Idk I thought he was dropping too
Also, I’m interested to see how mamo performs down here, hope he gives y’all a good time
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Metagame SV RU Metagame Discussion (April Shifts #403)
- Thread starter Feliburn
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Also, I’m interested to see how mamo performs down here, hope he gives y’all a good time
Unironically I believe this is a net positive for the health of the tier, lmao
Losing Mew and Revavroom means less tools for hyper offense, which is honestly absolutely not fun to face with having to worry about armarouge or mew, bisharp, revavroom, and pom pom together. Long is the time gone where Mew and Revavroom were more than HO Hogs tbh, losing Conkeldurr kind of sucks cause solid breaker and could even use defog if you wanted to but oh well.
Araquanid is whatever, webs shit and people will just keep using ribombee anyways.
Mamo sounds lowkey broken but it will probably be an ok presence in the tier to keep fat structures in check Id say.
Call me crazy, but legitimately excited about this new meta!!!
Losing Mew and Revavroom means less tools for hyper offense, which is honestly absolutely not fun to face with having to worry about armarouge or mew, bisharp, revavroom, and pom pom together. Long is the time gone where Mew and Revavroom were more than HO Hogs tbh, losing Conkeldurr kind of sucks cause solid breaker and could even use defog if you wanted to but oh well.
Araquanid is whatever, webs shit and people will just keep using ribombee anyways.
Mamo sounds lowkey broken but it will probably be an ok presence in the tier to keep fat structures in check Id say.
Call me crazy, but legitimately excited about this new meta!!!
I'm sick, so this is a bit late, but here's my thoughts on the shifts/some cool usage stats.
Yeah, as expected this mon is utterly broken. It has very, very limited switchins, and the ones it does have are def dealable with via hazard pressure. I've been using it on a spikestack team and its incredibly easy to bait in slowbro/heattom and knock them, leading to them taking way too much from its hits/hazards (max layers of spikes and stealth rocks means e-quake is a 2hit ko on slowbro). Can we qb this please? Thank you
Entirely expected, but HO lost a good option. I personally was moving away from it since bisharp was the steel of choice, so I'm not too pressed about it.
Mew was certainly an interesting mon in the tier. It had a HO lead set, an NP set and a spikes setting set. All were useful, but it wasnt the best in any one area, so its moreso just something that you no longer in the builder (and ig the few people that still coped that it was broken are happy).
FUCK YOU UU. WHY DO YOU TAKE AWAY THE NICE THINGS IN THE TIER. Ngl, very unexpected rise. There was a small chance it would rise, but I was doubtful about it happening. Fat teams and fighting weak mons get a lot better with this gone (specifically bisharp), as conk was a major annoyance for it.
Uhhh, rip a webs option ig. Araquanid was mostly outclassed by ribombee in RU (though definetely not in OU), so it didn't see much usage. Main thing was that it murdered talon, but that wasn't nearly enough of a differentiating factor.
Surprised that this dropped. A-tales is a decent mon in the tier, with NP sets being great after they setup and veil sets can be a decent HO option. It did have low initial power, so that may be why it wasn't really used.
Not surprised by this, amoonguss is a good mon in the tier, but ladder doesn't really like it. I think that experimentation with its moveset (like stomping tantrum) could lead to this mon rising again.
Also not surprising. Sun isn't good in the tier, and torkoal is prob going to fall to ZU as drought is banned from NU. Rest in piss torkoal.
We would have gotten this if OU didn't steal it instead. This would have been a massive buff to stall, as you no longer have to run hazard removal and can go 6 boots with sticky hold mons/mons that don't care about hazards. But we can't have nice things, so we have to wait 6 months at least.
Some usage stats.
Number one mon used in the tier, not unexpected as I think it is a bit underrated with its utility being pretty great.
Also not unexpected, best speed control in the tier which is very splashable.
Not unexpected, really powerful mon that can revenge kill offensive threats easily.
Same as the other ones above. Not unexpected.
Okay, this one was a bit unexpected. Armarouge is absolutely a great mon in the tier, as its able to be great against defense and offense, but it was usually in the top 10. Guess ladder is finally realising how busted good this mon is.
Kleavor is usually in the top 5 range, but its now 7th in usage. This may be a sign that HO is finally falling off, and kleavor may even at some point fall to NU, which will be big. (now we just have to pray forretress will also fall).
Yeah, as expected this mon is utterly broken. It has very, very limited switchins, and the ones it does have are def dealable with via hazard pressure. I've been using it on a spikestack team and its incredibly easy to bait in slowbro/heattom and knock them, leading to them taking way too much from its hits/hazards (max layers of spikes and stealth rocks means e-quake is a 2hit ko on slowbro). Can we qb this please? Thank you Entirely expected, but HO lost a good option. I personally was moving away from it since bisharp was the steel of choice, so I'm not too pressed about it. Mew was certainly an interesting mon in the tier. It had a HO lead set, an NP set and a spikes setting set. All were useful, but it wasnt the best in any one area, so its moreso just something that you no longer in the builder (and ig the few people that still coped that it was broken are happy). FUCK YOU UU. WHY DO YOU TAKE AWAY THE NICE THINGS IN THE TIER. Ngl, very unexpected rise. There was a small chance it would rise, but I was doubtful about it happening. Fat teams and fighting weak mons get a lot better with this gone (specifically bisharp), as conk was a major annoyance for it. Uhhh, rip a webs option ig. Araquanid was mostly outclassed by ribombee in RU (though definetely not in OU), so it didn't see much usage. Main thing was that it murdered talon, but that wasn't nearly enough of a differentiating factor. Surprised that this dropped. A-tales is a decent mon in the tier, with NP sets being great after they setup and veil sets can be a decent HO option. It did have low initial power, so that may be why it wasn't really used. Not surprised by this, amoonguss is a good mon in the tier, but ladder doesn't really like it. I think that experimentation with its moveset (like stomping tantrum) could lead to this mon rising again. Also not surprising. Sun isn't good in the tier, and torkoal is prob going to fall to ZU as drought is banned from NU. Rest in piss torkoal. We would have gotten this if OU didn't steal it instead. This would have been a massive buff to stall, as you no longer have to run hazard removal and can go 6 boots with sticky hold mons/mons that don't care about hazards. But we can't have nice things, so we have to wait 6 months at least.Some usage stats.
Number one mon used in the tier, not unexpected as I think it is a bit underrated with its utility being pretty great. Also not unexpected, best speed control in the tier which is very splashable. Not unexpected, really powerful mon that can revenge kill offensive threats easily. Same as the other ones above. Not unexpected. Okay, this one was a bit unexpected. Armarouge is absolutely a great mon in the tier, as its able to be great against defense and offense, but it was usually in the top 10. Guess ladder is finally realising how Kleavor is usually in the top 5 range, but its now 7th in usage. This may be a sign that HO is finally falling off, and kleavor may even at some point fall to NU, which will be big. (now we just have to pray forretress will also fall).
Very early and random metagame thoughts
The New Arrival
Peak danger mon. Absurd stabs, great utility, priority is nice... but I wouldn't quickban it. Ngl, I do think there's a small amount of counterplay you can muster up which isn't bad. Tera steel G-Weezy, Phys Def Cress (this is just slept on in general; very fun utility pick on offense), Slowbro isn't the best at the job but its serviceable. I think it's the easiest suspect test on the planet but damn bro we only got mamo man can we atleast keep em for R1 ssnl
Lost Soldiers
Honestly their absence won't be hugely impactful. Revavroom gone does just mean bisharp just used even more than it already did which... god damn it. Conk was a cool mon but honestly its p expendable in its job, losing a defogger does suck though. Mew yeah we'll be getting it back next shift UU got Deo-S this shit comin right back. Hopefully with the psychic type we were SUPPOSED TO GET THIS SHIFT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Risk-laden Fellows
We were very close to losing Mence this shift, and truthfully? Who cares just use noivern lol. Jokes aside my infernape stocks WILL prosper soon mark my words. Ok ok real talk both of these were huge beneficiaries of the zapdos ban, and both of them are moving in stride in UU. Zap-Galar hasn't hit the same amount of usage, but its spot in the metagame is quite comfortable up there. I can easily see the timeline it rises to UU proper and we should be ready to embrace mienshao as our savior once it does.
Targets for a Grand Heist
I think we can all agree we were quite... generous to NU this time around. Taking nothing and giving 3 mons away, one hazard removal no less? (ignore that the hazard removal is droughtless torkoal). I say we take some stuff this coming shift in 3 months. With RULT in march to boot, I reckon its the best time to take some stuff. Registeel is a fantastic steel tank in the tier, and its ability to IDBP through pmuch anything it wants with tera. Gyarados and PomPom are both HO demons and their effectiveness on offense is great as well, and I'm surprised gyarados didn't get closer to rising to RU proper to begin with. Raikou hate is some of the most forced shit I've seen; an electric that doesnt care as much about Hoodra and also has water coverage is an excellent trait list and its speed and sp def are both good as well for soft checking ghosts. Wo-Chien we all know who he is what he does etc; but its gotten more comfortable with each passing shift and losing stuff like yanmega okidogi conk and more has only continued to solidify its place.
Let's all agree to work for atleast getting Registeel Gyarados and PomPom across the finish line come April yea?
The New Arrival
Peak danger mon. Absurd stabs, great utility, priority is nice... but I wouldn't quickban it. Ngl, I do think there's a small amount of counterplay you can muster up which isn't bad. Tera steel G-Weezy, Phys Def Cress (this is just slept on in general; very fun utility pick on offense), Slowbro isn't the best at the job but its serviceable. I think it's the easiest suspect test on the planet but damn bro we only got mamo man can we atleast keep em for R1 ssnl
Lost Soldiers
Honestly their absence won't be hugely impactful. Revavroom gone does just mean bisharp just used even more than it already did which... god damn it. Conk was a cool mon but honestly its p expendable in its job, losing a defogger does suck though. Mew yeah we'll be getting it back next shift UU got Deo-S this shit comin right back. Hopefully with the psychic type we were SUPPOSED TO GET THIS SHIFT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Risk-laden Fellows
We were very close to losing Mence this shift, and truthfully? Who cares just use noivern lol. Jokes aside my infernape stocks WILL prosper soon mark my words. Ok ok real talk both of these were huge beneficiaries of the zapdos ban, and both of them are moving in stride in UU. Zap-Galar hasn't hit the same amount of usage, but its spot in the metagame is quite comfortable up there. I can easily see the timeline it rises to UU proper and we should be ready to embrace mienshao as our savior once it does.
Targets for a Grand Heist
I think we can all agree we were quite... generous to NU this time around. Taking nothing and giving 3 mons away, one hazard removal no less? (ignore that the hazard removal is droughtless torkoal). I say we take some stuff this coming shift in 3 months. With RULT in march to boot, I reckon its the best time to take some stuff. Registeel is a fantastic steel tank in the tier, and its ability to IDBP through pmuch anything it wants with tera. Gyarados and PomPom are both HO demons and their effectiveness on offense is great as well, and I'm surprised gyarados didn't get closer to rising to RU proper to begin with. Raikou hate is some of the most forced shit I've seen; an electric that doesnt care as much about Hoodra and also has water coverage is an excellent trait list and its speed and sp def are both good as well for soft checking ghosts. Wo-Chien we all know who he is what he does etc; but its gotten more comfortable with each passing shift and losing stuff like yanmega okidogi conk and more has only continued to solidify its place.
Let's all agree to work for atleast getting Registeel Gyarados and PomPom across the finish line come April yea?
Based takes, I think specifically cylizar is very underrated with its utility and regenerator. Mamoswine and Gapdos feel quite strong for the tier.I'm sick, so this is a bit late, but here's my thoughts on the shifts/some cool usage stats.
Some usage stats.
bustedgood this mon is.
power creep in gen 9I love posting yaaaaaay
Winners of the ban:
yanmega hate squad rejoice, for this mon has only gotten even better. Thundi was both its best offensive check and could turn the hax game around on it with TWave unless you popped tera early. Kilowattrel is 2HKOed by it, even air slash, and pom-pom does take it decently, but both have to actually take an air slash before being able to do anything and also both have to click the worst move of all time to deal with a possible tera (30% chance of flinch + 30% chance of hurricane missing is agonizing). Your best offensive checks before any hax are like, tera steel flygon now? Pom-Pom? Offensive heattom if you can somehow fit that on offense? Good luck.
Unlike all the other electrics, who somehow get worse despite thundi leaving since a lot of their viability was soft checking it, pom pom is probably the best approximation of NP thundi left in the tier. It's nowhere near as good and not going to immediately take over, but if you want to boost and click electric moves with strong coverage pom pom's probably it since raikou's kind of a fraud. Definitely worth experimenting with more!
All of these loosely benefit from being strong setup breakers who came up just short of Thundi's speed tier and now no longer have to deal with that. Half of them could viably run scarf and half of them could dodge twave in some way, but luckily that's not something they have to worry about at all anymore! 110 also just gets a lot better as a speed tier with thundi gone, even if there's other things faster than it.
+
Most of the things that were faster than thundi got better both for not having to risk getting twaved and also now being our fastest pivots left, with skewda literally being the fastest and azelf being the slowest here. If you think about it, Azelf also is fast, can pivot, knock, and thunder wave, and is therefore exactly like thundi! Most of these were already good mons (use azelf more please) getting a minor buff.
:literally every setup sweeper that now can pick the tera they want instead of having to compromise between what they want and tera ground/dark:
yeah.
Losers of the ban:
Sure, Raikou is a base 115 speed pivot and a boosting electric, but a lot of its former viability was due to being able to beat back Thundi thanks to being faster than it and immune to para, the only non-scarfed mon in the tier with this distinction. It's not as strong as Thundi and outclassed by Pom Pom as a boosting electric thanks to Pom Pom's better moves in spite of lower stats, and outclassed by Kilowattrel as an electric type fast pivot.
Poor guys. Belli was a good defensive check to thundi and scared it back out, which was a good quality to have for a mon that doesn't actually check much on typing alone. It's still a decent, if esoteric, wall and pivot but thundi was definitely the best mon it checked. Palo only checked the pivot set but did it well. It's been trending downards for a bit now and this probably won't help, even if NP shredded it.
Niche HO guys who benefited from switching into both Thundi sets, setting up, and trying to sweep, who obviously can no longer do that. Tort's pretty definitively worse than Cloyster now, and Toxtricity's one other cute party trick of dunking on Chansey doesn't feel like enough to justify using it at this point.
