Metagame Let's Go OverUsed Discussion & Resources

[Eve]

Hi! As most of you probably know by now, we did indeed ban Mega Alakazam. I wanted to post some thoughts about the new metagame, starting with the six most used Pokemon. I will be referencing usage stats from the first three Rounds of the ongoing MZam Ban Tournament in this post.


Non-negotiable as ever, with both having near-100% usage. Melmetal feels maybe a little bit less vital and Mew maybe a bit more, but I'd still use them both on every single team, and Melmetal being less necessary defensively in some matchups just means it's freed up to mash buttons. I should note that setup Mew variants, especially Nasty Plot, have absolutely become more common and successful, and you will need a plan for handling it.


Zapdos stocks have gone up a substantial amount, taking it from being the #3 Pokemon (2/3 of teams) to being the #3 Pokemon (3/4 of teams). Other Ground-types than ADug are a lot more viable without having to fear Mega Alakazam OHKOing them, and they're generally easier for Zapdos to play around thanks to it outspeeding them. The Water Megas becoming more prominent helps too, and helps secure its defensive role over Starmie, who was encroaching on it slightly in the prior metagame. Zapdos can also choose to anchor your team against Zapdos and Eggy with Drill Peck if you want it to. It's generally far harder to justify not using Zapdos now imo, and that's reflected in the jump in usage it's enjoyed.


Scrap what I just said about other Ground-types! Apparently this thing is now even more spammed than its previous 40%ish average usage, with an unweighted usage of 58.09% prior to Round 4, and a usage of above 65% in specifically Round 3. This confuses me a lot- it's a very good Pokemon and still deserves to be the most used Ground by a decent margin, but I don't really see how this meta state favours it so much more than the previous one where it was even more obviously the best Ground. I'm interested to see how this holds up, and whether it's just a comfort thing.


I am not surprised to see this being the most used Mega by a large margin. Why? It is fast AND strong. Need I say more


It seems that Psychic is now near-mandatory on Starmie thanks to Venusaur's increased prominence, and the same is true for Thunderbolt due to Mega Gyarados. This means that Starmie basically only has one set right now- Water STAB, Psychic, Thunderbolt, and Recover- but fortunately that set is absolutely fantastic, ripping through a lot of teams with minimal effort. Starmie feels a bit less useful defensively right now but just as useful as ever offensively, and absolutely deserving of its Top 6 usage. Maybe you could drop Recover for Ice Beam or Thunder Wave to become even scarier.

Other thingies outside the top 6 usage:


The other megas of serious consideration, ordered by usage. I think that Blastoise is the #2 Mega by a slight margin, and that ZardX is easily the worst of this bunch. The three between are rather hard for me to rank and I'd probably put them in the same rank on a VR. I should note that there is quite a disparity in winrates among this bunch; 64.29%, 37.50%, 50.00%, 70.59%, and 55.56% respectively. Poor Venu, I still believe in it...


The slow Grounds that were previously put out of a job are now kinda back! I think Rhydon is the best of these, despite Nidoqueen having more usage- its solid MAero matchup and general deadliness really shouldn't be understated, and it's pretty splashable as a Zapdos answer that basically guarantees progress. Nidoking is very underrated and should be used more, its Speed tier above the bulky Megas and power and coverage are so good. Nidoqueen is Nidoqueen, it's ok.


Invest in these two immediately. Jolteon has won 8/10 matches, while Vaporeon has won 7/8. Big threats.


Alolan Muk's usage has taken a pretty substantial dip, as has its winrate- it now sits in a similar ballpark to Snorlax, who it used to convincingly outperform in most regards, on both metrics. I think this is somewhat of an anomaly and both of these Pokemon will recover their winrates, especially with their solid setup Mew and Starmie matchups, but I wouldn't be shocked if their usage stayed substantially lower without Mega Alakazam in the picture.

Regular, not Mega!

A small research paper

Regular Aerodactyl continues to stand apart from every other Pokemon with a legal Mega Evolution- in fact, it's the only one that has been used alongside other Mega Pokemon at all so far. Its main claim to fame is as a Stealth Rock lead. What does it do to stand out? Quite a lot, actually.

