Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v3

[Heatranator]

You answered your own question. It’s not a bad Pokémon at all, it just competes for a teamslot with one of the best Pokémon in the tier, and while it does still have some advantages over it and niches it doesn’t, Valiant is still overall a better pick most of the time. Doesn’t mean it’s not gonna put in work on most teams you put it on though.

I guess I kinda did, huh. The main advantage I can think of is the defensive utiltiy. It may be frail at first, but it can not only boost its physical defense with superpower, but flying type means it has a great entry point against great tusk. I also find it funny when I first use special moves and they switch into blissey, to only be destroyed by superpower on the next turn. One time, my enamorus swept their team as between superpower, moonblast, sludge bomb and earth power, everything on their team was hit super effectively.

Edit: Actually, do people think an iron valiant and enamrous team would work? They have similar checks/counters that they can overwhelm/force to tera for the other to clean up.

 

[Spheal boi]

Edit: Actually, do people think an iron valiant and enamrous team would work? They have similar checks/counters that they can overwhelm/force to tera for the other to clean up.

And to avoid to do an one-liner and also to talk about OU, would honestly be interesting seeing both of them together in a team, sure probably wouldn't win an important match/tournament, but can be useful to surprise people, since both of them can have three sets as you said (Physical, Special or Mixed), and also a wide movepool/coverage. Main problem is that Gholdengo resists both their STAB and hit them SE with MiR, and even if Enam can use a boosted Tera Earth Power for it, you're still forced to Tera, and the Ghold player may know that and so Tera in Flying or already has an Air Balloon. But besides that I would be really interested to see a replay of this team if someone does this.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

if you want to be pedantic: since "kokoloko tiering" has come back up as a topic of discussion, we should recognize that Manaphy dropped to UU because of how stats were calculated in early XY, although it was banned asap

if you really want to be pedantic, gliscor was in gen 7 uu from its inception in february 2017 until august 2018, so it was uu for longer than heatran or manaphy; i presumed this was more widely known because of how long a period the mon was uu, so i was under the impression that the discussion was about this generation specifically. also, shaymin-sky and darkrai never dropped to uu either and had brief ou tenures

 

[The Black Hippopotas]

It's SV OU the metagame with the most amount of bans ever?

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

It's SV OU the metagame with the most amount of bans ever?

if we're talking about official metas, i think so. if we bring oms into the fold, it's probably one of the older iterations of shared power or godly gift or something. if we consider "bans" as "things not allowed in the tier" instead of "things specifically kicked out of the tier", it's probably sm lc since i think gen 7 had the most evolved pokemon out of any gen, but any modern lc has a banlist numbering in the several hundreds

 

[YubelVT]

according to last voting from qualified playerbase, gambit isn't https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sv-ou-tiering-surveys.3711911/page-2

Just because a player is qualified doesn't mean their opinion is worth listening to. I will continue to say that people who think gambit isn't banworthy are incredibly incorrect and still think this is pre-home. I also notice you didn't even attempt to refute my last point about how we HAVE adapted. You NEED to run 2-3 gambit checks on offensive teams to not fold to it, and even those checks aren't ironclad just due to the nature of them having to check other things as well.

You answered your own question. It’s not a bad Pokémon at all, it just competes for a teamslot with one of the best Pokémon in the tier, and while it does still have some advantages over it and niches it doesn’t, Valiant is still overall a better pick most of the time. Doesn’t mean it’s not gonna put in work on most teams you put it on though.

On top of this, Valiant can actually deal with Kingambit via vacuum wave (provided tera was used previously, which can happen), while Enamorus kinda just can't without relying on Focus Blast (which... no lmao). Enam is a really interesting pokemon but it also just does get folded by Kingambit a lot of the time. Scarf Enam is pretty good tho I do like it

 

[Cuddly]

It's SV OU the metagame with the most amount of bans ever?

I mean if you want to be technical all metagames have more bans proceeding the one before. In terms of new bans, I think SV and BW are pretty close.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

On top of this, Valiant can actually deal with Kingambit via vacuum wave

does it really need vacuum wave? it naturally quad-resists sucker punch and has surprisingly decent defense. you can just run whatever fighting stab you want and it'll work better against gambit than vacuum wave because gambit tends to do stupid shit like surviving that somehow

 

[YubelVT]

does it really need vacuum wave? it naturally quad-resists sucker punch and has surprisingly decent defense. you can just run whatever fighting stab you want and it'll work better against gambit than vacuum wave because gambit tends to do stupid shit like surviving that somehow.

