I find it incredible that people are losing their minds over a meme team that will pass by if people stop talking about it
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v2 [Update on Post #5186]
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This made my fricking day
I’ve got another joke set coming soon
The one pragmatic defense I have to Tera (keep in mind I do want it restricted) is one of fear.
It's no secret that after the Dynamax ban, showdown and Smogon OU took a hit to their playerbase. I think when looking at banning the cornerstone mechanic of a generation, we need to tread a bit lightly. The vast majority of people who play SV OU are not active users of this site. I think it is telling how massive the Tera suspect was. Several people came out of the woodwork to ladder and attempt to save or stop Tera. It is a divisive mechanic and too harsh or no action will end up harming the tier's playerbase as a whole.
Now, did Dynamax need to be banned? Of course, it was broken. But I feel that it being so cut and dry ended up harming the tier. Compromises like making Dynamax levels 0 to cut down on the massive bulk increase or allowing only Gigantimax forms could have ended up being the token gesture that acted as a decent enough compromise. A hard and dry cut to dynamax sadly hurt SwSh in the long run among casual players.
I think OU is at its best when it has that massive swath of casual interest. Anyone if they wanted to can improve themselves and end up getting much better at the tier. Having a large, active casual fanbase is great so long as it isn't at the direct harm to the competitive scene. It is why we have bans. I just do not want to drive people away from the tier when we ban the cornerstone mechanic fully.
I think in the case of Tera we should tread lightly on how we handle it. There are very reasonable restrictions like Team Preview and banning Tera Blast that would solve a good chunk of the issues with Tera. Not having to guess what type Volcarona or Kingambit is in the back makes their late game sweep a lot less scary. Knowing Garg's Tera type beforehand lets you pressure it easier offensively. No more Tera Blast would mean Eleki is much more manageable. It does not fix everything, but I feel a compromise is what is needed here. If you hard go after Tera, I worry you will see a sharp playerbase decline. Ignoring what Tera brings to the tier or builder, even that is a bit of a scary prospect with how hard the drop was post Dynamax ban.
This is not saying we should not act on Tera. I think now is the best time we have had to act on it in a while. We were left twiddling our thumbs for a few months with HOME looming, making acting on it then hard. Besides, we also had to test Walking Wake and we banned Shed Tail since then, so it's not like we were doing nothing. We have had enough breathing room from the first Tera test as well as a ton of new Pokemon added to the tier. If you want purely my personal observation, the loudness and volatility of the Pro Ban side probably caused the pro Tera players or people on the fence to choose no action. Tera almost got restricted the first time, likely with Team Preview. I think a reasonable compromise and being a boring centrist would make Tera management much easier and feasible.
It's no secret that after the Dynamax ban, showdown and Smogon OU took a hit to their playerbase. I think when looking at banning the cornerstone mechanic of a generation, we need to tread a bit lightly. The vast majority of people who play SV OU are not active users of this site. I think it is telling how massive the Tera suspect was. Several people came out of the woodwork to ladder and attempt to save or stop Tera. It is a divisive mechanic and too harsh or no action will end up harming the tier's playerbase as a whole.
Now, did Dynamax need to be banned? Of course, it was broken. But I feel that it being so cut and dry ended up harming the tier. Compromises like making Dynamax levels 0 to cut down on the massive bulk increase or allowing only Gigantimax forms could have ended up being the token gesture that acted as a decent enough compromise. A hard and dry cut to dynamax sadly hurt SwSh in the long run among casual players.
I think OU is at its best when it has that massive swath of casual interest. Anyone if they wanted to can improve themselves and end up getting much better at the tier. Having a large, active casual fanbase is great so long as it isn't at the direct harm to the competitive scene. It is why we have bans. I just do not want to drive people away from the tier when we ban the cornerstone mechanic fully.
I think in the case of Tera we should tread lightly on how we handle it. There are very reasonable restrictions like Team Preview and banning Tera Blast that would solve a good chunk of the issues with Tera. Not having to guess what type Volcarona or Kingambit is in the back makes their late game sweep a lot less scary. Knowing Garg's Tera type beforehand lets you pressure it easier offensively. No more Tera Blast would mean Eleki is much more manageable. It does not fix everything, but I feel a compromise is what is needed here. If you hard go after Tera, I worry you will see a sharp playerbase decline. Ignoring what Tera brings to the tier or builder, even that is a bit of a scary prospect with how hard the drop was post Dynamax ban.
