STAB STABmons

[Bice]

looking from the outside in, im kinda surprised these moves weren't restricted earlier, especially torch song. its basically a better version of fiery dance, already a rly strong move, and since there's overall less tools to deal w/ special attackers it enables absurd snowballing, especially on a mon that isn't slow as molasses. esper wing is this to a lesser extent, especially as psychic is a weaker overall type than fire, but a lot of what could be said about torch song applies to it.

are there any plans to suspect take heart? it got only a slightly lower score than the restricted moves

 

[QT]

are there any plans to suspect take heart? it got only a slightly lower score than the restricted moves

It was our judgment that it was mostly the combination of take heart and esper wing that was the problem, such that dealing with either one would fix it, but if take heart continues to be problematic it is absolutely not off the table for tiering action and we will be watching it closely.

 

[drampa's grandpa]

Tornadus-Therian (M) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 40 HP / 252 Atk / 216 Spe
Jolly / Naive Nature
- Dragon Ascent
- U-turn
- Knock Off
- Heat Wave / Focus Blast / Defrog

I've made my hatred of Iron Valiant pretty well known in the the Discord, but since nobody else seems to feel it should be banned I decided to look for some new answers to it. This was something I came up with that I don't think is particularly meta, but works well on the right teams.
The EVs outspeed +1 Iron Valiant and invest the rest into Attack then HP. The HP is important because it lets you barely live +2 Rapid-Strike Jet Punch, while you OHKO back after rocks.

Because this set has no Boots it needs extremely good hazard removal support in order to survive many hits, and while it Regenerator can help it get back to full it needs momentum from the other members of the team and no Rocks to be effective. I don't believe this set to be amazing or anything, but it does its job and isn't deadweight. It competes with other revenge killers for a teamslot, notably Scizor which does an even better job at revenging Valiant, although of course they beat some different mons.

252 Atk Tornadus-Therian Dragon Ascent vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Iron Valiant: 356-422 (123.1 - 146%) -- guaranteed OHKO

Buncha Other Calcs

+2 252 Atk Punching Glove Urshifu-Rapid-Strike Jet Punch vs. 40 HP / 0 Def Tornadus-Therian: 261-307 (84.4 - 99.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Tornadus-Therian Dragon Ascent vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Urshifu-Rapid-Strike: 326-386 (95.6 - 113.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock

252 Atk Choice Band Weavile Ice Shard vs. 40 HP / 0 Def Tornadus-Therian: 224-266 (72.4 - 86%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Tornadus-Therian Dragon Ascent vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Weavile: 231-273 (82.2 - 97.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock

252 Atk Tornadus-Therian Dragon Ascent vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Zamazenta: 290-344 (89.2 - 105.8%) -- 75% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
252 Atk Tornadus-Therian Dragon Ascent vs. +1 0 HP / 0 Def Zamazenta: 194-230 (59.6 - 70.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock

252 Atk Tornadus-Therian Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latios: 214-252 (71 - 83.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Tornadus-Therian U-turn vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latios: 154-182 (51.1 - 60.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

 

[NeonJolteonWasUsed]

Hello again. This announcement is one that's a long time overdue, but I hope is one welcomed regardless.

I have come to my final decision of who will take on the role of tier leader, and will be passing the role on to SammyCe123 !
Please wish him luck in this position. Do note: I am not leaving council, I am simply passing the role on to someone that is more available, and able to take it on.

That'll be all for now. Thank you for your patience (that I probably don't deserve).

Tagging dhelmise to transfer The Main Thread Post, The Sample Teams Post, and The First Post in the Resource Page to Sammy.

 

[SammyCe123]

New post-OMPL, pre-OMCL sample teams! Hope you enjoy them!!
Click on the sprites to get the pokepaste

Offense
- Healing Wish Iron Boulder + Veil HO by Clem
- Salac Gholdengo HO by pannu
- Healing Wish HO by SammyCe123

Why Healing Wish is chosen over Lunar Dance

If Lunar Dance is used on a pokemon that has not taken any damage or status, but has still used a move, then the entire Lunar Dance effect will be consumed. This is generally unfavourable since you would almost always want to use the effect in order to heal a teammate in the back that has been afflicted with status or heavily chipped. Healing Wish would not be used in this situation, and is thus considered optimal on these types of offense teams where this situation is somewhat frequent. An example of this can be seen in this OMPL game on turns 15 and 18.


