To me, the biggest issue is Hydreigon. It can fit on any team and improve it. It’s super good on hazard stacking teams because it destroys every spin blocker. It is incredibly powerful and diverse in sets. It’s good on weather too, because it can give you a great mix of defense and offense, which is necessary on these teams. I think its just too strong with terastallization + levitate, can safely go tera steel/poison/fire to resist fairy with a lot less drawback than most pokemon. Just seems like an even stronger more versatile Iron Jugulis, which is currently banned. Manaphy is also insane, +3 Manaphy is a wrecking ball of unbelievable levels and Take Heart sets demolish stall teams VERY badly, and its hard to tell which one it is in preview because they both can fit on many structures. Rain in general MIGHT be too strong but I think manaphy in rain is the real broken element, for now anyways.
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Metagame SV RU Metagame Discussion (April Shifts, see post #191)
- Thread starter Feliburn
- Start date
I think personally this meta has way too many threats and is kinda bloated atm, so I wouldn't really enjoy having RUBL mons dropped even if they would be "balanced", but regardless here are my thoughts on whats broken & some more.
and yeah i know it's only day 2 of the meta but god damn
If y'all thought gyarados was punishing to go against, y'all ain't seen nothin' yet. This thing w/ tera can kinda just win games by itself. 2 dragon dances puts it easily above any scarfers, it's got amazing bulk, great typing, and tera steel on this thing makes killing it impossible. You have to be playing proactively every single turn or else this thing sets up and sweeps your entire team because you were a turn off on your defensive play. Not to mention that it can reliably run mixed sets to absolutely wreck anything that dares try and wall it. It's got unresisted coverage, can beat focus sash mons w/ dual wingbeat, and is generally just not fun to play against. I think this should be the first thing to go.
Even outside of rain this thing can steamroll you, and I don't want to run blissey and AV florges to be able to have a fighting chance against this thing. Call me a hater, but maybe the pokemon who has two completely viable sets that you need to deal with before they set up that can heal to full in a single turn in rain isn't that balanced.
The mouse is back, and it fits perfectly into this crazy meta. Now, beforehand teams could actually prep for maus & the HO gang, but guess what? 15 new threats have dropped, and now you can't actually prep for maushold AND the conkeldurr and zarude and manaphy and thunderous-t and hydregion and
better break out the rockyhelm tinkaton, cause it's +1 population bombing time
the ONLY reprieve we've got is gengar dropping (who takes 80% from a bite -.-, and amendment, that's unboosted. +1 is an OHKO.), but even still it's speed tier puts it above most scarfers (including gengar), so revenge killing's gonna be hard
THINGS THAT MAY BECOME ISSUES LATER ON
Just because we can drop it, doesn't mean that we should. Iron Jugulis would go right back to being irritating, restricting, and also we probably shouldn't give the team style that was 15% used last month that got 2 strong new abusers another threat to use. Iron Jugulis honestly isn't really a healthy presence, and I don't see it really adding anything positive to the tier. Also it would go back to cheesing out wins again
And speaking of Jugulis...
It's managable...? tera fairy anything kinda walls it, but it's probably only a matter of time before tera steel hydregion becomes a thing. something to keep an eye on for sure
the bird honestly doesn't seem too broken, but again, as things get banned we may see it pop up, maybe wielding a choice band or something
if y'all hated enam-t then this is enam-t on steroids with a better typing, recovery, and status curing
maybe could be hard to deal w/, but I'll wait until it hits top 10 and i can steal the set from there
anyways hope y'all are doing well in this mess of a meta, and i wish the council good luck
and yeah i know it's only day 2 of the meta but god damn
If y'all thought gyarados was punishing to go against, y'all ain't seen nothin' yet. This thing w/ tera can kinda just win games by itself. 2 dragon dances puts it easily above any scarfers, it's got amazing bulk, great typing, and tera steel on this thing makes killing it impossible. You have to be playing proactively every single turn or else this thing sets up and sweeps your entire team because you were a turn off on your defensive play. Not to mention that it can reliably run mixed sets to absolutely wreck anything that dares try and wall it. It's got unresisted coverage, can beat focus sash mons w/ dual wingbeat, and is generally just not fun to play against. I think this should be the first thing to go.
Even outside of rain this thing can steamroll you, and I don't want to run blissey and AV florges to be able to have a fighting chance against this thing. Call me a hater, but maybe the pokemon who has two completely viable sets that you need to deal with before they set up that can heal to full in a single turn in rain isn't that balanced.
The mouse is back, and it fits perfectly into this crazy meta. Now, beforehand teams could actually prep for maus & the HO gang, but guess what? 15 new threats have dropped, and now you can't actually prep for maushold AND the conkeldurr and zarude and manaphy and thunderous-t and hydregion and
better break out the rockyhelm tinkaton, cause it's +1 population bombing time
the ONLY reprieve we've got is gengar dropping (who takes 80% from a bite -.-, and amendment, that's unboosted. +1 is an OHKO.), but even still it's speed tier puts it above most scarfers (including gengar), so revenge killing's gonna be hard
THINGS THAT MAY BECOME ISSUES LATER ON
Just because we can drop it, doesn't mean that we should. Iron Jugulis would go right back to being irritating, restricting, and also we probably shouldn't give the team style that was 15% used last month that got 2 strong new abusers another threat to use. Iron Jugulis honestly isn't really a healthy presence, and I don't see it really adding anything positive to the tier. Also it would go back to cheesing out wins again
And speaking of Jugulis...
It's managable...? tera fairy anything kinda walls it, but it's probably only a matter of time before tera steel hydregion becomes a thing. something to keep an eye on for sure
the bird honestly doesn't seem too broken, but again, as things get banned we may see it pop up, maybe wielding a choice band or something
if y'all hated enam-t then this is enam-t on steroids with a better typing, recovery, and status curing
maybe could be hard to deal w/, but I'll wait until it hits top 10 and i can steal the set from there
anyways hope y'all are doing well in this mess of a meta, and i wish the council good luck
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Hi hi RUBL votes happened and here are the results, Feli is on vacation so you have to deal with my ugly table instead! With all nine members voting, 6/9 was needed for an unban:
Gyarados, Hoopa-Unbound and Iron Jugulis received 8/9 votes, Iron Leaves and Mew received 7/9, while Haxorus received 6/9. As such, Gyarados, Haxorus, Hoopa-Unbound, Iron Leaves, Iron Jugulis and Mew are unbanned from RUBL and are coming back to RU. Tagging dhelmise and Marty to implement on ladder, thank you!
Hawlucha and Polteageist are still banned, confirming the corrupt agenda against making Indeedee a top tier pokemon again.
Gyarados, Hoopa-Unbound and Iron Jugulis received 8/9 votes, Iron Leaves and Mew received 7/9, while Haxorus received 6/9. As such, Gyarados, Haxorus, Hoopa-Unbound, Iron Leaves, Iron Jugulis and Mew are unbanned from RUBL and are coming back to RU. Tagging dhelmise and Marty to implement on ladder, thank you!
Hawlucha and Polteageist are still banned, confirming the corrupt agenda against making Indeedee a top tier pokemon again.
Aight new Meta, new fun and I can finally start giving a shit again. First impressions / opinions coming up.
Nuke all four of these. All of them are silly levels of broken in the tier. Manaphy is doing what everybody expected and bulldozing the entire tier without recourse, usually needing 2+ mons to die before you can send it packing, REALLY dumb on webs, 0 reliable checks, broken tera wincon and that's ignoring the option of take heart sets. Hydreigon is probably the least broken of these, but it's still very dumb. Specs is an OHKO machine, Tinkaton fighting for it's life just to take 80 from an earth power callout. The reason i'm not hugely on it's QB is scarf is just honestly kinda bad, other sets like sub 3a are nice though, and epack rocks is probably solid aswell, but specs is the main problem. Zapdos-G is genuinely just pre home flamigo all over again but worse, having knock and a superior everything to flamigo, and invites in so many broken nukes like Hydrei or crawdaunt when it u-turns on the 2 mons you can send into it (hippowdon and slowbro). Please send it packing, there's simply no good answers to this thing let's not waste time with SSNL right here. Salamence needs zero introduction, DD tera whatever you fucking want (you see a trend yet?) and wins really easily if you don't have a hippowdon. You have alot of variety with this thing and can even run mixed dd sets if you really want to snipe slowbros and hippowdons who think they actually check you. Send it out to RUBL please thnx.
Now for the more interesting ones.
I can't believe I'm saying this but... this mon is broken as fuck oh my god. Tera blast ground is so silly and can snowball so easily, flex options between stored power, taunt, encore, giga drain, knock. Immortal bastard who finds ways to win when it has absolutely zero business doing so. The checks to this thing is very mediocre, stuff like roar empoleon, cm slowking are decent answers until they whip out taunt. Vileplume can piss it off for a bit but unfortunately between taunt and cm boosts it can snowball past plume p easily. Stuff like Moltres is probably best but honestly cm taunt probably beats that too, let alone what stored power will be doing. Rotom-Heat can also do decently, and trick in general is a good way to stop this thing, but besides trick the picking are really bad honestly. I'd call this the first suspect of DLC2 this thing is genuinely nuts.
Our pivot waters are very exceptional, i fully expect for both washtom and slowking not to last forever, but until they leave they'll be held in extremely high regard. Slowking in particular I think is the primary stop to rain, they- Ya'll literally just unbanned hoopa-u WHY. Well assuming ya'll just ban it again on sunday my points still stands. Good mons and once the insanity of these decisions are dealt with ya'll can go back to havin a playable tier again
EDIT:
Add these to the QB list. Once post drop clarity comes and these things kill everybody you love again you'll realize your mistakes. We didn't need to bring back babies first HO lead of babies first balance mauler. We just got washtom and slowking and yall thought oh yeah hoopa-u will be fine this time! What are we doing here.
Not gonn make anymore points since there's no point till sunday when we get the first QB wave... right? So until they have fun with the stupid shittery we just freed LMAO
Nuke all four of these. All of them are silly levels of broken in the tier. Manaphy is doing what everybody expected and bulldozing the entire tier without recourse, usually needing 2+ mons to die before you can send it packing, REALLY dumb on webs, 0 reliable checks, broken tera wincon and that's ignoring the option of take heart sets. Hydreigon is probably the least broken of these, but it's still very dumb. Specs is an OHKO machine, Tinkaton fighting for it's life just to take 80 from an earth power callout. The reason i'm not hugely on it's QB is scarf is just honestly kinda bad, other sets like sub 3a are nice though, and epack rocks is probably solid aswell, but specs is the main problem. Zapdos-G is genuinely just pre home flamigo all over again but worse, having knock and a superior everything to flamigo, and invites in so many broken nukes like Hydrei or crawdaunt when it u-turns on the 2 mons you can send into it (hippowdon and slowbro). Please send it packing, there's simply no good answers to this thing let's not waste time with SSNL right here. Salamence needs zero introduction, DD tera whatever you fucking want (you see a trend yet?) and wins really easily if you don't have a hippowdon. You have alot of variety with this thing and can even run mixed dd sets if you really want to snipe slowbros and hippowdons who think they actually check you. Send it out to RUBL please thnx.
