Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4

[Welcome to mars]

And gouging fire only “ruined” the meta because the offensive mons that kept it in check were banned

And what would these pokemon do if they weren’t banned?

You can’t say that for sure. You can’t say that

“The more broken mons you have, the more mons are no longer good because they dont check one of the brokens, teambuilding becomes extremely hard as you can't be consistent in a meta full of broken mons”

20 Pokémon have been banned so far and I ask you on top of that many mons have been invalidated because of the fat mons and regen mons in OU? You want consistent team building at the expense of diversity. You don’t care if mons are no longer good in a meta if defensive mons wall them out and make it hard for them, but you care if mons are no longer good if offensive mons make it hard for them.

Plus how do you know raging fury is broken in a meta with iron bundle and palafin? How do you know magearna is broken in a meta with raging fury? Is roaring moon broken with Chien Pao and Sneasler? Banning too many mons leads to no diversity and mons becoming “broken” then 2 months down the road you have people in here complaining that there is nothing they can do against roaring moon. And I ask you where is the diversity these 20 bans were supposed to create? Cause from my perspective we just lost 20 mons out the tier, and now the meta is strangulated and boring because you can only choose from so many mons, but still have to deal with the same amount of fat walls and fat mons, that is what is truly restricting and why I bet everyone here can’t wait for the new games to come out and new mons to be introduced only to ban them again and the meta become stale and its cycle I’ve seen play out time after time.

No, “broken checks broken” doesn’t work for OU and never will.

Stall is not restrictive, stall will never truly be “good” in gen 9 OU, it wasn’t impossible to play around in gen 8 (which contrary to popular belief, is not this stall fest where niche pokemon are deemed completely unusable in standard play because they struggle against toxapex) and now its very much easy to play around in gen 9 OU, look how horrifically mangled the average gen 9 stall team looks, look how often stall teams use these pokemon with mediocre defensive stats just to not get demolished by a certain pokemon thats decently used on BO or Balance, if stall was becoming top tier, it wouldn’t need to use bronzong or defensive iron treads to avoid , this cycle you speak of where stall ends up triumphing all playstyles doesn’t exist. More often than not pokemon that suck tend to suck because they get heavily damaged (often OHKO’d) or chipped too frequently, struggling against defensive pokemon isn’t as common as a reason for something failing in OU.

I didn’t agree with the council quickbanning volcarona in june 2023 and many people can say the same, finch said the community should have accessed its antics but there wasn’t much room for that and it was ultimately banned with insufficent player support from surveys or otherwise (volcarona would later receive sufficent support nearly two years later for a suspect test), but did that really benefit stall in a meaningful way? Even now that its been banned on fair grounds, a volc ban moreso benefitted offensive playstyles since they didn’t have to slot a defensive check for it, which should be fine with you.

Also, Bulkier playstyles like BO and Balance doing well is not a stall fest, not when they often match up well into stall due to having moves or pokemon that consistently pressure stall.

We don’t know because they were all banned and weren’t allowed to experience a meta with one another. But we do know what gliscor and GKing, dondozo, do. We know what Zama, clefable, and Pech do, we know what Garg and mola do….

Where is the diversity friend? THEY HAVE BANNED OVER 50% OF THE OU TIER IN THE NAME OF WHAT? PREDICTABILITY??

We saw what these pokemon did, we saw terapagos win the game with a single button, we saw Baxcalibur get free setup after alolan used aurora veil, we saw what Espathra was capable of when it got a stronger stored power every single turn. What would these pokemon alone do if all three alone were all freed? They would warp the tier around themselves.

Theres a possibility you haven’t experimenting enough, you can make so much work in this tier if you build well enough, there are multiple pokemon you wouldn’t expect to work but can due to their unique traits, I understand these banned pokemon were fun to use, but they don’t really allow for creativity beyond trying to find ways to deal with them, please understand that broken cannot always check broken and that metagame dependant on that will not be able to thrive as a metagame should, you won’t see much except those pokemon and futile ways to deal with them.

Thats all I have to say, take care.

Keldeo brother???? Latios??? Get real

These are examples of what you can make work if you build well enough which i’m certain you can do, they are strong special attackers with keldeo being able to check kingambit and Latios having good set variety with options like soul dew calm mind or choice specs.

But I’ve said more than I should.

 

[Rekka's Backend]

And gouging fire only “ruined” the meta because the offensive mons that kept it in check were banned

With all due respect i think you might want to read over Veti's post again and take it to heart; If any of the previously banned mons (you were referring to) were in the tier it would be unplayable. Do you Think Fluttermane would balance the tier? Absolutely not, it'd be a nightmare for example. Bundle would break the tier over its knee and spit on it. And I shudder to imagine that fish even gazing at me in a normal match.

Ban's are done with playerbase approval and after much discourse or discussion; they are not the work of a shadow council. If a pokemon is too much for the tier due to its presence, it is voted on and/or done with full knowledge that everyone hates it. Dropping Miradon in the tier for example wouldn't accomplish anything, and neither would keeping Bundle or similar... Besides making everyone miserable.

