What if you remove the blanket ban on the steel type and instead ban individual steel Pokemon that everyone is using? Once people are using stuff like Alolan Dugtrio or Bastiodon surely they wouldn't be overpowered.
Edit: Also why is Rowap berry illegal only if used with harvest? Shouldn't it be covered by the "no harming items" ban?
tl;dr Something something complex bans.
Honestly Metronome Battle's 2018 inception had quite a few oversights in its ruleset if you read from the earliest pages like Mawilite and Shell Bell and Battle Bond being freed until pointed out, and really that's the reason behind most inconsistencies, no shade to Ridaz for bearing with it and updating in response though. In the spirit of the rules I assume the intent behind banning Rowap + Harvest is that it's renewable (and unlike the healing items banned in bulk there are much less harming items), though for a while I was running Rowap/Jaboca Pickup instead and reported a few bugs around that, and also incidentally the Rowap + Harvest ban was bugged/unimplemented until
lighthouse64 pointed it out in 2019. You could say that it's inconsistent with stuff like Oran Berry or even Gulp Missile (introduced later as a gimmick harming ability, arguably on a similar powerlevel to Sand Stream but much more limited) but in the end it all comes down to the human element.
To address the Steel-type windchime in the room, yeah Mega Chimecho is (currently still, as of getting around to writing tonight) here as our first (legal) mega option to gain the Steel type anew, and thus falling through the existing mega checks for BST and such, similar to the short Silvally-Steel strats of running RKS System and Steel Memory and giving up both of your slots for the pure Steel-type. Here, Chimecho finds itself in a slightly similar but still different situation, so I'll give it an overview and overdue review.
Mega Chimecho (Psychic/
Steel) - 75/50/110/135/120/65 (555 BST)
To play as Mega Chimecho, you have to load base Chimecho in the teambuilder with the Chimechite and manually mega evolve, which blocks access to another item slot, Tera, and also the use of most abilities as it will get set to Levitate. As mentioned, this still lets you run Intrepid Sword/Dauntless Shield/Download/Intimidate to benefit at the start of battle. Even though it's lacking in Attack, Mega Chimecho's stats are as allocated as you could reasonably ask for, building off base Chimecho in the 3 stats that matter. Its base Psychic type is one that doesn't actually synergize with Steel too much, losing a Fighting weakness but gaining Dark and Ghost weaknesses where the latter is usually gaining STAB around this format between all the natural and tera Ghosts. Overall like Silvally-Steel, I feel it's a fun novelty option with interesting tradeoffs to consider.
Note: While the moveset stats page shows "No Ability" for the Z-A megas when manually mega evolved, I can confirm that manual mega Chimecho does properly set its ability to
base Chimecho's Levitate (at least for the time being while mega abilities are still unknown). So that's what that means for reference. Unfortunately it doesn't seem that Chimecho's base ability options are represented here at the moment.
(EDIT: Also I only realized this was a thing seeing it relatively highly in the usage stats at the start of the month. Hooray for experimentation.)
Finally, it's a bit late from my part, both in real time and where this is placed within this post, but happy new year to 2026! As we approach the year of the horse, the days of the dark horse seem to be mounting as the gall of upward threats old and new, trotting the line of legal and illegal, mega and non-mega lopping along alike, all matter of which ride at a cavalier canter to disturb the stable reigns of the long-running thoroughbreds in the front of the pack, or so they say. I apologize in advance for any future horsing around and/or champing at the bit that may or may not occur in the rest of the year, but it behooves me to put my best foot forward even through unexpected brambles in the race of life.
Also with Pokemon Champions scheduled to release at some point this year at least before Worlds, who knows what new mega abilities or other kind of mechanical implications an official crossover of super mechanics could have, however they end up glued into Showdown.
But for now, let's go over the last usage stats of 2025, with about half a month's worth of Z-A DLC megas roaming free, and also a few days of Commander Tatsugiri unbridled and riding together with Dondozo in an unrivaled show of doubles dressage. Quite the throwbacks lately, all in all.
