What is the best singles metagame of all time?

[yee]

Birkal gave me permission to do this.

Because BW OU is currently the main active metagame, your favorite metagame probably isn't very active right now. Let's remember the fun metas again, the ones you would compete against friends daily in and still find new ways of doing things daily, the ones that never get old. At some point between RBY and BW, most of us experienced a Golden Age. What specific metagames / stages do you remember enjoying the most?

Mine are-

ADV OU- I'll be honest, the tour metagame is an embarassment but when you get creative I don't see how you can't love this tier. You will rarely get forced into a short game here and almost never get forced into a thoughtless or hopeless one. We all write off the people who want to ban Stealth Rock but it's absence isn't a bad thing here- stall can be beaten with attackers but not disintegrated as it is sometimes today.

The main con you hear is Celebi dominating the tier, and there always seems to be one guy in the room who wants it banned. It was a different age of Smogon with no suspect testing, and while it prevented Celebi from getting looked at too seriously, it did lead to refreshing analyses.

DPP OU with Latias and Salamence- I am a bit biased towards this stage because of the recent tournament involving them, and also due to it being one of the very first stages I seriously played competitively. A lot of people say no one actually wants a competely balanced metagame, and this metagame shows the hint of truth in that statement. I considered suspects very broken during their tests, but looking back I had fun and improved every game I played. I feel like Latias slightly balances the presence of Salamence, while both make defensive teams a bit less fun to use and can be ridiculous on paper, I like how it plays out in practice.

Honorable mentions-

BW UU- I'm surprised a BW metagame could be good without being far from OU at all. Hail is the only weather, as I personally believe is the best option for a metagame purely from a fun standpoint. Me and the others I know who play this tier enjoy the feeling that wins or losses were decided almost always entirely by the playing during the battle.

BW RU- I personally hate Nidoqueen in this tier, but right before it dropped, I considered this the most fun BW tier. It's interesting that while UU feels like DPP OU, this is often called similar to DPP UU.

BW NU- I've only played one game but I found teambuilding especially enjoyable- it was easy to spot many things that were "good" with almost no prior knowledge and easy to build a defensive backbone that I was confident would leave me with a decent chance against anything I saw. I've never played a metagame so easy to just jump into.

ADV Ubers- I only played 2 games, but without the new moves like Psycho Boost and Draco Meteor, I enjoyed the massive power without the normal drawbacks of being annoyed by facing them. The strategy in replaying the same 2 games may have never been so perpetually enjoyable for me, let alone so quickly. Edit- i'm dum @ psycho boost

DPP UU- There's such a massive following for this tier as the best ever, I'm not surprised I enjoyed the limited games I played.

Let's decide which of mine and yours are Smogon's favorite. Please list your favorites with insight you feel will be enjoyable for those who may or may not have played the tier.

[Cherub Agent]

My favourite metagame of all time is probably DPP UU. It was completely balanced towards the end. We had practically every playstyle as viable as the next, and the offensive Pokemon were perfectly balanced out by the defensive Pokemon. Fire/Water/Grass cores reigned supreme, and these cores are basically the epitome of balance. Pokemon such as Venusaur, Milotic and Houndoom were the face of my balanced teams, while more offensive FWG cores comprised mainly of mixed Blaziken and Sharpedo (who were awesome wallbreakers, both with 120 BP STAB moves, both with priority to revenge kill, both with awesome STAB combos) and Specs Sceptile to clean up the remains. I've never been too big a fan of stall, but I remember facing plenty of players with it, and it certainly held its own against offensive and balanced/bulky offense/semi stall teams. The lack of weather was beautiful, and while I think that we could have limited ourselves to fewer bans, the metagame that resulted of these bans was simply downright amazing, enjoyable to the core.

Those were the days, when we suspected Damp Rock. Now we refuse to suspect Drizzle ;_;

[Arcticblast]

Yeah, DPP UU was the shit. Its main Pokemon definitely had a solid grip on the tier, but it was loose enough that you could bring some Pokemon from the depths of NU (Mantine, Magcargo, etc.) and they'd do great. You could make a hyper offense team and a stall team, and if you were a decent player of both they'd see similar winrates, because for the most part all strategies were viable in DPP UU. Out of all of the singles metagames I've played, it's the closest thing to a "perfect" metagame that I've ever played.

There are also several side metagames that are pretty darn fun, like Balanced Hackmons and the OffStat metagame, but I'm assuming this thread is for official metagames.

[jc104]

Yeah for me it has to be DPP OU with Latias. I'm not sure whether salamence was a positive or not, but Salamence + Latias was definitely better than neither.

