Metagame NP: Stage 9 - Ex-Factor (Iron Thorns and Oricorio-Pom-Pom Banned)

[Be13costa]

Im in the middle of Brazil Carnaval but will still find time for my favorite tier.

I'm not gonna lie, i never found Thorns particulary troublesome. But i know im not the average player because i play most of my teams with intimidade Scrafty that straight up stomps it. Its a mon that you need to have a designated answer or you are seriously at risk of getting runned over. That's fairly restrictive plus how it abuses tera... Don't think it's a unfair ban.

Oricoreo.That one I'm grateful that was banned. The different ways it could play drastically changed the way to counter it. And if you guessed wrong you lost on the spot. That and in higher levels how could abuse seeds... The most safe way to beat it would be by phasing. Something that many archetypes don't have access. Thank God it was an overlooked mon probably because it looked silly and didn't have at first look impressive stats. Crazy to think it was PU by usege and is something that the council need to be commended for. Seeing that a mon that even if not abused by the majority of the community didn't have space in a healthy meta game.

Finally Inteleon. The fact you can run Specs with + SpA and have 339 speed it's insane. Tera Water Hydros are disgusting 2 hitting SpD+ Umbreon . It can be the faster scarfer in the tier if you want as well. And finally you can lents snipe fish for crits. I love to use it but it's broken, it's the best user of Specs on the tier and water hits every relevant mon for at least neutral except of pauros and tsareena. You usually if you don't have a direct answer you end up trading 2 mons for it. Even if I like using it would best for the meta game banning it.

 

[Oathkeeper]

Gotta throw my 2 cents worth in regarding this monstrosity. Currently, as I'm sitting here multitasking (making this post & teambuilding), I'm finding it very difficult to understand why Inteleon wasn't booted out. It's already naturally fast and then you throw Specs into the mix combined with Tera Water and Hydro Pump and special walls that are supposed to be just that have a practically 100% chance to be 2HKO'd. On top of that, it has U-turn and Flip Turn to pivot on said walls to bring in something that beats that switch-in. It even has Shadow Ball/Dark Pulse for would-be switch in Basculegion. Furthermore, the only water absorbers that come to mind are Tatsugiri (2HKO'd by Ice Beam), Lanturn (ok, this works fsr), Toxicroak (2HKO'd by Ice Beam), and Lapras/Poliwrath (both unviable despite beating Intel). Going back to my original point, I find it very constricting for teambuilding since there's only a couple of mons that outspeed it w/o scarf (Jolteon, Meloetta-P) and Jolt seems to have fallen off lately. Additionally, Intel sometimes forces you to use scarfers to beat it like Pawmot. Tsareena alone would need 1 Rapid Spin to outpace it and beat it, which is fine. However, the point still stands, switching into Intel is a nightmare since most of the time something is dying and the amount of reliable switch-ins is scarce. There may be info I'm missing, but going off of what I see, Intel is a problem and needs to go.

 

[Dr. Phd. BJ]

vr updates should be happening relatively soon, and I wanted to highlight some takes that I have that are probably not in line with everybody else's

General Takes -
A+
I believe that Flygon is the most splashable ground type in the tier. Levitate + ground typing allows you item flexibility that most mons do not have. It also has great coverage with eq, u-turn, and *insert dragon stab*. It can run dragon dance sets, and even run stealth rock sets to some effect. Where I think my take on Flygon is different than others is that I find flygon (specifically scarf flygon) to be one of, if not, the most exploitable mon in the tier. This issue was very prominent with Thorns and Oricorio-Pom-Pom around, but it is still important due to terrain teams, opposing dd Flygon, setup Thundy, Diancie, etc. Scarf Flygon users have to be aware that they might not ever be able to click their strongest stabs due to giving up free turns. Additionally, eq is very underwhelming when you're running jolly + scarf. The damage is really underwhelming against Glowbro, Sylveon, Mudsdale, Umbreon, and many other mons in the tier both offensive and defensive. There's no question that this mon is one of the best in the tier, however I find the most common set is too exploitable and too weak to warrant an S rank. With the ban of Thorns, I personally do not find anything in the tier worthy of being S as of right now.

A
Mudsdale is the best phaser in the tier, and it does a really nice job at soft checking (or better) pretty much every physical attacker in the tier in conjunction with tera. As an added bonus, it's is arguably the best ground type into Pawmot. Mudsdale is not passive by any means, and has deceptively good coverage options with stone edge, body press, and heavy slam respectively. I saw Wadley use a mixed def Mudsdale with tera dragon, which I found really cool as it can pop sun teams while still having utility in other games. This mon is not passive for something as bulky as it is, it is very anticheese, and it synergizes really nicely with the abundance of wish passers the tier has at the moment. I think offensive sets could also be good somewhere down the road, but they are definitely not yet experimented with. Overall people sleep on this mon, and I find its gameplay very consistent. If Vaporeon drops, I expect this mon's usage to skyrocket.

