How do we feel about being classified as a "Randomized Format" now in the updated Showdown interface? In a sense we are the exact opposite of random battles. You have control of your teambuilding choices, but minimal control of in-battle decisions. In randbats you have no control over teambuilding choices and full control of in-battle decisions.
The history of where Metronome has been classified as a format is longer than you may expect. Since its inception in 2018, Metronome Battle used to be grouped with all the Doubles formats like DOU and VGC, though I personally thought of it as more like an OM, but technically its intended discussion room on Showdown was the Random Battles room even back then which you can see some mentions of in the thread. Even this thread itself was in the parent Showdown forum until about 2021 when the Random Battles subforum was made. Only last year it got its own format section, along with [Gen 8] Metronome Battle being challenge only, lasting until recently. I would say there's no perfect solution here because having its own heading is overly specific, while Metronome doesn't completely fit with any other section, so the existing affinity with Randomized Metas is the next best thing and was probably overdue. At least the new star feature to pin formats makes it so you don't really have to mind where it's located now, but there is one ramification to this change which I'll get into soon that might not be obvious to regulars in this thread.Happy December! Metronome Battle now has a new home on the right side of the formats menu. What else will the future of Metronome Battles bring? No one truly knows.
It's been a year since the release of Gen 9, and in about two weeks, the Indigo Disk DLC will release with a lot of new/returning moves and abilities/mons to look forward to, and a whole new tera type. I personally don't expect the tera Terapagos to be legal BST-wise but we'll see what happens, and so far the DLC has had a good track record in adding new moves to the Metronome pool.
In other news about new mons, the new CAP 33 Cresceidon has released. It is a Water/Fairy type made to be a high-speed wall, with a unique stat spread of 80 HP / 32 Atk / 111 Def / 88 SpA / 99 SpD / 125 Spe (535 BST) that has Attack as its dump stat.
The battle count for November had 33144 battles which was a large dip, even lower than the end of Gen 8. I don't know if the current state of Toxic Chain is to blame, but I haven't been playing much myself. I imagine things should kick back up in December if it's just loss of interest, but I did end up coming up with another theory while writing this post, and it comes back to the format selector change that happened right before November.
This is what you see when opening the format list on a fresh Showdown session, where the Randomized Metas heading is collapsed by default, hiding Metronome Battle from view. I imagine this may be the cause of some visibility loss for new or casual players to add another step to find it, at least compared to when it had its own section. 30k is still a lot of battles but it's important to note any factors at the time affecting these stats.
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2023-11/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt
https://www.smogon.com/stats/2023-11/moveset/gen9metronomebattle-1630.txt
November 2023: 1630-weighted Top 10 + last month (October) positions:
#1: Mega Venusaur (no change)
#2: Ting-Lu (no change)
#3: Mega Heracross (no change)
#4: Blissey (#5)
#5: Mega Ampharos (#4)
#6: Dragapult (#10)
#7: Mega Slowbro (#9)
#8: Mega Sableye (#7)
#9: Necturna (#12)
#10: Mega Gengar (#6)
Venusaur is still the reigning champion of usage by far with 13945 raw uses, with Heracross in second at 7930. Most of the top picks are still the same, but a fair share of sub-1000 mons are visible in the top 20 like Guzzlord, Altaria, Tyranitar, and Iron Hands, and some dark horses include Wishiwashi-School at #20 with 358 uses, Baxcalibur at #24 with 451 uses, and Marshadow at #25 with 843 uses punching above their weight.
I noticed that compared to last month with 42 mons with >1000 uses, this month only has 24, so I decided to compare some of the common picks' raw usage (0 weighting) between this month and last month to see if my hypothesis about the casual majority dropping off has any bearing to it, even with about almost half the battle count. The same mons still make up most of the top spots of raw usage, but notably Snorlax and Mew fell off the most rank-wise, going from #10 and #14 to #22 and #23, which are the most common picks among casual players for being solid Gen 1 mons who learn the move in vanilla and are commonly used in videos. Otherwise there doesn't seem to be a huge change in raw usage other than numbers going down in general.
Over in the moveset file, we can see Toxic Chain with its true name along with Mirror Herb still going strong on Venusaur, though Flower Veil is in a close second instead of Magic Bounce now. Ting-Lu is still being used as its Flower Veil supporter. Baxcalibur is running Power Spot paired with Wishiwashi-School, while Wishiwashi iteslf has picked up Sword of Ruin over Pickup for synergy. Marshadow seems to be running generalist strategies of Magic Bounce and Intrepid Sword with Choice Band, mainly paired with Deoxys and Banette. I also noted that the posted Ability Shield Dondozo set has made it to the highest weighted usage, while Pastel Veil still maintains steady ground on Sableye and Pokestar UFO.
Looking through the top viability ceilings (highest GXE achieved by a user that used a Pokemon), Mega Venusaur and Ting-Lu take a major lead at 84, and are the only ones even in the 80s. The next highest viability ceilings are from Iron Hands and Mew in 78, with Iron Hands continuing to Toxic Chain while Mew is still split between Competitive and Defiant. Thirdly we have a four-way tie at 77 between Imposter Blissey, Dragapult still favouring Magic Guard and Mirror Herb, Necturna with Toxic Chain overtaking Thick Fat, and Fluffy WP Guzzlord still standing strong with a #14 ranking. Lastly there are 5 mons with 76, including Mega Heracross gaining a bit more Defiant usage, Mega Ampharos still preferring Magic Guard with Mirror Herb, Glastrier split between Intrepid Sword/Simple/Delta Stream/Primordial Sea, and the forementioned Wishiwashi-School and Baxcalibur.
Overall not too much has been changing in the meta at large, but soon the DLC release on December 14th will cause the next major upheaval before the game settles for a while, and as always I will try to cover every relevant change as we know of it. Thanks for your reading.