I don't post in here very often, but I wanted to share my response to the survey and other general metagame opinions that I've gathered from laddering at ~1850-1900 and helping my teammates prepare for SCL.
What is your enjoyment of the tier? - 4/10
The tier as it is right now feels empty. HO is present, in several incarnations even with Grassy/Psychic Terrain, Weather and of course more traditional Glimmora Paradox Spam teams. Stall is also quite strong and consistent. The new toys of Gliscor and Clefable have greatly assisted its ability to absorb Knock Off (traditionally stall's greatest weakness in SV), as well as some new toys like Torn-T. A lot of big stall counters exist, such as Hex Darts Boots Pult or Psyshock Glowking, and running into a Waterpon basically mandates a Dondozo Tera, which can be problematic, but stall is ultimately fine, and has enough different structures to feel fun and creative.
What's really missing is balance, which is a major problem for players like me who are looking for more flexible teams. Of course linear, easy stalls and HO's are fine to grind ladder games for hours at a time, but in a tournament setting you often want more agency over your gameplay then those archetypes can provide. Right now, the only viable form of balance/bulky offense is Superman, to borrow a term from ADV. Teams built around Flying-types, Magic Guard, Boots and theoretically Levitate, and perhaps one leftovers Pokemon like Ting-Lu. These teams are designed to basically bypass the hazard game altogether by absorbing knock with the non-boots users. This cuts the viability of Pokemon like Azumarill drastically, and on a grander scale just makes structures more rigid and basic when you don't have much choice for an item.
The only Pokemon that can really afford to not run boots on bulky offense structures are ones that are, let's face it, pretty broken. This is your Roaring Moons, Waterpons, Iron Moths and Valiants. These Pokemon all have their own set of problems though, leading into:
How competitive do you think the meta is? - 3/10
This meta, and SV as a whole to be honest but especially this meta, has a problem where extremely power-crept set-up Pokemon, when combined with Tera, are able to win games off of a single free turn at times. Moon with a single DD afforded by a burn, sleep or para, or simply with its impressive natural bulk. Waterpon's who pull out an unexpected Trailblaze after SDing. An Iron Moth who happens to get two Fiery Dance boosts in a row. A Manaphy who has the exact wrong set for your team between Tail Glow Tera Electric, Acid Armour Stored Power, or RestTalk Take Heart. Sneasler under Terrain with the right Tera or Shadow Claw. Kingambit doing the same shit it always has, even better now with Tusk getting weaker. If you don't have a Zama, good luck, and that's if it
can't Tera. Even more niche stuff like Agility SD Gliscor can become unstoppable thanks to the element of surprise letting it set up and Tera pulling a reversal on any counter you might have. It's simply too easy for a variety of monsters in this tier to win on the spot, even in a 6v6 or close to it situation to call the tier truly competitive. This is why freeing Darkrai is stupid by the way, it'll just add another set-up monster that shreds balance depending on its set to the tier (and thats ignoring all the Wide Lens Hypnosis shit we would surely see).
Even without these mons, the tier has its flaws. Stall vs Stall feels like it comes down to who has more knock users, it's not really possible to outplay a stall which has a good matchup against your stall. Stall vs HO feels like a check for "do you have any of the niche anti-stall techs (some i will mention later) on your team? If you do I lose if you don't I win". HO vs HO is as much of a crap-shoot as ever. Balance is, as established earlier hampered by a lack of diversity and item flexibility, and comes down to who can knock better or who can pop-off with one of the aformentioned monster sweepers. The better player is always going to have an advantage, sure, but simple bad matchups feels really hard to surmount in this metagame. And yes, tera is a big part of this problem, we should look at it again definitively after DLC2 dust settles and we have our presumably final version of Gen 9.
Individual Pokemon Rankings
- 4
Manaphy has too many sets and is too good with all of them. This isn't a surprise to anyone that's been following the meta. Bulky Take Heart + Acid Armour Stored Power with Tera Poison completely fucks some structures, Tera Electric Tail Glow completely fucks others, Inbetween sets like Tera Fairy Take Heart, Scald, Energy Ball exist as well, as well as even RestTalk Take Heart Scald. Screens, Rain or Grassy Terrain just make this Pokemon even more immediately lethal when it takes a couple of turns to completely take over a game. I've seen this Pokemon cleanly beat Spdef Haze Pex + Blissey before. It's not a 5 because its slow and not the most dominating thing in the metagame.
- 5
It has to go. Knock Off has completely reinvigorated this Pokemon, and being faster than basically everything with even a single DD, a very small task with its impressive bulk and Tera, allows it to just completely rip through teams with Tera Flying Acrobatics. Even if you have a Tera-Steel on something to try and counter it, it's a very simple prediction for the Roaring Moon user to EQ/Brick Break and make a joke out of it. This pokemon isn't reasonable to handle defensively for balance teams, or the HO's which it outspeeds every member of, bar Kingambit's Sucker Punch which delaying tera, Substitute, or Tera Fairy variants handle easily.
