hi everyone. in this post imma just go through my general thoughts on the meta now that the tour is over, as well as post some teams/sets that i came up with that we, the pandas used, and perhaps some that weren't brought but are probably worth mentioning. this time around i really did try to make an effort to try and horse sv throughout the entire tour cause 1) i felt like it 2) being more "ahead" than the other teams puts you at a large advantage and 3)
Floss was useless so i kinda had to. to start things off, this is what my personal tier list on the types are. (important: this is my opinion!)
Personal Type Ranking:
S: Dragon
S-: Dark / Steel
A: Fire / Flying / Fairy
B: Fighting / Water / Ground / Ghost
C: Poison / Psychic / Normal / Ice
D: Grass / Bug / Rock / Electric
S:
im sure everyone can agree dragon is by far the best type. very little consequences for running it, you
really have to prep for it if you want to beat it and even then you can still lose to it due to how flexible it is. it has at least 9 viable mons that you can justifiably fit on a team and feel good about bringing, and all those mons cover a wide variety of types. really can't say anything bad about it.
S-:
next, dark and steel. these 2 types are, in my opinion, pretty consistent at beating dragon (especially dark), but fall short from the same tier as dragon due to their heightened struggles with the rest of the type pool. dark imo is very underrated if you mess around with it in the builder and put some actual thought into it, and not assume putting pao and gambit on the same team means you're gonna win every game ever. prepping for other dark teams is pretty much memes (pao speed ties) but id say can be fine vs the other types. steel can be a bit shaky vs dragon but still fairly doable if you play well. i think it has a chance vs nearly everything except fire, and even then it can still technically win vs it.
A:
fire is capable of beating essentially everything except a well played ground and dragon. a consistent way of beating ground is probably possible but i don't think it has been explored yet; ogerpon typically isn't enough. this mu hasn't been played since w5 iirc so maybe im wrong. dragon feels possible but a consistent way of beating it hasn't been done yet i don't think, and being owned by dragon in this meta hurts it. flying can beat dragon if you play extremely well and the other dude mess up or never flinch your mons with baxcalibur. sd baxcalibur is nightmares but flying can deal with other variants of bax just fine probably. id probably go as far as saying its capable of beating all the types, just can't do it all simultaneously, so you'll have to pick and choose what you lose to. fairy i think is pretty ass usually but its capable of beating nearly everything, just not simultaneously.
B:
the stuff in this tier and under id probably never bring to a tour (as of now at least) but something has to be b tier, so yeah. fighting vs dragon heavily relies on them having a lati or not. can be potentially ass vs dark/steel/fairy which hurts it but it does decent vs a couple of stuff i suppose. water i for sure think is trash, i struggle figure trying to beat out what it beats sometimes. i feel like at most it can only beat like 4 types at once which is... lol. ground was good but fell off a bit once people realize fairy is in fact real and jolly glaive rush baxcalibur is an epic pokemon. its a pretty one dimensional type which people have people quickly adapted to; if you asked me how good ground is ~w5 i probably would have said its the 2nd or 3rd best type. with that being said, this type definitely has potential to be messed around with. i think sandless variants can be real cool, even sand variants can be messed with by using a gliscor. ghost is probably inbetween b and c but its closer to the b types. it will lose hard vs the s- types but its pretty decent into dragon, just have decent gouging fire counterplay. very hard to play with sometimes but i figured its worth a mention.
C/D:
these types are either for sure ass or just not experimented with enough and can probably be good. if you know me i do not entertain anything below b so... them shits are not getting talked about.
overall, i don't think this meta is as bad as people say it is but it can kinda suck to build sometimes. playing it can be fun though. while this isn't necessarily healthy (to some at least) i like the idea of just bringing dragon every game and expect to win 80% of the time. i think there are some match ups that involve actual thought which is always a good thing.
now, onto the teams. i mostly spent time talking in sv/natdex so they will be the focus of this post. i messed around with threat a little bit in later weeks of the tour but wont be going into them cause 1) its only rly played in mwp anyway and 2) i griefed sometimes.