 

[Disrespectn]

What metagames are you referring to? Last couple gens of OU have been cycling between offense and balance as the best playstyle, not stall. ORAS was pretty stally for a time but they banned Mega Sableye and it no longer is, gens like SS are definitely not stall, modern SS has offense teams as the best even while stall is usable but not great.


Defensive Pokemon are banned if needed (oras mega sableye, sm uu quagsire) but usually defensive mons just aren't broken. Its way easier for a Pokemon that can win games on the spot to become broken than a pokemon thats kinda annoying to ko. Most broken pokemon also have a very small amount of checks, if for example you have 6 pokemon that all are only checked by one good mon, you have to run those 6 mons or lose. Mons like flutter mane are just that absurd, they dont really have counters and they're so good that every team will use them, which makes flutter mane + one of the few counters to it mandatory on basically every team, that does not improve diversity.



There are plenty of absurd wallbreakers that aren't banned. Walking Wake, Hoopa Unbound, and Ursaluna are all Pokemon that 1 or 2hko pretty much every defensive Pokemon in the game, yet none of the council is advocating for any of them to be banned.


The more broken mons you have, the more mons are no longer good because they dont check one of the brokens, teambuilding becomes extremely hard as you can't be consistent in a meta full of broken mons. Gholdengo was also a dominant Pokemon in OU when Chi-Yu and Flutter Mane were legal btw, turns out broken Pokemon really love Gholdengo to keep hazards up (also Chi-Yu and Flutter Mane beat every defogger themselves by just killing them before they can even try to defog, so...)



Rain still exists, Trick Room is just almost never good in singles (and Trick Room prefers fatter metas), Grassy Terrain is less used because Pecharunt and Moltres and such hard counter rillaboom, they're still good if you unban a lot of mons, electric terrain was never good, sun is definitely not bad and still a major part of the meta.

You can’t say that for sure. You can’t say that

“The more broken mons you have, the more mons are no longer good because they dont check one of the brokens, teambuilding becomes extremely hard as you can't be consistent in a meta full of broken mons”

20 Pokémon have been banned so far and I ask you on top of that many mons have been invalidated because of the fat mons and regen mons in OU? You want consistent team building at the expense of diversity. You don’t care if mons are no longer good in a meta if defensive mons wall them out and make it hard for them, but you care if mons are no longer good if offensive mons make it hard for them.

Plus how do you know raging fury is broken in a meta with iron bundle and palafin? How do you know magearna is broken in a meta with raging fury? Is roaring moon broken with Chien Pao and Sneasler? Banning too many mons leads to no diversity and mons becoming “broken” then 2 months down the road you have people in here complaining that there is nothing they can do against roaring moon. And I ask you where is the diversity these 20 bans were supposed to create? Cause from my perspective we just lost 20 mons out the tier, and now the meta is strangulated and boring because you can only choose from so many mons, but still have to deal with the same amount of fat walls and fat mons, that is what is truly restricting and why I bet everyone here can’t wait for the new games to come out and new mons to be introduced only to ban them again and the meta become stale and its cycle I’ve seen play out time after time.

 

[Disrespectn]

With all due respect i think you might want to read over Veti's post again and take it to heart; If any of the previously banned mons (you were referring to) were in the tier it would be unplayable. Do you Think Fluttermane would balance the tier? Absolutely not, it'd be a nightmare for example. Bundle would break the tier over its knee and spit on it. And I shudder to imagine that fish even gazing at me in a normal match.

Ban's are done with playerbase approval and after much discourse or discussion; they are not the work of a shadow council. If a pokemon is too much for the tier due to its presence, it is voted on and/or done with full knowledge that everyone hates it. Dropping Miradon in the tier for example wouldn't accomplish anything, and neither would keeping Bundle or similar... Besides making everyone miserable.

You don’t know that. Thats only speculation on what you’ve been taught to believe. I’m not saying everything needs to be unbanned obviously but 20 bans is excessive and only creates the problem of more things being “broken”

That is why I said there needs to be limit on the amount of bans in a Certain timeframe, that way only the truly egregious stuff is brought on trial because you can’t ban stuff on the “whims” of the player base. Just because you’re a player and you vote doesn’t mean you know what’s best for the tier/meta. People vote based on what they are feeling at the time and when sentiment is high against a certain mon or the counsel may just outright ban stuff. Either way the Meta isn’t given time to naturally adapt and adjust, but we ban stuff to “fix” things in the short term but in the long term just create more problems ands that how you look up and see 20 mons banned.

 

[Moyashi]

Does anyone have tips for getting into the 1800s consistently? I’ve done it once or twice before but immediately go on a horrible losing streak back down to 1500 after. I have been on the cusp for like two years and try to use consistent teams, watch replays, etc, but can’t seem to make the jump.

