Honestly, this mon feels great atm. It's bullet punch (especially with tera steel) is one most best priority users in the metagame, both in terms of super effective targets and reliability. It has solid defensive checks, but it has the ever reliable combo of knock off and uturn to get around this. Honestly has a really consistent MU spread, although I really only use CB personally. Usage will probably screw it over next shift but I hope it has enough usage to stay OU.Though I am not enjoying this meta (Dnite and Wellspring are stupid and laddering SV OU has gotten boring since the OLT cycles ended), I’d like to give a shoutout to Scizor, who I think is at its peak rn.
View attachment 770408
Though Scizor doesn’t appreciate certain trends (Zapdos’ popularity being one such trend), Lefties Roost Fairy Blast Dnite and Kyurem are monsters that terrorize many common builds, but Scizor shuts them down. Scizor also has superb synergy with other offensive threats, forcing Knock Off on key targets like Zap/Molt/Lando/Corv and pivoting on them.
The best Scizor partners either abuse many of the mons Scizor lures in, or continue the Voltturn vortex.
CB Scizor is also one of the best mons at pressuring offenses. Fairy is a common type, and offense tends to have few safe switch-ins into Scizor’s moves. Usually their switch-ins are Lando/Tusk, but chipping them down works in favor of the Scizor user.
SD can also get some surprise kills with Tera Blast.
What are your thoughts on Scizor?
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4
- Thread starter TPP
- Start date
Heatran coming back is really good for Scizor imo because now Kyurem is going to use tera fire less on dragon dance sets and that means Scizor stocks rise quite a bit. Heatran coming back also hurts Scizor since it is a fire type that naturally outspeeds it, but the pros outweigh the cons.Though I am not enjoying this meta (Dnite and Wellspring are stupid and laddering SV OU has gotten boring since the OLT cycles ended), I’d like to give a shoutout to Scizor, who I think is at its peak rn.
View attachment 770408
Though Scizor doesn’t appreciate certain trends (Zapdos’ popularity being one such trend), Lefties Roost Fairy Blast Dnite and Kyurem are monsters that terrorize many common builds, but Scizor shuts them down. Scizor also has superb synergy with other offensive threats, forcing Knock Off on key targets like Zap/Molt/Lando/Corv and pivoting on them.
The best Scizor partners either abuse many of the mons Scizor lures in, or continue the Voltturn vortex.
CB Scizor is also one of the best mons at pressuring offenses. Fairy is a common type, and offense tends to have few safe switch-ins into Scizor’s moves. Usually their switch-ins are Lando/Tusk, but chipping them down works in favor of the Scizor user.
SD can also get some surprise kills with Tera Blast.
What are your thoughts on Scizor?
AV Scizor is a great blanket check to special attackers for play styles like HO and Sun. It compresses a Kyurem /
Val check with reliable slow pivots and Knocks, which is very helpful for Sun who really only needs to pivot in 
Wake and Co. to continue steamrolling the opponent. can handle most special attackers with the exceptions being Bolt, 
Iron Moth, and bulky 
Gholds (as well as Fairies carrying Mystical Fire like 
Hatt and 
Enam). 
Wisp Pult is annoying but with proper positioning Scizor at least gets to Knock it. The Kyurem and Valiant matchup is a huge selling point. Either Kyurem takes big damage from BP or it lets in a faster teammate that will force it out. Similarly, Val is forced to burn Speed Booster. Flipping the script on these two is great for offense. It unfortunately gets chipped down by hazards and Rocky Helmets but usually you just need it to handle the aforementioned special attackers once or twice and the rest of the team can get back to the offensive.
when talking about these things, like AV seizor,arent they team dependent? like it sounds cool
also, holy shit a lot of people are being unbanned, welcome back Thunder Pwoell
also, holy shit a lot of people are being unbanned, welcome back Thunder Pwoell
Is Dragonite too much for the tier? Its dragon dance set is basically a Pandora’s box that can very easily choose its counters but it is also our best wellspring answer and multiscale is nice for emergencies
I don’t think Dragonite is too much for the tier right now. Its Dragon Dance sets are definitely threatening, but they also come with trade-offs. The “choose your counter” idea is true to some extent, but Dragonite can’t cover everything at once — it either drops Roost and loses lon
Multiscale is great for giving it an emergency buffer, but it’s also pretty easy to break with hazards, residual damage, or chip before it sets up. On top of that, Wellspring being such a central threat actually works both ways: yes, Dragonite is one of the better answers, but it also means people are
In short, Dragonite is a strong and flexible wincon, but not unmanageable. Proper hazard control, revenge killers, and bulky checks kee
from personal experience, I have not used dnite at all, although I can imagine it would be fun to use. scizor is really good, banded tera steel bullet punch is simple and effective, especially with u-turn as emergency bailing out into something else, like g-slowking or clefable to sponge a hit.
