Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v2 [Update on Post #5186]

[Empress Mobile]

Tera is always a factor for why someone is banned, it is sometimes, so far more often than not the main reason and you can debate the individual cases on that but you even acknowledged it on some of them, and items are simply not in that situation at all rn.. unless you want to throw light clay under the bus for giving them screens or something.

This is not really a convincing argument to take action on Tera. "Palafin is broken, and it's even more broken with Tera." I mean that's obvious. I know there's a huge difference between Z moves and Tera but Z moves were very frequently discussed in Gen 7 suspects/bans. Naganadel was incredibly broken. Its Draconium Z set made it even more broken. The problem was Naganadel, not the Z crystal. I recognize these are not directly comparable tiering decisions (emphasizing to preempt the inevitable strawman that I know someone will come forward with), but Tera being mentioned in every ban is not relevant. It does not mean that Tera was the reason for the ban or even that the Pokemon would be remotely manageable without Tera.

 

[TheTraininator]

^ In that vein, I feel it’s worth pointing out that literally every banned Pokémon can benefit from Tera and that doesn’t mean anything whatsoever about the mechanic itself. This should be a no-brainer; it’s a universal tool that can be used to up damage or change match-ups, so of course they all find situations to benefit from it. In fact, everything in EXISTENCE can benefit from Tera, which wasn’t even true of something like Dynamax, (you give up all status moves and moves like Fishious Rend lose their OP effects), or Z-Moves, (not everything wants to give up their item slot for a nuke). However, that doesn’t mean everything that has been banned DIRECTLY BENEFITS FROM TERA BEING IN THE META. For example, Houndstone arguably was worse thanks to the existence of Tera because everything could technically become a Normal type and gain a free turn against it clicking Last Respects, which is more of a loss than it gaining extra damage that it didn’t need or shifting its type matchup when its goal was usually just to outspeed things in sand and OHKO anyways. Did that make Houndstone balanced? Hell no; slapping Tera Normal on half your team just to avoid losing to Houndstone is incredibly unhealthily restrictive as a concept. But this doesn’t change the fact that the idea that whether a Pokémon directly benefits from Tera is more complicated than “well it’s a banned Pokémon that got better in x situation when it clicked Tera so clearly Tera is the issue”.

 

[banito13]

Can we get a separate discussion thread for Tera, as much of discussion centers around it and it clearly differs from just discussing mons in the metagame ?

 

[Eeveeto]

My take about the Radar Mons (which means probably the opposite will happen) :
Zamazenta: Fine.
Ursaluna: Ban.
Sneasler: Fine.
Watershifu: Ban.
Volcarona: Ban.
Light Clay: Fine.

 

[tigers jaw]

after playing a fair bit last night with all of the pokémon currently on the radar, here are my thoughts:

somewhat overBEARing (sorry, not sorry), but held back by its speed. reminiscent of melmetal if melmetal didn’t offer any positives to the tier in terms of blanket-checking troublesome pokémon. currently unsure.
yeah this thing is way too much. sd+punching glove negates almost all of its last-generation answers & drawbacks, & we lack splashable pokemon that are top-tier like fini & slowbro post-nerf. it needs to go at some point. fun fact, tera water sd surging strikes can force haze pex to run out of recovers if the sequence is played correctly, lol.
too fast, too bulky, too efficient at what it does. essentially getting a free +1 to its main offensive stat that also makes it harder to kill is wild. cb & iron defense also have wildly different answers, and both are great sets, which is always a sign of a problematic pokémon. ban.
this is a red herring & will probably die down once the broken stuff is gone & the meta has settled. any action on this would be hasty.
not too sure, balloon sd acro sets are like hawlucha on steroids. life orb sd terablast also shreds 90% of the meta due to its speed & power, i just think i need more time & experience to come to a proper conclusion.
lol, lmao, hahahah hehehe. regardless of any meta adaptations to current variations, it will always be ahead in the predator-prey game of counter play. get it out.