I understand the frustration of hitting that high only to have a bad game and then fall into a losing streak and fall low again. I think most of us have been there at one point or another. The best advice I can offer, is avoid playing for long periods of time, especially after losing a game. Often times you may feel irked and want to reclaim the lost elo by quickly winning another game afterwards, but that just causes you to become impatient, lose focus and make plays you wouldn't normally do which can cause further losses and tilting. If you lose a game, don't feel like you need to jump right back in. Take a break, do something else you enjoy and come back at it later with a renewed, refreshed mindset. You're less likely to still be hung up on that one loss and will instead just focus on the game in front of you (this is especially important to remember for those odd games where unexpected or weird plays or set reveals from your opponent throw you off and make you think "wait what the heck").

If you hit 1800 or any specific ladder goal, that's also a good point to step back and stop for that day. You may feel really good about it, but don't push it and try to bite off more than you need to. Take it slow and steady. And of course, when you DO lose games it can help to save your own replays so you can go back and analyze what happened, where you made mistakes so you can improve in future games.

20 Pokémon have been banned so far and I ask you on top of that many mons have been invalidated because of the fat mons and regen mons in OU? You want consistent team building at the expense of diversity. You don’t care if mons are no longer good in a meta if defensive mons wall them out and make it hard for them, but you care if mons are no longer good if offensive mons make it hard for them

I'll bite: And what Pokemon have been "invalidated because of fat mons and regen mons" in this tier? We have no shortage of potent breakers to pull from both in OU and if you wanna get creative, UUBL. Hell some UU mons are quite solid at this time such as Latios and Keldeo. Consistent teams don't come at the expense of diversity, not inherently. No team is perfect, and any team that becomes too commonplace due to consistency ends up being something that players prep for and can punish other players for over relying on the same cores. Being able to spot weaknesses in those generally consistent teams is a skill itself, and leads to more metagame development and further experimentation and discovery of new options.

As a general note, mons not being good because they can't break through relevant defensive pokemon is just how the game is. And yes, in fact defensive pokemon that cannot answer enough offensive threats or be useful enough generally fall out. There's a difference between those examples, and the many banned pokemon from this generation. Many of the banned offensive pokemon made building and playing difficult and very centralized in general, not just in one way. We can legit take a look at an example like Bloodmoon Ursaluna which grossly warped teambuilding and play around it, and you'd see games where whoever's Bloodmoon set up first was often way ahead, if not winning. This is not healthy or fun.

Plus how do you know raging fury is broken in a meta with iron bundle and palafin? How do you know magearna is broken in a meta with raging fury? Is roaring moon broken with Chien Pao and Sneasler? Banning too many mons leads to no diversity and mons becoming “broken” then 2 months down the road you have people in here complaining that there is nothing they can do against roaring moon. And I ask you where is the diversity these 20 bans were supposed to create? Cause from my perspective we just lost 20 mons out the tier, and now the meta is strangulated and boring because you can only choose from so many mons, but still have to deal with the same amount of fat walls and fat mons, that is what is truly restricting and why I bet everyone here can’t wait for the new games to come out and new mons to be introduced only to ban them again and the meta become stale and its cycle I’ve seen play out time after time.

Well for one, Gouging Fire has a generally good match up vs both Iron Bundle and Palafin because of its naturally large bulk, typing and recovery. But what you're describing also with this theoretical "Well if Bundle/Palafin check Gouging and Gouging checks Magearna, or Pao/Sneasler check Roaring Moon (they don't btw), is literally just "Broken checks Broken" and results in a grossly overcentralized metagame around these Pokemon, while heavily limiting the viability of the non-broken Pokemon. It's never a fun game like that, and would wind up incredibly unenjoyable.

You talk and talk about how the meta is strangulated and boring, but you can go pull up the VR and see just from S through B range we have a long list of different, viable options. And you can always feel free to dip further below to have fun and explore other options..If you genuinely have trouble with fat mons, there's no harm or shame in asking for advice on how to deal with them. People here would be more than happy to help and offer advice. But complaining about it, especially complaining about stall like you did early when the playstyle is really only very niche, even fringe, in this tier while not being very good last gen or not amazing in gen7 (well except for the Dugtrio stall era).

Just because you’re a player and you vote doesn’t mean you know what’s best for the tier/meta. People vote based on what they are feeling at the time and when sentiment is high against a certain mon or the counsel may just outright ban stuff. Either way the Meta isn’t given time to naturally adapt and adjust, but we ban stuff to “fix” things in the short term but in the long term just create more problems ands that how you look up and see 20 mons banned.

There's always this bizarre mentality that if you wait long enough most banned mons will somehow settle or the meta will adjust or adapt in a healthy way. We in fact do see the meta adjust to brokens, that's how we've come to the conclusion that they're problems because we see the kinds of forced adaptations and how they're very often suboptimal vs the rest of the meta or limiting to build with and use. Once again examples like Bloodmoon Ursaluna which saw the meta "adapt" with tactics like SubToxic Gliscor and Spdef Unaware Clefable, but both of these were awful sets with next to no use vs anything that wasn't Bloodmoon.

