The First Smogon Council - Salamence

[Heartgold]

A very slow paced metagame, Stall is everywhere and much more annoying.

[coolking49]

Outside of the earlier said, i found that over half the teams I faced had calm mind jirachi and/or life orb gengar. That got annoying fast. I also only saw 1 scizor.

And if anyone headed over to the standard ladder, pretty much every team has a mence in it, as if the players are savouring the last moments of its freedom (if it is i dont know)

[Lee]

Originally Posted by Fat FlareBlitz

I'm really loving Luke in this metagame.

I know, right?! I still remember the huge boost Luke got when Garchomp was banned and now Salamence is staring down that same barrel. Happy days for Lucario. I think the lack of Latias is slightly detrimental to Luke though as he loved setting up on Scarfed Dragon attacks or mono-attackers but the removal of Salamence, a Pokemon who checked him quite well and was super-common is compensation tenfold.

And this Infernape hype is really getting to me. If Infernape was so good then why didn't you just put in the effort to Pursuit Latias and reap the rewards of this apparently unstoppable Pokemon?

[Heartgold]

Infernape is really high on this metagame, such a good sweeper. I'm carrying around dugtrio, it's doing a good job revenge killing those apes and trans =P

[matty]

Originally Posted by Fat Lee

I know, right?! I still remember the huge boost Luke got when Garchomp was banned and now Salamence is staring down that same barrel. Happy days for Lucario. I think the lack of Latias is slightly detrimental to Luke though as he loved setting up on Scarfed Dragon attacks or mono-attackers but the removal of Salamence, a Pokemon who checked him quite well and was super-common is compensation tenfold.

And this Infernape hype is really getting to me. If Infernape was so good then why didn't you just put in the effort to Pursuit Latias and reap the rewards of this apparently unstoppable Pokemon?

Thank you, this is the point I was trying to make earlier. Everyone is hyping ape and ya its good, but there is no reason it shouldn't have worked prior to Latias. Especially if you run U-Turn + ScarfTar

[Heartgold]

Originally Posted by Fat matty

Thank you, this is the point I was trying to make earlier. Everyone is hyping ape and ya its good, but there is no reason it shouldn't have worked prior to Latias. Especially if you run U-Turn + ScarfTar

Maybe the removal of latias has left many teams ape weak and haven't gone around replacing that slot. NPnape, mix ape are up on the rise, haven't seen these for a very long time.

[Ice-eyes]

Offensive Starmie with 252/252 and Surf/BoltBeam/Rapid Spin is actually really good. It's like the Recover spinning set, except that it's actually useful against offensive teams, switching into Infernape et al with impunity.

ScarfTran + Breloom is also amazing - Tran has very, very few safe switch-ins that aren't bulky waters or Blissey. I have yet to try Shaymin, but a Scarf set might be able to bludgeon its way through most offensive teams with some SpD drops on the switch.

[PenguinX]

Agiligross is working even more successfully than Standard at the moment, find loads of oppurtunities to set up on stall teams, and Flygon's locked into Outrage etc.

[kokoloko*]

Lucario is beasting this metagame like its nothing. I've found the most hyped up pokemon of all, Infernape, to be very underwhelming. Probably because since everyone thought it was going to run rampant, everyone is carrying plenty of shit to take care of it. For some reason I see Gengar everywhere and nowhere near as many Starmie as I expected. Also, in the 30-40 matches I've played so far I have seen no Scizor whatsoever (obviously I'm exaggerating, but still). My guess is because two of the main pokemon he was used to check, Latias and Salamence, are not even there; and on top of that Infernape is everywhere. ScarfTar is, unsurprisingly, still being used more than any other Tyranitar set - although not by such a large margin, I have seen a couple BandTar.

Anyway, this metagame is very, very fun to play in.

[IcyMan28]

With all the Lucario running around, I've been looking for something that can check it. I'm running ScarfFlygon already, so I pretty much was looking for a fast ghost or steel to take extremespeed.

Rotom-A didn't really fit my team (and is actually slower than Lucario unless Timid), but I really needed some bulk. Which is when I came across Mismagius.

Mismagius@Leftovers
Timid; 108 HP / 148 SpA / 252 Spe

Substitute
Nasty Plot
HP Fighting
Shadow Ball

A very underrated threat, for a long time I feel like. Though Nasty Plot helped to improve this, it has had Calm Mind for a long time [[shrugs]]. Oh well.

Missy provides my team with some much needed special bulk, and the 108 HP EVs prevent weak special attackers like Relaxed Swampert's Ice Beam or Blissey's elemental attacks from breaking the Sub. It also protects it from Scizor, ScarfTar, and Gengar, letting me set up NPs without too much issue.

