Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Volcarona Banned]

[Heatranator]

Well, my point is actually that I think we should all stop playing moderator and trying to control what people say in the discussion.



Grassy Glide comes with Rillaboom for free, so it's a little bit unconventional to have it on something else unless you are going double Glide. The problem with double Glide being there are like 7 resistances to Grass. So you would want the team to cover for that somehow. Ice, Ground, Fire, and sometimes Rock are all types that can hit multiple Grass resists. Fairy attacks are also decent for hitting hard neutrally and stopping dragons that aren't Gouging Fire. Dragons in particular are a huge problem since they are very common in the meta. You would also need an obvious Zama answer because physical attackers.

I tried something somewhat similar with Rillaboom and Teal Mask Ogerpon for the speed boost awhile back. Before the DLCs. It was very mid because there were too many stacked resistances to Grass Spam. It's probably worse these days I don't think I would even try something like that now with all the Gouging Fires and things making it even harder these days. But Waterpon at least has handy Water STAB. So it's not all bad.

In the case of Waterpon specifically, there are a lot of mons that outspeed it and revenge kill it. Grassy Glide would give it the option to hit those mons and at a speed tier that is higher than most of the priority users. E-Speed and Comfey still ignore that, but it's still decent against a lot. Waterpon Tera is also nice to have against Weavile Ice Shard and Cinderace Fire moves. Probably not Roaring Moon, though.

For complimentary attackers, I'm just gonna state the best options with each STAB that I listed earlier. For Ice attackers, you want Weavile or Kyurem. You could also maybe get cute with triple Grass spam and Triple Axel from Protean Meowscarada. This stacks a ton of weaknesses, but you do have a couple ways sort of around that and it's a more offensive core anyways.

For Fire, you want Gouging Fire, Volcorona, Heatran, or Cinderace. You can potentially pick more than one if you have room and you want more firepower. Pun intended. This is because Waterpon forms 2/3rds of an offensive Fire/Water/Grass core. But again, beware of Dragons.

For Ground, the best offensive grounds are Tusk, Treads, and Lando-T. You might want Lando-T because it gives you a ground immunity and a special attacking option. Something cheeky you can do with Heatran on the team is stack fire weaknesses like Treads. But maybe it's a bit too telegraphed.

Rock type attackers are tricky. Iron Boulder really isn't very good in most cases. You don't want Cornerstone if you have Waterpon. Glimmora is decent hazard support mon, but it's generally not used as a primary attacker. You can still make the set more offensive, though. Generally, I would skip this type as a primary focus in OU.

You can't fit too many complementary attackers next to two grass mons since you still need room for whatever bulk and/or support you are running. So focus on one or two primary Ground, Fire, or Ice attackers (or Meow if you are feeling cheeky) depending on what you are going for and what you have room for. You should try to fit in glue mons that also have Fire, Ground, Ice, or Rock STAB and/or coverage on them where you can. I think this would be the best way to make grass spam work.

I did create a triple grass core, using sinistcha, rillaboom and hydrapple (which I made an RMT on, but someone responded to it with something irrelevant and thus nobody else responded and I absolutely was not annoyed by that), and I have to agree with you. I used personally great tusk, kingambit and kyurem in my other three slots. An ice resistance is key, but you most of the time have to find grasses neutral to it's normal weaknesses. So that's why I chose sinistcha and hydrapple, because they are neutral to poison and fire respectively. The rest of the core should resist or do well against steels, fires and poisons.
That's how you do triple grass cores, though mine was created when rain was dominant.

