Metagame BDSP Monotype Megathread

Galarian Darmanitan doesn't exist in BDSP and as such is irrelevant as a demerit against ice in the present metagame, especially as gone are the obnoxious defensive threats such as Ferrothorn that generally wreak havoc in its absence. The closest thing to Ferrothorn now is Forretress, which as of now isn't very good and has no recovery. I don't think Ice is quite mid tier, as it autoloses to both Fire and Fighting whether Blaziken is present or not,) struggles with Steel, and has a hard time against Dark if the Ice player is not running SD Weavile (which is a subpar set on Ice.)
  • Many if not most ice builds will be running Abomasnow. Ice's viability in the metagame is contingent on its role as anti-meta. This makes Abomasnow a no-brainer not just due to Grass coverage but also its ability to set Aurora Veil and hail chip ensuring that Weavile's Banded Ice Shard is always a KO against Latios.
  • Metagross is a threat but finds itself in heavy competition with Jirachi for a teamslot due to the latter's far greater all-around utility as a pivot as support mon. As a physical attacker it is outniched by Medicham (no one competent should be running Gallade on Psychic –– no one competent will ever be running Scarf Gallade) due to Medicham's far greater utility against Dark and Steel, as well as Medicham's similar access to Bullet Punch and elemental punches at a higher speed tier.
  • "Without Shell Smash cloyster, good luck trying to out offense scarfers. Even then, scarf latis outspeed you." Ice runs not one but both of the viable Ice Shard users in the tier. Beyond that Weavile (if it is scarfed) outspeeds both.
(to be cont)

Assuming you run band weavile and mamo:
252 Atk Choice Band Weavile Ice Shard vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latios: 224-266 (74.4 - 88.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Mamoswine Ice Shard vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latios: 260-308 (86.3 - 102.3%) -- 12.5% chance to OHKO
252 Atk Choice Band Weavile Ice Shard vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latias: 204-242 (67.7 - 80.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Mamoswine Ice Shard vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latias: 236-278 (78.4 - 92.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Also, even with hail, the only OHKO is band mamo vs latios.

Here is why you are wrong when you said jirachi is better than metagross. JIRACHI LOST IRON HEAD. I don't care if it can pivot. Iron head gave jirachi the steel type move that constitute the scarf uturn, as well as thunder wave set. Without its most powerful weapon, jirachi has no niche on psychic beside specs/scarf special attacker with flash cannon as the best tool for ice. Metagross has band bullet punch which does heafty amount to a lot of pokemon. In addition, it has meteor mash which can give it an attack boost. Plus with metagross's higher defense allows it to take a few more hits. The only advantages jirachi has is support in the form of wish, uturn, and healing wish. With a hyper offensive meta as this one. Metagross is definitely better which makes ice a lot worse.
 
Assuming you run band weavile and mamo:
252 Atk Choice Band Weavile Ice Shard vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latios: 224-266 (74.4 - 88.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Mamoswine Ice Shard vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latios: 260-308 (86.3 - 102.3%) -- 12.5% chance to OHKO
252 Atk Choice Band Weavile Ice Shard vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latias: 204-242 (67.7 - 80.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Mamoswine Ice Shard vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latias: 236-278 (78.4 - 92.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Also, even with hail, the only OHKO is band mamo vs latios.

Here is why you are wrong when you said jirachi is better than metagross. JIRACHI LOST IRON HEAD. I don't care if it can pivot. Iron head gave jirachi the steel type move that constitute the scarf uturn, as well as thunder wave set. Without its most powerful weapon, jirachi has no niche on psychic beside specs/scarf special attacker with flash cannon as the best tool for ice. Metagross has band bullet punch which does heafty amount to a lot of pokemon. In addition, it has meteor mash which can give it an attack boost. Plus with metagross's higher defense allows it to take a few more hits. The only advantages jirachi has is support in the form of wish, uturn, and healing wish. With a hyper offensive meta as this one. Metagross is definitely better which makes ice a lot worse.
Basically Jirachi advantage is water nuking with Tbolt + Psychic/Eball and metagross is just bulkier and made to take physical blows

seems like two specific roles they can play differently

because let’s be honest water is always super popular so having the CM wish set to kill Water is basically a win button so I don’t think you exaggerating the niche Jirachi has as minimal or small

You can also use Twave as decent supporting moves as while Zen head can miss and doesn’t have as high of a flinch chance it’s still decent options. But yeah lacking Iron head sucks but it clearly establish their roles and it’s not like you can’t use both
 
Assuming you run band weavile and mamo:
252 Atk Choice Band Weavile Ice Shard vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latios: 224-266 (74.4 - 88.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Mamoswine Ice Shard vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latios: 260-308 (86.3 - 102.3%) -- 12.5% chance to OHKO
252 Atk Choice Band Weavile Ice Shard vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latias: 204-242 (67.7 - 80.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Mamoswine Ice Shard vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latias: 236-278 (78.4 - 92.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Also, even with hail, the only OHKO is band mamo vs latios.

