Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Volcarona Banned]

[Bold School]

I knew Boulder was a fraud since day 1.

To divert this convo to avoid a one-liner.

View attachment 621181
What does Blaziken even do in this meta anymore?

It sucks vs Balance because most of them carry Gliscor, Dozo, Mola, Tusk, and Zama.

Sucks vs BO/HO since they carry priority, Lando, Dnite, Tusk, Prim, Booster mons, and ofc Zama.

Forget about breaking Stall cause any Stall build that loses to Blaziken wasn’t good to begin with.

It needs Protect cause of Booster mons, so that limits you to Swords Dance, STAB, and the 4th slot. This is a problem for Blaziken who already had a big 4MSS. It can’t carry all the coverage it needs like T-Punch, EQ, and Knock. Even with resistances to Dark, Grass, Fire, and Steel, it doesn’t get many chances to setup due to its inherent frailty.

There’s competition with G-Fire and Cinderace as a physically offensive Fire type.

I might be the biggest Blaziken hater but every meta trend in the past few months has been terrible for it.

There are just better fire types. Cinderace doesn't need speed boost procs to be fast, has better coverage, and is just better in general for a hazard meta. Gouging Fire is better because it has bulk to survive while it gets up to speed with DD. Heatran has great defensive utility and trapping. Even Ceruledge has a bit of a niche.

I tried a very jank mixed attacking Blaziken on Psychic Terrain once. It was so bad. But it was useful hitting Overheat on a lot of physical walls that would come in to take the physical attacks. Pretty good for Tusk. Doesn't work on Dozo or Gouging Fire, though. Another problem I had was splitting EVs between attacks either meant compromising too much on power, speed, or both. Compromising it on speed meant you needed an extra free turn to often be revenge killed anyways. Too many fast BE mons even without that. I had fun with my jank Blaziken, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it.

I would still be curious to see if something like Life Orb or even Charcoal Tera Fire could salvage a mixed attacking set.

 

[Kallum]

Garg is back
Boulder is trash
Lando is now top 5 in usage
Teal Mask Ogerpon is good
Balance stonks are raising
Pult is committing tax fraud
Crab offense is fighting the war against big stall

man either we are heading towards the peak of this Gen or the utter low point and I'm not sure which

 

[viivian]

I knew Boulder was a fraud since day 1.

To divert this convo to avoid a one-liner.

View attachment 621181
What does Blaziken even do in this meta anymore?

It sucks vs Balance because most of them carry Gliscor, Dozo, Mola, Tusk, and Zama.

Sucks vs BO/HO since they carry priority, Lando, Dnite, Tusk, Prim, Booster mons, and ofc Zama.

Forget about breaking Stall cause any Stall build that loses to Blaziken wasn’t good to begin with.

It needs Protect cause of Booster mons, so that limits you to Swords Dance, STAB, and the 4th slot. This is a problem for Blaziken who already had a big 4MSS. It can’t carry all the coverage it needs like T-Punch, EQ, and Knock. Even with resistances to Dark, Grass, Fire, and Steel, it doesn’t get many chances to setup due to its inherent frailty.

There’s competition with G-Fire and Cinderace as a physically offensive Fire type.

I might be the biggest Blaziken hater but every meta trend in the past few months has been terrible for it.

boasts a really good MU into kingambit and you can always run upper hand if you want to run over offensive teams w/ blaziken. even then it has a ton of other options it can use to threaten other mons as well, knock off chunks skeledirge and is just a good tool to have, EQ also hits the aforementioned skeledirge and smashes gouging fire, and so on and so forth. it's a hard risk/hard reward pokemon imo

 

[Vaporwavvve]

Is anyone else tired of how MU fishy the meta is? It feels like so much is determined in team preview now more than ever.

 

[Time Waster]

Both games you mentionned would have not been affected at all by Freeze Clause, assuming you'd implement it in the same way that not more than one mon can be frozen. I think there is wider discussion to be had on Kyurem and it's ability to get multiple freezes per game more consistently, but Freeze Clause is a totally separate solution that doesn't really do anything here.

