Not necessarily, Spikes immunity can be explained away by Heavy-Duty Boots in the right circumstances
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Metagame Almost Any Ability
- Thread starter LordBox
- Start date
In theory yes, in practice for this to hold you need to avoid taking Stealth Rocks damage, and avoid having your item revealed by other means (including Knock Off, and obviously items like Leftovers automatically reveal themselves while others like Choice Specs can be easily inferred by damage ranges, btw if you are using Levitate in the first place you are probably doing it to use Leftovers).
I'm just not seeing this, having your ability revealed by the boost is probably going to impact negatively like one in 100 games, actually using the boost is going to matter way more often.
If you don't want your ability scouted just run Earth Eater.
2nd Chessking post in the Almost Any Ability thread you know this is going to be a banger.
Lets talk about Lugia, more formally. I've been rambling about this mon for a while on discord but with Ghold suspect going DNB, next most demanded mon being Deo-S that completely clowned itself in PL winrate and probably lost its chance to be suspected, and meta not in a volatile state, I think there is a better argument for a Lugia unban suspect with nothing its interrupting, so I'm making a formal forum post.
First timing wise AAAPL starts Manager Signups this Thursday, then week 1 starts Aug 3, while OMPL semis is next week (July 6) and finals is either July 13/20 depending on tb or not. Considering playoffs are tierlocked? and not all teams in playoffs this is a respectable window to run a suspect. Theres a similar window after AAAPL and before OMCL around end of September, but I think its less good with AAA Seasonal ongoing.
As background information, Lugia was released with DLC 2 and quickbanned in this slate in a 4-3 vote, the closest one of the legends. This is actually an arguable vote since the vote passes the 50% threshold but doesn't hit the 60% one. Obviously since then it has never been legal in AAA, and this does mean that arguments all have to be based on theoreticals, but that's also why unban suspects make them ladder legal. From here I'm going to try to suggest that Lugia has several issues that prevent it from posing as big of an issue its 680 BST might suggest.
1. Awful typing defensively
Psychic / Flying turns out to be really not good in current AAA. Flying grants a rocks weakness, which means Lugia is either running Magic Guard, or is basically locked into running Boots, and this makes Knock Off extra threatening. This typing also has a lot of weaknesses and not that many useful resistances in the tier. Notably, going down OMPL usage so far its typing matches up unfavourably defensively into the typings of (above 5% usage): Gholdengo, Roaring Moon, Ting-Lu, Zapdos, Kingambit, Meowscarada
And additional weaknesses to coverage options of: Zamazenta (Crunch, Stone Edge, Wild Charge), Deoxys-S (Thunderbolt, Ice Beam, Shadow Ball, Knock Off if you think thats real still), Iron Moth (Discharge), Great Tusk/Manaphy/Iron Treads (Knock Off), Landorus-T (Stone Edge).
And some misc VR Pokemon: Chien-Pao, Ogerpon-C, Electrode-H, Iron Boulder, Mamoswine, Sandy Shocks, Samurott-H, Thundurus(-T).
Meanwhile its typing is good defensively into... Zamazenta STAB, Deoxys-S STAB, various EQs.
This means despite its phenomenal bulk, it more or less needs a defensive ability + substantial defensive investment in the right spectrum to not fold to coverage options, and that STAB users can muscle past unless its very specific counter abilities. This also means more offensive sets are just vulnerable to being checked due to its weaknesses and lack of bulk investment.
2. Lacks a lot of defensive tools?
For anyone new to SV, Lugia lost Toxic and half its Recover PP. It also doesn't have like many useful utility moves at all, no status spreading move like Thunder Wave, no pivoting option, no utility moves like Knock, no play in the hazards game, it just gets some moves with secondary effects and phazing. So for the most part its not going to be annoying to handle or a momentum grabbing machine, and not able to role compress nearly as well as some defensive staples currently like Corv, Pech, STail, Ting.
3. Poor typing offensively + limited coverage
Turns out Psychic / Flying is also not great offensively despite Lugia having the excellent STAB Aeroblast. Steels resist it and many of the more popular Pokemon resist one and isn't weak to another (e.g. Moon, Ting, Zap) while threatening back with SE STAB.
Its coverage options are also not impressive. You have some options to help, but no universally good one and they are also not very strong, with Ground for non-Levi Ghold and Gambit, Ice for Moon Ting Zap, and Electric for non-VA Corv. This also means for Calm Mind sets, having only two moves leaves it very hard to hit everything.
3.5. It doesn't have Stored Power
This is a pretty major point, as if it did have Stored Power I think I wouldn't be making this post. Unlike existing Stored Power users (STail, Cress, Latias)? it does not have the explosive power they have after several CM boosts + anything else like Kee and Stamina. This should theoretically make those mons better at performing this role despite lower offenses/bulk/speed.
It also doesn't have coverage like Fairy move to hit the Psychic resists/immunes hard.
4. It's offensive stats are not very impressive
Base 90 is pretty middling especially without explosive setup moves like Nasty Plot+. Deo-S has higher offenses with a way more colourful movepool, runs max investment + Nature + ability + item and it still needs to get like every turn right to do anything. Lugia will need like investment + multiple CM boosts before it is meaningfully threatening and in that time opposing checks should have time to deal with it between counter setting up, phazing, status, grinding it down with strong hits. Its speed, while great especially for its bulk, is still only decent, speed tying with Latios and Moth, with stuff like Moon above, plus in order to make the most out of the speed it needs to invest into it.
5. Not BH, doesn't have unlimited EVs
Turns out you can't have full defensive investment in both spectrums, full offensive investment, and full speed all at once. Its going to be missing out somewhere, just like with its ability and moveset.
These combined make me think that Lugia seems balanced to be allowed into the metagame, as at least for me tiering wise I think if something isn't broken it shouldn't be banned. But I know theres many people out there who think something should have some benefits to be allowed back so:
Lugia is a nice defensive presence that can be reasonably tailored to the teams needs
While I mentioned before that Lugia's defensive capabilities are undermined by its typing, with team support, the right spread and ability it can fill roles that I can see valuable as additions.
It can't reliably check Band Zama due to the double threat of Crunch and Stone Edge, but non-Band it can soft check and its a great sponge against Close Combat, as well as IronPress sets. This especially helps alleviate teambuilding from fitting the same Zama checks.
It helps beat Deo-S even further down into the ground as a decent soft check, even though Deo-S has a lot of moves that can hit it between BoltBeam SBall and Knock.
It can check offensive Moth sets especially with anti Electric ability. Can also sponge other special attackers like Pixi STail, Latios, or the apparently 100% winrate Inteleon etc. This could help with RegenVest dependency and open up possibilities.
Prevents offensive Tusk from running away, particularly valuable with the intrinsic Ground immunity with recovery.
With the proper spectrum investment and maybe ability, can phaze various setup attackers like TG Mana, SD Chomp, CM wincons.
And in general it can typically live a hit from a lot of things to serve as a potential blanket emergency backup answer. Its also decently fast for defensive purposes, so it can outspeed some stuff to not take a second hit, similar to STail.
I will also list a counterargument that has been brought up before on discord and I think is reasonable
Lugia picks and chooses its counters making it a high variance matchup mon
This is a valid point. Just like how it can customize what it can check for the team, it is able to pick what it wants to have a better matchup into. If it runs like Purifying Salt it could maybe swing the matchup against Gholdengo, Fluffy for Dark-types, Volt Absorb/Delta Stream for Zapdos, or even sets like MGLO s/o DFM for special walls. Its similar to Gholdengo with its various abilities it can run. But in the same comparison, Gholdengo comfortably survived the recent suspect test and has much greater variety in offensive sets and more threatening (making it more punishing to read the ability wrong). And I think this is something that is hard to evaluate on paper, because it is also easy to argue on paper that teams can naturally have multiple forms of counterplay.
Lastly
I don't see significant harm in conducting a suspect test
An unban suspect allows the element to be allowed and tested on ladder for its duration. Even if you find my arguments above to be disingenuous or such, I think its fair to suggest that Lugia is definitely not clear cut banworthy, and so the best way to find out would be to actually see it in action. While not the same meta, we've seen previously feared elements end up proving completely balanced (MnM Dragapult, Rusted Sword, both with ~90% unban votes, or GG Gholdengo, and these all actually once were in the meta and got banned, unlike Lugia who never had a chance). Under the assumption that the AAA playerbase makes logical votes (which seems true), then if it ends up being overbearing people will vote ban (with precedent, AAA Annihilape) and vice versa. I think there is minimal harm in trying out the suspect test, and a test also helps boost ladder plays and interest, good stuff all around.
First timing wise AAAPL starts Manager Signups this Thursday, then week 1 starts Aug 3, while OMPL semis is next week (July 6) and finals is either July 13/20 depending on tb or not. Considering playoffs are tierlocked? and not all teams in playoffs this is a respectable window to run a suspect. Theres a similar window after AAAPL and before OMCL around end of September, but I think its less good with AAA Seasonal ongoing.
As background information, Lugia was released with DLC 2 and quickbanned in this slate in a 4-3 vote, the closest one of the legends. This is actually an arguable vote since the vote passes the 50% threshold but doesn't hit the 60% one. Obviously since then it has never been legal in AAA, and this does mean that arguments all have to be based on theoreticals, but that's also why unban suspects make them ladder legal. From here I'm going to try to suggest that Lugia has several issues that prevent it from posing as big of an issue its 680 BST might suggest.
1. Awful typing defensively
Psychic / Flying turns out to be really not good in current AAA. Flying grants a rocks weakness, which means Lugia is either running Magic Guard, or is basically locked into running Boots, and this makes Knock Off extra threatening. This typing also has a lot of weaknesses and not that many useful resistances in the tier. Notably, going down OMPL usage so far its typing matches up unfavourably defensively into the typings of (above 5% usage): Gholdengo, Roaring Moon, Ting-Lu, Zapdos, Kingambit, Meowscarada
And additional weaknesses to coverage options of: Zamazenta (Crunch, Stone Edge, Wild Charge), Deoxys-S (Thunderbolt, Ice Beam, Shadow Ball, Knock Off if you think thats real still), Iron Moth (Discharge), Great Tusk/Manaphy/Iron Treads (Knock Off), Landorus-T (Stone Edge).
And some misc VR Pokemon: Chien-Pao, Ogerpon-C, Electrode-H, Iron Boulder, Mamoswine, Sandy Shocks, Samurott-H, Thundurus(-T).
Meanwhile its typing is good defensively into... Zamazenta STAB, Deoxys-S STAB, various EQs.
This means despite its phenomenal bulk, it more or less needs a defensive ability + substantial defensive investment in the right spectrum to not fold to coverage options, and that STAB users can muscle past unless its very specific counter abilities. This also means more offensive sets are just vulnerable to being checked due to its weaknesses and lack of bulk investment.
2. Lacks a lot of defensive tools?
For anyone new to SV, Lugia lost Toxic and half its Recover PP. It also doesn't have like many useful utility moves at all, no status spreading move like Thunder Wave, no pivoting option, no utility moves like Knock, no play in the hazards game, it just gets some moves with secondary effects and phazing. So for the most part its not going to be annoying to handle or a momentum grabbing machine, and not able to role compress nearly as well as some defensive staples currently like Corv, Pech, STail, Ting.
3. Poor typing offensively + limited coverage
Turns out Psychic / Flying is also not great offensively despite Lugia having the excellent STAB Aeroblast. Steels resist it and many of the more popular Pokemon resist one and isn't weak to another (e.g. Moon, Ting, Zap) while threatening back with SE STAB.
Its coverage options are also not impressive. You have some options to help, but no universally good one and they are also not very strong, with Ground for non-Levi Ghold and Gambit, Ice for Moon Ting Zap, and Electric for non-VA Corv. This also means for Calm Mind sets, having only two moves leaves it very hard to hit everything.
3.5. It doesn't have Stored Power
This is a pretty major point, as if it did have Stored Power I think I wouldn't be making this post. Unlike existing Stored Power users (STail, Cress, Latias)? it does not have the explosive power they have after several CM boosts + anything else like Kee and Stamina. This should theoretically make those mons better at performing this role despite lower offenses/bulk/speed.
It also doesn't have coverage like Fairy move to hit the Psychic resists/immunes hard.
4. It's offensive stats are not very impressive
Base 90 is pretty middling especially without explosive setup moves like Nasty Plot+. Deo-S has higher offenses with a way more colourful movepool, runs max investment + Nature + ability + item and it still needs to get like every turn right to do anything. Lugia will need like investment + multiple CM boosts before it is meaningfully threatening and in that time opposing checks should have time to deal with it between counter setting up, phazing, status, grinding it down with strong hits. Its speed, while great especially for its bulk, is still only decent, speed tying with Latios and Moth, with stuff like Moon above, plus in order to make the most out of the speed it needs to invest into it.