On more balanced teams, it is significantly less likely to have these situations occur. In these cases, then Lunar Dance is certainly still viable. This is especially true if the balance team uses pokemon that frequently use moves with low pp, such as Walking Wake, Mamoswine and Moongeist Beam Gholdengo variants.

Bulky Offense
- CB Thundurus-I + Specs Walking Wake BO by pannu
- CB Rillaboom BO by QT
- Scarf Latios + Specs Walking Wake BO by QT
- LO Mamoswine + Specs Walking Wake BO by SammyCe123

Balance
- Hydrapple Sand Balance by pannu
- Scarf Darkrai + SD Urshifu-R Balance by pannu
- Scarf Walking Wake + CB Mamoswine Balance by QT

Stall / Semi-Stall
- CB Weavile Semi-Stall by Clem
- Dondozo Clefable Stall by SammyCe123
​

 

[Crep50]

Perhaps im simply ill informed, but shouldnt oricorio be part of the forme-change list? You can change its form with the corresponding nectar, and the change is outside of battle, so i see little reason why it shouldnt be.

 

[PrincessGardevoir]

Perhaps im simply ill informed, but shouldnt oricorio be part of the forme-change list? You can change its form with the corresponding nectar, and the change is outside of battle, so i see little reason why it shouldnt be.

It probably should be in the list on the first post, but Oricorio is correctly implemented that way on Showdown.

 

[Crep50]

It probably should be in the list on the first post, but Oricorio is correctly implemented that way on Showdown.

View attachment 781188

Thank you, though gonna be completely honest this was a total fuck up on my part. It was 10PM and i tried putting no retreat on it lmaooo
My sincerest apologies

 

[SammyCe123]

Perhaps im simply ill informed, but shouldnt oricorio be part of the forme-change list? You can change its form with the corresponding nectar, and the change is outside of battle, so i see little reason why it shouldnt be.

Oricorio has now been added to be part of the forme-change list in the OP, thank you for noticing that!

 

[pokeclysm]

I've been experimenting with ways to abuse Surging Strikes, and I think I've found something worth exploring further, Inteleon.

Inteleon @ Choice Band
Ability: Sniper
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant/Jolly Nature
- Surging Strikes
- Flip Turn
- Jet Punch
- Icicle Spear

Despite its subpar attack stat of 85, the Sniper ability boosting its crit damage by 1.5x means it's actually a bit stronger than Urshifu on average when using Surging Strikes. In addition, its Speed stat of 120 is far higher than either Shifu or Palafin, allowing it to get the jump on Latios and non-Booster Energy Iron Valiant, or go Adamant and still outrun both of them. It also has the benefit of not needing to switch in once to reach full power, like Palafin.

Its far lower bulk does mean it is significantly more niche than Shifu or Palafin, and its moves other than Surging Strikes do not do much damage, so it'd primarily see use as a late game cleaner or something along those lines. It's definitely worth using in that role, though, due to its high damage and speed.

It definitely wants the Choice Band or Scarf, as it only wants to click Surging Strikes 90% of the time. Most of the rest of the time, it'll click Flip Turn. Jet Punch can be used for niche scenarios where a low health target out speeds Inteleon. I used Icicle Spear in the last slot to bait Hydrapple and Beak Blast Landorus, but other options are definitely usable. Again, anything other than Surging Strikes or Flip Turn are corner case moves at best.

 

[SammyCe123]

STABmons Winter Survey

Hey all! With OMCL reaching its end, we wanted to run another survey to gauge what the community thinks about the metagame after the bans of Torch Song and Esper Wing. We really aim to make STABmons as competitive and enjoyable as possible, so any and all input will be very appreciated.

Thank you in advance, and I hope you have an amazing day!​

 

[SammyCe123]

Survey Results!
Thank you to everyone who answered, I apologise for being a bit late with this one. Hope you all enjoy.

Average: 6.4/10

Average: 7.7/10

These numbers are significantly higher than they were last survey (4.5 and 5.6 respectively), which is amazing to hear but they still a lot of room for improvement, especially in terms of making the metagame more competitive. We hope that as the metagame develops further, these numbers continue to increase.

