M&M Mix and Mega

[Giagantic]

Been laddering a lot lately as I wait for my cancer treatment so here is an analysis of the meta and a list of effective abusers of each new stone in my experience.

(temp) ZA Stone Metagame Analysis:

The metagame as a whole hasn't changed drastically with the introduction of the ZA Stones in their current temporary ability form. Standouts are as predicted with the defensive immunity stones Chimechite, Heatranite, and Chandelurite which add another means to answer threats within the metagame. These stones are healthy additions that add layers to the metagame and teambuilding as a whole with Chimechite in particular opening up a lot of options for many different mons in its current state (I wish it remained with levitate). The only other immunity stone is Zaeraorite which sadly has an extreme skewed stat boost towards offenses with no defensive stats to speak of which heavily hurts the usability of the stone on stuff like Corviknight. One other immunity, Eeleektrossite gives levitate as well but has an offensive stat boost which benefits a variety of stuff.

Offensively there is Zygardite and Barbaracite with the latter acting as a sidegrade to Metagrossite that includes a type change. Zygardite is great for already fast mons and occasionally as a surprise factor on otherwise inoffensive mons.

Other stuffs include Glimmorite which has seen some usage but the inclusion of a poison type like Eternatus or Pecharunt on teams heavily inhibits the presence of Toxic Spikes but with time there is potential for it to see more. Scolipite also sees some use as a sidegrade to Sablenite with poison point punishing contact physical attackers and giving great stats for a more defensive orientated Pokemon.

I still think there is potential for stuff like Scraftinite but at the moment I haven't found it to work all that well at this point.

Edit: Nearly forgot Absolite Z, sadly the stone won't see a ton of usage due to a lack of ghost move coverage that isn't the crappy low BP shadow claw, best of the bunch is Basculin honestly, which is faster then basically everything but deo-s and eleki.

In the end, the metagame basically in a similar state to pre-ZA stone introduction, the kings of the metagame are still kings and old teams will work just as well in spite of the new stones. Instead you can view these new additions as just more options that don't overly sway the top tier choices.


Stone pairings I found effective:

Chimechite: Bellibolt, Pecharunt, Iron Moth, Milotic, (been meaning to try Palossand with Chimechite)

Heatranite / Chandelurite: Magearna, Corviknight, (basically any fire weak mon really)

Eelektrossite: Iron Moth, Raging Bolt

Zygardite: Dragapult, Deoxys-speed, Electrode-Hisui, (random mons)

Barbaracite: Iron Boulder, Barraskewda, Chien-Pao, (any mon with good fighting stab but are not fighting types that benefits from the stone)

Glimmorite: Great Tusk

Scolipite: Corviknight, Great Tusk

 

[Giagantic]

To celebrate getting an oncologist appointment relatively fast and hitting the following milestone here is the process I went through to create my 90 GXE team!

The Team:


The team is a balance team centre'd around the core of Ho-Oh for most special threats and Eternatus for physical threats, obviously there are gaps with these two alone so I supplemented some of the weaknesses through Altarianite Great Tusk, Lunala, Pinsirite Regieleki, and Scolipite Kingambit. It is a team that handles most of the threats in the metagame with good playing.

Individual Team Member Analysis Below:

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Thanksgiving (Ho-Oh) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
- Sacred Fire
- Earthquake
- Future Sight
- Whirlwind

Bog standard max spdef Ho-Oh handles a wide range of threats, differences from usual sets is the choices of having no recovery and relying completely on Regenerator, and the usage of Future Sight. Firstly, the lack of recovery honestly rarely matters as in the worst case scenario vs a setup sweeper of the special sort you can just whirlwind them out.

Now the interesting thing about the set is running Future Sight in tandem with Whirlwind which allows it to setup delayed attacks that warp how the opponent should play in addition to Whirlwind which lets you phase threats but also fish for Future Sight targets when an opposing spdef wall comes in (or dark type).

Icky (Eternatus) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Pressure
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 252 HP / 220 Def / 36 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Sludge Bomb
- Flamethrower
- Meteor Beam
- Recover

Once again, bog standard, speed evs are for creeping stuff that is creeping Hearthflame Tusks. I used to run standard Dragon Pulse (Dynamax Cannon is inferior on defensive Eterns :P) over Meteor Beam but I found the lack of means of hitting things like Heatranite/Chandelurite Steels to be frustrating and Meteor Beam allows it to apply more pressure then simply being forced out every time.

