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Genesect is a pretty decent partner for Diancie - it deters Lando-T and opposing Mega Diancie, as well as potentially exploding to open up the foes to a clean with Diamond Storm. I have a team with it that I'm really enjoying right now. Obviously pair with things that beat aegis and ferro, or run Flamethrower of Genesect for a decent lure.
Has anyone had decent success with stall? I was watching a video on Alex Ogloza's youtube channel and he was talking about how stall was used somewhat in vgc early on and when the battle timer was implemented it dropped off. He also said that in formats without time restraint it has potential. So all I've been building over the past couple of days is bad stall lol. If anyone has anything to say or has some suggestions(cores,strategies etc.) other than "I DONT WANT STALL IN DOUBLES 3:" I would love to hear it.
Some other things I want to talk about are Mega Slowbro and Alomomola. Slowbro because I was watching a chimpact video and he was using it in doubles battle spot or some shit and Kyle uploaded something with it today and it's just one of those mons I have a soft spot for(alongside regular Kyurem m-Mawile and many others). Alomomola because while I was trying to build stall I was looking through analysis of mons that I thought could work on stall and found that the pink fish actually had a vgc analysis from a couple years ago and has some cool support moves(wide guard, icy wind, helping hand). So has anyone used these two with any type of success or have any thoughts on them?
Conversation_n initiator deo
Edit: qsns let me know that he dunked on my ass with a stall squad awhile back consisting of Aromatise, Sableye, Lando-T, Chansey, Talon, and Alomomola. qsns is truly the doubles stall master.
I like ferro/suicune/arcanine a ton, pretty solid fwg core that's great at hindering offense. It's usually spikes ferro, resttalk snarl cune, and willo snarl morning sun arcanine.
From my experience, stall really isn't too great. I think you can justify bringing it if you wanna hard ct someone who can't break specific walls, but it's honestly so much more difficult to win games than just using regular offense.
I like ferro/suicune/arcanine a ton, pretty solid fwg core that's great at hindering offense. It's usually spikes ferro, resttalk snarl cune, and willo snarl morning sun arcanine.
From my experience, stall really isn't too great. I think you can justify bringing it if you wanna hard ct someone who can't break specific walls, but it's honestly so much more difficult to win games than just using regular offense.
ferro/suicune/arcanine feels like you're hindering your own offense more than your opponents
i feel like talonflame + keldeo/washtom + ferrothorn/serp is one of the best cores
on the other side though I feel like diancie + jirachi is a super strong core at the moment so i'm looking forward to seeing it getting used a lot during seasonals and maybe even spl.
i still want to see if people are interested in seeing shaymin-sky coming back, it was banned with only a slight number, i think it would be interesting to see whether people would be interested in a skymin retest? personally i'm still really on the edge, but if im saying dumb stuff just tell me lol
I would personally love a skymin retest, but probably for the wrong reasons.I was brand new to the tier when skymin was suspected having less than a week of experience under my belt, so I never actually got to experience the tier at its finest with skymin in it. But as for practical purposes, I really like the meta, and adding skymin back might kinda just shake it up again. So yeah, would I like to see a skymin retest? Sure. Would I beg for one to held? Not at all. I'm certain even if it's possibly being planned, it had low priority as of now, with SPL happening soon.
one of my favourite pokes in this meta and has been for some time. it's typing gives it loads of resistances and it can take on whole rain teams at once. great kanga check as it deals 25% each time it's attacked. I've played in lots of games where my ferro is the last mon against 3/4 other mons and I just leech seed and sit there while they drop one by one. it even hits pretty hard with gyro ball and power whip.
the one drawback is that sometimes it can feel like deadweight against teams. if the enemy is applying you much pressure for ferro to get into its rhythm or against every fire type, ferro cannot stay in as it thrives of chipping away at opposing mons health while dealing some damage to complement it. it also doesn't learn spore. still a great mon though
I think people compare the bulky grasses without really keeping in mind what they are used for. Amoong, ferro and mega venusaur are all grass types that can take hits. That doesnt mean that they have the same jobs. Ferro is a win condition, a mon that can take repeated hits from a ton of pokemon and stall them all to death with leech seed once your team has cleared out the opposing checks to it. Amoong is a utility grass, the spreads sleep and rage powders to buy turns for your heavy hitters. A good way to understand this is through there items. The way to get value out of lefties, imo ferros best item, is too keep amassing leftovers over a long enough period that it outweighs the potential sitrus berry boost, ie >= 4 turns. In order to truly do its job as a win condition, ferro needs to be able to be on the field a long time. Amoong, by contrast, can do its job in one or two turns, because even if it just gets off a rage powder, spore, or two, this can make all the difference in a game. An amoong that dies in two turns can, and usually will, still have provided a large amount of value, where a ferrothorn probably wont. Amoong is an early game poke where ferro is a late game poke.
