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Metagame RU Metagame Discussion Thread
- Thread starter feen
- Start date
TLDR - free Volcanion in the tier, suspect later if it turns out to be broken
After the tera blast ban in ou, and unban of Yanmega and Comfey, I think next course of action should be to unban Volcanion, Gyarados and Serperior. I think Serperior is kind of no brainer, it will be an annoying pokemon but not even close to broken without the coverage. Gyarados might still prove to be problematic but it's most successful sets ( and the ones I thought were broken personally ) abused tera blast flying, without it you need to run tera fire temper flare to beat the grasses which is honestly pathetic damage and you also just lose to the waters. Volcanion is the most controversial so I'll expand my thoughts on it below.
To begin with, I think the Volcanion quickban was absolutely stupid. Despite being a controversial pokemon who had been in tier for multiple years, there was no suspect test done. The tiering was done at a snail's pace, in the 5 months preceding the random quickban slate, there was only 1 suspect done. I understand it was a controversial pokemon which had complaints from the community and wanting to apply some fix to the tier before scl but it was not properly regardless. This also brings me to my next point, Volcanion was mostly banned due to "people complaining about it", and the opinions on that can change now that it doesn't have a set that beats everything. I at the time thought it was unhealthy aswell but it was only because of the tera blast set, others seemed to share this opinion aswell. So I think it deserves another chance now without the strongest weapon in its arsenal.
The tier is also incredibly boring right now in its progress making options. There are almost no breaking options. It just rewards either one of passive play or hyper offense. The tier has become kind of a meme with coinflip of ho/stall thing. With the tera blast ban adding freshness to the tier, we need to test stuff now that we have the chance, if it's broken you can just test it again.
After the tera blast ban in ou, and unban of Yanmega and Comfey, I think next course of action should be to unban Volcanion, Gyarados and Serperior. I think Serperior is kind of no brainer, it will be an annoying pokemon but not even close to broken without the coverage. Gyarados might still prove to be problematic but it's most successful sets ( and the ones I thought were broken personally ) abused tera blast flying, without it you need to run tera fire temper flare to beat the grasses which is honestly pathetic damage and you also just lose to the waters. Volcanion is the most controversial so I'll expand my thoughts on it below.
To begin with, I think the Volcanion quickban was absolutely stupid. Despite being a controversial pokemon who had been in tier for multiple years, there was no suspect test done. The tiering was done at a snail's pace, in the 5 months preceding the random quickban slate, there was only 1 suspect done. I understand it was a controversial pokemon which had complaints from the community and wanting to apply some fix to the tier before scl but it was not properly regardless. This also brings me to my next point, Volcanion was mostly banned due to "people complaining about it", and the opinions on that can change now that it doesn't have a set that beats everything. I at the time thought it was unhealthy aswell but it was only because of the tera blast set, others seemed to share this opinion aswell. So I think it deserves another chance now without the strongest weapon in its arsenal.
The tier is also incredibly boring right now in its progress making options. There are almost no breaking options. It just rewards either one of passive play or hyper offense. The tier has become kind of a meme with coinflip of ho/stall thing. With the tera blast ban adding freshness to the tier, we need to test stuff now that we have the chance, if it's broken you can just test it again.
Well, elec-ant may have beaten me to it, but it's time i step in with a post of my own. Armarouge gone, tera blast banned (god is GREAT), and 2 unbans. Let's discuss.
First, the unbans. I'll start with the less interesting one and that's Comfey. The main star I see for this thing is KnockTurn Tera fairy sets. The speed tier with those moves + Encore/Taunt/Calm Mind is quite nice, pressures steels on hazard stack while being unique priority. That's the positives. The negatives are uh, the stats. I would love to run Encore with Timid nature boots but oh my god the damage is just fucking dog piss. With Tera, Dkiss with that loadout does.. 33% average to BASCULEGION. Shit is just piss weak but you can do Pixie Plate and whatnot and squeeze more damage. For the most part though, I suspect this guy goes to the C tiers. C+, if I was a betting man. CM sets have their qualities and into the right team and steel type it can make stuff happen. But its specific, lacks the power wanted out of a true priority clicker and its utility is offset by that lack of power.
Now the infinitely better and cooler one is Yanmega. This still has some juice in my eyes. Throat spray sets are still competent backed by Tera Ghost Shadow Balls. Jirachi users need to lock in because they'll need to respect Yanmega being a threat to them. Bug/Ghost/Flying is still superb coverage neutrally, but it isn't grabbing the OHKOs you'd have wanted and guys like Empoleon and Hoodra still take you for a ride. For the most part though, its a healthy set now. However. SPECS TINTED LENS IS BACK ON THE MENU. Have you ever seen a special attacker just raw 2 shot a hoodra with TIMID? Empoleon? What Empoleon I don't see him anymore. Noivern has a chance to just fucking die like this thing is the goat. Use him he's like Crawdaunt for people who got enough hugs growing up.
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Now for the ban. LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Looks like HO players gonna have to learn how to play the game. I'm so sorry to hear that. No matter how DNB I was on this guy (I voted as much, by the way) it's always funny seeing malding over bans when the solutions are easy as shit to do for HO but because it doesn't make a big number show up on the screen it sucks. Like some of yall outta be ashamed at how little effort yall want to ever put in. God forbid the googoo gaga playstyle requires the frontal lobe to function above a high school grade level to win with.
Now for actual talking points, yeah this is a large HO hit. Registeel is now among public enemy #1 and HO is heavily incentivized to turn to Basculegion for its management. Sensu too, if you want to be cute. RU Discord started speaking sweet nothings about Chandelure on webs before proceeding towards making fun of Heatranator for calling Stone Edge Stedge. (Chandy on Webs prolly sucks dont use it just use legion) That's not the only wrinkle for webs though. Quagsire is also doing the lords work with the tera blast ban, which means Mimikyu is fat chungus trash into some more balance builds which means Bike stocks>>
Torterra nerfed by Tera blast being gone stings for my beloved broken webs sample but I'll get to torterra later. Suffice to say, HO has to try now. I do think w Yanmega and Comfey we'll see some Steel overloading angles come about with HO again, threats like dl tera ghost PZ and Yanmega paired up to force through steels.
=============================================================================================
Let's do some rapid fire TBlast abuser discussion next. Not gonna dwell on many of these too long unless there's something interesting to say.
First is the goat. The goat sadly has to try now. TBlast gone means Chesnaught is more reliable, but its not foolproof. Zen headbutt and Superpower are both in Torterra's movekit, and investing tera fairy to get a 2nd shell smash can turn Chesnaught into fodder. Doesn't help Body press does a meager 29% max even at -1 with tera and good HP investments. Of course, you would say this is walled by birds. I would argue our birds are fucking dogshit and all lose to tera fairy zen headbutt anyways. He's still got the juice, I promise. He just lost some sauce.
Tera ghost Shadow Ball. Yall just have to try now.
Tera dark Crunch. Yall just have to try now.
Tera fairy blast subcm sets were quite good, and losing those is honestly a colossal blow. It can still function, it doesn't have bad coverage but honestly I'd put this shit out of the B ranks entirely from this. Gastrodon stocks to the moon is a massive blow and so is Quagsire resurgences. Chesnaught better too like this shit might genuinely be cooked now. Not impossible to handle but.. very dire. More dire than the others I'd say.
Niche obliterated. Get out of my builder expeditiously.
You shouldn't have been using these bums at all let alone as Tera captains. Graceless heathens begone from my RU Set Compendium Box.
The setup sets took a colossal hit to where they probably not worth it. Atales can run stabs and ignore steels or run Tera Ghost Hex, but for the most part its HO support duty for these two for the rest of time. A shame.
Lost a big chunk of their games. Thankfully, they all have valid jobs beyond their TBlast sets. Still a painful strike but they can lean on other gas from here.
DD RestoChesto TBlast got brought 1 RUPL game and for those like 18 hours Flygon was the best its ever been. Well, back to the homeless shelter you go.
=============================================================================================
Now for the fun part. Prospective RUBL Unbans. We already got two, but what about the others? We've got multiple line huggers, but are they possible? Let's yap.
Here we start with the most likely candidate. Volcanion is not a booster like the other big 3 candidates and thus lacks a lot of the threat factor. It's also quite slow, Bisharp speed tier. Now, it mostly got banned off the fact that TBlast Fairy sets were a one-size-fits-all to 1v1ing the entire tier without drawbacks and ALSO being a trade god. Now though, it has to work way harder and can't 1 stop shop the entire tier down the shitter. Noivern is now more reliable and it relies on sludge bomb poisons to get the job done. Sure, you can 1v1 Noivern, but you WILL take a super fang for the priviledge and thats a trade the Noivern user will love to take every time.
That's not to say Vern is the only one. Gastrodon is a stone wall, and if you feel like digging deeper Dragalge and Tentacruel are both serviceable the moment they dont run EP. Slowbro becomes ridiculously reliable if you opt for an AV approach, which isnt bad at all but doesn't see use since phys def is generally better. Legion can soft check, Suicune can run the PP stall game and win that. Hoodra bike and Blissey mandate body press, etc. Frankly, this thing is a glorified SS RU Nidoqueen. It doesn't have that many checks on paper but its not as if you can't handle it defensively or offensively. If SS Nidoqueen is OK to people, this should be ok to you as well. Easiest suspect candidate in my eyes. Admittedly, I dislike suspecting things down because it just doesn't give enough time to truly gauge if its broken as Natdex has suffered with Darkrai and Roaring Moon over, but alas.
Next likely candidate within reasonability. Restochesto sets are still good, and subdd nonsense is still pretty annoying. Truthfully I'm mostly expecting this thing to be broken regardless. SubDD / Restochesto / DDTaunt tend to have wildly diff counterplay and the coverage flexibility between Temper Flare / EQ / Waterfall / Crunch combined with that bulk leans me to thinking it's too much still. It hugs the line a lot and if I'm completely honest, tier is fine without it.
This fucking thing man. Look. I did hella testing with this guy in particular, because if tera blast was the primary culprit for being broken I'd have made a Tera Blast PR thread the moment it got locked away. Unfortunately for all of us, yeah this Pokemon is stupid as fuck even without Tera Blast. It may not look it, but it is. Leaf Storm Dragon Pulse are the coverage picks, and after that you have an assortment of utility picks. Glare is ungodly spammable on stuff that doesn't want paralysis whatsoever like Jirachi and Noivern, and steels also get hampered by Knock Off before they slowly stop being able to handle Serperior anymore. Registeel never beats subleech, Jirachi slow u turn is nice vs sub sets until they tera so the rachi needs to be encore u turn AND hold a glare OHKO to be serviceable at it. And +2/+4 Dragon Pulse mops up all the Cyclizars, Noiverns and Grasses after boosting that it WILL get off. This thing plays a nasty long game and its just a perfect encapsulation of what an unhealthy Pokemon tends to look like. Give up on Serperior, it almost certainly is never happening.
=============================================================================================
For the final category, we have prospective drops list. Pokemon that suddenly find themselves too fraudulent for UU and have good likelihood to enter our hands. And by list I mean 1. One Pokemon has a chance now that didn't before. (For reference that list is Cobalion and Azumarill.)
Meet Sandy Flops. Without TB Ice, Latios is a complete crapshoot and Gastrodon isn't much better. Frankly it doesn't do much Tera Blast memes too often, but that means nothing when Ladder goons can't lobotomize their way through the best mon in their tier and inflate its usage. It's still unlikely since UU ladder is wack as fuck, but it's a chance I see some promise in.
First, the unbans. I'll start with the less interesting one and that's Comfey. The main star I see for this thing is KnockTurn Tera fairy sets. The speed tier with those moves + Encore/Taunt/Calm Mind is quite nice, pressures steels on hazard stack while being unique priority. That's the positives. The negatives are uh, the stats. I would love to run Encore with Timid nature boots but oh my god the damage is just fucking dog piss. With Tera, Dkiss with that loadout does.. 33% average to BASCULEGION. Shit is just piss weak but you can do Pixie Plate and whatnot and squeeze more damage. For the most part though, I suspect this guy goes to the C tiers. C+, if I was a betting man. CM sets have their qualities and into the right team and steel type it can make stuff happen. But its specific, lacks the power wanted out of a true priority clicker and its utility is offset by that lack of power.
Now the infinitely better and cooler one is Yanmega. This still has some juice in my eyes. Throat spray sets are still competent backed by Tera Ghost Shadow Balls. Jirachi users need to lock in because they'll need to respect Yanmega being a threat to them. Bug/Ghost/Flying is still superb coverage neutrally, but it isn't grabbing the OHKOs you'd have wanted and guys like Empoleon and Hoodra still take you for a ride. For the most part though, its a healthy set now. However. SPECS TINTED LENS IS BACK ON THE MENU. Have you ever seen a special attacker just raw 2 shot a hoodra with TIMID? Empoleon? What Empoleon I don't see him anymore. Noivern has a chance to just fucking die like this thing is the goat. Use him he's like Crawdaunt for people who got enough hugs growing up.
=============================================================================================
Now for the ban. LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Looks like HO players gonna have to learn how to play the game. I'm so sorry to hear that. No matter how DNB I was on this guy (I voted as much, by the way) it's always funny seeing malding over bans when the solutions are easy as shit to do for HO but because it doesn't make a big number show up on the screen it sucks. Like some of yall outta be ashamed at how little effort yall want to ever put in. God forbid the googoo gaga playstyle requires the frontal lobe to function above a high school grade level to win with.
Now for actual talking points, yeah this is a large HO hit. Registeel is now among public enemy #1 and HO is heavily incentivized to turn to Basculegion for its management. Sensu too, if you want to be cute. RU Discord started speaking sweet nothings about Chandelure on webs before proceeding towards making fun of Heatranator for calling Stone Edge Stedge. (Chandy on Webs prolly sucks dont use it just use legion) That's not the only wrinkle for webs though. Quagsire is also doing the lords work with the tera blast ban, which means Mimikyu is fat chungus trash into some more balance builds which means Bike stocks>>
Torterra nerfed by Tera blast being gone stings for my beloved broken webs sample but I'll get to torterra later. Suffice to say, HO has to try now. I do think w Yanmega and Comfey we'll see some Steel overloading angles come about with HO again, threats like dl tera ghost PZ and Yanmega paired up to force through steels.
=============================================================================================
Let's do some rapid fire TBlast abuser discussion next. Not gonna dwell on many of these too long unless there's something interesting to say.
First is the goat. The goat sadly has to try now. TBlast gone means Chesnaught is more reliable, but its not foolproof. Zen headbutt and Superpower are both in Torterra's movekit, and investing tera fairy to get a 2nd shell smash can turn Chesnaught into fodder. Doesn't help Body press does a meager 29% max even at -1 with tera and good HP investments. Of course, you would say this is walled by birds. I would argue our birds are fucking dogshit and all lose to tera fairy zen headbutt anyways. He's still got the juice, I promise. He just lost some sauce.
Tera ghost Shadow Ball. Yall just have to try now.
Tera dark Crunch. Yall just have to try now.
Tera fairy blast subcm sets were quite good, and losing those is honestly a colossal blow. It can still function, it doesn't have bad coverage but honestly I'd put this shit out of the B ranks entirely from this. Gastrodon stocks to the moon is a massive blow and so is Quagsire resurgences. Chesnaught better too like this shit might genuinely be cooked now. Not impossible to handle but.. very dire. More dire than the others I'd say.