That said, it remains fast enough to outrun 192 speed Infernape (which is the standard for both physical and special Mixape), and isn't outclassed by Gengar because of Nasty Plot. It revenges Luke after a CC drop, and really cripples it otherwise.

She's pretty decent against stall, as Blissey can't really do anything to her while she sets up.

[pkmn-taicho321]

tbh honest don't we want to ban him because of Outrage? why not just ban outrage from OU play? without it he's OU easily.

[DDRMaster]

We don't ban specific moves on Pokemon, otherwise we would have probably already banned Stealth Rock and possibly things like Baton Pass on Mew to make it OU.

[Sixfortyfive]

Originally Posted by Fat DDRMaster

We don't ban specific moves on Pokemon, otherwise we would have probably already banned Stealth Rock and possibly things like Baton Pass on Mew to make it OU.

Evasion/OHKO Clause

Now that it's been mentioned, though, I remember one of the mods/staff asking this specific question before. "Are Dragon Pokemon or Dragon attacks more broken?" Don't remember how that thread went down though.

[pkmn-taicho321]

Originally Posted by Fat DDRMaster

We don't ban specific moves on Pokemon, otherwise we would have probably already banned Stealth Rock and possibly things like Baton Pass on Mew to make it OU.

Soul Dew clause? it was the only justification for making Latias OU at all. Garchomp deserves to stay in Ubers because he's a beast with or without Outrage.

[EvilMario]

Banning Outrage, and/or Draco Meteor was discussed a while ago. What's more broken, the Dragons, or the moves?

Anyways, from playing today, my 'Double Dragon, Double Steel' strategy has worked well. Scarf Flygon with a very Bulky Light Screen/Dragon Dance/Roost/Dragon Claw Dragonite have been a very effective pair. Vaporeon has become a valuable member of my team where I seldom used it before. Thanks to its ability to handle Infernape (in most cases), and Heatran, it's really a blessing.

I've seen a lot of Grass types, and while I know they enjoy Salamence and Latias being gone, Grass type is still not great. Things like Heatran, Infernape, Crobat, Dragonite, Scizor.. they all switch into those Grass Knots and Leaf Storms, or can at least use them to setup.

[goofball]

After playing a few battles, its pretty common to see stall hanging around tho I expect once players learn how to play offensively without salamence, stall will drop back down. Honestly, I don't get all this stall love but I guess there hasn't been many offensive players playing aside from a few. I have noticed that the more known users are running offensive teams instead of defensive teams.

Either way, this metagame is still new to everybody so just give it a couple days or a week or two things will evolve and ppl will adapt. I'm interested in where this metagame could possibly take us. As for the whole slow pace, it isn't really that slow things take a bit longer to die if you can't/aren't go around spamming draco and ridiculous hard hitters :D Like I said wait for some of the offensive players to come around I see plenty of possibility out there for offensive teams especially to lesser used pkmn.

[Zystral]

I've been laddering with a funny combination of Offense and TrickChoice. Frankly, ScarfTar rapes my whole team, but I have been having little trouble with any form of stall.

A lot of people are overjudging the lack of salamence. yeah, it's a lot less harder to weaken the foe and pivot around since you don't have a ridiculously powerful Draco Meteor/Outrage to spam, but it's not hard to patch up that gap with two other mons. I've been tinkering with Dragon Dance Kingdra and DDance/Outrage/Earthquake/Thunderbolt Dragonite, and while the latter is a lot more effective, I'm finding other things like SD Infernape and Special Based Lucario to be a lot more interesting.

However, I am enjoying the much more balanced game appearing. People are resorting to other dragons to fill up the space of Mence, which they just can't do, so a game less centralized around Steels and Dragons is definitely more enjoyable.

It'll be interesting to see what else might start being used in the absence of the great dragon.

[mtr]

Gonna start on Suspect when I get off work tonight. Since I'm pretty bad at stall vs. stall matches, I'll probably be playing a wallbreaking-oriented team to beat the inevitable stallfest.

Removing Salamence from the metagame will mean that there are no top-tier Dragons left in OU, which means that Steels will fall as well in terms of usage, because there will be more Fire, Fighting, and Ground-type attacks flying around in Salamence's absence.

The result will be an OU that looks a lot like UU, whose best Dragon-type is Altaria (who isn't that great). It will be slower, more decentralized, and have a greater diversity of types.

