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

[Ctann]

Thanks for being understanding Gomi Finchinator , it’s okay I’m not offended. Was just trying to explain why it has utility. I think very few Pokémon have only 1 spread that can be used!

I was interested in thoughts on Bulkarona tho, because it’s disgustingly good

 

[ausma]

Thanks for being understanding Gomi Finchinator , it’s okay I’m not offended. Was just trying to explain why it has utility. I think very few Pokémon have only 1 spread that can be used!

I was interested in thoughts on Bulkarona tho, because it’s disgustingly good

Bulkarona is weird but pretty solid in my eyes. It's something I think is fascinating in the sense that while it's a great win condition, it's also a really great offensive check to stuff like Melmetal, Kyurem, and Buzzwole, with some added benefits in helping to dissuade attacks from Kartana, Rillaboom, and Weavile due to Heavy-Duty Boots letting it afford to swap in for free without worrying about entry hazards and Flame Body providing a way to punish them on switch-in.

I think, though, in the sweeping department it's a tad outclassed by its offensive set since the loss in power generally means it needs a few boosts to offset the damage loss in comparison to its offensive variant, which can make it easily exploited by Dragon-types and Pokemon able to overwhelm or threaten its sweep than the offensive variant. It's for this reason I get more mileage out of Bulkarona on balances where its utility and ability to clean far more weakened teams can give it usage throughout a game while still boasting the traits that make Volcarona such a potent cleaner in general otherwise. I would also always run Bulkarona with Pokemon that more reliably check Grass-types and other physical attackers Bulkarona can situationally check, such as Corviknight or Skarmory.

Also never be afraid to speak your mind; that goes for everyone in this thread. Everyone has the right to express their thoughts and how they see the metagame, and regardless of who disagrees, you always have the right to make yourself heard!

 

[Tysonslayer]

To add onto the post above Bulkarona is indeed a great win condition while having some great defensive utility thanks to its decent defensive typing and ability in Flame Body as it punishes contact moves by getting the status conditioned of burn. Volcarona is one of the many pokemon to have benefit from using Heavy-Duty Boots avoiding getting heavily damaged by its biggest enemy in Stealth Rocks makes it a lot harder to break past through Volcarona or even revenge killing it after a boost.

By far both sets of Volcarona are always something that every team should prepare for as it can easily sweep through any team lacking proper switch in into or a way to immediately pressure it. Volcarona obviously has it flaws while we discuss about needing proper counterplay with it as it really dislikes switching into some of its checks like Kartana and Weavile that can remove Heavy-Duty boots, and by far one the most problematic is getting crippled by statuses such as Thunder Wave from Clefable, Melmetal, and Rotom-W and especially Toxic from the likes of Heatran and Hippowdon that can switch into Volcarona considering Safegaurd has fallen off from usage cause being mono locked leaves it in a disadvantage. It seems hard to switch into or have proper checks to Volcarona, however, as the meta keep changing more and more proper switch-ins into Volcarona get discovered and will provide a list for both check and counter.



Some of these are pretty self explanatory while others have adapted to the meta in favoring in checking other things such as Landorus-T and Hippowdon being able to switch into Volcarona where the former can Toxic it or potentially remove its item with Knock Off, while the latter could put it in a timer and phaze it out with Whirlwind. Tapu Fini and Blacephalon are able to stomach a hit and cripple it by tricking their choiced items, while Victini itself is decent in acting a nice soft check to it and pressuring it with V-Create. As you can see the list of checks and counters has expanded greatly than what it was before, so is Volcarona still problematic as what it was once said, from my perspective it can be an issue but its also something that is easy to handle, while it itself can also be a bit matchup reliant and won't be getting any opportunities itself to properly set up and potentially sweep.

That being said there's a handful of good partners for Volcarona will talk about a few that I find myself enjoying a lot lately these day, starting with Tapu Lele being able to pressure majority of Volcarona's switch-ins and overwhelm shared checks such as Heatran, with Psychic Terrain it prevents Volcarona from getting hit by another one of its biggest issues being prioirty, while itself is also able to increase the damage of Volcarona's Psychic in order to break Toxapex on it's own with ease. Choice Scarf Tapu Fini as well pairs nice with Volcarona being able to switch into Urshifu-R, Weavile, and Heatran for Volcarona, and it's ability to cripple the likes of Toxapex and Blissey with Trick hindering them in being useless, whiel also providing Misty Terrain support in blocking statuses for Volcarona. Lastly Spike setters are something that makes Volcarona even dangerous to switch into with Spikes and other hazards in the field it makes a lot easy to wear down majority of Volcarona's switch-ins that lack reliable recovery and even for those that do have a way of recovery can be overwhelmed by taking hazards and damage from Volcarona wasting their PP of recovery moves.

 

[Baloor]

in a attempt to unshit this thread for at least a couple posts i wanna share my thoughts on weather in the current metagame. weather seems to be a interesting topic at the moment cause the viability of certain weather strategies as a whole seems to have made a drastic change as of late and as we approach OLT we are bound to see the emergence of new adaptations in the team composition these teams run.

