With it officially being December and we now have access to the first round of usage stats, it'd be interesting to look at a few things. Granted we only have about 11-12 days worth of usage for the freed mons, so it's not exactly a great representation of things but I think you could still extrapolate from it a bit.
| 21 | Kingambit | 7.712% |
| 28 | Dragapult | 6.322% |
| 42 | Gholdengo | 4.526% |
| 50 | Terapagos | 4.150% |
| 53 | Melmetal | 3.651% |
| 63 | Zamazenta | 2.767% |
These are the notable Pokemon that were returned to NDOU with the ban, and it's fair to say that it may be too soon to fully claim anything outright, but I think these look positive for a few reasons. First, it's nice that despite being strong options none of them saw a crazy amount of play out of the gate. Gambit saw the most but the most common sets are Pursuit, not the SD that broke it before and is now a set that while good, has more hurdles to work through. Pult despite being the most arguably contentious drop, didn't explode either in usage and if you've played a fair bit, you'll know that despite the power of DD+Z, we're all seeing a lot of Status+Pivot sets which to me suggests that DD+Z isn't so good that you NEED to run it. Gholdengo is great, but it's neither overwhelming vs balance anymore nor has it felt too suffocating as a hazard removal blocker and just feels very positive a presence. Similarly, Melmetal and Terapagos have felt like nice stabilizing presences for teambuilding with the former's versatility and resilient nature and the latter being a strong anti-offense tool as well as a great spinner. Lastly Zamazenta is still really good, and one of the mons you must still respect a lot in the builder but it feels very balanced compared to before.
Beyond these, we've started seeing more exploration of mons you didn't see much of before like Mega Venu, Ting-Lu and Slowbro. Bulky Offense and Balance have started to reemerge and we're seeing a lot of different builds pop up which to me is a great sign. It feels a lot more varied and interesting, and most importantly fun, which I love. I'm really looking forward to seeing how December shakes out as far as usage goes, and what stuff will rise and fall!
Now on to some random thoughts
Toxapex @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Level: 100
Bold Nature
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 248 HP / 212 Def / 48 SpD
- Scald
- Recover / Knock Off
- Haze / Toxic / Knock Off
- Toxic Spikes / Baneful Bunker
With Balance making a comeback (Woohoo!!!), Pex has felt better than ever. Runo talked about it briefly in the Personal VR thread
here but Toxic Spikes are really potent with the decrease in fellow Poisons (though still viable!) like Glowking and Iron Moth. Playing a lot vs this mon, they always end up causing some kind of trouble if not played around well and with Pex's natural resilience and longevity, it's good at getting them up multiple times. I've seen some drop Recover for more utility, and I've even personally come around to the idea of Baneful Bunker as another slot option, since it so nicely punishes a lot of the common physical attackers such as Tusk, Moltres and Lando-T clicking U-Turn, Samurott-H attempting to stack spikes, even punishing U-Turn versions of Koko with a bit of good play. It's even useful to put Mega Medicham on a timer.
Slowbro @ Colbur Berry / Rocky Helmet
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpA
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Psychic Noise / Future Sight
- Scald / Body Press
- Teleport
- Slack Off / Thunder Wave / Trick Room
Despite the presence of Kingambit and Mega Tyranitar, this mon feels alright and offers some unique building tools that I feel we haven't gotten to properly play during the Tera meta. It's the bulky water I've played with the most since the Tera ban and I think it's got quite a few good options. Psychic Noise shits on Gliscor attempting to sit on you as well as Ferrothorn, Gholdengo switching in, though I think Future Sight still has merit especially alongside Colbur Berry to pair with strong fighters. I've come across a few Body Press variants with Colbur to dunk on MTtar and Gambit, and of course TWave is a nice option for speed control. I personally have fooled around with a variant running Trick Room as sort of a panic button vs certain boosters (Wellspring being the main one) but it's much more specific. Overall cool mon I think.
Iron Hands @ Leftovers
Level: 100
Adamant Nature
Ability: Quark Drive
EVs: 244 HP / 24 Atk / 156 SpD / 84 Spe
- Thunder Punch / Wild Charge / Swords Dance
- Drain Punch
- Ice Punch
- Substitute
This one is pretty experimental but I wanted to try Substitute over Swords Dance as a way of exploiting the steels and dark types that Hands typically forces out (also exploiting the fat waters like Mola and Pex too) for opportunities to hammer things. It's quite effective at luring in and beating or greatly weakening the common grounds too. OHKOs bulkless Garchomp with just SR up, greatly weakens offensive Landorus-T while comfortably carving off 45% to maxdef variants (bolstered even better by SR). Headlong Rush variants of non BU Great Tusk are forced to break the sub letting Hands rack up a lot of easy chip (44% minimium to max HP variants after the defense drop of HR). Other typical non Hands ground switch ins like Lele expecting a fighting move or Koko in general, have to break the sub so it can push damage on both nicely (even feeding off Koko's terrain for more power) while flyers like Tornadus-T and Zapdos straight struggle to pressure this (Zap not even being able to static it).
The main struggle points for this set are bulky Gholdengo and Infiltrator Dragapult variants, but at least vs Ghold you can fish for Thunder Punch para. Option to drop Elec stab to SD if you want a fun wincon vs bulkier teams that can't touch it easily (dunks on Mola reliant teams well this way).
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Said it before and I'll say it again. This meta has easily been the most fun I've had playing this tier in a long time and I hope you all are having a good time too.
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(okay the last one may be pushing it a bit but I think it could be kind of fun to try it out.)
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could be funny to test out but would probably be very stupid so I didn't include it. Seriously though, don't unban 
. That's a horrible idea. Don't let anyone fool you into thinking otherwise.
in the list are meant to represent the pokemon's rankings, not that wooper itself can check these mons, as goofy as that might sound)