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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4
- Thread starter TPP
- Start date
Banning tera in only OU would be reasonable but that kind of opens the whole tiering typically is a trickle down effect rather than one that bans with the effect trickling up which would be messy, but I'm kind of on board with this idea since tera issues are most apparent at high power levels
Legit this is probably the best compromise we came up with honestly but like it still creates the issue of it being an exception to tiering consistency
???? VGC doesn't have a usage limit? There was one ruleset during the pandemic years in which the top 10 Pokemon in the singles and doubles ladders were banned, but no major tournaments happened at the time. The whole point was to just create something different for people to play and wasn't meant to be taken too seriously, much like the unrestricted mythical format after Worlds in 2022. I can't see it happening again in VGC.
Furthermore, this isn't necessarily a good thing in OU. Pokemon that are integral to keep the tier together (Great Tusk, Lando, etc.) could catch strays and lead to even worse formats.
Mane and Spectrier very funny though haha. Good joke.
What do people think of the idea of banning Ivy Cudgel over Waterpon?
I don't want to rehash my opinion of Wellspring too much, but I must admit that I prefer facing that with its relatively higher predictability in this Tera meta than a lot of other borderline threats that have been discussed since at least DLC 2. I know what the Tera is, the item, and usually like 3 of the 4 moves. Predictability doesn't stop brokenness, but for me who plays mostly balance or offensive teams, it's nicer to play around than some of the others.
Meanwhile, the already high BP and elevated crit chance make for some real cheese potential for getting past would be checks. I think this move is the single most broken thing about the entire Ogerpon family.
I know what people will say: But it isn't broken on Grasspon or Cornerstone.
Except I think Rock Bonk is actually busted, too. A 100% accurate rock based move with 100 BP and elevated crit chance, that also gets powered up by the mask item and maybe even further by Tera. Not a ton switches into both Rock and Grass STAB. Of the 6 OU rated Steel types, only Ghold and Gambit aren't neutral to one of the two. Even then, Oger gets Knock Off and Fighting coverage if it wants. To me, there is a very good chance Cornerstone rolls if Wellspring goes and we are having a somewhat similar discussion since the STABs are just as hard to switch into.
We already know that Cudgel is broken on Hearthflame and probably Wellspring, too. The case can probably be made that it's the move which is most problematic.
Of course, removing a key STAB would be a big nerf without key alternatives. Wellspring would need to run Tera Blast and Tera every time to use water moves. Cornerstone would need to do that or run the low power Rock Tomb. Without running any calcs, I suspect an 80 BP move with all those power boosts would still be usable. The problem would be if you didn't Tera with it in that particular game.
I think Grasspon might still be ok since it gets Wood Hammer and other Grass moves, but obviously, there would be drawbacks like recoil, accuracy, or low BP to every decision for each potential replacement move.
I don't want to rehash my opinion of Wellspring too much, but I must admit that I prefer facing that with its relatively higher predictability in this Tera meta than a lot of other borderline threats that have been discussed since at least DLC 2. I know what the Tera is, the item, and usually like 3 of the 4 moves. Predictability doesn't stop brokenness, but for me who plays mostly balance or offensive teams, it's nicer to play around than some of the others.
Meanwhile, the already high BP and elevated crit chance make for some real cheese potential for getting past would be checks. I think this move is the single most broken thing about the entire Ogerpon family.
I know what people will say: But it isn't broken on Grasspon or Cornerstone.
Except I think Rock Bonk is actually busted, too. A 100% accurate rock based move with 100 BP and elevated crit chance, that also gets powered up by the mask item and maybe even further by Tera. Not a ton switches into both Rock and Grass STAB. Of the 6 OU rated Steel types, only Ghold and Gambit aren't neutral to one of the two. Even then, Oger gets Knock Off and Fighting coverage if it wants. To me, there is a very good chance Cornerstone rolls if Wellspring goes and we are having a somewhat similar discussion since the STABs are just as hard to switch into.
We already know that Cudgel is broken on Hearthflame and probably Wellspring, too. The case can probably be made that it's the move which is most problematic.
