it's kinda wild how this gen has made everyone collectively realize that dragon is still a really good offensive type. it never really came up as a topic when bax was running around, but tera dragon gouging has got people talking about tera dragon on garchomp and roaring moon and i've even heard people float the idea of trying it on dragonite or walking wake. we all thought dragon fell off after fairy was introduced but it turns out that being neutral or better against 16 of 18 types is a pretty solid matchup spread if your stab is strong enough
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Kyurem banned]
- Thread starter TPP
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I have not faced Nac or stall yet with it, but so far I have done fine with Tera Dragon on Pult. I think it's like any Tera Dragon mon where you want a team to compensate for the Fairies and such.
Yeah, but post Gen 6, I can't just sup on my glue and break my keyboard jamming Choiced Dracos/Outrages knowing it will always hit something. I have to be *ugh* cognisant of my opponent's team and what plays they might make.
I think part of the percieved downfall of the offensive Dragon has to do with the fact while they hit tons of stuff neutrally, they don't hit anything except Dragons for super effective damage which why nuclear options like Draco Meteor and Outrage were so pivotal pre Gen6. Once, Fairies dropped and can blank these kill buttons, having to rely on stuff like Dragon Pulse/Claw for consistent damage made the lack of super-effictive targets much more apparent. Though with the advent of Tera, it gives the Dragon STAB moves that extra kick to make it worth throwing around despite getting blocked by Fairies 'mons. Or in Gouge's case, you more or less can 1v1 almost every Fairy so why go ham and obliterate Tusk with a nuclear Outrage.
i think it's important to note that the absence of tapus in SV likely has something to do with tera dragon is (or was) more common as an offensive tera on pokes like baxcalibur and gouging fire. dragon is undeniably still a very good offensive type with or without the fairy type but the smaller quantity in fairies this gen helps it a lot
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I feel like this has more to do with all the great dragons we got this gen, absense of fairy types (especially tapus), and buffed scale shot due to loaded dice
I honestly wonder if Gouging and co. will ever have this as a concern, since knowing TPC, they'll want Future and Past Paradoxes to have parity in games they return for, and Tapu Koko alongside the Futures is a disaster waiting to happen for either format.
That said I agree that the absence of the Tapus is having a massive effect on SV OU, with Kingambit not having to deal with faster Sucker Punch resists that can hit it back decently hard (Fini and Koko neutral to Iron Head so not even quite safe to tank-and-STAB), plus a lack of prominence for the Terrains where even if it beat Lele, Psychic Terrain throws a major wrench in its playstyle and Fini could burn it on Flying with Scald. I always knew those 4 were major tier shapers (imagine Gen 5 Weather but on Pokemon that DO something besides set it) so it's kind of surreal seeing a Meta without them for a bit after so long.
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i don't think tapu koko + future paradoxes will be that busted tbh. like koko itself is an insanely cracked mon but the pokemon it enables with its electric terrain (besides MAYBE iron valiant) just aren't as insane as the pokemon enabled by the current sun setters in the metagame. and knowing game freak i highly doubt that game balance is their top priority, especially in regards to singles. i don't doubt that we'll be seeing them together in a future game, only reason why that wouldn't be the case is if the paradoxes & ruin legendaries are meant to be replacements for the tapus and UBs
As I always said, Tapus being non existant, protects the meta from chaos:
Lele is broken (should have been banned in Gen 8) and with Tera would be even more broken. Indeedee but actually good.
Bulu with Tera is a bulky SD sweeper that breaks everything slower, including Corv. Tera allows Bulu to remove the mediocre defensive typing.
Koko is a fast STAB Boltbeam Mon with Tera Ice that outspeeds everything... and Future Paradox Mons enabler at once.
Fini would have the positive effect of making Toxic Gliscor worse (Gliscor is the one defensive Mon whose nerf is a good thing). In exchange, it would also prey on defensive teams with cancerous CM + Taunt + Draining Kiss combination and also completely nulify Dondozo and other Restalk Mons with the Terrain, benefiting offensive teams a lot.
So no, I am pretty happy these Mons and the Ultrabeast are among the Dexited ones. In fact, if it was my way, I would Dexit almost every legendary Mon each Gen and undexit most normal ones.
