Metagame 1v1 Metagame Discussion

Hoopa is pretty broken and can run a lot of sets to beat almost every mon in the meta rn well keeping its core mus.

Most of the sets I have posted will be labeled with what they beat but some are not so if you have questions about evs ask the damage calc

anti-hoopa-unbound hoopa-unbound (Hoopa-Unbound) @ Choice Band
Ability: Magician
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 4 HP / 100 Atk / 152 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Gunk Shot
- Rock Tomb
- Knock Off
- Zen Headbutt

chomp band (Hoopa-Unbound) @ Choice Band
Ability: Magician
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 160 HP / 252 Def / 96 Spe
Impish Nature
- Gunk Shot
- Ice Punch
- Hyperspace Fury
- Zen Headbutt

both avaluggs (Hoopa-Unbound) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Magician
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 200 HP / 252 Def / 56 SpA
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Grass Knot
- Psychic
- Dark Pulse
- Trick

best ursa mu (Hoopa-Unbound) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Magician
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 168 HP / 72 Def / 252 SpA / 16 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Grass Knot
- Psychic
- Dark Pulse
- Trick

goodrah (Hoopa-Unbound) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Magician
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 248 HP / 100 Def / 48 SpA / 96 SpD / 16 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Dark Pulse
- Psychic
- Grass Knot
- Focus Blast

physical scarf (Hoopa-Unbound) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Magician
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 72 HP / 104 Atk / 88 Def / 244 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Rock Tomb
- Hyperspace Fury
- Ice Punch
- Zen Headbutt

focus blast scarf (pao sucker punch) (Hoopa-Unbound) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Magician
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 12 HP / 8 Atk / 244 Def / 244 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Rock Tomb
- Hyperspace Fury
- Ice Punch
- Focus Blast

anti-sturdy av (Hoopa-Unbound) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Magician
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 248 HP / 52 Atk / 104 Def / 8 SpA / 76 SpD / 20 Spe
Mild Nature
- Gunk Shot
- Rock Tomb
- Psychic
- Knock Off

sub breaker av (Hoopa-Unbound) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Magician
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 244 HP / 84 Atk / 180 Def
Relaxed Nature
- Hyperspace Fury
- Psychic
- Gunk Shot
- Ice Punch

brazy lo(ting lu) (Hoopa-Unbound) @ Life Orb
Ability: Magician
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 252 HP / 152 Atk / 36 Def / 28 SpA / 40 SpD
Quiet Nature
- Focus Blast
- Nasty Plot
- Gunk Shot
- Dark Pulse

cuck protect (Hoopa-Unbound) @ Life Orb
Ability: Magician
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Atk / 252 Def
Bold Nature
- Protect
- Psychic
- Dark Pulse
- Ice Punch

sub breaker + anti-sturdy (Hoopa-Unbound) @ Expert Belt
Ability: Magician
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 152 HP / 240 Def / 20 SpA / 96 Spe
Lax Nature
- Hyperspace Fury
- Psychic
- Gunk Shot
- Skill Swap

tanga pult (fake) (Hoopa-Unbound) @ Tanga Berry
Ability: Magician
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 216 HP / 252 Def / 24 SpA / 16 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Psychic
- Focus Blast
- Protect
- Dark Pulse

tanga gren (fake) (Hoopa-Unbound) @ Tanga Berry
Ability: Magician
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 56 HP / 196 Atk / 252 Def / 4 SpA
Brave Nature
- Psychic
- Hyperspace Fury
 
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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.
thank you
 

XSTATIC COLD

Banned deucer.
I just wanted to make a rant about the current metagame in Sv 1v1.
I played 1v1 lt and kick off tour, and i made an observation: People are playing 6 mons in the metagame :
- valiant
- regidrago
- walking wake
- hoopa
- gholdengo
- volcanion

It means that, in EVERY GAME i played, there was at least one of these mon in each opponent team.
And i see a lot of drago/ ghold/volcanion teams.