Now for the more interesting ones.
I can't believe I'm saying this but... this mon is broken as fuck oh my god. Tera blast ground is so silly and can snowball so easily, flex options between stored power, taunt, encore, giga drain, knock. Immortal bastard who finds ways to win when it has absolutely zero business doing so. The checks to this thing is very mediocre, stuff like roar empoleon, cm slowking are decent answers until they whip out taunt. Vileplume can piss it off for a bit but unfortunately between taunt and cm boosts it can snowball past plume p easily. Stuff like Moltres is probably best but honestly cm taunt probably beats that too, let alone what stored power will be doing. Rotom-Heat can also do decently, and trick in general is a good way to stop this thing, but besides trick the picking are really bad honestly. I'd call this the first suspect of DLC2 this thing is genuinely nuts.
Our pivot waters are very exceptional, i fully expect for both washtom and slowking not to last forever, but until they leave they'll be held in extremely high regard. Slowking in particular I think is the primary stop to rain, they- Ya'll literally just unbanned hoopa-u WHY. Well assuming ya'll just ban it again on sunday my points still stands. Good mons and once the insanity of these decisions are dealt with ya'll can go back to havin a playable tier again
EDIT:
Add these to the QB list. Once post drop clarity comes and these things kill everybody you love again you'll realize your mistakes. We didn't need to bring back babies first HO lead of babies first balance mauler. We just got washtom and slowking and yall thought oh yeah hoopa-u will be fine this time! What are we doing here.
Not gonn make anymore points since there's no point till sunday when we get the first QB wave... right? So until they have fun with the stupid shittery we just freed LMAO
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imo the tiering trend of "we just got a bunch of drops lets unban everything!!!" has been pretty awful and 90% of the time most of it gets rebanned, if not everythingAight new Meta, new fun and I can finally start giving a shit again. First impressions / opinions coming up.
Nuke all four of these. All of them are silly levels of broken in the tier. Manaphy is doing what everybody expected and bulldozing the entire tier without recourse, usually needing 2+ mons to die before you can send it packing, REALLY dumb on webs, 0 reliable checks, broken tera wincon and that's ignoring the option of take heart sets. Hydreigon is probably the least broken of these, but it's still very dumb. Specs is an OHKO machine, Tinkaton fighting for it's life just to take 80 from an earth power callout. The reason i'm not hugely on it's QB is scarf is just honestly kinda bad, other sets like sub 3a are nice though, and epack rocks is probably solid aswell, but specs is the main problem. Zapdos-G is genuinely just pre home flamigo all over again but worse, having knock and a superior everything to flamigo, and invites in so many broken nukes like Hydrei or crawdaunt when it u-turns on the 2 mons you can send into it (hippowdon and slowbro). Please send it packing, there's simply no good answers to this thing let's not waste time with SSNL right here. Salamence needs zero introduction, DD tera whatever you fucking want (you see a trend yet?) and wins really easily if you don't have a hippowdon. You have alot of variety with this thing and can even run mixed dd sets if you really want to snipe slowbros and hippowdons who think they actually check you. Send it out to RUBL please thnx.
Now for the more interesting ones.
I can't believe I'm saying this but... this mon is broken as fuck oh my god. Tera blast ground is so silly and can snowball so easily, flex options between stored power, taunt, encore, giga drain, knock. Immortal bastard who finds ways to win when it has absolutely zero business doing so. The checks to this thing is very mediocre, stuff like roar empoleon, cm slowking are decent answers until they whip out taunt. Vileplume can piss it off for a bit but unfortunately between taunt and cm boosts it can snowball past plume p easily. Stuff like Moltres is probably best but honestly cm taunt probably beats that too, let alone what stored power will be doing. Rotom-Heat can also do decently, and trick in general is a good way to stop this thing, but besides trick the picking are really bad honestly. I'd call this the first suspect of DLC2 this thing is genuinely nuts.
Our pivot waters are very exceptional, i fully expect for both washtom and slowking not to last forever, but until they leave they'll be held in extremely high regard. Slowking in particular I think is the primary stop to rain, they- Ya'll literally just unbanned hoopa-u WHY. Well assuming ya'll just ban it again on sunday my points still stands. Good mons and once the insanity of these decisions are dealt with ya'll can go back to havin a playable tier again
EDIT:
Add these to the QB list. Once post drop clarity comes and these things kill everybody you love again you'll realize your mistakes. We didn't need to bring back babies first HO lead of babies first balance mauler. We just got washtom and slowking and yall thought oh yeah hoopa-u will be fine this time! What are we doing here.
Not gonn make anymore points since there's no point till sunday when we get the first QB wave... right? So until they have fun with the stupid shittery we just freed LMAO
EDIT 2: Never mind I just learned these drops were done a singular week before RULT. Genuinely, what the fuck was the reasoning for freeing these besides new meta brainrot. I get that it's a new meta so we don't know about some of these, but most of you guys just thoroughly abandoned considering thinking about anything besides yo lets bring shit back down!!. Feli and berald in particular i genuinely want to see some fuckin reasonings for the votes you casted. Because frankly I don't think a singular ounce of critical thinking skills was used there besides new meta unban all!! (one week before RULT btw) I get that RULT is a good spot to test them but at the same time we coulda tested them down later
especially when nothing actually changed for them except "new pokemon exist" and they usually just beat them anyways
I think in a lot of cases this is true - which is why most tier shifts nothing is unbanned (unless it was going to be resuspected anyways). However, I think from a tiering process perspective when a tier gets 39 new pokemon, 29 of which look like they are likely to be good (or possibly even broken themselves), it doesn't actually make sense to leave things banned that were banned from an entirely different meta. For perspective, 39 new pokemon, when previously there were 48 Pokemon that had enough usage to be considered RU, the number of drops was 81% of the size of the tier. It's a little bit of a grey area at what number a tier shift becomes a functionally different tier from the one before it, but I feel very confident this situation counts as one. If I were on the council and not a washed boomer like I am, I would have probably voted to unban everything from the perspective that this RU tier is literally not the same meta game as the one from which these Pokemon were banned (no shade at the Hawlucha and Polteageist votes, I literally do not have the meta knowledge to comment). And yes, it's entirely possibly that most or even all of these get rebanned, but at least it will be because they were broken in this meta.
As a side note, not directed at what I'm quoting but tangentially related, I feel like I've seen a lot of complaints about the amount of new Pokemon from either drops and unbans either on here or on Discord. Maybe I'm crazy but I don't get it, this is like the most fun part of playing a lower tier where everything is new, crazy, and yes possibly a little busted. Use the broken stuff, have fun with it, it will probably be back to a normal metagame in a month if you play and decide you hate it. Not gonna lie the Slowking Moltres nostalgia is making me want to dabble a little bit.
I'm just a boring person because I care about stability more than anything else. For me "optimal tiering" would be the most optimal path to a stabilized meta as quickly as possible.I think in a lot of cases this is true - which is why most tier shifts nothing is unbanned (unless it was going to be resuspected anyways). However, I think from a tiering process perspective when a tier gets 39 new pokemon, 29 of which look like they are likely to be good (or possibly even broken themselves), it doesn't actually make sense to leave things banned that were banned from an entirely different meta. For perspective, 39 new pokemon, when previously there were 48 Pokemon that had enough usage to be considered RU, the number of drops was 81% of the size of the tier. It's a little bit of a grey area at what number a tier shift becomes a functionally different tier from the one before it, but I feel very confident this situation counts as one. If I were on the council and not a washed boomer like I am, I would have probably voted to unban everything from the perspective that this RU tier is literally not the same meta game as the one from which these Pokemon were banned (no shade at the Hawlucha and Polteageist votes, I literally do not have the meta knowledge to comment). And yes, it's entirely possibly that most or even all of these get rebanned, but at least it will be because they were broken in this meta.
As a side note, not directed at what I'm quoting but tangentially related, I feel like I've seen a lot of complaints about the amount of new Pokemon from either drops and unbans either on here or on Discord. Maybe I'm crazy but I don't get it, this is like the most fun part of playing a lower tier where everything is new, crazy, and yes possibly a little busted. Use the broken stuff, have fun with it, it will probably be back to a normal metagame in a month if you play and decide you hate it. Not gonna lie the Slowking Moltres nostalgia is making me want to dabble a little bit.
I don't really find it fun to play the broken metas for instance, and if Pokemon could maybe be tested, I'd rather we find stability and then see if it could be a problem. I feel like unbanning Pokemon can slow down this process rather than speed it up, and even actually be worse to test out the unbanned Pokemon. If you see X offensive brokemon checking Y, chances are now the community has to debate which brokemon is the most broken first, and then after that Y brokenmon is broken because, it was broken before, it's the same Pokemon it was just checked by other brokens; and now that has to be a tiering process too. I also don't find it fun to learn metagames that I know will quickly be outdated/useless to know of, and a lot of the time that is true for new metas. I want to see a tier get to the state where every issue is more debatable than anything quickly.
Frankly, I prefer "guilty before innocent" in my tiering with drops. It's just my preference.
That's just my opinion (one I think a lot would disagree with, mostly because a lot of people like chaotic metagames because they feel like they're really engaging to a lot of people).
Hey, council was getting a good amount of flack due to the unbans but I feel as if this is entirely unjustified.
Firstly, this is a new meta-- and as always when a new wave of pokemon are dropped, the tier destabilize. This destabilization is fine and should be accepted by this point with each new wave/dlc. While I did say that this is a new metagame, I think a healthier way of looking at it is an extension of the former, and often the case is that old strategies/pokemon are still good, just simply less oppressive/effective than before. A good example of this is FezMag structures being dominant in DLC1 meta, but then falling out of popularity in the initial DLC2 metagame last month. It was still a viable core and had its place, but it clearly lost its dominant da edge of the tier.
This brings us to the RUBLs. Reflecting on the previous wave of RUBL unbans earlier this month. After 28 new pokemon were released, Here the council decided to unban five pokemon: Regidrago, Mienshao, Lilligant-Hisui, Mew, and Zarude. Prior to that, in November, 19 new pokemon were released and here, the council decided to unban 3 pokemon: Politoed, Lycanroc-D, and Iron Jugulis. Across these two votes, only Mew was quickly banned, with a vote taking 4 days after the freeing. Other pokemon like Iron Jugulis took much longer to be banned and had the previous meta continued for longer, only Zarude and possibly in the long haul Mienshao would be banned.
