Metagame 1v1 Old Gens

[RADU]

ORAS Mew Suspect Page is also Live: https://www.smogon.com/tools/suspects/view/104

Voters: RADU, DezShizzels, torterraxx, Synonimous, SEROO, Mubs, cakeezz swag edition, NTG Cuz IDK, A Hero's Destiny, Mishlef, Tox1c1v1, Elo Bandit, Rei, Long Spirit, Mcthelegit, Mentality,  Lialiabeast

Deadline Saturday May 10th at 11:59 PM GMT

 

[Felucia]

Darkrai - Unban (2/28 = 7.14%)
Darkrai - Do Not Unban (16/28 = 57.14%)
This vote includes DripLegend, who was meant to be included from OGPL3 but was missed. He voted Do Not Unban. The rest of the votes can be found on the Suspect Page

Even if all remaining voters vote Unban, the highest ban% that can be achieved is 44% which is well below the required 60%. As such Darkrai will remain banned in Gen 7 1v1

re: Missing voters

There was a little bit of unrest because we mistakenly forgot to add a couple players from recent tournaments. However, even if we added 10 more players who all vote Unban, the required 60% supermajority would still not be reached, so I've decided it's not worth the hassle.

Also, since this suspect does not count towards TC I've closed the vote early.

 

[Felucia]

Mew voting has ended

• Mew - Ban (8/13 = 61.54%)
• Mew - Do Not Ban (5/13 = 38.46%)

Given that mew has reached the required 60% supermajority, that means Mew is now banned from Gen 6 1v1

 

[torterraxx]

Hello, the ORAS sets comp has been updated to more accurately represent the tier going into PL!

The new sets comp can be found here: https://pokepast.es/a7dbe5ec80edf483

Changelog

Additions

• Added Mega Blaziken
• Added Life Orb Volcarona
• Added Special Scarf Hoopa-U
• Added a new Bulk Up Talonflame set

Removals

• Removed Mew and mentions of Mew
• Removed Insect Plate Volcarona
• Removed Mixed Scarf Hoopa-U
• Removed Cresselia
• Removed Gastrodon
• Removed Clefable
• Removed Quagsire
• Removed HP Poison Latios

Tweaks

• Facade Mega Altaria EVs
• AV Entei EVs
• Icy Wind Mega Gardevoir EVs
• Band Durant EVs
• Specs Empoleon EVs
• Added Alt EV spreads for Mega Metagross and WP Victini on explanations doc
• Added Rocky Helmet as a potential item on Standard Heatran
• Modified slashes/slash order on various sets

Thank you to everyone who continues to support our tier, more changes to resources will be coming after PL!

 

[stravench]

Greetings!

In light of the metagame development in DPP 1v1, updates to the current samples teams would be necessary. We kindly encourage and ask for any DPP players or enthusiasts to submit as many teams are you could.

https://forms.gle/HbZ8pTJdXfG3k8jQ7

For guidance in building teams, set theories have been compiled by Elo Bandit which contains certain sets to use or benchmarks that could be used for creating your own sets.

https://pokepast.es/554a53ec516aac3e

Additionally, there is also an importable sets paste

https://pokepast.es/16342513994c27f4

 

[Euphonos]

Good day, everyone! Time to make a rather long-overdue announcement to the 1v1 community:

Due to circumstances leading to a new chapter in my life, I am unfortunately expressing my retirement in leading (and being part of the council in) the DPP 1v1 metagame. This marks the new chapter of the DPP 1v1 metagame as I have officially passed the torch to co-leader stravench as the sole leader. I am optimistic stravench's leadership and the current council body keeps on working to develop the metagame, and I am optimistic that this metagame will reach newer heights in the future.

Of course, before I get to announce my retirement, we've been working on revamping viability rankings (looking at you Jamez and Nuxl) and I myself am working on my ultimate DPP 1v1 Team Showcase for all interested players to steal and tinker to their liking. Please do take note that the team showcase is 85% complete, and new team updates will be added eventually. That said, enjoy the madness!

Tagging Felucia to officially make necessary changes with this announcement. Cheers, and see you whenever we see you!

 

[frogfacts]

hi i saw the adv vr and thought it needed to be updated so here are my takes on it

Notable rises and drops will be explained.

First off, Sceptile. It isn’t a bad mon, but it’s clearly not one of the top mons anymore. It sometimes tries to do too much, which results in it not doing anything. A- makes sense for it.

Celebi doesn’t deserve to be as high as it is. It’s clearly not an A-tier mon. It’s just not really usable on most teams, and when it is usable, it usually doesn’t have good matchups.

I dropped Dusclops to C+ because it can have good matchups, but it’s crit bait, and you shouldn’t run crit bait in ADV.

I dropped Ludicolo because I think it’s not consistent enough. It usually has to guess correctly to win almost all of its matchups, or it’s very easy to beat by just throwing Substitute on a mon.

I dropped Mence because I think it’s fallen off a bit, with things running HP Ice and just beating it. It’s still very good though.

I dropped Alakazam because it’s just not what it once was anymore. Its Petaya set is alright and its Trick set can have some good matchups, but it’s a good mon for B+ tier, not A tier.

I dropped Starmie for the same kind of reasons as Alakazam. Its Petaya set is alright, but it doesn’t have any diversity in what it can use, so it’s very easy to beat.

I dropped Dragonite because I think it’s just not a good Pokémon overall.

I think Jirachi could be very good and it does have a lot of tools, but it struggles because all of its matchups are set-dependent on the opponent. Jimmy Neutron is definitely its best set though.

I dropped Blastoise because it’s just not good.

i didn't rank a lot of mons which could be ranked but they are all pretty irrelevant

Rises

The biggest riser is Venusaur, which it definitely deserves. In my opinion, it’s a top 5 Pokémon in the meta. It can run diverse sets and is especially a threat with its mixed set.

Aerodactyl is the fastest mon in the tier with Pressure. It can run Jolly Band, Adamant Band, or Pressure stall. It has good diversity and can also hit hard.

Armaldo is a good mon. sd counter, can beat a lot of things, has alright bulk, and a good typing.

lmk if I missed some mons or if you wanna know why I dropped or raised this mon just pm me on discord frogfacts_ and thanks Adam3560 for playing test games with me and helping me with a few mons and let Marshmelto on the adv council pls he actually plays the tier

 

[bern]

hi i saw the adv vr and thought it needed to be updated so here are my takes on it

hello i am like the eighth best adv player that isn't on the council (genuinely like put marsh on council also i think blanched would be a good fit)
actually got a fair bit to say about this cuz i went 3-3 on ogpl3 ig
so when i made my s/o post i posted that i would make an adv post here, that never happened, this post reminded me of that so here's the adv post... yk like 3 months late or som.

i ranked every mon currently in the vr, i'll talk about the ones that i think are worth talking about in no particular order.

yeah it's like a top 10 mon rn not top 2 or 3 as i personally thought mid-ogpl, grasses overall are fine but like overall i think with hera and mence being so common they aren't super great, and fires popping up doesn't help either.

part-poison actually kinda does you wonders cuz you beat hera and you also get eq so it wasn't uncommon to see mixed sets with like stabs + eq + sub/endure mayb? (i just explained the setcomp set god dammit).

so like it does subseed stuff like 20% more efficiently than sceptile in some matchups and 35% less efficiently in others, and sceptile isn't as good anymore so idk.

to counter or hydro pump the aero? fr tho this guy is fine, it's decent for p much the same reasons as kingdra except it's weak to mence and hera instead of being weak to mence's dragon claw if you think that's a sizable enough threat.

yeah vrs are just not updated enough, this guy is ez top 3 probably top 2.