 

[Komodo_Drogo]

I think the idea of using the amount of banned mons as an argument that tera isn't an issue is kinda misleading. It's not an obviously busted mechanic, but it's very invasive. Seems like everything has to low-key revolve around tera and how it affects mons in question, if not, it's always a factor.

On a separate note, just leave the next suspect binary, If it gets two suspects with multiple options, that's ridiculous. It didn't get regulatory action the first time so why are we trying to balance it still when the the community voted no action. I get wanting to work with it but you're looking at potentially 3 suspects, 2 already guaranteed essentially. 2 is excusable considering the narrow results, but any more and it gets silly.

I've been drinking, so I apologize if this came off as rude or confusing. I think council is doing great overall, really great to hear the differing opinions especially as someone who plays more casually.

 

[Exotic64]

my take on the radar mons:

I am fine with this Mon. I legit thought It was going straight to ubers when I played a lot of teams with it before home actually came out (shoutout traineraid) but ever since the meta has somewhat settled down I haven’t found this Mon to be as threatening as it felt like previously. I feel like it’s a 3/5 deserving of a suspect but there is for sure a lot of counters to it right now and it’s biggest weakness is it’s abysmal speed

fuck this mon there’s nothing much to say when surging strikes banded 2HKO or OHKOs everything when it has future sight support…

fuck this mon 2
Zamazenta leftovers is just stupidly strong with ID.. some people were running it over zama crowned and i believe it’s just as bad as it’s crowned form. It’s absurd speed coupled with its bulk makes gambit looks like shit and with the sub set no physical attacker is killing it
I’m seeing a lot of crunch ID BP stone edge too.. not even volc or zap beats it now either

believe it or not now that pao is gone you can’t even psychic fangs to get rid of that shit anymore. The life orb pao set with psyfangs that vert gave me not only beat shifu but screens too, but now that pao is gone and there’s a lot more dengos popping up and stuff screens is gonna be as oppressive as ever, especially with Galarian Articuno’s rising usage. I believe clay will die down eventually but right now it’s looking so stupid and the only way to beat it is if you got defog (which half the screens teams are now running gholdengo for since it beats every defogger LMFAO) or you run cinderace (that won’t work either if you run inteleon screens since cinderace now fucking dies.. thanks vert!) I firmly believe screens needs to be looked at because from what I’ve seen it’s looking very stupid rn.

why is sneasler even on the radar? It’s a good Mon but it’s definitely not top tier, and to everyone who is complaining about dire claw I’m gonna be honest with you.. static and flame body is 100 times worse + dire claw is poison type so it’s not a spammable move. With static and flame body it’s a passive thing and from what I’ve seen there has been so many more situations where I have lost becuase of those 2 than dire claw (which paras me or poisons majority of the times. I’m rarely asleep)
suspect test. Tera makes it very good since it now can be water and hit heatran and stuff and resist aqua jet or strikes, or turn ground and kill pex and gking. However it is very predictable that’s why I say suspect

 

[JunkoAJ]

Since a few people are doing it - here's my thoughts on the radar:

Probably would need a suspect I think instead of a QB, has single-handedly made trick room viable again and is bulky enough to stick around especially with Healing Wish and Lunar Dance support. But I don't think it's particularly meta-warping just yet.

I just have a soft spot for it even though it's probably broken. While Crowned was its own flavour of bullshit, Hero's higher speed, ability to hold an item and lack of weakness to common coverage like ground and fire means that it also is rather hard to deal with.

Would be fine if not for Dire Claw lmao. Idk how much more needs to be said about the move, it's stupid and given we know how the tiering policy goes, it's not exactly feasible to ban just Dire Claw alone.

I mean, it's just far too flexible, I wouldn't mind if it sticks around but the amount of different sets it can run with an even wider range of Tera types it can use means it's basically impossible to account for in the builder. Definitely a suspect.

I haven't really seen this mon enough to talk about it.

I mean, I guess it's annoying but that's just bc of the new toy syndrome surrounding HO right now - will probably be okay when the meta settles.

