Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion

[Ihatemakingnames]

RE Gholdengo, I don’t really see the problem with it, but I also have been running Cyclizar which I think is a pretty good counter. Gholdengo really doesn’t want to switch in on a predicted spin since you can just click shed tail instead and set up a Dragonite/Chien Pao/Polt in its face

 

[woopdoopity]

I'm sorry but Shed Tail on Orthworm is just as broken as it is on Cyclizar and needs banning just as much.

I personally disagree; the speed difference between Cyclizar and Orthworm means that Orthworm will often have to eat an attack to get Shed Tail off, and that can leave it without the HP to sub up.

Orthworm is still annoying, possible even moreso than Cyclizar, but I just don’t think this is banworthy (I don’t think Cyclizar needs banning either)

 

[MrE]

I personally disagree; the speed difference between Cyclizar and Orthworm means that Orthworm will often have to eat an attack to get Shed Tail off, and that can leave it without the HP to sub up.

Orthworm is still annoying, possible even moreso than Cyclizar, but I just don’t think this is banworthy (I don’t think Cyclizar needs banning either)

I agree both aren't ban worthy, shed tail is

 

[alephgalactus]

I personally disagree; the speed difference between Cyclizar and Orthworm means that Orthworm will often have to eat an attack to get Shed Tail off, and that can leave it without the HP to sub up.

Orthworm is still annoying, possible even moreso than Cyclizar, but I just don’t think this is banworthy (I don’t think Cyclizar needs banning either)

Orthworm can run Sitrus Berry to vastly increase the chances of getting a Shed Tail off, and its low Speed means that whatever comes in is virtually guaranteed to be behind a Substitute for at least the next turn, which is rarely the case with Cyclizar. In my experience, I’ve actually found Orthworm to be more oppressive than Cyclizar at times. Ban Shed Tail.

 

[ayevon]

My point was moreso that he performs well specifically against those team building archetypes while having mediocre at best performance against others, which is not a strictly uncommon state for a lot of Pokemon in a Gen. Besides that it was also to raise the question of if Annihilape having very strong performance against Balance/Stall would be a banworthy topic if those playstyles were already extremely hard to play efficiently because of several other factors in the tier as is.

The rest of my post also brought up the consideration that other restrictive threats like Palafin and Iron Bundle being removed would give defensive cores ways to diversify rather than hyper focus on hem, which potentially results in them becoming more common because they can deal with other things more efficiently, including a building-up Annihilape.

Regardless of other threats, what defensive pokemon can effectively handle both of Annihilape's rest and taunt sets? Status moves like Spore, Leech Seed, Toxic, WoW, etc all count towards Annihilape's Rage Fist counter. Annihilape punsihes basic pokemon play at an exponential scale. I really don't think people have scratched the surface with how good Annihilape can be and it's already pretty busted. Imagine scarf + wish pass support, imagine rest + heal bell support. The ease at which you can get this thing to have a stab 150+ BP move is insanity.

 

[roboscout]

Decided to jump into doing some S/V OU after being away from pokemon for awhile. Been having a ton of fun so far. Really enjoyed tera as it is and the mindgames that go into figuring out when they are going to tera. This is the team I have been running with at this point, which seems to have been working out so far. Experimented with sylveon early on but swapped it for bellibolt to better deal with iron bundle and gholdengo.

Iron Bundle @ Booster Energy
Ability: Quark Drive
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Freeze-Dry
- Hydro Pump
- Flip Turn
- Taunt

Baxcalibur @ Life Orb
Ability: Thermal Exchange
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Earthquake
- Glaive Rush
- Ice Shard

Skeledirge @ Leftovers
Ability: Unaware
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Slack Off
- Will-O-Wisp
- Roar
- Torch Song

Bellibolt @ Assault Vest
Ability: Electromorphosis
Tera Type: Ice
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Parabolic Charge
- Volt Switch
- Muddy Water
- Tera Blast

Great Tusk @ Leftovers
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Grass
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def
Impish Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Rapid Spin
- Earthquake
- Knock Off

Kingambit @ Assault Vest
Ability: Supreme Overlord
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk
Adamant Nature
- Sucker Punch
- Iron Head
- Kowtow Cleave
- Zen Headbutt

 

[Negative Charge]

What do you all think of my idea of TWO seperate tiers/ladders/meta games (or whatever you want to call it): one with Terastalizing allowed, and one without. To each his/her own, you know?