Also the council doesn't just up and decide to ban on their whim. They actually get community feedback first. The many quickbans of this gen were community supported.

 

[rinagram]

20 Pokémon have been banned so far and I ask you on top of that many mons have been invalidated because of the fat mons and regen mons in OU? You want consistent team building at the expense of diversity. You don’t care if mons are no longer good in a meta if defensive mons wall them out and make it hard for them, but you care if mons are no longer good if offensive mons make it hard for them.

Plus how do you know raging fury is broken in a meta with iron bundle and palafin? How do you know magearna is broken in a meta with raging fury? Is roaring moon broken with Chien Pao and Sneasler? Banning too many mons leads to no diversity and mons becoming “broken” then 2 months down the road you have people in here complaining that there is nothing they can do against roaring moon.

im not a psychologist but “bad thing wouldn’t be bad if we had worse thing” seems like a poor line of thought.

reshiram isn’t your top 5 ubers mon but that doesn’t mean it would be fine in ou just because we also added like koraidon to check it. likewise if i took your example of magearna and gouging fire, adding one mon that checks it (and it doesn’t exactly check it all that well.) does not magically make it all work out.

im also pretty lost on what fat/regen mons you’d consider broken at the moment without adding a significantly more polarizing offensive threat a la chien pao as suggested. after all, it’s significantly easier for an offensive mon to be polarizing than a bulky one— it’s pretty easy to see that it’s not healthy for the game to come down to not letting your opponent get turns. this isn’t shin megami tensei, there’s another person on the other end of the screen

 

[Disrespectn]

And what would these pokemon do if they weren’t banned?

We don’t know because they were all banned and weren’t allowed to experience a meta with one another. But we do know what gliscor and GKing, dondozo, do. We know what Zama, clefable, and Pech do, we know what Garg and mola do….

Where is the diversity friend? THEY HAVE BANNED OVER 50% OF THE OU TIER IN THE NAME OF WHAT? PREDICTABILITY??

 

[rinagram]

for what it’s worth i think i should mention that i also opposed the moon ban, im not the strawman that wants every offensive mon banned

i just think there is a balance to be struck and it’s more easily disrupted by offense than defense

 

[FayaWizard]

You can’t say that for sure. You can’t say that

“The more broken mons you have, the more mons are no longer good because they dont check one of the brokens, teambuilding becomes extremely hard as you can't be consistent in a meta full of broken mons”

In fact, you can! Throughout dozens of tiers and metagames, we have seen that more broken threats, in fact lead to more centralized metagames, shaped around said threats.

We saw what happened when we freed one of these Pokemon, Palafin, a few months ago. While not necessarily broken itself (up to debate, with a large movepool and set variation to be explored), it forced an unhealthy metagame by its sheer power forcing structures that could be abused by its teammates. The resounding 76% Keep Banned vote speaks enough to the issues of Palafin.

We can also point to examples in other tiers, such as Miraidon in Ubers, who's sheer presence warped the metagame so heavily that its ban fundementally reshaped the tier and allowed for, unsurprisingly, greater diversity in picks like Mewtwo and Lunala, who were no longer trying to compete with one of the most broken threats to ever grace the tier.

Reaching back further in OU, we had the Archaludon Rain meta, where the metagame centralized around Rain teams and their counters, and once again, when Archaludon was banned and rain was no longer the top dog, the metagame opened up for more creativity.

Plus how do you know raging fury is broken in a meta with iron bundle and palafin? How do you know magearna is broken in a meta with raging fury? Is roaring moon broken with Chien Pao and Sneasler? Banning too many mons leads to no diversity and mons becoming “broken” then 2 months down the road you have people in here complaining that there is nothing they can do against roaring moon. And I ask you where is the diversity these 20 bans were supposed to create? Cause from my perspective we just lost 20 mons out the tier, and now the meta is strangulated and boring because you can only choose from so many mons, but still have to deal with the same amount of fat walls and fat mons, that is what is truly restricting and why I bet everyone here can’t wait for the new games to come out and new mons to be introduced only to ban them again and the meta become stale and its cycle I’ve seen play out time after time.

Broken checks broken is notoriously a horrendous way to balance the metagame, and the many years of Smogon tiering policy have shifted away from it for this exact reason. Sure, some Pokemon won't be broken if you free all the Ubers, for example, but people do not want to play "Iron Bundle, Palafin, and the 4 friends to support/check them", because that metagame will be endlessly more limiting than whatever you perceive the current metagame to be.

You want to know why the Council doesn't ban defensive Pokemon often? Simple enough: they aren't broken. We've only seen one defensive Pokemon get banned this generation, and it was Gliscor in DLC 1, for enabling hazard stacking. Let's look at the current top tier defensive Pokemon: staples like Ting Lu, Pecharunt, Gliscor, and Galarian Slowking. They all have notable downsides that keep them from being broken, at least defensively.

