hi, wanted to share some thoughts and my experience with the meta.
gonna share some teams first tho:
This is the one of the first teams i built when the drops dropped and its still quite good. People assume lead azelf, which is honestly ass, especially with tyranitar in the tier meaning crunch + sand kills it t1, so i ran an offensive rocks set which can bluff as a lead and punish by leaving big holes in the opposing team. MMQ and bish are IMO HO staples, just because they stop opposing offense really well due to their defensive utilities, all while providing a sweeping and even breaking threat. I saw a variation with lucario > bisharp but I think bisharp provides more. I think Lucario in general is a bad pick as other fighting-type options and other steel-type options can provide the threat lucario brings while giving much more defensive utility. Lucario also has unfavorable mus into slowbro/glowbro and mmq. In ss, lucario was able to take advantage of BB crobat, but in sv it has to worry abt flame vern and i also think defensive tera hurts lucario sweeping stuff. at the back of the team i put a cloyster to provide a water resist into opposing rain. Special cloyster is, and has been for most of this generation, better than phys since it makes better use of tera blast, esp into things like slowbro. I use tera ghost to hit slowbro/glowbro, bronzing, and probably other things and to give cloyster a very favorable mu into slither wing. The tera dragon on the thundy is kinda of a meme but it comes clutch sometimes ig, i think when i designed the team i just wanted the extra resists as opposed to tera ground or something.
obviously torkoal has left and sun has died, but I think this team is super cool. Only gw used it in ssnl and got a whatever mu. I noticed ppl trying to put slither on sun I realized that although slither benefits from the sun, slither itself doesn't really support sun and this team was my attempt to make slither-less sun. Bonnet is a really cool and kinda slept option. its a bit pressed on moves since u kinda need cc for chien but it still has really good bulk and is hella strong. MMQ and Revavroom make this more aggressive as I also felt a lot of suns on ladder lacked in aggression, usually trying to fit shit like muds.
Yama was one of the freed rubls that I was a bit skeptical should be allowed, but after toying with BD to little success I went with the approach of Bulk Up instead. I found a lot of success with it since it takes advantage of chien and some of the passive fattys ppl insist are good. Here, paired with chien, makes two good pokemon that actually want to run knock off, which would allow spikes to really take advantage. Yama has sweeping potential with tera steel bullet punches too, making it a formidable wincon. I decided boots typh was really good as it blocked common spinners like forretress and tsareena. I went with flame/wisp/inf-parade/shadow ball for the moveset. I didn't like relying on focus and rather just wisp the dark types since they are all physical anyway, and it would pair well with inf-parade. Ill talk a bit more abt this pokemon below. I went with a wo-chien forre core since we don't have options, but these two offer a lot between them. Chien is a really good knock user, targeting birds like kilo and vern, as well as knocking boots off slither and opposing chien to make full advantage of the hazard stack. forre isn't a great spinner and is exploitable itself, but its a steel type with spin and spikes. Its the role compression this team needs and also offers support into mmq and bish. Diancie gives a very good stealth rocker and helps into the annoying noivern. I went with earth power over encore/drain kiss to bop toxtricity which would be annoying. Kilo offers speed control, ground immune, volt immune, and a kilo check. Pivots well into yama and typh.
Toxtricity is another rubl I didn't think should have been released. I think boots is its best set as having the choice between moves lets you be less prediction reliant and it makes a lot of progress without specs. Making a volturn core with slither is always going to be enticing in the builder. The two have a fair amount of defensive utility and slither offers the "speed" through first impression. forrechien makes a return bc compression. Scarf krook offers cleaning and a ground type and noivern gives key resists and supports the volturn nicely with its limited switch ins, uturn, and speed. I actually don't really like this team because it doesn't have a kilo to check kilo and I need the noiverns resists. In play it def ends up a bit flimsy, but I suppose that's natural with a more aggressive team? giannis actually brought this to slam finals, I heard he made some tweaks like toxic on toxt and edge>rocks krook, so ig theres that. I think sturdier teams with a similar concept are possible.
