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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4

lucky333 said:
Just gonna say this but if you are fearing that sun is taking over as the new oppressive archtype.... there is a forgotten threat that used to be in OU you know. Iron Moth!

Just destroyed an entire sun team with this mon on this ladder including Gouging Fire. In fact if any sun teams are in any disadvantagous position it is easy for Moth to just sweep them entirely. Sun also has some very easy to exploit mons like Torkoal or Walking Wake that just dropped a Draco so it is easy for Moth to just end behind a sub too. The only hope they have is roaring moon but only if Moth is not behind a sub and encore H-Lily which they have to position really well and chances are Moth already claimed a bunch of kills. I would love to post replays but at this point I have probably posted so much of them, it might seem like spamming

That said I understand that Gouging Fire can look completely overwhelming sometimes. The set-up variants can find a lot of opportunities to setup thanks to it its bulk and good typing. Despite it's variety, you can guess which set it is based on which Protoboost it has(although stuff like offensive Morning sun is not that rare as well). I usually play really aggressively against those variants as not to give them too many boost and they are not that threatning offensivley at +1.

CB variants in the sun: I feel guilty for using him and but I have so much fun with this mon (both attack and speed variants). Just turn your brain off, and click the button. Even Dragonite with Multiscale takes around half and he doesn't even KO you back with earthquake . Even if he doesn't outright sweep teams, the opponent will be forced to Tera their bulkiest mon which opens up other breakers and sweepers. Wanna save up that Tera for Gambit? Too bad, you gonna have to Tera your Lando JUST to get any type of chip against this mon and not let it devour your whole team. Which makes fighting Gambit a lot less frustrating, ironically. Best counters are bulky flash fire mons , other weather and a very bulky variant of Gouging Fire himself. Walking Wake can only come in once.

Not gonna say whetever he is broken or not though. I am having a lot of fun with this mon and I will be sad if he will be gone. There IS counterplay but I am not gonna judge if it is gonna be sufficient.
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I've been using Iron Moth lately and I'll admit, it can still be pretty OP, but it gets trashed by G-Fire all the same. GFire is just WAY too bulky and doesn't take enough damage from Sludge Wave. You need to properly align your pieces so that Iron Moth fishes for a Fiery dance boost on something else before GFire is coming in order to beat it.

132 SpA Iron Moth Sludge Wave vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Gouging Fire: 160-190 (45.5 - 54.1%) -- 49.2% chance to 2HKO
+1 132 SpA Iron Moth Sludge Wave vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Gouging Fire: 240-283 (68.3 - 80.6%) -- 43.8% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock

Sub probably is the play in the current metagame though. I've been using 4 Attacks, which may be why I've been struggling. Will give it a try and see how it goes.
 
Magcargo said:
I've been using Iron Moth lately and I'll admit, it can still be pretty OP, but it gets trashed by G-Fire all the same. GFire is just WAY too bulky and doesn't take enough damage from Sludge Wave. You need to properly align your pieces so that Iron Moth fishes for a Fiery dance boost on something else before GFire is coming in order to beat it.

132 SpA Iron Moth Sludge Wave vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Gouging Fire: 160-190 (45.5 - 54.1%) -- 49.2% chance to 2HKO
+1 132 SpA Iron Moth Sludge Wave vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Gouging Fire: 240-283 (68.3 - 80.6%) -- 43.8% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock

Sub probably is the play in the current metagame though. I've been using 4 Attacks, which may be why I've been struggling. Will give it a try and see how it goes.
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"If it is one vs one always bet on Gouging Fire". True, if it is simply GF vs Iron Moth then GF will come out on top. But that is not what you are supposed to do. As I said, Sun has alot of exploitable mons like Torkoal, Walking Wake that just dropped a Draco, Hatt that Iron Moth can come in on. Those are also invaluable pieces to sun as well so they can't just sack them(except maybe Hatt). I also just run Tera Ground to just cleanly 2HKO GF and deal with Heatran. Sometimes it is not even about sweeping. Moth can get at least 2 Kills if properly positioned and can ease burden of other teammates even if it falls.
 