Big Horns (Great Tusk) @ Altarianite
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Ground
EVs: 252 HP / 212 Atk / 44 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Headlong Rush
- Body Slam
- Smack Down
- Rapid Spin

Altarianite Great Tusk is in general just really cool, and completely and utterly walls Raging Bolt as well as many fighting types such as Barbaroachite (I don't wanna look up how to spell it) Iron Boulder. Smack Down is your counter to levitate and flying types allowing you to pressure them and force switches, honestly, should be ran on most tusks that aren't Hearthflame.

Pew Pew (Lunala) @ Leftovers
Ability: Shadow Shield
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 64 HP / 252 SpA / 192 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Psyshock
- Moongeist Beam
- Calm Mind
- Moonlight

The newest addition, Calm Mind Lunala is fat, and handy to have in the back pocket to cover stuff that has broken past both Eternatus and/or Ho-Oh. A very threatening pokemon that faces few walls due to the inherent mixed nature as a result of psyshock meaning special walls fear it. Leftovers are used over Heavy Duty Boots just because it negates burn. Moongeist Beam ignoring abilities is especially handy versus multiscale, purifying salt, and opposing lunala. Speed evs are same as Eternatus, creeping creeps of Hearthflame.

BZZZZZZ (Regieleki) @ Pinsirite
Ability: Transistor
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Naughty Nature
- Volt Switch
- Extreme Speed
- Rapid Spin
- Explosion

I use the second best Regieleki in Pinsirite which shouldn't be underestimated for it brings unique characteristics such as immunity to ground types and resistances to fighting. Honestly, only downsides over Altarianite is not hitting Dragonite super effectively, hitting opposing Regielekis for resistance, and finally stealth rock weakness. Hitting fires for neutral is also useful meaning Hearthflame Great Tusks aren't a great answer to it.

Short Stuff (Kingambit) @ Scolipite
Ability: Defiant
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Iron Head
- Kowtow Cleave
- Sucker Punch
- Low Kick

Kingambit is criminally underused and often threatens many stuff in the metagame and brings useful resistances on top of this. I choose to use scolipite one of the newer stones entirely because it grants MASSIVE stats on top of good attack, however, Latiosite is an extremely viable alternative as is the two flash fire stones. Don't bother with speed investment with Kingambit, it is waste of its combination of good bulk and attack, emphasize those elements over trying to speed creep stuff.

I use no setup as I find I rarely have the opportunity to setup and abuse it and rather use Defiant to get boosts off of stuff like Pecharunt and Intimidate Pokemon / Mega stones.

The team plays predictably, abuse openings, play safe and smart.


zastra QT are allowed to use this as a sample, I got 90 GXE so I am taking a break until stones are either given actual abilities or I desire MnM laddering again.

 

[zastra]

TIERING SURVEY​

After 2 weeks of MnMPL gaming, Mix and Mega is now running a tiering survey to gather community feedback on the current metagame. With the introduction of new stones, the meta has seen different opinions on what--if anything--needs tiering action, so this is your chance to help shape the tiering direction moving forward. We will keep it open for about a week, so please respond ASAP! Shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes, would appreciate any responses. I'll be tagging a few players below as well (anybody can respond though!).

>> FORM <<

players with 2 sv mnm or bo3 games in mnmpl / have been slotted twice

hayedenn
Mindnight
seraphz
Concept
ghostlike
RoFnA
zuzhouwawa
sky
Time2Bonk
TKYSZL
Betticus IV
GhastlyPixie
kDCA
Tanny89k
pannu
QT
damflame 3
Mincera31
Sagazinha
Tbp24

 

[zastra]

SURVEY RESULTS ​

No responses for a while so im releasing them a little early. 28 responses this time, 13 qualified.

Enjoyment

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• General: 7.43/10
• Qualified: 7.615/10

It seems our playerbase finds the current metagame fairly enjoyable, though there's still room for improvement.

Competitiveness and Balance

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• General: 6.57/10
• Qualified: 6.77/10

Competitiveness and balance scores are not bad, but they definitely need improvement.