That Zama game is just unfortunate, sometimes we gotta just take that L

The only time I've ever experienced Kyurem getting 2 freezes in a game was against stall. Specifically against Blissey so it actually didn't affect the game much. Also don't think a 10% freeze chance is enough to move the needle on Kyurem.

RNG is something you're more likely to encounter when you're trying to drag the game out as long as possible anyway. I think that's fair. Games don't last long enough this gen for RNG to matter nearly as much vs the older gens that have Freeze Clause.

 

[Moyashi]

The only time I've ever experienced Kyurem getting 2 freezes in a game was against stall. Specifically against Blissey so it actually didn't affect the game much. Also don't think a 10% freeze chance is enough to move the needle on Kyurem.

RNG is something you're more likely to encounter when you're trying to drag the game out as long as possible anyway. I think that's fair. Games don't last long enough this gen for RNG to matter nearly as much vs the older gens that have Freeze Clause.

freeze actually played a big part of what broke it last gen (the other being the versatility)

but also freeze is especially potent rng that can outright remove things as checks if they get stuck so it is worth keeping in discussion with kyurem

 

[Darlington]

Since we are entering to a decent meta right now or at least things are more calm now, could be wrong. I think it's best to stop doing the tier shift every month since there is no more dlc and even the Pokemon company announce something in June maybe, it's most likely just a remake but I doubt it. I think it's the perfect time to do the 3 months tier like before. I think it's a good time to do since Bulky Offense and Bulky Balance is making a comeback. It's up to the council though, I'm just stating my opinion.

 

[Heatranator]

Since we are entering to a decent meta right now or at least things are more calm now, could be wrong. I think it's best to stop doing the tier shift every month since there is no more dlc and even the Pokemon company announce something in June maybe, it's most likely just a remake but I doubt it. I think it's the perfect time to do the 3 months tier like before. I think it's a good time to do since Bulky Offense and Bulky Balance is making a comeback. It's up to the council though, I'm just stating my opinion.

I mean, what would be the difference in the one months vs three months tier shifts? It honestly doesn't sound like much and the lower tiers still are developing a decent amount, though of course the major shifts have happened so they mostly are locked in.
I think we stick with the one month shifts, we have had it for so long and you shouldn't fix what isn't broken.
Edit: Nope, we are back to the three months tier shifts. Ignore this post, you actually got what you wanted. Dissappointed by the change, but oh well. It's not the worst thing in the world.

 

[Vaporwavvve]

Since we are entering to a decent meta right now or at least things are more calm now, could be wrong. I think it's best to stop doing the tier shift every month since there is no more dlc and even the Pokemon company announce something in June maybe, it's most likely just a remake but I doubt it. I think it's the perfect time to do the 3 months tier like before. I think it's a good time to do since Bulky Offense and Bulky Balance is making a comeback. It's up to the council though, I'm just stating my opinion.

is bulky balance that good right now? I almost exclusively use balance and feel like stall and offense have been the main things I’ve seen at the 1700. Feels as tough as ever to build for FAT.

 

[Insolence]

Is anyone else tired of how MU fishy the meta is? It feels like so much is determined in team preview now more than ever.

It's mostly due to the impact of tera as a mechanic. It's certainly been demonstrated that there is plenty of skill expression in playing with/around tera and it adds a unique aspect to teambuilding, but the price we pay for this diversity is a more polarized meta. Higher emphasis is put on team construction and having the ability to counter what your opponent has. Add on to this the general power creep and you get a recipe for a metagame that feels more and more like it's determined from team preview.

I'm personally not a fan of counterplay being mostly accessible through the team builder as opposed to being available in game, but it's a dynamic that a lot of people clearly enjoy.

 

[Heatranator]

is bulky balance that good right now? I almost exclusively use balance and feel like stall and offense have been the main things I’ve seen at the 1700. Feels as tough as ever to build for FAT.

