Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v3

[Firenix]

Hello,
Does anyone know a reliable answer to this Iron Moth set?

1. Using tera on your Glowking is often worthwhile to beat an Iron Moth if it has committed tera as well. I run Psyshock+Ice Beam as it covers both Non-Tera and Tera Ground/Grass Moth, while also being useful vs Gliscor switchins.
2. Ting Lu can phase out all sets of moth including energy ball, you just need to ensure you aren't taking unnecessary chip before moth commits its booster. Alternatively, you could run Rest to ensure longevity, as you can take 2 hits from moth comfortably while sleeping and phase it out in the third turn. Calc - 132 SpA Tera Grass Iron Moth Energy Ball vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Vessel of Ruin Ting-Lu: 180-212 (35 - 41.2%) -- 68.7% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery. Worst case scenario, moth commits to tera grass while you are chipped down and you burn your tera on ting lu to reliably phase it out.

These are my favorite checks to moth on bulkier teams. HO has a wider variety of ways to deal moth, be it priority/faster booster mons.

 

[dragonbr]

How does this work well vs gambit? In the best case scenario, you do 70% with +2 u-turn, and then they +2 Sucker you and you die. That's assuming that you were setup beforehand, and that you're facing the offensive varient with no bulk evs. And I don't believe this has the positive matchup into glimm and samu-h. Glimm is guaranteed to set at least toxic spikes with bullet punch and probably stealth rock and has a roll to 2HKO with Power Gem. Samu-H has a favorable roll to 2HKO with Ceaseless and your move you have to hit it is a pivot move, which forces you out. It also has Sucker Punch and Aqua Jet to get that damage on you before you bullet punch to finish it after sash.

OH and very sorry I forgot to mention to even be able to use Sucker, they need to use it when they are in a higher priority bracket, Sucker and Bullet Punch are in the same Priority Bracket, so Sucker Fails if you BP while you are faster. This means to use Sucker against a 0 Speed EV Scizor, they need to invest 124 Speed EVs Minimum, or they get 2HKOed by +2 NON-TERA'ed BP. Pretty sure +0 Tera'ed 3HKOs as well. This is ignoring if you forced the gambit to Tera already, and if they went Fairy... Nice +0 BP OHKO!

 

[dragonbr]

You seem to underestimate just how much damage is racked up on hazards. Looking at even neutral damage, you're losing about a quarter of your health every time you switch in, and are badly poisoned atop of that. That is enough to make even powerful tanks feel the burn, and Gholdengo is pointedly immune to all the common methods of removing it outside of Court Change, which while good still means you're forced to run Cinderace on every team. And no, Heavy-Duty Boots are not an option, because there are a lot of items, many of which Pokemon would have much greater use out of.



As I've said, people really underestimate Ribombee. It's a really solid little lass.

once people realize how insane the Rillaboom is at just spamming U-Turn and knock-off, way better in-fact then Meow was because you can run stuff like AV and get recovery, run adamant as well with a priority option, and even have Drain Punch for wayward gambits/(insert other fighting weak mons here)

thats when Ribombee/Gholdengo/Gliscor/Rillaboom/(probably not) Samu-H/Sneasler will be the team you see basically everywhere. I think G-King over samu-h probably fits better, but still you get the point. You have such hazards that you end up with an HO and a Stall team at the same time. Makes you think HO means hazard offense instead of hyper...

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

but in doing so, you A: have to predict accurately whether to defog or u-turn, B: even if you predict correctly and u-turn on the ghold, THE HAZARDS STAY UP, and C: Corv has this same option and is very clearly weak to gholdengo. What makes scizor different?
Even your (singular, 1380) replay shows Scizor not as a defogger, but as a swords dance sweeper, which really shouldn't have done anything if your opponent had went into toxapex or at least not just sacked their Pdef lando or Kingambit. It's also worth noting that the team didn't have gholdengo, which completely and utterly walls it AND prevents defog.

