Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [ survey results -- see post 21,221 ]

[Magcargo]

Probably revealing my hand a bit early here (since the team I am currently running is garbage), but I've been trying out Modest Fist Plate Keldeo on ladder and its fun.

The combination of Fist Plate & a Modest Nature bump up Keldeo's damage output a decent amount. Notably, Secret Sword into Vaccum Wave has an extremely high chance to KO Ogerpon-W with no prior chip. The extra damage on the likes of Raging Bolt and Pecharunt is also nice. Some other notable calcs is that Vaccum Wave does significantly more to Kingambit compared to standard sets, almost always OHKOing max HP variants. Darkrai can also be revenge killed from higher ranges as well.

Calcs

252+ SpA Fist Plate Keldeo Secret Sword vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Ogerpon-Wellspring: 211-249 (70 - 82.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ SpA Fist Plate Keldeo Vacuum Wave vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Ogerpon-Wellspring: 90-106 (29.9 - 35.2%) -- 20.1% chance to 3HKO

252+ SpA Keldeo Surf vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Pecharunt: 178-211 (46.8 - 55.5%) -- 74.2% chance to 2HKO
252+ SpA Fist Plate Keldeo Secret Sword vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Raging Bolt: 196-232 (50.1 - 59.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252 SpA Keldeo Vacuum Wave vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Kingambit: 304-360 (75.2 - 89.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ SpA Fist Plate Keldeo Vacuum Wave vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Kingambit: 396-468 (98 - 115.8%) -- 81.3% chance to OHKO

252 SpA Keldeo Vacuum Wave vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Darkrai: 144-170 (51.2 - 60.4%) -- 90.2% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ SpA Fist Plate Keldeo Vacuum Wave vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Darkrai: 186-222 (66.1 - 79%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

There are some key drawbacks with this set. Effectively, you go from being a base 108 Speed Pokemon to a base 94 Speed pokemon, notably losing out on Kyurem, Iron Treads, Enamorus, and a few others, which does sting quite a bit. Keldeo also does struggle a decent amount with Big regen ( ), as well as needing to make a few reads against cores like Ogerpon-W + Ghost type or regen mon, which are all pretty annoying. That said, you still have a good enough speed tier to outspeed some key mons like Lando-T, Great Tusk, Ghold, Samu-H, and Glimm, which you can use as entry points to get the big hits in.

As an aside, something I find cool is that Keldeo's neutral damage & speed aren't too far off from a mon we currently have on the banlist, Urshifu-RS (specifically Pads Shifu-RS). Use it quickly before the council notices!

Calcs

252+ SpA Keldeo Hydro Pump vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Silvally-Electric: 205-243 (61.9 - 73.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ SpA Keldeo Surf vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Silvally-Electric: 169-199 (51 - 60.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ SpA Fist Plate Keldeo Secret Sword vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Silvally-Electric: 190-225 (57.4 - 67.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252 Atk Urshifu-Rapid-Strike Surging Strikes (3 hits) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Silvally-Electric on a critical hit: 198-234 (59.8 - 70.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Urshifu-Rapid-Strike Close Combat vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Silvally-Electric: 205-243 (61.9 - 73.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

 

[Avira]

I am more on the philosophy of "If I think X mon is broken/unhealthy enough to be banned, one more mon being more problematic and legal in the tier doesnt make the first one significantly less banworthy" which is a philosophy that I think would lead to better action in my humble opinion, as in the gliscor + kyurem suspect tests for example, plenty of people used Gliscor being more problematic with a kyurem ban as a reason to not ban kyurem which I find pretty odd, as if that is true then just take action on it on a future suspect test...
Also curious on which mon you think is more constraining in the builder if you dont mind answering it.

I find Kyurem more constraining to deal with in the builder than Ogerpon-Wellspring due to all its different sets that have counterplay that don't overlap well with each other. All of Choice Specs, Mixed DD, and physical DD along with all of Kyurem's other good sets make building for it a chore due to how strong of an immediate threat it poses.

I also find Gholdengo harder to prep for than Ogerpon-Wellspring for balance. The Grassy Seed set is ridiculous to KO outside of using the strongest special attackers in the tier, and it can more just trade 1-for-1 with so much of the tier. Just look at how oldspicemike decimated Dasmer03 in OLT Swiss Round 4. The Gholdengo just cleaved through the opposing team like Swiss cheese with the Grassy Seed Defense boost, and this is a team that had Great Tusk, Samurott-Hisui, Ting-Lu, and a faster Gholdengo (with a Hex that doesn't 2HKO, and if it had Shadow Ball, it still wouldn't 2HKO), showing how this Grassy Seed set smites standard counterplay to Gholdengo.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-873378?p2

 

[viivian]

i'll keep this post brief but i don't think wellspring is an unreasonable mon to account for in the teambuilder. most teams often have 2 or more pokemon (i.e. , , ) that can sufficiently limit the amount of progress wellspring can make. they aren't perfect counters ofc, given ivy cudgel's crit rate and wellspring's long list of coverage options, but they often provide enough stability to prevent her from just setting up an SD and slaughtering everything. and between her own 4MSS and gen 9's more proactive style of defensive counterplay, i'm not sure if i can say this mon is outright banworthy. i wouldn't be opposed to a wellspring suspect at all but i'm still very skeptical on banning it; some of her checks are more splashable than ever and she constantly has to adjust her moveslots to account for them, only to leave herself without anything to threaten a different pokemon, and so on. if she ever does end up getting banned, then so be it, i just don't think it's absolutely necessary to ban this mon.

my thoughts are kinda jumbled rn so i'm sorry if my points weren't made clear in this post, i will do my best to clarify if needed

 

[JackRG]

I find Kyurem more constraining to deal with in the builder than Ogerpon-Wellspring due to all its different sets that have counterplay that don't overlap well with each other. All of Choice Specs, Mixed DD, and physical DD along with all of Kyurem's other good sets make building for it a chore due to how strong of an immediate threat it poses.

I also find Gholdengo harder to prep for than Ogerpon-Wellspring for balance. The Grassy Seed set is ridiculous to KO outside of using the strongest special attackers in the tier, and it can more just trade 1-for-1 with so much of the tier. Just look at how oldspicemike decimated Dasmer03 in OLT Swiss Round 4. The Gholdengo just cleaved through the opposing team like Swiss cheese with the Grassy Seed Defense boost, and this is a team that had Great Tusk, Samurott-Hisui, Ting-Lu, and a faster Gholdengo (with a Hex that doesn't 2HKO, and if it had Shadow Ball, it still wouldn't 2HKO), showing how this Grassy Seed set smites standard counterplay to Gholdengo.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-873378?p2

I don't think gholdengo is too challenging to prep for on balance, tbh the team they used was a little bit scuffed, having no strong special attackers will always leave you prone to getting punished by guys who boost their defense. Balance has many common countermeasures with mons like Ting-lu (even if it loses 1 on 1 to seed, it can get it low for a revenge killer with ruination), cinderace, iron treads (especially spdef), Kingambit, gliscor, moltres, hrott, etc. (note, most of these pokemon don't mind switching in directly).

I personally think wellspring is harder to prep for than kyurem but its, but its close, and both are broken anyway so it doesn't really matter which one you think is worse.

and between her own 4MSS

It's refreshing to see a dnb Woger post that seems to be in actually good taste, but I want to touch on this part. I've said this many times, but Woger is not the type of mon that needs perfect coverage. Take dragonite for example. Ideally Woger would have play rough for it, but if it has knock off, it can still break through without much trouble by knocking off boots then 2 shotting with Ivy Cudgel afterwards. Same deal for pech, it wants Knock Off in this MU, but just nuking it with +2 tera water cudgel is sufficent (especially because pech is forced to rely on a malignant chain proc, since the move is doing nothing after tera. Zama needs to check a million other things and is also just a bad check. Honestly just the combination of Ivy Cudgel and Knock Off can break literally anything with hazards. These 2 moves pair especially well with synthesis since you can easily outlast these checks when they only get 1 or 2 switch-ins anyway.

252+ Atk Wellspring Mask Tera Water Ogerpon-Wellspring-Tera Ivy Cudgel vs. +1 0 HP / 0 Def Zamazenta: 160-190 (49.2 - 58.4%) -- 97.7% chance to 2HKO (now It will be in +2 gambit sucker punch range for later!)

 

[Avira]

I don't think gholdengo is too challenging to prep for on balance, tbh the team they used was a little bit scuffed, having no strong special attackers will always leave you prone to getting punished by guys who boost their defense. Balance has many common countermeasures with mons like Ting-lu (even if it loses 1 on 1 to seed, it can get it low for a revenge killer with ruination), cinderace, iron treads (especially spdef), Kingambit, gliscor, moltres, hrott, etc. (note, most of these pokemon don't mind switching in directly).

I personally think wellspring is harder to prep for than kyurem but its, but its close, and both are broken anyway so it doesn't really matter which one you think is worse.

Whenever I build a team, I consider whether it has the offensive power to beat Gholdengo as if the answer is no, I consider it unviable due to Good as Gold limiting ways to answer Gholdengo aside from outoffensing it. I have felt this way since the beginning of SV OU. Even storm zone, one of the best players and builders, finds Gholdengo the #1 limiter to balance's viability, which he has shared in OU room when he rebuts people who claim that Ogerpon-Wellspring should be banned due to how she limits balance, saying if that's the case that they should want Gholdengo banned since it limits balance a lot more than Wellspring does. I'm not just piggybacking off storm zone though since I've felt this way since the beginning.

Here's what I believe oldspicemike's Gholdengo set was for that OLT game I linked:

Gholdengo @ Grassy Seed
Ability: Good as Gold
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 196 SpD / 60 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Focus Blast
- Nasty Plot
- Recover
- Shadow Ball

And to illustrate how bulky it is, let me demonstrate with a calc:

252+ SpA Protosynthesis Raging Bolt Thunderbolt vs. 252 HP / 196+ SpD Gholdengo: 177-208 (46.8 - 55%) -- 67.2% chance to 2HKO

So a Booster Special Attack Raging Bolt barely does 50%, meaning the Ghold user can just force out Raging Bolt with another mon, and the next time Ghold is in, Raging Bolt won't be beating it due to having blown its Booster boost.

Even Fiery Dance from Iron Moth doesn't do as much as you'd think:

132 SpA Iron Moth Fiery Dance vs. 252 HP / 196+ SpD Gholdengo: 206-246 (54.4 - 65%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Grassy Terrain recovery

I could list other calcs such as Darkrai's Dark Pulse, but with these calcs, I think I've made it clear that Gholdengo can Tera into another type and just cleave through entire balance cores if your Tera matches well into the opponent's team or if they don't use the strongest special attackers in the tier since only STAB supereffective hits really do enough damage to threaten Gholdengo, and unlike other threats, you can't Encore or Taunt it unless you have a very specific Ability.

 

[JackRG]

Whenever I build a team, I consider whether it has the offensive power to beat Gholdengo as if the answer is no, I consider it unviable due to Good as Gold limiting ways to answer Gholdengo aside from outoffensing it. I have felt this way since the beginning of SV OU. Even storm zone, one of the best players and builders, finds Gholdengo the #1 limiter to balance's viability, which he has shared in OU room when he rebuts people who claim that Ogerpon-Wellspring should be banned due to how she limits balance, saying if that's the case that they should want Gholdengo banned since it limits balance a lot more than Wellspring does. I'm not just piggybacking off storm zone though since I've felt this way since the beginning.

Here's what I believe oldspicemike's Gholdengo set was for that OLT game I linked:

Gholdengo @ Grassy Seed
Ability: Good as Gold
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 196 SpD / 60 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Focus Blast
- Nasty Plot
- Recover
- Shadow Ball

And to illustrate how bulky it is, let me demonstrate with a calc:

252+ SpA Protosynthesis Raging Bolt Thunderbolt vs. 252 HP / 196+ SpD Gholdengo: 177-208 (46.8 - 55%) -- 67.2% chance to 2HKO

So a Booster Special Attack Raging Bolt barely does 50%, meaning the Ghold user can just force out Raging Bolt with another mon, and the next time Ghold is in, Raging Bolt won't be beating it due to having blown its Booster boost.

