Metagame 1v1 Metagame Discussion

[STABLE]

After the Chi-Yu ban and the subsequent Greninja drop 1v1 has seen a bit of a drop in activity and not a lot of players really care for the state of this metagame, due to the fact that Home is supposedly dropping semi-soon and PL signups are in imminent reach, so most people are waiting for either of the two before diving into the tier once more, which brings to the metagame being in somewhat of a dire state and people generally not caring to change it. I'm gonna be brief and to the point: you should. The Home release date has not been announced yet, and PL manager signups are less than two weeks from now, so every supposition that Home will be released before the actual PL start is based merely on speculation, and most likely false. With VGC series 2 being confirmed February 1st to March 31st, we've predicted that its likely for Home to be dropped somewhere between March 1st and April 1st, which brings to the 1v1 Premier Leaguer regular season having to go through various weeks of Pre Home metagame before effectively switching to Post Home, and potentially, if the drop is later than we anticipated (right now the only confirmation we have is that it'll be in spring, which is really broad), the entire tournament being pre home locked. I won't go into details about the specifics of each scenario but either way the chances that at least some of PL will have to be played in the current metagame is quite high.

With this preamble out of the way, discussion has pointed out that there are basically 3 Pokemon that should be outright banned in rapid succession, however the Council decides to go about whether to quickban either of them or to suspect is no matter of mine, but the order of criminality is as follows:

1. Gholdengo Quite the demoniac presence in every tier from day 1 due to its crazy ability, amazing typing, vast movepool and acceptable stats, now finds itself as the most problematic part of our metagame. While initially Choice sets were the most prevalent with the occasional Nasty Plot strats, fraun's famous Max Defense Reflect Weakness Policy Set has surprised everyone with how much this thing was actually capable of; with the appropriate stat spreads and movesets this mon seems to be able to beat anything, from reflect metal sound to thunder wave hex to light screen to nasty plot i swear ive seen everything on this guy, and with its biggest nemesis Chi-Yu now gone, beating this guy both in the builder and in game is a massive headache. I could keep going for even longer but I think it's clear to mostly anyone that has touched SV recently that this Pokemon does not belong with how lackluster its checks and counters are. My stance on Gholdengo is to outright quickban it but I understand that a certain process has to be followed so I don't think suspecting it is that bad of an idea.

2. Iron Valiant already borderline even before the chi yu ban, if gholdengo, its biggest counter, were to get removed, iron valiant would absolutely need to get booted right after. Encore Disable Booster Energy already pushed Scream Tail over the edge, and one thing valiant has that demon puff didnt is really high offensive stats with a good offensive typing and moveset to boot. While I admit the former is much more relevant than the latter, its enough to make this mon banworthy. QB or Suspect, it matters little, just make it quick.

3. Greninja dropped very recently but from what I've heard its cancer up the wazoo. Trillion different items and moves and sets its pretty much a build-a-threat of a mon; I've seen some random ass petaya counter shit just snag a win for no reason, so weird. I've heard that its not as banworthy as the rest but maybe if valiant's gone its worth suspecting it, after all it feels awfully similar to a specific scorching bunny we've had our fair share of.

if all 3 of these guys get booted, or even just a couple, I can easily see Annihilape or Flutter Mane needing a ban, but I doubt we'll even have the time to get that far.

The main point is that these things take time, between the On The Radar thread, people posting, Council deciding, suspects lasting weeks, etc. we cannot afford to show up to PL's doorstep with so many issues all piled up and no time to address them, we risk ruining the biggest tour of the year just due to lack of action.

I'm also gonna use this post to say that, looking at the mons Home is bringing us, while some hope that it will be a saving grace and bring us to a whole different tier (wishful thinking), to me it doesn't seem like it'll be that much different. We'll get a good addition of mons thats for certain and the tier will be less stale, but from my expectations we're seeing <10 mons between the S-B tiers, so nothing that will turn the tier upside down. Which means all the action we're taking on the current metagame is sure to be relevant on post Home as well. As an example, sure we can free Chi Yu once Home drops, but looking at the new mons, I don't see it getting much weaker. Yeah Landorus Therian seems like a good counter but it being outsped means that wisp wp will still likely beat it and scarf chi yu will beat scarf landot, making it a bit of a cat and mouse situation. urshifu rapid strike may be a similar deal, with Specs Psychic completely mauling it unless AV, which will also be losing to wisp, av chi yu beating volcanion and so on and so forth.