0 SpA Lugia Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Gholdengo: 128-152 (33.8 - 40.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
0 SpA Lugia Ice Beam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Zapdos: 130-154 (40.4 - 47.9%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
+1 0 SpA Lugia Aeroblast vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Zamazenta: 260-308 (80 - 94.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+4 0 SpA Lugia Aeroblast vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Gholdengo: 159-188 (42 - 49.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
+6 0 SpA Lugia Ice Beam vs. 248 HP / 68 SpD Assault Vest Roaring Moon: 292-344 (70.7 - 83.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+6 0 SpA Lugia Aeroblast vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Manaphy: 189-223 (46.7 - 55.1%) -- 69.5% chance to 2HKO
+6 0 SpA Lugia Ice Beam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Corviknight: 189-223 (47.2 - 55.7%) -- 21.5% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+6 0 SpA Lugia Psyshock vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Corviknight: 150-177 (37.5 - 44.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
This is what happens if you let something like Cresselia or even Scream Tail get 6 Calm Minds
+6 0 SpA Cresselia Stored Power (260 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Corviknight: 351-414 (87.7 - 103.5%) -- 25% chance to OHKO
+6 0 SpA Scream Tail Stored Power (260 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Corviknight: 314-369 (78.5 - 92.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
0 SpA Lugia Ice Beam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Zapdos: 130-154 (40.4 - 47.9%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
+1 0 SpA Lugia Aeroblast vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Zamazenta: 260-308 (80 - 94.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+4 0 SpA Lugia Aeroblast vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Gholdengo: 159-188 (42 - 49.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
+6 0 SpA Lugia Ice Beam vs. 248 HP / 68 SpD Assault Vest Roaring Moon: 292-344 (70.7 - 83.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+6 0 SpA Lugia Aeroblast vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Manaphy: 189-223 (46.7 - 55.1%) -- 69.5% chance to 2HKO
+6 0 SpA Lugia Ice Beam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Corviknight: 189-223 (47.2 - 55.7%) -- 21.5% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+6 0 SpA Lugia Psyshock vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Corviknight: 150-177 (37.5 - 44.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
This is what happens if you let something like Cresselia or even Scream Tail get 6 Calm Minds
+6 0 SpA Cresselia Stored Power (260 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Corviknight: 351-414 (87.7 - 103.5%) -- 25% chance to OHKO
+6 0 SpA Scream Tail Stored Power (260 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Corviknight: 314-369 (78.5 - 92.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
5. Not BH, doesn't have unlimited EVs
Turns out you can't have full defensive investment in both spectrums, full offensive investment, and full speed all at once. Its going to be missing out somewhere, just like with its ability and moveset.
These combined make me think that Lugia seems balanced to be allowed into the metagame, as at least for me tiering wise I think if something isn't broken it shouldn't be banned. But I know theres many people out there who think something should have some benefits to be allowed back so:
Lugia is a nice defensive presence that can be reasonably tailored to the teams needs
While I mentioned before that Lugia's defensive capabilities are undermined by its typing, with team support, the right spread and ability it can fill roles that I can see valuable as additions.
It can't reliably check Band Zama due to the double threat of Crunch and Stone Edge, but non-Band it can soft check and its a great sponge against Close Combat, as well as IronPress sets. This especially helps alleviate teambuilding from fitting the same Zama checks.
It helps beat Deo-S even further down into the ground as a decent soft check, even though Deo-S has a lot of moves that can hit it between BoltBeam SBall and Knock.
It can check offensive Moth sets especially with anti Electric ability. Can also sponge other special attackers like Pixi STail, Latios, or the apparently 100% winrate Inteleon etc. This could help with RegenVest dependency and open up possibilities.
Prevents offensive Tusk from running away, particularly valuable with the intrinsic Ground immunity with recovery.
With the proper spectrum investment and maybe ability, can phaze various setup attackers like TG Mana, SD Chomp, CM wincons.
And in general it can typically live a hit from a lot of things to serve as a potential blanket emergency backup answer. Its also decently fast for defensive purposes, so it can outspeed some stuff to not take a second hit, similar to STail.
I will also list a counterargument that has been brought up before on discord and I think is reasonable
Lugia picks and chooses its counters making it a high variance matchup mon
This is a valid point. Just like how it can customize what it can check for the team, it is able to pick what it wants to have a better matchup into. If it runs like Purifying Salt it could maybe swing the matchup against Gholdengo, Fluffy for Dark-types, Volt Absorb/Delta Stream for Zapdos, or even sets like MGLO s/o DFM for special walls. Its similar to Gholdengo with its various abilities it can run. But in the same comparison, Gholdengo comfortably survived the recent suspect test and has much greater variety in offensive sets and more threatening (making it more punishing to read the ability wrong). And I think this is something that is hard to evaluate on paper, because it is also easy to argue on paper that teams can naturally have multiple forms of counterplay.
Lastly
I don't see significant harm in conducting a suspect test
An unban suspect allows the element to be allowed and tested on ladder for its duration. Even if you find my arguments above to be disingenuous or such, I think its fair to suggest that Lugia is definitely not clear cut banworthy, and so the best way to find out would be to actually see it in action. While not the same meta, we've seen previously feared elements end up proving completely balanced (MnM Dragapult, Rusted Sword, both with ~90% unban votes, or GG Gholdengo, and these all actually once were in the meta and got banned, unlike Lugia who never had a chance). Under the assumption that the AAA playerbase makes logical votes (which seems true), then if it ends up being overbearing people will vote ban (with precedent, AAA Annihilape) and vice versa. I think there is minimal harm in trying out the suspect test, and a test also helps boost ladder plays and interest, good stuff all around.
I'm down
-myself
-idk what rest of council thinks
-myself
-idk what rest of council thinks
I don't have the AAA experience necessary to argue for or against this, but I would like to mention that Lugia has equal offenses, phasing (Dragon Tail or Whirlwind) plus Future Sight, Curse, Brave Birb for Magic Guard sets, and okay coverage primarily Earthquake. Don't only consider special moves.2nd Chessking post in the Almost Any Ability thread you know this is going to be a banger.
Lets talk about Lugia, more formally. I've been rambling about this mon for a while on discord but with Ghold suspect going DNB, next most demanded mon being Deo-S that completely clowned itself in PL winrate and probably lost its chance to be suspected, and meta not in a volatile state, I think there is a better argument for a Lugia unban suspect with nothing its interrupting, so I'm making a formal forum post.
First timing wise AAAPL starts Manager Signups this Thursday, then week 1 starts Aug 3, while OMPL semis is next week (July 6) and finals is either July 13/20 depending on tb or not. Considering playoffs are tierlocked? and not all teams in playoffs this is a respectable window to run a suspect. Theres a similar window after AAAPL and before OMCL around end of September, but I think its less good with AAA Seasonal ongoing.
As background information, Lugia was released with DLC 2 and quickbanned in this slate in a 4-3 vote, the closest one of the legends. This is actually an arguable vote since the vote passes the 50% threshold but doesn't hit the 60% one. Obviously since then it has never been legal in AAA, and this does mean that arguments all have to be based on theoreticals, but that's also why unban suspects make them ladder legal. From here I'm going to try to suggest that Lugia has several issues that prevent it from posing as big of an issue its 680 BST might suggest.
1. Awful typing defensively
Psychic / Flying turns out to be really not good in current AAA. Flying grants a rocks weakness, which means Lugia is either running Magic Guard, or is basically locked into running Boots, and this makes Knock Off extra threatening. This typing also has a lot of weaknesses and not that many useful resistances in the tier. Notably, going down OMPL usage so far its typing matches up unfavourably defensively into the typings of (above 5% usage): Gholdengo, Roaring Moon, Ting-Lu, Zapdos, Kingambit, Meowscarada
And additional weaknesses to coverage options of: Zamazenta (Crunch, Stone Edge, Wild Charge), Deoxys-S (Thunderbolt, Ice Beam, Shadow Ball, Knock Off if you think thats real still), Iron Moth (Discharge), Great Tusk/Manaphy/Iron Treads (Knock Off), Landorus-T (Stone Edge).
And some misc VR Pokemon: Chien-Pao, Ogerpon-C, Electrode-H, Iron Boulder, Mamoswine, Sandy Shocks, Samurott-H, Thundurus(-T).
Meanwhile its typing is good defensively into... Zamazenta STAB, Deoxys-S STAB, various EQs.
This means despite its phenomenal bulk, it more or less needs a defensive ability + substantial defensive investment in the right spectrum to not fold to coverage options, and that STAB users can muscle past unless its very specific counter abilities. This also means more offensive sets are just vulnerable to being checked due to its weaknesses and lack of bulk investment.
2. Lacks a lot of defensive tools?
For anyone new to SV, Lugia lost Toxic and half its Recover PP. It also doesn't have like many useful utility moves at all, no status spreading move like Thunder Wave, no pivoting option, no utility moves like Knock, no play in the hazards game, it just gets some moves with secondary effects and phazing. So for the most part its not going to be annoying to handle or a momentum grabbing machine, and not able to role compress nearly as well as some defensive staples currently like Corv, Pech, STail, Ting.
3. Poor typing offensively + limited coverage
Turns out Psychic / Flying is also not great offensively despite Lugia having the excellent STAB Aeroblast. Steels resist it and many of the more popular Pokemon resist one and isn't weak to another (e.g. Moon, Ting, Zap) while threatening back with SE STAB.
Its coverage options are also not impressive. You have some options to help, but no universally good one and they are also not very strong, with Ground for non-Levi Ghold and Gambit, Ice for Moon Ting Zap, and Electric for non-VA Corv. This also means for Calm Mind sets, having only two moves leaves it very hard to hit everything.
3.5. It doesn't have Stored Power
This is a pretty major point, as if it did have Stored Power I think I wouldn't be making this post. Unlike existing Stored Power users (STail, Cress, Latias)? it does not have the explosive power they have after several CM boosts + anything else like Kee and Stamina. This should theoretically make those mons better at performing this role despite lower offenses/bulk/speed.
It also doesn't have coverage like Fairy move to hit the Psychic resists/immunes hard.
4. It's offensive stats are not very impressive
Base 90 is pretty middling especially without explosive setup moves like Nasty Plot+. Deo-S has higher offenses with a way more colourful movepool, runs max investment + Nature + ability + item and it still needs to get like every turn right to do anything. Lugia will need like investment + multiple CM boosts before it is meaningfully threatening and in that time opposing checks should have time to deal with it between counter setting up, phazing, status, grinding it down with strong hits. Its speed, while great especially for its bulk, is still only decent, speed tying with Latios and Moth, with stuff like Moon above, plus in order to make the most out of the speed it needs to invest into it.
0 SpA Lugia Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Gholdengo: 128-152 (33.8 - 40.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
0 SpA Lugia Ice Beam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Zapdos: 130-154 (40.4 - 47.9%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
+1 0 SpA Lugia Aeroblast vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Zamazenta: 260-308 (80 - 94.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+4 0 SpA Lugia Aeroblast vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Gholdengo: 159-188 (42 - 49.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
+6 0 SpA Lugia Ice Beam vs. 248 HP / 68 SpD Assault Vest Roaring Moon: 292-344 (70.7 - 83.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+6 0 SpA Lugia Aeroblast vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Manaphy: 189-223 (46.7 - 55.1%) -- 69.5% chance to 2HKO
+6 0 SpA Lugia Ice Beam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Corviknight: 189-223 (47.2 - 55.7%) -- 21.5% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+6 0 SpA Lugia Psyshock vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Corviknight: 150-177 (37.5 - 44.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
This is what happens if you let something like Cresselia or even Scream Tail get 6 Calm Minds
+6 0 SpA Cresselia Stored Power (260 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Corviknight: 351-414 (87.7 - 103.5%) -- 25% chance to OHKO
+6 0 SpA Scream Tail Stored Power (260 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Corviknight: 314-369 (78.5 - 92.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
5. Not BH, doesn't have unlimited EVs
Turns out you can't have full defensive investment in both spectrums, full offensive investment, and full speed all at once. Its going to be missing out somewhere, just like with its ability and moveset.
These combined make me think that Lugia seems balanced to be allowed into the metagame, as at least for me tiering wise I think if something isn't broken it shouldn't be banned. But I know theres many people out there who think something should have some benefits to be allowed back so:
Lugia is a nice defensive presence that can be reasonably tailored to the teams needs
While I mentioned before that Lugia's defensive capabilities are undermined by its typing, with team support, the right spread and ability it can fill roles that I can see valuable as additions.
It can't reliably check Band Zama due to the double threat of Crunch and Stone Edge, but non-Band it can soft check and its a great sponge against Close Combat, as well as IronPress sets. This especially helps alleviate teambuilding from fitting the same Zama checks.
It helps beat Deo-S even further down into the ground as a decent soft check, even though Deo-S has a lot of moves that can hit it between BoltBeam SBall and Knock.
It can check offensive Moth sets especially with anti Electric ability. Can also sponge other special attackers like Pixi STail, Latios, or the apparently 100% winrate Inteleon etc. This could help with RegenVest dependency and open up possibilities.
Prevents offensive Tusk from running away, particularly valuable with the intrinsic Ground immunity with recovery.
With the proper spectrum investment and maybe ability, can phaze various setup attackers like TG Mana, SD Chomp, CM wincons.
And in general it can typically live a hit from a lot of things to serve as a potential blanket emergency backup answer. Its also decently fast for defensive purposes, so it can outspeed some stuff to not take a second hit, similar to STail.
I will also list a counterargument that has been brought up before on discord and I think is reasonable
Lugia picks and chooses its counters making it a high variance matchup mon
This is a valid point. Just like how it can customize what it can check for the team, it is able to pick what it wants to have a better matchup into. If it runs like Purifying Salt it could maybe swing the matchup against Gholdengo, Fluffy for Dark-types, Volt Absorb/Delta Stream for Zapdos, or even sets like MGLO s/o DFM for special walls. Its similar to Gholdengo with its various abilities it can run. But in the same comparison, Gholdengo comfortably survived the recent suspect test and has much greater variety in offensive sets and more threatening (making it more punishing to read the ability wrong). And I think this is something that is hard to evaluate on paper, because it is also easy to argue on paper that teams can naturally have multiple forms of counterplay.
