Resource BDSP OU Metagame Discussion Thread

[ooook]

just wanted to share some thoughts after playing for two days, though i'm not very high rated so grains of salt required:

I think rain is really good, swift swim is probably broken. There is very little speed control so essentially nothing outspeeds kingdra after rain. The only things that can take 2 of kingdra's hits are water absorbers + blissey/similarly stally mons. The lack of ferro and ttar being worse help rain a ton vs. gen 5 (probably this meta's closest equivalent).

Infernape is crazy. banded, mixed, sd, nasty plot are all terrors to deal with. Lati/starmie are probably must-haves right now to deal with it

gliscor is really good, spdef or phys def. i think sd/eq/knock off or facade/roost is kind of the only set you can run without tspikes, though tspikes allow you to fit taunt or protect and it's crazy. tspikes are also really good...

spdef wish/protect/teleport/moonblast gardevoir has been cool, functions similarly to slowbro/king in gen 8. Walls Lati for days and is a pretty good special sponge outside that.

 

[Ctann]

been having a lot of fun running banded or scarf medicham, it’s giving me nostalgia from many years ago when I would run scarf medicham and mow through teams in an older meta on smogon.

Banded high jump kick can OHKO or 2HKO most of the meta..! Zen headbutt is a good option if you’re predicting a faster/bulky fighting resist switch in.. whilst ice punch and your choice of filler can round out the rest.

generally only bulky psychics like slowbro are a full stop to medicham



banded Blaziken has also been very fun..! It’s very strong and my favourite wall/stall breaker right now, as you don’t need much prediction. Even quagsire is 2HKOd by close combat, whilst the dragons need to beware!

Flare blitz and close combat maim a lot of the metagame. u turn hits slowbro and the lati twins on the switch, and if you’re using banded Blaziken, you’re running something to take advantage of the switch in against those. The final slot is filler… since knock off is currently unavailable.

 

[Lily]

So personal thoughts after a couple days of playing (not that much - I've been watching a fair bit but I haven't had a chance to play bc of a billion other responsibilities D:) - I originally didn't think Manaphy was an issue, and I still don't, but I do think rain is a massive problem and would like to push for a ban on Drizzle. Here are the two obvious big ones:


Manaphy is the destroyer of fat teams everywhere, much like it has always been. Defensive counterplay is limited to Mantine, Unaware Clefable, and Shedinja... and Clefable is cheesed by Skill Swap anyway so lol (edit: i thought shedinja was too but i GUESS NOT). It trucks balance with ease, though stall doesn't actually have a huge issue with it because of the former two Pokemon being pretty much staples. Kingdra shits on any and all offense, particularly those that have the nerve to drop the one offensive Pokemon capable of soft checking it in Azumarill. Together they are the cream of the crop and what makes rain broken, but I'd like to present a few reasons why I don't think we should ban them.


These two Pokemon are obviously not as bulky as Manaphy, Crawdaunt in particular is very frail and Gatr is fat but can't compete with 100/100. They make up for it, though, in their ability to muscle through -every Pokemon in the game- without fail. Here are a few Pokemon that could theoretically fit on fat teams that get absolutely mauled despite seeming like they may be checks. Some calcs require an SD boost which you conveniently can freely get on Pokemon like Blissey and Slowbro/king.

252+ Atk Life Orb Adaptability Crawdaunt Crabhammer vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Clefable in Rain: 390-460 (98.9 - 116.7%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO
252+ Atk Life Orb Adaptability Crawdaunt Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Mantine: 257-304 (68.9 - 81.5%) -- 50% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
252+ Atk Life Orb Adaptability Crawdaunt Crabhammer vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Skarmory in Rain: 252-299 (75.4 - 89.5%) -- 12.5% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
+2 252+ Atk Life Orb Adaptability Crawdaunt Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Tangrowth: 354-416 (87.6 - 102.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock
+1 252+ Atk Life Orb Adaptability Crawdaunt Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Salamence: 356-421 (90.3 - 106.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock
+2 252+ Atk Life Orb Adaptability Crawdaunt Crabhammer vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Azumarill in Rain: 368-433 (91 - 107.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock (if you wanted to run this for some reason??)

This doesn't even begin to cover the fact that Jet gives you a great offense MU, nuking Blaziken, Weavile, Infernape, Nidoking and even dropping Garchomp in a single hit at +2. It also comes very close to dropping Latios, 1 SR hit + 1 Life Orb hit or 2 SR hits makes it a reasonable or even favourable roll.

Feraligatr does much of the same thing but doesn't even need to take Life Orb recoil, making full use of its good natural bulk. It does just barely miss out on most OHKOs but it can tank hits from the Pokemon it's hitting easily (for example, Clefable's Moonblast doesn't even 2HKO it after Stealth Rock ever):

252+ Atk Life Orb Sheer Force Feraligatr Liquidation vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Clefable: 196-231 (49.7 - 58.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
+2 252+ Atk Life Orb Sheer Force Feraligatr Ice Punch vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Mantine: 237-279 (63.5 - 74.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+2 252+ Atk Life Orb Sheer Force Feraligatr Liquidation vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Skarmory in Rain: 378-446 (113.1 - 133.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+1 252+ Atk Life Orb Sheer Force Feraligatr Ice Punch vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Salamence: 655-775 (166.2 - 196.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+2 252+ Atk Life Orb Sheer Force Feraligatr Ice Punch vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Tangrowth: 322-382 (79.7 - 94.5%) -- 50% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
+2 252+ Atk Life Orb Sheer Force Feraligatr Liquidation vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Azumarill in Rain: 277-328 (68.5 - 81.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock

Much like Crawdaunt, Feraligatr also has an Aqua Jet that sends anything weak to it (and most things neutral) to the shadow realm whenever the rain is up.

