Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Volcarona Banned]

wait, hang on. didn't you want rillaboom and stored power banned in dlc1 because they made stall "unviable"? you even compared rillaboom to chi-yu. but now you're perfectly fine with a mon that's actually comparable in damage output to chi-yu and 6-0s stall on preview? your mind is very interesting
Idk what you're talking about stall has a way harder time dealing with rillaboom and stored power than Arch. Blissey literally 1v1s without body press and they've still a solid check in clodsire even if blissey goes down for some reason. Boom's grassy surge gives your team greater longevity, it has knock to be a nuisance and if corv goes down, you can just hit forfeit because not even skeledirge checks it well:
252+ Atk Choice Band Rillaboom Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Skeledirge: 340-400 (82.7 - 97.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Grassy Terrain recovery
Stored power is even harder to play around because it still requires a good tera dark mon and aggressive play b/c blissey, your dedicated special wall, does not win the 1v1 vs hatterene, the best user of the move, with draining kiss.
 
Idk what you're talking about stall has a way harder time dealing with rillaboom and stored power than Arch. Blissey literally 1v1s without body press and they've still a solid check in clodsire even if blissey goes down for some reason. Boom's grassy surge gives your team greater longevity, it has knock to be a nuisance and if corv goes down, you can just hit forfeit because not even skeledirge checks it well:
252+ Atk Choice Band Rillaboom Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Skeledirge: 340-400 (82.7 - 97.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Grassy Terrain recovery
Stored power is even harder to play around because it still requires a good tera dark mon and aggressive play b/c blissey, your dedicated special wall, does not win the 1v1 vs hatterene, the best user of the move, with draining kiss.
dawg it was about gouging fire, arch never even entered into the conversation
 
I think Archaludon stands out very blatantly in the context of Rain teams. It snowballs out of control to a crazy extent due to great strength and durability without many checks/counters.
Yes. Been wondering why more folks haven’t come to the conclusion yet. I see Barraskewda and Pelipper complaints as if Arch isn’t the problematic mon. We’ve seen Gen 9 rain before Arch…. (It wasn’t good)
 
what’s your reasoning behind it not being broken? Interested to hear your thoughts. There are so few checks in rain, I have trouble believing it’s not problematic. It’s so difficult to switch in and out of without taking huge chip.
before i lay out my opinion, i will admit that in rain archaludon is extremely strong, very snowbally, and often trades for at least one mon. the thing holding it back from being broken in my eyes (and this opinion is liable to change) is that it's heavily dependent on rain to actually be that good. unlike something like gouging fire, who can force similar trades with out-of-weather sets too, archaludon really needs those electro shots to get to that scary-strong level, and it really needs that rain for those electro shots. also, when i play arch i feel like i still have to actually play the game to get mileage out of it, as opposed to gouging fire or roaring moon or kyurem, where i can basically just click buttons
 
Idk what you're talking about stall has a way harder time dealing with rillaboom and stored power than Arch. Blissey literally 1v1s without body press and they've still a solid check in clodsire even if blissey goes down for some reason. Boom's grassy surge gives your team greater longevity, it has knock to be a nuisance and if corv goes down, you can just hit forfeit because not even skeledirge checks it well:
252+ Atk Choice Band Rillaboom Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Skeledirge: 340-400 (82.7 - 97.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Grassy Terrain recovery
Stored power is even harder to play around because it still requires a good tera dark mon and aggressive play b/c blissey, your dedicated special wall, does not win the 1v1 vs hatterene, the best user of the move, with draining kiss.
Eh it does and it doesn't, arch restricts stall in the builder by forcing Clodsire (Blissey isn't a reliable answer bc they're almost always Press) which deals with arch without much issue in battle but that builder restriction hurts the archetype by making "ideal" Pokémon like Pex less reasonable to bring to battle, basically claims a slot. Clod at least contributes to the team and helps a lot with nasty matchups like Ghold and stored power (steel actually works fine too, not just dark.) I don't love racing SP users with Blissey so Teraing amnesia clod is generally better, challenge is if they have something else that requires Tera like Wellspring then you kinda just can't respond to everything at once. The rilla problem is that you either have to run Corv, a mon i dont love that has other opportunity costs, or leave things up to chance with Talonflame (usually works out at the expense of talon's life if u keep roosting, which is a worthwhile trade)
 
on the fence about arch currently since I do think it has reasonable, albeit shallow counterplay (and is really only good in rain, sorry) but it is undeniably the funniest fucking thing in the meta from a game design standpoint and I hope it sticks around. bro is singlehandedly keeping the spirit of weather wars alive with the dumbest zero IQ move of all time
 
