The very obvious (and very much expected) winners were Raikou and Registeel, who have also been made officially OU this past year. There were also some adjacent rises in Salamence and Swampert that were also very much expected with the rise of Slop (shoutout Fruhdazi).
[...]
An interesting shift to me has been that of Dugtrio; despite many threads and arguments about a potential Dugtrio ban, it has fallen 3 spots from last year, despite new dug-able targets like Raikou and Registeel rising in popularity. The aforementioned rise of slop structures and increased usage of Salamence likely explains a big part of this [...]
I want to add context here because 1) I have an ego, 2) I feel like this misrepresents a lot of the shit I've been repping for a minute, and 3) I feel like Fruh and I are more uniquely poised to address your call for meta analysis, but he's in tour prep mode, so now you have me
Let's get the record clear: DD Tar/Steel/End Pert/Kou/DD Mence was my concoction, and I labbed modifications with Fruh in preparation for JI2. Credit to his hard work and contributions, but I'm very much the theoretician motivating the use of End Pert, off-beat DD Brick Mences, and Registeel on Spikeless trapless offense and Skarm + Spin. He introduced me to the Forre fit in SPL, and I found a way to make it a robust archetype, including identifying optimizations in Tar's sets, and together we found optimal coverage on Tar, with him doing the testing and I much of the theorizing (s/o Vapi for the Grass Steel nod, which was pivotal) and initial sketching. I share my stuff with everyone, so I'd appreciate it if all of the details I worked hard to discover wouldn't be entirely attributed to Fruhdazi at this point, especially when the details reflect collaboration or decisions made for the community. Credit where due -- I don't care if we speak about these things without giving credit, but I bristle when I see my entire body of work and effort misattributed with my name erased.
The second point I will make is that the loudest voices in favor of a Dug ban have been Fruhdazi and I. These builds I sketched specifically as a patch to solve the Dug problem. That being said, I remain strongly anti-Dug, and I don't see my adaptation to Dug as proof of Dug's healthy existence in the metagame. I've continually argued that Dug's footprint cannot be fully understood by what we see in play that thrives despite Dug but rather by the hidden graveyard of archetypes and sets that are never used because of Dugtrio's inclusion. I contend that Dugtrio exists in a perpetual arms race of setting the standard for stall teams, those teams being counter-teamed, and readjusting to establish a new norm for defensive compositions.
I would also like to argue that while I have proposed certain antidotes with my work to Johnald's (and Vapicuno's) contributions in updating CuneDug comps with my Registeel Spikes builds, those games remain highly technical and those teams are robust enough that there is a reasonable argument to be made that the better player will win the game fairly consistently due to the technique required to play both sides of that match-up.
To that extent, I think that CuneDug -- to your point about Cune's Spike in viability -- sets the tempo for the rest of the tier, and one can argue that Raikou is seen as an RPS (read: fishing) option for low-Dug scouts because it's difficult to patch for multiple Duggable threats on a team, and I would argue that Registeel trading one-for-one with Dug on slop by booming or Countering is one of the few antidotes -- Steel is less Duggable than Kou or Pert, even, so I challenge your claim about Steel being highly Duggable or its absence highly punishable. Maybe Spec off and AeroDug can challenge that notion, but that's a very nuanced topic for another day. For now, I'll keep this section short, but I want to note that this is why I feel Cune has jumped in viability and that I believe Dugtrio falling on the list is largely cosmetic and likely does not reflect any real shifts in actual viability, in my understanding of the tier.
Is it good that the best style of team can't be game-planned in the builder? I think that it lends itself to stagnation and tier-death. I still have two ideas I'm working on which might flip that dynamic on its head, but one of them is with another Pokemon I wouldn't mind to see banned in Gengar, as it gatekeeps high-viability options in a similar way to Dugtrio, and the other is a patch that attempts to address both Dug and Gar for bulkier offenses. It's a fine line to thread between running bulky enough to avoid Dug traps, fast enough to avoid getting run over by Skarmory and Spikes, and capable of absorbing WoW and coverage from Gengar.
I'd say that (Tar +) Gar Spikes and Bliss + Dug Spikes are centralizing, and I'd like to center the discussion on cores and comps rather than individual mons, because so much context is lost by zooming in on those individual mons when it's the synergies that create the context for every match-up and interaction. And I'd like to make the point that offensive options are short on Gar checks because Baton Pass Zapdos can't hold momentum worth a damn without Speed Pass to help it, and it's hard (impossible?) to compress WoW absorbers into a non-SpD slot without serious consessions. Recall BKC's video essay on why Lax is terrible in ADV because contemporary Lax teams relied heavily on Lax dueling Gar.
Offense is so gatekept by Spikes offense and stall that the tier is polarizing around Spikes. Every mixed offense idea I've come up with in the last years I've updated and upgraded by adding Spikes (see brainrot, Forre Spikes comps). Every time I've brought up Dug's brokenness, I've gotten a response that Skarm is more centralizing. I'd argue that it's only because Skarm fits with Gar and with Dug that it is oppressively centralizing rather than centralizing in a purely healthy way, but I digress. My concern is that Spikeless offense probably just sucks because Spikes make everything but CuneLax offense better, and I think CuneLax being good is generally good for the tier.
My ideal ADV is one in which the tier is centralized by mons that offer real defensive and offensive utility simultaneously, and teams that have extreme compartmentalization accent the tier rather than setting the tempo. I think Bliss's bulk and utility makes it a healthy force for ADV. I think it's strong fit with shitmons -- Ghost-types and Dugtrio in particular -- turns a mon with 0 offensive presence into a tier-king in a way that kills the diversity of Spikeless approaches that require real skill and thought to craft and play. I know some people disagree with my assessment that Gar is a serious problem and believe that Dug and/or Gar keep the tier fresh and balanced, but I think a tier with Dug (and Kou or Jira or even Mag, if they're so scary absent Dug) banned is probably more dynamic and healthy without creating serious headaches in the builder. Just my two cents.
