Is it though? That probably would take a few turns, I'm not sold on espathra being broken without tera since it definitely takes some time to get it going and kinda feels unreliable into Gambit and U-Turn spammers, it would definitely be way more contentious without tera. But thinking about it, it's definitely iffy
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Volcarona Banned]
- Thread starter TPP
- Start date
KamenOH
formerly DynamaxBestMeta
Smogon continuing the trend of not recognizing what power creep is. How many Gen 9 Pokémon have to be banned for us to learn?
I am Pro Tera, but I believe Espathra won,t be broken at all without Tera. It needs CM, Psychic STAB, Low Kick, Dazzling Gleam and either Protect, Roost or Substitute to cover every possible counterplay, probably needs Screens support too. Even then, there are some hard counters no matter what moves it slaps in, like Alolan Muk, Iron Boulder (this guy has amazing Sdef for an offensive Mon btw), Payback Ting Lu or Jirachi. Tera 100% is what breaks Espathra, and I want Tera to stay.
You underestimate how easy it would be to get those boosts. Any mon that can't hit esparthra for good damage would be crippled immensly as that is a free opportunity for it to start going. HO wouldn't struggle against it, but any slower teamstyle would. Slap a rillaboom on the team and a grassy seed, and you have a defensive boost to increase your power and get an opportunity to set up. Don't like status? Slap a lum berry on and watch them try to get a t-wave off to get healed while you have boosted. Dark types do help, but that's if you can stop it before it gets going, which will be immensly hard because it is boosting constantly. It will probs be broken even without stored power because now it can use lumina crash to break through walls. Roost can help with longevity and allow it to take hits it usually couldn't. It even has low kick, which while it may seem bad, still 3hit ko's gambit.
0- Atk Espathra Low Kick (100 BP) vs. 212 HP / 0 Def Kingambit: 148-176 (37.5 - 44.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
Not going to be used, but the fact that it can threaten its best counter with a 3hit ko is insane. This thing would be bs as while it can't immediately brute force it's way through counters, it just has to wait a few turns to do so.
We have players who want to make up for lost time with suspects, surveys and others, and players who want slower and "organic" development. And neither of these 2 groups are wrong.
Although I believe that a large part of the community would be against it, and the council would avoid it as much as possible, I would not be against 2 QB right now.
Roaring Moon is perhaps one of the most predictable and yet most dangerous threats in the game. Outside of Sun, where he can eventually use some Choice, he always performs BE Tera Flying, Acrobatics, Knock Off, DD and EQ/Taunt/Brick Break.
Gouging Fire needs Sun's support and uses its Tera, but can perform scenarios with little interaction between both players. It just uses Choice Band that shreds stall and slow teams with Proto Atk Raging Fury or sweeps fast teams with proto Speed Heat Crash. Of course, there are still sets that need to be thought about, such as DD or defensive sets.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2061474993
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-742923
Raging Bolt is what catches my attention here. The range of possibilities is incredible and is waiting for creative players to execute what it has to offer.
Volt Switch, Thunder Clap, Taunt, Weather Ball with 3 weather to abuse, CM, and the use of Tera to turn the key against some counters.
I'm against doing something with Tera Blast and treating it as something isolated to Terastal just to preserve 1 or 2 mon and go down Regieleki, love it or hate it, you're not indifferent to Volcarona, but it's healthier to let it go.
After these 3 we can look with a less obfuscated view at Waterpon, Gholdengo and Iron Valiant.
Although I believe that a large part of the community would be against it, and the council would avoid it as much as possible, I would not be against 2 QB right now.
Roaring Moon is perhaps one of the most predictable and yet most dangerous threats in the game. Outside of Sun, where he can eventually use some Choice, he always performs BE Tera Flying, Acrobatics, Knock Off, DD and EQ/Taunt/Brick Break.
Gouging Fire needs Sun's support and uses its Tera, but can perform scenarios with little interaction between both players. It just uses Choice Band that shreds stall and slow teams with Proto Atk Raging Fury or sweeps fast teams with proto Speed Heat Crash. Of course, there are still sets that need to be thought about, such as DD or defensive sets.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2061474993
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-742923
Raging Bolt is what catches my attention here. The range of possibilities is incredible and is waiting for creative players to execute what it has to offer.
