Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion

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I'm really enjoying playing Gargancl, such a great phys. defensive wall that's essentially unkillable with Tera Water. Salt Cure and Recover let him force out walls since toxic is not an essential on anything
 
I'd like to just shoutout the dev team and admin for not banning leppa berry during endless battle clause construction because it's now a mainstream relevant item for Pawmot. I think the tier will be in a pretty good spot once Cyclizar, Gholdengo, and Chi-Yu are gone.
 

awyp

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I'm really enjoying playing Gargancl, such a great phys. defensive wall that's essentially unkillable with Tera Water. Salt Cure and Recover let him force out walls since toxic is not an essential on anything
Exactly, the whole metagame is not revolving around Toxic at least in comparison to Gen 8 because so much Pokémon lost the ability to learn it. Gargnacl is a fantastic Pokémon and Salt Cure allows it to excel as a wall in OU by just chipping damage if the opponent decides to stay in, combine that with that fact that you're limited to Toxic on these Pokémon: https://www.smogon.com/dex/sv/moves/toxic/

It's a beast.
 
Exactly, the whole metagame is not revolving around Toxic at least in comparison to Gen 8 because so much Pokémon lost the ability to learn it. Gargnacl is a fantastic Pokémon and Salt Cure allows it to excel as a wall in OU by just chipping damage if the opponent decides to stay in, combine that with that fact that you're limited to Toxic on these Pokémon: https://www.smogon.com/dex/sv/moves/toxic/

It's a beast.
why does limited toxic distribution even matter? garganacl is immune to all status anyway, no?
 

awyp

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why does limited toxic distribution even matter? garganacl is immune to all status anyway, no?
I was referring to in general to conjunction with other walls on the team in terms of switching in / out the other walls you can leverage it's ability. Also it's ability is really important now with the non-existence of Aromatherapy and Heal Bell.
 
I'd like to just shoutout the dev team and admin for not banning leppa berry during endless battle clause construction because it's now a mainstream relevant item for Pawmot. I think the tier will be in a pretty good spot once Cyclizar, Gholdengo, and Chi-Yu are gone.
I think if you really want to do bans to make balance and stall more reasonable, you have to get rid of gholdengo and then maybe annihilape. Gholdengo makes it to where you must have a rapid spinner on your team or a magic bounce pokemon(which doesn't even provide a great solution). Basically gholdengo makes it fairly difficult to have answers to everything because you must have a rapid spinner.

Secondly after him is annihilape. Because of rage fist, eventually you just lose the game. I mean you could use something like wigglytuff to wall him, sort of. Basically if you can get something resistant to fighting with a normal type immunity to ghost that is tanky enough you can have a solution. But it fundamentally makes it to where after his rage fist is strong enough youll lose the game.

I was pretty anti ban but I think if people are unhappy with the metagame those are the two things that would fix a lot.
 
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I think if you really want to do bans to make balance and stall more reasonable, you have to get rid of gholdengo and then maybe annihilape. Gholdengo makes it to where you must have a rapid spinner on your team or a magic bounce pokemon(which doesn't even provide a great solution). Basically gholdengo makes it fairly difficult to have answers to everything because you must have a rapid spinner.

Secondly after him is annihilape. Because of rage fist, eventually you just lose the game. I mean you could use something like wigglytuff to wall him, sort of. Basically if you can get something resistant to fighting with a normal type immunity to ghost that is tanky enough you can have a solution. But it fundamentally makes it to where after his rage fist is strong enough youll lose the game.
I'd say that for stall and balance specifically Curse Dondozo usually is a pretty good answer if playing carefully
 

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I'm always scared the council will ban all the offensive options and the meta will become a stall fest. speaking from a completely casual point of view. I'm more scared of breaking a stall team on the ladder then facing a super strong power house like iron bundle
If you’re scared of stall with no reliable hazard removal, no Heal Bell, and no Magic Guard, then perhaps you should reassess a bit of how you approach it.

This metagame is getting less and less conducive to stall. Hell, Palafin strongarmed stall into temporary relevancy by forcing a really fat Water or Amoonguss on many teams, but now with it gone and Heal Bell legality changed and Gholdengo Spikes taking over even more, it’s really hard to be consistent with any Stall.

