Format Discussion Metronome Battle

Adding support to banning Tatsugiri x Dondozo (which FTR I think should be done via banning the ability Commander). The Unaware set is unbreakable 90% of the time making it an extremely consistent PP stalling strategy.
 
My experience with double Mirror Herb Unaware is that it's not "slightly favoured" into Dondozo, it's pretty massively favoured:

Wins:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9metronomebattle-1721940523-956rom2m0ecfgir4x9zyuql17igoa23pw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9metronomebattle-1721943307
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9metronomebattle-1721950834

Losses:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9metronomebattle-1721946882

Yes, this took only 4 games against Dondozo + Commander Tatsugiri to achieve! Arguably the key is to use only mons that hit hard on both sides in order to waste as few turns as possible - I had similar results last night with Enamorus-T instead of Venusaur-Mega.

Sadly, Mirror Herb + Weakness Policy Unaware is better in the open meta.

I tried a Choice Specs Beads of Ruin Enamorus-T + Choice Band Sword of Ruin Tera Ghost Landorus-T team in the earliest stages of the Gen 9 Metronome ladder - it performs quite well against everyone but Dondozo + Commander Tatsugiri due to having double mostly free Life Orbs on both mons at first that recedes to worse Intrepid Sword + Intrepid Sword parallel instead of receding to nothing (a la double Power Spot) when one of my mons is KOd.

Yes, I also support banning Commander. It invalidates far too many teams, and I feel like I'm stuck running double Unaware right now for the most consistent results. (Opportunist against my omniboost results in both my and the opposing mon no better off than before, while Unaware lets me take advantage of my own omniboost.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On another note, I like how Ghost Terastal enables several mons with well-rounded stats but at least one horrific weakness (e.g. the Tyranitar in my replays, Landorus-T, Salamence, Dragonite) and fortuitously-for-the-meta fails to work on Megas (e.g. Camerupt-Mega, Abomasnow-Mega).
 
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Mold Breaker Mirror Herb Dondozo does worse at beating Unaware Leppa Dondozo than Unaware Leppa. It doesn’t stop Unaware from ignoring your defensive boosts, so you’re still getting attacked x2 to x1. Meanwhile, you’re not ignoring defensive boosts yourself so you’re only attacking x3 to x2, or x1.5 to x1. The only anti-ability strat that can actually work in your favor is Dondozo with Wandering Spirit Protective Pads which can steal the opponent’s Unaware and not give it back, and then that loses to Unaware Ability Shield. Speaking of, I checked in-game and Ability Shield actually protects against Mold Breaker too.
 
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Lectrys said:
On another note, I like how Ghost Terastal enables several mons with well-rounded stats but at least one horrific weakness (e.g. the Tyranitar in my replays, Landorus-T, Salamence, Dragonite) and fortuitously-for-the-meta fails to work on Megas (e.g. Camerupt-Mega, Abomasnow-Mega).
Click to expand...
Megas can't Terastelize sadly, though maybe it's a good thing since Heracross would be even more powerful than it already is lol.
 
Well that was fun! Usage stats are gonna be hilarious.
Screenshot_20221127_155407.jpg


I started with the unaware+clear amulet and finished with unaware+leppa to beat opposing mirror matchups more consistently:
Screenshot_20221127_155452.jpg


So when we banning it? :zonger:
 
Normally I'd test this out more myself but a brief play session yesterday and the general oversaturation of this strategy indicate that this is pretty nuts. The fact that the other 'mon isn't a waste of space and actually gets to stall and maintain PP the entire time really pushes this over the edge. To keep the early meta hype going, I've submitted a PR to get Commander banned ASAP. pyuk
 
Ivy said:
Normally I'd test this out more myself but a brief play session yesterday and the general oversaturation of this strategy indicate that this is pretty nuts. The fact that the other 'mon isn't a waste of space and actually gets to stall and maintain PP the entire time really pushes this over the edge. To keep the early meta hype going, I've submitted a PR to get Commander banned ASAP. pyuk
Click to expand...

Okay, cool. Because my counterplay using Ring Target Inwards Out Chansey wasn't working very consistently :row:

An example: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9metronomebattle-1723404344-51mgh4hiwlypo30goc0om8enu13b904pw
 
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I didn't realize this at first, but there is actually a way that nerfed Protean and Libero can still be used to turn into a random non-Normal type, and that is to be pure Normal already so that Protean doesn't first activate on Metronome itself, or the Normal moves it calls so you can keep your opponent in suspense. This can give you a big STAB hit if you get lucky and can even become Steel-type in the most ideal scenario, though it didn't really matter much in the end. I tried this with Porygon2 and Type: Null as they have a valuable niche of Eviolite tanking regardless of type.
 
