Regarding the tiering survey from last week and trying to get the results out...
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v3
- Thread starter TPP
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you literally just described gen 9 and said "that's different from our modern meta". at what point in this meta has it been different from what you described? there have been exactly zero points where this meta wasn't run by hazards, gambit, and [insert bullshit of the week here]
gen 8 wasn't a stallfest, you're mistaking semistall for stall and writing off the prominence of balance and bulky offense. gen 7 was absolutely broken-checks-broken; at the very minimum, magearna and ash-greninja needed to go
it doesn't make sense to compare gen 2 to a modern gen. the scope and mechanics are so different that tiering policy is going to be different in older gens by necessity
balanced to me is "there aren't any overwhelming threats or mons warping the meta". broken-checks-broken is "everything beats everything", which appears to be your idea of balance
As a member of the pro-ghold community, it is very disturbing to see that almost all the botted responses voted 5 for Gholdengo (and Mr. Gambit). Thank you for catching this voter fraud before it got out of hand finch.
I dont care about SV OU, but saying magearna and ashgren needed to go in SM OU show u dont know at all the meta. Without Magearna, HO and surely Offense would be unviable and will require to ban lele and maybe alakazam-mega. For ashgren, this pokemon is, for any competent mainer, a very bad wallbreaker and his main niche atm is on xtrashine-like structure to stack spikes and lure several defogger with z-hpump (nowadays, most ashgren structure tend to suck overall).
I understand and somewhat agree actually, however I meant that in suspecting Zama we now have people unironically asking for more 650+ BST brick shithouses of mons to be suspected in OU. The wording I used in the original post was not good, and I apologize.
sv ou players have been so preconditioned to hazards and every other team being a form of offense that "ss ou was a stall fest" is a take that exists
absolutely despicable behavior from whoever tried pulling that shit again. after they got caught already. maybe we should try including some sort of captcha-esque feature to make it harder for bots to spam responses, but i don't think forms has an easy way to do that
Yup, even if weren't so common and was mostly the pivot set with Choice Scarf and Poison Touch, Sneasler also had the Fling set with the Golden Nugget that once flinged it had 120BP and also activated Unburden, but if you wanted you could do SD before using Fling.
fling was more of an emvee gimmick set than something people actually ran, its rendered kinda pointless when sd lash out takes out ghold and pult anyway. was fun though cant lie
I think Ghold should get suspected but these botted votes are unacceptable
I know Tera has been talked to death already, but we should definitely ramp up taking a look at it once DLC 2 comes. If you told people in detail how Tera worked last gen, it would come off as a shitpost. “So I could just turn my Bisharp into a Fairy type, get free STAB Hidden Power on steroids, get a pseudo-Technician boost for my
lower BP moves and suddenly counter goddamn Zamazenta thanks to all that? Would you look at the time lmao”.
And it’s not just how Tera as a mechanic just breaks the entire premise of Pokémon’s battling system (defined type VS type relationships), but also how Tera is always one of the listed reasons for a Pokémon being banned, if not the very thing that pushes them over the edge (Regieleki, Espartha, Volcarona, probably Tapu Koko once it comes back).
Kingambit? Would be alright to keep in OU if the Fighting types actually checked the thing, but right now it’s a major pain in the ass because it can just suddenly turn all of your “checks” for it into fodder with the click of a button. Gliscor? Sure, still annoying to deal with defensively without Tera despite me personally being fine with Gliscor in OU, but people got real tired of seeing it casually turn its Water and Ice weaknesses into resists by turning into a Water type itself. Manaphy without Tera being a thing would be bearable if Ogerpon-Wellspring and Rillaboom stay around, but Tera Poison/Steel/Dragon/Grass or whatever allowing it to outright set up on Rillaboom/Waterpon makes it a pain in the ass. Not to mention Ogerpon-W itself and its Tera form making it an “I win” button with a single turn of safe setup (nevermind the Trailblaze sets).
Once DLC 2 comes along, we should definitely take a look at banning Tera. It wouldn’t just make for a more balanced metagame, but also make addressing the potentially overwhelming Pokémon in the game easier as there would be no more “usually Great Tusk, Zamazenta and Dondozo handily counter Kingambit, but…” kind of problems to discuss. Things would just check and counter eachother like they used to and you could discern what is legitimately broken through there.
