Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4

[Bold School]

Re: Toxic Chain: That just bad luck on your opponent's end. I've used Beat Up TChain Fez several times in one game and gotten supremely unlucky, only getting a toxic after three tries.

Covert Cloak absolutely does block Toxic Chain

Ok. Now I have actually spent the time to test this. I had two teams, each with Covert Cloak Prim set. This was the result:

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2180335495-9d5xhiuqsjevxtva81psj9xfrkwd669pw

The match obviously isn't serious. The team on my account in particular was randomly cobbled together by whatever I could copy/paste the fastest. But the result speaks for itself. You cannot say the Fezandipiti got unlucky, either. I got plenty of procs with a Toxic Chain Beat Up in the match, but never on cloak. This clearly isn't just a coincidence every time. It's the item. It blocks Toxic Chain.

As for the knowledge of this item, I thought this was the case since I have experienced it before. But I did still want to allow for the fact that I could have been mistaken. My point has been proven.

 

[Avira]

The match obviously isn't serious. The team on my account in particular was randomly cobbled together by whatever I could copy/paste the fastest. But the result speaks for itself. You cannot say the Fezandipiti got unlucky, either. I got plenty of procs with a Toxic Chain Beat Up in the match, but never on cloak. This clearly isn't just a coincidence every time. It's the item. It blocks Toxic Chain.

This sounds like either extreme luck or a Pokemon Showdown implementation problem as Toxic Chain is an Ability and hence should not be blockable by Covert Cloak.

 

[Bold School]

This sounds like either extreme luck or a Pokemon Showdown implementation problem as Toxic Chain is an Ability and hence should not be blockable by Covert Cloak.

It's not luck. In this initial debate, I mentioned how it has happened to me before every time. This replay came later. You can't just say I'm getting extremely lucky every time.

Is it a Smogon error? That I don't know. But I do remember it performing this way for quite awhile on showdown. I can't tell you about cart.

The justification why it wouldn't be an error is that cloak counters the secondary effects. All Toxic Chain really does is add a chance for a secondary effect on attacks. What it does would seem within reason.

 

[viivian]

i feel like is quite decently balanced despite everything(supreme overlord, insane set diversity with items and tera) due to its multiple checks it can never break past(, , , ) but i agree that it is quite centralising since you have to keep your gambit check alive and even then it could be a set that checks your check and some gambits run low kick or tera blast fairy instead of kowtow and sucker combined with its bulk makes for a scary mon but not banworthy imo

it can break past any of those pokemon with the right set. the reason why it's not super broken is because it not only struggles to beat all its counters with just one set but the amount of faster pokemon that can status it or set up alongside it or simply resist its sucker punch and can OHKO it back are all definitely holding it back by a lot

 

[somebodyuknow2]

It's not luck. In this initial debate, I mentioned how it has happened to me before every time. This replay came later. You can't just say I'm getting extremely lucky every time.

Is it a Smogon error? That I don't know. But I do remember it performing this way for quite awhile on showdown. I can't tell you about cart.

The justification why it wouldn't be an error is that cloak counters the secondary effects. All Toxic Chain really does is add a chance for a secondary effect on attacks. What it does would seem within reason.

It's not a Smogon error, it works this way on cart. This issue was already looked at when Toxic Chain started running rampant in Metronome Battles and people were looking for counterplay. It's just a counterintuitive mechanic. Bold School did not get superhuman luck xD.

 

[HunterNeverHere9]

Is cloak really that justifiable to replace actually good items just to solve toxic chain? None of the toxic chain mons are too viable so why is cloak even being talked about besides it's niche for salt cure?

 

[Bold School]

Is cloak really that justifiable to replace actually good items just to solve toxic chain? None of the toxic chain mons are too viable so why is cloak even being talked about besides it's niche for salt cure?

This misses the point. Again. There was an entire discussion earlier that you may have missed on cloak and its various uses. Nobody said you would use it just for Toxic Chain and nothing else. It was just one of many examples I gave. I only brought this particular part up again for the sake of making sure the facts were straight. Had I been wrong, I would have said that as well.