SV:
https://pokepast.es/58d315aa38279923 
i think we used this lol. you can run several variants of dragon; its pretty hard to find a combination that sucks. i only have 3 in my saved builder so im just posting the one i liked the most. sub np hydrei is a nice way of dealing with steel since you can't expect gouging fire to do all the work. great way of dealing with water since you sub on pex and some of the other mons on the type. ground immune so band exca wont beat you. jolly sd glaive bax is the only bax set imo, outspeeding mamo is too important + you want to get the most from bax in mirrors as possible, so you at least want to tie other baxs. best mon on the type by far, you can never drop this. spa scarf pult > phys scarf pult due to the existence of archaludon. can also revenge exca in sand. speaking of archaludon, this is lowkey the 2nd or 3rd best mon on the type. excellent rocker, lives all types of stupid shit. latios also functions as a way of not losing to eq spam but can switch into landoi which is always nice. prevents you from getting destroyed by fighting. gouging fires impact on the metagame is crazy, usually can't drop it.
https://pokepast.es/aec7bc86cac60a3a 
floss used this vs tmoi w7. i saw suspense use these np tr hoopa which was cool so... i stole it. hazard removal is pretty whatever on dark for me cause mandi is kinda shit at removing hazards anyway and having uturn + toxic on the same set seemed real nice. respectable band exca switch in and can toxic bloodmoon which is always convenient. as mentioned before on the dragon writeup, hydrei is great vs water/steel/ground. muk + kingambit should? make you okay vs fairy. i really like psy fangs > sword on pao due to how much it can save you vs water/poison/fairy/fighting. you will lose to other darks but its basically a 50/50 with sword anyway, and crash/sucker/sacred pao isn't a reliable steel answer anyway.
https://pokepast.es/4f9d935fde413883 
ikiarihs used this in the finals vs clean. i really liked the np tr hoopa idea so i tried it again. you can't have sableye + mandi on the same team without the team feeling super passive so i ended up with this. typically, no mandi leads to sableye + tinglu since you need a way of dealing with gouging fire/exca/other things. twave on sab can surprise people pretty hard, night shade so you don't lose to zama. tinglu can be heavy slam > eq to somewhat own fairy. no hydrei/mandi -> air balloon gambit so you don't lose to eq. pretty efficient at making progress vs ground as well. this pao covg is excellent -> its here again. no mandi means you need a goltres/hoopa so you don't lose to bloodmoon off the bat. i went with hoopa as its just better all around and the np tr set is just solid. does wonders vs water/flying/fighting. skarm switch in that isn't named sableye but isn't gliscor food. roaring moon is underrated on dark imo, due to its ability to deal with fire pretty well. this set is pretty ratchet but i think its what makes it worth it. switching this in on scarf shifu's strikes means its gonna be in range of +2 suckers from pao/gambit, making the rain match up super doable. another cool thing about helmet moon is that it fucks up skarm real bad, which makes pao/gambit a lot scarier. no1 really knows what moon is gonna do on dragon so you can just bluff scarf and surprise dd on something and just be in a nice position just off of that. one of the teams i really enjoyed making, recommend trying it out for sure cause its pretty fun. this may be kinda hard to use though
https://pokepast.es/fb016650d1d3d7d4 
i think skarm used this w6, maybe someone else as well i don't remember too much. this is fairly standard and can probably be improved upon. i always thought hatt was ass but it might not be bad over clefable. physically biased mixed life orb valiant is really cool, definitely worth experimenting with over ebelt. stop running max speed azu they don't need to be that fast!! prim set can be messed around with. specs flutter is prob the best flutter item, covg is whatever
https://pokepast.es/a703ff13a4945bdd 
skarm used this in semis i believe. ive experimented with stall flying a little bit throughout the tour, but this is the only one we ended up using. facade/knock glis so you don't run out of pp vs other flying. fire fang/knock off might be worth experimenting with so you can really own steel. i think gyaras alright, i typically use mandi over it, can't remember 100% why i had gyara but.. ye. icicle spear articuno cause goltres was scary but the pp felt nice and i don't think you absolutely need sub. av torn is just a good mon, kinda prevents u from getting owned by ghold.
there's a lot more i can post but im too lazy to write about them + we probably didn't bring them anyway but if you're interested i can share, just pm me
NatDex:
i started building this tier a little bit w5 cause it seemed pretty cool with the new mons and kaiser got a lil bit busy during this time.