doesn't scizor get knock off? why not use that to predict the ghold switch-in instead of u-turn? if you run something cheeky like expert belt or life orb, it actually ohkos uninvested ghold and cleanly 2hkos fatter sets. i feel like there's something we can work with here

 

[Bakugames]

Re: Metagame being balanced, I personally don't think it is but I do disagree with the notion that it's unfun. It's been the most fun I've had in the entire gen imo, and I really like laddering. Maybe I just have a whimsical state of self that allows me to have fun in the most dire situations, but I really think people exaggerate how broken this meta is. Does it still deserve suspects? Yeah ofc, but I don't find it this unsalvageable thing that seems to be the common opinion

 

[Fracterra]

are we seriously comparing a meta built on the modern day equivalent of a fucking calculator to a game that released in 2022

first time i got out trolled on here. you win

Or pre Dyna Ban Gen 8. Or Gen 5. Or Gen 2
What I’m saying is their have been worse, and there might be worse

 

[Just A Shroom God]

OH and very sorry I forgot to mention to even be able to use Sucker, they need to use it when they are in a higher priority bracket, Sucker and Bullet Punch are in the same Priority Bracket, so Sucker Fails if you BP while you are faster. This means to use Sucker against a 0 Speed EV Scizor, they need to invest 124 Speed EVs Minimum, or they get 2HKOed by +2 NON-TERA'ed BP. Pretty sure +0 Tera'ed 3HKOs as well. This is ignoring if you forced the gambit to Tera already, and if they went Fairy... Nice +0 BP OHKO!

I already talked about this; offensive gambit does in fact run 252 speed evs and outpaces scizor, while with bulky gambit, you are forced into that uncomfortable 50/50 on whether to click bullet on the sucker or u-turn on the kowtow. And all of this is assuming scizor is already at +2 when gambit switches. Basically, the stars have to align for scizor to win the matchup.

I like to think of it this way. The team is built to not need hazard control. BUT scizor has access to defog, so if I have a turn where I have to sack scizor and don't care about BP chip, its a great bonus to remove hazards for the mon I bring in if I can get it off. I don't rely on it, its pretty situational, but also people dont expect it, most expect CC/Dual Wingbeat/Bug Bite

I do not understand your defog reasoning
"Scizor is a cool defogger"
"yeah but it can't defog very reliably"
"well my team doesn't need it to defog reliably
Then why even run scizor? If your team doesn't really NEED defog, then why wouldn't you just run something else that better fills the swords dance sweeper role? Valiant, Kingambit, Wogerpon, Sneasler, Hamurott, or even the rare SD Gliscor are all better options than Scizor, and that's not even debatable. Wogerpon, Gliscor, and Sneasler can even act as pivots, with Wogerpon and Gliscor being able to take moonblasts too.

Oh, and don't double post. If you want to make another statement, edit your original post.

doesn't scizor get knock off? why not use that to predict the ghold switch-in instead of u-turn? if you run something cheeky like expert belt or life orb, it actually ohkos uninvested ghold and cleanly 2hkos fatter sets. i feel like there's something we can work with here

Yes, scizor does get knock. I was responding to this guys set, where he was running sd/bp/uturn/defog scizor. You can't have scizor fill the role of a defog user AND a sweeper at the same time, at least not effectively. And knock scizor can't even deal with defensive ghold.
It also gets thief, which given how prone it is to getting knocked off, might actually be a better move, and it gets the technician boost. Sadly still doesn't deal with defensive ghold tho :(.

