Format Discussion Metronome Battle

jeffdaboss said:
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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At the least the usage from the first week probably revolved around the dominance of Commander, though I would definitely believe that it is a pretty common pick in general even now. Even though the ideal Unaware Dondozo would not care about Opportunist, it still leaves a lasting impression when it activates visually and probably spread around quickly because of that. I do agree personally that it is in a very strong position right now and its impact is on another level, potentially going even beyond Neutralizing Gas in shutting down certain paths to victory by making them neutral and rather power creeping them out of the meta instead by making them a negative.

Unlike Magic Bounce only reflecting the same move debuffs targeted at it, Opportunist can copy boosts from abilities and items on top of moves, which are the major drivers of the bulky statboost archetypes, and can always trigger on both mons, so at best you can't get ahead of the enemy and at worst both your mons are making both of them stronger at the same time while weaker individually. Even Unaware has the tradeoff of debuffs being ignored while Opportunist is a pure positive. The enemy getting momentum from your own buffs gives them a large advantage when your goal is aiming to do enough damage or build up/debuff to that point to win, so Opportunist ends up with multiple win conditions that also take away from the enemy's own goals.

EDIT: Also the Opportunist can also run Clear Amulet so it can't lose its boosts to make both buffing and debuffing harder on the opponent.
 
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I've been using double Volcanion a lot lately to decent success. Volcanion has always been one of my favorite mons in metronome because of it's solid bulk and mixed offenses. There are definitely better mons to use than Volc, but I like him so I use him.

Volcanion @ Choice Specs
Ability: Tinted Lens
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Quiet Nature
- Metronome

Volcanion @ Clear Amulet
Ability: Power Spot
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Quiet Nature
- Metronome

I've experimented with many different abilities and it's really just up to personal preference. I like Specs Tinted Lens + Power Spot so I can potentially fire off unresisted nukes, and with Tera Fire if you roll a Fire move the opposing mon will most likely die or take a stupid amount of damage. The Tera type on Volcanion #2 doesn't matter much but Ghost is the best defensive option if you decide not to Tera the first one. Instead of running Power Spot you can also just run another Volc with Tinted Lens but like I said earlier, it's just personal preference.
 
Ello folks.

I'm trying out a new team of Galarian Corsola and Scream Tail

:Corsola-Galar: :Eviolite:
Ability: Opportunist
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Relaxed Nature
- Metronome

:Scream Tail: :Choice Band:
Ability: Good as Gold
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Impish Nature
- Metronome

I don't terastilize Corsola at all - so I just went with Fire. Opportunist is a way for it to deal meaningful damage and be even more annoying than before. Scream Tail - in spite of having 65 base attacking stats - is stupid with a Choice Band. The damage isn't too noticable, however, with Good as Gold in its arsenal, it can't be statused either. The dual Ghost combo thanks to the tera type of Scream Tail is good in general and doesn't need an explaination.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9metronomebattle-1755394519 <- funny game

https://pokepast.es/0c0bef92d2bc940d <- team paste

That's all I got for now. See you next time everyone

Edit: Scream Tail has near equal bulk to Eviolite Gorsola wtf
 
Markings 7 said:
Ello folks.

I'm trying out a new team of Galarian Corsola and Scream Tail

:Corsola-Galar: :Eviolite:
Ability: Opportunist
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Relaxed Nature
- Metronome

:Scream Tail: :Choice Band:
Ability: Good as Gold
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Impish Nature
- Metronome

I don't terastilize Corsola at all - so I just went with Fire. Opportunist is a way for it to deal meaningful damage and be even more annoying than before. Scream Tail - in spite of having 65 base attacking stats - is stupid with a Choice Band. The damage isn't too noticable, however, with Good as Gold in its arsenal, it can't be statused either. The dual Ghost combo thanks to the tera type of Scream Tail is good in general and doesn't need an explaination.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9metronomebattle-1755394519 <- funny game

https://pokepast.es/0c0bef92d2bc940d <- team paste

That's all I got for now. See you next time everyone

Edit: Scream Tail has near equal bulk to Eviolite Gorsola wtf
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252+ Atk Abomasnow Wood Hammer vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Eviolite Dusclops: 76-90 (26.7 - 31.6%) -- guaranteed 4HKO

252+ Atk Abomasnow Wood Hammer vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Eviolite Corsola-Galar: 90-106 (27.7 - 32.7%) -- guaranteed 4HKO

Dusclops outclasses Corsola-Galar as a bulky Eviolite user. Unless you just really like how it looks or you have some nickname joke that requires it, there’s no reason to use Corsola-Galar over Dusclops. The 5 extra SpA isn’t worth 15 less Atk, and less speed is generally considered preferable for a Pokémon this slow since it improves your chances of winning a Perish Song tiebreaker.