https://pokepast.es/28354e18f9e4cd73 
kaiser used this w5. this is pretty much my take on flying. that balance stuff never really seemed appealing to me but they're probably fine. goltres seemed super good and naturally fits into offense so i wanted to try that. zdark goltres > z fly just feels like it covers more. can justifiably run air slash cause hurricane and z fiery wrath have similar targets. gyarados is a pretty underrated mon on flying in general imo. metas where water/ground are used -> gyara shines. metas specifically where gyara learns pwhip makes it a pretty nice mon over the usual dnite. water resist as well, neutrality to ice which distinguishes it from dnite. auto steela fits naturally into offense, put that here as well cause you need a steel anyway. very nice vs dragon/fairy/ground/psychic. scarf enam gets hwish, putting it here is a no brainer. maero is decent as a hazard remover, though the surprise factor of it removing hazards is what can make it effective. similarly, im sure everyone forgot lando got taunt so it makes its appearance here to make gliscor less annoying, prevent rocks sometimes, and check gouging fire. aside from steel, im pretty confident about this team doing well into the commonly used types
https://pokepast.es/9a9d84756d4bf715 
spell used this w6. this dragon features a lot of cool sets that i think can be implemented into many ndm dragon teams today. no bax means you have to do some stupid shit for your ground counterplay and well, this kyurem is the stupid shit. its not gonna beat ground on its own of course but it will do a lot of work. switching into mamo is super convenient, and can emergency live a hit from band exca. will own water as well since bpress will do a good amount to empoleon should they run it. great weavile answer too if you ever run into that. this kyurem isn't dark food really which is a convenient thing. this malt is super fire. i think all dragons run arch as their way of dealing with dd mega alt, and will be trashed pretty hard when they run into an spa agility alt instead. should they have a hoodra, willowisp shuts it down pretty nicely. a cool thing about wilo malt is that people always expect it to be dd, so they always switch in their steel into it, allowing you to burn it, which benefits pretty much everything on the team. amazing vs dark/dragon, and the threat of malt being dd can be used to your advantage. being able to burn things you normally aren't able to is nice as well. sub dd moon cause the psy mu can be stupid, also back up wincon vs water in case kyurem gets overwhelmed. arch is arch, can't leave home without it. same with gouging fire, though it should be flare blitz > heat crash. scarf hydrei so that you don't lose to eq in case you're inclined to mega your alt, although this can easily be something like scarf dnite/lati etc.
https://pokepast.es/722280ed812691e2 
dugza used this in the finals tb vs dieu. this is pretty much a crackhead version of the team above, with scarf arch so you can run a dd dnite. this dnite set was only used cause bloodmoon was allowed, otherwise always use tpunch > low kick. the roaring moon is supposed to boost speed in sun not attack so change that if you ever plan on using it (remove attack and put it to def)
https://pokepast.es/126a1060ad0772e5 
i made like 7 different dark teams but we didn't get to use any of them, though this was considered in semis. this team is pretty fun not to post though. im a big weav fan, id even entertain using it in regular sv mono even if pao exists. that's how much i like the mon. excellent vs dragon/ground/flying. dbond msharp is unexpected and can catch something, benefitting goltres/weavile or whatever. meowscarada is probably the best scarfer on the type especially now that it got axel. specs ninja got sludge wave which is a nice way of dealing with fairy. goltres is amazing, always use it on dark. hazard removal is easier to come around in natdex mono but its still a tinglu so it was put in. can soft check most things cause the things so damn bulky.
i built a bit more teams than the ones shown here so if you're interested, as always pm me
CAP:
Kyurem @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Pressure
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 12 HP / 216 SpA / 220 SpD / 60 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Freeze-Dry
- Earth Power
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
this was pretty much my only contribution to cap for the entire season. water was on some justice league shit so this was my way of dealing with it. the strap used this in semis on ice, and sificon used this in the finals vs fog.
Conclusion:
first off, grats on glameows for winning the tour. thank you floss for managing with me, and thank you pandas for making the tour fun. this post mostly serves as a resource so hopefully to those who read it that you can get something out of this, perhaps even look at this tier at a different way than you currently do. as always, thank you for reading and ill see you all in the next tour
would've done a lot better vs Water thanks to Neutralising Gas stopping Arghonaut's Unaware and Gunk Shot OHKOing Cresceidon, not to mention that I was made aware of a Spdef SD Snaelstrom capable of beating Water so ye, not my best team. I do not even have the paste for this since I've revised my Bug teams.
are notable additions. I went the regular Venomicon, it's a good specially defensive pokemon without being passive thanks to Nasty Plot. It also can boost its already high defence with Stamina. The rest of the team is standard Flying procedure (
and 
and even 
as a ground immune so it wasn't just clicking EQ 6 times.
