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Hello everyone!
So, I'm sure you're wondering what this thread you've just stumbled upon is all about. Well, simply, this is a little place for me to leave my opinions on all the ADV tiers I've played. You see, when in summer of 2024 gen3 ZU got a ROA spotlight ladder I decided I should try getting at the very least 1300 elo in every "main" gen3 meta (this includes Ubers, UU, RU, NU, PU, ZU, LC and Doubles OU). This post will document my time doing this little quest of sorts. Whenever I get 1300 in a meta (I swear it's harder than it sounds) I will add it here and talk a bit about it, giving my two cents on the meta, a VR and one or two team pastes and replays (any "ladder peak" replays will be of my peak at time of writing, I'll add replays for new peaks only if I really liked the games or they're major elo ratings).Hello everyone!
Now, I need to note that I am very new to any non-OU meta so my opinions on any tier that isn't OU are shaky and shouldn't be taken too seriously. The main idea here is just to have fun talking about ADV metas that I've had few chances to try out. So that means of course that I'd be more than happy to hear what you guys have to say about every meta, if there's any cool teams or replays you want to share and the likes.
All that said now I will get to talking about the metagames I've played. If you don't see every meta I mentioned before in this post it means I haven't got to them yet, as said I will update this original post with any new meta I get 1300 elo on (this will take a while as I'm of course at the mercy of the ROA spotlight rotation). The tiers will be in no particular order, tho I originally intended to order them from favourite to least favourite I've since changed my mind. Alright, let's begin then!
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OU 
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Peaked 1813
- THOUGHTS OU ====================================Peaked 1813
I don't think I need to say much about OU, as everybody knows it's a great metagame. It's my favourite metagame ever, even if I have to admit Gen3 Ubers gave it some competition. It's a very creative metagame with a bunch of cool and fun options in the teambuilder but it rarely feels like preping for most of them is hard. The most splashable pokemon all have defined counters and checks and they're not at all one note as they all have plenty of options to play around with, some of which are actually still underexplored (we got to start trying out counter Skarm more lads, actually beating Metagross with Skarm seems so nice).
Only real complaints I have for this meta are:
- please ban accuracy lowering moves;
- speedpass (all speedpass, not just Ninjask) is an annoying mu fish;
- Dugtrio is a bit hard to deal with at times and limits the team builder more than any other pokemon, aside for maybe Ttar.
- PERSONAL VR
I won't be giving detailed explanations of all the VRs here, but if you want you can find my explanation for this VR here.
-FAVOURITE MON TO USE
SwampertDealing with rock types and Metagross is an important part of good team building in OU and Swampert on its own already makes those mons soooo much more manegeable. I value this consistency a ton and for this Pert is my #1 warrior. Other pokemon that could count as my faves to use are Salamence and Zapdos but they aren't on 99% of my teams like Swampert is. If you're just starting out Swampert will teach you a lot of the basics of ADV and save your bum many times. Or you can run lead Dugtrio and make me very unhappy with your life choices, it's up to you.
-REPLAYS
I have way too many replays I would like to share for OU, so I'll have to limit myself:
- First time I ever reached 1800s, not a particulary good game but it has sentimental value.
- Suicune's fun, right?, okay this one isn't very fun ahahaha.
- Made a friend who knows nothing about comp make a team and play me. It was pretty hilarious. I tried playing a bit subpar to not go hard on him, don't tell him tho lol.
- Cool ladder game with a bunch of crazy RNG. This one was an interesting game against Mint_Yerb.
-TEAM PASTES
Aside for the fact I have way too many teams in OU, most of them aren't made by me so I don't know which ones I can share. I'll try to share a couple fun ones tho:
- The taunt bros. This is my own spin on a team I saw in I believe a SPL game. I don't remember the original builder sadly. It's very fun but it can feel really hard to break through Milotic stall cores. Be very mindful around Mixed Salamence too, he can be an issue.