Ting Lu has no reliable recovery, and struggles to fit Rest on its sets (as well as Rest sucking in general), so it can get worn down over time, as well as being vulnerable to Water-type special attackers, which have been rising in prominence in response to Ting Lu's own rise.

Pecharunt notoriously struggles against top tier Kingambit, as well as the risen Corviknight, and while its Parting Shot can pivot it out, it still sucks to blank into two common picks. Furthermore, its lacking special defense and reliance on Parting Shot allows Gholdengo to threaten it reliably, and Gliscor's Poison Heal similarly allows it to shrug off Malignant Chain pretty easily and abuse Pecharunt's relative lack of damage.

Speaking of Gliscor, its defensive hazard sets are no longer the top nuisance they were in DLC 1, due to the higher competition from other setters like the aforementioned Ting Lu, as well as a faster-paced metagame. Physical defense sets can struggle to handle the abundance of Ice-type attacks from the rising Dragonite and Weavile. Specially defensive sets do not appreciate the rise in Water-types to check Ting Lu. Corviknight is another stalwart wall that Gliscor struggles against, and with the usefulness of Swords Dance, more people have been turning Gliscor into a bulky offensive threat.

Last but not least, Galarian Slowking's base typing does it little favor, weak to the abundant Dark and Ground-types running around the tier. While Tera can bail it out of these situations, and there are many Pokemon it can in fact check like Iron Valiant or Primarina, its ability to threaten larger swathes of the tier is relatively limited, and without hazards to supplement its passivity it can often struggle into threats like Swords Dance Gliscor and the ever-present Kingambit.

Now, I am not saying that any of these Pokemon are bad: they are all very commonly used, and for good reason. But if you really are complaining that the Council doesn't ban enough defensive Pokemon, first take a step back and actually look at them, before you start making wide-sweeping claims with little basis to back them up.

20 bans are not excessive: all of them had wide community support, and clearly are still popular, as there has not been a significant movement to unban any of them since the Palafin re-suspect ended in a resounding No. If you still think the tier is unfun for you personally, that's too bad, but the community resoundingly disagrees with you.


This topic is starting to wear out its welcome, and we're close to going in circles around this endlessly. If you truly still believe your viewpoint is right, either make a Policy Review thread to argue for a change in tiering policy overall, or voice your opinion on the next survey.



To provide a conversation topic to shift away from this, how do people feel about Manaphy currently? Starring on the latest Webs sample, my experience with the Pokemon has been 50% "this is blowing up the entire enemy team" and 50% "it did 30 to Ting Lu got phased endlessly and then died". What do yall think?

 

[Rekka's Backend]

Thats only speculation on what you’ve been taught to believe.

I played the tier when these things were inside it my opinion is my own, grind the tier when my IRL business doesn't intrude and I've been able to steadily rise up in skill and use niche heat to moderate success.

Sneasler being around didn't make the tier better (I was spamming acrobatics/CC/Gunkshot all the way to the 1600's when I had no right to be doing so LOL) and its inclusion and eventual exclusion was only a net gain. That thing decimated Moon and a lot of other mons, we had more than enough time to see what a meta with these threats all playing against each other were like; it wasn't fun. It was highly about Match Up Fishing and it was a headache to form a cohesive meta out of.

You're talking like there's no diversity in the tier when these mons you are advocating for--Stifle and centrialize around them more than anything. Dropping Urshifu wouldn't accomplish anything other than warp the Meta around it and make the tier tedious and unfun to play. Theory is cool, but we've seen what these mons do in actual practice and its why they were removed.

To provide a conversation topic to shift away from this, how do people feel about Manaphy currently? Starring on the latest Webs sample, my experience with the Pokemon has been 50% "this is blowing up the entire enemy team" and 50% "it did 30 to Ting Lu got phased endlessly and then died". What do yall think?

Manaphy is simultaniously a mon that is always on the cusp of being good yet every single time I play it it falls flat on its face... Which is a shame, I feel like Tera Fairy Manaphy is ok though

 

[Disrespectn]

I understand the frustration of hitting that high only to have a bad game and then fall into a losing streak and fall low again. I think most of us have been there at one point or another. The best advice I can offer, is avoid playing for long periods of time, especially after losing a game. Often times you may feel irked and want to reclaim the lost elo by quickly winning another game afterwards, but that just causes you to become impatient, lose focus and make plays you wouldn't normally do which can cause further losses and tilting. If you lose a game, don't feel like you need to jump right back in. Take a break, do something else you enjoy and come back at it later with a renewed, refreshed mindset. You're less likely to still be hung up on that one loss and will instead just focus on the game in front of you (this is especially important to remember for those odd games where unexpected or weird plays or set reveals from your opponent throw you off and make you think "wait what the heck").

If you hit 1800 or any specific ladder goal, that's also a good point to step back and stop for that day. You may feel really good about it, but don't push it and try to bite off more than you need to. Take it slow and steady. And of course, when you DO lose games it can help to save your own replays so you can go back and analyze what happened, where you made mistakes so you can improve in future games.



