Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v2 [Update on Post #5186]

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I remember this, and I also remember the trapinch sets (don't remember Diglett ever being used). If just trapinch got arena trap and dugtio didn't, I highly doubt it would be even suspected. The sets were annoying, but on the level of magnezone trapping your steel types. I guess I was and still am a pretty bad player, so it's possible I am wrong about that. But like, would we say that arena trap is less deserving of a ban if feebas got it as a hidden ability?

arena trap has the same dynamics in-battle regardless of the pokémon. it was determined that arena trap in & of itself was uncompetitive, as it has no real counterplay. diglett was used as it eliminated key threats to stall such as heatran, cb tyranitar, & others. the baby goths also did similar things with trick scarf & other choiced sets.

personally my stance back in the day (& to some extent now) was that all trapping is uncompetitive, but others argued that because of magnet pull’s far more limited scope, it wasn’t worthy of being in the same category as arena trap/shadow tag, & that stance won out in the end.
 
personally my stance back in the day (& to some extent now) was that all trapping is uncompetitive
Out of sheer curiosity, can you elaborate on this? I'm honestly a bit curious, as someone who's always thought Magnet Pull was fine and assumed that basically everyone believed that.
 
Out of sheer curiosity, can you elaborate on this? I'm honestly a bit curious, as someone who's always thought Magnet Pull was fine and assumed that basically everyone believed that.

i fail to see a meaningful distinction between arena trap, shadow tag, & magnet pull when it comes to play. the scope doesn’t really matter to me, & given the necessary composition of teams, magnezone will more often than not have trappable targets. i think it’s a borderline no-skill way of achieving goals.
 
i fail to see a meaningful distinction between arena trap, shadow tag, & magnet pull when it comes to play. the scope doesn’t really matter to me, & given the necessary composition of teams, magnezone will more often than not have trappable targets. i think it’s a borderline no-skill way of achieving goals.
I guess I just don't agree that it's no-skill? The opponent could have switched out, it's not gen4 anymore they know which mons you brought.
 
I guess I just don't agree that it's no-skill? The opponent could have switched out, it's not gen4 anymore they know which mons you brought.
I actually agree with him on the complete other end, Arena Trap and Magnet Pull are functionally the same and Arena Trap being banned was nonsense. They just wanted to keep a good Trio down.
 
TBH tera and the way they buffed hazards so monstrously just so that they would see use in official formats has really killed smogon singles for me. This gen has been by far the worst offender with power creep, both adding insane offensive threats and removing options like toxic, scald, and numerous defensive mons. All that not to emphasize how hazard stack and hyper offense are really the only consistent playstyles. People criticize the council for being ban-happy, but the way gamefreak has chosen to balance the game towards BSS and VGC, I'd say the council could do even more to help shape the game back into something remotely competitive.

Too bad Smogon isn’t an official format and as long as Game Freak keeps making overly busted or increasingly stronger Pokemon, the power creep is only gonna make OU more unplayable.
 
Too bad Smogon isn’t an official format and as long as Game Freak keeps making overly busted or increasingly stronger Pokemon, the power creep is only gonna make OU more unplayable.
Tbh the main things that make OU unplayable have nothing to do with power creep. Gen5ou has historically been a mess and that's a full 4 gens ago.
 
Too bad Smogon isn’t an official format and as long as Game Freak keeps making overly busted or increasingly stronger Pokemon, the power creep is only gonna make OU more unplayable.

More unplayable to start the generation*

then smogon smoging and you ban more Pokémon each generation. /problem fixed
 
Out of sheer curiosity, can you elaborate on this? I'm honestly a bit curious, as someone who's always thought Magnet Pull was fine and assumed that basically everyone believed that.

I actually complained about this last gen. If smogon bans arena trap and shadow tag because removing the ability to switch is uncompetitive, then why the fuck is magnet pull still allowed? Is that limited scope of targets really a good enough justification? So much for trying to be consistent if this shit is still running around

i fail to see a meaningful distinction between arena trap, shadow tag, & magnet pull when it comes to play. the scope doesn’t really matter to me, & given the necessary composition of teams, magnezone will more often than not have trappable targets. i think it’s a borderline no-skill way of achieving goals.

Yeah, exactly what this guy said

More unplayable to start the generation*

then smogon smoging and you ban more Pokémon each generation. /problem fixed

Not just at the start but also when other shit drops like Home or the dlcs. God I still remember what a mess gen 8 was when crown tundra dropped. Everyone was spamming the shit out of Genesect and Naganadel
 
TBF magnet pull is on a very niche amount of mons and only affects a specific niche type of pokemon.

