Other General Metagame Discussion

[alexwolf]

Hey guys, here you can discuss about anything metagame related, including metagame trends, metagame evolution, underrated Pokemon, and effective strategies. To get you started, how do you think defensive teams have adapted to the recent influx of offensive teams that are using some nasty wallbreaking combos, such as SD Diggersby + SD Mega Pinsir + Magnezone, Pursuit Bisharp + Mega Charizard Y, and 3 attacks Taunt LO Gengar + late game sweeper.

That's it, discuss already! (i might try to make the OP fancier in the future)

 

[Aragorn the King]

One thing I've noticed is the amount of defensive steel types has been decreasing. Previously, Ferrothorn was many people's go-to counter for Azu, but because of its acting as extreme Magnezone bait, people (or at least me) are using Amoonguss a lot more for a Azu counter. Ik that they're different (ie you can't just take a ferro team, replace it with amoong, and call it a day), but the decrease in Ferro is a trend I've been seeing. I've also seen a decrease in Scizor, but not as drastic as the ferro decrease.

Another thing Zone related is that a couple mons that used to sometimes run HP Fire, like Latias + Latias, don't need to run it any more, since they can just slap Zone on the team to take care of Ferro. This allows Latios to run a different coverage move and Latias to run Roost, which is really good for them both.

One last thing I've been seeing (not Zone related) is an increase in Dark Pulse Greninja, which is mainly for hitting Slowbro + Mew, who are both pretty awesome atm.

 

[I AM THE JAMAICAN BOBSLED TEAM]

tg+rd manaphy is really good rn. its really underprepared for, and it just fucks w/ sand offense. its also HELLA strong, because after a single tg u have to be a bulky resist to take the hit. also 6-0s most stall builds.

 

[WideTomato]

I actually think bulky offence and balance is some of the best strategies rn, especially balance, as it is usually able to put offensive pressure to the opponent while pivoting in their offensive/frailer mons much more safely than most HO teams. HO though is as viable as ever, but relies a lot more on predictions than balance does.

Stall IMO is pretty meh in the current meta, as it's pretty easily handled by slapping just one pokemon on your team (gg manaphy, stall breaking mew, mega wallbreakers etc.)

As far as weather based teams go, I think rain is pretty decent in the current meta, having a relatively nice matchup against sand, and offence in general.

Finally sand based teams are really good, but they only consists of exca and TTar, meaning they aren't really teams, more just slap-on to offence or balance.

 

[Albacore]

One of the things I've noticed recently is a rise in dark and ghost types, particularly Bisharp and Crawdaunt, and to a lesser extent Gengar. This is probably a reaction to of all the Psychic types freely flying around atm, I personally always end up with at least 1 and sometimes up to 3 psychic types per teams. These 3 mons are kinda underprepared for at the moment, especially Crawdaunt who just seems to completely ruin Doublade stalls in general. As a result, they're doing really well, and will probably continue to do so until the rest of the meta catches up with them

I've also seen a bit more Wobbuffet, not really sure why that is exactly, maybe because of an increase in choice items? Or maybe people are just discovering that it' a pretty decent mon, and a great way of giving free turns to whatever you want because everyting is just terrified of touching it

Not sure if this is really new per se, but Taunt+WoW is quickly taking over as Talonflame's most common set, and for good reason since it's by far the best set IMO, and can singlehandedly run through an impressive amount of teams.

Also, I'm seeing less sand, probably because everyone and their mother is prepared for it as this point. Rain seems to be becoming more common though.

 

[Taliheim]

Picking up where Alba left off, Rain seems to be getting better and better. The most recent boon is the ability to wreck sand offense, being able to not only completely cancel sand, but be able to handle Exca and TTar really well. It also has a lot of mons to take advantage of - from stock mons like Kaputops to innovative ones like Rest Hydration Goodra. I've actually seen a few rain teams run Gastrodon. And rain isn't just limited to offense; balance and semistall are viable, too, with mons like Goodra, Azumarill, Gyarados, and even the water/ground mons, who can all take advantage of the rain and hit back hard even while still retaining very high bulk. The fact that Ferrothorn and Scizor can fit on them brilliantly, too, doesn't hurt either.

