Metagame NP: NU Stage 10 - Kids See Ghosts

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etern

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NU Leader



Hi everyone, thank you for being patient, we've finally received the drops and gains of the major tier shift. They are the following:

Lost: Gastrodon, Toxicroak,
Gained: Decidueye, Hoopa, Dhelmise, Quagsire, Aerodactyl


Use this thread for general discussion of the tier, interesting sets, cores, and anything you've found effective or useful in the current metagame. Don't discuss or spectate on any quickbans and dont theorymon about retesting banned Pokemon. The council will be discussing and evaluating any problematic elements brought by or amplified by the most recent tier shift and have a vote on them this week. Any one-liners or inappropriate posts are being deleted and run the risk of being infracted, so don't do it. Finally, we'll keep everyone posted in regards to whether on not the post-tiershift meta will be included in NU Open r2, so stay tuned for that. Enjoy!​
 

Rabia

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ban hoopa

This mon is insane as hell though. While it's sort of held back by its average Speed, Hoopa almost mandates a Pursuit user on every team right now just to deal with it since its more than passable Special Defense allows Hoopa to pivot in on more passive stuff like Slowking and Vaporeon, only really fearing a Scald burn or, in Vaporeon's case (and other passive things), Toxic. I'm definitely loving Substitute + 3 attacks Fight-Z Hoopa. Substitute lets you not get Pursuit trapped by Sneasel while Fight-Z + dual STAB coverage isn't resisted by anything relevant. I am interested in how other sets like OTR and Specs would work, specifically OTR since I feel that further removes counterplay like Pursuit trapping and revenge killing.

Decidueye has also been really irksome to deal with because of its signature Z-move letting it nuke whatever it wants (can also run Grassium Z), though Incineroar being literally the most used Pokemon currently should hold Decidueye back some. I also see defensive Defog sets rising since Decidueye can do that, as well as some other meme stuff like Scarf and Nasty Plot probably at least being tried out.

Dhelmise was pretty fine when I used it. It's another Rapid Spin user that beats every Stealth Rocker in the tier. Anchor Shot is the obvious benefit to using it over Blastoise imo since it generates free momentum.

Aerodactyl was useless the one game I had it in. On paper it should derank Lycanroc off the VR as an HO suicide lead, and offensive sets like Hone Claws seem cool. I don't know where this thing will wind up and frankly, I could see it anywhere from mid-A to mid-B VR-wise.

Quagsire will give stall another wincon. All I really have to comment here is my wondering about Pyuku's fate with Quag in the tier. I don't play Stall so I don't quite understand the implications this drop has atm.

1531729452461.png

I mentioned Sneasel earlier when talking about Hoopa. Sneasel is looking really great after this shift, clapping back most of the drops quite well while losing an offensive switch-in in Toxicroak. Furthermore, the potential decline in Slowbro usage would further bolster Sneasel's effectiveness. While Incineroar and Diancie both still exist and give Sneasel problems, I'd say Sneasel is as best as it has been since post-Emboar ban.

1531729569705.png

Busted team player cat got better too, naturally. Incineroar is the tier's most reliable defensive switch-in to Decidueye, and can pivot on Hoopa's STAB moves. I don't see Aerodactyl's inclusion having too much of an affect on Incineroar, though another revenge killer for the cat will be nice to have.

1531729734310.png

literally these drops are all blizzard fodder and again, potential for decline in Slowbro usage = good for vani

edit:
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I think Toxicroak's leaving is really, really beneficial for Scrafty as it opens the door not only for another setup Fighting Pokemon to "replace" it, but also helps Scrafty in breaking teams since Toxicroak was a pretty solid answer defensively. Also preys on all the new Ghost-types in the tier while having a fine enough Speed tier to reliably boost its Speed (though needs +2 to relevantly beat stuff like Passimian).
 
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Fragmented

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gonna give some thoughts on the drops and meta after an hour of playing (not much tbh). i'm kind of inactive so forgive me if i get some facts wrong.

Drops
Hoopa:
Borderline broken, if not broken. 3 attacks + Sub is arguably its best set, since scarf is outpaced by Passimian anyway. Fightinium and Ghostium are both good, with the former remedying the accuracy issue of Focus Blast while the latter is just an all round nuke to non-resists. Sub allows it to win Sucker Punch mind games, unless you run stuff like Spiritomb and fast bat to check it. Honestly, nothing enjoys switching in on Hoopa's perfect coverage (for the meta at least), and I wouldn't mind if this got quickbanned since prepping for it is a pain.

Decidueye:
Pretty cool mon, the one I was most hyped for tbh. SD sweeper is cool, although it's hard to find set-up opportunities in the current meta due to the prevalence of Passimian and Incineroar, the latter checking most SD sets bar like Z-Low Sweep or something niche. I haven't experimented with a supportive defog set yet, although it does have the movepool to perform as such, with tools like Roost for longevity and U-turn for momentum. It also has a nice niche in stall breaking with SubRoost + Spirit Shackle. Nasty Plot might be worth a try and Scarf is definitely bad due to rugby monkey outspeeding anyway.

Dhelmise:
Hazard remover that beats hazard setters, while also providing utility in trapping. It has decent bulk though along with a monstrous attack stat and a decent movepool to play around with. It'll probably function as a slow breaker with SD + 3 Attacks or as hazard removal with Synthesis and 2 other attacks. Honestly haven't played with this as much, and although being able to trap is nice, it's typing doesn't really help it much in a meta dominated by Incineroar. What it's typing does do, however, is allow it to be a counter/check to Heliolsik (which will probably start to run Dark Pulse now) and bulky waters like Slowbro and Vaporeon. It hates the Knock Off and U-turn spam from Passimian and Incineroar in general, but it could do well in the meta.

Aerodactyl:
Being the second fastest mon in the meta has its benefits. 130 base speed allow it to outspeed the entire un-Scarfed metagame, almost guaranteeing Stealth Rocks turn 1. It definitely functions as a better suicide lead than Lycanroc and Archeops, but in a more bulky oriented metagame with defoggers on nearly every team, setting rocks and then dying isn't that great. LO Roost 3 attacks might be cool to try out, with Fire Blast for Lix, Earthquake for more consistent damage or even Pursuit since you scare out most offensive mons and can chunk them as well.

Quagsire:
Everyone already knows what this mon does, but what's noteworthy is that it's probably our best Incineroar check bar WP Power Trip. It isn't as passive as Pyukumuku, and can set up alongside Incineroar or just Toxic and Scald it to death. It does get Haze to invalidate those stat boosts, resetting Power Trip's base power. Other than that, it doesn't really function that much differently from Pyuku in being an Unaware mon.

252+ Atk Incineroar Darkest Lariat vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Quagsire: 112-133 (28.4 - 33.7%) -- 97.7% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Incineroar Malicious Moonsault vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Quagsire: 237-280 (60.1 - 71%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

Rises
Didn't mention that I was going to write this but here we go:

Gastrodon:
Not a big deal, as most people already said. It was a decent check to Heliolisk, Rotom and handled other Waters pretty well. However, we still got the tools for that.