Pros

• Set up Stealth Rock safely. No Taunt Mew troubles, no nothing- if you don't have a Mega Aerodactyl of your own, you aren't preventing it. It's the safest Rocker bar Mew, although it may get KOed for its troubles.
• Lets you run other Mew sets. Like any non-Mew rocker, the main selling point is that you get to run a scarier Mew set than the standard Rocker, whether that's one with Will-O-Wisp or a setup variant.
• Sometimes it's a revenge killer. 130 Speed and serviceable Attack lets it do things in the midgame if it stays alive.
• Taunt other Stealth Rock users. Fairly self-explanatory, you outspeed and stop them. You can also Taunt stuff that wants to set up on you, and Taunting Mew to deny recovery can help offensive teammates a lot.
• It can be a backup Mega Evolution. Let's say your Mega doesn't enjoy the Beedrill matchup. Having the option to use Mega Aerodactyl can help with that sometimes!

Cons

• Very frail. Most Pokemon with decently strong super-effective moves can OHKO Aerodactyl, and Mew can 2HKO with Psychic. As such, you will typically be playing a Pokemon down in exchange for Stealth Rock (and, hopefully, denying the opposing Rocker). This, in combination with its own weakness to Stealth Rock, means that if it doesn't get Stealth Rock up at lead, it may struggle to find an opportunity.
• Mind games. This results from Aerodactyl's frailty. Do you Taunt the Mew as it predicts that and clicks Psychic twice? Do you just Stealth Rock expecting this? Generally the former is a better plan, but what about versus something like Rhydon? In that case, it may be better to Stealth Rock first to guarantee it actually happens. There's a strong disconnect between your best case play and your safest play a lot of the time with Aerodactyl.

Here's an overview of all 7 matches so far featuring Regular Aerodactyl, in order to demonstrate what it does in practice:

• R1 ImJustSamu vs. LpZ IV sets up Stealth Rock, does 55% to Mega Blastoise before going down thanks to a Rock Slide flinch. This set frees up Mew to run Psychic Taunt Wisp Roost, which could have carried LpZ to victory bar some unfortunate WoW misses. Loses
• R1 diegoyuhhi vs. Flying Beagle temporarily denies Mew from setting Stealth Rock, sets its own, does 40% to Rhydon before going down. This allows Flying Beagle to run CM Mew which utterly dominates the lategame, and the Rocks help play around Zapdos in the midgame. Wins
• R2 Dribbowl vs. LpZ IV denies Mew from setting Stealth Rock for a long time, sets its own, and damages a few things while exerting pressure from its Speed tier. The Stealth Rock prove pivotal in helping handle MAero, Zapdos, and Cloyster. Wins
• R2 igiveuponaname vs. lily sets up Stealth Rock and immediately faints. Frees up Mew to run a CM set that is unfortunately helpless versus Mega Gyarados, as is the rest of Lily's unorthodox team. Loses
• R2 SoggyBagel64 vs. Flying Beagle sets up Stealth Rock and immediately faints. Frees up Mew to run Fire Blast which helps break down Melmetal for Flying Beagle's Mega Venusaur. Wins
• R3 gastalies vs. igiveuponaname sets up Stealth Rock, takes Mew down to 59% and almost KOes Alolan Dugtrio before fainting. Provides strong early momentum that igiveuponaname capitalises on fantastically. Wins
• R3 A Welcome Guest vs. Mimikyu Stardust isn't sent out until the mid-lategame, meaning Mimikyu Stardust never gets Stealth Rock up. This is not ideal versus MAero and results in a loss. Loses

7 uses gives Aerodactyl a usage of 5.15% prior to Round 4, on par with Gengar, and a winrate of 57.14%. It is worth noting that nobody has chosen to Mega Evolve their Aerodactyl instead of their main Mega candidate thus far.

That's all for now- I plan to gather strong performers and consistently good players together in the near future in order to update our resources for the new metagame, especially our Viability Rankings and Sample Teams. Stay tuned, and feel free to post your thoughts on the new meta :)

 

[Samu77]

This place rarely get's attention so I'm posting something here, about my favorite Pokemon in the tier: Vaporeon.