I've actually seen HP Fighting Lati@s much more often now, due to the increase of Dark-types that Psyspam (teams that spam multiple Psychics) teams have caused. I've also seen them start to pick up Thunderbolt again, probably again due to the increase of Rain teams.

 

[Clone]

Hey alexwolf I'm just wondering how different this is than the current metagame trends thread (can't find the link ;-;). Either way I'll give my findings.

For one I've seen like maybe 5 stall teams in my past 500+ battles. They're really bad in this meta and it's not hard to see why. Speaking of which, the spam of mega wallbreakers, particularly Medicham, has died down quite a bit. The rise of Mew and Slowbro contribute to this quite a bit. In response, I've seen a lot more mons running sub lately to avoid a wisp from Mew. That, and Dark Pulse Greninja became good. Like, really good. It OHKOes Bro while 2HKOimg Mew, something that very few mons can boast. It also takes care of the rising use age of Gengar which is p much thanks to the increased usage of the breakers.

Another trend I've seen lately, which has been mentioned by a few people above me, is rain. Idk why, but I've been running into it like 1 out of every 8 battles or so in the 1700s range. Way more than I've seen it in like the past few months. Along with that is the decline of sand teams. They're still common, but not as common as they were before. I think because of this is why Manectric has shot up in usage. Like literally, he's everywhere. And annoying af. He forms a p good VoltTurn core with Scarfed Lando, which is really annoying to deal with. In my eyes, this is why I've been seeing less and less Birdspam, and more pinsirmag and stall breaker Talonflame running around.

 

[michaeloche]

I've actually seen HP Fighting Lati@s much more often now, due to the increase of Dark-types that Psyspam (teams that spam multiple Psychics) teams have caused. I've also seen them start to pick up Thunderbolt again, probably again due to the increase of Rain teams.

I'm running HP Fighting Latias to lure in those dark types, especially Bisharp, which can really screw with your attempts to Defog.

I've actually been using a pseudo Drag Mag team in OLT this cycle, and it's really effective so far, since stall is down recently and Outrage is becoming easier to spam with both steels and fairies dropping as well. Of course, the ones that do show up can be dealt with by stuff like Magnezone or Gothitelle, which are great support for Drag Mag (and hyper offense in general).

 

[I AM THE JAMAICAN BOBSLED TEAM]

Hey alexwolf I'm just wondering how different this is than the current metagame trends thread (can't find the link ;-;). Either way I'll give my findings.

For one I've seen like maybe 5 stall teams in my past 500+ battles. They're really bad in this meta and it's not hard to see why. Speaking of which, the spam of mega wallbreakers, particularly Medicham, has died down quite a bit. The rise of Mew and Slowbro contribute to this quite a bit. In response, I've seen a lot more mons running sub lately to avoid a wisp from Mew. That, and Dark Pulse Greninja became good. Like, really good. It OHKOes Bro while 2HKOimg Mew, something that very few mons can boast. It also takes care of the rising use age of Gengar which is p much thanks to the increased usage of the breakers.

Another trend I've seen lately, which has been mentioned by a few people above me, is rain. Idk why, but I've been running into it like 1 out of every 8 battles or so in the 1700s range. Way more than I've seen it in like the past few months. Along with that is the decline of sand teams. They're still common, but not as common as they were before. I think because of this is why Manectric has shot up in usage. Like literally, he's everywhere. And annoying af. He forms a p good VoltTurn core with Scarfed Lando, which is really annoying to deal with. In my eyes, this is why I've been seeing less and less Birdspam, and more pinsirmag and stall breaker Talonflame running around.

the old one is dead. its actually been dead for a good several months.