Even for Stall however, Roaring Moon is a problem. Growing steadily in popularity from my experiences at high ladder are sets like Taunt/Roost/Acro/DD with Booster Tera Flying, or Jaw Lock/Rest/DD/Taunt with Lefties Tera Fairy. These sets can and have 6-0d most Stall structures off the lead from my observation, and a single pokemon shouldn't be able to 100% invalidate a playstyle like that, no matter how specialised towards stallbreaking it is.
- 5
This Pokemon is, as far as I'm concerned, the main culprit of the meta's problems right now. The standard set of Spikes, Protect, Toxic and EQ/Knock is able to put Pokemon on timers, come back from huge injury, threaten Knocks and get max layers up easily. The only pokemon that really want to come in on a Knock or Toxic are Clefable, which has trouble threatening Gliscor, and opposing Gliscor. Unsurprisingly, the latter is the most common switch-in, and when two Gliscor's meet, both will get back to full health and lay all their Spikes, contributing to this perma-hazard, boots-mandatory metagame. This is ignoring the great utility of U-Turn, and the surprising Stall/Balance dismantling abilities of SD Ice Fang, but those just further stress how strong Gliscor is. The centralising effect Gliscor has is astonishing, with Tusk being weakened due to needing to run Ice Spinner on every set. and Fighting-types in general suffer greatly because of it. This Pokemon can slow games to a crawl, especially in matchups against Corviknight where PP stalling seems to be an inevitability. And yes, tera of course is great on it. If anything needs to go it's this
- 5
Again, it's just too strong. If you don't have Amoongus on your balance, this thing is going to sweep you with an SD. If you're using Stall, it forces your Dondozo to tera, enabling a cheese mon Waterpon is usually paired with to dominate the game. It's a fantastic user of tera, and Water Absorb is extremely powerful even without Tera. Horn Leech can make it hard to take out and Power Whip is simply incredibly powerful, and it's hard to know which it has before it's already attacking you. Between Synthesis, Knock, Play Rough and Trailblaze, it has so many great, hard to predict options that are hard to cover all of. It says a lot about the pokemon when it's an elite threat in a meta where boots are necessary, without boots. If Gliscor goes I imagine it will definitely tip over the edge without its only weakness of omnipresent hazards.
- 3
It will be a shame if this thing goes because I very much enjoy using the Boots Pivot set on balance (the only set viable on non-HO), but under Terrain this thing is insane. Even in games where it faces a Tusk, that's far from a safe guarantee, as EQ vs Seed Terrain Tera Ghost does awful damage with the Terrain healing, and one or two SD's is enough to just win a game. Gholdengo will beat it if it's not Shadow Claw or meme Fling, but against an SD'd Sneasler you hardly have the time to scout such options. This thing will probably be strictly broken if Gliscor goes, since thats the only great answer it has. It doesn't help that it shares most of its counters with Moon and Gambit, both of which are super common allies.
- 4
Still broken, exact same reasons as always. Tusk being worse doesn't help in that regard either. If you don't have a Zamazenta, or you need your Zamazenta to tera to deal with something else like a Moon or Valiant, good luck.
- 1
Maybe an unexpected hot take given my general pessimism throughout this post, but I actually think Gholdengo has been the subject of a lot of scapegoating for problems caused largely by other pokemon. This Pokemon helps keep menaces like Amoongus and Corviknight in check, and can help fill gaps for teams as a scarfer, or balloon user (it used to be able to do more, but even ghold is restricted in versatility in this meta). Psyshock sets can help break stall, but most good stall teams these days seem use Tera Dark Blissey which beats it cleanly while also handling Stored Power Threats. It's a problem of course when paired with Waterpon forcing a Dozo tera, but this is another case of a broken pokemon scapegoating Ghold.
Most people seem to contend that this pokemon is too good at blocking hazard removal, but this is really only true for Corv, which should U-turn on it anyway (but can't because most Corv's are forced to run Iron Defense because of broken physical sweepers) it does nothing to stop measures like Court Change and tidy up, Defoggers like Mandibuzz threaten it, and even Balloon-variants don't want to come in on a fast Tusk Knock (which it can't run because they're all forced to be Ice Spinner for Gliscor). This pokemon is such a versatile glue on a lot of archetypes with its different options, helps keep annoying pokemon in check, and is perfectly balanced in my opinion with low speed, very notable type-weaknesses (ghost/fire/dark/ground), and hazard vulnerability. This pokemon was quite clearly not broken pre-DLC, and I don't think that's changed. Would be a big blow to see this Pokemon go.
***
Some other options I offered as potential problems were Rillaboom, Valiant, Moth and Booster Energy itself, but I believe the above Pokemon are bigger problems. Really, to me, Tera is starting to reach a breaking point with the amount of power in the tier, and I don't think DLC2 will help, (rather, make it worse with things like Serperior). As I said before, I would love to see it re-examined definitively at some point, with DLC2 seeming to be the best time. For now though:
TL;DR: Gliscor, Moon and Waterpon need to go. Kingambit and Manaphy are pushing it and Sneasler might be a problem after Gliscor is banned. The problems of this tier tie back to Tera and it should be re-examined when DLC2 drops and SV is in it's "final version".
Also, as I've finished writing this Finch has just posted a Moon suspect. I would have gotten Gliscor first but this is a good sign. I say suspect all three concurrently and let those with reqs check boxes for which ones they think should be banned though.