BW2 General Metagame Discussion Thread

[alkinesthetase]

holy crap stone edge heatran. that was amazing. volcarona? NO SCREW YOUR VOLCARONA

as for keldeo against sand teams, it's just that... well most sand teams are fighting weak lol. just having tyranitar on the team already brings in that problem. moreover neither of the sand weather starters can take keldeo on and often tyranitar serves as a bulky sand team's primary special wall... unfortunately it'll still get minced by keldeo.

and as for hippowdon vs tar, we all know the classical arguments, but tar has always been in the superior position. part of the strength of cb tar is that you can actually dent weather starters with your neutral pursuit (without a cb and 252+ attack, you don't make much of a mark in most situations) which makes so much difference in winning the weather war since sand has never really been big on the trapper playstyle (unless you're up against specs toed in which case you both have so much firepower that someone's goin down). it's interesting how both specs toed and cb tar gravitate towards a 252hp / 252+ attacking stat spread because they hope to combine the bulk of a defensive set with the raw firepower that wipes out most any other weather starter. hippowdon on the other hand... sure you have slack off and roar, but you're still gonna die to defensive politoed's scald >_> i think part of the appeal of double sand is that you can rely on hippowdon to sponge big physical fighting attacks and get the bonus of having a secondary weather starter for free, but in general tyranitar has always performed better. it doesn't really help that most of the big new offensive toys (gothitelle, tornadus-T, thundurus-T, keldeo) are all special attackers and can hit hippo on its weaker side.

EDIT: lavos, you're referring to the 252 HP / 252 sdef impish hippo spread right? otherwise hippo can get ohkod by tree's ebelt blizzard with middling investment (going off of the spread on smogon atm: 252+ atk / 144 satk / 112 spe)

 

[EspeonX]

I agree, Keldeo can run through those Sand teams. However, Amoonguss is a great pokemon for sand teams. Gives nice resists to Water/Fighting/Grass/Electric and such. As rare as Sand Stall may be, It also absorbs Toxic Spikes for them, which is ace. Nice check to Techniloom/Keldeo(albeit shaky)too.

 

[Jimbon]

I've been testing Physically Defensive Amoonguss on a Sand Team for quite a while now, and I can say it's been doing pretty well. It further helps against Breloom, as it still has massive trouble breaking through Amoonguss after a Swords Dance or two. It's also pretty nice being able to deal with Terrakion and Landorus as they try to set up in the face of Amoonguss thinking it is Specially Defensive. It still deals with Keldeo pretty well, but you have to be careful of Choice Specs variants, as they 2HKO Amoonguss on the switch if Rain is up.

Like EspeonX mentioned, Amoonguss is one of the few Pokemon that is viable to use in Sandstorm that can actually handle Keldeo. Even then, if your opponent is running Keldeo, it's more than likely they're using an offensive team with other offensive powerhouses alongside Keldeo. It doesn't matter if Amoonguss can beat Keldeo, as common partners to Keldeo such as Landorus-T, Terrakion and Tyranitar can still break through Amoonguss, paving the way for Keldeo to sweep. Keldeo is pretty hard to deal with, but Toxicroak is something I've also been testing and it's worked pretty damn good. It's one of the few offensive checks to Keldeo, resisting both STABs and being able to benefit from the prevalence of Rain Teams. But yeah, Keldeo is pretty scary if you lack an answer to it, in which case it pretty much grabs a kill everytime it switches in.

tl;dr use Keldeo + offensive partner for best results

Also, something that looks pretty intriguing is Offensive Trick Room Reuniclus. I'm interested to see if anyone has tested it and the results they got. It has a certain niche in such a fast paced metagame to be able to completely shift the momentum of a match in your favor, it also gives stall teams a really hard time being immune to hazards, status, leech seed etc.

 

[SpecsX]

I haven't tested OTR Reuni because it requires 3 moveslots to get good coverage, unlike OTR Cofagrigus(not that it's a threat in OU, just an example). No way to set up SpA boosts without sacrificing coverage is asking for Blissey to come in and wall it to hell and back.

