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although usage stats don't mean much, nobody uses it in this spl and wcop 2019 and it's the only OU mon that ranks C in viability. according to smogon analysis, it is generally outclassed by lax on offensive teams. gross and ttar seriously threaten frail regice teams. forre can set spikes on regice if regice is without hp fire.
baton pass teams feel no different than before the ban.
on second thought, being able to dump off into a spore sleeper like smeargle would help. i also wouldn't mind being able to use more baton pass pokemon
Considering that SPL ended and ADV Cup is around the corner, I think this is a good time to update the VRs.
I will just quote myself from the previous update regarding how this thing works:
I want every "relevant" ADV players to PM me their own ranking. I will then make an average of everyone's ranking to reach the final result (similary to the SPL pre-season power rankings). I plan to disclose the full results and show who voted what exactly (unless they don't want to be revealed). I will also probably discount every pokemon's highest and lowest individual ranking to avoid outliers.
I want you guys to give this post a quick read, and if you care about this thing, to send me YOUR own viability ranking by PM. Please also mention if you'd like your ranking to be associated with your name or not. Also, if you know anyone you'd consider as qualified enough to send their take on the matter, let them know and tell them to PM me with their ranking too.
The only thing I'll do is probably decide myself whose vote gets to be taken into account for the averaged result at the end. Feel free to ask me in PM if you'd make the cut so you dont waste time sending a ranking for no reason.
In the meantime, feel free to influence everyone's vote by pushing for or against various Pokemons.
The order after A rank is tricky, especially the top of A- where I think they're all about equally good.
S rank
Tyranitar
S- rank
Metagross - Teams cant not want metagross. It just splashes on every build. Even if you know the set, you still are losing something to explosion unless you risk gengar. The set variety included makes me edge it out over the rest of A+ into it's own field.
A+ rank
Swampert
Zapdos
Gengar - lost some steam with pursuit tar being more common than ever tbh. It feels strongest with its 3 attack hypnosis sets honestly, just gotta use a 60% move...
A rank
Skarmory
Blissey - I'm not quite as high on the hype train as blissey feels more exploitable and significantly less varying in what it does than all those above it. I also really dislike using mons with 4mss personally, and blissey is one of the biggest offenders.
Snorlax
Celebi - I think offensive celebi is pretty dead, but soft pass + leechpass sets are just so damn effective. It's one of the best mons when it comes to Not Losing I'll say.
A- rank
Salamence
Suicune
Dugtrio
Starmie
Jirachi - I'm not sure what to think about Jirachi. Offensive CM is probably not an A- pokemon, but as a spdef wish passer it fits a lot of teams well. I think wishtoxic can just game some matchups to be unbeatable as well. Its winrates are staggeringly low every tournament but it might just be because jirachi tends to be BPB (figure this acronym out).
Claydol
Forretress - Forretress usage gonna skyrocket in ADV cup/ci4 thanks to the forretress alliance that undi, linear, and I have formed. It pairs insanely well with pursuit tar and loves that gengar is not super strong right now. Also with skarm bliss so high in usage, you have a nice advantage in the hazards war when you have the forre into the skarm thanks to not needing to also have a starmie for spinning. Pair it with wish blissey for success.
B+ rank
Magneton
Milotic
Cloyster - cyberodin is on a mission to proving that cloyster is the goat, and hes doing a decent job of it. I still strongly prefer forretress as a dual hazards control mon, but cloys speed and ability to setup and threaten a fast boom on passive mons like milo/cune gives it a nice niche on more offensive spikes teams.
Aerodactyl
Jolteon
Moltres
Breloom - This mons insanely potent when paired with pursuit tar. I wasnt even the only person showing off brelooms power this spl. I think its definitely OU by viability right now.
Heracross
B rank
Flygon
Venusaur
Gyarados
Charizard
Jynx
Porygon2 - Should probably drop to BL. It really only fits on those outdated reverse trap CM spam teams, which I dont feel are particularly good or even common. It doesnt do much else besides trap dugtrio.
Hariyama - Hariyama really feels like it has a hidden gem set just waiting to be shown. The knock rest set is good enough to justify B rank though. Hariyama is more consistent than all the MU cheese mons that B- is designed to encapsulate.
S
Sand Stream remains unmatched, significantly impacting literally every single battle. Tar itself remains a consistent performer - Pursuit is key as ever and many teams have incredible difficulty not sustaining a ton of damage against mixed sets.
A+
The strongest offensive Pokemon, and it comes with incredible defensive utility to boot. Unmatched in raw power and set flexibility alike.
Offensive and Refresh sets are the backbones of their respective team styles and define much of the meta. Endeavor is top-notch as well.
Spikes Gar teams have taken a hit, but they are still the #1 thing you must be prepared for and remain dangerous. While this is the main reason I've kept Gar this high, he is not just a Spikes-abusing machine and should be seen more on teams lacking them; almost as relevant is just how absolutely excellent he is on offensive teams without Spikes, where he really gets to make his extensive movepool shine en route to enabling incredibly threatening sweepers.
Blissey is kind of like the Pokemon version of TTar's Sand Stream - just by existing on your team, it will be incredibly useful, game in and game out, by virtue of how much it covers; it's even good against physical offense! It has a multitude of great, diverse sets and is generally a beacon of consistency. It absolutely deserves A+.
A
Even more monstrous with mixed sets really taking off (because Zap is a bird); Drill Peck + Grass slices through Pert + Cele (/ Venu) and can pick off Blissey with Spikes, but max Attack HP Fighting has merit too, since by the time Pert learns it's not Grass then Tyranitar or Blissey will have already been dusted. Plus, Pert still won't like Spikes + really strong Drill Pecks. DP also comes with the excellent side benefits of destroying Heracross and Breloom.
Celebi's resistances - Water, Electric, Fighting and even Ground (protecting Waters/Steels from CB EQ) - are incredibly useful. Natural Cure is tremendous, letting it pivot into Toxic-spamming defensive Pokes to safely Leech Seed, which is of course as good as ever, especially against offensive teams. Baton Pass sets up all kinds of synergy beautifully. While they're not currently popular, purely offensive sets are dangerous as hell, too.
Dugtrio opens holes for its offensive teammates or covers holes for its defensive ones, and generally massacres offense.
A-
Jirachi is underrated as hell. Its standard sets bring a lot to its team and it has a ton of unexplored options that can go a long way.
Asta's Modest Cro set is the rejuvenation Suicune has needed.
Last year's naysaying was a passing trend. Aero's proved once again that he's the real deal - he rips through offense and many common defensive-leaning teams alike.
Possibly the most oppressive Pokemon in the metagame - it is ludicrously difficult to switch into safely without Blissey or Milotic. Plus, while Milo teams at least tend to be pretty well-guarded against Spikes, Blissey is highly susceptible to getting Roared with a couple layers down.
B+
MixZap has improved Jolteon significantly. Getting Thunder Waved by other Zap isn't so bad - it allows for a slow Baton Pass out of it.
B
Offensive Claydol is on the up-and-up, and it's fitting into more aggressive teams, making it more well-rounded as a Pokemon.
Flygon is being seriously slept on. All the Zapdos not running Toxic or HP Ice? Teams relying on bulk-lacking Swampert to tank STAB Earthquake? Most offenses seriously struggle against him, and common bulky teams are begging to get ripped up by CB. Gon is legit.
B-
Venu deserves to move up from C. It is unique in the way it is able to effortlessly exert such an extraordinary amount of pressure over many solid teams.
C
Jumpluff is an absolute terror when it gets going with some Spikes down. That speed stat is no joke. Encore is a hell of a move as well. (idk why the sprite doesn't work)
- Sand is king (100s if not 1000s of free % of damage over the course of a match, for those who may not understand quite yet) AND you get a kickass mon to boot. Fills many roles defensively while exerting pressure. Extremely versatile. The best mon.
A+
- The discovery of fast Mixed Metagross bumps this up another couple spots. No longer tied at the hip to or limited as greatly by Magneton. Classic sets are as good as ever.
- Honestly I think people are sleeping on Gar. Meta trends haven't been the kindest to Gar but "standard" BoltBeam WoW filler is still strong and has matchups it absolutely dominates. Lots of room for creativity with MonoGar, different coverage variations, and Focus Punch that are underexplored.
- it's damn hard to effectively "counter" and it's damn hard to wear down. Instant insurance vs all special attackers and mixed attackers. Underrated versatility - easy to tailor a set to best fit a team (Fire Blast, Counter, Tox, Wish, T-Wave, Bold, Max speed, etc)
- can't beat the classics. Defensive glue to so many teams and archetypes. Just flexible enough to be unpredictable. Offensive and defensive potential.
- Blissey. That's a list of this thing's counters with Spikes down, and even then Blissey can lose to physically-based mixed sets or Roar. Loads of defensive utility to boot. Best pivot in the tier.
A
- Spikes are good. Skarm is the best spiker. Ironically, while still extremely strong defensively, it has warped the meta around it - people know you gotta beat it down these days - and struggles more than 5 years ago. Refresh invalidates Toxic, Mixed Meta/TTar/Zap/etc don't care about Peck alone, Mag usage is up etc etc
- Traps the 3/4 best mons, given proper conditions. Insurance vs special attackers (Superachi, CM Bi, Starmie). Enabler for all sorts of setup threats.
- Hard to break without Bug coverage. Has freed itself from Mag support with BP Leech + Spinner + BP Zap cores present on spikeless bulky sands. Loads of versatility - Screens are underrated, new-age offensive Leech sets, SDPass, etc.
- People aren't hip to this yet. There is no bigger gatekeeper to teambuilding than Starmie. You need Blissey + backup, soft switch-in (Ludicolo, Snorlax, Regice) + mon that outspeeds (Jolly Dug, CB Aero, Jolteon) in order to beat it. Coverage can be tailored. Offensive Recover + Spin sets can sweep and sit on SkarmBlissPert cores.
- BoltBeam sets + WoW Gar are great. CM that varies from Psychic/Fire only coverage is great. Sub 3 atks is good on certain structures. SpD is mediocre imo (lose to Cune, loses to Gar, loses to Tres, Refresh waters sit in front of it etc) but it has MUs where it can't be killed.
A-
- one of the few special checks in the game, good coverage, strong Boom. Curselax can be devastating to certain archetypes.
- I'm not high on Mence as most. Easy to wear down/scout CBMence. Physical sets need Mag support. Mixed sets are bad without Spikes but it's hard to justify this because it provides so little defensive synergy (overlap with Peck Skarm) and can rarely sweep (Gengar, Aero, Electrics, Starmie all soft check, outspeed, and OHKO). That said, Band with proper support is devastating and Mixed is the bane of slow teams with sand and Spikes down.
- AstaCune eats so many teams - mainly those relying on Curselax or Blissey (without water-resistant phazer or Leech Seed) to check Cune. Defensive sets are still good as well and can provide a counter to itself.
- Skarm dropping Toxic and the rise of offensive (re:fragile) rock resists are 2 trends Aero enjoys immensely. Decent defensive utility from high speed. Another gatekeeper like Starmie - forces 1-3 checks, depending on what they are.
- MagDol is the tier's premier hazard-removal core. Strong Boom. TTar check. Can be EV'd to live virtually any hit -important on offense to trade with offensive CM Bi, Starmie, unboosted Cune, etc.
B+
- This mon can be unbreakable at times and can check virtually every non-electric, non-setup mon. Sort of like a physically-defensive Blissey but its typing is not as ideal as Pert's - doesn't resist Rock, not immune to sand
- Enables so many defensive and offensive strategies and threats. Potential to be useless though. Can be trapped by Dug.
- Much like Zapdos but less defensive utility due to typing and speed tier. Roar + Spikes is good vs fat stuff, WoW is great vs offense. Only Blissey and Milotic can check it long-term.
- Spiker that beats MagDol is extremely valuable. Fast sets are good. Typing is middling but Boom makes up for it.
B
- Drill Peck Skarm being the new standard hurts all of the next 3 mons significantly. The most consistent and threatening of the fighters. Salac sets are a demon when there isn't sand up. SalacSubPunch a la Asta are good for beating down new-age Skarm.
- Offensive pivot with surprisingly good defensive typing - resists rock, water, ground, electric. Spore exerts good pressure. Bane of defensive teams without Celebi.
- Underrated threat. Knock Off is so strong for defensive squads. Hardest TTar counter there is. Soft Moltres check, abuses Bliss and Refresh waters. There's a lot to like here.
- It's a spinner that can struggle to spin and can't really check much. Spiker that consistently beats Claydol though. Needs a lot of support.
- Serviceable blanket check to many special threats. Very few instances where I'd want to use this over Zapdos. Only good on Dual Electric tbh.
- Another underrated mon. Some meta trends have not been the kindest to it (Peck Zap, Peck Skarm, rebirth of Celebi) but it still exerts so much pressure with the threat of sleep and has generally good defensive utility. Hard counter to ProTox waters is a plus.
B-
- Strong enabler for weather-clearing Curselax squads. Threatens Mean Look pass, forcing offensive answers.
- Shittier-than-Mence DDmon. Too weak to be good vs Starmie/Gengar. Too slow to outspeed Aero/Jolt with Adamant. Coverage issues.
- Strong breaker. Offensive Metagross check. Limited defensive utility. Better speed tier than Moltres but far weaker; lacks staying power of Wisp.
- bulky 3 atks + Leech sets are underrated; soft checks Starmie, Suicune, Pert, Gar, TTar, Metagross all in 1 slot. Still exerts good pressure vs Skarm. Best non-CM pass rain dance sweeper thanks to Grass stab.
- lol just use Hariyama if you want a defensive mon. CB can be ok with support but is generally outclassed by Mence. Good on some niche structures.
- HP Fighting + Ice Beam paired with Mag is the wave. Finally can hit TTar, Lax, & Bliss and can trap opposing Mag. Best rain dancer to support Salac Heracross.
- Best of the worst. Probably highest C-rank mon but I wanted to talk about it so it's going in B-. Good vs Gar and good vs Moltres. Can burn TTar and soft check Metagross. Those qualities alone make it the perfect CurseLax enabler. FBlast Pursuit WoW Taunt is good.
well to elaborate, offensive teams with a magneton have been great for me. and they often times run a breloom. snorlax is great as it's a special sponge that can still hit back hard. add a tyranitar with pursuit to deal with will-o-wisp gengar and you're gold. some say gen 3 is a stall format, but im starting to lean towards the other way.
i've been building bad teams and losing with them for YEARS. come join the club. we meet for drinks after 7
but getting back on track, i wanna nitpick metagross. it's still top 5. easily. but i like being contrary. it can feel linear sometimes. with some prediction it can be played around. people here are saying they're using mixed sets so maybe they're getting more mileage out of it than me.