- Raikou's 3BLs. This weird team is what I've been using to do the 3BL challenge. It actually proved itself to be a ton of fun, tho I wouldn't rely much on it ahahah. This team is based on a team by ZPanther19.
- Just a version of Beerlover. I put this here for newer players. It's a very classic team that will teach you a lot about the game but, mind you, it is by no means the best or easiest team to use. It's actually kind of hard to pilot in a bunch of mus! The team is especially bad against any rest Suicune, to the point you might want to use destiny bond on Gengar over taunt. It is a good teacher tho.
- Big5 Zap. Another simple team that's about on par with beerlover as far as ease of use goes. You could go with choice band Ttar here, but then it might be better to have wish support on Bliss.
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UBERS 
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Peaked 1406
- THOUGHTS UBERS ==================================Peaked 1406
Gen3 Ubers was the biggest surprise out of the tiers I've played at time of writing. It's a genuinely really fun metagame where the top threats don't feel too difficult to handle. There's a good amount of fun to be had in the team builder even tho some slots on teams are rather set in stone. Always bring either Groudon or Kyogre (or both) unless you are memeing, and usually you should also have one of Latios or Latias (if not, again, both). This second suggestion isn't exactly set in stone as it is more than possible to make good teams without the latis, but these two are such good and useful glues to teams that help either fully counter or at least soft check a huge portion of the metagame that it's often pretty hard to pass them up. Latios especially is invaluable to apply strong offensive pressure to your opponent while also giving you a good switch in to lots of scary threats like Groudon and Kyogre.
This reminds me that I should note the fact that Soul dew in this gen is a choice specs and assault vest with no drowback for Latios and Latias. This makes the planes stupidly bulky on the special side and allows them to hit really hard even with just thunder and ice beam and no STAB.
Perma weather also means that Groudon and Kyogre are of course amazing while also having many other notable effects on the meta (thunder being a great move to beat rain or be abused on rain, swift swimmers and some chlorophyl mons being good choices, Snorlax and Blissey being gods with no sand up most games). The meta for sure revolves around weather wars, but even tho it is centralized due to that in a sense there's enough wiggle room for sun, rain and double weather teams to not all end up looking or playing the same just based on which weather you chose.
Another thing to note is that SunStall can feel quite strong in this Ubers due to Oh-Ho in sun and Lugia being seriously hard to kill, but the tier has plenty of super strong offense and if you're playing rain winning the weather war will usually win you the game so the team style doesn't seem too op.
Sun in general tho is the best weather in my opinion as thunder is everywhere and while being able to spam it yourself is cool, giving that ability to your opponent as well isn't. Due to this rain can feel a bit weaker than Sun at times.
Main problems with the meta for me include:
- Often times your teams will have one major threat that it can only really soft check and it's hard to build teams that don't have that one blind spot;
- Sun Stall can be annoying;
- Thunder spam can suck due to that nasty 30% para chance. I have lost multiple games over thunder deciding to para-fullpara something that was otherwise the right switch in.
- PERSONAL VR
Don't tell me "Wobbufett + Wynaut teams are real", I'm not going to listen.
Also, probably rating swift swimmers and chlorophyl mons too low. I'll need more time to really decide how I feel about them.
-FAVOURITE MON TO USE
MewtwoI love love love love thunder, icebeam, fire blast, self destruct lum berry lead Mewtwo on offensive teams. It has either a good or neutral match up against all other common leads, beating Latios, Latias, Kyogre, Groudon, the occasional Heracross and doing neutraly against itself and Mew (who can be a bit weird and force a boom depending on set). Its huge speed allowing it to outspeed Latios even when running modest is amazing and its even bigger spatk combined with its large movepool allow it to threaten so much of the meta, plus if it can't threaten something (Snorlax, Blissey) it can just boom to force a trade. In this sense Mewtwo feels like Offensive Gengar in OU, with strong special hits and the ability to boom, but its physical attack is actually great and its bulk is way better than you'd expect, allowing it to take a bunch of hits while hurting real hard when self destructing. Booming a special wall can also really enable your Latios and other offensive special attackers like calm mind Oh-Ho, which is really nice.
