DPP OU General Metagame Discussion

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DPP OU General Metagame Discussion



I felt this was needed. Discuss anything 4th gen OU including stats, trends, movesets, cores, etc. What are you noticing about the metagame? What's doing good in it right now? What can possibly make an impact if given the chance?


4th Gen is often seen as a balanced game (at least one of them), where all sorts of playstyles are viable and not one of them bowls over all the rest. In reality, that can still be said today, but you'd have to also mention it's a highly focused, fast paced, and often-times brutal environment which requires a likewise mindset and high level of play to actually succeed in. What I love about the metagame is how out of all generations, it's in that perfect spot where there are a lot of threats to prepare for, yet you are still given room for creativity when building your teams. There is still a decent amount of stuff to discover and rediscover.


Where to start? Why not the usage stats for the past few months?

These are all 1760 stats, so take that into account.

February
March
April


Apart from the weird stuff getting spammed on the ladder, you can see the changes between the months, obviously reactions to stuff getting increased usage. Flygon taking number one in March resulting in the increase of Gliscor and Skarmory the following month. Not only that, oddities are everywhere. Heatran, the "king of DPP" not in the top five in February. Scizor apparently holds strong in top level play, appearing in the top five each month (I've always thought it be lower).

A big one that caught my eye was Hippowdon. One of the faces of stall in DPP, incredibly difficult to kill, provides Sandstorm, is a reliable user of Stealth Rock, heals instantly, PHazes like nothing, hits with a decent Earthquake, the whole defensive package. Yet it's hovering in the mid to upper 30s in usage. I've realized that I have been seeing it less and it's just bizarre such that a good Pokemon is getting so little use.

It brings to mind one of the big topics of DPP OU, the state of Stall. It's hard to deny that the playstyle's not as good as it was in the past. It's by no means dead however. It's just difficult to slap on six defensive Mons and expect to wall everything for eternity. You need to play smart and build your cores with care. I've ran into a couple good Stall teams, so people are still interested in the playstyle (I'm still for Balance or Offense myself). Personally, I think Balanced teams (with a preference for offense) are still the way to go right now. You get the offensive pressure you need to keep your team from getting eventually overpowered, but still have the utility and defense to keep your team on its feet and take attacks when needed.

I also want to bring up the matter of how it's really noticeable here how some Pokemon continue to get better and better as the time goes on. Flygon is getting used on most teams because it's that near-perfect scarfer (or at least as good as it can get in DPP OU) with its typing, ability, and physical moves, including U-Turn. Starmie, no matter what changes come about in the metagame, comes out as one of the best Pokemon with its speed, Special moves, and the fastest Rapid Spin available. Pokemon like Dragonite or Zapdos can bust holes in teams with their offensive sets and can generally be extremely hard to switch in to.

These are just some initial thoughts I wanted to bring up. Regardless, DPP OU, have a go at it.
 
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| 1 | Starmie | 60.98120% | 2526 | 36.726% | 2156 | 36.368% |

of course its #1 cause its the best pokemon but holy shit...

| 41 | Nidoqueen | 2.93840% | 72 | 1.047% | 66 | 1.113% |

used more than jolteon aero and mamo fuck yeah!!!

tentacruel and evire used more than abomasnow is an atrocity
 
| 23 | Dusknoir | 8.64487% | 376 | 5.467% | 342 | 5.769% |
| 31 | Azumarill | 3.87852% | 119 | 1.730% | 96 | 1.619% |


Anyways, on-topic really (let's not talk about these stats too much), what is the best Rotom forme to use (esp. if you're not using a signature mvoe)? I've pretty much been exclusively using Rotom-W just because it scares off Tyranitar and Heatran, but Rotom-H is decent as well for threatening Forretress with a OHKO I suppose. Rotom-C could work if you're really afraid of Swampert I guess, but I doubt I'd actually ever use it. Rotom-S and Rotom-F are just bad.
 
Stall is far from being dead or "nerfed", the classic Hardstall (hippowdown/skarmbliss/scarfttar and so on) is pretty damn hard to bust throught if your team doesn't have something like Infernape to really scare it. That's why i hate playing Scarfed Flygon, you always feel like playing 5-6 because you won't kill Skarmory and Hippowdon no matter what you do. Balanced teams are cool but good luck beating a stall without problem with it.

