On sun teams, most likely. On other teams, not really, as wake would be not very great with specs and booster speed, though that could be better against opposing sun teams. I wouldn't reccomend all three on the same team as there is a decent amount of defensive overlap, all being weak to dragon.
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Volcarona Banned]
- Thread starter TPP
- Start date
I find it more as a good cleaner against certain archetypes and also you can bait plenty of your opponent’s counters with sweepers that bring out their priority. You can run scarf with max speed to outrun pretty much everything and set up on something passive to OHKO your opponent’s Pokémon. You can remove your opponent’s priority users or just sweep with a different Mon once you have finished using Enamorus. However I do agree with the weaknesses you said, I just think that Enamorus while being outclassed is certainly viable and does not deserve a ranking of one. Pinkacross built a very strong team with it and showcased the team on a BMT. The replays there can show how powerful Enamorus can be.
Yeah, I feel like once people start realising that enamorus doesn't do the best damage if it doesn't get multiple boosts, it can be quite simple to deal with. 135 sp.A is still powerful, but it doesn't rip through everything. It destroys HO teams, with choice scarf specifically, but against any team with a backbone, it can only sweep if the opposing team is severly weakened.
The same could be said for serperior, but while it has less initial power, it is faster, which means it relies less on scarf to outspeed things, and has a better boosting move in leaf storm. Combine that with more utility in glare and leech seed, and serperior is much better than eman, but enam is still great.
I think both will fall off over time most likely, but what do I know, they could both eventually be banned.
Survey! I'll make this one quick (P.S. nvm)
Enjoyment/Competitiveness: I put down a 5 and a 6 here (I like to play a bunch of playstyles in this gen so these scores are always pretty similar for me). This meta still feels really weird to me and I don't think the variety available is all it's cracked up to be right now. It really feels like I can quickbuild a random balance and expect to climb consistently without much effort, while building offense can either be fine to use or shoot me down to the 1900s. In general it looks like there's a league of annoying mons that are just too easy to threaten sweeps with, and the best way to deal with all the shit in the meta happens to be hiding behind an Unaware mon (or a Barraskewda, rain's good too due to this obscene feat of speed control). Other blanket setup checks like Encore and priority have really fallen behind in this meta unfortunately, largely due to increased bulk amongst setup mons and an increased number of offensive threats, + of course the Encore and priority users still have to deal with a largely balance-focused meta on top of that. I think the best styles (outside of fat balance) owe most of their viability to basically one part of the team being anti-meta (while the rest kinda lags behind):
- HO is relying on Hat as a way to break balance and shut down the passive hazard setters. Arguably half of the point of using Screens/HO/Gterrain in the current meta climate is that you get to abuse CM Hat
- Rain is good because of Barraskewda's insane (permanent) speed tier. Being able to outspeed and OHKO pretty much all of the fast sweepers, often while clicking Flip Turn, allows the rest of rain teams to focus on having a sound structure and good breaking options like Archaludon
- There's a bunch of possibilities with lighter (non-fat) balances but not many of those possibilities actually count as special tools that make the style worth bringing. I'd say Samu-H is the most notable draw of these teams, being able to annoy balance teams and more importantly getting a reliable Spike that gives it universal utility vs all cheese styles.
Meanwhile, fat balance happens to have access to possibly the best pivot in Gking, Unaware which blanket checks more physical attackers than anything else in the meta, Gliscor to exert tons of control over the game-state, SkarmLu which beats a whole range of things on its own, etc. There's just much more to work with when you commit to this playstyle, which can sometimes work out in a metagame, but right now it poses an issue in the builder where lighter balance structures, BO, and many forms of offense have to take this huge variety of threats seriously because they can fuck you over in all sorts of ways. Fat balance on the other hand can slap some bullshit 3 mon combo of Lu/Skarm/Gliscor/Dondozo/Tera Dirge/Gking and literally just laugh at 70 percent of the offensive metagame (before using the rest of their slots and tera options to work around the other 30 percent). Like I said before, there's always been some degree of this in Gen 9 due to the nature of the mons we got - this dynamic doesn't have to ruin a metagame, and we've seen past iterations of this meta that can handle these guys while maintaining a healthy variety of teambuilding structures. From a tiering perspective, I think we need to pay more attention to mons that can find themselves in auto-win positions against BO/offense really easily, as these are the mons that make it hard for those playstyles to develop real competitive variety.