 

[frogfacts]

Hello, I saw this thread alive, so I thought I might as well give my thoughts. I agree with the above post that gholdengo is broken. I believe that action should be taken as soon as possible with pl in 3 weeks the tier is kinda dead rn I have not seen anything new built-in GC especially since gren is banned there for this round which is stupid, but it is unfortunate timing sadly. Because I don't know if gren is stupidly broken or just mid, for example when I ladder it just randomly loses shit it should not, but then I see it beating stuff like why does it beat that, so I don't have thoughts on it I would like for it to see team tour representation. Also about valiant, that thing might be more broken than gholdengo like that thing is insane I would like to see a valiant qb and a gholdengo suspect. which realistically is not happening and the tier stays dead until pl when people complain about the tier and blame the council even tho the thread is dead and nobody gave their thoughts on the tier when they know the council does not play mons.

 

[zioziotrip]

Yo.

As someone who is interested in the state of SV for the quickly approaching PL I wanted to make a post. It's clear that action needs to be taken to balance this tier as it is an incredibly top-heavy mess. I'm not gonna talk out my ass about specifics for the tier about what needs to be banned simply because I have not played a ton of this tier, but this is a better time than ever to share thoughts about how 1v1 operates.

The way 1v1 currently handles tiering is slow and misguided.

This is not meant to be an attack on the council or anyone else who participates in tiering. Please do not make your issues with the pokemon simulator personal, I myself have been guilty of this and it just makes everyone's lives harder for no reason. This post is meant to address systematic issues that can be addressed so everything runs smoother. The main things to go over are how our current policy (or lack thereof) clouds decisions and that council inactivity is not properly handled.

Policy

It is no secret that I think policy fails 1v1. It's an arbitrary article to hinge decisions off especially when it's not built for our tier. The lack of specifics leads to many people deriving many different meanings from the same text (insert the 1000th argument about the distinction between unhealthy and uncompetitive) which leads to endless discussion about how a decision is in line with policy when we should be primarily focused on the impact to the balance of the tier. The caveat is that people naturally have different views on what a balanced metagame is, however, there are almost certainly quantifiable metrics (ie. excessive set variance, overwhelming stat difference, etc.) for what it is unbalanced. Frankly, I believe that the current policy is almost entirely inadequate for our purposes and it needs to either be abandoned or overhauled. I will spoiler my rant on things in the current policy that fails us before moving on to improvements that can be made. I will be going over this and not the old framework for a reason I will soon elaborate on in the spoiler.

Issues with Tiering Policy Framework for 1v1

- First off, I have seen past versions of the policy used for justification on bans which should never be the case. The outdated policy is exactly that, outdated, and there should be a central framework so you don't have the issue of bans disagreeing with each other because you used a different framework (alternatively, abandon caring about satisfying the framework but I digress)

- The definitions outlined for uncompetitive and unhealthy have a fair amount of overlap when it comes to 1v1. Uncompetitive briefly mentions MU losses not necessarily caused by builder inadequacy, with the chief example being Baton Pass, as well as undesirable RNG elements. Unhealthy has an absurdly blanket statement in "These are elements that may not limit either team building or battling skill enough individually but combine to cause an effect that is undesirable for the metagame" which I have seen many times used to interpret the same exact meanings that uncompetitive covers. In 1v1 specifically, you naturally see this fine line discussed a lot more with mons like ORAS ZardY, Toge in several gens, SM Mew, etc. so having this blur because they to a degree harm both player influence and the builder health of the tier. The simpliest solution is to have unhealthy only describe builder health. There should be no mention of it influencing player decisions or MU in the tier because that is unneccessary and already covered in uncompetitive's description.

- Broken (as described by policy) is a somewhat useless descriptive. Within the framework itself, it is described that "broken" elements can be either uncompetitive or unhealthy. Lines like "These also include elements whose only counters or checks are extraordinarily niche Pokemon that would put the team at a large disadvantage elsewhere" could easily be moved into an updated version of unhealthy. I think most people would agree that banworthy elements either heavily lean towards not properly rewarding player skill (including building skill) or having a negative influence on the meta. You can easily have both of these described as clarified "uncompetitive" or "unhealthy" while totally ditching "broken." It just adds bloat to what could otherwise be a very simple system without overlap/confusion.