Such as Sneasler, which gets ez sweeps with Grassy Seed regardless of Tera while also being a powerful pivot. Or Annihilape, which is still the Fighting/Ghost snowballing Tank it has always been with Rage Fist. Or Palafin, which just needs to switch out once for it to become an over 600 BST Legendary-like 160 Atk powerhouse with STAB Wave Crash and 60 BP STAB priority. And Chi-Yu and Chien-Pao, they just nuke shit with little punishment, enough said about those two.
So once DLC 2 comes and we get any possible issues with Tera 19 out of the way, we should take another look at Tera as a whole.
lower BP moves and suddenly counter goddamn Zamazenta thanks to all that? Would you look at the time lmao”.
And it’s not just how Tera as a mechanic just breaks the entire premise of Pokémon’s battling system (defined type VS type relationships), but also how Tera is always one of the listed reasons for a Pokémon being banned, if not the very thing that pushes them over the edge (Regieleki, Espartha, Volcarona, probably Tapu Koko once it comes back).
Kingambit? Would be alright to keep in OU if the Fighting types actually checked the thing, but right now it’s a major pain in the ass because it can just suddenly turn all of your “checks” for it into fodder with the click of a button. Gliscor? Sure, still annoying to deal with defensively without Tera despite me personally being fine with Gliscor in OU, but people got real tired of seeing it casually turn its Water and Ice weaknesses into resists by turning into a Water type itself. Manaphy without Tera being a thing would be bearable if Ogerpon-Wellspring and Rillaboom stay around, but Tera Poison/Steel/Dragon/Grass or whatever allowing it to outright set up on Rillaboom/Waterpon makes it a pain in the ass. Not to mention Ogerpon-W itself and its Tera form making it an “I win” button with a single turn of safe setup (nevermind the Trailblaze sets).
Once DLC 2 comes along, we should definitely take a look at banning Tera. It wouldn’t just make for a more balanced metagame, but also make addressing the potentially overwhelming Pokémon in the game easier as there would be no more “usually Great Tusk, Zamazenta and Dondozo handily counter Kingambit, but…” kind of problems to discuss. Things would just check and counter eachother like they used to and you could discern what is legitimately broken through there.
Such as Sneasler, which gets ez sweeps with Grassy Seed regardless of Tera while also being a powerful pivot. Or Annihilape, which is still the Fighting/Ghost snowballing Tank it has always been with Rage Fist. Or Palafin, which just needs to switch out once for it to become an over 600 BST Legendary-like 160 Atk powerhouse with STAB Wave Crash and 60 BP STAB priority. And Chi-Yu and Chien-Pao, they just nuke shit with little punishment, enough said about those two.
So once DLC 2 comes and we get any possible issues with Tera 19 out of the way, we should take another look at Tera as a whole.
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Why were people on nat dex out here asking for team advice when they got NINETALES+BAXCALIBUR before the ban, if you can’t somehow win with dragon dance bax under snow and aurora veil, you simply have far worse issues in competitive play then “getting outoffensed”
Over 10,000 bot votes. That is weirdo behaviour, damn. Really nice that clearing it out wasn’t much of a problem.
This is from my recent policy review post here:
The second DLC of this generation is set to be released on the 13th of December, which is just under three weeks from now. There is technically time for another suspect test, which takes about two weeks, but there is also a sentiment that this would generate diminished returns as any potential suspect would end up back in OU upon the release of DLC 2.
SV OU will undergo what some can call a "partial reset" at this time. We will evaluate some potential Ubers to drop down and examine the status of the Pokemon being added to the game that may have been Uber in the prior generation, too. This post is not about that metagame, however, which we will deal with once we have more confirmed information. It is about the current metagame, which has an expiration date within the next month.
Our tiering system has evolved to focus more on data and addressing the evolving needs of the community, which includes the practice of regular community surveys on the metagame. Pokemon that receive high amounts of support within the surveys end up as potential subjects of tiering action. Pokemon like Baxcalibur and Sneasler received overwhelming support and got quickbanned, but other Pokemon received good, but not overwhelming, amounts of support, leading to suspect tests of Pokemon like Roaring Moon or Gliscor.
