I’ve been playing quite a lot of this new meta thanks to RULT and wanted to give my thoughts on what I’ve seen recently as the lone balance player on ladder. (jkjk)
These two have been incredibly good against HO in my experience. Hippo does what Hippo did last time it was in the tier and provides an excellent matchup into every physical attacker under the sun. Its combination of being fat, having roar, and setting sand and rocks has broken nearly every physical attacker I’ve played against, Tera Steel exemplifies this bulk, as much of the tier is running dragon stab. I think helmet on this is definitely the best item as well, it forces physical attackers and even comfey to need to play extremely carefully around you. Bellibolt is in a pretty similar vein to Hippo, providing a fat mon that can get off passive chip with toxic and easy recovery with Parabolic Charge. You can run volt switch or protect on it as last, both work extremely well. I think both of these mons stack up extremely well against the mostly physical meta.
AV Hoopa may be one of the better special walls in the tier, as it tanks essentially every special hit and isn’t passive with its massive attack and special attack stats. I’ve personally been running a mixed set with psychic noise, drain punch , knock off and filler. Psychic noise neuters anything rhyming with bomfey or stored power draining kiss Mew, some of the most potent sweepers in the tier right now. Hoopa makes progress on both balance and HO teams with knock off riding off a base 160 attack stat, and manages to stay healthy with drain punch.
This bug is still extremely good in the current tier, as priority is almost everything right now. With a Stab priority move that matches up well into the slew of dark and psychic sweepers, as well as just being able to do good damage against most of the tier quickly. Its defensive profile also works well for it against other priority in the tier, like Conk and Breloom Mach Punches or Bisharp Sucker Punches.
The things I think that need to go immediately are 
and maybe 
First off, Comfey and Mew are the two things I fear most at team preview, although I think Mew is a little more pressing than Comfey. Mew is very easily able to switch in on much of the tier and set up IDs, CMs, or even DDs. I think the most threatening is definite the double dance stored power sweeper but the amount of utility that this mon can have makes me think it should really have no place in the tier. Comfey is very similar to mew, however it lacks the ability to set up its defense easily which can definitely be negated through tera, but is something to be mentioned. Being able to sweep through an endgame unopposed and with minimal setup is also something extremely unhealthy for the tier. I do think that there is some counter play to these two through methods that have already been mentioned in this thread, but it’s limited at best and is not something that should be required on every team in order to beat them.
In my experience, these two always miss out on KOs even when boosted, this is more so with Salamence than Haxorus, but I feel that we have enough defensive counter play in the tier to deal with them, through things like Roar hippo or even Unaware quag. This doesn’t entirely apply to Salamence as neither of those options appreciate switching into a specs Draco. Also needing to bring a definite answer to them doesn’t add much to the tier and really just constrains it providing a lot of merit towards a ban from them.
I haven’t dealt with the bird much, which definitely skews my opinion, but once again, I feel like there is definite counterplay in the form of rocky helmet hippo and other fat defensive options. This bird is killing itself pretty quickly if it is banded, but I do see the potential problem of it ripping a hole through your team with banded sets.
Both use Booster Energy and go to town on teams. Jugulis still does the same thing it did before it got banned by breaking open teams incredibly easily for its team and out speeding everything outside of swift swimmers. I’m not to sure about Iron Leaves, but I can definitely see the tera fire SD Booster speed set being extremely hard to deal with.
Thunderus-T seems extremely strong in my interactions with it, especially if it’s running specs. This can rip through teams with a few correct predictions, the only problem with it being its weakness to rocks. This thing is also extremely fast too, so I wouldn’t be sad to see it gone. Hoopa-U seems pretty slow for the current meta, but it’s going to be crazy after bans remove the extremely broken options on the tier. Might be nice to remove it earlier rather than later.
and maybe First off, Comfey and Mew are the two things I fear most at team preview, although I think Mew is a little more pressing than Comfey. Mew is very easily able to switch in on much of the tier and set up IDs, CMs, or even DDs. I think the most threatening is definite the double dance stored power sweeper but the amount of utility that this mon can have makes me think it should really have no place in the tier. Comfey is very similar to mew, however it lacks the ability to set up its defense easily which can definitely be negated through tera, but is something to be mentioned. Being able to sweep through an endgame unopposed and with minimal setup is also something extremely unhealthy for the tier. I do think that there is some counter play to these two through methods that have already been mentioned in this thread, but it’s limited at best and is not something that should be required on every team in order to beat them.