I like DPP because it was the one metagame where you could feasibly run a stallish team, and yet it was challenging. The introduction of SR brought further discouragement to incessant switching, and a good, bulky spinblocker went a long way too. ADV OU for me is too slow, and BW OU just has too many offensive threats, as well as ridiculous weather wars.

Honorable mentions for me:

DPP UU - my experience in this tier is fairly limited, but this was actually a decent metagame. Perhaps Venusaur and Milotic were a bit too difficult to kill, but it certainly beat the copycat OU metagame that arose after the banning of Latias/Mence.

Gimmick metagames. Actually I've changed my mind; these are my favourites by far. Nothing quite beats the uncharted territory that these offer. The lack of balance just adds to the fun when people don't take it too seriously. After all, do we not play pokemon for fun? Best gimmick metagames: Glitchmons, Balanced Hackmons, Challenge Cup (aka real randbats), Metrobattles (and pokelab sextouples, but that's not a singles metagame...)

[Deluks917]

1) ADV OU. All playstyles are viable. Lots of usable pokemon. Lots of innovation through the many, many years it has been played.

2) DPP UU

4) ADV UU + 1/2 BL. Pokerealm tiers.

[AJC]

silly yee Psycho boost is a gen 3 move deoxy's sig move.

also lugia got it via XD

[fryfrey]

Surprisingly enough, I really like BW2 RU the best. Many playstyles are viable here, unlike the higher tiers, which are plagued with weather and disgustingly offensive Pokemon, which results in a lack of variety due to how alluring pokemon like Drought Ninetales and Multiscale Dragonite are. Conversely, today's RU provides quite a bit of wiggle room for more playstyles, even with threats like Nidoqueen and Moltres in the tier.

[Milos]

also agreeing that DPP UU was the best metagame. i never cared for nor did i play UU until my buddy iris introduced me to the metagame, and most importantly stall. it was honestly one of the funnest metagames to play in, and even with little experience you could have success with a well-built team. a close second for me would DPP OU with salamence + latias. a lot of people hated this metagame but i personally enjoyed it since it was my most successful metagame and the one i had the most fun playing in.

[PK Gaming]

Nothing beats DPP UU

It's balanced to a point where pretty much anything is viable, there aren't any broken or overpowered threats and it has a wild card in the form of Venusaur. (some people want it banned/think its OP but overall appreciates Venusaur's presence) Some people think that DPP UU is all about abusing FWG cores but that isn't true.They're useful / generaly handle everything, but they're not as useful as people make them out to be. There were plenty of team styles (Offense, Balance, Stall, Weather) to choose from too, it was like the definitive "perfectly balanced tier."

And it was really damn fun too. I had this binder filled with potential teams, and every Saturday i'd go out and test them on Shoddy. Those were the days...

BW UU is a pretty good tier; it pales in comparison to DPP UU, but it's pretty fun tier all in all. It's a lot stricter than DPP UU in terms of what you can use, but it still contains elements "you can use what you want and win" feel to it. I like how BW UU has some of the most powerful Pokemon in the game; Darmanitan, Victini, Raikou... it's a miracle that the tier can handle those threats, but it everything falls into place, somehow.

[Smurf.]

Originally Posted by Fat PK Gaming

Nothing beats DPP UU

It's balanced to a point where pretty much anything is viable, there aren't any broken or overpowered threats and it has a wild card in the form of Venusaur. (some people want it banned/think its OP but overall appreciates Venusaur's presence) Some people think that DPP UU is all about abusing FWG cores but that isn't true.They're useful / generaly handle everything, but they're not as useful as people make them out to be. There were plenty of team styles (Offense, Balance, Stall, Weather) to choose from too, it was like the definitive "perfectly balanced tier."

And it was really damn fun too. I had this binder filled with potential teams, and every Saturday i'd go out and test them on Shoddy. Those were the days....

truth

[Duckster]

Imo, it's:

ADV OU - Stall was probably the best strategy in this generation with Skarm/Bliss/Water being a pretty impenetrable core. Sweepers were usually saved for mid-late game when your opponent's Swampy/Milo were at 40% or less, at which point you would DD up your HP Flying Salamence for the kill. Matches were a little bit drawn out but imo that was better than just having a couple of 120+BP moves incinerating everything. You beat hard counters by weakening the entire team with the use of Toxic/Spikes or just Random heavy hits your opponent wasn't expecting. CB Tar, Focus Punch predicts, and Sub punch could put a dent in your opponent's hard counters as well. Those strategies on an offense team combined with Dugtrio and Magneton could potentially mess up your opponent's core defense in a couple of turns if they were playing too telegraphed or not scouting properly. In 4th/5th gen it feels like matches can be decided by the turn 1 face off. Stealth Rock + first hit sort of just put your opponent at an instant disadvantage where they're trying to recover off damage in a metagame where the recover turn leads to your opponent sending out another mixed-sweeper-potential-OHKO-everything.

