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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4

Most of the suspects/quickbans this generation were administered after a survey score of 3.5+ or higher from the qualified demographic. I don't see Dragonite getting a suspect unless its survey score clearly reaches that threshold for the next OU Tiering Survey next month. It could feasibly happen though, given how close it was to reaching that threshold in the previous survey.
 
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There's a myth here I really need to prove wrong
Banning≠suspecting
Technically you could suspect a zu mon if you wanted to
If a large portion (and it is a large portion) want wellspring at least suspected. Why not just give a chance? To me it's just mean.
 
a month ago. usually when the council is gearing up for a suspect we would've heard at least a single word about it by now
We were very transparent in that we are going to reassess things after SCL, which is ending in a week or two, as Dragonite was close and a few things got noteworthy scores.
never, unfortunately. i think we're done with ou suspects this gen. we've been deprived of a reference point for so long that a large portion of the playerbase has forgotten what a balanced meta even looks like. some people haven't, but half of them gave up on this gen after the initial tera suspect and the other half has been bleeding away the whole rest of the gen. this is what we're going to have to live with
So idk if this is cope or doomerism or whatever, but like go do it elsewhere because it’s not reflective of reality or the metagame itself
 
never, unfortunately. i think we're done with ou suspects this gen. we've been deprived of a reference point for so long that a large portion of the playerbase has forgotten what a balanced meta even looks like. some people haven't, but half of them gave up on this gen after the initial tera suspect and the other half has been bleeding away the whole rest of the gen. this is what we're going to have to live with
that's the thing my man

You can't speak collectively as one person with Deathspell Omega level of "we don't care anymore" especially when you yourself are playing the game with no problem.

Honestly, to hell with "balanced metas". I'm not going to speak for others but I would be sad to see Ogerpon-W or Dragonite suspect tested while I would love to see Alomomola suspect tested.

I can still start the sim, choose any SV tier, and find games no problem on the ladder. We're not arranging funerals for this game anytime soon so your oratory needs work
 
:Clefable::Blissey::Jirachi::Gliscor::Dondozo::Tornadus-Therian:

Metronome (the move) adds cheese to the game without any strategic or competitive gain.
We had Acupressure banned for potentially violating the evasion clause.
Metronome is capable of violating not only the evasion clause but also the OH-KO moves clause.
Some examples in the mid ladder of anti-competitive play.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2483958070-1pm4v15dllbgkm2qcg2r1dfhrn1q9jwpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2485253448-uhibem1jx77shjifj1d5p7mfuwyxpuxpw?p2
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2485720435-o5kv2a4fgieyejy442uuqd01oi8vxn7pw?p2
It's not a priority, but I believe the question should be "why not ban it?", instead of the common "why ban it?"
"Why not ban it?" So we don't lose face for being incredibly thin-skinned.

I don't think I need to do a deep dive on the math to point out that the chances of Metronome doing anything significant to enable a game win are ridiculously low. You are more likely to have a Pokémon KO itself by rolling Explosion and friends (7 moves) than rolling an OHKO move (4 moves) and then land it (30% chance), especially when all OHKO moves can be blocked by type immunities. Oh no, Metronome called Guillotine against my Gholdengo, whatever am I do to. Acupressure also has to roll its own dice to hit Evasion even if you do get it from Metronome. No one is bringing this to a tournament game – let alone with 6 users – unless they feel stupidly lucky, and they might as well go buy lottery tickets at that point. You should be much more concerned about losing from a single untimely Ivy Cudgel crit than multiple good Metronome procs.

To put it another way: sometimes you have a D&D session where you just roll like shit all day, your DM is rolling 20s every other attack, and your character dies to bullshit with nothing you can do about it. Life can be that way, just be mature about it.
 
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Being correct about Ogerpon-W remaining OU doesn't suddenly make the unban campaigns or desire to suspect Alomomola and Ting-Lu any less absurd. One relatively-green player making a fearful proposal doesn't have any effect on how agreeable your own controversial ones are.