Basically I don't think Manaphy is the problem behind Rain's incredible fat MU but rather just the tier's kinda middling water resists (and by this I mean we don't have Toxapex...), anything with fatbusting capabilities will just go bananas. Manaphy has the longevity advantage over these two for sure but unlike Manaphy they just... break the entire tier on the spot.


There are a lot of Kingdra alternatives - Golduck is the one I'm talking about here because it's the most directly comparable, but there is Ludicolo, Kabutops, Mantine, Omastar, Floatzel, Qwilfish... you get it.

Golduck shares Kingdra's statline as far as the most important ones go: a solid 85 Speed tier, and a very workable 95 SpA. This makes its Surfs/Hydro Pumps just as capable of cleaning up offense as Kingdra's, with its main shortcomings being two things:
a) it's less bulky
b) it's not able to OHKO the Lati twins

It makes up for this in some ways, mostly an Ice Shard resistance instead of a neutrality and the ability to switch up its game with Calm Mind if it wants. It pretty much performs the exact same role in my testing and as such I don't think banning Kingdra will really help that much. Doesn't even begin to mention the others I listed above... Kingdra is not the broken element but rather the best of the broken elements, if that makes sense.

Basically I think we really just should get rid of Drizzle and leave it at that, nothing else in the meta feels really broken to me except maybe Latios (which is also powered up significantly by Rain anyway) and I'd rather let it settle beyond that. I'll be keeping an eye on it during the Charity Bowl for sure. I'm glad people are enjoying this meta so much, it's been a blast to play for me!!

 

[afuyeas]

A few observations of mine after playing and watching some games:



Water types are looking incredibly potent with good resists being sparce, with offensive teams usually going with a lati twin or or having to sac a pokemon to every hit from a specs kingdra unless they're running . In particular I've been particularly impressed by Azumarill's strengths in the metagame and its synergy with dragons like or where trying to revenge either with a choiced dragon move (very likely) may very well end the game on the spot against an offensive team. As for the prince of the sea () it has predictably been a threat and a half to every type of team. While Manaphy's speed can result in an unsuccessful sweep against offensive teams packing Garchomp, a lati and/or Infernape the sheer bulk it has means it's able to go one on one against the vast majority of the tier and will often require multiple pokemon teaming up on it which makes it excellent at opening holes for its teammates by forcing favorable trades, while i'm not completely convinced of its stallbreaking prowess as of now there is no denying that one critical hit or an ice beam freeze on the one pokemon on stall that is tasked with handling it can spell doom for the stall team making Manaphy a serious threat to offense and defense alike. Finally life orb Starmie has been absolutely incredible in every game where it wasn't facing a Blissey, a Rotom-wash or a Gastrodon with its simple coverage of Hydro Pump, Ice Beam and Thunderbolt threatening to ohko or 2hko nearly the entire tier. The restriction to only pokemon of gen 1 through 4 and the removal of Pursuit has highlighted both how important the base 115 speed was in those early gens and how important pursuit was to holding Starmie off, it being able to outrun the majority of the tier while not fearing getting trapped by Tyranitar has made Starmie a force to reckon with.



Stall is good, much to my dismay. Many eyes have been focused on offense for the few days this metagame has been existing and understandly so, however on the other side of the coin I've found stall to be quite powerful and effective at throttling generic offense that stack on set up sweepers only to be stonewalled by the unaware duo of Quagsire and Clefable while Blissey still eats special attacks for breakfast. There are a few reasons to this: for one Platinum tutor moves being inaccessible has resulted in the move Trick having a poor and easily planned for distribution with only the rotom formes truly being viable users of the move. Now Blissey knows she can come in on Latios without fearing being tricked and wall it forever, not even fearing Psyshock. With Trick being unusable on many teams stallbreaking tactics become much more limited with Substitute + Nasty Plot Gengar being a notable example of a pokemon threatening to stall teams since it has poison stab for Clefable and a physically defensive Quagsire is not an answer while being able to walk all over Blissey:

252 SpA Gengar Shadow Ball vs. 248 HP / 8 SpD Quagsire: 184-217 (46.8 - 55.2%) -- 69.9% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery

I read about techs such as skill swap Manaphy to beat Unaware Clefable but I've not found it to be effective when the opponent can simply switch between Blissey and Clefable only for Clef to come back in and nullify the tech (the stall user has to avoid a crit on the switch tho). Not to mention that such a Manaphy will struggle to fit all the moves it wants on its moveset and Skill Swap doesn't help against Haze Mantine in the slightest.

Another reason as for why stall has been good so far is Toxic not being a TM, you can't just slap Toxic on your Kingdra and that Mantine or that Slowking that would wall you are no longer a problem. Random status spreading has always been a notable method of breaking through defense since getting rid of status on your team requires the use of moves with low pp such as Heal Bell or Aromatherapy that take a valuable turn for the stall user and thus can be exploited. Now i think Toxic Spikes are currently pretty good and are massively helpful for breaking through defensive cores that forgot to add a grounded poison type and have to defog them away (which is exploitable, of course) and i would like to see them explored more but good poison types to fit on defensive teams aren't exactly hard to come by (Venusaur, Neutralizing Gas Weezing come to mind).