This is not saying we should not act on Tera. I think now is the best time we have had to act on it in a while. We were left twiddling our thumbs for a few months with HOME looming, making acting on it then hard. Besides, we also had to test Walking Wake and we banned Shed Tail since then, so it's not like we were doing nothing. We have had enough breathing room from the first Tera test as well as a ton of new Pokemon added to the tier. If you want purely my personal observation, the loudness and volatility of the Pro Ban side probably caused the pro Tera players or people on the fence to choose no action. Tera almost got restricted the first time, likely with Team Preview. I think a reasonable compromise and being a boring centrist would make Tera management much easier and feasible.
Gambit itself is worse than the shit Dragapult and Gholdengo would pull without it, you are right that they’ll go crazy tho
to avoid a double post, here’s my next goofy set
Fuck ghost types but gholdengo in particular
Flamigo @ Clear Amulet
Ability: Scrappy
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Close Combat
- Brave Bird
- Agility
- Swords Dance
It might look meh on paper, but I tried this in about five or so matches and it does, as stated, fuck ghost types. Lmao people seem to forget about Scrappy, even in the 13-1400’s. The Double dance can spiral quickly. I would use Hecidueye but not only is it much slower, it has no way to boost speed. Flamigo is the optimal scrappy mon rn specifically because it doesn’t succumb to the fast ghosts.
252+ Atk Flamigo Brave Bird vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Zamazenta: 350-414 (107.6 - 127.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO
This is okay, not great but it can work in OU when done right.
I’ll be posting a Brute Bonnet set soon, one I had great success with in early Gen 9. Unlike most mons I have over two months of experience with this the dino imposter.
Once I have six weak Mons optimized I will mold them into a team.
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Broken checking broken is using the argument a mon thats broken itself should be in the tier to make another broken mon more balanced.
ex;
no ban argument was by banning it, you'd also have to ban the megas; 
, 
, 
, 
, 
. This was definition of 'broken checking broken' cause these mons were all acknowledged as too strong with Aegislash in the tier, and keeping it for the sake of not opening the flood gates to let them through was a broken checking broken argument, and as it turned out only mawile was actually broken enough to be banned prior to ORAS when aegislash went. All-in-all keeping aegislash in the tier to make mawile less broken wasn't the way to go about it because both were deemed broken from the beginning.With
we're not seeing that, we're seeing mons that we didn't see broken with it in the tier, suddenly become broken because there's no good role compression for dealing with them, volc soft checked them all, not hard countered but did check and make them not as oppressive in teambuilder.
- recently was deemed not broken enough to be banned via surviving the suspect test. Volcarona being a decent check to it isn't 'broken checking broken' it just relieves the teambuilder in handling zama, which is the current broken argument for zama.. lack of answers but not overwhelming enough to be banned for it.
- wasn't broken for 6 months, actually it was held back a lot with volc in the tier as it was running a more predictable tera typing to match volcarona. Its borderline broken in the sense there's no answers in the tier to match it now. Its basically volc 2.0 rn that it isn't forced to play around volc and can funnel its matchups on less fire types.
- same as above, valiant was strong but only ever got serious consideration early on in the generation, and then just adapted to fit which checks in the tier, volcarona isn't a fail safe stop to it, its bearly a check to valiant, but it does pressure valiant in the sense volc can be a legitimate switch-in so its not as oppressive in the metagame. Again, another case of just needing answers.So broken-checking-broken doesn't really work cause they're not broken with volc around, it'd only be broken-checking-nonbroken then. Volcarona itself is the one you'd have to argue is broken, and I ain't seeing it cause again, teams haven't really improved (got worse), teams haven't changed adaptations (stayed the same except for the void in volc itself), and mons previously never looked at were greenlit as broken without a proper check. Volcarona itself also had a lot of checks, was role compressed, and there were proper shutdown options for it unlike most sweepers or fast wall breakers that just click a 'die' button.
Yes it got banned because the council felt it was 'too strong' but that wasn't really the case, and we did see the metagame actually become less healthy with it gone, it didn't benefit the tier leaving it just got rid of volc for the sake of it because even if it is a strong mon, you did not jump hoops to deal with it (as we see with no adaptation) and it still didn't get used nearly as much as many would say, it wasn't even a top 10 usage mon when OU only has like 35 or so pokemon in it. Chien-pao didn't change the meta much when it left because it just ate the meta, there were no switchins or reliable revenge killers, there was nothing to adapt with, volc had plenty of checks in the tier to acknowledge and none of them needed volc to be OU. Even if we looked at a dracovish meta, a mon with a 'die' button, you'll see a spike in storm drain and water absorb users, we just did not see a surge in special walls like blissey/chansey, flash fire users cause the one was already there, and volc wasn't problematic enough to randomly make assault vest tera rock tyranitar OU again.
