Curious on why Mag and Zard are so low and Jolt is so high compared to many vrs, maldo over loom too
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Resource ADV OU Viability Ranking and Metagame Discussion
- Thread starter McMeghan
- Start date
Curious on why Mag and Zard are so low and Jolt is so high compared to many vrs, maldo over loom too
I don’t really know where I stand on sleep but every time I encounter a smeargle or some gambling addict running hypnosis I lean closer and closer to wanting sleep banned. These things never fail to genuinely make my day worse
E: Had the misfortune of encountering a 4 pressure pokemon pp stall team. I don't think it's good at all but I do think playing it should get you IP banned from showdown. Genuinely miserable game that I'm pretty sure I only won because he failed a double protect on the final turn
E: Had the misfortune of encountering a 4 pressure pokemon pp stall team. I don't think it's good at all but I do think playing it should get you IP banned from showdown. Genuinely miserable game that I'm pretty sure I only won because he failed a double protect on the final turn
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I was perhaps too low on Mag. I think if Mag became better, it became incidentally better, not convincingly. Distributed sp.def core structures like el clasico, Registeel, and Jolteon actually have a fair bit of trouble with Mag. However, Mag usually is made to support, not be supported - not many are actually actively thinking of use Mag to exploit these structures, which is what I mean by incidental. Perhaps this could be a point of innovation just as what hclat did with sp.def Mag (!). I should point out though that Fruhdazi's take on Magneton + Raikou is interesting defensively and offensively. My general impressions are that over the years, fewer Pokemon need/want Mag support.
I have nothing against Charizard. If you traced my VR history, you would see that I have consistently ranked Charizard higher than most people even in 2018. I think value has only been recognized by the masses recently. Charizard has some flaws that prevent me from putting it on every team. Think about the economy of flying types/levitators - it's very competitive. Once you have filled the key roles, you typically only have 1 or 2 remaining slots, and are you going to use a Charizard? On a Spikes team, you include Skarm, a special wall (mostly grounded, but could be a Zap), a physical wall (also grounded, could be Flygon) and if you use ttar then you have maybe 2 more slots. There are so many more reasons to fit the hovering mons I ranked above Charizard. You typically want these flyers to have good sweeping power (Charizard breaks some teams well, sweep, not really) or Spikes utility (spinblock, spin, dug trap - which is also Spikes utility btw). What about spikeless mixed offense? In short, the standard Charizard set (Subpunch lefties) lends itself to a pivot-based game that is my less preferred style of engaging with mixed offense. I feel that a pivot game usually favors Spike styles and mixed offense needs to be built a certain way to be effective with a pivoting style. I'm more in favor of sets that divide and conquer or maintain momentum (Sunny Petaya), which is a minority set. Note also that you do get one extra (flying) slot compared to Spikes, but to make up for the lack of Spikes chip you also want this slot to be able to boost (speed or (sp)attack). So you are once again constrained.
I think Armaldo is a much better knock offer than Hariyama, and Knock Off has a place in this metagame. Hariyama teams usually try to make use of its fighting type and knock off but fail to do both effectively. Sand is too potent. It's far more difficult to Wish or Rest+Aroma up a Hariyama than an Armaldo. At the same time, Hariyama isn't that great at checking physical Ttar. One more thing Armaldo can do is threaten the Recoverers Celebi and Starmie. It is a lot easier to exploit an itemless Blissey than an stemless Celebi / defensive Starmie in my opinion. That's partially because people who use Blissey frequently rely entirely on it for their sp.def needs (which is also changing to be fair).
Breloom used to be really interesting to use but a few things changing like Agility Metagross being everywhere means its ability to act as a physical check is made highly irrelevant. Not to mention inviting zard in.
Jolteon is pretty scary don't you think?
Do you ever feel like defense is just too strong in adv? I feel like the majority of teams that can consistently get past big 5 +1 are either weak to Zap or Dug or lack the tools to get past sandless Milotic teams. It feels like Metagross and maybe Haracross are the only wallbreakers that offer non negligable defensive utility to a team.
(I'm not counting cb Mence or Tar because they lack the option to hit both Skarm and Pert for significant damage)
Most VRs reflect this as the majority of ADV defense resides in the S, A, and B ranks.
It's not necessarily that the defensive mons are too strong in a vacuum (at lest imo), but that the offensive mons tend to be very flawed and thus inconsistent. Maybe it's just my skill issue tho
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this
(I'm not counting cb Mence or Tar because they lack the option to hit both Skarm and Pert for significant damage)
Most VRs reflect this as the majority of ADV defense resides in the S, A, and B ranks.
It's not necessarily that the defensive mons are too strong in a vacuum (at lest imo), but that the offensive mons tend to be very flawed and thus inconsistent. Maybe it's just my skill issue tho
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this
Idk if defense vs offense mons is a great distinction. The dex is quite small in gen 3. Most of the top mons fit on a broad range of archetypes. Example: defensive vs offensive suicune,swampert,jirachi etc. Even blissey can find itself on teams that would be considered an offense.
Heh. Defense is broken indeed. Free agipass zap or ban dugtrio, I dont care which.
