Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion

[AM]

OU fine minus Garg (and the memes it requires to keep its pool of options in check) and the dancing around Tera of the top let’s say, top 5 to 10 mons, which is a tera issue mostly. Power creep going to keep going up it’s not realistic to ban every offensive mon. OU is normally going to centralize around few key threats at any given moment. This tier in its current state is much more enjoyable than past ones, balance heavy tiers are boring af anyways.

 

[Ehmcee]

Hey so I just want to start off saying in this post that I appreciate the time and effort that the OU council have put in this generation.
They have been more transparent and responsive to the player base, while also taking swift and corrective action on the problematic pokemon that have cropped up this generation.

Thank you Finchinator, ausma, ironwater, Ruft and TPP for all of your hard work thus far.

Now, I want to talk about the elephant in the room. Great Tusk.
I'm not posting to say "oh no Great Tusk is broken ban ban ban".
But this is the third consecutive month where it has been the top pokemon. With two consecutive months of an over 50% usage stat, I think there is something wrong with the OU tier. No pokemon should ever have that high usage. It's a cry for help. (Per the monthly stat charts displayed at the start of each month, Great Tusk had 37% in December, 53% in January, and 57% in February.)

Last generation, I think there was too much caution on behalf of banning problematic pokemon (too many suspect tests and not enough conversations among the council for quick bans). This led to heavily skewed usage stats of checks and counters that otherwise shouldn't have seen that much play (Looking at you Seismitoad). Clefable was good, but it was the only realistic answer to Urshifu-S.

I digress. My point here isn't the Great Tusk is problematic. But something is wrong with the meta, and the role compression offered by Great Tusk is probably the most efficient method to answer whatever that problem may be.
I'd assume Gholdengo is in a similar boat. It has 35%+ usage for the past three months. (37% in December, 43% in January, and 41% in Febrauary).

Something needs to be done. I would love to see Garganacl banned, as it just is dummy thiccccc (yes with five "C"s) and causes all sorts of problems.
However, I don't know what the actual problem is. I don't know if Great Tusk is a symptom or a cure, but I felt the need to call attention to it.

A parting thought: when the Home/DLC drops, I think we should learn from the mistakes of Gen 8. I don't think everything should be freed again (there were like... three suspects on Cinderace in gen 8 back when Libero was broken).
Please consider keeping all of the currently banned mons locked out of OU, or at least provide a transparent council vote on what should or shouldn't be allowed back. I'd also ask that the council vote on or outright ban any of the pokemon that were banned last gen. So Lando-I, Magearna, etc. Barring balance changes from Gamefreak, broken mons don't stop being broken, and I bet tera will help most of the Ubers more than hurt.

Again, I digress. My overall point is this: Something is wrong and clearly overcentralized in OU, moreso than possibly any other generation. Something is wrong, and I appreciate whatever changes may come to improve the health of the OU metagame.

Frankly I think the reason Great Tusk is so excessively used is quite obvious.
Generation 9 just simply doesn't have OU level viable hazard removers outside of Great Tusk and Corviknight, these two frankly just have so many more tools than the rest of the competition, and this isn't even on a level of them being "broken", they're just the two pokemon that can reliably get rid of hazards. Couple that with the increased distribution of spikes. a lot of OU level pokemon getting Stealth Rocks, Glimmora and you're essentially required to have one of the two on your team. This is why Hatterene is so much more used than last generation, preventing hazards from going up is essential to a lot of more offensive playstyles, and even stall builds.

Gholdengo's usage is coupled with just how great hazards are this generation, the lack of pokemon that can A. remove hazards and B. Beat Gholdengo 1v1, makes it such a great and appealing option in the current metagame. The lack of removal options is what causes both of these pokemon to be so great.

Last generation we had a ton of viable defoggers, Lando-T, Zapdos, Tornadus-T, Mandibuzz, Tapu Fini, all mons with either great typings or options for teams or reliable recovery. Once home comes around, this'll hopefully reduce the usage of these two (that is if we get more removal), but in this current metagame, Great Tusk, Corviknight and Gholdengo's usage is excessively bolstered by the great viability of hazards and the huge lack of viable removal.

 

[UnusualBoy]

Hey so I just want to start off saying in this post that I appreciate the time and effort that the OU council have put in this generation.
They have been more transparent and responsive to the player base, while also taking swift and corrective action on the problematic pokemon that have cropped up this generation.

