Metagame SS OU Metagame Discussion Thread v7 (Usage Stats in post #3539)

[DragonAscent]

With all due respect, if we’re here debating whether or not a mechanic even works the way its intended, then that means not enough testing happened.

A metagame discussion thread honestly shouldn’t even bring up untested gimmicks; if you want to talk shop about an underused mon or unique lure set, you should show up to the thread already armed with results and issues from hard fought games to talk about. This feels very wasteful the way its going.

To add something to, and perhaps recenter, the discussion, I wanted to talk a little about role compression on Rain.

Lately I often find myself almost being outright forced to bolt a Blissey onto my rain teams because making room for Pelipper and for abusers and for a Spectrier check and an Urshifu check while compressing hazards, defog, and other major threat-checks (hi Magearna) is kind of insane. It’s also deceptively hard to place Defog. Pelipper doesn’t want it and isn’t great at the role, unable to carry boots and too important to be forced in for the job. Zapdos would rather have, frankly, anything else in slot 4, but particularly Roost + 3 Attacks.

What mons are you using to round your rain team these days? For what it’s worth, my inexperienced self is doing something like this.

Someone earlier in this thread mentioned heliolisk as a spec check and semi decent rain abuser. Worth noting that it gets glare if you're feeling lucky. He used it with a seismitoad, though if you don't have a ground type you'd probably be better off with a thundurus t and bolting a blissey on like you said.

Here's a Pokemon I've been experimenting with on Rain:

I was looking for some sort of offensive pivot to Spectrier that prevents it from mindlessly spamming its Ghost-type STABs, and I came up with Heliolisk. Much like the aforementioned Toxicroak, Heliolisk is also a Dry Skin Pokemon, giving it a Water-immunity (good for opposing Rain, especially Pelipper) and good passive recovery under Rain, allowing it to find more opportunities to come in on Spectrier and actually nullify Will-o-Wisp damage to a degree. Granted, it has to watch for Mud Shot and the less-impressive Dark Pulse, but having a Pokemon on your Rain team that makes the opposing Spectrier user think twice about clicking Shadow Ball/Hex is really nice, imo. Still toying around with the set, but I'm currently running a Life Orb 4 Attacks set with Thunder/Volt Switch/Grass Knot/Surf. I know it gets Weather Ball, but I like Surf more as it gives Heliolisk something to use vs Excadrill outside of Rain. Dry Skin is also really nice to mitigate LO recoil. In short, it's a very niche Pokemon and I don't really see it being used outside of Rain, but it does what I need it to do for my rain squad and I'm proud of the little reptile.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1239627104-n62l56ettu038eu5uy8muoni9jalp13pw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1239641840-rf50t9pghu9wyl74nl0m7xpxgoaqi56pw

The games themselves aren't super great (I gambled a lot vs Excadrill in the beginning of g1 lmao), but it at the very least shows what Heliolisk does against Spectrier.

 

[glava222]

To add something to, and perhaps recenter, the discussion, I wanted to talk a little about role compression on Rain.

Lately I often find myself almost being outright forced to bolt a Blissey onto my rain teams because making room for Pelipper and for abusers and for a Spectrier check and an Urshifu check while compressing hazards, defog, and other major threat-checks (hi Magearna) is kind of insane. It’s also deceptively hard to place Defog. Pelipper doesn’t want it and isn’t great at the role, unable to carry boots and too important to be forced in for the job. Zapdos would rather have, frankly, anything else in slot 4, but particularly Roost + 3 Attacks.

What mons are you using to round your rain team these days? For what it’s worth, my inexperienced self is doing something like this.

Can I offer you a nice tentacruel in these trying times?

Tentacruel @ Black Sludge
Timid Nature
Ability: Rain Dish
EVs: 120 HP / 152 SpA / 232 Spe
- Rapid Spin
- Scald
- Dazzling Gleam
- Knock Off

this stat spread lets it compress rapid spin(generally better than defog), checking urshifu since it's faster and being an ok check to spectrier in rain, or shaky check outside of rain,which is good enough since your blissey has shadow ball. Good thing about it is that both scald and knock do good damage so spectrier can't do it's disable shenanigans, which means it also does well into the spectrier set that counters your blissey. Also this thing has mad regen in rain. In your team I'd prolly suggest to try this in place of tapu fini, and then you can maybe replace buzzwole with another abuser,since tentacruel also resists fighting. I also think that in general rain should probably be a bit more offense oriented than your team, so tentacruel compressing some defensive things that buzzwole and fini offer to make more room for abusers would be more along the lines the most common process of building a rain team.