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2025-12/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2025-12/moveset/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt
The battle count dips a bit more to
25630, closest to how the year started off yet still pretty consistent.
December 2025: 1630-weighted top 10 + last month positions
#1: Blissey (#3)
#2: Mega Chandelure (#1)
#3: Mega Heracross (#2)
#4: Mega Venusaur (no change)
#5: Mega Ampharos (no change)
#6: Mega Golurk (NEW)
#7: Ting-Lu (#6)
#8: Glastrier (no change)
#9: Mega Abomasnow (#10)
#10: Dondozo (#66) 
*
#11: Iron Hands
(#7)
#12: Mega Tatsugiri-Curly (NEW) 
*
That's right, it's actually a top 12 thanks to recent extenutating circumstances. Despite Dondozo and Tatsugiri's relatively low usage time, they still managed to get high placements on weighted success and invaded the top 10, so I choose to recognize both their combined efforts and also acknowledge Iron Hands that would have placed as a dark horse in #10 otherwise.
There is probably some legitimate Dondozo use mixed in there, probably more so than Tatsugiri's case, but by unweighted raw counts 71.586% of Dondozo teammates were Mega Tatsugiri and so I don't really think Dondozo would make the top 10 without that. Similarly, 92% of Curly Mega Tatsugiri's teammates were Dondozo, and 97% held the Tatsugirinite, though only 73.077% seemed to actually manually mega evolve based on the No Ability/Nothing Tera Type indicators. Also the stats don't actually list the other Tatsugiri forms at all so maybe they all got counted together under Curly-Mega like how the base form only shows up once.
Notably missing out by this altered criteria is Mega Eelektross at #13, still largely botted with 17686 raw uses from the moveset file, double that of Heracross next, and still running about the same sets as mentioned in the
previous monthly stats post. But in terms of other dark horses to shout out, Guzzlord is below at #14/906 uses (representing Magic Guard/Life Orb and a large variety of other items/abilities alike), and also Mega Slowbro (representing Unaware, Ice Scales) and Chansey (Blissey alternative that outslows Blissey) are hanging around #17/18 with uses in the 500s, neither of their peak performances by far but punching above their weight in raw uses at least.
Despite 5 megas in a row vying for the top, the humble yet omnipresent Imposter Blissey takes the lead as queen of the hill for the very first time (as far as I can tell by searching for "#1: Blissey"), showing that eggs truly are the natural enemy of ghosts as contained in mortal shells. Though technically most of the time Blissey is also copying a mega itself and you could say it thus represents the rest of the meta equally, but still. Overall I'm interested to see how things stabilize out entering 2026 and Champions's release, but for now I'll cover the relatively new mons at least for their debuts.
Mega Golurk makes a fair debut as well only behind a set of big 5 veterans despite limited usage time, and in terms of raw usage it places 8th already, putting it in a similar position to Chandelure's debut in October but already surpassing Ting-Lu. Time will tell if history will repeat itself once more, but as a generalist it does seem to elevate a lot of other mons equally enough with it.
Mega Absol Z lands itself at around a nice #20, fiittingly between its fellow Dark/Ghost Mega Sableye at #19 and its fellow physical Ghost Mega Banette at #21 as it plays very closely to the latter going all in offense but has closer raw uses to the former, though Absol sees much more Stellar usage than Banette and Sableye implying it's the main Tera target on its teams.
Just below that, Mega Meganium has fallen back down to #22 since its top 10 breakthrough last month, but still sees >1000 uses, and also Mega Chimecho made it to #24 with only about 213 raw uses, just above Mega Drampa (mostly running Minus but with some slightly notable Drampanite -> Berserk usage (represented as No Ability)).
The rest of the Z-A DLC mega debuts are as follows:
Mega Crabominable at #32 (435 uses)
Mega Glimmora at #43 (438 uses)
Mega Staraptor at #49 (139 uses)
Mega Scovillain at #85 (129 uses)
Mega Raichu Y at #194 (72 uses)
Mega Meowstic-F at #323 (1 use, according to the stats file which could be an underestimate. This mon doesn't show up in the moveset files. But there is 1 instance of Meowstic-F-Mega as an Absol-Z teammate in the chaos/json files so I will assume this is the 1 use.)