I put down a 3 on this, but it's like a low 3 tbh. I don't find hazard lead sets to be a major concern right now, the main Deo-S sets to watch out for from a tiering perspective are NP LO and NP Boots, due to its crazy Speed/coverage and relative ease in finding opportunities to click Nasty Plot. Despite this, the power drop going from LO to Boots is noticeable, and the fact that you're forced to run Psycho Boost in order to make your neutral hits hard enough to scare defensive mons means that there's basically always a way to survive it. NP Deo-S is generally an offense tool that tries to break in short bursts throughout the game, as opposed to a sweeper (think of NP as the 4th coverage move on 4 attacks Deo-D), due to the fact that we have faster mons and priority to keep it in check after chip. In my opinion, while I think Deo-S is strong in a vacuum, you have to factor in the fact that its most dangerous sets are generally forced onto teamstyles that are struggling right now, and that's why I can't really think of it as anything other than a 2 or 3 in the current meta
This is a slightly higher 3 than Deo-S imo. I'm kinda torn on this mon because it is simultaneously one of the best anti-balance options we have, and also one of balance's favourite clicker mons, but in general I feel like Kyurem could end up being a case of a mon that's just a bit too strong for the meta. 95 base Speed gets you past the 300 Speed tier which allows it to reliably outspeed a bunch of meta favourites Tusk, Gholdengo, Glimmora, Rilla, and Samu-H which makes its Speed pretty useful. On top of this Kyurem packs the bulk to deal with a lot of faster mons and find good attacking opportunities in general. My main concern in terms of Kyurem sets right now is the Specs set, I think it can make use of the cheeky Speed tier combined with fucktons of initial power and threat level from the coverage to force kills super quickly, leaving a small window to deal with it before it takes out key pieces of your team. That being said, I still don't think it's time to address Kyurem yet, as the Specs set does run into problems with its preferred style of BO being kinda bad, and hazard control being pretty poor in general. DD sets exist and can get really annoying, but I haven't seen them enough for me to get a proper read on them so far. For me, Kyurem is something to keep on a watchlist for the future.
1. Meh. This isn't the mon it used to be, maybe I could have voted it a 2 but frankly it's just not the priority right now and it runs into more challenges than ever before when it comes to picking a good Tera. All of the decent playstyles right now have pretty accessible tools against Volc, I see no reason to care about it right now. My favourite set when using it has been Tera Dragon, I think that this coverage + the Water/Fire/Grass resists is the best way Volc can adapt to the current meta.
2. Look, this guy is supposed to be scary into balance, that's basically its job. I think it would be really hasty to ban a mon like this given the current state of the metagame, it seems totally fine to me for HO to have a tool that forces balance players to plan around it, possibly taking chip damage on multiple mons or give up a Tera etc. Roaring Moon as always is chip prone and priority prone, and it does still need to commit to Teraing in a lot of situations, so for me it's just a case of every playstyle having options vs it, with the mon itself being practical enough to be worthwhile to the meta, but not so practical that it makes me panic when seeing it. Personally I think that Roaring Moon's brand of progress-making should be encouraged where possible, since its job is basically to weaken physical walls in a way that allows other physical sweepers to get into the game, which I think is much better than the current state of the HO vs balance matchup, which basically involves the balance player insta-clicking the ignore button on half the opposing team, before devising some Tera-related plan to deal with the 1-2 threats that might not run face first into a brick wall.
I put down 4 on Gouging Fire. This mon scares and annoys me more than anything else in the metagame right now. Its stat spread is just way too convenient, being bulky as hell while also fast enough to outspeed all the unboosted mons at +1, and all the boosted mons at +2. When it comes to playing against this thing, unless you're using the harder counters like Dondozo or Physdef Gliscor (which are locked to fat), you are going to have a real painful time figuring out how to reliably kill this thing. Thanks to its insane 3 move coverage (and pretty good 2 move coverage), you'll be forced into many situations where you have to guess the Gouging Fire set immediately or risk losing to double Dragon Dance. A common choice in these games will be between staying in with your mon that can't 2hko Gouging Fire so that you can chip the 3a sets into range of other mons, or switching out to something that covers 2/3 attacks immediately so that you can stop DD Morning Sun from winning. Tera in general allows Gouging Fire to flip many of its weak matchups in order to make this really problematic, because again this is a mon that you need to respond to immediately, you cant afford to lose a turn to Gouging Fire pulling out Morning Sun or clicking the Tera button to wall your "check" all of a sudden. This is the main mon in the metagame that makes me want to give up on running anything that isn't fat balance or rain, massive fuck you to this guy.
1. I'm not convinced this is a real pokemon. No really, who is this? I think I've seen him once in about 100 games at the top of the ladder. I guess there's technically an outside chance that this becomes a problem down the line? In general though, a mon with only 113 Speed that also isnt packing obscene bulk or a good way to boost its own Speed is so 2019, give me 400+ atk and 600+ speed in one turn or don't bother calling.
2. Mostly based off the fact that I don't think it's a priority right now. Need more time to evaluate this guy and I haven't had much of a scare against it so far. My experience of using Raging Bolt has mostly been a case of it putting up Lebron numbers 1 in every 5 games and then spending the next 4 as a glorified cheerleader. Weird mon, interesting mon, potentially healthy mon (it beats Zapdos), I think it's fine to stay for now.
2. Main reason I put this as 2 and not 1 is the principle I mentioned earlier about mons that hurt BO/offense way more than fat balance. Maybe there's a future where clearing this out could benefit the meta, but frankly it'd always be a weird thing to target from a tiering perspective. There's some cool options for sets right now, like Stallion's SubSD Tera Flying set (which has also been run with other Teras like Dragon) and Sacred Sword > CC being an option to push through Skarmory. Thanks to its crazy speed stat, it can actually somewhat pull these sets off due to the auto-win potential that comes from getting a sub off on Glisc Toxic or Gambit Sucker Punch.