Here is why you are wrong when you said jirachi is better than metagross. JIRACHI LOST IRON HEAD. I don't care if it can pivot. Iron head gave jirachi the steel type move that constitute the scarf uturn, as well as thunder wave set. Without its most powerful weapon, jirachi has no niche on psychic beside specs/scarf special attacker with flash cannon as the best tool for ice. Metagross has band bullet punch which does heafty amount to a lot of pokemon. In addition, it has meteor mash which can give it an attack boost. Plus with metagross's higher defense allows it to take a few more hits. The only advantages jirachi has is support in the form of wish, uturn, and healing wish. With a hyper offensive meta as this one. Metagross is definitely better which makes ice a lot worse.
There's a few things wrong with this post.

1. Banded Weavile calcs are pointless when talking about Ice. Ice cannot afford to run banded Weavile unless you want to lose to anything at +1 speed; the only other mon above base 95 speed is froslass who shouldn't be running scarf. Scarf Weavile is the only way ice maintains speed control. Then the calcs look like this:

252 Atk Weavile Icicle Crash vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latios: 318-374 (105.6 - 124.2%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 Atk Weavile Throat Chop vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latios: 300-354 (99.6 - 117.6%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO

252 Atk Weavile Icicle Crash vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latias: 288-342 (95.6 - 113.6%) -- 75% chance to OHKO
252 Atk Weavile Throat Chop vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latias: 270-320 (89.7 - 106.3%) -- 37.5% chance to OHKO

2. Jirachi sees more usage than metagross on psychic for a good reason; it's the better SR setter. The only users of rocks on psychic are Claydol (questionable viability), pure psychic type (mew, azelf, mesperit, uxie), Steel type (jirachi, metagross, bronzong) or just bad (solrock, lunatune). Since psychic generally has better things to be doing than running claydol, solrock, lunatune, or any of the pure psychic types (because psychic wants to run great dual typed mons like gardevior/slowbro/lati@s/medicham/etc), this generally means that unless you want to run double steels, your steel type should be running rocks. Obviously you can run double steels or metagross + one of the aforementioned SR setters but this forces metagross to require specific partners. Jirachi is just the easier mon to build with.

Overall the post seems to indicate that you haven't built or played with the types you're talking about. Please take some time to think about what a type can/can't reasonably use before you comment!
 
One other thing in addition to the points made above:

Plus with metagross's higher defense allows it to take a few more hits.
Jirachi is 100/100/100 defenses.
Metagross is 80/135/80.

These are effectively the same physical bulk. Jirachi has more special bulk. If you bothered to run calcs you would discover that every relevant calc presents support Rachi as being bulkier than offensive Metagross.
 
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Acknowledging the posts above, I understand my mistakes. With this out of the way, lets move on to sth interesting.

In a previous post, I said that steel is mid/low-mid tier. I start to play it normally and had a bit of fun. HOWEVER, if people know me, they know I like to make Meme Teams. One set I discovered playing Gen8 mono was an offensive skarmory set. I then tweeked it to BDSP and started laddering with it. To my shock, it was not just decent, but really viable. Here is the set:

Skarmory @ Leftovers
Ability: Weak Armor
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant/Jolly Nature
- Roost
- Swords Dance
- Drill Peck/Brave Bird
- Rock Slide/Steel Wing/Night Slash/X-Scissor

Now the set I run is with rock slide, drill peck, and an adamant nature as I think that's the most viable one. First, with adamant nature, I still outspeed EVERY NON_SCARFED POKEMON in the entire game (discounting ninjask-notviable and regieleki-notinbdsp) and I can outspeed any scarf max speed plus speed nature pokemon with base 95 speed or below which is a super large majority of pokemon. With Jolly, even though you drop power, you outspeed max speed scarf plus speed nature pokemon with base 109 or less. This means that yes, you outspeed scarf chomp, scarf infernape, sacrf rachi, scraf raptor, scarf manaphy, scarf mence, scarf ninetail, scarf rapidash, the list goes on. However, almost none of these mons actualy run scarf, so I go adamant(I may be wrong, pleas tell me so I know about it). Set up is actually not THAT difficult. Bait a pokmeon to use a physical attack (not uturn) and sd on the switch. With skarm's immense defense, you should live 2 hits. One set up, not many teams can run over this pokemon. In addition, infernape available, steel suffers a lot. With this set, at least you have a chance.