 

[AM]

Rain offense is for the most part such a great playstyle right now because people are utilizing things like omastar much more and not necessarily building a team solely dependant on rain. Stall has diminished but hasnt necessarily died out. Better stall teams now usually have some sort of offensive presence behind them to keep up the pace with offense and at least now people are going out of there way to find new tools outside of the norm which i think is good to see.

 

[Jukain]

anyways the meta was trending more balanced-ish/bulky offensive for awhile as well as sand offense but recently the new trend is physical spam offense. i'm of course talking about teams like the italian double bunny mag and its variations, different variations on these teams with drag fairy steel cores, some even with like sr clef whatever. these teams do really well vs the rest of the meta, balanced/bulky offense teams which aren't bulky enough and too slow to keep up in a lot cases, and stall teams which have trouble handling combos like pinsir diggs. this is spearheaded by a drastic rise in lead chomps particularly with lum and sd because of all the slowbros gliscors rotoms around, sd chomp can be killer vs a lot of teams because it is underprepared for as a whole.

rain has definitely increased in effectiveness with people actually realizing that you can attach a basic rain core to three other mons and have an effective team as opposed to a more dedicated rain, it's a very effective playstyle vs these offenses tho av azu is a thorn in their side. well-played/built rain is crazy effective.

stall atm is all about finding a good build that can handle all these threats, it's not even necessarily offensive presence but having really cohesive defensive cores to be prepared for everything is very important. probably the best stall team ive seen is boudouche's team which if you don't know is doublade / mandi / ferro / zard x / mew / slowbro, which is a huge step away from the standard stall cores we're accustomed to. it's not perfect but it's definitely one of the better builds around. i've been working with cress venu stall and so has wcar, cress is a great mon in general for stall with the ridiculous level of bulk and defensive threat coverage it provides for the team. doublade covers a bunch of big things in one package and combined with shell skarm wrecks digg pins which is pretty great.

 

[I AM THE JAMAICAN BOBSLED TEAM]

i think stall is like you have a piece of bread(the meta) and some jelly(what you have to work with.) you simply don't have enough jelly to cover the entire piece of bread, so there's inevitably a mon that will beat your stall. boudouche's stall team does handle some of the more used threats pretty nicely actually, but it kinda just flops to a well played weavile(heres how it goes: ice punch 2hkos zard x after rocks, mandi can't defog on it, and it 2hkoes the rest of the team). i acknowledge that weavile isn't really common, but its hella antimeta. sure, losing to azu sucks, but beating nearly everything else 1v1 is just amazing. weavile is seriously an anti-meta threat. it deserves more usage than it currently has.

 

[trc]

skarmory are all running shed shell at the moment, with magnezone being everywhere there's no point just waiting to be trapped. the lack of leftovers / rocky helmet isn't too detrimental since skarmory has plenty of opportunities to roost against a plethora of pokemon. with magnezone + azumarill + diggersby (double bunny) being pretty common skarmory is essentially dead weight against these teams without shed shell and you cant rely on non shed shell skarmory to check these things because any magnezone team will trap you, which is why all good skarmory should be running shed shell at the moment.

crawdaunt offense is kinda big and i'm not entirely sure why, i know hugo and aim used it at some points, hugo in his ladder tour run when he came first for his cycle, it is a cool pokemon but i don't know why it became more popular outside of people emulating hugo and joey. there isn't really anything different about it, if anything the shift towards azumarill made crawdaunt fight for a spot even more as it fights with it as azumarill is similar but has the bulk in typing to aso act as a powerful check to many things in the mega. the difference is obviously the power, which crawdaunt boasts far more of, especially since most azumarill are assault vest.

i've been running ludicolo on rain recently as plenty of people use av azumarill is their main rain check (which i don't even think is a good rain check anyway since it gets worn down super quick and can only basically switch into kingdra, kabutops does a ton with stone edge, omastar doesn't give a shit with hydro pump, and even seismitoad has sludge wave. ludicolo is nice though since it's the only one with se stab, and it is nice to focus blast ferrothorn and other stuff.

finally, i've been seeing a few regular scizor actually, and not just band too, but sd leftovers. if anyone has anything to say about sd lefties scizor please speak up because i'm not too sure of the appeal right now.

