Metagame SV UU Metagame Discussion - The Indigo Disk

[Catcus]

Tier shifts on my birthday :)

- Thank you for taking this OU. ID+CM+booster was just dumb. Hopefully this can make HO a bit more managable.

- Be real this was terrible no one used it

- No wake drop means this sucks. sorry torkoal fans

- araq is better as a webs setter honestly. I know theres a crowd that thinks non-webs is good but don't really believe in it.

decent at least imo. great speed tier, glare and its ability to snowball really fast feels like a great combo. seems a bit fishy but glare means it can at least be a para bot at worst.

Congrats to Cobal rhy and comfey for rising, they definitely deserve it. Glad Weav didn't drop. Also Skarm didn't drop so we might wanna look out for ursaluna.

 

[mrsuslawl]

My opinions on shifts:

: HO just got much worse
: Niche pick, don't think it was too impactful

: HO just got much better, spreading ez para with glare while being a nuisance with sub is kinda crazy. Thank god it has like no coverage
: Webs aren't rly that good since serperior exists so webs will be fraudulent until serp gets banned (maybe?) (i dont think serp will get banned tbh)
: Sun is kinda bad since there are no abusers

 

[HydreigonTheChild]

- good, this mon is a MU fish half the time with double dance while CM is very good... but fuck double dance, often times some teams get rolled over just cuz while others can just encore it into bullshit. Good it left

in this slowking meta, with rock slide drill, rhyperior, h-arc, dirge it wouldnt be doing much.. does much better in OU than in UU

_______________________

likely broken... ur answers come down to lokix (pretty good), torn-t (hates glare, hates knock off, and cant really switch in with rocks up with av so its bound to get worn down by other stuff it needs to check and some teams just dont have the steels to deal with it... even then once serp gets going its unlikely to be easy to stop as unless ur team is using lokix (still have to hope they didnt burn tera yet or arent above 50%), hydrapple is ok if its more sp. def but leaf storm -> leaf storm -> non tera'ed tera blast(or one leaf storm -> d pulse) and its done, most steels lose to tera and some others just crumble under leaf storm and just a bit of chip

stun spore hits exca a bit harder but araq still sets it up vs exca sooooo its prob bad.

sun is gonna be ok? slowking kinda resets sun every day of the week tho so idk

 

[Susmaster77]

View attachment 644480

this is the funniest shit I have ever seen on this god forsaken website

 

[Twilight]

Initial thoughts:

The tier is basically the same. Aside from HO taking a little hit with Crown gone, these shifts don't have a massive impact, though that is honestly whatever.

Torkoal is not going to make sun good, tbh I think Ninetales is just better anyway. As everyone else has mentioned, we just lack abusers for this archetype. Maybe I will mess around with some Choice Specs Eruption in Trick Room.

It is not a great time to try out webs when everyone will probably be testing Serperior. Either way, Araquanid is likely still a better setter due to being able to keep them up against Exca. I always liked Specs Bee when it was last here and it adds a notable Speed tier jumping Gren and Torn so I'm sure it will find some way to set itself apart.

Serperior just seems decent from first impressions. I don't think it is problematic from the sample size of games I have used and played against it. I think it mostly just comes down to positioning and using the abundance of checks to it well. Its game plan is usually rather slow with needing to spread paralysis among several of its checks and then needing either para hax or the right tera to snowball. Glare is a very strong tool to have so regardless it will probably get some value in a match even if it cannot sweep.

I shall share a team seeing as every sample has Kommo-o.



Here is a semi-revised HO team I have been using for a few games with solid success. Skeledirge is usually a pain to answer defensively and it just adds a failsafe against the most dangerous stuff in the tier. It also works quite nicely with Serperior spreading para for the Hex boost. Serperior hasn't really done a whole lot so far, mostly duck and Comfey just pop off but it's nice to support the slower members I have on this and punish Mandi clicking Defog. The team is slow, which means positioning matters a lot more. Rockpon is the biggest hurdle to play around when matching against other offenses from experience but I'm too lazy to properly fix that. Drill is EVd to eat a Whip from full or just pop tera.

