Metagame SV PU Metagame Discussion - Indigo Disk (Tiering survey @ #16)

[Corvy]

Well well well, today it seems to be only me. A little bit lonely ngl but Ampha (the mon, not the player) kept me company!



First and foremost I apologise for this being only me, since it won't show many, undoubtedly more varied results for this research. We all had a lot to do this week but there's always gonna be weeks like that. I hope y'all will still enjoy the post nontheless!

When I went into this week I had already kinda tested Ampharos a little and used it as a bootleg, boneless Bellibolt. I felt that it wasn't bad enough to be UR, but not good enough to be anywhere above C+. It does certain things that no other mon really does in the tier and it might be intriguing for some of y'all to build with.

The 2 sets I was able to test were Cotton Guard + Charge beam and Meteor Beam + Agility. Now how did those sets do? Let's find out!

I can say that charge beam + cotton guard was extremely fun to play with! I usually led with it into any non-mudsdale team. Why? Charge beam doesn't kill Havalugg or get it to custap range, while letting you set up a cotton guard in advance to prepare for a semi sweep. After 1 boost to SpA this mon rips through a lot of current relevant mons, and after 1 cotton guard it makes physical attackers do zilch to it. Pair that with Alluring voice and tera water/grass blast, and you got coverage for almost anything in the tier! Having static and lefties makes most ambi sets shiver their timbers too, so it becomes a bit of a problem. This mon has decent bulk with this set and can catch a lot of teams with their pants down.
Now I won't say this set is something to include in every team, since it has certain matchups like heatom and espeon that just force a switchout, but it can fill a niche, that no other mon in our tier currently fills. A static mon with great bulk, that can also pressure with great damage.

Now onto Meteor beam! This set was moreso fun than functional imo. Meteor beam ruins most mon not named mudsdale, while outspeeding about anything post agility. There is 3 issues you run into with this set;

1. Switch outs make it an unmon.
2. You become quite squishy with all that dmg and speed investment.
3. You are essentially running 2 damaging moves post t1. So no opportunity for much coverage.

Definitely a fun set that ruins your opponent's day once, but definitely limited to low ladder sadly.


Overall I'd say that Ampharos is a fun mon with a decent niche, but you have to have matchup knowledge and experience in the tier to run it to maximum effect. I'd recommend it to higher level players, but only if you really want a niche option to catch opponents off guard.

Offensively: B-
Defensively: C+
Utility: C+
Overall: C+

Next week should be better! We got one of my fav mon, Drifblim! What sets will do best? Is it usable? Idk! Tune in next week to find out!

 

[Corvy]

Today we got Drifblimington to show off! Is he overlooked, underused (not the tier), or just unusable? Read on to find out!



Me:

I went in knowing about what to expect from this mon, as I had used this mon to decent success before, in a meta that was way more hostile to it than the current one.

The set I used is the Corvy special of Rocky Helmet Aftermath Blim. Defog, strength sap, knock off, willo is what brought me the most consistent results with this big balloon. With full def and hp invests there is no mon in the tier that reliably one shots you bar pawmot. The idea is to cripple the enemy's phys attackers with pure frustration. Any recoil mon eats shit against this, as they will do more recoil damage to themselves than actual damage to drifblim. And multihit mons like taxel ambi can't kill it reliably either, and will eat a sap into willo combo, rendering the mon useless thereon out.

Idt I have to mention that the mons you don't want to face with this set under any circumstance are rotom and jolteon, but usually you should have teammates to cover for that.

It's a very simple mon to pilot, as it punishes mons by simply existing. It can never be your defensive cornerstone on your team based purely on stats and typing, but it can be a thorn in about any team's side.

My recommendation is to try it out on your teams! It's got set versatility too. Mons like arcanine are just fodder for this mon and due to sap having 16pp it outstalls morning sun and any other regen move!

My elo went from 1000-1300 with this mon. Not too impressive but I also didn't have much testing time this week.

Offense: C
Defense: B+
Utility: B+
Overall: B-

Heatranator:

Drifblim, drifblim. Oh how you sail the winds with your ghostly hollows. (okay, I won't do any more rhyming intentionally). Drifblim has always been an interesting pokemon, its in the "Big hp, no defenses" category, but has a unique bag of tricks that are unique even in the ever expanding pokedex. So this week I decided to try them out.

I only tried one set, the unburden set, since everybody else had been trying out defog sets. These sets aren't amazing, as they are generally outclassed by other unburden mons. However, what it does have is longevity and its special boosting via cm. With this, drifblim becomes a very difficult pokemon to take down if you don't have trick, phazing or encore at your disposal, with one of them not working in endgame scenarios. This means against unprepared teams, drifblim can snowball very easily. The best moveset is cm, strength sap, shadow ball and thunderbolt, which gives it pretty good coverage.