So again I repeat, what exactly changed without volc? Nothing positive. Volcarona's pressure on teambuilder was a placebo effect from the start, instead creating an actual negative effect on removal.
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While I don't want to ban Quick Claw, I get the argument.
I even sort of get the Dire Claw argument because 50% proc is a big deal, especially when sleep is a possible effect.
But seeing people then suggest banning things like Static, Poison Touch, etc feels like a bridge too far.
I can divide hax into a few different categories:
My point is, if a ban is proposed for Quick Claw, wouldn't it make more sense to ban all of Group 1 hax?
I even sort of get the Dire Claw argument because 50% proc is a big deal, especially when sleep is a possible effect.
But seeing people then suggest banning things like Static, Poison Touch, etc feels like a bridge too far.
I can divide hax into a few different categories:
- Hax items: quick Claw, focus band, kings rock, scope lens, bright powder, etc. All these are items which give you a ≤20% chance of an effect.
- Status chance moves. Dire claw is the big one, but other moves that fit would be lava plume, scald, discharge as your 30%ers, with others like flamethrower, ice beam etc as less likely.
- Other chance moves. This has Triple arrows as the most busted at 50%, but then you've also got iron head etc as flinch chance moves, moves like crunch or moonblast that drop enemy stats, and rarely, things like metal claw or charge beam that boost you
- Crits
- Missing moves
My point is, if a ban is proposed for Quick Claw, wouldn't it make more sense to ban all of Group 1 hax?
what's the issue with that? bisharp's actually a pretty solid mon and has historically been either uu or ou for its entire career even before it had the ability to use eviolite. it's not like it's some sort of unviable shitmon, it's just that kingambit is a direct upgrade in almost every way and there's virtually nothing bisharp can do that gambit can't do better. the flip side is that eviolite bisharp can serve as "kingambit at home" without some of the bullshit that makes gambit so op
Can't wait until somebody makes a full eviolite team and win on high ladder so people ask it to be banned for "being cheese and gimmicky" "allowing you to use lite versions of uber Pokémon".
the frequency with which people misunderstand or wilfully misrepresent arguments in this thread really butters my crumpets.
anyway, i’m glad people are converging on the idea that a lot needs to go in this meta. thank you for restoring my faith in smogon, esteemed users.
anyway, i’m glad people are converging on the idea that a lot needs to go in this meta. thank you for restoring my faith in smogon, esteemed users.
why not just ban items altogether? i mean, look at the uncompetitive and unhealthy guessing games they force. having to guess whether something is running band or scarf or boots is too much for my tiny brain. and even if we implemented some sort of "item preview" that takes the guesswork out of it, look at the unreasonable power boost that some of these items give! 150% power to attack or special attack with no drawback except for the drawback it has? ridiculous! or you could run scarf instead to completely flip a mon's matchups and there's nothing your opponent can do about it aside from knock off, trick, or simply being better at the game and knowing what scouting is! hell, you can even run boots and actually be able to switch out in this hazard hellscape, and i don't approve of that because i want to be able to set up 3 layers of spikes and win automatically. and look at eviolite chansey's calcs! do we really want to live in a meta where a pokemon with base 250 hp is—gasp!—difficult to break? unacceptable! why is the council not doing anything about the scourge of items? i know what's good for the meta more than a simple team of experts because i reached 1500 on ladder once!
(but for real though, we should forget about this quick claw crap and focus on suspecting gambit/sneasler and implementing tera preview. tera has a lot less counterplay than items and tera preview would change that in what i believe to be a very positive way)
Quick Claw doesn't need "focus", Buzzwole. It would be a pretty quick-quickban, not some suspect test or anything. It could be swatted down like a fly.
I really wonder where you all were during the SWSH King's Rock discourse. Yes, we should ban things that only add a random chance to break the game, even if underpowered, or bad. I do not care if Quick Claw is bad, it should be banned, so should things like Focus Band.
We are lucky that the council was able to get Sand Veil and its clones banned. Because it should be banned, even without permanent weather, even if the only way to set is literally Sandstorm, even if it has an "opportunity cost" of an ability slot.
King's Rock is only viable on like two Pokemon, though one would be seriously a problem (it's not Maushold), and it is honestly dumb that we had to wait until people discovered Cloyster's viability to get that banned. Genuinely pretty disappointing of the community, considering it always should have been banned.