Since Latias was banned, Starmie, especially the LO+3 attacks, became a pain to switch into when your team is really offensive, it always comes down to prediction, damn this thing is annoying to face.
Hopefully LOmie is awesome but can be hard to fit in a team because it is way too frail, and teams with like CM or ScarfJirachi/Scarfgon/Suicune/Roserade etc. can play around him without suffering much.

Sub and Specs Rotom-w/h are underrated threat and they are hella fun too play, people seems to have overlooked those sets for the restalk/scarf ones, Agility Empoleon/Zapdos/Lucario are underrated too.

And Sand Veil Gliscor can eat a #@! btw
 
Stall is only 'dead' because no one is making stall teams, not because it isn't viable anymore.

Rotom-Wash is generally the best, Shadow Ball, Thunderbolt, Hydro Pump, and Trick generally hits everything. It's the Hydro Pump, really. Shit like Tyranitar or Sp. def Hippo and Heatran should counter it but can't eat a Hydro Pump. Blissey laughs at everything until it gets Tricked a Scarf.

I'm also with Morpheus on Sub Rotom. I personally struggle every single time, luckily I've only faced it about 3 times, lol. I hope this thread doesn't give people any ideas and they keep on running Trick and Resttalk.

Oh, Leech Seed Shaymin is another really hard thing to counter if you're not running Zapdos. It has great coverage and again, things like Blissey or Lax which should scare it off get Seeded. It just doesn't die with its speed, bulk, and natural cure.

Edit: also, ChestoRest Kingdra does get decent recognition and usage but I'd still call it underrated. I've been running one for a while and it is my early/midgame/lategame sweeper. So long as Skarm, Gyarados, and to a much lesser extent, Pert, arent there to phaze it out, it can sweep at any given moment in the game. I use it to punch holes in my opponents team early to make way for my other sweeper but it works late as well. Plus, it benefits immensely from Starmie's overuse. Most people stay in, not knowing ChestoRest was built specifically for set up on Starmie.
 
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Stall is still pretty great honestly. It is generally easier to counterstyle, but that argument only applies if it is the only thing your opponent uses. It can win just by making safe plays which makes it a good smogon tour team or ladder team. It doesn't need to sacrifice as much as other playstyles to deal with threats. It is a great way to beat players who lack the metagame knowledge possible to understand the mechanics to defeat stall in the fourth generation. (Mix Nite actually isn't the best way to beat stall!)

Stall still can't regain lost momentum as easily, and dislikes hazards. It also tends to depend on hazards which can be a bit hard if they have one of those Defensive Starmie + Tyranitar teams. Let me make this clear. Most of those 2010 or 2011 stall teams are outdated for the new metagame. BKC and I created a great stall team which is designed for the hipster new 2014 DPP OU metagame.
 
Bring the DPP ladder back plz, this tier is actually the best to watch, play and build, and without the smogon tour, it would be pretty much dead, PO2/Showdown ladders are not really active and they lack some level, shoddy's top 50 level was amazing.
 
In my experience, PO ladder was extremely bad. At least 3 times worse than the Shoddy one.
Agreeing with this, when DPP was the main tier, PO only had about 200 people on it about the time, and I was consistently top 5 on the ladder. This was back when playing a tournament would boost your ranking on ladder up.

The shoddy ladder was easily 3x better as LizardMan said, I don't think I was ever able to break top 40 on the Shoddy ladder.
 

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I don't think 2010/2011 stall teams are outdated. A lot of those stall teams still work pretty well (I have a couple of early platinum stall teams that still work p well, and the classic Earthworm esque stall still works)

About shoddy ladder, yes it was really good, and there were a lot of good players there. I had had great battles vs players like Krack, Zak, IPL, Panamaxis, etc who used to ladder a lot as well. Ladder level was pretty high, and there were a lot of good gamez
 
The classic defensive Rotom isn't as good as it once was due to the surge of Bold Starmie. A lot of us use bulky Scarf Rotom nowadays. People also need to be a bit more prepared for Breloom. Gyarados as your sole Breloom check just won't cut it anymore. A secondary way of checking or dealing with it is pretty important.

That is what I meant by outdated. I do agree with you that there are many 2010 or 2011 stall teams which can most definitly still work.
 
Player like Husk/EW/Krack/IPL/Zak91... stopped playing or they play way less than before and most of the dpp community grew up so they got more important things to do than laddering on sb, so yeah we lost a lot of competitivity because of that.

