Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4

Things that outspeed and OHKO Zamazenta
-Deoxys-Speed
-Specs Dragapult
-Booster Speed Iron Valiant
-Choice Scarf Enamorus

Things that 1v1 Zamazenta one time and force it out
-Booster Speed Iron Moth
-Booster Speed Iron Valiant

Things that half-check Zamazenta and usually force it out
-Landorus-T
-Gholdengo
-Wisp Dragapult
-Alomomola
-PhysDef Slowking-G
-Primarina
-Dragonite

Things that wall Zamazenta
-Zapdos
-Moltres
-Gliscor
-Sinistcha
-Pecharunt

This not enough for you? Also, Dragonite, Gholdengo, Iron Moth, Iron Valiant, and Tera Ghost Pokémon all fit on HO. Also, Landorus-T, Moltres, Enamorus, Alomomola, Slowking-G, and Primarina fit on offense.
I would like to add to this calm mind hatterene for either the wall or the half check section. Hatterene resists body press and takes neutral damage from crunch and stone edge. It cannot be forced out by Roar because unless I am mistaken it is effected by magic bounce. Admittedly there is heavy slam but that is rather rare in general and especially so on idbp sets due to steel not hitting that many of zama's checks supereffectively and being a very flawed move in general due to it being weight based. As for hatterene's offensive capabilities it can use draining Kiss to regain lost health or even stored power if it boosts itself up enough.
 
Anyone have some good checks to Waterpon? I want to use everyone's favorite wish fish, but it can't do anything to the ogre. The checks I thought of all get beat by a coverage move, like Sinistcha getting OHKOed by +2 Knock Off or Dragon types in general not liking Play Rough.
 
Anyone have some good checks to Waterpon? I want to use everyone's favorite wish fish, but it can't do anything to the ogre. The checks I thought of all get beat by a coverage move, like Sinistcha getting OHKOed by +2 Knock Off or Dragon types in general not liking Play Rough.
There is no consistent Waterpon answer. The best you have are Tera Grass/Dragon Pokémon such as Moltres, Corviknight, and Gliscor.

However, these Teras do other good things beside check Waterpon and they're not too big of a commitment anyways, so it's not a huge deal imo.
 
We had a good tera blast consensus going for 10 pages and once that was shut down everyone is throwing literally everything at the discussion and seeing what sticks lol. Hyrapple included. Lol


After seeing someone discuss stellar zama I ran it on my assault vest zama and it uh didn't seem to hit any OHKOs or 2hkos that it doesn't otherwise
 
Anyone have some good checks to Waterpon? I want to use everyone's favorite wish fish, but it can't do anything to the ogre. The checks I thought of all get beat by a coverage move, like Sinistcha getting OHKOed by +2 Knock Off or Dragon types in general not liking Play Rough.
Defensively there is no consistent check to Ogerpon. You just gotta scout what its coverage move is, and play from there. While Defense struggles there are nice handful of powerful Pokemon that check it offensively. Darkrai, Pult, Zama, etc all can threaten Ogerpon. Just gotta play smart, and make good pivots.
 
Anyone have some good checks to Waterpon? I want to use everyone's favorite wish fish, but it can't do anything to the ogre. The checks I thought of all get beat by a coverage move, like Sinistcha getting OHKOed by +2 Knock Off or Dragon types in general not liking Play Rough.
Wellspring really just doesn't have checks that can completely counter it. Everything is afraid of coverage of some kind. The best way for Balance to handle it is to tera something to resist a hit and cripple it/trade with it. Wellspring really hates status and hazards, so using both can limit the amount of times it can come in. Don't be afraid to just choose a Wellspring switch in that fits your team; it has the coverage to beat anything but it's not guaranteed to have it all the time. Unfortunately when it does have it, you'll just have outplay their advantage somehow.
 
Anyone have some good checks to Waterpon? I want to use everyone's favorite wish fish, but it can't do anything to the ogre. The checks I thought of all get beat by a coverage move, like Sinistcha getting OHKOed by +2 Knock Off or Dragon types in general not liking Play Rough.

There's Amoonguss with Foul Play. That's probably the hardest defensive check to Ogerpon-Wellspring there is although Amoonguss is not a great mon in general.

Heavy-Duty Boots Ogerpon also avoids the 2HKO from most of Wellspring's attacks most of the time and can 2HKO her back with Ivy Cudgel or KO her outright with a Tera Grass Ivy Cudgel at 70% HP or lower.