Average: 3.5/5

Walking Wake is a very controversial mon in the meta right now, between its wide set variety and high damage output with strong stab moves. Choice Specs rips a lot of teams apart, and Substituite + Knock-Off being able to get past even AV Toxapex makes it a formidable foe. The sun teams also enable it to reach even higher levels of potency. We put it on the survey for this reason, and people seem to generally agree based on these quite high numbers. We will continue to monitor Wake, and see if it ends up being too strong for the metagame to handle.

Average: 2.4/5

Raging Bolt on the other hand seems to be more manageable, likely due to being soft-checked by both Ting-Lu and Tyranitar, giving a lot of teams a splashable option of efficiently checking it. Despite this, the Booster Energy + Calm Mind sets are still very strong, and it can be a very dangerous threat on sun teams that grant it access to both Protosynthesis and Life Orb, as well as a strong Solar Beam to cleave through Ting-Lu. We will continue to monitor Raging Bolt if it becomes too much as the metagame develops, but for now we think it is safe to assume that it is not banworthy.

Average: 2.8/5

The purpose of adding this to the Survey was twofold: there are a lot of potentially overwhelming mons roaming the metagame that abuse Surging Strikes, like Urshifu-R and Basculegion-M, that could be seen as overwhelming. The other aspect is that STABmons has already banned a lot of elements that have abused Surging Strikes, mainly Ogerpon-Wellspring, Gyarados, and Rain in the form of damp rock. If Surging Strikes were to go, then one or more of these elements could potentially come back to the metagame. Overall, it seems that there are a lot of mixed opinions on Surging Strikes, so we will continue discussions on it and see what option is best for the metagame. For now however, there will likely not be any action taken on Surging Strikes.

Average: 2.6/5

The reason why we put Meloetta on the survey was because one of the main elements that caused it to be broken, Esper Wing, was banned after Meloetta had been banned, so we wanted to see what the general consensus was on potentially freeing Meloetta back. It would no longer be able to snowball games as well as it did before, and it should be much easier to revenge kill now. Generally, you guys seem to agree, so we will continue discussions on potentially freeing Meloetta in the near future.


We also added a section where we asked you guys if anything should be looked at. The main responses that stood out were freeing Victory Dance and banning Zamazenta. Victory Dance is, frankly, unlikely to be freed due to the already high saturation of strong fighting types in the metagame, which would likely warp the metagame around offense structures abusing them. Zamazenta is a fair shout, as Substitute + Bulk Up sets have been shown to run away with a lot of games, and it can run a wide variety of coverage moves to get past its checks. However, it can't get past all of them, so it always has to make a sacrifice somewhere. It also already has a ton of common counterplay options depending on what coverage moves it decides to run, but that could also be seen as restricting in the builder. Either way, Zamazenta will be discussed more in the future. Any other comments or questions mentioned in this section will be forwarded to the council if deemed important.

And that's it! I hope you guys continue to enjoy STABmons, and I hope that it continues to progress towards a healthy and competitive metagame where all of the truly problematic elements have been dealt with. I know STABmons doesn't have an amazing track record in terms of being a competitive metagame, but I promise that we are doing everything we can to steadily improve upon it. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out and let us know! Thank you and have a nice day.​

 

[pannu]

Hey everyone! The council have been discussing quite radical tiering action in order to improve the tier. We believe that the current state of the tier is not good enough, its quite centralized and gets called unfun and match up fishy by many people. We also don't think there's any one element making the tier so unhealthy, its been quite the tricky problem but we think we've landed on a solution we like:


Whats been going on in the council discord over the last few days has been discussing of 1 big ban slate. The pokemon/moves that we have discussed banning are Ting-Lu, Toxapex, Raging Bolt, Walking Wake, Latios, Thunderus-Therian, Gholdengo and Surging Strikes. Action on mortal spin rather than Toxapex has also been brought up.



These bans are meant to target PexLu, the overwhelmingly dominant defensive core of the tier in the past few years, making the tier sort of "Balance Slop" if you will. We believe that these 2 feel necessary to check some of the tiers stronger breakers, while also forcing very specific, hard hitting options in the builder to consistently break. This makes the tier incredibly centralized, repetitive and frankly unfun. However getting rid of defensive staples would also mean having to get rid of some of the Pokemon they are tasked with dealing with.



