the absolute state of ladder meta:
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I wanted to have open up discussion on how to address Shed Tail, as I am struggling with it myself and keep hitting roadblocks in the builder in anticipation of the ladder tournament. Please let me know your thoughts on how viable any of these options are:
Infiltrator:
- The most obvious option for countering shed tail. Except it's really not as consistent as you would think.
are all really common teammates for the worm and can easily deal with pult and then get to keep their sub. Also dragapult runs into problems when it gets choice locked, especially when the opponent still has their tera option. It is a great mon to have on your team, but doesn't feel like it uses it's ability well here compared to when Cyclizar was around and the meta had different options for passing a sub.
- Too slow to use boots, too weak to use infiltrator over analytic, faces up poorly against a lot of the metagame and gets recked by hazards.
&
- I like these options actually. They have enough bulk to be good spin blockers. I just think
is better running wind rider.
feels pretty decent here though, being able to use wisp on something behind a sub is really strong. Has access to pain split, sucker punch, and shadow ball and has good bulk. Probably my favorite infiltrator mon atm.
&
- idk enough about using these mons to give any opinion here. other than that glare seems strong?
Red Card & Whirlwind:
I don't have enough experience with either of these strategies to say much about them, except for that Whirlwind feels pretty weak in such an offensive metagame and inconsistent because
can often use Shed Tail more than once but that Whirlwind users like
get chunked so hard that they can't use it consistently especially since many beneficiaries of the free sub can deal super effective damage to common Whirlwind options.
Red Card feels good and has surprise factor, it feels hard to pull off since it can get activated early and you also have the opportunity cost of an item like boots or lefties on one of your defensive pivots.
Taunt & Encore & Haze:
I'm not going to go into the specific options here other than to say that good
play has it getting free switchins on
and tons of other ground types/physical attackers that often don't carry either of these moves. So then you're left with turns where your best option feels like using a set-up move or stealth rock while the opponent shed tails, then hard switching into a taunt/encore/haze user on the following turn to try and mitigate the upcoming sweep. There's too much variability here, and while it is consistent and can fit well into lots of team structures, it fails too often.
Sound Moves:
- the hot croc is good. really flexible thanks to its whole kit. I have to admit I don't love it for Shed Tail counterplay, mostly because it obviously threatens
and usually has a lot of offensive threats to handle where it can get overwhelmed. It also needs to use Torch Song a couple times to get going, feels particularly weak against
which can get attack boosts and keep its sub.
- this is kind of a meme, but can we make bug buzz viable? idk, sigh.
- This thing deals with a lot of the same problems as
in terms of being choice locked, immunity/resists to Boomburst, and Color Change. Also struggles with a lot of common threats that are getting the free sub from the worm.
- probably the best option here in terms of dealing with Shed Tail. I don't have enough experience to know whether Specs or NP is the way to go. Feels like it isn't strong enough when mons like
and
are getting free substitutes.
edit: Multi-Hit Moves:
Looking back at this, I realize that I forgot multi-hit moves. Makes me think that there is room for
?
?
(lmao)
to deal with the Shed Tail problem. Most of these mons are slow, and in addition won't be able to deal as much damage as some of the infiltrator/sound move users, but they can break sub and get some necessary chip off. Idk, this last category just occured to me, need to think about it more deeply. All of the multi-hit moves I can think of are resisted by
except for bone rush which is pretty problematic.
Let me know what I missed or what you've been able to do in the builder/in-game to avoid getting swept.