you gotta try dnite bro it's goated. also the fire punch scale shot set with dice is fire (literally) (like you use tera fire lol) (and encore last move) (dd obviously too), but even roost dtail espeed eq is good and twave has seen use. maybe one day people will open their eyes to the REAL tech (Agility Special Attacking).
btw chat use AV Sylveon too it's fire. Trust me when I say, Tera Ground Mud Slap. Unironically. Acc drop is very good, and tera makes it 60BP. Pairs well with Volcanion. Remember to use Hyper Voice instead of Moonblast though because I was using Moonblast for a few days until I realized (lwk the spatk drop saved me a few times though so take that into consideration...).
btw chat use AV Sylveon too it's fire. Trust me when I say, Tera Ground Mud Slap. Unironically. Acc drop is very good, and tera makes it 60BP. Pairs well with Volcanion. Remember to use Hyper Voice instead of Moonblast though because I was using Moonblast for a few days until I realized (lwk the spatk drop saved me a few times though so take that into consideration...).
from the user's Pov: yes, Dragonite is 100% balanced
From the opponents Pov: hell no. imagine a pokemon that always has a chance to not have anything in your team beat it, no matter your team. when you use a Dragonite: there's a chance your Dragonite just easily wincons after 1 or 2 DD and there's a chance that your opponent can easily stop your Dragonite.
when you face Dragonite you have to guess the set. and if you're wrong, you've probably lost.
TL;DR: when you use Dragonite, it just seems like a lot of teams just weren't built with your Dragonite in mind. but when you face it, you have to guess the right set or probably lose.
I get what you mean, but I think the “guess the set or lose” argument is a little overstated. Dragonite definitely has set variety, but most of its options come with clear trade-offs:
- If it runs Dragon Dance + 3 Attacks, it’s strong offensively but loses longevity without Roost.
- If it keeps Roost, it usually drops a coverage move, which gives certain checks a much safer time against it.
- Its Tera choices are also pretty telegraphed depending on team structure — you can usually tell if it’s likely to be Tera Flying or Tera Normal.
And while Multiscale makes it threatening as a setup mon, it’s also fragile to chip damage: hazards, Knock Off, and even small bits of prior damage can take away its “free turn.” In practice, Dragonite often needs very specific conditions (hazard removal, right matchup, correct Tera timing) to actually sweep.
So yeah, sometimes you do guess wrong and it runs away with the game, but I’d argue that’s true for a lot of setup sweepers in the tier. Dragonite just feels scarier because of Multiscale + Tera, but it’s not like it’s consistently unanswerable if you play carefully.
this is why i'm still on the fence about dnite. consistent answers to it in builder are few and far between, and it invents new nonsense on the regular that can muscle past its check-of-the-week, but it's very linear and its set is way easier to guess in practice than it looks on paper. it's very strong and very cheap and i would eventually like a suspect of it down the line, but i don't know whether i would call it broken or what i would vote in said suspect, or even whether i'd argue strongly in favor of one position or the other. if it were just a little bit harder to guess its set i'd be firmly in favor of a ban, but on preview it's basically wearing a neon sign that says "hey look at me i'm the tb flying set" or whatever, so it's really not hard to address except when a new dnite set pops up, in which case it's impossible to address for 2 days and then counterplay happens. what a weird case this is
Dnite is annoying but tbh, by choosing to keep tera blast, we basically decided its staying the tier. They are so linked to each other in terms of brokeness or lack there of that I highly doubt if it was suspected, dnite would get even close to getting banned. I honestly think a dnite suspect would rival the SS melmetal suspect in terms of precentage
Your analysis is very partial imo. You should also be mentioning Solgaleo's weaknesses like knock off, eq, spikes, not having an easy time setting up in the first place, and so on. and of course it distracts from other topics...
It's only in OU that i've seen such heated discussions on what to ban and unban.
