Resource ORAS OU Metagame Discussion

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Is it just me or is this thing actually really really good rn. Being able to u-turn out vs all its counters into a trapper is just amazing. IMO This thing + Specs Keldeo actually demolishes almost every Bulky Offense/Any sort of offensive type build. Offences main way of beating this is either Heatan, or Scizor which both give keeled either a free scald, or a free secret sword (since if you're running a heatran/scizor rotom-w is usually paired well thanks to its ability of luring in clef, burning lando etc..). Another option is pairing it with a trapper, either magnezone or dugtrio both work nicely with this thing as they trap the main offensive counters to this thing. (Excluding Lando-t Of course) Oh also scarf mag is needed tbh since specs mag just loses to fast superpower scizor. Anyway this thing + anything that can beat landot/scizor = amazing.

It's not that great tbh, it doesn't appreciate Rocks being up one bit and it abolutely hates Rough Skin/Iron Barbs/Rocky Helmet which are around quite a bit atm (sure it can knock off Helmet's but still).
 
Secondly, I can tell you're kind of frustrated. After all, everyone seems to think your set is bad. And that's okay. I know the feeling.

Just in general, if you want to make a good set, make sure to consider the following:

  • How well does it fare against OU's top threats? (Landorus-T, Clefable, Latios, etc)
  • How does it do against different playstyles (HO, BO, balance, stall)?
  • Is the set completely outclassed by another Pokémon?
  • Does it require too much team support?
In addition, I recommend posting replays. Ideally, you'll want replays from a tournament, but high ladder ones of the set doing work can help just as much.

One more thing: Don't take any of the stuff that these people are saying personally! The people here are just criticizing your set, not you. Remember that you're the only one that can stop yourself from becoming a great player.
Thx and from what you are saying the only treat to him of top ou threats are hyper offensive mons like landorus t and mega metagross eq. I was trying it the other day, though, and it completely walls anything without super effective STAB, like chansey and mega slowbro. it can take a hit from latias mega because they don't often pack fire blast, same as every other mega except diancie, metagross and maybe sableye.
 
Hello everyone, i waned to share a team i've been using recently that seems to be putting in work
Weezing @ Black Sludge
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 Spe
Bold Nature
- Will-O-Wisp
- Toxic
- Venoshock
- Explosion

Alomomola @ Leftovers
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 36 HP / 220 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Toxic
- Wish
- Protect

Clefable @ Leftovers
Ability: Unaware
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Moonblast
- Stealth Rock
- Heal Bell
- Moonlight

Scizor @ Scizorite
Ability: Light Metal
EVs: 248 HP / 44 Atk / 16 Def / 200 SpD
Impish Nature
- Bullet Punch
- U-turn
- Roost
- Swords Dance

Crawdaunt @ Splash Plate
Ability: Adaptability
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Crabhammer
- Knock Off
- Aqua Jet
- Swords Dance

Goodra @ Draco Plate
Ability: Sap Sipper
EVs: 212 HP / 252 SpA / 44 Spe
Modest Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Fire Blast
- Sludge Bomb
- Earthquake

wanted to build a team around weezing, figured wish passing alomomola would help to patch up its lack of recovery, the clef set is a bit dumb i'll admit, i just made it that way for role compression, mega-sciz is a great blanket check for a bunch of mons, really helps in stopping mons like mega ala, or latios from wrecking my team, craw is my go to stall breaker, with a splash plate crabhammer 2HKOing unaware quag and clef, picked Goodra because i needed something to stop nasty plot thundy, and other electrics, ended up putting in a lot more work than i thought it would, most of these sets i grabbed from the smogon dex analysis guide thing, and tweaked a little, best change i made was swapping thunderbolt on goodra for eq, made heatran go from straight up walling my whole team to being not much of a threat. Team is weak to a lot of stuff, such as dragons (my answer to char is toxicing it with weezing, then protect stalling with alo) and gets work down easily, so it'd be really cool if a pro player could test it out and make some changes. here are some replays if any one is interested, just used the first games i played.
 
So because this team features an unranked mon in Weezing, might I suggest posting to the Underdog thread as well? It's a great spot for exploring niche picks like Weezing (and Abomasnow, Lanturn, Espeon, etc.), and contributors there might be able to help you.
 
It's not that great tbh, it doesn't appreciate Rocks being up one bit and it abolutely hates Rough Skin/Iron Barbs/Rocky Helmet which are around quite a bit atm (sure it can knock off Helmet's but still).
huh i swear i replied to this, w/e. Mega Bee doesn't have to break every team on its own, you can pair it with something like keldeo to get rid of almost all mega bee counters oo.(Garchomp, landot, scarf drill etc..)
 
huh i swear i replied to this, w/e. Mega Bee doesn't have to break every team on its own, you can pair it with something like keldeo to get rid of almost all mega bee counters oo.(Garchomp, landot, scarf drill etc..)

