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Format Discussion Metronome Battle
- Thread starter Ivy
- Start date
Weakness Policy procs force the Pickup guys to pick up the Weakness Policy instead of Mirror Herb. Watch the look on their face when their Tera Ghost guy picks Weakness Policy up.
Weakness Policy is not a counter to Pickup Mirror Herb for obvious reasons. If you want a real counter, Unaware completely shuts down their whole gimmick leaving them effectively without an item or ability. If you want a gimmicky counter, slow Speed Boost will activate after Pickup which almost guarantees that you’ll burn both Mirror Herbs on a useless +1 Speed in such a way that they can’t pick them back up again. Alternatively, you could just use a team that runs on raw power with little to no boosts like Plus/Minus or Sword/Beads of Ruin. I won’t say Imposter is a sure fire counter, but with at least two speed ties and Leppa Berries in the mix, things tend to get really chaotic after Turn 5.
Edit: If you want to disrupt Pickup Mirror Herb with an item, Kee/Maranga Berry is a much better answer than Weakness Policy. It activates sooner and gives a much less unequalizing boost to the opponent.
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btw this april 8 metronome will turn 7 years old lucky y baby
I named Weakness Policy as a natural counter to Pickup Mirror Herb precisely because I have witnessed Pickup misfire and pick up an opposing Weakness Policy many times, thus halting the Mirror Herb chain. See this replay's Turn 1 for an example of Pickup picking up Weakness Policy and essentially halting for the rest of the game: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9metronomebattle-2299789153
I have run plenty of Weakness Policy and encountered plenty of Pickup Mirror Herb so I am well aware of this interaction. Here’s the thing: who cares if the chain dies? The Mirror Herb team has +2/+2 on both their mons, they still have one Mirror Herb as well as a Weakness Policy, and you just ate a super effective hit. The battle is probably going to end soon; they don’t need to copy much more. Mirror Herb is the counter to Weakness Policy, not the other way around. Your replay is hardly a counterexample.
- Your opponent is using Shox, a fake ass mon, and didn’t Tera either mon until it was dead; you are running double Pecharunt
- You only got one boost off that would have been copied by Venusaur’s Mirror Herb if it hadn’t picked up the Weakness Policy
- It copying that boost would have been good for you since you would have guard swapped it onto yourself
- The boost didn’t end up mattering either way because you Taunted the Venusaur and it Struggled to death
thank you! i somehow forgot about unaware entirely- though the other counters seem fun too, definitely will try them out
I haven't talked much recently, had to take a break for work reasons.
Recent things I've been testing is Tera ghost t-tar (magic bounce but also some other abilities) with pecharunt based on a suggestion from pyuk. It's ok, haven't seen amazing results with it. Iron-hands has been a big interest of main as well past few days. After trying eviolite rhydon with again mixed results, I looked into ice scale iron hands (banded and covert cloak). I might have gotten baited by some good luck, because the initial team with chansey flew to 1450 super quickly, but all the variations I have tried struggle to reproduce that speed fo climbing, and seem inconsistent. Regardless, Iron hands is notable in my opinion.
I'm still trying to test different versions of regirock. The one I posted with cloak and chansey seems to have high variance. Banded rock with pecha seems to have higher consistency, but struggles to get past 1450ish. Doesn't help hippobotas has been down either, since it delays testing of my bot. Since our games are basically instant it means I'm getting half the testing I would otherwise. I'm interested to see this season's stats at the end of the week, I expect some changes based on what I've played against but nothing too drastic. Pecha is prob gonna stand out heavily, but it is an Ice scales thing for sure.
Recent things I've been testing is Tera ghost t-tar (magic bounce but also some other abilities) with pecharunt based on a suggestion from pyuk. It's ok, haven't seen amazing results with it. Iron-hands has been a big interest of main as well past few days. After trying eviolite rhydon with again mixed results, I looked into ice scale iron hands (banded and covert cloak). I might have gotten baited by some good luck, because the initial team with chansey flew to 1450 super quickly, but all the variations I have tried struggle to reproduce that speed fo climbing, and seem inconsistent. Regardless, Iron hands is notable in my opinion.
I'm still trying to test different versions of regirock. The one I posted with cloak and chansey seems to have high variance. Banded rock with pecha seems to have higher consistency, but struggles to get past 1450ish. Doesn't help hippobotas has been down either, since it delays testing of my bot. Since our games are basically instant it means I'm getting half the testing I would otherwise. I'm interested to see this season's stats at the end of the week, I expect some changes based on what I've played against but nothing too drastic. Pecha is prob gonna stand out heavily, but it is an Ice scales thing for sure.
Happy March! It feels like time just passes by more easily around this time of year, like life's a fleeting dream. Maybe that's more due to daylight savings or the turn to springtime on this side, but I still hope to see my goals like this through and not let them go just yet.
About the Pokemon Presents: Nothing much Metronome-related to say about Legends Z-A so far with no new mons/megas mentioned yet, other than the implications of the starters/Meganium getting something, and I doubt Metronome will show up in the game either. But I'm sure there will be at least some new mons to use this year, and some moves that will show up properly in Gen 10, or perhaps a certain other game in the room.
