Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Volcarona Suspect]

[Komodo_Drogo]

"Uncompetitive - elements that reduce the effect of player choice / interaction on the end result to an extreme degree, such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant"

Sleep completely removes any interaction from the opposing player. Quite literally making more skillfull play irrelevant. There's really nothing people can say to defend it. Darkrai and IV don't matter in regards to sleep as it's an issue by itself. At this point, it's more figuring out where the line should be drawn.

 

[TurquoiseLink]

At the end of the day, the only thing you can measure a game by is fun. Uncompetitive is kind of a fake term, in the end the ratings end up the same whether it's a 51% winrate or a 99% winrate. Losing in the short term to relatively uncontrollable RNG isn't fun though.

You can "patch" the game to make it more fun, but you will alienate people who want to play pokemon, not community made pokemon fangame. Believe me, I've seen card games balanced by Reddit before... it goes badly.

Stuff like kings rock ban no-one cares about, its still pokemon. Evasion is a bit more of a blow, I'm sure some people have left because of that ban but whatever, worth the loss for the more fun game.

So does sleep alienate too many people? I feel it does, every kid remembers crushing the single player with their hypnosis or their sleep powder. Pokemon to me involves Butterfree and Gengar doing their thing. Take that out and you've strayed too far into fangame territory. Sleep clause helps fix this and is a good solution. I think it's worth keeping the deviation from regular tiering policy.

Also, there is a ton of RNG in chess, it just isn't particularly visible. How recently did your opponent study the opening you chose is purely random and out of your control, but has a huge impact on the game.

 

[Divine Retribution]

At the end of the day, the only thing you can measure a game by is fun. Uncompetitive is kind of a fake term, in the end the ratings end up the same whether it's a 51% winrate or a 99% winrate.

I'm sorry, what? Uncompetitive is a fake term even though we have a quantifiable (albeit difficult to quantify) definition for it, but fun isn't despite fun being entirely subjective instead of just mostly subjective?

You can "patch" the game to make it more fun, but you will alienate people who want to play pokemon, not community made pokemon fangame.

My brother in christ, what exactly do you think the point of this website is?

This discussion has clearly outlived its productivity if these are the kinds of arguments we're trotting out now.

EDIT: I didn't even read this bit at first because chess isn't even relevant, but then I did and it caused me psychic damage so...

Also, there is a ton of RNG in chess, it just isn't particularly visible. How recently did your opponent study the opening you chose is purely random and out of your control, but has a huge impact on the game.

The argument has never been that YOU should have maximum control over the game. The argument is that the players collectively should have maximum control over the game. Your opponent has control over how often they study openers or the metagame or whatever, so to act like it's the same thing as RNG where neither player has control is to either horribly misunderstand what the issue at hand is or just be flat out disingenuous.

Sorry but this entire post is just awful from start to finish.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

You can "patch" the game to make it more fun, but you will alienate people who want to play pokemon, not community made pokemon fangame.

Sleep clause helps fix this and is a good solution. I think it's worth keeping the deviation from regular tiering policy.

let me get this straight. you think that banning things will alienate people because it strays too far from the source material, so your solution is modding the game? i'm ashamed that i kept reading after that

 

[RS25802580]

tiering policy suggests that sleep should have been banned from the get-go. there's never been a logical reason for sleep to exist besides "we keep everything that isn't broken, unhealthy, or uncompetitive", and sleep has always been uncompetitive. hell, it's starting to bleed over into "broken" and "unhealthy" too

Agreed tbh, I wouldn’t miss sleep if it was banned entirely.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Agreed tbh, I wouldn’t miss sleep if it was banned entirely.

if you don't want to miss sleep just run spore

 

[Magcargo]

SD Valiant feels kinda good rn. One massive benefit over iron Boulder is that Valiant is really versatile, so players will often switch into their Gking instead of Skarmory on the SD, giving you a crucial free turn to do something like Knock or setup another SD. Might be a bit early to say since I haven't faced many Volcs yet, but I am liking the old Tera Water Liquidation set currently since Tera Water Liquidation is hitting a few other threats like Gliscor and Lando-T + Volcarona for good damage

I think specs Val has potential in this balance heavy meta, but dealing with G-King and Pex is tough.

