approved by drampa's grandpa and Ransei
In this metagame, you can only use status moves. You can’t rely on any physical or special hard-hitters anymore, so you have to rely on less direct ways of dealing damage such as status ailments, hazards, perish song, and more! There’s all sorts of cool strategies here that wouldn’t be very good in standard battles so let your imagination run wild!
Rules:
Mechanic: Any move not classified as “Status” is banned
Clauses: Ubers Clauses,
Level 100 Clause: All Pokemon must be Level 100
Banned Abilities: Magic Guard, Magic Bounce, Regenerator
Banned Moves: Taunt, Nature Power, Heal Order, Life Dew, Moonlight, Morning Sun, Purify, Recover, Rest, Roost, Slack Off, Soft-Boiled, Strength Sap, Swallow, Synthesis, Wish, Ingrain, Metronome
Strategy:
Watchlist:
Playability:
Nowhere yet, but you can challenge someone to the gen 8 Ubers format with both players only using status moves. To find people who want to play, you can join the discord located here
Council:
fanyfan (TL)
Pokesartoolcay (TL)
Tip:
Type ‘status’ into a mon’s moveslot to see every status move they learn.
In this metagame, you can only use status moves. You can’t rely on any physical or special hard-hitters anymore, so you have to rely on less direct ways of dealing damage such as status ailments, hazards, perish song, and more! There’s all sorts of cool strategies here that wouldn’t be very good in standard battles so let your imagination run wild!
Rules:
Mechanic: Any move not classified as “Status” is banned
Clauses: Ubers Clauses,
Level 100 Clause: All Pokemon must be Level 100
Banned Abilities: Magic Guard, Magic Bounce, Regenerator
Banned Moves: Taunt, Nature Power, Heal Order, Life Dew, Moonlight, Morning Sun, Purify, Recover, Rest, Roost, Slack Off, Soft-Boiled, Strength Sap, Swallow, Synthesis, Wish, Ingrain, Metronome
Strategy:
- Status ailments, especially toxic, are a great way of wearing down opposing Pokémon relatively quickly. Because of this, Pokémon that can still learn toxic are very useful. On the flip side, poison- and steel-types that are immune to toxic are valuable to prevent your whole team from being worn down quite quickly. Will-O-Wisp can also be nice to wear down toxic-immune opponents, albeit quite a bit slower then toxic.
- Hazards are another way of quickly spreading passive damage. Stealth Rock in particular damages any Pokémon just for switching which is nice in a meta such as this. Spikes can also be stacked however, so non-immune Pokémon can potentially take a lot of damage just by switching in. This also makes roar and whirlwind nice moves to use to try and quickly rack up hazard damage. Also, Heavy-Duty Boots are very useful for hazard-weak Pokémon, making them a lot harder to KO.
- Perish Trapping can ko a mon in just 3 turns, which is the fastest way to ko a mon. This involves the move Perish song alongside a trapping move such as Mean Look or Block. The ways of countering it are: using a ghost-type, having baton pass or teleport, having a phazing move like Roar or Whirlwind, having the ability soundproof, or just equipping a Shed Shell. Perish Song can also be nice to force a mon to switch out and rack up hazard damage.
- Leech Seed also is a great move. It’s one of the few ways to restore your health and you can also damage your opponent at the same time. The main counterplay is to go out to a grass-type who is immune to Leech Seed or getting a fast substitute off. Generally, mons will want 1 HP IV in order to minimize Leech Seed recovery they give to the opponent, while having an odd HP number to potentially last an extra turn
- Substitute in general is nice for becoming temporarily toxic-immune and Leech Seed-immune. It doesn’t block phazing though, and if the mon using it doesn’t also have leftovers/black sludge or leech seed, taking a fourth of your hp off can be a risky endeavor. Since that kind of damage can be hard to get.
- Klutz + Assault Vest + Trick seems like a pretty nice strategy. If the opponent doesn’t have a Sticky Hold mon or a Klutz mon of their own, then they basically just lose a mon to this. However, the mons that can pull this off (Woobat, Swoobat, and Golurk) can’t do a ton once they do this. Golurk can set rocks, but none of them get status ailments, Phazing moves, perish song or anything that can cause direct damage to the opponent. This means that those mons can potentially be dead weight once they trick.
