The new vote to befriend a Pokemon thing grants us an amazing opportunity, to get Regenerator Ho-oh! Ho-oh is, quite frankly, lackluster without Regenerator, and I think it deserves to get it.
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General Metagame Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Fireburn
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It's more like Ho-Oh is already really fucking good and gets really really fucking good with Regernerator.
I've decided to switch to Ubers - or, at least, I'll attempt to switch to Ubers. Several questions:
Why does it seem like there are way more Toxic users in Ubers compared to Thunder Wave? From my experience in other tiers, paralysis is typically more useful because it stops a sweeper at once instead of stops it several turns down the line. Surprisingly however, this doesn't seem to hold true in Ubers. Why?
Virtually all the tier seems extremely vulnerable to Toxic Spikes. Sure some Pokemon Levitate and avoid it, there are a few absorbers out there, Manaphy in rain doesn't care and Forretress is immune to it + can spin, but still: virtually all the tier seems extremely vulnerable to Toxic Spikes. Is Toxic Spikes very common in the tier, or is it simply too difficult to set up?
How does the Uber tier differ from other tiers considering the fact that many Ubers have no counter? For example, before Excadrill's banning from OU if one's team had trouble with it one could always slot in a hard counter (Skarmory, Gliscor, etc). It might ruin the team synergy and it might not fit the spirit of the team, but the option is always there. In Ubers, Deoxys-A will 2HKO everything in the game, so it has no counters. How then does a team survive against a Deoxys-A that may be predicting a switch-in? For that matter, how does anyone deal with the insanity of Specs Water Spout? Without immunity everything takes big damage from it, so they can all be worn down. This ought to imply that stall is ineffective, but that hardly seems to be the case. Why?
Why does it seem like there are way more Toxic users in Ubers compared to Thunder Wave? From my experience in other tiers, paralysis is typically more useful because it stops a sweeper at once instead of stops it several turns down the line. Surprisingly however, this doesn't seem to hold true in Ubers. Why?
Virtually all the tier seems extremely vulnerable to Toxic Spikes. Sure some Pokemon Levitate and avoid it, there are a few absorbers out there, Manaphy in rain doesn't care and Forretress is immune to it + can spin, but still: virtually all the tier seems extremely vulnerable to Toxic Spikes. Is Toxic Spikes very common in the tier, or is it simply too difficult to set up?
How does the Uber tier differ from other tiers considering the fact that many Ubers have no counter? For example, before Excadrill's banning from OU if one's team had trouble with it one could always slot in a hard counter (Skarmory, Gliscor, etc). It might ruin the team synergy and it might not fit the spirit of the team, but the option is always there. In Ubers, Deoxys-A will 2HKO everything in the game, so it has no counters. How then does a team survive against a Deoxys-A that may be predicting a switch-in? For that matter, how does anyone deal with the insanity of Specs Water Spout? Without immunity everything takes big damage from it, so they can all be worn down. This ought to imply that stall is ineffective, but that hardly seems to be the case. Why?
It always seemed to me that Toxic was the most commonly thrown around status move in every tier even in OU. Things in Ubers are really freakin' bulky and having them poisoned puts them on a timer. Would you rather have a paralyzed Ho-Oh or a poisoned one? I'd prefer the latter since it'll severely limit Ho-Oh's staying power and the number of Subs it can throw out add to the fact there may be Rocks in the air. A lot of people are fans of passive damage, due to the prevalence of Spikes (Ferrothorn), Toxic Spikes (Forretress, Tentacruel), and Stealth Rock (Dialga, Groudon). Overall, it's up to your team and your personal preference, for example, I'd rather have everything paralyzed so that Deoxys-A can mop everything up endgame.
Toxic Spikes is common enough to be considered a big threat if you don't have a Spinner or Poison type on your team and your team is grounded. It's actually pretty easy to set up since Forretress and Tentacruel, the two main setters, have good resistances and defenses to switch into things like Spacial Rend or Ice Beam and into 'mons like Chansey. I'd say that if the opponent has the Giratinas or Ghost-Arceus, hazards in general have a hard time leaving your field since no Rapid Spinner (sans Excadrill) can get past them.
Broken things check other broken things. Some people even say that Ubers is the most balance tier (ironic I know). Everything can be played around. Even though Deoxys-A has no counters, it's wet paper bag defenses ensure that Scarfers and priority users get the upper hand. It's very easy to predict that a Deoxys-A will switch out of Rayquaza whenever it sees one and you can set up the game winning Dragon Dance on the switch. Extremespeed Arceus is everywhere, which is why Deoxys-A isn't as common as other Ubers. Palkia and Grass Arceus can take a full powered Specs Water Spout, outspeed and hit Kyogre with Thunder or Grass Knot respectively. Specs isn't as common as ScarfOgre so many people are content in using just Blissey or Ferrothorn as checks. The thing about Specs is that it's pretty slow and vulnerable to hazards so fast Ubers like Mewtwo can hit with Psystrike or sleep it like Darkrai.