Fewer options for hazard removal and no Heavy-Duty Boots has resulted in hazard stacking being once again a powerful tool both for and against defensive teams and with Knock Off having a much lower distribution as of now it is honestly a relief so I'm looking forward to seeing how offense reacts to stall being effective in this early metagame, for now I'm pretty tired and I'll refrain from making further comments. Those have been my early conclusions on a still very young meta.

 

[Amane Misa]

Just wanted to jump on the HO train. It's extremely good right now and you can go really creative with it, making it hard to prepare for. I got to #28 on the ladder by just playing on my phone while doing other stuff. This probably doesn't say much because the top spots are still at a relatively low ELO but this just shows the potential of the archetype.

Linoone HO (pokepast.es)

Tyranitar @ Focus Sash
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stone Edge
- Crunch
- Dragon Dance
- Stealth Rock

It's a pretty cool anti-Starmie lead that can also get a kill on your opponent's team. It's extremely hard to stop from setting Stealth Rock up once it starts using Dragon Dance. Another cool perk of it is that if the opponent has an Infernape, Sand puts it in the range of a +2 Quick Attack from Scizor after one round of Stealth Rock damage (I will get into the details later). My main issue with it is that I am always anxious when I face a Breloom but the ones I faced were Adamant so lucky me.

Linoone @ Iapapa Berry
Ability: Gluttony
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def
Adamant Nature
- Extreme Speed
- Shadow Claw / Thief
- Belly Drum
- Facade / I don't fucking know

Linoone is not an auto-win, even if you get it to set up Belly Drum. Furthermore, it lost a lot of its good moves (Stomping Tantrum, Seed Bomb and etc.) this generation. Nevertheless, I found it really effective, especially due to the lack of Ghost-types (Gengar is the only viable Ghost, I think?) and because easy it is to get chip damage on stuff like Scizor, Magnezone, Heatran, Tyranitar and etc. with the other sweepers on the team. I haven't found the need for Speed EVs yet but I might be missing something. Same for coverage; I just went with Facade so it could potentially set up on Water-types but it's mainly because I haven't found a better idea yet. I love max HP because with Screens up it can survive with enough HP to use Belly Drum lot of strong hits like Kingdra's Surf under rain, Garchomp's Earthquake, and a lot more. It also has a good matchup against rain and HO in general.

Scizor @ Life Orb
Ability: Technician
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Bullet Punch
- Quick Attack
- Swords Dance
- Brick Break

Scizor is relatively standard at this point so nothing special here, just wanted to touch on Quick Attack. My fellow SM UU players might recall this demon and what it can do, but for those who don't, at +2 it can OHKO Infernape and Blaziken after Stealth Rock damage (the OHKO is guaranteed if you get one turn of sand chip with Tyranitar). It's also a bit stronger against Heatran (it's not ideal, but Alakazam's Focus Blast + Stealth Rock damage + +2 LO Quick Attack KO Specially Defensive Heatran, which is really cool to take into account).

Alakazam is great against slower teams, namely stall, as it can bypass even Blissey. Blaziken is obnoxious and I hope it gets banned. The main counterplay I found for it is chipping it with recoil + LO and hoping to get the kill with a resisted Bullet Punch or Ice Shard.

 

[UltiMario]

Current meta seems pretty dominated by HO and rain variants. Between Blaziken, Latios, Kingdra, and Manaphy, it looks pretty hard for anything that's not stall to keep offensive threats in check, creating a bunch of offensive team variants that are trying to outpace each other.

Of the things I've messed with that are unusually good is Staraptor + Zone, a lot of bulkier teams only have Emp or Skarm and that's free zone food unless they're Shed Shell. Obviously you have to decide between Scarf or Band to be stronger vs offense or stall but sometimes Band can even get in on offense and force kills so its not terrible either way.

252+ Atk Life Orb Sheer Force Feraligatr Liquidation vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Clefable: 196-231 (49.7 - 58.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
+2 252+ Atk Life Orb Sheer Force Feraligatr Liquidation vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Skarmory in Rain: 378-446 (113.1 - 133.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO

Worth noting that you're stuck with Waterfall until Home, only Kabutops, Corsola, and Sharpedo have Liquidation access in BDSP.

 

[AM]

Rain will probably be fine when Manaphy gets a ban. Most of the rain checks are invalidated/made unviable by Manaphys presence. Things like Gatr/Daunt are not and wont be issues in rain. Manaphy's respectable speed for the format, bulk, and access to Tail Glow makes it too overbearing to account for everything else at least consistently. Tackling Swift Swim/Kingdra over Manaphy is just backwords logic.

 

[Baloor]

the head honcho

capone (Honchkrow) @ Life Orb
Ability: Moxie
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Brave Bird
- Night Slash
- Sucker Punch
- Roost

ive been playing around with this and honestly its pretty good. i initially got the idea after seeing all the lati spam, this makes psychic less clickable for choiced sets as you can basically come in and take a kill with this and snowball every time. this does face competition with in a similar role but ice stab is a lot less spamming than flying currently, as well as sucker being significantly better in most mus compared to ice shard. honch is also a lot stronger out the gate than weavile. currently running jolly on it to outrun manas that speed creep loom but ada can be used. this does eventually die due to bb+lo but its very likely you'd have chipped the other team significantly / gotten some kills by the time that happens so its worth imo. only mon off the top of my head that can come in a reasonable take a hit is skarmory but honestly that mons not v good rn lol.

