Current Sword and Shield OU Meta, Ban Regnerator spam/stacking
(with a side of heavy duty boots)
small disclaimer: english isnt my first languange so please mind the bad grammar
Hello everyone, As the tier is coming to a close as a current gen meta and into the ruins of alph, the meta has been ironed out and optimalized quite well, on whats the best, the good, the bad and the dominant. 2 Things that i feel like have gotten more usage and dominated the meta are two things, Regenerator Spam and Heavy-Duty Boots.
This post is going to focus more on Regenerator spam and in the end i will give some thoughts on heavy duty boots, as the discussion of boots have been done to death and back.
this is a bit lengthy but the most important parts of this post are
Replays and Example of Games
and the brief explanation/
Verdict below that and of course my
solutions at the bottom, so if you dont have time you can just read that part but i do appreciate you read everything here.
Why I think having more than one regenerator pokemon is unbalanced and deserved to be looked at
Regenerator Spam has been reallty good or even dominating the meta for a while, giving teams amazing defensive backbone without having to invest into a fatter more stall-like build, this has made making progress againts teams very difficult as having 2 regenerator pokemon with 1 or 2 more pokemon with good defensive utility you are forced to always play aggressively and even with one mistake, that can take you back a ton of progress, and if that core is paired with devastating offensive pokemon like
Tapu Lele or
Melmetal, you also have to be more careful as to how you play your defensively and not fall to these great offensive threat
like in this game where the regen-spam offense was able to use pex and glowking to switch around and stall out the opponent a bit to regen and do chip damage.
Not only that, defensively it can make teams very hard to break. when mons like
Rillaboom and
Garchomp and
Melmetal or
Heatran gets paired with a regen spam core of
Tornadus and
Toxapex or
Slowking-G or
Slowbro it creates a very tough team to crack with the safety of switching around with regenerations while being able to cripple and chip down the opponent team with status, hazard and future sight
like in this replay here. So both bulky offense teams and balance teams are able to use regenerator-spam to their advantage.
Regenrator spam also has a much easier time to succeed in this gen than the last few due to changes like teleport buff and heavy-duty boots. It lets you play even more passively with mons like tornadus and slowbro/slowking able to use boots and ignore hazard damage. This makes chipping them very difficult to deal meaningful damage, while you can use knock off but with mons like clefable or toxapex as knock absorber it will be much harder knocking off heavy-duty boots.
Offense and Balance teams alike can have a tough time dealing with regenerator-spam because how it can invalidate how they play normally.
Offense requires momentum and breaking huge holes on the enemy team quickly with massive attacks combined with small support from status and hazard and great predictions in which later on in the game you can clean in the endgame with a fast pokemon or a set-up sweeper
like in this battle. However, regenerator spam makes it much harder to do, as regenerator pokemon can at least take any 1 big hit or super effective move to scout, and then switch to a different pokemon that can counter. For example, a lot of people runs spdef slowbro, when faced againts a specs dragapult, this slowbro can take the super effective shadow ball first (252 SpA Choice Specs Dragapult Shadow Ball vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Slowbro: 272-324 (69.2 - 82.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO) and slack off to scout if the dragapult wants to predict something and then switch out, despite taking 82%, slowbro healed back up to around 70% with slack off and can regenerate the rest back to full in which slowbro can do it all over again later in the game. That's already tough on its own but when 2 regenrator pokemon gets paired together + pokemon with good defensive utility it gets even tougher, a good combo is tornadus + toxapex, where both pokemon are able to take 1 or 2 big hits and then is able to switch into one another, or a different pokemon with good resistance that can create momentum through damage or passive damage. For example, dragapult or even blacephalon againts a torn-pex-weavile which is a common build will have a very hard time to break though. If dragapult is out, pex is usually a safe switch, if the pult uses shadow ball, you have a free switch to weavile to deal damage, if it clicks draco, you can safely switch into torn as it wont take too much damage from draco and can regen it, if it predicts and clicks flamethrower, just stay in. Of course this is just one example of interaction but it shows how stacking regen mons can make it very hard to outplay for offense.