Toxicroak:
Don't know if this mon was busted or not, but it was one of the main things keeping Incineroar in check. It got decent usage in RU due to it being able to switch into Barbaracle's STAB and also abusing passive stuff like Registeel and Milotic for setup (could probably be wrong about this). NP Croak was a good lure for Bro and Palo and destroy stall while SD was a breaker that was hard to deal with due to the threat of Z-Move. With another frog leaving (RIP Seismitoad), Passimian is now the uncontested best fighting type (it probably already was while Croak was still here), Incineroar got better among a bunch of other things and Fighting-checks have more room to breathe.

Now moving on to the impact on the meta

Incineroar:
Everyone knows this mon is broken, I'm probably beating a dead horse at this point (and rehashing old arguments). It has limited counters, several viable sets and is just a pain in the ass to deal with. With the arrival of 3 new ghosts, Incineroar is just going to have a field day. It can switch easily into 2 out of the 3 new ghosts, while defensive sets can survive a Stone Edge from Aero from full anyway after Intimidate. If anything, with Toxicroak leaving, it became much better and is a much bigger problem.

Sneasel:
Trap. Trap. Trap. Ice Shard. Knock Off. Profit.

Passimian:
Scarf is no longer as necessary since it doesn't need to outspeed Toxicroak anymore, and other sets like Bulk Up + Z-Move can be explored to beat the common Fighting-checks in the tier. It doesn't have the wallbreaking and/or sweeping potential as Croak did, but it does have better bulk and a usable movepool for set up and such.

Slowbro/Steelix:
Yeah, they hate the drops (bar like Aero).

Sorry for the long post, I took like an hour to type all this out, but I'm just pretty excited for the new meta.
TL;DR ban hoopa, busted ass cat got better, ban that too and rip brolix
 
Hoopa

Honestly, I would be extremely surprised if this thing doesnt get banned - whether it be quickban or otherwise. Hoopa's coverage makes it one of the, if not the, best wallbreaker in the tier. With acces to shadow ball, psychic stab and focus blast it will blow away the whole tier. Although its speed is somewhat subpar and its typing not very good defensively (4x weak to pursuit), you can not switch into this thing safely with any mons in the tier. Any dark type gets blown away by (z) focus blast, with the exception of some mons that are either neutral to shadow ball (like spiritomb) or don't see much, if any usage in NU at all (skuntank and... alolan grimer).

In my opinion, hoopa does not need to run more than those 3 moves, giving him all the room he needs for substitute, which would only break him even more: pursuit wont kill it, it can outplay sucker punches. And because hoopa does force a lot of switches, a sub should not be that hard to get up (especially considering its spdef stat is still quite monstrous)

Hoopa @ Fightinium Z / Ghostium Z / Life Orb / Leftovers / Spell Tag / Colbur Berry
Ability: Magician
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature / Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Psychic / Psyshock / Hyperspace Hole
- Focus Blast
- Substitute

As you can see, even though its moveset is basically always the same, hoopa can still run numerous items, leaving your opponent guessing until they see it activate. Besides this point, I haven't even talked about its speed tier. It has a pretty weird speed tier. With base 80 being quite common in NU, both for scarfers and non scarfers, hoopa will not outrun a large part of the tier. It doesn't need to, however, as long as it kills what it needs to. Which is exactly why running modest might actually be a valid/better option.

If this set isn't enough to push it over the edge, I want you to keep in mind that a choice specs, choice scarf and a nasty plot set still are good and strong options, with nasty plot psyshock having a good chance to completely demolish stall.

I thoroughly believe hoopa will be broken in the tier and the tier is gonna see an extreme spike in pursuit usage (especially with 2 other ghost types dropping), just to try and deal with this beast.

 
Anchor Shot trapping is pretty subpar due to the low speed (as is everything else Dhelmise does). Besides, Heavy Slam outdamages it on basically everything but Cryogonal and a couple other heavy ‘mons that would probably take more damage from its other attacks.
 

Yoshi

IT'S FINK DUMBASS
Anchor Shot trapping is pretty subpar due to the low speed (as is everything else Dhelmise does). Besides, Heavy Slam outdamages it on basically everything but Cryogonal and a couple other heavy ‘mons that would probably take more damage from its other attacks.
I think one of the best things that Anchor Shot actually does though is remove prediction on your side, unless they have some sort of pivoting move. For example, say you're non-Earthquake Dhelmise, and your opponent has an Incineroar. You click Anchor Shot, and they switch into their more than likely SD Incineroar. This means that you know they can't go anywhere since they're trapped, so you actually gain momentum from switching into your Incineroar check, giving you control over the battle. It's little things like that which makes trapping with Anchor Shot so valuable. I would say Heavy Slam is not better than Anchor Shot though since Anchor Shot guarantees consistent damage, and Anchor Shot is doing a lot of damage anyway.
 

lax

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hmm so i've been playing a bit of this meta and i'll drop some of my thoughts

firstly, losing toxicroak is honestly a god send.. it does allow slowbro to run some cm toxic instead of needing psyshock though. losing a mon that can threaten bro/force it to run a lesser moveset SEEMS bad but i think croak is a really annoying mon to deal with in general so idm losing it. it has few real switch ins and has a decent speed tier along with 2 powerful sets that only golbat really answered?

losing gastro is really unfortunate because i always found it to be a nice glue for some teams and fills the spot of electric immune and decent physical, water wall that isn't slowbro but this rise was coming a long time since dudes starting spamming gastro clef tran in ou


Hoopa @ Psychium Z
Ability: Magician
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Trick
- Nasty Plot
- Shadow Ball
- Psyshock

Sub NP or sub 3 attacks is also pretty solid but i think this set is kinda neat with the right support
+2 252+ SpA Hoopa Shadow Ball vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Sneasel: 202-238 (80.4 - 94.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+2 252+ SpA Hoopa Shadow Ball vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Houndoom: 192-226 (76.4 - 90%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
This damage is pretty sick and it hits some nice speeds at +2 modest that lets it outspeed common scarfers like passimian and rotom (the only scarfers actually). this mon could be broken but hasn't seen much competitive play so it's not a for sure ban i think. idk the fact that absolutely nothing switches into a specs/sub/whatever set because of its immense power and good coverage is probably enough


Decidueye @ Decidium Z
Ability: Overgrow
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Substitute / Shadow Sneak
- Spirit Shackle
- Leaf Blade / Shadow Sneak
Decidueye is actually a really cool mon and it's nice to have more stuff to fuck over slowbro. the team i'm running it on also has vanilluxe because the 2 work in tandem to pressure their only real answer: incineroar. i think if incinroar gets banned decidueye is also worth looking into because it actually has potential to have no real counters with the Z low sweep set

Decidueye @ Fightinium Z
Ability: Overgrow
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Low Sweep
- Spirit Shackle / Shadow Sneak
- Leaf Blade
The set probably looks something like this (can opt out of priority if you just want pure breaking power) but any of its "answers" will all get owned by z low sweep.
+1 252 Atk Decidueye All-Out Pummeling (120 BP) vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Incineroar: 374-440 (95.1 - 111.9%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO
+2 252 Atk Decidueye All-Out Pummeling (120 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Guzzlord: 758-892 (129.1 - 151.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+2 252 Atk Decidueye All-Out Pummeling (120 BP) vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Miltank: 438-516 (111.4 - 131.2%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Leftovers recovery
Idt its defensive set has much potential because having a free ass nuke if you come into something like slowbro and its coverage are really nice.

