Okay, went back to peak ladder once more with the new meta.
Before commenting on the meta, I'd like to propose a new sample team:
As linked above, this team changes about half of the team members of the original version that had
/
,
and
, this may seem drastic, but hear me out.
provides Fluffy, which is crucial to cover most physical attackers on the meta, as we all know the trend is to stack offensive multipliers and reach surprisingly high results, Trick is a good tool to cripple some potentially threatening sweepers like
and
, Poltergeist also hits quite well considering that it ignores Fluffy, allowing it to be a decent lead and late-game cleaner, and Body Press acts as decent coverage to hit Normal-types like
.
provides Stealth Rock, Natural Cure to ensure everyone remains healthy (notably giving
and
less passivity with Rest), and is a blanket check to special attackers, being able to wear them down with Seismic Toss, or Shadow Ball when dealing with Ghost-types.
's ability combined with Fluffy nets a x2.5 multiplier to physical bulk, allowing for stuff like this, for instance:
Leech Seed is a good tool to wear down opponents while also potentially healing allies, Foul Play punishes some setup sweepers that try to break past it, most notably
and
, and it can Terastallize to cover other things too, with Knock Off shutting down
and
, easing the act of making progress by wearing down the other team. Protect without Pressure may seem unecessary, but it increases the recovery gained between Leech Seed and Leftovers, does chip to teams reliant on Guts or Toxic Boost, and eases scouting on opponents.
Levitate from
means that the team only cares about Stealth Rock, and with no mons particularly weak to it, combined with the capability to encourage opponents to remove them by drowning them in hazards between
and
, while also spinblocking with the dual Ghost-types (or
for the rare
), means that lacking hazard removal isn't as bad as one would think, abusing status with Hex also minimizes its passivity, especially now that
has been rendered irrelevant, being able to comfortably come into weak Knock Offs (its item can't be removed and thus the move doesn't get boosted either) is also a nice bonus to support the team.
with Levitate walls a good chunk of the meta, both on the physical and special spectrums, and being able to make progress in most match-ups (it does little in match-ups involving other
and Levitate mons) renders it a quite valuable option, especially to cover the weakness to Fire otherwise granted by
's Fluffy.
Did you know that netically
is almost as physically bulky as
? Clodsire holds an anti-meta typing, handling
,
(not triggering Rage Fist is easy as it just isn't breaking past it alongside
, requiring a ton of predictions to avoid being status'd),
and mons that ran random Grass coverage like
, this combined with synergy with Flash Fire in total rendering it practically immune to burns, paralysis and poisoning, and Levitate ensuring the only hazard damage is minimal to the point it's healed by
in the same turn, renders
a quite strong upgrade overall from
with a ton of longevity.
"But Bob! What about Mold Breaker?"
Well,
and
are straight up banned, lol, and the only relevant Mold Breaker mon in this context is
, which struggles with
anyways.
"What about
?"
That mon indeed hits ridiculously hard, I did once face a team like I described in a previous post here, namely involving donors of Sharpness, Technician, Steely Spirit and Adaptability, which in total its Tachyon Cutter gets a x6.75 multiplier, which puts pre-nerf STAB Self-Destruct to shame, and that's not even counting items or setup,
barely lives this stuff and so is required to be kept healthy in this kind of match-ups, and ideally hope they don't have Focus Blast, or hope that it misses.
252 SpA Choice Specs Adaptability Iron Crown Tachyon Cutter (169BP, 2 hits) vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Heatran: 250-296 (64.7 - 76.6%) -- approx. 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
The
variants of
do ensure a 3HKO from this move, and you can go out of your way for Bulletproof support to make it a sturdy answer (by becoming immune to Focus Blast), but at that point you'd be considerably compromising the structure of a team just for one mon, only time will tell if
is fine to stay on the meta or not.
Okay, speaking of the meta, it seems that ladder hasn't changed much, although a rise on team structures that spam type immunity abilities like Water Absorb, Flash Fire, Levitate and so on has been happening, the users also seem to have been gaining some experience on using more optimal ability stacking, although as a result of the big stall wars, it's also easy to notice that ladder activity has decreased a bit now that little Timmies can't just watch their mons 2HKO everything for the most part.
While we're at it, I'd also like to talk about a particular thing that has also been complained on in the recent survey that I forgot to comment on.
Harvest teams have been a potent alternative to annoy passive team structures for a good while, and the ability (heh) to have pseudo-Regenerator between Cheek Pouch, Harvest, Drought and any berry of choice is rendered almost fool-proof with Sticky Hold ensuring that this kind of stalling can go on forever, however, as such team structures rely on multiple species with lacking stats in general, they easily struggle against offensive teams, but overall one could argue that they're uncompetitive as they're heavily match-up fishy.