Now, after 39 new pokemon were released, the council unbanned 6 pokemon. For me, this lines up quite well with the track of the previous unbannings. There is still criticism despite this as some would argue that there are better times to unban such pokemon as RU Ssnl is occurring right now and RULT is going to start soon, but I disagree with this notion. Part of the reasoning for RULT occurring as early as it did last year was because it was the best tour to develop the brand new generation of RU, and due to the multitude of games in RULT, it would assuage the impact of the uncompetitive pokemon. Secondly, keeping these pokemon locked until the metagame stabilizes before suspecting them down one-by-one is unrealisitic if one actually wanted these pokemon to be given a chance. It will take a long time for the current metagame to stabilize to a point where no tiering action is necessary, factoring UU taking whatever top tier it chooses at any moment leading to further destabilization. There might not be an optimal time to bring down these pokemon later. Even if council promised to unban these pokemon at a later date, who says that would be fulfilled? If the metagame is stable and in a good place, what good is it to bring down a potentially broken pokemon to mess with everything?
With that being said, I do think that Lucha and Poltea should have been unbanned as well, poltea especially. This isn't the first time Polteagiest is broken on paper but then just a mu fish in reality (think last gen). Drednaw, another frail shell smasher, was banned sometime around now last year, was freed and is completely fine, bordering unviable now. Poltea is much more impressive offensively and has a better typing for what it wants to do, but I feel as if it is still more than deserving of being unbanned with the rest.
Firstly, this is a new meta-- and as always when a new wave of pokemon are dropped, the tier destabilize. This destabilization is fine and should be accepted by this point with each new wave/dlc. While I did say that this is a new metagame, I think a healthier way of looking at it is an extension of the former, and often the case is that old strategies/pokemon are still good, just simply less oppressive/effective than before. A good example of this is FezMag structures being dominant in DLC1 meta, but then falling out of popularity in the initial DLC2 metagame last month. It was still a viable core and had its place, but it clearly lost its dominant da edge of the tier.
This brings us to the RUBLs. Reflecting on the previous wave of RUBL unbans earlier this month. After 28 new pokemon were released, Here the council decided to unban five pokemon: Regidrago, Mienshao, Lilligant-Hisui, Mew, and Zarude. Prior to that, in November, 19 new pokemon were released and here, the council decided to unban 3 pokemon: Politoed, Lycanroc-D, and Iron Jugulis. Across these two votes, only Mew was quickly banned, with a vote taking 4 days after the freeing. Other pokemon like Iron Jugulis took much longer to be banned and had the previous meta continued for longer, only Zarude and possibly in the long haul Mienshao would be banned.
Now, after 39 new pokemon were released, the council unbanned 6 pokemon. For me, this lines up quite well with the track of the previous unbannings. There is still criticism despite this as some would argue that there are better times to unban such pokemon as RU Ssnl is occurring right now and RULT is going to start soon, but I disagree with this notion. Part of the reasoning for RULT occurring as early as it did last year was because it was the best tour to develop the brand new generation of RU, and due to the multitude of games in RULT, it would assuage the impact of the uncompetitive pokemon. Secondly, keeping these pokemon locked until the metagame stabilizes before suspecting them down one-by-one is unrealisitic if one actually wanted these pokemon to be given a chance. It will take a long time for the current metagame to stabilize to a point where no tiering action is necessary, factoring UU taking whatever top tier it chooses at any moment leading to further destabilization. There might not be an optimal time to bring down these pokemon later. Even if council promised to unban these pokemon at a later date, who says that would be fulfilled? If the metagame is stable and in a good place, what good is it to bring down a potentially broken pokemon to mess with everything?
With that being said, I do think that Lucha and Poltea should have been unbanned as well, poltea especially. This isn't the first time Polteagiest is broken on paper but then just a mu fish in reality (think last gen). Drednaw, another frail shell smasher, was banned sometime around now last year, was freed and is completely fine, bordering unviable now. Poltea is much more impressive offensively and has a better typing for what it wants to do, but I feel as if it is still more than deserving of being unbanned with the rest.
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I also dislike unstable metas. Indeed, I outright despise them. But I cannot in good faith vote to keep all the RUBLs locked up when the meta suddenly gains 30 new mons. We now have a completely different tier from what we did a few days ago. It is difficult to know beforehand precisely which elements will be too much and which ones will be alright. The best way to go about it, the way I see it, is thus to free those elements that could reasonably have a shot at being balanced, while we do not free those elements that are obviously going to be unhealthy. Then, after observing how the meta adapts and develops, we may remove those elements that turn out to be obviously unhealthy by means of a council vote or two, before eventually returning to slower tiering with the occasional suspect test at a later point in time. Ultimately, from a long-term perspective, this should produce a more stable tier in the long run.
Shame that Salamence might be broken because its best UU set for two generations is a very nice addition for the tier.
Salamence @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Intimidate
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 4 HP (or 4 Atk) / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid / Naive Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Hurricane / Dual Wingbeat
- Hydro Pump / Earthquake / Iron Head
- Roost
This set blanket checks a decent amount of physical attackers like Infernape and Zarude without being too passive that other sweepers can just set up on its face freely. And its good speed tier also means that it's a physical wall who outspeeds and threatens Pokémon like Hydreigon and Hoopa.
As for Salamence's sweeping sets, while I do think it's potentially broken, it does face very heavy competition from Haxorus. I find Haxorus's raw power and versatility of choosing either DD+Outrage vs SD+Scale Shot, CC vs EQ, item flexibility, and Mold Breaker overall more problematic since your ways of answering Haxorus changes a lot depending on the set, unlike Salamence who feels more one-dimensional. Dual Wingbeat isn't that good of a STAB and sure Moxie is great for snowballing, but I favor the instant raw power more over the snowballing of Moxie. There are a decent amount of checks to a +1 Salamence that stop it from snowballing like your average bulky water with Ice Beam, Hippo, Enamorus, bulky Mew, Donphan, Cress, Mimikyu, as well as the 101+ scarfers and priority. I would like to wait until at least the second wave of quickbans before banning it.
Also thank you to the council for being very liberal with the unban votes, as you should be. I personally think everything should have been unbanned, even Hawlucha who I think is still broken and especially the teapot because it would mean that we have hard evidence of their strenghts in the most recent, power-crept metagame, but I'm satisfied with the result for now. I understand if this is the HOME or DLC1 meta where you only have like 3 months of it. But this RU is the final meta for the remainder of the generation and therefore deserves a reset. Anything that's broken would eventually get banned. I rather have a few days of clearly broken Pokémon like Hoopa running the tier than rely on theorymonning to be the standard whenever a big shift happens. If 1 or 2 Pokémon that is theoretically broken gets saved from BL because a tier reset gave them hard evidence of them being ok, then the reset is worth it even if 90% of the BLs get banned again.
Edit: I forgot to mention that even if I find Haxorus more frustrating to answer, you can still spam both of them in the same team which makes both Pokémon much stronger than they should be.
Salamence @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Intimidate
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 4 HP (or 4 Atk) / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid / Naive Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Hurricane / Dual Wingbeat
- Hydro Pump / Earthquake / Iron Head
- Roost
This set blanket checks a decent amount of physical attackers like Infernape and Zarude without being too passive that other sweepers can just set up on its face freely. And its good speed tier also means that it's a physical wall who outspeeds and threatens Pokémon like Hydreigon and Hoopa.
As for Salamence's sweeping sets, while I do think it's potentially broken, it does face very heavy competition from Haxorus. I find Haxorus's raw power and versatility of choosing either DD+Outrage vs SD+Scale Shot, CC vs EQ, item flexibility, and Mold Breaker overall more problematic since your ways of answering Haxorus changes a lot depending on the set, unlike Salamence who feels more one-dimensional. Dual Wingbeat isn't that good of a STAB and sure Moxie is great for snowballing, but I favor the instant raw power more over the snowballing of Moxie. There are a decent amount of checks to a +1 Salamence that stop it from snowballing like your average bulky water with Ice Beam, Hippo, Enamorus, bulky Mew, Donphan, Cress, Mimikyu, as well as the 101+ scarfers and priority. I would like to wait until at least the second wave of quickbans before banning it.
Also thank you to the council for being very liberal with the unban votes, as you should be. I personally think everything should have been unbanned, even Hawlucha who I think is still broken and especially the teapot because it would mean that we have hard evidence of their strenghts in the most recent, power-crept metagame, but I'm satisfied with the result for now. I understand if this is the HOME or DLC1 meta where you only have like 3 months of it. But this RU is the final meta for the remainder of the generation and therefore deserves a reset. Anything that's broken would eventually get banned. I rather have a few days of clearly broken Pokémon like Hoopa running the tier than rely on theorymonning to be the standard whenever a big shift happens. If 1 or 2 Pokémon that is theoretically broken gets saved from BL because a tier reset gave them hard evidence of them being ok, then the reset is worth it even if 90% of the BLs get banned again.
Edit: I forgot to mention that even if I find Haxorus more frustrating to answer, you can still spam both of them in the same team which makes both Pokémon much stronger than they should be.
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I don't play many game but i think someone can try.
Mamoswine @ Assault Vest
Ability: Thick Fat
Tera Type: Grass
EVs: 240 Atk / 16 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Trailblaze
- Earthquake
- Icicle Crash
- Ice Shard
Thanks to the good corvage and 130 Attack,Mamoswine always be a good breaker in game.But it also have some defense valuable.Ground type allow it to be the electric immunity and thick fat can deal with ice/fire.It also have good HP,AV Mamo in this meta can deal with manythings,such as hydre,salamence,juguils,noivern,even tail grow manaphy.Here are some damage.
252 SpA Choice Specs Hydreigon Draco Meteor vs. 0 HP / 16 SpD Assault Vest Mamoswine: 304-358 (84.2 - 99.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Iron Jugulis Hurricane vs. 0 HP / 16 SpD Assault Vest Mamoswine: 169-201 (46.8 - 55.6%) -- 74.2% chance to 2HKO
252 SpA Salamence Hydro Pump vs. 0 HP / 16 SpD Assault Vest Mamoswine: 210-248 (58.1 - 68.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+3 252 SpA Manaphy Ice Beam vs. 0 HP / 16 SpD Assault Vest Thick Fat Tera Grass Mamoswine: 202-238 (55.9 - 65.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Gardevoir Moonblast vs. 0 HP / 16 SpD Assault Vest Tera Grass Mamoswine: 150-177 (41.5 - 49%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
It not good at switch in but it can do well in revenge kill,I hope players try it.
Entei @ Choice Band
Ability: Inner Focus
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Extreme Speed
- Sacred Fire
- Flare Blitz
- Crunch
In the offense metageme,some mon have powerful priorty move can do well,I make example in Entei because it have some advantage,Extreme Speed is +2 so it don't afraid other priorty move,Inner Focus don't worry about Intimidate,Sacred Fire can spread burn,we have slowking so slowbro maybe drop some usage.Overall i think it is cool and can do well in this metagame.
and so on toxic spikes user
T-spikes is annoying,it can limit many pokemon set up or break,it also can help some mon break such as Gengar's hex,use it with knock off.
and some high speed encore user.