Aero and quag aren't really anything new. Life orb aero with pursuit and roost as a nice xatu stop seems solid or the standard suicide lead aero work. quag isn't as solid as gastro for balance teams so it'll probably only be on stall. The anchor seems like a really strong breaker potentially but its also super slow. these new mons kinda invite sneasel back in to be meta on some kinda volt turn team or with low kick/iron tail so it isn't annoyed by incin/diancie respectively. these drops pressure xatu a solid amount but xatu will still remain on a lot of teams. sap sipper miltank is pretty cool cuz it sits on non-fightz decid and can run punishment/zpunishment like i used before as a nice offensive ghost answer. incineroar is still the best mon ever though and that won't stop until it receives a swift ban bop

hoping these mons and potential future bans can lead nu back to its former glory, seems promising at least
 
I discussed a lot about the drops with quziel today and this is most of what we talked about!!


My favorite drop, the caped mastermind has lots of viable sets from defensive defog to shiftry roleplayer to sd zmove and they are all pretty good. After using most of them, I think defensive defog is the most effective since it clears vs all the popular hazard setters much better than every other current defogger. As a result I expect that usage of stuff that can set up rocks on this dude/pressure him will start seeing more use (like piloswine, toxic lix, etc). SD is also really strong vs lots of teams with sd / low sweep / spirit shackle / shadow sneak which picks apart common balance builds like Incineroar / Slowbro / Passimian / Torterra. Some sets I still haven't tried that I've heard others use and seems p good are sub / roost / spirit shackle / toxic and nasty plot (and maybe band since u-turn + shackle is crazy).


It's kinda OK, but I have less experience with this dude compared to the others. I tried out band, and while it's kinda strong it's super prediction reliant since the only stab that has good neutral coverage is shadow claw and it's weak. It has the cool ability to prevent doubles, and it has Switcheroo, so that's something. As far as hazard removal, in general I think it's worse than Decidueye, but it can spin block + spin if you are spike stack or something. Quziel was using 2 atks + synth + spin and it was pretty ok until you scouted what coverage moves it was running (grass stab / ghost stab / steel stab / eq), and Kay was using a cool toxic / protect / anchor shot set that has a niche over subroost Decidueye since it can trap Audino, but in general it seems worse.


This was a drop that surprised me when I used lots of sets on it. I initially thought stuff like LO Unnerve Pursuit or offensive rocks or band would be the best sets, but in practice they were awful. After we figured that out, we tried out lots of cooler defensive sets to take advantage of pressure like torment, subprotect, and subtoxic, and subtoxic was very clearly the most effective. I was running a set of sub / toxic / roost / fly (though it's possible rozes is right and rock slide is better but who cares) and it was WAAAAY more useful that offensive sets. So far, I'm happy with this dropping.

Quag has 1 set (though with gastrodon leaving maybe water absorb could have a niche).
----------------------

Some quick notes about these guys:

Toxicroak leaving frees up lots of waters like Vaporeon and Samurott, and lets Passimian drop eq in favor of gunk shot. I think this mon leaving will have a very positive effect on the meta developing away from Slowbro as the only water. AV Bro doesn't even have to think about running psychic anymore which is p good too.

In testing, Golbat is hella good rn as a dude that can actively beat all Decidueye and Dhelmise sets (except trick). Defog Golbat is still bad, but toxic + super fang is very strong c+ lol. Bulky poisons in general seem to be good in the initial meta so break your your black sludges.

Finally, Braviary does a similar thing to Golbat as a mon that can switch into Decidueye (and pressure defog). I haven't tried regular sub bu yet (I can't imagine it being bad though), but zbrave bird / superpower / roost / bulk up was very strong as a balance breaker. Scarf is also pretty good as an offensive switchin to Decidueye.

Overall, I think NU is a lot more fun with these drops.

p.s nuke hoopa
 

JustoonSmitts

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Hey hey! Wanted to share my thoughts on the new drops and rises real quick:
  • Decidueye is probably my favorite of the drops. Not just because I love the design so much, but because it can be surprisingly versatile. Decidueye can run a nice Swords Dance set, yes, but there's also Sub Roost, Defog, and even an interesting Nasty Plot set. It's speed is has much to be desired and it has notable checks and counters (Incineroar! **cough**). Long Reach is kind of pointless considering Spirit Shackle already is a non-contact move and that's the move we'll be spamming the most. It's still nice to have another Pokémon that can at least keep Slowbro and Diancie at bay. Try this set out for fun:
    • Fuck you, Richard Parker! (Decidueye) @ Ghostium Z / Grassium Z
    • Ability: Overgrow
    • EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
    • Timid Nature
    • - Nasty Plot
    • - Shadow Ball
    • - Energy Ball
    • - Hidden Power Rock
    • +2 252 SpA Decidueye Hidden Power Rock vs. 248 HP / 128+ SpD Incineroar: 190-224 (48.3 - 56.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
    • +2 252 SpA Decidueye Hidden Power Rock vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Incineroar: 238-282 (71.9 - 85.1%) -- 75% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
  • Hoopa seems really busted in NU. With insane Special Attack, great Psychic / Ghost/ Fighting coverage, access to Nasty Plot, this thing is probably the best wallbreaker in NU. Despite a not-that-great speed and even worse defensive typing, there is no such thing as a safe switch in to this threat. The funny thing is I haven't seen this around NU too much. It MIGHT get quickbanned since this is 10x better than Bruxish, but we'll see.
  • Quagsire I kind of could see coming back to NU eventually. Unaware, good bulk, and access to Haze makes this a big anti set-up Pokémon. Even Water Absorb variants could make a nice replacement for Gastrodon.
  • I'm not 100% about how well Dhelmise will do. It's a nice big "fuck you" to Diancie and Slowbro and I guess having another spinblocker and Rapid Spinner isn't that bad. I can see Choice Band or two attacks + Spin and recovery being kind viable. Gets demolished by Incineroar, though. Then again, most of these drops do.
  • Aerodactyl is an interesting one. Outside of Accelgor, I think this is the fastest non-Scarfed Pokémon in NU. I've seen Sub-Toxic sets working excellently since it takes advantage of Pressure and I guess it makes a better suicide lead than Archeops. Offensive sets I hear are bad since it's not a great Pursuit trapper and it lacks a GOOD Flying-STAB (Wing Attack is its best one outside of Power Herb Sky Attack. Lol).
  • Sandslash and Stoutland are irrelevant now that Gigalith is banned. Unless you want to run Hippopotas Sand (lol).
  • Torterra rising up here is interesting. I'm not sure how long it will stay up here in NU since it had a niche in Sand, but it might be a fun defensive and offensive Pokémon. It has good bulk and checks every rocker in NU. Too bad it's slow and goes down to any Ice attack. Sneasel food, for sure
  • Ferroseed has always been great and I'm glad it rose. Yeah it's piss slow too, gets roasted by all Fire-types, and hates losing its Eviolite, but it's defensive utility in Iron Barbs, its Steel-typing, and ability to lay Stealth Rocks and Spikes (and Leech Seed) are all excellent traits to have.
 

