Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4

In other news, I'm still confused about why the council thought dropping Deo-S was a good idea.

I don't see it staying in the tier at all. It's doing the same things with the same efficiency that got it banned the last three times it was dropped.

Well, you know the definition of insanity....
 
In other news, I'm still confused about why the council thought dropping Deo-S was a good idea.

I don't see it staying in the tier at all. It's doing the same things with the same efficiency that got it banned the last three times it was dropped.
I believe the idea is that Deoxys-S wouldn't have been the definitive hazard setter in the tier. We did have Pokemon like Samurott-H and Glimmora introduced where were pretty great hazard setters, with the former being a good answer to lead Doe-S. We also had other Pokemon with its other sets like screens (Dragapult and Ninetales-A) and fast set up sweeper (literally pick anything).
The unique thing is Deo-S can do all these things, where you won't know what its doing in most scenarios, and does it fast and efficiently. We'll have to see how busted it really is in the future.
 
Now that Terapagos was banned(shame that the Terastal form was banned), what have y’all been using as your spinner? Is Great Tusk still the best spinner around, because looking at the options, it still seems to be that.
 
In other news, I'm still confused about why the council thought dropping Deo-S was a good idea.

I don't see it staying in the tier at all. It's doing the same things with the same efficiency that got it banned the last three times it was dropped.
DeoS is the new Genesect

Now that Terapagos was banned(shame that the Terastal form was banned), what have y’all been using as your spinner? Is Great Tusk still the best spinner around, because looking at the options, it still seems to be that.
Excadrill and Treads can both reliably answer past raikou, latios, archaludon which tusk can have trouble switching into. Tusk is still undeniably the better choice overall but there is niche options.
 
Aw man, I was having so much fun abusing Starry Gamera on ladder and it didn't even get a sprite to look at :(

oh well, time to cook up a Hydrapple team. Have any of you tried him out yet?
I’ve tried Hydrapple, it’s fine but nothing amazing imo. Regenerator is cool but it’s got no pivot moves and a just ok defensive typing. You can prob run some regenvest or NP stuff but I think you’re better off with other regens and offensive grasses(like broken serp!).
 
I’ve tried Hydrapple, it’s fine but nothing amazing imo. Regenerator is cool but it’s got no pivot moves and a just ok defensive typing. You can prob run some regenvest or NP stuff but I think you’re better off with other regens and offensive grasses(like broken serp!).
It is sometimes a bit Tera reliant but the regenvest set can act as a good pivot and rain check, being especially good against Waterpon. On that topic, what has been the viability of Fickle Beam compared to just dropping Draco?
 
To be honest, I rather have Ghold get banned than anything else. Even we have enough tools to beat Ghold right now and it's not really good for now, it still blocks Defog and rapid spin. I was one of the people that didn't wanted Ghold to get ban but now I do. We do have plenty of defogs and rapid spin users but problem is that it's not because those Pokemon aren't good for Ou but because Ghold can defeat all it's check. Telling you right now, when Ghold is gone, you will see that hazards would not be such a big issues. I can use lower tier defog mons and get them to defog on a opponent that Mon is not weak against. Time to let Ghold be gone, defog is sadly not a TM anymore which is sad. National Dex looks happy because Ghold is not there and people can naturally defog and rapid spin there and spikes are not a issues in that tier. Could be wrong though, I know National Dex and Ou is not the same due to some mons not having a their moves anymore. This is only how I feel but I know it's not going to happen so I leave it as that.
 
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To be honest, I rather have Ghold get banned than anything else. Even we have enough tools to beat Ghold right now and it's not really good for now, it still blocks Defog and rapid spin. I was one of the people that didn't wanted Ghold to get ban but now I do. We do have plenty of defogs and rapid spin users but problem is that it's not because those Pokemon aren't good for Ou but because Ghold can defeat all it's check. Telling you right now, when Ghold is gone, you will see that hazards would not be such a big issues. I can use lower tier defog mons and get them to defog on a opponent that Mon is not weak against. Time to let Ghold be gone, defog is sadly not a TM anymore which is sad. National Dex looks happy because Ghold is not there and people can naturally defog and rapid spin there and spikes are not a issues in that tier. Could be wrong though, I know National Dex and Ou is not the same due to some mons not having a their moves anymore. This is only how I feel but I know it's not going to happen so I leave it as that.
Even considering the Dengo problem, DeoS deserves the banhammer first. It's too overwhelming for the tier, it probably has around 40% usage right now and that's unsurprising considering how damn versatile it is. It sets up Hazards, it T-waves, Tricks items, it has access to Knock Off and it can even function as a Special Sweeper with its stupidly high Speed to abuse. I'm still on the "Ban Dengo" team, but even without it Deoxys would still be way too broken as an Hazard setter. Gholdengo's ban might actually prevent Gliscor from getting banned again, though.
 