Also, Bundle was the same way: Blissey usage skyrocketed because of it, making Stall more common. Banning a few offensive Pokemon doesn’t make stall better — it just made the metagame more playable as a whole and allowed other offensive options to breathe.
 
The no skill Ostrich may warrant thorough tiering examination. It’s starting to get out of hand
very annoying Pokémon that is likely to get more attention if the most prominent threats leave OU.

the only thing holding it back is how many offensive things there are that reduce it’s space and the predictability of it, you know exactly when it needs to Tera if it wants to shine. It’s definitely one of the best Tera type abusers right now!!

Every team needs priority or phazing to reactively deal with it, since clearly a dark type isn’t enough. Proactively you’re fortunate to have many options that don’t even allow it to setup.

it’s also pushing teams more and more into winning by applying pressure being the only method to get reliable results. You can’t get reliable results with middle tempo or slow tempo, only high pressure fast tempo.

it’s creating bad situations, like you don’t want your Tyranitar to actually ko chi yu. Because espartha gets a free calm mind on you whilst you desperately try to heavy slam it, only to find out it is a fighting type and it not fairy, and it has lots of defensive EVs, but you couldn’t go too offensive on your EVs because you’re trying to avoid the 3h ko from hit and run style Chi yu overheat and were forced to use heavy duty boots over leftovers or choice band thanks to Gholdengo + hazards. It then doubly sucks because you have so much offensive pressure from the opponent, you didn’t even get the chance to get rocks up, so now you’ve lost your Tyranitar, and the scarf chi yu is still on 65%.

It’s turning into a metagame of requiring min 2x priority options, a phaser, a gholdengo, at least one out-of-place defensive Pokémon like dodonzo or whatever, preferably taunt from at least 90 base speed somewhere, and at least 3 Pokémon with what was once extremely high base speeds. Weird meta right now.
 
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Re:Espathra and the metagame in general.

I think the crux of Tera discussion is ultimately going to come down how many things Tera breaks. Espathra without Tera would probably end up a good not great option on screens or similar builds, but it's ability to be both a fairy or fighting type, gain stab moves with those types, and them often having seperate counters really makes it hard to say it's a healthy mon for the metagame. This fundamentally applies to so many pokemon (moon, kingambit, volcarona, dragonite, chien pao, gholdengo, annihilape, etc.) I think the it's hard to imagine healthy metagame where Tera and a bunch of powerful pokemon are coexisting. I think this is an instance of cognitive dissonance from the adamantly pro Tera, bans are inherently anti-fun, pro stall and alienating casuals crowd. Would it really be a more fun and engaging experience if a large portion of the (often most cool and fun) pokemon are banned to ubers in the already tiny dex we have at the moment? I don't think Tera is really close to the level of absurdity that dynamax was, and there's definitely skill involved in playing with the mechanic, but I think having more diverse options to use in a metagame is better than the eventuality of having huge swaths of mons getting banned just save a generational gimmick.
 
Re:Espathra and the metagame in general.

I think the crux of Tera discussion is ultimately going to come down how many things Tera breaks. Espathra without Tera would probably end up a good not great option on screens or similar builds, but it's ability to be both a fairy or fighting type, gain stab moves with those types, and them often having seperate counters really makes it hard to say it's a healthy mon for the metagame. This fundamentally applies to so many pokemon (moon, kingambit, volcarona, dragonite, chien pao, gholdengo, annihilape, etc.) I think the it's hard to imagine healthy metagame where Tera and a bunch of powerful pokemon are coexisting. I think this is an instance of cognitive dissonance from the adamantly pro Tera, bans are inherently anti-fun, pro stall and alienating casuals crowd. Would it really be a more fun and engaging experience if a large portion of the (often most cool and fun) pokemon are banned to ubers in the already tiny dex we have at the moment? I don't think Tera is really close to the level of absurdity that dynamax was, and there's definitely skill involved in playing with the mechanic, but I think having more diverse options to use in a metagame is better than the eventuality of having huge swaths of mons getting banned just save a generational gimmick.
a tera meta would possibly lead to the best threats, like espartha, dragonite, etc, eventually being banned in an attempt to keep the mechanic intact

a non Tera meta would possibly lead to a less creative metagame, however with less banned Pokémon overall making it more diverse overall.

curious to see why not just discuss a situation where the metas co-exist.
 
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Re:Espathra and the metagame in general.

