Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion

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Just tested it myself. It seems that Cloak doesn't stop Ceaseless Edge/Stone Axe, which I thought was the case from my experience in BH. Probably for the exact reason you stated, same way Court Change and Tidy Up don't activate GaG.
Worth noting that this is (probably) Showdown's assumed interaction and not a tested one, but yeah it probably doesn't. Unfortunate, honestly, I think it would be an interesting form of counterplay against those moves

Edit: realizing you might have meant that you tested it in game via hacking in the hisuian forms in which case my fault for misunderstanding & thank you for taking the time to do that
 
Since we're discussing Covert Cloak, has anyone been using it on the ladder? Any thoughts to share? I find it pretty difficult to fit onto teams since its benefits are so limited--outside of the Salt Cure interaction, you get some use against Hatterene (Nuzzle + MF) and get to avoid random flinches and stat drops which come up rarely enough to begin with. With that said, there are two mons where I can see the upside being large enough to warrant using over anything else, particularly if you feel your team is otherwise weak to Garg (and really, what teams don't struggle with Garg these days...)

:Gholdengo: - The one you're most likely to encounter running Cloak at the moment. Instead of getting walled by Water Garganacl (unless you pack Tbolt I guess) and severely chipped by Salt Cure, you sit in front of it forever and set up with ease. Loss of Air Balloon/Choice item can be unfortunate but there is pretty significant upside if the opponent has Garg.

:Garganacl: - Funnily enough, Garg itself can consider Covert Cloak to win the mirror match-up. I think this is particularly applicable for Iron Defense Tera Water Gargs, since one large downside of Tera Water (and a reason I prefer Tera Fairy) is you end up taking 25% from opposing Salt Cures. With Covert Cloak you force opposing Gargs out and set up on them forever. Ultimately I feel the loss of Lefties is a little too tough to stomach, but if you really want to shut down opposing Gargs this could be the tech for you.

There are plenty of other mons where you could think about Covert Cloak--:Corviknight:, :Toxapex:, :Amoonguss:, :Great Tusk: to name a few but unless you know you'll be facing a Garg it's probably not worth giving up your item slot.
 
Since we're discussing Covert Cloak, has anyone been using it on the ladder? Any thoughts to share? I find it pretty difficult to fit onto teams since its benefits are so limited--outside of the Salt Cure interaction, you get some use against Hatterene (Nuzzle + MF) and get to avoid random flinches and stat drops which come up rarely enough to begin with. With that said, there are two mons where I can see the upside being large enough to warrant using over anything else, particularly if you feel your team is otherwise weak to Garg (and really, what teams don't struggle with Garg these days...)

:Gholdengo: - The one you're most likely to encounter running Cloak at the moment. Instead of getting walled by Water Garganacl (unless you pack Tbolt I guess) and severely chipped by Salt Cure, you sit in front of it forever and set up with ease. Loss of Air Balloon/Choice item can be unfortunate but there is pretty significant upside if the opponent has Garg.

:Garganacl: - Funnily enough, Garg itself can consider Covert Cloak to win the mirror match-up. I think this is particularly applicable for Iron Defense Tera Water Gargs, since one large downside of Tera Water (and a reason I prefer Tera Fairy) is you end up taking 25% from opposing Salt Cures. With Covert Cloak you force opposing Gargs out and set up on them forever. Ultimately I feel the loss of Lefties is a little too tough to stomach, but if you really want to shut down opposing Gargs this could be the tech for you.

There are plenty of other mons where you could think about Covert Cloak--:Corviknight:, :Toxapex:, :Amoonguss:, :Great Tusk: to name a few but unless you know you'll be facing a Garg it's probably not worth giving up your item slot.
+1 for covert cloak garg, aside from the mirror matchup it also appreciates the ability to avoid flinches (kingambit iron head, pao icicle crash), and stat drops like pao/roaring moon crunch in order to keep recovering and accumulating salt cure chip.

