OU ADV OU Metagame Discussion

[Alpha Atom™]

I like Glalie a lot and I personally was experimenting with it in my builder this past mushi league season, but I don't believe I ever got the chance to actually bring it. I came up with this lead-tailored set that I believe gives you good opening sequences against some very common leads, but I've been struggling to actually fit it on any teams, which I think may just be a symptom of Glalie being... not that great.


Glalie @ Leftovers
Ability: Inner Focus
EVs: 252 HP / 124 Def / 12 SpA / 92 SpD / 28 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Spikes
- Ice Beam
- Explosion
- Earthquake / ???

VS
One of the opening sequences I tailored this towards was Zapdos. At the time I was prepping to face sheik who had decently high zapdos lead usage, and I found that glalie could be EV'd to always live two Timid Zapdos thunderbolts while always KOing with two ice beams.

252 SpA 30 IVs Zapdos Thunderbolt vs. 252 HP / 92 SpD Glalie: 163-192 (44.7 - 52.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
12- SpA Glalie Ice Beam vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Zapdos: 173-204 (53.7 - 63.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

The opening sequence I anticipated was a turn 1 tbolt vs ice beam, in which the Zapdos user is forced to swap out or sac their zap, giving the glalie a turn to spike or explode against another enemy.

vs
This is the other opening sequence I had envisioned, EVing Glalie to always survive an Adamant Tyranitar's Rock Slide and be able to set up a spike, living sand damage as well to lead to an explosion turn or another spike if deemed necessary. 223 Speed also helps speed creep 252 neutral tar and mons that aim to speed creep it (like many base 70s). The unfortunate side of this set is that it always loses against bandtar, but considering glalie typically loses against Tyranitar anyway, I don't think that's much of a detriment. Outside of these two lead matchups, I think this set performs about as well as any other Glalie, maybe a bit weaker than hard physical sets like the one in the quoted post above or other sets that aim to use ice beam as a main attack.

252+ Atk 30 IVs Tyranitar Rock Slide vs. 252 HP / 124 Def Glalie: 287-338 (78.8 - 92.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after sandstorm damage and Leftovers recovery

Before sharing the teams I built around glalie, I'd like to say that I'm still a novice builder and these should be treated moreso as ideas rather than fleshed-out ready-to-play teams.


https://pokepast.es/727fa7e7ee1ba749
On to the teams that I attempted to build around Glalie, first is this glalie physoff team. This team capitalizes on the fact that Skarmory is a primary switch-in to a lead glalie, and also benefits from a very unique opening line in the Glalie exploding on a Skarmory (or its protect), leaving it open to a magneton trap. Apart from this opening sequence, this is a standard physically offensive team, packed with members such as agiligross and curselax that really benefit from skarmory going down.


https://pokepast.es/be6f5ccb3630309f
I think this takes the shape of a more traditional HO team that glalie may be found on, with Charizard and Jolteon acting as offensive pressure towards Skarmory. Rather than an aggressive explosion opening line, this moreso benefits from the fact that the Glalie set is tailored to beat lead Zapdos, whose offensive and defensive power can check Charizard and Metagross. I had more success testing this over the prior team, but that may have to do with mixoff's ridiculous mu against the general ladder.

Glalie is definitely a mon that I think is worth experimenting with, as I think it has a lot of potential to fit on teams that don't necessarily represent its expected HO playstyle. As for best partners, I think Agiligross and offensive Swampert are incredible, as they can take advantage of chipped Skarmory and other mons that come in to soak up explosions like opposing Swamperts. Finally, one last mon that I've been trying to build around with Glalie is Pursuittar, as I think it can lead to some interesting guaranteed Gengar traps because of Glalie's telegraphed gameplan. The team structure I had in my head was Glalie / Pursuittar / Moltres / Starmie, but I think it needs some work to get off the ground.

You really cooked with the EV Spread. I will be trying to make a team around this. Thanks you the great build!

 

[YubelVT]

I've joined the dark side of the metagame. By that I mean I've started using SubPass Lead Zapdos on a dugtrio team and god it's so fucking fun. I've won games on the spot by passing a sub to offensive starmie, I've won long games by just drypassing with zapdos like I usually do, and just having a zapdos behind a sub is oftentimes good enough to put immense pressure (no pun intended) on the opponent. This is the team I built and it's so fun: https://pokepast.es/a0eec154a41642e9

 

[YubelVT]

Not to double post but I swear to god this meta would be infinitely improved if you banned speed passing. There's a decent chance you could just remove most of the restrictions on BP if you banned speed passing, plus it would remove the ninjask cheese teams mid ladder loves and force them to actually play the game. Yeah it would mean that the agilipass team where I pass agility and a sub to rhydon wouldn't work anymore but that's a price I'm willing to pay

Edit: I made this post in a wave of salt after losing entirely to protect RNG against a speedpass team but I stand by most of it. Like RIP to the guy running thief skarmory and quick claw dusclops on his speedpass team (you are the only creative speedpasser I've ever met) but this shit gotta go fam.

