Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v2 [Update on Post #5186]

[Just A Shroom God]

I think this meta game needs a lot of changes. For starters, we need to ban Iron Valiant. It has just too good of a typing to handle and it can just moon blast and delete everything. Also, we need to ban Heatran. Heatran can just trap you so easily and even if you U-turn or switch out it can just trap whatever you send in. Iron Moth is also very banworthy because it's just so hard to defeat because it can resist the best priority in the tier and also destroys things with its fire moves. Gholdengo should definitely be banned because it has too much bulk and recover and it can prevent you from removing hazards so u can't switch in anymore. Also Enamorus is just too fast and it does big damage also so ban it. Also corviknight is stinky and bad and it just eats hits so easily and retaliates like there's literally nothing in the tier that can break it. Moltres is also a flying type and can even burn you so ban that too. also Sneasler just swords dance and acrobatics all over you so need to ban it. Um also ceruledge is kinda strong I mean it has swords dance and priority and it can even heal itself with bitter blade and get faster with weak armor so even tho its UU it clearly needs to be booted. I hope you take all my opinions into account because I am a Pokemon master who is the best at Pokemon I mean for real whenever I play Pokemon I Pokemon all over my opponent's pokemon and you should listen to me and nobody else

-sincerely,
a completely unbiased and totally normal OU player with no ulterior motives whatsoever

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Ban Gholdengo and save the meta. I view it in a similar vein to Gen-6 mega Sableye where it isn’t in itself broken but warps the meta and hazard game so severely as to be a net negative to the tier. I don’t really know how this is even debatable at this point, Gholdnego is very close to being a perfect Pokémon. People are constantly whining about boots yet I rarely see anyone argue that the current hazard fiesta meta and extreme difficulty of removal is the reason for boots spam. Gholdengo is the single biggest bottleneck for team building, more so than even Gambit.

banning gholdengo won't increase the amount of viable hazard removal or decrease the amount of spikes setters, though. sure, defog will actually work when you click it, but with the proper positioning you can make that happen already. the real problems are more structural and can't be solved with simple tiering action. unless the dlc massively expands access to defog and/or introduces a new relatively widespread hazard-removing move, we're kinda stuck like this

 

[pika pal]

banning gholdengo won't increase the amount of viable hazard removal or decrease the amount of spikes setters, though. sure, defog will actually work when you click it, but with the proper positioning you can make that happen already. the real problems are more structural and can't be solved with simple tiering action. unless the dlc massively expands access to defog and/or introduces a new relatively widespread hazard-removing move, we're kinda stuck like this

I go back to mentioning Corviknight being a massive difference in and of itself, because there's no "positioning" to Gholdengo and its Defogging anyway. Gholdengo comes in absolutely free against Corviknight, with U-turning into a different teammate being the only play that doesn't stop Corv's momentum dead, much less make any miniscule progress.

Corv being able to Defog reliably wouldn't necessarily fix the Hazard situation, but it'd have a sure-as-hell noticeable effect on being able to deal with Hazards beyond taking everyone to the Shoe Store on a Big Elephant.

 

[ant4456]

not sure why it is so hard it is to understand that a good pokemon being able to Defog would actually make hazards easier to keep off the field

like what is this defeatist attitude where "only" one potentially top tier Pokemon being able to Defog doesn't make more team structures viable

a defogger with good matchups against a lot of pokemon with reliable recovery, pivoting and good stats

this feels so defeatist or disingenuous to remove all fault from the playerbase's choices

no, we caused this when we immediately realized Gholdengo was broken in the days with Flutter Mane and Chi Yu, then got amnesia for like 6+ months

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

I go back to mentioning Corviknight being a massive difference in and of itself, because there's no "positioning" to Gholdengo and its Defogging anyway. Gholdengo comes in absolutely free against Corviknight, with U-turning into a different teammate being the only play that doesn't stop Corv's momentum dead, much less make any miniscule progress.

