Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Volcarona Banned]

[Heatranator]

We are discussing two potential suspect candidates internally

Alright, Great Tusk and Slowking Galar will finally be banned. Too long have they been scourges on the OU metagame.

 

[ianlazerbeem]

the thing about that is, well…

…yeah. not to mention the stuff that would need to go if all this went (lookin at you, dragapult). "we need like 6-10 bans to fix things" is not a ridiculous concept. we easily hit those numbers during pre-dlc and dlc1 and it wasn't even enough

"6-10 bans to fix things is totally reasonable, look at the worst version of this generation for example"

DLC1 is not a thing that should be strived for

 

[GummyRowlets]

Uh, so thoughts on breaking swipe gliscor? I used it in a natdex stall team, and here it should also be good. You lower the opponents attack while attacking, meaning you aren't as passive as sometimes gliscor can be. It can even live two tusk ice spinners if its at full health and tusk gets anything other than the highest roll.
Turn 1: Tusk uses ice spinner, that deals 74% to gliscor and you breaking swipe, lowering its attack. You recover 12% health at the end of the turn. Gliscor is now at 38% hp.
Turn 2: You protect, tusk does no damage, you heal a further 12%. Gliscor is now at 50% hp.
Turn 3: They ice spinner, -1 tusk ice spinner can do a max of 50% damage, so it has to get a high roll in order to ko gliscor.
Everything else it can kinda sit on. With knock to get rid of lefties, it could be really disruptive. Against something like gouging, you are constantly reducing its attack, meaning it can't attack you without dealing a lot less damage.
I could see a set like this work
Gliscor @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
Tera Type: Water/Steel
EVs: 244 HP / 248 Def / 16 SpD
Impish Nature
- Protect
- Breaking Swipe
- Knock Off
- Swords Dance/Earthquake/Spikes
Only really stuff like gambit or weavile could beat it 1v1. It sounds like a really disgusting set. I could even see sd on it to make it a really great sweeper that prevents sweepers on its own. Kinda like a counter-sweeper. Other moves are more standard.

seems okay but way too passive. With SD, it isn't doing a lot and if used on a more defensive set, it still doesn't do much. like yes, you do beat Tusk if it works out but you don't do anything back. Toxic just feels better there.

"6-10 bans to fix things is totally reasonable, look at the worst version of this generation for example"

DLC1 is not a thing that should be strived for

Just wondering but was wrong with DLC meta besides maybe ogerpon water back then? It felt really balance without nearly as potent threats as there are now.

 

[Copland]

So in Vert's surrender on the idea of a Tera Blast suspect they raise an interesting point. The player base has a sense that there's something worth banning, but there's really not consensus on any single Pokémon.

Relevant quote from Vert's post

everyone has their own opinion on how to "fix" SV OU:

volcarona
kyurem
wellspring
gouging fire
raging bolt
roaring moon
kingambit
zamazenta
gholdengo
deoxys-speed
garganacl
darkrai
gliscor

33% of the playerbase would probably vote ban on 1 of these 'mons and keep the rest. that 1 'mon is different for every voter. another 33% wants 2-3 of these 'mons gone. once again, the 'mons selected are different for everyone. the final 33% want most of, if not the whole list banned and/or hate tera as a mechanic.

If there's a good number of Pokémon who are right at that broken threshold, but the community can't come to an actionable consensus for an outright ban, is this the time when we explore an alternative tiering method? Not Kokoloko, but Whac-A-Mole. I'm thinking something like a reverse suspect, where by community decision one Pokémon is banned for a period of time, reintroduced for a period of time, and then qualified voters say if they liked it being gone.

A limitation of the traditional suspect test is that we can't play the tier without the suspected Pokémon while we're deliberating whether or not it's banworthy. In a situation like we're in now, where no one can agree on what's broken, the prospect of a Pokémon being permanently banned becomes too contentious for some to consider. But the reverse suspect test presents the opportunity to say, okay, we will remove Raging Bolt, for example, from the tier for x number of weeks. At the end of the duration, Raging Bolt will be returned to the tier for x number of weeks, and then a vote will be held on whether or not its absence actually made the tier better.