Encore is a good move to deal with some setup,such as manaphy,reun,necro and so on,it also annoying,scarf encore not bad too,also,i think np encore salazzle is interesting.
Mamoswine @ Assault Vest
Ability: Thick Fat
Tera Type: Grass
EVs: 240 Atk / 16 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Trailblaze
- Earthquake
- Icicle Crash
- Ice Shard
Thanks to the good corvage and 130 Attack,Mamoswine always be a good breaker in game.But it also have some defense valuable.Ground type allow it to be the electric immunity and thick fat can deal with ice/fire.It also have good HP,AV Mamo in this meta can deal with manythings,such as hydre,salamence,juguils,noivern,even tail grow manaphy.Here are some damage.
252 SpA Choice Specs Hydreigon Draco Meteor vs. 0 HP / 16 SpD Assault Vest Mamoswine: 304-358 (84.2 - 99.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Iron Jugulis Hurricane vs. 0 HP / 16 SpD Assault Vest Mamoswine: 169-201 (46.8 - 55.6%) -- 74.2% chance to 2HKO
252 SpA Salamence Hydro Pump vs. 0 HP / 16 SpD Assault Vest Mamoswine: 210-248 (58.1 - 68.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+3 252 SpA Manaphy Ice Beam vs. 0 HP / 16 SpD Assault Vest Thick Fat Tera Grass Mamoswine: 202-238 (55.9 - 65.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Gardevoir Moonblast vs. 0 HP / 16 SpD Assault Vest Tera Grass Mamoswine: 150-177 (41.5 - 49%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
It not good at switch in but it can do well in revenge kill,I hope players try it.
Entei @ Choice Band
Ability: Inner Focus
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Extreme Speed
- Sacred Fire
- Flare Blitz
- Crunch
In the offense metageme,some mon have powerful priorty move can do well,I make example in Entei because it have some advantage,Extreme Speed is +2 so it don't afraid other priorty move,Inner Focus don't worry about Intimidate,Sacred Fire can spread burn,we have slowking so slowbro maybe drop some usage.Overall i think it is cool and can do well in this metagame.
T-spikes is annoying,it can limit many pokemon set up or break,it also can help some mon break such as Gengar's hex,use it with knock off.
Encore is a good move to deal with some setup,such as manaphy,reun,necro and so on,it also annoying,scarf encore not bad too,also,i think np encore salazzle is interesting.
The mons I have thoughts on:
Gengar: this mon is fine, are we really going to ban a mon with marginal upside to horoark?
Manpahy: this mon is just absurd, if I don't see 9 ban votes then I will angry react them
necrozma: I feel like necrozma is definitely going to be banned eventually, might as well get it out of the way now. It just has too many sets, coverage moves and tera types, and if you guess wrong then you lose on the spot. meteor beam, dragon dance and calm mind are all just problems that can spiral out of control if you switch a special wall in on a dragon dance, and then you have to guess its item/tera type.
salamence: dragon dance is just too good and too fast for this tier IMO. The revenge killing options are just too limited due to its speed and resistance to common priority moves and the list of mons that can actually take its hits is smaller.
Zapdos-galar: if you don't ban this then I will hit you with a banded brave bird.
Gengar: this mon is fine, are we really going to ban a mon with marginal upside to horoark?
Manpahy: this mon is just absurd, if I don't see 9 ban votes then I will angry react them
necrozma: I feel like necrozma is definitely going to be banned eventually, might as well get it out of the way now. It just has too many sets, coverage moves and tera types, and if you guess wrong then you lose on the spot. meteor beam, dragon dance and calm mind are all just problems that can spiral out of control if you switch a special wall in on a dragon dance, and then you have to guess its item/tera type.
salamence: dragon dance is just too good and too fast for this tier IMO. The revenge killing options are just too limited due to its speed and resistance to common priority moves and the list of mons that can actually take its hits is smaller.
Zapdos-galar: if you don't ban this then I will hit you with a banded brave bird.
Here be me thoughts
Gengar: Honestly pretty balanced, I don't see this ever being an issue, as it's kinda a sidegrade to horoark, which has been proven to also be balanced
Hydreigon: I think eventually it's gonna really warp the metagame around it, so if it gets axed i wouldn't be mad; cause with this things profiling and attacks, you're gonna be hurting if you can't soak up the hits w/ a fairy type
Manaphy: if it's potentially too good for OU, it's too good for RU
Necrozma: guess the set or lose 2 mons
Reuniclus: whats doing she that's ban worthy, is there a set running around that i haven't seen yet
Salamence: tera steel's too good on it man, and if you predict the tera whats the guarantee that you OHKO it
Zapdos-Galar: flamigo if it was good
Gengar: Honestly pretty balanced, I don't see this ever being an issue, as it's kinda a sidegrade to horoark, which has been proven to also be balanced
Hydreigon: I think eventually it's gonna really warp the metagame around it, so if it gets axed i wouldn't be mad; cause with this things profiling and attacks, you're gonna be hurting if you can't soak up the hits w/ a fairy type
Manaphy: if it's potentially too good for OU, it's too good for RU
Necrozma: guess the set or lose 2 mons
Reuniclus: whats doing she that's ban worthy, is there a set running around that i haven't seen yet
Salamence: tera steel's too good on it man, and if you predict the tera whats the guarantee that you OHKO it
Zapdos-Galar: flamigo if it was good
Gengar: Not sure its broken, speed tier is nice and has good power, but that’s it. It’s a good pokemon, I dont forsee it immediately being an issue
Hydreigon: Get this guy outta here. Fairy types switch in until specs or tera steel flash cannon show up. Stealth Rocks + 3 attack is also an amazing set, so is sub NP, its just too hard to reasonably answer.
Manaphy: Very broken, kind or solo’s stall AND balance teams, and offensive teams are not exactly safe either. too strong and has the bulk and decent speed to back it up.
Necrozma: Truthfully I dont have a lot of experience fighting or using this, but on paper it seems insanely good. probably too good. This guys movepool is way too good and it has a million boosting moves on both attacking sides like CM, DD, and meteor beam sets. the coverage is god tier, the bulk is great, and the unpredictability makes it seem overwhelming.
Reuniclus: Could see this becoming a problem down the line, especially with tera, but it seems notably less broken than most of the other things on the banslate, at least currently.
Salamence: This is like a gyarados but it can also be special to throw you off. incredibly strong and such a great speed tier too. I like him but DD ends games too quickly and specs/special sets really put in too much work with that speed. Axe this.
Zapdos-G: People have said this already but this is basically flamigo on crack. nearly perfect STAB coverage + uturn is just a classic combo and this guy has 100 speed and 125 attack as opposed to flamigo’s 115 atk and 90 speed. Flamigo has caused issues in this tier in the past, and this would probably do the same thing. Dont think this should stick around.
Also, Hoopa-U, Mew, and Haxorus are still hella broken imo, hope to see them not here soon.
Hydreigon: Get this guy outta here. Fairy types switch in until specs or tera steel flash cannon show up. Stealth Rocks + 3 attack is also an amazing set, so is sub NP, its just too hard to reasonably answer.
Manaphy: Very broken, kind or solo’s stall AND balance teams, and offensive teams are not exactly safe either. too strong and has the bulk and decent speed to back it up.
Necrozma: Truthfully I dont have a lot of experience fighting or using this, but on paper it seems insanely good. probably too good. This guys movepool is way too good and it has a million boosting moves on both attacking sides like CM, DD, and meteor beam sets. the coverage is god tier, the bulk is great, and the unpredictability makes it seem overwhelming.
Reuniclus: Could see this becoming a problem down the line, especially with tera, but it seems notably less broken than most of the other things on the banslate, at least currently.
Salamence: This is like a gyarados but it can also be special to throw you off. incredibly strong and such a great speed tier too. I like him but DD ends games too quickly and specs/special sets really put in too much work with that speed. Axe this.
Zapdos-G: People have said this already but this is basically flamigo on crack. nearly perfect STAB coverage + uturn is just a classic combo and this guy has 100 speed and 125 attack as opposed to flamigo’s 115 atk and 90 speed. Flamigo has caused issues in this tier in the past, and this would probably do the same thing. Dont think this should stick around.
Also, Hoopa-U, Mew, and Haxorus are still hella broken imo, hope to see them not here soon.
We got the votes!!!
As usual, 6/9 to ban since everyone voted, it's me, so bad graphic design, here are the results:
Hydreigon and Manaphy got unanimous ban votes and therefore are banned from SV RU, tagging dhelmise and Marty to implement on ladder, thank you both! Everything else got fairly low votes but ofc that doesn't mean we can't revisit down the line, particularly with rult activity coming up soon.
As usual, 6/9 to ban since everyone voted, it's me, so bad graphic design, here are the results:
Hydreigon and Manaphy got unanimous ban votes and therefore are banned from SV RU, tagging dhelmise and Marty to implement on ladder, thank you both! Everything else got fairly low votes but ofc that doesn't mean we can't revisit down the line, particularly with rult activity coming up soon.
Miscellaneous post-drop, post-ban thoughts on mons not discussed above:
Dogi is broken af, this has very few safe switch-ins and even those switch-ins don't appreciate eating a Knock with a 30% poison chance off 128 base attack. Colbur Glowbro is barely an answer since it still gets 2HKOed without an item and if it tries to pivot out after eating an initial knock then something else will lose an item and risk getting poisoned. Taunt/Sub + BU sets are hard to stop once they get going. Even Scarf sets are good. I really like using it but I don't know how healthy it is for the tier.
I think Comfey has the potential to become really problematic. Its typical checks in Poison and Steel mons do not appreciate getting smacked by a Stored Power or Ground/Fire Tera Blast. Priority is not an answer against it since healing moves are +3. Liquid Ooze full SpD Tenta can be an alright check depending on the set, but it still gets 2HKOed by Stored Power after 2 Calm Minds. Tink gets smacked by Tera Blast sets. I think an eye should be kept on this thing.
Rev is still super good, don't sleep on the car.
Gatr is really good, its natural bulk makes it hard to revenge kill easily without a strong SE hit and/or burning your own Tera. It has its own priority in Aqua Jet to pick off frail Scarfers trying to revenge it. Liquidation + Crunch hit most of the tier for at least neutral damage barring Zarude, Chesnaught or Aquaros (technically Breloom and Crawdaunt too, but they still get 2HKOed by unboosted Liquidation). It has decent coverage options too in Ice Punch, Rock Slide and Psy Fangs.
Slowking is a fantastic fat pivot and rain check. Chilly Reception is an incredible move that allows for safe switch-ins to breakers and sweepers that can't take a hit on their own. It pairs quite well with Mamo in particular.