That lead set is also only the tip of the iceberg as Mewtwo has way more options. In the back you can run it with CM over Fireblast to become a very scary setup sweeper that can still just boom special walls, especially good in rain with never miss thunder, or you can use it's huge hp to make 101 hp subs. This can be really nice combined with focus punch to make Mewtwo into either a good physical setup sweeper with Bulk up and Shadow ball or even a mixed set with Thunder and Icebeam. Mewtwo is very customizable, but the special sets needing to boom to beat special attackers and the fully physical ones not being able to deal that much damage to strong physical walls keeps it in check.
I want to try out a mixed subpunch set eventualy, but I'm not sure how I'd ev it.
-REPLAYS
Not as many replays to choose from this time, but hope you enjoy:
- My peak on ladder. It's actually higher than it might seem.
- Gengar gaming vs Blues. Such an interesting pokemon, tho not the best.
- ADVpl 5 Week 3. This is my first ever game of ADVpl. I've decided to add it to this post both because I feel me and my opponent played well but also because this replay appeared for a huge 5 seconds in JimothyCool's video on Ho-Oh. So uh yeah I'm pretty cool and stuff clearly (not really).
- ADVpl 5 Week 4. This was a fun match that I feel I played well, so I'll toot my own horn for once here ahah.
-TEAM PASTES
I actually have a bunch of Ubers teams I made, so choosing what to put here is easier than OU:
- Lead Mewtwo Sun Boom-Offense. This is my favourite team and I spammed it a lot. It ended up being way more reliable than I ever expected one of my homemade teams to be. Be mindful against Stall, you need to use those booms well if you want to win.
- Standard Sun Stall. A somewhat standard stall team I made. Lugia and Oh-ho will carry you a lot.
- Standard Sun Balanced. A standard and very solid balanced team. This version was given to me by Ajencis.
- CB Ho-Oh Sun Offense. A rather standard Sun Offense team that carried me to a win in ADVpl 5.
- Kabutops Rain. Finding a Rain team I was willing to share was hard so I've decided in the end to go with something fun. Rest on Kyogre is probably suboptimal and could be changed with twave or substitute. Mewtwo set could also be many other things.
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UUBL 
===================================Peaked at 1421
And here we have...a last minute addition. I wasn't planning originally to have UUBL here as at the start of this year (2025 at time of writing), back when I began the creation of this post, I didn't even know UUBL was played as a tier by its very own competitive community. I learned about UUBL as I assume most people did: Jimothy's discord server's UUBL tournament. A tournament I didn't join for the record, even tho it is going on as I write this part of my post, mostly due to time, tournament fatigue and me playing in ADVpl. Despite not wanting to play in tours I did still end up getting interested in the tier and, after playing it a bit, I ended up making the decision to have it join all the other "real" tiers in my little challenge of sorts.
Before I share my opinions I'd just like to make a little aside on that "real" designation I just gave to this tier. Indeed you'll have noticed that, in theory, this is suppossed to just be UU's ban list and not a whole Smogon tier. Thing is that UU's ban list is one of the largest ban list of any main Smogon tier, actually containing MORE pokemon in it than UU itself! Due to this it was only natural that at some point people would start wondering if this ban list could function as a tier on its own right. The fact it's a ban list doesn't mean it isn't worthy of being played like a real tier and it didn't effect my experience with UUBL. I will also be refering to UUBL as just a normal tier like all others, for simplicity's sake.
That out of the way, let's get my opinions out: tier's good. Just like Ubers, I was pleasantly surprised by just how much fun I had with this tier. The meta has some pretty crazy strong centralizing threats but none of them ever felt too hard to deal with. As long as you've built your team well you shouldn't have trouble dealing with all the best pokemon in the tier. The checks to everything also feel varied (usually at least, more on that later).