Lets get to its counters:
Decently bulky mons: The biggest issue is skarm's slightly below average attack which sometimes does not grant it the KO's needed. With speical attackers threatening an OHKO usually
Fast scarf mons: Bulky mons but without taking damage. It's preferable to have a bulky mon use switch move to bring scarfer in unless you want to sack some mons
Priority: With skarm's abundant resistances, most priority don't do that much. The best ones being mach punch, aqua jet, shadow sneak, succer punch, and most importantly vacuum wave. For how weak some of these moves are, teams often need more than one priority to kill skarm, leaving easy pickings for the rest of the team.
Ditto: imo the only counter when skarm has set up unless you want to run scarf jolly tauros which is a bit of a waste since you don't have LO


THOUGHTS???
 
Heya frends, got a couple ladder guys asking for this team so thought can as well share with anyone that likes to try it. It's very easy to use cause meta is mostly all offense rn :mad:


_______(click sprites for paste)

Bronzong and Cresselia are classic, SpD bronzong because everyone and their mothers want to fire blast it. Also double colbur berry cause Crawdaunt is scarier. Not much to add, every mon does good again a certain type and you can play aggro cause lunar dance Cresselia is there to full heal a sweeper.

Threats:
Monoghosts
Dark pulse flinches
High jump kick always missing
 
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So im not too good, but here's my team. Any and all advice/criticism is appreciated. I'll replace anyone but nidoking and chomp. All the sets are smogons auto-EV so actual EV spreads for hippowdon gliscor and gastro are appreciated!
:hippowdon: :nidoking: :garchomp: :gliscor: :gastrodon: :mamoswine:

:hippowdon:
Stealthrocker, whirlwind is because there is no toxic and phasing out nerds who think they can set up on you is funny. Overall good check to physical non waters/grasses.

:nidoking:
My favorite pokemon, it hits hard and I like it. Kinda why I made this team alongside chomp and Glisc.

:garchomp: A set cheesier than olive garden pasta. It's just really funny to swords dance in front of an ice beamer or a slower dragon and pull it off.

:gliscor: I don't think monoground has any other good hazard removers? I definitely want to run a more defensive set but idk what EVs to run, help would be appreciated.

:mamoswine: Everyone's favorite pig-mammoth thing. Helps with water and other ground MU a lot, and carries against dragons.

:gastrodon: Obligatory bulky water. I would run swampert, but I really need the storm drain to stay competitive in the mono-water matchup, especially since everyone and their grandma uses mono-water
 
Now that the BDSP kickoff tour has ended, I thought it would be fun to compile a usage stat sheet (with lots of help from Ticken) to see what's meta and help people kind of see what's being used. Although Water and Psychic make up most of the games and Dragon used the same 6 mons each time it was brought, I still think this tier is fun.
Yeah I was gonna drop a long form post on my thoughts of bdsp and breakdown some common build types, sets, and what’s meta. I built most of the teams the Zig Zag Goons used and got a lot of ladder games to see what most types have been running
 
Thoughts on BDSP metagame

Honestly, this tier is very very limited. This is especially apparent on types like dragon, grass, rock, and electric. Despite this, I still find this tier very fun to play and build for and it's been helpful to me for getting back into mons after taking a break for an entire generation. Moving on, as mentioned by cy Water and Psychic are by far the best types in the meta. In my opinion, whether a type is good or not is measured by whether it can beat both or at least one of these types. Rain is giga busted and there's pokemon on both these types that invalidate half of the types available and prevent them from gaining any usage whatsover.

Tier 0 Threatlist:

Sample Moveset:
Latios (M) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Surf / Energy Ball / Shadow Ball
- Draco Meteor
- Psychic
- Thunderbolt

The combination of great typing, ability, coverage, and high offensive stats, make Latios unquestionably the best pokemon in the tier. Specs Draco Meteor has no switchins on types and with the combination of Latios's coverage and often being paired with healing wish support and breakers like banded medicham and banded metagross make Latios too difficult to deal with for some types, and even the ones that can deal with it, struggle to check it more than a couple times.


