Almost anybody benefits from Urshifu being gone, most of the times had to emergency tera water something that could either KO or cripple it or else they would lose a mon. That mon was just hard to wall even if you knew that it would just click a water move 90% of the time.
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v2 [Update on Post #5186]
- Thread starter TPP
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Garg absolutely does not need a suspect, in fact it's been made worse by how many potent special attackers the tier gained in home and how much more competition it has for that Tera slot now. Yes, it can sometimes be difficult to beat physical walls if you have no special attackers on your team. This is solvable in the builder. A ton of physical mons introduced in Home such as Landorus or Ursaluna threaten it too. The most problematic aspect of Garg is the way it can choose its own counterplay via Tera but you've said you think that's fine. You also admitted there's plenty of counterplay to it. So what exactly is the issue beyond being a strong wall that's hard to break? Should we ban Dondozo as well?One last thing I would like to add is
PLEASE just suspect this mon. I have NO IDEA why volc is on the radar but this isn't; i will say there is a lot of counterplay to this mon such as trick and covert cloak and people have gotten better at adapting vs salt cure, but garg sits in the same boat as Zama-H in the sense that it is just so fat and if you are against an ID BP set garganacl with no special attackers it is near impossible to break it. The best mon vs garg in my opinion right now is Gholdengo, since it offers great utility with trick, as well as hits everything very hard, and its ability stops defog; gholdengo is everywhere since the meta rn is just spike stack for what ive seen, HOWEVER if garg turns water then its a lot harder for gholdengo, and good players WILL scout for the trick.
I will get the 30-0 next time
TLDR: volc is borderline op but should be suspect tested > quickbanned, zama is op, garg needs a suspect, TERA IS FINE RIGHT NOW there is enough counterplay that comes with experience
Ultimately I think a lot of people agree with the result of an Urshifu/Volc ban but disagree with the process, at least in terms of Volc. Don’t get me wrong though, I wouldn’t say something so asinine as “oh the OU council is corrupt”. Anyone doing that is being ignorant; obviously you’re all doing your best to represent the tier you run and make the most educated decisions you can. However, I’ve got to say that I think there’s a Smogon-wide trend I’ve never been a fan of about rushing tiering decisions right before world cup which just never sits right with me. It shifts the viewpoint from “what’s the decision I should make that would best benefit the longterm health of the tier while representing the wishes of the playerbase most accurately” to “what’s the best way to achieve short-term stability for the sake of this particular tournament” which I think kind of are at odds with each other. Volcarona is obviously a contentious and problematic Pokémon sure, but would it really have swung from a 0-9 DNB vote to a 7-2 QB vote in less than a week if there wasn’t a tournament coming up? I don’t think it would have, especially considering multiple council members citing it as the reason for their vote now. This wouldn’t be a problem if it was only banned for the tournament, but it’s something the entire OU playerbase now has to deal with. Essentially, a full tiering decision has been made that affects the entire playerbase due to an event that only a few of them are going to be participating in, which makes it feel like this decision wasn’t made in an attempt to represent the wishes of the OU community as a whole, and that doesn’t sit right with me.
Again, I want to re-emphasize two things: one, I actually agree with both of the bans, and two, I think this problem isn’t one unique to the OU council and has been a trend going on for years across multiple tiers in multiple generations. Every time it does happen though, I feel like it sets an unhealthy precedent, and when I feel a lot of the most questionable bans in Smogon history have happened that then later ended up overturned by the playerbase in a suspect, those bans usually happened before a tournament. Ideally I think wcop should just be allowed its participants to vote to ban Pokémon for the event and not have to maintain 1-to-1 tiering parity to begin with, but if that won’t change, then the rules of the tier itself should imo not be shifted to appease its participants.
EDIT: For clarity, I DM’d Finch about some of this stuff and while there is precedent to split parity between WCoP and OU, it has historically caused a lot of issues because of a lack of a split ladder for practice and ladder players being ineligible to get into tours. It’s a tough situation.
Again, I want to re-emphasize two things: one, I actually agree with both of the bans, and two, I think this problem isn’t one unique to the OU council and has been a trend going on for years across multiple tiers in multiple generations. Every time it does happen though, I feel like it sets an unhealthy precedent, and when I feel a lot of the most questionable bans in Smogon history have happened that then later ended up overturned by the playerbase in a suspect, those bans usually happened before a tournament. Ideally I think wcop should just be allowed its participants to vote to ban Pokémon for the event and not have to maintain 1-to-1 tiering parity to begin with, but if that won’t change, then the rules of the tier itself should imo not be shifted to appease its participants.
EDIT: For clarity, I DM’d Finch about some of this stuff and while there is precedent to split parity between WCoP and OU, it has historically caused a lot of issues because of a lack of a split ladder for practice and ladder players being ineligible to get into tours. It’s a tough situation.
