Some good points have been made. I'll do a quick recap :
-
Ghosts are the new
Dragons.
They seem to have replaced
Dragons at the top right now. Offensively, there is one single resistance, and one immunity to withstand their attacks. Needless to say, that this immunity we're talking about, is arguably not so relevant. Normal type has always been pretty disapointing, you don't play a Normal pokemon because of the possiblities its typing could bring to your team. No, you play it because the pokemon is good in itself (
). If you check last gen OU list, there is ONE SINGLE Normal pokemon, which is
(definitely
NOT the most appealing pokemon in this tier).
Granted, Dark pokemons are another issue. However, this typing never been really appealing either in competitive play. Sure, there is
, but the big boy must feel pretty lonely (last GEN, he was alone in OU, with
..).
,
,
,
,
are all trying to join the party though. The Fighting weakness during BW really hold them down, let's see what they can bring to the table with their new buffs.
In a nutshell, the offensive power is almost compulsory in order to break defensive cores easier + being able to spin block (goes with the increased
Hazard Control) has always been a staple to classic defensive teams =
Ghost the closest thing to a 6GEN new staple.
-
As a result : The need to have a Dark type in order to respond to the aforementioned "new staple" ?
I'm not sure about this one. Because as I said, Dark types never been that good. And the Dark type has always been a double-edged sword since the defensive side of this typing is really underwhelming. I mean, Steel was everywhere to counter Dragons because, anyway, Steel is one hell of a typing. I really doubt that the same thing will happen to Dark, but this is questionnable.
So, other things that are not gonna be staples (at least not right now) , but are currently really good :
- I don't see
Priority being a Staple. Yea, it's everywhere, and it was also the case last GEN (
,
,
everywhere ?
,
,
,
,
lurking in their shadows). You can compare it to, say, recovery moves in 3rd GEN : they were really present, but they were not staple either. Checking Terrakion in 5th Gen was hella hard if you didn't have
or
, and still, they were no staple (but they were top tier for sure).
I mean, priorities are THAT good, but you don't NEED them in order to build a viable team (it's not
Stealth Rock).
* Many people pushed for Priorities as a staple. In order to make it a staple, you could try to find pokemons/teams etc that could (almost) ONLY be defeated with the help of Priorities = making it (almost) mandatory to run.
For instance, in GEN5, having 2 Water resistances became a staple due to the cheer presence of Rain teams. You could not deal with them unless you had at least one solid check, and a replacement (if your solid check got overloaded with damage, or lured, which was very likely to happen).
- Same goes for
Status. It's present (and it has always been the case), and good, but I don't feel like you NEED it at all cost. It could become a staple if everybody runs it, and runs a status absorber : same way everybody runs SR + a way to deal with SR RS/Defog/FastTaunt. We didnt reach that point yet in my opinion.
I don't believe that people are thinking "oh shit I forgot to put Will-O-Wisp somewhere !" yet. And about how to deal with it, there are so many ways to actually deal with it (Fire type, Magic Coat, Magic Bounce, Heal Bell, Guts, Natural Cure etc.. or just a pokemon that doesn't care about it).
-
Coverage moves shift. Yea, the set of moves you can use for coverage will probably shift. But it will never create a "staple" in my opinion.
Granted, Ghost + Fighting is perfect coverage. Granted, Dark has a good coverage. But not to the point where you HAVE TO run a Dark move to have a viable team (same way you never HAD TO run BoltBeam on something to have a viable team).
Knock Off is something interesting though, because the move offers both incredible utility, and power (good BP if the opponent is holding an item, and good coverage). So I "could" see this move becoming a staple and shift the Metagame given how interesting it is to run it (but it's not the case at the moment).
To sum up : I'll Edit the OP with the GEN6 staples we've found so far. Keep in mind that the discussion is supposed to improve it. So keep it going, nothing is set in stone.
I'm also doing a quick note about
(as I did for
), to illustrate the
Ghost staple.
PS : I've been quick to add Ghost because I felt like it was the closest thing at the moment.