Niche obliterated. Get out of my builder expeditiously.
You shouldn't have been using these bums at all let alone as Tera captains. Graceless heathens begone from my RU Set Compendium Box.
The setup sets took a colossal hit to where they probably not worth it. Atales can run stabs and ignore steels or run Tera Ghost Hex, but for the most part its HO support duty for these two for the rest of time. A shame.
Lost a big chunk of their games. Thankfully, they all have valid jobs beyond their TBlast sets. Still a painful strike but they can lean on other gas from here.
DD RestoChesto TBlast got brought 1 RUPL game and for those like 18 hours Flygon was the best its ever been. Well, back to the homeless shelter you go.
=============================================================================================
Now for the fun part. Prospective RUBL Unbans. We already got two, but what about the others? We've got multiple line huggers, but are they possible? Let's yap.
Here we start with the most likely candidate. Volcanion is not a booster like the other big 3 candidates and thus lacks a lot of the threat factor. It's also quite slow, Bisharp speed tier. Now, it mostly got banned off the fact that TBlast Fairy sets were a one-size-fits-all to 1v1ing the entire tier without drawbacks and ALSO being a trade god. Now though, it has to work way harder and can't 1 stop shop the entire tier down the shitter. Noivern is now more reliable and it relies on sludge bomb poisons to get the job done. Sure, you can 1v1 Noivern, but you WILL take a super fang for the priviledge and thats a trade the Noivern user will love to take every time.
That's not to say Vern is the only one. Gastrodon is a stone wall, and if you feel like digging deeper Dragalge and Tentacruel are both serviceable the moment they dont run EP. Slowbro becomes ridiculously reliable if you opt for an AV approach, which isnt bad at all but doesn't see use since phys def is generally better. Legion can soft check, Suicune can run the PP stall game and win that. Hoodra bike and Blissey mandate body press, etc. Frankly, this thing is a glorified SS RU Nidoqueen. It doesn't have that many checks on paper but its not as if you can't handle it defensively or offensively. If SS Nidoqueen is OK to people, this should be ok to you as well. Easiest suspect candidate in my eyes. Admittedly, I dislike suspecting things down because it just doesn't give enough time to truly gauge if its broken as Natdex has suffered with Darkrai and Roaring Moon over, but alas.
Next likely candidate within reasonability. Restochesto sets are still good, and subdd nonsense is still pretty annoying. Truthfully I'm mostly expecting this thing to be broken regardless. SubDD / Restochesto / DDTaunt tend to have wildly diff counterplay and the coverage flexibility between Temper Flare / EQ / Waterfall / Crunch combined with that bulk leans me to thinking it's too much still. It hugs the line a lot and if I'm completely honest, tier is fine without it.
This fucking thing man. Look. I did hella testing with this guy in particular, because if tera blast was the primary culprit for being broken I'd have made a Tera Blast PR thread the moment it got locked away. Unfortunately for all of us, yeah this Pokemon is stupid as fuck even without Tera Blast. It may not look it, but it is. Leaf Storm Dragon Pulse are the coverage picks, and after that you have an assortment of utility picks. Glare is ungodly spammable on stuff that doesn't want paralysis whatsoever like Jirachi and Noivern, and steels also get hampered by Knock Off before they slowly stop being able to handle Serperior anymore. Registeel never beats subleech, Jirachi slow u turn is nice vs sub sets until they tera so the rachi needs to be encore u turn AND hold a glare OHKO to be serviceable at it. And +2/+4 Dragon Pulse mops up all the Cyclizars, Noiverns and Grasses after boosting that it WILL get off. This thing plays a nasty long game and its just a perfect encapsulation of what an unhealthy Pokemon tends to look like. Give up on Serperior, it almost certainly is never happening.
=============================================================================================
For the final category, we have prospective drops list. Pokemon that suddenly find themselves too fraudulent for UU and have good likelihood to enter our hands. And by list I mean 1. One Pokemon has a chance now that didn't before. (For reference that list is Cobalion and Azumarill.)
Meet Sandy Flops. Without TB Ice, Latios is a complete crapshoot and Gastrodon isn't much better. Frankly it doesn't do much Tera Blast memes too often, but that means nothing when Ladder goons can't lobotomize their way through the best mon in their tier and inflate its usage. It's still unlikely since UU ladder is wack as fuck, but it's a chance I see some promise in.
Body Press is predictable
Tera Fighting Tera Blast Slowbro is innovation
They weren’t ready for it (I wasn’t either)
hello,
Just yesterday the RU tiering council voted upon 4 RUBL pokemon regarding a potential restest in the wake of a tera blast ban. And, as you can read above, no retests were issued, with only 9 of the 40 votes being in favor of any sort of action at all. Quite frankly, this is nuts. The tera blast ban was not only seen as a major victory within Smogon's top tier, but for lower tiers alike who felt the same imbalance from the mechanic and the move. And very much, the expectation was that certain pokemon who were previously banned for being noteworthy abusers of the move would be freed or retested in some way. The victory that is the tera blast ban and this expectation of having previously banned pokemon allowed in the tier have both been defied by the recent vote. This is because all four of the pokemon above were noteworthy abusers of tera blast. For some of the pokemon, their use of tera blast is directly accented in their reasoning for a ban. For others, no reasoning was actually given at all, but upon looking at the metagame and some of the posts surrounding their respective bans, it is not difficult to tell that tera blast was an essential aspect of what pushed them over the competitive boundaries set by smogons tiering policy.
Upon looking at the Tera Blast Policy review discussion, it is clear a major motivator was the extended length of the SV generation. Finch alludes to the additional year of SV being a factor in beginning this discussion, and Lax, who is a part of OU council explictly states that if the generation ended in 2026, then he would be against any sort of change at all, but that given its extended life, the tiering discussion changes. Furthermore, there is a change in disposition towards being more open to change. From these posts and discussions, its clear that the extended life of SV should encourage more exploration as to what should be allowed or not allowed within the tier. Its natural as well, as once SV loses its status as a current gen, the bar for change increases significantly more (as evidenced by the Talonflame suspect in SM RU). While the extended timeline of SV might seem a burden to some, it allows for a more precise tiering that allows councils and their playerbases more time to ensure the tiering decisions made prior were correct.
This is not reflected in the council votes and in particular, id be curious to see how the four council voters that opted for no suspects entirely reconcile the fact that a tera blast ban was made in the context of an extended SV timeline, that was partially made for the purpose of retesting previously banned pokemon on the merits of tera blast. While no reasoning is provided in the posts, upon my discussion with diogo in the discord, he made the argument that the tier was finally reaching a good state and that voting for a retest would destabilize that. Regardless of what qualifies RU to be in a "good state", such rationale makes zero sense in the wider context of the tera blast ban. Theres no way to be concerned about destabilization if (1) a retest one by one would have the explicit purpose to evaluate the merits of such concern and (2) there is an estimated 1.5 years left of SV to restabilize the tier if the suspect was deemed to be erroneous. This type of argument is also blatantly just not in conformity with the tiering policy. The goal of the policy is to allow for as many pokemon as possible while retaining the competitiveness of the tier. Objecting to a retest due to fears it might destabilize the tier (while the tier has another 1.5 years left) rather than the specific merits and qualities of the pokemon is not in line the council's duties.
While only franklin, slikkles, and hjkhj know the full rationale behind their votes, as no reasoning is provided at all, if it is anything similar to diogo's rationale, they should reconsider their votes. I made a mistake earlier when I labelled this vote as "vibes based tiering", rather, it is just reflective of a disposition across the entirety of the council (bar ming) to keep pokemon banned (for what reason, I do not know), in spite of the tera blast ban. For whatever reason, there is a hesitancy to retest that is reflected by only 9 of the 40 votes being in support of a retest even though the tera blast ban was made in the context of an extended timeline that allows the time for these retests to exist. If there was a default option in this type of vote, the default should have been "retest" rather than "ban". Going back to the four mentioned prior, another reason might have been that they believed that each pokemon individually would have been too much for the tier, regardless of tera blast ban.
For this rationale, upon examining each of the four slated pokemon individually, it is found that tera blast was a major factor behind each of their respective bans. Starting with the Blastoise suspect, the rationale provided by the council paints a rather clear picture. The argument is that between blastoise's two primary sets of tera blast electric and earthquake, there is no reliable way to cover both sets. If tera blast is gone, then obviously one of those two options is missing, leading to more predictable counterplay. That being said, of the four pokemon, voting ban on blastoise is the most justifiable due to other coverage options it has beyond earthquake, but undoubtably, none of them cover as wide of a range as tera blast electric does. That said, if no retest were to be issued, a revision of this reasoning would have to be given as with the paragraph provided, there is no way to justify keeping blastoise banned.
After blastoise, the decision to vote ban on the remaining three is particularly egregious. Going to Serperior, which was quickbanned, tera blast becomes an even more prominent part of the rationale than blastoise. In the reasoning, 2 of the three coverage options that are explicitly mentioned involve tera blast, specifically tera blast electric and tera blast stellar. Whats most shocking here is that hjkhj voted to suspect serperior during this time, but now in the vote yesterday, serperior is no longer considered suspect/retest worthy at all, despite losing tera blast, one of its key primary coverage options.
Voting ban on volcanion and gyarados is the most outrageous decision of all, especially in context of the outright dubious procedure of their bans, explained best by goldcat. For gyarados, tera blast fairy and tera blast flying were two major well-documented sets it ran, both help overcome its poor matchup into grass types like wo-chien and chesnaught, and while it has some other options with tera dark crunch and sub sets and chesto-resto, the ease of tera blast in particular made it banworthy before. With gyarados (and blastoise), there is the additional argument that "oh it would be silly to unban another HO element", to which I would rehash reasoning from the second point i made in an earlier post; this logic does not hold up because it blatantly is just not a tiering argument. I made The volcanion ban is still largely controversial, even with tera blast in the tier and the removal of tera blast surely makes it a no brainer for a suspect (especially with the rise of noivern since that point). Regardless, in the context of both pokemon being quick banned relatively late into the current tier, it would seem obvious that suspect is due with a tera blast ban, especially when both of which were such great abusers of the move.
edit: Realizing I forgot to mention that the burden of proof for a retest is considerably lower than a flat out unban. The "burden of proof" if you will for a retest only really should have to address whether there are elements that might make the pokemon balanced and competitive rather than a definitive proof. Considering the logic used to ban these four pokemon involved tera blast which is now gone, reaching that burden is not as far of a stretch for a retest.
As stated prior, the default vote for this test, given the context of the tera blast unban and the 1.5 years left remaining in SV's timeline, should have been retest rather than ban. The conversation that should be occurring now is which one of these four should be tested first, not whether any of them should be tested at all, because that answer is painstakingly obvious. If OU is the tiering model that RU is to follow in the wake of the tera blast ban, RU has succeeded with respect to the initial unbans of yanmega and comfey as OU has done with regieleki. But the OU council has signaled a clear indication to discuss other pokemon like volcarona and roaring moon. Why hasn't RU done the same?
Just yesterday the RU tiering council voted upon 4 RUBL pokemon regarding a potential restest in the wake of a tera blast ban. And, as you can read above, no retests were issued, with only 9 of the 40 votes being in favor of any sort of action at all. Quite frankly, this is nuts. The tera blast ban was not only seen as a major victory within Smogon's top tier, but for lower tiers alike who felt the same imbalance from the mechanic and the move. And very much, the expectation was that certain pokemon who were previously banned for being noteworthy abusers of the move would be freed or retested in some way. The victory that is the tera blast ban and this expectation of having previously banned pokemon allowed in the tier have both been defied by the recent vote. This is because all four of the pokemon above were noteworthy abusers of tera blast. For some of the pokemon, their use of tera blast is directly accented in their reasoning for a ban. For others, no reasoning was actually given at all, but upon looking at the metagame and some of the posts surrounding their respective bans, it is not difficult to tell that tera blast was an essential aspect of what pushed them over the competitive boundaries set by smogons tiering policy.
Upon looking at the Tera Blast Policy review discussion, it is clear a major motivator was the extended length of the SV generation. Finch alludes to the additional year of SV being a factor in beginning this discussion, and Lax, who is a part of OU council explictly states that if the generation ended in 2026, then he would be against any sort of change at all, but that given its extended life, the tiering discussion changes. Furthermore, there is a change in disposition towards being more open to change. From these posts and discussions, its clear that the extended life of SV should encourage more exploration as to what should be allowed or not allowed within the tier. Its natural as well, as once SV loses its status as a current gen, the bar for change increases significantly more (as evidenced by the Talonflame suspect in SM RU). While the extended timeline of SV might seem a burden to some, it allows for a more precise tiering that allows councils and their playerbases more time to ensure the tiering decisions made prior were correct.
This is not reflected in the council votes and in particular, id be curious to see how the four council voters that opted for no suspects entirely reconcile the fact that a tera blast ban was made in the context of an extended SV timeline, that was partially made for the purpose of retesting previously banned pokemon on the merits of tera blast. While no reasoning is provided in the posts, upon my discussion with diogo in the discord, he made the argument that the tier was finally reaching a good state and that voting for a retest would destabilize that. Regardless of what qualifies RU to be in a "good state", such rationale makes zero sense in the wider context of the tera blast ban. Theres no way to be concerned about destabilization if (1) a retest one by one would have the explicit purpose to evaluate the merits of such concern and (2) there is an estimated 1.5 years left of SV to restabilize the tier if the suspect was deemed to be erroneous. This type of argument is also blatantly just not in conformity with the tiering policy. The goal of the policy is to allow for as many pokemon as possible while retaining the competitiveness of the tier. Objecting to a retest due to fears it might destabilize the tier (while the tier has another 1.5 years left) rather than the specific merits and qualities of the pokemon is not in line the council's duties.
While only franklin, slikkles, and hjkhj know the full rationale behind their votes, as no reasoning is provided at all, if it is anything similar to diogo's rationale, they should reconsider their votes. I made a mistake earlier when I labelled this vote as "vibes based tiering", rather, it is just reflective of a disposition across the entirety of the council (bar ming) to keep pokemon banned (for what reason, I do not know), in spite of the tera blast ban. For whatever reason, there is a hesitancy to retest that is reflected by only 9 of the 40 votes being in support of a retest even though the tera blast ban was made in the context of an extended timeline that allows the time for these retests to exist. If there was a default option in this type of vote, the default should have been "retest" rather than "ban". Going back to the four mentioned prior, another reason might have been that they believed that each pokemon individually would have been too much for the tier, regardless of tera blast ban.
For this rationale, upon examining each of the four slated pokemon individually, it is found that tera blast was a major factor behind each of their respective bans. Starting with the Blastoise suspect, the rationale provided by the council paints a rather clear picture. The argument is that between blastoise's two primary sets of tera blast electric and earthquake, there is no reliable way to cover both sets. If tera blast is gone, then obviously one of those two options is missing, leading to more predictable counterplay. That being said, of the four pokemon, voting ban on blastoise is the most justifiable due to other coverage options it has beyond earthquake, but undoubtably, none of them cover as wide of a range as tera blast electric does. That said, if no retest were to be issued, a revision of this reasoning would have to be given as with the paragraph provided, there is no way to justify keeping blastoise banned.
