Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Volcarona Banned]

[Storm Zone]

Its funny that everything i bring up just randomly becomes a discussion in the future despite it not being received well by finch or anybody else huh, i said there were 2 options, banning the bad dreams + hypnosis combo, or banning sleep altogether, but i can modify the second option to a great idea ausma had, and ban direct sleep moves like hypnosis, spore and sleep powder, yawn is fine, once it doesnt sleep you on the turn it is used, by the way just for further information for some "false comparisons" brought up about a day ago, an ability + move combo has never been the thing that broke any pokemon ever, rage fist + defiant did NOT break annihilape, rage fist did, zero to hero + jet punch did NOT break palafin, its stats and ability alone did, shall i go on?, its self explanatory , that is not my main discussion here, im here to talk about :-

First off, he was never broken to begin with, thats an extremely soft take to watch a tier with kyurem, gouging fire, roaring moon and even raging bolt, and say darkrai is broken, is unreal, darkrai has moveslot syndrome, if it runs hypnosis plot, it needs to pick 2 coverage moves, pulse focus blast walled by fairies, pulse ice beam walled by gambit , pulse sludge bomb walled by ting lu, etc, and even if it has the right coverage, it still only has a 60% chance to hit hypnosis, and the "if it hits u lose" arguments have been proven false immediately without any evidence because the game was never auto lost when a mon went to sleep in recent memory, if anything, it forces good healthy metagame threats as counterplay rather than slapping cheesy teams with no good special wall or speed tier.

My second point is, the person who said sleep was never a problem before darkrai, is being proven false in real time right now because hisuian lilligant with sleep powder is on a fast rise along with hypnosis valiant which is ALOT scarier than hypnosis darkrai, and by that logic we should ban valiant and hisui lilligant too which is about as ridiculous as pecharunt is viable, sleep was only "not a problem" because people never cared to explore sleep moves in the builder before darkrai came around, and now im being proven right about it.

My Third point is that moves that sleep u , and yes i include spore because its the one that is 100% accurate, is very unhealthy and uncompetitive, and if gholdengo were to ever get banned which is never gonna happen, amoonguss spore would plague the tier, and people would hate it, indirect sleep moves like yawn, effect spore ability effects, etc, are fine, its the ones that sleep u on the turn its used that is a problem that needs to be addressed.

My Fourth point is even WITH hypnosis, hes STILL not broken, despite being strong, it has LOTS of counterplay let me name a few:

1. Hatterene + fast breaker or pivot
2. Banded pult
3. Sub zamazenta
4. Iron Valiant subcm or encore
5. Scarf landorus therian
6. Tera spdef gliscor with toxic
7. Any form of tspikes
8. Booster speed taunt moon
9. Scarf twave or trick rotom
10. Rest Talk tera ting lu which i see ALL over the ladder now
11. Spdef fairy garg
12. Sand teams

For a pokemon to be broken my rule is that it has to restrict the builder to the point it has less than 4 counters, i named 12, so that proves it is not unhealthy.

My Final point is its an amazing speed tier which blends into the offensive meta quite nicely serving as an awesome revenge killer for booster mons with scarf, or just a nice special counterpart to weavile which breaks balance (the style that people say is broken this dlc), banning darkrai is unnecessary and would be 1 less breaker for balance to worry about, which is unhealthy because you are favoring a playstyle, its favoritism which is normal nowadays, they favor balance so get rid of the balance breakers, it doesnt work that way, we must be fair to all playstyles, if anything banning darkrai would be unhealthy.

My Conclusion: Darkrai staying is the right move here, and banning Direct sleep moves like spore, sleep powder and hypnosis, is the way to go (shouts to ausma for this great idea).

