Rockslide Tusk has been my answer for a lot of deeply annoying things in this game. Removes the birds, Now the spider, and makes your match up into the stupid ice dragon better if you prefer headlong over CC. Too bad that there's still no fucking Rockmove that isn't 100 accuracy that is readily applicable.
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [PALAFIN RETEST]
- Thread starter TPP
- Start date
Rock Slide doesn't actually remove any of the birds aside from Moltres due to the low Base Power.
252 Atk Great Tusk Rock Slide vs. 248 HP / 244+ Def Zapdos: 134-158 (34.9 - 41.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
You'd need roughly 31% chip to 2HKO Zapdos, not to mention that it can still miss, and Rock Slide obviously tickles something like Corviknight.
252 Atk Great Tusk Rock Slide vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Kyurem: 180-214 (46 - 54.7%) -- 58.2% chance to 2HKO
And against Kyurem, it's not even a guaranteed 2HKO, so if you chunk it once, it could still survive if you switch out and hit it with Rock Slide again when it comes in.
Usually, I believe more accurate moves are better than less accurate moves, but with a 25 Base Power difference between Stone Edge and Rock Slide and only a 10% increase in accuracy, I believe Rock Slide tends to not be worth it unless you get STAB on it, some other power multiplier like Sand Force for Excadrill in Gen 5, or have Swords Dance.
252 Atk Great Tusk Stone Edge vs. 248 HP / 244+ Def Zapdos: 178-210 (46.4 - 54.8%) -- 59% chance to 2HKO
For reference, Stone Edge can 2HKO Zapdos, whereas Rock Slide never does.
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Local Pawmot enthusiast here. Two main reasons:
1. You’re using a Pokémon that applies a field effect on switchin, (i.e. weather or terrain), and want access to a safety net. Pawmot also enables an aggressive sack of a setter earlier in a game to get up a field effect in a situation where the setter won’t survive a switchin while still allowing a potential extra switchin later in the game.
2. You’re running a hyper offensive playstyle and don’t have the liberty of defensive switchins. Pawmot lets you sack a win contition and still (potentially) win with it, assuming it is a Pokémon capable of setting up to win from half HP or Healing Wish support is used alongside it. On that note, Pawmot lets you get multiple uses out of a single Healing Wish user.
Basically, Pawmot is a Pokémon whose niche in OU really is only valuable on certain very offensive playstyles, but it does exist. Balance or anything bulkier than that doesn’t have a use for it in this tier.
Ok, so Pawmot's microniche is being a shitty Lokix for HO, but instead of Priority, it's Double Shock calcs? Along with "multiple" Healing Wish users?
what
Ive been using adamant cornerstone to beat araquinids and the birds. Adamant is honestly better for guaranteeing kills, and you can run anything outside of knock off, power whip, and ivy cudgel. Maybe spikes could work but i havent tried it yet.
Water Bubble is a cool ability, its bulk and better matchup into hazard removers lets it set up webs a lot more consistently than Ribombee, and its bulk lets it do cool stuff like custap endeavor, endure, stuff like that.
ace, hatt, weav, dnite, boots tusk, clear body/boots pult, boots zama, and scarf enam are just a few examples of relevant mons that cover your webs MU
Well you'd still be wrong because the only thing that happened was ladder being dumb. Tinkaton is well regarded and a strong pick in the tier. Also chill. You're acting like Tinkaton emptied your whole live savings or something.
Anyways
I don't know if adamant Pon is worth it on much of anything. Of course someone chime in if there is a practical case, but I feel the speed drop from Jolly is too big and makes the mon much more clunky.
For me, the speed drop isnt too signifigant, since you naturally outspeed the targets you want to kill anyways(kyurem, gliscor, tusk). The only MU thats changed is with iron crown and the other ogerpons(though it is still a scary speed tie even with jolly). Adamant guarantees ohkos on targets like offensive tusk, garg after rocks, and threatening zapdos with a potential ohko.
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You could use Smack Down if you really want to kill the birds... also Headlong is stronger than Rock Slide vs Kyurem. Smack Down lets you beat Corv and Zapdos, while also 2HKOing Moltres without making contact.
Hammers are expensive.
Only issue I see with this is Smack Down is a LOT more prediction reliant, since it won't produce significant damage output on its own and you essentially need to tag them on the switch for max Momentum gains. Corv would have time to grab an Iron Defense or take off a chunk with Brave Bird, Moltres could Wisp, etc. Smack Down has to get them on entry rather than functioning on the "first" turn as well like Stone Edge could.
Not to say the benefits don't exist: Corv takes a decent chunk if HLR is neutral and thus is much riskier to U-Turn rather than hard-switch, while Zap and Moltres obviously get gobsmacked if they're grounded and don't Tera. At the same time, this depends on Tusk having to run HLR as its STAB since Earthquake is significantly easier for these mons to play around (Zapdos has a chance to survive Smack Down -> EQ vs Smack Down -> HLR), and HLR obviously opens it back up to Contact punishment in these scenarios.
