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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4
- Thread starter TPP
- Start date
If I wasn’t polite, this thread would be much less tolerant like prior generations. Believe me.
I feel as though some context is in order
Quick question: What exactly would Palafin contribute to SV OU now if it were unbanned? Because I'm really not seeing the vision here.
This basically sums up my thoughts on Palafin perfectly. It's an obscenely strong mon after Z2H activates, and it was banned from a similarly powerful meta. The current meta has settled down a lot from the releases of the two DLCs, the Pre-DLC meta, and especially Pre-Home (the most fucked up era of SV imo), and the power level's definitely come down a few notches since back then. The problem with it just being able to Tera out of its checks, blow through them, and run away with the game is still present, which is what I'm mostly concerned about. There's also the possibility of even more sets arising to blow through would-be checks, sort of like Gouging Fire was doing. So, could any Palafin truthers out there tell me what the deal is with it and what beneficial things it'd bring to the tier if it was dropped?
Specs Kyu is alright but can be a bit unweildy with Tera Ice. Despite it's power, it feels like it's on a permanent timer & you are locked to similarish cycles with it with the samey gking cinderace builds. I much prefer running it with Tera Ground to get rid of the rocks weakness. I like Terastalizing this variant early to leave big holes early on. Feels kinda similar to CB Chien Pao or CB Bax in that sense, where you Tera it early to make it less reliant on hazard removal.
Tera Steel covers Chomp's weaknesses, and you sweep/wallbreak that way.
And in other news: the sky is blue, water is wet, and butter goes well with bread.
So to turn the discussion from palafin..
I don't make new teams too often when I have one that works and I made a new one this week that got me almost to 1700 before loses started to be more common.
When I lose it is almost always to an end game tera fairy kingambit, ghouldengo, garganacle or occasionally zamazenta, Tera Fire or not.
An additional problem had been corvinite and primarina.
For many of those my go to on the team is moltres which is great however it is very difficult to keep moltres alive amid the initial hazard battle- and even then I'm counting on a burn if they've gotten one free turn in. Moltres is good and scorching sands plus flame body cab occasionally threaten to hurt and burn everything on the opposing team but it's also just not that great compared to the amount of physical threats it's up against as well as the fiery dance and sludge wave it usually takes when checking the imposter moth. I'd really like volcarona back instead to really keep the tons of physical threats on their toes.. but anyways.. also threw magnezone on over ogrepon which does occasionally help to nuke those tera fairy's and obviously corvinight is no issues.
The team has been affective until recently. The primary sweeper is cb tera dragon pult but I'm starting to think it's the week link. Smoked the lower mid ladder but the above threats are just too common. Tried a mixed dragon fang set with Draco meteor but doesn't fix the problem other than a chunk out of non tera fairy garg or zamazenta.
Really enjoying my teams synergy with every mon being speedy with a rotating move and hate to replace dragapult but I think it is necessary... wow u turn hex darts pult would partially solve problems but then leave me lacking power generally.
Thoughts on a replacement? Kyurem and dragonite would run into similar issues and lack uturn..
I aspire to rank higher so don't want to give away all of my current surprises on the team but if that's enough information for anyone to suggest any ideas I appreciate it!
I don't make new teams too often when I have one that works and I made a new one this week that got me almost to 1700 before loses started to be more common.
When I lose it is almost always to an end game tera fairy kingambit, ghouldengo, garganacle or occasionally zamazenta, Tera Fire or not.
An additional problem had been corvinite and primarina.
For many of those my go to on the team is moltres which is great however it is very difficult to keep moltres alive amid the initial hazard battle- and even then I'm counting on a burn if they've gotten one free turn in. Moltres is good and scorching sands plus flame body cab occasionally threaten to hurt and burn everything on the opposing team but it's also just not that great compared to the amount of physical threats it's up against as well as the fiery dance and sludge wave it usually takes when checking the imposter moth. I'd really like volcarona back instead to really keep the tons of physical threats on their toes.. but anyways.. also threw magnezone on over ogrepon which does occasionally help to nuke those tera fairy's and obviously corvinight is no issues.
The team has been affective until recently. The primary sweeper is cb tera dragon pult but I'm starting to think it's the week link. Smoked the lower mid ladder but the above threats are just too common. Tried a mixed dragon fang set with Draco meteor but doesn't fix the problem other than a chunk out of non tera fairy garg or zamazenta.