This mon's still sleeper good since a lot of our most controversial mons happen to be strong special attackers, but we did in fact just lose a controversial strong special attacker. At least the remaining ones don't always run knock?
poor glig's just getting bullied by the recent tier changes. I guess it didn't do a ton back to thundi but it didn't let it make progress either, especially if it was NP. It's still got the god typing and movepool but it can't quite flex it as well now that its two most prominent winning matchups are gone.
I really couldn't tell you:
so, this was already gaining ground as a soft check to the pivot set and a decent check to NP set thanks to its speed tier and typing blanking paralysis. It's likely to become the next best pivoting electric in the tier thanks to its access to roost and great stab combination, but the lack of prankster twave, knock off, or taunt removes a lot of the utility it had. It'll probably be used more, but probably not get that much better? I really don't know.
Mew leaving is huge. That was my favorite mon. I love spamming random attacking sets on it to throw people off guard. It was my best friend. I'll miss that pink mouse big time.
Aside from the love, Mew was huge in many areas and I think it leaves a pretty big hole. Can't wait to find out what replaces the big Mew1.
Aside from the love, Mew was huge in many areas and I think it leaves a pretty big hole. Can't wait to find out what replaces the big Mew1.
After playing a bit post-shifts, I'd like to make a quick post about some of my thoughts on the tier;
These six offensive powerhouses have warped the tier quite drastically in my opinion. While they all have limitations, certainly, they can use a plethora of items, coverage moves, and Tera's to their advantage and completely overwhelm common balance and bulky offense structures. Mamoswine is our newest addition and is likely to be soon on bulky offense squads more than straight hyper offense, but CB sets are near impossible to switch into and it can pick and choose what checks it wants to beat (Trailblaze for Quagsire, Rock Blast for Heattom, etc.) My opinion of Mamo has lessened a bit, I don't think I'd actually favor a quickban if I were prompted to choose today, but it is really powerful and has a better Speed tier than our other notable wallbreakers like Basculegion-F and Volcanion to go alongside insane priority in Ice Shard.
All of these mons were struggling a bit to handle some of the wallbreakers in the meta and Mamoswine joining the frey has not made their lives easier. Quagsire usage will certainly pick up for me, as it checks Bisharp and Mamoswine quite effectively for the most part, but being skewed to run certain defensive pieces is very exploitable and I worry about loading slower stuff because you can get outmuscled quickly. Cyclizar and Noivern are really important mons in my building because of the utility they offer and their capacity to check Volcanion pretty well, but Mamo invalidates them pretty handily.
A handful of mons I like in the tier right now, all for different reasons of course. SubKou and Specs Toxtricity both seem like really nice picks, capable of using their coverage to prevent Mamo from coming in cleanly while they can use strong STAB Volt Switch to position their team nicely against the bulkier stuff that does sponge their attacks. Chandelure is still probably really good and Lycanroc-Dusk got dropped in the VR recently for reasons I must not be aware or.
Overall, the tier still skews really offensive and can get monotonous building around the same cores at times (Bisharp + HWish, WP Arma + spinblock, Scarf Gapdos + Specs breaker, etc.) but I still think it's a fun meta that has much exploration to do. I've got my eyes set on a few low tier forgotten mons that I think can cook..
Offense Reigns Supreme
These six offensive powerhouses have warped the tier quite drastically in my opinion. While they all have limitations, certainly, they can use a plethora of items, coverage moves, and Tera's to their advantage and completely overwhelm common balance and bulky offense structures. Mamoswine is our newest addition and is likely to be soon on bulky offense squads more than straight hyper offense, but CB sets are near impossible to switch into and it can pick and choose what checks it wants to beat (Trailblaze for Quagsire, Rock Blast for Heattom, etc.) My opinion of Mamo has lessened a bit, I don't think I'd actually favor a quickban if I were prompted to choose today, but it is really powerful and has a better Speed tier than our other notable wallbreakers like Basculegion-F and Volcanion to go alongside insane priority in Ice Shard.
Balance / Bulky Offense Stuffs
All of these mons were struggling a bit to handle some of the wallbreakers in the meta and Mamoswine joining the frey has not made their lives easier. Quagsire usage will certainly pick up for me, as it checks Bisharp and Mamoswine quite effectively for the most part, but being skewed to run certain defensive pieces is very exploitable and I worry about loading slower stuff because you can get outmuscled quickly. Cyclizar and Noivern are really important mons in my building because of the utility they offer and their capacity to check Volcanion pretty well, but Mamo invalidates them pretty handily.
Niche Picks
A handful of mons I like in the tier right now, all for different reasons of course. SubKou and Specs Toxtricity both seem like really nice picks, capable of using their coverage to prevent Mamo from coming in cleanly while they can use strong STAB Volt Switch to position their team nicely against the bulkier stuff that does sponge their attacks. Chandelure is still probably really good and Lycanroc-Dusk got dropped in the VR recently for reasons I must not be aware or.
Overall, the tier still skews really offensive and can get monotonous building around the same cores at times (Bisharp + HWish, WP Arma + spinblock, Scarf Gapdos + Specs breaker, etc.) but I still think it's a fun meta that has much exploration to do. I've got my eyes set on a few low tier forgotten mons that I think can cook..
So, been messing a bit around in this meta, and while I dislike it compared to the old meta (please ban mamo holy shit that mon is busted), there is still some things that can be innovated. So I'd like to talk about quite a few mons that I've been messing around with.
Bronzong @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold/Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Stealth Rock
- Iron Defense/Future Sight/Night Shade/Gyro Ball/Heavy Slam
- Body Press
- Psychic Noise
This rn is probably one of the go to steel types for me, as it probably is one of the single best 'counters' to Mamoswine. With levitate, bronzong can switch in easily to both of Mamoswine's stab moves and can take knock off pretty well, meaning it can actually switch in multiple times a game and threaten mamoswine out with body press. It can use this opportunity to get up rocks, which is great for forcing non boots mamo to take chip. Psychic noise means that bronzong is a lot less passive and can stop bulky pokemon from setting up on it. Tera water is just an all round good defensive typing. The last moveslot on zong is very flexible. Iron defense means you can beat physical attackers a lot easier while having the potential to sweep, future sight can set up some combos with teammates to break defensive cores, night shade gives consistent damage and lets you cope that you still have psywave, and gyro ball/heavy slam lets you hit fairy types or speed boosting sweepers extremely hard.
Avalugg @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Sturdy
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def
Impish Nature
- Rapid Spin
- Recover
- Body Press
- Crunch/Avalanche
Can you see a trend here? Avalugg's main niche is that it completely counters mamoswine, and it does so HARD. Mamoswine's best option is to click knock off into avalugg and hope it can rack up enough stealth rock damage, which rapid spin completely alleviates. Body press off avalugg's defense stat can do good damage into unresisted targets, while crunch can hit slowbro/ghosts for decent damage or avalanche can deal with flying types. Tera water is just a good general defensive typing, allowing it to take on many more threats.
Armarouge @ Weakness Policy/Heavy Duty Boots
Ability: Weak Armor
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Armor Cannon
- Psyshock/Stored Power
- Endure
- Calm Mind
So then we aren't just talking about defensive mons, let me introduce you to one of the most disgusting offensive sets I've seen. I think I've seen it in some tourney games (maybe a teammate introduced in RUBD idk), and it punishes a lot of the usual armarouge counterplay, primarily scouting its set. If you run boots, you think its a calm mind set. This might mean you sack something in order to get your revenge killer like scarf krook in to nuke it. Instead, it clicks endure, gains +2 speed, and then revenge kills your scarf krook. If you don't run boots, you can still bait in opponents by clicking cm first and then endure'ing on the faster mon. You do struggle more into bulky water types, but you can usually get solid damage off on them before you faint.
Crawdaunt @ Choice Band
Ability: Adaptability
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Aqua Jet
- Crabhammer
- Knock Off
- Close Combat/Ice Beam
Crawdaunt has been on the downtrend recently, but with conkeldurr leaving the tier, it may be better as a slow wallbreaking option. Crawdaunt fits especially well on volt-turn teams, where it can utilise the switch in opportunities to start blasting the opposition. Stab adaptability knock off hits like a truck, with even frailer resisted targets struggling to take it. Crabhammer also hits incredibly hard, and can deal with pokemon such as hippowdon that may be able to take a knock off. CC can deal with something like bisharp more effectively, while ice beam chunks Chesnaught and Amoonguss. Aqua jet can pick off frailer opponents and with tera water, can clean offensive teams once there resists are gone. Overall, a really disgusting mon if you can account for it with teammates.
Umbreon @ Leftovers
Ability: Inner Focus
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
- Foul Play
- Wish
- Toxic
- Protect
Umbreon is a pretty good mon in the tier, it can wall a lot of special attackers, spread poison, and wish pass. But what about physically defensive? This set can take on pokemon such as mamoswine and bisharp very effectively, as it not only can avoid there flinches, but takes very little damage from there hits and can hit back hard with foul play. It can still even take on some special attackers like ghost stab locked ghosts and non-tera slowbro, while still living a +4 hit from bisharp at full. It can be a very effective pokemon alongside specially defensive hoodra as it can take on the ground types like krookodile that usually beat it.
Finally, I'd like to give my thoughts on the meta. Offense is probably the single best playstyle in the tier, with HO or BO coming in second. Any defensive playstyle isn't bad per say, but with mamoswine in the tier it feels like you have to use very specific mons to counter it, which leads to them being exploited by other mons such as Volcanion, Bisharp and Armarouge. You can still use them and get good results, but they feel much more restricted then the previous meta.
Mamoswine is completely busted, can we please get a suspect of it? Lots of its answers that are more splashable have some asterisk applied to them. Slowbro gets pressured by spikes (with full layers its 2hit ko'd by e-quake, one of the samples is literally mamo spikestack so its something you will see), heattom/geezing have to tera to be truly safe against mamoswine (heattom hates getting its boots knocked off and doesn't like rock blast, geezing is one flinch away from losing if it doesn't tera), cress is a passive blob that lets pokemon such as bisharp in for completely free. I could go on, but I think you get the point. This means you have to use pokemon which while not 'horrible', you would much prefer to use better mons (for example, I would prefer using jirachi's vast support movepool over bronzong). If we ban mamoswine, then we get a lot more breathing room in the builder for the other threats in the tier.
Bronzong @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold/Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Stealth Rock
- Iron Defense/Future Sight/Night Shade/Gyro Ball/Heavy Slam
- Body Press
- Psychic Noise
This rn is probably one of the go to steel types for me, as it probably is one of the single best 'counters' to Mamoswine. With levitate, bronzong can switch in easily to both of Mamoswine's stab moves and can take knock off pretty well, meaning it can actually switch in multiple times a game and threaten mamoswine out with body press. It can use this opportunity to get up rocks, which is great for forcing non boots mamo to take chip. Psychic noise means that bronzong is a lot less passive and can stop bulky pokemon from setting up on it. Tera water is just an all round good defensive typing. The last moveslot on zong is very flexible. Iron defense means you can beat physical attackers a lot easier while having the potential to sweep, future sight can set up some combos with teammates to break defensive cores, night shade gives consistent damage and lets you cope that you still have psywave, and gyro ball/heavy slam lets you hit fairy types or speed boosting sweepers extremely hard.
Avalugg @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Sturdy
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def
Impish Nature
- Rapid Spin
- Recover
- Body Press
- Crunch/Avalanche
Can you see a trend here? Avalugg's main niche is that it completely counters mamoswine, and it does so HARD. Mamoswine's best option is to click knock off into avalugg and hope it can rack up enough stealth rock damage, which rapid spin completely alleviates. Body press off avalugg's defense stat can do good damage into unresisted targets, while crunch can hit slowbro/ghosts for decent damage or avalanche can deal with flying types. Tera water is just a good general defensive typing, allowing it to take on many more threats.
Armarouge @ Weakness Policy/Heavy Duty Boots
Ability: Weak Armor
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Armor Cannon
- Psyshock/Stored Power
- Endure
- Calm Mind
So then we aren't just talking about defensive mons, let me introduce you to one of the most disgusting offensive sets I've seen. I think I've seen it in some tourney games (maybe a teammate introduced in RUBD idk), and it punishes a lot of the usual armarouge counterplay, primarily scouting its set. If you run boots, you think its a calm mind set. This might mean you sack something in order to get your revenge killer like scarf krook in to nuke it. Instead, it clicks endure, gains +2 speed, and then revenge kills your scarf krook. If you don't run boots, you can still bait in opponents by clicking cm first and then endure'ing on the faster mon. You do struggle more into bulky water types, but you can usually get solid damage off on them before you faint.
Crawdaunt @ Choice Band
Ability: Adaptability
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Aqua Jet
- Crabhammer
- Knock Off
- Close Combat/Ice Beam
Crawdaunt has been on the downtrend recently, but with conkeldurr leaving the tier, it may be better as a slow wallbreaking option. Crawdaunt fits especially well on volt-turn teams, where it can utilise the switch in opportunities to start blasting the opposition. Stab adaptability knock off hits like a truck, with even frailer resisted targets struggling to take it. Crabhammer also hits incredibly hard, and can deal with pokemon such as hippowdon that may be able to take a knock off. CC can deal with something like bisharp more effectively, while ice beam chunks Chesnaught and Amoonguss. Aqua jet can pick off frailer opponents and with tera water, can clean offensive teams once there resists are gone. Overall, a really disgusting mon if you can account for it with teammates.
Umbreon @ Leftovers
Ability: Inner Focus
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
- Foul Play
- Wish
- Toxic
- Protect
Umbreon is a pretty good mon in the tier, it can wall a lot of special attackers, spread poison, and wish pass. But what about physically defensive? This set can take on pokemon such as mamoswine and bisharp very effectively, as it not only can avoid there flinches, but takes very little damage from there hits and can hit back hard with foul play. It can still even take on some special attackers like ghost stab locked ghosts and non-tera slowbro, while still living a +4 hit from bisharp at full. It can be a very effective pokemon alongside specially defensive hoodra as it can take on the ground types like krookodile that usually beat it.
Finally, I'd like to give my thoughts on the meta. Offense is probably the single best playstyle in the tier, with HO or BO coming in second. Any defensive playstyle isn't bad per say, but with mamoswine in the tier it feels like you have to use very specific mons to counter it, which leads to them being exploited by other mons such as Volcanion, Bisharp and Armarouge. You can still use them and get good results, but they feel much more restricted then the previous meta.
Mamoswine is completely busted, can we please get a suspect of it? Lots of its answers that are more splashable have some asterisk applied to them. Slowbro gets pressured by spikes (with full layers its 2hit ko'd by e-quake, one of the samples is literally mamo spikestack so its something you will see), heattom/geezing have to tera to be truly safe against mamoswine (heattom hates getting its boots knocked off and doesn't like rock blast, geezing is one flinch away from losing if it doesn't tera), cress is a passive blob that lets pokemon such as bisharp in for completely free. I could go on, but I think you get the point. This means you have to use pokemon which while not 'horrible', you would much prefer to use better mons (for example, I would prefer using jirachi's vast support movepool over bronzong). If we ban mamoswine, then we get a lot more breathing room in the builder for the other threats in the tier.
