OU DPP OU Metagame Discussion Thread

Excal · Jun 8, 2021

Hi everyone! It has been a few months since SPL ended and we got our first solid glimpse of the DPP metagame without Dugtrio. In light of the new generation subforums in Ruins of Alph, the timing is perfect to start a new general discussion thread on the metagame. This is a great place to discuss thoughts on a wide range of things DPP OU, from teambuilding to metagame trends to personal thoughts on the metagame's health, strengths & weaknesses, etc.

Note: No one-liners. Don't post basic questions that can be easily answered with minimal effort or ones that may belong in the main forum's SQSA thread.

Some prompts to get you started:

What do you find strong in the current metagame?
Any unique trends you've noticed?
What are some nice anti-meta Pokemon right now?
Do you enjoy the current metagame, and do you think it's in a good/balanced place? Why or why not?

EDIT (5/3/2024): Do not post in this thread about a potential Iron Head/Jirachi + Iron Head complex ban. Posts regarding this may be deleted and repeat offenders will be warned. You can find necessary information in this post.

johnnyg2 · Jun 8, 2021

Thought I could start this off with some things I've noticed over the last few weeks/months.

-- Post SPL, I was a little down on clef. I think that had to do w how easily I saw it being broken down in games and how it led to easy set up for rose. However, over the last few months, I've been higher on the builds people have come up w (Skarm spikes stall w scarf tar, forre stalls, some good zone balances) that I think i was a little premature in my analysis. It also is one of the better ways to handle the really popular subtect heatran (but watch out for taunt/magma or explosion). One casualty though in the post dug ban has been cm clef -- haven't seen that set in a minute

-- I was quite high on rose spikes post spl, but I think i've gotten a little down on it in general. Rose spikes feel delicate at time -- opponent has that one threat (like Dragonite + Gyarados, Gengar, other stuff depending on the team) that can really bust up the team, its in trouble. Not to mention relying a lot on inaccurate moves. I've seen some cool rose spikes like builds, will be interesting to see them evolve

-- HO is still as strong as ever. I really like the experimentation outside of just azelf + 5 set up sweepers. The empoleon slot, sometimes even the dnite slot, various items, even different leads (like dnite or gyara) shows that even for a fairly rigid style, ho can still be relatively versatile. I think we can be due for a rise of like gyara and metagross, staples of this style.

-- Another mon that feels awesome to play around w is Empoleon, specifically the specially defensive sets and the midrange set that August posted last time. I feel I always get something of value out of my Empoleon, a very anti-cheese mon. Looking forward to the next great empo builds.

-- I would argue that paraspam might be underrated. We still are largely seeing the jirachee style bliss zap champ star rachi x builds and the emeral (i think?) build of zelf rachi ttar lati gyara champ with some uxie ones thrown in there. Really looking forward to the next great one!

Some more things I like: Skarm as a wall, Zone offense, Destiny Bond Gengar, Sub DDNite, Ice Beam Scarf ttar (i know it exists before but its so nice for those lo flygons for your stalls), custap heatran, healing wish celebi, and these sets below:

Jolly LO SD Scizor
:scizor:

Scizor @ Life Orb
Ability: Technician
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Bullet Punch
- Superpower
- Bug Bite

This thing I think is awesome right now. Really likes less scarf zone (cause rose spikes + people like magnet rise), good mu against HO (do like 75 to ttar and can handle non lo meta in a pinch, only real check is gyara which has to check a million other things), nails skarm w +2 superpower, like Rachi moving away a bit from fire punch, less zapdos, Heatran commonly relatively slow (though you want to hit it on the switch, cause fast subtect is more common). I think Jolly is better bc timid non scarf mag is everywhere and that speed tier is really valuable, but adamant really nails skarm. Build some HOs w this again, you wont be disappointed

Lum DD Tyranitar
:Tyranitar:

Tyranitar @ Lum Berry
Ability: Sand Stream
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Earthquake / Aqua Tail
- Crunch / Stone Edge
- Ice Punch / Fire Punch

I know this existed before, but it is so good rn imo. It is so nice when someone tries to check you w flinch head Jirachi and they Body Slam this thing only to shrug it off and sweep their team. Once hippo/pert/resttalk gyara is down from stall, this thing goes nuts. I like to use it early game on like a heatran and just mess up their team. A lot of teams are weak to it. Now Chople is still good, but having that status shield is super nice

Electric Coverage on Rachi
:Jirachi:

Jirachi @ Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 40 Atk / 252 SpA / 216 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Iron Head
- Ice Punch
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ground]

or

Jirachi @ Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 HP / 80 SpA / 176 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Hidden Power [Ground]
- Thunder
- Iron Head
- Substitute

Having Thunder(bolt) on Jirachi is so nice when someone tries to check you w Lum DD Gyara or a skarmory. Mixrachi feels awesome right now. You must have an answer for Hippowdon and especially Gliscor and Flygon bc you can't para them, but its been a lifesaver on some stalls. having hp ground can be really nice for Lucario duty on this thing, and of course is a really nice zone/heatran lure

Refresh Special Pert
:Swampert:

Swampert @ Leftovers
Ability: Torrent
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 248 HP / 40 Def / 176 SpA / 44 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hydro Pump
- Earth Power
- Ice Beam
- Refresh

I feel sticking Refresh on Pert over Rocks if you have something else setting them gives you an awesome lefties heatran check, while also giving you a good skarm lure. I like my perts pretty bulky (this spread lives +1 non LO DNite iirc while creeping scizor). I've seen all physical pert for this, but Refresh broadly fits well on pert if you don't need rocks/superpower/sub on it

Defensive Celebi
:Celebi:

Celebi @ Leftovers
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 248 HP / 224 Def / 36 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 2 Atk / 30 SpA / 30 Spe
- Grass Knot
- Recover
- Thunder Wave / Perish Song / Almost anything
- Hidden Power [Fire] / Earth Power

Celebi needs a lot of support, but it is probably the best non Bounce (a set that I feel has almost died) Gyarados check there is. It is way physically bulky than Latias, and have a unique palette of resistances. I feel Celebi has a lot of exploring to be done tbh -- I'm not as high on Nasty Plot sets as I was, but it is a pretty awesome physical wall against water spam if you can handle the hazards issues (easier said than done I know) as well as the huge U-turn and list of weaknesses in general.

Thanks for reading this far, looking forward to other insights!

Pideous · Jun 9, 2021

Personally, I've been enjoying the current meta a lot. It feels like there's a lot of variety in the builds you can make and have success with, all the way from all out offense to hard stall.

RoseTran balances are good, but not overtly dominant, and I agree that they can feel fragile sometimes. That said, the legitimacy of Roserade as a spiker has had a pretty interesting effect on teambuilding I feel, because anti Skarm measures such as Magnezone are no longer synonymous with hazard control, and Starmie isn't able to alleviate this hazard pressure as consistently. For me, this is one of the issues that slower paced teams with several grounded pokemon, such as paraspam, might have difficulty overcoming.

These days, when I think HO I think Azelf/Gyarados/Dragonite/Tyranitar/Metagross/Empoleon, and although there is flexibility in the slots and the sets I would like to see HO builds stray a bit from this formula. It is very good and flexible though, so I expect teams like it to remain prominent.

I have to agree with rating Empoleon highly, especially the specially defensive set. Among its numerous excellent qualities is the ability to take on Suicune with Knock off and Roar, and Suicune is definitely a pokemon a lot of teams have difficulty with right now. I suppose as far as anti-meta threats go, Suicune deserves special mention since it can threaten basically every team style while possessing a good amount of defensive utility.

Magnezone is very good, and makes Skarmory's life much harder. Regardless, I really like Skarmory right now. I think it can be overlooked a bit in the teambuilder, and a Skarmory weakness is very hard to overcome in game. Spikes are as strong as ever, and Skarmory is an effective wall in the current meta, proving very hard to take down for teams without the right tools.

As far as hard stall goes, I've not been a huge fan of ForreGyara stuff. I think hazard weak stall can fall apart a bit too easily. There are a lot of good hazard setters, and the ghosts are amazing right now, so I don't feel very good about stall builds with a stealth rock/ spike weakness. That might be more down to personal preference and my own inexperience with them however. I think Clefable is still good, although I don't like it as a rocker. With Encore it becomes a good bit harder to take advantage of.

Machamp is still hard to deal with. I expect that although paraspam might be due for a facelift, Machamp will remain the prime abuser.

I definitely agree that Celebi is still worth using, those resistances are excellent, and it finds some good opportunities to get rocks up early in my experience. Horrible 4mss though, it's impossible to fit everything you want. Choosing between HP Fire, Ice and Earth Power is a nightmare, and it can come down to the team, but I prefer Ice for Dragonite, Flygon and Gliscor.

I actually like Hippowdon outside of hard stall as well, I think it can serve some balances well. Rocks and sand is most of what it does, but it can form a nice defensive backbone to shore up the offense matchup. Think hazard stacking balance with Skarmory and powerful special attackers like Specs Latias/ Zapdos/ the ghosts/ MixGon/ whatever.

Call me silly, but I don't really like that Snow Cloak (and to a lesser extent, Bright Powder) is allowed. The idea of TTar lure/Magnezone/Abomasnow/SubProtect Glaceon cheese gives me the heebie jeebies. Sounds super frail and gimmicky, yeah, but it also sounds like no fun at all to play against. That said, I don't think this is really on anyone's radar so its ok.

Lastly, Mamoswine, specifically that Sub Knock set, is legit. That Azelf/ 5 Sweeper HO build can have a horrible time vs Mamoswine if Gyara is out of the picture, and with Magnezone support its quite threatening to defence as well. Also, Roserade, Heatran, Flygon and Jirachi are all quite scared of Mamoswine. Just some food for thought.

That's about it, can't wait to read some other thoughts!

Sakito · Jun 9, 2021

Things I find strong/enjoy a lot in the current meta:

Metagross is one of my favorite Pokemon to use in DPP, you hardly can ever go wrong with it and it's one of the most reliable Pokemon around both offensively and defensively. Still a big fan of Trick Iron Ball; its ability of slowing down basically everything and (usually) getting Leftovers in exchange is amazing, its longevity only gets better and allows it to stay around for a long. In the same vein I really like Lefties Protect BUT it's not as easy to slap on a team as Iron Ball for example, and usually requires Magnezone (still pretty awesome set). Agility Boom can function both as a breaker and a cleaner which I really like, makes it really flexible vs both offense and defense and usually expands possibilites in game.

Empoleon in general too is an excellent Pokemon, always find its way vs both offense and defense - very difficult to handle. My favorite set is offensive Lefties Knock Off which disrupts defense really well and always put in work vs offense, great Jirachi check on top of that. Agility and SD gets a lot of credit on offense for their sweeping and breaking abilities, I find SD to be very effective in the current meta especially vs Stall.

I'm pretty high on Modest Specs Latias; the raw power it delivers is just crazy to me and I'm surprised it's not used that much more (at least from my point of view). Tyranitar can't switch in or usually gets 2HKOed, steels takes a lot and have to be wary of Trick. One could argue that Trick is Latias best move and I wouldn't necessarily disagree, it's such a good, useful and disruptive tool (especially vs defense) and makes Latias a real pain to play around sometimes. By the way, Modest Specs Lati is one of the best leads for sure (Tar and steels being the "only" true counterleads - altho even then you may be able to chip the Tar which other pokes surely can enjoy). Overlooked options on Specs Trick Latias are Recover (more longevity overall - vs like Heatran in particular) and Roar (with Spikes). I don't use Sleep Talk anymore on Specs Lati as I find it too unreliable and it always takes up a precious moveslot.

All Dragon Dance users (Tar, Gyara, Dnite) are strong as fuck lol, this is nothing new but I feel it has been strenghtened especially because hyper offense has proven many times to be up there as one of the best archetypes in the tier (at least for the moment).

I'm not sure if it's a trend or if it has always been underlooked, but MixGon is crazy good and it baffles me how some teams are singlehandly destroyed by it. I guess it's hard to 100% account for it on a team/play around perfectly unless you have what are close to its best checks (SpD Bronzong, Hippo, Milotic, Clef among others), you usually need a good speed control and Pokemon that can force it out repeatedly if weakened a bit - but even then it can be a massive pain. I really like it on teams with hazards support especially (Skarm/Rose) and Tyranitar support.

Lead Gallade (CC/IcePunch/ShadowSneak/WoW with Lum Berry) is one overlooked set. Great anti-lead that gets a lot of good MUs (besides all of Azelf, Uxie, Latias, Metagross and Rotom) and can be very hard to play around - a well played Gallade can usually force a KO and/or disrupt the opposing team enough thanks to the Fighting-Ice coverage and Will-O-Wisp option. Lead Gallade works well with offensive spiker Skarm in the back and even Camerupt lol, feel free to give it a try.

Other Pokemon I find interesting/slightly underlooked are:

Forretress: unironically annoying for some teams, decent spinner, Spikes, and good Meta check. Even better if Mag isn't around but I feel like it had toned down a bit

Choice Band Tyranitar: provides really awesome support and massive sheer power vs defense especially - only thing is that I find it hard to fit sometimes, can create some annoying issues on a team (leaves a lot of room to sweepers if locked, Breloom, Spikes)

Special Jirachi: the coverage and utility it provides is blessed (Psychic for Gengar, Tbolt for Skarm and waters, HP Ground for Heatran and Mag), can use SR 3atk, Mixed or Superachi - downside is usually Latias becomes annoying

Sub DDnite: insane Pokemon, lethal as fuck on the right team and alongside the right support, destroys Rose FWG teams and generally a lot of stuff if it can find just a single turn to start setting up (really appreciates weather reset tho)

Bulky SD Gliscor (SpD-ish): great win condition on defense + spikes stuff, one of the sturdiest levitaters around and feels like unkillable with good backbone - with enough SpD investment it can literally take on HP Ice Zapdos and weaker HP Ices, can take on most non Specs Latias, etc.

I do enjoy the current meta quite a bit and I think it's waaay better without Dugtrio. It's interesting to see the direction the metagame has taken (Rose teams are very much prevalent, offense is possibly at one of its peaks - altho don't underrate Stall it's still up there), think it's pretty balanced overall and I'm looking forward to see how it evolves/what will be the next trends.

Dorron · Jun 9, 2021

This will be hard for me to write, as I am the biggest Infernape fan.

Regarding :empoleon:

,I find its SubsAgility set greater than ever. It is very ease to force a switch on the opponent and set up Substitute to then use Agility and use more Subs to eat Petaya Berry and be in Torrent range. This thing just nukes. It can easily OHKO almost anything that receives neutral damage.

+1 252+ SpA Torrent Empoleon Hydro Pump vs. 240 HP / 76 SpD Jirachi: 400-472 (99.7 - 117.7%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO
+1 252+ SpA Torrent Empoleon Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 224+ SpD Jirachi: 319-376 (78.9 - 93%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+1 252+ SpA Torrent Empoleon Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Machamp: 496-585 (129.1 - 152.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+1 252+ SpA Torrent Empoleon Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Rotom-Wash: 297-351 (97.6 - 115.4%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO (and it is usually PhysDef, if defensive)
+1 252+ SpA Torrent Empoleon Hydro Pump vs. 240 HP / 252+ SpD Swampert: 334-394 (83.2 - 98.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery (the same as Rotom)
+1 252+ SpA Torrent Empoleon Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Bronzong: 280-331 (82.8 - 97.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

Resists Hydro Pump
+1 252+ SpA Torrent Empoleon Hydro Pump vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Gyarados: 216-255 (65.2 - 77%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+1 252+ SpA Torrent Empoleon Hydro Pump vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Empoleon: 213-252 (68.9 - 81.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+1 252+ SpA Torrent Empoleon Hydro Pump vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Starmie: 248-292 (95 - 111.8%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO goddamn
+1 252+ SpA Torrent Empoleon Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Suicune: 192-226 (47.5 - 55.9%) -- 23% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+1 252+ SpA Empoleon Ice Beam vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Kingdra: 158-188 (54.1 - 64.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+1 252+ SpA Empoleon Ice Beam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Latias: 244-288 (81 - 95.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+1 252+ SpA Empoleon Ice Beam vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Celebi: 306-360 (75.7 - 89.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

Empoleon doesn't shine just because of being poweful. As it can run a considerable amount of others sets, like Specs, SD, and SpD, the opponent will have to guess the set and it might lead to Empoleon to get a free Subs if opponent misses the set. It's great typing also means that it won't get revenge killed by Dragonite / Machamp / Scizor / Lucario / Mamoswine / Metagross / Weavile / my nasty Sucker Punch Gengar if you get to consume your berry at 25% HP. It can take advantage from Choice-locked Pokémon like Scarf TTar locked in STAB, Banded Scizor in Bullet Punch, Specs/Scarf Latias in Draco Meteor, an opposing Specs Empoleon in Ice Beam, Scarf Jirachi in Iron Head and Weavile in STAB, among others. The only problem is that it it still outsped by some Scarf users after Agility, including Lucario, Rotoms, Flygon, Gengar and Jirachi.

:Scizor:

Scizor @ Choice Band
Ability: Technician
EVs: 24 HP / 252 Atk / 232 Spe
Jolly Nature
- U-turn
- Bullet Punch
- Superpower
- Pursuit

I've been trying Jolly Banded Scizor lately and it is a pretty good mon in the current meta. As many mons run 244 Speed to outspeed Jolly TTar, the little Speed invested in HP still allows you to outspeed them, reaching 246 Speed. This allows you to be safe from Timid Magnezone and not forcing the hard switch against defensive Rotom, among other things. In general a good band user nowadays.