some relevant calcs:
152 SpA Tentacruel Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Urshifu: 344-408 (100.8 - 119.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252 SpA Spectrier Shadow Ball vs. 120 HP / 0 SpD Tentacruel: 121-144 (36.5 - 43.5%) -- 14.6% chance to 3HKO after Rain Dish recovery and Black Sludge recovery
152 SpA Tentacruel Scald vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Spectrier in Rain: 156-184 (45.7 - 53.9%) -- 3.1% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
0- Atk Tentacruel Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Spectrier: 142-168 (41.6 - 49.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO (knock loses power after first knock, but I think it's still enough for a 3hko, if it ain't because of lefties run hasty instead of timid i guess )


The only way spectrier wins in rain is if it presses an attack every turn. If it tries to do sub disable stuff it straight up loses. It can also cover for blissey decently if blissey teleports into it on an urshifu switch, or switches it in on an expected trick, only for an opponent to get black sludged instead.

EDIT: now that I think of it, just as tentacruel covers very nicely for blissey, so too does thundurus cover very nicely for it, what with being immune to two of the types tentacruel is weak to. The only thing that really threatens this core is a big fat psyshock.

 

[musiquepkmn]

Can I offer you a nice tentacruel in these trying times?

Tentacruel @ Black Sludge
Hasty/Timid Nature
Ability: Rain Dish
EVs: 120 HP / 152 SpA / 232 Spe
- Rapid Spin
- Scald
- Dazzling Gleam
- Knock Off

this stat spread lets it compress rapid spin(generally better than defog), checking urshifu since it's faster and being an ok check to spectrier in rain, or shaky check outside of rain. Good thing about it is that both scald and knock do good damage so spectrier can't do it's disable shenanigans. Also this thing has mad regen in rain, and can switch in on expected tricks to protect blissey. In your team I'd prolly suggest to try this in place of tapu fini, and then you can maybe replace buzzwole with another abuser. I also think that in general rain should probably be a bit more offense oriented than your team, so tentacruel compressing some defensive things that buzzwole and fini offer to make more room for abusers would be more along the lines the most common process of building a rain team.

some relevant calcs:
152 SpA Tentacruel Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Urshifu: 344-408 (100.8 - 119.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252 SpA Spectrier Shadow Ball vs. 120 HP / 0 SpD Tentacruel: 121-144 (36.5 - 43.5%) -- 14.6% chance to 3HKO after Rain Dish recovery and Black Sludge recovery
152 SpA Tentacruel Scald vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Spectrier in Rain: 156-184 (45.7 - 53.9%) -- 3.1% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
0- Atk Tentacruel Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Spectrier: 142-168 (41.6 - 49.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO (knock loses power after first knock, but I think it's still enough for a 3hko)


The only way spectrier wins in rain is if it presses an attack every turn. If it tries to do sub disable stuff it straight up loses. It can also cover for blissey decently if blissey teleports into it on an urshifu switch, or switches in on it on an expected trick, only for an opponent to get black sludged instead.

Well I wouldn't really say it checks Urshifu, more like just prevents it from clicking CC, since even Jolly LO Wicked Blow is an OHKO on this set. Then again, given the fact that rains teams often have 2-3 of Pelipper, Tornadus-T, Zapdos, and Thundurus-T, it's not like Urshifu is going to click CC anyways.

 

[glava222]

Well I wouldn't really say it checks Urshifu, more like just prevents it from clicking CC, since even Jolly LO Wicked Blow is an OHKO on this set. Then again, given the fact that rains teams often have 2-3 of Pelipper, Tornadus-T, Zapdos, and Thundurus-T, it's not like Urshifu is going to click CC anyways.

tentacruel is faster, urshifu can't click wicked blow without going down to dazzling gleam,thats why this isn't a counter but it is a clean check. scarf can outspeed tenta, but can't ohko it with anything, also tentacruel resists uturn,cc,iron head and poison jab which means it can even switch in on a predict occasionally.

 

[Spyro]

tentacruel is faster, urshifu can't click wicked blow without going down to dazzling gleam,thats why this isn't a counter but it is a clean check. scarf can outspeed tenta, but can't ohko it with anything, also tentacruel resists uturn,cc,iron head and poison jab which means it can even switch in on a predict occasionally.

