With my SCL season coming to an end, I'm also done with SS UU for the gen as I didn't signup for any other tour and didn't really care to make circuit playoffs. Probably gonna make a couple more posts since as much as I hate this tier with all my heart, I think there is more to be said, and honestly excited to see how the meta keeps developing with the switch to oldgen since this is probably one of the most volatile tiers i've ever seen. But to start things off, what better way than dropping an essay with all my unviable takes on this ungodly mess :D
Gonna try to write a bit on everything but mostly gonna focus on the bigger changes. Also, everything is ordered until B-.
So to start things off, I have shroom as personal best in the tier rather than Cobalion, with Nihilego being very close. Amoonguss is honestly insane rn, compresses a lot of good features while also being the single best enabler in the tier with stun spore, who i find to be so much better than spore for one big reason: You don't have enough time to properly make use of the sleep turns, and the targets you would get the spore off onto can often punish a setupper trying to go off. And then there is obviously just how big it is to not be useless against Cobalion while also being able to shut it down with one simple move, and since Cobalion is basically an omniglue that a lot of mons want weakened to start making solid progress afterwards, it's effectively a big breaking point. For this same reason we have also seen stuff like Sub SD or Taunt on rocks sets pop up a lot more frequently, being able to abuse shroom and make it fodder for you is super big. As for Cobalion itself, the mon does not feel like a S rank to me, nor performs like one, but with meta revolving big times around it and it being able to check decently the other S ranks, while also being probably the first or second best up in the tier just makes it appear there. Trade sequence on Salamence and Scizor check after you scouted the set are also cool, just don't feel like i've seen one properly break in ages, and SD 3a with Megahorn doesn't feel nearly as good as it did during it's peak. Lastly Nihilego, who i think it's the best performing mon in the tier and probably the most flexible. It's really, really rare for a Nihilego to be useless in the game, all of Rocks-stabs-tw/knock/gk/corrosive/tspikes, Specs, Meteor beam, Scarf, 4a sets with fillers such as hex and even more sets are very viable and can do amazingly on the right team, this mon is probably one of the last things that really makes me enjoy this tier and to me truly allows creativity to shine, and on top of the infinite options it has I also consider it to be probably one of the most reliable winconds/speed control in the tier with beast boost lategames coming up so often.
Next up, I have the A+ rank polluted with ground types, and looking at the S ranks it's not hard to see why. Excadrill initially got hit really hard by much bulkier metas, but atm with the decrease in usage of mons like mence, tang, hippo and others SD honestly just feels amazing. I think there might be more exploration to be made with this mon since this meta is so friendly to it, we have seen people like Lily or Umbry utilize Scarf in a couple of their games, and although i'm not the biggest fan of that set simply for the HO matchup, it's definitely a more decent set and shows that this mon has more to offer. Diggersby and Zygarde also find themselves here imo, Diggersby is amazing into offense and it's really solid speed control, unfortunately it also doesn't have the best HO mu and idt it's very flexible in what it can do, I don't rate SD or CB sets much even after trying them. Zygarde fits in a lot different builds than 2 mons prior to it and shroom/ho meta really makes this mon shine. And now.. the part we have all been waiting for.. Scizor. Honestly I don't know what people don't see in this mon that (most) of the tours players do, Amazing moveset, being able to literally deal with every single answer outside of Skarmory, Set flexibility and also the most threatening knock in the tier. I think with mence being less used Scizor winpaths aren't even that hard to achieve, and stuff like SD dwb being able to just remove Cobalion from the game, while also dealing with Amoonguss, makes this mon very good. The meta is very unfriendly to mence but the amount of stuff it checks+being amazing in the spikes mu keeps it super relevant, although it's really easy to deal with/to abuse. And lastly Hydreigon is just amazing, Scarf being one of the best speed control options and goes really hard when it doesn't face tog/defensive prim, but also we have seen more diversity in the hydra sets recently, although specs died out completely. stuff like fire spin/NP taunt are very good at dealing with chans/togekiss, tw comes up from time to time as well.