Sacrificial Lambtias said:
My hot take:
I think Kingambit is more oppressive than Raging Bolt. I'm seeing them being compared a lot, and I think Kingambit is due for a retest now that we are presumably at the end of the DLC pipeline.

Kingambit has arguably a much better defensive typing. It's immune to toxic and resists rocks. Nothing is immune to its dark STAB which notably threatens all but the bulkiest resists. It also epitomizes making use of multiple tera types. Meanwhile, Raging Bolt relies on weather to overcome many of its checks, restricting the playstyles where it can leverage its full power.

I think it is interesting to look at how stall answers these two mons since a well-built stall team has to defensively answer every relevant threat to some capacity. For Kingambit, Dondozo is typically the check of choice. However, it needs tera fighting to check the tera dark Kingambits which means saving tera all the way to the endgame just to wait and see if Kingambit is actually tera dark. The alternative go-to is Talonflame of all things because it has a fast wisp. This is considered a significant enough niche that stall players consider tflame to be a top 10 option on stall despite being a mon that on paper has no business in OU. On the other hand, Raging Bolt is fairly simple to check. Clodsire handles any variant without weather ball, and Blissey walls it easily. There is no cheeky tera type that allows Bolt to bypass Blissey. Blissey is free to run whatever tera type it wants.

This is not to say that banworthiness can be determined solely by how many hoops stall has to jump through to beat it. If that were the case, Stored Power (wouldn't mind that), Ursaluna, and Hoopa-U would be banned. However, if we're getting ready to suspect Raging Bolt, it can't be ignored that Kingambit is not only similar but also arguably better.
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I 100% agree with this.
However, I would still ban bolt (after gouging fire and roaring moon because I think they are much more theatening). The meta would certainly be way less restrictive and messy.

Lastly, I definitely wouldn't let gambit run freely since it's one of the main reasons we are in this situation to begin with imo. It's more versatile than bolt and you can literally slap it in any team.

The way I see it, the 4 of them deserve a suspect (and probably ban as well).
 
Psyces said:
I just reached 1444 on showdown. My current team is Zamazenta, Goodra-H, Enamorous, Roaring Moon, Ditto and Blastoise (still testing Blastoise)

Roaring Moon and Zamazenta are incredibly broken. I have swept hole teams with both.

I'm also sick of battling the same rain teams. Get original.

The most overrated pokemon is still imo Kingambit. I'm truly surprised by the fuss.
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Congrats on your peak, team on paper doesn't look bad.

Roaring Moon can have an argument at being broken, but I think Zamazentas ship has sailed and isn't considered broken in many eyes because there's a lot of answers with Tera Ghost and things that 2x / 4x resist Body Press


----

Kingambit is not overrated...if anything its underrated with all these conversations about Raging Bolt, Gouging Fire, and Roaring Moon.
 
We could probably retest gambit once Bolt, Gouging fire and Roaring Moon is taken care of. Bolt is no.1 for me, Gouging and Moon could go either way I'm fine with both
 
It feels like Bolt might be the priority because it might push over several playstyles (Sun, rain, balance).
Additionally, you have to guess whether it carries Weather Ball or not, which can significantly alter some matchups (thread for example).
 
Ok real talk: if we ban kingambit and raging bolt it's gonna be completely chaos. Ghosts get 100x better, especially Dragapult as it jumps from almost-busted to super-busted. Ghold makes a resurgence making it that much harder to remove hazards as excadrill (and sand by proxy) drops because its typing isn't that great anymore. Kyurem completely shatters the tier with specs ice beams, and a bunch of busted setup sweepers lose a revenge killing option i.e. enam wogerpon barra volc valiant serp and tera'd moon. Darkrai actually might make a resurgence as nasty plot LO loses one great check and doesn't have to slot FB, freeing up space for ice beam, sludge bomb, thunder, maybe even options like WoW or Knock. We're gonna need at LEAST 3 more bans (moon pult gouging) with the possibility of more depending on what emerges. It is crazy how much role compression gambit (and to a lesser extent Bolt) has for a setup sweeper.