Magnezone and magneton were basically your only viable magnet pull users and neither were broken with it, they just helped you break past certain steels and they were weak to some of the steels they trapped such as heatran. Scizor had u-turn, the main victims was just the trinity of tank steels in corviknight, ferrothorn, and possibly celesteela. Banning magnet pull for just those 3 pokemon is about as absurd as banning sand stream for shedinja.

Arena trap and shadow tag on the other hand were distributed way more and affected the large majority of the game. Didn't help the pokemon that got those abilities were very capable assassins; see fucking trapinch who last gen could kill water+grounds with fucking giga drain when they were most common for dracovish. I don't think those users had any bad matchups, dugtrio and wobbafett basically guaranteed killing their target, RN in uber dugtrio uses memento to really screw the opponent over but reversal used to be the assassin build. Didn't matter if you were a tank, a glass cannon, a sweeper, whatever you were dugtrio/wobb could remove it from the battle while mag is basically just ferro and corv and even corv has some methods around it.
 
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Speaking of Dugtrio i tried playing him in gen 4 the other day with a meme team only to find out i can't play him at all because it's only two abilities arena trap AND sand veil are banned
beetlejuice-honk.gif
 
i fail to see a meaningful distinction between arena trap, shadow tag, & magnet pull when it comes to play. the scope doesn’t really matter to me, & given the necessary composition of teams, magnezone will more often than not have trappable targets. i think it’s a borderline no-skill way of achieving goals.
wartime flashbacks to magnezone + quadruple "fucked over by corviknight" threats teams in gen 8
 
i fail to see a meaningful distinction between arena trap, shadow tag, & magnet pull when it comes to play. the scope doesn’t really matter to me, & given the necessary composition of teams, magnezone will more often than not have trappable targets. i think it’s a borderline no-skill way of achieving goals.
magnet pull is worse than it's ever been because any steel-type can decide to not be a steel-type at any given moment. also, look at the steel-types of ou. we have one that's immune to trapping, one that outspeeds zone and runs u-turn as a rule, one that works best when there's nothing else left on a team to switch to, a ground-type, a specially bulky electric resist (not sure where goodra-h is gonna end up though), and heatran. zone needs to run tera blast or body press to have any good matchups against non-corv steels in the current meta, and even the corv matchup is a toss-up depending on whether you run scarf and how much you and the corv are willing to invest into speed
 
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“oh dire flaw isn’t broken, sneasler is actually balanced”

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-698231
wait a fucking second

thats just my team with a worse sneasler and a worse rillaboom set

mfer didn't realize why it was drum beating and not wood hammer LMAOOO

edit: to be clear im not mad this is just the first time a team ive built has done anything and i wanted to joke about it, it feels really good esp. seeing it do well against finch!

and also the wood hammer choice joke is bc on rilla its p bad because drum beating destroys hrott leads and has no contact, allowing you to fuck up zapdos over time, and kill things a lot smoother without recoil
 
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“oh dire flaw isn’t broken, sneasler is actually balanced”

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-698231
He could have killed it with Pult way early :pikuh:. Replays like this one can look like bs, but it only happens like 1/6 games, the other 5 times it gets destroyed if dire claw doesn't trigger the right status one or two times.
Static is a way bigger issue but almost nobody talks about it or gets laug reactions when says uncompetitive. :blobshrug:
 
He could have killed it with Pult way early :pikuh:. Replays like this one can look like bs, but it only happens like 1/6 games, the other 5 times it gets destroyed if dire claw doesn't trigger the right status one or two times.
Static is a way bigger issue but almost nobody talks about it or gets laug reactions when says uncompetitive. :blobshrug:

what if we can have a society where we can consider both zapdos and sneasler to be a broken? wouldn't that be something
 
“don’t touch it” is legitimate advice when it comes to static btw. you can choose whether or not attacking zapdos is worth the risk, & when to do so

there’s no real analogue with dire claw, & when it works, you lose
 
wait a fucking second

thats just my team with a worse sneasler and a worse rillaboom set

mfer didn't realize why it was drum beating and not wood hammer LMAOOO

edit: to be clear im not mad this is just the first time a team ive built has done anything and i wanted to joke about it, it feels really good esp. seeing it do well against finch!

and also the wood hammer choice joke is bc on rilla its p bad because drum beating destroys hrott leads and has no contact, allowing you to fuck up zapdos over time, and kill things a lot smoother without recoil
actually tera ground might be cooking nvm

I take that back, Tera Ground is very much cooking
 
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