Been a while since I did a forum post, eh? I want to give my quick thoughts on the tier to get my opinion out here on Smogon forums and to keep people in the loop about the rapid developments that have happened over the last RUGL through my insight. I want to publicly announce we are going to have an
open tour with signups going out next week! This post is meant to help the people trying to get in the tour on what the current meta looks like right now, I would go as far as to say the VR and Samples we made a month ago arent completely up-to-date, RUGL just flipped our knowledge of the tier upside down. How so you may ask? I will go over my thoughts on the metagame at large first, then post my new updated VR with explanations as to who i think won and lost the least over the course of RUGL changes etc.
Overall Metagame Thoughts: 
Honestly, I think my complaints regarding the meta in the previous metagame have died out for the most part.
The tier is pretty stable right now, and it might stay that way for a good time until we get probable shifts or some crazy tech not even I thought of has been unveiled. As I tend to be overt about my thoughts on that kind of stuff, me and other people will try and find ways of solving those kinds of problems and it seems to work out fairly well. I tend to speak things into existence a lot even tho I'm not actively playing in this tour (helps mental health), I like this metagame a lot and I want it to stay healthy and fresh, so I do talk with people a lot about new possible tech and team structures. If its anything I want this post to do I want it to help people formulate their own opinion on this kinda stuff, not to regurgitate what I say. As far as the tier goes, my concerns regarding Damp or the Polis has faded, Politoed is going to be a great breaker because of its ability to trade well with its strong offensive precense, defensive profile, and blocking Explosion, but I feel like Explosion users are teching back in response nicely with more Hidden Power Grass Glalie and Double-Edge Metang, not to mention the other ways of brawling Politoed which I will get to in a bit. As far as Poliwrath goes, people know that Belly Drum is an existent threat enough to where they almost overcompensate for it, and getting a successful sweep off with Belly Drum Wrath has been more challenging. This was the only set that really pushed the mon almost over the edge and sparked discussion regarding tier health. While Bulk Up, Lead, and Defensive sets (you heard me right) are solid they dont break the mon by any means. Quagsire got bodied with HP Grass Toed everywhere, thats what I'll leave it at lol.
Quite possibly the biggest and most notable change right now is seeing a mon ranked as low as B- shine in full glory as one of the tiers most versatile offensive threats and in a huge twist, outdone the rest of its competition. This mon I'm talking about is
Rapidash, used a lot more in RUGL for being a Fire-type with a great Speed tier and a myriad of offensive sets that deal with Politoed quite well in comparison to other FIre-types. As people began to notice this, Fire-types have seen a big resurgence and are back to being more metagame defining threats. While Flareon lacks the Speed tier of Choice Band Rapidash and has to leverage its health more, It kept being Flareon by having good power without CB Rapidash's choice lock nature. Magmar has been revered more for its ability to hit other FIres and Politoed well at the same time with special coverage alone. Torkoal's defensive utility has been more robust by checking Rapidash and a slew of other physical attackers. Perhaps another big change that came as a good shock to a lot of people including myself when I talked about it was the rise in
Mantine, a mon I completely dunked on in my last post. That thing I said about speaking metagame shifts into existence is no joke, and a good example I can point to is the lack of HP Electric Toed in favor of HP Grass, all because I said Mantine was near-unviable dogwater. Somehow in an ironic twist of fate, disrespecting Mantine only made it much better than it could've hoped for in any ADV RU iteration. HP Grass Toed just gets duped by Mantine, somehow revealing the other key components of Mantine that make it effective, from its Spikes Immunity, to soft checking Hitmonchan, to being great into HP Grass fires, to its Rain Dance set being a potent endgame sweeper that can countersweep sun sweepers, and the like. Mantine also helps Quagsire out, shown in
this replay where they can be used on the same team to cover for each other beautifully, Quagsire covering for HP Elec Toed/Fires as well as blocking Explosion, and Mantine covering for HP Grass Toed and Sunny Day Rapidash. The general takeaway is that Fires are centralizing the meta a little more, and alternative Waters to Politoed are being more explored.
Speaking of the last replay,
stall is actually viable now! While Offense still defines the tier at large, it can sometimes go south at one wrong turn of luck; Stall provides a means of consistency and balance to the tiers pace. Stall has seen a resurgence with more defensive waters being explored such as SpDef Politoed, RestTalk Poliwrath, and defensive Mantine, as well as a former "unmon" Lickitung getting its due diligence with its Heal Bell + Wish role compression as a special wall that helps a lot of teams' longevity. Rapid Spin support from Hitmonchan is key to these fat builds, being very fond of the Haunter uprising for short-term spinblocking that loses to HP Ghost prediction or just gets outlasted in offense v fat wars. SpDef Politoed breathed a whole new life into the mon, tearing through teams using offensive Politoed/Mantine as their water check while most of the Toed breakers still don't like switching into it (even Haunter has to 3HKO).