As for Scream Tail, I’m not really sure how it compares to Cresselia, which is better in every single stat except Speed. It’s very hard to determine the value of speed in Metronome Battle. Obviously moving first has the benefit of letting you end battles with attacks before your opponent can which is most important to highly offensive Pokemon that aim to end battles in just a few turns. It also lets you get defensive moves like Charm, Cosmic Power, Worry Seed, and Knock Off sooner, and gives you first crack at potentially making your opponent lose turns to sleep, paralysis, or even flinches. However, being slower also comes with its own advantages besides winning from Perish Song. It lets you take more of your actions while benefiting from buffs gained from your opponent via effects such as Opportunist, Weakness Policy, Magic Bounce, Pickpocket, and Defiant. Of course, your Scream Tail isn’t using any of those, but neither is it making much use of extra turns with those weak offenses. There’s also the extra Fairy STAB, but again Scream Tail doesn’t hit hard enough for that to really matter, and there are barely any Fairy moves to be rolled in Metronome anyway. At least as far as a Tera-using Good As Gold set goes, I consider it a toss-up between Cresselia and Scream Tail.

On that note, it’s worth mentioning that Scream Tail’s pre-Tera type is better than Cresselia’s in case you actually did want to Tera your other Pokémon, and for a Ghost type that you don’t usually intend to Terastallize, I would recommend either Dark, Poison, or Ground in no particular order. Dark gives you immunity to Prankster if you happen to encounter someone on the ladder that you know is using it, Poison does the same for Poison Point, Poison Touch, and Effect Spore which are collectively more common than Flame Body, and Ground can help you beat Hadron Engine + Galvanize.


Markings 7 said:
It could be cuz you reflect something, activate Defaint - and activate Opportunist (which no one likes)
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Reflecting things and activating Defiant would have been a valid concern in Gen 8, but nowadays nobody runs Defiant because Opportunist eats it alive, and in this particular team’s case activating a foe’s Defiant or bouncing a Swagger would activate the ally’s own Opportunist, not the opponent’s, so Magic Bounce definitely seems like the better ability here. That said, Good as Gold does protect against a few moves that Magic Bounce can’t, including Trick, Skill Swap, and importantly Perish Song.
 
Heya, been playing around with several teams on ladder so far and I just wanted to say that I support an Oppertunist suspect at this time. This is a metagame that, in my experience, revolves almost entirely around either inflicting poisoning (regular or severe) and burning the opponent, as well as getting the right boosts and summoning the moves that match to power through opponents. The ability to essentially take away your opponents advatage of having stat boosts is absurd, and in my opinion, should not be legal in the format.
 
I am for a suspect of opportunist. I have seen it played on all types of pokemon, at all elo in about half my games. It restricts creativity because not playing it is a clear disadvantage. It is so good that a lot of players don't bother pairing it with magic bounce but just play double opportunist. It removes the fun of this meta because you know what you are facing and just hope you don't get swept after you boost yourself. Worst thing I faced was opportunist with mirror herb. After one boost on my part I faced 2 overboosted pokemon. Please ban this
 
Happy new year! This marks the first full set of usage stats for Gen 9 Metronome Battles since the Commander ban, so we can see what's going on in the meta by large.

The battle count stacks up to a solid 85280, peaking with a new generation.

https://www.smogon.com/stats/2022-12/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2022-12/moveset/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt

1630 Top 10 + last positions from Gen 8's final November stats:
#1: Ting-Lu (new) :ting-lu:
#2: Glastrier (#10) :glastrier:
#3: Mega Venusaur (no change) :venusaur-mega:
#4: Iron Hands (new) :iron hands:
#5: Mega Heracross (#1) :heracross-mega:
#6: Mega Ampharos (#11) :ampharos-mega:
#7: Diancie (#130) :diancie:
#8: Mega Gengar (#9) :gengar-mega:
#9: Dusclops (#4) :dusclops:
#10: Hisuian Zoroark (#17)