It's definetely hard. I've built for HO, balance and stall and with both HO and stall, they feel so easy to build for. I just slap on a few mons that I know work, then add a few unique mons and I can call it a day. With balance, I have to spend twice or even three times as long just building a team that might not even work in practice. I usually have to scrap half the team after playing a few games because despite looking good on paper, the team doesn't work in practice.
TLDR, HO and stall easy to build, balance is not and feels bad rn.

 

[EpicGuy321]

boasts a really good MU into kingambit and you can always run upper hand if you want to run over offensive teams w/ blaziken. even then it has a ton of other options it can use to threaten other mons as well, knock off chunks skeledirge and is just a good tool to have, EQ also hits the aforementioned skeledirge and smashes gouging fire, and so on and so forth. it's a hard risk/hard reward pokemon imo

Blaziken with SD, EQ, Flare Blitz, Substitute and Tera Ground also 6-0s sun 90% of the time probably. Sub up on Tork and SD once.

+2 252+ Atk Tera Ground Blaziken Earthquake vs. 12 HP / 0 Def Walking Wake: 366-432 (107 - 126.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO

 

[Magcargo]

is bulky balance that good right now? I almost exclusively use balance and feel like stall and offense have been the main things I’ve seen at the 1700. Feels as tough as ever to build for FAT.

I'd say so, though there isn't much variety. Balance still has some very strong pieces to work with like Zamazenta, Gking, etc. which do 90% of what you want and pair well with other strong pieces like Kyurem. I've mainly been vibing with the classic Garg-Corv-Clod core, with Clefable, Zamazenta, and a filler slot (I picked kyurem, but other options for Future Sight are preferable, probably Weavile or Darkrai) and its worked fine for me. The main thing with balance is that there will always be some difficult MU since you can't tech for everything. In my case, I find Ogerpon and Manaphy to be particularly difficult MUs, and other balances I used with stuff like Gking struggled with Knock Spam.

One underrated element of Tera is how it helps the defensive Pokemon. Garganacl requires a good deal of support for opposing Hstack, but it is an extremely powerful piece thanks to Tera Water, Purifying Salt, Salt Cure, and Curse. When Supplanted with a good defensive core + hazard removal, it becomes one of the strongest progress makers the metagame has ever seen. Pokemon like this, and many of the metas strongest like Kyurem, Dragapult, etc. feel like they fit particularly well on balance where their unique offensive / defensive traits have more room to shine.

 

[N ™]

is bulky balance that good right now? I almost exclusively use balance and feel like stall and offense have been the main things I’ve seen at the 1700. Feels as tough as ever to build for FAT.

As someone who builds and plays balance almost exclusively, I can say it's definitely the much harder playstyle of the main three. It's not unviable at all and it's not limited to a single structure or something like that, but it definitely has to put much more care into the building process to not end up being run over by certain specific threats as a result of the incredible offensive saturation and terastalization; I've found like three main defensive cores that can work and your progress making options are very limited since they have to be affective with only 2 slots or something available for purely offensive mons, which is also why the few defensive mons that can also play offense in a way like glowking or heatran are almost a must. It's definitely very frustrating, especially since it can't afford to get creative nearly as much as other playstyles, but as a result you get a team that's much less matchup fishy, meaning the better player almost always wins without having to rely on or be worried about cheese.

 

[N ™]

One underrated element of Tera is how it helps the defensive Pokemon. Garganacl requires a good deal of support for opposing Hstack, but it is an extremely powerful piece thanks to Tera Water, Purifying Salt, Salt Cure, and Curse. When Supplanted with a good defensive core + hazard removal, it becomes one of the strongest progress makers the metagame has ever seen. Pokemon like this, and many of the metas strongest like Kyurem, Dragapult, etc. feel like they fit particularly well on balance where their unique offensive / defensive traits have more room to shine.