This year, I wanna make a UD-esque post to display my rankings. I tried to be as objective as possible between my own experience playing/facing the Pokemons and watching them in the hands of others. Now buckle up for...
The McMeghan 2020 ADV Viability Rankings
S Rank The face of the tier
Uncontested king of ADV. Sand itself is one of, if not the biggest influencing factor of the tier. Tyranitar can find a spot in every archetype, it is one of the best opener and wallbreaker with the Mixed Sets and 4 Atk Physical. DD is still a fearsome finisher. The natural bulk makes it an answer to a plethora of threats. Did I mention Sand? Making chip damage sticks on non-Sand immune is what defines the viability of many Pokemons that will follow suit. The best without a doubt.
A+ Rank The most consistent performers
Last year, Metagross was already on the second spot of my VR, and my opinion hasn't changed. CB pretty much requires a trapper to stop it from getting two kills. It will for sure open up a wall for you to abuse later on. The typing and bulk makes it useful in almost every 1 on 1 and he's the reason (alongside Skarm) Fire types are more viable than ever. Incredible Offense enabler, easily finds a spot on defensive squads for its sturdy resistances and the Boom factor guaranteeing progress/countermeasure vs pretty much anything. Bulky SpDef variants have been explored to turn the tables on Zapdos while super fast with Sailak can act as a great countermeasure vs speedy threats for your offensive teams.
Had a hard time picking between this and the 4th for the third spot but here I am. Zapdos is better than ever in my opinion. It's one of the best Pokemon to get any kind of Offensive momentum going, and it has shown over the year with the countless appearances of "Zapdos synergy offenses" that are a big part of the ADV landscape, as vague as that is. Probably the best pivot in the tier thanks to the immediate threat of stab Elec/coverage + status, and Baton Pass is just a godsend on it to abuse its answers and giving free entry to fearsome sweepers. It's still a formidable SpDef Sponge for offensively inclined teams that don't wanna spend time recovering with Blissey and inviting too much Pokemons. Not only that, Zapdos is an incredible threat on its own, whether it is because of its stupidly strong Tbolts or the Mixed Sets laying the hurt on defensive squads. Add to that it is one of the best weather resetter AND one of the key piece of Baton Pass cores and you have all the reasons why I ranked it as high as third.
Swampert is the best glue in the tier. Both in Offense and Defense. It is still the most reliable Rock check for defensive teams for example, Mixed Sets & Endeavors are as strong as ever and really gives you some concrete defensive basis for your Offenses to pivot in and out. Endeavor is better than ever in my opinion, able to the shift the tides in some games and fight your way out of very difficult situations. In defensive teams, it's still one of the sturdiest Pokemon to get past, as sand immunity makes it so worthwile and desirable. My two main "grips" with Swampert are the fact that, when it is teched for (read: HP Grass), it's pretty much put out of commission (offensive variants die, defensive variants now low on health have a hard time doing anything due to the lack of speed). It's also one of the premier Spikes bait in the tier. I've personally had some nice results with Curse as a way to check Suicune/Snorlax since those teams Pokemons usually have a strong support cast vs your typical defensive Pert team.
A Rank Very good Pokemons that shape the tier
I had no doubt I'd rank Blissey right after my Big 4. To define what makes Blissey so great, you have to realize that, between its broken Special bulk and Natural Cure, it's a wall that generates free turns for itself to either heal a team member (Wish/Cleric), itself, threaten a status or direct damages. Almost no other defensive Pokemons can do that as well as Blissey, and that's why it's so good. Not only will it keep every special attackers at bay, but it does pretty well vs Mixed Sweepers (no wonder a lot of them have to carry Focus Punch to actually threaten Blissey, and it doesn't even put it out of commission). It's one of the Pokemons that makes Spikes such a desirable trait in the metagame as otherwise it really becomes too oppressive for most teams. Counter while rare, often hits and is a game changer. It is only hindered by its relative passitivity and the reliance a lot of teams have on it, opening the gates for a lof of wallbreakers.
Celebi comes this high in my ranking. I think it's also an incredible pivot. You can EV it to check almost any Pokemons in the tier. Leech Seed is still an awesome defensive and supportive tool, but the main reason I've ranked Celebi so high is because of two reasons. First, it's actually an amazing Sweeper in my opinion. SuperBi eats Milotic teams alive, actively pressure almost any defensive teams actually because Natural Cure makes it that much more difficult to deal with, and the Giga Drain heals are game changing when all you can do is chip at it. Not only that, Natural Cure lets it act as a great pivot early game vs all those Zapdos so one of your offensive Pokemons doesn't get crippled. Now, the other reason why Celebi deserves this ranking is because of Baton Pass. Baton Pass Celebi is such a central force in many archetypes, be it Special Spam, Physical Pass, or just keeping Chains going (Zap+Cele+stuff anyone?). Baton Pass + trapper is still amazing too. One of the biggest toolbox in the tier. Gotta mention Leech Seed + Sub Magneton as a very clever way to get rid of any Metagross too by the way.
Last year, I was already a bit low on Gengar (compared to its previous ranking) and my opinion is still the same pretty much. Still, Gengar is one of the best enabler in the tier. Coverage, status, boom, spikes and Fight/Ground immunity, it's got it all and that's why its up there. I definitely believe the "Spikes abusing" sets have been on a downward spiral for a while now, as Spikes teams are being fought better and better. The status + Boom sets are insanely disruptive though, often forcing your opponents to reveal their cards for you. I don't really see it as that dangerous Sweeper anymore but an incredible enabler thanks to all its options (double status boom is insane). Not to mention, it's still gonna allow you to keep your Spikes for a bit longer if you go that route, which is its most unique trait.
I'm not gonna lie, I've never wanted to put Skarmory so low. I was really tempted to go full UD mode and drops it even further. Skarmory might be the most metagame defining Pokemon of ADV after Tyranitar. It is pretty much the face of Spikes, and it is the driving force between so many movesets used nowadays. Beside the obvious, Skarmory has two strong points that I wanna emphasize, first it's gotten a lot more versatile with time, with its offensive sets and the Drill Peck/Toxic/Taunt variants with different levels of speed and bulk. Second of all it's so good that sometimes, the best countermeasure is just trading a Boom with it and it's still gonna force your opponent into some plays/set revelations (you cannot give free room for Skarm and if you did you might HAVE to spin later). My biggest problem with Skarmory is that, even with its relative versatility, it can be such a dead weight. I'm not even talking about Magneton here. At the end of the day, Skarmory is still a Pokemon that is only threatening weak Drill Pecks and Spikes. It doesn't truely wall anything longterm (many Pokemons adapt their movesets just for that fact) (tho Wish support can change that) and it doesn't truely give you offensive options. Is it gonna be worth it? Especially with the viability and usage rate of Spinners nowadays? You might have spent the first 15 turns getting battered all for Spikes that could be removed later, and now you're 5 vs 6 maybe.
A- Rank Top tier Pokemons that are a bit more flawed than the rest to my tastes
I might have have been a bit biased here, as anyone who knows me also knows I'm an avid user of Suicune. Suicune is definitely a support-intensive Pokemons. As a defensive Pokemon, it struggles walling Physical and Mixed Attackers because of unflexible recovery option and sand damages. As an offensive Pokemon, it is crippled by all kind of status and chip damages, isn't particulary fast and can be hard walled by some Pokemons. For all these reasons, other people have probably ranked it lower than me. However, Suicune trades all of that by being incredibly hard to stop once it gets going. It also has some tools that completely turn the tables around some of its supposed checks (Roar/Sub/Sleep Talk on Rest variants have vastly different answers). Also, the defensive counterplay WILL be outlasted with the right support. While not the most common, Offensive variants have to be mentionned for their ability to just run down some teams with sheer power and sheer bulk. Also has to be mentionned how it's almost never OHKOd, which is always a strong trait.
Jirachi, much like Celebi, is one of the most versatile Pokemon in the tier. It also is one of the most unique Sand Immune Pokemon available, making it much harder to deal with as a sweeper (CM variants) or a more flexible Wisher than most. It spreads status like nothing else thanks to Serene Grace and can be EV'd to check almost anything you want. Strong speedtier to boot, it can do it all. It is lacking in immediate power though and is proned to trapping. Give sub variants (not only CM) a try, you'll be surprised by the result. The uprising of the Fire types made it worse as a wall, which is something to keep in mind (but the offensive sets make up for it).
Salamence has always been an oddball to me. I feel like it is always softchecked by defensive teams, which has always turned me off of it. However, I have to say that it's never pleasant to face for Offense and it has unique traits available. Intimidate gives you playing room around a lot of threats. The typing allows you to pivot around many hits while not taking Spikes chip, which is big. I believe that CB and Mixed sets are much better than DD. Great speedtier too. What really sells me on it nowadays is that it's the best offensive answers to Fighters and those have been on an uprising that year.
Snorlax is one of the most solid Pokemon available for sure. Stupid bulk allows it to live any hit, and Stab Boom pretty much always at least kills something. It has tremendous utility as a soft check to any special attacker so you don't just get run over early game; all the while threatening para with its Body Slams. CurseRest variants need a ton of support and I'm honestly not a fan. Those teams are always flawed in those ways, and it can be difficult to create clear checkmate games for Lax, as it's often still gonna fall prey to a crit (being super slow does that for you). It suffers a bit from the Fighters uprising and Focus Punch being slapped on everything. It's also one of the most consistent entry to Skarmory/Tyranitar/Metagross, aka the openers of their respective teams.
Trapping is broken. Won't spend time on the obvious. Dug benefits of the meta going fast as fuck on everything, forgoing bulk, allowing it to pick KOs easier. However the problem with it is that it's often difficult to safely trap something due to its frail nature. Oftentimes, I feel like you have to be on the backfoot or had to sack something for it to do its job. By that time you're maybe gonna be behind AND you're giving a guaranteed freeturn once the mon is trapped (which in itself forces you into some team structure so you don't die to what's setting up next). Still an amazing enabler, or a great safety net for defensive teams, creating unique sequences and checkmate scenarios. Shout-out to Screech which started seeing some play as an answer for bulky last mons; and absurdly bulky variants to take out Blissey in more situations.
B+ Rank Quite reliable Pokemons, not as well rounded as the A Pokemons, pretty much the Spikes game pieces
Same situation as Suicune with some bias involved? Maybe. Anyway, Claydol is STILL picking up in usage and being more and more explored and it's one of the best support Pokemon in the tier in my opinion. Boom and Spin are two of the best tools for any team, always giving you that board reset and that trade to stop a bleeding/open the gates. Claydol typing also gives to its team a pivot around Rock, Ground, Fight and most notably Electric without taking sand and spikes chip, which is all incredible. Not dying to the typical Grass/Ice coverage compared to Flygon/Swampert is pretty big too. It's bulky to the point where it can be EVd to tank any hit, giving you that one turn room for Spin/Boom, which is sometimes all you need. Underappreciated is its speed, giving it an advantage either against the things its supposed to check or its counterplay. It is flawed in the sense that it doesn't directly threaten many Pokemons and still stays relatively weak, often having to resort to drastic options (without Boom I think it's terrible). Refresh variants exist but have been adapted to, and are much worse but well, they have to be taken into account.
I dont feel like Starmie has really changed since last year. Offensive is still a threat to offensive teams, especially the "synergistic offenses" that are quite popular. However, it's very reliant on a 80% accuracy move (until Surf picks up in usage there?) and still lacks that raw damage output that would push it to the next level. Bulky variants are quite nice as usual and TWave can make up for some of its passivity but they have a hard time truely walling anything, creating holes in their teams. Pretty much still where it's always been in my opinion. Not the best spinner, not the best special attacker, not the best bulky water but a nice mix of all.
Magneton traps Skarmory. That's it, the usual. Will expand a bit on the details now. Have to deal with the YoloSkarm, obviously an issue. You may want bulk, but suddenly you are either super slow and can't softcheck/get that additional hit that makes Magneton at least a bit useful outside of the trap or you run Timid which doesn't guarantee the OHKO on SpDef Skarms anymore, which can be very detrimential to some teams. Two things have to be mentionned too: HP Grass/Ice gives you the 31 speed IV and makes it more well rounded, obviously a good trait but watch out for Forretress' return with that (and now Magneton is stuck in another pick your poison situation). Sub variants coming back to life to trap Metagross with Leech Seed support has been really cool. Gotta mention that trapping CB Metagross is pretty amazing too.
B Rank Solid Pokemons with unique attributes that easily find their spot in many teams
Milotic is the best Mixed Sweeper wall in the game pretty much. Recover and great defenses on both sides does that for you. Unless it's coming from a stab, you're soaking super effective hits, which is awesome. It's quite passive though and can be abused by setupper, baton passer and Spikers; forcing you into defensive structures. Hypnosis is an underrated move making it a lot less abusable and giving you a lot more direct pressure for Offenses.
The Revenge Killer of the tier. It kinda feasts on those "frail" "synergistic" Offenses which makes it a bit better than last year. Still a pretty support intensive Pokemon in other situations (you need to open the bulky water and you very much want Spikes to put anything in KO range). Sub variants prob deserve some more exploration.
Moltres has now solidly got its spot in the metagame. It's insanely good at forcing switches into very specific Pokemons and lay the hurt vs anything else when it's given a free turn, which is not that hard given the typing (pivoting into ground/grass/steel). As usual, gotta make it work vs Milotic/Blissey teams but that's where Spikes & Roar shine for you. Sort of held back by its speed tier, as the base 100 can all be threatening in their own way.
Cloyster is a pretty great Spiker for Offensive teams in my opinion. It doesn't have the flexibility of Skarmory, but the thing is it still easily finds opportunity to at least get one Spikes down, which is all you need in some teams. Unlike Skarm, it has actual offensive pressure and Boom is broken so there we are. Gotta be mentionned how it gives (Mag)Dol teams a run for their money and can even Spin vs those. Suffers a bit from Focus Punch being slapped so much on Snorlax/Pert nowadays though.
The same as it's always been, an immediate threat and killer finisher with the right support. Problem is, it doesn't contribute much defensively, some rising Pokemons/sets like DP Skarm and Mence are troublesome. It's outpaced by a lot of offensive teams as well. SubBreakers sets deserve some attention, they get the most ouf ot the room Heracross finds to shine in a game and can activate a speed boost to gives it more presence vs Offense.