Attachments

Abejas

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is a Top Tiering Contributor
After playing a lot with the new drops there are some cool sets I wanted to share with you people.



This mon is really fun in this meta due to its great diversity of sets and movepool.

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Decidueye @ Decidium Z / Fightinium Z
Ability: Overgrow
EVs: 64 HP / 252 Atk / 192 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Leaf Blade
- Spirit Shackle
- Low Sweep

Pretty easy set to explain, standard SD is pretty hard to counter in this current metagame since Grass and Ghost are great coverage moves while also having access to fighting coverage. This lets Decidueye break through common checks to ghost+grass coverage such as Incineroar and Guzzlord. The spread gives Decidueye enough speed for base 60 pokemon and pokemon that creep that much such as Incineroar, Miltank, Xatu and Samurott. You can always run max speed if you dont want to lose speed ties with oposing Decidueye's.

1532011537524.png

Decidueye @ Grassium Z
Ability: Overgrow
EVs: 64 HP / 252 Atk / 192 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Nasty Plot
- Shadow Ball
- Leaf Storm
- Hidden Power [Fighting]

Nasty Plot Decidueye is also pretty fun since it has a nice surprise factor. This let's it have an easier time against rockers and other soft checks that SD Decidueye might have . The spread is the same as the set above this while the coverage in Grass+Ghost+Fighting makes it really hard to counter.

1532011989771.png

Decidueye @ Colbur Berry
Ability: Overgrow
EVs: 252 HP / 196 Def / 60 SpD
Careful Nature
- Spirit Shackle
- Toxic
- Roost
- Defog / Protect

This has to be my favourite set so far. Bulky Decidueye is a great check to a good portion of the metagame, some mons that come in mind are Whimsicott, Hariyama, Ferroseed, Medicham, Diancie and Hitmonlee. It also has access to defog and has a great typing making it a great counter to most rockers besides Piloswine and Steelix. Decidueye also has the ability to trap Pokemon with Spirit Shackle and whittle most Pokemon with Toxic. Colbur berry also makes it a nice fighting check. Here is a replay of this set being effective https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7nu-777363942.



The great speed tier and decent attack Aerodactyl has, makes it a magnificent drop for this metagame.

1532013252284.png

Aerodactyl @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Substitute
- Toxic
- Roost
- Earthquake / Rock Slide

This is probably the best set Aerodactyl can run. Due to its great speed tier, decent bulk, great ability in Pressure and Substitute + Toxic makes this mon a really anoying to deal with defensively and offensively. It also has the ability to also punish poison types like Garbodor with Earthquake or Golbat with Rock Slide. I perfer to run EQ since it chips away at Steelix, mon that can be really anoying most of the times.

1532013353440.png

Aerodactyl @ Life Orb
Ability: Unnerve
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Pursuit
- Stone Edge
- Roost
- Earthquake

Thanks to its decent attack stat and great speed, Life Orb 3 attacks Aero is pretty fun and effective to use. Edgequake coverage is still as good as ever being able to hit almost everything in the tier. Pursuit makes this pokemon a great offensive trapper to fire, psychic and ghost types such as Delphox, Hoopa, Sigilyph, Mismagius and even non scarf Rotoms.



This Pokemon is pretty simple and has only one set but its still a great one especially for semi-stall and full stall builds. This set is:

1532013947508.png

Quagsire @ Leftovers
Ability: Unaware
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Protect / Curse
- Recover
- Toxic / Earthquake

Quagsire is a staple on stall teams due to it's great ability while also not being completely Taunt bait like Pyukumuku. I perfer to run Protect over Curse due to all the Z moves running around especially for stuff like Incineroar. Curse can let it beat set up sweepers with Rest such as Malamar and Scrafty.



This is the final drop and probably the most broken one I have played with at the moment, it has a great diversity of sets and most of them are really great and even broken.

1532014082568.png

Hoopa @ Choice Specs / Choice Scarf
Ability: Magician
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Psyshock
- Shadow Ball
- Focus Blast
- Trick

Choice Specs Hoopa makes a great Wallbreaker with practically no switch ins. Choice Scarf Hoopa makes this mon a great revenge killer and pretty much can OHKO after some chip damage most of the faster mons of this metagame. The downside of running these choiced items is that it makes this mon really suceptible to Pursuit users due to its really mediocre defense stat and being 4 times weakness to it.

1532014115185.png

Hoopa @ Colbur Berry
Ability: Magician
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Shadow Ball
- Psyshock
- Focus Blast / Nasty Plot

This is probably the best Hoopa set in the current metagame. Substitute avoids being Pursuit trapped by Sneasel, Houndoom and even Absol while also OHKOing these mons with Focus Blast if you even hit of course. It can use weaker mons such as Blastoise, Vileplume and Vaporeon as set up bait and put huge holes in bulky builds if you perfer to run Nasty Plot over Focus Blast.

1532014193474.png

Hoopa @ Psychium Z
Ability: Magician
EVs: 80 HP / 252 SpA / 176 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Nasty Plot
- Psyshock
- Focus Blast
- Ally Switch / Trick

Z Ally Switch has to be my favourite set with Hoopa, it makes Hoopa a kind of Special Dual Dance Rhydon. This Z move provides Hoppa a nice way to boost its speed by 2 stages and making it a really threatening sweeper in the late game. The spread lets it outspeed most common scarfers such as Rotom and Passimian when it uses it's Z move while also outspeeding max speed with base 60 speed such as Incineroar.

And thats pretty much all the sets I have been playing around with this far. I haven't used Dhelmise yet but it seems pretty fun to use since it has the abilty to be a spinner that beats most rockers, while also having a great attack stat and access to a trapping move, this being Anchor Shot. It also has access to 3 stabs moves due to it's ability in Steelworker.
 

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Hey guys, with NU Open ongoing, the council has decided to take a different approach and do a council vote on drops that were nominated. Here are the results:

As a result, Hoopa is now banned from NU with the following reasoning

Hoopa was unanimously banned from the NeverUsed tier due to its ridiculous power and great STAB combination which made defensive counter play non-existant. Even with a middling Speed tier it still had enough to outpace any defensive cores and make it near impossible for balanced and stall teams to react without relying on a Pursuit trapper. It even had a solid matchup versus offense due to it's lack of many weaknesses and impressive special bulk, meaning Hoopa was getting at least one kill every game without needing any support. It's Nasty Plot + Z-Move, Choiced, and Substitute sets were all able to break through specific checks and alleviate most of Hoopa's flaws, making it far too overwhelming to deal with.

Tagging The Immortal to make the changes to the ladder. Thanks in advance!
 

Jrsmash9

jrsmash that timer
I have seen many people using iapapa berry Incineroar lately, but you should be using figy berry instead. The reason is that trick/switcheroo users can steal incineroars berry and potentially use it. Iapapa berries will confuse the opponent if they have a -def nature. Thing is most trick/switcheroo users run -atk natures, so if they steal Incineroars berry they will still be able to utilize the berry and heal 50%. However if Incineroar is holding a figy berry then pokemon like rotom, delphox, and whimsicott will be confused if they steal the berry instead of healing. You could also use wiki berry to bop medicham. Basically iapapa berry is sub optimal and should not be used over figy and wiki.
 