It doesn't necessarily need vacuum wave, but I do think it's a good option to consider on BE CM sets as a more reliable move than focus blast, especially if you're in a position where you can get more than 1 CM.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

It doesn't necessarily need vacuum wave, but I do think it's a good option to consider on BE CM sets as a more reliable move than focus blast, especially if you're in a position where you can get more than 1 CM.

that's true, but why would you not go for aura sphere? sucker punch does nothing to it, vacuum wave doesn't outpriority espeed, rillaboom is bulky enough to survive and grassy glide anyway, no other priority is widespread enough for valiant to dedicate a moveslot to, and anything that outspeeds booster valiant doesn't really care whether it has vacuum wave or not

 

[YubelVT]

that's true, but why would you not go for aura sphere? sucker punch does nothing to it, vacuum wave doesn't outpriority espeed, rillaboom is bulky enough to survive and grassy glide anyway, no other priority is widespread enough for valiant to dedicate a moveslot to, and anything that outspeeds booster valiant doesn't really care whether it has vacuum wave or not

Ok at this point I'm gonna be honest, I didn't build this set. Take literally any set recommendations from me with pokemon that aren't Tundurus-Therian or Hisuian-Zoroark with a huge grain of salt because a friend of mine (WastePKMN on the forums[I'm too lazy to actually ping them]) builds most of my teams for this format since post home. You are right tho, but Vacuum Wave has come in handy against some scarfers and I have killed exactly one (1) unburden sneasler with it so :3

 

[MattC (Banned)]

Ok at this point I'm gonna be honest, I didn't build this set. Take literally any set recommendations from me with pokemon that aren't Tundurus-Therian or Hisuian-Zoroark with a huge grain of salt because a friend of mine (WastePKMN on the forums[I'm too lazy to actually ping them]) builds most of my teams for this format since post home.

Ain't no way this guy got an inside man for teambuilding. Shout-out to WastePKMN for that.

Funny you should mention having a teambuilding plug in the first place. I don't know how many y'all got, but I have 2 teambuilding peeps. Really close friends of mine, and I'm really glad to have someone like them to help me. I wouldn't have won the Smogon tournament that I did of it wasn't for them -- they never questioned why or when I wanted to build said pokemon and just rolled with it at any time of day.

I'm aware Thanksgiving was 2 days ago, but I feel we don't give these types of people enough credit. All the love in the world goes to the both of you TheIronPikachu and happysh

 

[YubelVT]

Ain't no way this guy got an inside man for teambuilding. Shout-out to WastePKMN for that.

The funniest part is that I STILL cannot get above 1400s LOL. Good teams they may be, but they cannot compensate for my lack of skill.

 

[sims796]

so, i'd like to ask this because it's thanksgiving: what about gen 9 ou are you most thankful for?

i'm thankful for the council being so much more open, transparent, and active than it's been in the past. it's helped improve the meta so much more than older iterations of the council would have. looking at day 1, you'd think the meta would never be playable, but we've made so much progress in such a short time and it's all thanks to the efforts of our council

I'm answering late, but this. I'm a little tired of the level of complaints. This tier is vrey much playable, and that took work. Game Freak has dropped the biggest level of power creep seen in a while. I could use it as a textbook example of power creep if I needed to explain the term. We, as in the council and players, are doing, and have been doing, all we can to salvage this game yo a playable state by our standards. We deserve applause

 

[Welcome to mars]

The funniest part is that I STILL cannot get above 1400s LOL. Good teams they may be, but they cannot compensate for my lack of skill.

stay below the 1400s, don’t dare to even hover above that forbidden threshold if you want a grasp of whats viable , your skill issues are what keeps a storm red cards from shredding you alive, your inability to guard your team is ultimately what guards you, for zapdos is always adapting his game plan, and midladder is where the phoenix of million thunderstorms calls his territory, the reach of gambit may extend across anywhere the light of ou even slightly glimmers on but in midladder, you play zapdos’s rules, and zapdos is a cruel anarchist

 

[Ctann]

The funniest part is that I STILL cannot get above 1400s LOL. Good teams they may be, but they cannot compensate for my lack of skill.