There's a lot of good and popular Keldeo checks and counters and Beedrill doesn't really come in on anything, so that's hardly a reliable way of getting rid of Beedrills counters tbh.

Things like Latios, Latias, Starmie, Amoonguss, AV Tangrowth, AV Tornadus-T, Slowbro and Celebi all come in on most Keldeo sets with relative impunity, now a bunch of them can be trapped, but that's a lot of effort just to get rid of the counters of the counter to Beedrill's counters ;)
 
There's a lot of good and popular Keldeo checks and counters and Beedrill doesn't really come in on anything, so that's hardly a reliable way of getting rid of Beedrills counters tbh.

Things like Latios, Latias, Starmie, Amoonguss, AV Tangrowth, AV Tornadus-T, Slowbro and Celebi all come in on most Keldeo sets with relative impunity, now a bunch of them can be trapped, but that's a lot of effort just to get rid of the counters of the counter to Beedrill's counters ;)
Everything u listed loses to beedrill lol,, Like I said Beedrill and Keldeo work very well together..also it appears you don't get how offense works. Beedrill doesn't need to come in on anything to be a threat.
 
Everything u listed loses to beedrill lol,, Like I said Beedrill and Keldeo work very well together..also it appears you don't get how offense works. Beedrill doesn't need to come in on anything to be a threat.


I don't think u got what he was saying. He is saying bedrill can't switch in on those things so the pair doesn't work well. Also almost every team has a keldeo switch in so that pair doesn't work well cause they can switch into their keldeo counter and then have trouble with that keldeo switch. You can double into beedrill but with rocks and paper thin defense, it can be hard to keep switching.
 
I don't think u got what he was saying. He is saying bedrill can't switch in on those things so the pair doesn't work well. Also almost every team has a keldeo switch in so that pair doesn't work well cause they can switch into their keldeo counter and then have trouble with that keldeo switch. You can double into beedrill but with rocks and paper thin defense, it can be hard to keep switching.

Yea, I understood what he said. I'm just saying that the way you should play beedrill is pressure rock setters with keldeo, and keep doubling with bee. It does have 0 defense so when you use it you don't have room for error, and you are forced to always play offensively. Beedrill does work well with keldeo because it deals with things that beat keldeo. You don't always have to switchin to be a good partner zzz
 
Hello I am currently looking for a tutor for xy or oras ou tier. I looked on the tutor signup thing but it wouldn't let me post on it. I know the basics just need a little extra help. Thanks in advance.
 
Hello I am currently looking for a tutor for xy or oras ou tier. I looked on the tutor signup thing but it wouldn't let me post on it. I know the basics just need a little extra help. Thanks in advance.

First would like to say welcome to Smogon!

This wouldn't be the thread to post this in as a mod will probably tell you either as I'm typing this or afterwards. You can get help from some people across Pokemon Showdown in the OverUsed room (I know I would be glad to help) and the Competitive Tutoring room. You can also read up on the different threads we have here on different topics like teambuilding or countering / checking a specific Pokemon (just was something off the top of my head I knew we had).
 
We have a Battle Spot forums and you can have the RMT Part of the forum rate your team under Other Metagames (I believe that the subforum).
 
Wanna dispel a common misconception that building with cores based purely on typing is an effective way to build. This method is archaic in such an inflated meta. If you want to build an effective team, with a defensive backbone, it's much more effective to cover certain threats in the meta. Take for example, off the top of my head, Jirachi+Rotom+Latios+Lando+Keldeo+Mega; this team has few glaring weaknesses and is representative of the majority of bulky offence builds in some form. It doesn't feature any of the fabled FWG or SFD of DPF cores or whatever you want, yet it isn't auto-losing to a hell of a lot of the meta, why is this? It's because role compression and blanket checks are a hell of a lot more important than typing cores now, and always will be in an inflated meta.