Even Fiery Dance from Iron Moth doesn't do as much as you'd think:

132 SpA Iron Moth Fiery Dance vs. 252 HP / 196+ SpD Gholdengo: 206-246 (54.4 - 65%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Grassy Terrain recovery

I could list other calcs such as Darkrai's Dark Pulse, but with these calcs, I think I've made it clear that Gholdengo can Tera into another type and just cleave through entire balance cores if your Tera matches well into the opponent's team or if they don't use the strongest special attackers in the tier since only STAB supereffective hits really do enough damage to threaten Gholdengo, and unlike other threats, you can't Encore or Taunt it unless you have a very specific Ability.

This set living all these hits is great and all but how much is it really doing back to these mons?

0 SpA Gholdengo Shadow Ball vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Iron Moth: 102-121 (33.8 - 40.1%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
0 SpA Gholdengo Shadow Ball vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Raging Bolt: 121-144 (30.9 - 36.8%) -- 71.3% chance to 3HKO
0 SpA Gholdengo Make It Rain vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Darkrai: 180-213 (64 - 75.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

If you invest fully in special defense, obviously you are going to live most hits, but this is coming at the cost of considerable damage output. I could EV my keldeo to live a mega alakazam psychic, but then I'm just using a bad keldeo set.

for the record I think finding gholdengo broken is a valid opinion, but what does this have to do with Wellspring? If you want to defend wellspring, you can do so, but just pivoting to other mons to avoid the discussion seems like you don't want to argue that it isn't broken. It's fine to bring up concerns about gholdengo, but don't just bring it up when the discussion is about something else entirely (also who is to say these people don't ALSO want gholdengo banned).

As an aside I think one of the main things seperating Wellspring from Gholdengo is the sheer difference in speed. Most of Gholdengo's checks that can switch in to its attacks are faster, making it naturally easier to play around.

 

[Avira]

This set living all these hits is great and all but how much is it really doing back to these mons?

0 SpA Gholdengo Shadow Ball vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Iron Moth: 102-121 (33.8 - 40.1%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
0 SpA Gholdengo Shadow Ball vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Raging Bolt: 121-144 (30.9 - 36.8%) -- 71.3% chance to 3HKO
0 SpA Gholdengo Make It Rain vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Darkrai: 180-213 (64 - 75.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

If you invest fully in special defense, obviously you are going to live most hits, but this is coming at the cost of considerable damage output. I could EV my keldeo to live a mega alakazam psychic, but then I'm just using a bad keldeo set.

Gholdengo would be at +2 since those mons would be switching into it after it has used Nasty Plot, so those calcs you listed wouldn't be relevant. Keldeo has 0 reason to ever run bulk, but Gholdengo can due to its defensive profile, Recover, and Nasty Plot with the bulk making it easy for it boost up or otherwise 1v1 many mons.

for the record I think finding gholdengo broken is a valid opinion, but what does this have to do with Wellspring? If you want to defend wellspring, you can do so, but just pivoting to other mons to avoid the discussion seems like you don't want to argue that it isn't broken. It's fine to bring up concerns about gholdengo, but don't just bring it up when the discussion is about something else entirely (also who is to say these people don't ALSO want gholdengo banned).

As an aside I think one of the main things seperating Wellspring from Gholdengo is the sheer difference in speed. Most of Gholdengo's checks that can switch in to its attacks are faster, making it naturally easier to play around.

This is a forum, where a free exchange of ideas takes place. Someone bringing up another mon instead of Wellspring is a perfectly acceptable decision to make unless you want to censor them. You may find Waterpon more unhealthy/broken than Gholdengo 'cause of its speed, but I find Gholdengo's superior bulk + Ghost STAB coupled by other coverage more threatening than what Wpon typically runs since Ghost/Fighting or Ghost/Fairy are pretty nasty (especially the former) whereas Water and Grass is resisted by two types naturally although I acknowledge Ogerpon-Wellspring has good coverage options, such as Play Rough and Knock Off.

 

[JackRG]

Gholdengo would be at +2 since those mons would be switching into it after it has used Nasty Plot, so those calcs you listed wouldn't be relevant. Keldeo has 0 reason to ever run bulk, but Gholdengo can due to its defensive profile, Recover, and Nasty Plot with the bulk making it easy for it boost up or otherwise 1v1 many mons.

This calc was purely to make a point, yes logically keldeo isn't running Bulk lol.

This is a forum, where a free exchange of ideas takes place. Someone bringing up another mon instead of Wellspring is a perfectly acceptable decision to make unless you want to censor them. You may find Waterpon more unhealthy/broken than Gholdengo 'cause of its speed, but I find Gholdengo's superior bulk + Ghost STAB coupled by other coverage more threatening than what Wpon typically runs since Ghost/Fighting or Ghost/Fairy are pretty nasty whereas Water and Grass is resisted by two types naturally although I acknowledge Ogerpon-Wellspring has good coverage options, such as Play Rough and Knock Off.

Whenever I build a team, I consider whether it has the offensive power to beat Gholdengo as if the answer is no, I consider it unviable due to Good as Gold limiting ways to answer Gholdengo aside from outoffensing it. I have felt this way since the beginning of SV OU. Even storm zone, one of the best players and builders, finds Gholdengo the #1 limiter to balance's viability, which he has shared in OU room when he rebuts people who claim that Ogerpon-Wellspring should be banned due to how she limits balance, saying if that's the case that they should want Gholdengo banned since it limits balance a lot more than Wellspring does.

Yeah thats fine, if you want to discuss gholdengo you can do that, but saying it being potentially worse means Woger shouldn't get a test is silly. If you want to say Woger is balanced, say why you think so, don't just say well actually what about gholdengo. Gholdengo has nothing to do with wellspring being broken or not.

 

[Avira]

Okay, when you put it that way, I'll end this by saying I'm not convinced Ogerpon-Wellspring needs to be banned since I don't think it crosses the threshold of being broken in practice due to top-tier mons such as defensive Pecharunt, Zamazenta, some prominent Dragon-type Pokemon, and lesser answers such as Rillaboom as well as all of the other faster revenge killers, that while aren't perfect answers, can usually manage to do the job in tandem with the rest of the team, but if others do, that's a fair take. I just firmly believe there are better suspect targets that would improve the meta more should they be removed due to them being more restrictive in the builder.

 

[40kultra]

Actually Dragonite takes around 30% from Ivy Cudgel if Multiscale is broken (not hard to pull off, and if at any point Dragonite comes in on Ivy Cudgel while MS is down, it is forced to roost or it won't be able to comfortably take boosted Cudgels next time (especially with the risk of crits). Of course bulky DNite takes it much better, but it's one set. And Play Rough isn't exactly the only way Wellspring can bypass DNite. The thing with needing hazard removal for DNite in case of Knock Off, is that Wellspring beats most removal options so in a game where it's coming in a lot. If you aren't using Hatterene, stopping to removal rocks isn't the easiest against Wellspring teams (unless you're Cinderace but that isn't perfect either).

Fair enough. Although in in terms of hazard removal, I'm assuming we are talking :galarian-weezing: ?. in a certain context maybe is true as and are the most common form of removal in the game and both lose to waterpon. in that case yea wogerpon is beating its removal options a lot of the time, but then again this is a game of 6 mons no? tusk and treads could find other opportunities in the games to remove hazards and common spin blockers like and wont exactly be taking hits from comfortably. again this is really dependent on game state though i'm not dismissing scenarios where hazards are really super stacked and tusk/treads wont have the longevity to remove them, but I think they will find a reasonable amount of opportunities to remove hazards. in terms of the other removal options though I don't really agree that wellspring beats most of them. gweezing despite its numerous flaws is often sited as a Woger check, and Woger isn't exactly keen on staying in on a gweezing and risking a will o wisp or a sludge bomb for example. Again depending on game state Woger can/can't muscle through Gweez but generally speaking Gweez is not a mon Woger wants to be taking on. About again, sure SD ogerpon can definitely muscle through corviknight, but lets assume in the context of hazards(since this is what the post is talking about) Ogerpon doesn't really want to be risking clicking taunt on a corviknight that can potentially kill it with brave bird or heavyily chip it with U-turn. can outspeed and kill Woger if chipped(again assuming non tera, but even then cinderace still clicks U-turn for free. Woger also isn't exactly keen on taking on physdef packing nuzzle.

The point is that, if you don't want to be forced to burn Tera against it, you need other back ups which can be more limiting than it seems. Of course Tornadus-T, Zamazenta and some others can soft check temporarily, but they're imperfect answers for multiple reasons whether it's shaky bulk or vulnerability to crits and lack of longevity.

again I think some of the points are being missed here. the DnB in general isn't arguing that Woger has perfect checks that can handle it in the long term or that Woger can't muscle through its checks, I'm not arguing that. i'm argument that Woger has a fair amount of checks that can handle it and phase it out in the early/mid game and prevent it from rolling through teams immediately. in that case Woger checks are fairly reliable in doing that. and on the tera stuff again its situational. you're not going to be forced to burn tera everytime, but in situations where you need to it's there and games can still be winnable.

physdef Pecha switches in but after Knock Off, it's vulnerable to being overwhelmed by hazards. Even with just rocks up, Pecha needs to almost always Recover each time it switches into Ivy Cudgel lest it fall dangerously close into range of a potential crit +2 Cudgel (something you must factor), or Tera Water +2 hits. Dragonite checks some variants, not all. Not just Play Rough but Knock variants are irritating for it too. The rest of this is just not really a sound argument, saying that Wellspring can go without SD isn't really compelling because a lot of them still are running it. You always have to respect the possibility of it.

When talking about checks that lose to different Wellspring sets, it's not a matter of these sets appearing all the time, but that you have no real way of knowing which you'll face and prepping for the many variants it can bring is a strain on building. SD has many permutations alone, and with Wellspring variants now including bulkier sets and recovery moves, it continues to broaden the possibilities and make counterplay weirder. There aren't many comfortable true stop gaps. Side note but I miss Tangrowth.

Okay so it seems we are going in circles on the Pecharunt argument. I'm saying physdef Pecharunt can switch in on Woger if you initially recover and hazards aren't stacked, your saying that it's vulnarable if hazards are up. both are reasonable situations but it's just going to keep going in circles if we going further. FWIW though from my experience playing OLT Pecharunt was still able to check Woger pretty decently despite being knocked and stealth rocks being up(not ideal, but still good enough)

On your statement that "you have no real way of knowing which woger you'll face" I disagree with. does not have the set anonymity as a dragon dance or that can run 4-5 different tera blast sets. Woger does not have the same set anonymity due to being item and tera locked, which removes a lot from the guessing game. yes Woger has a lot set diversity but you can figure out it's moveset on the first turn its in(assuming its not just spamming cudgel). for example if Woger clicks U-turn you can safely assume its not SD(I highly doubt anyone runs SD u-turn but I have seen it like one time). If Woger clicks a support move like encore/taunt/spikes or clicks trailblaze you can safely assume its lacking coverage and base your game plans on that information. knock off is probably the trickiest one but then again you can still assume stuff like no play rough, etc. I know people don't like the argument "YoU cAn TeLl BaSeD oN tHe TeAm PrIeViEw" but there is some truth to it as in you can make an educated guess based on team preview. for example if you see a team that looks like a voltTurn spam team you can assume that Woger is U-turn. if you see a team that looks like set up spam(I'm talking like a veil,webs or other sorta niche archetypes like grassy terrain structures) you can assume SD Woger is coming. if you see a team that looks like hazard stacking(which is probably easier to tell) you can assume Woger is knock off. Sure educated guesses aren't always going to be exactly right but they are more reliable than not.