Of course, removing a key STAB would be a big nerf without key alternatives. Wellspring would need to run Tera Blast and Tera every time to use water moves. Cornerstone would need to do that or run the low power Rock Tomb. Without running any calcs, I suspect an 80 BP move with all those power boosts would still be usable. The problem would be if you didn't Tera with it in that particular game.
I think Grasspon might still be ok since it gets Wood Hammer and other Grass moves, but obviously, there would be drawbacks like recoil, accuracy, or low BP to every decision for each potential replacement move.
Except Cudgel is not "broken" on either of them. They're elevated by the Mask boost and further Tera boosts, and are also amde potent by their good speed tiers for Balance breakers. Rock-Cudgel is technically more threatening than Water, but it is on a pokemon with significantly smaller defensive utility and thus requires more to get going both in battle and the builder. It's a good mon but it' not some cracked beast. There's a lot more nuance to what makes Wellspring a broken pokemon than just "high BP move that can crit". Its impressive defensive utility for such an offensive leaning pokemon is what helps make it so potent and difficult to stop on top of that.
Banning Cudgel is a ridiculously silly idea when two of its users are nowhere near broken, one of them is in Ubers (and was broken more due to its post Tera ability more than anything), while its main abuser is broken for multiple reasons beyond one move.
We don't ban parts of Pokemon. This is why Smogon didn't ban Speed Boost on Blaziken in old gens. It is a non-starter to ban Ivy Cudgel when it isn't fundamentally the reason for any brokenness of the Ogerpon forms, of which two are not even broken (Base Ogerpon and the Cornerstone form) abusers of the move.
For a move ban to be considered, the bar is higher, and you'd have to show why it breaks the vast majority of the users of the move and would conceivably be broken on anything even remotely viable. This bar is not met with the alternative Ogerpon forms. The kit of the alternative Ogerpon forms are also innately tied to the mask boosts that give them a 1.2x multiplier to all damage-dealing moves. It's clearly how Hearthflame and Wellspring's entire design together that makes them broken rather than just a move. I could be wrong, but I think Ivy Cudgel fails on anything that's not Ogerpon even in Balanced Hackmons, so that's another reason you can't generalize Ivy Cudgel as being some broken move that needs to be banned since it's the interaction with the mask alongside other factors that make Hearthflame absolutely broken and Wellspring potentially broken.
For a move ban to be considered, the bar is higher, and you'd have to show why it breaks the vast majority of the users of the move and would conceivably be broken on anything even remotely viable. This bar is not met with the alternative Ogerpon forms. The kit of the alternative Ogerpon forms are also innately tied to the mask boosts that give them a 1.2x multiplier to all damage-dealing moves. It's clearly how Hearthflame and Wellspring's entire design together that makes them broken rather than just a move. I could be wrong, but I think Ivy Cudgel fails on anything that's not Ogerpon even in Balanced Hackmons, so that's another reason you can't generalize Ivy Cudgel as being some broken move that needs to be banned since it's the interaction with the mask alongside other factors that make Hearthflame absolutely broken and Wellspring potentially broken.
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it'd be reasonable as an om. in fact, i'd actually love to see this as an om. but it can't work in the main tier. consider a mon like garganacl that's really good with tera and would be significantly worse without it. it starts out in uu or wherever it is these days and it's able to tera, but then it rises up to ou because it's legitimately good (it does that every so often). but then it loses its ability to tera, so everyone stops running it and it drops back down to uu. but then it regains the ability to tera and then everyone puts it back on their teams, and so on and so forth. a similar case would likely happen with serperior and other borderline-ou tera-reliant mons. and don't get me started on regieleki—if it's ou, it'd be balanced and not particularly good, but if (or rather, when) it drops to uu it suddenly becomes ubers-worthy, but then we'd have to have a conversation about dropping it down from ubers into ou until the next tier shift because it is balanced when it's in ou after all, etc etc. it's just not workable. and not that this matters to ou tiering, but this would put uu into truly horrific and volatile state
Except neither Rockpon nor Grasspon are broken with it.
