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Metagame 1v1 Old Gens

VR Update post just in time for 1v1 CL!
Here Comes Team Charm! has stepped down from council. Their support has been very appreciated! Thank you from the council!

VR Shifts:
Rises:
:Tapu Fini:Tapu Fini A+ -> S-
:Darmanitan-Galar:Darmanitan-Galar A -> A+
:Togekiss:Togekiss A- -> A
:Regidrago:Regidrago B+ -> A-
:Venusaur:Venusaur B+ -> A-
:Rhyperior:Rhyperior B -> B+
:Glastrier:Glastrier C -> C+
:Toxtricity:Toxtricity C- -> C
:Golduck:Golduck UR -> D
:Shedinja:Shedinja UR -> D

Drops:
:Sylveon:Sylveon A- -> B+
:Aggron:Aggron B -> B-
:Dracovish:Dracovish B- -> C+
:Sawk:Sawk B- -> C+
:Zapdos-Galar:Zapdos-Galar B- -> C+
:Blissey:Blissey D -> UR
:Golisopod:Golisopod D -> UR
:Grimmsnarl:Grimmsnarl D -> UR
 
sleep (alt: venu) should be banned in sm post-1v1 cl. had a conversation with the greatest minds in 1v1 RADU Potatochan Mishlef crucify DEG DripLegend and decided it provides 0 value to the tier and actively deteriorates quality in builder/game. would address ongoing frustrations w the tier being stale and inactive apart from suspecting darkrai (nobody asked for this) and push sm to be more played.

encourage people to post their thoughts (the ones below are all from the past year). include a personal vr if ur eliminated from cl after this week.

sleep.png
 
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Ok man, i need to say something. sorry LittEleven if it seems like I’m flooding your post on venu sleep in sm but im tired of getting shafted by this community and my opinions not getting taken seriously but people need to hear this



FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, BAN TAUROS FROM ADV 1v1.

IMG_0022.gif


Tauros at this point is a cancer to the tier and I speak for everyone when i say it should get banned asap or at the very least, post cl. Ever somce adv has been apart of a team tournament setting, all it really stems down to is “toxic tauros cheese” if not that it’s raikou critical hit cheese” cause that’s all people who play this tier actually use raikou and tauros. I’ll explain raikou’s impact on the tier later but tauros is the real problem when it comes to adv.



Tauros is a pokémon that beats 95% of mons in the builder and actively prohibits creative team building and overall just makes team building in general suck ass. Need I remind you that that the tier leader of adv is an advocate of creative team building?



Tauros’ main set is that stupid stalling toxic set. Because base 110 speed is really fast in a tier like this, all you can really do is click toxic, get your 50/50s right if necessary and win the game. It’s a min to the sub leech sceptile set where if your opponent has no way of outspeeding you or having a way of one shotting you, you just win the game. Difference between sceptile and tauros is that Tauros has respectable bulk as well intimidate to let it sponge physical attacks more reliably.



You may be wondering why other mons don’t use a toxic protect set, well the simple answer is some mons don’t have the proper bulk to utilize a toxic protect set without it being too punishing or they’re simply too slow to use a toxic protect set. Tauros is really the only mon in adv that can wield the toxic protect set to its highest potential.



The obvious answer to this toxic set would be steel types or bulky mons that can utilize rest, but the thing is, TAUROS HAS OTHER SETS IT CAN USE!!!! Choice band can eat a hit from metagross mash and 2hko it with eq, sub liechi can cheese counter mons that are locked to counter/as well as metagross sets that use dynamic punch (lol). Mons in adv typically have 3 sets on average but there is a difference in having 3 sets and having 3 GOOD AND VIABLE. Some Pokemon may beat certain sets but there’s likelyhood they lose to other sets, making this mon very restrictive in the team builder as well as it having SO much pressure in the team builder of you’re not prepped for it properly. There are very few established mons that can reliably beat every set, and the number of mons is so little is to why people are resorting useing non mons like cradily, Steelix, and Skarmory, just to beat one mon reliably.



There are 3-4 viable mons that can reliably beat tauros.



:vaporeon:
This is one of the best mons in the tier right now because of tauros usage. Acid armor and rest just walls it.



:registeel:
Just pray you don’t get crit but registeel’s whole gimmick is pray you don’t get crit. (Unlikely in a gen where critical hits are 1/16)



:regirock:
Curse + Rest just walls every set and you can afford to take one critical hit unlike registeel I think. This mon is very underrated because a spdef curse and rest can beat tauros and raikou, two of the best mons in the tier.