Eh it does and it doesn't, arch restricts stall in the builder by forcing Clodsire (Blissey isn't a reliable answer bc they're almost always Press) which deals with arch without much issue in battle but that builder restriction hurts the archetype by making "ideal" Pokémon like Pex less reasonable to bring to battle, basically claims a slot. Clod at least contributes to the team and helps a lot with nasty matchups like Ghold and stored power (steel actually works fine too, not just dark.) I don't love racing SP users with Blissey so Teraing amnesia clod is generally better, challenge is if they have something else that requires Tera like Wellspring then you kinda just can't respond to everything at once. The rilla problem is that you either have to run Corv, a mon i dont love that has other opportunity costs, or leave things up to chance with Talonflame (usually works out at the expense of talon's life if u keep roosting, which is a worthwhile trade)
Try Tera psychic Clodsire, I have run into that on ladder and it basically walled most of my team.
 
Try Tera psychic Clodsire, I have run into that on ladder and it basically walled most of my team.
Why? I'd rather go with the psychic resist that isn't goobed by the ever present ghost and dark moves. Dark is immune to psychic but can be poisoned. Steel resists and has the poison immunity. Psychic just seems like the worst of both worlds, no immunities and nasty weaknesses
 
Why? I'd rather go with the psychic resist that isn't goobed by the ever present ghost and dark moves. Dark is immune to psychic but can be poisoned. Steel resists and has the poison immunity. Psychic just seems like the worst of both worlds, no immunities and nasty weaknesses
Oh I know, it's just a funny tera type that I actually struggle against because you keep the fighting resistance, which is pretty amazing. I think it was because I was running a rain team and my main stall breaker was keldeo, which couldn't hurt it that hard.
You are probably right, but its something that I find funny.
 
Barraskewda has 700+ Speed under rain, is spamming a 382.5 BP Liquidations + 270 BP Flip turns under Rain (factoring Tera + STAB + CB), forcing mons like GAMBIT into 50 / 50s with Aqua Jet, and somehow Archie is the problem? Its gotten so bad, that I am seeing players counterplay Barra by sacking their Volcarona and hoping Flame Body Procs. Archie is merely profitting off of the unhealthy effect of Barraskewda forcing mons like poor gliscor and Lando-T into clicking Tera Water / Dragon, which Arch (AND BOLT) both can take advantage of.

IMO we should be targeting the mons that get a free shift gear boost in rain, or the playstyle as a whole before we target honest archie. A Damp Rock ban or Drizzle ban should also be in the cards. Raging Bolt is another mon that should be looked at considering it is quite difficult to account for in the builder and it particularly potent in Rain, where even Ting-Lu isn't a reliable check.
 
before i lay out my opinion, i will admit that in rain archaludon is extremely strong, very snowbally, and often trades for at least one mon. the thing holding it back from being broken in my eyes (and this opinion is liable to change) is that it's heavily dependent on rain to actually be that good. unlike something like gouging fire, who can force similar trades with out-of-weather sets too, archaludon really needs those electro shots to get to that scary-strong level, and it really needs that rain for those electro shots. also, when i play arch i feel like i still have to actually play the game to get mileage out of it, as opposed to gouging fire or roaring moon or kyurem, where i can basically just click buttons
on the fence about arch currently since I do think it has reasonable, albeit shallow counterplay (and is really only good in rain, sorry) but it is undeniably the funniest fucking thing in the meta from a game design standpoint and I hope it sticks around. bro is singlehandedly keeping the spirit of weather wars alive with the dumbest zero IQ move of all time
I'm sorry did I wake up in a bizarro world where instead of tiering based on a Pokémon's most viable set, we factor in suboptimal sets as well? Why would Arch outside of rain matter AT ALL for tiering action? It's not like rainless Arch is a remotely important consideration; the amount of effort it takes to set up rain is very close to zero. Archaludon, with the support of skewda and Pelipper, has an 87.50% winrate is tournament. Let's start there. Or maybe we free Magearna so I can use it as a spikes lead? After all it's just the stored power set that's broken - DNB!
 
Barraskewda has 700+ Speed under rain, is spamming a 382.5 BP Liquidations + 270 BP Flip turns under Rain (factoring Tera + STAB + CB), forcing mons like GAMBIT into 50 / 50s with Aqua Jet, and somehow Archie is the problem? Its gotten so bad, that I am seeing players counterplay Barra by sacking their Volcarona and hoping Flame Body Procs. Archie is merely profitting off of the unhealthy effect of Barraskewda forcing mons like poor gliscor and Lando-T into clicking Tera Water / Dragon, which Arch (AND BOLT) both can take advantage of.