As shown in Freedom Cup, we don't really need fringe tactics like Sand Attack banned most likely because they wouldn't be very good anyways. It's all just HO but even more somehow, using Minimize isn't a very good strategy. This is also shown in VGC outside of fringe circumstances like Chansey, which was also never really that good.. However, on the off chance that someone is feeling funny, we should want to combat those odds. These are things that remove agency from the match with no other strategic value.
Bans shouldn't be just about "balance", mono Quick Claw is a dumb strategy that isn't even good. The item should be banned on principle to keep up with the core tenants of Smogon that we all presumably agree on, and honestly, is one of the least controversial.
I really wonder where you all were during the SWSH King's Rock discourse. Yes, we should ban things that only add a random chance to break the game, even if underpowered, or bad. I do not care if Quick Claw is bad, it should be banned, so should things like Focus Band.
We are lucky that the council was able to get Sand Veil and its clones banned. Because it should be banned, even without permanent weather, even if the only way to set is literally Sandstorm, even if it has an "opportunity cost" of an ability slot.
King's Rock is only viable on like two Pokemon, though one would be seriously a problem (it's not Maushold), and it is honestly dumb that we had to wait until people discovered Cloyster's viability to get that banned. Genuinely pretty disappointing of the community, considering it always should have been banned.
As shown in Freedom Cup, we don't really need fringe tactics like Sand Attack banned most likely because they wouldn't be very good anyways. It's all just HO but even more somehow, using Minimize isn't a very good strategy. This is also shown in VGC outside of fringe circumstances like Chansey, which was also never really that good.. However, on the off chance that someone is feeling funny, we should want to combat those odds. These are things that remove agency from the match with no other strategic value.
Bans shouldn't be just about "balance", mono Quick Claw is a dumb strategy that isn't even good. The item should be banned on principle to keep up with the core tenants of Smogon that we all presumably agree on, and honestly, is one of the least controversial.
see this is the bullshit i’m talking about. obtuse & insulting overreactions to something so minor. quick claw adds nothing to the game but uncompetitive scenarios, due to its very nature. like, why does a very simple, level-headed proposal warrant this level of vitriol & demeaning characterisation?
your post is not even funny! if it was, i’d understand & think it was cool, but it’s just mega cringe.
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I did not play SS, but I was under the impression that the drop off in players was due to a combination of Dexit, the former being bad,and the introduction of the NatDex OM that cannibalized the standard formats. Dynamax also isn't necessarily a popular gimmick anyway from what I've seen on other sites
I don't think your points about causal interest and the dangers of banning the generational gimmick are wrong, but I feel like that context is important.
Don't slander my boy lol. Bisharp was a top tier threat in XY and extremely solid in SM. If Kingambit didn't exist Bisharp would probably get some use since it has a good typing a strong Knock Off, and priority. Doesn't even need Eviolite since it sometimes ran AV.
not anymore :(
Why would you ever run AV if Eviolite in an option?
I think he means AV in a previous gen, not this gen since Eviolite is obviously a straight up upgrade for Bisharp over AV with Kingambit around.
Ain’t no way Homer Simpson over here said “mega cringe”.
DaddyBuzzwole has a point, the real problems rn are Kingambit (which if you’ve read my posts, you’ll understand my Hatred for the bitch), and dealing with Tera.
'Losing their mind' is a bit excessive, wake up call is more like it. This is something that hadn't been used in this generation when you get to see the full force of it you start to have an idea of how broken the concept is of having priority randomly on vital turns. It's a bunch of bulky mons with Quick Claw so you fix a majority of their deficits and then you put screens on top of that conceptually it becomes a bit difficult to beat (its luck of the draw). People won't stop talking about it because they realize that it is uncompetitive and it doesn't have to be in the meta.
It's like.. yeah, it's not good. Objectively, this is not strong, or not especially viable. It is extremely unlikely that these mons would ever use the item to great success in a tournament setting.
These are all reasons in favor of banning Quick Claw, not against it! If it's bad-but-uncompetitive, there's zero downside to just getting rid of the damn thing.
I mean, vert won with it in tour; and I'm #19 on ladder with it rn. I'd say its not THAT bad either. Don't sleep on my work.
(jk it is probably bad)
It's definitely not bad I think it's viable but when people start preparing for it could be a different story.
mega cringe mega cringe mega cringe
i agree, like the point isn’t that it is wreaking havoc & dominating the meta, but a quick claw ban would be a simple council vote, & there’s no downside to getting rid of it
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