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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v3

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does anyone in favor of a tera ban have any other pokemon that abuses tera to such an extreme extent? kingambit is an outlier, as is manaphy, and all other notable abusers (espathra, annihilape, volcarona, baxcalibur, roaring moon, regieleki) have been banned.

This is the wrong question. You are presuming my argument is that Tera is broken only because the most egregious abusers, which includes Kingambit, abuses it. Thus, the solution is to simply ban Kingambit. As I said just a few posts back, we will probably end up banning 25+ pokemon if we don’t deal with Tera. The problem is Tera as a mechanic is uncompetitive based on its effect on the game, not which Pokémon is using it. Srn has already written two bible essays on the points.

I bring up Kingambit vs. Great Tusk because they have been at the center of the metagame for months, with 30+% usage each.

Great Tusk on paper is the definition of a hard check to Kingambit. It is physically bulky, strong, and faster than Gambit. It also gets STAB on both Fighting moves (4Xs weakness), and Ground moves (2X weakness). The only thing it’s missing to be a perfect Kingambit counter is reliable recovery. This is as solid of a check as one can get.

Insert Tera. With one click of a button, Kingambit turns Great Tusk from being a solid hard check into rubble. Tusk becomes useless. If that Tusk doesn’t have the correct Tera type available to counter Gambit’s Tera type, it just loses this interaction. This whole circle jerk makes the original spirit of Pokémon (type matchups) into a joke.

This interaction can happen with any Pokémon. It doesn’t matter if it is Kingambit and Great Tusk or Pikachu and Diglett. Same thing. Tera is a free pass to instantly turn should-be checks into fodder.
 
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I cant wait for sneasler to become the most broken mon in the meta after ghold or gliscor get banned. This guy is already more broken than kingambit, just go play on the ladder or watch any tournament matches, grassy terrain HO/BO is played literally every other game. Every single team needs a mon that can beat +2 unburdened sneasler and once the two best options are gone maybe this cheap ass pokemon can finally be banned.
 
People who want gliscor banned but keep gholdengo in the tier miraculously wiped their memory of how omnipresent glimmora/ting-lu/h-samurott hazard stacking teams were before the dlc.

No we didn't, sure the latter Pokémon are carried by Gholdengo a great deal, but Gliscor maintains Spike pressure by threatening removers with Toxic and being exceptionally difficult to wear down, allowing it to keep toxicing, knocking, and spiking even if the opponents successfully removes the spikes. Gholdengo might be an issue, partially because of what it does for spikes teams, but Gliscor effortlessly succeeds at this objective even without Gholdengo
 
I don’t want Gliscor banned predominantly because of Spikes, but rather because of its versatile overall presence.

I also want Gholdengo suspected regardless of Gliscor.

I think this is a very fair perspective.
And you’re right, it is a fair perspective of things. Personally I would rather keep Gliscor and suspect/ban Gholdengo, but it’s honestly fine if Gliscor goes, Gholdengo gets suspected and goes, and then Gliscor is dropped after we see how the meta develops without Gholdengo’s presence.
 
This is the wrong question. You are presuming my argument is that Tera is broken only because the most egregious abusers, which includes Kingambit, abuses it. Thus, the solution is to simply ban Kingambit. As I said just a few posts back, we will probably end up banning 25+ pokemon if we don’t deal with Tera. The problem is Tera as a mechanic is uncompetitive based on its effect on the game, not which Pokémon is using it.

I fully agree with you that the mechanic has an uncompetitive effect on the meta. We probably will have to ban 25+ Pokemon with Tera legal, but not all of those are broken because of Tera. Stuff such as Flutter Mane, Iron Bundle, Chi-Yu, Annihilape (encourages degenerate play patterns even without Tera), Magearna (never needed Tera in the first place), Urshifu-Rapid Strike, Baxcalibur, and Ogerpon-Hearthflame (broken with just Mold Breaker in Sun) are all stupid Pokemon by design and had no business being made for a competitive meta. I'm one of the biggest proponents of a Tera ban here, but I'm not going to attribute all the bans to Tera. Tera does increase the number of mons that will be banned and increases the number of Pokemon that become borderline broken, but there are plenty that are just outright broken regardless of the mechanic.

I also don't think the second DLC will be the last big drop of new mons either as I believe the rumoured Legends Unova game in 2024 or 2025 will add even more (probably) overtuned mons into the game.
 
