It's been awhile, but it's finally time for an update to the Viability Rankings. As you may expect, DLC threw a huge wrench into our plans so we've held off on voting for awhile now, which has unfortunately left the VR somewhat dated (i.e. Togekiss should've been S for awhile, but more on that in a second).
Now we have an entirely new metagame and despite it being live on PS for some time, it's still too early for us to accurately update the VR at this time. At this time we're only moving up Rillaboom and Cinderace, as these two have been in the meta for a longer time with their hidden abilities and their place in the meta is far more clear. We're also making some slight adjustments to the S tier for now since keeping the S tier accurate is the best we can do. While some of us feel that Togekiss is still S tier worthy, that discussion was during a previous meta so we'll be re-evaluating that one as soon as possible as there are new factors in the metagame that may push against it slightly.
Cinderace rises from B+ to S as the biggest standout in the new meta. We saw a huge surge in Cinderace usage when Libero was released, and that went a lot way in boosting it up from it's high B rank already. However, Libero alone is not what makes Cinderace a clear contender for S rank and it was debatable if it was quite S rank with just that. The G-Max form pushes it to yet another level that's previously unmatched in Gen 8 BSS, giving it an insane 160 BP Max move that has Mold Breaker effect. Between this, a solid physical movepool, and great Speed, it's difficult to contest Cinderace without a Dynamax of your own. It's not quite a Gen 7 Greninja in terms of versatility, but for the context of this metagame it's a more than worthy imitation.
Rillaboom rises from C to A- in a similarly insane spike in viability, and could even see a further rise as high as A+ in the future. Grassy Terrain and Grassy Glide are both immensely useful tools that turned Rillaboom from a reasonably niche pick into a major metagame threat, and having a G-Max move with a Mold Breaker effect is just icing on the cake. The increase in strong Water-types to contest Cinderace, such as Azumarill and Rapid Strike Urshifu, only serves to benefit Rillaboom further as it matches up favorably against all of them except Gyarados, which is still a reasonably neutral matchup. Rillaboom is everything Tapu Bulu wishes it was last gen and more, which of course includes being actually good.
Excadrill and Snorlax drop from S to A+ as well for the time being, as we don't feel they hold up as well as S tier threats for the time being. As stated before, keeping the S tier as updated as possible is the least we can do at the moment, and while it may turn out that one or both of these still deserves it, this feels more appropriate at the moment. Fighting-types actually exist now and Cinderace is bad news for both of them as well, so these two S rank threats feel like the ones that suffer the most from this immediate meta shift. We will see if things remain this way for these two though.
Additional nominations for the future:
Togekiss from A+ to S (for real this time)
Corviknight from A+ down to A/A-
Gyarados from A up to A+
Dracozolt from A- up to A
Primarina from B+ up to A/A-
Ditto from B+ down to B-/C
Conkeldurr from B+ down to B/B-
Durant down from B+ down to B/B-
Indeedee-M being re-ranked somewhere
However, that's not all I'm going to talk about today. It obviously wouldn't be helpful to wait until the metagame has settled to do anything with the new and returning Pokemon, so we've been discussing impressions on them so that we can at least give an idea of what to look out for in the early meta. Please keep in mind that this is still early meta so some of these impressions might turn out to be completely off-base once things settle a bit. However, for the time being this is what we feel about the new inclusions in the metagame in broad terms, similar to the OU Viability Rankings though they do it for the entire VR (credit to Finchinator and the OU Council for this approach).
Once we've had more time, we will try to rank these Pokemon properly, provided they remain meta-relevant. For the time being, these will be listed within the "New Pokemon Rank" at the bottom of the OP. Here they are in a easy-to-parse visual list, courtesy of marilli.
Now we have an entirely new metagame and despite it being live on PS for some time, it's still too early for us to accurately update the VR at this time. At this time we're only moving up Rillaboom and Cinderace, as these two have been in the meta for a longer time with their hidden abilities and their place in the meta is far more clear. We're also making some slight adjustments to the S tier for now since keeping the S tier accurate is the best we can do. While some of us feel that Togekiss is still S tier worthy, that discussion was during a previous meta so we'll be re-evaluating that one as soon as possible as there are new factors in the metagame that may push against it slightly.
Additional nominations for the future:
Togekiss from A+ to S (for real this time)
Corviknight from A+ down to A/A-
Gyarados from A up to A+
Dracozolt from A- up to A
Primarina from B+ up to A/A-
Ditto from B+ down to B-/C
Conkeldurr from B+ down to B/B-
Durant down from B+ down to B/B-
Indeedee-M being re-ranked somewhere
However, that's not all I'm going to talk about today. It obviously wouldn't be helpful to wait until the metagame has settled to do anything with the new and returning Pokemon, so we've been discussing impressions on them so that we can at least give an idea of what to look out for in the early meta. Please keep in mind that this is still early meta so some of these impressions might turn out to be completely off-base once things settle a bit. However, for the time being this is what we feel about the new inclusions in the metagame in broad terms, similar to the OU Viability Rankings though they do it for the entire VR (credit to Finchinator and the OU Council for this approach).
Once we've had more time, we will try to rank these Pokemon properly, provided they remain meta-relevant. For the time being, these will be listed within the "New Pokemon Rank" at the bottom of the OP. Here they are in a easy-to-parse visual list, courtesy of marilli.
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