90 speed and bu encore i really don't understand how this guy is C-.

should be B+ but i don't wanna take another screenshot, this guy is good for every reason you think it is.

oh damn i have this guy in A tier, ummm i think rachi has a high skill ceiling however it is packing heavy 4mss with like tbolt fpunch icywind psychic cm sub rest and what have you.

fraud, stop using it, mence has more bulk, more power, and more ambiguity surrounding its set sometimes.

i can't remember why you should run this mon over vaporeon aside from maybe petaya hydro cannon and being faster than wak naturally but even then it's not exactly doing that good considering the amount of mons that use sub, with venu and zard having secondary typings and sets that vary this guy just kinda falls off as the third kanto starter.

same reasons as frog, like yeah zam has encore and like cm recover is real nice but petaya is the main set, starmie is the same but it doesn't get encore or cm and it loses to kou idk how this is so high.

tier list doesn't fare too differently from the vr aside from these changes, if you need me to justify/ask about other changes i am in the cord, adv is a good tier would definitely play again.

 

[Marshmelto]

U guys(Bern) have arcanine way too low he can beat everything s to a with real sets except raikou and blissey(which I think u can beat with random hp fighting but it’s not good). putting him in b tier is criminal. imo arcanine is at minimum an A tier mon.this guy has zero business being ranked with Celebi or regirock or any of ts. Also about the whole Mence vs dnite thing yeah Mence is probably better 90% of the time but there are some situations where dnite is better (maybe zam?, petaya scept?, random boltbeam access) <— looking into examples I swear we had a reason for using this thing. he’s definitely not a c tier. Being a worse top mon doesn’t make it bad. Wak stocks might be slightly dropping as things like arc can easily tech for it + waters can beat a lot of the same things -raikou. Still a good mon tho.

 

[fake tom numbers]

:joy:

fraud, stop using it, mence has more bulk, more power, and more ambiguity surrounding its set sometimes.

can we not rank mons that we've never used before? with the extra spdef you get much more evs to live ice beams/hp ice and you can pretty comfortably run sub dd hp flying eq just like mence, although beam can be used too. It also gets better special coverage with boltbeam and other tech options

edit: examples are like petaya scept ice beam ludi (because ludicolo can live non band hpflying idk why bern thinks it loses lol) and benches that mence hits, but u gain extra evs to put into attack/speed

Aerodactyl is the fastest mon in the tier with Pressure. It can run Jolly Band, Adamant Band, or Pressure stall. It has good diversity and can also hit hard.

252 Atk 30 IVs Choice Band Aerodactyl Earthquake vs. 0 HP / 236 Def Raikou: 272-320 (84.7 - 99.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

only reason to run aero is because its fast and rock slide flinch. it has zero diversity in its sets+does not hit hard at all

Other things to note:
Why did yall rate this so high? especially after ogpl this is incredibly easy to cteam+megahorn miss chance not doing any favors
Very techable too, you are forced to run bulk or else you can randomly die to stuff, but then you can easily get outsped by things like machamp and lose. Also zero set diversity unless youre talking about sandstorm for zard (lol)
This is literally worse moltres. The extra speed doesn't matter and zard doesn't get agility, misses benches on things like wak, tauros etc etc and has less set diversity. Sub bdrum is actually troll, and that terrible dd eq set thats supposed to beat raikou can still lose to raikou
Agree with marsh, very good mons
Both sd and band beat totally different things and can feel very inconsistent with its slow speed tier and middling bulk compared to tauros, definitely not on the same level as some other guys
actual viable mon

Some other issues plague these vrs (dodrio higher than dnite? armaldo after zap ban?? regice gengar are the same tiers as entei vigoroth???) but no1 cares

top 7 adv player out

 

[Murm]

Since people are posting their ADV VRs, figured I'd go through on stream and update mine (also its not ordered within tiers).

I talked a good amount about most of these guys in the stream, here's the vod if you're interested (I also did some GSC stuff in the beginning)

A couple notes:

Regice is really nice just to sit in front of strong special attackers while not losing to stuff like Marowak. I personally think Amnesia is a bit overrated however, I like Scope Lens and I like Psych Up to copy opposing Calm Minds from stuff like Raikou and threaten them back.

I think this guy has a lot of really nice traits people are overlooking. Sand means you don't get stalled out by Substitute mons, it hits hard and is bulky, and honestly, its weaknesses are manageable.

Honestly, I think Skarmory could be really solid. Curse stuff can be good, it gets Counter, hell you can run Sandstorm to get around Substitute + Liechi berry Heracross. Its typing also just naturally allows it to tank normally hard to tank physical attackers like Metagross and Tauros, resisting their main STAB moves and being immune to Earthquake.

As much as I like Dragonite, it is quite overrated in my opinion. So it has two things over Salamence, being its Special Defense, and its special movepool. Its Special Defense is honestly quite negligible.

can we not rank mons that we've never used before? with the extra spdef you get much more evs to live ice beams/hp ice and you can pretty comfortably run sub dd hp flying eq just like mence, although beam can be used too. It also gets better special coverage with boltbeam and other tech options

edit: examples are like petaya scept ice beam ludi (because ludicolo can live non band hpflying idk why bern thinks it loses lol) and benches that mence hits, but u gain extra evs to put into attack/speed

I looked into these examples, and generally, Dragonite gains 5-10 attack points over Salamence with these benchmarks, which isn't much. In turn, it loses out on a lot of physical bulk through Intimidate, and its significantly slower, which can matter. For instance, if you try to tank Sceptile HP Ice, Dragonite cannot outspeed Raikou after a Dragon Dance, while Salamence can, albeit with 0 attack investment. I think the best use of Dragonite is probably just something like mixed Choice Band, as this kind of set doesn't really need Speed investment, so you can invest in the bulk and Special Attack needed to beat Salamence with Ice Beam while still maintaining a good amount of other matchups. I'll say I mostly ranked it as high as I did since in a vacuum, its solid, but it is just worse than Salamence in most scenarios, and when Salamence is one of the best Pokemon in the tier (at least in my opinion), that's a weird place to be.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

 

[fake tom numbers]

I looked into these examples, and generally, Dragonite gains 5-10 attack points over Salamence with these benchmarks, which isn't much. In turn, it loses out on a lot of physical bulk through Intimidate, and its significantly slower, which can matter. For instance, if you try to tank Sceptile HP Ice, Dragonite cannot outspeed Raikou after a Dragon Dance, while Salamence can, albeit with 0 attack investment. I think the best use of Dragonite is probably just something like mixed Choice Band, as this kind of set doesn't really need Speed investment, so you can invest in the bulk and Special Attack needed to beat Salamence with Ice Beam while still maintaining a good amount of other matchups. I'll say I mostly ranked it as high as I did since in a vacuum, its solid, but it is just worse than Salamence in most scenarios, and when Salamence is one of the best Pokemon in the tier (at least in my opinion), that's a weird place to be.

This is very true, talked a bit more with some adv guys and it seems more fraudulent than I remember (pov u havent built adv in multiple years), thought this guy had 90 speed but it's actually 80 which makes it so that hitting 373 is never worth it for dnite (ev wise, which makes the dnite sample actually useless because surprisingly mence only gets a bit less evs). However, the spdef is still noteworthy if you don't run dd/go something like 363+ (since most scept dont go max speed, although not beating zam is pretty dire). And yeah, something like band sounds pretty good (maybe some def to live +1 aero since you have inner focus? then special bench could be whatever, even something like 2 icy winds from non-petaya rachi) or the special moves it got is very useful.

One thing that I disagree with is the notion that "mence has so much more def with intim+better stats" and while this is obviously true, you still beat 80% of attackers without intim because of the typing/speed/coverage. Intim does help with some wak, cb tauros (although toxic is probably more common nowadays) and rocks like aero and ttar, which you can beat with special/physical dnite still, while still beating fightings like hera. More lower on the vr intim definitely is more important, but dnite can definitely help with specific use cases, especially synergizing with some top mons.

tl;dr not as good as I remember, but it is nowhere near useless as bern mentions

A couple notes:

Regice is really nice just to sit in front of strong special attackers while not losing to stuff like Marowak. I personally think Amnesia is a bit overrated however, I like Scope Lens and I like Psych Up to copy opposing Calm Minds from stuff like Raikou and threaten them back.