this is the team im currently using with honchkrow, 4-0 on ladder in the 1400s and only lost to dnite in a room tour.
paste
the intial idea for this was honch + doom desire but as i continued to play with honch i realized to get through clef you really do not need doom desire, its still nice utiltity for stuff like gengar vs ttar but you can drop it for psychic (breaks dnite sub after multiscale broken) / flash cannon (roll to break dnite sub but more reliable vs most of the meta). added scarf chomper for elec immune + speed control, added gengar for some additional speed control and to help the stall mu. band breloom for a water resist and another breaker + prior. rotom as another water resist and pivot to get in shit like honch and breloom. jirachi to provide rocks and a lati check that i can pivot into strong mons with. weakest mu is def dnite where you have to rely on some prerequisites in game to win such keeping rocks up. as i said earlier you can put something like psychic on rachi to force the sub to break to chip it into range of prior or scarf chomp if they arent set up a shit ton. you can also try and get a wisp off with rotom but its quite unlikely that will happen. maybe psychic > twave on rachi since im not clicking that a lot idk. additionally weav and mamo can also be annoying for this so obivously this isnt the BEST team and no chance i submit it for samples but i think this is a decent showcase for now to show honch has some merit as i learn the tier more. s/o adem for bouncing ideas off of me for this such as band loom

 

[R8]

I would have posted that in a bazaar thread, but since that thread doesn't exist yet i'm going to post this team here. You can see that more like an attempt to explore the meta rather than a sample team submission.

https://pokepast.es/3e15215d70d10525
So i wanted to explore the full stall archetype in this metagame, and i got pretty good results with this formula. I believe better can be done, but even if that team is arguably underoptimized, it still got pretty good results in the ladder. I'm currently top 57 in the bdsp ladder, and tied for the second highest GXE (EDIT: Not anymore at all lol). However, i must point that i only played 24 games on the ladder with that team, which isn't a very big sample size.

proof

View attachment 386519

The idea is pretty simple: unaclef + glisc + quagsire + bliss attempts to cover as much threats as possible early on the build, while covering some stuff that have very few reliable defensive checks such as Manaphy, Heatran, Garchomp and Specs Latios, for example, so i don't have to go through the struggle of fitting a counter to those later in the build. Gliscor also is a decent win condition, and can be an important asset against opposing defensive teams thanks to Poison Heal. Tangrowth and Skarm, the former dealing with annoying stuff like Daunt and Breloom (Yeah, it can lose to certain loom sets without aerial ace), provides the supremely useful Knock Off and can be an annoyance with Sleep Powder, and the latter compressing Spikes and Defog, while being a second Ground immune and a Steel. As a physical wall, it also helps Tangrowth, which can be otherwise overwhelmed.

Options
+ Wish: There are two reasons to run Wish on Blissey, over Aromatherapy, in this build: first, Aromatherapy disrupt Gliscor's Poison Heal, and also often isn't needed since the team already has two status absorbers. Second, wish passing helps cancelling the progress made by the opposing team by wish passing to something that was previously worn down. This can be useful against a well played mana rain: manaphy can abuse the way Wish+Tect work to progressively wear it down: if manaphy clicks surf two times on the switch and then proceed to switch out, Clefable will be around 80% after Wish + Tect. That makes me wonder if Mantine isn't actually mandatory on stall?
Aromatherapy is however still sometimes nice, and gives you a way to play around tspikes long term (i'll expand a bit more about that later in that post).

+ Ice Fang: Might be better than facade to fish for a freeze or a flinch against Skarmory, and immediately hitting opposing Gliscor and Garchomp.

+ Leech Seed: Regenerator sometimes doesn't feel enough long term, so yeeting Sleep Powder for Leech Seed might make it more consistent, especially since Crawdaunt existing forces it to not run leftovers.

+ Might be worth since, without leftovers, Skarm can be easier to chip. However, i believe that zone might have some decent usage in this meta.

- - - -

Some thoughts
Manaphy rain MU still can be rough against that team: mystic water mana or even skill swap variants just win immediately, and even without one of those two options, a well played Mana can wear down Clefable over the course of the game, so i'm starting to wonder if Mantine isn't actually mandatory on stall?

On paper, TSpikes looks pretty annoying as well. However, from my experience, if you run Aromatherapy, the TSpikes setter usually doesn't live long enough to be a huge threat long term. Fitting a tspike absorber or Xatu sounds also a bit too difficult on stall, so i guess that's the best we can get. That also made me wonder if TSpikes could be used on Stall, since that hazard seems to be annoying for quite a lot of structures ; however, most tspikes setters we have sucks. The best of them might be Nidoqueen, but i feel like this thing doesn't check enough stuff to be worth a slot.

Stall is good in this metagame IMO, as we saw in the Smogon Charity Bowl's tournament. I feel like Stall is currently more consistent at keeping stuff in check than other archetypes.

 

[Eve]

Hi! With the Charity Bowl concluding, the council has reached a fairly unanimous conclusion about one aspect of the metagame:
Rain.

This playstyle, over the course of the tournament and prior, has proven itself to be frankly obscene and restrictive, and that goes beyond just the talents of Manaphy. The format simply lacks adequate responses to the power Rain provides to far too many Pokemon. Lily's above post shows this nicely but only scratches the surface, as even generally fast things that enjoy boosted Water attacks like Latios and Starmie become unreasonable to account for in the downpour. We don't think banning any single abuser would solve the issue- there are plenty of insane wallbreakers for Rain to make use of, and plenty of insane Swift Swimmers (that also act as wallbreakers against anything but the most specific prep). We also don't think a Damp Rock ban would be enough to really stop these Rain abusers from making the progress they're currently capable of, or that a Pelipper ban would be reasonable or guarantee a solution to the problem. We would like to get this problematic element resolved as soon as possible so we can focus on other aspects of the metagame, and as such, Drizzle is now banned from BDSP OU via a unanimous council vote. We hope you enjoy this change to the metagame!
P.S: We are still willing to take tiering action on Manaphy if it proves to be problematic in the future, but this change will definitely nerf it.