The details of this process would definitely need to be ironed out--like, I don't have a sense for what durations of temporary removal & returns would be enough for proper consideration, or how we determine the order of Pokémon we test. But I think the Whac-A-Mole method, temporarily removing + reintroducing one Pokémon, would give the community a clearer sense of the suspect's impact on the tier--and hopefully an easier time with Pokémon that they personally don't find broken being put up for a suspect test.

 

[Avira]

We are discussing two potential suspect candidates internally

Considering the people who posted in Policy Review dumped on the idea of a Tera Blast suspect for the most part, the OU Council is clearly deciding between Volcarona and Ogerpon-Wellspring to be the next suspect target. I hope the OU Council truly picks the one that the community feels more strongly about, which I believe is Volcarona since it has greater snowballing potential against non-stall teams. I could be wrong though since Vert believes Ogerpon-Wellspring might be the only mon that has the support for a ban, and he probably has a better gauge of the pulse of the playerbase than I do.

 

[Carl_the_turtle]

Uh, so thoughts on breaking swipe gliscor? I used it in a natdex stall team, and here it should also be good. You lower the opponents attack while attacking, meaning you aren't as passive as sometimes gliscor can be. It can even live two tusk ice spinners if its at full health and tusk gets anything other than the highest roll.
Turn 1: Tusk uses ice spinner, that deals 74% to gliscor and you breaking swipe, lowering its attack. You recover 12% health at the end of the turn. Gliscor is now at 38% hp.
Turn 2: You protect, tusk does no damage, you heal a further 12%. Gliscor is now at 50% hp.
Turn 3: They ice spinner, -1 tusk ice spinner can do a max of 50% damage, so it has to get a high roll in order to ko gliscor.
Everything else it can kinda sit on. With knock to get rid of lefties, it could be really disruptive. Against something like gouging, you are constantly reducing its attack, meaning it can't attack you without dealing a lot less damage.
I could see a set like this work
Gliscor @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
Tera Type: Water/Steel
EVs: 244 HP / 248 Def / 16 SpD
Impish Nature
- Protect
- Breaking Swipe
- Knock Off
- Swords Dance/Earthquake/Spikes
Only really stuff like gambit or weavile could beat it 1v1. It sounds like a really disgusting set. I could even see sd on it to make it a really great sweeper that prevents sweepers on its own. Kinda like a counter-sweeper. Other moves are more standard.

Turn 2: The opposing Great Tusk used Bulk Up!
“guess I’ll die” -gliscor, probably
I dunno, scor already wants so many moves that I can’t see it fitting this.

 

[Kallum]

This meme was more appropriate during DLC1 but I'm bringing it back because I've seen a non zero amount of people complain about Gliscor recently. Gambit has completely and utterly warped the metagame around itself I don't understand why you people are so terrified of getting rid of it. If its defensive presence is so necessary to keep other pokemon in the tier, maybe they should also be banned! Novel concept I know!
View attachment 622992

The amount of freaking matches my skillless ass has won by the power of tera flying x5 SO Kingambit is just so disgusting

 

[Kallum]

Considering the people who posted in Policy Review dumped on the idea of a Tera Blast suspect for the most part, the OU Council is clearly deciding between Volcarona and Ogerpon-Wellspring to be the next suspect target. I hope the OU Council truly picks the one that the community feels more strongly about, which I believe is Volcarona since it has greater snowballing potential against non-stall teams. I could be wrong though since Vert believes Ogerpon-Wellspring might be the only mon that has the support for a ban, and he probably has a better gauge of the pulse of the playerbase than I do.

Maybe it is because I almost exclusively play Kyurem + Hexpult but I think Volc is so much harder to deal with than a Oger-W since all it takes is a 4x Freezedry and that Ogre is down for the count.