I'll bite: And what Pokemon have been "invalidated because of fat mons and regen mons" in this tier? We have no shortage of potent breakers to pull from both in OU and if you wanna get creative, UUBL. Hell some UU mons are quite solid at this time such as Latios and Keldeo. Consistent teams don't come at the expense of diversity, not inherently. No team is perfect, and any team that becomes too commonplace due to consistency ends up being something that players prep for and can punish other players for over relying on the same cores. Being able to spot weaknesses in those generally consistent teams is a skill itself, and leads to more metagame development and further experimentation and discovery of new options.

As a general note, mons not being good because they can't break through relevant defensive pokemon is just how the game is. And yes, in fact defensive pokemon that cannot answer enough offensive threats or be useful enough generally fall out. There's a difference between those examples, and the many banned pokemon from this generation. Many of the banned offensive pokemon made building and playing difficult and very centralized in general, not just in one way. We can legit take a look at an example like Bloodmoon Ursaluna which grossly warped teambuilding and play around it, and you'd see games where whoever's Bloodmoon set up first was often way ahead, if not winning. This is not healthy or fun.



Well for one, Gouging Fire has a generally good match up vs both Iron Bundle and Palafin because of its naturally large bulk, typing and recovery. But what you're describing also with this theoretical "Well if Bundle/Palafin check Gouging and Gouging checks Magearna, or Pao/Sneasler check Roaring Moon (they don't btw), is literally just "Broken checks Broken" and results in a grossly overcentralized metagame around these Pokemon, while heavily limiting the viability of the non-broken Pokemon. It's never a fun game like that, and would wind up incredibly unenjoyable.

You talk and talk about how the meta is strangulated and boring, but you can go pull up the VR and see just from S through B range we have a long list of different, viable options. And you can always feel free to dip further below to have fun and explore other options..If you genuinely have trouble with fat mons, there's no harm or shame in asking for advice on how to deal with them. People here would be more than happy to help and offer advice. But complaining about it, especially complaining about stall like you did early when the playstyle is really only very niche, even fringe, in this tier while not being very good last gen or not amazing in gen7 (well except for the Dugtrio stall era).



There's always this bizarre mentality that if you wait long enough most banned mons will somehow settle or the meta will adjust or adapt in a healthy way. We in fact do see the meta adjust to brokens, that's how we've come to the conclusion that they're problems because we see the kinds of forced adaptations and how they're very often suboptimal vs the rest of the meta or limiting to build with and use. Once again examples like Bloodmoon Ursaluna which saw the meta "adapt" with tactics like SubToxic Gliscor and Spdef Unaware Clefable, but both of these were awful sets with next to no use vs anything that wasn't Bloodmoon.

Also the council doesn't just up and decide to ban on their whim. They actually get community feedback first. The many quickbans of this gen were community supported.

Blood moon Ursa isn’t a problem in tier with chien pao, iron bundle, av ape, palafin, urshifu, sneasler, fire pon, etc. but it is a problem when you banned everything else and that is my point your mindset is only set to “well if my wall can’t deal with x then it’s broken” when I’m saying the that’s not the only way. If the meta shifts more to offense dealing with offense then it shifts there. The solution is not to force it into defense being able to handle every offense, because it can’t, but it can if you ban enough things.

Keldeo brother???? Latios??? Get real

 

[rinagram]

i like that the examples for why this philosophy would work are the mon that infamously struggles to break things nowadays and the mon that relies on specs while being weak to sucker

putting them on the same pedestal as bloodmoon is like putting a plate of spaghetti next to a messy, unsupervised baby in a room with a low ceiling. you just don’t do that

 

[ConeFearer]

Rain became mid after iron bundle and Archaludon being banned. Ogrepon isn’t coming in on those mons.

And gouging fire only “ruined” the meta because the offensive mons that kept it in check were banned

Wogerpon isn't coming in on those mons because nothing is coming in on those mons. It isn't just fatter team styles that are affected by these overpowered mons in the tier, every single game, even offense vs offense, just boils down into who gets their 580 best minmaxed monster in first. If that sounds fun to you, got play Anything Goes. OU is meant to be the balanced metagame, and if we have to ban some of the biggest examples of powercreep to create a fun format to play, then we will.

 

[Moyashi]

To provide a conversation topic to shift away from this, how do people feel about Manaphy currently? Starring on the latest Webs sample, my experience with the Pokemon has been 50% "this is blowing up the entire enemy team" and 50% "it did 30 to Ting Lu got phased endlessly and then died". What do yall think?

I want to like Manaphy, and back during the Teal Mask meta I remember toying with silly Sub+Tail Glow stuff to capitalize on forcing Gliscor or Tusk out (or to punish Mola) but as a whole the presence of Wellspring feels like such a massive roadblock for Manaphy in general, in addition to its mid range speed. And like you said, Ting-Lu phasing it is just awful for it. It feels suited for those aggressive Webs teams, but for any other kind of team I find myself preferring Boots Walking Wake for its utility and progress forcing capabilities (run Scald over Surf btw, you'll pressure Glowking long term more easily this way alongside hazards), or Keldeo for its Dark resist checking Kingambit and Samurott, and in a pinch, some Darkrai variants.