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It happened. It actually happened
Volcarona has been banned from OU. Always a powerful setup sweeper ever since its inception. And now it's gone
I blame tera for this. I loved Volcarona for its risk reward. Tera needs action on it. I don't think I can live with this. We entered the dark timeline folks
You was gonna be banned either way
But VOLCARONA?? Nah now I'm just mad. After everything is said and done, we need tera action
(JK I'm just kinda upset and mad. Greifing, coping hard)
Anyways, people bitching aside:
I feel like Landorus-T is still very good in this metagame, and I find myself constantly using it over Great Tusk in a lot of team comps. The set I mainly run is SR/EQ/U-turn/Taunt or Protect, but it synergizes kind of well with other pivots in the tier from experience. Unlike Great Tusk, I think Landorus-T's biggest upside is U-turn. Being able to reduce a guessing game of "stay in/switch" to "when in doubt, just U-turn out" is a massive boost to Offense and BO compositions. Great Tusk achieves this through a one-time-use Eject Pack and running full offensive spreads. When everything shakes out, I feel like Lando-T will be top 15 in usage, maybe top 10.
Also, AV11 and I spent some time calculating "effective base powers" of Dire Claw and Hurricane. We did have some different modeling approaches, but I think we've come across two conclusions.
The same rationale can be said for Hurricane vs. Bleakwind Storm to some extent. If there's ever a point in the metagame where Torn-T will constantly force switches, Bleakwind gets much better because of the 30% speed drop, especially against faster Pokemon. The Speed drop effectively makes it as if Tornadus-T attacked twice in a row (in a very specific scenario). Understandably, the number of Pokemon that are naturally faster than Torn-T isn't high, and most of them don't like eating Flying STAB to the face. My initial take is that fatter variants (that don't run as much Spe) of Tornadus-T appreciate Bleakwind Storm while NP/Specs variants appreciate Hurricane more.
Let me know if you want to see the derivations/calculations for these effective base power justifications. I also realize that I completely hand-waved over the definition of "effective base power", so I can elaborate more on this if people really want it. It's currently sitting in a Word document on my computer, and I'm hesitant to just dump a bunch of math onto an OU Metagame thread.
I feel like Landorus-T is still very good in this metagame, and I find myself constantly using it over Great Tusk in a lot of team comps. The set I mainly run is SR/EQ/U-turn/Taunt or Protect, but it synergizes kind of well with other pivots in the tier from experience. Unlike Great Tusk, I think Landorus-T's biggest upside is U-turn. Being able to reduce a guessing game of "stay in/switch" to "when in doubt, just U-turn out" is a massive boost to Offense and BO compositions. Great Tusk achieves this through a one-time-use Eject Pack and running full offensive spreads. When everything shakes out, I feel like Lando-T will be top 15 in usage, maybe top 10.
Also, AV11 and I spent some time calculating "effective base powers" of Dire Claw and Hurricane. We did have some different modeling approaches, but I think we've come across two conclusions.
- When factoring in Sleep and Paralysis, Dire Claw has a higher effective base power than Gunk Shot. When only considering the chance to Sleep, Dire Claw has lower effective base power than Gunk Shot. Paralysis was factored in since it also had an incapacitating effect when Paralysis triggered.
- When factoring in Hurricane's confusion rate, Hurricane has a higher effective base power than Bleakwind Storm.
The same rationale can be said for Hurricane vs. Bleakwind Storm to some extent. If there's ever a point in the metagame where Torn-T will constantly force switches, Bleakwind gets much better because of the 30% speed drop, especially against faster Pokemon. The Speed drop effectively makes it as if Tornadus-T attacked twice in a row (in a very specific scenario). Understandably, the number of Pokemon that are naturally faster than Torn-T isn't high, and most of them don't like eating Flying STAB to the face. My initial take is that fatter variants (that don't run as much Spe) of Tornadus-T appreciate Bleakwind Storm while NP/Specs variants appreciate Hurricane more.
Let me know if you want to see the derivations/calculations for these effective base power justifications. I also realize that I completely hand-waved over the definition of "effective base power", so I can elaborate more on this if people really want it. It's currently sitting in a Word document on my computer, and I'm hesitant to just dump a bunch of math onto an OU Metagame thread.
So uhhhh, what beats Booster Val now?
Volc was one of the only things that could consistently come in on special Valiant sets over the course of the game, and it's really the only one that generates offensive momentum from doing so, rather than just being big and fat and sitting on it. Besides, Clod, Pex and Amoonguss hate Psyshock, Corv and Pex hate Tbolt, Dirge and Ghold hate Shadow Ball. Heatran is like the only new switch-in the tier has now, and remember that this thing can also destroy it with Fighting STAB. I also kinda think it needs CM much less now, since it doesn't really need it for any of its common checks besides Volc. It outspeeds everything, 4-attack sets basically just choose between hitting Corv or hitting Tran while outspeeding entire offensive teams, and Taunt sets or physical sets are dangerous a mix-up as ever. I'm trying to replace Volc in my builder and like, anything I pick to replace it as the Volc check gets beat by a coverage move even without Tera. I guess I'm never taking BandNite off my teams now because how else am I going to pressure this thing?
Also yeah, I think Gambit is basically the same as Volc in the sense that it's a really useful check to otherwise broken mons (I def think that Pult is teetering on the edge of broken), but it's just a devastating wincon that negates offensive checks with the strongest priority in the tier. I don't think it's as good as Volc because it's never unkillable on either side, which actually makes Tera fairly neutral for it imo since its checks include everything that can squeeze in Tera Fairy, but it's a lot like Volc in the sense that if you don't have one of the two-ish reliable counters, you're at risk of getting snowballed every game. Once Zama-H is banned, the status quo will basically be the same for Gambit as it was pre-home, and that thing was absolutely suspect-worthy, given that it forced Tusk onto every good team.