 

[Insolence]

So in Vert's surrender on the idea of a Tera Blast suspect they raise an interesting point. The player base has a sense that there's something worth banning, but there's really not consensus on any single Pokémon.


If there's a good number of Pokémon who are right at that broken threshold, but the community can't come to an actionable consensus for an outright ban, is this the time when we explore an alternative tiering method? Not Kokoloko, but Whac-A-Mole. I'm thinking something like a reverse suspect, where by community decision one Pokémon is banned for a period of time, reintroduced for a period of time, and then qualified voters say if they liked it being gone.

A limitation of the traditional suspect test is that we can't play the tier without the suspected Pokémon while we're deliberating whether or not it's banworthy. In a situation like we're in now, where no one can agree on what's broken, the prospect of a Pokémon being permanently banned becomes too contentious for some to consider. But the reverse suspect test presents the opportunity to say, okay, we will remove Raging Bolt, for example, from the tier for x number of weeks. At the end of the duration, Raging Bolt will be returned to the tier for x number of weeks, and then a vote will be held on whether or not its absence actually made the tier better.

The details of this process would definitely need to be ironed out--like, I don't have a sense for what durations of temporary removal & returns would be enough for proper consideration, or how we determine the order of Pokémon we test. But I think the Whac-A-Mole method, temporarily removing + reintroducing one Pokémon, would give the community a clearer sense of the suspect's impact on the tier--and hopefully an easier time with Pokémon that they personally don't find broken being put up for a suspect test.

It takes time for a meta to develop. The immediate effects of each adjustment take some time to fully spread and it's not instantly clear what trends will develop from a single change. We saw this happen during the gouge test in real time, with different sets on dozo and lando-t designed to more effectively check it. The meta isn't instantly solved - we need to give players time to adapt and get used to it. Simply removing one mon for a short period won't give enough time to properly gauge its impact on the tier, and if we increase the duration of each one to be long enough that we can gather actual data I don't really see a meaningful enough difference from the current methodology of simply putting something on the chopping block via a suspect test. There's also going to be the natural headache of people complaining if their favorite gets banished to the shadow realm first.

I originally thought some form of ranked choice voting could work as the solution to the problem, but there's obvious pitfalls there - both in logistical issues, and with players who only have one issue with the meta and would abstain from listing multiple options.

 

[Delibird Heart]

In the midst of the OU metagame discussion thread's 409th annual upcoming ban debacle, take a break and enjoy this gravity team destroying stall by clicking right here. Fun fact: hustleband Flapple using grav apple in gravity is the strongest unboosted physical hit in the tier, surpassing band rilla wood hammer in terrain by a little bit. I do think this team (and gravity as a whole) has potential, but I haven't worked out all of the kinks yet. What do you think about gravity?

My two cents on the whole ban situation is that we should accept this gen is a bit more offensive than previous ones, rather than trying to achieve gen 8 in gen 9 by banning every mon and tera. Try to think about which of these would be more enjoyable for a bit. Gen 8 is fine but we already have it. No need for gen 8: 2. There are no autowin mons anymore; the possible exceptions might be moon and volc which are very MU fishy, and very difficult to deal with for some teams after 1 boost, but idt it's quite banworthy either, and it's not like mons like these haven't existed before. I've already expressed this multiple times, but I'll say it again: The tier definitely feels playable and enjoyable rn.

 

[Heatranator]

In the midst of the OU metagame discussion thread's 409th annual upcoming ban debacle, take a break and enjoy this gravity team destroying stall by clicking right here. Fun fact: hustleband flapple using grav apple in gravity is the strongest unboosted physical hit in the tier, surpassing band rilla wood hammer in terrain by a little bit. I do think this team (and gravity as a whole) has potential, but I haven't worked out all of the kinks yet. What do you think about gravity?

