-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
Metagame National Dex Metagame Discussion
- Thread starter R8
- Start date
I agree that 
is sort of overbearing now. Good offensive typing, mask boost and sd boost with taunt/encore makes it a terrifying breaker. Without tera almost the only check in the meta is 
and it can die to the superpower variant. It is true that tera dragon kinda solves the problem but +2 ivy still does about 30% to max def alo, and with taunt to block status and recover, these "checks" can barely do anything. And even 
needs to rely on tera and bring bodypress instead of STAB to beat pon. Also, if a mon forces you to bring some certain tera and prepare to click that at team preview, I think that already explains a lot just like its fire mask version. In practice, the only way to deal with pon is to "outplay" your oppo and trade mons with them, which isn't healthy to me.
TLDR: nothing can stop just sus it or ban it
is sort of overbearing now. Good offensive typing, mask boost and sd boost with taunt/encore makes it a terrifying breaker. Without tera almost the only check in the meta is and it can die to the superpower variant. It is true that tera dragon kinda solves the problem but +2 ivy still does about 30% to max def alo, and with taunt to block status and recover, these "checks" can barely do anything. And even needs to rely on tera and bring bodypress instead of STAB to beat pon. Also, if a mon forces you to bring some certain tera and prepare to click that at team preview, I think that already explains a lot just like its fire mask version. In practice, the only way to deal with pon is to "outplay" your oppo and trade mons with them, which isn't healthy to me.TLDR: nothing can stop
just sus it or ban it
On a side note. This tier’s council is doing a great job with the bans to have balance in this chaotic meta.
Which mons do y’all think got better or worse with Sneasler’s departure?
ftr i would like to say that any tiering action at the moment probably wont happen because of how close we are to dlc2, and even though historically dlcs dont make much of an impact on us bc we just get moves and a few new mons what the indigo disk has in store might be something we want to handle first before anything else. this doesnt throw anything like ogerpon being looked at out of the window though
+2 252 Atk Wellspring Mask Ogerpon-Wellspring Power Whip vs. 248 HP / 8 Def Latias-Mega: 189-222 (52 - 61.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+2 252 Atk Wellspring Mask Ogerpon-Wellspring Ivy Cudgel vs. 248 HP / 8 Def Latias-Mega: 156-185 (42.9 - 50.9%) -- 98% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock
+2 252 Atk Wellspring Mask Ogerpon-Wellspring Ivy Cudgel vs. 248 HP / 8 Def Latias-Mega: 156-185 (42.9 - 50.9%) -- 98% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock
neither of the lati twins wall it, they barely even check it, best latias can do is twave it because it does nothing back. u should see the latios calcs too
+2 252 Atk Wellspring Mask Tera Water Ogerpon-Wellspring-Tera Ivy Cudgel vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Latios-Mega: 246-290 (81.7 - 96.3%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
+2 252 Atk Wellspring Mask Tera Water Ogerpon-Wellspring-Tera Horn Leech vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Latios-Mega: 138-163 (45.8 - 54.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
these are two of my favourites, they make me laugh every time
mvenu is losing because spikes is the best move in the game, and has to play a 5050 between sludge and giga anyways, because giga does nothing if you domt tera, and sludge does nothing if you do! also…
+2 252 Atk Wellspring Mask Tera Water Ogerpon-Wellspring-Tera Ivy Cudgel vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Venusaur-Mega: 154-182 (42.4 - 50.1%) -- 92.6% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock
amoonguss is the same but not as bad because of smog and boots, but its still pretty bad
its speed tier is amazing lol, considering its a breaker, outside of scarfers / booster mons, theres barely anything that outspeeds (lop vile torn koko valiant zama (usual speed control options)…. and ace)
superpower is also really only for ferro, it can tech play rough to beat the dragons easier + the tera dragons, or it can run encore to ruin mons like dnite who swap in on cudgel and roost, or it can run taunt to make mons like pex and alo complete fodder, it can trailblaze so you literally cannot revenge kill it, etc etc etc
it can sd very easily and is not a hard choice for tera considering how fast and strong it is. idk if you have built in this tier before but if you have then i am suprised you would think this mon is an actual healthy thing lol. the spd boost most defensive comes into play, letting it live stuff like torn hits, scarf lele hits, val hits etc. consider also that 80% of the mons you listed are happily sitting around the c tier range, because of how badly they do in the meta outside of “checking“ ogerpon.
it deals a shit ton of dmg even to ferro, i dont recall exactly, but i think i had a match where a +3 ivy cudgel was enough to kill ferro in 2 hitsI agree that
TLDR: nothing can stop
As regarding to the above discussion on Ogerpon-Wellspring, I just want to mention how badly it is to counter on both a defensive and offensive perspective. Starting with the former, Ogerpon-Wellspring (henceforth referred to as Waterpon) hits hard, and has a movepool that, while not as vast as Iron Valiant's, is deep enough to have a move to KO any potential wall. Most notably, it has Low Kick, allowing it to easily KO heavy physical walls like Ferrothorn. Even without Low Kick, it can still deal a bunch of damage to that same Ferrothorn with Ivy Cudgel when it Teras, with a single Swords Dance boost being enough to 2HKO a 252 HP/252+ DEF Ferrothorn. As for the offensive side, when it Teras, it gains a new signature ability called Embody Aspect, giving it a +1 boost to its SPD. This on its own would not appear that bad, but when you consider it Teras into a pure Water type, it becomes much more apparent how bad this is. The only types super effective against a pure Water type are Grass and Electric, and the strongest possible moves on both types are all Special, meaning Waterpon is taking significantly less damage than it really should. And physical alternatives aren't great, with the strongest moves, Wood Hammer for Grass and Wild Charge for Electric, have a lot of recoil on them, meaning that you could potentially KO your own Pokemon by using the move for a potential chance to OHKO Waterpon and stop it from sweeping.
also to exacerbate the issue w/ waterpon teraing into an assault vest, grass and electric moves are neutral to it, and trying to hit it with a move that's SE on grass but neutral to water is just asking to get terad on and have waterpon take like 20% from your glowking sludge bomb, let alone its coverage for dragons or ability to speed boost and sweep with trailblaze
So what are we feeling like complaining about more now guys moistpon (next breaker that beats dozo and fat waters without being bad into everything else) or Ival (next fastest mon after sneas).