- Dynamaxing, of course, turns every move into Max Guard, so it’s not going to spiral out of control anytime soon. Dynamaxing basically serves as a one-time free protect to get extra chip damage on something that ‘s is being worn down through to
- There are other potential, more niche strategies like Ghost-Type curse or Nightmare that maybe have potential, but only tme will tell if they end up becoming consistent strategies.
- Hazards are another way of quickly spreading passive damage. Stealth Rock in particular damages any Pokémon just for switching which is nice in a meta such as this. Spikes can also be stacked however, so non-immune Pokémon can potentially take a lot of damage just by switching in. This also makes roar and whirlwind nice moves to use to try and quickly rack up hazard damage. Also, Heavy-Duty Boots are very useful for hazard-weak Pokémon, making them a lot harder to KO.
- Perish Trapping can ko a mon in just 3 turns, which is the fastest way to ko a mon. This involves the move Perish song alongside a trapping move such as Mean Look or Block. The ways of countering it are: using a ghost-type, having baton pass or teleport, having a phazing move like Roar or Whirlwind, having the ability soundproof, or just equipping a Shed Shell. Perish Song can also be nice to force a mon to switch out and rack up hazard damage.
- Leech Seed also is a great move. It’s one of the few ways to restore your health and you can also damage your opponent at the same time. The main counterplay is to go out to a grass-type who is immune to Leech Seed or getting a fast substitute off. Generally, mons will want 1 HP IV in order to minimize Leech Seed recovery they give to the opponent, while having an odd HP number to potentially last an extra turn
- Substitute in general is nice for becoming temporarily toxic-immune and Leech Seed-immune. It doesn’t block phazing though, and if the mon using it doesn’t also have leftovers/black sludge or leech seed, taking a fourth of your hp off can be a risky endeavor. Since that kind of damage can be hard to get.
- Klutz + Assault Vest + Trick seems like a pretty nice strategy. If the opponent doesn’t have a Sticky Hold mon or a Klutz mon of their own, then they basically just lose a mon to this. However, the mons that can pull this off (Woobat, Swoobat, and Golurk) can’t do a ton once they do this. Golurk can set rocks, but none of them get status ailments, Phazing moves, perish song or anything that can cause direct damage to the opponent. This means that those mons can potentially be dead weight once they trick.
- Dynamaxing, of course, turns every move into Max Guard, so it’s not going to spiral out of control anytime soon. Dynamaxing basically serves as a one-time free protect to get extra chip damage on something that ‘s is being worn down through to
- There are other potential, more niche strategies like Ghost-Type curse or Nightmare that maybe have potential, but only tme will tell if they end up becoming consistent strategies.
Watchlist:
Salazzle/Salandit:
Potentially too much for the tier for being able to toxic everything except immunity snorlax, being immune to both Toxic and Will-O-Wisp, and Heavy-Duty Boots taking away the other main way of dealing damage to them. They have the potential to become over-centralizing.
Shadow Tag/Arena Trap
On one hand, the Goth line, Wobb line, and Dugtrio line don’t have great moves to abuse their abilities, but on the other, they could potentially sub up and just use a lot of high pp moves to just stall out the opponent, which could be deemed uncompetitive if the opponent doesn’t have a chance to switch into a mon that has counterplay to it.
Wonder Skin
This ability causes all status moves to have 50% accuracy versus a mon with this ability, which of course is every move here that targets the opponent. This is potentially too luck based and doesn’t really add much.
Potentially too much for the tier for being able to toxic everything except immunity snorlax, being immune to both Toxic and Will-O-Wisp, and Heavy-Duty Boots taking away the other main way of dealing damage to them. They have the potential to become over-centralizing.
Shadow Tag/Arena Trap
On one hand, the Goth line, Wobb line, and Dugtrio line don’t have great moves to abuse their abilities, but on the other, they could potentially sub up and just use a lot of high pp moves to just stall out the opponent, which could be deemed uncompetitive if the opponent doesn’t have a chance to switch into a mon that has counterplay to it.
Wonder Skin
This ability causes all status moves to have 50% accuracy versus a mon with this ability, which of course is every move here that targets the opponent. This is potentially too luck based and doesn’t really add much.
Playability:
Nowhere yet, but you can challenge someone to the gen 8 Ubers format with both players only using status moves. To find people who want to play, you can join the discord located here
Council:
fanyfan (TL)
Pokesartoolcay (TL)
Tip:
Type ‘status’ into a mon’s moveslot to see every status move they learn.
Last edited:
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