It appears that a ton of discussion has been sparked in this thread and as usual people have been going through their thoughts on each of the arguably broken elements of the metagame. This is good, but at this point I'd like to zoom out a bit and talk about why this meta has been feeling like a true BH hell original and the main differences in how the meta plays in general now compared to gen 7. After that I'll use those thoughts to explain what I think should be done with the meta.
The thing that strikes me about BH right now is how unstable it is. Normally when we talk about instability in mons we're almost exclusively referring to building/matchup aspect of the tier, but in this case I think this statement is relevant to both building and playing. It's pretty difficult to go into a tour game feeling confident right now because there's normally something that destroys the team you're about to bring.
This comment was about the 170+ BP moves on ladder but it remains true for the metagame in general and also tour play. On top of weather and Eterrain you also have various forms of species spam running wild in the meta. There's a wide variety of teams that can remove player agency given the wrong matchup, and when you're playing in tours the dumb stuff will eventually get you. To avoid this, we really need those teams to either be less common or less good. Luckily there's a pretty simple way to help with this that doesn't involve banning styles that aren't broken.
For the most part making BH balanced comes back to this statement. I'll roll with the use of "sauce" here to mean any of the borderline broken elements discussed in the last few pages. Currently with so much sauce in the meta there isn't really much room to specifically prepare for any of the other things that I mentioned in the last paragraph. The powerful things that dominate the meta are also dominant in the builder, to the point where most people just build to fit whatever broken things they can on their team and do their best to cover the top threats. This leads to really limited building and playing (do we have a breaker that wins? How well can we switch into their breakers?). In fact, SL42 has already beaten me to voicing this sentiment.
If the meta were in a good place (and this applies to any meta really), the middle ground would be good teambuilding. What we have currently allowed in the meta is a big flashing neon sign that says mons should do all of their work on their own - if they resist your STABs just slap them with some of the powerful coverage options. The fact that mons make huge progress on their own so often is detrimental to games; there's not much skill to demonstrate in playing like this, as the interactive parts of mons games don't really come into play if the outcome is hinging on whether your mon can successfully break its checks. Gen 7 was dominated by threats that could cripple but generally not break their checks. Things like Xerneas were good because they could make progress against their checks (thanks Spikes), even though they weren't breaking directly through them - that came later, with the help of their teammates. This is much healthier, as games don't feel random that way, and it was much easier to claim that the better player+team combo came out on top.
Following on from that point, Gen 8 features plenty of ways that the game state will pivot in the space of a turn. All it takes is a convenient Octolock or V-create, and suddenly you can be in a lot of danger. This is nothing new, but as loser mentioned in his post, the combination of more high BP moves and weaker defensive mons means that we're struggling for consistent defensive mons. Here's another funny excerpt from a conversation with Andy (who played some BH last gen and is now learning gen 8).
On the one hand, the problem here is using Hippowdon as an Electric check when it dies to Fishious Rend. On the other hand, how do we actually get around this kind of thing? Seismitoad isn't weak to Fishious Rend which is pretty cool, but it is weak to Grass coverage. The difference between this gen and last gen is that the outcome of one turn like this is normally OHKOing a crucial mon of a matchup. I'm not actually even asking for walls here - weaker checks to things being 2HKOed by coverage would already be a much better scenario. Then, if they predict correctly, you still get punished for having a worse check, however for the time being you'll be able to keep your weakened mon to deter the spammable move or to preserve a sack. This makes a huge difference in these matchups, and it's pretty crucial to surviving some of these matchups. The concept of making plays to recover from unfortunate turns is a central skill-based aspect of BH, and if a mon can't successfully recover from these scenarios that would typically cause it to be written off as a bad mon. Right now, however, there's not enough mons that aren't bad for the roles that you have to cover on a team, so instead we're stuck with things we already know are not ideal. To be clear, I'm not saying it's impossible to hard check the threats in this meta, this is more of a commentary on how much worse games can go when you bring softer checks to these threats. The give and take of prepping different amounts for different mons is messed up, because the middle ground that sl mentioned of mons that don't either lose or hard wall is tiny.