+ tera resus when? Atleast include tera on the next metagame tiering poll its a huge disservice to the community not to.
+ tera resus when? Atleast include tera on the next metagame tiering poll its a huge disservice to the community not to.
Personally I would say that Waterpon is the more immediate issue to deal with after The Indigo Disk is dealt with. Iron Valiant is manageable to a certain degree, but Waterpon is just beyond stupid.
hai can we ban wsterpon plz Mon is not okkkk no no no not okay sir. Click Sd and go to the races U have 1 check to ur stabs in ferro and u Just get superpowerd or if U tera dragon on (X) mon they will simply go into their team builder and replace sp with play rough and then u lose again. Also tera giving free spdef boost is stupid Af and not at all talked about enough as a factor pushing this jerk over the edge. Forces situations that should never happen also trailblaze shits on all Offensive cplay but the media won’t tell u that. Only thing keeping this Mon in check is the low cognitive function of our player base leading people to running spikes u turn on the pkmn that kills the entire tier. Thank U.
Jesus Christ even after reading that I cant understand wtf he is saying.
Regardless yes I agree waterpon is very difficult to check let alone counter and puts a huge strain on the already difficult team building process
THE UNFORNATE DEATH OF SNOW...
This just in... the massive snowstorm that previously caused havoc has recently shifted towards Ohio, meanwhile here in Natdex Ou it is one hell of a Wellspring. (I know, these puns keep getting better n better).
I'm pretty sure a lot of you didn't even noticed Alolan Ninetales's drop from OU, and it may also suprise no one why it dropped. In fact, some may even ask why is was OU in the first place. And I'm glad you ask this question (let's assume you did), cuz I'm here to answer that for you. Let's go back to the beginning of Gen 9 OU, where Snow was introduced. Before this, Snow was instead Hail, and for the most part, Hail wasn't really good, as it was outclassed by the other 3 weathers, minus for the niche of Aurora Veil. But in Gen 9, Hail was "replaced" with Snow, which was a pretty big buff. (The move Hail still exist however) Snow keeps some of the same benefits as Hail, including the abilities like Slush Rush and Snow Warning, but the main benefit is that Snow now grants a 50% defense to all Ice types instead of chipping all non Ice types every turn. This may not sound so impressive giving that Ice is the worse defensive type in the game, but a 50% defense buff is quite big. At first however, it wasn't seen often, as other archetypes at the time where just better. From the broken Shed Tail dual screens HO teams, to the copius amount of Walking Wake and Ogerpon Heartflame Sun teams, Snow just wasn't that gamebreaking by comparison. But after the first wave of DLCs came, things shifted massively in Snow's favor, as one of the staple mons of Snow teams, Baxcalibur, received a huge buff in the form of Scale Shot. This made Bax from an solid mon to a meta dominating behemoth. Thanks to this, Snow teams were finally taken seriously for the first time, as a Baxcalibur under Veil and Snow was probably one of the deadliest things to face. It did had competition with Koko Ho teams however, given how dominant they were with acess to not just Bax, but Bloodmoon Ursaluna and Sneasler as well. But it was still a force to be wreckon with, and it even made Alolan Ninetales rise to OU, proving of its dominance, until they took everything from them. When Baxcalibur got banned, Snow unfortunatetly died with it. Without acess to Bax, they didn't had neither a good weather abuser, nor a distinct factor over hyper offense teams, leaving it outclassed by Sun, Rain and Hyper Offense. In fact, it was so bad, it even became just as bad, if not worse, than Sand, which is not a good sign, leading to Alolan Ninetales dropping to UU.
But is there any hope to Snow? Maybe...
They issue in hand is that the abusers they have aren't good enough to justify using Snow in a series competetive setting over other archetypes (similar to Sand). Arctozolt is pretty good offensively, and its probably their best bet atm thanks to its amazing stab combo and Bolt Beak, but it's rather awful 55 speed for a Slush Rush sweeper makes it easy to revenge kill with a Scarfer, especially considering that "110 speed became the new 100". Cetitan seems like it was going somewhere, but it hasn't been paying out. It has a huge hp stat of 170, a decent 113 atk stat, and a somewhat workable 73 speed for a Slush Rush mon. It also has Belly Drum making it a potential lights out, but the problem is that is very risky to use due to Belly Drum cutting it's HP in half. It's a bit unfortunate that Snow is currently sitting next to Sand right now, as there seemed to be a lot of promise to it. Here is hoping for the better of Snow in the future.
This just in... the massive snowstorm that previously caused havoc has recently shifted towards Ohio, meanwhile here in Natdex Ou it is one hell of a Wellspring. (I know, these puns keep getting better n better).