I think Jolt has been on a downward spiral for sure. It's really not as good without Spikes, and the trend has been fighting those teams better and better. It's ruined by Paralysis, doesn't really OHKO anything but most of all, just hates the Claydol presence in the meta. While still a good Pokemon in theory (the fabled "Spikes Jolt has no counterplay"), it doesn't pan out consitently in practice in my opinion (maybe I'm biased as an avid Claydol fan though?). Maybe should keep an eye on SubPass set to abuse the Zapdos presence and Blissey/Celebi switches.
This guy has seen a meteoric rise this year. Its currently very trendy and I've found it to be amazingly consistent. It really gets a lot out of its entries because guaranteed sleep is amazing and even just one Focus Punch hit will weaken anything, or forces a Recovery. Priority Mach Punch is a great tool to have vs anything getting low, just makes some endgames much different by virtue of existing. The problem with Loom is always getting more out of it past its first switch but it hasn't stopped from establishing itself in the meta thanks to its qualities for now. Will Lum Berry pick up in usage on some Pokemons to combat it?
The other comet of the year, Charizard. It walks in the footsteps of Moltres, trading its raw power, Wow and bulk for a greater speed tier and access to Focus Punch, giving it a solid spot on all-out Offense as it doesn't invite Blissey entirely for free. Blaze also makes it incredibly scary for a few turns and keep an eye on Dragon Claw allowing it to hit both Salamence and the Waters.
B- Rank Those Pokemons don't walk into teams as easily as the former, but work quite consistently in the one they do
Trapping Dug enables some unique strats, which is definitely worth it on the right teams. Shout-out to HP Fighting allowing it to trap Mag in some instances and give it a good tool vs Ttar. Much like Milotic, it's a pretty good answer to (most) Mixed attackers but is a lot more abusable and doesn't have access to Refresh. Also mentionning the fact it pretty much never dies in one hit while threatening Paralysis, which is pretty strong and I've got some success with that.
Life has been pretty rough for Flygon, it has been at its lowest point usage-wise in forever. My main grip with it is that it really lacks power as usual, and doesn't check too well the things its supposed to wall. When it walls with a bulky set, it doesn't really do much (defensive teams don't lose to Protox anymore) while the offensive variants need support to be consistent. That being said, there is some meta trends it could abuse (mainly the Electrics pretty much never running Toxic or Hp Ice and it can pivot into Fire attackers while threatening them).
I don't think much has changed for Gyarados. Still a good DDer with an unique typing. Always hates having to pick between HP Rock/HP Flying but it does abuse OffensivePert, resists Fight and sorta checks the Fires (definitely checks Zard, WoW from Moltres sucks but Rest Gyara can shine there), which gives it some added viability both in defensive and offensive teams. Twave sets to be explored?
I'm not too sold on Venusaur but I recognize it's a good Lead. It doesn't sound like much but it really gives a strong opening to some teams. Still gotta deal with the value past that but it's gonna help you check Zapdos/Swampert for a bit and those two are everywhere so it works consistently.
Wont explain in details how Forre works or the support it needs as its the same it's always been. However I will mention that it does benefit from some meta trends (can Spikes vs Zapdos lead, Metagross is everywhere, isn't too free for Claydol). I also think if you're trying to build those "foolproofs" defensive teams with PursuitTtar you're doing it wrong. It's better with some strong Offensive presence so you can "divide & conquer" to find your spin/boom opportunity later in more safety. Appreciates Wish support quite a bit if you're looking to Spin & Spikes with it.
Knock Off is never useless and always a big boon vs defensive teams. You're still a fighter so you're checking the most used Pokemon in the tier while threatening damages because Fighters are like that (though obviously that depends on the moveset/EVs you went for with Hari, it's quite flexible in that regard).
The Rest Pretty niche Pokemons, either not too consistent or don't walk in many teams, but they have very unique traits or big payouts
Bulky Water that hard walls Suicune and possesses Haze in defensive teams. Baton Pass in Offense to keep chains going while giving you that bulky water typing to pivot. Strong as a lead too. Very flawed defensively (Wish for recovery, takes chip, hates status, which all requires support to make it work as a result). Doesn't have Swampert resistances and sand immunity to find a spot in many offenses.
Rain sweeper with Grass stab. Leech Seed 3atk actively does something vs Blissey/Suicune while threatening Offense or switches. Kinda slow and takes all sort of chip damages while not having the bulk or Rock resistance of other bulky waters (much less a good recovery move).
More one-dimentionnal than Ludicolo and no grass stab. Trades that for a slightly stronger special Attack and the ability to pretty much setup vs anything due to good bulk and the lack of weakness outside DClaw Mence.
My boy... Passively checked by most teams, Claydol hurts. Doesn't really have the power to quite get the OHKOs all the while dying to the common Ground attacks. Needs support to work "consistently". It wins some games on its own though and can offensive check a few pesky attackers thanks to great natural speed & special attacker (Zap, Gengar mainly). Some sets can prob be explored (Thunder, Modest, Endure Berry), but is it worth it?
Great SpDef sponge for early game that threatens Paralysis and has access to strong IB and Boom. Outstandingly slow and weak though, all the while taking all kind of chip damages. Some special attackers it also won't check like the Fires.
Solid speedtier vs defensive teams and p.much always tanks a hit vs Offense all the while checking Ttar. Access to Fight/Rock/Bug coverage. Hurt by the rise of Yolo/DP Skarm in general. Also reliant on 80% accuracy stab. Basically a slower but bulkier Heracross that rarely dies in one hit.
Baton Pass ban on it sucks massively as it doesn't make your opponent guess its set like it used to. Spore+Spikes+two support moves of any kind is still strong and can find its way into some HO, but is it worth it past the initial value and with the presences of anti-spikes measures in the game?
Very sturdy physical check, the closest thing to a physical Ttar counter. Spins and immune to sand. Telegraphs Magneton and a Pursuiter and only proved to work in those structures though.
Solid Spdef wall vs non-setupping Special attackers (Zap/Starmie for example). Great bulk makes it not immediately threatened by some Mixed sweepers as well. Provides Pursuit without Sand (and Wish, altho it's a shacky form of recovery for itself sometimes) which gives it a niche in some teams (usually setting up a Snorlax sweep).
Weezing has fallen from grace by now. I've ranked it because I recognize its merits (spikes + toxic immune + boom are just too good traits) but I wont comment further because of the lack of data (didn't see it too often in the past year).
Solid electric check and natural bulk gives it some utility vs anything physical. It's got Boom. Problem is its pretty weak and dislikes Spikes. It has great defensive synergy with Salamence/Gyarados though and finds its worth into some specific structures thanks to those traits, where it can be quite consistent.
One of the best Baton Pass recipient in the tier. Either from Agility Zap (with or without Celebi) or Ninjask. I don't really believe in it outside of those teams altho I've seen it a bit there.
It's bad in itself but it can abuse Dug like nothing else (or any choice locked EQ) and it can get ugly real quick if you don't have the right counterplay tools.
Take Moltres or Charizard, make them super slow and remove the bulk while you're at it, but give it Fighting stab. That's enough to be usable and poses a huge threat to some defensive cores (popular at that).
Great paraspam abuser, as it's immune to sand and gets access to SD + stab ground/rock not to mention strong Bug coverage. Slow as balls and many common weaknesses though. Endure Reversal sets with the right support are actually not bad.
Unranked Pokemons
I reckon the following Pokemons can work but I don't have any experience with them and/or don't see them being used enough to rank them:
Articuno / Sceptile / Exeggutor / Tauros / Miltank / Scizor / Jynx / Houndoom / Medicham / Registeel / Camerupt / Cacturne / Alakazam / Regirock / Gligar / Omastar / Dragonite / Lunatone / Armaldo / Jumpluff / Dusclops / Slaking
S
This pokémon is literally a wonder, whenever you have it in front you do not know how it will attack you, very versatile, it serves as a traper, as a booter, as a bulky and many more uses, being the most common booter for Sweepear when the moment warrants it, especially since it has few counters and always forces you to carry one of them, be it Swampert, be it Cleadol, be it Dugtrio, Flygon, etc. and it can have attacks for them, excellent pokémon, I love it, without neglecting its ability to neutralize access to leftovers of pokes that are not metals, rocks or earth.
A+
Metagross, another fucking master of the metagame, his status allows you to have multiple functions on him accompanied by a rich movepool, just like Tyranitar, he forces you to take poke like Swampert (mostly) or pokes killer like Dugtrio, to add that if you Grab in his Chocie Band version with low health pokes, he can kill you all the team, he has well deserved his position and I think he is not in S rank because he is not more used than Tyranitar and he does not have moves that increase 2 status as previously mentioned beyond Agility and MM.
Excellent poke, good combination of stabs, very good stats and rich movepool, it is the most used of the waters and above these for its stab ground that allows it to be an excellent rock defense, it is practically adaptable to any type of equipment, it has different used as the user wants, from defensive, to offensive, to mixed, sp.a, etc. when played well it can be a hard poke to beat, it almost always forces you to have to beat it with status attack like Toxic, or by wearing down spikes, or by hitting very strong attacks, excellent design and will never be neutralized to remains because it is sand.
The big daddy of the stalls, excellent antispinner in front of his brothers Dusclops, Sableye, etc., who from far are very little used but are cases that have been seen, excellent speed and good offensive, rich movepool that offers him different utilities, his only problem, is the rapid wear that suffers from his precocious defenses, more accompanying him with good pokes and good care can be a monster beyond if he does not enjoy having in the team some Starmie with Psichyc who can kill him with 1 hit and then have chances to remove spikes if you are assembled in an entry hazard team.
Mother of Chansey, she is the mistress of the special defense, due to her normal type she has access to a wide variety of attacks that allow her to adapt to different types of equipment, often being the standard with TW or Toxic, or if you prefer to use CM Boltbeam, or with Counter for offensive players, also wearing it is quite tedious when the enemy does not have pokes that aggressively hit or is based on a strategy of wear through roar and spikes and thus it is torture to be in front of this pokemon, and also when the mind comes to you wanting to use a pokemon that protects you from sp. she is the one who comes to mind many times if you want variety and access to a poke that recovers, something that her brother (Snorlax) does not have beyond Rest and be the mixed set the one that best defends against offensive teams or stalls.
A
its stabs are extremely a perfect combination in this generation since the flyers do not have damage by entry hazard as Stealh rock, because it does not exist, and when combined with stalls teams it copes very effectively against spinners like Starmie, Cloyster or Forrtress already that breaks them with electrical attacks, Claydol being the most viable vs this poke, as long as it does not break you based on hp grass or toxic wear if you do not come with Refresh, it has a good attack which allows access to tacks like Drick Peck that allow it to be used in a mixed way, or as a pheudo phaser, thus, having a counter vs this poke often becomes relative since with a good combination of companions such as Skar, bliss or tyranitar, it becomes a beast to kill since In front of a well worn bliss it can have a lot of advantage, but thinking that this poke is only for offensive use can be very ignorant, because it can also be used even for wearing pp with pressure, and rest, for the Zapdos, be the king of electrics, is the one who best represents them by his accompanied stab (flying)
The daddy is the entry hazard, more used than Fortress and Cloyster, his stabs make him position well and stats that give him some comfort to freely enter Spikes if he does not need enemies to very defined pokes such as electric pokes or fires, almost always It is accompanied by Tyranitar for the laying of sand, and with gengar to block spinners.
excellent pokemon, it has a very good role in this gen, rich movepool and different uses to suit the user, it adapts to any type of equipment literally, and as in this gen the use of waters and ground, rock is almost always safe, that will it almost always gives a very good advantage, just like Recover and read Seech have to make an opponent's life hell.
He is the butt eater for excellent, serves more as a life insurance against aggressive pokes like Metagross, Tyranitar, jirachi, Magneton, etc. As a killer for worn pokes if it is inside a spiker team, this because its ability allows it, its use is practically specific, without more or less.
What to say about this poke that is not known, rico move pool is not affected by entry hazar since, as is known, the fliers reign in this metagame, access to DD, if you prefer it can be used in a mix, or defensive way, good status , around many water such as Swampert, Milotic, statermie, etc. this then will not have so many freedoms, its most common use is with CB or DD, being the second to be able to Sweepear and the first to golepear and change.
Excellent status, access to recover, good wearing with Toxic + 2 moves of offensive, either Surf and Ice Beam or 1 move offensive and Refresh in case they try to weaken it with status, for me it is a safe A because it can move decently vs many pokes of the metagame Ou, beyond CM with Rest or sub.
A-
It will always be helpful when you have the right companions, with both Tyranitar and Dugtrio it is somewhat complicated that Jirachi has a lot of freedom, in the same way although he enjoys these complications he is a very good pokémon, he does not have as much freedom in terms of a rich movepool so It will almost always be very repetitive, ranging from CM with Wish, to defensive with Body Slam.
Snorlax, good defensive special pokemon, if you catch the opponent with pokes sp.a that are not cm it is practically a win free by curse lax rest, its most frequent combination is with magneton to mop Skarmory if you do not have a Mix lax with Fire Blast, or combined with Tyranitar traper in case you have a Body Focus punch lax or Body Earquaker, too bad it is not so used due to how aggressive the metagame is and with so much Spikers team.
The only Water with access to CM within the meta ou, his most participative sets are crocune or Rest cm roar and surf, very rarely is cune used with Sub or Full ofesinvio, I particularly like the off with Hp grass or Electric depending on what the team deserves, it is a very good poke in a Spikerya team that if it wears out its most common threats the crocune will be a win free.
Good Sweepear if played well, although lately it has been little used due to the excessive use of Claydol, Metagross and Swampert.
Lately Moltres is shining a lot from the very frequent use of pokémons like Metagross, Jirachi, Celebi, with WOW it can do damage of state before changes and hp grass gives him many possibilities against pokémons waters and rock.
B+
The best of the Spinners, it has access to Recover, you can use it both offensively and defensively, it stands well against problematic threats such as Metagross, Tyranitar, Salamance, etc. Much damage to be killed by Dugtrio or Jolteon, you can remove the spikers, just as you can spear an entire team if you do not get any poke to face starmie in the team builder.
The enemy of Skarmory and Fortress, most used to make way for pokes such as Salamance, Heracross, Snorlax or anyone who is threatened by Skmory, although he may well face metagross, this only happens if metagross is CB and spemea MM.
It is like a Zapdos but without the Flying stab and with more speed, I really like this poke although many times it is a double-edged sword to use it since it will always be around the mind to put a zapdos instead of jolteon, in some cases there is a combination between both pokes and one taking roar to wear if there is an entry hazar in the team, but the most frequent use of Jolteon is as Pheudo Phaser or to do status damage, his stats in sp and speed allow him to escape with Baton pass and make Decent damage with Thundrbolt and hp grass for pokes soils or rocks.
