Weirdhamster
Banned deucer.
Best picture i’ve seen this week ngl. I really hope that in some way, defense will still be viable with things such as balance whilst stall still gets nerfed.
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Metagame [SPOILERS] Scarlet & Violet OU Discussion [BAN LIST POST 626]
- Thread starter ironwater
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Dang chi Yu gonna be good also long time no See Weirdhamster
i ment someone while playing Pokémon who was call weirdhamster 2.0 and he said that his hamster eats steak
i ment someone while playing Pokémon who was call weirdhamster 2.0 and he said that his hamster eats steak
Weirdhamster
Banned deucer.
That’s sounds quite concerning, even with a total of 8 hamsters, none of them have eaten steak. (Probably cause i don’t feed them steak but yeah)
But yeah, chi Yu looks like it will have a severe impact on the metagame, though i wonder with all the other sv pokémon how good it actually would be with quite a bit of new competition along with it.
haha, true
Yo, what's up guys, today I bring you Kingambit, or the guy from the One Piece is Real meme.
Kingambit has base 100 HP, 135 Atk (Holy Shit), and 120 Def, but it sadly only has 50 base speed. Kingambit has the ability; Supreme Overlord which boost the attack stat of Kingambit based on how many Pokemon in your team are dead. It also gets access to Physical Moves, and Support Moves like; Iron Head, Night Slash, Sucker Punch, Poison Jab, Zen Headbutt, Stone Edge, Foul Play, X-Scissor, Taunt, Iron Defense, Stealth Rock, and Swords Dance.
Because Kingambit is so slow, I could see most people using it on Trick Room teams, I have some sets, and some calcs, this thing is a beast and does a shit-ton of damage, and like Iron Villiant, this thing 2hkos LOADS of things at +1 or +2, and if you want me to do a certain Pokemon (ex. seeing how good it is, sets, calcs, etc, etc.) let me know either on my wall or replies thanks!
Calcs:
+2 244+ Atk Kingambit Zen Headbutt vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 210-248 (69 - 81.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+1 244+ Atk Kingambit Zen Headbutt vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 158-186 (51.9 - 61.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+2 244+ Atk Kingambit Night Slash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 348-410 (88.3 - 104%) -- 25% chance to OHKO
+1 244+ Atk Kingambit Night Slash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 260-308 (65.9 - 78.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+2 244+ Atk Kingambit Night Slash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Rotom-W: 177-208 (58.2 - 68.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+1 244+ Atk Kingambit Night Slash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Rotom-W: 133-157 (43.7 - 51.6%) -- 9% chance to 2HKO
+2 244+ Atk Kingambit Iron Head vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Garchomp: 219-258 (52.1 - 61.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+1 244+ Atk Kingambit Iron Head vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Garchomp: 165-195 (39.2 - 46.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
+2 244+ Atk Kingambit Iron Head vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Tyranitar: 396-468 (98 - 115.8%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO
+1 244+ Atk Kingambit Iron Head vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Tyranitar: 296-350 (73.2 - 86.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+2 244+ Atk Kingambit Iron Head vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Clefable: 516-608 (130.9 - 154.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+1 244+ Atk Kingambit Iron Head vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Clefable: 386-456 (97.9 - 115.7%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO
Sets I would use for Kingambit:
Kingambit @ Leftovers
Ability: Supreme Overlord
EVs: 148 HP / 244 Atk / 112 Def / 6 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Iron Head
- Sucker Punch
- Night Slash
- You choose the move. Mess around with them
A bit of a short one I don't really see a lot of options but that's just me, if I made any mistakes kindly let me know, and let me know your thoughts and opinions, and also if you want to see a certain Pokemon reviewed with sets, calcs, and everything just let me know on my wall or my replies!
Kingambit is a hard hitting Pokemon which can do a load of damage but is sadly a bit too slow, I can see this mon Staying in OU, maybe UU.