 

[MC Squared]

My opinions on shifts:
: Sun is kinda bad since there are no abusers

Time for Scovillain (the thing made for sun) to have its spotlight

 

[mintwinter]

The most impactful drop imo. I’ve been testing it a little (albeit on a lower elo alt). I’ve been using it with cornerstone and latios to try and pressure steels and sweep with one of them. It doesn’t feel too broken atm, but glare spreading para consistently is a pain in the ass to play around, especially when combined with sub to generate even more free turns. I don’t think it’ll get banned but i would like to see it gone since uu does not need another cheesy para mon

 

[BolTingBlazie]

The most impactful drop imo. I’ve been testing it a little (albeit on a lower elo alt). I’ve been using it with cornerstone and latios to try and pressure steels and sweep with one of them. It doesn’t feel too broken atm, but glare spreading para consistently is a pain in the ass to play around, especially when combined with sub to generate even more free turns. I don’t think it’ll get banned but i would like to see it gone since uu does not need another cheesy para mon

Serp just seems like a cheese mon but not broken, probably worse than crown overall because at least AV Crown offered a lot to the tier as a special attacker answer and could choose not to be a cheese mon.

We really traded one cheese mon for another didn’t we?

 

[Jonbot]

@ Choice Scarf
Ability: Rock Head
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Flare Blitz
- Head Smash
- Crunch/Wild Charge/Rock Slide
- Close Combat

I’ve always loved using choice band harcanine and but I’ve been struggling to use it since its speed tier isn’t good enough anymore and head smash isn’t spammable enough to justify the lack of speed nowadays. Extreme speed looks like a great way to avoid this issue at first, but it doesn’t do enough to reliably revenge kill much, especially since a significant number of offensive pokemon can threaten harcanine back with ease of extreme speed doesn’t kill.

However, choice scarf harcanine flips the matchup on its head. A lot of the offensive metagame gets absolutely destroyed by either head smash or flare blitz. The surprise factor also means you’re nigh guaranteed to get at least on kill in the early game as well, which can sometimes effectively end the game if the opponents excadrill or torn T gets decked in the first turn. Its last 2 moves are pretty customisable, since you only really need flare blitz and head smash. Crunch confirms the kill on Latios (head smash can miss and is an ~80% range to kill) and smacks slowking harder, close combat is good for the occasional dark type, rock slide is a more accurate stab option if head smash feels a bit too unreliable, and wild charge is good for certain water types like quaquaval and keldeo while also being a more accurate option for greninja. I prefer adamant, since it allows harcanine to still pack a punch against bulkier targets, but jolly can be used to check a few extra mons that have their speed boosted, like quaquaval after an aqua step or excadrill after a rapid spin

By no means is this set splashable, since its stealth rock weakness, not brilliant defensive typing and prediction reliance (once the set has been revealed) means that it needs a bit of support to get on the field safely, but I do think it has merit and I recommend trying it out.

 

[hotpineapple]

Alright i got back from hibernation since these mons are pretty cool

very strong,not much can resist grass and fire atm,status cheese is always funny,there is a lot of potential with this

definitely a solid tool for HO players,even though webs HO is not the strongest anymore due to exca and(to an extent)serp

haven't used,haven't fought yet,but could be very cool

 

[mrsuslawl]

Alright, now that has been in the tier for a grand total of 5 days, what do you all think about this Mon?

Personally, I think that it’s annoying to counter. It doesn’t like Tornadus, but it is pretty hard to position around it and it’s Tera Blast Rock/Ice and it’s Glare.Even while using it, Glaring a Mon on the switch in and then spamming Substitute feels scummy asf but I do think that the metagame will adapt. Anyways, I’m willing to hear whatanyone else thinks / new sets / counters, etc

 

[BradenBmw]

I think spdef dirge gets alot more use with serp in the tier. Tera blast rock/ground doesnt twoshot and you can go past sub with torch song. Glare is still annoying but its about as sturdy of a counter as you can get.

 

[Jonbot]

Alright, now that has been in the tier for a grand total of 5 days, what do you all think about this.

It hasn’t been a big issue for me really. You do have to keep it in mind throughout the entire game but if you position carefully against it and don’t let it in for free then it’s pretty easy to beat. It also struggles to fit all of the tools it wants. It needs leaf storm and glare, it really wants tera blast (but if it runs ground/fire it wants dragon pulse for hydrapple), substitute is good since it forces switches, synthesis to stop it getting worn down, etc. The fact that it is terrified of lokix and scizor (if it isn’t tera fire) is also an issue. It just feels really matchup fishy overall and not overwhelming rn

I can definitely see it becoming a bigger issue once its sets have been optimised fully but for now I don’t feel like it’s that big of a threat.

