Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4

[UltraSword]

Abysmal Dogshit take. Only three of these are reasonably useable in OU and of those three only one of them is actually relevant. If you list off supposed counters to a mon and most of them are below UU that’s a sign that the actual relevant metagame is not well equipped to handle it because you have to dip into using niche options that you would not have to use otherwise in order to counter something. The Even from a pro-Mola perspective this arguement is flimsy.

I agree with this statement in general as only Volcanion and Clodsire (who will probably stop using water absorb anyway if Wogerpon is banned) are solid OU picks, though it is possible some of the other niche options become better if Wogerpon is banned. However, Alomomola is probably going to be fine in OU if Wogerpon is banned. Aside from water absorb pokemon, there are plenty of pokemon in the tier that punish flip turn including (but not limited to) Zapdos, Moltres (I know it is weak to water but even then it is taking almost nothing from flip turn), the many rocky helmet mons in the tier, and even the rare but still somewhat viable Garchomp. Even Ceruledge punishes flip turn because similar to Moltres, it doesn't take much damage from flip turn and that will activate weak armor. There are also a lot of pokemon that threaten it offensively such as Raging Bolt and Rillaboom but even just general special attackers can threaten Alomomola if it isn't AV. Now this isn't to say that Almomola won't get better in the event of a Wogerpon ban but it certainly won't be broken in my opinion.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Alomomola is a completely fine Mon. Even in the unlikely (for now) case of Waterpon being banned, you have Volcanion, Clodsire, Poliwrath, Cacturne, Gastrodon, Tatsugiri, Vaporeon and Toxicroak, among other options (just listed the best Water immune Mons) to prevent it from pivoting out. Its a Mon that holds the meta together and should never be banned.

i agree that alomomola is fine, but i also agree with seraphyde (never imagined i'd say those words) that the list of mons you gave for pivot blocking is kind of bad. most of the mons you listed have little to no use case in ou. the ones i can see being useful are clodsire, volcanion, vaporeon, gastrodon, and quagsire (which was not listed). even these are not super great options. quagsire and clodsire are more useful as unawaremons and their use cases are limited to pretty much only stall, gastrodon's niche lies more in the realm of "sticky hold knock absorber that can also set hazards" than storm drain user, and vaporeon is literally just alomomola but worse. volcanion's the only one here that i believe is a respectably viable mon in this tier when running water absorb, and it's kind of pigeonholed into taunt if you want to actually force switches or make progress against the mola itself

that said, blocking mola's pivots is only one way of dealing with its shenanigans. there's other stuff you can do to mitigate alomomola's support capability—knocking its boots and putting up hazards (3 spikes layers + rocks outdamages regen and forces mola to burn tera flying if it has it, which relieves the tera prediction burden and narrows the opponent's decision space), running neutralizing gas geezing to stuff out regen and cut into its hp with pain split, using a phazing move to underspeed the flip turns and take control of the wish healing out of the opponent's hands, psychic noise to prevent it clicking wish and to prevent wish recipients from healing with it, taunt in general, choice trick, strong breakers that can significantly outdamage regen, refusing to interact with the mola and clicking the setup button instead, all of these are viable methods of dealing with the classic wishfish option. av mola is weak to hazards without even needing knock and you can punish it much more easily by consistently outdamaging/neutralizing regen since that's its only form of healing, or underspeeding the flip turns and hitting the switch-ins really hard. all you have to do is scout properly so you don't get sniped by mirror coat and you're good. mola is not as hard to beat as everyone says it is, it just requires more work than people are comfortable with

 

[Achohermano]

People here know what that is?

Abysmal Dogshit take. Only three of these are reasonably useable in OU and of those three only one of them is actually relevant. If you list off supposed counters to a mon and most of them are below UU that’s a sign that the actual relevant metagame is not well equipped to handle it because you have to dip into using niche options that you would not have to use otherwise in order to counter something. The Even from a pro-Mola perspective this arguement is flimsy.

I agree with Seraphyde, while I don't think Alomomola, even in an hypothetic Waterpon-less meta that I won't talk in depth since it's theorymon, would be broken, using Gastrodon or even Tatsugiri as arguments isn't good.

It's cool to find some sort of niche to those low tier mons, but using them as arguments to keep something in the tier / unbaning a Pokémon is extremely dangerous. With Tera in hand, I'm sure you can find combinations of certain lower tier mons that could wall, I don't know, Urshifu Water Strike for example. Maybe a Tera-Ghost Cacturne or something like that. The argument is just unhealthy for the tier imho.

 

[cat111ca]

Here's a full explanation of why and (and probably more) are broken (please don't just respond with laughter and actually explain why u think I'm wrong)
unwallable set up.
Dragonite enters on a resisted or ineffective attack and from there can set up faster than you can theoretically stop it and with so much variation and moves you can't have a intended counter.
and wellspring can enter on a slower or more passive pokemon, use swords dance and survive, than use unwallable ivy cudgel that no pokemon that doesn't resist can survive one and outspeed. and it has incredible coverage against anything that thinks it can survive 2 and than ohko or survive 1 and outspeed and ohko. and with such a powerful move it can free up move slots for grass stab (wood hammer, vine whip, leech horn) coverage (play rough, knock off) and so much utility (taunt, encore, trailblaze, spikes, and more) and it can even surprize with pivoting sets!
they are unpredictable and 1 bad turn that could be non of your fault is enough for these to win. and please actually give reasons when countering what im saying