Lastly
I don't see significant harm in conducting a suspect test
An unban suspect allows the element to be allowed and tested on ladder for its duration. Even if you find my arguments above to be disingenuous or such, I think its fair to suggest that Lugia is definitely not clear cut banworthy, and so the best way to find out would be to actually see it in action. While not the same meta, we've seen previously feared elements end up proving completely balanced (MnM Dragapult, Rusted Sword, both with ~90% unban votes, or GG Gholdengo, and these all actually once were in the meta and got banned, unlike Lugia who never had a chance). Under the assumption that the AAA playerbase makes logical votes (which seems true), then if it ends up being overbearing people will vote ban (with precedent, AAA Annihilape) and vice versa. I think there is minimal harm in trying out the suspect test, and a test also helps boost ladder plays and interest, good stuff all around.
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teams i built for PL:
https://pokepast.es/13abe942cf796992 pawmot cress
https://pokepast.es/79646dfd733a26c7 cheese for subzero like an hour before the game
https://pokepast.es/73d8464d2c806222 unused meow team
https://pokepast.es/6cfea4302054c8be cheese for subzero
https://pokepast.es/783789d17b4786e6 unused zama / gambit + fsight
https://pokepast.es/e85da5ebeecd21d8 regenscarf gap. cool glue for heavier offense teams
other teams that i made recently that i like:
https://pokepast.es/ab260059b2c1a569 webs - versatile playstyle that can still be explored tbh, lots of interesting guys you can make work
https://pokepast.es/dec123cee07ed28a based on an ou team i saw, cress is a flop though
https://pokepast.es/5ddcbdcff53c0ad7 meow lead ho, great anti-ho lead with pranktaunt immunity + copycat to force webs back and decent damage
https://pokepast.es/7c5382d08cad2fd1 tinted hoger + gsurge hits very hard. a bit zap weak
https://pokepast.es/c7ed18c3215eae9e pglove underrated item. reused an old core though
https://pokepast.es/73f5e898b7a2545b fun bo
https://pokepast.es/848c4fd991deb6e1
https://pokepast.es/840d8b624fa475e0
https://pokepast.es/218863eaa4c51b94 car
https://pokepast.es/3bdd213218361263
https://pokepast.es/0811d39810cd349e
https://pokepast.es/c748f54aadcad054
https://pokepast.es/406679099fcad3fe
https://pokepast.es/13abe942cf796992 pawmot cress
https://pokepast.es/79646dfd733a26c7 cheese for subzero like an hour before the game
https://pokepast.es/73d8464d2c806222 unused meow team
https://pokepast.es/6cfea4302054c8be cheese for subzero
https://pokepast.es/783789d17b4786e6 unused zama / gambit + fsight
https://pokepast.es/e85da5ebeecd21d8 regenscarf gap. cool glue for heavier offense teams
other teams that i made recently that i like:
https://pokepast.es/ab260059b2c1a569 webs - versatile playstyle that can still be explored tbh, lots of interesting guys you can make work
https://pokepast.es/dec123cee07ed28a based on an ou team i saw, cress is a flop though
https://pokepast.es/5ddcbdcff53c0ad7 meow lead ho, great anti-ho lead with pranktaunt immunity + copycat to force webs back and decent damage
https://pokepast.es/7c5382d08cad2fd1 tinted hoger + gsurge hits very hard. a bit zap weak
https://pokepast.es/c7ed18c3215eae9e pglove underrated item. reused an old core though
https://pokepast.es/73f5e898b7a2545b fun bo
https://pokepast.es/848c4fd991deb6e1
https://pokepast.es/840d8b624fa475e0
https://pokepast.es/218863eaa4c51b94 car
https://pokepast.es/3bdd213218361263
https://pokepast.es/0811d39810cd349e
https://pokepast.es/c748f54aadcad054
https://pokepast.es/406679099fcad3fe
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i think it goes without saying that its impossible to check every mon in this tier defensively unless you're playing something like stall which still has bad MUs even then. this makes offensive counterplay to balance breakers like specs ghold / bramble / ogers? some of the most valuable pieces you can have to not get ran over by them. however these mons like boots zama / sd gambit / scarf ghold are pressured by anti-offense tools like deos / scarf moon / scarf meow / scarf stail / etc. it creates a rock-paper-scissors dynamic where:
anti-offense > (bulky) offense > balance > anti-offense
which isnt a bad thing inherently. however this leaves the meta in a spot where the player with the better matchup is favored even if the other player has been outplaying their opponent, to a point where i would even say that games are decided on preview unless the player with a worse matchup completely outplays their opponent. (note: this is my own personal opinion that i made after building in ompl. im not going to actively look for replays of this happening in ompl, because this is just a personal vibe that ive felt, but i can if anyone really wants.)
you could say that this results in AAA being a tier where builder prowess is more valuable than playing prowess. however, i would argue otherwise. the meta has been pretty stagnant for a while now, and apart from the occassional crack brings like ghostlike's w3 rain, teams will end up reusing the same core / mons. this leads to an inherently high floor and low ceiling for building skills, whereas clicking ability has an average floor and high ceiling.
ive had my issues with tera. its definitely annoying to lose an advantageous position of like, pao vs zama, where pao clicked tera fairy tblast and lived a cc to trade tera for zama. however i dont think this is a bad trade for the zama player at all. the more ive played with tera, the more it feels like a resource thats equally as valuable as having another mon on your team; games are essentially a 7v7 instead with tera in the equation.
this leads to what i personally believe to be a healthier dynamic as both players have access to the same button - it is ultimately up to the player to decide when to click it, and the player who is able to get more value out of their tera is favored to win.
tera gives both players the ability to flip the momentum of a match entirely. an offensive tera can be match-winning when timed right, whereas a defensive tera can halt the momentum of your opponent by limitting the progress an offensive threat can make. both of these, especially offensive teras, are heavily reliant on the player's innate playing ability and game sense to know when to use tera to maximise the value it gets.
furthermore, i believe that tera is a very helpful tool to limit how much of the game is decided by matchup. being able to tera offensively to kill the biggest threat to your team, or defensively to have a better matchup into said offensive threat, gives both sides much more room to outplay their opponent, to the point where i would say that the better player is favored to win even with a poorer matchup into their opponents team. my opinion is that the better player should be favored to win in a tier where the skill floor for building is high.
an issue i believe many people will have an issue with is tera + bulky setup. being able to gain a poison immunity on cresselia with the press of a button sounds great on paper, but in practice? your poison is realistically coming from pecharunt, who not only has to win a 50/50 with malig rng, but also has to outspeed it and be able to click malignant in the first place.
sure, you could say prankster toxic from pecha / pex, but prank pecha is naturally strapped for slots between pshot/malig/recover/dbond, and dropping one just for toxic makes it harder to justify even using this set, and prank pex is going to haze you before it even thinks about toxic.
what about tera fairy cress for dtail immunity + moonblast? well, what about prim? or even fezandipiti? stamina prim is an amazing punish to teams that rely on dtail as their only setup control that can already eat maligs with cm boosts + sub. i dont really know what the fuck fezan does but ive seen it before so im mentioning it
my point here is that, while tera would definitely help bulky setup like cress/prim (as it would all mons), it does not make them any more broken than they already are. there is no consistent counterplay to both cress and prim without severely handicapping your team and if you loaded into a bad mu into either of these, you will almost always be losing either way, even without tera taken into account.
another initial pushback i can imagine will be the sheer versatility that tera provides. this is certainly true, but the meta will eventually settle down to a state where we know what teras are viable on x and y mon and can be prepared for them. this will require time, weeks of it, that i am unsure whether only two will be enough. i personally hope for a tera slot in aaapl where we can also use to gauge whether tera will have a positive or negative impact.
next i saw some concerns about how tera will shake up the tier. yes, that certainly is true, but are we going to believe that the top 5 mons are not going to retain their top 5 spots? zamazenta will just do zamazenta things. gholdengo will just do gholdengo things. great tusk will do great tusk things. sure, maybe the viability of some mons will rise and fall, but we see that all the time with meta shifts and other tiering changes. i dont think the versatility of tera on some mons like zama/ghold/deos will be particularly hard to figure out by using a bit of time to analyse the opponents structure and seeing what tera would fit there best.
tera blast will probably be the last major issue anyone has with tera. and to that i will say that we just ban tera blast if it turns problematic, especially since we have precedent from OU. however looking at other OMs with similar power level (GG mainly, STAB when it had it), tera blast was never a major issue there and i dont think it will be here either. and to be frank i do not care about whether tiering policy states that we cant tier for the future (ie: freeing tera only to ban tblast). policy is a solid framework that can never properly account for the fluidity of a meta. this tier has been quite stale and if we want a shakeup i think tera is the way to go instead of lugia.
feel free to ping for clarification on disc
ban bd
The take away from this OMPL being that we should do suspect unbans for random mons/mechanics is one of the most dire things I have seen.
What should have happened is Deos getting suspected anytime within the last year, the mon has been borderline at the very least since then, but now that it had an abysmal tour the likelihood of that happening is potentially dead in the water. More aggressive tiering options like getting rid of certain offensive abilities (ex SoR/Hadron) could also work to alleviate some of the building centralization we see, but I doubt these garner enough support and haven't really been seen as problematic by the community at large. Otherwise, I think people just accept this is the meta we have, the tier has always been more centralized than others, and with no clear direction from council/the larger community, I don't think there is a reason to push anything super hard since there is no majority, especially since nothing is overtly broken (deos I would classify in the more unhealthy teetering on broken, depending if it loads the right set, zone of tiering).
There is something to be said about the consistent gridlock of the AAA council, it took us nearly a year to get rid of wake, dnite, and ceruledge, which is... not good. I still find myself and others talking about deos for multiple months with nothing given in response. This is not how a council should respond to things, and a more expedited tiering process should be taking place when necessary.
Realistically, to me, these posts feel like a response to the stagnation and settling of the tier, and while Lugia/tera do appear to have merits on paper, I can't help but read these posts as anything but wanting change for the simple fact of change. I do not think either of these or other unbans are the route to go for the future of tiering AAA, and would only exacerbate current issues seen in the tier. For example Lugia, only having top tier mons being able to answer it is a bad thing, as the mon has insane natural bulk and speed to lock out many mid tier mons. This only works to further centralize the meta, add another obnoxious wincon, and a middling defensive piece at best. Tera completely flips the meta on its head, benefits offensive mons much more due to the simple fact of amp abil + boosted coverage option, and I believe does not truly solve the issues cat is talking about in her post. It also connects back to my point of would the AAA council even be able to handle such a drastic tier shift and respond accordingly in a timely manner? Truthfully? I don't think so.
To me though, in an ideal world, no deos, but even then, at the end of the day I don't really care, I could take it or leave it atp. But after that, I don't really think the meta needs work, and is in a decent enough spot I am fine playing it for another year (people have been playing RBY for 20+ years so I don't really see the need/reason for constant change just bc) Personally I think the meta does still have room for expression in the builder, and this can be seen by the innovations in stall, the progressive lrod ghold structures, non-pixi stail (mg, fluffy rising), no removal teams, torn-t structures, etc. seeing a bit more exploration this open/OMPL.
If people want to explore things like tera/AAA + Lugia, we can always do side-tours, but I don't see the need to subjecting all of ladder to these things for two weeks.
What should have happened is Deos getting suspected anytime within the last year, the mon has been borderline at the very least since then, but now that it had an abysmal tour the likelihood of that happening is potentially dead in the water. More aggressive tiering options like getting rid of certain offensive abilities (ex SoR/Hadron) could also work to alleviate some of the building centralization we see, but I doubt these garner enough support and haven't really been seen as problematic by the community at large. Otherwise, I think people just accept this is the meta we have, the tier has always been more centralized than others, and with no clear direction from council/the larger community, I don't think there is a reason to push anything super hard since there is no majority, especially since nothing is overtly broken (deos I would classify in the more unhealthy teetering on broken, depending if it loads the right set, zone of tiering).
There is something to be said about the consistent gridlock of the AAA council, it took us nearly a year to get rid of wake, dnite, and ceruledge, which is... not good. I still find myself and others talking about deos for multiple months with nothing given in response. This is not how a council should respond to things, and a more expedited tiering process should be taking place when necessary.
Realistically, to me, these posts feel like a response to the stagnation and settling of the tier, and while Lugia/tera do appear to have merits on paper, I can't help but read these posts as anything but wanting change for the simple fact of change. I do not think either of these or other unbans are the route to go for the future of tiering AAA, and would only exacerbate current issues seen in the tier. For example Lugia, only having top tier mons being able to answer it is a bad thing, as the mon has insane natural bulk and speed to lock out many mid tier mons. This only works to further centralize the meta, add another obnoxious wincon, and a middling defensive piece at best. Tera completely flips the meta on its head, benefits offensive mons much more due to the simple fact of amp abil + boosted coverage option, and I believe does not truly solve the issues cat is talking about in her post. It also connects back to my point of would the AAA council even be able to handle such a drastic tier shift and respond accordingly in a timely manner? Truthfully? I don't think so.
