Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4

Actually, Deoxys-D retains Recover, which Mew lost this gen. It is not a worse spiker than Mew because Mew is on a timer since all damage to it is lasting whereas Deoxys-D can last a long while. Don't use Deoxys-D as a suicide lead. Use Spikes with Recover.
Oh really? I didn’t know Mew didn’t get recover or something similar. Not even Morning Sun or something. Just Rest and Pain Split.
 
So, just jumping into the thread - What's the current list of ban candidates looking like?
nothing at this exact moment until we figure out where things stand in the post-terapagos ecosystem. until then, all we have are guesses. here's mine, in no particular order:
  • :deoxys-speed: just kidding about no particular order, this is definitely coming in first—with that speed, it always does. (the rest isn't ordered though.) some people seem to have mixed feelings about this, but i'm seeing it on almost every team and its set diversity is insane. it can set spikes and rocks, cripple with knock off or twave, taunt opposing leads/setup, trick a choice item, sweep with nasty plot, set screens, wash your car, do your math homework, make your dinner, repair your shed, take care of your kids, save your marriage, raise the dead, this baby can do anything. it even works underwater! call today for your chance to order the amazing deoxys-speed, only $34.99 plus shipping and handling, and we'll throw in a gholdengo at no extra cost! and you won't believe how fast the shipping is!
  • :darkrai: i'm still not sure why i see so many people calling it mid because hypnosis + np + dpulse + fairyblast is super cheese on it and it's handed me way more games than something with a 60% accuracy move ever deserves to. it's just straight-up dishonest and is definitely a better hypnosis user than valiant ever was. maybe that's just me getting lucky, but we'll never know until more people try it out. either way, i don't think it has the support for a suspect or ban right now, but i think it will at some point—it is definitely not as washed as people were saying
  • :kyurem: this thing is crazy with veiltales support, as expected, and i only expect it to get better now that the weather-clearing mon is out of the picture
  • :roaring moon: sun teams got a lot better, and that benefits roaring moon a lot because it can now run band sets more comfortably. not too sure on this one but i've seen a lot of people complaining about it
  • :raikou::entei::terrakion: i'm not particularly overwhelmed by these three, but plenty of people seem to think that one or all of raging bolt, gouging flame, or iron boulder are busted—bolt for its excellent setup potential and priority, flame for its ability to 2hko dondozo in sun with band among other things, and boulder for its booster-energy speed tier that makes iron valiant green with envy. i can't make much of an assessment because we just got these guys and the meta's still kinda wonky
 
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I personally would of liked match up turtle to get a little more time just to see how thing’s further developed, especially since we aren’t on a time crunch anymore, but you can’t really argue the council’s decision.

as someone said he was basically going to force the meta into a primary balanced play style and nothing currently consistently beat it from an HO scheme.

With match up turtle gone I’d probably say Dino entei is the best Pokémon in the tier it basically has everything.
 
Choice Band Gouging Fire in the sun hits so hard. It 2HKOes Dondozo, the physically bulkiest wall in the tier, with minimal chip.

252 Atk Choice Band Protosynthesis Tera Fire Gouging Fire Flare Blitz vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Dondozo in Sun: 230-271 (45.6 - 53.7%) -- 42.2% chance to 2HKO

This thing is a beast and basically one-shots everything on offense. You do need to limit the number of hazards are on your side of the field to make the most out of it though.

I do really enjoy Gouging Fire's defensive capabilities, but it might be offensively too powerful.
 
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OU is somewhat playable now the 700 BST pokemon is gone.

Rain has gained a lot with Kingdra, Archaludon, Araquanid as well as Keldeo.

DeoxysS is still a rat, still does what Deoxys S does, whatever it wants and on its terms. It just gets up 2 layers not matter what unless Hatter is on the other side which is rare in OU. Ran into DeoD cosmic/stored set which is very hard to bring down with the lack of toxic available in the tier.

Iron Boulder on paper seems really good but far too early to tell, it has checks/counters in Gliscor, Garchomp, Unaware Waters, Lando, Balloon Ghold, Pult. It has good SpD which helps it set up SD. Haven't played against Entei, Raikou and Darkrai enough to comment.

