Well, here we are, the first week of BDSP OU is coming to a close and I think it's a good time as any to do a recap of the metagame so far!
Small note: we have preliminary usage stats too!
Generally speaking and to nobody's surprise, we took a very offensive approach from the get-go, instantly capitalizing on what the newer generations gifted us in the form of, among all the things we got, Hidden Abilities, and by extention accessible weather abilities, giving us the first occasion to experiment Drizzle and Drought in a way that wasn't possible before in DPP OU, and we all saw what rain did to the tier in just two days and a single tournament being ran... rip
, you will (probably not) be missed. But aside from that, we also kept to our roots and demonstrated that Dragons are still a force to be reckoned with.
This premise aside, we can see that the current metagame is a mess of a mix with real power thrown around, seeing how hyper offence is the most prevalent archetype we can find, although it's by far the only one; it's going to be a real while until the meta stabilizes, and it's really fun seeing how every type of build can carry itself up, with I'd say the sole exception in balances being treated harsher, but more on that later; for now, let's see the current meta-defining Pokémon:
I can go on and on with offensive threats all day, but I'll just mention others that are gaining usage rather quickly but don't belong to a specific category: Trick Room, thanks to Cresselia and Bronzong, among other setters; Dragon Dancers like Feraligatr and Gyarados; nearly unresisted Birdspam in the form of Staraptor; the good old Cloyster in all his Smashing glory; Tyranitar to check Sun teams and Latwins at the same time, Alakazam and Starmie, proving they still got it when it comes to flex some serious power and their OU status, once lost; Suicune, while missing Pressure, still hasn't forgotten how threatening he can be while Calm Minding; The Rotom formes have their actual typings, and Nasty Plot to abuse most of them, so don't forget them; Kingdra and Drapion really love the new crit mechanics, Toxic Spikes are the bane of current stall cores, and many more; even manual Rain is actually still... not forgettable! Not to mention, thanks to the absence of any item from the newer generations, Volturn is the strongest now and basically just unpunishable. As I said from the beginning, so much offensive potential, thanks to all the newer gens did to once forgotten Pokémon and mechanics. But let's give love to our more passive, but also elegant and still important defensive brethren:
Of course, we can't just skip mentioning Blissey, being the other end of the infamous Skarmbliss core we all feared at least once, although losing Toxic is a heavy blow; Shedinja, making Shedstall once again a feared matchup if you rely on Manaphy too much; Tangrowth, with his Regenerator prowess and amazing physical bulk united with Sleep Powder access, Hippowdon for being as fat as he can get once again while being a terrifying phazer, Weezing for distrupting both stall and offense cores thanks to Neutralizing Gas while offering a precious Fighting resist and Toxic Spikes absorber, and more.
This metagame has some serious potential with all the new tools the newer generations gave to all these forgotten legends, new entries, and the usual span of titans we already expected; while right now Hyper Offense seems to be the current trend, every kind of offense has a lot of tools to thrive with, thanks to Volturn having a lot more access than before and being basically unpunishable, cheering the loss of Pursuit and Rocky Helmet, while Stall and Semistall are the usual customers being reliable, both with newer tools and thanking... well, everyone losing Toxic from their movepools. Speaking of which, we all noticed how a lot of Pokémon lost moves returning here, unfortunately, and it definitely feels so when Weavile can't Low Kick things, Scizor can't Superpower Magnezone, and half of the metagame not being able to Knock Off things.
My conclusions for this:
1: Blaziken will probably go soon, but other than that I feel every other threat deserves at most a suspect, not a quickban (for me Manaphy and Latios, and maybe Chomp after)
2: Balance is the current poor guy of the meta, but I feel like it will have potential again
3: Screens HO with Aero + Screener + 4 breakers are the most valid way to use a Screens HO, change my mind
4: This meta won't stop being offensive-driven any time soon, and I LOVE it.
5: According to the (preliminary and not totally exact, but decent enough) usage stats, Honchkrow should be OU. Let that sink in.
Well, hope you enjoyed the long read, this is the first time I actually do a post like this but I'm... surprisingly really loving this meta, even more than my first love, BW <3
Of course, I probably forgot or fucked up something, but I feel like this is all encompassing and I'll enjoy re-reading this when the Kickoff tour ends, seeing how much the meta evolved from here to there
shoutouts to the BDSP Discord for being an excellent resource of information and for his super valid members btw, love you guys and I recommend joining it if you're interested to the meta, and also to my frens :]
Small note: we have preliminary usage stats too!