But the issue is bigger, the core drago + gholdengo covers nearly all metagame.
(You just have to bring a meow and band haxorus counter in third slot.)

Thus, players have to bring one fairy and one fire/dark everytime, which limits the metagame and the creativity.
I tried to bring ideas like av bundle, av moltres or dondozo but it s impossible to win with regidrago and gholdengo everywhere + iron valiant which is annoying af cause it can run tons of sets (unpredictable).

So yeah, instead of suspecting only hoopa, which for me is not the most broken mon, maybe suspecting several mons like gholdengo in first, and then regidrago.
You will say " no cause regidrago is free lose vs fairies" , but the problem is that fairies are the only answers to beat it, (with unnerve haxorus) , then you just have to bring a steel mon which beat fairies and haxorus like balloon gholdengo or a shit like that.
These mons centralize too much metagame, and if you want to enjoy watching some SV1V1 PL games, just do something.
I guess we dont want to see 5 mons in entire sv pl.

People want to be surprised, they want creativity, I think this is the best way to have a good PL (or tours, in general).
So please, ban some mons before PL and not only hoopa, to enable players to bring new sets, cause the meta is unhealthy af.
Dude i m playing home for 1 month now and i'm already done.
Open your eyes, Hoopa ban will solve nothing, people will continue to spam broken mons without brain.

Let people who want bringing new mon, new sets in the aim of extending the metagame, cause it's catastrophic rn and i think i'm not the only one who thinks that, and not the only one too who is already bored of this fuckin meta.
 
I just wanted to make a rant about the current metagame in Sv 1v1.
I played 1v1 lt and kick off tour, and i made an observation: People are playing 6 mons in the metagame :
- valiant
- regidrago
- walking wake
- hoopa
- gholdengo
- volcanion

It means that, in EVERY GAME i played, there was at least one of these mon in each opponent team.
And i see a lot of drago/ ghold/volcanion teams.

But the issue is bigger, the core drago + gholdengo covers nearly all metagame.
(You just have to bring a meow and band haxorus counter in third slot.)

Thus, players have to bring one fairy and one fire/dark everytime, which limits the metagame and the creativity.
I tried to bring ideas like av bundle, av moltres or dondozo but it s impossible to win with regidrago and gholdengo everywhere + iron valiant which is annoying af cause it can run tons of sets (unpredictable).

So yeah, instead of suspecting only hoopa, which for me is not the most broken mon, maybe suspecting several mons like gholdengo in first, and then regidrago.
You will say " no cause regidrago is free lose vs fairies" , but the problem is that fairies are the only answers to beat it, (with unnerve haxorus) , then you just have to bring a steel mon which beat fairies and haxorus like balloon gholdengo or a shit like that.
These mons centralize too much metagame, and if you want to enjoy watching some SV1V1 PL games, just do something.
I guess we dont want to see 5 mons in entire sv pl.

People want to be surprised, they want creativity, I think this is the best way to have a good PL (or tours, in general).
So please, ban some mons before PL and not only hoopa, to enable players to bring new sets, cause the meta is unhealthy af.
Dude i m playing home for 1 month now and i'm already done.
Open your eyes, Hoopa ban will solve nothing, people will continue to spam broken mons without brain.

Let people who want bringing new mon, new sets in the aim of extending the metagame, cause it's catastrophic rn and i think i'm not the only one who thinks that, and not the only one too who is already bored of this fuckin meta.
Hollup lemme get this right

You're telling me REGIDRAGO
:sv/regidrago:
Yes this thing (best regi fight me on that take), gets 2 coverage moves. And now it's oppressive. I thought it was ass last gen smh
 
Regidrago was good last gen as well lmao, also lack of good fairies changes the math on regidrago potentially (Ftr I have no opinion on regidrago) but saying regidrago sucked last gen is just factually incorrect; there were even some people who wanted it banned iirc for being too overcentralizing although that obviously didn’t end up happening
 
Regidrago was good last gen as well lmao, also lack of good fairies changes the math on regidrago potentially (Ftr I have no opinion on regidrago) but saying regidrago sucked last gen is just factually incorrect; there were even some people who wanted it banned iirc for being too overcentralizing although that obviously didn’t end up happening
i didnt know that my fault
 
I do agree with XSTATIC COLD SV 1v1 is extremely bland and unfun that has near zero room for creativity in its current state. No matter what happens to Hoopa-U I propose serious action on both Gholdengo and Meloetta post-suspect.