After blastoise, the decision to vote ban on the remaining three is particularly egregious. Going to Serperior, which was quickbanned, tera blast becomes an even more prominent part of the rationale than blastoise. In the reasoning, 2 of the three coverage options that are explicitly mentioned involve tera blast, specifically tera blast electric and tera blast stellar. Whats most shocking here is that hjkhj voted to suspect serperior during this time, but now in the vote yesterday, serperior is no longer considered suspect/retest worthy at all, despite losing tera blast, one of its key primary coverage options.
Voting ban on volcanion and gyarados is the most outrageous decision of all, especially in context of the outright dubious procedure of their bans, explained best by goldcat. For gyarados, tera blast fairy and tera blast flying were two major well-documented sets it ran, both help overcome its poor matchup into grass types like wo-chien and chesnaught, and while it has some other options with tera dark crunch and sub sets and chesto-resto, the ease of tera blast in particular made it banworthy before. With gyarados (and blastoise), there is the additional argument that "oh it would be silly to unban another HO element", to which I would rehash reasoning from the second point i made in an earlier post; this logic does not hold up because it blatantly is just not a tiering argument. I made The volcanion ban is still largely controversial, even with tera blast in the tier and the removal of tera blast surely makes it a no brainer for a suspect (especially with the rise of noivern since that point). Regardless, in the context of both pokemon being quick banned relatively late into the current tier, it would seem obvious that suspect is due with a tera blast ban, especially when both of which were such great abusers of the move.
edit: Realizing I forgot to mention that the burden of proof for a retest is considerably lower than a flat out unban. The "burden of proof" if you will for a retest only really should have to address whether there are elements that might make the pokemon balanced and competitive rather than a definitive proof. Considering the logic used to ban these four pokemon involved tera blast which is now gone, reaching that burden is not as far of a stretch for a retest.
As stated prior, the default vote for this test, given the context of the tera blast unban and the 1.5 years left remaining in SV's timeline, should have been retest rather than ban. The conversation that should be occurring now is which one of these four should be tested first, not whether any of them should be tested at all, because that answer is painstakingly obvious. If OU is the tiering model that RU is to follow in the wake of the tera blast ban, RU has succeeded with respect to the initial unbans of yanmega and comfey as OU has done with regieleki. But the OU council has signaled a clear indication to discuss other pokemon like volcarona and roaring moon. Why hasn't RU done the same?
Well, I was actually gonn make a summary of why I voted what I did though in part I already had. My votes for Volcanion, Serp, Gyara and Toise were suspect Volcanion, keep everything else away. I already mostly gave my reasoning on the other three, but Blastoise is fresh so I'll go over that one in particular.
First off I'd like to say I genuinely never expected this shit to ever hit the slate before Thundurus-I. No matter how good TBlast sets were, I found them to not really be taking the best advantage of Blastoise's offering. Sure they were good in isolation, but I personally felt like HO had better Tera investments to be using, like Throat Spray Yanmega or TB Fire Iron Leaves. Not having to invest Tera for effectiveness vs Waters like Slowbro was great, and it provided immunity to stuff like Twave Thundy-I. The caveat to this set was stuff like Conk and Slither who ate it for breakfast. Those two are no longer here.
Like you can say it was a strong part of its game THEN, and like sure. But even back then, you didn't need tera blast to be broken at all in my eyes, that shit was stupid regardless. I remember people cooking Aura Spheres and EQ with misc teras to drop Hoodras Empoleons and Umbreons, and honestly the stupidity never truly stops. If we still had the other guys like Slither Conk Fezandipiti and others, then maybe I'd entertain the idea of Blastoise. But right now in big 2026? Modest is faster than like everybody but Scarf Ape and Scarf Gar at +2. Keep it gone lmao.
As for the actual results of the slate in particular, I can't say I'm not somewhat disappointed. I think suspecting nothing definitely wasn't the right call, and Volcanion at the very least absolutely should be given its fair shake.
There's no say that we won't revisit this by the way. Odds are if we stay commited to doin nothing, we'd likely rehold this vote after SCL or something to re-examine them since that's the next best time to run this after this point in time right now. If you disagree w the justification, feel free to post more on the threads. I promise you, it does make a difference. Just look at how Mence got handled.
First off I'd like to say I genuinely never expected this shit to ever hit the slate before Thundurus-I. No matter how good TBlast sets were, I found them to not really be taking the best advantage of Blastoise's offering. Sure they were good in isolation, but I personally felt like HO had better Tera investments to be using, like Throat Spray Yanmega or TB Fire Iron Leaves. Not having to invest Tera for effectiveness vs Waters like Slowbro was great, and it provided immunity to stuff like Twave Thundy-I. The caveat to this set was stuff like Conk and Slither who ate it for breakfast. Those two are no longer here.
Like you can say it was a strong part of its game THEN, and like sure. But even back then, you didn't need tera blast to be broken at all in my eyes, that shit was stupid regardless. I remember people cooking Aura Spheres and EQ with misc teras to drop Hoodras Empoleons and Umbreons, and honestly the stupidity never truly stops. If we still had the other guys like Slither Conk Fezandipiti and others, then maybe I'd entertain the idea of Blastoise. But right now in big 2026? Modest is faster than like everybody but Scarf Ape and Scarf Gar at +2. Keep it gone lmao.
As for the actual results of the slate in particular, I can't say I'm not somewhat disappointed. I think suspecting nothing definitely wasn't the right call, and Volcanion at the very least absolutely should be given its fair shake.
There's no say that we won't revisit this by the way. Odds are if we stay commited to doin nothing, we'd likely rehold this vote after SCL or something to re-examine them since that's the next best time to run this after this point in time right now. If you disagree w the justification, feel free to post more on the threads. I promise you, it does make a difference. Just look at how Mence got handled.
Hello 0yster since you did mention my votes and of those specific let me get you my thought process on the thing.
The first point I want to raise is what is possible and what wasn't possible in this slate. My first idea was to free 2 mons serp and gyarados and if they're too broken to quickban them and avoid a toxic metagame. I was told if we unban them that a quickban wasn't possible.
This was more of a problem for me and I think depends on how you see tiering and how it should go foward. I do not want to creat an unbalanced metagame just for the sake of rereleasing new mons. This of course depends on how you see it. Let me tell you what I think RU should aim for.
My idea was always that if a metagame is dominated by ho/ offense or stall there is a problem with it. That means the metagame is oriented in a way that either makes it too easy or too hard to make progress. I consider like many others that yes there is some skill to ho and stall but it's less thinking in general that facing a bo, balance or fat as these archetypes rely more on the matchup.
Ho has been a problem in RU for years, there is no denying that. It has seen large tournament success as well as usage due to it being that reliable.
We've entered an era where I feel like the metagame shows better skill expression while also being fun. Of course both of these notions are subjective. My point is more that the meta is less centralized on offense and on more diverse builds. Of course ho is far from dead and same for stall the goal is not to kill them off.
I voted ban on all these mons as I felt like they would break the balance that we got atm.
Blastoise has no 100% reliable switch in and while yes it loved using tera blast I still think that it would be similar to armarour as a big wallbreaker for ho and nothing else. I doubt we woul've seen spin sets.
For Gyarados, I was hesitating but felt in a similar way that it was just too good of a trade mon. You don't know which set it is and they require vastly different counter play. It would be a less opressing version of it before the ban where it ran either tera fly blast or crunch tera dark but it could still adapt with temper flare tera fire or tera dark crunch depending on if you want to beat ches or bro. You can't cover everything and the physical mons can already overwhelm these guys so I felt like it would just be too much.
Serp I was on the fence as well. I at first wanted to suspect test it. After talking with both sides of ban/ unban I saw it as being too much of a progress maker while being restrictive in the builder. Goodra is the only real answer and that we saw can be knocked off. Before it's ban I didn't even run tblast serp. Knock, leaf storm, glare and dragon pulse/ synth was doing an insane amout of work with spikes.
For volc it's in the idea to not kill of balance. This mon is good into ho yes as it trades into it but is also a great offense mon as it can weaken or straight up ko some mons for it's teammates. Fire spin volc with taunt was a set and yes you won't ko gastro but you will chip it enough for a partner to beat it. Slowbro would also cripple to it. Noivern and bike aren't reliable switch ins if it gets poisoned by sludge bomb. This made volc just too good of a progress maker in my opinion.
This did reveal a problem in the system. A slate like this only shows the final decision and not the thought process. What I would propose is to have to justify why they voted for this decision to have better transparency with the public.
Hope it helped clear up some stuff,
As someone who's been playing RU on-and off for a while, I agree with Oyster's points. In fact, I find it very odd that there was only 9/40 votes in support of any sort of re-suspect.
All of the banned threats were clear abusers of Tera Blast, and would regularly use the move to win games. I think the Tera Blast ban in and of itself should've warranted the unban of at least a couple of the Pokemon on the voting slate. Especially now, during a time of ladder tour where you're likely to see high voter turnout and higher quality of games. By prolonging these suspect tests, it further delays the ability to re-test anything or allow for meta development with these additions. Currently as I see it, people have a biased perspective on these Pokemon, and theorizing scenarios that are likely not representative of how they'd actually play out (e.g. Volcanion interactions)
I think the re-examinations of Volcarona in OU and Frosmoth in PU are good examples of what should be done -- both proactive approaches to tiering that still leveraged community input and discussion.
All of this is to say that I support (and hope for) the suspect test of any of the above Pokemon, to which I think Volcanion should be the first (though any are valid).
All of the banned threats were clear abusers of Tera Blast, and would regularly use the move to win games. I think the Tera Blast ban in and of itself should've warranted the unban of at least a couple of the Pokemon on the voting slate. Especially now, during a time of ladder tour where you're likely to see high voter turnout and higher quality of games. By prolonging these suspect tests, it further delays the ability to re-test anything or allow for meta development with these additions. Currently as I see it, people have a biased perspective on these Pokemon, and theorizing scenarios that are likely not representative of how they'd actually play out (e.g. Volcanion interactions)
I think the re-examinations of Volcarona in OU and Frosmoth in PU are good examples of what should be done -- both proactive approaches to tiering that still leveraged community input and discussion.
All of this is to say that I support (and hope for) the suspect test of any of the above Pokemon, to which I think Volcanion should be the first (though any are valid).
I was against suspecting Volcanion but everyone is using Noivern again so it's probably not that bad. I wasn't around when Blastoise got banned so I'm honestly not so sure about that, but I think Volcanion, Serperior, and Gyarados can be given a fair shot. Especially Gyarados. It does not have good coverage for Grass-types, and if it does not run EQ, it risks being checked by Roar Empoleon. Ches can check Gyarados, unless it runs like Hurricane which is probably viable honestly. We already have Water-types in the tier that are actually better at getting past the Grass-types in the metagame like Feraligatr, Crawdaunt, or I guess even Drednaw but I'm like the only guy using that.
As for Volcanion it's understandable if people don't want it back again since it is very bulky and difficult to switch into. Although, with Noivern being better than ever it's probably not that bad. It could be a nice alternative to Entei.
Serperior is potentially really annoying with Glare and boosting Leaf Storm but probably not broken.
The only other thing I think that could be reasonably freed is Hawlucha, but being realistic I don't think we'll have a lot of support to free this HO Tera Unburden Pokemon, lol
But the main issue is that people don't like the tier and whatever changes the tiering council can move towards probably aren't going to fix that. If only we could move back to RU alpha days with Haxorus, if only.
Maybe the best course of action would be to have a community survey. Crazy how I'm a bigger fan of what the community thinks when I'm no longer council...
As for Volcanion it's understandable if people don't want it back again since it is very bulky and difficult to switch into. Although, with Noivern being better than ever it's probably not that bad. It could be a nice alternative to Entei.
Serperior is potentially really annoying with Glare and boosting Leaf Storm but probably not broken.
The only other thing I think that could be reasonably freed is Hawlucha, but being realistic I don't think we'll have a lot of support to free this HO Tera Unburden Pokemon, lol
But the main issue is that people don't like the tier and whatever changes the tiering council can move towards probably aren't going to fix that. If only we could move back to RU alpha days with Haxorus, if only.
Maybe the best course of action would be to have a community survey. Crazy how I'm a bigger fan of what the community thinks when I'm no longer council...
hi im ming i got a vote, was very pro testing stuff as you can see
so will give some of my personal thoughts on why i thought these guys could've gotten looked at
To wrap my thoughts I also want to give some impression just about the state of the tier in general. I already basically did this in my team dump for RUPL so i will keep it somewhat more succinct here. RU has had the reputation of being the "HO or stall tier" probably mostly bc of what hjkhj was doing in SCL when his team won the whole thing. That is not entirely untrue as HO and stall are both playstyles that can be run to success within the tier. However I believe that categorically viewing RU as a whole as such is disingenuous to the identity of the tier and I believe I proved that with my recent RUPL run specifically. I think the tier is in a pretty good spot at the moment as far as overall power level and parity amongst various playstyles with some being better than others but all like kinda useable. That being said I maintain my position over the guys I voted on in the slate and believe that even if i think the tier is cool rn, that's not a reason to deny them their fair shake. Oh also before I conclude I want to also add that just because the council voted on no action RIGHT NOW that does not mean there will be no potential action EVER. So keep that in mind when talking this type of stuff, it could very well be like september that rolls around and suddenly we see a reintroduction suspect for gyara or smth, we don't know!