I've been playing metronome on and off for years and i finally made a smogon account. Anyways i think metro this gen is great but until tatsu+dozo get banned i feel like there's no reason not to run double unaware on everything. From my experience it's the closest thing to consistency in that matchup + it covers random opportunist teams as well. I've had success with double unaware skeledirge and double unaware ting lu (my fav atm) but any decently strong bulky mon w unaware works. In terms of tera i've been experimenting with different types but ghost and fairy are what i use most, tho i tera ghost turn 1 like 95% of the time. Tera poison is also useful to dodge sludge bomb poisons and stuff
 
Been having a lot of fun on the ladder this gen, abilities like opportunist are really cool but ive been having the most luck with unaware mons. The classic double Ting-Lu strat is probably my favourite so far, getting me to the highest i've been on the ladder.
The player 'Doowadoo' is actually my alt where i test ideas and combos before going on my main of Pharnapus and im very suprised to see it this high up as well lmao, probably speaks to the strongness of unaware in this meta
Other than that, screw mortal spin as a move, shit is busted with its guaranteed double poisoning. at least its not badly poison but still sucks big time when you have to just watch your mons slowly die, so much that ive even started using pecha berry every now and then to combat it
2022-12-01 (2).png
 
I've noticed some funny things in the Gen 9 Metronome meta compared to the Gen 8 one:
  • Due to Opportunist (being pretty darn common), Intrepid Sword, Dauntless Shield, Download, Defiant, and Competitive have gone way down (at least in my experience). Not so coincidentally, Intimidate has gone at least slightly up. The Ruin series of abilities are at least sometimes used as substitutes (I might be the most fond of them).
  • Weakness Policy is/feels too easily exploited by opposing Opportunist mons too often, to the point where I feel that Weakness Policy is viable only on Unaware mons and is risky on all others (e.g. support Venusaur-Mega sets such as Flower Veil, Power Spot, or Friend Guard).
  • As a result of Weakness Policy being exploited too often, I've been having a harder time making Fluffy work. Even double Weakness Policy Unaware had longer win streaks for me. (Granted, maybe I should go back to double Fluffy Hydreigon instead of trying to make Fluffy Skeledirge work.)
 
Happy December! Metronome Battle now has a new home on the right side of the formats menu. What else will the future of Metronome Battles bring? No one truly knows.

1670440483350.png

To end off the year of 2022, the final usage stats for Gen 8 and the first usage stats for Gen 9 are out, though both are incomplete in their own ways (Gen 8 lasted until November 25) so I won't really go into detail on those.

For Gen 8, 39935 games were played and for Gen 9, 19980 games were played in the span of a week.

https://www.smogon.com/stats/2022-11/gen8metronomebattle-1630.txt
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2022-11/moveset/gen8metronomebattle-1630.txt

1630 Top 10 + last month positions:
#1: Mega Heracross (#2) :heracross-mega:
#2: Mega Slowbro (#5) :slowbro-mega:
#3: Mega Venusaur (#1) :venusaur-mega:
#4: Dusclops (#8) :dusclops:
#5: Blissey (#3) :blissey:
#6: Mega Sableye (no change) :sableye-mega:
#7: Necturna (#4) :necturna:
#8: Mew (#12) :mew:
#9: Mega Gengar (no change) :gengar-mega:
#10: Glastrier (no change) :glastrier:

In the end, Mega Venusaur ended up dethroned and overtaken by both Heracross and Slowbro once again, with Slowbro making an upset with 1320 uses in between Heracross's 8328 and Venusaur's 6995. Technically Tatsugiri and Dondozo are here but they only got 40 uses altogether. There are quite a few dark horses with uses in the hundreds among the thousands, but I want to highlight Marowak-Alola in #15 with 458 uses.

The Gen 9 stats are notably tainted by Commander and I don't think it lasted long enough for the 1630 stats to really mean anything other than massively weighting more towards Dondozo and Tatsugiri, so I'll just show raw unweighted stats for now as a preview.

https://www.smogon.com/stats/2022-11/gen9metronomebattle-0.txt
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2022-11/moveset/gen9metronomebattle-0.txt

Raw top 10:
#1: Dondozo (7117) :dondozo:
#2: Tatsugiri (6432) :tatsugiri:
#3: Mega Heracross (3780) :heracross-mega:
#4: Mega Venusaur (3445) :venusaur-mega:
#5: Annihilape (1812) :annihilape:
#6: Blissey (1600) :blissey:
#7: Mega Gengar (1554) :gengar-mega:
#8: Mega Sableye (1544) :sableye-mega:
#9: Baxcalibur (1539) :baxcalibur:
#10: Iron Valiant (1537) :iron valiant:

Ting-Lu, Hisuian Zoroark, and Mega Ampharos make up the last of the 1000+ uses club. I feel like Annihilape's placing is partly due to alphabet bias. Dondozo and Tatsugiri have a viability ceiling of 70. For some reason Heracross has --- weight and 0 ceiling, and Opportunist is indeed managing to place as the highest ability on many mons offensive and defensive alike. It might be new toy syndrome but it goes to show just how splashable it is to give you an advantage, and it's even being stacked with Mirror Herb to double up on a one time boost, which isn't that bad as every statboost but speed alone will probably end up in your favour. It really goes up there with Magic Bounce as an ability taking advantage of the opponent's move and using that for momentum, and the fact that both enemies can copy boosts from one mon can quickly lead to a big snowball.

Since it's December, I think it's fitting to go over the new snow weather here for those who weren't aware of its changing in Gen 9.
Snow replaces Hail as the ice weather, affecting the same moves and abilities (Slush Rush, Snow Cloak) but boosts Ice type Defence by 1.5x instead of dealing chip damage. Snow is not callable by any Metronome moves, so the only way to see it is via Snow Warning set at the start of the battle or manually via mega evolving Abomasnow, so you can regenerate Ice Face once if you want. There's not much else to say about Snow, but its defence boost is at least an invisible form of support, which is a niche that can be appreciated in these times of opportunists taking hold of the meta with visible stat boost inflation, which ties into my motivation behind this new team I made that has nothing to do with snow.

way of the future (Ampharos-Mega) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Hadron Engine
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Quiet Nature
- Metronome

BIG MODE (Iron Hands) @ Choice Band
Ability: Galvanize
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Brave Nature
- Metronome

The idea and gameplan for this team is to stack various invisible multipliers to do a lot of damage and ideally defeat the Opportunists fast enough before they start opportuning. The way of the future is to set Electric Terrain and boost your own Special Attack with Hadron Engine. Technically this setter doesn't need to be Mega Ampharos or an Electric type, but it works well enough with stats to spare and the potential STAB is nice. On the other hand, Iron Hands notably has the highest HP (154) and Attack (140) of Electric-types and is canonically powered up by Electric Terrain, so it works well enough to take advantage of physical Normal moves with Galvanize. With the 2x Tera super STAB boost and Electric Terrain, Electric moves get a 2.6x damage multiplier and Normal moves get to 3.12x with Galvanize on top of that. It also retains its former Fighting STAB for what it's worth. In practice I was pretty impressed with its ability to take recoil damage and the HP made up for the lower Special Defence, though friendly fire can still be a problem. The low Special Attack is a notable weak point that a more balanced mon like a UFO might be better at, but it can still hit hard with Electric moves. 50 Speed is actually enough to outspeed some of the slower mons in the meta like Mega Ampharos itself. I think for future teams I will put dedicated tera mons in the first slot so it's harder to miss the button, but it hasn't affected me that much so far.

252+ Atk Choice Band Galvanize Tera-Electric Iron Hands Extreme Speed vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Mew in Electric Terrain: 374-442 (92.5 - 109.4%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO
252 SpA Tera-Electric Iron Hands Thunder vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Mew in Electric Terrain: 136-162 (33.6 - 40%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

This kind of Galvanize stacking team was possible in Gen 8 with Electric Surge, but Electric resistances were common with not much weaknesses to hit, while I preferred Pixilate to hit the more common Fighting and Dark types super effectively. Now the offensive power of Terastallization can synergize with the -ate abilities, and Electric is the only -ate type that has an extra boost so Electric's resistances will at least get hit harder than a neutral Normal hit now. Fairy Aura and Power Spot are similar powerups but are only as good as long as their user is alive, while both mons can stand on their own here. In practice you still need to roll strong enough moves to win, but now there are more moves you can hope for a kill with. Ground types are still an issue on offense and defense, but there are a lot of neutral targets to hit and Ghosts are more targetable for it. There are also a handful of ways that terrain can go down now, so there are a lot of times it fizzles out but it's pretty funny when it works. With Electric Terrain up this team is also immune to turn loss from both sleep and paralysis, which has pros and some cons.

There are many other possible options for these mons, but this is the team I settled on. The Electric Terrain setter can have Terrain Extender for more uptime, but I opted for Choice items for more raw power and self sufficiency, as without dynamax to stall out passive damage it can be harder to come back from a 1v2. You could also mega evolve Ampharos manually for Mold Breaker to have another ability after Electric Terrain goes down, though it doesn't really affect the Opportunist matchups. Quark Drive is another option to stack raw Attack instead of having more common STAB to take advantage of, and Booster Energy can be used to make it permanent while not losing the ability to use multi turn moves, or even just an Electric boosting item to go all in. Being able to stack boosts and Choice Band applying on all physical moves is part of the power of the set though. Also Electric Seed exists but would probably just make it worse off against Opportunists.