Zygardite

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• General: 3.64/5
• Qualified: 3.77/5

The playerbase has shown significant support for tiering action on Zygardite, with 17 people being on the 4 & 5 classes. The numbers are alarming.


Dragapult

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• General: 3.25/5
• Qualified: 3.46/5

The respondents, especially the qualified ones, have shown significant support for action on Dragapult as well, which is the prime Zygardite abuser.


Raging Bolt

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• General: 2.96/5
• Qualified: 2.7/5

The playerbase has shown decent support for tiering action against Raging Bolt, but it's not significant enough to warrant immediate attention. We'll keep an eye on Raging Bolt.


Deoxys-S

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• General: 2.5/5
• Qualified: 2.38/5

The playerbase has shown some support for tiering action against Deoxys-S, but it's not significant enough to warrant immediate attention.


Urshifu-R

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• General: 2.39/5
• Qualified: 1.85/5

Most of the playerbase was against taking action on Urshifu-R, generally agreeing that it's healthy for the metagame.


Red Orb Retest

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General Chart

Qualified Chart

Results are a bit all over the place, but most people wouldn't oppose a retest. Something to look at in the future.

Comments

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• Gholdengo - 4
• Gengar
• Regigigas
• Zacian
• Pidgeotite
• Kyogre - 2
• Ursaluna-BM
• Last Respects
• Lugia
• Bikes
• zastra
• zastra's competence
• add me on council

Gholdengo received decent support last survey as well. Definitely something that could be revisited in the future.

To sum things up, these 2 elements are going to be the priority of the council:

• Zygardite
  
• Dragapult

As a note, it's still not clear whether Zygardite is the issue or Dragapult is. Zygardite may have received the highest numbers, but Dragapult numbers are also fairly concerning. Majority of the respondents feel the other two main Zygardite users, Deoxys-S and Raging Bolt, are largely fine. Other users like Helectrode and Pecharunt weren't in this survey specifically, but they weren't brought up in comments. Stone bans are a delicate matter, so it's best to proceed with caution before hastily banning Zygardite. We've been engaging in internal discussion on how to proceed and would really appreciate it if people posted their thoughts, may it be here or OMCord. We're planning to do something this weekend, so now is the time to speak!

 

[Betticus IV]

Personally I dislike the zyg stone on a fundamental level, it is essentially a free choice specs that is splashable on rlly any fast mon, this gets turned up to 11 with the option to pivot. I think what makes the stone truly terrible to deal with from a building and playing perspective is that it has insane offensive synergy with the newly released immunity stones, which let one run pretty free hard counters to the most common revenge killers. This feels different from running things like psyterrain as the opportunity cost is much much lower, as vabs and flash fire cover a much wider range of mons and archetypes outside of espeed. Already great mons also benefit from the offensive synergy offensive synergy (ex. bolt, shifu/barra, dnite, harc, etc).

As of right now I think the bare minimum tiering action is to get rid of pult, the customization of 4th move slot + extremely free u-turns makes building extremely restricted in terms of the types of cores one can run for bulkier teams. Zyg mons will continue to reveal themselves, but might not be as ridiculous as pult currently is. I would hope that there is a qb on pult so the rest of mnmpl can be a bit more playable if the stone is such a delicate matter.

 

[QT]

Fundamentally I think the case for zygardite being as broken as claimed is very weak. We’re in MnMPL week 4 by now, and most Zygardite pokemon have terrible win rate and perhaps equally importantly a terrible performance in most games. A good Pokemon can have a poor winrate if the team it’s on is bad, but in that case you would expect it to heavily outperform its teammates; likewise a Pokemon can have unimpressive performance if heavily overprepped for, but one would typically expect this means the team still wins because there’s no room to prep for its teammates. The biggest exception to this situation is if it’s a playstyle dependant pokemon and the playstyles it eats alive get entirely forced out of the metagame, but I think even more so this has not materialized and it’d be something you want to specifically establish.

If none of these hold - if a pokemon has sufficient checks to not go the distance in most battles, and these checks are generally good enough or splashable enough or reliable enough that it is neither winning a lot of games or enabling its teammates to win games - that’s some serious limitations on how broken it can actually be. There’s no denying Zygardite is powerful, that Pokemon who use it can do serious damage, but it’s not actually a bad thing for a format for it to have frail breakers that can punish overly passive teams. On the contrary, if getting through a defensive core is so difficult even breakers can’t manage it with free turns and proper positioning, that’s in many ways the bigger problem, and I think it’s a good thing Mix and Mega doesn’t have it.