Elo change: Stayed around 1300s, dipping to 1250s and rising to 1350s

Offensive: B-
Defenseive: B-
Utility: B-
Overall: B-


It seems like both of us agree that this mon is underutilized in the meta and could potentially shake the meta up a tiny bit if used properly! Now who are we doing next week? Mr. Obama himself! Tune in to see how he fares in modern times!

 

[sychillz]

Hello people of PU, recently I started reading 1984 unimportant, just thought I’d share. I’m also posting this weeks research!

This week was Hypno, the 16th best Pokémon in RBY OU! Hypno has been a silly mon to use. I genuinely wasn’t planning on researching this week, but then I found the holy grail: Assault Vest Hypno. AV and SubEncore have actually proven to be seriously viable sets.

Hypno has quite serviceable special bulk and a Speed stat decent enough to creep the slower, bulkier Pokémon. A lot of Hypno’s tools come from its great utility movepool, with things like Encore and Taunt, status in Thunder Wave and Toxic—it literally learns everything, including Haze somehow.

I’ll quickly go over the 3 main sets I used on balance structures:
1. Assault Vest
AV drops all those good utility moves for a special wall rivaling Goodra, with more team-supporting options.
Hypno @ Assault Vest
Ability: Forewarn
Tera Type: Grass
EVs: 252 HP / 148 SpA / 108 SpD
Quiet Nature
- Future Sight
- Knock Off
- Psychic Noise
- Grass Knot
This set allows you to eat common special moves relatively easily. Knock Off and Future Sight set up Pokémon like Pawmot, knocking off Boots on common walls and setting up a fighting + Future Sight combo on other turns. This set was pretty decent, as I had a Pokémon to throw out who wasn’t as important (like Milotic) while still having more supporting options than, say, AV Slowbro-G.
2. Substitute
Hypno @ Leftovers
Ability: Insomnia
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 252 HP / 164 SpD / 92 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Encore / Taunt
- Psychic Noise
- Toxic / Thunder Wave
With Spikes and Knock Off support of its own, this can shut down teams pretty hard and is capable of breaking common cores. The Speed EVs creep 210, and the SpD EVs allow you to eat the likes of Zoroark’s Dark Pulse and Hoopa’s Shadow Ball. This one was less consistent, but it had a better upside than AV as it could make heavy progress on multiple mons, unlike AV’s tendency to only annoy 1–2 Pokémon.
3. ToxTect
Hypno @ Leftovers
Ability: Forewarn
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 252 HP / 164 SpD / 92 Spe
Timid Nature
- Toxic
- Protect
- Psychic Noise
- Knock Off
This was easily the best and most consistent set of the 3. Psychic Noise gives you a great tool into Pokémon who’d otherwise pivot around you with Regenerator. Knock Off serves as an even more annoying tool, taking away the Boots so needed to keep coming in. I found it to be especially good when facing Frosmoth or Florges, who typically don’t pack super effective coverage and are a lot of teams’ special checks. Both are deeply susceptible to being Toxiced and Knocked Off, which also doubles as a way to stop Florges from tricking you.
Hypno is by no means a sleeper threat in SV PU, BUT I do think it’s carrying the traits to be a decent bring to a serious game. Probably would bring a bulky NP set in that case, but hey I didn’t test that so idk.
My ratings:
Offensive: C
Defenseive: B+
Utility: B-
Overall: C+

Corvy !
Didn't think we'd be here this week but I tested Hypno anyways!

My expectations were kinda between abysmal dogshit and mediocre at best. And I can proudly proclaim that Hypno did not surprise me by that much personally. I tried a utility set with Knock off, toxic, night shade, psynoise. In theory it should do well with that set and the SpD bulk it has but unsurprisingly being a bulky psychic type does not bode well in a tier with Hwilfish, Wo Chien, and a plethora of knock off users. Getting it in was a bit of a struggle, and whenever it did get in it felt very very weak to me. Sych seems to have had different experiences with this mon, but for me it just felt absolutely horrendous.

I personally wouldn't recommend using it at all, unless you have a solid gameplan with it that I'm too peabrained to fathom.

Offensively: C
Defensively: C+
Utility: B
Overall: UR

And that’s a wrap for this week we gave it about a C to C- try it for yourself or don’t I’m not your dad. Short pause coming up as we lock in for Swiss. Tune back in some time to hear us talk about _______

 

[Yech]

So what are our thoughts on the shifts? We lost and and gained and

Now my initial thoughts are that the tier lost 3 good physically defensive pokemon and gained a physical attacking monster so that'll be a lot of fun. As for Alolatales, people are saying veil isn't going to be that good and even done better by Abomasnow but plot sets have the potential to be a headache especially with the lack of steels and potential tera blast coverage.

