I heard someone used Mandibuzz in a double/triple dark core a while back, is that still a strong way to run Buzz?
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4
- Thread starter TPP
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Usually I run Mandibuzz in a double dark core--Sometimes triple if I'm confident in the set up. I think running it with a good, strong and fast dark type (Meow, Weavile, Darkrai) that threaten Ghold is the best answer you can give it. Mandibuzz really does just tank hits from physical attackers like nobodies business, and in a pinch can tera to answer even more.
I've been an advocate of it for a long time, feels really good to use imho. Ghold is the only real annoyance but depending on set you can simply knock it off or similar. I prefer Foul Play to deal with Dnite or Ogerpon though on switch ins. Toxic is also just a really clean pick.
The one Mandibuzz team I built during Wcop is this one: https://pokepast.es/fecb4d92e5712676
Using Mandibuzz as Defogger is pretty pointless with Gholdengo existing, Mandibuzz is so weak, that it won,t offensively break Gholdengo (unless you use some offensive item or EVs, but it just Teras). Instead, is a pivot that checks physical threats, knocks things and gets Rocky Helmet damage when absorbing opposing Knock. Its pretty cool at handling SD Gliscor and DD Nite in the long term. "Slow" U-Turn is invaluable to get actual threats in, so in the end Mandibuzz is just a bulky Mon with 4 very good moves and a decent defensive typing. Won,t ever be OU, but it is usable.
Using Mandibuzz as Defogger is pretty pointless with Gholdengo existing, Mandibuzz is so weak, that it won,t offensively break Gholdengo (unless you use some offensive item or EVs, but it just Teras). Instead, is a pivot that checks physical threats, knocks things and gets Rocky Helmet damage when absorbing opposing Knock. Its pretty cool at handling SD Gliscor and DD Nite in the long term. "Slow" U-Turn is invaluable to get actual threats in, so in the end Mandibuzz is just a bulky Mon with 4 very good moves and a decent defensive typing. Won,t ever be OU, but it is usable.
it is nice finally seeing scizor in OU, I was expecting him to raise back when kyurem dodged the ban-hammer since he can handle anything that kyurem can throw to it except from tera fire.
yes, I know that there are other answers too but scizor offers utility that they do not.
I wonder if he will stay in OU or will end up dropping like tinkaton did.
yes, I know that there are other answers too but scizor offers utility that they do not.
I wonder if he will stay in OU or will end up dropping like tinkaton did.
At least Scizor has some actual offensive power, unlike Tinkaton relying on Gigaton Hammer to do anything to the opponent.
i think we need to start heavily considering a terablast suspect test with the recent innovation of fairy blast kingambit its made a bunch of formerly solid checks to it practically useless, for example iron valiant was able to consistently stop a kingambit sweep through encore / closecombat / vaccum wave, but tera fairy fairy blast just destroys previous checks to a already incredibly unhealthy mon such as zama, iron val, and great tusk. 1 i think we really need to start considering a terablast suspect and 2 potentially a kingambit suspect
I believe a tblast suspect should still be taken into consideration, even though my feelings for the tier are more positive these days.
But Tera Blast Fairy Gambit is definetely nothing new. In fact it’s a set that has been around since 2023.
On the topic of Tera Blast, how do people feel about Tera Blast Ground CM Val?
I think its a very legit set in the current meta, Fairy/Ground/Electric coverage hits a majority of the OU tier for SE damage and has other applications like OHKOing lead Cinderace and Treads.
I honestly will never understand the pushback against a tera blast ban. Its an inherently cheesy move that adds even more unnecessary volatility to a metagame that certainly doesn’t need any more of it. The opportunity cost bullshit also doesn’t really work to justify this because when you are committing to tera on a tera blast user, its to either A. Facilitate a game ending sweep or B. Unexpectedly remove a key defensive piece that breaks open the game for another threat on your team (Both of these are well worth your tera, especially the former). I’m hoping people will eventually get tired of dragonite randomly turning into marshadow and sweeping them and we can all come together and suspect then ban this cheesy move.