SAND

sand

lets start with what has been the preferred weather this gen, sand. despite being on top for the majority of gen8, i feel sand has seen better days. to me, tyranitar in particular seems quite underwhelming. on sand teams tyranitar has a lot of roles to fill; sand setter, rock setter, volc check, pult check, tran check, torn check, "kyu check". this is a whole lot for a mon with unreliable recovery to deal with, making teams in recent history go in one of two different directions. A) Double up on checks for at least half of these mons, going towards a more balanced team (this has been happening since the gen started) B) Go towards a more HO route with mons like hawlucha (See teams being used in wcop by people like Valentine). Tyranitar isnt bad, but I feel with the current state of the meta things could be a lot better for it. I've heard things about offensive tyranitar being pretty cool but I have yet to use it & have yet to see it being used in the tournaments games ive been watching. hippo on the other hand is on quite the rise. hippo has been seen a lot on fatter teams as of late, becoming a real cool special wall that offers some good utility with stealth rocks & toxic. being ground type (a type that is vital to have since the beginning of dlc2) with slack off is also great, offering longevity vs koko and non toxic zera. despite these positive traits hippo isnt really seen alongside sand abusers, being a bit to passive and having a bit of anti synergy with mons currently being used on the archetype.

excadrill has been the titan of sand teams since its introduction in gen5, however, it seems like those days are starting becoming a thing of the past. sd excadrill is quite, well, bad at the moment. it very rarely makes progress due to current defensive absolutely bodying it, things like opposing ground types, steel birds, and bro twins prevent it from making progress currently. toxic excadrill is a little better, helping it deal with a few of it checks, but theres still the existence of moistshifu & rillaboom that instantly pressure it out with super strong priority. theres been mons like tangrowth that have found their way onto the archetype to try and pressure these two for drill but with their access to u-turn, you can position yourself into a favorable position. dracozolt has really been the saving grace of sand this gen, being one of the strongest breakers in general. Unfortunately, theres some issues that dracozolt faces currently that holds it back. Notably spdef hippo, spdef lando and spikestack really hold this mon back from making progress. Theres also things like weavile that can rk it even in sand. dracozolt def has some glaring problems as its best coverages are special moves when its most spammable move is physical, forcing it to run a mixed set. dracozolt can blow back teams when positioned right but there is some instances where it feels like its doing nothing.

Despite gaining a great abuser in dracozolt, theres a lot to be desired currently for full sand. however, balanced teams with hippo are particularly good right now.

RAIN

rain

the playstyle that once terrorized the ladder through gen7 and early gen8 has fallen off a lot. pelipper really does nothing other than set rain this gen. if you dont have a secondary defogger on a rain team, rocks are basically always staying up. pelipper never gets a chance to defog because of the insane pressure against it rn and is chipped down by rocks, limiting the amount of rain turns you can get. if you do ever manage to get a defog, theres also a very low chance you will be able to roost back up. with the insane amount of wallbreakers that pressure peli, its just in a really bad spot right now, not much else to say.

kingdra is without a doubt the worst abuser imo, i dont feel like this offers anything better than toad. draco can be a cool nuke sometimes i guess but toads ability to not get pivoted on by pex seems a lot more valuable to me. Skewda & moistshifu are two other mons walled by pex on rain, however, they have the ability to pivot out on it. skewda spamming flip turn can be insanely annoying for teams to handle that dont know how to deal with it. Shifu is shifu, great mon even outside weather, boosting surging strikes is terrifying but is still dealt with by its usual checks. i feel that toad is criminally underrated for rain at the moment, being a ground type, meaning it doesnt lose to pex and isnt pressured as much by electrics. toad can also run rocks, which frees up a slot for ferro, letting it use another utility move like spikes or status. only downside to toad is that its walled to hell by blissey.

rain itself is quite weak, losing to other weathers and common fat mons like pex cores. theres a variety of offensive pressure that exists as well that i have yet to mention. rillaboom, dragapult, electrics, kartana, and kyurem all can typically click buttons vs the archetype, making it quite weak to play with. I feel rain comps is going to need a dramatic overhaul if it wants to be the laddering demon it used to be during OLT.