Pretty sure a check is something that can switch in and deal with said threat. A counter would be something that walls the threat. This isn't a check just something that can revenge kill Urshifu.

 

[glava222]

Pretty sure a check is something that can switch in and deal with said threat. A counter would be something that walls the threat. This isn't a check just something that can revenge kill Urshifu.

https://www.smogon.com/smog/issue32/checks-and-counters
EDIT: shadowpeashooter

 

[shadowpea]

Pretty sure a check is something that can switch in and deal with said threat. A counter would be something that walls the threat. This isn't a check just something that can revenge kill Urshifu.

No:

Pokémon A checks Pokémon B if, when Pokémon A is given a free switch into Pokémon B, Pokémon A can win every time, even under the worst case scenario, without factoring in hax.

Pokémon A counters Pokémon B if Pokémon A can manually switch into Pokémon B and still win every time, even under the worst case scenario, without factoring in hax.

Edit: Well, whadaya know, we looked at the exact same article and basically posted at the exact same time. Good for us!

 

[Vincent210]

Wouldn't that worsen his hazard control by a decently big amount? Running Assault Vest on Volcanion means you give up running Defog on that as well as a Stealth Rock immunity due to the boots, which in turns makes it harder to support other teammates like Pelipper and the non-Boots Thundurus-T who are also weak to Stealth Rock. Pelipper can defog if he needs it, but it's not the best one since Damp Rock makes it Stealth Rock weak.

Also his Blissey has Teleport, which is illegal with Wish on Blissey, so it will have to give up a lot of opportunity cost by not running the coveted Teleport bringing in frail partners like Barraskewda and Thundurus-T in safely, especially since a moveslot is devoted to Shadow Ball for Spectrier.

This post saved me a lot of time, and helps highlight some of the decision rationale that went into that team in the first place. Thanks.

Can I offer you a nice tentacruel in these trying times?

Tentacruel @ Black Sludge
Timid Nature
Ability: Rain Dish
EVs: 120 HP / 152 SpA / 232 Spe
- Rapid Spin
- Scald
- Dazzling Gleam
- Knock Off

this stat spread lets it compress rapid spin(generally better than defog), checking urshifu since it's faster and being an ok check to spectrier in rain, or shaky check outside of rain,which is good enough since your blissey has shadow ball. Good thing about it is that both scald and knock do good damage so spectrier can't do it's disable shenanigans, which means it also does well into the spectrier set that counters your blissey. Also this thing has mad regen in rain. In your team I'd prolly suggest to try this in place of tapu fini, and then you can maybe replace buzzwole with another abuser,since tentacruel also resists fighting. I also think that in general rain should probably be a bit more offense oriented than your team, so tentacruel compressing some defensive things that buzzwole and fini offer to make more room for abusers would be more along the lines the most common process of building a rain team.

some relevant calcs:
152 SpA Tentacruel Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Urshifu: 344-408 (100.8 - 119.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252 SpA Spectrier Shadow Ball vs. 120 HP / 0 SpD Tentacruel: 121-144 (36.5 - 43.5%) -- 14.6% chance to 3HKO after Rain Dish recovery and Black Sludge recovery
152 SpA Tentacruel Scald vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Spectrier in Rain: 156-184 (45.7 - 53.9%) -- 3.1% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
0- Atk Tentacruel Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Spectrier: 142-168 (41.6 - 49.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO (knock loses power after first knock, but I think it's still enough for a 3hko, if it ain't because of lefties run hasty instead of timid i guess )


The only way spectrier wins in rain is if it presses an attack every turn. If it tries to do sub disable stuff it straight up loses. It can also cover for blissey decently if blissey teleports into it on an urshifu switch, or switches it in on an expected trick, only for an opponent to get black sludged instead.

EDIT: now that I think of it, just as tentacruel covers very nicely for blissey, so too does thundurus cover very nicely for it, what with being immune to two of the types tentacruel is weak to. The only thing that really threatens this core is a big fat psyshock.