While I wouldn't be against a Tera Blast ban, the OU playerbase has not even gotten to a point in which it agreed that there needs to be action on Tera with the first Tera suspect only resulting in 58% wanting action on Tera and subsequent surveys (aside from the one in July 2023) showing waning interest in acting on Tera over time. While some people will complain that the 60% threshold is too high, I believe it's just right as it's ideal that any ban necessitates a strong consensus, and a lower threshold would result in variable swings in voter participation potentially affecting the result in a negative fashion, which is why a 60% ban threshold in which the pro-ban group has 50% more votes than the anti-ban group is a sufficiently good number to reach.
I agree with the premise that Tera Blast is an inherently cheesy move that adds more unnecessary volatility to the metagame, but unless someone can come up with an extremely compelling post that demonstrates all the negative aspects of Tera Blast to the point that a large majority of suspect reqs getters can get behind it, a Tera Blast suspect will always be dead on arrival no matter how strongly you feel about this.
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I am very biased towards Dragonite as it is my favorite pokemon but I do feel like it is very 50/50. On one hand the tera normal espeed set was already really strong by itself so having all of these other sets is really dangerous. On the other hand, about 90% of these sets are as good as they are because of tera blast......and on the other OTHER hand I think it would be really funny and gratifying if my favorite pokemon was so powerful it got banned lmao. In all seriousness though, Dragonite is definitely quite strong but is it due to the pokemon itself or tera blast?
Anyway, from the replays I've seen, I believe nothing should be banned. I understand that the main grief would be setup sweeper + tera across a large sample of battles, but I honestly disagree with this view because teams will always change and go as the meta goes on. As a former gen 9 hater it has become by far my favorite generation to play thanks to the huge diversity enabled by the likes of Tera, Tera Blast, and other moves such as Psychic Noise. Tera Blast contributes to a dynamic metagame and allows offense teams an out in a losing situation. I agree that it should stay.
As for some Pokemon in contention e.g Kyurem, Ogerpon-W, Dragonite etc... frankly I wouldn't bother banning them either. They're now forming part of the Gen 9 identity and honestly I'd rather play with broken mons over Zap King Lu, a core which contributed to me loathing gen 9.
I don't believe we should tier around balance teams but rather make the metagame as fun and competitive as possible, and these two statements aren't dependent on each other.
What’s so bad about Zap King Lu? For example, people said that Kyurem should not be banned because it keeps Zap King Lu in check. I don’t actively play SV OU, so someone tell me.
Zap King Lu was a prominent defensive core in DLC1. It was incredibly effective at just stopping most teams.
However, its a thing that sure, you can use, but it struggles immensly. Pokemon such as Gliscor, Weavile, Hydrapple, Torn (moreso NP torn but standard sets also do well), Deoxys-Speed and others that I'm probably kinda just rip the core apart.
Nowadays its more of a thing people use to fearmonger to say X mon shouldn't be banned. Even if you ban mons such as Gliscor and Kyurem that supposedly keep this core in check (they do well into them, but they aren't the only reason), this core will never truly come back like it was in DLC1.
Zap King Lu is more of a synonym for "fat balance". It also covers other hard to kill, dominant Pokemon such as Mola and Clefable.
This playstyle contributes in my opinion to much longer, boring, uninspired games compared to the more offensive metagame we have now. Now combine this with the de facto banned pokemon almost never coming back unless a new dlc / game gets released in the same generation and you get an idea of a stale game.
If we redefine balance as "bulky offense" then I don't see any big issue with the current meta tbh.
Zap-King-Lu refers to passive fat boots spam team comps. These teams don't always use that exact three mon core, but the idea is the same: ignore hazards and chip down opponents with status and hazards until you can clean the endgame with your win condition (historically, this was either Zama or Gambit, but a lot of teams now use Weavile, Pult or Scor). They rely a lot on hax, with flame body, static, and thunder wave spam being employed as the primary methods to force progress.