so will give some of my personal thoughts on why i thought these guys could've gotten looked at
firstly ill start off with volc who was the only mon I thought did NOT deserve to be let back in the tier. the short version is volc was a guy who COULD tera blast you but whos most oppressive sets in my opinion, fire spin trapping shenanigans, did NOT revolve around tera blast and the meta has not changed to a point where i think introducing him back into the mix would be particularly fun or healthy or useful. People love to complain about the "teRa BlaSt FaiRY" sets that saw some limited play and those sets were pretty good at blowing through guys like exactly noivern in one big burst. But to me what pushed volc over the edge in the first place and is the reason i voted to ban him out in the first place was his ability in the grind game to just overpower his checks and "counters" over the course of a long game. Steam eruption + rocks damage outdamaged regen on most bike spreads, not including burn chip GOD FORBID u got burned, and volc could tech into smth like body press to get immediate big damages which made bike an inconsistent at best "check" to the guy. guys like gastrodon were getting fire spun on swaps and could be taunted on subsequent turns to prevent recover which was just bananas. fire spin + taunt trapping obliterated entire swathes of the fatter guys in the tier, stuff like empo, umbreon, and slowbro always had to keep their eye on a swivel vs volc lest they just evaporate bc trapping is fun. you also were a pretty good trade machine vs offenses bc u had a billion sp atk and pretty good defenses with a decent typing and a useful water immunity so even if you were geared towards clocking fat you werent a complete nothing burger trading vs guys. all in all i think minimizing volcs role to "tera blast fairy merchant" is disingenuous to all of the other things he was doing which to me have not changed in a meaningful enough way to warrant his reintroduction into the tier
this is the guy that quite frankly im shocked NO ON ELSE thought was worth reintroducing into the tier. his ENTIRE. GIMMICK. was relying on tera blast fly to blow through grasses and provide super strong neutral hits. People are often quick to mention some of the off shoots of gyara we saw later in its lifetime when people were using stuff like sub tera dark sets to tech around slowbro or sub tera ground sets to also mix things up and stuff. that all is well and good and true, people WERE experimenting with other offshoots of gyara but all of that was only possible because you HAD to respect the tera fly sets which caused the grasses to be unreliable checks to the guy. the chesnaughts/brelooms/wochiens of the world dgaf ab you or your sub crunching sheaningans when they KNOW a base 140 or whatever tblast fly isnt coming their way. This isn't to say gyarados doesn't have ANYTHING to touch up the grasses, he does have temper flare and hurricane access. hurricane is mostly a meme when talking about gyarados in any serious ban/unban conversations but temper flare is somewhat interesting. it's just that to me after calcing around some temper flare stuff i dont think it does enough for gyara to merit such ubiquitous hesitation to let him back in the tier like:
+1 252+ Atk Gyarados Temper Flare vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Chesnaught: 164-194 (43.1 - 51%) -- 5.9% chance to 2HKO
+1 252+ Atk Gyarados Temper Flare vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Tablets of Ruin Wo-Chien: 196-232 (52.4 - 62%) -- 97.7% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+1 252+ Atk Gyarados Temper Flare vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Breloom: 316-372 (97.5 - 114.8%) -- 81.3% chance to OHKO
with the exception of admittedly saucing breloom the guy is just inconsistent into the grasses. some people might be keen to notice this is before tera calcs but like honestly if you turn yourself into a raw fire type to secure 2HKOs on like specifically these two grass guys on the swap like be my guest. You still need to eat a hit from them since its a 2hko not an ohko, just made urself weak to water, weak to ground, kept ur rocks weakness, haven't done anything to improve ur defenses against the common priority options we have in the tier, like the tera fire option doesn't seem that impressive to me and in a lot of cases actively bad. beyond that you also need to give up the moveslot that you would otherwise love to use for running stuff like sub or rest or other forms of extra coverage. if you choose to give up coverage and run waterfall+temper flare as ur attacks it mean that just leaves you boned into like any water in the tier worth their salt. slowbro, empoleon, legion, gastro, etc etc they all just eat u for breakfast. if you choose to give up smth like sub or rest your survivability can suffer as result and to be quite honest even when gyarados was legal in the tier the non rest/sub sets with dd 3 atks were at least to me far more linear to play around than the rest or dd sets. with that being said there is some important context to note here. a big reason gyara was doing stuff like subbing and resting in the past was because we had like exactly galarian weezing who could burn the guy and cripple him forever. we no longer have that defensive resource nor really ANY super consistent form of burn so whether or not that technology would still be necessary or relevant in the modern day is a bit hazy. but at least in my opinion thats a great reason why we should've tested the guy and seen how the meta adapted or warped around it. to have him locked out of the tier entirely just seems a bit too rooted in theorymonning around sets that never existed for my tastes which is why i voted for a suspect
+1 252+ Atk Gyarados Temper Flare vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Chesnaught: 164-194 (43.1 - 51%) -- 5.9% chance to 2HKO
+1 252+ Atk Gyarados Temper Flare vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Tablets of Ruin Wo-Chien: 196-232 (52.4 - 62%) -- 97.7% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+1 252+ Atk Gyarados Temper Flare vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Breloom: 316-372 (97.5 - 114.8%) -- 81.3% chance to OHKO
with the exception of admittedly saucing breloom the guy is just inconsistent into the grasses. some people might be keen to notice this is before tera calcs but like honestly if you turn yourself into a raw fire type to secure 2HKOs on like specifically these two grass guys on the swap like be my guest. You still need to eat a hit from them since its a 2hko not an ohko, just made urself weak to water, weak to ground, kept ur rocks weakness, haven't done anything to improve ur defenses against the common priority options we have in the tier, like the tera fire option doesn't seem that impressive to me and in a lot of cases actively bad. beyond that you also need to give up the moveslot that you would otherwise love to use for running stuff like sub or rest or other forms of extra coverage. if you choose to give up coverage and run waterfall+temper flare as ur attacks it mean that just leaves you boned into like any water in the tier worth their salt. slowbro, empoleon, legion, gastro, etc etc they all just eat u for breakfast. if you choose to give up smth like sub or rest your survivability can suffer as result and to be quite honest even when gyarados was legal in the tier the non rest/sub sets with dd 3 atks were at least to me far more linear to play around than the rest or dd sets. with that being said there is some important context to note here. a big reason gyara was doing stuff like subbing and resting in the past was because we had like exactly galarian weezing who could burn the guy and cripple him forever. we no longer have that defensive resource nor really ANY super consistent form of burn so whether or not that technology would still be necessary or relevant in the modern day is a bit hazy. but at least in my opinion thats a great reason why we should've tested the guy and seen how the meta adapted or warped around it. to have him locked out of the tier entirely just seems a bit too rooted in theorymonning around sets that never existed for my tastes which is why i voted for a suspect
this is a guy who never even had a chance in the tier before we nuked him when he dropped, but that was for good reason. having access to tera blast meant having easy access to grass+ground coverage which is pretty potent in RU by itself without factoring in serps ability to also have dragon pulse which is legitimately quite strong coverage for the bikes and noiverns of the world. when you have a guy who has what is essentially a 195 bp grass type nasty plot and who could not reliably be answered by steels, fires, OR dragons you have a pretty serious issue on your hands. this in conjunction with the possibility of running tera stellar blast sets which is like a more consistent but slightly weaker version of the aforementioned combo was just like, too much for the tier and I think that was a true statement when serp first dropped. Now those tera blast options just don't exist anymore and serps one man army style of offensive potency is a pipe dream. every steel and guys like entei and alomuk all suddenly become better at checking the dude and give you new options where before there were none.
INSTEAD, what a lot of the council members have pointed to as reasoning to keep him in jail is essentially his ability to be an annoying glare + knock bot. This is a fair assessment. Glare, para in general really, is stupid, its uncompetitive, and I think its about time smogon STUCK IT TO THE MAN AND BANNED THE FRICKING MECHANIC UNILATERALLY PARA SUCKS RAHHHHHH. Item removal in knock off is also really good. But idk personally that doesn't meet the burden of proof to me to keep that guy locked up entirely. the limited nature of leaf storm pp especially in these long drawn out game situations is smth i feel like a lot of people don't properly consider, its not like scald were you'd have like 24 chances at 195 bp nasty plot, u can FLY through those 8 pp before you even realize it. Once u start throwing things in the mix too like judging whether or not things like sub or leech seed or taunt or having rocky helmet or lefties or boots or whatever are worth it, you do get a lot of nuance. But at the end of the day its all nuance behind what is primarily a support oriented mon. And to me that feels like a good thing and a welcome addition to the meta. Serp provides a lot of interesting additions to the tier that I think could be positives, being a special attacking grass, being perhaps a legitimate sub seed user, giving us another knock option, giving us a potential para option. That isn't to say all these things couldnt be negatives as well but like... that would be the point of suspecting him in a tera blastless world where you no longer need to respect the one man wrecking crew type stuff he could do before.
INSTEAD, what a lot of the council members have pointed to as reasoning to keep him in jail is essentially his ability to be an annoying glare + knock bot. This is a fair assessment. Glare, para in general really, is stupid, its uncompetitive, and I think its about time smogon STUCK IT TO THE MAN AND BANNED THE FRICKING MECHANIC UNILATERALLY PARA SUCKS RAHHHHHH. Item removal in knock off is also really good. But idk personally that doesn't meet the burden of proof to me to keep that guy locked up entirely. the limited nature of leaf storm pp especially in these long drawn out game situations is smth i feel like a lot of people don't properly consider, its not like scald were you'd have like 24 chances at 195 bp nasty plot, u can FLY through those 8 pp before you even realize it. Once u start throwing things in the mix too like judging whether or not things like sub or leech seed or taunt or having rocky helmet or lefties or boots or whatever are worth it, you do get a lot of nuance. But at the end of the day its all nuance behind what is primarily a support oriented mon. And to me that feels like a good thing and a welcome addition to the meta. Serp provides a lot of interesting additions to the tier that I think could be positives, being a special attacking grass, being perhaps a legitimate sub seed user, giving us another knock option, giving us a potential para option. That isn't to say all these things couldnt be negatives as well but like... that would be the point of suspecting him in a tera blastless world where you no longer need to respect the one man wrecking crew type stuff he could do before.
this another guy who back in the day was banned for his sins of being too good at obliterating the tier with various tera blast variants. I remember I was calling for stoise suspects as early as rult 2024 days when he ultimatley got suspected like 4 months later or smth. this guy was just silly, you had pretty great bulk and water+ice+literally whatever coverage you wanted to throw on him was unbelievably powerful. However even back then, I had started to shift my tune slightly when it came to how powerful he actually was and by the time he got suspected I think I even voted to keep him in the tier. A lot has obviously changed since back then, we've banned a whole bunch of mons, a bunch of other mons left, we got like exactly blissey who we didn't have before. And I believe that the guy deserves at least a chance to be looked at again. The primary things that I remember breaking stoise open were the tblast elec/grass sets which gave him a one stop shot to get thru all forms of water counterplay to the guy. Obviously that is no longer an option so things like empo/slowbro/gastro and stuff all become better at trying to control him. It must be mentioned however that just because tblast has left you still do have a bunch of strong options for potential coverage. Things like dark pulse exist for bro, aura sphere for empo and like goodra and stuff. We also lost one of the better answers to stoise that we had in fez who could taunt the guy and 1v1 or like fish for tox chain procs and whatnot as well as various priority options like slither with fimp or conk with mach punch. Because of all that personally I think stoise would actually be broken and if we suspected him I would probably vote ban. That being said I still maintain a healthy amount of skepticism behind just theorymonning the guy and I think enough has changed with him losing tera blast that a suspect would at least be useful to confirm my suspicions about how good he would be.
To wrap my thoughts I also want to give some impression just about the state of the tier in general. I already basically did this in my team dump for RUPL so i will keep it somewhat more succinct here. RU has had the reputation of being the "HO or stall tier" probably mostly bc of what hjkhj was doing in SCL when his team won the whole thing. That is not entirely untrue as HO and stall are both playstyles that can be run to success within the tier. However I believe that categorically viewing RU as a whole as such is disingenuous to the identity of the tier and I believe I proved that with my recent RUPL run specifically. I think the tier is in a pretty good spot at the moment as far as overall power level and parity amongst various playstyles with some being better than others but all like kinda useable. That being said I maintain my position over the guys I voted on in the slate and believe that even if i think the tier is cool rn, that's not a reason to deny them their fair shake. Oh also before I conclude I want to also add that just because the council voted on no action RIGHT NOW that does not mean there will be no potential action EVER. So keep that in mind when talking this type of stuff, it could very well be like september that rolls around and suddenly we see a reintroduction suspect for gyara or smth, we don't know!
Don't want to go in depth here for fear of getting banned haha... but there's no way that even before the rest of the stuff on the slate that bisharp shouldn't be looked at first. It's incredibly strong and has always had immense snowball potential in the tier because of tera needing multiple checks. Perhaps the best check to it was talon forcing it to run tera fire which made counterplay a bit more predictable e.g. krook can click ground move safely most of the time but it has access to several great tera types each needing different forms of counterplay. It has won games on its own since the beginning of the gen and is to me, one of the most painful mons to actually deal with playing wise for how obnoxious playing around its tera type can be. I'd encourage the council to look at suspecting bisharp before freeing any other BL mons as none of them really need to be freed or add anything positive to the tier.
Bisharp is completely fine, idk why people keep asking for its ban. It gets better every shift but then precedes to still be fine. Bisharps core traits means it can't be broken, its item locked meaning it is insanely predictable in that aspect (if you drop evio for something like lum gl actually switching into even gengar shadow ball more then twice nevermind shit like garde moonblast that you want it to check, which with tera can OHKO bisharp) and while it can run lots of teras, it has to pick and choose carefully.
Tera ghost makes it weak to opposing bisharp sucker punch and mmq sneak while still making scarf krook a great revenge killer. Tera fire leaves it ground weak still while giving it a nasty water weakness (meaning something like craw or suicune can check it much easier). Tera flying is prob the best defensively but still leaves it vulnerable to stuff like entei, registeel, gastrodon etc. Tera dark doesn't alleviate its fighting weakness at all so stuff like terrakion and chesnaught still revenge kill it. Tera fairy is also great defensively but becomes even weaker to jirachi. Every tera choice has at best, a decent downside.
Theres also sucker punch, which having to rely on it is so ass for bisharp. This allows options like encore and trick to just straight up stop a sweep no matter what. Options like comfey, gengar, jirachi, pz, cress, garde, toxt, maus etc can run it reliably and I bet if you tried you could make others work too. You can even tech things like sub or phazing on uncommon mons (we've seen sub krook and I've even tried roar entei as an option) to help beat it. And if all else fails, you can play the sucker 50/50 which honestly just having an out in a supposedly lost game I feel shows that bisharp cannot be broken. I remember seeing a game in which a bisharp should have 6-0d, yet a gligar outplayed it enough to stop its sweep.
Yes, bisharp has swept teams on its own, but lets be real for a second? What hasn't. We've seen everything sweep teams on its own due to tera shenanigans, bisharp does not do it more then other things that we currently deem as very fine in the tier. I don't see a reason to suspect bisharp, usually I'm fine with suspecting things even if I'm against banning them, but it has gotten lower and lower results every survey. The tier is good rn and suspecting bisharp would feel like suspecting for the sake of suspecting. And considering what might drop to RU in the future as of typing (moltres and geezing are low in OU while talon is low in UU. Also ttar is low in OU thus making hippo drop to RU probably), i feel bisharp is going to get worse in the tier.
Tera ghost makes it weak to opposing bisharp sucker punch and mmq sneak while still making scarf krook a great revenge killer. Tera fire leaves it ground weak still while giving it a nasty water weakness (meaning something like craw or suicune can check it much easier). Tera flying is prob the best defensively but still leaves it vulnerable to stuff like entei, registeel, gastrodon etc. Tera dark doesn't alleviate its fighting weakness at all so stuff like terrakion and chesnaught still revenge kill it. Tera fairy is also great defensively but becomes even weaker to jirachi. Every tera choice has at best, a decent downside.
Theres also sucker punch, which having to rely on it is so ass for bisharp. This allows options like encore and trick to just straight up stop a sweep no matter what. Options like comfey, gengar, jirachi, pz, cress, garde, toxt, maus etc can run it reliably and I bet if you tried you could make others work too. You can even tech things like sub or phazing on uncommon mons (we've seen sub krook and I've even tried roar entei as an option) to help beat it. And if all else fails, you can play the sucker 50/50 which honestly just having an out in a supposedly lost game I feel shows that bisharp cannot be broken. I remember seeing a game in which a bisharp should have 6-0d, yet a gligar outplayed it enough to stop its sweep.
Yes, bisharp has swept teams on its own, but lets be real for a second? What hasn't. We've seen everything sweep teams on its own due to tera shenanigans, bisharp does not do it more then other things that we currently deem as very fine in the tier. I don't see a reason to suspect bisharp, usually I'm fine with suspecting things even if I'm against banning them, but it has gotten lower and lower results every survey. The tier is good rn and suspecting bisharp would feel like suspecting for the sake of suspecting. And considering what might drop to RU in the future as of typing (moltres and geezing are low in OU while talon is low in UU. Also ttar is low in OU thus making hippo drop to RU probably), i feel bisharp is going to get worse in the tier.