Lastly I do want to point out that certain Woger sets do have its flaws and disadvantages. for example encore Pon and trailblaze Pon lack coverage moves and especially trailblaze Pon has a worst matchup into bulkier teams. Knock is probably the most reliable Woger move into everything but even then knock off Pon variants can lack the immediate breaking of a SD play rough woger and have a more annoying matchups into dragons for example(can definitely be beatable, but its a little harder)

Gliscor and Gholdengo aren't really something to be put in the group of braindead (well maybe some SD Gliscor sets are silly but meh). And Kingambit isn't even at its peak from earlier in the gen. It's great, but it has flaws holding it back and is not nearly as flexible in sets compared to Wellspring or Dragonite. And I'm perplexed why Bolt is even here at all, since it's neither braindead nor super crazy. It's not something that "basically gets a kill every time it switches in", not at all. And it is pretty defensively lacking at times while being pretty fair to overwhelm through chip and pressure.

both and have insanely broken abilities in prison heal and GAG. being entirely immune to support moves and in gliscors case, being immune to status conditions while getting free hp off being poisoned makes them cheap to use. and Gholdengo has one of the best typings in the game and has two spammable stab combos in shadow ball(ghost resist are fairly limited) and make it rain(120 move with barely any draw backs) I would argue they belong in the braindead category. I disagree on your assessment on , outside of ting lu & iron treads(which don't like taking specs Draco's) raging bolt pretty much has nothing that wants to switch ins. imo its around the caliber of specs kyurem, although it's slower I argue its less predict reliant than Kyurem since it can just spam specs draco especially into teams where ting lu is the main check and most fairy types get severely chipped from volt switch/thunderbolt. although isn't the mon its once was its still generally agreed upon as a braindead mon that can just come in the late game and claim wins, its also one of the more controversial tera abusers so it definitely belongs here. I could have put or but they are more controversial mons where there is a good amount of people that think these mons are broken as well and basing arguments around them when talking about Woger as well will probably end up in the debate going a different direction which I don't really want right now.

and again the general point of that section where I mentioned those braindead mons isn't about their literal level of brokenness. it's about the sentiment that you can think something is very braindead/cheap to use but also think they are not broken at the same just. someone originally quoted my post saying "I love how you think Woger is balanced but also admit its cheap and braindead to use" and my general response to it was that something can be braindead, and can also be thought to be balanced/not broken at the same.

As a general note, when talking Wellspring, games like the match between TDNT and leng loi from SCL during week 2 really illustrate why Wellspring can be a frustrating pokemon. By all rights, leng loi was well prepared for Wellspring with Zamazenta, Tornadus-T and even Kyurem meaning they had a decent out in most situations. And yet on turn 20, Wellspring proceeded to BS anyways because Cudgel crit through a +3 Zama and removed it from the game on the spot. Torn-T got removed by Valiant and then Kyurem was dropped by the surprise Play Rough at the end.

That really brings me to a point about this mon: It's not that inherently it's impossible to prepare for, but that prepping for it is a big ask when few long term answers exist and many short term answers are also tasked with handling other threats on Wellspring's teams, making preserving those short term answers for it while also handling other threats tough. Crit Cudgel allowing Wellspring to upend would be counterplay is to me, a major reason why I can't stand its presence. There's a lot of threats that indivudually aren't problematic necessarily, but preparing for them all sometimes feels like a chore when threats like Wellspring stick out and require extra attention, making building frustrating at times.

If i'm being honest I don't think the replay you cited is a good example of Woger being broken. I didn't watch the replay myself but based on what other people commented about that replay it seems like that zama setting up all those iron defense wasn't necessary, it seems leng loi was being greedy with the iron defenses and ended up getting critted by Woger. it's tuff but based on what i'm reading I'm going to assume it was preventable. also I know that ivy cudgel has a high crit rate but its still rng at the end of the day. I find the claim that Woger is stupid because of a replay where Woger only won cuz of a cudgel crit(which was preventable) very similar to the guy that was complaining about kyurem being broken then citing a replay of kyurem only winning because of a freeze(and it was preventable the guy that lost could have easily won and beat the kyurem).

although I do understand your general sentiment that Woger is frustrating and annoying to deal and it does lack very long term checks outside of mostly shitmons(minus my goat obviously) and I feel like you're a good poster in general. I definitely don't want to go back and forth with you, I'm just hoping we can meet an eye for an eye and understand each others views.


Side note: does anyone know the actually command for the Gweezing sprite?? I have trouble finding that. And forums is really annoying. spent nearly half an hour typing this and I click away for one second and most of it was removed, so I had to type it again. hopefully it's coherent enough to get my point across(and hopefully not that much grammar mistakes).

 

[Moyashi]

Fair enough. Although in in terms of hazard removal, I'm assuming we are talking :galarian-weezing: ?. in a certain context maybe is true as and are the most common form of removal in the game and both lose to waterpon. in that case yea wogerpon is beating its removal options a lot of the time, but then again this is a game of 6 mons no? tusk and treads could find other opportunities in the games to remove hazards and common spin blockers like and wont exactly be taking hits from comfortably. again this is really dependent on game state though i'm not dismissing scenarios where hazards are really super stacked and tusk/treads wont have the longevity to remove them, but I think they will find a reasonable amount of opportunities to remove hazards. in terms of the other removal options though I don't really agree that wellspring beats most of them. gweezing despite its numerous flaws is often sited as a Woger check, and Woger isn't exactly keen on staying in on a gweezing and risking a will o wisp or a sludge bomb for example. Again depending on game state Woger can/can't muscle through Gweez but generally speaking Gweez is not a mon Woger wants to be taking on. About again, sure SD ogerpon can definitely muscle through corviknight, but lets assume in the context of hazards(since this is what the post is talking about) Ogerpon doesn't really want to be risking clicking taunt on a corviknight that can potentially kill it with brave bird or heavyily chip it with U-turn. can outspeed and kill Woger if chipped(again assuming non tera, but even then cinderace still clicks U-turn for free. Woger also isn't exactly keen on taking on physdef packing nuzzle.

Gweezing is a check, but it also has no reliable recovery and is not too difficult to overwhelm with prior damage. +2 Cudgel is a roll of min 70% and that’s not hard to push it towards prior. +2 Cudgel also blows through Hatterene unless it Teras. And I’m not sure why you mentioned Taunt vs Corv…?

again I think some of the points are being missed here. the DnB in general isn't arguing that Woger has perfect checks that can handle it in the long term or that Woger can't muscle through its checks, I'm not arguing that. i'm argument that Woger has a fair amount of checks that can handle it and phase it out in the early/mid game and prevent it from rolling through teams immediately. in that case Woger checks are fairly reliable in doing that. and on the tera stuff again its situational. you're not going to be forced to burn tera everytime, but in situations where you need to it's there and games can still be winnable.

This all assumes that Wellspring won’t get many chances to come in so short term checks are good enough, but this isn’t super true since it offensively threatens so many staples

I know people don't like the argument "YoU cAn TeLl BaSeD oN tHe TeAm PrIeViEw" but there is some truth to it as in you can make an educated guess based on team preview. for example if you see a team that looks like a voltTurn spam team you can assume that Woger is U-turn. if you see a team that looks like set up spam(I'm talking like a veil,webs or other sorta niche archetypes like grassy terrain structures) you can assume SD Woger is coming. if you see a team that looks like hazard stacking(which is probably easier to tell) you can assume Woger is knock off. Sure educated guesses aren't always going to be exactly right but they are more reliable than not.

First let’s not with strawmanning because no one dislikes “you can tell from team preview”. Most any player knows that on average you can discern information from preview through team comp. But that’s not what is argued here with regards to not knowing. It’s not knowing what variant of sets it runs because different versions exist. Bulky variants, sub variants, sets with recovery, and of course difference fourth move coverage. And more than that, the issue is you might not be prepped for a specific set and wind up pretty disadvantaged as a result. A dynamic not uncommon from past big threats of the tier.

both and have insanely broken abilities in prison heal and GAG. being entirely immune to support moves and in gliscors case, being immune to status conditions while getting free hp off being poisoned makes them cheap to use. and Gholdengo has one of the best typings in the game and has two spammable stab combos in shadow ball(ghost resist are fairly limited) and make it rain(120 move with barely any draw backs) I would argue they belong in the braindead category.

These qualities don’t make them braindead. It makes them very good. Gliscor excels at long games but has problems facing aggressive teams where its low average damage output can get it into trouble, and its bulk isn’t always sufficient into some threats, especially boosting ones. And Make it Rain has a big drawback. The part where it lowers its own damage output? Plus it’s near 8PP means it cannot just be thrown out freely. Especially as steel is not a very spammable type due to how it gets resisted often.

I disagree on your assessment on , outside of ting lu & iron treads(which don't like taking specs Draco's) raging bolt pretty much has nothing that wants to switch ins. imo its around the caliber of specs kyurem, although it's slower I argue its less predict reliant than Kyurem since it can just spam specs draco especially into teams where ting lu is the main check and most fairy types get severely chipped from volt switch/thunderbolt.

This grossly exaggerates how threatening Bolt is. In practice, for one, specs is super prediction reliant and just not very good. The set is protect bait and offensively revenge killed easily, plus super hazard weak and as Bolt has little defensive utility in practice it struggles for direct switch ins, this makes it awkward to use as any one wrong call saps so much momentum.

If there is a ground+steel or ground+fairy, sometimes all three, it’s extremely hard to consistently make the correct call on the move. Bolt itself has appeared, by my knowledge, a whole 4 times in the first two weeks of SCL so far. Lost both games in week one, won both in week two (but one game saw it attack a total of one time) and both times it appeared week 2 was on sun.

It’s still overall quite good, but it’s harder to fit in practice than it was when indigo disk meta started.

If i'm being honest I don't think the replay you cited is a good example of Woger being broken. I didn't watch the replay myself but based on what other people commented about that replay it seems like that zama setting up all those iron defense wasn't necessary, it seems leng loi was being greedy with the iron defenses and ended up getting critted by Woger. it's tuff but based on what i'm reading I'm going to assume it was preventable. also I know that ivy cudgel has a high crit rate but its still rng at the end of the day. I find the claim that Woger is stupid because of a replay where Woger only won cuz of a cudgel crit(which was preventable) very similar to the guy that was complaining about kyurem being broken then citing a replay of kyurem only winning because of a freeze(and it was preventable the guy that lost could have easily won and beat the kyurem

Afaik only one person commented on the game i brought up and i covered why the play leng loi made wasn’t likely greedy. The replay demonstrates that short term counter play also hinges on not being crit and put into situations where you have to play awkwardly and reactively. In general I respectfully encourage you to form your own opinion by watching it instead of taking someone else’s argument as truth because their conclusion lines up with your view on a Mon.

 

[Guizs]

Fair enough. Although in in terms of hazard removal, I'm assuming we are talking :galarian-weezing: ?. in a certain context maybe is true as and are the most common form of removal in the game and both lose to waterpon. in that case yea wogerpon is beating its removal options a lot of the time, but then again this is a game of 6 mons no? tusk and treads could find other opportunities in the games to remove hazards and common spin blockers like and wont exactly be taking hits from comfortably. again this is really dependent on game state though i'm not dismissing scenarios where hazards are really super stacked and tusk/treads wont have the longevity to remove them, but I think they will find a reasonable amount of opportunities to remove hazards. in terms of the other removal options though I don't really agree that wellspring beats most of them. gweezing despite its numerous flaws is often sited as a Woger check, and Woger isn't exactly keen on staying in on a gweezing and risking a will o wisp or a sludge bomb for example. Again depending on game state Woger can/can't muscle through Gweez but generally speaking Gweez is not a mon Woger wants to be taking on. About again, sure SD ogerpon can definitely muscle through corviknight, but lets assume in the context of hazards(since this is what the post is talking about) Ogerpon doesn't really want to be risking clicking taunt on a corviknight that can potentially kill it with brave bird or heavyily chip it with U-turn. can outspeed and kill Woger if chipped(again assuming non tera, but even then cinderace still clicks U-turn for free. Woger also isn't exactly keen on taking on physdef packing nuzzle.

I think it makes sense what you brought, but I still don't see the situation so clear in favor of Wogerpon like that. Yes, it presses the most common ways of removal (:prey large:, :bands iron:) and in super stacked hazard scenarios it weighs, but as you said, the game is not just about this 1v1. These two still find reasonable windows to remove against quite a lot, even with Woger in the field.