Balance requires slow and safe plays slowly making progress though passive damage, chip damage while preventing that from your opponent with recovery moves, heavy-duty boots, hazard control and magic guard, so in the end game the opponent's team have been crippled enough that you can clean in the endgame with either a fast pokemon or a set up sweeper
like in this battle. Regenerator spam completely messes up this interaction. Balance needs to match the passiveness of these regen spam teams with either stacking magic guard/heavy-duty boots or having a regen spam of ur own. This means balance really need to go super passive with at least 1 super strong breaker or set-up sweeper to be able to defeat opposing balance so it wont go to a stalemate, popular mons among those are
Melmetal,
set up reuniclus,
Hex pult and etc. and since balance is the most popular playstyle at the moment a lot of games can go very long
like this battle.
To put it simply,
Stacking 2 or more regenerator pokemon lets you:
Able to create a solid/great defensive core without having to go fat.
Able to play more passively due to passive health gain.
Able to have safe pivots into more dangerous offensive threat.
With additions of gen 8 like teleport, future sight and heavy-duty boots regenerator-spam has a much easier and safer time switching around and dealing damage passively.
There are 13 Fully Evolved regenerator pokemon in which 7 of them are viable, to give a better understanding of viability i will put them in their respective tiers below and explain what they do.
GREAT
S
Tornadus-T
Slowking-G
A
Toxapex
Slowbro
A-
Slowking
GOOD
B
Reuniclus
Tangrowth
MEH
C
Very Niche/Bad
D
Audino
Mienshao
Eldegoss
Heres a brief explanation of the 4 best and most common ones do.
Torn-T is a swiss-army pokemon with its many set from being great utility with knock off, u turn, defog, toxic, taunt and its great potential offensive prowess with nasty plot, hurricane, focus blast, icy wind, heat wave, weather ball, sludge bomb, superpower or even using assault vest to be an excellent spdef check to most things and its excellent speed that can beat many common fast offensive threat like
Adamant Weavile,
Kartana,
Tapu Lele,
Urshifu and many more.
While it doesn't have the greatest bulk of 79/80/90 it is enough to be able to take some great hits like draco meteor from specs dragapult and it makes up for it in speed, regenerator, the use of heavy-duty boots and utility. it can safely stay in on most choiced attackers, knock them off, and regenerate off its lost HP by u-turning into something that can beat the current threat better, an example is Torn knocking off a scarf lele, and then u-turning off into slowking-g/heatran. Overall its ability of taking any 1 or 2 stray hits, speed control, many sets makes it a really good pivot.
Slowking-G is an amazing tank, with its great damage output from its 110 Special attack and great bulk of 95/80/110 able to go both physically and specially defensive depending on the team and set. Its most dominant and common set is
Assault Vest with its unique typing, it is able to beat all of the fairies in OU while taking neutral damage from all the non-ghost special attacker in OU and threaten back with a super effective move or a poison. It can run quite a lot of things from the common future sight, sludge bomb, flametrhower, ice beam, scald to the less common but still excellent hydro pump, earthquake, psychic/psyshock, whirlpool and even some very niche moves like focus blast, eerie spell and power gem. This set is quite weak to physical attackers or coverage moves like psyshock which is why its physically defensive/lure set is also another excellent set, with its decent 95/80 bulk it can take a surprising amount of physical moves and hit back hard as physical attackers usually have poor special defense. It usually runs a trick black sludge set to cripple walls or a weakness berry (usually colbur or shuca) to lure in mons with super effective attacks, survive the hit, and kill it back with something super effective. Overall a great wall that is able to go both side of the defensive spectrum and lure a lot of things.