So throughout the recent weeks, there have been a lot of interesting ideas and varying interpretations of how ru could be "fixed" and throughout the recent ssnls, ru circuit playoffs, rubd, and a good amount of laddering on the side, i've definitely developed my own.
Throughout that timeframe, Ive found it more and more difficult to build quality teams, specifically, and while I don't love using these abstract archetype titles, balance and BO. I've found that these "balance and BO" builds, which include my teams and the teams used by others, never really feel comprehensive--they never really feel like they are close to covering everything. Now of course, teambuilding should be difficult and it should be impossible to have an ideal matchup into everything, but "balance and BO" teambuilding has become more than that ideal barrier of difficulty. What was once the playstyle of playable matchups into everything, which is the core principle behind these archetypes, is now, in my view, simply picking and choosing matchups. Pokemon like Cyclizar and Slowbro, two pokemon that should be fantastic additions to most teams of this archetype and generally find success in opposing balance match ups, are some of the most exploited pokemon in the face of an opposing HO team. That list of pokemon continues as pokemon like hippowdon, weezing-galar, gligar, reuniclus, talonflame, etc... all suffer similar fates as in theory excellent balance picks, but struggle severely in the HO match up. Add to that basic resists (of which many balance teams seen in tournaments lack), hazard gameplanning, speed control, regenerator, and progress makers of its own, the list of boxes that really, definitely, should almost always be checked, grows. To add even more to these circumstances, the tier possesses extremely limited (both in quantity and quality) role compression pokemon (cyclizar, gligar, talonflame, empoleon), which streamlines "balance and BO" building to the extent to which so many balance builds look so similar.
Now the tier is at a point to which HO is more flexible than balance and BO. Within the past few weeks, creativity has only really flourished within this archetype, as developments such as webs or oricorio all add interesting dynamics to HO that the community is still adapting to. HO teams are nowhere near as restricted as balance and BO as core archetypes, which is healthy, but comes with the consequence that HO is more reliable than balance and BO. I witnessed this first hand in rubd as we prepped for 5 sv slots that building HO was just easier and had much less hassle; HO was the default instead of BO. Ultimately, in an idealized and optimized state, I find it hard to argue that anything other than HO as the primary playstyle.
Does this mean that RU needs to be "fixed"? Not necessarily. I think the community puts far too negative a connotation on HO as a concept. I dont believe an HO-centric tier is necessarily a bad one. Provided there is a diverse pool of pokemon to choose from and that they can be viably combined creatively, I think an HO-centric tier can be fun. And I struggle to see how this isnt applicable to the current state of the tier. To provide a contrast, do we remember that yanmega-maushold-blastoise metagame? Do we remember how streamlined those HO builds were with any combination of kleavor, mimikyu, blastoise, yanmega, maushold, frosslass, terrakion, armarouge, bisharp, etc... were just automatically good enough, being spammed and spammed to no end in that RU Open? The current tier and the current state of HO is so far beyond that, has evolved so much and has exploded in diversity with pokemon like zapdos-galar, feraligatr, gyarados, cloyster, mamoswine, ribombee/webs, and so much more. There is a semblance of sustainability within the HO of this tier in which I think if it were to be fully embraced, could be enjoyable and fun.
But the big word there is the "if". Ultimately, the community, and thereby the council, has to make a decision of whether they will embrace HO or not and the implications of one or the other. It is my belief that if RU decided to get out of an HO-centric metagame, it would require both the unbanning of yanmega and thundurus. From a practical sense, these were the two pokemon that constricted offense so that HO would be the more cheesy, more streamlined version of itself. This way it would naturally fall out of favor just like balance is doing now. We can also analyze the actual timeframe in which both of these pokemon were allowed, of which occured from weeks 1-5 of SCL, in which we saw little to no HO at all. If we wanted a tier where balance and BO were most prevalent, there it is.
It is pertinent that a decision is made though, and with the current ideas of possibly suspecting bisharp or armarouge, I don't see what either of those bans would point towards. As for bisharp, I believe it is merely a beneficiary of the current offense-dominant state of the tier. Complaints of bisharp are very similar to the complaints of revavroom not long ago, and that pokemon, while underutilized in the latter stages of its stay, definitely lost its steam before it rose to UU. I think removing bisharp would ultimately harm the tier and devolve it into more and more chaos as its ability to trade with anything at will against offense teams is a net positive when considering an HO-centric tier. And throughout the entirety of this generation, it has proven itself to be not a banworthy presence in metagames that are more balance-centric. I also do not find the pokemon itself warping nor impractical to incorporate sufficient counterplay to. To those arguing that we don't need to make a decision regarding HO-centrism or "balance and BO"-centrism, then what is your ideal version of this tier? Aiming for some theoretical 50/50 or 60/40 split of "balance and BO" to HO is unrealistic and most definitely unattainable.
Throughout that timeframe, Ive found it more and more difficult to build quality teams, specifically, and while I don't love using these abstract archetype titles, balance and BO. I've found that these "balance and BO" builds, which include my teams and the teams used by others, never really feel comprehensive--they never really feel like they are close to covering everything. Now of course, teambuilding should be difficult and it should be impossible to have an ideal matchup into everything, but "balance and BO" teambuilding has become more than that ideal barrier of difficulty. What was once the playstyle of playable matchups into everything, which is the core principle behind these archetypes, is now, in my view, simply picking and choosing matchups. Pokemon like Cyclizar and Slowbro, two pokemon that should be fantastic additions to most teams of this archetype and generally find success in opposing balance match ups, are some of the most exploited pokemon in the face of an opposing HO team. That list of pokemon continues as pokemon like hippowdon, weezing-galar, gligar, reuniclus, talonflame, etc... all suffer similar fates as in theory excellent balance picks, but struggle severely in the HO match up. Add to that basic resists (of which many balance teams seen in tournaments lack), hazard gameplanning, speed control, regenerator, and progress makers of its own, the list of boxes that really, definitely, should almost always be checked, grows. To add even more to these circumstances, the tier possesses extremely limited (both in quantity and quality) role compression pokemon (cyclizar, gligar, talonflame, empoleon), which streamlines "balance and BO" building to the extent to which so many balance builds look so similar.
Now the tier is at a point to which HO is more flexible than balance and BO. Within the past few weeks, creativity has only really flourished within this archetype, as developments such as webs or oricorio all add interesting dynamics to HO that the community is still adapting to. HO teams are nowhere near as restricted as balance and BO as core archetypes, which is healthy, but comes with the consequence that HO is more reliable than balance and BO. I witnessed this first hand in rubd as we prepped for 5 sv slots that building HO was just easier and had much less hassle; HO was the default instead of BO. Ultimately, in an idealized and optimized state, I find it hard to argue that anything other than HO as the primary playstyle.
Does this mean that RU needs to be "fixed"? Not necessarily. I think the community puts far too negative a connotation on HO as a concept. I dont believe an HO-centric tier is necessarily a bad one. Provided there is a diverse pool of pokemon to choose from and that they can be viably combined creatively, I think an HO-centric tier can be fun. And I struggle to see how this isnt applicable to the current state of the tier. To provide a contrast, do we remember that yanmega-maushold-blastoise metagame? Do we remember how streamlined those HO builds were with any combination of kleavor, mimikyu, blastoise, yanmega, maushold, frosslass, terrakion, armarouge, bisharp, etc... were just automatically good enough, being spammed and spammed to no end in that RU Open? The current tier and the current state of HO is so far beyond that, has evolved so much and has exploded in diversity with pokemon like zapdos-galar, feraligatr, gyarados, cloyster, mamoswine, ribombee/webs, and so much more. There is a semblance of sustainability within the HO of this tier in which I think if it were to be fully embraced, could be enjoyable and fun.
But the big word there is the "if". Ultimately, the community, and thereby the council, has to make a decision of whether they will embrace HO or not and the implications of one or the other. It is my belief that if RU decided to get out of an HO-centric metagame, it would require both the unbanning of yanmega and thundurus. From a practical sense, these were the two pokemon that constricted offense so that HO would be the more cheesy, more streamlined version of itself. This way it would naturally fall out of favor just like balance is doing now. We can also analyze the actual timeframe in which both of these pokemon were allowed, of which occured from weeks 1-5 of SCL, in which we saw little to no HO at all. If we wanted a tier where balance and BO were most prevalent, there it is.
It is pertinent that a decision is made though, and with the current ideas of possibly suspecting bisharp or armarouge, I don't see what either of those bans would point towards. As for bisharp, I believe it is merely a beneficiary of the current offense-dominant state of the tier. Complaints of bisharp are very similar to the complaints of revavroom not long ago, and that pokemon, while underutilized in the latter stages of its stay, definitely lost its steam before it rose to UU. I think removing bisharp would ultimately harm the tier and devolve it into more and more chaos as its ability to trade with anything at will against offense teams is a net positive when considering an HO-centric tier. And throughout the entirety of this generation, it has proven itself to be not a banworthy presence in metagames that are more balance-centric. I also do not find the pokemon itself warping nor impractical to incorporate sufficient counterplay to. To those arguing that we don't need to make a decision regarding HO-centrism or "balance and BO"-centrism, then what is your ideal version of this tier? Aiming for some theoretical 50/50 or 60/40 split of "balance and BO" to HO is unrealistic and most definitely unattainable.
I'll throw my own 2 cents in, on the pokemon people are complaining about the most; of which there are four of them, and then I'll add 3 curveballs to the mix that I think deserve to be talked about in some fashion.
Contrary to the opinion above, I do find bisharp to be the dumbest mon in the tier, but I also agree with the sentiment that it brings far more than its others on the list. Being a ghost resist is massive, and priority sucker wrings out some good utility. But on the other hand it has blastoise syndrome where while you might not land the correct tera into every matchup, the times that you do its damn near hopeless. Tera fire into talonflame/wisp slither users, Ghost into Registeel/Chesnaught users, or Flying into Krook users etc. You just can't really tell at all what tera bisharp is gonna be running and the counterplay beyond these are meager. I've seen people talk about encore mons alot; you know the mons literally all weak to throat chop? Sure outplaying sucker punches isn't impossible but I don't think I need to elaborate on the fact that's not hugely reliable. Personally I find this the most broken mon right now. However, i will concur that oyster has made me consider my stance a bit more, and I can see arguments that the curveball slot is more worthy of attention.
Say hello to the dastardly trio. These three have been tearing house in RUBD and its not difficult to see why. All three pose their own unique offensive profile while complimenting eachother flawlessly. Zoroark in my eyes would be the issue here. While its not unreasonable to answer Volcanion or Gapdos in isolation; when you throw the curveball of your checks exploding because its actually H-Zoro in disguise it becomes alot more stressful in an actual game to handle them. Cyclizars have exploded from yolo focus punches disguised as Volcanion, and Psychics have blown up to stray shadow balls. Each of these mons stand in the top 10 of usage for RUBD, at 10th 6th and 1st respectively. And when you slap even more support onto these; like Lunar dance Cresselia for instance, it becomes a nightmare to stop the crusade from winning. These combos I think are the main root of this offensive metagame, and I do think it's worth giving an honest look at H-Zoro or maybe Volcanion. I think Gapdos is a comfortable and balanced S tier, and doesn't require any action at all.
Another member of the broken allegations; and much to my surprise Mamoswine has been more reasonable than I expected. Sure, its dumb offensively and its checks are beatable but in an offense oriented tier Mamoswine isn't really that bad? Pokemon who are already good, Cress Quagsire Slowbro G-Weez and others do nicely at checking it and it's not like Ground competition isnt the stiffest in the tier. Golurk, Krookodile, Hippo, Gligar, Rhyperior and Flygon are all excellent mons, and that still excludes things like Palossand and Gastrodon. Of course, not all of these play the same but they do give it competition. I'm not hugely opposed to a suspect on Mamoswine but personally I'd like to wait a little longer into seasonal to consider Mamoswine on the chopping block i just think we can do better.
Don't. I honestly don't get the idea of picking this over anything I've mentioned before Armarouge. Sure; its a fantastic mon that usually puts in game to game performances. But I've never found it hugely overwhelming or unmanageable at any point and the stuff its vulnerable to are the stuff you should be having anyways. Tera may be excellent for procking weak armor, but its also just as good at taking Armarouge out of the picture. And that ignores the fact that usually, procking weak armor comes at a price. Sure, you can switch into U turns just fine and get it off but that assumes that the opponent doesn't have anything that can take a hit from a no boosts Armarouge, and odds are they will have something even in the midgame. It needs timid nature as well, otherwise it becomes pickings for scarf H-Zoros which isn't a hugely uncommon sight. And if you don't get the weak armor off then forget it this thing barely deserves the A ranks. Sure, odds are if Armarouge can get going; it takes a pokemon with it. But that 1: Doesn't always happen and 2: Requires so many pre-requisites to actually happen anyways. We have better targets; and this ban doesn't actually achieve anything significant for the tiers development if we want any actual change.
But if we hate HO with a passion, then this would be the target. Yet another Electric/Flying type people cant stop bitching about, and Oricorio has been hugging BL tiers the entire gen so frankly I'm not surprised. Do I think this thing is even broken? Not really. Do I think it'll be broken? Probably. Its just starting to truly catch on how silly this thing can actually be, and it wouldn't surprise me one iota if this thing hits A rank next VR shift. Honestly I think pulling the trigger on this thing is incredibly hasty, I'm just covering my bases here.
As for ranking them, I'd probably pick them in this order for suspect candidacy. My opinions are law but I'll say this directly to council. Whatever you guys actually pick; get the reqs to actually vote, or we'll have wasted our time quite a bit. Don't repeat on Okidogi where like 2/9 got the reqs thanks.
Contrary to the opinion above, I do find bisharp to be the dumbest mon in the tier, but I also agree with the sentiment that it brings far more than its others on the list. Being a ghost resist is massive, and priority sucker wrings out some good utility. But on the other hand it has blastoise syndrome where while you might not land the correct tera into every matchup, the times that you do its damn near hopeless. Tera fire into talonflame/wisp slither users, Ghost into Registeel/Chesnaught users, or Flying into Krook users etc. You just can't really tell at all what tera bisharp is gonna be running and the counterplay beyond these are meager. I've seen people talk about encore mons alot; you know the mons literally all weak to throat chop? Sure outplaying sucker punches isn't impossible but I don't think I need to elaborate on the fact that's not hugely reliable. Personally I find this the most broken mon right now. However, i will concur that oyster has made me consider my stance a bit more, and I can see arguments that the curveball slot is more worthy of attention.