Speaking personally, I would like to see a retest of Mega Camerupt. I used it a lot in the brief time it was legal, and I really don't think it warranted a quick ban: just about every Water type in the tier could easily force it out, its pathetic speed meant it often had to take a hit before moving, and of course it has no recovery whatsoever, making it easily worn down. Really, it was just a more offensive Steelix.
 
Speaking personally, I would like to see a retest of Mega Camerupt. I used it a lot in the brief time it was legal, and I really don't think it warranted a quick ban: just about every Water type in the tier could easily force it out, its pathetic speed meant it often had to take a hit before moving, and of course it has no recovery whatsoever, making it easily worn down. Really, it was just a more offensive Steelix.
I liked your post initially but looking at the viability rankings I think that the pressure M-Camerupt would put on teambuilding would easily force out many of the current A rank members. Looking at the A ranks you have a number of Grass, Fire and Electric types that would have trouble against M-Camerupt, or at least it seems to me.

Also currently the NU meta has only a handful of water types, looking at the VR again you have the Slows (Bro and King) at the top, further down in B you have Blastoise and Vaporeon, and only in C do you see Jellicent and Sammurott. This would mean all these mons would go up, while a lot of A rank stuff would go down. You could also make an argument saying more mons could use Water moves but that also would restrict some gameplay, forcing HP Water and other moves.

All in all M-Camerupt seems, just by looking at the current meta, that it would have quite an impact, even if it would end up not being that viable. I don't know if the meta could easily find a way to deal with its presence. Even with slow speed and no recovery, M-Camerupt has the potential to change the meta quite a bit.

But I don't really know so I'd love to hear more discussion on this.
 
Okay I normally don't make these kind of posts but for everything is a first time I suppose, Mega-Camerupt shouldn't be retested for a couple of reasons:
1. Incredible bulk: 70 HP (what you sometimes invest in too), 100 Def and 105 spD is incredible for a mon that isnt supposed to be defensive at all. Which allows it even to take some Water-type attacks (calcs later in this post), if you're still not convinced about that bulk just think that those stats are on par with Slowbro for most of them (95 HP 110 Def 80 spD) which is considered the bulkiest mon in NU.
252 SpA Life Orb Whimsicott Hidden Power Water vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Camerupt-Mega: 234-276 (83.2 - 98.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Cryogonal Water Pulse vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Camerupt-Mega: 204-244 (72.5 - 86.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Incineroar Malicious Moonsault vs. 176 HP / 0 Def Camerupt-Mega: 270-318 (83 - 97.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
16+ Atk Rhydon Earthquake vs. 176 HP / 0 Def Camerupt-Mega: 302-356 (92.9 - 109.5%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO
+1 252 SpA Delphox Bloom Doom (160 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Camerupt-Mega: 228-269 (81.1 - 95.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

2. Insane nuke: 145 spA Sheer Force boosted with strong STAB moves like Fire Blast and Earth Power which also gets boosted by Sheer Force, is there something else I need to say about this? Fine, 145 spA Sheer Force boosted move can ever break through it's so called counters, checks which you can see in this calc.
252+ SpA Sheer Force Camerupt-Mega Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Slowbro: 273-322 (69.2 - 81.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ SpA Sheer Force Camerupt-Mega Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Assault Vest Slowbro: 183-216 (46.4 - 54.8%) -- 62.1% chance to 2HKO
252+ SpA Sheer Force Camerupt-Mega Earth Power vs. 248 HP / 8 SpD Vaporeon: 237-279 (51.1 - 60.2%) -- 89.1% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ SpA Sheer Force Camerupt-Mega Earth Power vs. 248 HP / 0 SpD Assault Vest Slowking: 141-166 (35.8 - 42.2%) -- 84.8% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and 1 layer of Spikes
252+ SpA Sheer Force Camerupt-Mega Earth Power vs. 0 HP / 200 SpD Assault Vest Guzzlord: 186-220 (31.6 - 37.4%) -- 88.9% chance to 3HKO

3. It's 20 base Speed: With speed investment which doesn't have to be alot btw, only 84 speed investments makes you already outspeed base 30 speed with 0 speed investments. (Slow brothers and Steelix) Which is huge with that nuke it already has, with Max speed Modest nature you can even outspeed until base 48 and - speed diancie. So even that minor detail of Mega-Camerupt you can easily be prevented by some investments.

4. Trick Room: Mega-Camerupt under Trick Room is almost unstoppable, if you play the Camel okay (doesn't even have to play well just click buttons) you get easily get 2 kills per match with it. Then it even has the fact that you can support the Camel with Healing Wish support so it can be brought back to full and do the whole process again.

With all these statements I can't see a single reason why Mega-Camerupt should be retested.
 

Yoshi

IT'S FINK DUMBASS
@ Leftovers
Ability: Mega Launcher
EVs: 248 HP / 204 SpA / 56 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Toxic
- Water Pulse
- Dark Pulse / Ice Beam

Hey all, wanted to spark some discussion here as I noticed this thread was pretty dead. After looking through the viability rankings today, I saw that some people wanted Clawitzer to rise for its Choice Specs set, so I thought it would be interesting if we talked about a different (and totally more fun) Clawitzer set, which has been dubbed by the community as KUSHAWITZER (named after Kushalos).

The idea of Kushawitzer is to force switches thanks to Clawitzer's coverage, in order to set up a Substitute / get off a Toxic. This is especially annoying when paired with the fact that you can still afford to run an extremely hard-hitting Claw. Water Pulse and Dark Pulse are still doing a huge amount of damage, even with less Special Attack. Some people even like to take out of HP to put into Speed instead, meaning you'd hit harder, but I personally don't see the benefit. Said Speed is run to outspeed Base 50s + Vaporeon, which is something especially important to get a Substitute off on.

I've heard some people vouch for Ice Beam > Dark Pulse, so I included it here, but I personally prefer Dark Pulse because while Ice Beam is damaging Vileplume and Guzzlord more, Dark Pulse still hits pretty hard and it covers other things as well. One example is the Slowbrothers, and while you can just Toxic those, oftentimes you just want to get them off the field, especially if your opponent has a Heal Bell / Aromatherapy user. Another thing that I found is that Ice Beam doesn't kill Decidueye after Stealth Rock, which can be an annoyance for Decidueye (although I suppose as I write this Vileplume is as well). So, it really comes down to personal preference. Personally, I'm okay with having to play around Vileplume and Guzzlord, while being able to cover the much more common Slowbro, Slowking, and Decidueye easier, which a lot of people find to be difficult to play around, perhaps more so than Strength Sap Vileplume.

Anyway, here are some relevant replays that basically show what Clawitzer does (most things happen in the first couple turns):

Also, here are some calcs that are relevant to this post, if anyone was curious:
204+ SpA Mega Launcher Clawitzer Dark Pulse vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Decidueye: 260-308 (87.5 - 103.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock

204+ SpA Mega Launcher Clawitzer Dark Pulse vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Slowbro: 314-370 (79.6 - 93.9%) -- 43.8% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
(now that I think about it this would make me want to run max special attack lmao, but I digress, it isn't too important)

204+ SpA Mega Launcher Clawitzer Dark Pulse vs. 248 HP / 0 SpD Assault Vest Slowking: 162-192 (41.2 - 48.8%) -- 78.5% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock

204+ SpA Clawitzer Ice Beam vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Vileplume: 214-254 (60.4 - 71.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Black Sludge recovery

So that's pretty much it on Kushawitzer, I'm sure this probably isn't exactly what Kushalos was running, so shout outs to him, but I wanted to share this set with you guys because I've had a lot of fun playing around with it, so, enjoy :toast:!
 