Really enjoying my teams synergy with every mon being speedy with a rotating move and hate to replace dragapult but I think it is necessary... wow u turn hex darts pult would partially solve problems but then leave me lacking power generally.
Thoughts on a replacement? Kyurem and dragonite would run into similar issues and lack uturn..
I aspire to rank higher so don't want to give away all of my current surprises on the team but if that's enough information for anyone to suggest any ideas I appreciate it!
Got a Pokepaste/RMT? DM if needed.
I'm surprised nobody's answered this question yet, so I guess I have to throw my hat into the ring.
Palafin's greatest contribution to the tier by far would be providing it with another priority revenge killer, a role that is in high demand but preciously short supply in OU itself. It can cut short the sweeps of terrifying setup pokemon such as Tera Flying RM, Moth and Valiant, being one of the two priority options we'd actually have for Gholdengo, and can out-priority-speed Kingambit while doing actual damage (looking at you,
), as well as being a hard answer to Tera Fire sets that could otherwise set up on wispers looking to cripple the mon. Being able to revenge the blazing fast setup pokemon of this tier is a role in such short supply that OLT's laddering phase has seen the usage of pokemon such as Lokix and Scizor just to try to curb the problem. I believe that Palafin would provide more utility to this tier by curbing the threat level of setup sweepers (especially Moth, who clocked in with the most write-ins on the OLT survey, and who commonly runs Tera Ground), while still being restrained by its inability to revenge kill Ogerpon-Wellspring and Raging Bolt, leaving room for other options to shine as well.
Once shit like Kyurem leaves maybe a palafin resuspect wouldn't be bad, even if i think its probably too much.I'm surprised nobody's answered this question yet, so I guess I have to throw my hat into the ring.
Palafin's greatest contribution to the tier by far would be providing it with another priority revenge killer, a role that is in high demand but preciously short supply in OU itself. It can cut short the sweeps of terrifying setup pokemon such as Tera Flying RM, Moth and Valiant, being one of the two priority options we'd actually have for Gholdengo, and can out-priority-speed Kingambit while doing actual damage (looking at you,
I'm surprised nobody's answered this question yet, so I guess I have to throw my hat into the ring.
Palafin's greatest contribution to the tier by far would be providing it with another priority revenge killer, a role that is in high demand but preciously short supply in OU itself. It can cut short the sweeps of terrifying setup pokemon such as Tera Flying RM, Moth and Valiant, being one of the two priority options we'd actually have for Gholdengo, and can out-priority-speed Kingambit while doing actual damage (looking at you,
I'm gonna pump the brakes here and just simply ask if you think 'another revenge killer' is enough of a (and I employ the loosest possible interpretation of the term here) utility for the tier to not only fix the main disease plaguing OU, but also to not end up being one of the primary things to throttle the entire meta. To prove my point about what that 'utility' should (even if only vaguely) look like, permit me to make a microcosmic example: The ORAS April Fools Gira-O suspect.
The main argument given here (as jokingly as it was the case) was that Gira-O would be a defensive stopgap against the tier's strongest wallbreakers at the time (then it was Serp, Zard-Y and Lando-I, which in Gen 9 terms would translate roughly to Waterpon/Rillaboom/Iron Moth/Great Tusk etc.), spreading Wisps or Toxic(s) to halt given setup sweepers, and being a safety net for the tier's crippling lack of hazard control at the time. And while the jig was eventually torn off at the 'turn of our society day', I recall vividly how several mods and tier figureheads were admitting that, compared to what could have been, that Gira-O would have been potentially healthier for the tier than it had any right to be (w/ or not that translates to 'only ever healthy and can do no wrong' is not a judgement I'm strictly fit to articulate on, as fun as it would be to do so).
Keep in mind, the above is a less egregious case study then a mon that (even applying our more generous allegation) wallbreaks basically for the sheer hell of it, among other things. And I need to clarify (if the end of that previous paragraph wasn't enough implication) I'm not clambering for Gira-O to grace OU with it's presence - 3 gens removed from that fact, I've made peace with said reality. I'm just simply saying that a drop should only really happen if A) Power Creep has reached enough of a critical mass that candidates for a drop would never choke the tier again (a Tera Blast ban goes a lot further to this end, and I've even heard discussions about a Terapagos drop if a 'Stellar form clause' in the same vein as old Uber's 'MRay clause' were ever implemented, which I'm actually really impressed with the idea of), or B) a drop exists to facilitate a specific focus of mons, and not be facilitated by them for it's own sake. Something like Darkrai falls in the former, Lando-T could be argued as falling into bits of both, and Palafin... is neither.