I think this guy has a lot of really nice traits people are overlooking. Sand means you don't get stalled out by Substitute mons, it hits hard and is bulky, and honestly, its weaknesses are manageable.

Honestly, I think Skarmory could be really solid. Curse stuff can be good, it gets Counter, hell you can run Sandstorm to get around Substitute + Liechi berry Heracross. Its typing also just naturally allows it to tank normally hard to tank physical attackers like Metagross and Tauros, resisting their main STAB moves and being immune to Earthquake.

I also surprisingly agree with most of these as well, especially ttar with something like a liechi berry can still beat starmie and outspeeding 361 guys (its definitely not good but it is way better than silver powder, and you don't need hp bug).

Some sets to shoutout to make this post not a complete waste of time:
I've been liking a lot more offensive sets like petaya thunder ever since scope lens warped the tier, helps out with matchups that I don't remember (definitely tauros tho). Subtect is also sometimes not prepped for and can catch band users that rely on eq to beat raik.

Very underrated imo, gets barrier/amnesia/mirror coat and can stall with its very interesting typing. Definitely something cool that can be looked into

twave petaya sub hp ice beats mence!!1

Has more bulk and damage than venu, cool mon :thumbsup:

very happy that theres adv posts, hope to see more

 

[pqs]

interrupting your adv talk to bring you my personal sm 1v1 vr; it's a year old but my takes haven't significantly changed. i would say this is a very helpful video for anyone trying to get into the tier, and i personally think that my vr is a lot better than the current one on smogon.

im a little flustered in it but i get better as it goes on

the easy to read version

S Rank​

Mega Charizard X
Dragonite

---

S- Rank​

Magearna
Mega Mawile
Porygon-Z
Zygarde

---

A+ Rank​

Mega Charizard Y
Mega Metagross
Tapu Fini
Tapu Lele
Zeraora

---

A Rank​

Greninja
Mega Gardevoir
Mega Gyarados
Meloetta
Primarina

---

A- Rank​

Aegislash
Crustle
Empoleon
Heatran
Landorus-T
Manaphy
Magnezone
Serperior
Mega Slowbro
Togekiss
Victini
Volcarona

B+ Rank​

Mega Altaria
Celesteela
Mega Diancie
Garchomp
Genesect
Kommo-o
Kyurem
Naganadel
Necrozma
Quagsire
Registeel
Mega Sableye

---

B Rank​

Mega Aggron
Araquanid
Kartana
Chansey
Clefable
Ferrothorn
Gigalith
Hoopa-Unbound
Incineroar
Mega Latias
Krookodile
Porygon2
Mega Scizor
Shaymin
Mega Swampert
Mega Tyranitar
Mega Venusaur
Volcanion
Zapdos

---

B- Rank​

Alolan Muk
Ambipom
Archeops
Blaziken
Mega Blaziken
Carracosta
Chandelure
Deoxys-S
Diggersby
Donphan
Golem
Infernape
Mega Lopunny
Mega Medicham
Mega Pinsir
Pyukumuku
Raikou
Slaking
Tapu Bulu
Type: Null

---

C+ Rank​

Mega Aerodactyl
Aggron
Mega Audino
Blacephalon
Mega Blastoise
Cloyster
Emboar
Gengar
Hydreigon
Jumpluff
Latios
Mega Lucario
Nihilego
Rhyperior
Rotom-W
Sawk
Scrafty
Staraptor
Mega Steelix
Suicune
Sylveon
Terrakion
Thundurus-T
Vaporeon
Virizion
Vivillon
Weavile
Whimsicott

---

C Rank​

Alakazam
Arcanine
Mega Audino
Breloom
Buzzwole
Mega Camerupt
Durant
Gyarados
Keldeo
Landorus
Mega Latias
Alolan Ninetales
Rotom-H
Salamence
Salazzle
Mega Sceptile
Scolipede
Stakataka
Tentacruel
Thundurus
Tyranitar

---

C- Rank​

Mega Abomasnow
Mega Ampharos
Avalugg
Celebi
Excadrill
Mega Gallade
Mega Garchomp
Mega Heracross
Mandibuzz
Milotic
Musharna
Nidoking
Mega Pidgeot
Reuniclus
Rotom-M
Salamence
Skarmory
Talonflame
Xurkitree

---

D (gimmick) Rank​

Mega Alakazam
Alomomola
Aron
Blissey
Exeggutor
Mega Gengar
Illumise
Machamp
Magneton
Rampardos
Relicanth
Riolu
Sceptile
Shedinja
Smeargle
Togedemaru
Trevenant
Ursaring
Venusaur

 

[pqs]

Can we get a blanket ban on sleep in SS, SM, and ORAS? In all of these gens it’s pretty clear that the current sleep bans (only inaccurate sleep moves are banned) are half-baked compromises that make nobody happy. There is no argument for sleep’s competitiveness, whether inaccurate or accurate—Mega Venusaur should not be able to beat a Victini, but it can with the right amount of sleep turns; it’s the same deal with Yawn Sylveon and AV Zeraora in SS.

The only exception I can think of for a blanket sleep ban is Relic Song in ORAS and SM, as it actually provides a viable and competitive strat (which doesn’t rely on sleep) for Meloetta. I hope we can get a discussion going on this, seeing how PL is wrapping up and WC is just around the corner!

 

[Kanha Greninja]

Can we get a blanket ban on sleep in SS, SM, and ORAS? In all of these gens it’s pretty clear that the current sleep bans (only inaccurate sleep moves are banned) are half-baked compromises that make nobody happy. There is no argument for sleep’s competitiveness, whether inaccurate or accurate—Mega Venusaur should not be able to beat a Victini, but it can with the right amount of sleep turns; it’s the same deal with Yawn Sylveon and AV Zeraora in SS.

The only exception I can think of for a blanket sleep ban is Relic Song in ORAS and SM, as it actually provides a viable and competitive strat (which doesn’t rely on sleep) for Meloetta. I hope we can get a discussion going on this, seeing how PL is wrapping up and WC is just around the corner!

i can't speak for SM or ORAS since I do not have as much experience in it as SS, but if the only argument to ban sleep is that you should not be able to luck yourself out of a bad MU, according to your argument shouldn't flinch moves also be banned since the odds that you land the sleep powder incase of venu in SS + getting the sleep turns is pretty much as bad odds as flinches also why Darm-G has no reliable check but anyway in the case of yawn sylv it faces tons of opportunity cost from its other sets which are better than yawn like specs and custap... is luck terrible when a ton of stuff in 1v1 rely on rolls and getting lucky?

 

[Here Comes Team Charm!]

Talking about SS here because it's my area of expertise: I think sleep in its current form is not problematic and I think the way it currently sees use is very suggestive of that. I won't spend much time on Sleep Powder because I think venu is a largely deterministic speed trap and if anything, venu is the one taking on the burden of RNG there - I think I've seen more matches decided by a missed attack than by 3-turn sleep.

The question is: is Yawn uncompetitive? Is it an "element that reduces the effect of player choice/interaction on the end result to an extreme degree, such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant"? I do not think so. Other sleep moves were, but I think Yawn is inherently more competitive than other sleep moves, because the turn after Yawn almost always has a meaningful attack/setup protect/attack choice going on for both sides (not to mention that Yawn still always allows the opponent to act on the Yawn turn, which allows for a ton more counterplay than 'traditional' sleep moves).

As far as Sleep turns go, Yawn is less bad than other sleep moves. The mandatory Protect/Endure turn after Yawn often allows for a 50-50 that a skilled player can exploit with setup. (I don't think this 50-50 is uncompetitive in itself: it's basically the same dynamic inherently generated by Custap Berries, and custap is fine) The ability to use moves like Rest, Encore, or Calm Mind reactively adds counterplay to Yawn that isn't there in other sleep user matchups, and that allows for skillful outplays on part of Sylveon and its foe both.