Notable is also the fact that spikes feel neither impossible to deal with nor impossible to use well. There's plenty of good spikes setters that give all team styles good ways to get up hazards, but there are also good spinners and plenty of spikes immune (not to mention the various things that directly threaten the spikers). This is something tiers can sometimes struggle with (like in ZU where spikes feel either impossible to set up or impossible to deal with based only really on match up) and I was happy to see UUBL avoid this pitfal.
As far as team styles in the specific are considered, all the major styles felt solid enough here which is a very good thing in my eyes. I tend to prefer metas where there isn't one or two styles that are the only ones worth using as it gives me more options both in what I can play and what I will be playing against, thus I was happy when I found myself able to get good results with offense, balanced and stall teams. As always balanced ended up being my prefered style but I was happy to be able to deviate from it here and there.
I also want to bring up the interesting effects that one pokemon in particular has on the meta: Houndoom. The dark type dog is such a fun part of the meta and I enjoyed using it a lot. You see, good psychic and good ghost types aren't rare in the tier, the opposite actually, plus the great Weezing has so little special bulk and is so often seen spamming will o'wisp that it also functions a bit like a dark weak ghost. This means that UUBL is ripe for Houndoom to spam pursuit, which might not seem that interesting but not only is this important for the health of the meta and for keeping the dark weaks at bay, but it also leads to a bunch of interesting and skill intensive mind games that made me feel like a god gamer every time I got them right. The satisfaction of doing a bunch of doubles to Houndoom on the enemy Weezing or calling out the enemy Houndoom and mantaining your own Weezing all game against all odds is unmatched by anything else in the UUBL metagame. I bring it up here as Houndoom missed out on being my favourite mon to use in the meta by an hair so I wanted to give it at least some spotlight somewhere.
Now, the meta isn't perfect tho of course so here's my main issues with it:
- Baton pass can never let me be, can it? I already don't enjoy everything baton pass brings to OU, even tho there it is generally fine balance wise in my eyes, but here in UUBL it goes to another level. If you don't spam haze Weezing on all your teams it is really hard to stop and/or phaze the many viable bp users. It leads to many scenarios where I feel agency has been taken from me and I feel forced to run only one or two specific mons on all my teams. An especially strong "screw you" goes to Smeargle, who's speed is actually fine here making it infinitely
more annoying than in OU. I am in favor for a dry pass rule to be added to UUBL. Medicham...kind of...it's complicated. So, Medi isn't hard to deal with in this meta...but it is very hard to not cheat on it at least a little. The only 95% reliable (psychic Medi is the remaining 5%) ways to deal with this titan of the metagame are my king Weezing and bulky Venusaur, anything else is only kind of good at beating Medicham. This can feel annoying in the team builder, tho it's mostly fine and only somewhat of a problem with the meta in my opinion. Still wanted to bring it up tho.Forget that, Medicham is OU now lol.
- PERSONAL VR
Regibros rise up. Fraudnite ain't got nothing.
For more indepth explanations on some of my choices go here (it's pretty dated though).
-FAVOURITE MON TO USE
WeezingThis man checks like half the metagame. There is no such thing as a physical attacker Weezing can't annoy with the right set. I grew very quickly to love the utility and safety Weezing brings to a team by just existing and I noticed very quickly that a ton of games were coming down to how well I used this ball of gas. At time of writing, in the official VR Weezing is not only below the top 10 but also below Venusaur which I believe to be crazy! Don't get me wrong, Venusaur is awesome but it could never hold a candle to Weezing's sheer will power and aura. Amazing physical bulk, levitate with mono poison type, will o'wisp, haze, workable offenses and decent attacking moves to boot with only a low special defense and leftys + pain split as the only recovery options as its main downsides, what more can I ask for? Weezing's recovery issues aren't even that huge in a meta with no sand, especially when it takes so little from the things it has to check (or nothing at all in the case of earthquake). The real issue is its special defense which leaves it helpless vs special and mixed attackers, chief amongst them being Houndoom. As I said in the meta overview, Houndoom can really screw with Weezing but it isn't a complete counter as sludge bomb should usually 2hko Houndoom, which can lead to many interesting mindgames.