 

[EspeonX]

Unfortunately, it's not so attractive to use Psyshock when you will do less damage to Gliscor and physically bulky friends. Amoonguss hates Psyshock though, so that's a bonus (unless it runs Physically Defensive, which is a little more rare due to Keldeo and such). I haven't ever wanted to use OTR Reuniclus, due to the fact that you are sacrificing boosting for the ability to outspeed everything with Trick Room and more coverage. Blissey isn't as common as Chansey anyways, but yeah, Blissey isn't a fan of Psyshock. But yeah, most run Psyshock to beat Blissey and maybe Chansey.

 

[Jimbon]

I haven't tested OTR Reuni because it requires 3 moveslots to get good coverage, unlike OTR Cofagrigus(not that it's a threat in OU, just an example). No way to set up SpA boosts without sacrificing coverage is asking for Blissey to come in and wall it to hell and back.

I don't really understand what you're saying. Everything has a counter, that doesn't make a Pokemon unviable. 3 moveslots is all you really need coverage wise, and on OTR Reuniclus there's not really anything else you need to run, as it's goal is to achieve a late game sweep. You can pretty easily take out 4 Pokemon in a row with hazards up under Trick Room, as very very little wants to switch into Reuniclus. Unlike Cofagrigus or any other TR sweeper, you're forgetting the status immunity and the overall sheer power of Reuniclus. While boosts are appreciated, you don't need any to actually sweep, or certainly dent something very hard. Flawless coverage coming off a 125 Base Special Attack stat boosted by Life Orb and very little outspeeding it under Trick Room is very frightening, especially given that the only things commonly used that are slower than Reuniclus are Ferrothorn and Forretress, both of which cannot beat OTR Reuniclus 1v1.

Why I'm saying this is because I had pretty incredible results with a heavy offense team in BW1 stacking hazards and then sweeping with Reuniclus, I wondered if it could perform as well in BW2.

 

[EspeonX]

With Gene running around, whether Reuniclus can perform well in the BW2 metagame is up for testing in the end.

 

[SpecsX]

Genesect. That's the biggest threat for OTR Reuniclus. And Forretress can run HP Dark (lol). But seriously, Keldeo can hit it w/ HP Ghost as it comes in/sets up TR. I never said it wasn't viable, I said I don't like using it.
How could I forget Psyshock? *facepalm* It can still beat Gliscor with Shadow Ball.

 

[Lavos]

@alkinesthetase: ebelt abomasnow doesn't run blizzard iirc, wood hammer/ice shard/hp fire/protect or eq is the accepted set, though in the event it does run blizzard it would take away its coverage on ninetales.

Genesect. That's the biggest threat for OTR Reuniclus. And Forretress can run HP Dark (lol). But seriously, Keldeo can hit it w/ HP Ghost as it comes in/sets up TR. I never said it wasn't viable, I said I don't like using it.
How could I forget Psyshock? *facepalm* It can still beat Gliscor with Shadow Ball.

ok first of all, no, if we're talking about threats in general to otr reuniclus sweeping then the first thing that should come up is chansey/blissey, reuniclus with no setup move cannot break through those bar two consecutive focus blast crits with the first one getting a spdef drop. genesect, scizor, and even forretress can't say the same - besides, the fifth most common move on otr reun (besides tr, psychic, sball, fb) is hidden power fire, which ohkos the three mentioned above and removes them from the equation.

you mention hp ghost keldeo, i don't know why in hell a keldeo would be running hp ghost over something that's actually useful like hp ice, electric, or grass, but in the event that it does, a surf/hpump does more to reuniclus anyways when you factor in stab.

you say reuniclus can beat gliscor with shadow ball, except it can't, because gliscor takes barely half damage at maximum damage roll (43.5% - 51.41%) and can take reuniclus out with four earthquakes. assuming gliscor is carrying protect (which most of them do), it can stall reuniclus out of trick room, hitting it with eq every other turn, and eventually beat it one-on-one, even if it switches into the trick room to begin with. trust me, i've tested the scenario before. there is absolutely no reason to run psyshock on otr reuniclus, because a) it's not breaking through the pink blobs anytime soon, b) it gets walled by gliscor, and c) it's not getting into a calm mind war like the standard cm reuniclus would be, so it doesn't require a move that hits on the physically defensive side. also i just realized standard defensive hippowdon can stall it out if it runs psyshock too. that's just embarrassing.

