Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion

Status
Not open for further replies.
Skeledirge @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Unaware
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Torch Song
- Will-O-Wisp
- Slack Off
- Hex / Shadow Ball

this beats Annihilape 100% of the time after tera unless it's some weird max attack set. Dirge is very bulky so even SE Drain Punches will be doing very little damage. You also should not try to burn it because it will probably taunt you, just attack.
Thanks, i'll give it a shot.
 
I really don't like a tera ban list because it creates this really weird dynamic where pokemon are basically "worse" because of how good they are. I personally believe viability should be purely based on a pokemon's actual usefulness, and not based on whether or not the playerbase decided to handicap it
I would agree with your last point. However I feel like we’re far beyond the point of not handicapping something if we want to preserve Tera typing in some capacity.
 
Last edited:

heatmoron

Banned deucer.
Should Anihilape be banned despite it barely being ou by usage? #41 in usage stats, yet people claim it to be overpowered. How can this be?
 
Frosmoth can be unironically good if you don't mind giving up the Tera for it. But I do mind committing that hard to Tera on a single mon. Quiver Dance + Ice Scales is kinda interesting, though.
 
Should Anihilape be banned despite it barely being ou by usage? #41 in usage stats, yet people claim it to be overpowered. How can this be?
Usage statistics frankly have nothing to do with a mon's viability or brokenness, especially THIS early in the meta. As you may recall Mane/Fin meta was very chaotic and there was a lot of new toy syndrome that resulted in stuff like Maushold being OU. Simply put, not enough people knew how good Ape was and that consequently led to it's low usage.
 

1LDK

Trial by fury
is a Top Team Rater
Should Anihilape be banned despite it barely being ou by usage? #41 in usage stats, yet people claim it to be overpowered. How can this be?
Usage does not always mean viability or brokenes
in Anihiliape´s case, while i personally belive its not broken in any means, you have to dedicate something to check or counter it in some fashion, and even tho you can play around it, its a dangerous game due to Rage Fists, ape also has been seeing use with Final Gambit + Max HP and Choice Scarf alonside the standard bulk up set,

does anyone have suggestions for mons that can reliably counter annihilape without being totally useless otherwise
In my case I use the combination of Sylveon + scarf Chi Yu, both are pretty good right now and this ensures I never get sweep by any variant, at worst, i only lose 1 mon, but thats if i play bad

Maushold being OU
Maushold is viable shut up i wont take my normal pills :blobnom: :blobnom: :blobnom: :blobnom: :blobnom:
 

BlackKnight_Gawain

PUPL Champion
Wild to see the survey results but it does confirm what I at least thought would be the case at present: which is restriction is the most favorable choice right now among the playerbase. It really does suck that the data is a mess though, appreciate council for having to pore thru that (Finchinator in particular as always).

I am intrigued a lot by how controversial and close the split is, particularly in qualified responses. I'm kinda curious to know if there were any text responses submitted that caught your eye on either side of the split from those responses.


On the mons side of things, I wasn't expecting Gholdengo to be less controversial than the other ones. I feel like more vocal discussion has been around cheeseman being busted over the others, but I'm also surprised the Chi Yu and Annihilape ones are similar in number. I'll just wait to see what the tiering updates are before I give further thoughts on it, but all in all survey was very useful I'd say.
 

alephgalactus

Banned deucer.
On the mons side of things, I wasn't expecting Gholdengo to be less controversial than the other ones. I feel like more vocal discussion has been around cheeseman being busted over the others, but I'm also surprised the Chi Yu and Annihilape ones are similar in number. I'll just wait to see what the tiering updates are before I give further thoughts on it, but all in all survey was very useful I'd say.
I mean, it’s probably the case that even some of the top players just haven’t noticed yet how Gholdengo is busted because it’s way more subtle about it than the usual suspects. There’s probably also a non-zero number of high-ladder people who are leaning heavily on Gholdengo, Chi-Yu, Annihilape, and/or Espathra to actually maintain that ranking and are fully aware that they will immediately plummet once bans start happening (which I can say confidently because I was absolutely carried by Bundle and Palafin during the second week of OU and probably don’t deserve a single win I got in that time).
 
I mean, it’s probably the case that even some of the top players just haven’t noticed yet how Gholdengo is busted because it’s way more subtle about it than the usual suspects.
Or maybe Gholdengo isn't actually busted. Not to start this debate again. Some people talk like it's undeniable fact that it's broken and it really isn't. It has enough counterplay. And if it Terastallizes, it doesn't block Spinners anymore unless it stays a ghost type. I don't want to get into all the details since it's mostly been covered in this thread.
 
