ngl steel type zamazenta is infinitely easier to handle than fighting type zamazenta which seems paradoxical but like, earthquake is a really good move. u right tho
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v3
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that's just any matchup-fish mon though, isn't it? zama has a way better matchup spread than most of them, but it still gets bonked by enough that i think it feels fine right now. i also think it'll actually get weaker once ghold goes—sure, that's its absolute best check, but ghold's existence gives defensive teams very little room to breathe, so archetypes more conducive to beating zamazenta are being held back by ghold. i could be wrong, of course, or it might simply be too fast and too strong for an actually balanced meta to handle, but right now i don't see zama as an issue at all
Can all the people who want to ban Zama refer to the suspect thread from a few months ago or something? It feels like a really weird mon to focus on when we already tested it and it got sub 50% support. If you think it's broken, your argument needs to clearly explain why it is broken now as opposed to back then.
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Zama really isn’t broken right now. AoA set is entirely balanced and just an example of a good Pokemon with a good niche.
Setup variants are cheese and I understand why people have grievances, but it has enough counterplay no matter what four moves you are running. It doesn’t exactly threaten to OHKO enough with its coverage — be it Heavy Slam or Crunch — to make it some high stakes guessing game as to how to combat it and the mere concept of it being a fast and bulky IronPress user with a strong Body Press doesn’t break the tier. Yes, it’s on the polarizing end of the spectrum, but there is enough for it and if we wish to complain about it for this reason alone, then there are many other things that have established themselves as similarly cheesy with a smaller pool of checks and counters like Sneasler and Manaphy.
Setup variants are cheese and I understand why people have grievances, but it has enough counterplay no matter what four moves you are running. It doesn’t exactly threaten to OHKO enough with its coverage — be it Heavy Slam or Crunch — to make it some high stakes guessing game as to how to combat it and the mere concept of it being a fast and bulky IronPress user with a strong Body Press doesn’t break the tier. Yes, it’s on the polarizing end of the spectrum, but there is enough for it and if we wish to complain about it for this reason alone, then there are many other things that have established themselves as similarly cheesy with a smaller pool of checks and counters like Sneasler and Manaphy.
Why wasnt kingambit on the survey btw? im curious did something change between pre DLC -> post DLC that it was considered more or less balanced.
Like what does it do differently... gliscor wasnt exactly a good stop to it, zama-h still loses to tera variants and cant take repeated hits well, smth like spikes it benefits from by forcing progress on its own checks and counters... So im more or less curious what made it go from a "omg we need tiering action" cuz it was reaching 4 and 4/3.5 on surveys to just be dropped..
Like what does it do differently... gliscor wasnt exactly a good stop to it, zama-h still loses to tera variants and cant take repeated hits well, smth like spikes it benefits from by forcing progress on its own checks and counters... So im more or less curious what made it go from a "omg we need tiering action" cuz it was reaching 4 and 4/3.5 on surveys to just be dropped..
gambit was on the most recent survey, wasn't it? isn't that where the whole controversy of people botting the survey came from? or did some other survey happen after that? normally i'd be pretty confident in saying what was on the last survey but honestly anything could have happened between noon and 7 and i wouldn't know
hey, not sure which survey you were reading but gambit was on the two most recent surveys. heres the link to the post https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sv-ou-tiering-surveys.3711911/#post-9843015
somehow i missed it???? but what is to be done about kingambit...it recieved mroe support from the casual side and almost equal support from the comp side
I'm personally of the mind that, with DLC2 so close, we may as just well live with the King for a bit. Testing it in DLC2 would make whatever happens more permanent anyway. Given we know other stuff will drop down, and after using the core myself, I feel like we lose like, almost nothing whatsoever if there's just a quickban for Sneasler and then just scope out how people are feeling about other top threats in the last 20 or so days.
Edit: The other most pressing concern would be Gholdengo, but we're so close to seeing whether we get expanded coverage that allows hazard removers to threaten it like giving roost back to Lando-T that it feels a little silly to test it before DLC2 as well.
Edit: The other most pressing concern would be Gholdengo, but we're so close to seeing whether we get expanded coverage that allows hazard removers to threaten it like giving roost back to Lando-T that it feels a little silly to test it before DLC2 as well.
the general support number for gambit has been rendered effectively meaningless because people have been spamming the survey with identical responses listing gambit as 5. since the qualified support responses are individually vetted, those numbers are the only useful statistic here. this is actually true for all our surveys—the general results are very easy to manipulate, so they can pretty much be ignored entirely. we also saw this happen in the first tera survey, where aim accidentally rigged the general vote in favor of no action by making a video about it
i swear i thought your name was siIvagunner for a split second
I’m glad people are finally talking about Sneasler and how stupidly uncompetitive it is. It’s a wonder how this shit was allowed for as long as it currently is. Moves like Dire Claw have no purpose in the meta. They are blatantly uncompetitive with the ability to put your opponent to sleep 1/6th of the time and doing so while attacking. Even without Dire Claw, Sneasler is still pretty busted on its own. Having Unburden was definitely a mistake considering how fast it already is and how strong it is. Literally only Barraskewda in rain is able to outspeed immediately.