Meta needs to settle but don't see anything that urgent after Terapagos (until people are inevitably fed up with DeoxysS). Council has ignored hazards as an issue since forever, but now we get more spikers and no defoggers, the strain this puts on teambuilding is as frustrating as ever. The hazard setter to hazard remover ratio is terrible, how is this healthy for the game?
 
There are so many broken stuff running around, it's not easy to determine out what's obviously broken. With that being said, I would say that Deoxys-S should be next on the chopping block. It's incredible as a lead, sweeper and revenge killer.

I honestly don't think anything else aside from Deo-S qualify for quickban consideration. Let the 'broken' things duke it out.
 
OU is somewhat playable now the 700 BST pokemon is gone.

Rain has gained a lot with Kingdra, Archaludon, Araquanid as well as Keldeo.

DeoxysS is still a rat, still does what Deoxys S does, whatever it wants and on its terms. It just gets up 2 layers not matter what unless Hatter is on the other side which is rare in OU. Ran into DeoD cosmic/stored set which is very hard to bring down with the lack of toxic available in the tier.

Iron Boulder on paper seems really good but far too early to tell, it has checks/counters in Gliscor, Garchomp, Unaware Waters, Lando, Balloon Ghold, Pult. It has good SpD which helps it set up SD. Haven't played against Entei, Raikou and Darkrai enough to comment.

Meta needs to settle but don't see anything that urgent after Terapagos (until people are inevitably fed up with DeoxysS). Council has ignored hazards as an issue since forever, but now we get more spikers and no defoggers, the strain this puts on teambuilding is as frustrating as ever. The hazard setter to hazard remover ratio is terrible, how is this healthy for the game?
On the bright side, the Hazard controllers did get buffed.
Great Tusk now has powerful Fire coverage for Gholdengo it can use when Gholdengo has Air Balloon and switches into Rapid Spin.
Hatterene is now way more threatening to Gliscor because of Psychic Noise preventing Poison Heal from healing.
We also got Iron Crown, a Pokemon that is a great anti-lead against Glimmora and Ribombee, and it also too learns Psychic Noise.
We also got another Magic Guard user in the tier and hey it learns Psychic Noise too!
 
i also don't think it makes much sense to have that discussion before the tera suspect, because it might end up being a waste of time—what if we implement terapagos clause and then tera gets banned and all that discussion becomes moot?
We should still have the discussion regardless of a Tera suspect since it can also pertain to things like signature moves and abilities. GameFreak seems intent on doing signature things more and more that seem busted more and more. We should have a discussion on whether to open up policy to allow banning of signature stuff that is clearly broken or not. The sooner we start the discussion on this and get something in place to deal with the trend that GameFreak seem to be pushing the better.
 
We should still have the discussion regardless of a Tera suspect since it can also pertain to things like signature moves and abilities. GameFreak seems intent on doing signature things more and more that seem busted more and more. We should have a discussion on whether to open up policy to allow banning of signature stuff that is clearly broken or not. The sooner we start the discussion on this and get something in place to deal with the trend that GameFreak seem to be pushing the better.
Next year, Smogon will have been running for 20 years. That's older than some of you reading this thread right now.
I think its fair to ask for a review of policy to update it to modern pokemon design.
 
regice without rock polish
IMG_2251.jpeg

tbh i could say the same with latias in the higher tiers with no defog:boi:
 
does anyone know any pokemon that can make a good use of the stellar type?
the only pokemon that I can think are golurk and feraligatr and they are both not so good.
I doubt if either of them will stay in OU.
 
I don't think that all of our mons are perfectly fine as some people have implied, much less that we can even determine so in such a short time span, but I do believe that no mon is urgent to act upon now that the turtle is gone. We may need some weeks to determine if some of the more prominent mons, like Deoxys-S, Roaring Moon or the past dogs, deserve some early tiering action.
But unless one of them stands out greatly in the following days (I'm most dubious for Deoxys-S), it might be better to go straight into "Tera Suspect #2" or "Hazards: what now?" topics without any further tiering actions prior. Best to wait to avoid another Chi-Yu situation where a broken mon stays for 3 months of Tera discussions, but I can definitely see us having those conversations without banning anything.

