Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

warriors up 3-1 in the 2016 NBA finals.

Why would you remind me of that!?

With that said... Tera was not banned and Tera Preview was the most-voted "Action". This means Tera is 100% staying. (Now this is a supermajority, take notes Anti-Tera crew)

We even got some new, delicious salty pasta.

Lemme drop a spoiler of what OU will be like in the following mons when the likes of Cyclizar get taken out of the paint.

 

[Komodo_Drogo]

I think a major part of it is people still considering the meta comparatively new, which is a valid opinion, and people actually liking the concept. And that there is an element of "get good" involved. Along with those there's still obviously broken parts of the meta game that still need to be dealt with, most pressing the fish, shed tail/cyclizar, and the ape.

 

[DaemonChop]

A week ago it was "we need to lower the GXE so that mediocre players can save Tera!" And now its "We need to lower the GXE so that mediocre players could have banned Tera!", make up ur mind OU forum lol

Also, the GXE and its oppressively high bar was apparently not that oppressively high considering this was the largest OU suspect ever and by like a wide margin. The votes came in and the chips landed where they did and you can be unhappy about how it turned out all day but it wasn't cheating and it wasn't rushed and it wasn't a fluke.

 

[SapphSabre777]

I do think that this decision is probably the most historic in Smogon history. It has been very cool to watch as a spectator to the process.

I agree with your wider points about the discourse throughout this suspect process and that the above would be the best course of action. However, considering the historic and ground-breaking nature of this decision, it is natural for people to discuss it for a while. We are just monkeys that learned to play Pokemon on computers after all. So let's agree to not get too worked up at people taking the time to process this in... a variety of healthy and unhealthy ways.

Just my humble opinion.

It's notsomuch the discussion that bugs me. I think everyone should be allowed to discuss the results and the like of this suspect...in a productive way. There's a difference between processing something and reflecting on the changes at hand compared to the more egregious stuff that has shown up much more than to my tastes in this forum. Ironically, the ad hominem and unhealthy banter (not the healthy banter) is doing more damage than the suspect results.

 

[SpritePony]

It's really not that high a bar for what the criteria is designed to do, prove that you have the chops to know what you are talking about and voting on. Informed decision making is pretty critical to the health of smogon's tiering design. I'm saying this as a shit player myself, I don't make reqs, it's that simple.

A week ago it was "we need to lower the GXE so that mediocre players can save Tera!" And now its "We need to lower the GXE so that mediocre players could have banned Tera!", make up ur mind OU forum lol

Also, the GXE and its oppressively high bar was apparently not that oppressively high considering this was the largest OU suspect ever and by like a wide margin. The votes came in and the chips landed where they did and you can be unhappy about how it turned out all day but it wasn't cheating and it wasn't rushed and it wasn't a fluke.

Yeah, I'm aware of this. 80% GXE feels really high to me, and I don't play OU that much since I don't enjoy the tier for what it is. That's why I never bothered to get reqs in the first place. Even though the outcome of this suspect test sends ripples throughout the rest of the SV metagames, I just did not feel the want to deal with the OU ladder.

 

[ApertureB]

IMO tera is a lesser threat in how unenjoyable gen 9 OU is. I made melmetal suspect reqs right before gen 9 released, but I just quit the game after the first couple of weeks in gen 9, because like many others in this thread, I absolutely hated it.


I only started playing in gen 7 ou right before zygarde was banned, and gen 8 had some pretty rough patches to play, but some of the mons introduced this gen are just awful to play with or against.


Abilities like purifying salt and good as gold are just so infuriating to put on already decent pokemon, and it just feels cheap. Against ID garg you must preserve a choice trick or some ludicrously strong attacker and hope they don't have the right tera to counter that, because you cant even status it and salt cure is a crazy strong move. Not to mention gholdengo blocking an entire category of moves and blocking all methods of harzad removal other than tidy up.