That being said, I personally have a lot more success with protect lefties garg than any idbp variants, since on the team structures I use being able to scout choiced mons is pretty needed to not get obliterated, and that extra 12% hp between recover and protect turns can flip a lot of matchups, including allowing even tera fairy (spdef) garg to break through a scarfed make it rain gholdengo if its at full, so it is a big opportunity cost
 

awyp

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Since we're discussing Covert Cloak, has anyone been using it on the ladder? Any thoughts to share? I find it pretty difficult to fit onto teams since its benefits are so limited--outside of the Salt Cure interaction, you get some use against Hatterene (Nuzzle + MF) and get to avoid random flinches and stat drops which come up rarely enough to begin with. With that said, there are two mons where I can see the upside being large enough to warrant using over anything else, particularly if you feel your team is otherwise weak to Garg (and really, what teams don't struggle with Garg these days...)

:Gholdengo: - The one you're most likely to encounter running Cloak at the moment. Instead of getting walled by Water Garganacl (unless you pack Tbolt I guess) and severely chipped by Salt Cure, you sit in front of it forever and set up with ease. Loss of Air Balloon/Choice item can be unfortunate but there is pretty significant upside if the opponent has Garg.

:Garganacl: - Funnily enough, Garg itself can consider Covert Cloak to win the mirror match-up. I think this is particularly applicable for Iron Defense Tera Water Gargs, since one large downside of Tera Water (and a reason I prefer Tera Fairy) is you end up taking 25% from opposing Salt Cures. With Covert Cloak you force opposing Gargs out and set up on them forever. Ultimately I feel the loss of Lefties is a little too tough to stomach, but if you really want to shut down opposing Gargs this could be the tech for you.

There are plenty of other mons where you could think about Covert Cloak--:Corviknight:, :Toxapex:, :Amoonguss:, :Great Tusk: to name a few but unless you know you'll be facing a Garg it's probably not worth giving up your item slot.
I've used it for a couple of games and I've seen it on ladder, I personally used it for Dondozo but I feel like 1/5 times it came to be clutch (With opposing Garganacls). The opponent proceeded to try to remove my item with Knock Off which I think is a downfall when resorting to Covert Cloak. I honestly think if Salt Cure didn't exist people wouldn't be using it based off on how much it's been brought up on this thread. Do I think it's competitive yes, but once Nacls usage drops or Tera gets banned completely I could seeing Covert Cloak being a niche item.
 
Covet Cloak right now is really only a strong answer to Garganacl but I feel like most teams with Garganacl have a knocker that lives a long time anyway (Tusk) which makes it extremely difficult. It's probably best to use on Gholdengo if you're ought to pull it off though. Since we're not 100% sure how it'll interact with the hisui mons (only through hacking in, but not sure if anyone actually reliably tested this) will probably dictate it's viability in the future.

i've had fun using covert cloak on dondozo to avoid salt cure damage and avoiding defense drops from chien-pao using crunch. same thing goes for blissey when using stall, as covert cloak makes blissey avoid flinching from chi-yu spamming dark pulse.

covert cloak on roaring moon with jaw lock and dragon dance is also something i've had success with, as you can trap pokemon that depend on the secondary effects of moves to halt setup-sweepers, such as garg
I think the problem with Covet Cloak can stem from this message though, even though it's a nice niche to have you are giving up an item spot for well, something niche.
 
Since we're discussing Covert Cloak, has anyone been using it on the ladder? Any thoughts to share? I find it pretty difficult to fit onto teams since its benefits are so limited--outside of the Salt Cure interaction, you get some use against Hatterene (Nuzzle + MF) and get to avoid random flinches and stat drops which come up rarely enough to begin with. With that said, there are two mons where I can see the upside being large enough to warrant using over anything else, particularly if you feel your team is otherwise weak to Garg (and really, what teams don't struggle with Garg these days...)

:Gholdengo: - The one you're most likely to encounter running Cloak at the moment. Instead of getting walled by Water Garganacl (unless you pack Tbolt I guess) and severely chipped by Salt Cure, you sit in front of it forever and set up with ease. Loss of Air Balloon/Choice item can be unfortunate but there is pretty significant upside if the opponent has Garg.

:Garganacl: - Funnily enough, Garg itself can consider Covert Cloak to win the mirror match-up. I think this is particularly applicable for Iron Defense Tera Water Gargs, since one large downside of Tera Water (and a reason I prefer Tera Fairy) is you end up taking 25% from opposing Salt Cures. With Covert Cloak you force opposing Gargs out and set up on them forever. Ultimately I feel the loss of Lefties is a little too tough to stomach, but if you really want to shut down opposing Gargs this could be the tech for you.