This thing may be the most unspectacular looking Pokemon of all time but this thing to me is the savoir of every build I make. It lost Baton Pass, it lost Hidden Power, it even lost your boy Wish, so why is this thing so good to me? In short, it's always doing something valuable.

First let's look at these stats:
HP: 130
Attack: 65
Defense: 60
Special Attack: 110
Special Defense: 95
Speed: 65

In a meta with only the Kanto Dex and it's Extensions, these are some pretty dang good stats. The distribution is fairly solid too, high HP distributed in that golden 525 BST means that you get better stats all around since the numbers don't have to be so crunched between. In fact only 12 Pokemon (discounting Mega's) are actually beating that number, a fair amount of them being weak to Rocks and not having the tools to function well independently. In a meta with no abilities, items or especially EV's, Stats are a really big deal. While of course low base stat mons do exist in LGPE OU (Dugtrio certainly isn't breaking any records), it's a pretty big deal here. For reference, these stats let it take a lot of hits, most notably

Zapdos Thunderbolt vs. Vaporeon: 128-152 (62.4 - 74.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO (100.00% chance to 2HKO after accuracy)

Zapdos can't OHKO this thing, even after SR, so getting rid of this thing quickly is out of the question. And if it's taking this it's taking a lot of other things as well.

Water is famously one of the best types that's ever done it throughout all of Pokemon, and in LGPE it's still one of the best. Water Stab is notoriously hard to switch into in this tier, and Vaporeon clicking Surf can actually be fairly annoying to deal with due to the high special attack it has. The only mon that can reliably take the move that doesn't just get smacked by Ice Beam (although not all of them choose to run that) is Venusaur, and the non-Mega variant doesn't even come close to OHKOing it (not that Vaporeon is staying in against Venu regardless). That Water-Typing also makes it one of the best resists to one of the scariest moves in the game: Double Iron Bash. While Vaporeon still won't win the the MU if it switches into DIB raw on Melmetal, it's going to get two Surf's off if it does, and a Melmetal for Vaporeon trade for the Vaporeon player is almost always worth it. Vaporeon also threatens out Rhydon, a mon that has been rising in popularity as of late and doesn't really even mind Earthquake that much nor can the Substitute from Rhydon threaten to OHKO it with Megahorn, unlike Starmie. While odds of it getting taken out by two Dugtrio EQs after Rocks is high, if coming in on Rock Slide Dugtrio always gives Vaporeon a free Surf. All of this is just ONE move too. Like Water, Ghost is an incredible offensive type and Shadow Ball does, maybe not amazing, but certainly not negilgable damage to everything it hits, most notably it eventually tells Mew to leave by virtue of it doing around half with the chance for Drops eventually getting the best of it as well as almost always KOing Starmie after Surf and Stealth Rocks. Yawn is the last trick and with how fast paced LGPE OU is, Sleep can be devastating. Couple that with the fact that one-shotting Vaporeon is impossible and if Vaporeon is dead set on it, something can be put to sleep by it if it just decides to click nothing but Yawn, while potentially rubbing in SR chip to the opponent if they try to dance around it too much.

Protect has sometimes been suggested over Ice Beam, so as to get the Yawn off without even being hit in retaliation but the OHKO on Exeggutor feels very nice to me as well as potentially catching a Zapdos switch (although that is rare). A freeze, while obviously unreliable, is often also a death sentence in this tier with no relevant Ice-Types or Lum Berries.

The main reason i love this mon is that is has, without fail, in every game I've used it, done something. Being an Aero check is already a decent niche and gives you insurance against the scariest Mega in the tier. Unlike Starmie and Kingler, it's not accuracy reliant on it's Water Stab, meaning every time you click a move with this mon it's going to hit. This might not sound like a big deal since people have been clicking Focus Blast for nearly 17 years now, but again with how fast-paced the tier is, missing the wrong move at the wrong time can be disastrous. This mon has always felt good to me and I think it's mad underrated.