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I understand that the Mon have gotten stronger, and ill admit that there are arguments to be made for a lot of the bans. However, I fundamentally disagree with the idea that "this pokemon is unkillable" or "nothing can switch in to this". There are over 1000 pokemon in this game and y'all really expect me to believe that not one of them can KO gliscor or gholdengo? A certain ice/ground type pokemon would like to know your location. I mean for goodness sake people, gliscor doesn't even have roost anymore, it can only heal by spamming protect, the move taunt literally exists

It's really easy to make claims like these without realizing how complex the issues are. You can say "mamoswine exists" but then you look at where its place in the metagames is. It's difficult to fit, despite having a niche, and isn't even perfect into either. Gliscor freely racks up hazards and slams toxic which mamoswine hates, while Gholdengo slams it with make it rain and offensive sets outrun mamoswine anyways.

Gliscor has also succeeded immensely even at times without roost. Back in BW, it at a point couldn't run roost on poison heal sets, and got by with protect just fine. Saying taunt exists doesn't get into the deeper issue: what pokemon is running the move effectively, while out speeding it?

I think my biggest issue is that nobody wants to do any experimentation, or search through the pokédex to find mons that will deal with the problem at hand. Everyone just wants to keep using iron valiant and great tusk. In previous gens it was common for pokémon to be tiered as UU or lower, but still have viability in OU. But now in Gen 9, that is almost unheard of which I think is absolutely crazy.

This is a somewhat conceited claim to make that people just aren't willing to experiment. People have been doing that all gen. Pre home we saw the rise of pokemon like Scream Tail which had previously been thought to be a mediocre pokemon, all the way to the A ranks. HOME meta saw thenrise of Moltres, Brute Bonnet enjoyed success even.

You can't just say search the Pokedex for a mon to handle problems. Some mons, many mons, just don't fit into the meta. We saw people adapt to mons like Bloodmoon with sets like Subtoxic gliscor, spdef Unaware clefable, which were bad outside this matchup. It's not using lower tier mons that's the issue. It's when those mons are ONLY good fof one specific matchup up while doing next to nothing otherwise. This has been the case many times this gen.

What it feels like to me, is that everyone in OU is using the same 6-7 mons, and crying about something being broken when the opponent uses a niche pokemon that deals with the OU staples

No one wants to use only the same mons. We're literally seeing a comeback of Heatran which fell to UU, and we're seeing interesting pokemon pop up all the time.

People have no issues experimenting.
 
And you’re right, it is a fair perspective of things. Personally I would rather keep Gliscor and suspect/ban Gholdengo, but it’s honestly fine if Gliscor goes, Gholdengo gets suspected and goes, and then Gliscor is dropped after we see how the meta develops without Gholdengo’s presence.

Gliscor does not belong in this tier even without Gholdengo. It's the spikes setter that relies on Gholdengo support the least and has the easiest time succeeding without Gholdengo support. Don't need to worry about blocking removal if you can just get the spikes up again
 
I understand that the Mon have gotten stronger, and ill admit that there are arguments to be made for a lot of the bans. However, I fundamentally disagree with the idea that "this pokemon is unkillable" or "nothing can switch in to this". There are over 1000 pokemon in this game and y'all really expect me to believe that not one of them can KO gliscor or gholdengo? A certain ice/ground type pokemon would like to know your location. I mean for goodness sake people, gliscor doesn't even have roost anymore, it can only heal by spamming protect, the move taunt literally exists

I think my biggest issue is that nobody wants to do any experimentation, or search through the pokédex to find mons that will deal with the problem at hand. Everyone just wants to keep using iron valiant and great tusk. In previous gens it was common for pokémon to be tiered as UU or lower, but still have viability in OU. But now in Gen 9, that is almost unheard of which I think is absolutely crazy.

What it feels like to me, is that everyone in OU is using the same 6-7 mons, and crying about something being broken when the opponent uses a niche pokemon that deals with the OU staples

There are certainly mons that can KO gliscor. However, these pokemon are not easy to slot on teams and play around. There is a reason Weavile or Mamoswine are not in the OU tier by usage. Building with a mon that can answer Gliscor is not easy in the current tier.

HO teams can usually overwhelm gliscor, and most often the Gliscor answers can work fine on those teams.

However, slower balance teams can't usually fit in a Gliscot answer between everything else that needs to be taken into account, and thus Balance/Stall does the next thing: run their own Gliscor as a Gliscor answer, leading to pp stall mirror matches unlesa one of the Gliscor is running SD Ice Fang, which in itself only really exists to shit on gliscor/stall.

The issue with Gliscor isnt per se that its unkillable, but due to how the tier is shaped around it, it becomes very centralizing since it limits your builder options a lot.
 