- The skill section can be entirely reworked. The battling skill portion is almost entirely inapplicable to 1v1 (Recognizing the Win Condition, Smart Switching, Long-term vs. Short-term Goals, Assessing Risk) and misses key fundamentals to tier. I won't rattle off a bunch of additions I would make to this section because it's ultimately very subjective so if this section is kept (I would personally try to include relevant skill disruptions within uncompetitive) I will leave that to separate discussions.

- Heads up, this is the most subjective issue I have with policy so feel free to glean what you want from it. Precedence should be secondary. Too many decisions are bogged by what precedence you will establish or how previous decisions influence the current one. No more. Obviously, to a certain extent, it is nice to have something to refer back to but this neverending attempt to satisfy previous decisions is counterintuitive. Pokemon is not a game with a ton of patterns so to try to perfectly match your decisions with previous ones done in different situations in different metas by different people is futile. The primary goal of tiering should be to improve the current metagame, appeasing old tiering actions works against this.

"Okay sure dickhead, but what exactly do you suggest we do to improve policy?" I hear you asking. Well, I don't think a ton of alteration needs to be done to make the policy compatible with the tier. Specify that uncompetitive refers to things that hamper player influence/skill. Specify that unhealthy means mons that negatively impact the tier from a builder standpoint (overcentralizing, requiring incredibly specific counterplay, excessive set variance, limiting options or creating too many options, etc.) and make sure it is clear that unhealthy does NOT have any relation to player influence/skill. You can also trim down a lot of sections that add confusion which I outlined in the spoiler, ultimately tho, the goal should be to clarify policy.

Clarification will help people understand why something is problematic and reduce the time that is spent arguing over irrelevant semantics.

Council Improvements

Before I say anything, to reiterate. This is not an attack on anyone and no one has an obligation to spend a shit ton of time on their hobby because they are council. Life happens and people have priorities before developing the tier, which is completely understandable. My issue arises when people who are effectively on Leave of Absence are forced to vote or participate for anything to move forward. If someone is unavailable for an extended period of time, put them on LoA until they are able to tier again. They don't have to be demoted and they can return any time but it's historically been an issue of several council members not participating and holding things up when the community and other council needs urgent action. Members on LoA should have their votes voided; I think mathematically it's better that their votes aren't counted instead of abstains but someone smart can correct me. This will speed up the process and stop bandwagon decisions from happening.

Conclusion

This post is by no means an end-all-be-all but I hope for the sanity of everyone that plays this tier things run smoother this gen. I don't have much else to say, so:

Cheers, The Tripster

 

[fruan]

I agree with many of the sentiments expressed above and hope to talk about something else.

We have not had official samples for the entirety of the SV metagame.

The first few days we had tera and any sort of sample was impossible to build. Then there was scream tail, and so there was more waiting for the meta to settle, and then chi-yu rose to prominence and was banned. Every time the meta is about to settle another broken pokemon pops up to fill the place of its fallen brethren. I do not know when this cycle will stop. All I know is that the current sample submission system only works if there are samples to fall back on - of which there currently are none.
At the rate we are going we are never going to have samples because the ban turnover rate is currently faster than council voting or making samples.
Now this isn't the end of the world, but I feel like sample teams are nice for beginning players who are looking to get into 1v1 or to capture snapshots of a meta as it changes.

Suggestions/Thoughts? Take with a grain of salt
1) Voting on samples as they come in I understand takes more time and commitment but when a metagame is still this volatile after months of development it feels appropriate. It also brings closure to the teambuilder - you don't have to wait (and waste) a month to know whether you need to tweak something and try again or whether the team is accepted.
2) I liked the old submission system purely because it felt friendlier to post a team but maybe that's just me.

