Gold, I'm not calling anyone at Smogon dumb, and I do read that site quite often. The point I was making is that they make changes to try and make things better and end up creating more issues that they later work on to repair.
The issue with Smeargle is that he does not overcentralize the UU metagame. Is usage is high which is great, but he has been banned from a large part of his play. This is where something like a dual tiering would work. OU/UU would work perfectly fine as Smeargle has the usage for OU and does not overcentralize UU. Banning him from UU limits one aspect of that metagame. I know that there is a suspect test for UU, it is just being done too slowly for me as I enjoy playing UU and the tiers are in too much of a state of flux for it to be enjoyable.
The debate here is not theorymon vs usage for me. It is overcentralization vs usage. I fear that there aren't enough Smogonites playing UU to really deal with making it right when you take into account how they tested it. I feel that they did to much at once and needed to do tests in smaller samples is all.
Okay, here's how I see the tiers, and from my perspective, this tiering system seems almost perfect, so hopefully it will help you to see why I don't have a problem with it.
Basically, we all started playing Pokemon. However, some Pokemon such as Kyogre were being used on nearly every team, and were very difficult to take down. The metagame was very centralized. So we banned Kyogre and other such broken Pokemon.
Then, we had a balanced tier, which featured about 50 useable Pokemon. This was more fun, and there was a decent amount of variety between everyone's teams. Everybody was happy. However, after a little while, people realized that there were about 400 Pokemon that weren't seeing any significant use, and weren't powerful enough to play properly.
So, as a community, it was decided that we'll ban all the most popular Pokemon, so we'll be forced to use some of the lesser used Pokemon. But, there came a problem. How do we define what a popular Pokemon is? Is Vaporeon 'popular'? Is Electivire 'common'? Is Empoleon 'uncommon'? Is Donphan's usage low enough to consider it 'not popular'? It is vital that there needs to be a cut-off point to determine what gets banned for the metagame where we are forced to use less popular Pokemon. In the end, it was agreed that the cut-off point is at a position such that the Pokemon is more likely than not to be seen in at least 1 of 20 teams.
It so happens, that the above criteria leads to having about 50 Pokemon in OU. So, everybody is happy now. We have a metagame (which is called 'UnderUsed'), where some Pokemon that can't shine in normal play (which is called 'OverUsed'), can have their own fun. However, there's more problems. Firstly, UU isn't balanced! Shock! Horror! What can we do to balance it? A good solution is to ban the Pokemon that are 'breaking' the tier. So, people conduct experiments to attempt to single out the broken Pokemon, and see which ones need banning.
Okay? Now, why would we ban 50 Pokemon to try and balance UU? Sure, if we absolutely MUST do so, then it has to be done. But isn't the whole point of UU to allow more Pokemon to see use? Banning dozens of Pokemon will just mean that these Pokemon can't be used in UU, and are not considered common in OU. I'd feel very sorry for those Pokemon that are banned, as they don't really have a metagame to shine in.
However, there's another issue. The popularity of a Pokemon is always changing. Some Pokemon, such as Empoleon, Rhyperior and Smeargle have rose in popularity recently. They're seeing more use in OU, and are considered 'common'. But isn't the whole point of UU for Pokemon that are 'not common' to see play? Well, Empoleon, Rhyperior and Smeargle are now 'common' in OU, so they have to be removed from the tier that is supposed to feature 'not common' Pokemon. Sure, they didn't break the tier, but they're common now. The uncommon Pokemon are supposed to shine in UU. Likewize, Yanmega, Spiritomb, Roserade and Milotic have declined in popularity in OU. They were added to UU, so they can be used effectively by their fans again.
Even with UU, there are still about 300 Pokemon that aren't getting much use / can't be used effectively in any metagame, so the process was repeated again, and a tier for Pokemon that are 'not common' in UU was created. Sure, some of the Pokemon in this tier can be useful in both UU and OU. The the point is, they're not seeing much use at all. It is less likely than not for such Pokemon to appear in at least 1 in 20 teams in OU AND UU. This is considered 'not common', so these Pokemon are put in a lower usage tier, where hopefully, they can be 'common'. And, as usual, NU may not be balanced, so appropriate Pokemon are banned to try and help matters. And, after NU is established, there will probably still be hundreds of Pokemon not getting use, and another tier may be created.
This makes perfect sense to me. The point of tiers is to create numerous metagames so that most Pokemon can be 'common' in a metagame. Tiers are NOT to show how strong Pokemon are. It does so happen that the stronger Pokemon are used more, because everybody wants to win, but if Scizor and Salamence got now use, they would drop to UU, and probably be banned to BL.
Personally, as a Tangrowth fan, I'm quite happy that I can use the Pokemon to good effect in 3 tiers now. And who knows? Maybe it won't be 'common' in NU, and it'll have a 4th tier to play in!
Do you understand why I don't find the tiering system weird now?
Bye everyone.