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Metagame np: SV Ubers Stage 4 - Thunderstruck

Unsure why two of the nastiest posts in this thread come from the person who's never played a game of sv ubers in their life and the one who ragequit council because they were upset that this suspect even happened. I play Ubers because I like using Ubers mons. I feel like this is the majority of people. Sure, if miraidon gets banned will some people be upset? Of course, and yet there's still 40 more Ubers mons at their disposal. If y'all want to live in a fantasy world where we can act as a dictatorship and ban tera so the ideal sv ubers metagame that you still won't play can form, or where some more miraidon checks will appear out of thin air to reinvent the meta in a couple weeks, be my guest. Me personally, I find miraidon broken and uncompetitive, reducing the tier to a slot machine, one that rewards lazy repetitive play or risking insane 50/50s. There is no consistent check and there will never be one, and that can be fine but I don't find it at all pleasant to play. I will be voting ban
 
Before the rant starts, I want to emphasis how annoying it is for every no ban mira person to think just cause a mira ban will not 100% solve SV ubers for the next million years, it means we should just let sv uber be what it is today.



we are playing a luck based game so now that means we shouldnt bother to eliminate some variables that greatly increase the relevance of luck in the game? U understand the whole idea behind smogon tiers are to reduce this luck factor to a meaningful extent so we get some resemblance of a competitive game within pokemon

this is such a ridiculous point, idk if there is anything more that needs to be said on this. and the speed tie issue has always been secondary. the main issue was that mira is that 1 mon that requires a very unique way of handling it, which makes role compression way harder, not allowing for more consistent bulkier teams to appear. thats why its being singled out over Kora who probably also deserves a suspect.

Now add this up with the fact that mira 2kos and ohkos everything in the meta, and has absurd speed that already limits viable alternative plays at any given turn in a game, sometimes the most optimal path is to go for speed ties vs another very strong pokemon in Kora. This is just one of the many byproducts of mira, not the core reasoning for it to be gone

i already addressed this in the FC reply. the problem is how much influence trying to avoid speed tie has on the game. it devolves the game down to very very predictable lines (cause mira and kora are too powerful and there arent many alternative plays), taking the advantage of being a better player away frequently.

die by ur own terms with semi forced sub optimal plays to avoid the tie, or go for it. but again this is just a byproduct of the core mira issue of making role compression in the builder impossible to get more consistent teams in the tier thats not just webs or HO.


We cannot ban zac + kora + mira at the same time. Everyone is well aware that uber might need future bans and that the meta could possibly not be solved fully after mira is gone. Does that mean that there should never ever be ANY ban happening in this tier unless we 100% know that it will solve all of our problem? this is not how tiers are ran

tldr this is just another pretty ridiculous point + the reason mira did not get banned last time was largely because of popular and uninformed people swaying a good amount of people away from voting ban. Mira met the threshold for a ban in any other tier's pov, including uber.



Whats happening now is that we finally got to see all the shitty predictions the no ban mira defenders said 7 months ago. None of the alternative ways of walling mira has surfaced, the state of sv uber is arguably worse now than it was back then, Mira got even more broken sets now, and the only defense u guys have is that just a mira ban alone would not solve all of our problems...like no shit? but u need to start somewhere

Also no concept is being destroyed here, u just simply disagree with the reasoning for its ban. the same logic to ban arceus in gen 4, mray in gen 7, and zac in gen 8, and caly already in gen 9 is being used here as well. The only difference is that mira doesnt seem like a 100% fix so you disregard any progress that u guys should make in the tier
xle7hg.png
 
I will be voting ban. I think the health of a metagame is determined by how good balance is, and balance is currently a very difficult playstyle to make work entirely due to Miraidon. Miraidon is extremely prediction reliant, as many people have said, and reduces games to a series of 50/50s. Is it scarf or specs? Is it boots? Which immunity to 1 of its attacks should I risk sending out in case they click the other move and ohko me? Is it going to taunt on my recover, leaving me unable to check it when it comes back in later? I think it is far more unhealthy than anything else in the tier due to this constant 50/50 it forces every single turn it is in. Its almost like kingambit sucker punch mindgames, but instead of sucker punch it is just 2 stupid strong stab moves that 2hko most resists and forces you to bring 2 immunities (a fairy and a ground)on every team. It puts too much strain on the builder and I will definitely be voting to ban.
 
Notice how every anti-ban argument is entirely predicated on an arbitrary line that Miraidon doesn't cross for them for whatever reason; that it's a Pokemon that players just need to play against more and figure out how to adapt to. These arguments are entirely theoretical, the very thing the anti-ban camp accused us of in the first suspect. Why are they all clinging to these measures, instead of offering reasonable, practical arguments for keeping Mirai in the tier? It’s because there are none. There is not and has never been a case for keeping Mirai in the tier other than blindly hoping that things will somehow magically get better. And, big surprise, they haven't!

