Metagame National Dex Metagame Discussion

[Dahness]

As a gen 9 and gen 6 OU player that touches Nat Dex sometimes despite being really bad at it, I feel like regular Ttar is better at all of those things because it has item choice. Idk if Mega Ttar is still good as a dd sweeper but if it isn't as good as other dd sweepers that would probably explain why people say it is bad. And to be fair while knock off is a good buff idk if it is big enough to save Mega Ttar.

why are u giving ur opinion on a tier that you are aware you don't play often

 

[UltraSword]

why are u giving ur opinion on a tier that you are aware you don't play often

Because I felt like sharing my opinion? I know how Mega Ttar works in gen 6 and because of that I can figure out how it works in Nat Dex. I was just explaining why I think Mega Ttar might be bad in this tier based on what I know from how both Ttar and Mega Ttar work in gen 6 and 9 (well Mega Ttar isn't in gen 9 but that isn't my point).

 

[Dahness]

Because I felt like sharing my opinion? I know how Mega Ttar works in gen 6 and because of that I can figure out how it works in Nat Dex. I was just explaining why I think Mega Ttar might be bad in this tier based on what I know from how both Ttar and Mega Ttar work in gen 6 and 9 (well Mega Ttar isn't in gen 9 but that isn't my point).

Two whole different tiers. Mega Ttar lacked Knock Off in gen 6, and was more of a Dragon Dance sweeper iirc. In gen 9, its role is entierely different. U gotta be at least a tad bit knowledgeable about something to be able to give a competent opinion on it

 

[Malanaki]

As a gen 9 and gen 6 OU player that touches Nat Dex sometimes despite being really bad at it, I feel like regular Ttar is better at all of those things because it has item choice.

As a NatDexOU main, let me tell you howmuch better Mttar is than regular Ttar: a 20% buff to ATK DEF SPDEF and a 10 speed increase is in overall stats (meaning you can spend less EVs to hit 200speed for example and put them in HP or Spdef); Not to mention the weather war winning by evolving and setting sand after charizard y, or on a wrong lead vs pelipper/torkoal. All of this isn't outclassed by putting an AV or a choiced item on regular ttar.

 

[UltraSword]

Two whole different tiers. Mega Ttar lacked Knock Off in gen 6, and was more of a Dragon Dance sweeper iirc. In gen 9, its role is entierely different. U gotta be at least a tad bit knowledgeable about something to be able to give a competent opinion on it

Well listen I can accept if I am wrong about something. I just felt my knowledge would help me understand what might make Mega Ttar not as good in this tier. But if what you say is true then I guess fair enough

 

[Ch0ppas]

Mtar isn't a bad mon but I certainly do not think its great by any means either. When the things you want to pursuit trap are not guaranteed traps, your role of a pursuit trapper becomes flimsy. Think ghold, bro, gking all of which are targets you'd want to pursuit. Ghold can MIR/Fblast and KO you, gking turns to a 50/50 where if you pursuit they can chilly and gain momentum on you while removing sand, and bro could be colbur bpress. Given these are specific situations but all valid and common sets that you could run into. Being weak to hazards also chips away at its usefulness throughout the game. Additionally with zama usage being crazy high rn, it doesnt help the case for mtar.

A shining point to mtar is its role as a disruptor to certain structures. Sand chip on mons to negate lefties, break tera shell/multi-scale, spam click knock, reset weather vs sun and rain, and destroying the contact birds are all valuable traits to have. I think its rank in the vr (B) is a good enough representation to how it fits into the current meta

Also mtar is miles better than reg

 

[Medasus]

Was reading through this thread and felt like throwing my hat in the ring since I've not posted here in a while!