I genuinely imagine GF is just unaware that Defog is even something noteworthy to begin with. Hazards are barely used in VGC, so to them Defog is just a random evasion debuff move that was a HM in Gen 4.
They know. It's not a coincidence we got a metric fuckload of different ways to set up hazards, more mons getting spikes in their movepools, and stuff like Gholdengo all at the same time. My semi-unironic conspiracy theory is that Game Freak is actively trying to kill off singles so we all go play their corpo metagame where they can actually make money off of us- otherwise, imo, none of the massive balancing changes they've made this gen make any sense. Hazards are non-existant in VGC for very fundamental and obvious reasons, the removal of transfer moves has 0 effect on VGC because they haven't had transfer moves for over a decade, and the nerfs to stuff like recover is obviously targeted at singles as well since bulky team styles are unviable in VGC, so you wouldn't ever want to run recover anyways.

They want singles to be an uncompetitive HO hellhole so we stop playing our format and start playing the format they can easily monetize. I 100% expect next generation to remove the ability to play singles with others locally or online at all, so be prepared for that.
 
I’ll be honest, people have been discussing a sr ban since gen 4 and the topic of banning spikes comes up from time to time. I’m not saying that would ever happen or that I would agree if it did, but I think the reality is hazards themselves are more broken than people like to admit and dhengo is kind of a scapegoat for that. In ADV there was no defog, so all ghosts were hard counters to hazard removal, no court change, mold breaker, no work-around whatsoever. And you’d see the same scenario nowadays where gar gets sacked just to prevent spikes being removed, even if it gets pursuit trapped after because keeping spikes + chip/status on tar can be considered a fair trade. This really isn’t much different than sending your dhengo in on tusk to get knocked and then trying to rk for example.

I don’t really get the fear of dhengo right now specifically however when we just got so much dangerous shit that checks it? With darkrai, volc, glisc, and moon all being Uber-worthy threats that check dhengo and just dropped. Like to me the pre and post-dlc disparity is massive, dhengo does not feel as good/threatening as it was last week.
 
Anyone have any replays of deoxys speed dominating another team or doing much besides dying after it sets up hazards?

Darkrai is more of a problem for me but it's never swept- I might just lose something taking it down. Same can be said of many things.

I have much more problems with Boulder and valiant (still). Oh and roaring moon..


Using a sun team at the moment. Going fairly well.
 
Anyone have any replays of deoxys speed dominating another team or doing much besides dying after it sets up hazards?

Darkrai is more of a problem for me but it's never swept- I might just lose something taking it down. Same can be said of many things.

I have much more problems with Boulder and valiant (still)
Ill be honest, I played one game with a NP Psycho Boost :deoxys-speed: which would have swept... but it missed 3 times in a row.
All I want for christmas from this forum, is somebody to cook a rising voltage raging bolt team.
 
They know. It's not a coincidence we got a metric fuckload of different ways to set up hazards, more mons getting spikes in their movepools, and stuff like Gholdengo all at the same time. My semi-unironic conspiracy theory is that Game Freak is actively trying to kill off singles so we all go play their corpo metagame where they can actually make money off of us- otherwise, imo, none of the massive balancing changes they've made this gen make any sense. Hazards are non-existant in VGC for very fundamental and obvious reasons, the removal of transfer moves has 0 effect on VGC because they haven't had transfer moves for over a decade, and the nerfs to stuff like recover is obviously targeted at singles as well since bulky team styles are unviable in VGC, so you wouldn't ever want to run recover anyways.

They want singles to be an uncompetitive HO hellhole so we stop playing our format and start playing the format they can easily monetize. I 100% expect next generation to remove the ability to play singles with others locally or online at all, so be prepared for that.
Bro that is insane.