SUN

sun

sun is a niche playstyle that i feel gets a lot more hate than it deserves. sun can pick up some insane matchups a lot more frequently than rain does, this is mostly because the its "checks" are a lot less consistent than rains (or sand even). another nice perk of sun is that it can actually pick up wins vs some rain builds due to its primary abuser being a grass type. torkoal is kinda in the same boat as pelipper when it comes to needing a secondary removal because its rocks weak and gets pressured out, but due to its high defense stat theres a lot more room to play around with torkoal than you can with peli. it also gets stealth rocks which is some nice role compression so you can have a extra slot for another abuser or a utility mon. something unique about sun itself is that the playstyle tends to have really fat defensive cores. blissey & chansey are very common partners for sun, being able to absorb strong spa attacks, offering a variety of utility and having access to teleport. teleport is really nice to get in your sun abusers because they are a lot less easy to get in when compared to abusers on other weathers. Sun has started to pop up in tournaments again (tpp vs poek) and i feel there is still a lot of room for this playstyle to grow.

abusers on sun are usually just super strong fire mons. my personal favorites being blacephalon & victini, two mons which are on the rise right now for completely different reasons. when it comes to blace, ghost coverage is insanely good right now, and with the ability to easily snowball if left unchecked, it only makes sense why blace is so good. Victini on the other hand can pick apart fat cores with a variety of coverage moves and super strong sun boosted vcreates, glaciate in particular is super good, being able to hit chomp which is a super common switchin to victini. charizard is another mon that is super hard to switch into, however, i personally feel like its a bit hard to justify charizard over tini or blace unless you just really want to use charizard. darm is another option that sees some usage. while a bit stronger than victini, i think victini still outclasses it mainly because victini has better coverage. finally the big bad of sun, venusaur, this is the mon that glues the playstyle together. this is mainly because of venus typing, grass/poison. Water types are particularly troublesome for sun to deal with, so having something that can switch in a couple times is a life saver. Venu is also a incredibly sun sweeper itself, having all the coverages needed for it to make progress. I personally run Giga/Wball/Earth Power so im not walled by tran which is something that can be annoying for sun to deal with. you dont have to run sludge because a boosted wball in sun and giga deals enough damage to relevant fairies as it is.

sun is a very underrated playstyle in the current metagame and I can see it rising in popularity very soon. with a couple more explorations of the playstyle i feel sun can be a dominant force in ou.

edit: how can i forgot heatran. its super self explanatory, just click eruption.

HAIL <insert ho mons here>

hail

finally on to hail. despite lack of options, this is my personal favorite weather to use at the moment. hail is kind of a weird one, hail basically either functions of alolatales ho no zolt or alolatales ho with zolt. for the sake of simplicity ill only be talking about alolatales+abuser but alolatales ho is rising in popularity in tours play. any hail team basically functions as a weird combination of ho & bo due to one thing thats unqiue to hail teams. Alolatales access to Aurora Veil makes hail the most hyper aggressive weather. AVeil lets hail abusers (typically arctozolt) get in a lot more, aveil also helps mons setup a lot easier, taking less damage when its up. Alolatales also gets some nice utility, encore and hypnosis can open up opportunities for mons to set up or get in to tear open in the enemy team. Freeze Dry is also nice in particular to hit water types which might switch in on mons that check your hail abusers (in this example swampert is the most relevant but making progress on bros or pex is also nice). Hail teams either go all in on the ho aspect or carry 1-2 utility mons to cover threats and to do stuff like defog so alolatales can come in more.

theres only really two "relevant" hail abusers that arent just ho mons; sandslash-alola and artcozolt. Sandslash in my opinion is pretty bad but i figured id mention it because I know theres people who would standby alolaslash on their hail teams until they die. ill just say that being walled by the steel birds aint a good look for sandslash. onto the big dog, arctozolt. I absolutely love this thing. bolt beam coverage with freeze dry is actually unwallable in the current metagame (outside of ferro). while this thing is a bit weaker than its sand brother dracozolt, being able to actually make progress and clean up without running into a ground type and having to get the fuck out of there. arcto typically runs either hdb or lo, i personally prefer hdb because you can bring in arcto less conservatively. artcozolt can always make progress of some kind in the current meta, while thats opening holes for your strong mons in the back or cleaning up after your strong mons have done work with little problems outside of priority & running out of hail turns. people are recently starting to come around to just how strong this thing is, possibly because tricking recently used it in wcop. I recently played a tournament game where I won just because I loaded arctozolt and the only thing I needed to do was keep pressure with arctozolt. while its a bit awkward to make teams with alolatales + abuser, its definitely worth the headache.

I feel alolatales and arctozolt are due for a rise on the vr. hail is a super fun archetype and zolt is near unwallable. the only thing holding hail back at the moment is that its extremely hard to build a consistent team with but I feel once we explore it a bit more we can find a formula that works (like ferro + torn/zap on rain)

ill edit this post with example teams for each playstyle once i get the time but it'll take a bit longer to compile them or build something and i dont really want to do that at the moment but still worth getting this post out.

whats everybody elses thoughts on weather currently?

 

[Gomi]

Suns a fairly underutilized archetype imo, the options for handling Venusaur basically boil down to Latis, Weavile Rking, Gking, or dragons at rlly high health and spamming sun boosted fire stabs is p fun. One option ive enjoyed is LO SD chomp as ur ground bc SD with sun boosted Fire Fang is pretty impossible to answer and ravages archetypes that have the capability to play around Venu p hard, like Gking+Pult or smth.