I'm pretty sure a lot of you didn't even noticed Alolan Ninetales's drop from OU, and it may also suprise no one why it dropped. In fact, some may even ask why is was OU in the first place. And I'm glad you ask this question (let's assume you did), cuz I'm here to answer that for you. Let's go back to the beginning of Gen 9 OU, where Snow was introduced. Before this, Snow was instead Hail, and for the most part, Hail wasn't really good, as it was outclassed by the other 3 weathers, minus for the niche of Aurora Veil. But in Gen 9, Hail was "replaced" with Snow, which was a pretty big buff. (The move Hail still exist however) Snow keeps some of the same benefits as Hail, including the abilities like Slush Rush and Snow Warning, but the main benefit is that Snow now grants a 50% defense to all Ice types instead of chipping all non Ice types every turn. This may not sound so impressive giving that Ice is the worse defensive type in the game, but a 50% defense buff is quite big. At first however, it wasn't seen often, as other archetypes at the time where just better. From the broken Shed Tail dual screens HO teams, to the copius amount of Walking Wake and Ogerpon Heartflame Sun teams, Snow just wasn't that gamebreaking by comparison. But after the first wave of DLCs came, things shifted massively in Snow's favor, as one of the staple mons of Snow teams, Baxcalibur, received a huge buff in the form of Scale Shot. This made Bax from an solid mon to a meta dominating behemoth. Thanks to this, Snow teams were finally taken seriously for the first time, as a Baxcalibur under Veil and Snow was probably one of the deadliest things to face. It did had competition with Koko Ho teams however, given how dominant they were with acess to not just Bax, but Bloodmoon Ursaluna and Sneasler as well. But it was still a force to be wreckon with, and it even made Alolan Ninetales rise to OU, proving of its dominance, until they took everything from them. When Baxcalibur got banned, Snow unfortunatetly died with it. Without acess to Bax, they didn't had neither a good weather abuser, nor a distinct factor over hyper offense teams, leaving it outclassed by Sun, Rain and Hyper Offense. In fact, it was so bad, it even became just as bad, if not worse, than Sand, which is not a good sign, leading to Alolan Ninetales dropping to UU.
But is there any hope to Snow? Maybe...
They issue in hand is that the abusers they have aren't good enough to justify using Snow in a series competetive setting over other archetypes (similar to Sand). Arctozolt is pretty good offensively, and its probably their best bet atm thanks to its amazing stab combo and Bolt Beak, but it's rather awful 55 speed for a Slush Rush sweeper makes it easy to revenge kill with a Scarfer, especially considering that "110 speed became the new 100". Cetitan seems like it was going somewhere, but it hasn't been paying out. It has a huge hp stat of 170, a decent 113 atk stat, and a somewhat workable 73 speed for a Slush Rush mon. It also has Belly Drum making it a potential lights out, but the problem is that is very risky to use due to Belly Drum cutting it's HP in half. It's a bit unfortunate that Snow is currently sitting next to Sand right now, as there seemed to be a lot of promise to it. Here is hoping for the better of Snow in the future.
Attachments
Last edited:
" that previously caused has" the suspense on what it caused is killing me..
Yeah, that was purposesly to cause suspension. Clearly no grammar error of any kind.
So, we finally banned the brocken sneas, I wanted to share my thoughts about the new meta.
General meta Trends: In my humble opinion balance and bulky offense will domianate the new meta, sneas forced these teams to either use nishe pokemon like aegi and skele or tera reliant soft checks like tera ghost ferro, tera poison tusk, zap and ting lu. This made it harder for them to still check the plethora lof other threads and as a result mu fishs. The ban coupled with the overall decline in power levels will allow balance and bo stapels like garg, glisc, gking, zapdos, mola, lele and volc to thrive.
I have heard many ppl complain about this thing even before the ban. Getting +1 spdef for free by teraing, allows it to turn the tide on revengekillers like ival, koko, lele and z-torn, while being able to heal off chip damage with horn leach making it mutch more difficult to wear down. Its speed stat not only significantly shortens the list of revengekillers, but also allows pon to outspeed every pokemon in the tier that isnt ival in terrain or a weather mon after trailblaze; which is useful for punishing more offensiv teams, which try to switch around it with revengkillers, but sacrifices a lot of breaking power. Personally I prefer superpower in the last slot for the clean OHKO on ferro and non scarf kart as a bonus, superpower dosent do mutch do mutch outside of that though. Encore, Subsitute and Taunt are two intresting options which improve the wallbreaking capability of ogerpon by a lot, you can trick the opponent into teraing thier pex/mola and shut them down completly; using encore will give your opponent nightmares in general. There are very few reliable checks, which arent at risk of getting blown up by a certain 4th move, but I will discuss those later. There are a some checks, that are reliably beat most sets like tera dragon mola/pex, which take very little damge from pons STABs and put it on a timer with toxic and then either haze pons boosts away, stall it out with regenerator or switch into a revengkiller. This approach brings many with it though the first and most servere drawback is the mandatory tera, the ogerpon player can now use thier tera on an offensiv pokemon to make more progress and slow the opposing progress down with offensiv pressure, while thier opponent cant. So the ogerpon player has more time to win than thier opponent. The second iussue(s) are, the Taunt/Subsitute/Encore sets that I discussed and nishe coverage moves like play rough. Another "check" is ferrothorn that handels every non superpower set, but even against those it can be used to punish horn leech and cause prediction games with zaps static and lavados/volcs flame body, although the opponent can +2 252 Atk Wellspring Mask Tera Water Ogerpon-Wellspring-Tera Ivy Cudgel vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Zapdos: 396-466 (103.1 - 121.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO your zap too.
Alolamola can assit pon most crucially by passing it multiple Wishes throughout the game, which allows pon to trade health more liberally and punishes the many teams without a long term answer; mola can also bring ogerpon onto the field with flip turn and stop revengekillers with its enormus bulk, but exept against glisc, garg and gking trying to catch a toxic in for the former and lop for the latter you wont have many opportiunities. Ogerpon also pairs very well with especially special wallbreakers like fight-z lele and zap to lure/wear down ferro faster and almost guarantee a win against stall. I also wanted to highlight the role pon plays on (hyper) offense in containing rain with is water absorb making the opponent think twice about clicking thier strong water moves or at least prevent them from doing so twice with thier choice locked threads and threatining thier team back with a now rain boosted Ivy Cudgel that allows pon to beat even fully physically defensiv ferro without superpower by using sd on the switch, doing about half with Ivy Cudgel, taking about half form power whip (if the oppent even has that move) and then knocking it out with tera water, hazards or other prior chip ideally to keep water absorb.