Now with that said, I do personally dislike Zygardite Dragapult. I don’t really respect uturn that much - it’s too difficult to get dragapult in safely in a good position for me to want to immediately have it switch itself out before accomplishing anything - but the spd drop on shadow ball is actually super obnoxious when it triggers and you suddenly have to decide between awkward lines instead of a safe one like you’d planned. Likewise I lowkey hate hydro pump as a move for how unreliable it is, both to use and play against, but there’s just no real replacement so you have to live with it. I don’t think I can justify voting to ban it on this, but I wouldn’t be very sorry to see it go.

 

[Azeri8k]

TBH, the new mega stones abilities are really underwhelming, just keeping the abilities of their previous forms. I play a lot of legends z-a Ou, & the mega stone abilities are better for… just making sense? Skarmorite, Meowsticite, all the starter mega stones, just all of the stones from Z-A & Mega Dimension(excluding Zygardnite because having +125 sp.atk is a good trade-off for not having a ability) should be fixed to what they are in the Z-A OU list. Will it break the meta? Maybe. But it’s better to have some mega stones changed, & after some testing, with Starminite, Pure Power is, by a landslide, much better than Illuminate, same goes for Hawluchanite, the other stones i mentioned, just take the pre-existing abilities from ZA OU, & fix em’ that way.

 

[Chessking345]

Other Metagames base things on rules, not arbitrary changes or balances beyond what common tiering can accomplish. Giving the new stones the best ability that the original user had is clearly Pet Mod territory as this is trying to improve them or ensure they are good. Ultimately, since we are based on rules we decided the most logical way to decide their ability was to base it on their default ability. For all we know, this is just a temporary state and the release of Champions or Generation 10 could change things fundamentally for MnM or this could just be how things are.

In short, OMs are created and controlled by the boundaries of their conceptual rule, AAA gives Pokemon access to almost any ability, STABmons access to same type moves of their STAB, etc... We don't decide what abilities each stone is gonna come with, even including these new stones was not an easy decision but we settled with either having no ability unless datamines existed or defaulting to the most basic ability, all for the sake of consistency.

You can/should've referred to this existing post that addresses a similar question, as the meta you cited is a Pet Mod

 

[Azeri8k]

You can/should've referred to this existing post that addresses a similar question, as the meta you cited is a Pet Mod

Better than having Keen Eye/Illuminate/Poison Point as the ability on the stones

 

[Lightniong]

Better than having Keen Eye/Illuminate/Poison Point as the ability on the stones

the problem is that om’s just don’t change the abilities of the mega stones just to make other stones better, that’s ped mod territory. it’s kinda like reworking run away to be broken to make it good in aaa, if it makes sense. There’s always gonna be duds, alakazite and charizardite x exists. plues champions is coming soon and they’re actually gonna give those stones abilites come then, so this is just temporary at the time.

 

[Ren]

Better than having Keen Eye/Illuminate/Poison Point as the ability on the stones

So I don't really blame you for not going through 19 pages of the thread - it's a lot. I also fully get your frustration since it feels like a lot of new toys were dropped but most of them are duds. The thing w/ OMs and Smogon in general is we can't really go for the most "fun" option, because the goal for OMs is to apply a uniform change (like any Pokémon can have almost any ability, almost any Pokémon can run almost any move and ability with almost any item, etc.) and balance things from there. If we start modifying things based off of a pet mod, that breaks that premise since suddenly people have to familiarize themselves with a pet mom's list before getting into this meta, while the current system adds a pretty easy to follow exception.

Pet mods can also change depending on balance - looking through the current ZA Mega list, I can tell a lot of abilities have changed for the new megas (and they change some abilities for existing megas also, like Audinite, which isn't an option here for the reasons I just described). Adjusting abilities for balance reasons isn't really what this meta does - if a stone is broken, we ban it rather than change it.

I'm not saying your idea is invalid or wrong or bad - I'd probably play a mashup of Legends Z/A OU and Mix and Mega and it sounds like a fun metagame. But I'm hoping that helps shed some light on why things are the way that they are. If you really wanna play that metagame (cause it does sound exciting), you could look into hosting a tournament for it in the Pet Mods forum maybe? I'm not fully sure if that's the right place, but I'm hoping that you can find a solution that works for you.