I wouldn't ban Bisharp either. You need to be smart about it, like how you can deal with it before and after terastallizations. I remember using Terrakion + Indeedee where Indeedee would actually check it after Terastallization due to Psychic Surge. We have faster resists, bulky Pokemon, and other priority. Bisharp does not really feel broken in practice at all and there are some things that it just is unable to deal with like Quagsire, and other bulky Pokemon still force a lot of damage against it at least with their attacks + Rocky Helmet. The only thing that I feel is kinda problematic in the tier is sun. Venusaur under sun is basically impossible to wall and faster than everything except like Choice Scarf Ditto, Gardevoir, and Noivern. Scovillian is also really strong but at least it's usually choice locked. At least with Bisharp there are defensive Pokemon that can reliably deal with it or trade with it like Quagsire and Gastrodon but with Venusaur you don't even really have that. Goodra-Hisui can be bopped by Earthquake and Thunder Waving Venu is not even a guarantee given it can run Tera Ground, and sun can run cleric support with Healing Wish too. Vs Umbreon and Blissey Giga Drain restores so much health against them that it is able to beat them. Venu can maybe struggle to set up a bit but it can set up against like Breloom, Gligar, a -2 Noivern and other things in the tier, and it has the bulk to take a hit either way. I really don't think Venusaur is a healthy element in the tier.
As for good news, I do think that the Tera Blast and Armarouge bans have improved the tier a lot. You don't have to worry about anything running any coverage to blow anything up, and Armarouge had very few true checks like Umbreon and Muk-Alola. It feels like you can more freely run other stuff like Wo-Chien without having to Terastallize with Armarouge gone now. Armarouge had great coverage and did even use Tera Blast; it could KO or seriously damage basically most of the metagame.
As for good news, I do think that the Tera Blast and Armarouge bans have improved the tier a lot. You don't have to worry about anything running any coverage to blow anything up, and Armarouge had very few true checks like Umbreon and Muk-Alola. It feels like you can more freely run other stuff like Wo-Chien without having to Terastallize with Armarouge gone now. Armarouge had great coverage and did even use Tera Blast; it could KO or seriously damage basically most of the metagame.
Hey... so I wanna explain my current thoughts on the metagame rn, especially after the tera blast and armarouge bans (with potential :moltres: and :talonflame: drops). (WARNING: LONG POST)
As much as I didn't want tera blast to be banned because of the opportunity cost around it, as well as wasting your tera for coverage. I think the ban actually kinda improved the tier ngl. This means that you will no longer be surprised by the random coverage from tera blast (like tb ground yanmega, or uhh... before the :oricorio-pom-pom: ban did that thing ever run tb ice?). Which means that the pokemon that wouldn't check the pokemon they WOULD check can now actually check those foes.
:armarouge: definitely deserved to be ban ON GOD ON GOD lmao, keep that bitch in RUBL. Aside from :umbreon: and :muk-alola: what was this thing even defensively checked by. Fire/Psychic is a great offensive typing and with endure + weakness policy, it was quite hard to revenge kill aside from having priority. This combined with the fact it has calm mind to boost its special stats, this thing was almost impossible to kill. Weak armor ensured it outspeeded everything after a boost, and honestly this tier is much better off without it.
If we could see :moltres: coming back, I think a defensive set would be its best set as it is in OU. With a physically defensive set, it can act as a blanket check to half of the tier's physical attackers such as :bisharp:, :gallade:, and :krookodile:. Access to roost with a good defensive typing is quite huge, especially with alright special bulk too. This is further powered up by will-o-wisp, which can further check stuff like :chesnaught:.
:sv/moltres:
Moltres @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Flame Body
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
- Flamethrower
- U-turn / Hurricane
- Roost
- Roar / U-turn
Now... time for the flame, :talonflame:.
Its basically a worse moltres but with the added speed and access to defog. It also has flame body and can outspeed non choice scarf krook and maushold to pressure them with wisp. But then, like molt, its 4x weak to rocks, so heavy-duty boots is mandatory on it and can remove the stealth rock that its quad weak to. I guess with double removal you can be a madman and run rocky helmet with double removal. Leftovers would also probably work ha ha. It also has access to a fast u-turn which is nice.
:sv/talonflame:
Talonflame @ Heavy-Duty Boots / Rocky Helmet / Leftovers (helmet and lefties for the crazy ones or double removal peeps. Otherwise just run boots)
Ability: Flame Body
EVs: 248 HP / 8 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Flamethrower / Brave Bird
- U-turn
- Roost
- Defog / Taunt
Now... its time for a BOILING hot take. Its so hot, it can cause a 3rd degree burn.
If we ever ever get :talonflame: and :moltres: back (also if :weezing-galar: comes back but thats never gonna happen), we could consider retesting :mienshao:. I don't think shes that bad with talon and molt in the tier afaik, and the choice scarf set is somewhat easy to play around with. It also has atrocious bulk (65/60/60) which leaves it prone to priority and faster attackers. The combination of U-turn and Regenerator is nice, but :cyclizar: does her job just as well, if not better, because of its access to hazard removal in STAB rapid spin along with better bulk, speed, and arguably typing (resisting fire/water/grass/electric all in 1 and shadow ball immunity is nice).
I think the metagame is as fine as is rn, but if the one change i would want if we get talon and molt back, is to retest mien. RU is a fun tier to play nowadays but the support it provides with knock and u-turn is very nice. Pure fighting is also not that great, and its easily walled by both talon and molt if it doesn't have stone edge. Ice spinner is doing very little to it anyways.
tl:dr mienshao honestly wouldn't be that bad with both talon and molt in the tier so i'm honestly interested in retesting her. As much as I voted dnb on tb though, its quite nice to see it gone (I do like using tera blast, haha).
Anyways, post over. I'm going back to my home
As much as I didn't want tera blast to be banned because of the opportunity cost around it, as well as wasting your tera for coverage. I think the ban actually kinda improved the tier ngl. This means that you will no longer be surprised by the random coverage from tera blast (like tb ground yanmega, or uhh... before the :oricorio-pom-pom: ban did that thing ever run tb ice?). Which means that the pokemon that wouldn't check the pokemon they WOULD check can now actually check those foes.
:armarouge: definitely deserved to be ban ON GOD ON GOD lmao, keep that bitch in RUBL. Aside from :umbreon: and :muk-alola: what was this thing even defensively checked by. Fire/Psychic is a great offensive typing and with endure + weakness policy, it was quite hard to revenge kill aside from having priority. This combined with the fact it has calm mind to boost its special stats, this thing was almost impossible to kill. Weak armor ensured it outspeeded everything after a boost, and honestly this tier is much better off without it.
If we could see :moltres: coming back, I think a defensive set would be its best set as it is in OU. With a physically defensive set, it can act as a blanket check to half of the tier's physical attackers such as :bisharp:, :gallade:, and :krookodile:. Access to roost with a good defensive typing is quite huge, especially with alright special bulk too. This is further powered up by will-o-wisp, which can further check stuff like :chesnaught:.
:sv/moltres:
Moltres @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Flame Body
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
- Flamethrower
- U-turn / Hurricane
- Roost
- Roar / U-turn
Now... time for the flame, :talonflame:.
Its basically a worse moltres but with the added speed and access to defog. It also has flame body and can outspeed non choice scarf krook and maushold to pressure them with wisp. But then, like molt, its 4x weak to rocks, so heavy-duty boots is mandatory on it and can remove the stealth rock that its quad weak to. I guess with double removal you can be a madman and run rocky helmet with double removal. Leftovers would also probably work ha ha. It also has access to a fast u-turn which is nice.
:sv/talonflame:
Talonflame @ Heavy-Duty Boots / Rocky Helmet / Leftovers (helmet and lefties for the crazy ones or double removal peeps. Otherwise just run boots)
Ability: Flame Body
EVs: 248 HP / 8 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Flamethrower / Brave Bird
- U-turn
- Roost
- Defog / Taunt
Now... its time for a BOILING hot take. Its so hot, it can cause a 3rd degree burn.
If we ever ever get :talonflame: and :moltres: back (also if :weezing-galar: comes back but thats never gonna happen), we could consider retesting :mienshao:. I don't think shes that bad with talon and molt in the tier afaik, and the choice scarf set is somewhat easy to play around with. It also has atrocious bulk (65/60/60) which leaves it prone to priority and faster attackers. The combination of U-turn and Regenerator is nice, but :cyclizar: does her job just as well, if not better, because of its access to hazard removal in STAB rapid spin along with better bulk, speed, and arguably typing (resisting fire/water/grass/electric all in 1 and shadow ball immunity is nice).
I think the metagame is as fine as is rn, but if the one change i would want if we get talon and molt back, is to retest mien. RU is a fun tier to play nowadays but the support it provides with knock and u-turn is very nice. Pure fighting is also not that great, and its easily walled by both talon and molt if it doesn't have stone edge. Ice spinner is doing very little to it anyways.
tl:dr mienshao honestly wouldn't be that bad with both talon and molt in the tier so i'm honestly interested in retesting her. As much as I voted dnb on tb though, its quite nice to see it gone (I do like using tera blast, haha).
Anyways, post over. I'm going back to my home
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Random metagame yap time from LBN the council guy! Whatever I say isn't necessarily something the entire council agrees with, in advance. This thread is just more dry than thanksgiving turkey so it's time I spruce it up with actual metagame talk.
Overall, let me start with the big thing I have a problem with in the meta right now. It was mentioned by one other person so far, but I wanna go into a bit more detail with it in general. I'm not completely sure I think its a major problem, but I think its very close to teetering that line and the more I think on it the more I tend to think it's just a bit much.
Yeah, it's sun. I think sun is pretty constricting in the builder right now, for a couple reasons. For one thing, something you'll know from me glazing specs infernape for like the span of a year now, its that our special fire resists are fucking dogshit. Like, you look at our traditional fire resists and its like, Noivern, Cyclizar, Slowbro, just alot of guys who tend to not really have the BST to be taking nuclear fire buttons on repeat. Our best special walls consist of Blissey, Umbreon, a dragon who doesnt resist fire and a water type who doesn't resist fire. Beyond these Pokemon you have stuff like Vaporeon who is heavily flawed and basically can't do anything if your opponent has a Gardevoir (another Pokemon to try and check sun who I'll get to), and shit like... fuck I got nothing I think list just ends here. I'm not listing Wo-Chien in a sun discussion. Defensively, Scovillain is a fucking nightmare that, without Umbreon or Blissey, I'd argue its almost hopeless. Hoodra with max max calm is a 50% death risk to tera specs overheat. Yeah let that sink in.
As for offensively, Scovillain gets a bit better. Priority like Bisharp, Entei, Duskroc and Crawdaunt can help. Scarf Gengar fell off a cliff, to the point alot of Scovillains are using Modest Charcoal sets, and Gardevoir. Basculegion-M and Feraligatr can also help. Beyond this, the pickings are slim. One thing I neglected to mention so far is that our current scarfers are really slow. Krookodile, Gardevoir, Flamigo, Legion-F, Jirachi, Yanmega. All of these are slower than a modest Scovillain, ignoring Trace memes with Gardevoir, who'll get its own section. Only Terrakion, Gengar and Infernape are faster scarfers, and if I'm so honest the confidence level on any of these w scarf besides Gengar is very low. What I'm saying is these guys can greed modest with very little consequences.
Answers exist, to be sure. But the limited answers to Scovillain combined with a lack of overlap between what handles all these sun abusers (Blissey losing to Venusaur, Noivern being shit vs all of them, etc) makes it so that building with sun in mind becomes a nightmare. There's a shocking amount of variety to sun as well. Lemme just showcase some builds from the recently concluded RU Open, and other tours with mid to high-level players.
You can see multiple variations here. Some go Torkoal > Tales. Some drop Venusaur. Some drop Scovillain. Some do removal = bike. Some do the Rat Pack. Some drop Entei. There's alot of wiggle room you can employ with sun that gives it a surprising amount of variety. Whether you do Gligar pivot, or Swampert, or Cress Lunar Dance Support, or Jirachi, or even stuff like Roostless Flip Empoleon, or Helmet Milotic, there's a wide variety of directions you can take with sun. Even on the wincon end, I've used both Shiftry and H-Typhlosion to good results when I test w some buddies. The style is very good, and I think my biggest issue is a noticeable lack of reliable answers to everything sun can throw at you. Beyond Umbreon, people in particular vouch for one specifically.
I think gardevoir is slightly overrated into sun and here's why. A massive part of Gardevoir's game is moonblast spam, and that just doesn't do well into sun for obvious reasons. Ignoring the non-existence of Tera Psychic, the psychic moves either lack utility, or lack the damage I would want to say is juicy. Without rocks, you never kill Scovillain from full. With it, Psychic does the job, while Psynoise never does and Psyshock is a poor roll. Sure, you can force Venusaur out sometimes. But then what? Alot of these builds have something that can pivot around a Scarf Gardevoir, like Entei, Cresselia, Slowbro/Krook, or Necrozma. If you want to make your matchup worse into literally every other archetype, then you can get away with Tera Psychic. But you're kneecapping yourself hard to get the priviledge of.. what? Killing Scovillain from 100%? Doing a bit more to Entei so you can still take like 60% from Extreme Speed? It just doesn't add up for me.
Obviously, it's nice in conjunction with other guys like Umbreon or priority users. But how much are we willing to expect people to cram into a build before we start calling it a bit too much? I will admit, in practice, it feels a bit more manageable than it is on paper. But in the builder its an actual nightmare. The builder already has to handle a lot of other demons. Yanmega has been tearing house, and while you won't catch me calling it broken, switching into it is quite the task. There's a lot of threats rn and I don't think its impossible to cover a swath of them, I think sun requires a bit too much out of you compared to what's around it and how narrow the options really feel.
Now for actually fun things, I been liking this core a lot. CB Ape + Yanmega is very nice offensively, Ape provides a knock on Noivern and entry points for Yanmega to abuse. If people could get over their hate boners for Infernape and actually use it then we might be in business. Yanmega itself though, oh boy. This mon is actually amazing. Boots, Specs, Scarf, Throat Spray its all gas. I've seen sub tera ghost Throat Spray Yanmega's to abuse blissey and its like wow. Do you need a fucking psychiatrist?
One of the biggest shifts in public opinion recently is Necrozma not being wax. Honestly, it was just underexplored until recently. By all accounts it should've been moving like king von the moment Hippowdon left. But people were so focused on Armarouge that they forgot that Necrozma with tera, bulk investments and DD recovery is actually a demon. Who cares about Slowbro just run Covert Cloak and dance in its face. Whats it gonna do, foul play you? (It can but if it does just say botted bg and click x). Meteor beam 3a sets w recovery are also nasty. Good mon. B+ may honestly be underselling it but imma need to see a bit more tournament movement that isnt RULT ladder and a couple language tours before I pop unlimited glaze works.