:scizor:
Another underrated mon. Sd into getting hit into swarm range to throw a nasty hp bug into quick attack. Out of all the mons here, this one is definitely the least reliable but an alteration to this set can easily beat tauros.



Notice how no fighting types were at all mentioned?



Tauros being a normal type, should be vulnerable to fighting types right? Welll unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Because of intimidate, Most fighting types actually struggle to deal with tauros.



-1 252+ Atk Choice Band Machamp Brick Break vs. 208 HP / 8 Def Tauros: 280-330 (81.6 - 96.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery



In terms of base attack, machamp has the highest (Medicham is an outlier) and with most reliable fighting type move, it can’t even one shot it. Most fighting types on average are slow so you just get stalled out and lose, Tauros can stall out cross chop pp (8) with this set as well as cross chop being relatively not that reliable cause of the accuracy. However, Tauros also has other sets it can use as well, most fighting types drop to a banded hyper beam, even the most bulkiest of ones don’t win.



216+ Atk Choice Band Tauros Hyper Beam vs. 252 HP / 20 Def Machamp: 383-451 (99.7 - 117.4%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO



For reference, 252 HP 20 Def is just enough to tank adamant band metagross meteor mash.





I wanted to clear up a misconception people have when it comes to fighting types being capable beating tauros reliably which isn’t the case at all.



:rs/raikou: :rs/tauros: :rs/machamp:
This stupid team lives in everyone’s heads rent free (my own included) it was made two years ago but is still used today because it consistent of two broken ass pokémon and a mon which is supposed to beat said brokens.



However, this replay is the culmination of everyone that’s currently wrong with ADV at the moment: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen31v1-908276



Two players using the EXACT SAME TEAM because everyone new who touches this tier is allergic to using pokemon other than raikou and tauros. It’s generally a very uninspiring game for the most part. But did you guys notice that the supposed tauros check lost? The machamp was band so you couldn’t really use cross chop so you resorted to ea so that you don’t miss your move on a crucial turn. But because of that, you lose, making fighting types having a LOSING MATCH UP into tauros and by extensions this mon has no real weakness.





If you’re reading this far, you’re probably wondering why I want to ban a mon like tauros and not a mon like Raikou? Well as op as raikou is, it’s the mon that holds this tier together. Without Raikou, water types become way to op (Vaporeon, Kingdra, Gyarados, Starmie.) Water would would be the main centralization because there are no good electric types to beat said water types which in turn would make fire types slightly less prevalent which in turn, make leech mons really good. Raikou maintains the power balance the adv meta has and if you ban raikou, you’re actively making the tier worse. Tauros on the other hand doesn’t bring anything significant to make the tier better and is a liability to the tier so banning it would be the only justification. I don’t think anyone has any compelling nor convincing arguments on why Tauros shouldn’t be banned from ADV, if you want tauros to stay, chances are tauros is probably top 1 in your usage which says a lot about you.



Furthermore to this argument. What raikou had that tauros lacks is varirety of counterplay. It’s much easier to tech a mon like raikou as opposed to tauros. Raikou is relatively frail so any ground type, most choice banded mon with eq or strong STAB, most mons with any sort of set up moves, bulky spdef physical mons, most leech seeders, (depending on raikou’s set) the list goes on. As for tauros, the counter play just stems down to running rest on every mon which can be a liability if the mon isn’t built to run rest properly and especially if the tauros set you’re facing isn’t even a toxic tauros. You also have to run rest sets which are catered to beating tower tauros sets to begin with and the opportunity cost when it comes to using a tauros proof set is very noticeable.





One last thing of note I would like to add are statistics. I took the first 4 weeks of cl and compared to overall usage and win rate of tauros and raikou, the top ranked non when it comes to the viability rankings



:tauros: - 2.25 rank in usage / 23% usage / 48% WR roughly

:raikou: - 2.75 rank in usage / 26% usage / 39% WR roughly



As you can see, when it comes to the usage rank, Tauros has a higher usage rank, averaging being ranked 2nd in usage across the 4 weeks as opposed to raikou, who is averaging 3rd across the 4 weeks. However with the actual usage percentage, Raikou has higher usage but it’s not a lot. The reasoning to this is Raikou had inflated usage week 4 with it being brung on 12 separate occasions (tauros was 2nd highest with 7.) But what the main juice of these statistics is the win rate. Tauros has a 48% usage, meaning it basically wins every other game it’s picked, Now if we look at Raikou’s win rate, we can see it’s only at a mere 39% almost 10% less than Tauros’ win rate, and Raikou is supposed to be the top ranked mon in ADV, this further supports my claim that Raikou is easily beatable and has tons of counter play as a whole while tauros just doesn’t.