Say hello to the dastardly trio. These three have been tearing house in RUBD and its not difficult to see why. All three pose their own unique offensive profile while complimenting eachother flawlessly. Zoroark in my eyes would be the issue here. While its not unreasonable to answer Volcanion or Gapdos in isolation; when you throw the curveball of your checks exploding because its actually H-Zoro in disguise it becomes alot more stressful in an actual game to handle them. Cyclizars have exploded from yolo focus punches disguised as Volcanion, and Psychics have blown up to stray shadow balls. Each of these mons stand in the top 10 of usage for RUBD, at 10th 6th and 1st respectively. And when you slap even more support onto these; like Lunar dance Cresselia for instance, it becomes a nightmare to stop the crusade from winning. These combos I think are the main root of this offensive metagame, and I do think it's worth giving an honest look at H-Zoro or maybe Volcanion. I think Gapdos is a comfortable and balanced S tier, and doesn't require any action at all.
Another member of the broken allegations; and much to my surprise Mamoswine has been more reasonable than I expected. Sure, its dumb offensively and its checks are beatable but in an offense oriented tier Mamoswine isn't really that bad? Pokemon who are already good, Cress Quagsire Slowbro G-Weez and others do nicely at checking it and it's not like Ground competition isnt the stiffest in the tier. Golurk, Krookodile, Hippo, Gligar, Rhyperior and Flygon are all excellent mons, and that still excludes things like Palossand and Gastrodon. Of course, not all of these play the same but they do give it competition. I'm not hugely opposed to a suspect on Mamoswine but personally I'd like to wait a little longer into seasonal to consider Mamoswine on the chopping block i just think we can do better.
Don't. I honestly don't get the idea of picking this over anything I've mentioned before Armarouge. Sure; its a fantastic mon that usually puts in game to game performances. But I've never found it hugely overwhelming or unmanageable at any point and the stuff its vulnerable to are the stuff you should be having anyways. Tera may be excellent for procking weak armor, but its also just as good at taking Armarouge out of the picture. And that ignores the fact that usually, procking weak armor comes at a price. Sure, you can switch into U turns just fine and get it off but that assumes that the opponent doesn't have anything that can take a hit from a no boosts Armarouge, and odds are they will have something even in the midgame. It needs timid nature as well, otherwise it becomes pickings for scarf H-Zoros which isn't a hugely uncommon sight. And if you don't get the weak armor off then forget it this thing barely deserves the A ranks. Sure, odds are if Armarouge can get going; it takes a pokemon with it. But that 1: Doesn't always happen and 2: Requires so many pre-requisites to actually happen anyways. We have better targets; and this ban doesn't actually achieve anything significant for the tiers development if we want any actual change.
But if we hate HO with a passion, then this would be the target. Yet another Electric/Flying type people cant stop bitching about, and Oricorio has been hugging BL tiers the entire gen so frankly I'm not surprised. Do I think this thing is even broken? Not really. Do I think it'll be broken? Probably. Its just starting to truly catch on how silly this thing can actually be, and it wouldn't surprise me one iota if this thing hits A rank next VR shift. Honestly I think pulling the trigger on this thing is incredibly hasty, I'm just covering my bases here.
As for ranking them, I'd probably pick them in this order for suspect candidacy. My opinions are law but I'll say this directly to council. Whatever you guys actually pick; get the reqs to actually vote, or we'll have wasted our time quite a bit. Don't repeat on Okidogi where like 2/9 got the reqs thanks.
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
---------------------- Cosmic Gap ------------
6:
7:
2:
3:
4:
5:
---------------------- Cosmic Gap ------------
6:
7:
Guess I'm going to go over the usage statistics (no, I did not delay making this post all day)
We have no projected drops because UU is no fun. Closest was Revavroom (4.739%), Mew (5.186%) and Toxapex (5.381%).
Not surprised by this rise ngl, gyarados has been picking up a lot more lately, with resto chesto sets in particular being amazing for being able to brute force its way through more defensive teams.
No projected rises to RU, closest was Raikou (4.297%), Oricorio Pom Pom (4.280%) and Regidrago (4.279%). The last two are expected, both are great mons, but regidrago confuses me since its only gotten worse over time. Guessing its a ladder moment.
No projected drops to NU, closest was Azelf (5.056%), Suicune (4.682%) and Ribombee (4.630%). Azelf has fallen off quite a bit, though I still think it can do decently. Suicune is a great mon, but is not a mon that ladder likes to use too much. Ribombee webs are alright, but are a bit niche in the tier.
Onto some usage stats:
Surprise, surprise (not). Gapdos is one of the best mons in the tier and is an elite scarfer. Not much to talk about here, if you play the tier, you know why its number one.
Cyclizar has fallen a bit off, but is still a top mon. Spins, knocks, u-turns, takes special hits. The whole kitten kaboodle.
(still no fucking weezing galar pmd sprite). This one actually surprised me a bit. Geezing isn't a bad mon persay, but it can be exploitable against steel and fire mons, and does have some 4mss trying to fit all of defog, wisp, strange steam, toxic and pain split. Might be a blip on the horizon, but maybe geezing is better then people thought?
Top tier mon that can be a devestating sweeper against more offensive playstyles. And since ladder likes more offensive playstyle, bisharp is more likely to get chosen.
Surprised a bit by this ngl, but I guess slowbro does slowbro things of being a fat wall and CM sweeper. Pretty much the best bulky water in the tier, so probably deserved.
Jirachi has fallen off a bit recently, but its still a great mon. WIth a wide array of utility moves from rocks, encore, wish, healing wish and u-turn, it can fill a variety of roles on a team. Scarf and CM are also decent sets that can surprise unprepared teams.
Bit surprised by this, but ig being a fan favourite helps that a lot. Salamence isn't a bad mon by any means, but can be awkward to fit onto teams. If you do account for it however, it can be amazing.
An incredibly dangerous mon if it gets going, armarouge can do decently well against the HO ladder by using a weakness policy set to take advantage of ladder forgetting its a set. Can destroy more defensive teams as well with its coverage and stabs.
Yeah, despite the fact that it only dropped a month ago, mamoswine already cracks the top ten. Insane wallbreaker that can also revenge kill things incredibly easily (mandatory ban mamoswine insert).
Falling a bit off from the previous months, hoodra still shows its packing a lot of tools to keep itself going. Specially defensive sets are still probably the best sets, with acid spray popping up a bit to make it more offensive by forcing switches easier. Specs sets are still very good though, and shouldn't be underestimated.
Also kleavor is now number 12 in usage, its finally falling off a bit.
We have no projected drops because UU is no fun. Closest was Revavroom (4.739%), Mew (5.186%) and Toxapex (5.381%).
Not surprised by this rise ngl, gyarados has been picking up a lot more lately, with resto chesto sets in particular being amazing for being able to brute force its way through more defensive teams.No projected rises to RU, closest was Raikou (4.297%), Oricorio Pom Pom (4.280%) and Regidrago (4.279%). The last two are expected, both are great mons, but regidrago confuses me since its only gotten worse over time. Guessing its a ladder moment.
No projected drops to NU, closest was Azelf (5.056%), Suicune (4.682%) and Ribombee (4.630%). Azelf has fallen off quite a bit, though I still think it can do decently. Suicune is a great mon, but is not a mon that ladder likes to use too much. Ribombee webs are alright, but are a bit niche in the tier.
Onto some usage stats:
Surprise, surprise (not). Gapdos is one of the best mons in the tier and is an elite scarfer. Not much to talk about here, if you play the tier, you know why its number one. Cyclizar has fallen a bit off, but is still a top mon. Spins, knocks, u-turns, takes special hits. The whole kitten kaboodle. Top tier mon that can be a devestating sweeper against more offensive playstyles. And since ladder likes more offensive playstyle, bisharp is more likely to get chosen. Surprised a bit by this ngl, but I guess slowbro does slowbro things of being a fat wall and CM sweeper. Pretty much the best bulky water in the tier, so probably deserved. Jirachi has fallen off a bit recently, but its still a great mon. WIth a wide array of utility moves from rocks, encore, wish, healing wish and u-turn, it can fill a variety of roles on a team. Scarf and CM are also decent sets that can surprise unprepared teams. Bit surprised by this, but ig being a fan favourite helps that a lot. Salamence isn't a bad mon by any means, but can be awkward to fit onto teams. If you do account for it however, it can be amazing. An incredibly dangerous mon if it gets going, armarouge can do decently well against the HO ladder by using a weakness policy set to take advantage of ladder forgetting its a set. Can destroy more defensive teams as well with its coverage and stabs. Yeah, despite the fact that it only dropped a month ago, mamoswine already cracks the top ten. Insane wallbreaker that can also revenge kill things incredibly easily (mandatory ban mamoswine insert). Falling a bit off from the previous months, hoodra still shows its packing a lot of tools to keep itself going. Specially defensive sets are still probably the best sets, with acid spray popping up a bit to make it more offensive by forcing switches easier. Specs sets are still very good though, and shouldn't be underestimated.Also kleavor is now number 12 in usage, its finally falling off a bit.
View attachment 586590
Second DLC dropped, and here are the Pokémon we got in the newest tier shift:
OU to RU | Other Relevant Drops From Lower Tiers
|
UU to RU
RU to OU | RU to UU
|
As you can see, we gained quite a lot of new tools, but it seems that the direct drops from UU are mostly powerful breakers, while we lost 3 solid defensive tools in Donphan, Hippowdon and Tyranitar.
REGI FLYGON IS BACK... although now they can compete for a position of the rocker of the team. Flygon losing Roost hurts a lot, but it can still pull off offensive sets relatively well. I listed Alcremie, Scrafty & Malamar as they can be quite annoying to handle with tera.
The RU council will look into the current state of the tier to take action (be it quick bans or freeing some RUBL mon). Feel free to drop your own thoughts on the new drops!
I like this. Thank you for giving great information.View attachment 586590
Second DLC dropped, and here are the Pokémon we got in the newest tier shift:
OU to RU | Other Relevant Drops From Lower Tiers
|
UU to RU
RU to OU | RU to UU
|
As you can see, we gained quite a lot of new tools, but it seems that the direct drops from UU are mostly powerful breakers, while we lost 3 solid defensive tools in Donphan, Hippowdon and Tyranitar.
REGI FLYGON IS BACK... although now they can compete for a position of the rocker of the team. Flygon losing Roost hurts a lot, but it can still pull off offensive sets relatively well. I listed Alcremie, Scrafty & Malamar as they can be quite annoying to handle with tera.
The RU council will look into the current state of the tier to take action (be it quick bans or freeing some RUBL mon). Feel free to drop your own thoughts on the new drops!
With RUBD wrapping up and my team dump giving me the itch to write about the tier a bit more, I figured I'd come here and talk about some cores and mons I liked a lot last month. There are a ton of things I wanted to explore and will probably tinker with for seasonal as well that I might cover.
I think these three are clear S-rank contenders and are the top of the tier for me in terms of overall splashability and effectiveness in their roles. I originally wasn't as high on Slowbro heading into this meta but it has just been such an effective glue mon for balance and bulky offense teams, especially in conjunction with another mon I didn't expect to use as much as I have in Galarian Weezing. Volcanion has always been problematic in my opinion, with almost no checks, and none that don't have limitations that are easy to exploit like Cyclizar and Noivern. I don't build with a ton but any time I do it feels so easy to pilot and it can trade with basically anything if needed.
I did not like this mon prior to shifts, always seeing it as U-turn bait to allow something like Hisuian Goodra or Magnezone in to start breaking. However, with Mamoswine dropping and the tier going more offensive (as if it wasn't already), this thing just really holds down a lot of matchups and can be incredibly useful with the option to Defog, Toxic Spikes, and Will-O-Wisp. Really foundational piece for me in the builder with Slowbro and something I think has been instrumental in developing the metagame.
These two I was pretty low on for a while because of their poor matchups into Mamoswine and Volcanion, though I have seen the light a bit as they can catch a lot of teams lacking in the switch-ins to them. SD Rhyperior and IronPress Registeel are both incredibly bulky setup sweepers that can just throw offense for a loop if positioned well and I appreciate them for that more now than I did before, though you do need to account for the wallbreakers they struggle with by giving them great teammates like Rotom-H (slept on).
These three are all incredible mons that, even with being viewed positively generally, don't get the recognition they deserve for being meta-defining threats. Fezandipiti is especially potent as it can just skew outcomes with its Taunt sets or pivot freely with U-turn stuff to always get teammates in on favorable matchups. Magnezone is a bit tricky to use at times but it just takes over games if you get some clicks right, so disruptive and powerful. Umbreon is the same annoying WishPass + Toxic spammer as it has been but it has plenty of great bulky wallbreakers to pair with like Basculegion-F and Mamoswine to make it so much more impressive. Really great trio of mons that I think can be hard to account for.
I have been trying to get Crawdaunt the recognition it deserves for a while now, even though I find it hard to build with at times too. It just has such impressive breaking power that matches up into the meta well, blowing through most balance and bulky offense teams with its STABs while threatening offense with Aqua Jet as well. I think people would view it more favorably if they opted for Jolly > Adamant, to get surprise KOs against stuff like Bisharp and Volcanion, as well as neutral 60s in Hisuian Goodra and Magnezone. Lycanroc-Dusk and Toxicroak are another two mons that can clean games with ease, using their high base power attacks, with strong priority and access to SD, to great effect.
I didn't want to address this again but... I want these gone. They are just so incredibly warping and I think have a limiting effect on the amount of mons that can be used without having to accept major concessions. I understand the argument that stuff like Armarouge and PomPom are more "cheesy" in nature and don't offer as much to the tier with regards to their overall gameplay, but these three are just... yeah. If it were up to me I don't think I could rationalize allowing them in the tier, they just feel too effective and too powerful and clearly have a negative impact in team compositions and game planning.
I think these three are clear S-rank contenders and are the top of the tier for me in terms of overall splashability and effectiveness in their roles. I originally wasn't as high on Slowbro heading into this meta but it has just been such an effective glue mon for balance and bulky offense teams, especially in conjunction with another mon I didn't expect to use as much as I have in Galarian Weezing. Volcanion has always been problematic in my opinion, with almost no checks, and none that don't have limitations that are easy to exploit like Cyclizar and Noivern. I don't build with a ton but any time I do it feels so easy to pilot and it can trade with basically anything if needed.