And on that topic, between Tera and Hazards, which do people think should be tackled first? Tera talks have being demanded for the longest time, but I'm, personally, much more sick and tired of hazards' ubiquity in this gen, yet also don't know what action we'd have to take to fix that issue, making me uncertain.
 
does anyone know any pokemon that can make a good use of the stellar type?
the only pokemon that I can think are golurk and feraligatr and they are both not so good.
I doubt if either of them will stay in OU.
Enamorus and Serperior come to mind first.
I also like to believe that Iron Valiant would make for a good Stellar type option. A lot of fast hard hitting Pokemon or Contrary Pokemon would be ideal for Stellar Tera. You want to use it to counter Pokemon who use it defensively, which is a lot of Pokemon really. Like for example using it to counter Kingambit.
 
I like how people are asking for a policy review because of a specific mons interaction with a mechanic that was already controversial. Makes you think.
 
I like how people are asking for a policy review because of a specific mons interaction with a mechanic that was already controversial. Makes you think.
Hey now, I got pissed 10 years ago when people refused to just ban speed boost on Blaziken because apparently it was too "complex"
I've been waiting for things to change for a long time.
 
Hey now, I got pissed 10 years ago when people refused to just ban speed boost on Blaziken because apparently it was too "complex"
I've been waiting for things to change for a long time.
Not the same thing. Speed Boost doesn't break every single mon it's on, Baton Pass aside, and it doesn't make sense to ban a specific ability on a specific mon instead of just banning a mon. That's literally what a complex ban is, "X and Y being used together is banned". Like Drought and Chlorophyll in Gen 5. Terapagos' Tera is locked to a single type, gives it a new form, and has unique Terapagos-only interactions. That needs a whole new discussion on if Terapagos-Stellar can be separated from Terapagos.
 
And on that topic, between Tera and Hazards, which do people think should be tackled first? Tera talks have being demanded for the longest time, but I'm, personally, much more sick and tired of hazards' ubiquity in this gen, yet also don't know what action we'd have to take to fix that issue, making me uncertain.

God please get Tera out of here, I can not fathom how anyone can possibly think it's healthy at this point where almost every ban we've had has been because of it.

Also quite frankly I'd rather a Booster Energy discussion than a Hazards one, I genuinely hate what Booster does to the meta.
 
God please get Tera out of here, I can not fathom how anyone can possibly think it's healthy at this point where almost every ban we've had has been because of it.

Also quite frankly I'd rather a Booster Energy discussion than a Hazards one, I genuinely hate what Booster does to the meta.
You know, people keep saying that Tera caused so many bans, yeah only a handful of Pokemon were banned because of Tera, and even in that pool, there were obvious exceptions like Ogerpon-H getting a new ability when Tera'd or Terapagos getting 100+ to its BST.
And honestly, Annihilape and Espathra could be retested in the future too. Stellar Tera pretty much counters the uncertainty of defensive Teras and you can now just spam really strong Tera Blast that at minimum will hit neutrally, and more often hits them super effectively.
If they are retested and found to be fine now, along with Volcarona, that only leaves Regieleki as a Pokemon broken by Tera as how its treated for every Pokemon.
 
And honestly, Annihilape and Espathra could be retested in the future too. Stellar Tera pretty much counters the uncertainty of defensive Teras and you can now just spam really strong Tera Blast that at minimum will hit neutrally, and more often hits them super effectively.
Nope. Annihilape I can give some leeway on as it does have some counterplay with being slower than quite a few mons. However, tera was only part of the reason as it destroyed stall and slower teams. Esparthra on the other hand, should never be allowed in OU. It can outspeed everything after a few speed boosts, which it gets easily, and can fire off boosted stored powers and dazzling gleams that destroy everything not named blissey or gambit. Never ever let this ostrich join OU again, it can burn in hell.
 
Espathra without Tera actually does look healthy, unlike Annihilape. However, I still support Tera being allowed, so no ostrich in the menu for now.
 
Espathra without Tera actually does look healthy, unlike Annihilape. However, I still support Tera being allowed, so no ostrich in the menu for now.
I honestly don't agree as it still has dazzling gleam to hit dark types and the sheer power of either stored power or lumina crash is too much for every other pokemon. Also, it gets low kick which does a lot to gambit.
0- Atk Espathra Low Kick (100 BP) vs. 236 HP / 0 Def Kingambit: 148-176 (37 - 44%) -- 99.2% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
0- Atk Espathra Low Kick (100 BP) vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Kingambit: 148-176 (43.4 - 51.6%) -- 5.1% chance to 2HKO
Remember, this is 0 iv's and negative attack, and still at the very least 3HKO's.
 