Mega Raichu X at #362 (20 uses)
Mega Meowstic-M at #482 (2 uses, similar case to the above with Dragalge/Houndoom as confirmed teammates)
So here I was Ctrl+F-ing through the stats with -Mega highlighted, about to go over to the moveset file as usual, when I saw this:
Before anyone else goes to try this, unfortunately I believe this is just the usage stats assuming all Zygarde @ Zygardite should be listed as Zygarde-Mega, even though you can't actually become Complete to Mega Evolve in-battle since Power Construct is banned, and also the fact that Zygardite is assigned to Zygarde-Complete so you can put it on base Zygardes in the teambuilder. But hey, someone did try it out and this is the first time that it's appeared in the listings, not even in October/November. Hooray for experimentation.
Back to the moveset file, we have a flat 10 viability ceilings (highest GXE scored by a user/mon combination in tandem) just within the 80s, all packed closely together. Leading at
82 we have Mega Heracross, Dondozo, Tatsugiri, and Dusclops (still representing bonkstall Friend Guard/Magic Bounce with some Power Spot).
81 follows with Mega Camerupt (mainly Storm Drain, some Analytic/Download/Magic Bounce), Regirock (mainly Ice Scales, maybe as a Desolate Land Camerupt partner to place as well), and Ting-Lu (mainly Ice Scales, some Unaware/Magic Bounce/Simple, major Chimecho partner).
Rounding out at
80 are Imposter Blissey, Glastrier (horse, fair distribution of Refrigerate/Aerilate/Ice Scales and Choice Band/Lum Berry/Weakness Policy/Miracle Berry (the Gen 2 Lum Berry)), and Rhydon (mainly Sap Sipper but also some canon Lightning Rod usage probably with lead partner Gyarados and Ice Scales/Desolate Land).
Since Dondozo and Tatsugiri took 2 spots here as well, I'll step down once more through viability ceiling
79 with a three-way tie to make a baker's dozen, featuring Chansey the smaller imposter, Mega Crabominable (majorly Friend Guard/Weakness Policy alike at ~49%, some Ice Scales/Intrepid Sword, and main partners split between Golurk and Crab/itself), and lastly Pokestar Humanoid (91 uses, mainly Good as Gold, some Poison Touch, with items basically split between Mirror Herb/Normalium Z and only Pokestar Humanoid/Monster teammates just like in the movie). I don't have much to say about this mon since it's basically a 6x100 BST normal mon, just like Pokestar Giant but smaller, but for the Pokestar enjoyers reading this I do have a fun fact that the Red Fog of Terror mons are canonically from the 11th dimension in-universe according to the
relatively recently documented easter eggs when you use Defog in the 3rd movie and also implied in the strange ending, which I have gotten to post about twice now on different relevant notes. Thanks for your reading.
(Oh hey, this has a minisprite now.)
Scrappy is my preferred ability for Anti-Ghost, partly because I love this stupid ugly bear, but also because the additional access to Fighting-type moves gives Luna the most consistent damage output of any physical attacker in the game. I wouldn't really recommend this abil on non-Normal mons, since STAB is vital to making Scrappy being worth using over other options - similar goes for -ate users needing to be the -ate's type. Scrappy also fishes into the rare but otherwise-terrible Intimidate matchup, though Mind's Eye can be run for marginally better odds into all other matchups if you prefer.
-ate exchanges Fighting move access for an extra multiplier on your Normal moves, making it more of a middle ground between the consistency of Scrappy and the nuke fishing of ISword, albeit still leaning consistency. Refrigerate Crab seems like the best option to me, in part because of its incredible stat spread, and in part because Refrigerate is one of the stronger types to -Ate into (you're iffy into Chandelure, but beat Golurk comfortably). Galvanize Iron Hands is equally potent, but a little riskier due to Grounds' immunity. Other more aggressive abusers include Aerilate Landorus-Therian and Galvanize Eelektross-Mega.