In my experience, these two always miss out on KOs even when boosted, this is more so with Salamence than Haxorus, but I feel that we have enough defensive counter play in the tier to deal with them, through things like Roar hippo or even Unaware quag. This doesn’t entirely apply to Salamence as neither of those options appreciate switching into a specs Draco. Also needing to bring a definite answer to them doesn’t add much to the tier and really just constrains it providing a lot of merit towards a ban from them.
I haven’t dealt with the bird much, which definitely skews my opinion, but once again, I feel like there is definite counterplay in the form of rocky helmet hippo and other fat defensive options. This bird is killing itself pretty quickly if it is banded, but I do see the potential problem of it ripping a hole through your team with banded sets.
Both use Booster Energy and go to town on teams. Jugulis still does the same thing it did before it got banned by breaking open teams incredibly easily for its team and out speeding everything outside of swift swimmers. I’m not to sure about Iron Leaves, but I can definitely see the tera fire SD Booster speed set being extremely hard to deal with.
Thunderus-T seems extremely strong in my interactions with it, especially if it’s running specs. This can rip through teams with a few correct predictions, the only problem with it being its weakness to rocks. This thing is also extremely fast too, so I wouldn’t be sad to see it gone. Hoopa-U seems pretty slow for the current meta, but it’s going to be crazy after bans remove the extremely broken options on the tier. Might be nice to remove it earlier rather than later.
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Stored Power shenanigans have also infested the ladder, and commonly run Tera Poison for Toxic immunity. Once a PU mon in gen 8, Tera grants Comfey many options to bypass its would-be checks and counters pretty easily. Even Blissey is not safe since it can't do anything back, and also gets deleted with Stored Power. I can thus understand why many people are so keen on seeing this mon go.
I am not sure why nobody has mentioned this yet. Maybe because Umbreon is currently in NU, but I find it to be pretty reliable in punishing many physical attackers like Maushold with Foul Play and reliable bulk. It losing Heal Bell is not too big a deal since it can also spread Toxic and Thunder Wave to cripple the opponent.
Tera Dark Quagsire checks most Stored Power mons pretty well since it is now immune to Stored Power and able to threaten them bar Cresselia with Earthquake since most of them commonly run Tera Poison.
(great physical bulk)
(mold breaker gigaton hammer is great vs mmq, twave and encore do a lot vs set up sweepers)
(haze, ice beam, good bulk, scald burn, dragon tail, mirror coat for special attackers that aren't Iron Jugulis)
. The only scarfer that outspeeds it is 
, 
and others. There is also the problem that Jugulis is quite fat for an offensive mon. Killing it with priority is very difficult AND even if u do manage to hit it with an attack, say a sludge wave from Gengar, u don't fucking kill. All of this is without factoring in Terastallization AND the fact you can be turned immobile 20% of the time. The former works beautifully with the latter in giving it even more opportunity to flinch the lights out of you. Sure it has it's so-called checks like Assault Vest users 
, 
(don't know why you would use the latter two) but they all get blasted by something or the other. All of them (bar Blissey) are one or two flinches away from being Hurricane'd. Blissey gets taunted, cyclizar can get focus blasted, tinkaton can be earth powered and reun, king and the rotom forms have to burn tera. Spdef hippowdon (something I have seen pop up) can also just be taunted and it's fucked or you can take the more immediate was and hydro pump it away. Sure you can't run all of these moves on it for it needs Dark Pulse and Earth Power and then u need to fit taunt, work up (that's another option btw), fire blast, hydro pump, focus blast and hurricane. But most of these mons are not run in conjunction with one another thus making it easier for the jugulis user to pick and choose what it wants to screw over in the match. To summarise this, Jugs is incredibly fast, quiet strong and bulky and is one dark pulse flinch away from really just running away with the games.
