Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v3

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zbr

less than 99% acc = never hit
is a Tiering Contributor Alumnus
If theyre running that off brand shit to get at gliscor, that scorpion lando ripoff could be too much, but who knows.
Maybe its ok if an ou mon adapts, but not ok when a uu mon is used.
not too sure if you understand how the phrase "adapting to threats" is used in smogon's metagame concepts. adapting to threats imply that the mons have additional uses OUTSIDE of what they were initially aimed to do during the teambuilding process.

i.e - during team building process, you decided that encore valiant was gna be your catch all to offence but the sharp rise of gliscor spike balance meant that you had to figure another way around it. your answer to that was to swap encore for feint. now does valiant's functionality and viability to be used against offence change because you ran feint over encore? ans is no. valiant can still be used effectively in OU teams despite this small change. this is therefore an adaptive change.

when a lower tier mon is being used, it is used solely to deal with certain threats and has no other utility that other mons can't provide better. if you're running max physdef max hp arcanine just to deal with teal mask ogerpon and against any other matchups where oger is not around you are playing a 5v6 matchup then that's a problem lol

tldr - its not rlly about the tier of the mons used but its about their utility outside of what they were intended to do.
 
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not too sure if you understand how the phrase "adapting to threats" is used in smogon's metagame concepts. adapting to threats imply that the mons have additional uses OUTSIDE of what they were initially aimed to do during the teambuilding process.

i.e - during team building process, you decided that encore valiant was gna be your catch all to offence but the sharp rise of gliscor spike balance meant that you had to figure another way around it. your answer to that was to swap feint for encore. now does valiant's functionality and viability to be used against offence change because you ran feint over encore? ans is no. valiant can still be used effectively in OU teams despite this small change. this is therefore an adaptive change.

when a lower tier mon is being used, it is used solely to deal with certain threats and has no other utility that other mons can't provide better. if you're running max physdef max hp arcanine just to deal with teal mask ogerpon and against any other matchups where oger is not around you are playing a 5v6 matchup then that's a problem lol

tldr - its not rlly about the tier of the mons used but its about their utility outside of what they were intended to do.
Great post. My only nitpick is choosing to use Arcanine as an example since its physically defensive set does check Kingambit and Iron Valiant, which means it's not a 5v6 matchup outside of dealing with Teal Mask Operpon given that those mons are Top 5 in usage. Arcanine does have Close Combat for Kingambit, which is something it has over Moltres, and it can still somewhat function after getting hit by Knock Off since it isn't 4x weak to Rock like Moltres is.
 
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it's not even the stats that are the main problem, or the free scarf on switch-in that booster energy gives it. it's the fact that the damn thing learns every move in the game and somehow magically always runs the ones that win against you in particular. every time i think i've finally got a handle on all the sets it runs, it pulls out some new bullshit like hypnosis or shadow sneak or vacuum wave or leaf blade and my perfectly crafted anti-valiant team drops like flies in a fly-dropping contest where the prize is a meta without iron valiant. it's just not possible to predict or check consistently
Do any val sets make it past strong priority? Val gets 2HKOed by some stuff that goes first. I like choice band Dragonite, but I wonder how Scizor would work as well. What else is there out there that can really blow past Val? Weirdly, you CAN switch scarf Sneasler into just about any val sans hypnosis once. I've gotten some people off guard with scarf meow, but it isn't like you can switch that in. And play rough misses 1/10 times, meaning 100% of the time at a crucial moment.
 
So, trying to be calmer, but what would be the predicted major shifts in the meta if/when Tera is banned?
all of them.

this sounds like a shitpost but it's true. a tera ban would effectively be pushing a reset button on the entire meta because of how ingrained the mechanic is at this point. we'd basically be back to day 1 minus a couple mons that stay banned, and that goes for both tiering action and meta knowledge/trends
 
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all of them.

this sounds like a shitpost but it's true. a tera ban would effectively be pushing a reset button on the entire meta because of how ingrained the mechanic is at this point. we'd basically be back to day 1 minus a couple mons that stay banned, and that goes for both tiering action and meta knowledge/trends
Yeah gambit and Volc would immediately drop (As we know gambits days are numbered and will be banned before a tera ban most likely.), as while both would be annoying they would also be reasonable to answer in a non-tera metagame.

Espathra, Regieleki, and Hearthflame ogerpon will drop as well, since all 3 were broken by tera in different ways. (Firepon without tera loses embody aspect.)

Darkrai would probably be a more reasonable test without tera, since its 4mss is far more apparent in a meta without tera.

So it would be a giant reset button essentially.
 
So, trying to be calmer, but what would be the predicted major shifts in the meta if/when Tera is banned?
Volc, Esp, and maybe Ape are unbanned.

Gambit drops significantly—not being able to tera out of WOW or a ground/fighting move is a massive change that likely sinks momentum instead of getting a free SD. Other threats like Val and moth become easier to handle without having to guess around mind games. Less offense means that Glimmora usage goes down, though I don't think it'll be drastic enough to drop. Balance also gets even better (even if gliscor spikes stack is already really good rn), without the threat of getting swept at the drop of a hat.
 
Yeah gambit and Volc would immediately drop (As we know gambits days are numbered and will be banned before a tera ban most likely.), as while both would be annoying they would also be reasonable to answer in a non-tera metagame.