Also this may be a hot take, but I kinda disagree on the notion that Tera is the main reason Volc got banned. I'm not really sure that Tera is on a different level in terms of enabling Volc to rip apart its counterplay as gems or Z-moves were. The big difference is that Boots and the Toxic cuts make bulky sets far more viable than they were before, which in turn makes every physical-attacking check far more subject to getting invalidated by bad RNG. Yeah, it'd be worse without Tera, but like, Dragonite still gets ruined by burn, and without Toxic Tran can literally lose the 1v1 because at +6 even not very effective moves can break through. I would have preferred a suspect on this, but yeah, definitely should be banned.
Volc was one of the only things that could consistently come in on special Valiant sets over the course of the game, and it's really the only one that generates offensive momentum from doing so, rather than just being big and fat and sitting on it. Besides, Clod, Pex and Amoonguss hate Psyshock, Corv and Pex hate Tbolt, Dirge and Ghold hate Shadow Ball. Heatran is like the only new switch-in the tier has now, and remember that this thing can also destroy it with Fighting STAB. I also kinda think it needs CM much less now, since it doesn't really need it for any of its common checks besides Volc. It outspeeds everything, 4-attack sets basically just choose between hitting Corv or hitting Tran while outspeeding entire offensive teams, and Taunt sets or physical sets are dangerous a mix-up as ever. I'm trying to replace Volc in my builder and like, anything I pick to replace it as the Volc check gets beat by a coverage move even without Tera. I guess I'm never taking BandNite off my teams now because how else am I going to pressure this thing?
Also yeah, I think Gambit is basically the same as Volc in the sense that it's a really useful check to otherwise broken mons (I def think that Pult is teetering on the edge of broken), but it's just a devastating wincon that negates offensive checks with the strongest priority in the tier. I don't think it's as good as Volc because it's never unkillable on either side, which actually makes Tera fairly neutral for it imo since its checks include everything that can squeeze in Tera Fairy, but it's a lot like Volc in the sense that if you don't have one of the two-ish reliable counters, you're at risk of getting snowballed every game. Once Zama-H is banned, the status quo will basically be the same for Gambit as it was pre-home, and that thing was absolutely suspect-worthy, given that it forced Tusk onto every good team.
Also this may be a hot take, but I kinda disagree on the notion that Tera is the main reason Volc got banned. I'm not really sure that Tera is on a different level in terms of enabling Volc to rip apart its counterplay as gems or Z-moves were. The big difference is that Boots and the Toxic cuts make bulky sets far more viable than they were before, which in turn makes every physical-attacking check far more subject to getting invalidated by bad RNG. Yeah, it'd be worse without Tera, but like, Dragonite still gets ruined by burn, and without Toxic Tran can literally lose the 1v1 because at +6 even not very effective moves can break through. I would have preferred a suspect on this, but yeah, definitely should be banned.
I don't really think the argument of "losing mons to keep tera" really holds up when out of all of the mons banned, only 2-3 were banned primarily because of tera. Only regileki, volcarona and maybe espathra were banned with tera being the main reason. All of the other mons banned were broken regardless of tera, and would be banned in a meta with or without it.
the fact volcarona was key word "quickbanned" is hilarious, let alone the idea there was even a vote to begin with. it's barely been 48 hours since the chien-pao and zamazenta-crowned ban was implemented on the ladder, and somehow the council already came to this asinine conclusion
quickbans historically are meant for shit that is egregious like regieleki, marshadow, and naganadel, not no fuckin' volcarona when solid ban and do not ban arguments can be made for it. volcarona is very easy to say is broken when you tell me it's running flamethrower, bug buzz, quiver dance, morning sun, tera blast-water, giga drain, fiery dance, tera blast-ground, substitute, tera blast-fairy, psychic, and tera blast-ghost all on the same set. another fact that is being ignored is its unpredictability has been confined with heatran's release. most variants are tera blast-water or -ground nowadays. out of all the times you could possibly act on this 'mon, it's now? not pre-home? let's also disregard how volcarona's defensive profile is necessary for the tier's stability. totally "quickban" worthy my guy... don't even suspect test it. the community really does matter! iron valiant can do the exact same shit, and i'd argue it's even more dangerous with its ability to go either physical, special, or mixed. this 'mon is probably stupid now by the way, considering you unnecessarily deleted its best check.
urshifu-rs is cheap and i don't mind it being gone, but even this shouldn't have gotten quickban'd when solid ban and do not ban arguments can be made for it too. urshifu-rs only got a 3.0 rating on the recent survey; on the other hand, garganacl received scores of 3.44 & 3.29 in the past and it wasn't even suspect tested because "[garganacl's support] still trails well behind suspects and bans from prior points this generation or of a similar time last generation."