I’ve watched a lot of games sub 1700 since they’re usually what shows up on showdown.

it’s almost always people losing games because of overthinking and making plays they didn’t need to do.

example:

Your pokemon is 80% HP against your opponents 20% HP, your pokemon is faster, and capable of doing 40% minimums. But your opponent could potentially switch in a pokemon that takes only 10% at most.

Players over 1900 ELO: gotta secure the KO, or force a Tera on this bottleneck threat that can enable a partner to sweep later. So what if it switches out, it’s 20%.

Players under 1500 ELO: Alomolola is gonna switch in for sure, better predict this counter play and switch into zapdos!

—-

Reality for players under 1500 ELO: Weavile switched out, go Zapdos! Gholdengo used recover, Gholdengo recovered 50% of its HP. Bangedyourmumlastnight2004 forfeited.

—-

and then you have 1600-1900 ELO which is typically a mix of good players with non-meta optimised teams and the overthinking players with meta optimised teams. 1900+ needs meta optimisations or a lot of luck with a mediocre team. I’ve tried to maintain 1900+ with mediocre teams and can only manage 20 games in a row at best.

 

[Ctann]

Just saw a game with kingambit using mental herb, I’m surprised this is the first time I’ve seen it TBH.

replay is here: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1998444636

so theoretically Tera Fire kingambit with 218 speed and a mental herb can beat the majority of the “status” counterplay against gambit.

where status counterplay is most commonly:

1. fast wisp from cinderace, dragapult, etc.
2. Trick from gholdengo, and some other rarer choice users like valiant, greninja, meowscarada
3. Encore from valiant, Ogerpon and rarer users like clefable and dragonite

It’s possible to tech a gambit for any counter-tech, and simply use it mostly-reactively or to force damage if it doesn’t work against the other teams comp, or use it offensively (and ideally 100% HP in endgame) if it does.

 

[taziathegreat]

Quick and possibly random question,I haven’t played alot of dlc1 meta but why didn’t brambleghast take off as a rapid spinner that beats gholdengo ?

just taking a quick glance I’d imagine it’s the amount of investment it requires to really threaten gholdengo and the situational interactions with ghold who commonly Runs air ballon.

Just thought it was interesting since it poltergeist was really hyped up on it.

 

[YubelVT]

Quick and possibly random question,I haven’t played alot of dlc1 meta but why didn’t brambleghast take off as a rapid spinner that beats gholdengo ?

just taking a quick glance I’d imagine it’s the amount of investment it requires to really threaten gholdengo and the situational interactions with ghold who commonly Runs air ballon.

Just thought it was interesting since it poltergeist was really hyped up on it.

A spinner needs to do more than just beat Gholdengo to be viable. Tusk is one of the physical walls of all time, treads is not as good but is probably underrated, etc. Brambleghast just doesn't do anything other than spin and beat ghold

I’ve watched a lot of games sub 1700 since they’re usually what shows up on showdown.

it’s almost always people losing games because of overthinking and making plays they didn’t need to do.

example:

Your pokemon is 80% HP against your opponents 20% HP, your pokemon is faster, and capable of doing 40% minimums. But your opponent could potentially switch in a pokemon that takes only 10% at most.

Players over 1900 ELO: gotta secure the KO, or force a Tera on this bottleneck threat that can enable a partner to sweep later. So what if it switches out, it’s 20%.

Players under 1500 ELO: Alomolola is gonna switch in for sure, better predict this counter play and switch into zapdos!

—-

Reality for players under 1500 ELO: Weavile switched out, go Zapdos! Gholdengo used recover, Gholdengo recovered 50% of its HP. Bangedyourmumlastnight2004 forfeited.

—-

and then you have 1600-1900 ELO which is typically a mix of good players with non-meta optimised teams and the overthinking players with meta optimised teams. 1900+ needs meta optimisations or a lot of luck with a mediocre team. I’ve tried to maintain 1900+ with mediocre teams and can only manage 20 games in a row at best.

I am definitely guilty of overthinking, but at the same time I think a bigger issue for me is underthinking. That being said who the fuck leaves Kyurem-Black in against a kartana that hasn't clicked anything who DOES that (this happened months ago and I'm still mad)

 

[Heatranator]

I’ve watched a lot of games sub 1700 since they’re usually what shows up on showdown.

it’s almost always people losing games because of overthinking and making plays they didn’t need to do.

example:

Your pokemon is 80% HP against your opponents 20% HP, your pokemon is faster, and capable of doing 40% minimums. But your opponent could potentially switch in a pokemon that takes only 10% at most.

