If Darkrai is deemed acceptable, why is Spectrier considered Uber? Do you occasionally overlook similar Pokémon, perhaps intentionally?
Edit: fixed spelling mistakes
Edit: fixed spelling mistakes
Last edited:
-
The moderators of this forum are Finchinator, Ruft, ausma, 658Greninja, kd458, FayaWizard, Srn, TPP, and viivian.
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2024 Smog Awards!
Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v3
- Thread starter TPP
- Start date
- Status
Lets do a nice comparison, shall we?
First, the stats and abilities:
Spectrier comes in at an ubers respectable 100/65/60/145/80/130 with the ability Grim Neigh, which raises its SpA by 1 stage whenever it knocks something out.
Darkrai, by comparison, is a little more modest, with 70/90/90/135/90/125 and Bad Dreams, which makes the opponents sleeping pokemon take damage equal to 1/8th of their max HP at the end of each turn.
Already, we can see a stark difference when it comes to power and speed tier. Darkrai maxed out hits as hard as Enamorus and Volcarona, while Spectrier busts in the same damage ranges as Thunderus and Eternatus. Darkrai will speed tie with Weavile and Kilowattrel outside of Tailwind, while Spectrier will speed tie the likes of Mewtwo, Jolteon, and once again, Eternatus. Odd how Spectrier is literally just a less bulky Eternatus with a better ability.
Now, im not too used to their movesets, but Darkrai will typically run Dark Pulse, Sludge Bomb, and Ice Beam, which is rather nice coverage, while Spectrier will run all of Dark Pulse, Shadow Ball, and fucking Tera Blast/Draining Kiss. Good god this horse's moveset is barren of anything good., but what it does have, it uses well. Its like a special Dragapult, complete with substitute.
Basically, its fast as fuck, hits really damn hard, and if it werent for its god awful movepool, would be hella uber, instead of ok uber. It exists solely to Shadow Ball, and unlike Darkrai it has no pretenses about being somewhat varied.
Draining Kiss is also just an insane move in a tera metagame, between the damage boost on Tera Fairy, the fact that it has great coverage with Ghost moves (or Stored Power in the case of other mons), and just generally messing up the main practical counterplay to fast setup mons, which is to hit it first and then sack and revenge kill. Spectrier would be able to get out of hand very quickly and has just enough bulk to repeatedly evade being revenge killed in many scenarios, with just enough movepool to still handle some of its "checks" through Wisp and Substitute etc.
That's an awful comparison. Spectrier is faster and has a way less crowded speed tier, has more bulk, is stronger, has special Moxie rather than a useless ability 90% of the time, and is a nasty Tera abuser with Tera Fairy turning it from a better gengar to a worse Flutter Mane. Darkrai got nerfed a lot between the nerf to it sleeping move and the meta becoming way stronger and fast paced, when building a team Iron Moth and Valiant look way more scary than Darkrai.
Not disputing that Spectrier is way stronger than Darkrai, but no way do I agree with this. Darkrai has barely less Sp.A than Iron Moth and enough Speed to make it the third-fastest thing in OU, combined with Tera and amazing coverage to let it abuse any matchup it wants. Its Ability and Hypnosis are trash but it doesn't need them outside of Ubers. You can just put Specs on it and suddenly Chi-Yu is back in the tier.
I have a lot of problems with this sentence. Yes, it's fast has coverage and can abuse Tera but so do the other two while being the fastest thing in the field thanks to B.E. Darkrai has coverage yes but it also has a big 4MSS than the other two, stab and fairy coverage are a must then you need to juggle between F.Miss, Ice beam, Psychic, Set Up, etc. Also your comparison with Chi-Yu is Horrible, Chi-Yu was a monster who had no counters thanks to being able to brute force them through Tera Fire, Sun and it's ability let it reduce the opponents Special Defense giving it a way higher damage it should, hell, modest Chi-Yu without any boosting item does almost the same damage as Timid Specs Darkrai.
I will point out that this isn't really a case against Waterpon. It reflects more on Alomamola itself. It's a defensive mono water type against a water absorb grass type.
Hope they aren't running encore val and lead Loaded Dice Tera Steel Iron Head garchomp to own this structure. Swords Dance -> Scale Shot makes you fast and kills glimmora instantly, also it's really funny
I know that viability rankings don't mean much without context, but Spectrier is literally better than Darkrai in Ubers UU. Again that doesn't mean much, but Spectrier is a much better pokemon despite the movepool because it's just so much stronger and snowballs extremely quickly.
