in my five minutes of playing the new home meta, these home additions have made weather even more powerful. im mainly going to talk about rain and sun here because sand and snow didnt see much change from what i see.
starting off with
rain, rain already seemed good before home but the addition of basculegion and return of both tornadus and zapdos have really catapulted its potential. basculegion imo is really interesting because it actually doesnt have any physical ghost stabs given we banned last respects (deservingly), and the only other one is phantom force. it feels like a midground between barraskewda and floatzel in that it has wave crash unlike barra but hits harder than floatzel. while its noticeably slower than both of those, it still outruns most scarfers with an adamant nature and it has better bulk than a wet tissue paper at least, as well as immunity to fighting and normal, meaning it does have slightly more opportunities to switch in, which imo makes it prob the best swift swimmer. but basculegions other ability, adaptability, poises it to be a ridiculous wallbreaker, even more so than crawdaunt, and i feel both abilities are viable on rain. i could legitimately see guessing games of whether it be swift swim or adaptability, with both forms hitting like a truck either way. you could prob stack another one of those aforementioned swift swimmers like floatzel and just onslaught the opponent with rain boosted moves; its pretty absurd honestly. should also mention the female basculegion as well, imo its main draw is having an actual ghost stab in shadow ball, but i feel its not as consistent as it would need to rely on hydro pump for power and its easier checked by like clodsire. its probably best not as a swift swimmer but with as wallbreaker with adaptability, likely on teams outside of rain.
we also have the return of rain staple tornt, back to do its things as something to take on grasses and fighters and pivot in mates while spamming hurricane (although rip knock off), and zapdos is back here too though it actually lost weather ball which is pretty unfortunate. i still think it would be preferred over killowattrel due to its better bulk therefore more opportunity to get in on the field, but again, losing weather ball sucks; at least you have tera blast ig.
onto
sun, main additions im looking at here are the hisuian forms of lilligant and arcanine, as well as typhlosion to an extent. lilligant-h is already immediately threatening in sun due to chlorophyll, but it can also function outside of sun due to victory dance, which to no one surprise, a physical qd is crazy powerful. you can come in to threaten a cc on something only to vd up and be even more scary. its also crazy this mon gets ice spinner too so you dont even need to necessarily burn a tera to hit flyers. honestly its main issue is that grass is not a powerful physical type, your best option is leaf blade unless you wanna hard commit to sun with solar blade, which maybe it can work on like a cb set or smth, but i feel that grass stab could be droppable for something like tera blast fire to hit gholdengo. i also should mention that this mon gets sleep powder but honestly i dont think its that worth, this mon really wants its coverage and vd, and i dont fuck with the accuracy. same reason with hustle but youd prob want hustle on non-sun teams just for the power at least. overall though i can see this mon be a premier chlorophyll sweeper which makes me so happy eeee this mon slays.
arcanine-h on the other hand is simple af. slap a choice band, go tera fire, spam flare blitz and head smash with no recoil to incinerate your foes. you also still have espeed as priority and idk ur fourth move doesnt rly matter whether its cc double edge or w/e. very fun mon held back by head smash accuracy and hazards weakness. both typhlosion forms are really fun to use on sun even though they are hard to fit, really wish home brought back burn up for these guys it would be so sick with tera fire. you still have the paradox past forms like your walkingwakes and greattusks which make sun more diverse than rain imo, but its rly fun to see these unga bunga mons
overall i think its interesting how these weather styles got new tools to work with, and i can see them be very powerful.
is the best Trick Room Pokemon ever and likely uncounterable to a broken degree. With Eject Pack Magearna and Chilly Reception Slowking-G, Trick Room is already more accessible than ever. Enter Ursaluna, who is a picture perfect abuser. It’s naturally very bulk, it has an incredibly spammable move, it’s able to practically ignore status, and it can opt to SD for some walls or break most things from the start.
is outright stupid. It can be checked, it can be countered, and it is not the same offensive profile (or even close) to others being discussed now, but Dire Claw in such a fragile metagame state may not have a place. Way too much variance and no true way to circumvent it or enforce counterplay besides being fortunate.
is probably broken. Not a huge shock, but BoltBeam with Tera and that much power is nuts when coming off of speed like that. Priority is awesome for it and a few things soft check, but hands are being simplified by these single interactions and that’s not very competitive or stimulating.
is pulling the same stuff it did last generation, but with more openings due to Tera and arguably more possibilities. Mainly seeing the Stored Power sets now, but I imagine it can pull off a lot. It’s worth noting that it’s kinda needed for Chien-Pao now, who I’ll probably get to in a later post.
