Gonna drop my thoughts as someone who learned the meta while laddering for lt since it's survey season
This guy is really good, shocker. The generational shift lost us the tapus, kiss, aroma, ferro, cele, and aggron in exchange for val, crown, and enam, which has made building feel a little more restricting. Lando-t, ursaluna, and other non-fairy/steel checks are usually serviceable but drago has ways to get around them and I've found them really hard to rely on. A bunch of new targets on top of the limited counterplay make sets like specs and scarf feel really good in a way that they don't in ss, though personally my favorite set is super bulky haban dd. Drago is probably my top pick for a potential suspect, and like murm said we were promised one.
Meh. Very versatile obviously but from anecdotal experience it felt like its usage in lt dropped off a cliff after the first cycle. It's unpredictability is easily its most valuable trait but in a ladder environment it doesn't really get to shine as much. I feel like the matchup variation between sets is very large and caused me to lose a lot of matches I felt like I shouldn't have, but I'll wait until playoffs to give a more developed opinion because I'm sure it'll be better there. Additionally, I think
should be in the same tier as it. It trades metagross and goodra-h for reliable prim and lando matchups, and is much better into gouging without having to run rock tomb. Encore lets it keep winning mus into fatter steel types because of ivy cudgel's crit rate too. It doesn't seem so much worse than hearthflame that it deserves to be a tier lower, but I'd really be more in favor of dropping hearth to A+ over raising wellspring to S.
Don't agree with S tier gouging, I was surprised it was even on the survey. It has good stats and typing but nothing overwhelming, it can be surprisingly bulky but there's an obvious cost in power, and it doesn't have any really ridiculous tools. It feels like it lacks the ability to tech that made previous top mons like kiss and zardx earn their spot. It's a very honest mon and I don't see anything pushing it to be problematic.
Super cracked, insanely strong and insanely bulky. One of the more consistent non-fairy/steel drago answers but can still get owned. Surprising set versatility on top of sheer stats lets it cover huge swathes of the meta which makes it very nice to build with. It's really the strong, bulky mon holding the tier together that gouging fire wishes it was.
Current 1v1 discourse mon, genuinely do not see the problem with this guy. I think pecharunt is a very good mon but it's held back from being broken by its movepool of 4. It's really one of the most straightforward mons in the tier, and to echo rtm, it only feels bad to play against when you don't bring good counters, and pecharunt's extreme linearity makes it very easy to find good counters. Most things with taunt, most steels, poisons, psychics, grounds, ghosts, and darks, anything with rest and most things with encore or trick will pretty easily beat pecha. I don't see the issue with malignant chain either, in an overwhelming majority of cases it will only speed up a winning mu with a poison or at best allow pecha to skip having to win a 50/50. There is only a 16% chance pecharunt will steal your turn from you by clicking malignant chain, which is about a quarter as effective as togekiss, a mon with less consistent counterplay than pecha due to it actually having a movepool. I think the argument of "run better counters" is fine here, because they are both abundant and very good, it's not like we're digging into zu-level mons because soundproof bastiodon is the only thing that wins.
Finally, just wanna drop a list of mons that I had a lot of success with laddering that aren't reflected well (imo) on the vr.
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Should all go up a half tier or more
I think sv is in a really fun spot post-arch, and I'm genuinely enjoying it more than I thought I would. I think drago is annoying yeah, but I've never liked having to play a game where it's present so it's nothing new. I'm excited to try new stuff in lt playoffs. -Blanched out