?!
so apparently we're gon' quickban shit that received a 3.0 now? what's the point of having these surveys then? you really can't give urshifu-rs a week, then a community vote when you couldn't even touch shed tail for 6 fuckin' months? you want urshifu-rs gone for world cup's "competitive integrity" or whatever despite us having that dumbass ostrich legal for 3 weeks in SPL? it's walking wake all over again, except this time they actually went through with the quickban. don't even get me started on the fact zamazenta, the 3.7 rated 'mon, survived the vote. i don't think this 'mon is broken, but even i know quickbanning urshifu-rs and volcarona before this is outright blasphemy and confirms most of this council does not play. if volcarona and urshifu-rs get banned via community vote, then so be it. i won't complain. a quickban however is just unfair.
i am requesting senior staff to reverse these bans, put up formal community suspect tests for volcarona and urshifu-rs, then give us an updated council where every member actually plays the CG at a high-level both tournaments & ladder-wise (2000's+). even though i heavily disagree with my brother njnp's vote, i believe adding him along with more minimalistic minds such as ima would be a good start. consider adding storm zone for ladder representation too. i would also like to request a new tier leader next gen. presidents can't run more than 2 terms and neither should Finchinator, respectfully. i hold this man in high regard as he is a world cup champion and 2-time former circuit champion, but the reality is his name is attached to the unplayable hell hole that is SS (statistics) and whatever the fuck SV is going to be at this point. while yes he is very in-touch with the community, if the decisions being made are not based off aforementioned survey results then it doesn't matter how transparent you are. it's pointless. bro even went on my wall a couple weeks ago and argued with the raw data i presented in the link above. numbers don't lie, unless you're Finchinator kek. unironically ABR sitting on his ass and not doing shit as SM OUTL gave us an exponentially better tier with a much higher playerbase than whatever the hell i've been playing the past 3-4 years on this dystopian ass website. sure was fun to play that boring ass heavy-duty boots / static / flame body fuckfest last gen and that cancerous shed tail metagame this gen!
SV OU has lost all of its credibility with these results; put up a new survey asking whether the community agrees with the volcarona quickban or not. i guarantee you the answer will be "NO." and it will win by an overwhelming majority. i fuckin' dare you. well, it's not like these surveys hold any weight to begin with now that you quickban'd volcarona of all 'mons. honestly y'all should just quickban tera while you're at it because it has become clear the council is allowed to do whatever the hell they want.
clown shit man
quickbans historically are meant for shit that is egregious like regieleki, marshadow, and naganadel, not no fuckin' volcarona when solid ban and do not ban arguments can be made for it. volcarona is very easy to say is broken when you tell me it's running flamethrower, bug buzz, quiver dance, morning sun, tera blast-water, giga drain, fiery dance, tera blast-ground, substitute, tera blast-fairy, psychic, and tera blast-ghost all on the same set. another fact that is being ignored is its unpredictability has been confined with heatran's release. most variants are tera blast-water or -ground nowadays. out of all the times you could possibly act on this 'mon, it's now? not pre-home? let's also disregard how volcarona's defensive profile is necessary for the tier's stability. totally "quickban" worthy my guy... don't even suspect test it. the community really does matter! iron valiant can do the exact same shit, and i'd argue it's even more dangerous with its ability to go either physical, special, or mixed. this 'mon is probably stupid now by the way, considering you unnecessarily deleted its best check.
urshifu-rs is cheap and i don't mind it being gone, but even this shouldn't have gotten quickban'd when solid ban and do not ban arguments can be made for it too. urshifu-rs only got a 3.0 rating on the recent survey; on the other hand, garganacl received scores of 3.44 & 3.29 in the past and it wasn't even suspect tested because "[garganacl's support] still trails well behind suspects and bans from prior points this generation or of a similar time last generation."
?!
so apparently we're gon' quickban shit that received a 3.0 now? what's the point of having these surveys then? you really can't give urshifu-rs a week, then a community vote when you couldn't even touch shed tail for 6 fuckin' months? you want urshifu-rs gone for world cup's "competitive integrity" or whatever despite us having that dumbass ostrich legal for 3 weeks in SPL? it's walking wake all over again, except this time they actually went through with the quickban. don't even get me started on the fact zamazenta, the 3.7 rated 'mon, survived the vote. i don't think this 'mon is broken, but even i know quickbanning urshifu-rs and volcarona before this is outright blasphemy and confirms most of this council does not play. if volcarona and urshifu-rs get banned via community vote, then so be it. i won't complain. a quickban however is just unfair.
i am requesting senior staff to reverse these bans, put up formal community suspect tests for volcarona and urshifu-rs, then give us an updated council where every member actually plays the CG at a high-level both tournaments & ladder-wise (2000's+). even though i heavily disagree with my brother njnp's vote, i believe adding him along with more minimalistic minds such as ima would be a good start. consider adding storm zone for ladder representation too. i would also like to request a new tier leader next gen. presidents can't run more than 2 terms and neither should Finchinator, respectfully. i hold this man in high regard as he is a world cup champion and 2-time former circuit champion, but the reality is his name is attached to the unplayable hell hole that is SS (statistics) and whatever the fuck SV is going to be at this point. while yes he is very in-touch with the community, if the decisions being made are not based off aforementioned survey results then it doesn't matter how transparent you are. it's pointless. bro even went on my wall a couple weeks ago and argued with the raw data i presented in the link above. numbers don't lie, unless you're Finchinator kek. unironically ABR sitting on his ass and not doing shit as SM OUTL gave us an exponentially better tier with a much higher playerbase than whatever the hell i've been playing the past 3-4 years on this dystopian ass website. sure was fun to play that boring ass heavy-duty boots / static / flame body fuckfest last gen and that cancerous shed tail metagame this gen!