SupaGMoney made an excellent post (outdated now, but still accurate) during the Kyurem suspect, which provides historical context to the argument.
These teams nowadays also use Pech, Nite, Ghold, Torn-T, and other boots mons. They have a very strong matchup into both offense and fat due to hazard immunity, so the best way to defeat them is to employ strong breakers, who force progress against the defensive core and open holes for the rest of the team.
In a healthy meta, breakers will shift in and out of focus as boots spam becomes more or less popular, which we've seen happen during both SPL and WCoP. Most breakers aren't easy to fit on teams, as they usually have heavy structural constraints to make them consistent. Specs Kyurem requires hazard control to keep rocks off, Wake is weather reliant, Hoopa-U necessitates multiple pivot partners, Ursaluna is only really seen on trick room... you get the drill. Due to this, it's very easy for these comps to tech against them, for example Tera Water Lu or Glowking to destroy sun.
A lot of top players' reasoning is that if we remove enough breakers from the metagame, these teams will be able to tech to handle the remaining breakers and once again become the undisputed best team composition. As mentioned before, the heavy reliance on paralysis and pivot spam makes them extremely infuriating to face, so a return to that metagame would be extremely undesirable.
The last three mons to be suspected (minus Palafin) were all breakers: Moon, Gliscor, and Kyurem. Moon in particular was one of the few splashable 'mons that was able to force progress due to its strong STAB knock; you can draw a direct line from its ban to the recent outbreak of veil and webs in tours and ladder, as the removal of one of the only consistent HO breakers drove players towards cheese.
As to whether or not that argument is valid: it's up to you. I personally agree with it, but see why others might not.
I can go over some of the arguments to keep TB.
- It's a complex ban, which is usually frowned upon, especially considering this is a generational gimmick. That's like keeping D-Max but banning certain max moves, or banning certain Z Crystals. Tera is tera, which includes TB. There have been pages of discussions on what to do with Tera including talks of team preview for Tera types. The general consensus is just leave it alone at this point.
- Tera is already cheesy without TB. Your points A and B (Game ending sweeps/removing a key defensive piece) already happen without TB. That's the crux of the entire mechanic. That's how the meta is played. It's kinda terrible but also whatever. Nite losing a Ghost STAB isn't going to stop it from getting +1 then clicking Encore on a Zama. It's all just swiss and cheddar dude idk what else to tell ya.
- TB really isn't used on that many mons. It is an opportunity cost and forces teams to either commit or have a dead move slot.
- There have been too many mons banned due to TB at this point. We would have to re-test mons. The meta is finally in a decent spot, nobody wants to fix what's not broken.
- There's no proof or good argument that banning TB would improve the meta. Some ban TB posts just seem like cope tbh. Banning it won't magically fix the meta.
- Banning TB hurts a lot of lower tier mons that need it to be viable/semi-viable in OU.
- If you're still getting cooked by TB then that's kinda on you as the player at this point. SV punishes players who don't keep up with the current trends or have lots of experience in the tier- but with that said, we're on the back half of 2025, you should not be surprised by Fairy TB Gambit at this point.
Junk post
Tera blast is catching a lot of flak for what is a tera issue. Overwhelmingly, tera is used as a defensive tool for free turns, whether thats to get free setup, or make the ting/garg unkillable. This is the bed we've made with keeping tera. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I think it's fun, but that's just how it goes.
Look at the offensive uses of tera blast. It's really just a "break Zamazenta button" on a few physical sweepers, opting into a fairy or flying move. Otherwise, it's moth/serp/enam. The uses where tera blast ice ting lu randomly vanquishes gliscor is a good thing; I love it. It's a nice disruption to the rote and formulaic gameplay of reactively switching between a bunch of hazards-immune pokemon.
If you ask me, the issue the whole generation has been the efficacy of hazard setters, which pushes things towards the truly awful bootspam fat stuff. I think it is a huge miss to ban breakers and breaking tools in periods like that without similarly limiting the heinously fat defensive pokemon. people really want gking + mola slow pivot gameplay? cmon now.
