Survey! I'll make this one quick (P.S. nvm)
Enjoyment/Competitiveness: I put down a 5 and a 6 here (I like to play a bunch of playstyles in this gen so these scores are always pretty similar for me). This meta still feels really weird to me and I don't think the variety available is all it's cracked up to be right now. It really feels like I can quickbuild a random balance and expect to climb consistently without much effort, while building offense can either be fine to use or shoot me down to the 1900s. In general it looks like there's a league of annoying mons that are just too easy to threaten sweeps with, and the best way to deal with all the shit in the meta happens to be hiding behind an Unaware mon (or a Barraskewda, rain's good too due to this obscene feat of speed control). Other blanket setup checks like Encore and priority have really fallen behind in this meta unfortunately, largely due to increased bulk amongst setup mons and an increased number of offensive threats, + of course the Encore and priority users still have to deal with a largely balance-focused meta on top of that. I think the best styles (outside of fat balance) owe most of their viability to basically one part of the team being anti-meta (while the rest kinda lags behind):
- HO is relying on Hat as a way to break balance and shut down the passive hazard setters. Arguably half of the point of using Screens/HO/Gterrain in the current meta climate is that you get to abuse CM Hat
- Rain is good because of Barraskewda's insane (permanent) speed tier. Being able to outspeed and OHKO pretty much all of the fast sweepers, often while clicking Flip Turn, allows the rest of rain teams to focus on having a sound structure and good breaking options like Archaludon
- There's a bunch of possibilities with lighter (non-fat) balances but not many of those possibilities actually count as special tools that make the style worth bringing. I'd say Samu-H is the most notable draw of these teams, being able to annoy balance teams and more importantly getting a reliable Spike that gives it universal utility vs all cheese styles.
Meanwhile, fat balance happens to have access to possibly the best pivot in Gking, Unaware which blanket checks more physical attackers than anything else in the meta, Gliscor to exert tons of control over the game-state, SkarmLu which beats a whole range of things on its own, etc. There's just much more to work with when you commit to this playstyle, which can sometimes work out in a metagame, but right now it poses an issue in the builder where lighter balance structures, BO, and many forms of offense have to take this huge variety of threats seriously because they can fuck you over in all sorts of ways. Fat balance on the other hand can slap some bullshit 3 mon combo of Lu/Skarm/Gliscor/Dondozo/Tera Dirge/Gking and literally just laugh at 70 percent of the offensive metagame (before using the rest of their slots and tera options to work around the other 30 percent). Like I said before, there's always been some degree of this in Gen 9 due to the nature of the mons we got - this dynamic doesn't have to ruin a metagame, and we've seen past iterations of this meta that can handle these guys while maintaining a healthy variety of teambuilding structures. From a tiering perspective, I think we need to pay more attention to mons that can find themselves in auto-win positions against BO/offense really easily, as these are the mons that make it hard for those playstyles to develop real competitive variety.
I put down a 3 on this, but it's like a low 3 tbh. I don't find hazard lead sets to be a major concern right now, the main Deo-S sets to watch out for from a tiering perspective are
NP LO and
NP Boots, due to its crazy Speed/coverage and relative ease in finding opportunities to click Nasty Plot. Despite this, the power drop going from LO to Boots is noticeable, and the fact that you're forced to run Psycho Boost in order to make your neutral hits hard enough to scare defensive mons means that there's basically always a way to survive it. NP Deo-S is generally an offense tool that tries to break in short bursts throughout the game, as opposed to a sweeper (think of NP as the 4th coverage move on 4 attacks Deo-D), due to the fact that we have faster mons and priority to keep it in check after chip. In my opinion, while I think Deo-S is strong in a vacuum, you have to factor in the fact that its most dangerous sets are generally forced onto teamstyles that are struggling right now, and that's why I can't really think of it as anything other than a 2 or 3 in the current meta
This is a slightly higher 3 than Deo-S imo. I'm kinda torn on this mon because it is simultaneously one of the best anti-balance options we have, and also one of balance's favourite clicker mons, but in general I feel like Kyurem could end up being a case of a mon that's just a bit too strong for the meta. 95 base Speed gets you past the 300 Speed tier which allows it to reliably outspeed a bunch of meta favourites Tusk, Gholdengo, Glimmora, Rilla, and Samu-H which makes its Speed pretty useful. On top of this Kyurem packs the bulk to deal with a lot of faster mons and find good attacking opportunities in general. My main concern in terms of Kyurem sets right now is the Specs set, I think it can make use of the cheeky Speed tier combined with fucktons of initial power and threat level from the coverage to force kills super quickly, leaving a small window to deal with it before it takes out key pieces of your team. That being said, I still don't think it's time to address Kyurem yet, as the Specs set does run into problems with its preferred style of BO being kinda bad, and hazard control being pretty poor in general. DD sets exist and can get really annoying, but I haven't seen them enough for me to get a proper read on them so far. For me, Kyurem is something to keep on a watchlist for the future.
1. Meh. This isn't the mon it used to be, maybe I could have voted it a 2 but frankly it's just not the priority right now and it runs into more challenges than ever before when it comes to picking a good Tera. All of the decent playstyles right now have pretty accessible tools against Volc, I see no reason to care about it right now. My favourite set when using it has been
Tera Dragon, I think that this coverage + the Water/Fire/Grass resists is the best way Volc can adapt to the current meta.