To me though, in an ideal world, no deos, but even then, at the end of the day I don't really care, I could take it or leave it atp. But after that, I don't really think the meta needs work, and is in a decent enough spot I am fine playing it for another year (people have been playing RBY for 20+ years so I don't really see the need/reason for constant change just bc) Personally I think the meta does still have room for expression in the builder, and this can be seen by the innovations in stall, the progressive lrod ghold structures, non-pixi stail (mg, fluffy rising), no removal teams, torn-t structures, etc. seeing a bit more exploration this open/OMPL.
If people want to explore things like tera/AAA + Lugia, we can always do side-tours, but I don't see the need to subjecting all of ladder to these things for two weeks.
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Well as TL i suppose a response in is in order to all this recent discussion...
Re: Meta State.
So, clearly there has been some dissatisfaction with the current state of the meta, by the drive of posts proposing quite significant upheavals to the meta (re: Tera) and also the push to introduce a test Lugia, a mon historically frowned upon and brushed off by the council due to the little upsides that introducing the borderline mon would have into the meta would have, even if you argue for its downsides being minimal. It's pretty clearly outlined by Betticus above and the sentiment of others I've talked to in the Discord and even in past of this forum that the meta has not experienced any serious significant change for at least a year now, with the last successful tiering action being back in February of 2025 and this has been quite clearly the main issue driving dissatisfaction with the meta. While there are certain other issues you can also take with the meta depending on your experience (eg. cat talking about defensive imbalances) the majority of past surveys and the lull in discussion itself indicate this has really been driven by a general burnout with the tier remaining similar with the most common attribute I can find when people talk about disliking the meta as boring, even if most people as far as I can tell acknowledging it being stable and not overtly unbalanced or uncompetitive. That being said I think it should be acknowledged that meta still develops, even if quite slowly, as seen in the jump in usage of sets such as Ting-Lu and bulkier Scream Tail teams in general as opposed to the drive of offense that was popular beforehand. Still its become clear this tiering deadlock is something that needs at the very least a discussion about, if not a response and change.
Re: Council Criticism and Tiering Speed/Deadlock.
Will be clarifying as I talk here I'm just talking for my personal perspective and actions as TL and as a council member. I would like to lead off with a reminder that the council is not a unified behemoth but a reflection of the community as a whole concentrated into its most qualified and active members. You yourself and others have acknowledged the amount of proposals being thrown around, with Lugia, Tera and even other major proposals being thrown around in the past for this such as Ice Scales or just those that are relatively sated with the meta. The council as well can reflect this state and different council members can have significantly different takes (i.e Lugia, recently). I talked about it before with the meta being fairly stable and balanced/competitive in all surveys and responses if even if stagnation was taking its toll on the playerbase, the council could never reasonably push any of these forwards in these conditions with such fragmented support and really very little discussion being had in the past year except for a recent surge now and before OMPL for Deoxys-S (which I will address later).
I will say I do take blame for not being active in pushing more discussion as TL and letting the meta and discussion continue in this sated position until the dissatisfaction has built up to this point, partly because of my own burn-out with this meta that I experienced after last OMPL/AAAPL, but I don't think it's reasonable to solely blame the council for this stagnation in tiering action when discussion as a whole has been stagnant the past year. The criticism pointed at the council not being able to "handle such a drastic tier shift and respond accordingly in a timely manner?" I believe is completely unfounded however. Historically the council has been able to competently deliver quickbans on extremely destabilizing elements and quickly suspect any truly contentious mons during unstable metas like after all of the DLC and Home drops. You criticize the length of time it took to suspect Wake, Dragonite, Ceruledge but all of these mons were contentious in their suspects and had detractors on both sides if you read through the suspect threads (for example Betticus you were also pro-DNB for two of these). The Wake ban took 2-3 months after Zamazenta got dropped and was a contentious suspect, after the meta cleared a bit with Wake gone Dragonite after some discussion was suspected then banned after 2-3 months. Then we resuspected Zamazenta after discussion and banned Volcarona before suspecting Ceruledge a few months after that. Given the Ceruledge ban could've probably been quicker, but in a stable meta taking the proper time to discuss these mons before heading into a suspect and giving time for the meta to clear after a mon gets banned or dropped is standard procedure for any large meta such as OU? And large destabilising elements like Keldeo, Bundle and Raging Bolt were all quickbanned. It's hardly unjustified taking a measured approach here to large changes either given we've been given a whole year after all of these tiering changes to address anything pertinent and Deoxys-S is the only somewhat apparent candidate with mixed support for most of its lifespan (see Aug Survey).
Addressing the Deoxys-S suspect that was pushed somewhat recently before OMPL, that was my own decision as TL to delay any vote to suspect after OMPL or a short survey. My main justification for delaying the suspect was because the surge in support was relatively contained and brief to a couple of forums post made just in April and I wanted to see more discussion and development in OMPL and see how the community felt on it given the significant impact Deoxys-S has on the meta as a whole, and I still stand by that decision with how it is developed in OMPL so far. That being said, I will admit again the opportunity for a suspect could've probably been pushed earlier by initiating discussion in the large lull we've had so far which is my fault for not engaging with the meta as much as I could have after AAAPL. However there was practically no discussion or a prerogative for a Deoxys-S suspect at all before April, with there being brief discussions on Discord and nothing on the forums (the last major meta discussion thread for example in September from Betticus indicated a preference for stability and nothing to be tiered) and when we gauged support for Deoxys-S suspect before there was even less support than mons like Chien-Pao/Roaring Moon, though the last survey was some time ago which is fair to criticize.
Re: Lugia.
I have made it quite clear on Discord when discussing this mon and when in the past it was brought up that I find the idea of freeing this mon quite terrible. While in practice Lugia probably is not outright broken or going to hyper centralise the meta around it to be hyper fat or anything like that due to numerous drawbacks outlined in Chessking's post (eg weakness to common coverage moves/Knock) I also find that because of this Lugia being freed in this meta would add very little value. This is mainly because since Lugia cant competently wall some common breakers or even last that long in a balance matchup due to reliance on boots (though MGLO Psynoise/Brave Bird/EQ sounds quite good for this of situation) and has very little utility aside from potentially Phazing/Future Sight it means all Lugia becomes is a CM cheese factory that can pick and choose abilities that can improve its ability to go for a CM sweep while retaining its Box Legendary bulk to be able to trade with things that will be forced in (eg Zamazenta/Ogerpons/etc*). It simply adds a nuisance that would further centralise the tier around making sure you don't get swept by some dumb setup set which is most of what it practically does. You can argue the comparison to something like Stamina Scream Tail or Cresselia, but like, even disregarding if it's better or w/e why would we want to add another reason for people to spam fishy setup? Stamina Scream Tail is funny and not that annoying because people don't bother to fish with it that often but it can well do so and proliferating an extremely attractive option to do so is not conducive to improving the metagame at all. While I disagree with other proposals such as Tera or Ice Scales quite vehemently at the very least these proposals try to justify that they would actually meaningfully improve the meta and sate peoples dissatisfaction with it, while Lugia is just a "because it's not that broken" moment. I don't mind it to the point of something consistently proved useless like Revival Blessing but Lugia is just the limit for me and I don't think the support is even there outside of a couple of loud posters.
Re: Tera.
To be honest I don't really get the hype behind this mechanic being this saving grace that will increase the skill ceiling and fairness of a somewhat polarized meta. I'm writing this up quite impromptu but the main reason I oppose freeing Tera is because in spite of the defensive grace and utility that Tera can give the polarising addition of extra amplification on STABs or on dumb setup mons just sounds like it would outweigh any grace this would give or any dynamic interactions it would introduce.
AAA inherently is a far more amped and polarised metagame than OU which has been the main comparison point. People will bring dumb breakers with SFLO Deoxys-S or Sword of Ruin/TLens Roaring Moon and sometimes your Regen or Fluffy/Intimidate mon doesn't have a good matchup and you know that sucks. Tera does give some grace in that these fat mons can now Tera to give resists or perhaps some of your weaker offensive mons to exert more pressure on these mons but at the same time the boost Tera provides sounds like it would amplify these polarised dynamic even more. For example I think it'd easily suppress spd counterplay in the tier back to forcing max SpD investment bar your Regen mon getting absolutely hammer by something Tera Flying SFLO Bleakwind from Torn-T or from a Choice Specs Gholdengo with Tera Steel and Hadron Engine or Tinted Lens (which can 2hko SpD Manaphy!) which is already hard to outplay using resists and offensive pressure. Resists don't mean that much when you suddenly start getting double stacked amplification with Tera STAB amplification + the myriad of easy boosting options available.
Similarly for setup the options are endless in combination with all the abilities that can enable them. There's obvious options like DDance Roaring Moon or Kingambit with an actually good defensive typing but also super fat options. You bring up Cresselia which still sounds super obnoxious (aside it from already being so) with Tera and yes Fezan does have drawbacks outside of the typing (no Stored Power means you cant beat stuff like Iron Moth or even like SpD Moltres even) and there's other dumb shit like Power Trip Corv that can suddenly troll whatever it's weak that its abilities dont already cover while accumulating boosts. There's also Tera Blast, which ignores Fluffy which is a core defensive mechanic for this generation and stuff like Roaring Moon, Kingambit and Zamazenta suddenly being able to ignore it aside from everyone getting infinite coverage, but at least you can ban this part of it probably.
So far I think having flexibility for your Regen being AV or SpD and other defensive slots as the meta has progressively decreased in power has been a good thing and I don't think Tera with its defensive flexibility would outweigh the offensive nightmares you would create in the process nor does it address structural issues like limited removal (which in fairness is practically a hard stuck factor). Yes you can rearrange and ban a significant portion of the meta to favour a Tera based metagame to a point but I don't see the point? OU doesn't seem exactly like a paragon to emulate (except maybe stealing being the spotlight and defacto meta everyone builds and develops and gets rewarded for) and there is plenty of controversy and people that have already disclosed their displeasure at the mechanic in the small discussion we've had, aside from other metas that are fine without the mechanic interfering. I'm a bit more open to discussion around this option personally compared to stuff like Lugia or the other borderline dumb stuff like Shaymin-Sky or we because it does have merits but personally I'm not very convinced and the sheer magnitude of change would necessitate at least something like a tour or slot to test out beforehand.
Re: Deoxys-Speed
I already addressed why there hasn't been a suspect of Deoxys-S above so most of this will just my personal thoughts on the mon itself. Personally I'm rather partial to Deoxys-Speed in the same way I was to Dragonite almost. It provides quite a unique role in being quite good speed control against the Zama BOs while not being rather passive and can be made rather consistent with its ability to Knock or even Spike though I find these sets rather weak. It can definitely have quite the restraining effect on teams with how it threatens a sweep with its more powerful sets, with SFLO or Hadron Engine LO Plot and a myriad of coverage it can be quite frustrating to lose to and restricts your SpD counterplay particularly on more greedy offensive teams. To be honest I don't find having a fast mon that makes it so offense cant be too greedy with their structures that bad of a concept, but max offensive sets might be a little too dumb and restrictive with how they can fish even versus some balance teams. It did have its recent showing in OMPL be quite poor, which I think is partly due to the use of more conservative sets like mixed and that Deoxys-S in general can be quite a hard mon to use with how it often needs to get predicts and turns right with how frail it is. That said despite this I think it's still worth looking at with how it can constrain teams, with the rise of AV Ting-Lu a good argument in this (or against banning, depending on your perspective anyway). Overall however I don't think it would particularly shift the core and dynamics in the builder so much as to alleviate some of the boredom people have complained about but I do think it would be quite a major change at least with how good it is and would be a fine change especially to those that find the meta mostly balanced/competitive anyway and that some of this frustration is just structural with how the stable meta has stretched on for and other restrictions like limited removal distribution being the main reason I find behind the meta being "boring".
Re: The Future(?)
Clearly as stated before there is some degree of dissatisfaction with the current state of the meta from certain players that is indicated just by the fact of the burst of proposals and discussion recently. So what is to be done? Well, we don't even know the true extent of what people think about the meta. Yes there has been significant discussion and loud proponents for proposals like Lugia and Tera, but that is mostly contained to Discord discussion that is hard to keep track of to gauge and there are still many that haven't really filled in on their opinions yet. As much as people I know would disfavour a further delay in any action, to be frank there has been only a day or two of discussion with three posts on the forums that make any major argument with them all being different. So expect at least a survey soon or after OMPL to gauge opinions on both the meta and also views on all these proposals. Either way, it's good that serious discussion is taking place which is a step in the right direction compared to before now and I hope that more people do speak up on their view of the meta and any proposals presented here or their own.
Re: Meta State.
So, clearly there has been some dissatisfaction with the current state of the meta, by the drive of posts proposing quite significant upheavals to the meta (re: Tera) and also the push to introduce a test Lugia, a mon historically frowned upon and brushed off by the council due to the little upsides that introducing the borderline mon would have into the meta would have, even if you argue for its downsides being minimal. It's pretty clearly outlined by Betticus above and the sentiment of others I've talked to in the Discord and even in past of this forum that the meta has not experienced any serious significant change for at least a year now, with the last successful tiering action being back in February of 2025 and this has been quite clearly the main issue driving dissatisfaction with the meta. While there are certain other issues you can also take with the meta depending on your experience (eg. cat talking about defensive imbalances) the majority of past surveys and the lull in discussion itself indicate this has really been driven by a general burnout with the tier remaining similar with the most common attribute I can find when people talk about disliking the meta as boring, even if most people as far as I can tell acknowledging it being stable and not overtly unbalanced or uncompetitive. That being said I think it should be acknowledged that meta still develops, even if quite slowly, as seen in the jump in usage of sets such as Ting-Lu and bulkier Scream Tail teams in general as opposed to the drive of offense that was popular beforehand. Still its become clear this tiering deadlock is something that needs at the very least a discussion about, if not a response and change.