Overall, tauros is a pocket monster that should be axed from ADV 1v1 as soon as possible. Making this post as a call to action and hopefully the rest of the adv council will agree with me to take immediate action as well. With Tauros banned, the more variety of mons that will be used, the more quality the adv games will be, the tier will be more enjoyable to watch.



Would love to hear people’s overall thoughts on tauros in adv but chances your opinion is probably the same as mine, that shit needs to get banned immediately.
 
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Tauros at this point is a cancer to the tier and I speak for everyone when i say it should get banned asap or at the very least, post cl. Ever somce adv has been apart of a team tournament setting, all it really stems down to is “toxic tauros cheese” if not that it’s raikou critical hit cheese” cause that’s all people who play this tier actually use raikou and tauros. I’ll explain raikou’s impact on the tier later but tauros is the real problem when it comes to adv.
I totally agree with this sentiment. I don't know if cheese is the word I'd use to describe it but it feels like Tauros just has 2 sets that together beat the vast majority of the meta. I've been having a lot of fun building ADV but I feel almost forced to bring suboptimal teams if I want to be remotely diverse because if I sit and optimise teams for too long it feels like I eventually land on a Tauros Raikou local maximum and any change I make to the team from that point just makes it worse. There just isn't enough direct counterplay to Tauros and everything else that is a problem in the meta (Raikou!) is just amplified by the ability to slap a Tauros next to it to cover any weakness strong mons might have. Let's bring some freedom back into the tier
 
Edit: This apparently went undocumented but I left SM council a couple months ago. As such, these are not my views as a council member but just my personal views unrelated to whatever council is or isn't cooking up. I wanted to give people a framework to actually talk about this topic instead of getting stuck in the same anecdotal evidence and circle reasoning that's been plagueing the discussion for god knows how long.
Venu first, then sleep.

Venu is one of the best mons in SM, always has been. There's a reason it's my highest usage mon by a landslide, bringing at least 2 almost every week of every tour I play in. Stall is the set, whether you're running 1 offensive move, 2 offensive moves, or 0 offensive moves they all have their merit. Sleep Powder 3 attacks is its own thing but not super viable unless you're trying to tech a pretty specific threatlist on your 3rd mon, but it still just has that flexibility to brute force some matchups with that offensive set that it otherwise wouldn't be able to make it through with 1 set. I don't think offensive venu beats anything stall doesn't for what it's worth, it just doesn't have the moveslots and EVs to beat the entire list at the same time. (Amnesia beats Genesect and Magearna for example but then you likely drop the charm you need to beat zardx reliably).

Long story short, Venu is a really strong mon. It beats a baseline portion of the meta and has the flexibility of moveslots and EVs to beat more. For me the main reason to run grasses in general in SM will be to beat waters + grounds + zera, but venu adds a layer of convenience that has it also beating other grasses and greninja. That's a comfortable beatlist that you have to spend like 1 moveslot and 0 EVs for.

From that point onwards you're optimising for specific threats. Charm beats most garchomp, amnesia beats genesect, synthesis beats... something I don't remember what. You can be physically defensive for mawile or you can be specially defensive for naganadel or whatever, you can even be fast for silly dragonites who forgot their speed investment. You run sludge bomb for opposing grasses, you run a grass move for certain annoying grounds or steels, you can run HP fire as your offensive move if you really struggle with steels, you can even run spdef frenzy plant if you're paranoid about extrasensory greninja, which for what it's worth I am and you should be too.

That said, venu's biggest counters are linear. You have to jump through hoops to beat Venu's worst matchups, if you can beat them at all. Just looking at the top of the VR, you get to choose your consistent matchups, either you run charm for ZardX or Amnesia for Magearna, but those 2 aside Gyara and Zera are the only matchups that end up being consistent. Flyinium Dragonite depends on your set but if it outspeeds you you're dead, Metagross thankfully doesn't run zen headbutt in 2026 but it can run sub which shuts venu down completely, zardy outdamages venu's sustain, and then garde, gren, meloetta, pz, and lele can just KO or otherwise hard shut down venusaur with little to no opportunity cost. Even if you factor that the SM VR is a little dated, that's a lot of high viability venusaur answers.