 

[Fracterra]

I cannot wait for DLC 2, we get every starter, some new paradox pokemon, so many returning pokemon. Though, DLC 1 is pretty fun. I don’t have replays unfortunenatley.
I think its fun, definitely not balanced, but very very fun. Kommo-o is very fun, as well as Ogerpon. Wogerpon and Ogerpon are very funny, as Ogepron regular form can do the funny snowball without Tera

 

[That_Dwayneee]

lol

Heatran (F) @ Air Balloon
Ability: Flash Fire
Tera Type: Grass
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 212 SpD / 40 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Magma Storm
- Taunt
- Earth Power
- Stealth Rock

>"Hey can anyone help me out against this iron moth set"
>"Iron moth is so easy to counter bro look"
>Posts heatran as a response to the one iron moth set that beats heatran 100% of the time

 

[KamenOH]

Hello,
Does anyone know a reliable answer to this Iron Moth set?
View attachment 560916
I just feel like you have to sack your bulky poison (e.g pex or glowking) to force the tera, and then revenge kill with rillaboom or something, or let something die and revenge with booster val psyshock. Either way, I feel like you gotta let something die, unless you're running Alolo/Bliss stall lol.
I find iron moth a very tricky mon to face, does anyone know any good answers to these sets? Thanks in advance

I know ting-lu can manage non energy ball sets well, but its weak to toxic and val close combat and has no recovery outside of lefties so idk

Why isnt that thing maxxing out its SpA? It's hitting 350 speed regardless so 4 defense and 124 defense EVs are about the same to the 2HKO monster.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

>"Hey can anyone help me out against this iron moth set"
>"Iron moth is so easy to counter bro look"
>Posts heatran as a response to the one iron moth set that beats heatran 100% of the time

did you miss the air balloon? that iron moth set hard loses to air balloon heatran unless it already has a sub up, decides to stay un-tera'd, goes for a normal-type tera blast, then teras and uses ground tera blast, and even then it has to play the 50/50 of whether heatran will tera so it has to choose between clicking sludge wave and tera blast. if it teras while heatran's air balloon is intact, it literally cannot damage that heatran, so you've burned both its booster energy and tera and it becomes approximately infinity times easier to deal with even outside of the thing that hardwalls it. how exactly does that "beat heatran 100% of the time"?

Why isnt that thing maxxing out its SpA? It's hitting 350 speed regardless so 4 defense and 124 defense EVs are about the same to the 2HKO monster.

it needs to stay under 350 spa so booster energy works on speed. otherwise, among other problems, you speed-tie with waterpon and that's not a fun speed tie to lose

 

[dragonbr]

>"Hey can anyone help me out against this iron moth set"
>"Iron moth is so easy to counter bro look"
>Posts heatran as a response to the one iron moth set that beats heatran 100% of the time

here are that Heatran set with balloon and flash fire list of immunities:
Fire
Poison
Ground

Here are the types for the moths attacks:
Fire
Poison
Normal (Ground after Tera)

nice job, you died to EP after trying to pop the balloon with base tera blast, and did like 8%…

Real nice 100% winrate… and if you tera to live the EP you get perma walled…your post confuses me

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

i will say, though, that the set could probably benefit more from tera flying or bug than grass if you're going up against iron moth specifically—those both protect you from the ground coverage (and grass coverage to boot) while not giving you a poison weakness. that kind of kneecaps your usefulness against other things and gives you a stealth rock weakness, but heatran is niche in this meta anyway, might as well specialize

 

[SDK03]

I think the biggest hurdle to Bronzong countering Bloodmoon in OU may be that Bloodmoon was banned with a 90+% margin

Well, Bronzong does have something new it can counter in Gliscor.

0 Atk Bronzong Ice Spinner vs. 244 HP / 252+ Def Gliscor: 132-156 Bronzillion (37.5 - 44.3%) -- 21.5% chance to 3HKO after Poison Heal

Pretty little damage, but it’s not like Gliscor can do anything meaningful back if it’s a defensive set not running Knock Off (basically the most common Gliscor sets as of now). More offensive Gliscor sets and SpD Gliscor tend to die even easier to this. Bronzong can even set Rocks itself, pull off things like Iron Defense Body Press sets for Kingambit, check Valiant well too with Gyro Ball and even run options like Hypnosis for RNG coinflip bullshit or Psychic for both Great Tusk AND Valiant. Unlike Rotom-W or Zapdos, it’s also immune to Toxic to make it an even sturdier counter to Gliscor.