Corv being able to Defog reliably wouldn't necessarily fix the Hazard situation, but it'd have a sure-as-hell noticeable effect on being able to deal with Hazards beyond taking everyone to the Shoe Store on a Big Elephant.

not sure why it is so hard it is to understand that a good pokemon being able to Defog would actually make hazards easier to keep off the field

like what is this defeatist attitude where "only" one potentially top tier Pokemon being able to Defog doesn't make more team structures viable

a defogger with good matchups against a lot of pokemon with reliable recovery, pivoting and good stats

this feels so defeatist or disingenuous to remove all fault from the playerbase's choices

no, we caused this when we immediately realized Gholdengo was broken in the days with Flutter Mane and Chi Yu, then got amnesia for like 6+ months

shh, if we acknowledge other solutions then game freak won't make a water-type rapid spin with scald distribution. their spies are everywhere

 

[Wapf]

shh, if we acknowledge other solutions then game freak won't make a water-type rapid spin with scald distribution. their spies are everywhere

Clearly we just need to acknowledge defog mold breaker hawlucha as the S tier threat it truly is

 

[G-Luke]

Did you even read my post?

So this isn't a one-liner, how is trick room doing in the meta? Would a semi-room strategy with say Ursa and Cress have any viability, or is that just a gimmick?

Yeah, and the point I am saying is it doesn't need a fair shot.

 

[ianlazerbeem]

I think this meta game needs a lot of changes. For starters, we need to ban Iron Valiant. It has just too good of a typing to handle and it can just moon blast and delete everything. Also, we need to ban Heatran. Heatran can just trap you so easily and even if you U-turn or switch out it can just trap whatever you send in. Iron Moth is also very banworthy because it's just so hard to defeat because it can resist the best priority in the tier and also destroys things with its fire moves. Gholdengo should definitely be banned because it has too much bulk and recover and it can prevent you from removing hazards so u can't switch in anymore. Also Enamorus is just too fast and it does big damage also so ban it. Also corviknight is stinky and bad and it just eats hits so easily and retaliates like there's literally nothing in the tier that can break it. Moltres is also a flying type and can even burn you so ban that too. also Sneasler just swords dance and acrobatics all over you so need to ban it. Um also ceruledge is kinda strong I mean it has swords dance and priority and it can even heal itself with bitter blade and get faster with weak armor so even tho its UU it clearly needs to be booted. I hope you take all my opinions into account

-sincerely,
a completely unbiased and totally normal OU played with no ulterior motives whatsoever

this is literally what the people who want to ban Garganacl sound like, "ban it because I don't know the 1000 ways of beating it"

 

[Goodbye & Thanks]

this is literally what the people who want to ban Garganacl sound like, "ban it because I don't know the 1000 ways of beating it"

I don't want to get into a Garganacl debate so please don't take this as me arguing in favor of Garg getting banned or anything, but I think that this logic is a little disingenuous. The meta has adapted to Garg via things like Covert Cloak (which is still almost always an inferior item that you're being forced to run in order to check Garg), Substitute, and Encore, but Garg is still excellent and was just one of the best performing mons in World Cup. There is enough variety to Garg sets (and the nature of Tera obviously exacerbates this, although I'm not taking a stance on Tera here either) that it's difficult to conclusively say that much simply beats Garg; for example, even something like Covert Cloak Gholdengo, which is presumably being used as a team's best answer to Garg, gets dominated by Tera Water Garg with Earthquake. Sure, there are some mons like Covert Cloak Gastrodon with Clear Smog that should beat essentially any Garg set, but you can find plenty of examples of irrelevant mons/sets that beat top tier mons (like how Dachsbun can pretty much counter Koraidon in Ubers). The problem with Garg to me is that it just feels incredibly "cheesy," kind of like Volcarona and Espathra did in OU; Garg feels more unhealthy to me than overpowered, if that makes sense. Sometimes you just get 6-0ed by a certain Garg set, and while you could say that a team should be built to answer the various sets it runs, this meta already has so many difficult mons/sets to check that it's putting even more strain on teambuilding and making it harder to check everything that you need to. I could be wrong about this but I think that may be part of the reason why HO/offense in general has been so prominent - it's easier to mostly ignore defensively checking so many things when you can instead stack threats that your opponent is more likely going to struggle to answer.

