Metagame Ubers Metagame and Set Discussion v4 - DLC 2 Edition

[Pigbeeef]

~~Haha we got the double post let’s go~~

Ok, it’s been a while since the forums have graced me with another notification that a post had been made in the metagame discussion thread, and the ladder honestly feels as dead as this thread, so I’ll be here to be the one to make it happen.

People who don’t play Ubers often are often not interested in playing this tier, as from an outsider perspective, not a lot is going on and ladder being dead doesn’t help either. You do still see a few accounts playing the tier regularly on the higher parts of the ladder sometimes to mess with whatever they are testing, but that’s about it. Or maybe it’s just me with when am I active everybody is not.

The mainstay players are usually playing or focused on UPL right now, and they have other players to test teams with too…

Anyways, metagame developments that at least I have seen, some might be covered somewhat above, but here I go with some new sets rising in usage.




Koraidon @ Life Orb
Ability: Orichalcum Pulse
Tera Type: Fire / ghost
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Scale Shot / Wild Charge
- Flare Blitz
- Close Combat / Wild charge

I forgot to cover life orb koraidon in the post above, but life orb koraidon has been rising in usage for quite a while now for its immediate power against teams that are more prepared for scale shot variants, as it can one tap Lando-t easily at just +1 with sun boosted orichalcum pulse flare blitz, and one tap full physdef fairyceus at +2 with life orb flare blitz and also arc water with life orb wild charge. Scale shot is there as an option even though loaded dice isn’t there to make sure it hits 4-5 times when it connects, because speed boosting is still a very valuable in this offense oriented metagame, and hitting eternatus is still nice. Wild charge is still an option for Ho-Oh but scale is usually better as you can win after weakening them anyways, and +2 lorb cc should nuke waterceus anyways. It has also been rising in usage for a while now in tournaments which really doesn’t help stall teams…



Necrozma (Necrozma-Dusk Mane) @ Leftovers / Heavy duty boots / covert cloak / utility umbrella maybe
Ability: Prism Armor
Tera Type: Fire / Grass
Evs: 248 HP / 140 Def / 120 Spe
Impish Nature
-Dragon Dance
-Sunteel Strike / Earthquake
-Photon Geyser
-Morning Sun

Ironically, the drop in dusk mane usage is actually helping the people who do use dusk mane, as now that less people are using dusk mane, the people who still do can afford to run double stab moves instead of one stab and a coverage move / knock more often. Though you will still have kingambit issues, just like normal photon eq / Sunsteel knock sets. However, photon Sunsteel is great into the rest of the tier as the only other steel outside of gambit is other dusk mane, who as I said has dropped off in usage on ladder, and zacian, who is the the mon it checks and is not resistant to Sunsteel anyways. Photon and sunsteel helps with the iron defense + calm mind fairyceus MU a lot too, as the two stab options hits both its base type and Tera type of poison very effectively, and the rise of Etern lets it have more opportunities to come in than before. Covert cloak is nice for dodging burns, utility umbrella is a tech to still have normal healing in the rain while taking less damage from kyogre, while also weakening attacks from koraidons flare blitz, though there will be no boosted healing from morning sun.

Anyways these are some of the cool sets yall should try out ig, photon knock has also been a thing but I don’t fw it.

And honestly maybe I should convince people to ladder more as none of this matters if nobody is playing.

Gliscor fell off a cliff long time ago, knock isn’t as useful now.

There are some more cool new sets as well, but either I don’t have enough time to go over them or I just want to wait till UPL is over.

And shoutout to the Chinese homies for playing with the wack mons on ladder, yall are awesome.

Edit: I’ll go over some funny techs I have witnessed in UPL after it’s over, some of them are truly hilarious.

 

[Pigbeeef]

I swear this is the last post I’m gonna make before the next person hopefully posts, but UPL is over, and here is a set I feel like MIGHT get a little bit of ladder usage after this.