Re: Council Criticism and Tiering Speed/Deadlock.
Will be clarifying as I talk here I'm just talking for my personal perspective and actions as TL and as a council member. I would like to lead off with a reminder that the council is not a unified behemoth but a reflection of the community as a whole concentrated into its most qualified and active members. You yourself and others have acknowledged the amount of proposals being thrown around, with Lugia, Tera and even other major proposals being thrown around in the past for this such as Ice Scales or just those that are relatively sated with the meta. The council as well can reflect this state and different council members can have significantly different takes (i.e Lugia, recently). I talked about it before with the meta being fairly stable and balanced/competitive in all surveys and responses if even if stagnation was taking its toll on the playerbase, the council could never reasonably push any of these forwards in these conditions with such fragmented support and really very little discussion being had in the past year except for a recent surge now and before OMPL for Deoxys-S (which I will address later).
I will say I do take blame for not being active in pushing more discussion as TL and letting the meta and discussion continue in this sated position until the dissatisfaction has built up to this point, partly because of my own burn-out with this meta that I experienced after last OMPL/AAAPL, but I don't think it's reasonable to solely blame the council for this stagnation in tiering action when discussion as a whole has been stagnant the past year. The criticism pointed at the council not being able to "handle such a drastic tier shift and respond accordingly in a timely manner?" I believe is completely unfounded however. Historically the council has been able to competently deliver quickbans on extremely destabilizing elements and quickly suspect any truly contentious mons during unstable metas like after all of the DLC and Home drops. You criticize the length of time it took to suspect Wake, Dragonite, Ceruledge but all of these mons were contentious in their suspects and had detractors on both sides if you read through the suspect threads (for example Betticus you were also pro-DNB for two of these). The Wake ban took 2-3 months after Zamazenta got dropped and was a contentious suspect, after the meta cleared a bit with Wake gone Dragonite after some discussion was suspected then banned after 2-3 months. Then we resuspected Zamazenta after discussion and banned Volcarona before suspecting Ceruledge a few months after that. Given the Ceruledge ban could've probably been quicker, but in a stable meta taking the proper time to discuss these mons before heading into a suspect and giving time for the meta to clear after a mon gets banned or dropped is standard procedure for any large meta such as OU? And large destabilising elements like Keldeo, Bundle and Raging Bolt were all quickbanned. It's hardly unjustified taking a measured approach here to large changes either given we've been given a whole year after all of these tiering changes to address anything pertinent and Deoxys-S is the only somewhat apparent candidate with mixed support for most of its lifespan (see Aug Survey).
Addressing the Deoxys-S suspect that was pushed somewhat recently before OMPL, that was my own decision as TL to delay any vote to suspect after OMPL or a short survey. My main justification for delaying the suspect was because the surge in support was relatively contained and brief to a couple of forums post made just in April and I wanted to see more discussion and development in OMPL and see how the community felt on it given the significant impact Deoxys-S has on the meta as a whole, and I still stand by that decision with how it is developed in OMPL so far. That being said, I will admit again the opportunity for a suspect could've probably been pushed earlier by initiating discussion in the large lull we've had so far which is my fault for not engaging with the meta as much as I could have after AAAPL. However there was practically no discussion or a prerogative for a Deoxys-S suspect at all before April, with there being brief discussions on Discord and nothing on the forums (the last major meta discussion thread for example in September from Betticus indicated a preference for stability and nothing to be tiered) and when we gauged support for Deoxys-S suspect before there was even less support than mons like Chien-Pao/Roaring Moon, though the last survey was some time ago which is fair to criticize.
Re: Lugia.
I have made it quite clear on Discord when discussing this mon and when in the past it was brought up that I find the idea of freeing this mon quite terrible. While in practice Lugia probably is not outright broken or going to hyper centralise the meta around it to be hyper fat or anything like that due to numerous drawbacks outlined in Chessking's post (eg weakness to common coverage moves/Knock) I also find that because of this Lugia being freed in this meta would add very little value. This is mainly because since Lugia cant competently wall some common breakers or even last that long in a balance matchup due to reliance on boots (though MGLO Psynoise/Brave Bird/EQ sounds quite good for this of situation) and has very little utility aside from potentially Phazing/Future Sight it means all Lugia becomes is a CM cheese factory that can pick and choose abilities that can improve its ability to go for a CM sweep while retaining its Box Legendary bulk to be able to trade with things that will be forced in (eg Zamazenta/Ogerpons/etc*). It simply adds a nuisance that would further centralise the tier around making sure you don't get swept by some dumb setup set which is most of what it practically does. You can argue the comparison to something like Stamina Scream Tail or Cresselia, but like, even disregarding if it's better or w/e why would we want to add another reason for people to spam fishy setup? Stamina Scream Tail is funny and not that annoying because people don't bother to fish with it that often but it can well do so and proliferating an extremely attractive option to do so is not conducive to improving the metagame at all. While I disagree with other proposals such as Tera or Ice Scales quite vehemently at the very least these proposals try to justify that they would actually meaningfully improve the meta and sate peoples dissatisfaction with it, while Lugia is just a "because it's not that broken" moment. I don't mind it to the point of something consistently proved useless like Revival Blessing but Lugia is just the limit for me and I don't think the support is even there outside of a couple of loud posters.
Re: Tera.
To be honest I don't really get the hype behind this mechanic being this saving grace that will increase the skill ceiling and fairness of a somewhat polarized meta. I'm writing this up quite impromptu but the main reason I oppose freeing Tera is because in spite of the defensive grace and utility that Tera can give the polarising addition of extra amplification on STABs or on dumb setup mons just sounds like it would outweigh any grace this would give or any dynamic interactions it would introduce.
AAA inherently is a far more amped and polarised metagame than OU which has been the main comparison point. People will bring dumb breakers with SFLO Deoxys-S or Sword of Ruin/TLens Roaring Moon and sometimes your Regen or Fluffy/Intimidate mon doesn't have a good matchup and you know that sucks. Tera does give some grace in that these fat mons can now Tera to give resists or perhaps some of your weaker offensive mons to exert more pressure on these mons but at the same time the boost Tera provides sounds like it would amplify these polarised dynamic even more. For example I think it'd easily suppress spd counterplay in the tier back to forcing max SpD investment bar your Regen mon getting absolutely hammer by something Tera Flying SFLO Bleakwind from Torn-T or from a Choice Specs Gholdengo with Tera Steel and Hadron Engine or Tinted Lens (which can 2hko SpD Manaphy!) which is already hard to outplay using resists and offensive pressure. Resists don't mean that much when you suddenly start getting double stacked amplification with Tera STAB amplification + the myriad of easy boosting options available.
Similarly for setup the options are endless in combination with all the abilities that can enable them. There's obvious options like DDance Roaring Moon or Kingambit with an actually good defensive typing but also super fat options. You bring up Cresselia which still sounds super obnoxious (aside it from already being so) with Tera and yes Fezan does have drawbacks outside of the typing (no Stored Power means you cant beat stuff like Iron Moth or even like SpD Moltres even) and there's other dumb shit like Power Trip Corv that can suddenly troll whatever it's weak that its abilities dont already cover while accumulating boosts. There's also Tera Blast, which ignores Fluffy which is a core defensive mechanic for this generation and stuff like Roaring Moon, Kingambit and Zamazenta suddenly being able to ignore it aside from everyone getting infinite coverage, but at least you can ban this part of it probably.
So far I think having flexibility for your Regen being AV or SpD and other defensive slots as the meta has progressively decreased in power has been a good thing and I don't think Tera with its defensive flexibility would outweigh the offensive nightmares you would create in the process nor does it address structural issues like limited removal (which in fairness is practically a hard stuck factor). Yes you can rearrange and ban a significant portion of the meta to favour a Tera based metagame to a point but I don't see the point? OU doesn't seem exactly like a paragon to emulate (except maybe stealing being the spotlight and defacto meta everyone builds and develops and gets rewarded for) and there is plenty of controversy and people that have already disclosed their displeasure at the mechanic in the small discussion we've had, aside from other metas that are fine without the mechanic interfering. I'm a bit more open to discussion around this option personally compared to stuff like Lugia or the other borderline dumb stuff like Shaymin-Sky or we because it does have merits but personally I'm not very convinced and the sheer magnitude of change would necessitate at least something like a tour or slot to test out beforehand.
Re: Deoxys-Speed
I already addressed why there hasn't been a suspect of Deoxys-S above so most of this will just my personal thoughts on the mon itself. Personally I'm rather partial to Deoxys-Speed in the same way I was to Dragonite almost. It provides quite a unique role in being quite good speed control against the Zama BOs while not being rather passive and can be made rather consistent with its ability to Knock or even Spike though I find these sets rather weak. It can definitely have quite the restraining effect on teams with how it threatens a sweep with its more powerful sets, with SFLO or Hadron Engine LO Plot and a myriad of coverage it can be quite frustrating to lose to and restricts your SpD counterplay particularly on more greedy offensive teams. To be honest I don't find having a fast mon that makes it so offense cant be too greedy with their structures that bad of a concept, but max offensive sets might be a little too dumb and restrictive with how they can fish even versus some balance teams. It did have its recent showing in OMPL be quite poor, which I think is partly due to the use of more conservative sets like mixed and that Deoxys-S in general can be quite a hard mon to use with how it often needs to get predicts and turns right with how frail it is. That said despite this I think it's still worth looking at with how it can constrain teams, with the rise of AV Ting-Lu a good argument in this (or against banning, depending on your perspective anyway). Overall however I don't think it would particularly shift the core and dynamics in the builder so much as to alleviate some of the boredom people have complained about but I do think it would be quite a major change at least with how good it is and would be a fine change especially to those that find the meta mostly balanced/competitive anyway and that some of this frustration is just structural with how the stable meta has stretched on for and other restrictions like limited removal distribution being the main reason I find behind the meta being "boring".
Re: The Future(?)
Clearly as stated before there is some degree of dissatisfaction with the current state of the meta from certain players that is indicated just by the fact of the burst of proposals and discussion recently. So what is to be done? Well, we don't even know the true extent of what people think about the meta. Yes there has been significant discussion and loud proponents for proposals like Lugia and Tera, but that is mostly contained to Discord discussion that is hard to keep track of to gauge and there are still many that haven't really filled in on their opinions yet. As much as people I know would disfavour a further delay in any action, to be frank there has been only a day or two of discussion with three posts on the forums that make any major argument with them all being different. So expect at least a survey soon or after OMPL to gauge opinions on both the meta and also views on all these proposals. Either way, it's good that serious discussion is taking place which is a step in the right direction compared to before now and I hope that more people do speak up on their view of the meta and any proposals presented here or their own.
I have no real intention or desire to share my broader meta reads in AAA now or at the end of OMPL, but I want to share some of my general perspectives on the metagame and its future direction, as I don’t think I have ever really done so publicly.
AAA is a tier in the midst of a crisis of identity. No playstyle is truly consistent. For every standard meta balance or bulky offense core, there is at least one common, strong set of progressmakers that completely destroy it with little to no counterplay. For every set of progressmakers, there is a core that completely stops them with little to no counterplay. I don’t view this as particularly debateable, as it has been a feature of the tier now for quite a long time. Certain players have still managed to find consistency using singular teams or playstyles, I think probably most notably DFM and Glory, but constant innovation is required for consistency, and usually even then risks awful 100-0 matchups, just with mons that aren’t currently as popular. I view this metagame dynamic as exhausting, personally. I love how AAA rewards its most innovative players, but I wish comfort, meta playstyles were more consistent. I think due to the overwhelming importance of unpredictability in AAA, the tier rewards fishing to an egregious degree, leading to a significant amount of battles this OMPL that felt decided at team preview by pokemon that quite frankly will never have any true metagame niche outside of the circumstances of that prep environment.
Now that I’ve laid out the premises, I want to acknowledge that many people won’t or don’t see this as a bad thing. At the end of the day, metagame quality is entirely subjective, and people disagree far too often even on what factors tiering officials should try to optimize for. I know for certain that some players really adore the fact that innovation, even if many of the things being innovated are shitty gimmicks with no legitimate worth outside of the narrow contexts for which they were invented, is so highly rewarded in this tier. I can only really speak for myself when I say that this is why I have no real interest in playing AAA unless something drastic changes for the rest of gen 9, although I know that there is a significant number of mainers that agree with me. For those people, I want to run through two tiering decisions that I think would change the dynamics of the tier.
