Disclaimer: I suck at writing but i bottled up my opinions for too long and the result is a ~2500 word likely disaster. The first half of this post showcases some cool sets, the second half is a bunch of my opinions about the metagame and potential suspects. Also i spent way too long doing this and am kinda tired so towards the end my opinions aren't fully fleshed out, but i may come back and edit the reasoning to be clearer if i feel it needs to be. I'm sorry about this guys.
Okay since these threads are quite dead and it would be nice to have some actual discussion on here, i'm going to make a new post instead of editing the old one like i said i might, so uh here's sets ig.
Mew @ Altarianite
Ability: Synchronize
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Return
- Explosion
- Tailwind/Taunt
Lead mew. This set serves a few niches over a similar srock+boom alt lando set. Firstly it has base 100 speed which allows it to outspeed mons that put themselves at 310 for alt lando s.uch as arceus and manectite mew, meaning that it can stealth rock and then explode before they can defog or attack you. Secondly, it has access to both tailwind and taunt. Tailwind is slashed first here for the utility it provides after mew uses explosion, even one remaining turn is enough for a mon to gain a winning matchup and thus also gain momentum (for example, if mew uses explosion two turns after it uses tailwind, and both sides go down, there will be a play involved in who gets the winning 1-on-1 matchup and forces the other out. Normally if the mew player went to their blastrai and the opponent went to kartana, they would be at a disadvantage since kartana normally beats blastrai, but if there's one turn left of tailwind kartana ends up losing and would have to switch out, meaning that the incoming mon would have to take a powerful dark pulse). Taunt is also another option, since it can prevent opposing rocks for mons such as lunala and also defog and recover in matchups against fatter teams, where the mew may want to preserve its nuke for later when mons that take explosion well such as skarmory are removed. Lastly, mew benefits from the fact that it runs other sets more commonly in this meta such as manectite, allowing it to lure mons such as darkrai and mandibuzz when dark pulse and u-turn respectively would normally be safe clicks. To take full advantage of mew's unpredictability, it would be advisable to not have mew in the first slot of the team, since having a mew in the first slot with 5 offensive mons following behind it may give your opponent a clue as to which set you're running.
This mew set pairs particularly well with a few common HO picks. Lunala as mentioned earlier takes advantage of mew's ability to set up stealth rock on any team that chooses to use mandibuzz as its bouncer, meaning that mandibuzz is also pressured as one of a handful of lunala switchins in the current meta. It could also potentially lure darkrai or weaken sablenite magearna into range of +1 z, stopping them from checking lunala effectively, and taunt variants can prevent rocks from going up which preserves lunala's shadow shield, making it much harder to check. Kartana also benefits from this, as most of its checks are either weak to rocks or are steel types, which are also the primary switchins for altarianite explosion. In the same vein, pinsirite magearna can beat some extra mons when stealth rock goes up whilst also having explosion to further pressure steel types and again prevent defog.
Milotic @ Ampharosite
Ability: Competitive
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Toxic
- Recover
- Haze
This set provides a niche on balance teams for its ability to check primal kyogre and cameruptite magearna together in one slot, as well as manaphy and some defensive mons without suffering from a lack of recovery like pdon or having to sack in situations where pogre gets to come in after your red orber. Scald is the STAB of choice for its ability to burn and also thaw itself from freezes by pogre's ice beam, toxic is for mold breaker status which milotic can easily spread against a lot of teams due to common steel types disliking the burn or in the case of blue orb skarmory, simply being 2HKOed. Haze allows milotic to remove boosts from cam mage and pogre, and it can also stop other specially-based mons from setting up on milotic, especially if they took a toxic on the switch in. This means that only a select few mons can come in safely on milotic and threaten it out, such as pdon, whilst other mons that kill it dislike coming in on its attacks (altarianite lando and terrakion take heavy damage from scald and also risk being burned, whilst other mons need their longevity to break teams so can't even afford to come in on a toxic). It is also worth noting that milotic can often also play quite aggressively in order to punish these switchins because it can still check both ogre and magearna even when chipped to 60 percent hp, so it doesn't need to click recover as often as other defensive mons (252+ SpA Sheer Force Magearna Ice Beam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Milotic: 95-112 (24.1 - 28.4%) -- 96.9% chance to 4HKO).