could be considerd to be that pokemon that benifits the most from the from the ban of sneasler. Its talent in abusing tera to gain multiple boosts has been known since a long time, but with possibly the most consistent revengekiller gone volc very well could reach a new hight. I have always been a fan of bulky volc this gen, due to its usefulness as both a sweeper and a wall/soft check for ival, mega scizor, lop, zama, kart and medi, while helping with flame body shenanigans. In my opinion the best tera types on bulky sets rn are Grass and Steel with very differnt checks and counters, Tera Grass with flamethrower (or fiery dance if you are that sort of person), giga drain, roost and qd is almost the standard volc set, it can beat rain, if you manage to weaken the zap enough, I can beat garg 1v1 by forcing it to recover reapeatedly by threatinig the flame 2HKO (+2 0 SpA Tera Grass Volcarona Giga Drain vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Tera Fairy Garganacl: 160-190 (39.6 - 47%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery/ +3 0 SpA Tera Grass Volcarona Giga Drain vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Tera Fairy Garganacl: 201-237 (49.7 - 58.6%) -- 68.4% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery; +3 0 SpA Tera Grass Volcarona Flamethrower vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Tera Fairy Garganacl: 241-285 (59.6 - 70.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery) and healing off salt chip, although with the past promince of tera water and the emerging tera dragon, that used to be easier, it mere exsitence can trick prominet offensiv water types like ursh, hsam, rotom and weakend ogerpon into switching out against it, fearing the possibilety of getting used as a setup fodder and it can guarantee an OHKO against diancie, while requiring significantly less chip for ting lu, (m-)ttar and the rising mola. Tera grass has a lot of downsides though: it still has crippling weakness to flying, made wore by the fact that bulky volc wont be able to OHKO zap and torn (both will likely be better and more common in the new meta) without significant chip damage, volcs nemisis, toxic, is still as crippling, it cant even dream of touching tran (although that has been and will continue to decline in usage and viability) and its new fire weakness allows yard to beat volc, if it terad on a water type. Tera Steel has, exept it weakness to fire, a completly different set of weaknesses and setupfodders, its resistances to flying, fairy and psychic let it setup on torn, zap, diancie and scarf lele, some of which would be revengekillers otherwise, its resistance to normal, steel and ice make it harder for priority moves like lop fake out, zors bp and weavs ice shard to revengekill it, but it gains a crippling weakness to ground, although glisc and (most of the time) lando can OHKO it and it gets absolutly stonewalled and destroyed by garg. This set usally runs hp ground as the coverage move, although psychic and giga drain might also work.
But the best part about this set is that it fixes volcs biggest iussue: Toxic. This mostly help against mola and gking which go from counters to setupfodder, unfortunatly many Toxic users like tran, lando and glisc can now threaten it with thier stabs, but they will most likely use Toxic against an unterad volc, you can qd with tera steel on toxic and then survive one hit on another qd (if they are weakend enough) or Flamethrower and followed by (another) Flamethrower and you have a +1 or +2 volc on the field (Examples: lando tran).
this mon is very addicting, after the ban, running a classic speedcontrol is mutch more worth it again and the wallbreaking set is as annoying as ever. Although scarf lele is as prediction reliant as it always was, but due to the shift to bos and balnces this gives lele more opportinities to lele, which means that the opponent is the one who relies on predictions to beat lele and if it doesnt psychic into a dark type or moonblast into a gking or pex, especially tera psy/fairy boosted attacks will always do valuable chip damage. lele also benefits from the slight drop in tar usage, which allows lele to make progress in alomst every game. It does still do scarf lele things as always, but I wanted to highlight Future Sight as a powerful wallbreaking tool, it will almost guarantee a kill if you can bring in a physical thread, this works best with zama in my experience, you have to drop either psychic or psychock though. There are also still the wallbreaker set with psy/fight z, cm, psychock, focus blast/hp fire and moon blast. This is relativly self explanetory, fight z is a nice steel lure and while psy z is good at nuking rondom threads like zap, mola, torn, lando and unterad pon and is a surprisingly effectiv emergency option for idef garg and sd glisc. Most ppl expecting (locked!) scarf lele also helps a lot when it comes to scoring surprise k.o.s and in the information game in general, so keep this set a secret as long as possible. You can break the defensiv backbone of balance and bo with this easely, but for well build fats and stalls you will need additional support such as hazardstacking, knock, wish and pivoting support from mola and/or another breaker like pon, zap, medi, diancie or iron hands. A specs set might work too, but I prefer the ability to switch moves + Z Moves of the cm set
the underrated C-Tier Grasses:
I told you I would talk about the universal pon checks later and here we are, these three can beat pretty mutch all pons if they arent heavily weakend and force pon out by threatining it with giga drain/horn leech, but they have a lot of defensiv and offensiv utility in many other mus. The best, mega venu, is also a surprisingly good wallbreaker that will either tear the opposing team apart with its hard hitting neutral coverage and sludge bomp poision or it will do noting offensivly against a mega zor or a blob, although this rarely happens due to thier low usage. It will almost always have defensiv value (which gives it more opportiunities to wallbreak) a toxic and lech seed-immunity coupled with being a solid knock absorber, quite bulky overall and a great typing and can help its team out against a plethora of threads like ival, hsam, glisc, kart, rain/water in general, ferro, mola, pex, the aforementiond pon ( you have to be carefully against it though as if can defead venu with tera + chip, hazards, 2 max rolls and a giga min roll, so venu is a more soft check), tera fairy/water garg (it can at least force the others to tera). Its ability to take almost every not super effectiv hit once and retaliate with a strong counterattak I havent tried this out, but a set of giga drain, hp fire, lech seed, synthesis and a phys def oriented spread sounds very annoying to deal with. Amoonguss is very simular to venu due to its typing, but it trades the wallbreaking power for spore (pls dont forget that you cant spore things in etrrain), regenerator, the ability to hold an item and higher bulk. When it comes to defensiv utility is mostly does the same jobs as venu, but better. As an item I pefer boots, due to the few good defoggers rn, but rocky helmet, leftovers and eject pack all have nice too. Last but not least we have bulu, which has a different but simular typing as the other two. bulu mostly relies on grassy terrain for its nice as it can disrupt opposing terrain, get 12% recovery each turn and help out its teammates with a reduced eq and passiv recovery. Although it doesnt like getting parad or knocked it makes up for that with its huge bulk, avoiding the 2HKO by lop, lele, diancie, it is probably the best pon check in the game as it 2HKOs non tera pon while gaining health back with horn leech, it can force garg to tera, while salt cure is mitigated by leftovers + terrain (it can only fish for a crit at +6 vs non tera water) and it can beat sd glisc 1v1 by not getting 2HKOed and spamming +2 horn lech. With sd and stone edge it can become a huge thread itself, scoring surprise kills agaist yard, volc, zap, torn.