As others have said, the best way to beat Waterpon is to get Spikes up and offensively pressure it since she is quite difficult to switch into without blowing your Tera.
 
A little late to the Zama vs Offense discussion, but I think Zama can offer alot to Offense/HO brews as a means to ensure your team doesn't instantly get mopped up by priority guys like Dragonite or Gambit if you lose momentum while still having the requisite speed and power to preform at the pace HO needs.

As for Gliscor, I think what bothers me about it isn't the SD sets, but that they exist alongside Gliscor being one of the best spike setters in the tier. I believe Blunder during one his tier list vids said it best that when Gliscor has to focus on being support, it is *acceptable*. But when its allowed to be a breaker that resists almost all forms of progress making, it pushes Gliscor towards being bannable. Granted with Kyurem still around and Corv finding new cores to work with on balance might make Gliscor tolerable enough to stay in the tier, but I guess we'd have to wait until the suspect to see if the standard or any newly developed counter-play sticks.
 
week in to kyurem being back

I have faced gking 90% of my games

My mental state is returning to unstable

Considering running mono dark
Yeah, Glowking is the only balance thing that kinda holds the dam without being an autolose if it's the wrong set. It was already meta before and now it's almost indispensable in pivot-heavy cores. People always talk about how Kyurem can break through Glowking balance cores but the fact of the matter is it breaks through everything else much more easily and Glowking is now even more central.

On the shitmon exploration side of things: thoughts on Wish/Protect/Hyper Voice Sylveon? I can run some calcs and fiddle with EVs and items when I get home, but at first glance it seems like it should be able to hard punish subtect sets while still forcing a tera at least on other sets with minimal investment threatening a OHKO through subs. No worries about SE coverage, and enough bulk to take a boosted hit or two depending on set.
 
Anyone have some good checks to Waterpon? I want to use everyone's favorite wish fish, but it can't do anything to the ogre. The checks I thought of all get beat by a coverage move, like Sinistcha getting OHKOed by +2 Knock Off or Dragon types in general not liking Play Rough.

Some of the most fun I've had this gen was the day I went on a big win streak with Toxicroak. Now the guy isn't good enough for OU, I'm not advocating for him or anything, but wow did he help out the wish fish.

Toxicroak @ Choice Band
Ability: Dry Skin
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 252 Atk / 200 Def / 56 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Gunk Shot
- Close Combat
- Sucker Punch/Bullet Punch
- Knock Off

The speed EVs are to outspeed standard Moltres. Gunk Shot 2hko's if it switches in on you.

+2 252 Atk Wellspring Mask Ogerpon-Wellspring Power Whip vs. 0 HP / 200 Def Toxicroak: 242-285 (78.8 - 92.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock

+2 252 Atk Wellspring Mask Ogerpon-Wellspring Play Rough vs. 0 HP / 200 Def Toxicroak: 243-286 (79.1 - 93.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock

252+ Atk Choice Band Toxicroak Close Combat vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Ogerpon-Wellspring: 324-382 (107.6 - 126.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO

And of course gunk shot massively over kills if it hits. Ivy Cudgel heals dry skin if they ever actually click it.

These calcs rarely actually happen. By far the most common interaction is Mola wishes as Ogerpon switches in. You hard switch to the frog and Wish heals whatever they poked you with. They have to switch out with no progress made and you get to make an Adamant + banded wall breaker hit worth of progress on something.

Toxicroak gets crushed by Lando-T and Great Tusk, but these are usually mons Mola likes coming in on so they help each other. Poison and Fighting are also rough moves to be banded into, with common immune switching all over OU. Dropping the choice band doesn't help, since he's slow and fragile Toxicroak doesn't get to fire a 2nd bullet.

At the end of the day Toxicroak just doesn't have the stats for an OU wall breaker. But wow did I love using him to de-tilt in my Alomomola vs Ogerpon-W games.
 
Some of the most fun I've had this gen was the day I went on a big win streak with Toxicroak. Now the guy isn't good enough for OU, I'm not advocating for him or anything, but wow did he help out the wish fish.

Toxicroak @ Choice Band
Ability: Dry Skin
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 252 Atk / 200 Def / 56 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Gunk Shot
- Close Combat
- Sucker Punch/Bullet Punch
- Knock Off

The speed EVs are to outspeed standard Moltres. Gunk Shot 2hko's if it switches in on you.