As for Toxic Chain itself, no, it isn't that common. Fezandipiti is a good anti-meta mon that is likely underrated. I'll stand by that. On the other hand, Munkidori is unfortunately trash. I have seen only a little use of Okidogi in OU. There is also Pecharunt, which is not the same, but can still be somewhat similar with Poison Puppeteer and Malignant Chain. While it is more UU than OU, it is occasionally seen in OU.

So if you were looking into various matchups, you might find there are more mons than just Garg that cloak is good for. You also seemed confused about my Tusk and Hatt example earlier, but it should be noted that cloak is fairly good into Hatt's Nuzzle.

 

[Rekka's Backend]

So if you were looking into various matchups, you might find there are more mons than just Garg that cloak is good for. You also seemed confused about my Tusk and Hatt example earlier, but it should be noted that cloak is fairly good into Hatt's Nuzzle.

I think the easiest and more direct way of putting it; Cloak is very good at select use cases like Nuzzle, Salt Cure. But its useful outside of that due to the myriad of bullshit this games throws at you, and for defense mons removing that myriad of bullshit is sometimes useful if you rely on it for defense purposes and want to avoid those Very Unfortunate Events. I.e. walls requiring to avoid stat drops, paras, etc.

It will not be a forefront item, but I think if you have to bring a mon in then it has substantially more use cases than not. Sure, it won't be The item you think about at times but the sheer number of small interactions it has can and will at least crop up more than once. It's fun! Its not choice specs but it allows you to safe guard against things you'd usually have to switch out for.

 

[Srn]

While taking ladder points from OLT goofballs and reading some of the intermittent dissatisfaction that is expressed here, I want to share some of my personal “philosophy” of the meta to maybe bring some relief of hope to people that feel oppressed by certain Pokémon, usually because they choose to favor a particular playstyle.

The Circle Of Meta​

Offense —> “Cheese” —> Boots Spam —> Weather —> Fat —> Balance —> Breakers

This is the rough loop for how I perceive ladder trends to usually play out. Most people like playing the big blasting fun stuff, so offensive styles start the generation. These teams aren’t usually very resilient and get farmed by stuff like screens, webs, TR, hazard stack etc. in turn, people use things that ignore these strategies and pull out some timberland squads. When damage is impossible through the field, it has to come through pure POWER, which is where extreme HOs like weather might shine. There’s usually a bounce back to some fat water core around this time, at which point the idyllic balance fantasy starts to play out. Then people get bored of gking click chilly all the time and decide to run some breakers. And then the cycle repeats as offense beats down the goofy breakers.

if you really want to simplify this, boots-weather-fat-balance can be condensed to a single phase.

From my experience on ladder, I think it’s currently in the breaker to offense transition, and I’d say the results in OLT bear this out. I also think these cycles can oscillate very rapidly at high ladder during periods of high play. I’ve been sitting at 2k not with any particular skill, but just because I’ve been a phase ahead of the cycle and playing webs, which farms the offenses and breaker teams. Jk im a beast. Anyway in not too long you’ll probably see more stuff like that 4fat + cinder kyurem /zama team become more ubiquitous and I’ll lose. I think this cycle is a good and natural basis for how the game evolves. Would be boring if everything was good all the time.

idk why I wrote all this. I don’t mean to come across as some purveyor of wisdom. I just feel like people get so emotional on here because theyre so attached to a particular phase of the cycle and can’t see the forest for the trees. Can’t grow the crops out of season. Like…freeeze??? C’mon. Maybe this can shift that perspective. The “problematic” Pokémon are the ones that can persist across multiple phases and dictate team building and play patterns throughout. To me, these are things like , and obviously.

☮

I disagree with the overall point of this post. The meta is lightly cyclical, but I don't think these trends need to be taken too seriously beyond adjusting/scrapping bad teams to better handle some hot new techs. If you rely on spamming a cheesy playstyle that relies a lot on MU fishing, you are going to feel the turns of the cycle a lot harder, and I can understand that somebody spamming webs interprets this cycle as more important than it is.

However, if you're primarily using consistent teams with playable MUs across the board and winning due to skill and knowledge, you're not really going to feel the turns of the cycle as much. Sure, you've got to keep up to date with what people are using, but at the end of the day, mons is mons. If you're fighting a lot of balance and you have a good team that can beat balance, you outplay and win. If you're fighting a lot of weather and you have a good team that can beat weather, you outplay and win, etc etc.