Although Mtar has obviously seen better days in natdex and just in general, I still hesitate to call it outright bad and say its niche flat out isn't at all important in the tier right now. Mtar is able to pressure Flying-types like Zap, Molt and the albeit slightly of the boil Yard, well, while also threatening Stealth Rock and most importantly Knock Off and Pursuit allowing it to threaten staples such as Gholdengo, Gking and Mtios. While not an answer to any of these bar Gking by any means, it definitely has positive traits into them offensively. When paired with teammates such as Zapdos, Corviknight, Iron Treads and Gking in teams like these it can be utilised to force pressure on defensive cores with its combination of Stealth Rock and Knock Off, as well as trapping important pieces via Pursuit. Although its showings in NDCL have been pretty paltry, winning only 3 of 7 appearances in the first 4 weeks, managing to get used 7 times surely means theres something worth using there.



To the rest of what slopcat said, I pretty much agree, Kart is fundamentally outclassed at nearly everything it tries to do, and even when it does hold some form of niche it's extremely limited. Same applies for Water Absorb Clodsire which pops up on random ladder teams which is just an attempt at trying to compress loads of roles into 1 subpar mon to try and compensate for bad building.

On the flipside I do also agree that stuff like Hatt and Offtran can be looked into more than they are currently, especially Hatt.



CM Hatt seems really nice right now, even despite Gholdengos huge presence, being able to answer things and apply pressure to mons like Zama and the plethora of Dragons in the tier. Even without turns to setup Calm Mind, Hatt can apply great pressure through Psychic Noise and Mystical Fire, which a large portion of the tier struggles to switch in against. Not only this but Hatt also has great variety when it comes to being slotted. Support sets can be very helpful support on some Offense builds, notably Weather Builds such as Sun, where it is used as a way to deny hazards, gain momentum and cripple offensive threats with Nuzzle. The more widely spread Calm Mind sets can fit as a wincon on many structures, BO, Offense, Screens HO, you name it, putting in work as a wincon on most. My HO pilled self has loved to use it on Zama screens, where between Leftovers, Draining Kiss and Calm Mind it can easily find setup opportunities and break through common defensive cores using Zap, Glic, Pex, Ferro and the like.



Offtran also seems to be useful in a Ghold pilled metagame, with Grass Z being the main option giving it a way to nuke Mola and Bro, although sets using HP Ice and potentially even Taunt seem nice to nuke threats such as Gliscor, Lando T and prevent pivots such as Gking from pivoting out and Pex from recovering. Although extremely situational, Rock-type moves such as Power Gem can also be used for foes such as Yard, Molt and Volc, although dropping one of the more traditional slots like EP probably isn't worth it most of the time.

Closing thoughts are that I really like the spot the metas in right now and am having a lot of fun playing and building it, sorry if any of this came across as ramble I was kinda js letting my conscience stream out lol

 

[papillon heart]

As a gen 9 and gen 6 OU player that touches Nat Dex sometimes despite being really bad at it, I feel like regular Ttar is better at all of those things because it has item choice. Idk if Mega Ttar is still good as a dd sweeper but if it isn't as good as other dd sweepers that would probably explain why people say it is bad. And to be fair while knock off is a good buff idk if it is big enough to save Mega Ttar.

The reason Mega is vastly preferred over base is that you get the benefits of similar sets and items without dealing with the drawbacks, similar to Latios. The jump in bulk also makes it a better trade machine (try Jolly with enough speed to deal with Zapdos on offense, lowkey decent). Yes, Banded hits harder but it isn't that much of a difference in practice to deal with the choice lock.

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honestly this is gonna be more unstructured than my ""usual"" rantposts but i kinda wanted to talk about a couple of phenomena we're seeing in nd specfically regarding some of the best (or at least extremely viable and consistent) mons in the tier.

it's no secret to anyone that nd ladder is shit. like eye-gougingly awful and incredibly easy to get randomly matchup fished by z hypno xurkitree or random excadrill (or rain, which on ladder is so prevalent of a fish that it's genuinely a viable archetype). but there's a really interesting dissonance that comes with discussions of viability or assessments of strength especially when it comes to very strong OU mons, especially regarding the higher level tours crowd and the usual ladder crowd. We can even see this in usage- latios and cinderace are almost never used on ladder while genuine pigslop like rillaboom gets more usage, whereas in tours these two are staples of the metagame and it would be absurd to think that they are undeserving of ou status. in every gen there's going to be ladder demon mons that are much weaker in tours and vice versa, but i think the prevalence of this archetype in natdex is really fascinating. Like we've had a comical amount of these examples-