Voting Sheet

Tony is currently not active on the council, making this ban entirely unanimous.

 

[Zeno420]

Banned after 2 days…

First of all I love the banning of drizzle, rain was way too oppressive and common through out the tournament and ladder. The only type of fat or balance that had decent success was built around mantine and checking latios to an extent. Obviously the latter is still an issue but with rain being gone it becomes much easier to dedicate certain slots to latios over what would’ve been rain. There are some obvious losers and winners in rain being unanimously banned.

Losers:

I want to get the obvious ones out of the way, the first 3 on the list will definitely drop out of ou all together by the time usage stats comes out as the only niche they had were being sweepers under rain. Mantine almost had 100% usage on most balance and fatter builds throughout the tournament, it was really the only reliable check to manaphy while also boasting defog. Now I’m not saying mantine will drop out of ou like the other 3 but compared to its dominance with rain it will be a significant drop off. But with the tier overall lacking in hazard control, mantine will definitely still have a place checking the likes of blaziken (edge less), lucario, and scizor as it can now likely focus on its physical variant.


These 2 are just semi losers. Latios was almost as a big of a problem compared to rain but now with rain gone I believe it will be much easier to manage. Specs surf won’t be blowing back rachi and scizor any longer and many builds will be able to solely focus on latios with the threat of rain gone. But specs Draco and psychic isn’t going anywhere it will definitely remain a s tier threat. Same goes for manaphy in this scenario, I believe it will function close to how manaphy is being used in oras. It can still tail glow up and sweep at a moments notice but can also manually set up rain with rain dance.

Winners:


I’m going to be honest, you can make an argument that damn near everyone (basically all fat builds) will benefit from this but I believe these are the most noticeable benefactors as I was scourging through the tier. You may have realized I left a couple names out that I’m going to discuss in depth. If I write out everything that benefits this will be damn near a college essay.


God I missed this mon in ssou, it’s undeniably the best rocker in the tier with insane longevity. One of the reasons why it wasn’t as unbearable was because of the presence of rain. You had to constantly switch out so you don’t get ohkoed. With rain gone i believe many people will experiment more with sd gliscor over rocks but only time will tell. Definitely A+/S tier imo.


This mon is insanely powerful with access to the best priority move in espeed. Minimal chip on mons that can revenge lucario in theory will leave them helpless once u get up an sd. The likes of lati and garchomp will all drop. It didn’t get too much time to shine because of kingdra and rain never giving it the opportunity to set up at all.


Weavile is in the same boat as lucario imo but to a lesser extent. It was alrdy dominant with rain being a factor imagine rain being gone. Sd and band are both great sets. Not to mention it’s one of the 2 viable dark types in the tier. The other being ttar. Band throat chop can easily 2hko scizor after rocks and icicle crash can 2hko most clefs trying to switchin in on the throat chop.​

 

[Samurux]

Aw man I loved using Armaldo's non boosted Life Orb Stone Edge to 2HKO Gliscors and then outspeed them next turn thanks to rain. But fair enough.

 

[Blimax]

Magnet Pull is Extremely Decentralizing. Since the other trap abilities are banned, Magnet Pull should be no exception. Given the lack of Dragon Checks in the tier, most of the Steel Types (Heatran not counting as a dragon resist as it gets destroyed by a secondary 4X weak EQ or a Specs Surf) get trapped and easily destroyed by zone, leaving most teams extremely frail to Dragon Spam.
Magnet pull is very uncompetitive in the meta right now, pressurizing teambuilding a lot. Also promoting a unhealthy meta as most team in the upper level is just brainless Drag Mag given, given the lack of counter play.
Well this is just my insight about how Broken Magnet Pull is right now and how uncompetitive it is.

 

[Just_Aaron]

Magnet Pull is Extremely Decentralizing. Since the other trap abilities are banned, Magnet Pull should be no exception. Given the lack of Dragon Checks in the tier, most of the Steel Types (Heatran not counting as a dragon resist as it gets destroyed by a secondary 4X weak EQ or a Specs Surf) get trapped and easily destroyed by zone, leaving most teams extremely frail to Dragon Spam.
Magnet pull is very uncompetitive in the meta right now, pressurizing teambuilding a lot. Also promoting a unhealthy meta as most team in the upper level is just brainless Drag Mag given, given the lack of counter play.
Well this is just my insight about how Broken Magnet Pull is right now and how uncompetitive it is.

Not only Magnet Pull isn't nearly as broken as Arena Trap and Shadow Tag, but also Magnezone isn't even that great at trapping the steels besides Skarmory and Empoleon (the latter can even threaten it with big damage with Water-STAB). The other steels have ways to deal with it (Like your example, Heatran), and only Skarm and Empoleon are actually weak to electric (since Magnezone lost both Hidden Power and Body Press).

 

[Dr Ya Yeet]

hiii everyone
so much like everyone else in this thread,i've played the meta for 2 days,~55 games give or take,and im here to give my thoughts on it coz i cracked top 100

owo

first up shoutouts to the goat ironwater for that blaziken ho team. It is phenomenal,and i request the council to add it to the samples in the first update
moreover,a couple things did quite surprise me about the meta (POV-You only know the dpp metagame through false swipe gaming's vids).