More than just straight absurd power, I think the thing that needs to be discussed if anyone wants to push for a Suspect test is greater Metagame effect since we've long since Tested the mons that would just be "big number" problems like DLC1 Gliscor (DLC2 it's seemed pretty honest) on defensive play or Baxcalibur on offensive. Like does Ting-Lu actually force anything to play differently, or is it just an extremely strong blanket check to a lot of the tier's attackers? Does Wellspring force defensive teams to build outright suboptimal structures, or is it just one breaker they have to weigh the heavy risk of compared to being weak to, say, Gholdengo or NP Darkrai? We've been in SV OU long enough that I think wider meta effects are visible without being trends that will easily shift around, so discussing that wider context is more important to pin down things to add, remove, or experiment with.
From my point of view Ting Lu being suspect isn't that absurd. Otherwise we should unban box legends at this point. We all share our opinions here so all calls for tiering actions will be controversial. Given some posts here I'm glad that the chaotic BW is my favorite old gen but I wish less vitriol towards offensive pokemon and less fearmongering regarding setup moves would be thrown around. SV made people see red in their eyes when they hear the words Dragon Dance.
 
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"Why not ban it?" So we don't lose face for being incredibly thin-skinned.

I don't think I need to do a deep dive on the math to point out that the chances of Metronome doing anything significant to enable a game win are ridiculously low. You are more likely to have a Pokémon KO itself by rolling Explosion and friends (7 moves) than rolling an OHKO move (4 moves) and then land it (30% chance), especially when all OHKO moves can be blocked by type immunities. Oh no, Metronome called Guillotine against my Gholdengo, whatever am I do to. Acupressure also has to roll its own dice to hit Evasion even if you do get it from Metronome. No one is bringing this to a tournament game – let alone with 6 users – unless they feel stupidly lucky, and they might as well go buy lottery tickets at that point. You should be much more concerned about losing from a single untimely Ivy Cudgel crit than multiple good Metronome procs.

To put it another way: sometimes you have a D&D session where you just roll like shit all day, your DM is rolling 20s every other attack, and your character dies to bullshit with nothing you can do about it. Life can be that way, just be mature about it.
i agree with this in principle but i also think that metronome is literally just pure rng and if we're going to be consistent with tiering rng things it should probably go. it's not really problematic at all on a wide scale, but neither was acupressure (and honestly neither was post-nerf moody, don't @ me, it's exclusively on shitmons). the problem with metronome is less that it's good by any stretch of the imagination and more that it removes all the player choice out of the game on both sides of the equation. not that i think there's actually a problem with metronome, literally nothing of importance hinges on it staying or going, but i don't think leaving it be is a consistent application of policy as it's been applied this gen
 
"Why not ban it?" So we don't lose face for being incredibly thin-skinned.
This is a terrible reason to not ban something.

I don't think I need to do a deep dive on the math to point out that the chances of Metronome doing anything significant to enable a game win are ridiculously low. You are more likely to have a Pokémon KO itself by rolling Explosion and friends (7 moves) than rolling an OHKO move (4 moves) and then land it (30% chance), especially when all OHKO moves can be blocked by type immunities. Oh no, Metronome called Guillotine against my Gholdengo, whatever am I do to. Acupressure also has to roll its own dice to hit Evasion even if you do get it from Metronome. No one is bringing this to a tournament game – let alone with 6 users – unless they feel stupidly lucky, and they might as well go buy lottery tickets at that point. You should be much more concerned about losing from a single untimely Ivy Cudgel crit than multiple good Metronome procs.

To put it another way: sometimes you have a D&D session where you just roll like shit all day, your DM is rolling 20s every other attack, and your character dies to bullshit with nothing you can do about it. Life can be that way, just be mature about it.
I think it is less about the fact that metronome is broken or unhealthy (as it is neither of those things) but more so it being uncompetitive. While I don't agree with the sleep ban, one of the reasons hypnosis was considered uncompetitive was that it not only had chance to hit but also a really high chance to miss. On something like Iron Valiant who can out speed all viable pokemon in the metagame, hypnosis was impossible to play around and relied on praying for the miss. In my opinion, we should have just banned Darkrai and Iron Valiant instead of sleep altogether but that isn't what is important. The reason sleep was banned is the same reason metronome is technically banworthy. It is impossible to play around which is uncompetitive in the same way hypnosis was. I personally do not care if metronome is actually banned or anything but if we want to have at least a little consistency this gen then metronome should be banned.

Edit: Also, technically this move violates the clause that doesn't allow for OHKO moves to exist since this technically has a chance to use something like sheer cold or guillotine.
 
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Metronome can call Acupressure, Fissure, Guillotine, Horn Drill, Sheer Cold, Double Team, Minimize, Hypnosis, Sing, Sleep Powder, Spore, Yawn, Last Respects, and Baton Pass (Dark Void fails for non-Darkrai Pokemon).
This is a 14/577 (total number of Metronome moves) = 2.426% chance to call a banned move on every use of Metronome.
Yeah, I agree, just because it hasn't caused any major problems yet doesn't mean we should wait for it to do something goofy in a major tournament game, especially since it should technically be banned under the current ruleset
From my point of view Ting Lu being suspect isn't that absurd. Otherwise we should unban box legends at this point.
I mean let's be real for a sec, Giratina-A isn't broken. Annoying yes but you can tell me that fat blob that can't even make progress is broken, right?
 