Espathra, Regieleki, and Hearthflame ogerpon will drop as well, since all 3 were broken by tera in different ways. (Firepon without tera loses embody aspect.)

Darkrai would probably be a more reasonable test without tera, since its 4mss is far more apparent in a meta without tera.

So it would be a giant reset button essentially.
Darkrai should not be tested even with Tera banned as it'd clearly be broken. Nasty Plot, Dark Pulse, Psyshock, and Focus Blast with a Life Orb cleaves through the entire meta at +2 aside from Clefable. It's absolutely still a disgusting mon that has no business being OU. It would literally 'cause Zamazenta usage to increase a lot as the only relevant naturally faster Pokemon that can OHKO Darkrai without using an inaccurate move and shift the meta towards HO since it shits on everything slower.

I think, if anything, Darkrai becomes more broken in a Teraless meta since you can't pop a defensive Tera against it much like Walking Wake becomes really problematic in a Teraless meta, although depending on who you ask, Walking Wake is already a problem in this meta that has Tera.
 
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Anyway, as a proposal, how about we set a Tera suspect for February? That would seem like an appropriate amount of time, assuming DLC2 is November/December, and would dovetail neatly with Pokemon Day as a bonus.
 
252+ SpA Choice Specs Tera Psychic Hoopa Hyperspace Hole vs. 244 HP / 12 SpD Gliscor: 398-470 (113 - 133.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO

right through protect on turn 1

yw nerds
Wait, it also hits Ursaluna BM hard too. You might be cooking here…
 
Darkrai should not be tested even with Tera banned as it'd clearly be broken. Nasty Plot, Dark Pulse, Psyshock, and Focus Blast with a Life Orb cleaves through the entire meta at +2 aside from Clefable. It's absolutely still a disgusting mon that has no business being OU. It would literally 'cause Zamazenta usage to increase a lot as the only relevant naturally faster Pokemon that can OHKO Darkrai without using an inaccurate move and shift the meta towards HO since it shits on everything slower.

I think, if anything, Darkrai becomes more broken in a Teraless meta since you can't pop a defensive Tera against it much like Walking Wake becomes really problematic in a Teraless meta, although depending on who you ask, Walking Wake is already a problem in this meta that has Tera.
It's worth noting that in Monotype, Darkrai is legal and is seemingly fine there. While yes, different meta and all, I do think it's enough to show that Darkrai isn't so ridiculously broken that it shouldn't even be considered.
 
It's worth noting that in Monotype, Darkrai is legal and is seemingly fine there. While yes, different meta and all, I do think it's enough to show that Darkrai isn't so ridiculously broken that it shouldn't even be considered.
The Monotype meta has no bearing on the actual OU meta. Stuff like Landorus-Incarnate has also been legal for many generations in Monotype, and that thing has been a world-beater whenever it was legal for use in OU that is quickbanned very quickly.
 
If we're going to throw out nonsensical suggestions:

Ban recovery. All of it. Leech Seed, gone. Strength Sap, gone. Leftovers, gone. Poison Heal, gone. Water Absorb, gone. Regenerator, gone. Needless to say, straightforward moves like Rest and Recover, gone.

Embrace the HO that GameFreak has given us.

Or...we can accept that we're an unofficial metagame, based on a game that is (theoretically) balanced around a 4v4 doubles format, trying to shoehorn everything into a 6v6 singles format. The only singles format that GameFreak cares about is BSS, not the one that comprises nearly every in-game battle.

If GameFreak hands us a bunch of insanely powerful offensive mons (and they have), we have two choices: ban a bunch of stuff to recreate a "preferred" metagame, or deal with it and accept that Gen 9 is going to skew offensive. Smogon policy holds that the metagame should allow different styles to all be playable, it does not hold that any given style is 'bad' and some other (usually a flavor of balance, varies with the complainer) is 'good'.

There's a point where an offensive mon is too good and stifles another style entirely - this was Annihilape's crime - and then of course, we ban them. General "make the meta less offensive" is not grounds to ban anything.
 
Yeah gambit and Volc would immediately drop (As we know gambits days are numbered and will be banned before a tera ban most likely.), as while both would be annoying they would also be reasonable to answer in a non-tera metagame.

Espathra, Regieleki, and Hearthflame ogerpon will drop as well, since all 3 were broken by tera in different ways. (Firepon without tera loses embody aspect.)

Darkrai would probably be a more reasonable test without tera, since its 4mss is far more apparent in a meta without tera.

So it would be a giant reset button essentially.
i agree with all of these except for darkrai. that guy can fuck right off no matter what gen it is. i think espathra, firepon, and gambit would likely still find themselves facing tiering action after dropping—even without tera, espathra effectively forces a dark-type onto every team, firepon's damage output is still bullshit good and she still has swords dance, and gambit doesn't deserve to be let back into ou ever once it gets banned, no matter what, purely out of spite
Anyway, as a proposal, how about we set a Tera suspect for February? That would seem like an appropriate amount of time, assuming DLC2 is November/December, and would dovetail neatly with Pokemon Day as a bonus.
if we assume that dlc2 will release precisely 1 year from release date, that would put us about in line with the end of the pao suspect and the espathra qb, which is about the point where things were starting to look like we could pretend the meta was almost balanced, so yeah, that should give us enough time to clean things up beforehand. in fact, we'd actually get more done in this november-february period than the last one, because the last one contained the first tera suspect and that slowed everything else down. february should be fine
 
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