 

[Heatranator]

SD Valiant feels kinda good rn. One massive benefit over iron Boulder is that Valiant is really versatile, so players will often switch into their Gking instead of Skarmory on the SD, giving you a crucial free turn to do something like Knock or setup another SD. Might be a bit early to say since I haven't faced many Volcs yet, but I am liking the old Tera Water Liquidation set currently since Tera Water Liquidation is hitting a few other threats like Gliscor and Lando-T + Volcarona for good damage

I think specs Val has potential in this balance heavy meta, but dealing with G-King and Pex is tough.

I prefer calm mind valiant with shadow ball and tera ghost, which destroys gholdengo. Plus, it has unresisted coverage with shadow ball + stabs. Calm mind boosting sp.Defense also helps it against mons that can it on the special side for neutral damage.
I also would be interested in SD tera grass leaf blade because that sounds funny. Tera Nomal hyper voice and giga impact could be even funnier.

 

[NotDaProGamer]

Also, there is a ton of RNG in chess, it just isn't particularly visible. How recently did your opponent study the opening you chose is purely random and out of your control, but has a huge impact on the game.

2 things:
First, this point may be true at lower levels of chess but at higher levels, it should be more regimented because if you are a top level player playing top level players, you are likely to have been scouted for your most common opening/playstyle/et cetera. In Pokemon, you might get away with playing against unprepared opponents, but at higher levels you (I think) might have people scouting you or things (correct me if I'm wrong). Additionally, how is one singular thing in chess that you mention mean there is a ton of RNG?
Second, sorry for bringing up this chess argument in the first place

 

[Heatranator]

2 things:
First, this point may be true at lower levels of chess but at higher levels, it should be more regimented because if you are a top level player playing top level players, you are likely to have been scouted for your most common opening/playstyle/et cetera. In Pokemon, you might get away with playing against unprepared opponents, but at higher levels you (I think) might have people scouting you or things (correct me if I'm wrong). Additionally, how is one singular thing in chess that you mention mean there is a ton of RNG?
Second, sorry for bringing up this chess argument in the first place

I know the scouting thing does occur as you can look at what common archetypes your opponent is likely to use i.e. HO or stall, and make a team that is better against that style than others while still not being bad against other teams you might play. For example, if your next opponent is known to play stall in the tournament, you might put on your team a strong stallbreaker like crawdaunt or something. It is a big component and switching up strategies/using unorthodox mons is part of the strategy, but you generally have a good idea of what they use, severly limiting the randomness of what you need to prepare for.

 

[fluff!!]

I believe that trying to argue about Sleep's brokenness is irrelevant as long as the Sleep Clause mod is in effect and said mod should be removed entirely.

The issue I have with the Sleep debate is that it is based from a modded version of the game.
When you first arrive on Smogon or when you first play OU on Pokémon Showdown, you'd believe you are talking about and playing Pokémon. However, this isn't exactly the truth... as we have, indeed, modded the game.
This is, by definition, and before even starting to talk about Sleep's competitiveness, a bright red flag and questionable integrity.

The current sleep restrictions are no different than if we said "Flutter Mane and Iron Bundle are broken in OU, so let's nerf their base Special Attack and Speed by 20 so they're not broken anymore". This is the exact same mentality as the Sleep mod. They are both mods made to nerf cetain elements of the game. This is not up for debate. The current Sleep Clause is purely non-sensical and it would never, ever happen today. Finch would be crucified on the spot if Sleep mod was implemented today, you'd see riots on twitter and content creators on Youtube would spell the end of Smogon. But for some reason, because it's been there for a decade, it's... ok?