As an aside, I especially can't take this cycle too seriously when you put "Weather" as one turn of it. The last time Weather was dominant was perhaps last OLT with the rise of Vertex Sun. I really have not felt another time since then that weather was actually "the meta." Is the cycle so slow moving that we have yet to complete a full revolution in a whole year? I'm patiently waiting for weather to be dominant again for 2 weeks.

With that in mind, I feel like your last few sentences are both wrong and contradict the rest of your post. Pokemon that persist across multiple phases and dictate teambuilding and play patterns include balanced and healthy pokemon like Great Tusk and Slowking-G, and I wouldn't use this description to define "problematic" pokemon. But problematic pokemon do also persist across multiple phases, which makes the cycle theory harder to take seriously anyway, because the new hot shit on the ladder is still less important than checking and/or abusing the strongest and most consistent pokemon in the tier.

 

[arnimacarni]

Hi everyone, sorry to intermingle amidst the Cloak and Gambit discourses lol Sorry to post this here but the team is not close to RMT-ready

I've been trying out some mons that I hadn't just yet and I thought of Enam-T. I used to run a CM-SP Cress on Psyspam that was very noob-proof and I had been having some nice results. Although Enam-T is no Cress in terms of bulk, it can hold some punches. I put it in an adaptation of the team that I've been most comfortable running this gen, I call it fake triple unaware stack as I run Dozo Dirge and WA Clod, the team started out with Amoonguss Garg and Gambit pre-HOME but it's undergone some changes across the months. Now I run it with Pecha, whom I love since introduction, and anti-Stall Glisc (Poison Jab instead of Toxic). Enam-T is double dancing and I changed the Tera to Poison like with Cress to avoid getting poisoned. I'm not sure of how it fares, I rose to 1450 almost instantenously but I've seen some glaring holes such as a massive Psychic weakness pre-Tera (got 6-0'd by Specs Crown once). Maybe I'm thinking of adding Crown myself or Garg again, but I wanna keep the semi-stall-ish vibe.

So yeah, idk, any and all input is welcome if any of y'all want to help out a fella. Have a great thursday :)

https://pokepast.es/382b3177de2e7486

 

[HunterNeverHere9]

So if you were looking into various matchups, you might find there are more mons than just Garg that cloak is good for. You also seemed confused about my Tusk and Hatt example earlier, but it should be noted that cloak is fairly good into Hatt's Nuzzle.

To end of this entirely stupid discussion, what? Moyashi has said multiple times that corv is realistically the only cloak user but it's an insane niche on stall and why are you switching tusk into hatt? Your weak specially and weak to both of hatt stabs. This cloak discussion is gonna end; yes cloak is good but it's incredibly niche, you don't give replays and the mons you list that allegedly abuse cloak are shit with cloak

 

[Talpr0ne]

To end of this entirely stupid discussion, what? Moyashi has said multiple times that corv is realistically the only cloak user but it's an insane niche on stall and why are you switching tusk into hatt? Your weak specially and weak to both of hatt stabs. This cloak discussion is gonna end; yes cloak is good but it's incredibly niche, you don't give replays and the mons you list that allegedly abuse cloak are shit with cloak

That's literally the point, because can't switch Tusk into Hatt you use the teammate with cloak to absorb Nuzzle.

 

[HunterNeverHere9]

That's literally the point, because can't switch Tusk into Hatt you use the teammate with cloak to absorb Nuzzle.

Hey man look at this part real quick

Tusk cannot safely switch into Hatt, so this is an area where cloak could help is my point.

The way he phrased it sounded like cloak could help tusk switch into hatt

 

[party_po1s0n]

i feel like is quite decently balanced despite everything(supreme overlord, insane set diversity with items and tera) due to its multiple checks it can never break past(, , , ) but i agree that it is quite centralising since you have to keep your gambit check alive and even then it could be a set that checks your check and some gambits run low kick or tera blast fairy instead of kowtow and sucker combined with its bulk makes for a scary mon but not banworthy imo

Gambit definitely kills ting lu... but don't get me started on tusk! The newly common bulk up sets have become the bane of my existence

 

[Big Chiken]

I disagree with the overall point of this post. The meta is lightly cyclical, but I don't think these trends need to be taken too seriously beyond adjusting/scrapping bad teams to better handle some hot new techs. If you rely on spamming a cheesy playstyle that relies a lot on MU fishing, you are going to feel the turns of the cycle a lot harder, and I can understand that somebody spamming webs interprets this cycle as more important than it is.