Generally speaking and to nobody's surprise, we took a very offensive approach from the get-go, instantly capitalizing on what the newer generations gifted us in the form of, among all the things we got, Hidden Abilities, and by extention accessible weather abilities, giving us the first occasion to experiment Drizzle and Drought in a way that wasn't possible before in DPP OU, and we all saw what rain did to the tier in just two days and a single tournament being ran... rip
This premise aside, we can see that the current metagame is a mess of a mix with real power thrown around, seeing how hyper offence is the most prevalent archetype we can find, although it's by far the only one; it's going to be a real while until the meta stabilizes, and it's really fun seeing how every type of build can carry itself up, with I'd say the sole exception in balances being treated harsher, but more on that later; for now, let's see the current meta-defining Pokémon:
No, he's not the first in usage (not even in the first 10!), but he's certainly the most defining Pokémon we have, and a current candidate to get under the eyes of the council very soon (I... hope?)! This fiery chicken got his well deserved upgrade from being an inferior version of the titular starter ape we all love in DPP, to being the very epitome of power and speed nobody can hope to face without losing a single Pokémon, other than being one of the very reasons we can't just get away in building balance teams, since they're pretty much forced to run certain structures that would make them frailer in one sense or the other; backed by Speed Boost and impressive power with his 120 BP STABs, this chicken ain't for play, and he doesn't even need coverage to do his job efficiently; throwing a Swords Dance in your opponent's face is easy, and from then it's just a matter of picking the right sack and then revengekill him with your priority, or revengekiller of choice. Nothing much you can do against him if you're not running stall, just hope you get in advantage against your opponent before he gets to throw Blaziken in the field.
The other Pokémon that got pretty quickly in the spotlight for obvious reasons, while sharing with Blaziken a good history of being confined in Ubers for a long while, we have the very Pokémon we nurse since it was a small, blue egg. To nobody's surprise, rain or not heàs still very menacing, sporting one of the best boosting moves ANY Pokémon ever received and both the necessary bulk and speed to be a very threatening win condition, at any stage of the game. While he's pretty much the only Pokémon without a variance in sets (until the CM monoattacker of old works again, I suppose...), this shows how he only needs a total of five moves to be a nuisance to every type of team; Tail Glow, your STAB of choice, Ice Beam and either Skill Swap or Energy Ball, depending on what you want to deal with. Nothing much to say, just tailor its EVs on what you need and bring it to do the job he's known for since the very beginning of his life.
Well, we have to discuss of them at some point. The epitome of power and adaptability, these big claw or jet-equipped Pokémon aren't just for show; DragMag rose again as one of the most common type of offense teams, and with a good reason, since their shared checks can't hope to contain any combination of them all at once, so you need to play pretty offensively in order to get the better on them; Garchomp and Latios are the current poster children, with one having lots of variability between his sets, and a perfect combination of Speed, bulk and raw power; SD sets, LO mixed and Choiced sets are all good choices, with all bringing different things to the table, and all of them are able to deal with the majority of the meta, AND as usual he's just a good Rocker too, while the other brings up the best Speed tier available between the dragons, while packing sheer power to drop a Draco on everyone poor enough to face him, in both Choiced flavor variants, and other sets capitalizing on his typing, coverage and options, like Roost, Defog and even Calm Mind, among other things; the other three, while not as prevalent as the first two, are still perfectly capable of contributing in the battle, with Latias being the more defensive sister of Latios, and Dragonite and Salamence offering Dragon Dance sets, with their set of strengths, like Dragonite having one of the strongest priorities in the game and Multiscale to ensure a boost (or just a Banded Outrage in your face!), and Salamence having crazy snowball potential in Moxie.
Oh, and lest we forget Magnezone, the almighty trapper of Steel types and the Pokémon you'll probably either love or hate for the remainder of the metagame. While he lost every kind of tool that directly dealt with most Steel-types (rip Hidden Power and Body Press), he's showing he doesn't need them (that, and Scizor lost Superpower. Rip.). Specs, Scarf and even things like Leftovers Magnet Rise, Custap Endure or... you name it, honestly, he's in this category for his invaluable support in taking down whatever could hinder your beloved scaly bois, and much more!