, 
and 
are the only "problems" in the tier, but I'd rather roaring moon be freed. 
and 
are just what you get with tera and fewer breakers available.
Heat
Great Tusk @ Booster Energy
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Rock Tomb
- Rapid Spin
- Headlong Rush
- Ice Spinner
Here's a cool great tusk set for offensive teams, especially on webs. Rock Tomb drops speed, which gives you counterplay to a lot of stuff that attempts to cheese you:
-
with balloon doesn't get a free switch vs you!
-
/
can't switch-in to no-skill status
- cannot Tera+DD+encore in your face!!
Some hazard lead tech
/
+ 
If you drop some EVs and underspeed hatterene with these dudes, then you can get hazards up through magic bounce when the lil witch gets sent off the pitch. can also use mirror coat and some spd EVs to nab cheapo free kills on a target your opponent can't control. I'll go so far as to say that Red Card Ting Lu is the best pokemon in gen 9.
Your new favorite button to click
Gholdengo @ Life Orb
Ability: Good as Gold
Tera Type: Steel
252 SpA
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Nasty Plot
- Recover
- Make It Rain
- Ghost move
Make it rain does really illegal things. AV samurott, ting lu, or kingambit just die. Have something to eat ground moves. This is a heavenly pairing with
(and also 
tbh).
lastly, for the haters:
Ribombee @ Expert Belt
Ability: Shield Dust
Tera Type: Ground
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Tera Blast
- Bug Buzz
- Moonblast
- Sticky Web
you ever seen a ribombee go for 3-for-1 off lead? now you have. eat your heart out,
bee stocks up. invest now. Tailwind > Stun Spore ©2025
Tera blast is catching a lot of flak for what is a tera issue. Overwhelmingly, tera is used as a defensive tool for free turns, whether thats to get free setup, or make the ting/garg unkillable. This is the bed we've made with keeping tera. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I think it's fun, but that's just how it goes.
Look at the offensive uses of tera blast. It's really just a "break Zamazenta button" on a few physical sweepers, opting into a fairy or flying move. Otherwise, it's moth/serp/enam. The uses where tera blast ice ting lu randomly vanquishes gliscor is a good thing; I love it. It's a nice disruption to the rote and formulaic gameplay of reactively switching between a bunch of hazards-immune pokemon.
If you ask me, the issue the whole generation has been the efficacy of hazard setters, which pushes things towards the truly awful bootspam fat stuff. I think it is a huge miss to ban breakers and breaking tools in periods like that without similarly limiting the heinously fat defensive pokemon. people really want gking + mola slow pivot gameplay? cmon now.
, and are the only "problems" in the tier, but I'd rather roaring moon be freed. and are just what you get with tera and fewer breakers available.Heat
Great Tusk @ Booster Energy
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Rock Tomb
- Rapid Spin
- Headlong Rush
- Ice Spinner
Here's a cool great tusk set for offensive teams, especially on webs. Rock Tomb drops speed, which gives you counterplay to a lot of stuff that attempts to cheese you:
-
with balloon doesn't get a free switch vs you!-
/ can't switch-in to no-skill status-
cannot Tera+DD+encore in your face!!Some hazard lead tech
/ + If you drop some EVs and underspeed hatterene with these dudes, then you can get hazards up through magic bounce when the lil witch gets sent off the pitch.
can also use mirror coat and some spd EVs to nab cheapo free kills on a target your opponent can't control. I'll go so far as to say that Red Card Ting Lu is the best pokemon in gen 9.Your new favorite button to click
Gholdengo @ Life Orb
Ability: Good as Gold
Tera Type: Steel
252 SpA
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Nasty Plot
- Recover
- Make It Rain
- Ghost move
Make it rain does really illegal things. AV samurott, ting lu, or kingambit just die. Have something to eat ground moves. This is a heavenly pairing with
(and also tbh).lastly, for the haters:
Ribombee @ Expert Belt
Ability: Shield Dust
Tera Type: Ground
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Tera Blast
- Bug Buzz
- Moonblast
- Sticky Web
you ever seen a ribombee go for 3-for-1 off lead? now you have. eat your heart out,
bee stocks up. invest now. Tailwind > Stun Spore ©2025
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This is one I'll actually take credit for. I topped ladder with this last year a little bit before OLT. It was TB Ground, MB, Vacuum Wave, CM.