- this used to be really good in dpp,but imo its like b+/a- tops now,which is much less than what i expected. Its main issue is it losing a couple resistances,ghost and dark+not being able to punish u-turners+no iron press which means it actually *loses* to a lot of physical attackers+a lot of 'physical' attackers simply roasting it with special fire moves(the dragons that is) or straight up having stab fire moves i.e. infernape and blaziken. Even stuff like scizor just u-turns on it for free,coz no helmet. Its a physically defensive steel immune to eq that loses to the dragons even without zone ;-; I would rather just use gliscor or something tbh.
This might be a hot take,but blissey is not the best, a- ish for me. Losing boots and teleport is a huge blow,it makes it wayyy too easy to exploit. You just came in on Lati's specs Draco, have to heal coz you literally took like 45 with rocks,which gives a free switch to a dangerous breaker like mix ape(this thing is goated btw),then you're on the backfoot again. Even if you come in on like gengar shadow ball,that thing just pops a sub and you cant touch it. Its a huge momentum sink imo. I'm not completely sure of this but i think blissey loses to manaphy even outside rain,which is not ideal for a catch all special wall. Its an ok rocker,thhings defog/spin on it for free but at least it can sort of touch them,like twaving starmie for ex. All in all,this thing is underwhelming for me rn,although tbh this will proly change after the meta settles down and we start seeing a little less of the physically offensive HOs,maybe people will start resorting to lati to break and blissey can get better? idk tho
now for my thoughts on potentially broken/centralising stuff
I've played with the chicken ever since my lati got ohkoed by +2 lo,which is,since the second game of the meta lmao. Fr tho,blaziken is a force to be reckoned with rn. Only needing its stabs to cleave through most teams means it can safely run protect and become a really good revenge killer for stuff thats faster. Its not even like resists to its stabs are like really bad or dont exist,oh no. We have stuff like azu, dragonite,the latis,starmie,slows,etc etc,but the problem is that this thing is nuclear at +2. dragonite is a check only if rocks are off,azu needs to click aj every single time which is exploitable,lati@s drops to +2 adm lo with lil chip,starmie staight away drops to +2,although i will admit slowbro is pretty fine vs it. Most teams just resort to a healthy gliscor/unaware clef/bulky water to check it,which can be overcome. BUT is it completely broken? ehh idk. we have a nice couple of fighting resists,which means its often forced to click flare blitz,which seriously shortens its lifespan by a lot,coupling with lo recoil,to a degree its comparable to gapdos in swsh ou,its broken for the 4 turns it lives. So its more of a breaker than a sweeper,mostly just excelling at cleaning late game. another drawback is the no of times it clicks cc,the frailer its making itself,and we have a lot of priority in the tier rn,from bp sciz/luca,shard weav/mamo,mach punch breloom/infernape,espeed dnite/luca,im proly forgetting some,but the point is,even offense can limit it to a couple kills,max.Just something i wanna point out,is that you need adm to have a good roll to kill lati@s at +2 lo,but you need jolly to outpace scarf lati even at +2 speed,i learned this the hard way :<. Tldr,it burns for a short span of time,but it burns REALLY bright,i would support tiering action but im not completely sure if i would want it banned just yet.
i was gonna speak on rain but it got banned so oh well it was broken anyways
i'll be completely honest,the only thing this has going for it is unaware+fairy typing. One of the few checks we have to monsters like sd chomp,dd nite/mence,tail glow manaphy etc. I feel like this thing is gonna drop in usage as soon as the meta stabilizes a bit and people stop spamming HO hoo haa. But for the moment,this is very good rn,10/10 just enough water will recommend
I have yet to play the rain-less meta,so idt i can give thoughts on this rn,on the surface tho,it might not be completely broken
this thing is gonna be the new lando and im here for it. Checks a whole lot of stuff,both physical and special,which is much appreciated rn. SD is a monster,arguably its best set,low-key one of the better checks to dragons,and considering it doesnt even resist the type,it really speaks volumes on how good the dragons are. Which brings us to..
dragons are the best mons in the meta rn,period. DragMag is excellent,they easily override their shared checks,then one just cleans. Garchomp is likely the best mon in the meta,with latios not far behind. They exploit the shit out of the fact that clef only has moonlight and its 8 pp,which is not hard to stall out considering how hard these guys hit. Idt there's much to say here,easily the most potentially bannable thing in the meta rn imo
i think that's all i wanted to say,meta looks fun af,will play more when i get the time. Till then,good bye!

 

[Savouras]

My thoughts on the 2 days Rain Ban

I dont agree at all with this ban. We were introduced in this metagame literally yesterday and it makes so much sense why offense with fast strong hitters boosting their stabs in the rain would be used the first few days just like it was with the introduction of Sword and Shield using Barraskewda rain teams. Should have atleast left a couple of days or even a week instead of rushing it so we would have the chance to see countermeasures to it and how the metagame would shift against it if need be.
Also i think Dragmag is alot better than rain. Empoleon, Clefable, Stall, fast strong hitters like Latios and Garchomp that outspeed manaphy, magnezone and mainly protect / rest spam is incredible to stall rain turns and give you kills after. So yeah as a player having over 200 games and gettin semis in yesterdays live tour i completely disagree with how rushed this decision was.
Im totally gettin why it would seem that way after yesterdays tour with like idk 60% of the people running Rain or something like that but i cant lie i really dislike how fast it was decided and removed out of the metagame until we maybe get the opportunity again in the future to retest it (we definitely should).
Also this is the first time ever we get such quick ban in a new metagame and we clearly had many opportunities as a community to get there in the past with Arena Trap retests, Genesect, Naganadel and many more beasts that we were allowed to experiment with for atleast about a week (and it was hella fun doing so)

Anyway even tho i dont agree with the decision shoutouts to our active and strong moderation team, im sure you guys will do excellent job just like with Sword and Shield to develop and shape with the help of the community of course a healthy, competitive metagame!