Thank you Finchinator, ausma, ironwater, Ruft and TPP for all of your hard work thus far.

Now, I want to talk about the elephant in the room. Great Tusk.
I'm not posting to say "oh no Great Tusk is broken ban ban ban".
But this is the third consecutive month where it has been the top pokemon. With two consecutive months of an over 50% usage stat, I think there is something wrong with the OU tier. No pokemon should ever have that high usage. It's a cry for help. (Per the monthly stat charts displayed at the start of each month, Great Tusk had 37% in December, 53% in January, and 57% in February.)

Last generation, I think there was too much caution on behalf of banning problematic pokemon (too many suspect tests and not enough conversations among the council for quick bans). This led to heavily skewed usage stats of checks and counters that otherwise shouldn't have seen that much play (Looking at you Seismitoad). Clefable was good, but it was the only realistic answer to Urshifu-S.

I digress. My point here isn't the Great Tusk is problematic. But something is wrong with the meta, and the role compression offered by Great Tusk is probably the most efficient method to answer whatever that problem may be.
I'd assume Gholdengo is in a similar boat. It has 35%+ usage for the past three months. (37% in December, 43% in January, and 41% in Febrauary).

Something needs to be done. I would love to see Garganacl banned, as it just is dummy thiccccc (yes with five "C"s) and causes all sorts of problems.
However, I don't know what the actual problem is. I don't know if Great Tusk is a symptom or a cure, but I felt the need to call attention to it.

A parting thought: when the Home/DLC drops, I think we should learn from the mistakes of Gen 8. I don't think everything should be freed again (there were like... three suspects on Cinderace in gen 8 back when Libero was broken).
Please consider keeping all of the currently banned mons locked out of OU, or at least provide a transparent council vote on what should or shouldn't be allowed back. I'd also ask that the council vote on or outright ban any of the pokemon that were banned last gen. So Lando-I, Magearna, etc. Barring balance changes from Gamefreak, broken mons don't stop being broken, and I bet tera will help most of the Ubers more than hurt.

Again, I digress. My overall point is this: Something is wrong and clearly overcentralized in OU, moreso than possibly any other generation. Something is wrong, and I appreciate whatever changes may come to improve the health of the OU metagame.

GT is a great mon and it's easy to fit in most teams plus people want something to kind of fill Landorus' role but I also think some of its success has to do with the mon right after: Gholdengo. Tusk is its best counter and also gets rid of the hazards that Gholdy insists on keeping. If OU loses GT, Gholdengo usage would be through the roof (I mean it's currently at 40% that should tell you enough) and we'd prolly seeing it with over 60% usage.

Although I agree that the usage for both mon is insane lol, has that ever happened in OU? 2 mon with over 40% in usage?

 

[Turtleye_]

I was typing up a response but everything I wanted to say has been said already lol

Yeah, Tusk is just a symptom of Gen 9's Hazard game: General poor quality of hazard removers, Gholdengo (and Pult, to some extent) being everywhere, and Spikes & Rocks seeing quite a big increase in distribution.

The thing is that I just don't see a way to realistically change this for now. When HOME arrives, things might change. But in the meantime, what could the OU Council realistically do to adress the issue?

Ghold isn't really bannable (Although I personally hate it and wouldnt mind seeing it go), and neither is Tusk.
And even if Ghold does get the yeet, I doubt it would increase other spinners/foggers' viability aside from Corviknight. Realistically, the onlyother mon that would benefit from Ghold being gone would be Scizor but he's got other flaws too.

So then what... do we unban Cyclizar?
Ban Spikes or Rocks?
There's just not really a way to change this I think

 

[Sheerluck Holmes]

Personally I like having movepools shrank. Transfer-only moves like Toxic and Knock off are a total pain to get on cartridge, and even more obnoxious to play around. It's nice to see mons have limitations again.

 

[Rootb]

I was typing up a response but everything I wanted to say has been said already lol

Yeah, Tusk is just a symptom of Gen 9's Hazard game: General poor quality of hazard removers, Gholdengo (and Pult, to some extent) being everywhere, and Spikes & Rocks seeing quite a big increase in distribution.

The thing is that I just don't see a way to realistically change this for now. When HOME arrives, things might change. But in the meantime, what could the OU Council realistically do to adress the issue?

