Project The Top 10 Titans of the 6th Gen OU Metagame

[Martin]

Gothitelle
Honestly I'm still shocked that Clef is being voted 'cause it's not actually that defining relative to some other stuff despite it being so good imo. Like, there's no way that thing is top five imo when Latios, Gothitelle, Deo-D and a few other things are still not placed.

Gothitelle completely centralised the stall archetype and it just did a really good job of taking out key stallbreakers and opposing stallmons. Trapping is by far the most incredible mechanic in the game, and on my personal ranking lists a trapping ability can increase the rank of a Pokémon by a full 1-2 subranks, and Gothitelle was no exception. It alone was the reason that ShedTogie+ScarfTar became a thing, and just the sheer volume of Pokémon that it could trap (ranging from Politoed to Heatran to Chansey to numerous other important Pokémo ) was completely insane. It's passable bulk and access to Trick+Rest allowed it to trap and PP stall it's targets and it could either dismantal a part of a defensive core or it could important things like Manaphy for the rest of the match because, even if it can't KO something on the spot, if it has tricked smth like Manaphy a Choice Scarf it has already done it's job. All in all it was super dangerous and super influential on the whole.

 

[Vxy]

I still can't believe how you guys can bring yourselves to nominate stuff like Landorus-T and Clefable every round when monsters like Greninja, Mega Mawile, and Landorus-I have not yet been nominated in these past two rounds. If you haven't played XY, I recommend you watch blunder's history of 6th gen OU video, it'll open your eyes up to how ridiculous these Pokemon were.

Anyways, I vote for Greninja. In early ORAS, it was easily the best Pokemon in the tier barring Mega Salamence. Every team was forced to play around it carefully thanks to its excellent speed, power, and coverage. It had no surefire switch ins and all of them got obliterated by a certain coverage move. It could very easily adapt to any of the meta trends of what people were using to check it. It forced obscure switch-ins like Tentacruel and Porygon 2 (otherwise not very good Pokemon) and was a massive headache to anyone who faced it. ORAS gave it Gunk Shot and Low Kick, which invalidated XY counters like Clefable, Azumarill, Chansey, and Empoleon.

 

[Fire Fist Ace]

Lando-T for 3

It actually surprises me that people are voting for Clefable for #3. Lando-T, as I've stated before is still the main Pokemon driving OU and has been for almost all of ORAS, whereas Clefable's been up there, but not necessarily the main threat (yeah I get superior "viability rankings" and all that, but they're subjective imo). Almost 2x the usage of Lando-T over Clef should speak LOADS over who was more influential. I've also seen the meta change quite interestingly with the main sets going from Lum, to Scarf, to defensive Rocks over the course of time, whereas Clef has pretty much stayed in the same realm and barely straying from what it originally did.

TL:DR. Lando-T probably helped shape the current meta the most to what it is now, and adapted along with it, whereas Clefable's kinda just been doing the same thing.

 

[Gammafire]

Lando-T
Clefable is definitely a good 'mon, but Lando is more versitile and more influential in my opinion. The meta adapted to Lando in a specific way because of how unique Lando is, the meta didn't specifically adapt to Clefable, it was adapting to fairy types in general. And it wasn't really until things like mega mawille were banned that clefable became what it is today. Lando was also more influential because of the constant presence of offensive in OU. For example, Lando blanket checks Excadrill, mega charizard x, talonflame, terrakion, thundurus (when scarfed), mega lopunny (forced this thing to run ice punch for a while), mega metagross (also forced this thing to run ice punch), mega scizor, tyranitar, mega heracross, breloom, the list goes on and on. There's a reason that this guy has either been #1 or #2 in usage throughout all of gen 6.

Edit: And speaking of viability, guess who just got put into S rank

 

[komet3]

Landorus-t
Because of the same reason stated before.

 

[cityscapes]

I've got a couple things to say before I vote.

1. Please keep in mind that we're voting for the most influential Pokémon, not the best. Clefable might be S rank but did it encourage people to pack a "Clefable counter"? Greninja might have been good while it was around, but was it as centralizing as Aegislash? (Keep in mind that I don't know the answer to this question because I didn't really play XY lol)
2. What are you going to do with this thread once the voting has been completed? I think it would make a good Flying Press article.

With that in mind, I'm voting for Hoopa-U.
Hoopa-U was able to break literally everything in OU, from Alakazam-Mega to Zygarde (maybe not SubCoil, though) with the right set. Its Special Defense was good enough to take hits from Mega Manectric and OHKO something back. When its Specs set was discovered, it became a very low-risk, high-reward Pokémon that was able to just win against stall sometimes. Pursuit trapping and a more offensive metagame, which it partially caused, are still around to this day.