 

[carbonlifeform]

What up, UU? Haven't played the meta in a while, but I got the urge to build around the Dogi/Mamo core that I used to rock in RU, so here I am!

I'm happy to say that Band Dogi + Dice Mamo remains stupid fun. There's a lot of prediction and a fair amount of luck involved (Gunk Miss, Toxic Chain luck, 4 vs 5 hits on Icicle Spear), but the immediate power and utility on hand is just silly. Offensively, I've been rounding out the pair with a kinda weird Latios set that I've also been enjoying:

@ Throat Spray
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Recover
- Psychic Noise
- Dragon Pulse

This is primarily a stall-breaker set, but it's also perfectly capable of cleaning up against balance teams and providing some solid utility as a defensive pivot, too.

Sub + Recover + Latios' resistance profile (pre tera and post) keeps you safe from status, makes you a pain to whittle down, and helps you scout switches (sorry, Lokix, no revenging for you). Psychic Noise is just crazy useful to make progress against walls, and its ability to activate Throat Spray is really what helps make this set, giving a nice damage boost to power through frailer resists and/or clean up threats. Reducing the damage of incoming Knocks is also a pretty big deal. Dragon Pulse could be any number of other things -- Ice Beam, Aura Sphere, Shadow Ball, Thunderbolt -- but STAB gonna STAB, and the consistency feels way more valuable than not having anything for Steels.

Finally, I am at long last on the Tinkaton Hype Train. This little gremlin packs so much utility into one spot! Rocks/Encore/TWave/Knock just supports a team in so many ways, and Air Balloon + Pickpocket leads to some very fun interactions.

Thanks for maintaining a fun and surprisingly playable tier during this chaotic generation, folks!

 

[starbitstorm]

I recognize that my teams normally come across too many players as some random non-mon sundae with counter-teaming as the main topping. I also acknowledge that I’ve yet to ever share my thought process, beyond testing with some people, probably perpetuating the idea that I am indeed Jank incarnate. I do however have a process and believe my teams have potential beyond being niche match-up fishes. An example of this is my recent Misty Terrain Bo team.



Misty Terrain team


Beyond this team acting as some obvious Berserk reference, the concept was something I used last UUSD and wanted to use in UU circuit semis (Inspired by Lily, Amesa, and recently Kib0's usage).

The initial idea of my misty terrain team began with wanting a psychic resist to hard counter Latios while the terrain is active. I immediately thought of running Dragon Dance Tyranitar due to its bulk and ability to help with annoying Pokemon for Hyper Offense, such as Skeledirge. However, its low speed proved difficult to utilize as a set up mon, leading to me shelving the idea. This was until my managers for UUBD told me to “prepare for Greninja and Ursaluna”. I couldn’t help but return with a Bulky Offensive variant.

Misty terrain in the current meta is an excellent answer to status spread found in toxic Mandibuzz, glare Serperior, and even self-inflicted status, such as the late Guts flame orb Ursaluna (RIP). Weezing being the only misty setter does lead itself to some detriment, but its bulk and ability to clear smog can lend itself to more use. Quaquaval in terrain is disgusting if you win the “don’t get crit simulator” that is setting up. Quaqua can easily decimate generic bo/balance teams being spammed since it can easily set up on Greninja and Slowking with a sp def boost and terrain. Sinistcha's typing can easily set up Ursaluna and Hydrapple in terrain, but without tera it struggles to Zapdos and Tornadus-Therian. This weakness led me to change the idea from ho to more of a bo with fat modest agility Thunderous-Therian to answer both birds and potentially sweep somewhat with agility. Last, I was tittering towards either Comfey and Krookodile (better into random fast mons, Lokix, and gave priority) or Tyranitar and Excadrill (better Skeledirge mu, speed control). I couldn’t decide on one or the other, so I flipped a coin (shoutout to Liam) and went with the Comfey variant.