Toxapex is the face of regenerator, GREAT bulk on both sides, Amazing defensive typing, utility from knock to trapping, and the flexibility of it being able to be in most team style from BO to Stall. Its biggest strenght is in its bulk being able to take more than 2 hits from most strong attacks like scarf blace shadow ball,
Kartana Leaf Blade and
Weavile knock off and then able to stall them out with recover or set up tspikes and switch into a better counter while regenning yourself. It's vast array of utility move and its bulk to be able to take a lot of strong hits and pivot out is what makes pex the face of regenerator (albeit not as good as before).
Slowbro is an amazing pivot with teleport and future sight, it is able to both get in any pokemon safely with the -priority pivot teleport while regenerating itself off, and do great damage with future sight and able to support offensive pokemon by hitting their counter in the same time as them with future sight (for example: Future Sight -> teleport to weavile -> attack which can beat weavile's counter like buzzwole, urshifu and toxapex). Slowbro is able to run both physical and special defensive set depending on the team and can be a great lure with sets like colbur berry with body press to lure weavile, ice beam to nail cocky garchomps, flamethrower to hit ferrothorn or even thunder wave to help its teammate. It can also run many items from boots to ignore hazard, rocky helmet to chip or even colbur berry to lure. Slowbro is a very versatile pokemon and it is definetly one of the best bulky waters in SS.
So, now with all that out of the way, i want to give explanations and examples on why regen-spam is broken.
lets say you have
Tornadus +
Weavile +
Toxapex + electric immunity immunity (as you should have). That core is quite common and has been used a lot in tournaments. The opponent has a choiced tapu lele and your steel type has been trapped and removed by
Magnezone, you can safely go to tornadus, check what item it is based on damage and scout what move its used, if it used moonblast, you have a free toxapex, if it used psychic, you have a free weavile switch to deal damage and pressure the opponent. You can just switch, and regen off the damage by getting tornadus in later on a double to something like
Lando-T that switched into your pex, letting you heal off 33% each time, but thats just lele, what about other mons like
Kart or
Blace? you can still switch around from tornadus to pex to weave and your other defensive mon almost infinitely until you can make a safe pivot into your real threat, wittle them with hazard/status or make a good double switch/prediction.
and the even better part about stacking regenerator, the danger of getting caught by a good prediction is reduced by a lot. to give the same example with lele, say you have a lando on the field, your steel type is dead, and the opponent just switched in lele, so you go torn to see what it clicked, and it predicted that by clicking thunderbolt which does a lot, but doesn't quite kill you, now you just go back to lando and your torn has regened half of the damage dealt to it from that double and can try to find another opportunity to regen again so it can soft-check lele again. This cycle of going to regen -> other regen -> counter can go on while you slowly chip down the opponent in an almost endless loop unless you also match them in passivity with either your own regen spam + status knock spam or boots + magic guard spam or have to do many great predictions, double to out heal them with your offense.
Now a lot of balance teams, including regen spam uses
Heavy-Duty Boots to face of againts hazard and chip damage. Knock off counters that strategy, by slowly knocking off every non magic guard pokemon they will eventually be susceptible to hazard damge and can be worn down to be cleaned off later in the game. While regen-spam teams also use heavy duty boots for mons like tornadus and the slow-twins, they aren't as susceptible to hazard as normal team since they can regenerate off their health and effectively cancel out hazard damage
Now i have some example of games that showcase the strength of regen-spam from tournaments, big and small. (A disclaimer: I am not bashing any of the players that are featured in the replays below, they are incredibly talented players. I am just using their games as an example)
Replays and Example of Games
VS
ewin vs xavgb (SCL Game)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8ou-647178
In this game, its a Bulky Offense team fighting againts a sand balance, the match-up is quite even for both sides, weavile looks threatening from ewin once clefable, excadrill and rotom are chipped.