Certainly, a lucky Yawn Sylveon can get 33% odds for 3-turn sleep and high rolls and cheese something like Volcanion maybe 20% of the time. But some degree of RNG is simply considered acceptable in this meta: Togekiss has an 18% chance to flinch Band Rhyperior to death, Gdarm beats Occa Steela 25% of the time, and Cress or Regi's odds of getting crit by an 8-pp move are roughly one in three.

Does Yawn, and sleep in general, 'reduce the effect of player choice/interaction on the end result'? Certainly, just like flinches, scald, high crit moves, crits, and custap berries. But like all those things, it does not do this to an extreme degree - not by this meta's standards. Nor does it render more skillful play irrelevant - skillful play is more relevant in a matchup like primarina vs yawnsylv than in matchups like zera vs entei or crustle vs gdarm, who are just hoping for good RNG with no alternative.

Yawn is a very small, unobtrusive part of the current metagame. It is not overpowered, and not unhealthy. The argument for its uncompetitiveness is there, but I remain unconvinced by it, because Yawn as a move is simply less inherently uncompetitive than other sleep moves. If we declare it a problem, either in theory or in practice, we are measuring it by a fundamentally different standard.

 

[crow crumbs]

The only exception I can think of for a blanket sleep ban is Relic Song in ORAS and SM, as it actually provides a viable and competitive strat (which doesn’t rely on sleep) for Meloetta. I hope we can get a discussion going on this, seeing how PL is wrapping up and WC is just around the corner!

ftr blanket sleep bans such as those in sv ou typically don't include moves like relic song and dire claw. i think those type of moves r pretty uncontroversial (especially relic song).

i'm pretty neutral on sleep in ss these days. no1 really runs speedtrap venu anymore and yawn sylv is a pretty fair/healthy set. in terms of gameplay health id prefer if at least yawn was kept in but i'm also a big fan of just having consistency between gens. comparing the sleep banlists between each 1v1 gen is smth u would legit want a spreadsheet for and its not an important enough part of any particular gen to justify that level of complexity.

my ideal solution would just be to have all sleep besides yawn banned in all gens. gun to my head if i had to choose between Ban All/status quo, i would probably vote ban for ss though.

edit didnt see sylv was actually mentioned in op:

it’s the same deal with Yawn Sylveon and AV Zeraora in SS.

+1 to charms points abt yawn in general but also i dont think sylveon being able to oddsmaxx vs av zera/ferro is a bad thing. if ur running those mons ur already acknowledging that ur cutting corners vs sylveon as they can both lose to different sets. its hard to articulate/quantify this but i think the meta is a lot more dynamic with sylveon being so powerful into passive meatballs. if yawn is banned then stuff like chansey becomes a lot more linear to handle in the builder etc.

 

[pqs]

I agree with your premise and appreciate you posting Kanha Greninja; I think that it’s very important to consider the obvious “slippery slope” that comes with any discussion about a potential sleep ban.

if the only argument to ban sleep is that you should not be able to luck yourself out of a bad MU, according to your argument shouldn't flinch moves also be banned since the odds that you land the sleep powder incase of venu in SS + getting the sleep turns is pretty much as bad odds as flinches

I believe that the difference lies in the fact that the attacks with side effects (be it Icicle Crash, Air Slash, Relic Song, etc) all have actual competitive merit outside of their potential for hax. There’s clearly a difference between putting Icicle Crash on your Darm-G and putting Sleep Powder on your Mega Venusaur; one’s main purpose is getting actual almost-guaranteed matchups against specific threats, while the other is solely for testing the user’s luck against a broad range of Pokemon.


And to Charm and crow crumbs’ posts; honestly, I kinda glossed over Yawn and how the “warning turn” is actually conducive to a lot of skillful matchups with probability management; however, I think that any sleep move past that is where the line should be drawn for “competitive” vs. “uncompetitive” for sleep. I can agree to keeping Yawn unbanned, but the rest of the sleep moves gotta go.


tl;dr: sleep moves require no skill and make the game less competitive (outside of yawn) unlike moves with rng chances that have a specific purpose outside of hax (icicle crash, air slash, etc). ban sleep but i concede that yawn is fine.

 

[Kanha Greninja]

I agree with your premise and appreciate you posting Kanha Greninja; I think that it’s very important to consider the obvious “slippery slope” that comes with any discussion about a potential sleep ban.

I believe that the difference lies in the fact that the attacks with side effects (be it Icicle Crash, Air Slash, Relic Song, etc) all have actual competitive merit outside of their potential for hax. There’s clearly a difference between putting Icicle Crash on your Darm-G and putting Sleep Powder on your Mega Venusaur; one’s main purpose is getting actual almost-guaranteed matchups against specific threats, while the other is solely for testing the user’s luck against a broad range of Pokemon.


And to Charm and crow crumbs’ posts; honestly, I kinda glossed over Yawn and how the “warning turn” is actually conducive to a lot of skillful matchups with probability management; however, I think that any sleep move past that is where the line should be drawn for “competitive” vs. “uncompetitive” for sleep. I can agree to keeping Yawn unbanned, but the rest of the sleep moves gotta go.


tl;dr: sleep moves require no skill and make the game less competitive (outside of yawn) unlike moves with rng chances that have a specific purpose outside of hax (icicle crash, air slash, etc). ban sleep but i concede that yawn is fine.

I agree with the difference between sleep moves and side effect moves nonetheless the odds between them both are similar regardless. There is one more point i wanted to make that is that Venu in SS doesn't gain MUs from sleep turns which basically means that the Sleep user doesn't get a lot of benefit from Sleep. And Sleep Powder and Leech Seed can both miss and is super unreliable that also isn't giving you a whole lot of MUs either. This makes it unreliable for the person using Venu and not overwhelming for the person without. Banning sleep is a little notch crazy especially in SS

 

[Felucia]

Edit: This post is about the "consistent" sleep implementation in modern gens, I don't feel qualified to speak on gens like RSE where sleep can go up to a thousand turns. Any "blanket" solution should only apply to gens 5+

I don't disagree that the current partial ban on inaccurate sleep feels incomplete at face value. If sleep is a problem, only banning the portion of it that is less likely to affect the outcome of a game can feel backwards, but I really believe there's more merit to the solution than a "half-baked compromise". Now I wasn't around when sleep got banned from SM, but if I had to justify a low accuracy sleep ban I'd either say it provides less value to the metagame because it's less popular, or say its abusers are generally a lot faster (Mega Sceptile, Mega Gengar, and Whimsicott are the most notable ones) which creates inconsistent speed traps which genuinely impact player agency a lot more than "just" sleep. These reasons combined are enough for me to feel that a partial ban is justified.

With that out of the way let's tackle how I actually feel about a full ban on sleep-inducing moves. I feel like there's 2 aspects at play here: Perceived matchup consistency and player agency, I'll mostly be going into the latter. There are things that are out of your control and hinder consistency but are still up to player choice, this includes things like running Hustle Durant if you so desire (who would do that lmao), where you have no-one to blame but yourself. Player agency or perceived player agency are important, and the reason why things like OHKO moves or evasion boosts are banned because it takes too much agency away from a party that can't reasonably be expected to mitigate that loss of agency. "Just run sturdy for OHKO moves" does not qualify as sufficient agency, "Just don't run Hustle" does.

Which brings me to "sleep" itself, in all of its perceived unfair glory. My opinion on this has remained unchanged for the past 8 years, but I don't think I've ever taken the time to make a solid post on the topic (back when I wrote my sleep post 8 years ago I was a child and didn't know how to construct an argument). I don't believe "sleep" as an element takes away all that much agency from either player. There's no "If you hate sleep just run insomnia" levels of loss of agency, and in fact if you start digging deep enough into SM teambuilding it's surprisingly not that hard to build solid teams that have consistent matchups into mons that can run sleep-inducing moves, and although I don't want to speak for them it seems I've seen this sentiment echoed from SS players as well. If you don't have a consistent answer to Jumpluff, Relicanth, Venusaur, or Mega Swampert in SM then that is absolutely a choice you are consciously making in builder, and I don't think getting punished for that by getting sleep rolled is in any way indicative of a particularly uncompetitive element. I view "sleep mon" matchups as no more or less impactful than any other matchup, and I don't think it's unreasonably hard to strive for consistency in those matchups. There are no unreasonbly fast speed traps (imagine if zeraora got access to spore) that genuinely take away a ton of player agency and metagame diversity either. Even if there were, that sounds like a case for a regular pokemon ban.