Brazil used ID slowbro and I really liked it since it went really well into chien, which kinda made cm really ass. Put a kilo so I don't lose to kilo and gives me smth that is naturally fast. Blissey is slept on I think. Its obv used on some stalls but I think it can work on balances like this. It being able to take special attacks reduces that burden on the steel type, in this case klefki, but on most teams will probably be forre. Hecidueye is a good option, really spammable moves in knock and trip arrows. My only issue with it is that its a fighting type that kinda struggles into bish, which is bad. its also susceptible to gunk from krook which is another negative. I made this a few days ago so it didn't get used in ruwc or any tours but in the handful of tests it felt strong so I thought id include it.
i have more teams but I think that's all ill share for now
now building in this tier is a really awful experience. I found myself going back to the same cores, simply because I felt as if using otherwise would mean using sub-optimal pokemon.
Like for example, u see that for volt immunes and only like kilo and scarf krook, everything else just isn't good into volters, and even then kilo and krook aren't great either. I see ppl use mudsdale and it kinda baffles me. This pokemon for me is passive and just ruins team momentum as the oppo usually has a great number of options to switch into it. it doesn't work on fat either since lefties is its only recovery and its weak to spikes/tspikes. Ig its a bulky ground type except that it losesto toxt and rotom and is iffy into kilo, only really working into pawmot. The only thing this pokemon is good into is krook which is a good niche since that pokemon is still dumb, but it doesn't justify its grand use.
This dilemma is present in other areas too, but that kinda sums up the current sv experience. the dex is too small for lower tiers to have multiple options, which i think we'll just have to accept for now.
There are also some super restrictive pokemon that IMO need to be banned.
i believe this is the most oppressive pokemon in the tier. There really arent any genuinely good kilowattrel checks and can deal with it throughout the entirety of the game. Ftr, im referring to a t-bolt/cane/volt switch/ roost set, roostless is awful, tera blast is unneeded, and volt is usually fine so u-turn isn't needed. Now yes, there are some pokemon that can take multiple hits, for this example, diancie. Diancie in theory is a good kilo check since it resists cane, can force kilo out, and has the special bulk to work with thunderbolt. BUT, u realize that t-bolt into volt does 35-40%, then couple this with diancie's vulnerability to hazards which are not difficult to keep up in this tier, then also coupled with diancies lack of recovery besides lefties and that kilo check just gets run over very quickly.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 I just kinda pulled these replays from the last 2 pages of ruwc and in all of the replays kilo breaks through teams, most if not all of which have a considerable amount of "checks" to kilo. in one of the replays it 1v1's a fucking sylveon LOL. There was another where there was a bronzong and dragalge at near max hp, it takes down the zong and then tera steels to force out the drag. Those replays show how supposed "checks" like bronzong, toxtricity, diancie, dragalge, muds, glowbro, rotom, and other stuff just get easily chipped and then knocked out, leaving the opponent to the mercy of hurricane. if there is anything u take from this post, please just consider how insane kilowattrel is.
just gonna lump this guy in this debacle too, still stupid please ban.
in theory this thing is only checked by like blissey lol. all of the dark-types of the tier lose to wisp and they all drop to flame anyway. Diancie isn't an amazing check since after it gets wisped, it drops to inf-parade. someone also used iron head on one of their typhs LOL. Now there are other pokemon that have similar issues of not having switch-ins but typh has enough speed and defensive utility to get onto the field consistently, esp when we are forced to use like forretress as our steel, which is just asking typh to switch in. Playing against this pokemon feels impossible.
I think people should also consider looking into the above pokemon when discussing tiering too. While personally id argue chien and pawmot as healthy presences, I've heard ppl complain, hence why i put them in the list. I think azelf is just too unproven to really justify any tiering action, i can see how certain sets can be kinda bonkers. I honestly feel the same about garticuno, but that feels a bit more proven. i don't really get amarouge either, but ppl have complained. bish i think is really insane with tera. idt i can really prove it as broken but if its the right tera, it does just kinda win, adding another pokemon to the list of setup tera guessing games. Slither is honestly just an enabler of brokens like kilo. I still think it should be banned.
i wanted to talk a bit more into some meta picks, but after i vote for a vr slate, ill just explain those in a post whenever that thread happens.
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yeah, Psychic is better in Sheer Force sets.
