Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4

[Morkal]

A bit off topic, but why not uturn on poison touch? Wouldn't it be better since you can poison opposing mons?

Also all those points make alot of sense, definitely see why you'd use deoxys-speed. Thanks for the explanation y'all!

I've found that the utility of softening an incoming attack via Parting Shot is more helpful than the additional Poison chance when it comes to U-Turn. However, it is definitely still a valid option if damage accumulation and status spreading are a higher priority for your team build, and you can assure that Grafaiai won't be put in a position to take more hits than it needs to. Parting Shot doesn't trigger powerful STAB priority moves such as Kingambit's Sucker Punch or Raging Bolt's Thunderclap. Grafaiai isn't bulky, and its defensive profile is situational (immunity to Ghost-type attacks is nice, but not as common as you'd think), so any hits you can avoid taking with Grafaiai should be avoided.

 

[perplexful]

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.

I saw no one really replied so i thought i would take a shot at making this an actual discussion lol but i mean this is just kind of how the game works, new strategies are constantly being made. I mean if screens really becomes such an annoyance for the metagame then it’s not much of a hard thing for it to adapt to -> things like infiltrator dragapult could finally find their time to shine. i also think banning light clay is a little stretched considering how quickly screens can fall apart after deo - s is knocked off or dead. Sure atm there is a lot of cringe teams and strategies but it’s still a lot of stuff that just require common counters that seem so rare because of how vast SVOU has become with insane strategies. Infiltrator haze etc. But i can agree this late stage of SVOU has felt very unenjoyable cuz cheesy strategies.

 

[Moyashi]

I saw no one really replied so i thought i would take a shot at making this an actual discussion lol but i mean this is just kind of how the game works, new strategies are constantly being made. I mean if screens really becomes such an annoyance for the metagame then it’s not much of a hard thing for it to adapt to -> things like infiltrator dragapult could finally find their time to shine. i also think banning light clay is a little stretched considering how quickly screens can fall apart after deo - s is knocked off or dead. Sure atm there is a lot of cringe teams and strategies but it’s still a lot of stuff that just require common counters that seem so rare because of how vast SVOU has become with insane strategies. Infiltrator haze etc. But i can agree this late stage of SVOU has felt very unenjoyable cuz cheesy strategies.

Infiltrator Pult has issues with Tera abusing set up threats due to its lack of notable power, and is hardly a catch all for every screens abuser in the first place. It’s awful against Galarian Moltres and CM Hatterene and in general struggles against bulky set up mons. Phasing is not always reliable because some abusers run taunt to shut that down, which also ruins haze attempts.

Riding out the 8 turns of screens isn’t always the easiest, nor is it an automatic solution either when some mons can just abuse those turns to snowball into a very dangerous, potentially game winning state right there. This again is very notable in bulky set up threats like the aforementioned edge and goltres, but also cm hat, sd gliscor, gambit, and the many other variable threats you can run into. Screens with clay have too much variable options and there aren’t enough reliable ways to deal with enough of the possible combinations, leading to the style really feeling kind of cheesy, at least I think so. You have go be prepared for these kinds of teams or just risk losing outright very quickly, but they place an annoying restraint on the builder in a tier that has so many threats to account for naturally as is.

Screens are a reason why I just find myself not enjoying building or playing this tier lately. There’s also burnout from how long gen9 has gone on but it’s felt not great

 

[EpicGuy321]

If you hate screens just run Psychic Fangs Metagross. Ez. Or classic stuff like Garg to outlast. In general screens will beat some offenses which can't play around A9, so you just have to consider that in builder I think.

Something cool is that Hoopa-U may get Psychic Fangs in gen 10, because it has it in ZA DLC.