The First Smogon Council - Salamence

Now that we have a final tiering decision on Latias (uber), it is time to turn our heads to the dragon in the room... Salamence. Questions about his appropriateness in OU have been raised, and now that Latias is handled, we will address the issue.

As soon as possible, we will have a suspect test ladder running on SU on which Salamence will not be allowed. After approximately 4 weeks of testing during which you all can form an opinion about Salamence's tiering, Jumpman or I will post a thread asking for applications to join The First Smogon Council.

We will be asking for information relating to your rating and deviation on both the suspect and standard ladders in addition to inquiring about any recent and relevant tournament success/participation. From the applications we've receive, Jumpman and I will select nine active and qualified players to cast a vote on Salamence to decide his fate.

You'll obviously notice that this is a greatly simplified and streamlined process than what we've had before. That is by design. Asking people to submit paragraphs and test for months on end became too costly for too little return. There is obviously a subjective element in the selection of The Council, however nobody will be asked to disclose their vote in their application and Jumpman and I will ensure maximum fairness. Go forth and test!

As always, you may use this thread to make comments and describe your experiences. Members of The Council may read this thread to inform their vote when the time comes!

Ok, I just updated the ladders. This thread is now open for business!

sweet!
*goes to win 1 battle and get on leaderboard*
Expecting to see a lot of participation for this. hope everyone realizes how broken mence is.
I'm gonna start with my standard OU team and see if the lack of mence or latias changes it.

I don't know if it's just me, but every team is running rotom/calm mind jirachi

Great, I'll get on the ladders as soon as I'm able. Not right now, sadly :(

Through my first seven or eight battles on the Suspect ladder, it is quickly becoming clear that a lot of the teams people are using at the moment are heavily stall weak. No Salamence makes a big difference there! Just slapping Infernape onto your team doesn't mean it can break stall, especially if it can't beat Resttalk Gyarados.

My thoughts, I'm not seeing anything different, however without mence stall is harder to deal with.

With one less threat out the way, it's easier to team build and deal with other threats more effectively.

reachzero said:

Through my first seven or eight battles on the Suspect ladder, it is quickly becoming clear that a lot of the teams people are using at the moment are heavily stall weak. No Salamence makes a big difference there! Just slapping Infernape onto your team doesn't mean it can break stall, especially if it can't beat Resttalk Gyarados.

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I've found that Infernape, Dragonite (CB or mixed), Tyranitar (DD + Taunt or CB), and DD + Taunt Gyarados are able to effectively beat stall. I've only played about 20 games so far but without Latias OR Salamence, grass types like Roserade, Torterra, and Tangrowth have found their way onto my team. I've also been using Tentacruel to some success. Overall I feel the metagame is a lot more balanced without the two big dragons.

I whipped up a standard OU team but slapped Dragonite where Salamence usually stands. I've been running it with 16 Atk / 252 SpA / 240 Spe (Naive) using Fire Blast / Draco Meteor / Earthquake / Outrage. The downside to this is that anything with 85 base speed or higher can outspeed and revenge kill, but I surprisingly haven't had it happen yet.

I also saw another user use a mixed Flygon as their stand-in Dragon (who I lost to due to a miss from Fire Blast and a SpD drop from Seed Flare in the same turn). Flygon on the other hand doesn't suffer from the lack of speed Dragonite has, but has worse stats in the other categories. Flygon also suffers from the lack of a setup move, which Dragonite can take advantage of.

I think it'll be interesting to see what people use to fill the "gap" that Salamence being gone left. Personally I'm going to love not having DDmence running around, since that's really the only thing my Scarfed Jirachi can't outspeed and take out (I could put in 252 speed EVs to risk the speed tie, but that's a 50% chance - not worth it).

Uberiffic said:

I'm gonna start with my standard OU team and see if the lack of mence or latias changes it.