Gonna limit discussing this cause rules, but long-term, this mon probably isn't balanced.
I did test it in few games with Moisture99 & I did notice it did struggle in a lot of MUs - Ting-Lu + Mola teams in particular were a nightmare, it felt like it had 4MSS (almost as bad as Empoleon lol). Configuring a moveset that covered everything was extremely difficult and in a lot of cases it didn't even feel more threatening to handle in battle than the other high BST guys like Kyurem, Zamazenta, Roaring Moon, or even Hoopa-Unbound. A lot of pokemon - even those considered mid like Garchomp - felt like they gave Solgaleo trouble. Calm Mind sets struggled to sweep as well from what I saw, usually being walled by Skeledirge or Ting-Lu. It mainly felt difficult for me to handle because of Knock Off + Recovery, but lets be real - 90% of the mons with Knock Off are hard as fuck to deal with lol. All of Weavile, Ogerpon, Darkrai, Great Tusk, Iron Treads, Hoopa-Unbound, Iron Jugulis, Meow, etc. can feel like a nightmare to switch into because not a single mon likes taking a Knock off, even doubliy so if they have Ice Coverage for Gliscor. I'd even say that Solgaleo's access to Clear Body and Psychic fangs could potentially make it nice for various cheeser HO forms like Webs or Veil, as well as Pecharunt Clear Body.
That said with the high BST, there is always massive cheese potential that is being overlooked, espicially with that bulk and Tera Blast letting it break through a lot of potential counterplay. A few test games aren't enough to gauge this well imo, espicially for me since I personally like mainly running sets I'm familiar with. I'm not the type of guy to run some bullshit set like Fire-Spin Tera Blast Fairy on it to cheese past Ting-Lu or something and with so much hidden information, it can be difficult to scout this set. I also think the raw bulk of some of these Ubers just feels too high which can make a poor scout bad. And as I said, I find anything with Knock Off to feel impossible to swap into. Not helping matters is that we banned 3 potential counterplay options to this Pokemon between Volcarona, Roaring Moon, and Gouging Fire.
Still, I think the thoughts of what this Pokemon could do if it was legal is interesting, and it could be worth experimenting with.... LARPer mons. Mons like Metagross or Iron Crown to Larp as various Solgaleo variants seems worth experiementing with - it could even open up interesting possibilities on these Pokemon we never saw before like CM Tera Blast Fire Iron Crown or finding out that "hey maybe Metagross could have a niche with Knock Off + Psychic fangs while also having Ice Coverage for Gliscor" (IDK I've never used it but it seems fun lol). I'll be trying something similar by giving Taunt Protective Pads Quaquaval a bit of a whirl and I think its fun... when it works. Obviously, there are massive issues with a lot of these Pokemon compared to the Ubers, but I think its still a fun thought experiment & could even help in finding new niches for Pokemon that typically are overlooked or rarely see usage.
I would like to remind everyone to please read the forum rules before posting, as the very first post in this thread states that discussion/theorymoning of potential Ubers drops are not allowed in the thread.
Not like anything could be dropped right now anyway. iirc, Finchinator said in a thread that is now in the OU Archives that nothing would be dropped while OLT is happening.
So for now, any discussion on Ubers drops are pretty much pointless. Even on the correct threads for it.
Yeah, Knock Off is quite cheap, especially on fast mons with STAB. If you're playing offense, you just sack whatever has the worst matchup and bring out your check/counter to the knock off user. This is what makes piloting balance and semi-stall teams really hard (for me at least) - almost every team you match up into has a really consistent knock off user and they can force progress every time they hit the field as you get caught in a loop of trying to not let your knock off absorber get chipped down while keeping hazards (mostly) off your side of the field.
Clef is probably the most reliable knock off absorber in the tier, because Gliscor gets nuked by ice moves and cannot afford to get knocked pre toxic orb activation (which makes it quite exploitable in the match up against most knock off mons early game, since it is forced to click protect the first time.) Booster energy mons can technically absorb knock, but most of the are offensive threats and are usually frail enough that they die to the coverage options most of these things. Things like Corv and Lando can take knock off as well, but losing helmet sucks and Lando hates getting chipped down (and ice moves, like Gliscor.) Is there any other defensive knock off counter play in OU? Generally it seems to boil down to fat flying types or things with levitate (or magic guard) so that they can continue to ignore hazards after being knocked.