 

[AM]

skarmory are all running shed shell at the moment, with magnezone being everywhere there's no point just waiting to be trapped. the lack of leftovers / rocky helmet isn't too detrimental since skarmory has plenty of opportunities to roost against a plethora of pokemon. with magnezone + azumarill + diggersby (double bunny) being pretty common skarmory is essentially dead weight against these teams without shed shell and you cant rely on non shed shell skarmory to check these things because any magnezone team will trap you, which is why all good skarmory should be running shed shell at the moment.

crawdaunt offense is kinda big and i'm not entirely sure why, i know hugo and aim used it at some points, hugo in his ladder tour run when he came first for his cycle, it is a cool pokemon but i don't know why it became more popular outside of people emulating hugo and joey. there isn't really anything different about it, if anything the shift towards azumarill made crawdaunt fight for a spot even more as it fights with it as azumarill is similar but has the bulk in typing to aso act as a powerful check to many things in the mega. the difference is obviously the power, which crawdaunt boasts far more of, especially since most azumarill are assault vest.

i've been running ludicolo on rain recently as plenty of people use av azumarill is their main rain check (which i don't even think is a good rain check anyway since it gets worn down super quick and can only basically switch into kingdra, kabutops does a ton with stone edge, omastar doesn't give a shit with hydro pump, and even seismitoad has sludge wave. ludicolo is nice though since it's the only one with se stab, and it is nice to focus blast ferrothorn and other stuff.

finally, i've been seeing a few regular scizor actually, and not just band too, but sd leftovers. if anyone has anything to say about sd lefties scizor please speak up because i'm not too sure of the appeal right now.

As far as Crawdaunt goes I think it's just that immediate power it has and Adaptability is a huge selling point because with it, things are getting severely crippled. Lots of offense doesn't actually enjoy taking any hits from it and in those scenarios where it gets a free turn, it can become extremely dangerous.

The only appeal I can see of that Scizor is an open slot for the mega evolution amongst the fact that Band is considering the most common of sets. People know this and as such usually just take advantage of it being choice locked. Tbh I don't think there's an actual appeal I think you just ended up facing a lot of Regular SD Scizors lol.

 

[Sun King]

i think stall is like you have a piece of bread(the meta) and some jelly(what you have to work with.) you simply don't have enough jelly to cover the entire piece of bread, so there's inevitably a mon that will beat your stall. boudouche's stall team does handle some of the more used threats pretty nicely actually, but it kinda just flops to a well played weavile(heres how it goes: ice punch 2hkos zard x after rocks, mandi can't defog on it, and it 2hkoes the rest of the team). i acknowledge that weavile isn't really common, but its hella antimeta. sure, losing to azu sucks, but beating nearly everything else 1v1 is just amazing. weavile is seriously an anti-meta threat. it deserves more usage than it currently has.

This is one of the best analogies I've seen regarding the metagame. The Aegislash ban pretty much opened Pandora's Box and stall has had a REALLY hard time keeping up with the metagame. Banning Aegi pretty much opened the meta up to a huge power creep, which we've collectively done nothing to combat. Offense has been able to make use of cores such as Digg/Pinsir/Magnezone which completely throw off and overwhelm the previous stall builds. Basically it's an entirely new metagame with--to quote Smog Frog --a bigger slice of bread. What I don't really get is why it's okay to let a play style more or less die. I'll try not to make this sound too rantish, because this thread probably isn't the right place for that. We did say, however, during the Aegi ban that if certain things got too powerful or out of hand, we would at the very least suspect them. We have had only one suspect since Aegi, and it was something that was broken way before Aegi was banned.

