As I promised, this would be a three-parter. The second part of this post will discuss some metagame trends and larger implications of it all. I dive into the things that are surging in the current metagame while including some historical perspective and speculate what may be in store for the future on various fronts.
Latios is easily the best Pokemon in the tier. This was the case before this SPL, but the ban of sleep moves solidified this. Not having to run Sleep Talk opens up Choice Specs Latios quite a bit. Not only does Latios now always have the room to run Trick, but it also can run Trick + Recover for longevity against things like Keldeo, Thundurus-T, and Heatran. Alternatively, it can stick with Dragon Pulse in order to have more Dragon PP against Protect Breloom and a spammable move against weatherless offensive teams. On paper, Tyranitar is able to trap Latios, Ferrothorn and Jirachi are able to function as strong checks to Latios, every team has at least one faster Pokemon that can threaten Latios, and Rain teams (aka the ones that lack Tyranitar) tend to have at least 2-3 Protect users to scout out what move it is locking into. Despite all of this, Latios still functions as the most threatening Pokemon in the metagame. Despite all of this, Latios still finds a way to outlast its checks and counters consistently due to Trick, hazard support, progressive wear and tear, and a variety of other measures. Despite all of this, Latios is the undisputed king of the weather generation. In my eyes, you are handicapping yourself on most teams by not using Latios at this point. There are very viable teams without it and you can justify not using it, but you are doing yourself a disservice if you go out of your way to avoid it and even if you expect a Jirachi or a max SDef/Scarf Tyranitar, then you can still make use of Latios both offensively and defensively. I used it 10/10 times during SPL and I do not regret this whatsoever, even when people started to bring out Scizor.
Many people believe Latios is broken in BW OU; I happen to agree with this assessment and have for a number of years (predating the recent sleep ban), but I do not know if I want it banned despite this. The rippling impact a Latios ban would have on the metagame may never truly stop a potential spiral that could involve various periods of relative unbalanced metagame states. Of course, tiering based on this theory and making/not making tiering decisions based solely on fear of a worse future is something to avoid whenever in doubt. However, old generation tiering is unchartered territory and I am unsure if typical conventions of current generation tiering such as these still apply to the same extent. The lack of a dedicated playerbase coupled with the lack of a sample size of high-level battles relative to current generation formats make it so that accounting for consequences of tiering decisions and reacting to future metagame problems is something that is far less possible. Truth be told, I see both sides of the coin. I instinctively lean towards the conservative status quo as I find the current metagame to be both enjoyable and competitive, but I also believe that Latios is broken by textbook definition and there is a possible future metagame that is better without it. This possible future metagame may be an entirely different metagame -- meaning a number of bans over a long period of time -- than the one we have currently and stripping an identity of an old generation is another bit of unchartered territory that we would have to weigh philosophically before acting. I do not know what the best line-of-action is at the end of the day, but I do think that our playerbase should have an open dialogue about this and other matters in the near future.
Landorus-T is another one of the best Pokemon in the current metagame. Personally, I would say it is second to Latios, but you can plausibly put it behind Ferrothorn or Tyranitar if you wish to make those arguments. They all fulfill vastly different roles that are unique and end up impacting every team, be it directly through usage or indirectly through the constructing of different cores around the prospect of their presence on opposing teams. Landorus-T has always been one of the better Pokemon in the metagmae, but for years the Choice Scarf variant dominated the usage stats while the occasional Swords Dance (usually with Fighting Gem) set was thrown in to get some surprise value and breaking power on the right team. This changed drastically in recent months; team structures have shifted to welcome Stealth Rock Leftovers Landorus-T to the party and it is now a staple.
While the other Landorus-T sets are still very viable, with Choice Scarf arguably being as good as ever before even, Stealth Rock Leftovers Landorus-T is peaking at the perfect time. The metagame is filled with Excadrill, Poison Heal Breloom, Tyranitar, and even Gliscor/Garchomp to a lesser extent. Leftovers Landorus-T is able to soft check all of these Pokemon barring unlikely circumstances/sets popping up. Soft checking things while maintaining momentum and having a definitive purpose on teams is pretty much how a Pokemon rises in popularity in BW. Unlike modern generations, there is no Defog, less Regenerator, less Magic Guard, etc. -- BW is largely a no-nonsense metagame in terms of pacing and the gifts of Stealth Rock Leftovers Landorus-T are so rich because of this. Respectable built-in longevity, the ability to reliably set-up Stealth Rock while threatening to kill all common removers, U-turn to pivot out quickly, Hidden Power Ice to make it a nuisance to switch into for many teams, and Earthquake that still is able to hit Ferrothorn/Politoed hard enough to punish their switch-in during the midgame. I used this Landorus-T set during 5 of the last 6 weeks of SPL and this was absolutely no coincidence. I do not think it is mandatory to use to the same degree Latios is, but if you see an opportunity to make use of it then odds are you are going to be well off with it on your team. Of course, other variants are still respectable and can be used similarly to previous BW metagames, which honestly just adds to the already sky high viability of Landorus-T right now.