The current Ubers meta is exactly the consequence of not banning broken Pokemon. Minus Last Respects, the meta is right back to where it was when Mirai was first suspected 7 months ago. It's all webs, offenses that beat webs, coinflipping, and basically nothing else. No consistent counterplay to Mirai has surfaced, or will ever surface. Even if you have multiple forms of “counterplay” on your team, like two priority users, Zacian, and a scarfer, Mirai can and does still find a way to mess you up with little to no opportunity cost. Balance is unable to keep up with how insanely offensive the tier is. It's completely unviable, with basically no usage in SCL compared to HO and BO. No, balance winning 2 games out of 25 does not magically make it viable. The better player does not consistently win in this tier. The tier is not stable, nor is it fun.

Not banning Miraidon the first time was by far the biggest mistake we’ve made this generation, but this test is an opportunity to correct that mistake. It's another chance to improve the tier so long as we realize the tier is not gonna become any better if we don't take action. Just ban this bitch already and let's get things back on track.
 
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Notice how every anti-ban argument is entirely predicated on an arbitrary line that Miraidon doesn't cross for them for whatever reason; that it's a Pokemon that players just need to play against more and figure out how to adapt to. These arguments are entirely theoretical, the very thing the anti-ban camp accused us of in the first suspect. Why are they all clinging to these measures, instead of offering reasonable, practical arguments for keeping Mirai in the tier? It’s because there are none. There is not and has never been a case for keeping Mirai in the tier other than blindly hoping that things will somehow magically get better. And, big surprise, they haven't!

I think many do not ban voters simply enjoy the meta and are fine with Miraidon's effect on it. It's not necessarily that they think there is going to be some magical new development that shuts down Miraidon. Personally, I don't view it as a problem in the builder or in battle.
 
Alright. I'm gonna let out a lot of pent up anger in this post, so prepare yourselves. Who the hell at gamefreak designed Miraidon? This stupid ass thing's typing isn't even all that original because it stole the typing from Zekrom. And they gave it an ability that's literally just Electric surge but it also boosts your special attack when in electric terrain for some ungodly reason which is a completely stupid trait when one of your stabs is already boosted in electric terrain. Oh yeah! That's not all! Miraidon is unpredictable AND it's incredibly fast! So many 50/50s have been caused by the existence of this Bootleg Toothless. This thing also hard abuses tera, making the tier even more coinflippy. I am genuinely impressed how much the power creep of gen 9 has continued to piss me off to no end. Get this filth out of the tier.
BAN
 
I will vote DO NOT BAN. Doing my best to not echo the posts already posted but here is my reasoning. My goal is really simple. If we leave the meta like this Ubers will eventually get excluded from every major tournemant. This gives much more exposure to other overlooked tiers and we as the Ubers community worked hard together to make this happen. Knowing we purposely overlooked this problem and that we were part of the reason why Ubers will get cancelled already gives me a lot of pleasure. If you reached this point still thinking I would vote dnb then go fuck yourself.
 
The better player does not consistently win in this tier. The tier is not stable, nor is it fun.
I don't agree with the way you state this like it's an objective fact. Plenty of people enjoy the tier the way it is now, I'm sorry if you don't enjoy it but there's plenty of people who disagree with you.

also balance is plenty viable, my previous post listed several good checks that fit on balance. The reason people may not being having success with balance it due to a lack of experimentation imo

edit: also the haha reactions are real mature, what a bunch of kids
 
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Alright, reqs run done and I have some thoughts i'm gonna jot down:

1. Kind of dont see the point in comparing miraidon to banned mons in previous gens, gen 9 has enough new things going to differentiate it from those metas (most notably being tera) that makes it a comparison i see no point in making. We already have two bans this gen to compare it too, and while I dont think its hard to say Miraidon isn't as grossly overcentralizing as Caly was, or as BS as basc was, it still has merit to be banned

2. Im in the same boat with a few other people here that Miraidon isn't what I see as the most broken shit in this meta right now (ahem, koraidon.) However I do think that miraidon is a huge part in making koraidon more broken and vice versa, miraidon shreds pretty much everything that could be considered a koraidon check, and Koraidon does really well into miraidon checks, with both having problems into Zacian, which doesnt account for the fact that scarf is also effective on both. The offensive dynamic that Koraidon, Miraidon, and Zacian create together in my opinion is one of the huge overcentralizing factors of this meta, but not in a way that feels particularily healthy to me, in my reqs run speed ties were a huge component of my games and almost as many games that came down to speedties were effected by draco meteor and scale shot hitting, or were tera dependent.