1. No reason to care about this mon yet, maybe down the line. Tera Stellar is a pretty notable buff to Specs Enam as well as Scarf Enam, it's kinda hard to run Specs Enamorus right now but I'm sure this will be a big thing at some point in the future.
1. I've talked about my thoughts on Ghold's hazard-blocking capabilities in various discords, but my general thoughts are that it's not worth it to sacrifice one of our few decent Steel types so that we can get 1.5 viable Defoggers back (which may account for like 20 percent of teams at best). Competitive mons in general has been trending towards avoiding hazards instead of removing them for a while and I really dont think freeing one mediocre Defogger is going to put a dent in that. As for Ghold's anti-balance capabilities, I don't think any aspect of what it does is too much for the meta, balance has proven to be able to build/play around Ghold time and time again even though it takes some effort, and the more mons we get the worse Gholdengo has become as a pokemon. Not a fan of banning this guy as a solution to anything we have going on right now, he's not even the least honest Steel type in this meta.
3. I've been anti-Gambit for nearly a year at this point and my thoughts on it can only change so much. Yes it has been worse than usual in the past couple of DLCs but it is one of the main ways to punish a bunch of frailer/weaker offensive picks, and I cant help but wonder how much more variety this meta could achieve if we didnt have to deal with last mon Gambit throughout the gen. I get that this topic is polarizing because a lot of people like Gambit's ability to cut down on the range of opposing picks, but for me as someone who uses a lot less Gambit than most people, seeing endgames where there's clearly not gonna be a way to get the Gambit from 100 percent to 0 percent gets tiring, and I think the mon is cheap in general. In terms of Gambit sets, I do like the anti-Skarm Gambit sets, namely Jolly BlackGlasses variants that can pick off Skarm later in the game, and Tera Ghost on bulky variants which can wall out standard Skarmory after it loses its Helmet (maybe even with the Helmet, I've never labbed that situation). Tera Fight is also better than usual thanks to the lack of Kanto Birds.
That's it for me, I'll leave you guys with the rain that I've liked since i'm not using it anymore.
Enjoyment/Competitiveness: I put down a 5 and a 6 here (I like to play a bunch of playstyles in this gen so these scores are always pretty similar for me). This meta still feels really weird to me and I don't think the variety available is all it's cracked up to be right now. It really feels like I can quickbuild a random balance and expect to climb consistently without much effort, while building offense can either be fine to use or shoot me down to the 1900s. In general it looks like there's a league of annoying mons that are just too easy to threaten sweeps with, and the best way to deal with all the shit in the meta happens to be hiding behind an Unaware mon (or a Barraskewda, rain's good too due to this obscene feat of speed control). Other blanket setup checks like Encore and priority have really fallen behind in this meta unfortunately, largely due to increased bulk amongst setup mons and an increased number of offensive threats, + of course the Encore and priority users still have to deal with a largely balance-focused meta on top of that. I think the best styles (outside of fat balance) owe most of their viability to basically one part of the team being anti-meta (while the rest kinda lags behind):
- HO is relying on Hat as a way to break balance and shut down the passive hazard setters. Arguably half of the point of using Screens/HO/Gterrain in the current meta climate is that you get to abuse CM Hat
- Rain is good because of Barraskewda's insane (permanent) speed tier. Being able to outspeed and OHKO pretty much all of the fast sweepers, often while clicking Flip Turn, allows the rest of rain teams to focus on having a sound structure and good breaking options like Archaludon
- There's a bunch of possibilities with lighter (non-fat) balances but not many of those possibilities actually count as special tools that make the style worth bringing. I'd say Samu-H is the most notable draw of these teams, being able to annoy balance teams and more importantly getting a reliable Spike that gives it universal utility vs all cheese styles.
Meanwhile, fat balance happens to have access to possibly the best pivot in Gking, Unaware which blanket checks more physical attackers than anything else in the meta, Gliscor to exert tons of control over the game-state, SkarmLu which beats a whole range of things on its own, etc. There's just much more to work with when you commit to this playstyle, which can sometimes work out in a metagame, but right now it poses an issue in the builder where lighter balance structures, BO, and many forms of offense have to take this huge variety of threats seriously because they can fuck you over in all sorts of ways. Fat balance on the other hand can slap some bullshit 3 mon combo of Lu/Skarm/Gliscor/Dondozo/Tera Dirge/Gking and literally just laugh at 70 percent of the offensive metagame (before using the rest of their slots and tera options to work around the other 30 percent). Like I said before, there's always been some degree of this in Gen 9 due to the nature of the mons we got - this dynamic doesn't have to ruin a metagame, and we've seen past iterations of this meta that can handle these guys while maintaining a healthy variety of teambuilding structures. From a tiering perspective, I think we need to pay more attention to mons that can find themselves in auto-win positions against BO/offense really easily, as these are the mons that make it hard for those playstyles to develop real competitive variety.
