Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4

Jiro7 said:
How exactly does Dondozo lose to Palafin? I've had this matchup a few times, Bulk Up Palafin ALWAYS loses to dozo even with taunt, Drain simply never heals enough. Only chance to beat Dozo is Tera Water Band in Rain, which requires setup, commit Tera and lose like 70% hp in recoil from Wave Crash. So only one specific set+item+tera of Palafin can get through dozo and requires weather and tera. And mola can probably help dozo against the rain version (assuming you don't have Water Absorb in the team)
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press dozo wins, but the other dozos don't. waterfall/avalance is dealing like no damage, drain punch heals like 5% every time so you should break before dying. lefties make it much better into dozo as well.
 
Hi all, I've once again returned from my Youtube retirement (temporarily) to make a couple more videos, one of which being on the big Pokemon of the hour, Palafin! Specifically, I've been thinking a lot about the different kinds of sets it can run even beyond the Bulk Up and Choiced ones that most people are citing. I talk about them in my latest video here:


What do you think of Palafin's set variety? Do you think it creates for a positive presence, or is it more trouble than it's worth?
 
I think Palafin is pretty mid tbh. Like A tier at most. If you run Mola + Drapple + check for Ice Punch variants it’s almost useless into you. Z2H makes it so that if you can’t lead with it, it’s hard to get it in and out so that it becomes a real mon. Hazards are a big issue for it, and like we all expected, Woger being on the other side makes Palafin half a mon.
 
ianlazerbeem said:
Surveys should be more often, in fact in my opinion should be a regular thing, monthly, quarterly, after every major tournament, your call. Right now surveys feel very "reactive" in that they are usually only released if the meta feels unhealthy to the council or their peers; with the fairly stable place we've been at since the bloodmoon or debatably arch ban, they are so infrequent that the delta in the enjoyment and balance scores is not super useful information in my eyes since there is no constant rate of change and it's difficult to evaluate what meta developments led to a change in scores and at what point. Being able to monitor the change in scores more actively would be more useful for council in pinpointing "what went wrong" if scores were low, or determining the change in overall meta health, I would think. Being able to consistently track the change of opinion on Tera as well as mons like Kyurem, Gliscor, gambit, Zama, etc as the meta continues to evolve (which literally will never stop if Tera is legal, which is not a bad thing necessarily but a reality we must accept) would be useful as well. When even was the last one?

Surveys should not be connected to a promise of tiering action (I don't really think they are but there is definitely a correlation.) overall in shorter terms, "regular check ins" are a healthy communication convention that allows us to be proactive about attending to the needs of the community, even if the need ends up being "do nothing right now." The data and being able to consistently track it is valuable nonetheless

Tera is the largest definer of this generation and it should be on every single survey. A real 1-5 survey question, not the statistic-skewing "do you believe Tera NEEDS to be banned RIGHT NOW" that was put on surveys a few times before the topic was dropped because of the overwhelming no response to that very extreme question. Even if the answer is consistently low and it seems to be a non-issue, that is a useful data point that can be pointed to in tiering discussion. At this point we have literally no idea what the player base thinks of the mechanic as it's been at least a year since the question was asked and even longer since it's been asked in a non-leading way. With other tiers doing away with Tera and feeling positive about it we should at least raise the question, regardless of what the answer ends up being.

As a result of the infrequency of these surveys we have people constantly arguing about "what the real problem with the meta is" (if one really exists) and people (not me but others) being frustrated about DNB votes because "no one can agree what needs to change." No one can agree because we have no idea what others are feeling! Ask us these questions regularly and monitor how the answers change and there you have your answer. Instead, we have half the people in this thread acting like the meta is an unmitigated disaster and the other half literally chilling and no recent data points to point to on how many people feel which way.

Monthly would be ideal but I recognize there's a point where participation drops when they're too frequent. I'm not sure how much work compiling this data is as a good deal of automation for this exists but as an administrative professional I recognize there definitely is work done by finch and others so their time should be considered as well. Quarterly or after every major tournament (by virtue of, most of them significantly change/develop the meta) would be quite reasonable and useful too. but the current system of "every once in a while, but not regularly" is not particularly effective in 1) determining if change is needed and 2) driving that change.