Lele is broken (should have been banned in Gen 8) and with Tera would be even more broken. Indeedee but actually good.
Bulu with Tera is a bulky SD sweeper that breaks everything slower, including Corv. Tera allows Bulu to remove the mediocre defensive typing.
Koko is a fast STAB Boltbeam Mon with Tera Ice that outspeeds everything... and Future Paradox Mons enabler at once.
Fini would have the positive effect of making Toxic Gliscor worse (Gliscor is the one defensive Mon whose nerf is a good thing). In exchange, it would also prey on defensive teams with cancerous CM + Taunt + Draining Kiss combination and also completely nulify Dondozo and other Restalk Mons with the Terrain, benefiting offensive teams a lot.
So no, I am pretty happy these Mons and the Ultrabeast are among the Dexited ones. In fact, if it was my way, I would Dexit almost every legendary Mon each Gen and undexit most normal ones.
I don't think Bulu is that broken, given its reliant on tera and not-so-high speed and lack of priority move.
Same with Fini. Calm Mind Taunt Draining Kiss may be able to clap fatter teams, but I always think it's still pretty slow, so it may only be good against fatter teams, but not faster and more offensive teams.
Lele and Koko, no doubt, would be broken in gen 9.
i dunno, i can see plenty of potential for stuff to run wild with an actually good eterrain setter:
iron moth with boots and a speed boost every time it comes in means that forcing it out isn't nearly as beneficial as it is right now. being able to switch out more freely also lets moth come out more comfortably in the early game and run more pivot-y things—you might even see it with u-turn
you did mention this and you're 100% right. valiant would no longer have to make the sophie's choice between scarf and booster that it currently does, getting the best of both worlds by being able to switch freely and choose its attacks. one of valiant's greatest strengths is its unpredictability, and being able to free up the item slot on the over 90% of its sets that run booster or scarf (yes, it's actually over 90%) will make it a lot more stressful to face and will probably end up breaking it
crown is one of the breakout stars of dlc2, and a large part of that comes from the breaking power of its specs set. now imagine that with a free life orb boost on top of it (which lets it potentially 2hko blissey with focus blast without needing to tera) and an extra power boost to volt switch. if that's not scary enough for you, consider the potential of a specs set ev'd to provide a speed boost instead, sacrificing the raw breaking power but massively improving crown's matchup against offense. the av set also much appreciates a speed or power boost, and the rare but notable calm mind sets like being able to run, say, leftovers instead of booster energy
lmao just kidding this guy is mid as fuck
being able to viably use an item besides booster energy is a godsend for this thing. i doubt its existing sets would change too much besides the item, since its movepool is so shallow there's nothing it can really do besides be a setup sweeper, but the possibility of something like, i dunno, boots? lefties? expert belt? i'm sure something is out there that would make koko-supported boulder as busted as we thought regular boulder would be when its stats leaked
this one is broken already
a boost to its base 140 attack and its electric stab would make iron hands a terrifying breaker or sweeper even though all non-signature physical electric moves are garbage. banded or sd supercell slam will 2hko just about anything that isn't ground and you can dispatch those pretty easily with a well-placed ice punch. alternatively, you can ev it for defense to boost its dondozo-level physical bulk to sky-high levels and run electric seed to boost it even more (this isn't shitposting, its most common set right now is grassy seed), making it a virtually unbreakable physical wall that can still throw out some pretty devastating terrain-boosted attacks. i'm not certain this would be broken in ou with tapu koko around, but it'd sure as hell make itself viable
ok now hear me out-
i dunno, i can see plenty of potential for stuff to run wild with an actually good eterrain setter:
i have a hard time seeing how iron moth and especially iron crown would be busted regardless of the available electric terrain setters, the former still has crippling 4MSS and struggles to make any progress vs common defensive cores and the latter is surprisingly well-balanced, even with a quark drive boost i doubt it would cause any serious problems for the tier. iron valiant could potentially be a problem if being able to run life orb messes with its defensive counterplay but the others would be, for the most part, perfectly fine even if tapu koko were in the game
They might be fine, but Koko itself is very strong. The combination of all of them won,t be fine, but at the same time tiering will be quite slow to determine which of them should be banned first, leading to a shitty meta for a long time.
