I would like to be able to play and team build more consistently, which has become basically impossible isince DLC2. I have hit 1800 a few times with teams I built, but those teams pretty immediately become obsolete with how rapidly the meta adapt and my elo plummets. As I said before, I think mid ladder and high ladder are vastly different (mid ladder being harder in someways), below 1500 HO/offense is still dominant and you can often lose on preview to some random Tera set up Mon you didn’t anticipate or hope you get some RNG before your opponent does. It often feels for teambuilding it’s throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall and hoping something sticks but just accepting you’ll be hopeless for certain matchups. It is what it is, but this meta is good for people who were already proficient players or good with HO.
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Gliscor suspect]
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I would like to be able to play and team build more consistently, which has become basically impossible isince DLC2. I have hit 1800 a few times with teams I built, but those teams pretty immediately become obsolete with how rapidly the meta adapt and my elo plummets. As I said before, I think mid ladder and high ladder are vastly different (mid ladder being harder in someways), below 1500 HO/offense is still dominant and you can often lose on preview to some random Tera set up Mon you didn’t anticipate or hope you get some RNG before your opponent does. It often feels for teambuilding it’s throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall and hoping something sticks but just accepting you’ll be hopeless for certain matchups. It is what it is, but this meta is good for people who were already proficient players or good with HO.
If you’re wondering why I haven’t been posting as much high-quality content lately, its because my enjoyment for the tier has lowered.
Reason 1: Matchup Fishing
My main issue with the tier is its matchup fishy nature. Throughout my experience fighting some of the best players on the ladder, I find that for like 55% to 70%, the game is decided on matchups. In this gen its never been easier to 6-0 teams with just a single mon.
Here’s an example.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2128398664?p2
In theory, my opponent’s team has multiple counter measures to Moth, the main one being Future Sight Gking and Sucker Samu, but then I just reveal Tera Dark and it was just over. They may have just preserved their Garg, but there was no telling if it was Tera Dark or the standard Tera Ground.
Surprise tech has always been a thing, but in Gen 9, you could outright lose the game because of it. I’ve even ran into someone using Scarf or Sash Cinderace, just to fuck with Treads leads and Boosters. No reason to run it over ol’ reliable Boots unless you specifically were fishing for HO teams.
There’s something off about it and I couldn’t pinpoint the exact reason why the tier is matchup fishy. The Volc ban eased things but Gen 9 OU still feels like a game of Rock Paper Scissors eerily similar to Gen 5 among other similarities it has with the tier. While it is possible to account for multiple matchups, we run into the next problem with the tier.
Reason 2: Building Difficulty
Teambuilding is always a difficult process of making, testing, and revamping, but SV OU is imo the most difficult to build in. The tier has several fantastic glue mons like Zama, Gambit, Pult, Gking, etc, but with the amount of threats in the tier, it feels difficult to make the most of your slots.
Unless you’re running Stall, HO, or Weather. Most good SV OU teams need to have..
A breaker
Something speedy
Priority cause not having it screws you over most of the time
A rocker
A knock user cause then Boots Spam rolls over you
A Ghost resist cause Pult/Ghold will make your day miserable
A Steel cause Kyurem will ruin you
1 or more pivots cause it makes your life easier
An Electric immune cause Bolt
A Ground immune cause Earthquake and HLR are spooky
A Fairy check
A Wogre check
A Fire resist cause otherwise Cinderace clicks Pyro for free
A way to deal with Tspikes cause of Glimmora
And make sure you have a check to the rest
View attachment 636960View attachment 636961View attachment 636962View attachment 636963View attachment 636964View attachment 636965View attachment 636966View attachment 636967View attachment 636968View attachment 636969View attachment 636970etc
Oh and if you’re not running Boots spam, HO, or BO, you need hazard control cause you might get 6-0d by Webs.
This doesn’t seem all bad until you realize you often can’t fit everything you need.
Everytime I build something that isn’t HO, I often end up scrapping it or completely reworking it cause there’s so many flaws. I always end up with same generic team structures like a standard Boots Spam, Cinder/Lando/Gking/Gambit/Zama team, or run BO. Part of all this is contributed to the fact that there’s so many boxes to check and so few options to do so.