 

[Niadev]

Greninja

Even in XY, it was a top tier threat and forced teams to carry sp.def fairies like Sylveon or AV Azumarill to not get ravaged by it. Then came ORAS. While at first glance, Gunk Shot may not seem much, but when you consider all of it's previous counters were fairy types and Gunk Shot hit them on the lower defense side, it became a very defining offensive threat after Mega BorkedSalamence got kicked out of OU faster than a speeding bullet. Thanks to Protean, it had STAB on everything. It could run a spikes set to capitalise on all of it's forced switches, had coverage coming out of every orifice you can think of and was ridiculously centralising, forcing teams to run obscure Pokemon to counter it, which even then consisted of Porygon2 and Porygon2 (Tentacruel gets hit by Extrasensory).

EDIT: Oh yeah and Low Kick hit Chansey if it had like 20 atk investment or something like that

Lando-T didn't really define the meta like other Pokemon, it was more a result of other 'mons like Exca and Xard. Clef was more defining imo, but mostly was already answered by people running fairy answers for others like MDia, MGarde and MAlt. Greninja forced people to run fairies when they were still counters and made stall after run Pory2. imo that's more influential than either. Another 'mon I'd say is like Excadrill or Talonflame but I feel Greninja inches out a bit more.

 

[MANNAT]

Greninja

Greninja had been one of the best Pokemon in XY for a damn long time, and it forced people to run spdef fairies, empoleon, chansey, or similar obscure checks to it on their teams even in XY, which was literally the metagame that was constantly banning shit for almost its entire existence (deoxys, kanga, luc, gengar, gene, etc.). Then, ORAS came around and gave the already S-rank mon 2 amazing tools in Gunk shot and Low kick that allowed it to muscle past many previous counters with a mixed attacking set that had maybe 2 good switch ins, neither of which fit very well on any playstyle bar stall. The metagame became so centralyzed that offense v offense matchups ended up becoming "who's greninja dies first" a very large portion of the time and even in XY at some points. The fact that Greninja's presence in the tier had been forcing people to run mons like AV Azu and Porygon2 just speaks to just how amazing it was and makes it more than deserving of the #3 spot.

P.S: Stop voting for Clef, it's a good mon but isn't centralizing or defining enough to be this high on the list.

 

[Agent Gibbs]

Niadev

Yes, you can change your vote, but please delete your old vote post. That'll reduce the risk of me making a mistake and counting both of your votes.

 

[X5Dragon]

Greninja

How can you defend against a mon that not only has a movepool to make Dragons jealous, it got stab on all of them, mixed (padded most of the time with an LO as well) and it changed type accordingly. Fun eh? Well then send it something faster. Um, troll speed tier. Priority? Who would want to switch? Mons that it didn't have coverage against? Yeah thay only worked for a while until ORAS came. In the end it wasn't how to kill the Ninja but what it can't kill/2hko.

 

[Maid-]

Greninja

What switchins? It's rare to have a mon that is both a wallbreaker and a revenge killer but with its amazing speed tier and power as well as expansive movepool it really made a divisive metagame of either offense or stall. Once it was banned it allowed a much healthier metagame with balance being quite commonplace.

 

[Martin]

Like, I've already voted, but I'd just like to say that personally I think that Lando-T is very much in the same boat as Clefable in that it is recieving way more hype than it should be regarding how influential it is. Like, I think that it's a good 'mon but I wouldn't exactly call it influential so much as I'd say Lando-T's popularity and quote "influence" is the product of various other Pokémon's influence. Namely, I'm looking at Mega Charizard X and Excadrill with this. Like, when I build I don't really prep specifically for Lando-T, but rather I prep for fat grounds and offensive grounds. This means Water- and Ice-type attacks are a must on the team as standard before I even consider Lando specifically (not mentioning grass offensively 'cause literally every high-ranking ground is neutral to grass), and it means a ground resist in Rotom-W, Tangrowth, Skarmory or--hell--my own Lando (not recommended as a sole Lando answer 'cause DD is a thing) is also a neccessity before considering it. As such it isn't all that constraining in the teambuilder, and similarly meta trends haven't really shaped around it's popularity. No matter how much you bring up the argument of splashability, versatility, popularity etc. it already has far more ground to make up to hit a top five position for influence than it can realistically make up with said attributes to the point where I think it is just far too early to be voting for it.

