Metagame NP: Stage 20 - Over It (January shifts)

[Rabia]

January is here with some lame ahh tier shifts once again! The NU-relevant ones are as follows:

Mienshao moved from NUBL to RU
Politoed moved from NUBL to RU
Porygon-Z moved from NUBL to RU
Suicune moved from NUBL to RU
Breloom moved from NU to RU
Ribombee moved from NU to RU
Torterra moved from PUBL to RU

Chansey moved from RU to NU
Reuniclus moved from RU to NU

Dudunsparce moved from PU to NU
Espeon moved from PU to NU
Goodra moved from PU to NU
Braviary moved from ZU to NU
Grafaiai moved from ZU to NU
Thwackey moved from NFE to NU

Galvantula moved from NU to PU

What lies in NU's future? Let's talk about it down below :]

 

[Shagg51]

I’m excited to get back into the tier finally. A lot seems to have changed over the year and a half I have been absent. However, I am a bit worried about a specific drop



Do we beat this? Our dark types cannot take special attacks (especially focus blasts) super well at all and this thing is ridiculously bulky. Magic guard and regenerator are both phenomenal abilities that give reuinclus sky high levels of staying power and attacks like psyshock ravage a lot of potential checks like florges. The shifts haven’t been applied yet, so I am a bit interested to see what comes of this, but it’s also pretty horrifying. Nasty plot uxie can probably handle it, Frosmoth has a surprisingly decent matchup, and specs chandelure likely eats this thing up, but the list of answers isn’t as large as I would’ve hoped.



Took her long enough. It might be worth blowing the dust off the table to give Chanseylugg a spin again. I’ve noticed that avalugg has fallen off quite a bit, but I wonder if the return of chansey provides some new hope to this Mon. Stall could certainly be interesting, and maybe there’s a position for these two on balance like in florges meta? The tier has gotten stronger but I’m interested.

I’m gonna come back some time soon with a better assessment once the shifts apply and I get to play some games. I’ll have to figure out what team to build until then.

 

[Shengineer]

Am I the only one who has felt like Reuniclus is.... fine?

I'm not really sure the best way to build around it. It's a Psychic-type in a tier already filled with many strong Psychic-types, and Magic Guard is an incredible ability that lets you skip out on boots in favor of a Defensive ( ) or Offensive ( ) item - perhaps it will fit best on teams lacking hazard control. There aren't many mons that it can directly wall or Counter, although Magic Guard is good at abusing passive pokemon reliant on status. Calm Mind sets aren't terribly hard to wall, with Psychic-types walling Psychic + Fighting coverage and Dark-types walling Psychic + Ghost. Maybe there will be some other catch-all move like Thunder that picks up usage, or a Tera Blast set that becomes mainstream. Reuniclus's speed is its biggest drawback, and even if it is difficult to trade into it can reliably be chunked by a breaker and revenge killed with something else. OTR seems to be the most popular set right now, as it lets you opt into 3 attacks instead of 2 while also solving its Speed issues - making it much harder to switch into. RegenVest is another cool set with access to Future Sight and Knock Off.

I think it's far too early to declare this pokemon as "broken", although the concerns it raises are legitimate. I'm eager to see how it performs in tours.