I guess to elaborate on current topic of conversation, I would support a Tera Blast suspect if we had enough support on the next survey. I think if it were to be banned it would result in a lot of work for us in terms of retesting or straight dropping a lot of things from Ubers, but I think it's warranted tbh. I posted a little bit about it in council chat.
"Ok so, I feel like the only time that the whole "flipping matchup" argument against tera is valid/particularly egregious is with tera blast. I also was thinking abt it and I feel like, because of this amplified "flipping matchup" mechanic, the whole "don't tera first"/"never exhaust" idea might get a little less applicable. Also, not to retread things that have been discussed to death but I'd be down to retest several things with tera blast gone."
Forgive the casual tone here. To expound on this, one of the earliest things I learned about SV that pushed me to be a better player and builder was the idea of building around mons that force tera. Back in the day the easiest examples were things like Baxcalibur, but the principle still (mostly) stands today. Forcing your opponent to tera first to make progress cements a positional advantage. The thing about tera blast though, is that it lets tera be a much more proactive resource expenditure for offense teams specifically. I used to muse that tera hurt balance playstyles the most because it couldn't (with some exceptions, namely Garganacl and Latios) tera one mon every game/matchup, it has to use tera purely reactively, whereas even stall isn't forced into a suboptimal usage of tera because they are tera Dark/Steel/Water/Ghosting the same thing per matchup in most games and have redundancy in checks.
To get back on topic, the thing about Tera Blast that I think is problematic is it more often 2 for 1s than a regular offensive or defensive tera usage. People often harp on the problems with using tera blast sweepers or breakers as "tera hogs" but they don't often recognize that these mons, especially these breakers, carry far more impact per tera than anything else.
I do want to qualify this stance however, because I think that this "2 for 1ing" is far more impactful to mid-to-low-experienced players than top players. Talked with Fusien the other day about how it's quite possible to position around Tblast sweepers (namely Kyurem and Dragonite) in a way that neuters their potential, but I don't think this holds true for breakers like Specs Stellarblast Enam, SD/Band Terablast Rillaboom/Scizor.
Now I know that these aren't top threats, but I think they make the meta worse by their presence. Something I will point to as a Tera Blast breaker even though many may consider it a cleaner because of the game ending potential of Weak Armor and Shadow Sneak is the newly risen Ceruledge. I would call this a "lure/coverage breaker" given my previous terminology post, even though it can also function as a cleaner in many matchups. I've been using it with Tblast fairy (or Tera Ghost Poltergeist, though this weakens my argument) to great success on non-screens teams. This is just an example of something really strong that has a powerful, I would say unhealthy, metagame impact.
I'll leave this here for now. Hopefully I'll be posting more in this thread/forum in the future but you can also message me on Discord in traineraid/smogtours or in the OU Room on PS!
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Wouldn’t banning these oppressive threats that put strain on the teambuilder actually just make it EASIER to fit breakers / breaking cores though? In the current meta fitting breakers is a challenge because there is so many different threats you need to cover and not enough team slots to cover all the threats in the tier and still have slots open for breakers with less defensive utility. Not to mention even with several bans these teams would not even be great due to the abundant knock off spam in the tier.
I’m still waiting for someone to tell me how to deduce which one of tera blast ghost, flying or fairy the dnite is running. People will just use vague statements like “outplay” and “look at the team composition” but fail to provide any examples of how to tell the set (also, its a problem on a lot more things than just dnite, just using dnite as my example because its the easiest example to make)
I'll remember to gather some examples as I ladder for both Kyurem (harder than Dnite) and Dnite. Will make a post at some point about this bc I think it's important. Also tagging Fusien if he wants to add input because I know he's talked about this with me.