+2 252 Atk Wellspring Mask Ogerpon-Wellspring Power Whip vs. 0 HP / 200 Def Toxicroak: 242-285 (78.8 - 92.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock

+2 252 Atk Wellspring Mask Ogerpon-Wellspring Play Rough vs. 0 HP / 200 Def Toxicroak: 243-286 (79.1 - 93.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock

252+ Atk Choice Band Toxicroak Close Combat vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Ogerpon-Wellspring: 324-382 (107.6 - 126.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO

And of course gunk shot massively over kills if it hits. Ivy Cudgel heals dry skin if they ever actually click it.

These calcs rarely actually happen. By far the most common interaction is Mola wishes as Ogerpon switches in. You hard switch to the frog and Wish heals whatever they poked you with. They have to switch out with no progress made and you get to make an Adamant + banded wall breaker hit worth of progress on something.

Toxicroak gets crushed by Lando-T and Great Tusk, but these are usually mons Mola likes coming in on so they help each other. Poison and Fighting are also rough moves to be banded into, with common immune switching all over OU. Dropping the choice band doesn't help, since he's slow and fragile Toxicroak doesn't get to fire a 2nd bullet.

At the end of the day Toxicroak just doesn't have the stats for an OU wall breaker. But wow did I love using him to de-tilt in my Alomomola vs Ogerpon-W games.
I have to try this lmao, goated set. It also hard-walls Alomomola and Dondozo. What did you pair it with other than Mola?
 
Finally found a team with Waterpon, and I was able to win despite it getting a free switch whenever Mola comes in.
Ended up using Ogerpon because I've never used it before, and I really like how it plays!
Also ended up using Zama and Ghold, who can check it too (252 HP/196+ Def Gholdengo can take two Ivy Cudgels from full HP and paralyze it, which is cool)
Thanks everyone for all the advice and suggestions!
 
So I have been looking into Gliscor counterplay for a bit. I really don't think it is broken. The main thing is the passive and SD sets have somewhat different counterplay. I feel like the passive sets have been covered pretty well on here. But getting other people to talk about the SD set counterplay in this thread has been somewhat tricky. With a Gliscor suspect looming, I will attempt to get the conversation started again. I will leave out obvious mons like Corv and Dozo for the time being.

SD sets can really only fit two moves, usually between Facade, Knock Off, and EQ. Outside of the metal birds, there are also a decent amount of mons that can resist 2 of the 3 moves like Sinistcha, Gambit, Tinkaton, or even less seen niche picks like Mandibuzz or Tyranitar. Though I have also seen Ice Fang and EQ.

The thing about Ice Fang is it also has a low base power. So it doesn't tend do much damage outside of supereffective hits on SD boosts. Knock Off has a similar problem, not hitting as hard after the first hit. You don't necesarrily need to have a straight resist to it. EQ can be mitigated by Grassy Terrain and/or Air Balloon. EQ also has a lower PP, so it can more easily be stalled out. What I'm saying is there are various way to play around EQ.

One mon I want to bring up is Garganacl. You resist Facade, you counter Poison Heal recovery with Salt Cure, and you are immune to Toxic. After the first Knock Off, it wouldn't do that much. You can boost your own defense with Curse or Iron Defense. I feel like this is a pretty good mon into Gliscor if you have a way to mitigate the threat of potential EQ. You can also make your Tera with this in mind.

Another mon I have been experimenting with is Orthworm. It's... interesting. I don't know if it is good in OU. But you are immune to Toxic and EQ, you resist Facade, and you have a naturally high 145 base defense. I also considered it for Kyurem because you resist both the STABs while being immune to Earth Power. It feels like there is an anti-meta mon in there somewhere. No recovery hurts it, but you can maybe run it with Wish support on more defensive teams. While more testing is needed, I wanted to mention it now before the Gliscor suspect.
 
So I have been looking into Gliscor counterplay for a bit. I really don't think it is broken. The main thing is the passive and SD sets have somewhat different counterplay. I feel like the passive sets have been covered pretty well on here. But getting other people to talk about the SD set counterplay in this thread has been somewhat tricky. With a Gliscor suspect looming, I will attempt to get the conversation started again. I will leave out obvious mons like Corv and Dozo for the time being.

SD sets can really only fit two moves, usually between Facade, Knock Off, and EQ. Outside of the metal birds, there are also a decent amount of mons that can resist 2 of the 3 moves like Sinistcha, Gambit, Tinkaton, or even less seen niche picks like Mandibuzz or Tyranitar. Though I have also seen Ice Fang and EQ.