mola, glisc, garg I have written way too mutch, but I wanted to at least mention these three, they will be the defensiv cornerstones of the balance/bo new meta, mola passes wishes (with still has 16pp for whatever reason) all day to gives your threads multiple lives and provides a slow regen pivot, glisc massivly benefits from less (hyper-) offense teams and dominates the tier with its many sets, that are all one of the best in sweeping, knocking, hazardsetting and -removal respectivly. The cornel salt stacker also benefits from less offense and it is almost impossible now to handle all of its different tera variants with one mon. Its idef set is a scary as ever due to the decline in power levels and only very few teams use a solid salt cure absorber like coat pex and knock clef. I would consider the latter two as future suspect candidates.
Ban Tera
General meta Trends: In my humble opinion balance and bulky offense will domianate the new meta, sneas forced these teams to either use nishe pokemon like aegi and skele or tera reliant soft checks like tera ghost ferro, tera poison tusk, zap and ting lu. This made it harder for them to still check the plethora lof other threads and as a result mu fishs. The ban coupled with the overall decline in power levels will allow balance and bo stapels like garg, glisc, gking, zapdos, mola, lele and volc to thrive.
I have heard many ppl complain about this thing even before the ban. Getting +1 spdef for free by teraing, allows it to turn the tide on revengekillers like ival, koko, lele and z-torn, while being able to heal off chip damage with horn leach making it mutch more difficult to wear down. Its speed stat not only significantly shortens the list of revengekillers, but also allows pon to outspeed every pokemon in the tier that isnt ival in terrain or a weather mon after trailblaze; which is useful for punishing more offensiv teams, which try to switch around it with revengkillers, but sacrifices a lot of breaking power. Personally I prefer superpower in the last slot for the clean OHKO on ferro and non scarf kart as a bonus, superpower dosent do mutch do mutch outside of that though. Encore, Subsitute and Taunt are two intresting options which improve the wallbreaking capability of ogerpon by a lot, you can trick the opponent into teraing thier pex/mola and shut them down completly; using encore will give your opponent nightmares in general. There are very few reliable checks, which arent at risk of getting blown up by a certain 4th move, but I will discuss those later. There are a some checks, that are reliably beat most sets like tera dragon mola/pex, which take very little damge from pons STABs and put it on a timer with toxic and then either haze pons boosts away, stall it out with regenerator or switch into a revengkiller. This approach brings many with it though the first and most servere drawback is the mandatory tera, the ogerpon player can now use thier tera on an offensiv pokemon to make more progress and slow the opposing progress down with offensiv pressure, while thier opponent cant. So the ogerpon player has more time to win than thier opponent. The second iussue(s) are, the Taunt/Subsitute/Encore sets that I discussed and nishe coverage moves like play rough. Another "check" is ferrothorn that handels every non superpower set, but even against those it can be used to punish horn leech and cause prediction games with zaps static and lavados/volcs flame body, although the opponent can +2 252 Atk Wellspring Mask Tera Water Ogerpon-Wellspring-Tera Ivy Cudgel vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Zapdos: 396-466 (103.1 - 121.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO your zap too.Alolamola can assit pon most crucially by passing it multiple Wishes throughout the game, which allows pon to trade health more liberally and punishes the many teams without a long term answer; mola can also bring ogerpon onto the field with flip turn and stop revengekillers with its enormus bulk, but exept against glisc, garg and gking trying to catch a toxic in for the former and lop for the latter you wont have many opportiunities. Ogerpon also pairs very well with especially special wallbreakers like fight-z lele and zap to lure/wear down ferro faster and almost guarantee a win against stall. I also wanted to highlight the role pon plays on (hyper) offense in containing rain with is water absorb making the opponent think twice about clicking thier strong water moves or at least prevent them from doing so twice with thier choice locked threads and threatining thier team back with a now rain boosted Ivy Cudgel that allows pon to beat even fully physically defensiv ferro without superpower by using sd on the switch, doing about half with Ivy Cudgel, taking about half form power whip (if the oppent even has that move) and then knocking it out with tera water, hazards or other prior chip ideally to keep water absorb.