I put down a 3 on this, but it's like a low 3 tbh. I don't find hazard lead sets to be a major concern right now, the main Deo-S sets to watch out for from a tiering perspective are NP LO and NP Boots, due to its crazy Speed/coverage and relative ease in finding opportunities to click Nasty Plot. Despite this, the power drop going from LO to Boots is noticeable, and the fact that you're forced to run Psycho Boost in order to make your neutral hits hard enough to scare defensive mons means that there's basically always a way to survive it. NP Deo-S is generally an offense tool that tries to break in short bursts throughout the game, as opposed to a sweeper (think of NP as the 4th coverage move on 4 attacks Deo-D), due to the fact that we have faster mons and priority to keep it in check after chip. In my opinion, while I think Deo-S is strong in a vacuum, you have to factor in the fact that its most dangerous sets are generally forced onto teamstyles that are struggling right now, and that's why I can't really think of it as anything other than a 2 or 3 in the current meta This is a slightly higher 3 than Deo-S imo. I'm kinda torn on this mon because it is simultaneously one of the best anti-balance options we have, and also one of balance's favourite clicker mons, but in general I feel like Kyurem could end up being a case of a mon that's just a bit too strong for the meta. 95 base Speed gets you past the 300 Speed tier which allows it to reliably outspeed a bunch of meta favourites Tusk, Gholdengo, Glimmora, Rilla, and Samu-H which makes its Speed pretty useful. On top of this Kyurem packs the bulk to deal with a lot of faster mons and find good attacking opportunities in general. My main concern in terms of Kyurem sets right now is the Specs set, I think it can make use of the cheeky Speed tier combined with fucktons of initial power and threat level from the coverage to force kills super quickly, leaving a small window to deal with it before it takes out key pieces of your team. That being said, I still don't think it's time to address Kyurem yet, as the Specs set does run into problems with its preferred style of BO being kinda bad, and hazard control being pretty poor in general. DD sets exist and can get really annoying, but I haven't seen them enough for me to get a proper read on them so far. For me, Kyurem is something to keep on a watchlist for the future. 1. Meh. This isn't the mon it used to be, maybe I could have voted it a 2 but frankly it's just not the priority right now and it runs into more challenges than ever before when it comes to picking a good Tera. All of the decent playstyles right now have pretty accessible tools against Volc, I see no reason to care about it right now. My favourite set when using it has been Tera Dragon, I think that this coverage + the Water/Fire/Grass resists is the best way Volc can adapt to the current meta. 2. Look, this guy is supposed to be scary into balance, that's basically its job. I think it would be really hasty to ban a mon like this given the current state of the metagame, it seems totally fine to me for HO to have a tool that forces balance players to plan around it, possibly taking chip damage on multiple mons or give up a Tera etc. Roaring Moon as always is chip prone and priority prone, and it does still need to commit to Teraing in a lot of situations, so for me it's just a case of every playstyle having options vs it, with the mon itself being practical enough to be worthwhile to the meta, but not so practical that it makes me panic when seeing it. Personally I think that Roaring Moon's brand of progress-making should be encouraged where possible, since its job is basically to weaken physical walls in a way that allows other physical sweepers to get into the game, which I think is much better than the current state of the HO vs balance matchup, which basically involves the balance player insta-clicking the ignore button on half the opposing team, before devising some Tera-related plan to deal with the 1-2 threats that might not run face first into a brick wall. I put down 4 on Gouging Fire. This mon scares and annoys me more than anything else in the metagame right now. Its stat spread is just way too convenient, being bulky as hell while also fast enough to outspeed all the unboosted mons at +1, and all the boosted mons at +2. When it comes to playing against this thing, unless you're using the harder counters like Dondozo or Physdef Gliscor (which are locked to fat), you are going to have a real painful time figuring out how to reliably kill this thing. Thanks to its insane 3 move coverage (and pretty good 2 move coverage), you'll be forced into many situations where you have to guess the Gouging Fire set immediately or risk losing to double Dragon Dance. A common choice in these games will be between staying in with your mon that can't 2hko Gouging Fire so that you can chip the 3a sets into range of other mons, or switching out to something that covers 2/3 attacks immediately so that you can stop DD Morning Sun from winning. Tera in general allows Gouging Fire to flip many of its weak matchups in order to make this really problematic, because again this is a mon that you need to respond to immediately, you cant afford to lose a turn to Gouging Fire pulling out Morning Sun or clicking the Tera button to wall your "check" all of a sudden. This is the main mon in the metagame that makes me want to give up on running anything that isn't fat balance or rain, massive fuck you to this guy. 1. I'm not convinced this is a real pokemon. No really, who is this? I think I've seen him once in about 100 games at the top of the ladder. I guess there's technically an outside chance that this becomes a problem down the line? In general though, a mon with only 113 Speed that also isnt packing obscene bulk or a good way to boost its own Speed is so 2019, give me 400+ atk and 600+ speed in one turn or don't bother calling. 