Is the concept broken? No. It seems more like it can be strong and unique if fully realized. The version I ran suffered from a severe lack of Immediate speed control, namely in the 350s, leading to it losing a tour game I played. Scarf Krookodile improved the team overall, it being my means of obtaining reqs for the Ursa suspect test, but it could be better. I’ve also a few variations that I will be exploring later including sand misty terrain, back to the basic’s ho terrain, and even some fat balance terrain teams (see pastes below).

https://pokepast.es/62bfbae047be55c9 Misty sand 8/10

https://pokepast.es/3ad0f5b24315f852 Misty terrain ho 7/10

https://pokepast.es/5fabddb180013768 Misty terrain Fat 5/10

I’ll probably be trying to post more to practice some writing. Hopefully, this inspires or at least informs people about a concept that I found interesting. See you next time when I talk about psychic terrain, or how/why you should cteam the ladder.

 

[Cynde]

don't know how accurately the ladder can be used to reflect the state of the meta game but I think it's pretty appalling. I did a bit of laddering last few days until around #4/#5 and there are effectively 3 teams in the ladder meta game.

lokix + and random 5
volt turn bots
various kinds of cheese

The gravest enablers of these play styles I think are lokix (which I think deserves a suspect test). It clearly caused too many issues with resistances not being resistances. I assume those who disagree rely on lokix as a crutch. Enables too much bullshit with volt turn, and those teams are far too powerful.

Some stuff to qualify what I'm saying:
- team I used: https://pokepast.es/2f3de0be56cc99d2. I wouldn't agree that this team is very weak to lokix. But despite that, it was still a problem.
+ ladder rank


Tier enjoyment is probably at an all time low this generation primarily because those are the entirety of the meta's teams. Anything outside of that just falls flat. Don't know if anyone would agree that lokix is the problem, but getting that banned with give teams so much more time and room to deal with the bots that spam volt turn / lokix + breaker. Would make the tier better and more enjoyable overall.

 

[Lizzie]

While I don't agree that lokix is the problem and feel that banning it rn would ultimately do more harm than good, the issue of staleness and teams being largely similar compositions has long been prevalent in the tier in my opinion. Ursalunas recent ban has improved things somewhat as certain mons that fell off due to allowing it in are easier to fit on teams now as opposed to people commonly running 6 mons that never gave it opportunities towards the end of its time in the tier, but ultimately I feel that the problem which has persisted for a while now is that there are simply too potentially devastating threats in the tier. People will often overstate the downfall of certain mons, latios and hydrapple being examples off the top of my head, where like yeah the meta has adapted to them to an extent and they don't see the same level of success, but both are still pretty difficult to account for in the builder and will win if you don't account for them. And to be clear, out-offensing them is accounting for them. When you combine this with mons like cornerstone, greninja serperior, and even mons like excadrill and lokix to a lesser extent, there just isn't that many ways to account for everything. This is not to say I have a solution for this, or that we need to do something about it immediately, however it feels like an oversaturation of threats has been a consistent theme throughout the past few months and I still believe its the biggest issue with the tier rn. Ultimately there's probably not much to be done about it until support for banning something randomly swells again but I find this incredibly frustrating. I'm sure I missed some annoying stuff to account for and I'm sure some people will think some stuff I mentioned is easy to account for but I hope that people don't focus on that and miss the point, which is that building consistent teams in this tier sucks because of the power level of threats and lack of diverse defensive counterplay to most of them.

 

[udongirl]

I don't know if it should be banned or not, but if I name the pokemon that limits the team's options the most, it is clearly tornadus therian. There is no mons that can replace its role and I feel that the quality of the team will vary greatly depending on whether or not this is used. I don't think it is impossible to build a decent team without using torn, but there is no denying that it limits your team options as it makes your play very comfortable.

However, I will say that I still enjoy the metagame, even after taking into account that torn voltturn is sitting in the meta. Please stop banning unbroken pokemon.

 

[arbiter1337]

Is UU just Lokix and/or Torn-T: The Tier now? Every team I have to face has one of the two and everything I slot on my teams I have to vet whether the MU against the big 2 is good. I swear these 2 mons are to UU what Peedon is to Natdex Ubers

 

[mrsuslawl]

I mean, many teams don't pack a lot of speed control apart from Hoopa-U and Okidogi, but even then giving them a scarf is mainly to fix their bad speed tier and use them as a wallbreaker instead. People don't use the fast, frail scarfer archetype (mienshao) anymore because lokix does it better without being locked into a move and losing momentum. Plus, there are tons of other priority options in the tier like Scizor, Harc, Mamo, etc that just make it not worth running a traditional scarfer.