I don't know enough about playing Crown, but for Moth, you'd be looking at it essentially having its Booster Energy set multiple times throughout the game, which heavily mitigates the mentioned struggles with Defensive Cores since being stopped by them doesn't cost it nearly as much AND it would be able to run something like the mentioned Heavy Duty Boots to further mitigate penalty for switching out. This on top of the synergy it has with a mon like Koko to begin with providing it easy pivoting and frying Water Types for example. The primary theme I sus out is that the fast Paradoxes would be the most concerning since Koko actually DOES something on the offensive styles they play to, with the setter... doing something being the big distinguisher between this scenario and our current Sun (Ninetales is given Sun value for being able to provide a heal/safe-switch ONCE using Healing Wish).
Back on topic to SV briefly, does anyone find it odd how few Fairies seem to exist that play well in OU, Tera users excluded? We basically just have Primarina, Enamorus,Tinkaton, and Iron Valiant in the A ranks, and then Clefable and co. as more team specific options. Aside from the above dexiting, did the Fairies get hit with power creep or do we chalk this more up to a bunch of tier big wigs that just don't care about them like Crown, Treads, Ghold, and King?
I think tera pushes it firmly into broken territory, as when you account for tera stab and a plus 1 attack proto boost its kinda dumb.
But not upset that it's going honestly because this mon isn't healthy really
Also I highly doubt koko would be broken if it was gen 9. In a gen 9 setting it would be an insane enabler though
Only tapu I see being broken in a gen 9 setting is lele and that is for the sole reason that tera ground and tera fire lets it terrorize steels more easily and stab tera makes it pretty nuclear
SS had 4 fairies in A ranks too, so we are not that much different. Also, if Waterpon is banned, I expected Azumarill to go up, its a very good Mon outside of Waterpon and Dondozo match-up. Also, despite not being A rank, we have Ribombee, Hatterene and Weezing too as viable options, so we are not low on fairies at all.
clefable got nerfed pretty hard, megas are still gone, tapus got dexited, magearna got banned, and besides iron valiant a lot of the fairies that came to take their place just weren't that good when any of the pokemon mentioned above were top tier threats. ribombee is just an HO lead, primarina was outclassed hard by tapu fini in previous gens, hatterene wasn't bad last gen but i don't think it was particularly common, and while there isn't any precedent for this i doubt enamorus would see much use with more powerful fairy types in the metagame
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if it counts it does coexist in natdex and, yeah, its just not good there
I don't know why the topic of Koko in this tier comes up once in a while as if it would snap the tier in two. It really wouldn't.
As for Fairies in this tier,
Actually a fair bit to do with powercreep actually, as well as some mechanics changes. There never were that many fairies in OU to begin with (gen7 was the peak of fairies in OU). This gen most of the fairies introduced were frailer offensive threats, while we don't really have good defensive ones outside Clefable and Primarina. Tinkaton is good, but meant more for offense as a temporary stopgap for big threats that brings strong utility. A bigger issue is many Dragons you'd want to check with fairies, tend to be too strong and have coverage to bypass them either secondary stab or powerful moves like Roaring Moon's EQ/Acro for example. A lot of Dragons this gen are also super fat on top of being strong and capable of set up, so many defensive fairies struggle to keep them in check long enough.
Beyond that, this gen has been basically heaven for Poison types. Galar Slowking is the most obvious, but Iron Moth and Glimmora are there too, as is Clodsire, and the many lower tier Poison types like Fez that get used sometimes. This on top of many great fairy resistant steels just makes it easier to answer fairies.
As for Fairies in this tier,
Actually a fair bit to do with powercreep actually, as well as some mechanics changes. There never were that many fairies in OU to begin with (gen7 was the peak of fairies in OU). This gen most of the fairies introduced were frailer offensive threats, while we don't really have good defensive ones outside Clefable and Primarina. Tinkaton is good, but meant more for offense as a temporary stopgap for big threats that brings strong utility. A bigger issue is many Dragons you'd want to check with fairies, tend to be too strong and have coverage to bypass them either secondary stab or powerful moves like Roaring Moon's EQ/Acro for example. A lot of Dragons this gen are also super fat on top of being strong and capable of set up, so many defensive fairies struggle to keep them in check long enough.