On the other hand, Pokemon Champions was announced to much surprise and discussion, succeeding the dedicated battling series of games. Despite my feelings of distilled detachment so far, I admit it might have some relevant implications like what Metronome movepool they use with removed moves back, Z-move powers for future moves, or making an official ruling on if megas can actually tera or not, along with other such generational mechanics. I could even question if Metronome will be in the game either or if they just don't want to deal with it.
They could bring back the ingame Metronome ladder events, though the 1v1 Gen 7 one was much better than Gen 8's 3v3. Either way, it doesn't seem like much will take effect for a while with an unknown release date and new content having to roll in afterwards, and I guess it's still up in the air if Showdown will start supporting [Champions] formats at all. So that's really all I can think to say, but it's more than I was expecting to talk about anyway.
Before getting into February's usage stats, I was also going to shout out the trending 1v1 Metronome tournament, but signups seems to have already ended. I can't begin to imagine what's optimal with it being similar to the aforementioned ingame ladders but also allowing any mon to use Metronome, with the rest adhering to legality otherwise and the 1v1 ruleset as well as a light banlist. Of course there's free steels, and also tera steel exists, but I feel like I would pick some natural steel options anyway because of good stat allocation and abilities just looking over what exists. Then there's also the bring 3 choose 1 aspect too which I don't envy. But it looks like an interesting time nonetheless.
(EDIT: I just checked to make sure and Gen 9 1v1 has tera banned. Alas.)
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2025-02/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2025-02/moveset/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt
The battle count went down by an even smaller bit (~500 games) to 25491, though it is worth noting February is a shorter month and so there were more average battles per day, which I almost forgot to consider.
February 2025: 1630-weighted top 10 + last month positions
#1: Pecharunt (no change)
#2: Mega Heracross (no change)
#3: Blissey (#5)
#4: Mega Ampharos (#3)
#5: Mega Venusaur (#4)
#6: Iron Hands (#26)
#7: Ting-Lu (#6)
#8: Mega Gengar (#20)
#9: Guzzlord (#33)
#10: Mega Sableye (no change)
Wow. Where to start with this lineup? Well, the top 2 haven't changed, though Pecharunt's raw usage has dipped significantly while Heracross and Venusaur have surpassed it once again, though it certainly has been represented well by brettwhite4's reign over ladder. Speaking of Venusaur, it's fallen to a low of #5 again behind Blissey moving up. Then there's Iron Hands finding respectable success as a dark horse after Game Brain's recent highlight, displacing Ting-Lu for the first time in a while.
Ice Scales definitely seems the ability of choice, though some (Atk/SpA) Ruin abilities fall behind it, but Mirror Herb takes the lead over both Covert Cloak and Choice Band. Also, I feel like I haven't mentioned spreads in a while but I want to point out that Sassy minspeed seems to be the lead spread, with Relaxed/252 Speed just behind it and Brave minspeed/Naughty 252 farther back. Any particular thoughts or beliefs that defense wins championships? Is Iron Hands really fat enough to afford to double down on Tablets of Ruin/Vessel of Ruin support to carry its game? These are questions I did not expect to be asking here, and I'm wondering about what kind of answers might come up from experience.
Meanwhile Gengar and Guzzlord have also risen up fairly noticeably, though Guzzlord is much more of a dark horse just based on its raw usage, but instead of the traditional Fluffy/Weakness Policy, we see a trend of Magic Bounce and Covert Cloak being run instead. Iron Hands seems to be common teammates with such a Guzzlord and also Porygon2, which definitely shows with Porygon2 achieving #14 with a primary Mind's Eye set. I guess that Normal STAB counts for something, even if it may or may not go Tera Ghost as well.
Beyond the top 10, the hippobotas bot watch has lowered a bit as well with Rotom-Wash at #23 and its friend Wishiwashi-School at #22 along with the rest of its mon pool hanging around similarly. Shox makes #30 just above Mega Gallade with <10% of its raw uses. Overall it seems like some trends are certainly shifting. Perhaps not to the ends of a dream of an entirely new top 10, but hey, Mega Gengar is there again and 3 upsets from outside the top 10 in a month doesn't happen every month (though it did last month).
Over to the moveset file, I'm just going to start off saying that there is still a very high count of 9 mons in the 80+ viability ceilings (highest GXE across anyone that used the mon), and half of which I haven't even mentioned yet, which you might have seen coming by the fact that I went over some other mons in detail earlier. So let's get right into it.
Leading at 85 is Pecharunt, heading both the weighted usage and viability ceilings, with a main lead of Ice Scales/Weakness Policy as expected and primarily running Relaxed. Heracross is still barely above double Pecharunt in terms of teammates. However, also tied for 85 is Shox, running Magic Bounce, Mirror Herb, Brave minspeed, tera Ghost, and Pecharunt. It's not that out of nowhere since it was pretty highly weighted last time and just barely out of range at 79 with tough competition, but still. I suppose this goes to show how far dead hours can take you alone, but at any rate Shox has definitely made an impact in its short existence so far.
Following up is Ting-Lu with 83, skipping over 84. Ting-Lu is still favouring Simple/Weakness Policy with some other general options in mind, Brave seems to be the most popular nature by far, Tera Ghost leads, and the top teammates are relatively split between Venusaur/Pecharunt/Blissey.