Anyways, the OP listed two disgustingly effective wall breaking cores that I have seen a lot of lately.

RIP Stall.

 

[Karxrida]

I actually like that traditional Stall isn't really viable. While it's a legit playstyle, it's never really been fun to fight against (at least for me) and good Stall teams can elongate games to ridiculous levels when paired against each other, like in that SPL match earlier this year that lasted for +200 turns.

That being said, Sand has been dominating for a while and Rain's on the rise to combat it, so it'll be interesting to see how teams start to adapt to Rain.

 

[Taliheim]

I actually like that traditional Stall isn't really viable. While it's a legit playstyle, it's never really been fun to fight against (at least for me) and good Stall teams can elongate games to ridiculous levels when paired against each other, like in that SPL match earlier this year that lasted for +200 turns.

That being said, Sand has been dominating for a while and Rain's on the rise to combat it, so it'll be interesting to see how teams start to adapt to Rain.

the same way they handled it in BW:

 

[trc]

ok here's an example of what i was talking about re: crawdaunt
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ou-23476

this is a replay from today's smogon tour, in the finals, soulwind vs cristal. soulwind is using hugo's team of crawdaunt / garchomp / landorus-t / azumarill / gengar / manectric. now manectric has been getting pretty popular again since it does pretty well against defensive balances (alomo, ferro, defensive landt, slowbro, etc), and crawdaunt is sd. against cristal's team, soulwind eliminates crawdaunt's sole counter (ferrothorn), and then sets up a swords dance on gliscor's eearthquake. from this point it defeats the remaining five pokemon in its own, spamming aqua jet vs mega charizard x, gliscor, mew, and gengar, and knock off against rotom-w. of course everything needed a bit of hazards first etc but it's a devastating pokemon with adaptability powered attacks and its really prominent at the moment.

 

[RichieTheGarchomp]

I've noticed that one pokemon impacted this meta so well over the past 2 weeks or so, that some pokemon decreased in usage or had to carry specific items to get away. Obviously I'm talking about Magnezone, who basically fucks over all of the steel types bar Excadrill and Heatran. I think Magnezone will be seeing a lot of professional usage and be used to the point where Steel types will be almost nonexistent. It literally counters Scizor, Skarmory (without Shed Shell) Ferrothorn, Basically 33% of all lead SR setters.

Crawdaunt scares me so much. Not only does it have a scary ass ability, making STAB moves do SE damage, it has a good typing for it too. It literally 2HKO's all of the meta bar Azumarill, Keldeo, and Chesnaught.

 

[xSilentDeviL]

I've noticed that one pokemon impacted this meta so well over the past 2 weeks or so, that some pokemon decreased in usage or had to carry specific items to get away. Obviously I'm talking about Magnezone, who basically fucks over all of the steel types bar Excadrill and Heatran. I think Magnezone will be seeing a lot of professional usage and be used to the point where Steel types will be almost nonexistent. It literally counters Scizor, Skarmory (without Shed Shell) Ferrothorn, Basically 33% of all lead SR setters.

Crawdaunt scares me so much. Not only does it have a scary ass ability, making STAB moves do SE damage, it has a good typing for it too. It literally 2HKO's all of the meta bar Azumarill, Keldeo, and Chesnaught.

That will never happen

A good teambuilder will have an answer to Magnezone on their team before they just abandon using one of the best types in the game. A Steel type is one of two types almost mandatory on every good team, the other being a Water type. Magnezone is definitly underrated, but it isn't the end all of an entire pokemon type, especially one as powerful as Steel.

 

[zbr]

I've noticed that one pokemon impacted this meta so well over the past 2 weeks or so, that some pokemon decreased in usage or had to carry specific items to get away. Obviously I'm talking about Magnezone, who basically fucks over all of the steel types bar Excadrill and Heatran. I think Magnezone will be seeing a lot of professional usage and be used to the point where Steel types will be almost nonexistent. It literally counters Scizor, Skarmory (without Shed Shell) Ferrothorn, Basically 33% of all lead SR setters.