This shit is cope. Weak as piss, claims a niche in stomping balance and fat as if loading up a mon weaker than my 300 pound dad's KNEES is the only way to get that to happen. I've seen this shit at +1 DD click drain punch on a offensive Overqwil and do 39. Trying to use this vs anything with a tinge of speed or oomph to its hits is about as effective as trying to catch a deer with bagpipes. Fuck em.
Last little blurb because it's 12:30am and I'm a dumbass but I think alot of the gimmick HOs are doing around as well as one another, with snow and sun a significant step above its competition. I've been dicking around w ETerrain with Sceptile and Electric seed stuffs and honestly its kinda fun. Idk if the word effective is what I'd use for it but hey I won with it in tour so shit it's something. I still think GT is mostly a meme and chesnaught never wins but it has promise. I think. Maybe. Sensu and Thorns are mons I'd consider underexplored wincons in the current meta. Dice thorns and dd taunt boltbeam thorns are solid wincons in the right situations, and Sensu either does nothing or straight 6-0s so it can sit in the aids pile with the rest of them. Better than regidrago though
Overall, let me start with the big thing I have a problem with in the meta right now. It was mentioned by one other person so far, but I wanna go into a bit more detail with it in general. I'm not completely sure I think its a major problem, but I think its very close to teetering that line and the more I think on it the more I tend to think it's just a bit much.
Yeah, it's sun. I think sun is pretty constricting in the builder right now, for a couple reasons. For one thing, something you'll know from me glazing specs infernape for like the span of a year now, its that our special fire resists are fucking dogshit. Like, you look at our traditional fire resists and its like, Noivern, Cyclizar, Slowbro, just alot of guys who tend to not really have the BST to be taking nuclear fire buttons on repeat. Our best special walls consist of Blissey, Umbreon, a dragon who doesnt resist fire and a water type who doesn't resist fire. Beyond these Pokemon you have stuff like Vaporeon who is heavily flawed and basically can't do anything if your opponent has a Gardevoir (another Pokemon to try and check sun who I'll get to), and shit like... fuck I got nothing I think list just ends here. I'm not listing Wo-Chien in a sun discussion. Defensively, Scovillain is a fucking nightmare that, without Umbreon or Blissey, I'd argue its almost hopeless. Hoodra with max max calm is a 50% death risk to tera specs overheat. Yeah let that sink in.
As for offensively, Scovillain gets a bit better. Priority like Bisharp, Entei, Duskroc and Crawdaunt can help. Scarf Gengar fell off a cliff, to the point alot of Scovillains are using Modest Charcoal sets, and Gardevoir. Basculegion-M and Feraligatr can also help. Beyond this, the pickings are slim. One thing I neglected to mention so far is that our current scarfers are really slow. Krookodile, Gardevoir, Flamigo, Legion-F, Jirachi, Yanmega. All of these are slower than a modest Scovillain, ignoring Trace memes with Gardevoir, who'll get its own section. Only Terrakion, Gengar and Infernape are faster scarfers, and if I'm so honest the confidence level on any of these w scarf besides Gengar is very low. What I'm saying is these guys can greed modest with very little consequences.
Answers exist, to be sure. But the limited answers to Scovillain combined with a lack of overlap between what handles all these sun abusers (Blissey losing to Venusaur, Noivern being shit vs all of them, etc) makes it so that building with sun in mind becomes a nightmare. There's a shocking amount of variety to sun as well. Lemme just showcase some builds from the recently concluded RU Open, and other tours with mid to high-level players.
You can see multiple variations here. Some go Torkoal > Tales. Some drop Venusaur. Some drop Scovillain. Some do removal = bike. Some do the Rat Pack. Some drop Entei. There's alot of wiggle room you can employ with sun that gives it a surprising amount of variety. Whether you do Gligar pivot, or Swampert, or Cress Lunar Dance Support, or Jirachi, or even stuff like Roostless Flip Empoleon, or Helmet Milotic, there's a wide variety of directions you can take with sun. Even on the wincon end, I've used both Shiftry and H-Typhlosion to good results when I test w some buddies. The style is very good, and I think my biggest issue is a noticeable lack of reliable answers to everything sun can throw at you. Beyond Umbreon, people in particular vouch for one specifically.
I think gardevoir is slightly overrated into sun and here's why. A massive part of Gardevoir's game is moonblast spam, and that just doesn't do well into sun for obvious reasons. Ignoring the non-existence of Tera Psychic, the psychic moves either lack utility, or lack the damage I would want to say is juicy. Without rocks, you never kill Scovillain from full. With it, Psychic does the job, while Psynoise never does and Psyshock is a poor roll. Sure, you can force Venusaur out sometimes. But then what? Alot of these builds have something that can pivot around a Scarf Gardevoir, like Entei, Cresselia, Slowbro/Krook, or Necrozma. If you want to make your matchup worse into literally every other archetype, then you can get away with Tera Psychic. But you're kneecapping yourself hard to get the priviledge of.. what? Killing Scovillain from 100%? Doing a bit more to Entei so you can still take like 60% from Extreme Speed? It just doesn't add up for me.
Obviously, it's nice in conjunction with other guys like Umbreon or priority users. But how much are we willing to expect people to cram into a build before we start calling it a bit too much? I will admit, in practice, it feels a bit more manageable than it is on paper. But in the builder its an actual nightmare. The builder already has to handle a lot of other demons. Yanmega has been tearing house, and while you won't catch me calling it broken, switching into it is quite the task. There's a lot of threats rn and I don't think its impossible to cover a swath of them, I think sun requires a bit too much out of you compared to what's around it and how narrow the options really feel.
Now for actually fun things, I been liking this core a lot. CB Ape + Yanmega is very nice offensively, Ape provides a knock on Noivern and entry points for Yanmega to abuse. If people could get over their hate boners for Infernape and actually use it then we might be in business. Yanmega itself though, oh boy. This mon is actually amazing. Boots, Specs, Scarf, Throat Spray its all gas. I've seen sub tera ghost Throat Spray Yanmega's to abuse blissey and its like wow. Do you need a fucking psychiatrist?
One of the biggest shifts in public opinion recently is Necrozma not being wax. Honestly, it was just underexplored until recently. By all accounts it should've been moving like king von the moment Hippowdon left. But people were so focused on Armarouge that they forgot that Necrozma with tera, bulk investments and DD recovery is actually a demon. Who cares about Slowbro just run Covert Cloak and dance in its face. Whats it gonna do, foul play you? (It can but if it does just say botted bg and click x). Meteor beam 3a sets w recovery are also nasty. Good mon. B+ may honestly be underselling it but imma need to see a bit more tournament movement that isnt RULT ladder and a couple language tours before I pop unlimited glaze works.
This shit is cope. Weak as piss, claims a niche in stomping balance and fat as if loading up a mon weaker than my 300 pound dad's KNEES is the only way to get that to happen. I've seen this shit at +1 DD click drain punch on a offensive Overqwil and do 39. Trying to use this vs anything with a tinge of speed or oomph to its hits is about as effective as trying to catch a deer with bagpipes. Fuck em.
Last little blurb because it's 12:30am and I'm a dumbass but I think alot of the gimmick HOs are doing around as well as one another, with snow and sun a significant step above its competition. I've been dicking around w ETerrain with Sceptile and Electric seed stuffs and honestly its kinda fun. Idk if the word effective is what I'd use for it but hey I won with it in tour so shit it's something. I still think GT is mostly a meme and chesnaught never wins but it has promise. I think. Maybe. Sensu and Thorns are mons I'd consider underexplored wincons in the current meta. Dice thorns and dd taunt boltbeam thorns are solid wincons in the right situations, and Sensu either does nothing or straight 6-0s so it can sit in the aids pile with the rest of them. Better than regidrago though
Hello
With Mew and Regieleki dropping, we don't think any of them are blatantly over the line and would give time for them to settle in the community.
Meanwhile the council have done a slate on RUBL mons and here are the results:
Slate: :blastoise: :thundurus: :volcanion: :serperior: :gyarados:
With those in, Volcanion has received 7/9 votes in favor of at least a suspect, and thus will be the next suspect test!
With Mew and Regieleki dropping, we don't think any of them are blatantly over the line and would give time for them to settle in the community.
Meanwhile the council have done a slate on RUBL mons and here are the results:
Slate: :blastoise: :thundurus: :volcanion: :serperior: :gyarados:
Stoise: ban. Even without tblast it’s a pain due to its coverage (dpulse eq) and while there are bulky waters that can deal with it - they arent really the best waters atm
Thundy: ban. Insane speed tier and coverage with twave shenanigans make it rly hard to account for
Volc: suspect. Prob needs one atp, gastro and vern stocks super high and it cant cheese its way out anymore
Serp: suspect. It’s a very annoying mon with glare, imagine thundy but without coverage. Think this can at least be suspected
Gyara: ban. Don’t run chesnaught and woch in all teams
Thundy: ban. Insane speed tier and coverage with twave shenanigans make it rly hard to account for
Volc: suspect. Prob needs one atp, gastro and vern stocks super high and it cant cheese its way out anymore
Serp: suspect. It’s a very annoying mon with glare, imagine thundy but without coverage. Think this can at least be suspected
Gyara: ban. Don’t run chesnaught and woch in all teams
stoise: ban. This mon is certainly still too much with shell smash, even without tera blast.
thundurus: ban. The overall speed tier has declined a little bit and that is only good for np thundurus. There is very little that naturally outspeeds it. And everything that does cannot afford to take a twave.
volcanion: suspect. I personally think this mon is still gonna be too much for the tier, but it is the one closest imo and therefore I am down to try it out. It losing tera blast fairy means noivern is at least somewhat safe to switch in and at least deal some chip. However volc can tech for most of the other switch ins. It will for sure be very good in the tier into any playstyle.
serperior: ban. Serp is very similar to thundurus with good speed tier and para spread bot. It's coverage sucks without tera blast, but that will not stop it from enabling a whole lot of nonsense with para spam. The combination of "who can switch into leaf storm" and "who wants to take a para" leaves not a lot of switch ins.
gyarados: ban. Eventhough tera blast fly was the main and best set of gyara, it still has two sets that were also busted (sub tera dark crunch and tera ground eq). You will need to run a defensive grass on every team to get some insurance versus this mon, but even those will fall to tera fire temper flare.
thundurus: ban. The overall speed tier has declined a little bit and that is only good for np thundurus. There is very little that naturally outspeeds it. And everything that does cannot afford to take a twave.
volcanion: suspect. I personally think this mon is still gonna be too much for the tier, but it is the one closest imo and therefore I am down to try it out. It losing tera blast fairy means noivern is at least somewhat safe to switch in and at least deal some chip. However volc can tech for most of the other switch ins. It will for sure be very good in the tier into any playstyle.
serperior: ban. Serp is very similar to thundurus with good speed tier and para spread bot. It's coverage sucks without tera blast, but that will not stop it from enabling a whole lot of nonsense with para spam. The combination of "who can switch into leaf storm" and "who wants to take a para" leaves not a lot of switch ins.
gyarados: ban. Eventhough tera blast fly was the main and best set of gyara, it still has two sets that were also busted (sub tera dark crunch and tera ground eq). You will need to run a defensive grass on every team to get some insurance versus this mon, but even those will fall to tera fire temper flare.
- Blastoise
- Thundurus
- Volcanion
- Serp
- Gyara
Blastoise - Keep Banned: With the ban of terablast, some of the issues caused by blastoise have been alleviated. However, Shell smash earthquake sets, or just shell smash 3 atks in general sets are still widely threatening and it will cause a large strain in the builder to try and account for it. That being said, this is probably the pokemon that I can be most convinced to change my mind on.
Thundurus - Keep banned: Was overcentralizing when it was around, and honestly the only thing that has changed is its inability to run terablast fly, which I don't believe is enough to keep it from still being overcentralizing.
Volcanion - Suspect: Terablast was one of the major reasons volcanion could pick and choose how it wanted to beat literally anything in the tier. Without it, the ability to check it has become much more available.
Serp - Keep banned: Simply an unhealthy addition to the tier introducing more variance, and the ability to defensively tera makes would be checks potentially ignorable by Serperior, cusing it to snowball even further into a centralizing part of the metagame.
Gyara - Suspect: Like volcanion, a large part of its ability to break whatever it pleased was terablast, and with that gone, I believe it is slightly easier to check. However, I am still concerned about sets like tera dark or tera ground dd, which you would potentially need to alloacte multiple checks in order to avoid an isntant loss, as gyarados is another mon that can snowball very easily. Would like to conduct a suspect, but am currently leaning 51/49 in favor of voting ban.
Thundurus - Keep banned: Was overcentralizing when it was around, and honestly the only thing that has changed is its inability to run terablast fly, which I don't believe is enough to keep it from still being overcentralizing.
Volcanion - Suspect: Terablast was one of the major reasons volcanion could pick and choose how it wanted to beat literally anything in the tier. Without it, the ability to check it has become much more available.
Serp - Keep banned: Simply an unhealthy addition to the tier introducing more variance, and the ability to defensively tera makes would be checks potentially ignorable by Serperior, cusing it to snowball even further into a centralizing part of the metagame.
Gyara - Suspect: Like volcanion, a large part of its ability to break whatever it pleased was terablast, and with that gone, I believe it is slightly easier to check. However, I am still concerned about sets like tera dark or tera ground dd, which you would potentially need to alloacte multiple checks in order to avoid an isntant loss, as gyarados is another mon that can snowball very easily. Would like to conduct a suspect, but am currently leaning 51/49 in favor of voting ban.
- Blastoise: Suspect
- Thundurus: Suspect
- Volcanion: Keep Banned
- Serp: Keep Banned
- Gyara: Unban
Blastoise : keep banned, can still do a lot of the same things by simply teraing into coverage moves, bulky waters that might be able to blanket check are gonna struggle to do much in return. Tier is also very ill equipped to deal with the mixed damage from this.
Thundurus : keep banned, very difficult to stand up to nasty plot sets imo, your average team will have 1 maybe 2 mons faster than this with one of them possibly being noivern which needs to run 252 draco to threaten when noivern nowadays is somewhat pressured into fullfilling a bunch of roles and really appreciates the bulk. It being faster than most teams + being able to tera vs a lot of common priority moves makes it too much. Also worth mentioning ru does not have the best roster of scarf users which makes this even trickier to handle.
Volcanion : suspect, has the tools to probably be one of the best mons in the tier but without the tera grass option to instant nuke water types ive come to the opinion that it might be possible to handle. i dont think the tier needs this change at all and i possibly would vote to keep banned but everyones complaining about sun now and even tho i very much think sun is fine and people need to learn to build better this alleviates that. would be disingenuous of me to say this is for sure a ban at this state though when i dont think that
Serp keep banned, speed tier problems already mentioned + glare and sub and knock off this thing does not need tera blast to be complete cancer and terrible to play against, would definitely be a negative change for the tier
Gyara suspect, i think this is op still and dont want it in the tier at all, it has the privilege of potentially running bulky setup sets that can go multiple times even without healing wish and force progress vs water types that can only go for passive options like toxic or roar or haze, it would force the meta into a state of feeling forced to run amoong or ches or umbreon to feel like you can deal with it which is just gonna make teams be ate up by hyper offense even more. its important to keep in mind the types of teams something like this can be used in. i feel like the state of the tier at the moment is further away from the either stall or ho dichotomy we had a couple months ago and i complained about and this would put us right back. however, similar to volcanion, i do think no tera blast is a giga nerf to this things power budget and would be disingenuous to say it doesnt at least deserve a suspect
Thundurus : keep banned, very difficult to stand up to nasty plot sets imo, your average team will have 1 maybe 2 mons faster than this with one of them possibly being noivern which needs to run 252 draco to threaten when noivern nowadays is somewhat pressured into fullfilling a bunch of roles and really appreciates the bulk. It being faster than most teams + being able to tera vs a lot of common priority moves makes it too much. Also worth mentioning ru does not have the best roster of scarf users which makes this even trickier to handle.