Sun does have a painful Pult weakness in general tho, arguably worse than rain's because a good bit of the Breakers r Sball food and Venu has to set up to beat chipped Pults, unlike Barra whose rlly being forced out on KOs with liquidation. Granted, u can patch it up via Mandibuzz, Bliss, or Tele Clef even.

Hails also p cool since its basically just an HO offshoot with breaker Zolt in the back, who is incredibly difficult to answer without Physdef Ferro, which is p rare rn. Overall tho I've used it less post Ace Mage so idr have as much to say in regards its ingame preformance.

All in all tho im pretty excited to see them grow during OLT, esp since OLT in general tends to be a weatherfest.

 

[Red Raven]

I think sand really suffers from how much Excadrill sucks atm. Instead of building dedicated sand teams, I'm instead using support sand or whatever you wanna call it. By dedicated sand teams I mean building a team that is completely based around making Excadrill function and by supporting sand I mean using Tyranitar and Dracozolt as the wall breakers while having a sweeper that doesn't benefit from the sand at all. I mean, Tyranitar still has that 134 atk stat and stab stone edge while Dracozolt has Zekrom's stab combination. The dedicated sand teams for me is somewhat on the bad end because it's fairly easy to screw up Excadrill while the supporting sand has issues in the form of lava frog. Garchomp may be a good sand abuser because sand veil is one of the most ridiculous abilities ever but it has far better things to do than fishing for rngesus or relying on a teammate to kill Corviknight. I mean, why bother to wait for a teammate when it can simply do it itself. Overall, I find that offensive Tyranitar with Dracozolt to be far more consistent than dedicated sand because you know, Excadrill

Out of all the weathers, I think rain is the one that is hurt the most. The loss of Greninja and Mega Swampert is what makes it bad. That's not even mentioning how restrictive rain is and I believe the final nail in the coffin was the ban of Magearna. Now, Kyurem is fully unleashed and rain would have to make uneasy compromises if it wants to be safe from Kyurem. The increased number of hurricane users such as Zapdos, both forms of Articuno and Moltres and even Tornadus' new nasty plot just isn't enough to offset the loss of two of its biggest guns. Barraskewda and Seismitoad are nowhere near the level of threat Greninja and Mega Swampert posed

On sun, I think it is a weather that should be feared. It has one of, if not, the most terrifying wall breaker in the tier, specs Heatran. Specs Heatran under sun straight up two shots full spd Slowking and even Blissey. Garchomp even straight up dies to it. I don't personally use sun myself but I would dare say it is probably the best weather in the tier atm simply because other than opposing Heatran, nothing in the tier can take a full powered sun boosted specs eruption from modest Heatran, well, unless you reset the weather with Tyranitar or Pelipper anway. I mean

Hide

252+ SpA Choice Specs Heatran Eruption (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Slowking in Sun: 204-240 (51.7 - 60.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ SpA Choice Specs Heatran Eruption (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Blissey: 310-366 (43.4 - 51.2%) -- 5.9% chance to 2HKO
252+ SpA Choice Specs Heatran Eruption (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Toxapex in Sun: 169-200 (55.5 - 65.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ SpA Choice Specs Heatran Eruption (150 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Garchomp in Sun: 346-408 (96.9 - 114.2%) -- 81.3% chance to OHKO

You get the idea. Specs eruption from Heatran under the sun is scary but at the very least getting Heatran in safely is a lot more difficult than it sounds

I have no idea what to think of hail to be honest. It doesn't function like other weather at all since Arctozolt is so slow that even Garchomp outspeeds it at +1. I think that it would function similarly to the supporting sand where the weather abusers will instead pave the way for a non weather abuser to sweep and hail is incredibly annoying because of aurora veil. I would need to try out a hail team first before I come to a definite conclusion about it so that's just my immediate thoughts

 

[AM]

Hail > Sand = Sun > Rain.

And Sand only equal to Sun cause Dracozolt exists otherwise it would be much worse than Sun.

 

[VannAccessible]

On the subject of sun, I feel like LO 4 attack Venusaur does a lot more work against the meta than Growth variants, and isn’t unreliable like Sleep Powder.

Venusaur (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Chlorophyll
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Mild Nature
- Giga Drain
- Sludge Bomb
- Weather Ball
- Earthquake

Venus’ bad defensive typing has so many weaknesses setting up a Growth is always a risk, and regardless if it gets set up, it’s not getting past Weavile.

However, Grass+Fire+Ground coverage is sickeningly good as it hits all of the the Bros, Metal Birds, Ferro. Earthquake nails Heatran and 2HKOs Glowking and chips Dragapult every time it tries to come in. Sludge Bomb lets it wreck fairies, notably Ninetales-A which would try to change your weather.

Giga Drain is preferred as it offsets LO recoil and gives Venus some nice sustainability. Please don't use Solar Beam, because it removes Venus’ invaluable ability to hit opposing weather setters Pelliper, Tyranitar and Hippowdon when the weather changes.