Ghold isn't really bannable (Although I personally hate it and wouldnt mind seeing it go), and neither is Tusk.
And even if Ghold does get the yeet, I doubt it would increase other spinners/foggers' viability aside from Corviknight. Realistically, the onlyother mon that would benefit from Ghold being gone would be Scizor but he's got other flaws too.

So then what... do we unban Cyclizar?
Ban Spikes or Rocks?
There's just not really a way to change this I think

Sometimes, it really feels like Rocks get an undue level of reverence for an ability that a bunch of mons are willing to waste their item slot on. Yeah, boots block Spikes and T-Spikes too, but.. that's not that much more relevant than Cloak's secondary effects in the current meta - just more visible. And, in the case of Dragonite? It's not really relevant at all!

Hell, you even run into the very fun issue where Rocks are super effective against almost everything with Defog, further forcing HDB onto said mons lest they take 25% on a switch in. If 60% of the meta is running the same answer to a single move, and the consensus is that you need an answer to it.. maybe the problem isn't the lack of varied answers to begin with?

I didn't really follow competitive before the HDB era, so I don't know a ton about how balanced rocks were back then. But nowadays, with dexit and reduced move pools, I think it's becoming a question worth asking.

 

[Eeveeto]

Regarding Great Tusk: It's not broken. It's the best Mon but I would say it was even overrated before Chien Pao and Espathra Bans. It's way better after those Bans (it even started appearing quite often in my teams, prior to the Bans I hardly ever had a good team with Great Tusk), but there is still more than enough counterplay. If anything, it's a symptom of how hazard centric the meta is, I would look to Spikes + Rocks + Gholdengo combination way earlier than I would look into Tusk, who still, while being able to do many things, can't do them all at once. By itself, it doesn't even centralize, it's just a splashable Mon.

 

[kosecant]

Sometimes, it really feels like Rocks get an undue level of reverence for an ability that a bunch of mons are willing to waste their item slot on. Yeah, boots block Spikes and T-Spikes too, but.. that's not that much more relevant than Cloak's secondary effects in the current meta - just more visible. And, in the case of Dragonite? It's not really relevant at all!

Hell, you even run into the very fun issue where Rocks are super effective against almost everything with Defog, further forcing HDB onto said mons lest they take 25% on a switch in. If 60% of the meta is running the same answer to a single move, and the consensus is that you need an answer to it.. maybe the problem isn't the lack of varied answers to begin with?

I didn't really follow competitive before the HDB era, so I don't know a ton about how balanced rocks were back then. But nowadays, with dexit and reduced move pools, I think it's becoming a question worth asking.

Arguably gens 8-9 are the worst rocks have ever been. Spikes are often considered better in this meta, and HDB are often better than items like leftovers for the Pokémon that use them. Hazards are very strong but not terribly difficult to play against, and help teams make progress.

 

[schlondark]

Rocks

The easiest way to illustrate how gamewarping Stealth Rock is is to imagine the history of the game if it was a different type than rock. Stealth Ice? Suddenly dragons are barely viable and every dragon analysis of every generation has to start with their crippling weakness.

It's quite simple really: Infinite damage potential off one move is, and always has been, stupid.

 

[SciWiz373]

I digress. My point here isn't the Great Tusk is problematic. But something is wrong with the meta, and the role compression offered by Great Tusk is probably the most efficient method to answer whatever that problem may be.
I'd assume Gholdengo is in a similar boat. It has 35%+ usage for the past three months. (37% in December, 43% in January, and 41% in Febrauary).

To an extent I feel like your worry about how "no OU Pokemon should have that high of usage" is simply unfounded. I can't find any current-day usage stats, but after a cursory search I can find some notable examples disproving this.

GSC Snorlax is used on *literally every* team, both in OU and Ubers.
ADV Tyranitar had a 70+% usage in the latest ADV Tournament (I could find, at least, which was also 2 years ago)
DPPt similarly has Tyranitar at 50+% usage. (According to this site at least, I have no idea if it's reliable https://asanrom.github.io/Smogon-Stats-Viewer/?month=2019-03&format=gen4ou&cut=1630)

But just going down the OUs on this site, every Gen but 5 and 6 have something (or multiple, for Gen 1) towering over the rest, and these Metas are all thriving to my knowledge.