Okay so putting aside that psyshock blows me up if I take this:

This team is already pretty weak to FuturePort as it is, with my only real counter-play being to make aggressive doubles that punish sending SlowBros out in the first place by claiming a kill with Thundurus as it stands, since Wole dies and P-Jab + Sight will put Fini six under. Am I to understand that not only should I make my team in a way that loses a mon every time Future Sight is clicked, but that I should double down and make a team that lets Urshifu click a mon every time it comes in, even without? Without Wole-Fini I have no switch in. Cruel can revenge kill but Scarf Fini already does that but also takes Wicked and CC freely while abusing Wole’s existence to do so without fearing P-Jab, letting me nab a free defog, trick, or button.

It is true the team suffers from not being as offensive as rain should be, its basically balance with a skewda at this point, but I don’t see how gaining an extra abuser slot at the cost of having zero way to deal with urshifu outside of revenge is improving the team.

 

[VTMagno]

I thought about it for a little bit and the only other alternative I could think of to make it more offensive is replacing Tapu Fini with Tapu Koko. It's generally a great mon on rain in general; has Defog and can take a hit from Urshifu if needed, as well as U-Turn/Volt Switch and incredibly strong Thunders. Having another electric to take care of water types also means you have the possibility of take out Thundurus-T for a better rain abuser. However, Fini can still take Urshifu's hits much better and Trick is always a nice tool to have, as well as rain boosted Surfs not being that much weaker than ETerrain boosted Thunders, so I think both are good options.

 

[glava222]

This post saved me a lot of time, and helps highlight some of the decision rationale that went into that team in the first place. Thanks.



Okay so putting aside that psyshock blows me up if I take this:

This team is already pretty weak to FuturePort as it is, with my only real counter-play being to make aggressive doubles that punish sending SlowBros out in the first place by claiming a kill with Thundurus as it stands, since Wole dies and P-Jab + Sight will put Fini six under. Am I to understand that not only should I make my team in a way that loses a mon every time Future Sight is clicked, but that I should double down and make a team that lets Urshifu click a mon every time it comes in, even without? Without Wole-Fini I have no switch in. Cruel can revenge kill but Scarf Fini already does that but also takes Wicked and CC freely while abusing Wole’s existence to do so without fearing P-Jab, letting me nab a free defog, trick, or button.

It is true the team suffers from not being as offensive as rain should be, its basically balance with a skewda at this point, but I don’t see how gaining an extra abuser slot at the cost of having zero way to deal with urshifu outside of revenge is improving the team.

I'm going to list the mons urshifu can't one shot on your team:
fini
buzzwole
pelliper
thundurus


I'm going to list the mons on your team that can one shot urshifu:
fini
pelliper
thundurus


buzzwole can't one shot but he's such a hilariously strong counter to urshifu that it doesn't matter. The only pokemon on your team urshifu can take 1 on 1 are blissey and barra, and blissey can just teleport as it's coming in into something that checks it. But the problem is that urshifu shouldn't even be able to switch in, since if it has a slowbro when it comes out you send thundurus, if it goes for future sight it's not allowed to teleport anymore, and it can't teleport into urshifu since urshifu loses the 1v1. The point is, against rain teams the question shouldn't be how you can switch into urshifu but how can urshifu switch into you.
Also replacing buzzwole and fini with cruel + x doesn't make your team weaker to future sight if the x isn't weak to future sight, since you are replacing one pokemon that would get bopped by future sight with another one. The problem with choice fini defogging is that if you defog you instantly have to switch out next turn, and you lose all tempo doing it. With rapid spin you are not 100% forced to swap out after spinning, and after a spin you actually have a better speed tier than fini so you can still do stuff unless they send out a psyshocker, and none of those are faster than a +1 speed tent without a scarf and don't like to take knock offs, or a physical attacker might get scald burned if you feel like you can't switch. Also cruel has double lefties in rain while scarf fini has nothing, which means it can get chipped into urshifu range easier. And while cruel obviously won't do the job of buzzwole and fini as good as the two of them combined, it will open room for another pokemon who combined with cruel might be better than fini+buzz while still doing a satisfactory job of their tasks on the team. If you are afraid of future sight, it would probably be good to take a steel type like magearna who doesn't have to fear future sight and appreciate the reduced fire damage from rain.