I did not like this mon prior to shifts, always seeing it as U-turn bait to allow something like Hisuian Goodra or Magnezone in to start breaking. However, with Mamoswine dropping and the tier going more offensive (as if it wasn't already), this thing just really holds down a lot of matchups and can be incredibly useful with the option to Defog, Toxic Spikes, and Will-O-Wisp. Really foundational piece for me in the builder with Slowbro and something I think has been instrumental in developing the metagame.
These two I was pretty low on for a while because of their poor matchups into Mamoswine and Volcanion, though I have seen the light a bit as they can catch a lot of teams lacking in the switch-ins to them. SD Rhyperior and IronPress Registeel are both incredibly bulky setup sweepers that can just throw offense for a loop if positioned well and I appreciate them for that more now than I did before, though you do need to account for the wallbreakers they struggle with by giving them great teammates like Rotom-H (slept on).
These three are all incredible mons that, even with being viewed positively generally, don't get the recognition they deserve for being meta-defining threats. Fezandipiti is especially potent as it can just skew outcomes with its Taunt sets or pivot freely with U-turn stuff to always get teammates in on favorable matchups. Magnezone is a bit tricky to use at times but it just takes over games if you get some clicks right, so disruptive and powerful. Umbreon is the same annoying WishPass + Toxic spammer as it has been but it has plenty of great bulky wallbreakers to pair with like Basculegion-F and Mamoswine to make it so much more impressive. Really great trio of mons that I think can be hard to account for.
I have been trying to get Crawdaunt the recognition it deserves for a while now, even though I find it hard to build with at times too. It just has such impressive breaking power that matches up into the meta well, blowing through most balance and bulky offense teams with its STABs while threatening offense with Aqua Jet as well. I think people would view it more favorably if they opted for Jolly > Adamant, to get surprise KOs against stuff like Bisharp and Volcanion, as well as neutral 60s in Hisuian Goodra and Magnezone. Lycanroc-Dusk and Toxicroak are another two mons that can clean games with ease, using their high base power attacks, with strong priority and access to SD, to great effect.
I didn't want to address this again but... I want these gone. They are just so incredibly warping and I think have a limiting effect on the amount of mons that can be used without having to accept major concessions. I understand the argument that stuff like Armarouge and PomPom are more "cheesy" in nature and don't offer as much to the tier with regards to their overall gameplay, but these three are just... yeah. If it were up to me I don't think I could rationalize allowing them in the tier, they just feel too effective and too powerful and clearly have a negative impact in team compositions and game planning.
Good old post incoming. I might repeat some Pokémon I've talked about in the past but I feel like there are some really overlooked mons that should definitely see more usage.
Noivern @ Choice Specs
Ability: Infiltrator
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Boomburst
- Flamethrower
- Switcheroo
I first thought about using Specs Noivern when I was building for Danny in Grand Slam Playoffs last year. It just felt like a good hitter against the normal cores, and it's a really fast breaker with good defensive value as well. I feel like it has been feeling better and better as the meta progresses, with Volcanion being one of the breakers that lets in Noivern in to drop a strong hit. Granted, you lose a lot of longetivity since you are an offensive set with no recovery, but you swap that for really solid breaking power and the ability to choice lock some defensive mons if the matchup is not on your side. I think I've built like 5 Specs Noivern teams in the past couple of weeks, and it always performs amazingly.
I'm here once again to try and get Wo-Chien to be used on ladder so it becomes RU. Jokes aside, I've been labbing the heck out of this Pokémon. People know I love using Wo-Chien a lot, but that also comes with getting counter teamed consistently, or people just playing without thinking about the moveset it is using. In the last couple of months, I've been trying to branch out my sets depending on the teams I've used Wo-Chien in. So far, here's what I've been able to come up with successfully:
- Taunt. I first came up with the Taunt idea when feen asked me for help prepping vs Guille for RU playoffs. I was building a very standard team, and the first thing that crossed my mind when I looked at the team was "Armarouge has to put some overtime if it pulls the fat matchup". That's when I noticed that I didn't really need Foul Play based on the structure, so I opted to try Taunt Wo-Chien. The performance it displayed were great, being able to prevent Pain Split or Defog from Weezing- Galar, or passing a Wish from Umbreon or getting hit with a Toxic. I gave it to Franklin again for RU Circuit Finals. I think in the right team, Taunt is a game changer on how people have to approach playing vs it.
- Leaf Storm. Ok this was a bit of a crazier idea, but I was starting to get annoyed at people staying in with Slowbro and fishing for Scald burns vs Wo-Chien. I decided to try Leaf Storm over Foul Play, and the surprise factor worked every single time. Leaf Storm was getting OHKOs on mons like Krookodile, Rhyperior (some goons try to trade a Knock Off for a Megahorn), Mamoswine, Slowbro, and you could even do actual damage to Volcanion or a tera'd Armarouge. This was more of a surprise factor, but at some point people will have to start scouting for it. It probably isn't as splashable as the other utility moves, but it's a really solid tool for getting some surprise KOs.
Everyone knows what Klefki does: Prankster Spikes, Prankster Thunder Wave & attack. I've been using Switcheroo as my last move with items like Choice Band or Toxic Orb since I think they provide the most value across most matchups right now. Switcheroo Choice Band is amazing for dealing with bulky set up sweepers like Slowbro or Reuni, as well as specific HO mons like Armarouge or Oricorio. I not only think that Klekfi is a really solid mon right now, but I also think this set patches a lot of holes against a lot of matchups (also being able to one shot Moxie Krook as they switch in to prevent anything is pretty funny).
Check out this post I made in the VR thread regarding my thoughts on Forretress. tl;dr the mon is better than what everyone thinks.
Muk, that's the post. In a tier with really annoying special set up mons, Muk provides a really cool role in tanking hits, and fishing for Poison Touches to make progress. The set I run is Knock Off, Drain Punch, Toxic, Protect. With this you are able to make progress vs near everything (except the previously mentioned Forretress ROFL). You can Toxic an Armarouge that has clicked Endure, and then click Knock Off for free, and you can also Poison Touch fish vs something like Taunt Oricorio as they try to set up. Drain Punch is sort of for longevity vs like Umbreon and Empoleon, but you also don't want to give Bisharp any free turns, so this is decent chip.
Other mons I'd like to talk about, but I'm too lazy:
Noivern @ Choice Specs
Ability: Infiltrator
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Boomburst
- Flamethrower
- Switcheroo
I first thought about using Specs Noivern when I was building for Danny in Grand Slam Playoffs last year. It just felt like a good hitter against the normal cores, and it's a really fast breaker with good defensive value as well. I feel like it has been feeling better and better as the meta progresses, with Volcanion being one of the breakers that lets in Noivern in to drop a strong hit. Granted, you lose a lot of longetivity since you are an offensive set with no recovery, but you swap that for really solid breaking power and the ability to choice lock some defensive mons if the matchup is not on your side. I think I've built like 5 Specs Noivern teams in the past couple of weeks, and it always performs amazingly.
I'm here once again to try and get Wo-Chien to be used on ladder so it becomes RU. Jokes aside, I've been labbing the heck out of this Pokémon. People know I love using Wo-Chien a lot, but that also comes with getting counter teamed consistently, or people just playing without thinking about the moveset it is using. In the last couple of months, I've been trying to branch out my sets depending on the teams I've used Wo-Chien in. So far, here's what I've been able to come up with successfully:
- Taunt. I first came up with the Taunt idea when feen asked me for help prepping vs Guille for RU playoffs. I was building a very standard team, and the first thing that crossed my mind when I looked at the team was "Armarouge has to put some overtime if it pulls the fat matchup". That's when I noticed that I didn't really need Foul Play based on the structure, so I opted to try Taunt Wo-Chien. The performance it displayed were great, being able to prevent Pain Split or Defog from Weezing- Galar, or passing a Wish from Umbreon or getting hit with a Toxic. I gave it to Franklin again for RU Circuit Finals. I think in the right team, Taunt is a game changer on how people have to approach playing vs it.
- Leaf Storm. Ok this was a bit of a crazier idea, but I was starting to get annoyed at people staying in with Slowbro and fishing for Scald burns vs Wo-Chien. I decided to try Leaf Storm over Foul Play, and the surprise factor worked every single time. Leaf Storm was getting OHKOs on mons like Krookodile, Rhyperior (some goons try to trade a Knock Off for a Megahorn), Mamoswine, Slowbro, and you could even do actual damage to Volcanion or a tera'd Armarouge. This was more of a surprise factor, but at some point people will have to start scouting for it. It probably isn't as splashable as the other utility moves, but it's a really solid tool for getting some surprise KOs.
Everyone knows what Klefki does: Prankster Spikes, Prankster Thunder Wave & attack. I've been using Switcheroo as my last move with items like Choice Band or Toxic Orb since I think they provide the most value across most matchups right now. Switcheroo Choice Band is amazing for dealing with bulky set up sweepers like Slowbro or Reuni, as well as specific HO mons like Armarouge or Oricorio. I not only think that Klekfi is a really solid mon right now, but I also think this set patches a lot of holes against a lot of matchups (also being able to one shot Moxie Krook as they switch in to prevent anything is pretty funny).
Check out this post I made in the VR thread regarding my thoughts on Forretress. tl;dr the mon is better than what everyone thinks.
Muk, that's the post. In a tier with really annoying special set up mons, Muk provides a really cool role in tanking hits, and fishing for Poison Touches to make progress. The set I run is Knock Off, Drain Punch, Toxic, Protect. With this you are able to make progress vs near everything (except the previously mentioned Forretress ROFL). You can Toxic an Armarouge that has clicked Endure, and then click Knock Off for free, and you can also Poison Touch fish vs something like Taunt Oricorio as they try to set up. Drain Punch is sort of for longevity vs like Umbreon and Empoleon, but you also don't want to give Bisharp any free turns, so this is decent chip.
Other mons I'd like to talk about, but I'm too lazy:
Hello y'all, it's been a hot minute since my last forum post here, and I would like to revive a tradition, a monthly check-in for my absolute ALL TIME favorite Pokemon and her spot in the metagame, so without further ado...
peak in the top right next to peak in the center
First off!
Section 1: What does Meloetta do?
First off, Meloetta has a pretty varied (yet I'll be real, very lacking) movepool, with plenty of utility and even setup, so how you use her depends on the team and intent, and while this is true with most mons, Meloetta lacks a very clearly defined niche (aside from Relic Song which I'll go into later), so you have to get creative with her teammates, EV spreads, and most importantly, her moveset.
Her utility moves are as follows: Thunder Wave, Knock Off, U-turn, Trick, Trick Room, and Rain Dance & Sunny Day. First off, she gets the coveted combo of Knock Off and U-Turn, which while she lacks the blistering speed of Cyclizar to make the combo truly great, it does allow her to be able to support her team pretty effectively, which along with T-Wave gives her very good supportive options to run, and is one of the few Pokemon in the tier who has all 3, and is by far the bulkiest of them all. Trick allows for the usual shenanigans with Choice Scarf and Specs, Trick Room allows Meloetta to be one of the very few mons to have both a pivoting move AND Trick Room, and combine that with a natural Ghost immunity allows for a potentially good defensive piece on a teamstyle often stacking multiple Psychic Type Trick Room setters. The last two are pretty much Rain Dance Gallade levels of good. You can use it. For sure. She also gets Light Screen, but in a Light-Clayless meta there's not much to say there.
And just going over her base attributes so that everyone is on board (ignore the gloves, I have Kay Faraday as my background)
So right off the bat, 100 HP is important since it allows for 101 HP subs, and that combined with 128 SpD means Meloetta is capable of being a very proficient special wall, and although she lacks any reliable recovery, she still is able to take some pretty mean hits. 90 Speed is pretty ok, and makes Meloetta, amongst other CM sweepers, the fastest, which is pretty sick. You also can't ignore the monstrous 128 SpA, which while Meloetta lacks any giant BP moves to throw out, that SpA still manages to be pretty solid.
Additionally, as a Normal and Psychic type, Meloetta is neutral into Fighting Type attacks, is immune to Ghost type attacks, and that leaves Meloetta with only a weakness to Dark-type moves and Bug-type moves, so that's some pretty good attributes to mess around with.
Meloetta has a lot of... weird? moves to use as coverage, with stuff like Thunder & Thunderbolt, Ice Punch, Play Rough, Energy Ball and Grass Knot, and Shadow Claw and Shadow Ball, primarily. Also Triple Axel is there, along with her various stab options like Facade, Drain Punch, Tera Blast, etc etc.
For setup options it's literally only Swords Dance and Calm Mind, both of which cleanly fit into Pirouette and Aria formes respectively
Section 2: Meloetta's Major Sets
The tried and true set for Meloetta is of course her Calm Mind set, which I will give two alternative EV spreads for...
Basically, the set is able to make pretty novel use of Tera Blast to always have stab on it, which is pretty cool since it lets you not worry about skimping out on coverage since it comes prepackaged with the move.
Your first option is this:
Meloetta @ Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 HP / 40 Def / 216 Spe
Timid Nature
- Substitute
- Calm Mind
- Tera Blast
- Psyshock
This set is EV'd to hit 297, which allows you to outspeed, amongst other things, Kleavor, Overqwil, and importantly Suicune.
Meloetta @ Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 HP / 152 Def / 104 Spe
Bold Nature
- Substitute
- Calm Mind
- Tera Blast
- Psyshock
This second set is instead EV'd to always take less than 25% from a Cyclizar U-turn (note that this is for a common AV Cyclizar running Timid), which allows you to keep your subs up, and is EV'd to outspeed base 70 mons running max like Volcanion and Bisharp.
Unlike most Calm Mind pokemon, Meloetta is definitely more of a set up "breaker" than a wincon to play towards. Due to a lack of reliable recovery you have to rely solely on your Lefties for recovery, and you don't have Scald like Slowbro and Suicune. BUT, what you do have is the ability to set up on passive mons, and start going to town, importantly forcing damage on mons like Hoodra, Bisharp, and Chansey and possibly downright OHKO'ing them if your opponent lets you set up enough. But since you don't have Pressure or Regen or even a useful ability at all, along with no easily spammable stab like Scald or Psychic Noise, you can't really get into game winning positions like Suicune and Slowbro can. However, you still have your strengths, such as having way better offensive coverage and way better stats to be able to take hits and chunk things for big damage.
I won't dwell on Pirouette sets for too long, but I guess they're there. Meloetta sadly suffers from having to dedicate a moveslot to Relic Song, which constrains Meloetta's ability to actually do anything with the massive movepool she has, so it's either Relic SD and STABS or Relic STABS and Knock Off so you don't get owned by Ghost Types. But, if you can get Meloetta into position and get and SD off, in theory you could absolutely clean house with her. 128 Atk and 128 Speed are nothing to sneeze at.
