The SV OU council is discussing Volcarona and Tera Blast: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/re-sv-ou-volcarona-tera-blast.3740619/#post-10063527
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4
- Thread starter TPP
- Start date
I actually think Hawlucha can be a bit of a trap in grassy terrain teams (compared to some of the risk free cheese we've seen this gen.) It pigeonholes you into an HO type structure, because it can only do its thing once and is tera reliant on coverage or can't break past stuff if it is running encore, so you need to build/play carefully to enable it. Not a necessarily a bad thing, HO has been the dominant play-style this gen for a reason, but stuff like Zamazenta can also do a very good job on grassy terrain, and stacking fairy weaknesses is an issue with teams this gen with all the dominant dragon/dark/fighting type mons. A lot of bulky mons without consistent recovery like dog, tusk, raging bolt, manaphy, hat like terrain recovery. Bolt, gouging fire and ghold love terrain halving EQ's damage as well. Some of these mons use grassy seed + setup to become unkillable setup sweepers as well, which is where things can get cheap. Rilla also is never run without glide, so that is a non-issue. Terrain may not be the most dominant playstyle at the moment, but it is still good and quite consistent.
Tera blast ban would be really good, but that is my bias speaking up. I hate the move, it feels really cheap and adds to the chaos. I get that volc is also matchup fishy, but it offers a fair bit defensively; unfortunately, it is a bit much with tera and tera blast. Either being banned would improve things.
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Sticky Barb Clef is my favorite one. Dozo is the easy answer and if Moon's running taunt then it can't beat Gambit. Taunt is more likely when Moon's paired with Gambit so that's bit of a tell. Really any balance team with good pivoting physical walls + strong priority user can deal with Moon. Some other physically bulky mons like Garg can as well with tera in the mix. RH Lando is probably the best and can heavily damage Moon if they don't tera. If they do tera fly then Bolt and Gambit have a much easier time killing it. Dragonite will always beat Moon generally. Weavile has the most consistent priority for it and with tera ice, Moon doesn't need much chip beforehand to die. Even things like CB tera grass glide will do ~50% to Moon resisted. I don't find that using tera to beat it is a problem since Moon is extremely likely to tera itself. That's a fair trade but not a requirement to beat it. Another good way of limiting it is entry hazards + status because of how much Moon hates being chipped. Forcing it out in any way makes it much less scary to deal with the second time too.
Normally, I don't think that SPL stats are the best for discussing "broken" mons but here it's useful. Moon is one of the most used mons and its win rate is below 40%. For something that generally only fits on one play style that's pretty telling and It's only gotten worse as time goes on. And if you look at the replays vs balance teams you can see they have good answers. Moon is a very one dimensional mon and doesn't force balance to run things that it isn't already using. If you're relying on only one physical wall like Skarm and no priority you're generally gonna have a bad time even if you don't face Moon.
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Thanks for the response. It’s funny because I feel the opposite when using balance. I disagree with sticky barb clef as a switch in as Tera flying 2HKOs max def and that goes back to my point that it always requires you sack at least one Mon (or Tera to survive a hit). Sticky barb also doesn’t work if you switch it into a knock off. I will keep an eye out for the Roaring Moon-Gambit pairing but having to pair Dozo and Gambit on the same team seems for counter play incredibly restrictive to me. But that goes back to my issues with the meta that typical balance feels very difficult to build.
I’ve been using the balance team below and dropped from 1750-1500 just by running into moon repeatedly. Maybe I should make clef barb and swap out Corv for Rocky helmet skarm?
https://pokepast.es/143bc9df2002e319hh
I will watch those SPL replays but I also think it’s SPL winning percentage (which I don’t like to use either) can be explained by 1) its high usage rate meaning losses or more likely 2) it’s a non that typically is used early game to break holes in teams so it allows time for opponents to come back.
I also think the taunt/EQ/sub set guessing goes back to what Finch said about problematic pokemon. They can choose their counter play and require you to guess to figure it out. That seems fairly uncompetitive to me.