I do hope that this leads to more action against unnecessary RNG elements too, not just picking and choosing and even altering game mechanics like Freeze Clause.
I do hope that this leads to more action against unnecessary RNG elements too, not just picking and choosing and even altering game mechanics like Freeze Clause.
Let's be honest here, Dire Claw has never been the core issue with Sneasler. Yes it's uncompetitive and yes it shouldn't exist, but it's also not what makes Sneasler busted. Dire Claw is a good move, but the real issue with Sneasler is the unburden set and it has been since home dropped. Imagine Gen 7 Hawlucha but you don't have to SD to kill stuff and that's Sneasler. It's brain dead and applies too much pressure in the back because, if combined with a Rillaboom on the other team, you have to assume it's the unburden set or risk losing immediately. Unburden sets shouldn't even run Dire Claw because, again, it's only good against the fat teams that you weren't beating with Sneasler anyway. SD Acro [Anti Gholdengo Move] CC is the best unburden set
Can all the people that want explanations just read the previous posts? Anyways, back when Zamazenta dropped to OU we had a shit ton of threats running in the tier, stuff like Magearna, Roaring Moon, Baxcalibur, Volcarona, Urshifu, Sneasler and many more were all incredibly common and completely busted, so the overall brokenness of the meta was pretty high. Although some of them did not outright check Zamazenta, it is pretty fucking obvious that when the level of threats is so high you're not gonna pay much attention to the average broken mon number X, but rather you'd focus on the more problematic elements of the meta. To use a metaphor, when your house is on fire you're not really gonna worry about the glass shards on the floor. Eventually some of those mons ended up getting banned, and yet with DLC1 we ended up with other broken mons to deal with between Firepon, Ursaluna-B and the rest of the remaining ones that were then enabled even more thanks to their newly acquired moves (such was the case for Bax, Moon and Sneasler indirectly) and thanks to A-tales/Aurora Veil. So once again, between all of the other broken mons that needed more attention and immediate action, the fact that Zamazenta itself functioned as a check for some of those broken mons and a generous dose of New Toy Syndrome, Zamazenta flew under the radar.
to all saying that most bans so far would have happened regardless of blind Tera, I would like to propose the following hypothetical:
if Palafin was similar to Waterpon, and locked into a water type Tera, as a condition of its superhero form, would it be as “broken”? It would still get the 33% power boost on stab, but it can no longer reliably breakthrough giga drain/grass knot amoonguss with a surprise steel Tera + taunt. Ergo, the Pokémon is more predictable.
im not saying palafin would be OU-friendly if it was Tera-locked into a water type, but I am saying you could actually plan for it if you knew the Tera type. This could potentially lead to an OU where more of these top threats would have had a better chance to see if they were too OP or not. Maybe the increased power creep threats could have been the new face of OU, rather than the new face of OUBL
This is a big reason why I think waterpon is only slightly controversial right now, have you seen it surprise Tera steel reverse sweep a Rillaboom?
if Palafin was similar to Waterpon, and locked into a water type Tera, as a condition of its superhero form, would it be as “broken”? It would still get the 33% power boost on stab, but it can no longer reliably breakthrough giga drain/grass knot amoonguss with a surprise steel Tera + taunt. Ergo, the Pokémon is more predictable.
im not saying palafin would be OU-friendly if it was Tera-locked into a water type, but I am saying you could actually plan for it if you knew the Tera type. This could potentially lead to an OU where more of these top threats would have had a better chance to see if they were too OP or not. Maybe the increased power creep threats could have been the new face of OU, rather than the new face of OUBL
This is a big reason why I think waterpon is only slightly controversial right now, have you seen it surprise Tera steel reverse sweep a Rillaboom?
Yeah the example was pretty bad, considering that Palafin would definitely still be too broken for OU (imo at least). But I do agree that Tera is a huge problem for the meta, and it's becoming quite clear that it directly breaks some mons (or at least it makes them even more broken). Would Volc be as broken if it couldn't Tera into a type that could allow it to dodge so many KOs, such as Fairy, Grass and Steel? Would Moon be banworthy if it couldn't get a STAB on Acro and also be able to take so many hits that would otherwise kill it? Regieleki is an obvious case of a mon broken by Tera, so it's pointless to bring it up, but even right now we have so many mons that feel borderline unfair because of Tera allowing them to either hit incredibly hard for no reason, or allowing them to live for that extra turn needed to sweep or kill your revenge killer/check. Kingambit abuses Tera to turn into a Fairy or Flying type, Dragapult and Dnite abuse Tera to receive ungodly strong STABs, and so on with the likes of Garchomp, your average Stored Power mon, Ceruledge etc. And this is all coming from a guy that voted "No Ban" on the first Suspect.