 

[Azeri8k]

the problem is that om’s just don’t change the abilities of the mega stones just to make other stones better, that’s ped mod territory. it’s kinda like reworking run away to be broken to make it good in aaa, if it makes sense. There’s always gonna be duds, alakazite and charizardite x exists. plues champions is coming soon and they’re actually gonna give those stones abilites come then, so this is just temporary at the time.

How is charizardite x even bad to begin with? Alakazite, sure. I get it, trace is bad. But tough claws is decent, & I know that the stats are wasted on sp.atk, but it’s at the very least decent. In my eyes, having a good ability over bad stats is better than having good stats with a bad ability. Starminite is supposed to have huge power/pure power, & the only time a mega stone had less or more than 100 bst increase was Zygardnite, & Zygardnite is also pretty decent. My point is, if you’re going to keep these bad abilities on mega stones with solid potential via base stats, give them a different ability for them, for example, instead of Skarmorite having keen eye, give it sturdy/weak armor instead. Much better abilities, no contest. There’s also the case of contrary on malamarite, & contrary isn’t the primary ability for malamar.

 

[Clas]

How is charizardite x even bad to begin with? Alakazite, sure. I get it, trace is bad. But tough claws is decent, & I know that the stats are wasted on sp.atk, but it’s at the very least decent. In my eyes, having a good ability over bad stats is better than having good stats with a bad ability.

no speed, +dragon secondary hurts its viability a ton since dragon moves notoriously suck physically and lack any distribution, and aero/meta/barb are just better

Starminite is supposed to have huge power/pure power, & the only time a mega stone had less or more than 100 bst increase was Zygardnite, & Zygardnite is also pretty decent.

we know, but since thats not how theyre coded in home (someone correct me on this if im wrong thanks, is it actually in z-a itself?) thats how they work. itd also be banned with huge power, so at least it has some fake viability currently. and by fake i mean its probably somewhat viable right now because the raw stats are really respectable, just ignore how it gives barely any speed and middling bulk

My point is, if you’re going to keep these bad abilities on mega stones with solid potential via base stats, give them a different ability for them, for example, instead of Skarmorite having keen eye, give it sturdy/weak armor instead. Much better abilities, no contest.

petmod territory, i.e. not permitted

There’s also the case of contrary on malamarite, & contrary isn’t the primary ability for malamar.

uhm brother what else is it running, infiltrator? contrary is what its known for

 

[Talpr0ne]

TBH, the new mega stones abilities are really underwhelming, just keeping the abilities of their previous forms. I play a lot of legends z-a Ou, & the mega stone abilities are better for… just making sense? Skarmorite, Meowsticite, all the starter mega stones, just all of the stones from Z-A & Mega Dimension(excluding Zygardnite because having +125 sp.atk is a good trade-off for not having a ability) should be fixed to what they are in the Z-A OU list. Will it break the meta? Maybe. But it’s better to have some mega stones changed, & after some testing, with Starminite, Pure Power is, by a landslide, much better than Illuminate, same goes for Hawluchanite, the other stones i mentioned, just take the pre-existing abilities from ZA OU, & fix em’ that way.

Just wait for the official abilities in Pokémon Champions then.

 

[Azeri8k]

Welp I’ve been roasted so hard about my opinions that at this point it’s pointless to even talk about anything with ability changes for the mega stones. Feel free to roast me about my “horrible” opinions, I will not care.

 

[Giagantic]

Welp I’ve been roasted so hard about my opinions that at this point it’s pointless to even talk about anything with ability changes for the mega stones. Feel free to roast me about my “horrible” opinions, I will not care.

No one roasted you, they just stated facts. Don't take things like that personally and they were polite about it as well...

If you read the original post I made and that which has been repeated several times, Other Metagames do not balance things by specifically targeting elements of a specific Pokemon. An OM modifies an element by introducing a concept like AAA letting all pokemon run any non-banned ability, that is all.

If you have any other questions please ask them, but this won't change and the current way of deciding their ability is a compromise that will remain until official abilities are released via Champions or Gen 10 (if neither do then they will remain as is).