Imo this is what natdex should actually be, the current gen mechanic with the full pokedex (excluding megas, z-moves and dynamax). I think this would probably make the largest number of people happy.

 

[alephgalactus]

Status moves like Spore, Leech Seed, Toxic, WoW, etc all counter towards Annihilape's Rage Fist counter.

This is the big reason I think it needs to go. You think Gholdengo is bad? Wait till Defiant Annihilape comes in on your Defog and gets +2 and a Rage Fist boost. Try to burn it to halve Rage Fist’s power? Guess what, fucker, it’s still 50 at the absolute least and you’ve accomplished nothing. Try to force it out? Too bad, the Rage Fist counter doesn’t reset. KO it? Whoops, Revival Blessing just got coded and the Rage Fist counter doesn’t reset after fainting either.

Edit: So it turns out that status moves don’t affect Rage Fist after all. Still an absurd move that should be looked at.

 

[the mystery duck]

Status moves like Spore, Leech Seed, Toxic, WoW, etc all count towards Annihilape's Rage Fist counter.

Only direct damage contributes to rage fist counter.
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/scarlet-violet-battle-mechanics-research.3709545/page-13 (post#312)

 

[ayevon]

Only direct damage contributes to rage fist counter.
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/scarlet-violet-battle-mechanics-research.3709545/page-13 (post#312)

Then it's implemented very incorrectly on showdown

 

[Bugboy]

Only direct damage contributes to rage fist counter.
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/scarlet-violet-battle-mechanics-research.3709545/page-13 (post#312)

This is wild, on showdown it definitely feels like it’s stacking for anything like will-o for example. I’m 90% sure this is what’s happening.

Why are we discussing banning things when the mechanics don’t even work properly?

 

[Finchinator]

Then it's implemented very incorrectly on showdown

I am inquiring internally on this matter

 

[Finchinator]

Why are we discussing banning things when the mechanics don’t even work properly?

Can we ever be 100% sure every mechanic is 100% proper? We had shifts to RBY and ADV 15+ years after their releases due to newly discovered mechanics that genuinely altered both metagames — Sleep Talk in ADV was dwarfed and Body Slam into normals in RBY was changed.

Maybe not everything is perfect yet, but there’s no way for us to be sure as a council and there’s no way for us ever to be 100% positive as a community. We just have to do our job and accept the fact that things may be imperfect. We have a team of awesome, hard working developers and coders doing their best to make this all possible after all.

 

[Tzolkin]

I am really surprised by the amount of hate Gholdengo recevies for essentially preventing hazards from being easily removed. Hazards are the only thing keeping this metagame from turning into regenerator/pivoting moves spam as it sometimes felt like in gen 8 where you had widespread defog, magic guard mons and of course HDB which still exist. When meta actually settles down a bit I really don't see how hazard stacking teams can even be a problem with HDB in the tier and I am not saying that every mon should run them but so many pivots are naturally going to use them (dragapult etc.) many sr weak pokemon are going to use them anyway so in the end hazards only bother very defensive stuff anyway imo. From what I've seen there are many many more problematic things to consider.

 

[Bugboy]

Can we ever be 100% sure every mechanic is 100% proper? We had shifts to RBY and ADV 15+ years after their releases due to newly discovered mechanics that genuinely altered both metagames — Sleep Talk in ADV was dwarfed and Body Slam into normals in RBY was changed.

Maybe not everything is perfect yet, but there’s no way for us to be sure as a council and there’s no way for us ever to be 100% positive as a community. We just have to do our job and accept the fact that things may be imperfect. We have a team of awesome, hard working developers and coders doing their best to make this all possible after all.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask for exercising a little bit more patience with bans here. We will be playing gen 9 OU for 3 years and we’re only a few days in. Not to mention that this is information that has been publicly available at least since Wednesday and should be influencing ban discussions.

don’t get me wrong. I am not against a ban of something like flutter mane or palafin that are simply stat nightmares that anyone could have predicted being uncompetitive, just arguing in favor of a bit more patience with bans.