Players over 1900 ELO: gotta secure the KO, or force a Tera on this bottleneck threat that can enable a partner to sweep later. So what if it switches out, it’s 20%.

Players under 1500 ELO: Alomolola is gonna switch in for sure, better predict this counter play and switch into zapdos!

—-

Reality for players under 1500 ELO: Weavile switched out, go Zapdos! Gholdengo used recover, Gholdengo recovered 50% of its HP. Bangedyourmumlastnight2004 forfeited.

—-

and then you have 1600-1900 ELO which is typically a mix of good players with non-meta optimised teams and the overthinking players with meta optimised teams. 1900+ needs meta optimisations or a lot of luck with a mediocre team. I’ve tried to maintain 1900+ with mediocre teams and can only manage 20 games in a row at best.

You sir, have defined my entire existence on ladder. I have multiple times had my heatran in on their corviknight, and predicting they will switch to a pokemon that resists magma storm, due to corviknight walling other pokemon on my team, click earth power, but they instead stay in and use body press, ko'ing my heatran and making me lose the game. I have to force myself not to click the predict option most of the time, it is excruciating.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

You sir, have defined my entire existence on ladder. I have multiple times had my heatran in on their corviknight, and predicting they will switch to a pokemon that resists magma storm, due to corviknight walling other pokemon on my team, click earth power, but they instead stay in and use body press, ko'ing my heatran and making me lose the game. I have to force myself not to click the predict option most of the time, it is excruciating.

the best way to play the game sub-1600 is to play like your opponent is an in-game npc. the best way to play above 1900 is to assume the opponent knows everything you're going to do, and that your opponent is also aware of that and knows what you're going to do to counter it. the best way to play in between those is to get lucky

 

[Heatranator]

the best way to play the game sub-1600 is to play like your opponent is an in-game npc. the best way to play above 1900 is to assume the opponent knows everything you're going to do, and that your opponent is also aware of that and knows what you're going to do to counter it. the best way to play in between those is to get lucky

I find when I somehow get to high ladder, such as in the gliscor suspect which I got to 1800s, I actually do better because my predicts actually work most of the time. The in-game npc part is absolutely true, sometimes I feel like an option is going to be stupid and then when it works I remember I'm playing low laddder. My opponent is not some ultra-instinct player that has theory crafted their team for 24 hours, but little timmy who decided to play the online pokemon game his friends are talking about.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

I find when I somehow get to high ladder, such as in the gliscor suspect which I got to 1800s, I actually do better because my predicts actually work most of the time. The in-game npc part is absolutely true, sometimes I feel like an option is going to be stupid and then when it works I remember I'm playing low laddder. My opponent is not some ultra-instinct player that has theory crafted their team for 24 hours, but little timmy who decided to play the online pokemon game his friends are talking about.

suspect ladders are a lot harder because if they have the suspect prefix in front of their name you no longer have any idea whether they belong that low. you could be facing a 12-year-old who doesn't know what the letters mean but wants to look like one of the cool kids, or a mutant super-genius mastermind living in a concrete bunker who spends 18 hours a day on ladder and the other 6 teambuilding and can literally read your mind

 

[zannty]

So I wanted to make this post for a while so here it is. How is gholdengo still around in OU?

Gholdengo is the most centralizing, metagame warping, and restricting pokemon for teambuilding this entire generation. It all stems from its ability "Good as gold" which makes it immune to status moves. This notably stops defog from being used to clear hazards. Furthermore it is a ghost type so it also stops rapid spin. This has lead to 1 of 4 things being true.
1. You run either Great Tusk or Cinderace as your hazard removal.
2. You run HDBs on pretty much every pokemon
3. You play Hyper offence that does not care about spikes
4. You just lose to gholdengo hazards setup.

No lets address each of these points one by one.

Number 1: You run Great Tusk or Cinderace as your hazard removal. Another option that I should mention is that maushold learns tidy up which also works, maushold is just very weak though defensively. So its not hard to just ko the maushold (it also gets worn down with spikes since it runs wide lens) and then commence your hazard stacks. Furthermore cinderace doesn't work that well either. After you court change your opponent can just set up hazards again and then you got nowhere. Tusk is a decent option since it can threaten gholdengo with both knock off and earthquake so it can often force a switch out. Lastly other options such as cyclizar just do not have enough offensive power to reliably answer ghold. Therefore you basically need to be running great tusk as the only way to remove hazards.

