Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v3

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RaikouLover said:
Cerulege is a fvcking demon on sun teams. Very underrated mon. Unfortunately, Poltergeist wasn’t all that helpful in playtesting. It can even be a liability (knock off is still one of the best moves in the game).
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Even on non sun teams, this mon is quite scary to face as an early game hole puncher. Focus Saah + Weak Armor lets it get to +2/+2 when positioned in 1v1s vs some physical attackers and it can leave big dents for other threats to take advantage of. Sometimes, it's Focus Sash won't even proc, & it can heal off all the damage it's taken with Bitter Blade.

Poltergeist can be a bit iffy in a booster energy meta but imo is a big upgrade on this Pokemon's damage output vs the walls it struggles against.

A nice bonus of Ceruledge is that it's typing is good against Iron Moth too.
 
FCKNfuego said:
This is max Spatk Espathra after 2 Calm Mind + 1 Speed Boost on Bold Corv. This is not dropping resists....Almost every meta relevant Steel atm beats Espatha. UUBL at absolute best and this is probably pushing it.
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Teach us this secret tech that ends up with Espathra somehow having a free Calm Mind boost when switching in so it can get +2 in special attack and defence while only having +1 in Speed. We gotta know how you broke the system to cause this
 
I want to 2nd i'd rather see skymin than darkrai, and I'm also using hypnosis as a reasoning.

Here's the thing, :Shaymin-Sky: can flinch me 57% of the time, but in order to kill my check it would need to do this;

252 SpA Life Orb Shaymin-Sky Air Slash vs. 252 HP / 120+ SpD Assault Vest Slowking-Galar: 75-91 (19 - 23%) -- possible 5HKO

252 SpA Life Orb Shaymin-Sky Air Slash vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Clefable: 117-138 (29.6 - 35%) -- guaranteed 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

0 SpA Clefable Moonblast vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Shaymin-Sky: 124-147 (36.3 - 43.1%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

120 SpA Slowking-Galar Sludge Bomb vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Shaymin-Sky: 300-354 (87.9 - 103.8%) -- 25% chance to OHKO

(and just incase someone points out the obvious: 252 SpA Life Orb Shaymin-Sky Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 120+ SpD Assault Vest Slowking-Galar: 122-146 (30.9 - 37%) -- 69.2% chance to 3HKO)

Meanwhile :Darkrai: only needs to hit 1 single hypnosis, and then it will nasty plot into:

+2 252 SpA Life Orb Darkrai Dark Pulse vs. 252 HP / 120+ SpD Assault Vest Slowking-Galar: 351-416 (89 - 105.5%) -- 31.3% chance to OHKO

252 SpA Life Orb Tera Poison Darkrai Tera Blast vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Clefable: 273-322 (69.2 - 81.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

If you did switch into an offensive check, either they tank a dark pulse instead of darkrai using nasty plot, or darkrai switches out and your team still has 1 pokemon disabled.

To say the least, there is pretty much nothing that can deal with darkrai besides a scarf revenge killer, and you're forced to sacrifice a mon for it. Sure Air Slash is more accurate and has near equal chance to flinch, but you have many more opportunities to save yourself than darkrai who basically forces a 60% chance to automatically win.

Its kinda weird, because the more I'm looking at calcs and actually thinking about skymin the more I'm finding justifications for it being tried in OU, it's really not as hot shit as it sounds, at best it might be borderline broken enough to remain ubers. Darkrai I can't find a reasoning to drop at all besides "anything faster kills it" which is literally the same thing as skymin with less room to do so, and at that point you could justify fucking spectrier, urshifu, palafin, annihilape, and lando-i if thats your only reasoning.
 
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RoyalDispenser said:
I want to 2nd i'd rather see skymin than darkrai, and I'm also using hypnosis as a reasoning.

Here's the thing, :Shaymin-Sky: can flinch me 57% of the time, but in order to kill my check it would need to do this;

252 SpA Life Orb Shaymin-Sky Air Slash vs. 252 HP / 120+ SpD Assault Vest Slowking-Galar: 75-91 (19 - 23%) -- possible 5HKO

252 SpA Life Orb Shaymin-Sky Air Slash vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Clefable: 117-138 (29.6 - 35%) -- guaranteed 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

0 SpA Clefable Moonblast vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Shaymin-Sky: 124-147 (36.3 - 43.1%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

120 SpA Slowking-Galar Sludge Bomb vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Shaymin-Sky: 300-354 (87.9 - 103.8%) -- 25% chance to OHKO

(and just incase someone points out the obvious: 252 SpA Life Orb Shaymin-Sky Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 120+ SpD Assault Vest Slowking-Galar: 122-146 (30.9 - 37%) -- 69.2% chance to 3HKO)