Beyond that, this gen has been basically heaven for Poison types. Galar Slowking is the most obvious, but Iron Moth and Glimmora are there too, as is Clodsire, and the many lower tier Poison types like Fez that get used sometimes. This on top of many great fairy resistant steels just makes it easier to answer fairies.
For all the positives that Dragons have in SV, that fact that pocket Tera Fairy is extremely common makes it lowkey annoying for Dragons to use their main moves. You can justify Tera Fairy on anything, from Dengo, Gambit, Gouging, Bolt, Lando-T, Great Tusk, Garg, etc. Dragon-types still benefit overall since the Tapus were extremely common, metagame defining Pokemon that you often ran multiple of on a team last gen, but the upgrade to Dragons in a Tera metagame arguably aren't as impactful, given this dilemma. One thing to note is that most Dragons commonly run Fairy as their defensive Tera, making it a big of a gamble to even click your Dragon-moves against them. On the flipside, while Tera Fairy is massively impactful against Dragons, its also a big committment play compared to running Tapu Fini or Koko, which usually pays off, but not always.
How can you figure? We have already seen what BE + Tera can do in this gen. Electric Terrain gives a similar boost to Electric type moves and that's before even factoring items. These Electric moves would be nukes. Bolt and like half the OU Ground types are weak to Fairy STAB. The rest and Grass types can be U-turned on or maybe hit by Flying coverage. Plus, you don't know the set because Koko has a huge variety. It can be physical, special, mixed, screens, support, etc. You cannot account for everything it can do in the builder. Let alone pairing it with other mons you can't account for everything with.
There are exactly 3 non-boosted OU mons with a faster speed tier than Koko. D-speed, Pult, and Zama. And at that, Zama often doesn't run full speed. Koko resists Body Press and Crunch while being neutral to Heavy Slam. It also has matchup things it can do to Pult and D-speed because of the Fairy typing and U-turn. You could bring up Quark Drive mons like Moth and Valiant as a counter, but I wouldn't because most Koko teams will be built with Quark Drive in mind from the get go. Rillabom would be the main obstacle, I'd think.
It is too fast, has too many potential sets, too much combined damage multipliers, and too much synergy with other mons. I really don't see how it wouldn't be OP.
Some reminders for people worrying that e-terrain teams might become too much with an actually good enabler (gonna touch that one towards the end):
- The ground weakness is MASSIVE. No but seriously, look at the full list of future paradox mons (as well as mons like raging bolt). Now tell me how many of them AREN'T weak to ground. Your options are iron bundle (rip), iron jugulis (without rain, its stab hurricane is simply not what you'd want it to be, and your next best flying stab option is...air slash...), and iron leaves (its typing effectively had the mon be dead on arrival, which is a shame because it's this close to being potentially usable, but...yeah it's a real showcase of how psychic's arguably worse than ice to have as a typing defensively (iron crown's an exception to this statement, not the rule); there's also iron valiant but it can only really take 1 unboosted ground type attack. But yeah uh...good luck covering that awful weakness otherwise, especially with all the ground types roaming around (you can offensively overpower most of them first, but if you end up on the backfoot somehow then...good luck!)
- For iron valiant in particular, despite the scary prospects of a free item slot, the mon's core issue -the inability to cover any and every thing in 1 set- is still very much a problem. Simply put, you cannot put enough moves and evs onto the mon to cover everything (though the pool of mons it can potentially cover increases by a solid amount with the right set/item), and the freed up item slot isn't going to suddenly make this statement false.