Oh, and lest we forget Magnezone, the almighty trapper of Steel types and the Pokémon you'll probably either love or hate for the remainder of the metagame. While he lost every kind of tool that directly dealt with most Steel-types (rip Hidden Power and Body Press), he's showing he doesn't need them (that, and Scizor lost Superpower. Rip.). Specs, Scarf and even things like Leftovers Magnet Rise, Custap Endure or... you name it, honestly, he's in this category for his invaluable support in taking down whatever could hinder your beloved scaly bois, and much more!
Well, we talked about the Dragons, now we're gonna talk about their kryptonite. Here they are, in all their glory, the enemies of the status quo (/j) in all their glory. Weavile quickly rose to usage thanks to his qualities that make him both a very potent revengekiller and late game sweeper, thanks to his combination of blazing fast Speed, power, good STAB combo and priority. Both SD Weavile with his STAB combo and fast Ice Shard to sweep entire teams with ease, and Banded Weavile with things like Beat Up to make him the perfect antilead against screens HO and taking care of things like Sash Alakazam are perfectly fine, while Mamoswine takes a more direct approach, straight up getting on his job with his powerful STAB combo, dealing with Magnezone and his steely friends at the same time, even more Attack to abuse his priority, Life Orb to boost his power and things like Freeze-Dry to take care of any would-be switchin; you can't just enter in a Mamoswine and hope to get unscathed from the encounter. Bonus points for him: he also makes a terrifying Stealth Rock setter.
By now, you figured out, or already knew, why I'm making a big deal of this; how are you gonna effectively deal with all these threats thrown around at once? Here's your answer! Some of them are already in the thread (Dragonite, Weavile and Mamoswine), and here are the remaining ones. All are valuable for different reasons, but one that is shared across by them all is their use of a priority move. Nothing better than being able to pick off a KO on a 40% Latios, right? With how offensive is this meta, the current way to keep threats in check is just to chip them enough or revengekill them through the use of priority spam, and its noticeable just by the fact that almost every offensive team has at least TWO of them at any time. Scizor is one of the two premier steels of the tier, being able to both dish a considerable amount of damage and to resist a LOT; Breloom does his usual job of disruption, putting a enemy to sleep, picking KOs with his moves strengthened by Technician, or going the Poison Heal route making itself the perfect status absorber; Azumarill and Crawdaunt have the strongest Jets in the tier, both of which can be Banded for unparalleled damage, or boosting themselves with free turns in order to sweep entire unprepared or chipped teams; Infernape brings both Speed and power to the table, with his usual variance of sets, while sporting an impressive Mach Punch in all flavors; SD Lucario just destroys the cores relying on Clefable as their Unaware while being the other Extremespeed user in the tier, and last but not least, a new addition of the very last days, showing off his sheer Attack and Moxie abuse while having a near unresisted Sucker Punch, especially after picking KOs.
Gengar deserves a mention by himself seeing how quickly he rose the ranks of offensive glue to deal with every problematic affair in the current offensive metagame we face. Mainly Scarf, he's the guy to call when you need to clean up a Blaziken trying to spiral out of control, a Specs Latios not leaving you survivors, and much more, but with lots of potential thanks to moves like Nasty Plot, Destiny Bond and way, way more, getting able to pick up most balance cores and just rip them apart.
While you don't need one of these, they'll surely help you in the journey of building a HO team. Yes, dedicated leads are back, baby! Speed and either hazard stacking capabilities or screen setting are what matter here, and all these Pokémon are perfect for the job. Azelf and Espeon are the premiere screen setters, being able to guarantee them while either exploding in the face of a poor opponent, getting valuable momentum to not waste a single turn of them, or disrupting the opponent's lead with Yawn or Thunder Wave. Aerodactyl is the current fastest antilead available, being able to Taunt EVERY single lead except Espeon and Xatu, and then set up their own Rocks. Skarmory and Froslass are good stacking setters, and removal isn't one of the easiest things in this tier, so having Spikes is pretty appreciated, and Smeargle... is Smeargle. We have Webs, and Smeargle is ready to set them for you. Other than that, you know what this Pokémon does by know.