Finchinator would you have a plan to kill everyone you meet?
What
team fortress 2 reference/continuation of the meme i posted
Pardon me being uncultured, thanks!
I don't think any singular tiering action will solve the entirety of the problems with the tier, Palafin included. It's clear that there's still a ways to go in that regard. That being said, if you're asking if I think Palafin being dropped would be a net benefit to the tier, my answer would be yes.
Frankly, with the amount of offensive and defensive answers to threats like Waterpon that can also handle Palafin in some capacity (
, 
, 
, 
, , 
) I think so. While Palafin can certainly run certain sets to make certain trades less weighed against it, it'll always be stopped by something, and we're not tiering on the concept of a pokemon running every set at once, or 
would be banned.I'm not well-versed enough in ORAS OU to make a judgement call here, but if Giratina-Origin proved to be a worthwhile defensive presence in the tier that could hold back some of its' biggest threats, and not outright unhealthy or broken, I would not be at all opposed to letting it drop.
I genuinely believe that Uber drops shouldn't be held by some pretense of "is this fun for the tier" or whatever, but that if they're not actively broken or uncompetitive, they don't need any further justification to exist in OU beyond "more pokemon in the teambuilder is better than less pokemon in the teambuilder". If it won't centralize the entire metagame around itself by dropping and have egregiously negative effects on the metagame, it should drop without question.
Ultimately, I guess you and I will have to agree to disagree that Palafin wouldn't choke out the tier with the numerous deal of bulky resists that I believe could hold Palafin in check, that weren't in the tier as a result of Dexit or not existing due to DLC when Palafin was initially banned. I solidly believe that Palafin falls in the former category.
tolerance? politeness? when i was
I’ll be away for the weekend at a VGC regional, but there’s a chance for a suspect early next week. There’s also a chance we have a survey instead. Still being discussed.
yeah, now we can't even ban a pokemon without a survey and a suspect and three months of hoopla and foofaraw, much less a user. back in my day we'd outright rig a suspect by requiring an entire essay explaining your vote, and we liked it. we'd perma someone for making eye contact with a mod on a bad day. we handed out bans like you modern kids hand out spikes, with your ceaseless edges and your tings-lu. smogon went woke and got soft when it started putting millennials in charge. sad!
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I'll respond to this by saying that I think the main 'disease' in this tier is basically a result of an antiquated tiering policy, and certain overreaches of what is effectively executive action (Bax/HearthPon being QBs and not suspects comes to mind) - but credit where it's due, I am (once again) appreciative of the more liberal tiering action towards moves and not the mons themselves (see this post for more on that), and I think it's only a matter of time before that proverbial dam breaks.
As for Palafin's 'health' in the tier, I've already touched on it's stat distribution, but I'd also like to call attention to the fact that Offensive mons of this status tend to fight an uphill battle for unbans because of the sort of 'Paper Tiger' effect that the most egregious bans tend to employ. I mean this in the sense that when something like this gets the boot, every mon in the tier technically 'gets better', so in that sense it almost comes full circle to making a net zero change - wait any amount of time, and you get a bunch of people turning around going 'I mean, why would we want this thing back in the tier anyway?'. There's a greater point I'm trying to make here, but I don't know how to word it without sounding like I'm talking in circles, so I'll leave it at that.
EDIT: if it helps, I would say it's kinda like 'we don't use broken to fix broken' with extra steps, but that initial saying has kinda eroded in it's validity as a descriptor anyway, so... take it as you will.
Frankly, with the amount of offensive and defensive answers to threats like Waterpon that can also handle Palafin in some capacity (,
Gonna be frank, I don't picture a lot of these these being good examples:
Rillaboom / Sinischa: name one thing that is stopping Fin' from either A) Flip Turning on it's counters or B) hitting Tera Grass or (to a lesser extent) Tera Ice/Dragon for defensive purposes, and flipping the MU entirely? I understand it's a little bit presumptuous to assume this thing will Tera because of the Tera sink Kingambit is (both in use and in opposition) - but it'll always be an option that is there. I also see Sinischa's usage as a little bit suspect, but I think that's down to matchup unfamiliarity, so I'm willing to be illuminated on that minor matter.