>
Having stab grass + fire coverage and the ability to growth is very big. After laddering a lot with sun I found tera ghost to be the best Scovillain set. You dodge Lucario and Arcanine espeed, Ambipom fake out, spin block Coalossal, and you nuke Chandelure. If you're playing to win with sun, I don't think Typhlosion is very optimal at doing that. A great example of this is Basculegion being able to live a hit and force it out, whereas with Scovillain you are in the driver's seat. You also don't have to risk scarf 100s speed ties with Flygon, Pauros, and Staraptor. The damage is pretty comparable still

252 SpA Typhlosion Eruption (150 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Mew in Sun: 325-384 (95.3 - 112.6%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO
252+ SpA Charcoal Scovillain Fire Blast vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Mew in Sun: 313-369 (91.7 - 108.2%) -- 50% chance to OHKO

I am honestly very surprised that sun teams often opt to run other chlorophyll users, as having a chloro user with fire stab hits very hard off rip, and you can still outrun scarf 100s with a modest nature compared to Victreebel and Vileplume for example. From my experience, this is the best chlorophyll user in the tier and people just don't run it? If you are running sun, I urge you to use this.


These are the five best priority users in the tier at the moment (no not klefki e.e), it is very hard to dispute this. Ambipom is a ladder favorite that can be really good against the right teams with fake out, however these 5 are the most consistent in terms of priority and usefulness in the tier. There are plenty of games in nucl that showcase the impact strong priority has over the outcome of games. There was a time during scl post-Grimmsnarl rise where the main priority users were Scyther, Decidueye, and Hariyama. It is safe to say that the users now are stronger than before, and I find priority to keep a lot of the offensive stuff in check right now. I think because we were deprived of good consistent priority for a long time, people aren't building with priority as much as they should be.

Terrain Takes (only including terrain sets) -
B+
This is my hot take, but from playing on both sides of the terrain matchup, I have found that Uxie is the most consistent wincon on terrain teams. Having levitate is really nice as terrain teams often aren't packing reliable hazard deterrents and are prone to spike stacking to an extent. The cm + rest sets alongside +def seeds (grassy > electric) are really hard to break, and stored power is obviously an amazing move. This thing is basically Cresselia as slice has stated. If you are wondering why use Uxie over Glowbro, Uxie has fewer weaknesses than Glowbro (losing psychic resist sucks btw!), more speed, and more immediate special bulk. Having to run a Thwackey or Pincurchin is annoying, however if you're committing to a terrain team and more specifically a terrain wincon, Uxie is your best bet imo.
B
Both are similar to me, very fast unburden sweepers which allow for more hp investment than Hitmonlee. They both tend to run acrobatics oriented sets too. Sceptile's coverage and immediate power is worse, however it can setup on some grounds/waters/grasses, and it has solid bulk with seed + hp investment. Grafaiai has stab gunk, knock, and toxic immunity which is nice. These wincons do better against offense than they do against fatter teams, which makes them feel inconsistent as individual wincons. I don't think they support each other that amazingly on terrain, as they aren't the strongest unboosted and the synergy isn't that noticeable offensively or defensively when running the two together. Furthermore, they are also quietly extremely tera reliant. Are you scared of sd leaf blade Sceptile, or of non stab acro? Are you scared of Grafaiai hitting every single gunk or clicking stabless knock/acro/low kick? I know lots of people love terrain offense, but I don't really buy into the unburden sweepers atm.
B-
I think this thing is kinda bad tbh. It is extremely hard to get in with terrain up as it has no physical bulk whatsoever and no real notable resistances that it can setup freely on. It still faces difficulties with Glowbro, Gligar, Fairies, and being weak to prio if it chooses to run tera flying acro sets. Another thing that kinda screws Hitmonlee over is opposing tera. For example, Hitmonlee can't really touch fairies, and a lot of teams tend to have a tera fairy hidden somewhere. If not, there are still common tera types such as ghost/poison that can give hitmonlee fits even if everything goes right. In my experience, Hitmonlee feels as if it is very prediction reliant for something you want to sweep with. Why would you build around Hitmonlee in psychic terrain when Lucario essentially outclasses it as a sweeper outside of psychic terrain in every way? The risk vs reward is not there for me, and if you are building the best terrain team you can, it will be around other terrain sweepers as opposed to around Hitmonlee. It's a cute tool, it's an add-on. Are we running it for rapid spin?

Overall I enjoy the current meta, I am curious as to if Inteleon, Pawmot, or anything else will deem themselves to be too problematic for the tier to handle.

 

[LeonLeeds]

I've been playing around with some concepts/ideas in NU I've wanted to try for a while.

This thing has such an epic design but has been cursed with horrible typing. As a sweeper, it finds difficulty setting up, so I started exploring a different route. In UU Quaquaval is the only spinner since treads moved up and it is great in its role, and can even pull off some accidental sweeps. Braviary also gets a speed-boosting move, removal, and recovery, so why not? What I found is that this mon is Mediocre. Even with max special attack and a modest nature, its moves don't do enough to registeel or copperajah to warrant using over Delphox or specs chandy. It's hard to defog because most fighters have knock off coverage. It does however have a lot of snowball potential against balanced teams that have been chipped by hazards.

I loved whimsi in last gen's PU tier, but it doesn't carry over that well. The best trait it has is a surprise factor and unique typing, neither of which are favorable in this tier. Most people know what you're gonna do and tsareena just shuts you down (does get goobed by specs hurricane though). The steels and tera poisons/steels are everywhere nowadays. This mon is sadly, Bad.
Offensive
I got inspired by someone in this forum I think who said NU wasn't using the elephant the right way. I can confirm this mon is Insane. Literally no one expects it and Mudsdale is the only real defensive switch in (most run spdf anyways). Life orb sheer force with any combination of iron head, play rough, rock slide, heat crash, zen headbutt, knock off, earthquake, or superpower is extremely strong. I like 3 sheer force moves + knock off for utility.