(Don't question why I know Still Dre)
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You know, the biggest offenders I see are Heracross with immaculant physical damage, and Flower Veil. In Metronome Battles, you wanna limit counterplay such as using Ghost tera's and Good as Gold - but also have high damage output for an easier, less RNG based game. But those mons are just so common it's hard to justify other strats and monsHappy June! The usage stats for May are out, and as the northern summer equinox arrives and the HOME compatibility for SV finally arises, Metronome Battle is still gaining new options as well. Will the new trend of legal Hisuian pokemon across Showdown lower the appeal or reinvigorate the usage trend? Only time will tell.
A new CAP was added recently and is now usable, the unique Fire/Fairy type Hemogoblin. By design, it has slightly below average stats of 90/99/89/99/97/55 (529 BST), but fortunately its speed being weak is an acceptable trade off for this format. Fire/Fairy is actually a relatively solid defensive type combination with the synergy of both types being able to share their good resistances without much conflict, so it's probably ideal to avoid terastallizing to make the most out of it especially since there is no other Fire/Fairy mon. On the defensive side, it has 8 advantageous matchups by resisting Bug, Dark, Fairy, Fighting, Fire, Grass, and Ice, while also being immune to Dragon. It has a few scattered weaknesses to Rock, Ground, Water, and Poison though, which is in a mixed spot where it makes Weakness Policy a viable choice but not the most likely to activate compared to the usual Grass type users. Just on paper, I think trying to go all in on bulk and relying on resistances to survive may be the key to working with this mon.
This month's battle count hit 55865, and continuing with the trend of last month not changing much, this is only 6 less than last month's 55871, which is still relatively high.
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2023-05/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2023-05/moveset/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt
1630 Top 10 + last month positions:
#1: Ting-Lu (#2)
#2: Mega Venusaur (#1)
#3: Mega Heracross (no change)
#4: Glastrier (no change)
#5: Blissey (#6)
#6: Mega Ampharos (#5)
#7: Hisuian Zoroark (#17)
#8: Baxcalibur (#11)
#9: Mega Sableye (no change)
#10: Iron Hands (#20)
Upsets have been made in the top 10 for this month. Heracross has barely managed to overtake Venusaur for most raw usage (10723 vs 10614), with both just above 10000 which is an improvement for Heracross and a fall for Venusaur compared to last month's 15733. However, Ting-Lu has risen over both former kings of the hill to retake the #1 spot. Even with less raw usage (7970) than the megas, it's still #4 overall just behind Hisuian Zoroark (9227), who is also notable for returning to the top 10 and taking its highest spot ever this month, despite usually having a consistent high raw usage. Other such major risers/returners include Baxcalibur slowly but steadily making an impact, and Iron Hands who is actually kind of a dark horse here with only 1076 raw usage compared to everyone else, and just beating out Mega Gengar in #11 with 5286 raw usage.
Some other dark horses of the month include the literal dark types Tyranitar (#27/744 uses) and Guzzlord (#32/967 uses), mainly because they have triple digit uses but are still going pretty strong with their bulky builds, as well as Mega Slowbro (#12/1462 uses) falling short of the top 10 but still a threat in its own right that I'll discuss later on. Meanwhile, Mew and Snorlax remain in the exact same positions as last month, their archetypes going unchanging as vanilla but solid Metronome users for new players, and in a similar vein Enamorus-T and Landorus-T have been next to each other as well. One miracle of raw usage I just noticed writing this is that Glastrier and Blissey have the exact same amount of raw usage, but I guess that just goes to show how much better Glastrier has been over Blissey, even when Blissey is the one rising up.
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Moving over to the moveset file, I want to take a closer look at the recent risers and what they're doing differently. Ting-Lu's Unaware and Magic Bounce weighted usage has dropped from about a combined 58% to 35%, while Pickup rises from 6% to 14%, Mummy from 6% to 9%, and Ice Scales making a new appearance with 8%. It seems like item choices rank about the same, and Ting-Lu's teammates are pretty varied with Glastrier still leading, though Heracross teammates have made an upsurge over even double Ting-Lu.
Hisuian Zoroark seems to be succeeding most with Magic Bounce and Good as Gold to protect against status while its type handles the common attacks it will take. The item pool is still a complete mess with almost any item you could think of in the mix, but the dominant items seem to be Mirror Herb, Choice Specs, and Normalium Z. Hasty and Hardy are top picks for EV spreads at about 70% combined weighting, which all goes to show that Hisuian Zoroark is a real wild card pick and you may not know what kind of person you're facing with it. Its teammates are also pretty varied, with Venusaur, Sableye, double Hisuian Zoroark, Ting-Lu, and Landorus-T making up the top 5 picks. I guess having a partner to attacks off of you is one way to make it survive a little longer.