Why don't you use Defense if it's broken?
Was gonna respond and say idk if defense is broken, but dugtrio in particular adds a certain something sus to it for sure ... especially those lead dug teams. I personally view it in a sorta similar way as I was thinking about smearlge DD pass stuff (just on the other side of the coin), it exists on/enables teams that are very consistent at making auto wins in their desired matchup which can be what makes it frustrating to play I think.
Feel like speedpass ban makes the already increasing dug suspect test support even stronger, would be very interesting (I'm pro dug ban unless all the vets say no).
I do sort of feel like anyone who supported a speedpass ban should also want to ban dug but I know this isn't true at all so thats why it's interesting
It is simple. I am too stupid to use defense. Besides, I do occasionally, see me vs Mayo g1 of JI or me vs fakes g2 of JI finals for that matter. Granted if I was a better defense pilot I would probably use it more often, the truth is that the style is in fact very skilled and it needs something I do not have (patience). I do think defense is restricting when putting on account that u need to handle both the prospect of facing Aero spikeoff or Dug fat. Its possible that diversity is unhealthy for the meta but I genuinely thought we had a almost perfect sweetspot w agizap in the mix. That said I am gonna learn defense more sometime, I think ppl dont use it due to the fact its honestly harder to enter / intuitively "less fun" for most ppl. Thats most definitely the case w me, that doesnt mean it isnt restricting and I feel it in my bones while building
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>Feels like its existence just eats away at the viability of so many mons
First of all, "x makes y unviable" is no reason for a ban.
I think the main reason for Dug being free is that the metagame is less frail than in newer generations and that Dug doesn't have sash. Since you're limited to one cb boosted move instead of 2 unboosted moves, the amount of mons you can eliminate from full health isn't that big. It also means that your Dug is mostly useless against faster mons. Also, because Dug needs to lock into either eq or a weak coverage move, it's also highly exploitale and a huge loss of momentum whenever it kills something.
Looking at OU, only Breloom, Hera, Mag and Medi are always a potential oh-ko, and Medi is a roll even with adamant.
Offensive sets of Celebi, Jirachi, Meta and T-tar can be oh-ko-ed aswell, but bulky sets always live. Bulky beat up Dug is anti Blissey Tech and sacrifices its matchup into anything else.
Compared to modern metagames, this really isn't a lot. Even against its targets, dug doesn't have the easiest time switching in. Keep in mind that dug can't be used to check dd sweepers since it doesn't outrun them and doesn't have sash.
That being said, Dug is still a controversial force an ADV and as you can see in this thread, many want it banned.
The reasons why I only gave arguments against a ban on Dug are
a) to answer your questin.
b) because the broken aspects of Dug are pretty obvious and I already listed all the mons it does trap from full. Especially offense suffers from having little counterplay vs Dug.
From a historical perspective, ADV was around before any later gen arena trap bans happened, and ADV clearly has a thriving player base (most/2nd most popular oldgen on the ladder), so it is probably doing something right. As someone who played ADV when it was the current generation, it is more perplexing that people found things that worked in later gens (like blanket BP bans) and think of back-applying it in ADV assuming that conditions are similar. The onus is on later gen players to show that their gen requires some regulation and that it would be beneficial to apply it to historical gens. It's like perhaps asking my grandma "Why don't you use social media? You can keep in touch with your friends" and her responding "Unlike you, back in my day, we actually meet our friends" and then running off for tea.
Unfortunately, I think we are at a point where people are already performing too much elective surgery (banning speedpass) on ADV, restricting the amount of dynamism in this metagame, to produce one that runs like clockwork. Some people like the predictability, but there is nothing alive about a clock. It is death. So at this point we might as well just open the Pandora's box.
I think you're absolutely right that dug makes a lot of fun mons unviable, enough to make the metagame visibly different. Notice that I haven't actually said anything about dug's interactions, and that is intentional. I think a lot of people try to make tiering arguments based on detailed evaluations of the current metagame without acknowledging higher order effects and interactions -- i.e. the metagame will look different enough that your assumptions of how dug interacts with any other mon's current roles fall flat -- and I disagree with that. Isn't is an oxymoron to guess the future based on how it currently looks? I could tell you how balanced dug is right now but that answers nothing. When one suggests a big enough change, only the philosophical questions remain -
Do you want to see
(1) a different (likely unrecognizable) metagame?
(2) a more varied metagame?