3. Hyper offense is entirely dominant right now, there are a few stubborn attempts to make balance work that from my perspective rely almost entirely on surprise factor, and the few stall attempts that have popped up just don't seem to be working well outside of farming bad players. This isnt to say Hyper Offense is an inherently flawed archetype for a meta to be, however when paired with what my experience of this meta has been so far I think an H/O oriented meta where over 50% of games come down to speed ties/ having the right tera for the scenario i feel that this meta is both incredibly unstable and unreliable as a result. The top ladder players I played during this suspect in which our games came to a draco miss or crash flinch, or just losing the wrong speed tie can attest to this.

4. Ultimately I think the correct play here is to ban miraidon, its not the core issue with this tier but is certainly one of the biggest contributing factors right now, when a metagame has multiple unhealthy threats its bad practice to not ban one of them because your personal villain of the week didnt go up for a suspect first. A Miraidon ban will mean we get to actually explore other things in this tier, and hopefully make some progress.

I don't agree with the way you state this like it's an objective fact. Plenty of people enjoy the tier the way it is now, I'm sorry if you don't enjoy it but there's plenty of people who disagree with you.
Because Im sorry, but there are also plenty of people who do not enjoy the tier the way it is now. I understand that you enjoy it, but the fact that the enjoyment results have dipped to their lowest point this generation is far more telling of the fact that people generally are enjoying this meta a lot less, telling someone off for saying their own personal opinion of the metagame and not prefacing it with an "imo" is not productive.

Anyways, really hoping this thing gets banned. My fellow ban voters just do us all a favour and do it legitimately because if any of yall cheat and a ban result gets overturned I will personally come find you :) I need to calm down now, time to go listen to some lena raine... (you should too)
 
I'm not entirely sure why some anti-ban sentiment seems to hinge on the idea that the meta will somehow swing back towards bulkier teams in the future even with Miraidon around, or that people just haven't experimented with options enough. With Ubers this gen having the power level that it does, there really is only so many options you can exhaust without resulting in teambuilding issues vs other major threats. And for Miraidon specifically, with its massive versatility and instant power you can only prep for it so much.

Back in Gen8, even with CalyS as threatening and centralizing as it was forcing teams to run Yveltal, they weren't seriously impeded from a teambuilding standpoint. Most every team had a Caly answer built into them which also functioned as an incredible glue for teams, and Caly really had to work to get into that game winning state. It could rarely threaten to insta blow up teams, especially since it wasn't that uncommon to see teams have a back up check (Ho-oh is the main one coming to mind). This on top of the fact that it was the only pokemon sporting such an absurd speed stat, meant that you didn't regularly have to fear speed ties or making frustrating 50/50 plays or awkward lines of play. Why am I mentioning this?

During my laddering there was a frustrating amount of times where Mira/Korai (or two Miraidons) would end up facing off, and this led to an annoying amount of 50/50 calls on whether to tera and try to snipe the opposing dragon or to try and switch into an immunity to one stab hoping to make the right call and absorb the hit, or to sack a weakened pokemon hoping to reposition. This was more prominent than I care for (oh and the speed ties and 50/50s were made worse when Draco Meteor misses if staying in and winning that dice roll). Now I ran a HO team during laddering, I tried originally going with a bulkier team with not great results. Too many of Miraidon's checks on these teams are abused by the presence of other dangerous, difficult to handle threats.

My point is this: Even if SS CalyS is arguably a more centralizing pokemon than Miraidon, you had to really work to get a CalyS into position to win back in gen8 and thus feeling more skill rewarding, while current gen9 games feels far more volatile and swingy based on things that aren't as much in player control (the aforementioned speed ties, 50/50 plays as a result of Miraidon and Koraidon's power, etc.), it feels comparatively less rewarding and much more frustrating, and Miraidon is a major contributor to this factor. And Koraidon is guilty of this too, and if necessary (probably) it's always possible to look at it in the future post Miraidon.

I don't agree with the way you state this like it's an objective fact. Plenty of people enjoy the tier the way it is now, I'm sorry if you don't enjoy it but there's plenty of people who disagree with you.
It's completely fair if you enjoy the tier, But there's an undeniable feeling that there's been a dwindling enjoyment factor for more players. It's not really a good sign when enjoyment on the latest survey went down instead of up despite the ban of Last Respects, and stability has remained around the same (and generally not too high). As for your list of defensive checks, I'd like to go over that briefly.

Clodsire: Miraidon and Kyogre check. This is fair, except it runs into the major problem of its immense passivity which makes it very easy to exploit by offensive teams which either turn it into set up fodder with certain sets, or simply overwhelm it. It also tends to invite dangerous pokemon that Miraidon tends to be paired with (also momentum drain).

Ting-Lu: This has fallen way off because it's terribly easy to punish and exploit. It frankly checks just about nothing outside Miraidon well, and without the reliable recovery that Clod at least has, isn't harm to overwhelm. It's also a giant momentum drain and frankly, it just sucks if I'm being blunt.