Worse, because the Sleep mod isn't questioned, every debate, every argument, whether you're conscious of it or not, are based off of a modded version of Sleep which does not reflect the actual game. Now, you could say "just make the move unclickable" instead of letting the option open but disablng the status. It is theoretically a better way of doing it, and we are getting closer to a complex ban status rather than a literal mod of the game, but then it's still a complex ban at best which we try to avoid. Oh and it's still technically a mod because the move would still be clickable in-game but not on simulator. We could go on and talk about the health bar mod, but...

I'll keep this post short so I'll go straight to the conclusion. My proposal is that we simply delete the Sleep Clause Mod and Sleep Clause (which are technically 2 separate things). That's it. Nerfing a status with a game mod on top of a complex ban is against modern tiering policy, cartridge mechanics... everything, really. After deleting the clause will people spam fast Hypnosis and Spore? Definitely yes. Will it be uncompetitive? Who knows, we have yet to play a non-modded version of the game.

 

[ACExDiscostu93]

Fully Defensive Hex Pecharunt has been doing work for me. Paired it with Incineroar and Rillaboom, and the double Parting-Turn Squad got me back to the 1700's after tanking a bit with Hypnosis Gengar.

It's shocking what Pecharunt can live:

252 Atk Protosynthesis Roaring Moon Knock Off vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Pecharunt: 152-180 (40.1 - 47.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 Atk Choice Band Meowscarada Knock Off vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Pecharunt: 146-174 (38.5 - 45.9%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

With Grassy Terrain support to neuter Earthquake Pecharunt eats most Physical hits and retaliate with a guaranteed Toxic that also confuses these mons with already high attack stats. It sucks that the #1 Mon of the tier hard walls you, but hey what are teammates for!

I've used specially defensive set with tera fairy, you can set up NP on a number of surprising special mons if you can preserve tera for its checks. It may be more useful as a blanket check to physical attackers, but still entertaining.

Pecharunt @ Leftovers
Ability: Poison Puppeteer
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Sludge Wave
- Nasty Plot
- Recover

Here's some mons you can bait (you will need to tera after the NP for a lot of its usual checks).

252 SpA Gholdengo Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Pecharunt: 210-248 (55.2 - 65.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

252 SpA Enamorus Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Pecharunt: 158-188 (41.5 - 49.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

252 SpA Choice Specs Kyurem Ice Beam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Pecharunt: 172-204 (45.2 - 53.6%) -- 2% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

It also really likes grassy terrain for mitigating EQ and the passive recovery. Sadly you're not going to be taking 2 hits from some common specs mons (e.g. latios, walking wake under sun), but it's fun to see it bait in some of its usual checks and set up on them until the team loses the power to effectively deal with it.

 

[Heatranator]

I believe that trying to argue about Sleep's brokenness is irrelevant as long as the Sleep Clause mod is in effect and said mod should be removed entirely.

The issue I have with the Sleep debate is that it is based from a modded version of the game.
When you first arrive on Smogon or when you first play OU on Pokémon Showdown, you'd believe you are talking about and playing Pokémon. However, this isn't exactly the truth... as we have, indeed, modded the game.
This is, by definition, and before even starting to talk about Sleep's competitiveness, a bright red flag and questionable integrity.

The current sleep restrictions are no different than if we said "Flutter Mane and Iron Bundle are broken in OU, so let's nerf their base Special Attack and Speed by 20 so they're not broken anymore". This is the exact same mentality as the Sleep mod. They are both mods made to nerf cetain elements of the game. This is not up for debate. The current Sleep Clause is purely non-sensical and it would never, ever happen today. Finch would be crucified on the spot if Sleep mod was implemented today, you'd see riots on twitter and content creators on Youtube would spell the end of Smogon. But for some reason, because it's been there for a decade, it's... ok?