Eternatus @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Pressure
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 16 HP / 252 Def / 192 SpA / 48 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Dynamax Cannon
- Sludge Bomb
- Fire Blast
- Toxic Spikes

Credits to Kate and Taka for the set.

Dubbed Voyagetern, This eternatus set looks quite unconventional, with the EV spread designed to live a five hit scale shot from koraidon due to how sitrus berry and multi hit moves work, it can lead off versus koraidon and win the exchange if they try to get some damage in via scale shot as Dmax cannon one shots with modest. Sludge bomb and fire blast are there for coverage versus zacian-c and fairyceus, while toxic spikes is great in case you get the chance to click it, and yada yada yada. Hilariously fun as an Antilead into koraidon, works wonders if they don’t see it coming, especially as it doesn’t reveal itself on preview. It does have a little bit of trouble twave kyogre leads though, as it cannot two shot kyogre like life orb sets nor status them like spdef sets do.

Probably left out important details but yeah, coolest set to come out of this tour I know.

 

[sleazy dimonkey]

Here are some cool techs and ideas I've recently used on ladder:

+

Stall isn't in a great spot rn. Ability Shield is a cool pick on Unaware mons like Skeledirge and Dondozo as it prevents Photon Geyser or Teravolt from shutting it down. This helps both Dirge and Dozo stand up to set-up sweepers like non-Knock Off NDM and Kyu-B. If running Ability Shield on Dirge, either Rapid Spin or Defog support is required.


+

Trick + SD Band Calyrex-Ice

Calyrex-Ice @ Choice Band
Ability: As One (Glastrier)
Tera Type: Ice
EVs: 232 HP / 96 Atk / 180 Def
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Glacial Lance
- High Horsepower
- Swords Dance
- Trick

Band Calyrex-Ice is incredibly powerful. It can easily OHKO resists at +1 with Tera Ice. This set works best on Hyper Offense teams and pairs well with another TR setter like Hatterene or NDM. The defense EVs help it survive a +1 Behemoth Blade from Zacian-C and non-LO Flare Blitz from Koraidon from full HP. Trick is an interesting option that can cripple physical walls.

 

[Pigbeeef]

Here are some cool techs and ideas I've recently used on ladder:

+

Stall isn't in a great spot rn. Ability Shield is a cool pick on Unaware mons like Skeledirge and Dondozo as it prevents Photon Geyser or Teravolt from shutting it down. This helps both Dirge and Dozo stand up to set-up sweepers like non-Knock Off NDM and Kyu-B. If running Ability Shield on Dirge, either Rapid Spin or Defog support is required.


+

Trick + SD Band Calyrex-Ice

Calyrex-Ice @ Choice Band
Ability: As One (Glastrier)
Tera Type: Ice
EVs: 232 HP / 96 Atk / 180 Def
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Glacial Lance
- High Horsepower
- Swords Dance
- Trick

Band Calyrex-Ice is incredibly powerful. It can easily OHKO resists at +1 with Tera Ice. This set works best on Hyper Offense teams and pairs well with another TR setter like Hatterene or NDM. The defense EVs help it survive a +1 Behemoth Blade from Zacian-C and non-LO Flare Blitz from Koraidon from full HP. Trick is an interesting option that can cripple physical walls.

interesting ideas, though ability shield on unaware walls don’t actually work well in practice, as the spinners we have right now simply lack reliable recovery, and our defoggers lack recovery as well, which really impacts how well do they fit on such teams, and NDM and Zekrom aren’t even that common these days, as life orb koraidon could also blast away dozo with close combat anyways.

 

[doubtful intuition]

interesting ideas, though ability shield on unaware walls don’t actually work well in practice, as the spinners we have right now simply lack reliable recovery, and our defoggers lack recovery as well, which really impacts how well do they fit on such teams, and NDM and Zekrom aren’t even that common these days, as life orb koraidon could also blast away dozo with close combat anyways.