Sample Moveset(s):
Manaphy @ Salac Berry
Ability: Hydration
EVs: 252 HP / 108 SpA / 148 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Tail Glow
- Substitute
- Surf
- Energy Ball

Manaphy @ Leftovers
Ability: Hydration
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Tail Glow
- Ice Beam
- Surf
- Energy Ball

Manaphy's combination of bulk, typing, coverage and Tail Glow make manaphy a menace in this tier. With just surf and energy ball it can muscle past most of it's checks/counters and can solo the mirror matchup on it's own (which happens more often than not). Even dragons like latios don't like being worn down/fear an ice beam. Also helps that manaphy is usually paired with pokemon that can take on its checks like Empoleon, Feraligatr, Starmie, and Kingdra. If your team doesn't have a water check this thing will just steamroll through without much effort.


Sample Movesets:
Kabutops @ Choice Band
Ability: Swift Swim
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Aqua Jet
- Stone Edge
- Liquidation
- Knock Off

Kingdra @ Choice Specs
Ability: Swift Swim
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hydro Pump
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Draco Meteor

I couldn’t decide if whether I should just put Kingdra alone here, but considering how often Kabutops and Kingdra are paired together, I figured I’ll talk about both of them and rain as a whole. If you’re team does not have a water immunity, or a solid water answer you will straight up lose to rain. This forces some types to run subpar pokemon options or a straight up water immunity/dedicated water beater through this pair’s mere existence. Some of these are: lantern/rotom-mow on electric, cacturne on dark, articuno/mantine on flying, poliwrath/toxicroak on fighting, sub cm/specs jirachi, specs e ball/tbolt Latios, sub tail glow manaphy, hell even recently someone was using torterra on ground alongside gastrodon to give ground a shot in the matchup in the BDSP kickoff tour finals. These two are rain’s best swift swimmers and pair together extremely well, only checked by gastrodon off the top of my head, which will just lose to manaphy. Water being able to support these two, as well as both of them providing such offensive presence makes rain an incredibly difficult archetype to deal with.

Side notes: Notice how water has access to both rain and manaphy, it’s no wonder water had a ton of usage, alongside psychic in the bdsp kickoff tour. It also helps that’s both these tops are a lot more versatile than everything else.
 
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Now that the BDSP kickoff tour has ended, I thought it would be fun to compile a usage stat sheet (with lots of help from Ticken) to see what's meta and help people kind of see what's being used. Although Water and Psychic make up most of the games and Dragon used the same 6 mons each time it was brought, I still think this tier is fun.
If dark had a good MU into water....shame three of mono darks best mons secondary stabs don't hurt water too much
 
To help develop the metagame further, I'm just going to drop loads of solid teams I built. Thank me later :psyglad:

Edit: Nevermind, ended up dropping almost my entire builder :smogduck:

[Ghost] Specs Hex Gengar + Wisp Spam https://pokepast.es/103427ca458b46b1
[Poison] Discount Venusaur https://pokepast.es/3759afa5e1c05bd0
[Electric] Resto Chesto Def Rotom-Mow + Spdef Zapdos https://pokepast.es/7e74a292bbd45a48
[Fire] Rotom-Heat Screens
https://pokepast.es/2c85b7d0dcd1d6a1
[Steel] Sub CM Rachi + SD Lucario https://pokepast.es/f513e82629dd9941
[Water] Gastro Rain + Banded Azu https://pokepast.es/3f2991ee12c74c7f
[Flying] Yanmega + Sub DD Mence https://pokepast.es/d2d9ce2f8491e922
[Water] Rotom-Wash Screens https://pokepast.es/9dd0506f73e8561a
[Ground] Banded Sandslash Sand https://pokepast.es/c04b4f646f3a6480
[Ground] Scarf Torterra https://pokepast.es/7e8b4624d31dc7e8
[Flying] Specs Articuno https://pokepast.es/3c104bbdb6f91ae6
[Bug] Specs Yanmega https://pokepast.es/c047866d14a73664
[Fairy] Specs Garde + Band Granbull https://pokepast.es/e21cc66fa275fba9
[Steel] Scarf Mag + Scarf Tran https://pokepast.es/0cae13905c9d7688
[Fighting] Rest Talk Poliwrath https://pokepast.es/87690e2e9d3880aa
[Normal] Tauros + Specs PZ https://pokepast.es/5c5fa3914337b2be
[Water] Milotic Semi Stall https://pokepast.es/8415393cdce9e795
[Water] Gastrodon Rain + Rain Abusers https://pokepast.es/cd0edf5f82250fd0
[Water] Crawdaunt Balance https://pokepast.es/97b1419541fae0fa
[Psychic] CM Stored Power Latias https://pokepast.es/62a9bd791bf03ddf
[Water] Slowbro Balance https://pokepast.es/d72cb78507fea784
[Psychic] Banded Medicham + Specs Latios + NP Zam https://pokepast.es/cade15e2d04f14de
[Psychic] SD Gallade + NP Zam https://pokepast.es/e033a4da0c6df100
[Dragon] Screens Dragon https://pokepast.es/a9819ad01575c2e0
[Dragon] Specs Latios + Banded D Nite https://pokepast.es/ce9bdf80abc8a678
[Dark] Specs Houndoom + Banded Weavile
https://pokepast.es/b33195345d9a34ed
[Steel] Specs Jirachi Balance
https://pokepast.es/1c4b383a74dc4e24
 