Mega venu is just a bad combination of the two. Cant wall things like ferro can. Cant offer the utility that amoong can. Isnt powerful enough to be a bulky slow trick room attacker like abomasnow. Is just kinda mediocre at everything. I feel like the people who defend mega venu in the viability thread (sorry for kinda blending the two threads) dont really understand this. Whatever you want mega venu to be doing, there is an option that thoroughly outclasses it. Its actually sort of a lot like garchomp in the fact that it combines a few nice features of a couple of different common mons (ground type with fire resist vs utility grass plus wall), but the result is less than the sum of its parts in that like garchomp, while it can fill multiple roles, it does all of them at substantially less quality than the more popular alternatives.
I think people compare the bulky grasses without really keeping in mind what they are used for. Amoong, ferro and mega venusaur are all grass types that can take hits. That doesnt mean that they have the same jobs. Ferro is a win condition, a mon that can take repeated hits from a ton of pokemon and stall them all to death with leech seed once your team has cleared out the opposing checks to it. Amoong is a utility grass, the spreads sleep and rage powders to buy turns for your heavy hitters. A good way to understand this is through there items. The way to get value out of lefties, imo ferros best item, is too keep amassing leftovers over a long enough period that it outweighs the potential sitrus berry boost, ie >= 4 turns. In order to truly do its job as a win condition, ferro needs to be able to be on the field a long time.
Lum is honestly still the best item on Ferrothorn. This allows it to more confidently switch in against Water types (whereas Leftovers Ferro would fear a Scald burn and be largely neutered), be a much better Rotom-W check, avoid freezes from Kyurem-B, and mess with the dickweeds on ladder who TWave it turn one.
Amoong, by contrast, can do its job in one or two turns, because even if it just gets off a rage powder, spore, or two, this can make all the difference in a game. An amoong that dies in two turns can, and usually will, still have provided a large amount of value, where a ferrothorn probably wont.
Are you sacking your Amoonguss to Talon turn 3 every game? Amoonguss has far better sustain than Ferrothorn thanks to Regenerator and (against certain targets) Giga Drain. Regenerator is a big part of why Amoonguss has a tendency to leave the field after a few turns; rather than let itself die, it will usually do what's needed in a turn or two and get out to do it again later.
Mega venu is just a bad combination of the two. Cant wall things like ferro can. Cant offer the utility that amoong can. Isnt powerful enough to be a bulky slow trick room attacker like abomasnow. Is just kinda mediocre at everything. I feel like the people who defend mega venu in the viability thread (sorry for kinda blending the two threads) dont really understand this. Whatever you want mega venu to be doing, there is an option that thoroughly outclasses it. Its actually sort of a lot like garchomp in the fact that it combines a few nice features of a couple of different common mons (ground type with fire resist vs utility grass plus wall), but the result is less than the sum of its parts in that like garchomp, while it can fill multiple roles, it does all of them at substantially less quality than the more popular alternatives.
I wouldn't say it's a "bad combination of the two" when it's a greater offensive threat than either one (Sludge Bomb is hella). It's pretty mediocre and sort of like Garchomp I agree, but it still has some merit to it.
Lum is honestly still the best item on Ferrothorn. This allows it to more confidently switch in against Water types (whereas Leftovers Ferro would fear a Scald burn and be largely neutered), be a much better Rotom-W check, avoid freezes from Kyurem-B, and mess with the dickweeds on ladder who TWave it turn one.
Are you sacking your Amoonguss to Talon turn 3 every game? Amoonguss has far better sustain than Ferrothorn thanks to Regenerator and (against certain targets) Giga Drain. Regenerator is a big part of why Amoonguss has a tendency to leave the field after a few turns; rather than let itself die, it will usually do what's needed in a turn or two and get out to do it again later.
I wouldn't say it's a "bad combination of the two" when it's a greater offensive threat than either one (Sludge Bomb is hella). It's pretty mediocre and sort of like Garchomp I agree, but it still has some merit to it.
Mm, ok granted I undersold regenerator a lot, but the point I was trying to make is that amoong can make a huge impact in just one turn or two turns whereas ferro needs time to rack up chip damage, not that amoong doesnt have survivability, which it certainly can. This is just discussing their roles philisophically, and I dont think anyone would disagree with the conclusions.