However, if you're primarily using consistent teams with playable MUs across the board and winning due to skill and knowledge, you're not really going to feel the turns of the cycle as much. Sure, you've got to keep up to date with what people are using, but at the end of the day, mons is mons. If you're fighting a lot of balance and you have a good team that can beat balance, you outplay and win. If you're fighting a lot of weather and you have a good team that can beat weather, you outplay and win, etc etc.

As an aside, I especially can't take this cycle too seriously when you put "Weather" as one turn of it. The last time Weather was dominant was perhaps last OLT with the rise of Vertex Sun. I really have not felt another time since then that weather was actually "the meta." Is the cycle so slow moving that we have yet to complete a full revolution in a whole year? I'm patiently waiting for weather to be dominant again for 2 weeks.

With that in mind, I feel like your last few sentences are both wrong and contradict the rest of your post. Pokemon that persist across multiple phases and dictate teambuilding and play patterns include balanced and healthy pokemon like Great Tusk and Slowking-G, and I wouldn't use this description to define "problematic" pokemon. But problematic pokemon do also persist across multiple phases, which makes the cycle theory harder to take seriously anyway, because the new hot shit on the ladder is still less important than checking and/or abusing the strongest and most consistent pokemon in the tier.

Thx for the thoughts. I m not so on board with the notions of “well-built” and oppositionally cheesey or “fishing” styles. I think these both of these put too much value on the idea that a “good” team should be able to react to everything. On the extreme end of things, a stall team that covers 99% of Pokémon might be well thought-out, but there’s still way more that goes on in-game that determines how “good” the player+team are and if it’s actually going to win. (Hence all the stall teams stuck at like 1500). Or in the instance of webs, if I’m supposedly fishing, then is everyone else just goofing around by not doing the same?

I think SV puts a lot more emphasis on the in-game side of things, largely because of how much of a power play the Tera button can be to moderate differences in team building.

and yes, I did mean that the cycles are much longer in period than a few weeks. There’s definitely more local experimentation and cteaming maybe in pockets of the ladder, but the changes are slow at the macro level.

but yeah don’t mean to start a debate. Just wanted to clarify my points!

 

[DaRotomMachine]

Gambit definitely kills ting lu...

This is only if it runs the Tera Fairy Tera Blast set I’m pretty sure.

Hey man look at this part real quick
The way he phrased it sounded like cloak could help tusk switch into hatt

I pretty sure that part was already explained

 

[TheDuckChris]

Thx for the thoughts. I m not so on board with the notions of “well-built” and oppositionally cheesey or “fishing” styles. I think these both of these put too much value on the idea that a “good” team should be able to react to everything. On the extreme end of things, a stall team that covers 99% of Pokémon might be well thought-out, but there’s still way more that goes on in-game that determines how “good” the player+team are and if it’s actually going to win. (Hence all the stall teams stuck at like 1500). Or in the instance of webs, if I’m supposedly fishing, then is everyone else just goofing around by not doing the same?

I think SV puts a lot more emphasis on the in-game side of things, largely because of how much of a power play the Tera button can be to moderate differences in team building.

and yes, I did mean that the cycles are much longer in period than a few weeks. There’s definitely more local experimentation and cteaming maybe in pockets of the ladder, but the changes are slow at the macro level.

but yeah don’t mean to start a debate. Just wanted to clarify my points!

This is a favorite topic of mine because it highlights two differing viewpoints among the community, based around "solid" vs "fishy" teams.

On one side the solid teams idea: these team structures go for often standard builds, put together in a way somewhat predictable due to solid "good" sets that everyone knows. Players with these teams often have multiple win conditions that change depending on the matchup, and use this to minimize bad matchups at the expense of not having as many overwhelmingly favourable matchups. Since they don't win many games off pure matchup, players with these teams try to win in game through positioning and identifying counters to their opponents play. A reactionary playstyle that can weather most opposing strategies. In SV this often takes the form of balance or bulky offence featuring known defensive sets like Landorus and known offensive sets like SD Kingambit.