Worse, because the Sleep mod isn't questioned, every debate, every argument, whether you're conscious of it or not, are based off of a modded version of Sleep which does not reflect the actual game. Now, you could say "just make the move unclickable" instead of letting the option open but disablng the status. It is theoretically a better way of doing it, and we are getting closer to a complex ban status rather than a literal mod of the game, but then it's still a complex ban at best which we try to avoid. Oh and it's still technically a mod because the move would still be clickable in-game but not on simulator. We could go on and talk about the health bar mod, but...

I'll keep this post short so I'll go straight to the conclusion. My proposal is that we simply delete the Sleep Clause Mod and Sleep Clause (which are technically 2 separate things). That's it. Nerfing a status with a game mod on top of a complex ban is against modern tiering policy, cartridge mechanics... everything, really. After deleting the clause will people spam fast Hypnosis and Spore? Definitely yes. Will it be uncompetitive? Who knows, we have yet to play a non-modded version of the game.

If you genuinelly think that sleep either not banned or without sleep clause is going to be healthy, please leave. I know that your trying to say that we should remove sleep clause, but if we did that without banning sleep, let's just say that terapagos would look quite fine compared to that metagame. And that shit lasted a week. If you want to remove a mod that is keeping something in check, please give reasons to actually control that mechanic. Otherwise, your just trying to upend the metagame in a purely negative way.

 

[ACExDiscostu93]

First, this point may be true at lower levels of chess but at higher levels, it should be more regimented because if you are a top level player playing top level players, you are likely to have been scouted for your most common opening/playstyle/et cetera.

I do agree mostly, but there are occasions where, even at the highest level, an opponent can surprise you with an off beat opening or line of the opening, and overwhelm you with that specific matchup. That being said, I feel that's more being caught unprepared than RNG.

An example would be like expecting lead webs ribombee, and then losing your lead mon to a quiver dance set up. It's not RNG, you just lost the prep battle.

 

[fluff!!]

If you genuinelly think that sleep either not banned or without sleep clause is going to be healthy, please leave. I know that your trying to say that we should remove sleep clause, but if we did that without banning sleep, let's just say that terapagos would look quite fine compared to that metagame. And that shit lasted a week. If you want to remove a mod that is keeping something in check, please give reasons to actually control that mechanic. Otherwise, your just trying to upend the metagame in a purely negative way.

1 - I didn't say sleep without any clause wouldn't be broken. This wasn't even the point of my post.
2 - I will leave whenever I want. You can keep your toxicity for yourself.

 

[ACExDiscostu93]

If you genuinelly think that sleep either not banned or without sleep clause is going to be healthy, please leave. I know that your trying to say that we should remove sleep clause, but if we did that without banning sleep, let's just say that terapagos would look quite fine compared to that metagame. And that shit lasted a week. If you want to remove a mod that is keeping something in check, please give reasons to actually control that mechanic. Otherwise, your just trying to upend the metagame in a purely negative way.

I know it would never happen, but I'd love to see a general sleep mechanic suspect where sleep mod clause was removed with no alternative and see how it changes people's opinions.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to run 6 lum berries to not lose to teams with 3 or 4 sleep powder slammers for a week or 2 or however long we'd give it. But it would be interesting for people to see how uncompetitive sleep is on its own merits, so to speak, and not arbitrarily balanced by a mod that can't be reproduced on cart.

I will say, I don't really have any strong opinions on any action, or lack thereof, to the clause itself. I just hate the sleep mechanic like I hate the freeze mechanic.

 

[Heatranator]

1 - I didn't say sleep without any clause wouldn't be broken. This wasn't even the point of my post.
2 - I will leave whenever I want and your toxicity won't be the reason

I'm sorry if I came across as aggresive, but the way you worded it at the end kinda implied that nobody would know if sleep would be uncompetitive without a clause, which I believe to be untrue. The reason why we have a modded sleep is because people knew it would not be competitive, but wanted to keep a core mechanic of pokemon. It wouldn't fly today at all, which I agree with you, and sleep clause should be removed, which I also agree to be true. However, doing nothing after that would be suicudal to the competitive scene.
I'm sorry for asking you to leave, that was wrong of me. I'm not thinking straight cause it is late where I am, but that does not excuse my actions, so I am genuinelly sorry.

