Metagame NP: ZU Stage 3 - The Arrival - Combusken Unbanned @24

[Celever]

So I'd say the main Pokémon to fall far below expectations so far has been Lurantis. People were excited for a mono-Grass defogger because it looked neat for teambuilding, but I think it's ended up way too frail and slow to perform this role adequately. It needs full defense investment to perform its role as Defogger, which leads to it being a momentum killer and at that point you're better off using anything else with Defog like Vullaby or one of our several good spinners. But I think I found the role it's best at:


Lurantis @ Assault Vest
Ability: Contrary
EVs: 248 HP / 8 SpA / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
- Giga Drain
- Leaf Storm
- Knock Off
- Superpower

This Lurantis set has performed pretty well for me, but it's not very splashable. The role of this set is to be a cleaner on powerful offense teams, as it's the best mixed attacker we have thanks to it boosting both of its offenses. Max SpDef with Assault Vest means you should bring it in against a special attacker and 99% of the time use Superpower immediately to shore up its PhysDef, at which point it has good offensive presence on the physical side to potentially take out a counter to its special-sided Grass-Type moves. You also want to Leaf Storm ASAP so when you need to heal, it's strong enough to do the job.

Lurantis isn't good enough to poke holes in the opponent's team, but it's a nice option for cleaning up once your harder hitters have poked those holes as it's very good at capitalising on them. Having a nice mixed cleaner is nice for balance teams in particular, as this beats annoying mons for balance like Dusclops or Lickilicky regardless of which defense they're invested in.

 

[risin_glory]

It needs full defense investment to perform its role as Defogger, which leads to it being a momentum killer and at that point you're better off using anything else with Defog like Vullaby

Lurantis @ Assault Vest
- Giga Drain

I knew defog is a waste of slot on lurantia due to various reasons and so have been using leftovers leaf storm/superpower/knock off/synthesis with the same spread.
But man this assualt vest giga drain is cool I like it!! Great thinking.

 

[S1nn0hC0nfirm3d]

This post isn't worth too much but I wanted to write something down anyways. With the holidays, lack of any serious tours, and most importantly the huge shift next month, there’s not much of a need to open discourse on broken or centralizing Pokemon. Okay, but regardless, I don’t mind posting about some of the conversations I’ve had or heard about the meta.

Liligant:

Before I even mention terrain or offense, there’s Liligant just of itself worth talking about. Quiver Dance sets have a lot of variability and really limited checks and counters, if any of the latter at all. Pollen Puff is pretty consistent coverage, and Sleep Powder kind of works to put targets like Vespiquen out of commission to help other sweepers like Falinks. If that’s all there was to Liligant, maybe it be okay, but Electric Terrain has a handful of little internal and external buffs that may just push it over the edge. Internally, Liligant can run Eseed to raise its Def and make it much harder for priority users and physical scarvers to revenge kill. Then there’s Nature Power, which turns into Thunder Bolt, and is absolutely devastating against Vespiquen, Vullaby, Fire-types, and most Steel-types. This leaves only Roselia and a limited amount of super bulky special walls like Lickylicky and Regice as potential checks; some walls like Dusclops and Type: Null can’t effectively Toxic stall with Electric Terrain up as they rely on Rest for recovery, and that fails. It could even go LO and Modest and wallbreak without the boosts, it’s pretty strong for the tier.

Terrains:

This is mostly for Electric Terrain, but a lot of abusers can benefit from either or. Besides Liligant, there’s the Psychic-type Stored Power sweepers, Unburden Driftblim, and terrain-specific abusers like Rising Voltage Manectric and Grassy Glide Lurantis. Its tough here because it’s hard to say if there’s a single abuser that’s broken, or if it’s the playstyle that’s unhealthy. Rain was proven to be okay as it is now with Drednaw out of the picture, but would the terrains be fine with something like Liligant gone? I’m uncertain, but overall I don’t think either terrain is over the top broken atm. Offense in general is pretty centralizing, and the terrains are just a few small elements in making offense really good.

Toxic Spikes

It’s funny for me to bring up Toxic Spikes a second time for being centralizing in ZU, as the original time I had it was when Mareanie first dropped down from PU. Mareanie again is super popular and invaluable for both Toxic Spikes itself and it clearing opposing Toxic Spikes. There’s also Pincurchin, Roselia, and Vespiquen that can set it fine, but the top user surely is Mareanie. This is probs in part due to its defensive typing and recovery, but don’t forget that Knock Off is incredible so that any Heavy-Duty Boots users can become vulnerable to Toxic Spikes as well, so removers like Avalugg and Lurantis aren’t exactly safe switching into it. Even with hazard control being arguably the best that it has ever been rn, Toxic Spikes is still dominating games and should never go unprepared for in the teambuilder.

That’s all I have to say for now. This December meta has been pretty fun, and the unexpected mid-month shift turned out to have some healthy additions for the most part. Here’s to hoppin January goes well for us :)

Bonus sets I made / saw for new mons: https://pokepast.es/f38e1f0964799b81