I think Gholdengo is the most broken Pokemon in SV. With only two sets being Spdf Twave Hex and Defense Gholdengo destroys more than half the metagame and this is without accounting Specs/Scarf. You can only beat it if you have a remarkable type advantage and even stuff like Arcanine-Hisui and Volcanion are forced to run specific EVs and sets to counter it as fire-types or Gholdengo can easily sponge their moves and win. It can eat hits from Meloetta, Greninja, and even Moltres-G. Good news that it doensn't even have much opportunity cost! Gholdengo is extremely unhealthy while building and on preview, it creates the most annoying and broken cores; Gholdengo+Regidrago/Valiant/Melotta/Volcanion/Wake etc... Gholdengo has no place in a healthy metagame.

Meloetta topic is a bit more sensitive. Great typing and stats and has access to a nuke in hyperbeam, can succesfully run choice item, cm lo, and people talking about charm for regidrago (fake set for now). However, the most glaring part is that Dark-type Pokemon aren't safe either. Relic song meloetta makes it a fighter allowing it to beat dark types. It can bulk many hits such as Dark Pulse from Greninja, and Outrage from Dragons (Haxorus, Chomp). CM LO + Pirouette sets are enough to constrict teambuilding. I see Meloetta as problematic and should probably be banned.

I cannot talk about Greninja, as I'm really not impressed. Its spot is awkward right now and before more tournament games I cannot make the correct decision. Drago is manageable asf so it shouldn't be touched as of now. Valiant is fine.

I believe we shouldn't rush ban cause of PL being nearby - I'd rather look out for the health of the metagame in the long term that's why I think Gren, Drago, Valiant are OK if there's nothing on practice that shows they're broken, however Gholdengo and Meloetta have already proved to be too much in the recent tours.
 

XSTATIC COLD

Banned deucer.
agree but the question of banning regidrago is real, cause this mon is unhealthy for the meta: beats all but fairies + force a fairy mon in opponent team.
Thus, we have a typical spamming team composed of : dragon fairy steel which is drago / valiant / gholdengo or Walking wake / gholdengo / valiant or sylveon

Disgusting.
 
I haven’t played too much of this tier seriously but yes this tier rn is cock and ball torture.


XSC made a wonderful point in 5 mons soloing the tier. Hoopa as stong as it is isn’t really that broken. People are just making boogeyman sets that take away hoopa’s main selling point imo. And these Mickey sets happened to have people shit themselves for a suspect. Hoopa imo ain’t that broken. If hoopa gets banned, that’ll lead to Pokémon like Spectrier and more notably Cresselia to be even better and overall worse for the tier

What is broken is Gholdegno. This fucker can tech for anything it wants to and should get quickbanned. Meloetta has STAB hyper beam with the occasional relic song physical set that limit s team building like deg said. Iron Valiant went from the ooga booga encore disable sets to actual unpredictable and versatile sets that can hard to beat consistently with a dedicated valiant answer. Regidrago’s only reliable answers are fairy types and unnverve haxorus which kinda limits teambuilding too.


Honestly I see banning one Pokémon snowballs to another one being broken and banworthy and so on and so forth which shouldn’t be ideal.
 
But the issue is bigger, the core drago + gholdengo covers nearly all metagame.
(You just have to bring a meow and band haxorus counter in third slot.)
If ghold runs the old max defense weakness policy set it always beats hax and coinflips adamant band meow. Overall the meta is very centralized with all the mons you listed making it very annoying to build without using any of them.
 