Not saying we shouldn't, I personally would welcome the reining in of power creep, but it's something to keep aware of
 
Just A Shroom God said:
Ok real talk: if we ban kingambit and raging bolt it's gonna be completely chaos. Ghosts get 100x better, especially Dragapult as it jumps from almost-busted to super-busted. Ghold makes a resurgence making it that much harder to remove hazards as excadrill (and sand by proxy) drops because its typing isn't that great anymore. Kyurem completely shatters the tier with specs ice beams, and a bunch of busted setup sweepers lose a revenge killing option i.e. enam wogerpon barra volc valiant serp and tera'd moon. Darkrai actually might make a resurgence as nasty plot LO loses one great check and doesn't have to slot FB, freeing up space for ice beam, sludge bomb, thunder, maybe even options like WoW or Knock. We're gonna need at LEAST 3 more bans (moon pult gouging) with the possibility of more depending on what emerges. It is crazy how much role compression gambit (and to a lesser extent Bolt) has for a setup sweeper.

Not saying we shouldn't, I personally would welcome the reining in of power creep, but it's something to keep aware of
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I know that you are trying to say that gambit and bolt have some defensive use in the tier, but I think this is a bit of a bad faith arguement. I know your not trying to say it that way, but let's look at what would happen.
Everybody say's dragapult would become super busted and I just don't see it. It is fast, and can be annoying, but it is not kept in check by just gambit. If we didn't have 6 other fucking dark types, then yeah it could be an issue, but right now it isn't and won't be for a while. Ghold usage rising wouldn't really be that much as while gambit is an amazing counter to it, stuff like focus miss and even tera fairy dazzling gleam can deal with gambit, though to varying degrees of success. Kyurem is arguably already broken as you can just earth power gambit and it most likely will die, idk calcs so don't trust me on that, but it can work if it is chipped. Enam can break through gambit with superpower, so there is that, waterpon can again deal with gambit decently well with low kick, barra can use mystic water sets if it hates gambit (People fall for it every time), volcarona can easily use tera fairy to beat gambit, valiant quad resists sucker so lol no gambit is not a counter, serp has to use tera so it now can be countered easier, moon teraing is interesting, but a smart moon player will not tera. Darkrai again is kept in check by more than just gambit, and using focus blast isn't the worst thing as it would have to deal with other steel types like heatran.
All of the mons mentioned get better, sure, but not so much more that they become unmanageable. If gambit is the only thing keeping them in check, I would say you would need to ban them regardless if gambit is banned because one mon keeping a mon from ruining the tier is unhealthy.
 
Imo i feel :gouging fire: should be the priority to suspect test next. Its much more unpredictable than :raging bolt: in terms of set it can thus being more dangerous.

Both have snowball capabilities with Dragon Dance and Calm Mind respectively but GF has more breaking power if you dont contain it in time. The speed difference is also a huge factor. GF has recovery with Morning Sun and its signature move Burning Bulwark that adds to its unpredictability.

:Roaring Moon: is also strong but I think ranks 3rd in terms of brokeness among these three.
 
Having trouble with the three dragons, well these mons can deal with them fully.
Gouging Fire: Tera fairy air balloon Heatran, Chandlure, Ceruledge, H-Arcanine, Arcanine, Armarouge, Coalossal, Ninetales, Typhlosion, Flareon and Houndoom.
Raging bolt: Tera fairy mons with either lightning rod, volt absorb or motor drive. List of mons include: Kilowattrel, Thundurus-T, Jolteon, Pawmot, Lanturn, Minun, Pachirisu, Rhyperior, Pinchurchin, Plusle, Raichu, Zebstrika and Electivire. I prefer Jolteon since you have alluring voice to not have to use tera fairy blast.
Roaring Moon: Air balloon on regirock, Tyranitar, Klefki, Diancie, Tinkaton and Kingambit.
Moon is the hardest to completely wall as these counters take resisted damage from moon's moves and aren't immune to all of them.
 