And if you’re worried about Blissey, dude you’re already using sun. You oughta be packing some godly powerful fire types like Victini or Darmanitan to blow that up.

 

[Totomon]

What is the line between broken and proper prediction?


This is a topic that in general seems very interesting to me, we are at a point where the meta is so incredibly power crept that the concept of "unwallable breakers" isn't anything new, just take a look at Tapu Lele in theory it is able to OHKO/2HKO every single mon in the tier with proper predictions, just having to chose between Thunderbolt for Slowking and Psyshock for Blissey/Galarking. OMG Why isnt this already banned?! It literally has no true counters and it only has to chose between 2 moves to just absolutely bust through every defensive core ever! Oh offensive counterplay you say? I can run a scarf and everything is dead! BAN IT NOW!...Do you see the problem with this argument?

The important phrase is proper prediction, the previous argument completely ignores the existance of defensive cores in which lele has to click a specific move to at least 2HKO the mon in front of it. It also assumes that the Lele user is gonna get every single prediction right against you, and it simply isn't about clicking the right move but also predicting your play after scouting what move lele has locked istelf into and bringing the right Pokemon out, and at that point aren't you just getting outplayed? aren't you just the worse player? Prediction in Pokemon isn't just a bunch of 50/50s as other things like knowing to identify wincons, positioning and calculated risks also are a big part of what move is your opponent gonna click, its fine if Pokemon like Tapu Lele takes kills against your team, thats what wallbreakers do...break walls. Sometimes taking kills isn't optimal, as there are ways to abuse your position after killing something, and even if your teamstyle benefits from it (which is why lele is an incredible Pokemon) a list of things that can counter certain Pokemon isn't the end all be all to determine if something is broken.

This segways into something that I really don't like about suspect tests, saying that a Pokemon is broken is really easy, like incredibly so. especially some Dragapult discussion that I've seen recently suffers especially from this, many arguments assume that identifying the set of a mon beforehand is impossible and knowing which move is it gonna click is equally impossible. The same first phrase about Lele in the beginning can be virtually applied to every mon ever, "Oh wdym Toxapex walls Scizor, just U-Turn and knock its shed shell and trap it with Sand Tomb and also bust out the banded Dual Wingbeat for Buzzwole" "Clefable? pfft just SpDef drop it with your Shadow Ball". Pokemon right now are incredibly bulky, versatille and strong thats what happens when power creep becomes too much, especially in a game that also involves a shit ton of prediction and luck. So busting a bunch of calcs and a list of checks/counters simply isn't enough to determine if a mon is broken at this point.
When is prediction healthy and when does it turn uncompetitive/unfair?
I honestly dont know and would like to know y'alls opinions on this​

 

[PlusC]

Hail > Sand = Sun > Rain

Gen 5 players having a stroke

 

[AM]

Gen 5 players having a stroke

Look at your teams and see which ones can cover Arctozolt Hail reliably without sacking half the team then get back to me with a more productive statement.

 

[Zeno420]

Hail > Sand = Sun > Rain.

And Sand only equal to Sun cause Dracozolt exists otherwise it would be much worse than Sun.

Personally I would rank it as:
Sand > Rain > Sun=Hail
Sand is by far the most diverse style, you can really use whatever you want. Hippo stall, zolt ho, drill balance theres a lot of options and almost all are viable. The other 3 are completely interchangeable IMO, hail is underexplored but storm zone has managed to peak ladder with a hail team featuring magnezone, mandibuzz, and low kick arctozolt (to be fair it is sz, man can peak with anything). Sun on the other hand has the most breaking potential with band vic, growth venu, and in some cases band darm. Only reason why it’s not much better in the current meta is because of the high usage of dragapult. Rain suffers a same fate as sun but not to that extent, pult is easily outplayable with ferro and skewda 2hkoing with flip turn into liquidation. Personally I am not a big fan of rain, but it destroys most balance teams where the only water resist is slowking/pult.

 

[Fighting game enthusiast]

I was reading that and had a feeling when I opened the spoiler, the first calc would be against bulkarona, haha!

Have been seeing a surprising level of Bulu, I guess it is a bulkier Rillaboom with a secondary typing that is a double edged sword. Could you please expand a bit more on why you prefer assault vest to other items? I have observed that the aggressive sets tend to cover similar threats, except obvious ones like fire and flying type special attackers. Also, in my experience horn leech AV sounds great on paper but is remarkably easy for any common team to play around, so it makes keeping your Bulu in the critical >70% HP threshold very hard!

The aggressive sets don't need to keep Bulu's hp high to check things, as it threatens 2hko's on some of OU's most common switch ins like Skarmory/melmetal/ferrothorn.

Sure Id love to:

There are many reasons as to why I chose AV as the item for my Tapu Bulu set, but I think they can all be summed up to role compression and creating opportunities for my team. With AV Bulu you acquire a great amount of possible switchins for your team that work for scouting sets, checking and countering a big part of our current metagame.

