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The Top 10 Titans of the 5th Gen OU Metagame [VOTING OVER]

Excadrill
At the time, it was almost a game that was played everyday to try to come up with sets that could reliably deal with it no matter how obscure. The broken Adamant LO Excadrill was best kept in check with Jolly Air Balloon Excadrill. That's how centralizing Exca was. This was a time when Sand was ridiculous not Rain. Even after the ban, Sand VoltTurn was ingrained everywhere into the meta up until BW2 with the new Rain threats. I think it fits nicely at this slot on this list too(3rd place non-weather started).
 
Well, if garchomp was voted #5 i find no reason as to why excadrill shouldnt be #6, as the same principles apply, and, after all, if scarfers meant jack during exca era, and setting up as well, then ye, thats as far as you can go when you can fuck up a metagame, oh, sorry, and weather.

Bad sardonic comments aside, using the same principles to the votes for chomp, exca for #6
 
I think Lando-I, Excadrill, and Genesect are all terrific candidates for #6-- as they all were also terrific candidates for five (Garchomp was my opinion, I could easily have seen any of these guys in that spot as well-- Lando-I has most of the same things going for it as Garchomp).

If Garchomp didn't take #5, I'd be more adamant about pushing for Lando-I, but I think this list should be representative of a wide variety of types of major threats that shaped the game-- Garchomp and Lando-I are both bulky, powerful, somewhat fast Ground types that abused sand and were allowed for most of the tier's history, but banned for some of it. There's a lot of overlap there.

For that reason, I think it's finally time we put up one of the CLEARLY broken Pokemon in this list-- break up the monotony, and give these one-time-titans the acknowledgement they deserve.

That said, I'm still completely torn between Excadrill and Genesect. Both of these Pokemon were absolutely dominant and characteristic of the metagame in their times-- and both were such unique threats that they're incomparable to anything else.

I guess-- I'm going to vote for Genesect, just because Tyranitar is already in the list, and as far as broken mons-- Genesect was way more prevalent than Excadrill in its meta.



So far though, I think this list is really good-- we have all the major elements that shape the metagame in these top 5. All Sand, Sun, Rain, Bulky Steel type, and an offesive Dragon. I think that describes OU in a nutshell.
 
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I came into BW OU at the end of the Excadrill era, and I only wish I could have came in a bit later. My first teams were very bad, simply because THEY LOST TO EXCADRILL. I never really learned how to deal with Excadrill, but my old teams that lost to Excadrill started doing REALLY well once it was banned. Excadrill, in its days, made Sand THE WEATHER TO USE, and forced you to run either Gliscor, Hippowdon, very powerful Mach Punches, bulky Rain/Sun, or lose about 20% of your battles just to Excadrill.

Even though it was not here for a lot of Gen 5, Excadrill still defined the OU metagame way back when.
 
im gonna vote genesect this round despite voting excadrill last round, simply because gene was just so incredibly dominating during its stay, and overcentralized the metagame completely. if that isnt influential, i dont know what is
 
For me #6 is between Kingdra, the posterboy for the SS + Drizzle complex ban, Genesect which everyone was using because there was no reason not to use it, or Scizor which has always been a top tier threat that has maintained #1 usage ever since Genesect was banned. I'm going to vote Kingdra this time around since ban blocked multiple pokemon for ever seeing use in OU, and it stopped rain from easily being the best weather in OU.

You know what scratch that Genesect. That thing was everywhere.
 
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I think we should all look objectively at these three pokemon for the following discussions: Kingdra, Excadrill and Dragonite. I think everyone knows what the former two are mentioned there (meta defining, etc.) but I'll expand a bit on Dragonite. Dragonite is the essence of quintessential Dragon, perfect ability for any of it's roles (phazer, tanks, sweeper, bander, mixed, set-up, etc.), Priorities, massive widepool, all around excellent stats (and the only average stat, speed is boosted by Agility and Dragon Dance) that you will be pressed hard to find a reason not to use this fat dino on your team. From the moment he got Multi Scale he basically made all Physical Dragons second tier, it didn't matter if they had better speed, pure Dragon typing, more attack, moxie, whatever it is they got or claimed to be better on paper, they never were a complete package. Even the recently included Chomper found it's way back to OU as a lead SR setter or Dragon revenger (of you guessed it, +1 Dragonite). Less important to mention was that it was suspect tested once and was always a top 10 (or top 5) player.

Consequently, when we talk SR and it's importance on the field, the need for spinners and spinblockers, ice moves and priorities, steels, rain, sand, hail, sun, we are never far behind of mentioning Dragonite and why all these decisions matter in team building.

Dragonite.
 
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Goddamn people, Latios is/has been way more consistently influential than any of the top 5 except Politoed and maybe Ninetales.
 