The match starts off not too great for ewin as their
offensive heatran gets tricked by
sticky barb clefable, which makes them unable to lure
rotom and counter clefable safely, but then caught a break by getting
xavgb's tornadus-therian paralyzed from static and tricking clefable a choice scarf from
tapu fini, at this moment it looks good for ewin as one of
weaviles counter has been tricked and tornadus can't pivot in and out as safe as before, but then after heatran died, it quickly turns sour. Despite Tornadus being paralyzed, it is still able to check both tapu fini and urshifu effectively, and when weavile comes in, xavgb just goes to rotom and tyranitar. After around 30 turns, xavgb was able to get back into the game by pivoting the paralyzed tornadus into pokemon that beats ewin's current pokemon on the field and repeatedly getting regenerator off and free pivot while slowly chipping down ewin's team and killing zapdos with stray moonblast, u-turn, sand and future sight. After that, xavgb just effectively pivots around with their regenerator pokemon and win with slowking-g spamming furure sight and tornadus-t spamming hurricane.
So in that game, despite
Tornadus-T getting paralyzed early, it was still able to check and pivot around everything and chip down ewin's team, and towards the end it was compounded even more with another regenerator pokemon in
Slowking-G as it switches freely into both tapu fini and zapdos and spam future sight, and switch out to regenerate its health to tornadus-t which can also regenerate and pivot out itself, which makes it incredibly hard for ewin to make meaningful progress.
VS
SOULWIND vs Raptor (OLT Semi Final's Game)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8ou-656997
In this game, its 2 Balance teams facing off againts each other, Raptor's team relies on spreading status with every pokemon so that
specs hex dragapult can dish out massive damage and clean the game with support of aromatheraphy clefable. Soulwind's team relies on its longevity, slowly but surely chipping down the opponent with status, hazard and chip damage from future sight in which later rillaboom can clean.
In this match, it shows how difficult it is for raptor to make progress even after statusing most of soulwind's pokemon making tha dragapult able to 2hko everything, Soulwind is just able to go to a regen pokemon, take the big hit from dragapult, and go to spdef garchomp or melmetal/slowking-g (depending if raptor used a ghost move or dragon move) and heal up later which is much easier with grassy terrain. Soulwind just need to make sure to not let garchomp be toxiced and it is a smooth game (just look at the first 30 turns). Not only that, even if garchomp was toxiced, soulwind is still able to go melmetal on ghost moves and protect to gain back health. After many turns of future sight and small chip damage, melmetal and rillaboom are able to clean in the endgame.
VS
Edrala vs Empo (OLT SWISS ROUND)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8ou-646024
In this game edrala uses SpDef slowbro and slowking-g on his sand balance, while empo has a spikestack team with sub cm keldeo which can be problematic.
Empo doesn't have the greatest matchup but what empo does have is keldeo which in theory should win easily, as edrala only has slowbro with future sight to threaten it, and set-up sweepers are regenerator spam natural weakness. However, this game showcases how you can just play super passively until empo's team get chipped down with passive damage, just how edrala can safely stay in on dragapult with slowbro, if empo draco's, just stay in or teleport and if empo shadow ball, edrala can just go tyranitar. Now, another strength of regen-spam that is showcased here is when keldeo begins to set-up, slowbro was able to teleport in and out and keep regenerating on keldeo while using future sight to break sub until keldeo is so low that it can be revenged by excadrill. So despite having a poor matchup, many set-up sweepers can be slowly chipped down by passive damage while the regenerator spam team can switch around between walls and the other regen pokemon until the sweeper is dead whether it be keldeo like in this battle, garchomp, dragonite, etc.
VS
RaiZen1704 vs Dahli (OLT SWISS ROUND)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8ou-646716
In this game, Raizen is using a more offensive version of a regen-spam team and dahli is using a standard lele-zone offense with fini and melmetal.
