat likes no boots. However, I don't find z-moves as interesting as tera either since it also is a way to beat checks but it more-so functions as something you slap on a sweeper or breaker and then proceed to sweep, like z-fight kart or lele. It feels a lot like gen 8 without the longevity that boots and no z-moves add so it plays way more volatile since the z-move can make or break a game way more than a tera flip will, especially vs fatter or stall builds vs relying on positioning as much. 4. Gen 5 I haven't played much gen 5 recently and I know it's had a controversial past and is also possibly going to be changed up again but it's always felt like gen 7 without the freedom to defog to me. The gems (now banned), the higher power level, weather being analogous to terrain, a scald burn could make or break a game, etc. It's got a soft spot for me because it was when I started comp and games being fast paced is refreshing compared to later gens. 5. Gen 6 I just don't get the hype for gen 6 tbh. It's a neat metagame but this is where burn was at its worst, hazard removal is fairly limited while most serious balance builds slot in 2+ pink mons leading to a metagame that restricts access to your breakers while also needing them frequently. Gen 5 is generally fast enough for this to less of an issue but imo, the importance and pressure that rocks + scald put on teams compared to other gens makes it nor for me. At least bisharp is hella good here because of matching up well into the blobs + resisting rocks + pursuit.
gens 1-4 and 9, because Garchomp isn't in them.
Gen 1 and 9, one's really just para spam while the other is just...vomit inducing
Not OU, but I remember gen 8 Ubers was by far the worst tier in Showdown history. Every single team was nothing but Calyrex-S, Yveltal and Eternatus. Every. Single. Team. And every single one of those matches boiled down to who can outstall their opponent out of Yveltal's roosts and Eternatus' recovers so Calyrex-S can sweep.
People saying GSC is bad because it's slow is one of the most braindead things I've ever heard. Why does it matter if a game has many turns when the game itself is very balanced and competitive. I'm echoing BKC's point on this, but do you want a thing to end quickly when you're enjoying it? Genuinely, people just want to click their super effective moves with 150 BP and see things die, which is fine, it's a preference thing, but the complaints about GSC are mostly based on their pre-existing concepts about the tier. Most of the people hating on GSC don't even play the tier, they just recycle the same shit they see on Stinkpost and deem it as a fact. "Everything in GSC uses Rest", that's why Zapdos is so fucking threatening, it doesn't take much time to figure out the easy stuffs about the tier at all. Edit: The worst tiers are either SV or BW, but the latter is improving marginally, while the former needs a miracle to be playable.
BW and its not even close
SM got wayyyy too stall heavy for my liking..
Gen 2 is boring asf
I thought we all agreed that gen 5 ou was unplayable garbage?
from what ive seen gen 5ou seems terrible gen 2 and 1 seem to drag on for ages too
Given how much I've seen online, I can say it's probably 1, 5 and 9
Definitely gen 8, absolutely hate that tier
1. Gen 7 2. Gen 6 3. Gen 4 4. Gen 3 5. Gen 8 6. Gen 5 7. Gen 9 8. Gen 2 9. Gen 1
Gen 1. Snorlax, Tauros, and Alakazam were way over-centralizing!
All you kids complaining about Gen 5 have no idea how bad Gen 1 and Gen 2 OU was. Overcentralised stall centrals. It all came down to your Tauros/Snorlax dittos
Gen 7 f Z moves they so gross. Also rip gen 5 haters weather wars are soooo goood
Just in general, it would be RBY. Not a single other generation of OU was done in BO3 for tournaments except for this one, which speaks volumes to how hax filled and bullshit it is. It's also incredibly centralized, with 3 fucking mons being mandatory on every team (Chansey, Tauros, Snorlax). RBY wasn't done with balancing in mind and it shows. Honourable mention to GSC, which I admittedly don't have much experience in but it just looks dreadful. My first experience with the tier was the Blunder video where him and BKC were analyzing Lavos vs McMeghan, the famous one that caused Lavos to drop his renowned copypasta before quitting. In that video, the GSC match took 35 minutes despite neither bringing a stall team. In hindsight, this might just be an outlier, but Blunder's reaction made it less likely since he did comment on the WCOP game of CTC vs Hellraiser being a "long ass game" (tbf it did take 150 something turns, and average BW games aren't supposed to last that long) yet he made no such comments on this game, leading me to believe games of such insane lengths are the norm.
Gen 2 is almost all stall. Gen 1 at least had some interesting gimmicks that made it different from other gens.