Let me give you an example: my opponent switches in Garchomp and I have a ferrothorn on my team as my defensive wall, many Garchomps nowadays are running a mixed set that likes to surprise Ferrothorn in the switchin with a fireblast that OHKOs, with AV Bulu I can switch into the chomp, survive comfortably the fireblast (which would toast me if I was banded or a stallbreaker taunt set), setup grassy terrain and react/predict what they do from there, if it SDs instead, I can easily go to ferro and win the 1v1 cause of grassy terrain. There are many, many cases like this where AV Bulu covers most if not all the options that my opponent may have, while also providing utility in grassy terrain.

When I look at the advantages of a set like the choiced one, I see that it is still prediction reliant and guessing wrong is much more punishing, given that you dont have that many opportunities to switch in, so I decided that if I was gonna make predictions, I`d rather make many that are not very risky (that still can have high rewards with focus punch), as opposed to making few predictions that are very risky and can have bigger rewards. It may seem like a thing of preference, and this may be my Fighting game background speaking, but I strongly believe that it is more valuable to have multiple opportunities that are not that risky to understand how your opponent plays and reacts, rather than having the pressure to make the few choices that you have be absolutely worth it.

Maybe it would be different if Bulu got u-turn, as it would be easier to cover multiple options, but I dont think that would be faithful to its design, I like to think of Bulu as a 1v1 that has a typing that allows it to switch into a lot of important types (I really think that the fairy type is a little bit too good defensive wise) and forces its opponent to switch out as it probably wont win the 1v1, and that`s when the true fun begins, as it rewards you for staying and switching out too, cause of grassy terrain (which of course also can help ur opponent, but the idea is that you design your team to get the most benefits).

Moving on to another topic, I would like to know where the popular opinions currently stand on HBD, because I really dislike that item and the type of careless gameplay it rewards, in the 1700s its not rare for me to see teams where there are 3 or even 4 mons with boots. I think hazards are the healthiest they`ve ever been and having boots as an extra option is just a little bit too much IMO. Im not saying banning them completely, but I would really like to explore the idea of a clause.

Having said that, I just would like to know where that discussion is headed and what everybody thinks about them ATM.

Thanks for reading until the end

 

[Endrism]

What is the line between broken and proper prediction?


This is a topic that in general seems very interesting to me, we are at a point where the meta is so incredibly power crept that the concept of "unwallable breakers" isn't anything new, just take a look at Tapu Lele in theory it is able to OHKO/2HKO every single mon in the tier with proper predictions, just having to chose between Thunderbolt for Slowking and Psyshock for Blissey/Galarking. OMG Why isnt this already banned?! It literally has no true counters and it only has to chose between 2 moves to just absolutely bust through every defensive core ever! Oh offensive counterplay you say? I can run a scarf and everything is dead! BAN IT NOW!...Do you see the problem with this argument?

The important phrase is proper prediction, the previous argument completely ignores the existance of defensive cores in which lele has to click a specific move to at least 2HKO the mon in front of it. It also assumes that the Lele user is gonna get every single prediction right against you, and it simply isn't about clicking the right move but also predicting your play after scouting what move lele has locked istelf into and bringing the right Pokemon out, and at that point aren't you just getting outplayed? aren't you just the worse player? Prediction in Pokemon isn't just a bunch of 50/50s as other things like knowing to identify wincons, positioning and calculated risks also are a big part of what move is your opponent gonna click, its fine if Pokemon like Tapu Lele takes kills against your team, thats what wallbreakers do...break walls. Sometimes taking kills isn't optimal, as there are ways to abuse your position after killing something, and even if your teamstyle benefits from it (which is why lele is an incredible Pokemon) a list of things that can counter certain Pokemon isn't the end all be all to determine if something is broken.

This segways into something that I really don't like about suspect tests, saying that a Pokemon is broken is really easy, like incredibly so. especially some Dragapult discussion that I've seen recently suffers especially from this, many arguments assume that identifying the set of a mon beforehand is impossible and knowing which move is it gonna click is equally impossible. The same first phrase about Lele in the beginning can be virtually applied to every mon ever, "Oh wdym Toxapex walls Scizor, just U-Turn and knock its shed shell and trap it with Sand Tomb and also bust out the banded Dual Wingbeat for Buzzwole" "Clefable? pfft just SpDef drop it with your Shadow Ball". Pokemon right now are incredibly bulky, versatille and strong thats what happens when power creep becomes too much, especially in a game that also involves a shit ton of prediction and luck. So busting a bunch of calcs and a list of checks/counters simply isn't enough to determine if a mon is broken at this point.
When is prediction healthy and when does it turn uncompetitive/unfair?
I honestly dont know and would like to know y'alls opinions on this​

I love this post right here, and Id like to give my thoughts on it. I believe prediction becomes unhealthy when theres no way to feasibly predict what's about to happen.