I feel like ultimately, dealing with these mons isn't something Tusk can do efficiently enough to go any deeper than Stone Edge as a lure to grab immediate results. If you want Tusk to not get stopped by Birds, I think you'd be better served by something apparent but still consistent.
Corviknight is also weak to Headlong Rush after a Smack Down. It is definitely prediction reliant, and in fact if the opponent has two Flying types they can pretty much PP stall you anyway. That's what limits this option the most, for sure. (Other than 4MSS).
Also it's my birthday yippee
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"SV OU is pretty enjoyable and competitive right now, in my opinion."
Milestone of under a million games played this month (didn't happen throughout the entirety of gen 8).
Two 55%+ pro ban suspect tests that left a bad taste in peoples' mouths and reinforced the divisions in the community.
An average of 6/10 for competitiveness and enjoyment from the most elite and dedicated players of the tier in the last survey.
You are welcome to your opinion but i'm left confused as to why there is such denial to any push-back on the state of the tier.
Milestone of under a million games played this month (didn't happen throughout the entirety of gen 8).
Two 55%+ pro ban suspect tests that left a bad taste in peoples' mouths and reinforced the divisions in the community.
An average of 6/10 for competitiveness and enjoyment from the most elite and dedicated players of the tier in the last survey.
You are welcome to your opinion but i'm left confused as to why there is such denial to any push-back on the state of the tier.
short post just for visibility on my opinion on direction from here. tiers in a weird spot and i feel there’s very clearly a problem but its hard to put a finger on it
reposting my brief thoughts on kyurem: i really hope we can come around to the idea of properly nuking kyurem. while it on and off goes from good to very fucking annoying because the volatility of the meta which skews the perception of whats broken among literally all of the controversial topics. i personally feel the no kyurem meta had a ton of room for creative expression, especially when dealing with top threats in different ways. while there is a lot of no kyurem teams here, i didnt share a ton of them bc i felt theyd be eh rn. from a building and laddering standpoint i had the most fun ive had with this tier in a long time, the structure variety i experienced felt very very fresh. this is just my opinion of course but that two week stint was genuinely the best ive felt with the tier in a long while in several ways and hopefully others felt the same.
personally i feel no kyurem meta looked like a decent step in the right direction and several people i know felt similar. considering we spent a decent bit of time (about two weeks) in a no kyu environment i think the conversation is a bit different this time instead of “two suspects lol no”.
tera blast suspect is a weird one but something worth exploring. removing some of the unpredictability would honestly be beneficial even if sacrificing some variety. honestly my main reasoning for this is very bad but, tera blast ban comfortably can lead to a volcarona resus. as it stands volc would still be too much but it’s defensive profile would be very nice in dealing with the current state of things so if tera blast ends up going it would be effectively nerfed and worth looking into from there.
reposting my brief thoughts on kyurem: i really hope we can come around to the idea of properly nuking kyurem. while it on and off goes from good to very fucking annoying because the volatility of the meta which skews the perception of whats broken among literally all of the controversial topics. i personally feel the no kyurem meta had a ton of room for creative expression, especially when dealing with top threats in different ways. while there is a lot of no kyurem teams here, i didnt share a ton of them bc i felt theyd be eh rn. from a building and laddering standpoint i had the most fun ive had with this tier in a long time, the structure variety i experienced felt very very fresh. this is just my opinion of course but that two week stint was genuinely the best ive felt with the tier in a long while in several ways and hopefully others felt the same.
personally i feel no kyurem meta looked like a decent step in the right direction and several people i know felt similar. considering we spent a decent bit of time (about two weeks) in a no kyu environment i think the conversation is a bit different this time instead of “two suspects lol no”.
tera blast suspect is a weird one but something worth exploring. removing some of the unpredictability would honestly be beneficial even if sacrificing some variety. honestly my main reasoning for this is very bad but, tera blast ban comfortably can lead to a volcarona resus. as it stands volc would still be too much but it’s defensive profile would be very nice in dealing with the current state of things so if tera blast ends up going it would be effectively nerfed and worth looking into from there.
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I think you got the point about Kyurem here. I really enjoyed no Kyurem meta as well, been a long time since I didn’t have fun building teams, and these 2 weeks were really cool to play in general, besides the fact Gliscor and (maybe) Waterpon became more than annoying. I still think banning Kyurem was a very huge step forward for the tier, and given how weird ended the suspect (with some new cheaters being found afterward that would have changed the result of the vote again iirc), I think seriously discussing a new suspect is needed at least. Right now we are staying in an unhealthy metagame state and we should change it quickly, so yeah.