Chi yu and lesser so chien pao are basically unprecedented wallbreakers to be a part of an OU metagame, rage fist is an extremely dumb move, I could go on. The point is I think if the council and player base makes the right bans, we can hopefully evaluate tera in a less toxic context and then make a proper decision then.


Completely forgot about stupid shed tail, that move is so dumb on a fast regen mon like cyclizar

On a similar note all of my friends who play pokemon normally have quit until bans and stuff happens. I don't think we have ever played through a meta where offense is so ridiculous busted, randomness is around every corner, and obviously broken stuff has been in for far too long due to another suspect. Played a week after Bundle and fin were banned and we all were like, this is stupid.

Cheers to next week bringing in major changes.

 

[Alternator]

Is ape really that big of an issue ? I play such aggressive teams he hasn’t really been a problem for me but I know enough to say I have a positive match up against him.

I’m assuming bulkier teams are having a hard time managing the game state in a way he’s not picking up cheap boost coming in on weak attacks ?

Yes and no.

The most common set is Bulk Up/Drain Punch/Rage Fist/Taunt, which HO doesn't have major problems with - he's got good bulk, but if you don't give him a free turn to get off the BU, it's nothing that strong attackers can't handle. 100 BP Rage Fist is strong, but not overbearing, so 2HKO and be fine.

He does horrible things to most defensive mons, however. You simply cannot chip him down with repeated weak attacks; Rage Fist breaks even Dodonzo if you power it up enough. If you go Tera Normal for the immunity, you're turning Drain Punch into a very effective healing move. Annihilape isn't fast, but he's speedier than most defensive mons, so Taunt can protect from status. That's not to say that a defensive team has no options; Talonflame threatens the burn with both a faster WoW and from Flame Body, and adding one offensive wincon to a stall team is nothing new.

There's also a ChestoRest set that laughs at your attempt to status it, flipping the table on defensive answers.

He's a bit constraining on team building - maybe too much so, given the restricted dex.

 

[YNM]

I'm not going to pay you... But I'm curious. What design could you think of that
- Is applicable to every Pokemon
- Is visually distinct enough to be instantly recognisable by anyone, colourblind or not.
- Looks aesthetically interesting.

There might well be a better solution, but I personally can't think of one.

Right off the bat I would make a sort of crystal skin every time a mon terastallizes, kinda like rainbow cards in Pokemon TCG but instead of the rainbow colours imagine a crystal-like effect. And for each typing I would make a crystal of a different colour, plus some cool animation during the transformation when the crystal shatters to reveal the new skin (like a burst of flames coming off the mon for Fire types, leaves blowing off for Grass types etc). But keep in mind, I'm just an average dude and the Pokémon Company certainly doesn't lack the money to hire a couple of people with a creative brain.

 

[Srn]

Hello OU,

I am sad.
Moving on,

Traditionally, to quote finch "the necessary burden of proof for banning a move would be it directly causing multiple Pokemon to be banworthy." This was true in the case of abilities like arena trap and shadow tag, where we were able to decide that gothitelle was not the problem, shadow tag was. Because shadow tag was causing multiple pokemon to be broken, it was specifically shadow tag that was banned, not goth or wobb or whatever. We even banned arena trap over dugtrio because pokemon like trapinch and diglett were deemed broken enough to get hit too.

But now that we've decided to keep tera, we have to contend with several pokemon that are fine on their own but incredibly strong and top tier only thanks to tera. Espathra is mid, but tera allows it to break dark types and flex stored power+speed boost. Annihilape is probably broken without tera, but unquestionably so with it as it can shift weaknesses and thus counterplay at a whim. Garganacl without tera is stuck with pure rock typing, but with tera it can shift weaknesses/counterplay and run like 6+ viable types, hope u have an answer. Chien pao without tera lacks the power to push through walls like dondozo, but tera allows to to 2hko dozo with hazards along with many other damage benchmarks. Dragonite without tera is just a dnite as usual, but tera allows STAB espeed and leverages multiscale much more effectively. Kingambit without tera is stuck with an easy to exploit 4x fighting weakness, but tera leverages its great bulk with diff. typings and is much more threatening etc etc. I can go on and on.

