Metagame [SPOILERS] Scarlet & Violet OU Discussion [BAN LIST POST 626]

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1) Transfer will only be possible when Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are compatible with Home from spring 2023 onwards, so no, it would in fact influence Smogon tiers.
2) We will start off with a pre-Home metagame like we did in Sword and Shield, yes.
Huh interesting, thank you
 
the tm learnsets just dropped, it looks like a ton of old and new mons learn spikes now. garchomp, magearna (!!!), quagsire (both forms), meowscarada, ting-lu (this was known but still extremely good for it), probably even more that i couldn't find. makes it feel like ferrothorn never even left.
 
Mentioned it before, but I think mons like Corviknight will no longer be OU now that Roost and other recovery moves are 5 PP. Winning neutral matchups will be much harder, particularly since you can't Roost as liberally as before. In Corviknight's case, I feel it needed to roost in a lot of situations like against SD Garchomp and whatnot. In BDSP OU, Clefable doesn't run Moonlight largely because it is only 5 PP, so I think it'll be a similar case in this meta, with a few exceptions of course.
 

1LDK

It's never going to get better
is a Top Team Rater
I think the nerf to healing moves means that Regenerator mons are gonna be in higher demand than ever, :Breloom: is confirmed to be here so toxic heal and mons like that are gonna be in high demand too, every team is gonna be at the very least, forced to have enough power to keep themselves alive, and that also means status effects are gonna be even stronger, uh
 

TCTphantom

formerly MX42
Zamazenta-C took a heavy hit for the most part. Interprid Shield got hit, it lost some bulk and attack power as well. Honestly, would not be shocked if it got tested in Gen 9 OU at some point, Body Press be damned. Still is gonna be a bit dicey, but I do think that at least by the end of the DLC period, there will be serious discussion of testing this thing again.

Speaking of things that will be probably dropping from Ubers: Cinderace. I still think this thing will have a niche in OU, despite the hit Libero is taking. While this does hit its long term damage output, it still offers a lot right now. Hazard removal looks to be scarcer, especially if we are losing transfer moves, so Court Change will be nice in this meta. It also will still hit pretty hard and outspeed a lot of the meta, letting it act as a solid pivot still. Its just no longer nuking everything with super effective STAB hits every turn.

I do think that Ace and the other good Protean mons could easily have a niche in our early metagame at least. Greninja and Meowscarada both outspeed a large part of the metagame and would be effective revenge killers. I am not gonna go into detail on Battle Bond, since that is its own can of worms. But just having a solid pivot that can revenge kill and snipe stuff with super effective hits is decent. Both also offer some nice utility with hazards and knock off respectively.

Hoopa U also is coming back with transfer, which is neat. Hope it is a little more viable than SuMo but less dumb than in ORAS.

Broadly though, I think the biggest thing is that if transfer moves are nixed, Hazard Removal is going to be a lot harsher than it was in SwSh. Defog is not as prevalent without transfer moves. If we lose defog Lando-T in particular, that means the hazard game is gonna be very different. Likely more boots/knock off as a result. In terms of solid new defoggers, Hisuian Lilligant and Hisuian Braviary come to mind. Rapid Spin is a bit more accessible. We have some good new spinners potentially like Great Tusk, Iron Treads, Ququaval, Brambleghast (hey its a spinblocker that spins), Cyclizer, and maybe Tatsugiri. Tidy Up with Maushold is interesting, but I am iffy on how strong it will be.
 
Reducing all recovery moves to 8PP is one of the worst decisions they've ever made. Especially when the offensive powercreep is possibly at its highest level yet; it's not like Gen 3 where Rest is still usable.

Also, Terastal is broken. There's no way that all the OU-level breakers and sweepers will be manageable when they can put Adaptability on their best STABs. On Dragapult alone, it can now have winning matchups against bulky neutral switch-ins which used to be decent checks:
252 SpA Choice Specs Adaptability Dragapult Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Toxapex: 160-190 (52.6 - 62.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Choice Specs Adaptability Dragapult Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 56+ SpD Clefable: 204-240 (51.7 - 60.9%) -- 94.1% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Choice Specs Adaptability Dragapult Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Landorus-Therian: 182-216 (47.6 - 56.5%) -- 31.3% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
Now apply that to every offensive Pokemon in the game. Even defensive Pokemon that can avoid 2HKOs from full will have a much harder time staying at a high enough health total (especially with lowered recovery PP).
 