252+ Atk Life Orb Palafin-Hero Zen Headbutt vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Amoonguss: 263-309 (60.8 - 71.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Yeah tera was always going to be something that pushes the 'nearly broken' pokemon into 'broken'. That's been *the* topic of conversation when it comes to tera last few days, but honestly its not something I see as an issue. I wish the discussion would be more focused on how tera interacts between 2 clearly balanced, even underpowerded pokemon. For some reason telling me Tera is what makes Kingambit broken doesn't persuade me, probably bc Kingambit is kinda dumb and kinda broken regardless of tera. Hell big reason I like Tera is it is banning these borderline ubers. You really want to keep playing in the tier with Supreme Overlord? I for one don't really want to be tied into a tier where every one of my sweepers have to have something that lets them beat kingambit on their set.
To put what I think you're trying to say another way, pokemon that were banned because of tera would have, for the most part, been banworthy without tera. I think Espathra (and maybe Volcarona but that pokemon is fucked up in many ways and is borderline banworthy in every gen its in) is a rare exception, but I also think it would have been a really annoying matchup fish mon like Gen 3 Ninjask is. Without Tera, Espathra is annoying, with Tera, it's busted to shit. The pokemon that would have been banned without tera should be banned with tera and the pokemon that are broken exclusively because of tera are few and far between, acceptable collateral damage in my view.
I mean just think about the stuff that can reliably beat kingambit if tera is banned. Tusk, Lando, valiant, zama, moltres, any mon that feels like running fighting coverage, and a plethora of other stuff. No more "Screw you I tera fire/fly/fairy and click sd and win". Also there have always been excellent revenge killers/ sweep stoppers. Its like saying "Do you really want barraskewda to be in the tier when it outspeeds and ohkos all my sweepers?". I dont see why its a problem for kingambit to be one.
of these, valiant is banworthy in its own right, lando absolutely does not "reliably beat kingambit", zama is definitely banworthy without tera, and moltres doesn't resist sucker punch. Kingambit is a "fuck you I win now" button that really should have been banned when it was suspected.
moltres burns gambit + a single mispredict on flamethrower will kill you, lando doesn't strictly win against it but does get it down to 15% with uninvested EQ and limits its setup to +1, making it possible something bulky-ish (for example Walking Wake or Manaphy) to live SP and revenge kill. Valiant and Zama's banworthiness is debatably but regardless the commenter was talking about OU minus Tera, not OU minus all the things you consider broken. I think personally it does become a lot easier to beat kingambit endgame because you KNOW your Great Tusk will be able to beat it instead of it randomly growing wings and reverse-sweeping.
But this is the problem with gambit, all of its "checks", with the exception of iron valiant who can just click vacuum wave, are one wrong move away from dying immediately. Gambit is absolutely banworthy without tera. With my examples, I was theorizing how a tera banned OU meta game would shape up, and, in my opinion, valiant and zama wouldn't stay in the tier. Kingambit is something that really shouldn't be in any competitive environment full stop if we value stuff like skill
I have no idea what you meant, I calc'd what I thought was the worst case scenario for each of them, where Kingambit has used SD and has 5 allies dead:
Lando always survives with intimidate, leaves kingambit in the red with eq, and then dies to sucker. Intimidate means that even with correct prediction in sucker punch on bulky stuff, they will always survive and can revenge kill
Moltres burns it, doesn't die to Kowtow + Sucker, and can flamethrower for a guaranteed kill with the burn damage.
I would 100% agree with your statement in a Tera meta, where gambit can remove its weaknesses and/or break past the stuff that defensively beats it, but after Tera ban? No idea what you mean.
honestly man, its not really that bad in practice, its strong, but we got bigger fish to fry in my opinion,
WE’RE WELBACK
Your assumption hinges entirely on all of these checks having full health, which is not reasonable. Great Tusk beats teraless gambit 99.9% of the time and will be ignored, but lando and moltres will be taking chip, and lando doesn't have roost so it has to rely entirely on wish support or leftovers, neither of which are super reliable as A. wish mons are generally high priority targets and can't come in on much and B. Knock off is the best move ever. Moltres, while having roost, is also extremely crippled by a knock off as its typing leaves it taking 50% from rocks without its boots. Late Game Kingambit thrives on teams being weakened over the course of an otherwise normal game, and it always has.
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