If any of the pokemon that I mentioned get suspected, the argument could legitimately be made that tera is what's breaking the mon, and that it's fine without it. So when a group of mons have 1 broken thing in common and they're all fine without it, why are we suspecting the mon and not the broken thing? Hate to bring up this tired old example, but are we really gonna ban regieleki and not tera? Are we gonna pretend that tera ice regieleki will be fine? Are we gonna say "actually regieleki would be broken either way and tera has nothing to do with it"? We face some strange new tiering challenges now that we've decided to keep tera, by a landslide.

Of course, this all rests on the assumption that you think any of espathra/garg/pao/gambit/dnite are even remotely problematic + tera is the reason why. If you don't, then you can ignore everything I just said as baseless speculation and move on.

I have no complaints with the voting structure of this suspect and I'm happy so many people qualified for reqs. Looking through the votes though, I'm pretty shocked at how unpopular Action+Outright ban was. The survey results showed 29% of the qualified playerbase wanted a full ban but boy I did not see 3/10 voters vote for a full ban. I would've considered any action a win and a step in the right direction, but hey, enough whining.
We'll get another shot.

 

[Vall]

Right off the bat I would make a sort of crystal skin every time a mon terastallizes, kinda like rainbow cards in Pokemon TCG but instead of the rainbow colours imagine a crystal-like effect. And for each typing I would make a crystal of a different colour, plus some cool animation during the transformation when the crystal shatters to reveal the new skin (like a burst of flames coming off the mon for Fire types, leaves blowing off for Grass types etc). But keep in mind, I'm just an average dude and the Pokémon Company certainly doesn't lack the money to hire a couple of people with a creative brain.

They do already have a crystal effect tho?
The effect upon tera-ing would be cool though, but it still has the problem of not being identifiable for the rest of the match.

 

[ReadTheMango]

Yeah, I'm aware of this. 80% GXE feels really high to me, and I don't play OU that much since I don't enjoy the tier for what it is. That's why I never bothered to get reqs in the first place. Even though the outcome of this suspect test sends ripples throughout the rest of the SV metagames, I just did not feel the want to deal with the OU ladder.

I see, I can understand the sentiment when I think about the ripples into other SV metagames if you don't enjoy OU. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[adenS]

I think because the results were so close, there's probably gonna be another suspect in the future, so now I'm dedicated to grinding to get better so I can vote on that one.

This is a fine result, I said before that I thought the best options were either a complete ban or no restrictions, with further action against some of the more egregious Tera abusers. It's hard for me to pick which one of these I prefer, because on one hand, I hate Cyclizar and Espathra, but on the other, I really love Annihilape.

 

[Vrin]

Figured I'd mention this since people are discussing the 80% threshold:

For OU room, I ran a quick manual count of how the users who took >50 games to get reqs voted. I tallied the following results:

• Action: 32
• No action: 30
• No vote: 2

In other words, about 46~50% wanted no action. If these people were excluded from the sample, action would've been taken, as (205-32)/(351-64) exceeds 60%.

I stress not to read into this too much, since there are plenty of very strong players who took more than 50 games to get reqs. Still, I think it's fair to say that raising the GXE threshold would probably have increased the chances of action being taken, not decreased it.

(Count is potentially subject to human error, I did my best but may have made a minor mistake.)

That said, at the end of the day, everything about the suspect process is arbitrary — the GXE number, the 60% threshold, the minimum game count, the length of the laddering period, etc. Please don't take this as some indictment of the number chosen or whatever. What matters is that we stick to the process set out, which happened in this case.

