Metagame Metagame Discussion Thread

macle

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Post Drifloon Metagame Discussion Thread

Since the old thread is 2 years old, I made a new one. Discuss various topics in the thread like new innovations, possible suspects, and the state of the meta.
 

Fiend

someguy
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Scraggy seems to be overlooked far more often than it should be. It has good bulk, makes up by being a bad Pawn counter by best being paired with other Pawn counters, habitually pairs well with pokemon that accidentally get it free turns to set up, deals with Sucker Punch and Aqua Jet rather well. It's a threat pretty much any game unless they have Fletchling, Snubbull, AND another way of dealing with it.

I'm really liking Scraggy more now than ever, as Snubbull is laughably easy to lure and KO, Spritzee generally gets rolled over by whatever is luring Snubbull and unlike Snubbull just needs to be low and not KOed, Fletchling gets trapped, Mienfoo still isn't a good counter, and Timburr is easy as balls to beat. Scraggy also sets up on Diglett unless it Memento's, but then you don't lose too much as Snubbull is the only thing hard to switch into that comes in on Scraggy often.

Scraggy really punishes the standard Diglett / Mienfoo / Fletchling / Chinchou / Pawniard / Foongus teams with just ZHB and some Pursuit trapping support. Dual Fighting move Scraggy can beat the team as well, you just need to screw over Foongus more via say Fire Punch Snubbull. Teams without a Fighting resist, which are rather common somehow, are also heavily punished by any Scraggy. It's also an auto BP win so you don't need to build with that in mind if you are one of the 3 who do so.

Scarf Scraggy is kinda bad though, needs Pursuit to remove HJK switch ins imo.

Also cute as fuck in an it's so ugly-it's-cute way:
 
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If you all want a stupidly powerful set up sweeper with near perfect coverage, an absurdly large support pool, and a ton of bulk, why don't we reintroduce Gligar to the meta? 9_9

pls stop advocating we bring back obviously broken mons just because you're bored with the meta already
 
possible suspects​



Lately I've been noticing how much of a clear cut it is over most of the rest of the tier.

It's extremely fucking fast and extremely fucking powerful, it can sweep pretty much the entire metagame with almost no problem at all. Munchlax is the only absolute cancer Absol has. That's it. Everything else is blown away by at least one move of some sort. There's always a move that OHKOes or 2KOes a Pokemon, usually the former. It wouldn't be so much of a problem if it outright died to priority. Focus Sash + Magic Guard means it can't be OHKOed by pretty much anything, so "checks" like Pawniard can Sucker Punch it but without actually killing it, and then Pawniard gets killed by HP Fighting.

Tl;dr: I'm tired of dealing with it, It can rot in LC Hell​
 

sam-testings

What a beautiful face, I have found in this place



Lately I've been noticing how much of a clear cut it is over most of the rest of the tier.

It's extremely fucking fast and extremely fucking powerful, it can sweep pretty much the entire metagame with almost no problem at all. Munchlax is the only absolute cancer Absol has. That's it. Everything else is blown away by at least one move of some sort. There's always a move that OHKOes or 2KOes a Pokemon, usually the former. It wouldn't be so much of a problem if it outright died to priority. Focus Sash + Magic Guard means it can't be OHKOed by pretty much anything, so "checks" like Pawniard can Sucker Punch it but without actually killing it, and then Pawniard gets killed by HP Fighting.

Tl;dr: I'm tired of dealing with it, It can rot in LC Hell​
copy paste from my post on the vr thread

"While Abra is indeed incredibly good, it can be hindered by quite a few things. First of all, its extreme frailty makes it so that it cannot switch into anything ever. It is literally ohkoed by like half the tier which is the reason sashbra is the most common set. With the abundance of good priority in this tier with things such as Sucker Pawn and Acro Fletch, Abra's life is even harder. Second of all, the current meta is quite unfriendly to it. Diglett, scarf mag/chou, and many other things deal with Abra quite well and make it so that Abra cannot reach its full potential. And also, there are three mons that can outspeed Abra, Elekid, Diglett, and Voltorb. Elekid is decently common and Diglett is extrememly common and both can beat Abra handily. Voltorb is ass. You also forget that scarf mons are very common and pretty much all of them beat Abra. While Abra is still quite good and underused in my opinion, it has way too many faults to be banned."