 

[incorolla]

Of the currently radar'd Mon:

I think now that Mag is gone this guy is much easier to deal with. Sure, it hits like a truck, but there's ways and means around it, and Trick Room really isn't as scary as it seems.

This guy, however, destroys me. It can be revenge killed pretty easily due to its just-ok speed, but swords dance sets are nigh on unwallable, and Punching Glove was the best thing it could have asked for. I'd argue broken.

I haven't encountered this guy enough to judge. Whenever I see one on the ladder it's always Crowned still.

ban this sick filth

Suspect, imo. I think it's manageable, just very very good, but I appreciate the arguments. It's very hard to stop and definitely a top 3 Mon in the tier right now.

Light Clay - eh. No opinion. I think it's fine, though.

this guy is very annoying, but similarly to Ursa, I don't think is busted. Grassy Terrain Unburden is the set I've seen do the best. Poison Touch is fun but definitely the weaker option.

Btw, have the tiering survey results been published?

 

[LoseToRU?]

There really aren't "so many mons getting banned because of it."

It was a factor in Annihilape's ban, but he probably would have been banned anyway for being too oppressive versus defensive teams.

It was the major factor in banning Espathra, who would have been an obnoxious matchup fish without it, but not broken.

It was the sole factor in banning Regieleki.

And...that's it. Other banned mons used the mechanic, of course, but it wasn't what pushed them into ban territory. Chi-Yu one shotting Blissey with Tera-Fire in the sun is a cool calc and all, but Chi-Yu in the sun without tera one shots things, too.

Future action candidates that could be banned with tera in the metagame, but fine without, is:

Volcarona. Matchup moth doing matchup moth things, now with a tool to be even less predictable and have even more choices. Might get banned anyway, but clearly less likely.

That's it, that's the list. The collateral damage from the mechanic, in terms of bans, is 2-4 mons.

I want the most Pokémon possible when I'm playing Pokemon, hot take, I know.

Let me break this goofy ahhh post down

1) Pre-Home meta was broken checks broken, and if we never got Home/DLC then mons like Gambit, Val, Nite, Garg, etc. would have 100% been looked into eventually and possibly banned due to tera. I don't want to speculate which ones, but that meta was not lasting in the state we knew it. Home and DLC on the horizon was the reason that dead meta wasn't ripped apart by tera bans.

2) Oh, only Leki, nice. We lost a fast spinner that scares out several mons, including ghosts, and let's you keep momentum via Volt Switch. If you actually ladder, you know we have a hazards problem. HDB are becoming increasingly popular because there are times where you just can't mitigate hazards. Leki would have been really nice.
I'm sure I don't have to spell out for you how literally a single mon can drastically change a meta. Imagine gen 5 w/o Magnezone, or gen 8 w/o Clef. I'm not saying Leki was on par with those, but the meta is different now, straight up. Electric moves aside, it was a fast screen setter, and spin + explosion would let you remove hazards and keep momentum even vs a Tusk. We have less options now in builder, simple as that. We lost a tool. Don't shrug it off like we lost nothing.

3) I'm not going to argue much for Espa, but it was a key mon in not letting stall build lazy unaware cores and Curse Dozo their way to easy wins in this offensive meta.

4) By your own words you say future bans may happen. Spoiler, they will. We are still in Home meta infancy, since it's literally just now going to have time to develop w/o Uber mons running around. We're seeing issues already, but in 6-9 months I promise you it won't just be Leki that gets pushed out via tera.

5) I don't think you actually care how many mons we lose. If you're cool w losing Leki (fast spinner, screens utility, specs breaker, revenge killer) then you don't care about losing mons. If/when we lose Volc, it'll be "Leki, Espa, and Volc.. and that's it" and you'll shrug like that means nothing. And then when the next mon is pushed out, you'll just expand your list, and shrug a little harder, cuz you don't actually care what we have to do to keep tera.