could be considerd to be that pokemon that benifits the most from the from the ban of sneasler. Its talent in abusing tera to gain multiple boosts has been known since a long time, but with possibly the most consistent revengekiller gone volc very well could reach a new hight. I have always been a fan of bulky volc this gen, due to its usefulness as both a sweeper and a wall/soft check for ival, mega scizor, lop, zama, kart and medi, while helping with flame body shenanigans. In my opinion the best tera types on bulky sets rn are Grass and Steel with very differnt checks and counters, Tera Grass with flamethrower (or fiery dance if you are that sort of person), giga drain, roost and qd is almost the standard volc set, it can beat rain, if you manage to weaken the zap enough, I can beat garg 1v1 by forcing it to recover reapeatedly by threatinig the flame 2HKO (+2 0 SpA Tera Grass Volcarona Giga Drain vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Tera Fairy Garganacl: 160-190 (39.6 - 47%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery/ +3 0 SpA Tera Grass Volcarona Giga Drain vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Tera Fairy Garganacl: 201-237 (49.7 - 58.6%) -- 68.4% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery; +3 0 SpA Tera Grass Volcarona Flamethrower vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Tera Fairy Garganacl: 241-285 (59.6 - 70.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery) and healing off salt chip, although with the past promince of tera water and the emerging tera dragon, that used to be easier, it mere exsitence can trick prominet offensiv water types like ursh, hsam, rotom and weakend ogerpon into switching out against it, fearing the possibilety of getting used as a setup fodder and it can guarantee an OHKO against diancie, while requiring significantly less chip for ting lu, (m-)ttar and the rising mola. Tera grass has a lot of downsides though: it still has crippling weakness to flying, made wore by the fact that bulky volc wont be able to OHKO zap and torn (both will likely be better and more common in the new meta) without significant chip damage, volcs nemisis, toxic, is still as crippling, it cant even dream of touching tran (although that has been and will continue to decline in usage and viability) and its new fire weakness allows yard to beat volc, if it terad on a water type. Tera Steel has, exept it weakness to fire, a completly different set of weaknesses and setupfodders, its resistances to flying, fairy and psychic let it setup on torn, zap, diancie and scarf lele, some of which would be revengekillers otherwise, its resistance to normal, steel and ice make it harder for priority moves like lop fake out, zors bp and weavs ice shard to revengekill it, but it gains a crippling weakness to ground, although glisc and (most of the time) lando can OHKO it and it gets absolutly stonewalled and destroyed by garg. This set usally runs hp ground as the coverage move, although psychic and giga drain might also work.But the best part about this set is that it fixes volcs biggest iussue: Toxic. This mostly help against mola and gking which go from counters to setupfodder, unfortunatly many Toxic users like tran, lando and glisc can now threaten it with thier stabs, but they will most likely use Toxic against an unterad volc, you can qd with tera steel on toxic and then survive one hit on another qd (if they are weakend enough) or Flamethrower and followed by (another) Flamethrower and you have a +1 or +2 volc on the field (Examples: lando tran).
this mon is very addicting, after the ban, running a classic speedcontrol is mutch more worth it again and the wallbreaking set is as annoying as ever. Although scarf lele is as prediction reliant as it always was, but due to the shift to bos and balnces this gives lele more opportinities to lele, which means that the opponent is the one who relies on predictions to beat lele and if it doesnt psychic into a dark type or moonblast into a gking or pex, especially tera psy/fairy boosted attacks will always do valuable chip damage. lele also benefits from the slight drop in tar usage, which allows lele to make progress in alomst every game. It does still do scarf lele things as always, but I wanted to highlight Future Sight as a powerful wallbreaking tool, it will almost guarantee a kill if you can bring in a physical thread, this works best with zama in my experience, you have to drop either psychic or psychock though. There are also still the wallbreaker set with psy/fight z, cm, psychock, focus blast/hp fire and moon blast. This is relativly self explanetory, fight z is a nice steel lure and while psy z is good at nuking rondom threads like zap, mola, torn, lando and unterad pon and is a surprisingly effectiv emergency option for idef garg and sd glisc. Most ppl expecting (locked!) scarf lele also helps a lot when it comes to scoring surprise k.o.s and in the information game in general, so keep this set a secret as long as possible. You can break the defensiv backbone of balance and bo with this easely, but for well build fats and stalls you will need additional support such as hazardstacking, knock, wish and pivoting support from mola and/or another breaker like pon, zap, medi, diancie or iron hands. A specs set might work too, but I prefer the ability to switch moves + Z Moves of the cm setthe underrated C-Tier Grasses:
I told you I would talk about the universal pon checks later and here we are, these three can beat pretty mutch all pons if they arent heavily weakend and force pon out by threatining it with giga drain/horn leech, but they have a lot of defensiv and offensiv utility in many other mus. The best, mega venu, is also a surprisingly good wallbreaker that will either tear the opposing team apart with its hard hitting neutral coverage and sludge bomp poision or it will do noting offensivly against a mega zor or a blob, although this rarely happens due to thier low usage. It will almost always have defensiv value (which gives it more opportiunities to wallbreak) a toxic and lech seed-immunity coupled with being a solid knock absorber, quite bulky overall and a great typing and can help its team out against a plethora of threads like ival, hsam, glisc, kart, rain/water in general, ferro, mola, pex, the aforementiond pon ( you have to be carefully against it though as if can defead venu with tera + chip, hazards, 2 max rolls and a giga min roll, so venu is a more soft check), tera fairy/water garg (it can at least force the others to tera). Its ability to take almost every not super effectiv hit once and retaliate with a strong counterattak I havent tried this out, but a set of giga drain, hp fire, lech seed, synthesis and a phys def oriented spread sounds very annoying to deal with. Amoonguss is very simular to venu due to its typing, but it trades the wallbreaking power for spore (pls dont forget that you cant spore things in etrrain), regenerator, the ability to hold an item and higher bulk. When it comes to defensiv utility is mostly does the same jobs as venu, but better. As an item I pefer boots, due to the few good defoggers rn, but rocky helmet, leftovers and eject pack all have nice too. Last but not least we have bulu, which has a different but simular typing as the other two. bulu mostly relies on grassy terrain for its nice as it can disrupt opposing terrain, get 12% recovery each turn and help out its teammates with a reduced eq and passiv recovery. Although it doesnt like getting parad or knocked it makes up for that with its huge bulk, avoiding the 2HKO by lop, lele, diancie, it is probably the best pon check in the game as it 2HKOs non tera pon while gaining health back with horn leech, it can force garg to tera, while salt cure is mitigated by leftovers + terrain (it can only fish for a crit at +6 vs non tera water) and it can beat sd glisc 1v1 by not getting 2HKOed and spamming +2 horn lech. With sd and stone edge it can become a huge thread itself, scoring surprise kills agaist yard, volc, zap, torn.mola, glisc, garg I have written way too mutch, but I wanted to at least mention these three, they will be the defensiv cornerstones of the balance/bo new meta, mola passes wishes (with still has 16pp for whatever reason) all day to gives your threads multiple lives and provides a slow regen pivot, glisc massivly benefits from less (hyper-) offense teams and dominates the tier with its many sets, that are all one of the best in sweeping, knocking, hazardsetting and -removal respectivly. The cornel salt stacker also benefits from less offense and it is almost impossible now to handle all of its different tera variants with one mon. Its idef set is a scary as ever due to the decline in power levels and only very few teams use a solid salt cure absorber like coat pex and knock clef. I would consider the latter two as future suspect candidates.