- The rest of the future paradox mons are also not super impacted by things; people cite moth being able to run boots, but in a playstyle like e-terrain you don't really want/need to switch in and out that often (though koko would provide pivoting support, which I suppose can help on that regard); iron treads being able to run air balloon turns it into a MUCH better pokemon overall, but it still has its usual host of issues holding it back (while also gaining a near-fatal new one: the inability to use ice spinner without ruining everything; this is esp notable since treads doesn't really ohko any of ice spinner's targets with only 1 use of the move). Iron moth/jugulis can use power herb meteor beam to gain newfound access to a strong coverage move that additionally aids their sweeping potential, but they're still not breaking past fatties like even ting lu, much less blissey, and are also just, really commital in their roles still. Iron hands can become a much more potent tank/breaker -especially with terrain/quark drive boosted supercell slam outright dunking many offensive mons in 1 hit- but it's still fairly reactive due to its slowness/move choices dilemma (scell slam can be fatal if it crashes, but it reaches dmg levels wild charge simply fails to; drain punch is good for sustain/reliability but also with mid base power/doesn't heal that much due to the mon's titanic hp stat; ice punch just has mid bp in the first place). Iron crown can reach silly damage levels with specs+quark drive -especially with tera steel- but that's not really gonna stop it from getting overran by boosted offensive threats that crack it open with eq and move on with their lives. Raging bolt can use its strongest possible electric stab option, but it changes nothing about the dynamics of the mon vs ground types; I could go on and on but it's really late in here and I think the point's gotten across by now.
- Would koko itself make them that much better/be broken on its own? Well its ability to grass knot/tera blast ice most grounds would certainly be most welcome, as would be its ability to pivot with volt switch/u turn. It's also really fast, helping out vs mons like darkrai, and tera can let it explore stuff like physical tera blast off its actually higher attack stat. Still, it being another ground weakness for the playstyle would certainly not help matters, as wouldn't the inability to contend with stuff like rain barraskewda, proto speed wake in sun, etc. Ultimately though, in such a wild, unpredictable and volatile meta with tons of similarly statted mons, it's really hard to say for sure; it would certainly leave an impact in the tier itself though, and considering its surrounding cast with newfound access to options not really possible to explore before would certainly shed a new light onto said mons, but really it's just theorymon with no evidence to point out towards anything in specific.
Playing tiers where they are legal together? Natdex, while nowhere near a 1to1, is a glimpse of what it's like. We've seen what BE + Tera can do, and outside Gouging Fire and maybe Roaring Moon, nothing else was really broken with the combo. We have no borderline E-Terrain mons at all (Valiant hasn't been anywhere near broken since pre-home and Iron Crown is a great, but very balanced pokemon while Moth isn't anywhere near an issue either). Koko's electric moves without a boosting item just don't hit that hard into defense, and offense has ways around it (Iron Crown literally stuffs it, and abuses its terrain to use against it). Also mixed/physical are not sets. Please don't. You don't need to go out of your way because it's just good, not that insane. Zama legit can easily tech speed to outpace and beat Koko longterm. Boosted Body Press easily breaks it down (+2 BP 2HKOs offensive Koko).
Regarding the "opposing quark mons don't work as answers"... just not true at all. You're not gonna argue that koko standalone is a broken offensive threat with Tera (it's not even close), and as an enabler it's just good. You can't argue that it has too many sets, because the only "dangerous" sets would be specs. Boots attackers aren't THAT strong, screens are just an alternative (not even the best) to screens Deo-S, and what are support sets gonna do? They're not breaking things either. Yes it's versatile but it's not breaking anything in that versatility at all or anywhere close to it.
Exactly. Iron Bundle and Flutter Mane didn't need Booster Energy to be broken, so the combination of Booster Energy + Tera doesn't really scream broken since it's only really broken on Gouging Fire and maybe Roaring Moon.
Aside from allowing Iron Valiant or Iron Moth to run powerful Specs sets while boosting Speed (which aren't necessarily broken), I don't see Tapu Koko causing a huge number of mons to get banned.
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The initial issue with the Dragon type likely stemmed from Game Freak’s early approach of associating Dragon-types with Flying, positioning them as the most offensively dominant. They seemed to equate 'Dragon' with 'it flies,' but this logic falters when considering threats like Ice-types (e.g., Weavile) and the coverage moves even other Dragon-types can utilize against them. Dragon-types tend to work better with standard elemental combinations like Fire or Water, as these provide better resistances and more reliable STAB coverage
Wow. This is way too much to address. I'll start with this. Although I don't play a ton of Nat Dex, you have to keep in mind the options in Nat dex to deal with it are greater both in mons and movepool. I don't think it's close to the same. Like, they banned Ghold in Nat Dex but not OU. In OU, hazards are sticky and we keep banning mons because teams are being stretched thin in the builder, among other things.