About the other options:

• Gweezing it really isn't a perfect answer, but you can't deny that it's a nuisance check and that Woger usually doesn't want to risk Will-O-Wisp or Sludge Bombs for free.
• Corviknight also not such a simple target to explore — SD can pass, but the risk of Brave Bird/heavy chip + the uncertainty of a Taunt greatly complicates.
• Cinderace it has the advantage of being able to force the Woger on the chip, either by U-turn free, or by threatening direct KO in some situations.
• Hatterne it is also another case: it is not counter, but Woger does not like to eat Psyshock / Draining Kiss when he needs to preserve HP.

In the end, the point is that although Wogerpon presses quite the most common spinners, it does not invalidate“the hazard control generally ” several options still manage to work depending on the state of the game. It is precisely this situational interaction that prevents it from being a universal response to hazards.

 

[Whaloob]

Anti-offense options like trailblaze or glide are tradeoffs that compromise Woger's ability to serve as a breaker. (Not to mention glide is telegraphed from preview). It is disingenuous to claim that these are common options.

Moltres and Zapdos are not listed as teammates on either the 1695 or 1825 moveset stats, nor have I seen Woger paired with them on ladder or in tour. Webs is a cheese playstyle that by definition has an extremely skewed matchup spread; there is nothing special about Woger on these teams. These are bad faith arguments.

Woger's ability to "do something" is heavily limited against more offensive teams. This has been shown in multiple tour games this week:

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-873595
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-873178?p2
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-872674

Every single 'mon will sound unstoppable if you give them a perfect set for every possible scenario.
This is not how actual games play out. You have to make concessions when teambuilding. Nothing can run every option at once.

Glide isn’t particularly common, that is true. Trailblaze is quite common. And yes, running these sets is a compromise in breaking power (though most of your breaking power is built on SD + cudgel anyway). The point here is not that Woger can have everything at once. The point is that Woger cannot reliably be dealt with by running offense.

One of your replays LITERALLY has a Moltres with a Woger, so you expressly have seen that partnership. I’m not attached to that particular partnership mind you (and I reserve the right to be non-specific because the existence of anti-offense mons is both undisputed and not the subject of conversation)—I am merely pointing out that with 5 other mons on any given team, struggling against offense is incredibly far from sufficient to deem it as having sufficient counterplay. Webs, while fishy, is also a well-established playstyle that regularly sees some tournament usage—certainly enough that offense teams have to consider them in the builder—and more uniquely to Woger among webs abusers, Woger puts a lot more pressure on balance and stall teams than other webs abusers, which is, again, what makes being able to shore up its supposed offense weakness with ease so compelling. Shoring up Lokix’s matchup into offense isn’t compelling because it’s already good into offense; doing the same with the best breaker to ever hit OU is much more compelling. I’m not sure what about that is so hard to gather, though I would also encourage you to understand the meaning of the phrase “bad faith argument” before just throwing it into your comment.

And frankly, the replays you provided prove my point if anything—that being that even in Woger’s worse matchups it still manages to make significant meaningful progress. In the first game Woger takes out a whole Tusk and then is arguably misplayed when sacked to the Pult. The second game Woger is again arguably misplayed given it sacs itself for damage on Zama when it has a Moltres and a tera fairy Dragonite to rein it in, and when Woger only needed Zama to exit the field at some point and Rilla to be cleared in order to sweep. *Even then* in an ostensibly bad matchup for it, it still trades for 0.8 of a Zama, arguably the biggest threat to the Woger team at least if it had Stone Edge (which does not oneshot Moltres anyway, though you want health for Rilla). The third replay Woger is inarguably misplayed, switching directly into Pech while the special walls of the team just kinda ate a ton of chip, no offense to the player in question but honestly the whole battle is pretty puzzling at least to the eye, maybe I’m missing something.

So again, my whole point here is this: Woger can tech for offense matchups either through team support or through a couple of its move options, so offense being a bad matchup for it is not at all a given; furthermore, even when it DOES encounter an ostensibly bad matchup, such as offense that it hasn’t teched for or fat Mola hstack shit when it’s running trailblaze, it still generally manages to earn or get close to earning its slot, even as it performs overwhelmingly well in its good matchups.

 

[EpicGuy321]

Fair enough. Although in in terms of hazard removal, I'm assuming we are talking :galarian-weezing: ?. in a certain context maybe is true as and are the most common form of removal in the game and both lose to waterpon. in that case yea wogerpon is beating its removal options a lot of the time, but then again this is a game of 6 mons no? tusk and treads could find other opportunities in the games to remove hazards and common spin blockers like and wont exactly be taking hits from comfortably. again this is really dependent on game state though i'm not dismissing scenarios where hazards are really super stacked and tusk/treads wont have the longevity to remove them, but I think they will find a reasonable amount of opportunities to remove hazards. in terms of the other removal options though I don't really agree that wellspring beats most of them. gweezing despite its numerous flaws is often sited as a Woger check, and Woger isn't exactly keen on staying in on a gweezing and risking a will o wisp or a sludge bomb for example. Again depending on game state Woger can/can't muscle through Gweez but generally speaking Gweez is not a mon Woger wants to be taking on. About again, sure SD ogerpon can definitely muscle through corviknight, but lets assume in the context of hazards(since this is what the post is talking about) Ogerpon doesn't really want to be risking clicking taunt on a corviknight that can potentially kill it with brave bird or heavyily chip it with U-turn. can outspeed and kill Woger if chipped(again assuming non tera, but even then cinderace still clicks U-turn for free. Woger also isn't exactly keen on taking on physdef packing nuzzle.



again I think some of the points are being missed here. the DnB in general isn't arguing that Woger has perfect checks that can handle it in the long term or that Woger can't muscle through its checks, I'm not arguing that. i'm argument that Woger has a fair amount of checks that can handle it and phase it out in the early/mid game and prevent it from rolling through teams immediately. in that case Woger checks are fairly reliable in doing that. and on the tera stuff again its situational. you're not going to be forced to burn tera everytime, but in situations where you need to it's there and games can still be winnable.


Okay so it seems we are going in circles on the Pecharunt argument. I'm saying physdef Pecharunt can switch in on Woger if you initially recover and hazards aren't stacked, your saying that it's vulnarable if hazards are up. both are reasonable situations but it's just going to keep going in circles if we going further. FWIW though from my experience playing OLT Pecharunt was still able to check Woger pretty decently despite being knocked and stealth rocks being up(not ideal, but still good enough)

On your statement that "you have no real way of knowing which woger you'll face" I disagree with. does not have the set anonymity as a dragon dance or that can run 4-5 different tera blast sets. Woger does not have the same set anonymity due to being item and tera locked, which removes a lot from the guessing game. yes Woger has a lot set diversity but you can figure out it's moveset on the first turn its in(assuming its not just spamming cudgel). for example if Woger clicks U-turn you can safely assume its not SD(I highly doubt anyone runs SD u-turn but I have seen it like one time). If Woger clicks a support move like encore/taunt/spikes or clicks trailblaze you can safely assume its lacking coverage and base your game plans on that information. knock off is probably the trickiest one but then again you can still assume stuff like no play rough, etc. I know people don't like the argument "YoU cAn TeLl BaSeD oN tHe TeAm PrIeViEw" but there is some truth to it as in you can make an educated guess based on team preview. for example if you see a team that looks like a voltTurn spam team you can assume that Woger is U-turn. if you see a team that looks like set up spam(I'm talking like a veil,webs or other sorta niche archetypes like grassy terrain structures) you can assume SD Woger is coming. if you see a team that looks like hazard stacking(which is probably easier to tell) you can assume Woger is knock off. Sure educated guesses aren't always going to be exactly right but they are more reliable than not.

Lastly I do want to point out that certain Woger sets do have its flaws and disadvantages. for example encore Pon and trailblaze Pon lack coverage moves and especially trailblaze Pon has a worst matchup into bulkier teams. Knock is probably the most reliable Woger move into everything but even then knock off Pon variants can lack the immediate breaking of a SD play rough woger and have a more annoying matchups into dragons for example(can definitely be beatable, but its a little harder)

both and have insanely broken abilities in prison heal and GAG. being entirely immune to support moves and in gliscors case, being immune to status conditions while getting free hp off being poisoned makes them cheap to use. and Gholdengo has one of the best typings in the game and has two spammable stab combos in shadow ball(ghost resist are fairly limited) and make it rain(120 move with barely any draw backs) I would argue they belong in the braindead category. I disagree on your assessment on , outside of ting lu & iron treads(which don't like taking specs Draco's) raging bolt pretty much has nothing that wants to switch ins. imo its around the caliber of specs kyurem, although it's slower I argue its less predict reliant than Kyurem since it can just spam specs draco especially into teams where ting lu is the main check and most fairy types get severely chipped from volt switch/thunderbolt. although isn't the mon its once was its still generally agreed upon as a braindead mon that can just come in the late game and claim wins, its also one of the more controversial tera abusers so it definitely belongs here. I could have put or but they are more controversial mons where there is a good amount of people that think these mons are broken as well and basing arguments around them when talking about Woger as well will probably end up in the debate going a different direction which I don't really want right now.

and again the general point of that section where I mentioned those braindead mons isn't about their literal level of brokenness. it's about the sentiment that you can think something is very braindead/cheap to use but also think they are not broken at the same just. someone originally quoted my post saying "I love how you think Woger is balanced but also admit its cheap and braindead to use" and my general response to it was that something can be braindead, and can also be thought to be balanced/not broken at the same.

If i'm being honest I don't think the replay you cited is a good example of Woger being broken. I didn't watch the replay myself but based on what other people commented about that replay it seems like that zama setting up all those iron defense wasn't necessary, it seems leng loi was being greedy with the iron defenses and ended up getting critted by Woger. it's tuff but based on what i'm reading I'm going to assume it was preventable. also I know that ivy cudgel has a high crit rate but its still rng at the end of the day. I find the claim that Woger is stupid because of a replay where Woger only won cuz of a cudgel crit(which was preventable) very similar to the guy that was complaining about kyurem being broken then citing a replay of kyurem only winning because of a freeze(and it was preventable the guy that lost could have easily won and beat the kyurem).

although I do understand your general sentiment that Woger is frustrating and annoying to deal and it does lack very long term checks outside of mostly shitmons(minus my goat obviously) and I feel like you're a good poster in general. I definitely don't want to go back and forth with you, I'm just hoping we can meet an eye for an eye and understand each others views.


Side note: does anyone know the actually command for the Gweezing sprite?? I have trouble finding that. And forums is really annoying. spent nearly half an hour typing this and I click away for one second and most of it was removed, so I had to type it again. hopefully it's coherent enough to get my point across(and hopefully not that much grammar mistakes).

= : weezing-galar : just like on actual showdown lol.

---

I've been trying out encore dnite recently and this mon is awesome. I was always a big fan of Scale Shot Fire Punch Encore, but Tera Blast Encore lets you use Boots, too. I just had a game won by the skin of my teeth thanks to this tech: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2448680064

Really cool mon. My favourite set is still Scale Shot or Dtail though. Also dont ask about the team I know it's bad lol

---

Another mon I've been LOVING recently is AV Sylveon. Yes, I know what you're thinking, now that Moon is banned, you can drop Quick Attack. I've been using a specific tech instead recently:

Sylveon (F) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Pixilate
Shiny: Yes
Tera Type: Ground
EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpA / 8 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draining Kiss
- Hyper Voice/Moonblast
- Mud-Slap
- Psyshock

Yep. Mud-Slap. You read that right. Hear me out: hits Moth for decent damage on the switch, and drops accuracy which can be huge in some special brawls. This mon basically 1v1s every special attacker depending on tera. If you terastallize into a Ground type, Mud-Slap becomes 60BP (90 with STAB) and does actual good damage to stuff like Gholdengo. If you're lame and want a "real move" use Shadow Ball. And like, tera Steel I guess. Which helps vs Kyurem or whatever.

 

[40kultra]

Okay so I figured that the reason my other post were getting deleted was because i'm not allowed to double post. Tbh trying to reply to multiple peoples post all in one post seems annoying and messy, but I will try to do my best.