Overall we're already seeing some pretty large shakeups compared to the end of Gen 8 as the shape of the meta starts to unfold with the typical statboost builds being upended by a new threat. Despite maintaining their top raw usages, Mega Heracross and Venusaur lose out on #1 and #2 to Ting-Lu and Glastrier's bulky stat spreads. Speaking of bulk, Iron Hands sneaks into 4th as another new Gen 9 contender, while Diancie goes from #130 to #7 to make the largest jump into the top 10 ever with an upsurge in both raw usage (3983) and success. Hisuian Zoroark also sneaks back into the top 10 with its sheer raw usage (3rd place and above 10k), though it doesn't have a minisprite for me to put here. Dark horses of the month include Mega Houndoom at #12 (435 uses), Chandelure at #27 (295), Mega Audino at #28 (878), Latias at #30 (175), and Shaymin at #32 (164), while the worst performing mon relative to usage is Sirfetch'd in #811 despite 1231 uses. At this point the ladder might not have the same development as Gen 8 so the 1630 weighting might be going off more sparse data than usual and the raw usage may be more representative of what you'll typically see, but the 1500 stats are also pretty much just arranged by raw usage so I just went with 1630 to be consistent and we'll see how it develops from here.

Over on the moveset side, taking a look at the raw usage (https://www.smogon.com/stats/2022-12/moveset/gen9metronomebattle-0.txt) reveals that Opportunist is among the top picks on almost every pokemon, and Mirror Herb is becoming a common item slot as well. This is a little less visible in the 1630 stats with the high rating weighting leading to things like Poison Touch being in the lead for Heracross, so I wanted to point this out because it's one of the most common abilities you will likely see in a battle. Ting-Lu is managing to stay high with Unaware usage and is one of the few mons that's doing so right now along with Mega Slowbro. Good as Gold also has its fair share of usage even competing with Magic Bounce. Most of the dark horses are just running Opportunist for success, though Shaymin and Audino have Ice Scales and mainly Mirror Herb/Weakness Policy respectively. For some other non-Opportunist picks, 1630 Glastrier has Magic Guard in the lead, Dusclops has Friend Guard and Orichalcum Pulse going on, and Hisuian Zoroark has Mummy. About Diancie, in 1630 usage it has mainly Magic Bounce/Good as Gold usage with its item slot scattered around Scope Lens/Covert Cloak/Bright Powder/Clear Amulet.

The viability ceilings (highest GXE of a player that used the pokemon) for this month are pretty low compared to past stats, which makes sense when having to start building up ladder rating mostly from scratch. Ting-Lu and Chandelure (pure double Specs Opportunist) take the lead at 76, followed by Iron Valiant, Dusclops, Type: Null, and Hisuian Arcanine at 73, and Glastrier, Diancie, Snorlax, and Mega Houndoom at 72.

EDIT: On a final note, I assume Diancie's rise compared to Gen 8 is helped by being able to tera into a less vulnerable type, but tera types aren't marked in these stats, so there's not much to say for now without actually fighting it and seeing what it does.
 
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I'm definitely in favour of an Opportunist suspect, it's just so potent into strategies not built specifically to counter it that the format becomes a rock paper scissors of Opportunist < Unaware < some other formerly top tier abils < Opportunist. While this isn't objectively a bad thing, a format with already-rigid teambuilding like Metronome becomes a lot less interesting when the meta is so centralized.

doipy hooves said:
The viability ceilings (highest GXE of a player that used the pokemon) for this month are pretty low compared to past stats, which makes sense when having to start building up ladder rating mostly from scratch. Ting-Lu and Chandelure (pure double Specs Opportunist) take the lead at 76, followed by Iron Valiant, Dusclops, Type: Null, and Hisuian Arcanine at 73, and Glastrier, Diancie, Snorlax, and Mega Houndoom at 72.
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I'm pretty sure the Ting-Lu/Chandelure is me, and yeah don't run dual Chandelures it's bad, I just didn't realize Trick House didn't accept Metronome matches at the time lmao. Ting-Lu's popping off though, and deservedly so, it's definitely the best Unaware + WP abuser right now. As a tip for playing double Unaware, you don't have to Tera immediately; It's often optimal to wait to Tera whichever gets its WP proc first, since that leaves you with more weaknesses that can activate it. You can also use it reactively to protect whichever of your mons is getting low first, or to stop a multi-turn move you become immune to via Tera. If you suspect your opponents are Unaware too, or you've gotten a wincon like Perish Song or Mortal Spin off, then you Tera early.
 
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Who the hell was running Mummy on Hisuian Zoroark?! I thought I was the only one using Mummy, and I ran it on Type: Null. Zoroark-Hisui is, like… the exact opposite of the kind of Pokémon you would want to run Mummy on. It has three immunities, so all those Normal, Fighting, and Ghost contact moves (did you know most Ghost attacks make contact? I didn’t) can’t activate Mummy and every other type does massive damage because it has the bulk of a wet noodle. I honestly have to wonder if the stats are even accurate there, or if Mummy’s effect to spread itself around is messing with them somehow.
 