Ubers ADV+ - Ubers was actually super viable in ADV. The main difference between OU and Ubers in 3rd generation was that the amount of set-up required to sweep was a lot less. IE: a little bitch of passive damage and a Swords Dance/Calm Mind could mean GG. This lead to a really weird counter metagame where you had Pokemon sacrificing valuable moveslots for Reflect/Light Screen/whatever. There were a ton of Weather abusers/niche counters like Shedinja or whatever that could find their way onto a team. The strategy was "counter the most OP Pokemon at all costs". Kind of funny that even the OP Pokemon had obscure counters back then, now it's all "hammer away with 130 base stat 150 base power OU nonsense". In that sense I sort of like Ubers as the preferred competitive metagame in all gens past ADV.

ADV Stadium Mode - With team preview and only 3 mons matches were very quick. Sort of like BW OU. No time for stall since you don't actually get a "core" to work with. Just hope you got a good match up and try to get by with resistances/quick gimmicks. If it was level 50 and no T-Tar then Endure/Reversal Heracross and shit like that was cool to use. And the move Counter.

DP OU, pre-Platinum - Chomp/Mixmence sucked, but they weren't as bad as CC/Outrage/Scizor, imo. Sort of like a mix between ADV OU and ADV Ubers. Special attackers became as viable as physical attackers as sweepers. Terrifying mixed attackers existed but it wasn't quite as bad as where you guarantee having to sacrifice a Pokemon to see what your counter is.

PBR Wi-Fi - no rules - This was the scummiest shit of all time. Ubers/unrestricted imo is more about metagaming than any other format. I mean, metagaming exists in OU so far as you better have an answer to Baton Pass teams in the event you find someone lame enough to run one, or that Boah/McGar were innovated at one point to put a dent into an otherwise unstoppable defense, but those sets became standard and no one good will really look past the fact that they exist. In 2v2 you have to consider that if you run Rain you might get Trick Room/Taunted and lose, but there's really nothing you can do about it. Ubers was more like, you know Kyogre is broken as shit, he's S-Tier. You can fight brokeness with brokeness or you can metagame and run an otherwise shitty Pokemon whose sole purpose is to stop Kyogre from winning. Or use Light Screen on your already limited moveset. You're actively trying to counter the best movesets with otherwise ineffective Pokemon. Pokemon who might lose against a normal, non-Kyogre centric team. That was metagaming imo - running something bad to counter something good. In OU, S Tier doesn't really exist, just an A-Tier of 10-15 Pokemon and then a B+ Tier with another 20-15 Pokemon. Pick 6 of those and try to win. In unrestricted I don't think you'd ever see a stagnant "metagame". People would spam sleep. Then we'd have Lum everywhere and STers. Sleep would become a little more obscure, and it would sort of just run in circles from there.

[Edit oops I read this as "best single metagame" or something oh well]

ADV 2v2 OU - This wasn't even a real Metagame. People were either playing JAA 2v2 or Ubers. If we played doubles back then people would have had a lot of fun with anti-explosion tech and shit like Gyarados+Lightning rod gimmicks. There weren't too many specialized strategies like rain/trick room, just good stuffs. That's what made it fun, knowing you don't lose automatically because of team composition.. maybe just order and prediction. I don't even think 4v4 existed on NB either.

ADV+ Ubers/anything goes 2v2 - Same reasoning as me liking Ubers singles after third gen. Too much OP shit anyways. Let's just use the strongest.

Basically, 2006-2008ish were good years.

[toshimelonhead]

I'll expand on this later but I would say I lost most of my life to:

1.) DPP UU

2.) BW OU (meta before BW2 right after Manaphy/Blaziken/Garchomp got out)

3.) DPP OU

I still need to try BW2 RU/NU though. Maybe this weekend.

[SHUCKLE MAN]

Gen III OU and Gen IV UU are the ones I have the fondest memories of. RSE OU mainly because that's the metagame I played most when I joined Smogon and started playing NetBattle. I loved it, I prefer it to now, the matches were so much longer, and it was the type of thing where you'd be planning 10 turns ahead, which I don't really find when playing this generation.