:Roserade:

Roserade @ Focus Sash
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 3 Atk / 30 SpA / 30 SpD
- Sleep Powder
- Leaf Storm
- Hidden Power [Ground]
- Toxic Spikes

This set was pretty good when Heatran was a very common lead, but I feel that trend is disappearing and thus the HP Groundrose is losing in viability. Azelf being very consistent as a lead and the sleep miss chance don't help Roserade at all, as well as the Lum Berry leads like Machamp and Metagross. Roserade itself is pretty good though; its Spikes sets are great in teams with MixGon (which is also a very strong mon in the meta), it can remove Toxic Spikes from opposing Roserades and using Stun Spore will open the window for Scizor to outspeed some fast threats.

Finally
:infernape:

Infernape @ Life Orb
Ability: Blaze
Hidden Power: Ice
EVs: 64 Atk / 252 SpA / 192 Spe
Naive Nature
- Fire Blast
- Close Combat
- Grass Knot
- Hidden Power [Ice]

This is the only set I think Infernape can run consistently in the current meta, and still isn't great. Infernape finds itself in a very uncomfortable meta with hazards and sand everywhere, which heavily wears it down, and is very weak to any priority, it is fast but doesn't reach the 110 tier and its damage output isn't that great. HOs prefer using other mons and it leaves a lot to desire as a lead. I hope the metagame development makes it become more viable.

The SPrinkLer · Jun 11, 2021

Hello. So I'm gonna just post some sets I think are worth experimenting with more. I haven't used anything too crazy in tours but I've been laddering some with different stuff that I've seen around. I think Will o Wisp heatran is extremely underrated. never see it too much but your best answer ever is clef, and Clef doesn't even like switching directly into Heatrans. Especially if you're using an offensive set with the wisp. I'm trying max speed timid with Life Orb, with Overheat, earth power, protect and will o wisp. basically nothing wants to switch in on this thing. Very good for weakening Tar/Swamp early game without relying on t spikes and even w t spikes up, those guys can do big damage. Burn really puts you at way more peace of mind.

Substitute Thunder wave dd gyara seems pretty cool. even tho it's mono water attacking, thunder wave cripples a vast majority of gyara answers, and abuses them for your other guys too. Fits nicely on a para spam.

I know I've seen someone post about wide lens gengar, but it's pretty good too. hitting stuff with sleep or wisp, with more accurate focus blasts. you never really feel too pressed with it because you can hypno stuff you might not wanna wisp like heatran or clef.

I've also been using band gyarados with sleep talk, and ice fang/giga impact as last two attacks. more of a chance to hit breloom or some water/lati hard on your choice locked turn.

A Johnnyg team he posted, with uturn azelf lead alongside magnezone and scarf copycat luke is also super cool. I think cool uturn/trap structures like that are very effective. paired with gyarados and metagross to abuse no skarm, its a very nice concept.

Definitely enjoy the metagame lately. I'm usually not nervous to bring whatever out of fear of getting trapped, except like skarm stuff. But being afraid to bring Breloom Tar Tran etc with dug, was not as enjoyable. The uturn games w dug were fun but definitely just OP. I'm definitely less inclined to bring something like swampert w no t spikes removal lately. People abuse the fuck out of heatran and t spikes. You really need good Heatran and Loom counterplay.

eden · Jun 11, 2021

a quick review of the VR:

S Rank

jirachi can still do everything:
-fit on defensive zone clef structures with wish ih slam tect, denying frail offenses any room in game via incredible sustain
-it can open games with traditional mixed sets, its great on tspikes whether that be with super jira/cm tect/or an aoa set.
-scarf jira's a bit rarer, and ground is opted for over fire punch pretty often but other than that I don't really see jirachi's role as having changed much.
-it can open games up on its own, or it can prove to be an insurmountable road block defensively, or it can be placed on bulkier teams as a way to pick up the pieces.

S tier for a reason. picks and chooses its checks/counters and/or what it wants to wall

- crunch suit eq sr @ custap was the preferred utility set, but giving loom free entry as bulky off is undesirable; it also gets overloaded defensively
- defensive ttar traps stuff in a telegraphed manner; so it can get doubled on early, which denies you rocks and puts you on the backfoot
- the big takeaways are:

its riskier to use scarf tar when HO is dominant, but it's still a great fit on stall particularly along with rotom(scarf or stalk) to hold hazards
band is good but opens issues vs loom, and can feel like its on a timer to break defense, i prefer fast band to get the jump on loom/pert/milo
DD tar is great just by virtue of the archetype it fits on being strong,
I also think fast mix tar is one of tar's better sets for sure

Tyranitar @ Expert Belt
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 48 HP / 36 Atk / 168 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Lonely Nature
- Fire Blast
- Hidden Power [Grass]
- Superpower
- Crunch

outspeeds max speed pert, and gets notable hits on most things that bulky offense tends to struggle with switching into - such as pert/tran/loom etc

I'm respecting Heatran more and more during the building phase definitely top 3 mon now:
- Stuff like moving from Fire Punch -> HP: ground even on the classic slam ih sr set is a p notable change I've been implementing lately, teams with all 6 having an SE move into tran(mostly on balanced builds).
- Tran is incredibly strong, it can use magma boom to help rose builds have a better clef matchup
- It can use wow on teams with a shaky tar matchup(just have to make sure you're good vs stuff like clef/mie/milo that can potentially come in to soak wow, so you're not forced to boom on them with tran to make headway)
- defensive tran sets being awesome at patching up issues against slam ih jira, which used to regularly be used to shut down bulky offense builds, with the looming threat of dug letting you reduce games to jira vs the other 5.
- I'm sure stuff like sub LO is under explored and probably has some good upside,
- Specs is good too, but I like the utility provided by the other sets much more

A+ Rank

-scarf is used on bulky offenses pretty often, i'm not really too impressed by it unless there are spikes, or overlapping mons like starmie/latias to pressure tar and make revenging stuff safer.
-charge beam is good vs non cm clef pretty consistently, charge beam+hp:fight can break open some games very quickly which is a quality that's appreciated.
-rest talk rotom+scarf tar is insane at holding layers which is massive for slower builds, even if rest talk rotom itself isn't really that good in my opinion. it's great vs stall though has a ton of pp to burn, but in loom matchups if you manage to get it slept, it'll pretty consistently get abused, so the best set is probably rest sleep talk shadow ball? to at least try and not let loom come in for totally free/pressure gliscor a bit. not too high on it though
-specs is underrated, can be used to help scarf latias get safer revenges/is a good partner for cm 2 attacks latias w recover to some extent, and the surprise burst damage on tar/jira etc helps overlapping offense a ton

-skarm's always good, just hard to want to use it sometimes when stuff like mixgon/tran etc is always ready to take advantage of your free turns.
- I don't like using skarm without overlapping defense like gliscor etc, because skarm as the sole physical wall, is generally asking for trouble with loom.
- I dislike dual hazards roost whirl. defense already struggles with loom, i loathe turning a good check into free tempo for it. dual hazards was good in dug meta though, sacking itself off to hold hazards with dug/scarf tar/rotom etc was pretty potent.

-This is pretty obvious but defensive Starmie's a lot worse than it used to be, because the reliable rock setters in dpp usually have a good matchup into Starmie: stuff like Knock SR Clef/SR Tar/magma grass sr passho tran etc, all punish it quite hard for clicking spin
-starmie trading itself vs tar to click spin/losing vs knock sr clef long term/getting caught by magma and being removed with hp:grass against passho tran and then having to deal with rocks later are how those respective scenarios play out, there are even more of course: like swampert rocking into a starmie switch then clicking eq over and over again, or jirachi having rocks and punishing mie with either of thunder/gk, the list goes on really
- offensive is still really potent: specs lead especially seems to be pretty used for starmie. dropping star on teams like the classic specs zap loom star tar style of build feels great, and lets you open up a slot to add some actual offensive pressure or a defensive backbone depending on how you're leaning. Speaking of which looking at how the metagame broadly punishes Starmie ever clicking spin for the most part how is this thing A+?
-It's at its best just mashing the hydro button with specs. It's the best mon out of the quartet of donphan/forretress/tentacruel/starmie, but being the best spinner doesn't necessarily translate to it being objectively good. Just means that all of the removal options are pretty mediocre.
- classic defensive mie can be ok in sandless matchups I guess? gives you a tool to burn pp assuming you don't get too unlucky with paralysis. the issue with mie is that spin is extremely punishing and tempo losing by default, being forced to click it means you're already significantly behind. offensive starmie is still an A rank mon to me though, fast strong water stab is quite good as expected in dpp.

-I'm more into denying loom room to do anything via being fast enough in game/not using overly passive teams, than I am into using stuff like sleep talk latias,
- it's a crutch which majorly mispositions you pretty often, which is notably bad in a lot of matchups, I dislike stalk CB nite(I just think it's mediocre in general when protect spam stall is frequently used), and I think sleep talk zapdos is somehow even worse than st latias. I'm surprised at how loom consistently forces losing situations(think forcing slow pert/tar to accept either of being slept, or straight up dying because they can't afford to switch out), and yet still is not top 5. People quite literally want to ban spore on this thing, because of how much that can change the tempo of a game. It massively swings defensive matchups just by virtue of having a mix of awesome sustainability, power and just enough bulk.
-It has a variety of strong sets, ranging from defensive sd with or without spore(even sp.def sd is quite strong), to the classic sub punch with its super high highs, and the consistent/easy to fit without being quite as dominating spore mach spower seed bomb set, which is an excellent catch all for late game emp/tar etc. most of its sets are pretty consistent
- I hate mono attacking loom, the kind you see on teams with clef/mag etc. giving gar extra room when it's already good vs a clef mag sorta build, is an unnecessary constraint, maybe I'd run those mono facade/force palm sets more with scarf tar? I think the set is incredibly mediocre, it's supposed to help vs gyarados, but given the comparative rarity of bounce, and how often Ice Fang is used, I don't think it adds much value even there. It can occasionally be very annoying in the right matchup thought, can be hard to kill. these sets not being able to do enough to bold cm clef is also comical.

0 Atk Breloom Force Palm vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Clefable: 144-170 (36.5 - 43.1%) -- 98.5% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery: this is laughable.

i loathe facing gar on those builds to where I frequently use a bulky SD set instead on those style of teams, the mono attacking sets are usable but considering how ununderwhelming it is compared to the more classic sets, and the weaknesses it ends up compounding on the builds where it fits, I very rarely if ever end up using it
- fantastic mon overall though, one of the most meta defining ones for sure.

the final view (Breloom) @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
EVs: 112 HP / 188 Def / 32 SpD / 176 Spe
Impish Nature
- Spore
- Swords Dance
- Superpower
- Seed Bomb

benchmarks:

lives a +1 dd tar IP from full
LO gar sball from full
faster than max speed neutral pert

-I've found slow pert to not quite be my cup of tea in dpp, using defensive teams with a mon that's unable to significantly pressure loom outside of pinging it on the switch with IB feels pretty uncomfortable to me - I tend to use faster offensive pert sets a fair bit
- conversely respecting how good those pert sets are vs balanced teams I run stuff like belt tar a lot: with grass/fire and max speed w a neutral nature.
-Avoiding losing too much tempo off a loom doubling into tar and trying to take a free spore is pretty great. cb perts solid too, so is sr physically offensive.

- latias is vastly overrated:

it has a sum total of one really brutal meta defining set
lati's in dpp seems to have made the viable structures more "strict" as opposed to pre lati, forcing teams to run jira or tar/frequently both
keeping the fact that redundancy vs latias is common it only stands to reason that even though its good in its own right, it practically doesn't do much, unless its specs: in which case it is extremely potent game to game.

- specs is top notch. modest is amazing if you're willing to ignore infernape which while not being safe is a respectable take. it's really good because it overlaps excellently with all the stuff which wants tar/jira weakened, which is just about everything.

- cm roar with spikes to allow you to revenge stuff with scarf rotom easier isn't bad, or using specs rotom+cm fire latias with spikes is again pretty decent too, not as great as specs but better than most of the intensely mediocre sets

- expert belt can be very good in a pinch, there are some very niche sets like cm 3 attacks lum/colbur that I have seen floating around that are usable but ultimately the only one i see as a rock standard staple is specs.

- defensive trick sets, using stuff like flame orb are quite good in the right matchup assuming you catch stuff like jira/tar early: very doable considering people blindly hard switch these two vs Latias

- reflect twave is mediocre, its good versus teams which are bad versus latias outside of tar, and in those matchups you are reduced to clicking recover over and over again praying for an fp(so basically classic bulky off),

it actually needs a little bit of special attack invest, to KO dnite/kingdra reliably post rocks which illustrates how comically weak it is(i think it's around 124 sp.a or so?, dnite is less relevant since +speed is extremely rare, the kingdra point is relevant however)
this set is supposed to be "cool because it can wall stuff and paralyze things it's weak to like Tyranitar/Jirachi" which it never gets to do in bulky offense matchups, it'll only meet tar because we don't have dugtrio anymore to force the issue.
Hypothetically even if we did: is reflect latias getting past bslam jira? why would you make this your centerpiece over specs latias if dug was available anyway? you'd want to open up the game for your cm clef clean instead of using a set that quite literally does nothing). In other matchups where you'd see Jirachi(classic nido clef jira stalls/defensive jirachi zone clef style teams you'll frequently have other stuff like clefable that's going to absorb your twave anyway.
Like what is the use case for this set besides clicking twave vs tar, spamming roost and praying tar gets paralyzed enough to beat it? the most common scenario that plays out is you inevitably don't get lucky enough turns in a row, and get a drop or they never get paralyzed, and you have to repeat the sequence: and they now have a chipped paralyzed ttar which is not that notable. the only sort of build where I see it as decent is milo/loom/zone/jira/latias/clef style stuff. you have the zone to try and ensure latias faces off vs tar and gets it low, you have milo potentially pinging opposing loom on the switch allowing clef to have more breathing room etc, good synergies there
. I'd say this set is only really good vs stuff like rose tran where you have pert instead of offensive cune as the water and rotom>gar, because those kinds of teams have limited pressure options vs latias outside of tricking it with rotom/exploding on it with heatran/freezing it with pert, but even Specs Latias does really well vs that sort of team..so again why bother with this set?

- scarf is again a crutch. It mispositions you vs HO into game ending situations vs empoleon/meta/dd tar etc held back, after forcing lati to revenge dd nite. scarf is also frequently forced to double out in order to avoid being tar bait. it's frequently found on balanced teams in a similar slot to where scarf gon is. except scarf gon's way better. scarf is usable though

- cm refresh/cm safeguard are horrible, they were only usable when dug was around in the vein of the cresselia dug archetype, which was also mediocre. they don't push games quickly enough and they won't push past sp.def jira ever realistically

-it's more of a builder constraint to teams i build, than actually good when I use it;
- I like the uturn ice cc fire blast @ lefties set a lot, definitely deserves to be moved down(to B?)
-Life Orb is incredibly mediocre. I'm indifferent to band/scarf too. Doesn't really belong with the A+ mons.

-clefable's a bit worse than it used to be but still really good, it just doesn't have dugtrio+spikes anymore to make it as straight forward as it used to be.
-HO's pace really denies classic clefable stall the room to do what it wants, I think it's high time people used encore a bit more to leverage clefable in HO matchups effectively. Thunder Wave/Knock is still pretty consistent though, I think its just the classic bold cm that struggles for the same consistency that it had, the trend of HO builds like azelf/dnite/gyara/ttar/metagross/emp, lacking a mon hit by tspikes, also makes it tougher for nido clef teams to really get maximum value out of the residual damage they need.
- I think nido clef builds are maybe at their best facing stuff like zap/ape/jirachi/tar/flygon/off cune(in fact this sort of team cannot contest the stall matchup once a tspike goes up) or zap/ape/tran/scarf gon/ttar/starmie:

these sort of teams find contesting tect nido + clef sort of stalls to be very difficult once the game drags out a bit,
these sort of restrictive nido clef teams tend to also be good vs generic fgw bulky offenses, especially when the grass is something like spower loom, which doesn't really add value in the stall matchup
it's even stronger if the tar on those teams is non cb - however, if the fgw balance did opt for a classic fp loom/cb tar setup, it comes down to a race of whether they can break through stall before the game boils down to a situation where 3 attacks jira/glisc/scarf tar/scarf rotom or stuff like that can finish the game via residual.

- often in matchups where loom with a more aggressive set has activated its toxic orb, clefables value in the matchup is reduced to clicking twave or delaying recovery to click seismic toss and punish loom for trying to take advantage of a free turn, it's very important to be mindful of not giving sets like fp loom too much room vs the classic defensive clef build.

A Rank

-I think this is probably my favorite lead in dpp, extremely consistent. will always do something game to game: sr/mash/bp/boom @ lum
and mash/bp/eq/boom @ sash are both excellent
- I love trick Iron ball SR metagross as well, you catch stuff like zapdos/starmie/skarmory/rest talk rotom pretty consistently, which either lets you hold hazards easily, or render one of the levitating mons that can answer metagross totally useless vs it.
- Agility is awesome too on HO. I even think mash tect is great on the right team
- mid game occa SR is a bit of a relic but is also quite decent. it has one of the best mixes of power/bulk to me, but sometimes struggles to make an impact besides the lead set being consistently good/agility being really good vs bulky offense later game. possibly due to needing to rely on the correct combination of coverage to actually sweep.
- Trick Scarf is great too, either you cripple a key wall in matchups vs bulkier teams, or metagross becomes a potent cleaner in its own right

- the easiest to fit on a team out of ttar/dnite/gyara. provides excellent defensive utility to bulky offenses too, and wacan gyara on HO is deadly - letting you trade with either of scarf latias or scarf gon is huge for those teams.
- rocks weak/again needing the right combination of coverage slightly holds it back.
- bounce is pretty dead, due to taunt bounce being held off by slam jira pretty frequently mid game
- eq ifang wfall is probably my favorite combination, though I've seen waterfall dropped to use stone edge on some teams before to great effect.
- dropping ifang is pretty bad, because not being able to push past loom which due to its great self sustain is likely to be around later too sounds pretty ridiculous.

