If you’re wondering why I haven’t been posting as much high-quality content lately, its because my enjoyment for the tier has lowered.
Reason 1: Matchup Fishing
My main issue with the tier is its matchup fishy nature. Throughout my experience fighting some of the best players on the ladder, I
find that for like 55% to 70%, the game is decided on matchups. In this gen its never been easier to 6-0 teams with just a single mon.
Here’s an example.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2128398664?p2
In theory, my opponent’s team has multiple counter measures to Moth, the main one being Future Sight Gking and Sucker Samu, but then I just reveal Tera Dark and it was just over. They may have just preserved their Garg, but there was no telling if it was Tera Dark or the standard Tera Ground.
Surprise tech has always been a thing, but in Gen 9, you could outright lose the game because of it. I’ve even ran into someone using Scarf or Sash Cinderace, just to fuck with Treads leads and Boosters. No reason to run it over ol’ reliable Boots unless you specifically were fishing for HO teams.
There’s something off about it and I couldn’t pinpoint the exact reason why the tier is matchup fishy. The Volc ban eased things but Gen 9 OU still feels like a game of Rock Paper Scissors eerily similar to Gen 5 among other similarities it has with the tier. While it is possible to account for multiple matchups, we run into the next problem with the tier.
Reason 2: Building Difficulty
Teambuilding is always a difficult process of making, testing, and revamping, but SV OU is imo the most difficult to build in. The tier has several fantastic glue mons like Zama, Gambit, Pult, Gking, etc, but with the amount of threats in the tier, it feels difficult to make the most of your slots.
Unless you’re running Stall, HO, or Weather. Most good SV OU teams need to have..
A breaker
Something speedy
Priority cause not having it screws you over most of the time
A rocker
A knock user cause then Boots Spam rolls over you
A Ghost resist cause Pult/Ghold will make your day miserable
A Steel cause Kyurem will ruin you
1 or more pivots cause it makes your life easier
An Electric immune cause Bolt
A Ground immune cause Earthquake and HLR are spooky
A Fairy check
A Wogre check
A Fire resist cause otherwise Cinderace clicks Pyro for free
A way to deal with Tspikes cause of Glimmora
And make sure you have a check to the rest
etc
Oh and if you’re not running Boots spam, HO, or BO, you need hazard control cause you might get 6-0d by Webs.
This doesn’t seem all bad until you realize you often can’t fit everything you need.
Everytime I build something that isn’t HO, I often end up scrapping it or completely reworking it cause there’s so many flaws.
I always end up with same generic team structures like a standard Boots Spam, Cinder/Lando/Gking/Gambit/Zama team, or run BO. Part of all this is contributed to the fact that there’s so many boxes to check and so few options to do so.
Another part is that
Tusk, is not as reliable or splashable as it was in previous metas.
While obviously still fine, it feels awkward to slap on teams. The first reason is that it overlaps with the mons you want to run, mainly Lando and Zama. You could run both but you end up with 2 Water weak/Fairy weak mons with similar roles.
This wouldn’t be a problem if Tusk didn’t lose to 90% of the fucking metagame. The things it does check its inconsistent at doing so. Dnite, Gambit, and G-Fire all Tera through it, Raging Bolt OHKOs Tusk with Pulse if it doesn’t have any bulk investment and 1v1s anyways with Tera Fairy. Guess what, Zama and Lando also check these mons and more with better consistency. Around that point I just say fuck it and either run Lando + Cinder or just run no removal at all.
Tusk has a 4MSS, wanting Bulk Up to actually beat Tera Gambit and G-Fire 1v1, Knock Off, or Rocks. So you end up needing 1 or 2 extra slots just for that. Tusk almost always needs Boots because Webs just 6-0s it anyways, but it would love having Helmet to punish Gambit/Zama/Dnite or Lefties for recovery, which means you need secondary hazard control for Webs anyways. Tusk has a hard time investing in bulk because it needs to power and speed to consistently vs Ghold, hence why the only good Tusk set is offensive. Unless we see a new meta altering set for Tusk that shoots it back up to top 3 status, I consider Tusk to be overrated with a meta that’s unkind to it. Teams that rely on Tusk to spin are difficult to pilot, let alone build, because it doesn’t do enough defensively compared to other Grounds or Zama.
This meta’s issues are problems with no clear solutions. The random movepool cuts and power level being higher than in previous gens made things a mess, but I think there is a direction we can go to make things better. There are two mons I would like to see get suspected.
This is the most broken mon in the tier rn and several players agree. Wogre is the single best breaker in OU off of a great speed tier for its role and having a 0 drawback base 100 power Water STAB that crits for some reason cause fuck balance ig.
You can straight up spam Cudgel most of the time because Water types are scared of you, its free chip vs Dragons, and Wogre can pair itself with mons that punish Grasses who don’t even reliably check it btw besides Amoonguss. Sinistcha dies to +2 Knock and needs to land a burn to beat it, Serperior isn’t real anymore, Rilla takes over 40% from Pwhip and doesn’t OHKO back without Tera, and Wo-Chien dies to U-Turn. Before you say Hydrapple
+2 252 Atk Wellspring Mask Ogerpon-Wellspring Play Rough vs. 244 HP / 0 Def Hydrapple: 410-484 (99 - 116.9%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO
and this shit does nothing back.
You can even run Trailblaze + Encore which 6-0s some offenses.
Suspecting Wogre after or during WCOP is the best course of action rn, because removing it makes checking everything else easier. Wogre’s checks like Dnite, Zama, and Pult are needed for other things, hence they can be preserved in a game-to-game basis.
This is a controversial take, but this shit is broken. The utility sets are fine, there’s several mons in the tier that take advantage of it, but it’s the SD sets that push it overboard. It lacks the immediate power of Wogre or Kyurem but it outlasts all its checks and has plenty of opportunities to come in. Name a longterm check to this……You can’t. Either they don’t punish Gliscor significantly enough, or they get worn down by Knock + hazards. Even Skarm/Corv lose longterm since Gliscor can stay in the game long enough to burn their Roost pp. Gliscor is so tanky on the physical side that it can just dump points into SpD for Hexpult, Moonblasts, and random special hits that otherwise 2HKO you. Your best response to Gliscor is to run Corv + fast mon with Ice moves or bring Encore (or run HO). That is if Gliscor doesn’t decide to just go for the win with Tera Normal or Water or Fairy. This is made harder by the fact you can’t predict if it is SD. You could pivot into something like Wogre, then it just Toxic’s it or sets up hazards. Gliscor is a contributing factor to the MU fishy nature of SV OU, because its matchup vs offense isn’t great but it farms the hell out of Balance and Stall. While Gliscor provides benefits to the tier defensively, but the dynamic it creates harms the meta in the long run.
There are other mons some players have argued for a suspect, but those are the two main ones I think we should get out of the way. I’ve been back and forth with Zama, but imo it fixes more problems in the builder than it creates. Its too soon to act, but we should have this discussion until the time comes to take action.
Stay strong OU
or serperior 
. Tera is still a stupid mechanic, but this Stellar variant with Tera Blast is a nice way to mitigate the BS variance of lategame tera garbage in games that you otherwise have won.
. With Modest, you kill 
with Terablast into earth power. Metronome really gets cooking against fat teams, where you can get free subs vs Gliscor and then go to town.
is the only real counterplay that webs has to cinderace.
. Whether it's an offensive regenerator set like 