Another part is that Tusk, is not as reliable or splashable as it was in previous metas.
While obviously still fine, it feels awkward to slap on teams. The first reason is that it overlaps with the mons you want to run, mainly Lando and Zama. You could run both but you end up with 2 Water weak/Fairy weak mons with similar roles. This wouldn’t be a problem if Tusk didn’t lose to 90% of the fucking metagame. The things it does check its inconsistent at doing so. Dnite, Gambit, and G-Fire all Tera through it, Raging Bolt OHKOs Tusk with Pulse if it doesn’t have any bulk investment and 1v1s anyways with Tera Fairy. Guess what, Zama and Lando also check these mons and more with better consistency. Around that point I just say fuck it and either run Lando + Cinder or just run no removal at all. Tusk has a 4MSS, wanting Bulk Up to actually beat Tera Gambit and G-Fire 1v1, Knock Off, or Rocks. So you end up needing 1 or 2 extra slots just for that. Tusk almost always needs Boots because Webs just 6-0s it anyways, but it would love having Helmet to punish Gambit/Zama/Dnite or Lefties for recovery, which means you need secondary hazard control for Webs anyways. Tusk has a hard time investing in bulk because it needs to power and speed to consistently vs Ghold, hence why the only good Tusk set is offensive. Unless we see a new meta altering set for Tusk that shoots it back up to top 3 status, I consider Tusk to be overrated with a meta that’s unkind to it. Teams that rely on Tusk to spin are difficult to pilot, let alone build, because it doesn’t do enough defensively compared to other Grounds or Zama.
This meta’s issues are problems with no clear solutions. The random movepool cuts and power level being higher than in previous gens made things a mess, but I think there is a direction we can go to make things better. There are two mons I would like to see get suspected.
This is the most broken mon in the tier rn and several players agree. Wogre is the single best breaker in OU off of a great speed tier for its role and having a 0 drawback base 100 power Water STAB that crits for some reason cause fuck balance ig. You can straight up spam Cudgel most of the time because Water types are scared of you, its free chip vs Dragons, and Wogre can pair itself with mons that punish Grasses who don’t even reliably check it btw besides Amoonguss. Sinistcha dies to +2 Knock and needs to land a burn to beat it, Serperior isn’t real anymore, Rilla takes over 40% from Pwhip and doesn’t OHKO back without Tera, and Wo-Chien dies to U-Turn. Before you say Hydrapple
+2 252 Atk Wellspring Mask Ogerpon-Wellspring Play Rough vs. 244 HP / 0 Def Hydrapple: 410-484 (99 - 116.9%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO
and this shit does nothing back.
You can even run Trailblaze + Encore which 6-0s some offenses.
Suspecting Wogre after or during WCOP is the best course of action rn, because removing it makes checking everything else easier. Wogre’s checks like Dnite, Zama, and Pult are needed for other things, hence they can be preserved in a game-to-game basis.
This is a controversial take, but this shit is broken. The utility sets are fine, there’s several mons in the tier that take advantage of it, but it’s the SD sets that push it overboard. It lacks the immediate power of Wogre or Kyurem but it outlasts all its checks and has plenty of opportunities to come in. Name a longterm check to this……You can’t. Either they don’t punish Gliscor significantly enough, or they get worn down by Knock + hazards. Even Skarm/Corv lose longterm since Gliscor can stay in the game long enough to burn their Roost pp. Gliscor is so tanky on the physical side that it can just dump points into SpD for Hexpult, Moonblasts, and random special hits that otherwise 2HKO you. Your best response to Gliscor is to run Corv + fast mon with Ice moves or bring Encore (or run HO). That is if Gliscor doesn’t decide to just go for the win with Tera Normal or Water or Fairy. This is made harder by the fact you can’t predict if it is SD. You could pivot into something like Wogre, then it just Toxic’s it or sets up hazards. Gliscor is a contributing factor to the MU fishy nature of SV OU, because its matchup vs offense isn’t great but it farms the hell out of Balance and Stall. While Gliscor provides benefits to the tier defensively, but the dynamic it creates harms the meta in the long run.