Punchshroom

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Vileplume @ Black Sludge
Ability: Effect Spore
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
- Giga Drain
- Sludge Bomb
- Synthesis
- Sleep Powder / Moonblast

As I observe the recent meta trends, I'm starting to believe that Vileplume has little reason to go fully physically defensive anymore. Most of the popular physical threats these days such as Incineroar, Braviary, Decidueye, Dhelmise, Klinklang, etc. are either too powerful for phys def Vileplume to take on, or can simply be responded to with just max HP investment, such as Scarf Passimian, Scrafty, and various physical Stealth Rockers not named Piloswine (which Vileplume can struggle to take on in general anyway). On the other hand, I find that SpD investment is more beneficial for Vileplume to better combat some of the rising special threats in the tier that it couldn't take on so well with a physically bulky spread:
252 SpA Choice Specs Sceptile Hidden Power Ice vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Vileplume: 132-156 (37.2 - 44%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock and Black Sludge recovery
252 SpA Life Orb Heliolisk Hyper Voice vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Vileplume: 133-156 (37.5 - 44%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock and Black Sludge recovery
252 SpA Life Orb Whimsicott Psychic vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Vileplume: 140-166 (39.5 - 46.8%) -- 0.4% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Black Sludge recovery
+2 252+ SpA Aromatisse Psychic vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Vileplume: 276-326 (77.9 - 92%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Black Sludge recovery
+1 252+ SpA Life Orb Comfey Hidden Power Fire vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Vileplume: 161-190 (45.4 - 53.6%) -- 1.2% chance to 2HKO after Black Sludge recovery
Admittedly, this spread does face mild competition with Torterra, which can be EVed to take on most of these attacks, such as from Scarf Passimian, Heliolisk, and Specs Whimsicott, though Vileplume obviously takes on Grass-types far more efficiently than Torterra ever can and it has a penchant for spreading status, namely still being able to punish Passimian's U-turn.



Drampa @ Choice Specs
Ability: Sap Sipper
EVs: 124 HP / 252 SpA / 132 Spe
Modest Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Flamethrower / Fire Blast
- Hyper Voice
- Energy Ball

Abejas brought up Drampa earlier, and I am pretty entertained by the idea. Two of the Pokemon that gave Guzzlord a significant defensive edge over Drampa (Delphox and Houndoom) have gone down in usage and are more frequently using sets that don't pose as much offensive threat (Wish Fox and Scarf Doom), slightly lessening the opportunity cost in using Drampa. Of course, the likes of Incineroar and Slowbro are still around to make Guzzlord's combination of resistances plenty relevant, but Drampa boasts an immunity to Grass, allowing it to deter Sceptile and Dhelmise from spamming their ludicrously powerful STABs and even shutting down non-Low Sweep Decidueye. Additionally, Drampa makes up for its lesser defensive utility with disgusting power in combination with its amazing coverage, boasting some of the strongest attacks in the meta bar none. Specs Draco kills damn near everything unresisted after SR, and Drampa is strong enough to reasonably consider Flamethrower over Fire Blast. Energy Ball is actually pretty neat coverage, allowing Drampa to nail Slowbro/Slowking + Diancie in one go without worrying about pivoting, and does other things like demolish Rhydon and deny Vaporeon's attempts of Wish stalling. Drampa would likely still have a tricky time fitting onto teams since its godawful Speed tier can leave it open to most other wallbreakers, but at least it's in a better position in this meta now.
 
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Blast

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Hey, with August over I figured now's a good a time as any to share some thoughts on the meta. This thread tends to be really dead so maybe I can spark up some actual discussion here, who knows? Even if I can't, I definitely wanna at least get my thoughts out.

So I've been seeing tons of complaints about how stale and unfun this meta has become, and while fun is subjective, I think NU is anything but stale atm. In fact, I haven't had so many teambuilding ideas in quite some time. This whole notion of how boring the tier is allegedly comes from how centralized it is around mons like Bro, Incin, and Pass, and while I won't deny for a second that they're very centralizing, to say that they've completely killed creativity in this tier? From my experience, it's easier than ever to take advantage of the dominating trends in the metagame. And since it's just the start of Snake season, it seems like a perfect time as a non-Snake player to dump off some stuff I've been using:


Incineroar @ Choice Band
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 208 HP / 252 Atk / 48 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Knock Off
- Flare Blitz
- U-turn
- Earthquake

This set is beastly and is quickly becoming one of my favorite Incineroar sets. Truth be told, I actually prefer this over SD Incineroar because of the immediate power and more leeway to run a bulkier spread. Most notably, it OHKOes Pass after rocks with Flare Blitz, and can 2HKO even Shuca Berry Diancie with EQ. EVs beat Vaporeon and is bulky enough to live 2 Vanilluxe Blizzards + hail.

Charizard @ Grassium Z
Ability: Blaze
EVs: 248 HP / 76 SpA / 184 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Fire Blast
- Toxic
- Solar Beam
- Roost

There's been a couple of different variants of this going around among different players, but this is the one I've been using. As long as you can keep rocks away, Charizard checks all of Passimian, Whimsicott, Sceptile, Comfey, Decidueye, and Dhelmise, and can piss off Slowbro with Toxic and Bloom Doom. SUPER underexplored mon.

Scyther @ Choice Band
Ability: Technician
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- U-turn
- Aerial Ace
- Knock Off / Bug Bite / Pursuit / Quick Attack
- Quick Attack / Knock Off / Bug Bite / Pursuit

scuse me while I plug my RMT here

Again, if you can keep rocks away (I recommend pairing a bulkier hazard remover with a frail emergency remover), this thing's very favorable rn. STAB CB U-turn is pretty huge in Slowbro's tier when you pair it with a strong VoltTurn core, plus Banded Aerial Ace is insanely strong in a tier with very few sturdy Flying resists.

Vivillon-Marine @ Flyinium Z
Ability: Compound Eyes
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Quiver Dance
- Hurricane
- Sleep Powder
- Energy Ball / Substitute

Technically standard but I'm still counting this because no one's used it since the Gigalith meta. Please start using it again, it destroys.

Gallade @ Grassium Z
Ability: Justified
EVs: 116 HP / 140 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Bulk Up
- Drain Punch
- Psycho Cut
- Leaf Blade

Nice mixture of the best qualities of Gallade's SD and SubBU sets. Bulk Up combined with Drain Punch recovery makes it way harder for Passimian and Sneasel to revenge kill, and the Attack EVs kill Bro after rocks with +1 Bloom Doom.