XSTATIC COLD

Banned deucer.
If ghold runs the old max defense weakness policy set it always beats hax and coinflips adamant band meow. Overall the meta is very centralized with all the mons you listed making it very annoying to build without using any of them.
that was my g5 game vs bobson.
I ran band haxorus, it tanked, and killed me.
That's why i was mad and decided to post here.
 
id like to bounce off of what xsc and deg said. read this whole post because im basically telling a story here

hoopa as a mon isnt the main thing i wanna talk about but i have to address it so i will now. i think its incredibly unsurprising that this mon is really good with the reduced dex size and no charizard/dnite/z moves etc. people have gone extensively into why they think the mons broken, and while i think that a lot of the sets that people have cited are just unsets and cheese, i dont extensively disagree with their reasoning. like the mon undisputedly has a metric fuck ton of options and tech, but from what ive watched from lt and other random games and experienced on the suspect ladder (because the ladder qualifies people like me to make decisions like this on metagames) i dont view it as an overcentralizing mon.

i think that its fair to say that hoopa has counterplay and doesn't just fuckin beat everything no negotions, it woulda been quickbanned no sweat if it did. so what i actually want to talk about in this post is how mons and cores interact with each other, as i come from an era where people cared and thought critically about this instead of just using tech potential and set variety as the impetus for banning mons

anyway, this is where i refer to DEG and XSTATIC COLD's posts. honestly, this dr nadal post is the most coherent and best metagame post i think hes ever done in like 5 years of 1v1, so kudos to him on it. people definitely recycle the same 5-6 mons and few cores constantly. why? because they are really easy to use and hard to get bad matchups with a lot of the time. shit like gholdengo + walking wake, which i used for reqs, is like you look at it and think what do i even beat this core with on paper when they can both be any set. this dynamic of similar mons and cores leads to previews being stale and gross unless you have fishes for them that also dodge getting teched by ghold or drago or whatever, and from my admittedly limited experience leads to building being a pain in the ass. just this dynamic alone. im not saying you cant beat them, dont misunderstand, but if you wanna bring up the self serving "unhealthy" clause in the tiering policy then I will too :thumbsup:

since i finally said the mons name, i think gholdengo is actually the overcentralizer and what causes this dynamic to exist. i wont insult you, the reader's, intelligence by explaining in depth what gholdengo does and why its obscene and kinda breaks 1v1 like mimikyu does. DEG gave a good brief explanation on it so i direct you to him, but just as a tl;dr ghold's mu spread is broken, he has like no opportunity cost, and like xsc, deg, and i said above he enables broken and unhealthy cores.

now, we return to the case of hoopa-unbound formation. earlier, i established hoopa's strengths and the broken things that it does but i said that it wasnt overcentralizing. then, i said gholdengo and the spammable cores it enables are what is overcentralizing and make the metagame stale. hoopa, while it certainly fits well with a lot of the spammed mons, exists outside of this central metagame, to put a name to it. without going too in depth, its answers arent necessarily the same as a lot of those spammed mons and cores, making those answers harder to fit, or making teams that have those more reliable answers to hoopa match up less well vs the rest of the metagame, and then you have 3 1-2's and cry.

so basically these two factors of the presence of gholdengo being broken and enabling broken spammed cores on top of hoopa existing generally outside of those cores and being really strong lead to the meta being bad, stale, unhealthy, whatever negative adjective you wanna put on it. id like to now address the hoopa suspect and say that regardless of whether hoopa gets banned or not to quickban gholdengo for the reasons outlined in this post, xscs post, and degs post. im probably gonna vote ban on hoopa just bc its one less annoying mon for sv in pl but it realistically won't get banned bc as i was writing this post i realized that this hoopa suspect is basically the annihilape suspect but with gholdengo replacing chi yu in the discourse.