Sure it’s still Bronzong, but at the same time it’s Bronzong. The fact that it can hard-check defensive Gliscor while also checking Valiant and Tusk in the same slot gives it some sort of valid niche in OU. And that’s hilarious, so why not try to run it?

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Well, Bronzong does have something new it can counter in Gliscor.

0 Atk Bronzong Ice Spinner vs. 244 HP / 252+ Def Gliscor: 132-156 Bronzillion (37.5 - 44.3%) -- 21.5% chance to 3HKO after Poison Heal

And it’s not like Gliscor can do anything meaningful back if it’s a defensive set not running Knock Off (basically the most common Gliscor sets as of now). Bronzong can even set Rocks itself, pull off things like Iron Defense Body Press sets for Kingambit, check Valiant well too with Gyro Ball and even run options like Hypnosis for RNG coinflip bullshit or Psychic for both Great Tusk AND Valiant. Unlike Rotom-W or Zapdos, it’s also immune to Toxic to make it an even sturdier counter to Gliscor.

Sure it’s still Bronzong, but at the same time it’s Bronzong. The fact that it can hard-check defensive Gliscor while also checking Valiant and Tusk in the same slot gives it some sort of valid niche in OU. And that’s hilarious, so why not try to run it?

why stick with 0 atk? why not go for full attack investment to say "fuck this scorpion in particular" and 2hko gliscor (over 70% chance after poison heal)? or, for that matter, why not drop ice spinner altogether, go full memelord, and bring block + skill swap? if we're bringing bronzong to the table we might as well bring some fuckery along with it and really tilt some people

 

[cosmogii]

As a Student of the Way of the Webs

oh great shroom god, bestow upon me the knowledge of the sticky web, i am somehow managing to be garbage with the (arguably) easiest team style possible

 

[Cuddly]

Sure it’s still Bronzong, but at the same time it’s Bronzong. The fact that it can hard-check defensive Gliscor while also checking Valiant and Tusk in the same slot gives it some sort of valid niche in OU. And that’s hilarious, so why not try to run it?

It still has many glaring flaws. Namely that what ever it wants to do, there usually is something else that does that thing significantly better and would be a better teamslot choice than.
Even memeing on Gliscor by taking away Poison Heal, why not use Skill Swap Ribombee?
You get a Pokemon that not only sets up Sticky Webs but also gives Gliscor some trouble along with preventing Magic Bounce from bouncing back Sticky Webs.

 

[SDK03]

It still has many glaring flaws. Namely that what ever it wants to do, there usually is something else that does that thing significantly better and would be a better teamslot choice than.
Even memeing on Gliscor by taking away Poison Heal, why not use Skill Swap Ribombee?
You get a Pokemon that not only sets up Sticky Webs but also gives Gliscor some trouble along with preventing Magic Bounce from bouncing back Sticky Webs.

I’m mostly (half) joking with Bronzong, but it does have viable niches. And it’s also hilarious to gimp your opponent with Bronzong too, which is another fun niche it fulfils.

why stick with 0 atk? why not go for full attack investment to say "fuck this scorpion in particular" and 2hko gliscor (over 70% chance after poison heal)? or, for that matter, why not drop ice spinner altogether, go full memelord, and bring block + skill swap? if we're bringing bronzong to the table we might as well bring some fuckery along with it and really tilt some people

Since you brought up joke sets, here’s a fun one:
https://pokepast.es/52978aa0d0c81c86

 

[dragonbr]

I already talked about this; offensive gambit does in fact run 252 speed evs and outpaces scizor, while with bulky gambit, you are forced into that uncomfortable 50/50 on whether to click bullet on the sucker or u-turn on the kowtow. And all of this is assuming scizor is already at +2 when gambit switches. Basically, the stars have to align for scizor to win the matchup.