There are other mons some players have argued for a suspect, but those are the two main ones I think we should get out of the way. I’ve been back and forth with Zama, but imo it fixes more problems in the builder than it creates. Its too soon to act, but we should have this discussion until the time comes to take action.
Stay strong OU
Thanks for this post. It’s well articulated and reasons through the burnout that many of us have been feeling. I don’t want to change the subject too much but I do feel that at least a part of the matchup-fishy threat over-saturation in Gen 9 is due to Tera. SD Gliscor going to Tera Water, Gambit going Tera Ghost to beat Tusk and the Iron Birds, Iron Moth going Tera Dark… there are simply so many permutations that can cause a loss to even the most well prepared and well-played teams. But I don’t intend this to be a saltpost and I recognize that the ship on Tera action has probably sailed. It’s also not the only factor since this gen has also seen substantial powercreep and hazards creep. For what it’s worth I think the council has done an excellent job working with what’s at hand and balancing the many different viewpoints and player contingents who inevitably advocate for different things.
One other unrelated thing. From my personal experience, fat balance teams can sometimes get away with not running a fastmon as long as they have priority. Very bulky mons like Dozo and AV Glowking are a godsend to fat balance structures by hardstopping a lot of fast sweepers, reducing the need for speed control. I’ve been sitting around the 1800s with a team revolving around these two fatmons and Sucker Punch Gambit in the back. For the record, the fastest mon on my team was a Waterpon.
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Did some legit laddering for the first time since base sv and I gotta say it felt even more brain dead than usual. I ran webs + hisuian sam +ghold and it legit felt like cheating. Anytime someone predicted ghold it didn’t matter because hazards are so broken that even sacking your ghold to keep them up seems like a fine trade. I see why ribombee got so high on the viability ranking. The stupid string cheese feels so dumb.
Also has anyone ever tried wide lens h-samurott? I slapped it on mine and it felt so nice never missing razor shell or ceaseless
Also has anyone ever tried wide lens h-samurott? I slapped it on mine and it felt so nice never missing razor shell or ceaseless
Apparently the concept of unhealthy is no longer applied as it should, Mega-Sableye in ORAS suffered 2 suspects and 1 ban for much less.
Gholdengo has both excellent offensive and defensive stats, an excellent typing, a restrictive and limiting ability, making Taunt, Trick, Defog and even Skill Swap ineffective. And a moveset with wide coverage with the help of Nasty Plot, solid recovery, and utilities like Trick and Thunder Wave for speed control. But if the Pokémon is very versatile, it seems more practical to say that it suffers from 4MSS and cannot do everything at once, because to be broken it needs to check all the few answers in the same set, neutralize the 2 or 3 defensive cores that obviously your opponent has space to bring and even prepare his breakfast and iron his clothes. (He does this on his surfboard.)
In addition to being unhealthy, we have things that, due to this nefarious and apparently untouchable mechanics, are beyond the control of skill and go beyond the scope of gresswork. Hello Kingambit.
I could still say how Kyurem and Waterpon are oppressive and how Zamazenta looks like a 4MSS when in fact the best choice most of the time is simply ID + BP, Roar was enough of an innovation to show how out of the curve this dog is.
But don't waste your time replying to me, I won't be able to understand the explanations. I'm a casual player who doesn't reach the top of the ladder and doesn't participate in tournaments (even though some participants in group tournaments end up with a negative score or reach the final stages just by being carried by their teammates, no, it wasn't an attack personal to no one, this has been happening forever.), your "ha ha'' reaction is enough for me to know that we don't share the same opinion and that's ok. Because at the end of the day the community is divided or playing tricks on the concept basic rock-paper-scissors with a repulsive mechanic that encourages guesswork over skill, which was obviously designed for doubles, but we won't touch on it in singles.
TL;DR This metagame is the epitome of shit, no matter what philosophical scope you wanted to put on it.
Gholdengo is unhealthy shit and Terastal makes revenge killing unfeasible in addition to rewarding guesswork.