Another thing you might notice with OU is a general lack of fast Electric types. It is mostly Bolt and the occasional Zapdos. Jolteon is too weak to be more than very niche and Regieleki is banned. If Regieleki was ever unbanned, that would be another issue to consider with Koko.
And with a boosting item? That's the problem. Or one of them. Set diversity being another.
And before you say mixed sets can't work again, I'm calling cap on that. I see no reason why you can't carry Wild Charge, Thunderbolt, or maybe even Electroball (more debatable) on some sort of mixed set that has mostly moves from the other spectrum. If they don't already exist, I'm pretty sure one could be made.
You often don't need quite the same raw power on mixed because a lot of walls stray towards one or the other. It's also possible to sacrifice a bit of speed if you are focused on just wallbreaking. There are also set up moves like Agility and Calm Mind to make up for it. E-seed + CM could probably run something like Acro/Thunderbolt/Tera Blast. In one turn, you would be +1 in 3 stats and nobody would see it coming. Honestly, I would go on further if that was relevant to the tier. But the insinuation that mixed sets cannot work seems close minded at best.
Sure, but you resist BP and, if we are playing the counter set game, can run items like Choice Specs or Electric Seed. Zama isn't going to want to trade damage from Dazzling Gleam or maybe even Acrobatics without Tera Steel or something. And you certainly aren't going to want to do that before you are even set up. Zama can't come in on Koko and just set up very often.
This seems to assume Zama came in on something else and set up prior over the course of an entire game. All this really says is Koko isn't the best RKer for Zama. Not that Zama is going to stop it from doing its thing that much.
I'll admit I glossed over this first part, but Koko is a pivot. Or at least tends to have pivoting moves. Teams with it are generally going to be very good at gaining momentum. These Quark Drive mons as counters to Tapu Koko would be anti-leading or attempting to RK most of the time. Almost none of them are going to want to risk coming in on an Electric move or U-turn into something that deals with them. I also feel like Koko could just straight up win the exchange against Valiant in a turn even if it was out sped, unless Valiant decided to Tera. Koko KOs and Valiant doesn't.
Thinking about the actual OU tier, mons like Valiant and Moth are already top tier without the benefit of E-Terrain. And it has already pointed out how some others could be good in OU.
As far as other sets, I don't know why you seem to think Specs is the only viable damage multiplier item to ever run on it. You could run Choice Band with U-turn, which goes off the same Attack stat as Gouging Fire by the way. You could run other damage multiplier items like Magnet, Expert Belt, and Life Orb. Something like Expert Belt with TB could be particularly devastating considering Ice is super effective to like every Electric resist. Even something gimmicky like Swagger/Mirror Herb is a potential option. Do Nat Dex players lack creativity or something these days? Not a snarky remark. I'm legitimately asking since I don't know.
This seems really silly.
Boots attackers aren't THAT strong? Then don't run boots. Run hazard control and an item for damage. Problem solved. Treads is even a Quark Drive mon and Koko can pop Air Balloon Ghold for it.
Screens are just an alternative to D-speed? You mean with Electric Terrain support? Isn't that entirely different? If you are talking about Koko as an enabler, isn't this something that should be considered? Screens + Electric Terrain on Koko is arguably bigger than Screens + Snow from A-tails is for Cetitan considering all the Quark Drive mons.
What is a support gonna do? I don't know, maybe run some moves like Taunt, Defog, T-wave, Toxic, and/or U-turn? I don't know if Koko would get Defog in S/V, but it has it in Nat Dex. And you keep trying to use Nat Dex as an example for OU.
The problem with versatility is that it can require different things. If you are worried about specs and get band, you might be losing a mon. If you are worried about offensive Koko and get screens, maybe it sets up 1 or 2 screen and U-turns into some Quark Drive mon your team can't deal with as well. And if you are worried about different coverages, expecting one set can get you blindsided by another.
Even if you think everything is good yet not too much, the emergence of even one set being so could make all that versatility far more problematic. But in Koko's case, that doesn't just go for it but any mon it potentially enables.