I do not understand your defog reasoning
"Scizor is a cool defogger"
"yeah but it can't defog very reliably"
"well my team doesn't need it to defog reliably
Then why even run scizor? If your team doesn't really NEED defog, then why wouldn't you just run something else that better fills the swords dance sweeper role? Valiant, Kingambit, Wogerpon, Sneasler, Hamurott, or even the rare SD Gliscor are all better options than Scizor, and that's not even debatable. Wogerpon, Gliscor, and Sneasler can even act as pivots, with Wogerpon and Gliscor being able to take moonblasts too.

Oh, and don't double post. If you want to make another statement, edit your original post.


Yes, scizor does get knock. I was responding to this guys set, where he was running sd/bp/uturn/defog scizor. You can't have scizor fill the role of a defog user AND a sweeper at the same time, at least not effectively. And knock scizor can't even deal with defensive ghold.
It also gets thief, which given how prone it is to getting knocked off, might actually be a better move, and it gets the technician boost. Sadly still doesn't deal with defensive ghold tho :(.

I personally wanted a pivotter that was really good offensive pressure and a sweeper, and bulky, that wasn’t tera reliant, and picked scizor cuz it could be really nice role compaction and it synergizes with Heatran well. Its got a great typing, and can function in different ways depending on matchup. If the opponent is running webs, knock off spam, and a bunch of steel resists, I have a mon that can sponge 1-2 hits, defog, and pivot. If they have a fast and frail team, find one turn to SD (sometimes twice), Tera, and then OHKO every mon on their team with 60 power (technician), 120 power after Tera STAB, Priority move, coming off of 394 ATK, and 788 ATK with one SD. Its like if ID BP corv wasn’t such an incredibly inconsistent setup mon that it just died after Home came out. Sorry for the continued discussion, I was inefficient when explaining it originally.

 

[dragonbr]

i will say, though, that the set could probably benefit more from tera flying or bug than grass if you're going up against iron moth specifically—those both protect you from the ground coverage (and grass coverage to boot) while not giving you a poison weakness. that kind of kneecaps your usefulness against other things and gives you a stealth rock weakness, but heatran is niche in this meta anyway, might as well specialize

After encountering more then one wayward Specs Pult running HYDRO for some unknown reason… I had to. I also like the water resist in general lol, but i do see your point

 

[Cuddly]

I’m mostly (half) joking with Bronzong, but it does have viable niches. And it’s also hilarious to gimp your opponent with Bronzong too, which is another fun niche it fulfils.



Since you brought up joke sets, here’s a fun one:
https://pokepast.es/52978aa0d0c81c86

Honestly wasn’t able to tell given discussion here is mental asylum given recent topics being discussed. Like Miraidon for OU because of Treads and Rillaboom.

 

[Ehmcee]

After encountering more then one wayward Specs Pult running HYDRO for some unknown reason… I had to. I also like the water resist in general lol, but i do see your point

252 SpA Choice Specs Dragapult Hydro Pump vs. 244 HP / 252+ SpD Gliscor: 260-306 (73.8 - 86.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Poison Heal

worth

 

[UnusualBoy]

At this point I'm left wanting for a new HA on Swampert thats actually useful, and although unconfirmed I want Tapu Koko back for the chaos that would ensue

Imagine Swampert with regenerator or if it could learn recover at the very least. Make it happen GF!!!

Today is the 10th Anniversary of XY being released.

And despite the odds, still is OU. In fact its the only Kalos Pokemon to be OU still.

I hope Gren gets a rise in usage again so it does not drop to UU. We need Kalos representation in the tier!!

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Imagine Swampert with regenerator or if it could learn recover at the very least. Make it happen GF!!!

swampert with regen actually makes sense flavor-wise because the evolutionary line's design is partially based on axolotls, which are known for their regenerative abilities

 

[SciWiz373]

Apologies if this is too drastic a topic shift or not something to ask in this thread, but the mention of XY made me curious (and slightly nostalgic).

For those that have played OU for more than one Gen, why do you like OU specifically? Is it simply because of the "higher average power" of the tier, or do you have a favourite that was/is consistently an OU mon?

Edit: and for those whose introduction to Smogon is with this current gen, why did you choose OU over other tiers?

Hope that question makes sense lol