 

[Finchinator]

I don’t think it’s too much to ask for exercising a little bit more patience with bans here. We will be playing gen 9 OU for 3 years and we’re only a few days in. Not to mention that this is information that has been publicly available at least since Wednesday and should be influencing ban discussions.

We have 4 total Pokemon in Ubers rn. 2 are box legendaries, 1 was one of the most broken things ever regardless of mechanics, and another had a 200-300 BP STAB move late game. We only banned 2 of 8 things initially and maybe only 1-2 more are coming. This is plenty patient; we have already expressed that we are only tackling egregious things initially and our messaging has been consistent with what’s transpired.

 

[AtlasFlame18]

Can we ever be 100% sure every mechanic is 100% proper? We had shifts to RBY and ADV 15+ years after their releases due to newly discovered mechanics that genuinely altered both metagames — Sleep Talk in ADV was dwarfed and Body Slam into normals in RBY was changed.

Maybe not everything is perfect yet, but there’s no way for us to be sure as a council and there’s no way for us ever to be 100% positive as a community. We just have to do our job and accept the fact that things may be imperfect. We have a team of awesome, hard working developers and coders doing their best to make this all possible after all.

To play Devil's advocate it is much harder to unban something than it is to ban something once a metagame settles. So we definitely want to make sure that before we make any bans we are working with near 100% certainty about the mechanics and attributes of the Pokémon.

If Rage Fist is incorrectly programmed and its because of that mistake that Annihilape gets banned that's certainly not good for anyone.

 

[pokemonisfun]

Can we ever be 100% sure every mechanic is 100% proper? We had shifts to RBY and ADV 15+ years after their releases due to newly discovered mechanics that genuinely altered both metagames — Sleep Talk in ADV was dwarfed and Body Slam into normals in RBY was changed.

Maybe not everything is perfect yet, but there’s no way for us to be sure as a council and there’s no way for us ever to be 100% positive as a community. We just have to do our job and accept the fact that things may be imperfect. We have a team of awesome, hard working developers and coders doing their best to make this all possible after all.

Yeah what you said is true and yes as always we must thank the PS people making the website function.

still, I think the poster has a point - people are literally discussing whether to ban Rage Fist /Annihilape in this thread and we aren’t certain how good it is because it was implemented different from cartridge.

I think we should be cognizant and more acknowledging of this and that we really don’t know how good Annhilape is yet, to the certainty we have for other elements of the game that are presumably implemented correctly.

Feel free to correct me if I misunderstand you or Bugboy

 

[Finchinator]

To play Devil's advocate it is much harder to unban something than it is to ban something once a metagame settles. So we definitely want to make sure that before we make any bans we are working with near 100% certainty about the mechanics and attributes of the Pokémon.

If Rage Fist is incorrectly programmed and its because of that mistake that Annihilape gets banned that's certainly not good for anyone.

I can unban things whenever I see fit and may very well do so if Tera is restricted or banned. I may do so as well when Home comes out and we have new OU pokemon. I am saying, as the person who does the bans and unbans, that it is not harder to unban something than it is to ban it if there is good reason for it.

 

[Finchinator]

still, I think the poster has a point - people are literally discussing whether to ban Rage Fist /Annihilape in this thread and we aren’t certain how good it is because it was implemented different from cartridge.

I think we should be cognizant and more acknowledging of this and that we really don’t know how good Annhilape is yet, to the certainty we have for other elements of the game that are presumably implemented correctly.

I mean I highly doubt the Ape is going to be banned yet (I know I’m not voting to ban it and others aren’t likely to quite yet either), but to stop quickbans as a whole on this basis is a weak, insufficient argument in my eyes.

 

[pokemonisfun]

I mean I highly doubt the Ape is going to be banned yet (I know I’m not voting to ban it and others aren’t likely to quite yet either), but to stop quickbans as a whole on this basis is a weak, insufficient argument in my eyes.