is beyond washed but remained in ou for fucking everrrrr despite every person you ask universally agreeing that this thing is just worse than waterpon in every available metric. and before anyone responds to this post with "oh kart isnt great but it can hold z and scarf and xyzabc123qwertyuiop!!!!" i need you to understand that just because a mon CAN do something does not mean that niche is valuable. for the rest of the mons on this list that i describe as terrible please understand im not really citing controversial examples here. these mons are pretty objectively bad into most teams either because they are directly outclassed (kart or clod) or their niche is not very valuable (rillaboom type guys)

but this isn't exactly a shocking reveal to anyone who engages with nd at a higher level. everyone knows that some mons that are ranked ou are pretty horrifically awful (or have been in the past). what i really want to talk about is the relationship some people have with guys like hatterene and heatran, that being the syndrome of "this mon is good but never ever ever ask me to bring it to a tour". granted this comes with the caveat that these guys do see semi-regular usage, but I think people have kind of a mental block with hatt especially. its gotten kind of relegated to the sun or screens pigslop hazards denier but i just find that so intersting especially when shit like cm and rh on more standard teams is like.. still really good and strong. I think as people realize that is an extremely potent ho threat and that is the best ground in the tier, we should see more hatt on these more like standard squads. I used one vs taka in this cl to pretty great effect and it kind of came to me how we see very little of this kind of deadzone archetype of mons or sets that are really strong but are usually passed over for various reasons.

to not belabor my point any harder, I think there are some of these deadzone guys that are really fucking strong but just do not see use for one reason or another. besides hatt, stuff like offensive heatran and my beloved specs rbolt are really unseen right now and it makes me wonder why this is. obviously some of it is just aversion to experimentation or preference in terms of style, but I think these types of staple genres of mon are less seen then they maybe should be. like to sort of loop around to a past point, specs raging bolt is unseen but i feel like specs or band guys are generally not seen very much despite how useful they can be and often are. band shifu specs lele specs rbolt are all really strong breakers and it feels like there is some element that stops people from using them as much as they maybe should be. i think the biggest reason for this is probably z moves, but idk it feels like that shouldnt wholly shove them out of a niche. anyways big tldr of this yapsesh it's an interesting quirk of the tier that so many players understand the actual viability of a mon but for one reason or another it sees more or less usage than it really deserves, and even when you pit tour players against ladder players as ""true meta understanders" (which is on the whole true) we still see stuff get put in a sort of cognitive blindspot and not interacted with meaningfully

anyways i think the metagame has a couple more weird quirks like this that i'll probably discuss later (including my beloved glowking treads zap) but this is kind of just a germinating thought i've been having.

also @noobs go do nd tutoring and if u feel qualified to be a tutor go apply!!!! ts mons shit isn't fkin rocket science and i think demystifying some of it really helps the tour scene grow​

Hatterene is for sure the most "underused mon for how good it is" pick rn, the usual Hat/AV Torn/Kyurem/elephant yawn builds of SV OU also work well on NatDex. Stuff like Future Sight is also fun to play around along side Urshifu or Zama. M-Scizor is also fucking cracked as long as you don't match against bird users (sinners).

 

[Moyashi]

Something like random Z-move Mew, or Power Gem Heatran, or even Xurk probably has some quality at a higher level that might make them at least worth taking a look at. NP Mew for example, might be annoying for that "standard " (idk if this is the case anymore) Ferro Lando-T Pex core because it outspeed everything in that core and has annoying super effective moves for most of the mons there.

I think the thing is that a lot of these examples just aren’t as broadly effective as other options and will come with consistency issues. Like sure Power Gem Heatran may help with ZardY or Volcarona but you can also just answer them with other choices that have more generally useful applications beyond that specific situation. I don’t think people are necessarily dismissing options so much as they are seeing them and wondering “okay but why not use a better option to perform this role”. There probably are some specific builds those examples are decently useful on but I’d still wonder how much consistency you’d get with that.