 

[AM]

Re/ Hazard control on rain. Either run an offense that breaks stuff to not worry about hazards long term ie you have a rocker no hazard removal, run something like Corviknight, or just accept Defog on Pelipper with Boots if you want to keep it around longer. I don't like bulkier rain builds since their momentum is on and off granted Vincent's build is probably the right route if you want to go for that because defensively there is too much to check within 3/4 utility mons, so it needs Bliss/Buzz. If I'm building rain I want it to be for the most part brainless and if anything I'm utilizing some sort of voltturn core within ie koko + Barra. Builds usually just fall under kind of the same formats of Peli, Barra, Hurricane abuser, Steel, Electric immunity, extra that doesnt tack on weaknesses to above or additional rain abuser.

Not sure about Tentacruel I haven't used it and I probably wouldn't in this metagame honestly. Feels like a momentum sap and invitation for a lot of dangerous things like Magearna .

 

[glava222]

Re/ Hazard control on rain. Either run an offense that breaks stuff to not worry about hazards long term ie you have a rocker no hazard removal, run something like Corviknight, or just accept Defog on Pelipper with Boots if you want to keep it around longer. I don't like bulkier rain builds since their momentum is on and off granted Vincent's build is probably the right route if you want to go for that because defensively there is too much to check within 3/4 utility mons, so it needs Bliss/Buzz. If I'm building rain I want it to be for the most part brainless and if anything I'm utilizing some sort of voltturn core within ie koko + Barra. Builds usually just fall under kind of the same formats of Peli, Barra, Hurricane abuser, Steel, Electric immunity, extra that doesnt tack on weaknesses to above or additional rain abuser.

Not sure about Tentacruel I haven't used it and I probably wouldn't in this metagame honestly. Feels like a momentum sap and invitation for a lot of dangerous things like Magearna .

I agree with everything you said. I think the tentacruel thing has been a bit misunderstood. I mostly suggested it to address the very specific things that were being talked about in that post (a thing that can compress urshifu check, hazard control and a spectrier check that also fits on a slower rain team). If I were trying to build the rain team I tought would be the best I would prolly just chuck out wole, fini and blissey and build an offensive team too

 

[Vincent210]

Yeah, I think I also got misunderstood along the way.

What I was trying to present was the why behind why I had been using a slower rain. I couldn’t compress the roles I wanted to so when I ran it more offensively, I ran into issues where I was losing a mon to urshifu every time I scored a kill if I didn’t score it with, like, Flip Turn.

I wasn’t saying that team example failed to meet the hazard control need, but that it was merely an example of the compromises I was making to deal with offensive rain, the more standard build, folding in this meta in my hands.

I wanted to see if that frankly just came down to me playing poorly or if there were mons or sets I should know about that give you better options than “just don’t let urshifu in the entire game” which seemed like a tall order.

 

[glava222]

Yeah, I think I also got misunderstood along the way.

What I was trying to present was the why behind why I had been using a slower rain. I couldn’t compress the roles I wanted to so when I ran it more offensively, I ran into issues where I was losing a mon to urshifu every time I scored a kill if I didn’t score it with, like, Flip Turn.

I wasn’t saying that team example failed to meet the hazard control need, but that it was merely an example of the compromises I was making to deal with offensive rain, the more standard build, folding in this meta in my hands.

I wanted to see if that frankly just came down to me playing poorly or if there were mons or sets I should know about that give you better options than “just don’t let urshifu in the entire game” which seemed like a tall order.

Unfortunately, "Don't let urshifu in the entire game" is probably the best tactic for rain teams, closely followed by sack and bring in a breaker. For the record, your team has the tools to deal with urshifu pretty well, as well as pressure it's partner in slowbro, I just think it shows that it's not always the best idea to fixate on one mon so much that you considerably weaken yourself against everyrthing else, especially since I personally think your team can deal with urshifu even without wole or fini, but it will be significantly harder. Also rain has the tools to offensively pressure shifu teams, and it's probably better to use those tools proactively than to try to put a band aid over an urshifu thats already in
Still, was a nice discussion

 

[Supersam10001]

There's nothing wrong with using Exploud. It's a Pokemon that even if there's no Spectrier on the opponent's team it can still put a massive amount of work. It is easier to use Pokemon like this (looking at you Nidoking you bastard) because they are much easier to bring in this generation with the gift from the gods: Teleport.
I feel like Urshifu is a more pressing issue than Spectrier. Spectrier atleast has some hard stops or temporary stops to it. Urshifu? No. One Poison Jab is all it takes to overwhelm your Fairy. From there it will 2HKO everything at worse. Except Buzzwole but even that's not safe if it's paired up with Future Sight support or the rare Aerial Ace/Acrobatics.