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Volcarona Stats
Overall usage, SPL: 14th
Win rate, SPL: 57.69%, rising to 60.53% without the mirror match (highest in top 15, 5th highest in "ou range")
Tera usage: 9 times, won 8 of them, 5 different types
Overall usage: OST: 9th
Win rate: 48.39% (larger sample size)
Tera usage: unavailable
It's pretty clear Volcarona is a top pokemon in the metagame, holding an A+ rank on the VR and a strong showing in tournaments. Note that these stats also include a number of weeks in the Archaludon metagame which was bad for Volc so these stats are actually more of an underestimation of how good it is. I think the tera stats are enlightening too as it shows that volcarona using tera is a very effective strategy, which explains why Volc and Tera Blast are both being looked at.
I do think it would be a shame to lose tera blast in that it adds a lot of variety for lower tier pokemon to succeed with but some people don't like the variety we have right now so it's understandable to be discussing it
Overall usage, SPL: 14th
Win rate, SPL: 57.69%, rising to 60.53% without the mirror match (highest in top 15, 5th highest in "ou range")
Tera usage: 9 times, won 8 of them, 5 different types
Overall usage: OST: 9th
Win rate: 48.39% (larger sample size)
Tera usage: unavailable
It's pretty clear Volcarona is a top pokemon in the metagame, holding an A+ rank on the VR and a strong showing in tournaments. Note that these stats also include a number of weeks in the Archaludon metagame which was bad for Volc so these stats are actually more of an underestimation of how good it is. I think the tera stats are enlightening too as it shows that volcarona using tera is a very effective strategy, which explains why Volc and Tera Blast are both being looked at.
I do think it would be a shame to lose tera blast in that it adds a lot of variety for lower tier pokemon to succeed with but some people don't like the variety we have right now so it's understandable to be discussing it
Kingambit is using terablast?
Since when?
I have never once encountered a kingambit with tera blast.
What tera blast is he using?
Certainly not fighting because low kick is almost always the better choice.
it has used tera blast fairy p often for since last summer. it has been all over the ladder and tournaments. you surely have seen it if you are playing the tier
Oh okay, thanks.
Nobody uses that on the low ladder.
Anyway, did people vote for volcarona on a survey?
If yes then where are the results of the survey?
Something unrelated: do you people think that hatterenne risks dropping if gholdengo gets banned?(she would still have niche regardless).
i mean, i believe you about tours, but i don't see tera blast on the stats page for it on mid or high ladder:
basically all ladder gambits are running sd + sucker + kowtow + iron head, occasionally swapping out iron head for low kick, with not enough running tera blast to even separate it from the "other" category (which i believe means less than 4% of them run it but i don't know exactly how that's sorted out). it was huge on ladder earlier in the gen, it even got an in-game shout-out with geeta's gambit using flying tera blast in the dlc2 rematch, but i think right now tera blast gambit is more of a tour thing than a ladder thing. i wouldn't consider it "all over the ladder" at the moment
(also, good luck to the one person using pressure gambit on high ladder)
Bonus stat:
Uses tera blast 76% of the time (OU 1685 stats for march ladder)
Code:
volcarona
Moves |
| Quiver Dance 99.667% |
| Tera Blast 76.542% |
| Fiery Dance 58.579%Uses tera blast 76% of the time (OU 1685 stats for march ladder)
Tera Blast being that much higher than Fiery Dance is crazy.
I would imagine its because Tera Blast is effectively an auto include while you have a few fire moves to choose from. Fiery Dance is prooobably best, but Flamethrower shows up often enough to skew things away from Dance alone.
Yeah, I've seen Flamethrower and even Fire Blast at times from people who I guess either wanted more immediate power, didn't want Fiery Dance's stupid coin flip SpA boost that proves that, no, heads isn't "inevitable" strictly speaking, and/or just wanted to see the world Burn (status) like psychos when Flame Body wasn't enough. So between that and Tera Blast essentially being Hidden Power on steroids as long as you're willing to Tera on one of the mons that already benefits from Tera the most, it's not that surprising really even if Fiery Dance is still the most common Fire move overall.
Not getting into Volcarona banning discussion otherwise, especially given how endless and bitter these things tend to go on and on (and on) at times otherwise. So I'll all else I'll say before disappearing again that if it does go, then at least which "Volc" people are talking about here at times will become 100% clearer, especially now that people are starting to talk about and see
Volcanion's merits again this gen (before they miss a vital Steam Eruption or Fire Blast and die and then hyperbolically talk about how trash it is with 100% certainty).P.S. Kudos to the staff again for their extreme patience for a thankless job and for the April Fool's Day sprites. My favorite was Maushold-Three's due to my love for Courage the Cowardly Dog.