There are plenty of other mons where you could think about Covert Cloak--:Corviknight:, :Toxapex:, :Amoonguss:, :Great Tusk: to name a few but unless you know you'll be facing a Garg it's probably not worth giving up your item slot.
I was thinking of Covert Cloak Corviknight, but I think it runs into the issue of Corv just being major Knock Off bait in general. Corv is often used to check Pokemon such as Iron Treads, Great Tusks, and Meowscarada, all of which are prone to using Knock Off and getting rid of its item. Ironically, despite Gholdengo having a worse match-up against these guys, I don't think this is as big of a flaw for it because its not really being used to check these Pokemon at all the same way Corv is. Unlike Corv, it also threatens Garganacl hard w/ Make it Rain.

Another issue is that sometimes, Corviknight wants to opponent to proc their secondary effects due to Mirror Armor, which effectively fulfills Covert Cloaks purpose against many other Pokemon like Moonblast Iron Valiant, Shadow Ball Gholdengo, etc. on top of additional functionality like completely nullifying Parting Shot and Memento.
 

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Worth noting that this is (probably) Showdown's assumed interaction and not a tested one, but yeah it probably doesn't. Unfortunate, honestly, I think it would be an interesting form of counterplay against those moves

Edit: realizing you might have meant that you tested it in game via hacking in the hisuian forms in which case my fault for misunderstanding & thank you for taking the time to do that
You're more likely right with your first assumption, as I was only able to test on Showdown via Custom Battle. Can't say I'm sure whether it's been determined through the game's code or an assumed interaction though, but I'd guess the former.
 
:Great Tusk:

Great Tusk is the best mon in the meta by a wide margin in my opinion (aside from Chi-Yu because he should be banned), and I think nobody even uses his best set. I feel pretty confident that bulk up Great Tusk is the single best pokemon in OU right now


Great Tusk @ Leftovers
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Ground
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
IVs: 30 Spe
- Rapid Spin
- Bulk Up
- Earthquake
- Close Combat

The reason I think this is the best Tusk set is because he turns his ability as one of the best defensive mons in the tier into an offensive strength; almost everyone that you switch Tusk into to check defensively he can set up on, and once he gets a rapid spin and bulk up he's one of the best win conditions possible. He has an insane matchup against sun and hyper offense in general because he can just set up alongside other set up mons. He can set up on a lot of dragonites, roaring moons, annihilape, kingambit, ting lu and so much more. The only issue with this set is that you're missing knock off, but I think that only really matters in the matchup vs air balloon Gholdengo because otherwise eq + CC is always good enough coverage. I like CC > Body Press because the base power is a lot better and by the time you're pressing your fighting move anyways you're probably already bulk up boosted and running through the opposing team. The rapid spin speed boost really puts this guy way over the edge. I like tera ground because a strong earthquake lets you set up on and get past guys like annihilape and it can also let you soak up a hit that the opponent thinks will be super effective and then spin on them and just win the game. I guess you could run tera flying or whatever people run with Tusk but I definitely prefer ground to anything. The utility from this set I believe is just unmatched from anything we've seen in pokemon; one of the undoubted best defensive pokemon that automatically turns into a win condition on the regular
how is great tusk soo good.
i think it has to be due to the dearth of good bug/flying types since both its stabs are weak or immune to the above types.
 
how is great tusk soo good.
i think it has to be due to the dearth of good bug/flying types since both its stabs are weak or immune to the above types.
There's plenty of good flying types (sorry bug), Great Tusk has incredible role compression and is one of the few things that can *really* shit on Gholdengo and other very common glue mons
 
On the topic of Covert Cloak, I've tried it on :glimmora: Glimmora. Idea is that Salt Cure and Nuzzle are really weak moves without the added effect and you get a free TSpike from it. Additionally it can hit both Hat and Garg effectively with Sludge Bomb/Wave and Tera Energy Ball respectively. Obviously, it's not a suicide lead in this role/with this set so it's a bit team dependent. It helped give me a switch-in to those two mons though.
 