Take a game I had 2 days ago. I looked at the team at hand, thought, "Okay, with the amount of physical attackers on this team, that Dragapult is 100% specs, and I need to watch out for threatening shadow balls." So as the game went on Pult made it's first appearance, threatening to KO me. I swap to Blissey obviously knowing even Draco isn't doing much and he clicked dragon dance instead. This was something I could not have anticipated from the start, and that "misplay" costed me the entire game. Theres a few mons that can have this kind of threatening aura to it, and it's the reason why Zygarde was banned this and last gen.

Lele on the other hand can be scouted, as even the worst case scenario you sac something weak to learn what Lele is locked into, oh it used Psychic on my 11% Lando-T? Perfect! I just go Blissey, threaten it out and T-Wave the incoming mon for momentum later in th- aaaaaand the Lele was HDB and just Psyshocked my Blissey out of existence.


I personally believe that Power Creep itself is the actual problem here, and with the more and more powerful the mons get, the less and less specific playstyles can be viable. At this current moment with mons like Kyurem, Lele, and others Stall has been registered basically worthless because there is no mon that can actually bulk the force of these wallbreakers that can easily OHKO the entire stall team. The fact that stall teams are resorting to Shedinja to be viable and do anything against the wallbreakers is incredible. Yes we've had stall sweepers in the past, but they weren't amazing otherwise and were picks that weren't too common. Take Crawdaunt for example, Adaptability Knock Off destroys any and all stall teams that exist, but with there being so many things that threaten it on every other archtype, Crawdaunt isnt worthing using to counter stall, just to be dead weight against Hyper Offense and Offense. However, now we have those before-mentioned threats that can be splashed on so many teams that they are personally invalidating so many mons with extremely high potential. I believe Pokemon like Kyurem need to be looked at because of this, as if you make one small mistake suddenly you are in a situation where sacking a mon is the only option to keep yourself alive.

 

[TailGlowVM]

My big problem with the metagame, as I have stated before, is that it feels too difficult to cover every important Pokemon safely in the teambuilder - we have a lot of strong Pokemon with very few reliable switch-ins, like Kartana, Kyurem, Weavile, Tapu Lele, Heatran, and lots have been able to just adapt to get rid of a load of their previously established counterplay - for example, Dragapult has responded to the rise of specially defensive Hippowdon and continued dominance of Heatran by using Hydro Pump over Flamethrower, and many Pokemon Buzzwole is supposed to check are just running Aerial Ace to beat it, like Kartana, Weavile, and Bisharp. Obviously these examples require dropping a previous coverage move, introducing new counters, but the old sets still remain and you have to deal with both of them, and we seem to be discovering even more of them all the time, like Tapu Bulu, Victini, and Blacephalon. Obviously, Future Sight further complicates this by adding an additional external way to further limit counterplay, but that's been discussed to death before.

It's difficult to identify any single Pokemon as overwhelming in its own right, but I believe that with careful consideration, banning something could make other stuff generally easier to handle - the difficult part is doing it without the banned Pokemon just freeing up other stuff that now looks a bit problematic - like Weavile and Tapu Lele for Magearna. (Not saying that banning Mage was incorrect though.)

 

[pulsar512b]

It's difficult to identify any single Pokemon as overwhelming in its own right, but I believe that with careful consideration, banning something could make other stuff generally easier to handle - the difficult part is doing it without the banned Pokemon just freeing up other stuff that now looks a bit problematic - like Weavile and Tapu Lele for Magearna. (Not saying that banning Mage was incorrect though.)

Id like to note that if you are going to, say, not ban something because it would open up other stuff, then well, that doesn't really work innit (broken checks broken=bad)

My opinion would be that Dragapult is the big one (and also, happens to have the least probability of doing any of that). If anything, it'll also mean that Weavile and Bisharp lose quite a bit of their defensive utility.

 

[Deleted User 464209]

All these wanna-be game designers taking about "the problems"...

If you think OU is too high in power level, then play UU or a lower tier.

Maybe fill this thread with "solutions" instead of just asking to ban everything.

 

[HydreigonTheChild]

Id like to note that if you are going to, say, not ban something because it would open up other stuff, then well, that doesn't really work innit (broken checks broken=bad)

My opinion would be that Dragapult is the big one (and also, happens to have the least probability of doing any of that). If anything, it'll also mean that Weavile and Bisharp lose quite a bit of their defensive utility.

I really do think Pult is the big one, it provides speed control, breaking power with specs, late game cleaning potential and ability to cripple their teammates with hex, and ability to gain momentum with u-turn is huge. Would be counters like blissey, sp def clef, and sp def mandibuzz get pivoted on and are easily forced into a bad position especially if they are knocked and they are not having leftovers recovery or now taking hazards damage if they lost boots. Many pokemon cannot check it due to its ability to just use them as pivot and use it for free entry for a teammate, like blissey is free entry for urshifu-r, bisharp, kartana, and weavile. Many pokemon all it takes is 1 paralysis from thunder wave and they are no longer able to check dragapult hex spam like clefable getting a full para can cause it to lose the 1v1. Or against other pokemon such as toxapex vs weavile spamming haze and recover and eventually getting full para'ed which causes the weavile to be +2.