Currently Gholdengo is comfortably within the margin of support that something would get to be a potential suspect -- it is at a 3.8 out of 5, which is on par with or higher than various prior suspects. There has also been a large outcry about it throughout the community, which you can see across thousands of posts on the forum and discord in recent weeks.
If we had a more permanent metagame state, a suspect would likely be up already (although there is some dispute within the council, this data would be hard to ignore I would personally say) given the uptick in recent support. However, suspecting Gholdengo could be seen as pointless as the verdict would only be in place for about a week before DLC2. This leads me to the point of this thread: when do we draw the line to stop tiering action prior to a release? Is it 2 weeks? A month? 2 months? Situationally dependent?
We have had various suspects and bans recently that are able to help people play a more balanced metagame on the ladder and in tournaments, and this feeling of the metagame improving is reflected in survey results, too. However, players would hardly be able to experience a post-Gholdengo metagame, if it even were to get banned, and with Gholdengo being such a major presence in the metagame, it seems like we would be flirting with futility by suspecting it -- or anything -- this late in the game.
The natural counter to this is that the support is there, there is no precedent or guideline that says when to stop, and we just went ahead on various other suspects/bans that could very well be undone with DLC2 as well, so where do we truly draw the line? We should focus on the current metagame while it is current as it is true that everything else is speculative and unconfirmed until it becomes the current, real metagame in the future post-release. And I personally understand and resonate with this side as we have been focusing on the current metagame for months, so this would be a bit of an abrupt stop. However, I also feel a line needs to be drawn somewhere and now may be the ideal time for that...hence this discussion
I am curious on what the community feels on this. I am ok to go forwawrd with a suspect to give the people what they support, but I also feel that it could be a waste at this point in our timeline and the results would not actually have any longstanding impact.
The second DLC of this generation is set to be released on the 13th of December, which is just under three weeks from now. There is technically time for another suspect test, which takes about two weeks, but there is also a sentiment that this would generate diminished returns as any potential suspect would end up back in OU upon the release of DLC 2.
SV OU will undergo what some can call a "partial reset" at this time. We will evaluate some potential Ubers to drop down and examine the status of the Pokemon being added to the game that may have been Uber in the prior generation, too. This post is not about that metagame, however, which we will deal with once we have more confirmed information. It is about the current metagame, which has an expiration date within the next month.
Our tiering system has evolved to focus more on data and addressing the evolving needs of the community, which includes the practice of regular community surveys on the metagame. Pokemon that receive high amounts of support within the surveys end up as potential subjects of tiering action. Pokemon like Baxcalibur and Sneasler received overwhelming support and got quickbanned, but other Pokemon received good, but not overwhelming, amounts of support, leading to suspect tests of Pokemon like Roaring Moon or Gliscor.
Currently Gholdengo is comfortably within the margin of support that something would get to be a potential suspect -- it is at a 3.8 out of 5, which is on par with or higher than various prior suspects. There has also been a large outcry about it throughout the community, which you can see across thousands of posts on the forum and discord in recent weeks.
If we had a more permanent metagame state, a suspect would likely be up already (although there is some dispute within the council, this data would be hard to ignore I would personally say) given the uptick in recent support. However, suspecting Gholdengo could be seen as pointless as the verdict would only be in place for about a week before DLC2. This leads me to the point of this thread: when do we draw the line to stop tiering action prior to a release? Is it 2 weeks? A month? 2 months? Situationally dependent?
We have had various suspects and bans recently that are able to help people play a more balanced metagame on the ladder and in tournaments, and this feeling of the metagame improving is reflected in survey results, too. However, players would hardly be able to experience a post-Gholdengo metagame, if it even were to get banned, and with Gholdengo being such a major presence in the metagame, it seems like we would be flirting with futility by suspecting it -- or anything -- this late in the game.