The thing about Ice Fang is it also has a low base power. So it doesn't tend do much damage outside of supereffective hits on SD boosts. Knock Off has a similar problem, not hitting as hard after the first hit. You don't necesarrily need to have a straight resist to it. EQ can be mitigated by Grassy Terrain and/or Air Balloon. EQ also has a lower PP, so it can more easily be stalled out. What I'm saying is there are various way to play around EQ.

One mon I want to bring up is Garganacl. You resist Facade, you counter Poison Heal recovery with Salt Cure, and you are immune to Toxic. After the first Knock Off, it wouldn't do that much. You can boost your own defense with Curse or Iron Defense. I feel like this is a pretty good mon into Gliscor if you have a way to mitigate the threat of potential EQ. You can also make your Tera with this in mind.

Another mon I have been experimenting with is Orthworm. It's... interesting. I don't know if it is good in OU. But you are immune to Toxic and EQ, you resist Facade, and you have a naturally high 145 base defense. I also considered it for Kyurem because you resist both the STABs while being immune to Earth Power. It feels like there is an anti-meta mon in there somewhere. No recovery hurts it, but you can maybe run it with Wish support on more defensive teams. While more testing is needed, I wanted to mention it now before the Gliscor suspect.
Orthworm is so bad, he loses to every special attacker and lacks Recover. Don't use him, he's not a check, beating Kyurem sometimes and beating Scor means nothing.
 
Orthworm is so bad, he loses to every special attacker and lacks Recover. Don't use him, he's not a check, beating Kyurem sometimes and beating Scor means nothing.
Well, yeah. But you can maybe run him with AV and/or Wish support. I would also argue that beating the two recent suspect mons (past and future) means a lot more than nothing. And there are probably other decent matchups.

Beating Kyurem, or at least just guaranteeing you can beat the DD Kyurems, whether they are physical or mixed DD, is a pretty big deal. You can switch your special set check like Glowking in for the special sets, and when Kyurem "surprise" DDs, you have something for it. In general, playing balance without Kyurem was way more fun for me because of how less restrictive it felt. Defensive cores are going to need to change.

Like I'm aware that Orthworm post Shed Tail has been a bad mon. But I also feel that some of the tools it has are pretty desirable. Maybe not as much as the metal birds, but you also resist Ice rather than being neutral to it. Again, more testing is needed.
 
Well, yeah. But you can maybe run him with AV and/or Wish support. I would also argue that beating the two recent suspect mons (past and future) means a lot more than nothing. And there are probably other decent matchups.

Beating Kyurem, or at least just guaranteeing you can beat the DD Kyurems, whether they are physical or mixed DD, is a pretty big deal. You can switch your special set check like Glowking in for the special sets, and when Kyurem "surprise" DDs, you have something for it. In general, playing balance without Kyurem was way more fun for me because of how less restrictive it felt. Defensive cores are going to need to change.

Like I'm aware that Orthworm post Shed Tail has been a bad mon. But I also feel that some of the tools it has are pretty desirable. Maybe not as much as the metal birds, but you also resist Ice rather than being neutral to it. Again, more testing is needed.
No, it loses to Tera Fire/Electric Blast Kyurem. It also hates taking Specs Draco Meteors and Blizzards. It also hates taking +1 Icicle Spear. Orthworm is bad, simple as that.
 
The whole of Garganacl is unhealthy as fuck. It has an immunity to status conditions, a free Ghost resist, and what is essentially unresisted Toxic that directly counters its two most reliable checks. That’s one form of counterplay just flat out eliminated and another form of counterplay that is severely limited. It can very easily beat its other checks with the right Tera. There is absolutely no way to switch into Garganacl except for a Grass type, Salt Cure is an extremely brainless no-risk move and it can easily stall out super effective hits with the asinine combination of Protect and Recover. Oh, and it also has access to the most spammable attacking moves in the game, Earthquake.
Shiver me timbers, Garg EQ. One thing I've learned is that some mons are builderchecks, and that's ok. I mean if you can't break a Garg, you probably can't break stall in general, aka your team is bad. There are plenty of anti-Garg tools. For example, its base typing is Rock which is horrible. Great Tusk can Headlong Rush it pretty well. If it starts clicking Curse or Recover or whatever, we have plenty of Encore mons in the tier. Waterpon also kind of just... exists in general, as well as Hydrapple which actually owns every Garg set. And if it teras then you actually 1v1 with SD Gliscor if it's used a lot of Recover pp. Facade hits it pretty hard then.
Anyone have some good checks to Waterpon? I want to use everyone's favorite wish fish, but it can't do anything to the ogre. The checks I thought of all get beat by a coverage move, like Sinistcha getting OHKOed by +2 Knock Off or Dragon types in general not liking Play Rough.
Hydrapple the goat. Alternatively, you could use Rillaboom, or bring back Tera Fly Acro Mola lol.
 