Concerning Tera Blast, I feel like re-opening a thread or idk what is welcomed, I’d love to see new thoughts about good players about it at the moment.
While I don't really disagree that there are problems in this metagame that need to be addressed (Kyurem namely), I honestly think this statement in particular is a bit misleading for a couple of reasons.
1: We are no longer in a pandemic like we were for the nearly entirety of Gen 8. Activity across websites all across the globe has gone down since that period of time since people are no longer stuck at home due to there being a deadly virus rapidly spreading around all across the world, they are back to going about their daily lives as usual and don't have the extra time anymore.
2: VGC has grown substantially in the past few years and continues to do so at a fairly rapid rate, which has naturally taken people away from Smogon metagames to the point that we are no longer the quintessential format for competitive Pokemon like we were often considered to be ever since the late 2000s. To be clear, I don't want this to come of as me saying that this is a bad thing, (I actually do like too see that an officially supported format is getting more popular and better support quite a lot. Smogon wouldn't even need to exist if VGC Support wasn't absolute dogshit for the longest time), but I do think that pretending like this is not the case is just silly.
I could just quite as easily say that if it weren't for the last 2 months of suspect tests, which have inflated game numbers and have more of a direct impact on the player-base, that this point would have been achieved sooner. The fact that this thread has a record number of comments and yet has seemingly less of an active playerbase also speaks to that. While your point is valid, it's not as directly comparable as the last two I mentioned and there was nothing stopping people from playing other games at home like among us or apex instead of playing gen 8 OU.
I actually agree with your 2nd point. I just think that reflects badly on the singles OU meta, that people would rather play VGC instead. I mean, the VGC meta has actually been less stale than the singles meta which just speaks volumes.
maybe im reading too much onto this but like... maybe vgc is getting popular because its much more accessible (other than the fuckass legendary pokemon you need to bring from other games. boo) than it used to be AND the metas are good and fun. I won't act like theyre perfect (sneasler.......), but I don't like this "the vgc meta is still bad actually, singles is just worse" tone. You don't have to throw vgc under the bus to complain about OU lol
My bad if it came across as if i'm throwing VGC under the bus which isn't what I was trying to do. While it's not my cup of tea, I have no problem if people prefer to play that over whatever else.
My frustration lies in the fact that the singles meta isn't as great and enjoyable as it could be and perhaps that is why people are exploring less traditional avenues.
That's fair, I do think thats probably happening to some people, though I just like to give some credit to vgc for actually having a pretty fun meta and less so becoming popular because of OUs struggles, if that makes sense. Sorry if I jumped the gun, i just noticed quite a few single players like to shit on vgc which annoys me a bit, as someone who mainly plays singles but likes watching both LOL
It’s more like a monument builder for a wall that's been knocked down.
short answer: araq is the only webs setter that can set up webs more than once and also helps your team not get 6-0ed by fire types
Speaking of electric types, something I've been trying to use on hyper offense is thundurus incarnate.
Thundurus @ Focus Sash
Ability: Prankster
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Taunt
- Thunder Wave
- Grass Knot
It's really good as an anti-lead, as nothing likes prankster thunderwave or taunt. The only 2 leads i can think of that dont mind are samurott(dies to a thunderbolt) and iron treads(gets 2 shot by grass knot). In addition, it can be used as an emergency check against something like a iron valiant with sash.
Thundurus @ Focus Sash
Ability: Prankster
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Taunt
- Thunder Wave
- Grass Knot
It's really good as an anti-lead, as nothing likes prankster thunderwave or taunt. The only 2 leads i can think of that dont mind are samurott(dies to a thunderbolt) and iron treads(gets 2 shot by grass knot). In addition, it can be used as an emergency check against something like a iron valiant with sash.
Honestly at this point if we went full natdex and suspected tera I wouldn't complain because I think the tier needs some sort of drastic action due to lack of enjoyment and lack of meta engagement
With swsh OU it was never this bad even when clefable was broken pre dlc2 and running the meta, people hated that meta but had comfort in the fact that dlc2 was gonna make the meta way more fun, which ended up being the case. SV never really had that luxury of the dlc making tiering far easier like swsh did.
I think maybe taking a page from natdex's book might be wise because it seems like tier enjoyment over there has skyrocketed since tera went, so possibly considering a 2nd tera suspect as drastic and somewhat unfounded as that would be could be the right play, because as good as suspecting tera blast would be it definitely creates the question of some of "if we suspect tera blast why not suspect tera as a whole?" If that tera suspect ended up working out in natdex, could it work out here?
I know natdex and sv ou are different tiers, but where SV OU is, is not that different from where natdex was months ago, so maybe such a thing is kind of warranted. Just a thought but I wouldn't mind if we did something that drastic if it means tier engagement and enjoyability goes up.