The most important thing was that the ladder on sb was a pretty big deal back then, now you ladder to train or to prove that your team is good in your rmt, being top 10 of sb was as much as a challenge than winning. Everyone can't be top 50 now, some sort of monthly tournament like "the first 32 on the ladder will participate to a big tournament" with like something to win (hall of fame/trophy idk) for the winner could motivate the community a bit more and rise up the global level imo. Sorry if i'm changing the main subject a bit, back to the DPP metagame.

Yeah the classic SStall (hippo/gyara/skarmbliss and stuff) still works, but imo it is a bit risky to play those kind of teams, because if you play SS stall, you will be playing 99.9% the same team than KG stall, and it's easy to predict and counter a team that you already know by double-switching and stuff. Those kinds of stall are also pretty weak to grass types (KG had a hard time dealing with venusaur for example) and Breloom can also destroy those teams once Gyarados got killed. (and it's not hard to do)
I saw a lot of Celebis because of the gain of popularity that Breloom got too.
 
sdef celebi is great, i use it on the stall team i made with lizard. it completely walls breloom/shaymin, which are annoying for most (semi) stalls.

speaking of loom, i've been using that husk set (spore/facade/seed bomb/superpower) and it rules. lots of crobats running around to smack on the switch, especially if sr is up.
 
Just to be clear, when you guys are saying bring back the DPP ladder, you're speaking of Shoddy, correct? Whatever happened to that? I'm assuming it was gradually replaced.
 
Shoddy kinda died at the start of the 5G, Pokemon online became popular and shoddy battle tried to fight back with "Pokemon lab" but it was pretty much a fail and it died quickly too, so Smogon started to make a PO server and after that we got Pokemon Showdown.

Shoddy battle was shitty looking (no replays, no animations, no disallow spects) but it was the best competitive pokemon simulator in terms of pure skill.
 
I too agree that Gen 4 was at its peak on Shoddy both player wise and skill wise.

Where do you guys even find a battle? PO is almost dead.
 
PO mainly, some good people ladder there at times.

Can we pls drop the sim talk now I loved shoddy as much as anyone but still!!!
 
PO mainly, some good people ladder there at times.

Can we pls drop the sim talk now I loved shoddy as much as anyone but still!!!
It really was great though.

About PO though, the max I can find is two battles before I give up on waiting for another.
 
I'm always on Showdown, because PO doesnt support the iPad. Sometimes its impossible to get a match, sometimes I only have to wait a few minutes for several matches.
 
The classic defensive Rotom isn't as good as it once was due to the surge of Bold Starmie. A lot of us use bulky Scarf Rotom nowadays. People also need to be a bit more prepared for Breloom. Gyarados as your sole Breloom check just won't cut it anymore. A secondary way of checking or dealing with it is pretty important.
For the Rotom-A question, I think RW is the best overall form (whether using Hydro Pump or not). It's the reason why Stealth Rock is so important in dealing with it, knowing if it's carrying Leftovers or not. Without a clue to what its moveset is, nothing is truly a safe switch-in (while most Heatran can switch into most any RH form), as you can be crippled for the rest of the match. If you're not worried about its offensive moves, you're still going to have to deal with Trick or WoW. Any Substitute set is also bad to mispredict on.

Anyways, OK, a few of you have been talking about Bold Starmie for a while now. Someone needs to explain this one to me. I've never seen one (and the moveset stats only show Timid). What does Bold do for you? I've been plugging in the set in the calculator. It doesn't properly protect you from Tyranitar, who now does not have to worry about an overpowered Hydro Pump. With an updated EV spread, the Band set can't even be 2HKO'd by non-LO Hydro Pump (without SR damage), while Scarf itself isn't 2HKO'd by Surf (no SpA investment on Starmie for both situations). By dropping the speed, you're now outsped by Gengar and Infernape, two Pokemon you should have no business being slower than. You also miss out on the speed tie with other Starmie (always better than nothing) as well. Starmies not paper frail, fortuneately, but I can't see how the slight boost in physical Defense can ever be justified. It's strength is its speed. Countering its Rapid Spin is supposed to be difficult because it can choose to hit switch-ins with decent moves and threaten to finish them off the next turn. Dropping the speed for a little extra defense doesn't block the things you want to block because they no longer are forced to play it safe. I mean, CB Scizor can switch in on any move and can play like normal (Pursuit does a minimum of 70% on 252 HP no Def Starmie).