Another massive mistake I see a lot in the OU room, and on here, is people arbitrarily asking for Pokemon to fill X role. For example, questions such as "What's a good special tank?". This is not only ineffective, counter-intuitive, but once again, outdated. There are a multitude of Pokemon which excel at taking hits on the special side, but it's pointless throwing on a Chansey, though it may be the premier special tank/wall, onto a bulky offence/balance/semi-stall team if you're struggling with Keldeo (yes I know Chansey doesn't beat Keldeo this is just an example), Volcanion, Zard-Y, etc. Identifying key weaknesses and throwing on something to remedy these is much more effective. This is thanks to the inflated meta, once again, and the fact that role compression and blanket checks are so so important, so important that I cannot add enough emphasis. The key to building a solid team is recognising what Pokemon provide support to the other members, and recognising your team's weaknesses and remedying them without using arbitrary Pokemon because of some made-up criteria that you must fill (see: typing cores, "what's a good tank?" "what's a good sweeper?" etc.). Letting go of this will make you a much more efficient builder, I can promise you. The lesson of these two paragraphs is: don't throw on random typing cores or Pokemon to fulfil pointless roles on certain teams. This is a hindrance to building now, and will get you nowhere outside of serendipitous fringe cases where the team will work. I hope this makes sense to people, because my building and stance on it is convoluted to explain, yet second-nature to me now.

As far as Megas go, I don't even recognise the term. Other than the one-per-team restriction, all they are is additional Pokemon, in essence. What I will say though, is that considering many people use a Mega as a starting point whilst building, and what they bring to the team in terms of role-compression, offensive prowess, or utility, it is unlikely that, a) you will find a team without a Mega, and, b) you should not be using one yourself. Their effect on building is this: you are at a disadvantage by not using one, and a lot of them are detrimental to the meta in conjunction with the many other viable and threatening Pokemon we have.

As far as hazard control goes, many teams are forgoing it as of late, which is acceptable if the team doesn't autolose to hazards stack or have multiple Pokemon weak to Stealth Rock, or a Pokemon such as Talonflame, Zard-Y, or Volcarona. As long as you can either provide enough offensive pressure to common hazard setters, or you team doesn't mind hazards too much (see: the random 5 'Mons I posted earlier), you're ok to drop hazard control in favour of coverage/Specs on Latios or Roost on Latias or just a different Pokemon altogether. Not going to say too much about how I feel about hazards in general, though, but I will say that I do not like the concept at all.

tldr: don't build in a shitty old way, role compression is king, you should have a mega, hazard control necessity is a team-by-team thing

edit: @below I'm unsure as to what you want in response, if I'm honest. They are incredibly powerful additions to the game which provide a hell of a lot to a team, and if you want evidence that teams are less viable without a Mega then go and watch all of the last OR/AS OU WCOP replays. That should be evidence enough that you should be using a mega, and that they greatly increase the viability of a team. Teams are unique, and have unique needs, as was the message of my post.

People who come to these threads come here for two reasons; to learn about battling and the current state of the meta, and to discuss battling and the current state of the meta. If they fit into the former category, they shouldn't be innovating anyway, for the most part, as innovation from those who are still learning the ropes ends up in disastrous sets like Specs Scizor or whatever these magicians cook up. The latter already know what is viable and have a grasp on what has merit as far as innovation goes and what is just a gimmick, so they're completely unaffected. I'm not saying leave innovation to the best of the best, just learn the meta before you try to innovate. After all, an innovative set is one that takes advantage of common meta trends, and if you don't know said meta trends/the meta, then you aren't innovating.

This post needs to be re-purposed into an article because holy shit it's straight up one of the best things I've seen posted on this website.
 
What happen to OU? I did not play for like month and I'm pretty sure that every team is either HO with suicade lead or stall. Suspect test ladder is completly trash, I cannot stand it. What happen that shifts metagame so much?
 
What happen to OU? I did not play for like month and I'm pretty sure that every team is either HO with suicade lead or stall. Suspect test ladder is completly trash, I cannot stand it. What happen that shifts metagame so much?
It's just an attempt to get reqs as quickly as possible. Stall is slow but consistent, HO is less consistent but you can get games done more quickly.

If you're that upset, standard OU ladder is still open.
 
What happen to OU? I did not play for like month and I'm pretty sure that every team is either HO with suicade lead or stall. Suspect test ladder is completly trash, I cannot stand it. What happen that shifts metagame so much?

Suspect ladder on a Mon that people have strong opinions about, it's cancerous if you aren't doing it for reqs .
 
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I'm more curious than mad. When did stall and HO became so strong. As far as I recall most tour players said that HO and stall are pretty bad and BO is way to go. For long time that was true. Yeah, birdspam is probably best team I've seen through my entire pokemon experience and that's suprising there is no hard way to counter it.

Now we have explosion of various stalls and HO. Suicadr leads on many, many teams. It's not fun, becauese almost every turn is 50/50.

Can we discuss some ways of dealing with that? Like double defog CT or ways to play against bird spam? I think that's good point on discussion like that.

I start with one: taunt alakazam, which prevents azelf lead. Still shaky one becaue it's so obvious.
 