Gweezing is a check, but it also has no reliable recovery and is not too difficult to overwhelm with prior damage. +2 Cudgel is a roll of min 70% and that’s not hard to push it towards prior. +2 Cudgel also blows through Hatterene unless it Teras. And I’m not sure why you mentioned Taunt vs Corv…?

again, I did acknowledge in my post that :weezing-galar does have numerous flaws like it's lack of reliable recovery and can be muscled through by via SD, but my general point still stands. Gweezing is not a mon Woger wants to be taking on due to the potentially being burned with willo or hit with sludge bomb especially when it can tera grass out of the cudgel weakness. also I didn't really name as a Woger switch in or a Woger counter at all I only stated that Woger wont exactly be keen on taking physdef invested hatterene if it's packing nuzzle. I mentioned taunt Woger because we were talking in the context of hazards and preventing them from being removed so that's why I brought it up. although wogers would most likely be fishing for cudgel crits or be U-turning on corviknight(but U-turn into rocky helmet corv isn't ideal)

I think it makes sense what you brought, but I still don't see the situation so clear in favor of Wogerpon like that. Yes, it presses the most common ways of removal (:prey large:, :bands iron:) and in super stacked hazard scenarios it weighs, but as you said, the game is not just about this 1v1. These two still find reasonable windows to remove against quite a lot, even with Woger in the field.


About the other options:

• Gweezing it really isn't a perfect answer, but you can't deny that it's a nuisance check and that Woger usually doesn't want to risk Will-O-Wisp or Sludge Bombs for free.
• Corviknight also not such a simple target to explore — SD can pass, but the risk of Brave Bird/heavy chip + the uncertainty of a Taunt greatly complicates.
• Cinderace it has the advantage of being able to force the Woger on the chip, either by U-turn free, or by threatening direct KO in some situations.
• Hatterne it is also another case: it is not counter, but Woger does not like to eat Psyshock / Draining Kiss when he needs to preserve HP.

In the end, the point is that although Wogerpon presses quite the most common spinners, it does not invalidate“the hazard control generally ” several options still manage to work depending on the state of the game. It is precisely this situational interaction that prevents it from being a universal response to hazards.

Nonetheless this is pretty much similar to what I wanted to sum up about the hazard interactions. Ogerpon does pressure and beat the more common forms of hazard control in (at least for tusk, it has CC to potentially hit Woger hard, Iront reads in general is just cooked unless it's some endeavor custap berry bullshit) however, Ogerpon doesn't really restrict or invalidate most hazard removal options and doesn't really beat most of them directly outside of the elephants.

This all assumes that Wellspring won’t get many chances to come in so short term checks are good enough, but this isn’t super true since it offensively threatens so many staples

ngl i'm not really sure where this assumption is from. I wasn't really assuming that Woger will get limited chances to come in. FWIW though ig some Woger weak pokemon do have some on their own little tech to work around oger. for example has been seeing usage with it's weakness policy payback set every since it first appeared in that one WCOP match. I have also seen it used a little bit in OLT. it's a cheesy set but i'm glad people are exploring ting lu's 110 attack I think it's a very underrated aspect of it. , the most Woger weak mon imo(especially without toxic this gen) has been seen using tech to work around that weakness like tickle, acrobatics, body slam, etc. I think my personally favourite was red card acrobatics I used to abuse that long when I was using mola before. ^This isn't really apart of my argument about Woger I just wanted to point a few fun facts out.

nonetheless though this is my response though. Yes Woger as a lot of opportunities to come in(especially thanks to water absorb) and is a threat to common staples especially bulkier balanced ones. however some mons that Woger does switch in on do have their means of chipping it. talking about though seriously it has ruination which can cut hp to half on switch in. This can halt Woger's longevity in a game especially Woger sets lacking recovery like synthesis for example. and are also mons that wellspring can easily into their water stabs and immediately threaten them back, however both prim and keldeo are strong enough to comfortable do more than half to Woger on the switch with their secondary stabs. is going to get a lot of good opportunities to switch in, however its not as super free as people are making it out to be.

First let’s not with strawmanning because no one dislikes “you can tell from team preview”. Most any player knows that on average you can discern information from preview through team comp. But that’s not what is argued here with regards to not knowing. It’s not knowing what variant of sets it runs because different versions exist. Bulky variants, sub variants, sets with recovery, and of course difference fourth move coverage. And more than that, the issue is you might not be prepped for a specific set and wind up pretty disadvantaged as a result. A dynamic not uncommon from past big threats of the tier.

I might sound ignorant but i'm not entirely sure on what you mean by strawmanning. I wasn't trying to invalidate anyone I was just saying that people don't like going the discussion route of team preview guessing games especially when talking about bans, at least based on what I read when I read suspect threads sometimes. I'm guessing it was tone that was the problem, it probably wasn't necessary but it's whatever.

about your points, again the sub variants and the recovery variants still fall under the categories of the Woger support movesets I was arguing in my thread where if you uncover those, you'll probably know that it's lacking coverage.

If Woger clicks a support move like encore/taunt/spikes or clicks trailblaze you can safely assume its lacking coverage and base your game plans on that information.

Yea those sub and synthesis variants fall under here too^

I also don't think uncovering the 4th move is as essentially imo, you can have a good idea of what the woger set is when it clicks its 3 other moves. the suprise factor comes here and then but the first 3 moves reveal enough info to make decent gameplans about Woger.

I disagree that the dynamic is the same for Woger as it is for other past threats in the tier. if we take a look at for example those mons had like an abundance of tera sets and items it can abuse. and had like 5 different DD sets alone and can abuse items like and for examples while having like 5 different teras(this is more in gouging fires case roaring moon was mainly abusing tera fairy and flying for the most part). Volcarona, while not having the same item diversity as the two former as its forced to run boots, it still had a lot of tera sets which made it difficult for teams to answer outside of being forced to tera fairy on . does not have the same dynamic as those mons due to it being item and tera locked, which limits its set anomynity a lot despite its great movepool.

and not the specific set thing, again I feel like there is enough tools to generally prepare for . yes if you put a specific set inn a right scenario it's going to be an advantage, this can be said for a lot of mons, however this definitely isn't always the case. Woger does have a lot it can do but it's definitely nowhere near the set anomynity of previous banned mons like a Gfire/Rmoon or Volc imo.

These qualities don’t make them braindead. It makes them very good. Gliscor excels at long games but has problems facing aggressive teams where its low average damage output can get it into trouble, and its bulk isn’t always sufficient into some threats, especially boosting ones. And Make it Rain has a big drawback. The part where it lowers its own damage output? Plus it’s near 8PP means it cannot just be thrown out freely. Especially as steel is not a very spammable type due to how it gets resisted often.




This grossly exaggerates how threatening Bolt is. In practice, for one, specs is super prediction reliant and just not very good. The set is protect bait and offensively revenge killed easily, plus super hazard weak and as Bolt has little defensive utility in practice it struggles for direct switch ins, this makes it awkward to use as any one wrong call saps so much momentum.

If there is a ground+steel or ground+fairy, sometimes all three, it’s extremely hard to consistently make the correct call on the move. Bolt itself has appeared, by my knowledge, a whole 4 times in the first two weeks of SCL so far. Lost both games in week one, won both in week two (but one game saw it attack a total of one time) and both times it appeared week 2 was on sun.

It’s still overall quite good, but it’s harder to fit in practice than it was when indigo disk meta started.

again this argument is not really one I want to be going back and forth on because the original sentiment was more philosophy based rather than literally talking about the brokenness of these mons. and this is kinda subjective as there is people that find the mons I included braindead and cheap as I have seen a some people make arguments about and . I will still make some comments on your response though.

Yes make it rain has a drawback technically. but its not really a big one as only -1 special attack drop isn't that big of a drawback especially on a mon that has 133 based special attack. after a nasty plot and 1 make it rain it still has +1 special attack, so it can drop a few make it rains without worrying about big special attack drops. yes steel is easily resisted but in the case of gholdengo not a lot of resist take boosted make it rains that well, especially with the metal coat dengo sets that have been on the rise.

I don't think i'm exaggerating how threatening bolt is, and I definitely don't agree that specs is not very good. outside of ting lu most steels get 2hkoed by specs draco and most fairies get nearly Koed by electric move. there is a reason why specs was commonly used a lot especially in OLT. and I don't really get your statements on bolt being hazard weak and easy to revenge kill. I mean yes grounded mons not running are going to be taking hazard damage if they are on the field but raging bolt isn't even weak to stealth rock like . also bolt is very bulky with it's high hp stat and isn't as easy to revenge kill as you're making it out to be especially when it's really healthy. Raging bolt on sun is another scary version of bolt which will prob support some of my arguments but again I don't really want to go that deep into this.

looking back at this argument I probably should've included mons like here because that is generally agreed upon as a braindead mon, but then again the original point of this entire argument was suppose to be more philosophal.

Afaik only one person commented on the game i brought up and i covered why the play leng loi made wasn’t likely greedy. The replay demonstrates that short term counter play also hinges on not being crit and put into situations where you have to play awkwardly and reactively. In general I respectfully encourage you to form your own opinion by watching it instead of taking someone else’s argument as truth because their conclusion lines up with your view on a Mon.

Fair enough. if you have the replay I will gladly watch and assess it on my own.


onto the other posts where I originally responded was deleted due to double posting.

Oh MY BAD I didn’t realize I don’t get to make my own points about Woger :|

Listen I never said you can't make your own points on woger. the main reason why I was criticizing your posts was because you kept making a lot of quotes and remarks to my arguments, then you went on saying stuff that didn't make sense or were completely unrelated to my arguments. You can make your own points about woger but if you're going to be making references to my argument at least make it something that actually makes sense or relates to my argument. FWIW I do have other comments to say on your other posts.

Glide isn’t particularly common, that is true. Trailblaze is quite common. And yes, running these sets is a compromise in breaking power (though most of your breaking power is built on SD + cudgel anyway). The point here is not that Woger can have everything at once. The point is that Woger cannot reliably be dealt with by running offense.

One of your replays LITERALLY has a Moltres with a Woger, so you expressly have seen that partnership. I’m not attached to that particular partnership mind you (and I reserve the right to be non-specific because the existence of anti-offense mons is both undisputed and not the subject of conversation)—I am merely pointing out that with 5 other mons on any given team, struggling against offense is incredibly far from sufficient to deem it as having sufficient counterplay. Webs, while fishy, is also a well-established playstyle that regularly sees some tournament usage—certainly enough that offense teams have to consider them in the builder—and more uniquely to Woger among webs abusers, Woger puts a lot more pressure on balance and stall teams than other webs abusers, which is, again, what makes being able to shore up its supposed offense weakness with ease so compelling. Shoring up Lokix’s matchup into offense isn’t compelling because it’s already good into offense; doing the same with the best breaker to ever hit OU is much more compelling. I’m not sure what about that is so hard to gather, though I would also encourage you to understand the meaning of the phrase “bad faith argument” before just throwing it into your comment.

And frankly, the replays you provided prove my point if anything—that being that even in Woger’s worse matchups it still manages to make significant meaningful progress. In the first game Woger takes out a whole Tusk and then is arguably misplayed when sacked to the Pult. The second game Woger is again arguably misplayed given it sacs itself for damage on Zama when it has a Moltres and a tera fairy Dragonite to rein it in, and when Woger only needed Zama to exit the field at some point and Rilla to be cleared in order to sweep. *Even then* in an ostensibly bad matchup for it, it still trades for 0.8 of a Zama, arguably the biggest threat to the Woger team at least if it had Stone Edge (which does not oneshot Moltres anyway, though you want health for Rilla). The third replay Woger is inarguably misplayed, switching directly into Pech while the special walls of the team just kinda ate a ton of chip, no offense to the player in question but honestly the whole battle is pretty puzzling at least to the eye, maybe I’m missing something.

So again, my whole point here is this: Woger can tech for offense matchups either through team support or through a couple of its move options, so offense being a bad matchup for it is not at all a given; furthermore, even when it DOES encounter an ostensibly bad matchup, such as offense that it hasn’t teched for or fat Mola hstack shit when it’s running trailblaze, it still generally manages to earn or get close to earning its slot, even as it performs overwhelmingly well in its good matchups.