2. Mostly based off the fact that I don't think it's a priority right now. Need more time to evaluate this guy and I haven't had much of a scare against it so far. My experience of using Raging Bolt has mostly been a case of it putting up Lebron numbers 1 in every 5 games and then spending the next 4 as a glorified cheerleader. Weird mon, interesting mon, potentially healthy mon (it beats Zapdos), I think it's fine to stay for now. 2. Main reason I put this as 2 and not 1 is the principle I mentioned earlier about mons that hurt BO/offense way more than fat balance. Maybe there's a future where clearing this out could benefit the meta, but frankly it'd always be a weird thing to target from a tiering perspective. There's some cool options for sets right now, like Stallion's SubSD Tera Flying set (which has also been run with other Teras like Dragon) and Sacred Sword > CC being an option to push through Skarmory. Thanks to its crazy speed stat, it can actually somewhat pull these sets off due to the auto-win potential that comes from getting a sub off on Glisc Toxic or Gambit Sucker Punch. 1. No reason to care about this mon yet, maybe down the line. Tera Stellar is a pretty notable buff to Specs Enam as well as Scarf Enam, it's kinda hard to run Specs Enamorus right now but I'm sure this will be a big thing at some point in the future. 1. I've talked about my thoughts on Ghold's hazard-blocking capabilities in various discords, but my general thoughts are that it's not worth it to sacrifice one of our few decent Steel types so that we can get 1.5 viable Defoggers back (which may account for like 20 percent of teams at best). Competitive mons in general has been trending towards avoiding hazards instead of removing them for a while and I really dont think freeing one mediocre Defogger is going to put a dent in that. As for Ghold's anti-balance capabilities, I don't think any aspect of what it does is too much for the meta, balance has proven to be able to build/play around Ghold time and time again even though it takes some effort, and the more mons we get the worse Gholdengo has become as a pokemon. Not a fan of banning this guy as a solution to anything we have going on right now, he's not even the least honest Steel type in this meta. 3. I've been anti-Gambit for nearly a year at this point and my thoughts on it can only change so much. Yes it has been worse than usual in the past couple of DLCs but it is one of the main ways to punish a bunch of frailer/weaker offensive picks, and I cant help but wonder how much more variety this meta could achieve if we didnt have to deal with last mon Gambit throughout the gen. I get that this topic is polarizing because a lot of people like Gambit's ability to cut down on the range of opposing picks, but for me as someone who uses a lot less Gambit than most people, seeing endgames where there's clearly not gonna be a way to get the Gambit from 100 percent to 0 percent gets tiring, and I think the mon is cheap in general. In terms of Gambit sets, I do like the anti-Skarm Gambit sets, namely Jolly BlackGlasses variants that can pick off Skarm later in the game, and Tera Ghost on bulky variants which can wall out standard Skarmory after it loses its Helmet (maybe even with the Helmet, I've never labbed that situation). Tera Fight is also better than usual thanks to the lack of Kanto Birds.That's it for me, I'll leave you guys with the rain that I've liked since i'm not using it anymore.
I personally run HDB and roost on the set I use, which allows you to come in multiple times and threaten a mon with knock off. The main reason why it is so banworthy in my eyes is that it is fast, bulky and can make progress without sacrificing any of the other traits. 105/71/101 isn't too bad for such a fast mon. And its moveset is quite flexable, as after the almost mandatory knock off and dd, you can run anything from jaw lack, u-turn, taunt, roost, coverage moves in e-quake, iron head or brick break to name a few or dragon stab. It is so versatile and doesn't give up any of its outstanding traits to boost its power level.
I can see why you would think that, the normal version is definetely weak to hazards/chip, but it can easily run other sets that take advantage of this thinking and end up sweeping.
I've been trying out something
I made some teams with several mons that spread status and after I cleaned up a bit and got most of the team statused, I come out with Specs Hex Pult and clean. Got me to 1300s, I didn't create a well balanced team yet, I find T-Wave Tinkaton and WoW/T-Wave Rotom-W quite good with this style. I may try out some toxic chain mon once. When I have a team that got me to 1400s, I'll post a RMT
Do you think this style has a future or is it gimmicky?
I made some teams with several mons that spread status and after I cleaned up a bit and got most of the team statused, I come out with Specs Hex Pult and clean. Got me to 1300s, I didn't create a well balanced team yet, I find T-Wave Tinkaton and WoW/T-Wave Rotom-W quite good with this style. I may try out some toxic chain mon once. When I have a team that got me to 1400s, I'll post a RMT
Do you think this style has a future or is it gimmicky?
Moon's a very different mon without Acro, I'm sure Boots DD can put in work from time to time but the drop in coverage and power when you're not running Booster Energy is noticeable (having used Boots at the start of DLC 1). For the sake of the survey responses I only really worried about relatively common sets that also have potential to be broken.
I completely forgot moon mainly uses acro lol. The power drop is noticeable, I will agree. However, the main thing with the set is that you can come into the game multiple times, whereas with acro moon, you most likely can only come in once. Of course, that one turn can just win you the game, so you could say it is only needs that set. However, if you believe your opponent will be relying on hazards/chip to beat moon, then this set can stop those strategies from working.
It's less so that the Boots DD set is broken, it's more that it has the option to use that set. As you said, it's a very different mon, which can throw off the opponent hard. Using a less optimal set can sometimes be actually better if the opponent is unprepared for it.