Stall is pretty much unviable, but they can fit in more unorthodox Defoggers with reliable recovery like or , at the cost of being weaker to other things. Ability Shield is a cool pick, but I agree with you, it'd be difficult to pull off in practice because stall literally sucks rn

+

Koraidon @ Heavy Duty Boots
Ability: Orichalcum Pulse
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Scale Shot
- Flare Blitz
- Close Combat

This has been my favorite set as of late. Boots Koraidon nearly invalidates Webs on its own, but the crux of this set is Tera Fairy, which can be used as a great check to shore up opposing mirrors. Alternate Tera Types like Tera Dark can work too to stop ID+CM set-up sweepers.

 

[Pigbeeef]

Stall is pretty much unviable, but they can fit in more unorthodox Defoggers with reliable recovery like or , at the cost of being weaker to other things. Ability Shield is a cool pick, but I agree with you, it'd be difficult to pull off in practice because stall literally sucks rn

+

Koraidon @ Heavy Duty Boots
Ability: Orichalcum Pulse
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Scale Shot
- Flare Blitz
- Close Combat

This has been my favorite set as of late. Boots Koraidon nearly invalidates Webs on its own, but the crux of this set is Tera Fairy, which can be used as a great check to shore up opposing mirrors. Alternate Tera Types like Tera Dark can work too to stop ID+CM set-up sweepers.

The only idcm setup sweepers tera dark stops is ndm, and if you wanna do that taunt over cc shuts it off completely anyways.

On a side note, I do see the appeal in tera fairy, but my personal preference still lean towards steel for iron head sets or simply tera fire for the flare blitz one shots. for invalidating webs consider flame charge with tera fire for double boosting, as that lets you blow right past scale shot blockers!

 

[doubtful intuition]

The only idcm setup sweepers tera dark stops is ndm, and if you wanna do that taunt over cc shuts it off completely anyways.

On a side note, I do see the appeal in tera fairy, but my personal preference still lean towards steel for iron head sets or simply tera fire for the flare blitz one shots. for invalidating webs consider flame charge with tera fire for double boosting, as that lets you blow right past scale shot blockers!

Giving up CC to run Taunt on Korai is a huge opportunity cost and hardly ever worth it outside of the stall mu. Tera Dark also has fringe uses as seen when Colin used it in UPL, preventing Agility Lunala sweeps, getting a Ghost resist, etc.

Tera Fairy works better on Boots, Tera Steel better on Loaded Dice, although I never got the appeal of a Koraidon lacking Fire or Fighting coverage. Sure, you beat Tera Fairy cores occasionally, but the opp could always Tera themselves. Seems like a mid set at best, but what do I know. Good convo.

 

[Pigbeeef]

Giving up CC to run Taunt on Korai is a huge opportunity cost and hardly ever worth it outside of the stall mu. Tera Dark also has fringe uses as seen when Colin used it in UPL, preventing Agility Lunala sweeps, getting a Ghost resist, etc.

Tera Fairy works better on Boots, Tera Steel better on Loaded Dice, although I never got the appeal of a Koraidon lacking Fire or Fighting coverage. Sure, you beat Tera Fairy cores occasionally, but the opp could always Tera themselves. Seems like a mid set at best, but what do I know. Good convo.

Because just a fire move and a dragon move gives up surprisingly little coverage and utility into the meta. Sure, maybe a fighting move gives you a nice middle ground into certain turns at times, I've often found substitute, taunt or a different move to be more useful at cheesing certain matchups, as blitz, scale and sd lets koraidon do like 85% of what it does already, though scale missing is pain. we also got sub sd iron head sets that gets walled by ndm most of the time, its a MU fish set anyways. taunt abuses roar arc fairy, stall, and other fat structures + idcm, while sub flame charge messes up webs leads real hard, heck, even scale flame charge can sweep teams! though, tera fairy with its surprise factor I believe can work quite well.

but yeah, the last moveslot is extra customizable.

