Format Discussion Metronome Battle

[doipy hooves]

It's finally October 2025, marking the point when Legends Z-A will release mid-month on the 16th and ideally introduce its new megas to PS ready to use. Like the past few new launches, though I won't know exactly when datamined stats will start to properly drop, once they do I plan to cover and collect first impressions to the new (usable) mons' stats and any other relevant additions to the best of my ability at the time. I'll probably be using spoiler tags for the rest of October, with November probably being a fair point to stop spoilering, at least for anything relevant for the meta in monthly stats. So if you still don't want to be spoiled on any unrevealed mons, then I would avoid the Metronome Battle ladder or even teambuilder. Honestly I'm not sure how much real overlap there is between people reading this thread that would also want to avoid Z-A spoilers, but I suppose it doesn't hurt. Also, I feel like I've been on this page (58) before already... maybe that's just the deja vu of returning to Kalos soon.

In the meantime, it's about time to look over the last full month's stats of the pre-Z-A era.

https://www.smogon.com/stats/2025-09/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2025-09/moveset/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt

The battle count has slightly heightened again to 27368.

September 2025: 1630-weighted top 10 + last month positions
#1: Mega Heracross (no change)
#2: Mega Ampharos (no change)
#3: Mega Venusaur (no change)
#4: Ting-Lu (no change)
#5: Mega Gengar (#6)
#6: Silvally-Ghost (#12)
#7: Blissey (#5)
#8: Iron Hands (#10)
#9: Mega Abomasnow (#14)
#10: Glastrier (#7)

Once more, the top four have no changes in sight, though Venusaur's raw use count has increased the most of them for what it's worth. However, the movements of recent lower meta shifts certainly feel appropriate heading into spooky season, with Mega Gengar continuing to rise and reach a new peak at #5 (EDIT: tied twice before, Jun 2021 and Jan 2022), while Silvally-Ghost (Ice Scales, Mirror Herb, main Iron Hands/Glastrier teammates) finally makes its debut into the top 10 proper with a major leap after 3 months in the making. It's a fair showing of how old tricks can still have potential even before an incoming status quo shakeup.

Other dark (type) horses include Tyranitar (#13/821 raw uses) and Guzzlord (#14/846 raw uses) hanging back to back with triple digit uses just under a streak of mons with 2000s above, and also I noticed Mega Banette (#18) and Ceruledge (#19) also doing relatively well for themselves as physical Ghosts.

I'll keep this brief and start going over the moveset file and their viability ceilings (highest GXE of a user of a mon).
The highest peak this month is at 85 with the thematic paradox duo of Iron Hands still at the top (Ice Scales/Choice Band/Brave minspeed) along with Iron Moth of all things (Quark Drive/Weakness Policy/Hardy). Neither are their prime teammate (Iron Hands much prefers Silvally-Ghost and has way more usage), so I would just call this the result of a particularly notable demon streak.

Following that in 83 are the more expected meta picks of Mega Venusaur (Flower Veil/Weakness Policy/Quiet, Ting-Lu main teammate) and Imposter Blissey doing its usual thing in the midst around us. Actually, Ghost Tera has surged up above Stellar for once on it, so I guess you could say that Imposter Blissey has chosen to be a disciple of shadow over the path of light, leading its wicked covenant as its HP stat inflates under the full egg moon phase, or something like that. The same trend also applies to Chansey, going from mainly Stellar to Ghost and Ice above Normal with no Stellar in sight.

Next up at 82 is another fitting plus-minus duo of Mega Ampharos (Plus/Mind's Eye/Minus, Choice Specs) and Mega Gengar (Minus/Competitive/Good as Gold, Choice Specs). And then at 81 is a 59-use Rhydon (Ice Scales, Eviolite) which I suppose is fairly bulky especially with a Ghost tera type to remove its main weaknesses. If anything it might have been a Blissey teammate carried somehow.

Skipping one down, viability ceiling 79 features a 4-way tie between Mega Heracross, Ting-Lu (Ice Scales, Weakness Policy), Raging Bolt (Competitive/Dancer/Unaware, Mirror Herb) and Ursaluna-Bloodmoon (Mind's Eye/Storm Drain/Magic Bounce, Choice Specs/Weakness Policy). I think 11 would be a good place to end it, but I will highlight the mons at 78 just to show what kind of variety of parity there is before the end (Silvally-Ghost, Mega Abomasnow, Glastrier, Chansey, Landorus-Therian, Cresselia, Wishiwashi-School, Baxcalibur). Thanks for your reading.