Breloom was perhaps the Pokemon that had the most questions surrounding it coming into SPL. Would it see a stark decrease in usage due to the loss of Spore, which was one of the best moves in the game? Would people suddenly stop accounting for it, opening the door for Poison Heal sets to wreck havoc? Would it see another shift in viability due to a novel application of it (like my Facade set around last SPL)? The answer to these questions was no, yes, and yes respectively. Breloom not only avoided a decrease in usage, but it shot up into the top 10 in usage for the first time in a little while. It is even higher than this mark in raw viability, too, in my eyes. People did neglect to prepare for conventional Bulk Up and the growing standard of Swords Dance Poison Heal Breloom in early weeks of SPL; it did see a decent amount of usage over this span of time and it experienced success because of this. It and Keldeo are the only top 10 Pokemon with a win% of 60% for good reason. Finally,
dice created the Substitute / Protect / Seed Bomb / Focus Punch Breloom set that is very challenging to handle, especially for teams lacking the aforementioned Landorus-T set to slow its progress early game or something like Amoonguss, Reuniclus, or Celebi.
Breloom is such a unique Pokemon because it has always been good, but we have adapted to different uses of it over the years. It has gotten to the point that what Breloom truly is in BW OU has been redefined more than anything else that has been as consistent as it is in BW in any generation of OU prior. I find this phenomenon to be intriguing and I think it just shows that you always need to lean towards the side of overpreparing for it whenever in doubt. During the BW1 days, bulky/grimy Poison Heal sets and even SubPunch were strong. During the BW2 days, Technician took over and honestly ran rampant for a while. During the years following that (aka the XY settling of BW), Breloom still was seen as a top threat, but as this metagame grew stagnant Breloom usage began to decline. In recent years, we have seen a slight uptick due to Poison Heal sets popping back up and also opening up for more surprise factor behind the still potent Technician sets. This got to the point that we banned Spore, but this ban arguably made it even better over the course of SPL, which is honestly crazy. The sheer adaptability and versatility of Breloom over the years is fascinating. Breloom is one of the most interesting Pokemon in BW OU to me because of this. I look forward to seeing how it is used and why moving forward. It is no longer a question if it it will be one of the top few tiers of Pokemon, but now it is simply a question of why it is up there and with what specific sets.
Thundurus-T is another Pokemon that I feel has evolved over the years. Unlike Breloom, the lows it saw were quite low, even to the point where it was something far off the radar in terms of Rain threats to prepare for and seen as more of a niche option than anything else. Nowadays, however, it is one of the most potent threats on Rain teams and bordering staple status on some archetypes. The classic, SoulWind inspired Substitute variants (be it with my personal favorite of Agility from the last post, Nasty Plot which is something SoulWind himself has used to so much success in numerous important settings, or just Focus Blast to make it a huge threat off-the-bat to standard team structures) are superb right now. Substitute avoids having to predict around a lot of switches and it also takes advantage of Ferrothorn, which it encounters in more games than not it seems, and Jirachi, which is seeing a slight increase in usage after years of gradual decline, specifically due to the commonly used defense investment. The fact of the matter is that Thundurus-T Rain is ridiculously consistent right now due to the fact that it has the ability to threaten just about everything outside of some sporadically used stall structures that have their own set of crippling flaws. Rarely have we ever seen a type of Rain team that has so few drawbacks and so much consistency that inspires user confidence to this degree. I think SoulWind, myself, and others resorting to it on such a frequent basis is a direct testament to this, too. I personally only used it once this SPL, which is honestly a ridiculous undersell of how much I normally use it, but I did break the bad boy out during WCOP over the last couple of years and intend to again moving forward in some other important setting. Thundurus-T was a top 20 Pokemon and should probably be within the top 15 now. It is winning >60% of its games and while the sample size is small, the users who feel highly about it are some of the best players and this is just not a coincidence. The win rate is similarly not a coincidence.
Scizor is an anti-metagame pick that has been receiving more usage than before recently. It is true that "before" did not set a high bar as it was virtually unseen in the tier for a couple of years, but the zf-inspired bandwagon seems to be well on its way to metagame-trend land. I do not have a ton to say on this Pokemon when compared to those listed above because I do not use it much, I have been outspoken against it at various points in the past, and it is simply less viable than all of the aforementioned Pokemon. However, I will say that I do see why it is worth considering. A ton of people are running double -- even sometimes triple -- Psychic and the match-up improvement with Scizor over an alternative is drastic. Even if you do not encounter this specifically, Latios alone is common enough to where you can see the merit of having it on some Rain builds (weatherless is a far harder sell for me, however). I do feel that teams with Scizor are inevitably going to have some trade-off flaws as Scizor fills a specific role that you still need to cover elsewhere through a secondary Steel if you do not go crazy like zf did against me, which I would not personally advise as there is far too much risk in this to find consistency. With this said, the upside can outweigh the negative end of the trade-offs and I hope that people see this, explore with it more, and we can get a clearer picture of Scizor's overall viability in the current metagame. It has been dormant for years and seeing another Pokemon in the mixture in old generations is always a positive in my eyes.
The third and final leg of this will likely be delayed by a bit as going through ten teams and discussing my entire process takes a while. I am also moving back home on Wednesday, so that will be a dead day when it comes to making progress. It is in the works and will come in the near future though, so do not worry.