2. Look, this guy is supposed to be scary into balance, that's basically its job. I think it would be really hasty to ban a mon like this given the current state of the metagame, it seems totally fine to me for HO to have a tool that forces balance players to plan around it, possibly taking chip damage on multiple mons or give up a Tera etc. Roaring Moon as always is chip prone and priority prone, and it does still need to commit to Teraing in a lot of situations, so for me it's just a case of every playstyle having options vs it, with the mon itself being practical enough to be worthwhile to the meta, but not so practical that it makes me panic when seeing it. Personally I think that Roaring Moon's brand of progress-making should be encouraged where possible, since its job is basically to weaken physical walls in a way that allows other physical sweepers to get into the game, which I think is much better than the current state of the HO vs balance matchup, which basically involves the balance player insta-clicking the ignore button on half the opposing team, before devising some Tera-related plan to deal with the 1-2 threats that might not run face first into a brick wall.
I put down 4 on Gouging Fire. This mon scares and annoys me more than anything else in the metagame right now. Its stat spread is just way too convenient, being bulky as hell while also fast enough to outspeed all the unboosted mons at +1, and all the boosted mons at +2. When it comes to playing against this thing, unless you're using the harder counters like Dondozo or Physdef Gliscor (which are locked to fat), you are going to have a real painful time figuring out how to reliably kill this thing. Thanks to its insane 3 move coverage (and pretty good 2 move coverage), you'll be forced into many situations where you have to guess the Gouging Fire set immediately or risk losing to double Dragon Dance. A common choice in these games will be between staying in with your mon that can't 2hko Gouging Fire so that you can chip the 3a sets into range of other mons, or switching out to something that covers 2/3 attacks immediately so that you can stop DD Morning Sun from winning. Tera in general allows Gouging Fire to flip many of its weak matchups in order to make this really problematic, because again this is a mon that you need to respond to immediately, you cant afford to lose a turn to Gouging Fire pulling out Morning Sun or clicking the Tera button to wall your "check" all of a sudden. This is the main mon in the metagame that makes me want to give up on running anything that isn't fat balance or rain, massive fuck you to this guy.
1. I'm not convinced this is a real pokemon. No really, who is this? I think I've seen him once in about 100 games at the top of the ladder. I guess there's technically an outside chance that this becomes a problem down the line? In general though, a mon with only 113 Speed that also isnt packing obscene bulk or a good way to boost its own Speed is so 2019, give me 400+ atk and 600+ speed in one turn or don't bother calling.
2. Mostly based off the fact that I don't think it's a priority right now. Need more time to evaluate this guy and I haven't had much of a scare against it so far. My experience of using Raging Bolt has mostly been a case of it putting up Lebron numbers 1 in every 5 games and then spending the next 4 as a glorified cheerleader. Weird mon, interesting mon, potentially healthy mon (it beats Zapdos), I think it's fine to stay for now.
2. Main reason I put this as 2 and not 1 is the principle I mentioned earlier about mons that hurt BO/offense way more than fat balance. Maybe there's a future where clearing this out could benefit the meta, but frankly it'd always be a weird thing to target from a tiering perspective. There's some cool options for sets right now, like Stallion's SubSD Tera Flying set (which has also been run with other Teras like Dragon) and Sacred Sword > CC being an option to push through Skarmory. Thanks to its crazy speed stat, it can actually somewhat pull these sets off due to the auto-win potential that comes from getting a sub off on Glisc Toxic or Gambit Sucker Punch.
1. No reason to care about this mon yet, maybe down the line. Tera Stellar is a pretty notable buff to Specs Enam as well as Scarf Enam, it's kinda hard to run Specs Enamorus right now but I'm sure this will be a big thing at some point in the future.
1. I've talked about my thoughts on Ghold's hazard-blocking capabilities in various discords, but my general thoughts are that it's not worth it to sacrifice one of our few decent Steel types so that we can get 1.5 viable Defoggers back (which may account for like 20 percent of teams at best). Competitive mons in general has been trending towards avoiding hazards instead of removing them for a while and I really dont think freeing one mediocre Defogger is going to put a dent in that. As for Ghold's anti-balance capabilities, I don't think any aspect of what it does is too much for the meta, balance has proven to be able to build/play around Ghold time and time again even though it takes some effort, and the more mons we get the worse Gholdengo has become as a pokemon. Not a fan of banning this guy as a solution to anything we have going on right now, he's not even the least honest Steel type in this meta.
3. I've been anti-Gambit for nearly a year at this point and my thoughts on it can only change so much. Yes it has been worse than usual in the past couple of DLCs but it is one of the main ways to punish a bunch of frailer/weaker offensive picks, and I cant help but wonder how much more variety this meta could achieve if we didnt have to deal with last mon Gambit throughout the gen. I get that this topic is polarizing because a lot of people like Gambit's ability to cut down on the range of opposing picks, but for me as someone who uses a lot less Gambit than most people, seeing endgames where there's clearly not gonna be a way to get the Gambit from 100 percent to 0 percent gets tiring, and I think the mon is cheap in general. In terms of Gambit sets, I do like the anti-Skarm Gambit sets, namely Jolly BlackGlasses variants that can pick off Skarm later in the game, and Tera Ghost on bulky variants which can wall out standard Skarmory after it loses its Helmet (maybe even with the Helmet, I've never labbed that situation). Tera Fight is also better than usual thanks to the lack of Kanto Birds.
That's it for me, I'll leave you guys with the
rain that I've liked since i'm not using it anymore.