SV OU has lost all of its credibility with these results; put up a new survey asking whether the community agrees with the volcarona quickban or not. i guarantee you the answer will be "NO." and it will win by an overwhelming majority. i fuckin' dare you. well, it's not like these surveys hold any weight to begin with now that you quickban'd volcarona of all 'mons. honestly y'all should just quickban tera while you're at it because it has become clear the council is allowed to do whatever the hell they want.
clown shit man
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Well, Volc's ban nerfs Dual Screens HO, so everyone wins
WCOP main round is starting so I will probably be keeping my knowledge secret for a few weeks, but for now I will drop some quick commentary on voting stuff.
Shifu was a pretty easy ban for me, it's very consistently strong and useful, with the potential to go above and beyond in some games depending on the variant (including Trailblaze SD variants which can use non-STAB Teras or screens or both to get around checks. It also has pretty free moveslots outside of Surging Strikes so it just wasnt something I ever saw as being fair (SD Surging Ice Punch Jet Punching Glove poses some real practical problems for Dnite/Pult/Amoon for example without giving up that much).
Volcarona and Zamazenta were the two most difficult votes for me. I decided to vote mostly based off of my personal experience in games and a little bit of my thoughts in the builder:
Volc was something that was pretty strong when I used it, the big current meta sets imo were Tera Blast Water with Giga, Tera Blast Ghost with Sub, and Tera Blast Ground with Morning Sun. It was also something that felt pretty annoying to cover in the builder especially factoring in other mons existing in the meta. As I mentioned in the last post, in pre-home I almost always made sure to have two mons for Volc as it had a lot of variety in coverage + a general profile that meant typing-based checks and spdef based checks didnt necessarily work against it (by this I mean QD Morning Sun rinsed a lot of the mons that you might expect to use against Fire types or special attackers). With the addition of many threats in Home and Volc continuing to have this variety available it became a lot more difficult to tolerate putting multiple Volc checks on a team when there were also other dangerous mons to worry about. In the end, after some more thinking about the games I'd won with Volc (against teams that were not checking it to as high of a standard as I aimed for), and the builds I'd made where I'd considered sacrificing other big matchups to be safe into Volc, I decided it would probably be a better idea to vote Ban. The mon wasn't exactly fair at any point in this gen, and I think that introducing more mons only made the problems that came with it worse (+ Volc was a top suspect target pre-Home as well, tiering just slowed down a bit with the uncertainty of home dates and the slight lull in major tours).
Zamazenta was a vote that I'm still not fully confident on. Typically with the way I build, stat checks like Zama without a clear utility (like hazards/removal/long-term walling with recovery/breaking/prio/even Ghost typing tend to fall by the wayside, and this meant that I was mostly using other people's teams to try out Zama, which is rare because I almost always stick to my own builds and perform less well with other people's teams. The results of this were a mixed bag - in some games Zama was very good, in others it looked very good but I either messed it up or ran into cycles where my opponent demonstrated their counterplay, and others it seemed pretty useless compared to its teammates. To add onto the difficulties, I was having a really hard time getting the information I needed out of my opponents on ladder. My concern with Zama is its variety in filler choices on the IDBP set, as well as its variety in Tera typings that it can run with those sets. Even just with that, there's a ton of variants to experience, and I'd like to see their performance into multiple teams, which makes collecting relevant data very difficult. To put this into perspective:
Firstly, you need to actually face Zamazenta. Its ladder usage was not crazy high as far as I can tell, I faced it in maybe 15 percent of games I can recall, maybe even less.
Then, once you actually face it, you need to have a matchup where their Zama is actually a potential danger and one of, if not their most important threats. Given that I'm actually trying to prepare for Zamazenta, this didnt come along very often.
After that, you need to actually get into a position where the opponent has good free Zama turns and makes the decision to go for a sweep with their Zama. Sometimes, you will limit these turns before they even come along by playing well. Other times, your opponent either won't recognize the potential strength of their Zama or they'll make the call to go for a different wincon. Suddenly the chances to truly observe Zamazenta in action are looking very small.
AFTER THAT, you want their set choice and tera choice to be something that's actually dangerous into your team. If they happen to have the wrong coverage, the game gets marked down as Zamazenta being easily handled and no useful experience of it potentially being broken is presented.
I can mitigate some of these factors a bit with my own theoretical calculations, but even then doing accurate theorymon on something with so many variations and annoyances in calculating how it will work is very difficult. On top of this, there are still many unanswered questions, such as:
What support is this opponent going to bring with Zamazenta - will it be behind screens, will it have hazard support, will it have a nice partner that forces in my checks to take chip.
What would be the combined usage of available checks to Zamazenta be (from a building standpoint). I remember tallying out my building strategy in pre-Home to see why I felt Garganacl was so underwhelming, and through doing that I realised that my teams (and also teams in general) naturally had a lot of outs to Garg just through the building process. It's somewhat harder to do this for a new mon in a new metagame. My general impression was that teams were naturally going to be forced to run some checks to Zamazenta because of the other threats in the meta (particularly looking at the options for Ground immunities and Normal/Fight resists). Despite this, I did have some worries about the matchups of offense and hyper offense into Zamazenta - in my opinion the available pool of Zama checks that fit on those two styles is smaller than the one for balance. Vert (resident spammer of offense and hyper offense) had mentioned that he was finding Zama easier to check lately, and he has more experience than me with those styles, so I decided to drop that concern for now.