This has been mentioned in the thread already, but Chilly Reception is really the best thing that could have happened to Cetitan. Having a safe switch-in opportunity that sets snow, gives it a defense boost and allows a setup opportunity is amazing. After a Belly Drum, it wipes the floor with basically the entire tier outside of like Unaware Quag. It can be hard to revenge kill with priority given the defense boost from snow. It's far from a top tier mon given its weakness to hazards and its heavy reliance on team support, but I do think Slowking's presence has given it a new lease on life in RU.
I have seen this on ladder maybe once in the past week. It's not terrible, but being so boots-reliant isn't great and its speed tier is very mediocre compared to its otherwise amazing stats. I do see some potential in offensive Flame Charge sets though... maybe someone could make it work.
Another mon I haven't seen much of since it was freed. Iron Leaves is still very good and Booster sets continue to go crazy. I don't think it's as overwhelming as it was when it was banned though given the presence of checks like Overqwil, Scarf Zarude and Armarouge, but it can easily overwhelm an underprepared team.
Minior has been a flop for me if I'm being honest LMAO. It really struggles to break through both physical and special walls like Bro and King and can barely take a hit even in its defensive form. It ends up being a Tera sink in order to do respectable damage before getting easily revenge killed by something like Mamo.
Suicune feels very underexplored. Having access to Scald is great along with decent coverage in Ice Beam, Shadow Ball and Air Slash. It can be an effective setup mon with CM/Crocune sets and has access to Roar for phazing. It does struggle to break through other bulky waters like Milotic sadly.
Dogi is broken af, this has very few safe switch-ins and even those switch-ins don't appreciate eating a Knock with a 30% poison chance off 128 base attack. Colbur Glowbro is barely an answer since it still gets 2HKOed without an item and if it tries to pivot out after eating an initial knock then something else will lose an item and risk getting poisoned. Taunt/Sub + BU sets are hard to stop once they get going. Even Scarf sets are good. I really like using it but I don't know how healthy it is for the tier.
I think Comfey has the potential to become really problematic. Its typical checks in Poison and Steel mons do not appreciate getting smacked by a Stored Power or Ground/Fire Tera Blast. Priority is not an answer against it since healing moves are +3. Liquid Ooze full SpD Tenta can be an alright check depending on the set, but it still gets 2HKOed by Stored Power after 2 Calm Minds. Tink gets smacked by Tera Blast sets. I think an eye should be kept on this thing.
Rev is still super good, don't sleep on the car.
Gatr is really good, its natural bulk makes it hard to revenge kill easily without a strong SE hit and/or burning your own Tera. It has its own priority in Aqua Jet to pick off frail Scarfers trying to revenge it. Liquidation + Crunch hit most of the tier for at least neutral damage barring Zarude, Chesnaught or Aquaros (technically Breloom and Crawdaunt too, but they still get 2HKOed by unboosted Liquidation). It has decent coverage options too in Ice Punch, Rock Slide and Psy Fangs.
Slowking is a fantastic fat pivot and rain check. Chilly Reception is an incredible move that allows for safe switch-ins to breakers and sweepers that can't take a hit on their own. It pairs quite well with Mamo in particular.
This has been mentioned in the thread already, but Chilly Reception is really the best thing that could have happened to Cetitan. Having a safe switch-in opportunity that sets snow, gives it a defense boost and allows a setup opportunity is amazing. After a Belly Drum, it wipes the floor with basically the entire tier outside of like Unaware Quag. It can be hard to revenge kill with priority given the defense boost from snow. It's far from a top tier mon given its weakness to hazards and its heavy reliance on team support, but I do think Slowking's presence has given it a new lease on life in RU.
I have seen this on ladder maybe once in the past week. It's not terrible, but being so boots-reliant isn't great and its speed tier is very mediocre compared to its otherwise amazing stats. I do see some potential in offensive Flame Charge sets though... maybe someone could make it work.
Another mon I haven't seen much of since it was freed. Iron Leaves is still very good and Booster sets continue to go crazy. I don't think it's as overwhelming as it was when it was banned though given the presence of checks like Overqwil, Scarf Zarude and Armarouge, but it can easily overwhelm an underprepared team.
Minior has been a flop for me if I'm being honest LMAO. It really struggles to break through both physical and special walls like Bro and King and can barely take a hit even in its defensive form. It ends up being a Tera sink in order to do respectable damage before getting easily revenge killed by something like Mamo.
Suicune feels very underexplored. Having access to Scald is great along with decent coverage in Ice Beam, Shadow Ball and Air Slash. It can be an effective setup mon with CM/Crocune sets and has access to Roar for phazing. It does struggle to break through other bulky waters like Milotic sadly.
Alright, I didn't think I was going to be making this post when I woke up this morning and decided to learn the meta, but I'd like to talk about my thoughts on Comfey.
So Comfey's role in the tier started off for me as a tool to better handle Hyper Offense teams, thanks to the strong and fast hitting Draining Kiss. The more games I played, the more I noticed most of my games would end up with a Comfey in the winning screen, be it mine or my opponent's. I started using different types of teams (from more offensive ones to bulkier ones), and I always felt like Comfey was the main issue when playing. The standard set to me looked like Calm Mind, Life Orb, Draining Kiss, Tera Ground Tera Blast and a last move in Taunt, Giga Drain or Encore, but then I also faced different sets such as Grassy Seed under Terrain with Stored Power or different Tera types for coverage or defensive utility, such as Fire or Poison. It felt really tricky to narrow down if my teams were the issue, or if Comfey was just that good.
Most of my ways of handling Comfey were with a fast Trick user, a decently bulky Pokémon that could hit it before it got too many boosts, such as Okidogi or Bisharp, or even Steel types like Tinkaton or Registeel (I also tried Orthworm but it's an Orthworm at the end of the day). The most consistent option ended up being setting up with my Comfey before they could set up with theirs. Some sort of outplaying in forcing an early Tera and hitting with coverage (Giga Drain for Tera Ground and Tera Ground Tera Blast for Tera Poison). That's when I started wondering if, between all the strong and powerful breakers available to us (Salamence, Hoopa-Unbound, Necrozma), Comfey was the one Pokémon that had to be played around the most.
As I'm writing this, I'm also theorymonning on potential Pokémon I could use to handle Comfey that I haven't tried yet.
Blissey tops the list as the best special wall in the history of the game. Seismic Toss does almost half to speedy Comfey, while Draining Kiss can do around 20% at +2 with a Life Orb, while recovering around 30% but losing 10% due to Life Orb. Regardless of the different items, it almost always beats it unless it randomly runs an anti Blissey Tera Ghost set, which does not seem like the norm. The issue is that Blissey does not match up well in the tier outside really fat teams, and even then it's super easy to handle those due to the current power creep.
I'm grouping the defensive Fire Types together here. To not make it too long: Rotom-Heat could get into a Nasty Plot vs Calm Mind war vs Comfey, in which it could end up winning depending on A) Comfey's HP investment, B) Comfey's Tera Type and C) Rotom-Heat's Special Attack investment. In the most favorable case, a Special Attack invested Rotom-Heat at +6 can OHKO a non HP invested Comfey with 4 Calm Minds 56% of the time (Comfey can do half with Draining Kiss in this exchange) while not coming close to winning this if it's bulky Rotom vs bulky Comfey. Volcanion relies a lot on raw power, being able to outspeed a bulky Comfey and hitting it with Sludge Wave, or even a Steam Eruption if it's Tera Fire or Ground. The issue is that it can't really OHKO a bulky Comfey, and an offensive one will just Tera Blast it and OHKO it with ease without any boosts. Moltres feels like the more reliable one of the bunch, since it can Will-o-Wisp it for chip damage, as it spams Flamethrower while Comfey tries to set up. Flamethrower does around 30% against bulky Comfey with 0 Calm Mind boosts, and takes 25-30% against a +2 Calm Mind Comfey. It feels like the more reliable option so far, as Moltres also has a good matchup against most physical threats thanks to the ability to Burn them, by either Will-o-Wisp or Flame Body.
The reliable Steel types all feel like relatively good answers until Comfey clicks Tera Ground Tera Blast. Tinkaton is usually the more effective overall answer, but Comfey can outspeed any spread and it only needs one Calm Mind to have a shot at OHKOing bulky Tinkaton with Tera Ground Tera Blast. If Tinkaton uses its Tera, then Comfey can easily win with Draining Kiss, as a neutral Gigaton Hammer does not enough damage to make up for the turns where it can't be clicked. Revavroom is usually holding an Air Balloon, so it's perhaps the more reliable revenge killer, as it does really solid damage against Comfey, and it can usually have a free set up opportunity against Tera Ground. It can do around 80% with +1 Iron Head if Comfey is a neutral Tera. Obviously, there's always the risk of Tera Fire (it'd prevent Revavroom from getting the free set up, while a neutral High Horsepower does around 85%). Bisharp and Registeel do not have enough damage output to beat a Comfey with Tera, as Tera Blast does too much, and Draining Kiss could potentially win an interaction against Sucker Punch due to the priority difference.
Ok, so I'm doing a bit of a stretch by adding certain Poison types in this list, but I'm trying to include all the possible options. Gengar is a solid revenge kill tool in the tier overall, but Scarf sets can't OHKO Comfey if it's a bulky variant, or if it's at +1 in an offensive one, not to mention it just can't do anything if it uses its Tera. Munkidori is in a similar position as Gengar, in which all they can do is Trick their Choice Scarf. Okidogi and Fezandipiti threaten with the Toxic Chain ability, and Fez can even be a speedy Taunt. The issue is that it ends up being a Tera war with both, in which Comfey can easily win thanks to the coverage. Vileplume and Tentacruel do not have the damage output to beat a boosting Comfey. I'm not even mentioning Stored Power variants against all of these.
The final category is just Offensive Pressure. In such a fast-paced meta, Comfey does good against certain breakers like Hoopa-Unbound, Haxorus, Salamence, Feraligatr, while these can all win vs it if they are boosted before Comfey is, and have an appropriate defensive tera to kill it. There are other breakers, like Necrozma, who are naturally bulky enough to beat a Comfey in a set-up war.
This is just my personal experience on how I've seen the current tier take shape. I'd like to see other people comment on their own experiences, as it makes it easier for the RU council to spot the best path and take action accordingly.
So Comfey's role in the tier started off for me as a tool to better handle Hyper Offense teams, thanks to the strong and fast hitting Draining Kiss. The more games I played, the more I noticed most of my games would end up with a Comfey in the winning screen, be it mine or my opponent's. I started using different types of teams (from more offensive ones to bulkier ones), and I always felt like Comfey was the main issue when playing. The standard set to me looked like Calm Mind, Life Orb, Draining Kiss, Tera Ground Tera Blast and a last move in Taunt, Giga Drain or Encore, but then I also faced different sets such as Grassy Seed under Terrain with Stored Power or different Tera types for coverage or defensive utility, such as Fire or Poison. It felt really tricky to narrow down if my teams were the issue, or if Comfey was just that good.