 

[MrUnicorn118]

As of now I'm using a core of specs latios, banded scizor, and yache chomp, to take advantage on the quote on quote "checks" latios has, in the fairies, but the fairies does not seem as good as expected, clef and togekiss with no boots, is just not sufficient to check the crazy dragons. I can also double to scizor for a free u-turn. or chomp if I'm expecting a heatran or blissey switch. With rocks practically nothing can stop the assault of these 3, not to mention two other members I have in CB dragonite and life orb analytic starmie with spin. And a taunt stealth rocks lead aero. I can almost gurantee rocks every game and just click. Also the absence of pursuit makes the lati twins even more impossible to deal with. Spam dragons and win.

I believe latios and latias, definitely needs to be looked into immediately.

 

[NA Weezing]

Magnet Pull is Extremely Decentralizing. Since the other trap abilities are banned, Magnet Pull should be no exception. Given the lack of Dragon Checks in the tier, most of the Steel Types (Heatran not counting as a dragon resist as it gets destroyed by a secondary 4X weak EQ or a Specs Surf) get trapped and easily destroyed by zone, leaving most teams extremely frail to Dragon Spam.
Magnet pull is very uncompetitive in the meta right now, pressurizing teambuilding a lot. Also promoting a unhealthy meta as most team in the upper level is just brainless Drag Mag given, given the lack of counter play.
Well this is just my insight about how Broken Magnet Pull is right now and how uncompetitive it is.

Hi, I'd like to speak more deeply about Magnet Pull's and Knock Off's difference in the BDSP OU format compared to the SWSH OU one.

While it's true Magnet Pull is a good option in SS OU, mainly due to Corviknight and Ferrothorn's presence, I do not find it that effective against the sole Metal Bird in BDSP OU, which is Skarmory .

The abundance of Knock Off users in threats Corviknight had to check such as Rillaboom , Kartana , Landorus-T made the use of Shed Shell unviable on Corviknight.

Other Knock Off Users

Bisharp , Ferrothorn , Scizor , Weavile , Clefable , Tornadus , Toxapex

Indeed, once Knocked Off, Corviknight lost almost any capacity to avoid Magnezone's Magnet Pull, and had to rely either on a suboptimal speed investment + U-Turn spread to outspeed it, or to inconsistantly predict Magnezone's switch in.

However, Knock Off users in BDSP OU are now reduced to the number of 26 (111 in SS format), among which only 3 of them seems to be competitively viable in BDSP's OU format : Gliscor , Tangrowth and Crawdaunt .

That being said, it means Skarmory can succesfully ignore most Dragmag team compositions by holding Shed Shell.
Pokemons such as Scizor , Mamoswine , Clefable and Weavile all lost Knock Off in their movesets, making Shed Shell Skarmory an even more valuable option to check those threats without the itemloss drawback.

What remains of Magnezone's capability to trap mentionable steel typing pokemons is in this list : Scizor , Forretress , Jirachi .
What's even funnier is, that those 4 pokemons can potentially pivot using U-Turn or Volt Switch, avoiding Magnezone's trap, or just survive with variable ease Magnezone's damages.

My conclusion is that I barely see any interest to play Magnezone for its ability to trap steel typing pokemons at the moment and heavily do not recommend its use for this purpose, even for the sake of "Dragmag" team composition.

I'd rather recommend to use Dragon typing pokemons such as SD Garchomp and DD Dragonite with a Fire typing move in order to bypass skarmory .

Still, Gliscor's or Tangrowth's Knock Off in tandem with Magnezone can annoy Skarmory in some way, but any good player will know that they mustn't send their Skarmory on those pokemons in this case.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Ctann]

Hey all, just wanted to chime in with all the dragon spam talk and mention that can be a good catch all check. Immune to earthquake, can tank a fire blast, and switches into the STABS of the lati twins with ease

it also packs earthquake, so it’s not magnezone bait.

if you’re also using a clefable, it makes for a nice wish receiver due to the complimentary typings. Watch out for some staples like gengar tho..

personally I’ve been having fun with it using it as a stealth rocker. It might be missing toxic, tho there’s other utility moves you can experiment with. Personally enjoying rock tomb as an anti-set up softener to make it easy to counter switch in on the next turn. I can see bronzong also fitting in on a manually-activated weather team.

 

[Vrji]

As a member of the above screenshot, some of my thoughts:

I agree the drizzle ban was way too rushed, there were a couple of fun answers to it as a whole (such as scarf gardevoir, spd mantine, etc.)
The notion that banning singular abusers wouldn't solve the problem is a bit weird considering we didn't really have enough time to figure out if that is really the case. Day 1 weather teams tend to consist of just slapping every single abuser and a setter on one team, which obviously invokes the feeling that all the abusers are equally broken, while in reality these teams are a) pretty easy to beat because of their homogeneous nature and b) not reflective of which rain mons are actually problematic.