Toxic Spikes is common enough to be considered a big threat if you don't have a Spinner or Poison type on your team and your team is grounded. It's actually pretty easy to set up since Forretress and Tentacruel, the two main setters, have good resistances and defenses to switch into things like Spacial Rend or Ice Beam and into 'mons like Chansey. I'd say that if the opponent has the Giratinas or Ghost-Arceus, hazards in general have a hard time leaving your field since no Rapid Spinner (sans Excadrill) can get past them.
Broken things check other broken things. Some people even say that Ubers is the most balance tier (ironic I know). Everything can be played around. Even though Deoxys-A has no counters, it's wet paper bag defenses ensure that Scarfers and priority users get the upper hand. It's very easy to predict that a Deoxys-A will switch out of Rayquaza whenever it sees one and you can set up the game winning Dragon Dance on the switch. Extremespeed Arceus is everywhere, which is why Deoxys-A isn't as common as other Ubers. Palkia and Grass Arceus can take a full powered Specs Water Spout, outspeed and hit Kyogre with Thunder or Grass Knot respectively. Specs isn't as common as ScarfOgre so many people are content in using just Blissey or Ferrothorn as checks. The thing about Specs is that it's pretty slow and vulnerable to hazards so fast Ubers like Mewtwo can hit with Psystrike or sleep it like Darkrai.
Actually Specs cleanly 2HKOes without hazards and a full powered spout. Not sure about Specs Hydro Pump though. Gastrodon, Shedinja, and Specially Defensive Giratina-a are the only things that counter basically all forms of Kyogre (well unless sub cm is used then gastrodon is screwed and Gira-a also if it doesnt have roar). Normally however due to that fact Kyogre hates hazards its often only nessecary to pack a check like Scarfkia to prevent the power of Specs Spout from destroying a team.
Although most Ubers have no counter, checks + hazards + priority/ scarfmon is enough to debilitate them to the point where they are worthless. Since stall does this effectively it was extremely popular earlier. Also immunity does not mean an attack is worthless, Ferrothorn's ability to shove off 4* Super Effective Fire blasts in rain from a dragon still occurs in ubers.
just saying, a paralyzed ScarfPalk is a lot stupider than a Toxiced One as it has to take two hits from Kyogre before retaliating now...
Well the point is that even if you Toxic a Palkia, it's still going to be attacking at full force and it's still going to be punching holes in your team. Sure it will die eventually, but it might very well take something down with it. On the other hand if you Thunder Wave Palkia with whatever (idk ... Ferrothorn?) then you can go to a resist on a predicted attack (say Fire Blast -> your own Palkia) and then kill it since you're guaranteed to be faster, and your team is relatively intact. Would I rather have a paralyzed Ho-oh or a poisoned one? I don't know, but it seems the paralyzed Ho-oh is easier to handle, unless I've got a lot of copies of Protect on my team or something.
As for Specs Water Spout, well the point is that although there are Pokemon that can switch into it and not die, they all take severe damage from it. From Kyogre's analysis page:
That's why I thought this implies that stall will not work well. Stall needs to lose as few Pokemon as possible, especially early in the game, because each Pokemon that stall loses means a weakness opened that can be exploited by someone else. Since Kyogre kills stuff so easily, it ought to mean that stall isn't very effective. It's the same thing with Deoxys-A - it kills stuff easily, and although you can revenge / check it with priority and scarfers, as long as it is killing stuff it is breaking stall. Why, then, does stall even exist? Or is there something fundamentally different between Ubers stall and non-Ubers stall?
As for Specs Water Spout, well the point is that although there are Pokemon that can switch into it and not die, they all take severe damage from it. From Kyogre's analysis page:
Aside from Ludicolo, who seems way more like a specialized Kyogre counter than anything else, everyone else takes huge damage. The damage is so high that if the defender survives and has a recovery move, it's forced to use it if it is faster (if it's slower, it's dead anyway, so ...) in the hope that Kyogre switches out. If the defender does not have a recovery move, then it will only be able to switch in once or maybe twice if hazards are up. After that Kyogre will be KOing things each time it comes in. You can still revenge kill it, but you'll be losing Pokemon fast.