Most of my ways of handling Comfey were with a fast Trick user, a decently bulky Pokémon that could hit it before it got too many boosts, such as Okidogi or Bisharp, or even Steel types like Tinkaton or Registeel (I also tried Orthworm but it's an Orthworm at the end of the day). The most consistent option ended up being setting up with my Comfey before they could set up with theirs. Some sort of outplaying in forcing an early Tera and hitting with coverage (Giga Drain for Tera Ground and Tera Ground Tera Blast for Tera Poison). That's when I started wondering if, between all the strong and powerful breakers available to us (Salamence, Hoopa-Unbound, Necrozma), Comfey was the one Pokémon that had to be played around the most.
As I'm writing this, I'm also theorymonning on potential Pokémon I could use to handle Comfey that I haven't tried yet.
Blissey tops the list as the best special wall in the history of the game. Seismic Toss does almost half to speedy Comfey, while Draining Kiss can do around 20% at +2 with a Life Orb, while recovering around 30% but losing 10% due to Life Orb. Regardless of the different items, it almost always beats it unless it randomly runs an anti Blissey Tera Ghost set, which does not seem like the norm. The issue is that Blissey does not match up well in the tier outside really fat teams, and even then it's super easy to handle those due to the current power creep.
I'm grouping the defensive Fire Types together here. To not make it too long: Rotom-Heat could get into a Nasty Plot vs Calm Mind war vs Comfey, in which it could end up winning depending on A) Comfey's HP investment, B) Comfey's Tera Type and C) Rotom-Heat's Special Attack investment. In the most favorable case, a Special Attack invested Rotom-Heat at +6 can OHKO a non HP invested Comfey with 4 Calm Minds 56% of the time (Comfey can do half with Draining Kiss in this exchange) while not coming close to winning this if it's bulky Rotom vs bulky Comfey. Volcanion relies a lot on raw power, being able to outspeed a bulky Comfey and hitting it with Sludge Wave, or even a Steam Eruption if it's Tera Fire or Ground. The issue is that it can't really OHKO a bulky Comfey, and an offensive one will just Tera Blast it and OHKO it with ease without any boosts. Moltres feels like the more reliable one of the bunch, since it can Will-o-Wisp it for chip damage, as it spams Flamethrower while Comfey tries to set up. Flamethrower does around 30% against bulky Comfey with 0 Calm Mind boosts, and takes 25-30% against a +2 Calm Mind Comfey. It feels like the more reliable option so far, as Moltres also has a good matchup against most physical threats thanks to the ability to Burn them, by either Will-o-Wisp or Flame Body.
The reliable Steel types all feel like relatively good answers until Comfey clicks Tera Ground Tera Blast. Tinkaton is usually the more effective overall answer, but Comfey can outspeed any spread and it only needs one Calm Mind to have a shot at OHKOing bulky Tinkaton with Tera Ground Tera Blast. If Tinkaton uses its Tera, then Comfey can easily win with Draining Kiss, as a neutral Gigaton Hammer does not enough damage to make up for the turns where it can't be clicked. Revavroom is usually holding an Air Balloon, so it's perhaps the more reliable revenge killer, as it does really solid damage against Comfey, and it can usually have a free set up opportunity against Tera Ground. It can do around 80% with +1 Iron Head if Comfey is a neutral Tera. Obviously, there's always the risk of Tera Fire (it'd prevent Revavroom from getting the free set up, while a neutral High Horsepower does around 85%). Bisharp and Registeel do not have enough damage output to beat a Comfey with Tera, as Tera Blast does too much, and Draining Kiss could potentially win an interaction against Sucker Punch due to the priority difference.
Ok, so I'm doing a bit of a stretch by adding certain Poison types in this list, but I'm trying to include all the possible options. Gengar is a solid revenge kill tool in the tier overall, but Scarf sets can't OHKO Comfey if it's a bulky variant, or if it's at +1 in an offensive one, not to mention it just can't do anything if it uses its Tera. Munkidori is in a similar position as Gengar, in which all they can do is Trick their Choice Scarf. Okidogi and Fezandipiti threaten with the Toxic Chain ability, and Fez can even be a speedy Taunt. The issue is that it ends up being a Tera war with both, in which Comfey can easily win thanks to the coverage. Vileplume and Tentacruel do not have the damage output to beat a boosting Comfey. I'm not even mentioning Stored Power variants against all of these.
The final category is just Offensive Pressure. In such a fast-paced meta, Comfey does good against certain breakers like Hoopa-Unbound, Haxorus, Salamence, Feraligatr, while these can all win vs it if they are boosted before Comfey is, and have an appropriate defensive tera to kill it. There are other breakers, like Necrozma, who are naturally bulky enough to beat a Comfey in a set-up war.
This is just my personal experience on how I've seen the current tier take shape. I'd like to see other people comment on their own experiences, as it makes it easier for the RU council to spot the best path and take action accordingly.
hi
There's a lot of things in this tier that can use dragon dance.
Let's talk about them.
Florida Man's arch nemesis does very well for itself as a dd user, 2HKOing or OHKOing most of the meta after a single boost by virtue of its powerful sheer force boosted Liquidations. 78 speed might not seem that high for a dragon dance user, but it outspeeds the whole unboosted ru metagame at +1 if running a speed boosting nature. Decent 85/100/83 natural bulk allows it to tank a few hits here and there too. Couple this with solid sheer force boosted coverage in Ice Punch, Crunch and Psychic Fangs (aqua jet is an option too for emergency rkilling) and you have a potent, threatening sweeper in the late game. Alternatively, it can very viably use a SD/scale shot set, relying on those destructive +2 liquidations to shred stuff. Feraligatr seems fine now but I'm unsure as to whether it will be balanced in the long run.
Gyarados has been overshadowed by gatr so far, but it sets itself apart with access to intimidate and a more flexible defensive typing.
This allows it to use bulkier dd sets, often combining well with support moves like substitute and/or taunt to win games after a few boosts.
Alternatively, one could opt to use a moxie build for higher snowball potential. Like with Feraligatr it will be interesting to watch once the meta settles.
ok now I know I said we were primarily talking about dragon dance users and sure, Haxorus is a fine user of it but Swords Dance + Scale Shot is what truly breaks this pokemon. When used in combination with loaded dice, scale shot turns into a MINIMUM 100 base power (125 BP if you get five hits) STAB move coming off a monstrous base 147 attack stat that also BOOSTS SPEED. Even fairies aren't safe as haxorus can just tonk them with iron head (it may even opt for tera steel) and it can pack earthquake or close combat for the steel types. Mold Breaker means unaware users arent safe from being eviscerated by it either. Hax is also a great user of terastalization, enabling to create both setup opportunities and avoid revenge killing attempts from opposing priority. Absolutely bonkers pokemon that imo isnt healthy for the meta at all. It's too strong and too fast and is very good at getting to said point of strength. pls ban
j use swift swim choice specs thx
this thing is solid. 97/101/89 bulk combines super well with prism armor to make a pokemon that has no reason to tank the stuff that it does. Fantastic STAB in photon geyser coupled with decent coverage in the form of eq, knock and x-scissor gives this thing some serious offensive presence and 79 speed is definitely serviceable. However, the biggest asset in necrozma's favour is that it can a variety of different sets, including things like calm mind and agility weakness policy which all have different checks, forcing the opponent into a dangerous guessing game where one or 2 bad turns can cause necro to turn into a wrecking ball that cant be stopped.
someone come collect my boi he's fallen off
The big boi. Salamence is a force of nature lmao it's got tons of attack, tons of speed, solid defensive typing(also tera steel), 2 very good abilities in moxie and intimidate (where have I seen this before?), access to reliable recovery in roost, decent secondary STAB in dual wingbeat, great movepool AND can just smoke u with a special/mixed set if it wants to because why the heck not lmao. Sure having to pick between outrage and dragon claw is less than ideal but its not nearly enough to offset everything else going in its favour. im ngl big bro might need the axe too
in other news comfey is somehow the most busted thing in this tier who tf let gamefreak cook w triage
gn
There's a lot of things in this tier that can use dragon dance.
Let's talk about them.
Florida Man's arch nemesis does very well for itself as a dd user, 2HKOing or OHKOing most of the meta after a single boost by virtue of its powerful sheer force boosted Liquidations. 78 speed might not seem that high for a dragon dance user, but it outspeeds the whole unboosted ru metagame at +1 if running a speed boosting nature. Decent 85/100/83 natural bulk allows it to tank a few hits here and there too. Couple this with solid sheer force boosted coverage in Ice Punch, Crunch and Psychic Fangs (aqua jet is an option too for emergency rkilling) and you have a potent, threatening sweeper in the late game. Alternatively, it can very viably use a SD/scale shot set, relying on those destructive +2 liquidations to shred stuff. Feraligatr seems fine now but I'm unsure as to whether it will be balanced in the long run.
Gyarados has been overshadowed by gatr so far, but it sets itself apart with access to intimidate and a more flexible defensive typing.
This allows it to use bulkier dd sets, often combining well with support moves like substitute and/or taunt to win games after a few boosts.
Alternatively, one could opt to use a moxie build for higher snowball potential. Like with Feraligatr it will be interesting to watch once the meta settles.
ok now I know I said we were primarily talking about dragon dance users and sure, Haxorus is a fine user of it but Swords Dance + Scale Shot is what truly breaks this pokemon. When used in combination with loaded dice, scale shot turns into a MINIMUM 100 base power (125 BP if you get five hits) STAB move coming off a monstrous base 147 attack stat that also BOOSTS SPEED. Even fairies aren't safe as haxorus can just tonk them with iron head (it may even opt for tera steel) and it can pack earthquake or close combat for the steel types. Mold Breaker means unaware users arent safe from being eviscerated by it either. Hax is also a great user of terastalization, enabling to create both setup opportunities and avoid revenge killing attempts from opposing priority. Absolutely bonkers pokemon that imo isnt healthy for the meta at all. It's too strong and too fast and is very good at getting to said point of strength. pls ban
j use swift swim choice specs thx
this thing is solid. 97/101/89 bulk combines super well with prism armor to make a pokemon that has no reason to tank the stuff that it does. Fantastic STAB in photon geyser coupled with decent coverage in the form of eq, knock and x-scissor gives this thing some serious offensive presence and 79 speed is definitely serviceable. However, the biggest asset in necrozma's favour is that it can a variety of different sets, including things like calm mind and agility weakness policy which all have different checks, forcing the opponent into a dangerous guessing game where one or 2 bad turns can cause necro to turn into a wrecking ball that cant be stopped.
someone come collect my boi he's fallen off
The big boi. Salamence is a force of nature lmao it's got tons of attack, tons of speed, solid defensive typing(also tera steel), 2 very good abilities in moxie and intimidate (where have I seen this before?), access to reliable recovery in roost, decent secondary STAB in dual wingbeat, great movepool AND can just smoke u with a special/mixed set if it wants to because why the heck not lmao. Sure having to pick between outrage and dragon claw is less than ideal but its not nearly enough to offset everything else going in its favour. im ngl big bro might need the axe too
in other news comfey is somehow the most busted thing in this tier who tf let gamefreak cook w triage
gn
kinda forgot to press post lmao
i feel like the mons that make people go "fuck, do i even have something that can deal with this mon" is
, and 
. i don't want to sound like a broken record. but most of the time when building, especially since doing RULT, the first thing that now comes to mind is if i have ways to deal with a boosted Comfey/Haxorus or a Choiced Gapdos. god i've even seen a Bulk Up Trailblaze set and cried. it's either:
1. i bring a specific mon specifically to counter Comfey/Gapdos/Haxorus and hopefully it could do some other defensive roles too/not get fucking critted
2. boost up before them
3. specifically for Comfey, psychic terrain/psychic noise lmao
Gapdos and Haxorus honestly have their own difficulties, since there's a few physical walls and status spreaders (though with calcs you can see that they won't last that long lmao), but Comfey is in its own other league. Feliburn pretty much explained it all, you'll often end up having a Comfey at the winning screen once you play your cards right.