 

[recti]

I Just want to take a whole overwiew on the meta rn bec im bored lol
GOOD MONS OR META DEFINERS (very few/none)
:Annhilappe:
first lets see dondozo it has alot of sets band,mental herb,etc it was a counter to chi yu the rampager of the meta since it was banned Its droppong of use only good mons it beats are donphan which is definetly the worst of these mons it loses to tbolt gholdengo,specs valiant it defo wins greninja the recent hottake,flutter mane the meowscarada counter and after the chi yu quick ban inferno dondozo should drop in usage but im not sure


valiant time has some sets booster speed encore disable,specs,band etc its counter gholdengo, mane are two of the best mons in ladder which is a realy hard hit on the mon asside that it beats random mons and mostly all of the above exept mane and ghold and it has a good position in the meta
oh and it also loses to scarf meowscarada


greninja is just the hottake ppl r interested in using this mon bec this mon is usable after 2gens as the national dex thingy
it has protean and basicaly just acts as a worse prim(hydro torent) thats all for grenin i bet its usage will criple after some time


gholdengo i have a seperate post for this thing im tired to talk about about this shit basicaly ban it

donphan it is used with gholdengo and valiant it beats an abundant amount of mons it is good and its the most popular mon on high lladder
it ohkos mane,grenin,50/50 ape and so on

flutter mane skipper is goated ohkos everything with booster sucks in def snarl set is hated by me gets ohkoed loses to that volcarona thingy
loses to ape

meowscarada protean is good i thought something imagine youre chi yu scarf and you overheat and meowscarda just scraf chillin waters you
and youre outraged reasonably this thing is just unpredictable



ape-idk this beats mane phan,dozo and most of all the good mons this thing is good but nt banworthy in my oppinion

at the end of the day the moral is if you ban a mon another mon gets banworthy(for ex if you ban gholdengo valiant will be suspected)
also the goat bored_glitch isnt locked on ps so hurrah

 

[glitched]

I Just want to take a whole overwiew on the meta rn bec im bored lol
GOOD MONS OR META DEFINERS (very few/none)
:Annhilappe:
first lets see dondozo it has alot of sets band,mental herb,etc it was a counter to chi yu the rampager of the meta since it was banned Its droppong of use only good mons it beats are donphan which is definetly the worst of these mons it loses to tbolt gholdengo,specs valiant it defo wins greninja the recent hottake,flutter mane the meowscarada counter and after the chi yu quick ban inferno dondozo should drop in usage but im not sure


valiant time has some sets booster speed encore disable,specs,band etc its counter gholdengo, mane are two of the best mons in ladder which is a realy hard hit on the mon asside that it beats random mons and mostly all of the above exept mane and ghold and it has a good position in the meta
oh and it also loses to scarf meowscarada


greninja is just the hottake ppl r interested in using this mon bec this mon is usable after 2gens as the national dex thingy
it has protean and basicaly just acts as a worse prim(hydro torent) thats all for grenin i bet its usage will criple after some time


gholdengo i have a seperate post for this thing im tired to talk about about this shit basicaly ban it

donphan it is used with gholdengo and valiant it beats an abundant amount of mons it is good and its the most popular mon on high lladder
it ohkos mane,grenin,50/50 ape and so on

flutter mane skipper is goated ohkos everything with booster sucks in def snarl set is hated by me gets ohkoed loses to that volcarona thingy
loses to ape

meowscarada protean is good i thought something imagine youre chi yu scarf and you overheat and meowscarda just scraf chillin waters you
and youre outraged reasonably this thing is just unpredictable



ape-idk this beats mane phan,dozo and most of all the good mons this thing is good but nt banworthy in my oppinion

at the end of the day the moral is if you ban a mon another mon gets banworthy(for ex if you ban gholdengo valiant will be suspected)
also the goat bored_glitch isnt locked on ps so hurrah

dude i got locked again

 

[sh0shin]

are there not ban announcements in this forum

 

[Lumii]

are there not ban announcements in this forum

Hi, we announce our bans in different threads. This one, for example, was our announcement about Flutter Mane and Gholdengo being banned, while the most recent ban, which was the Greninja ban, can be found here.

 

[sh0shin]

oh gdi i always forget archives exist thx

 

[justdrew]

Just wanted to pop in here and say that qualifying for BLT I've played this tier a number of times. And without a doubt, Iron Valiant is 100% uncompetitive and should be banned. It's Encore Disable set is stupidly good and is the most mindless strategy I've ever seen farm victories. Desperately needs a quick ban or a suspect test. Thats all I got to say!