DPP UU was awesome. I remember when Roserade climbed to OU and Venusaur learned Power Whip, and it climbed in the usage stats from about #25 to #1 in the space of 2 months!! But it was no surprise after that, Venusaur nearly always found itself getting into my teams, one time it would be a physical Swords Dance set, next time it would be specially defensive, then next time it would be Sub-Seed, then next time it would be Choice Scarf, and it performed well no matter what it was doing. Definitely one of the most useful Pokemon ever I've played with in any metagame imo.

[GatoDelFuego]

I really don't understand what people saw in the mence/latias era. Maybe I was just a terrible player, but I always thought those two were pretty broken. Post bans on both, DPP OU is definitely my favorite metagame of all time. The days when people started running Lum Berry over Occa Berry on their metagross because Machamp was overused...azelf vs tyranitar lead predictions...anti-lead dragonite and gallade...can't ever go back.

Aside from maybe dragonite getting a little too much love, the very end of BW1 OU was pretty fun too. At least when you compare it to basically the worst metagame of all time, except for maybe RBY, BW1 OU was pretty quiet.

I still had some fun the day genesect was released before I realized that there was no turning back anymore and things were gonna get crazy.

[Xephyr]

I really don't understand what people saw in the mence/latias era. Maybe I was just a terrible player, but I always thought those two were pretty broken. Post bans on both, DPP OU is definitely my favorite metagame of all time. The days when people started running Lum Berry over Occa Berry on their metagross because Machamp was overused...azelf vs tyranitar lead predictions...anti-lead dragonite and gallade...can't ever go back.

I have to agree with this. God, this shit was fun.

[shrang]

Guys what happened to DPP Ubers pre-Farceus? It's not exactly balanced, since it was Ubers, but I know many of us who played it thought it was an excellent metagame. While diversity wasn't that high, you could run pretty much every playstyle you wanted and in the end, offensive, balanced, and stall kind of went in cyclic fashions in terms of popularity due to changes in metagame when no Pokemon were added or removed at all. It was one metagame where one spike of creativity from one player could alter the state of the metagame. Definitely noting down, IMO.

[ala]

Originally Posted by Fat Deluks917

4) ADV UU + 1/2 BL. Pokerealm tiers.

Lol yes, completely agree with this!

[Danilo]

adv ou is the best
no team archetype is necessarily better than another(stall doesn't dominate)
tons of viable mons
nothing is broken(celebi isn't broken if anything ttar/dug are gay)
can always overcome team matchup
adv ou is easily a top 3 metagame.
adv uu and ubers are probably as good or better than adv ou.

[DarkBlazeR]

Umm.. will I get slain if I say that I think BW2 OU is the best metagame of all time? XD

Nah, just kidding. Though admittedly I'm biased in this regard as I've never played any tier other than OU (yeah I'm boring like that), I think my personal favourite tier is the old, pre-Platinum D/P metagame, after Wobbuffet/Garchomp/Deoxys-E all became banned. That was some seriously balanced stuff right there. From my experience, you could run virtually any playstyle and have a chance of success. Offense was stronger than in ADV, but it had to contend with a new and improved stall. Practically anything from the lower tiers could find some kind of respectable niche in OU. There was a notable powercreep in gen 4 from gen 3, but it wasn't a particularly overwhelming difference early on in the metagame's history. Too bad this meta is completely dead - sure I may love modern DPP OU as well, but IMHO I never felt more enjoyment than I did from playing the pre-Platinum metagame.

[sasami]

DPP UU, for reasons already stated. I was also a huge fan of DPP OU both before and during Latias being legal. I'm not sure why but I seriously enjoyed those metagames and that's when I did my best. Overall, I actually enjoyed most of DPP OU.

Now my favorite is probably BW2 Randoms :p. BW2 OU is OK but it just hasn't held my interest as much as ADV and DPP did.

[Jcpdragonx]

I started playing a few weeks before DPPt, and I loved playing throughout the whole generation. I have probably played 10 DPP games in the past 9 months and I only had 2 teams which did me any good, but it was still enjoyable (except for the last mon Lucario sweeps). It was more towards the stall side, but everything was really balanced in my opinion, and team building was much less irritating than this generation.

I pretty much hated BW from the moment it came out, but I don't mind the current state of it. Still a few overwhelming threats make this game somewhat unpleasant for me sometimes (Rain, Terrakion, gay shit like Volcarona), but I'm getting used to it after playing it a bit.

BW UU was something I really enjoyed in BW1, but I gave up on it in the late stages of it. I pretty much had to use the same core every game to succeed on the ladder, anything else and I was average at best. I don't really enjoy this Chandelure/Heracross meta though, but I haven't really played enough to judge. DP UU was fun but I didn't play it enough.

DPPt > BW1 UU > BW OU

Don't care about Ubers, RU, NU, LC.