In conclusion: Weezing makes dealing with physical attackers really easy and I want to make out with it because of that. Put it higher on the official VR, you know you want to.
-REPLAYS
I've actually got some real cool replays for you this time. Here you go:
- My peak game. This one was played with a very fun team made by JoaF, have to thank him for the team as it helped out when laddering. This is also a good example of Weezing in action, with the whole game coming down to if I can mantain for long Weezing in the face of an enemy Houndoom. Match itself was pretty fun and I feel I played decent, tho I made some seriously dumb miss plays.
- Houndoom gaming. This is a great example of the things Houndoom can do if played well, it especially shows the mu between Houndoom and Weezing.
- More Houndoom, mooooore. This shows how to avoid the enemy Houndoom with your Weezing.
- Blaziken good? Crazy. I didn't use this team a ton but this replay is pretty golden. Shows exactly how I wanted the team to function when I made it.
- JoaF team again. EVs here weren't final but the team still worked out nicely. The double status Registeel from the opponent took me off guard.
-TEAM PASTES
As usual there won't be a ton of teams but what I can share is pretty fun:
- Standard balanced. Yes yes, this is a sample team...but it's a really good sample team. I used it a ton and feel it's a great first team if you want to try out the meta. Just has simple, all around solid stuff that teaches you a lot about match ups and the tier. OUTDATED, Medi is now OU so this team is unusable now.
- Hariyama semi-stall. A solid team I built, tho it isn't anything crazy or new for the meta ahahah. Hariyama is the best check to just about all fire types with thick fat which stally teams like this really enjoy. The rest of the team is pretty simple to understand I'd say. Be mindful to not waste Houndoom, even if it has gotten pursuit and eliminated the enemy ghost type, it is very useful for making progress.
- Blaziken and Glalie offense. This team is very fun but needs to be played right to work. Regice here is pretty nasty as it can twave or toxic Blaziken as it's coming in. Don't feel shy about booming Regice with Glalie, it's always a solid trade to make. For the rest, make sure to keep up the offense and not let your opponent breathe.
- The JoaF team. It's a very fun team, also showed me the power of Tauros who I otherwise used little. Thanks to JaoF for lending it to me.
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UU ==================================Peaked at 1302
- THOUGHTS
And here we are with UU, a tier I had heard not so stellar things about. Before we get into the tier tho I must admit that perhaps my opinions on UU have been negatively affected by my experience with its ladder. You see, when I played UU the spotlight ladder was in such a state that it ended up being my least favourite ladder experience of any meta (at least, at time of writing. I fear some tiers such as DOU will probably have the same issues as UU). Wait times between games were long due to very few people playing, which also meant most players weren't very high on the ladder which then meant every loss was -35ish elo and most wins were +15. Laddering was slow, grueling, unforgiving and punishing to the max. Things got a bit better when a friend, Lory, told me to just run hyper offense and gave me a sample team of the style. Not that things got much better but at least the games were going quicker and my offensive power was punishing the many weirdly built and defensively unsound ladder teams I faced much better. So this experience for sure gave me some level of PTSD which made my opinions on the meta more sour but after taking sometime to collect my thoughts I do believe my conclusions on UU are what I really feel about the meta and not just the ladder.
That said, where do I even begin? UU is, I am sad to report, a meta I have a bunch of issues with that kept me from enjoying the tier much. If we have to start from somewhere I guess it might as well be the kangaroo(?) in the room: Kangaskhan. In this tier you basically always should use this mon for the simple reason that it doesn't really have any major flaws and helps you check a bunch of stuff. Great bulk, solid speed, good attack, nice movepool that features wish for some reason and the really strong combo of rest + early bird (strong when you consider how bulky Kanga is for this tier's powerlevel) means Kanga will put in work almost always for you. Checking it is also a nightmare since it has so many options that you can't really be ready for everything, especially when you realize that all its "walls" take a ton from one of its coverage moves. This puts a strain on team building and makes playing around Kanga awkward as you try to figure out which options it's running.