My two cents on the whole ban situation is that we should accept this gen is a bit more offensive than previous ones, rather than trying to achieve gen 8 in gen 9 by banning every mon and tera. Try to think about which of these would be more enjoyable for a bit. Gen 8 is fine but we already have it. No need for gen 8: 2. There are no autowin mons anymore; the possible exceptions might be moon and volc which are very MU fishy, and very difficult to deal with for some teams after 1 boost, but idt it's quite banworthy either, and it's not like mons like these haven't existed before.

While I do appreciate you trying to get gravity to work, its a gimmick strategy. It basically only shalackes stall and every other playstyle would be able to comfortably beat it.
Maybe try zap cannon Deo-S? With tera electric, even resists can take a huge amount of damage. It 3hit ko's rillaboom and this helps in the more offensive matchups. Focus blast valiant could also work well too. That could really screw over the opponent.
Sets like these I'm talking about:
Deoxys-Speed @ Power Herb
Ability: Pressure
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Psyshock
- Zap Cannon
- Focus Blast
- Meteor Beam
Iron Valiant @ Booster Energy
Ability: Quark Drive
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Focus Blast
- Moonblast
- Calm Mind
- Shadow Ball

 

[BolTingBlazie]

Maybe it is because I almost exclusively play Kyurem + Hexpult but I think Volc is so much harder to deal with than a Oger-W since all it takes is a 4x Freezedry and that Ogre is down for the count.

I think wellspring is probably a bigger issue overall since it isn't broken due to outside factors like tera or booster, just broken in its own right. I think a Wellspring ban is easier to justify right now. I think trying to get wellspring banned is more feasible, since it isn't broken because of any outside factors and overall I think it is an easier sell to the playerbase since I think people would agree on getting it out

I feel as if it is gonna be harder to get Volc banned for that reason, since tera is what breaks it and you have a potential Gambit suspect situation just waiting to happen because I just have a gut feeling a few people are gonna vote no ban on Volc because they want action on tera, and truly I don't think Volc will reach the supermajority due to the controversy and those players who resent tera surrounding it. Suspecting Volc just makes me feel like it will end up like the Gambit suspect a while ago.

 

[YubelVT]

People aren't terrified of getting rid of it. They just don't think it's banworthy at this moment. Consider that instead of attacking strawmen. I said this already. There are more pressing pokemon and Gambit has accessible widely splashable and useful counterplay. It's centralizing but far less problematic than oth

Last time I'm gonna talk about gambit in this particular reply string. Yes, Gambit's 'counterplay' is splashable and useful, but it's also completely forced because of gambit. Instead of being able to use Tusk OR a worse option with different upsides, I'm forced to consider both. This isn't fun, especially when you need more than one answer because, let's be real, Tusk is tasked with dealing with much more than just gambit. You also just can't tera your fighting type in a gambit game lest you lose on the spot, or be forced to run multiple fighting types and be burdened with the defensive hole that can leave to other teams. I'm a gen 7 OU enjoyer, I can enjoy a good Broken Checks Broken metagame, but gen 9 isn't that. It's not fun, and in large part it's because of the non-games Gambit enables and being shoehorned into running 1-2 of maybe 5 pokemon that semi-consistently beat it.

 

[SnoozSeal]

It takes time for a meta to develop. The immediate effects of each adjustment take some time to fully spread and it's not instantly clear what trends will develop from a single change. We saw this happen during the gouge test in real time, with different sets on dozo and lando-t designed to more effectively check it. The meta isn't instantly solved - we need to give players time to adapt and get used to it. Simply removing one mon for a short period won't give enough time to properly gauge its impact on the tier, and if we increase the duration of each one to be long enough that we can gather actual data I don't really see a meaningful enough difference from the current methodology of simply putting something on the chopping block via a suspect test. There's also going to be the natural headache of people complaining if their favorite gets banished to the shadow realm first.

I originally thought some form of ranked choice voting could work as the solution to the problem, but there's obvious pitfalls there - both in logistical issues, and with players who only have one issue with the meta and would abstain from listing multiple options.