After that is the bonkstall duo of Type: Null and Dusclops tied for 82, running their typical Friend Guard/Eviolite, though Dusclops's ability options are much more split with noticeable Magic Guard secondary usage on both. Both seem to run Relaxed though, but Null seems to lead with Tera Stellar while Dusclops has Tera Ghost, which I would expect to be the other way around even with them still being fair secondary options. First Mind's Eye Porygon2, now Stellar Type: Null... Normal Eviolite mons have been throwing me off here. I guess if you only want to tera Type: Null then Dusclops's tera doesn't really matter to change, but I wouldn't have thought about Stellar on Null to begin with. Apparently it has been a thing for some months though, so maybe the idea is that you may as well take what offense you can get.
To end things off, there's a 4-way tie for mons with a viability ceiling of 80. First up is Heracross, who still has mainly Pecharunt as a teammate, and Defiant/Sword of Ruin have actually picked up quite a bit of usage together (22%/13%) compared to Intrepid Sword (39%). Next is Venusaur, and Magic Bounce has barely surpassed Flower Veil once again, with Mirror Herb over WP as well, and tera Ghost/Stellar with another main Pecharunt teammate. Also, there's a "Nothing" tera type I just noticed. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but a lot of Mega Sableye seem to have it. I assume that might be if you just import a team with no set tera type and not use the teambuilder that explicitly sets one or something, and then in battle it would still default to your main type?
Anyway, next up in the tie for 80 is Tyranitar, following the Tera Ghost Magic Bounce set with Pecharunt as mentioned above. While the raw count is pretty low, it seems it at least peaked well at least once. Lastly, Mega Banette is here. Mostly it just runs Intrepid Sword/Choice Band, with Orichalcum Pulse in the back and...
Well, I'm glad I paid more attention to the spreads for this post all of a sudden, because I probably would have skimmed over Banette leading with a vanilla 510 EV limit spread otherwise (Brave 0/252/0/4/0/252 with 52.629% weighted usage). This probably (hopefully) wasn't the one that hit the 80 ceiling, but I'm kind of impressed it even weighs that highly compared to the others.
I'm not sure how to end this now. I just tried to find another mon with a limited EV spread, and I saw Mega Slowbro with one in 3rd with 3.5% usage. Then I found Garganacl leading with 0/252/0/252/0/252 which seems to be someone using it as a Sticky Barb Shedinja setter. People run minimum Attack Ursaluna-Bloodmoon as its second highest spread. There's a divide between 0 HP EV Shedinja and 252 HP EVs, and also Hardy vs Serious while Naive is leading. By the way, Shedinja's teammates are kind of interesting too. Garganacl, Geodude, and Donphan are the top 3 there for no apparent reason other than flavour.
I finally found that Clefable's usage seems to lead with 0/252/252/252/4/252, which doesn't follow the limit but also doesn't use the full limit in two stats, and I suppose that's as good a place to end things. The immense creativity and variety of the Metronome Battle ladder is something that I just don't see Pokemon Champions living up to replace. That and random battles, or any past gen format, on top of however they handle obtaining mons. Thanks for your reading.
About the Pokemon Presents: Nothing much Metronome-related to say about Legends Z-A so far with no new mons/megas mentioned yet, other than the implications of the starters/Meganium getting something, and I doubt Metronome will show up in the game either. But I'm sure there will be at least some new mons to use this year, and some moves that will show up properly in Gen 10, or perhaps a certain other game in the room.
On the other hand, Pokemon Champions was announced to much surprise and discussion, succeeding the dedicated battling series of games. Despite my feelings of distilled detachment so far, I admit it might have some relevant implications like what Metronome movepool they use with removed moves back, Z-move powers for future moves, or making an official ruling on if megas can actually tera or not, along with other such generational mechanics. I could even question if Metronome will be in the game either or if they just don't want to deal with it.
They could bring back the ingame Metronome ladder events, though the 1v1 Gen 7 one was much better than Gen 8's 3v3. Either way, it doesn't seem like much will take effect for a while with an unknown release date and new content having to roll in afterwards, and I guess it's still up in the air if Showdown will start supporting [Champions] formats at all. So that's really all I can think to say, but it's more than I was expecting to talk about anyway.
Before getting into February's usage stats, I was also going to shout out the trending 1v1 Metronome tournament, but signups seems to have already ended. I can't begin to imagine what's optimal with it being similar to the aforementioned ingame ladders but also allowing any mon to use Metronome, with the rest adhering to legality otherwise and the 1v1 ruleset as well as a light banlist. Of course there's free steels, and also tera steel exists, but I feel like I would pick some natural steel options anyway because of good stat allocation and abilities just looking over what exists. Then there's also the bring 3 choose 1 aspect too which I don't envy. But it looks like an interesting time nonetheless.
(EDIT: I just checked to make sure and Gen 9 1v1 has tera banned. Alas.)
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2025-02/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2025-02/moveset/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt
The battle count went down by an even smaller bit (~500 games) to 25491, though it is worth noting February is a shorter month and so there were more average battles per day, which I almost forgot to consider.