I understand that the Mon have gotten stronger, and ill admit that there are arguments to be made for a lot of the bans. However, I fundamentally disagree with the idea that "this pokemon is unkillable" or "nothing can switch in to this". There are over 1000 pokemon in this game and y'all really expect me to believe that not one of them can KO gliscor or gholdengo? A certain ice/ground type pokemon would like to know your location. I mean for goodness sake people, gliscor doesn't even have roost anymore, it can only heal by spamming protect, the move taunt literally exists

I think my biggest issue is that nobody wants to do any experimentation, or search through the pokédex to find mons that will deal with the problem at hand. Everyone just wants to keep using iron valiant and great tusk. In previous gens it was common for pokémon to be tiered as UU or lower, but still have viability in OU. But now in Gen 9, that is almost unheard of which I think is absolutely crazy.

What it feels like to me, is that everyone in OU is using the same 6-7 mons, and crying about something being broken when the opponent uses a niche pokemon that deals with the OU staples

This is a massive oversimplification of what the situation is like atm.

Gliscor arguably would not even run Roost this generation because on top of how tightly contested its moveslots are, one of its major appeals right now is how easily it makes progress with the turns it naturally buys in front of things that don't break it, which Roost is redundant with since even if Gliscor heals in front of a Pokemon, it's either just sitting there playing chicken or over-healing an already-winning match up where it could do something like lay a Spike, Knock Off an item, or safely U-Turn into a more directly offensive teammate. Simply presuming that Gliscor is worse because it lost Roost is to ignore the Metagame it finds itself it or things it DOES have over previous generations such as Terastalization, access to Spikes, and a much better Hazard-survival profile in a Meta with very few Hazard removers (exacerbated by one of its better teammates).

The issue is not the fact that Gliscor or Gholdengo cannot be KO'd: Great Tusk is lauded as the best Spinner specifically because it's the one with the best match-up against Gholdengo without compromising itself. The issue is that these Pokemon are so constrictive on the state of the Meta due to being so proficient in their roles that a Pokemon must be able to overcome that high bar if it wants to play in the tier. Consider Gholdengo's typing and ability: 12/18 types on the chart are resisted or immuned by it, and its ability completely shuts down anything that isn't direct damage from targetting it. This basically means if your Pokemon does not have access to a specific 1/3 of the type chart AND half-decent offenses, Gholdengo uses it as food, something you don't want to allow a Pokemon with Nasty Plot, solid Bulk, >130 on its primary offense, and one of the most colorful movepools in OU (MiR is just Draco Meteor but without total crippling for example). Gholdengo without having to tailor itself any major way heavily pressures almost every defensive Pokemon even before considering offensive match-ups it's afforded by its resistances and set-up opportunities therein.

Plenty of Pokemon exist that can KO Gholdengo or Gliscor, such as Great Tusk, Kingambit, Cinderace, and Iron Moth for the former, but the problem that arises is that pool is narrow and thus heavily limits/dictates what playstyles you can make work without a massive weakness to these two, while they in turn match-up into so much of the Pokedex (much less the OU viable roster) that they don't present significant opportunity cost to discourage their presence on teams in turn.

People keep using Iron Valiant or Great Tusk or whatever current OU staple you point to because they work. Fixing a bad Gliscor match-up isn't as simple as slapping Mamoswine on the team: dropping Great Tusk means losing the tier's best Hazard Removal/Glue option (and preventing Hazard removal is already what those two mons want technically), while using it with GT means having to account for a massive weakness overlap in the shared Ground typing while the tier has other big threats like Ogerpon, Manaphy, and to a lesser extent things like Rillaboom. Most of the rest of the Pokedex has been "experimented" with and found to simply not be as efficient in the Metagame at large even if they deal with these particular Pokemon, and having to run otherwise-unviable Pokemon to improve a match-up at the top at the expense of the dozens of other Pokemon in the tier is frequently viewed as a sign of an unhealthy state (most infamous recently is Water Absorb Seismitoad into Dracovish in Gen 8).

To be blunt, saying "Search the Pokedex" is passing the buck and burden of proof when making the argument that goes against current consensus. It doesn't specify any examples of Pokemon that fulfill the role you claim exists but no one is using nor demonstrate that they are effective and simply underexplored. Maybe a Pokemon fitting these descriptions is in the roster, but the way this post argues does nothing to present a solution, just say "figure something else out." Several Pokemon that make UU by usage still see play in OU, such as Heatran post-Bloodmoon, Greninja, Garganacl, and the on-the-rise Alomomola, the difference being most of these Pokemon are teams adapting to trends, not to literally a single Pokemon.