 

[miya_04]

Here's a full explanation of why and (and probably more) are broken (please don't just respond with laughter and actually explain why u think I'm wrong)
unwallable set up.
Dragonite enters on a resisted or ineffective attack and from there can set up faster than you can theoretically stop it and with so much variation and moves you can't have a intended counter.
and wellspring can enter on a slower or more passive pokemon, use swords dance and survive, than use unwallable ivy cudgel that no pokemon that doesn't resist can survive one and outspeed. and it has incredible coverage against anything that thinks it can survive 2 and than ohko or survive 1 and outspeed and ohko. and with such a powerful move it can free up move slots for grass stab (wood hammer, vine whip, leech horn) coverage (play rough, knock off) and so much utility (taunt, encore, trailblaze, spikes, and more) and it can even surprize with pivoting sets!
they are unpredictable and 1 bad turn that could be non of your fault is enough for these to win. and please actually give reasons when countering what im saying

Woger can be defensively checked through any singular entry hazard and the following mons if it doesn't tera (if it does then you've forced them to exhaust, and you can also counter tera).
Hydrapple (if no play rough), zapdos, gweez, corv, rillaboom, torn-t, Skarm, fatnite, pecharunt, mandibuzz, moltres (with tera), hatterene (nuzzle) or clef (twave). You will be hard pressed to find a fatter archetype that can't fit atleast one of these guys.

Woger can be offensively checked (can't set up on, forced to trade into at best, or is forced out) by the following mons:
Cinderace, darkrai, dragapult, zamazenta, iron valiant, booster speed moth, hatterene, kyurem, gambit (if no encore), dnite, scizor, torn-t, raging bolt, meowscarada, wake (on sun), lokix

And once again, it is not possible to understate how big the inability to wear boots is on this Mon. Furthermore, the current submeta on high ladder (to the best of my knowledge) is seeing heavy offense usage, encouraging even more fast guys (and Zama usage as a result) giving less free turns because of how much respect you need to give to the barrage of threats on screens and webs teams.

I understand that it can feel frustrating to face him with a bulkier team, because he is one of the fastest fat breakers we have ever seen, and that makes him very strong. I have been a victim many times to an unfortunately timed crit haha. However, the way of beating woger with fatter teams has not changed since its release—keep rocks up and play actively so that it doesn't get those free turns, and needs to really think about when it's coming in to take that hazard chip. This alone can, in many games, limit woger all by itself.

And remember, woger cannot run u turn, stabs, knock, play rough, SD, synth, trailbaze to stop revenge options, encore and taunt for extra fat breaking, and spikes all on one set. It is very possible to fit one or several of the mentioned (already good) mons on your team. There's also the unique downside with oger forms of knowing their tera type 100%, meaning surprise sets can only go so far, unlike dnite, who we can talk about next.

Dragonite I am a bit more annoyed by, but it is more to do with tera blast to be honest, which I know isn't getting looked at as much right now so I won't talk about that aspect too much. The main sentiment I see in the forums is that the combination of multiscale + high variation makes it feel like you can't do anything to stop dnite, and need to just hope that you're up against a set that your team is good into.

While I do agree to an extent, there are some nuances to consider. For one, you can generally tell a lot about the dnite set from preview alone. Is it on a Lu + ghost + no removal structure? It's probably a phasing fat set. Is it on a team with double Hazard control, or a screens team? It's probably bootless tera blast fly/fairy. If the rest of the physical attackers have no way of dealing with corv or Zama, it could be fire punch dice or tera ghost blast + encore. Is the team lacking priority? You can play around it being espeed. By looking at the rest of the offensive and defensive pieces, which are generally much easier to deduce, it can help a lot in figuring out what the dnite wants to do : )

Ignoring that corv beats every set that isn't fire punch or tb ghost (because you run out of encore pp due to pressure and can't actually break corv if they are encored into idef, especially if they are also lefties). We can again look at guys who can be used to help Vs dnite:

The regular espeed set loses to Zama, corv, mandibuzz, pech (who runs foul play commonly now), skarm, dozo, gweez, pex (eats +1 eq) , moltres (who also cooks any set that isn't tera fire).

It also needs a free turn to click that first dd remember. It can't do that Vs weavile, pult, tusk (spin to break scale and then force tera), meowscarada, Rai, toxic scor, alomamola (it's not safe to set up on scald), chomp, wake, bolt, pex, gweez, ace, clod, Val, gambit (gambit will just tera next turn and 2hko) hatterene, Lu, moltres, kyurem

And the other thing with dnite is that he is a real tera hog on a lot of teams between powering up espeed to get KO ranges and tera blast sets. And because he is more of a late game mon than woger, reading the tera turn is much easier than with woger.

Overall, I understand why you're frustrated with both of these guys, and I was once in the same ban camp for woger haha. But after learning a lot from my buddies in stallcord who are much better than me, as well as guys like MrJamvad, lax, and blunder on YouTube, I don't really have the same troubles against either of those mons, and every time I get goobed by one of them, it's very rare that I won't find plays that I could have done better to manoeuvre around them!

There is a time and a place for bans, but it is also important to reflect on your own performance, and ask yourself if there was truly nothing better you could have done in the games that you lost to woger and dnite, and any strong mon for that matter. Did you only start thinking about them once they were on the field and in a winning position, or were you considering what you know to be potent and potentially game ending threats from team preview all the way up until that point?