February 2025: 1630-weighted top 10 + last month positions
#1: Pecharunt (no change)
#2: Mega Heracross (no change)
#3: Blissey (#5)
#4: Mega Ampharos (#3)
#5: Mega Venusaur (#4)
#6: Iron Hands (#26)
#7: Ting-Lu (#6)
#8: Mega Gengar (#20)
#9: Guzzlord (#33)
#10: Mega Sableye (no change)
Wow. Where to start with this lineup? Well, the top 2 haven't changed, though Pecharunt's raw usage has dipped significantly while Heracross and Venusaur have surpassed it once again, though it certainly has been represented well by brettwhite4's reign over ladder. Speaking of Venusaur, it's fallen to a low of #5 again behind Blissey moving up. Then there's Iron Hands finding respectable success as a dark horse after Game Brain's recent highlight, displacing Ting-Lu for the first time in a while.
Ice Scales definitely seems the ability of choice, though some (Atk/SpA) Ruin abilities fall behind it, but Mirror Herb takes the lead over both Covert Cloak and Choice Band. Also, I feel like I haven't mentioned spreads in a while but I want to point out that Sassy minspeed seems to be the lead spread, with Relaxed/252 Speed just behind it and Brave minspeed/Naughty 252 farther back. Any particular thoughts or beliefs that defense wins championships? Is Iron Hands really fat enough to afford to double down on Tablets of Ruin/Vessel of Ruin support to carry its game? These are questions I did not expect to be asking here, and I'm wondering about what kind of answers might come up from experience.
Meanwhile Gengar and Guzzlord have also risen up fairly noticeably, though Guzzlord is much more of a dark horse just based on its raw usage, but instead of the traditional Fluffy/Weakness Policy, we see a trend of Magic Bounce and Covert Cloak being run instead. Iron Hands seems to be common teammates with such a Guzzlord and also Porygon2, which definitely shows with Porygon2 achieving #14 with a primary Mind's Eye set. I guess that Normal STAB counts for something, even if it may or may not go Tera Ghost as well.
Beyond the top 10, the hippobotas bot watch has lowered a bit as well with Rotom-Wash at #23 and its friend Wishiwashi-School at #22 along with the rest of its mon pool hanging around similarly. Shox makes #30 just above Mega Gallade with <10% of its raw uses. Overall it seems like some trends are certainly shifting. Perhaps not to the ends of a dream of an entirely new top 10, but hey, Mega Gengar is there again and 3 upsets from outside the top 10 in a month doesn't happen every month (though it did last month).
Over to the moveset file, I'm just going to start off saying that there is still a very high count of 9 mons in the 80+ viability ceilings (highest GXE across anyone that used the mon), and half of which I haven't even mentioned yet, which you might have seen coming by the fact that I went over some other mons in detail earlier. So let's get right into it.
Leading at 85 is Pecharunt, heading both the weighted usage and viability ceilings, with a main lead of Ice Scales/Weakness Policy as expected and primarily running Relaxed. Heracross is still barely above double Pecharunt in terms of teammates. However, also tied for 85 is Shox, running Magic Bounce, Mirror Herb, Brave minspeed, tera Ghost, and Pecharunt. It's not that out of nowhere since it was pretty highly weighted last time and just barely out of range at 79 with tough competition, but still. I suppose this goes to show how far dead hours can take you alone, but at any rate Shox has definitely made an impact in its short existence so far.
Following up is Ting-Lu with 83, skipping over 84. Ting-Lu is still favouring Simple/Weakness Policy with some other general options in mind, Brave seems to be the most popular nature by far, Tera Ghost leads, and the top teammates are relatively split between Venusaur/Pecharunt/Blissey.
After that is the bonkstall duo of Type: Null and Dusclops tied for 82, running their typical Friend Guard/Eviolite, though Dusclops's ability options are much more split with noticeable Magic Guard secondary usage on both. Both seem to run Relaxed though, but Null seems to lead with Tera Stellar while Dusclops has Tera Ghost, which I would expect to be the other way around even with them still being fair secondary options. First Mind's Eye Porygon2, now Stellar Type: Null... Normal Eviolite mons have been throwing me off here. I guess if you only want to tera Type: Null then Dusclops's tera doesn't really matter to change, but I wouldn't have thought about Stellar on Null to begin with. Apparently it has been a thing for some months though, so maybe the idea is that you may as well take what offense you can get.
To end things off, there's a 4-way tie for mons with a viability ceiling of 80. First up is Heracross, who still has mainly Pecharunt as a teammate, and Defiant/Sword of Ruin have actually picked up quite a bit of usage together (22%/13%) compared to Intrepid Sword (39%). Next is Venusaur, and Magic Bounce has barely surpassed Flower Veil once again, with Mirror Herb over WP as well, and tera Ghost/Stellar with another main Pecharunt teammate. Also, there's a "Nothing" tera type I just noticed. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but a lot of Mega Sableye seem to have it. I assume that might be if you just import a team with no set tera type and not use the teambuilder that explicitly sets one or something, and then in battle it would still default to your main type?
Anyway, next up in the tie for 80 is Tyranitar, following the Tera Ghost Magic Bounce set with Pecharunt as mentioned above. While the raw count is pretty low, it seems it at least peaked well at least once. Lastly, Mega Banette is here. Mostly it just runs Intrepid Sword/Choice Band, with Orichalcum Pulse in the back and...