That's why I thought this implies that stall will not work well. Stall needs to lose as few Pokemon as possible, especially early in the game, because each Pokemon that stall loses means a weakness opened that can be exploited by someone else. Since Kyogre kills stuff so easily, it ought to mean that stall isn't very effective. It's the same thing with Deoxys-A - it kills stuff easily, and although you can revenge / check it with priority and scarfers, as long as it is killing stuff it is breaking stall. Why, then, does stall even exist? Or is there something fundamentally different between Ubers stall and non-Ubers stall?
Grr... my college thesis long post got deleted so I'll just briefly summarize =(
A lot of your questions can be answered as you play more of the tier and gain experience. As an avid Ubers player I'm greatly more annoyed by poison then paralysis. A good example is Extremekiller Arceus, it can bypass the speed problems with boosted priority will not worrying about burn or passive damage since it's already afflicted with paralysis! As for Ho-Oh, if you've played against a good one, then you'll realize that this Pokemon has immense staying power and the only thing that limits that are Rocks and Toxic. Even Giratina-A the only nonresist that can take more than two full powered Brave Birds (Lugia gets molested by Sacred Fire so...) and live may possibly lose if Ho-Oh's paralyzed but not if it's poisoned. But like I said earlier, it's up to personal preference and team composition so whatevs.
I think those calcs are for Timid SpecsOgre that haven't been updated. A full power Modest Specs Water Spout from 438 SpA does 48.60% - 57.17% to the same Chansey.
Stall is a powerful force in Ubers and many top teams are stall or incorporate elements of stall in them. Specs Kyogre may be one of the best wallbreakers but it isn't without its problems. It's exteremly suceptible to hazards, especialy Toxic Spikes, which is bad for a Pokemon who needs to be at full health to break walls like Ferrothorn and Chansey. Another thing is that, it's pretty slow even with max speed. On the ladder, you may come across offensive teams that stack Mewtwo/Darkrai/Rayquaza/Arceus and the same team and Kyogre will be hardpressed to do big damage since all of those Pokemon can either kill Kyogre or cripple it. This is why SpecsOgre no matter the power is not as popular as Scarf varients, which is more versatile.
A lot of your questions can be answered as you play more of the tier and gain experience. As an avid Ubers player I'm greatly more annoyed by poison then paralysis. A good example is Extremekiller Arceus, it can bypass the speed problems with boosted priority will not worrying about burn or passive damage since it's already afflicted with paralysis! As for Ho-Oh, if you've played against a good one, then you'll realize that this Pokemon has immense staying power and the only thing that limits that are Rocks and Toxic. Even Giratina-A the only nonresist that can take more than two full powered Brave Birds (Lugia gets molested by Sacred Fire so...) and live may possibly lose if Ho-Oh's paralyzed but not if it's poisoned. But like I said earlier, it's up to personal preference and team composition so whatevs.
I think those calcs are for Timid SpecsOgre that haven't been updated. A full power Modest Specs Water Spout from 438 SpA does 48.60% - 57.17% to the same Chansey.
Stall is a powerful force in Ubers and many top teams are stall or incorporate elements of stall in them. Specs Kyogre may be one of the best wallbreakers but it isn't without its problems. It's exteremly suceptible to hazards, especialy Toxic Spikes, which is bad for a Pokemon who needs to be at full health to break walls like Ferrothorn and Chansey. Another thing is that, it's pretty slow even with max speed. On the ladder, you may come across offensive teams that stack Mewtwo/Darkrai/Rayquaza/Arceus and the same team and Kyogre will be hardpressed to do big damage since all of those Pokemon can either kill Kyogre or cripple it. This is why SpecsOgre no matter the power is not as popular as Scarf varients, which is more versatile.
My first twenty games in Ubers and I'm already top 100 lol, I get stomped by many better players and I still can't guess sets very well, but still ... first impressions:
Making teams appears to be easy. I started off with a rather random Kyogre + Ferrothorn + Tentacruel + Lugia + Deoxys-A + Latias, with the idea of using Latias's Tailwind + Healing Wish to pump SpecsOgre's Water Spout. Latias was horribly useless, but otherwise the team worked quite well. Afterwards I swapped around Latias with all sorts of random sweepers - Darkrai had a run, before I realized that Dark Void obviously conflicts with Toxic Spikes, and so did Manaphy (lol @ Thunder weakness), Zekrom ... and they all worked to some extent. I wonder if I was lucky. Now that I look at it the team's core is very well known, but what the heck, I put it together from scratch I swear!
Kyogre really is the most common Pokemon in the metagame. It's as though half the teams have it. Crazy.
Spinning so difficult in the tier, it doesn't help that Giratina-O is so versatile.