Grass/Rock is considerably worse than Grass/Water defensively
(Gras/Rock)
(Grass/Water)
Add to this that Rockpon is easier to pivot around with physically bulky mons like Lando, Zama, etc than Wogre and I cannot see how this would be broken in a post-Wogre meta.
Deciding the order of suspects is futile without survey results. Finch said a survey will come out in ~2ish weeks so can we just, like, wait till then?
Well, not all discussion has to end in results. It's fun to talk about the game, no need to abandon the thread until surveys drop
I’m not trying to shut down discussion and hope I didn’t come off that way. I just want to point out that “X mon should be suspected before Y” depends on community opinion in the polls. The mon with the highest survey score gets suspected first. Arguing the order of suspects is futile without survey data. Because that’s the only way to discern general and qualified opinion. What you see in the comments of this thread tends to not be representative due to a variety of selection biases. There’s even been many cases when the qualified voter poll ran quite different from the sentiments in the forums.
On a whim today I threw CB on Zama and kinda just clicked Close Combat on a lot of things. Not only did this work disturbingly well, it was equally upsetting for me to watch a Tusk take 50% on switch in. With that being said, also very satisfying in a power high way
youre 100% right imo, when im thrown to the 1400s its always a battle of choosing if i play with an actual team and get killed cuz i couldnt break straf berry ice beam hurricane eq roost dragonite, or play a bs hyperoffense team and get cooked by someone using an actual team that can actually deal with it, truly is the wild wild west and at least on high ladder theres less fringe mons with random sets unless a youtubers recording a video or something..Just my thoughts though as someone whos been in 1400-1500 hell for a Long while though
Best course is to just play with whatever actual team is your favorite to use. You can never prepare for everything and there will always be games you can't win based on matchup. Ladder cheese is by definition uncommon so it's not something to worry about or prepare for. As long as your are winning more games than you are losing you will rise, albeit slowly. Best way to do that is of course with a team you enjoy and that is generally strong in the meta.
Pokemon of The Week!!!
Thanks once again for the success of the last Pokemon. Before analyzing our next Pokemon, is there anything you guys believe I should add or do to improve this series? Like an extra section or something as an example. I just wanna make sure I produce the best product I can and give a fun experience to people. Moving from that, after the last vote, a certain three-headed fellow won. One of my fav pseudo in existence. A Pokemon that I genuinely wish was better and will call horrendous things from this moment on.
Hydreigon Nasty Plot!
I will be straight up honest with you that Hydreigon is lack of a better word, shit in this tier. With a stale, 98-base speed nasty plot Hydregion often fails to be a fast enough threat and is outsped by everything imaginable in OU. Its only success was before Pokemon Home DLC where some type of miracle from god made it OU for a bit. Until afterward nature healed and made it go burn in UU to eventually rot in RUBL, where it remains to this day. Hydregion's main flaw as an offensive threat isn't just its pitiful speed tier but also being outclassed in every way by
. Big and scary Pokemon like 
, and everything dam else in this tier destroys any hopes of a Hydregion ever doing anything in a game. Making an offensive nasty plot all by set work on something like balance or just HO is just a lost cause when I saw this. This is also not bringing up the point that 
is better in every way with a better speed tier and coverage and better breaking power. So only one playstyle could shred any type of hope on Fraudregion. STICKY WEBS.
Team Building Experience
Working around Hydregion I immediately used this set and pared it up with Ribombee. With this core, I could fix Hydregion's main issue of speed and finally allow it to become a faster threat. A sub-variant was firstly used due to my belief that dragon/ dark would be enough. It was not. The stabs types were walled by
and way more. Instead of opting for the obvious flash cannon, I decided on running focus blast. This was all mainly due to my hatred for Kambit and because flash cannon still did barely anything to unaware and . This core ofc needs the most basic ass cookie cutter mon that I've never used this generation: Gholdengo
Originally it was a basic np, shadow ball, make it rain, and recover set but with testing I found boots zama to overwhelm the team/ i instead just chose Thunderwave to allow my other Pokemon to outspeed and deal with it on their own. Ofc this mons main purpose was just to block spin but using it surprisingly brought some much-needed defense to the team whether it was
or 
i
Ofc with Hydregion around, I wanted to add a mon which although it is great, is typically held back by its speed to work well Hydregion defensively and help out against special walls that Hydregion loses to. Mainly
and 
which both lose pre-tera to tera ghost psychic noise. I also appreciated Prim way of counter-leading cheeky 
into thinking they can spin freely against me and destroy unprepared Sun teams.