-I think sd gliscor is really good, a setup mon that resists sr and is great into loom/tran/luke/tar etc is massive on bulky offense, has some options to stop free setup from dangerous stuff like Gyarados/Dragonite, which lets teams using it get away without a scarfer somewhat, on top of all of this it's a boosting mon that doesn't really get revenged by scarf gon, which is the icing on the cake to me.
- zone glisc tar, is a powerful synergetic core which enables glisc to scale into a massive threat come mid/late game.
-I love taunt Ifang roost as well, has great sustain mid game whether that be on classic nido clef teams as a last slot, or on standard bulky off in the vein of emp/glisc/jira/tar/starmie/loom.
-taunt wing attack is a great source of pp on stall builds too
-being immune to spikes and taking only 12.5% from SR as a defensive mon, while simultaneously being able to deny skarm spikes is a premium trait.

- I love specs zapdos: it's amazing at just getting to blindly click tbolt early to soften up tar which everything from lati/tran/rotom etc all love.
- defensive 3 attacks is good too: but the structures are obviously just the same classic fat builds mostly, now that dugtrio's gone
- loom tar can give zapdos teams a headache so need to make sure that zapdos doesn't get over relied on defensively, or it'll get abused in game
- sub roost has some potential with tspikes, but sand being up really detracts from it's performance, it also has coverage issues game to game

- with the uptick of rose tran: gar's not far behind, so I try to work in ways to trade with it where I can. all of its sets are strong: whether it be the classic LO sub split, or taunt wow, or even black sludge trick. Knock is quite a strong offbeat option on it too, and boom is always great in a pinch. it fits on offense quite well: using dd tar tar to force loom to mach punch, and taking momentum with a gar switch never gets old.
- Gengar is one of the few things that can claim to be good in stall matchups(sub split abusing the hell out of clefable is amazing here), while carrying its weight in offensive matchups to the extent where offensive teams frequently resign themselves to losing one mon to gar by default.
- teams frequently struggle with pivoting gar to the extent that going scarf lati/scarf tom to scare gengar, and double switching out is quite a common play that's made mid game.

- DD is great whether with Lum on HO, and is monstrous with LO on screens:

it's held back by its lack of survivability
usually doesn't sweep, it's used to potentially break early and ideally forces flygon/latias to revenge you to let you setup your next sweeper. Dropping espeed on DD sets is quite good - outrage/eq/fire punch is great coverage
forces teams overly reliant on scarf latias/flygon to consider switching in on dd, which is why haban dd nite has potential to be really good on HO: not letting them have the option of switching in on the dd turn gives you flexibility

- mixed with no roost is pretty great:

superpower and earthquake both complement the standard 3 of draco meteor/fire blast/extremespeed perfectly
it doesn't really get the chance to click roost vs much but the most passive of stalls and even those frequently have like 3-4 members where you can't really roost that safely in - gliscor/hippo/potential scarf tar/latias etc.

- it has a variety of more niche sets like sub dd roost, or even bell that can be great fits on the right team

-mix gon obviously kicked up a lot: I highly enjoy the outrage variants with attack investment, I think roosts value is overstated; in a similar vein i drop roost on mix nite all the time: although that being said flygon gets to click it much more than dnite ever does.
- band gon is pretty underprepared for in that when people see flygon, the default assumption is always scarf early on, so there's potential for band gon to change games off of those blind assumptions people make.
-I haven't used sub gon yet, but max attack eq sub gon sounds like a massive pain to deal with, flygon is a mon that naturally synergizes with spikes and forces its share of switches so I can see that set having games where a single sub is game ending.
- scarf is good as usual albeit a bit weak.

- payback sr is a relic sometimes seen on defensive nido clef teams trying to squeeze in an sr mon that punishes starmie which lets them use scarf tar/non sr clefable which is fair I guess role compression wise.
- OTR is pretty good late game(and is the set I rate the highest), and makes CB tar relevant in non stall matchups outside of just picking off latias/rotom, trick sets are quite good too(with lagging tail or iron ball),
- lum sr is something I've seen used on offense too, while hypno gyro rain dance boom is one of the more commonly seen rain dance users, it has some good flexibility set wise.
- heatproof is possibly underexplored when tran is so dominant but its hard to give up levitate

- i've been loving empoleon with sea incense a ton @ lead - softens matchups v hippo clef stuff a ton lets you avoid getting hydros burned, letting the emp stay a threat past the lead slot
- sash lead is excellent as usual, I don't even mind dropping stealth rock on it as a lead: because I can see wanting all four moves, if I really did want rocks on it though - aqua jet would be the first move to be dropped> I frequently run dual rocks with it because having your sole rocker get slept by rose lead is pretty untenable, I've even seen lum empoleon be used as a niche option
- sp.def empoleon is something I've seen on classic clef hazard stack teams, it can be good but feels pretty abusable in game to me so I've never been a huge fan really.
- Agility is amazing late game, but ironically I think SD can be just as if not more dangerous just off of surprise value.

A- Rank

- zone has some cool applications: good synergy with skarm+another defensive steel, as well as denying slam wish tect jira the room to take over a game too easily. scarf zone patches up issues on luke weak archetypes(and lets you force twave on to jira if needed), magnet rise lets you restrict lead meta, deny bronzong room, pick off scizor - this is all on top of picking off skarm.
- good synergy vs stall when used in tandem with gar too, due for a rise maybe does a limited number of things but does them well
- custap boom's a classic too which still works, and metal sound has some good utility vs stall builds.

this is pretty minor but I usually use like 20 HP EVs, to ensure that my scarf zone's live Empoleon hydro pump->AJ. pretty solid overall.

Magnezone @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Magnet Pull
EVs: 20 HP / 236 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Thunder Wave
- Explosion

- I think nidoqueen's kind of mediocre frankly. it's a staple on clefable stalls but all I seem to see it do is be good vs generic bulky offenses
- tspikes are great vs teams like zap/ape/cune/jira/tar/scarf latias or flygon as mentioned when discussing clefable,
- nidoqueen helps stall get an unlosable matchup vs those styles of bulky off, however:

those teams are not particularly good in their own right, so i don't see improving your matchup spread vs them as being too beneficial.
It's also pretty awful versus every single DDer- unless you got roar, which is my preferred nidoqueen set
I don't even think its particularly good vs loom, outside of being a solid designated sleep sack(which is valuable on stall)

- the best I can say for it is it gets tspikes, and in conjunction with classic stall members can be very constricting to play vs in tandem with protect
- I'm pretty low on it overall, it barely answers a lot of stuff, but is genuinely excellent vs very little: It's still somewhat of a stall staple though.

-3 attacks off cune is mediocre vs a lot of teams, if I had to use it it'd be on a rose team probably, patches up those builds issues with dd tar/dd nite/dd gyara by giving them one less slot to setup vs
- I think sub cune's way better and is probably my favorite set.
- crocune is situationally good vs opposing stall, especially if you can fit in weather removal dpp's power creep is too high to let you get away with regularly waking up suciune outside of those matchups.

- I'm pretty low on machamp. lead champ is overrated, it only becomes truly dangerous with luck, assuming there's no para spread:

and the classic champ tran tar gyara lati etc etc kind of offense doesn't really focus on spreading para at all
they also get awkwardly positioned pretty easily vs defensive builds unless champ gets lucky.

- champ either trades one for one vs frailer teams, or does essentially nothing without significant luck vs bulkier teams.
- Its mediocre on para spam too in my opinion. Sub champ dies way too quick to be viewed as a cleaner on those teams(unless you get lucky), that being said it's pretty good to force trades and soften stuff up on those builds

- i'm pretty low on lucario mostly: I enjoy scarf luke somewhat, and do think agility luke has its place, sd relying on +2 espeed(sometimes bp as well) to clean in offense matchups feels suspect to me, where does it get this sd barring vs say a locked flygon or lati? Even if it does get the sd it frequently needs the correct combination of moves to do anything.
- it's fantastic vs cheese though: in fact its great vs cheesy structures to the point where you'll frequently see defensive structures weak to it just having a scarf zone tacked on to pick it off.
- Which just means that even in the matchups where it's excellent you almost would rather have agility just so it does more than picking off one mon into being revenged. If I had to use SD, SD salac is what I'd prefer probably

- dd is incredibly mediocre.
- specs with something else throwing up rain for it is amazing, modest kingdra easily punishes tar for weather reset attempts from a higher % which is massive, but timid is fine too.
- Rain Dance to back specs kingdra doesn't even have to be on dedicated rain - using rain dance in filler moveslots can potentially change the tide of a game, by letting you have access to Kingdra in spots you might not be able to use it otherwise.
- RD LO is decent too, but I value the explosive power of Modest specs to cleave open bulky offense matchups really highly.

- roserade in and of itself is not really that impressive.
-however the archetype is enables is quite good, my big issue with those rose tran builds is:

you often have trouble vs stuff like dragonite/gyarados etc if they get free turns
ground is obviously great in a tran dominated meta, but I greatly prefer Ice because of the issues rose teams tend to naturally have with dragonite.

- lead rose is mediocre, has a pretty bad matchup spread, and can wrong foot you vs HO very early, I much prefer back rose.
- I don't view roserade as good anywhere outside of the rose tran tspikes special offense style teams.
- spikes+tspikes is p good too, i don't mind dropping sleep powder too much but sleep powder's hard to give up given that jira/tran etc are all solid sleep powder targets.

- azelf HO is pretty strong, I especially love the bulkier azelf spreads ev'd to anti lead metagross/champ/starmie effectively with sitrus.
- choice band azelf gets you off to a solid start in some games
- dual screens is ok but I greatly prefer uxie for that for the most part. special attacking oriented sets @ LO have potential too but for the most part I stick to standard Azelf.

- pretty restrictive vs dnite/tar/metagross style offenses, frequently will need to catch it out with explosion to push a game in those matchups.
- I think my issue with milotic is the teams it tends to be on all are horrid vs rose tran builds, frequently you'll see zone as the only way to prevent hazards on milo builds, so you can get awkwardly positioned pretty quickly, haze is good on defensive teams
- offensive recover milotic on rose tran builds or with skarm for spikes is a relic
- blobby abusable mon, fits like a glove on some great teams though, the flygon glisc milo clef jira mag team in particular comes to mind

- tar,clef and blissey fit in the same slot on quite a few teams for the most part(an example being something like: the famous zap/star/jira or meta/loom/ttar or clef or blissey/heatran from jirachee)
- blisseys much higher special bulk stops it from losing to super strong special attacks where clefable would, notably vs gengar and strong water STAB from stuff like empoleon. keeping its utility vs gengar in mind on teams which tend to struggle vs gengar otherwise, I hate dropping Ice Beam, if I can help it: denying gar/dnite etc room in matchups vs offense is pretty critical to me.
- it's a pretty reliable stealth rocker, can potentially spread paralysis, can fit on dual blob scarf tar stalls etc: fits on aforementioned balanced teams too, good mon. bit abusable though, quite vulnerable to tspikes for one, abusable by loom/tar etc.

B+ Rank

- I think this is actually one of the best leads for screens/rain, solid bulk letting it reliably do its job more than once per game. My issue with it is that vs leads like rose/azelf, sleep powder or taunt can put you on the backfoot immediately with no real good options to reset the situation.
- It's good on more balanced teams too: stuff in the vein of uxie/loom/clef/tar/rotom/jira, etc, even has an excellent trick scarf set. Even has heal bell which given its narrow distribution is worth mentioning(and has potential on cune teams). Another one of my favorite leads.

- Sp.def hippo's great on stall, I loved the suggestion of experimenting with protect but it can be pretty hard to fit, I loathe dropping ice fang, on it just because I like having that extra hit vs dnite/gar etc as stall, though whirlwind is just as good.
- Solid mon, hippo stall is good for the most part but can struggle vs HO/rose tran teams potentially

- I like offensive celebi a lot: np leaf ice ep, is pretty strong into balanced builds,however it can feel quite awkward vs teams with fast pivots
- even NP cel with zone on a more defensively minded team can work
- leaf storm sr fire recover sets are quite solid, ice also fits here again for dnite; which teams using celebi as a rocker can struggle vs potentially
- I like hippo cel forre clef gyara stalls a lot, working spin into a defensive celebi structure without stacking tar weaknesses is quite synergetic.
- the unique defensive profile of being strong vs loom and pert in one slot is on paper amazing for defensive teams
- defensive sets like gk ice recover twave etc, are good in a vacuum but are awkward to fit, and can potentially stack problematic weaknesses
- I don't use teams where it's the sole loom switch in. the turn where you come in to take loom sleep is pretty risky, you're open to a double spore if you switch, or just being punished with tar for a stay, no real good options there

- scizor had a pretty massive fall from grace, at one point scizor was a casualty of fire punch jira being on every other team, meaning that given how often JIrachi is around come late game, it would naturally not get room to setup and clean. which is a stark contrast from the times when an intelligently held back sp.d sd scizor could setup uncontested in end games to close them out
- however with dugtrio being banned and ground being in vogue as the attack after bslam and ih:

all of a sudden one of the biggest obstacles to scizor late game isn't as common; that being said the uptick in tran is obviously not that great for it.
but tran depending on the team can sometimes be a boom set to catch clef, or be an offensive berry set and can thus sometimes lack sustain, and just not be around late game.
in those games the tran player is potentially on a timer, if the scizor player either: hides it, or outlasts the tran barring trick or some luck they might potentially just straight up win

- I see band way less but I can see it work on really aggressive teams, scarf is pretty rare,
- I associate it with weird fast paced fun teams, like smeargle HO or offbeat rose builds, which probably says something about that sets overall viability. Very fun to use though when momentum's on your side

B Rank

- I've seen this used to good effect on para spam builds
- sd toxic orb is extremely destructive in the few turns it's around
- scarf is passable just because once you remove ghosts cc with rocks up can be pretty spammable

- lead raikou can occasionally be quite potent
- tect cm raikou on rose tspikes offense can be quite effective

- shaymin is a dead slot vs clef teams, they have numerous options to reset sp.def drops, tects to burn shaymins pp, and leech does nothing to clef.
- has good utility vs opposing fgw builds thanks to its good coverage

- I think its pretty mediocre mostly, sub lefties has some potential in stall matchups to be quite good, and it can abuse metagross/zong tricking an iron ball to something like rotom/skarmory quite effectively
- it naturally pairs with magnezone too, so drag mag style builds are what I see as the only place for this to fit reliably

- abomasnow's decent, I don't really like the defensive sets: I think the offensive sets whether that be SD or 4 attacks are pretty decent though, the former fits especially well on paralysis oriented builds.
- abomasnow being able to abuse starmie clicking spin, giving you something to hold off empoleon late game, potentially stopping dragonite from setting up freely, being able to punish all non dd/non scarf ttar(because those very rarely go max speed barring mix tar running max neutral to outspeed pert), are pretty noteworthy traits to have.

- crobat is the perfect loom counter on paper, rocks and tar existing, compounded with the fact that it finds clicking roost quite difficult, make it unusable

- togekiss is actually not seen as often on para spam as one would think, those teams frequently lean very physically offensive: cb tar/machamp/sd loom/cb pert all being more frequently seen on that style.
- togekiss still has some potential though: stuff like np/bell/air slash/roost with magnezone or np 2 attacks are decent, aura sphere being rare has pretty good odds at randomly catching tar/tran out in game.

- quagsire is a natural fit on some bulkier teams, quag clef zone builds/classic nido stalls with quagsire slotted in(either in the last slot, or over clef to give those teams a desperately needed water immune which isn't trappable; encore's pretty good on it and gives it good value in HO matchups - I don't view curse sets as being particularly likely to sweep anyway, way too abusable by loom in game, clicking curse feels like a waste of time unless you stumble into the right matchup

- forretress is really good in some matchups, natural fit on hippo stalls, gets paired off with scarf tar a fair bit:

can be good if you can get it into spots where it can continually reset layers with spin via picking off the ghost.
it provides no real defensive utility barring vs metagross, unlike skarmory which is a corner stone of stalls in its own right defensively outside of the spikes it provides

- it can be hard to reset layers more than a few times per game reliably though. not too great, and is dead ended by zone just as hard as skarm is, except forretress has no whirlwind to attempt to scout it out.

B- Rank

- gastrodon is mediocre to me, being immune to knock is cool i guess? it fits on zone teams, but I don't really see gastrodon of all things as being particularly good, too abusable by loom too
- I guess it can be...better at curse than quagsire? Which isn't saying much coming from me because I think curse quagsire is pretty bad.

- incredibly mediocre. defensive setup sets were usable with dugtrio in the tier
- offensive cresselia is discount super jira.

- mediocre, clefable killed leech seed grasses barring loom, easily chipped by hazards, struggles to switch in vs stuff it should answer, unimpressive
- it's a relic from when grasses other than loom(and celebi to some extent) were viewed as more viable options on the fgw balance archetype
- I honestly feel like its threat factor peaks while it's sleep powder hasn't been spent. can't see myself using this

- rhyperior has potential, the classic zap rhyp tar jira clef star builds is a good setup for it, however the style is vulnerable to breloom
- both of sub sd/sub 3 attacks are good to varying degrees

- jolteon has a place on fast paced lead skarm HO, gives the archetype a slot faster than starmie to help hold hazards, with reasonable coverage to close out some end games.
- pretty mediocre overall though, and almost never seen for a reason

- it has a niche on hippo stalls and abomasnow builds, absorbing tspikes is massive and helps avoid being put into awful positions vs rose tran.