R. Bolt: Aren't Bulk Up sets supposed to just play mindgames with this thing? It's only a matter of time before you Tera to an Electric-resistant type and either Ice Punch this thing to death, or (because Bolt seems to adore Tera Fairy so much), you basically hit Wave Crash and brute force the interaction (small mechanics inquiry: how do Jet Punch and Thunderclap interact with each other? Are they both +1 Priority?). Dragapult isn't all that different, just with different Tera's, and I don't recall this thing being listed as a good answer when this thing first got QB'd, so... what was the argument here again?
Dragonite / Zamazenta are the only ones on here I see being remotely good examples, and even then that's in a scenario where you let Dragonite set up (which honestly, I think this playerbase is getting a lot better at handling anyway). Zamazenta is in a similar boat, and the only ones I've had trouble forcing out from my own personal experience are the Sub ID sets.
As for if Val' would be banned for set verity, well... I've also been in a similar-ish conversation about this before (and no, I don't think Val should be banned just for this - and I think the idea that Darkrai is higher up the hit list for suspects when Val is doing more for the tier, and the two are acting as sort of partners in crime for each other, is sort of dumb), given that Kyurem is the talk of the town atm for being unpredictable and cheesing it's checks with SubTect freezes (again, allegedly) - nothing would surprise me at this point.
I'll throw it in here now for those who remember me from 2017: I was the guy who coined 'ban DD' as a thing (rather haphazardly in the initial SM Duggy suspect, much to everyone's ire), but as I've played the game more, I've found myself more willing to adapt to even the more ""broken"" abusers of the move - my indifference to GFire is one such example, but is also not limited to SM Zygarde (as much as I agree that thing deserved the boot), Bax and Kyurem this gen (side note: am I the only one who thinks the order we banned Bundle/Bax/upcoming Kyu suspect is back-to-front? No? Just me?), Dragonite, SM Zard X... the list goes on, and I'm not as resentful as I used to be about the move, even with mechanics changes that seem to facilitate it, and all I can think is "did I unknowingly have a body swap episode with one of the council, and just never notice? Or did someone here lose a bet?" (Sorry, long tangent... anyway).
Point being is that I think there are a lot of core aspects of Gen 9 that has left the tier to sort of eat itself in that sense (see also the incumbent power creep intrinsic to every generation), and it's not something that I think can be gone after without reforms to the tiering policy. This is why I call GFire and the like only 'symptoms' and not the cause. This Cancer ain't gonna die away just because you pop a few bite marks from time to time.
If this were 3 or 4 years ago, I think we'd be on the same wavelength... alas.
Everything else in this post I feel I'd kinda be repeating myself, so I'll shelve it there.
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firepon got a 4.1 from the qualified playerbase and bax got a 4.64. both of those are well within quickban range during the first weeks of a meta, and bax's score was the highest ever seen on a survey. and this was during teal mask, which we knew for a fact was going to be no longer than three months, so tiering had to happen way faster than usual (not that they wouldn't have both been qbs here but still). bax's quickban was one of the most universally supported tiering actions in this entire gen, probably only beaten out by stuff like the flutter mane and terapagos qbs but we don't even have numbers on those because of how obvious they were
Briefly unghosting to answer this simple question.
Yeah, Jet Punch is +1 priority, so since Thunderclap is a Sucker Punch clone, it will just completely fail against Jet Punch despite them both being +1 because it and Sucker Punch fail against any attack that's faster, e.g. other +1 attacks from faster mons, Extreme Speed, First Impression, etc.
No real comment otherwise on the usual "let's discuss unbanning an Uber for some reason" song and dance that seems to always happen this gen after a suspect, failed or not, other that in the unlikely event that Palafin-Hero was somehow balanced now-press X to doubt--it would still be pretty goddamn ugly. And isn't beauty the real factor people should be looking at given Gouging Fire's ugly self was finally banned after two suspects and given that Kyurem's ugly self is probably and predictably on the chopping block again? /s
Finch is about to join Wolfe in attaining an ancestral hatred of Incineroar.
Good luck man. Hope you detail your VGC experience, especially in contrast with your Smogon Singles career.