 

[Funbot28]

#3) Greninja

Greninja was soo good in XY as it dismantled teams lacking Clefable, Chansey, Empoleon, or Azumarill due to the fact that Protean was so powerful and made it to be one of the most difficult wallbreakers to check because of this. ORAS even busted Greninja even more and made it nigh impossible to find a solid answer to it. Really think it could be placed in the 3rd spot.

 

[KztxL7]

There are two things that are kind of bothering me right now:

The meta adapted to Lando in a specific way because of how unique Lando is, the meta didn't specifically adapt to Clefable, it was adapting to fairy types in general.

See, this is only partially true. Yeah, the meta has adapted to fairies. Its why formerly prominent fairies are all losing some steam (MAlt, Azumarill, MGarde and MDiancie is looking not as good). Yet while all these Fairies are having some difficulties, guess which one eventually rose to the very top without ever dropping thanks to the removal of banworthy things in the meta? Clefable. Who despite all these adaptations that hinder the rest of the fairies in the meta manages to sit in S-rank in viability and people had trouble wrapping their heads around the idea of putting anything else in that rank with it because nothing is considered as good.

1. Please keep in mind that we're voting for the most influential Pokémon, not the best. Clefable might be S rank but did it encourage people to pack a "Clefable counter"?

The thing about this is: What Clefable counter is there? What Pokemon can you name that can reliably handle being crippled by Thunder Wave while simultaneously doesn't fear Moonblast or 2 decent coverage moves in Flamethrower/Fire Blast or Ice Beam?

------------------

The thing about "influence" is that it doesn't have to be some sort of massive impact, everyone gather around me and bask in my glory type deals. It can be incredibly subtle while being no less powerful. Clefable has been consistently good throughout the 6th Gen Meta and has always had some sort of answers towards whatever was going in the Meta as long as it wasn't faced with something broken/banworthy.

Yeah, it never dismantled teams or forced centralization but it has been great primarily for the levels of utility. Stealth Rock, Thunder Wave, Wish, Healing Wish, Status Absorber. And teambuilding has been so much easier with it's existence. It's a pokemon that you'll almost never find being useless unless faced with a ridiculous match-up, misplay or your opponent luck-haxing.

 

[Martin]

There are two things that are kind of bothering me right now:



See, this is only partially true. Yeah, the meta has adapted to fairies. Its why formerly prominent fairies are all losing some steam (MAlt, Azumarill, MGarde and MDiancie is looking not as good). Yet while all these Fairies are having some difficulties, guess which one eventually rose to the very top without ever dropping thanks to the removal of banworthy things in the meta? Clefable. Who despite all these adaptations that hinder the rest of the fairies in the meta manages to sit in S-rank in viability and people had trouble wrapping their heads around the idea of putting anything else in that rank with it because nothing is considered as good.



The thing about this is: What Clefable counter is there? What Pokemon can you name that can reliably handle being crippled by Thunder Wave while simultaneously doesn't fear Moonblast or 2 decent coverage moves in Flamethrower/Fire Blast or Ice Beam?

------------------

The thing about "influence" is that it doesn't have to be some sort of massive impact, everyone gather around me and bask in my glory type deals. It can be incredibly subtle while being no less powerful. Clefable has been consistently good throughout the 6th Gen Meta and has always had some sort of answers towards whatever was going in the Meta as long as it wasn't faced with something broken/banworthy.

Yeah, it never dismantled teams or forced centralization but it has been great primarily for the levels of utility. Stealth Rock, Thunder Wave, Wish, Healing Wish, Status Absorber. And teambuilding has been so much easier with it's existence. It's a pokemon that you'll almost never find being useless unless faced with a ridiculous match-up, misplay or your opponent luck-haxing.

My key gripe with this argument is that it doesn't bring up the key thing with regards to whether it should be high or low on the top ten list. Great, Clefable has been an incredible asset to teambuilding this gen. That's it's influence. Is this on it's own enough to justify it being top five? God no it isn't. When you consider influence in the teambuilder phase (the phase that this refers to) you don't just think about it in one direction, but rather you think about it in both directions--like you do with prediction. Talonflame is highly influential because it both brings a very widely appreciated set of utility to the builder as well as being a constraint to teambuilding that needs specific accounting for due to it's ability allowing the rare offensive sets to completely tear apart poorly prepped teams. This one Pokémon is the biggest reason why people use fucking Lando as their flying "resist" for crying out loud. Gothitelle is influential because it both provided one of the best forms of utility for it's builder but it also posed as an immense restraint that needed specific prep for. This list goes on, but the fact of the matter is that Clef isn't on this list 'cause your prep is a general fairy check (whether this is reliable or not is another story, but yeah if you can't completely prep for it this then you'll do it as close to that as possible)--which really caps how high I realistically think it can sit on this list. I don't go out of my way to prep for it, and this has a huge baring on this. It hasn't really shaped the meta that much, and while it is super iconic I simply can't put it anywhere near as high as number three.