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Its funny that everything i bring up just randomly becomes a discussion in the future despite it not being received well by finch or anybody else huh

your point itself is good but i don't think you have the claim on this discussion. i brought up the possibility of hypnosis darkrai leading to action against darkrai or sleep months ago, and multiple times after that. no one believed me then and i was called many unflattering things, so out of spite i'm claiming personal responsibility for the sleep discussion and any action that occurs because of it

and before a bunch of people go "this discussion isn't because of darkrai", yes, i know this discussion has a much wider scope than darkrai and the issue of sleep has been a point of controversy forever, but the fact that it's occurring right now, right after darkrai was legalized and at the exact same time as its sash hypnosis set started becoming popular, means that it was absolutely involved in sparking this particular iteration of the discussion

 

[Welcome to mars]

and to think i believed that this thread had found peace amidst a finally balanced and disverse metagame for generation nine overused, just for once

but somethings in the way

 

[Goodstyle]

Everyone is ignoring the obvious solution right in front of us:

It's time to start running vital spirit Magmotar and Electivire.

 

[pika pal]

Me just wanting to talk about the niche heat people are finding for the Zombie Berry while the Sleep talk continues to cycle. Can posters at least settle if they're debating Sleep Clause, Sleep Balance, or both and distinguish their arguments accordingly? Half the particularly barbed posts seem to come out of that muddying alone.

(Disclaimer: I like Breloom more than Darkrai so I'd sooner kick him than lost Spore.)

 

[ant4456]

Me when I make a team with 4 mons that can use the same status to make any good effect

Versus one single Pokemon putting Hypnosis on its set being able to wipe half if not an entire team given the correct, easy to find circumstances (such as Hex Valiant)

 

[YubelVT]

I've never understood the "what about Relic Song" thing in relation to Sleep Clause Mod/Sleep Moves Clause. Meloetta doesn't even want to run the move because it forces a transformation into the awful Meloetta-P (last I checked it never even saw see significant use in lower tiers), and who the hell cares if that forme becomes effectively unusable because the trigger is banned.

It's a borderline bad faith argument.

Meloetta-P is way better than normal meloetta but the problem is that you don't start as her and have to lose a ton of momentum to change form. Meloetta-P is not a bad pokemon not by a long shot, or are you telling me that this thing wouldn't be OU or OU adjacent if you could start in this forme

The problem with Pirouette is that you have to start as a pokemon that can't afford to lose momentum. Don't fucking slander Meloetta-P I will find you

 

[Eeveeto]

Meloetta-P is way better than normal meloetta but the problem is that you don't start as her and have to lose a ton of momentum to change form. Meloetta-P is not a bad pokemon not by a long shot, or are you telling me that this thing wouldn't be OU or OU adjacent if you could start in this forme
View attachment 591750
The problem with Pirouette is that you have to start as a pokemon that can't afford to lose momentum. Don't fucking slander Meloetta-P I will find you

So true, we need to preserve Pirouette Meloetta and harshly discriminate all her haters. Long life Pirouette Meloetta, sing every broken hostile threat out of OU!

 

[Cuddly]

Just wanted to let everyone know I wanted Sleep Clause to change and wrote extensively about it when we first learned what Dire Claw would do in regular game. Dire Claw being just about the first time a (relevant) attacking move could put you to sleep, which massively alter tournament results for cart and sim play. Plenty of people agreed but most people ignored it.

And while I am glad this discussion is being taken more seriously, I feel like it’s for the wrong reasons. I feel like many people don’t actually care about parity between cart and sim, or parity between sleep clause and other clauses. It feels like many people just got fed up with Sleep spam and use some jargin to make themselves sound more legit.
And tbh and tbf, I also am speaking from ulterior motives as I want Smogon to pick a direction. Either have your policies be cart accurate and consistent and not complex, or do the opposite and add in “balance patches”. I actually wish the latter was true to a certain extent, but that’s not gonna happen. Well besides in very specific stuff that is. Sleep Clause, Freeze Clause, patching out dysncs when using Counter, etc. Most only existing in Gen 1/2, with Sleep being the odd one out as it lasted until post-Gen 5 Gen 5 meta where Sleep was fully banned. And besides Baton Pass and weather stuff in Gen 5, Sleep Clause has been the only complex ban + game altering clause.
Before no one would notice this and honestly I could easily ignore it. It’s not like you’d ever realistically use sleep move multiple times on purpose (though Sleep Clause should have then just greyed out all sleep inducing moves until that Pokemon woke up). Reason why I took to more seriously is because Dire Claw is an attacking move and thus could realistically be spammed or greatly alter tournament results. Say you put to sleep a Landorus-T with Dire Claw, then your opponent switches into Tera Fairy Skeledirge. On sim you can just use Dire Claw and Sleep Clause will prevent you from putting Skeledirge to sleep. On cart, Dire Claw in that scenario would result in a 1/6th chance to actually lose as you’d put 2 Pokemon to sleep and have to forfeit. This apartly was not enough to warrent change to sleep clause, but someone spamming Hypnosis Darkrai on ladder was.