 

[DaRotomMachine]

Techinically the definition of Grass Spam is an offensive team that has two grass types used for offense while the rest of the team if built to cover the types.
Example is this team:
https://pokepast.es/7d52906dcd563138

 

[weirdo faye]

Okay, ignoring the rudeness of this post (bad takes, really? Is that what we really are resorting to? Seriously, have you heard the phrase "if you don't anything nice to say, don't say anything at all"), yes zama is amazing against physical sweepers, but my main point is that it is weaker to special hits. When did I say, "physical sweepers are good against it"? If your team doesn't have special threats, guess what? Of course you are going to get owned by zama, that is it's most defining trait. But most teams have special threats, if you don't then that's just bad teambuilding. The serperior example was to show how saying a mon is broken by taking out its checks is unreasonable, this is only ever a good statement if the checks to said mon are extremely easy to beat with other mons and after said checks are defeated, the opposing team is helpless. This is not the case with zama. Let's look at the list of offensive mons in OU that can beat zama, alright?
Dragapult
Gholdengo
Dragonite
Enamorus (why are you switching into heavy slam? Once it revenge kills something, that's when you switch in)
Hatterene (Tera steel heavy slam only has 50% chance to OHKO, so you can get a nuzzle off)
Iron Valiant
Landorus-T
Primarina
Raging bolt
Volcarona (if they don't use stone edge, so that one is a bit iffy)

I would say that is a fair list of offensive mons that can deal with zamazenta. And if it tera's into steel? Well that's a lot worse defensively on the physical side, which is what it should be good on. Tusk? Two hit kos. Weavile? If you have low kick, it has a 2hit ko. Cinderace? Can live a cc and fire back with pyro ball to do big damage.
I win arguements because I don't resort to mocking people as you just did to me, I do play a lot of ladder. Am I the best player? No, I am a perennial 1400s player. Does that make my opinion less relevant? Also no. If I can back it up with facts and logic, people will listen.

Good morning let me reply to this if u think me just saying ur take is bad i disagree, u have not seen how unpleasant people can rly be, this is nothing I have made bad takes too & I got flamed for it too??? This doesn't count as rude, u are too soft.
So what exactly is ur point? My point was they should suspect zamazenta cos I think its a bit too good, If u just wanted to say zamazenta spdef is weaker I agree ya obv since it can't boost it, doesn't change fact its extremely fat tho, then what's the point of typing of that irrelevant things to reply me?
I never said anything about caring whether ur perennial whatever that means 1400s player or whatever ur mmr is idc, I have no problems befriending newer players. U said u win arguments by logic, yes I go by logic as well and I hard disagree with whatever ur on about, who's mocking u lol if u want to "discuss" here then be open to this sort of thing. But anyway I hard disagree, any1 that's played this game even remotely long enough can tell u lack actual game experience and r just talking cap. The easiest way I can alr see this when u said just cos zama tera steel it lose to tusk cinderace bla bla, it outspeeds all of them and can Iron def 1st before taking a hit...? It beats them still...? Lolxdd then also u r giving me a whole list of sposed counters and I can also tell u lack exp from that besides dragapult that will outspeed wisp u and physdef goldengo all these r mostly counters that can be worn down over time n it's not that hard, and yea dnite is a zama counter, totally krappa
Like I said u don't win arguments just cos u act like u have a PhD in English and my English is worse than urs wdym u win by logic ur logic is flawed lol, sometimes it's so hard to understand some of these posts on here too

 

[DaRotomMachine]

Well its late at night for me

"Survey results indicate that a tera vote would be pointless"

I think I get your point, but it hasn't just been one survey that has turned out to have that result. Tera's been here for the whole generation and the survey results have shown little difference in how people in the community think about Tera. And literally almost everybody who plays Pokemon rn is actively thinking about Tera, cause it could either win you a game or lose you one. In every single game.
This was not meant to reawaken the "brief tera derailment."

 

[Heatranator]