 

[Magcargo]

I don't want to get into a Garganacl debate so please don't take this as me arguing in favor of Garg getting banned or anything, but I think that this logic is a little disingenuous. The meta has adapted to Garg via things like Covert Cloak (which is still almost always an inferior item that you're being forced to run in order to check Garg), Substitute, and Encore, but Garg is still excellent and was just one of the best performing mons in World Cup. There is enough variety to Garg sets (and the nature of Tera obviously exacerbates this, although I'm not taking a stance on Tera here either) that it's difficult to conclusively say that much simply beats Garg; for example, even something like Covert Cloak Gholdengo, which is presumably being used as a team's best answer to Garg, gets dominated by Tera Water Garg with Earthquake. Sure, there are some mons like Covert Cloak Gastrodon with Clear Smog that should beat essentially any Garg set, but you can find plenty of examples of irrelevant mons/sets that beat top tier mons (like how Dachsbun can pretty much counter Koraidon in Ubers). The problem with Garg to me is that it just feels incredibly "cheesy," kind of like Volcarona and Espathra did in OU; Garg feels more unhealthy to me than overpowered, if that makes sense. Sometimes you just get 6-0ed by a certain Garg set, and while you could say that a team should be built to answer the various sets it runs, this meta already has so many difficult mons/sets to check that it's putting even more strain on teambuilding and making it harder to check everything that you need to. I could be wrong about this but I think that may be part of the reason why HO/offense in general has been so prominent - it's easier to mostly ignore defensively checking so many things when you can instead stack threats that your opponent is more likely going to struggle to answer.

Even adaptations to Garg's adaptations get adapted on.... maybe I need to explain.

In WCop, there were a lot of Thunderbolt Gholdengo. Thunderbolt is a pretty good move on it since it hits Samurott-H and Tera Water Garganacl for big damage. However, in the middle of WCop, we saw the legendary Tera Electric Garg, which handles Zapdos, in addition to this Gholdengo variant quite nicely. I am already seeing more Tera Electric Garg on the ladder, so I think this Tech is here to stay. Gholdengo enjoyers may need to go back to the drawing board to beat it (Tera Blast Ground? Lol).

Most counterplay to garg is either making you worse vs rest of the meta (cloak) or is positonal (bait out other Tera, get it to use non Salt Cure move for Encore, etc.)

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Most counterplay to garg is either making you worse vs rest of the meta (cloak) or is positonal (bait out other Tera, get it to use non Salt Cure move for Encore, etc.)

so you want garganacl banned because you have to pay attention and play around it?

 

[Moyashi]

so you want garganacl banned because you have to pay attention and play around it?

Mmm I love disingenous comments.

No one even mentioned banning garg or wanting it banned. They just pointed out how good it is in spite of attempts to respond to it.

 

[Jhang]

shh, if we acknowledge other solutions then game freak won't make a water-type rapid spin with scald distribution. their spies are everywhere

Jellicent just lurking in the shadows, patiently wringing it's tentacles for it's time to relive the Gen V OU glory days.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Mmm I love disingenous comments.

i would say something like "that explains why you make them so often" but your posts aren't disingenuous enough for me to diss. in the future, please be less honest so i have a witty comeback that makes sense

No one even mentioned banning garg or wanting it banned. They just pointed out how good it is in spite of attempts to respond to it.

and yeah, fair enough, i'm just so sick of people still arguing about garganacl instead of actual bullshit mons like gambit and valiant. the tier has real problems to focus on and we should be discussing those, how to deal with them, and how to avoid a repeat of the gambit suspect (my vote: just stop trying to solve problems with democracy)

Jellicent just lurking in the shadows, patiently wringing it's tentacles for it's time to relive the Gen V OU glory days.

i wonder if it would still run energy ball

 

[ant4456]

My issue with the idea of banning Garganacl is that it is currently one of the only Defensive Pokemon that do not just sit there and do nothing in the entire game. One of the only others being Ting-Lu. This is good to open up a lot more cores, as it's a Pokemon that offense cannot simply roll over with +2 Attacks, or setup on for free. However, it is still flawed as to not make this just a "Broken checks broken" argument.