Maybe some kind of “Alt OU” tier where we get to preview what a metagame without the suspected Pokemon would look and feel like. That way the meta can have some time to develop with and without the Pokemon. Suspect tests could also take longer so metas can develop in both OU and the theoretical Alt OU while not upsetting the playerbase. Definitely agree that there’s no way of knowing how a meta will develop when you ban something, but having some way of better gauging how a ban would change the meta would probably be good.

 

[Carl_the_turtle]

In the midst of the OU metagame discussion thread's 409th annual upcoming ban debacle, take a break and enjoy this gravity team destroying stall by clicking right here. Fun fact: hustleband Flapple using grav apple in gravity is the strongest unboosted physical hit in the tier, surpassing band rilla wood hammer in terrain by a little bit.

Are you certain? I'm pretty sure it gets out damaged by CB proto atk gouging in sun (even with adding grassy terrain to grav apple), and while that requires sun setup, gravity for CB flapple would also require external setup to get going as well.

 

[Duck Chris]

This weekend in Smogon Tournaments

in Official Smogon Tournament XX Finals
Storm Zone vs Antonazz - Replay
Storm Zone vs Antonazz - Replay
Couple very interesting games here featuring the rising Sinistcha, recently promoted from D to B+ rank on the VR and described as "a conservative rank until it sees long term success." Well some success here is notable with a solid performance in game 2 despite dying to two knocks from the main target it is supposed to counter in game 1. Storm Zone has been extremely hard to predict against given his creative teambuilding and he takes home a well deserved trophy.

in Smogon Premiere League
JJ09LIE vs Mada - Replay
Storm Zone vs myjava - Replay
Trosko vs Luispeikou - Replay
S1nn0hC0nfirm3d vs Poek - Replay
The final week of SPL came down to Tigers vs Tyrants, with plenty of talent to show for both teams in SV. Styles were mostly offensive with some balanced looks, even featuring a rain team which got a pretty good matchup with Hydration Manaphy and Amoonguss. With only one volcarona, one ogerpon, and two Kingambit, it looks like teams were going for a more subtle approach than just relying on strong "broken" offensive mons. The meta has definitely slowed down a bit and it shows in how these teams handled their weaknesses with smart usage of tera and solid defensive cores. It's been a blast to watch SPL this season and I highly recommend checking out the SPL Discussion thread as players are already posting their teams from the tournament and thoughts on the metagame.

No Smogon Tour SV this week, they played SM, but will be back Friday!

 

[BolTingBlazie]

This weekend in Smogon Tournaments

in Official Smogon Tournament XX Finals
Storm Zone vs Antonazz - Replay
Storm Zone vs Antonazz - Replay
Couple very interesting games here featuring the rising Sinistcha, recently promoted from D to B+ rank on the VR and described as "a conservative rank until it sees long term success." Well some success here is notable with a solid performance in game 2 despite dying to two knocks from the main target it is supposed to counter in game 1. Storm Zone has been extremely hard to predict against given his creative teambuilding and he takes home a well deserved trophy.

in Smogon Premiere League
JJ09LIE vs Mada - Replay
Storm Zone vs myjava - Replay
Trosko vs Luispeikou - Replay
S1nn0hC0nfirm3d vs Poek - Replay
The final week of SPL came down to Tigers vs Tyrants, with plenty of talent to show for both teams in SV. Styles were mostly offensive with some balanced looks, even featuring a rain team which got a pretty good matchup with Hydration Manaphy and Amoonguss. With only one volcarona, one ogerpon, and two Kingambit, it looks like teams were going for a more subtle approach than just relying on strong "broken" offensive mons. The meta has definitely slowed down a bit and it shows in how these teams handled their weaknesses with smart usage of tera and solid defensive cores. It's been a blast to watch SPL this season and I highly recommend checking out the SPL Discussion thread as players are already posting their teams from the tournament and thoughts on the metagame.

No Smogon Tour SV this week, they played SM, but will be back Friday!