I think the crux of Tera discussion is ultimately going to come down how many things Tera breaks. Espathra without Tera would probably end up a good not great option on screens or similar builds, but it's ability to be both a fairy or fighting type, gain stab moves with those types, and them often having seperate counters really makes it hard to say it's a healthy mon for the metagame. This fundamentally applies to so many pokemon (moon, kingambit, volcarona, dragonite, chien pao, gholdengo, annihilape, etc.) I think the it's hard to imagine healthy metagame where Tera and a bunch of powerful pokemon are coexisting. I think this is an instance of cognitive dissonance from the adamantly pro Tera, bans are inherently anti-fun, pro stall and alienating casuals crowd. Would it really be a more fun and engaging experience if a large portion of the (often most cool and fun) pokemon are banned to ubers in the already tiny dex we have at the moment? I don't think Tera is really close to the level of absurdity that dynamax was, and there's definitely skill involved in playing with the mechanic, but I think having more diverse options to use in a metagame is better than the eventuality of having huge swaths of mons getting banned just save a generational gimmick.
Imo, the thing that makes it even more annoying to deal with is dealing with an espathra + grimm/cyclizar team. It's much easier to pressure it when it's not behind screens or a sub (or both <:( ), even after it teras. Teams without those I can wriggle around with, but it's still really annoying. Not saying this as a defense of tera, but as more that I think espathra loves support and if it gets it it's almost impossible to stop it (ig skeledirge helps? lol)

Also how in the world do u guys deal w garganacl. Best walls get beaten down by salt cure, takes ages to die, recover is hell. Am I just bad and cringe for never knowing how to deal w this thing
 
a tera meta would possibly lead to the best threats, like espartha, dragonite, etc, eventually being banned in a bid to keep the mechanic intact

a non Tera meta would possibly lead to a less creative metagame, however with less banned Pokémon overall making it more diverse overall.

curious to see why not just discuss a situation where the metas co-exist.
As I said in my post, it's hard imagine them being to able to co-exist. Nevermind the "if/when" mind games when it comes to tera, or even that many pokemon have multiple viable tera typses, but so many of these pokemon we have in this insanely power crept generation are fundamentally balanced by their type weaknesses. Kingambit, Roaring Moon, Volcarona, Dragonite, Chien Pao are all elite tera users that have 4x weaknesses, nevermind the ones like Espathra and Annihilape that would be infinitely healthier without being able to change their types that only have 2x weaknesses.
 
how is ttar OU? I never see him on the ladder. how is ttar used in this meta? what sets do people use and what utility does it offer?
 
Wouldn't be sad to see the bird go. I've struggled more with that thing recently than Annihilape, Chi-Yu or whatever else.

I don't think it's just Tera pushing it over the edge either. Speed Boost and Stored Power on the same mon is always gonna be an issue, because Substitute can pretty much guarantee that it'll at least get to fire off 140bp Stored Powers. You cannot afford to use that to heal up either because if you switch to anything too passive it can Calm Minds. It feels very uninteractice to be honest.
 
Wouldn't be sad to see the bird go. I've struggled more with that thing recently than Annihilape, Chi-Yu or whatever else.

I don't think it's just Tera pushing it over the edge either. Speed Boost and Stored Power on the same mon is always gonna be an issue, because Substitute can pretty much guarantee that it'll at least get to fire off 140bp Stored Powers. You cannot afford to use that to heal up either because if you switch to anything too passive it can Calm Minds. It feels very uninteractice to be honest.
Between Chi Yu, Kingambit, Ting Lu, I think it would have a really hard time without being able to acquire fighting coverage or fairy stab + sucker punch resistance through tera. Not that it would be bad at all, but it's really tera that creates difficult counter play.
 

awyp

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Best chi-Yu answer right now, and can In a pinch, force a Non air baloon gholdengo to retreat, also Thunder wave shits on so many things rn
This true, as long as Chi-Yu doesn’t have Fighting Tera…which then becomes a much different story with Tera Blast.
 
I am actually really enjoying terra, and picking weird times to screw with people on the ladder. Haven't really looked hard at a meta since the mess that was gen V, but I am optimistic for this one.

The Ruination legends seem really strong, and I find them personally annoying, but nothing seems super obnoxious right now. AT least at low ladder.

Edit: Actually, I lied. Shed tail can go away forever.
 
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