1. Freeing Ceruledge
I think banning ceruledge was, in hindsight, a horrible decision. Ceruledge had a level of consistency on more offensive teams that no other breaker since has ever had. None of the cope wbb itemless ceruledge answers really truly beat ceruledge in the long term, and most good progressmaking cores with ceruledge were capable of running them over. The infamous Glory RMT is imo the best example of this. Ceruledge was well and truly consistent with excellent play. The downside of freeing ceruledge is, of course, that it runs rampant over balance and fats as a playstyle. However, this is where I think AAA’s crisis of identity is most visible: do we prefer a metagame where all playstyles are equally fishy, or would we rather have a metagame that is dominated by one playstyle, but that playstyle is strong and consistent? On the other end of the spectrum, there’s:
2. Editing the ability clause
Changing the ability clause to allow players to use 2 of the same ability per game I think would change the tier in the exact opposite fashion. One of the driving forces behind balance’s fishiness imo is the inability to have more than one regen mon, forcing these regenvest dynamics where based on your choice you are essentially forced to drop the ability to beat certain mons or use worse pokemon to compensate that eventually lose long term. I think this change would, imo, drastically reduce the quality of bulky offense as a playstyle. However, I think it would become way easier to build consistent balances and fatter teams. Again, I’ll pose the question: do we prefer a metagame where all playstyles are equally fishy, or would we rather have a metagame that is dominated by one playstyle, but that playstyle is strong and consistent?
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I set this dichotomy up so that I could pose the question to the council and to the mainers who are still interested in making gen 9 AAA the best tier that it could possibly be. What is YOUR vision for the metagame? What things do our TLs want to optimize for? Should I have any hope in the future? Do you even perceive there to be any problems with the tier dynamics as they are in the first place? Is this entire post just yap and bullshit and lies written by a complete fraud with no building chops and an incomplete understanding of the metagame?
We are getting to the end of the generation. The time for fragmentation is over. If anything comes as a result of this post, I would like it to be this sentiment: choose a direction, and whatever direction you choose, stick with it. I know this is hard. I know the council is made up of individuals with completely different visions for the metagame. But I am sick and tired of this as an excuse for nothing happening. Figure it out. And if you can't, what are you doing on a tiering council in the first place?
AAA is a tier in the midst of a crisis of identity. No playstyle is truly consistent. For every standard meta balance or bulky offense core, there is at least one common, strong set of progressmakers that completely destroy it with little to no counterplay. For every set of progressmakers, there is a core that completely stops them with little to no counterplay. I don’t view this as particularly debateable, as it has been a feature of the tier now for quite a long time. Certain players have still managed to find consistency using singular teams or playstyles, I think probably most notably DFM and Glory, but constant innovation is required for consistency, and usually even then risks awful 100-0 matchups, just with mons that aren’t currently as popular. I view this metagame dynamic as exhausting, personally. I love how AAA rewards its most innovative players, but I wish comfort, meta playstyles were more consistent. I think due to the overwhelming importance of unpredictability in AAA, the tier rewards fishing to an egregious degree, leading to a significant amount of battles this OMPL that felt decided at team preview by pokemon that quite frankly will never have any true metagame niche outside of the circumstances of that prep environment.
Now that I’ve laid out the premises, I want to acknowledge that many people won’t or don’t see this as a bad thing. At the end of the day, metagame quality is entirely subjective, and people disagree far too often even on what factors tiering officials should try to optimize for. I know for certain that some players really adore the fact that innovation, even if many of the things being innovated are shitty gimmicks with no legitimate worth outside of the narrow contexts for which they were invented, is so highly rewarded in this tier. I can only really speak for myself when I say that this is why I have no real interest in playing AAA unless something drastic changes for the rest of gen 9, although I know that there is a significant number of mainers that agree with me. For those people, I want to run through two tiering decisions that I think would change the dynamics of the tier.
1. Freeing Ceruledge
I think banning ceruledge was, in hindsight, a horrible decision. Ceruledge had a level of consistency on more offensive teams that no other breaker since has ever had. None of the cope wbb itemless ceruledge answers really truly beat ceruledge in the long term, and most good progressmaking cores with ceruledge were capable of running them over. The infamous Glory RMT is imo the best example of this. Ceruledge was well and truly consistent with excellent play. The downside of freeing ceruledge is, of course, that it runs rampant over balance and fats as a playstyle. However, this is where I think AAA’s crisis of identity is most visible: do we prefer a metagame where all playstyles are equally fishy, or would we rather have a metagame that is dominated by one playstyle, but that playstyle is strong and consistent? On the other end of the spectrum, there’s:
2. Editing the ability clause
Changing the ability clause to allow players to use 2 of the same ability per game I think would change the tier in the exact opposite fashion. One of the driving forces behind balance’s fishiness imo is the inability to have more than one regen mon, forcing these regenvest dynamics where based on your choice you are essentially forced to drop the ability to beat certain mons or use worse pokemon to compensate that eventually lose long term. I think this change would, imo, drastically reduce the quality of bulky offense as a playstyle. However, I think it would become way easier to build consistent balances and fatter teams. Again, I’ll pose the question: do we prefer a metagame where all playstyles are equally fishy, or would we rather have a metagame that is dominated by one playstyle, but that playstyle is strong and consistent?
-
I set this dichotomy up so that I could pose the question to the council and to the mainers who are still interested in making gen 9 AAA the best tier that it could possibly be. What is YOUR vision for the metagame? What things do our TLs want to optimize for? Should I have any hope in the future? Do you even perceive there to be any problems with the tier dynamics as they are in the first place? Is this entire post just yap and bullshit and lies written by a complete fraud with no building chops and an incomplete understanding of the metagame?
We are getting to the end of the generation. The time for fragmentation is over. If anything comes as a result of this post, I would like it to be this sentiment: choose a direction, and whatever direction you choose, stick with it. I know this is hard. I know the council is made up of individuals with completely different visions for the metagame. But I am sick and tired of this as an excuse for nothing happening. Figure it out. And if you can't, what are you doing on a tiering council in the first place?
would rather not have had to make this post but unfortunately my team has been eliminated. it was a good run in reg season but just seemed to sputter out at playoffs which i do feel pretty disappointed in myself with. not to say i didnt enjoy the season overall, every week was fun chatting to my teammates, shoutout tech for being the manager goat with scouts every week for zASStra i cant rlly think of anything nice to say tbh. also rest of my teammates i already said it but luv yall for giving it ur all.
i spent most of the season supporting my teammate o1v to a combined record of 7-2 in the aaa slot. oh also this is sorta a follow up post for me getting to aaalt and aaassnl finals then choking them, i never made a post in the aaa thread kuz i was lowk bummed out but ill be shortly reflecting on it here.
below is a teamdump of each ompl week and my thoughts on the game/why x was brought:
week 1:
week one tbh we didnt have many teams built up yet so we wanted to go with something solid, opted for stall as shiloh's builder didn't really have any real threats. ingame o1v might not have been as comfortable with the team which led to a loss, tinglu should have been used more as a sponge for ghold to not be a 1% and also blissey got chipped too much by flipturn which also could have been sponged by tinglu which led to a lucky crit from gholdengo to kill blissey which pmuch lost us the game. hindsight is just make sure player feels comfortable w stall b4 loading it. imo stall is fine to bring to a tour or whatever just needs to be the right setting. also helps muddle up the scout which is nice
week 2:
w2 was vs nightshades and tbh they didnt really have much aaa presence on their team so tech pasted some teams from betti and o1v went w the regen samu one kuz it looks dope and unaware stail/wabs corv are good stopgaps into offense/balance. wabs really helps pull the team together to make sure pert cant come in for free or whatever, and spikes lets zap break lu/pert/whatever more easily might be a bit dicey going into vabs corv but w ghold should be doable.
week 3:
w3 was kinda a hatebuild but the idea was band meow due to glory's low physdef corv usage and its just a good speed to check threats like lando and moth. corro ogi was brought versus me in the past by betti so glalie put together that idea to wall zamazenta which we all know glory very much likes. scarf psea lando is also dope kuz it walls iron moth wout eball and has good coverage into common threats glory likes to bring alot. most importantly it brings in mana/pert alot so band meow can get more hits off. another idea that was drawn from the genius of the bettussy was wabs corv which funny enough we did load last week but seeing betti use wabs corv w tinglu was dope esp that hands struggles to wall things longterm if mana is able to burn and knock its vest. team is a bit weak into specs ghold so keep that in mind if u wanna use it. sadly idt glory was slotted into aaa this week but the team that was passed would prob end up to be a glory team. (im too lazy to check the thread rn)
week 4:
kinetic is a tough oppo that generally brings solid balances/offenses so we just went with something that o1v would be comfortable with which is this classic specs ghold team from last ompl. goated rebring its like 9-0 in tour or smtn. anyways i didnt like how it was too weak to fire types and zarude would kinda lose momentum due to kinetic having very high corv usage. pretty much it was bricked so i just replaced it with a moon for a better fire type switchin and also a pivot to get in ghold more. kinetic ended up bringing the weirdest team like bor hydra with rocks and lefties? idk man but yea gameplan was pretty simple.
week 5:
facing the zards which imo have by far the best aaa in the pool was pretty sketch kuz ghostlike really be loading anything so i didnt really know what to expect, but i knew some weird shit or like offensive stuff was coming. but then half way into the week i started to 2nd guess myself and thought he would bring fat into us so i wanted a consistent breaker which led me to great tusk. i normally like the tough claws + clam/softsand sets more if ur running offensive tusk but i eventually decided on bringing mold breaker cb tusk instead kuz i it would be hella aids if he brough levitate. rest of the team is pretty standard offense stuff and i couldnt fit spin on tusk so cinder slotted in nicely. oh also i forgot to add rocks/lowk couldnt fit them so cinderace is cope hazard setting and removal
. lastly scarf meow to threaten mana immediately and clean up games. really benefits from tusk removing corv and also patches up tusk's low speed.
week 6:
our team was doing pretty good in the standings so tech decided to let starters rest for a week meaning i got to play. i was bummed that stall lost in w1 and grey's scout is pretty free for stall. i also wanted to conserve information if opponent scouted. changed the ghold to bulletproof just bc i didnt want to get fucked by primarina again/good stopgap for ghold. the actual game was kinda chopped kuz i got impatient and started fishing for burns on meloetta by going naught on uturn which led to a good callout by him to psychic my naught then he died rip. game coulda been done much faster if i didnt do that.
week 7:
faced the commanders with lordbox playing, previously he brought some goodra team and the builds over the season just looked fatter in general so i wanted to have fun for the last week of the regular season and after talking to lordbox about what HO he thought was the best in aaa i decided to make webs (what he said was the best). glory showed me the truth of lorb sor zama which is the goat of cleaners and i paired that up with a strong special core of tornadus/moth/ghold. the idea was that moth has most stuff covered and torn to clean up games. gholdengo was our spinblocker and nuclear option for av tinglu/av hands which i actually brought once before vs betti but i got fucked up by unaware blissey. bor + lorb + modest lets u ohko tinglu and hands which cleanly opens up the other special attackers to finish the game. lastly ogerpon rock was to deal with the elemental birds but also forcing in corv/pech/ghold to weaken them for zamazenta to clean later. it could be tinted or adapt/rockypay really up to you. o1v did a great job of piloting kuz the pao coulda been a bit tricky but thankfully it was only sucker punch so zama/torn could clean endgame.
semis:
for our last week I had to move from the west to east coast to start my first job which naturally took some time away from sitting on my ass all day so less time to teambuild. this was the first time i've ever worked a 7-5 shift so i felt like shit everyday for a while. we loaded stall into the witches w1 and lost so i wasnt really sure what would be brought this week. The builds looked to consistently be from fifi which i assumed was in the cord being friends w pyu and all asw as all the lu usage over the weeks. Because of this i wanted to build some sorta anti offense that wouldnt struggle with an ho/offense bring but i just couldnt really piece together a team which led to betti providing his fat team.i trusted the team as its been proven this ompl on top of all the times hes used it in aaalt/ssnl blah blah. in hindsight i really am beating myself up for not building the team for the week that could potentially be our last. but skill issue and cope kuz ive also fucked myself that way in aaalt and aaassnl finals ending up losing those for the same reason. i feel particularly responsible for my teams elimination kuz if im a support and not doing my job id be pretty useless. going into the match 3-4 i felt dread as tinglu leadoff and missed 2 ruinations in a row and got burned by scald and knew it was a mistake to not have prepped as heavy that week. it felt like the knife got twisted into my gut as moon revealed firefang for fluffy corv which pretty much put o1v into a losing position. its in the past now and i can only move on but man it feels like shit to lose due to a teambuilding issue/lack of confidence for the 3rd tour in a row.
reflection on aaa as a whole:
i was lurking in council chat and saw lordbox wanted more people to post about their thoughts on the tier (yes you reader! go post) so putting my opinion out there for whatever its worth.
so my opinion kinda formed around aaalt 2 where the qualifiers (me and like 7 others? idk exact number) got to vote on a pokemon to sus. quite alot of people actually said to ban deo which got me thinking what the tier would look like wout deo and honestly it seemed pretty shitty kuz its just zamaslop now. but then i read some post by betti which pointed out that the meta eventually shifted (albiet slowly) to accomodate for sets like hadron lorb deo. we saw the explosion in usage of regenvest tinglu, unaware bulkystail and vabs corv/ghold used alot more. so idk meta isnt cooked it just takes time esp for a smaller meta/one that seens often dry spouts of tournaments (when meta is developed upon the most) to develop. with that being said, i really like the idea of just testing stuff like tera or ban/unban x mon. shoutout Betticus IV GlalieGoesBoom Glory for being huge inspirations for my building yall sum goats.
cya in aaapl!