I don't think the first couple of mons in A need any introductions, Togekiss is really good paired with anything that takes advantage of nihi such as exca, Conkeldurr is really strong and easily the best breaker this tier has in a super friendly meta with lots of nihis/chanseys/washtoms and such to click onto, while also being relevant against offenses with all the good targets mach punch gets. Thundurus is back to being pretty fine since it's really good into the shroom/kiss teams we have seen a lot in SCL, although i still rate NP>pivot for sure. Primarina being down there is probably a surprise to a lot of people but i really don't rate offensive primarina at all, think it's really hard to build good teams with it since it's defensive utility it's nonexistent, and needing to get all the few clicks you can get for free doesn't really appeal me as i'd rather use azelf at that point. Restalk and CM snore are both pgood, i don't love the couple limitations CM snore gives to your team such as needing something to burn tangrowth with but that set also autowins a lot of mus so. Skarmory to me is really hard to rank correctly, spikes are amazing especially cause this tier doesn't have more than 3 "good" removal options to me, but the mon itself is really meh and outside of stall (where you'd be running fog paired with smth else anyways) i really don't like it at all without dhelmise. Especially cause most of the dhelmless skarms i've seen were spdef tox in hopes to up on mence, but at that point you basically don't do anything a skarm would like to and at that point you'd just rather running skarmdhelmnihi and deal with mence just fine while also being useful vs other stuff. Hippo is honestly a weird case. I don't think it's as bad as this rank shows, I think hippo was really bad for a couple of months because people were really focussed on abusing it when it was the meta's central point, but also.. i never used a single hippo throughout the tour, and the usage in general was really low. It's hard to fit and doesn't really pair with most of the good mons is another reason why I think it's usage is so slow, but it probably should see more experimentation with other moveslots and it could find itself more relevant again idk. Steela's rank only reflects the offensive set since i really don't like the defensive one much, offensive is really great but the issues i found myself with were it feeling suboptimal on a HOs often and also i don't think i've seen many offensive steelas winning games recently, it ends up trading with nihi or king but not many HO mons really want those 2 gone, and it's also hard stopped by chansey which limits the HOs it fits into imo.
It did fit really good in the team I used in semis though (that i didn't build [umbry did])
My A- ranks are probably the most different compared to other people's. Chansey is very good and probably should be A, but I really don't like how badly chansey teams matchup into some things such as conk and you really can't do anything to fix that mu. Still, Chansey has a ton of utility to offer and mon just feels really good in current meta. Washtom is another one i'd rate highly if it wasn't so hard to build a good washtom team to me, all the ones i tried to come with or tried from others always felt like they had a massive problem, and the cause to me always felt like it was washtom. wow split performs really well by itself but also there are very few mons that sinergize with it since the targets it burns atm aren't huge. Keldeo is honestly underrated to me, I think people just look at it's specs set when CM is where the it's at to me rn, both cm 3a and sub cm do really well against the many chansey/shroom teams out there, but building with it is hard. Dhelmise is probably one of the most underrated mons in the tier (Umbry reacted to your post in the thread SS UU Crown Tundra Viability Ranking Thread with Love). Jokes aside, Skarmdhelm is imo one of the strongest archetypes in the tier, just really hard to use especially if you aren't familiar with it at all. Being able to run a spikes team with good mu vs HO and offenses in general is really great, and dhelmise is a key part in allowing this, considering that not only it works as a good spinblocker vs the one common spinner this tier has, but also helps the mu against thundurus a lot and it's surprisingly hard to switch into with spikes up. Dhelmise end games are also not uncommon from my experience, poltwhip with a couple of spins can get off really hard. Ghost type is also a really strong typing in the tier and that helps a lot tbh. I also have a couple of mons that people would probably not expect to be this low in Tangrowth, Zarude and maybe Gyarados. Tangrowth in SS UU ironically mostly peaked at the tier's worst times thanks to how well it compresses roles, but it's super easy to abuse, super easy to overwhelm and it.. doesn't do a lot. It's mostly great into prim and the grounds, but all of them also have ways to deal with it. Also huge reliance on a solid fogger paired with it while also not working well with most of them limits the options you can go for a lot. Zarude's set that i think it's worthy of this rank is scarf honestly, which i think it's great. Boots faces issues with a lot of common mons such as shroom and cobalion, we have seen people trying to drop jungle healing (although not for cc) but to me it just kills the entire reason to use boots zarude at all, although encore is a cool tool to have in this tier, too bad little mons can make good use of it. Gyara i don't think it's really threatening after the meta adapted to it more, it has a couple cool trading patterns for HO but that's about it. Lastly, we have Reuniclus who is a good wincond/breaker/shroom abuser and it's very flexible with all of CM 2a, CM AA, Trick barb/iball, knock tox, sight knock and more being very good, and Mandibuzz, who I think it's really underrated atm paired with mons such as Azelf. I think this mon is very underexplored, Really good usual knock targets and baits in coba which allows Azelf to click moves for example, and it's also just amazing to have with HOs being as common as they are atm, and Mandi singlehandedly solves that at preview often.