I won't put pictures because they weren't a big add, but I also added a and 
for goof physical attackers for the team
Overall thoughts and Opinions
When doing Pokemon Of The Week so far, I have enjoyed using both
(which was surprisingly great) on HO and AV
(which is just a worse glowking but still great), but never have I used I despised a pokemon so much. I thought it could work but despite web support, it still underperformed to my liking. With boot spam, 
, 
existing, it's much harder to use the web than I had thought. There are ways around it such as me using for cinderace and tera steel for glim but it still wasn't that ideal. Without any webs, Hydregion just didn't bring enough value to the team and just got OHKO by everything, and even with webs, it still lost to mixed and pretty easily At least my gouging fire or prim were good even if there were no webs just due to how good they are. From this experience, I will never ever touch Hydregion again but will experiment with webs to see if I can bring out it's full potential
Side Notes: Funny enough, my goat Pinkacross had a live stream where he made a hazard stack balance team all around Hydregion around the time I was making my webs team. It was fun to watch and I recommend giving it a watch.
https://www.youtube.com/live/4U4jF5GzjZ4?si=amvaqDMmyETlDHA0
VOTING TIME
Time for the next Pokemon :D
Rules:
1. These sets are considered to change but the main idea will remain. Meaning I may replace a move on a pokemon but still keep the main idea
2. To vote each pokemon will be assigned an emote (wow, haha, sad, etc.) said right after there title with a colon. You will emote with the one you want next on the post next week. By the end of tomorrow of this time, whoever receives the most, will become a team and I will make a post like this one once again like next week.
- Heavy Duty Boots Utility Walking Wake
: Emote Wow
- Swords Dance Iron Leaves
: Emote Sad
- Support/ Offensive Ogerpon
: Emote Angry
Thank you all again :D.
Thanks once again for the success of the last Pokemon. Before analyzing our next Pokemon, is there anything you guys believe I should add or do to improve this series? Like an extra section or something as an example. I just wanna make sure I produce the best product I can and give a fun experience to people. Moving from that, after the last vote, a certain three-headed fellow won. One of my fav pseudo in existence. A Pokemon that I genuinely wish was better and will call horrendous things from this moment on.
Hydreigon Nasty Plot!
I will be straight up honest with you that Hydreigon is lack of a better word, shit in this tier. With a stale, 98-base speed nasty plot Hydregion often fails to be a fast enough threat and is outsped by everything imaginable in OU. Its only success was before Pokemon Home DLC where some type of miracle from god made it OU for a bit. Until afterward nature healed and made it go burn in UU to eventually rot in RUBL, where it remains to this day. Hydregion's main flaw as an offensive threat isn't just its pitiful speed tier but also being outclassed in every way by
. Big and scary Pokemon like , and everything dam else in this tier destroys any hopes of a Hydregion ever doing anything in a game. Making an offensive nasty plot all by set work on something like balance or just HO is just a lost cause when I saw this. This is also not bringing up the point that is better in every way with a better speed tier and coverage and better breaking power. So only one playstyle could shred any type of hope on Fraudregion. STICKY WEBS.Team Building Experience
Working around Hydregion I immediately used this set and pared it up with Ribombee. With this core, I could fix Hydregion's main issue of speed and finally allow it to become a faster threat. A sub-variant was firstly used due to my belief that dragon/ dark would be enough. It was not. The stabs types were walled by
and way more. Instead of opting for the obvious flash cannon, I decided on running focus blast. This was all mainly due to my hatred for Kambit and because flash cannon still did barely anything to unaware and . This core ofc needs the most basic ass cookie cutter mon that I've never used this generation: GholdengoOriginally it was a basic np, shadow ball, make it rain, and recover set but with testing I found boots zama to overwhelm the team/ i instead just chose Thunderwave to allow my other Pokemon to outspeed and deal with it on their own. Ofc this mons main purpose was just to block spin but using it surprisingly brought some much-needed defense to the team whether it was