Kingambit has base 100 HP, 135 Atk (Holy Shit), and 120 Def, but it sadly only has 50 base speed. Kingambit has the ability; Supreme Overlord which boost the attack stat of Kingambit based on how many Pokemon in your team are dead. It also gets access to Physical Moves, and Support Moves like; Iron Head, Night Slash, Sucker Punch, Poison Jab, Zen Headbutt, Stone Edge, Foul Play, X-Scissor, Taunt, Iron Defense, Stealth Rock, and Swords Dance.
Because Kingambit is so slow, I could see most people using it on Trick Room teams, I have some sets, and some calcs, this thing is a beast and does a shit-ton of damage, and like Iron Villiant, this thing 2hkos LOADS of things at +1 or +2, and if you want me to do a certain Pokemon (ex. seeing how good it is, sets, calcs, etc, etc.) let me know either on my wall or replies thanks!
Calcs:
+2 244+ Atk Kingambit Zen Headbutt vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 210-248 (69 - 81.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+1 244+ Atk Kingambit Zen Headbutt vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 158-186 (51.9 - 61.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+2 244+ Atk Kingambit Night Slash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 348-410 (88.3 - 104%) -- 25% chance to OHKO
+1 244+ Atk Kingambit Night Slash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 260-308 (65.9 - 78.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+2 244+ Atk Kingambit Night Slash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Rotom-W: 177-208 (58.2 - 68.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+1 244+ Atk Kingambit Night Slash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Rotom-W: 133-157 (43.7 - 51.6%) -- 9% chance to 2HKO
+2 244+ Atk Kingambit Iron Head vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Garchomp: 219-258 (52.1 - 61.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+1 244+ Atk Kingambit Iron Head vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Garchomp: 165-195 (39.2 - 46.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
+2 244+ Atk Kingambit Iron Head vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Tyranitar: 396-468 (98 - 115.8%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO
+1 244+ Atk Kingambit Iron Head vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Tyranitar: 296-350 (73.2 - 86.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+2 244+ Atk Kingambit Iron Head vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Clefable: 516-608 (130.9 - 154.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+1 244+ Atk Kingambit Iron Head vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Clefable: 386-456 (97.9 - 115.7%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO
Sets I would use for Kingambit:
Kingambit @ Leftovers
Ability: Supreme Overlord
EVs: 148 HP / 244 Atk / 112 Def / 6 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Iron Head
- Sucker Punch
- Night Slash
- You choose the move. Mess around with them
A bit of a short one I don't really see a lot of options but that's just me, if I made any mistakes kindly let me know, and let me know your thoughts and opinions, and also if you want to see a certain Pokemon reviewed with sets, calcs, and everything just let me know on my wall or my replies!
Kingambit is a hard hitting Pokemon which can do a load of damage but is sadly a bit too slow, I can see this mon Staying in OU, maybe UU.
In a meta where offence will be king, you need the offence killer. You need weather! Let me introduce you to your candidates!
Sun
Torkoal - Scovillain - Slither Wing - Chi Yu
Sun will obviously stick out at the start due to how it buffs up all the new caveman mons. Torkoal is your setter. It hates the lack of removal but hey what ya gonna do.
That weird ass pepper mon Scovillain has just about the right stats and movepool to work as a chlorophyll sweeper. 108 SpA ain't incredible, but it's good enough when sun boosted to smash hard. Growth, Fire Blast, Solar Beam/Giga Drain/Energy Ball/Grass Knot for grass stab to hit rocks and waters. Unfortunately its special movepool is pretty lacking so there's no good final move on a special set to hit fire types. But mixed works since you can run stomping tantrum. It's physical movepool is much better overall, including Zen Heatbutt and Crunch, but is stuck with fire fang so isn't worth it. Honestly you hit so hard with fire blast that you could run sub in the final slot.