Also the more I play this metagame I'm of the opinion that it's not Slowbro that makes Future Sight problematic. It's Future Sight itself. Slowking Galar abuses Future Sight just as well as Slowbro even without Teleport I feel. I would like to hear people's thoughts on this. But yeah I wouldn't support a Slowbro suspect since it's pretty apparent that people will still abuse the hell out of the move even with Slowbro gone.

I think that although the Spectrier issue is more pressing than most of other mons The OU Council may have to ban future sight as a complex ban because it is extremely hard to counter. Magearna is also not super good for the meta although people have started using av melm slowking-witch galar and even av victini. The only way to counter shifu [with fs] is ...... nothing [as far as I know] although I think without FS stall would be much harder to break but it would probably be good for the meta ? Or maybe the council could make a complex ban like swift swim+drizzle banned and ban urshifu plus fs on the same team? maybe im going too far but I think the council HAS to do something about fs.

 

[clean]

I think that although the Spectrier issue is more pressing than most of other mons The OU Council may have to ban future sight as a complex ban because it is extremely hard to counter. Magearna is also not super good for the meta although people have started using av melm slowking-witch galar and even av victini. The only way to counter shifu [with fs] is ...... nothing [as far as I know] although I think without FS stall would be much harder to break but it would probably be good for the meta ? Or maybe the council could make a complex ban like swift swim+drizzle banned and ban urshifu plus fs on the same team? maybe im going too far but I think the council HAS to do something about fs.

As many others have said before, the OU council is not considering complex bans. Opening the door to complex bans would lead to a slippery slope of allowing anything into OU with certain restrictions. The tier would be an unrecognizable mess if this precedent was set.

 

[OneSmogonCopyer]

I think that although the Spectrier issue is more pressing than most of other mons The OU Council may have to ban future sight as a complex ban because it is extremely hard to counter. Magearna is also not super good for the meta although people have started using av melm slowking-witch galar and even av victini. The only way to counter shifu [with fs] is ...... nothing [as far as I know] although I think without FS stall would be much harder to break but it would probably be good for the meta ? Or maybe the council could make a complex ban like swift swim+drizzle banned and ban urshifu plus fs on the same team? maybe im going too far but I think the council HAS to do something about fs.

Nah. If only Urshifu is the problem. Then ban Urshifu. It's long overdue for a ban anyways. Wicked blow is absolute braindead to click. If it shows other problems then ban those as well. Dont go complex banning stuff. I also dont wanna see people suggesting other complex bans because this sets a precedent for unbanning stuff

 

[Supersam10001]

Nah. If only Urshifu is the problem. Then ban Urshifu. It's long overdue for a ban anyways. Wicked blow is absolute braindead to click. If it shows other problems then ban those as well. Dont go complex banning stuff. I also dont wanna see people suggesting other complex bans because this sets a precedent for unbanning stuff

Ok that's true but banning urshifu prolly isn't the smartest choice imo cus it is a great stall breaker and although stall always uses clef or other counters.It rly helps in breaking stall and also FS is quite a problem cause the only thing that can counter ace and fs are Slowbro and Mandibuzz and Mandibuzz loses to bu Cinderace and getting gunk poisoned although slowbro is quite a good check.Gunk shot poison is also very hard to outplay. Ace and shifu along with fs puts the council in a position so they have to ban FS as a whole or just ban 2 of the best Stallbreakers And Ace and Shifu aren't the only abusers FS [ex mosa which is getting suspected and prolly banned]as a whole is problematic Like I'm currently waiting for something like rillaboom to use fs and break the meta with rocks plus banded knock off and superpower. All you need to do is keep clicking a button and getting a mindless kill 6 times.

 

[OneSmogonCopyer]

Ok that's true but banning urshifu prolly isn't the smartest choice imo cus it is a great stall breaker and although stall always uses clef or other counters it rly helps in breaking stall and also FS is quite a problem cause the only thing that can counter ace and fs is slowbro and Mandibuzz and Mandibuzz loses to bu Cinderace although slowking is quite a good check. Ace and shifu along with fs puts the council in a position so they have to ban FS as a whole or just ban 2 of the best Stallbreakers And Ace and Shifu aren't the only abusers FS [ex mosa which is getting suspected and prolly banned]as a whole is problematic Like I'm currently waiting for something like rillaboom to use fs and break the meta with rocks plus banded knock off and superpower. All you need to do is keep clicking a button and getting a mindless kill 6 times.