To reiterate multiple things would be banned at once, so you wont have to deal with trying to check Raging Bolt without Ting-Lu, for example. (Assuming that council finds the both of them banworthy). However, we wanted to inform you guys before we voted on anything to get public consensus-- is this the right action to take? Would banning one of ting-lu or toxapex make the tier feel less centralized and boring? would getting rid of certain overbearing offensive threats make the tier more fun to play?

We want you to let us know your thoughts, ideally in this thread or in OM discord, so that we can make informed descisions going forward-- if we have this slate, we plan to have it before STAB Open would start (march 15th)​

 

[SammyCe123]

Obligatory mention that this post does not reflect the views of the council, and instead purely reflects my own personal opinion. I'll also admit that I do have some bias towards seeing the centralisation of PexLu as a positive thing. The core is stable and consistent, but not overwhelmingly strong or "broken". (at least by my definition) In a metagame that has historically been unstable and full of HO cheese, PexLu puts the fate of the game into the player's hands with an even matchup spread and outplay options vs most threats. Still, it is undeniable that it could get repetitive and that it limits builder creativity for defensive mons since you'd need to have a really good reason to use it instead of Pex or Lu, which is often not the case. Though, mons like Slowking and Tyranitar are just as viable, especially on more offensive strucutres with scarfers or priority. If you disagree with me, please speak up either here on the forum or in OMcord and continue this discussion!

I think the meta is in a good state right now. It's still relatively underexplored imo, and HO, BO, Balance, and Stall are all viable. Top Tier mons like Wake and Bolt are controversial, but they're not overwhelmingly broken (at least, that's what the consensus is as of writing this post) and it's nice being able to have some reliable breakers that can deal with defensive cores like, you guessed it, PexLu. Other breakers like SD Urshifu-R, Basculegion, and Araquanid + Weezing-G have also popped up, among mons and cores. That could be argued to be another form of repetitive centralisation, but I digress. At the very least, this meta is in a much better state after the couple waves of bans we've had, where we previously had tons of different HO teams that could easily overwhelm defensive cores. Still, that's not a great argument seeing as we could possibly make the meta even better. It just leads to a difficult tightrope where we want to make the metagame as balanced as possible without leaning too much in either end of the spectrum. If we nerf consistent defensive cores like PexLu too much, then we risk a metagame where teams can't check everything at the same time, which could lead to matchup fishing and HO cheeses being too strong. If we instead make the defensive cores too good by banning breakers like Wake and Bolt that are able to threaten them, then we run the risk of making the metagame too much like "PexLu balance slop". The best way to know is by trial and error and discussions about the meta, but it's worth keeping in mind.

We started discussion other options than directly banning both Pex and Lu in one big ban slate. Of those options, I strongly prefer banning Lu + subsequent mons that end up being broken without Lu around. We would still have alternatives to what Lu does, like TTar, Treads, Drill and Clod, but it should lead to more builder diversity. It also naturally means that we get rid of a lot arguably centralising breaker, which could lead to more breaker diversity. It would be a lot easier justifying the use of a fun off-breaker now. Banning Lu should also lead to a lot of solid psychic types recieving viability, which in turn makes Pex easier to handle with strong hitters and Take Heart around to sponge mortal spins.

Banning just Pex, at least in this current metagame, feels like a bad idea given how many mons Pex is tasked to check. While it does have replacements, these replacements are significantly worse at checking threats compared to Pex. They also don't provide nearly as much role compression as Pex does. This could be a case of broken checks broken, but honestly, I don't think it's good enough to warrant being banned. It's passive and abuseable, losing to both sub and cloak mons, and any half-decent team should have some form of counterplay to it. I like to imagine that Pex to STAB is what Lando-T is to a lot of OU gens: a popular and consistent glue that's used to check a lot while not being overly difficult to handle and with different drawbacks.

IMO, banning both Pex and Lu at the same time is the worst alternative for the same reason as above, but now even worse. I think that it would throw the metagame into a state where way too many offensive threats would run rampant without teams being able to easily fit sufficient counterplay. it would probably lead to teams being forced into running HO or stall, which idt is very fun.

TLDR: If we want to shake up the meta with some radical tiering, I think banning Lu and the subsequent offensive mons is the best idea. Otherwise I think the meta is in a good spot as is despite the centralisation.