That doesn't mean sleep is not an RNG element, but with how consistent you can make matchups that rely on sleep-inducing moves I feel like the inconsistency is mostly on the end of the player using sleep moves, where sometimes Stunfisk can just lose to ZardX because it got unlucky with a first turn wakeup. And yes, Stunfisk can get good sleep rolls and beat a genesect, but I don't think any SM player would be willing to a. Build a team where Stunfisk is your Genesect answer or b. Build a team where your Stunfisk answer is a Genesect, which just further drives home my point.

tldr: I have never seen sleep inducing moves as fundamentally problematic, and think any posts supporting this claim need to put in a lot more effort than "rng bad". Although opinions may vary on how much reduction of player agency is acceptable in a competitive environment, I'd need to see a compelling case for sleep consistently removing agency to an unhealthy extent. Until I can be convinced such a case exists, I will not support a ban on any sleep inducing moves.
If anything, if I had to argue for a consistent policy on sleep inducing moves across generations, I'd argue if we can't justify banning it from all gens that's a sign that abusers are the problem and not the mechanic, but now is not the time to try get SV players to agree to a sleep unban.

 

[Murm]

been talking a lot on discord about this subject, i'm going to make this short: I believe sleep is just an awful mechanic to have in a competitive game. imo ban all sleep. that being said, unbanning the low accuracy sleep moves is better than the current system for gens 6-8, its just very unintuitive, and it doesn't really line up with tiering policy at all. it also should be left to each generation imo, leave it to the people who play the tiers, just don't touch ancient gens smile. these are just my thoughts, sleep just isn't fun to play, it isn't fun to build around, and it isn't fun to watch.

 

[Felucia]

With PL coming to a close and ORAS cup just about starting, I think it's about time I make a post outlining what I ran into while building ORAS for AHD for pretty much the entire tour. This won't a full VR post or anything but there are some mons that deserve a special highlight.

If you haven't been watching A Hero's Destiny's ORAS series, "fires that beat Victini" is a pretty big concept in the way I've come to understand and build ORAS. That doesn't mean you need to build like that (obviously, because it falls apart when you're actually using victini) but it's been a damn good fallback for me as I was essentially re-learning the meta because I hadn't really touched it much.

Before I go into any of my fun things to share I want to take a quick stop at Volcarona. Although it's listed as A- on the VR, it's surprisingly hard to slot on a lot of teams because of the abundance of good fire types that not only all beat Volcarona in the one-on-one, but also oftentimes manage to have a reliable Victini matchup, something Volcarona doesn't have.

I don't think Volcarona can keep up as a fire and should probably be dropped all the way down to B rank.

With that out of the way... In no particular order here's some fire types.

It's camel time

Camel

Camerupt-Mega @ Cameruptite
Ability: Solid Rock
EVs: 208 HP / 56 SpA / 244 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Fire Blast
- Ancient Power / Flash Cannon
- Earth Power / Flash Cannon
- Focus Energy / Growth / Protect

Sheer Force Fire Blast deals more damage than Overheat so you have practically no reason not to run it. Flash Cannon can be slotted over Ancient Power or Earth Power to get a reliable Mega Altaria matchup. This set also naturally beats non bulky Victini by just mega evolving and clicking Earth Power. If the Heatran and Gardevoir matchups aren't important to you, you can run less special defense to get the damage to beat bulk-invested Victini.

Protect is mostly for Mega Lopunny but doesn't actually win with this spread because you lack damage. You need a minimum of 164+ SpA investment for that matchup. Focus Energy and Growth can help camerupt set up and beat defense boosting stall matchups, I don't think either is particularly reliable into Sableye but a girl can dream

Overall this one Camerupt set beats most of S rank on its own, with the potential to run some alternative spreads and moves to grab some extra matchups. It also obviously beats almost all Fire and Steel types by virtue of... being Mega Camerupt.

In VR terms, Camerupt can easily be bumped up to B or even B+ rank.

Chandy is awesome, trust me

Chandelure

Chandelure @ Life Orb
Ability: Infiltrator
EVs: 192 HP / 56 Def / 160 SpA / 4 SpD / 96 Spe
Modest Nature
- Will-O-Wisp
- Overheat
- Shadow Ball
- Calm Mind / Taunt / Curse / Energy Ball

I initially tried to build a specs chandelure, realised it wasn't cutting it, then tried some other weird set but lacked damage. I eventually landed on Life Orb but I feel like there's more exploration to be done with Chandy. The EVs allow Chandelure to tank an EQ from a burned Donphan on the physical side, while tanking Scald + Life Orb from Mega Slowbro and Specs Shadow Ball from Victini on the special side.

Calcs

252+ SpA Choice Specs Victini Shadow Ball vs. 192 HP / 4 SpD Chandelure: 260-308 (84.1 - 99.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Choice Band burned Donphan Earthquake vs. 192 HP / 56 Def Chandelure: 261-307 (84.4 - 99.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
0 SpA Slowbro-Mega Scald vs. 192 HP / 4 SpD Chandelure: 236-278 (76.3 - 89.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Overheat and Shadow Ball as dual STABs give maximum damage, you can consider running Fire Blast or some other fire move if you're concerned with repeated use but honestly I don't care enough. Calm Mind / Taunt / Curse are all different ways to get through opposing stall, Taunt deals with Chansey and Audino which can't do anything to Chandelure while taunted, while Calm Mind gives a better line into certain Sableye and Venusaur sets. I don't know why you'd ever run Curse but it sounded funny so I put it on the list.

Don't get too baited by Energy Ball, pretty much all relevant water types are faster than you. If you're running it, it's basically for Swampert and Quagsire.

I feel like there's more options to explore here, you can probably run Acid Armor + Pain Split instead of Will-O, which would still beat band donphan while potentially picking up some matchups. Chandy gets Endure which means there's potential for a custap set, and of course max speed specs can just pick up matchups as well.

Chandelure feels a bit finicky at times and for sure can't match the likes of Camerupt, but I think it can easily be added to the VR at C+ or even B-.

Entei is my goat
I don't have a whole lot to say here because Entei is already on the ORAS setcomp with a reliable helmet set that you can just copy/paste and win games with, but I wanted to mention Entei because it has the potential to beat a lot of top tiers (Victini, Gardevoir, Gengar, Sableye) depending on its set. I think offensive is being slept on, but it obviously also has a PP stall set that I haven't used yet but is super good. Being a physical fire is nice for the Sableye matchup (same goes for Blaziken and Darmanitan, the latter isn't in this post) because it means you can't be burnt.

Entei sits comfortably at B, but I think it could easily be raised to at least B+

Blaziken
I had plans for what to write here but I took a sip of my tea and forgot all of them. Tldr: Mega Blaziken's little brother is ranked a little high at B-, I think blaziken has comfortably settled into a spot where a bulky mega is just the way to go.

Mega Chomper
The current setcomp Megachomp is a relic, do not get scammed by it. Running max speed jolly sounds enticing to make use of ORAS speed mechanics, but you don't gain enough running mega over regular chomp if you use it like that. In my opinion the way to go if you're running mega is to go full bulky with very little speed investment and rely on mega garchomp's absurd stats (108/115/95 bulk with a 170 attack stat) to bulk whatever the fuck you want and retaliate. I don't have a set for you, because I've run it twice to beat super weird specific shit that I can't remember the calcs for. I'll owe you this one!

