One of the most fantastic notes to me is the doubling of stall's usage in Pokebank compared to last. Yes, yes, the results were skewered but stall didn't even exist prior to this month. Now, the 3% pure stall (discounting weather and such) speaks that the meta is settling in as stall generally flourishes in a more stable metagame.
But the shifts are also evening out, as seen in the stall statistic. In last month's eight day, not even .5% got to the 2.5 mark, but now we have some teams hitting the 3.0 mark.
+2.0|#
|#
+2.5|#
|#
+3.0|#
While this balance is still rather unhealthy, it is more practical than it had been and the general stall rank is actually at balanced right now, although this is due to the lack of any team being able to become more offensive than -2.0 and the huge saturation of teams right around 0.0 and -0.5. I'd hope to see the usage near +2.0 double in the next month with the lack of mega gengar and the meta's sign of settling down.
To the donphan question, there are some easy answers:
A.) Donphan can take the #1 web users on by himself (though sleep sucks still). Galvantula loses a stab against him and gets rocked by head smash/rock slide/stone edge. In the pokebank OU, donphan is 28th in usage with roughly 21% of the moves used is being allotted to a rock move not named stealth rock. This allows him to deal with major threats such as Talonflame, galvantula (#8 and #5 in leads respectively) and also put rocks on the field. He is also listed as one of the best counters to aegislash in pokebank.
B.) Donphan's major weaknesses (Ice, water, grass) are a bit lower than usual, bar rotom-wash. Rain is low in usage, hail is almost gone, and grass pokemon rarely lead... And are also a bit low considering fairies now also carry cure moves that were generally limited to normal and grass types (aka aromatherapy/Synthesis). Even the decline of sun has HELPED donphan as there aren't as many clorophyll sweepers. And the only weather left, sand, is boosting him by letting him not take passive damage and abuse edgequake combos.
On the note of Aegislash, from pokebank OU, people are starting to note just slightly Aegi's special side, but only in terms of Mixed aegi. The total special based aegis in meta right now are:
| Quiet:252/4/0/252/0/0
2.349% |
And the only special moves seen?
| Shadow Ball 19.804% |
| Flash Cannon 5.129% |
Shadow ball has become a haymaker for a lot of intimidate switches and even some pokes like Lando-t with enough physical bulk not to bother with any physical aegi attacks. However, flash cannon is probably almost exclusive to special sets/lures as the steel typing isn't necessarily good.
The low special side usage, however, is probably a direct result from the physical side seeming very hard to stop. The last counter listed, heatran, only succeeds in counter/checking 60% of the time, suggesting a 40% rate KO? Regardless, he is only performing the KO 30% of the time.