Is it Triage's fault? Yeah lmao. If it didn't have Triage then Comfey probably wouldn't stand a chance me thinks. And now with Tera, you'd either have to pray that you can kill it in time or have a Haze user that can block this thing.
If the trio get banned, then good riddance fr. It was fun playing them but i doubt that they're healthy o7
i feel like the mons that make people go "fuck, do i even have something that can deal with this mon" is
, and . i don't want to sound like a broken record. but most of the time when building, especially since doing RULT, the first thing that now comes to mind is if i have ways to deal with a boosted Comfey/Haxorus or a Choiced Gapdos. god i've even seen a Bulk Up Trailblaze set and cried. it's either:1. i bring a specific mon specifically to counter Comfey/Gapdos/Haxorus and hopefully it could do some other defensive roles too/not get fucking critted
2. boost up before them
3. specifically for Comfey, psychic terrain/psychic noise lmao
Gapdos and Haxorus honestly have their own difficulties, since there's a few physical walls and status spreaders (though with calcs you can see that they won't last that long lmao), but Comfey is in its own other league. Feliburn pretty much explained it all, you'll often end up having a Comfey at the winning screen once you play your cards right.
Is it Triage's fault? Yeah lmao. If it didn't have Triage then Comfey probably wouldn't stand a chance me thinks. And now with Tera, you'd either have to pray that you can kill it in time or have a Haze user that can block this thing.
If the trio get banned, then good riddance fr. It was fun playing them but i doubt that they're healthy o7
So I played a lot of RU for rult and had some metagame thoughts.
Comfey is the single most broken thing in the tier rn, feli also said in his post above. People who spectated rult also know how broken comfey is, winning games it had no business winning.
I had been using 2 sets mainly :
1. Tera poison, Grassy seed with
calm mind, draining kiss, stored power, synthesis.
2. Tera fire, Grassy seed with tera blast, calm mind, draining kiss, taunt ( this one was a bit bulkier ).
I kept alternating these sets in between games and was able to beat most of the comfey counterplay. As much I love comfey, i hope its gone in next council vote.
so there are atk boosting which hits hard like a truck and utilise trailblaze for speed, and then there are speed boosting sets, which is the broken one imo.
Setup opportunities are easy with tera and revenge killing is hard due to tera. It doesn't win games all by itself but it forces tera/ punch big holes into teams for his ho partners to clean up.
see hoopa is not broken, infact I think it's pretty mid, but that's because the meta rn is infested with ho/offense and hoopa doesn't get to shine. but if you are running a fattish team and run into cb hoopa, god bless you. There are other strong pokemons aswell like conkeldurr, crawdaunt which make fat bad but they are not as fast/have set diversity like hoopa.
grouping these 2 together since they both do pretty similar stuff, cm and stored power.
both have amazing bulk and make full use of tera to execute their sweep.
dragon dance sets with tera are cancerous, special sets work amazing as breaker. I think mence isn't that much broken due to low bp moves it has to be use, iron head/dual wingbeat/dragon claw are all pretty weak and miss on koes pretty often, outrage is strong but has big drawbacks and can be taken advantage of, and especially in this offensive metagame you don't wanna give a free turn to anything. but it's still pretty strong and tier would be better without it i think.
This mon is good, encore is very very good in this meta, the typing is great into mimikyu and gengar.
Love volcanion, bulky wisp sets are great and annoying for a lot of teams, specs in rain is a nuke, and is not a passive water immune.
checks hoopa and gengar , foul play punishes a lot of pokemon and provides wish support.
priority is really good in this meta, lucario even gets bullet punch which is good into mimikyu and gengar. entei has sacred fire which is great into this physical heavy meta.
bisharp feels really good this meta and i'm glad its getting the usage it deserves, sucker punch is great and is a great cleaner with sd and tera. red card mimikyu is amazing aswell disrupting a lot of setup. crawdaunt's typing resists sneak from mimikyu and sucker from bisharp which is very handy, water priority feels especially good since mons like iron leaves tera into fire/fighting and haxorous/mence tera into steel usually which get picked off by jet after some chip.
breloom's mach punch is rlly strong and picks up a lot of weakened stuff, is a potent lategame cleaner with sd and gets zen headbutt for okidogi, gengar, vileplume etc.
encore and trick are very good in this meta, gengar especially is a fav of mine, great revenge killer with scarf, has some trick up his sleeves like destiny bond, trick, memento etc.
So these were some of my thoughts, thanks for reading. I think meta is not bad, i had fun playing it but some bs cheese stuff needs to go which I know council will do a good job in handling.
Comfey is the single most broken thing in the tier rn, feli also said in his post above. People who spectated rult also know how broken comfey is, winning games it had no business winning.
I had been using 2 sets mainly :
1. Tera poison, Grassy seed with
calm mind, draining kiss, stored power, synthesis.
2. Tera fire, Grassy seed with tera blast, calm mind, draining kiss, taunt ( this one was a bit bulkier ).
I kept alternating these sets in between games and was able to beat most of the comfey counterplay. As much I love comfey, i hope its gone in next council vote.
so there are atk boosting which hits hard like a truck and utilise trailblaze for speed, and then there are speed boosting sets, which is the broken one imo.
Setup opportunities are easy with tera and revenge killing is hard due to tera. It doesn't win games all by itself but it forces tera/ punch big holes into teams for his ho partners to clean up.
see hoopa is not broken, infact I think it's pretty mid, but that's because the meta rn is infested with ho/offense and hoopa doesn't get to shine. but if you are running a fattish team and run into cb hoopa, god bless you. There are other strong pokemons aswell like conkeldurr, crawdaunt which make fat bad but they are not as fast/have set diversity like hoopa.
grouping these 2 together since they both do pretty similar stuff, cm and stored power.
both have amazing bulk and make full use of tera to execute their sweep.
dragon dance sets with tera are cancerous, special sets work amazing as breaker. I think mence isn't that much broken due to low bp moves it has to be use, iron head/dual wingbeat/dragon claw are all pretty weak and miss on koes pretty often, outrage is strong but has big drawbacks and can be taken advantage of, and especially in this offensive metagame you don't wanna give a free turn to anything. but it's still pretty strong and tier would be better without it i think.
This mon is good, encore is very very good in this meta, the typing is great into mimikyu and gengar.
Love volcanion, bulky wisp sets are great and annoying for a lot of teams, specs in rain is a nuke, and is not a passive water immune.
checks hoopa and gengar , foul play punishes a lot of pokemon and provides wish support.
priority is really good in this meta, lucario even gets bullet punch which is good into mimikyu and gengar. entei has sacred fire which is great into this physical heavy meta.
bisharp feels really good this meta and i'm glad its getting the usage it deserves, sucker punch is great and is a great cleaner with sd and tera. red card mimikyu is amazing aswell disrupting a lot of setup. crawdaunt's typing resists sneak from mimikyu and sucker from bisharp which is very handy, water priority feels especially good since mons like iron leaves tera into fire/fighting and haxorous/mence tera into steel usually which get picked off by jet after some chip.
breloom's mach punch is rlly strong and picks up a lot of weakened stuff, is a potent lategame cleaner with sd and gets zen headbutt for okidogi, gengar, vileplume etc.
encore and trick are very good in this meta, gengar especially is a fav of mine, great revenge killer with scarf, has some trick up his sleeves like destiny bond, trick, memento etc.
So these were some of my thoughts, thanks for reading. I think meta is not bad, i had fun playing it but some bs cheese stuff needs to go which I know council will do a good job in handling.
Updated tier list based on my own games and watching RULT happen this week;
Worthy of ban consideration:
Comfey is tricky to play around because the more popular set right now (Calm Mind, Draining Kiss, Tera Ground/Tera Blast, Taunt) is really strong. Triage is a very good ability, arguably the best in the tier above Regenerator and Disguise. Tera Poison sets with Stored Power also wreak havoc.
Haxorus is classic strong mon with DD/SD Scale Shot sets both putting in work. It gets nice coverage in Iron Head and Earthquake to hit a lot of stuff really hard off even unboosted 147 Attack.
Hoopa-Unbound is pound-for-pound the best mixed attacker and has insane coverage with Drain Punch, Knock Off/Hyperspace Fury and Psychic all being tough to switch into.
Iron Jugulis and Iron Leaves are both Booster Speedsters that haven't seen a lot of usage but can win games if you don't have a Scarfer faster than them, which there are very few in the tier right now.
Mew is still a double dance machine, inarguably better than Cresselia given the range of coverage.
Salamence is such a versatile monster, capable of running bulkier sets, physical sets, special sets AND mixed sets. Moxie DD or Specs sets are the worst offenders but still really hard to account for the options it has.
Thundurus-Therian is a monster that will Volt-turn you to death in or outside of rain.
Zapdos-Galar should always be Scarf so that it can run a simple Brave Bird, Close Combat, Knock Off, U-Turn set.
A step below broken, but still really good:
The above list is full of competent wall-breakers, setup sweepers and Choice item abusers. Not to go overly into detail here, but basically any of the ones listed above are capable of winning a game if given a free turn.
Some of these work really well in tandem especially, with Psychic Terrain, Rain, Sun and Trick Room all really strong team structures in the current meta.
Cores to build around / build with:
- -
A trio of Psychic Terrain abusers that hit very hard with boosted Expanding Force while limiting revenge-killing options given the blockage of priority such as Sucker Punch and First Impression.