There has been fearmongering about Boots spam since at least the Volcarona suspect, and Boots spam has not been broken after Volcarona was banned, after Gouging Fire was banned, which 'his holiness' CTC was adamant would happen (which was completely wrong), or after Roaring Moon was banned, and I think the fearmongering is unjustified based on what has actually happened. I agree with you that if we remove enough breakers from the meta that Boots spam teams will become the best team composition, but I believe we're currently nowhere near that point.
Since the end of the DLC1 meta, we've gained a strong special breaker in Raging Bolt, a sturdy breaker in Gliscor (which had been briefly banned at the end of that meta), a strong breaker and/or sweeper depending on the set in Kyurem, the advent of Psychic Noise, which is a disruptor to passive teams and regularly used on several OU mons, and Ceruledge has returned to OU after Roaring Moon's ban with it being a top breaker itself. We're not closing in on Boots spam being the undisputed best team composition, and the day it happens, we can direct something to be sent to Ubers.
At this point, I believe talk about Boots Spam becoming OP is not helpful with the surplus of potent breakers that we have to in SV OU. There's a reason stall is dogshit in this meta, and it's 'cause there are just so many breakers to choose from to cover the stall MU that are even readily splashable that stall is the worst playstyle or among the worst playstyles in the meta, and the same applies to Boots spam to a lesser extent as such teams have some of the same problems since offense teams will likely have more progress-makers that can make a dent in the current game state.
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I also want to add that without Boots, Pokemon Competitive Single may as well be scrapped.
Yeah sure, we see that in gen 6, we have another option for hazard removal named Defog. But even if we ignore the Gholdengo in the room, the metagame has been faster and faster, reeked with myriads of offensive threats that you can't realistically defensively check them all, especially with the help of hazards. Even Corviknight back in gen 8 feels like a deadweight sometimes.
Yeah sure, we see that in gen 6, we have another option for hazard removal named Defog. But even if we ignore the Gholdengo in the room, the metagame has been faster and faster, reeked with myriads of offensive threats that you can't realistically defensively check them all, especially with the help of hazards. Even Corviknight back in gen 8 feels like a deadweight sometimes.
What is this gen 8? I thought we were done complaining about heavy duty boots. This feels like how stealth rock was treated in gen 4 where everyone hated it and then eventually, they realized it was probably good for the metagame. It feels like this hasn't happened with hdb yet though and I am not exactly sure why. Whenever that day comes, I am sure that will be a great day in competitive pokemon history.
Stall is...for lack of a better term terrible in gen 9 (ou though I don't think it is very good in the lower tiers either). Whereas there are an insane amount of viable ho, bo, and balance teams, there is only maybe one or two viable stall teams and that is kind of it. The insane versatility of tera means that no matter what you do one pokemon can just bowl the stall team over and that is kind of it. I would say that its potential might be somewhat unexplored but considering how long this gen has been going on for I believe there is not that much exploring left to do. I may hate stall but it was definitely a part of every gen until this one and it is mostly thanks to tera. But who knows maybe I am wrong. That is for me to not know and for the stall player base to find out.
Would like to play sun again, this is a fairly experimental post and I'd like to use Torkoal.
I keep hearing that Ninetales is better thanks to Encore, Healing Wish, and Hatterene support but can't you just compress the roles with torkoal's rapid spin and stealth rock and replace hatt with something else, leaving room for another breaker like Specs Latios or a wish user?
would be interested in trying Latios+Flip Turn on such a team and get insurance against valiant and offensive tusk, too
I keep hearing that Ninetales is better thanks to Encore, Healing Wish, and Hatterene support but can't you just compress the roles with torkoal's rapid spin and stealth rock and replace hatt with something else, leaving room for another breaker like Specs Latios or a wish user?
would be interested in trying Latios+Flip Turn on such a team and get insurance against valiant and offensive tusk, too