Kingdra is actually kinda good

Trust the process

Kingdra @ Haban Berry / Roseli Berry / Honestly any item you want
Ability: Swift Swim
- Hydro Pump
- Draco Meteor
- Disable
- Rain Dance

I haven't managed to find a good EV spread for this thing so I simply didn't include one, but if you need something quick just pick out a swift swim speed benchmark and throw the rest into SpA and bulk. The game plan is simple: Click rain dance, disable choiced mons or anything that wants to click a move that kills you, then win at the video game. Haban Berry makes kingdra beat most dragons (even haban ones!) by disabling their dragon type move, the obvious exception being unnerve haxorus. Overall this technology needs further exploring before we can properly rank it, but as it stands it's at least C worthy.

Oh it also beats victini btw.

That's all folks!
I've got more ideas and opinions when it comes to ORAS and I'm currently working on doing a full pass over setcomp to clean things up, re-EV things, improve explanations, etc. but the full extent of what I've learned will have to wait until after PL. My team would shoot me if I shared everything :3

 

[Mishlef]

There isn't an PL dump so I'm going to post here some SM sets with EVs and explanations because I don't believe in gatekeeping + I think SM resources are hella outdated. Add me on council to fix them! I got tired halfway through so the quality of my explanations decreased sorry about that gg.

Anti-Victini Zard-X

Anti-Victini (Charizard-Mega-X) @ Charizardite X
Ability: Blaze
EVs: 20 HP / 68 Atk / 168 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Flare Blitz
- Outrage
- Substitute

+1 252+ SpA Victini Stored Power (120 BP) vs. 20 HP / 168 SpD Charizard-Mega-X: 255-301 (84.4 - 99.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Outrage t1 beats Victini but DD t1 becomes better if z-celeb become bulkier but this loses like random CB Victini matchup, max speed + Substitute also helps in the mirror. Attack is dump. I consider this to be the standard ZardX set way more splashable than spdef zard.

Protect Physical Z-Fly Dnite

Protect Physical Fly-Z (Dragonite) @ Flyinium Z
Ability: Multiscale
EVs: 160 HP / 252 Atk / 96 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Fly
- Extreme Speed
- Dragon Dance
- Protect

Max Attack Adamant for best Rolls, Speed for base 60s and outspeeding stuff like Ambipom and base 100s. Rest in HP. Protect helps with expected stuff like Fake Out but notably combined with Fly this set beats Tapu Lele. DD t1 if they Z Reflect u can stall out the Reflect between Fly and Protect. Be careful of how much spa Lele is running but u should be able to tell from Fly damage and Moonblast damage if you can drop your Z move early. Additionally, if they normal reflect Fly into Fly Z KO's at +1 just make sure to not Protect and get Multiscale broken by Z-Psychic.

SpeedTrap Venusaur

Speedtrap Venusaur (Venusaur-Mega) @ Venusaurite
Ability: Chlorophyll
EVs: 248 HP / 8 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Sleep Powder
- Substitute
- Leech Seed
- Sludge Bomb

Straightforward evs that may be able to be optimized but imo this is it's best set by far and makes Venusaur a top 5 mon. There are some matchups this gives up but the amount of absurd matchups you gain makes up for it. Also this is a dnite counter. I would consider banning MVenu because of this set.

Iapapa Tapu Fini

Posting 3 spreads for this mon pick and choose which one you prefer. Play pattern vs all Dnite is ID T1. If Band Tpunch then click Moonblast twice. If Special click CM. If Jolly Z Fly ID to +4 then spam Moonblast.

Tapu Fini @ Iapapa Berry
Ability: Misty Surge
EVs: 192 HP / 84 SpA / 16 SpD / 216 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Iron Defense
- Moonblast
- Surf

Speed for Adamant Dnite, Defense to live CB Donphan Gunk Shot at +2 into +4 which is almost identical to living Jolly Band Tpunch Dnite. Spa to KO 4 Spdef Dnite, rest in Spd for best rolls vs Special Flynium Z Dnite 44.52% to live (61.164% to win including Hurricane miss).

Tapu Fini @ Iapapa Berry
Ability: Misty Surge
EVs: 212 HP / 64 Def / 16 SpA / 216 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Iron Defense
- Moonblast
- Surf

Speed for Adamant Dnite, Defense to live Jolly Band Tpunch Dnite, lives Special Z Flynium but now rolls 4 Spdef Dnite as you only KO 58.9% of the time.

Perfect Anti Dragonite Fini (Tapu Fini) @ Iapapa Berry
Ability: Misty Surge
EVs: 220 HP / 164 Def / 92 SpA / 28 SpD / 4 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Iron Defense
- Moonblast
- Surf

Lives all Dnites + Donphan, 92 spa to ohko specs gren at +2 (not strictly necessary can go down to 84 if you want). Spdef is added to maximize chance to live Z Grass Heatran that Fini now loses to because slower. 4 speed is dump. 40 EVs are customizable taking out 8Spa, 28Spdef, 4Spe.

IMO 1st is the best because Z Hurricane Dnite is not that good of a set and generally outclassed by other Dnite sets. If you're not scared of Jolly TPunch 2nd set essentially beats all Dnite, 3rd guarantees but you really like speed on this Fini IMO. I cannot promise these evs are perfect I feel like I went crazy making them.

HP Ice ZardY

HP Ice (Charizard-Mega-Y) @ Charizardite Y
Ability: Drought
EVs: 192 HP / 84 Def / 136 SpA / 96 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Blast Burn
- Solar Beam
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Will-O-Wisp / Flame Charge

Speed for Dnite, Defense to live Garchomp Rock Tomb, Spa to OHKO 4HP Garchomp, HP to live Quiet Z Draco into burned Espeed (be aware that HP Ice rolls 252 HP Dnite). Cool ZardY that keeps many of the core matchups but also beats most of the 4x ice weaks. Zygarde can run any evs so theres not necessarily a perfect sequence, Wisp into HP Ice x2 probably the safest but can technically be rolled by groundium, you can also solar beam into HP Ice to always beat groundium but you lose odds vs DD Z Outrage Zygarde. Might have to redo this

Mixed Electrium (Good EVs)

This is the good evs much better than the setcomp one imo.
Mixed Electrium (Zeraora) @ Electrium Z
Ability: Volt Absorb
EVs: 228 HP / 48 Atk / 100 Def / 44 SpA / 88 Spe
Naive Nature
- Plasma Fists
- Thunder
- Charge
- Fake Out

HP + Def lives 252 Atk EQ into Bullet Punch from Metagross and lives 0Spa Lele Z Psychic after a charge. Speed for Greninja. Spa to KO Crustle after Fake Out while maximizing attack. Click Charge into Z against Metagross instead of clicking Fake Out to not give Stomping Tantrum the ability to KO.

Protect Gardevoir

Protect Gardevoir (Gardevoir-Mega) @ Gardevoirite
Ability: Trace
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 244 HP / 172 Def / 24 SpA / 68 Spe
Modest Nature
- Protect
- Hyper Beam
- Hyper Voice
- Icy Wind / Encore / Psychic / Calm Mind

Lives Giga Impact from Lopunny and Scarf PZ Hyper Beam. Speed to Outspeed Gren at -1 and stuff that EV to outspeed Gren such as faster MGyara. Rest in Special Attack. Protect lets Gardevoir beat Lopunny, Greninja, Garchomp, stall out Melo Laser Focus etc. Generally pretty versatile of a move. Last can be any move. Vs Greninja stay normal and Protect vs Protean as you turn Normal and live Gunk Shot and win with Icy Wind into Hyper Beam thanks to newly gained Normal STAB.

Screens Serperior

Z-Screens (Serperior) @ Psychium Z
Ability: Contrary
EVs: 252 HP / 88 Def / 168 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Light Screen
- Reflect
- Leaf Storm
- Synthesis

I dont rememember what EVs are for, might just be speed for Chomp and then Def Dump. Click Z-Screen then spam Synthesis and Leaf Storm and win.