Glad to see a council member share why he thinks Gouging Fire is a problem. I do think that it's a much bigger threat than Raging Bolt and that Gouging Fire is the best of the new (not just newly released but new) mons released with Indigo Disk.
xavgb, if you think balance is too strong, is there any defensive mon you would ban to make offense more viable?
xavgb, if you think balance is too strong, is there any defensive mon you would ban to make offense more viable?
I do think that enamorus is good on ho teams as a really good cleaner since it becomes unwallable with mons resistant to fairy after Tera stellar. This means that the choice lock from scarf really doesn’t matter too much since you should only be using enamorus rarely to revenge things or as a cleaner after weakening your opponent’s checks to it. I suppose unaware mons could be dangerous but you could just use another Mon in the back to sweep after dealing heavy damage to your opponent’s team with enamorus or force them to use them by setting up a dangerous sweeper and then damaging the unaware Mon.
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It does clean things when their weakened, but they have to be severly weakened.
252 SpA Tera Stellar Enamorus Tera Blast (100 BP) vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Kyurem: 146-173 (37.3 - 44.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 SpA Tera Stellar Enamorus Tera Blast (100 BP) vs. 236 HP / 0 SpD Kingambit: 155-182 (38.7 - 45.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
Not even 50%, yikes. Still great, but you do need to work a lot for that power. I've been in a good spot to sweep that has been cut short simply because enam has done not enough damage despite me weakening the opposing team. If you can get hazards and weaken the opposing team, great, it will be amazing. However, I believe that outside a pure cleaner role on teams that can force tons of chip, it isn't too worth it.
Btw, what happened to manaphy? I've seen only one person even mention and I never see it. Has it fallen off that much?
I run it with screens currently for extra bulk and maybe fire off more Tera blasts. Honestly I see it as a viable but outclassed option as a sweeper that I use for fun. I do think you need to build your team around enamorus for it to be successful though.
Im not sure if Gouging Fire is a problem, but if someone doesnt see its by far the strongest newest adition to the game, he is blind.
-Amazing Sun Swepper
-DD Sets are scary and can easily get out of control
-Defensive sets are also great thats to some unique tools and great bulk, specially under sun
-Great, almost perfect coverage
Ofc there are still many different answer, but its a VERY strong mon, and by far the strongest DD user in the tier as it doesnt rely on Tera as much as other like moon.
Similar mons would be Moon (which doesnt need the set up thanks to its crazy high speed) and Kyurem (which main benefits is that it can go either physical or special)
Still, I am not sure if Gouging Fire is a problem, tera can ofc complicate things as usual, but there are multiple ways to handle it and it certainly has some weaknesses.
I mentioned it briefly in the post above, but I don't really like the idea of banning one of the defensive mons as a first point of action. The main reason for this is that basically everything I mentioned has had phases of the meta where they've been completely fine (I also think Gliscor was fine in DLC 1).
For example, Dondozo has incredible value in the balance vs HO matchup, because even if it gets crippled by a Knock Off it can still stop the physical threats in a pinch, but once you get to offense and BO matchups, Dondozo can find itself exploited by Knock Off and its over-reliance on Rest, combined with general passivity. In this example, Dondozo is getting its success from the fact that most of the teams you'll run into are either balance (a mirror matchup that you'll be prepared for) or straight hyper offense (which Dondozo is good against).
Generally in phases of the meta where the playstyle variety has been good, defensive mons have become less of an issue, and the opposite is also arguably true. The craziest offensive meta we had this gen was the late Shed Tail meta, and during that meta the clear two best playstyles were Shed Tail and fat balance, while everything else kinda faded away into obscurity (seriously almost everything brought in tours at that time was one of these two playstyles).
I think it's pretty difficult for defensive ability alone to make a mon difficult to deal with - Dondozo has a crazy defensive profile and even then it's historically been low A rank/high B rank. Generally in modern pokemon gaming, defensive mons need to offer something after they switch into the threat and that's where the mons I mentioned excel - there's a not insignificant amount of (otherwise) strong attacks that do barely any net damage to Ting-Lu or Regen Gking, and all of those switches convert back into momentum for the person using the fat mon, since Ting-Lu can force the opponent to respond to Spikes, and Gking can Chilly out for momentum. Within the context of building and playing, these threats need to be taken seriously just like offensive threats - these sequences can provide opponents with a free momentum farm that mostly plays itself, starting from a simple thought of "let's go to the switchin here".
Probably the worst state of the meta I've seen regarding defensive play took everything mentioned above one step further. The Zap + Gking + Ting-Lu metas existed because those three mons generated insane amounts of momentum while also being really defensively solid. Within this core I disliked Zapdos the most. My main reason for this was the fact that Zapdos also has very few safe switchins, with the few mons that do come in safely being limited to balance builds - essentially propagating the same style that was causing problems in the first place.
It's worth noting at this point that defensive mons becoming better at creating momentum is a part of power creep across the generations - the really old generations barely get to play with these concepts because they don't have Regenerator or Magic Guard or a million pivot moves. In a sense, the ability for defensive mons to generate momentum efficiently is kinda inevitable - however, since offensive power creep also exists, it should generally be possible for more offensively-based teams to find new combinations to slice through common defensive cores.