Calcs against ubers defensive skeledirge for context:
252 SpA Spectrier Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Skeledirge: 360-426 (87.3 - 103.3%) -- 18.8% chance to OHKO
252 SpA Darkrai Dark Pulse vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Skeledirge: 342-404 (83 - 98%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
(note that both guaranteed ohko with life orb)
I am of the opinion that Darkrai should not drop, but I'm also bad at the game. Spectrier dropping would be a genuine misstep even if Darkrai turns out to be fine.
Also, my brother in christ
You joined in 2012 there's no shot you're this ignorant about Spectrier
Last edited:
This is a double post (cringe!) but I don't want to distract from the points in my previous post with my own personal skill issues. I'm an advocate of Mirror Coat Milotic as a special wall for more offensive oriented teams, but I have an issue where I forget that Dark types are immune to Mirror Coat because of how different Mirror Coat is as a move compared to other attacks. How do I ingrain this into my head that I can't actually click Mirror Coat against a Dark type special attacker?
I guess same way you ingrained that prankster moves don't affect dark types.
You can't exactly Counter a Ghost type can you now? Now, Dark-Ghost is amazing typing sure. But is Sableye and Spiritomb OU caliber? Absolutely not.
Darkrai on the other hand is... uuum... I don't think it's THAT strong? It's damage source isn't only Life Orb sure, but those tournament games suggest otherwise. I'm sure Trick Scarfrai would be used as like some Stallkiller with Psyshock Trick NP and filler (and tera Psychic to boost dat Psyshock) or like Choice Specs. But I genuinely don't think Darkrai would be too broken. Something else I wana touch on:
Yes obviously previous Ubers pokemon are kinda meh right now, but the power creep of this gen is also counterintuitive to dropping any Ubers. How does Darkrai help the metagame? Does it counter Gholdengo? Would this mean that Gholdengo is the real problem and Darkrai is only a way to not ban Gholdengo? It's stuff like this that one needs to consider when any Ubers pokemon is down in OU. It may be OU later, but unfortunately, we can't drop any Ubers to OU until DLC 2.
Bold of you to assume I still don't have problems with this too whenever it comes up lol
I think something else to consider is that the players in this tournament prepared for darkrai with their team building. It reminds me of when Adventure Phantom Knights was a top deck for a long time in the Yu-Gi-Oh! OCG and then failed almost completely to convert in the TCG because players prepared for the matchup in advance and also the deck kinda sucked actually.
Last edited:
Spectrier is straight up way better than Darkrai, besides like physical bulk and stronger coverage.
252+ Atk Choice Band Rillaboom Grassy Glide vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Darkrai in Grassy Terrain: 205-243 (72.9 - 86.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Grassy Terrain recovery
252+ Atk Choice Band Rillaboom Grassy Glide vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Spectrier in Grassy Terrain: 285-336 (83.5 - 98.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Grassy Terrain recovery
252 SpA Scovillain Flamethrower vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Darkrai: 141-166 (50.1 - 59%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Scovillain Flamethrower vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Spectrier: 154-183 (45.1 - 53.6%) -- 37.1% chance to 2HKO
Physical bulk it can compensate with Will-o-wisp too.
Spectrier also has better offenses obviously, a significantly better ability, and better typing. Spectrier’s problem before was that it had no movepool to speak of, and in Gen 9 was provided Drain Kiss and Tera Blast, which frankly is all it needed because Ghost offensively is really good, while Darkrai needs to choose Fighting and Poison and a whole bunch of other types depending on certain Pokemon like Clodsire or Zamazenta. Only other thing you could note is that Darkrai does handle Kingambit better, though you’ll often Tera Spectrier if you see Kingambit and can Will-o-wisp non-Fire variants.
Why are we trying to push Darkrai to OU?
People would rather sit here and discuss adding in more bullshit to ou then address issues intrinsic to it like Tera and Dengo lmfao man people are crazy.
So Triple Axel Weavile will be outclassed and we won't have to drop Gliscor from Ubers, obviously.