Meanwhile :Darkrai: only needs to hit 1 single hypnosis, and then it will nasty plot into:

+2 252 SpA Life Orb Darkrai Dark Pulse vs. 252 HP / 120+ SpD Assault Vest Slowking-Galar: 351-416 (89 - 105.5%) -- 31.3% chance to OHKO

252 SpA Life Orb Tera Poison Darkrai Tera Blast vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Clefable: 273-322 (69.2 - 81.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

To say the least, there is pretty much nothing that can deal with darkrai besides a scarf revenge killer, and you're forced to sacrifice a mon for it. Sure Air Slash is more accurate and has near equal chance to flinch, but you have many more opportunities to save yourself than darkrai who basically forces a 60% chance to automatically win.
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Are you forgetting about seed flare, the signature move that halves your special defense? Because all of the sudden your checks look like this:
252 SpA Life Orb Shaymin-Sky Air Slash vs. -2 252 HP / 120+ SpD Assault Vest Slowking-Galar: 152-179 (38.5 - 45.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

252 SpA Life Orb Shaymin-Sky Air Slash vs. -2 252 HP / 4 SpD Clefable: 329-387 (83.5 - 98.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

Like I get it’s popular to hate darkrai, but holy shit Shaymin is so much stronger. Those calcs aren’t even factoring in the damage seed flare would do before that. Shaymin is broken as shit and should never touch OU
 
There's lots of things that can handle a Skymin spamming Air Slash. There's very few things that can switch into Seed Flare, eat a -2 SpD, and still handle a Skymin spamming Air Slash.

It's also not frail, 100/75/75 is better bulk than Dragapult, and Grass/Flying is a decent defensive typing (minus requiring HDB) this generation.
 
Neither Skymin nor Darkrai should be legalized. They're both broken, as evidenced by the arguments and calcs above. Both have very uncompetitive aspects (i.e. skymin's speed + 60% chance to flinch/80% to drop spdef, darkrai's hypnosis + nasty plot) and add nothing to the metagame except more broken mons that benefit HO and nothing else. Do we really need more stupidly strong breakers in a metagame infested with them? I genuinely don't even know why we're having this discussion when they're both so obviously going to be problems when legalized- we might as well discuss dropping Kyogre if this is the degree of stupid things we're going to be talking about.
 
Can we stop pretending either of these things are worth adding to the tier in its current state? Volcarona at least had the discussion about it being a check to Kingambit and Valiant to suggest some kind of defensive utility rather than JUST being another offensive piece. Besides the fact people have to argue they're not that strong, is there any significant benefit to balance out their questionably overpowered offensive capability? Another example is Zamazenta, who besides being assumed reasonable (with much more ground than these two, especially in a Tera game), also offerred Balance and Bulky offense teams a good option for a Revenge Killer or Immediate breaker with Choice Band to slow down the more dominant Hyper Offense teams and prominent members like Kingambit.

It feels incongruous to me because several people posing (entirely reasonable) grievances with some mons currently in the tier are arguing as well for Mons who probably would exacerbate the same issues as many problem mons they point out. I'm not even that concerned with the Hax aspects like Shaymin's Flinch spam or Darkrai's Hypnosis, I just think their offensive sets are "1 more on the pile" at best and "wouldn't say saved, more under new management" at worst: Consider that you are as likely to be hit by the SpD drop on Seed Flare as you are to be hit AT ALL by Focus Blast, and that a -2 SpD is the equivalent of Shaymin achieving an Unaware-circumventing Nasty Plot against that particular Switch-in (obviously not maintained against the whole team but for the purposes of being a check, it's a close enough comparison). More to the point, the time spent dropping them into the tier probably just isn't worth it, as even if they're brought in and Quickbanned within a week, that's still a week where we don't learn anything meaningful about other meta trends or the existing Radar (be it now or after DLC2).
 
Keep both banned for now.
Suspect test Darkrai once most of the obvious broken bullshit is banned. It's definitely at a lower power level than people make it out to be (not the first time people did this here) but it would suck having to deal with it + other threats currently in the meta.
Don't bother with Shaymin-Sky at all. No one wants to deal with psuedo Contrary on a Pokemon faster/stronger than Serperior.
 