 

[Return to Zero]

Stealth Bugs added, Chien-Pao allowed in OU again. A new age of evil dawns.

Really, Great Tusk is fine. It's the glue holding this meta together. I think the more pressing question would be how to get Rapid Spin or Defog on more OU mons so that we have more than three-four mons capable of doing it and one that's just better at it than everything else.

Love me Tusk.

 

[Rootb]

To an extent I feel like your worry about how "no OU Pokemon should have that high of usage" is simply unfounded. I can't find any current-day usage stats, but after a cursory search I can find some notable examples disproving this.

GSC Snorlax is used on *literally every* team, both in OU and Ubers.
ADV Tyranitar had a 70+% usage in the latest ADV Tournament (I could find, at least, which was also 2 years ago)
DPPt similarly has Tyranitar at 50+% usage. (According to this site at least, I have no idea if it's reliable https://asanrom.github.io/Smogon-Stats-Viewer/?month=2019-03&format=gen4ou&cut=1630)

But just going down the OUs on this site, every Gen but 5 and 6 have something (or multiple, for Gen 1) towering over the rest, and these Metas are all thriving to my knowledge.

SPL's overall usage statistics are pretty illuminating. While they don't tell the whole picture, when you look at what Gen 9's meta looks like despite its relative youth, it's pretty easy to draw a certain conclusion: Great Tusk is a massive outlier as far as use rate. You've got to go all the way back to gen 2 to find anything else that breaks 66% usage (let alone 75!), and those metas are.. to put it mildly? Not the healthiest in terms of diversity.

It'd be easy to argue all day about just how big of a deal it is, but as far as league play goes? There is a pretty clear consensus as to just how essential Tusk is to teambuilding.

 

[pulsar512b]

To an extent I feel like your worry about how "no OU Pokemon should have that high of usage" is simply unfounded. I can't find any current-day usage stats, but after a cursory search I can find some notable examples disproving this.

GSC Snorlax is used on *literally every* team, both in OU and Ubers.
ADV Tyranitar had a 70+% usage in the latest ADV Tournament (I could find, at least, which was also 2 years ago)
DPPt similarly has Tyranitar at 50+% usage. (According to this site at least, I have no idea if it's reliable https://asanrom.github.io/Smogon-Stats-Viewer/?month=2019-03&format=gen4ou&cut=1630)

But just going down the OUs on this site, every Gen but 5 and 6 have something (or multiple, for Gen 1) towering over the rest, and these Metas are all thriving to my knowledge.

also worth noting that in one of the generations that I think one could easily argue has metagame balance issues that should be handled via tiering action (gen 7) the most used mon (lando-t, naturally) has about 40-50% usage (depending on what you pull from, varies. spl has 50% for instance). if you look at all the things that one could reasonably consider 'broken' or worthy of tiering action in kartana, magearna, ash-greninja, possibly volcarona (a huge stretch), lando-t doesn't answer any of these almost at all. It can help awkwardly pivot around kartana and av magearna but that's far from the main methods teams typically want to use to handle these threats (see: one of the most common defensive structures for BO is lando+torn-t+av magearna). While these numbers aren't quite as high as tusk is, they definitely show that pokemon can be extremely common while not necessarily being a response to brokens.

Great Tusk is simply gen 9's new landorus-therian, an excellent option for defensive and offensive role compression with a myriad of good sets, but certainly not broken or a herald of broken elements in the metagame at large.

(also for usage stats the showdown ladder usage stats and spl usage stats are your friend, and typically other large tournaments will also have similar threads. willing to give advice on how to use/interpret if you like. there's also various third party websites that unofficially help visualize, but they tend to be a bit out of date at times)
It's also probably worth noting that pre-espathra ban statistics reflect a different metagame for what that's worth

 

[Skyuchi]

To an extent I feel like your worry about how "no OU Pokemon should have that high of usage" is simply unfounded. I can't find any current-day usage stats, but after a cursory search I can find some notable examples disproving this.

GSC Snorlax is used on *literally every* team, both in OU and Ubers.
ADV Tyranitar had a 70+% usage in the latest ADV Tournament (I could find, at least, which was also 2 years ago)
DPPt similarly has Tyranitar at 50+% usage. (According to this site at least, I have no idea if it's reliable https://asanrom.github.io/Smogon-Stats-Viewer/?month=2019-03&format=gen4ou&cut=1630)

But just going down the OUs on this site, every Gen but 5 and 6 have something (or multiple, for Gen 1) towering over the rest, and these Metas are all thriving to my knowledge.