IMO we should be targeting the mons that get a free shift gear boost in rain, or the playstyle as a whole before we target honest archie. A Damp Rock ban or Drizzle ban should also be in the cards. Raging Bolt is another mon that should be looked at considering it is quite difficult to account for in the builder.
I get that arch may seem like the problem, but barra is so unbelievably stupid that I can't explain otherwise. You have to run a choice scarf, max speed evs and timid nature deoxys speed to outspeed it naturally under rain. That is so insanely fast, plus it has power for days. You either have to 1. Be a resist with great bulk or 2. Have a quad-resistance, which is limited to wake and hydrapple or 3. Have an immunity, which is really only ogerpon. When people say arch restricts counterplay, barra does that too. You can't just say that arch is a problem because rain wasn't a problem in DLC1, the influx of dragons reduced ogerpon's viability and IMO, people should have explored rain more such as poison jab barra.
Damp rock should be banned, because having to deal with both for 7 turns is so stupid, I've run into non-damp rock pellipers and they have been fine.
 
Barraskewda has 700+ Speed under rain, is spamming a 382.5 BP Liquidations + 270 BP Flip turns under Rain (factoring Tera + STAB + CB), forcing mons like GAMBIT into 50 / 50s with Aqua Jet, and somehow Archie is the problem?
Yes, Arch is the 100% the problem. Rain has never been problematic in Gen 9 until Arch. Barraskewda (and the other Swift Swimmers) has counterplay and is downright bad vs. certain cores. And we’re really mentioning a mon forcing 50/50s on Gambit? It’s both ironic and funny, because Barraskewda doesn’t survive any priority whatsoever.
 

Ehmcee

A Spoopy Ghost
is a Pre-Contributor
Y'all are not seriously comparing Archaludon and Barraskewda.

One is countered by like 3 ground types, while there's a sleue of different ways to beat Barraskewda.

- :rillaboom:
- :raging_bolt:
- :dragonite:
- :archaludon:
- :ogerpon-wellspring:
- :walking_wake:
- :hydrapple:
- :sinistcha:
- :dondozo:

Tera water / Dragon on pretty much any physdef mon

These are all mons that take CB liquidations well and threaten a revenge kill back, or are not 3hko'd. If you're letting Barra flip turn all over your team, you should be keeping hazards up, i think it's ridiculous to imply that the counterplay to either of these two is remotely similar. Rain is pretty much the most telegraphed playstyle in the game right now, you should not be letting barraskewda enter for free if you're at a risk of an ohko, and if so you should have one of these mons to compensate.
 

Finchinator

-OUTL
is a Tournament Directoris a Top Social Media Contributoris a Community Leaderis a Community Contributoris a Smogon Discord Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributoris a Contributor to Smogonis a Top Smogon Media Contributoris a Top Dedicated Tournament Hostis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnusis a Past WCoP Championis the defending OU Circuit Championis a Two-Time Former Old Generation Tournament Circuit Champion
OU Leader
Barraskewda has 700+ Speed under rain, is spamming a 382.5 BP Liquidations + 270 BP Flip turns under Rain (factoring Tera + STAB + CB), forcing mons like GAMBIT into 50 / 50s with Aqua Jet, and somehow Archie is the problem? Its gotten so bad, that I am seeing players counterplay Barra by sacking their Volcarona and hoping Flame Body Procs. Archie is merely profitting off of the unhealthy effect of Barraskewda forcing mons like poor gliscor and Lando-T into clicking Tera Water / Dragon, which Arch (AND BOLT) both can take advantage of.

IMO we should be targeting the mons that get a free shift gear boost in rain, or the playstyle as a whole before we target honest archie. A Damp Rock ban or Drizzle ban should also be in the cards. Raging Bolt is another mon that should be looked at considering it is quite difficult to account for in the builder and it particularly potent in Rain, where even Ting-Lu isn't a reliable check.
I disagree profusely with this post.

Skewda is annoying and strong, but it is by no means broken. There are plenty of durable Water resists, Water immunities, and so on. And there are also Pokemon that function as near carbon copies of it, but with less speed, would it go.

Archaludon has virtually no defensive counterplay aside from Clodsire and carefully crafted cores of 2-3 defensive options.

And you don’t have enough evidence to ban Damp Rock/Drizzle right now; that’s a non-starter from a tiering POV right now.
 
We're already on the topic of Archaludon's "likely future" suspect before Kyurem's result (?)
This will be very close, and in the DNB case, it could be the third case where a 50% majority loses in this generation. (Terastal +/- 59% and Kingambit +/- 55%)
 
Y'all are not seriously comparing Archaludon and Barraskewda.

One is countered by like 3 ground types, while there's a sleue of different ways to beat Barraskewda.