I wanted to put Skarm there at first, but it's not considering how good is Sand Stream, Tyranitar isn't just what your pokemon will do in battle, it's also the Sand up for the whole game, just for that it deserves to be S rank alone.
A+ Rank :
Skarmory
Metagross
Zapdos
Skarmory is just too good, as long as you can afford not to rely on it to beat most of the teams it's the best support you can have in the game, enables Offense, enables defense, check a lot of troublesome mons, can basically win games alone if you manage not to get trapped by the Magneton. One thing I'd like to point is that Skarmory isn't a wall and "SkarmBliss" isn't a defensive core anymore, Skarmory can become a huge stop to a lot of teams if you manage to trap a Magneton or something, but in most cases you just want to trade it for the number of spikes you need + stall an immediate threat away an deal with it latter with your other 5, it's your joker. Finally just a word on Yoloskarm, you can fit it almost anywhere and it can be amazing, it trades of the "joker" ability and some special bulk ( mostly relevant vs bulky waters ) to more consistant spiking and ability not to play around Magneton, amazing tech.
Metagross is your offense enabler, rock resist, emergency button vs a lot of offensive threats, access to Pursuit, Explosion, all the coverage you can, its insane stats makes it highly customisable. It's also a great pokemon in more sturdy builds, as it's both an offensive and a defensive asset, would be S if it wasn't trapped by both trappers.
Zapdos is too good, there's no thing such as a Zapdos counter in the game if spikes are up, as long as Zapdos can hit and run and those things are up it will destroy any team, its great speed allows it to be a threat for offensive teams as well, access to both twave and toxic, amazing coverage, baton pass to prevent your opponent from pivoting as well as he would like , even without sleep talk this thing is up there to be one of the best Pokemon in ADV, highly customisable too, Mixed Attacker, SpD with a phazing move, SpD in a more offensive team with twave bp, completely offensive with a Modest nature, maybe metal sound ? There's not flat out bad sets, you will always be able to make Zapdos into something good.
A Rank :
Blissey
Jirachi
Suicune
Blissey is a nightmare to switch into, and it comes on a lot of powerful breakers to shut them down completely, this lovely blob is even able to stop DDMence from sweeping your team, it's not easily trapped by Dugtrio,there's nothing much to say, Blissey does Bliss things and we love it for that <3
Jirachi is the ADV's jack of all trades, master of none , you can use almost any move you want it'll be good , it needs different support depending on the set, but it's amazing typing and its ability to fit your team at the perfection ( maybe that's its mastery :] ) makes it the best Pokemon out of the top 5.
Suicune is one of the few Pokemon you have to kill. What I mean is that as long as this thing is alive it can win any game, there's no Pokemon until the likes of C-rank that are able to deal with this shit 100% of the time, there's combinaison tho, but this thing is a menace, standard Offensive is a nightmare for offensive teams, RoarCM is a threat and deny Jirachi and co any attempt at a CM War, deny CurseLax too, Defensive Cune is also a stop to the newly popular Offensive Swampert , and Modest Sleep Talk is higher than ever.
Controversial ranking I know, first off, Gengar. This man is at an all time low, with the popularity of BlackGlasses Tyranitar and the rise of Claydol, Gengar as a long term spinblocker became a liability, you need to find other methods to win the spikes war. Gengar is still a powerful and fast offensive Pokemon tho, and its ability to spinblock at short term is still something to be considered.
Swampert is another Pokemon that I'm low on. Why ? It gained a new set in Offensive Pert, Endeavor is super great too, so why is it that low ? Precisely because of those sets, in todays metagame you like to have bulky waters able to deal with Swampert, and Swampert doesn't. It's not the glue it used to be, and as good as its offensive sets are, they are not worth higher than this. Still a great Pokemon tho, but the king of the bulky waters has fallen.
Hey that's Dugtrio, the new glue ! Dugtrio is weird, it kinda does the job of Swampert + Gengar by trapping stuff they would be used to beat otherwise like DDTar, Heracross, and helping in the spikes war. It's shaky at doing it tho, as it's not something you can switch on a lot of things, it's also an insane offense enabler, trapping Bliss, Tyranitar, other Dugtrio, Rachi etc ... Also a good measure against last mons setup with screech, and a nice trump card vs BP Offenses.
Milotic is our saviour, this thing is a menace for MixOffenses, completely shutdown Offensive Pert, it's basically unkillable, you just need to make up for the lack of rock resists, but it's super worth it. It walls most mixed attacker in the tier too.
Snorlax is a very good offense enabler / pivot for offensive teams , defensive sets aren't as good as they used to be, but offensive teams with Snorlax are, for sure, a threat you cannot underestimate, it's a key part of them, therefore it's here.
Claydol is the best spinner in the tier, a good check to a lot of stuff, a decent offense enabler, a cool trump card with boom, and refresh can make it very hard to kill for passive builds. Just don't run the bad IceBeamEQ set with Pursuit Tyranitar and you'll be able to use it at its full potential.
Celebi used to be insane, and it's still very hard to kill, it became too passive for the metagame tho, and its offensive sets, even if they are very good, aren't worth an higher rank. It's still a key part in a lot of strategies, and a needed glue for a lot of slower teams, it closes our A ranks.
Now I'm tired writing all this on my phone, I'll skip explanations and if anyone wanna discuss anything on those rankings feel free to ask either here or on Discord.
Things that either I or as a community we have learnt to appreciate better this year:
- Advent of Spikes + stallbreakers replacing traditional Spikes + spinblocker/trapper archetypes, cf: thelinearcurve's forre venu aero, BKC's skarmbliss hari/loom, zom's forre loom.
- To me this particularly helps forre break out of its conventional stall molds, and strengthens skarm's position.
- Use of Blissey to support offense by generating free turns.
- Use of Metagross for defensive support.
- Customizability of Celebi's sets from the whole spectrum of defensive to offensive brings it up, but prevalence of fires makes it harder to use.
- Prevalence of HP Grass spammers has reduced my appetite for Swampert
- Offensive Snorlax is highly customizable, and curse boom is one of the few spikeless meta/tar removers to enable lots of threats.
- Claydol's getting better with time, but that is unfortunately balanced out by WishBliss + Skarm.
- Obviously Spikes is Jolteon's main iron rice bowl, but I've always been an unorthodox fan of Spikeless Jolteon's berry passing and anti-Starmie/chipped DDtar abilities.
- I've not liked Mag + 5 skarm weak mons in a while, but mag zap/cel is awesome for reliable trapping and having a backup plan vs skarm.
- Moltres theoretically devastates a ton of stuff, but I have several issues: middling speed means it is outraced by 328's on offenses; having to make the WoW vs attack read (it's not obvious that Moltres' opponent is going to switch especially if the entire team is fire-weak); unreliability of WoW hitting yet not having that many pivot opportunities in to even the odds out. Like undisputed, I prefer Charizard.
- I didn't start out by thinking Jirachi is a bad mon but so many things have been elevated above Jirachi for me. Still appreciate its unique endgame/enabling roles. WishTect, not so much now.
- Porygon2 is good for me. Not just a Dugtrio trapper, but also has amazing defensive utility (free switchin vs mence, hp fight allows it to solo tar, can easily get into Jolteon which spikeless offenses fear a ton, can also tank Aero). Importantly, these defensive pivoting abilities also enable mono-water partners like roar endpert or sleep talk cune. To me, this mon has a ton of synergies that miss the eye.
- Vaporeon is a cool hyper offense poke (cf Salac set that I passed to Asta/Linear), and haze distinguishes it from cune/milo defensively that I think novel teams can be built out of it.
- I'm quite high on Regice because of its ability to simultaneously nail Starmie, Skarmory and Blissey. Sure it isn't 100% reliable, but if your gameplan is fluid enough, with enough offenses the walls can all be brought down.
A+ Rank
Metagross - Increasingly splashable and flexible. Can sweep or be a defensive wall. Explosion is a fantastic safety net too.
Blissey - It's the soul-crusher to so many specially offensive teams and the prime reason they so often need dugtrio to work.
Swampert
A Rank
Zapdos
Skarmory
Gengar - Lower as it doesnt cope as well in the increased speed and offensiveness of the modern meta
Salamence - The right predictions with mix and cb just win games. DD provides good defensive utility whilst simultaneously threatens a constant late-game sweep.
A- Rank
Jirachi
Snorlax
Celebi
Dugtrio - Its ranking is so perfectly counterbalanced by its unique and innate ability to stop otherwise unavoidable threats dead in their tracks, and its backbreaking problem wherein it gives the opponent a free turn to set up
Starmie - Its offensive set just sweeps too many teams for it to not be this high
Aerodactyl - This mon can really just do crazy things. Outspeeds and 1hkos things, punishes milo stall teams, carves up offense etc. I think it's routinely underrated.
B+ Rank
Suicune
Heracross - Sometimes its a ferrari, other times it's a bicycle
Magneton - Performs better these days even if oppo doesnt have skarm/forre, or if they've already been removed
Milotic - It has to be ranked highly, it just solos so many mixed offenses.
Claydol - does fantastically vs slower spike teams. honestly not terrible vs offences too because eq stings everything and airborne mons generally dont hit it that hard
B Rank
Forretress - It does beat garless skarm teams pretty well.
Gyarados
Moltres
Breloom - I've never been too high on it because of its flimsiness and lack of offensive output after it gets a spore off, but guys like Z0mOg have proven it to be menacing even at the highest level of play.
Flygon - routinely underrated, checks the best poke in the tier, doesn't take spikes, decent speed and recovers HP in sand. What's not to like?
Jolteon
B- Rank
Vaporeon
Venusaur - Its lack of accuracy with sleep powder, coupled with its lack of offensive output and lack of longevity make it desperately inconsistent
Jynx
Cloyster - Very lacklustre mon that does not do its job well any more
C+ Rank
Porygon2
Umbreon
Smeargle
Charizard - fun and a great meme, but it epitomises bulky water weakness
Raikou
Kingrdra
Ludicolo
here's my list. descending order, slash means I think they're about roughly viable:
s rank: tyranitar
s- rank: metagross
reasoning: don't think I need to explain tar being amazing. meta is simply too good atm, its the ultimate offense mon thanks to mash + boom, soft-checking everything thanks to ridiculous bulk, and surprising moveset flexibility. defensive sets making a resurgence have worked to make it extremely splashable as well, it fits everywhere and will almost always do something.
a+ rank: blissey, swampert, skarmory, gengar, zapdos / salamence
reasoning: bliss is just impossible to kill unless you have a specific plan for dealing with it bc soft and natural cure and it creates so much momentum by virtue of just existing and stuffing the special attacker.
pert is the anti-physical mon that gets stops against a plethora of dangerous attackers and owns offense with hydro spam. hard to get in front of, harder to keep down.
perhaps I have skarm a little high but I think now it truly is that good, all of its counters have counters and skarm is good at finding ways to force layers and create pressure. mag and spinners are both exploitable in the right scenario, plus spikes are arguably more valuable than ever considering how the four mons at the top of the list are grounded.
gengar is still plenty ridiculous, and its immunities (fighting, ground, normal, spikes) give it plenty of opportunities to come in and start fucking with an opponent's game plan. wisp, hypnosis, taunt, ridic coverage, boom to catch bliss, gar just has to many options and it's incredibly hard to stop when it gets going. sure pursuitar owns it and the range of answers means it can be hard to catch the right targets or get its full value sometimes, but I don't think a mon should be ranked low just because it demands that its user use their brain as well.
I have zapdos lower than other people just because I find it hard to be a fan these days; yeah its a terror but I feel like it just keeps smacking into bliss cele and dol vs defensive shit and is forced to switch out of ddtar aero and jolt vs offense. the meta being as status-crazy as it is hurts it too (paraed zap is functionally only good for foddering and if you let it take tox or burn it becomes easy to slip into range of gar / cbgross mash / pert hydro). mix is good as are all of its sets I just feel like it has more problematic matchups than you'd like and its rarely going to own teams on its lonesome. it's still comfortably a top 10 mon just not top 5.
salamence on the other hand I feel has re-established itself as a homewrecker - cb and dd cleave through offense while still having some utility vs fatter shit (another place where setting spikes helps) while mix just owns slower teams straight up. yeah milotic and blissey are pains but they're not the end of the world. intimidate is also a great emergency button for just about every physical threat and again resist package and defensive utility (particularly against fighters and fire-grass coverage) are to kill for.
a rank: celebi, jirachi, suicune, dugtrio, aerodactyl / snorlax
Hello
I'd like to talk about a mon that I think could be pretty good, although I haven't really gotten much use out of it so far:
Rhydon @ Choice Band
Ability: Rock Head
EVs: 252 Atk
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- Megahorn
- Focus Punch
I left the EVs unfinished because I think it should run quite a bit of speed (like somewhere in the 160-170 speed tier) but that's going to be pretty arbitrary. I think Band Rhydon could be pretty good because if you have a good idea of your opponent's team this thing can be a complete bitch to come in on. Defensive pert is the obvious answer, but it really really doesn't like taking any hit here aside from rock slide, and getting that massive chip on pert is what is going to enable mons like physical mence, dd tar, meta, whatever, to come through and break the other team. Focus punch does like 70 to spdef skarm and that's another thing that physical offense teams (if they don't have a mag, which they should) really want to see.
CB Rhydon is going to behave a lot like CB meta or tar, with the difference being it's slower and frailer, but has a slightly better movepool and STABs. The main reason that I can see to use it over one of those is that it itself isn't metagross or ttar, and I've been running this alongside pursuit tar and salac gross. It can also do a ton more to pert but it gets ohkod in return so that's not a great reason in my opinion.
The biggest shortcoming that Rhydon is going to have is that it is incredibly easy to kill on the special side. Like uninvested metagross hpgrass is a roll to kill from full. Against a lot of mixed offensive mons and pretty much any special mon Rhydon isn't making any headway whatsoever, it doesn't matter that he's practically impossible to switch into if he is outsped and ohkod by everything. So Rhydon absolutely will be useless against CMspam, special spikes offense, most mixed offensive teams, which is pretty horrible on paper and in practice as well, but it really can shine against defensive/stall teams. If you look at the classic TSS team (tar/pert/skarm/bliss/gar/last, meaning moltres, jolteon, flygon, starmie, claydol, whatever), you don't see a CB Rhydon switchin. It's unrealistic for the Rhydon player to click the right move every single time, but even if only happens a couple times that could be more than one kill.
I don't think that CB Rhydon is fantastic, it's definitely not good in all matchups (making it a pretty bad pick on the ladder), but I do think that with proactive play and in the right matchup it can put in a lot of work.