Iron Treads: I'd argue this mon, while good in a Miraidon meta, is only good in a Miraidon meta. It's role compression is born entirely of the presence of electric terrain, and without that it's a passive weak mon that checks nothing else realistically (I certainly can't think of any). Not to mention that its claim of spin is increasingly difficult to work with when Webs HO can just spinblock through Ghostceus or other Tera Ghost mons.

Blissey: Super passive and generally not great outside stall. Also lumping in protect here but, outside Treads what mon is even fitting Protect right now? I can't think of any off the top of my head.

I'd love to touch on LO Miraidon because that's what I used during my run and it put in significant work every single game. Against opposing offense it slices right through steels who try to absorb Draco (ZacianC, NDM), while it still places huge burden on balance that isn't running Ting-Lu because CM+LO Draco drops almost anything from full. And there's Agility sets which as was pointed out earlier, kind of makes most of your offensive counterplay section moot. BTW calling Webs teams and Agility sets gimmicky is pretty bizarre when they've been prominent for a while now (Agility sets taking a lot of attention and rightly so).

Anyways I feel like I got a bit off track from my original thoughts, but I'm voting ban on Miraidon. It may not solve every issue the tier has, but it's a good step in the right direction and I really feel its removal will also ease the burden on building which will help make checking Koraidon and ZacianC easier (and Kyogre if we're bringing up huge threats).
 
Because Im sorry, but there are also plenty of people who do not enjoy the tier the way it is now. I understand that you enjoy it, but the fact that the enjoyment results have dipped to their lowest point this generation is far more telling of the fact that people generally are enjoying this meta a lot less, telling someone off for saying their own personal opinion of the metagame and not prefacing it with an "imo" is not productive.

Anyways, really hoping this thing gets banned. My fellow ban voters just do us all a favour and do it legitimately because if any of yall cheat and a ban result gets overturned I will personally come find you :) I need to calm down now, time to go listen to some lena raine... (you should too)
I never said this? All I said was that saying the tier is a unenjoyable mess is not objective
 
It's completely fair if yo enjoy the tier, But there's an undeniable feeling that there's been a dwindling enjoyment factor for more players. It's not really a good sign when enjoyment on the latest survey went down instead of up despite the ban of Last Respects, and stability has remained around the same (and generally not too high). As for your list of defensive checks, I'd like to go over that briefly.

Clodsire: Miraidon and Kyogre check. This is fair, except it runs into the major problem of its immense passivity which makes it very easy to exploit by offensive teams which either turn it into set up fodder with certain sets, or simply overwhelm it. It also tends to invite dangerous pokemon that Miraidon tends to be paired with (also momentum drain).

Ting-Lu: This has fallen way off because it's terribly easy to punish and exploit. It frankly checks just about nothing outside Miraidon well, and without the reliable recovery that Clod at least has, isn't harm to overwhelm. It's also a giant momentum drain and frankly, it just sucks if I'm being blunt.

Iron Treads: I'd argue this mon, while good in a Miraidon meta, is only good in a Miraidon meta. It's role compression is born entirely of the presence of electric terrain, and without that it's a passive weak mon that checks nothing else realistically (I certainly can't think of any). Not to mention that its claim of spin is increasingly difficult to work with when Webs HO can just spinblock through Ghostceus or other Tera Ghost mons.

Blissey: Super passive and generally not great outside stall. Also lumping in protect here but, outside Treads what mon is even fitting Protect right now? I can't think of any off the top of my head.

I'd love to touch on LO Miraidon because that's what I used during my run and it put in significant work every single game. Against opposing offense it slices right through steels who try to absorb Draco (ZacianC, NDM), while it still places huge burden on balance that isn't running Ting-Lu because CM+LO Draco drops almost anything from full. And there's Agility sets which as was pointed out earlier, kind of makes most of your offensive counterplay section moot. BTW calling Webs teams and Agility sets gimmicky is pretty bizarre when they've been prominent for a while now (Agility sets taking a lot of attention and rightly so).

Anyways I feel like I got a bit off track from my original thoughts, but I'm voting ban on Miraidon. It may not solve every issue the tier has, but it's a good step in the right direction and I really feel its removal will also ease the burden on building which will help make checking Koraidon and ZacianC easier (and Kyogre if we're bringing up huge threats).
also you made some great points here. Don't entirely agree with all of them (especially lu) but they definitely aren't perfect checls
 
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The biggest problem with miraidon is just how bad its checks are into anything that is not miraidon. All of ting-lu, clodsire, iron treads, and spdef arceus ground would see little to no usage if they werent thrown on teams for the near sole purpose of not losing to mirai on preview, and theyre not even good checks at that.