While Drizzle is gone, Drought isn't. Torkoal and Ninetales are your sun setters, while Venusaur and Victreebel (surprise!) are your abusers. What you end up picking depends on what you want; Torkoal, unlike Ninetales, doesn't get walled by Heatran, and can spin hazards away or set them, while Ninetales has an actual offensive presence; Venusaur gets walled by Skarmory thanks to his loss of Weather Ball, while Victreebel gets walled by Heatran thanks to not having any coverage to hit him. No matter what you end up choosing though, Sun is still a strong weather that can easily bring you to victory, especially when Blaziken is still around to abuse it for his own Flare Blitzing ends.
I can go on and on with offensive threats all day, but I'll just mention others that are gaining usage rather quickly but don't belong to a specific category: Trick Room, thanks to Cresselia and Bronzong, among other setters; Dragon Dancers like Feraligatr and Gyarados; nearly unresisted Birdspam in the form of Staraptor; the good old Cloyster in all his Smashing glory; Tyranitar to check Sun teams and Latwins at the same time, Alakazam and Starmie, proving they still got it when it comes to flex some serious power and their OU status, once lost; Suicune, while missing Pressure, still hasn't forgotten how threatening he can be while Calm Minding; The Rotom formes have their actual typings, and Nasty Plot to abuse most of them, so don't forget them; Kingdra and Drapion really love the new crit mechanics, Toxic Spikes are the bane of current stall cores, and many more; even manual Rain is actually still... not forgettable! Not to mention, thanks to the absence of any item from the newer generations, Volturn is the strongest now and basically just unpunishable. As I said from the beginning, so much offensive potential, thanks to all the newer gens did to once forgotten Pokémon and mechanics. But let's give love to our more passive, but also elegant and still important defensive brethren:
The poster child of Fairy types deserves a mention by itself, being a top threat in its own right from the very beginning, getting the most important roles of being one of the few Pokémon able to enter on basically any unboosted attack thanks to its bulk, healing and supporting his teammates with the best lone typing a Pokémon could get blessed in a metagame as offensive as this. We all already know what Clefable does, you don't need me to repeat the obvious since Generation 6, and that's how it still thrives in the metagame. Unaware for the fatter teams, Magic Guard for the usual support and status absorber shenaningans, it wasn't hurt too hard by the loss of Soft-Boiled and still remains one of the most splashable glues you can afford.
Yup, didn't change a bit since when we lost him. Speedy enough to be able to rock SD sets and get kills in a matter of seconds, while also being bulky enough to provide invaluable support in the form of being a Ground type and resisting a lot of current offensive types (hi Fighting priorities), sporting excellent longevity and status absorbing qualities, and both blocking momentum and grabbing it, he's sure as hell here to stay. Be to set rocks, to Defog them away or to SD in the face of a poor Breloom that tried to Spore you, he's an invaluable asset in building fatter teams, no matter the set you'll end up running.
Steel-types complement both Dragmag and fatter cores well, providing varying degrees of invaluable support; they set hazards, pressure the opponent with their attacks (Heatran, Doom Desire/CM Wish Jirachi and Scizor), or remove them with either Spin or Defog and passively phazing threats away or just gaining the good old slow momentum (Empoleon, Scizor, Forretress and Skarmory). Nothing much to say here, they're just invaluable and you should take care both of dealing with them and using them to your advantage in your teams.
Washing machine once again sports the ability to freely bring threats in and out, burn any physical threats he finds in his path, and distrupt both offense and stall cores depending on his set, be Leftovers or Choice Scarf Trick - oh, did I mention basically everyone else lost it? One more reason to fear Rotom -. Starmie and the Slows are perfect in this meta full of Fighting STABs thrown with no real care, Mantine is the only thing that can 100% deal with Manaphy, Empoleon eats Latios' Meteors for breakfast, and Gastrodon, Quagsire and Swampert stop Volturn cores from doing as they please thanks to absorbing Rotom-W and Magnezone's Volt Switches. Of course, Quagsire is also vital in full stall builds thanks to being the other part of the Unaware core, while Gastrodon straight up eats Water attacks, and Swampert sets Rocks. Some of them also remove hazards, which is an invaluable thing where you could be at the mercy of Spikes, or even worse, Roserade.
Of course, we can't just skip mentioning Blissey, being the other end of the infamous Skarmbliss core we all feared at least once, although losing Toxic is a heavy blow; Shedinja, making Shedstall once again a feared matchup if you rely on Manaphy too much; Tangrowth, with his Regenerator prowess and amazing physical bulk united with Sleep Powder access, Hippowdon for being as fat as he can get once again while being a terrifying phazer, Weezing for distrupting both stall and offense cores thanks to Neutralizing Gas while offering a precious Fighting resist and Toxic Spikes absorber, and more.