It's like 12:20 am rn and I know some of these sentences are run-on but I hope this made some sense. I think it's worthy of like c- or d rank or something for this set, and there's also the sub sd set on paraspam that mcmeghan talked about that's probably better than this.
Hello guys, I know I’ve been out of the game for a while but seeing as I’m trapped inside thanks to COVID-19 I’ve been doing a fair amount of building and playing for the past couple weeks and thought it would be fun to post my thoughts. No need to add my list to the overall stats as I’m sure it’s not as accurate as someone who’s been keeping up with the game these past 6 months.
For the sake of simplicity I've only included pokemon that are on the current VRs.
S
Tyranitar: The pokemon that defines the tier and the only one worthy of S rank. Sand stream is such a powerful tool in this gen. turning little bits of chip on things like suicune, snorlax, blissey, milotic and celebi in to permanent damage is such a powerful tool for so many teams particularly ones that rely on fast frail cleaners. Outside of that though ttar is just a good pokemon. Solid stats across the board even that low on paper speed stat is surprisingly solid in the early to mid game with max speed mixtars guaranteeing they’re faster than all the offensive swampert and adamant metagross running around these days. As for sets I think the best right now are those aforementioned mixtars which put pretty much any team without a milotic on the backfoot, and the bulky 4 attacks focus punch set which reliably bullies bliss and provides a nice additional check to electrics. DD is still solid although I would argue more so as a midgame wall breaker than a late game cleaner and techs like salac berry taking advantage of the preconceived notion of lum berry on dd tar are pretty neat too. Pursuit tar of course always has a niche in the metagame and I still think the old joke holds true that you can really run any 4 moves on tyranitar and it’ll still be alright.
A+
Metagross: My most used pokemon after Tyranitar right now. With swampert running offensive spreads more often these days metagross’ use as a solid back up vs rocks and choice banders is even more useful than ever all while providing some of the best midgame offensive presence in the tier. Offensive teams really rely on this mon for their defensive backbones. Its resistances and natural bulk give so much counter play to the offensive threats of the tier. Explosion is a big part of it too as it gives you an out vs pokemon you may be shaky against while also having the ability to create valuable positive trades for the rest of your offense. My favorite set right now is agility, unlike other late game set uppers metagross doesn’t give up much in terms of its early to midgame utility by running this set so it gives it some flexibility in different match ups. Mixed is always strong with STAB psychic hurting a lot of its common switch ins and nothing creates more early game pressure than choice band metagross. I also really like the idea behind salac sets particularly with endure as it allows you to more easily force positive trades on the pokemon that commonly try and outspeed and revenge kill you to stop you from exploding on something.
Blissey: In my opinion the days of blissey being a passive poke that slows down your offense and gives physical free turns are over. Blissey is more than capable of crippling many of its common switch ins with Fireblast roasting metagross and skarmory, twave and toxic threatening a lot of common offensive pokemon, plus the option of sing to shut something down. Even the consistent chip of Stoss in sand is nothing to scoff at. Even for behemoths like Lax and Tyranitar. It also provides really solid utility in wish which can be beneficial for offensive and defensive teams alike. The days of blissey being only viable on stall teams are definitely over as many bulkier offenses really appreciate blissey’s ability to prevent them from being dismantled by the next pokemon on this list.
A
Zapdos: Sitting at the top of A rank is Zapdos. With Blissey being the only thing that truly consistently counters it Zapdos has a very good match up against a lot of common teams and has a large impact on the way teams are built in this tier. A solid speed tier and powerful thunderbolts are really the only two things this pokemon needs to be effective and many pokemon like Claydol find a lot of their value merely from the fact that it stops zapdos from being able to spam tbolt. Personally I think offensive twave hp grass sets are where it’s at right now with this pokemon. With roar in the 4th slot its one of the best spike shufflers in the game and baton pass is excellent alongside trappers as well as strong physical attackers like metagross and tyranitar. Toxic protect sets are strong too particularly in the early game however twave’s ability to neutralize late game threats and create positive trades are hard to pass up in the current metagame. I’m not super sold on rest zap right now. Unlike what I mentioned with blissey that is a set that lets gives powerful physicals too many free turns although it can be useful in heavily stallish match ups just for its ability to drain pp on things like milotic and blissey. Offensive sets give it more than enough reason to get this high on the list though.
Swampert: I debated putting this above Zapdos but I ultimately decided against it. Mixed offensive swampert is one of my absolute favorite inventions of the past few years. Stab Hydro is so strong and with its ability to keep blissey on its toes with focus punch, any team without a water resist is going to struggle a bit against this mon. Even common water resists like celebi and suicune can struggle a bit, celebi thanks to powerful ice beams forcing it in to recovering as you bring in your aggressive physicals and suicune as sand makes it less than a consistent answer (although the modest crocune sets that are popular right now call this in to question). The only thing that really puts a hard stop on this is milotic so pairing this with something like a metagross to lure and explode on it is crucial. This also has the added benefit of making up for this sets relative frailty compared to more traditional swampert. That being said this thing is not a defensive liability and its ability to buy your team time against threats like dd tar, dd mence, agiligross and aerodactyl are incredibly valuable for the offensive teams this set finds itself on. The reason I decided to rank it lower than Zapdos is because I’m not as high on the defensive sets these days. It’s still one of the absolute best showstoppers to the tier’s best physicals but HP grass is all over the place right now which hurts it a bit and the mono surf set’s lack of offensive output can make it set up fodder for bulkier set up users like subrachi and suicune. Still this thing is absolutely top tier and one of the defining pokemon in the metagame. Also almost forgot to mention endeavor. One of the best sets in the game for forcing favorable trades
Skarmory: The next slot goes to the best user of arguably the best move in the game: spikes. Spikes are such a powerful tool for offensive and defensive builds a like, the ability to turn aggressive double switches in to not just momentum builders but actual damage is insane and the chip it provides against common defensive behemoths force teams in to tricky situations when the later stages of the game roll around. Right now unfortunately skarm’s place in the metagame isn’t as high as it used to be. This is due to two factors. One some of its old common set up targets like Blissey, Swampert and even Snorlax are now running moves that do a lot of damage to it. Probably even worse for it though is the rise of Claydol who can reset your spikes which is absolutely devastating for the speed oriented frail spikes teams that dominated the post restalk era of the metagame. Now skarmory teams have to either focus hard on ways to keep their spikes, or preferably in my opinion, focus on other paths to victory just supplemented by spikes. Still spikes are an ever present and powerful tool in ADV so its best user is always going to be a threat because of it.
Gengar: Like Skarmory, Gengar’s effectiveness in the metagame is largely tied to spike’s effectiveness. Not that it is codependent on spikes but being one of the best abusers and supporters to the strategy there will always be a correlation. Even on spikes teams I do often find myself dropping Gengar more often than I used to these days as I with the greater dominance of blissey I find myself favoring a more robust physically offensive presence on my teams which gengar unfortunately cuts in to. One would think with rapid spin seeing more use in the current metagame that gengar would rise to meet it but I think many teams are finding it far more effective to just round out a teams offense so they aren’t totally reliant on spikes rather than going all in on protecting them which means it’s finding itself getting cut from some of its old mainstay teams more often than it used to. Still Gengar’s offensive presence is not lost in the current metagame. The threat of amazing coverage, sleep and burn make most offensive teams have to think twice whenever it finds a way in to the game and thanks to its plethora of immunities and resistances this is not a difficult task. Its disruptive moves like taunt, destiny bond and of course explosion also play a huge role in its effectiveness. Explosion in particular thanks to its late game board control utility. A fast relatively weak explosion is actually an insanely powerful tool in the later stages of the game as it can simultaneously stop an opposing set up turn while also giving you a free switch in to a pokemon that may be able to just win the game. This tool is powerful enough that even non spikes teams, particularly special offenses who appreciate gengar’s ability to lure blissey have a place for Gengar.
A-
Snorlax: Had a tough time placing this spot but ultimately decided on Snorlax. It’s ability to hold off Zapdos and other specially offensive pokemon while also not sacrificing on a team’s physically offensive pressure is extremely valuable and fairly unique to this pokemon. Bulky boom users as discussed under metagross are also incredibly valuable and make it an easy inclusion on any offense. With the great coverage provided by body slam, shadow ball and focus punch allow it to stave off common counters like gengar, tyranitar and skarmory allowing it to more easily click body slam and curseboom or counter sets are great at forcing positive trades. Snorlax can sometimes struggle to do damage without resorting to self destruct and of course with the everpresence of sand, snorlax often struggles to stick around long term but those few early game switches in to something like zapdos are often all an offensive team needs to get the momentum on its side and take the game. I’m not a huge fan of curse rest sets right now. They’re very effective against milodol type archetypes but they struggle a lot against more offensive teams. They also rely entirely on magneton and possibly even claydol as well to consistently do anything which limits the amounts of teams it can be found on. Since im not a huge fan of magdol this really sours my opinion on traditional curselax.
Suicune: I’m very high on that modest crocune set right now so this is getting a higher spot on this list than usual. Traditional rest cune sometimes struggles with being a little weak until around its second calm mind but even with surf this set still busts through lax just fine while also having the increased longevity provided by restalk which makes the sacrifices in bulk less noticeable compared to other offensive cune. This set is also one of the best punishers for passive pokemon like milotic which is very useful. The other sets still have the same struggles, offensive variants can do a ton of work opening holes in opposing teams and depending on the way you play them can still create the 100% win scenarios suicune is known for but as always it struggles with the fact that any damage on it is permanent and it very often doesn’t have every tool it needs against opposing checks (ie if no roar opposing roar cune is a hard stop, if no sub, milo/bliss are hard stops and if no ice beam stuff like celebi and salamence can be difficult). This is a problem for offensive cune as unlike other offensive mons if it tries to set up and loses any hp in the process only to be met by one of those hard stops it can often have a hard time creating value for itself later even if you manage to get rid of those stops. Defensive variants are still very strong against passive builds but can struggle against more offensive builds as they can have a hard time waking up once they click rest.
Salamence: The main thing I’ve always liked about Salamence is that combination of intimidate and offensive pressure. Intimidate is such a great tool for neutralizing physical threats with the right predictions and with its ability to force a lot of pokemon to switch out with its powerful attacks and pressure switch ins it creates a lot of value on offensive archetypes. Mixed Mence and CB mence are the sets that do this best in my opinion due to their raw power and how difficult it can be for so many teams to switch in on them. CB mence relies somewhat on magneton support but it is right alongside aero as the main reason teams need some sort of rock/steel type and if it can clear its resists to hp flying or earthquake it just gets a free kill every time it finds a way to switch in. Mixmence doesn’t have quite the raw power (although base 110 spA is nothing to scoff at on a mon that can also do 45% to bliss) but more than makes up for it in coverage. Sometimes I like to drop HP grass for wish to give teammates like lax, suicune, tyranitar and metagross a second life. Seeing as these pokemon easily switch in to a lot of mixmence’s common answers this is a very easy thing to pull off. Dragon dance sometimes struggles offensively since without a boost hidden power flying can be a little weak. It also just barely misses out on some crucial Kos on things like tyranitar, bulky gengar and metagross so even if its counter is down it can still come up short. Still if you manage to get everything in to its range, its coverage and ability to outspeed everything after just one boost can create a lot of unwinnable late game situations for opposing offensive builds. DD is ironically better in many ways for its defensive utility, providing a reliable answer to things like heracross, celebi and others without getting chipped by sand the way CB does.
Dugtrio: Always a useful inclusion on the teams it finds itself on. Dugtrio is ever reliable for trapping metagame staples like tyranitar, celebi, blissey, mangeton, metagross and heracross among many others. It’s also ironically one of the best countertrappers to itself when paired alongside something like hera, celebi, or breloom that forces it in to one of its weaker attacks although I can’t tell you how many times I’ve both lost the speed tie and gotten crit while trying this. With many DD tar and of course mixtar forgoing bulk these days its ability to put a stop to the tier’s best mon is at an all time high. It pairs really nicely with specially offensive threats like Gengar, Suicune, Starmie, Jolteon and of course Zapdos by trapping blissey and celebi. Particularly useful when you consider Zapdos and Jolteon have baton pass to easily get dugtrio in. The main thing keeping it so low is the fact that every time it does its thing it cedes momentum to your opponent which can be devastating for some of the offensive teams it likes to find itself on.
Celebi: Usually finds its way on to teams as an answer to electrics and waters. It’s particularly useful on mag teams who tend to stack weaknesses to earthquake. Stats make it really versatile though. Spdef sets with leech seed are solid pivots that work really well alongside trappers with a well timed dry pass since it lures in both tar and skarm fairly reliably. Offensive sets are strong too as both supporters with CM pass or as a sweeper in its own right. Also provides a nice offensive check to the aforementioned electrics and waters as well as gengar thanks to natural cure and STAB psychic. I do sometimes wish it was faster though especially with hp fire cutting that crucial speed iv. Swords dance is also neat and can really up the aggression factor on physical offenses. I personally like running SD Baton Pass Leech Seed Recover. Plays like a traditional leech BP cele in the early game allowing you to reveal SD at a crucial blowout moment.
Jirachi: Super weird mon but very solid. Despite having the same exact typing as metagross the two could not be more different. I think calm mind sets are where its at with this mon right now. Particularly substitute to block all the Twave being thrown around these days. It’s really effective against both passive teams as well as slower offenses. It does struggle to fit the right coverage moves sometimes though. Mixed rachi is also pretty strong in the current metagame also due to its ability to mess with slower offenses. Wishtect sets are not so great right now unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it). Dugtrio has become common enough again that the toxic set is far from reliable and both the toxic and body slam sets just do nothing against passive refresh oriented teams while letting bulky set up sweepers like cune have a field day.
B+
Aerodactyl: Nothing takes advantage of ballsy late game plays better than aerodactyl. The fact that it outspeeds and threatens huge damage on all the other fast frail lategame threats other than Jolteon is huge and if you can pull off successful doubles with it you’ll be picking team members off from your opponent 1 by 1. Hp fight is really cool if you’re a little soft vs dd tar since you’re guaranteed to outspeed it at + 1 although does drop a speed IV which is really unfortunate. Since you’re not winning those speed ties anyway you can go down to 180+ speed though to get the jump on Dugtrio and throw the rest in HP to live things like offensive gar tbolt and milotic surfs which is kinda nifty. Ranked below A because if you play this thing passively it’s not gonna do a ton since it has a hard time getting in on anything but doubles and revenge kills.