or iOfc with Hydregion around, I wanted to add a mon which although it is great, is typically held back by its speed to work well Hydregion defensively and help out against special walls that Hydregion loses to. Mainly
and which both lose pre-tera to tera ghost psychic noise. I also appreciated Prim way of counter-leading cheeky into thinking they can spin freely against me and destroy unprepared Sun teams.I won't put pictures because they weren't a big add, but I also added a
and for goof physical attackers for the teamOverall thoughts and Opinions
When doing Pokemon Of The Week so far, I have enjoyed using both
(which was surprisingly great) on HO and AV (which is just a worse glowking but still great), but never have I used I despised a pokemon so much. I thought it could work but despite web support, it still underperformed to my liking. With boot spam, , existing, it's much harder to use the web than I had thought. There are ways around it such as me using for cinderace and tera steel for glim but it still wasn't that ideal. Without any webs, Hydregion just didn't bring enough value to the team and just got OHKO by everything, and even with webs, it still lost to mixed and pretty easily At least my gouging fire or prim were good even if there were no webs just due to how good they are. From this experience, I will never ever touch Hydregion again but will experiment with webs to see if I can bring out it's full potentialSide Notes: Funny enough, my goat Pinkacross had a live stream where he made a hazard stack balance team all around Hydregion around the time I was making my webs team. It was fun to watch and I recommend giving it a watch.
https://www.youtube.com/live/4U4jF5GzjZ4?si=amvaqDMmyETlDHA0
VOTING TIME
Time for the next Pokemon :D
Rules:
1. These sets are considered to change but the main idea will remain. Meaning I may replace a move on a pokemon but still keep the main idea
2. To vote each pokemon will be assigned an emote (wow, haha, sad, etc.) said right after there title with a colon. You will emote with the one you want next on the post next week. By the end of tomorrow of this time, whoever receives the most, will become a team and I will make a post like this one once again like next week.
- Heavy Duty Boots Utility Walking Wake
: Emote Wow
- Swords Dance Iron Leaves
: Emote Sad
- Support/ Offensive Ogerpon
: Emote Angry
Thank you all again :D.
Attachments
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Btw I lost so much elo from Hydregion which is why I added hated it throughout my post.
Pokemon of The Week!!!
Thanks once again for the success of the last Pokemon. Before analyzing our next Pokemon, is there anything you guys believe I should add or do to improve this series? Like an extra section or something as an example. I just wanna make sure I produce the best product I can and give a fun experience to people. Moving from that, after the last vote, a certain three-headed fellow won. One of my fav pseudo in existence. A Pokemon that I genuinely wish was better and will call horrendous things from this moment on.
Hydreigon Nasty Plot!
View attachment 638539
I will be straight up honest with you that Hydreigon is lack of a better word, shit in this tier. With a stale, 98-base speed nasty plot Hydregion often fails to be a fast enough threat and is outsped by everything imaginable in OU. Its only success was before Pokemon Home DLC where some type of miracle from god made it OU for a bit. Until afterward nature healed and made it go burn in UU to eventually rot in RUBL, where it remains to this day. Hydregion's main flaw as an offensive threat isn't just its pitiful speed tier but also being outclassed in every way by
Hey, nice post. It’s cool you’re trying out Hydreigon. I don’t necessarily think its biggest competitor is Moon because they fullfill different roles: Moon being a physical sweeper and knock spreader and Hydra being a special breaker. The main mon that invalidates Hydreigon as a Dark type special breaker is Darkrai, IMO. Due to being light years faster and having better coverage. Before Darkrai dropped, Hydreigon saw some use as a breaker that was strong vs balance. But Darkrai almost completely stole that role.