What about Band Zamazenta... I've barely even touched on that in this post, and as mentioned in previous posts it could totally become more relevant (esp with Fsight support)
In the end I decided to side with the decision that fit both my personal experience and the status quo. I feel that a suspect test is a better avenue for deciding the fate of Zamazenta.
Ursaluna is something that I think would need to see more development in the builder before kicking it out of the meta. As in every generation, TR tends to be a style with practical holes that make it annoying to run and almost always a playable matchup for the opponent. Screens also has some practical difficulties, but it does seem like a better fit for Ursaluna - the style is better in general + Ursa complements its usual weaknesses very well by forcing a kill or two into fatso teams. There has been some talk of using Ursa outside of these styles as well, but I haven't seen as much in terms of solid teams that use Ursaluna in this way. Was pretty confident keeping this mon around for now.
Sneasler is something that almost entirely comes down to Dire Claw for me - and I'm not comfortable getting rid of it on that basis so early into the meta. For me, the really fucked up situation with Sneasler is getting Dire Claw slept or para full para'd while it attempts a hail mary sweep - and frankly, the ~20 percent likelihood of this happening does not seem to be crazy out of line with general game management or sometimes even RNG management in non-Sneasler endgames. As for longer-term fishing sequences, I currently feel that this can be worked around a bit more - fishing possibilities can be factored into how good of a check you consider X mon to be against Sneasler and can inform decisions accordingly (e.g. Toxapex gives Sneasler lots of opportunities to Dire Claw with a 50 percent chance of the first status it receives being sleep -> maybe Toxapex should be running Cloak in this meta). I also think that Sneasler's coverage is just generally super awkward, and that leads to a lot of the mons that wall it being able to wall it very convincingly (Lando, Ghold, aforementioned Pex). Fat Gholds and Covert Cloak on checks also function as a fairly common opt-out button for those who cannot stand Dire Claw.
SD Unburden sets with Tera are a still a concern for me, but not enough for me to vote Sneasler out right now.
Light Clay is a red herring imo. I don't think that <2 weeks into a metagame that gains a bunch of broken offensive threats is a good time to be evaluating the brokenness of screens. In the long-term as mentioned before, I would always want to see Tera banned before Light Clay, and I will push for that when the time comes.
Shifu was a pretty easy ban for me, it's very consistently strong and useful, with the potential to go above and beyond in some games depending on the variant (including Trailblaze SD variants which can use non-STAB Teras or screens or both to get around checks. It also has pretty free moveslots outside of Surging Strikes so it just wasnt something I ever saw as being fair (SD Surging Ice Punch Jet Punching Glove poses some real practical problems for Dnite/Pult/Amoon for example without giving up that much).
Volcarona and Zamazenta were the two most difficult votes for me. I decided to vote mostly based off of my personal experience in games and a little bit of my thoughts in the builder:
Volc was something that was pretty strong when I used it, the big current meta sets imo were Tera Blast Water with Giga, Tera Blast Ghost with Sub, and Tera Blast Ground with Morning Sun. It was also something that felt pretty annoying to cover in the builder especially factoring in other mons existing in the meta. As I mentioned in the last post, in pre-home I almost always made sure to have two mons for Volc as it had a lot of variety in coverage + a general profile that meant typing-based checks and spdef based checks didnt necessarily work against it (by this I mean QD Morning Sun rinsed a lot of the mons that you might expect to use against Fire types or special attackers). With the addition of many threats in Home and Volc continuing to have this variety available it became a lot more difficult to tolerate putting multiple Volc checks on a team when there were also other dangerous mons to worry about. In the end, after some more thinking about the games I'd won with Volc (against teams that were not checking it to as high of a standard as I aimed for), and the builds I'd made where I'd considered sacrificing other big matchups to be safe into Volc, I decided it would probably be a better idea to vote Ban. The mon wasn't exactly fair at any point in this gen, and I think that introducing more mons only made the problems that came with it worse (+ Volc was a top suspect target pre-Home as well, tiering just slowed down a bit with the uncertainty of home dates and the slight lull in major tours).
Zamazenta was a vote that I'm still not fully confident on. Typically with the way I build, stat checks like Zama without a clear utility (like hazards/removal/long-term walling with recovery/breaking/prio/even Ghost typing tend to fall by the wayside, and this meant that I was mostly using other people's teams to try out Zama, which is rare because I almost always stick to my own builds and perform less well with other people's teams. The results of this were a mixed bag - in some games Zama was very good, in others it looked very good but I either messed it up or ran into cycles where my opponent demonstrated their counterplay, and others it seemed pretty useless compared to its teammates. To add onto the difficulties, I was having a really hard time getting the information I needed out of my opponents on ladder. My concern with Zama is its variety in filler choices on the IDBP set, as well as its variety in Tera typings that it can run with those sets. Even just with that, there's a ton of variants to experience, and I'd like to see their performance into multiple teams, which makes collecting relevant data very difficult. To put this into perspective:
Firstly, you need to actually face Zamazenta. Its ladder usage was not crazy high as far as I can tell, I faced it in maybe 15 percent of games I can recall, maybe even less.