 

[mr.pinklives]

Im not ranked high enough to really say if speed passing is competitive or cheesy or wtv
but it is super annoying to play against, especially ninjask
i think just banning ninjask would make speedpassing more tolerable tbh
I kinda agree that bp would have less restrictions without speed pass, but passing a bunch of other stat boosts would still be so annoying

 

[Mintyfresh756]

I think that Speedpass as a whole should be banned, ideally without the removal of any other BP restrictions. (AKA multi boost passing)

All three of the common speedpassers are degenerate in their own ways.

Ninjask is the worst offender, and teams built around it are the most annoying to play around. Mag makes it so skarm is not a reliable answer, and the other roarers are generally pretty easy to take care of if they only have one, which most teams do. And once the roarer is dead a single misspredict can instantly lose you the game because of how disgustingly powerful marowak is with Sd up. Also the fact that Ninjask abusers figured out that they can also cheese bulky setup mons and roarers with sand attack should’ve immediately gotten it banned but whatever. That said fishing for paras with Ninjask is a very similar strat that can instantly win the game if they get a sub on a para turn that allows marowak to come in safely. Extremely niche Sidenote but I hate that the high score for the 3 BL mon ladder achievement will always be a Ninjask Marowak team because they are already 2 mons that fit the criteria that are actually very good.

Maybe a controversial take but I think Smeargle is almost as degenerate as Ninjask and personally I barely put them above Ninjask abusers as people. Sleep adds no value to the competitive meta except it is pretty good against slow teams which are generally very powerful at a high level, but realistically sleep should get gen 9’d which would make smeargle awful but it is way too easy for it to generate value as of now tbh. The real issue with smeargle is that it can literally run anything so you may not know it is Speedpass until it is too late. Also extremely degenerate is the belly drum pass set, but that is beside the point.

Zap is the most minor offender but it’s still lame for two reasons. First is that the first agility is probably free since people don’t usually run that set, and the second is that it smacks skarm and swampert if you run hp grass. It can even run roar to get rid of other roar attempts.

Realistically who really thinks Speedpass abusers actually know the game at all, I know when I first started playing gen 3 the first team I made was a Ninjask marowak team because I knew that I didn’t have the knowledge to beat anyone even halfway decent and yet I very quickly hit top 100. It’s basically a flowchart to pilot those teams. If people want to play setup sweeper matchup fishing every game gen 9 is currently the modern gen so go try that. I genuinely believe nothing of value would be lost if Speedpass was banned.

That said imo we probably should keep multi boost passing banned cause if not it is an ok chance it could get statpassing overall banned.

Notably I generally hover rank 10 when I’m playing normal teams so it’s not like I’m some salty low ladder player who doesn’t know the meta at all. I don’t even see these teams often but everytime I do I just wanna close the game out of boredom even though I usually beat them

 

[YubelVT]

I think that Speedpass as a whole should be banned, ideally without the removal of any other BP restrictions. (AKA multi boost passing)

All three of the common speedpassers are degenerate in their own ways.

Ninjask is the worst offender, and teams built around it are the most annoying to play around. Mag makes it so skarm is not a reliable answer, and the other roarers are generally pretty easy to take care of if they only have one, which most teams do. And once the roarer is dead a single misspredict can instantly lose you the game because of how disgustingly powerful marowak is with Sd up. Also the fact that Ninjask abusers figured out that they can also cheese bulky setup mons and roarers with sand attack should’ve immediately gotten it banned but whatever. That said fishing for paras with Ninjask is a very similar strat that can instantly win the game if they get a sub on a para turn that allows marowak to come in safely. Extremely niche Sidenote but I hate that the high score for the 3 BL mon ladder achievement will always be a Ninjask Marowak team because they are already 2 mons that fit the criteria that are actually very good.