Heatranator said:
Having trouble with the three dragons, well these mons can deal with them fully.
Gouging Fire: Tera fairy air balloon Heatran, Chandlure, Ceruledge, H-Arcanine, Arcanine, Armarouge, Coalossal, Ninetales, Typhlosion, Flareon and Houndoom.
Raging bolt: Tera fairy mons with either lightning rod, volt absorb or motor drive. List of mons include: Kilowattrel, Thundurus-T, Jolteon, Pawmot, Lanturn, Minun, Pachirisu, Rhyperior, Pinchurchin, Plusle, Raichu, Zebstrika and Electivire. I prefer Jolteon since you have alluring voice to not have to use tera fairy blast.
Roaring Moon: Air balloon on regirock, Tyranitar, Klefki, Diancie, Tinkaton and Kingambit.
Moon is the hardest to completely wall as these counters take resisted damage from moon's moves and aren't immune to all of them.
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What is this? You know these Mons don’t only have Elemental STABs, right? I hope this is a joke.
 
Anchor9 said:
What is this? You know these Mons don’t only have Elemental STABs, right? I hope this is a joke.
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All these mons are either resistant or immune to the most common sets that these mons run. For example, Tera Fairy Heatran with Air balloon completely walls gouging fire as it is immune to all of fire, dragon and ground.
 
Anchor9 said:
Most of these Mons are useless against anything else. Having to burn Tera isn’t great as an answer to something.
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Oh I know, it's just kinda funny how the two that people have more problems with technically have mons that are completely immune to the most common sets moves. I would never run tera fairy flash fire houndoom or tera fairy motor drive zebstrika, but hey, they still can blank every common move.
It was moreso just a thought experiment, I don't think anything will come of it and as the only one that is remotely viable is tera fairy Heatran, and I would still be concerned if someone pulled that out in a match.
 
I've seen a few people say it and it's true, heatran is only good 75% of the time. Magma storm/ taunt to remove something like G-slowking or clodsire is nasty work. If you miss though, or you're up against HO, it does
sweet fuck all
for the entire game. Balloon steels is reason #1 why I always run rock coverage on clodsire as well.
 
tommytt22 said:
I've seen a few people say it and it's true, heatran is only good 75% of the time. Magma storm/ taunt to remove something like G-slowking or clodsire is nasty work. If you miss though, or you're up against HO, it does
sweet fuck all
for the entire game. Balloon steels is reason #1 why I always run rock coverage on clodsire as well.
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I have missed too many magma storms to count and I gotta say, both fuck that move and thank god it exists. Without it, Heatran would be worse off, but with it you have to pray you don't miss. Like why the hell couldn't it be at least 80% accurate, like they nerfed the power of it from 120 to 100 when they made the trapping damage do more, but they didn't do the same for other trapping moves. It feels like they just didn't want Heatran to thrive.
Sorry for the rant, I have had many Heatran traps ruined by this move, at some point I may even run fire spin heatran to see how that goes. Will probably go poorly, but at the very least it will be 85% accurate so I don't feel like I am getting cheated by the game constantly.
 
Everything’s a little messed up, but seriously wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a stalemate on ban progress if the order isn’t done right. We already saw a Kyurem ban fail because of it being suspected before Archaludon. Truly, I would have voted do not ban on Kyurem if I was in the vote as well, since it wasn’t broken for the meta it was in. It will definitely be broken if OU becomes a little less “broken checks broken”.

—


Bolt being the first suspect is likely a mistake. I’d suggest the first suspect is the one with the least “counterplay value” in OU.

currently that’s roaring moon, it’s defensive play style isn’t used at all. The only playstyle you see from it are “after something faints in front of a set up opportunity, then set up, and break the check for the next sweeper”. In some cases it’s just straight sweeping.

the usual things it was used to defensively check simply aren’t there. Volcarona is running bug buzz or Tera blast on almost every set, anything that can’t hit dragon very well is running Tera fairy right now, gholdengo is not worth checking with your progress maker when there’s like 10 other high value checks for gholdengo right now, etc.
 