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Reducing all recovery moves to 8PP is one of the worst decisions they've ever made. Especially when the offensive powercreep is possibly at its highest level yet; it's not like Gen 3 where Rest is still usable.

Also, Terastal is broken. There's no way that all the OU-level breakers and sweepers will be manageable when they can put Adaptability on their best STABs. On Dragapult alone, it can now have winning matchups against bulky neutral switch-ins which used to be decent checks:
252 SpA Choice Specs Adaptability Dragapult Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Toxapex: 160-190 (52.6 - 62.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Choice Specs Adaptability Dragapult Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 56+ SpD Clefable: 204-240 (51.7 - 60.9%) -- 94.1% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Choice Specs Dragapult Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Landorus-Therian: 136-162 (35.6 - 42.4%) -- 92.4% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
Now apply that to every offensive Pokemon in the game. Even defensive Pokemon that can avoid 2HKOs from full will have a much harder time staying at a high enough health total (especially with lowered recovery PP).
Dragapult might be a bit of an outlier. I think it'll be broken regardless of Terastal since it;ll be harder to tank with lower Recover PP + most of its switch-ins like Heatran may have lost Toxic so they won't be able to keep it at bay. At least the new Salt mon will act as a decent check to it since it resist Shadow Ball, has Recovery,, and isn't weak to U-Turn. Hisui Zoroark might also be a good check and a great partner simultaneously, since it can disguise itself as Dragapult to bait Shadow Balls, only to be immune to them and gain momentum / free damage.

I fully expect Terastal to get banned, but that's a shame since I think Gen 9 will lose a lot of its identity like Gen 8 did (which felt kinda like a watered down USUM metagame rather than its own thing). Dynamax was busted, but in formats that I played that used it, it did introduce a lot of unique risk + reward situations that I thought were pretty enjoyable. Terrastal might be more overpowered since it won't be able to counterplay itself like Dynamax could, nor can it just be stalled out. But I do think it has a lot more room for creative strategies, like making Dragapult a strong physical sweeper with Tera Power as its Ghost STAB or turning something like Hydregion into an electric type to give it no weaknesses and subvert some of its usual counters, like Azumarill.
 
Reducing all recovery moves to 8PP is one of the worst decisions they've ever made. Especially when the offensive powercreep is possibly at its highest level yet; it's not like Gen 3 where Rest is still usable.

Also, Terastal is broken. There's no way that all the OU-level breakers and sweepers will be manageable when they can put Adaptability on their best STABs. On Dragapult alone, it can now have winning matchups against bulky neutral switch-ins which used to be decent checks:
252 SpA Choice Specs Adaptability Dragapult Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Toxapex: 160-190 (52.6 - 62.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Choice Specs Adaptability Dragapult Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 56+ SpD Clefable: 204-240 (51.7 - 60.9%) -- 94.1% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Choice Specs Dragapult Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Landorus-Therian: 136-162 (35.6 - 42.4%) -- 92.4% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
Now apply that to every offensive Pokemon in the game. Even defensive Pokemon that can avoid 2HKOs from full will have a much harder time staying at a high enough health total (especially with lowered recovery PP).
I think we need to like terastylize sit for a minute, because defensive terastylizing could be very powerful
 

TCTphantom

formerly MX42
Terrastylize might be broken, it certainly looks scary, but calling for bans pre release is just a little too hasty.

Let people mess with it. Experiment with it. See if they could break it. If it is broken, great, we ban it. If not, we do have a lot of interesting new avenues of play to consider. SV is very different from SwSh. Meta looks to be much more offensive in general. In a very offensive meta, Terrastylizing a breaker might not even be that hot of an idea.
 