This post in general is weird. I don't get why you're dying on this hill on trailblaze and woger's offense matchup in general when it's literally the worst angle to argue on a Wogerpon ban post when there is literally a lot of better arguments to go off of. me, and many other have gone over posts explaining the huge disadvantages of trailblaze pon in the first place. it trades it's wallbreaking capabilities into bulkier teams(which it was it does best) to a trailblaze set that is mediocre in general and isn't even that good of an anti offense mon in the first place. imo it's the worst ogerpon sets to run and oger has a lot of better sets to run over trailblaze. At best trailblaze is an okay whatever cheese that can work sometimes.

don't really see how made significant progress against these offense teams like your saying. the first offense game literally shows woger having a terrible trade off against the other offense team despite woger being under screens. it take significant chip like the Tusk CC and gets revenge killed by dragapult. Ogerpon did kill great tusk yes but that's not proof of it making significant or meaningful progess. the great tusk wasn't needed at that point of the match, it was sacked for a reason. the person that traded the tusk for the woger easily had the better tradeoff.

the second replay showed woger dying to zama. the only thing it did was hit the cudgel crit on the switch in( I know this is what the ban side have been argument but still it's rng). had that cudgel crit not happen on the switch and literally any other turn zama sets up iron defense and gets max boost for free. even then woger still clicks trailblaze(mid move) and dies, proving other points about trailblaze woger where it wont find a lot of opportunities to set up perfectly even against offense teams. FWIW that blonded guy still won comfortable despite the crit and their zama still put enough pressure on the opposing team.

I wouldn't exactly consider the third replay an entire misplay. it was more like the bhkg guy lost his only ghost resist in ting lu and his other mons were either walled by pecha or weak to shadow ball, so he really didn't have much of a choice but to try and switch in Pon and maybe respond with knock off. still maybe you're right on it not being entirely on woger since this is more on the guy letting hazards up and giving up his ghost resist to chip and tera.

In general, even if you did technically prove some points your overall argument on this post is weak, and there is better arguments where you can base your Woger ban opinions on over whatever this is.

The thing with the arguments the ban side is throwing around is that they sound like "what if it snows in July?". This is fearmongering and bordering on disinformation, with most examples citing theorymon or one instance on high ladder or OLT, SCL etc.

Hydrapple taking 70% from +2 Play Rough shows that it's a great physical tank, not that Ogerpon-W is broken. If it was an OHKO, sure. Zapdos losing to a crit Ivy Cudgel is... not a problem. Zapdos does not have the god-given right to beat Ogerpon no matter what. Sure, it happens. But we're playing the same game where we bitch about scald burns and hoping not to get full paras. Which btw, is a huge component of ZapKingLu and its adjacents, and a core Ogerpon-W does great against. The crit rate needed to be at least 50%.

The same people that bitch about Ivy Cudgel crit rates would be far more annoyed by ZapKingLu if you ask me. I believe Ogerpon-W needs to remain unbanned, it's good for business.

Lastly, I do understand your sentiment on bulky balance teams being obnoxious and annoying to play against, I would argue it's more obnoxious than stall itself, but respectfully this ZapKingLu analogy needs to be dropped. it's not a good analogy and that core is barely even used nowadays.

 

[Whaloob]

Okay so I figured that the reason my other post were getting deleted was because i'm not allowed to double post. Tbh trying to reply to multiple peoples post all in one post seems annoying and messy, but I will try to do my best.



again, I did acknowledge in my post that :weezing-galar does have numerous flaws like it's lack of reliable recovery and can be muscled through by via SD, but my general point still stands. Gweezing is not a mon Woger wants to be taking on due to the potentially being burned with willo or hit with sludge bomb especially when it can tera grass out of the cudgel weakness. also I didn't really name as a Woger switch in or a Woger counter at all I only stated that Woger wont exactly be keen on taking physdef invested hatterene if it's packing nuzzle. I mentioned taunt Woger because we were talking in the context of hazards and preventing them from being removed so that's why I brought it up. although wogers would most likely be fishing for cudgel crits or be U-turning on corviknight(but U-turn into rocky helmet corv isn't ideal)

Nonetheless this is pretty much similar to what I wanted to sum up about the hazard interactions. Ogerpon does pressure and beat the more common forms of hazard control in (at least for tusk, it has CC to potentially hit Woger hard, Iront reads in general is just cooked unless it's some endeavor custap berry bullshit) however, Ogerpon doesn't really restrict or invalidate most hazard removal options and doesn't really beat most of them directly outside of the elephants.

ngl i'm not really sure where this assumption is from. I wasn't really assuming that Woger will get limited chances to come in. FWIW though ig some Woger weak pokemon do have some on their own little tech to work around oger. for example has been seeing usage with it's weakness policy payback set every since it first appeared in that one WCOP match. I have also seen it used a little bit in OLT. it's a cheesy set but i'm glad people are exploring ting lu's 110 attack I think it's a very underrated aspect of it. , the most Woger weak mon imo(especially without toxic this gen) has been seen using tech to work around that weakness like tickle, acrobatics, body slam, etc. I think my personally favourite was red card acrobatics I used to abuse that long when I was using mola before. ^This isn't really apart of my argument about Woger I just wanted to point a few fun facts out.

nonetheless though this is my response though. Yes Woger as a lot of opportunities to come in(especially thanks to water absorb) and is a threat to common staples especially bulkier balanced ones. however some mons that Woger does switch in on do have their means of chipping it. talking about though seriously it has ruination which can cut hp to half on switch in. This can halt Woger's longevity in a game especially Woger sets lacking recovery like synthesis for example. and are also mons that wellspring can easily into their water stabs and immediately threaten them back, however both prim and keldeo are strong enough to comfortable do more than half to Woger on the switch with their secondary stabs. is going to get a lot of good opportunities to switch in, however its not as super free as people are making it out to be.


I might sound ignorant but i'm not entirely sure on what you mean by strawmanning. I wasn't trying to invalidate anyone I was just saying that people don't like going the discussion route of team preview guessing games especially when talking about bans, at least based on what I read when I read suspect threads sometimes. I'm guessing it was tone that was the problem, it probably wasn't necessary but it's whatever.

about your points, again the sub variants and the recovery variants still fall under the categories of the Woger support movesets I was arguing in my thread where if you uncover those, you'll probably know that it's lacking coverage.

Yea those sub and synthesis variants fall under here too^

I also don't think uncovering the 4th move is as essentially imo, you can have a good idea of what the woger set is when it clicks its 3 other moves. the suprise factor comes here and then but the first 3 moves reveal enough info to make decent gameplans about Woger.

I disagree that the dynamic is the same for Woger as it is for other past threats in the tier. if we take a look at for example those mons had like an abundance of tera sets and items it can abuse. and had like 5 different DD sets alone and can abuse items like and for examples while having like 5 different teras(this is more in gouging fires case roaring moon was mainly abusing tera fairy and flying for the most part). Volcarona, while not having the same item diversity as the two former as its forced to run boots, it still had a lot of tera sets which made it difficult for teams to answer outside of being forced to tera fairy on . does not have the same dynamic as those mons due to it being item and tera locked, which limits its set anomynity a lot despite its great movepool.

and not the specific set thing, again I feel like there is enough tools to generally prepare for . yes if you put a specific set inn a right scenario it's going to be an advantage, this can be said for a lot of mons, however this definitely isn't always the case. Woger does have a lot it can do but it's definitely nowhere near the set anomynity of previous banned mons like a Gfire/Rmoon or Volc imo.


again this argument is not really one I want to be going back and forth on because the original sentiment was more philosophy based rather than literally talking about the brokenness of these mons. and this is kinda subjective as there is people that find the mons I included braindead and cheap as I have seen a some people make arguments about and . I will still make some comments on your response though.

Yes make it rain has a drawback technically. but its not really a big one as only -1 special attack drop isn't that big of a drawback especially on a mon that has 133 based special attack. after a nasty plot and 1 make it rain it still has +1 special attack, so it can drop a few make it rains without worrying about big special attack drops. yes steel is easily resisted but in the case of gholdengo not a lot of resist take boosted make it rains that well, especially with the metal coat dengo sets that have been on the rise.

I don't think i'm exaggerating how threatening bolt is, and I definitely don't agree that specs is not very good. outside of ting lu most steels get 2hkoed by specs draco and most fairies get nearly Koed by electric move. there is a reason why specs was commonly used a lot especially in OLT. and I don't really get your statements on bolt being hazard weak and easy to revenge kill. I mean yes grounded mons not running are going to be taking hazard damage if they are on the field but raging bolt isn't even weak to stealth rock like . also bolt is very bulky with it's high hp stat and isn't as easy to revenge kill as you're making it out to be especially when it's really healthy. Raging bolt on sun is another scary version of bolt which will prob support some of my arguments but again I don't really want to go that deep into this.

looking back at this argument I probably should've included mons like here because that is generally agreed upon as a braindead mon, but then again the original point of this entire argument was suppose to be more philosophal.


Fair enough. if you have the replay I will gladly watch and assess it on my own.


onto the other posts where I originally responded was deleted due to double posting.


Listen I never said you can't make your own points on woger. the main reason why I was criticizing your posts was because you kept making a lot of quotes and remarks to my arguments, then you went on saying stuff that didn't make sense or were completely unrelated to my arguments. You can make your own points about woger but if you're going to be making references to my argument at least make it something that actually makes sense or relates to my argument. FWIW I do have other comments to say on your other posts.




This post in general is weird. I don't get why you're dying on this hill on trailblaze and woger's offense matchup in general when it's literally the worst angle to argue on a Wogerpon ban post when there is literally a lot of better arguments to go off of. me, and many other have gone over posts explaining the huge disadvantages of trailblaze pon in the first place. it trades it's wallbreaking capabilities into bulkier teams(which it was it does best) to a trailblaze set that is mediocre in general and isn't even that good of an anti offense mon in the first place. imo it's the worst ogerpon sets to run and oger has a lot of better sets to run over trailblaze. At best trailblaze is an okay whatever cheese that can work sometimes.

don't really see how made significant progress against these offense teams like your saying. the first offense game literally shows woger having a terrible trade off against the other offense team despite woger being under screens. it take significant chip like the Tusk CC and gets revenge killed by dragapult. Ogerpon did kill great tusk yes but that's not proof of it making significant or meaningful progess. the great tusk wasn't needed at that point of the match, it was sacked for a reason. the person that traded the tusk for the woger easily had the better tradeoff.

the second replay showed woger dying to zama. the only thing it did was hit the cudgel crit on the switch in( I know this is what the ban side have been argument but still it's rng). had that cudgel crit not happen on the switch and literally any other turn zama sets up iron defense and gets max boost for free. even then woger still clicks trailblaze(mid move) and dies, proving other points about trailblaze woger where it wont find a lot of opportunities to set up perfectly even against offense teams. FWIW that blonded guy still won comfortable despite the crit and their zama still put enough pressure on the opposing team.

I wouldn't exactly consider the third replay an entire misplay. it was more like the bhkg guy lost his only ghost resist in ting lu and his other mons were either walled by pecha or weak to shadow ball, so he really didn't have much of a choice but to try and switch in Pon and maybe respond with knock off. still maybe you're right on it not being entirely on woger since this is more on the guy letting hazards up and giving up his ghost resist to chip and tera.

In general, even if you did technically prove some points your overall argument on this post is weak, and there is better arguments where you can base your Woger ban opinions on over whatever this is.



Lastly, I do understand your sentiment on bulky balance teams being obnoxious and annoying to play against, I would argue it's more obnoxious than stall itself, but respectfully this ZapKingLu analogy needs to be dropped. it's not a good analogy and that core is barely even used nowadays.

A little more reading and a little less writing would have done some good. The reason I reference its offense matchup is it’s undisputed that it does incredibly, oppressively well in balance and fat matchups. The main anti-ban argument is that it’s bad into offense, which is not necessarily true. It has sets that do well into offense, though they do sacrifice some wallbreaking power. The point of bringing up trailblaze (and glide, though glide is niche) is, like I explicitly said, NOT that Woger can do it all with one set; rather, it is that Woger is not a mon you can consider unproblematic in the builder simply because you are running offense. It has the means to perform quite well into offense. I don’t know why you and others insist on saying “trailblaze isn’t worth mentioning, you lose a lot of breaking power with it” as though that was ever disputed.

“It takes significant chip from CC and gets revenge killed” it trades 1 for 1 with the Tusk in an ostensibly bad matchup. It didn’t need to be sacked to Pult either imo.