Well, I'm glad I paid more attention to the spreads for this post all of a sudden, because I probably would have skimmed over Banette leading with a vanilla 510 EV limit spread otherwise (Brave 0/252/0/4/0/252 with 52.629% weighted usage). This probably (hopefully) wasn't the one that hit the 80 ceiling, but I'm kind of impressed it even weighs that highly compared to the others.
I'm not sure how to end this now. I just tried to find another mon with a limited EV spread, and I saw Mega Slowbro with one in 3rd with 3.5% usage. Then I found Garganacl leading with 0/252/0/252/0/252 which seems to be someone using it as a Sticky Barb Shedinja setter. People run minimum Attack Ursaluna-Bloodmoon as its second highest spread. There's a divide between 0 HP EV Shedinja and 252 HP EVs, and also Hardy vs Serious while Naive is leading. By the way, Shedinja's teammates are kind of interesting too. Garganacl, Geodude, and Donphan are the top 3 there for no apparent reason other than flavour.
I finally found that Clefable's usage seems to lead with 0/252/252/252/4/252, which doesn't follow the limit but also doesn't use the full limit in two stats, and I suppose that's as good a place to end things. The immense creativity and variety of the Metronome Battle ladder is something that I just don't see Pokemon Champions living up to replace. That and random battles, or any past gen format, on top of however they handle obtaining mons. Thanks for your reading.
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The no-Tera type Mega Sableye is due to a change in how usage stats are tracked. Sableye-base holding Sablenite is unable to Terastallize, so the Tera type on its set is not counted. I didn’t expect that to mean it counts as an instance of “Nothing”, but this does let us see exactly how many Sablenite Sableye-Mega are running around starting in their mega forme: about 3.76%, apparently.Happy March! It feels like time just passes by more easily around this time of year, like life's a fleeting dream. Maybe that's more due to daylight savings or the turn to springtime on this side, but I still hope to see my goals like this through and not let them go just yet.
About the Pokemon Presents: Nothing much Metronome-related to say about Legends Z-A so far with no new mons/megas mentioned yet, other than the implications of the starters/Meganium getting something, and I doubt Metronome will show up in the game either. But I'm sure there will be at least some new mons to use this year, and some moves that will show up properly in Gen 10, or perhaps a certain other game in the room.
On the other hand, Pokemon Champions was announced to much surprise and discussion, succeeding the dedicated battling series of games. Despite my feelings of distilled detachment so far, I admit it might have some relevant implications like what Metronome movepool they use with removed moves back, Z-move powers for future moves, or making an official ruling on if megas can actually tera or not, along with other such generational mechanics. I could even question if Metronome will be in the game either or if they just don't want to deal with it.
They could bring back the ingame Metronome ladder events, though the 1v1 Gen 7 one was much better than Gen 8's 3v3. Either way, it doesn't seem like much will take effect for a while with an unknown release date and new content having to roll in afterwards, and I guess it's still up in the air if Showdown will start supporting [Champions] formats at all. So that's really all I can think to say, but it's more than I was expecting to talk about anyway.
Before getting into February's usage stats, I was also going to shout out the trending 1v1 Metronome tournament, but signups seems to have already ended. I can't begin to imagine what's optimal with it being similar to the aforementioned ingame ladders but also allowing any mon to use Metronome, with the rest adhering to legality otherwise and the 1v1 ruleset as well as a light banlist. Of course there's free steels, and also tera steel exists, but I feel like I would pick some natural steel options anyway because of good stat allocation and abilities just looking over what exists. Then there's also the bring 3 choose 1 aspect too which I don't envy. But it looks like an interesting time nonetheless.
(EDIT: I just checked to make sure and Gen 9 1v1 has tera banned. Alas.)
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2025-02/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2025-02/moveset/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt
The battle count went down by an even smaller bit (~500 games) to 25491, though it is worth noting February is a shorter month and so there were more average battles per day, which I almost forgot to consider.
February 2025: 1630-weighted top 10 + last month positions
#1: Pecharunt (no change)
#2: Mega Heracross (no change)
#3: Blissey (#5)
#4: Mega Ampharos (#3)
#5: Mega Venusaur (#4)
#6: Iron Hands (#26)
#7: Ting-Lu (#6)
#8: Mega Gengar (#20)
#9: Guzzlord (#33)
#10: Mega Sableye (no change)
Wow. Where to start with this lineup? Well, the top 2 haven't changed, though Pecharunt's raw usage has dipped significantly while Heracross and Venusaur have surpassed it once again, though it certainly has been represented well by brettwhite4's reign over ladder. Speaking of Venusaur, it's fallen to a low of #5 again behind Blissey moving up. Then there's Iron Hands finding respectable success as a dark horse after Game Brain's recent highlight, displacing Ting-Lu for the first time in a while.
Ice Scales definitely seems the ability of choice, though some (Atk/SpA) Ruin abilities fall behind it, but Mirror Herb takes the lead over both Covert Cloak and Choice Band. Also, I feel like I haven't mentioned spreads in a while but I want to point out that Sassy minspeed seems to be the lead spread, with Relaxed/252 Speed just behind it and Brave minspeed/Naughty 252 farther back. Any particular thoughts or beliefs that defense wins championships? Is Iron Hands really fat enough to afford to double down on Tablets of Ruin/Vessel of Ruin support to carry its game? These are questions I did not expect to be asking here, and I'm wondering about what kind of answers might come up from experience.