Scizor. Defining VoltTurn teams and being among the top in usage throughout the entire generation (except the Genesect-period)
 
Wizarus said:
For me #6 is between Kingdra, the posterboy for the SS + Drizzle complex ban, Genesect which everyone was using because there was no reason not to use it, or Scizor which has always been a top tier threat that has maintained #1 usage ever since Genesect was banned. I'm going to vote Kingdra this time around since ban blocked multiple pokemon for ever seeing use in OU, and it stopped rain from easily being the best weather in OU.

You know what scratch that Genesect. That thing was everywhere.
Click to expand...

Keep in mind that you can't vote for Kingdra in the future because it wasn't nominated.
 
Genesect

Choice is between Genesect, Dragonite, Scizor, Terrakion, and Excadrill as I see it. I would have put Excadrill over Garchomp, but we don't need 2 round 5 sand abusers in a row. Dragonite and Terrakion are both incredible, but Genesect totally defined the meta and deserves to be on this list.
 
How did Genesect "define the meta"? It was just used a lot. I think Heatran usage went up, Dnite usage went down and that was mostly it. I might just not be seeing it, but I feel like usage=\=meta defining.
Things like Excadrill, Politoed, etc completely changed what everyone decided to run on every team. I just don't feel that way about Genesect regardless of how good it was or how popular.


Edit @ below: I ran Rock Helmet Deo-D(pseudo spinblock, not for Gene) a lot during the Genesect era and it totally shit on Scarfsect. Yet it was slow and U-Turn weak. Stall dgaf about RPsect due to sDef walls, while offense rarely can't 2hko it. Even your UU example of Weavile has a chance to 2hko with rocks and low kick.
But oh well, Genesect's cool idc if it wins the spot. I just think there are mons that are a lot more meta-defining.
 
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Genesect defined the meta by having over half of all teams using one. If a pokemon is weak to U-turn and below 446 speed, it is a liability. If a pokemon couldn't do over 50% damage to Genesect (Weavile, for instance), it risks Genesect RPing and blowing through the team. Both defenses are even? Better throw your 4 extra EVs in special defense so Genesect gets an Attack boost instead.

Sounds ridiculous? That's how the metagame was when it was around, and if that's not metagame defining I don't know what is
 
Keep in mind that Genesect only hit 50+% usage on a suspect ladder. While that's no doubt a notable accomplishment, suspect ladders are often quite different since many people just spam the same successful teams in order to get voting requirements. On the regular ladder, Genesect only received a little over 20% usage, which is less than what Scizor got last month. I also wouldn't say that the strategic placement of the 4 leftovers EVs to control Download is evidence of overcentralization, just small steps taken to prepare for a popular threat. Looking over the UU analyses, I can count several Pokemon with 252/252 offensive spreads and the leftover 4 EVs placed into SpD specifically for the purpose of keeping Porygon2 and Porygon-Z from getting beneficial Download boosts. Besides, it's not like those leftover EVs are going to make a huge difference otherwise. Just a thought.

That said, I guess this would be a good time to vote for Genesect. Despite the fact that I would not consider it the most broken Pokemon to ever hit OU like some have said (in my own opinion, I'd consider Darkrai, Skymin, Blaziken, and Excadrill to be worse), it was definitely a very powerful threat that was the king of its domain while it was in OU. Genesect might be the most "complete" Pokemon to ever hit OU, as it just had a great combination of offenses, movepool, coverage, a great ability, decent bulk, great defensive typing, STAB U-turn, etc. that left it with very few flaws (besides an unfortunate but still good speed stat). There was almost no reason to not add a Genesect onto a team since it could offer so much with one of its several sets and did very little to stack weaknesses with other Pokemon.

I really want to see Terrakion on this list eventually, but we'll see what happens.
 
youngjake93 said:
How did Genesect "define the meta"? It was just used a lot. I think Heatran usage went up, Dnite usage went down and that was mostly it. I might just not be seeing it, but I feel like usage=\=meta defining.
Things like Excadrill, Politoed, etc completely changed what everyone decided to run on every team. I just don't feel that way about Genesect regardless of how good it was or how popular.

Edit @ below: I ran Rock Helmet Deo-D(pseudo spinblock, not for Gene) a lot during the Genesect era and it totally shit on Scarfsect. Yet it was slow and U-Turn weak. Stall dgaf about RPsect due to sDef walls, while offense rarely can't 2hko it. Even your UU example of Weavile has a chance to 2hko with rocks and low kick.
But oh well, Genesect's cool idc if it wins the spot. I just think there are mons that are a lot more meta-defining.
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Also lets remember that Celebi was nearly UU because Genesect was all over the place. Then it got banned and Celebi became the posterboy for being a switch in to both SF Lando and Keldeo. If Genesect had stayed and Lando+Keldeo were around while they were popular, I don't think much would have been able to beat a core like that. The only other poke that I can think of that deals with Lando and Keldeo pretty well is Gyarados, but it gets owned by a T-bolt from Genesect.
 
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