On the fishy side: these team structures deviate from standard builds with a unique or hard to predict variation that standard builds will not be prepared for. Players with these teams often gravitate toward a smaller amount of paths to victory, relying on those specific paths being hard to counter with standard teams. While they may accept a few really bad matchups, they choose teams where their bad matchups are unlikely to show up. This makes the team feel like a "matchup fish" when used in a vacuum but often teams like this are chosen with specific knowledge of meta trends and in some cases knowledge of their opponents habits and team preferences. This is a proactive playstyle forcing opponents into unfamiliar scenarios that the fishy player is more comfortable in. In SV this often takes the form of Offenses utilizing unfamiliar tera types like Tera Dragon Gouging Fire or move combinations like DD Special Kyurem.

Personally I think "fishy" teams are more fun to watch, and in tournament are often a more decisive pick when you have a decent idea what you are up against. On ladder it's usually a crapshoot and most of the time you will need your teams to be a bit more "solid" in order to match up against the variety of opponents. Though many ladder players can top the ladder with the right matchup fish (probopass HO) and many tournament players prefer to play with safer solid teams since they have a high level of trust in their reactive in-game skills.

I do think fishy teams take a lot of skill to build and pilot and deserve respect for being willing to experiment

 

[pika pal]

I just want to note that when I gave this a HaHa, it's the amused kind and not the mocking kind.

RE: Kingambit, this might be the grognard in me talking, but it feels like a less extreme version of Gen 2 Snorlax. Unlike Snorlax, Kingambit isn't far and away the best mon (though it's very much in the discussion for the best), but it serves as a powerful centralizing force with a number of different options (sets for Snorlax, fourth move and tera choice for Kingambit), and determining which set is a major part of playing the tier. Also, both are defensively stout (Snorlax through massive special bulk, Kingambit with a great typing and bulk) and blanket check a large chunk of the metagame, thus serving a major defensive role.

Both Gen 2 Snorlax and Gen 9 Kingambit are arguably broken, but even while centralizing the metagame significantly, neither is impossible to deal with and - crucially - there is a wide variety of counterplay available that fits on all styles. That last is the difference between unhealthy centralization and acceptable centralization; after all, something is going to be the top dog around which the tier revolves, so why not a big fatty with plenty of options?

I did make a Snorlax/Kingambit comparison before in terms of centralization and blanket check usage, though with the caveat that unlike Snorlax, I think stuff Kingambit holds in check are still debatable in if they're acceptable for the Meta (compared to Snorlax where a lot of Special Breakers are definitely fine-with and Busted-without), which is why I think it might warrant a test but should not be top of that list.

My other hang-up is that the nature of their metas doesn't lead to playing different roles for Kingambit so much as variations on the same one (a defensive stop-gap with Lategame clean-up). Where Gen 2's meta and Mechanics lend themselves to Snorlax being able to serve as a Sweeping Wincon, an All Out Attacker, a Wallbreaker, a full on defensive Wall, etc, its role more drastically affects what it can do for teams and has a lot more variance. One reason Kingambit feels like such a prominent Blanket Check to me is that it falls under its own Blanket: Kingambit Checks many things while needing to be respected to the extent of 2 pretty good answers itself, which is where I find the teambuilding is so limited. With Snorlax this feels more in the vein that Snorlax has to plug whatever holes the rest of your team misses while picking checks that your team can manage for its own set: Kingambit doesn't have such a wide variety of playstyles (just Tera Types), so both of these fronts become linear: Bulky Fighting-Types with an out for a bad Tera, and Encore users of which we only have a handful viable in OU.

It's also not necessarily the center piece of the team or Metagame: progress against Snorlax goes far in a game like GSC because it's frequently a glue or an attacker the opponent needs to get value out of in absence of such a thing holding the team together. Kingambit's focus on lategame play and the nature of Supreme Overlord means you're not making "progress" until Gambit is actually down or can't hit back (Sucker Punch, Status, Fainting, or otherwise).