6) Or, when we lose something that isn't as clear cut broken due to Tera as Leki, cuz nothing will be more obvious than Leki, there will be mental gymnastics about how it was already broken. "No dude it wasn't losing a major weakness and gaining a massive damage buff that pushed out Urshi, it was SD!" and we'll say, it was def a combo of both.. and then the convo will get muddled and pointless and you'll walk away swearing you're right.

7) Losing mons is just a fraction of the anti-tera logic. It's literally just one aspect of how this gimmick is unhealthy for the meta. Even if we "only" lose 5 mons to tera when its all said and done, that's not some gotcha moment. As I've said, those are tools we lost from our toolkit and their absence drastically changes the meta in some way- but even with that said, losing mons is far removed from the main argument and key complaints.

 

[Carolusim]

Of the currently radar'd Mon:

I think now that Mag is gone this guy is much easier to deal with. Sure, it hits like a truck, but there's ways and means around it, and Trick Room really isn't as scary as it seems.

This guy, however, destroys me. It can be revenge killed pretty easily due to its just-ok speed, but swords dance sets are nigh on unwallable, and Punching Glove was the best thing it could have asked for. I'd argue broken.

I haven't encountered this guy enough to judge. Whenever I see one on the ladder it's always Crowned still.

ban this sick filth

Suspect, imo. I think it's manageable, just very very good, but I appreciate the arguments. It's very hard to stop and definitely a top 3 Mon in the tier right now.

Light Clay - eh. No opinion. I think it's fine, though.

this guy is very annoying, but similarly to Ursa, I don't think is busted. Grassy Terrain Unburden is the set I've seen do the best. Poison Touch is fun but definitely the weaker option.

Btw, have the tiering survey results been published?

spidops catching strays

 

[Ctann]

It would be sad to see urshifu go, such a nice mix of offensive and defensive presence. Whilst I do think it needs a suspect at some point, I will lament the time of having options to deal with Kingambit - who is already beginning to rear its head in a lot more end games with the first wave of bans.

People mentioned magearna brings a nice defensive profile to the meta. Imo urshifu brings a much better, healthier one. Being such a great offensive switch in with OK speed and strong presence.

Magearna is yet another optimised BST steel with a great movepool that just further shits on the bugs, psychics, grasses, poisons and ices of OU that already have a hard time coming out. it also encourages even more use of ground/fire coverage, like we need more of it…

 

[msnt]

After 100+ games in that metagame I'm also going to give my thoughts on the radar pokemons !

: I was really pro-ban at first sight, but games after games I realised that if dire claw doesn't get sleep/para this is "only" a better hawlucha which is really playable in my opinion, but the pokemon is still really frustrating when dire claw gets too lucky, not deserving a ban atm.

: Ursaluna was a bit similar to sneasler, it was really broken to me at first but he really need too much support in my opinion, it works outside of trick room but it's clearly not the same pokemon which makes it fine to me, not deserving a ban.

: In my opinion there are too much playstyles where Urshifu is too strong especially fsight and rain it's putting too much pressure and hits too hard to be handled in a correct way, deserves a ban or at least a suspect test.

: This pokemon only needs iron def and body press to be useful, tbh I'm never clicking something else than iron def + body press but the real problem of Zamazenta is the speed imo, you can't have this bulk and a perfect speed tier that's what makes him broken, deserved a ban.

: Since this pokemon came out it has been a problem, I don't know why it has never been banned before, with terastallize this pokemon became even stronger and deserves at least a suspect test.

The item it not an issue to me even if it makes pokemon like Garticuno or Gmoltres really strong, if we get rid of volcarona, zamazenta and urshifu, ho teams will be what they've always been ladder/fishy teams, not deserving a ban nor a suspect to me.

Thanks for those who read this and have a nice day !