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Metronome can call Acupressure, Fissure, Guillotine, Horn Drill, Sheer Cold, Double Team, Minimize, Hypnosis, Sing, Sleep Powder, Spore, Yawn, Last Respects, and Baton Pass (Dark Void fails for non-Darkrai Pokemon).
This is a 14/577 (total number of Metronome moves) = 2.426% chance to call a banned move on every use of Metronome.
that's a higher chance than i expected actually. i think this definitely deserves more discussion. the right move is probably to open a pr thread about it, which is what was done with acupressure iirc
I mean let's be real for a sec, Giratina-A isn't broken. Annoying yes but you can tell me that fat blob that can't even make progress is broken, right?
giratina-a can absolutely make progress. unlike ting, it actually has setup capability. it can sit there and sponge hits all day while setting up calm minds until it gets bored and starts flinging out nuclear bombs. that's the thing that'd break it
 
that's a higher chance than i expected actually. i think this definitely deserves more discussion. the right move is probably to open a pr thread about it, which is what was done with acupressure iirc

giratina-a can absolutely make progress. unlike ting, it actually has setup capability. it can sit there and sponge hits all day while setting up calm minds until it gets bored and starts flinging out nuclear bombs. that's the thing that'd break it
Yeah and then it gets knocked and becomes a sitting duck. Sets up calm minds, fails to ohko something and gets revenge killed.

It's just what i said, SV has, in my opinion, traumatized people with setup moves. I'm not going to state my opinion on Giratina-A here as people here kinda know my sentiment, so I'm going to ask you people a question... what is it about Calm Mind / Quiver Dance / Dragon Dance that you cower in fear over? As someone who is possibly going to vote ban on Frosmoth in PU, from my point of view, you need a very specific combination of traits, and for everything to go well, in order to get the conditions for a clean sweep against any decent opponent, even with so-called "broken" pokemon.
Notice how most of the setup sweepers that signify this boo-hoo-hoo are brutally weak to knock off. Stop scaring people with the television!
 
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Yeah, I agree, just because it hasn't caused any major problems yet doesn't mean we should wait for it to do something goofy in a major tournament game, especially since it should technically be banned under the current ruleset

I mean let's be real for a sec, Giratina-A isn't broken. Annoying yes but you can tell me that fat blob that can't even make progress is broken, right?
Leaving aside the fact that it has ways of making progress (CM, Dtail, Sub) do you really want to make bulky hazard teams even more unbearable to play against? Giratina-A is essentially unbreakable by all hazard control options and can actually do damage to them. To be honest, it just seems like another status spamming fat mon that really contributes nothing to the tier.
 
Leaving aside the fact that it has ways of making progress (CM, Dtail, Sub) do you really want to make bulky hazard teams even more unbearable to play against? Giratina-A is essentially unbreakable by all hazard control options and can actually do damage to them. To be honest, it just seems like another status spamming fat mon that really contributes nothing to the tier.
Sub is a progress making move lol? I never even said it should actually be unbanned, just that its not really broken. Idk if this is bait but the best playstyle in the tier is screens rn, bulky hstack isn't close to a problem
 
what is it about Calm Mind / Quiver Dance / Dragon Dance that you cower in fear over? As someone who is possibly going to vote ban on Frosmoth in PU, from my point of view, you need a very specific combination of traits, and for everything to go well, in order to get the conditions for a clean sweep against any decent opponent, even with so-called "broken" pokemon.
Notice how most of the setup sweepers that signify this boo-hoo-hoo are brutally weak to knock off. Stop scaring people with the television!

Set up sweepers should have reasonable outs against them so they can’t just snowball and roll over teams. All the set up threats that have been banned from OU this gen have have that absurd snowball/sweep capability, and they also have had minimal counterplay. In fact let’s go through them.