@EspeonX: reuniclus is just straight-up bad in this metagame. sure, genesect didn't help its case, but scizor and tyranitar are still in the top 5 in usage last time i checked.

 

[emirinho]

I definitely agree that OTR Reuniclus should run Psychic as it can hit all the Defensive metagame hard. For the Specially defensive metagame Reuniclus must always have a pokemon that will help it deal with the blobs and the whole Specially Defensive metagame like terrakion,keldeo etc.
Reuniclus is not meant to be independant in the first place.

 

[DrDLO]

I didn't say it can't be OU I said its just more appealing and simply more used by a matter of facts and usage based. I also said they both can fulfill each other jobs that is what vice versa means and finally indicated they both have their own merits as in qualities. As for Shiftry it can run HP Ice for Dragonite here's some calcs you dig?

Shiftry (M) @ Life Orb
Trait: Chlorophyll
EVs: 140 Atk / 156 SAtk / 212 Spd
Mild nature (+SAtk, -Def)
- Leaf Storm
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Sucker Punch
-Low Kick

I've been testing this out recently and it's worked pretty well. Granted even with life orb, it's not terribly powerful. But you can also try a purely physical variant with rock slide instead of hp ice (what i've been using: 252 attack adamant). That way you don't give up power on it's physical side. I know the counterpoint's will be that it gives up its ability to hit on the special side and will have trouble with common walls (gliscor, swarm). Just a suggestion. However, with this set it still isn't walled by dragons (dnite is 2HKO by rock slide) and like I said, it has increased attack power for other threats barring skarm or gliscor. But hey, you're probably running it on a sun team, so skarm probably isn't much of a problem...

 

[Lavos]

But hey, you're probably running it on a sun team, so skarm probably isn't much of a problem...

tell that to dragonuser lol

hey what do you guys think of offensive politoed, we're considering giving it a set in C&C. right now it looks something like this:

@ Water Gem
Trait: Drizzle
EVs: 200 HP / 252 SAtk / 56 Spd
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
- Hydro Pump / Surf
- Ice Beam
- Focus Blast
- Encore / Perish Song

i use hydro pump and encore, but that's personal preference. anyways, any thoughts on this thing?

 

[2sly4u]

I've been testing this out recently and it's worked pretty well. Granted even with life orb, it's not terribly powerful. But you can also try a purely physical variant with rock slide instead of hp ice (what i've been using: 252 attack adamant). That way you don't give up power on it's physical side. I know the counterpoint's will be that it gives up its ability to hit on the special side and will have trouble with common walls (gliscor, swarm). Just a suggestion. However, with this set it still isn't walled by dragons (dnite is 2HKO by rock slide) and like I said, it has increased attack power for other threats barring skarm or gliscor. But hey, you're probably running it on a sun team, so skarm probably isn't much of a problem...

The thing is that 2HKOing Dragonite isn't enough for Shiftry because he'll get demolished from any of his attacks. There's a reason that Venusaur is the king of Chlorophyll sweepers and it's because he as enough bulk to take a hit as he sets up Growth. Shiftry and Victreebel, the only others I would consider using, will meet a swift end if they try to set up in this metagame and as you said their power is underwhelming without a boost. Even if they somehow manage to boost up, they still get destroyed by priority (both have a chance of being OHKOd by Scizor's Bullet Punch after SR, 100% after SR and LO recoil).

tell that to dragonuser lol

hey what do you guys think of offensive politoed, we're considering giving it a set in C&C. right now it looks something like this:
*snip*
i use hydro pump and encore, but that's personal preference. anyways, any thoughts on this thing?

I think it could work, but it seems kind of gimmicky. I'd much rather use Choice Specs if I'm looking for power. While your initial STAB move would be insanely strong, that's most likely the move you're going to be spamming early game, so you lose the Water Gem early on, most likely to a Water-resist switch-in that can shrug off the extra damage. At that point, you're stuck with a generic Water-type that has mediocre power on both of its coverage moves. Specs forces you to predict better, but Poli likes the extra oomph on Ice Beam and Focus Miss and maintains his power all game long. Something slow with average bulk like Poli tends to be more hit-and-run anyways, so locking yourself into a move isn't that annoying. If I was looking for a way to boost my damage output without LO recoil or a Choice item, I'd probably just slap on an Expert Belt.