Volcanion : suspect, has the tools to probably be one of the best mons in the tier but without the tera grass option to instant nuke water types ive come to the opinion that it might be possible to handle. i dont think the tier needs this change at all and i possibly would vote to keep banned but everyones complaining about sun now and even tho i very much think sun is fine and people need to learn to build better this alleviates that. would be disingenuous of me to say this is for sure a ban at this state though when i dont think that
Serp keep banned, speed tier problems already mentioned + glare and sub and knock off this thing does not need tera blast to be complete cancer and terrible to play against, would definitely be a negative change for the tier
Gyara suspect, i think this is op still and dont want it in the tier at all, it has the privilege of potentially running bulky setup sets that can go multiple times even without healing wish and force progress vs water types that can only go for passive options like toxic or roar or haze, it would force the meta into a state of feeling forced to run amoong or ches or umbreon to feel like you can deal with it which is just gonna make teams be ate up by hyper offense even more. its important to keep in mind the types of teams something like this can be used in. i feel like the state of the tier at the moment is further away from the either stall or ho dichotomy we had a couple months ago and i complained about and this would put us right back. however, similar to volcanion, i do think no tera blast is a giga nerf to this things power budget and would be disingenuous to say it doesnt at least deserve a suspect
Blastoise: Keep it banned. Honestly I don't think blastoise needs tera blast. You'll always have shell smash + surf/hpump, then probably ice beam and after that it's a bit of a lottery: is the blastoise running dark pulse for slowbro? eq for empo? aura sphere to cover empo and bike? we don't have any answers to cover every set and even without tera blast, tera is still really useful to boost your damage even further, defensive teras are also good like tera ghost for espeed entei, tera fairy for dtail or tera ground to boost eq and be immune to twave.
Thundurus: Keep it banned. I think thundy suffers a bit more from the tera blast ban, however it's still a big problem with electric stab, gknot and focus blast it can hit the entire tier for really good damage while being super fast. Nasty plot makes it even worse, same as twave prio, thundy sounds very tough to deal with imo especially since tera will be invested defensively making offensive rk quite difficult. The mons that try to rk will also just get para'd and become useless for the rest of the game, so yeah, it's something worth considering.
Volcanion: Suspect. I think volc could deserve a suspect since it could have a positive impact on the meta (good breaker) while being somewhat balanced because of its many flaws being : no setup, quite slow, fears koff, no heal. Albeit quite restrictive in the builder, I think volc is worth testing.
Serp: Suspect. It never really was RU so at least I'd like to see it suspect tested out of curiosity.
Gyara: Keep it banned. Like thundy, this mon loses a lot from the tera blast ban but I don't see what this mon would bring to the tier except another toy for ho teams (already very popular). The only real answers to the tera dark/sub sets are chesnaught, breloom and foul play wo-chien so yeah this mon makes no sense in RU to me.
Thundurus: Keep it banned. I think thundy suffers a bit more from the tera blast ban, however it's still a big problem with electric stab, gknot and focus blast it can hit the entire tier for really good damage while being super fast. Nasty plot makes it even worse, same as twave prio, thundy sounds very tough to deal with imo especially since tera will be invested defensively making offensive rk quite difficult. The mons that try to rk will also just get para'd and become useless for the rest of the game, so yeah, it's something worth considering.
Volcanion: Suspect. I think volc could deserve a suspect since it could have a positive impact on the meta (good breaker) while being somewhat balanced because of its many flaws being : no setup, quite slow, fears koff, no heal. Albeit quite restrictive in the builder, I think volc is worth testing.
Serp: Suspect. It never really was RU so at least I'd like to see it suspect tested out of curiosity.
Gyara: Keep it banned. Like thundy, this mon loses a lot from the tera blast ban but I don't see what this mon would bring to the tier except another toy for ho teams (already very popular). The only real answers to the tera dark/sub sets are chesnaught, breloom and foul play wo-chien so yeah this mon makes no sense in RU to me.
Blastoise - keep out
Thundurus - suspect
Volcanion - keep out
Serp - suspect
Gyara - unban
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...d-tera-blast-banned-105.3767219/post-10991114
since this post i have thought more ab stoise and with the tools we have probably water + dark coverage is still too much
so i think he should be kept out
as far as thund goes, even when he was banned it was moreso oh this guys is annoying at spreading paras and being hard to speed control with ur standard scarfer (gapdos) at the time because of the natural typing, his setup sets while they existed werent exactly anything special
i think adding another para guy to the tier would be annoying but probably fine and he'd be a great tool to limit the extremes of the tier (stall + basically every single HO build)
Thundurus - suspect
Volcanion - keep out
Serp - suspect
Gyara - unban
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...d-tera-blast-banned-105.3767219/post-10991114
since this post i have thought more ab stoise and with the tools we have probably water + dark coverage is still too much
so i think he should be kept out
as far as thund goes, even when he was banned it was moreso oh this guys is annoying at spreading paras and being hard to speed control with ur standard scarfer (gapdos) at the time because of the natural typing, his setup sets while they existed werent exactly anything special
i think adding another para guy to the tier would be annoying but probably fine and he'd be a great tool to limit the extremes of the tier (stall + basically every single HO build)
Blastoise: Keep Banned
The tier is not how it is around 2 years ago. Priority Quality has gone down tremendously, and Pokemon that prevented Tera Dark Pulse routes from being easy - Conkeldurr, Slither wing, Fezandipiti, are all gone. Sets up on too much, and the small amounts of counterplay that remain - Umbreon, DTail Hoodra are stuffed out by set alterations. You also don't need water stab really you just don't. Most broken thing on the list so far
Thundurus: Suspect
I think Thundurus would be a centralizing top 1 Pokemon by a country-mile. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing. I think the utility of being a basically perfect pivot mon combined with prankster Twave would bring HO down a peg or two. Really, this one is a bit indulgent. It would shape the tier, but it being broken is another matter entirely, and on that front I'm not sold. NP sets are a bit concerning, but I'm willing to give a shot for the potential of it being OK.
Volcanion: Unban
I really think this would be a great addition to the tier. All the complaints about sun would immediate hit a wall with this thing being a great stop into any and all weather-related antics. Even beyond that benefit, I think it'd be fine. Tera blast Fairy being as universal as it was is the driving reason I hated it, and now I think it'd be much more palatable. This tier has a distinct lack of any great trade-guys who you can throw at anything, and Volcanion lacks the same sweeping-concern the others do. Some will stand by Fire Spin being too much to handle, but I can't agree on that being that overpowered to keep it locked up.
Serperior: Keep Banned
Absolutely not lmao. This is a take of the mildly spicy variety, but I think fun factor is a massive part of a tiers identity. Serperior is anything but. If that was my only reason, I'd vote to free it, but this thing is overcentralizing in a way that is wildly unhealthy, unlike Pivot Thundurus. Sure, there is counterplay to sets like Hoodra or Amoonguss or Encore Rachi, but each of these are eating glares and are liable to Murphy's Law. One thing thats also important is Serperior is gravely lacking in half-measures. Volcanion has a ton of these who can take one and smack back for alot of damage, in part to the mediocore speed tier. Serperior doesn't really have that. You either beat it, or you lose. Your half measures are crippled for life from Glare, and Tera lets it pick what check it stonewalls. Tera Ghost sits on Amoonguss and non CM SBall Blissey, Tera Steel stuffs Jirachi, and the other noted Grass Resists tend to get OHKO'd by Glare. Bike, Noivern, etc. You can say Sap Sipper Hoodra or Haze A-Muk all you like, but Hoodra is not impossible to chip down with spikes support and both of these are particularly big momentum sinks. Did you know Serperior gets Knock Off?
Gyarados: Keep Banned
This one concerns me, I'll be honest. It's the kind of mon I really can't say I think would be balanced, and I really think its very likely to not be ok once good players really explore it. A big user of the pick-your-counters club, Gyarados is very liable to rip any game open if it lands on the right square and there is very little way to predict what its game is. Is your chesnaught liable to get boomed by Hurricane? Is it subDD or Taunt DD? Is it restochesto, is it Tera Dark Crunch or Tera Ground EQ? This type of flexibility, which ignores Temper Flare entirely by the way, is why my vote is Keep Banned. I think any time your not running an Umbreon is rolling the dice. That said, I'm willing to experiment on this one. Should my vote be a decider, I'd flip to the suspect route. I generally believe in giving things a shot. But its also my lowest priority to give a chance out of the ones I support.
The tier is not how it is around 2 years ago. Priority Quality has gone down tremendously, and Pokemon that prevented Tera Dark Pulse routes from being easy - Conkeldurr, Slither wing, Fezandipiti, are all gone. Sets up on too much, and the small amounts of counterplay that remain - Umbreon, DTail Hoodra are stuffed out by set alterations. You also don't need water stab really you just don't. Most broken thing on the list so far
Thundurus: Suspect
I think Thundurus would be a centralizing top 1 Pokemon by a country-mile. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing. I think the utility of being a basically perfect pivot mon combined with prankster Twave would bring HO down a peg or two. Really, this one is a bit indulgent. It would shape the tier, but it being broken is another matter entirely, and on that front I'm not sold. NP sets are a bit concerning, but I'm willing to give a shot for the potential of it being OK.
Volcanion: Unban
I really think this would be a great addition to the tier. All the complaints about sun would immediate hit a wall with this thing being a great stop into any and all weather-related antics. Even beyond that benefit, I think it'd be fine. Tera blast Fairy being as universal as it was is the driving reason I hated it, and now I think it'd be much more palatable. This tier has a distinct lack of any great trade-guys who you can throw at anything, and Volcanion lacks the same sweeping-concern the others do. Some will stand by Fire Spin being too much to handle, but I can't agree on that being that overpowered to keep it locked up.
Serperior: Keep Banned
Absolutely not lmao. This is a take of the mildly spicy variety, but I think fun factor is a massive part of a tiers identity. Serperior is anything but. If that was my only reason, I'd vote to free it, but this thing is overcentralizing in a way that is wildly unhealthy, unlike Pivot Thundurus. Sure, there is counterplay to sets like Hoodra or Amoonguss or Encore Rachi, but each of these are eating glares and are liable to Murphy's Law. One thing thats also important is Serperior is gravely lacking in half-measures. Volcanion has a ton of these who can take one and smack back for alot of damage, in part to the mediocore speed tier. Serperior doesn't really have that. You either beat it, or you lose. Your half measures are crippled for life from Glare, and Tera lets it pick what check it stonewalls. Tera Ghost sits on Amoonguss and non CM SBall Blissey, Tera Steel stuffs Jirachi, and the other noted Grass Resists tend to get OHKO'd by Glare. Bike, Noivern, etc. You can say Sap Sipper Hoodra or Haze A-Muk all you like, but Hoodra is not impossible to chip down with spikes support and both of these are particularly big momentum sinks. Did you know Serperior gets Knock Off?
Gyarados: Keep Banned
This one concerns me, I'll be honest. It's the kind of mon I really can't say I think would be balanced, and I really think its very likely to not be ok once good players really explore it. A big user of the pick-your-counters club, Gyarados is very liable to rip any game open if it lands on the right square and there is very little way to predict what its game is. Is your chesnaught liable to get boomed by Hurricane? Is it subDD or Taunt DD? Is it restochesto, is it Tera Dark Crunch or Tera Ground EQ? This type of flexibility, which ignores Temper Flare entirely by the way, is why my vote is Keep Banned. I think any time your not running an Umbreon is rolling the dice. That said, I'm willing to experiment on this one. Should my vote be a decider, I'd flip to the suspect route. I generally believe in giving things a shot. But its also my lowest priority to give a chance out of the ones I support.
With those in, Volcanion has received 7/9 votes in favor of at least a suspect, and thus will be the next suspect test!
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Allowing Volcanion a chance to drop into a meta where Sun is everywhere so that the strength of its Steam Eruptions is reduced, thus making it balanced
New shifts baby! And unlike the abusive older brother known as UU, OU has once again blessed us after gifting us the Tera Blast Ban! Weezing-Galar is back in business!
Look at him! He's even got a PMD sprite now! My goat! But how will OUR goat change the tier. He'll be good, I don't think that much is a surprise. Bringing a fresh life back into the absolute miserable state removal was in before. But once again, it's time for a game of winners and losers. First, the losers.
Tonights Biggest Losers
All of these are our biggest losers of these shifts. Let's start with the easy shit, Flygon is fucking homeless. I remember someone talkin bout some "sub dd" shit. Ask yourself, what is Flygon going to hit Weezing with on a set like that. The iron tail it doesnt get anymore? Stone Edge? Fuckin Fire Punch? Yeah I'm good. C tier you go.
Chesnaught has been overranked at A tier for a bit, with Chesnaught balances contributing to some of the easiest teams to take a shit on, I've soured on it quite a bit. Now I'm gonna go even further and say this mon might be lowkey shit. Maybe it'll be a bit better w Krook also taking a hit from this, but at the same time I've always felt Breloom and just playing better was always the way you handle a Crawdaunt. Bisharp tera'd and beat ts anyways.
Tsareena is dead honestly. Tentacruel atleast is more useful on the special side, but why it was slated to RISE TO RU BY USAGE is beyond me. Tsareena was mainly good cuz Whip/Axel/Knock was able to be threatening. Now its not really threatening. Bin you go.
Krookodile meanwhile has a fucking check back! After being buffed by rises to the point of being an arguably broken Pokemon, now BO/Balance has a much more consistent means of checking it while also providing removal. Like, Krook can still be amazing, but I'm no longer calling Krookodile the best mon in the tier right now, nor am I calling it broken.
Scrafty.. man this thing was already steaming, SMOULDERING fucking garbage, but now I better not see some cope. DD sets are outright dead without Iron Head, and Iron Head is already not ideal on a mon who lives and dies by the ability to rest up. You do like, 35 at +6 to a knocked weezing. And this thing gets pain split. Yeah this thing is objectively worthless. If it doesn't get URd next fucking VR update im rioting. Results are trash, showings have been embarrassing for awhile. Saw someone vouch for sub bulk up. On the shed skin guy. Cmon man.
Hecidueye LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Tonights Biggest "They'll live" guys.
These four definitely are encumbered by GWeez, but they still function nicely in their job. By all accounts, GWeez was already and still is a Tera Normal Facade victim. Shit does half to the damn thing, and +2 no tera does like 70. Breloom WILL BE FINE.
Torterra doesn't like seeing Gweez, but at the same time I'd rather deal with G-Weez with Torterra than a Chesnaught. Heavy slam drops it on its neck, and Zen Headbutt still doubles on both, though to less effectiveness. Torterra can easily beat GWeez if it doesnt pop a tera steel, and HO loves seeing that option be burned on a weezing gotcha in the early game. Torterra still got it.