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Baxcalibur is partly named after Excalibur, the iconic sword of King Arthur in mythology, and its ability choices stay true to the legend with the most common being Sword of Ruin and Intrepid Sword, with also some Defiant following closely in 3rd. It's clear that Baxcalibur is going all in on its Attack stat and the item choices follow through as well with Choice Band predominantly leading with 59% usage, rather far ahead of Mirror Herb's 21% usage and leaving the rest of the single digit items behind. To carry on this legacy of strength, Baxcalibur takes on a Brave nature (~45%) almost doubly more than Adamant (~23%), and teams up with fellow heroic warriors like Mega Gallade, Iron Hands, and Silvally-Ghost.
Iron Hands itself is still mostly Galvanizing with Mega Ampharos but with Baxcalibur as a common comrade now. Other ability choices include Intrepid Sword, Good as Gold, Sword of Ruin, and Scrappy, but one thing is for certain than Choice Band is the item of choice with a universally agreed 91% usage.
Going through the viability ceilings (the highest GXE that a player using that pokemon has reached), we see the peaks staying around 81 starting with the #1 Ting-Lu and also Mega Slowbro who isn't far off in 12th and is still overperforming as I mentioned earlier, who has Ting-Lu as a main teammate with 56% usage. Slowbro is still primarily running Unaware/WP like last month, but to a lesser degree as Purifying Salt has actually risen up to about 18% usage out of nowhere, which I guess would defend against a weakness and common status that could wear Slowbro down. The next viability ceiling is 80 with Glastrier (Intrepid Sword/Refrigerate/Simple/Magic Guard and WP/Band/Mirror Herb/Life Orb as scattered picks above 10%) and Mega Ampharos (Competitive/Hadron Engine/Plus and Specs/Herb as the higher picks) with the Iron Hands combo being its primary teammate (18%), but not by as a large margin as Slowbro.
The last few viability ceilings to round it out will be 79 featuring Blissey (classic Imposter) and Dragapult, who is still pretty varied but seems to be mainly running Fluffy/Competitive/Good as Gold with Mirror Herb and Chioce Band being main items and Normalium Z slightly behind. Lastly, at 78 we have a 3-way tie of the classic meta mons in Mega Venusaur, Mega Heracross, and Necturna, who are all mostly up to the same tricks. Necturna still seems to be mainly based on the Thick Fat sample set, but even Primordial Sea has more usage than Flower Veil which I didn't see coming.
Interestingly Mega Venusaur's teammates are very varied but double Venusaur still beats out Ting-Lu and sample Necturna. Heracross is the same way with double Heracross over Ting-Lu as the most common picks, and with Ampharos in 3rd it goes to show that Heracross doesn't really care what its partner is. Meanwhile, Necturna has a 70% Venusaur partner rate, mainly due to the forementioned classic sample team from the thread OP, but also has no visible Ting-Lu teammate, which goes to show how it seems to be perceived as less generalist than Venusaur and working more around Flower Veil than standing on its own. Thanks for your reading.
This brings up some fair points about the current meta, but also reminds me of something I realized while writing and wanted to touch upon further. It may be true that Heracross and Venusaur are still dominating, but I think you shouldn't count out Ting-Lu for the reason that it is #1 with a presence that we haven't seen before, which I would say could be the antimeta pick to what we've seen established in Gen 8, making the biggest impact of Gen 9 by sort of creating its own niche in the meta of being a safe pick for nearly any team combination.You know, the biggest offenders I see are Heracross with immaculant physical damage, and Flower Veil. In Metronome Battles, you wanna limit counterplay such as using Ghost tera's and Good as Gold - but also have high damage output for an easier, less RNG based game. But those mons are just so common it's hard to justify other strats and mons
Then you got the Ghost types such as Mega Sableye and Gengar and Dusclops with incredible bulk and power (power being Mega Gengar). I'll try and find some "counters" to this stuff, because a) I made Regirock top 10 usage last gen b) I hate meta stuff, and c) I'm confident as shit
Usage stats be too tuff
Oh man, Toxic Chain. IF on the rare chance it just always badly poisons the target, then it might actually be threatening. See, here's the thing about the top pokemon:I wanted to post a quick update about the new DLC reveal of the Toxic Chain ability. So far it reads similarly to Poison Touch adding a random secondary effect to moves (without knowing the exact chance), but without the contact hit requirement (working on any offensive move) and inflicts Toxic poison instead of regular poison, which will deal more damage after 3 turns and outpace recovery if left for long enough. When DLC1 comes out, I feel like this ability could become a pretty common option on ladder as a new toy and more reliable status spreading option, depending on the proc chance. Despite being more likely to activate, I'm not sure if the ability will end up making a place in the meta where Poison Touch or even Poison Point haven't been able to, since passive damage and status still have its general counters like Flower Veil and Magic Guard, and specific picks like Poison types or Covert Cloaks will also block its main effect.