Agent Gibbs is having debates like this in the thread ok or does it clutter the thread too much for you to keep track of votes easily? If it's a problem I apologise.

 

[Agent Gibbs]

Martin.

No please, feel free to have discussions. Just keep it civil, of course. And don't use bold text, lol.

 

[p2]

Mega Sableye

 

[koista12]

Landorus-T

Maybe I'm misunderstanding how the title should be interpreted, but when I think "Top Ten Titans of the 6th Gen OU Metagame", what I think is, "When I think of the Gen 6 OU, what Pokemon come to mind; who were the kings of the metagame? Zard X? Sure. Aegislash? Yes. I don't really consider Mega Sableye and Gothitelle to be titans of OU; while both definitely made their splashes on the Metagame, neither truly dominated OU for extended periods of time. And while I definitely overestimated Clefable's influence in the Aegislash metagame (I was thinking of XY right before ORAS), Landorus-T has consistently been a powerhouse throughout XY and ORAS. Its always been the most popular answer to Zard X on offensive teams, as well as about 1/3 of the physically based Metagame.

 

[Random Passerby]

I'd like to say that while Clefable and Landorus-T are great Pokemon in the metagame, they never truly dominated to such an extent that they are the face of an entire playstyle (Mega Sab), straight up invalidating playstyles (Deoxys, Goth, Greninja) or having the meta based on checking them (Aegislash). When you see a Mega Sab team, you know that unless you're running Rocks Clef or Lum + SD Chomp, you're going to have difficulty getting hazards up while also having issues in keeping the hazards there. When you see Deoxys, you know that you'll be facing an uphill battle because 2 layers of hazards will be up on your side of the field so you will compensate with your teambuilding. With Goth, you will be heavily pressured in case your one win condition gets trapped or you straight up lose from Team Preview. Similarly, Greninja forces you to either run Stall or HO with speed demons or priority because it just OHKOes anything slower than it before they can move. Does Landorus-T or Clefable do this? No, they don't. The pressure generated by these Pokemon is much greater than the pressure of facing Clef or Lando-T. Hence, I feel that Mega Sab, Deo, Goth and Greninja are more worthy of being ranked high compared to Clef and Lando who are simply there because of the ease of use / role compression.

 

[Vxy]

"What Pokemon forced every team to run specific Pokemon to handle them? What Pokemon SHAPED the metagame?"

Just wanted to put in my opinion on this whole thing that's been going on. Those two questions I quoted from the OP are what I'm basing my votes off of. Both of those things are, to me, what makes pokemon really influential in the metagame. Zard X and Aegislash definitely deserve their spots. However, I simply can't see Clef and Lando-T fitting those two things well enough to even be top 5. Take a look at other Pokemon being nominated:
Gothitelle: removed a vital aspect of pokemon (switching out) and forced stallbreakers to run stupid items like Shed Shell.
Greninja: forced niche switch ins and could completely destroy teams with the right move set. Could completely choose it's checks, not even it's counters.
Landorus-I: same thing as greninja, pretty much forced stall to use SpD Gliscor or Gyarados in XY, AV torn-t became popular in ORAS as a good switch in...until lando began running rock slide. It choose to give hell to offense or stall with RP/CM, respectively.
Mega Mawile: obscure pokemon like Arcanine and Weezing were used to counter this and like defensive Zard Y became a thing simply because Mawile existed. Insanely powerful and could sweep, wallbreak, and lure, capable of destroying so many teams by itself.
Deoxys-D: this thing alongside stuff like Deoxys-S and Genesect and other huge threats made hyper offense SO common in early XY, it was so dominant with hazard stacking and gave offense such a huge advantage. It's a shame that Deoxys-S, who was probably better than Defense forme, wasn't nominated because it could be a massive threat offensively with that insane speed and coverage or supportively by guaranteeing hazards up.

I hope this shows you guys just how influential and restrictive these now banned pokemon were. A lot of them had niche switch ins and they could all obliterate teams by themselves.

Agent Gibbs I know it's probably too late but could I make a Deoxys-S nomination? At least one of them should be there, and if one of them deserves it more than the other, it's the speed forme.