Gholdengo on its own is not broken at all, there is enough counterplay to every single of its sets. If Gholdengo appeared 2 gens ago, with only like 3 viable Spikers and with Mega Sableye existing, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

It's in combination with the billion hazard Mons, almost 0 Defoggers (at least the Donphans are good, but those 2 guys are the only things that avoid total chaos) when Gholdengo makes an unhealthy Meta that forces every team to either go fully offensive or to have like 4 Boots Mons.

In an ideal world, this could have been solved with either Gholdengo + Spikes or Gholdengo + Rocks Ban, similar to the Drizzle + Swift Swim Ban in BW. But since complex Bans are to be avoided, it's Gholdengo the one that has to go.

Of course, survey showed that Terastal, Chi-Yu and Annihilape are more concerning at the moment. Don't really agree with the fish being problematic, but the last 2 weeks really made me hate the monkey, who also contributes to the extremely offensive Meta by abussing almost every passive Mon and switching into spinners better than Gholdengo ( and also punishing the poor crow with Defiant).
 
Gholdengo on its own is not broken at all, there is enough counterplay to every single of its sets. If Gholdengo appeared 2 gens ago, with only like 3 viable Spikers and with Mega Sableye existing, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

It's in combination with the billion hazard Mons, almost 0 Defoggers (at least the Donphans are good, but those 2 guys are the only things that avoid total chaos) when Gholdengo makes an unhealthy Meta that forces every team to either go fully offensive or to have like 4 Boots Mons.
Except that's not entirely true. Gholdengo counters exactly one relevant Defogger. Corviknight. And even using that as a Defogger is mostly fine if it has U-Turn and teammates that can hit Gholdengo. It's true that the numbers of Defoggers are low. But Talonflame beats non-Tera Gholdengho. We also have more spinners than before, many of which can threaten Gholdengo on the switch. Gholdengo blocking Rapid Spin isn't different than any other Ghost type. Ghost types aren't new.

The meta would be hyper offensive regardless with Tera and all these Paradox mons and Ruin Legends running around. Shed Tail, too. Shed Tail really punishes slower or more passive sets. There is simply too much offensive pressure. And the hazard setters wouldn't stop setting hazards if Gholdengo is gone. The momentum it takes to clear hazards in this gen is much harder than in the prior one with all the offensive pressure in the Meta game.

Furthermore, Stall was nerfed with Toxic and Scald being taken away from many pokemon. And you don't need to run 4 Heavy Duty Boots to make a team less vulnerable to hazards. Ground, Steel, Poison, Flying, and Fighting types are all good against various hazards. Nearly every OU team will find a way to have a Ground and a Steel type on it already and it doesn't take much modification from there. You shouldn't need more than one or two Heavy Duty Boots on a team. It's funny that people might run 4+ boots, but hardly necessary.

I also suspect we need to go over the different hazard clearers somewhere because we have more options than a lot of people seem to think. Glimmora can be used as a Spinner. While Gholdengho still blocks Mortal Spin because Steel type, it's a better option against double Ghost cores. Glimmora also can run Earth Power to threaten Gholdengo for when it wants to switch in. Hatterene is a decent Magic Bounce pokemon for whatever that is worth.
 

Soiramio3000

Banned deucer.
I have got one question about those of you who have high elo:
do you keep using the same teams over and over again or you keep making new ones whenever you feel like making one.

my elo has always been between 1000 to 1200 at best.
I just want to know if it is 100% because I am bad at team building or just 90%.
(before you answer NO I am NOT asking for help on how to improve, I don't think that I want that any way. so just answer the question and refrain from saying anything else).
 
I have got one question about those of you who have high elo:
do you keep using the same teams over and over again or you keep making new ones whenever you feel like making one.

my elo has always been between 1000 to 1200 at best.
I just want to know if it is 100% because I am bad at team building or just 90%.
(before you answer NO I am NOT asking for help on how to improve, I don't think that I want that any way. so just answer the question and refrain from saying anything else).
Make new teams whenever I feel like it. Making teams with higher viability Pokémon usually easily reach 1900+, making fun teams as a challenge to get to 1900+ that are themed and/or deliberately handicapped (e.g. all UU team in OU) usually struggle to break past 1900.

getting to high elo isn’t exclusively about the team, it’s more about can you read the game well enough, and do you have the Pokémon that can make the impact you need to make to win.
 

Soiramio3000

Banned deucer.
Make new teams whenever I feel like it. Making teams with higher viability Pokémon usually easily reach 1900+, making fun teams as a challenge to get to 1900+ that are themed and/or deliberately handicapped (e.g. all UU team in OU) usually struggle to break past 1900.

getting to high elo isn’t exclusively about the team, it’s more about can you read the game well enough, and do you have the Pokémon that can make the impact you need to make to win.
oh so it is 100% of my bad skills.
thanks a lot.
 