This post is already long but I'll get my thoughts on changes to the suspect process here too. Nothing to complain about with the regular system, but the terms of this unban test are just weird and dated and don't make a lot of sense compared to the rest of tiering policy. My umbrage mostly comes to 1) the 50% threshold 2) the timeframe and 3) the reasoning rules in the suspect thread. I have always been under the impression 60% was what it took to change the status quo and that makes sense. Only 50 to drop an uber is a little lackadaisical and even though I personally think Palafin is looking more ok than not it just seems like an out of place and odd threshold. I also worry about turnout and the community not getting the full picture with only a week to develop, but I understand the flip side of not drawing things out if it's crazy broken - it's an unintended side effect that the pala test is looking more complicated. Also the idea of "the only reasoning allowed in the thread is why Palafin NEEDS to be unbanned" is ridiculous not only for the absurdly high bar but also by virtue of, what percentage of voters are actually going to vote with that logic rather than broken vs not broken. I understand it's policy but it feels very unrealistic and ignoring of the reality of why people vote which way and also makes discussion in the thread challenging by artificially limiting the framework. I understand why tiering policy is rarely changed mid gen but a lot of these regarding the unban rules feel very odd and arbitrary in ways that aren't super constructive. Lugia and solgaleo also would almost certainly need more than a week for things to develop so maybe being proactive about this would be a good thing if dropping palafin turns out to have been a good idea.
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hard agree with several points of this post:
  • surveys are an invaluable source of data and in my opinion should be at least a monthly thing, ideally at the same time each month. asking "hey guys what do y'all think about the meta" twelve times a year seems reasonable enough to me. if that's too big of a time commitment, maybe we could have some non-council person whose job is specifically to make and analyze the surveys every month so it doesn't get in the way of other council duties. holding a survey doesn't really take a council-member amount of skill or meta knowledge, all it takes is an awareness of what things are currently contentious and some very basic data analysis skills, so the pool of people who are capable of holding this theoretical position is fairly wide. maybe someone on the vr council could do it or something, i dunno
  • tera absolutely should be on every survey, especially after its ban in natdex gave us a reference point of what a meta without tera looks like in practice—obviously not a perfect reference point since we don't have mega charizard y or pursuit over here, but there's still useful data to glean from it. my opinion on the mechanic has definitely shifted since the natdex ban and i'm willing to bet a lot of people feel similarly
  • i honestly don't like the "you have to explain why palafin needs to be unbanned" thing. the way i see it, if something isn't broken, it should drop, whether it actually "adds value" to the tier or not. it's not some sort of desperate imperative thing that we add palafin back, but if it's not broken or at least severely unhealthy (i still think it is, for the record, though my opinion is subject to change), tiering philosophy dictates that it be unbanned. the traditional school of thought regarding this tier, or at least my understanding of it, is that ou should allow as many pokemon as reasonably possible while remaining balanced and healthy (and yes, we still need more bans to get to this point after all this time). if a mon isn't broken or destabilizing the tier, that's reason enough for me to vote it back down
  • i too am worried that turnout for this suspect might be affected by how many other time commitments there are for a lot of people around this time of year. for example, i planned to ladder today but i ended up spending the entire day wrapping presents and playing games with a friend who came over for christmas, and i'm booked for several other days of the suspect. i'm not calling for any sort of extension or action about it, i'm just kind of concerned about how many people might decide to not bother grinding for this suspect during the two busiest weeks of the year
 
The reason why tiering policy wants you to explain why a palafin unban is necessary is the same reason why it wants you to explain why a gouging fire ban was necessary: you want the status quo to change, it's on you to tell us why. It's that simple.

Ideas like "oh we should have more mons in the tier if they're balanced" are purely personal preference. Voters will unfortunately vote based entirely on their preferences, but that's all it is.
DaddyBuzzwole said:
but if it's not broken or at least severely unhealthy (i still think it is, for the record, though my opinion is subject to change), tiering philosophy dictates that it be unbanned. the traditional school of thought regarding this tier, or at least my understanding of it, is that ou should allow as many pokemon as reasonably possible while remaining balanced and healthy
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I do not know how you came to think tiering philosophy dictates this, because nothing like this is stated here. You could perhaps stretch it to this tidbit "This can also work in reverse; if the metagame is too centralized around a particular set of Pokemon, none of which are broken on their own, we may seek to add Pokemon to increase diversity." But I do not think this description applies to SV.
ianlazerbeem said:
Also the idea of "the only reasoning allowed in the thread is why Palafin NEEDS to be unbanned" is ridiculous not only for the absurdly high bar but also by virtue of, what percentage of voters are actually going to vote with that logic rather than broken vs not broken.
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This "absurdly high bar" is the same exact bar that every person arguing to ban a pokemon has had to reach, that I have tried to reach for every single suspect test in this tier until now. It suddenly feels absurdly high to the DNB crowd because this is the first time they've had to try reaching it this gen.

Yes more regular surveys would be great thanks
 
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Delibird Heart said:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2268773826-jp57l6dkg85cytiz7wfbz7f2meexkl6pw

Some people need to be banned from cooking forever. I don't think anyone besides Satan himself could have imagined a team like this one...
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Pretty sure this specific team won a tourney a while ago, I can't find the replay right now but I remember Kyurem exhausting tera turn 1 into successfully PP stalling and Icicle spearing the entire balance team it was facing with some help from the other mons on the team (it easily outlasted an unaware clefable and tera water gliscor). Don't remember who built it nor brought it for the match but Hiko was the one facing it if I remember correctly.