Anyways, here I show off my personal VR, always subject to change but what I feel represents the current meta to me. I won't go over every single placing but I will talk about some notable changes here in comparison to our current VR which I helped take part in, mainly by talking about everything thats underrated and overrated to me.
Viability Rankings: 
A+: 
A: 
A-: 
B+: 
B: 
B-: 
C+: 
C: 
C-: 
To start off, I just want to go over the S rank real quick. I used to think that Politoed was clearly above the rest of the whole tier with Glalie and Haunter short behind, but I think the gap has been pretty bridged now and I can't deny any longer Glalie is the king of every single structure and Spikes are too important to the meta. Politoed is very good as the premier Water-type that also fits on virtually every team, but alternatives have been explored and more sufficient counterplay has been found for it. The alternative Spikers are nowhere near as splashable as Glalie is with more marginal upside, main counterplay to Glalie just being to outoffense it at every corner or pack a Spin Hitmonchan, but someway somehow Glalie finds a way and Spikes find a way. Moving onto A+ to A I believe these threats are currently some of the more centralizing threats of the meta and are splashable on many different teamstyles. I've been MUCH higher on Hitmonchan these days, my mantra with it being that it makes any team that has it better, and it really does. It prevents so much things in the tier (spikes + normals + sweepers) from being too broken with its great array of unmatched utility, and it's also a whole offensive threat to account for! Works on any structure, has numerous ways around its potential checks, just a great mon. I already gave the spiel about Rapidash so I wont go in too much detail, just that in terms of sets I think SubTox > CB > Sunny Day > Silk Scarf. Raichu has potential to be in A+ but I think A is fine for now. Now that we got past them I just wanna move onto the overrated/underrated picks rn.
Overrated:
Persian is the poster child for this whole section and I want to explain its placing first considering how controversial it might be rn. One thing very apparent about Persian compared to the other wallbreakers that abide in A+ is that Persian is less self-sufficient and needs more team support to be able to do what it wants to do. Persian's lack of power just gets in the way a lot, even offensive structures have been getting more bulky and faster to combat Persian; It needs Adamant on every set besides CB which ofc is more exploitable and doesn't give you reliable priority as choice Fake Out is Not It. Because Persian needs a boosting item on every set it runs, be it CB or Silk Scarf or Liechi Berry, it can't run lefties and its longevity is quite awful, seemingly not a problem when "all it needs to do is nuke everything" but you have to nuke things with Double Edge and the recoil tacks on quickly with spikes in the equation, compare with the other breakers in the higher ranks who have enough sufficient power to run Lefties and can actually fit more utility into their movesets. Not to say that Persian is a bad mon, of course it still can be a beast into offense as long as you spikestack out of your mind and cover for Salac Haunter, Hitmonchan, etc; you can honestly forget it into bulky teams youre dead weight there lol. I just think people give it more credit than it honestly deserves, if I wanted a fast Spikes abuser/cleaner I have Rapidash right there who can open up for itself much better and isn't completely reliant on its teamcomp to function.
This is the second most probably the most controversial placing here, what happened to Ninetales??? Isn't the meta supposed to be Fire centric? What has happened to make Tales fall such a large amount? Fire horse. The simple answer is fire horse. The longer answer is, due to Rapidash being a much better offensive fire, the old Tales sets people were using to be good into Toed stopped being effective, in fact some of the first RUGL replays shown an HP Grass Toxic Tales being setup fodder for Sub Dash, and the dominos started to tumble from there. Nowadays if you want to run a good Tales set you need Wisp or Roar and still actually hit other fires, only move doing that is HP Water which of course means you're worse into the waters. There is no fine balance of Tales being both good into Waters and good into Fires at the same time other than hoping the Fire you run into has no Lefties and you can run Roar on it to shuffle it around with Spikes... but inherently all of the progress Tales makes is just too slow for my liking. Like the only reason you would ever use this as an offensive fire is to have a reliable Haunter switchin, only one hole you're able to plug. This is why I think the main Tales set that I think works rn is Defensive sets with Rest, forcing fat builds to necessitate it as a Haunter/Fire/Sun Sweeper/CM Chimecho check. I just don't happen to know why I need to use Tales and I think it fell off considerably hard in comparison to everything else, I've always been low on Tales but this is prob my lowest point with it.