As far as the item goes, if you are running lum to get around random ice beam freezes and t waves, you are wasting the potential of an item slot. The scald point is somewhat valid, but the problem is that there are really only two really common mons that commonly carry scald: keldeo and toed. Switching ferro into keldeo is a bad plan in general, and Ferro would much rather have lefties against a rain team, because it would greatly aid in ferros job in walling the whole team to hell and back and sapping them all dry with leech seed. This leaves only rotom. Giving an item to ferro so it can ohko this one reeks of overspecificness.
This is all to say that lum has selective uses, and can make an impact on some games. Lefties make an impact every single game. Ferro is primarily a win condition, not a physical attacker, and I feel that using an item that supports it in the goal of being a win condition is the best use of its talents.
for pokemon like ferro, kyube, heatran that like to get into situations where they can sit on the field, lefties is still really fucking good. The bonus hp is really noticeable once you start living certain 2hkos, once the recovery starts stacking up, etc, while I'd also simultaneously argue that, with Rotom-wash falling out, there's little reason to use lum anymore. Rocky Helmet is cool but I could see lefties being standard (no idea what qualifies as standard atm. Maybe lum)
The highlight of Amoonguss is its rotational power. I come in, soak hits, rotate out after they switch to their Amoonguss counters, and, on a whole, have gotten net momentum (in a sense). Obviously it's harder to put into words than that, but yes Amoonguss' ability to swing around and come back later at almost full HP is noticeable for sure.
Venusaur isn't really a bad combination of the two, it's more like (in my experience) "Hi I'm Ferrothorn but with better resists on the whole". It's an interesting mega for sure but I think the combination of shitloads of sub tran/kyube and the presence of Latios/Talonflame/Kang are what are forcing it out atm.
On a different tangent, if anything, Skymin's unban has taught me to look past specific "skymin beats x, y beats skymin" thought processes which I think was the focus of the suspect discussion to broadening my scope to looking at how Skymin effected teambuilding and how it compares to other available things that can attempt to fill its role. On a whole, this leap has helped me notice how certain things effect teambuilding considerations. For example, I was thinking the other day how dominantly good landot has been (I'll be the first to admit that I hate using it and hate choicelocking, but hey it's good/popular) and how this might effect teambuilding with Diancie, cuz, well, you can't use both LandoT and Diancie (well you can but the synergy doesn't feel good tbh) and LandoT is good, and how this might effect the way that Diancie teams commonly end up dfs fwg rather than more chalk-looking compositions, because this is practically impossible to do with Diancie. Also other distasteful synergies such as Kang + Aegis, to name some, and how certain things rising in the meta might mean the fall of the other, even if the matchup itself isn't the reason but more the teambuilding considerations that have to be made. This is something I'd love to see come up more in the upcoming skymin resuspect that we are probably getting, at least according to kami
Unrelated to Skymin, I've started thinking more about "What am I overly prepared for" in teambuilding rather than "what am I threatened by", as I think a lot of teambuilding is letting aspects of your team cover certain weaknesses, letting others flourish. If I'm overly prepared for talon, I might consider Keldeo heavily, which is really good and only really inhibited by latios/talon mus (and amoonguss but I'm not going to list all the checks to keld here you get the point). Mons generally tend to cover opposing threats if you can cover for their checks anyways, imo, and this is easier and keeps things more relevant to "what top tier threats can I put" rather than "what am I threatened by" which I find often leads me into overly considering certain threats during teambuliding, and then realizing "oh I forgot this" or ending up just using bad sets due to being over-obsessed with checking opposing specific threats. Obviously one should considering opposing threats while building, but I've been finding myself building a solid core of 4/5 mons then doing that.
Venusaur isn't really a bad combination of the two, it's more like (in my experience) "Hi I'm Ferrothorn but with better resists on the whole". It's an interesting mega for sure but I think the combination of shitloads of sub tran/kyube and the presence of Latios/Talonflame/Kang are what are forcing it out atm.
Oh I would say the opposite, the steel resists for ferrothorn are huge. In tier 1, ferro has a better matchup with kang and a slightly better matchup against diancie, where venusaur has a better matchup against keldeo and a slightly better matchup against charizard, meaning the resists are a wash in tier 1. In tier 1.5, ferrothorn has a better matchup against jirachi, kyub, latios and usually hydreigon. Venusaur has a better matchup against heatran. Again, you wouldnt say that venu has better resists even if you disagree with some of these. But where ferro really distinguishes itself from venu as a wall is against neutral things, like bisharp in lando, where ferro's item, ability, and better bulk (I would classify physical bulk as slightly more important for them, though not by a lot) allow it to wall them more easily. This is why I would categorize ferro as a better wall than venu, because I would say ferro has to be targeted more by super effective moves where venu gets overwhelmed by stronger neutral attacks easier. The kang matchup really highlights this, as the steel typing just allows it to hard switch into so much more. Considering the fact that venusaur also takes the mega slot, and its just hard to justify it over ferro.