:clodsire::ting-lu::iron treads::arceus-ground:
Clodsire is insanely passive and easy to take advantage of, it loses to standard boots taunt sets most of the time and can also struggle to pick between unaware and water absorb (would you rather lose to draco or lose to cm?). Ting-lu has fallen off a cliff and struggles to keep up in a more fast-paced offensive meta where and also struggles to do anything of note vs stall; its essentially fishing for a mu into balance or an offence team with a miraidon set that doesnt outright beat it. Spdef arceus ground would much rather be physdef or dd, and iron treads struggles to spin or actually make use of its kit most of the time. Practically all 'good' checks are just bad mons in the meta, while they set hazards and give some general utility its very much players being forced to make the most out of mons that would otherwise never be used, and even if they were solid into the rest of the meta miraidon can still wear them down with taunt + u-turn or blast them away with overheat/solarbeam/specs/LO/etc.

:life orb::choice specs::electric seed::choice scarf::heavy-duty boots:
Miraidon also has far too great of an ability to pick and choose its checks dependant on its teams need and it can be extremely difficult to determine what set it is based solely on teampreview so you're forced to try and outplay only after its been revealed. Agility sets throw off a lot of the usual offensive counterplay and necessitate the use of emergency tera or needing to build with a bulkier miraidon check with restricts teambuilding (i'll get back to this), while overheat and solar beam break through iron treads and ting lu/arceus ground respectively. All of this puts the opposing player on the backfoot since they have to react to whatever the miraidon set is revealed to be, while also attempting to preserve enough counterplay in case they guess wrong. In other words, you have to pivot around and scout the set out, but trying to be overly safe means that you risk giving free boosts to cm/agility, free pivots to u-turn, or free chip to any other set, or just giving them too many chances to get a right predict and snipe a mon for free

:koraidon::chien-pao::flutter mane::zacian-crowned::landorus-therian:
Trying to revenge kill miraidon isn't easy either and theres very limited offensive counterplay. Flutter mane and chien-pao lack usage because theyre simply not great right now, and even if they were, its hard to commit to going into them or non-scarf korai/mirai to revenge kill because you're betting the game on a 50/50 speed tie, its not a consistent or reliable way to play the game. Zacian naturally outspeeds but dropping anything for play rough is always hard to justify since behemoth, wild charge, and cc are all necessary coverage moves so you're making more holes in a team by trying to ohko miraidon and more consistently revenge it. Scarf lando has popped up quite a bit and its very solid but it can be hard to get in because it only switches into electro drift. Scarf koraidon is the most consistent option for revenge killing but one great option is simply not enough from a teambuilding perspective and koraidon often wants to be sd scale shot on offence otherwise it can be either too much of a momentum sink or just a u-turn bot. What LBN said about agility into offence and revenge killers really highlights how limited offensively checking miraidon can be, it completely flips the matchup and creates an unhealthy dynamic; do you build something bulky and have your defensive ground take 60% from draco or do you build something offensive and get bowled over by agility?

From a teambuilding perspective, unless you're using hyper offence, you need a ground to pivot into electro drift and resist/immunity to draco, but at least one of these also has threaten miraidon from full and also either outspeed or not get outright KOed by miraidon, and you also desparately need something to be able to revenge kill so scarf korai or zacian become really hard to justify not bringing so teambuilding can become excessively restrictive.

tl:dr the overreliance on pivoting through immunities in order to have counterplay, lack of good defensive checks, agility bypassing offensive checks, and excessive strain on the teambuilder are why im strongly leaning towards voting ban
 
i never played ubers before this suspect so i'm not very familiar with how the meta has evolved over time, but i did get reqs so i feel like i should give my two cents about my experience getting them. this meta is profoundly unhealthy, and it doesn't feel like the kind of regular-unhealthy that comes with the territory of being a meta filled with, well, ubers. miraidon is not the sole cause of this, but it's one of the major ones. the total lack of defensive and offensive answers for miraidon aside, it's frankly ridiculous how many matches in this tier are decided by koraidon/miraidon speed ties, and i'm not buying the people saying "good players avoid those as often as possible" because i did build my team to avoid those as often as possible, i always position to avoid scenarios like that, and yet still it comes down to speed ties more often than a tier has any right to. with miraidon out of the picture i expect koraidon to become an even more massive problem than it currently is, but getting it out of the picture is the first step towards creating an ubers that ar least nominally allows for skill-based play, so i'm going to have to vote ban
 