Keldeo brother???? Latios??? Get real

Keldeo and Latios have seen actual actual usage and success at high level and are at respectable B+ rankings on the VR so...

 

[Disrespectn]

I want to like Manaphy, and back during the Teal Mask meta I remember toying with silly Sub+Tail Glow stuff to capitalize on forcing Gliscor or Tusk out (or to punish Mola) but as a whole the presence of Wellspring feels like such a massive roadblock for Manaphy in general, in addition to its mid range speed. And like you said, Ting-Lu phasing it is just awful for it. It feels suited for those aggressive Webs teams, but for any other kind of team I find myself preferring Boots Walking Wake for its utility and progress forcing capabilities (run Scald over Surf btw, you'll pressure Glowking long term more easily this way alongside hazards), or Keldeo for its Dark resist checking Kingambit and Samurott, and in a pinch, some Darkrai variants.



Keldeo and Latios have seen actual actual usage and success at high level and are at respectable B+ rankings on the VR so...

I just did respond to it, it’s only one of me and bunch of you

 

[Disrespectn]

Wogerpon isn't coming in on those mons because nothing is coming in on those mons. It isn't just fatter team styles that are affected by these overpowered mons in the tier, every single game, even offense vs offense, just boils down into who gets their 580 best minmaxed monster in first. If that sounds fun to you, got play Anything Goes. OU is meant to be the balanced metagame, and if we have to ban some of the biggest examples of powercreep to create a fun format to play, then we will.

Yeah OU is fun when you can only choose from 10-15 viable Pokémon and actually have real success on the ladder, but hey we got our predictability. But something tells me you can’t wait until the next gen comes out and you get to use new mons because the current gen is stale and boring.

 

[rinagram]

You probably got the Covid vaccine too huh?

yknow i was gonna troll you but i don’t think you have the brain to be worth it anymore

 

[Magcargo]

To provide a conversation topic to shift away from this, how do people feel about Manaphy currently? Starring on the latest Webs sample, my experience with the Pokemon has been 50% "this is blowing up the entire enemy team" and 50% "it did 30 to Ting Lu got phased endlessly and then died". What do yall think?

Underexplored Pokemon. Bit of set variation allows it to slaughter many of the fat teams we see in SPL, IMO to a higher degree than other Pokemon such as Darkrai or Ogerpon-W due to its unique traits (greater bulk, super effective STAB vs grounds, better boosting move compared to Darkrai & Item + Tera Versatility, attacking from the special side, so no vulnerability to ID + BP or Wisp from Pult). 100 Speed is also an elite speed tier to get jump on the likes of Gliscor / Kyurem. Many cores such as CorvKingLu, Garg + Zap + Tusk, or Ting-Lu + Pecharunt + Dnite can get absolutely slaughtered by it with the right set / item combination, with speed control options such as Zamazenta, Pult, or Weavile needing to play guessing games with Tera. I'd say Vert's Cloak set is still the best in the current metagame due to being strong vs Garg / Pecharunt cheese, and being one of the better anti-Gliscor options in the metagame is still a massive boon to most general offensive teams, even outside of webs or Veil where you will typically see it on.

Manaphy's 3 biggest issues are priority, lack of longevity, and counter Tera'ing. I'd say these issues can compound against each other when facing certain balance teams, where a Tera Ting-Lu can phase it out, or a Tera Dragonite / Lokix can revenge kill it a bit easier. A manaphy that has been phazed out by ting-lu will typically have have a much harder time finding another oppurtunity to sweep. I will also say it has a bit of 4MSS, mainly in choosing between Alluring Voice, Ice Beam, and Energy Ball, as each move serves an important purpose. Lastly, it can be revenge killed by some of the various offensive pivots in the metagame. Thus, while I do not find other Pokemon such as Darkrai or Hydrappl better at surgically deleting balance, they do it well enough while also having more general useful traits that are more suitable to the metagame at large.

Personally I do not find Ogerpon-W as egregious of an issue for manaphy as many others do - Tera Flexibility can always allow it to be muscled past and partners like Raging Bolt, Dragapult, Dragonite, or Zamazenta can make like difficult for Ogerpon-W. Encore is also rarer than it was in the DLC1 metagame.

With Roaring Moon banned, I feel Manaphy has gotten significantly better, as the team styles it is effective against (Balance) has gotten signficantly better. I forsee it being more popular to beat Gliscor teams.

 

[Finchinator]

You probably got the Covid vaccine too huh?