 

[doipy hooves]

So bits and pieces of Z-A have been floating around, but now at least the base game's datamined stats (and icons) have supposedly just dropped, so here we go with some generally impulsive first impressions. Apparently there's some oddities though and only one source but I'm writing this ahead of time anyway.

(mid-post EDIT: These have been pretty much confirmed for the most part by now, so let us away.)

LEGENDS Z-A DATAMINED NEW CONTENT SPOILERS

As an initial note, it seems like ability slots are copied from the base mons as placeholders, and there are no new abilities in the game with no abilities. I assume that manual megas will just take the first slot ability 1 as a default but I don't actually know how this would work in practice so I won't go over that too much.

According to the legal movelist from a few days ago the base game only introduces one new move that is probably not callable via Metronome. On the bright side, Metronome is surprisingly a move you can use in this game and looks to be a TM.

No word on any other held items yet though I doubt they will affect PS until being added to Champions if any.

(UNUSABLE) POKEMON​

I just want to account for these somewhere in the post, whether unusable by being Steel type or above the BST cap.

Mega Starmie*
Mega Dragonite
Mega Feraligatr
Mega Skarmory
Mega Emboar
Mega Excadrill
Mega Chesnaught
Mega Delphox
Mega Greninja
Mega Zygarde-Complete
Mega Floette-Eternal

I think it's just a little unfortunate 5/6 of the starters barely miss out under the BST cap. Mainly because Mega Chesnaught sounds absurd. Also Mega Starmie has some weird >+100 BST stuff going on with its Attack stat that might be making up for an ability like Huge/Pure Power in mainline.

EDIT: More specifically on Starmie: So Starmie got +140 BST, but 40 of that going into Attack seems to align with Mawile and Medicham also being rebalanced to gain +40% Attack in ZA with the lack of abilities, so the expected Mega Starmie in Champions may look more like 60/100/105/130/105/120 (620 BST) and be legal. But until then it has 660 BST in Legends.

POKEMON​

Mega Clefable (Fairy/Flying): - 95/80/93/135/110/70 (583 BST)
Competing with Enamorus-Therian having close to the same BST, Clefable has more HP/SpD/Speed but mostly lacks in Attack/Defense, which may be more noticeable with the physical lean of Metronome. I do respect its existence as the original Metronome user in the games.

Mega Victreebel (Grass/Poison) - 80/125/85/135/95/70 (590 BST)
As expected, it has more Attack than Venusaur, but also surprisingly even more SpA and less bulk/speed otherwise though not minmaxing its speed for even greater power. Overall I feel Venusaur's bulk is still noticeably better on both ends, but I'm glad Victreebel technically has its own niche as another alternative Grass/Poison option to represent the typing.

Mega Meganium (Grass/Fairy) - 80/92/115/143/115/80 (625 BST)
The other close Venusaur comparison with its base stats shuffled at base, Mega Nium heavily leans more into +60 SpA now instead of leveraging its bulk advantage like I had expected, with that stat being its only one above Venusaur's now. The Grass/Fairy typing is a bit more questionable even compared to pure Grass or Grass/Poison, gaining a notable 4x Poison weakness and Steel weakness but resisting Dark and being immune to Dragon in exchange with a generally uncommon STAB offense outside of Pixilate. Compared to Jumbao and Tapu Bulu, Megamega Nium does kind of hit a nice balance between them though excelling both on the Special sides.

Here's hoping it gets Flower Veil in Champions for some proper ingame representation.

Mega Froslass (Ice/Ghost) - 70/80/70/140/100/120 (580 BST)
I don't know, it's a slightly more balanced stat spread than Mega Gengar which more so means it doesn't pop off as a special nuke as well. Ice/Ghost is still not a very synergistic typing defensively and anyone can go Ghost otherwise. It does look very big though.

Mega Scolipede (Bug/Poison) - 60/140/149/75/99/62 (585 BST)
Oh hey, it's a minmaxed Speed mega, and now the biggest Bug/Poison mon by far. Still not a fantastic typing but the heavy physical spread is pretty respectable on both sides, though it's still shackled to a low HP stat like many other Defense heavy mons. But having a fair and strong balance between Atk/Def/SpA/SpD does stand out to me when most high Defense mons feel pretty lopsided on some ends to compensate.

Mega Scrafty (Dark/Fighting) - 65/130/135/55/135/68 (588 BST)
I think this mon is bulkier than Urshifu-Dark on both sides, barely for Defense but much more notably for SpD. Other than that they're pretty similar offensively with Scrafty having less SpA and Speed but the same Attack.

Mega Eelektross (Electric) - 85/145/80/135/90/80 (615 BST)
Admittedly pretty rare combination of having the highest Attack of base Electric types while also having a very noticeable SpA to go with it. Like just among high Attack mons disregarding type, I would say this looks kind of Landorus-T-esque but with even more SpA. It's no Mega Ampharos but the Attack alone may just be worth it.