Payback Gyarados

Payback MGyara (Gyarados-Mega) @ Gyaradosite
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 248 HP / 24 Atk / 236 Def
Brave Nature
- Payback
- Outrage
- Stone Edge
- Ice Beam

Moves can be whatever, EV'd to live standard Fly-Z LandoT as well as standard TPunch Metagross. Stone Edge + Outrage beats Charizards if you hit. Ice Beam over Ice Fang for Zygarde and accuracy.

Fast CB Dnite

Fast CB (Dragonite) @ Choice Band
Ability: Multiscale
EVs: 20 HP / 252 Atk / 12 Def / 224 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Outrage
- Earthquake
- Fire Punch
- Thunder Punch / Stone Edge

Max Attack Adamant is important for Incineroar so EQ into EQ KOs even after a BU from Incin, Speed is for Max Speed Magearna, Bulk is for standard Incin fake out into Z. Thunder Punch is good for the water fairies, Stone Edge lets you beat the Spdef Wisp ZardX. Iron Head is bait, you can maybe run Superpower as well for Heatran reliability but personally I just Outrage and get the roll.

Normal Z-Conversion PZ

Normal Z Convert PZ (Porygon-Z) @ Normalium Z
Ability: Adaptability
EVs: 120 HP / 88 SpA / 116 SpD / 184 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Conversion
- Hyper Beam
- Nasty Plot
- Uproar

Tried with this Speed is for Venu, Bulk is for Incin + Mana iirc but like idk how I feel about this. I'm convinced there's a better way to do this maybe with like insane amounts of Special Defense so I'll leave this as an idea for someone else to improve upon.

Magnet Rise Aegislash

Magnet Rise (Aegislash) @ Ghostium Z
Ability: Stance Change
EVs: 88 HP / 4 Def / 232 SpA / 8 SpD / 176 Spe
Modest Nature
- Magnet Rise
- Shadow Ball
- Shadow Sneak
- Laser Focus

I've been a fan of running faster Aegislash in other gens so I changed it a bit here, Speed is for Donphan. Idr what the bulk for maybe some Metagross like EQ into Mash because if they are sub they are always clicking it. Not having King Shield can be a lot unfortunate at times. Laser Focus does a lot of the things Metal Sound does but means you aren't relying on hitting an 85% accurate move.

AB Magearna

AB Magearna (Magearna) @ Air Balloon
Ability: Soul-Heart
EVs: 108 HP / 152 SpA / 248 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Fleur Cannon
- Ice Beam
- Heart Swap
- Magnet Rise

My most used Magearna set personally, Heart Swap is crazy, AB does AB stuff.

Gigalith

Anti Zard + Dnite (Gigalith) @ Rockium Z
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 HP / 128 Def / 128 SpD
Impish Nature
- Stone Edge
- Protect
- Laser Focus
- Earthquake

Gigalith which doesnt throw all your evs away just to beat Genesect instead it throws away all the evs to beat Dnite + Zard. Lives ZardY Solar Beam and rest in Defense for best odds to live stuff like +1 Z-Dragon. If you would like to lose to ZardY you can go 252 HP and 252+ Atk for decent odds vs Maw and Fini.

AV Lando-T

AV (Landorus-Therian) (M) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 244 HP / 168 Atk / 24 Def / 52 SpD / 20 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Rock Tomb
- Earthquake
- Outrage
- Punishment / Smack Down / Superpower

Attack to KO Max HP Dnite with Rock Tomb into Outrage, Speed to Outspeed Chomp at -1 so you can Rock Tomb into Outrage (if they sub then Rock Tomb bounces off you). Spdef to live ZardY Blast Burn, dump is Defense for best odds vs DD Z-Outrage Dnite. Punishment is for Ghost Conversion PZ and Meloetta, Smack Down for Steelas and AB Magearna, Superpower for Scarf PZ.

Ferrothorn (Good EVs)

Better EVs and Moves (Ferrothorn) @ Grassium Z
Ability: Iron Barbs
EVs: 240 HP / 156 Atk / 100 Def / 12 SpD
Impish Nature
- Power Whip
- Protect
- Leech Seed
- Swords Dance

Idk why people would run z-confide or Substitute I think this clears. Bulk is for Lopunny and CB Zera, Z Leech beats Taunters. Attack to always KO Lopunny, Spdef is dump I believe. Kind of underrated mon that gets hurt by random HP Fires meant for genesect although you beat some of them still.

Z-Grass Serperior

Z Grass Serp (Serperior) @ Grassium Z
Ability: Contrary
EVs: 240 HP / 32 Def / 4 SpD / 232 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Leech Seed
- Protect
- Substitute
- Leaf Storm

I thinks EVs were for best odds vs Mawile. Play is Leaf Storm on Taunt, Leaf Storm again, and if you are out of range of Sucker then Z Leaf Storm otherwise you can Z Leech Seed and win unless they predict and don't sucker. I think this is just objectively better than Leftovers because you are able to flip some matchups by attacking into Z such as Gardevoir and I don't know if you lose any matchups from dropping Leftovers except maybe PP Stalling some moves.

Physical Scarf Genesect

Physical Scarf Genesect (Genesect) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Download
EVs: 8 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 244 Spe
Adamant Nature
- X-Scissor
- Gunk Shot
- Giga Impact
- Ice Beam

Originally tried to use Fly/Giga Impact to beat Volcarona but you never win because they should just QD and then Sub. However turns out Gunk Shot just beats the Water Fairies easily and you keep a lot of your matchups. And sometimes Giga Impact KOs a ZardY
+1 252+ Atk Genesect Giga Impact vs. 116 HP / 0 Def Charizard-Mega-Y: 312-368 (95.7 - 112.8%) -- 75% chance to OHKO.

That took much longer than I thought and again I apologize for rushing a bit near the bottom half. First half I think are just either best sets for the mons or should otherwise be included in the calc. Second half is more niche or just stuff that are known but I wanted to bring mention to but still good. Thanks for reading I'll make an SM metagame + VR post later.

 

[zo]

so im able to really gather my ss thoughts now at the conclusion of my pl season and after marinating on them for a bit. ill go over the changes i noticed in my own play/building and some habits i fell into and how they happened, as well as trends that popped up from my observation in tournament games.

top 5 mons

this mon has not really gotten worse imo. i think its in a zyglike situation where it absolutely can defeat everything but its opportunity cost for fringe mus is still notably great enough that it cant just steamroll the entire tier. however, i believe a lot of builders are sleeping on its techability, as theres still a lot thats fairly unexplored. cresselia has pretty good coverage for what it wants to do (sans focus blast, unfortunately) so specs would probably be worth looking into. i also think rocky is something thats deserving of experimentation because you can snag a few matchups with just a little bit of extra damage, which is pretty amazing for a mon that so often finds itself optimized to its limit. leftovers had an incredible showing this tournament without question, but i also saw a fair bit of scarf which obviously didnt really surprise me but the uptick in "easier sets" is worth noting regardless. i think no set has really fallen off and all of them have very defined strengths with few weaknesses, and i expect cresselia to stay #1 indefinitely at this point unless it ever gets banned (duh)

has had a relatively meteoric rise to become a contender for #1 but i think its pretty clearly #2. dont get me wrong of course, primarina is absurd and what it can do is truly ludicrous (mental herb LMAO) but cresselia to me is plainly a better pokemon in its techability and matchup spreads across the board. but speaking on the mon itself, primarina is excellent as always im glad to see it finally getting its recognition as very very easily top 3, the fact of the matter is that it only needs 2 moves to obliterate most of the tier and anything beyond that ranges from pretty good to overkill. encore cm icy wind endure jet charm dkiss reflect all deserve mention as some of its tech move options, baby doll eyes might be worth trying a bit but not hugely impressed, resist berries flip everything, etc. not much to say, youve probably seen a prim rob a game at least once this pl and it will keep happening until the end of time.