I know specs greninja is kinda of falling out of fashion, and rightfully so, but I do want to point out that Extrasensory is a legitimately good option for your 4th moveslot. Hydro Cannon, Grass Knot, and Ice Beam are easily the best moves, but from there your move options are kind of limited and depend on what niche subset of the meta you're trying to cook.
  • Dark Pulse beats every little (Metagross bulks, Meloetta bulks, steelium Aegislash wins (which I'd argue is its best set), Slowbro takes more damage from Grass Knot, and I can't even find the next dark-weak mon on the VR)
  • HP Electric has 1 matchup and it's Gyarados
  • Gunk Shot has 1 matchup and it's Gardevoir and only works if they're not bulky
So consider Extrasensory!! It OHKOs venu that don't run enough HP investment (usually dropping it for speed and/or pure physdef) and 2HKOs every Venu set. Venu's only shot at OHKOing a greninja back is with Frenzy Plant, which still requires a lot of offensive investment and isn't something they generally run anyway. If they are Sleep Powder, you have 20% chance to flinch them, 25% chance to dodge sleep powder, and 33% (or even 66% depending on their moveset) chance to wake up before they kill you. That's 60% (or 82% if they can't 2HKO you), assuming they live the Extrasensory in the first place. So yeah, run Extrasensory Gren if you hate Venu it's funny trust

Now to finally get to my thoughts on sleep (starting with sleep venu), the reason I haven't touched on it yet is because in all my explanations of how to run venu and how to beat it it hasn't been relevant. Variance is inherent to 1v1, and I don't think it's fair to call something a counter to anything if there's a significant RNG chance to Just Lose™. I would be willing to call Swampert a Dragonite answer because it usually beats Dragonite (67%), I would be willing to call Archeops a Dragonite (ignore scarf) answer because it usually just beats Dragonite (80%), I would not be willing to call Durant a Dragonite answer because it usually just doesn't (19.2%). Where you draw the line is personal, I might be comfortable using a Stone Edge Durant as a Charizard answer while someone else refuses to use Head Smash (at all). It's important to recognise this both ways when talking about swaying RNG matchups, especially when it comes to beating RNG "abusers" (nobody would be willing to call Durant a Dragonite counter and then blame Dragonite for winning).

I know these numbers are debatable, but for the sake of argument I'm going to consider requiring 1 (additional) sleep turn a "winning" matchup and requiring 2 or 3 a "losing" matchup. 1 sleep turn has a 67% chance of happening which may not be consistent enough for some people but if you look at it from the defender's perspective I'd struggle to call Dragonite a Swampert counter, while on the opposite end I wouldn't say Swampert beats Primarina reliably enough.

With that in mind, RNG alone does not make something banworthy in 1v1, we all know this from looking at Togekiss and Jirachi or even something like ZardY that pull similar numbers out of their ass to just sometimes win matchups, but despite that we aren't (usually) trying to ban them. They introduce volatility to certain matchups, but there's enough and consistent enough counterplay to justify their existance. The reason something like Togekiss with Serene Grace Air Slash (you can substitute Togekiss here for anything that "lucks" matchups, be it Iron Head Metagross, Iron Head as a whole, or even zen headbutt Serene Grace Chansey) doesn't get scrutinised for RNG-winning matchups is because Togekiss doesn't check all the boxes of "excessive variance". For something to be "too much RNG" there needs to be a balance of variance, distribution, and counterplay. So let's look at Serene Grace Air Slash:
  • Variance is high, a lot of matchups depend strictly on RNG
  • Distribution is low, there are only 2 SM-legal Serene Grace Air Slash pokemon, one of which is Dunsparce which I'm going to dismiss as mostly unviable.
  • Counterplay is high, it's only one move on two pokemon that lose to a large portion of the meta even after factoring flinch chances

You can apply this framework to sleep-inducing moves in SM 1v1 too, though it quickly gets more complicated. Variance is pretty high, whether you're talking about Yawn or Sleep Powder, both can turn matchups into RNG coinflips. Distribution is debatable, I'd say there are 3 viable Sleep Powder users (Venusaur, Jumpluff, Vivillon, maybe 4 if you count Roserade) and 6 Yawn users (Swampert, Camerupt, Empoleon, Sylveon, Relicanth, Stunfisk, and I feel like I'm missing one). All things considered this is not a particularly large amount of pokemon compared to say... Pokemon that get a 30% flinch chance move or pokemon that can induce paralysis, which have similar odds of RNGing their way into a victory. Let's leave a mental note with distribution, it'll be interesting later.