Tough sell over Haunter as an offensive Ghost-type generally speaking, but also a bunch of other issues plague Banette that I think make me lower on the mon. Since everyone knows what it does now it just is more easy to exploit, it doesn't have Haunter's proactivity of Boom so it can just get statused and lose its offensive precense, easy to do since it clicks Endure in front of a lot of mons with Toxic. It also has Persian's issue of just feeling like nothing into bulky teams, with physically defensive mons that just dont care about Shadow Ball much, Sableye will sometimes use full PDef for this reason. I also mention Fires are getting more central to the meta and there's nothing Banette hates more than Fires. There's a lot of other things I could say about Banette that highlight its inconsistency, and while it is a unique breaker, the meta just isnt kind to it atm and you're usually better off having the swiss-army-knife offensive utility of Haunter.
I know I know I was behind the original hype around this mon in lead but I think the hype has sufficiently died down and Kabutops is actually not that good of a lead anymore. Imo beating lead Glalie and Banette is not that high of a bar when taking into account the other losing lead matchups those two commonly have, and Kabu's matchups into everything else is usually losing or inconsistent. Stantler wins, Hitmonchan can win with bulk EVs not that you'd be in a good position taking the trade anyway, Primeape wins, Water leads win or render Kabu ineffective, Torkoal can just have HP Grass and win without a crit / flinch, Hypno / Poliwrath win, and the new lead Raichu wins. Persian lead is winning for Kabu but Persian lead has dipped in usage since most Persian are lasts (another minus for Persian). Ok so its lead matchups arent good but what if it needs to come in midgame? Well Metang is back to being good again, Defensive Poliwrath and Quagsire builds took a rise, and it just gets battered by Spikes repeatedly with a speed tier that makes the Spikes damage really matter. Back Kabu sets are nonexistent and/or fishy so really only the lead set is worth considering here. Its ok sometimes but I don't think it truly "beats everything" the way that it used to.
Why. Please, unironically, tell my why use this. There is just no place for Mime rn and everything I can think of that it can run is either outclassed or inconsistent af, theres no reason to viably run this since the defensive utility is nil and the offensive benefits are so unbelievably half-baked. If you're using it as a fast special breaker, well, Haunter Rapidash Raichu and Magmar exist. Fast Encore? Also Raichu which has actual defensive/offensive utility into Toed. Dual Screens? Absolutely an inconsistent playstyle and I can honestly see Hypno being better at it. Calm Mind Hypnosis? Calm Mind is so hard to set up reliably on a mon like Mime and I think Hypnosis is straight up unviable in this tier, trust me when I say as much as I tried to make the move in general work on mons like Stantler Persian Poliwrath, hitting is not very beneficial and missing one just puts you on the back foot a lot, it is UNBELIEVABLY inconsistent. I don't think there's anything of worth to Mime, I rank it out of pity bc it might do one thing in some tour game but it wouldn't be too meaningful. Bottom of the barrel mon, genuinely.
Underrated:
WHEW I talk about some positive things for once... ok. Metang has been overhated pre-RUGL, lot of this comes down to when Sub Toed was a new discovery and passive Metang sets just got bodied by them. However, all it takes is a deep breath and some EV teching and I think Metang isn't too bad into Politoed, losing fs but it can definitely make progress and deny free Subs from Toed, either with invested EQ or Double Edge so it doesn't need said investment. Its offensive sets are also good in this regard, hitting Toed modestly on the switch while still having Boom to open the way for its team. Agility is good in a few endgames, seen
here where it has very limited walls after both Toeds go into a Toed war. I also think CB is a funny lead into Normals Hitmonchan and Banette. Metang is still very versatile and it makes a lot of good teams function with its blanket-check nature.
I might be the only one rating Torkoal this much higher than everyone else but I see a LOT of potential with that mon, good on bulky teams and good on offense, pretty good lead rn and helps check a lot of key threats in the tier. It gets dogged on a lot because "Its the weakest Fire into Toed" but in practice I dont see it being any worse than Ninetales into Toed and I honestly think Sub on Toed is more droppable than ever so its nothing terrible, and it also should go without saying Torkoal is pretty solid into non-Toed teams too. There is plenty of potential with the mon, boom is just an incredible tool to have even in Damp meta.