 

[Gurkenbrot]

Ngl in terms of Ursulana I think it's perfectly reasonable to run less than 31 Speed EV's on whatever is lurking in the lower depths of the speed tiers. It's not like these suckers are going to outspeed anything anyway, might as well ditch these 31 Speed EV's and make them slow creep the Trick Room mons since that lets you "outspeed" more stuff

At the very least Body Press / Iron Defense Garganacl should consider it, because it lets it do some funny stuff. This is with an unpopped Tera btw so you still have wiggle room

252+ Atk Guts Tera Normal Ursaluna Headlong Rush vs. +2 252 HP / 4 Def Garganacl: 270-320 (66.8 - 79.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+2 4 Def Garganacl Body Press vs. -1 252 HP / 0 Def Tera Normal Ursaluna: 416-490 (89.6 - 105.6%) -- 37.5% chance to OHKO

 

[tigers jaw]

Ngl in terms of Ursulana I think it's perfectly reasonable to run less than 31 Speed EV's on whatever is lurking in the lower depths of the speed tiers. It's not like these suckers are going to outspeed anything anyway, might as well ditch these 31 Speed EV's and make them slow creep the Trick Room mons since that lets you "outspeed" more stuff

At the very least Body Press / Iron Defense Garganacl should consider it, because it lets it do some funny stuff. This is with an unpopped Tera btw so you still have wiggle room

252+ Atk Guts Tera Normal Ursaluna Headlong Rush vs. +2 252 HP / 4 Def Garganacl: 270-320 (66.8 - 79.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+2 4 Def Garganacl Body Press vs. -1 252 HP / 0 Def Tera Normal Ursaluna: 416-490 (89.6 - 105.6%) -- 37.5% chance to OHKO

this was standard practice for pex last generation for the a-marowak trick room matchup, so you could underspeed it & knock its club off. very valid concept.

 

[Ctann]

You know the more I play garganacl

And the more I play against it..

the more I’m grateful for it, lol.

Is this weird?

it has such an important place in the meta.

 

[Finchinator]

You know the more I play garganacl

And the more I play against it..

the more I’m grateful for it, lol.

Is this weird?

it has such an important place in the meta.

Without Garganacl, Dragapult would perhaps be Uber. And Garganacl, while annoying, is more checkable than ever before. I find it not broken and important to have around.

 

[1LDK]

On the radar mons

No action, the bear on TR is like Walking Wake in sun, you just accept your fate, but people are starting to be proactive against this thing, stalling out tr turns, focusing the setter, knock off, ghosts. Seems reasonable for the moment

BAN, it does nothing but WALLS, it will wall your wife, it will wall your son, and it will wall your infant daughter, and that's with just with the defense boost from the ability. Also, there's choice band and howl sets going around, I think they are cute

No action, What do you mean it's problematic? Just put covert cloak, 2 regen mons and 2 mons with substitute bro! It's what you guys told me to do whenever I saw a garganacl

No action, already explained, but the TLDR is, it's Volcarona, it has been bullshit wacky ass mon from the days when it was a Japanese name in gen 5

Suspect down the line, Swords dance is kinda whack bro, with trailblaze? damm bro, punching glove, protective pads and taunt have become more common thanks to it, so you can't just out speed as easily, pray for shitty cheese body status procs, or just go to pex and watch him cry. Also, Scarf is a thing too so uhh, yeah. Still, it's somewhat manageable, so I'm willing to give it the room

No opinion, I need to think this one more

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Aside from that, I wanted to see what OU to Uber mons really were broken by tera

fuck no its a fucking legendary

only blissey could wall it

lazy design, shitty min maxed mon, if you think this mon is either no problem at all or was broken by tera, you're literally a in disguise, you don't fool anyone

it was ban worthy because it actually, unironically and 100% invalidates stall, which I like, but uh, yeah

lmao

Okay, it's literally chi-yu but physical and with priority, it's fucking better, you guys said it's alright because it's... walled by donzo? You guys know that it's one mon right?

you guys need to think that with no tera on either side means no tera dark clodisre, which means It's still pretty free