It's very Tera reliant in a metagame where not being Tera reliant is a huge boon. That's part of why I think Baxcalibur is top five, it forces enemy Tera and doesn't generally need to Tera itself to break, though that isn't to say it doesn't Tera, that'd be absurd. Not needing to Tera to be reliable, however, is a fairly big advantage over several other breakers.

Garganacl almost always needs to Tera and it is not going to immediately break. It needs to either setup or get several free turns, for Salt Cure damage to pile up or to Curse up.

Substitute and Encore help it stay more passive than a Tera-reliant Pokemon wants to be, a well-timed Trick can basically destroy it. In my opinion, Garganacl is one of the easiest Pokemon to PP Stall in the entire game. Even SpDef Curse can take reliable damage post-Tera that forces it to Recover, and with no Regenerator and often no Heavy-Duty Boots? That PP is going, and it's going fast. Salt Cure is also not that hard to PP stall for a lot of fatter cores, though it has to play around Curse setting up to make it unwallable. I find this is not too hard as you can force it into Recover / Salt Cure cycles to keep up its pressure and not die, slowing down its ability to Curse up continuously.

Garganacl is a great Pokemon with a pretty busted ability and statline on paper, but its base Rock-Type and requirement for the opponent to basically sit on their ass, not play proactively, makes it an in my opinion fairly balanced presence.

I do not agree that the right Tera + set wins against prepared teams, which I can't say for other threats. Garganacl is actually pretty well-defined in its Tera Types and moves.

That's just my opinion though, and my first non-shitpost in weeks.

 

[Bakugames]

and yeah, fair enough, i'm just so sick of people still arguing about garganacl instead of actual bullshit mons like gambit and valiant. the tier has real problems to focus on

Talking about garg rn isn't suddenly giving everyone amnesia about gambit, people just like to talk about different topics. Especially right now as we don't really have anything to look forward to except the dlc itself. Gambit is probably gonna be one of the first radar pokemon as long as not every single new mon is broken enough to fill a slot anyway

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

as long as not every single new mon is broken enough to fill a slot anyway

i mean, i'm reasonably certain that dipplin and poltchageist will be balanced

…r-right?

 

[Moyashi]

Garganacl almost always needs to Tera and it is not going to immediately break.

Just to bring this up because this is a common misconception, but while there are some match ups where it may want to tera sooner, garg does not NEED to tera immediately, if at all in every game. If this was truly the case, it wouldn't be nearly as good as it is and be much harder to build with. There have been a fair number of games where it puts in immense work without even terastilising, qnd its base typing is very useful vs Pokemon like Zapdos, moltres and pivot Cinderace, as well as defensive mons like Skeledirge. Helpful vs Dragapult and Iron Moth too.

and yeah, fair enough, i'm just so sick of people still arguing about garganacl instead of actual bullshit mons like gambit and valiant.

I mean people still talk about it because, like it or not, garg is still one of the most warping pokemon in the metagame requiring specific counterplay to comfortably handle.

 

[MattC (Banned)]

You know, I said I'd play this meta after HOME shit calmed down

... I haven't played OU since pre HOME

And honestly, I don't plan on getting into this metagame even after DLC 1 & 2. Not hard to see why with the copius amount of sheer power in the metagame

 

[matte]

Talking about garg rn isn't suddenly giving everyone amnesia about gambit, people just like to talk about different topics. Especially right now as we don't really have anything to look forward to except the dlc itself. Gambit is probably gonna be one of the first radar pokemon as long as not every single new mon is broken enough to fill a slot anyway

They would NEVER make a electric special sucker punch with piority..

right? tbh, if raging bolt has the bulk or speed (or both yk its pokemon), It might be pretty good. (nasty plot + thunderclap?) burns don't effect spa damage and its immune to para...