Sun mons amongst the Caveman Mons are tough to pick out since the obvious candidates would be banned even without sun (Salamence and Misdreavus). From the remaining candidates, the extra floofy Volcarona looks promising. Its attack is so high so it can't realistically boost speed, but you do have flame charge as a genuinely terrifying option. +1 speed and +1 attack floofy bug will sweep a lot of teams.
Finally as just a fire type nuke, hard to go wrong with Chi Yu. I actually think this mon will take a while to get banned, since its 100 speed will look slow compared to the hyper offence at the start, it has no good speed boosting option, and hates the numerous dark types the starting meta has. Still, if you just want to click funny fire button go boom like Victini or Darm, Chi Yu is probably your best bet. (I guess there's Zard, but eeehhhhh with hazard control as difficult as it's going to be, not convinced Zard will be a good option).
Snow
Slowking - Cetitan - Abomasnow
I'm rushing in here excited to tell you all about my new favourite combo: Slowking + Cetitan! Slowking can do the frosty teleport move to bring in Cetitan for free under snow. Since you'll want to try bring in a physical attacker versus Slowking, and not one who is a fire or fighting type, Cetitan will be in a perfect place facing something that will do not that much damage to it with its defence boost in snow. From there, Cetitan clicks belly drum, runs the old ice+ground super duper Mamo combo and dunks on everything. You can't even revenge it in snow with mach punch Breloom since Cetitan can just click ice shard for its last move and out-priority the priority.
There's also the option of Abomasnow, which isn't as laughable as it sounds originally. The defence boost goes a long way to making it much bulkier. It means it switches in pretty freely versus the Chad Dolphin. Plus it's going to be one of the few mons that take not much damage from Future Delibird, since it resists hydro and takes little from freeze dry. Considering how good Veil is, it's not a terrible option. However if you want screens + hail for the optimal Cetitan setup, Slowking can actually do that too. Run Oblivious over Regenerator if you are going dual screens to hard commit to the strategy. A bit silly but definitely viable.
Sand
Tyranitar - Hippowdon - Houndstone
I don't see a huge amount of space for Hippowdon in OU right away, but TTar definitely can fit in. But what is he going to do without his best buddy Excadrill? Team up with a good doggy! Not Lycanroc you silly, although I suppose if you squint really hard you can see a niche for it. No, it's with Houndstone. What does Houndstone do? Well, you know how Dracovish couldn't have Strong Jaw and Sand Rush at the same time, so you were "stuck" with "only" the 170 base power version? Well fear no more, because Houndstone has Last Respects, the 50 bp move that gets an extra 50bp for every mon of yours that faints. Meaning it's not difficult to see a last mon Houndstone under sand easily sweeping teams with its funny 300bp kill everything move.
It technically has coverage for all the darks with Play Rough, but let's be honest here. You might as well only run two moves on this mon, and the second should be Sleep Talk.
Rain
Pelipper - Barraskewda - Drednaw - Palafin
Rain is kinda shit out of luck. Yeah you have Pelipper, but Barraskewda lost flip turn in the generational shift, and Skewda without flip turn dropped to RU in Gen 8. Your best swift swim sweeper is Drednaw. Drednaw! I've actually used Drednaw in UU and it's not that bad. It's pretty much exactly the same as Kabutops (SD + Liquidation + Head Smash + Megahorn). Your best bet would be using rain to boost hard hitting water types like Palafin or maybe Quaquaval? That is, until Home is released and we get the Hisui mons. There's Overquil, but you also get the unholy abomination that is Basculegion for the brief 5 seconds before it's banned.
Sun
Torkoal - Scovillain - Slither Wing - Chi Yu
Sun will obviously stick out at the start due to how it buffs up all the new caveman mons. Torkoal is your setter. It hates the lack of removal but hey what ya gonna do.