 

[SwordIsBored]

Just wanted to pop in here and say that qualifying for BLT I've played this tier a number of times. And without a doubt, Iron Valiant is 100% uncompetitive and should be banned. It's Encore Disable set is stupidly good and is the most mindless strategy I've ever seen farm victories. Desperately needs a quick ban or a suspect test. Thats all I got to say!

Iron Valiant is a competitive Pokemon that has only seen less use as the generation goes on. It's completely balanced and doesn't warrant tiering action at all, I'm not here to change opinions but I would just like to talk abt where the Pokémon sits right now in the metagame. (At least in my opinion.)

Encore Disable, it's main set and the reason why it has garnered so much popularity has always been a useful combination of moves in 1v1 which can seem overbearing due to the fact of it locking you into struggle and then finishing you off. However, I would like to argue that the tactic isn't uncompetitive in its own right which I think you're trying to partially say here. The difference between the abuser and the actual moves is why we have Aromatisse in SS 1v1 but not Sableye and Iron Valiant in SV 1v1 but not Scream Tail.

There are many counters to the strategy: priority, switching moves (though this can not work for some Pokémon), and running less Choice items. Due to its reasonable to counter frailty, you can easily run teams which aren't even 2-0ed by the Pokémon (which i'd recommend in 1v1 due to the common appearance of top tiers, and because playing around 2-0s is never fun and can lead to an unnecessary coinflip.)

Sylveon being the renowned best Pokémon in the tier doesn't help Iron Valiant's case at all, losing to the Pokémon which I would say fits on the most teams. As well as this, general Fairy-type counters are ran which will also beat Iron Valiant. Take Corviknight, Skeledirge and Volcarona for example which gained their popularity from the absurd levels of power Fairy-types have gotten since Gholdengo's ban.

I'd like to link to the point I made in the 2nd paragraph a bit more. Unlike Scream Tail, which was a horrendously overpowered monster, Iron Valiant's flaws are more noticeable due to its lack of set variety, worse defensive typing (Even though the defensive typing is still useful) and its much lower defensive stats.




Edit:
Oh yeah, Gardevoir is seeing more use as well which furthers the point of Iron Valiant itself not being a problem. It isn't easily splashable on teams like other overpowered Encore Disablers are like SS Sableye and SV Scream Tail and therefore can be replaced for better fitting choices.

 

[Baleblaze]

Test 1604 (Iron Treads) @ Booster Energy
Ability: Quark Drive
Tera Type: Ground
EVs: 144 HP / 180 Def / 184 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Iron Defense
- Body Press
- Earthquake
- Heavy Slam

Speed is to hit 323 to outspeed haxorus, def to hit 321 so booster energy hits speed and rest on hp for bulk for now

Just a theorymon I've been having fun with. Maybe AV set could work? is a banded version? Are the other Donphan versions are worth using over this? prolly yes to all of them. Still gonna throw my two cents out there, maybe inspire some more underrated sets and other underrated mons.

 

[Adam3560]

I say we either ban iron valiant or unban scream tail. None of this wishy washy bull crap. This is why America is failing as a country.

 

[fruan]

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen91v1-1859206420
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen91v1-1862946706

An analysis of non boosting item vs bulky (assuming no boosting item on either side)
If spa >= 391: spamming bug buzz guaranteed wins.
If spa >= 362 : check speed for optimal play, but no bulk needed to win.

speed >= 309
Quiver Dance two or three times into bug buzz spam.
if spa <= 311: Bulk suggestion for if espathra roosts on a turn 3 bug buzz: [108 HP] OR [84 Spd].

speed >= 297:
Quiver dance three times into bug buzz spam.
if spa <= 311: Bulk suggestion for if espathra roosts on a turn 4 bug buzz: [248 HP and 104 Spd] OR [72 HP and 252 Spd].

speed < 297:
spa needs to be >= 350, quiver dance 4 times. Bulk suggestion: [36 hp or 28 Spd] so that you can ko +3 espthra at +5 if they stored power on turn 4, and to generally 2 hit them after a roost and live a +4 espathra stored power.

speed < 289:
run >= 391 spa to have a guaranteed winpath.

speed <= 247 --> asking to lose.

Quiver dancing too much makes espathra able to 2 hit volcarona through successive quiver dances, as such:

For with spa < 391 and speeds less than 289 where volcarona needs >= 5 quiver dances to be able to outpace espathra for two turns after speedboost, there is no guaranteed winpath for volcarona anymore as it is a bunch of 50/50s based on timing bug buzz/stored power correctly. Volcarona should still be favored however.