briefly, meloetta seems similar to hoopa but is a wait and see for me, gren doesnt seem broken to me, but regidrago seems really strong and the best at being a coinflip button than its ever been, especially when it gets pushed

think thats it, i was compelled to post because of pl starting soon (no tl;dr obviously)
 

bo_bobson27

is a Forum Moderatoris a Tiering Contributor
Moderator
Pokemon I Think Should Be Banned
:Gholdengo:Gholdengo: Covers 69% of the VR with WP (def and spd), specs, air balloon. Forces fire ground or dark type mons on every team, many of which need to run specific sets to win. Individual sets are very powerful.
:Meloetta:Meloetta: Covers 87% of the VR with Specs, WP, Scarf, Colbur Relic, Amulet. Broken af
:Regidrago:Regidrago: Covers 77% of the VR with Haban, Band, WP, AV, LO, Scarf, Specs. Forces fairy type or select few steel, ice, or dragon type mons on every team. Lack of fairies, and diversity therein makes this mon overbearing.
:Hoopa-Unbound:Hoopa-Unbound: See my suspect post
If these mons get banned, I think Greninja should be revisited.
 

Lucario

A side must always be chosen
is a Top Social Media Contributoris a Community Contributoris a Tiering Contributoris a Contributor to Smogon
Polish_20230625_182513015.jpg


As you all know, Hoopa-U was recently banned, though, there are still 4 little shits in this meta that can be hard to handle (and 2 need the Mew/Magearna treatment). Let's start from the most broken and go down to the least (imo).



:sv/gholdengo:
String cheese, inflatable at car dealerships, and coin surfer man are all names for the first of the brokens, Gholdengo. Specs hits hard and bulky Weakness Policy sets with Thunder Wave and Hex are annoying to deal with. Imagine looking at a should be check and saying "not today" and KOing it. You can imagine it, but you can also load it up on ladder and see for yourself. Good As Gold really is an ability that is good as gold, often forcing teams with Iron Valiant or other status-move reliant Pokemon to only have 2 effective Pokemon while your opponent has 3. I used to be a non-believer and thought this mon was trash, but after a couple of days after Home I realized this mon has to go.



:sv/meloetta:
Adele hits hard when she wears glasses, or when she has a calm mind, and even with her charm and fake tears. But what can be even more frightening is when she sings so well you fall asleep and wake up to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in front of you. STAB Hyper Beam hits hard off of an enormous base 128 SpA, pair that with excellent neutral bulk and you have the demon Lillith in your party. Meloetta deserves a ban because of how hard it hits paired with it's set diversity. You may think your Gholdengo checks it, but it doesn't because of Shadow Ball while Focus Blast misses against Heatran and other Steels. This isn't a valid reason, just something personal, but Serene Grace + Relic Song has no place in SV 1v1 because it makes Meloetta uncompetitive to some degree.



:sv/regidrago:
I haven't actually used this thing to great success, but I hate losing to it. Its high base HP gives it more than enough opportunities to use its Dragon's Maw boosted STAB Dragon moves at least 53 times in a single battle. Resists? Nope. Fairies? Sure, but there's only like 4 good ones, all of which lose to Regidrago's teammates. Not much else to say since I don't have too much experience with it, but I do think it should be looked into in the near(-ish) future.



:sv/Iron Valiant:
/dt Substitute
User takes 1/4 its max HP to put in a substitute.
I wouldn't say that Mega-Gallade is broken, but it is *very* strong right now, arguably stronger than before. If both Gholdengo (its biggest check) and Meloetta get banned then this thing definitely has the potential to demolish the meta. SubVersal sets popped out of nowhere and are now everywhere. You can't even beat it with your Meloetta because you just got Disabled and are forced to Struggle. Sometimes you load against this mon and say gg, though sometimes you also load it and say gg because your opponent went Gholdengo and played the ultimate mind game.​
 

bern

professional 1v1 fraud
is a Social Media Contributor
so the hoopa ban happened (hooray), kind of wanna mention how it polarized people, lots of conversations went haywire and people were attacked, so just a reminder to not do that, it doesn't help anyone if you do. anyway here's some opinions on the current threats since it's very likely for there to be tiering action this week. (this section was gonna be way longer)

:Gholdengo: please get them out, i don't need to say why this thing isn't healthy at all for the meta and why draghold cores are everywhere currently, it's been said a million times. i understand it's a good fairy counter but it's just not balanced, i'm very sorry. quickban gholdengo.