That weird ass pepper mon Scovillain has just about the right stats and movepool to work as a chlorophyll sweeper. 108 SpA ain't incredible, but it's good enough when sun boosted to smash hard. Growth, Fire Blast, Solar Beam/Giga Drain/Energy Ball/Grass Knot for grass stab to hit rocks and waters. Unfortunately its special movepool is pretty lacking so there's no good final move on a special set to hit fire types. But mixed works since you can run stomping tantrum. It's physical movepool is much better overall, including Zen Heatbutt and Crunch, but is stuck with fire fang so isn't worth it. Honestly you hit so hard with fire blast that you could run sub in the final slot.
Sun mons amongst the Caveman Mons are tough to pick out since the obvious candidates would be banned even without sun (Salamence and Misdreavus). From the remaining candidates, the extra floofy Volcarona looks promising. Its attack is so high so it can't realistically boost speed, but you do have flame charge as a genuinely terrifying option. +1 speed and +1 attack floofy bug will sweep a lot of teams.
Finally as just a fire type nuke, hard to go wrong with Chi Yu. I actually think this mon will take a while to get banned, since its 100 speed will look slow compared to the hyper offence at the start, it has no good speed boosting option, and hates the numerous dark types the starting meta has. Still, if you just want to click funny fire button go boom like Victini or Darm, Chi Yu is probably your best bet. (I guess there's Zard, but eeehhhhh with hazard control as difficult as it's going to be, not convinced Zard will be a good option).
Snow
Slowking - Cetitan - Abomasnow
I'm rushing in here excited to tell you all about my new favourite combo: Slowking + Cetitan! Slowking can do the frosty teleport move to bring in Cetitan for free under snow. Since you'll want to try bring in a physical attacker versus Slowking, and not one who is a fire or fighting type, Cetitan will be in a perfect place facing something that will do not that much damage to it with its defence boost in snow. From there, Cetitan clicks belly drum, runs the old ice+ground super duper Mamo combo and dunks on everything. You can't even revenge it in snow with mach punch Breloom since Cetitan can just click ice shard for its last move and out-priority the priority.
There's also the option of Abomasnow, which isn't as laughable as it sounds originally. The defence boost goes a long way to making it much bulkier. It means it switches in pretty freely versus the Chad Dolphin. Plus it's going to be one of the few mons that take not much damage from Future Delibird, since it resists hydro and takes little from freeze dry. Considering how good Veil is, it's not a terrible option. However if you want screens + hail for the optimal Cetitan setup, Slowking can actually do that too. Run Oblivious over Regenerator if you are going dual screens to hard commit to the strategy. A bit silly but definitely viable.
Sand
Tyranitar - Hippowdon - Houndstone
I don't see a huge amount of space for Hippowdon in OU right away, but TTar definitely can fit in. But what is he going to do without his best buddy Excadrill? Team up with a good doggy! Not Lycanroc you silly, although I suppose if you squint really hard you can see a niche for it. No, it's with Houndstone. What does Houndstone do? Well, you know how Dracovish couldn't have Strong Jaw and Sand Rush at the same time, so you were "stuck" with "only" the 170 base power version? Well fear no more, because Houndstone has Last Respects, the 50 bp move that gets an extra 50bp for every mon of yours that faints. Meaning it's not difficult to see a last mon Houndstone under sand easily sweeping teams with its funny 300bp kill everything move.
It technically has coverage for all the darks with Play Rough, but let's be honest here. You might as well only run two moves on this mon, and the second should be Sleep Talk.
Rain
Pelipper - Barraskewda - Drednaw - Palafin
Rain is kinda shit out of luck. Yeah you have Pelipper, but Barraskewda lost flip turn in the generational shift, and Skewda without flip turn dropped to RU in Gen 8. Your best swift swim sweeper is Drednaw. Drednaw! I've actually used Drednaw in UU and it's not that bad. It's pretty much exactly the same as Kabutops (SD + Liquidation + Head Smash + Megahorn). Your best bet would be using rain to boost hard hitting water types like Palafin or maybe Quaquaval? That is, until Home is released and we get the Hisui mons. There's Overquil, but you also get the unholy abomination that is Basculegion for the brief 5 seconds before it's banned.