 

[doubtful intuition]

Because just a fire move and a dragon move gives up surprisingly little coverage and utility into the meta. Sure, maybe a fighting move gives you a nice middle ground into certain turns at times, I've often found substitute, taunt or a different move to be more useful at cheesing certain matchups, as blitz, scale and sd lets koraidon do like 85% of what it does already, though scale missing is pain. we also got sub sd iron head sets that gets walled by ndm most of the time, its a MU fish set anyways. taunt abuses roar arc fairy, stall, and other fat structures + idcm, while sub flame charge messes up webs leads real hard, heck, even scale flame charge can sweep teams! though, tera fairy with its surprise factor I believe can work quite well.

At least in my experience, Tera Fairy worked best on ladder since, as you said, most people don’t expect the surprise factor. I got it to work best on the Specs Ogre Webs HO sample I submitted, which is one of the rare structures that doesn’t use Pagos.

I asked this on the SQSA page, but since you’re the only one contributing to this thread, I’m curious what’s the most popular Koraidon set atm? The utility of Scarf Koraidon is unmatched, yet I see more LO usage in tours + ladder. And for Scale Shot sets, why is LO preferred over Loaded Dice? I assume it's because Koraidon gets the ability to OHKO max/max Arc-Fairy and Lando-T at +2 / +1 respectively? In that case, are LO variants better off using Tera-Fire / Ghost Scale Shot / Flare Blitz / Close Combat or Tera-Fire Flame Charge / Close Combat / Wild Charge?

 

[Pigbeeef]

At least in my experience, Tera Fairy worked best on ladder since as you said, most people don’t expect the surprise factor. I got it to work best on the Specs Ogre Webs HO sample I submitted, which is one of the rare structures that doesn’t use Pagos.

I asked this on the SQSA page, but since you’re the only one contributing to this thread, I’m curious what’s the most popular Koraidon set atm? The utility of Scarf Koraidon is unmatched, yet I see more LO usage in tours + ladder. And for Scale Shot sets, why is LO preferred over Loaded Dice? I assume it's because Koraidon gets the ability to OHKO max/max Arc-Fairy and Lando-T at +2 / +1 respectively? In that case, are LO variants better off using Tera-Fire / Ghost Scale Shot / Flare Blitz / Close Combat or Tera-Fire Flame Charge / Close Combat / Wild Charge?

Man, now that you bring it up, the thread really is dead asf ;(. In my opinion though, specs ogre isn't good on webs, as it does pretty badly into the webs mirrors as giving koraidon free setup on an HO team is a massive No-No in my eyes. cm sitrus ogre (funny UPL set, beats etern 1v1) as a breaker or scarf ogre as an endgame cleaner seems much more plausible, though that's more me, but most of us can agree that 99% of the "good" HO teams make sure koraidon cannot have a single free turn on all six slots one way or another. (except hax, cant control that.) or else a single sd and a speed boost can be ggs.

Scarf don is the best scarfer in the tier yes, but sd koraidon is so versatile, unpredictable and powerful that people have been throwing it on balance, BO and Other offenses while having lando for example as an alternative scarfer, cuz the opportunity cost is way too high not to use on many teams. There is not many different ways you can play scarf korai, its usually just same four moves, maybe with a bit of EV changes and natures or the occasional dual wing beat, it really is mostly the same thing... but for SD koraidon the possibilities are endless, skies the limit, we got standard tera fire SD scale shot with dice, tera ghost for ekiller, tera steel iron head for fairy ogre cores + ekiller, sub + tera to abuse arc fairy and others, taunt to break stall, raw scale shot with heavy duty boots, NO scale shot with boots, scale shot AND flame charge, life orb scale shot sets for super breaking power... The list goes on and on and on and on. I don't know exactly which of these specifically is the most used, my bets on tera fire SD because its the first Dex set so ladder is more likely to use it, but in tours the variants span so far and wide I really don't know.

Long answer short SD is the most used set now, and life orb movements both you listed are good for different matchups. one breaks better and one is better into offense, but I cant say exactly which is better.