My unasked for thoughts on the Volcarona kerfuffel: To me, the defensive and counter-offensive profile of Volcarona is worth it more than its potential brokenness. I think it's an superb mon that will dominate, it can adapt and pick its counters, but it's not easy to get it rolling, specially in a meta filled with Encore and phazing.
To play devil's advocate to myself, I'm all for the Tera Blast ban, I feel it provides too much universal coverage to too many mons, and that randomness benefits nobody. In any case, I strongly feel that the best Volc is the Tera Grass Giga Drain variant, which doesn't even require TB, so in that regard I wouldn't link the brokenness of Volc to TB.
All in all, that's my opinion. If it were up to me, the most pressing matter in SV OU is Kyurem, but oh well, nothing is going to happen in that regard.
Anyway, I have been playing more constantly as of late, trying new ideas and lost a bunch of ELO, but build a Psyspam team (https://pokepast.es/891c9f3521d72892) which has been fairly successful and got me back to 1400 in a breeze. It's a pretty basic PsySpam team with IVal to deal with some of the more contentious matchups (Ghold, RBolt, Gambit, Moon, Hamu). It's lacking some hazard control, which usually renders Polteageist useless if I face Glimm or something. I was thinking Hatterene but man, Cresselia is a beast and I feel its slightly overlooked. After a Calm Mind it's basically unbeatable. I'm thinking of giving up Lefties in favour of Mental Herb bc the only thing stopping me is Taunt and specially Encore. So yeah, any input on the team is welcome. Take care my dudes happy saturday
To play devil's advocate to myself, I'm all for the Tera Blast ban, I feel it provides too much universal coverage to too many mons, and that randomness benefits nobody. In any case, I strongly feel that the best Volc is the Tera Grass Giga Drain variant, which doesn't even require TB, so in that regard I wouldn't link the brokenness of Volc to TB.
All in all, that's my opinion. If it were up to me, the most pressing matter in SV OU is Kyurem, but oh well, nothing is going to happen in that regard.
Anyway, I have been playing more constantly as of late, trying new ideas and lost a bunch of ELO, but build a Psyspam team (https://pokepast.es/891c9f3521d72892) which has been fairly successful and got me back to 1400 in a breeze. It's a pretty basic PsySpam team with IVal to deal with some of the more contentious matchups (Ghold, RBolt, Gambit, Moon, Hamu). It's lacking some hazard control, which usually renders Polteageist useless if I face Glimm or something. I was thinking Hatterene but man, Cresselia is a beast and I feel its slightly overlooked. After a Calm Mind it's basically unbeatable. I'm thinking of giving up Lefties in favour of Mental Herb bc the only thing stopping me is Taunt and specially Encore. So yeah, any input on the team is welcome. Take care my dudes happy saturday
As long as they don't have an item, which Moon never does because Booster, they get the barb. This works even with knock off. Not an outright counter but it's a good way to make progress against it. Moonblast one shots if Moon doesn't tera, has access to t-wave to cripple it, generally the pink blob is annoying for it to deal with. I brought up Taunt because that can potentially beat certain Dozo sets but you're not required to run Gambit/Dozo. Lando/Corv/Mola/Gliscor are all good for chipping it and getting something in to kill it.
Barb Clef would be a good option because you have 2 knockers. Brave bird on Corv I think is better overall for things like Ogerpon and will do much more damage if Moon teras. Skarm is great for ID press but you could also run whirlwind. That was used in SPL and Garg was able to 1v1 Moon easily without the proto boost. A phaser would probably be a good idea generally because any sweeper with sub will dodge your toxics and salt cures.
It matters more in this case because Moon is mostly limited to hyper offense, the other top mons fit a variety of play styles and will be more balanced. If the opponent is able to come back and win then it's probably not doing a good job at making holes.
The counter play's not significantly different. It only determines if like your Dozo/Corv can curse/iron defense or if it can hit Gambit hard. Volcarona is an example where it's significantly different and there's almost no indication of its moveset and tera type.
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It’s just another attempt at ignoring the real problem with the meta, unfortunately. We saw this coming.
how bout no.
it’s rather easy to get going. Not sure where you get that from. Trying to encore it can get risky and phasing reliably is limited to Ting Lu who takes a lot of damage just to do so once.
you even admit it’s able to handpick its counterplay, which is a pretty tell tale sign of a problem.