is probably the most average of the top tiers, seriously nothing really changed for it lol. last wc there was a bit of tech floating around, i was talkin with some people on west and they had a neat set idea but besides that i havent been particularly impressed or blown away by any new developments. fortunately for metagross it is absolutely the second least reliant on needing huge techs to swing matchups, behind

which finds itself very satisfied with its current plethora of sets. while it would take an hour to map each sets matchups realistically, tapu finis tldr is that it beats fires and fightings and darks (besides zarude) and doesnt ask anything in return. im a very big fan of the leftovers, wiki berry (dont say it) and scarf sets, and while i dont expect fini to pull any new tricks out of its shell anytime soon it really doesnt need to. its stats and typing are too blessed for it to really fail even with a dearth of tech moves.

rounds out my top 5 pokemon and its changes have been quite a doozy. stealing from sv, we have lorb spectrier being an absolute terrorist. the numbers lorb x2 hex can hit are frankly ludicrous, and hyper beam as a last move completely flips a decent amount of matchups. of course average taunt sitrus isnt going anywhere, but this lorb spectrier set is a terrorist on the metagame and spectrier legitimately concerns me sometimes with how much of the tier it can really beat using basically 2 and a half sets. specs has been completely absent from what ive seen (for good reason) but spectriers viability hasnt taken a hit at all. the advent of immediate power sets has really skyrocketed spectriers viability to the point where it could possibly be top 3 imo


other mons that deserve a mention

is fucking great. when you list the top 5 mons and you list their weaknesses zarude is the literal only one that can beat all of them remotely reliably. this makes teambuilding with it almost easy in comparison because you take care of the tech monsters and can thus focus your energy on a lot of the less annoying pokemon in the tier. additionally the usage of choiced sets has bumped up zarude even further for me, im a pretty big fan of scarf zarude to bully gdarm and cb has its moments as well. of course bu encore is the classic tried and true for very good reason but zarude wont find a shortage of usage anytime soon i think because of its outstanding natural traits and its pretty fucked up stat spread.

rapid made some real waves (no pun intended) this tournament. i saw a decent amount of set innovation (ironically, i fell onto the exact same sets many times) and my opinion on rapid has raised. i think rapid cant really be taken at theoretical value because most of what it provides is not really a set of difficult and awkward matchups but instead a guarantee in matchups that you desperately need to win, like entei. surging is op

i think should only really get better as spectrier and cress move up or stay near the top respectively but its starting to become a little difficult to use it. i dont feel comfortable with sets besides cb av and lorb, kinda seems like a scramble in order to beat mons you should very clearly beat such as spectrier. for the most part the ghosts have made it increasingly more obnoxious for shifu to deal with them, so while it still should be winning the fact the mu is even flippable lowers how i feel about it overall despite the fact that its usage should be rising to counteract spectriers.

sucks. i really wouldnt run any sets besides wisp and specs and cb specifically if you really suck into metagross. not much else to say

non choice sets saw a pretty hefty bump up in usage in my experience, which makes sense because theyre not really inherently bad just vastly different. its also kind of an extension of "endure is op" which ill get to later but yeah gdarms opportunity cost is through the roof when changing sets yet it still feels fine to load non gtactics.

is still stupidly unexplored for how great it should be and i strongly encourage anyone to try and diversify its sets to find new things it can do. its really not that hard when you take a look at its movepool and stats imo

is fucked up man Lol can we run kee again. idk what else to even write this mon should beat 90% of the tier and no one will diverge from scarf (WORST SET)

is getting a mention for being a very sad pokemon. i advise never running it unless you are physical electric move w protect lol

i think got a slight usage bump? rising on vr anyway it looks cool its fine. i like beating fairies

moves and items

endure is op. i think its become increasingly obvious that the custap berry promotes some really dumb lines of play and like yeah. it kind of contributes to porygonzs dropoff as a pokemon (along with spect being jesus) and truth be told prim would be lower if it couldnt literally use encore to guarantee certain annoying custap mus. ive noticed some interesting nonchoiced mons that probably should be choiced (kyurem garm pz... zeraora haxorus, arguably shifu rapid as well) just because the freedom of even trying to outplay custap on certain mons is worth sacrificing the damage for. lorb has become a very serviceable alternative for most of the aforementioned nonchoiced pokemon. meanwhile the opposite holds true in that the sudden damage burst from a choiced pokemon renders a custap berry moot if the foe isnt able to understand that they need to endure. it creates an interesting cyclic dynamic where the best mons at any given time are trying to be the most surprising option.

that said! i think the custap berry is fucking annoying. im team "maybe not ban right now but look at later because zeraora should beat primarina lmao"

id press stuff is cool. im of the Woke Af opinion that teching into chansey (among other things) is broken. id press tran is a great start but metagross should maybe be looked at for its ability to do this as well. id press is the entire reason i even run ferrothorn lol

i touched on it prior, but lorb is a really good item actually. not much to add clicking setup move + lorb move is strong.

shuca tran > balloon tran

sleep

dont rly care i rather ban all than none


underrated mons

read above

check my vr sheet comments

STILL GOOD

RUN SPEED!!!!!!!! op with id + speed. like seriously slow sets r garbage

CLOSING THOUGHTS LOL I FORGOT

i think ss is in a fine if not kinda torturous state right now. to be honest its a little hard to build and kinda annoying. i like it for its faults regardless nglll but yeah it can be hard to stomach.

personal vr will be edited in at..... some point. idk. im very tired right now. byeeeeeeeeeeeeee

 

[luser]

Corviknight

Corviknight @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 160 HP / 96 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Iron Head
- Roost
- Substitute
- Taunt / Iron Defense

Agree with zo that you should run max speed on this

Watershifu

Urshifu-Rapid-Strike @ Weakness Policy
Ability: Unseen Fist
EVs: 248 HP / 60 Atk / 48 Def / 124 SpD / 28 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Close Combat
- Surging Strikes
- Poison Jab
- Bulk Up

Agree with zo that this mon needs some more exploration. You get pretty good matchups into common steels (many celesteela, almost all metagross) and have enough bulk to play around with sets like WP.

Azumarill

Azumarill @ Pixie Plate
Ability: Huge Power
EVs: 200 HP / 180 Atk / 36 Def / 92 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Liquidation
- Play Rough
- Icy Wind
- Encore

Encore + Icy Wind is pretty powerful. No other thoughts. I don't remember why pixie plate matters

Blissey

Blissey (F) @ Mental Herb
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 9 Spe
- Counter
- Toxic
- Soft-Boiled
- Seismic Toss

Yeah man this is better than assault vest or whatever the setcomp has. It's a pretty strong sidegrade to Chansey that I think is a little more splashable.

That is it for creative sets I built this year : (

In terms of meta thoughts as a whole, I actually quite disagree with zo about the relevance of Custap. I have found myself leaning further and further away from using that item. Taunt and Encore are the two best moves in the tier in my opinion. Additionally, running Custap often turns matchups into uncomfortable 50/50s (ie, Custap Ferro v GDarm).

Generally, I have found myself trending towards "simpler" mons - replacing "weird" sets often with unorthodox Choice Items / LO. For example, I ran Band Swampert, LO and Band Volcanion, Band Ferrothorn, Specs Tapu Koko, as well as using much more Choice Tapu Fini.

Here's my approximate PVR. I only ranked mons I think are loadable in tournaments outside of specifically trying to cteam. Mons aren't ranked within tiers, except S tier.

My general meta thoughts are that Electric types as a whole are quite bad, while Grass-, Fire-, and Ground-types have been better over time. Scarf GDarm is a very splashable glue mon which also beats most of the tier amongst 3 sets, as well as has the ability to cheese much of the tier with flinches.

SS isn't the most engaging tier right now, but I think it is a consistently competitive format that rewards creativity and meta knowledge. I would make no changes to the tier - I would probably vote ban on a hypothetical sleep ban but I frankly feel indifferent towards it, and don't feel like it aggressively needs to go.