Tentacruel @ Black Sludge
Ability: Liquid Ooze
EVs: 208 HP / 64 Def / 60 SpA / 80 SpD / 96 Spe
Timid Nature
- Hydro Pump
- Ice Beam
- Knock Off
- Rapid Spin

benchmarks:

hits 286 speed for luke, mamo, and slower glisc
hydro and some sp.a invest to push past scarf rotom easier
defense to live +2 espeed from luke with rocks down, does what it needs to

- lead aero HO, was quite popular once upon a time, however: this sort of team historically has always sucked vs defensive slam jira, also pretty awful vs dedicated stall
- sand with sub roost aero also used to be a thing pretty mediocre again, doesn't really provide any key defensive utility for that archetype
- LO 3 attacks roost is just too weak to realistically make an impact game to game

C+ Rank

- defensive vaporeon is mediocre.
- specs is good, because offensive water stab is strong. there is really not much to say about it

I actually like it a fair bit as a lead, but its mostly a worse machamp with some more offbeat options which can be useful in a pinch, wow IP CC Shadow Sneak is decent

- healing wish is one of its major selling points on more offensive teams
- has a niche on rose tran which can struggle vs dnite/gyara
- can be a niche utility pick on stall too

- i've used it a bit on stall, being able to hard switch vs ttar is cool, but it's pretty mediocre, thanks to being super slow it can't even sacrifice itself to click spin.
- it's hilariously bad at spinning vs stall:

tspikes timer you
clefable potentially knocks you on a rapid spin turn
you take sand and spikes damage

- i can see this having good potential:

hp ground molt with wow has good potential vs tran bulky off to some degree, stone edge on tar not being seen on support sets helps it in this regard
provides key resistances vs stuff like loom, good early switch vs jira etc. has potential

- really wants to use sub too though to abuse pressure, make sure to have some way to either: abuse clef or make sure your team can at least engage in a pp stall war vs it. feels unwieldy to build with but I can see it do work

C Rank

- zone clef slowbro, is pretty decent although insanely weak to gar, I don't like slowbro too much outside of walling champ
- surf ib twave slack means its pretty good vs fast paced offenses, then again tar existing on those teams is a pain, so realistically barring vs say machamp para spam sort of stuff I can't see it being too good

- donphan's ok, I've seen stuff like magnitude be used before in the vein of wing attack gliscor to give you more pp for potential stall wars,
- the only one I really see as decent is probably like an offensive spinner set with head smash. it can at least hard in vs most rock tar pretty reliably which is a good quality to have. it's ok

C- Rank

-I actually haven't seen azumarril outside of the zong azumarril rain, but being able to potentially benefit from both trick room/rain dance(potentially at the same time) is pretty awesome. It's obviously strong if it gets going but I see needing to trick room for it as a massive issue:
because it means you essentially have to lose a mon in zong, to give you all of 3 turns to sweep. so you threw away a mon that has some key resistances for rain, and wasted turns of rain switching zong in and booming, to have something that might be good for three turns. sounds like a pretty shaky premise.

- I like kabutops a fair bit because rain can struggle vs lucario if it gets a free sd vs stuff like uxie/zong etc, even +2 espeed is a massive thread, so just off the back of providing a solid defensive synergy for rain I rate it somewhat. its tough to fit though, rain usually only has an extra slot or two to play around with so it's tough to justify it.

- qwilfish absorbing tspikes is amazing for rain, and qwilfish usually trades with something game to game so pretty decent

- ludicolo is like having a second kingdra but it's a bit weaker vs some crucial stuff like ttar/jirachi which is why its a great overlapping sweeper with kingdra. having the early pivot into pert is pretty crucial too, lets you immediately get some pressure and potentially save kingdra's health for later is awesome. SD ludicolo is passable too

some general notes/observations:

I feel like when you use a bulky off team: stuff like the classic 6 of jira/tran/flygon/gyara/tar/star, I loathe giving room to any of loom/tran/pert, so especially vs these three mons I tend to pack a lot of trading options. classic loom tar stuff is still strong, loom gives bulky offenses strong pressure options early on.

I hate being weak to rose/tran builds, there's definitely a notable uptick in them - I've moved towards using dual rocks a lot more to help out with that, stuff like rocks emp+rocks jira on the same team helps a ton.

HO's great, so conversely slow paced teams looking to gradually burn things into the range of scarf tar/rotom/cm clef etc don't work as effectively as before. tar/nite/gyara are frequently all used in tandem on HO, to abuse the overlapping checks that they share: I love gyarados the most out of the dd mons of ttar/nite/gyara. Its the most reliable and carries its own weight, gyara's the easiest to fit onto a team because of its defensive qualities, dnite's the best at getting a kill and setting up a sequence where they're forced to use a scarfer to revenge letting you setup your emp etc effectively, tar's probably the best cleaner out of the 3 to me: especially with chople

I enjoy stuff like jirachi/skarm/zone a lot, I almost appreciate the fact that magnezone lets me select which of skarmory/jirachi(or empoleon or metagross, the concept works with any defensively minded steel there) I want to get more use out of in the matchup as much as I do it picking off opposing skarmory(which is key on a lot of teams, especially defensively minded ones with a lot of grounded members not willing to dedicate resources to a defensive starmie). Obviously stacking all those steels together introduces some notable weaknesses(stuff like tran for starters), which limits your options in the building stage, but still an effective synergy worth taking note of.

i love rain - I think its pretty reliable, given the nature of the classic DPP defensive teams/bulky offensive builds being weak to strong water types, I actually don't think rain is a matchup oriented pick, it's just good in it's own right:
-Hydro from specs Kingdra is what splits matchups completely open, being able to cleave the classic bulky off jira set from nearly full is massive, demolishing tar on weather reset attempts is pretty amazing too
-I love modest Kingdra a ton just because it reduces games to just getting to click water moves way quicker:

252 SpA Choice Specs Kingdra Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Tyranitar in Sand: 318-374 (78.7 - 92.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ SpA Choice Specs Kingdra Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Tyranitar in Sand: 348-410 (86.1 - 101.4%) -- 12.5% chance to OHKO)

it doesn't seem like much but potentially denying ttar one extra weather reset, is huge while playing rain, keeping momentum and not being forced to reset weather too often is key for this style to work
- One issue with these sort of teams is obviously stuff like lucario can just click buttons at +2, gyro rd boom hypno seems to be one of the more popular mons to reset weather on these teams and is a place where luke can gamble to get its boost: 0 Atk Bronzong Explosion vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Lucario: 217-256 (77.2 - 91.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO, you can nearly KO it but that still gives it turns to do what it needs to - also if you're forced to boom vs it as opposed to RDing it arguably already did something pretty major. Kabutops on rain helps a ton but that seems much rarer now.

I think on classic para spam I actually far prefer sd loom as the para abuser, to machamp. sub champ has no sustainability which really impacts it. It has high highs and low low lows, especially because those para spam builds tend to end up playing with a ton of layers their side(notably in the rose tran matchup), which is expected given how difficult it is to spin vs teams dedicated to keeping their layers up: which by extension also can make defensive matchups very uphill. which is why: sd loom is a far better center piece, which helps with the major pert issue those teams end up having

some ideas I've been messing with:

- a team based on slowly picking off all the possible scarfers that might revenge dd nite, to allow the second dd mon in the back to clean easily: the idea I had was using something like haban dd nite lead(instead of the popular yache lead dd nite) to let you be fine vs scarf latias/flygon that's harded in, use it with preferably magnezone(for scarf jira), and you could even run some bulk on the dd nite so it can take a HP:ice from rotom and trade with if needed, sadly it never really moved beyond the ideas phase.

- meta rose tran cune gar cune flygon is the other one I'm toying with, pretty basic 6 - the idea I wanted to try and work on was: trick ball meta/rose/gar/flygon being pretty great at holding layers in tandem especially after starmie's tricked(letting me not have to use scarf rotom which is cool), I figured this gave me a good shot at abusing sub roar tran in game, team really has nothing for clef so the cune has to be sub, pretty straightforward set wise.

The cool part I tried to work in not being forced to revenge dragons with flygon immediately: delaying setup with ice rose/having icy wind gar for the same reason is pretty nice in game. Needs to be retooled vs clef though, because as is the cm clef matchup can be very uphill, especially with no boom tran. I linked the team below along with some other more experimental(occasionally very old) teams, enjoy!

Zapdos @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 248 HP / 204 Def / 24 SpD / 32 Spe
Bold Nature
- Discharge
- Hidden Power [Grass]
- U-turn
- Roost

Hippowdon @ Leftovers
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 240 HP / 8 Def / 252 SpD / 8 Spe
Careful Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Ice Fang
- Slack Off

Breloom @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
EVs: 112 HP / 188 Def / 32 SpD / 176 Spe
Impish Nature
- Spore
- Swords Dance
- Superpower
- Seed Bomb

Tentacruel @ Black Sludge
Ability: Liquid Ooze
EVs: 208 HP / 64 Def / 60 SpA / 80 SpD / 96 Spe
Timid Nature
- Hydro Pump
- Ice Beam
- Knock Off
- Rapid Spin

Blissey (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Wish
- Soft-Boiled
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam

Jirachi @ Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 240 HP / 176 Def / 60 SpD / 32 Spe
Impish Nature
- Wish
- Protect
- Iron Head
- U-turn

Hippowdon @ Leftovers
Ability: Sand Stream
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Def / 252 SpD
Careful Nature
- Roar
- Earthquake
- Stealth Rock
- Slack Off

Jirachi @ Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 HP / 144 Def / 112 SpD
Impish Nature
- Wish
- Body Slam
- Iron Head
- U-turn

Magnezone @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Magnet Pull
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 2 Atk / 30 SpA / 30 Spe
- Thunder Wave
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Toxic

Milotic @ Leftovers
Ability: Marvel Scale
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 248 HP / 184 Def / 76 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Haze
- Recover

Breloom @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
EVs: 236 HP / 16 Atk / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Careful Nature
- Bulk Up
- Protect
- Seed Bomb
- Facade

Gliscor @ Leftovers
Ability: Hyper Cutter
EVs: 252 HP / 24 Def / 232 Spe
Impish Nature
- Taunt
- Earthquake
- Ice Fang
- Roost

Swampert @ Choice Specs
Ability: Torrent
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 2 Atk / 30 SpA
- Hydro Pump
- Hidden Power [Grass]
- Earth Power
- Ice Beam

Jirachi @ Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 HP / 32 Atk / 44 Def / 4 SpD / 176 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Thunder/Grass Knot
- Iron Head
- Body Slam/Icy Wind
- Fire Punch/HP:Ground

Gliscor @ Leftovers
Ability: Hyper Cutter
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Ice Fang
- Thunder Fang
- Earthquake

Breloom @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
EVs: 112 HP / 220 Def / 176 Spe
Impish Nature
- Spore
- Swords Dance
- Superpower
- Seed Bomb

Heatran @ Passho Berry
Ability: Flash Fire
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 2 Atk / 30 SpA
- Stealth Rock
- Magma Storm
- Earth Power
- Hidden Power [Grass]

Tyranitar @ Expert Belt
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 48 HP / 36 Atk / 168 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Lonely Nature
- Fire Blast
- Hidden Power [Grass]
- Superpower
- Crunch

Jirachi @ Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 HP / 32 Atk / 44 Def / 4 SpD / 176 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Protect
- Iron Head
- Body Slam
- Fire Punch

Gliscor @ Leftovers
Ability: Hyper Cutter
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Ice Fang
- Thunder Fang
- Earthquake

Breloom @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
EVs: 112 HP / 220 Def / 176 Spe
Impish Nature
- Spore
- Swords Dance
- Superpower
- Seed Bomb

Latias (F) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Thunder Wave
- Trick
- Healing Wish

Swampert @ Leftovers
Ability: Torrent
EVs: 160 HP / 252 SpA / 96 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hydro Pump
- Stealth Rock
- Earth Power
- Ice Beam

Tyranitar @ Expert Belt
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 48 HP / 36 Atk / 168 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Lonely Nature
- Fire Blast
- Hidden Power [Grass]
- Superpower
- Crunch

Jirachi @ Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 HP / 32 Atk / 44 Def / 4 SpD / 176 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Protect
- Iron Head
- Body Slam
- Fire Punch

Zapdos @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 248 HP / 228 Def / 32 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 2 Atk / 30 SpA
- Discharge
- Hidden Power [Grass]
- Heat Wave
- Roost

Breloom @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
EVs: 112 HP / 220 Def / 176 Spe
Impish Nature
- Spore
- Swords Dance
- Superpower
- Seed Bomb

Starmie @ Leftovers
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP / 40 SpA / 216 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hydro Pump
- Psychic
- Rapid Spin
- Recover

Swampert @ Leftovers
Ability: Torrent
EVs: 160 HP / 252 SpA / 96 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hydro Pump
- Stealth Rock
- Earth Power
- Ice Beam

Tyranitar @ Expert Belt
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 48 HP / 36 Atk / 168 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Lonely Nature
- Fire Blast
- Hidden Power [Grass]
- Superpower
- Crunch

Heatran @ Lum Berry
Ability: Flash Fire
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 HP / 80 Def / 96 SpA / 80 Spe
Modest Nature
- Explosion
- Magma Storm
- Earth Power
- Will-O-Wisp

Zapdos @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 240 HP / 228 Def / 40 SpD
Bold Nature
- Discharge
- Hidden Power [Grass]
- U-turn
- Roost

Abomasnow @ Leftovers
Ability: Snow Warning
EVs: 220 Atk / 64 SpA / 224 Spe
Lonely Nature
- Wood Hammer
- Focus Punch
- Ice Shard
- Blizzard

Jirachi @ Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 HP / 72 Def / 184 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Iron Head
- Body Slam
- Fire Punch

Starmie @ Colbur Berry
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hydro Pump
- Grass Knot
- Ice Beam
- Rapid Spin

Tyranitar @ Expert Belt
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 48 HP / 36 Atk / 168 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Lonely Nature
- Fire Blast
- Hidden Power [Grass]
- Superpower
- Crunch

Metagross @ Iron Ball
Ability: Clear Body
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 248 HP / 136 Atk / 104 SpD / 20 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Meteor Mash
- Earthquake
- Trick
- Stealth Rock

Roserade @ Black Sludge
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP / 80 SpD / 176 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 2 Atk / 30 Def
- Spikes
- Toxic Spikes
- Grass Knot
- Hidden Power [Ice]

Suicune @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 HP / 32 SpA / 224 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Calm Mind
- Surf
- Ice Beam

Gengar (M) @ Black Sludge
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Trick
- Icy Wind
- Shadow Ball
- Focus Blast

Heatran @ Leftovers
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Lava Plume
- Earth Power
- Roar

Flygon @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- U-turn
- Earthquake
- Outrage
- Thunder Punch

I've really enjoying playing no dug dpp feels really fresh to me, hope reading this was enjoyable

NeoSeth · Jun 23, 2021

I think Jirachi introduces an overly present uncompetitive element to far too many games. The game is never over while Jirachi can Iron Head you. Jirachi's great bulk and immunity to sand can boost this X-factor immensely. You're trying to 2HKO it but it keeps Iron Heading you and now your 2HKO is a 3HKO, or even a 4HKO. Or perhaps your Jirachi check is itself about to be forced out, being worn down by Sand and Iron Head. Many Jirachi checks can suddenly fail due to Body Slam paralysis. Beyond Iron Head there are other issues serene grace causes; switching in a physical-based counter to Jirachi can fail spectacularly when Fire Punch burns you, as previously mentioned.

Even if you do force Jirachi out, it can just come back in to threaten you later. Jirachi's bulk, resistance to passive damage and access to Wish give it EXCELLENT longevity. It can hang in the back wings for a long time, waiting for its moment to strike. Coupled with its extreme versatility, this can exert far too much pressure. A wrong guess against Jirachi can be much more devastating than if Jirachi itself makes a bad call. This by itself might not make a Pokemon Uber. It's often the hallmark of OU's top threats. But combined with Jirachi's ability to roll dice in a losing position to steal a win, I think it's far too much. It reminds of Garchomp in the sand. Yes you can run powerful checks, but even after all of that you're still gambling on if you win or not.

I do understand the argument that Jirachi can't leave while Latias is around. I was upset when Latias came back too! However, for over a decade now, ever since Gen IV was the current meta, whenever I mention the idea that Jirachi introduces too much luck into games I feel that the response anyone gives me is "Yeah, but that's Jirachi." I feel like there is an unspoken agreement among the playerbase that Jirachi DOES introduce an unhealthy amount of luck to the game, but we endure it for other reasons. I do think a suspect test of Jirachi would yield nothing but positive results.

If nothing else, would it be possible to simply ban Iron Head on Jirachi? I'm personally usually against such complex or specific bans, but such a change would remove by far the least fun thing about Jirachi while allowing it to remain in the tier as a versatile and powerful Pokemon. No other move, in my opinion, introduces such an element of RNG to Jirachi's existence. Body Slam paralysis is unfortunate, but is no longer nearly as threatening without Iron Head to pair with it. Spreading paralysis is a common strategy, but paraflinch is not. And Jirachi's paraflinch is on another level of power from, say, Togekiss.

Excal · Jun 24, 2021

NeoSeth said:
I think Jirachi introduces an overly present uncompetitive element to far too many games. The game is never over while Jirachi can Iron Head you. Jirachi's great bulk and immunity to sand can boost this X-factor immensely. You're trying to 2HKO it but it keeps Iron Heading you and now your 2HKO is a 3HKO, or even a 4HKO. Or perhaps your Jirachi check is itself about to be forced out, being worn down by Sand and Iron Head. Many Jirachi checks can suddenly fail due to Body Slam paralysis. Beyond Iron Head there are other issues serene grace causes; switching in a physical-based counter to Jirachi can fail spectacularly when Fire Punch burns you, as previously mentioned.