Goodbye & Thanks

Thrown in a fire?
oh so it is 100% of my bad skills.
thanks a lot.
Don’t be hard on yourself! I just want to mention that often it’s difficult to improve your playing ability and knowledge of a tier if you aren’t using the best constructed teams. I recommend initially finding like one solid team that fits your preferred playstyle (usually built by someone who is known for being a good builder, although that’s a little harder early into a meta and without sample teams yet) and just laddering with that team as high as you can. That way you can focus on learning the nuances of the tier and how a good team is supposed to function and what threats it needs to account for. If/when you plateau for a while in laddering with that team, you’ll know about where your skill level is, and from there it’s up to you if you want to/are able to put in the time and use resources like Smogon’s tutor service to continue improving as a player. Regardless, you should then be able to build your own teams once you know roughly where you peaked with a “known good” team and try to reach that point again with your own teams. If you’re able to reach or get close to a personal peak with some of your own teams, then you know that at least your teams aren’t holding you back. I’ve personally found that I’m much more comfortable playing with teams that I’ve built (in tiers that I’m experienced with) since I know the particulars about things like EV spreads or how certain situations are meant to be dealt with, but the hard part, for me at least, is being confident that your team isn’t holding you back at all or that you couldn’t be winning more with some other team. Building a good team often just takes a very long time though and requires a great deal of tweaking through testing, so that’s also a factor.

Edit: I didn’t see in your previous post that you said that you weren’t looking to improve at all. I’m not sure why that is, and I wasn’t really talking about improving as much as providing a way to assess your playing ability relative to the quality of your teams, but I apologize if you didn’t want that. I’ll leave my post though as just general advice for anyone who could benefit from it, but obviously you can feel free to ignore it.
 
Last edited:
Hey just wanted to shift the attention a bit since it doesn't seem like this pokemon is getting a lot of attention in the discussion threads.

:sv/talonflame:
Talonflame @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Flame Body
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 204 Def / 52 Spe
Bold / Impish Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Flamethrower / Taunt / Defog
- Air Slash / Hurricane / Brave Bird
- Will-O-Wisp
- Roost

If you haven't noticed, Talonflame has been seeing a decent amount of usage in fatter structures in ladder with this stall team by Highv0ltag3, in roomtours with this Chi-Yu semi stall by pW17, and Lennart in this Round 4 game of the No Johns tour in which it walled 5/6 of the opposing team. Taunt is self explanatory, Flamethrower allows you to deal with Gholdengo more reliably, and the Flying Special Attacks are a good alternative if you don't like Brave Bird's recoil. The speed on this spread in particular hits 301, so you are able to outspeed Great Tusk. Talon is a decent enough defogger, and can check physical attackers throughout the game as made evident by the last replay.

Any thoughts on Talong or diff spreads? I've also seen some of them go faster to outspeed Garchomp or Pawmot, but I like the bulk on this one.
 
Last edited:

TheRealBigC

I COULD BE BANNED!
Except that's not entirely true. Gholdengo counters exactly one relevant Defogger. Corviknight. And even using that as a Defogger is mostly fine if it has U-Turn and teammates that can hit Gholdengo. It's true that the numbers of Defoggers are low. But Talonflame beats non-Tera Gholdengho. We also have more spinners than before, many of which can threaten Gholdengo on the switch. Gholdengo blocking Rapid Spin isn't different than any other Ghost type. Ghost types aren't new.

The meta would be hyper offensive regardless with Tera and all these Paradox mons and Ruin Legends running around. Shed Tail, too. Shed Tail really punishes slower or more passive sets. There is simply too much offensive pressure. And the hazard setters wouldn't stop setting hazards if Gholdengo is gone. The momentum it takes to clear hazards in this gen is much harder than in the prior one with all the offensive pressure in the Meta game.

Furthermore, Stall was nerfed with Toxic and Scald being taken away from many pokemon. And you don't need to run 4 Heavy Duty Boots to make a team less vulnerable to hazards. Ground, Steel, Poison, Flying, and Fighting types are all good against various hazards. Nearly every OU team will find a way to have a Ground and a Steel type on it already and it doesn't take much modification from there. You shouldn't need more than one or two Heavy Duty Boots on a team. It's funny that people might run 4+ boots, but hardly necessary.

I also suspect we need to go over the different hazard clearers somewhere because we have more options than a lot of people seem to think. Glimmora can be used as a Spinner. While Gholdengho still blocks Mortal Spin because Steel type, it's a better option against double Ghost cores. Glimmora also can run Earth Power to threaten Gholdengo for when it wants to switch in. Hatterene is a decent Magic Bounce pokemon for whatever that is worth.
Talonflame and Mold Breaker Hawlucha aren't exactly top meta picks. Corv has plenty of use outside of just Defogging and sometimes doesn't even run Defog at all, whereas Talonflame and Hawlucha are extremely niche outside of their Defogging, having nothing even close to the longevity of Corv. I do think Talonflame specifically is pretty underrated because it hard counters most variants of Great Tusk and Iron Treads (although it hates getting Knocked) and can spread fast burn around, and Hawlucha has a nice STAB combo. But to address your central point, these just aren't mons that want to switch into Gholdengo or most other offensive mons more than once, so their utility as dedicated Defoggers is very limited.