And that's just a handful of them. I know I'm not the only one who's been plenty busy in the teambuilder, either; ik quziel's been dropping truckloads of obscure PU mons with tons of potential in chat too, among other people. To me, it feels similar to certain points in ORAS where there's one or two particularly dominant builds, but if you avoid those builds you realize how much other stuff there is to run. Point is, saying that there's no more creativity in this tier couldn't be further from the truth. You just need to know where to look, and frankly I don't even think it's all that hard.

I mean this tier is FAR from perfect, don't get me wrong. Like I said, I get that it's very centralized. That being said, I can't help but feel banning any one of them would probably do more harm for the tier than good; I get the whole "broken checking broken" argument tends to be pretty poor in most situations, but all our most centralizing mons fill very important positions atm and getting rid of them slowly one by one would probably leave the tier in a worse state than it is already. Even so, there's still plenty you can do with the meta as it is.

Also, people need to stop thinking that tiering revolves exclusively around making fat balance optimal. That ain't it.
 
ok these are my opinions (just opinions) about the current state of the metagame and I'll just keep it short

i honestly think the meta is unhealthy rn and i feel one of the main reasons is that there is a large amount of unique threats in this tier which you could autolose to if not checked properly and this makes games much more matchup reliant. this also contributes to the staleness of the meta because players tend to stick to strong standard mons like slowbro, diancie, etc. because they're the ones capable of blanket checking vast amounts of pokemon in one go. what i'm getting to here is that it's very hard to stray away from standard builds because there's a good chance you're not checking a number of threats unless you're running super bulky builds or basically stall.

i think it's extremely fair to reduce the number of these threats especially the tier is somehow going downhill and i truly believe we can start fixing the issue by suspecting something, like incineroar for example, which is the closest thing to broken.

first of all, incin is not inherently broken. however, it's also not unknown to everybody that this mon is an issue when it comes to battling and teambuilding. it is obviously limiting building a team and sd incinium is just dumb and has no real defensive answers aside from pyukumuku (and no, physdef yama is bad). but then again, certain things like its low speed and everybody running passimian keeps it from being definitely broken.

tl;dr: honestly i think people aren't really underexploring mons but are rather held by the fact that the tier has too many great threats. i think moving on from the incin meta is a fair and square solution.
 

Snou

the grand master of all the things bad!
is a Tutor Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Past SCL Champion
ok these are my opinions (just opinions) about the current state of the metagame and I'll just keep it short

i honestly think the meta is unhealthy rn and i feel one of the main reasons is that there is a large amount of unique threats in this tier which you could autolose to if not checked properly and this makes games much more matchup reliant. this also contributes to the staleness of the meta because players tend to stick to strong standard mons like slowbro, diancie, etc. because they're the ones capable of blanket checking vast amounts of pokemon in one go. what i'm getting to here is that it's very hard to stray away from standard builds because there's a good chance you're not checking a number of threats unless you're running super bulky builds or basically stall.

i think it's extremely fair to reduce the number of these threats especially the tier is somehow going downhill and i truly believe we can start fixing the issue by suspecting something, like incineroar for example, which is the closest thing to broken.

first of all, incin is not inherently broken. however, it's also not unknown to everybody that this mon is an issue when it comes to battling and teambuilding. it is obviously limiting building a team and sd incinium is just dumb and has no real defensive answers aside from pyukumuku (and no, physdef yama is bad). but then again, certain things like its low speed and everybody running passimian keeps it from being definitely broken.

tl;dr: honestly i think people aren't really underexploring mons but are rather held by the fact that the tier has too many great threats. i think moving on from the incin meta is a fair and square solution.
I honestly disagree. As an ex OU player (because that's what I am now), I used to play a tier full of broken mons you can't literally counter in a single team, even using the top 6 mons in the VRs. This is not the case of NU, in which yeh, splashing Incine or Slowbro here n there is usually the best way to deal with stuff, but the tier is extremely balanced imo and doesn't force you to run the same splashable mons everywhere.
Incineroar is what Landorus-T is in OU, but for NU: a mon the tier needs in order to properly work. Yeh, it's everywhere and it's supergood, agreed, but you need it if you want to prevent other threats to show up. Incineroar doesn't limit teambuilding, imo, it's a resource. I've been succesfully building using underrated (but still good) PU or ZU mons and if they turned out to work it's because I had solid backbones I could rely on, and this wouldn't be possible in a metagame without these pseudo-broken mons (Incine, Slowbro etc).
I still would like a Incineroar suspect, tho, because I'd like to see if I'm the only one thinking it should stay because it's one of the key mons in the tier, and the tier would need ton of fixes to reach this level of stability.
 

Rabia

is a Site Content Manageris a Top Social Media Contributoris a Community Leaderis a Community Contributoris a Smogon Discord Contributoris a CAP Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Top Smogon Media Contributoris a Battle Simulator Moderator
GP & NU Leader
ok these are my opinions (just opinions) about the current state of the metagame and I'll just keep it short

i honestly think the meta is unhealthy rn and i feel one of the main reasons is that there is a large amount of unique threats in this tier which you could autolose to if not checked properly and this makes games much more matchup reliant. this also contributes to the staleness of the meta because players tend to stick to strong standard mons like slowbro, diancie, etc. because they're the ones capable of blanket checking vast amounts of pokemon in one go. what i'm getting to here is that it's very hard to stray away from standard builds because there's a good chance you're not checking a number of threats unless you're running super bulky builds or basically stall.

i think it's extremely fair to reduce the number of these threats especially the tier is somehow going downhill and i truly believe we can start fixing the issue by suspecting something, like incineroar for example, which is the closest thing to broken.

first of all, incin is not inherently broken. however, it's also not unknown to everybody that this mon is an issue when it comes to battling and teambuilding. it is obviously limiting building a team and sd incinium is just dumb and has no real defensive answers aside from pyukumuku (and no, physdef yama is bad). but then again, certain things like its low speed and everybody running passimian keeps it from being definitely broken.

tl;dr: honestly i think people aren't really underexploring mons but are rather held by the fact that the tier has too many great threats. i think moving on from the incin meta is a fair and square solution.
I disagree. The metagame is far from unhealthy/stale even, as I have been able to pilot several different archetypes of teams using unique Pokemon and have had just as much success as when I have loaded up standard Incineroar balanced teams.

On Incineroar: yeah it's the best Pokemon in the tier (if you believe it is > Slowbro, which I personally do), but it's far from unmanageable because the tier has plenty of ways to deal with it: Passimian, Diancie, Rhydon, Vaporeon are just some of them high-ranked VR Pokemon that are capable of managing Incineroar just fine, and rest assured when I say there are plenty more (and physically defensive Hariyama is far from bad unless you're using it on builds it doesn't fit on J:). It restricts building in a certain way because you're forced to run a dedicated stop to it sure, but it's an S-rank Pokemon; you should be expected to.