The natural counter to this is that the support is there, there is no precedent or guideline that says when to stop, and we just went ahead on various other suspects/bans that could very well be undone with DLC2 as well, so where do we truly draw the line? We should focus on the current metagame while it is current as it is true that everything else is speculative and unconfirmed until it becomes the current, real metagame in the future post-release. And I personally understand and resonate with this side as we have been focusing on the current metagame for months, so this would be a bit of an abrupt stop. However, I also feel a line needs to be drawn somewhere and now may be the ideal time for that...hence this discussion
I am curious on what the community feels on this. I am ok to go forwawrd with a suspect to give the people what they support, but I also feel that it could be a waste at this point in our timeline and the results would not actually have any longstanding impact.
Tiering survey results are now up: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sv-ou-tiering-surveys.3711911/page-2#post-9871773 -- thanks for participating to those who are not spambots...
Ik this is kind of a dick head thing to say but do you think the Flutter, Hound, Palafin, Bundle, and Eleki bans were to quick were is the line in your opinion not trolling genuinely curious what you have to say and respect you as a player.Since it is mere weeks untill DLC 1 ends and DLC 2 drops, im going to drop my thoughts on how SV has been going for me,
After the banning of sneasler there has been a sour taste that has been developing for me, i was an avid sneasler ban enjoyer, i thought it was busted but upon retrospect i think there is a problem with this generation. The bans are happening way too fast and there physically isn't enough time to let the meta settle to make balance changes. the speed of which things are getting banned, and how many pokemon ARE banned (which can be its own tier and metagame) is a bit concerning.
i'm going to take a few examples between Baxcalibur, Walking Wake, Garganacl (Pre Home), Sneaseler, Roaring Moon and Volcarona.
Baxcalibur i think is a perfect ban, it has marinated in the metagame for a long while and we have seen the positives and the negatives it brings.
Pros
-Big Attacker with decent speed and good bulk
-Great defensive utility for offense
-Fixes many holes on teams
Cons
-Dondozo is almost forced on a lot of fat teams
-Can set up and win way too easily
-it can pick its counters very easily with tera, and with just 1 misplay, it can snowball
We had it in the tier for months and after exhausting everything that we can do with it, the verdict is made that it is Broken.
Garganacl was in the opposite side of the spectrum, where in pre home, it garnered a lot of support for a ban due to how dominant and slappable it was, at points gaining a 3/5 points in favor of suspect but it never got it and guess what? People adapted, people started using more knock off, Covert Cloak pex and dengo, Bulk Up great tusk, spikes spam, etc. After a while, garg just became a great, but not broken mon, the opposite of Baxcalibur before falling off a bit once Home dropped.
These two are perfect examples of how letting the meta adapt can show the true colors of a pokemon and truly see if they are just good, or broken.
However, those are just 2 rare cases, and i think this is the main problem for current tiering for SV OU, Actions are being taken way too quickly before the meta can even develop and marinate.
Walking Wake, Roaring Moon, Volcarona and Sneaseler didn't have enough time for the meta to settle to see if theyre truly broken or not.
Walking wake is a perfect example of a pokemon that was thought to be broken at the beginning and ended up being fine additions to the metagame. Walking Wake suspect in my opinion, was still one of the worst choice for suspect we have had, it was barely released in 4 days, in a meta where the scariest water type was rotom wash, and people were still comfortably using teams with no water resist, so if we just take those 3 days where people haven't adapted, Walking Wake is going to look like Dracovish-Incarnate, but after the suspect was over, people quickly realized that it was very mid, it did get better during home meta but at the time, we were about to suspect and potentially ban a pokemon that is mid, there was even rumors about a quick ban for it although i cant confirm it.
Blood Moon was a very centralizing pokemon that forced people to run stuff like Spdef Unaware Clefable that got banned in 7th of october 2023, then roaring moon was suspected 10 days later, the threshold for people making new teams and getting rid of old ones after a ban is usually around 3-5 days, arbitrary but its what i notice from friends who are good players as well. Taking this into account, we only have 5 Days to play in a roaring moon meta, a pokemon who is powerful, but is deeply flawed like only being able to sweep once, heavy 4MSS, before it was suspect tested and resulted in a ban. This ban opened the floodgates to the dreadful meta that was Rillaboom Sneaseler Gliscor Heatran meta, where it revolves around Gliscor Spikestack teams and Rillaboom Sneaseler, why? because the breaker that checked these pokemon got banned, and gliscor at this time held a monopoly on defensive pokemon which unintentionally made fatter teams worse and offensive teams better, once it got banned, Sneasler rose to power... for 2 days... before the meta can settle and potentially find a counter play to it and build the meta around it.