 

[GEEV]

why is meowscarada the only protean user that is not banned?

 

[SwordIsBored]

Meowscarada doesn't have as much powerful options as the others, Cinderace has extremely powerful moves with high base power that it can make overwhelming by turning into STAB and Greninja has too much variety which makes it one of the best Pokémon on preview.

Meowscarada's physical movepool isn't so extensive, running STAB moves, Giga Impact and one of it's limited coverage as a moveset. It also uses a Substitute Leech Seed set which plays into it's Protean ability, allowing it to be a Normal-type which can be useful sometimes.

Meowscarada has limits and weaknesses. Greninja however, has way too many different type options which can make it insane on preview and Cinderace has great utility with Will O Wisp and has generally high base power moves. Think Pyro Ball, Gunk Shot, High Jump Kick.

 

[crow crumbs]

tourban this guy

 

[Bruh Wobuffet]

According to the recent potential banlist of 1v1 cinderace and chi yu had a relative close vote, so would they ever be tested in 1v1 or would they just be doomed forever

 

[DEG]

According to the recent potential banlist of 1v1 cinderace and chi yu had a relative close vote, so would they ever be tested in 1v1 or would they just be doomed forever

There's chances that Pokemon might get suspect unbanned but that's for sure after the broken mons get banned first in current meta.

 

[LRXC]

yo can we ban hoopa this mon is not fun

 

[cold illusions]

yo can we ban hoopa this mon is not fun

Please do it

 

[RTM]

Just giving my first thoughts on the home meta


Hoopa unbound is overrated to the point where i can't even tell if people complaining about it are trolling. Firstly, it is the kind of thing that is only strong because its a hard hitter the meta hasn't adapted to (there are many examples of these throughout all gens of 1v1). Secondly, it has an extreme lack of physical bulk, getting ohkod by most faster physical attackers, even some uninvested mixed attackers can ko with u-turn. This leads me to my third point, u-turn exists. Some might call this unnecessary restriction of building, but bug coverage is genuinely good rn, as it hits hoopa, zarude, meowscarada (if faster), wo chien, gren (if faster), iron leaves and the list goes on. Hoopa is also extremely easy to creep, at 284 speed, and while still having very high stats as a scarfer, it fails to find KO's on mons it can't hit supereffectively. Overall, hoopa-unbound is an overrated mon and while it still definitely has a lot of merit, this mon is a lot better on paper than it is in practice.


Enamorus on the surface seems like the cloud men of gen 5, however I believe this has potential to be quite a bit better. First of all, it has great stat distribution, allowing it to bulk attacks easily (presumably), it also has both a high atk and spatk which allows it to run both a contrary based superpower set, as well as special oriented sets like specs and setup. This mons movepool is pretty insane for one of the cloud people, having access to sludge bomb, moonblast, earth power, mfire and more. Overall i believe this mon will be extremely techable and a cool fairy type which could possibly become very strong down the line.


Just gonna be brief, but this things stat distribution is great. It could probably run id rest stall very effectively as well as AV, WP and other offensive sets.


This thing is looking busted. Can stall, can run acid spray, can run physical, can run special, amazing typing, 3 useful abilities. Need i say more? Sidenote: amazing with counter.


Prolly good in this fairy-packed enviornment


Good, beats other home mons well

Pt2 maybe coming soon but i'm bored rn

 

[DEG]

Opinion on SV post-home unhealthiness;

• Greninja
• Gholdengo
• Hoopa-U
• Meloetta

in that order.

I think getting rid of greninja first will make the meta a bit more healthy. I'm not too sold on hoopa-u being the terror of sv 1v1 it's a more "healthy" threat than gren and gholdengo. Ghold might act fall of as weeks pass but I think it's uncheesable factor makes it a fantastic mon, specially when paired with stuff that can overload the preview i.e. Hoopa-U, Regidrago, Meloetta. Ghldengo paired with these mons is actually more threatening that the mons alone. I classify it more as "unhealthy" than broken.

I think gren/ghold can cheese their checks better than Hoopa-U. Hoopa-U is held back by its speed and can get beaten it has a harder time than gren and ghold to adapt back and running a bug move isn't that restricting on some mons. I'm not saying that it can't get better but rn, its pretty good but not broken.