Stall seems to be OK. The powerful stallbreakers will break through, but since spinning is so difficult they also tend to get worn down fast. As long as you can survive a bit, get hazards up, and then sacrifice your most useless Pokemon to bring in your Scarfed revenge killer, you can win.
I've been ambivalent about Thunder Wave vs. Toxic so far. Sure some Pokemon are more hindered by Toxic than by Thunder Wave (like Chansey), but I've also been swept by ScarfOgre because I have Toxic instead of Thunder Wave and not enough copies of Protect. One thing of note is that many Ubers are so bulky they are not easily OHKOed (0/0 Kyogre survives 252 SpA Modest Kyogre's Thunder wtf ...), so even with Thunder Wave you usually have to survive a hit, which I suppose is also why Deoxys-A is not very common. If you can't OHKO everything with Deoxys-A, you lose your Pokemon.
Maybe I should quit my unreasonable hate of Arceus and start using one. It's a powerful Pokemon. Hm ...
Making teams appears to be easy. I started off with a rather random Kyogre + Ferrothorn + Tentacruel + Lugia + Deoxys-A + Latias, with the idea of using Latias's Tailwind + Healing Wish to pump SpecsOgre's Water Spout. Latias was horribly useless, but otherwise the team worked quite well. Afterwards I swapped around Latias with all sorts of random sweepers - Darkrai had a run, before I realized that Dark Void obviously conflicts with Toxic Spikes, and so did Manaphy (lol @ Thunder weakness), Zekrom ... and they all worked to some extent. I wonder if I was lucky. Now that I look at it the team's core is very well known, but what the heck, I put it together from scratch I swear!
Kyogre really is the most common Pokemon in the metagame. It's as though half the teams have it. Crazy.
Spinning so difficult in the tier, it doesn't help that Giratina-O is so versatile.
Stall seems to be OK. The powerful stallbreakers will break through, but since spinning is so difficult they also tend to get worn down fast. As long as you can survive a bit, get hazards up, and then sacrifice your most useless Pokemon to bring in your Scarfed revenge killer, you can win.
I've been ambivalent about Thunder Wave vs. Toxic so far. Sure some Pokemon are more hindered by Toxic than by Thunder Wave (like Chansey), but I've also been swept by ScarfOgre because I have Toxic instead of Thunder Wave and not enough copies of Protect. One thing of note is that many Ubers are so bulky they are not easily OHKOed (0/0 Kyogre survives 252 SpA Modest Kyogre's Thunder wtf ...), so even with Thunder Wave you usually have to survive a hit, which I suppose is also why Deoxys-A is not very common. If you can't OHKO everything with Deoxys-A, you lose your Pokemon.
Maybe I should quit my unreasonable hate of Arceus and start using one. It's a powerful Pokemon. Hm ...
i've started playing ubers as well, and
honestly i'm glad i'm at a rating now where i no longer have to fight kids with charizards who complain that 'u use arcus, pussy pokemon'
jesus christ, is it always this bad?
honestly i'm glad i'm at a rating now where i no longer have to fight kids with charizards who complain that 'u use arcus, pussy pokemon'
jesus christ, is it always this bad?
low kick/superpower on deoxys-a: which is better?
Superpower. Defenses are Shite anyway.
Go10
Storm Vanguard !
You can win without SR you know. I never said you cant make a team without him, but he really can do anything you want better than most of the metagame.
Definitely Superpower like others mentioned.
I'm very much enjoying the metagame so far. Been trying out all the different Ubers and using some of the more unorthodox sets, such as shrang's Sub + Hone Claws Dugtrio. I swear, that Dugtrio is completely useless more than half the time. Really. I outsped one Kyogre to Earthquake it for ... 33% damage ?? Lol ?? Or how about the time I used +1 Stone Edge on Giratina, got a crit and did 35% damage? But the rest of the time Dugtrio works brilliantly and takes down two or even more Pokemon with it.
There're so many strong threats and Pokemon to use in Ubers. Darkrai is one Pokemon I immediately one to try. Sleep is very strong without specific counters, and Darkrai's stats aren't bad at all either. Manaphy is another Pokemon I've been using. So far it's not exactly been very encouraging (it's not very fast, and I got 2HKOed by Specs Rotom-C's Thunder at +4 SpD ...), but with rain as popular as it is it looks like a threat that might work with specialized teams. Lugia and Giratina never cease to amaze me. My physically defensive Giratina actually survived a +3 STAB Dragon Pulse from a CM Giratina to phaze it out, while Lugia lived a +4 Shadow Claw from EK Arceus too. These are super effective hits from crazy attack scores, and they actually survive. Wow! Small wonder Deoxys-A, despite sporting insane offensive prowess, is so uncommon lol. It needs massive hazard support to be able to OHKO all its targets. LO Psycho Boost still does a ton and it's a reasonably good revenge killer, but a sweeper it isn't - something I find it rather sad.