Then, after spending multiple team slots to deal with Kanga, you'll soon realize that you also need to beat Arcanine who is an insanely strong offensive threat. This isn't too hard but it also isn't too easy because Arcanine too has a bunch of options to use. Rely too much on Tentacruel and you'll get hp grounded, other waters can't tank hp grass forever (even worse if spikes are up) or will get toxiced, various mons don't like crunch and special walls that don't resist fire don't actually take fire blast well.
Okay good, now you've gotten a bunch of slots reserved to deal with Kanga and Arca while also getting yourself spikes, spin and maybe spin block. Now you just put in your own Kanga and Arca, go play a game and...all your walls get beat quickly by at least one thing they're suppossed to check...and your opponent has a Kanga set that's bad for you since you couldn't fit answers to it...and your walls get overwhelmed quickly by having to do too many things and check too many things in one slot...and you lose. The reality I had to come to terms with in UU is that most walls are walls only in a wonderful made up land where nothing ever goes wrong for you. While the spikes game didn't feel too bad (spikes aren't hard to set up but they aren't hard to spin) the sheer strength of the top threats meant that I couldn't get balanced to work, thus I had to pull out offense...and get destroyed multiple times by a single unlucky turn.
Nothing felt really reliable in this tier as most defensive or balanced teams just get worn down too quick by offense but offense is really risky and can go wrong easily. This did not make for a fun time and has made me decide to not play more UU even tho at time of writing ladder should still be around for just under a couple weeks. There are cool things here and a bunch of interesting interactions but they are bogged down by how hard it feels to truely check any of the top threats and how restrictive the meta becomes due to that.
So, main issues:
- Too many offensive power houses that feel unstoppable.
- PERSONAL VR
There shouldn't be anything too crazy in this VR opinions wise in theory. Use Kangaskhan.
-FAVOURITE MON TO USE
GorebyssThis will look insane I'm sure, and for good reasons, but let me explain myself. In the majority of my analysis you'll notice I tend to see as my favourite a pokemon which I have ranked highly in my VR. This is because I value consistency a lot (as talked about with Swampert in the OU section) and it is thus only natural I find strong and consistent mons to be fun. In a tier where I just couldn't truely find that consistency though...why not go for something dumb and fun? And so we have the pokemon that helped me get to the 1300s: Gorebyss. In theory I could also give this section to Golduck as the team I used that features both of this mons (and is the only team I have with either of them lol) worked because of how nicely the pair did together, but Gorebyss is cuter so gg duck. This pink fish is as simple as they come, try to break the opponents walls in early and mid game with strong special attackers (other waters work well in luring said walls, hence cm Golduck) and then go Gorebyss => rain dance => sweep or at least leave the enemy team so broken it can't make a come back. It either works and brings a tear of joy to your eyes or doesn't and makes you wish balanced didn't feel sucky and that you could run less all or nothing stuff. Simple but unreliable, a bit of a microcosm of UU as a whole actually. A shoutout to Omastar and Tentacruel for being the only reasons I stuck with balanced for a while by the way.
-REPLAYS
For sure won't have anything played well but I do have some funny things:
- The 1300 match. Funny that the 2 best pokemon in the tier were the first I sacced ahahah, but opponent was running a weirdo team so didn't need them. Also...don't talk about what happened to Gorebyss.
- Funny. Not a good match, but it is funny. You won't believe how many people forgot about damp.
- A game that looked over until it didn't. Not great plays but eh.
- First 1200s. It was also a fun game and maybe the only one were both me and opponent played decently.
- Girafarig? Girafarig. Love the stupid as hell extreme speed I did.
- Different team. Just to show you I used a good few teams before losing all hope and turning to HO lol.