When it comes to fixing these gameplay issues, I'd suggest the following:
1) QB Octolock. I'm targeting Octolock specifically here because it's just not competitive or healthy. It offers nothing positive to the meta as every set that runs it apart from NormPult is slightly worse, except for when they get the matchup they want. Octolock's existence makes scouting an absolute mess, as it's yet another thing that can effectively OHKO some mons; even though checks dying to Octolock does not happen in the space of a turn, once Octolock is clicked you are stuck there. I noticed Chess pointed out one of my games vs MAMP in open, and I don't think there's too much to read into there, but the full removal of Hippowdon from that game was a big deal when against nearly every other Zacian-C set Hippowdon would be able to dip from that matchup if there was a problem. Honestly all things considered I'm lucky to even have a Bounce Melmetal there when alternatively I could just have a situation where I lose my Zac-C check and then lose the game to Zac-C.
2) Suspect... the sauce. I'm not even kidding, I literally think reducing the amount of stuff to prep for in just about any way would be much more help than harm to the meta. Personally the 170+ BP moves in some order or Intrepid Sword would be a logical start, but again anything that's been mentioned works with a close enough eye or good activity to run any follow-up suspects if needed. Right now my least favourite place to start would be Dynamax. From using some of the cheese styles myself and playing against them, Dyna is generally one of the only consistently strong elements holding these teams back, because it's hugely important to manage the situations where you can clean a team that's weak defensively, or to switch the momentum of the game by turning an OHKO into a 2HKO and taking out a breaker. While this is very clearly a broken checks broken argument, we have multiple broken things in the meta and the order in which we deal with them is still up for debate - I'm not suggesting that we don't deal with Dynamax, just pointing out that it's not a no-brainer to get rid of when it comes to the positives and negatives of its impact. I expect that the overall dumbness of the mechanic will easily outweigh any positives to keeping it in a balanced meta, but for now we're dealing with a crazy meta.
I don't think there's anything to wait for right now, since the Open's final round has already started, so I'd really like to see any type of tiering action soon. Like I said before I'm not too bothered exactly what it is, anything's better than nothing at this point.
I'll leave y'all with this completely unrelated video of someone trying to pronounce Worcestershire Sauce.
The thing that strikes me about BH right now is how unstable it is. Normally when we talk about instability in mons we're almost exclusively referring to building/matchup aspect of the tier, but in this case I think this statement is relevant to both building and playing. It's pretty difficult to go into a tour game feeling confident right now because there's normally something that destroys the team you're about to bring.
This comment was about the 170+ BP moves on ladder but it remains true for the metagame in general and also tour play. On top of weather and Eterrain you also have various forms of species spam running wild in the meta. There's a wide variety of teams that can remove player agency given the wrong matchup, and when you're playing in tours the dumb stuff will eventually get you. To avoid this, we really need those teams to either be less common or less good. Luckily there's a pretty simple way to help with this that doesn't involve banning styles that aren't broken.
For the most part making BH balanced comes back to this statement. I'll roll with the use of "sauce" here to mean any of the borderline broken elements discussed in the last few pages. Currently with so much sauce in the meta there isn't really much room to specifically prepare for any of the other things that I mentioned in the last paragraph. The powerful things that dominate the meta are also dominant in the builder, to the point where most people just build to fit whatever broken things they can on their team and do their best to cover the top threats. This leads to really limited building and playing (do we have a breaker that wins? How well can we switch into their breakers?). In fact, SL42 has already beaten me to voicing this sentiment.
If the meta were in a good place (and this applies to any meta really), the middle ground would be good teambuilding. What we have currently allowed in the meta is a big flashing neon sign that says mons should do all of their work on their own - if they resist your STABs just slap them with some of the powerful coverage options. The fact that mons make huge progress on their own so often is detrimental to games; there's not much skill to demonstrate in playing like this, as the interactive parts of mons games don't really come into play if the outcome is hinging on whether your mon can successfully break its checks. Gen 7 was dominated by threats that could cripple but generally not break their checks. Things like Xerneas were good because they could make progress against their checks (thanks Spikes), even though they weren't breaking directly through them - that came later, with the help of their teammates. This is much healthier, as games don't feel random that way, and it was much easier to claim that the better player+team combo came out on top.
