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Metagame SV PU Metagame Discussion (September Shifts - Post #26)

Avalugg is basically going to take all of havalugg's defensive sets niche, it's ability to actually function without clicking tera is big and the extra offenses aren't worth especially when Kalos version still has decent offenses and coverage. Havalugg will still have ho stuff so not unviable.

Grafaiai either does terrain shit or some scarfer/utility pivot stuff but IDT either will be great considering glowbro is a top mon.
 
OK 2 broken things i HATE on PU:

1: GALARIAN SLOWBRO
:slowbro-galar::slowbro-galar: :slowbro-galar:

Just ban this motherf***er please. CM or Phystank sets are relly good and manageable. But Assault Vest sets are really annoying and too specific to check.

Those who tell me to use Skunktank or Hisuan Qwilfish, you're right, but you have a lot of coverage to handle them. I'm talking about Earthquake, for example. Well, it weakens Skunktank, buuut against Qwilfish-H it's a bit more complicated...

But hey, in a tier where Ground-type Pokémon are very popular, that nerfs it a bit...

And now you're going to tell me that Ground Pokémon are enough? Just use (Tera Water) Surf or annoying cores like AV Glowbro+Bombirdier / Wo-Chien ...

Oh? Talking about Sandslash-Alola? Flamethrower!!!

Shell Side Arm is just ANNOYING, 30% Poison is annoying and handicaps the opposing Ground Pokémon.

Nothing can safely switch on this ******* POKEMON

He is the 2nd most used Pokémon on PU Tours like PUFF, he is really OVERPREPARED (Golurk 6th place).

Please suspect this cancer...

2: Heat Rock

:heat rock::venusaur::heat rock:

Sun is absolutly brokeness since Goodra moved up to NU. Forces too much Tera...

You want to play Chansey because you want to outplay sun? Just play a Tauros-Paldea-Blaze / Emboar.

Do you want a bulky fire? EP Venusaur. An Orthworm? Weather Ball. Orthworm + Bulky Fire? Play both...

YEAH BAN THESE MONS

I hope these cancers will get banned. Goodbye!
 
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PorygonBG said:
2: Heat Rock

:heat rock::venusaur::heat rock:

Sun is absolutly brokeness since Goodra moved up to NU. Forces too much Tera...

You want to play Chansey because you want to outplay sun? Just play a Tauros-Paldea-Blaze / Emboar.

Do you want a bulky fire? EP Venusaur. An Orthworm? Weather Ball. Orthworm + Bulky Fire? Play both...

YEAH BAN THESE MONS

I hope these cancers will get banned. Goodbye!
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Sun is ass.

I've been using multiple variants of this playstyle recently. The problem is that PU has too many pokemon that are very specially defensive, such as tera'd Florges, Hoopa, Tentacruel, Chansey, tera'd Shaymin etc. which do not die to a LO sludge bomb or weather ball, sometimes even if Venu is at +2. so if you burn your tera when facing a sun team, it is significantly more rewarding long term.

You need a Healing Wish mon like Mesprit to back up your Tauros, but you can't purely rely on it for sunny day so you will also need something like Grafaiai, effectively having two mons that don't do much besides setting up sun. Speaking of Mesprit, you want it to be as fast as possible for Healing Wish, but you also NEED it to be max/max def so you have a complicated dilemma... You can instead use Revival Blessing Pawmot I guess, the pokemon that can't switch into anything besides a telegraphed volt switch

There's too much counterplay to sun venu tbh, you're on a timer against sucker punch users and hariyama will eventually wear you out. And these problems get really highlighted when you don't have Drought Torkoal/Ninetales as an enabler and have to manually set up sun with a mon which can only really taunt rock users and hope to survive a sunny day+parting shot sequence.

Of course, you can try fitting in other mons such as Scovillain or Zard etc., but you need to run a choice item and most PU teams save for the very offensive ones can fit one of the specially defensive mons mentioned above. Also Tatsugiri will never die to any sun-boosted Flamethrower, and AV Glowbro can decide to tera water and force your breaker out.