It could also be people realizing scale shot is really good even just for that speed boost, and life orb just blows things up especially with the decreased ekiller usage.

 

[doubtful intuition]

Man, now that you bring it up, the thread really is dead asf ;(. In my opinion though, specs ogre isn't good on webs, as it does pretty badly into the webs mirrors as giving koraidon free setup on an HO team is a massive No-No in my eyes. cm sitrus ogre (funny UPL set, beats etern 1v1) as a breaker or scarf ogre as an endgame cleaner seems much more plausible, though that's more me, but most of us can agree that 99% of the "good" HO teams make sure koraidon cannot have a single free turn on all six slots one way or another. (except hax, cant control that.) or else a single sd and a speed boost can be ggs.

Scarf don is the best scarfer in the tier yes, but sd koraidon is so versatile, unpredictable and powerful that people have been throwing it on balance, BO and Other offenses while having lando for example as an alternative scarfer, cuz the opportunity cost is way too high not to use on many teams. There is not many different ways you can play scarf korai, its usually just same four moves, maybe with a bit of EV changes and natures or the occasional dual wing beat, it really is mostly the same thing... but for SD koraidon the possibilities are endless, skies the limit, we got standard tera fire SD scale shot with dice, tera ghost for ekiller, tera steel iron head for fairy ogre cores + ekiller, sub + tera to abuse arc fairy and others, taunt to break stall, raw scale shot with heavy duty boots, NO scale shot with boots, scale shot AND flame charge, life orb scale shot sets for super breaking power... The list goes on and on and on and on. I don't know exactly which of these specifically is the most used, my bets on tera fire SD because its the first Dex set so ladder is more likely to use it, but in tours the variants span so far and wide I really don't know.

Long answer short SD is the most used set now, and life orb movements both you listed are good for different matchups. one breaks better and one is better into offense, but I cant say exactly which is better.

Thanks for the thorough response!

And yea this thread is dead af but I guess that speaks more about the stale nature of the metagame than the player base.

Have any new “innovations” been discovered as of late? Feel like running Sitrus on random defensive mons only works in a tour game once in a while but lacks the consistency to do well on ladder

 

[Pigbeeef]

Thanks for the thorough response!

And yea this thread is dead af but I guess that speaks more about the stale nature of the metagame than the player base.

Have any new “innovations” been discovered as of late? Feel like running Sitrus on random defensive mons only works in a tour game once in a while but lacks the consistency to do well on ladder

We have sitrus eternatus that eats a round of scale shot and fires back due to how sitrus works I guess, but I assume you already saw that.

There are also 6792671 different koraidon sets running around on the ladder...

if you wanna find people who are still searching for new sets, reach out / check out my Chinese homies, Emoxu9 and others are awesome builders and players.

Maybe you can count flyceus as a new one? perhaps eleceus as a Zac check? Honestly, the only place that is kinda active is the Ubers discord and even then they talk about random stuff a big chunk of the time... the sample team submission numbers have been lacking too.

lets just hope gen 10 we see this tier back in action.

Oh yeah ndm is rising in usage again.

and I think we once saw SD u turn koraidon to bluff scarf.

 

[doubtful intuition]

We have sitrus eternatus that eats a round of scale shot and fires back due to how sitrus works I guess, but I assume you already saw that.

There are also 6792671 different koraidon sets running around on the ladder...

if you wanna find people who are still searching for new sets, reach out / check out my Chinese homies, Emoxu9 and others are awesome builders and players.

Maybe you can count flyceus as a new one? perhaps eleceus as a Zac check? Honestly, the only place that is kinda active is the Ubers discord and even then they talk about random stuff a big chunk of the time... the sample team submission numbers have been lacking too.

lets just hope gen 10 we see this tier back in action.

Oh yeah ndm is rising in usage again.

and I think we once saw SD u turn koraidon to bluff scarf.