:Meloetta: hoopa ban only made it stronger, tricky to play around, has a great variety of sets, incredibly powerful and bulky, good typing and movepool options, it has a lot and it's difficult to stop. quickban meloetta.

:Iron-Valiant: powerful and annoying, especially after the discovery of sub+reversal, with it having so many options in terms of movepool and items due to its great stats. but it's quite frail and there's some opportunity cost as well. for now it's fine as is. no action

:Regidrago: i've mentioned draghold core on the gholdengo part, and drago on his own seems really solid, obviously every fairy type under the sun beats it but i guess that's what gholdengo is for, but a problem that i've seen people express is what happens after the gholdengo ban, which is basically fairy types being invaluable due to regidrago's presence, and being used everywhere. which makes it stale. i hope it doesn't come down to that though, but currently, regidrago's fine. no action

thank you for reading and good luck to everyone in PL!
 
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XSTATIC COLD

Banned deucer.
i think gholdengo will be quickbanned soon after hoopa ban. But do it before pl starts.

As said the guys, a gholdengo ban will still be catastrophic for the meta since gholdengo is the biggest valiant counter.
Thus, Valiant will centralize the meta and it will be unplayable. (it is already over used now, so imagine after)

Then, a valiant ban will give more power to regidrago, since valiant is the best fairy and best regi counter... And we know that the only other viable fairies in the meta are sylveon and enamorus. It is not enough.

So, the issue is that, if you ban gholdengo, you are forced to ban valiant, and nearly obliged to ban drago behind.

I have to talk about volcanion and meloetta too: the hoopa ban makes it more powerful, and still more with a potential regidrago ban cause drago beat both.
So yeah a meloetta ban is possible too.
I wont say volcanion is broken but if meloetta + drago are banned, this thing will be too powerful.

But i think it is the only way to have a healthy sv meta. We all saw that the meta is controlled by 5 mons (now 4 with hoopa ban but volcanion is a thing)

I propose to : ban gholdengo, then ban valiant instantly.
If we see that the meta is good, then dont ban regidrago and meloetta but i have big doubts on that.
In the long term, i cant imagine that meloetta stays unbanned, and the question of regidrago is real. If we were in SS, i would say ok cause there is a lot of good steels and fairies, but not in SV.

As i said earlier and other days, I don't want to watch PL games with 5 mons with idiots spamming it just to win. I think we are all bored of that. We need more creativity, people like to discover new sets, so let's go.

 

DripLegend

is a Forum Moderator
Moderator
post pl thoughts on the metagame:
1. fishing with quirkies is broken
2. main thing that makes the best mons stand out is versatility and ability to compress/have consistently solid matchup spreads.
3. seeing more of a resurgence of really bulky mons like cress belli ursa that have especially been putting in a ton of work in pl.
4. fighting is a really underrated type rn but i can't blame people for not running it since cress has been extremely popular since the hoopa ban
I think the meta is in an alright position, home brought a lot of great mons but it still does feel like a broken checks broken meta due to SV having a pretty low power level overall compared to other gens. I don't think anything being banned would make the metagame better in my opinion. Valiant is a pretty polarizing mon but it does have consistent answers and it's ambiguity is often lost on preview in my opinion. Plus centralizing the metagame around it is a much better outcome than any of the other top tiers we have right now imo.
i'm gonna drop some of the stuff i used during the tour in the set dump thread so if u wanna steal ideas now's your chance
if anyone has anything to say about the current metagame/thoughts that would be cool too since i wanna be able to listen to how the overall community feels about SV. :)
 

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