I agree we shouldn’t stop quickbans based on this

I also would say I highly doubt that’s what the poster meant and we should be more generous when interpreting posts but yeah I agree with your main point

 

[AtlasFlame18]

I can unban things whenever I see fit and may very well do so if Tera is restricted or banned. I may do so as well when Home comes out and we have new OU pokemon. I am saying, as the person who does the bans and unbans, that it is not harder to unban something than it is to ban it if there is good reason for it.

Aren't unbans usually done via suspect tests unless it's the start of a new gen/dlc?

 

[Finchinator]

Aren't unbans usually done via suspect tests unless it's the start of a new gen/dlc?

They can be done more liberally if a core mechanic changes or a new release happens

 

[Perish Song]

I would like to discuss how the reaction towards Gholdengo is pretty similar to the reactions we've seen in previous generations. We are all used to some level of comfort that changes when a new generation hits. Let's remember, when Stealth Rock was first introduced there were masses complaining about how it made the game very easy and it was restrictive for some Pokemon and we didnt have enough viable hazard removal. We learned to play around it. Despite hazards being very relevant DPP does have a lot of completely viable teams that dont run any sort of removal. Then Boots were introduced, and people complained how it was invalidating the hazard stacking which was a very common concept in the game up until that point ever since generation 4. If we look at the end of generation 8, balance is dominating and while hazards are still very important they are rather insignificant. Corviknight and Tornadus-T could Defog on almost anything, Clefable didnt care, and we had Rillabooms running Terrain Extender that sort of invalidated the whole indirect damage concept and if anything it caused negative progress.

Now, we have the cheesestick. It just completely invalidates the autopilot gameplay and your "insert defogger name here" carelessly clicking Defog. Is this a bad thing? I believe no, I believe this post perfectly sums it up what this Pokemon does. We will eventually adapt and balance will find a way to threathen Gholdengo too. I would also like to point out that voltturning is in a pretty uncommon as of now, we dont have much Pokemon using these which is one of reasons why Air Balloon set is strong right now. Imagine they just predict your spin or whatever and they get hit by U-turn, now they have to think twice before switching into Great Tusk or whatever Pokemon is your hazard removal.

Last note: This thing blocking Corviknight is a good thing lol.

 

[Dunfan]

An OM may be more feasible as it requires less to maintain, but an official splinter tier is out of the question as far as I know

That's actually a very good point. UU OMs have worked in the past, and by extension lower tiers are possible as well. I do not have a single doubt that it would work pretty well as one.

However, OMs and their extremely small but effective councils and playerbases also show how ridiculously easy it is to manage a meta,
as well as the ABUNDANCE of tiering respondent. Small playerbases are already perfectly sufficient and effective. In other words, I'll talk as casually as you do, it completely dabs on your "but muh playerbase" speech.
Not to mention that in terms of sustainance, it makes way more sense for a terastal ladder to gain a following considering this is what game players will automatically direct themselves towards, by extension making much quieter a non-tera ladder.

I'm also gonna bring it up again since the question got avoided, ever since bot usage like Scrappie's .alts command got restricted to %driver users and above (I'm not exactly sure when, but I definitely remember when it wasn't like that), the current ladder has had a problem of favoritism, unfairness, and uncompetitiveness. That, once again, terastal largely mitigates.
In other words, terastal is the better ladder in the current state of things.

But "mitigating" and "fixing" are two different things. I normally should not even have to consider a terastal meta, which also suffers to an extent from the problem of scouting, to deal with what is essentially a Showdown problem rather than something coming from Smogon.
I recognize how paradoxal is my position, but NOTHING bot-related was fixed over the past few years since the ban of that-one-mechanic that also mitigated the unfairness issue, so why would we put any faith on Showdown's incompetent side of dealing with the problem?
We wouldn't. Only Smogon can fix it at this point. And clearly, if we must have two main ladders to deal with a problem of uncompetitiveness and favoritism, then it's a price Smogon is willing to and naturally has to pay.
Which is why it is out of question to not keep a terastal ladder, because with it things are still better.