Glimmora has no business being your primary form of hazard removal, Mortal Spin is just too easy to block and it does not have the bulk or defensive typing of Great Tusk or Iron Treads. It also gets stuffed by Gholdengo anyway, so what's even the point? Overall, I think you're heavily exaggerating both how strong hazards are in this meta and how much Gholdengo enables that. I definitely think hazards would be far less centralising than they currently are if Gholdengo was gone, its high usage is testament as to how valuable it is on hazard stack teams
 
Talonflame and Mold Breaker Hawlucha aren't exactly top meta picks. Corv has plenty of use outside of just Defogging and sometimes doesn't even run Defog at all, whereas Talonflame and Hawlucha are extremely niche outside of their Defogging, having nothing even close to the longevity of Corv. I do think Talonflame specifically is pretty underrated because it hard counters most variants of Great Tusk and Iron Treads (although it hates getting Knocked) and can spread fast burn around, and Hawlucha has a nice STAB combo. But to address your central point, these just aren't mons that want to switch into Gholdengo or most other offensive mons more than once, so their utility as dedicated Defoggers is very limited.

Glimmora has no business being your primary form of hazard removal, Mortal Spin is just too easy to block and it does not have the bulk or defensive typing of Great Tusk or Iron Treads. It also gets stuffed by Gholdengo anyway, so what's even the point? Overall, I think you're heavily exaggerating both how strong hazards are in this meta and how much Gholdengo enables that. I definitely think hazards would be far less centralising than they currently are if Gholdengo was gone, its high usage is testament as to how valuable it is on hazard stack teams
Personally though, I would keep Gholdengo on the backburner and see what home brings us to deal with it, because it sounds like we are getting a lot of pokemon that can actually shut down Gholdengo.

Cinderace in particular, sounds like an incredible answer to Gholdengo.
 
Talonflame and Mold Breaker Hawlucha aren't exactly top meta picks. Corv has plenty of use outside of just Defogging and sometimes doesn't even run Defog at all, whereas Talonflame and Hawlucha are extremely niche outside of their Defogging, having nothing even close to the longevity of Corv. I do think Talonflame specifically is pretty underrated because it hard counters most variants of Great Tusk and Iron Treads (although it hates getting Knocked) and can spread fast burn around, and Hawlucha has a nice STAB combo. But to address your central point, these just aren't mons that want to switch into Gholdengo or most other offensive mons more than once, so their utility as dedicated Defoggers is very limited.

Glimmora has no business being your primary form of hazard removal, Mortal Spin is just too easy to block and it does not have the bulk or defensive typing of Great Tusk or Iron Treads. It also gets stuffed by Gholdengo anyway, so what's even the point? Overall, I think you're heavily exaggerating both how strong hazards are in this meta and how much Gholdengo enables that. I definitely think hazards would be far less centralising than they currently are if Gholdengo was gone, its high usage is testament as to how valuable it is on hazard stack teams
If Spikes is the problem, suspect Spikes, if it's not a problem, then neither is Gholdengo.
The low amount of defoggers relative to the high amount of Spike users is 100% the problem here, not Gholdengo.
Corviknight is literally the only thing that Gholdengo stops that other Ghosts don't.
Ban Gholdengo and hazard spam is still going to bully every team not running Corviknight.
What do we do after Gholdengo gets banned? Run Corviknight on every team?

Banning Gholdengo for hazard stacking is so backwards. Back in previous gens where DeoSharp was terrorizing OU we banned the Deo half, not the Sharp half.
 
Last edited:

Fusion Flare

i have hired this cat to stare at you
is a Community Contributoris a Tiering Contributor
mold breaker hawlucha is a meme and i will never know why people pretend it has any semblance of a niche. doesnt even beat gholdengo, mind you, unlike talonflame who can at least force it out. if i wanted to use a pokemon that guaranteed hazard removal and lost to gholdengo, i’d use the mouse. at least population bomb is a neat sweeping tool.

other thoughts:

-glimmora has been exploring its niche outside of a hazard lead lately. sometimes it likes to mix up its coverage moves. energy ball for tusk, ep for treads and gold man—i’ve even been seeing a lot of scarf sets, usually as leads designed to pick off faster dragon types with a tera fairy dazzling gleam.

-fire tauros is actually kinda good. being a chien pao answer that bones screens teams is really really good

-cyclizar enables the offensive threats in this tier to such a degree that its almost insulting how brainless it is. i hope a suspect in the near future takes it into account. not shed tail, mind you. at least orthworm is limited by bad speed and low spdef.

-ceruledge is bad. dont use it
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 2)

Top