Not in the game but Chandelure. Also Noivern but that would be Dragapult but worse
Scarfed moonblast is still probably going to be OP asf… whether that’s one of the 570BST new Pokémon’s, or just scarfed lele.
shame meowscaranda missed out on the previous mechanics of protean… of course the grass types turn to get that ability got the short end of the stick.
looks like the vice grip STAB shadow ball has on OU might be relaxed a little too.. although I’m curious to see how dragapult performs.
shame meowscaranda missed out on the previous mechanics of protean… of course the grass types turn to get that ability got the short end of the stick.
looks like the vice grip STAB shadow ball has on OU might be relaxed a little too.. although I’m curious to see how dragapult performs.
They didn't get it since the move description requires the cognizance to speak and make a bad joke. Slowbro and G-Bro aren't smart enough. And no to the second question
I strongly agree with that, Tera Blast adds a much higher level of unpredictability to the mechanic. It would be as if every Pokemon had access to a 120 BP Hidden Power (including STAB) that could be either Special or Physical. On an offensive level, being limited to only moves that the Pokemon already knows would limit the predictability to a level similar to Z-Moves. Defensive Terastalizing certainly adds nuance to the discussion but I guess we'll just have to see. At least we wouldn't have any Volcs blasting Heatrans into the stratosphere.
edit: If this happens before Home is released however, it would sadden me not being able to finally meme everyone on Showdown with Tera Blast Fairy Banded Koko but such is life (also RIP Regieleki).
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wrt Sun I'll probably load up a band Roaring Moon + specs Flutter Mane and just click buttons until they get banned. I'll try to enjoy a stab-only Scovillian in a Heatran-less metagame but I suspect it may be a bit disappointing as a lot of the paradox mons will be out-speeding you anyway, even with a timid nature. Chi-Yu is going to murder everything at +2 without needing to tera, probably won't even need a power-boosting item after having a quick look at potential calcs.
Dreadnaw gets Shell Smash now and I think it'll be pretty nasty under rain.
ground/water tera (Drednaw) @ Life Orb / White Herb
Ability: Swift Swim
EVs: 152 HP / 248 Atk / 108 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Shell Smash
- Liquidation
- Earthquake
- Ice Spinner / Head Smash
Palafin will take the Barra slot for me. Banded Wave Crashes are going to be fun. Mystic Water may get the job done too and catch people off-guard.
Rain also gets Kilowattrel which has access to 100% accurate Thunders and Hurricanes as well as Weather Ball to hit Iron Treads. Volt Absorb could also be useful for the Electric immunity but Competitive turns it into a pretty good sweeper.
Pult is the fastest Ghost in the meta (in an initially Ghost-infested meta to boot) and we've perpetually found it to be powerful enough in Gen 8. Pult has shockingly sweet resists (resists/immune to Quaquaval's and Slither Wing's STABs, for example). Pult will find a way.
We got this calc for Booster Energy boosting Special Attack instead of Speed, so all we gotta fear is the Speed booster:
252 SpA Choice Specs Infiltrator Dragapult Shadow Ball vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Flutter Mane: 254-300 (100.7 - 119%) -- guaranteed OHKO
So now that Flutter Mane is boosting Speed, let's see how stuff fares:
252 SpA Flutter Mane Mystical Fire vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Kingambit: 192-228 (56.3 - 66.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Flutter Mane Moonblast vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Kingambit: 183-216 (53.6 - 63.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Life Orb Kingambit Sucker Punch vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Flutter Mane: 273-321 (108.3 - 127.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Likely one of the most viable ways to check this Flutter Mane, especially since you don't need any KOed buddies or Defiant boosts in order to do so.