I'm more curious than mad. When did stall and HO became so strong. As far as I recall most tour players said that HO and stall are pretty bad and BO is way to go. For long time that was true. Yeah, birdspam is probably best team I've seen through my entire pokemon experience and that's suprising there is no hard way to counter it.

Now we have explosion of various stalls and HO. Suicadr leads on many, many teams. It's not fun, becauese almost every turn is 50/50.

Can we discuss some ways of dealing with that? Like double defog CT or ways to play against bird spam? I think that's good point on discussion like that.

I start with one: taunt alakazam, which prevents azelf lead. Still shaky one becaue it's so obvious.
Well the reason HO is so good is because stall is good right now. Once stall dies HO will become even better, it just wasn't that used before stall was good. Balance was where it was at. Stall is also good because half the players who find stall on the ladder forfeit, and if stall is played correctly it wins every time. Also, I want to add if HO dies stall rules. HO and Stall balance each other out, so when stall became more popular, so did HO.
 
So, I am not sure if this would count as being "against the rules", but I want to bring up the point of what stall would become without Mega Sableye. I think Pokemon like Quagsire and Chansey are more stall defining, but according to most people Mega Sableye defines stall. Therefore, I'd like to hear someone else's opinion on this. If Mega Sableye gets banned, people have been saying that Mega Venusaur and Mega Altaria will be the mega evolutions to be used on stall and I agree. But I think maybe a mega like bulky Charizard X or Mega Latias because of their bulk and stall capabilities. Not only that, but they have offensive presence as well so they can take the offensive support slot as well, opening a slot for another stall member. Now, I'd like to hear the opinion of someone else.
 
So, I am not sure if this would count as being "against the rules", but I want to bring up the point of what stall would become without Mega Sableye. I think Pokemon like Quagsire and Chansey are more stall defining, but according to most people Mega Sableye defines stall. Therefore, I'd like to hear someone else's opinion on this. If Mega Sableye gets banned, people have been saying that Mega Venusaur and Mega Altaria will be the mega evolutions to be used on stall and I agree. But I think maybe a mega like bulky Charizard X or Mega Latias because of their bulk and stall capabilities. Not only that, but they have offensive presence as well so they can take the offensive support slot as well, opening a slot for another stall member. Now, I'd like to hear the opinion of someone else.

I can testify that my mega of choice for stall was SpDef zard X and mega Venusaur, meta trends made me shift away from Venusaur into spdef toxic Altaria, defensive taunt Aerodactyl, Sableye and mega CM surf Latias for a period before settling fully on either Sableye or Venusaur for most of my builds.

Stall is very diverse in formations, but no Pokémon can reach sableye ability to create positive match ups without risking big core issues as zard X or Venusaur.
 
Stall won't be crippled. The biggest issue with Sab in the context of stall versatility is that it makes the matchup for any non-Sab stall very difficult, which is a big part of why I think non-Sab stall has fallen into obscurity. What I've noticed with my limited suspect ladder playtime is that the way you can structure stall feels a lot more... well, fluid. I made a quick build that springboarded off of Tele stall that featured Mega Slowbro>Mega Sableye and CM Blissey or SR Chansey>Suicune and reworked Dugtrio set, and it's not been half bad. What it has definitely shown me is that non-Sab stall isn't unfeasible or even necessarily bad (further supported by ABR's success with Alt Stall even with Sab on the ladder) and that options are freed up by a large number of factors, including the mega slot no longer being eaten by Sableye, the lack of opposing Sableye to need to spike stack against/reflect your status back at you etc. Right now stall has to actively look for reasons to not use Mega Sableye, and this is not a healthy aspect.

Good stall megas (exc. Sab) include, but aren't limited to, Mega Venusaur, Mega Slowbro, Mega Altaria, Mega Charizard X and a few others. Mega Audino stall anyone?

On the flipside, it does open you up to a number of stallbreakers which were not efficient at stallbreaking before, including but not limited to Taunt Gliscor, Taunt+Wisp Talonflame, Mew, Mega Alakazam and MediSpikes. This means that you will need to approach threat management differently, and stallbreaking will be a different concept to what it is atm.

I can only see the metagame becoming more healthy without Mega Sableye in it tbh, both in the respect that the matchup issues are hurt less due to a large number of stallbreakers no longer being invalidated in one team slot and due to there no longer being something restricting the way that you can build in the respect of stall vs. stall matchup (i.e. ensuring it's not an upward if you lack it), and also in the respect that I think there will just be a wider range of viable options in the same way that banning Aegislash in XY opened up a wider range of options.
 
whats the best set on mega heracross? Also, what makes it good in the current metagame? it used to be quite low on the viability ranking, if I remember correctly.
 
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