This game showcases something that regen-spam team can afford doing, staying in on a big damaging move with much less risk than usual, RaiZen can afford staying in landorus-therian potential earthquake with slowking-galar with his physically invested Slowking-G in turn 8 (based on U-turn crit damage) and
melmetal's double iron bash with
tornadus-therian to be able to knock it off at turn 13 and flamethrower the incoming melmetal for permanent damage, even after torn was hurt its still able to come in on dahli's own tornadus which then gets ejected out into lele, even after making the right read with psyshock, raizen can still go to ferrothorn and heal slowking-g back up again by switching it into torn to essentially full by turn 29 which wins wins raizen the game. The fact that regenerator can let your pokemon go down to near death amounts of hp, and let them still be able to still get their hp back to almost full is nuts.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8ou-649485
VS
Meroz vs fatbatman (OURLT Playoffs)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1689689751-mi2guhos677q1tpaefjk34nz35g0w13pw
In this game, fatbatman uses a standard sand balance team while meroz brought an unconvential sand balance with mons like umbreon.
This replay may not be in the same grade of tournament games but it shows everything thats strong about regenerator spam, having 2 regenerator, 2 big walls and 2 strong attackers it really makes the most used of it. In this game meroz didn't have to make much aggressive plays since their defensive core of pex-torn-hippo-umbreon creates an almost perfect counter to fatbatman's team. Meroz took this game slowly with getting rotom toxiced, defogging rocks with torn and brawling with clefable to stall out turns and healing up with umbreon for 30+ turns until rotom gets low and meroz was able to beat the excadrill which is big since it hindered kartana and lele to throw out big hits safely. After that meroz was able to play it safe until they can pivot in tapu lele to finish off the game.
There still way more replay i can show on how great regenerator spam is, but that would make this post WAY too long (and plus, i don't have that much free time) but i hope these 6 games were enough proof on how strong regenerator spam is.
Verdict
now i know its not impossible to beat regenerator spam, there are replays that shows you can overwhelm them with the right team and plays
like in this replay here or
this one but i do genuinely think its unbalanced letting someone able to make extremely risky plays and be let off easily, it makes predictions way less rewarding for offense team and its hard for balance teams to punish without matching them in regen or having a surprise set-up sweeper, as knocking off lefties/boots and status don't quite have the same effect as they do againts regular balance teams. Not only that, a regen-spam team vs a balance/stall team can easily lead to stalemates and ties due to how easily it is to heal yourself up and switch around, you can just catch your opponent's offensive pokemon on a bad prediction, or if you have a good match up just keep up pressure with hazard and infinitely switch which has happen
like in this game.
Overall, regenerator-spam creates quite a boring metagame as it is quite a cheap combo to be able to safely gain a net 66% health just by switching from one regen, to another. Gen 8 has turn into quite a boring metagame with a surge in passive playstyle that mainly abuses regenerator and heavy-duty boots. While boots is often said to be the main culprit of this due to it removing hazard damage, boots is able to create offensive teams work aswell with mons like
G-molt and
Volcarona being amazing. Since even with knock off, regen spam has the tools to prevent them like having an absorber in clefable. Having this 2-mon combo that can invalidate predictions, passive damage, knock off, huge damage and make the game overall slower, able to take extremely high risk with no worry makes the game way less competitive and boring which is what a lot of people think is the problem with generation 8 OU.
My Solutions are.
Ban regenerator as a whole
Limit to ONLY one regenerator per team
Ban Boots
Ive seen a lot of people wanting boots banned but i do feel despite how anoyying it is, its not the biggest problem. Yea, it makes it WAY harder to do passive damage with hazard but it only blocks hazards which goes to show the power of hazard that we want to ban a whole item that blocks the damage, however that discussion has been done to death so im not going to add anything more to it.
Banning regen as a whole, might not be the way to go, regenerator is still dumb but theres still a lot of team where it is perfectly fine and healthy, it can help balance teams to take a hit or help offense teams to pivot, but just one regen pokemon isnt that broken, the broken-ness comes from where you can stack more than one. As i've said before, the fact that you can heal basically 66% health by switching from one to another regenerator pokemon is unfair. You make making progress much harder and take much longer which can lead to a way more boring meta especially combined with gen 8 additions like boots.
So my proposal for Gen 8 ou is Limit teams to only able to have one pokemon with the Regenerator abilities.
due to how passive the meta can be with it
thanks for reading and
goodbye