252 SpA Flutter Mane Thunderbolt vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Palafin-Hero: 226-268 (66.2 - 78.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Flutter Mane Moonblast vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Palafin-Hero: 180-213 (52.7 - 62.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Life Orb Palafin-Hero Jet Punch vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Flutter Mane: 265-312 (105.1 - 123.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 Atk Choice Band Palafin-Hero Jet Punch vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Flutter Mane: 277-327 (109.9 - 129.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Not bad, actually. Just lose momentum to Turn 1 Cyclizar Shed Tail while you switch Palafin-Zero out and...
Flutter Mane and Slither Wing will definitely be crazy. Boost attack with Wing then click ddance and win. Or boost speed with Flutter Mane and click calm mind to win. They're both getting banned as they're busted even without sun or terra, so it's like a week 1 strat at best.
I missed smash Drednaw. I'm not actually convinced it would be better than swords dance life orb, but it would be fun to try.
I knew there must be some hurricane spamming birb I was missing! Kilowattrel has all the right tools now you point it out. Its stats might mean OU is above its paygrade. Buuuut it does have 125 speed so like, it might actually be legit once the meta calms down a little?
You really can tell how much power creep is in this Gen because of the volume of new viable (and possibly broken) Pokemon. It really seems like more than any other Gen, Pokemon who have this as their debut generation will be dominant. Gen 7 sorta had that too, with Ultra Beasts and the Island Guardians, not to mention Toxapex and Magearna, but at least in Gen 7 you had other mons relevant too. With Gen 9, all of Flutter Mane, Chien-Pao, Ting-Lu, literally every Violet exclusive Paradox, Great Tusk, Chi-Yu, Pawmot, Gholdengo, Cyclizar, Kingambit, and Roaring Moon seem OU material, and half of those are probably gonna end up becoming Ubers. Not just the volume of new mons, but also most previous gen mons are either cut or nerfed (Toxapex, Corviknight, etc.) I could genuienly see mono-Gen 9 teams be viable (though I wouldn't encourage it just for the sake of doing it). How this is relevant to the metagame is that we really are embarking in on uncharted territory, and everything we knew before will not be the same. It will absolutely take some getting used to.
Hello everyone, Game's coming closing to release assuming you haven't pireted or emulated yet. What are your expectations for the new mons, tier-wise? Here are mine predictions.
And in case anyone wanna make theirs I leave the link in the spoiler below.
And in case anyone wanna make theirs I leave the link in the spoiler below.
honestly don't think tinkaton will be in NU... you ever heard of gigaton hammer?
Yes I heard of it, it's still a mediocre mon with a strong move. Look, Hammerfairy has a nice design but that's all it got about it. It will be solid NU, considering the speed and the nice support movepool, maybe even getting a Niche on RU but if you want a offensive Steel or Fairy types there a way better mons.
I think people are overrating defensive terastellization and not realizing the true brokenness of offensive terastellization and here's why.
As a refresher on a couple absolutely key aspects- 1) you must choose the tera type (for each mon) BEFORE battle (in the teambuilder) and it cannot change 2) you can only use it once per battle. 3) you cannot retract the tera (i.e. you cant change back to normal)
So, let's say there's something like a dozen-2 dozen huge offensive threats in the metagame. When building a team (that you want to be able to switch into most stuff- extremely offensive teams aren't so much affected), not only do you have to account for them non-tera'd (already a difficult task) you have to make sure you dont lose to any of their teras - remember basically every offensive mon can take use of terastellization (tera blast and if nothing else just boosting stab). This is hard enough as-is because it kinda requires you to bring multiple answers for most pokemon in the metagame due to every pokemon learning tera blast (for a concrete example, you cannot rely on just torn/corv/skarm anymore for a defensive answer to kartana due to electric tera blast, but you also can't just rely on buzzwole or dragonite because what if it has fire/ice tera blast, so if you want to not just instalose to half of kartana sets you need to run multiple answers). defensive teratyping helps, but not enough to alleviate this undue burden on teambuilding.