 

[RaikouLover]

gen 4 has drypass and gen 3 has passing of some stats, and it pisses off the most annoying group of people (people who hate all complex bans unconditionally even in oldgens because they were told to hate them)

Dry pass would be some extra viability for the Eeveelutions. Particularly Espeon with Magic Bounce!! Anything that keeps hazards off is a net positive!

 

[CTC]

Banning sleep altogether is way too rash as amoong and other grassy sleep powder mons rely on the sleep to make up for lack of coverage / utility. The problem w rai is that its coverage is impeccable so lead hypnosis spam can end games depending on hit or miss on the first one or two turns, which is absolutely absurd and no other mon consistently take out counters and cripple teams like it. I think the ability bad dreams is simply cheap in conjunction with hypnosis spam, because you incapacitate one mon while chipping others assuming you hit. The argument that so many mons beat it at lead, raised by storm zone, sounds reasonable at first. Band pult, sub zama, and Val/hat are all good leads into it, but w a sash in tact rai can still do damage mid game if something else were to lead, such as glim which easily matches up with all of those mons. The problem w rai is that when it gets a free switch in, it can easily spam hypno and run away with a game as long as it hits, and including hypo on the switch makes it 84% accurate beating out many other sleep options. Also unlike spore and sleep powder, this mons sleep mechanic cannot be tanked by anything but garg, as grasses and ghold can check spore mons but not rai. Having literally 1 reliable switchin that doesn’t get instantly hypnosis fished (garg) or like a blissey makes the mon able to overcome any circumstance akin to swagger thund back in the day, something so uncompetitive we banned it immediately. Even in the case of blissey or other special walls, that bad dreams chip is extremely potent and allows for np to reach killing thresholds easily as long as hypo and dark pulse rng are hitting.
In my opinion hypnosis on rai is the only form of uncounterable sleep currently and is uncompetitive for the game as it encourages a lead fish set banking on 60% fish. If u hit, chances are you win due to incapacitating one and chipping another (assuming no 1 turn wake). Therefore, I ask the council not to nerf already struggling mons in ou such as any grass type w a sleep move just to curb darkrai. Banning hypnosis would be much more reasonable as the move is made to be an unreliable fish move that rewards blind luck and isn’t even meant to be clicked so liberally like in darkrais case.
in short don’t ban sleep just remove hypnosis

 

[YubelVT]

Dry pass would be some extra viability for the Eeveelutions. Particularly Espeon with Magic Bounce!! Anything that keeps hazards off is a net positive!

Dry Pass would be an interesting option on zapdos as a pivoting move that can't be blocked by Volt Absorb/Ground Types or punished by rocky helmet. We're on our gen 3 shit here I think

 

[YubelVT]

Wait, Sneasler was banned because of Dire Claw and not because of it's coverage of Poison/Fighting OR was it both reasons?
The council must respond to how they ban things. One reason, or multiple.

By the end of sneasler's tenure in OU, Dire Claw wasn't even being run on the most egregious set. You really had no room for it and the hax potential wasn't worth it.

 

[June Heat]

in short don’t ban sleep just remove hypnosis

I hate this suggestion. It implies that either all Pokemon with Hypnosis, or an acceptable threshold of Pokemon are problematic/broken. The reality is two Pokemon are the problem.

 

[YubelVT]

I hate this suggestion. It implies that either all Pokemon with Hypnosis, or an acceptable threshold of Pokemon are problematic/broken. The reality is two Pokemon are the problem.

So ban hypnosis and test the pokemon on their own merits without the context of an awful high roll set affecting results sometimes. I don't want any BP silliness with sleep either. My idea is this: Ban Hypnosis, if sleep is still a problem, ban the sleep status. One complex ban that goes into a full ban if it doesn't fix the problem. Also hypnosis is a bad move why are you complaining.