Good morning let me reply to this if u think me just saying ur take is bad i disagree, u have not seen how unpleasant people can rly be, this is nothing I have made bad takes too & I got flamed for it too??? This doesn't count as rude, u are too soft.
So what exactly is ur point? My point was they should suspect zamazenta cos I think its a bit too good, If u just wanted to say zamazenta spdef is weaker I agree ya obv since it can't boost it, doesn't change fact its extremely fat tho, then what's the point of typing of that irrelevant things to reply me?
I never said anything about caring whether ur perennial whatever that means 1400s player or whatever ur mmr is idc, I have no problems befriending newer players. U said u win arguments by logic, yes I go by logic as well and I hard disagree with whatever ur on about, who's mocking u lol if u want to "discuss" here then be open to this sort of thing. But anyway I hard disagree, any1 that's played this game even remotely long enough can tell u lack actual game experience and r just talking cap. The easiest way I can alr see this when u said just cos zama tera steel it lose to tusk cinderace bla bla, it outspeeds all of them and can Iron def 1st before taking a hit...? It beats them still...? Lolxdd then also u r giving me a whole list of sposed counters and I can also tell u lack exp from that besides dragapult that will outspeed wisp u and physdef goldengo all these r mostly counters that can be worn down over time n it's not that hard, and yea dnite is a zama counter, totally krappa
Like I said u don't win arguments just cos u act like u have a PhD in English and my English is worse than urs wdym u win by logic ur logic is flawed lol, sometimes it's so hard to understand some of these posts on here too

Trust me, I know how unpleasant people can be on this forum, I have seen that first hand. I'm sorry for the flaming, looking back over your post and from this information, it seems like you were not trying to mock me, it's just how it came across to me, so I apologise for that.
Okay, so let's go through the checks I listed. I will not talk about dragapult and ghold, since you agreed they were good against zama.
Dragonite: Is able to take any hit besides ice fang, which in that case it doesn't beat volc. As such, you can encore it and switch in something else that resists the move. At minimum, you do 25%, if you don't have encore and they have id' once. Not the best, but with encore it's a mostly free win.
Enamorus: Again, moonblast absolutely chunks it, and if it tera's? Well, there is this thing called scouting. You switch enam in, they tera steel, and then you can get enam in safely on a bp, and do 65% to it with earth power, which is most of the time enough chip for it.
Hatterene: Nuzzle, that is just the answer. Nuzzle destroys zama as it now isn't fast, and once again, tera steel heavy slam only has a 50% chance to OHKO. 252 Atk Tera Steel Zamazenta Heavy Slam (120 BP) vs. 252 HP / 204+ Def Hatterene: 288-342 (90.5 - 107.5%) -- 50% chance to OHKO
Iron Valiant: Outspeeds and destroys it with both stabs, so whether or not it tera's before valiant comes in, it will destroy it.
Landorus-T: Ice fang does max 88%, which is not ko'ing. Even at +6, bp ain't koing. In return, earth power is doing 27% max. Not the best thing in the world, but in return it is making the rest of the team better against zama, as even if it doesn't get an attack off, it can still do something.
Primarina: Again, +6 bp doesn't even ohko. And in return, moonblast does 90% max to zama. And if it tera's? Surf is still doing 43% max so you aren't helpless against it.
Raging bolt: +6 bp does ko you, but if zama is getting to that high for free, idk, that sounds like your team is letting in zama too easily. It 2hit ko's zama with t-bolt and it even has thunderclap to deal great damage to it even if it is chipped, which is around 46%.
Volcarona: If the zama has stone edge, gg's, if not, one of the most free setup opportunities. Zama can't even reliably chip it down due to flame body procs, which makes it basically dead weight. +6 bp does destroy volc, but it at minimum does 36% damage, and if we are being realistic here, at +1 it 2hit ko's.
I've explained my reasoning for why these mons beat it, and yes, tera'ing steel does open it up more to physical hits. You can easily include one or two of these on your team, and that will help a lot in the matchup. Like, Enamorus + Volc does great against this core. You switch in enam, then switch to volc to bait out the tera steel. If they have stone edge, volc might get killed, but then you can switch into enam to get off chip and revenge kill with a fighting resist. If they don't, free qd boost for volc. Idk why your saying my logic is flawed, I have explained my reasonings why zama isn't broken.

 

[weirdo faye]

I told u earlier already most of these checks can be worn down or koed or trade 1for1 overtime with the right teammates, I've rarely seen a dd dnite with encore, volc is encore bait w the speed tier, encore is coming if the answer to zamazenta is valiant I cba typing another essay

 

[TurquoiseLink]

252 Atk Iron Valiant Close Combat vs. +3 252 HP / 88 Def Tera Steel Zamazenta: 132-156 (34 - 40.2%) -- 25.5% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

You've got to be careful talking about weaknesses and resists when it comes to Zamazenta. Your physical attack can double it's damage and Zam absolutely does not care. Mixed Valiant does even less.