Honestly don't think the recover move PP nerf is that big of a deal at all for matchups vs offensive styles. My intuition is that the average offensive vs defensive Pokemon matchup consumes 2-3 recover move PP across the course of the game, if the defensive Pokemon is the victor. If you have one Pokemon defensively responsible for more than 50% of the enemy team, either it's well built offense and it'll have a way to break said Pokemon regardless of much recover PP you have, or it isn't and the other five Pokemon you have should be able to convert that 5v3 into a victory.

Mainly I see this PP change just shortening fat vs fat matchups, and maybe as a relative buff to Pokemon with Regenerator, Poison Heal, and similar not-recover-move ways of staying healthy.

Don't see defensive teamstyles surviving Tera, but once that mechanic is banned as I expect it will be I'm less pessimistic than it seems like a lot of people are. I expect a shift back towards hazard stacking with many good new Spikes/TSpikes users and hazard removal at a premium, plus status moves being less well distributed. But we have three new interesting Unaware users, an ability which has historically been a crutch for heavy stall in offensively strong metas, and a whole bunch of new fat Pokemon with interesting typing to play around with once things chill a little.

Mostly just super hyped to throw a bunch of unviable jank around. Hope it doesn't take too long for these to be up on showdown for us to play around with.
 
New pseudo looks insane. Ice+Dragon hits absolutely everything but Shedinja with EQ coverage, and it has decent bulk to let it set up, plus it can run ice body on snow teams for better longevity to complement its +1 defense buff, but why would you when its default ability makes its 145 (!!!) attack uncuttable by burn and a terrifying prospect for throwing around fire type moves with it potentially switching in. With access to ddance, ice shard, icicle crash, outrage, earthquake, and iron head, it's wild to me how threatening it looks.
Scarf lando, which outspeeds it at +1, can't ohko with stone edge and is ohko'd itself by a +1 ice shard, same with scarf chomp. Toxapex gets 2hko'd by unboosted eq after rocks, Slowbro is 2hko'd by +1 outrage, Corviknight has an almost 30% chance to be 2hko'd after rocks (98% if it's adamant!) by +1 icicle crash, the list just goes on and on. That's not even taking into account its sig move, which while coming with heavy drawbacks, could make Baxcalibur a nightmare if it means a high base power ice STAB. Just... christ.
 
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The nerf matters for certain pokes with pressure like Corviknight and the legendary birds since it limits what you can pressure stall. You cant switch into a Choice Locked move with more than 5pp and spam roost anymore.
 
I've been lurking the leaks thread the last few days and trying to theorymon in my head, but I'm also in the "we'll just have to try it out" camp. I remember when gen 8 started I wanted to get Appletun to work so badly and kept getting smoked by Pult until I learned my lesson. This is part of the fun and excitement of a new meta; getting to be creative with whatever insane idea you can come up with because everybody else is doing the same.

That's also part of the reason I'd like tera to stick around for a little bit instead of getting insta banned. Because you have to pick your tera types before the battle starts, I think there's an extra layer of thought and creativity in there that dynamax didn't have. (I assume) every mon will have a tera type, even if you don't intend to terastallize it, so how can you use that to plan out certain contingencies just in case? For example, the classic Pelipper Barraskewda core. Skewda with tera water, banded, in rain, will likely destroy pretty much everything, with maybe tera psychic being an option if Pex is still relevant. But what about Pelipper? Sure, you may never terastallize it in battle, but what if you did? What if you were forced to? It'd be easy to just make it tera bug or dark for STAB U-turn or Knock, but there are more possibilities than that. Tera ground comes to mind right away; maybe tera grass too. Just little contingencies that might catch someone off guard.

Maybe I'm thinking too much about a mechanic that won't be around long, but I think that's part of the new meta fun. I'm excited to lose a game I had in the bag because my opponent suddenly tera-poisoned out of nowhere on a mon I would have never predicted. Whether it's competitive or not, I think this early gen 9 meta is definitely gonna be crazy.
 