Gholdengo has both excellent offensive and defensive stats, an excellent typing, a restrictive and limiting ability, making Taunt, Trick, Defog and even Skill Swap ineffective. And a moveset with wide coverage with the help of Nasty Plot, solid recovery, and utilities like Trick and Thunder Wave for speed control. But if the Pokémon is very versatile, it seems more practical to say that it suffers from 4MSS and cannot do everything at once, because to be broken it needs to check all the few answers in the same set, neutralize the 2 or 3 defensive cores that obviously your opponent has space to bring and even prepare his breakfast and iron his clothes. (He does this on his surfboard.)
In addition to being unhealthy, we have things that, due to this nefarious and apparently untouchable mechanics, are beyond the control of skill and go beyond the scope of gresswork. Hello Kingambit.
I could still say how Kyurem and Waterpon are oppressive and how Zamazenta looks like a 4MSS when in fact the best choice most of the time is simply ID + BP, Roar was enough of an innovation to show how out of the curve this dog is.
But don't waste your time replying to me, I won't be able to understand the explanations. I'm a casual player who doesn't reach the top of the ladder and doesn't participate in tournaments (even though some participants in group tournaments end up with a negative score or reach the final stages just by being carried by their teammates, no, it wasn't an attack personal to no one, this has been happening forever.), your "ha ha'' reaction is enough for me to know that we don't share the same opinion and that's ok. Because at the end of the day the community is divided or playing tricks on the concept basic rock-paper-scissors with a repulsive mechanic that encourages guesswork over skill, which was obviously designed for doubles, but we won't touch on it in singles.
TL;DR This metagame is the epitome of shit, no matter what philosophical scope you wanted to put on it.
Gholdengo is unhealthy shit and Terastal makes revenge killing unfeasible in addition to rewarding guesswork.
Well, Mega Sableye was banned mostly due to how many people had tuned out of the meta given the meta was on its last days. It wasn't that hard to actually overwhelm in the long run with its 50 Base HP. You are right that Gholdengo is way more powerful than Mega Sableye with not only superior bulk but also elite Special Attack, a usable speed tier, the ability to use an item, and also powerful tools such as Nasty Plot and Trick. It basically curbstomps really slow-paced teams since the main way of beating it is to outoffense it.
You're selling yourself short here. Casual players don't routinely qualify for suspect tests like you do. Even without being a tournament player, you're most likely in the top 10-15% of players on Smogon. Your opinion does matter even if a lot of people don't agree with you and embrace the overall higher power level. A lot of Gen 9 OU mons would be banned within days or weeks in previous generations. There is still time to improve the meta, so don't take it too badly that the pace of action isn't to your satisfaction.
By the way, you have very good taste as a Frieren enjoyer.
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Wait, but the first one got banned while the other didn't. I think you got your Dragons swapped.
It's a joke.
Really?!
That's why Baxcalibur calling someone sexy gets a good response while Kyurem asking where the bathroom is gets a negative reaction. awyp is memeing about the community's opinions not making sense. It has nothing to do with community sentiment on Baxcalibur or Kyurem. He most likely chose Baxcalibur and Kyurem 'cause they are both Dragon/Ice type.
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De repente caralho
Yeah, it's clear the definition of broken is more and more subjective and revolving around "well, there is counterplay" and people so often forget the basic dimensions of what is broken that only the absolutely blatant shit is being considered. Fuck, drop Arceus and the meta will warp enough to counteract it. Gholdengo and Gambit live in a limbo of "well, everyone is running multiple checks so it's fine" well fuck everyone is running multiple checks because those two are so centralizing you gotta run with it or you get smacked around like a 900 elo player once they get a single opportunity (which they will because of Tera, but I digress).
It's even more stressful because mass dropping Ubers after Indigo Disk set us back so much. Instead of dropping a couple at a time and identifying the ones that are fine (Deoxys for instance), Gen 9's lifespan is spent dealing with the crater the mass drop caused:
We had to resuspect Volc which was clearly overpowered
Reading the forums makes it clear people are still unhappy with Gliscor because it is almost single-handedly making everyone run random Ice coverage. Even Landorus wasn't able to do anything remotely similar because the only counterplay is to hit Gliscor really fucking hard (and ofc I'm not getting into SD and other specifics here because of post size). Gholdengo is doing something similar (both are, outside of very specific instances, effectively immune to status moves and make games revolve around them).