TL:DR, abra is a mon that is really good, but has drawbacks and weaknesses that can be taken advantage of.

shrug dont kill me
 
Newer player here, but doing quite well so will give thoughts on Abra. It is almost impossible to OHKO if running it's sash variant, you don't really know it's set until it's too late in many cases and at least for me that greatly affects how I play against it. Abra has many tools in this meta, and is borderline broken now but from the looks of it will become even stronger in the Sun and Moon meta from what has been revealed thus far. Also I'd like to ask what our plan is for previously banned mons like Floon and such in Sun and Moon.
 

doomsday doink

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Lately I've been noticing how much of a clear cut it is over most of the rest of the tier.

It's extremely fucking fast and extremely fucking powerful, it can sweep pretty much the entire metagame with almost no problem at all. Munchlax is the only absolute cancer Absol has. That's it. Everything else is blown away by at least one move of some sort. There's always a move that OHKOes or 2KOes a Pokemon, usually the former. It wouldn't be so much of a problem if it outright died to priority. Focus Sash + Magic Guard means it can't be OHKOed by pretty much anything, so "checks" like Pawniard can Sucker Punch it but without actually killing it, and then Pawniard gets killed by HP Fighting.

Tl;dr: I'm tired of dealing with it, It can rot in LC Hell​
copy paste from my post on the vr thread

"While Abra is indeed incredibly good, it can be hindered by quite a few things. First of all, its extreme frailty makes it so that it cannot switch into anything ever. It is literally ohkoed by like half the tier which is the reason sashbra is the most common set. With the abundance of good priority in this tier with things such as Sucker Pawn and Acro Fletch, Abra's life is even harder. Second of all, the current meta is quite unfriendly to it. Diglett, scarf mag/chou, and many other things deal with Abra quite well and make it so that Abra cannot reach its full potential. And also, there are three mons that can outspeed Abra, Elekid, Diglett, and Voltorb. Elekid is decently common and Diglett is extrememly common and both can beat Abra handily. Voltorb is ass. You also forget that scarf mons are very common and pretty much all of them beat Abra. While Abra is still quite good and underused in my opinion, it has way too many faults to be banned."

TL:DR, abra is a mon that is really good, but has drawbacks and weaknesses that can be taken advantage of.

shrug dont kill me
Sam covers a lot of the reasons why Abra's not broken in his post. It's an offensive tyrant but lacks approximately zero defensive utility, meaning that it can easily be handled with momentum and pressure. It has very few safe ways to switch in without breaking its Focus Sash and the Life Orb set frankly can't switch in. As for its coverage, Abra can't do it all. The Life Orb set uses Substitute to get around Sucker Punch so it's instantly limited to only three coverage moves and the Focus Sash is simply too weak to abuse four attacks in the manner that the Life Orb variant would.

Also, if you're experiencing difficulty in deciphering which set your opponent is running, I'll share my general though-process for making an educated guess.

- If your opponent's weak af to Omanyte, Fletchling, DD Scraggy, etc. and it appears your opponent needs a panic button, it's most likely a Focus Sash variant
- If your opponent's packing a lot of Knock Off support with only one or frankly no real win condition, it's most likely a Life Orb variant (Keep in mind this only applies if the first rule isn't true)
- If your opponent is unfamiliar with LC or simply a poor teambuilder, it's most likely a Focus Sash variant
- If your opponent has a Gastly as well, it's most likely a Focus Sash variant and odds are the Gastly has a Focus Sash too
- If you're stumped, assume Focus Sash
 
Abra functions as an insurance policy versus a number of deadly set up sweepers in this meta. While Abra hits like a truck, it is far from broken. Focus Sash Abra obviously isn't capable of switching into anything, and almost always relies on having to sacrifice a mon to check whatever it's in on. Furthermore, most situations would actually leave your Abra at one health point, opening up for a revenge kill by the opponent and essentially putting yourself at a two mon disadvantage.

