this is gonna be a rambly post cause im not sure where to begin but building in this tier rn is fucking miserable. some of this stems i think from some mons that probably could have been banned in this past slate and some of it i honestly have no idea what to do about. (for the record, im going to be approaching this from the perspective of building balance).
so problem number 1 as i see, is there are two stealth rockers that can be used unless you want to start off in a massive hole in the builder: raj and zong. both of them provide so much more defensive utility than the others that its mostly pointless to go around them. diancie is also decent but even then i find myself throwing like an av raj on the team somewhere to compensate. the psychic, dragon, and fairy resists provided by these 2 mons are just too damn good to pass up on realistically. they both provide some unique things, w raj having a damn good offensive presence and zong adding ground immune + ability to use tox and fitting a number of 4th moves that can be tailored to the team: protect so its team is less vulnerable to certain breakers, eq for electrics, psychic for plume, and body press for raj and goro. however, both mons have two main flaws: they leave u w/o a volt immune (which has often been filled by the rocker in past metas) and leave you vulnerable to dark, fighting, and ghost type breakers.
for the volt immune: most of the ground types in this tier suck ass now bc they leave u exposed af to cress, sigilyph, noivern, etc. as far as i see it you have like flygon, palossand, golurk, and gastro. palossand isnt terrible, but it still more or less requires a raj or zong to fulfill the gaps it leaves. gastro does some nice things between being able to blanket check waters, dragons, and fires, but has a pretty big issue in being passive as shit, losing to both zong and raj (if power whip) and still getting blown back by all our offensive electrics- boomburst toxtricity 2hkos even if max sp def. golurk is a great breaker but cant check any of the fighters really. so in terms of pure utility flygon is gonna be the pick here most of the time. good speed tier, can do some ok things w cb, and can win some games w dd. while i dont think volt immunes are mandatory necessarily, having toxtricity (and to an extent heliolisk) and a bunch of other perfect voltturns mons make it extremely risky to not do so currently.
now we need to solve another issue: we get owned by fighters. mienshao, bewear, and pangoro are all massive threats that need to be accounted for. and here's the problem: only plume and sylveon have the bulk to hope to switch into these more than once. and even then, bewear can still get around these w/o too much of an issue, pangoro means sylveon is at risk of getting ohkod, and mienshao can pivot around us endlessly thanks to regen, so we'll want to make sure we have something that can maybe switch in w the right prediction, outspeed, and ohko. this can be our own mienshao, noivern, sigi, or cress (which has the bulk to win 1v1 vs any of these).
to round out the team we throw on a breaker, this can be whatever we want for the most part, and then something bulky enough that can keep up momentum. this can be milo, golisopod, dhelmise, arcanine, noivern, talonflame, we have some options.
ultimately the second you deviate from this formulaic style of building, is that you risk autolosing to something like cress, mienshao, sigilyph at team preview. and even w this, sigilyph can still own depending on the set (flame orb cm air slash), mienshao still puts a ton of pressure (particularly if it's LO pjab and we dont have plume). mienshao is imo way too hard to punish for a mon w its speed tier and power. the only way to reliably stop it defensively is to hope you can effect spore sleep or para onto it w plume. thats about it. gl if you run into mienshao + sap sipper goodra or smth that blocks strength sap; eventually u will succumb to sr and mindless uturning
cress and sigi are also threats that can win from team preview. sub cm cress is a nightmare to deal with unless u have zong or raj. and even then it can beat them if youre able to get a knock on either. ultimately cress is kept in line by its lack of power which means a lot of teams can respond immediately or pp stall it w stuff like milo, sylveon, talonflame. cress can run psyshock or stored power to get around these at the cost of sub or immediate recovery, which are both viable options. sigi can also just get around things that want to deal w it by spreading burns, and its better power make it able to break everything once it gets boost, at the downside of much worse bulk. while im not convinced either are broken yet, i do think they kind of enforce the formulaic teambuilding.
the other thing that sucks to me is im not sure what the solve on this is. i do think mienshao is broken (poh does a good job outlining my general thought process). u have a scarfer w a perfect speed tier that can potentially break for itself and make progress by getting rocks up -> knocking the fighting switchin -> spam uturn. and w regen you cant make progress vs it. throw on LO and all the sudden you can just eliminate sylveon or flyers w poison jab/stone edge if u so choose. ultimately the same teambuilding issues remain w or w/o shao, however. i think this is likely the case w everything else on the slate.
i'd like to hear ppl's thoughts on how they deal with making teams rn, as revving up the builder the past few weeks for me has turned into groundhog's day (1993) where i create teams that share at least 3 mons with every other team i make that all lose to flame orb cm airslash sigilyph. my mind has turned into a bowl of vichyssoise and if i have to watch another game of sylveon/raj/flygon/mienshao/milotic/filler i might get permanently trapped in the void, rambling to anyone who passes by how things were better back when we just threw sandaconda on teams to check silvally
so this post isnt just a stream of bitching, i'd like to point out a mon i feel underrated currently:
is a cool mon that can check a lot of threatening offensive mons and pressure the opposing team. here's a list of good things it can do:
- walling dhelmise and golurk in particular
- good bulk and recovery to soft check a lot of things like noivern and flygon
- potentially open up holes for other mons w a strong brave bird and cc.
- punish defog, sylveon's moonblast, and vileplumes strength sap with defiant
- access to sub and bulk up allow brav to punch holes midgame or clean teams: can set up pretty reliably on both raj and zong, and has the power to punish initial switchins like toxtricity fairly well.
generally speaking, ive found jolly nature w enough speed for max bewear (96 spe evs w jolly), max hp, rest in sp def to be pretty nice. ive also gone adamant on defog sets to have a more immediately threatening brave bird and cc. i havent rly seen anyone else run it and i def have to recommend it.