What it feels like to me, is that everyone in OU is using the same 6-7 mons, and crying about something being broken when the opponent uses a niche pokemon that deals with the OU staples
To this I direct you to the infamous carkoala vs "Sylveon is so cute" game in SCL recently, in which 70/131 turns, more than half the game was more or less just two Gliscor sitting on each other and PP Stalling because even amongst the 9 Pokemon on both teams (which did not include any other Survey subjects besides the mellowing-out Kingambit), Gliscor into Gliscor was the safest/most-optimal state to keep things in until it literally had no move left to use. This isn't crying about the opponent using a niche mon, both players were using what is considered to be a highly effective and centralizing member of the tier and everyone agrees it turns the match into an unappealing state of affairs.

I don't know what you're referring to about Volcarona not being seen "throughout the entire Suspect timeframe" since the contention was Volcarona being Quickbanned, there was no Suspect for it to be encountered in. It's also disingenuous to cite this while talking about the process as "all of a sudden" when Volcarona has historically been one of the most contentious presences in OU despite never being pushed to a ban (it's been referred to as the "match-up moth" in several contexts) and this was simply the generation where the changes were too heavily pushing those problem traits (affording a Pokemon that sweeps if you generate a set-up window much easier set-up options). You have a case to argue that the quickban was mishandled in terms of the process (Volc being one of the few subjects to face a Quickban without being a featured Survey option), but that topic has been covered and in hindsight is generally considered to be the ideal result reached by a mistaken/poor course at the time.

And at risk now of feeling like a call out, your account is not much older than your first reply on this subject, despite trying to make the imposing promise of "never playing OU again" if a very-disliked defensive Pokemon is banned (Defensive specified because they take a lot more work and argument to demonstrate a "broken" influence over a kill-everything attacker like Flutter Mane, Bundle, or Bloodmoon). I take you at your word that you play OU a lot, but for that reason I think this post low quality because you should be arguing from knowledge the rest of the playerbase is discussing already, or able to demonstrate play options that support your uncommon position rather than dismissively call for other players to find it because you assume it to exist.
 
This interaction can happen with any Pokémon. It doesn’t matter if it is Kingambit and Great Tusk or Pikachu and Diglett. Same thing. Tera is a free pass to instantly turn should-be checks into fodder.
if the power level doesn't matter, why does ou have so much more discussion about tera than any other tier (even proportional to the size/activity of the other tiers)? shouldn't there be rioting in every tier if tera is as bad as you say it is? instead, we have a bunch of posts in ou threads from uu players saying "hey, tera's fine down here, you guys have a problem with your mons".
raikoulover in the future probably said:
but some of the lower tiers have huge banlists which means tera is the prob-
no. they have huge banlists because ou is centralized around several broken mons that are pushing a bunch of mons that would otherwise be ou into uu, which in turn is pushing a bunch of uu mons into ru, and so on and so forth all the way down to pu. so every other tier gets flooded with stuff that's too strong for it because ou has a bunch of stuff that's too strong for it. we ban those mons, we solve ou, and things start going back to normal
 
So, this might be an inappropriate time to ask...but what're you guy's favourite mons to play, kit-wise?

I like Offensive Boots Great Tusk with max Attack, Bulk Up, Rapid Spin, Ice Spinner, and Headlong Rush. It combines the spinner, breaker, and sweeper roles under certain conditions. I don't like Booster Speed Tusk. It's too weak and has no item afterward being forced out once. I also don't like SR + Rapid Spin Great Tusk as I feel using Tusk for that role gets it chipped way too much for it to do its job best.
 
So just so we're keeping track; who becomes the most busted mon after Gliscor and Gholdengo are gone?
unclear. those bans would produce a massive shift in the meta as more defoggers and other forms of ghold-walled removal rise up, other hazard setters rush in to fill the void previously occupied by gliscor, some offensive mons with heavy reliance on hazards become less relevant, webs become less relevant, boots become slightly less spammed which makes stall more flexible, and a whole host of other things, so it's impossible to tell the full extent of banning those two. but i think both of those bans would be huge dubs for sneasler
 
if the power level doesn't matter, why does ou have so much more discussion about tera than any other tier (even proportional to the size/activity of the other tiers)? shouldn't there be rioting in every tier if tera is as bad as you say it is? instead, we have a bunch of posts in ou threads from uu players saying "hey, tera's fine down here, you guys have a problem with your mons".

no. they have huge banlists because ou is centralized around several broken mons that are pushing a bunch of mons that would otherwise be ou into uu, which in turn is pushing a bunch of uu mons into ru, and so on and so forth all the way down to pu. so every other tier gets flooded with stuff that's too strong for it because ou has a bunch of stuff that's too strong for it. we ban those mons, we solve ou, and things start going back to normal

That's not the entire picture. A lot of mons were nerfed from Gen 8 (or Gen 7 if they were dexited in Gen 8) to Gen 9 with movepool losses that lowered their viability, inflating the number of broken mons in lower tiers. Also, Tera breaks many things like the Oricorio forms in lower tiers due to interactions with their kits. Tera also artificially inflates the power of most offensive Pokemon, which also contributes to the very large banlists in lower tiers.
 