Swampert seems more dire on one hand, but only on the surface. Sure, standard Knock/Quake/Flip Pert hates a Gweez stuffing the rocks. But if you want rocks to stay up? We bring back the ADV classic, Surf Swampert. Honestly, if your willing to ditch Knock & Flip, you have a deceptively strong special tank thats keep rocks up on the entire tier. EP or EQ/Ice Beam/Surf is actually quality shit in this tier, and even if you went full monkey and did modest max tank, you still do stuff like checking Bisharp and keeping up on all the removal. I think that shit could be gas. Also Sub Bulk up gets 20x better with Chesnaught taking a colossal hit.
Cetitan.. it can handle GWeez, but Tera Steel GWeez is like, one of one for screwing Cetitan over. Like Cetitan def gets worse, but its very easy to point at a certain thing and being like "I'll be fine" and ignore the problem. Some Pokemon can fuck it and ball, Cetitan is one of them.
As for Rhyperior, it's way easier to kill a weezing than kill a chesnaught. Smack down is a start, and while ditching Rock Blast for my Mimikyu and Kleavor hatred sucks, it's a manageable trade. You can also invest in SD on hwish builds. Take the burn in exchange for a nuke on it or forced tera. It's like, still not great but its definitely doable. Tera Normal Facade anybody?
Tonight's Winners
Now you may be thinking? Why would the Defogger like Gweez's presence? Isn't it stealing its job? And well, yes it is. But only on paper. By all accounts, Noivern wants to do literally anything else besides Defogging. Flame Taunt, U turn, Super Fang? You name it. Now it can delegate the role to someone who doesn't share a type and isn't named fuckin Tsareena. It also helps because Noivern can be a little shaky into a lot of the fighting types, so having a secondary option is amazing. On all accounts, one of Noivern's best partners.
Empoleon meanwhile eats Gweez for breakfast. Another defogger it completely gargles. Oh i just LOVE free boosts! MMMM yess.
Crawdaunt mostly just loves the Chesnaught drop off. By all accounts, thats the best for that guy. Stop using sludge wave, we can do better again.
Specs Overheat Victim #7827119281
Chandelure I think has some potential, no fushiguro megumi. It's sun mu is objectively outstanding, and I think some stuff like wisp three attacks + a subcm guy like raikou who likes a burned cyclizar/umbreon can shine. Beyond that, anytime there isn't a bike, Chandelure is a threat. Having another mon it completely sits on could & hopefully should be what it needs to hit the VR again.
Look at him! He's even got a PMD sprite now! My goat! But how will OUR goat change the tier. He'll be good, I don't think that much is a surprise. Bringing a fresh life back into the absolute miserable state removal was in before. But once again, it's time for a game of winners and losers. First, the losers.
Tonights Biggest Losers
All of these are our biggest losers of these shifts. Let's start with the easy shit, Flygon is fucking homeless. I remember someone talkin bout some "sub dd" shit. Ask yourself, what is Flygon going to hit Weezing with on a set like that. The iron tail it doesnt get anymore? Stone Edge? Fuckin Fire Punch? Yeah I'm good. C tier you go.
Chesnaught has been overranked at A tier for a bit, with Chesnaught balances contributing to some of the easiest teams to take a shit on, I've soured on it quite a bit. Now I'm gonna go even further and say this mon might be lowkey shit. Maybe it'll be a bit better w Krook also taking a hit from this, but at the same time I've always felt Breloom and just playing better was always the way you handle a Crawdaunt. Bisharp tera'd and beat ts anyways.
Tsareena is dead honestly. Tentacruel atleast is more useful on the special side, but why it was slated to RISE TO RU BY USAGE is beyond me. Tsareena was mainly good cuz Whip/Axel/Knock was able to be threatening. Now its not really threatening. Bin you go.
Krookodile meanwhile has a fucking check back! After being buffed by rises to the point of being an arguably broken Pokemon, now BO/Balance has a much more consistent means of checking it while also providing removal. Like, Krook can still be amazing, but I'm no longer calling Krookodile the best mon in the tier right now, nor am I calling it broken.
Scrafty.. man this thing was already steaming, SMOULDERING fucking garbage, but now I better not see some cope. DD sets are outright dead without Iron Head, and Iron Head is already not ideal on a mon who lives and dies by the ability to rest up. You do like, 35 at +6 to a knocked weezing. And this thing gets pain split. Yeah this thing is objectively worthless. If it doesn't get URd next fucking VR update im rioting. Results are trash, showings have been embarrassing for awhile. Saw someone vouch for sub bulk up. On the shed skin guy. Cmon man.
Hecidueye LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Tonights Biggest "They'll live" guys.
These four definitely are encumbered by GWeez, but they still function nicely in their job. By all accounts, GWeez was already and still is a Tera Normal Facade victim. Shit does half to the damn thing, and +2 no tera does like 70. Breloom WILL BE FINE.
Torterra doesn't like seeing Gweez, but at the same time I'd rather deal with G-Weez with Torterra than a Chesnaught. Heavy slam drops it on its neck, and Zen Headbutt still doubles on both, though to less effectiveness. Torterra can easily beat GWeez if it doesnt pop a tera steel, and HO loves seeing that option be burned on a weezing gotcha in the early game. Torterra still got it.
Swampert seems more dire on one hand, but only on the surface. Sure, standard Knock/Quake/Flip Pert hates a Gweez stuffing the rocks. But if you want rocks to stay up? We bring back the ADV classic, Surf Swampert. Honestly, if your willing to ditch Knock & Flip, you have a deceptively strong special tank thats keep rocks up on the entire tier. EP or EQ/Ice Beam/Surf is actually quality shit in this tier, and even if you went full monkey and did modest max tank, you still do stuff like checking Bisharp and keeping up on all the removal. I think that shit could be gas. Also Sub Bulk up gets 20x better with Chesnaught taking a colossal hit.
Cetitan.. it can handle GWeez, but Tera Steel GWeez is like, one of one for screwing Cetitan over. Like Cetitan def gets worse, but its very easy to point at a certain thing and being like "I'll be fine" and ignore the problem. Some Pokemon can fuck it and ball, Cetitan is one of them.
As for Rhyperior, it's way easier to kill a weezing than kill a chesnaught. Smack down is a start, and while ditching Rock Blast for my Mimikyu and Kleavor hatred sucks, it's a manageable trade. You can also invest in SD on hwish builds. Take the burn in exchange for a nuke on it or forced tera. It's like, still not great but its definitely doable. Tera Normal Facade anybody?
Tonight's Winners
Now you may be thinking? Why would the Defogger like Gweez's presence? Isn't it stealing its job? And well, yes it is. But only on paper. By all accounts, Noivern wants to do literally anything else besides Defogging. Flame Taunt, U turn, Super Fang? You name it. Now it can delegate the role to someone who doesn't share a type and isn't named fuckin Tsareena. It also helps because Noivern can be a little shaky into a lot of the fighting types, so having a secondary option is amazing. On all accounts, one of Noivern's best partners.
Empoleon meanwhile eats Gweez for breakfast. Another defogger it completely gargles. Oh i just LOVE free boosts! MMMM yess.
Crawdaunt mostly just loves the Chesnaught drop off. By all accounts, thats the best for that guy. Stop using sludge wave, we can do better again.
Specs Overheat Victim #7827119281
Chandelure I think has some potential, no fushiguro megumi. It's sun mu is objectively outstanding, and I think some stuff like wisp three attacks + a subcm guy like raikou who likes a burned cyclizar/umbreon can shine. Beyond that, anytime there isn't a bike, Chandelure is a threat. Having another mon it completely sits on could & hopefully should be what it needs to hit the VR again.
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my krooooooooook..........New shifts baby! And unlike the abusive older brother known as UU, OU has once again blessed us after gifting us the Tera Blast Ban! Weezing-Galar is back in business!
Look at him! He's even got a PMD sprite now! My goat! But how will OUR goat change the tier. He'll be good, I don't think that much is a surprise. Bringing a fresh life back into the absolute miserable state removal was in before. But once again, it's time for a game of winners and losers. First, the winners.
Tonights Biggest Losers
All of these are our biggest losers of these shifts. Let's start with the easy shit, Flygon is fucking homeless. I remember someone talkin bout some "sub dd" shit. Ask yourself, what is Flygon going to hit Weezing with on a set like that. The iron tail it doesnt get anymore? Stone Edge? Fuckin Fire Punch? Yeah I'm good. C tier you go.
Chesnaught has been overranked at A tier for a bit, with Chesnaught balances contributing to some of the easiest teams to take a shit on, I've soured on it quite a bit. Now I'm gonna go even further and say this mon might be lowkey shit. Maybe it'll be a bit better w Krook also taking a hit from this, but at the same time I've always felt Breloom and just playing better was always the way you handle a Crawdaunt. Bisharp tera'd and beat ts anyways.
Tsareena is dead honestly. Tentacruel atleast is more useful on the special side, but why it was slated to RISE TO RU BY USAGE is beyond me. Tsareena was mainly good cuz Whip/Axel/Knock was able to be threatening. Now its not really threatening. Bin you go.
Krookodile meanwhile has a fucking check back! After being buffed by rises to the point of being an arguably broken Pokemon, now BO/Balance has a much more consistent means of checking it while also providing removal. Like, Krook can still be amazing, but I'm no longer calling Krookodile the best mon in the tier right now, nor am I calling it broken.
Scrafty.. man this thing was already steaming, SMOULDERING fucking garbage, but now I better not see some cope. DD sets are outright dead without Iron Head, and Iron Head is already not ideal on a mon who lives and dies by the ability to rest up. You do like, 35 at +6 to a knocked weezing. And this thing gets pain split. Yeah this thing is objectively worthless. If it doesn't get URd next fucking VR update im rioting. Results are trash, showings have been embarrassing for awhile. Saw someone vouch for sub bulk up. On the shed skin guy. Cmon man.
Hecidueye LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Tonights Biggest "They'll live" guys.
These four definitely are encumbered by GWeez, but they still function nicely in their job. By all accounts, GWeez was already and still is a Tera Normal Facade victim. Shit does half to the damn thing, and +2 no tera does like 70. Breloom WILL BE FINE.
Torterra doesn't like seeing Gweez, but at the same time I'd rather deal with G-Weez with Torterra than a Chesnaught. Heavy slam drops it on its neck, and Zen Headbutt still doubles on both, though to less effectiveness. Torterra can easily beat GWeez if it doesnt pop a tera steel, and HO loves seeing that option be burned on a weezing gotcha in the early game. Torterra still got it.
Swampert seems more dire on one hand, but only on the surface. Sure, standard Knock/Quake/Flip Pert hates a Gweez stuffing the rocks. But if you want rocks to stay up? We bring back the ADV classic, Surf Swampert. Honestly, if your willing to ditch Knock & Flip, you have a deceptively strong special tank thats keep rocks up on the entire tier. EP or EQ/Ice Beam/Surf is actually quality shit in this tier, and even if you went full monkey and did modest max tank, you still do stuff like checking Bisharp and keeping up on all the removal. I think that shit could be gas. Also Sub Bulk up gets 20x better with Chesnaught taking a colossal hit.
Cetitan.. it can handle GWeez, but Tera Steel GWeez is like, one of one for screwing Cetitan over. Like Cetitan def gets worse, but its very easy to point at a certain thing and being like "I'll be fine" and ignore the problem. Some Pokemon can fuck it and ball, Cetitan is one of them.
As for Rhyperior, it's way easier to kill a weezing than kill a chesnaught. Smack down is a start, and while ditching Rock Blast for my Mimikyu and Kleavor hatred sucks, it's a manageable trade. You can also invest in SD on hwish builds. Take the burn in exchange for a nuke on it or forced tera. It's like, still not great but its definitely doable. Tera Normal Facade anybody?
Tonight's Winners
Now you may be thinking? Why would the Defogger like Gweez's presence? Isn't it stealing its job? And well, yes it is. But only on paper. By all accounts, Noivern wants to do literally anything else besides Defogging. Flame Taunt, U turn, Super Fang? You name it. Now it can delegate the role to someone who doesn't share a type and isn't named fuckin Tsareena. It also helps because Noivern can be a little shaky into a lot of the fighting types, so having a secondary option is amazing. On all accounts, one of Noivern's best partners.
Empoleon meanwhile eats Gweez for breakfast. Another defogger it completely gargles. Oh i just LOVE free boosts! MMMM yess.
Crawdaunt mostly just loves the Chesnaught drop off. By all accounts, thats the best for that guy. Stop using sludge wave, we can do better again.
Specs Overheat Victim #7827119281
Chandelure I think has some potential, no fushiguro megumi. It's sun mu is objectively outstanding, and I think some stuff like wisp three attacks + a subcm guy like raikou who likes a burned cyclizar/umbreon can shine. Beyond that, anytime there isn't a bike, Chandelure is a threat. Having another mon it completely sits on could & hopefully should be what it needs to hit the VR again.
my krooooooooook..........
252 Atk Choice Band Tera Poison Krookodile Gunk Shot vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Neutralizing Gas Weezing-Galar: 174-205 (52 - 61.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
It still hurts a bit for sure but Gweezing is pretty easy to exploit especially given it does not have reliable recovery
anyone think mamoswine'd be balanced? i think you should re suspect it(why did i say we at first)
Also a winner to me is jirachi(steels fry gweezing as long as they're not lucario or bisharp honestly, and are special attackers.), voir took a w as gweezing gets fried on the special side. same with literally any special attacker(some more than others), the real question is what makes each special attacker good in particular.
Also a previous nom of mine;duraludon(as did the already good hoodra) benefitted from this;flash cannon is good;especially with specs(hoodra) OR eviolite to sponge whatever gweezing throws at you attack wise.
Dragons that aren't part steel or poison got nerfed by this shift;one more menacing fairy that can also poison it so dragalge(which I nommed) gains value as it’s a dragon that can’t be poisoned
please tell me chandy's gonna be ranked next update(also I think you should put in a vr update there gweezing isn't under a rank and there's some other stuff too.).
note;what relevance does paraspam even have in this current meta aside from helping c tiers?
Also a winner to me is jirachi(steels fry gweezing as long as they're not lucario or bisharp honestly, and are special attackers.), voir took a w as gweezing gets fried on the special side. same with literally any special attacker(some more than others), the real question is what makes each special attacker good in particular.
Also a previous nom of mine;duraludon(as did the already good hoodra) benefitted from this;flash cannon is good;especially with specs(hoodra) OR eviolite to sponge whatever gweezing throws at you attack wise.
Dragons that aren't part steel or poison got nerfed by this shift;one more menacing fairy that can also poison it so dragalge(which I nommed) gains value as it’s a dragon that can’t be poisoned
please tell me chandy's gonna be ranked next update(also I think you should put in a vr update there gweezing isn't under a rank and there's some other stuff too.).
note;what relevance does paraspam even have in this current meta aside from helping c tiers?
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Nah that mammoth would still be too much for the tier. I'm not touching that thing with a 10 ft pole until I even would do so. dude had no checks (skeleton emoji) not even gweez or slowbro can check that thing because yeah icicle crash flinches gweez and dies. Slowbro on the other hand gets nmi freeze-dried to death or tera grass trailblaze or tera dark koff
There is literally no reason to have that thing in the tier