Meanwhile Gengar and Guzzlord have also risen up fairly noticeably, though Guzzlord is much more of a dark horse just based on its raw usage, but instead of the traditional Fluffy/Weakness Policy, we see a trend of Magic Bounce and Covert Cloak being run instead. Iron Hands seems to be common teammates with such a Guzzlord and also Porygon2, which definitely shows with Porygon2 achieving #14 with a primary Mind's Eye set. I guess that Normal STAB counts for something, even if it may or may not go Tera Ghost as well.
Beyond the top 10, the hippobotas bot watch has lowered a bit as well with Rotom-Wash at #23 and its friend Wishiwashi-School at #22 along with the rest of its mon pool hanging around similarly. Shox makes #30 just above Mega Gallade with <10% of its raw uses. Overall it seems like some trends are certainly shifting. Perhaps not to the ends of a dream of an entirely new top 10, but hey, Mega Gengar is there again and 3 upsets from outside the top 10 in a month doesn't happen every month (though it did last month).
Over to the moveset file, I'm just going to start off saying that there is still a very high count of 9 mons in the 80+ viability ceilings (highest GXE across anyone that used the mon), and half of which I haven't even mentioned yet, which you might have seen coming by the fact that I went over some other mons in detail earlier. So let's get right into it.
Leading at 85 is Pecharunt, heading both the weighted usage and viability ceilings, with a main lead of Ice Scales/Weakness Policy as expected and primarily running Relaxed. Heracross is still barely above double Pecharunt in terms of teammates. However, also tied for 85 is Shox, running Magic Bounce, Mirror Herb, Brave minspeed, tera Ghost, and Pecharunt. It's not that out of nowhere since it was pretty highly weighted last time and just barely out of range at 79 with tough competition, but still. I suppose this goes to show how far dead hours can take you alone, but at any rate Shox has definitely made an impact in its short existence so far.
Following up is Ting-Lu with 83, skipping over 84. Ting-Lu is still favouring Simple/Weakness Policy with some other general options in mind, Brave seems to be the most popular nature by far, Tera Ghost leads, and the top teammates are relatively split between Venusaur/Pecharunt/Blissey.
After that is the bonkstall duo of Type: Null and Dusclops tied for 82, running their typical Friend Guard/Eviolite, though Dusclops's ability options are much more split with noticeable Magic Guard secondary usage on both. Both seem to run Relaxed though, but Null seems to lead with Tera Stellar while Dusclops has Tera Ghost, which I would expect to be the other way around even with them still being fair secondary options. First Mind's Eye Porygon2, now Stellar Type: Null... Normal Eviolite mons have been throwing me off here. I guess if you only want to tera Type: Null then Dusclops's tera doesn't really matter to change, but I wouldn't have thought about Stellar on Null to begin with. Apparently it has been a thing for some months though, so maybe the idea is that you may as well take what offense you can get.
To end things off, there's a 4-way tie for mons with a viability ceiling of 80. First up is Heracross, who still has mainly Pecharunt as a teammate, and Defiant/Sword of Ruin have actually picked up quite a bit of usage together (22%/13%) compared to Intrepid Sword (39%). Next is Venusaur, and Magic Bounce has barely surpassed Flower Veil once again, with Mirror Herb over WP as well, and tera Ghost/Stellar with another main Pecharunt teammate. Also, there's a "Nothing" tera type I just noticed. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but a lot of Mega Sableye seem to have it. I assume that might be if you just import a team with no set tera type and not use the teambuilder that explicitly sets one or something, and then in battle it would still default to your main type?
Anyway, next up in the tie for 80 is Tyranitar, following the Tera Ghost Magic Bounce set with Pecharunt as mentioned above. While the raw count is pretty low, it seems it at least peaked well at least once. Lastly, Mega Banette is here. Mostly it just runs Intrepid Sword/Choice Band, with Orichalcum Pulse in the back and...
View attachment 718657
Well, I'm glad I paid more attention to the spreads for this post all of a sudden, because I probably would have skimmed over Banette leading with a vanilla 510 EV limit spread otherwise (Brave 0/252/0/4/0/252 with 52.629% weighted usage). This probably (hopefully) wasn't the one that hit the 80 ceiling, but I'm kind of impressed it even weighs that highly compared to the others.
I'm not sure how to end this now. I just tried to find another mon with a limited EV spread, and I saw Mega Slowbro with one in 3rd with 3.5% usage. Then I found Garganacl leading with 0/252/0/252/0/252 which seems to be someone using it as a Sticky Barb Shedinja setter. People run minimum Attack Ursaluna-Bloodmoon as its second highest spread. There's a divide between 0 HP EV Shedinja and 252 HP EVs, and also Hardy vs Serious while Naive is leading. By the way, Shedinja's teammates are kind of interesting too. Garganacl, Geodude, and Donphan are the top 3 there for no apparent reason other than flavour.