 

[Mewthree69]

I hope we get a temporary team preview tera ladder sometime in the future. It would be nice to see how it would have affected the game feel if it went through

 

[Negative Charge]

What a glorious outcome. I gotta say, I was expecting some sort of limitation. Excited to have this mechanic for the next several years.

 

[YNM]

They do already have a crystal effect tho?
The effect upon tera-ing would be cool though, but it still has the problem of not being identifiable for the rest of the match.

Yeah but they also have a stupid hat on lol, unless you actually like it, in which case good for you. And I don't think you'd have much trouble remembering the typings considering that only one mon per team can Tera during a match.

 

[Dialzza]

Is ape really that big of an issue ? I play such aggressive teams he hasn’t really been a problem for me but I know enough to say I have a positive match up against him.

I’m assuming bulkier teams are having a hard time managing the game state in a way he’s not picking up cheap boost coming in on weak attacks ?

I ran a triple unaware team + tusk/pawmot/banded dnite for suspects and ape 6-0'd me if it had taunt. Team definitely wasn't perfect but given that it functioned against 99% of OU to the point where I made reqs, but was 6-0'd by taunt ape, I feel the mon warps the game and fishes matchups way too hard just by existing. It and Espathra feel a lot like Baton Pass in previous gens, which were far from guaranteed wins but just auto-won some matchups against otherwise viable teams.

 

[swampmist1142]

But now that we've decided to keep tera, we have to contend with several pokemon that are fine on their own but incredibly strong and top tier only thanks to tera. Espathra is mid, but tera allows it to break dark types and flex stored power+speed boost. Annihilape is probably broken without tera, but unquestionably so with it as it can shift weaknesses and thus counterplay at a whim. Garganacl without tera is stuck with pure rock typing, but with tera it can shift weaknesses/counterplay and run like 6+ viable types, hope u have an answer. Chien pao without tera lacks the power to push through walls like dondozo, but tera allows to to 2hko dozo with hazards along with many other damage benchmarks. Dragonite without tera is just a dnite as usual, but tera allows STAB espeed and leverages multiscale much more effectively. Kingambit without tera is stuck with an easy to exploit 4x fighting weakness, but tera leverages its great bulk with diff. typings and is much more threatening etc etc. I can go on and on.

This came up a bunch in the suspect thread; "how many mons need to be banned purely for tera for the mechanic to be worth banning"? ITs an answer that different people, especially across the no action vs full ban divide, disagreed on.

What I will say is, based on current discussion and meta development, I really don't see Dnite, Kingambit, Dozo, ect from being banned. I also highly doubt espathra will be, but I still contend that's because shed tail is what breaks the psybird, not tera (we did the calcs in that thread; the defensive set really doesn't ohko anything with tera fairy gleam that it doesn't without tera, and sub is better for ensuring 2hkos vs things like chein pao sucker punch). Also, as has been discussed, ape would probably have been suspected if not banned even with restricted or banned tera, mon is just crazy.

 

[Vall]

Yeah but they also have a stupid hat on lol, unless you actually like it, in which case good for you. And I don't think you'd have much trouble remembering the typings considering that only one mon per team can Tera during a match.

I'm indifferent to the hats TBH, but on Cart if I seeing the opponent Tera and being able to immediately identify its type, with no chance of mistaking bug for grass or ground for rock

 

[swampmist1142]

Yeah but they also have a stupid hat on lol, unless you actually like it, in which case good for you. And I don't think you'd have much trouble remembering the typings considering that only one mon per team can Tera during a match.

if a mon teras early, switches out and stays out for 6+ turns, then switches back in, are you sure you'll remember it's type? What if you're color blind, or the mon has multiple similarly colored types viable (ground and rock for example)?

 

[SinnohEevee]

80% GXE is something I could never achieve. Stuck at 50% in National Dex (lower in OU).

 

[Gekokeso]

For the last two hours this thread has had the same energy as View attachment 480856

Ok but for real tho let this happen, it would be hilarious to try.

