Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4

[JackRG]

Hello how are you all doing?

I’d like to talk about punishes to passive lame stuff like and

AV mola is probably the most broken Pokémon in OU, because it is a free turn button against non ogerpon teams. Similarly, slowking-g clicks chilly button button and gets momentum back with very little risk to the user. Very cheap. It makes me so mad.

I’ve found with choice specs Tera dragon Draco Meteor to be a nice punish to this core.
Yes, tastugiri:

You come in on the fish, get storm drain, and then click the button and something dies as long as they don’t have a primarina or something. Seriously. It OHKOs AV slowking and AV mola. Then you get to click the rest of the game with your opps defensive wall blown open. Free moon blast/bitter blade for the rest of the game? Sure thing, boss. Like wth is this damage??

+1 252+ SpA Choice Specs Tera Dragon Tatsugiri Draco Meteor vs. 20 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Alomomola: 502-592 (105.4 - 124.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO

+1 252+ SpA Choice Specs Tera Dragon Tatsugiri Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 96 SpD Assault Vest Slowking-Galar: 372-438 (94.4 - 111.1%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO

Here’s a team to illustrate the concept:

https://pokepast.es/1015ab8a4982910d

Bait mola with samurott, ceru or enam, nab a KO with fish, and clean with whatever beats the hole. (This team is really bad btw)

What are some other nice punishes to this cheap style of gameplay that you have found?

Specs is also a great aganist AV Mola / Gking, thanks to its dark typing making it immune to mirror coat
Darkrai @ Choice Specs
Ability: Bad Dreams
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Dark Pulse
- Sludge Bomb
- Trick
- Ice Beam

252 SpA Choice Specs Tera Dark Darkrai Dark Pulse vs. 20 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Alomomola: 204-242 (42.8 - 50.8%) -- 3.1% chance to 2HKO

252 SpA Choice Specs Tera Dark Darkrai Dark Pulse vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Slowking-Galar: 364-432 (92.3 - 109.6%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO

Lu ain't safe either

252 SpA Choice Specs Tera Dark Darkrai Ice Beam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Vessel of Ruin Ting-Lu: 190-224 (36.9 - 43.5%) -- 99.5% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

Bulky ace also gets fried, preventing voltturn from using it to give easy momentum

252 SpA Choice Specs Tera Dark Darkrai Dark Pulse vs. 224 HP / 0 SpD Cinderace: 340-402 (95.2 - 112.6%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO

 

[Aminal]

Similarly, slowking-g clicks chilly button button and gets momentum back with very little risk to the user. Very cheap. It makes me so mad.

Not going to talk about Mola because I don't have too many opinions about it one way or the other, but I don't find Glowking to be cheap in the slightest. With just a little bit of prior damage, it dies to most Knock Offs in the tier and, by design, is slow as hell. If you can predict a Glowking coming in, you can bring in your own physical Mon and take it out. Yes, Regenerator cores are annoying and something that you have to plan for in the teambuilder, but cheap? That's a bit much.

I also thank @Finchinator and this gen's OU Council, mainly Finch, for aggressively tiering SV OU given the abnormally high number of threats released this gen that in conjunction with Terastalization were crazy broken.

Seconded. I only recently got back into competitive after taking a break since ORAS and while I do fume every now and then from a Kingambit reverse 6-0 or from the randomest of defensive Teras (whoever innovated Tera Bug Ceru/Raging Bolt can be bitten by a million fire ants), I also am having so much fun playing the game. For that, thank you all.

 

[heileone]

Hi everyone. This is my first post on the overused forums in a while.

I think the metagame right now is pretty good, with one notable exception.

I believe that screens are too polarizing in the current metagame and that the meta would be far far better off with light clay banned. I don't think they are necessarily broken or particularly overpowered, but I do think that screens promote a very parasitic playstyle where you just throw a series of threats together and hope they can get though. Sometimes they can't, sometimes they can, but ultimately the opportunities for skill expression are very minimal in any match screens are involved. Especially recently, screens have become super optimized to fish as many good matchups as possible. Playing non cheese offenses at the moment feels very difficult because its challenging to deal with many of the setup threats that exist in the game once the screens are up for frailer teams. Ceruledge is a very big offender(probably the biggest), but stuff like moltres galar, gambit, gliscor, and hatterene can turn a single turn behind screens into an instant win.

I dont particularly find screens to be super mentally engaging to play or to play against either. I never feel like my wins come from getting key turns right or playing a solid positional game on BOTH sides of the matchup. Its usually just send in setup threat-> hope it wins-> if it doesnt, hope that whatever just came in to deal with it is setup fodder for my next guy. And if it isnt, then usually the game is over very quickly.
There are other cheeses that feel like this, namely stall and sun, but the matchup spread for those styles are much worse. Stall is bad and sun is really fishy(on top of that games vs sun are a lot less linear). But screens feels like it is way too good for how much skill expression it removes from the game. It ends up being a major team building constraint(probably the biggest one currently honestly), since if you lose to screens, there isnt really any cope you can have with "if I play well I can outplay this bad matchup", its just you die immediately and painfully.

Anyway long story short, screens are probably not "overpowered" in the traditional sense but they feel very toxic to the game and are too good for how much they rely on getting the matchup+how little they make in game skill matter.