They are literally just trying to make hazards stronger in the official 3v3 singles metagame on cartridge. That format is incredibly popular in Japan.
 
I promise you dude that the Developers and coders of gamefreak have no idea of how smogon singles is played. Most of them aren't even aware of the site (remember, theres a difference between NOA, NJP, Gamefreak higher ups/managers and gamefreak game developers. they are different people and not one single entity lol). They want hazard play to be worth it in bss, especially because they made an item to counter it but realized the strategy itself is kinda ass. This is not an uncommon game design especially if your designer team is not following trends or super updated to how people play/competitive is the second priority over something else, compared to games like hearthstone or idk LoL that only exist for competitive pvp
 
They know. It's not a coincidence we got a metric fuckload of different ways to set up hazards, more mons getting spikes in their movepools, and stuff like Gholdengo all at the same time. My semi-unironic conspiracy theory is that Game Freak is actively trying to kill off singles so we all go play their corpo metagame
I think all of this was to speed up 1v1 matches on cartridge. Singles on cart take way longer than this optimized simulator, specially in older gens.
I recall in gen 8 it was a common complaint in singles battles that people would run fat defensive and force ties by timer-stalling to avoid losing. That would explain why there are so many hazards, less removal, more offensive power creep and recovery moves got their pps reduced.
 
Same corpo shit as VGC then, just a different flavour. They want us to play their shitty formats to milk us for cash just like any other big corporation would.
Lol no they are just responding to trends in that meta and we get the ripple effects. They don’t give a literal fuck about smogon.

You can trace every change to either vgc or bss trends other than the transfer moves, which they just removed because they saw them as pointless
 
Ill be honest, I played one game with a NP Psycho Boost :deoxys-speed: which would have swept... but it missed 3 times in a row.
All I want for christmas from this forum, is somebody to cook a rising voltage raging bolt team.
I actually faced an eterrian team that had rising voltage raging bolt, it is very much a gimmick team but they did pretty well for one
 
Nintendo not consulting with finch on their new game is literally fascism.

To avoid one liner a follow up to my deoxys speed- any replays of gouging fire being broken? Not seeing it as very overpowered either.... but maybe it was a skill issue of me not making them work. If your in the camp of them being broken please share replays. Tried both and felt underwhelming and haven't been beaten by either yet
 
What exactly does Deoxys-S do that's so awful? Be a good lead? I mean sure it's a big hit to Glimmora's viability but at the end of the day I really don't care which Pokémon is vomiting up hazards or screens turn 1 then dying, they all do the same thing, this one just does it better than most. I don't think the metagame is old enough to declare that this makes HO overbearing because almost everyone (me included) is running HO right now. Making a couple Pokémon (glimmora and Ninetales being the most apparent imo) less reliable picks is not a banworthy thing, and neither is being spammed on ladder week one. I've heard alarms raised about nasty plot or other offensive sets, but this seems to be all theorymon from my observation, and I've not heard of anyone having notable success running this over a real offensive Pokémon, like the many booster sweepers or breakers in the tier, or some of the excellent new setup sweepers that arrived or were unbanned, and the calcs are not particularly impressive, especially given that the tier is absurdly fast right now with booster speed Boulder being a pretty notable benchmark and straight up priority being a lot more important to respond to it, along with scarf becoming more common. I really do not think this Pokémon should be quickbanned and honestly do not understand peoples drive to, please do a suspect if anything is done (and I don't see a reason for anything to be done)
 
Espathra without Tera actually does look healthy, unlike Annihilape. However, I still support Tera being allowed, so no ostrich in the menu for now.


Well, personally I'd say it's moreso "manageable" over "healthy". No tera meaning it can't tera fairy past gambit/ting-lu is useful, yeah, but what else does the ostrich do? It genuinely just contraints teambuilding, forcing unaware/phasing + darks to make sure it doesn't get too far into it's stored power shenanigans, which really isn't something we need as of well, any metagame state. It's not healthy imo, cause a cheap wincon remains a cheap wincon, no matter if it requires a click of a button or a click of multiple buttons (few spike layer chip rounds and even +1 dgleam's damage starts getting ting dangerously close to dying, gambit even moreso. Now, may I ask, else from being a stored power wincon, what does it even do?
 
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