This is a bit outside the scope now of Gen 9 OU but hot take - something being broken should be banned regardless of how much usage it has or what it does for the tier.
Gen 2 Snorlax is broken. Citing it is not a good example of something being used on every team yet deserving to stay in a metagame.

 

[1LDK]

As far as I know, the reason they won't ban Snorlax is that the massive tier earthquake across all tiers would be too much for an old gen

Anyway, let's move on another topic real quick, we have a possible tier earthquake, with the new Walking Wake and the possible (and i hope) ban of garganacl, what do you guys think the future has for us?

 

[Soiramio3000]

The psychic spam team is kinda popular rn, if you take a look a bit lower, Polt and Indedee have almost the same usage.

Psychic spam?
What psychic spam?
But the metagame is full of dark types this generation.
How is anyone suppossed to use psychic spam reliably?

 

[Rootb]

As far as I know, the reason they won't ban Snorlax is that the massive tier earthquake across all tiers would be too much for an old gen

Anyway, let's move on another topic real quick, we have a possible tier earthquake, with the new Walking Wake and the possible (and i hope) ban of garganacl, what do you guys think the future has for us?

I think Garg gets banned, Gholdengo gets better as a result, and Tusk's usage (somehow) continues to rise alongside Gholdengo's stocks. At this point, I have no idea what could happen (Home included) to make Great Therian and Gholdengo not incredibly powerful, because "being in NatDex" sure isn't enough to stop them.

(or Kingambit, for that matter, but I think Gambit is like the perfect example of a strong healthy mon)

 

[Carl_the_turtle]

Correct me if I'm radically misinterpreting something, but why is Garganacl being so fervently pushed for a ban if at high-level play (SPL) it's consistently been underperforming in its roles?

 

[Soiramio3000]

How come grimsnarl and scizor both dropped?
What changed?

Was chien pao the only reason people used scizor?

What on earth caused grimsnarl to drop?

 

[MrE]

As far as I know, the reason they won't ban Snorlax is that the massive tier earthquake across all tiers would be too much for an old gen

Anyway, let's move on another topic real quick, we have a possible tier earthquake, with the new Walking Wake and the possible (and i hope) ban of garganacl, what do you guys think the future has for us?

Hasn't there been a bunch of gsc tourneys that have been ran with the sleepy boy banned?

Speaking of sleepy boy, Make Snorlax Great Again!

 

[MrE]

How come grimsnarl and scizor both dropped?
What changed?

Was chien pao the only reason people used scizor?

What on earth caused grimsnarl to drop?

I dunno about Scizor but no Emu is why I'd guess Grimmsnarl has dropped off a bit

 

[Rootb]

Correct me if I'm radically misinterpreting something, but why is Garganacl being so fervently pushed for a ban if at high-level play (SPL) it's consistently been underperforming in its roles?

The short answer is that it's kind of miserable to play against, and it predates quite effectively on many mons which would be intuitive counters to it. The more involved answer is something other people could explain far better than I, but intentional metagaming against Garg is one big reason.

 

[Carl_the_turtle]

I dunno about Scizor but no Emu is why I'd guess Grimmsnarl has dropped off a bit

for sciz having bad MUs against tusk and dengo isn't a viable selling point right now

 

[Soiramio3000]

I dunno about Scizor but no Emu is why I'd guess Grimmsnarl has dropped off a bit

One of the niches scizor had, aside from killing chien pao with priority, was getting a OHKO on grimsnarl before it sets shields.

 

[SpritePony]

How come grimsnarl and scizor both dropped?
What changed?

Was chien pao the only reason people used scizor?

What on earth caused grimsnarl to drop?

Scizor's best MUs were against Valiant and Pao. Since Valiant isn't SUPER common, Scizor isn't as favorable.

Just took a look at the tier shifts list. The most surprising to me are Grimm/Scizor drop to UU, and the Skew/Float/Tauros-Water drop to RU. I guess Rain is becoming unfavorable now, or Skew/Float are just not favorable in Rain anymore with Gren and Wake existing.