If you want to present Jirachi as a negative influence on the metagame, you should go the direction of providing particularly egregious replays demonstrating how Jirachi has extremely limited counterplay (it doesn't) with teams that should be fortified enough against it, as opposed to pushing a narrative with exaggerated statements like "the game is never over while Jirachi can Iron Head you" (also not true). Alternatively, you could go into how conventional team structures can't handle Jirachi naturally well (they can).

NeoSeth said:
Even if you do force Jirachi out, it can just come back in to threaten you later. Jirachi's bulk, resistance to passive damage and access to Wish give it EXCELLENT longevity. It can hang in the back wings for a long time, waiting for its moment to strike. Coupled with its extreme versatility, this can exert far too much pressure. A wrong guess against Jirachi can be much more devastating than if Jirachi itself makes a bad call. This by itself might not make a Pokemon Uber. It's often the hallmark of OU's top threats. But combined with Jirachi's ability to roll dice in a losing position to steal a win, I think it's far too much. It reminds of Garchomp in the sand. Yes you can run powerful checks, but even after all of that you're still gambling on if you win or not.

For the most part you can replace Jirachi in this with a lot of different Pokemon in OU. For example: "Even if you do force Clefable out, it can just come back in to threaten you later. Clefable's bulk, resistance to passive damage and access to Wish give it EXCELLENT longevity. It can hang in the back wings for a long time, waiting for its moment to strike. Coupled with its extreme versatility, this can exert far too much pressure. A wrong guess against Clefable can be much more devastating than if Clefable itself makes a bad call. This by itself might not make a Pokemon Uber. It's often the hallmark of OU's top threats. But combined with Clefable's ability to roll dice in a losing position to steal a win [fishing for Ice Beam freeze/paralysis], I think it's far too much. It reminds of Garchomp in the sand. Yes you can run powerful checks, but even after all of that you're still gambling on if you win or not."

My point is there's a lot of unspecific to the metagame fluff here that imo is not at all convincing that Jirachi is unhealthy for the current metagame.

NeoSeth said:
I do understand the argument that Jirachi can't leave while Latias is around. I was upset when Latias came back too! However, for over a decade now, ever since Gen IV was the current meta, whenever I mention the idea that Jirachi introduces too much luck into games I feel that the response anyone gives me is "Yeah, but that's Jirachi." I feel like there is an unspoken agreement among the playerbase that Jirachi DOES introduce an unhealthy amount of luck to the game, but we endure it for other reasons. I do think a suspect test of Jirachi would yield nothing but positive results.

Here's a better answer than "Yeah, but that's Jirachi": the biggest question here is whether a suspect test of Jirachi, leading to a potential ban, would actually improve the metagame. And to that I would say definitely not. For better or worse, Jirachi is the glue that holds this tier together. Since Dugtrio was banned, Jirachi as a pokemon has mellowed out considerably and is not broken. Heatran is an S-tier Pokemon that offers ample counterplay, and the Jirachis that bend their back to be as good vs Heatran as possible have other cons (ie. being way worse vs Latias Gyarados Tyranitar Dragonite Metagross Gliscor and much more). Jirachi strikes a slightly chaotic balance in the metagame that despite Serene Grace and potential shenanigans is not overwhelming or too much whatsoever. There are several natural checks to the pkmn that you don't have to go anywhere close to bending your back over to fit on a team.

It's difficult enough to handle the onslaught of powerful sweepers, offensive threats, defensive pieces, etc in the teambuilder; removing Jirachi from the metagame would turn DPP into a clickfest of overpowered Pokemon that have little defensive answers while simultaneously limiting your options to break defensive cores should you run into a particularly bad matchup. On both sides of the spectrum there's going to be higher variance and more matchup fishing. No thanks.

NeoSeth said:
If nothing else, would it be possible to simply ban Iron Head on Jirachi? I'm personally usually against such complex or specific bans, but such a change would remove by far the least fun thing about Jirachi while allowing it to remain in the tier as a versatile and powerful Pokemon. No other move, in my opinion, introduces such an element of RNG to Jirachi's existence. Body Slam paralysis is unfortunate, but is no longer nearly as threatening without Iron Head to pair with it. Spreading paralysis is a common strategy, but paraflinch is not. And Jirachi's paraflinch is on another level of power from, say, Togekiss.

This is not possible because it goes against smogon tiering policy. Let's say you ban Iron Head on Jirachi, where do you draw the line? You could ban Tail Glow on Manaphy, Draco Meteor on Salamence, a few moves on Garchomp, and so on. Iron Head as a move is not broken, so it's not feasible to ban it solely for the sake of some contrived metagame preservation. It's either ban Jirachi or keep Jirachi as is.

I also wanted to critique the use of "least fun" to describe Iron Head, as well as the emphasis on how much RNG it causes. Jirachi's Iron Head having a 60% chance to flinch is a known entity that can be planned around. The move & Jirachi's attack in smaller increments is underwhelming offensively. Unless you're using a badly-built team you should be able to play against it assuming it is going to flinch you.

---

There are a lot of huge misconceptions about Jirachi relating to the current DPP meta and I think that this is a decent opportunity to clear some of the air. I honestly found Jirachi to be absolutely insufferable in the Dugtrio metagame, but now I think it's fine. Casually having a Jirachi suspect is 100% off the table, and if that were ever in discussion it would be an incredibly drastic move to make. There's so much that could go wrong with it: fundamentally altering years and years of teambuilding & the meta as we know it, having to deal with a tremendous shift and a completely different DPP compared to adding Lati/removing Dug (which sought to keep DPP's identity as intact as possible), and having an inherently flawed pool of voters some of which participating with uninformed bias. The recent changes to DPP aren't to open the floodgates to completely flip the meta on its head but rather to only happen if absolutely necessary for the metagame.

Sorry if I came off a bit harsh. I understand people's frustrations with Jirachi, but I hope this was informative. Btw I think the DPP metagame is the best it has ever been. So far so good (let's hope it stays that way).

DeepBlueC · Jun 24, 2021

I agree with what most of NeoSeth has said, so I'll try to respond on his behalf. He can correct me if at any point he thinks I'm putting words in his mouth.

Excal said:
If you want to present Jirachi as a negative influence on the metagame, you should go the direction of providing particularly egregious replays demonstrating how Jirachi has extremely limited counterplay (it doesn't) with teams that should be fortified enough against it, as opposed to pushing a narrative with exaggerated statements like "the game is never over while Jirachi can Iron Head you" (also not true). Alternatively, you could go into how conventional team structures can't handle Jirachi naturally well (they can).

Alright, here is the first replay:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-1056553765-4mqizakml2wlrnx2oetha69ydmva9hkpw

Here is your scarf Jira flinching a lefties Magnezone from full health to death. The trend about a couple of years or more ago was to use Custap Magnezone or Magnezone with a berry resist. Once people realized that such a Magnezone was not a good enough answer to something like lefties Wish Jira (as it could be flinched to death quite easily), people have started to use lefties on it to improve the odds. Scarf Magnezones also dropped Flash Cannon for Twave as it was a more reliable way of cripping Jirachi - reducing its speed which could then potentially stop its ability from flinching other non-paralyzed mons. I'm sure that there are other benefits to running Twave on Scarf Mag besides Jirachi, but I don't think any other reason for using twave is more rewarding than using it for Jirachi.

Going back to the replay, for more context, yes the Magnezone was of a -def nature. But that amount really doesn't make so much of a difference to me. You're inflicting about 9% damage per turn, and with leftovers recovery deduction, you're basically doing 3% damage per turn. Let's say that the Magnezone wasn't of a -def nature, we're still then talking about a difference of 1%, which to me really shouldn't be making that much of a difference. The Magnezone wasn't even able to pull off a single move as it just kept getting flinched.

This replay is definitely an outlier because majority of the time you will find that lefties Magnezone does prevail in such a matchup, but the point I want to bring forth is that even when you try to prepare against a known Jirachi set, there are odds that it will backfire.

Second replay:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-1363730751-t18vr7itmxafu9q6mm5yvd9opfesvsxpw

Here is my phys def hippo getting flinched to death by Jirachi. Now there was a turn I was greedy and SR'd instead of slacking off, but I honestly felt confident that a phys def Hippo would be able to hold back a physical Jirachi, however I was wrong.

Excal said:
For the most part you can replace Jirachi in this with a lot of different Pokemon in OU. For example: "Even if you do force Clefable out, it can just come back in to threaten you later. Clefable's bulk, resistance to passive damage and access to Wish give it EXCELLENT longevity. It can hang in the back wings for a long time, waiting for its moment to strike. Coupled with its extreme versatility, this can exert far too much pressure. A wrong guess against Clefable can be much more devastating than if Clefable itself makes a bad call. This by itself might not make a Pokemon Uber. It's often the hallmark of OU's top threats. But combined with Clefable's ability to roll dice in a losing position to steal a win [fishing for Ice Beam freeze/paralysis], I think it's far too much. It reminds of Garchomp in the sand. Yes you can run powerful checks, but even after all of that you're still gambling on if you win or not."

My point is there's a lot of unspecific to the metagame fluff here that imo is not at all convincing that Jirachi is unhealthy for the current metagame.

I don't think you can compare Jirachi's longevity with Clefable's all that easily. Like each of them have their own unique traits that grant it some longevity - Clefable having good bulk, and more importantly magic guard which allows it to now take any hazard / sand / status damage. Jira is susceptible to wisp / paralysis / spikes. Its leftovers recovery offsets the drop due to SR, and it is immune to sand. What gives Jirachi more longevity than Clefable, to me, is its ability to get more free turns compared to Clefable (with protect + potential paralysis turns + iron head flinch), and the ability to be ohko'd by a limited number of moves.

So let me explain, Clefable is a mon that dies to most physical fighting stabs / explosion / or gets damaged enough to the point that even if it survives, it still doesn't really end up winning. For example -> Clefable dies to banded Superpower from TTar / CC from Lucario etc. Even if you can't ohko it with a fighting type move, you can get a kill on it with something like explosion. Let's say that you're still unable to ohko it, you still should prevail in most matchups. For example, Bold Clefable can live a CC from Lefties Infernape, but even if it survives, it's not like Clefable then immediately takes out Infernape that turn. It needs a lot of luck -> twave para activation / crit tbolt or anything other luck. Similarly, Clefable probably lives something like CB Crunch from TTar, but even then it's not like by living such an attack that Clefable proceeds to defeat TTar (unless Counter) as it needs a lot of luck in the form of Twave paralysis to defeat it.

This is different with Jirachi. There are pokemon with moves that can ohko Jirachi -> Fire Blast Heatran / banded EQ from Swamp or Flygon / Infernape with orb etc. Banded Swamp / Flygon aren't that common. Physical Jirachi isn't really beating a lefties tran either, so that's a certain loss. Mixed Ape works well against Jirachi, depending on the Jirachi variant. If you are special attack ev'd and are facing a Careful Jirachi, it can live your Fire Blast, then body slam paralyze you, and flinch you death. The same goes for trying to beat standard physical Jirachi with something like Scarf Flygon. You can put some damage on it with EQ, but with a body slam paralysis, it can protect + iron head flinch its way through such that it goes back to its original health and leave your Flygon dead. The end result being that you probably lost your Flygon for nothing. Jirachi being resistant to explosion makes it harder to kill as well.

Here is an example of a Jirachi defeating my offensive swamp after my Swamp has taken one layer of spikes:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-1356271516-z4g8j0hcpmr21ltbunjezgjwupub5nwpw

The reason I went to Swampert vs a Jirachi despite having an Infernape is because I thought if I could at least land one Earth Power on Jirachi, I could leave it in a range where I could have a guaranteed kill with Infernape by using a fire stab.

Excal said:
Here's a better answer than "Yeah, but that's Jirachi": the biggest question here is whether a suspect test of Jirachi, leading to a potential ban, would actually improve the metagame. And to that I would say definitely not. For better or worse, Jirachi is the glue that holds this tier together. Since Dugtrio was banned, Jirachi as a pokemon has mellowed out considerably and is not broken. Heatran is an S-tier Pokemon that offers ample counterplay, and the Jirachis that bend their back to be as good vs Heatran as possible have other cons (ie. being way worse vs Latias Gyarados Tyranitar Dragonite Metagross Gliscor and much more). Jirachi strikes a slightly chaotic balance in the metagame that despite Serene Grace and potential shenanigans is not overwhelming or too much whatsoever. There are several natural checks to the pkmn that you don't have to go anywhere close to bending your back over to fit on a team.

It's difficult enough to handle the onslaught of powerful sweepers, offensive threats, defensive pieces, etc in the teambuilder; removing Jirachi from the metagame would turn DPP into a clickfest of overpowered Pokemon that have little defensive answers while simultaneously limiting your options to break defensive cores should you run into a particularly bad matchup. On both sides of the spectrum there's going to be higher variance and more matchup fishing. No thanks.

I do agree that Jirachi holds a lot of stuff together at the moment as it serves as an excellent check to so many mons. I can't comment on whether banning Jirachi would lead to a clickfest of overpowered pokemon etc. because at this point it's just speculation and we don't know whether the meta could adapt to such overpowered mons. I don't think there's ever been a period of DPP without Jirachi for me to form an assumption of how the state of DPP would be like without Jirachi.

Excal said:
This is not possible because it goes against smogon tiering policy. Let's say you ban Iron Head on Jirachi, where do you draw the line? You could ban Tail Glow on Manaphy, Draco Meteor on Salamence, a few moves on Garchomp, and so on. Iron Head as a move is not broken, so it's not feasible to ban it solely for the sake of some contrived metagame preservation. It's either ban Jirachi or keep Jirachi as is.

I also wanted to critique the use of "least fun" to describe Iron Head, as well as the emphasis on how much RNG it causes. Jirachi's Iron Head having a 60% chance to flinch is a known entity that can be planned around. The move & Jirachi's attack in smaller increments is underwhelming offensively. Unless you're using a badly-built team you should be able to play against it assuming it is going to flinch you.

We could honestly draw the line with Jirachi. As you mentioned how Jirachi is a glue that holds the tier together, it's a mon whose impact is considerably different than Mence, Manaphy, and Garchomp, I wouldn't mind making an exception to this mon. I understand how this could create a snowball effect but we can just flatten the slope right after this (only apply this exception to Jira).

Regarding the 60% chance flinch, yes I agree it is a known entity but there aren't many ways that you can fully avoid it as I showed earlier.

Excal said:
There are a lot of huge misconceptions about Jirachi relating to the current DPP meta and I think that this is a decent opportunity to clear some of the air. I honestly found Jirachi to be absolutely insufferable in the Dugtrio metagame, but now I think it's fine. Casually having a Jirachi suspect is 100% off the table, and if that were ever in discussion it would be an incredibly drastic move to make. There's so much that could go wrong with it: fundamentally altering years and years of teambuilding & the meta as we know it, having to deal with a tremendous shift and a completely different DPP compared to adding Lati/removing Dug (which sought to keep DPP's identity as intact as possible), and having an inherently flawed pool of voters some of which participating with uninformed bias. The recent changes to DPP aren't to open the floodgates to completely flip the meta on its head but rather to only happen if absolutely necessary for the metagame.

Sorry if I came off a bit harsh. I understand people's frustrations with Jirachi, but I hope this was informative. Btw I think the DPP metagame is the best it has ever been. So far so good (let's hope it stays that way).

I think we just have a difference of opinion because I don't think Jirachi is fine as is. I do agree that the DPP meta is much better than what it was in the Dug era, but if we can take steps to make it better then we should.

eden · Jun 24, 2021

Pretty short but I find spore on loom ridiculous still, loom if you’re running a balanced team on the slower end, can force you into some nasty situations straight up where you have no really appropriate responses.

I don’t really find stalk anything to help vs it: even the most common one you’ll see in stalk Latias never wants to stay in post taking sleep, and if you do stay in and get picked off: the mon allowing loom space to do this will prob still be around to give said opportunities up; loom makes it very difficult to run balanced teams on the slower side, offense shouldn’t really have a problem with it.

For teams on the slower side of bulky offense/some stalls without stuff like wing attack glisc/slower paced clef zone etc kinda stuff I see it as a major nuisance to the point where I run extremely fast mix tar/pert so as to straight up just deny it room: yes this is an adaptation that one can make but running bulkier variants of them shouldn’t feel so disadvantageous.

I think teams seem to handle it a bit better: but spore swings games in a way I’m not really a fan of if your team isn’t that offensive, the same can be said of many threats yes, but it’s pretty obvious how the varying lengths of sleep can make handling it even more difficult. Definitely feels like when loom teams get a lead via an early sleep in a good matchup, it’s hard to reverse the position, which is something applicable to a lot of mons but what most of them don’t share is looms incredible self sustain via pheal, keeping all this in mind it’s definitely worth looking into

I think jirachi is pretty balanced in a meta where heatran is S ranked, it’s disgusting vs some frailer offenses when the slam ih magic gets going but that’s very much a risk you take on when you run those teams. if you’re a jirachi opting to hit tran you’re either super jira in which case you’re not worried about ih anyway, and if you’re ground mixed to pressure tran significantly you need a good deal of sp.a invest/occasionally even run ebelt so you have a harder time checking stuff that you should/coming in to get attacks off; the perfect jira set will still maul any team but that goes for a lot of things.

if anything I find heatran more difficult to deal with in a broader spectrum of matchups, it can never match the highs of jirachi: but it’s much more consistently difficult to deal with to me

Pideous · Jun 24, 2021

I don't really like the idea that Jirachi is some all important defensive bastion against the floodgates of offensive DPP degeneracy. It certainly relieves a lot of pressure in the teambuilder with its ability to handle so many offensive threats in one teamslot, but as far as individual threats which become uncontrollable the second Jirachi leaves the format, I think it would be fair to say Latias (specs) is probably the only real offender. Therefore, if Jirachi is truly broken/ unfun/ uncompetitive then I don't think it's worth preserving for the theoretical health of the meta. If Jirachi is unhealthy, it should be banned, and subsequent uncompetitive elements should be treated similarly.