What exact moves and EVs you guys use on Bold Starmie?
 
bold is so you can recover vs scarf tar. if it pursuits, stay in and beat it. if it crunches, youre still at decent health after the recover and can switch out. the defense also lets you be a decent luc check and iirc heatran barely misses out on an explosion ko.

i use hydro / tbolt (i know lizardman likes reflect but the extra defense makes it almost impossible to lose to gyara...) / spin / recover, 248 hp / 176 def / 12 satk / 16 sdef / 56 spe. if my team is weak to mamo i bump the spe evs up to hit a 285 stat but most of the teams i have with boldmie have it countered already so
 
bold is so you can recover vs scarf tar. if it pursuits, stay in and beat it. if it crunches, youre still at decent health after the recover and can switch out. the defense also lets you be a decent luc check and iirc heatran barely misses out on an explosion ko.

i use hydro / tbolt (i know lizardman likes reflect but the extra defense makes it almost impossible to lose to gyara...) / spin / recover, 248 hp / 176 def / 12 satk / 16 sdef / 56 spe. if my team is weak to mamo i bump the spe evs up to hit a 285 stat but most of the teams i have with boldmie have it countered already so
I dunno. The use of Choice Band changes each month (Scarf dominated last month though), so sometimes it rises (I always get screwed when I expect Scarf) and I just don't want to exclude it. In reality, measures against Scarf fold when Band comes into play. Bold doesn't help on that. I need to try the set one day though. I'm just skeptical because then you drop that dubious thing of being able to beat the ghosts that try to block Rapid Spin (so what's the point anyway?).

An alternative you can try is the regular LO set, but with less SpA EVs and with some HP (or other stat) on it as well. You still have a lot of power and also have just a little leeway in possibly surviving Scarf Tyranitar (sure Bold does work on it, but I just hate the losses on the Ghosts). Basically, pull Starmie out at the appropriate time and make it so that you can bait the Pursuit instead of Crunch when you have some damage (not too much obviously, otherwise Pursuit would kill anyways). It's shaky, I'll be honest, but I've gotten it to work before. I usually use it with Wish, so it doesn't become useless afterwards. I just need to pinpoint the best spread on the set though.
 
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I've switch back to Rotom-H on my leftovers Rotoms.

As soon as someone see's leftovers Rotom-W they aren't scared of your (non-existent) hydro pump. Being RW with leftovers seems pointless. If you have Rotom-H though it makes people think "why aren't they using Rotom-W, maybe they have Overheat". I use this for the sole purpose of scaring off Forretress, who otherwise would set up multiple layers of hazards on Rotoms.

Restalk Rotom is pretty bad in the current metagame. It struggles to spin block starmie and can't burn off sleep turns easily. I wouldn't say it was a better gyra check than the scarfer, but it is less vulnerable to pursuit. It's main bonus is as a solid metagross check on skarmless stall, something scarf rotom can't do.

Restalk reflect Rotom has always been underrated in my opinion. Reflect doesn't conflict with toxic spikes, you don't have to predict the turn they switch, you can use reflect whenever. It lets Rotom check extra threats like Breloom and Machamp. When reflect is up it makes it very easy to set up entry hazards. It does make Rotom less effective against Metagross, Scizor and Forretress however.


I've been using a Starmie spread of 252hp, 228 defence, 28 speed (Timid). This sits you at 300 speed, but you still have enough defense to stay in and recover vs scarf tar. Outspeeding, cune, non-scarf rotoms, heatran, mamoswine, lucario etc. is rather useful and I just feel like I'm wasting a lot of Starmie's best stat with a bold nature.

An important change I've noticed is the huge lack of max/max physically defensive walls. Hippo, Gliscor, Skarm, Forry etc. are all preferring specially defensive spreads, while walls such as Restalk Gyra and Suicune are much less common.

What this means is that Choice banding physical attackers is incredibly effective. If they have speed they aren't a liability against offense. The success of pokemon such as CB Flygon and CB Infernape is a great example.

I think Jolly lucario will start rising up the usage stats again, not only are his counters becoming less popular but he works well in this Starmie, Scarf-tar metagame. Outspeeding all these slow Starmies and while Scarf tar is a lucario check, it's also amazing set-up fodder.
 
What kind of Flygons have you guys been seeing? The Flygo's I've seen are hardly ever scarfed. Mostly Banded or even Mixed.
 
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