I’m surprised with the lowered EKiller usage. I think EKiller is an insanely good pick (though I’m making this judgment - heh see what I did there? - solely off ladder). LO + Double Edge nukes so many things. And priority spam is always strong imo

Yes, I get the opportunity cost of not using an Arc-Fairy or Water but still, EKiller is incredibly strong and does better into a more offensive metagame

Speaking of offense, despite the sheer number of balances I see, I’m of the opinion a well built Deo-S HO or Webs to a less extent can beat the vast majority of non-HO teams

 

[Pigbeeef]

I’m surprised with the lowered EKiller usage. I think EKiller is an insanely good pick (though I’m making this judgment - heh see what I did there? - solely off ladder.) LO + Double Edge nukes so many thing. And priority spam is always strong imo

yeah, you either use fairyceus for defensive utility or something else, the decreased in tera ghost tells me I should start using it again. LO tera normal double edge just guarantees one shot on Ho-Oh and max defense arcs after a single sd... it can even one shot zacian at times!

Anyways join the Ubers discord, you will find people there.

 

[InkyDarkBird]

Have any new “innovations” been discovered as of late? Feel like running Sitrus on random defensive mons only works in a tour game once in a while but lacks the consistency to do well on ladder

Does Fezandipiti count? The NDubers set but fully invested into special defense can hard wall Eternatus, Fairyceus, special Ghostceus, and can even pick off a chipped Koraidon that switches into an Acid Spray using Icy Wind in an emergency. Still sucks into Kyogre, Lunala, and full physical teams though.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ubers-2447760509-hqlpeok8hgvt4tbjwa0nq4gh7a6swyqpw

 

[Pigbeeef]

It’s been… a very long time since this thread has been active.

The recent ( or relatively recent surveys) surveys have shown that webs isn’t overwhelming, but still annoying to play and prep against regardless.

I find it the same too, I feel like it’s difficult to build balance and BO that can effectively cover both HO Stall and every single thing between and the variations of each, while building HO teams and playing them feel easier than piloting a normal team against HO

I feel like this metagame is way too leaning in favor of HO still, but just by being unfun isn’t enough by the Ubers tiering standards to warrant a ban unfortunately.

Im also bored asf, are there anything new going on?

 

[Fc]

Following this post, I wanted to make that metagame discussion post I mentioned since I think some of the things I wanted to talk about are more appropriate for here and there's some cool ideas I had throughout SCL that I think could be explored more.


https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ubers-886065

I used Arceus-Steel in my week 9 game vs Mashing, and while the game was less important since my team had locked playoffs already we still wanted first seed and I still wanted to keep my winstreak alive so I didn't take the game super lightly. From the start of the week though I wanted to use arc steel, and was convinced it could do well. This thing is in C- rank rn but I feel like it's definitely better than some of the stuff above it, probably comparable to C+ / B- mons. The biggest issue is the opportunity cost of nice arc types ofc but looking at the fact that arceus dark is B- I'd even say I'd rather steelceus for the opportunity cost of running an arceus type. Its best traits are that it's a resist to ndm's dual stabs, zacians attacks, and has no immunities on judgment. I ran CM IDef which is kinda the standard if you wanna run a niche arc, but I think steelceus does it super well. Stuff like cm idef fairyceus will tera steel anyway a lot of the time to get out of being hit super effectively, and starting as a steel can be beneficial mainly for ndm like I mentioned, but it also allows for a different tera so you can flip certain matchups by becoming water which I think is the best. If people are more prepared for cm fairyceus as the idef set then this will be able to flip the checks with its natural typing, and can definitely catch some teams unprepared. Definitely not a metagame staple or anything, there are probably 6-8 better arceus forms depending on what you value, but it's a valid mon imo and fills a nice niche on certain teams.



This mon is him, near the end of the season I remembered it existed and used it 4 times in 5 weeks. Support is just so good since it's a non-passive soft check to zac korai ndm ekiller while still setting spikes and spreading status, really powerful rn. SD is also cool, I saw entro and emoxu in particular use it iirc and it's not a bad pick, I also tried building with it for some mu's just found other teams I liked a bit more when I did. Not much to say since people know it's good but I think from where it used to be Groudon probably had the biggest glow up in the entire gen, maybe bar pagos.