 

[mintwinter]

I don’t think that tornadus-therian is problematic at all. While yes, it has really high usage, banning it isn’t going to solve anything. I agree with the points brought up that defensive options are limited, which leads to high torn-t usage. However, banning torn-t would lead to even less defensive counterplay to the dangerous special threats in the tier and make teambuilding much harder. High usage does not equal being broken; torn-t is part of the solution, not the problem

 

[Catcus]

I did a post last time about potential tier shifts, so I figured I'd do one again

Shifts

- OU really can't decide if they want this mon. Doesn't matter much to us, it would have fallen to Ru anyways

- Obvious rises. These guys are great and have already shown themselves to be top-tiers.

- Wait really? Makes sense, Mew's really proven itself to be one of if not the best HO lead. I didn't think it would actually rise though. Good for it.

- Should've fallen last time honestly.

- This mon was A- a couple months ago lmao. In general there's just a lot of mons that give it trouble so it can struggle to make an impact

- Stall is pretty bad rn so maybe this could help? probably not but there's a chance I guess

- Super interesting. We're kinda lacking in good fire types besides skeledirge and Harc, so this would be a welcome addition

Weavile and skarmory were also projected to fall again but I already talked about them last time

Usage stuff

- Was the Second most used mon. Really shows how well it abused the ursaluna meta

- For the first time in months, Scizor has managed to outshine lokix in usage. Scizor feels like its made a bit of a comeback recently so its nice to see.

- please start using this mon ladder they're good I promise.

- these two were worryingly close to falling to UU. Clodsire's fine, but Dondozo in UU is terrifying


To add to the current conversation, I agree that the tier feels a little stale. I like the tier overall but i feel like most of my teams are similar. I never really noticed the amount of volt-turn here though. It feels like the consequence of most of the top tiers having pivot moves. I also agree that there's a bit of threat saturation, though I think its less that there's an abundance of threats and more like the threats we have have limited or more specific counterplay that leads to the same few mons being used a lot. I think for now, we should wait for a bit to see if the meta develops before banning things. I do disagree that torn and lokix are problems though. torn doesn't really limit building, and it's one of the things that actually helps check the threats we have. I'd be more on board with the idea of lokix being overbearing a few months ago, but at this point, we have cobal, dogi, and zapdos plus a lot of sweepers actually prep for it or have risen to counter it (Comfey, protect gren, revavroom, etc) so I think its fine.

 

[udongirl]

Just to be clear, I am not stating that torn is broken, the subject is that torn is too useful and plays a part that thehe team's mons are similar. There is no causal relationship between all the pokemon in tier not being broken and the metagame not moving. Unless torn is banned, the metagame will continue to be dominated by stable voltturn tactics. And I see no problem with that.

 

[Cynde]

Just to be clear, I am not stating that torn is broken, the subject is that torn is too useful and plays a part that thehe team's mons are similar. There is no causal relationship between all the pokemon in tier not being broken and the metagame not moving. Unless torn is banned, the metagame will continue to be dominated by stable voltturn tactics. And I see no problem with that.

Would it be reasonable to assume that any player whose success has been predicated on abusing the broken parts of the system wouldn't see it as problematic? But I think there is a problem with that. Because we have an extremely narrow metagame. There are no outs to volt turn into breaker for any team. A few mons like the regen mons are barely holding this thing together for a few turns. They are not the problem but rather the only thing making playing this tier somewhat salvageable at the moment. Otherwise you'd be left with a metagame with absolutely 0 manoeuvrability. Not that we are particularly far off. Maybe it is hard to single out a specific mon that is broken. But the play style as a whole is 100% overpowered and something needs to be done about it.

 

[udongirl]

I had to repost because my Google edited my post to Japanese without my permission when I replaced the image.

Once again, it is not a good idea to turn a blind eye to the fact that voltturn is thriving thanks to 121 speed regenerator pokemon. And every game in UUBD week 4 had at least one pokemon ranked B or lower. HO is commonly used in both ladder and tour, and two HOs are already used in this week. The heart of the voltturn metagame is undoubtedly torn, and previously unseen pokemon such as milotic and gligar are being discovered. In the first place, the scarf metagross you are using is also available because of the diversity in the metagame.