Don't know if it is a timezone problem or what but I can't find any opponent with 1300 elo or more. I am trying to get to 1400 but facing low rated players makes it nearly impossible (-40 for a loss and +10 for a win). The fact I face a lot of opportunist pokemon doesn't help my defant mega-heracross/competitive mega-ampharos team either.
 
BanStallPokemon said:
Don't know if it is a timezone problem or what but I can't find any opponent with 1300 elo or more. I am trying to get to 1400 but facing low rated players makes it nearly impossible (-40 for a loss and +10 for a win). The fact I face a lot of opportunist pokemon doesn't help my defant mega-heracross/competitive mega-ampharos team either.
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Opportunist countermeasure is simple, use Opportunist mons you too.

Let's use Opportunist Mega Heracross and Opportunist Mega Ampharos.
 
I agree that something needs to be done with Opportunist. Not only are the majority of teams using it but I feel like the only real viable ways to deal with it are things like Unaware and Mummy, or your own Opportunist mon. With how common stat boosting moves are it's almost inevitable that Opportunist will activate in any given game. Originally I ran double Unaware Ting-Lu, and while I still think Unaware Ting is one of the best mons to use, it gets boring quicky when you're basically forced to use him or another Unaware/Mummy mon if you want to consistently beat it. If Opportunist wasn't so overcentralizing I wouldn't care so much but when one ability is so good that it basically outclasses most other abilities it removes variance and saps a lot of the fun.
 
I was close to just quickbanning, but we'll have basically the same thing but with a bigger sense of involvement: a suspect with the ability banned for the duration.
Opportunist is being suspected!
To participate in the suspect, use a new account with the prefix MNOME (e.g. mnome Ivy) and get a 67% GXE over 25 or more games. (This is the same prefix we used for the last retest, but the ladder has reset, so it's fine if you use the same account as last time.) You can start whenever you'd like, although it will be a few hours before the ban is live. Once your score is good, post a screenshot here to register to vote. Deadline is end of day January 22nd.
67% was picked by the very rigorous scientific criterion of "it's a bit higher than the 60% we had last time, since the suspect was ridiculously easy last time".
Once again, this is just for fun, with no TC credit.
 
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I accidentally played an extra game, oops. I think Opportunist should be banned.
 
Ivy said:
I was close to just quickbanning, but we'll have basically the same thing but with a bigger sense of involvement: a suspect with the ability banned for the duration.
Opportunist is being suspected!
To participate in the suspect, use a new account with the prefix MNOME (e.g. mnome Ivy) and get a 67% GXE over 25 or more games. (This is the same prefix we used for the last retest, but the ladder has reset, so it's fine if you use the same account as last time.) You can start whenever you'd like, although it will be a few hours before the ban is live. Once your score is good, post a screenshot here to register to vote. Deadline is end of day January 22nd.
67% was picked by the very rigorous scientific criterion of "it's a bit higher than the 60% we had last time, since the suspect was ridiculously easy last time".
Once again, this is just for fun, with no TC credit.
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I agree quickbanning is a bit much when Unaware will certainly be strong with or without Opportunist in the meta :smogduck:
 
Sorry to double post :psynervous:
Screenshot 2023-01-09 111351.png

I believe Opportunist should be banned.

I echo reasons given here by other's previously. Opportunist in the meta greatly limits the viable Abilities one can select from (at least to reach the goal of top of the ladder). I used double Unaware out of preference, and being probably the only other viable ability in an Opportunist meta.
 
Por those who managed to get their 67% GXE done. What team did you use? I tried some but I always start badly with like 3 losses witch greatly compromises the GXE I have after the 25 games (I am more at 55% GXE at that point) I am seriously considering damp+poison pokemon at this point. I lose to much games to poison and explosion/memento/misty explosion...
 
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2023-01-09 (2).png

I dont even want to admit how long it took me to get to 67% lmao, but im glad i stuck it out. A lot more games than I would of liked, especially compared to the others so far since there was a lot of disables, explosions and the luck of the draw, also worth mentioning the amount of other opportunist teams I ran into where it became a stacking war on the buffs
But I would like to cast my vote that opportunist should be banned. Its a very overwhelming ability that disregards previous strategies like weakness policy, intrepid sword or even simple users and considering some of the only options to not get steamrolled where either opportunist itself or unaware, I believe the removal will lead to a healthier metagame and team building :tyke::tyke:
 
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