Fine then. Let's entertain the idea of complex ban. So what to ban. Future sight + Shifu in a team? Ok. And then Cinderace FS? And then Mosa FS? The list goes on. And future sight itself is not broken. Heck it's just now in gen 8 that it's seen as a problem. Ok. Is FS troublesome on say Glowking? Or is it just troublesome because of the qualities of another abuser I.E. biggest culprit being slowbro. It was discussed earlier in the thread that FS tele is itself not problem. The problem is the braindead nature of being able to live a hit regen all of that health. If they want to tackle the FS combo, then they better ban slowbro, which is a stupid decision imo

 

[Supersam10001]

Fine then. Let's entertain the idea of complex ban. So what to ban. Future sight + Shifu in a team? Ok. And then Cinderace FS? And then Mosa FS? The list goes on. And future sight itself is not broken. Heck it's just now in gen 8 that it's seen as a problem. Ok. Is FS troublesome on say Glowking? Or is it just troublesome because of the qualities of another abuser I.E. biggest culprit being slowbro. It was discussed earlier in the thread that FS tele is itself not problem. The problem is the braindead nature of being able to live a hit regen all of that health. If they want to tackle the FS combo, then they better ban slowbro, which is a stupid decision imo

I don't want a complex ban. I want council to maybe ban FS because it is rly hard to deal with.All brain-dead teams can run fs plus a mon that can use the support of fs to kill everything.Slowbro is not broken Slowkings are not broken but FS Is

 

[OneSmogonCopyer]

I don't want a complex ban. I want council to maybe ban FS because it is rly hard to deal with.All brain-dead teams can run fs plus a mon that can use the support of fs to kill everything.

I dont think banning a move in future sight is not the answer though. Why should a strategy that puts pressure on opponents and not luck based be banned. Also is future sight really just the problem and not the combination of the traits such as the mons using future sight I.E. Bro line since as far a I know, no other mon abused the move better than them and other mons that learn dont use it as well as they do. Really if FS is broken and promotes degen strats on each and every single one that learns it, fine I can agree with a ban. But I dont think it does since the FS breaker combo doesnt seem to be as effective as they are in the lower tiers due to having no slow family line to use. If I am wrong then please correct me

 

[ScarfchomperL100]

I don't want a complex ban. I want council to maybe ban FS because it is rly hard to deal with.All brain-dead teams can run fs plus a mon that can use the support of fs to kill everything.

If they wanted to ban Future Sight, they would have to determine if the move itself is broken enough or if only specific Pokemon exploit it. For instance, Slowbro right now is a very common user of Future Sight, but do you see Future Sight being used on anything else, like Latios? Tapu Lele? Victini? Slowbro (and Slowking) are only good future sight users because they can safely pivot out with Teleport most of the time after and put something in a checkmate position much more easily while passively regaining one third of their HP. Galarian Slowking sometimes uses it sure, but it's harder to checkmate since it doesn't have Teleport. While there are other possible Future Sight + Teleport users, they are literally unviable in this metagame and don't have passive recovery on switch. And anything that doesn't have that combination often just doesn't run it over another useful move. To sum it up, banning Future Sight would be the wrong move: It would be to suspect the Pokemon that abuse the strategy to exceeding levels.

 

[Hugin]

So, since Future Sight is a topic of discussion, here's the list of fully-evolved gen 8 mons that get Future Sight, ordered by tier:

Hide

Latios
Slowbro
Slowking-G
Tapu Lele

Alakazam
Azelf
Azumarill
Hatterene
Jirachi
Latias
Mew
Victini

Darmanitan
Gardevoir
Necrozma
Slowking
Togekiss

Indeedee-M
Reuniclus

Absol
Articuno-G
Bronzong
Celebi
Claydol
Cresselia
Espeon
Gallade
Indeedee-F
Malamar
Mesprit
Raichu-A
Sigilyph
Slowbro-G
Uxie
Xatu

Exeggutor
Noctowl
Orbeetle

Dusknoir
Jynx

Beheeyem
Calyrex
Delibird
Golduck
Gothitelle
Lapras
Lunatone
Meowstic-F
Mr. Mime
Mr. Rime
Musharna
Oranguru
Rapidash-G
Whiscash