That leaves counterplay, of which I would argue there is plenty. First let's look at blanket counterplay for sleep moves: Many top tier mons can viably run taunt or substitute, which completely shut down most sleep related strategies. 50/50s are commonplace in 1v1, and I don't believe for a second that "if I click taunt and they attack I lose" is any less playable than "if I mega evolve my gyarados and they click solar beam I lose." Sleep Powder is also a powder move, which means grass types are immune to it. Lastly there's Yawn, which requires a full turn of setup and thus guarantees the user must take at least one hit before they can do their shenanigans (and basically mandates protect/endure on the same set, costing 2 moveslots just to pull it off). All of the viable sleep powder users have some way to mitigate at least one of the above (Vivillon and Venusaur beat grass types, and Jumpluff has Infiltrator so there's no use subbing on it). You could theoretically run safety goggles on anything or run a mon with overcoat or insomnia, but that's entirely unviable so let's not even try.

The more important counterplay however is mon-specific, and for the most part just comes down to "just don't let them kill you" which seems easier said than done but... is it? Venusaur doesn't fare well into the peak of the metagame, especially the bulky psychic, flying, and normal type hitters easily melt Venusaur. Swampert's offensive typings are both pretty lacking, and obviously it gets blown up by grass moves, which are very prevalent for the many waters and grounds in the tier. Jumpluff only has speed going for it and runs no offensive moves so it auto-loses to anything that can't get seeded or outspeeds it and deals meaningful damage. Vivillon is fucking annoying but probably also loses to something idk. I could keep going down the list but everything that uses sleep has a large amount of unambiguous counterplay. They have structural damage or speed checks and hard shutdown conditions that aren't just plentiful but also viable. You don't need to bend over backwards to build teams that don't use to "sleep" as an entity, because "sleep" doesn't magically erase counterplay. When exceptions do exist, they come in the form of pokemon that are fundamentally lacking structural counterplay already. Snorlax was too strong and lacked a lot of structural counterplay. There were fewer damage checks that could get past Snorlax, and sleep turns could flip even those matchups. That's why Snorlax got the boot, but sleep didn't.

I told you we'd be putting a pin in distribution, because there's still one question left unanswered: Other gens banned sleep moves, why not SM? The answer to that is once again in the counterplay and distribution (probably more in counterplay now that I think about it). Because Z moves can easily double a move's base power at very little cost, damage in SM is higher than in any other gen. That also means that offensive counterplay to... just about anything is much higher, and that includes sleep-inducing moves, especially Yawn. Yawn was absolutely degenerate in SV because so many mons got access to it that weren't able to be KO'd in a single turn and would always get their Yawn off. Comparatively, even the viable Yawn users in SM can still get blown up by a random neutral z move (Camerupt can be the goat in ORAS all it wants but it ain't tanking a zmove from Meloetta with enough EVs left over to do anything meaningful to it), and most mons are straight up pushed out of viability because they either lack the bulk to get yawn off or lack the damage to do anything after. Yawn Mega Blastoise would be real funny but it just Doesn't Work. This is also why a blanket ban on sleep across all gens makes little sense, the way the mechanic and its counterplay interact with different generations should be evaluated individually.

This also sort of explains why low accuracy sleep moves got the boot. Low accuracy sleep moves have higher distribution, and lack some of the fundamental drawbacks of the higher accuracy sleep moves (believe it or not). None of the low accuracy sleep moves are powder moves, meaning grass types aren't immune. Additionally, Sing and Grass Whistle are sound moves meaning they can put something to sleep through a substitute. Distribution is different too, the 3 most common low accuracy sleep moves account for almost 5 times as many mons as sleep powder, and twice as many as yawn. Contrary to Sleep Powder, which has direct counterplay in grass types/overcoat/safety goggles (lol) and Yawn (we know the drawback of yawn), low accuracy sleep's only drawback is... being low accuracy. Pair this with the fact that many of the users are really fast, and you get the conclusion that in many cases all these moves contribute to the metagame is removing agency from the more skilled player.

Man I didn't plan to write an essay on sleep but I just want to settle this once and for all instead of always dancing around "it just depends on what you call too much RNG" arguments. Just in case it wasn't clear, I don't support a ban on sleep-inducing moves in SM, and I hope with this we can finally stop beating the dead horse that is sleep in SM.

Felu out
 
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Ok man, i need to say something. sorry LittEleven if it seems like I’m flooding your post on venu sleep in sm but im tired of getting shafted by this community and my opinions not getting taken seriously but people need to hear this



FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, BAN TAUROS FROM ADV 1v1.