 

[Joker 1v1]

Opinion on SV post-home unhealthiness;

• Greninja
• Gholdengo
• Hoopa-U
• Meloetta

in that order.

I think getting rid of greninja first will make the meta a bit more healthy. I'm not too sold on hoopa-u being the terror of sv 1v1 it's a more "healthy" threat than gren and gholdengo. Ghold might act fall of as weeks pass but I think it's uncheesable factor makes it a fantastic mon, specially when paired with stuff that can overload the preview i.e. Hoopa-U, Regidrago, Meloetta. Ghldengo paired with these mons is actually more threatening that the mons alone. I classify it more as "unhealthy" than broken.

I think gren/ghold can cheese their checks better than Hoopa-U. Hoopa-U is held back by its speed and can get beaten it has a harder time than gren and ghold to adapt back and running a bug move isn't that restricting on some mons. I'm not saying that it can't get better but rn, its pretty good but not broken.

"Cheese their checks" is all im taking from this, its funnier than it should be

 

[clerica]

Now that the new toy syndrome is starting to wear off I wanted to give my thoughts on the post-home meta. Some general thoughts are that this meta is bit of a clusterfuck right now. It might be more interesting than pre-home but it's definitely worse but that should improve over time, especially since we finally(!!!) have our first SV team tour, PL, to help speed development along. My main issue is that there's so many mons right now that demand attention that it's extremely difficult to cover them all so building feels more like trying to cover 5 mons and praying I don't get fished but mayb I just need to l2p.

pre-home mons

I think these 2 are the best legal pre-home mons in post-home meta currently. Encore disable valiant feels like it fell off but offensive valiant is so so good right now since it beats a lot of spammed mons like hoopa, good ursaluna mu, hoodra, decent gren mu, and so on. It's been very reliable for me these first few days. I think meow is pretty good right now mostly because it has good matchups into a lot of the mons people are calling broken. Scarf can handle hoopa and gren which is really hard to do otherwise.

SS mons of interest

I think spect is in a weird spot because it loses to a lot of the current spam like hoopa, gren, ghold, ursaluna, drago, and melo but after that I really like its matchup spread. Draining kiss is neat and allows it to pretty reliably beat urshifu now in a similar way to what pult could do back in SS. We'll have to see how tiering goes but if some of the stuff above it gets yeeted spect could become a huge threat. Then I think band haxorus is really strong right now. First impression goes harder than ever and you beat non scarf drago which is epic. I expect hax to fall off in the future but for now it's really solid.

Home mons

This mon is really good right now, buuuut i wouldn't call it super broken. What hoopa does well is it's a great blanket check to like most of the tier, but it can't work through its checks like gren can. I'd still call it the best mon in the meta even if I don't find it particularly infuriating to cover yet and I think it's pretty warping in the builder in tier filled with insane builder threats. 4.5/5 threat, Would not be opposed to a suspect on hoopa before pl.


Imo gren struggles a bit with sharing the spotlight with hoopa. Hoopa in general just covers more better. Gren loses to ghold and melo while hoopa wins which is a pretty rough drawback. That being said I do find it harder to reliably cover gren than hoopa just because of the options protean allows. If hoopa ends up going I could see gren taking over the tier very quickly. 4/5 threat but only because people aren't abusing it yet


This mon honestly feels fine to me. A lot of the new mons like lando, heatran, shifu, hoopa, ursaluna, etc are all pretty good into it. In my opinion the most annoying thing about this mon is covering it alongside hoopa, gren, regidrago, melo, etc because there isn't a ton of overlap across all those mons. Ghold itself has enough options as counters though imo, 2/5 threat.


Melo is really good at the moment and very difficult to cover alongside hoopa. It has some cool options in cm sets which haven't been explored in previous generations and I think that's super cool. However, that does make it a pain in the ass to cover in the builder. I'd say just run physical mons but it does learn charm to watch out lol. That being said I think it's fine for now and a lot of the pain comes from having to cover it alongside all the other super good mons in one team. 2/5 threat

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These were just some quick thoughts for now that i wanted to get out. I hope home has been what y'all were dreaming it would be and I'm excited to see it in pl soon. That's all from me for now, but expect OTR to open up in the near future oo