Because of being busy with school and playing other games, I haven't played much since the summer, but I'd like to come back and play again. What's good and what's popular in today's metagame? I've lurked a bit in some other threads (VR, Sample Teams), but I decided the best way to get answers like this is to actually start a discussion and see what people have to say.
Because of being busy with school and playing other games, I haven't played much since the summer, but I'd like to come back and play again. What's good and what's popular in today's metagame? I've lurked a bit in some other threads (VR, Sample Teams), but I decided the best way to get answers like this is to actually start a discussion and see what people have to say.
a good indicator would probably be the fall seasonal stats, in which you can see mega-kangaskhan is still the most common pokemon, together with talonflame, landorus-therian etc. mega-diancie is also really popular nowadays
note that diancie's winrate is lower than it should be because normal diancie stats are also with that stat, I think Stratos or Level 51 said there were 9 normal diancie uses all of which lost
edit: oh yeah it beat me once that shit was traumatizing
no there isn't, the whole purpose of the move is to luck your way to a win that was probably undeserved anyway, which is worse than air slash flinches (especially on the faster prankster mons ._.)
4 2 0 B L A Z E I T
anyway, I wanted to ask you guys how you felt about Jirachi+Diancie. I, personally, fucking hate it, and I blame most of it on Jirachi.
Jirachi's defensive coverage for Diancie is just fucking ridiculous
Like basically the only thing that both are weak to is Earthquake, and almost every EQ user in the game has big issues with Mega Diancie. The only one that appears to not lose to diancie+jirachi is Landorus-T with a scarf, which is sort of ridiculous because I feel myself only winning with teams that I've slapped Lando-t onto lately.
Having to face redirection+Diancie is fine by me. What's not fine by me is facing redirecting steel+Diancie. It's like having to face this whole helpless mence+jirachi complex but just ever so slightly easier to deal with. I've never really liked it to begin with, but when people started spamming jirachi+diancie all the time I could not see myself winning without Lando-T unless it was like rain with kingdra or mega pert, or if it was fire type+lots of speed control just to not lose to diancie.
Jirachi was the biggest factor in banning mence iirc, and I don't want that shit to walk again and just make something else look broken.
This is further supported by the fact that Jirachi has like few weaknesses and a large amount of key resists that make it spectacular at making almost everything stupidly annoying but right now diancie+jirachi is just fucking dumb.
idk about you but I seriously struggle with killing the Jirachi at all, and then you have something else that's killing your mons to deal with, and in the case of Diancie it's like bl impossible to beat by the time it kills what it needs to kill. I mean even looking at what Jirachi has to cover
kangaskhan
charizard
even keldeo I guess if we want to stick with tier 1
it's just too flexible :|
It proves itself as the ultimate support. It provides speed control, has great natural bulk, has very useful resists and easy to cover weaknesses, redirection, supportive flinches, and a move that can OHKO diancie and really just heavily wound all fairies in general. The only type of situation where Jirachi isn't just annoying af is when you have a zard y+lando-t staring it down, and one loses to diancie while both lose to like any bulky water at all (ESPECIALLY rain), and neither of the two like opposing lando-t at all. Any attempt to dismantle the other threats is ruined by bringing in Jirachi and redirecting venusaur's attacks if you actually have a venu on your sun team (it's on almost every single one, but some just dont have it).
This mon is also just too extremely easy to have finish up late game, especially considering it's hard as fuck to kill. A very very very long list of mons just literally cannot touch it which is sort of bullshit considering it redirects all attacks to it, such as deo-a, kangaskhan, offensive thundurus, keldeo, latios, kyurem-b, cresselia, serp, rain has some minor issues, amoonguss, azumarill, breloom, ferrothorn, gardevoir, metagross, rotom-w, suicune, hell even opposing diancie (some listed beat it 1v1 but most of the ones that win 1v1 vs jirachi lose to diancie hard). It takes way too much to deal w/ this thing.
I guess I don't really have much else to say about jirachi being broken, the flinches are annoying sometimes as well but it really doesn't need serene grace to get on my nerves this bad.
So what do you guys think? Am I just crazy and I need to learn how to play the game or am I right? Honest question, because I don't want to deal w/ not knowing how to deal with this outside of 1 or 2 things.
Ever heard of bisharp, or aegislash, or talonflame? Learn how to use them. First kill Jirachi with one of them, support them with wide guard or redirect if you have to. Then hit diancie with a steel move.