Volt Switch, Thunder Clap, Taunt, Weather Ball with 3 weather to abuse, CM, and the use of Tera to turn the key against some counters.
I'm against doing something with Tera Blast and treating it as something isolated to Terastal just to preserve 1 or 2 mon and go down Regieleki, love it or hate it, you're not indifferent to Volcarona, but it's healthier to let it go.
After these 3 we can look with a less obfuscated view at Waterpon, Gholdengo and Iron Valiant.
I’m not gonna harp on this theorycraft for long, but Espathra ain’t setting up on shit with its garbage bulk and mono Psychic typing.
Even if Espathra could tech Low Kick for Kingambit, its not as if Espathra could easily slap that into its moveset without sacking Roost, Sub, or Protect.
Even if Espathra could tech Low Kick for Kingambit, its not as if Espathra could easily slap that into its moveset without sacking Roost, Sub, or Protect.
"waaaaaah you guys are banning too many things"
go play bss or vgc then instead of crying about what the actual competitive community wants. there are plenty of formats tailor-made for people who don't want to play balanced metas, go play those. i'm sick as shit of people whining about bans that have, without fail, been according to the will of the community. seriously, point out any of the currently banned pokemon that you would unbanned and multiple people will tell you exactly why you're wrong. it's really hard to not be toxic when people keep crying and screaming about democracy existing and the tiering system working as designed
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My boi Heatran needs more usage. It’s slepted on and we need to push it back where it belongs. In OU.
KamenOH
formerly DynamaxBestMeta
>actual competitive community
Good lord this isn't ironic, is it? I doubt it's a serious belief, but Smogon's hardly the actual competitive community for Pokémon. If I had to wager, I'd say that would be VGC's job, no?
Besides, unless you count the Pokémon carried over from last gen's banlist, the only non-SV Pokémon bans are Regieleki and probably Urshifu? That bear is confusing no matter what.
This means, of course, that either we are obsessed with a prior generation's power level and meta game, or somehow 12 non-legendary pokemon are ban worthy, out of the 120 new pokemon added in Gen 9. That's 10% of the new pokemon, just banned.
We wouldn't, or shouldn't, ban more because of power creep. Also, how are you defining your Standard Power Creep?
We should ban less because Power Creep brings up the general power level, thus making less things ban worthy.
He probably will. If rain becomes less common we may start to see more Heatran, although Volcarona Tera Ground is still discouraging. Air Baloon Tera Fairy Heatran is the only answer to GFire.
Go through the list of mons that we have banned this gen, and show us how most of those are balanced. I bet you could potentially make a case for maybe 2-3 of those if you are being generous. I would say none of them are not ban worthy. Gf gave us a shit hand and the only way we deal with it is by banning these mons.
all right, i'll bite, which currently banned mon isn't banworthy? the one with 135 spa and 135 speed? the one with 160 attack and 60-power stab priority? the one with perfect neutral stab and 136 speed? the one that 2hkos blissey with special moves? the one whose best counterplay is not hitting it? the one with speed boost stored power? the one that's a better version of last gen's weavile? the one with base 200 speed and boltbeam? the one that dominated pre-dlc2 uubers, a tier with several arceus forms allowed? the box legendary? the one with swords dance and an autocrit move? the one that singlehandedly made atales ou because of how dumb it was on veil? the one that got pre-nerf intrepid sword when it tera'd? the one with ubers-level physical bulk, ubers-level spa, and a viable version of hyper beam? the one with unburden, base 3 trillion speed, and a sleep cheese move? the one with a 700-bst tera form? or the best rain mon in history? which one are we unbanning, bub?