- :rillaboom:
- :raging_bolt:
- :dragonite:
- :archaludon:
- :ogerpon-wellspring:
- :walking_wake:
- :hydrapple:
- :sinistcha:
- :dondozo:

Tera water / Dragon on pretty much any physdef mon

These are all mons that take CB liquidations well and threaten a revenge kill back, or are not 3hko'd. If you're letting Barra flip turn all over your team, you should be keeping hazards up, i think it's ridiculous to imply that the counterplay to either of these two is remotely similar. Rain is pretty much the most telegraphed playstyle in the game right now, you should not be letting barraskewda enter for free if you're at a risk of an ohko, and if so you should have one of these mons to compensate.
Okay, let's look at the counters.
Rillaboom: Great mon, but gets countered extremely hard by either raging bolt or arch.
Raging bolt: Probably the one of the best counter, but has issues with treads, which rain teams commonly run.
Dragonite: Get's countered by raging bolt and arch.
Archaludon: Only really used on rain teams, which also has to deal with treads, which can chip it down into barra range.
Ogerpon: Struggles a lot with raging bolt and Archaludon.
Walking wake: The best mon against rain, so I concede that.
Hydrapple: Already showed that it is great against barra, but struggles against arch and raging bolt.
Sinsitcha: Not really used that often, but struggles with arch and raging bolt.
Dondozo: Struggles with arch and raging bolt.
All of these mons are countered by common rain abusers, heck, none of these mons are the best against bolt, so you can't even say that it's arch.
Also, if you have to tera a mon, that is free opportunity for bolt or arch to respond.

I disagree profusely with this post.

Skewda is annoying and strong, but it is by no means broken. There are plenty of durable Water resists, Water immunities, and so on. And there are also Pokemon that function as near carbon copies of it, but with less speed, would it go.

Archaludon has virtually no defensive counterplay aside from Clodsire and carefully crafted cores of 2-3 defensive options.

And you don’t have enough evidence to ban Damp Rock/Drizzle right now; that’s a non-starter from a tiering POV right now.
I respectfully disagree, barra is so strong in rain, you have to be durable and have a resistance, which a lot of mons that fill that criteria are not the most splashable. Plus, no other mon can outspeed things like barra can, even scarf mons cannot outspeed it. Scarf mons are usually the way to deal with fast mons, and if it can outspeed them, then how are you going to offensively outplay it? Priority? Easily predictable because those mons use priority enough. Resists? Again, have to have sufficient bulk to take two liquadations. If arch is broken, then barra is broken, they can destroy most counters easily by people's definition of arch's counters. It's both mons that are a problem together.
 

Finchinator

-OUTL
is a Tournament Directoris a Top Social Media Contributoris a Community Leaderis a Community Contributoris a Smogon Discord Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributoris a Contributor to Smogonis a Top Smogon Media Contributoris a Top Dedicated Tournament Hostis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnusis a Past WCoP Championis the defending OU Circuit Championis a Two-Time Former Old Generation Tournament Circuit Champion
OU Leader
Okay, let's look at the counters.
Rillaboom: Great mon, but gets countered extremely hard by either raging bolt or arch.
Raging bolt: Probably the one of the best counter, but has issues with treads, which rain teams commonly run.
Dragonite: Get's countered by raging bolt and arch.
Archaludon: Only really used on rain teams, which also has to deal with treads, which can chip it down into barra range.
Ogerpon: Struggles a lot with raging bolt and Archaludon.
Walking wake: The best mon against rain, so I concede that.
Hydrapple: Already showed that it is great against barra, but struggles against arch and raging bolt.
Sinsitcha: Not really used that often, but struggles with arch and raging bolt.
Dondozo: Struggles with arch and raging bolt.
All of these mons are countered by common rain abusers, heck, none of these mons are the best against bolt, so you can't even say that it's arch.
Also, if you have to tera a mon, that is free opportunity for bolt or arch to respond.
This is all largely irrelevant; you just proved that there is ample counterplay to Barraskewda. You cannot just single it out because it has Flip Turn -- games are all about being able to assess risk, sequence, etc.

You cannot ban something because it being paired with Raging Bolt or Iron Treads is hard for single Pokemon -- users of these Pokemon have their own teammates and cores, too. This is the point of playing the actual game and trying to out-position the opponent to win.
 
The verdict of Kyurem is already pretty much locked; I am just waiting on one dude to vote despite checking the forums multiple times and being tagged on discord. Even if his vote flips from his initial stance for some reason, the remaining voters have been offline for multiple days, so I doubt they will change it.
In the case of inactivity, will the percentage of 60% be calculated on the total number of qualified candidates (128 x 60% = 76.8 = 77 votes for ban), or just the voters?
(Next time use the SQSA thread for this type of question, yes I know, sorry.)
 
Top