-TEAM PASTES
Eh...I'll do what I can:
- Missy and the dogs. Only team I built, it did okay. It isn't half bad but can suffer from usual "my walls are fake walls"itis.
- Heysup double water HO. Yes it's a sample team but it saved my life so I have to put it here.
- This kind of worked. Kind of, mostly I put it here to have at least three teams.
==================================
ZU 
====================================
Peaked 1305
- THOUGHTS ZU ====================================Peaked 1305
Soooooo...uuuuhm...did you wonder why I said I'll put tiers in this post when I get 1300 elo in them and not anything higher? Yeah, here's the reason. I played almost twice as many games in ZU as I did in Ubers and yet I struggled way more in this tier, to the point of deciding to go for 1300s for this post instead of my original intent of 1400s. It took me a long time and some help from my good friend pkLeech to figure out some fine strats in this meta.
Biggest issue with ZU was really just the fact that the second half of 2024 (when two ROA spotlights happened and I played this meta) saw a bunch of tier shifts and unbans that made the meta really chaotic and hard to get into. Things calmed down a bit the second time I played it but it does still feel like the meta is very unexplored. This brought me to not being sure what to do in both the teambuilder and ingame which was rather annoying.
The meta needing to settle down isn't the tier's fault tho of course, but even without this chaos I do still feel like ZU isn't really my cup of tea. A lot of the time I felt like preparing for every major threat was just too hard. I really feel like there's a lot of stuff you very much need to be ready to deal with, but of course 6 team slots are what they are and so I ended up feeling a bit lost in ZU.
A shame really because there is a ton of cool stuff here and the meta itself is more leaning on balance I feel which is my favourite team style usually but yeah, after doing not too badly in gen3 Ubers I felt a bit deafeted by ZU. Maybe one day I'll get to retry it and it'll click, I mean the second time around it was already starting to make more sense partially thanks to Leech so who knows?
No major complaints section here because I kind of gave all of them already, I'll just note that switching into offensive Clamperl is impossible lol.
- PERSONAL VR
This VR was very hard to make, don't take it too seriously.
-FAVOURITE MON TO USE
MightyenaIn a tier where I struggled to find consistency, heal bell Mightyena really helped me. I especially enjoyed using it along side wish Drowzee as they make for a very solid core. Yena helps check a bunch of annoying stuff and makes the endless spam of status in this tier not as big of a problem. It's actually rated #1 in the official VR right now and I think that's fair. Dropping it from ZUBL was a good idea in my opinion, even if Yena itself isn't always super easy to beat.
-REPLAYS
Not sure what replays to put here but I'll try to get you some fun ones:
- My peak elo game. This was a neat game vs the #1 rated player at the time. If you see this Scythernite, or whoever you are, you gave me PTSD lol.
- This one was pretty long. It's a good example of the Yena + Drowzee core carrying.
-TEAM PASTES
I have a cool team I'd like to show but I don't know if Leech would be okay with it as it is his team so I'll just show you a couple of mine:
- Spdef Clam balanced: https://pokepast.es/d5f1231d38e2a60a. My favourite out of the two. The Clamperl set is weird but a really fun idea pkLeech came up with, it tanks special hits like nothing else. Always have heal bell support with it tho.
- Drowsy and mighty: https://pokepast.es/6b7d5c0e33758c13. Not perfect but it was rather fun.
======================================= RANDOM BATTLES ======================================
Peaked 1464
- THOUGHTSPeaked 1464
Just like UUBL, this tier was a later addition I hadn't planned to cover at the start of the writing process of this post despite it having a permanent ladder. This choice came mostly from the fact I don't really like random metas...at all, but sheer boredom with the ladder brought me to the darkest places and got me to talk about randbats here. This will most likely be the most simple and negative of all my thoughts on the various ADV metas, so be warned.