I was pretty close to putting Meganium in A-, just that consideration alone and the pushback on it drives me to write about it here. Offensive and defensive synergies alike have been explored vastly with this mon and I really think this is so underutilized for a lot of people. SD Synthesis is very good at breaking through fat structures, SubSD Salac can actually get pretty scary since some prio bounces off of it at 25% and screws with people using slower Toxic-reliant teams to break through something like Meganium, and SpDef sets have huge potential as it checks Offensive Toed very well while having Leech Seed and Body Slam for Fires switching in thinking its "too passive". Really good mon and I like what it does for the tier.
People have slept on the octopus for a long point after the lead metagame developed more towards a Hitmonchan Persian and Stantler bias, I know I have slept on it, but now I think Octillery is one of if not the best water lead rn. The thing with Octillery then was that a lot of leads liked to run Lum Berry for Hypnosis Persian. But that set completely faded out of existence, lots of leads including Octillery gets to run lefties, and now its winning on average against many top leads. Lum Berry leads being less common helps Octillery gain a lot of momentum with Twave from turn 1, and it luring Toed early so effectively just enables offensive Fires and Waters a lot. I wouldn't be surprised if more Octillery offenses start popping up more in tour play, it's a really solid lead that can screw with a lot of opposing offensive teams reliant on keeping Toed alive for Waters.
Speaking of water leads, these two might actually be ok too, while Wailord is a bit worse in pressure since it relies on Hydro Pump damage and doesn't have speed control, it's the best water lead in terms of general bulk so it can duel Toed more easy, and it broken boom will always be handy by limiting Glalies ups or taking out Chan early for a sweeper. Seadra just nukes things and has the best speed tier but I get if its just not there because of the bad Toed MU. The original idea behind the whole water lead rise to me is if people are fine with Kabu's defensive profile and stuff then why not use leads that can fill the same breaking role while acting as a second Toed. Azu might be worth a try at some point but I don't feel particularly compelled to use it myself, even if I feel fine not hitting Sableye, I still have 4MSS. We will see...
At a point when I was dangerously close to URing it, I found that Pupitar might be something now. Previous meta definitely didnt give it much of any entry points, but now you have HP Elec Fires, CB Rapidash, and WishChu all being fodder for Pupitar to get to DDin'. Still dont find it to be the most consistent pick as it relies on getting a good MU like Sableye teams or CB Rapidash offenses, and it needs 2 DDs to outspeed Rapidash now, but developments in teambuilding have really helped its case, with Rapidash/Flareon beating down Toed and checking the HP Grass Fires Pupitar struggles with. Pupitar has more of a defined tiny role in sweeping, something that can ruin some otherwise conventional prep.
If you had a close eye you may also have noticed a slight anomaly peeking through in C-, lemme explain a lil bit.
This was a theorymon concept I did for a couple hours stolen from the pages of NU. Mawile's main benefit over Metang is its better matchups into Stantler, Persian, Banette, and Kabutops, while consistently breaking the Poli's Subs with Seismic Toss. Theres not much reason to use it without Baton Pass in RU but a tiny niche is a tiny niche for people that tend to have problems with the mons I stated above. I consider that to be the case for a lot if not all of the C- ranks, finding tiny almost insignificant ways of dealing with overrated mons (cough persian cough). Still, if it happens to get use I'll vouch for it in the official VR but its unlikely. Just proof that I don't think the tier is entirely stale and we haven't explored everything.
Closing Thoughts: 
It feels like a long time since I've been able to make one of these posts, especially since I almost didn't want to make something like this until after RUGL was over, by then we'd have a survey sent to the players regarding tier health and what we should do in the future. The eventual open tour was just a good segue for me to get a post out while all eyes are still on ADV RU. Truth be told mons burnout has hit like a freight train, I think this tier is a really good ADV tier but ofc I don't wanna pander on it forever; I have built so many teams and have rambled for countless hours over this tier that doing something like this is a step for me to say "I am proud of what I've done. I am a good player of this tier and I care about its health for many other people to enjoy quite like I do." In short, hopefully I can take a development break until we need to get down to business with tours, surveys, and shifts oh my. Thank you for reading this far in another way-too-long rambling session over the best ADV tier to ever do it, again if you feel so inclined join
our Discord to build hype for the upcoming tour. Peace~
Ninjask
Jumpluff
Absol
Clefable
Xatu
Pikachu
Sudowoodo
Vigoroth
Raticate
Bellossom
Wartortle
Closing Thoughts (Re: ADVPL): 