Now the meta is dominated by
double ground zapdos, very static reliant, rillaboom is even more powerful, ogerpon is more dominant than ever and one can only be happy that it will only last a few days.
Volcarona was probably the most controversial ban in gen 9 ou, as before pokemon home dropped, volcarona was a fine setup sweeper, not too broken but still really good, it gives a great defensive utility for offense and can even be slotted into more balance teams, it is heavily flawed with pokemon like clodsire and ting-lu being able to counter it quite easily in pre-home meta. Once Home dropped, not many people were clammoring for its ban and it was just banned.
Now why am i posting about this?
If we take just this DLC meta right now, Ogerpon wouldn't have been as dominant if Sneaseler was around, and Sneaseler wouldn't have been as dominant had we have roaring moon and gliscor keeping it in check, and roaring moon was kept in check by pokemon like gliscor, zamazenta and kingambit. (Oh and if ur saying "but tera..." respectfully, learn how to deal with it, i am speaking from the perspective of a tera meta)
SV OU physically CANNOT function without being 'Broken checks broken' like SS OU or ORAS OU. Theres simply too many 'broken' pokemon, but those broken pokemon cancels eachother out. Iron Valiant loses to Dengo, which loses to gambit, which loses to valiant, which loses to moth, which loses to roaring moon, which loses to weavile, which loses to zamazenta, which loses to dondozo, which loses to rillaboom, which loses to volcarona and etc. We also have adequate defensive pokemon, stuff like Great Tusk, Ting-lu, Zapdos, Dondozo, Garganacl are amazing pokemon that can check pretty much anything in the metagame, at the start of dlc Highv0ltag3 peaked on ladder with stall in a hearthflame meta using a Torn-t stall, and on high-ladder there was also a lot of balance teams that uses pokemon like defensive dragonite to check it, so we were at a precipice of people acclimating to the hearthflame meta before it got quickbanned.
I saw a lot of people here mentioning "why unban pokemon when its already banned? what purpose do they bring?" its to prevent stuff like this from happening, if Volcarona was here, Rillaboom wouldn't be this broken and so on. Having more variety is almost always better.
So heres my proposal, Slow Down the bans, after the first few OBVIOUSLY brokens (Magearna, Chi-Yu, Landorus-I, etc) only do suspect tests, and have a longer gap between them and let the meta settle, maybe 3 weeks minimum. Then can we also not ban litterally everything? I know "Broken checks broken" is a no-go usually, but looking at how game freak is taking SV with the DLC, new broken moves, new broken pokemon, its impossible to make an ORAS or SS style balanced metagame. If we continue this meta and ban Gholdengo, it may fix the problem of hazards but then Iron-Valiant and Rillaboom becomes more broken, then we ban those and dark types become more broken, then if we ban too much the defensive pokemon like garg starts becoming broken again its a never ending cycle, and lets not forget that the defensive pokemon of this meta like Garganacl, Great Tusk, Ting-lu, Zapdos are excellent and can check pretty much every pokemon. SV is very similar to SM at how many broken things there are, and guess what? despite SM having so many downright broken pokemon, the meta thrives, the things that are thought to be broken have balanced out (Tapu Lele, Ash Gren, etc.) because the meta eventually settled. I think its just impossible for this meta to be completely balanced with how dominant hazards are, amount of broken pokemon, the defensive power creep, etc.
I am not againts bans, but i am very concerned at how fast the meta is going, there are so many surveys in a row, just one after another barely after a ban just happened and people don't have enough time to collect their thoughts and vote, which at that point why even have a survey?
Slow down the survey so people can collect their thoughts a vote with a full grasp on the meta, Slow down the bans and suspect so the meta can develop naturally and have people deal with the 'broken' pokemon likeBax and
Garg in the past, Embrace the 'Broken checks broken' aspect of SV since it is the way game freak is going with the balancing and pokemon that are available, i know its very much so, not ideal but its just an idea. I know that Game Freak have moved from a Game to New Game basis to DLC to New DLC in a single gen, so the meta will be shorter than before. However, i dont think it is right to rush balancing just because a meta will only last 5 months. 2 Solid bans will always be better than a scattershot of 5 bans.
my personal opinion is that all of those bans were completely necessary at the times they were implemented. the only ones i can justify calling too quick are flutter and eleki because their abilities hadn't been figured out yet, but that didn't change what made them broken—flutter mane usually ran proto speed anyway, and eleki is broken not because of how strong its electric moves are but because it gets coverage it was never designed to get
Maybe we can suspect Ghold with what time we have left' then retest it after we get the meta to the best state possible in dlc2?