Now, for the final set... recommended by the Feliburner himself...
Meloetta @ Choice Specs
Ability: Serene Grace
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Tera Blast
- Psychic
- Knock Off
- U-turn
It was originally Hyper Voice but the ability to like
not
get walled by steels was too good to pass up
Anyways you hit a very threatening 533 SpA stat with Choice Specs on, so you're able to really blast holes in the enemy team, and that's just with your STABS. Meloetta is also running Knock and U-Turn on this set so you can pivot out to a breaker or defensive mon if you read a switch, and can play the utility game by possibly knocking a Chansey or other miscellaneous goon that attempts to switch in to Meloetta. He talked about pairing this set with Spikes and honestly I can see the vision, you have a high-powered nuke that obliterates most things in the metagame, and a way to punish the switch-ins. It just works.
CONCLUSION
Meloetta isn't the greatest Pokemon, I'll be the first to admit. You really gotta have a team built around her to get all the value you can, and she's absolutely a "centerpiece" type mon for a team. And even then Meloetta just has some very glaring flaws in not having a great ability and movepool combo, along with not having good offensive stabs, but I hope that this post has enlightened some of you to the potential in Meloetta.
As always have a great day!
IT'S MELOETTA MONDAYYYY
peak in the top right next to peak in the center
I shall be analyising the tried and true set, along with a new, prospective set that has popped up as a possibility, along with discussing and presenting the tools that Meloetta brings to the metagame for those new to Meloetta Monday. First off!
Section 1: What does Meloetta do?
First off, Meloetta has a pretty varied (yet I'll be real, very lacking) movepool, with plenty of utility and even setup, so how you use her depends on the team and intent, and while this is true with most mons, Meloetta lacks a very clearly defined niche (aside from Relic Song which I'll go into later), so you have to get creative with her teammates, EV spreads, and most importantly, her moveset.
Her utility moves are as follows: Thunder Wave, Knock Off, U-turn, Trick, Trick Room, and Rain Dance & Sunny Day. First off, she gets the coveted combo of Knock Off and U-Turn, which while she lacks the blistering speed of Cyclizar to make the combo truly great, it does allow her to be able to support her team pretty effectively, which along with T-Wave gives her very good supportive options to run, and is one of the few Pokemon in the tier who has all 3, and is by far the bulkiest of them all. Trick allows for the usual shenanigans with Choice Scarf and Specs, Trick Room allows Meloetta to be one of the very few mons to have both a pivoting move AND Trick Room, and combine that with a natural Ghost immunity allows for a potentially good defensive piece on a teamstyle often stacking multiple Psychic Type Trick Room setters. The last two are pretty much Rain Dance Gallade levels of good. You can use it. For sure. She also gets Light Screen, but in a Light-Clayless meta there's not much to say there.
And just going over her base attributes so that everyone is on board (ignore the gloves, I have Kay Faraday as my background)
So right off the bat, 100 HP is important since it allows for 101 HP subs, and that combined with 128 SpD means Meloetta is capable of being a very proficient special wall, and although she lacks any reliable recovery, she still is able to take some pretty mean hits. 90 Speed is pretty ok, and makes Meloetta, amongst other CM sweepers, the fastest, which is pretty sick. You also can't ignore the monstrous 128 SpA, which while Meloetta lacks any giant BP moves to throw out, that SpA still manages to be pretty solid.
Additionally, as a Normal and Psychic type, Meloetta is neutral into Fighting Type attacks, is immune to Ghost type attacks, and that leaves Meloetta with only a weakness to Dark-type moves and Bug-type moves, so that's some pretty good attributes to mess around with.
Meloetta has a lot of... weird? moves to use as coverage, with stuff like Thunder & Thunderbolt, Ice Punch, Play Rough, Energy Ball and Grass Knot, and Shadow Claw and Shadow Ball, primarily. Also Triple Axel is there, along with her various stab options like Facade, Drain Punch, Tera Blast, etc etc.
For setup options it's literally only Swords Dance and Calm Mind, both of which cleanly fit into Pirouette and Aria formes respectively
Section 2: Meloetta's Major Sets
The tried and true set for Meloetta is of course her Calm Mind set, which I will give two alternative EV spreads for...
Basically, the set is able to make pretty novel use of Tera Blast to always have stab on it, which is pretty cool since it lets you not worry about skimping out on coverage since it comes prepackaged with the move.
Your first option is this:
Meloetta @ Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 HP / 40 Def / 216 Spe
Timid Nature
- Substitute
- Calm Mind
- Tera Blast
- Psyshock
This set is EV'd to hit 297, which allows you to outspeed, amongst other things, Kleavor, Overqwil, and importantly Suicune.
Meloetta @ Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 HP / 152 Def / 104 Spe
Bold Nature
- Substitute
- Calm Mind
- Tera Blast
- Psyshock
This second set is instead EV'd to always take less than 25% from a Cyclizar U-turn (note that this is for a common AV Cyclizar running Timid), which allows you to keep your subs up, and is EV'd to outspeed base 70 mons running max like Volcanion and Bisharp.
Unlike most Calm Mind pokemon, Meloetta is definitely more of a set up "breaker" than a wincon to play towards. Due to a lack of reliable recovery you have to rely solely on your Lefties for recovery, and you don't have Scald like Slowbro and Suicune. BUT, what you do have is the ability to set up on passive mons, and start going to town, importantly forcing damage on mons like Hoodra, Bisharp, and Chansey and possibly downright OHKO'ing them if your opponent lets you set up enough. But since you don't have Pressure or Regen or even a useful ability at all, along with no easily spammable stab like Scald or Psychic Noise, you can't really get into game winning positions like Suicune and Slowbro can. However, you still have your strengths, such as having way better offensive coverage and way better stats to be able to take hits and chunk things for big damage.
I won't dwell on Pirouette sets for too long, but I guess they're there. Meloetta sadly suffers from having to dedicate a moveslot to Relic Song, which constrains Meloetta's ability to actually do anything with the massive movepool she has, so it's either Relic SD and STABS or Relic STABS and Knock Off so you don't get owned by Ghost Types. But, if you can get Meloetta into position and get and SD off, in theory you could absolutely clean house with her. 128 Atk and 128 Speed are nothing to sneeze at.
Now, for the final set... recommended by the Feliburner himself...
Meloetta @ Choice Specs
Ability: Serene Grace
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Tera Blast
- Psychic
- Knock Off
- U-turn
It was originally Hyper Voice but the ability to like
not
get walled by steels was too good to pass up
Anyways you hit a very threatening 533 SpA stat with Choice Specs on, so you're able to really blast holes in the enemy team, and that's just with your STABS. Meloetta is also running Knock and U-Turn on this set so you can pivot out to a breaker or defensive mon if you read a switch, and can play the utility game by possibly knocking a Chansey or other miscellaneous goon that attempts to switch in to Meloetta. He talked about pairing this set with Spikes and honestly I can see the vision, you have a high-powered nuke that obliterates most things in the metagame, and a way to punish the switch-ins. It just works.
CONCLUSION
Meloetta isn't the greatest Pokemon, I'll be the first to admit. You really gotta have a team built around her to get all the value you can, and she's absolutely a "centerpiece" type mon for a team. And even then Meloetta just has some very glaring flaws in not having a great ability and movepool combo, along with not having good offensive stabs, but I hope that this post has enlightened some of you to the potential in Meloetta.
As always have a great day!
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As somebody who has also used meloetta, I'd like to show a different set which utilises Meloetta's unique traits.Hello y'all, it's been a hot minute since my last forum post here, and I would like to revive a tradition, a monthly check-in for my absolute ALL TIME favorite Pokemon and her spot in the metagame, so without further ado...
peak in the top right next to peak in the center
I shall be analyising the tried and true set, along with a new, prospective set that has popped up as a possibility, along with discussing and presenting the tools that Meloetta brings to the metagame for those new to Meloetta Monday.
First off!
Section 1: What does Meloetta do?
First off, Meloetta has a pretty varied (yet I'll be real, very lacking) movepool, with plenty of utility and even setup, so how you use her depends on the team and intent, and while this is true with most mons, Meloetta lacks a very clearly defined niche (aside from Relic Song which I'll go into later), so you have to get creative with her teammates, EV spreads, and most importantly, her moveset.
Her utility moves are as follows: Thunder Wave, Knock Off, U-turn, Trick, Trick Room, and Rain Dance & Sunny Day. First off, she gets the coveted combo of Knock Off and U-Turn, which while she lacks the blistering speed of Cyclizar to make the combo truly great, it does allow her to be able to support her team pretty effectively, which along with T-Wave gives her very good supportive options to run, and is one of the few Pokemon in the tier who has all 3, and is by far the bulkiest of them all. Trick allows for the usual shenanigans with Choice Scarf and Specs, Trick Room allows Meloetta to be one of the very few mons to have both a pivoting move AND Trick Room, and combine that with a natural Ghost immunity allows for a potentially good defensive piece on a teamstyle often stacking multiple Psychic Type Trick Room setters. The last two are pretty much Rain Dance Gallade levels of good. You can use it. For sure. She also gets Light Screen, but in a Light-Clayless meta there's not much to say there.
And just going over her base attributes so that everyone is on board (ignore the gloves, I have Kay Faraday as my background)
View attachment 712668
So right off the bat, 100 HP is important since it allows for 101 HP subs, and that combined with 128 SpD means Meloetta is capable of being a very proficient special wall, and although she lacks any reliable recovery, she still is able to take some pretty mean hits. 90 Speed is pretty ok, and makes Meloetta, amongst other CM sweepers, the fastest, which is pretty sick. You also can't ignore the monstrous 128 SpA, which while Meloetta lacks any giant BP moves to throw out, that SpA still manages to be pretty solid.
Additionally, as a Normal and Psychic type, Meloetta is neutral into Fighting Type attacks, is immune to Ghost type attacks, and that leaves Meloetta with only a weakness to Dark-type moves and Bug-type moves, so that's some pretty good attributes to mess around with.
Meloetta has a lot of... weird? moves to use as coverage, with stuff like Thunder & Thunderbolt, Ice Punch, Play Rough, Energy Ball and Grass Knot, and Shadow Claw and Shadow Ball, primarily. Also Triple Axel is there, along with her various stab options like Facade, Drain Punch, Tera Blast, etc etc.
For setup options it's literally only Swords Dance and Calm Mind, both of which cleanly fit into Pirouette and Aria formes respectively
Section 2: Meloetta's Major Sets
The tried and true set for Meloetta is of course her Calm Mind set, which I will give two alternative EV spreads for...
Basically, the set is able to make pretty novel use of Tera Blast to always have stab on it, which is pretty cool since it lets you not worry about skimping out on coverage since it comes prepackaged with the move.
Your first option is this:
Meloetta @ Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 HP / 40 Def / 216 Spe
Timid Nature
- Substitute
- Calm Mind
- Tera Blast
- Psyshock
This set is EV'd to hit 297, which allows you to outspeed, amongst other things, Kleavor, Overqwil, and importantly Suicune.
Meloetta @ Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 HP / 152 Def / 104 Spe
Bold Nature
- Substitute
- Calm Mind
- Tera Blast
- Psyshock
This second set is instead EV'd to always take less than 25% from a Cyclizar U-turn (note that this is for a common AV Cyclizar running Timid), which allows you to keep your subs up, and is EV'd to outspeed base 70 mons running max like Volcanion and Bisharp.
Unlike most Calm Mind pokemon, Meloetta is definitely more of a set up "breaker" than a wincon to play towards. Due to a lack of reliable recovery you have to rely solely on your Lefties for recovery, and you don't have Scald like Slowbro and Suicune. BUT, what you do have is the ability to set up on passive mons, and start going to town, importantly forcing damage on mons like Hoodra, Bisharp, and Chansey and possibly downright OHKO'ing them if your opponent lets you set up enough. But since you don't have Pressure or Regen or even a useful ability at all, along with no easily spammable stab like Scald or Psychic Noise, you can't really get into game winning positions like Suicune and Slowbro can. However, you still have your strengths, such as having way better offensive coverage and way better stats to be able to take hits and chunk things for big damage.
I won't dwell on Pirouette sets for too long, but I guess they're there. Meloetta sadly suffers from having to dedicate a moveslot to Relic Song, which constrains Meloetta's ability to actually do anything with the massive movepool she has, so it's either Relic SD and STABS or Relic STABS and Knock Off so you don't get owned by Ghost Types. But, if you can get Meloetta into position and get and SD off, in theory you could absolutely clean house with her. 128 Atk and 128 Speed are nothing to sneeze at.
Now, for the final set... recommended by the Feliburner himself...
Meloetta @ Choice Specs
Ability: Serene Grace
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Tera Blast
- Psychic
- Knock Off
- U-turn
It was originally Hyper Voice but the ability to like
not
get walled by steels was too good to pass up
Anyways you hit a very threatening 533 SpA stat with Choice Specs on, so you're able to really blast holes in the enemy team, and that's just with your STABS. Meloetta is also running Knock and U-Turn on this set so you can pivot out to a breaker or defensive mon if you read a switch, and can play the utility game by possibly knocking a Chansey or other miscellaneous goon that attempts to switch in to Meloetta. He talked about pairing this set with Spikes and honestly I can see the vision, you have a high-powered nuke that obliterates most things in the metagame, and a way to punish the switch-ins. It just works.
CONCLUSION
Meloetta isn't the greatest Pokemon, I'll be the first to admit. You really gotta have a team built around her to get all the value you can, and she's absolutely a "centerpiece" type mon for a team. And even then Meloetta just has some very glaring flaws in not having a great ability and movepool combo, along with not having good offensive stabs, but I hope that this post has enlightened some of you to the potential in Meloetta.
View attachment 712693
As always have a great day!
Meloetta @ Assault Vest
Ability: Serene Grace
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Hyper Voice
- Psychic
- U-turn
- Knock Off
AV Meloetta utilises its good natural bulk in order to take hits, while also dishing them out. It can effectively trade itself for two other special attackers if it gets its cards right, and isn't really passive with knock off+u-turn. If you support your team against bisharp, then this set should shine. I remember taking down both a fezandipiti and a horoark because they simply could not deal enough damage to it. Also hyper voice going through substitute is nice against CM raikou.