“It thudded into Zama and trailblaze did nothing, this shows you won’t get good setup opportunities” yes, if you make the decision to just trade your Woger for chip on the potentially massive threat that is this grassy seed Zama (which is again debatably a misplay given the Dnite and Moltres available to sponge hits and given how good Woger looks after Zama goes down), it should come as no surprise that you don’t get a good setup opportunity to show for it. Saying Trailblaze Woger struggles to setup against offense because a player made the decision to exchange it for chip according to their assessment of the situation is…just not the gotcha you think it is. Trailblaze was, however, the literal best grass coverage option to have if you make that play there as it allowed Woger to pick up *slightly* more chip by outspeeding next turn; the only better thing to have in that slot would have been Encore to try to lock it into IDef. It’s only a tiny improvement over power whip or horn leech, but it is objectively an improvement for the play chosen.

“bhkg lost his only ghost resist in Ting Lu” he let Glowking get incredibly low to get a sludge bomb on the volcanion instead of chillying to Tusk or Woger to drop it. Then Ting Lu had to sponge the Pech that Glowking would’ve easily sponged, and takes hazards. Then stays in on Lando’s eq (getting crit, granted) even though he has Corv, Tusk, and Woger all able to enter. Ting Lu also teras while low to take IVal hits that Glowking would’ve taken, though it could only do this for Pech or IVal, but either route would’ve led to a much healthier Ting Lu and tera saved. Corv also could’ve taken on IVal, though I am all for the caution taken with regard to scouting the set. Then Ting Lu gets sacked on the next IVal entry and Corv walls it, and Pech comes in on a roost; Glowking is at this point healthy enough to live 2 shadow balls and a turn of burn damage, so if it has anything at all in its toolkit to help shut down pech, now is a good time for it. Instead Woger is switched in. Bhkg would almost surely toast me in a match, I truly don’t mean any disrespect to them as a player, but I really don’t understand why this game was routed this way at all.

And again, I will emphasize, even though I’m exhausted of having to do so only for you not to read, these are all “bad matchups” for Woger according to the eye. Yet in one, Woger trades evenly, in another it takes out most of a Zama’s HP, and in the final I am just at a loss for why the game was played the way it was frankly. Even the first 2 games, while I am not dying on this hill, both Wogers were debatably misplayed.

 

[CooolTrainer]

Turning away from the verbose Ogre discussion, Rillaboom is having a fun resurgence. So many pokemon appreciate passive healing+reduced ground damage. Grassy Terrain can enable Zama, Ghold, Hatterene, Oger, Bolt, Heatran and many others. Even without a choice band, its ability to provide priority, knock, u-turn, Oger-W checking, and emergency breaking with wood hammer makes it pretty easy to build around. I think top players are just scratching the surface of G-terrain based sets. Grassy Seed Dnite, Gambit, and Ceruledge all seem like they have potential.

 

[Magcargo]

While seeing a resurgence of a few popular Pokemon from older gens like Heatran, Garchomp, and Tyranitar is kinda cool, I am not a fan of how so many regen mons have also seen a rise in usage. In addition to the usual Gking / Mola which are as common as ever, mons like Torn-T, Hydrapple, Pex and Amoongus, are giga annoying to face, esp if they are used together with Gweezing / Treads x Hat for anti hazard support. Torn-T is definetly the most annoying of them all since Taunt / U-Turn / Knock / Filler has somewhat limited counterplay long-term and its difficult for defensive teams / pokemon to deal with. AV is also pretty crazy - I've seen many battles where this mon is able to use its incredible speed to knock off breaker's items and survive some crazy strong attacks like Kyurem's Blizzard and come back to full later in the match. Specs is also pretty solid as a breaker.

At the very least, these regen mons have a bit more counterplay here than UU, with strong Ice attackers like Weav / Meow destroying Hydrapple / Torn-T. Also I find that a lot of the defensive cores these regen cores use are a bit fake so their teams can get crushed by Gambit / Dnite if those are played well.

Also, the one annoying part about building around shiest mons like Garchomp, Heatran, Iron Hands, Keldeo, Meowscarada, and a few others is that most of them are fairy weak (specifically to Iron Valiant / Enamorus) so you have to run a few of the same options to address that like Moltres, Gking, Ghold and Corv. Overlapping weaknesses with other top tiers like Tusk is also annoying to account for, esp if you run a non boots item.

 

[40kultra]

A little more reading and a little less writing would have done some good. The reason I reference its offense matchup is it’s undisputed that it does incredibly, oppressively well in balance and fat matchups. The main anti-ban argument is that it’s bad into offense, which is not necessarily true. It has sets that do well into offense, though they do sacrifice some wallbreaking power. The point of bringing up trailblaze (and glide, though glide is niche) is, like I explicitly said, NOT that Woger can do it all with one set; rather, it is that Woger is not a mon you can consider unproblematic in the builder simply because you are running offense. It has the means to perform quite well into offense. I don’t know why you and others insist on saying “trailblaze isn’t worth mentioning, you lose a lot of breaking power with it” as though that was ever disputed.

“It takes significant chip from CC and gets revenge killed” it trades 1 for 1 with the Tusk in an ostensibly bad matchup. It didn’t need to be sacked to Pult either imo.

“It thudded into Zama and trailblaze did nothing, this shows you won’t get good setup opportunities” yes, if you make the decision to just trade your Woger for chip on the potentially massive threat that is this grassy seed Zama (which is again debatably a misplay given the Dnite and Moltres available to sponge hits and given how good Woger looks after Zama goes down), it should come as no surprise that you don’t get a good setup opportunity to show for it. Saying Trailblaze Woger struggles to setup against offense because a player made the decision to exchange it for chip according to their assessment of the situation is…just not the gotcha you think it is. Trailblaze was, however, the literal best grass coverage option to have if you make that play there as it allowed Woger to pick up *slightly* more chip by outspeeding next turn; the only better thing to have in that slot would have been Encore to try to lock it into IDef. It’s only a tiny improvement over power whip or horn leech, but it is objectively an improvement for the play chosen.

“bhkg lost his only ghost resist in Ting Lu” he let Glowking get incredibly low to get a sludge bomb on the volcanion instead of chillying to Tusk or Woger to drop it. Then Ting Lu had to sponge the Pech that Glowking would’ve easily sponged, and takes hazards. Then stays in on Lando’s eq (getting crit, granted) even though he has Corv, Tusk, and Woger all able to enter. Ting Lu also teras while low to take IVal hits that Glowking would’ve taken, though it could only do this for Pech or IVal, but either route would’ve led to a much healthier Ting Lu and tera saved. Corv also could’ve taken on IVal, though I am all for the caution taken with regard to scouting the set. Then Ting Lu gets sacked on the next IVal entry and Corv walls it, and Pech comes in on a roost; Glowking is at this point healthy enough to live 2 shadow balls and a turn of burn damage, so if it has anything at all in its toolkit to help shut down pech, now is a good time for it. Instead Woger is switched in. Bhkg would almost surely toast me in a match, I truly don’t mean any disrespect to them as a player, but I really don’t understand why this game was routed this way at all.

And again, I will emphasize, even though I’m exhausted of having to do so only for you not to read, these are all “bad matchups” for Woger according to the eye. Yet in one, Woger trades evenly, in another it takes out most of a Zama’s HP, and in the final I am just at a loss for why the game was played the way it was frankly. Even the first 2 games, while I am not dying on this hill, both Wogers were debatably misplayed.

i'm pretty sure I read your argument when I was responding to you. you're arguing that woger is not bad into offence and has some sets that do "well" into offence and the main set you're basing your argument around is trailblaze, which again not that good of a set in the first place. my points on your argument being weak in general still stand.

A little more reading and a little less writing would have done some good. The reason I reference its offense matchup is it’s undisputed that it does incredibly, oppressively well in balance and fat matchups. The main anti-ban argument is that it’s bad into offense, which is not necessarily true. It has sets that do well into offense, though they do sacrifice some wallbreaking power. The point of bringing up trailblaze (and glide, though glide is niche) is, like I explicitly said, NOT that Woger can do it all with one set; rather, it is that Woger is not a mon you can consider unproblematic in the builder simply because you are running offense. It has the means to perform quite well into offense. I don’t know why you and others insist on saying “trailblaze isn’t worth mentioning, you lose a lot of breaking power with it” as though that was ever disputed.

again, trailblaze pon isn't that good into offence as your making out to be and most of the time Woger doesn't perform the best into offence. also all builds view woger as a threat. Nobody goes in the builder not considering Woger a problem they have to account for so your statement on not considering it umproblematic doesn't make much sense. Offence uses proactive playing to gain the advantage on woger teams anyways+they do have decent midground checks like , etc.

and again, you're pretty much saying the same stuff you said last post that I literally spent an entire paragraph trying to dispute.

If you think a whole under screens for a that wasn't really needed at that point of the match was a good trade for Woger, idk what to say at this point. https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-873595 you say he didn't need to sack Woger to but literally had nothing else that can take pult on directly.

again on the second replay, had that cudgel crit happened any other turn than the switchin, it's influnce would have not been much in this match. sure it probably could have switched out after that fortunate crit and swap out to a moltres or something but even then he still won comfortably and woger wasn't even that free considering there was a whole healthy rilla in the back and a curse garg(that could have terad had that unfort not happened, but still it won the game comfortably after the opposing zama went down). https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-873178?p2

on the third replay though I will probably agree it was more on the fact that the guy was selling his defensive pieces than wogerpon doing poorly in general. idk why the guy let take all those unneccesary hits and burn a tera to tank when he had corv & gking. that specific woger play though he didn't really have much of a choice since he straight up loss to pecha at that point. https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-872674

but nonetheless, these three replays that you claimed "proved your point" that Woger makes "significant" progress against offence teams when these replays show the exact opposite of that. at best woger got a fortunate crit on a crucial switch in which slightly made a match more annoying. This is why I was calling your argument weak in the first place because why would you base your stance on this when there is better angles to argue at. At point though it's whatever.

Side note: sorry guys I know some said to move on from this annoying debate, but still I had this post in the drafts already and I wasn't planning on letting it slide anyways since he claimed I wasn't reading his argument (even though I was breaking down his points) and frankly, he spent a lot of posts making snarky remarks about my arguments then responding with stuff that didn't make sense but it's whatever I will move on from this topic for now.

Turning away from the verbose Ogre discussion, Rillaboom is having a fun resurgence. So many pokemon appreciate passive healing+reduced ground damage. Grassy Terrain can enable Zama, Ghold, Hatterene, Oger, Bolt, Heatran and many others. Even without a choice band, its ability to provide priority, knock, u-turn, Oger-W checking, and emergency breaking with wood hammer makes it pretty easy to build around. I think top players are just scratching the surface of G-terrain based sets. Grassy Seed Dnite, Gambit, and Ceruledge all seem like they have potential.

Rillaboom & grassy terrain Is a thing I been experimenting a lot with lately. grassy terrain does have a lot of benefits as you say giving free healing to all your pokemon which set up sweepers would like. it's essentially a leftovers but its not taking up your item spot. I remember trying some more unorthodox grassy terrain sweepers like

Decidueye-Hisui @ Grassy Seed
Ability: Scrappy
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 16 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SpD / 232 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Triple Arrows
- Trailblaze
- Swords Dance
- Substitute

I forgor why I put 16hp and 8spdef on there but the speed is there outspeed woger after 2 trailblazes. I really want to run adament but this mon is so slow that it needs that much speed invest just to outspeed a 350 speed mon after two trailblazes. but then, this set is really outdated and was barely a concept of a Hisidueye that I only played some ladder matches with. Still I think this mon have some potentially and I will probably fix up this set. initially building this set I kinda overlooked the fact that it had access to grassy glide, so I will try that over trailblaze and maybe try rock tomb to hit the fires like over subsitute. this mon kinda blanks into without ghost coverage though, so maybe shadow sneak/poltergeist can work here idk. If you have any thoughts on this mon^ let me know.

in general though rillaboom was really annoying to play against during OLT. not the fact that it was hard to counter or switch into but moreso the fact that it enabled its teammates very well and lived longer than you wanted it to live. FWIW though xav's rillaboom sand team was cool(even though it was annoyingly good).