View attachment 811862

Tauros at this point is a cancer to the tier and I speak for everyone when i say it should get banned asap or at the very least, post cl. Ever somce adv has been apart of a team tournament setting, all it really stems down to is “toxic tauros cheese” if not that it’s raikou critical hit cheese” cause that’s all people who play this tier actually use raikou and tauros. I’ll explain raikou’s impact on the tier later but tauros is the real problem when it comes to adv.



Tauros is a pokémon that beats 95% of mons in the builder and actively prohibits creative team building and overall just makes team building in general suck ass. Need I remind you that that the tier leader of adv is an advocate of creative team building?



Tauros’ main set is that stupid stalling toxic set. Because base 110 speed is really fast in a tier like this, all you can really do is click toxic, get your 50/50s right if necessary and win the game. It’s a min to the sub leech sceptile set where if your opponent has no way of outspeeding you or having a way of one shotting you, you just win the game. Difference between sceptile and tauros is that Tauros has respectable bulk as well intimidate to let it sponge physical attacks more reliably.



You may be wondering why other mons don’t use a toxic protect set, well the simple answer is some mons don’t have the proper bulk to utilize a toxic protect set without it being too punishing or they’re simply too slow to use a toxic protect set. Tauros is really the only mon in adv that can wield the toxic protect set to its highest potential.



The obvious answer to this toxic set would be steel types or bulky mons that can utilize rest, but the thing is, TAUROS HAS OTHER SETS IT CAN USE!!!! Choice band can eat a hit from metagross mash and 2hko it with eq, sub liechi can cheese counter mons that are locked to counter/as well as metagross sets that use dynamic punch (lol). Mons in adv typically have 3 sets on average but there is a difference in having 3 sets and having 3 GOOD AND VIABLE. Some Pokemon may beat certain sets but there’s likelyhood they lose to other sets, making this mon very restrictive in the team builder as well as it having SO much pressure in the team builder of you’re not prepped for it properly. There are very few established mons that can reliably beat every set, and the number of mons is so little is to why people are resorting useing non mons like cradily, Steelix, and Skarmory, just to beat one mon reliably.



There are 3-4 viable mons that can reliably beat tauros.



:vaporeon:
This is one of the best mons in the tier right now because of tauros usage. Acid armor and rest just walls it.



:registeel:
Just pray you don’t get crit but registeel’s whole gimmick is pray you don’t get crit. (Unlikely in a gen where critical hits are 1/16)



:regirock:
Curse + Rest just walls every set and you can afford to take one critical hit unlike registeel I think. This mon is very underrated because a spdef curse and rest can beat tauros and raikou, two of the best mons in the tier.



:scizor:
Another underrated mon. Sd into getting hit into swarm range to throw a nasty hp bug into quick attack. Out of all the mons here, this one is definitely the least reliable but an alteration to this set can easily beat tauros.



Notice how no fighting types were at all mentioned?



Tauros being a normal type, should be vulnerable to fighting types right? Welll unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Because of intimidate, Most fighting types actually struggle to deal with tauros.



-1 252+ Atk Choice Band Machamp Brick Break vs. 208 HP / 8 Def Tauros: 280-330 (81.6 - 96.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery



In terms of base attack, machamp has the highest (Medicham is an outlier) and with most reliable fighting type move, it can’t even one shot it. Most fighting types on average are slow so you just get stalled out and lose, Tauros can stall out cross chop pp (8) with this set as well as cross chop being relatively not that reliable cause of the accuracy. However, Tauros also has other sets it can use as well, most fighting types drop to a banded hyper beam, even the most bulkiest of ones don’t win.



216+ Atk Choice Band Tauros Hyper Beam vs. 252 HP / 20 Def Machamp: 383-451 (99.7 - 117.4%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO



For reference, 252 HP 20 Def is just enough to tank adamant band metagross meteor mash.





I wanted to clear up a misconception people have when it comes to fighting types being capable beating tauros reliably which isn’t the case at all.



:rs/raikou: :rs/tauros: :rs/machamp:
This stupid team lives in everyone’s heads rent free (my own included) it was made two years ago but is still used today because it consistent of two broken ass pokémon and a mon which is supposed to beat said brokens.



However, this replay is the culmination of everyone that’s currently wrong with ADV at the moment: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen31v1-908276



Two players using the EXACT SAME TEAM because everyone new who touches this tier is allergic to using pokemon other than raikou and tauros. It’s generally a very uninspiring game for the most part. But did you guys notice that the supposed tauros check lost? The machamp was band so you couldn’t really use cross chop so you resorted to ea so that you don’t miss your move on a crucial turn. But because of that, you lose, making fighting types having a LOSING MATCH UP into tauros and by extensions this mon has no real weakness.