Personally I'm really not a fan of this sentiment. I've come to terms with the fact that tera is here to stay even though I'd like to see it gone, but regardless I see this sentiment as a little hypocritical because the defensive utility terastalization offers to the meta at large is needed much because of its own offensive presence, and creates this really volatile dynamic of tera checking tera, which cranks the metagame's pace up to a thousand. The example of garg here defies this, sure, since garg makes use of defensive tera independently of the opponent's actions a lot of the time and would continue to do so with tera not on the table for the opponent, but this is a very isolated case and feels kinda cherry picked to be honest, with the only other half valid examples that come to my mind being dondozo and blissey, which don't even really count as being found almost only on stall means they aren't really taking tera away from something more valuable.

 

[Heatranator]

Personally I'm really not a fan of this sentiment. I've come to terms with the fact that tera is here to stay even though I'd like to see it gone, but regardless I see this sentiment as a little hypocritical because the defensive utility terastalization offers to the meta at large is needed much because of its own offensive presence, and creates this really volatile dynamic of tera checking tera, which cranks the metagame's pace up to a thousand. The example of garg here defies this, sure, since garg makes use of defensive tera independently of the opponent's actions a lot of the time and would continue to do so with tera not on the table for the opponent, but this is a very isolated case and feels kinda cherry picked to be honest, with the only other half valid examples that come to my mind being dondozo and blissey, which don't even really count as being found almost only on stall means they aren't really taking tera away from something more valuable.

While that is technically true, I don't think that shows the full picture. Tera helps patch up defensive holes on a team that might otherwise be possible. The best example I have is against rain, as while the playstyle is at an alltime low, its still something you have to consider. Barra's water attacks can blast through most things that aren't bulky resists or 4x resists. Thus, team structures would be way more restricted in what they could do. However, slapping a tera water, grass or dragon on something and now the team is pretty good against rain. It's not the whole story, but it helps a lot. Another example is against raging bolt, as while that does tera, it still is scary even if it doesn't. If your ground type is not as powerful or bulky, say your using gliscor, then it could be an issue. However, a tera grass or ground helps immensly and gives you a panic button.
TLDR, you're technically right, but defensive tera helps even when it doesn't come in reaction to the opponent's tera.

 

[FuecocoBoi]

IMO as a 1100 ELO player Tera is the most competitively balanced gimmick. Mega was the best, but we don’t need to give 100 BST to fucking legendaries, and it was restricted to only certain mon. Z-Moves are just haha funny delete a Mon. Dynamic is haha funny delete a Mon times 3 while retaining double health. Tera has so many factors, and a Tera can change the tide, but unlike the other gimmicks, if you misplay your Tera, you can turn the tides against you. Tera should not be banned. I do believe in open Tera like VGC, but i would like some reasoning behind fullbanning it.

 

[N ™]

While that is technically true, I don't think that shows the full picture. Tera helps patch up defensive holes on a team that might otherwise be possible. The best example I have is against rain, as while the playstyle is at an alltime low, its still something you have to consider. Barra's water attacks can blast through most things that aren't bulky resists or 4x resists. Thus, team structures would be way more restricted in what they could do. However, slapping a tera water, grass or dragon on something and now the team is pretty good against rain. It's not the whole story, but it helps a lot. Another example is against raging bolt, as while that does tera, it still is scary even if it doesn't. If your ground type is not as powerful or bulky, say your using gliscor, then it could be an issue. However, a tera grass or ground helps immensly and gives you a panic button.
TLDR, you're technically right, but defensive tera helps even when it doesn't come in reaction to the opponent's tera.

While this sounds correct on paper, in practice if you're using a tera like that purely defensively, as in a long term investment to help you withstand the threat in the long game, then on most teams it would be too much of an opportunity cost to take away from something more impactful like a game ending sweeper, but if you instead mean using such options as a method to lure in and grab a surprise ko on whatever you need to check, then that's just playing into that offensive and/or volatile dynamic I mentioned earlier.