 

[Cuddly]

Wait, Sneasler was banned because of Dire Claw and not because of it's coverage of Poison/Fighting OR was it both reasons?
The council must respond to how they ban things. One reason, or multiple.

It was banned because it had absurd traits like outrunning all but like 2 Pokemon while having Sword Dance and 130 Atk and a move with a 1/6th chance to sleep the target.

But anyways I mentioned Dire Claw because while Sneasler was legal, any games that you could use it on sim could easily deviate from cart play. Put something to sleep and now Dire Claw can be a liability on cart with how sleep clause works there. This being different from status sleep as you had no real reason to use Spore or Hypnosis a second time.

 

[OvertoneSeries]

Wait, Sneasler was banned because of Dire Claw and not because of it's coverage of Poison/Fighting OR was it both reasons?
The council must respond to how they ban things. One reason, or multiple.

They do that. You can just search the forums.

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sneasler-is-banned-from-sv-ou.3731467/

 

[YubelVT]

It was banned because it had absurd traits like outrunning all but like 2 Pokemon while having Sword Dance and 130 Atk and a move with a 1/6th chance to sleep the target.

But anyways I mentioned Dire Claw because while Sneasler was legal, any games that you could use it on sim could easily deviate from cart play. Put something to sleep and now Dire Claw can be a liability on cart with how sleep clause works there. This being different from status sleep as you had no real reason to use Spore or Hypnosis a second time.

Dire Claw was more an issue on the pivot set tho, which was a genuinely good set in its own right but not as genuinely obscene as seedler was.

 

[June Heat]

So ban hypnosis and test the pokemon on their own merits without the context of an awful high roll set affecting results sometimes. I don't want any BP silliness with sleep either. My idea is this: Ban Hypnosis, if sleep is still a problem, ban the sleep status. One complex ban that goes into a full ban if it doesn't fix the problem. Also hypnosis is a bad move why are you complaining.

But that's just not how we do it here. Why is it every other Pokemon we look at their kit as a whole, and make a decision from there? Why is it with Darkrai and Iron Valiant we're just saying "axe an entire mechanic" instead of looking at their whole kit which yes includes Hypnosis. It just seems weird that these mons are getting special treatment when other mons would be perfectly fine in OU if only we banned one of their moves.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

why are the forums the way that they are. we've had a nice discussion on getting rid of sleep clause mod and now people are crawling out of the woodwork asking for complex bans and freeze clause and drypassing even though the proposal is to get rid of that kind of nonsense. if you want to fill up a tier with complex bans and mods, make your own meta, and if it turns out that those mods and complex bans make that meta better than tiering policy could possibly make ou, i'll gladly play it. seriously, i'd genuinely be 100% down for rebooting gen-next and modding the shit out of the game until we come out with something that's more fun, diverse, and balanced than can be achieved within the limits of ou policy, because i have about ten billion ideas for balance changes that would improve things. but no one should be trying to get this meta to implement more mods

 

[ant4456]

Banning sleep altogether is way too rash as amoong and other grassy sleep powder mons rely on the sleep to make up for lack of coverage / utility. The problem w rai is that its coverage is impeccable so lead hypnosis spam can end games depending on hit or miss on the first one or two turns, which is absolutely absurd and no other mon consistently take out counters and cripple teams like it. I think the ability bad dreams is simply cheap in conjunction with hypnosis spam, because you incapacitate one mon while chipping others assuming you hit. The argument that so many mons beat it at lead, raised by storm zone, sounds reasonable at first. Band pult, sub zama, and Val/hat are all good leads into it, but w a sash in tact rai can still do damage mid game if something else were to lead, such as glim which easily matches up with all of those mons. The problem w rai is that when it gets a free switch in, it can easily spam hypno and run away with a game as long as it hits, and including hypo on the switch makes it 84% accurate beating out many other sleep options. Also unlike spore and sleep powder, this mons sleep mechanic cannot be tanked by anything but garg, as grasses and ghold can check spore mons but not rai. Having literally 1 reliable switchin that doesn’t get instantly hypnosis fished (garg) or like a blissey makes the mon able to overcome any circumstance akin to swagger thund back in the day, something so uncompetitive we banned it immediately. Even in the case of blissey or other special walls, that bad dreams chip is extremely potent and allows for np to reach killing thresholds easily as long as hypo and dark pulse rng are hitting.
In my opinion hypnosis on rai is the only form of uncounterable sleep currently and is uncompetitive for the game as it encourages a lead fish set banking on 60% fish. If u hit, chances are you win due to incapacitating one and chipping another (assuming no 1 turn wake). Therefore, I ask the council not to nerf already struggling mons in ou such as any grass type w a sleep move just to curb darkrai. Banning hypnosis would be much more reasonable as the move is made to be an unreliable fish move that rewards blind luck and isn’t even meant to be clicked so liberally like in darkrais case.
in short don’t ban sleep just remove hypnosis