Darkrai is only alive because its signature gimmick got outright banned, and even then it is clear it is very strong without an ability entirely subsisting off of sky-high BST. Zamazenta's doing something similar, with the excuse that it holds Gambit off.
Both RM and Kyurem are still controversial and running through teams left and right
And...
I'm overextending myself. You get the idea. Stuff like Gambit, Gliscor, Ghold, Zamazenta, Wogerpon - they tick off SO MANY boxes showing they're oppressive but tiering action is still busy with DLC mass drops, and if (big if) tiering action keeps a steady pace without 55%+ DNB results we'll be done so close to 2026 that by then gen 9 has passed us by entirely.
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About the hahas. I dunno man some people use it exclusively as an attempt to mock another player without any wish to actually engage, and not only just "hey, I disagree", so I pretty much ignore those
Moltres also good hurricane user, ground immune, can help with contact moves, good resists, punishes spin, great mon on rain
EDIT: we should put a "no kingambit/gholdengo/great tusk is secretly way too unhealthy" posts rule on this thread
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Bro really put Great Tusk with them. How long has it been since anyone has complained about Great Tusk? Last I remember was pre Home where it had like close to or over 50% usage rate.
My biggest problem with Mega Sableye analogy is the limited weaknesses of Dark/Ghost. They literally made Fairy type in part because that typing was so overpowered. As good a typing as Steel/Ghost is, it has 4 weaknesses and 3 in particular that are extremely common. The defensive profile is just too different. I'm with you on the Tera opinion, but for Ghold specifically that would stop it from spinblocking.
Other than this, I don't think you should put yourself down like that. You seem like a pretty good player from what I can tell.
Citation needed on Dark Ghost being a reason for fairy. As far as I'm aware, neither Sableye nor Spiritomb were an issue before gen 6. It seemed more like a direct balancing decision after seeing the dominance of dragons, and to a lesser extent, fighting types in the BW era.
It seemed more like it was about the dominance of dragons? Citation needed? For real, though. If it was just about Dragons, and I guess apparently Fighting types, then why have it also be good against Dark types?
Anyways, I found this:
"The Fairy type was introduced in Generation VI to balance the Dragon and Dark types. It is super-effective against both types and also resisted most types that were introduced in the past Generation (mostly Bug, Fighting, and Dark types). Another reason why the Fairy type was introduced was to give offensive advantages to the Steel and Poison types. Prior to Generation VI, the Dark/Ghost-type Sableye and Spiritomb had no weaknesses, so the Fairy type was added to give them a weakness."
https://pokemon.fandom.com/wiki/Fai... type was introduced,Fighting, and Dark types).
Don't @ me for the Wiki source. This isn't some official paper and it matches my memory of discussions that were made at the time.
I believe with the removal of Steel's resistance to Dark, Fairy was given a resistance to it to keep Dark from spiraling out of control and only having two resistances. I can't claim this for fact, but I know that Dark never ravaged a tier as badly as Dragon and Fighting did (Tyranitar was like, the only good Dark Type in OU for the longest time).
Aside from that, has anyone tried experimenting with 248 / 8 / 252 (Spe) Jolly Tusk? You get a good chunk of bulk and max out your Speed, but with 8 in Attack or Defense, you get a Proto boost to that stat instead of Speed.
i doubt sableye and spiritomb factored into the designing of the fairy type much considering that eelektross also effectively has no weaknesses and they seem just fine with that. i'll have to ask shigeki morimoto the next time i see him
Well, I did just claim what I said as a fact. I guess people will believe what they want to believe citation or not. It's just semantics in the end anyways. The point was Ghold gets hit for far more supereffectively than Sableyeye, which is what makes it different.
The difference is this is due to an ability rather than a typing combination. A new typing wouldn't balance out anything besides other typings and combinations of typings. We do already have stuff like Gravity, Mold Breaker, and more recently Neutralizing Gas to counter Eelektross if we really needed to.