Equally importantly, what happens even if you manage to get in a matchup where you're sure you can beat every opposing mon (regardless of whether it teras or not), albeit possibly at the very real cost of your tera. Maybe you need two of your defensive pokemon to tera to take on the other team and have to choose which you'd rather lose a mon to every time it comes in. Maybe your only check to one mon can only check it while unterad but needs to tera to answer another huge threat. Finally, using your tera just to stave off a huge offensive threat kinda sucks because it's not nearly as much of an impact as making a similar threat yourself.
However, most importantly, due to every pokemon being able to change it's set of answers at the drop of a hat, you cannot safely swap into anything because it could just get blown up by random tera blast (or tera boosted stab, which is especially important due to it's ability to just blanket deny pivoting around it with smth like torn-t or rotom-w by just killing) and congrats! it's 5-6. sure hope you didn't need that for something else! Having to just blindly guess what tera type something is to know what could possibly deal with it is not a good thing. Of course, you can somewhat tell from the team (a magnezone kart team isn't gonna be using electric tera blast) but it's still a shitty guessing game.
anyway thats most of my thoughts thanks for reading have a great day
As a refresher on a couple absolutely key aspects- 1) you must choose the tera type (for each mon) BEFORE battle (in the teambuilder) and it cannot change 2) you can only use it once per battle. 3) you cannot retract the tera (i.e. you cant change back to normal)
So, let's say there's something like a dozen-2 dozen huge offensive threats in the metagame. When building a team (that you want to be able to switch into most stuff- extremely offensive teams aren't so much affected), not only do you have to account for them non-tera'd (already a difficult task) you have to make sure you dont lose to any of their teras - remember basically every offensive mon can take use of terastellization (tera blast and if nothing else just boosting stab). This is hard enough as-is because it kinda requires you to bring multiple answers for most pokemon in the metagame due to every pokemon learning tera blast (for a concrete example, you cannot rely on just torn/corv/skarm anymore for a defensive answer to kartana due to electric tera blast, but you also can't just rely on buzzwole or dragonite because what if it has fire/ice tera blast, so if you want to not just instalose to half of kartana sets you need to run multiple answers). defensive teratyping helps, but not enough to alleviate this undue burden on teambuilding.
Equally importantly, what happens even if you manage to get in a matchup where you're sure you can beat every opposing mon (regardless of whether it teras or not), albeit possibly at the very real cost of your tera. Maybe you need two of your defensive pokemon to tera to take on the other team and have to choose which you'd rather lose a mon to every time it comes in. Maybe your only check to one mon can only check it while unterad but needs to tera to answer another huge threat. Finally, using your tera just to stave off a huge offensive threat kinda sucks because it's not nearly as much of an impact as making a similar threat yourself.
However, most importantly, due to every pokemon being able to change it's set of answers at the drop of a hat, you cannot safely swap into anything because it could just get blown up by random tera blast (or tera boosted stab, which is especially important due to it's ability to just blanket deny pivoting around it with smth like torn-t or rotom-w by just killing) and congrats! it's 5-6. sure hope you didn't need that for something else! Having to just blindly guess what tera type something is to know what could possibly deal with it is not a good thing. Of course, you can somewhat tell from the team (a magnezone kart team isn't gonna be using electric tera blast) but it's still a shitty guessing game.
anyway thats most of my thoughts thanks for reading have a great day
There is 0 chance of OU Garganacl. Mon may have nice stats but it is still a mono-Rock type, and that means its defensive profile sucks. Also, Kilowattrel is RU at best with no Heat Wave, Flutter Mane is 100% Ubers long before Chien-Pao, Tatsugiri is terrible, and you are criminally underrating Clodsire.
Made my own predicted tier list, might as well drop it now if that's what we're doing.