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Me, too. I quickly found that stall was very much alive, and a lot stronger. Mence kept all that stall down? Anyway, I quickly changed my team after a battle or two (My CRE went up even though I lost... something's wrong with that...) and started to win more often. My old team did well enough in OU, but the threats are much more diverse (so much so that my poor memory can't remember it all - but a lot of the mons are being used a lot more)

I've found Ape/Gyarados do MUCH better now in the current Suspect Ladder, also I've seen a lot less of Jirachi for some reason. I already see a huge increase in Dnite usage. That seems obvious I guess. In a few weeks I think we will see a lot of UU/BL pokemon entering the OU metagame within the Suspect ladder.
Already it seems without much play that Salamence affects the Metagame hugely and it seems of benefit without it.

EDIT: Just noticed a massive increase in Roserade leads.

Can't wait to make some comparative stats between Mence and Mence free metagames. Wonder if suspect will be centralised due to few battles even without a huge threat like Mence around.

This metagame is terrible. Its all like Heavy/Semi-Stall. I can't stand it tbh. Hopefully it all settles out, but at the moment it isn't very much fun. I really miss Latias, Salamence not so much

Alright sounds like a test I can get into. Big question is probably going to be how much of a difference dragonite and flygon vs salamence is. Breloom is going to be a must if mence is making stall much more popular. Resttalk gyarados is probably going to be big on stall.

Well after about 25 Battles on the ladder, Stall is sooo much more hard to break without latias and mence. Most of my teams had either one of them, so i had to go to one of my older teams without mence. After tweaking my old team a bit, stall was handled a bit better, but tbh i hate stall and mence and latias work great at breaking stall. Also as mentioned roserade leads are more common now. Just hope Mence won't go to Ubers cuz then I'll have to find a poke to replace mence on my old team,which in my case is near impossible because of Mence's speed atk and unpredictability.

Ok. I tested out a few battles with my stall/semi-stall team on the Suspect ladder, and I had quite success. I won 16/20 battles (2 of the battles had CH that changed the game and the other 2 I was outplayed outright IIRC). I noticed that without Mence as a means to break stall, my team has been wondrous. I really don't like this new metagame, since stall might be able to actually thrive now. Very slow-paced games suck.

However, I also noticed an increase of Roserade leads as well. I'm surprised that I don't see Ape as much as I expected. I might also test Torterra and Raikou in this meta, because it looks like they might have success now.

We broke stall before without Outrage Salamence and Trick Specs Latias, I don't see it being any more dangerous now.

Just run Infernape for craps sake.

Increases in Usage:
Grass-types
My goodness, I have never seen so many since Manaphy! Almost every team has a Shaymin, Breloom, or Celebi, all of which are used offensively. I think this has more to do with Latias's dissapearance more than Salamence's though (although it doesn't hurt, now they don't have to run HP Ice and Breloom loses a pretty good counter). With both dragons gone, Leaf Storm/Seed Flare/Seed Bombs are being thrown out everywhere, with the casualities stacking up.

Fire-types
This was almost guaranteed, but as we thought, Infernape and Heatran have certainly been seen quite more often than in the past metagames. Infernape and Heatran both rip right through stall, especially with the increase in Grass-types, and they both fill niches as Fire-type attack absorbers for the Grass-types. This increase in Heatran and Infernape though have brought in an increase in...

Water-types
Starmie! The best set that I have personally seen is Life Orb with Surf/Thunderbolt/Rapid Spin/Recover. It is still a great counter to Heatran and Infernape and has the power to back up anything it does. Stall is completely ruined by Starmie + Infernape, which might be why this is so popular right now. Gyarados is perhaps the counterpart of Starmie, ruining things with Taunt and strong attacks. Latias's removal and no more Intimidate from Salamence give Gyarados a better chance to sweep interuppted. Have to watch out for those Grass-types though!

Dragon-types
With Salamence gone, we had to expect Flygon usage to increase. Flygon is now the best Dragon-type in OU in my opinion, with immunity to Thunder Wave, Ground-type attacks, and it has U-Turn. Can really deal with all of the above threats such as Celebi, Starmie, and the Fire-types. Dragonite has increased as well, but just to fill in a psuedo-Mence. Not really good...

Scizor
Scizor gets his own category, because instead of the decrease as I expected, I have actually seen just as many as usual. Perhaps not really an "increase" because usage is already so high, but I can certainly see the merit in Scizor as it can revenge kill Infernape and Flygon late-game, as well as bother the Grass-types with U-Turn early. I think U-Turn may be the driving force here and with Flygon, as most teams are new and somewhat random. It is good to see exactly what you are dealing with instead of having to randomly switch.