Anyone with with a brain (or even eyes) can tell you Smogon's tiering philosophy is pretty agnostic to raw power creep. Statistically Baxcalibur doesn't look like any better of a sweeper than Haxorus. The obvious difference between the two is the functional tools available to us in Gen 9 (compounding over the generations) that Baxcalibur has a lot easier time abusing. It's not that Baxcalibur or Sneasler or whatever have too much raw power for the metagame to handle, it's simply that you have to decide whether that Baxcalibur is any exponential combinations of thermal exchange or ice body, sub lefties or dd loaded dice or sd ice shard, tera dragon or tera fairy, etc etc. Banning mons based on those types of issues have long been the core of Smogon tiering and putting them under a blanket of "it's just power creep bro" make you look dumb. But there is always gonna be the helmet wearing types who are always gonna default back on the argument of "they didn't give us enough time to develop 1337 counter strategies, no one explored Dachsbun enough in Chi-Yu meta!!"
At some point we reach the time when people say "don't banned sneasler" and that is the best argument they have. It boggles the mind how any of the bans were undeserved, they simply don't understand that bans will happen and keeping broken things will be negative. Would you not ban zacian from Gen 8 ubers because counterplay was under explored? No, quagsire was the best check and people did experiment with counters. Most of the time, counters to mons are found pretty quickly, the metagame doesn't need time to adapt, we just need to get these mons out.
Or we can argue that x mon isn't broken, or that banning every broken won't solve the tier since theres a ton of broken mon lol, or we should have tried to adapt our playstyle instead of banning every mons that is strong in the tier ?
" the metagame doesn't need time to adapt " lol ? it needs time to adapt, the meta changes every week. New sets and new teams appear every day, this is why this game is interesting, bc it constantly evolves. If we take the archa exemple, It's ok to think that archa is broken, but check spl replays, every team was ready for archa rain ( or isn't 0-100 at least ), bc the meta tried to adapt to this strong structure.
Hype to see what archa rain will change btw, hope it will be good news for the tier and we won't see HO and sun everywhere, like some ppl hoped with archa ban !
Not to drop a one liner and dip, but I just want to express my utter joy in seeing that stupid dragon go. It was a nightmare to deal with and I might get to actually enjoy some team comps I previously couldn't due to its existence.
KamenOH
formerly DynamaxBestMeta
Because Ubers is, in no uncertain words, a proper shithole in comparison to OU. Shit beyond broken here is commonplace, and I prefer having at least a semblance of strategy in my metas. No place for strategy when Mewtwo, Miraidon, and Koraidon are involved.
Annihilape:
Rain Pelipper run Hurricane quite often, and are bulky enough to win the confrontation, while Dragapult, Darkrai, and Gholdengo offer strong Ghost attacks to bring it down, Darkrai less recommended than others.
Archaludon:
Many great members of the community brought up answers, but I don't want to assume that you'd agree with them.
Baxcalibur:
Enamorus, Great Tusk, Iron Valiant, Primarina (thats ou? damn good for it), and like maybe a couple others are all good checks/counters, mostly checks but they all have good non-fire SE moves, and are OU. Can't have non-OU mons used to fight OU mons, after all.
Chi-Yu:
This fucker thrives in the sun, but that shits overrated because it's rain season. Its fire attacks are halved, and there's 8 fucking water types, as well as at least three ground types to use. It's strong, but not unbeatable.
Chein-Pao:
It's an Ice/Dark type that relies on its speed and Atk to fuck shit up, but thats fine and dandy because Iron Valiant can booster outspeed, while Kingambit our lord and savior regularly runs Low Kick, as well as Iron Head. Two top mons that should be on a good chunk of teams.
Espathra:
It has to burn a Tera if it wants to stay in. Otherwise, its Psychic type fodder that has 4MSS if it wants anything but stored power. It could run tera fairy, but then it opens itself to Steel and Poison attacks, which arent uncommon.
Flutter Mane:
It's diet mewtwo, cracked speed n special, with enough coverage to count. it can stay banned.
Iron Bundle:
Unless Raging Bolt Thunderclap OHKOS, this minmaxed fuckboy should also stay banned. I would say Electro Shot, but muh broken beats broken, which should only apply if we even agree on whats broken. I will not say FM can keep something OU, because that's patently ridiculous.