Heatranator said:
I know that you are trying to say that gambit and bolt have some defensive use in the tier, but I think this is a bit of a bad faith arguement. I know your not trying to say it that way, but let's look at what would happen.
Everybody say's dragapult would become super busted and I just don't see it. It is fast, and can be annoying, but it is not kept in check by just gambit. If we didn't have 6 other fucking dark types, then yeah it could be an issue, but right now it isn't and won't be for a while. Ghold usage rising wouldn't really be that much as while gambit is an amazing counter to it, stuff like focus miss and even tera fairy dazzling gleam can deal with gambit, though to varying degrees of success. Kyurem is arguably already broken as you can just earth power gambit and it most likely will die, idk calcs so don't trust me on that, but it can work if it is chipped. Enam can break through gambit with superpower, so there is that, waterpon can again deal with gambit decently well with low kick, barra can use mystic water sets if it hates gambit (People fall for it every time), volcarona can easily use tera fairy to beat gambit, valiant quad resists sucker so lol no gambit is not a counter, serp has to use tera so it now can be countered easier, moon teraing is interesting, but a smart moon player will not tera. Darkrai again is kept in check by more than just gambit, and using focus blast isn't the worst thing as it would have to deal with other steel types like heatran.
All of the mons mentioned get better, sure, but not so much more that they become unmanageable. If gambit is the only thing keeping them in check, I would say you would need to ban them regardless if gambit is banned because one mon keeping a mon from ruining the tier is unhealthy.
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OK first of all, I wasn't arguing against gambit. I said in my post I'd welcome a ban. But I think you're being a bit inaccurate with your analysis here.

Yes, a lot of these pokemon can get past gambit, with an asterick. Ghold CAN get past gambit... if it teras to resist sucker and runs focus blast. Kyurem CAN get past gambit... if it predicts correctly on gambit switch in. Barra CAN beat gambit... if it gives up ~30% of its power and wins a 50/50 mindgame. And all of this is ignoring Gambit teraing itself if it wants to. What's your Superpower Enamorus gonna do now? The point is that all the crap is more free to not focus on beating gambit, meaning they can use better or just different sets.

Also, I mentioned raging bolt as another thing. That's what I was talking about when mentioning ival and enam and other stuff
 
The OU community has already demonstrated it’s willing to vote no-ban on “broken” pokemon if they’re providing value at checking other “broken” pokemon.

the most significant examples are the Kingambit suspect and the Kyurem suspect. There are too many swing voters that use reasons similar to “well it checks x, y, z and makes it more bearable, so no-ban”

The order of suspects is really important Finchinator, hopefully the order chosen is logical and based on the “broken” that checks the least amount of other “broken” Pokémon’s first
 
Just A Shroom God said:
OK first of all, I wasn't arguing against gambit. I said in my post I'd welcome a ban. But I think you're being a bit inaccurate with your analysis here.

Yes, a lot of these pokemon can get past gambit, with an asterick. Ghold CAN get past gambit... if it teras to resist sucker and runs focus blast. Kyurem CAN get past gambit... if it predicts correctly on gambit switch in. Barra CAN beat gambit... if it gives up ~30% of its power and wins a 50/50 mindgame. And all of this is ignoring Gambit teraing itself if it wants to. What's your Superpower Enamorus gonna do now? The point is that all the crap is more free to not focus on beating gambit, meaning they can use better or just different sets.

Also, I mentioned raging bolt as another thing. That's what I was talking about when mentioning ival and enam and other stuff
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All these points are true, though I didn't know you were talking about bolt when you were talking about ival, so sorry about that. I think it is like everything in that these threats can destroy their checks. The ghold one I will give you, it can 30% of the time just fail to ko gambit back. Gambit actually takes 50%ish percent from specs draco, which means that gambit can at most come in 3 times, which is being generous as if stealth rocks are on the field it becomes a 50% chance to 2hit ko. The barra set is actually very interesting, as most of the time you can play around the fact that people expect you to be choice locked and you can get an aqua jet off. Gambit also can't switch in to liquadtion, as it can with tera water ko it most of the time. If it's coming in after a ko, then that is to the benefit of the barra player as that is extremely predictable. The enam set is interesting as earth power 2 hit ko's, so gambit can't get in.
You are correct, they do not have to focus on having to beat gambit, but all these mons wouldn't skyrocket in viability. I understand that you aren't arguing against a gambit ban, but these mons are checked by other parts of the metagame and gambit leaving just means that these mons are put more into the spotlight.
 
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