If you're having trouble with Abra, I recommend you give Vullaby, Ferroseed, Stunky, or even Honedge a try. As Sam also mentioned, Magnemite, Pawniard, Chinchou, and more can be spectacular checks to Abra. If you're tired of having your win condition decimated by Abra, try using Shellder or Mixed Omanyte, which are my personal favourites

side note: what are people running as their fourth move on Ponytas now that Digfloon isn't a thing? Are people going back to Wild Charge, stying with Flame Charge, or do you feel that dual status is more useful now?
 
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LRXC

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Okay a serious post here (Sorry @Mam
Abra functions as an insurance policy versus a number of deadly set up sweepers in this meta. While Abra hits like a truck, it is far from broken. Focus Sash Abra obviously isn't capable of switching into anything, and almost always relies on having to sacrifice a mon to check whatever it's in on. Furthermore, most situations would actually leave your Abra at one health point, opening up for a revenge kill by the opponent and essentially putting yourself at a two mon disadvantage.

If you're having trouble with Abra, I recommend you give Vullaby, Ferroseed, Stunky, or even Honedge a try. As Sam also mentioned, Magnemite, Pawniard, Chinchou, and more can be spectacular checks to Abra. If you're tired of having your win condition decimated by Abra, try using Shellder or Mixed Omanyte, which are my personal favourites

side note: what are people running as their fourth move on Ponytas now that Digfloon isn't a thing? Are people going back to Wild Charge, stying with Flame Charge, or do you feel that dual status is more useful now?
I have been seeing wild charge a lot on Ponyta actually, but also a good amount of Flame charge with it possibly. Speaking of Ponyta I think that thing is a monster, being able to shut down physical attacks, have reliable recovery and hit hard... it also does well in the meta. What are your guys opinions on Ponyta?
 

doomsday doink

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Okay a serious post here (Sorry @Mam


I have been seeing wild charge a lot on Ponyta actually, but also a good amount of Flame charge with it possibly. Speaking of Ponyta I think that thing is a monster, being able to shut down physical attacks, have reliable recovery and hit hard... it also does well in the meta. What are your guys opinions on Ponyta?
I really like Ponyta but I think it's actually decreased in viability in "this meta" due to it being a main check to Drifloon (which is obviously banned now). However, that decrease isn't all that substantial considering it was and is still trapped by Diglett if it can't manage to get a Flame Charge up. In a Diglett-less metagame, I'd argue that Ponyta should be S-rank in the VR.Ponyta's also going to be a top threat in POCL from what I can tell due to the inability to instantly eliminate it via Diglett.

For the fourth move, as long as Diglett exists I'll be running Flame Charge. It's still solid utility outside of the Diglett scenario but it's almost essential if you enjoy keeping your Ponyta.
 

tcr

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Hey guys, in case anyone didn't know, the BW LC Council recently held a suspect vote for Scraggy and Misdreavus in the metagame. I figured I would tell you guys why we were suspecting them and what my personal thoughts on them were, since this thread isn't JUST about ORAS (I asked quote!!!). OK so I'll start with Misdreavus. Misdreavus was offered up as a suspect for largely the same reasons that Gligar was offered as a suspect a couple years ago in XY. Misdreavus just does EVERYTHING really well. It can effectively run a defensive pivot set for bulkier teams, a Choice Specs set to bop common counters and form pretty cool cores with things like Tirtouga or Abra, a Choice Scarf set in order to clean late game while providing a safety net against things like Sandshrew, Snover, Shell Smashers, and more, while an Offensive Nasty Plot set is probably its most threatening set as it can often just win games. It is definitely something you should prepare for, but the problem becomes how its counters are few and far between, and instead relies on checks, which if you lose your check you often just lose the game.