The reason why I consider SV OU to be particularly prone to broken defense comes back to Tera as a mechanic. At this point in the generation it is clear that the most common use of Terastalization is on a defensive basis, usually to put a stop to an annoying offensive threat on the opposing team. With this in mind, it becomes pretty clear that defensive teams love having access to Tera - your fundamental weakness in the balance vs offense matchup is supposed to be the idea that your opponent can either run a threat that hits way above its weight class when played against passive teams, or they can run a combination of threats that force you into a set of responses until your defensive core is no more. Tera basically takes all of those ideas and then says "now do it twice".
To quickly recap everything from the last few paragraphs - we've been given some of the most momentum-positive defensive mons ever, 3-4 different Unaware mons, and a mechanic that can bail you out in situations where your defensive core has been cracked, all within the same generation. Other recent generations haven't really needed to worry about the state of defensive play, because over time we've been given lots of different angles which we can use to break teams down - Future Sight, Knock Off, hazards, breakers, breaking cores, pivoting attackers etc. SV OU is the first modern gen that has had real problems when it comes to consistently breaking down opposing teams, so imo it requires a more thoughtful approach in tiering.
My take on all of this is that the ideal way to prevent these issues from coming up repeatedly is to ban Tera, but since that is hugely community-dependent (and looking unlikely), I'm preparing myself to make tiering decisions around Tera staying - for me, this means that there needs to be some care taken to make sure that we dont ban too many mons based off of their scary breaking capacity, and that we do manage to ban mons that are toxic to multiple playstyles, even if they can't beat Dondozo.
Idk man. Between all the new dragons, the higher power level, and Meow being one of the best mons in the tier, I can’t really see this as broken at all, let alone a meta staple atm.
If the decision on whether banning Tera or not is community-dependent, and the community wants it to stay, then the community is a disappointment and the council should know better what to do. The point of having a council instead of letting the surveys have a DIRECT impact on the tiering system is that the community is biased, made out of many casual players and many people that don't have the knowledge to visualize the impact of a given decision on the tier. If (big "if", unfortunately) the council was well-educated on what a competitive tier should prioritize then Tera would have been gone for some time now, regardless of the majority's opinion.
So now you might think that my point is that the council should ban Tera, even going against the majority's opinion. But the hilarious fact is that the very few times the community was interviewed about the matter, a big majority wanted action!
I really don't understand why the Council mocks us all by stating that 65% of the qualified playerbase wanting action on tera isn't enough for a suspect, and then holds a voting on whether or not starting in OU Pokémon with like 2.6/5 support (reminder that lowest is 1 and neutral is 3, so it's equal to 4/10). At the same time they remove Tera from the surveys stating that it will be addressed "at a later time" for 5 months straight, maybe they are waiting for SV to not be CG anymore? Kek. Then of course I know the majority of the council isn't in bad faith but the way Tera is being dealt with is frustrating and unfair, especially considering it's the MAIN TOPIC of tiering action for the whole generation.
So now you might think that my point is that the council should ban Tera, even going against the majority's opinion. But the hilarious fact is that the very few times the community was interviewed about the matter, a big majority wanted action!
I really don't understand why the Council mocks us all by stating that 65% of the qualified playerbase wanting action on tera isn't enough for a suspect, and then holds a voting on whether or not starting in OU Pokémon with like 2.6/5 support (reminder that lowest is 1 and neutral is 3, so it's equal to 4/10). At the same time they remove Tera from the surveys stating that it will be addressed "at a later time" for 5 months straight, maybe they are waiting for SV to not be CG anymore? Kek. Then of course I know the majority of the council isn't in bad faith but the way Tera is being dealt with is frustrating and unfair, especially considering it's the MAIN TOPIC of tiering action for the whole generation.
If you want a third to half of OU banned, give UU a try.
That was my thought reading that post. Power is going to creep. If you want OU to remain at the same level as it was in gen 4-5, better make Uber-UU and Uber-RU and Uber-NU officially tiers because its going to be messy
This is so funny, so the decision is community dependent but if the community wanted Tera to stay then the council should ignore that decision? Wtf are we doing here, do you want the council to be a dictatorship or do you want them to listen to the community because then you go on to say:
I don't understand how people manage to come out with this when the Council have always said the timing is awkward surrounding major content drops and such a major decision needs a stabilised meta before testing it again.
4th January - Tera remains legal
29th January - Chien-Pao suspect
27th February - Walking Wake & Iron Leaves event
5th March - Walking Wake suspect
18th May - Pokemon Home release date confirmed
30th May - Pokemon Home compatibility update
11th June - Tera gets a bunch of write-ins on a survey
13th June - Zamazenta-Hero suspect
8th July - Tera gets 60% vote for action on a survey
14th July - OU forum Tera thread & PR Tera thread
26th July - Kingambit suspect
8th August - DLC1 release date confirmed
13th September - DLC1 released
28th September - Ursaluna-Bloodmoon suspect
18th October - Roaring Moon suspect
1st November - Gliscor suspect
2nd November - DLC2 release date confirmed
14th December - DLC2 release
So, inbetween high priority suspect tests and uncertainty surrounding DLC drops that will disrupt the meta - where do you want another Tera suspect to come in? Really the only time for it to happen is basically now that DLC2 has actually calmed down and nothing is overwhelming the meta.