 

[ScribeofRevocis]

Hello how are you all doing?

I’d like to talk about punishes to passive lame stuff like and

AV mola is probably the most broken Pokémon in OU, because it is a free turn button against non ogerpon teams. Similarly, slowking-g clicks chilly button button and gets momentum back with very little risk to the user. Very cheap. It makes me so mad.

Av mola is pretty obnoxious yea
Imo, just knock it or find a way to exploit how passive all molas are
My favorite way to punish ts is to honestly just run gweezing so they can't heal
Weezing is such a good mon because of neut gas and all its weird interactions
One of my favorite things this gen

 

[Just A Shroom God]

What are people’s thoughts on ?

For those who are unaware like a Dondozo, Zarude has recently been added to the Viability Rankings and moved up to C tier. This comes from the few impressive showings in OLT and SCL. The most notable of these is GXE ‘s match with Attribute where SD Zarude was used on a Sun team to make use of Leaf Guard + Synthesis with Tera to claim every kill.

Zarude also has unique qualities such as STAB Knock Off, and a slew of common resistances to Ghost, Dark, Ground, Grass, and Water. It also absorbs status with Jungle Healing, letting it 1v1 mons like Toxic Gliscor or G-Weezing if Zarude terastilizes. There’s alot of exploration for this mon that people may start partaking in since Zarude is now a BL knight. It has Trailblaze, Encore, and U-Turn. Zarude had matchups that range from solid to very good such as non-Spinner Treads, Hamurott, Ting-Lu, defensive Gholdengo, Mola, and Garganacl. The speed tier is really nice for Pecharunt, Kyurem, Lando, and offensive Zapdos. Could this be the next sleeper pick?

After playing a lot of UU and following the UU suspect train so closely it's almost strange to see Zarude be so mid in OU lol.

It does a lot of the same stuff that made it banworthy in UU, namely jungle healing bulk up to eat status, live forever and knock everything, but it seems much less effective in OU for reasons I can't even quite articulate myself. As you mentioned, it is certainly not lacking targets- stuff like mola, most wellspring, hamurott, even geezing and zap all hate it, and it is quite nice to be a setup mon that doesn't fear random paralysis or toxic, especially since that means it can comfortably run many more teras than steel/poison. But whenever I try to put it on a team, I always end up wanting something else for that slot.

I've not yet seen it on sun outside of those specific showings in SCL, but it seems to do a lot of the same things there in being bulky enough to take hits, heal, and do big damage (and of course its most notable impact, removing the Brute Bonnet from its last shadow of viability... :cry:).

Maybe it's just the opportunity cost. It's slower and has much more prominent weaknesses than Wellspring, who can do similar knock-healing shenanigans, has a little less natural survivability and worse hazard weakness than Gliscor, is a little weaker as a setup mon than like Ceruledge or Zama... even against Meow, who obviously plays very different than it and I'd consider personally weaker, it threatens knock absorbers much less and it's harder to run pivoting on it.

It doesn't really shore up any matchups in the builder either, every playstyle has some common mon that it has to fear/blow tera against.

Am I missing some secret sauce with this guy? I'll be awaiting new innovations with it, but right now I just don't see the vision :/.

 

[Finchinator]

indicated that an OU Tiering Survey is coming soon

Wouldn’t say this is a guarantee. I mean there will definitely be one in December or January, but I wouldn’t be refreshing forums looking for one this week anyway. Still discussing stuff internally and externally. Do not view anything as a major rush job.

tldr is we are still sorting through our process atm

 

[Avira]

Wouldn’t say this is a guarantee. I mean there will definitely be one in December or January, but I wouldn’t be refreshing forums looking for one this week anyway. Still discussing stuff internally and externally. Do not view anything as a major rush job.

tldr is we are still sorting through our process atm

Interesting. Sounds like your council might be coming up with objective criteria for when a survey is put out there (if that is even possible) if I'm not misinterpreting this.

 

[Rekka's Backend]

What are people’s thoughts on ?

Zarude @ Leftovers
Ability: Leaf Guard
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 136 HP / 136 Def / 236 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Bulk Up
- Knock Off
- Power Whip
- Jungle Healing

This is an old set I was experimenting with a long ass time ago (sometime in late 2024?), Zarude is a pokemon I genuinely believe in for its utility. The team I built around it was designed to deal with key threats at the time, along with eliminating direct answers to it. Once you remove the mainstays (Zama, Woger, etc) it kinda runs away with games very easily. The inability to be status'd does a lot for its value, and I believe this spread was built around distinctly answering not only Gambit, but other physatk threats at the time. I feel like you could do a lot with Knock + TB, Choice band with 4 attacks also feels like it has great value due to its attk and speed spread imo.

Additionally, unrelated to the above, thank you for whatever the process was for getting me a badge. I appreciate it! I think I provide value to discussions!

 

[ScribeofRevocis]

I believe this spread was built around distinctly answering not only Gambit

Wouldn't Gambit easy 1v1 this? None of its stabs are even unresisted and it can easily outboost it with an SD or two.
Zarude seems decent in the current meta, I guess, but it's slow, and while jungle healing does take off status, it doesn't really heal enough HP imo. I've actually never used the mon in OU however so I can't really say more than just speculation