Anyhow, I heard a couple of infidels (DuoM2) try to go against my saviour Gholdengo. First of I shall inform you that I currently run 4 Ghouldengo cults, the OU ladder radicalised me to the point that I fully believe this mon to be the best presence in the metagame.

I love this thing, I love making corviknight users ragequit after their shitty bird is unable to do anything against the glory of Gholdengo. I love watching setup sweepers get greedy and eat shit thanks to chad Gholdengo tricking them a specs or scarf. Y'all infidels fear returning to the old ways, the days of adv, of dpp and bw when having a ghost type in front of you meant you actually had to try before removing hazards. Go ahead, accept his golden ways, you will be happier.

 

[Ctann]

C O N T R O V E R S I A L

I for one am glad Tera stayed and think a metagame with Tera is fine.. it’s very fun, encourages diverse play, and dynamic, if less competitive due to less predictability.

Regrettably you might see the loss of a lot of otherwise fine Pokémon, due to their ability to abuse Tera more than others.

It’ll be interesting to see if Tera remains in OU, we might see a banlist of 10+ Pokémon such as Lele, kartana that otherwise would be fine without Tera! Still happy to play that kind of metagame

thay said..

chi-yu is broken with or without tera

Chien pao trades a lower BP secondary STAB for significantly more speed, and is possibly not far behind in brokenness. Will become more dominant as OU fills up

this might not be broken, its “extremely strong”, similar to Weavile last gen. Tho with Tera it might be considered over the edge. Over time it will be more manageable as OU fills up

gholdengo has felt less broken over time, as it seems gameplay is adapting to it, there’s also a hard check to the whole strategy with the newly released court change Cinderace. More defog users will be coming soon that beat it. All that said tho it’s probably on the radar.

shed Tail is a little ridiculous when it’s used woth 375 speed and regenerator, as well as actual utility moves to support it (rapid spin, u turn, knock off)

if this is great despite all the dark types in OU, what happens as the dark types are diluted with new Pokémon coming in. Interestingly it’s very Tera-independent, not needing it at all or caring about most Pokémon using Tera against it, due to the way specs shadow ball works, and very obvious Tera plays to check that.

 

[razorsharp3000]

Wow I'm shocked. I was convinced Team Preview would win out. At least the salt is fun in the thread! Speaking of salt, I guess Garganacl can continue to be the Bulky Water of the Tier! And Skeledirge the new Clef.

Since some UU players claim that Tera is balanced in their tier, fingers crossed when we remove all the broken mons like Chi-Yu and bring the overall power level of the tier down, Tera doesn't break any of the remaining mons and we can live with it.

I do enjoy the extra dimension Tera throws into competitive in the team builder and the improved viability of Pokemon with traditionally poor typings, even though it creates some additional volatility while playing the actual game. If only Tera was implemented slightly differently by GF so that the timing of it was more reliably known, like say making it so that the trainer can Tera a Pokemon only when it is sent out/switches into battle. Oh well!

 

[Vall]

Ok but for real tho let this happen, it would be hilarious to try.

Anyhow, I heard a couple of infidels (DuoM2) try to go against my saviour Gholdengo. First of I shall inform you that I currently run 4 Ghouldengo cults, the OU ladder radicalised me to the point that I fully believe this mon to be the best presence in the metagame.
View attachment 480859
I love this thing, I love making corviknight users ragequit after their shitty bird unable to do anything against the glory of Gholdengo. I love watching setup sweepers get greedy and eat shit thanks to chad Gholdengo tricking them a specs or scarf. Y'all infidels fear returning to the old ways, the days of adv, of dpp and bw when having a ghost type in front of you meant you actually had to try before removing hazards. Go ahead, accept his golden ways, you will be happier.

I miss being able to remove hazards is all I'm saying.
Gholdengo as a pokemon is fine, It'd be a really cool mon if it didn't block literally almost all forms of hazard control. It basically forces a fair few teams to run heavy duty boots on like half its members which is not great.