I've been away from the Pokemon scene -- how has the metagame changed?

[futuresuperstar]

I've been away from the Pokemon scene for about ... well, since around March or April. How has the competitive metagame changed since then?

>,> Does anyone still use GrowthTran? =p

 

[Bourbon]

no it's celebi and heatran now

and azelf leads always have taunt and stealth rock

oh yeah garchomp is going to get banned to ubers

 

[petrie911]

Garchomp and the un-Uberfied Deoxys-E are dominating standard. So much so that they're probably going to be banned. Stealth Rock is worth sacrificing a pokemon to set up, apparently, but for some reason isn't getting considered for a ban. Hail teams are out of fashion, and even Sand Stream teams seem somewhat rare. Sweeping is the name of the metagame it seems, and those who can't keep up are used as cannon fodder to set up rocks.

 

[Caelum]

This should help: http://www.smogon.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=73

 

[IggyBot]

Why not just hop on the Smogon server for an hour?