Another cool replay that demonstrate perfectly how much Kyurem has been benefiting this tier since it dropped.
 
Merry Christmas everyone! To keep it short and simple why the heck is no one using tera electric Rotom Wash? I haven't tried it yet but I would assume a solid defensive pokemon with no weaknesses would be really good. Of course Rotom Wash isn't that great of a defensive pokemon as it has been severely outclassed by other defensive water types over the years but I think having no weaknesses makes up for it in my opinion. Anyway this is the set I plan to use.

Rotom-Wash @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 HP / 212 Def / 44 Spe
Bold Nature
- Volt Switch
- Hydro Pump
- Pain Split
- Will-O-Wisp

This is just the defensive pivot set on the teambuilder but with tera electric slapped on it but I think it is fine. This could be a good Palafin check since it can probably tank most of Palafin's moves and then deal a good chunk back with volt switch or even just burn Palafin to make it essentially useless. It could be also just a generally good defensive pokemon against a good portion of the tier but who knows.
 
UltraSword said:
Merry Christmas everyone! To keep it short and simple why the heck is no one using tera electric Rotom Wash? I haven't tried it yet but I would assume a solid defensive pokemon with no weaknesses would be really good. Of course Rotom Wash isn't that great of a defensive pokemon as it has been severely outclassed by other defensive water types over the years but I think having no weaknesses makes up for it in my opinion. Anyway this is the set I plan to use.

Rotom-Wash @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 HP / 212 Def / 44 Spe
Bold Nature
- Volt Switch
- Hydro Pump
- Pain Split
- Will-O-Wisp

This is just the defensive pivot set on the teambuilder but with tera electric slapped on it but I think it is fine. This could be a good Palafin check since it can probably tank most of Palafin's moves and then deal a good chunk back with volt switch or even just burn Palafin to make it essentially useless. It could be also just a generally good defensive pokemon against a good portion of the tier but who knows.
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the reason people dont use it is the same reason people dont use eelektross, no weaknesses isnt great when you also have almost no resistances.
 
UltraSword said:
Merry Christmas everyone! To keep it short and simple why the heck is no one using tera electric Rotom Wash? I haven't tried it yet but I would assume a solid defensive pokemon with no weaknesses would be really good. Of course Rotom Wash isn't that great of a defensive pokemon as it has been severely outclassed by other defensive water types over the years but I think having no weaknesses makes up for it in my opinion. Anyway this is the set I plan to use.

Rotom-Wash @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 HP / 212 Def / 44 Spe
Bold Nature
- Volt Switch
- Hydro Pump
- Pain Split
- Will-O-Wisp

This is just the defensive pivot set on the teambuilder but with tera electric slapped on it but I think it is fine. This could be a good Palafin check since it can probably tank most of Palafin's moves and then deal a good chunk back with volt switch or even just burn Palafin to make it essentially useless. It could be also just a generally good defensive pokemon against a good portion of the tier but who knows.
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252+ Atk Choice Band Tera Water Palafin-Hero Wave Crash vs. 252 HP / 212+ Def Tera Electric Rotom-Wash: 356-420 (117.1 - 138.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO
 
AerionT said:
252+ Atk Choice Band Tera Water Palafin-Hero Wave Crash vs. 252 HP / 212+ Def Tera Electric Rotom-Wash: 356-420 (117.1 - 138.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO
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My bad friendo I didn't realize Rotom had NO BIT-

download.jpeg
 
Finchinator said:
Bruh we both are saying this is ok!! The issue is that what he said is both incorrect and not council errors. He’s mad at the community for how they voted and the concept of suspect tests.

How about you read before accusing? You guys should be critical of authority!! You guys deserve the best tier possible. We don’t get there by people spewing misinformation and being rude though.
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You just don’t want to do your job. This is the worst system I’ve ever seen in my life. Out of 500,000 likes, how many people do you think are between 1000 and 1200 Elo? Stop acting like random influencers and start making sensible decisions for the tier. I sincerely prefer when CTC gives his garbage opinions!
 
Weshbien said:
You just don’t want to do your job. This is the worst system I’ve ever seen in my life. Out of 500,000 likes, how many people do you think are between 1000 and 1200 Elo? Stop acting like random influencers and start making sensible decisions for the tier. I sincerely prefer when CTC gives his garbage opinions!
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The actual answer to this is well under 10%. The vast majority of likes (>450k) were funded by a few dozen prominent players and users. This is publicly available information.

Also, claiming I “don’t want to do my job” is crazy. You can agree or disagree with whatever, but if you’re questioning my work ethic then you can take a hike.
 