Sleep Mod Clause shouldn't exist

Hope this helps

 

[Cuddly]

Dire Claw was more an issue on the pivot set tho, which was a genuinely good set in its own right but not as genuinely obscene as seedler was.

You're just missing the entire point I laid out in my post about why Dire Claw would be problematic for Sleep Clause where it currently stands. It's about the fact that you could realistically see different results and make different decisions between Cart and Sim.

 

[Ibaragi]

But that's just not how we do it here. Why is it every other Pokemon we look at their kit as a whole, and make a decision from there? Why is it with Darkrai and Iron Valiant we're just saying "axe an entire mechanic" instead of looking at their whole kit which yes includes Hypnosis. It just seems weird that these mons are getting special treatment when other mons would be perfectly fine in OU if only we banned one of their moves.

Because Darkrai, Iron Valiant and Liligant-H didn't start this problem; they're bleeding off an open wound called "Sleep Clause Mod". Also, why are we keeping a mechanic like Sleep that is HALF NEUTERED BY A MOD. It's LITERALLY the only instance of such a limitation we have. If it needs a full mod to be playable, maybe that's the source problem to begin with? I think that the main problem of this discussion is that a lot of people have just accepted Sleep Clause Mod to the point of not doubting its existence and have forgotten how big of an exception to all tiering policy it is.
What's more, if the question is "are Darkrai/Iron Valiant/Lilligant-H so strong and overcentralizing with HypnoPowder that they should be banned?", answer would most likely be "no".
The problem is not that they're so strong and overcentralizing with Sleep that they should be banned, but that their Sleep Sets are good enough to be playable within their assets; which causes the result of matches being glorified coin tosses where the only relevant interaction is "did they hit Hypno? Y/N". Which also piles up on the classic Sleep problem of "will the mon be asleep for 1 turn, 2 turns or 3 turns".

And guess what, from a "win-rate" perspective, Coin Toss is a perfectly fair game that gives a 50% chance to all players by default. But I, for one, don't play pokemon to play a coin toss simulator. Some degree of randomness is to be expected in this game and is part of the game, but Sleep is BY FAR the most relevant, purely random aspect of the game after Evasion and OHKO moves. We banned those, which people from VGC and BSS would probably also argue that are just "part of the game", yet decided to stop at half-banning Sleep? And now we have to suck it up because people have gotten used to it? Strongly disagree.

 

[HallowedHarlequin]

how do y'all still misspell Ninetales in 2024

I'm starting to think that the games have to have like. An NPC that just says "by the way it's Ninetales, not Ninetails"

It's even funnier with Pokemon Unite players who play that game, see the name sometimes several times a day, and still cannot spell it right. It is baffling to me

See how many hits you get by searching "Espartha" in this forum. Genuinely hilarious.

As far as sleep clause mod, I don't know what exact solution I find best but I am ardently opposed to introducing a new loss condition. Selecting a button that's available to you and arbitrarily losing should remain the stuff of the deeper end of OMs. (Freezai clicking Healing Wish in First Blood and instantly losing was prime content. Even then, that isn't arbitrarily forbidden - the loss was purely mechanical and easily understood from the premise of the format.)

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

See how many hits you get by searching "Espartha" in this forum. Genuinely hilarious.

you also see plenty of "amoongus", "goldengho", "ogrepon", "armarogue", "dodonzo", and my personal least favorite misspelling of the gen, "skeleridge"

…i'm now realizing i should have spelled one of them correctly as a joke just to see how many people i could trip up