Number 2: Your run 6 HDBs. This is a good option to combat ghold + spikes. And certain pokmeon don't need to run boots like corviknight and cresselia since they take neutral damage from rocks and don't take damage from spikes. This option is however weak to knock off since the opposing player can knock off boots and slowly chip away at your team. This can be minimized with a specific knock off absorber such as corviknight or clefable (MG). You still are required to have a specific knock absorber (corv or clef) as well as losing all of your item slots.

Number 3: Play Hype offense. One of the biggest complaints about this metagame is that it has been too polarized with hype offense on one side and stall on the other side and almost no balance. This is because hyper offense is able to bypass removing hazards by minimizing the need to switch out and the length of the game in general. Furthermore balance or fat is pushed out since they are much more reliant on the items (such as leftovers). By keeping gholdengo around we are continuing to push hyper offence while restricting the viability of balance teams.

Number 4: Just lost to Gholdengo + Hazards. This is an option so I didn't want to ignore it. But ghold has been in the top 5 usage for the metagame for the whole year. Losing too it is just not a realistic answer.

At first I thought gholdengo was just an annoying mon that while unfun was probably not banworthy. However as we keep playing ghold seemed to get more and more banworthy until it reached the point where it is imo the main reason why S/V OU is unfun and unbalanced. Gholdengo checks all the boxes for why the last couple of pokemon have been banned. It restricts team building more than any other pokemon (more than roaring moon, blood moon luna, and gliscor all of which this was a defining reason as to why it got banned). It has no real counters to it. Blissey is the closest one but psyshock gholdengo is becoming more popular as an answer to blissey. Other than blissey the only real counters that can wall it are cm unaware tera clefable and amnesia clodsire. Without gholdengo we free up the possibly for defog to be used on Pokémon like mandibuzz and corviknight as well as other rapid spin users to be viable like quaquaval and cyclizar. We also allow for the usage of items instead of restricting it to just HDBs on all non tusk non hype offense teams. Furthermore another reason BM luna and gliscor got banned was its longevity andit being hard to deal with. Gholdengo gets recover has pretty solid defensive stats and also has this longevity that makes it hard to deal with. And what benefit does having ghold in the meta actually do? Does it have any positives it brings to the metagame?

And I am making this post now because I don't know if it will get banned at this point and if so how long it will be. If the metagame was lasting another month it would likely be next on the list to get looked at but with DLC 2 coming out next month it appears we have paused all tiering actions until the release of DLC 2. And once DLC 2 comes out several pokemon will likely get dropped back down from Ubers to OU such as gliscor, volcarona, etc. Also it is likely that there will be some new/returning pokemon that also need to be dealt with after release. It has also been told that tera will be looked at again once DLC 2 comes out. So it is likely that ghold will not be dealt with any time soon since there will be more pressing issues that will be dealt with first that arise from uber drops along with new pokemon being added to the meta along with the tera discussion.

To sum everything up gholdengo is the most teambuilding constricting pokemon of this generation that requires either great tusk, all your item slots + a knock absorber, or running hyper offense. It puts more pressure on team building than pokemon like BL luna, roaring moon, and glsicor which were all banned and a primary reason for their banning was the pressure on teambuilding. Furthermore it has great longevity with its access to recover which was another major reason for the banning of gliscor and bm luna. Lastly it has no real walls or counters to it since it has access to psyshock for blissey, which is one of the only pokemon that can wall NP+ MIR/Shadowball. It also brings no or almost no positive contributions to the metagame. It checks all the boxes for being an overpowered mon that deserves to be in ubers, massive pressure on team building, no counters and walls, and great longevity. For these reasons it amazes me that somehow gholdengo is still around in this metagame.

 

[artificialdeath]

suspect ladders are a lot harder because if they have the suspect prefix in front of their name you no longer have any idea whether they belong that low. you could be facing a 12-year-old who doesn't know what the letters mean but wants to look like one of the cool kids, or a mutant super-genius mastermind living in a concrete bunker who spends 18 hours a day on ladder and the other 6 teambuilding and can literally read your mind

to a lesser extent seeing random off meta mons in your opponents team also feels this way. Either it's someone trying to win with their favorites and using the most amazingly bad techs possible (saw Red Card + Acrobatics Alomomola today) or it's a really good player with a very niche but usable mon that will end up on the VR eventually (Whiscash and base Rotom in BW, Frosmoth and a few others this WCoP, etc.)