If you’re reading this far, you’re probably wondering why I want to ban a mon like tauros and not a mon like Raikou? Well as op as raikou is, it’s the mon that holds this tier together. Without Raikou, water types become way to op (Vaporeon, Kingdra, Gyarados, Starmie.) Water would would be the main centralization because there are no good electric types to beat said water types which in turn would make fire types slightly less prevalent which in turn, make leech mons really good. Raikou maintains the power balance the adv meta has and if you ban raikou, you’re actively making the tier worse. Tauros on the other hand doesn’t bring anything significant to make the tier better and is a liability to the tier so banning it would be the only justification. I don’t think anyone has any compelling nor convincing arguments on why Tauros shouldn’t be banned from ADV, if you want tauros to stay, chances are tauros is probably top 1 in your usage which says a lot about you.



Furthermore to this argument. What raikou had that tauros lacks is varirety of counterplay. It’s much easier to tech a mon like raikou as opposed to tauros. Raikou is relatively frail so any ground type, most choice banded mon with eq or strong STAB, most mons with any sort of set up moves, bulky spdef physical mons, most leech seeders, (depending on raikou’s set) the list goes on. As for tauros, the counter play just stems down to running rest on every mon which can be a liability if the mon isn’t built to run rest properly and especially if the tauros set you’re facing isn’t even a toxic tauros. You also have to run rest sets which are catered to beating tower tauros sets to begin with and the opportunity cost when it comes to using a tauros proof set is very noticeable.





One last thing of note I would like to add are statistics. I took the first 4 weeks of cl and compared to overall usage and win rate of tauros and raikou, the top ranked non when it comes to the viability rankings



:tauros: - 2.25 rank in usage / 23% usage / 48% WR roughly

:raikou: - 2.75 rank in usage / 26% usage / 39% WR roughly



As you can see, when it comes to the usage rank, Tauros has a higher usage rank, averaging being ranked 2nd in usage across the 4 weeks as opposed to raikou, who is averaging 3rd across the 4 weeks. However with the actual usage percentage, Raikou has higher usage but it’s not a lot. The reasoning to this is Raikou had inflated usage week 4 with it being brung on 12 separate occasions (tauros was 2nd highest with 7.) But what the main juice of these statistics is the win rate. Tauros has a 48% usage, meaning it basically wins every other game it’s picked, Now if we look at Raikou’s win rate, we can see it’s only at a mere 39% almost 10% less than Tauros’ win rate, and Raikou is supposed to be the top ranked mon in ADV, this further supports my claim that Raikou is easily beatable and has tons of counter play as a whole while tauros just doesn’t.



Overall, tauros is a pocket monster that should be axed from ADV 1v1 as soon as possible. Making this post as a call to action and hopefully the rest of the adv council will agree with me to take immediate action as well. With Tauros banned, the more variety of mons that will be used, the more quality the adv games will be, the tier will be more enjoyable to watch.



Would love to hear people’s overall thoughts on tauros in adv but chances your opinion is probably the same as mine, that shit needs to get banned immediately.
As one of the newer players in the replay you linked I feel it is important to offer my opinion:

TL;DR: if that g4 where I BS'd JoaF to win that series gets Tauros banned, it will be the best thing I've ever done on Smogon dot com.

Now for the rant. I will inevitably cover things that SMBZ did already, but this is because this is a stream of consciousness and I feel those produce my best arguments.

While my overall scout as a newer player has a lot less of that team than you might think(I've only ever actually loaded that team twice in 4 weeks of playing), I absolutely 100% agree that Tauros' impact is ridiculous and deserves further evaluation. You have two banded variants of which technically have different checks and counters, which both perform AMAZINGLY well into the metagame, and then you have sub + toxic. There are very few true options that stomach all of these sets and I think SMBZ did a great job in writing them up.

I also want to talk about another component here which is set calling Tauros in the moment. Now again, I am no veteran of this tier, but in the heat of the moment making a call between which band bull you're facing is a terrible feeling as the differences in the set truly do impact the way you play the game(not to mention sub toxic lmao).

Let's evaluate the other normals in this tier, like Kangaskhan and Ursaring(but really, more Ursaring). They don't have the ability to pull off sub + toxic because they don't have Intimidate to bolster their bulk nor a speed tier that allows them to get off a substitute in a reliable manner. This means that they actually play like Normal Types, which Tauros simply doesn't.