 

[Cautiousduck]

I believe suspecting the primary abuser in Darkrai should be enough, It is very splashable compared to other sleep users and I've experienced it on many team styles including, HO, Balance, BO, Stall and even teams with UU and or NU pokemon. Why is this? The randomness and high reward click of hypnosis significantly reduce the matchup based interactions between two teams, which in-turn reduce the skill level between the two opponents. A Hypnosis hit or miss (for darkrai) can both lead to bad situations with no fault on either players side, simply because it's darkrai.

Iron valiant isn't the same because it has ALOT more meta game answers, it's coverage when using hypnosis set is really poor, it's speed isn't the highest which means it needs booster energy, therefore it cannot abuse focus sash and it's power is much lower with just calm mind. In conclusion, not as splashable and game changing.

Other relevant sleep users like Liligant, Breloom, Amoongus, Venusaur, are not going to be splashed on any type of team like Darkrai.

Once Darkrai is removed and forever back to Ubers, the sleep talk will cool down. It's really not a broken mechanic in its current state, just Darkrai is too strong for the current OU meta game. After Darkrai is solved and there is still such a big issue of X pokemon being on every team griefing players, then that can be talked about.

Edit: To test this theory, a simple survey to players on either splashing darkrai into their team has caused a significant rise to their elo or has significantly increase the win rate of their meme team, hax/slot machine team and or UU/NU team.

 

[ACExDiscostu93]

I know that we're expecting a survey, I hope it at least asks if people would be willing to accept a slight change to the current restrictions to make the clause cart reproduceable, without actioning sleep moves.

Any action on the sleep abusers or the mechanic would probably be better suited afterwards, as at least we wouldn't need to worry about sleep mod clause debates in the future.

 

[ACExDiscostu93]

Anyhow, moving away from that topic, what are everyone's favourite wallbreakers at the moment?

 

[NotDaProGamer]

Anyhow, moving away from that topic, what are everyone's favourite wallbreakers at the moment?

and SD

 

[TheTraininator]

I've used specially defensive set with tera fairy, you can set up NP on a number of surprising special mons if you can preserve tera for its checks. It may be more useful as a blanket check to physical attackers, but still entertaining.

Pecharunt @ Leftovers
Ability: Poison Puppeteer
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Sludge Wave
- Nasty Plot
- Recover

Is the choice of Sludge Wave over Malignant Chain because of PP?

 

[ACExDiscostu93]

Is the choice of Sludge Wave over Malignant Chain because of PP?

Mostly, yes. I might swap the two, because I don't think I encounter too many scenarios where the extra PP matters.

 

[Wolf-X]

Some calcs to show how goated Pecharunt is:

252+ Atk Choice Band Barraskewda Liquidation vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Pecharunt in Rain: 171-202 (45 - 53.1%) -- 0.4% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

252+ Atk Gouging Fire Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Pecharunt: 112-134 (29.4 - 35.2%) -- 100% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

252+ Atk Choice Band Rillaboom Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Pecharunt: 174-206 (45.7 - 54.2%) -- 3.1% chance to 2HKO after Grassy Terrain recovery

252 Atk Weavile Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Pecharunt: 156-186 (41 - 48.9%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

Pair this with Tera Fighting for when you need it or to get some coverage to blast Gambit and the annoying steels and stuff gets scary.

Rillaboom grassy terrain as others have mentioned is a nice bonus, that in most cases removes a key weakness, and nasty plot sets easily wreck havoc, specially with webs to slow the speedsters.

 

[Fusion Flare]

Mostly, yes. I might swap the two, because I don't think I encounter too many scenarios where the extra PP matters.

Why not go Sludge Bomb? Higher chance for Poison, which means Pecharunt’s ability can actually be useful.