 

[Achohermano]

I don't think that GSC Snorlax, RBY Big 3, ADV TTar or stuff like that should be used as a point of view for discussions in modern gens. DBuzzwole said once in a post (I don't remember which one, sorry) that in those gens, options are pretty limited (mostly in RBY-GSC) and therefore there are no options or even a lot of mons to replace those niches. And they were absolutely right. If you remove Snorlax from GSC OU, there are not a lot of mons, probably any, that can replace a lot of its roles in the meta. This is not the case in a modern gen, specially in SVOU where a lot of old OU staples are just crap right now due to better new options.

That being said as Eeveeto said some posts ago Kingambit hasn't been banned because we always have a bigger priority to tackle first. But it's not healthy, it has never been tbh and thinking about what Kingambit "keeps in check" it's like the argument about unbanning Volc because it kept Zama and Kyurem more in check.
If Kingambit only kept X and Y mon in check, that would be great. The thing is it can do it while also being an insane wincon. Yeah you can use a lot of tools in the builder to stop this (for example, the team I use the most has a PhysDef Moltres, an Encore Oger and a Great Tusk. I personally don't struggle with Gambit) but the thing is by preparing that much for Gambit I think it can be tricky to make a team that covers most of the big threats in the meta. The ban on Volc was a good step but we need either more mons out of the tier

 

[party_po1s0n]

This is only if it runs the Tera Fairy Tera Blast set I’m pretty sure.

I run low kick which usually 2 hits

 

[ShizuOsaka]

I don't think that GSC Snorlax, RBY Big 3, ADV TTar or stuff like that should be used as a point of view for discussions in modern gens. DBuzzwole said once in a post (I don't remember which one, sorry) that in those gens, options are pretty limited (mostly in RBY-GSC) and therefore there are no options or even a lot of mons to replace those niches. And they were absolutely right. If you remove Snorlax from GSC OU, there are not a lot of mons, probably any, that can replace a lot of its roles in the meta. This is not the case in a modern gen, specially in SVOU where a lot of old OU staples are just crap right now due to better new options.

That being said as Eeveeto said some posts ago Kingambit hasn't been banned because we always have a bigger priority to tackle first. But it's not healthy, it has never been tbh and thinking about what Kingambit "keeps in check" it's like the argument about unbanning Volc because it kept Zama and Kyurem more in check.
If Kingambit only kept X and Y mon in check, that would be great. The thing is it can do it while also being an insane wincon. Yeah you can use a lot of tools in the builder to stop this (for example, the team I use the most has a PhysDef Moltres, an Encore Oger and a Great Tusk. I personally don't struggle with Gambit) but the thing is by preparing that much for Gambit I think it can be tricky to make a team that covers most of the big threats in the meta. The ban on Volc was a good step but we need either more mons out of the tier

To be honest, given that mindset, I think we need to yeet a large portion of the tier.
Almost every mon that is under discussion in this threat (maybe baring Gouging) require 2 of 3 dedicated checks to test the water for its set before devising a plan to check. Darkrai seems to be a more straightforward one, but since the tier has had many bigger soft checks running around, it doesn't seem as "broken" as it may seem. If we ban Gambito and Zam, we may see the entire meta having to run fat teams in order to deal with it.

 

[Pinecoishot]

QB gouging fire, kyurem, and Tera blast. It’s a joke but that these 3 aspects are still allowed in a tier that tries to be competitive

 

[Eeveeto]

QB Stealth Rock, Spikes, Knock Off or Gholdengo. If we are making unrealistic Quick Ban requests, lets make them big!

 

[CodeFour]

QB gouging fire, kyurem, and Tera blast. It’s a joke but that these 3 aspects are still allowed in a tier that tries to be competitive

Tera blast joins the conversation for many pokemon. I do hope it's listed on the next survey.

 

[PastaMechKaku]

Part of me wants to reopen the broken/healthy axis Finch brought up as a means to discuss what is banworthy compared to what is powerful (i.e. Gambit vs Kyurem), though I suspect it might cause a page long semantics dispute between people who use the term colloquially as a shorthand for 'really fucking strong' and those who are more absolutist about the term. A cleaner way to go to about it to would be to replace the broken/balanced axis with simply going off the viability rankings as a pre-made way to rank 'mons by power-level while the more subjective axis is still left to the person making the chart.


Example:

Healthy
|
|
----------------------- Viability Rank
|
|
Unhealthy