However, I truly don't think Jirachi deserves to be considered banworthy. It's not because Jirachi is the only mon holding the tier together, it's because it's genuinely not overpowered. I think the two elements of Jirachi as a pokemon people take issue with are 1 - its ability to flinch through defensive checks, undermining defensive counterplay in the builder and in game and 2 - its exceptional longevity allowing it to effectively outlast offensive checks to it. On paper, the combination of these traits leaves very little room to answer Jirachi.

I would like to point out that these traits individually are not unique to Jirachi. Gyarados stands out as a pokemon which can overrun potential checks, such as defensive Rotom or Skarmory, with an untimely flinch from Waterfall. Sure, 20% is less than 60%, but how often is a solid defensive check to Jirachi one flinch away from death? Generally, it will take a significantly unlucky chain, as seen in DeepBlueC's Magnezone replay, for Jirachi to flinch through a solid check. I'm sure we can all think of an instance where Gyarados lucks through an answer and proceeds to do Gyarados things. It's not like this element of chance is unheard of, or outrageous in this game. Gyarados is not a broken pokemon, but such outliers where a pokemon vastly over performs due to a flinch, crit, freeze etc may give that impression if taken in isolation.

As far as defensive threats which can outlast offensive checks go, look no further than Clefable or Gliscor. Reliable recovery, immunity to sand and great resilience to hazards - if the game goes long enough, no offensive pokemon can hope to go the distance with this. But this is obviously not broken, its a reasonable trade off for a lack of immediate offensive presence. This longevity would only be broken on a pokemon with an overwhelming offensive presence.

Enter Jirachi - with the longevity to rival any stall staple, and the offensive presence to blow past its checks with pure RNG. Except not really. First - defensive sets with the combination of Wish and Protect simply lack the offensive power to muscle through sturdy checks. And there really isn't a shortage of those - (with lefties of course) most bulky steels, such as Heatran, Metagross and Empoleon, the electrics Rotom and Zapdos, waters like Suicune and Milotic, even grounds like Hippowdon and Gliscor. Sure it can get through a specially defensive Hippowdon with some luck (and physdef with a lot), but in general bulky resists with leftovers are effective answers, especially if you pack a couple, which isn't hard to do. What about MixRachi, with coverage to limit potential checks like HP Ground for Heatran, Thunderbolt for Skarmory or Grass Knot for Swampert? First, it trades some of that oppressive longevity away, meaning that although it is checked by less, it also has a harder time outlasting those checks. Secondly, it can't run all the coverage it would need to hit everything, and can always be taken advantage of by something. Also, being able to run coverage for its checks isn't really a broken element of Jirachi - its pretty common for a lot of pokemon to bring coverage to limit defensive counterplay, and I don't see anyone clamouring for Hidden Power to be banned. SpDef Heatran can even take on HP Ground Rachi pretty effectively, and with full investment to really pressure Tran, Iron Head becomes significantly easier to take.

Jirachi isn't broken, but if you think banning it would make the tier more fun anyway then that's 100% fair. I'm not saying it makes the tier better by existing, but since it's neither obscenely overpowered, nor inherently uncompetitive (at least compared to the standards of pokemon), I don't really think it should be banned.

Gamer1234556 · Jun 24, 2021

I don't really have a problem with Rachi honestly. What I do have a problem is with Spore Breloom. The problem is that any attempt to counterplay against it (i.e. Rest-Talkers) isn't reliable as they can easily be broken down by Loom's teammates. Some can argue that outspeeding Loom to prevent it from doing anything would be a good strategy, but if anything, I think that merely exacerbates the issue as plenty of other slower yet viable teams would just become Loom food. The fact that people are recently actually trying to forego Spore on Loom kinda strengthens the argument that Loom can still be viable without Spore and that Spore is just plain uncompetitive in the meta. I know this seems really pedantic since BW banned it due to Sleep generally being broken there, but I really don't think Spore adds much to the tier and should be banned entirely.

Excal · Jun 24, 2021

DeepBlueC said:
Alright, here is the first replay:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-1056553765-4mqizakml2wlrnx2oetha69ydmva9hkpw

Here is your scarf Jira flinching a lefties Magnezone from full health to death. The trend about a couple of years or more ago was to use Custap Magnezone or Magnezone with a berry resist. Once people realized that such a Magnezone was not a good enough answer to something like lefties Wish Jira (as it could be flinched to death quite easily), people have started to use lefties on it to improve the odds. Scarf Magnezones also dropped Flash Cannon for Twave as it was a more reliable way of cripping Jirachi - reducing its speed which could then potentially stop its ability from flinching other non-paralyzed mons. I'm sure that there are other benefits to running Twave on Scarf Mag besides Jirachi, but I don't think any other reason for using twave is more rewarding than using it for Jirachi.

Going back to the replay, for more context, yes the Magnezone was of a -def nature. But that amount really doesn't make so much of a difference to me. You're inflicting about 9% damage per turn, and with leftovers recovery deduction, you're basically doing 3% damage per turn. Let's say that the Magnezone wasn't of a -def nature, we're still then talking about a difference of 1%, which to me really shouldn't be making that much of a difference. The Magnezone wasn't even able to pull off a single move as it just kept getting flinched.

This replay is definitely an outlier because majority of the time you will find that lefties Magnezone does prevail in such a matchup, but the point I want to bring forth is that even when you try to prepare against a known Jirachi set, there are odds that it will backfire.

We calculated the chances of this happening in the discord and it came out to be 1.0463794e-11. Yea this replay is ridiculous but it was a very suboptimal magnezone (no bulk and -def) and Jirachi still had to literally win the lottery in order to beat it. If you use a normal mag this is near impossible to occur.

DeepBlueC said:
Second replay:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-1363730751-t18vr7itmxafu9q6mm5yvd9opfesvsxpw

Here is my phys def hippo getting flinched to death by Jirachi. Now there was a turn I was greedy and SR'd instead of slacking off, but I honestly felt confident that a phys def Hippo would be able to hold back a physical Jirachi, however I was wrong.

You fooled around too much & didn't respect jira ingame. If Jirachi has that much attack to do around 20% to phys def hippo then EQ is gonna destroy it so it runs a large risk to stay in and spam ih. In this case your opponent got lucky, the odds of it getting that many flinches on hippo are low and that will not happen very often.

DeepBlueC said:
I don't think you can compare Jirachi's longevity with Clefable's all that easily. Like each of them have their own unique traits that grant it some longevity - Clefable having good bulk, and more importantly magic guard which allows it to now take any hazard / sand / status damage. Jira is susceptible to wisp / paralysis / spikes. Its leftovers recovery offsets the drop due to SR, and it is immune to sand. What gives Jirachi more longevity than Clefable, to me, is its ability to get more free turns compared to Clefable (with protect + potential paralysis turns + iron head flinch), and the ability to be ohko'd by a limited number of moves.

So let me explain, Clefable is a mon that dies to most physical fighting stabs / explosion / or gets damaged enough to the point that even if it survives, it still doesn't really end up winning. For example -> Clefable dies to banded Superpower from TTar / CC from Lucario etc. Even if you can't ohko it with a fighting type move, you can get a kill on it with something like explosion. Let's say that you're still unable to ohko it, you still should prevail in most matchups. For example, Bold Clefable can live a CC from Lefties Infernape, but even if it survives, it's not like Clefable then immediately takes out Infernape that turn. It needs a lot of luck -> twave para activation / crit tbolt or anything other luck. Similarly, Clefable probably lives something like CB Crunch from TTar, but even then it's not like by living such an attack that Clefable proceeds to defeat TTar (unless Counter) as it needs a lot of luck in the form of Twave paralysis to defeat it.

This is different with Jirachi. There are pokemon with moves that can ohko Jirachi -> Fire Blast Heatran / banded EQ from Swamp or Flygon / Infernape with orb etc. Banded Swamp / Flygon aren't that common. Physical Jirachi isn't really beating a lefties tran either, so that's a certain loss. Mixed Ape works well against Jirachi, depending on the Jirachi variant. If you are special attack ev'd and are facing a Careful Jirachi, it can live your Fire Blast, then body slam paralyze you, and flinch you death. The same goes for trying to beat standard physical Jirachi with something like Scarf Flygon. You can put some damage on it with EQ, but with a body slam paralysis, it can protect + iron head flinch its way through such that it goes back to its original health and leave your Flygon dead. The end result being that you probably lost your Flygon for nothing. Jirachi being resistant to explosion makes it harder to kill as well.

Here is an example of a Jirachi defeating my offensive swamp after my Swamp has taken one layer of spikes:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-1356271516-z4g8j0hcpmr21ltbunjezgjwupub5nwpw

The reason I went to Swampert vs a Jirachi despite having an Infernape is because I thought if I could at least land one Earth Power on Jirachi, I could leave it in a range where I could have a guaranteed kill with Infernape by using a fire stab.

You misinterpreted that part of my post, I wasn't trying to compare Jirachi to Clefable, more so I was pointing out that the original post was vague. Yeah Jirachi flinched its way through your frail Swampert. It had a 4% chance to do that unscathed, you got unlucky. And if you landed an Earth Power it would have done a ton cause it's offensive Jirachi. Regardless, the team you're using is weak to jira since you don't really have something resilient naturally enough with leftovers to reliably check it.

DeepBlueC said:
We could honestly draw the line with Jirachi. As you mentioned how Jirachi is a glue that holds the tier together, it's a mon whose impact is considerably different than Mence, Manaphy, and Garchomp, I wouldn't mind making an exception to this mon. I understand how this could create a snowball effect but we can just flatten the slope right after this (only apply this exception to Jira).

Regarding the 60% chance flinch, yes I agree it is a known entity but there aren't many ways that you can fully avoid it as I showed earlier.

It's easy to say "look at Jirachi flinching down my frail Swampert/Magnezone", but calculating the odds of this actually happening is important. There are higher odds for other pokemon that are very difficult to handle defensively, like Gengar, to just crit Shadow Ball and beat the soft check. And like I said before, no we cannot draw the line with Jirachi. It goes directly against smogon tiering. Whether you'd mind making an exception for the mon or not is completely irrelevant. As much as I'd love to bring back the old DPP and ban Draco Meteor on Salamence and whatever else it takes, that's just not feasible at all, and it's not feasible for Jirachi either.

Re Spore: pretty neutral on it atm, I found it annoying in SPL but giving it more time I'm not as bothered by it. It definitely won't be banned at all for the foreseeable future. Let's see what happens in classic and future tours first.

DeepBlueC · Jun 24, 2021

Pideous said:
I would like to point out that these traits individually are not unique to Jirachi. Gyarados stands out as a pokemon which can overrun potential checks, such as defensive Rotom or Skarmory, with an untimely flinch from Waterfall. Sure, 20% is less than 60%, but how often is a solid defensive check to Jirachi one flinch away from death? Generally, it will take a significantly unlucky chain, as seen in DeepBlueC's Magnezone replay, for Jirachi to flinch through a solid check. I'm sure we can all think of an instance where Gyarados lucks through an answer and proceeds to do Gyarados things. It's not like this element of chance is unheard of, or outrageous in this game. Gyarados is not a broken pokemon, but such outliers where a pokemon vastly over performs due to a flinch, crit, freeze etc may give that impression if taken in isolation.

I do agree that Gyara has the ability to beat its defensive checks, like Bold Rotom or Skarm. However there are two main differences.

First difference being that something like Rotom can OHKO Gyara if it fails to land a flinch, whereas if Jirachi fails to land a flinch, it can try again because of its bulk. This is the risk vs reward scenario.

Second difference being that your example is limited to just defensive checks. You can use scarf users with electric coverage that revenge kill Gyara - Tpunch Flyon / Tpunch Jira / Tbolt Lati / Tbolt Rotom, such that the luck factor of a flinch is never introduced. These mons generally ohko gyara (non-wacan variant), whereas none of these same scarfers can ohko Jira. Jira can cripple both its offensive and defensive checks.

Pideous said:
Enter Jirachi - with the longevity to rival any stall staple, and the offensive presence to blow past its checks with pure RNG. Except not really. First - defensive sets with the combination of Wish and Protect simply lack the offensive power to muscle through sturdy checks. And there really isn't a shortage of those - (with lefties of course) most bulky steels, such as Heatran, Metagross and Empoleon, the electrics Rotom and Zapdos, waters like Suicune and Milotic, even grounds like Hippowdon and Gliscor. Sure it can get through a specially defensive Hippowdon with some luck (and physdef with a lot), but in general bulky resists with leftovers are effective answers, especially if you pack a couple, which isn't hard to do.

So I disagree with the statement "Wish Protect Jirachi lacks the offensive power to muscle through sturdy checks" because Jirachi isn't doing it alone. Sand helps Jirachi an extra 6% in that regard which helps Jirachi take down sturdier checks much easier. I also don't want to turn this into an argument of the issues of sand, but we can't ignore its impact on assisting Jira with being a menace.

Also, we're not just talking about the wish protect set. We're also talking about the physical set with Fire Punch and which has its 4th move as Substitute or Protect. Heatran with leftovers is literally the best answer to the physical set, and it does require leftovers in order to defeat Jirachi because there are plenty of examples where non-leftovers Heatran loses to Jira:
https://i.imgur.com/e2NgK8t.png
https://i.imgur.com/e8owpnR.png

You can see ABR's well trained Wish Protect Jirachi taking down my Heatran. Another example that immediately comes to mind is an SPL replay of hyoga's non lefties Heatran dying to ToF's Jira. Here is the replay:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-471765

Metagross with lefties is a good answer to the wish protect set, but it isn't that of a reliable answer to Fire Punch Jira because those burns stop Metagross:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-1359411967-exew4nqy9vdza6g4ambd9cei5lva59upw

Here is a lefties Meta being forced out by an Iron Ball Wish Protect Jirachi:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-1090971327

Bold Rotom isn't that great of a check either because Jirachi can flinch it down too. I was one turn away from being flinched to death by Jira:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-472338

Sub Jira beating CroCune:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-856072629

Swampert isn't a great answer to Fire Punch Jira if it takes a burn:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-500338

I don't have any replays for the other examples you provided because I either didn't save them or haven't seen them happen. I also don't want it to sound like me just linking replays with extreme odds of showing Jira beating what it should have low odds to beat.

The purpose of the replays is to show that outside of lefties Heatran, everything is capable of being a shaky answer. Bulky water types like Swampert lose if they incur a Fire Punch burn, Suicune can lose if it takes a fire punch burn or if sand is up. It's hard for me to be confident against facing Jira while knowing that it is more than capable of beating such low odds.

Regarding the last bolded part, to me that just sounds incredibly restrictive.

Pideous said:
What about MixRachi, with coverage to limit potential checks like HP Ground for Heatran, Thunderbolt for Skarmory or Grass Knot for Swampert? First, it trades some of that oppressive longevity away, meaning that although it is checked by less, it also has a harder time outlasting those checks. Secondly, it can't run all the coverage it would need to hit everything, and can always be taken advantage of by something. Also, being able to run coverage for its checks isn't really a broken element of Jirachi - its pretty common for a lot of pokemon to bring coverage to limit defensive counterplay, and I don't see anyone clamouring for Hidden Power to be banned. SpDef Heatran can even take on HP Ground Rachi pretty effectively, and with full investment to really pressure Tran, Iron Head becomes significantly easier to take.

Jirachi isn't broken, but if you think banning it would make the tier more fun anyway then that's 100% fair. I'm not saying it makes the tier better by existing, but since it's neither obscenely overpowered, nor inherently uncompetitive (at least compared to the standards of pokemon), I don't really think it should be banned.

I don't have any issues with mixed Jirachi.

DeepBlueC · Jun 24, 2021

Excal said:
We calculated the chances of this happening in the discord and it came out to be 1.0463794e-11. Yea this replay is ridiculous but it was a very suboptimal magnezone (no bulk and -def) and Jirachi still had to literally win the lottery in order to beat it. If you use a normal mag this is near impossible to occur.

I get what you're saying (and you're right that a HP invested Mag with non-def nature would probably win), but to me it just sounds so stupid how a mon with lefties and with good natural bulk still loses to a pokemon that uses a 4x resisted move.

Excal said:
You fooled around too much & didn't respect jira ingame. If Jirachi has that much attack to do around 20% to phys def hippo then EQ is gonna destroy it so it runs a large risk to stay in and spam ih. In this case your opponent got lucky, the odds of it getting that many flinches on hippo are low and that will not happen very often.

What do you mean by fooling around the Jira? I can hardly move when it flinches me. Even if I EQ'd the Jira there and did quite a bit of damage, it's going to gain that health back by getting free flinches. And if Jira does have low odds of beating a phys def Hippo, then I shouldn't have to be punished for "fooling around" it.

Excal said:
You misinterpreted that part of my post, I wasn't trying to compare Jirachi to Clefable, more so I was pointing out that the original post was vague. Yeah Jirachi flinched its way through your frail Swampert. It had a 4% chance to do that unscathed, you got unlucky. And if you landed an Earth Power it would have done a ton cause it's offensive Jirachi. Regardless, the team you're using is weak to jira since you don't really have something resilient naturally enough with leftovers to reliably check it.

Explain how my team could be stronger against Jira. Like what other mon (other than lefties Heatran) could I have used that would be able to reliably beat it? My Swamp may be bulk-less but it's still resisting Jira's move and has leftovers, and it's just getting flinched to death.