i spent most of the season supporting my teammate o1v to a combined record of 7-2 in the aaa slot. oh also this is sorta a follow up post for me getting to aaalt and aaassnl finals then choking them, i never made a post in the aaa thread kuz i was lowk bummed out but ill be shortly reflecting on it here.
below is a teamdump of each ompl week and my thoughts on the game/why x was brought:
week 1:
week one tbh we didnt have many teams built up yet so we wanted to go with something solid, opted for stall as shiloh's builder didn't really have any real threats. ingame o1v might not have been as comfortable with the team which led to a loss, tinglu should have been used more as a sponge for ghold to not be a 1% and also blissey got chipped too much by flipturn which also could have been sponged by tinglu which led to a lucky crit from gholdengo to kill blissey which pmuch lost us the game. hindsight is just make sure player feels comfortable w stall b4 loading it. imo stall is fine to bring to a tour or whatever just needs to be the right setting. also helps muddle up the scout which is nice
week 2:
w2 was vs nightshades and tbh they didnt really have much aaa presence on their team so tech pasted some teams from betti and o1v went w the regen samu one kuz it looks dope and unaware stail/wabs corv are good stopgaps into offense/balance. wabs really helps pull the team together to make sure pert cant come in for free or whatever, and spikes lets zap break lu/pert/whatever more easily might be a bit dicey going into vabs corv but w ghold should be doable.
week 3:
w3 was kinda a hatebuild but the idea was band meow due to glory's low physdef corv usage and its just a good speed to check threats like lando and moth. corro ogi was brought versus me in the past by betti so glalie put together that idea to wall zamazenta which we all know glory very much likes. scarf psea lando is also dope kuz it walls iron moth wout eball and has good coverage into common threats glory likes to bring alot. most importantly it brings in mana/pert alot so band meow can get more hits off. another idea that was drawn from the genius of the bettussy was wabs corv which funny enough we did load last week but seeing betti use wabs corv w tinglu was dope esp that hands struggles to wall things longterm if mana is able to burn and knock its vest. team is a bit weak into specs ghold so keep that in mind if u wanna use it. sadly idt glory was slotted into aaa this week but the team that was passed would prob end up to be a glory team. (im too lazy to check the thread rn)
week 4:
kinetic is a tough oppo that generally brings solid balances/offenses so we just went with something that o1v would be comfortable with which is this classic specs ghold team from last ompl. goated rebring its like 9-0 in tour or smtn. anyways i didnt like how it was too weak to fire types and zarude would kinda lose momentum due to kinetic having very high corv usage. pretty much it was bricked so i just replaced it with a moon for a better fire type switchin and also a pivot to get in ghold more. kinetic ended up bringing the weirdest team like bor hydra with rocks and lefties? idk man but yea gameplan was pretty simple.
week 5:
facing the zards which imo have by far the best aaa in the pool was pretty sketch kuz ghostlike really be loading anything so i didnt really know what to expect, but i knew some weird shit or like offensive stuff was coming. but then half way into the week i started to 2nd guess myself and thought he would bring fat into us so i wanted a consistent breaker which led me to great tusk. i normally like the tough claws + clam/softsand sets more if ur running offensive tusk but i eventually decided on bringing mold breaker cb tusk instead kuz i it would be hella aids if he brough levitate. rest of the team is pretty standard offense stuff and i couldnt fit spin on tusk so cinder slotted in nicely. oh also i forgot to add rocks/lowk couldnt fit them so cinderace is cope hazard setting and removal
. lastly scarf meow to threaten mana immediately and clean up games. really benefits from tusk removing corv and also patches up tusk's low speed.week 6:
our team was doing pretty good in the standings so tech decided to let starters rest for a week meaning i got to play. i was bummed that stall lost in w1 and grey's scout is pretty free for stall. i also wanted to conserve information if opponent scouted. changed the ghold to bulletproof just bc i didnt want to get fucked by primarina again/good stopgap for ghold. the actual game was kinda chopped kuz i got impatient and started fishing for burns on meloetta by going naught on uturn which led to a good callout by him to psychic my naught then he died rip. game coulda been done much faster if i didnt do that.
week 7:
faced the commanders with lordbox playing, previously he brought some goodra team and the builds over the season just looked fatter in general so i wanted to have fun for the last week of the regular season and after talking to lordbox about what HO he thought was the best in aaa i decided to make webs (what he said was the best). glory showed me the truth of lorb sor zama which is the goat of cleaners and i paired that up with a strong special core of tornadus/moth/ghold. the idea was that moth has most stuff covered and torn to clean up games. gholdengo was our spinblocker and nuclear option for av tinglu/av hands which i actually brought once before vs betti but i got fucked up by unaware blissey. bor + lorb + modest lets u ohko tinglu and hands which cleanly opens up the other special attackers to finish the game. lastly ogerpon rock was to deal with the elemental birds but also forcing in corv/pech/ghold to weaken them for zamazenta to clean later. it could be tinted or adapt/rockypay really up to you. o1v did a great job of piloting kuz the pao coulda been a bit tricky but thankfully it was only sucker punch so zama/torn could clean endgame.
semis:
for our last week I had to move from the west to east coast to start my first job which naturally took some time away from sitting on my ass all day so less time to teambuild. this was the first time i've ever worked a 7-5 shift so i felt like shit everyday for a while. we loaded stall into the witches w1 and lost so i wasnt really sure what would be brought this week. The builds looked to consistently be from fifi which i assumed was in the cord being friends w pyu and all asw as all the lu usage over the weeks. Because of this i wanted to build some sorta anti offense that wouldnt struggle with an ho/offense bring but i just couldnt really piece together a team which led to betti providing his fat team.i trusted the team as its been proven this ompl on top of all the times hes used it in aaalt/ssnl blah blah. in hindsight i really am beating myself up for not building the team for the week that could potentially be our last. but skill issue and cope kuz ive also fucked myself that way in aaalt and aaassnl finals ending up losing those for the same reason. i feel particularly responsible for my teams elimination kuz if im a support and not doing my job id be pretty useless. going into the match 3-4 i felt dread as tinglu leadoff and missed 2 ruinations in a row and got burned by scald and knew it was a mistake to not have prepped as heavy that week. it felt like the knife got twisted into my gut as moon revealed firefang for fluffy corv which pretty much put o1v into a losing position. its in the past now and i can only move on but man it feels like shit to lose due to a teambuilding issue/lack of confidence for the 3rd tour in a row.
reflection on aaa as a whole:
i was lurking in council chat and saw lordbox wanted more people to post about their thoughts on the tier (yes you reader! go post) so putting my opinion out there for whatever its worth.
so my opinion kinda formed around aaalt 2 where the qualifiers (me and like 7 others? idk exact number) got to vote on a pokemon to sus. quite alot of people actually said to ban deo which got me thinking what the tier would look like wout deo and honestly it seemed pretty shitty kuz its just zamaslop now. but then i read some post by betti which pointed out that the meta eventually shifted (albiet slowly) to accomodate for sets like hadron lorb deo. we saw the explosion in usage of regenvest tinglu, unaware bulkystail and vabs corv/ghold used alot more. so idk meta isnt cooked it just takes time esp for a smaller meta/one that seens often dry spouts of tournaments (when meta is developed upon the most) to develop. with that being said, i really like the idea of just testing stuff like tera or ban/unban x mon. shoutout Betticus IV GlalieGoesBoom Glory for being huge inspirations for my building yall sum goats.
cya in aaapl!
now that my omfl run is over im gonna share all the teams I built for this tour as well as my ompl team. first of all I'd like to apologize to my team for my season, I didn't play up to my standards nor did I warrant my large price tag. s/o BoingK for checking over the teams each week
Week 1 vs. Lepton (W) - Replay
Nothing really jumped out to me from the scout this week so I just wanted to build something that I knew I would be very comfortable piloting. I ended up going with this sort of pivot spam built around scarf moon and zarude. I really like zarude even thought it obviously struggles quite hard into phys def corv. The game went pretty much according to plan, as I was able to generate enough momentum that lepton wasn't really able to get anything going.
Week 2 vs. Dahness / OMPL Week 7 vs. adriancosmoem (W) - Replay
So I originally built this team for my game against Dahness but we ended up not playing. So when I was up vs Adrian in OMPL I wasn't really sure what to bring so I just decided to load this because I felt confident in the team. Dahness loved using Fluffy Grounds as their main physical walls so I felt really good about loading a Chien Pao vs them. Team is pretty basic and I got really lucky in the game so not gonna say much else.
Week 3 vs. sleepyfwog (L) - Replay
This is the team I'm least proud of this tour. I'd brought pretty standard teams the last two weeks and I wanted to shake up my scout a little so I tried building some HO inspired by a team Kinetic brought to OMPL. However I think the team just isn't that good and I kinda got stomped
Week 4 vs. Lepton (L) - Replay
I guess I was subconsciously influenced by sleepyfwog as I realize I brought 3/6 mons he brought vs me to this game. Brambleghast is a really good mon vs a lot of common team structure IMO. I played really bad this game I clicked Knock Off vs the Ghold which really stunted my ability to make progress.
Week 5 vs. Rats220 (W) - Replay
I didn't know much about Rats so I built this into Dahness scout. Like I mentioned earlier they used a ton of fluffy ground and then non-fire immune corv so I felt good about bringing Deso Cinderace. I brought RegenVest Moon just because I think it's good and wanted to bring it at least once this tour. Rats ended up loading Webs and the team worked really well aside from an unfortunate Pyro Ball miss that made the game look closer than it was.
Week 6 vs sleepyfwog (W) - Replay
sleepy had brought double steels to every single game so I felt that Corrosion Gilscor could be a really good bring. It's such a stupid mon because you make progress into like every single non HO team (guess what sleepy loaded). I also thought of AV Treads as a cool mon that compressed a lot of what I wanted into 1 mon. Anyway I loaded into HO and would've gotten super smacked by Garchomp but somehow dodged scale shot twice and was able to win from there.
I dont really have many thoughts on the meta as I whole. coming back after an extended break from mons im pretty happy with how the tier feels. I enjoyed building each week and enjoyed my games despite my poor play. the vr feels a little cluttered to me though, especially in the lower tiers
anyways ggs again to all my opponents. not gonna play sv in pl cuz I love SS and Poke too much but maybe ill build some stuff during it.I'll probably make a smaller post soon with some godly gift stuff but idk.
Week 1 vs. Lepton (W) - Replay
Nothing really jumped out to me from the scout this week so I just wanted to build something that I knew I would be very comfortable piloting. I ended up going with this sort of pivot spam built around scarf moon and zarude. I really like zarude even thought it obviously struggles quite hard into phys def corv. The game went pretty much according to plan, as I was able to generate enough momentum that lepton wasn't really able to get anything going.
Week 2 vs. Dahness / OMPL Week 7 vs. adriancosmoem (W) - Replay
So I originally built this team for my game against Dahness but we ended up not playing. So when I was up vs Adrian in OMPL I wasn't really sure what to bring so I just decided to load this because I felt confident in the team. Dahness loved using Fluffy Grounds as their main physical walls so I felt really good about loading a Chien Pao vs them. Team is pretty basic and I got really lucky in the game so not gonna say much else.
Week 3 vs. sleepyfwog (L) - Replay
This is the team I'm least proud of this tour. I'd brought pretty standard teams the last two weeks and I wanted to shake up my scout a little so I tried building some HO inspired by a team Kinetic brought to OMPL. However I think the team just isn't that good and I kinda got stomped
Week 4 vs. Lepton (L) - Replay
I guess I was subconsciously influenced by sleepyfwog as I realize I brought 3/6 mons he brought vs me to this game. Brambleghast is a really good mon vs a lot of common team structure IMO. I played really bad this game I clicked Knock Off vs the Ghold which really stunted my ability to make progress.
Week 5 vs. Rats220 (W) - Replay
I didn't know much about Rats so I built this into Dahness scout. Like I mentioned earlier they used a ton of fluffy ground and then non-fire immune corv so I felt good about bringing Deso Cinderace. I brought RegenVest Moon just because I think it's good and wanted to bring it at least once this tour. Rats ended up loading Webs and the team worked really well aside from an unfortunate Pyro Ball miss that made the game look closer than it was.
Week 6 vs sleepyfwog (W) - Replay
sleepy had brought double steels to every single game so I felt that Corrosion Gilscor could be a really good bring. It's such a stupid mon because you make progress into like every single non HO team (guess what sleepy loaded). I also thought of AV Treads as a cool mon that compressed a lot of what I wanted into 1 mon. Anyway I loaded into HO and would've gotten super smacked by Garchomp but somehow dodged scale shot twice and was able to win from there.
I dont really have many thoughts on the meta as I whole. coming back after an extended break from mons im pretty happy with how the tier feels. I enjoyed building each week and enjoyed my games despite my poor play. the vr feels a little cluttered to me though, especially in the lower tiers
anyways ggs again to all my opponents. not gonna play sv in pl cuz I love SS and Poke too much but maybe ill build some stuff during it.I'll probably make a smaller post soon with some godly gift stuff but idk.
>>> Click for Post-OMPL Tiering Survey <<<
With the conclusion of OMPL and the recent discussion surrounding the future of the tier with multiple different proposals the council has decided that a tiering survey to more wholly determine peoples satisfaction with the current meta and their thoughts on the multiple paths forward to help guide future tiering action! The survey will be closed in approximately 3-4 days time and results posted soon after.
As extra news, the viability rankings have been updated to account for post-OMPL development and sentiment and lastly a reminder that sample submissions are always open as we are looking to update them soon.