I think Azumarill, Raikou and Rhyperior deserve more love. Azu is solid in both HOs and BOs and I think it has some cool options it can go for, Raikou is a great pivot and CM is also pretty good with shroom meta and Rhyperior keeps all the traits of the good offensive grounds while also being sturdier. Rest of B+ are mons who already recieve a lot of appreciation, except for maybe crobat but it's kinda dying out atm since it doesn't really have a use in this meta. On top of B i have teapot and toxt who I think are both solid HO options, with the first one being really good into hydra/mandi/scizorless teams and with a couple of options to deal with other checks such as sap for zarude or sub for chansey, and toxt really threatens teams with offensive grounds and no dhelm. Nidoqueen is something i probably have lower than I should but I don't love how she plays and the teams she fits into, she's still super threatening though. Suicune i think is somewhat underrated as well atm, it's very simple to find mus where this mon just straight up wins, and i found one myself in SCL although i fricked up hard that game. The last mon I should probably talk about is Hatt since i wasn't sure of where to rank it either, it's solid but i also never found it reliable at all, i always felt like it was sorta weaker prim/kiss in the cm role ngl. B- has probably a bunch of interesting stuff to talk about. Swampert I think it's really not good as a setter but I also feel like it's really underexplored, we kinda always defaulted to the same pivot set ever since we got it but I can see stuff like Restalk or Offensive working, and that would be a kind of unique niche. Sun is another thing that has always kinda been the same and was never expored all too much, most people who use Sun still go for the Kst3ve variation from 1 year and a half ago which i'm not sure it's optimal anymore, but the playstyle is strong in a meta where hippowdon is a lot less common and you can definitely find ways to deal with the other annoying mons such as NIhi. Weezing is something that i 100% think should be ranked and that has a lot of potential, just hard to pull off, but the things we have seen TDK doing with it in SCL definitely showed that it has a place in the meta. Lastly, I think that gastrodon is decent, and the standard tox stabs set is pretty hard to deal with honestly.
For C ranks i just put anything that seems to have a reason to exist. Sigi can be pcool to play with, decent fogger into hippo, surprisingly hard to switch into if you don't know what to expect from it, i've seen cm shift winning games and also has a couple of cool tox hits. Bulu is just the grassy terrain setter hat doesn't rly do anything in reality (the best bulu set is taunt tox madness synth i stand by it), milo is somewhat cool and has a couple of options you can go for, but extremely niche. rose can be cool atm since it's like a better up than skarm in the shroom mu, but is pretty weak vs everything else. Molt/daunt/king are pretty sad, molt relies on a 70% accuracy move that is not even powerful enough to get rid of some of the mons you'd like to kill, daunt never finds opportunities to click moves (although it hits hard when it does) and i don't even think it beats stall nowdays honestly, nidoking is almost always worse than queen unless you wanna run sub. Going down to C i have flygon since i think it's a cool stall option, cloy is usable on ho and it can beat all of it's answers on paper but you need to find free setup+you're carrying a shit item in LO so it's pretty unrealistic, eleki can be cool against HO/on some sort of tox spam, cress is nb on pressure cheese and in shroom meta that's probably buildable, regidrago goes hard into no fairy, jelli is decent into coba and can sorta work on spikes if you try really hard, mag has it's niche if paired with mence or trying to chip coba w/ scarf, cuno and ditto are usable on fat. Lastly i just put darm under unranked although it was meant to be D since it's the only UU mon that i don't think should be ranked at all, suboptimal on sun and i don't see it doing anything outside of it nowdays.
There were a couple of mons i just wasn't able to rank at all although they should be somewhere i think which is why i put them in unsure: I haven't found myself using tenta in months and i honestly have no idea of what i would use it for but in theory there might be some use for it? Same with Starmie, I think that defensive tp sets don't rly have a place and offensive sets just feel like worse versions of other mons, but probably combining that with spin should be able to give it a rank, just unsure of where. I think that fire types are great and entei should definitely be usable, but I didn't try it myself nor i've seen people doing it even tho it's currently ranked, so i have no clue of how well it'd perform, probably about b-. And to close this, people have stopped experimenting with rain after Poek and Askov's versions of it, I think that the playstyle is still fine but I'm not sure if it's as good as Sun or below.
At last i asked myself if there were some mons that aren't ranked/are being discussed to be unranked that I think could have a place but people never/barely have tried out:
- I tried Durant for a bit on a meme team and was honestly surprised by how good it can be if you hit moves, Umbry made a team with it during UUPL that passion used once and it did rly well in that game too, I think this mon should have a place in the tier, assuming people aren't too scared of missing. LO but also maybe scarf in oras-style?
- Lucario is cool considering that the main fight resist usually checks things thanks to intim and you completely ignore that, probably worse Cobalion in any situation except if you need that specifically, oh and also has less issues with 4mss ig
- Psy terrain looks fun, the espeon-kadabra would probably both be scarfed and then unsure what rest of team would look like tbh I think KM made one recently?
- TR hasn't really seen exploration after last year but should still be about where it was before, the biggest issue was hippo but that mon kinda died out so
- Chari on Sun looks better than it used to i think, probably worth trying if people go through more experimentation with the archetype.
Oki i wrote way too much and i def got a bit more lazy towards the C ranks/end because idk all too well of what to say about most of those mons that wasn't obvious already. But yeah, kinda just wanted my thoughts on how the tier's pre-oldgenning looks somewhere, will probably write a couple more posts on other stuff about it. also sorry for the brick LOL idk if anyone will read it all