Mega Chandelure (Ghost/Fire) - 60/75/110/175/110/90 (620 BST)
So after seeing a more balanced Ghost keeping cool, here the heat turns up with a new Special Nuke that ties Mega Alakazam for the 2nd highest SpA stat around, while also being both Bulkier and Physically Stronger than Mega Alakazam and Gengar, though still with about middling HP. Sacrificing Speed for other stats while also having a very high BST and a fair share of resistances makes Chandelure seem like a very viable alternative to Mega Gengar right after its rise in spooky season along with other Ghost/Fire attention. Overall a surprise sleeper option I didn't have on my radar but definitely stands out more than the rest of these megas so far especially in a hard-to-breach niche.

Mega Pyroar (Fire/Normal) - 86/88/92/129/86/126 (607 BST)
Ehh. I guess it's the highest BST Normal type we've seen so far? I would say it's the highest BST Fire type but Chandelure just dropped. I don't know what to say, compared to a standard 100x6 mythical stat spread, it's a hard ask to move stats all into SpA and Speed while not hitting very high SpA peaks. Like, I think every other Special attacking Mega above this mon has had more SpA in its stat spread. It also still has a unique typing I guess, but does not have the physicality to take advantage of Normal moves as well as other more bulkier Normals.

Mega Malamar (Dark/Psychic) - 86/102/88/98/120/88 (582 BST)
Ehhhhhhhhhh. Firstly, Pokestar Brycen-Man exists with a perfectly fine 100x6 stat spread, only costing some minor special bulk and 2 Attack. But also Dark/Psychic has almost nothing going for it defensively anyways.

It says a lot that I had more to say about Pyroar than this thing, and now I think Pyroar is the better mon. At least Pyroar gets Normal STAB at base which is more than I can say for Malamar, and Fire/Normal actually has resistances while also being able to pull off Weakness Policy procs more often. I admit I may be biased against Malamar and it admittedly has a cool weird design but what else is there to even say.

Mega Barbaracle (Rock/Fighting) - 72/140/130/64/106/88 (600 BST)
The last of the notable new mega typing changes, I recall Rock/Fighting or rather Terrakion being mentioned notably in the past for having a large spread of weaknesses and resistances alike, and this new Barbaracle seems to outdo Terrakion in all aspects but HP, SpA, and having less Speed. Disregarding typing, this mon immediately feels like a less healthier but faster Glastrier-like to me.

Mega Dragalge (Poison/Dragon) - 65/85/105/132/163/44 (594 BST):
Well it's still slow, and a notable SpD tank while still being balanced elsewhere which is kind of novel but not in high demand. It's not too bad resistance-wise either. Shame about the HP though.

Mega Hawlucha (Fighting/Flying) - 78/137/100/74/93/118 (600 BST):
Well its Attack and Defense both certainly did go up, while its SpA and Speed did not. Again I think compared to Pinsir its claim to fame is being slightly bulkier, and even compared to Barbaracle above it's pretty similar trading some Speed for Defense, but otherwise yeah I don't think they could have made Mega Hawlucha that much better for Metronome without severe minmaxing.

Mega Drampa (Normal/Dragon) - 78/85/110/160/116/36 (585 BST)
Here we have another slow mega with a big SpA stat which is respectable enough on its own. It's kind of like Mega Ampharos but has Normal STAB, so that's cool.

Mega Falinks (Fighting) - 65/135/135/70/65/100 (570 BST)
Another new high Atk/Def fighting type. Don't think this is making too many strides just compared to Barbaracle but it looks cool, though Barbaracle also looks pretty cool so tough call.

Overall: I feel like there's a fair share of interesting options. Just based on prerelease leaks I had a feeling the Grasses would be the main highlights here for me, maybe not quite new meta with their offensive lean, but more megas are nice in general and there may still be more to come in the DLC and any Champions adjustments proper, including learning what their manual mega abilities will be.

Just based off pure instinct I feel like Mega Chandelure is the standout new addition here based on the current meta in terms of adding on top of an existing niche of scary special Ghost while lowering Speed, but quite a few of these have a big stat in some areas to appeal to. Of course I could be off the mark with a lot of these expectations, but we'll just have to see later this week in practice when ZA releases for implementation to happen probably. Thanks for your reading and sticking around as we enter yet another new game release.

EDIT: In hindsight a closer comparison for Chandelure is really Mega Ampharos in terms of being a (less bulky but faster) special nuker, which is already pretty flattering, but being a base Ghost is pretty solid in its own right.