JJ09LIE actually made torn-T work decently well! Really helped them open up holes for their other heavy hitters like Glowking by removing Valiant and chipping and taunting dnite, I wonder if that was Physdef torn since it's not every day that you see the pokemon switching in to blanket check monstrous physical threats like that in this meta.

Love it when people make less viable pokemon work

 

[East Coast Elite]

the thing about that is, well…

…yeah. not to mention the stuff that would need to go if all this went (lookin at you, dragapult). "we need like 6-10 bans to fix things" is not a ridiculous concept. we easily hit those numbers during pre-dlc and dlc1 and it wasn't even enough

I think it’s sort of a ridiculous concept, even if people think the meta needs work. I don’t think many people, especially top players feel the meta is 8 bans away. I think power creep may be your issue over the meta. I thought the end of DLC1 was quite balanced, I’ve even heard people complain that it was too similar to Gen 8 with the Ting-Zap-Pex core everywhere.

 

[ianlazerbeem]

I think it’s sort of a ridiculous concept, even if people think the meta needs work. I don’t think many people, especially top players feel the meta is 8 bans away. I think power creep may be your issue over the meta. I thought the end of DLC1 was quite balanced, I’ve even heard people complain that it was too similar to Gen 8 with the Ting-Zap-Pex core everywhere.

How exactly is every single team spamming zap king Lu wellspring ace Ghold "balanced?"

 

[East Coast Elite]

How exactly is every single team spamming zap king Lu wellspring ace Ghold "balanced?"

Don‘t that meta wasn’t without issues/redundancy. Just saying that 8 bans to fix the meta isn't going to happen. Also just because those mons were used a lot doesn’t mean the meta is unbalanced.

 

[MattC (Banned)]

How exactly is every single team spamming zap king Lu wellspring ace Ghold "balanced?"

There exists a metagame called Gen 1 OU. Every team has Tauros, Chansey, and Snorlax and 3 other mons to complement them -- though this era has probably passed.

In Gen 2 OU, Snorlax is on 100% of competitive teams WITHOUT QUESTION. Highly concerning but it has a reason for being in every team.

Even in Ubers for last generation (8), Yveltal + Necrozma DM + Eternatus were kinda forced into every single team because of Calyrex Shadow -- in which, lies this very wonky triangle of sadness within diversity (it doesn't exist).


Those 3 examples above are [extremely] outdated and probably irrelevant to this but, in more recent times, as you said ianlazerbeem, ZapKingLu is (or was anyway) everywhere. Obviously it's not ideal but it's inevitable. Whether it be a specific mon, or a collective power of brokenness, there's always gonna be this group of mons everyone uses. It's not balanced at all, you're right. Creativity should be at least noticable, if not very diverse. But we have a long ways away until gen 10. The metagame will reach a point where there is creative teambuilding eventually, but until then, we just figure out ways to be off meta. Why not try out a core that matches well into a lot of the metagame that's underated? Why not try and merge the likes of Fat with HO to make Bulky Offense -- or a Stall team that bides time and manipulates switching until your offensive mon has an opening to sweep or poke holes in the opposition? Maybe you could use a Glass Cannon team with the likes of risky sweepers such as Polteageist and Ursaluna backed up by an endgame Kingambit. But whatever the case, it's all just for fun tho. Just because we can be different. Creativity knows no boundaries except its creator's limits :3

 

[arnimacarni]

You know, we spoke about Kokoloko some weeks ago, don't remember who in the council started it, but in this stalemate that we find ourselves in, I'm starting to consider it a reasonable proposal, specially now that tier shifts are every 3 months.