I tilted hard today, and lost a bunch of points. What I’ve come to learn is that I hate Veil cheese, and I hate Booster energy. It’s so crazy to me that you can just build a team filled to the brim with Booster Boosted mons, and just fucking win cause the item is broken and all the mons in OU that use it are excellent. I wish the item did not exist, or was actually humored for a suspect test.

Rant over, with that out of the way. I like Scizor in this meta. Soft checks Kyurem, and hard hitting priority feels like a must in this meta. That being said; what is ya’lls favorite Scizor set? CB? AV? SD?
 
No, it loses to Tera Fire/Electric Blast Kyurem. It also hates taking Specs Draco Meteors and Blizzards. It also hates taking +1 Icicle Spear. Orthworm is bad, simple as that.
Run calcs. A 0 EV + defense nature invested Orthworm takes 25.6 - 31.4 from a +1 Icicle Spear. Icicle Spear is not beating you at +1 without serious prior chip. Tera Electric does 41.3 - 48.9%. But that's with no defense EVs. Presumably, the Orthworm would have more defense investment than 0 EVs and potentially the ability to Iron Defense. TB Fire is more dangerous. But TB can beat literally anything when combined with setup moves like QD or DD, which is why there has been discussion for a suspect for it.

I would also like to mention that you 2HKO with Body Press unless Kyurem uses its Tera. You can also use your own Tera if you want, though you would likely be on the back foot without ID since you aren't the DD mon.

For the special sets, I'm less certain on this because it requires AV and special defense investment to be decent. And this means you can't Iron Defense. But Specs specifically is different because Kyurem is forced to be locked in. Kyurem hits like paper after a single Draco drops its stats because the STAB hits are resisted. It's really only a factor on Specs, and even then only because Orthworm lacks recovery. But Kyurem, now without Roost, is still losing half its health to Body Press if it stays in. Specs sets are also taking 25% chip from Rocks.
 
If you want a healthy metagame, ban the unhealthy mons. All of them. Kingcheap, Ogerbroad, IceUber, Flying Scorpion, Dark Nightmare, String Cheeseman, Fenris Wolf, and Long Neck. And you can also drop that piece of Rock Salt into an ocean trench and bury it.

The meta would thrive with all those mons gone.
briefly coming back from the dead to beg you to please just use their actual names
 
No, it loses to Tera Fire/Electric Blast Kyurem. It also hates taking Specs Draco Meteors and Blizzards. It also hates taking +1 Icicle Spear. Orthworm is bad, simple as that.
There's no reason to shut down discussion like this. Anti meta mons almost always come from being previously overlooked. Niche picks that have genuinely risen up in their own like Sinistcha, Tinkaton, Hydrapple, Okidogi, etc, were all overlooked and dismissed at first. Bold School is literally acknowledging that they've been testing it still for optimization but the good traits they've identified are really cool and worth discussing. It's one thing to harp on about a mon not worth using in the slightest but it's a different thing entirely to identify potential niches and play around with them. Frankly, it's just rude. What's it to you if someone wants to make Orthworm work? They never claimed it was good, merely that it seemed interesting vs Gliscor and Kyurem.

Anyways, I could maybe see Orthworm setting both hazards with Rocky Helmet to dissuade Rapid Spin? It can't really touch Great Tusk, but if Tusk doesn't have CC, it can't really do anything back. Sets like Headlong/Ice Spinner/Spin/whatever are entirely walled. It's unfortunately really passive though, it invites a lot of stuff in like Ghold and Bolt.
 
Anyways, I could maybe see Orthworm setting both hazards with Rocky Helmet to dissuade Rapid Spin? It can't really touch Great Tusk, but if Tusk doesn't have CC, it can't really do anything back. Sets like Headlong/Ice Spinner/Spin/whatever are entirely walled. It's unfortunately really passive though, it invites a lot of stuff in like Ghold and Bolt.
So where do you realistically see Orthworm carving a niche for itself exactly? I'm gonna be honest, this thing hasn't been on my radar at all, but it's got that "Hey. I do one or two things pretty decently with so and so advantages" thing nailed down, so it has to count for something.

I was thinking some kind of balance or bulky hazard stack?
 
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