There is also Tera in gen 9 where any mon with Levitate can turn Electric or even Poison, and while I don't believe Tera is implemented in the most balanced way, we haven't seen any Levitate mons be too problematic in that way since they can just be hit hard neutrally. This is apples to oranges.
yeah, and we had stuff that could hit sableye and spiritomb supereffectively before fairy came into existence too. foresight, odor sleuth, and scrappy were all things before the fairy type was, and they could all remove or bypass dark/ghost's fighting immunity. and don't hit me with "but no one used foresight" because no one in singles uses gravity either. we can go round and round about edge cases all day long and it still doesn't make your proposition that fairy was introduced because of dark/ghost any less ridiculous
Technically in Gen 4 UU, both donphan and hitmontop used foresight in order to rapid spin on the prevalent ghost types of the tier (I think Donphan also used it in Gen 3, though I am less sure about that).
This of course is the most fringe cases ever, so the point still stands. Sableye and Spiritomb were at best, mediocre picks in OU or Doubles. The fairy type was not introduced to counter them, and saying they were is a bit silly.
First of all, I said it was in part. I even listed a source. So believe it or not, I don't care, but it didn't just come from nowhere. It was definitely a factor.
Second, I just got through explaining the difference between addressing a typing and an ability. Fairy typing being a typing is important for balancing other typings. Get it? Balancing abilities is a whole different story. Again, you wouldn't introduce a new typing to do that.
Something like Scrappy would not then allow you to hit Mega Sableye without worrying about Will-O-Wisp, which would be a problem because most Fighting moves are physical especially at that time. Normal type moves would only let you hit it neutrally, not super effectively, which was the entire point of the discussion.
As for the preemptive no one used Foresight line, I might as well address it since you brought it up. That and Odor Sleuth are hard to use since they take a tempo for a very situational thing. By then you are burned by Sableye anyways. An ability like Scrappy is better because it just happens passively. You don't lose a tempo and a move slot only to maybe have to set it up against later anyways. This is also why nobody used Gravity, but at least I have seen that in actual games on the very, very rare niche teams in this gen.
Then I guess the entire page on Fairy type I gave a link for is silly. I don't really know what to tell you guys. Believe what you want I guess. Maybe go edit the Wiki page while you are at it.
you listed a "source" that has nothing backing it up whatsoever. just because you have a link to a website doesn't make it the gospel truth, especially if it's a wiki that isn't wikipedia or bulbapedia. wikia (i refuse to call it "fandom") has basically no standards for proof, so speculation and editorializing run rampant there. more likely than not, the person writing the article just made that up as a reason because it kinda made sense to them. unless you have a link to an interview from an actual game freak employee saying "yeah we did it because of sableye", you have no proof
And yet, it's still more than anyone else provided and the reasons other commenters here maybe "made up because it kind of made sense to them" or something. This is getting awfully one sided for something that doesn't really matter in the first place. For the sake of thoroughness, I did one more check. I don't have a source from a game freak employee about this specifically. The only things I found on that specifically were about balancing the Dragon type such as this:
“This is something we’ve talked about since we released the very first generation of the games, but Dragon-types are strong, and we saw little deviation in the Pokémon that were used, even at tournaments. While we did balance the games for each new title, this time we put more effort into the adjustments, and added a new type that is strong against Dragons.
“We had many candidates for the new type, but in the end, you could say it’s due to a fantasy-like connection, that we went with a plan that involved having ‘a fairy that is strong against dragons,’ and settled with the type name as Fairy.”
https://mynintendonews.com/2013/10/...ion-and-why-raising-pokemon-is-easier-in-x-y/
There is no quote I could find in a quick Google search that stated anything else about the Fairy type relating to Fighting types or Steel losing the Dark immunity or anything else other people here said that some of you agreed with despite zero sources whatsoever. Nothing besides just Dragons. I could maybe try to put more effort in this, but why should I bother when A. you all believe what you want regardless and B. I am the only one providing links for anything. This is already way too much one sided effort for a red herring.