Overall this mon won't be an ideal fit for the majority of teams, but it can be very important to the few teams where it does fit. The main individual mon that appreciates milotic's support is offensive pdon, either rock polish or mixed sd variants, since they don't run spdef investment and therefore cannot take on either pogre or magearna very well. pogre can also come in on their fire moves and potentially disrupt their momentum, leaving them scrambling for a switchin to a rain boosted origin pulse/water spout. Milotic also fits well on teams that are prone to repeatedly letting pogre in, since replacing milotic with a pdon in those situations would eventually lead to pdon being pressured to death by ice beam and also other teammates (
Here is an example of a team that effectively overwhelms pdon by taking advantage of it needing to switch into multiple mons whilst not having recovery). Milotic also appreciates teammates that can switch into pinsirite mage, so rockceus in particular is a great option, whilst it also takes on ho-oh which may try to absorb a toxic with the help of regen and retaliate with a powerful brave bird.
Moltres @ Sablenite
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Flamethrower
- Toxic
- Roost
- Will-O-Wisp/Defog
Sablenite moltres' niche in the meta is to bounce stealth rock from the two most common rockers in the current metagame, defensive pdon and altarianite lando-t, as well as most of the more passive rockers that are used such as fairyceus. Its typing also allows it to take on threats such as necrozma-dusk-mane, kartana and cm groundceus, whilst spreading toxic against more offensive teams that lack sablenite or a blue orb steel. The choice between will-o-wisp and defog depends on how confident you are in getting your mega off quickly, since defog isn't necessary if you can get your moltres mega evolved before they get the chance to set rocks. I slashed will-o-wisp first because moltres actually has very good bulk and can even mega on the likes of pinsirite zeraora if it has to, either clicking roost or crippling it with wisp and living the next hit (252 Atk Zeraora Plasma Fists vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Moltres: 200-236 (52.2 - 61.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO).
Obviously, even if it does prevent most rockers from setting rocks, it is still 4 times weak to them, so it appreciates support that beats the less common rockers in the tier, particuarly sd sr pdon. Defog salamencite lando-t is a nice fit for this role, since it can use its speed to defog for moltres if it doesn't mega in time or if it faces webs, and it also beats sd sr pdon whilst not being as passive as most other defoggers. Another big weakness of moltres is that it lets in pogre pretty easily, so milotic is actually appreciated as a teammate here. Another pairing that can work, but is still a bit risky is sablenite moltres+cm groundceus, which allows moltres to act as an alt zyg switchin by burning it and then switching to groundceus to remove it with ice beams(normally groundceus would lose since +1 return just about 2HKOes). Moltres also covers for groundceus being a shaky defensive don check, and also covers kartana since you can't use another arceus forme to check it.
Kartana @ Metagrossite/Lucarionite
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant/Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Leaf Blade
- Smart Strike
- Synthesis/Defog
I'll only talk about this set briefly because this is also a placeholder for me to talk about my thoughts on kart in general in the metagame, but the defog variant is an offensive defogger that responds to alt lando in particular, by threatening it out with both STABs and defogging when it sets up rocks, whilst the synthesis variant aims to be a long-term alt zyg check that can offensively threaten the likes of terrakion and darkrai and stop them from using any mon that beats alt zyg as bait. The defog variant can also run pinsirite which i think has already been brought up in this thread, but metagrossite kart can also check alt zyg and hit mage harder, in trade for the surprise factor and extra power of return against other targets such as noivern and ho-oh. Defog kart fits neatly with mandibuzz since it takes on the two main altarianite mons in zyg and lando and stops lando getting free rocks against teams with mandibuzz as their bouncer. Adamant metagrossite was slashed before jolly lucarionite here due to the extra spdef allowing it to live fleur cannons from pivot mage and also because lucarionite has much more use than metagrossite in the meta for other mons.