Crawdaunt scares me so much. Not only does it have a scary ass ability, making STAB moves do SE damage, it has a good typing for it too. It literally 2HKO's all of the meta bar Azumarill, Keldeo, and Chesnaught.

Steel types being non-existent will only happen if they remove it's resistance to Dragon, Fairy ... etc. etc. You get the deal. Steel types are way too good and they will never die.

 

[Albacore]

One thing I've noticed recently (and this has already had a lot of discussion), and that's the fact that Knock Off Pinsir is taking off and taking off fast. A week ago this set was completely unheard of, and now it's all over the ladder. After all, it makes sense : Skarmory users have adapted to MagneSir teams by running Shed Shell, so, in response, MagneSir teams have adapted by running Knock Off on Pinsir to remove said Shed Shell. Also, it bops Doublade too which is an added bonus since it's on basically on every stall team at this point.

 

[RichieTheGarchomp]

I've used Knock Off Pinsir weeks before it was discussed lol.
Anyways I'd like to talk bout rain. Rain is fucking annoying if used correctly. EVERY rain team has obvious strength and shit pokemon like Omastar are huge threats in rain. Also MOTHERFUCKING SPECS RAIN HYDRO PUMP KELDEO will tear through your team. Many megas are also good on it, especially M-Gyara. It also counters basically every fire type in the meta.
Even if you resist it's Water Type attacks, most Specs Hydro Pump Rain users will 2HKO about every Pokemon bar .25 resists and Water Absorb users... Rain is a force in the meta with Tran, Diggersby, and now speedy Gonzales Pinsir all gaining huge popularity.

 

[nmitchell890]

Are people using full-on rain teams or just slapping Politoed onto a team with pokemon that don't find rain too detrimental? I don't call any old team with Politoed, Ferrothorn and Keldeo on it a rain team, I call that an offense team with rain slapped on.

 

[Celticpride]

I've noticed that even with all this HO hype around, bulky offense has become more effective as well. Chesnaught, Rhyperior, bulky Latias, Sylveon, Conk, Specs Mag, etc. all have their uses in the meta. Many of them run significant HP and/or Defensive investment, but still boast the ability to deal solid chunks of damage. A lot of this might go back to the post-Aegi meta evolving. Take Chesnaught for example. Tank Ches can afford to run Wood Hammer and/or Hammer Arm, which allows him to deal with the TTar-Exca core, +1 Mega Gyara (even with Ice Fang iirc), +1 Mega TTar, Landorus-T, Terrakion, SD Craw and a bunch of other hard hitting things. It OHKOs or 2HKOs them all back with no investment, except for Lando-T, who it outlasts (especially with some Leech Seed and Spiky Shield stalling). Similar reasoning extends to Rhyperior, Sylveon, Conk and a few others. Most of them don't have textbook reliable recovery, but they have means of recovering some health, be it Leech Seed, Drain Punch, Wish-Protect or Lefties.

With regards to stall and the offensive explosion going on, I think some of it goes back to Mega Evolution in general. It's tough for stall to cover everything when Blastoise and Aerodactyl are considered weaker Megas, and they have 135 in their offensive stats! There are at least a dozen Megas running around with at least 150 Attack or Special Attack. ORAS is just going to bring more. That's before we get into other stall-wreckers like Lando-I, Taunt LO Gengar, Kyu-B, Keldeo... There's so many things running around with absurd attack stats, ridiculous attacking and boosting moves, running Taunt and Subs, Choice items slapped on them, buffed Knock Off, and nearly unresisted STAB combos. There's a certain point where the power creep just becomes too much to deal with to still be playing totally defensive. I don't think a few bans will fix it either. There are at least 5 Megas that really screw with stall just by existing, and that's before we get into things like Taunt MegaZam, 3 Attacks+SD Mega Scizor, and Stallbreaker Mega Houndoom. So that's my mini-rant on that.