:Annihilape: taunt+bu sets were unreasonably hard to handle as it punished defensive teams which couldn’t damage it significantly due to Rage Fist while Drain Punch healed off damage. RestChesto and Leftover variants were both nasty and Tera only compounded the issue and often took multiple Pokémon to bring it down.
:Baxcalibur: way too strong and difficult to answer after it boosted which it did with ease. Much like Ape it often needed multiple Pokémon to bring it down if it didn’t outright sweep. Tera exacerbated it but tbh it was broken with or without it.
:Chien-Pao: Way too fast which made handling a boosted Pao very strenuous, especially considering its priority.
:Espathra: pretty obvious but incredibly brainless snowball Mon that overwhelmed teams with little effort and had far too specific of counterplay.
:Magearna: same as bird but had ridiculous versatility in how it could set up and sweep making prep for it near impossible to do relia
:Palafin-Hero: easily set up due to excellent stats and was way too hard to remove once boosted.
:Roaring-Moon: incredibly threatening and hard to remove once boosted, easily left tons of damage strewn about even if it didn’t sweep which enabled its teammates (this is relevant and I’ll get to it).
:Sneasler: basically impossible to revenge KO without priority after it boosted and unburdened and very strong with very limited counterplay.
:Ursaluna-Bloodmoon: extremely strong, and difficult to remove once boosted (seeing a pattern?) which often forces multiple trades to remove it, if it didn’t sweep outright. Extremely centralizing when it was legal.
:Volcarona: outrageous and versatile with capabilities of snowballing super quickly and was very difficult to prep for.

All sorts of broken set up threats are broken whether it’s through speed and power once boosted that makes them capable of just cleaving through teams without specific counterplay, or they’re the slow burn super bulky type with great longevity that once boosted are very hard to remove and can claim many KOs before being removed, if they are at all. And again have specific counterplay.

The point is once these threats are boosted they very often threaten to end games or at least claim multiple kos, and easily at that, unless they face the specific counterplay they had. It makes for restrictive gameplay when they’re around and unbalanced, generally less pleasant and less enjoyable metas.

Also all these I listed save espathra are not weak to knock off, and the move does nothing to halt their sweeps.

I never even said it should actually be unbanned, just that its not really broken

It is very much broken and for the same reasons as all the other pasted banned set up threats pushed to the extreme (super fat, access to Tera, incredibly hard to remove once boosted, and it’d just prop up those types of teams more than ever (and screens are strong atm but calling them the best playstyle is a hot take for sure). Like what is your strategy for beating just a simple CM+Wisp+STABS set factoring the many tera choices on top of everything?
 
We were very transparent in that we are going to reassess things after SCL, which is ending in a week or two, as Dragonite was close and a few things got noteworthy scores.

So idk if this is cope or doomerism or whatever, but like go do it elsewhere because it’s not reflective of reality or the metagame itself

never, unfortunately. i think we're done with ou suspects this gen. we've been deprived of a reference point for so long that a large portion of the playerbase has forgotten what a balanced meta even looks like. some people haven't, but half of them gave up on this gen after the initial tera suspect and the other half has been bleeding away the whole rest of the gen. this is what we're going to have to live with

I believe the OU Council has done a great job this generation under your leadership. Contrary to the beliefs of those such as DaddyBuzzwole, there has been more tiering action this generation than any other generation, and the transparency of the OU Council is at its highest ever due to your personal efforts to lead on that front. From an accessibility standpoint of making tiering decisions easy to understand by as much of the playerbase as possible, no previous OU tier leader has Finchinator beat, and it shows in how Finchinator believes in being accountable to the people.

The only cases in which mons were suspected or quickbanned when they had a survey score lower than 3.5 were Ursaluna-Bloodmoon (which the OU Council saw as broken before the general playerbase, Urshifu-Rapid Strike (the OU Council was ahead of the curve again, especially with the checks that made Shifu balanced in Gen 8 were nerfed into the ground, and Volcarona (which had a record level of write-in support for an individual mon). The OU Council is merely trying to be consistent with tiering decisions by not suspecting Dragonite before it has a survey score of 3.5.

I know many players who were upset by the results of the Tera suspect will never be happy with the end result of this meta, but objectively, this OU Council has been much more proactive with getting out suspects tests or quickbanning mons that were clearly broken such as Chi-Yu and Annihilape. I know it's frustrating for some players that only roughly 50% of suspect tests resulted in a ban or remain banned result this generation, but that does not mean that the OU Council is sitting on its ass, and trying to depict this OU Council as such is both blatantly untrue and baseless.
 
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cmon, man, can we stop talking about metronome and "uncompetitive" when Moltres and Zapdos are literally in the OU tier?

And +1 to Alomaloma ban (idk the order of the vowels)
 
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.

Regarding Mons that should actually be banned, my list continues being short: Waterpon and Gliscor. If both go, then Kyurem might be considered, but I don,t find it on the same level. Nite is another totally fine Mon despite being versatile.
 
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