 

[MattC (Banned)]

They would NEVER make a electric special sucker punch with piority..

right? tbh, if raging bolt has the bulk or speed (or both yk its pokemon), It might be pretty good. (nasty plot + thunderclap?) burns don't effect spa damage and its immune to para...

As long as it doesnt have Supreme Overlord, we won't have a special Kingambit

...

Hopefully

 

[MetaSkipper]

As long as it doesnt have Supreme Overlord, we won't have a special Kingambit

...

Hopefully

Yeah, instead of getting a boost from having dead teammates, you'll get it for having the sun up or a specific held item. So at least it's more restrictive... I think.

 

[Athyestic]

On the topic of Kingambit, many people cite Encore as one of the primary ways to handle it. So…
Kingambit @ Mental Herb
Ability: Supreme Overlord
Tera Type: (its Kingambit do what you like)
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Sucker Punch
- Kowtow Cleave
- Swords Dance
- Iron Head
While this doesn’t solve all of its problems with Encore, it may allow it to turn the tides on like, encore Dragonite or Valiant if that’s your endgame plan vs Kingambit or something.

Definitely not it’s best item but if it can run lum berry it can probably run Mental Herb.

 

[Ehmcee]

On the topic of Kingambit, many people cite Encore as one of the primary ways to handle it. So…
Kingambit @ Mental Herb
Ability: Supreme Overlord
Tera Type: (its Kingambit do what you like)
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Sucker Punch
- Kowtow Cleave
- Swords Dance
- Iron Head
While this doesn’t solve all of its problems with Encore, it may allow it to turn the tides on like, encore Dragonite or Valiant if that’s your endgame plan vs Kingambit or something.

Definitely not it’s best item but if it can run lum berry it can probably run Mental Herb.

Why must you release this into the world...


The fact it also blocks taunt definitely helps, especially in scenarios where you have final mon Kingambit and are looking to end game sweep by getting an SD up. Def not revolutionary, but surely a tech option that seems at least decent.

 

[Cheryl.]

Kingambit has a lot of lowkey powerful item choices that go very overlooked. One of my favorite techs with it in recent memory is using Chople Berry on it to minimize the thought process of Low Kick Kingambit dittos. Gambit's fat enough that even a 5 allies boosted Low Kick (at +0) isn't one shotting it from full if it's a max speed Gambit, and Adamant at least has a chance not to kill:

252 Atk Supreme Overlord 5 allies fainted Kingambit Low Kick (100 BP) vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Chople Berry Kingambit: 286-338 (83.8 - 99.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Supreme Overlord 5 allies fainted Kingambit Low Kick (100 BP) vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Chople Berry Kingambit: 316-372 (92.6 - 109%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO

Not perfect by any means, but it can come in clutch especially in the common endgame situations that Gambits find themselves in. Also I'd recommend running Jolly on your Gambit if you go with this item so that you'll always be able to creep other Adamant Gambits (and tie with the occasional Jolly ones) and further minimize the chances of you getting out-goobed with your tech. Also obviously they can also Tera, but you also have that option too. It's... a huge mindgame with this mon.

Also here's the actual reason I wrote this post because this was extremely funny:

The opposing Kingambit used Low Kick!
It's super effective!
(Kingambit ate its Chople Berry!)
The Chople Berry weakened the damage to Kingambit!
(Kingambit lost 86.8% of its health!)

Kingambit used Low Kick!
It's super effective!
(The opposing Kingambit lost 100% of its health!)

The opposing Kingambit fainted!

CherylBush won the battle!
GrindrInChat's rating: 1764 → 1739
(-25 for losing)
CherylBush's rating: 1676 → 1701
(+25 for winning)