Yes, Ursaring has a Sub SD set which is different enough from its standard Band set. But the difference is, Ursaring has to assume risk to set up a Sub or a SD, it can't just magically lower its opponent's attack by 1 to deceptively improve its bulk, and it will be dented or outright killed by strong fighting type hits where Bull can generally capitalize on everything I've written above to put the game(whether mindgame or the actual game) in its favor alone.

Now as I've said before, I'm not really a super dedicated 1v1 player, but I've been around comp for a while. As a Gens 1-3 player at large I actually feel really uniquely qualified to talk on the Normal type. It's supposed to be, in theory, a fantastic neutral click that performs well into most of the metagame but with the severe flaw of blanking into rocks, steels and ghosts - and dying to strong fighting type hits.

At least, you would think. The Fighting type is largely nowhere near as powerful as it is following Gen 3 for a variety of reasons, but perhaps most prominently is that the moves we have are largely terrible and even the ones that get something better than Brick Break are inaccurate and unreliable, which Substitute Tauros can abuse viciously. Dynamic Punch and Cross Chop are easily stallable by SubTect due to their low PP, and you know what's even scarier? Let's say you're Choice Banded and you curse under your breath as you realize Machamp has been clicked on your CB Tauros. They don't know for sure that you're CB. So not only can they miss if they commit to the big hit, but the Fighting move is generally not a great click anyway due to the shaky accuracy, leaving you to commit to a high powered normal hit and just go in.

But wait, you're saying. What about the Rocks and the Steels? Well, you're right that there "are" some hard stops to Tauros, but then you remember that Tauros has partners that can be used to cover those specific matchups. I won't go into the Bull Raikou Champ team because it feels like that's been done to death, but I think the key point to focus on here is Tauros' unique qualities like its blistering fast speed and Intimidate give it all the flexibility it needs to essentially remain unpunishable in the builder, which I find to be terrible for metagame diversity and health.


I totally agree with this sentiment. I don't know if cheese is the word I'd use to describe it but it feels like Tauros just has 2 sets that together beat the vast majority of the meta. I've been having a lot of fun building ADV but I feel almost forced to bring suboptimal teams if I want to be remotely diverse because if I sit and optimise teams for too long it feels like I eventually land on a Tauros Raikou local maximum and any change I make to the team from that point just makes it worse. There just isn't enough direct counterplay to Tauros and everything else that is a problem in the meta (Raikou!) is just amplified by the ability to slap a Tauros next to it to cover any weakness strong mons might have. Let's bring some freedom back into the tier

As one of Felucia's players in the Gogoatcord I've seen this firsthand. I think it took me exactly one week to say that I thought Tauros > Raikou in this metagame just because of how much pressure it can force by its mere existence and while I don't want to go into too much detail until after my team either wins or is eliminated, it has ABSOLUTELY paralyzed a lot of my building options as a player even as I'm trying to learn the ropes.

In short, ban Tauros. As far as the electric beast goes, I would disagree with Felucia in saying that it's a "problem" in the meta; Raikou to me comes off as more of a necessary evil due to the points SMBZ covers regarding Vaporeon and such. But this is a loosely held opinion and I'll be much more willing to revisit it in the future if we collect data on what a Bull-less meta looks like.

Raikou can run 20548 different sets. This much is known. Yet fighting Raikou can, and should, be rewarded by intelligent team building decisions. I will use a replay from that exact same set to prove my point:

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen31v1-908264

In the above replay, Joaf appears to be 3-0'd on the surface by Regice. I got a little too eager about this and made the click, not realizing that a quality build would HAVE to have a Raikou that is capable of addressing Regice(in this case, it's almost assuredly Scope Lens) and I get punished for this when my probable best click in the face of this information is actually Metagross if I believe he will be pressured into Raikou(I feared sub tect when he has no reason to be running it here). This is an example of me NOT reading the Raikou correctly and getting lured/punished for my not thinking this through.
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Some of this is probably repetitive and redundant but the point remains that if a new ADV 1v1 player can see the problem with Bull in literally one week, and I now know that others feel the same way outside of my teamcord, I think we have an elephant(or a bull, rather) to address in the room.

Please consider all of the above and make this ban happen. I am even OK with it happening right now in the middle of 1v1CL because it would breathe some life into team building, but if hosts find that excessive, I'll settle for the literal second 1v1CL ends. Thanks.
 
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