With that said, from the little time we did have experimenting with rain, I feel like it's uncontroversial to place Latios and Manaphy as the main troublemakers, as rain latios is, other than blissey, literally unable to switched into safely, and the same goes for manaphy ones it grabs a tail glow, made even easier by hydration rest. It definitely helps the case that, even outside of rain, both of these mons are still the ones talked about in the context of being broken. Latios specifically I feel like many agree is banworthy, as specs is pretty much impossible to switch into while scarf makes it hard to check offensively. But then, if we think about a meta without Latios, drizzle might be entirely balanced.

There are, of course, the swift swimmers, but they are rather flawed mons. Ludicolo and Mantine do very underwhelming damage to any water resist, Kabutops is frail and struggles vs physically bulks mons such as tangrowth, as well as basically doing nothing without a swords dance which, as mentioned, is hard to grab with a frail mon. Kingdra is the only swift swimmer that's good on its own merit but even it struggles with any specially bulky mon a ton, and hates being forced to click draco.
I'm not saying none of these mons are oppressive under rain, just that killing all their viability just on account of maybe kingdra but mainly latios and manaphy being broken seems a bit unwise.

With rain gone, the meta (well, at least ladder) seems to have fallen into dragon spam, mainly carried by the fact that latios + garchomp + one or two steel types is really hard to stop. Pretty much any non dragon spam teams I've faced were full or semi stall, as it seems dragon spam's one weakness is its lack of really good wallbreakers. Skarm Bliss Clef can be really hard for these teams to punch through, especially if the stall team has some offensively threatening mon like starmie or gengar. In my opinion either dragon spam or stall is not a particularly appealing meta, we'll see what'll happen with latios gone.

 

[RaikouLover]

The drizzle ban saddens me deeply. I was really looking forward to BDSP. I’m an avid rain enthusiast now this entire metagame is unplayable. Would have at least hoped for suspecting Manaphy & Latios the major culprits for why it was so “oppressive.” No one even gave the metagame a chance.

 

[VTMagno]

Not only Magnet Pull isn't nearly as broken as Arena Trap and Shadow Tag, but also Magnezone isn't even that great at trapping the steels besides Skarmory and Empoleon (the latter can even threaten it with big damage with Water-STAB). The other steels have ways to deal with it (Like your example, Heatran), and only Skarm and Empoleon are actually weak to electric (since Magnezone lost both Hidden Power and Body Press).

Don't neccessarily agree on magnet pull being uncompetitive but worth to note skarm and empoleon are far from the only things Zone can trap. Scizor does have U-Turn but also lacks any way of putting a dent on Zone, and one Thunderbolt puts it into Specs Latios range after rocks, so it needs to get every prediction right to not get trapped. There's also been a Magnet Rise set popping up that allows it to trap Metagross, Forretress and Bronzong.

 

[KamenOH]

Hi! With the Charity Bowl concluding, the council has reached a fairly unanimous conclusion about one aspect of the metagame:
Rain.

This playstyle, over the course of the tournament and prior, has proven itself to be frankly obscene and restrictive, and that goes beyond just the talents of Manaphy. The format simply lacks adequate responses to the power Rain provides to far too many Pokemon. Lily's above post shows this nicely but only scratches the surface, as even generally fast things that enjoy boosted Water attacks like Latios and Starmie become unreasonable to account for in the downpour. We don't think banning any single abuser would solve the issue- there are plenty of insane wallbreakers for Rain to make use of, and plenty of insane Swift Swimmers (that also act as wallbreakers against anything but the most specific prep). We also don't think a Damp Rock ban would be enough to really stop these Rain abusers from making the progress they're currently capable of, or that a Pelipper ban would be reasonable or guarantee a solution to the problem. We would like to get this problematic element resolved as soon as possible so we can focus on other aspects of the metagame, and as such, Drizzle is now banned from BDSP OU via a unanimous council vote. We hope you enjoy this change to the metagame!
P.S: We are still willing to take tiering action on Manaphy if it proves to be problematic in the future, but this change will definitely nerf it.

Voting Sheet

View attachment 386600
Tony is currently not active on the council, making this ban entirely unanimous.

I dont exactly know if this is the right place to ask, but wouldn't Rain Dance, however inferior it is as a set up move, still be usable?

If so, what prevents a team from replacing a less used move with Rain Dance, like a coverage move thats maybe redundant? The rain would last just as long as drizzle, and allow for rain teams to return to prominence.

 

[Your Hopes and Dreams]

I dont exactly know if this is the right place to ask, but wouldn't Rain Dance, however inferior it is as a set up move, still be usable?

If so, what prevents a team from replacing a less used move with Rain Dance, like a coverage move thats maybe redundant? The rain would last just as long as drizzle, and allow for rain teams to return to prominence.

Having to necessitate spending a turn manually setting up rain vs setting it automatically upon a switch-in is a massive drain in momentum that any competent opponent will be able to take advantage of, not to mention the possible opportunity cost of having to fit the move in on at least one, if not multiple, movesets. You could probably make Rain Dance work, but it's much less viable than Drizzle and only really seen in lower tiers in more recent generations.

Although, if there's a high-tier meta that you could possibly use Rain Dance in and not get eviscerated for it, it's this one. Well, at least after everything's calmed down a little bit.

 

[pix]

quick thoughts:
* dragon spam is great rn to expolit but annoying to deal with and should be suspected
* drizzle ban has opened up space for other stuff to be more prominent while also promoting a healthy meta
* azumarill with rocks and belly drum up just sweeps team
* lati twins are a menace.