Maybe a controversial take but I think Smeargle is almost as degenerate as Ninjask and personally I barely put them above Ninjask abusers as people. Sleep adds no value to the competitive meta except it is pretty good against slow teams which are generally very powerful at a high level, but realistically sleep should get gen 9’d which would make smeargle awful but it is way too easy for it to generate value as of now tbh. The real issue with smeargle is that it can literally run anything so you may not know it is Speedpass until it is too late. Also extremely degenerate is the belly drum pass set, but that is beside the point.

Zap is the most minor offender but it’s still lame for two reasons. First is that the first agility is probably free since people don’t usually run that set, and the second is that it smacks skarm and swampert if you run hp grass. It can even run roar to get rid of other roar attempts.

Realistically who really thinks Speedpass abusers actually know the game at all, I know when I first started playing gen 3 the first team I made was a Ninjask marowak team because I knew that I didn’t have the knowledge to beat anyone even halfway decent and yet I very quickly hit top 100. It’s basically a flowchart to pilot those teams. If people want to play setup sweeper matchup fishing every game gen 9 is currently the modern gen so go try that. I genuinely believe nothing of value would be lost if Speedpass was banned.

That said imo we probably should keep multi boost passing banned cause if not it is an ok chance it could get statpassing overall banned.

Notably I generally hover rank 10 when I’m playing normal teams so it’s not like I’m some salty low ladder player who doesn’t know the meta at all. I don’t even see these teams often but everytime I do I just wanna close the game out of boredom even though I usually beat them

Ninjask also learns toxic so you can't even do the phazing with your normal phazers (minus skarmory which those teams will handle as mentioned in your post) without getting something crippled outside of the niche perish song celebi. I thing agilipass zap is maybe the only speedpasser I'm ok with existing but also getting rid of it would just be consistent so I'm content with him dying. Onto sleep, I think it's honestly pretty healthy in this generation (then again I'm like 1600 flat at best). The setters with consistent sleep moves are relatively slow and it's not completely unrealistic that you burn enough sleep turns over the course of the game anyway. I wouldn't be too beat up about it if sleep left but I don't think it's necessarily an issue either.

 

[mr.pinklives]

I think that Speedpass as a whole should be banned, ideally without the removal of any other BP restrictions. (AKA multi boost passing)

All three of the common speedpassers are degenerate in their own ways.

Ninjask is the worst offender, and teams built around it are the most annoying to play around. Mag makes it so skarm is not a reliable answer, and the other roarers are generally pretty easy to take care of if they only have one, which most teams do. And once the roarer is dead a single misspredict can instantly lose you the game because of how disgustingly powerful marowak is with Sd up. Also the fact that Ninjask abusers figured out that they can also cheese bulky setup mons and roarers with sand attack should’ve immediately gotten it banned but whatever. That said fishing for paras with Ninjask is a very similar strat that can instantly win the game if they get a sub on a para turn that allows marowak to come in safely. Extremely niche Sidenote but I hate that the high score for the 3 BL mon ladder achievement will always be a Ninjask Marowak team because they are already 2 mons that fit the criteria that are actually very good.

Maybe a controversial take but I think Smeargle is almost as degenerate as Ninjask and personally I barely put them above Ninjask abusers as people. Sleep adds no value to the competitive meta except it is pretty good against slow teams which are generally very powerful at a high level, but realistically sleep should get gen 9’d which would make smeargle awful but it is way too easy for it to generate value as of now tbh. The real issue with smeargle is that it can literally run anything so you may not know it is Speedpass until it is too late. Also extremely degenerate is the belly drum pass set, but that is beside the point.

Zap is the most minor offender but it’s still lame for two reasons. First is that the first agility is probably free since people don’t usually run that set, and the second is that it smacks skarm and swampert if you run hp grass. It can even run roar to get rid of other roar attempts.

Realistically who really thinks Speedpass abusers actually know the game at all, I know when I first started playing gen 3 the first team I made was a Ninjask marowak team because I knew that I didn’t have the knowledge to beat anyone even halfway decent and yet I very quickly hit top 100. It’s basically a flowchart to pilot those teams. If people want to play setup sweeper matchup fishing every game gen 9 is currently the modern gen so go try that. I genuinely believe nothing of value would be lost if Speedpass was banned.

That said imo we probably should keep multi boost passing banned cause if not it is an ok chance it could get statpassing overall banned.

Notably I generally hover rank 10 when I’m playing normal teams so it’s not like I’m some salty low ladder player who doesn’t know the meta at all. I don’t even see these teams often but everytime I do I just wanna close the game out of boredom even though I usually beat them

LMAO
go try that matchup fishing bs in gen 9 is a bar