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If dark had a good MU into water....shame three of mono darks best mons secondary stabs don't hurt water too much
Having to run Cacturne really kills you but at the second level only 4 out of 12 Dark teams at maximum had the capacity to run hazard control via Honchkrow or Skuntank. I doubt all 4 ran Defog Honchkrow, and while Drapion is night and day better than Skuntank, that only one person ran Skunk suggests to me that the community has decided that the current Dark meta is to forgo hazards, which to me is super strange considering how many matchups this costs you, especially when most of those teams aren't running Houndoom and Skarmory simply wins by clicking Spikes and avoiding Ttar. Seems like people are running Cacturne just to... end up conceding the Water matchup and lose to Steel as well. I had this discussion with Vodoom weeks back that while Sableye is good Dark's needs pretty much means it's a luxury you can't afford. I don't know if his thoughts have changed at all but I was very surprised to see Sableye on more teams than Drapion and Houndoom.

Ofc none of this matters as the type is abjectly terrible in BDSP but alas. Interesting but not surprising to see that the data bears out that only 7 types are playable.
 
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Kev

Part of the journey is the end
is a Community Leader Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnus
We have decided to ban Shaymin-Sky (and Arceus). Tagging Kris to implement

Also, for those complaining, there was a miscommunication it seems since SS council was not supposed to be tiering this. We will be putting together a council of people that are genuinely involved in this metagame
 
We have decided to ban Shaymin-Sky (and Arceus). Tagging Kris to implement

Also, for those complaining, there was a miscommunication it seems since SS council was not supposed to be tiering this. We will be putting together a council of people that are genuinely involved in this metagame
Glad this finally happened. Though it was fun to use brokens for a little while, having mono flying look like Ubers is wild:psywoke:
 
We have decided to ban Shaymin-Sky (and Arceus). Tagging Kris to implement

Also, for those complaining, there was a miscommunication it seems since SS council was not supposed to be tiering this. We will be putting together a council of people that are genuinely involved in this metagame
As an active player primarily within BDSP, and specifically the monotype because it's a lot of fun, I disagree with this decision to ban Shaymin-s. As discussed above, water and psychic types make up the majority of teams I see and honestly there are just way too many OP water types. Just to name a few, Feraligatr, rotom-w, starmie, the list goes on.
I enjoy using flying types and with Shaymin-s being taken away, one rotom-w can destroy the whole team, how is that fair? Gliscor is destroyed by hydro pump and just about every other flying type is taken out with electric moves.
There needs to be an answer to all of the many water types, and Shaymin was it. Now that it's banned, this leaves few options to answer those.
This needs to be overturned. Thanks for your consideration.
 
Being a relatively new player to the bdsp monotype tier, i have been seeing replays and played battles seeing the offensive power of flying teams. Strong attackers like staraptor and setuppers like salamence, dragonite, and gyarados makes using flying optimal. I had team made around this concept. here
:bw/salamence: :bw/skarmory: :bw/dragonite: :bw/gyarados: :bw/zapdos: :bw/gliscor:


The concept here is to lay spikes with skarmory, hopefully get down to sturdy and either get damage on the opponent or get the final layer of spikes. then many options are there to get in a setup pokemon, like gliscor or dragonite. both hindered by skarmory, salamence lures it and knockouts or it can draco meteor on other physical walls, like defensive gliscor or hippowdon. hopefully spikes are up so you can also roar with zapdos and get damage to either sweep with gliscor, scarf gyarados, or dragonite. zapdos is also useful for the water matchup, since the ice moves carried by those teams can deal with this team negatively. the lost of drizzle is useful as well, making that matchup easier. hopefully this team is good, also watch out for steels
:]
 
I know this is a dead tier but surely Gengar doesn't need to be banned, does it?
dont worry gengar was already banned. it has coverage, speed and nasty plot which would make it able to plow through teams easily with its powerful stabs. i'm sure it would've been too dangerous if it wasn't allowed in the same tier as when arceus and shaymin-s were unbanned.
 

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