I've pp stalled +6 dragonites before through encore and then swept.

I think it's a common trap you fall into Heatranator. Not a criticism, but you focus a little too much on typing and not enough on role and game flow.

 

[Conflux123]

Excuse me. Who made you arbitrator? Anything included on surveys is more than fair game to complain about. If you actually think the metagame is all good in the hood, good for you. I disagree; there is substantial room for improvement!

I agree with you about the survey and think that the metagame needs to be improved like you say you do. I meant arbitrary complaining about stuff that no one else complains about.

 

[Heatranator]

252 Atk Iron Valiant Close Combat vs. +3 252 HP / 88 Def Tera Steel Zamazenta: 132-156 (34 - 40.2%) -- 25.5% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

You've got to be careful talking about weaknesses and resists when it comes to Zamazenta. Your physical attack can double it's damage and Zam absolutely does not care. Mixed Valiant does even less.

I've pp stalled +6 dragonites before through encore and then swept.

I think it's a common trap you fall into Heatranator. Not a criticism, but you focus a little too much on typing and not enough on role and game flow.

I mean, sure, but zama is forced to tera on it, which while great against offense teams, does leave it a lot more vulnerable to many more attacks. And as you can see, zama still takes big damage from cc, which does min 35%. And valiant can also tera, meaning it can encore the zama afterwards because at -1 defenses, heavy slam only has a 12.5% chance to ohko.
I see what your trying to say, but it is still about how zama does against offense, and as such chip on a mon whose best matchup is offense is great, and being able to force damage is a great trait for valiant. Plus, one of the things they said was to pack an encore mon, which valiant is one of the best of. All of the sets on smogon dex have it for a reason, and that can help immensly in the zama matchup. It not being able to switch moves means something that might ordinarilly get destroyed by heavy slam or bp, will be able to get in for free and deal amazing damage. Like gambit could come in to sd up and deal 60% damage with the combo of kowtow and sucker, which I think would be enough most of the time if valiant has gotten chip.

But stepping away from zamazenta, has anyone tried sets other than booster energy on valiant lately? I've tried HDB with vacuum wave to help check faster mons, while still having the amazing power it normally has.

 

[BolTingBlazie]

Glad we agree on something, let's blacklist Tera and Ubers drops discussions from here and we are both happy.

I think both should have dedicated threads honestly to keep those from derailing discussion about the current meta in this thread, as it does sound reasonable

 

[RainWaiv]

A lot of tera derailment comes from when someone brings up tera as a "this isn't a 100% foolproof counter" argument then dipshit mcgee goes "haha bad mechanic amirite? anyways here's 5 paragraphs that have nothing to do with the previous conversation and a few slurs"

 

[BolTingBlazie]

A lot of tera derailment comes from when someone brings up tera as a "this isn't a 100% foolproof counter" argument then dipshit mcgee goes "haha bad mechanic amirite? anyways here's 5 paragraphs that have nothing to do with the previous conversation and a few slurs"

As someone who has derailed threads without any ill intent but rather frustration and trying to start conversations, I apologize on my behalf. Talks about dropping a certain great wall and tera maybe should have their own discussion threads so they can stay separate and not derail things over here.

 

[RainWaiv]

I told u earlier already most of these checks can be worn down or koed or trade 1for1 overtime with the right teammates

If you're letting yourself trade the one thing stopping one mon from steamrolling the rest of your team, that says more about your teambuilding and gamesense than it does about the mon in question.