Ground-types
I already mentioned Flygon, but I want to mention Swampert and Gliscor here. Their bulk, STAB Earthquake, and power against stall are very helpful (Gliscor much more than Swampert, but Swampert can Roar and Stealth Rock, or just use 3 attacks). The bulk and core these 2 can provide is very beneficial to a lot of teams.

Decreases in Usage:
Some Steel-types
With the increase in Fire-types, Grass-types with HP Fire, Focus Punch, or Earth Power, and bulky Water-types, Steel is rare to see on ladder. Magnezone has almost no reason to exist with Latias and Salamence gone, as it can't let them set up or sweep if they aren't there! The Steel-types who are used (Scizor, Skarmory, Forretress), can be trapped, but 2 run SS and the other can U-Turn or Superpower at any time. Jirachi isn't as common as before, nor is Metagross or Lucario. This could definitely be the result of more Gliscor and Gyarados. Heatran is used quite often as I said, so be on the lookout for him!

Dangerous Threats:
Gengar
Substitute/Pain Split/Focus Blast/Shadow Ball with Life Orb can put a quick end to stall teams and is a huge nuisance to many offensive teams. Gengar is always a dangerous threat but I have seen it used much more effectively than normal here.

Celebi
Leaf Storm/Recover/Thunder Wave/Hidden Power Fire with Leftovers will stay around for a while, Thunder Waving or HP Firing any massive threats such as Scizor or fast sweepers. Leaf Storm spam will catch those Flygon and Tyranitar early, although HP Fire right off the bat is a pretty safe choice, especially when matched against a Swampert. Just a scary Pokemon to fight.

I'll post more later after more playing tommorow, just my first thoughts and whatnot after a day of playing.

Epic Cherubi said:

We broke stall before without Outrage Salamence and Trick Specs Latias, I don't see it being any more dangerous now.

Just run Infernape for craps sake.

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I think you need to go play more because Ape can't continually switch into Spikes/Toxic Spikes and then you have to figure out someway to break Rest Talk Gyarados. Even if you do somehow get by him, you have LO recoil and Sandstorm damage. The thing is a glass cannon. Stop theorymoning and actually play the metagame. The only thing that really helps Ape to sweep is Spikes of its own and Starmie as a Spinner. I've seen a ton of teams focused around that strat. It is fairly hard to get around, especially if Ape continually U-Turns around.

Infernape, Infernape, Infernape...

He's not the only fighting type that is loving this metagame...

No BRELOOM is really enjoying this metagame. To of it's best counters on offensive teams (Mence and Latias) are now gone and it can truly appreciate their lack of presence.

Edit: Pairing it up with Ttar has truly been a boon, especially with above average type synergy with each other and Ttar's ability to remove Celebi.

I wonder what people mean when they say slow paced. GSC was slow paced. A game that takes more than 15 turns because you aren't DD to death immediately isn't "slow paced".

Aeolus said:

I wonder what people mean when they say slow paced. GSC was slow paced. A game that takes more than 15 turns because you aren't DD to death immediately isn't "slow paced".

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No, but a match where your opponent constantly switches to something that can recover and simultaneously shrug off your attacks until you are worn down by Spikes, Stealth Rock, and Toxic Spikes is.

EDIT: and I've encountered more of that stuff on average than I have on the standard ladder. A lot more, percentage-wise.

EDIT 2: And I've been moving to slightly bulkier, slightly more stallish, too.

I'm really loving Luke in this metagame. Currently the most popular Pokemon on offense (Infernape, Starmie, Flygon...) all die to +2 Extremespeed, and there's no more Salamence to come in and Intimidate you into submission. It doesn't particularly appreciate the massive increase in HP Fire Celebi, but it definitely likes the Scarftar decline. Pair it with something that can handle Heatran (I use Bulky Gyra) and something to deal with bulky waters (I use Shaymin) for a great offensive core.

oh man flare fwg core, you're thinking like a uu player again

Just put 80 HP Evs on Flygon, and he can always survive a +2 Extremespeed, even after Rocks (just barely, though...)

How is Lucario a fire type .__________________.