All of this is without considering Tera, and some of my opinions have changed since I made this but generally I feel this is pretty accurate. I forgot about the Oricorios but Sensu prob hits NU, Baile and Pom-Pom I can see in PU, and Pa'u still sucks. PU feels kinda unfinished cause I ran out of good mons about halfway through filling it out, so maybe there are a couple ZU mons that'll actually find their home there. Feel free to ask about any of the takes here, I'll be glad to explain.
there are some ones I pretty heavily dissagree with here, vivilion in zu is odd given this mon was a solid nubl mon in the past with more competition, it might drop to pu this gen, but definitely not zu, I find it odd that you put h-avalugg above regular avalugg given it seems almost objectivly worse, klawf as regen + rocks + knock off, it'l find a niche in lower tiers, zu is way too low, rubl for liligant-h and cyclizar seems way too low, both of these mons are both incredibly potent and I'd be surprised if they ever dropped bellow ou, let alone uu, small one but I see noivern having uu or even ou usage given it's one of only 3 mons to have both roost and defog (and one of them is hawlucha so it's really only 2), being able to keep off hazards while not being worn down sounds super valuable and something worthy of uu. besides those though nothing here really stands out as off to me, good job! :)
As a reminder, Gallade got a massive buff with Sharpness:
Without Sharpness, Toxapex can recover off Gallade's best STAB:
252 Atk Gallade Psycho Cut vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 120-144 (39.4 - 47.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
With Sharpness:
252 Atk Gallade Psycho Cut (105 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 180-212 (59.2 - 69.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Oh, and Sacred Sword becomes 135 BP (before STAB) that ignores defense boosts and has no drawbacks
Lacks the set versatility but functionally hits a lot harder than Iron Valiant on the physical side. I think Scarf and AV sets might both have a role to play in early OU.
Gardevoir might also have a niche, as Scarf Healing Wish and copying weather-based abilities with Trace are both really powerful in offense-oriented metas (and there are a ton of scary new Dark and Fighting types running around that don't appreciate eating a moonblast).
Without Sharpness, Toxapex can recover off Gallade's best STAB:
252 Atk Gallade Psycho Cut vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 120-144 (39.4 - 47.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
With Sharpness:
252 Atk Gallade Psycho Cut (105 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 180-212 (59.2 - 69.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Oh, and Sacred Sword becomes 135 BP (before STAB) that ignores defense boosts and has no drawbacks
Lacks the set versatility but functionally hits a lot harder than Iron Valiant on the physical side. I think Scarf and AV sets might both have a role to play in early OU.
Gardevoir might also have a niche, as Scarf Healing Wish and copying weather-based abilities with Trace are both really powerful in offense-oriented metas (and there are a ton of scary new Dark and Fighting types running around that don't appreciate eating a moonblast).
Thanks for the feedback! Some explanations for the mons you mentioned: Avalugg-Hisui, as opposed to base Avalugg, has a stellar offensive profile. Mountain Gale + Stone Edge + Earthquake is a nightmare to wall in lower tiers, and I can see this filling a role similar to Stakataka as a hazard-setting tank (except this one also gets spin!). Sure, its defensive typing is godawful, but that's why it's all the way down in PU. The only reason to use Vivillon over the Oricorios is Sleep Powder, and I really don't think that's enough to make up for its typing. Klawf's special bulk honestly kills the mon. I didn't realize it had Knock though, so I could maybe see a PU niche. Cyclizar was tough to rank when considering Shed Tail. RUBL made sense to me originally but I think as long as Shed Tail is legal this mon will be at least UUBL, possibly even banned from OU. Without Shed Tail I think it slots solidly into RU though. The UU meta is extremely unfavorable to Lilligant-H, as mons like Moltres, Salamence, Amoonguss, Ceruledge, and Thundurus-Therian all completely stop its sweep, and some of those can be very dangerous when given free turns, so I don't think it's worth the risk. Agreed on Noivern, but I'm not comfortable putting it any higher than RU long-term.
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