 

[weirdo faye]

Wat r u yapping about he told me stuff like primarina landot counters zamazenta so it's is balanced but it's so easily fixed by having something like roaring moon with taunt to wear down or eliminate landot it owns corv and skarm too for zamazenta. There's other ways to get rid of gholdengo and primarina too,might as well be giving out what i like to run if i say anymore which im not going to. What's this got anything to do with me sacking something that's stopping my entire team from being swept? L2 read the entire thing if u want to make urself a part of this

 

[Heatranator]

Wat r u yapping about he told me stuff like primarina landot counters zamazenta so it's is balanced but it's so easily fixed by having something like roaring moon with taunt to wear down or eliminate landot it owns corv and skarm too for zamazenta. There's other ways to get rid of gholdengo and primarina too,might as well be giving out what i like to run if i say anymore which im not going to. What's this got anything to do with me sacking something that's stopping my entire team from being swept? L2 read the entire thing if u want to make urself a part of this

Or maybe this is not an issue that is exclusive to zamazenta and in fact every mon can be deadly if it is supported by teamates. But guess what? You also have teamates. If moon is able to wear down your checks so easily, then that means your team actually has problems with moon. Zama doesn't force you to go too out of your way to counter it, so I don't think it is broken. Also, how in the hell is moon going to reliably counter skarm/corv? If it teras to beat corv/skarm, then now zama can't tera and thus enam is great against it. I do believe that moon is broken, but by combining it with something like gambit will fix that issue. If your team really crumbles so hard to these two mons, I've got to say that's something wrong in the teambuilder and not with the mons.

 

[Alternator]

This is my exact frustration with the meta right now, no one seems to be able to agree on what is busted and what isn't at times, along with all the uncertainty.

Also yeah no need to derail this meta discussion with more tera discussion when we have broken mons to deal with

To misquote Syndrome, "When everyone is broken...nobody is."

Everything currently in the tier, even the most powerful mons, have counterplay. Everything from stall to HO is viable at all points on the ladder, the closest thing we have to a single centralizing mon - Kingambit - has exploitable flaws and also provides defensive utility (good resistance profile, strong priority) so while it's prominent it's not committing crimes against OU, and hazard removal remains a problem because when GameFreak axed Defog distribution, they didn't compensate by jacking up Rapid Spin.

At this point, nothing stands out as being uniquely problematic. As frustrating as it can be, we're just going to have to wait and see how it all shakes out after several rounds of metagame adaptations.

 

[Heatranator]

To misquote Syndrome, "When everyone is broken...nobody is."

Everything currently in the tier, even the most powerful mons, have counterplay. Everything from stall to HO is viable at all points on the ladder, the closest thing we have to a single centralizing mon - Kingambit - has exploitable flaws and also provides defensive utility (good resistance profile, strong priority) so while it's prominent it's not committing crimes against OU, and hazard removal remains a problem because when GameFreak axed Defog distribution, they didn't compensate by jacking up Rapid Spin.

At this point, nothing stands out as being uniquely problematic. As frustrating as it can be, we're just going to have to wait and see how it all shakes out after several rounds of metagame adaptations.

And then it just comes down to "How viable is the counterplay to include while also accounting for everything else in the meta?" and to that, not really. Like, I could name counterplay for every mon that people think is broken, including for ones that I think are broken, but it's how feasable it is to include that counterplay.
It's probably is what's is the worst about this metagame (though the meta isn't too horrible mind you) is that nothing is so stand out in isolation, but that together it makes everything worse.

 

[Gryphonkill]

Hey all! First time posting on here but I wanted to ask for some help.
I'm writing an argumentative essay about kingambit for a school paper. The goal is to answer the question: is kingambit unfair/uncompetitive within its place in OU? The idea behind this is to look at its stats, movesets, and matchups and compare them to its overloaded kit (ie: sucker punch, supreme overlord, swords dance, abuse of tera). I'm not really on OU much but I have a strong dislike for kingambits sucker punch mind games and I wanted to see if anyone else had anything to say about it.

Thank you!