This metagame has some serious potential with all the new tools the newer generations gave to all these forgotten legends, new entries, and the usual span of titans we already expected; while right now Hyper Offense seems to be the current trend, every kind of offense has a lot of tools to thrive with, thanks to Volturn having a lot more access than before and being basically unpunishable, cheering the loss of Pursuit and Rocky Helmet, while Stall and Semistall are the usual customers being reliable, both with newer tools and thanking... well, everyone losing Toxic from their movepools. Speaking of which, we all noticed how a lot of Pokémon lost moves returning here, unfortunately, and it definitely feels so when Weavile can't Low Kick things, Scizor can't Superpower Magnezone, and half of the metagame not being able to Knock Off things.
My conclusions for this:
1: Blaziken will probably go soon, but other than that I feel every other threat deserves at most a suspect, not a quickban (for me Manaphy and Latios, and maybe Chomp after)
2: Balance is the current poor guy of the meta, but I feel like it will have potential again
3: Screens HO with Aero + Screener + 4 breakers are the most valid way to use a Screens HO, change my mind
4: This meta won't stop being offensive-driven any time soon, and I LOVE it.
5: According to the (preliminary and not totally exact, but decent enough) usage stats, Honchkrow should be OU. Let that sink in.
Well, hope you enjoyed the long read, this is the first time I actually do a post like this but I'm... surprisingly really loving this meta, even more than my first love, BW <3
Of course, I probably forgot or fucked up something, but I feel like this is all encompassing and I'll enjoy re-reading this when the Kickoff tour ends, seeing how much the meta evolved from here to there
shoutouts to the BDSP Discord for being an excellent resource of information and for his super valid members btw, love you guys and I recommend joining it if you're interested to the meta, and also to my frens :]
Last edited:
- this thing needs to go. It is incredibly oppressive to any team that can’t put offense it. I absolutely love manaphy as a Pokémon and it really saddens me to say this, but I can’t call him healthy for the metagame with a good conscious. Even water immunities aren’t safe since he can easily just run skill swap to remove their ability, and pummel them all the same. Easily the most broken mon in BDSP OU imo.
- this is a tough one. I personally see both sides to the argument. On one hand, it’s very easy to get set up with blaziken, and having more reliable fighting STAB in close combat elevates his threat level. On the other hand, he is frail, and can be chipped into priority range while setting up, allowing stuff like Infernape to revenge kill. Overall though, I do think blaziken is a bit much for the metagame at large, and as such also deserves a ban.
- oh man this is tough for me. I have no idea whether chomp deserves a ban or not. The classic DPP yache berry set is back and effective as ever, but the existence of fairy types means that it’s a fair bit easier to check Garchomp than originally in gen 4. I could understand if Garchomp gets banned, but I personally don’t lean one way or the other. I love Garchomp dearly and to me it’s a pleasure seeing him reach heights he hasn’t been able to reach in almost a decade, so I am likely seeing this with some bias.
- another very tough call for me. I have always loved the latis and am pleased to see them in almost any metagame. But even I can’t deny that Latios can be a bit overbearing in this metagame. He almost always forces Blissey in (or whatever your special sponge is), which can be easily abused with a well timed double switch. With Latios I’m pretty split as well, but the higher speed tier makes him a fair bit more dangerous than Garchomp in my opinion, and as such I’m leaning towards ban.
can make quick work of it, or with a flare blitz and close combat, suddenly Mach punch 
forces it out. So this gives the illusion of Blaziken being less intense than it actually is.
as a counter, who can’t punish a u turn) .
didn’t make it into OU because it was too overbearing on team building then there is no way manaphy/latios will remain when they can almost always force a 6 Pokémon team into 5 at the very least.
a lot. It’s easily an S Pokémon currently, the rain and Blaziken ban might make it a little less S, and more A, as sun teams and bulky grass types start to appear more. It’s speed tier forces out so many Pokémon and this is the first generation in a while where it feels like Starmie is actually strong. It’s interesting what can happen in a metagame without 
have been pretty cool too..
completely invalidating almost every special grass type.. 