P.S. i am back :)
 
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PorygonBG said:
When is the new tiering survery?
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I figure the answer to this helps lay out council plans for the future so here goes- we’re not currently planning a survey or particularly worried about anything in the metagame. The tier feels balanced, we’ve got 3 major tours going on right now without any massive complaints or things taking over the meta, and we haven’t had a major shift recently to shake things up. If people want to push for any change, they should be posting here to change our minds! Otherwise, we’re feeling good.

That being said, what seems like the most likely potential avenues for discussion?
  • A few people have brought up Kilowattrel
  • Taking greater action on cheese styles like sun or psychic terrain
  • On the opposite end of the spectrum, maybe there are still people who want damp rock back
  • Nothing in publ looks terribly attractive but we could always consider a retest if the community is in favor
I don’t favor action on any of those things, but they’re at least conversation starters. Maybe I’m out of touch and action on Sun or Kilo or something is way more popular than I thought.
 
MZ said:
I figure the answer to this helps lay out council plans for the future so here goes- we’re not currently planning a survey or particularly worried about anything in the metagame. The tier feels balanced, we’ve got 3 major tours going on right now without any massive complaints or things taking over the meta, and we haven’t had a major shift recently to shake things up. If people want to push for any change, they should be posting here to change our minds! Otherwise, we’re feeling good.

That being said, what seems like the most likely potential avenues for discussion?
  • A few people have brought up Kilowattrel
  • Taking greater action on cheese styles like sun or psychic terrain
  • On the opposite end of the spectrum, maybe there are still people who want damp rock back
  • Nothing in publ looks terribly attractive but we could always consider a retest if the community is in favor
I don’t favor action on any of those things, but they’re at least conversation starters. Maybe I’m out of touch and action on Sun or Kilo or something is way more popular than I thought.
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i think making a survery is the best option (i hate glowbro so much i want to ban this bitch)

thx for the answer and gl for the SA tour!
 
a glowbro suspect is something I'd get reqs for personally. All of it checks are sniped by its coverage (movepool specific, like if the glowbro doesn't have eq then yeah skunk and hisuiqwil check it well) which can be annoying. Regen is a bitch too.

Disagree in sun being good though. A glowbro ban is something that can improve this tier (you are forced to offensively check it).
 
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MZ said:
I figure the answer to this helps lay out council plans for the future so here goes- we’re not currently planning a survey or particularly worried about anything in the metagame. The tier feels balanced, we’ve got 3 major tours going on right now without any massive complaints or things taking over the meta, and we haven’t had a major shift recently to shake things up. If people want to push for any change, they should be posting here to change our minds! Otherwise, we’re feeling good.

That being said, what seems like the most likely potential avenues for discussion?
  • A few people have brought up Kilowattrel
  • Taking greater action on cheese styles like sun or psychic terrain
  • On the opposite end of the spectrum, maybe there are still people who want damp rock back
  • Nothing in publ looks terribly attractive but we could always consider a retest if the community is in favor
I don’t favor action on any of those things, but they’re at least conversation starters. Maybe I’m out of touch and action on Sun or Kilo or something is way more popular than I thought.
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My current opinion is monitoring Slowbro-Galar, Heracross and Sun. I'll likely attempt to make an elaborate post on these (mainly Heracross) at some point, to analyze their results in tour games, effects on builder and such, maybe once SCL is over. I can't say anything feels like an emergency and it's better to wait before doing anything, because I can't say for sure what I would want to vote or target first.
Metagame is really cool, yes there are quite a lot of threats to account for, but it feels like every team has ways to fight back. I really like our defensive options, removal is very good for SV standards, it's BO centric which is always an indicator of a good shape.. At least that's my impression.
For other potential concerns, I've seen some people bring up Araquanid but it feels kinda fishy/preppable i would say.. Yes I do think some teams just get destroyed by this mon on paper but in practice it's ok to play around, somewhat. Kilowattrel is whatever to me, Pawmot turned out to be fine, Arcanine is very threatening but has some clear counterplay. I don't know if anyone has a problem with Zoroark anymore.
 
I dont think glowbro is broken tbh, if anything it is looking to be one of those mons that can hold the tier together. It wants to run like 3 items at the same time and it cant phase, which means it can be broken through with setup wallbreakers, some of which can set up on glowbro itself, especially with Substitute. Trick Room + Nasty Plot can be very threatening, but it's pretty matchup dependent.