Ogerpon Heathcliffe:
As a Fire/Grass type with no item, it has rather good resistances to its weaknesses. Pelipper is, besides just winging it with Tera Flying Tera Blast, my only consistent option. Regrettably, keep it banned.
Palafin:
It requires two total turns to be its best. Rillaboom, Raging Bolt, and other water types are good checks that can make it swap back out, and help you regain momentum. Unless that fucker packs Ice Punch hundo %, Zapdos too.
Regieleki:
You are burning your tera with regieleki. Using it without it being net bullshit besides being the third electric type in OU requires burning your tera to Tera Ice. Being a pure ice type comes with all the net negatives of being fucking ice type. If you arent using your tera on this mon, regieleki will be walled by any ground type or electric resist.
This fucker wouldn't be banned if tera wasnt a thing, like its UU/RU self was back in gen 8. Instead, we get base 100 boltbeam coverage, that would die to a body press. Its frail, and very fast, and was contentious even when it was banned.
Sneasler:
Im tired as fuck rn man, dire claw is cheese hell.
Terapagos:
Jesus fuck just ban its Stellar Form like we did Zygarde Complete. It's a slow, tanky normal type otherwise with defenses slightly better than mew and an attack stat of 105. It can't even Tera normally, so its just mediocre otherwise. Gen 2 Tauros ass mon, but since we apparently can't separate Stellar from its normal form, even though we could separate complete zygarde from zygarde, its banned. With Stellar its ban, without it aint.
wait til u hear about tera
What exactly is your argument here. There are a ton of broken mons so don’t ban them?
people did adapt to arch and realized that it wasn’t doing enough to contain the dragon, but they also felt the adaptations necessary were too constraining to gameplay and team building. People who want to win will adapt. But not all adaptations are healthy.
people overprepped for arch, which those structures become weak to other prevalent threats.
I personally think that the main problem is tera, and since we don't discuss abt it, banning every strong mon won't solve the tier
Adaptation is an important thing in this game, u need to adapt. if we check spl replays, have u seen many arch rain ? there was many arch rain w1, then ppl adapted to it, without being 0-100 by the rest of the tier, w3/w4 There wasn't too much archa rain ( 2 in w4 ). I agree when u say that archa was restraining team building, but i do think that it would have been better to try to adapt us to this mon, instead of just banning every mon that annoys us in teambuilding/gaming but it's my opinion and I understand that u think the opposite
There's many viable mons who can handle archa rain, for ex I play many HO on the ladd and rain wasn't my main problem tbh, I agree that u need to be prepped for, but this is the same thing for sun, HO or stall, u need to be ok vs strong structure, u say that overprepared teams was weak to other threat but this is the point of the tier, u can't be overprepared to every structure lol, if u achieved to find a team which counters every strong structure gratz, but when u build a team to be strong against x or y teams, u will have to accept that u will be weak to another threats, and in this tier, where tera is there, I agree that it can be frustrating because sometimes u can't do anything against some mons bc they have the good set, or the good tera LOL
you know, i just dont get the argument conflating "lots of broken things" with "its just a higher power level".
for the latter to be true, we'd need to have a lot of really strong pokemon compared to previous gens, but also every playstyle to be viable and a large variety of mons to be viable - that is what simply "having a high power level" means. and thats clearly not what is happening here, whats happening is we have a bunch of really really strong mons who are so much stronger than the rest that pretty much nothing besides them is used. not every playstyle is currently viable, and using a non-OU mon nowadays is not the anti-meta choice it otherwise would be. a tier full of broken things is not simply a powercrept tier, the difference lies in whether the mons with the higher power level are invalidating other options.
the strain on the teambuilder right now is real, ive found myself using the same few pokemon on most of my teams ranging from HO to balance just because of how limiting it is to have so many top-tier threats to account for. if this were truly a case of a non-broken higher power level, then everything would be at the same power level as the top tier offensive threat gang, and we'd have a variety of counterplay and viable mons, but thats not the case. this meta needs fixing.