 

[RainWaiv]

Wat r u yapping about he told me stuff like primarina landot counters zamazenta so it's is balanced but it's so easily fixed by having something like roaring moon with taunt to wear down or eliminate landot it owns corv and skarm too for zamazenta. There's other ways to get rid of gholdengo and primarina too,might as well be giving out what i like to run if i say anymore which im not going to. What's this got anything to do with me sacking something that's stopping my entire team from being swept? L2 read the entire thing if u want to make urself a part of this

What he listed was multiple reliable checks that are reasonably common on teams anyways. Things get worn down by all sorts of things: hazards, resisted switch-ins, burn/toxic. And pokemon tend to be better when they're supported by their teammates. That's literally the most basic teambuilding measure imaginable. That's what a core is. If you have a set of 2 mons (say gambit and moon) they do get chunked hard by zam, but they also struggle with valiant and tusk. So what do you do? If you guessed put something in your team that can soft check all 3, you'd be correct! I'm going to say this again. This is the most basic teambuilding advice in history.

 

[FayaWizard]

Hey all! First time posting on here but I wanted to ask for some help.
I'm writing an argumentative essay about kingambit for a school paper. The goal is to answer the question: is kingambit unfair/uncompetitive within its place in OU? The idea behind this is to look at its stats, movesets, and matchups and compare them to its overloaded kit (ie: sucker punch, supreme overlord, swords dance, abuse of tera). I'm not really on OU much but I have a strong dislike for kingambits sucker punch mind games and I wanted to see if anyone else had anything to say about it.

Thank you!

I think Kingambit can be annoying but not uncompetitive nor unfair. Sucker Punch, while strong and threatening, has its fair share of counterplay, and so does Kingambit. Notably, mons like Iron Valiant and Ogerpon-Wellspring completely shut it down after it clicks Sucker Punch once with Encore, and mons like Iron Defense Zamazenta, Bulk Up Great Tusk, or Dondozo are excellent checks, while the rise in Status Dragapult also poses another threat to non-Lum Berry Kingambit.

 

[weirdo faye]

What he listed was multiple reliable checks that are reasonably common on teams anyways. Things get worn down by all sorts of things: hazards, resisted switch-ins, burn/toxic. And pokemon tend to be better when they're supported by their teammates. That's literally the most basic teambuilding measure imaginable. That's what a core is. If you have a set of 2 mons (say gambit and moon) they do get chunked hard by zam, but they also struggle with valiant and tusk. So what do you do? If you guessed put something in your team that can soft check all 3, you'd be correct! I'm going to say this again. This is the most basic teambuilding advice in history.

OK and what does this have to do with you telling me I sacked the Mon that's stopping a particular sweeper on the enemy team from sweeping me? Sure I've done that before from displays but this wasn't even the point of argument till u brought that up of nowhere. In case u didn't realise, tldr this all started from me saying zama is broken and should be banned and that heatranator decides to type a million words and that from his own text say "my point is that zama is weaker on spdef" so what is he even arguing about???

Or maybe this is not an issue that is exclusive to zamazenta and in fact every mon can be deadly if it is supported by teamates. But guess what? You also have teamates. If moon is able to wear down your checks so easily, then that means your team actually has problems with moon. Zama doesn't force you to go too out of your way to counter it, so I don't think it is broken. Also, how in the hell is moon going to reliably counter skarm/corv? If it teras to beat corv/skarm, then now zama can't tera and thus enam is great against it. I do believe that moon is broken, but by combining it with something like gambit will fix that issue. If your team really crumbles so hard to these two mons, I've got to say that's something wrong in the teambuilder and not with the mons.

Yes I know every mon with support is deadly, but I think u also conveniently left out the part where I told u zama is so fat and unkillable when just 1-2mons on the enemy side is weakened, that doesn't apply to other mons like the example u said serp. This is called selective reading BTW. U guys are just yapping too much at this point typing walls of text that's irrelevant to the original point of discussion, hoping I will forget what that original point and u will "win" this argument...? Like I said just cos ur English is better doesn't mean u win arguments ur literally yapping for the sake of yapping now. Lastly, yes roaring moon is s tier on ho teams u didn't know??? Knock is strong stab removes boots and helmet from stall and then u taunt them and they're stuck with 40%hp next time they switch in they're so easy to ko. It's also strong vs other offense... it doesn't need the tera??? I'm not having another discussion with u abt roaring moon , this gna be my last reply regarding this getting too cringe for me. Keep yapping

 

[Heatranator]

Hey all! First time posting on here but I wanted to ask for some help.
I'm writing an argumentative essay about kingambit for a school paper. The goal is to answer the question: is kingambit unfair/uncompetitive within its place in OU? The idea behind this is to look at its stats, movesets, and matchups and compare them to its overloaded kit (ie: sucker punch, supreme overlord, swords dance, abuse of tera). I'm not really on OU much but I have a strong dislike for kingambits sucker punch mind games and I wanted to see if anyone else had anything to say about it.