Excal said:
It's easy to say "look at Jirachi flinching down my frail Swampert/Magnezone", but calculating the odds of this actually happening is important. There are higher odds for other pokemon that are very difficult to handle defensively, like Gengar, to just crit Shadow Ball and beat the soft check. And like I said before, no we cannot draw the line with Jirachi. It goes directly against smogon tiering. Whether you'd mind making an exception for the mon or not is completely irrelevant. As much as I'd love to bring back the old DPP and ban Draco Meteor on Salamence and whatever else it takes, that's just not feasible at all, and it's not feasible for Jirachi either.

Re Spore: pretty neutral on it atm, I found it annoying in SPL but giving it more time I'm not as bothered by it. It definitely won't be banned at all for the foreseeable future. Let's see what happens in classic and future tours first.

I mean if we're always talking about Jirachi's odds to flinch something, it can always be phrased in a matter that seems so low or unlikely to happen, yet it happens more often than not. I'm sure that from an odds perspective, we can also calculate the likelihood of Sand Veil causing a move to miss over a period of turns and make it sound like Sand Veil isn't that harmful, when it actually is.

I get why banning a move on Jira would violate smogon tiering, but to me it felt like a more desirable alternative to just banning Jirachi without having to completely turn upside down the current metagame.

NeoSeth · Jun 24, 2021

I will start trying to preserve replays in order to demonstrate my Jirachi point. I have had bulky lefties Mags get stalled out before by flinchrachi. With wish, bulk investment and lefties I have been ground down by paraflinch even using bulky magnezone. I do not consider Mag a great Jirachi check by any means when you run the risk of getting Fire Punch'd, but even after scouting all of Rachi's moves the fact that you can still be ground down is pretty nuts.

And it isn't just on the losing end; recently I was in a bad spot against Infernape. My opponent hid their Ape all game until they wore out my checks, and suddenly BAM infernape comes out. If it sets up I lose. So I sack a mon to it and bring out my weakened ScarfRachi. Now I don't remember the full details of the scenario, but I remember after sacking the mon I was basically lost... except I had Jirachi. I couldn't bring in Jirachi on a CC or FB or I would instantly lose, but by bringing in ScarfRachi for free I had a chance. And I proceeded to flinch my way through every single one of my opponent's Pokémon. I flinched Infernape to death, flinched through all his remaining Pokémon and took an undeserved win.

Jirachi reminds me very much of when I used to use bad Hail teams. Sometimes you're losing but you can bring in Froslass and start rolling the dice. You mention how low the odds are of Jirachi actually getting a great many flinches in a row, but with the ubiquity of Jirachi in the metagame the odds of a player being on the receiving end of such game in a given session are much higher.

I am sympathetic to the arguments against testing Jirachi; I wish we could have tested Jirachi before Latias returned. But I don't think my concerns have really been addressed by these counterpoints. Jirachi's ability to force you to play around it until you determine the set is monstrous, and then to have the ability to break through you anyway with a few flinches puts it over the edge.

In the court of public opinion it seems that Jirachi will remain with us for some time longer regardless. I will start saving replays and hope to compile more evidence.

Pideous · Jun 24, 2021

DeepBlueC said:
First difference being that something like Rotom can OHKO Gyara if it fails to land a flinch, whereas if Jirachi fails to land a flinch, it can try again because of its bulk. This is the risk vs reward scenario.

Second difference being that your example is limited to just defensive checks. You can use scarf users with electric coverage that revenge kill Gyara - Tpunch Flyon / Tpunch Jira / Tbolt Lati / Tbolt Rotom, such that the luck factor of a flinch is never introduced. These mons generally ohko gyara (non-wacan variant), whereas none of these same scarfers can ohko Jira. Jira can cripple both its offensive and defensive checks.

I didn't mean to focus too much on Gyarados, something like Agiligross getting a MMash boost works too, in which case your options to revenge kill it reliably would be more limited. It's a good point that luck doesn't influence offensive counterplay to Gyarados, that is a pretty significant distinction to make. As far as risk reward goes though, I'd say Jirachi takes a pretty significant risk. If it gets burned (by far the most likely outcome if it attempts to flinch Rotom from full, even in sand), then it is effectively nullified as far as offensive presence and longevity go.

I should have said WishTect Rachi lacks the power to reliably muscle through checks, but I do think the point stands. Sand isn't affecting the steels available to sponge Iron Head, and even something like Rotom isn't going down quickly (or getting paralyzed) giving it plenty of chances to ruin Jirachi with Wisp.

Regarding Fire Punch burns - yeah it sucks when a Jirachi answer is ruined by that 20% burn, no denying that. However, I don't think Jirachi often finds itself able to freely fish for burns without consequence, which means it isn't clicking Fire Punch a ton during a game, so the chance of a burn isn't super high. This is still the part of Jirachi I like the least though, the options to play around it are much more limited (basically just to Heatran, maybe you count Rest Rotom and Suicune and Refresh stuff too, but the window for breaking through flinch shrinks a lot with burn) and it feels really bad when it happens. It's in the weird middle ground between a Lava Plume burn, where you have to expect it and prepare as such, and an Ice Beam freeze where you sort of just throw your hands up and hope for the best. At least Jirachi's checks tend to be paralysed lol.

DeepBlueC said:
Regarding the last bolded part, to me that just sounds incredibly restrictive.

Metagross, Empoleon, Heatran, Skarmory, Magnezone, Rotom, Zapdos, Suicune, Swampert, Milotic, Hippowdon, Gliscor. I probably missed some, but fitting a couple of these on a team for security against WishTect Rachi doesn't seem that restrictive to me. Yeah, something like Magnezone isn't too good against Fire Punch variants, and a couple don't resist IH, but that still looks like a pretty healthy pool of viable options to me.

eden · Jun 28, 2021

while i do think jirachi gets naturally checked much better nowadays without dug in the tier, wish tect jirachi most definitely has enough power to muscle through checks:

quite reliably actually: teams like gyara/loom/tran/jira/rotom/tar kind of bulky offenses:

on paper you have the heatran/your own jira/cb gyara etc, in practice: if the tran gets paralyzed on the way in: your best tool v slam wish jira is all of a sudden magma storm through para, cause cb gyara isn't really breaking past it without a flinch most of the time, and the only way your own jirachi gets past it is with a fire punch burn(if you do manage to para their jirachi with thunder or something, then of course it gets much easier to handle), this is like a classic bulky offensive team, even though I'll say I think to be resilient to jirachi you need much more than a resist berry tran realistically and needing overlapping checks/counter, is something a lot of the top tier mons share(that being said I don't really like these sort of teams much for this exact reason)

you have stuff like dd gyara on more offensive teams being made to run lum(sacrificing items like wacan which let you trade gyara's hp for scarf lati/scarf gon etc, which is massive) a lot - just cause you don't want your sweep to be ruined by defensive jirachi(i guess it also lets you dd vs loom without too much concern) - which I guess is why stuff like sd emp is really popular on those more offensive teams to have a slot that's both potent offensively/is somewhat good v that kind of jira(although with bad luck even that can be gotten past)

slam wish tect jira has enough power to reliably do a shift vs reasonably ok bulky off teams, and pretty standardish offensive teams, that particular set is definitely pretty constricting, I still think loom spore's worse, but that set is definitely restricting for frailer teams

also about stalk rotom: takes sand/pretty easy to wear down/frequently gets used to burn clef pp so it's not too surprising to see it trying to fend off jira without lefties, it also ends up kind of just flailing in rest cycles a lot -i guess its worth mentioning that even though this jira frequently comes with mag, the sort of teams with stalk rotom/skarm will often be filled out in such a way that it shouldn't do too much work on its own: rotom/skarm/milo/glisc/clef/scarf tar sorta builds come to mind

lot of the mons you come with a lot of caveats too: offensive glisc doesn't hold off that jira rly post para/hippo exclusively stall mon/skarm out of ho teams mostly just on bulkier teams/tran without lefties isn't too reliable/zapdos needs to be defensive to reliably hold off/zone can be accounted for: skarm/mag/jira sorta teams+u-turn on these defensive sets is also occasionally a thing/defensive tect emp for bulkier teams is a rock solid counter,sd patches up issues vs it on off(but as alluded to earlier: it can be gotten past/this jira can come with stuff like zone milo etc that'll help a ton even here/offensive cune obviously is not helping too much vs this/metagross is extremely solid etc

This is a fairly varied pool of mons on the surface but to be rly good v this jira set you 're either running defensive variants of the mons outlined which will help your bulky offense be more resilient v jira overall, but will in exchange provide you less overall offensive utility or you're running stall: it's definitely constricting - even though I think good teams generally have enough overlapping checks to where it shouldn't single handedly flinch past everything

coco · Jun 29, 2021

Sup guys!

A really Interesting thread to discuss about the DPP meta I missed coz of not being very active, sorry. I really love how the DPP community grows up; the way how this tier became cool thanks to mutiple changes in the recent months. After the dug-ban we finally established a perfect balance in the tier. It became fun and the team building process very much improved.

We all know how frustrating DPP was with the Dugtrio era. Heatran, which I always thought plays a vital role in the tier in terms of balance, was severely hurt by Dugtrio. This forced the community to have limits in terms of team building.
I think talking about the current status of the tier (which I consider good) comes later - most of you told about it wisely with really nice posts, but I would like to argue about Jirachi. Jirachi with Heatran and TTar, plays an important role in the tier. We all know how Jirachi is good (doesn't need explanation) but it's necessary to talk about Serene Grace.

I did not save replays where I can show how frustrating it is losing to being flinched to death, but we all know the feeling.
What do I want to mean? I want to say, I’d consider great to suspect the Jirachi ability, and not removing Jirachi altogether from the tier. Removing jirachi would mean losing someone who balances the tier, give a great answer to common threats and lots of positive aspects we know. Jirachi does not deserve to get banned, because it has multiple check, but we can try limit something we “can’t control”

So my proposal is:
Can we just try to remove the combination of iron head and serene grace?

Blox · Jun 29, 2021

hellpowna said:
So my proposal is:
Can we just try to remove the combination of iron head and serene grace?

I feel like taking away Jirachi's (arguably) best move is not the right way to handle the situation. Personally, I believe Jirachi is a healthy presence for the tier, but I do understand where your anger comes from as every DPP has lost at least one game to Jirachi para flinching 10 turns in a row. However, this complex ban would not entirley stop the annoyance of Jirachi. Jirachi still has 30% flinch moves besides iron head and plethora of ones with 10%. There is still the possibility you can lose to flinches with your proposal, but it does become slightly less viable to do so.

In my opinion, I think there is should be no complex ban on the Jirachi situation, it should only be banned entirely or allowed as is. As I stated earlier, I think Jirachi should stay in tier. There already have been several posts made reflecting my opinion (specifically Excal had a fantsatic post in my opinion), so I won't repeat anything, but I do believe Jirachi is a necessary evil to hold this tier together. If I were to label anything as "broken" I would agree with several other users and say spore Breloom is an issue. Since in DPP there is no Spore immunity (to my knowledge) you are essentially forced to pacify a Pokemon for an unknown number of turns while also allowing loom to SD/Sub. Sleep talk is an option on some Pokemon, but sleep talk in itself is an unreliable move and I think in 8/10 matches is useless.

TLDR
Keep Rachi as is and POSSIBLY look into sleep
Thanks for reading and sorry if that came off as rude hellpowna

SFG · Jun 29, 2021

An Iron Head suspect Test is smthing we talked about with some of the French goons, especially Vay , BIHI , Sakito, Altthiel and Emeral. Here's my opinion, strongly influenced by the debates we had.

I'm not really good at writing long theoretical texts,this post is more like an introduction to BIHI's future post since we have really similar opinions.

edit: since BKC gave me some answers on discord, I added them to the post. Ty friend!

Iron Head Jirachi, or every DPP player's worst nightmare

First of all, I would like to make clear that we're not adressing here a Jirachi ban. Jirachi is the keystone of the current DPP, and banning it would only turn the tier into a chaos that none of us wants to play. Moreover, I just don't think Jirachi deserve to be banned. The problem doesn't come from Jirachi itself,but from the combination of serene grace and Iron Head's 30% flinch chance , which makes it a monster who can win almost any of his 1v1s provided he is lucky enough. So, should we ban Iron Head (or Jirachi+IH)?

Pro-arguments:

Banning Iron Head would make the tier more competitive:

Probably the most important and obvious argument: without Iron Head, we will no longer see these normally lost games which are totally returned because the Jirachi player has been lucky (or at least we'll see a lot less). As hellpowna said, we all know how frustrating it is losing to being flinched to death. In addition to allowing it to pass certain checks, IH also allows Jirachi to recover HP much more consistently than what leftovers alone should provide. Even without talking about the games Jirachi steals, IH adds a huge luck factor to the tier, and I think it's easy to understand how this ability could seem unfair and unhealthy for our tier.

Iron Head Jirachi is a huge restriction in the Teambuilding process:

As explained before, Jirachi is able to pass some of its "checks" if you're lucky enough, which is a huge restriction during the Teambuilding process: don't I risk getting flinch in series and losing on it? If some ppl think that it's ok and player must adapt. However, if you don't play some specific mons, it's really hard to be safe vs IH Jirachi

Jirachi is the only common Iron Head user in OU:

Even if some ppl will say that IH is a good option on Scarf Scizor (I disagree ngl, but ok), we have to admit that Jirachi is the only common IH user in the OU metagame. However, "in the OU metagame" is the problematic part, but I'll talk about it in the "Con-arguments" part.

Con-Arguments:

Jirachi is the only common Iron Head user... in OU:

I'm not a low-tier player, but it looks like Iron Head is used by several Pokemon like Aron(LC), Registeel(UU) or Mawile(NU). This is already an huge argument agains't a potential Iron Head Ban

BKC's response:

even if you banned iron head in ou,it wouldn't be automatically banned in the lower tiers

same reason why dugtrio is banned in ou and legal in uu

The opening of Pandora's box:

If we ban Iron Head+Jirachi, why couldn't we unban Latios without DM? Or Manaphy without Tail Glow, Shaymin-Sky without Air Slash, etc etc... I think banning a Pokemon + move combination is something we shouldn't do, otherwise we end up with super complex ban

Moreover, if we ban Iron Head, shouldn't we ban Air Slash, Waterfall, Zen hedbut, and all the "luck" moves to be fair?

BKC's response:
1) just straight ahead iron head ban > iron head jirachi ban 2) iron head ban =/= air slash ban until there is a pokemon that completely dominates ou through the use of air slash (same reason why sand veil is 100% banned and snow cloak is not)

Psychological effect:

This one is tricky, and I may be all wrong. In psychology, the negativity bias says that: " something very positive will generally have less of an impact on a person's behavior and cognition than something equally emotional but negative. The negativity bias has been investigated within many different domains, including the formation of impressions and general evaluations; attention, learning, and memory; and decision-making and risk considerations. " (Wikipedia). I feel like it's not stupid to apply it to our case: we remember "too well" the games we lost on a Jirachi bullshit, which distorts our perception. I don't have the motivation to do some stats rn, but the number of games Jirachi "steals" is probably much smaller than you think.

Conclusion:

Finally, I think I understand both points of view. From a policy point of view, it looks rly hard to do anything. But from a player point of view, I really would like to see what a meta without Iron Head would be. Ban Iron Head only in OU (as we were able to do with arena trap) looks like a possible solution too. Maybe we could try to make a tournament to test this meta !

.

Excal · Jun 29, 2021

Even though banning Iron Head is not on the table, I still want to humor the discussion as if it is and explain why I'd be against it regardless.

DeepBlueC said:
Explain how my team could be stronger against Jira. Like what other mon (other than lefties Heatran) could I have used that would be able to reliably beat it? My Swamp may be bulk-less but it's still resisting Jira's move and has leftovers, and it's just getting flinched to death.

We talked about this already on discord, but without going into way too much detail, considering it's a completely bulkless Swampert that can't ohko Jirachi with one of its attacks, Jirachi has low, but higher than needed odds to win the 1v1. On that team Swampert should have bulk to handle the likes of Dragon Dance Tyranitar, switching into most Tyranitar/Metagross variants (your own zong is not enough, AgiliGross is quite popular rn), and having a longer lasting soft check to Heatran/Gengar/Offensive Rotom/Zapdos/Offensive Suicune etc. I don't see much of a point to run 219 Swampert right now especially since Breloom hits 220, but the takeaway here is that you're not just increasing Swampert's bulk for Jirachi. It accounts for several other threatening pkmn at not really much of a cost.

SFG said:
Iron Head Jirachi is a huge restriction in the Teambuilding process:

As explained before, Jirachi is able to pass some of its "checks" if you're lucky enough, which is a huge restriction during the Teambuilding process: don't I risk getting flinch in series and losing on it? If some ppl think that it's ok and player must adapt. However, if you don't play some specific mons, it's really hard to be safe vs IH Jirachi

I disagree, and I don't really see how this explains how it's restrictive in the teambuilding process. Steel is a terrible typing offensively, resisted by several great Pokemon in the tier that you don't need to bend your back over. I've heard a point that "you must run Leftovers to deal with Iron Head Jirachi", which isn't necessarily 100% false, but it's not painting the whole picture. Leftovers is the best item in the metagame and you are running it for more than just Jirachi. Yes it can be nice to use resist berry/non-leftovers items on Pokemon, but I think that this tier provides you enough flexibility to use those when desired regardless of Jirachi. It's just not necessary on that many teams and is usually worse than Leftovers in most cases.

In addition, I think with Jirachi it's the opposite. Rather than Jirachi restricting the teambuilding process, it's usually Jirachi that helps you patch up several weaknesses with its great defensive attributes. Yeah, it's the best pkmn in the metagame, it has a tremendous influence in the builder, but I don't think it causes issues addressing threats in the teambuilder. Some Pokemon I find just as restricting/more restricting include but are not limited to Heatran, Latias (specs & defensive), Clefable, and Breloom. I think Knock Off and Spore are much larger nuisances to deal with in the teambuilder than Iron Head will ever be.