With the conclusion of OMPL and the recent discussion surrounding the future of the tier with multiple different proposals the council has decided that a tiering survey to more wholly determine peoples satisfaction with the current meta and their thoughts on the multiple paths forward to help guide future tiering action! The survey will be closed in approximately 3-4 days time and results posted soon after.
As extra news, the viability rankings have been updated to account for post-OMPL development and sentiment and lastly a reminder that sample submissions are always open as we are looking to update them soon.
Survey Results
Survey results are here! This time around 24 people responded, a fairly sharp decrease from last year which is a bit disappointing but regardless thank you to all those who took the time to fill out the survey and give us your thoughts!
Average Competitiveness: 6.92/10
Average competitiveness has increased moderately from the last survey a year ago (6.69) which is a welcome sign, though this may be impacted by the lower turnout in responses the overall consensus seen has been that the meta remains fairly balanced and competitive at least, with a few outliers in opinion.
Average Enjoyability: 6.75/10
Average enjoyability has seen a moderate decrease from the last survey (7.02) and there can be seen a large divide in opinion with a large clump of players finding it fairly enjoyable and a varied lower majority that have found it less enjoyable or rather unenjoyable. This combined with the lower turnout in responses is cause for concern for the meta though a large part of this can be attributed to significant lifespan and stability the meta has been in.
The general feelings around Deoxys-Speed currently seem to be rather ambivalent with a moderately sized neutral base and similarly sized opinion in support for tiering with half of the responses being mostly soft pushback. With only a quarter of the responses indicating support for tiering there will not be an immediate suspect but we will keep it open as option for future opinion to be centered around with the lack of truly significant pushback.
Ceruledge has seen a rather large negative response when surveyed with over 2/3rds of the respondents indicating a pushback against tiering Ceruledge back into the meta with it being split between soft and strong opposition. With this and the low amount of support for Ceruledge it will not be considered as a viable tiering pathway for the future unless things change dramatically.
Lugia sees the most outright support for a tiering out of the options presented with around a 1/3rd of respondents showing some support for it. Despite this the pushback to Lugia remains notable with over half the respondents responding with a form of pushback against tiering it in with a large strong opposition and only a small neutral pool. As such there will be no action taken for now.
Terastallization has seen a large backlash in responses with an overwhelming majority responding with a strong opposition to suspecting the mechanic back in and only a small vocal strong support. Given the higher standard for such a mechanic to be introduced and tested we are ruling out Tera as a viable pathway for the meta to take.
Survey results are here! This time around 24 people responded, a fairly sharp decrease from last year which is a bit disappointing but regardless thank you to all those who took the time to fill out the survey and give us your thoughts!
Average Competitiveness: 6.92/10
Average competitiveness has increased moderately from the last survey a year ago (6.69) which is a welcome sign, though this may be impacted by the lower turnout in responses the overall consensus seen has been that the meta remains fairly balanced and competitive at least, with a few outliers in opinion.
Average Enjoyability: 6.75/10
Average enjoyability has seen a moderate decrease from the last survey (7.02) and there can be seen a large divide in opinion with a large clump of players finding it fairly enjoyable and a varied lower majority that have found it less enjoyable or rather unenjoyable. This combined with the lower turnout in responses is cause for concern for the meta though a large part of this can be attributed to significant lifespan and stability the meta has been in.
The general feelings around Deoxys-Speed currently seem to be rather ambivalent with a moderately sized neutral base and similarly sized opinion in support for tiering with half of the responses being mostly soft pushback. With only a quarter of the responses indicating support for tiering there will not be an immediate suspect but we will keep it open as option for future opinion to be centered around with the lack of truly significant pushback.
Ceruledge has seen a rather large negative response when surveyed with over 2/3rds of the respondents indicating a pushback against tiering Ceruledge back into the meta with it being split between soft and strong opposition. With this and the low amount of support for Ceruledge it will not be considered as a viable tiering pathway for the future unless things change dramatically.
Lugia sees the most outright support for a tiering out of the options presented with around a 1/3rd of respondents showing some support for it. Despite this the pushback to Lugia remains notable with over half the respondents responding with a form of pushback against tiering it in with a large strong opposition and only a small neutral pool. As such there will be no action taken for now.
Terastallization has seen a large backlash in responses with an overwhelming majority responding with a strong opposition to suspecting the mechanic back in and only a small vocal strong support. Given the higher standard for such a mechanic to be introduced and tested we are ruling out Tera as a viable pathway for the meta to take.
2AC (2): 2AC has been weighed as an option in the past but with it necessitating a significant overhaul to the meta and the lack of support as surveyed previously we wont pursue 2AC without significant change in sentiment.
Aerilate: Aerilate as a ban is unjustified under tiering policy as it has only gotten 2 abusers banned with rather prominent traits that got them banned in combination with Aerilate and the lack of abusers of Aerilate currently means it would be very hard to pursue Aerilate as a ban.
Gholdengo: Gholdengo was already recently suspected a few months ago with a majority unban side and a lack of discussion recently means we won't be pursuing Gholdengo any time soon unless the meta shifts significantly.
Solgaleo: Lugia already has concerns due to its ability to leverage its immense bulk with the many abilities available despite its lackluster and Solgaleo can similarly emulate this with CM sets while also packing potent defensive stats or even physical sets with its abundant coverage so we will not be suspecting Solgaleo any time soon.
Stored Power: We're not banning Stored Power to free Lugia or remove SP sweepers as annoying as they can be when they rarely show up (also Lugia doesn't get the move).
The remainder of responses were varied elaborations on their thoughts on the meta or the proposals here which are appreciated!
Aerilate: Aerilate as a ban is unjustified under tiering policy as it has only gotten 2 abusers banned with rather prominent traits that got them banned in combination with Aerilate and the lack of abusers of Aerilate currently means it would be very hard to pursue Aerilate as a ban.
Gholdengo: Gholdengo was already recently suspected a few months ago with a majority unban side and a lack of discussion recently means we won't be pursuing Gholdengo any time soon unless the meta shifts significantly.
Solgaleo: Lugia already has concerns due to its ability to leverage its immense bulk with the many abilities available despite its lackluster and Solgaleo can similarly emulate this with CM sets while also packing potent defensive stats or even physical sets with its abundant coverage so we will not be suspecting Solgaleo any time soon.
Stored Power: We're not banning Stored Power to free Lugia or remove SP sweepers as annoying as they can be when they rarely show up (also Lugia doesn't get the move).
The remainder of responses were varied elaborations on their thoughts on the meta or the proposals here which are appreciated!
Idea: regenarator
Meowscarada @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Trick
- Triple Axel
- Spikes
- U-turn
Meowscarada @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Trick
- Triple Axel
- Spikes
- U-turn
Hey guys, this is my first post in the AAA community.
I'm making a team with Primarina, and I am strongly considering many abilities for it, but I simply cannot decide which. My current set is:
Primarina (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Beads of Ruin
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Surf
- Draining Kiss
- Psychic Noise
- Calm Mind
Beads of Ruin is goated, but I'm also considering Adaptabillity, Primidorial Sea, Sheer Force, and Hadron Engine (yes Hadron Engine).
I'm having a mild headache from this, so can anyone make some suggestions? Thank you.
-OverpoweredPenguin
EDIT: turns out BoR is goated, but now I'm wondering if physically defensive Gholdengo is viable on stall teams.
I'm making a team with Primarina, and I am strongly considering many abilities for it, but I simply cannot decide which. My current set is:
Primarina (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Beads of Ruin
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Surf
- Draining Kiss
- Psychic Noise
- Calm Mind
Beads of Ruin is goated, but I'm also considering Adaptabillity, Primidorial Sea, Sheer Force, and Hadron Engine (yes Hadron Engine).
I'm having a mild headache from this, so can anyone make some suggestions? Thank you.
-OverpoweredPenguin
EDIT: turns out BoR is goated, but now I'm wondering if physically defensive Gholdengo is viable on stall teams.
Last edited:
6-0 in pools/semis
first the teams i loaded:
loaded w1, 2, 4
i really like stall alot esp in a multiple sv slot tournaments, keeps the opponents weary for the stall load in the first place + you never know which slot it could be in. i loaded this when i had a weaker opponent and didn't want to bother prepping that week/knew opp wouldnt prep for stall. ghold ability was different each time, lev, vabs, bproof very flexible mon.
w3
already being 2-0 and knowing my opp would 100% prep for stall i decided to use something that was sitting in my builder for a while, its pretty weak into iron hands which i dislike alot but i knew if opp was prepping for stall hands wouldnt be loaded. ended up loading into dd acro itemless moon so good thing i switched up and shoutout cobal for tanking that acro at the end despite my dumbass letting moon +10000 atk boosts.
w5
betti's team just put in the subs so i reloaded the goat ogislop, what was funny is that i ended up wanting to change to pixiburst but then forgot to make stail pixi and it was unware, ended up getting a perfect matchup into the tailglow sub manaphy which i was able to ignore stat increases and bypass sub. band meow very strong into low corv usage oppos, keep em on their toes.
semis
another build that was sitting in my builder since ompl, i always have liked offensive tusk due to just it feeling so consistent. i opted to not run band + mold or band + amp and run nonchoiced in order to get the temperflares on fluffy corv/levi ghold. ended up facing stall so i didnt get to show all the cool techs of the team. spdef moth is a cool guy kuz in 2026 desoland moth is never clicking fierydance until theres 0 resists on the board so figured i can get the slow uturn on opposing zapdos and also the extra bulk lets you eat hits like hadron latios draco or specs ghold sball. tspike good for anti offense and beating fluffy tusk which our tusk might struggle with. fluffy deo also heat yall gotta try that mon. the nicknames were even handcrafted to trick ppl into thinking i was band tusk and offensive deo :fireemoji:
prepping for 2 other sv slots was lowk a headache, shoutout GlalieGoesBoom and pyu for helping out each week for spell/minds team. here where some builds that i thought was cool.
intel moth by pyu/me/glalie
mind wanted to try out some offensive moth and it nicely paired with intel to overload alot of special cores, gameday mind piloted it well despite its defensive shortcomings. intel cool mon and rest of the other mons is just typical glue core.
meow/moth bo by pyu
another moth build kuz moth is a good offensive mon, ive personally not been a big fan of non psea defensive zapdos but pyu made it work on this team. i would make the ghold spread more defensive kuz lowk that was greedmaxx in our game.
loved spending time with my team yall were fun, thank god bo3 wasnt a tier in this aaapl also im taking a break from mons zzz
again shoutout pyu glalie Osake Alexw Mindnight Pokemh hida Gwanian and everyone else <3 kinda ran outta energy writing the outro xoxo take care
first the teams i loaded:
loaded w1, 2, 4
i really like stall alot esp in a multiple sv slot tournaments, keeps the opponents weary for the stall load in the first place + you never know which slot it could be in. i loaded this when i had a weaker opponent and didn't want to bother prepping that week/knew opp wouldnt prep for stall. ghold ability was different each time, lev, vabs, bproof very flexible mon.
w3
already being 2-0 and knowing my opp would 100% prep for stall i decided to use something that was sitting in my builder for a while, its pretty weak into iron hands which i dislike alot but i knew if opp was prepping for stall hands wouldnt be loaded. ended up loading into dd acro itemless moon so good thing i switched up and shoutout cobal for tanking that acro at the end despite my dumbass letting moon +10000 atk boosts.
w5
betti's team just put in the subs so i reloaded the goat ogislop, what was funny is that i ended up wanting to change to pixiburst but then forgot to make stail pixi and it was unware, ended up getting a perfect matchup into the tailglow sub manaphy which i was able to ignore stat increases and bypass sub. band meow very strong into low corv usage oppos, keep em on their toes.
semis
another build that was sitting in my builder since ompl, i always have liked offensive tusk due to just it feeling so consistent. i opted to not run band + mold or band + amp and run nonchoiced in order to get the temperflares on fluffy corv/levi ghold. ended up facing stall so i didnt get to show all the cool techs of the team. spdef moth is a cool guy kuz in 2026 desoland moth is never clicking fierydance until theres 0 resists on the board so figured i can get the slow uturn on opposing zapdos and also the extra bulk lets you eat hits like hadron latios draco or specs ghold sball. tspike good for anti offense and beating fluffy tusk which our tusk might struggle with. fluffy deo also heat yall gotta try that mon. the nicknames were even handcrafted to trick ppl into thinking i was band tusk and offensive deo :fireemoji:
prepping for 2 other sv slots was lowk a headache, shoutout GlalieGoesBoom and pyu for helping out each week for spell/minds team. here where some builds that i thought was cool.
intel moth by pyu/me/glalie
mind wanted to try out some offensive moth and it nicely paired with intel to overload alot of special cores, gameday mind piloted it well despite its defensive shortcomings. intel cool mon and rest of the other mons is just typical glue core.
meow/moth bo by pyu
another moth build kuz moth is a good offensive mon, ive personally not been a big fan of non psea defensive zapdos but pyu made it work on this team. i would make the ghold spread more defensive kuz lowk that was greedmaxx in our game.
loved spending time with my team yall were fun, thank god bo3 wasnt a tier in this aaapl also im taking a break from mons zzz
again shoutout pyu glalie Osake Alexw Mindnight Pokemh hida Gwanian and everyone else <3 kinda ran outta energy writing the outro xoxo take care