for the latter to be true, we'd need to have a lot of really strong pokemon compared to previous gens, but also every playstyle to be viable and a large variety of mons to be viable - that is what simply "having a high power level" means. and thats clearly not what is happening here, whats happening is we have a bunch of really really strong mons who are so much stronger than the rest that pretty much nothing besides them is used. not every playstyle is currently viable, and using a non-OU mon nowadays is not the anti-meta choice it otherwise would be. a tier full of broken things is not simply a powercrept tier, the difference lies in whether the mons with the higher power level are invalidating other options.
like this, for example; how is broken mons being commonplace in OU "just a higher power level" while broken mons being commonplace in ubers is "actually a broken meta"? by your logic, shouldnt ubers be a perfectly fine tier that just so happens to be powercrept? its not (the previous generation)OU, after all, its inherently going to have a higher power level and we should just accept it, shouldnt we?
the strain on the teambuilder right now is real, ive found myself using the same few pokemon on most of my teams ranging from HO to balance just because of how limiting it is to have so many top-tier threats to account for. if this were truly a case of a non-broken higher power level, then everything would be at the same power level as the top tier offensive threat gang, and we'd have a variety of counterplay and viable mons, but thats not the case. this meta needs fixing.
Guys pls don’t ban gouging fire that mon balanced I swear! Just run Tera fairy air balloon Tran on every team! On a more serious note, now that rain is significantly weaker, dinosaur sun spam will most likely rise up, and that will probably just kill stall for a while. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next suspect has some mon in sun getting out on the chopping block.
No, strong mons aren't " so much stronger " than the rest, they are simply stronger, like in every tier, but the problem is that there are too many " strong mons ", + u add tera to this, and now u have strong mons who simply destroy the tier with the good tera, I do not think that rm, volcarona or kingambit would be " overpowered " without tera, so if u want to keep it, accept that there will be broken mons, bc u can ban rm, volc or w/e, I think that some mons will take their place as it did pre-dlc, and tera doesn't help in this process lol, u can disagree but it is what I feel with this gen, if u want to kill the spider, cut off its head
Every playstyle is viable rn, weather, HO, stall, Bulky offense is possible too and with archa rain, it will be a good news for it, as it was hard to build it with archa
I mean you’re free to think that, but the general community doesn’t seem to want to ditch Tera as a whole, so it’ll just have to focus on Pokémon bans instead.
you’re… not exactly listening. People did adapt, but that didn’t fix team building and people felt the tier was worse with arch in it because of the constraints it placed on building and the influence it had on the metagame.
sun, HO and stall were all more prevelant in part due to rain because of their positive match ups into rain, but this just resulted in a very unbalanced metagame that would end up more match up heavy at times. It just sort of pidgeonholed team building this way. And people couldn’t prep for rain while also prepping for sun and HO. well not very reasonably anyways.
most people acknowledge this is an issue, but that’s in part due to threat saturation. There simply isn’t enough slots on the builder to be able to handle all the huge threats. Kicking arch isn’t gonna magically fix the whole tier but it’s a step in the right direction to improve it.
I missed this before but wow could you be any more out of touch with reality. Half the stuff you tried to argue for as being manageable just Tera’s on you and other stuff is just wrong outright. Like Great Tusk was not a Baxcalibur check. What.
this just tanks your whole post tbh. ChiYu never needed sun for anything but blissey. It rolled over everything else by itself and just clicked Tera grass for stuff like ting Lu.
chien pao your arguments for it are almost somehow worse. IV is a one time offensive check due to booster only working once, and kingambit gets split by sacred sword.
lol @ paladin. Enjoy it clicking Tera grass and then trolling your rilla for set up. Or better yet, it can just lean into other set up sweepers and Tera poison while paired with rilla itself to do the same thing, beat the grounds and sweep you.
and regieleki? Wasn’t contentious whatsoever. Just about everyone wanted it gone. It doesn’t matter it had to burn Tera because the upside was a Pokémon that generated unstoppable momentum with volt switch and swept teams with ridiculous ease. You had to rely on priority to at all hold it in check. Which it can just switch out of.