But yeah I'm fine waiting on the Ghold suspect even if it makes this pre dlc2 meta less desirable to play in the future by not banning it
I don't know this sounds like something that needs a council vote on whether to move forward with a suspect or not.
But yeah I think we should suspect Ghold for the sake of the DLC 1 metagame for those who want to play it years later I guess
If we had an internal consensus, we would’ve acted reflecting it, but we didn’t and felt it was best to set precedent for the future as the DLC/HOME model seems to be a staple of Pokemon now. As such, creating a PR thread and bringing it up here for input felt important.
Alright, that sounds like a pretty sound approach honestly and I think it is up to us as a community to decide whether we wanna suspect Ghold or not
i say 2 weeks is a good place to stop tiering before a new meta. as for ghold specifically, i say we suspect it now and only drop it if it gets a high enough score on the pre-dlc2 "what should we drop" survey. yes, the result might not last for a long time, but at least those of us who want peace from ghold will be able to have it, however briefly, and we'll get a bit of data on how hazard play will be in a gholdless meta
alternatively, we could compromise: do nothing now, but put ghold on the first dlc2 qb radar no matter how the meta develops
isn't that what the survey was supposed to answer? i think the decision has already been made
Rather than a suspect right now for something we know is going to last for only two more weeks, I personally would work on coming up with some sort of like, conditional suspect label we can put on stuff like Gholdengo. Since DLC and 3-4 different metagames in one generation are the standard now and likely will be going forward, it makes sense to adapt and move on from tiering policy created when a shakeup like this would only happen once years later rather then multiple times within one year of release. Something like Gholdengo, where there's a lot of support for a suspect but in a metagame we know is ending too soon for a ban to matter, could use something like "Hey, we know this thing is contentious and will continue to be if upcoming X Metagame has similar developments to current Y Metagame, so let's not bother with needing to go through another month and another user survey if that's how things shape up and just suspect it there".
As with most things I think context is a big part. I don't know any specific time that feels right to be set in stone, but I think what is being looked at matters. For Pokemon like Gholdengo and Kingambit, which have been around since Day 1 and been discussed ad nauseum, I think it would simply be smarter to wait when we know a new drop is coming soon. For something like Sneasler, however, only a week earlier than now, it was a relatively uncontroversial ban on a standard ish late game sweeper that's dangerously effective. I suppose I mean that Sneasler likely wouldn't be a mon which is in discussion for coming back after its ban whereas things like Gholdengo or Gambit, who are either still highly contentious or, in the latter's case, had a legitimate suspect already, would almost certainly be reintegrated with DLC2.
Obviously people will differ on what they feel is the most sensible ban at any given time, but the community feedback has been better than ever, and we can have a much better idea now than before about what drops would generally be seen as controversial. This and the last thread must have discussed Darkrai and Giratina for hundreds of posts, for instance.
Obviously people will differ on what they feel is the most sensible ban at any given time, but the community feedback has been better than ever, and we can have a much better idea now than before about what drops would generally be seen as controversial. This and the last thread must have discussed Darkrai and Giratina for hundreds of posts, for instance.
At this point, given your results in the thread of the Poll results, it's not worth our time.
"Gholdengo will start OU after DLC2 regardless of the result "
"While Kingambit received a large amount of support, other Pokemon received noticably more. It will continue to be discussed in tiering circles in the future, where action may become more possible. "
The two most pressing mons in a vast majority of the community's opinion will not be banned in Indigo Disk DLC even if they're suspected or quickbanned now, and Tera (as should be obvious) is clearly not getting tested before DLC drops; ergo, it really is a waste of time to have something that we undo in such short notice. I want some action taken, but reality is that it just doesn't matter.
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