I honestly don't agree as it still has dazzling gleam to hit dark types and the sheer power of either stored power or lumina crash is too much for every other pokemon. Also, it gets low kick which does a lot to gambit.
0- Atk Espathra Low Kick (100 BP) vs. 236 HP / 0 Def Kingambit: 148-176 (37 - 44%) -- 99.2% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
0- Atk Espathra Low Kick (100 BP) vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Kingambit: 148-176 (43.4 - 51.6%) -- 5.1% chance to 2HKO
Remember, this is 0 iv's and negative attack, and still at the very least 3HKO's.

I mean, you can't fit CM, Protect, Roost, Stored/Lumina, Dazzling Gleam, Substituteand Low Kick in a single set. Darks aren't even only checks to it:
Steels. Not Corviknight (unless Sdef vs no Roost), but Gholdengo (NP or Trick vs no Sub), Excadrill, Iron Treads, Scizor, Metagross, Jirachi and the already mentioned Gambit are good at checking Espathra.
Unaware Skeledirge with Shadow Ball.
Roar and Whirlwind, many Mons learn that now.
If no Protect or Sub Up, First Impression from Lokix, Slither Wing or Spidops.
Vs no Sub, Toxic or Thunder Wave/Glare ruin it.
Heart Swap Manaphy is fun and not only works vs Espathra.
Band Grassy Glide from Rillaboom is pretty close from a OHKO.
Offensive pressure in general. Espathra is not an immediate threat, you can send your Band Lando or Cinderace at least once.
Encore from something like Scream Tail.
Finally, while this is a Dark type, its a full stop to Espathra and has utility vs the rest of the Meta (especially if Gliscor ends up banned again) : Alolan Muk. Nothing Espathra has outside of Tera even remotely threatens Muk.


So, I do think there is enough counterplay to Espathra in a Tera less Meta, Mono Psychic typing is so terrible that only Mons with Arceus, Mewtwo or Deoxys Stats (+ the respective huge movepools) can be broken in OU with it.

This discussion is pretty irrelevant though, for now we fortunately live in a Tera meta and have other problems to speak about (fuck Deoxys and Gholdengo).
 
I mean, you can't fit CM, Protect, Roost, Stored/Lumina, Dazzling Gleam, Substituteand Low Kick in a single set. Darks aren't even only checks to it:
Steels. Not Corviknight (unless Sdef vs no Roost), but Gholdengo (NP or Trick vs no Sub), Excadrill, Iron Treads, Scizor, Metagross, Jirachi and the already mentioned Gambit are good at checking Espathra.
Unaware Skeledirge with Shadow Ball.
Roar and Whirlwind, many Mons learn that now.
If no Protect or Sub Up, First Impression from Lokix, Slither Wing or Spidops.
Vs no Sub, Toxic or Thunder Wave/Glare ruin it.
Heart Swap Manaphy is fun and not only works vs Espathra.
Band Grassy Glide from Rillaboom is pretty close from a OHKO.
Offensive pressure in general. Espathra is not an immediate threat, you can send your Band Lando or Cinderace at least once.
Encore from something like Scream Tail.
Finally, while this is a Dark type, its a full stop to Espathra and has utility vs the rest of the Meta (especially if Gliscor ends up banned again) : Alolan Muk. Nothing Espathra has outside of Tera even remotely threatens Muk.


So, I do think there is enough counterplay to Espathra in a Tera less Meta, Mono Psychic typing is so terrible that only Mons with Arceus, Mewtwo or Deoxys Stats (+ the respective huge movepools) can be broken in OU with it.

This discussion is pretty irrelevant though, for now we fortunately live in a Tera meta and have other problems to speak about (fuck Deoxys and Gholdengo).
I agree with most of these points but unaware pokemon do not counter it as stored power ignores unaware.
But yeah, we shouldn't talk about this, I don't want to start another solgaleo discussion that takes 3 pages and goes nowhere.
 
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