This one is probably the only one that tera really broke, it was fine the empty land of gen 8, this gen would have been UUBL probably

sub, np, kiss, shadow ball spedef drops, yeah

no mandibuzz + scald pex to cheese it out. Offense still struggles for sucker punch, tera steel trail blaze or iron head and there goes valiant

it already has the best defensive type in the game, you don't even need tera 75% of the time
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When the tera suspect part 2 comes out, ill probably do a giant post about my personal experiences with tera and overall thoughts, which will probably make everyone angry because it's based in my personal experience and not spl/wcop numbers even tho those are literally personal experiences of other players, with the difference being that you care about those

 

[Finchinator]

Here’s how I intend to vote this weekend:

I intend to vote ban. While I wish I could’ve seen it a tad more without Crowned, it was clearly following its footsteps to me. Counterplay exists at least, but it’s too sparse to the point that teambuilding is basically put to the extremes — run a hard-stop that fits in fat or run offense with the right synergy scheme or special attackers if you want to put up a good fight. Half-measures end up subject to losing 1v1s if it gets a free Iron Defense first time in too often for my liking and Tera Dark Crunch circumvents a lot of trouble as well.

I intend to vote ban on, but it’s pretty close. Here is my reasoning from yesterday’s post:

On the upcoming tiering radar, it is likely we include again despite it not getting support last time. In addition, I personally plan to vote ban on Volcarona this weekend and I think others within the council are discussing/considering their options as well. My guess is that it stays OU, but as a community we should seriously assess this Pokemon and its antics a bit further moving forward.

Volcarona was drowned out a bit by the hype of new toys and the overbearing nature of the first couple of broken Pokemon perhaps, but it has retained and arguably gained viability and effectiveness with the transition from pre-HOME to post-HOME.

I already believed that Volcarona was broken prior to HOME, but it was so close that we never had time for a formal suspect test on it. Now we have a fresh metagame, but it has adapted with Tera Water or even Tera Ground offensively while even occasionally running Tera Ghost for ESpeed revenge killers.

Offensively, it can handpick its own counters. Scared of Heatran walking normal moves? Tera Water and Tera Ground do the trick. Skeledirge falls into the same boat, of course. Scared of revenge killers with priority? You can run Substitute for Sucker Punch or Tera Ghost for ESpeed as I mentioned before while hardly any scarfers do the trick after a Quiver Dance. Even things like Clodsire can lose to Substitute + Tera Grass, but at least this and bulkier variants have fallen out of favor with Heatran’s release. Given this, there is at least some counterplay and some intuition that can allow for eliminating some options or forming a hypothesis as to what Tera and set it may be. But is: that enough? I don’t really think so.

Yes, Tera is the overall problem here, but it’s not being reassessed for a little longer. Yes, Zama-H and maybe a few others are also just as, if not even more, problematic. But we need to consider changing the narrative on Volcarona. It’s unreasonable right now.

is another close one, but I’m leaning ban because it lacks counterplay. Sure, you can revenge kill with Dragapult or whatever fast Pokemon you got that doesn’t mind Aqua Jet (assuming that it doesn’t run Trailblaze), but defensively it has the tier dancing around a very dangerous reality right now. Dual STABs threaten everything short of Toxapex almost and balance teams just get shredded. Be it with a Swords Dance, Rain, or just outright, Punching Gloves are a godsend and the choiced sets both are strong and/or rich in utility as well. I would not mind at all if this ends up a suspect rather than a ban, but I also think that as long as this remains in the tier, we will see a strong pull towards offense or bulky teams with very specific backbones that either focus on immunities to its STABs or integrating Toxapex, which isn’t a place to be.

likely no ban as I don’t think it’s as problematic as the others. It’s tough because it’s cheesy and arguably uncompetitive, but it faced stiff competition and it’s not really thriving right now. I find Dire Claw not as easy to spam as most others would indicate and SD sets to be good additions to offense that don’t overwhelm the format.

has taken a big drop-off alongside TR teams. Nowadays I find it good at carrying its weight and forcing trades, but not near broken. Definitely no ban for the time being.