Here's a list of those that learn Teleport

Hide

Slowbro

Alakazam
Mew

Gardevoir
Slowking

Claydol
Gallade
Raichu-A
Xatu

Exeggutor

Jynx

Beheeyem
Mr. Mime

Here's the ones that learn Flip Turn/U-Turn/Volt Switch

Hide

Azelf
Jirachi
Mew
Victini

Darmanitan

Articuno-G
Celebi
Mesprit
Raichu-A
Uxie
Xatu

Orbeetle

Golduck

Here's the ones that learn Healing Wish/Lunar Dance

Hide

Hatterene
Jirachi
Latias

Gardevoir

Celebi
Cresselia
Indeedee-F
Mesprit

Mr. Mime
Mr. Rime
Musharna
Rapidash-G

And here's the list of those that got at least 0.5% usage in OU and had Future Sight appear at all in their moveset stats for Nov. (using 1695 stats)

Hide

Name/Usage/Future Sight Usage/Preferred switching move
Slowbro/9%/82%/Teleport
Tapu Lele/5%/9%/None
Slowking-G/5%/66%/None

Victini/3%/4%/U-Turn
Slowking/3%/87%/Teleport

Hatterene/1%/8%/Healing Wish
Jirachi/1%/12%/U-Turn/Healing Wish (also uses Doom Desire 23% of the time)
Reuniclus/1%/27%/None

Note that in all cases, if a mon gets a switching move, it is far more likely to run that switching move than Future Sight.

So, what does this tell us? A lot of nothing, TBH, but some trends are visible. There's a lot of mons that get Future Sight, and a decent chunk with Future Sight+a way of gaining momentum. The only mons that run it more than 10% of the time are the Slow family, Reuniclus, and Jirachi. No one is having any success making something like FS Claydol, Latias*, or Raichu-A work in OU.

That says to me that Future Sight is not the problem, Slowbro etc is. Drought gets banned from lower tiers because it's broken on all 3 mons that get it, including NFEs. OU bans Arena Trap/Shadow Tag for similar reasons. 54 mons get Future Sight. Over half of them get a VoltTurn move. Like 3 of them are a problem, and all have Slow in their name. I'd recommend testing the stupid panda before Slowbro, but don't test Future Sight unless we ban everything else and it's still a problem.

*Speaking personally, I tried to make Future Sight+Healing Wish Latias work at one point. It was fine, but I decided quickly that basically anything else in the slot would be better.

 

[glava222]

As a further argument for why it's the slowtwins and not FS by itself, consider the existence of doom desire. It's a move very similair to future sight, and quite a bit better in some ways since it has 20 more bp (seriously it's a 140 bp move), a steel typing that is super effective vs fairies and isn't immuned by anything so something has to take a 140 bp hit. you can EV a jirachi to oneshot phisdef clefable with it, which any urshifu would LOVE, as it stuffs the most splashable and common answer to urshifu. Even defensive buzzwole would take like 80-90% from it, and if those two things are down urshifu can just click buttons and win a lot of the time. Jirachi even has uturn to pivot after using it. And still no one ever uses doom desire, and it's because of the pokemon using it. Jirachi just doesn't have the longevity to use it reliably, or the slow pivoting to make sure you always have the tempo and can press your button with impunity. Weirdly I would say it's even more about slowbro having the slowest pivoting move known to man(a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much) which makes it able to ultra reliably get in what it wants to get in, than about regenerator, which makes the whole thing just go over the top.

What I'm trying to say here is that even though doom desire in a vacuum is at least as good as FS, no one ever complains about it or even uses it, just because there isn't a pokemon that can use it as well as the slowtwins can use FS.

(Disclaimer: I actually personally don't mind playing against future sight that much and find the minigames around it kinda fun, but that's just my personal opinion and so isn't here nor there, this post is more about trying to explain why people rightly think it's slowbro and not FS, and is also not about getting into the whole argument of is urshifu broken because of slowbro or is slowbro broken because urshifu, which to me seems to be more about which one of those two you hate more, since the actual fault of the mons is about 50/50 in my biased personal book)

Edit: the only slower turner is jigglypuf teleport

 

[AM]

Screens offense and the fact a good what feels like 150 mons are viable are way more problematic than Future Sight and somehow we are back talking about Future Sight again, tip toeing around Mr.Click Buttons Urshifu and Cinderace as well. Real tears down my face.