Prefer refer to the custom title of UT

 

[Disrespectn]

You're talking like there's no diversity in the tier when these mons you are advocating for--Stifle and centrialize around them more than anything. Dropping Urshifu wouldn't accomplish anything other than warp the Meta around it and make the tier tedious and unfun to play. Theory is cool, but we've seen what these mons do in actual practice and its why they were removed.

oh and playing against Gliscor, Zamazenta, mola, garg, GKing etc is??? Everything you said about those mons you can say about having all these fat walls. That’s tedious and unfun. There is no diversity because there is only a select amount of mons that can break through these things or get progress. These fat mons strangle and warp the meta around them same as the offensive mons you say will do same thing.

 

[Welcome to mars]

oh and playing against Gliscor, Zamazenta, mola, garg, GKing etc is??? Everything you said about those mons you can say about having all these fat walls. That’s tedious and unfun. There is no diversity because there is only a select amount of mons that can break through these things or get progress. These fat mons strangle and warp the meta around them same as the offensive mons you say will do same thing.

You keep saying the exact same thing which isn’t really true, you must first acknowledge the other person’s point in a debate to eventually come to a conclusion and I don’t think this debate will go anywhere if you don’t at least try to address what makes people think pokemon like garg, zamazenta (which is more of an offensive pokemon) and galarian slowking are balanced before you click post reply.

To provide a conversation topic to shift away from this, how do people feel about Manaphy currently? Starring on the latest Webs sample, my experience with the Pokemon has been 50% "this is blowing up the entire enemy team" and 50% "it did 30 to Ting Lu got phased endlessly and then died". What do yall think?

Manaphy’s flaws like its 100 stats across the board and reliance on tail glow have made people use it less since the dlc 1 meta which was more favourable to it, though its acid armor and take heart sets are worth another look since its a bulky sweeper that doesn’t need tera poison to do something about toxic, i might try out soon since those sets sound solid enough and I’ve been experimenting with alot of calm mind sweepers/cleaners (take heart is just calm mind that cures status)

 

[Cessora]

Yeah OU is fun when you can only choose from 10-15 viable Pokémon and actually have real success on the ladder, but hey we got our predictability. But something tells me you can’t wait until the next gen comes out and you get to use new mons because the current gen is stale and boring.

May I direct you to my good friend Leavanny?

Frankly, if you spend any time on the forums at all, I think you’d realize how wildly inaccurate this statement is. Insane anti-meta picks and undiscovered mons are being used all the time to great success, like the Leavanny I just referenced, that one Whimsicott sun team we saw a couple weeks back (which you said was dead), we saw SD Double Edge Cinderace (without court change even) and max speed Garchomp reach near top of the ladder. Saying that you only have 10-15 viable mons, and implying that they don’t have any set variation, just isn’t right. Like, it very obviously isn’t.

 

[Moyashi]

I'd say Vert's Cloak set is still the best in the current metagame due to being strong vs Garg / Pecharunt cheese, and being one of the better anti-Gliscor options in the metagame is still a massive boon to most general offensive teams, even outside of webs or Veil where you will typically see it on.

I have a hard time liking Cloak in general because it feels like such a big commitment of an item compared to other options, as its uses are much more specific and specialized so in match ups where the reasons you bring the item aren't present, it feels like a dead item slot. Now granted, Garganacl and Pecharunt are very good in the meta so it's not like this as often, but I dunno I feel like there has to be better ways for Manaphy to take advantage of them.

 

[Cessora]

Manaphy’s flaws like its 100 stats across the board and reliance on tail glow have made people use it less since the dlc 1 meta which was more favourable to it, though its acid armor and take heart sets are worth another look since its a bulky sweeper that doesn’t need tera poison to do something about toxic, i might try out soon since those sets sound solid enough and I’ve been experimenting with alot of calm mind sweepers/cleaners (take heart is just calm mind that cures status)

That’s mostly been my thinking, I haven’t really used its tail glow set since Gen 6, and even then I felt it wasn’t really consistent enough to justify using over other strong water type attackers. Now with webs being such a strong style, I tried picking it up again, but it just felt like its lack of priority and middling speed tier wasn’t enough, Meowscarada destroyed it, and so much of the tier could threaten serious damage and cripple it. The Acid Armor and Take Heart set does look really cool though, I’ve been meaning to try it out.

 

[Magcargo]

I have a hard time liking Cloak in general because it feels like such a big commitment of an item compared to other options, as its uses are much more specific and specialized so in match ups where the reasons you bring the item aren't present, it feels like a dead item slot. Now granted, Garganacl and Pecharunt are very good in the meta so it's not like this as often, but I dunno I feel like there has to be better ways for Manaphy to take advantage of them.

A set I like is Sub Tail Glow Tera Steel with Surf / Alluring Voice Coverage. You can get up to 2 turns setting up on the likes of Gking trying to break your sub -> get a Tail Glow and cook. Sub also will help against Garganacl, and also be difficult for defensive Gliscor to contest. The issue is the high commitment, as this set needs two turns to sweep. Once the Tera Jig is up, another Pokemon like Zamazenta can also revenge kill it. Still, I think 6-0'ing the average GKing Kyurem team is well worth the price of admission.