Happy Bidoof Day 2024! July is an interesting month for Metronome Battles because it marks the halfway point of the year and the start of the northern summer, a time that can be used for more work or play, and also marks the
4th anniversary of these usage stat posts from humble beginnings. While there hasn't been much official Pokemon news, I immediately noticed a surprise meta shift when opening the usage stats for June.
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2024-06/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2024-06/moveset/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt
The battle count has risen back up to
22114, making a recovery from last month's fall but generally still lower than usual.
June 2024: 1630-weighted top 10 + last month positions:
#1: Pecharunt (#5)

#2: Mega Venusaur (#1)

#3: Mega Heracross (#2)

#4: Ting-Lu (#3)

#5: Blissey (#6)

#6: Guzzlord (#4)

#7: Mega Ampharos (no change)

#8: Mega Sableye (#9)

#9: Dusclops (#11)

#10: Mega Gengar (#8)
Immediately we can all see that after months of Pecharunt being around the top 5 and peaking at #3 behind the big two megas, it has forced itself into the #1 position for the first time. This may be more because of stagnation in the meta or also because a few teams of Pecharunt have been posted around the thread, but either way Venusaur and Heracross's raw usage has fallen along with the total battles to the 6000s, while Pecharunt's usage of ~4000 has been fairly consistent even when the battle count was higher and is still enough to land it in 3rd highest raw usage. Speaking of which, Heracross actually beats Venusaur's raw usage as well, and the moveset file shows this difference even more with 6917 to 7567, which I think is due to it counting mons that appear twice more properly than the main stats file so I might try to refer to those from now on. Otherwise most of the changes are just a result of shuffling down and general variance in the lower places.
Some dark horses of the month include Type: Null making it up relatively high to #11 with 553 (moveset) uses though it's had better showings, and Deoxys-Defense making possibly its best showing yet that I can think of at #16/1139 uses. Drifblim is the first other nonstandard name I see at #29/390, and I don't think it's had any kind of similar showing before. (I searched the thread for mentions, and it was also in
#29 in May 2021's stats as well as having
pretty high uses/viability ceiling in January 2022). At the least it puts it above Dragonite and Mega Slowbro, who's fallen quite a bit since #10 last time, though with about the same raw usage as back then.
Getting into the moveset file, we can see that Pecharunt seems to be primarily succeeding with Toxic Chain, though Pickup and Magic Bounce follow behind and combine for about as much usage. Mirror Herb is the key item regardless of set though, but Covert Cloak and Clear Amulet still have 10% weighted usages as well. Mega Venusaur's stats have reversed course with Flower Veil having a safe lead again and Mirror Herb barely rising over Weakness Policy while Choice Specs is left behind, and Heracross is about the same way with Defiant dropping off to a point where even Scrappy is above it. Ting-Lu is back to having Toxic Chain lead with Magic Bounce/Simple/Good as Gold all hanging around the 10% mark, while Mirror Herb/Covert Cloak/Weakness Policy are all spread around the same usage rates in the 20s. As for the dark horses, Type: Null represents the return of Friend Guard bonkstall, I just noticed Abomasnow has Defiant in the lead while scrolling through, Deoxys-Defense is more of a Toxic Chain staller, and Drifblim mainly runs Good as Gold/Magic Bounce about evenly with Covert Cloak and a Pecharunt partner.
Over into the viability ceilings (highest GXE of a player that used the pokemon), max out at 80 once again but with a completely different makeup of Heracross/Blissey/Aurumoth (Pickup/Mirror Herb), followed by Dusclops (bonkstall Friend Guard with Type: Null) and Dragapult (Magic Bounce/Good as Gold/Toxic Chain, Mirror Herb/Weakness Policy/Choice Band/Normalium Z) at 79, Venusaur and Ting-Lu sharing a place but fallen to 78 since last time, and tying everything together with 11 mons at 77 with Sableye (Symbiosis in a distant 2nd for some reason), Mega Gengar (Magic Bounce/Competitive leading back), Type: Null, and Necturna (Dauntless Shield in 2nd behind Flower Veil over Thick Fat). Overall I would say this feels a lot more standard than the last month in terms of the popular moveset options, but we did start with Pecharunt defining the meta, so perhaps it is a tradeoff of recent developments. Thanks for your reading.