CheesyBrie said:
Dracovish only did ONE thing wrong.
I mean, that One Thing was Fishious Rend to two-shot basically the entire tier, but STILL.
I'm suuuure nothing in OU right now is thaaaaat bad (heavy sarcasm, it is.)
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honestly, i feel like dracovish could almost be manageable in the current meta. we have multiple viable water-immune mons and one of them happens to be one of the most splashable mons in the tier, there's a very popular freeze-dry user running around, rain is less prominent and sun teams are significantly more prominent, dondozo exists, and walking wake is basically another water immunity. that's not counting all the mons that run teras that resist water. it's still a bastard to switch into with anything that isn't gastrodon/waterpon/dozo/wake/dipplin but it has enough theoretical counterplay that i wouldn't start it in ubers if i were the council
 
so just to be clear, modifying tera is off the table right?
personally i feel like a lot of broken mons would be manageable w/o tera
however, im not that good at the game, so im *not* saying thats what needs to happen
I just want to know if competitive players are even considering modifying tera, or just moving on from that completely
 
I've been seeing way too many posts that seem to think Skymin is just this Air Slash spamming machine that has no other moves. This 75 BP STAB Move is actually more like 150 BP bc 80% of the time its other fair and balanced move is halving your special defense. SubSeed Skymin is an unholy abomination that can and will fuck you up in 700 different ways. Switching out of it bc it got the drop? Get subbed on lol. Think you can tank a few air slashes? You're not tanking them when you're also losing 1/8 of your health. If it doesn't wanna go for the hax it can just do good old SubSeed shenanigans; either it stalls out a mon or it gets a sub up and wins. This Pokémon is insane and should not be considered for OU ever.
 
mr.pinklives said:
so just to be clear, modifying tera is off the table right?
personally i feel like a lot of broken mons would be manageable w/o tera
however, im not that good at the game, so im *not* saying thats what needs to happen
I just want to know if competitive players are even considering modifying tera, or just moving on from that completely
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tera preview is the only "modification" that's on the table at the moment, and i believe it's the only surviving middle-ground option—stab-only tera was a joke, tera captain was in my opinion the most interesting premise but didn't get any traction, and i haven't heard much from any of the tera blast ban people since the dlc dropped
 
mr.pinklives said:
so just to be clear, modifying tera is off the table right?
personally i feel like a lot of broken mons would be manageable w/o tera
however, im not that good at the game, so im *not* saying thats what needs to happen
I just want to know if competitive players are even considering modifying tera, or just moving on from that completely
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Anyone with half a brain and who is arguing in good faith wants Tera acted upon in some regard, but it's too soon after the last failed suspect and this meta is too fleeting to warrant a Tera suspect. Tera will probably get another suspect test after the next DLC and after we deal with whatever bullshit nonsense that DLC comes with.
 
FCKNfuego said:
We've got a quite a few mons similar to this...Cloyster, Polteageist..etc. It always comes down to coverage moves and power. Espathra doesn't have much of either and it's stab isn't hard to find a resist to.
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You're not wrong, a team having 'mons whose intended role is to win the game is nothing new, but from my memory VSing and playing it (and Flittle in LC, which did the same thing before being booted off the tier) I think that Espathra simply pushes the issue to a seldom reached extreme where setting up and sweeping is the only impact it can realistically make in a match.
 
tr8orsrequiem said:
Anyone with half a brain and who is arguing in good faith wants Tera acted upon in some regard
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are you sure? because the more i improve at the game, the more comfortable i feel with the prospect of leaving tera as-is. tera preview's still my first choice but i could play a meta without it just fine
 
DaddyBuzzwole said:
are you sure? because the more i improve at the game, the more comfortable i feel with the prospect of leaving tera as-is. tera preview's still my first choice but i could play a meta without it just fine
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You also went on record for saying that Smogon should ban everything B+ and above in viability to decrease the power level in this meta (that has Tera). I don't think the tier is anywhere near broken to the point that we need to ban 20 mons, but banning the five mons I listed earlier today would be a great way of improving the meta while also weakening hazards.
 
To crib a turn of phrase from FSG - we need to consider the Zamazenta Principle. Just because a mon is "unviable" in Ubers doesn't mean it's okay to unload into standard play, because at the end of the day these are mons that we either decided were too busted to be used, or were actively designed by Gamefreak to be objectively stronger than regular mons.
 
MisogiKurakawa said:
To crib a turn of phrase from FSG - we need to consider the Zamazenta Principle. Just because a mon is "unviable" in Ubers doesn't mean it's okay to unload into standard play, because at the end of the day these are mons that we either decided were too busted to be used, or were actively designed by Gamefreak to be objectively stronger than regular mons.
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Zamazenta is balanced in OU tho...

Bro picked the worst mon to try make this point with
 
FrostedC said:
Zamazenta is balanced in OU tho...

Bro picked the worst mon to try make this point with
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I think they mean gen 8 zamazenta, a mon that was dogshit in ubers so it was tested but turned out to be extremely unhealthy in ou. Also crowned form in this gen of ou. Bad uber performance doesn't correlate to a balanced mon, just showcases the extreme power of some legendaries.

Don't know if it fits the darkrai/shaymin convo, since I think people aren't arguing from them being bad ubers but being powercrept (please don't argue with me I have no opinions about it and I think you're all wasting your time)
 
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