Behind the mandatory koraidon on every non-stall, these 3 were my most used mons in the tournament (also most used overall on the usage stats doc in that order). I used zacian in 7 games, and both kyogre and eternatus in 6 games. It's probably no surprise to anyone since all of these are really strong but I think these mons are just so insanely versatile that it's super easy to put them on a lot of teams and styles. I'd probably say in some order they're the top 2-4 mons after korai, probably zac > kyogre > etern and maybe etern can fall to 5 overall based on how I'm feeling the value of ho-oh / fairy / anything else is at the time, but I used them all so much just because they can really do it all. Exert a lot of offensive pressure while still having defensive capabilities which I think is super important in a meta where korai ekiller zac etc can tera and sd which is super scary.




General points on arceus, but I think now more than ever it's easier to run different arc types. Looking at the usage stats doc, the most common arc type is fairy, at 22%. Ekiller is right behind it at 21%, when in the past this wasn't the case at all. Compared to UPL where in more games fairyceus was at 35% there's quite a big drop, and I think that's just due to how the metagame has changed a bit. NDM is back on the rise after falling off in most people's view for a period of time, Zacian is everywhere and offense is very common. Fairyceus is still very good but it's not the definitive number 1 arceus imo or one that you can just throw on every team bc it blocks korai's scale, teams have to think more about how to use the arceus slot and I think that's a good thing. More variety and that means techs specifically to hit certain types aren't as needed and you can bring more general sets to outplay stuff. Ekiller also went from 4th most common in UPL to a definitive second, which in my SCL discussion thread post I talked about a bit but I just think the ability to revenge kill offense is so valuable since it keeps the game more in your hands and forces things like tera preservation and attacking into it always in games so that you don't just autolose. It can't fit on as many teams imo just bc it only has the defensive utility of being immune to moongeist beam really, but ekiller is def on the rise a lot and is probably in contention for best arc, at worst still top 4 with the usual fairy water ground.




This mon got almost 40% usage LOL how I swear this thing was legit the biggest fraud ever for a while, there was a point in time this mon was genuinely almost as bad as ndw for some people. It does make sense just bc ghost is such a good type rn and it has a lot of viable sets, it's a make a wish mon where you can just do whatever you want with it and it'll usually get results. Just seeing it cleanly above ho-oh, all individual arc types, ndm, etc. feels kinda crazy but it's a mon that's super on the rise and I think has kinda found its placement in the meta, strong pick that might fall a bit in usage since mid tour it did see a bit of a specs phase pick up which idk if that stays around, but it's really good now.


The usage stats sheet also just has a lot of cool info that I'd recommend checking out if you wanna see more about the metagame, the sheets put together for SCL and all officials are really nice to look at. Something interesting I see at least is that koraidon is clicking tera over twice as much as anything else which makes sense, and Lunala actually clicked it the second most in SCL, more than zacian and ndm who follow. Quad weaknesses be hitting so it does line up that they'd tera the most, but it's just cool to see just how much more koraidon teras than anything else and that lunala actually tera'd more than any of the mons above it in usage, even zac as the only setup sweeper above it.


There's a lot more random stuff I could briefly talk about like offensive ndm being the goat once again, hatt still being good and the hazard game still being such a huge thing, and ditto kinda falling off a cliff this tournament, but those are all smaller things where they aren't changing too much to begin with and just aren't what I wanted to discuss in this post at least. Hoping to see more people discussing stuff post SCL, and I'm looking forward to where the meta goes with circuit and our winter tour starting up. Same as my last post but just wanted to say again that I did really enjoy SCL, my record of course played a big part in how much I liked it but also just the team I was on was great and everyone who helped me with tests and to figure out the ideas of some of the things I'm talking about here made it a lot better. Hoping to keep it up in terms of records going forward and have as much fun in future tours as well.