Ordered by viability, everything separate from its current rank is effectively a nom by itself as I feel a lot has settled in over the past weeks. Going to go through the ones I feel most strongly about in detail but will also do my best to explain the subrank discrepancy notably in my top 10/5.





Between a mix of general usage and metagame influence I feel decisions are the most strongly impacted by these five mons in order; Mewtwo, Deo, Arceus-Poison, Tusk, and Magearna, with the psychics being ahead though not by a super significant margin.
Deo is similarly defining offensively to the extent that the right 4 coverage moves often enable it to grab game-changing KOes against much of the metagame, and it often lacks team-specific prerequisites to making this progress due to the sheer threat of its coverage moves, ability to support its team with spikes koff and espeed, and number of opportunities it gets to fire off its attacks on account of outspeeding the entire unboosted metagame and even notable boosted mons like Gouging Fire and Dragonite.
Tusk and Magearna serve as the default backbones for a lot of team nowadays, I think initially people were rather skeptical of Tusk's defensive reach and general playstyle at first, but smaller optimisations in between such as the increase in its item variety, speed investment to help it out vs things such as Dialga and Samurott, and people generally being more used to treating it as a tool to set momentum rather than a passive blob help its use case a lot, and scarf / bu sets remain as offensively potent as ever due to the power of its STABs.
Notably, Arceus-Poison thrives a bit more than usual after the Electric ban because of how much room it has to experiment offensively due to the excellence of its STABs on both atking and spatking sides. We saw lots of experimentation with its Tera as a result of this in particular, but poison as a type also has excellent defensive use against the myriad of fighting and fairy moves with the latter also being huge due to the resurgence of offensive Magearna, and does so while lacking the weaknesses to crucial types like rock and water.

Also knocking on the Top 5's door it's rather scary. The defensive utility offered by a fast behemoth immune to ground moves and resisting psychic without being weak to the common fighting move seen on 2a Mewtwo is insane, reliably phases a signficant portion of other setup threats from the offensive Magearna rising in usage, stored power sweepers, and any dragon dancer not named Roaring Moon (outside Tera), and also commands a surprising degree of respect in the builder with its CM sets due to Tera setup permutations allowing it to better deal with the shift to paraspam teams, speaking of which, has a prevalence which lowers its rise in viabilty a bit but otherwise the mon is incredible.

A few months ago I would have ranked this closer to its Origin forme, but in a more volatile metagame, I would argue the item versatility base Dialga offers often makes it much better in this department hence the higher viability gap than usual. One of the three main defensive steels besides Magearna and Treads holding the tier together against most offense types, distinguishes itself from both well between its blend of offensive firepower and reliability at spreading chip. Not too much to say besides this honestly. Its consistency at performing specific role compression is evident as I've been characteristically spamming this mon throughout both my tours and don't regret it at all LOL.

Fills the Arceus checking role quite well, also helps a lot with playing around fighters and other psychics defensively while being hard to take down because setup sweepers not named Arceus-Dark can't reliably 1v1 it due to Psyshock. Mostly held back by builder struggles due to its innate passivity but otherwise appreciates the slower and more reactive pace of the meta letting it do what it needs to. Good mon.

One of the harder mons to rank in my opinion, but has some pretty insane upsides on paper. Appreciates Great Tusk in particular being the most common ground as that mon's low spdef lets it experiment a bit more with its Tera type vs most. I liked fairy a lot to improve its matchup into dragons specifically but ghost + Thunder Wave also feels like it has quite a bit of merit vs priority spam teams.

This mon is highkey him. One of the truest Pdef sponges in the tier able to match Gira in its ability to devour most physical mons without relying on tera due to its insane natural bulk and threat of maligants, parting shot for momentum, and reliable recovery, but can also occasionally slip into Teras to patch its weaker mu into the grounds and also land crucial poisons on Arceus formes. Found myself experimenting with it a lot due to the avenues it opens up by itself in patching more offensive squads together against opposing offense.


I just had fun watching offensive shitmons like Dragapult and Primarina go off. Pult in particular has some big degen potential often not limited to its set, for instance,
in UMPL W5 I used a Band variant that takes advantage of a general lack of ghost sponges. Ghost Tera Blast is one shotting max hp Mewtwo, 2 shotting Lugia through multiscale, max hp Tusk, Magearna, and Arceus formes, and it also brings a lot of offensive utility to the table between checking espeeders in a vaccum, its webs immunity, and natural speed above CM Arceus and Zamazenta. Primarina on the other hand becomes a really nice hittaker and offensive momentum bot
with an Assault Vest set that naturally puts a ton of pressure on defensive cores between its unblockable psynoise and strong stabs while using its defensive traits also freely come in on some of the meta's most dangerous spa attackers in Arceus Ice/Dark and Palkia-Origin.

Never had time to get onto the Zapdos bandwagon myself, but from
the replays I saw of it I feel it has a lot of solid use case that is also fairly indicative of the exploration and success behind this new phase of paraspam bulky offense. Outside of being a huge stat stick able to annoy most of the tier's defensive pivots while being immune to the dreaded status itself, Zapdos also notably punishes Great Tusk, Zamazenta, and provides reliable pivoting that isn't blocked by grounds due to U-turn, which I feel are great traits to have for the non-HO teamstyle most prominent right now.

As for notes on Arceus, I feel the meta nowadays is a bit less centralized around dedicated formes with Poison arguably being the highest due to its sheer offensive potential, but also with formes such as Dark and Psychic being more defensively adept than before, and the other more offensively focused formes such as Ice often being built around in a commitial way. While this does lower the individual viability of each forme a bit in comparison to other mons, I find this to be a welcome change and healthy under the pretence of allowing different formes to more easily fit into team specific roles and encourages more effort from builders looking to make the most of its general versatility.