Compeitive play of Pokémon has had a tiering system for well over a decade now. With the evolution of the tiering system through Smogon, many people have some grievances, claiming it is not "how it should be." Through medium of this thread, discuss what you think the tier system should be like, and why. Don't forget to include the details of "how" and "to what end" with regards to how bans/unbans are conducted, and how the staff/council and community need to interact for a metagame!
I really don't have any complaints about Smogon's tiering system. It does what it's there to do fairly well. The ubers metagame is a bit of a sh*t show with Primal Groudon being on like 95% of viable teams and Pokémon like Greninja being unviable in Ubers while broken in OU, but this isn't something that Smogon wants to change since they are only concerned with making the format playable, not balanced. I'm not too informed about how the bans are conducted other than the fact that only those with reqs can vote, but I feel they do a really good job of laying out the reasons why it is being suspected and the reasons for why it should and/or should not be banned
This is what I've been trying to get through to people that are upset about Smogon's bans. The idea is to ban what is over-centralizing and making the metagame nearly unplayable due to viability compared to other Pokémon in that tier. Balancing a metagame in a format like tiers is difficult to do at best. I agree that Smogon generally does a great job of defining the reasons for suspects/quick bans clearly, and that the system for which suspect tests happen is conducted rather well. (Basically, the tier council votes on and discusses whether a Pokémon should be tested, either at the request of the metagame community or themselves. Following, either a suspect test is conducted, or it isn't. The rest is pretty evident.) One of the weaknesses you mentioned, @[member="Reborn"], about the tiering system is the lack of "balance." For those at home, would you care to describe what you mean by "balance"?
To be honest when it comes to tiering I am much more in favor of Smogon's approach than that of the official games (with online battles, VGC etc. having bans and such). Smogon isn't perfect, but they have a pretty good tiering system set in place for the competitive community. I'm not sure how I would tier Pokémon myself as I have a bias, but I don't think I'd factor usage into tiering like Smogon. I'd rather tier Pokémon based on their success rates perhaps (ie: ratio of wins a trainer has by having that Pokémon on their team). Just because a Pokémon is used frequently doesn't mean it is necessarily better than another and belongs in another tier. Also on an off note, anyone else find it amusing how much larger the smogon borderline tiers are nowadays? There are almost enough Pokémon in them to make it its own tier lol.
In recent times, I can't help but agree with you here. VGC has taken a turn for the worse over the past 3 years, and I'm really hoping with the release of Pokémon Sun/Moon, VGC will be revived like Ho-Oh. That's an interesting point--its actually quite the problem in the lower tiers (RU and NU specifically), as there have been accounts of NU players spamming RU matches with a Pokémon in order to keep it from falling from RU to NU. Case and point--Smogon awards this year had an award for the "most likely to spam a Pokémon to keep it from a lower tier", and "the entire RU playerbase" won. The BL area is a recent thing with the high number of bans in UU. UU was a fun tier for me, but it started getting a little lack-luster with the constant ban cycle. It's far worse than OU is in recent months, I'd say.