Here are some highlights:
the pachirisu struggle
Thunder and Explosion
Terrain Pulse
Focus Sash Reversal
Explosion
Tera Blast
Galvanize OHKOing Zoroarks
Big Volt Tackle on Dondozo
Heracross just killing me with Tectonic Rage and High Horsepower
vs. Quark Drives
big Opportunist
Breaking Avalugg
Strong burst comeback
Rising Voltage
relevant Tar Shot
recoil and friendly fire
Defog into terrain into terrain
Return of Terrain + Rising Voltage - the close ending

Overall I feel like Gen 9 is starting off pretty differently from Gen 8 with the new common threats of anyone becoming a ghost and/or a bulky statboost archetype, with offense and passive damage also being stronger without the safety net of dynamax, and I'm pretty interested in seeing how it will play out.
 
https://twitter.com/x/status/1602126343184912385
I don't think this is implemented yet, but I'd like to point out Pickup + Focus Sash Shedinja and Pickup + Jaboca/Rowap Berry in advance so that they don't take over the ladder for a week before they're banned. As far as less broken applications go, Pickup with Kee Berry or WP could be really funny except for the part where ladder is like 50% Opportunist and 20% Unaware rn.
 
Tapler said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1602126343184912385
I don't think this is implemented yet, but I'd like to point out Pickup + Focus Sash Shedinja and Pickup + Jaboca/Rowap Berry in advance so that they don't take over the ladder for a week before they're banned. As far as less broken applications go, Pickup with Kee Berry or WP could be really funny except for the part where ladder is like 50% Opportunist and 20% Unaware rn.
Click to expand...
It seems like Cud Chew keeps getting outclassed. At least Pickup Sash Shedinja has the common downside of being able to die if double targeted since the Sash isn't restored until the end of the turn. Pickup Jaboca/Rowap basically does become a more consistent version of the banned Harvest strategy with both mons being able to sustain it instead of only one being in play at a time, until you pick up something else to break the chain. If Pickup + Jaboca/Rowap is banned then I imagine you could still do the poor man's version by having a Pickup partner without an item to start, which is pretty similar to how it is now but would only end up on one mon instead of going back and forth. This is bringing me back to Symbiosis Harvest and other convoluted strategies of which Pickup once was.

As for stat buffs in this meta, Pickup Terrain Seeds could also give some consistent +5 defense increases in the same vein though not really doing much else with dedicating your whole team to it. I guess you could go Terrain Extender for +6 too.

EDIT: Personally I was fine with Harvest Rowap/Jaboca but again it sounds like Pickup does the most consistent job for it now anyway.
 
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Yeah I don’t think it’s worth using any kind of stat-boosting strat that can’t beat either Unaware or Opportunist. Using both your item and ability slots to slowly build up stat boosts that are getting ignored or copied is just not worth the creativity. In fact, I really think Opportunist deserves a ban. It has single-handedly taken over the entire stat-boosting niche of the meta’s ecosystem and left only scraps for teams that are willing to run things like Mummy. Any and all ideas for ways to build boosts get swallowed up by the Opportunist and Unaware black hole unless they can sacrifice slots for Mummy or Mold Breaker, and O&U can respond with Ability Shields. There are certainly other avenues to explore beyond stat boosting entirely like Plus/Minus, Hadron Engine, and Ruin stacking—except that actually identical Ruin abilities aren’t supposed to stack and PS has had that wrong this whole time. However, I don’t like the absolute death grip that Opportunist has over the right of any team to run Weakness Policy (or any other stat boosting besides Mirror Herb) without Unaware, and I think it needs to step aside and make some room for creativity.
 
I definitely agree that Opportunist is starting to get uncompetitive. It almost completely invalidates the effects of Weakness Policy, and heavily dissuades the usage of any stat-boosting strategy, such as Intrepid Sword, Download, Anger Shell?, and any terrain seeds. If we look at the usage stats from the first couple weeks of Gen 9, all of the top 10 most used Pokemon outside of Tatsugiri and Blissey have Opportunist in their top 2 most used abilities, with 21% usage on Dondozo, 33% usage on Mega-Heracross, 36% usage on Mega-Venusaur, 18% usage on Annihilape, 21% usage on Mega-Gengar, 22% usage on Mega-Sableye, 42%! usage on Baxcalibur, and 35% usage on Iron Valient. This is clearly demonstrative of the restrictiveness of Opportunist, as it is almost always the best and most used ability for any Pokemon. I am 100% in favor of either a suspect test or quickban.
 
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