I finally found that Clefable's usage seems to lead with 0/252/252/252/4/252, which doesn't follow the limit but also doesn't use the full limit in two stats, and I suppose that's as good a place to end things. The immense creativity and variety of the Metronome Battle ladder is something that I just don't see Pokemon Champions living up to replace. That and random battles, or any past gen format, on top of however they handle obtaining mons. Thanks for your reading.
As for Type: Null, that’s easy: hippobotas. All of the bot’s sets are Tera Stellar, and it has a Type: Null set. Mystery solved.
Last but not least, as the number 1 Shox hater, I do need to point out that its base stats are different now from what they were when it was first posted about in this thread. The changes are as such:
It’s now slightly bulkier and has a clearer focus on special attacks over physical. While I still maintain that Shox is just a worse Guzzlord, I admit this does seem to somewhat narrow the gap.
Howdy, Im zecilwenshe on ladder Been the main guy running iron hands + guzzlord on ladder as of late so I will say its likely just a bloated statistic of me doing so lol
omg i made it on the monthy post dream come trueHappy March! It feels like time just passes by more easily around this time of year, like life's a fleeting dream. Maybe that's more due to daylight savings or the turn to springtime on this side, but I still hope to see my goals like this through and not let them go just yet.
About the Pokemon Presents: Nothing much Metronome-related to say about Legends Z-A so far with no new mons/megas mentioned yet, other than the implications of the starters/Meganium getting something, and I doubt Metronome will show up in the game either. But I'm sure there will be at least some new mons to use this year, and some moves that will show up properly in Gen 10, or perhaps a certain other game in the room.
On the other hand, Pokemon Champions was announced to much surprise and discussion, succeeding the dedicated battling series of games. Despite my feelings of distilled detachment so far, I admit it might have some relevant implications like what Metronome movepool they use with removed moves back, Z-move powers for future moves, or making an official ruling on if megas can actually tera or not, along with other such generational mechanics. I could even question if Metronome will be in the game either or if they just don't want to deal with it.
They could bring back the ingame Metronome ladder events, though the 1v1 Gen 7 one was much better than Gen 8's 3v3. Either way, it doesn't seem like much will take effect for a while with an unknown release date and new content having to roll in afterwards, and I guess it's still up in the air if Showdown will start supporting [Champions] formats at all. So that's really all I can think to say, but it's more than I was expecting to talk about anyway.
Before getting into February's usage stats, I was also going to shout out the trending 1v1 Metronome tournament, but signups seems to have already ended. I can't begin to imagine what's optimal with it being similar to the aforementioned ingame ladders but also allowing any mon to use Metronome, with the rest adhering to legality otherwise and the 1v1 ruleset as well as a light banlist. Of course there's free steels, and also tera steel exists, but I feel like I would pick some natural steel options anyway because of good stat allocation and abilities just looking over what exists. Then there's also the bring 3 choose 1 aspect too which I don't envy. But it looks like an interesting time nonetheless.
(EDIT: I just checked to make sure and Gen 9 1v1 has tera banned. Alas.)
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2025-02/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2025-02/moveset/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt
The battle count went down by an even smaller bit (~500 games) to 25491, though it is worth noting February is a shorter month and so there were more average battles per day, which I almost forgot to consider.
February 2025: 1630-weighted top 10 + last month positions
#1: Pecharunt (no change)
#2: Mega Heracross (no change)
#3: Blissey (#5)
#4: Mega Ampharos (#3)
#5: Mega Venusaur (#4)
#6: Iron Hands (#26)
#7: Ting-Lu (#6)
#8: Mega Gengar (#20)
#9: Guzzlord (#33)
#10: Mega Sableye (no change)
Wow. Where to start with this lineup? Well, the top 2 haven't changed, though Pecharunt's raw usage has dipped significantly while Heracross and Venusaur have surpassed it once again, though it certainly has been represented well by brettwhite4's reign over ladder. Speaking of Venusaur, it's fallen to a low of #5 again behind Blissey moving up. Then there's Iron Hands finding respectable success as a dark horse after Game Brain's recent highlight, displacing Ting-Lu for the first time in a while.
Ice Scales definitely seems the ability of choice, though some (Atk/SpA) Ruin abilities fall behind it, but Mirror Herb takes the lead over both Covert Cloak and Choice Band. Also, I feel like I haven't mentioned spreads in a while but I want to point out that Sassy minspeed seems to be the lead spread, with Relaxed/252 Speed just behind it and Brave minspeed/Naughty 252 farther back. Any particular thoughts or beliefs that defense wins championships? Is Iron Hands really fat enough to afford to double down on Tablets of Ruin/Vessel of Ruin support to carry its game? These are questions I did not expect to be asking here, and I'm wondering about what kind of answers might come up from experience.
Meanwhile Gengar and Guzzlord have also risen up fairly noticeably, though Guzzlord is much more of a dark horse just based on its raw usage, but instead of the traditional Fluffy/Weakness Policy, we see a trend of Magic Bounce and Covert Cloak being run instead. Iron Hands seems to be common teammates with such a Guzzlord and also Porygon2, which definitely shows with Porygon2 achieving #14 with a primary Mind's Eye set. I guess that Normal STAB counts for something, even if it may or may not go Tera Ghost as well.