[Mastadi]

ADV OU + ADV UU were the shit.

[Zephir]

Originally Posted by Fat shrang

Guys what happened to DPP Ubers pre-Farceus? It's not exactly balanced, since it was Ubers, but I know many of us who played it thought it was an excellent metagame. While diversity wasn't that high, you could run pretty much every playstyle you wanted and in the end, offensive, balanced, and stall kind of went in cyclic fashions in terms of popularity due to changes in metagame when no Pokemon were added or removed at all. It was one metagame where one spike of creativity from one player could alter the state of the metagame. Definitely noting down, IMO.

Yeah, I think - among other great french players like Cristal and Go10 - that DPP Uber is (one of) the best metagame. At least, it is to me the most fun and tactical I've played. While there was a limited pool of pokemons - i'd say 30, 50 max with gimmicky mons -, it reduces team match up factor, and moreover there was a lot of viable sets and room for creativity. For example, Dialga could be Scarfed, Specs, LO SR, Support, Mixed, BU and even choice band. All playstyles were perfectly viable (HO, Offense, BO, Balanced, Semi Stall with Gira-O, Hard Stall...). Deep Thought, for instance, had huge success on the ladder with a nearly full choice offense while a friend won 1 STour (and lost in another final) with an Hail Stall. Speaking of it, the meta contained the strategical aspects of weather while not revolving around like BW2. There was few cookie cutter teams and a lot of win conditions / strategies. And sure you couldn't counter all the powerhouses but you could check a huge amount with decent team building and play around the remaining with pivoting, predictions and double switches.

DPP OU was fun too. A bit stale and centralized during Latias era but I remember some fucking great games of semi stalls or stall matchups. I know that people are annoyed by some cores of the current meta but the games are usually more satisfying than BW OU ones imo. Also, great variety of playstyles, absolutely no broken mon and room for creativity even though the pool of pokemons is relatively restricted.

DPP UU... i have some mixed feelings. I didn't like the stages with Raikou/Dug, Froslass. Late DPP UU is one of the most balanced i've ever played but also the most boring when two bulky offenses with FWG core fight and the game runs in circle. Overall the better player / builder tends to win but more often than not there's a lot of "useless" turns before one member faints and the team start falling apart. Also Venusaur and Milotic may not be broken, but well played they are very annoying. Lot of playstyles available here too, but i don't like rain dance teams.

I won't develop for BW tiers, i think each one is less balanced than their DPP counterpart. Especially, BW OU is lame/not fun atm. Did not play RU and NU ; judging from spl games, NU seems fun but i'm more skeptical about RU.

ADV OU is, like BW metagames and their team preview, very strategical, but way more defensive because there's not many wallbreakers or super strong moves. I didn't play the smogon meta enough, but i don't think I like it because i don't like some of the strongest strategies : spikes + ghost (gengar++), trapper or celejump + 4-5 sweepers, baton pass. Celebi can also be a pain in the ass. However, I like the long games that are practically never decided on team matchup.

[Bad Ass]

dp uu was pretty much the greatest tier. i'd say near the end it did start to get a bit stale, but that's just because it was so well balanced. i was one of the people who voted heracross uu because it made the metagame more fun (which is normally an awful reason, heracross was pretty op, but synre made a great argument that dp was at the end of its life-cycle and would never be played for anything serious again, barring a random dp uu tournament, so why not let it go out in style).

but really, during its life time it was so diverse and just plain fun. anything could be run -- you had eo and his incredibly stupid stall teams destroy the ladder and smogon tour, with loki's super offensive teams with LO clefable and scarf blaziken right behind him. there was a lot of room for creativity to fuck up the standard team, be it through using weird pokemon (my best dp uu team has hariyama) or strange movesets (refresh milotic owns.) the playerbase was awesome, too, and pretty much all of my best smogon friends come from my time with the tier.

and pretty much every stage of this meta was incredible fun. off of the top of my head, we had new uu, yanmega, raikou and dugtrio, moltres-is-a-god phase, shaymin+crobat phase, cresselia and porygonz phase, froslass, and of course earlier new uu with staraptor and such.
and you know what? not a one of them were bad.

/me sheds a manly tear for this lost gem.

[BKC]

latias/salamence era dpp ou

this is the metagame where i started competitive pokemon in may 2009. it may not have been "ideal" for a lot of people but it's definitely the most fun metagame i've ever played in. i sometimes play it with friends and it's as fun as ever. might edit this w/ details later.

honorary mentions: post-lati/mence dpp ou, pre-latias dpp ou, dpp uu, dpp ubers [non-arceus fuck that], adv ou