If anything, I'd like to see Vanilluxe suspect tested, as I feel its presence contributes much more bad than good to the metagame. I'll wait until tier shifts happen to fully develop an opinion on this because we could get some interesting drops as always, but this is the only Pokemon I currently view as problematic in any real way. The current S-ranks (and Passimian fwiw) are just strong presences that should be prepared for.
 

shiloh

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Tiering Lead
hey this threads been pretty dead, but with two phases of snake over i feel its a good time to talk about something thats been trending recently.

i mainly wanted to use this post to bring up a mon thats been on the rise, and something i personally view as problematic in the tier at the moment. this mon is heliolisk, which has picked up quite a bit of steam recently, being the 10th most used mon overall and spouting an impressive 71.43% win rate through that. one of the main reasons i think its been picking up lately is bc ppl have begun to realize how potent a specs set can be after a single right prediction on the opps elec immunity. just running through the electric immunities in the tier at the moment all are easily lured with the right coverage move on lisk. surf manages to catch a large majority of electric immunities in steelix / rhydon / piloswine / palossand and theres even been a little bit of usage for hp ice as it targets down grass types like dhelmise and decideueye while mainly getting a really strong hit on torterra which has been climbing in usage as a rocker that can beat common lisk sets.

once the opps elec immunity is dead (or if they failed to have one in the first place) lisk can spend the rest of the game basically freely volt switching around and wearing down the opps team. its great speed tier, special attack, and ability to just spam a stab pivot move makes it one of the hardest mons to handle mid-late game and is the reason its probably one of the hardest threats to handle in the team builder at the moment. while passimian may be the most common & splashable scarfer in the tier at the moment its also becoming easier and easier to handle in the builder which makes it less of a threat for lisk if it tries to pivot in on certain moves or comes in to revenge kill it.

heliolisk honestly puts a large strain on building at the moment because it forces a lot of teams to stack multiple checks for it in order to not be defeated if the lisk pulls out the right coverage whether it be ice for a torterra or surf for a steelix. common specially defensive mons in the tier also have issues with lisk as it either hits them super effectively (av bro) has a decent coverage option to nail them (focus blast for steelvally/guzzlord/crygonal) or just can wear them down via volt switch since they lack good recovery (diancie/hariyama).

i did spend most of my post talking about the specs set, which i believe is the superior one bc of the damage output & the ability to not lose 10% of your health every time you attack, but life orb has been pretty common as well and helps ease up the prediction game vs ground types. with a lot of steelix dying to the combination of hyper voice + surf; or rhydon just having a good chance to die to a life orb surf after rocks it becomes much easier to lure in and kill electric immunities without having to guess what your opp will do.

also compared to another hard hitting special attacker which has been brought up before as a possible suspect in vanilluxe, lisk isnt complete dead weight when it comes to putting it on a team defensively. with dry skin it has a very useful immunity to water which lets it pivot in on most slowbro sets, and its speed tier lets it be an offensive check to a lot of scary attackers like the aforementioned vanilluxe or even a worn down delphox. it also doesnt suffer a weakness to stealth rocks, and with hazard control being at one of its peaks in terms of splashibility it doesnt really fear spikes due to how easy it is to prepare for them in the current meta.

ill end this post with a few snake replays and a bit of analysis with lisk putting in work, sorry if the rest of this post was a bit rambly @ times, just really wanted to get my thoughts out there and see what everyone else thought about this meta + the effect heliolisk has had on it.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7nu-395175

the first one im going to bring up is kush vs lax as it was the first showing of an hp ice lisk in tours as it was meant to catch the uptick in torterra usage lately. he did manage to run into one and on turn 10 he took lax's most reliable lisk switch in down to 12%. i think from there kush could have played a bit more offensively with his lisk as he didnt lose a lot by just spamming hyper voice if he managed to get rocks up as steelvally doesnt come in multiple times long term due to the lack of leftovers. the game eventually does come down to a last turn speed tie, but i still think it is a good example of how lisk can impact a game.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7nu-397441
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7nu-396629

going to group both of these together as they are kind of similar, as they are both from tangy in phase two. he used a life orb lisk both games, and showed off how potent that set can be. while the game vs rodri didnt start out that great (surf into vap on t2), with some smart manuevering he managed to weaken rodris palo down to 14% on turn 20, effectively taking it out of the match for the rest of tangys team. in the game vs hootie he makes a big mistake as he was running low on timer on turn 13 where lo surf would have taken out lix and let him try to make a few plays around the eventual sash viv.

overall im probably the biggest advocate for a smaller banlist and prefer letting a meta adapt as opposed to having a test, but i think lisk has become a bit much for the tier in terms of its effect in the builder along with the myriad of other threats nu has to deal with.

i am very curious to hear what everyone else has to say on this though, as im sure the rest of council is as well so please post your thoughts on lisk and the overall meta, and let me know if you have any questions n_n
 
I'd throw my support in for a suspect test of Heliolisk as I do feel it's pretty problematic in the tier. It runs into the classic issue of 4 move slot syndrome, but you need to scout out what it's running in the first place which means you risk losing pokemon the spot. From the games I've played and seen recently, and take this with a grain of salt as I've been on hiatus, the prediction required to outplay an opposing Heliolisk far outways the prediction required to utilize it well. Volt Switch/Hyper Voice are pretty much set in stone, then it runs a mix of Surf/Focus Blast/HP Ice/Dark Pulse/Thunder bolt which can all be threatening to varying checks. Unlike some of the other Electric types in the tier, Heliolisk can actually threaten the ground types that want to switch in on it.

I've played around with LO and Scarf Heliolisk and the ability it has to safely rack up damage until the end game and sweep with hyper voice is ridiculous imo. Whilst the Scarf set is not as potent initially, it still manages to threaten the ground types whilst playing a more supportive role of forcing switches. Here's an example of this https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7nu-807034646. LO and Specs may not always sweep, but they WILL at the very least weaken if not eliminate the pokemon that are supposed to check it which opens up holes if Heliolisk is still alive at that point. The difficulty it poses both when teambuilding and the amount of prediction required to play around it is enough to warrant a suspect test in my opinion.
 

Snou

the grand master of all the things bad!
is a Tutor Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Past SCL Champion
Actually, I'm supporting the suspect test of Heliolisk.
The yellowsaur is one of the best mons of the tier overall, but it doesn't share common points with the Incineroar/Slowbro/Passimian discussion. Heliolisk, infact, is not one of those splashable mons you can just randomly throw in your teams BUT this doesn't mean it's less broken. And the fact that it's not S Ranked doesn't mean it's not suspect worthy. In terms of abilities, in fact, the dinosaur is probably the most troublesome mon to deal with in the tier.
Its speed tier is absolutely insane, being only outspeeded by the relevant Whimmi, Sneasel and Sceptile, or scarf mons. Its ability to win the whole match by guessing properly no more than a single predict on what's supposed to be a counter (steelix, palo, rhydon) is something that always surprises me. In addition, Surf not being the only possible option in the set makes it extremely unpredictable. Its access to Focus Blast, Dark Pulse, Surf or even HP Ice can possibly make him uncounterable. You'll probably end up losing several mons before you actually find out whats the coverage its carrying.
In addition, Life Orb set (despite being weaker) allows you to brainless click the supereffective move and get rewarded for that. It can even be a decent scarf user (well, at least its not broken) and Z fight/water has recently seen some use (still outclassed by Specs or LO).
With Slowbro being one of the most common picks in the tier, Heliolisk's ability Dry Skin can easily provide it a safe switchin and the chance to get a easy kill the 50 % of the times. Only reliable counters are special defense grass mons (Vileplume?), but you can easily volt switch on em and gain infinite momentum. Please, suspect this Pikachu-wannabe dinosaur.
 
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