I had a nice ladder run on my late night off work before that shit got ruined since my internet decided to die out of nowhere, peaked at #2 and if not for that I probably would still be top 5 but oh well, I'm still fairly high. Since I can't fall asleep at 6 AM despite having to be up in about 4 hours for work, I may as well post my initial thoughts on this meta cause it's quite a fun meta, if a bit busted.
Screens in general are absolutely busted, it's genuinely unfunny how easily you can simply set them up and abuse set-up sweepers behind them with ease. SD + Flame Koraidon, CM + Agility Miraidon, Flutter Mane, Chein-Pao, Moody Scovillain, Ceruledge, etc etc. All of these can very easily spiral out of control with just screens alone and you can easily flowchart sequences that can really push you towards an easy win. I'm sure there's even more set-up mons you can throw on a team and you'll generally perform under screens so long as you can simply abuse the Dragons for set-up, shouldn't be hard if you simply run Flutter Mane like imo you should on basically any screens or HO in general since it's just too good for HO to pass up on. I'm sure as people explore and "solve" the meta and certain aspects get looked at, screens will sort of become manageable but only time will tell. Speaking of Scovillain...
Scovillain @ Leftovers
Ability: Moody
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Protect
- Substitute
- Leech Seed
- Flamethrower
This is so damn annoying to face. Idt it's broken per se, but behind screens this can easily abuse free turns on fatter stuff with no problems. Even Unaware mons are going to get annoyed against this as this thing can sorta just sit there and waste PP because it means less PP for something else in the back to have to deal with, again which is easy to abuse, and given Moody almost nothing else wants to deal with it either. Toxapex is probably the only long-term means to answer it and that can be easily patched in the builder. Seriously, this thing seems to be underappreciated, give it a whirl when you get a chance. Also, feel free to actually experiment with EVs, I'm sure someone can break this mon by playing around with them lol.
Cyclizar @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Shed Tail
- Outrage
- U-turn
- Knock Off
Again, not particularly broken or anything, but this mon is pretty legit. It kinda lives and dies by aggressive play, but given the partners you naturally wanna pair this with you can live with that, and you'd be surprised how easy it is to pull this off 2-3 times in a game so long as you literally don't just throw this mon away thanks to Regen. Neat part is it's not even a bad Scarfer in its own right, as it's fairly fast and U-Turn + Knock if always good, though it's a bit weak so it's not a world beater or anything like that, don't sleep on this mon if you have remotely any predicting skills or if you simply wanna play aggressively cause this mon rewards good aggressive play like no other.
To absolutely no one's surprise, the cover legends are in the top 3 best mons of the entire metagame. It's my believe that any good teams within this meta should absolutely run at minimum 2 of these 3 outside of hard stall. I do think Miraidon is more threatening on paper than in practice, but it is still certainly an S-Rank threat imo. Koraidon steals the show for best meta mon though, it's actually insane just how threatening of a mon it is and I think my experience as well as others' speak for themselves. If I had to rank these 3 in order of viability, Koraidon > Flutter Mane > Miraidon. Flutter Mane is fairly simplistic, but you can very easily mix and match Tera types to your heart's content with it because no matter what it will put in work game-in and game-out. Fairy, Ghost for STABs, or Ground, Fire for coverage, and I'm sure you can probably use other types too, like Normal to surprise other Flutter Manes trying to revenge yours. As for the cover legends, I think they'll end up having a nice variety of sets to choose from between set-up sets (with either SD/CM or Agility, I think running both at least on Miraidon is the wave on HO), Choiced sets, good ol' LO which seems particularly good on Miraidon since LO Draco actually really hurts & you don't kill yourself with recoil unlike Koraidon, or just HDB pivot sets. I do wanna squeeze a little tidbit in here tho cause I've seen no Duggy for Miraidon so far, but IF ppl start running Dug to trap that, Ghost Tera Miraidon is definitely gonna be the play, or at least it'll actually crop up some I'm sure just to escape it.
Iron Bundle @ Booster Energy
Ability: Quark Drive
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hydro Pump
- Ice Beam
- Freeze-Dry
- Taunt
Honestly pretty underwhelming, though I still think this definitely has a niche. Outrunning the 3 best mons in the entire meta is no joke, especially when it has SE STABs to hit 2 of them with that aren't exactly all that weak. Idk how well it'll keep up with the meta long-term, but at least in this early part of the meta it'll most certainly hold a strong niche for that Speed tier alone. Probs best on heavy hazard stacking builds, probs with Knock Off mons too so that way Taunt + Freeze-Dry actually fucks with Pex really hard.
These guys are pretty good as well. They really help keep fatter builds alive in this otherwise very hard offensive metagame, ofc with the help of friends like Bliss, Corvi, and Pex paired with them. Skeledirge in particular is definitely one of the better checks to Koraidon, which is much needed in this metagame, and actually functions outside of hard stall so yea. Clodsire ig kinda can too but imo it's much harder to fit outside of hard stall.
There's more I wanted to talk about because frankly there are so many cool and imo viable new mons available to use (Chein-Pao, Iron Valiant, Scream Tail, the moths, just to name a few), but I've been at it for about 30+ mins now LOL. I'm sure there's far more to explore with this meta, especially while Tera is here because I doubt that shit's lasting till the end of the month but we'll see ig. Only time will tell if Tera is still around.
Tldr screens are bonkers, abuse them if/while you can. Can't wait to explore the meta more whenever I have free time to actually play & build.