Random takes post before RUPL? As well as some meta predictions (that will totally not age like milk) Why the hell not
I said it in my last post, but I seriously have begun hating this thing's presence in the tier more and more, and in part its because of the type of plays it forces in the early game. Whether it's Zoroark + Mamoswine, Zoroark + Volcanion, Zoroark + Gapdos, even more fringe stuff like Regidrago. The interactions where it disguises as mons where half-measures are honestly few and far between are just comically unhealthy and I really don't think I need to explain why considering how many times Zoroark forms have been nuked from old gen RUs. The main issue this time is; in a vacuum this thing is like; fine enough. It's good, but without these dumbass mindgames it plays it'd be a standard high tier. But the guessing games are just something I think makes the tier worse with little benefit. Frankly I expect alot of Gapdos + H-Zoro + Mamo/Volcanion cores to dominate early stage RUPL, and I think interactions this thing pushes will be properly spotlighted.
Now with the bitching out the way; lets talk about more fun stuff; my calls for RUPL highlight makers and up-and-comers. Pokemon I expect to slowly bring themselves closer to the A ranks, or mons I expect people will start warming up to further and see them rise; kinda like Golurk did.
This thing is usually pretty mediocore on defensive builds, where rockers like rhyperior, hippo or krook tend to outperform it. But I think it serves a nice spot on Offense in particular as a rocker that doesnt forfeit momentum and can forgo rocks to flip out on a G-Weez or something to keep up pressure. Its a bit specific, but I expect the structures it fits on to kick RUPL off with a bang and having a slow pivot rocker is really nice to get the monsters in. It also checks a decent amount of stuff, including the next mon I'll call
Another pokemon I expect to put in good numbers is the current rising star. Currently very close to hitting RU usage proper; this thing is our best offensive electric we have (not counting pompom) and its no surprise to see why. Aura sphere on an electric is almost as big as Scald for it; as self-sufficiency vs H-Goodra and Bike is a huge boon for its Pivot set. CM sets also show promise; I recall flam loadin a SubCM Tera Dark Raikou in SSNL iirc and it put it good numbers. Currently its B rank on the VR but truthfully I expect to see it shoot to A- by the time RUPL concludes.
You know how I predicted success for the above? Yeah I'm gonna do the opposite here; and I'm putting fraud allegations on this thing right here. It did do good numbers in SCL; but I've yet to see anything close to numbers put in since. SD Sets were a nice siren song but really I've never been that huge on its capabilities. It's not bad but I think it will show that its just not a B+ pokemon, and I think many of its placings on teams can be found on other mons with more to them even if they play a bit differently; like Male Legion.
Now this one is a hail marry but with the departure of Conkeldurr, Guts Facade memes are open to new showcases and Breloom aside, I think people will take to this thing for its superior clicks and speed tier. Breloom's longevity is better but Heracross's speed tier giving it Mamoswine, Armarouge, Legion-F and a couple other hugely important mons gives it an edge for use cases and it doesn't really walk that hard on Slither Wing's shoes either. Recreating SS levels of success just won't be happening but I think Heracross can join the pool of like 10 other quality fighting types this tier has to offer. Just needs a couple people to throw it a bone
I said it in my last post, but I seriously have begun hating this thing's presence in the tier more and more, and in part its because of the type of plays it forces in the early game. Whether it's Zoroark + Mamoswine, Zoroark + Volcanion, Zoroark + Gapdos, even more fringe stuff like Regidrago. The interactions where it disguises as mons where half-measures are honestly few and far between are just comically unhealthy and I really don't think I need to explain why considering how many times Zoroark forms have been nuked from old gen RUs. The main issue this time is; in a vacuum this thing is like; fine enough. It's good, but without these dumbass mindgames it plays it'd be a standard high tier. But the guessing games are just something I think makes the tier worse with little benefit. Frankly I expect alot of Gapdos + H-Zoro + Mamo/Volcanion cores to dominate early stage RUPL, and I think interactions this thing pushes will be properly spotlighted.
Now with the bitching out the way; lets talk about more fun stuff; my calls for RUPL highlight makers and up-and-comers. Pokemon I expect to slowly bring themselves closer to the A ranks, or mons I expect people will start warming up to further and see them rise; kinda like Golurk did.
This thing is usually pretty mediocore on defensive builds, where rockers like rhyperior, hippo or krook tend to outperform it. But I think it serves a nice spot on Offense in particular as a rocker that doesnt forfeit momentum and can forgo rocks to flip out on a G-Weez or something to keep up pressure. Its a bit specific, but I expect the structures it fits on to kick RUPL off with a bang and having a slow pivot rocker is really nice to get the monsters in. It also checks a decent amount of stuff, including the next mon I'll call
Another pokemon I expect to put in good numbers is the current rising star. Currently very close to hitting RU usage proper; this thing is our best offensive electric we have (not counting pompom) and its no surprise to see why. Aura sphere on an electric is almost as big as Scald for it; as self-sufficiency vs H-Goodra and Bike is a huge boon for its Pivot set. CM sets also show promise; I recall flam loadin a SubCM Tera Dark Raikou in SSNL iirc and it put it good numbers. Currently its B rank on the VR but truthfully I expect to see it shoot to A- by the time RUPL concludes.
You know how I predicted success for the above? Yeah I'm gonna do the opposite here; and I'm putting fraud allegations on this thing right here. It did do good numbers in SCL; but I've yet to see anything close to numbers put in since. SD Sets were a nice siren song but really I've never been that huge on its capabilities. It's not bad but I think it will show that its just not a B+ pokemon, and I think many of its placings on teams can be found on other mons with more to them even if they play a bit differently; like Male Legion.
Now this one is a hail marry but with the departure of Conkeldurr, Guts Facade memes are open to new showcases and Breloom aside, I think people will take to this thing for its superior clicks and speed tier. Breloom's longevity is better but Heracross's speed tier giving it Mamoswine, Armarouge, Legion-F and a couple other hugely important mons gives it an edge for use cases and it doesn't really walk that hard on Slither Wing's shoes either. Recreating SS levels of success just won't be happening but I think Heracross can join the pool of like 10 other quality fighting types this tier has to offer. Just needs a couple people to throw it a bone
I want to entertain some discussion around the 3 main water types in the tier (+1 extra that can potentially become a problem long term).
:
The main reason as to why I wanted to start this discussion. This mon is obnoxious.
Between Vincune, Crocune and other sets (less optimal options imo) u have enough ways to play around your checks and outstall if needed through Pressure.
Volcanion? unless it’s taunt u can get outstalled. Hoodra? recent trends (acid spray set) suggest it loses to vincune. Slowbro? probably the best check until u get sball / tera dark’d and both sides have to rely on crits.
Losing this mon wouldn’t break the tier but it surely would alleviate building here. QB.
: Now these two add to a very good discussion around broken/tier staples.
Slowbro gives the tier a good fighting resist and overall a great physical sponge but it’s the late game cleaner aspect that infuriates most players. Both of it’s moves on the usual cm set have some utility which allows more flexibility on early/mid game contrary to Suicune.
Bro most of the times is going to be available in the endgame with ~50%HP due to regen leading to some asspull* wins.
Volcanion is an even funnier situation since one of it’s biggest selling points is checking both suicune and bro* (psynoise throughout the game is a headache).
This mon however has some other traits that weigh heavy on it’s presence in the current meta.
Volcanion has insane coverage with an underrated bulk, good enough speed for the type of mon it is and with a small tech u flip x amount of matchups (ex. Firespin/Taunt for walls that want to pivot around it; Tera Blast for the noivern and umbreons).
This mon is borderline broken and with ghost zoroark mind games it can get even crazier.
I’d entertain a suspect.
: This is one i’m very interested on it’s development throughout rupl. RestoChesto with double stab is scary and being a HO tailored mon, getting into positions to wreak havoc is easier.
fun mention of a cool water i’ve been enjoying Water Absorb Quag w/Encore over stealth rocks to help vs setup and all the waters in the tier.
:The main reason as to why I wanted to start this discussion. This mon is obnoxious.
Between Vincune, Crocune and other sets (less optimal options imo) u have enough ways to play around your checks and outstall if needed through Pressure.
Volcanion? unless it’s taunt u can get outstalled. Hoodra? recent trends (acid spray set) suggest it loses to vincune. Slowbro? probably the best check until u get sball / tera dark’d and both sides have to rely on crits.
Losing this mon wouldn’t break the tier but it surely would alleviate building here. QB.
: Now these two add to a very good discussion around broken/tier staples.Slowbro gives the tier a good fighting resist and overall a great physical sponge but it’s the late game cleaner aspect that infuriates most players. Both of it’s moves on the usual cm set have some utility which allows more flexibility on early/mid game contrary to Suicune.
Bro most of the times is going to be available in the endgame with ~50%HP due to regen leading to some asspull* wins.
Volcanion is an even funnier situation since one of it’s biggest selling points is checking both suicune and bro* (psynoise throughout the game is a headache).
This mon however has some other traits that weigh heavy on it’s presence in the current meta.
Volcanion has insane coverage with an underrated bulk, good enough speed for the type of mon it is and with a small tech u flip x amount of matchups (ex. Firespin/Taunt for walls that want to pivot around it; Tera Blast for the noivern and umbreons).
This mon is borderline broken and with ghost zoroark mind games it can get even crazier.
I’d entertain a suspect.
: This is one i’m very interested on it’s development throughout rupl. RestoChesto with double stab is scary and being a HO tailored mon, getting into positions to wreak havoc is easier.fun mention of a cool water i’ve been enjoying Water Absorb Quag w/Encore over stealth rocks to help vs setup and all the waters in the tier.
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Usage post time, woooo.
Nothing was projected to drop, not even Mew, which is just on the cusp of dropping to RU. Some things were close like Toxapex, Metagross and Serperior, but still 1% usage away from dropping.
Nothing was also projected to rise. Closest ones were salamence (3.694%), fezandipiti (3.465%) and mimikyu? (3.237%).
Feliburn you did it you mad lad (now go do wo chien). Registeel is a really good pokemon in the tier, with it walling a large portion of the meta. It can also do ID+BP stuff to become a terrifying sweeper if they opponent doesn't have strong special attackers left or a bulky tera ghost mon. If the opponent does have those options though, regi is kinda screwed but it can still get up rocks or t-wave.
Was projected to rise last month, so I'd say it has a pretty good chance to fully rise. Does DD stuff, primarily with tera blast flying and resto chesto. There may be some room for experimenting with coverage such as temper flare, but even if it isn't, gyarados will still be good.
Just like gyarados, oricorio pom pom is an elite threat in the tier, utilsing quiver dance sets to set up on many targets in the tier, and utilise tera in order to snowball. Not really suprised about this rise.
Some usage stats:
Top three in the meta, I don't really want to talk about them, because everybody already knows there shtick.
(imagine this is the galar variant) Guess last month wasn't a fluke. Geezing has established itself as a powerful defensive piece in the meta, taking on large threats while being able to spread status or defog away hazards.
Jirachi has been with us for a while now, but it finally reached top 10 usage again. Jirachi is one of our most flexible steel types, with it being able to do utility, scarf and cm very easily. So it's not a complete surprise it reached top ten, but some people had been giving it fraud status which now seems to be untrue.
Hoodra has picked up in usage a bit, with its unique qualities shining more. Specs and defensive are as good as ever, not much more to say.
Slowbro is top tier, amazing defensive poke while also being deadly with cm. Not much more to say.
Mence keeps up it's usage from last month steady. Great defensively and offensively, filling a wide variety of roles. Dd sets have picked up a bit (fuck that physical offense HO, mu fishy team), but special attacker sets are still good.
This is a new mon in the top 10. Volcanion is an amazing wallbreaker in the tier, with only a few mins such as specially defensive storm drain gastro and the dragon/flyings being able to take it on. It also has nice defensive utility with it's good bulk and water absorb.
Armarouge fell off a bit from last month, but it's still very amazing at dealing absurd damage and outspeeding most of the metagame with weak armour.
Nothing was projected to drop, not even Mew, which is just on the cusp of dropping to RU. Some things were close like Toxapex, Metagross and Serperior, but still 1% usage away from dropping.
Nothing was also projected to rise. Closest ones were salamence (3.694%), fezandipiti (3.465%) and mimikyu? (3.237%).
Feliburn you did it you mad lad (now go do wo chien). Registeel is a really good pokemon in the tier, with it walling a large portion of the meta. It can also do ID+BP stuff to become a terrifying sweeper if they opponent doesn't have strong special attackers left or a bulky tera ghost mon. If the opponent does have those options though, regi is kinda screwed but it can still get up rocks or t-wave. Was projected to rise last month, so I'd say it has a pretty good chance to fully rise. Does DD stuff, primarily with tera blast flying and resto chesto. There may be some room for experimenting with coverage such as temper flare, but even if it isn't, gyarados will still be good. Just like gyarados, oricorio pom pom is an elite threat in the tier, utilsing quiver dance sets to set up on many targets in the tier, and utilise tera in order to snowball. Not really suprised about this rise.Some usage stats:
Top three in the meta, I don't really want to talk about them, because everybody already knows there shtick. (imagine this is the galar variant) Guess last month wasn't a fluke. Geezing has established itself as a powerful defensive piece in the meta, taking on large threats while being able to spread status or defog away hazards. Jirachi has been with us for a while now, but it finally reached top 10 usage again. Jirachi is one of our most flexible steel types, with it being able to do utility, scarf and cm very easily. So it's not a complete surprise it reached top ten, but some people had been giving it fraud status which now seems to be untrue. Hoodra has picked up in usage a bit, with its unique qualities shining more. Specs and defensive are as good as ever, not much more to say. Slowbro is top tier, amazing defensive poke while also being deadly with cm. Not much more to say. Mence keeps up it's usage from last month steady. Great defensively and offensively, filling a wide variety of roles. Dd sets have picked up a bit (fuck that physical offense HO, mu fishy team), but special attacker sets are still good. This is a new mon in the top 10. Volcanion is an amazing wallbreaker in the tier, with only a few mins such as specially defensive storm drain gastro and the dragon/flyings being able to take it on. It also has nice defensive utility with it's good bulk and water absorb. Armarouge fell off a bit from last month, but it's still very amazing at dealing absurd damage and outspeeding most of the metagame with weak armour.
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Interesting shifts in the tier! Losing Donphan, Hippo, and Ttar definitely weakens defensive cores, but Flygon’s return adds some flexibility despite losing Roost. Alcremie, Scrafty, and Malamar could become real threats with Tera. Curious to see how the meta settles and what the council decides!
I'm sorry but the council has decided that RU is gone forever. It's over.
RUPL has concluded its first week, and theres some stuff worth talking bout. I'll do this every week, mainly because I enjoy yapping and I get to throw either shade or compliments at random builds/techs. These also won't be lengthy (hopefully) so keep that in mind. This is pmuch inspired by what Django has been doing in NU for seasonal and NUCL, so shout outs to that ig
These four kick the tour off with a 100% win rate while having more than 1 game to their name. Most impressive of these is Gastrodon, with 6 uses in the first week. Chansey and Raikou are tied for 3 uses, while Gallade has 2. Raikou was an all star in the games in played too, showing that I called this shit lets keep it up boys.