 

[doublenikesocks]

tell that to dragonuser lol

hey what do you guys think of offensive politoed, we're considering giving it a set in C&C. right now it looks something like this:

@ Water Gem
Trait: Drizzle
EVs: 200 HP / 252 SAtk / 56 Spd
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
- Hydro Pump / Surf
- Ice Beam
- Focus Blast
- Encore / Perish Song

i use hydro pump and encore, but that's personal preference. anyways, any thoughts on this thing?

I like it, Water Gem Hydro Pump does a ton of damage to everything that doesn't resist and/or immune. It is also an option for offensive teams that don't want to be choice-locked. I will definitely try this out sometime.

 

[SpecsX]

I've faced this set, and while it usually gets an OHKO if used right, all it takes is a switch into Gastrodon or a Water resist, and Toed's lost its offense. Not bad, but not great.

 

[Lavos]

I've faced this set, and while it usually gets an OHKO if used right, all it takes is a switch into Gastrodon or a Water resist, and Toed's lost its offense. Not bad, but not great.

you can run hp grass too lol...the set isn't necessarily limited to what i posted, that's just what i most commonly see. besides, toed isn't meant to sweep or anything, and if gastrodon or water-types in general are a problem for this set, who cares, that's what team support is for.

the point isn't to hit stuff hard or anything, it's to bluff a choice item and then surprise the opponent when you're not choiced, essentially nabbing a free kill. not to mention it does work against the other weather starters (who are a prime target of the choice bluff).

 

[Danger Mouse]

@alkinesthetase: ebelt abomasnow doesn't run blizzard iirc, wood hammer/ice shard/hp fire/protect or eq is the accepted set, though in the event it does run blizzard it would take away its coverage on ninetales.



ok first of all, no, if we're talking about threats in general to otr reuniclus sweeping then the first thing that should come up is chansey/blissey, reuniclus with no setup move cannot break through those bar two consecutive focus blast crits with the first one getting a spdef drop. genesect, scizor, and even forretress can't say the same - besides, the fifth most common move on otr reun (besides tr, psychic, sball, fb) is hidden power fire, which ohkos the three mentioned above and removes them from the equation.

you mention hp ghost keldeo, i don't know why in hell a keldeo would be running hp ghost over something that's actually useful like hp ice, electric, or grass, but in the event that it does, a surf/hpump does more to reuniclus anyways when you factor in stab.

you say reuniclus can beat gliscor with shadow ball, except it can't, because gliscor takes barely half damage at maximum damage roll (43.5% - 51.41%) and can take reuniclus out with four earthquakes. assuming gliscor is carrying protect (which most of them do), it can stall reuniclus out of trick room, hitting it with eq every other turn, and eventually beat it one-on-one, even if it switches into the trick room to begin with. trust me, i've tested the scenario before. there is absolutely no reason to run psyshock on otr reuniclus, because a) it's not breaking through the pink blobs anytime soon, b) it gets walled by gliscor, and c) it's not getting into a calm mind war like the standard cm reuniclus would be, so it doesn't require a move that hits on the physically defensive side. also i just realized standard defensive hippowdon can stall it out if it runs psyshock too. that's just embarrassing.

@EspeonX: reuniclus is just straight-up bad in this metagame. sure, genesect didn't help its case, but scizor and tyranitar are still in the top 5 in usage last time i checked.

and for the record, choice band genesect OHKO's OTR reuniclus with U-Turn even without a download boost, though not if trick room is already up. yeah...cb gene is awesome.

 

[FaceFaceFace]

Also, something that looks pretty intriguing is Offensive Trick Room Reuniclus. I'm interested to see if anyone has tested it and the results they got. It has a certain niche in such a fast paced metagame to be able to completely shift the momentum of a match in your favor, it also gives stall teams a really hard time being immune to hazards, status, leech seed etc.