 

[tigers jaw]

i’m liking this discussion & hearing informed opinions guys/gals/nbs

keep it up

 

[Srn]

you guys need to think that with no tera on either side means no tera dark clodisre, which means It's still pretty free

You are correct that we cannot tera dark clodsire/skeledirge to answer espathra if tera goes, but we won't need to. Assuming it keeps running the same set as last time (shown below), here's how a dazzling gleam without stab matches up against the dark types of this tier (which you generally want on every team anyway to resist ghost, so minimal teambuilding strain)

Espathra @ Leftovers
Ability: Speed Boost
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Stored Power
- Dazzling Gleam
- Roost

So imagine espathra finds a free turn, uses Calm Mind as your opponent switches into their dark type:

Dark types not dying to espathra

+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Kingambit: 100-118 (24.7 - 29.2%)
+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Vessel of Ruin Ting-Lu: 110-130 (21.4 - 25.2%)
+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 24 HP / 0 SpD Moltres-Galar: 144-170 (44 - 51.9%)
(If you push it into berserk range, a +1 fiery wrath OHKO's you back)
+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Samurott-Hisui: 246-290 (76.6 - 90.3%)
+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Hoopa-Unbound: 138-164 (45.8 - 54.4%)
+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Meowscarada: 232-274 (79.1 - 93.5%)
+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Overqwil: 123-145 (39.5 - 46.6%)
+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Muk-Alola: 63-75 (15.2 - 18.1%)
(don't sleep on alolan muk it's heat)
+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Iron Jugulis: 208-246 (63.2 - 74.7%)
+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Greninja: 230-272 (80.7 - 95.4%)

Omitting hydreigon and roaring moon because they're 4x weak and die, omitting other fringe darks for the sake of brevity.

You can see how much worse it does vs relevant darks without the fire power+defensive utility tera brings. It goes from broken into manageable matchup fish, much like demon mew from gen8. Once again, I am adamant that tera is the main reason why espathra was banned.

 

[tigers jaw]

Hide

Mew @ Red Card
Ability: Synchronize
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 112 HP / 144 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Stealth Rock
- Spikes
- Thunder Wave
- Taunt

evs are optimised to live modest specs pult’s shadow ball

been trying out hazards ho yesterday, out of step with the typical pult screens wave. i posted the other day about how i believe that meow+tusk is still the optimal route to go in terms of setters. i take it back now - mew is as consistent at getting both rocks+a spike+a thunder wave off as it ever was. thunder wave is also invaluable in enabling the rest of the team & crippling otherwise troublesome pokémon.

i think it may be the premier setter from here on out, give it a shot.

 

[G-Luke]

On the radar mons

No action, the bear on TR is like Walking Wake in sun, you just accept your fate, but people are starting to be proactive against this thing, stalling out tr turns, focusing the setter, knock off, ghosts. Seems reasonable for the moment

BAN, it does nothing but WALLS, it will wall your wife, it will wall your son, and it will wall your infant daughter, and that's with just with the defense boost from the ability. Also, there's choice band and howl sets going around, I think they are cute

No action, What do you mean it's problematic? Just put covert cloak, 2 regen mons and 2 mons with substitute bro! It's what you guys told me to do whenever I saw a garganacl

No action, already explained, but the TLDR is, it's Volcarona, it has been bullshit wacky ass mon from the days when it was a Japanese name in gen 5

Suspect down the line, Swords dance is kinda whack bro, with trailblaze? damm bro, punching glove, protective pads and taunt have become more common thanks to it, so you can't just out speed as easily, pray for shitty cheese body status procs, or just go to pex and watch him cry. Also, Scarf is a thing too so uhh, yeah. Still, it's somewhat manageable, so I'm willing to give it the room

No opinion, I need to think this one more

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Aside from that, I wanted to see what OU to Uber mons really were broken by tera

fuck no its a fucking legendary

only blissey could wall it

lazy design, shitty min maxed mon, if you think this mon is either no problem at all or was broken by tera, you're literally a in disguise, you don't fool anyone

it was ban worthy because it actually, unironically and 100% invalidates stall, which I like, but uh, yeah

lmao

Okay, it's literally chi-yu but physical and with priority, it's fucking better, you guys said it's alright because it's... walled by donzo? You guys know that it's one mon right?

