hey 35ers, a TINY bit late but im going to share my thoughts on jan 26 now that the monthly tour is over and this month is being included in 35pl
this is my personal vr. in this metagame i'd only consider bringing mons in b+ and above for a game with stakes involved. despite this inevitable top-heaviness that comes with every 35 month, this month is more on the diverse side in terms of how many viable pokemon there are.
this month is very offensive and to be at the top, a mon must have an unmatched offensive or defensive profile that allows it to stand out when compared to the others. this prompts me to rank cobalion and washtom as s tier pokemon. these two hold the tier together and have great options to support their teammates / disrupt opponents, with cobalion providing stealth rock, pivoting, twave, taunt, etc. along with its great stab combination of body press and heavy slam meaning it is fairly difficult to switch into for a defensive pokemon, and washtom being the most splashable typhlosion check in the tier, providing pivoting, and having many tricks up its sleeve like defog, wisp, twave, and pain split. these two are also great offensively with cobalion having swords dance and a slew of coverage to beat its checks like megahorn for celebi and stone edge for typh and ori, and washtom hydro hitting like a truck with investment + having nasty plot and signal beam to muscle through grasses.
next in s- there's celebi and indeedee. celebi has amazing set variety, with defensive sets to check psychics and provide pivoting, nplot sets with giga earth power psychic move, and scarf sets all being very good. however, celebi has many exploitable weaknesses which is enough to knock it down a little imo. indeedee is an offensive powerhouse with scarf/specs expanding force having very few switchins. if not for celebi being in the tier i think indeedee would be broken simply due to the lack of splashable checks to it there would be and the amount of 50/50s it would force. indeedee's frailty and lack of resistances keep it in check though. celebi and indeedee also have good synergy on psyspam teams with indeedee enabling celebi to click expanding force as well.
the three next best offensive pokemon reside in a+ tier: sharpedo, typhlosion, and tyrantrum. every team must have a way to deal with these mons included or they can steamroll you. sharpedo is the best late-game cleaner in the tier with protect crunch cc +1 enabling it to deal with the entire metagame after a little chip. it can customize its last slot to pick and choose its checks with poison jab helping out against whimsicott and psyfangs enabling it to beat fezandipiti. flip turn is also a nice option to bait in and chip checks for later on. typhlosion terrorized the tier with scarf eruptions at the beginning of the metagame, but as players adapted it has many commonly-used checks like washtom, typenull, heatmor, etc. still a great mon especially since all of its checks do not have reliable recovery and are prone to getting chipped. tyrantrum is a great mon on offense builds acting as a sweeper and temporary switchin to typhlosion's fire moves. with chople it can find opportunities setting up a dd against almost everything and wont fear cobal coming in to try and answer it. however its middling speed means that scarfers can keep it in check. cb sets are amazing too with head smash having very little switchins and helping overload cobalion.
the mons in a+ and above are the top dawgs in the meta imo so now i'm going to discuss my reasoning for some of the other placements. let's start with the elephant in the room, gabite being in the same tier as hatt and type null xd. gabite imo is a great anti-meta pick with a slew of valuable qualities you wont find on many other pokemon. its dragon/ground typing letting it check typhlosion and switch in on volt from cobal, access to hazards, and great defense with eviolite allowing it to blanket check most physical attackers make for amazing role compression. i placed hatt a bit lower than where most players would place it because it doesnt fulfill its job as a mbounce user that well when the top sr setter beats it 1v1, making it not AS good at supporting its teammates. it's also just kinda hard to use defensively in general; if you look at the top mons it's only like indeedee that hatt is able to wall well. its tr and cm sets are still good however ESPECIALLY with psyterrain up, just a bit more difficult for it to do its job in this meta. type null's lack of reliable recovery and inability to hold leftovers along with neutral damage from stealth rock means that it gets chipped quite easily, which is enough to knock it down to a imo. still a great blanket check to spattackers like typhlosion, celebi, indeedee, etc. lilligant is the best abuser of sun with sleep powder growth and weather ball making it extremely difficult to deal with, and as such it goes in a while the other abusers go in a- along with whimsicott, whose only use is setting sun. hound is a nice check to cobal, tyrantrum, and null, but it's quite passive and lets in special threats like typh and indeedee quite easily, making it a- imo. ori is a niche sweeper that has a lot of counterplay like phazing, tyrant, trick scarfers, etc but it can def catch unprepared teams off guard. fez is a decent blanket switchin to non-psychic special mons, able to poison things with beatup and pivot with uturn. it's a great option to have in a game if you think your opp's scarf typh/indeedee isnt gonna click its primary stab. its lack of useful resistances vs the high tiers besides non-psyfangs shark bumps it down a bit for me though. i love webs but it's hard to use in this meta when hatt is used a lot and one of the most splashable mons gets defog so it's like a b+ tier strat imo. medi, despite its explosiveness, struggles from being slow and frail. its reliance on pjab to break through celebi and hatt leaves it vulnerable to cobal switching in and threatening it asw. basically it's got potential but you need to make god plays. tr sets are cool asw but again are vulnerable to opp switching around. heatmor is a cool typh check on offense builds. sun especially appreciates it helping remove typh. a bit 1 dimensional though as thats basically its only purpose besides helping vs sun asw, not to mention it's vulnerable to hazards since it needs to wear av to do its job. cradily is a cute rotom check and it helps in sun mus tanking 1 move from any abuser and koing back with mbeam. i think it has the potential to be higher but it needs more usage outside day 1 tours.
aand thats basically the metagame summed up in this post. i hope this is useful for any newcomers wanting to play jan26 in this 35pl and looking for discussion of the tier. i'm probably gonna edit this to include a team dump later asw. s/o
BIGSHOT_ranger presi MamboTND wouldnt be here without u guys powa4 forever
also fun fact this is the second time type null, oricorio, and shiftry have been rolled in january
qbking3 update hof yo