This will be a real effortpost, I'll keep updating it as we go. Using voice transcription so sorry for mistakes. Also presuming that there will be no transfer moves (just to be safe) and that terastalizing will be banned because it's broken oops.
Ting-Lu @ Leftovers
Ability: Vessel of Ruin
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Careful Nature
- Earthquake
- Spikes / Stealth Rock
- Protect / Whirlwind
- Ruination

Ting-Lu seems a bit overrated to me currently. I believe this mon has some significant shortcomings. Firstly it's quite passive, lacking any status moves or knock off to pressure defensive switch-ins. Ruination is OK but it really can't beat any sort of defensive flying type in the long term. I think this competes more with Tyranitar then with a defensive ground like Landorus-T overall. Similarly the dark type gives it some of the same problems though. It makes it really weak to Flutter Mane which I think will be the premier ghost type to start out and it can be chip down by U-turns from Landorus-T or Dragapult. But it is extremely bulky it just seems a bit better to me on paper than in practice.

Arcanine-Hisui @ Choice Band
Ability: Rock Head
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Head Smash
- Flare Blitz
- Close Combat
- Extreme Speed

Arcanine here is one of probably my favourite kind of breaker it's exorbitantly powerful with strong priority as well. The most natural check to it is probably garchomp as it's easily gonna be able to blow past landorus-T and tinglu. Oh and Quagsire but nothing really likes taking stab banded head smash. Close combat especially destroys tinglu and Tyranitar as well as any other potential rock types. Choice band rock head head smash is nothing new to the series but it's generally not on anything this fast or with this good of a secondary typing not to mention priority basically this thing is going to be insane I think.

Kingambit @ Black Glasses
Ability: Supreme Overlord
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Kowtow Cleave
- Iron Head
- Sucker Punch

Losing knock off on this obviously sucks but it ain't a nice new stab in Kowtow Cleave so it's not really a big deal as for supreme overlord it remains to be seen but even if it's a very marginal power boost this thing just seems like a good upgrade over bisharp. There's more room to play with the stats and the investment you probably don't need to run mount speed because there's a lot more bulk to play with. Stuff like assault vest might be useable as well? This thing is basically going to range from very good to broken and I think it all depends on supreme overlord.

Iron Thorns @ Air Balloon
Ability: Quark Drive
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Thunder Punch
- Ice Punch
- Fire Punch / Low Kick

How will ting lu stop you when you're floating on a balloon really I think the elemental punches are the best way to go here ice punch is just so good that you can't not run it. Fire punch helps with some steels low kick might be better if you want to hit tinglu. I really don't think it needs a rock stab because it's just not that synergistic with the electric stab. But really I don't think this thing will be that good. Maybe useable will see.

Iron Moth @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Quark Drive
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Fire Blast
- Sludge Bomb
- Fiery Dance
- U-turn

Without quiver dance is the best boosting move remaining is fiery dance so I think the best option is some kind of offensive pivot that tries to get fiery dance boosts to get a mini sweep going and u turning out if needed. It has some coverage issues but it's just so powerful that I don't think it's that much of an issue and sludge bomb poisons can help wear things down as well not to mention u turn chip on stuff like Tyranitar or ting lu.

Gholdengo @ Choice Specs
Ability: Good as Gold
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Make it Rain
- Trick
- Focus Blast

If the meta game ever progresses to sort of a more Bulky slower paced state, and it might not, gholdengo will absolutely destroy it. Although it compets a lot with magearna it's almost as good offensively, with a better stab combo although it has worse coverage and stats. Also has nasty plot and recover? Add an ability to make it immune to status moves? It will definitely fly under the radar for a while but it is kind of cracked. I think tin lu is probably the biggest problem for it that's a big thing magearna has over it.

Glimmora @ Black Sludge
Ability: Corrosion
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Spiky Shield
- Toxic
- Power Gem

I know most people are saying this thing is a hazard spammer but I saw Gomorrah as the corrosion installer that we always deserved. Actually has good bulk and to make great use of corrosion to beat down steel pipes it wouldn't be able to normally. The biggest problem here is gold and gold which completely walls it though so depending on how good that mine is this could be completely useless. The meta-game probably again it would need to sort of progress to a bulkier state for this thing to really stand out so I'm not sure but it does look fun to me.
 
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