Scraggy was up for suspect in a similar manner, but incredibly more volatile. Its counters were hyperspecific: Timburr, HJK defensive mienfoo, Riolu, and Scarf 16 Speed + Pokemon are the only things that REALLY check it reliably and aren't gimmicks. Due to Shed Skin and decent bulk, it often sets up on either super defensive Pokemon, like Clear Smog-less Foongus, Chinchou, Lileep, etc but it can also easily set up on some more threatening Pokemon in the tier, such as Abra and Misdreavus. This meant that Scraggy's offensive prowess often meant that builds were starting to form similarly, often revolving around Scraggy + checking Scraggy. It was becoming more and more of a liability to run defensive teams, as Scraggy + Misdreavus just demolished any sort of defensive core through their sheer power and immense set up potential. One wrong move often lost you the game against Scraggy.

Now onto my thoughts: On Scraggy, I voted ban. I personally felt that Scraggy was just too volatile and warped the metagame unhealthily around things like Timburr to stay. The problem a lot of people feel though is that BW is in some sort of rock paper scissors metagame, when it isn't. Banning Scraggy does not mean that Missy is automatically broken, and banning Misdreavus does not necessarily mean that Sand Rush would be broken. Scraggy itself was unhealthy in that it often turned into a one turn win after one or two things were weakened, and if not outright won it certainly dented holes too often to even remotely be considered healthy. I felt that Misdreavus, while certainly powerful and metagame defining, I did not find it did to the extent that Scraggy did. On top of that, its low number of counters (Porygon, Lileep, Vullaby, Stunky) was more than sufficiently fulfilled with a large number of checks, especially because Misdreavus is often a common switchin to random things, similar to Croagunk. Without reliable recovery it can't continually switch in, especially with weather and Stealth Rock being two really common things, as well as random Toxic's on things like Lileep or Bronzor. This makes preserving your Misdreavus often a sub skillset of its own in the metagame, as too many things limit its life. This in my eyes makes Misdreavus, while a difficult mon, not really too difficult ot deal with as it ends up taking a ton of passive damage without any sort of reliable recovery (although healing wish + Misdreavus is BROKEN).
 
So what were the results?
Scraggy banned and Misdreavus remained. who cares [edited by Heysup]
fixed.

to make this not a shitpost I think the metagame we are playing right now is pretty similar to the one we had when the most recent bans went through. Diglett is severely influencing team building but bulky offense is still very present. It's kind of weird to me that the playstyle that Diglett has an easier time breaking down at least part of most common bulky cores (ie. shit like Chinchou, Skrelp, Pony, etc) is still the most popular. It does have fighters/snivy/porygon but I mean if you're not Download porygon I'd classify you as approaching balance/stall territory - I rarely see it.

Gothita is still a beast though, and trapping is rampant. I'm pretty surprised we don't see more shed-shells tbh. I've ran it on Nosepass before with Pain Split, SR, HP Fire, and Power Gem to stop Fletch, Fires, while still trapping and donking Ferroseed with HP Fire. I've seen a Croagunk with it. It catches you off guard.
 

sam-testings

What a beautiful face, I have found in this place
The main problem with mons running shed shell is that the ones that want it usually get it knocked off. Like you mentioned Croagunk, but croagunk is usually used as a fighting/pawn check which means that it is going to probably be knocked off before it can be used to escape. I tried using shed shell Skrelp once, and it failed horrible against anything that didn't have a trapper because it really wanted the extra bulk from eviolite.
 

Fiend

someguy
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Losing bulk from a loss of Eviolite really sucks. Horribly so even; some teams are okay with not having the added inherent longevity of Eviolite or BJ Chinchou / Skrelp / Ponyta, but these pokemon are also a fair bit worse with Shed Shell than they are without. I've played versus Shed Shell RestTalk Chinchou (it had to be resttalk to continually beat my fletch) with a bog standard FletchDig team. Despite them having an untrappable Chinchou to handle Fletchling plus a Pawniard, my Fletch was able to sweep pretty quickly. I got an overheat off on Pawn and had SR up pretty quickly, but the Chinchou wasn't exactly able to save them as it was forced to removed every time it came in.

In a general sense Shed Shell mons are bad at doing anything but avoid being trapped.
 