 

[Agent Gibbs]

Vxy

I guess that's fine since we're still early into the voting phase. After tomorrow, though, no more nominations.

 

[zbr]

guys we are voting for titans of ou. not friendly little lando-t who is capable of doing multiple things at once. lando-t is a result of a shaped metagame. not a force that shaped the metagame. so i don't rly think it deserves the top few slots.

to be fair, if we were to vote for goth, we have to vote for the entire trapping style because it's evident even until today. goth redefined what it means to use stall, then dugtrio followed suite by providing stall with such an invaluable method of effectively removing certain elements of the game that stall didn't like.

so it comes down to greninja, lando-i, mmawile, hoopa-u, genesect (not included?), megagross, megasab, megadiancie and to an extent even zard y back when the whole "force of nature" teams were pretty much everywhere due to how easy it was (and still is) to build a team adjusted to zard y.

personally, i've never seen a mon more metadefining as greninja. controversially, it was the second starter to be banned due to it's phenomenal ability combined with it's extraordinary movepool and most importantly, it's beyond comprehensible ninja like speed. greninja in XY was capable of already forcing out a lot it's checks and counters as well as being a great end game mon because it helped to deal with the ever common lando-i (be it CM or AOA) as well as being able to utilise it's coverage immensely due to getting stab on all of them. even then, it was considered borderline broken and many games were decided by how well greninja was used in the game. having access to haze allowed for offensive teams to combat bp without having to resort to fat mons like quag / cune and having perfect FWG coverage in a single mon that was able to fire them off at high power made it a very phenomenal threat. greninja was one of the few reasons why lando-t had to run scarf in xy instead of exploring other options. then ORAS came along and decided to push greninja even further by giving it access to gunk shot and low kick. gunk shot was the more relevant problem here since fairy types (clefable) were it's primary go to check and now that gunk shot was introduced onto it, there was effectively no way to counter greninja without resorting to niche options like p2 and even p2 was a flimsy check at best because it relied heavily on it's item to check it.

as a result, greninja cause a lot of teams to resort to poorer options in ou to either semi deal with greninja or resort to revenge killing it (which were the more prominent arguments against it's ban) but keeping in mind that revenge killing meant sacking at a bare minimum of 1 mon and the greninja user can easily swap out to the other mon. honestly, i feel that greninja deserves the slot as third simply because of it's ability to centralise the metagame to the point where even p2 had an OU viability solely because of greninja. people even ran mixed defense rotomw to "try to deal with it" but it all fell short. it was a toss up between lando-i and greninja but honestly, greninja being more tailorable to your needs made it a much more defining threat than lando-i and therefore deserves the bronze award.

 

[Niadev]

I'ma weigh in on this discussion because I can.

Lando-T didn't really define the meta as much as other Pokemon that have been nominated. You prepared for one ground, you usually (but not always) prepared for Lando as well. Got Keldeo? Only variant you're struggling with is Double Dance with +2 speed and attack, and that's easy to avoid with good plays. It's a similar case with Clef, which is why I changed my vote from it. There's also the fact that Lando-T was more as a result of the meta changing, as opposed to being a definer like this thread is looking for. Lando-T became more prominent once people realised how good Defensive was at checking sand and Xard. Up until then, Garchomp was THE bulky ground. They're both fantastic Pokemon, just not as defining as Greninja, the Deos, Mega Metagross and Lando-I, and ig hoopa-u could be included (offense wasn't as bothered, though sacking something when it got in for free on latios sucked, but it did force stall to carry TTar or Weavile).

 

[HC]

Right, think I've been misinterpreting this thread; agreed that Lando hasn't been anywhere near as threatening (although I do think the most consistent mon of the generation) I won't change my answer for this round but I will for the next cause I didn't read the OP properly lol. Stuff like Greninja, Gothitelle, Keldeo, Manaphy, Hoopa, Mega Sableye, Mega Mawile have definitely been more threatening

 

[X5Dragon]

Guys I don't think we should vote for stuff that were quick banned by the OU council, anything else is kosher/halal [/humble opinion]

Some might think that we are just cherry picking from the ou suspect test list while others are cheering for pokemon that yoi had to count for/include whem building the team, bit ideally it shouod be mons that influenced the meta.

For example, it's been no secret stall suffered greatly from the Mega revolution at Gen 6, things like Mega Venusaur and Mega Sableeye helped to keep it alive and make it competitive to the point stall killer is not a redundant word anymore, it would be a damn shame if one of the two didn't make it.to the list.