[3v3rnoob]

That's not to say that the steels are going to fall off of the radar. Jirachi is still going to be as strong as ever, considering that it can any attack from any of the pokemon rising in usage (accept maybe ape's flare blitz/ overheat), and then has some kind of response to it. Maybe a scarfed special set? Might be interesting to try with an HP water or ground....

But besides that, the pokemon that I predict will go up in usage soon is Weavile. It's always been one of the more underrated OU's, being rather frail and weak to SR. But think about this for a minute. CB weavile literally outspeeds and OHKOs some threats that we predict to become increasingly popular. Brick break for tran and Ttar and Night Slash for Starmie. If you scout the opponent's ape for vacuum wave and Mach punch, it should be able to revenge kill it with reasonable ease. I predict it to become a potent revenge killer not necessarily because latias and mence are gone, but because of the pokemon that celebrate their removal.

[JonTheRed]

Originally Posted by Fat mtr

The result will be an OU that looks a lot like UU, whose best Dragon-type is Altaria (who isn't that great). It will be slower, more decentralized, and have a greater diversity of types.

Awesome. To say that "anything goes" in this suspect metagame is a gross exaggeration--I mean, some Pokemon are UU/NU for a reason--but with less Dragons, there's a lot more diversity you can explore since you're not stuck worrying about Salamence appearing on every third team to kill the shit out of your Tangrowth or whatever. The popularity of Salamence and Latias discouraged diversity to the max, so the chance to finally try some novel concepts (hopefully not gimmicks) is very welcome.

[EvilMario]

Originally Posted by Fat mtr

Gonna start on Suspect when I get off work tonight. Since I'm pretty bad at stall vs. stall matches, I'll probably be playing a wallbreaking-oriented team to beat the inevitable stallfest.

Removing Salamence from the metagame will mean that there are no top-tier Dragons left in OU, which means that Steels will fall as well in terms of usage, because there will be more Fire, Fighting, and Ground-type attacks flying around in Salamence's absence.

The result will be an OU that looks a lot like UU, whose best Dragon-type is Altaria (who isn't that great). It will be slower, more decentralized, and have a greater diversity of types.

Theorymon.

Jirachi, and Heatran are everywhere on the ladder. Scizor is 'less common', but being used on one out of every four teams I've seen. Lucario has started to creep up as well, teams are just no prepared for him.

Likewise, there has been a dragon (8 to 1, Dragonite over Flygon) on nearly every team I've played. To compare Dragonite and Flygon to Altaria is insulting. Dragonite hits as hard as Salamence, and Flygon's unique typing (and U-Turn) afford it many chances to switch in.

I find the game more enjoyable without Salamence thus far. Now you don't have the speedy, and powerful Pokemon all in one. But if you think Dragon types, and Steels will die out, you'll be sadly mistaken.

[3v3rnoob]

I don't think he believes steels and dragons are going to die out, just that they're going to drop in popularity and that'll make the metagame less homogenized.

[Scimjara]

Originally Posted by Fat mtr

Gonna start on Suspect when I get off work tonight. Since I'm pretty bad at stall vs. stall matches, I'll probably be playing a wallbreaking-oriented team to beat the inevitable stallfest.

Removing Salamence from the metagame will mean that there are no top-tier Dragons left in OU, which means that Steels will fall as well in terms of usage, because there will be more Fire, Fighting, and Ground-type attacks flying around in Salamence's absence.

The result will be an OU that looks a lot like UU, whose best Dragon-type is Altaria (who isn't that great). It will be slower, more decentralized, and have a greater diversity of types.

I've played a few suspect matches and most of the time it comes down to stupid stall with loads of switching just bores the crap out of me.

To follow up with your statment banning Mence will lead to no decent dragons in the OU tier and will just raise the usage of stall / balance teams

[Ice-eyes]

I've actually only seen a few Scizor and only one TTar, and I've been laddering for most of the day.

Plenty of Heatran, plenty of Breloom, loads of Jirachi - ResTalk Gyarados is also incredibly popular to deal with Infernape and Heatran. AgiliGross is really good, but for some reason some I've seen aren't running Thunderpunch and are getting taken out by Gyarados and Starmie.

[LoveDensity]

Best metagame I've played in a while and I haven't even built a new team yet. Just took apart some old teams and adjusted to a game without Mence in my team or theirs. I can say that finally I get some motivation to use and hone my skills for once and think more than I did in a Latias metagame or Mence metagame. I can also express my own creativity rather than just using shit like ScarfTar, Bulky Jirachi, Sp.Def Skarm, Vaporeon w/e to stop Latias and also Swampert, Skarm, Scizor, Jirachi, etc to check Mence.

I guess noobs can finally start getting creative and get a better chance in honing their skills.