Then, once you actually face it, you need to have a matchup where their Zama is actually a potential danger and one of, if not their most important threats. Given that I'm actually trying to prepare for Zamazenta, this didnt come along very often.
After that, you need to actually get into a position where the opponent has good free Zama turns and makes the decision to go for a sweep with their Zama. Sometimes, you will limit these turns before they even come along by playing well. Other times, your opponent either won't recognize the potential strength of their Zama or they'll make the call to go for a different wincon. Suddenly the chances to truly observe Zamazenta in action are looking very small.
AFTER THAT, you want their set choice and tera choice to be something that's actually dangerous into your team. If they happen to have the wrong coverage, the game gets marked down as Zamazenta being easily handled and no useful experience of it potentially being broken is presented.
I can mitigate some of these factors a bit with my own theoretical calculations, but even then doing accurate theorymon on something with so many variations and annoyances in calculating how it will work is very difficult. On top of this, there are still many unanswered questions, such as:
What support is this opponent going to bring with Zamazenta - will it be behind screens, will it have hazard support, will it have a nice partner that forces in my checks to take chip.
What would be the combined usage of available checks to Zamazenta be (from a building standpoint). I remember tallying out my building strategy in pre-Home to see why I felt Garganacl was so underwhelming, and through doing that I realised that my teams (and also teams in general) naturally had a lot of outs to Garg just through the building process. It's somewhat harder to do this for a new mon in a new metagame. My general impression was that teams were naturally going to be forced to run some checks to Zamazenta because of the other threats in the meta (particularly looking at the options for Ground immunities and Normal/Fight resists). Despite this, I did have some worries about the matchups of offense and hyper offense into Zamazenta - in my opinion the available pool of Zama checks that fit on those two styles is smaller than the one for balance. Vert (resident spammer of offense and hyper offense) had mentioned that he was finding Zama easier to check lately, and he has more experience than me with those styles, so I decided to drop that concern for now.
What about Band Zamazenta... I've barely even touched on that in this post, and as mentioned in previous posts it could totally become more relevant (esp with Fsight support)
In the end I decided to side with the decision that fit both my personal experience and the status quo. I feel that a suspect test is a better avenue for deciding the fate of Zamazenta.
Ursaluna is something that I think would need to see more development in the builder before kicking it out of the meta. As in every generation, TR tends to be a style with practical holes that make it annoying to run and almost always a playable matchup for the opponent. Screens also has some practical difficulties, but it does seem like a better fit for Ursaluna - the style is better in general + Ursa complements its usual weaknesses very well by forcing a kill or two into fatso teams. There has been some talk of using Ursa outside of these styles as well, but I haven't seen as much in terms of solid teams that use Ursaluna in this way. Was pretty confident keeping this mon around for now.
Sneasler is something that almost entirely comes down to Dire Claw for me - and I'm not comfortable getting rid of it on that basis so early into the meta. For me, the really fucked up situation with Sneasler is getting Dire Claw slept or para full para'd while it attempts a hail mary sweep - and frankly, the ~20 percent likelihood of this happening does not seem to be crazy out of line with general game management or sometimes even RNG management in non-Sneasler endgames. As for longer-term fishing sequences, I currently feel that this can be worked around a bit more - fishing possibilities can be factored into how good of a check you consider X mon to be against Sneasler and can inform decisions accordingly (e.g. Toxapex gives Sneasler lots of opportunities to Dire Claw with a 50 percent chance of the first status it receives being sleep -> maybe Toxapex should be running Cloak in this meta). I also think that Sneasler's coverage is just generally super awkward, and that leads to a lot of the mons that wall it being able to wall it very convincingly (Lando, Ghold, aforementioned Pex). Fat Gholds and Covert Cloak on checks also function as a fairly common opt-out button for those who cannot stand Dire Claw.
SD Unburden sets with Tera are a still a concern for me, but not enough for me to vote Sneasler out right now.
Light Clay is a red herring imo. I don't think that <2 weeks into a metagame that gains a bunch of broken offensive threats is a good time to be evaluating the brokenness of screens. In the long-term as mentioned before, I would always want to see Tera banned before Light Clay, and I will push for that when the time comes.
[QUOT
As we all know, Finchinator's recent actions with his band of thieves has a lot to do with post-modernism, and something-something I read this on Wikipedia. The banning of Volcarona can be represented by the suspected murder of Martin Luther King Jr., or assassination of JFK.
On this forum post on the OU Metagame Discussion, I will discuss the implications of the heinous, inhumane actions of the Anarchist council and how they banned Urshifu-Rapid from Gen 9 Overused, in a matter similar to the killing of Julius Caesar-
Today on Smogon . Com, I am going to talk about something very, very important to the tier.
As we all know, Finchinator's recent actions with his band of thieves has a lot to do with post-modernism, and something-something I read this on Wikipedia. The banning of Volcarona can be represented by the suspected murder of Martin Luther King Jr., or assassination of JFK.