 

[Finchinator]

Maybe fill this thread with "solutions" instead of just asking to ban everything.

While I am pretty content with the current metagame, mentioning problems is how we find solutions. Noting that X is a problem could lead to a suspect or ban of X, which would be the solution. I think your post goes against the intentions of the thread and healthy metagame discussion in general.

 

[Baloor]

Maybe fill this thread with "solutions" instead of just asking to ban everything.

considering smogon doesnt tamper too much with core mechanics of the game. there is no other "solutions" to fix a unbalanced metagame other than banning and unbanning problematic features. We typically only ban basic things like pokemon or abilities to keep the core aspects of gameplay intact. Let me remind you the last suspect test we did to unban something ended in a overwhelming majority of do not unban. Zama was considered the most possible ou candidate since you know, ubers are strong as fuck and the majority of them would just make ou even more unplayable. discussion of possible bans is happening in order to find the best approach to create a cohesive and competitive metagame since smogon exists as a alternative competitive ruleset to pokemon.

maybe next time bring a intellectual argument on why you believe the aspects that are being discussed are not issues for ou before you resort to being insults and telling people to play something else lol. ou is smogons premier format and balancing it is very important. im interested to hear what you consider solutions though, since you're obviously not into banning things and unbanning anything from ubers would be a huge step back.

 

[Deleted User 464209]

Smogon's metagames are wholly artificial constructions based on the site's deemed "competitive" tenets. These are maintained largely through opinion and tyrannical (lol) oversight, despite the massive sets of data available through PS. Discussing problems would be fine if there was an accompanying solution, but there's none of that here, just complaints.

Ctrl+F "unhealthy". It's an echo chamber.

I get you need to keep engagent through the forums, but come on...

 

[OneSmogonCopyer]

Smogon's metagames are wholly artificial constructions based on the site's deemed "competitive" tenets. These are maintained largely through opinion and tyrannical (lol) oversight, despite the massive sets of data available through PS. Discussing problems would be fine if there was an accompanying solution, but there's none of that here, just complaints.

Ctrl+F "unhealthy". It's an echo chamber.

I get you need to keep engagent through the forums, but come on...

Ok then. To quote you, "Discussing problems would be fine if there was an accompanying solution, but there's none of that here, just complaints.", what would be your solution?

 

[Monky25]

Smogon's metagames are wholly artificial constructions based on the site's deemed "competitive" tenets. These are maintained largely through opinion and tyrannical (lol) oversight, despite the massive sets of data available through PS. Discussing problems would be fine if there was an accompanying solution, but there's none of that here, just complaints.

Ctrl+F "unhealthy". It's an echo chamber.

I get you need to keep engagent through the forums, but come on...

Still didn’t give any of the “solutions” you tell everyone else to come up with when it comes to discussing potentially unhealthy mons. You don’t think Pokémon like dragapult are unhealthy? Then say why you believe they are fine as opposed to talking about shit like “groupthink” and whatever else you’re talking about. If there is a problematic element in the metagame, then how else would it be resolved without banning it assuming it fits the criteria for a banworthy threat?

 

[HydreigonTheChild]

Smogon's metagames are wholly artificial constructions based on the site's deemed "competitive" tenets. These are maintained largely through opinion and tyrannical (lol) oversight, despite the massive sets of data available through PS. Discussing problems would be fine if there was an accompanying solution, but there's none of that here, just complaints.

Ctrl+F "unhealthy". It's an echo chamber.

I get you need to keep engagent through the forums, but come on...

Well, we are discussing possible solutions by complaining about something. We complain about cinderace being broken, ok, OU suspected it and it was banned in a vote. Not every discussion has to be like "ok, dragapult is broken, ban it" not everyone could agree or propose other complaints about the meta such as "future sight and teleport are problematic". Unless you want to contribute to instead of spitting that does not contribute here.

 

[Finchinator]

Smogon's metagames are wholly artificial constructions based on the site's deemed "competitive" tenets. These are maintained largely through opinion and tyrannical (lol) oversight, despite the massive sets of data available through PS. Discussing problems would be fine if there was an accompanying solution, but there's none of that here, just complaints.

Ctrl+F "unhealthy". It's an echo chamber.

I get you need to keep engagent through the forums, but come on...

Get off your high horse with the condescending nonsense.

If you do not like what we do, message authority and it can be discussed in the appropriate place. If you still do not like it, there are so many other formats to play. You are not going to be the catalyst for change while talking down to entire groups of people.

Your inability to grasp that identifying the problem goes hand-in-hand with identifying solutions due to the cause-and-effect relationship between prospective suspects and prospective bans is as clear as day. I would be happy to break it down further for you or provide examples, but until you get past this and your “everyone keeps complaining without any solutions” misled narrative, perhaps try to lurk more before posting further.