Milotic: The best answer to mixed offensive threats in the game. Mixtar, mixmence, mixpert etc all have very few counters and this shuts each of them down almost entirely. Refresh + toxic + surf + recover is surprisingly difficult for a lot of more physical based offenses and midrange tss teams to switch in to and if it can avoid the boom from metagross it can sometimes singlehandedly dismantle these teams. Its main issue is that it lacks the bulk for the non-mixed variants of a lot of those threats (besides swampert although endeavor + roar pert is a great way to abuse milo). CB Mence and physical variants of tar force a lot of damage on it, so you need defensive back up alongside it which often forces it onto some fairly passive teams. It also really appreciates anti spikes support since it lets all three spikers get up their layers relatively freely and has a much harder time tanking hits with spikes down. This further limits its team options. Side note, on paper the offensive variant with hypno is really appealing to me but I haven’t really been able to get it to work on a good team yet.
Starmie: Nothing threatens physical offense more than offensive starmie. Excellent speed great coverage and super powerful STAB hydro are all amazing. It can also perform crucial late game spikes resets for things like dd tar who may need their full hp to get the job done in some instances. The main things holding it back are the fact that it struggles to do anything against bliss and also the fact that it can get itself picked off by dug. I’m also not a fan of bulky sets. Lategame twave threats to neutralize set up users are nice and it is one of the better moltres answers in the game but other than that it provides little defensive utility and basically 0 offensive utility. I just don’t value rapid spin enough for this to take up a whole teamslot.
B
Cloyster: Dual water/ice stab with decent speed, boom and spikes! What’s not to love? Cloyster’s a really great spiker for offensive teams who appreciate its ability to come in on things like milotic and threaten booms. It doesn’t last long but doesn’t really need to. Even if all it does it get one layer down and an ok boom trade it’s done its job. Its horrible special defense does really bite a lot of the time though especially since its old favorite thing to switch in to, swampert, is now running heavily invested hydro pumps to smack it with. Rock weakness also really hurts it and kinda ruins that base 180 def stat.
Claydol: I’ve been hating on this mon for years, so I guess it is finally time for me to eat my hat. I still think refresh dol is a dumb set. Way too passive and not enough defensive utility for a pokemon who’s main purpose is rapid spin. But I do really like the offensive boom sets that have cropped up recently since it allows it to fit on more aggressive teams which is where rapid spin’s ability to reset the field really shines. It hits a pretty nice speed tier and the power of boom/stab eq somewhat make up for its middling attack stat. Also, the ability to stop zapdos from spamming tbolt is a godsend.
Flygon: I really like flygon on paper. STAB EQ is super strong especially with pert leaning more and more offensive these days. 4 attacks flygon (EQ/RS/HP Bug/Fire Blast) is hard for lots of midrange teams to switch in to. The only thing is every time I try to build a team with this thing while the flygon itself is solid, the team as a whole always ends up with some gaping defensive weakness. This may be more a reflection on me as a builder than on flygon itself, but I can never seem to check all the defensive blocks I need when I run this thing. This is a problem since the kinds of teams it works best on are midrangey spikes builds which need a solid defensive backbone. I think this largely stems from the fact that it’s not a great answer to anything other than physical tyranitar and non hp ice electrics and even then, you want some back up in case of ice beam or hidden power ice respectively. If we were rating on appearance though this thing is S rank for sure.
Magneton: The skarm trapper’s utility is of course largely tied to whatever happens to be going on with skarmory these days. With skarm not really being able to run its classic protox set as often these days most physically oriented teams are better able to wear it down without the help of magneton between mixed attackers, lax focus punch, and CB metagross a lot more teams are able to get away without mag. The prevalence of yoloskarm also makes magneton much less reliable than it used to be. Still magneton still has the same niche it’s always had so it will always find teams that need it. SD pass teams in particular really appreciate mag’s support since celebi can just never get past skarm. Magneton also has some surprising usefulness vs mixed offense builds seeing as they generally rely on snorlax as their electric answer who magneton has a surprisingly good match up against.
B-
Moltres: STAB fire is so strong in this tier and throw in will-o-wisp to boot and you’ve got a massive threat on your hands. Bliss and milotic hard wall you (although roar + spikes shenanigans can really mess even these two up) and suicune draining fireblast PP can be a little rough but outside of that a lot of teams will struggle to switch in to moltres. I personally like to run it alongside spikes since it’s one of the better shufflers with roar but it doesn’t need spikes as it straight up ohkos a ton of common pokemon without the need for any chip. I do wish it was a little faster sometimes since timid zapdos being able to consistently revenge kill is a little rough. Also the 4x rock weakness definitely hurts as its main switch opportunities, metagross and heracross are fully capable of running rock slide and smacking it on the switch.
Jolteon: I love Jolteon and it pains me to put it this low on the list. Unfortunately, the prevalence of twave on offensive zapdos which was previously one of its best midgame match ups has really hurt its midgame utility as well as its viability as a check to opposing electrics. I think if using this the best set by far is twave as thanks to its blistering speed its one of the best neutralizers to lategame set up pokemon in the game which is a very useful tool on offensive teams.
Heracross: Heracross still finds itself running across excellent match ups with the prevalence of milo dol teams. Even though these teams often run dugtrio this is usually a positive trade for the heracross player since the dug player generally has to lose something to get the revenge kill allowing a counter trap with another dug or porygon2. That being said, heracross’ middling speed has always caused it to struggle against offenses which are fairly prevalent these days.
From here on out I’m not going to be talking about every mon, just ones I have thoughts on.
C+
Vaporeon: I’m really high on this pokemon lately. 101 HP Subs + Baton pass on a pokemon that hits this hard on the special side is absolutely insane. Vs stallish teams you force things like Blissey in as its often the only thing that can stand up at all to that STAB hydro pump and now you can baton pass an unpoppable sub to a dangerous physical attacker. It also has a pretty decent speed tier for the midgame, with timid it’s guaranteed to be faster than all these fast perts and tars running around these days as well as adamant metagross. You also generally outspeed things like bulky cele and bulky zap.
Charizard
Breloom: Cool to see this guy getting more recognition. Spore + powerful attacks + that nice mid game speed tier are really great traits. Not to mention it actually being a kinda decent ttar answer. I still really like stun spore on this guy for crippling fast fight resists after you've gotten your spore off.
Venusaur
Gyarados: Never been a huge Gyara fan. It has the intimidate that makes mence so good but it's severely lacking in immediate offensive power. Its ability to set up on lots of bulky pokemon is hindered by the fact that it often ends up getting chipped down to dust before it can even break through 1 or 2 pokemon. Rest kinda helps but also puts you to sleep for two turns and it's not doing anything to boost its defenses so it's quite vulnerable during that time.
Forretress
Porygon2
Kingdra
C
Cacturne: This relatively high ranking is less about sand veil and more about the fact that this is a really great spiker when you consider claydol is the primary anti spikes mon. It resist earthquake, is immune to psychic and hits it hard with hp dark. It’s also a great spikes abuser all on its own so you can get a lot of work out of those spikes before claydol is able to remove them against one of your team mates.
Hariyama
Machamp
Jynx
Weezing
Raikou
C-
Donphan
Ludicolo
Medicham
Marowak
Steelix
Blaziken
Regice
Houndoom
Alakazam
Rhydon
Umbreon
Smeargle
Gligar
Lunatone
Tauros
The following are pokemon that are currently on the viability ranking that I don’t think should be. This is not to say they are strictly bad and can’t be useful or even win games, just that either their niches are generally filled by pokemon above this point, or the kinds of support they require make the kinds of teams they end up on less than optimal in the current metagame.
The Definitive ADV Viability Rankings, by UD (Corona Virus edition)
S Rank
(Dominates the tier from both a viability and usage standpoint.)
I am putting Tyranitar back into S Tier this time around because it clearly earns the distinction. Versatility and power is the name of the game with the Big Bad Dino. Tar can threaten the entire metagame with anything ranging from a CB Focus Punch (for the Waters) to the MixTar set that has super effective coverage on everything in OU except for uhhh...Gengar, Gyarados, and Moltres? It does all of this while providing invaluable chip Sandstorm damage on most of the fat walls in the tier, and being insanely bulky no matter your spread. Consider the following:
A 0/0/0 Tar is approximately as bulky as:
Physically = 252 HP / 0 Def Weezing
252+ Atk Salamence Rock Slide vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Weezing: 79-94 (23.6 - 28.1%) -- 90.9% chance to 4HKO
252+ Atk Salamence Rock Slide vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Tyranitar: 85-101 (24.9 - 29.6%) -- 100% chance to 4HKO
Specially = 252 HP / 0 SpDef Jolteon
252 SpA Starmie Ice Beam vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Jolteon: 90-107 (26.9 - 32%) -- 52% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Starmie Ice Beam vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Tyranitar: 87-103 (25.5 - 30.2%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
Not that either of the above two examples are common or even used at all, but both Weezing and Jolteon are generally thought of as being pretty bulky on their respective sides of the defensive spectrum. It is an abstract way of looking at things but sometimes when I am EV'ing a Tar set, I find myself bemoaning the lack of enough EVs to hit certain defensive benchmarks. But it's nice to remember that if you can spare any investment for bulk on a Tyranitar then it's instantly one of the bulkiest Mons in the tier by default.
If there were any chinks in Tar's figurative armor, then it would be that he does invite pretty aggressive anti-Tyranitar strategies from the lead position (gives a free turn to lead CB Metagross, and is massive bait for the Fighting Mons), and that he has a habit of compounding weaknesses to Dugtrio and Starmie, which can be problematic for offensive builds.
A+ Rank
(Staples of multiple different team styles; dominant at their roles)
By far the best Bulky Water in the tier, Swampert offers the role compression that offense craves, and the defensive support that stall requires. Protect + Leftovers in Sandstorm makes him incredibly resilient. Oftentimes the opponent must resort to landing a stray HP Grass or else Exploding Pert on the switch to kill it. Using the Dex standard 40 SpA spread gives your Ice Beams / Hydro Pumps a bit of oomph to them. Increase SpA even higher and you can really make some Celebi and Zapdos think twice about switching in, all while still reliably checking PhysTar, most all Metagross, DD/CB Mence, Flygon, Aero, etc. The list goes on.
Toss in Refresh to the mix if you're running Mono Surf and now you have a Poke that no longer fears Toxic from SkarmBliss, at the expense of losing coverage. Either set is completely viable and pretty much "Plug and Play" in any team of five in ADV. Another option on Mono Surf, or just two attacks (Ice Beam + Earthquake), is Roar. Roar Pert can be a fantastic Phazer for shuffling to accrue additional Spikes damage, and it almost singlehandedly shuts down SD Pass Celebi teams, and has the bonus of emergency Phazing Snorlax and Suicune in a pinch.
Also noteworthy are offensive four attack sets that really pressure SkarmBliss teams in general, EndPert, which is an excellent wallbreaker, and even the odd Curse set which can sweep the unprepared team in the end game.
Blissey is the most oppressive Mon in ADV. Unless you are running a team of 5 Explosion Mons and a CurseLax, then your team is weak to Blissey. Consider a bog standard Magneton physical offense. Magneton / Snorlax / Mence / Metagross / Heracross / Water type. This is supposed to be one of the best possible matchups against Blissey, yet she still stonewalls DD Mence, comes in against the Water type and Magneton, threatens everything with T-Wave, Toxic, or Fire Blast, and can even check the Snorlax if it has Counter.
What makes her so good is that it's hard to reliably 2HKO her, and if you aren't 2HKO'ing her then you aren't making any progress. The most reliable way to counter Blissey is defensively, with a Rest Mon or with your own Toxic + Recover Mon that can just sit there and waste turns on the battlefield.
Blissey can struggle against some momentum based offenses where the Zapdos, for example, just Baton Passes to a CM Pass Celebi, who then passes the chain again to a MixTar, Offensive Pert, or MixMeta. But Bliss can still pressure the chain passers by spamming Ice Beam, or by hitting the final recipient with either Thunder Wave or Toxic. And of course, that's why there are five more Mons on your team.
Furthermore I do think Blissey struggles greatly with 4MSS. Thankfully it's not that big of a deal when she already does her job better than anything else in ADV just with Soft-boiled and Seismic Toss. But it can be really frustrating trying to fit coverage moves, status moves, even Wish or Heal Bell.
I still think Gengar is an absurdly strong Pokemon that restricts so much of team building. For instance, how nice would it be if you could just ignore Gengar in the builder? No more WoW to contend with outside of Moltres and the odd Smeargle/Weezing. No more worthless Shadow Ball coverage on Snorlax. A whole host of Mons suddenly becomes so much easier to use if you knew you didn't need to account for the annoying, smiling, Earthquake immune, Normal immune Ghost. Not to mention we would no longer feel so obligated to splash the far inferior Pursuit Tar on everything, instead of using its better sets.
The old Taunt WoW sets might not be as strong as they once were just with the general metagame shifts, but Gengar does have all the tools necessary to beat its best counters. Destiny Bond is awesome for Claydol, Explosion is great for bulky Starmie, and you can cheese Pursuit Tar and Blissey with Hypnosis + Focus Punch / Explosion. Offensive Gengar also cleans up in the endgame like nothing else this side of Starmie.
The problems with Gengar are of course that it has to contend with all of the the threats mentioned in the previous paragraph, and it can't really do that all in one set reliably anymore.
Probably the best combination of offense and defense in ADV, after Tyranitar. Boom is an indispensable tool and always gives you an answer to any fat Rest sweeper. Its special attacking sets hit a variety of targets super hard, all while still checking huge portions of the tier with the combination of Meteor Mash + Explosion. Thunder Punch + HP Grass is overall the best coverage, but being walled by opposing Jirachi/Meta/Zapdos sucks. HP Fire + Psychic chunks Zapdos and just drops Gengar, but it doesn't really hurt SkarmPert enough. CB Meta is the best wallbreaker in the tier, but it struggles immensely against trapper teams. Metagross also sort of needs Rock Slide to not be Zapdos and Moltres bait, but dropping Protect on the physical Leftovers set can really hurt your ability to check everything it's supposed to.
All that being said, there's really nothing that breaks a game open like a crit + Att raise Meteor Mash. And any team that doesn't have one of Dug or Mag is at real risk of losing two Mons to opposing Metagross.
A Rank
(Must be prepared for these or you'll pay the consequences)
Zapdos puts a lot of teams on edge by dishing out super powerful Thunderbolts and switching in on a huge portion of the tier. It can also pressure its switch ins/T-Bolt pivots using its filler moves. Protect + Toxic messes with Celebi and Blissey. Hidden Power + Toxic covers Swampert and Flygon. Thunder Wave ruins Venusaur and Jolteon. And Baton Pass or Roar takes advantage of all of them via regaining momentum. The problems with Zapdos, however, are that it can struggle to remain healthy enough to live a key hit in the end game, and that the wrong status move can be pretty useless in certain matchups. Furthermore, the difference between Modest and Timid can be significant in terms of power output, but the 328 Speed tier is a very sweet spot in ADV.