Beyond the top 10, the hippobotas bot watch has lowered a bit as well with Rotom-Wash at #23 and its friend Wishiwashi-School at #22 along with the rest of its mon pool hanging around similarly. Shox makes #30 just above Mega Gallade with <10% of its raw uses. Overall it seems like some trends are certainly shifting. Perhaps not to the ends of a dream of an entirely new top 10, but hey, Mega Gengar is there again and 3 upsets from outside the top 10 in a month doesn't happen every month (though it did last month).
Over to the moveset file, I'm just going to start off saying that there is still a very high count of 9 mons in the 80+ viability ceilings (highest GXE across anyone that used the mon), and half of which I haven't even mentioned yet, which you might have seen coming by the fact that I went over some other mons in detail earlier. So let's get right into it.
Leading at 85 is Pecharunt, heading both the weighted usage and viability ceilings, with a main lead of Ice Scales/Weakness Policy as expected and primarily running Relaxed. Heracross is still barely above double Pecharunt in terms of teammates. However, also tied for 85 is Shox, running Magic Bounce, Mirror Herb, Brave minspeed, tera Ghost, and Pecharunt. It's not that out of nowhere since it was pretty highly weighted last time and just barely out of range at 79 with tough competition, but still. I suppose this goes to show how far dead hours can take you alone, but at any rate Shox has definitely made an impact in its short existence so far.
Following up is Ting-Lu with 83, skipping over 84. Ting-Lu is still favouring Simple/Weakness Policy with some other general options in mind, Brave seems to be the most popular nature by far, Tera Ghost leads, and the top teammates are relatively split between Venusaur/Pecharunt/Blissey.
After that is the bonkstall duo of Type: Null and Dusclops tied for 82, running their typical Friend Guard/Eviolite, though Dusclops's ability options are much more split with noticeable Magic Guard secondary usage on both. Both seem to run Relaxed though, but Null seems to lead with Tera Stellar while Dusclops has Tera Ghost, which I would expect to be the other way around even with them still being fair secondary options. First Mind's Eye Porygon2, now Stellar Type: Null... Normal Eviolite mons have been throwing me off here. I guess if you only want to tera Type: Null then Dusclops's tera doesn't really matter to change, but I wouldn't have thought about Stellar on Null to begin with. Apparently it has been a thing for some months though, so maybe the idea is that you may as well take what offense you can get.
To end things off, there's a 4-way tie for mons with a viability ceiling of 80. First up is Heracross, who still has mainly Pecharunt as a teammate, and Defiant/Sword of Ruin have actually picked up quite a bit of usage together (22%/13%) compared to Intrepid Sword (39%). Next is Venusaur, and Magic Bounce has barely surpassed Flower Veil once again, with Mirror Herb over WP as well, and tera Ghost/Stellar with another main Pecharunt teammate. Also, there's a "Nothing" tera type I just noticed. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but a lot of Mega Sableye seem to have it. I assume that might be if you just import a team with no set tera type and not use the teambuilder that explicitly sets one or something, and then in battle it would still default to your main type?
Anyway, next up in the tie for 80 is Tyranitar, following the Tera Ghost Magic Bounce set with Pecharunt as mentioned above. While the raw count is pretty low, it seems it at least peaked well at least once. Lastly, Mega Banette is here. Mostly it just runs Intrepid Sword/Choice Band, with Orichalcum Pulse in the back and...
View attachment 718657
Well, I'm glad I paid more attention to the spreads for this post all of a sudden, because I probably would have skimmed over Banette leading with a vanilla 510 EV limit spread otherwise (Brave 0/252/0/4/0/252 with 52.629% weighted usage). This probably (hopefully) wasn't the one that hit the 80 ceiling, but I'm kind of impressed it even weighs that highly compared to the others.
I'm not sure how to end this now. I just tried to find another mon with a limited EV spread, and I saw Mega Slowbro with one in 3rd with 3.5% usage. Then I found Garganacl leading with 0/252/0/252/0/252 which seems to be someone using it as a Sticky Barb Shedinja setter. People run minimum Attack Ursaluna-Bloodmoon as its second highest spread. There's a divide between 0 HP EV Shedinja and 252 HP EVs, and also Hardy vs Serious while Naive is leading. By the way, Shedinja's teammates are kind of interesting too. Garganacl, Geodude, and Donphan are the top 3 there for no apparent reason other than flavour.
I finally found that Clefable's usage seems to lead with 0/252/252/252/4/252, which doesn't follow the limit but also doesn't use the full limit in two stats, and I suppose that's as good a place to end things. The immense creativity and variety of the Metronome Battle ladder is something that I just don't see Pokemon Champions living up to replace. That and random battles, or any past gen format, on top of however they handle obtaining mons. Thanks for your reading.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9metronomebattle-2311546204 battle of 3 team vs 2 team close game
also cheer me on in the 1v1 survirvor tour pls
i am also back at number 1. 2 time champ baby
champions will make metronome battle real
Hopefully, I do not like the open abilities and EV format that this one has lmao
from 2 to a 3 time champ
also the only way people are going to get number 1 is my eather a beating me or b witing for me to retire so ya
brett im coming for your title
btw 4 time champ now
95% of the actual gameplay in this tier is out of your control, what are you expecting?