i never played ubers before this suspect so i'm not very familiar with how the meta has evolved over time, but i did get reqs so i feel like i should give my two cents about my experience getting them. this meta is profoundly unhealthy, and it doesn't feel like the kind of regular-unhealthy that comes with the territory of being a meta filled with, well, ubers. miraidon is not the sole cause of this, but it's one of the major ones. the total lack of defensive and offensive answers for miraidon aside, it's frankly ridiculous how many matches in this tier are decided by koraidon/miraidon speed ties, and i'm not buying the people saying "good players avoid those as often as possible" because i did build my team to avoid those as often as possible, i always position to avoid scenarios like that, and yet still it comes down to speed ties more often than a tier has any right to. with miraidon out of the picture i expect koraidon to become an even more massive problem than it currently is, but getting it out of the picture is the first step towards creating an ubers that ar least nominally allows for skill-based play, so i'm going to have to vote ban
Well, I would not say that speed ties are as common as many people say they would be, unless you are spamming HO on ladder then it would be more common. For me, speed ties could often be just avoided with smart pivoting and the likes, but on Hyper offense and stuff they are often kinda just... There for obvious reasons. The best way to have less speed ties is to play less offensive structures like non Ho or Bulky offense.

however I am still voting ban, miraidon is unhealthy because all of its defensive counterplay sucks, we have spdef groundy :arceus-ground: , a shit set on a mon that could have been running sth better like ddance or physdef, lu, :ting-lu: which has no reasons to be used outside of checking miraidon, treads :iron treads: , which is an ou / uu mon with shitty stats, clod :clodsire: who has SOME use in stall but even then is really only used for miraidon. previously overpowered stuff that got suspected at least had defensive counterplay that were not shit outside of checking them, like yvel :yveltal: checking caly :calyrex-shadow: in g8.
honestly if your defensive checks are not shitmons you are good to not get banned from ubers, unless you are talking about sth like zac :zacian-crowned: .

tldr from your post i think you used HO, since scale shot korai is mosty a staple on HO, and HO has alotta speed ties, especially in mirrors, which is common cuz th ladder is bad and just spams HO. HO infested ladders are great food for :choice band: :calyrex-ice: btw

EDIT: clod also checks Kyogre but clod is still a shitmon without mirai.


:landorus-therian: :arceus-ground: :Kyogre: :koraidon: :miraidon: :Ho-Oh: :necrozma dusk mane: :Necrozma dawn wings: :calyrex-ice: :calyrex-shadow: :arceus-fairy: :zacian-crowned: :Groudon: ... (and more...)

I love minisprites wooooooo
 
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Well, I would not say that speed ties are as common as many people say they would be, unless you are spamming HO on ladder then it would be more common. For me, speed ties could often be just avoided with smart pivoting and the likes, but on Hyper offense and stuff they are often kinda just... There for obvious reasons. The best way to have less speed ties is to play less offensive structures like non Ho or Bulky offense.
yes but hyper offense is still really common in both ladder and tour play, i looked thru all the scl replays and in 5 weeks H/O has very clearly been the dominant playstyle, with a few structures that branch out popping up here and there but not having much consistent results in terms of winning. Building non Ho teamstyles right now doesnt feel like a "smart play to avoid speed ties", it feels like a gimmicky attempt to catch unprepared ho off guard that doesn't accomplish much outside of ladder. I am aware that individuals have had success with balance/bulky offense styles and stall on ladder, but I dont think saying "just build bulky offense and other non h/o styles" doesnt really help fix the problem when at almost every level of play those have been consistently less consistent.
 
yes but hyper offense is still really common in both ladder and tour play, i looked thru all the scl replays and in 5 weeks H/O has very clearly been the dominant playstyle, with a few structures that branch out popping up here and there but not having much consistent results in terms of winning. Building non Ho teamstyles right now doesnt feel like a "smart play to avoid speed ties", it feels like a gimmicky attempt to catch unprepared ho off guard that doesn't accomplish much outside of ladder. I am aware that individuals have had success with balance/bulky offense styles and stall on ladder, but I dont think saying "just build bulky offense and other non h/o styles" doesnt really help fix the problem when at almost every level of play those have been consistently less consistent.
to add on this when discussing a meta especially ubers ladder is not a great indicator of the current state of the meta as the ubers ladder is unserious in my opinion
you can win and have success with multiple styles
tours have clearly been leaning heavily into ho and for good reason
 
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Threw this together in 15 minutes and got reqs with it. The ladder is unsurprisingly filled to the brim with tomfoolery. Outside of games with others doing the suspect there was maybe one real team. No idea if the team is good but OTR Caly-I + Ditto + Toxic Spikes sliced through most of the tomfoolery.

Reqs took two runs where the first was lost to some hax and tilt about halfway through. I'll continue to think about it throughout the week, but I'm currently likely to vote ban. The metagame just feels far to constrained and trying to build something for suspect test had a very similar vibe to the Xerneas metagame in NDUbers. That meta was constricting in the builder and in game to an unhealthy degree and it feels similar here.