you guys need to think that with no tera on either side means no tera dark clodisre, which means It's still pretty free

This one is probably the only one that tera really broke, it was fine the empty land of gen 8, this gen would have been UUBL probably

sub, np, kiss, shadow ball spedef drops, yeah

no mandibuzz + scald pex to cheese it out. Offense still struggles for sucker punch, tera steel trail blaze or iron head and there goes valiant

it already has the best defensive type in the game, you don't even need tera 75% of the time
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When the tera suspect part 2 comes out, ill probably do a giant post about my personal experiences with tera and overall thoughts, which will probably make everyone angry because it's based in my personal experience and not spl/wcop numbers even tho those are literally personal experiences of other players, with the difference being that you care about those

I disagree with Espathra, pretty awful take, but for the most part you are right. I still think Annihilape would be resuspect worthy in a non Tera metagame but I'm 50/50 on whether or not it would be banned. Urshifu Water imo is really strong but Tera is def what pushes it over the edge thanks to how easy it is to spam Tera Water Surging Strikes. Without Tera I see Ursh being a strong A+ rank offensive threat (rain to me is very much reliant on Tera to be as good as it is, so in a non Tera world it wouldn't be as strong as an option) that wouldn't be worth quickban discussion, but a possible suspect test instead. Outside of that you are right, most of the Pokémon banned so far are not Tera reliant. The thing is though, we have already past the stage of banning Pokémon that are broken simply due to being broken, and we are now in a unstable mess that kinda runs into mons that are ok / fine, but reach into broken with Tera territory. And as I indicated, we are already leaning into that space.

 

[singaporygon]

You are correct that we cannot tera dark clodsire/skeledirge to answer espathra if tera goes, but we won't need to. Assuming it keeps running the same set as last time (shown below), here's how a dazzling gleam without stab matches up against the dark types of this tier (which you generally want on every team anyway to resist ghost, so minimal teambuilding strain)

Espathra @ Leftovers
Ability: Speed Boost
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Stored Power
- Dazzling Gleam
- Roost

So imagine espathra finds a free turn, uses Calm Mind as your opponent switches into their dark type:

Dark types not dying to espathra

+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Kingambit: 100-118 (24.7 - 29.2%)
+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Vessel of Ruin Ting-Lu: 110-130 (21.4 - 25.2%)
+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 24 HP / 0 SpD Moltres-Galar: 144-170 (44 - 51.9%)
(If you push it into berserk range, a +1 fiery wrath OHKO's you back)
+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Samurott-Hisui: 246-290 (76.6 - 90.3%)
+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Hoopa-Unbound: 138-164 (45.8 - 54.4%)
+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Meowscarada: 232-274 (79.1 - 93.5%)
+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Overqwil: 123-145 (39.5 - 46.6%)
+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Muk-Alola: 63-75 (15.2 - 18.1%)
(don't sleep on alolan muk it's heat)
+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Iron Jugulis: 208-246 (63.2 - 74.7%)
+1 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Greninja: 230-272 (80.7 - 95.4%)

Omitting hydreigon and roaring moon because they're 4x weak and die, omitting other fringe darks for the sake of brevity.

You can see how much worse it does vs relevant darks without the fire power+defensive utility tera brings. It goes from broken into manageable matchup fish, much like demon mew from gen8. Once again, I am adamant that tera is the main reason why espathra was banned.

Good reply. I still think though that espathra would be commonly used with screens, and then yes whilethere are still defensive answers to stop it from snowballing, it would become too limited imo and could very well still lead to ban with the limiting factor on teams.

 

[Crimson Chris]

So what're you guy's opinions on the following Pokemon post Pao and Zama ban:

H-Samurott
H-Decidueye
H-Typhlosion
H-Arcanine
H-Liligant
H-Braviary
H-Goodra
Enamorus-I
Enamorus-T

btw, how do you guys get the Pokemon sprites?