Ban Tera
Blud wrote the complete works of William Shakespeare.So, we finally banned the brocken sneas, I wanted to share my thoughts about the new meta.
General meta Trends: In my humble opinion balance and bulky offense will domianate the new meta, sneas forced these teams to either use nishe pokemon like aegi and skele or tera reliant soft checks like tera ghost ferro, tera poison tusk, zap and ting lu. This made it harder for them to still check the plethora lof other threads and as a result mu fishs. The ban coupled with the overall decline in power levels will allow balance and bo stapels like garg, glisc, gking, zapdos, mola, lele and volc to thrive.
Alolamola can assit pon most crucially by passing it multiple Wishes throughout the game, which allows pon to trade health more liberally and punishes the many teams without a long term answer; mola can also bring ogerpon onto the field with flip turn and stop revengekillers with its enormus bulk, but exept against glisc, garg and gking trying to catch a toxic in for the former and lop for the latter you wont have many opportiunities. Ogerpon also pairs very well with especially special wallbreakers like fight-z lele and zap to lure/wear down ferro faster and almost guarantee a win against stall. I also wanted to highlight the role pon plays on (hyper) offense in containing rain with is water absorb making the opponent think twice about clicking thier strong water moves or at least prevent them from doing so twice with thier choice locked threads and threatining thier team back with a now rain boosted Ivy Cudgel that allows pon to beat even fully physically defensiv ferro without superpower by using sd on the switch, doing about half with Ivy Cudgel, taking about half form power whip (if the oppent even has that move) and then knocking it out with tera water, hazards or other prior chip ideally to keep water absorb.
But the best part about this set is that it fixes volcs biggest iussue: Toxic. This mostly help against mola and gking which go from counters to setupfodder, unfortunatly many Toxic users like tran, lando and glisc can now threaten it with thier stabs, but they will most likely use Toxic against an unterad volc, you can qd with tera steel on toxic and then survive one hit on another qd (if they are weakend enough) or Flamethrower and followed by (another) Flamethrower and you have a +1 or +2 volc on the field (Examples: lando tran).
the underrated C-Tier Grasses:
mola, glisc, garg I have written way too mutch, but I wanted to at least mention these three, they will be the defensiv cornerstones of the balance/bo new meta, mola passes wishes (with still has 16pp for whatever reason) all day to gives your threads multiple lives and provides a slow regen pivot, glisc massivly benefits from less (hyper-) offense teams and dominates the tier with its many sets, that are all one of the best in sweeping, knocking, hazardsetting and -removal respectivly. The cornel salt stacker also benefits from less offense and it is almost impossible now to handle all of its different tera variants with one mon. Its idef set is a scary as ever due to the decline in power levels and only very few teams use a solid salt cure absorber like coat pex and knock clef. I would consider the latter two as future suspect candidates.
Ban Tera
Anyways yes absolutely ban tera shit is broken and adds very little to the metagame other than headaches.
I agree with the above, ban tera. Most of the recent bans, kingambit (flying/fairy), ghodengo (fighting), bax (fire), sneasler (flying) and maybe even bloodmoon (poison) were probably pushed over the edge by how good they were at using tera, and would perhaps be allowed back into the tier after a tera ban. Getting rid of your weaknesses, especially on setup sweepers, is a dumb mechanic only kept in check by itself (a version of broken counters broken and who uses it better). Add a very strong stab and maybe even tera blast and you get a pretty much random mechanic, with way too much variance and catastrophical outcomes when it comes to a prediction. It resembles dynamax, with games coming down to who uses it better and using your tera to stop your opponent’s tera. For example, see the heatran vs volc matchup. While heatran is favored, good switching and tactics can turn it around. Even the ev spread decisions are relevant and definitely rewarded or punished. Add tera to this and it turns into a randomness of many ramifications, kicking all skill and prep out of the picture (grass vs grass with or without bug buzz, grass vs psychic, bug vs psychic, and other scenarios). If volc wins, its very likely a sweep, so the consequences for this random outcome are severe. I even ran a team with tera ground rotomw for the otherwise very bad koko matchup. Literally impossible to predict and very punishing for the opponent. The balance for this is that I would continue the game without my tera to stop his tera, which is a dumb concept.
Tera makes the amazing mons even better, gives very little to the average mon while reducing the skill factor and is really only balanced by the cheese tactics it enables (such as the volc example or tera ghost to counter tera normal espeed dragonite).
Tera makes the amazing mons even better, gives very little to the average mon while reducing the skill factor and is really only balanced by the cheese tactics it enables (such as the volc example or tera ghost to counter tera normal espeed dragonite).
Raging Bolt is here!
I wanna say that I think this thing has a lot of potential. It has some good qualities that I think could definitely be explored more. For one, it serves as a wallbreaker with some relatively good bulk. While Dragon/Electric does give you four common weaknesses in fairy, dragon, ice and ground, you also resist fire, grass, water, flying, steel and quad resist electric. So that is nice. Plus Thunderclap has some defensive utility against opposing fast attackers since it works like sucker punch. I also think Substitute on this thing could be very potent as it has the bulk to set substitutes against slower blobs like Toxapex, Dondozo and especially Alomomola.
Has to be seen in greater detail and is probably a UU Pokemon but I bet that this thing can work in OU akin to say Iron Hands. Let's see how it goes. Happy hunting.