Weshbien said:
You just don’t want to do your job. This is the worst system I’ve ever seen in my life. Out of 500,000 likes, how many people do you think are between 1000 and 1200 Elo? Stop acting like random influencers and start making sensible decisions for the tier. I sincerely prefer when CTC gives his garbage opinions!
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God damn man. You really pulling this crap on Christmas (eve)? If you have a problem then you can gladly take a hike but don't be insulting the Grinchinator (xD)

Edit: We should add a reaction to boo users because this guy definitely deserves it
 
Weshbien said:
You just don’t want to do your job. This is the worst system I’ve ever seen in my life. Out of 500,000 likes, how many people do you think are between 1000 and 1200 Elo? Stop acting like random influencers and start making sensible decisions for the tier. I sincerely prefer when CTC gives his garbage opinions!
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If there's any critique to be made about the palafin likeshop rally it's that it was primarily pushed by a few prominent users, not that it was the work of tons of sub 1200 players. And it's still going to be a normal suspect test, so you can get reqs and vote no if you want.


Anyway, Merry Christmas to all of the forum users
 
Finchinator said:
The actual answer to this is well under 10%. The vast majority of likes (>450k) were funded by a few dozen prominent players and users. This is publicly available information.

Also, claiming I “don’t want to do my job” is crazy. You can agree or disagree with whatever, but if you’re questioning my work ethic then you can take a hike.
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Ah, it's even worse than I thought, so the one who gives the most money gets the suspect they want? Classic capitalism rotting the game from the inside. If you're rich, you can get Arceus in the tier, but if you're poor, you're not allowed to criticize it :(
 
It’s not that deep dude. It’s a forum Likeshop, not the global economy. This is not some bizarre commentary on capitalism or some grand conspiracy to silence you.

All of the things you have said just aren’t true. There was only a small list of possibilities up-front, so Arceus was obviously not an option. It’s not really our problem that you don’t take the time to do due diligence before complaining.

We have said you can be critical of the process — look at this whole thread, which literally was not open to tiering discussion until I permitted it as leader last generation. Censorship SUCKS and everyone should get an opinion!!!

But my guy, you’re complaining about me not wanting to do my job when I am literally taking time out of my vacation on Christmas Eve to dispel misinformation. You’re comparing a Likeshop to capitalism despite not knowing what you’re even talking about.

Perhaps you should go back to tagging me on discord every week asking me to ban Tera instead of whatever you are trying to do here.
 
Weshbien said:
Ah, it's even worse than I thought, so the one who gives the most money gets the suspect they want? Classic capitalism rotting the game from the inside. If you're rich, you can get Arceus in the tier, but if you're poor, you're not allowed to criticize it :(
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I replied to him in earnest before but it has to be a troll, right? There's no way the "classic capitalism rotting the game from the inside" line is meant as anything other than a joke. We fell for it, boys and girls
 
Finchinator said:
The actual answer to this is well under 10%. The vast majority of likes (>450k) were funded by a few dozen prominent players and users. This is publicly available information.

Also, claiming I “don’t want to do my job” is crazy. You can agree or disagree with whatever, but if you’re questioning my work ethic then you can take a hike.
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I still don't see the purpose of likeshop. If the council wanted a palafin retest they could have just dropped one, no? And all of the other suspects that were even slightly controversial (namely another tera suspect) did not get nearly enough likes. So that leaves the other likeshop rewards, most of which involve some kind of gambling... on a site that children use...
 
Weshbien said:
Ah, it's even worse than I thought, so the one who gives the most money gets the suspect they want? Classic capitalism rotting the game from the inside. If you're rich, you can get Arceus in the tier, but if you're poor, you're not allowed to criticize it :(
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A suspect is not a guaranteed unban. And Palafin has been talked about for quite some time. No need to villainize the council or anyone else, it just greatly reduces quality here. Even if the council makes a decision that doesn't follow your criteria for appropriate it doesn't mean they are out to get anyone. These posts(it isn't just you) are either bait that you laugh at or just plain foolishness. Please stop stretching stuff you don't agree with into some villainous or otherwise evil plan.
 
jjoba said:
I still don't see the purpose of likeshop. If the council wanted a palafin retest they could have just dropped one, no? And all of the other suspects that were even slightly controversial (namely another tera suspect) did not get nearly enough likes. So that leaves the other likeshop rewards, most of which involve some kind of gambling... on a site that children use...
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this thread is not devolving into a discussion on if gambling forum likes is problematic or not, nope.
 
jjoba said:
I still don't see the purpose of likeshop. If the council wanted a palafin retest they could have just dropped one, no? And all of the other suspects that were even slightly controversial (namely another tera suspect) did not get nearly enough likes. So that leaves the other likeshop rewards, most of which involve some kind of gambling... on a site that children use...
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It's a pity that the first critique is going to be ignored because you included the gambling part which is such a non issue
 
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