Okay, where to start now? I don't think I need to explain what randbats metas are since they are the most popular on showdown thus I'll just jump straight into the malding. Holy sweet mother of Arceus I hate not being able to choose my team and I don't know why anyone would want to play a meta like this in a competitive way. With friends for a quick fun game? Sure, it's quite enjoyable like that. But as a normal competitive meta? Hell.
Pokemon is famously a game of luck and luck management at its core and most of its more frustating aspects come from luck making games feel out of your control. So why not make it so your team is out of your control too? Trust me, ending up with your opponent having a pokemon that 6-0s you for free is the peak of fun. Of course the idea behind this whole meta is trying to figure out how to best use your given team to not get folded but I don't personally enjoy when I have to play like a god for a shot at winning while the opponent can just click buttons (or viceversa) and this happens way more often in randbats than in any other non-random meta.
Team building is also often more fun than actually playing the game to me so that being taken out by randbats feels like it just deleted half of the fun in this game.
Okay cool Leonardo, but are you talking about randbats in general or gen3 randbats? Well...that was a rant on random battles in general yes but that's because I don't really have much to say about gen3 in the specific. I guess less items means less possible sets, kind of, which I actually like. There's also the fact that allowing you to find Ditto and especially UNOWN in this gen should be considered a crime since it means you already started off with 5 mons and a sack instead of 6. Some sets also seem a bit sucky and could be changed or scrapped but not really much to say there.
Overall, it's randbats...you know what you're going to get. Me personally, only enjoy this meta as a little distraction here and there when I'm bored and I would never want to play it at an higher level like I have with other previous tiers, it just isn't for me.
- PERSONAL VR
I am not doing a VR for this. There's too many pokemon and most of them have multiple sets that can at times change how overall good they are are as not all sets are created equal. Just know that Ditto and Unown (in this order) are at the bottom of this non-existent tierlist.
-FAVOURITE MON TO USE
Whatever pokemon is impossible for my opponent to switch into.
-REPLAYS
Don't expect amazing replays here:
- My current peak. Pretty strong win.
- The fabbled belly drum sweep. My opponent threw away so much stuff for no reason lol.
- Dug is Dug even here. Man it took me a while to catch that Blissey. Also, so. Many. Kyogre. Answers. My goodness, I didn't even have calm mind lol.
-TEAM PASTES
Just imagine I put here the next team you'll be saddled with in a randbats game.
=======================================MAJOR EDITS=========================================
-22/01/2025 MAJOR EDIT 1: Added a couple of replays, one in OU and one in Ubers.
-14/02/2025 MAJOR EDIT 2: Changed the Ubers VR, it isn't much different from the previous but it does have some notable changes.
-17/02/2025 MAJOR EDIT 3: Changed the Ubers VR again.
-18/02/2025 MAJOR EDIT 4: Same as above.
-05/03/2025 MAJOR EDIT 5: Changed the Ubers and ZU VRs a bit.
-01/04/2025 MAJOR EDIT 6: Finally added a new tier: UUBL! Took long enough!
-16/04/2025 MAJOR EDIT 7: Added a new replay to Ubers.
-20/04/2025 MAJOR EDIT 8: Added a replay and team to Ubers.
-24/04/2025 MAJOR EDIT 9: Added a new tier: gen3 Random Battles.
-14/06/2025 MAJOR EDIT 10: Bunch of changes to UUBL since Medicham is now OU.
-19/06/2025 MAJOR EDIT 11: New tier added, UU!
======================================IN CONCLUSION========================================
I really hope you all found what I had to share interesting and I also hope to be able to start a bit of a conversation on the various ADV tiers, let me know what your opinions on them are and feel free to share teams and replays.
I ask of you tho to be respectful and not start fighting over any dumb tiering nonsense or opinions, lets just share our interests in ADV competitive! Remember also that I am new to any non OU tiers so my opinions on them hold only so much water.
I'll update this original post as stated at the begining with any other tiers I get 1300 elo in until all the ones I mentioned at the start are done. I have no idea how long it'll take but hopefully it'll be fun.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and have a nice day.
-Leo
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Good team 