Thread derailed again
Gliscor is getting dropped no matter what. That ban is only temporary
The darkrai unban players still haven't seemed to grasp that the supposed positive qualities darkrai brings weavile brings to the table and more with actual ice stab and an equal speed tier this unban darkrai garbage is complete bull honestly every time the thread brings up unbanning an uber its complete bullshit. Stop talking about fucking darkrai and move on to the actual metagame for once
Nines posted three OUPL replays where Darkrai was legal and while it was showing itself to be a good mon, it wasn’t dominating teams like many have assumed. So some players argued that Darkrai may be balanced for the OU tier due to the massive power creep since it was locked away into Ubers and it may be worth testing in DLC2.
I will not say who I side with here but I will say the “we can’t test it cause it doesn’t benefit the tier defensively.” argument should not be used to not give anything a chance. Obviously we aren’t talking about testing Calyrex Shadow into OU, but stuff like Darkrai.
Despite not offering any defensive utility, Gen 7 unbanned Hoopa-U and Greninja while Gen 8 unbanned Blaziken.
So? they got new moves/support and become impossible to stop, got suspected or quickbanned. Gambit didn't get nothing new, he still has the same checks and counterplays that u had one year to develop and learn
Also bax was the next to be suspected if dlc 1 did not drop early september so "completely fine" makes me laugh
Congratulation you just discovered how the generational mechanic works in terms of teambuilding and gameplan
Yes the famous viable avest ttar, directly from gen 6 (now without pursuit) top 60 usage on ladder, totally similar to being checked by a pokemon like tusk or dozo both able to move to a gambit's check to a wincon with curse or bulk up
And never got really banned in the generation with most bans in the history lmao
It's the ou forum no one cares
We are talking about a considerable amount of good players not with bad opinions/being controversial on twitter but ALL of them voting what YOU think is the wrong option in a survey. Only the fact they care about the OU state is something remarkable, there are many tournament players with 10 posts who appear on smogon only for posting tour results. If you think the qualified playerbase is wrong also the council is wrong on cutting the votes in two (normal/qualified), maybe the problem for you isn't gambit but the smogon community
For me in the last survey the qualified playerbase is totally right on putting gambit at the same level of manaphy and oger water and first place sneasler (rip) and second dengo, so keep these awful takes for you.
Yes i am wrong, qualified voters are wrong and council is wrong are u happy now?
U got one suspect for gambit almost at end of the of the home metagame lifespan where it was at is peak and multiple surveys to see if gambit deserved a new suspect, failing every time
It's time to adapt since new pokemons are dropping with dlc and from ubers in 20 days
I mean, it's clear given what the council have said that no action on either Tera or Gholdengo is happening until DLC2 so what's the problem lmao
Mr. "600 stat legendary" is not one to talk about Ubers drops honestly.
Darkrai is dumb but quite honestly we're at an awkward time point where we can't talk about anything else related to OU. DLC 2 is dropping soon and there's just not gonna be any tiering action done (much to the chagrin of the kingambit haters). Tera adds a lot to the generation and the thread has been mostly in agreement that Gholdengo needs to Gholdengoaway but again, awkward time.
Have some individuals not acknowledged that discussing Dhengo Terra at this moment is somewhat pointless? My suggestion would be to ban Dhengo teams and implement a loophole" restriction/ban on Terra, considering the DLC mechanic.
Loophole = technically you could argue that it is a new mechanic thanks to the DLC
- - - - - - - -
My point is very simple: For me Pro-Dakrai observations show me things I do not agree with and with my Spectrier comparison I wanted to highlight its effect on OU if it should be legal.
I played competitively since like Gen 4 so weird that it was only 11 years ago but whatever, please understand I do not speak of ignorance I question why an obvious broke mon like Spectrier does not open people's eyes about Darkrai. For me they both have a similar niche. (I have not written same niche btw I said similar)
Loophole = technically you could argue that it is a new mechanic thanks to the DLC
- - - - - - - -
My point is very simple: For me Pro-Dakrai observations show me things I do not agree with and with my Spectrier comparison I wanted to highlight its effect on OU if it should be legal.
I played competitively since like Gen 4 so weird that it was only 11 years ago but whatever, please understand I do not speak of ignorance I question why an obvious broke mon like Spectrier does not open people's eyes about Darkrai. For me they both have a similar niche. (I have not written same niche btw I said similar)
- Status