Shrug

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has anyone started to theorize about the discovery, of sorts, of CM Gothita and how it will affect the metagame? scarf gothita was effective in picking off lots of different mons with its panoply of coverage moves, but it lacked the OHKO punch needed to pose a major threat to the more sturdy checks to mons it was supporting and as such it fell out of favor. the cm variant swaps the ability to snag random annoying KOs on things in exchange for the ability to knock some bulky, team-glue mons the fuck out with extreme prejudice, switching in and calm minding up with no fear of dying. Foongus, Spritzee are obvious ones, but Porygon doesnt have a lot for Goth, nor do the slow fightings - Croagunk, Timburr cannot outspeed without some absurd creep (lol) and Gunk's sucker punch does like 0 (more like 45% but thats practically nothing). Theres some tech shit like Charm that better users than me have experimented with to kill other mons with efficiency, though im not going to elaborate there for lack of knowledge. it's even an abra check, or at least a sashbreaker. The potential of this mon seems enormous in that the mons i listed above are a lot of balances' checks to huge numbers of threats, and forcing double-checks on teams of that nature seems extreme. there's even less "counterplay" than diglett lol bc dig cant switch in to much - Goth comes in easy on the shit it traps.

I think during these dying hours of ORAS we should look at trapping again, as a suspect. my feelings about diglett are more cemented than mine on goth because i feel goth hasnt gotten a lot of time to be metagamed around, but both should be looked at as possible uncompetitive and pernicious elements of our metagame. u know u have a problem when mambo posts diglett.jpg and gets 30 likes bc people want that suspect again. i know we've done this before, but the results last time were close enough (and the arguments made in the meantime persuasive enough) to dedicate our likely last ORAS suspect to liberating ourselves from the menaces of trappers in a way our Croagunks never could.
 

macle

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What are yall hoping to get from gen 7? I kinda hope more playstyles are available. Specific team style are not really viable like tr, rain, etc besides maybe sticky web. I also hope to see more hazard removal.
 
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Anthiese

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things id like to get out of sumo

-more offensive threats that arent one trick ponies but not stupid like swirlix
-more defensive options like xy spritzee (gdlk)
-mons with hazard + hazard removal/phazing/voltturn
-mons with vswitch + good coverage (we getting some elecs this gen so im waiting)
-mons with HEX AND VENOSHOCK

things i dont need

-fucking z moves
 

Fiend

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Give me a good ice-type for the love of god. An Ice type + a dark resist would be dope as hell imo, but we can't have nice things I guess. Also give it like 17+ speed and maybe even something like flame charge so it can be semi useful as nonscarf and not fucked over by pawn so its typing is useful! And give it like passable phys bulk but with a kinda bad ability like limber or shed skin or mold breaker and enough attack to KO frail fletch w/ LO ice shard and a lot of SpA so it can 2hko pory after sr (if it packs LO)! It'd be actually viable on more than 2 teams unlike amaura and snover!!

Basically my dream is either a really good stated mon with a shit move pool for its stats akin to kyurem black but with a bit less. Like Archen stats but Ice Shard for Physical Ice STAB and Thief/Brick Break/not a fairy move bc play rough would be broken for its second stab.

or a more likely but still not happening ice type that's stated like 48 | 66 | 45 | 74 | 50 | 80 which adds up to a reasonable though slightly high 363. This spread lets it hit 14 attack for ice shard KOs, 17 SpA for 2hkos on a lot, and 18 Speed. But it'd have a shitty ability that's semi useful but not rlly so idt it'd be broken.

I'm pretty sure this will never happen, but damn i'm hopeful bc Ice-types are so underwhelming in LC despite Ice types being hard for most teams to handle, especially if paired with dig and/or the user can predict their opponent well enough.

Also give me a meta that gets murdered by treecko. One or the other and I'll be ecstatic.

A fire type special all-out attacker that's actually good



Also yeah more hazard removal too
Houndour is pretty good if you don't mind dig 50/50s and build to handle waters and timburr. also if you don't miss...
 

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