Don’t hit me, have stolen this set somewhere on this thread.
Roaring Moon @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Jaw Lock
- Earthquake
- Roost
Very bad as it loses to Unaware with Tera, but if the opponent has a Garg, you can trap it, Tera and PP stall it til death.
 
Don’t hit me, have stolen this set somewhere on this thread.
Roaring Moon @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Jaw Lock
- Earthquake
- Roost
Very bad as it loses to Unaware with Tera, but if the opponent has a Garg, you can trap it, Tera and PP stall it til death.
Oh yeah, this is the set I was messing around with a few days ago when I was just fed up of losing to Garganacl. I think I ran a bit less speed and additional bulk so you could set up more effectively on Torkoal and Amoonguss. I paired it with this wild Dondozo-trapper Lumineon meme since Dondozo hard counters it, but err… well, it turns out Lumineon is absolute garbage. Shocking, I know.
 
I honestly think Electric Terrain is heavely underexplored in this meta (because nobody likes pincurchin) and people are already strugglin to consistently counter Booster energy valiant, now with expert belt your basically god, or even specs, so that you can have scarf and specs, honeslty, valiant alone makes it worth it, but also having Threads as a spinner who gets boosted by it AND able to hold an item like AV, Boots or band is incredible
Once Tapu Koko gets released the Iron mons and terrain wars gonna go crazy

Ice Spinner haters gonna switch sides haha
 
There's plenty of good flying types (sorry bug), Great Tusk has incredible role compression and is one of the few things that can *really* shit on Gholdengo and other very common glue mons
when i say good bug and or flying i mean mons that arent dual stabbed into being neutral into one of its stabs i.e. volcarona. corviknight
 
Is Koko even gonna be in the game? I've searched everywhere and none of the Tapus are coming to SV when Home gets connected, at least from the articles I've read
Koko is a legendary, so it's nearly guaranteed to appear in the wormhole quest they have been doing in every remake/third version/DLC since ORAS. It's not in the first batch of transfers though so its return is still technically speculative.
 
Is Koko even gonna be in the game? I've searched everywhere and none of the Tapus are coming to SV when Home gets connected, at least from the articles I've read

The best chance for it would be some DLC in the future, but yeah for now it's safe to assume that Tapu Koko won't be in Scarlet & Violet, at least not with Home Release.
 

awyp

'Alexa play Ladyfingers by Herb Alpert'
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Is Koko even gonna be in the game? I've searched everywhere and none of the Tapus are coming to SV when Home gets connected, at least from the articles I've read
No it's not going to be added in the game sadly, you'll have to play Natdex. (There's no data for the Pokémon in the game, that's how we were able to confirm Paradox Suicune.)
 
It would definitely be a change from SwSh where the only legendaries missing were a small handful of Mythicals (Deoxys, Sinnoh ones, Meloetta, Hoopa) after DLC. The Tapus were heavily influential presences in VGC for a while, so it wouldn't surprise me if they ended up missing amongst all the other attempts at balance tweaks going on this gen.

In the meantime, I'm curious to see if Terrain teams with lesser/manual setters could get anywhere like Weather sometimes does, the biggest hurdle obviously being the weaker options for setters, but it does make me wonder if any of the Paradoxes might use ET for example as a pseudo boosting move in lieu of Booster Energy (or run it on a support teammate to allow potentially high-reward mons with the support like Expert Belt + Quark Valiant, or nuclear powered CB Great Tusk)
 

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Koko is a legendary, so it's nearly guaranteed to appear in the wormhole quest they have been doing in every remake/third version/DLC since ORAS. It's not in the first batch of transfers though so its return is still technically speculative.
No it's not going to be added in the game sadly, you'll have to play Natdex. (There's no data for the Pokémon in the game, that's how we were able to confirm Paradox Suicune.)
Honestly, no tapus also means no UB, so thats a fair trade, FUCK BLACEPHALON
 

awyp

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What do you think is a good spreader of para that pairs well with offensive chomp?

I would say maybe Scream Tail because of the combination of Wish and Thunder Wave while providing good speed and bulk.

Set would look something like this:

:scream tail:
Scream Tail @ Leftovers
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 192 Def / 64 Spe
Bold Nature
- Wish
- Protect
- Dazzling Gleam
- Thunder Wave
 
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