Whoa, you're right, Rhydon beats out everything else I covered in the physical bulk analysis chart I posted a while ago. Can't believe I missed that bugger.Oh man, Toxic Chain. IF on the rare chance it just always badly poisons the target, then it might actually be threatening. See, here's the thing about the top pokemon:
The sheer boosting factors of , Sword of Ruin, Intrepid Sword, and 's overwhelming 185 attack make it the absolute strongest physical attacker in the tier. The strongest special attacker is a polar oppsite , Beads of Ruin, Download [special attack boosting] , but it too is frail to even be a glass cannon - it's just glass
Now with that being said, Let's look at Mega Venusaur's stats
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It's the best Grass-type by an unreasonably large margin, with runner-up being in most cases. Looking at its stats, it's... not actually bulky. Or has that much attack honestly. It's just the only tool Grass-types have. Terastillization could help it, but turning into a Grass-type isn't ideal in the long run, and reverting from a Grass-type with a Flower Veil partner has moments before disaster written all over it. Even in using vs a duo, a super effective - say Metronome Fire Lash from (not STAB btw) with the boosting of , Intrepid Sword and an ally Sword of Ruin, that's going to KO. Maybe even Flame Wheel would KO and it's 20 BP weaker than Fire Lash. The only thing holding it back is the fact that it can't terastallize - but Grass-Poison is known for having bulky behemoths such as . But hey thats how the cookie crumples ig
UNFORTUNATELY, the absolute physically bulkiest mon in the game is Mega Steelix. BUT WE CAN'T USE IT due to it being a steel type. (in all fairness tho, it would be incredibly annoying to face) Guess what the physically bulkiest thing we can use is?
rhydon:
Rhydon. Fucking. Rhydon. Not Avalugg. Not even Ting-Lu. With armored rhino is ~5% bulkier than . Does it matter? No. Why does it not matter? Because has HORRENDOUS special bulk.
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Ok, it's not as bad as 's which isn't saying much, but it's something. It is astonishing how much wasted potential this thing has. It's even stronger than by a good margin. Good thing is decent enough to use
If we look at the other side of the spectrum, we have the specially bulkiest pokemon in the game being without a doubt
But you and I both know that it doesnt even use that amazing special bulk. No. Instead, it uses its ridiculous Eternamax-Eternatus equal HP stat (albeit by 5) with to make the best use of Imposter. It does it well yes, but if it could make use of that it would be hell.
So now that we've gone over this duo of + , what if you were to use it in a Metronome Battle? You would fail miserably. Because Chansey ALSO has equally bad physical bulk. In fact, it has the lowest physical defense stat in the entire game.
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5 defense with and 250 HP means it can [sometimes] tank a Close Combat. But it's not by much. And don't even get me started on its offensive stats. (just look at them) And you might be thinking, "Oh, what about terastallization?" Well I agree it's the fact that only 1 can use it in a match. They might have the best raw bulk we got, but PLEASE don't use this duo unless you are confident enough you can win games.
The next best raw bulk duo of / + as a duo isnt good either. It's the same thing, but they can use an item. But the same issue remains of only 1 using terastillization.
Now, how does everything above relate to Toxic Chain? Well as I said in a prior post, the name of the game is minimizing randomnes factors y using Ghost-types and Fllower Veil to make yourself immune to things. But also, the other half of this is raw damage output. The multipliers a can get is unprecedented and the same can be said for on the special end of it. Now Toxic Chain miiiight be hard countered by a Magic Guard, but what if you simply can't outlast your opponent? This is the case more often than not, and the in-between of is moreso bulk than attack. That being said, I could see using it to great success if it were to be used. Matter of fact, anything can use it - so we could see a tiny spike in Tera Poison and Magic Guard/Purifying Salt.
Thank you so much for reading this wall of text. I'll be back when the usage stats are up by doipy hooves on July 2nd ish. And with all of that being said, goodbye.
TL;DR: If Toxic Chain always inflicts a badly poison, we are going to have a problem. Anything can use it. Sure Magic Guard or Purifying Salt and the like stops it, but is still terrifyingly powerful. We'll just have to wait and see how it plays out
No one expects the Eviolite Rhydon. Lemme see something real quickWhoa, you're right, Rhydon beats out everything else I covered in the physical bulk analysis chart I posted a while ago. Can't believe I missed that bugger.