In the meantime, some Ubers seem to have completely disappeared. I haven't seen a single Shaymin-S so far, although I mean to try one myself sometime. Garchomp has been extremely rare, while aside from normal and Ghost Arceus I've yet to see another forme. Scizor, Jirachi, Metagross, Terrakion, Heatran - I simply haven't seen them, no idea if it's just me. Rain is way more common than sun, which is in turn way more common than sand, which is in turn way more common than hail (haven't seen a single hail team, although I have seen one Kyurem). I've faced a few Ho-oh, but with sun as uncommon as it is, there haven't been many. Another Pokemon to try myself.
I've switched and matched more than half my team now and there's still so much to experiment with :)
There're so many strong threats and Pokemon to use in Ubers. Darkrai is one Pokemon I immediately one to try. Sleep is very strong without specific counters, and Darkrai's stats aren't bad at all either. Manaphy is another Pokemon I've been using. So far it's not exactly been very encouraging (it's not very fast, and I got 2HKOed by Specs Rotom-C's Thunder at +4 SpD ...), but with rain as popular as it is it looks like a threat that might work with specialized teams. Lugia and Giratina never cease to amaze me. My physically defensive Giratina actually survived a +3 STAB Dragon Pulse from a CM Giratina to phaze it out, while Lugia lived a +4 Shadow Claw from EK Arceus too. These are super effective hits from crazy attack scores, and they actually survive. Wow! Small wonder Deoxys-A, despite sporting insane offensive prowess, is so uncommon lol. It needs massive hazard support to be able to OHKO all its targets. LO Psycho Boost still does a ton and it's a reasonably good revenge killer, but a sweeper it isn't - something I find it rather sad.
In the meantime, some Ubers seem to have completely disappeared. I haven't seen a single Shaymin-S so far, although I mean to try one myself sometime. Garchomp has been extremely rare, while aside from normal and Ghost Arceus I've yet to see another forme. Scizor, Jirachi, Metagross, Terrakion, Heatran - I simply haven't seen them, no idea if it's just me. Rain is way more common than sun, which is in turn way more common than sand, which is in turn way more common than hail (haven't seen a single hail team, although I have seen one Kyurem). I've faced a few Ho-oh, but with sun as uncommon as it is, there haven't been many. Another Pokemon to try myself.
I've switched and matched more than half my team now and there's still so much to experiment with :)
Go10
Storm Vanguard !
Skymin is frail as hell, weak to SR and there's a lot of priority. Also, Garchomp is completely walled by Arceus, same goes for Zor, Jira and Gross, they're walled all the day by Arceus/Ferrothorn (he'll take a lot from BB/Uturn but can recover with LS). Since rain dominate the metagame and there's almost nothing to counter Kyogre, Sun arent common so Heatran too.
Skymin mainly has his (her?) niche in the Scarf set, outspeeding the tier (only outsped by Scarf Mewtwo, lolScarf Deo-A, and even more lolScarf Deo-S) ties with Scarf Darkrai) and hitting practically everything for a ton of damage, especailly the weather inducers (offensive Kyogre is OHKO'd, nearly all Groudons are OHKO'd) and the flinch shenanigans from Air Slash are always rage-inducing and more effective than you would think. Another thing it has is the ability to destroy pretty much any special wall with a little luck, making the pink blobs and Ferro's Sp. Def pitiful 68% of the time (factoring accuracy).
EDIT: @Go10, I wasn't saying its amazing because of the flinch rate, I'm just saying its a neat little bonus for Shaymin. And I somewhat overestimated the Sp. Def drop's importance, but being able to half -insert wall here- Sp. Def is not something to laugh off, especially with hazards support.
EDIT: @Go10, I wasn't saying its amazing because of the flinch rate, I'm just saying its a neat little bonus for Shaymin. And I somewhat overestimated the Sp. Def drop's importance, but being able to half -insert wall here- Sp. Def is not something to laugh off, especially with hazards support.
Shaymin-S is 127 speed Darkrai is 125 Waterwarrior...
Go10
Storm Vanguard !
Skymin is obviously good, but not as good you're thinking Waterwarrior. Its like saying "Jirachi is good because he can flinch". In Scarf, Lugia, Ferro (yes, 20-25% with air slash), any special wall and Ho-Oh wall it. In subseed, you just have to keep the momentum, and still, Lugia with Whirlwind solve the problem.
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