Shoutouts to Calm Zapdos for still being a reliable special wall and great Skarmory / Milotic / Swampert switch in. And also shoutout to filler move Drill Peck since it always OHKOs Breloom/Heracross, and hits Celebi just a bit harder than Thunderbolt.
By far the best Spiker in the tier but it's significantly tougher to create your own offense with ProTox, and to keep your Spikes up, given the general nature of the tier these days. Fitting Drill Peck or Taunt means you dropped one of the two moves that used to make you so good, but going without them means you could just be completely blanked by a Claydol or Forretress team. Offensive sets mean opposing Magneton need to provide some kind of contingency in their team just in case they get sniped by YoloSkarm. Overall YoloSkarm is not very good, but it's definitely nice to mix it in to your team building every once in awhile.
Ranking Suicune this high might seem controversial, but I am a big fan of it. Rest or Sub sets when played right can just cruise control to a win in some games. Full on offensive Cune can be absolutely devastating against some teams, but it really struggles with Hydro Pump accuracy. Cune has a decent amount of variety to it, even if all of its sets operate mostly the same. Sub CM Surf can use a number of different moves in the last slot, such as Rest, Rain Dance, Roar, Protect, and of course Ice Beam. The reinvention of CroCune has reminded everyone to plan ahead whenever the opposing Cune clicks Rest.
The biggest issues that Suicune faces are its propensity for being asleep mid-battle, and lack of useful resistances or Sandstorm immunity means it's free reign for CB Mence to exploit Mono Surf versions, and DD Tar / Aero can flinch fish freely (say that 10x fast).
Speaking of CB Mence, here we find probably the best current CB Mon in the tier. Mence hits so hard and so fast, and it provides amazing defensive utility. MixMence also hits a huge portion of the tier for major damage, while still providing the same defensive utility that CB and DD sets do. DD is probably the most "effortless" cleaner in the tier, meaning if the conditions are right, then nothing sweeps as easily as a +1 +1 Salamence does. Bonus points for versatility with Wish (either three attacks + Wish or defensive Wish on a Claydol + Magneton style team that would otherwise be obliterated by Heracross).
A- Rank
(Extremely common threats but maybe not as powerful as those listed above)
One of the best walls in the tier, and very dangerous with the right set. Leech Seed + Recover provides excellent longevity throughout the game, and Psychic + HP Grass coverage means you actually hit a lot of the tier for respectable damage. Unfortunately, however, you are huge bait for Steel Mons and generally just not strong enough. For instance, HP Grass doesn't OHKO Starmie, meaning Starmie can fire off a minimum of two Ice Beams if it wants. Offensive sets function best with BP as the fourth move, but dropping an attack means you aren't hitting at least one common target for worthwhile damage. Overall, Celebi is extremely good and very splashable, but it's a bit hax prone and the offensive sets don't have great coverage or longevity.
Stupidly broken with Arena Trap. But Dug is kinda weak overall and very difficult to bring in outside of a sac or a double switch / Baton Pass. It's nice to see some people finally taking EQ locked Dug seriously, and absolutely blowing them away with a +2 +2 Marowak/Metagross/whatever, courtesy of Ninjask.
Offensive sets are sorta weak and don't have the best coverage since Psychic isn't an amazing STAB. CM / two attacks / Sub or Wish are Jirachi's best sets, but the coverage is laughably bad. It's really just a hax fishing machine, but the way it sets up in the face of Blissey is the absolute envy of special attackers everywhere. Wish + Protect is still a great team support Mon, but I think there are a bit too many Lum Berries and Refresh Mons around for it to really be dangerous enough offensively.
Starmie gets points for having two pretty distinct and powerful sets: Bulky Spinner and Offensive Cleaner. The former is actually a very stout and sturdy Mon that walls a lot of the tier while keeping Spikes off your side of the field. The latter is an absolute beast with or without Spikes support in the endgame. Incredible coverage coupled with a blazing Speed stat and you have a recipe for destruction. The problem of course is with 80% Hydro Pump accuracy, but you can toy with Surf, HP Grass, or Psychic on the moveset, which should mostly alleviate the need to ever click Hydro Pump in the first place.
In addition to being a great cleaner with Rock Slide flinch shenanigans at its disposal, Aerodactyl is also a great weapon for semi-BP chain stuff, since Celebi is usually a lynchpin of those teams, and it can't hardly touch Aero in return. Having the uber fast Rock Slide is great for Zapdos/Gengar/Starmie revenge killing, which is an invaluable trait for offensive teams. But that's not exactly new information. Still a very good finisher, it just appreciates Spikes support, which is a little easier said than done right now.
B+ Rank
(Strong Pokemon that require some team support)
The best Anti-Spikes measure in ADV, and just a pretty good Mon overall. It amazes me that ADV was played for about 15 years before people started using fast Claydol sets. Beefed up Att stat with Explosion + STAB EQ and an ability to pivot Zapdos makes an overall attractive package. I think Refresh saw its time in the spotlight but now it already feels a bit antiquated.
299/328 Speed with 299/328 Att and STAB EQ, Rock Slide, HP Bug, and filler move is an excellent set. You can try Sub + three attacks to guarantee you get chip damage on Gengar and always use your strongest move. But I think that four attacks is overall the best. Impish with ProTox is still quite good since it passively checks a bunch of stuff. Overall, Flygon is a great finisher for a lot of slow and bulky Mons. I sort of equate it to a physical version of Offensive Starmie, but without the Speed in exchange for better defensive typing. Offensive sets will kill pretty much anything under 35% HP, which is a good role to fill all while pivoting Zapdos and checking DD Tar.
Terrifying with a Spike down, but it's not that great defensively, and offensively it finds itself relying on WoW far too often for my liking. The speed tier isn't that great either since even if you go to 306 Speed then you'll still just be outsped by max Speed base 100s and the rest of the gang. But it does fulfill a unique role of being pretty much the only thing to switch in on Metagross and just completely, utterly, turn the tides in your favor. Roasting Celebi and Jirachi into oblivion is extremely satisfying too, but all too often I find myself using terrible Timid and not only being outsped but also taking a +1 Psychic for 70% while being forced to either Roar or do a pitiful 60% in return with Flamethrower.
Very good defensively when you bother to HP invest it and give it Leftovers > Magnet. But the problem is you can only really afford to do that on a team in which you also have a Spinner. But unfortunately if you're using Magnet and you get sniped by YoloSkarm, then you might be SOL. I think as a general rule of teambuilding, you should have at least one backup plan for all variants of Skarmory anytime you use Magneton.
Incredible in some games, like a Cloyster-lite in others, and almost a complete dead weight in the rest. Forry actually has an incredible movepool, but the problem is fitting anything in your moveset since you really should be using Rapid Spin, and that only gives you two free slots. But EQ + Boom means you have a very good chance of surviving Magneton from full HP and killing in return, and if they have something like a Snorlax, or you can paralyze something on their team, then you might have the chance to Explode later in the match. You can play around with Counter > EQ (kills Mag anyway), Zap Cannon (ruins Gengar), Light Screen (with EQ to really screw Magneton), and there are some others too. HP Bug would be nice if you can fit it because HP Bug + Spin Forry is theoretically probably the single best answer to defensive Celebi in all of ADV.
B Rank
(Either very good offensively or defensively but either flawed in what they do or else one-dimensional)
This might seem hilariously low, but I just don't think Snorlax is that good. No four attack set can ever do exactly what it wants to unless it's teammates with one of Magneton or Pursuit Tar. CurseLax will always get haxed down or have something terrible happen to it unless you have Mag + Spin + weather change + somehow manage to avoid everything else that will slip through the cracks on your MagDol Snorlax build. If there's a right way to use Snorlax, then I haven't found it yet.
Milotic is the premier Mixed Wall in ADV by virtue of only having two 2x weaknesses and a mammoth base 125 SpDef stat, meaning she can easily shrug off non-STAB HP Grasses from the likes of Tyranitar or Salamence. When equipped with both Toxic and Refresh, Milotic makes for an excellent answer to Blissey, Swampert, opposing non-Refresh Milotic, offensive Suicune, and others. Unfortunately, dropping Ice Beam means she no longer poses an immediate threat to Salamence or Celebi, and even the now-popular Breloom switches in risk free on 3/4 of her moves. Furthermore, Milotic is in general very one-dimensional and predictable in what it's going to do, which now makes it much easier to exploit since most players are prepared for a Refresh Milotic.
Gyarados has some nice tools in its chest and a unique base stat distribution. Its high base SpDef makes it ideal for setting up in the face of Cune/Milo/Swampert, and with Rest it can do so even more risk free. Having the Speed to go >394 at +1 with HP Rock is very useful as well, since Zapdos is your number one switch in and it only takes one chip HP Rock before you can finish it the next time it comes in if you DD. Bulky with Rest can be excellent in endgame situations against slow paced teams, while DD + three attacks (or Taunt) is a nice tempo changer on physical offense when you just need to pivot against the opposing Bulky Water. Thunder Wave is a decent option on paraspam, and Sub can be great to catch a Booming Metagross. Gyara loses points for being WAY worse against Heracross than Salamence, by virtue of sometimes being outsped and being less physically bulky than Salamence.
Nothing hurt Jolteon more than the advent of Claydol and Thunder Wave Zapdos. Unfortunately these two metagame trends have drastically cut into Jolteon's viability. That's not to say that it isn't still capable of putting in a shift. Even though paralyzed Jolteon is all but ruined, you can still get value out of it by preventing Zapdos from clicking T-Bolt, and also slow Baton Passing out of the matchup to regain momentum. Still an excellent Spikes shuffler, it just really desperately needs the Spikes to stick. But the Speed tier is invaluable and it allows Jolteon to pick a weakened offensive team apart.
I think Cloyster can really only be played one way these days (with a ton of Speed investment), but it's an excellent tempo shifter for fast paced, or Explosion based offenses. There's nothing more satisfying than laying that Spike against Swampert and then seeing your Leftovers take first after Celebi switches in, knowing you have a free Boom the next turn. You can also Surf to catch Magneton on a switch, which is an absolutely devastating move for ClayMag teams to contend with, since it means you can do two, if not all three of the following: kill Magneton, keep Spikes up, and Explode on something else.
On one hand this feels too low, but on another hand I personally like a lot of the Mons ranked below this much more than Heracross. I think Hera really struggles with, plain and simple, offering zero defensive synergy whatsoever with anything. It's just awkward. It sort of switches into physical Tar. It sort of switches in on Swampert. I guess it safely switches in on Milotic but taking Toxic might activate Guts in exchange for putting you on the fastest timer in history. It doesn't even really like coming in on Blissey's Thunder Wave since it means its best move now has barely over 60% chance to hit. This all while being Dugtrio bait, walled to hell and back by Salamence, outsped by Timid Moltres even when you went Jolly, and on and on. His best set is always going to involve Salac Berry, but sadly those are borderline impossible to support reliably. Because I can't only shit on Heracross without mentioning something nice about it, I must acknowledge the way it SHREDS most MagDol squads, particularly the Salac versions. And CB Hera is a nuke.
B- Tier
(Pretty niche threats but can still put in a shift in the right matchup)
Hariyama has access to one of the best moves in the game in Knock Off. It's also incredibly good against every variant of Tar out there, being capable of being 3HKO'd by +1 252+ Earthquake, while always OHKO'ing in return with your Fighting STAB move. Its problems are being just below the Swampert / Blissey tier unless you Speed invest, which he can't really afford the investment since he wants all the bulk he can get. Additionally, it takes a truck load from all but the weakest special attacks (ironically it isn't very threatened by Gengar outside of Taunt + WoW).
Crazy dangerous when it has the right lead matchup or when it gets in front of a Blissey / Tyranitar via Zapdos's Baton Pass. ADV doesn't have great Sleep absorbers, so the opponent needs something that can take the Spore + something that can easily fend off all variants of Breloom in order to really counter it properly. Breloom struggles with not being able to / not wanting to fit Substitute, meaning Dugtrio always revenge kills it, and generally not being easy to bring into the battlefield at all, by virtue of its terrible bulk and middling speed tier.
So stupid. I hate this Mon because it usually has to stay in T1 no matter what and click Lovely Kiss, with a 25% chance to die and 75% chance to wreak havoc, possibly even 6-0 the opponent's team. Those are the two extreme ends of the spectrum of course, with everything in the middle involving hitting the Lovely Kiss against Tar, then Blissey switches in and nullifies you for the rest of the match. It earns as high a ranking as it does because of the potential it has to sweep right out of the gate, and not much else can really lay claim to that.
Nice bulk all around means Venusaur can actually afford to miss Sleep Powder once or twice, and his typing means he switches in indefinitely against stuff like Mono Surf Water types. Access to Leech Seed and the aforementioned Sleep Powder makes him a valuable asset in any match. He even has the tools to really mess with the Natural Cure Mons, namely STAB Sludge Bomb which dents Celebi really hard, does respectable damage against Blissey, and Starmie certainly doesn't love taking them. What holds Venusaur back is lack of reliable recovery, bad case of 4MSS (wants Sludge Bomb, HP Fire, Roar even), Giga Drain PP sucks, and the way it gets wrecked by Drill Peck Skarmory.
WoW + Explosion + Taunt / Fire Blast / Sludge Bomb / HP Grass / HP Fighting / Thunder / etc... Weezing has one of the best and most exciting movepools in the tier. Still arguably the best pure Milotic lure in the tier since Steel types are for the most part running for the hills from its WoW and Fire Blast. The average Speed tier and mediocre bulk hold him back the most, not to mention that you still need to win a few prediction games against Refresh Mons, and Pursuit Tar can kinda ruin the party. Still a great and unique Mon that deserves higher usage.
Has lots of cool tricks to play with its unique Ability, including Tracing Volt Absorb and Water Absorb, Natural Cure, and most importantly, Arena Trap. Access to a strong BoltBeam makes him a prototypical DD Mence / DD Gyarados counter, but unfortunately that comes at the expense of being horrific Tar / Meta / Snorlax bait, and bait for any Sub + CM sweeper as well.
A lot of people are going to scoff at this placement, but Steelix is a freaking stud. I consider it the #1 Zapdos switch in in the tier since it's slightly less abusable than Blissey (the Mons that Zapdos Baton Passes to against a Blissey are more instantly threatening and harder to counter than the ones that Zapdos would Baton Pass to against a Steelix). Think about all the good things about offensive Claydol, and apply them to Steelix. But then make it also incredible against Metagross and Aerodactyl, in exchange for being stonewalled by Gengar. Oh and most importantly, shiny Steelix looks super cool.