I would take:

We toss a coin to select the order of reintroduction and we do a 16-week calendar, first week we see the meta at hand and select if anything needs to be booted, and then every week a new mon gets introduced

Its a lot but sounds feasable to me

 

[weirdo faye]

This weekend in Smogon Tournaments

in Official Smogon Tournament XX Finals
Storm Zone vs Antonazz - Replay
Storm Zone vs Antonazz - Replay
Couple very interesting games here featuring the rising Sinistcha, recently promoted from D to B+ rank on the VR and described as "a conservative rank until it sees long term success." Well some success here is notable with a solid performance in game 2 despite dying to two knocks from the main target it is supposed to counter in game 1. Storm Zone has been extremely hard to predict against given his creative teambuilding and he takes home a well deserved trophy.

in Smogon Premiere League
JJ09LIE vs Mada - Replay
Storm Zone vs myjava - Replay
Trosko vs Luispeikou - Replay
S1nn0hC0nfirm3d vs Poek - Replay
The final week of SPL came down to Tigers vs Tyrants, with plenty of talent to show for both teams in SV. Styles were mostly offensive with some balanced looks, even featuring a rain team which got a pretty good matchup with Hydration Manaphy and Amoonguss. With only one volcarona, one ogerpon, and two Kingambit, it looks like teams were going for a more subtle approach than just relying on strong "broken" offensive mons. The meta has definitely slowed down a bit and it shows in how these teams handled their weaknesses with smart usage of tera and solid defensive cores. It's been a blast to watch SPL this season and I highly recommend checking out the SPL Discussion thread as players are already posting their teams from the tournament and thoughts on the metagame.

No Smogon Tour SV this week, they played SM, but will be back Friday!

a for effort

 

[Unscripted]

Do people have the opposite of rose tinted glasses for the DLC1 metagame (crimson tinted glasses? green tinted glasses??) because it was not as bad as everyone is saying. In September almost fell out of OU. It was 34th in usage with 31 and 21. October had them move up but none of the "big three" reached near top 10, the closest being at 18. In November after the , , and bans finally moved to the top 10 but only had 15% usage while offensive mons like , , . , and remained the majority of the highly used mons. We barely had a month after the big DLC1 offense bans to let the metagame settle before DLC2 shook everything up. If these bulkier hazard balance teams were so prevelant then why didnt see high usage (it did) to counter bulky styles like everyone is saying it is banworthy now for?

The metagame hardly had time to develop and I think making statements about the state of affairs for a metagame where was on only one in eight teams is a folly.

"Oh no I have to play against actual good balance teams 1/8 times I queue into the ladder" is not a particularly unwelcome endpoint to aim for

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Do people have the opposite of rose tinted glasses for the DLC1 metagame (crimson tinted glasses? green tinted glasses??) because it was not as bad as everyone is saying. In September almost fell out of OU. It was 34th in usage with 31 and 21. October had them move up but none of the "big three" reached near top 10, the closest being at 18. In November after the , , and bans finally moved to the top 10 but only had 15% usage while offensive mons like , , . , and remained the majority of the highly used mons. We barely had a month after the big DLC1 offense bans to let the metagame settle before DLC2 shook everything up. If these bulkier hazard balance teams were so prevelant then why didnt see high usage (it did) to counter bulky styles like everyone is saying it is banworthy now for?

The metagame hardly had time to develop and I think making statements about the state of affairs for a metagame where was on only one in eight teams is a folly.

"Oh no I have to play against actual good balance teams 1/8 times I queue into the ladder" is not a particularly unwelcome endpoint to aim for

yeah, the fearmongering about zap-king-lu balance is the fourth dumbest thing to come out of this gen (after "we should drop [insert uber here]", "we should just accept the current state of broken checks broken", and "if we ban tera/[insert mon here] it'll go back to gen 8"). the tail end of post-home and the tail end of dlc1 were the most competitive and most stable points of the meta and it wasn't even close (no, ian, the gliscor meta was not good). we were starting to actually have to use our brains to play the game instead of just sending out whatever unga bunga offensemon (or, in gliscor's case, unga bunga stallmon) was the threat of the week. zap-king-lu balance was healthy, every playstyle could reasonably play around it, and it wouldn't even come back if a ton of tiering action was done—there are several new additions to the meta that are unambiguously healthy and capable of either dealing with the core or competing with members of it for teamspace