On this forum post on the OU Metagame Discussion, I will discuss the implications of the heinous, inhumane actions of the Anarchist council and how they banned Urshifu-Rapid from Gen 9 Overused, in a matter similar to the killing of Julius Caesar-
mannnn volc is gone noooooooooo
all my volc teams need to be remade my fav mon is gone
it's fun to play with and personally I did not have too much trouble against it but that's probably because higher ladder had the crazy Volcarona teams with good synergy
the bans arent a bad thing to be honest, but this just pushes the sentiment to ban tera or at least restrict it in some kind of way because like half the stuff out there that gets banned gets pushed to the edge by tera it's the same thing over and over dont you think?
all my volc teams need to be remade my fav mon is gone
it's fun to play with and personally I did not have too much trouble against it but that's probably because higher ladder had the crazy Volcarona teams with good synergy
the bans arent a bad thing to be honest, but this just pushes the sentiment to ban tera or at least restrict it in some kind of way because like half the stuff out there that gets banned gets pushed to the edge by tera it's the same thing over and over dont you think?
mfers literally will get on here and just talk like sephiroth
I would react to this with haha but I can't I got reaction banned ;-;
rly tho there are like a million things wrong with this post, but i have neither the time, the means, nor the will to respond
the vibes rn
#FreeTococot
our homie did nothing wrong bro was just sad
re volc: never liked the mon so personally glad to see it go but I think I would have preferred it to get suspected. WCoP coming up makes every tearing action tricky and an action on Tera impossible but considering how pao got tested during SPL it probably wasn’t much of a stretch to qb just shifu and test Volc and/or zama during WCoP. or maybe I’m just crazy who knows
Anyways, people bitching aside:
I feel like Landorus-T is still very good in this metagame, and I find myself constantly using it over Great Tusk in a lot of team comps. The set I mainly run is SR/EQ/U-turn/Taunt or Protect, but it synergizes kind of well with other pivots in the tier from experience. Unlike Great Tusk, I think Landorus-T's biggest upside is U-turn. Being able to reduce a guessing game of "stay in/switch" to "when in doubt, just U-turn out" is a massive boost to Offense and BO compositions. Great Tusk achieves this through a one-time-use Eject Pack and running full offensive spreads. When everything shakes out, I feel like Lando-T will be top 15 in usage, maybe top 10.
Also, AV11 and I spent some time calculating "effective base powers" of Dire Claw and Hurricane. We did have some different modeling approaches, but I think we've come across two conclusions.
I should re-iterate that this does not mean one move is better than the other. There are scenarios where one is better than the other. For example, a CB Gunk Shot can get KOs that Dire Claw cannot without explicitly fishing for Sleep or Paralysis. Dire Claw is particularly strong when Sneasler's pressure is enough to constantly force switches throughout the game.
- When factoring in Sleep and Paralysis, Dire Claw has a higher effective base power than Gunk Shot. When only considering the chance to Sleep, Dire Claw has lower effective base power than Gunk Shot. Paralysis was factored in since it also had an incapacitating effect when Paralysis triggered.
- When factoring in Hurricane's confusion rate, Hurricane has a higher effective base power than Bleakwind Storm.
The same rationale can be said for Hurricane vs. Bleakwind Storm to some extent. If there's ever a point in the metagame where Torn-T will constantly force switches, Bleakwind gets much better because of the 30% speed drop, especially against faster Pokemon. The Speed drop effectively makes it as if Tornadus-T attacked twice in a row (in a very specific scenario). Understandably, the number of Pokemon that are naturally faster than Torn-T isn't high, and most of them don't like eating Flying STAB to the face. My initial take is that fatter variants (that don't run as much Spe) of Tornadus-T appreciate Bleakwind Storm while NP/Specs variants appreciate Hurricane more.
Let me know if you want to see the derivations/calculations for these effective base power justifications. I also realize that I completely hand-waved over the definition of "effective base power", so I can elaborate more on this if people really want it. It's currently sitting in a Word document on my computer, and I'm hesitant to just dump a bunch of math onto an OU Metagame thread.
I do share your concerns, but I think the reasoning behind the bans right now seems to be tied purely for WCop and less to do with being a Regieleki / Magearna / Flutter Mane level threat.
IIRC there were issues with the Walking Wake suspect about the Pokemon causing a drastic shift in the metagame before a tournament and that a suspect was not the way to go about it instead of a QB. I believe the council took that note when making this decision.
Just a funny coincidence I noticed: All of the mons currently listed in "A+" on the viability ranking can be used as setup sweepers and use tera/terablast to beat their counters. Thinking it over... What does Volc do that they don't? Banning volc isn't going to drastically reduce the amount of Unaware or Priority seen in the tier, you still have these monster setup sweepers that try to sweep in an incredibly similar manner of Volc that you'll have to play a guessing game on "Damn, which Tera are they gonna turn into?"
This does not seem like a Volcarona issue, and rather a Terastalize issue, and Quickbanning Volc is not going to help the problem.
I wouldn't mind if you shared how you calculated "effective base power" tbh
main thing volc has going on that the others don't is its ability to boost bulk(and or cripple the opponents attack( at the same time as its boosting its speed/damage. quiver dance has always been a crazy move, and the inclusion of heavy duty boots, massive drop in accessibility of toxic and tera existing just exacerbate what has functionally always been a kinda wild pokemon.
like, roaring moon/bax/pult can dragon dance, iron valiant can cm+booster energy, but none of those capitalize on fucking with you purely based on what tera it could be running quite as much as volc does(though roaring moon at the start of the gen might be the closest to it).
this is just my two cents as someone who's never actually lost to volc on ladder though. i just also think its fundamentally unhealthy in unison with tera.
Very good for glaceon
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