I expect a similar level of skepticism with this placement as the one from before, but I stand by my evaluation. Donphan is the best physical Tar counter in the game, and it's not even close. Consider the following calcs.:
+1 252+ Atk Tyranitar Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Donphan: 117-138 (30.4 - 35.9%)
252+ Atk Choice Band Salamence Hidden Power Flying vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Donphan: 123-145 (32 - 37.7%)
252+ Atk Metagross Meteor Mash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Donphan: 118-139 (30.7 - 36.1%)
These are basically the three strongest physical attacks in ADV, and Donphan is comfortably 4HKOd by them after Protect. Note that I'm not showing the CB Mash calc. because that's not really fair. Nothing looks good under that microscope outside of Impish Skarmory, Steelix, and Bold Suicune.
He's not a one-trick Pony either. Donphan dishes out extremely strong Earthquakes even with 0 investment. He's a Mon that unfortunately I don't think can work outside of Magneton + Pursuit Tar builds, but that hasn't stopped better Pokemon from succeeding before.
Super strong STAB Ice Beam, nice utility Explosion, and great natural bulk make for an overall good package. Regice has trouble staying alive under Sandstorm and stepping on Spikes as it switches in on Gengar/Celebi/Zapdos, but Regice is better suited to fast paced teams anyway. It's kind of tough to decide on a 4th move as well, since T-Wave means you are hard walled by Steel types, but HP Fire means you can't prevent setup. I think Regice is under appreciated, but it only really fits on a small subset of teams.
C+ Tier
(Very niche threats)
Fire + Grass + Fight move is a recipe for Big 5 TSS destruction. Nothing on the standard SkarmBliss team switches comfortably into Blaziken, unless the Starmie is bulky with Recover. Blaziken struggles with his horrible defensive profile and middling speed tier. Seriously, Blaziken might be the worst defensive Mon in ADV. But in a bizarre twist, it actually can switch into Gengar "okay."
I fully acknowledge that I'm ranking Charizard possibly too low considering the fact that I have zero recent experience using it. He has great coverage and an awesome ability. Taking a Gengar Thunderbolt into Blaze range and then burning it to a crisp in return has got to be one of the most satisfying feeling in Mons. What holds Charizard back is his bad defensive typing and the way it invites Milotic and Suicune pretty hard.
Awesome natural bulk and weakness to only one move in the tier means Kingdra will get its opportunities to sweep. The problem is its average Speed before Swift Swim activates, and reliance upon Hydro Pump's accuracy. Also, you might be able to reliably trap Celebi or Blissey with Dugtrio, but you probably won't ever get both in the same game. Not to mention Suicune.
It's okay. Super slow and not that bulky even when you max HP and Defense. But its uninvested Surf does a ton to stuff like Zapdos and Jolteon, and it has access to a lot of great utility moves. It can even do offensive sets with Sub + Baton Pass. It's a decent package overall.
Neither versatile nor consistent, but Raikou does have a super high ceiling. It can obliterate some teams in the end game when it gets a free Calm Mind turn. It also could serve as a good early game Gengar / Zapdos check, but that means you sacrifice any sweeping ability. Just overall it really suffers from so many Mons being able to live a +1 Thunderbolt and OHKO in return with Earthquake.
Great Metagross and Starmie counter, can run a defensive set with Leech Seed or an offensive set with Rain Dance. Interesting Mon but it's pretty slow.
Amazing Gengar answer. Maybe THE best Gengar answer. But it's really easy to take advantage of since you almost always know what it's going to do, it's huge Explosion bait (even with Protect), and it just has no offensive presence whatsoever.
Awesome dual STAB and useful resistances, but Rhydon is slow as dirt and really wants a free turn in order to excel. But the power is for real. One of the most dangerous Mons with a free turn to Sub or SD.
Worse defensively than Rhydon, although it benefits from being able to live an HP Grass. Crazy powerful though. Nothing realistically stands up to a +2 Att +2 Speed Marowak outside of Suicune, and Suicune needs to be at full HP to do it.
Being so one-dimensional these days has really hurt Smeargle's value. But it's got Spore, WoW, Spikes, Boom, etc. That makes for a respectable package right there. You just have to hope the opponent's lead doesn't have Lum Berry, because you'll probably be dead in one shot.
I'm ranking Houndoom even though I don't want to. I used to value it pretty highly for being so good against Gengar plus absolutely blanking Psychic/Fire/Grass Celebi and Jirachi. But every time I've ever used Houndoom, I come away wholly unimpressed. I think it just totally blows.
Okay, everything that I ranked so far I think deserves a place in ADV Tournament games in some capacity. The below tier either fills a niche I don't know exists or I just didn't feel like ranking.
Outclassed by all other Fighting types imo. Slow and inaccurate Cross Chop sucks ass. Outspeeding Milotic does sound nice though...
Crazy slow and crazy frail. True definition of a glass cannon.
Camerupt should've been ranked in C+. Nice Gar switch and strong Explosion.
One Annoying Motherfucker.
One Annoying Prick.
Such wasted potential. CB Focus Punch is cool. Access to lots of different moves is cool. I dunno. It's C+ worthy I guess. Still hard to ever justify it over the role compression that Salamence offers.
Good annoyer with Rest + T-Wave + Counter blah blah blah. It's aight.
Jumpluff is great. Put him in C+. Access to fast Encore + Sleep Powder makes him the ultimate annoyer. Love this guy, just very hard to get him to work properly.
It's alright. Awesome speed tier, plus you win my respect for not using the Fire Starter.
Bad. Sorry Tauros, I wish you were good. I really do.
Knock Off + Rest + Battle Armor is an epic as hell Snorlax counter. Also with Swords Dance it hits like a truck.
It's only good when that one guy on ladder Mean Look passes against you and then his Alakazam Encores you into oblivion. I don't miss that guy.
Probably doesn't deserve to be grouped with Armaldo and Tauros. Strong Boom and nice Bulky Water lure.
Ladder Tier:
There's a dude on ladder who leads CB Nidoking and it's honestly not bad lol. Kinda dangerous when it hits with the right move.
To the people still using Mime on ladder: you suck and I hope this gets banned soon.
Kinda strong and you need to respect the BP possibility.
Shoutout to the guys still trying to make Barrier / Amnesia / Toxic / Rest Cradily work. I'm pulling for you!
The first post has been updated with the above ranking. Every Pokemon name redirect to its Smogon Analysis.
Important: You will notice that the Ranks subdivisions have changed drastically. I am aware it looks quite different from what it used to be, but Vapicuno did all the statistical work (like last time) for that part, and he truely believed these new subranks reflected the datas we gathered more accurately. He will explain how in his post.
I have decided to remove some Pokemons from the Rankings as they didn't receive enough data, showing that truely, not enough players cared for them.
Among the higher ranked Pokemons, I have manually inverted Suicune/Dugtrio, Snorlax/Jirachi and Moltres/Heracross positions on the spreadsheet because of their final rank once the outliers were taken care of, for visibility's purposes.
Some trivia:
This time around, there were four people who had the final Top 10 as theirs: BKC, CyberOdin, ABR and Star.
Didn't even have to lose time calculating who had the most outliers this time around, Zokuru takes the cake easily here with 5 outliers alone in the top10 and 9 in the top20.
Among the top 20, the most extreme outlier is undisputed's Moltres (30<>19).
The biggest outliers are marcop's Cacturne and CyberOdin's Articuno with 28 places of difference each (26<>54 and 31<>59 respectively).
If you have questions or some remarks to say, go ahead. Please give suggestions regarding where to draw the cutoffs for subranks.
The results are in! McMeghan has shared this year's VR data with me, and as per last year, I will be doing some statistical analyses to do the tiering according to the methodology described here. This year, I'm going to do the tiering a bit differently, so don't be surprised if the alphabetical categories aren't what they used to be. I wanted to make sure that alphabetical groups correspond to distinct demarcations, while numerical subgroups indicate only a slight difference in viability; ie. I want to reflect that people think of "A2" very differently from "B", while thinking that "A1" and "A2" are distinct, but not too far off. For more details read the "Naming Tiers: Subdivisions" of this post
Metagame Shifts
These are the changes from last year, comparing average rankings
Huge Breloom, Charizard, Milotic, and Blissey jumps there. P2, Gengar, Jirachi, Jolteon and Heracross don't look great this year. Coincidence?
Tiering Analysis
The full graph for tiering, read about it here for more details:
This is a zoomed in graph, focusing on the top few Pokemon which we would mostly consider OU
And the moment you've been waiting for...
2020 ADV OU VR tiers
S: A1: A2: B: C1: C2: C3: D: E1: E2: F:
where I've removed mons that are only ranked by one person.
To reiterate, the alphabetical/numerical subranks are chosen according to how close or distinct the mons are relative to the adjacent tiers. Alphabetical tier distinctions are chosen when the mons in the tier overlap each other in their standard deviation, meaning they are roughly indistinguishable from each other, but mons in adjacent tiers do not overlap at all. Numerical distinctions are made when grouping mons within the same range yields tiers that somehow overlap with each other, ie. some mons "bleed" into the adjacent tier.
Observations:
Forretress, Flygon, Cloyster, and Milotic have very high variance. Anyone want to comment on them, especially if you ranked them in the extremes? Similarity Analysis
These graphs below represent the distance between rankings (to be specific, the kendall-tau distance). Roughly speaking, to find the distance in ranking from person A to B, you would trace a path up and down the branches from person A to B, and the vertical distance you traverse will be a measure of how dissimilar their rankings are. The colors in some sense represent clusters, but don't take the colors too seriously, it's just a guide to the eye. I do this for the top mons (S to B), mid-range mons (C to D), and everything reasonably within OU (S to D).
As an example of what I mean, in this dendrogram below, CyberOdin and BKC basically have the same rankings within S to B, so there is no vertical distance between them.. zom and undisputed are basically bros so they only need to go up one short branch and down. linear and MDragon are quite a bit more separated. There aren't really clusters you can see from here; it seems like we don't have camps in ADV OU. But one thing's for certain: Zokuru and Triangles' rankings are out of this world.
I haven't done any detailed analysis on the similarities between specific rankings, but this will give you an idea of who to look out for if you're trying to get a different perspective of the metagame. If you notice anything, do leave a comment!
I hope this data can generate some lively discussions. I'll consolidate my observations here:
1. Huge Breloom, Charizard, Milotic and Blissey rise this year.
2. P2, Gengar, Jirachi, Jolteon and Heracross have gone down the ranks
3. Forretress, Flygon, Cloyster and Milotic's positions are rather contentious.
What do you think about these changes and controversies? Leave your comments!
McMeghan requested that I upload heatmaps for easier comparison of each other's VR's so here they are. The brighter the color, the closer your rank is to the other person you are trying to match to. The number in the boxes is in percentage points of correlation (maximum 100, minimum -100).
Edit 4/16/20: UD asked me for actual numbers on the rankings, so I have added numbers to the pictures, and reflected the graph around the diagonal for easy reading.
I've also compiled everyone's relative rankings into a single chart; it looks a bit messy, but the outliers are clearly visible and you may want to ask these guys why they rank some things so favorably or badly! Note that the upwards direction means more favorably than the average.
I've done further analysis on the camps that divide the S/A/B ranks and the C/D ranks, where the camps are determined based on the dendrograms above.
We shall deal with the two largest camps, which are, as far as I can tell,
In S/A/B:
Camp 1: zf, Sadlysius, ABR, BKC, CyberOdin, starmaster, Lord Ninjax, Altina, UD
Camp 2: z0mOG, undisputed, McMeghan, Gacu, Astamatitos, vapicuno, Cowboy Dan
In C/D:
Camp 1: Gacu, UD, Dizno, M Dragon, Astamatitos, Cowboy Dan, Lord Ninjax, BKC, CyberOdin
Camp 2: Altina, Triangles, z0mOG, Sadlysius, McMeghan, zf, ABR, starmaster
These are graphs the relative ranks among these two camps, drawn with extensions into the other tier,
Note that this data gives us an idea about the relative averaged ranks, but hidden within those averaged ranks are opinions across all pairs of Pokemon that cannot be aggregated into a single number. A clearer way to compare between camps is through a dissimilarity matrix, which roughly speaking, looks at every pair of Pokemon A and B and every pair of people P1 and P2 in the two camps, and finds the average number of times they disagree with each other on the relative position of Pokemon A and B. The resulting interaction is shown in the following two maps comparing the two camps in different tiers.
To read this graph, note that the numbers in each square go from -100% to 0% to 100%, representing full disagreement, to full agreeement, to full disagreement again. For example, in the graph below, both zf and z0mOG camps disagree on the relative ranking of the Metagross and Blissey by 25%, where the zf camp is in favor of Blissey, and the z0mOG camp is in favor of Metagross.
Notably, the z0mOG camp has a high opinion of Zapdos, rating it consistently higher than Gengar and even sometimes Blissey. The zom camp also has a relatively high affinity for Snorlax and Suicune, consistently rating them over Celebi, Salamence, Dugtrio, and especially Jirachi. The zom camp also has a slight preference towards Salamence. Some preferences bleed into the lower tiers: the z0mOG camp has a strong dislike of Moltres especially in favor of Milotic, favors Forretress (notably over Aerodactyl), and prefers Magneton and Claydol to Aerodactyl.
I get the sense that the z0mOG camp is generally in favor of Spikeless teams.
The Altina camp heavily favors Claydol and disfavors Aerodactyl, while showing preferences for Forretress over Moltres, Heracross and Jolteon, and features a notable dislike for Flygon, with many ranking it below even Porygon2 and Charizard. There is again a notable preference for Magneton over Aerodactyl. Interestingly, there's also a preference for Porygon2 over Venusaur. There are some notable preferences bleeding into the higher tiers: Jirach and Celebii > Salamence stands out, but there are also slight preferences for Gengar over Swampert and Skarmory.
I'm not too sure what to make of this. Feel free to discuss. And let me know if I've made any mistakes (I bungled up the RBY one sometime back by accident, so do let me know if you find something amiss).
after a long string of losing, i went back to playing with metagross, blissey, and tyranitar and have been doing much better. i came here to say they're probably the best monsters, but i see vapicuno beat me to it, with charts and all lol.
skarmory, blissey, gengar, tyranitar, metagross, swampert, celebi, and salamence feel like the best of the best. my only complaint is that these 8 pokemon do not carry rapid spin.
(idk why the sprite doesn't work)
and especially 
deserve D rank.