 

[FirstlyMe]

Since Woger has been the talk of the town of this thread for a bit I just wanna bring smth up.

Unironically most of the ppl who say Woger is broken bring up it killing rain’s viability as a major point on why. Look, even I hate woger but, hot take, it killing rain’s viability is a healthier aspect of it.
Let me explain,

By it killing rain’s viability I don’t exactly mean rain’s usage, I mean it indirectly acts as a barraskewda check.
Barraskewda being a mon with 123 base attack, frequently running max attack adamant being in rain spamming Tera water liquidations and flip turn isn’t exactly fun to face either, and if it weren’t for Woger I can guarantee you a portion of the community would be complaining about it. Either way, the ou playerbase sure loves to complain so it doesn’t matter.

I wouldn’t call barra broken in a Woger less metagame but it’ll absolutely be annoying as fuck, especially when you’re building and testing teams, you’re absolutely more likely to forget to account for it.
As well we have mons like raging bolt which gets 3 shot by band Tera water rain liquidations to thunderclap OHKO, pult which can take one hit and wisp, mola and dozo which can practically switch into barra indefinitely, pecharunt, zama and corv (same IronPress), strong priority like gambit sucker punches or rilla’s glide and mons like prima which can ohko with Moonblast and take at least one hit.

As well notice my wording, “it killing rain is probably a *healtheir aspect* of it”, I wasn’t directly implying it was healthy, I was stating it’s not as bad as the other things Woger has.

Anyways uhh, i’m bad at writing conclusions soooo, thank you for reading, sorry if it felt like you wasted your time, have a great day going forward!

 

[Moyashi]

and if it weren’t for Woger I can guarantee you a portion of the community would be complaining about it. Either way, the ou playerbase sure loves to complain so it doesn’t matter.

No one was complaining even before Wellspring was around so this completely falls on its face. Rain has far more issues than just Wellspring. If it was just one pokemon, it’d be easy to tech a slot specifically to taking advantage of or beating it, and there are multiple choices for this (whether raging bolt or specs TornadusT).

 

[Whaloob]

i'm pretty sure I read your argument when I was responding to you. you're arguing that woger is not bad into offence and has some sets that do "well" into offence and the main set you're basing your argument around is trailblaze, which again not that good of a set in the first place. my points on your argument being weak in general still stand.


again, trailblaze pon isn't that good into offence as your making out to be and most of the time Woger doesn't perform the best into offence. also all builds view woger as a threat. Nobody goes in the builder not considering Woger a problem they have to account for so your statement on not considering it umproblematic doesn't make much sense. Offence uses proactive playing to gain the advantage on woger teams anyways+they do have decent midground checks like , etc.

and again, you're pretty much saying the same stuff you said last post that I literally spent an entire paragraph trying to dispute.
View attachment 774024


If you think a whole under screens for a that wasn't really needed at that point of the match was a good trade for Woger, idk what to say at this point. https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-873595 you say he didn't need to sack Woger to but literally had nothing else that can take pult on directly.

again on the second replay, had that cudgel crit happened any other turn than the switchin, it's influnce would have not been much in this match. sure it probably could have switched out after that fortunate crit and swap out to a moltres or something but even then he still won comfortably and woger wasn't even that free considering there was a whole healthy rilla in the back and a curse garg(that could have terad had that unfort not happened, but still it won the game comfortably after the opposing zama went down). https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-873178?p2

on the third replay though I will probably agree it was more on the fact that the guy was selling his defensive pieces than wogerpon doing poorly in general. idk why the guy let take all those unneccesary hits and burn a tera to tank when he had corv & gking. that specific woger play though he didn't really have much of a choice since he straight up loss to pecha at that point. https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-872674

but nonetheless, these three replays that you claimed "proved your point" that Woger makes "significant" progress against offence teams when these replays show the exact opposite of that. at best woger got a fortunate crit on a crucial switch in which slightly made a match more annoying. This is why I was calling your argument weak in the first place because why would you base your stance on this when there is better angles to argue at. At point though it's whatever.

Side note: sorry guys I know some said to move on from this annoying debate, but still I had this post in the drafts already and I wasn't planning on letting it slide anyways since he claimed I wasn't reading his argument (even though I was breaking down his points) and frankly, he spent a lot of posts making snarky remarks about my arguments then responding with stuff that didn't make sense but it's whatever I will move on from this topic for now.


Rillaboom & grassy terrain Is a thing I been experimenting a lot with lately. grassy terrain does have a lot of benefits as you say giving free healing to all your pokemon which set up sweepers would like. it's essentially a leftovers but its not taking up your item spot. I remember trying some more unorthodox grassy terrain sweepers like

Decidueye-Hisui @ Grassy Seed
Ability: Scrappy
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 16 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SpD / 232 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Triple Arrows
- Trailblaze
- Swords Dance
- Substitute

I forgor why I put 16hp and 8spdef on there but the speed is there outspeed woger after 2 trailblazes. I really want to run adament but this mon is so slow that it needs that much speed invest just to outspeed a 350 speed mon after two trailblazes. but then, this set is really outdated and was barely a concept of a Hisidueye that I only played some ladder matches with. Still I think this mon have some potentially and I will probably fix up this set. initially building this set I kinda overlooked the fact that it had access to grassy glide, so I will try that over trailblaze and maybe try rock tomb to hit the fires like over subsitute. this mon kinda blanks into without ghost coverage though, so maybe shadow sneak/poltergeist can work here idk. If you have any thoughts on this mon^ let me know.

in general though rillaboom was really annoying to play against during OLT. not the fact that it was hard to counter or switch into but moreso the fact that it enabled its teammates very well and lived longer than you wanted it to live. FWIW though xav's rillaboom sand team was cool(even though it was annoyingly good).

Is trailblaze Woger good into offense? If so, your assessment of the set overall is irrelevant (though I’d add it had quite the tournament surge for a reason, it is in fact a good set, but again, irrelevant). It just needs to be good into offense to support the claim I made.

Also, might I remind you, I did not pick out these three replays. These replays were meant to showcase Woger doing poorly. The fact that it did okay—not fantastic, but okay within the contrived sample of games in which it was supposed to do poorly, even with misplays (I would argue Ceruledge or Ival is the better sac to the Pult btw, Woger resists bullet punch and blows up Glowking, and Pult revenge kills but cannot switch into it well so Woger likely claims another kill)—is in fact a point in favor of Woger.

And “you're pretty much saying the same stuff you said last post that I literally spent an entire paragraph trying to dispute” I repeated myself because you don’t listen. You did not do a good job of disputing my point, just because you tried doesn’t mean you succeeded.

ANYWAY

Yes, Rilla is good. I think its biggest problem in a supporting role is not its passivity into birds and pech and such, but rather that grassy terrain is so generalized in its value that it’s hard to make a team that appreciates grassy terrain by enough more than the opposing team to compensate for the use of Rilla over an otherwise better support mon (of which there are many, in a hypothetical version of Rilla where GT ends on switch-out it obviously becomes a terrible support pokemon even if its breaking capabilities remain untouched). That said, builders have worked hard on managing this with LO Zama and Heatran and such—LO Zama in particular becomes an absolute monster in GT.

Still, LO SD is in my opinion the best set on Rilla right now. I have talked some in the OU Underdogs thread about Jolly LO SD Rilla with tera blast rock and why I believe this set to be very good in the current meta, and the classic glide/hammer/knock/SD with tera grass or dark is quite potent at overwhelming its usual checks as well. Band Rilla’s problems with breaking birds and pech without having to predict correctly repeatedly are only partially resolved by SD sets, where +2 knock with tera OHKOs max defense pech (and max hp max speed pech is OHKO’d without tera, though it outspeeds you), but SDing as a slower mon switches out is SO much of an improvement over committing to the switch you want to hit, letting you threaten slow switch-ins with +2 wood hammer, knock, or a tera blast and fast ones with +2 glide, while LO glide is almost as strong as band glide for revenge killing. Additionally some faster frail mons die on switch-in to LO hammer into glide, but not band glide; this includes Cinderace, Ceruledge, and Dragapult, and I have to imagine there are others but I don’t feel like checking exhaustively. It’s just much better set up to break than band imo, and while you can’t build full GT around it, you can certainly exploit GT beneficiaries alongside LO Rilla.

As far as other sets I believe have earned a shout right now, I’d like to give mention to TB Ghost Enamorus—scarf/specs/LO/boots with moonblast, earth power, tblast, and hwish/superpower is quite nice into the current meta. Part of enam’s struggle is a lack of a good midground click against teams with Glowking, Corv, Moltres, and even bulky Ghold/Sciz/Crown; even without considering Enam, teams simply have to have fairy resists/moonblast switch-ins to have any shot against Ival, among others. Ghost resists are generally a lot thinner in supply than fairy resists, and the most common ones are dark types that get blown up by moonblast anyway. TB ghost has simply insane neutral coverage that helps Enam to circumvent some of its heavy prediction reliance quite nicely.

 

[Dead by Daylight]

Is trailblaze Woger good into offense? If so, your assessment of the set overall is irrelevant (though I’d add it had quite the tournament surge for a reason, it is in fact a good set, but again, irrelevant). It just needs to be good into offense to support the claim I made.

You can’t just dismiss a set’s flaws completely to say “Waterpon does well into offense”, considering running double Grass moves gets you hard walled by a significant portion of the metagame.

 

[Whaloob]

You can’t just dismiss a set’s flaws completely to say “Waterpon does well into offense”, considering running double Grass moves gets you hard walled by a significant portion of the metagame.

1) no one runs double grass move with trailblaze, it’s SD, cudgel, trailblaze, and play rough/knock/synthesis

2) when the point is “Woger can tech for offense (with concessions in other matchups)” its other matchups are, in fact, irrelevant to that point. I am BEGGING for basic reading comprehension.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Since Woger has been the talk of the town of this thread for a bit I just wanna bring smth up.

Unironically most of the ppl who say Woger is broken bring up it killing rain’s viability as a major point on why. Look, even I hate woger but, hot take, it killing rain’s viability is a healthier aspect of it.
Let me explain,

By it killing rain’s viability I don’t exactly mean rain’s usage, I mean it indirectly acts as a barraskewda check.
Barraskewda being a mon with 123 base attack, frequently running max attack adamant being in rain spamming Tera water liquidations and flip turn isn’t exactly fun to face either, and if it weren’t for Woger I can guarantee you a portion of the community would be complaining about it. Either way, the ou playerbase sure loves to complain so it doesn’t matter.

I wouldn’t call barra broken in a Woger less metagame but it’ll absolutely be annoying as fuck, especially when you’re building and testing teams, you’re absolutely more likely to forget to account for it.
As well we have mons like raging bolt which gets 3 shot by band Tera water rain liquidations to thunderclap OHKO, pult which can take one hit and wisp, mola and dozo which can practically switch into barra indefinitely, pecharunt, zama and corv (same IronPress), strong priority like gambit sucker punches or rilla’s glide and mons like prima which can ohko with Moonblast and take at least one hit.

As well notice my wording, “it killing rain is probably a *healtheir aspect* of it”, I wasn’t directly implying it was healthy, I was stating it’s not as bad as the other things Woger has.

Anyways uhh, i’m bad at writing conclusions soooo, thank you for reading, sorry if it felt like you wasted your time, have a great day going forward!

ok so i had to double-check because i don't remember anyone voicing that particular complaint against waterpon, and it looks like almost nobody is saying that. the last time someone mentioned rain at all in this thread was two and a half weeks ago, with no mention of waterpon. the last time someone mentioned waterpon weakening rain teams was in the middle of july, and the last time before that was 2 mentions in may when the latest (i think it was the latest? i wasn't paying much attention) survey came out. i found a handful of mentions of it in some of the cords, but a lot of those mentions were in a positive light, saying it was one of the only healthy things waterpon does, that sort of thing. actual complaints about the rain-killing aspect of waterpon are few and far between

i also think that rain is dealing with a lot more problems than just waterpon, and a waterpon ban would just shift rain from "completely unviable" to "niche at best", kind of like what the annihilape ban did for stall at the time