 

[RS25802580]

Meowscarada beating the UU allegations like

 

[Heatranator]

Meowscarada beating the UU allegations like
View attachment 621293

Serperior beating the UU allegations like

Edit: Also created this meme

 

[Vaporwavvve]

I'd say so, though there isn't much variety. Balance still has some very strong pieces to work with like Zamazenta, Gking, etc. which do 90% of what you want and pair well with other strong pieces like Kyurem. I've mainly been vibing with the classic Garg-Corv-Clod core, with Clefable, Zamazenta, and a filler slot (I picked kyurem, but other options for Future Sight are preferable, probably Weavile or Darkrai) and its worked fine for me. The main thing with balance is that there will always be some difficult MU since you can't tech for everything. In my case, I find Ogerpon and Manaphy to be particularly difficult MUs, and other balances I used with stuff like Gking struggled with Knock Spam.

One underrated element of Tera is how it helps the defensive Pokemon. Garganacl requires a good deal of support for opposing Hstack, but it is an extremely powerful piece thanks to Tera Water, Purifying Salt, Salt Cure, and Curse. When Supplanted with a good defensive core + hazard removal, it becomes one of the strongest progress makers the metagame has ever seen. Pokemon like this, and many of the metas strongest like Kyurem, Dragapult, etc. feel like they fit particularly well on balance where their unique offensive / defensive traits have more room to shine.

Thanks for the response! I’ll try some of those cores out. After reading your post I realize I may be getting stuck between BO and Balance and it’s causing gaps in my teams.

I guess my problem I feel caught in the middle when playing HO or stall. For mons like Zama and Kyurem, I find stall can handle them decently well and the offense can take advantage of the slower pacing of Garg with breakers, trick, or encore.

 

[BolTingBlazie]

So I'm hearing a lot about Iron Crown being genuinely good as an assault vest user along with the usual booster/stored power sets, could this mean that Iron Crown might beat the fraud allegations next month with the fact it is a genuinely good choice right now?

 

[Vaporwavvve]

While this sounds correct on paper, in practice if you're using a tera like that purely defensively, as in a long term investment to help you withstand the threat in the long game, then on most teams it would be too much of an opportunity cost to take away from something more impactful like a game ending sweeper, but if you instead mean using such options as a method to lure in and grab a surprise ko on whatever you need to check, then that's just playing into that offensive and/or volatile dynamic I mentioned earlier.

Great post. I don’t mean to say balance isn’t viable but you’re right, it’s much harder to use/build than other playstyles. Seeing as bans are done for a few months, I’m not sure much will change for this except for natural meta changes.

 

[Heatranator]

So I'm hearing a lot about Iron Crown being genuinely good as an assault vest user along with the usual booster sets, could this mean that Iron Crown might beat the fraud allegations next month with the fact it is a genuinely good choice right now?

You mean in 3 months (yes, we are going back to the three month shifts).
I'd doubt it, it is definetely a good mon, but there is so much steel type competition.
You have:
Gholdengo (hazard removal blocking machine and ghost type)
Kingambit (explanation not needed)
Corv/skarm (defensive beasts)
Heatran (balance god and offensive beast, while checking lots of amazing mons)
Iron treads (fraud, but still a spinner)
Compared to those mons, iron crown is meh at best. It is the best assault vest mon (though don't sleep on assault vest heatran, that is a amazing set), stuff like glowking is better in some regards for that role. I could see it rising, but I usually consider other psychic or steel types before it.

 

[BolTingBlazie]

You mean in 3 months (yes, we are going back to the three month shifts).
I'd doubt it, it is definetely a good mon, but there is so much steel type competition.
You have:
Gholdengo (hazard removal blocking machine and ghost type)
Kingambit (explanation not needed)
Corv/skarm (defensive beasts)
Heatran (balance god and offensive beast, while checking lots of amazing mons)
Iron treads (fraud, but still a spinner)
Compared to those mons, iron crown is meh and best. It is the best assault vest mon (though don't sleep on assault vest heatran, that is a amazing set), stuff like glowking is better in some regards for that role. I could see it rising, but I usually consider other psychic or steel types before it.

I guess it all depends on how the meta pans out honestly, I love iron Crown and it seems like it has carved out a good niche for itself to stand apart from other steels, but we shall see