Overall I think that kartana is in a very strong place in the metagame right now, due to a nice speed tier that puts it above a lot of offensive mons and great synergy with a few other popular mons. For example, offensive teams looking to use darkrai or terrakion as their breaker have to prep for atespeed somehow, and kartana gives a very solid option against one half of altarianite espeed that allows the team to keep up their momentum, which is something that most altarianite zygarde answers can't do very well (i'll explain that later). Meanwhile kartana itself doesn't have many good offensive switchins, so most kart answers are at the mercy of well-built offensive cores that allow the kart user to get up stealth rock and pressure mons such as sablenite buzzwole (also an important switchin for rai/terrak), mandibuzz (used as a pivot for blastrai, also would be expected to answer lunala and pdon) and magearna (rai and a few other things such as lele). Between the potency of these cores on offensive teams, and the utility of a defog kartana on balance teams for its ability to help with alt lando and tspikes (forgot to mention this earlier and now don't know where to fit it in ffs), I believe that kartana is stronger than it has been in the meta for quite a while.
Zygarde @ Altarianite
Ability: Aura Break
EVs: 176 HP / 252 Atk / 80 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Return
- Extreme Speed
- Thousand Arrows
Just a reminder that altarianite zygarde does not have to be simple max speed max attack dd, these bulky sets actually allow you to take two ice beams from the likes of arceus, mew and lunala which can be very important, whereas max speed mostly isn't necessary, since you'll still get outsped by dia lele unless you give up power and go jolly. 176 hp is to take 4 seismic tosses from blissey, rest is pumped into spdef for better bulk setting up and muscling through things in general. It may also seem weird that i'm bringing this up as a strong mon in the meta, but i've noticed that people have given up on a lot of solid checks to this mon such as aggronite buzzwole and wisp arceus, and replaced them with less solid checks (aka ice beam it and pray, as well as lando and pray). As a result of this zygarde can normally play two of three roles in any one game, between revenge killing threatening wallbreakers(and occasionally hard switching into them), breaking early game, and cleaning late game. Whilst zygarde is still limited by the fact that it can't realistically perform all three, it can still often manage two which is in itself incredible. If there's a time to pick up this mon, it would probably be right now, everything apart from kartana is going for it.
Darkrai @ Diancite
Ability: Bad Dreams
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Nasty Plot
- Ice Beam
- Dark Pulse
- Thunder
This one is a placeholder for my thoughts about a potential rai suspect, but also one of the sets that could potentially pose a problem (also considered putting ice beam red orb and taunt blastrai on here). As it stands, I am still fairly comfortable prepping for rai (at least as comfortable as prepping for any A+ rank mon should be), since the lure factor can be avoided whilst building defensively. Blastoisinite and diancite darkrai have shared counterplay defensively (pivot mage, sab buzz, not using certain mons that blastrai can use as a free switchin and instead making it sacrifice most of its hp preventing it from setting up repeatedly). Blastoisinite and red orb rai on the other hand have shared offensive counterplay, they're outsped and killed by the same mons with the exception of atespeed if darkrai somehow stays at full. Notably terrak can switch into both red orb and blastrai and retaliate with powerful attacks that the rest of the team will struggle with. However, if people branch out to using more sets/coverage options on rai i could definitely see this becoming a problem to deal with in any way that doesn't involve offensively pressuring it.
Finally my opinion on mage. I think that whilst mage is one of, if not the most versatile mon in the metagame, it can still be narrowed down into its coverage options, and there's a good few offensive cores in the current meta that can abuse mage's lack of reliable recovery and its inability to run all of its coverage moves at once. Offensive teams are pressured the most by boltbeam out of any coverage option since they can't switch in their grounds to kill it, but boltbeam variants also lose to blastrai with focus blast or taunt, as well as cm luc lele, raikou, various steels and other mons that can check mage enough times for the cores to overwhelm it. Sharing mage's roles with another steel makes it tough to prep for pdon and luc zyg, and then in turn other mons once that's sorted, and it also takes away from a large point of using mage in the first place, since reducing the amount of roles it needs to perform only leads to it getting fewer opportunities to throw off attacks and damage the opposing team. Whilst the versatility can be dangerous, certain sets are still checkable by some mons even when mage is allowed to setup based off a wrong initial switch. For example, if ho-oh switches in and mage happens to be pinsirite and clicks return or shift gear, from a building perspective there's still the option to bring a zapdos or a rockceus which will still check the mage even after wasting a turn. Also two of the most common bulky mons in the meta, def pdon and sab mage(mentioning mage here because sab is absolutely a healthy presence for the metagame regardless of the fact that it's a mage), both scout out mage's set and make it difficult for it to claim any damage on it at all without revealing its set so that it can be dealt with appropriately.