An ideal council should be able to both listen to the community and ignore the opinion of the majority when not well justified. However in the first paragraph i was referring to the entirety of the playerbase, later I only underlined statistics referred to the qualified playerbase. It's not the same. But since the council always justifies or supports its decisions with the tiering surveys or the community will, then it gets annoying to see them bending the numbers to use them as they like, like I showed in my example.
Edit: to explain myself better, it's completely arbitrary to say that 64.7% "isn't enough for a suspect yet", then acting like holding a vote in another case is justified by a 2.6/5.
It's not bending the numbers - in the instance of the suspect, yes 59.25% voted action, yes that is a majority, however we have known for a long time that a supermajority of 60% is needed, this isn't bending the numbers, this is the rules.
In the instance of the survey where a lot of people voted for action, the two threads were created to discuss what the options for a future Tera suspect should be, people had said that the first one was messy with 2 options AND ranked choice, so there needed to be a discussion on how to structure the vote in the future (and tbh there still isn't really a consensus on that lol)
And we know that the council does not want to quickban such a pivotal part of the meta game - it needs to go down to a community vote because at large, it is the community that decides the meta.
So with all that discussion, content drops coming in randomly and suspects for other things ongoing, again, where did you want Tera to be re-visited with its own suspect test (bearing in mind that it will need a full suspect because quickbanning it is dictatorial)
I somewhat understand this point but you're comparing apples and oranges still - suspecting the mechanic and suspecting a single Pokemon are completely different and required completely different approaches. It's not that it "isn't enough for a suspect" they never said that, they had two separate threads for discussion on how to tackle the topic because some people weren't exactly happy with the voting system of the first suspect.
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You can tell it's a salt post because 3 non-issues got a 4 :^)
Garg is a good pokemon with an obscenely good move but it's not hard to punish with a special attack
Stored Power is, as the randbats people once said to me after I killed my opponent with moody, something your opponent has to let you get bad
Latias? In my kingambit meta? lmao
anyway I just fucking robbed someone and I feel bad and want to share the replay https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2022503278
Every single decision on tiering should be at least somewhat "community-dependent" and a generational mechanic should be to a greater extent. We were not even allowed to quickban or quick-suspect something like Dynamax, which was fleshed out for a month, for example.
The entire implication here goes off of your personal agenda superseeding that of the community. If you want to think we are disappointing because our priorities align with the qualified playerbase rather than your own personally, then so be it, but I am content with our execution and I know a lot of the community likes the metagame (given ongoing survey results) and likes their increased involvement as well as our heightened transparency/communiction.
The point of having a council is to tier the metagame that the community plays with the aid of the community. Your personal definition does not align with the actual one or the job description we are tasked with. In addition, your bit about "casual players" neglects to mention that we exclusively factor in qualified survey responses and heavily weigh in our internal discussions when proceeding.
A generational mechanic cannot be quickbanned regardless of council sentiment (see: Dynamax, again) -- this has been made clear so many times. Your entire poing here is just ignorant to reality and downright incorrect.
I advise you to fact-check yourself before posting.
65% is equivelant to 3.25 out of 5, nothing got suspected with a 2.6/5, and there has not been an opening to suspect Tera during DLC1 with all that happened. This was made abundantly clear when we had regular suspects on Pokemon that got >95% ban (Ursaluna-Bloodmoon) or Pokemon with far more universal survey support (3.68 Roaring Moon and 3.99 Gliscor). We also had bans on Pokemon with far more support (i.e: Bax at 4.3/5 and Sneasler at 4.4/5). If you go through the entire calendar, there was never, ever even close to a fit for a Tera suspect during DLC1. We have stated we are open to revisiting it in DLC2 and if the support is there over other things, I am not going to interrupt it. A huge part of tiering is keeping an openmind after all, and we have done that all generation with the surveys.
You would be asking me to ignore the community's input when putting through...what the community would vote on in a suspect...if you wanted me to suspect Tera during DLC1. And all of this would only be to retest it promptly after DLC2 release due to how serious and close it could be. I do not have anything further to say beyond I do not agree and I advise you to double-check your information next time.
Regarding Garg, as long as Gliscor (who I personally consider unhealthy and very constraining to build vs despite Gholdengo being the main culprit of hazard dominance) is in the Tier, I see it completely a non issue. Clefable and Reuniclus also ruin this Mon hard (even better than Gliscor in fact), Reuniclus is still not common, but Clef is. Sub Serperior also abuses Garg unless some weird Tera is used.
It used to be a big banworthy threat, now it isn't and there are many more banworthy Mons.
It used to be a big banworthy threat, now it isn't and there are many more banworthy Mons.
I won't answer you about the rest because it is debatable and I don't have time, but about stats I fact checked very well. You missed 2 points: 1) 3.25 is not equivalent to 62.5% because lowest is 1 and not 0; 3.25 is equivalent to 56%. 2) the 2.6 referred to the latest survey before DLC2, the one asking about what Pokémon should start in OU. You held a vote on Pokémon that had 2.6 average vote.