- -
Rain has plenty of options for breakers, but this particular core works well because of their access to pivot moves (Flip Turn and Volt Switch). Basculegion-Female has insane upside as a Special breaker, Feraligatr can win games with just one DD and Thundurus-Therian has immediate power and coverage to hit anything hard.
-
Sun teams can be tricky to pilot but the core of Lilligant-Hisui and Venusaur provide speed and power unmatched by most of the tier.
- 
- 
Assault Vest Cyclizar isn't as good in this meta as it was last month (so far) but will always be a reliable spinner. Hippowdon and Slowking form a really tough to manage defensive core and can stop a fair amount of stuff in their tracks.
- -
A very scare offensive trio that plays off each other really well. All three are very fast and Zapdos-Galar can run U-Turn to freely pivot into either option depending on what is in front of you.
- -
Another combination of Cyclizar and Slowking but with Mienshao as a third Regenerator mon that has a great physical presence both as a Life Orb or Choice Scarf breaker.
- (pick any 5 offensive options)
Smeargle is a great HO lead because a set of Burning Bulwark, Ceaseless Edge, Sticky Webs and Stone Axe ensures you get some level of hazards up while also potentially getting a burn into opposing hazard leads like Kleavor.
- 
- 
A great defensive trio with access to Stealth Rocks, Spikes and Toxic Spikes. Removal is always difficult with Cyclizar as basically the only spinner so getting hazards up during a game is great, especially if your opponent lacks a Poison type to remove the Toxic Spikes set by Quagsire. One of my personal favorite cores last month (Chansey over Blissey because of tiering) likely picks up in usage again once the tier settles and the meta adapts.
- 
Fun core of Flame Body Moltres with Encore Tinkaton to stop setup mons in their tracks.
Ultimately, to wrap up my thoughts about the tier; I don't personally consider it to be healthy at the moment but that's a given with the amount of drops at once. The first ban after the tier shift consisted of only two mons (
and 
) and it feels like there is still plenty to consider, but it's only been a week and the RU Council has made it obvious they will routinely check on the meta and filter things out. I think the next few weeks will be very offensively-oriented and the team-building process to account for this will be very difficult... but still overall a fun tier with a great community.
Worthy of ban consideration:
Comfey is tricky to play around because the more popular set right now (Calm Mind, Draining Kiss, Tera Ground/Tera Blast, Taunt) is really strong. Triage is a very good ability, arguably the best in the tier above Regenerator and Disguise. Tera Poison sets with Stored Power also wreak havoc.
Haxorus is classic strong mon with DD/SD Scale Shot sets both putting in work. It gets nice coverage in Iron Head and Earthquake to hit a lot of stuff really hard off even unboosted 147 Attack.
Hoopa-Unbound is pound-for-pound the best mixed attacker and has insane coverage with Drain Punch, Knock Off/Hyperspace Fury and Psychic all being tough to switch into.
Iron Jugulis and Iron Leaves are both Booster Speedsters that haven't seen a lot of usage but can win games if you don't have a Scarfer faster than them, which there are very few in the tier right now.
Mew is still a double dance machine, inarguably better than Cresselia given the range of coverage.
Salamence is such a versatile monster, capable of running bulkier sets, physical sets, special sets AND mixed sets. Moxie DD or Specs sets are the worst offenders but still really hard to account for the options it has.
Thundurus-Therian is a monster that will Volt-turn you to death in or outside of rain.
Zapdos-Galar should always be Scarf so that it can run a simple Brave Bird, Close Combat, Knock Off, U-Turn set.
A step below broken, but still really good:
The above list is full of competent wall-breakers, setup sweepers and Choice item abusers. Not to go overly into detail here, but basically any of the ones listed above are capable of winning a game if given a free turn.
Some of these work really well in tandem especially, with Psychic Terrain, Rain, Sun and Trick Room all really strong team structures in the current meta.
Cores to build around / build with:
- - A trio of Psychic Terrain abusers that hit very hard with boosted Expanding Force while limiting revenge-killing options given the blockage of priority such as Sucker Punch and First Impression.
- - Rain has plenty of options for breakers, but this particular core works well because of their access to pivot moves (Flip Turn and Volt Switch). Basculegion-Female has insane upside as a Special breaker, Feraligatr can win games with just one DD and Thundurus-Therian has immediate power and coverage to hit anything hard.
- Sun teams can be tricky to pilot but the core of Lilligant-Hisui and Venusaur provide speed and power unmatched by most of the tier.
- - Assault Vest Cyclizar isn't as good in this meta as it was last month (so far) but will always be a reliable spinner. Hippowdon and Slowking form a really tough to manage defensive core and can stop a fair amount of stuff in their tracks.
- - A very scare offensive trio that plays off each other really well. All three are very fast and Zapdos-Galar can run U-Turn to freely pivot into either option depending on what is in front of you.
- - Another combination of Cyclizar and Slowking but with Mienshao as a third Regenerator mon that has a great physical presence both as a Life Orb or Choice Scarf breaker.
- (pick any 5 offensive options)Smeargle is a great HO lead because a set of Burning Bulwark, Ceaseless Edge, Sticky Webs and Stone Axe ensures you get some level of hazards up while also potentially getting a burn into opposing hazard leads like Kleavor.
- - A great defensive trio with access to Stealth Rocks, Spikes and Toxic Spikes. Removal is always difficult with Cyclizar as basically the only spinner so getting hazards up during a game is great, especially if your opponent lacks a Poison type to remove the Toxic Spikes set by Quagsire. One of my personal favorite cores last month (Chansey over Blissey because of tiering) likely picks up in usage again once the tier settles and the meta adapts.
- Fun core of Flame Body Moltres with Encore Tinkaton to stop setup mons in their tracks.
Ultimately, to wrap up my thoughts about the tier; I don't personally consider it to be healthy at the moment but that's a given with the amount of drops at once. The first ban after the tier shift consisted of only two mons (
and ) and it feels like there is still plenty to consider, but it's only been a week and the RU Council has made it obvious they will routinely check on the meta and filter things out. I think the next few weeks will be very offensively-oriented and the team-building process to account for this will be very difficult... but still overall a fun tier with a great community.
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Ok so, my thoughts on what should be banned this time
i've posted my concerns about the turtle on discord and had feli saying its drednaw moment (
) but to be fair, this thing has been extremely potent on ladder, grabbing a few sweeps or at least a good part of opposing teams, tera grass with tera blast or other teras with dark pulse can be quite annoying to play around, and can annoy most waters or checks quite quickly, plus I was only using herb, and life orb/belt/other boosting items sets are prob gonna pop up at some point and destroy quite a lot of things even harder
Has already been mentioned quite a lot of times but this thing for sure has to go, its always a guessing game to know what tera comfey is between tera poison and ground, along with the multiple options of coverage/utility it can use, between taunt, synthesis, encore, giga drain, etc
Needs not much explanation, DD/SD, scale shot, mold breaker, perfect coverage for what it wants and tera enhancing this thing even more, busted af
and rebans
Mew is classic it has whatever move it would want for coverage, 350 different boosting options between DD, SD, NP, CM, IDef, BU, and the list goes on, all possible hazards besides webs, and like a ton of other good options to choose from
Hoopa on the other side is a bit overwhelming still from my experience, its kinda """"contained""" rn bc of the HO meta, but it still breaks holes on teams, and can choose from whatever side of spectrum it attacks, be it the 170 spa psychics and dark pulses, or be it the 160 atk knock/gunk/hyperspace/drain punch/whatever coverage
252 Atk Choice Band Tera Flying Zapdos-Galar Brave Bird vs. 0 HP / 0+ Def Your Opinion 1280-1512 (386.7 - 456.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO
but in all seriousness, this thing is early RU Flamigo on steroids and idk how it avoided the ban, it 2ohkos or OHKOs the entire tier with band, is a good scarfer into most of the tier, has uturn AND knock off on top of that
Suspects:
I dont know if those peeps are gonna be in the slate(please do), but both are going to be EXTREMELY potent once we get some more bans, boosting leaves has insane coverage and hits like a truck on both speed and attack boosting
Cresselia is not under a lot of ppls radar rn, but if theres something i've seen from the guy using it on ladder is that this thing is basically immortal if it gets a bit of boosts going, which is not difficult with tera allowing it to change it to Poison/steel/electric/ whatever type it wants
aside from that, I havent had much problems with other mons people mentioned, Okidogi, Therian thundy, and such have been ok on a decent part of games I played and i've seen only 2 Salamences yet so I dont rly have a strong opinion formed
i've posted my concerns about the turtle on discord and had feli saying its drednaw moment (
) but to be fair, this thing has been extremely potent on ladder, grabbing a few sweeps or at least a good part of opposing teams, tera grass with tera blast or other teras with dark pulse can be quite annoying to play around, and can annoy most waters or checks quite quickly, plus I was only using herb, and life orb/belt/other boosting items sets are prob gonna pop up at some point and destroy quite a lot of things even harderHas already been mentioned quite a lot of times but this thing for sure has to go, its always a guessing game to know what tera comfey is between tera poison and ground, along with the multiple options of coverage/utility it can use, between taunt, synthesis, encore, giga drain, etc
Needs not much explanation, DD/SD, scale shot, mold breaker, perfect coverage for what it wants and tera enhancing this thing even more, busted af
and rebans Mew is classic it has whatever move it would want for coverage, 350 different boosting options between DD, SD, NP, CM, IDef, BU, and the list goes on, all possible hazards besides webs, and like a ton of other good options to choose from
Hoopa on the other side is a bit overwhelming still from my experience, its kinda """"contained""" rn bc of the HO meta, but it still breaks holes on teams, and can choose from whatever side of spectrum it attacks, be it the 170 spa psychics and dark pulses, or be it the 160 atk knock/gunk/hyperspace/drain punch/whatever coverage
252 Atk Choice Band Tera Flying Zapdos-Galar Brave Bird vs. 0 HP / 0+ Def Your Opinion 1280-1512 (386.7 - 456.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO
but in all seriousness, this thing is early RU Flamigo on steroids and idk how it avoided the ban, it 2ohkos or OHKOs the entire tier with band, is a good scarfer into most of the tier, has uturn AND knock off on top of that
Suspects:
I dont know if those peeps are gonna be in the slate(please do), but both are going to be EXTREMELY potent once we get some more bans, boosting leaves has insane coverage and hits like a truck on both speed and attack boosting
Cresselia is not under a lot of ppls radar rn, but if theres something i've seen from the guy using it on ladder is that this thing is basically immortal if it gets a bit of boosts going, which is not difficult with tera allowing it to change it to Poison/steel/electric/ whatever type it wants
aside from that, I havent had much problems with other mons people mentioned, Okidogi, Therian thundy, and such have been ok on a decent part of games I played and i've seen only 2 Salamences yet so I dont rly have a strong opinion formed