These two get a shoutout for winning the "Biggest pieces of shit of the week" award. Bisharp, with its 6 wins deserved under half where it flinched a slowbro twice over, another game where it flinched a body press Wo-chien, which costed ryu his slowbro, his flygon and forced him to burn his tera. The other games it either didnt come in or got thrown into a mamoswine and exploded so.. It also flinched down a volcanion in SSNL this week just to drive that luck aspect home. H-Zoro gets a mention for being the 2nd most used pokemon this week, and for taking some KOs that are really stupid in hindsight. Like Tnunes vs Gum game where it disguised itself as Gapdos and killed a Jirachi turn 2, which is an incredibly punishing coinflip to force on turn 2 if Tnunes didnt just explode a Gastrodon with Entei on turn 1. Or in 3d vs Gum's game where it disguised as Rhyperior and focus punched a krookodile for 100% turn 13. Theres probably more but I don't feel like siphoning through 13 games to hunt instances where this pokemon got kills it doesn't deserve to be getting. Now I'm not gonna say I told you so just yet but I'm just sayin I said this would happen and people would hate it and what do you know...
These pokemon saw sub 20% winrate in the first week, contrary to their usual dominance in previous tours. Admittedly, this isn't the full story. Jirachi managed to pretty much singlehandedly ragdoll a Cetitan snow team for instance. However, slowbro is unique among these for sporting a 0% winrate. Is this the sign of a fall off, or is it merely a factor of luck within an admittedly small sample pool?
And for the techs of the week section, these are my personal highlight makers. Multiple Entei's employed Tera Blast grass to good success, successfully baiting and killing their targets in both uses. Salamence sees a nod with a DD Facade Tera Fairy set which won Franklin his game vs PDT in SV. Multiple Wo-Chiens employed a lesser-used Rest Talk set as a more fool-proof check to things as opposed to its former standout leechtect set. And Punny Utilized a practically unseen in SV Bulk up Gallade and pretty much stole the whole show for him.
These four kick the tour off with a 100% win rate while having more than 1 game to their name. Most impressive of these is Gastrodon, with 6 uses in the first week. Chansey and Raikou are tied for 3 uses, while Gallade has 2. Raikou was an all star in the games in played too, showing that I called this shit lets keep it up boys.
These two get a shoutout for winning the "Biggest pieces of shit of the week" award. Bisharp, with its 6 wins deserved under half where it flinched a slowbro twice over, another game where it flinched a body press Wo-chien, which costed ryu his slowbro, his flygon and forced him to burn his tera. The other games it either didnt come in or got thrown into a mamoswine and exploded so.. It also flinched down a volcanion in SSNL this week just to drive that luck aspect home. H-Zoro gets a mention for being the 2nd most used pokemon this week, and for taking some KOs that are really stupid in hindsight. Like Tnunes vs Gum game where it disguised itself as Gapdos and killed a Jirachi turn 2, which is an incredibly punishing coinflip to force on turn 2 if Tnunes didnt just explode a Gastrodon with Entei on turn 1. Or in 3d vs Gum's game where it disguised as Rhyperior and focus punched a krookodile for 100% turn 13. Theres probably more but I don't feel like siphoning through 13 games to hunt instances where this pokemon got kills it doesn't deserve to be getting. Now I'm not gonna say I told you so just yet but I'm just sayin I said this would happen and people would hate it and what do you know...
These pokemon saw sub 20% winrate in the first week, contrary to their usual dominance in previous tours. Admittedly, this isn't the full story. Jirachi managed to pretty much singlehandedly ragdoll a Cetitan snow team for instance. However, slowbro is unique among these for sporting a 0% winrate. Is this the sign of a fall off, or is it merely a factor of luck within an admittedly small sample pool?
And for the techs of the week section, these are my personal highlight makers. Multiple Entei's employed Tera Blast grass to good success, successfully baiting and killing their targets in both uses. Salamence sees a nod with a DD Facade Tera Fairy set which won Franklin his game vs PDT in SV. Multiple Wo-Chiens employed a lesser-used Rest Talk set as a more fool-proof check to things as opposed to its former standout leechtect set. And Punny Utilized a practically unseen in SV Bulk up Gallade and pretty much stole the whole show for him.
RUPL analysis?
SSNL analysis??
Metagame analysis???
Nah.
It's time to get cheesy.
Elecress (Cresselia) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 40 Def / 216 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunder Wave
- Confuse Ray
- Moonlight
- Psyshock
This is my current favorite set for Cresselia, and you, little forum reader may be thinking: This looks cheesy, this looks RNG reliant, this looks unfun to play against, and I answer all of these questions with a resounding: Yes!
The "Elecress" set (named by famed gamer Flareblitzkrieg) was created by me and used by famed gamer LBN in an actual RUPL match! It does everything you'd want it be capable of doing, and has the potential to essentially 1v1 every mon in the tier.
First off, it's EV'd to hit 286, outspeeding maxspeed base 80s like Mamoswine, Gallade, and everyone slower. Rest goes into bulk.
ALSO you can add 8 more Evs to hit 288 and outspeed Slither Wing. That's 224 Spe EVs.
It's also got a rocky helmet, so it can serve as a last minute Maushold switch-in, and generally punish Physical Attacks like Gapdos and anyone else running not Knock Off.
The moveset itself is pretty self-explanatory, with T-wave and Confuse Ray both being great clicks to support your team, with Confuse Ray mainly being there to serve as a catch-all click that can hit ANYONE and get value, since there exist very few confusion immune Pokemon in RU, and the main one of Slowbro literally almost always runs Regen by default. Moonlight is there for longevity and to pretty much be a way to stick around and punish switch-outs from smart players trying to not have to deal with confusion. Last slot you can choose between Psyshock and Moonblast tbh. Moonblast is just like the more useful and less bad option, and cover Dark Types, but Psyshock does better into CM sweepers who can setup on ya and still let you deal consistent damage at the cost of blanking into Dark Types. Tera Type is steel to wall Mamoswine, and that's all there is to it. It's pretty good at just being a solid support mon on a team, and has the ability to not quite go the distance but definitely make some solid undeniable progress into the enemy team.
So go, use this set and destroy your enemies. It is 100% cheesy, however it's calculated cheese: it's all leveraged in your favor, and you have all the time in the world to take advantage of and punish your opponent. Also it's just like a crazy good Bisharp counter idk what it is, but it manages to do pretty well every time for some reason.
REPLAYS TO SHOW I'M NOT JUST YAPPING
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ru-2316468866
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ru-2317554699
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ru-2278860237
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ru-2280622139
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ru-2282395848
SSNL analysis??
Metagame analysis???
Nah.
It's time to get cheesy.
Elecress (Cresselia) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 40 Def / 216 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunder Wave
- Confuse Ray
- Moonlight
- Psyshock
This is my current favorite set for Cresselia, and you, little forum reader may be thinking: This looks cheesy, this looks RNG reliant, this looks unfun to play against, and I answer all of these questions with a resounding: Yes!
The "Elecress" set (named by famed gamer Flareblitzkrieg) was created by me and used by famed gamer LBN in an actual RUPL match! It does everything you'd want it be capable of doing, and has the potential to essentially 1v1 every mon in the tier.
First off, it's EV'd to hit 286, outspeeding maxspeed base 80s like Mamoswine, Gallade, and everyone slower. Rest goes into bulk.
ALSO you can add 8 more Evs to hit 288 and outspeed Slither Wing. That's 224 Spe EVs.
It's also got a rocky helmet, so it can serve as a last minute Maushold switch-in, and generally punish Physical Attacks like Gapdos and anyone else running not Knock Off.
The moveset itself is pretty self-explanatory, with T-wave and Confuse Ray both being great clicks to support your team, with Confuse Ray mainly being there to serve as a catch-all click that can hit ANYONE and get value, since there exist very few confusion immune Pokemon in RU, and the main one of Slowbro literally almost always runs Regen by default. Moonlight is there for longevity and to pretty much be a way to stick around and punish switch-outs from smart players trying to not have to deal with confusion. Last slot you can choose between Psyshock and Moonblast tbh. Moonblast is just like the more useful and less bad option, and cover Dark Types, but Psyshock does better into CM sweepers who can setup on ya and still let you deal consistent damage at the cost of blanking into Dark Types. Tera Type is steel to wall Mamoswine, and that's all there is to it. It's pretty good at just being a solid support mon on a team, and has the ability to not quite go the distance but definitely make some solid undeniable progress into the enemy team.
So go, use this set and destroy your enemies. It is 100% cheesy, however it's calculated cheese: it's all leveraged in your favor, and you have all the time in the world to take advantage of and punish your opponent. Also it's just like a crazy good Bisharp counter idk what it is, but it manages to do pretty well every time for some reason.
REPLAYS TO SHOW I'M NOT JUST YAPPING
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ru-2316468866
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ru-2317554699
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ru-2278860237
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ru-2280622139
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ru-2282395848
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RUPL concluded it's second week, so you know the drill. Recap time.
This thing rolled into week 2 with an impressive 5 brings and 0 wins. Alot of people will call this mon garbage and its honestly not surprising to see why. (It's not actually garbage but it definitely isn't anywhere near as good as people thought and think, shit is like A- ngl) With how offensively-inclined the metagame is (I'll get to this later), mamoswine's breaking talents are less useful and the walls that do get used on offenses like Weezing-Galar or Cresselia are its best checks. And on bulkier styles, Slowbro and still Weezing-Galar stuff it there too. I remember when I thought this thing would be bonkers broken but it's flopped comically hard
These three immediately refreshed their week 1 winrate with a 50%+ win rate reminding us why they are top tiers with consistent showcases. Not much to say for these 3, but I noticed alot more cyclizars loaded Facade in the last slot over dragon tail giving it more consistent DPS.
These four take the spots for MVPs of the week. Volcanion as usual does what it does best: Pick what "checks" it wants to beat and just fucking beats them. Like my game vs Lime where I just chose to beat slowbro by just slotting taunt and not giving a shit, especially after Bike exploded early in from counter krook. And then it pulled out custap to drop H-Zoro. Can I call this thing broken yet? The offensive metagame stuff I mentioned before feels like its largely a by-product of the strain this thing forces in the builder, and I know I'm not the only one who's been complaining about how dumb this Pokemon is. Tera blast Fairy, Taunt, Fire spin, Body press, Custap berries it just picks whatever it wants and every set is able to beat one of its checks really fucking easily. After shifts I want to see some shit to get H-Zoro and Volcanion out of here, because I doubt just about anything that could realistically drop will make these two acceptable.
Registeel has Ajna's game vs TKO where it took a mamoswine EQ to the face and still managed to come in like 8 times for leftovers and 1v1 a suicune. Unfortunately it also has a replay where Daharan tried to ironpress down a fucking quagsire so... Meanwhile Porygon-Z has Fish vs Lily where it put in great numbers for an endgame win, while H-lilli mopped gewwge in the endgame as well.
And for the techs of the week section, we have these 3. AOA Torn-I has been the standard, but Metallica pulled out an NP torn which broke Feen's team open in the midgame, letting him win much easier later on. Torn is also the only Pokemon with a 100% winrate with more than 2 uses atm which is another bag in its hat. Salazzle got showcased with HJK vs bouff, stuffing the fatbasher grimmsnarl bouff loaded to try to capitalize on HJK's rep of loading nothing but American Citizen level fatass teams. It wasn't the sub tox trash either, it was Toxic Protect Encore, which let him force the advantage much better. And while it may be tooting my own horn a bit, Counter krookodile as a suicide lead in my game vs Lime will get a spot (mainly because I already mentioned Porygon-Z above otherwise it'd be here instead), snagging cyclizar in the early game and letting Volcanion go crazy.
This thing rolled into week 2 with an impressive 5 brings and 0 wins. Alot of people will call this mon garbage and its honestly not surprising to see why. (It's not actually garbage but it definitely isn't anywhere near as good as people thought and think, shit is like A- ngl) With how offensively-inclined the metagame is (I'll get to this later), mamoswine's breaking talents are less useful and the walls that do get used on offenses like Weezing-Galar or Cresselia are its best checks. And on bulkier styles, Slowbro and still Weezing-Galar stuff it there too. I remember when I thought this thing would be bonkers broken but it's flopped comically hard
These three immediately refreshed their week 1 winrate with a 50%+ win rate reminding us why they are top tiers with consistent showcases. Not much to say for these 3, but I noticed alot more cyclizars loaded Facade in the last slot over dragon tail giving it more consistent DPS.
These four take the spots for MVPs of the week. Volcanion as usual does what it does best: Pick what "checks" it wants to beat and just fucking beats them. Like my game vs Lime where I just chose to beat slowbro by just slotting taunt and not giving a shit, especially after Bike exploded early in from counter krook. And then it pulled out custap to drop H-Zoro. Can I call this thing broken yet? The offensive metagame stuff I mentioned before feels like its largely a by-product of the strain this thing forces in the builder, and I know I'm not the only one who's been complaining about how dumb this Pokemon is. Tera blast Fairy, Taunt, Fire spin, Body press, Custap berries it just picks whatever it wants and every set is able to beat one of its checks really fucking easily. After shifts I want to see some shit to get H-Zoro and Volcanion out of here, because I doubt just about anything that could realistically drop will make these two acceptable.
Registeel has Ajna's game vs TKO where it took a mamoswine EQ to the face and still managed to come in like 8 times for leftovers and 1v1 a suicune. Unfortunately it also has a replay where Daharan tried to ironpress down a fucking quagsire so... Meanwhile Porygon-Z has Fish vs Lily where it put in great numbers for an endgame win, while H-lilli mopped gewwge in the endgame as well.
And for the techs of the week section, we have these 3. AOA Torn-I has been the standard, but Metallica pulled out an NP torn which broke Feen's team open in the midgame, letting him win much easier later on. Torn is also the only Pokemon with a 100% winrate with more than 2 uses atm which is another bag in its hat. Salazzle got showcased with HJK vs bouff, stuffing the fatbasher grimmsnarl bouff loaded to try to capitalize on HJK's rep of loading nothing but American Citizen level fatass teams. It wasn't the sub tox trash either, it was Toxic Protect Encore, which let him force the advantage much better. And while it may be tooting my own horn a bit, Counter krookodile as a suicide lead in my game vs Lime will get a spot (mainly because I already mentioned Porygon-Z above otherwise it'd be here instead), snagging cyclizar in the early game and letting Volcanion go crazy.
- Status