Regarding Hydreigon sets, I would drop Dragon Pulse. It doesn’t really accomplish anything as it’s not good coverage and Hydreigon will already beat most Dragons with Tera Steel. Hydreigon really wants three attacks: Dark Pulse, Flash Cannon for Fairies, and Focus Miss for Gambit/Ting Lu/Hamurott. For the last slot I would pick either Nasty Plot or Sub because you really need all three attacks to be an effective balance breaker. For what it’s worth, Dark + Steel + Fighting isn’t resisted by a single mon in OU.
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not on the table
if you want a detailed explanation, feel free to PM/VM me -- i can exand here in ~16 hours if needed, too
I don't know if you're serious or baiting, but no post including Flutter Mane is going to be considered serious here
On a serious note tho, how about a Magearna re-test? We haven't retested it in DLC2 and it is THE Kyurem counter, plus SP ain't really a strategy anymore these days in OU
Horrible idea. Magearna is extremely broken with all the buffs it received in Gen 8, and now it can Tera too? Keep this thing locked away for the rest of the generation.
252 SpA Choice Specs Kyurem Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Magearna: 192-228 (52.7 - 62.6%) -- 99.6% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery mage is not bulky enough to take earth power, even if av it still gets ruined by spikes.
Stored Powers only real issue is suboptimal users, Magearna would definitely not be a suboptimal user. I do think the metagame would just be straight up better with a nerfed Magearna however the council + tiering admins definitely won't allow that.
Well, it seems the reception for banning Cudgel over Wellspring isn't there. My opinion is still that the move is also broken on Cornerstone, making it broken on 3/4ths of the mons who get it. But I get that this must be minority opinion.
I also believe that Cornerstone would see a huge rise in usage if Wellspring was banned, though this is pure theory mon until and unless it actually happens. Wellspring has better defensive utility and is more splashable for various teams, but I do think that Cornerstone is underrated both on power and defensive utility with the Def boost and sturdy.
I can already see many people don't agree with me on this. That's fine. This isn't by any means close to a hill I would die on. I was mostly just curious at this stage. A ban for Wellspring could potentially have other benefits, such as opening up the way for Aqua Jet and maybe more offensive Water types.
While I think you make a lot of good points here, those two seem to be the exceptions that don't get hit as hard. Things like Corv, Tusk, Dozo, and even Gouging Fire still get hit for significant damage. Even so, Lando-T and Zama do take significant neutral damage from Rock or Grass STAB respectively. Lando doesn't like chip and Zama doesn't like coming in too much and losing its defense boost.
I just saw this and thank you for the offer. I think I will decline for now since I more or less know what the logic is, at least if it relates to Cornerstone not being seen as broken and the likely suspect process for Wellspring.
I also believe that Cornerstone would see a huge rise in usage if Wellspring was banned, though this is pure theory mon until and unless it actually happens. Wellspring has better defensive utility and is more splashable for various teams, but I do think that Cornerstone is underrated both on power and defensive utility with the Def boost and sturdy.
I can already see many people don't agree with me on this. That's fine. This isn't by any means close to a hill I would die on. I was mostly just curious at this stage. A ban for Wellspring could potentially have other benefits, such as opening up the way for Aqua Jet and maybe more offensive Water types.
While I think you make a lot of good points here, those two seem to be the exceptions that don't get hit as hard. Things like Corv, Tusk, Dozo, and even Gouging Fire still get hit for significant damage. Even so, Lando-T and Zama do take significant neutral damage from Rock or Grass STAB respectively. Lando doesn't like chip and Zama doesn't like coming in too much and losing its defense boost.
I just saw this and thank you for the offer. I think I will decline for now since I more or less know what the logic is, at least if it relates to Cornerstone not being seen as broken and the likely suspect process for Wellspring.
yeah but how would you nerf it?unless we as a small community decide to go to gamefreak and ask them to get them to remove stored power from it we really cant do anything..although i do agree that stored power is the biggest issue, if it didnt have it i could maybeee see it being balanced, and having another fairy type(and especially one with aura sphere) to get gambit and moon would be nice, oh well maybe in another life..