 

[Kinetic]

Obligatory also speaking for myself and not for the council. I don't consider PexLu "broken", but I think the two create unhealthy and centralizing dynamics in the tier together, although I don't think the two are individually banworthy. Toxapex provides a lot for the tier, but most of them are more for the benefit of its own team; checking a large amount of threats, slow pivoting, hazard removal, etc. While it can easily make progress with poisons and burns, it is pretty reliant on those to make progress itself, which means it can be pretty passive against Sub/Cloak mons that can often use it as setup fodder because of how common it is. (Side note: I personally don't think Mortal Spin should be banned, we have plenty of ways of dealing with it and Toxapex is not broken with it.) Ting-Lu, on the other hand, is much less passive and more difficult to break through. Knock Off and hazards let it easily make progress in a way that Toxapex can't really do (plus it still has the option of pivoting), and its typing and bulk make it nearly one of the only reasonable switch in to a large number of threats like Latios, Raging Bolt, Gholdengo, etc. While Toxapex is also able to check a large number of threats, many of them have other reasonable counterplay unlike the threats that Ting-Lu answers. These traits make Ting-Lu much more centralizing than Toxapex in addition to being more effective at making progress while providing little of value to the tier. I believe that to deal with how centralizing PexLu is, we should ban Ting-Lu and let Toxapex (and Mortal Spin) be free. Toxapex has a lot of unique traits that can't really be replaced by any other mon and is much less passive and more abusable than Ting-Lu is. Ting-Lu has many Pokemon that can fill a similar role to it like Tyranitar, Iron Treads, Clodsire, Excadrill, etc, but none of them can do everything or are as effective at it like Ting-Lu is. This should help increase defensive options by getting rid of such a centralizing Pokemon that is basically the best at everything it does. Banning Ting-Lu also makes many Pokemon that struggle to break through it more viable, which should increase breaker diversity instead of it just being the same 6 or so mons every time.

Of course by banning Ting-Lu, many of the centralizing mons that are almost solely held back by it need to be banned too. Latios and Raging Bolt definitely need to go since they just aren't consistently checked by almost anything else in the tier, and while I personally believe Gholdengo should also go if Ting-Lu gets banned, I don't think it's as egregious as Latios and Raging Bolt are. Regardless of whether Ting-Lu goes or not, I think Walking Wake should also be banned because of how centralizing it is at its role, being incredily difficult to switch into without Toxapex. I personally don't think that Thundurus-Therian is banworthy right now, but I think that it would definitely get harder to answer without Ting-Lu, though not on the same level as Raging Bolt is. A full Surging Strikes ban is something I've been in support of for a while now; it's a big contributing factor to why several physical waters like Gyarados and Ogerpon-Wellspring were banned and a big contributing factor to why many other physical waters like Urshifu, Araquanid, and Basculegion are so hard to answer (without Toxapex of course). Surging Strikes has virtually no downside since it can ignore Beak Blast/other contact effects since most Pokemon that run it can usually afford to run Punching Glove and it ignores Intimidate since it always crits. Other physical water moves have downsides that make them more manageable to play against; Wave Crash's recoil puts the user in range of priority and faster mons more easily, Crabhammer doesn't always ignore Intimidate, is usually weaker, and can miss, and neither move can ignore contact effects with Punching Glove. Urshifu was the initial concern brought up among the council instead of Surging Strikes, but in my opinion Urshifu isn't (immediately at least) banworthy without Surging Strikes since Swords Dance sets rely so heavily on it to get past Beak Blast mons, Rocky Helmet, etc, and banning Surging Strikes is more beneficial for the meta.

IMO, banning both Pex and Lu at the same time is the worst alternative for the same reason as above, but now even worse. I think that it would throw the metagame into a state where way too many offensive threats would run rampant without teams being able to easily fit sufficient counterplay. it would probably lead to teams being forced into running HO or stall, which idt is very fun.

I very much agree with this. Toxapex and Ting-Lu together are too centralizing for the tier, but they both answer so many threats that banning both of them would likely make defensive cores too inconsistent and would make too many breakers too powerful, which like you said, would make HO (probably not stall honestly) the best team style. As I explained earlier, I think just banning Ting-Lu and not Toxapex would be the best course of action.

TLDR: I think the meta definitely needs change, best way would be banning Ting-Lu and everything else that needs to be banned with it gone + some other stuff that should be banned regardless