So, this might be an inappropriate time to ask...but what're you guy's favourite mons to play, kit-wise?

I've been really liking LO Greninja, it's one of the few pokemon that can actually OHKO Gliscor and is able to set up spikes freely due to the switches it generates. Especially on more offensive teams, the speed tier is fantastic, being one of the few mons that can outspeed booster val if you get your battle bond boost.
 
That's not the entire picture. A lot of mons were nerfed from Gen 8 (or Gen 7 if they were dexited in Gen 8) to Gen 9 with movepool loses that worsened their ability and lowered their viability, inflating the number of broken mons in lower tiers. Also, Tera breaks many things like the Oricorio forms in lower tiers due to interactions with their kits. Tera also artificially inflates the power of most offensive Pokemon, which also contributes to the very large banlists in lower tiers.
fair enough, there's a combination of factors and i do admit that tera has a role to play in some of the bans. but it definitely isn't the sole reason or even the main reason for the inflated banlists, and on the whole tera seems like it's much more manageable in the lower tiers. that points to the issue not being with the mechanic but with the mons abusing it
 
fair enough, there's a combination of factors and i do admit that tera has a role to play in some of the bans. but it definitely isn't the sole reason or even the main reason for the inflated banlists, and on the whole tera seems like it's much more manageable in the lower tiers. that points to the issue not being with the mechanic but with the mons abusing it

I find that with any mechanic that increases the power level of the meta the higher the power level the more problematic it is, so it comes to no surprise to me that Tera is less of an issue or at least seen as so in lower tier metas. It just seems like common sense to me. Even Ubers has more of a cry to take action against Tera even though it has a smaller playerbase than OU, and I take it as a sign that Tera is unhealthy in metas with a high enough power level, which I believe applies to OU. I know we won't see eye to eye on this, but this is where I stand on this.
 
The meta has issues
Theres only one mon with the stab types to take on both Gliscor and Gholdengo…


CHIEN-PAO! UNBAN CHIEN-PAO, OR YOU LOVE STALL :Chien-Pao: :Chien-Pao: :Chien-Pao:

Just kidding. Its weavile :Weavile:(and Mamo on the non balloon sets! :Mamoswine: )

Ive been using Zoroark-H :Zoroark-Hisui: with quite a lot of success. Expert belt, it easily OHKOs lures the following: Gliscor, Gholdengo, Great Tusks, Hatterene and it hits like a truck while outspeeding a big bunch of falks. Also great typing.

Set is:

:Zoroark-Hisui: Zoroark-Hisui @ Expert Belt
Ability: Illusion
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Grass Knot
- Flamethrower
- Icy Wind
 
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if sand becomes good again after the second dlc, tyranitar might not rise to ou and could be outclassed by hippowdon, it may have a better offensive profile and more special bulk but it lacks the longevity of slack off plus hippowdon gives sand a built in physical tank like torkoal with sun but better , its typing is also terrible for a slow mon since it get hit super effective by many attacks and thus can’t threaten much especially in the same power crept gen where garchomp is UUBL and magnezone is RUBL so returning sand abusers like excadrill and possibly dracozolt just may not be enough for the tar to escape the limbo hes been recently

P.S sand may still suck after the second dlc since it got no buffs in the first one, the best “sand abusers“ rn are lycanroc and freaking dugtrio
 
No we didn't, sure the latter Pokémon are carried by Gholdengo a great deal, but Gliscor maintains Spike pressure by threatening removers with Toxic and being exceptionally difficult to wear down, allowing it to keep toxicing, knocking, and spiking even if the opponents successfully removes the spikes. Gholdengo might be an issue, partially because of what it does for spikes teams, but Gliscor effortlessly succeeds at this objective even without Gholdengo

I see where you're coming from and, like I said earlier, I agree with Finch Gliscor is worth looking into. I just think gholdengo, as the premier hazard support in the meta right now, should be looked at before we go banning Glisc. Seems like putting the cart before the horse a little when addressing one of the root causes of how poor the meta is right now.

Granted, tera should 100% be looked at before DLC 2 but I've given up that crusade.
 
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