Thank you!

Uhh, I probably wouldn't write that for school, you might get laughed at a bit.
But I'll still help you. Kingambit is a difficult mon to assess as it's traits while so overwhelming powerful, are also a vital component of OU. The best mon in the tier, Great Tusk, heavily counters it, and various other strong mons, such as iron valiant and zamazenta. For a team to succeed in OU, you have to have one dark resists, though two is usually the correct option. Get ready, for the people who say I write essays, THIS is an essay.

Sucker punch as a move on gambit is highly uncompetitive, as creating 50/50's constantly does not bode well for a competitive game. This is because it is so much in the gambit's users favour. The opposing player either has to 1. Have a will-o-wisp user which they preserve to the end or 2. Have an encore user which both are kinda hard to keep to late game. That's the main issue with gambit, it comes out late game at which point options for it are exhausted most of the time.
Supreme overlord is bs, I will say this outright, however it does not break it. Without supreme overlord, gambit would most likely still be 'broken' if you believe it is. It just adds another layer onto the cake that is "Kingambit's ability to win games it shouldn't". Overall, supreme overlod is focused on too much when talking about what breaks gambit, and while it does help break it, it is not the key component.
Swords dance is definetely a powerful component on gambit, but it is not what breaks gambit specifically. If you want to write part of your essay on sd, I would say just include it as a sidenote with "but its power is excarebated by swords dance which dramatically increases its power." I would say mention it, but don't stick on sd.
Finally, we have tera abuse, this is what arguably pushes gambit over the edge. I would focus on sucker punch mindgames and this in talking about gambit's uncompetitivness. Gambit's main weakness is it's 4x fighting weakness, and tusk is one of the most splashable mons in the tier. However, by using tera, it can either get out of its weaknesses or boost its power even further. It commonly runs tera fairy or flying because they resist fighting, and thus it can either get another sd off, or land a powerful hit. This is really constrictive as the one mon which is meant to counter it is no longer able to hit it effectively. Sure, tusk has ice spinner, but that is not stab and gambit has high defenses so it can take it. The other option is tera dark, which boosts the power of sucker punch even further. This means that gambit can chunk through bulky resists easily, as even the 4x resist valiant can die if it is chipped to 50% or below, which is not really healthy.

However, gambit does have notable weaknesses. While it does have sucker punch to alleviate its speed issue, any mon that can resist sucker punch is going to do well against gambit. This is your dark types, fairy types and fighting types. Due to the prevelance and ubiquity of these types (fairies are rarer though), gambit naturally struggles into one mon on every team. It's reliance on tera can also be an issue, because that means teamates cannot use it, thus restricting the ability to use other teammates effectively. Finally, it has lots of defensive utility in the tier. Many, many mons are countered by gambit and while it wants to stay at relatively high hp to sweep, the proliferation of dark types naturally means a bulky dark type that can hit back hard is going to be amazing. It also resists grass, ice, ghost and dragon, which all are important types to cover.

Overall, kingambit is a difficult issue, and while I did yap on about its negatives a lot more, it is a difficult issue to adress. I could easily see it going both ways, as it provides valuable defensive utility to the tier, it also has crippling weaknesses. I would say that you should make your own decision about whether gambit is broken, as if you believe it is, then this is some of the points you need.

Hope this helped.

 

[Magcargo]

Hey all! First time posting on here but I wanted to ask for some help.
I'm writing an argumentative essay about kingambit for a school paper. The goal is to answer the question: is kingambit unfair/uncompetitive within its place in OU? The idea behind this is to look at its stats, movesets, and matchups and compare them to its overloaded kit (ie: sucker punch, supreme overlord, swords dance, abuse of tera). I'm not really on OU much but I have a strong dislike for kingambits sucker punch mind games and I wanted to see if anyone else had anything to say about it.