I wanna say that I think this thing has a lot of potential. It has some good qualities that I think could definitely be explored more. For one, it serves as a wallbreaker with some relatively good bulk. While Dragon/Electric does give you four common weaknesses in fairy, dragon, ice and ground, you also resist fire, grass, water, flying, steel and quad resist electric. So that is nice. Plus Thunderclap has some defensive utility against opposing fast attackers since it works like sucker punch. I also think Substitute on this thing could be very potent as it has the bulk to set substitutes against slower blobs like Toxapex, Dondozo and especially Alomomola.
Has to be seen in greater detail and is probably a UU Pokemon but I bet that this thing can work in OU akin to say Iron Hands. Let's see how it goes. Happy hunting.
This mon is not a UU mon what. it's really good. The bulk, the power, the excellent priority...
Wanted to give my first opinions on this mon (may not be exactly correct)So we all know that when this thing Teras, it is broken. A combination of extremely high bulk, spatk the same as lele, and a permastab on everything (which is even worse due to it’s insane coverage and access to calm mind) make it very difficult to deal with. But, what about the Terastal form? What if we were in a meta where this was allowed but not its stellar form? It isn’t insanely broken like it is when it Teras. It has… ok stats I guess but the movepool and ability really make it stand out. The ability is basically multiscale on crack which helps it to take on many offensive threats in the tier such as iron valiant and lele. Of course with its unimpressive base 105 spatk it’s not going to be doing much to stuff like Zama and waterpon but it can still cripple those with toxic (yes it gets toxic). It has a very nice movepool as well with some neat options like rapid spin, rocks, toxic, roar, setup like rock polish and calm mind, and some pretty nice coverage to beat anything it wants such as flamethrower and earth power. It has no recovery but that can be solved by pairing it with Mola so it can continuously check offensive stuff and use whatever moves you give it. you would use this over tusk as a spinner potentially because it can beat rockers like Lando, Ferro, and Mdia with little ease due to its coverage as well as cripple defensive and offensive mons alike with toxic. A set I’m thinking of is boots with flamethrower spin toxic and either ep rocks roar or ice beam and probably spdef spread I’m assuming but physdef can also work. Of course if you want to use stellar form as it is currently legal you probably want to run calm mind+rock polish.
Get terapagos stellar out of here pls
Ive been liking Raging Bolt + Rillaboom, its a nice offensive core for the bulky offense teams where Raging Bolt will most likely fit well on. For sure has a solid place in this tier.
Raging Bolt @ Leftovers / Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Protosynthesis
EVs: 100 HP / 252 SpA / 156 Spe (outspeeds defensive tusk), you can use 232 / 252 / 24 to maximize bulk while outspeeding msciz and defensive heatran
Modest Nature
Tera: Fairy / Ground / Electric
- Thunderclap
- Calm Mind
- Dragon Pulse
- Volt Switch / Thunderbolt / Tera Blast
Archaludon looks like a solid glue Pokemon for rain teams, Stealth Rock + 3 attacks seems good as do AV sets. It has nothing that makes it broken but a lot of positive traits, fantastic typing, stamina, usable movepool and the ability to break past would be checks on rain like av torn and heatran. It's going to be best on rain but isn't specific to that.
Hydrapple is cool, another RegenVest user. The typing is not as great as the others but you have a good set of resistances, most notably 4x to ogerpon's stabs. Fickle Beam is a cool move too.
Iron Boulder is a great speed control pokemon, Tera Fire Terablast SD to break through steels and resist Bullet Punch sounds interesting.
I have no idea how stellar Tera Type works, would enamorus get an additional boost on moonblast, would stellar Tera Blast have the same effectiveness of normal Tera Blast on steel and ghosts or would it be neutral on everything unless the opponent teras? Will it lose the stab on stellar terablast too after it uses the move once? Enamorus seems cool though, scarf sets will likely make a comeback. That's the sole pokemon I see using stellar though, Serperior is better off using Tera Water. Tera Water Serperior is an incredible buff and lets it break past Heatran, moltres, and volcarona more easily, excited to see how it turns out.
Iron Crown has that broken Psychic noise move but I don't expect much from it. Gouging Fire is just a way worse Zard X
Ive been liking Raging Bolt + Rillaboom, its a nice offensive core for the bulky offense teams where Raging Bolt will most likely fit well on. For sure has a solid place in this tier.
Raging Bolt @ Leftovers / Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Protosynthesis
EVs: 100 HP / 252 SpA / 156 Spe (outspeeds defensive tusk), you can use 232 / 252 / 24 to maximize bulk while outspeeding msciz and defensive heatran
Modest Nature
Tera: Fairy / Ground / Electric
- Thunderclap
- Calm Mind
- Dragon Pulse
- Volt Switch / Thunderbolt / Tera Blast
Archaludon looks like a solid glue Pokemon for rain teams, Stealth Rock + 3 attacks seems good as do AV sets. It has nothing that makes it broken but a lot of positive traits, fantastic typing, stamina, usable movepool and the ability to break past would be checks on rain like av torn and heatran. It's going to be best on rain but isn't specific to that.
Hydrapple is cool, another RegenVest user. The typing is not as great as the others but you have a good set of resistances, most notably 4x to ogerpon's stabs. Fickle Beam is a cool move too.
Iron Boulder is a great speed control pokemon, Tera Fire Terablast SD to break through steels and resist Bullet Punch sounds interesting.
I have no idea how stellar Tera Type works, would enamorus get an additional boost on moonblast, would stellar Tera Blast have the same effectiveness of normal Tera Blast on steel and ghosts or would it be neutral on everything unless the opponent teras? Will it lose the stab on stellar terablast too after it uses the move once? Enamorus seems cool though, scarf sets will likely make a comeback. That's the sole pokemon I see using stellar though, Serperior is better off using Tera Water. Tera Water Serperior is an incredible buff and lets it break past Heatran, moltres, and volcarona more easily, excited to see how it turns out.
Iron Crown has that broken Psychic noise move but I don't expect much from it. Gouging Fire is just a way worse Zard X
Exactly! I have a hard time saying which pokemon really stand out because ofTterastal. So many battles beeing decided on a Terastal fifth fifth
Similar threads
- Locked