Heracross is a monstrosity, how is this thing in the tier is a dilemma to me and this is coming from someone who generally prefers more offensive metagames. Choice Scarf Moxie can snowball, while guts flame orb does what it does, and you can even employ it to set up spikes. This mon does everything, it breaks, it sweeps, and it supports.
 
I have never been the biggest Glowbro fan, but I think it enables more teams than it limits. It's the exact opposite problem to something like Heattom which had one set and basically meant you had to run Rhydon or Lanturn (which in turn restricted usable team archetypes).

Glowbro fits on and enables most types of team but it can never do everything all at once. The middle-of-the-road stat block means it needs to be EVed and have an item to a specific role, it can't do everything at once.

A few people have mentioned the AV set as being the most problematic, but its either too weak to do much into defense or too frail to check offense consistently. In short, it rewards thoughtful teambuilding. You cannot just slap a Glowbro on your team and call it a day, you need to think about what your team needs then tailor the set accordingly. It is, in my view, about as broken as Iron Valiant in OU which is to say, not at all.

Second, most teams will have a good way to deal with Glowbro without much change. Apart from HO, most teams have always needed a solid answer to Hoopa and Psychic/Ghost/Darks. Most bulky offense, balance, and defensive teams pre Glowbro dropping already had at least one of Bombirdier, HQwil, or Skuntank. There are a number of strong, common mixed walls like Milotic, P2, Snorlax. And most teams have a strong ground type which, while chunked by Surf can revenge kill or check at least once.

What about Tera Water you say? Tera is resource. If you get swept by a Tera Water CM Glowbro then your opponent has outplayed you (or you built a team with no way to beat bulky waters and/or slow setup sweepers). It's no different to losing to Tera Poison or Flying Rhydon (and I'd argue that mon is more of a problem than Glowbro ever will be).

And like yeah, it sucks to lose because your opp had the perfect set and perfect Tera type to beat your team but ain't that just the Gen 9 life?
 
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Another potential ban: Tatsugiri

Why tatsu? I'm talking about specs sets, 120 spa with dragon type is pretty much. He isn’t broken, but forces you to get a dragon resist or a spd mon with recovery. Welp, tatsu isn’t uncheckable, it’s why i say "potential".
 
PorygonBG said:
Another potential ban: Tatsugiri

Why tatsu? I'm talking about specs sets, 120 spa with dragon type is pretty much. He isn’t broken, but forces you to get a dragon resist or a spd mon with recovery. Welp, tatsu isn’t uncheckable, it’s why i say "potential".
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I had this train of thought a while ago : Specs DM looks like something that destroys the tier... until you remember that our tier is heavily spedef oriented, that Tatsu is frail with very little real defensive value (although its ability helps), that it comes with the opportunity cost of not being the removal for the team and that it puts itself into undesirable positions with the spatk drop. Our tier is also focused on pretty offensive BOs right now so its limited speed tier is manageable.
You can even have a few common fairy and steel teras on mons like hecid, bombirdier, cramorant, milotic or snorlax to help with it. We have a lot of decent means to play around it and it's just a nice balance breaker at the end of the day.
Yes, you will likely have to play florges, aloslash if you want to go for a bulkier style of team, but it's not like it's the only restrictive mon in the tier who forces you to a play a bit more proactively, and these mons are staples to begin with.
What could have made tatsu broken is its ability to abuse passive stuff like milotic or palossand, but the former can adapt (alluring voice is common now), and the latter is just really prone to inviting special breakers in general, not really an issue related specifically to tatsu... so it makes sense that you have to compensate with a spedef mon with recovery, just like you have to with kilo, brav-h, hoopa, specs florges etc.
Tatsu is scarier in theory than in practice and the fact this set isn't played that much is proof that it's not easy to play and slot on teams. Don't play the passive game around it and if you still want to do it, there are a lot of less common solutions to play around it (frosmoth, grimmsnarl, av regen mons, whimsicott, porygon2 and chansey...)
Some of these can get destroyed by tera dragon but then it's a huge commitment.. you get the idea
 
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