 

[Yech]

is actually kinda crazy now that I've had the chance to play with it a bit, with Tera Blast Water you can have both a great defensive type to tank 1 super effective hit to get a plot or extra hit off and have a move to blow up the fire types like Rotom-Heat and after a +2, this thing does so much damage to basically the whole team thanks to a 110 bp STAB. On boots spam it's quite a fun win condition to slap on since it outspeeds most of the rest of the tier with the exception of Ambipom. With Sticky Web or paralysis support you can even ensure most scarfers can't try to outrun you.

 

[Platum]

Early thoughts about new meta :

This mon is crazy, especially flame orb since we don't really have good facade switchins, it can just mindlessly click most of the time, even knock off cripples the few blanket checks it has (muds or eject amoonguss for example). You can use things like colbur palo or qwilfish to mitigate it a bit but each have their flaws, so it's more or less just about offensive positionning, trading (possibly with tera)... but it just does so much damage and its speed tier is a bit too good for that. It's not that frail either, it's obviously prone to chip but it can tank a few hits from mons like milo, hwil or aloslash if needed. If it gets a trailblaze it's fairly hard to stop, even scarf florges and hoopa get outsped.
Scarf is pretty good too, abusing our loss of three great fighting resists, megahorn is good to have against uxie and espeon, this set doesn't scream broken but it has a very good speed tier with snowballing potential. Other options such as spikes or sd are also worth mentionning, but honestly the flame orb 4a set alone makes it way too strong.

NP and specs are very good but I feel like we have enough ways around it. NP is quite tera dependant, has a good but limited speed tier and doesn't have insane damage output even after setup. A lot can trade with it and if you have something faster on the special side you'll likely be fine. Obviously scary due to bulk + tera, but it can't cover much at the same time. Players might get better at building teams around it and it might prove to be restrictive but for now it seems fine. Specs feels just fine to me, hazards limit it and we have decent switchins, aloslash and rotom-heat limit it enough.
Snow cores on the other hand might prove to be too strong, both aloslash and frosmoth are very scary with these boosts, we'll see if building limitations of having 2/3 ice types keep it balanced.

Some other things I wanna mention briefly :

This mon gets a lot better without glowbro, both cm and scarf got more free. Very good but still manageable.

Without glowbro in the tier, toxic switchins feel even more limited. We still have aloslash (what a goat) and hwil to deal with this issue, but I can't say amoonguss is easy to deal with.

etc. : pretty much all fighting types get better without glowbro and houndstone, guno was horrible for hecid (mainly scarf and defog hated guno).. but they all feel overshadowed by heracross right now. I think (aka Potential Man™) and benefit a bit more from these shifts, except for palo being very common currently. I also wanna mention , scarf is decent again. And i have not tried it but might be alright without houndstone? Or maybe it's just copium due to how poor hazard removal is...

One of the biggest winners from shifts, scarf is great with no wo-chien in its way. Excellent speed tier, doesn't have many great switch-ins, good partner to heracross... Bruxish just clicks, maybe we should explore sd and band a bit more cause this mon is scary.

People tend to prefer muds and palo rn cause they're better against the broken fighting types, but rhydon is still genuinely scary with no wo-chien in the tier.

Scarf is pretty good against both drops, it likes having one less bulky dark type in the tier. Doesn't even need to hit focus blast that much now.

Not a great mon per se but it's arguably the best anti-spin option for HOs without houndstone.

I must be one of the only players who used this irrelevant new drop, it's still ok. It hated bellibolt before rising, but it doesn't feel that much better now. Don't consider defog even if you're desperate. I mainly used sky attack power herb, I don't want to bother using scarf.

Just as restrictive as before, it likes rhydon being less used. Still not a fan of this mon's presence in the tier.

Overall meta feels fun despite some obvious flaws. I didn't like 's and 's influence on the builder. Getting rid of a glue means people have to get creative when building. Things feel freed up, meta seems a bit less repetitive than before, but I hope we look at a heracross ban soon enough.

 

[I'm Tapu Bulu]

From the little that i've seen, seems fine and i don't think it's suspect worthy for now. I used the 4 attacks flame orb set, hits incredibly hard but is actually pretty easy to chip down since its weak to all hazards and constantly takes damage on its own. Needs to avoid knock before proccing, even if running other items.

I could see it being broken down the line if people innovate with sd sets, swarm tera bug or like, scarfed moxie sets but for now i dont necessarily agree it should be banned. Megahorn missing more often that it should does it no favors.

No opinion on Alolan Ninetales yet, and i'm sad we lost Wo-Chien