Thank you!

In a metagame where everything feels a bit inconsistent and fishy, there is only one constant. One Solution. One King. The one and true ruler of the OU Monarchy: Mr. Gambit.

Kingambit is the true 50/50. For every reverse sweep I get with the King that feels...wrong (i.e. sack 5 shitmons vs stall -> Tera Dark Gambit GG), there are just as many times that dispatching it feels just as easy by exploiting common lines (switch into GKing / Ghold-> get Focus Blasted, Encoring the King with weird mons like Primarina, etc, random Trick from GKing, Ghold, random Low Kick from Meow, Fast TTar etc.). There are days I rue its presence (my ID Corv being unable to touch SD Tera Ghost Gambit as it sets up SD while I can't do anything) and days where I can't leave the builder without our friend (Tera Fire Balloon Gambit to emergency check the evil Kyurem and Volcarona). There are moments where Tera on this mon feels unfair (Tera Dark vs Stall, Tera Flying vs Tusk) and other times it feels like a waste (Tera Flying -> getting destroyed by Raging Bolt Thunderclap).

Ctann mentioned that Gambit was the potential solution for every borderline problematic Pokemon (including itself) and I am fully inclined to agree with that take. The issue then becomes whether its centralizing presence is itself a problem, which I am not fully sure of. There are things I see Gambit do that don't feel right, espicially as of late. However, it also reigns in a lot of evil cheese that I hate fighting even more, whether it be Volcarona, Specs Dragapult, GKing Future Sight, Sun, etc.). Currently, I feel other Pokemon are even more unfair to fight than Gambit, namely Volcarona and Ogerpon-W, so whatever negative feeling I have towards our friend are somewhat sidelined.

 

[East Coast Elite]

To misquote Syndrome, "When everyone is broken...nobody is."

Everything currently in the tier, even the most powerful mons, have counterplay. Everything from stall to HO is viable at all points on the ladder, the closest thing we have to a single centralizing mon - Kingambit - has exploitable flaws and also provides defensive utility (good resistance profile, strong priority) so while it's prominent it's not committing crimes against OU, and hazard removal remains a problem because when GameFreak axed Defog distribution, they didn't compensate by jacking up Rapid Spin.

At this point, nothing stands out as being uniquely problematic. As frustrating as it can be, we're just going to have to wait and see how it all shakes out after several rounds of metagame adaptations.

problem is it’s extremely difficult to fit all of that counter play on one team which makes the meta very rock-paper-scissors. I would also argue HO has been slightly more viable than other styles for most of the meta.

 

[cromatkastar]

To misquote Syndrome, "When everyone is broken...nobody is."

Everything currently in the tier, even the most powerful mons, have counterplay. Everything from stall to HO is viable at all points on the ladder, the closest thing we have to a single centralizing mon - Kingambit - has exploitable flaws and also provides defensive utility (good resistance profile, strong priority) so while it's prominent it's not committing crimes against OU, and hazard removal remains a problem because when GameFreak axed Defog distribution, they didn't compensate by jacking up Rapid Spin.

At this point, nothing stands out as being uniquely problematic. As frustrating as it can be, we're just going to have to wait and see how it all shakes out after several rounds of metagame adaptations.

everyone loves that syndrome quote but its actually pretty wrong because even when syndrome says it, he doesn't mean everyone.

he means the ones who can afford his technology. those who have the connections and power and wealth to buy it and do whatever they want. he's not gonna be giving that tech to everyone for free because then he'll no longer be special. the gap widens between those who have and those who have not.

so that quote doesn't even make any sense except "sound“ profound. because turns out when only a small subset of people have the means to become supers, it doesn't suddenly mean no one will be.

applied to pokemon showdown, its very clear that not everyone is broken in OU. there are like few pokemon that are clearly above all others and while they might be "no body is broken" with respect each other, unfortunately OU is a tier that has more than those pokemon.