---

I really wonder how often losses occur to a Jirachi spiraling out of control with a player having literally nothing they could have done better in the game or in the teambuilder. I think looking at things more closely, more often than not replays where a Jirachi cleans a team up are not due to some unfair & uncontrollable advantage.

DeepBlueC said:
Another example that immediately comes to mind is an SPL replay of hyoga's non lefties Heatran dying to ToF's Jira. Here is the replay:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-471765

Yea the odds of this happening are super low, but he was using an inferior Heatran here. Passho Berry Magma Storm Tran is just a much worse choice than Leftovers on this team, and it's not just because of Jirachi. I think using an inaccurate fire move with no lefties on Heatran these days is a death wish unless you support it properly (this is an old replay before Jirachi defense was optimized, and this Heatran did not have support).

DeepBlueC said:
Here is a lefties Meta being forced out by an Iron Ball Wish Protect Jirachi:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-1090971327

Not really? It didn't need to switch out at all. Yeah it was taking chip damage but the odds would eventually let Sakito regain momentum and probably even get some health back. I don't think he needed to switch out there and I don't think this replay really shows much of anything.

DeepBlueC said:
Bold Rotom isn't that great of a check either because Jirachi can flinch it down too. I was one turn away from being flinched to death by Jira:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-472338

Yeah it's not. And you sent it in at 61% after rocks damage in sand and you got the rest off. Even then Jirachi was unfavored to win that exchange and it didn't. But also this is an older team that might be considered a bit weak to Jirachi (and some other stuff) these days, which is why it's not used anymore.

DeepBlueC said:
The purpose of the replays is to show that outside of lefties Heatran, everything is capable of being a shaky answer. Bulky water types like Swampert lose if they incur a Fire Punch burn, Suicune can lose if it takes a fire punch burn or if sand is up. It's hard for me to be confident against facing Jira while knowing that it is more than capable of beating such low odds.

I don't disagree entirely, but I think this exaggerates at least to a small extent when it claims that Jirachi has pretty much entirely shaky answers. Another example of a very good answer that people gloss over is phys def Clefable (twave/knock/protect, even bold cm is favored vs jiras w not that much atk investment and some more SpD clefs w tect can be quite decent in the jira mu). Every Jirachi set has to make significant concessions against something, even if its versatility enables it to fulfill a tremendous number of roles. I think that in this way Jirachi can emphasize a lot of skill, as someone very knowledgeable of the metagame can more accurately identify which type of Jirachi they are facing and how to best answer it ingame & also to choose the best-suited Jirachi set in your builder to make your team function. Teambuilding in DPP is very difficult and always has been (it would be even more so without Jirachi), so I find that in this way Jirachi can be very rewarding to people who are dedicated to the tier.

---

Something no one has really gone into yet in a bit more detail: what would some of the negative effects of Iron Head being banned in Jirachi actually look like? For one, Jirachi loses a weapon against other tremendously influential pkmn like Tyranitar and Clefable, you lose a tool to keep busted dd sweepers like Gyarados and Tyranitar in check (seriously DDtar is fucking insane LOL), and you may have a much more difficult time dealing with Gliscor, Flygon, defensive Latias, and ofc a more difficult time dealing with a lot of other stuff. I think in these ways it may not be a fully positive change if it were to happen. Yea there would be pros to it, but I think it'd be worth it to step back and consider how it might make things more difficult. Imo even if you have a bit more freedom ingame (not really that significant to me cause you're always dealing with crucial luck-based scenarios in this metagame where there's no team preview and an insanely high power creep relatively), your teambuilder will be much more heavily restricted even with this change. Basically without Iron Head, Tyranitar, Latias, and Clefable in particular become way stronger than they already are.

Beyond these effects, once again there's a lot to consider. Even what would seem like a small ban in Iron Head would have a tremendous effect on the metagame, far more severe than reintroducing Latias, banning Dugtrio, etc which once again sought to preserve DPP's identity as closely as possible. This is an old generation; tiering decisions should have as minimized of an impact as possible and should only occur if absolutely necessary. We got rid of Dugtrio and made it way easier to deal with Jirachi. The new metagame is still fresh, unsettled, and has quite positive reception, indicated by significant community growth and approval. Even though it's been made clear that an IH ban is completely off the table, outside of the policy restrictions, this would be a very bad time to hold an Iron Head suspect and if it were being seriously discussed I would be very much against it.

One of the things I love the most about DPP is that in the teambuilder, literally any idea you have no matter how bizarre is possible to make work if you keep at it. The metagame is still very much unexplored, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how it evolves during classic!

DeepBlueC · Jun 30, 2021

Excal said:
We talked about this already on discord, but without going into way too much detail, considering it's a completely bulkless Swampert that can't ohko Jirachi with one of its attacks, Jirachi has low, but higher than needed odds to win the 1v1. On that team Swampert should have bulk to handle the likes of Dragon Dance Tyranitar, switching into most Tyranitar/Metagross variants (your own zong is not enough, AgiliGross is quite popular rn), and having a longer lasting soft check to Heatran/Gengar/Offensive Rotom/Zapdos/Offensive Suicune etc. I don't see much of a point to run 219 Swampert right now especially since Breloom hits 220, but the takeaway here is that you're not just increasing Swampert's bulk for Jirachi. It accounts for several other threatening pkmn at not really much of a cost.

The point of the Swamp isn't to OHKO Jirachi. The point of the Swamp is to put enough damage on Jirachi that it can be revenge killed. I mentioned earlier how stupidly bulky jirachi was that unless you're choiced, the odds of ohko'ing it are very hard. Now you're focusing the discussion on the merits of running bulky lefties Swampert and using that to justify that Jirachi is fine because bulky Swampert can handle it. My team doesn't need a switch-in to DD TTar / Metagross since I very rarely give it opportunities to come in outside of Scarf Latias (just one mon). And even then, I have a Swampert (capable of living a hit from either) / Trick Latias / TR Zong which is more than enough. If you want me to justify the perks of running speedy Swamp, I would be glad to do that. Being able to speed tie SD Empo is surely better than risking odds of flinching or losing to it straight up if my bulky Swamp is already damaged. Running speedy Swamp means that I can put more pressure on something like Milotic as the team would benefit greatly from removing bulky water types. Running speedy Swamp also gives me more confidence in revenge-killing a bulky attacker like Metagross (where I can earth power kill it before it explodes) or another bulky attacker like Machamp.

Moving onto bulky Swampert, it isn't handling Jirachi if it gets Fire Punch burnt, or it isn't guaranteed to beat Jirachi either because it is still very much mathematically possible for Jirachi to beat Swampert. If 219 speed Breloom users start to notice that everyone starts to use bulky swamperts, then they are probably going to drop their speed as well and invest it in other stats, which then makes Breloom harder to deal with.

For some reason you don't find this calc to be problematic at all:
252 Atk Jirachi Iron Head vs. 56 HP / 0 Def Swampert: 60-71 (16.9 - 20%) -- possible 6HKO after 1 layer of Spikes and Leftovers recovery

Excal said:
Yea the odds of this happening are super low, but he was using an inferior Heatran here. Passho Berry Magma Storm Tran is just a much worse choice than Leftovers on this team, and it's not just because of Jirachi. I think using an inaccurate fire move with no lefties on Heatran these days is a death wish unless you support it properly (this is an old replay before Jirachi defense was optimized, and this Heatran did not have support).

Okay, so this is something that I want to touch on a lot more. Every time someone links a replay of getting flinched to death by Jirachi, the common response is that "You're just unlucky" or "Those are very low odds." You know what else has super low odds and doesn't occur so often? Something like maybe 4-5 crits in a row. None of these things happen as common as Jirachi's ability to flinch. So something has to be wrong here.

Now let's analyze what could be wrong. I may be wrong about this, and if I'm wrong you guys can take away my Asian card, but isn't every turn of Jirachi flinching something an independent event? In other words, Jirachi's first turn of using Iron Head has 60% chance to flinch, second turn has 60% chance to flinch, third turn has 60% chance to flinch, and so on. So if you look at Jirachi's odds of flinching through the lens of it being an independent event, it really is an issue because Jirachi's ability to flinch something in nth turn is the same as it was in the first turn. The move doesn't function as protect where the odds off landing it actually decrease per turn -> 100% to 50% and so on.

Passho Tran is perfectly fine on the team. You may think running something like Roserade / Latias is enough as water resists for a rain team but it really isn't. Passho Tran is also one of the few "water resists" that is capable of ohko'ing a member on a rain team (Earth Power for Qwil / Explosion for Ludicolo), or something like a speedy offensive cune. You don't need lefties that badly outside of getting flinched by Jirachi. I get how using Magma Storm accuracy is a problem, but it has its benefits of trapping a target and ensuring it doesn't escape. For example, if you Magma Storm into a Clefable, you can then explode into it rather than still having to be forced to predict whether the Clefable will switch into an Explosion resist. What I'm trying to show you is that you label certain sets / spreads to be bad, when they aren't. They are not the best when it comes to handling Jirachi, but when you try to build, you try to keep into account everything, and when it comes to accounting for everything, then these are good.

Excal said:
Not really? It didn't need to switch out at all. Yeah it was taking chip damage but the odds would eventually let Sakito regain momentum and probably even get some health back. I don't think he needed to switch out there and I don't think this replay really shows much of anything.

You can ignore the replay as Sakito let me know later that his Metagross lacked EQ.

Excal said:
Yeah it's not. And you sent it in at 61% after rocks damage in sand and you got the rest off. Even then Jirachi was unfavored to win that exchange and it didn't. But also this is an older team that might be considered a bit weak to Jirachi (and some other stuff) these days, which is why it's not used anymore.

Don't you see how risky it was for me? Do I have to always pray that the dice will roll in my favor everytime I face a Jirachi? Just because it is an older team doesn't mean that it shouldn't be considered weak to Jirachi. Jirachi isn't a new threat; it's been around for a long time and it's a threat that this team took into account when being built.

Excal said:
I don't disagree entirely, but I think this exaggerates at least to a small extent when it claims that Jirachi has pretty much entirely shaky answers. Another example of a very good answer that people gloss over is phys def Clefable (twave/knock/protect, even bold cm is favored vs jiras w not that much atk investment and some more SpD clefs w tect can be quite decent in the jira mu). Every Jirachi set has to make significant concessions against something, even if its versatility enables it to fulfill a tremendous number of roles. I think that in this way Jirachi can emphasize a lot of skill, as someone very knowledgeable of the metagame can more accurately identify which type of Jirachi they are facing and how to best answer it ingame & also to choose the best-suited Jirachi set in your builder to make your team function. Teambuilding in DPP is very difficult and always has been (it would be even more so without Jirachi), so I find that in this way Jirachi can be very rewarding to people who are dedicated to the tier.

It's not an exaggeration. You really think your Swamperts / Milos / Suicunes / Skarmories are generally safe when they switch into a Fire Punch from Jirachi? It's super risky. On top of avoiding burn, they have to then avoid the flinches that come their way. Clefable can be nice yes because the only thing that affects it is flinch, and not outside factors like sand / burn / paralysis.

Jirachi isn't making a significant concession with running Iron Head / Fire Punch / Body Slam. That set has the ability to hax through most of the metagame bar lefties Heatran, so it is probably its best set. That isn't a signifcant concessin to me. And Jirachi can then pair itself with Knock Off Seismic Clefable that just walls lefties Lava Plume Tran. The only way your Tran is beating Clefable is if it explodes on it, but then you lack a proper Jira answer.

The rest of your post just contains boilerplate language. Identifying what kind of Jirachi you face ingame doesn't mean much when you're incapable of answering it as it flinches you to death. Yes teambuilding has been difficult in DPP, but we also used that as a reasoning to ban Dugtrio. You have no evidence on what teambuilding would be like in DPP if Jirachi is gone because there has never been a time where that has happened.

Excal said:
Something no one has really gone into yet in a bit more detail: what would some of the negative effects of Iron Head being banned in Jirachi actually look like? For one, Jirachi loses a weapon against other tremendously influential pkmn like Tyranitar and Clefable, you lose a tool to keep busted dd sweepers like Gyarados and Tyranitar in check (seriously DDtar is fucking insane LOL), and you may have a much more difficult time dealing with Gliscor, Flygon, defensive Latias, and ofc a more difficult time dealing with a lot of other stuff. I think in these ways it may not be a fully positive change if it were to happen. Yea there would be pros to it, but I think it'd be worth it to step back and consider how it might make things more difficult. Imo even if you have a bit more freedom ingame (not really that significant to me cause you're always dealing with crucial luck-based scenarios in this metagame where there's no team preview and an insanely high power creep relatively), your teambuilder will be much more heavily restricted even with this change. Basically without Iron Head, Tyranitar, Latias, and Clefable in particular become way stronger than they already are.

Beyond these effects, once again there's a lot to consider. Even what would seem like a small ban in Iron Head would have a tremendous effect on the metagame, far more severe than reintroducing Latias, banning Dugtrio, etc which once again sought to preserve DPP's identity as closely as possible. This is an old generation; tiering decisions should have as minimized of an impact as possible and should only occur if absolutely necessary. We got rid of Dugtrio and made it way easier to deal with Jirachi. The new metagame is still fresh, unsettled, and has quite positive reception, indicated by significant community growth and approval. Even though it's been made clear that an IH ban is completely off the table, outside of the policy restrictions, this would be a very bad time to hold an Iron Head suspect and if it were being seriously discussed I would be very much against it.

One of the things I love the most about DPP is that in the teambuilder, literally any idea you have no matter how bizarre is possible to make work if you keep at it. The metagame is still very much unexplored, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how it evolves during classic!

Dude let's not act like without Jirachi we'd be incapable of dealing with pokemon like TTar or Clefable. Breloom / Lucario are some easy names that can handle them. Jirachi can handle stuff like TTar or Gyara with Twave / Drain Punch / Thunder Punch etc. It has options besides just flinching with Iron Head; it's just that Iron Head makes it easier as you have one move to beat all 3, rather than having individual moves for each. An Iron Head Jirachi can run through Ttar / Gliscor / Lati easily, but if you remove Iron Head, then Jirachi is still capable of doing it but it will need more specific moves to do so. That isn't bad. You're just so used to the luxury of having a pokemon like Jirachi have a 60% chance of flinching something that anything less scares you.

You can't tell me that we should hold back on making changes on old gens when old gens are actively being played and as a result also changing. We got rid of Dugtrio for more reasons than just Jirachi, like CM Clefable or CM Cress cheese. No one is denying that this metagame is better, but it can certainly be better with more changes.

The SPrinkLer · Jun 30, 2021

Hello. I've been kinda torn over these discussions the past few days or so, and I thought I'd sum up some thoughts about Jirachi and sleep. Let's start with Breloom. I think sleep can be a little broken sometimes. When you're using a team with let's say, jirachi and zapdos or jirachi and lati, those are likely your two best ways to switch in after taking sleep with the other if you have no sleep absorber. If you take sleep with zapdos or lati, you're very pressed to continue switching in on superpowers w rachi unless you have wishtect or unless you can keep pressure off doubling into it. If you take the sleep w rachi, you're very likely to be much weaker to tar, and lose a very key member as well. It's very risky to take sleep so early without knowing exactly which will be better to keep around throughout the game. And since you have 1-4 turns of sleep, it's imperative you don't keep giving up free turns trying to wake up vs a generally offensive team like that. With all that said, I almost think it's a necessary evil to combat dual blob paraspams (which can still be a winning match-up because clef is that good) and different stalls. I think some stall match-ups would be impossible w no spore on loom because they'd just have an infinite answer with their lati glisc skarm zap. It's very tough to say. Definitely open to a ladder event for either of these potential suspects but I think with sleep talk, smart playing and keeping up the offensive, loom isn't so bad. Especially with a lot of the offensive teams I'm using and also facing. It really feels like it doesn't do a ton unless I'm using a dual blob team and even then the guy has to make some good doubles to get it in on blobs unscathed. Like eden has been doing, I've started to tweak my team's to not give it much room at all.

As far as rachi goes, I think everyone raises some really good points all around, and it's very tough to make final decisions on thinking with all of these questions. I still think jirachi would be very good without iron head. It'd still have ways to combat tar with drain punch or weaken it with cm knot set for example. I think the biggest issue for me is losing a way to deal with clef which is always a threat. I don't like to risk that match-up early unless I know it lacks t wave. The mixed sets are some of the scariest to switch into I think. If you're running an offense and they happen to have the right coverage, it can often just be gg. You don't wanna keep switching around constantly to scout if they have rocks too. The ability it imposes to weaken whatever you may send out is kind of horrifying. Iron head definitely amplifies this. Being able to iron head into a suspected double and just flinching if you're wrong too is pretty op. It alleviates a ton of the risk factors when you factor in the added chance for burns paras and freezes. Very high reward often times low risk mon.

So for me tl;dr: both kinda broken in ways but also kinda needed in some ways I think? Tough to say so that's why I'm open to testing the theories. I don't think we should shut down any real testing over theories, especially when so many people are vocal about changes it seems.

OU DPP OU Metagame Discussion Thread

Excal

johnnyg2

Pideous

Sakito

Dorron

BLU LOBSTAH

The SPrinkLer

Banned deucer.

eden

NeoSeth

Excal

DeepBlueC

eden

Pideous

Gamer1234556

"Because... Scald is a shit Ferro answer!!!"

Excal

DeepBlueC

DeepBlueC

NeoSeth

Pideous

eden

coco

formerly hellpowna

Blox

SFG

Excal

DeepBlueC

The SPrinkLer

Banned deucer.