I've been working on OTR Reuniclus lately, in fact just a TR team in general. I can PM you my team for a rate if you wish.

It kinda sprung out from a Wobby team I tried to make but...yeah.

 

[Lavos]

and for the record, choice band genesect OHKO's OTR reuniclus with U-Turn even without a download boost, though not if trick room is already up. yeah...cb gene is awesome.

band genesect is indeed a pro set.

moving on (because i think we've all had enough of otr rank for one day), what even happened to meloetta? seems like it's become keldeo and genesect's ugly cousin that nobody likes. i can understand why; both keldeo and genesect have defined niches in the metagame, but meloetta is kind of stuck. it can work as a mixed stallbreaker, except keldeo does it better. or a subcm sweeper, except jirachi does it better. your thoughts on this poor creature?

 

[Thorhammer]

I think the problem is that nothing happened. It's just one of many Pokemon that doesn't have much use in OU.

 

[alkinesthetase]

meloetta-A is a really unremarkable mon on its own; there are so many other bulky psychics out there. meloetta P is really good (base 128 speed!) but nobody has the time to use relic song first. so it's tough to find a good niche for it.

 

[SpecsX]

The reason Melly can't go mixed as well as other mons is because of Relic Song eating up a moveslot. This gives it a horrible case of 4MSS...or should I say 3MSS? Not just that, but Meleotta reverts to Aria Forme every time it switches out, requiring the use of Relic Song again to go physical. Then you have to choose 3 moves that combine to hit physically and specially. It has a decent physical movepool, but it's hard to abuse it. Meleotta isn't one of those mons that can be just thrown onto a team either, unlike Keldeo or Jirachi.

 

[Lavos]

i guess a set of relic song/close combat/thunder/shadow claw could function pretty well as a mixed sweeper in the rain, since thunder breaks through skarmory and shadow claw beats gengar. however, there's still the issue of gliscor and bulky waters, who both wall this thing to hell and back. relic song itself actually does some pretty nice damage, but it's essentially a one-use move, so not great for sweeping.

i wish this thing was like shaymin in that you could just change it to meloetta-p whenever you wanted...then it might actually be usable.

 

[Ricky Horror]

Used Reuniclus for a few rounds and honestly Tyranitar and Reuniclus are murdered by Genesect. It being on so many teams at the time I couldn't comfortably run Reuniclus, also with Scizor roaming some corners of the metagame.

 

[Jimbon]

Meloetta is a pretty interesting Pokemon, the only team I've really seen much use of it is ginganinja's team and even then, this team is pretty much built around Meloetta. Unlike a lot of the new BW2 additions such as Keldeo, Tornadus-T, Thundurus-T, etc. Meloetta is something that needs team support to make it work. Unlike the others, when you can just throw Keldeo into any team and it works well. The main issue with Meloetta I feel is that it doesn't really have a certain niche for what it does. What I mean is that Meloetta can perform a number of different sets due to its great movepool but at best, they're pretty subpar. The main issue is that you really need to transform Meloetta into pirouette mode before it can actually accomplish anything, meaning you need to sacrifice one moveslot to make this happen. As a result, you're only left with three moves after that, and picking those moves is an issue, as you will always find yourself being walled by something else.

What Meloetta does have over other mixed attackers is the great bulk. Base 130 Special Defense makes Calm Mind Meloetta a usable set, boosting both of Meloetta's fantastic special stats. Meloetta also has a pretty cool typing, being part Psychic and immune to Ghost type moves. It's a great offensive check for Spinblockers such as Gengar, who Meloetta can use as set up fodder, or just straight up fire off high power Psychics. With different forms of Meloetta, it also heavily opens up many other options for Meloetta. With a great movepool including Psychic, Psyshock, Shadow Ball, Shadow Claw, Close Combat, U-Turn, Perish Song, Calm Mind, Heal Bell, Thunderbolt, Trick and elemental punches Meloetta can perform many different roles even with the different forms. One thing that does annoy me is the lack of Recovery, I at least thought Meloetta might get Wish to make a defensive set more viable, but that is not the case. It's also a shame because Meloetta has a very interesting defensive typing, being immune to Ghost, while also taking neutral damage from Fighting moves.