Following on from that point, Gen 8 features plenty of ways that the game state will pivot in the space of a turn. All it takes is a convenient Octolock or V-create, and suddenly you can be in a lot of danger. This is nothing new, but as loser mentioned in his post, the combination of more high BP moves and weaker defensive mons means that we're struggling for consistent defensive mons. Here's another funny excerpt from a conversation with Andy (who played some BH last gen and is now learning gen 8).
On the one hand, the problem here is using Hippowdon as an Electric check when it dies to Fishious Rend. On the other hand, how do we actually get around this kind of thing? Seismitoad isn't weak to Fishious Rend which is pretty cool, but it is weak to Grass coverage. The difference between this gen and last gen is that the outcome of one turn like this is normally OHKOing a crucial mon of a matchup. I'm not actually even asking for walls here - weaker checks to things being 2HKOed by coverage would already be a much better scenario. Then, if they predict correctly, you still get punished for having a worse check, however for the time being you'll be able to keep your weakened mon to deter the spammable move or to preserve a sack. This makes a huge difference in these matchups, and it's pretty crucial to surviving some of these matchups. The concept of making plays to recover from unfortunate turns is a central skill-based aspect of BH, and if a mon can't successfully recover from these scenarios that would typically cause it to be written off as a bad mon. Right now, however, there's not enough mons that aren't bad for the roles that you have to cover on a team, so instead we're stuck with things we already know are not ideal. To be clear, I'm not saying it's impossible to hard check the threats in this meta, this is more of a commentary on how much worse games can go when you bring softer checks to these threats. The give and take of prepping different amounts for different mons is messed up, because the middle ground that sl mentioned of mons that don't either lose or hard wall is tiny.
When it comes to fixing these gameplay issues, I'd suggest the following:
1) QB Octolock. I'm targeting Octolock specifically here because it's just not competitive or healthy. It offers nothing positive to the meta as every set that runs it apart from NormPult is slightly worse, except for when they get the matchup they want. Octolock's existence makes scouting an absolute mess, as it's yet another thing that can effectively OHKO some mons; even though checks dying to Octolock does not happen in the space of a turn, once Octolock is clicked you are stuck there. I noticed Chess pointed out one of my games vs MAMP in open, and I don't think there's too much to read into there, but the full removal of Hippowdon from that game was a big deal when against nearly every other Zacian-C set Hippowdon would be able to dip from that matchup if there was a problem. Honestly all things considered I'm lucky to even have a Bounce Melmetal there when alternatively I could just have a situation where I lose my Zac-C check and then lose the game to Zac-C.
2) Suspect... the sauce. I'm not even kidding, I literally think reducing the amount of stuff to prep for in just about any way would be much more help than harm to the meta. Personally the 170+ BP moves in some order or Intrepid Sword would be a logical start, but again anything that's been mentioned works with a close enough eye or good activity to run any follow-up suspects if needed. Right now my least favourite place to start would be Dynamax. From using some of the cheese styles myself and playing against them, Dyna is generally one of the only consistently strong elements holding these teams back, because it's hugely important to manage the situations where you can clean a team that's weak defensively, or to switch the momentum of the game by turning an OHKO into a 2HKO and taking out a breaker. While this is very clearly a broken checks broken argument, we have multiple broken things in the meta and the order in which we deal with them is still up for debate - I'm not suggesting that we don't deal with Dynamax, just pointing out that it's not a no-brainer to get rid of when it comes to the positives and negatives of its impact. I expect that the overall dumbness of the mechanic will easily outweigh any positives to keeping it in a balanced meta, but for now we're dealing with a crazy meta.
I don't think there's anything to wait for right now, since the Open's final round has already started, so I'd really like to see any type of tiering action soon. Like I said before I'm not too bothered exactly what it is, anything's better than nothing at this point.
I'll leave y'all with this completely unrelated video of someone trying to pronounce Worcestershire Sauce.