I mean, bad example, but Gambit also gets to pick its counters and it is running freely.
To me, Volcarona is like just at the threshold of where the power level should be at. It is really good, no attempts to nerf it are going to work, and either we accept it or we don't. I say I like a meta with Volc being strong and centralizing. But thats just my ignorant take
I think that's then a issue with Gambit, rather than not an issue with Volc. If something is able to vastly change its counterplay by selecting one move/tera type, then that is extremely unhealthy.
Tera Grass Heatran would like a word with you, I believe that's like the healthiest defensive mon in the tier. But in regards to Volc I don't find it particularly varied in the way to counter it depending on its tera. But hey what do I know, it's not like 1400s have heard that Volc is amazing so i'm not facing that many. Really it's just a thing of state of tier, and it's very personal. I like what Volc has to offer and if it gets overbearing then so be it, but that's what I think and I'm not trying to convince anyone otherwise. I feel in a similar way to Arch, it was amazing utility and if that meant I had to endure rain sets that's a price I was willing to pay. And I don't wanna get too "slippery slope" but I feel that once Volc was originally banned, a lot of things started becoming broken. I am aboard the ban train and something needs to change in the tier, but I just don't see how Volc is the starting point. I gotta say that I appreciate the council's work enormously bc Volc is a contentious mon (in that ppl feel very attached to it and felt the ban was unjustified (but not uncalled for)), and I feel TB suspecting was something that they didnt really wanted to push for, but I appreciate that they're giving us this out of "okay lets try banning TB and see how things change". I personally don't see much changing besides Eleki coming back down, but it's a very nice and timely optic move that will help movilize a lot of more stubborn people.
Regarding the Volc/TB discussion: imo the correct order of operations is deciding what to do with Tera Blast before proceeding with action on Volcarona. As the most notorious user and abuser of the move, the two are intertwined. People don't vote in a vacuum: if Volc is suspected first, people are going to vote based on what they speculate is going to happen to Tera Blast. This will poison the well somewhat.
As Tera Blast has received less support for action than Volcarona, and banning a move that isn't outrageously broken like Last Respects is always going to be an ideological sticking point for many, it is the least likely to receive action. Thus, before suspecting or banning the moth, the council should formally vote on Tera Blast once and for all, and lock into history the decision, whether it be no action or a suspect. Then we can start talking about getting the moth out of here with a blank slate.
As Tera Blast has received less support for action than Volcarona, and banning a move that isn't outrageously broken like Last Respects is always going to be an ideological sticking point for many, it is the least likely to receive action. Thus, before suspecting or banning the moth, the council should formally vote on Tera Blast once and for all, and lock into history the decision, whether it be no action or a suspect. Then we can start talking about getting the moth out of here with a blank slate.
how about, IronPress skarm, or Kingambit, or the #4 most used Mon in the tier Lando-T
Well that's inconsistent - instantly shutting down an attempt to discuss Tera's place in the tier then saying that handpicking counterplay is a "tell tale sign of a problem." Is that not exactly how Tera works?
Because it is solely limited to volc. Show me any other mon besides volc, regieleki, terapagos and esparthra that are broken purely by tera. Every other mon that was banned/is banworthy is broken without tera. Why are you banning a whole mechanic to keep a few mons.
That's why people are shutting down tera discussion, not a thing about it has changed and no worthwhile arguments about its brokeness has come up. It just derails discussion.
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RE: The Tera Blast Discussion
It's so funny that people are doing everything in their power to just not touch kingambit because apparently banning him and then banning the things that become broken when he's gone is just too much action for the tier
It's so funny that people are doing everything in their power to just not touch kingambit because apparently banning him and then banning the things that become broken when he's gone is just too much action for the tier
Kingambit:
Eh, sucker punch and supreme overlord is still bs on gambit. +2 five allies defeated sucker punch still does 50% to tusk, which is insane. I could technically add gambit, but I think it's moreso that tera increases its power more when it still should be banned even if tera is banned. That mon still forces to many 50/50s, even when not tera'd.
Oh, and at least with gambit, it's most of the time not going to switch up its counterplay immensly by slotting in a different coverage move that it shouldn't have. Tera blast isn't even on 5% of gambit sets, so tera blast doesn't even involve gambit.