I just grabbed sample sets from the dex, but I found myself annoyed that Arceus-Ground would be outsped by Glimmora and Primal Kyogre, but apparently you need a whole ass max SpD Arceus to defensively answer Draco Meteor. Miradon isn't the only unhealthy element in the tier, but it is what is being tested. Dealing with Miradon itself is ok if annoying, dealing with Miradon + friends is a bit much. Its too fast for its power and having enough bulk and not terrible typing.

OTR Caly-I being in the A ranks is also a red flag to me. A metagame shouldn't be offensive enough for that to be somewhat consistent. SVUbers will always be an offensive metagame due to Game Freak gutting hazard control, but it is too offensive in a bad way. Getting rid of Miradon would be a step towards a healthier offensive metagame imo.
 
I'd love it if it's gone from the tier but during the suspect run, it didn't feel that oppressive to confirm that it's broken but it's definitely up there
It's the kinfd of thing i wouldn't mind getting banned but i don't feel it's brokenness in practice.
This might owe to how i used it as well and that would have left a bias in me, so i'll wait to make my judgement on this mon
Just coming back to this after a few days of further playing the tier, I'm planning to vote BAN and I'll explain why
I do strongly feel that Miraidon isn't the only broken thing rn, Korai is just as problematic and the complimentary offense these two provide is too hard to answer defensively without specific checks that still require good prediction, and HO teams just need Miraidon as their special attacker most of the time
I think it would've been better to have a dual suspect test of both, since after Mirai's ban , there's a [questionable]possibility that there's nothing that compliments koraidon well enough to make it broken, although koraidon may not need something like that and it may benefit from not having to deal with the speed tie at all. The chances of koraidon being less broken in a mirai-less meta feels low but it can't be discounted.
That being said , i don't think allowing those uninformed predictions should lead to not dealing with Miraidon in the ongoing suspect , and due to what i think of as the pair's collective brokenness and overcentralization and the fact that the suspect test is solely Miraidon , I think voting ban on Miraidon makes the most sense.
 
I want my game to be enjoyable. I do not care about old antics of Ubers as a tier. I want playability. I want variety. I want to look at my builder and go "I have a neat idea" which is currently not a thing if you want to win. We are currently stuck in an RPS format that sometimes Tera breaks up. I never post for suspects or anything of the sort. I feel like engaging with most of the arguments is nonsensical because everyone has their opinion and I'm not trying to sway that in the slighest, neither do I think that people are able to be swayed. I just believe, from the bottom of my heart, that if you were to poll the people currently playing in SCL you'd have a majority of players not exactly enjoying it. I could be wrong, it could be my own confirmation bias of only talking to people I like. It is also possible that the casual playerbase is, in a sense, way more important than the upper bracket of players. But I am firmly believing that if people do not enjoy something that is supposed to be a fun hobby, for NO gain might I add, that change should happen. If we notice that the tier is still awful after a Miraidon ban and it's still awful after X and it's still awful after Y then maybe, just maybe, we can also go back to full power format and reintroduce them. But I think the general view of not wanting change because of some old ass antics is awful and not productive for the further sustainability of Ubers.
 
Various pro-ban posts have said "Hyper offense is entirely dominant right now, there are a few stubborn attempts to make balance work that from my perspective rely almost entirely on surprise factor", "The current Ubers meta is exactly the consequence of not banning broken Pokemon. Minus Last Respects, the meta is right back to where it was when Mirai was first suspected 7 months ago. It's all webs, offenses that beat webs, coinflipping, and basically nothing else. No consistent counterplay to Mirai has surfaced, or will ever surface.", and "Balance as a playstyle is on life support because the cycle that miraidon forces in the builder of trying not to lose to it then realizing you have to out offense it to beat it most of the time often with your own miraidon/koriadon or just hoping its not running the set that beats your check." If the pro-ban arguments are to be believed, Balance is basically dead in the tier and should be really hard to build and get voting reqs with.

To test this claim, I built a balance team made entirely of OU-legal mons as a challenge, to see if I could get reqs (team: https://pokepast.es/d3f22444fab0da3b). If Ubers teambuilding is really so contrained (especially for balance), this should be somewhat difficult. I proceeded to not only get reqs, but also get them an entire 10 GXE above the minimum GXE required with relative ease (85 gxe, 28-2). Moreover, opposing Miraidon usually accomplished jack squat, and in games where it did accomplish something it didn't feel like a broken mon.
To show that I'm not just making things up, below are all the replays vs Miraidon that I faced on ladder by someone with skill:

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ubers-2223010869-6f4ysz01sa4w7f4xpmy0isv3ayylvfepw?p2 vs emonia
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ubers-2222960902-78tw71leq16bovtzq4pckb6sww82g0wpw?p2 vs monotone (vertigo)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ubers-2223004268-yl6w2y16h8cas3qkwilowx68tqluldupw vs 1600-ish lader
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ubers-2222946665-0w2jr54gusqei8amwni0igcjlfg00egpw vs 1600-ish ladder
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ubers-2222975240-067n6wqsfw4tg0njg9vlkbymupb3huvpw vs 1600-ish ladder
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ubers-2222887259-tyc3jnbl7uluet1r3hha7mc22bgjgbhpw vs 1600-ish ladder
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ubers-2222876011-c6w6n91zi294bpq70drgnd45vnisvvepw?p2 vs another suspect alt (which is currently 15-1)

I'm not going to deeply analyze every replay, but note that in most of the replays, Miraidon struggles to contribute and is close to a non-factor in the games.

Overall, I think many playstyles are viable in ubers and the metagame is in a good place, and it's clearly more than possible to prep for Miraidon.

Easy DNB vote from me.
 
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I notice that Ditto seemed to be putting in a lot of work in these replays. This makes a lot of sense, because most of the teams you ran into in those replays were HO (Grimmsnarl screens, Ribombee webs, Glimmora, etc.). You were able to take advantage of the fact that almost everybody is spamming HO at the moment. It's the most consistently successful playstyle. SCL replays from the last few weeks, which are more representative of high-level play than ladder matches, show this. Usage stats also show that balance staples like Ho-Oh and Ting-Lu are almost non-existent at the moment, which has become especially obvious as the tour has progressed. There has been a massive uptick in HO team styles like Ribombee + Arceus-Ghost webs, for example.

Pokemon like Miraidon, Koraidon, and Zacian-C, which are integral parts of these teams, are naturally going to have trouble when you have a Pokemon on your team that can copy whatever boosts the opponent might have and win every speed tie thanks to always having a Choice Scarf boost on top of that. Anecdotally, metagames where Ditto is able to benefit so much from trends like this are Not Enjoyable.

As an aside, I find it a bit condescending that you've gotten a good record with a team that happens to be a "balance [...] that rel[ies] entirely on surprise factor" on a ladder that isn't exactly renowned for its quality and waved away the concerns of top players who have to build for and play this metagame every week with a post that basically amounts to "get good lol look how i beat these scrubs with six OU pokemon".
 
I was against the initial Miraidon suspect, I felt that Basc was a far more problematic element and am glad we chose to ban it afterward. Many months later, with the meta having had time to evolve, my stance on Mirai has shifted and I am now pro-ban.

I don't think Mirai is as much of a problem as Basc was in battles, while it does force some unfortunate lines due to its sheer power, this is not really significantly different from the other major threats in the metagame (most notably Korai, but also Zac, Ho-Oh, and Kyogre). It also does not force tera normal/dark onto every team and prevent you from ever using Tera offensively to prevent a sweep.

When the suspect happened earlier this year, the meta also was completely different: NDM is used much less, going from a top 3/top 2 used mon to #7 in UPL and SCL; Without its typing needed for LR, EKiller has fallen off significantly in favor of Groundceus, with Gambit taking its spot on many teams as priority; Lando has almost doubled in usage as many balance teams have simply converted to BO; Zacian now frequently runs double STAB; Agility Etern is up in usage as an easy way to punish choice locks; and we have more diverse Korai sets including Adamant, LOrb, and Choice Band, where before it was either Scarf or Dice. Note that this is not entirely due to Miraidon, though it is a major contributing factor, and is driven primarily by the loss of Last Respects and the meta adapting to this change. We saw very similar trends during ULT.

It has become a lot easier to punish traditional counterplay such as Scarf Korai, making it much more difficult to scout and play around Miraidon. There are too many sets (Boots, Scarf, Specs, Sash, Double Dance, LOrb 3 Attack, Taunt/CM, Substitute, TWave, etc. Not even going to mention the different Teras it can run). While each set can be said to have defensive counterplay, when you combine it with how much greedier most offensive teams are defensively checking Mirai without burning your tera is almost impossible. The easiest and most consistent method to avoid this is just to not try to defensively answer it at all, which is why we are seeing unprecedented usage of Ribombee, Grimmsnarl, Ghostceus, and Zacian. At this point, it feels that so much comes down to playing the bike lottery where misidentifying the set once makes you lose a mon at best and at worst lose on the spot. It isn't fun and both the bikes should go.
 
I want to look at my builder and go "I have a neat idea" which is currently not a thing if you want to win.
This statement can be true for you, but it is not true for me. My point is that what you were saying you want Ubers to be, it already is for some people (like me), so banning Miraidon shouldn't be the way to go if we have a competitive metagame, variety in viable playstyles, and people who enjoy playing (which I believe we do). You do make some fine arguments in the rest of your post and I like the sentiment of caring for playability and variety.
 
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