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a) dug keeps many polarising mons in check. without dug mons like kou and hera and ddtar become much harder to stop -and consequently much easier to enable by hitting their checks. you need a variety of ways to check these kinds of mons available in the teambuilder or else it becomes rather simple to build teams that just blow through the limited answers these mons have via other means.
b) dug is very exploitable. people incorporate dug into teambuilding and have plans for when they encounter dug. like ok dug catches your cele. now you've got a guaranteed free setup turn for DDmence or even the SDhera in the back thats also technically weak to dug. lategame dug is more often a liability than an asset for this reason- once youre down a few mons and limited on switchins, dug can be a lead weight around your ankle as it forces you to commit to game-losing plays more often than not
c) all mons affect the viability of other mons. many mons are gatekept from OU by the mere existence of others, this is true for any meta. dug just happens to do it in a particularly obvious way. but so does ttar, so does aero, so does skarm, so does gar, etc etc. example- in a world without skarm or gar, CB tauros would be pretty mint, alongside the litany of normal type physical attackers that have a movepool that looks like Return/EQ/Ghost coverage (or the normal/flying types). but they all languish outside of OU with the exception of lax, why? cause they are gatekept by a combination of skarm and gar (and ttar) making them difficult to use, and lax outshining the ones that could function to some degree. lax can adapt and fit into a meta that is fundamentally very hostile to normal type physical attackers. and even if all of these things werent true (lets say we ban skarm gar and tar bc we love normals so much), we'd probably just look at tauros and go, this guy fits the meta best, all the others are lesser in some way (ursaring would probably be good tbh), and poor old granbull and kangaskhan would still be relegated to off meta picks (probably idk). and in that world where we try and make these normals more viable, what probably actually happens is suicune ascends to god emperor of the tier and destroys everything that isn't hypnosis bulk up focus punch poliwrath or something because that is also an incredibly powerful polarising mon presently operating in adverse conditions that keep it in check. so what have we gained? maybe if smogon was made of normal type lovers everyone would agree this was a necessary change for the better. but the world we live in is one where we like clicking spikes and directing gengars shit eating grin at our opponents. which brings me to
d)it's just always been that way and dug is part of the identity of the tier. there are people out there who hate dug but really the game has been played with dug for so long and theres zero evidence that dug breaks the tier in some way. we can argue about whether dug makes the tier *more* fun or *more* healthy (i happen to think yes and yes) but i think it would be stretching like stretch armstrong to claim dug restricts the metagame to an unhealthy and repetitive point that requires it to be restricted, which is really what the function of bans should be. dug does not solve the game in any way in such a way that you end up not really playing it, like BP chains did, or sand veil did, or allowing kyogre into OU would do. ADV is a tight meta with a very well defined range of threats and answers that have evolved over time to accomodate each other and dug is honestly just one of them, playing its part.
Based.
The semistall meta that predictably followed the speed pass ban is just... significantly less fun. I guess full stall options have really opened up and are waiting to be explored- who doesn't love rest talk? Woohoo!
Anyways, here's my funeral VR submission:
ADV 2025 VR
Notes:
I haven't used all these mons since the speed pass reckoning, so some of these placements might be a little off. Ex: I found an excellent entei niche on speed pass and am not sure how to weigh the archetype's loss for Entei's viability.
Top 5:
Meta #1. The last bastion and wisping embers of offense's lifeless husk. Get mashed.
Blissey is that high because light screen blissey is fucking nuts.
Tar isn't #1 because I think sandless is the most meta it has ever been.
Zapdos is the best lead in the game and has adapted its light screen set since speed pass ban.
Skarmory isn't #1 because its spiking niche is not unique, but its defensive profile + phasing is.
General:
Charizard is bonkers. Fire types across the board are hella good progress makers. Moltres is low cause cause moltres spikes feels weak and restricted.
I spite ranked Milotic even tho offmilo is fun. I ranked Registeel out of obligation.
Magneton feels clunky to use now that it can't be partnered with the max lethality combinations afforded by speed pass. It doesn't feel worth bringing even on SD pass. Magdol is still magdolling. Overall, the defensive hole magneton opens up on your team hardly feels worth it.
Mixoff is dead in a ditch.
Screens are fucking fantastic.
Teams be like -> R u an aero team or are u a dug team?
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Honestly I don't know what all the fuzz is about with speed pass.
Just run sub salac Marowak it's basically the same
Just run sub salac Marowak it's basically the same
1. o7 may you find new pleasures in life friend
2. fym Alakazam is in the OU cutoff it literally cannot touch tar or blissey
It can run cb focus punch to catch an unsuspecting blissey or tar I guess.
I mean that would certainly get me, but once you know it's coming it's not that scarry. Zam doesn't force out that much and is likely to fold to any incoming attack on the focus punch. Even if it survives, it's forced to switch or risk getting set up on the mon it wanted to scare out in the first place.
Honestly I encourage you all to read the analysis.
"Substitute lets Alakazam block status effects and Psychic foes until they faint."
is my personal high light
shit can get real with a +1 Zam in the end-game, esp without Bliss or Aero
To be fair I never tried Zam, but it always seemed like one of those mons which is decent in theory but matches badly into the meta. I've also never seen a good player use it. The only times I encounter Zam are on low ladder and I don't think it ever made significant progress vs my team even tho I didn't know what it does until today.
I will try it tho because it seems a little underexplored
I will try it tho because it seems a little underexplored
Celda put Skarm higher or you will lose all your right socks in the coming week
Better yet, Sub + Thief Marowak could potentially steal a Salac Berry and a Thick Club.
It's pre shit into aero structures but zam is my favourite mon to bring into spec off spammers.
Isn't VR supposed to be based of what I use? Skarmory is my most common spiker but not by much.