Alright, pre week 1 RUPL VR noms. Rules are the same as usual, i sing praise or take a fat shit over some of the mons and say why their good or bad, if you disagree i'm right your wrong + my dad could beat up your dad. First though, the new drops, namely Jirachi and Barraskewda.
-> A / A+
Jirachi dropping caused quite the fanfair, and for good reason. We finally have a high-end steel that doesn't lose to a fucking gardevoir not named empoleon, and that was quite a treat. Unfortunately, it's not quite as good as i was hoping, but it's still excellent. Wish passing is an amazing boon, CM sets are very good, coverage with thunder/grass knot/ aura sphere gives CM sets good depth vs things like hippo cobal and moltres. Meteor beam sets can be run when you want to pretend your a necrozma and snipe rotom heats out of the sky. Iron head scarf sets.. are shit. Helmets are everywhere and contact punishers like moltres also are a common presence, I wouldn't run scarf on jirachi i'd rather run almost anything else on it. More niche sets like Doom Desire, encore, its a fantastic steel on Rain alongside Forretress since it both pivots, lays them up and gets the accuracy boost on thunder for the juicy 60% para rate. Speed tier is good, soft checks leaves with a dice roll and god holding your hand for a slam para, checks enam-t quite nicely, but also brings about the Covert Cloak Covenant, with members like Fezandipiti, Cress and more spearheading the faction. Overall, very solid, very good mon.
-> A-
Barraskewda dropping was met with less joy than Jirachi and that's a crazy thing to say. "Rain is gonna be so annoying!" they said. "It'll be broken!" they said. Well... they were wrong.. kinda. It's excellent on rain, but thankfully the tier already has a good amount of anti-rain tools like Hippo weather wars, tera gotchas like rhyperior, moltres and fezandipiti, and natural rain checks like Volcanion, suicune and Wo-chien. What barraskewda does besides this, is imo, more valuable. Absolutely foddering the core of Cyclizar/Hippo/Molt like its a full course meal. This thing is very solid on Bulky Offenses and Offense, the downside is well, it's about as durable as a wet sock, and it's defensive utility amounts to being a soft check to opposing rain by just outspeeding their swift swimmers with jolly and picking your nose for every other scenario. It comes in on jack shit safely without balls of titanium but my god when it comes in it does the lords work. Empoleon teams wants to die, Noivern teams arent safe from catching an ice fang, amoonguss and okidogi risk psychic fang, and slowbro risks catching a crunch. Solid anchor.
Now for the others.
B+ -> A+
Rhyperior has taken off like no tommorow with it's traits being extremely compatible with the overall meta. It's arguably a top 3 rocker in the tier, it's an amazing partner for pokemon like Cobalion because it means your cobalion doesn't have to run rocks itself, which opens it up a ton for other shit it wants like taunt, volt switch, cm etc. That isn't all though, it's bar none the best 1 for 1 merchant in the entire tier, rhyperior with tera can practically trade itself for anything it wants, and it's power means it can beat ALOT of things with just edgequake. Despite appearances, Rhyperior can actually obliterate every ground type in the tier not named flygon. It eats hippowdons for breakfast, Swampert is liable to get smashed by a +2 quake even with max max def it takes 65%, Gastrodon straight dies to a +2 EQ. Palossand takes over 55% from a +2 quake, and all of these pokemon are slower with a meager bit of investment. AND this damage is achieved by just running adamant and a whopping Sixteen (16) attack evs. Uninvested Krook fucking dies to a quake after spikes WITH intimidate, and who cares about flygon he sucks. It's got set variety too, megahorn can melt wo-chiens and leaves, Heat crash can handle those 2 while also smashing chesnaught into dust. Rock polish exists so that's a fun unexplored meme, fuck it forget heat crash you can run SR temper flare and just, choose to OHKO chesnaught from full with a 150bp temper flare. If all this wasn't enough, with tera it can reverse thundurus-t, anything on rain and i do mean anything. And rock/ground provides useful boosts vs moltres naturally as a nice counter since wisp moltres fucking blows. And to top ALL of this off, it's a proud leader of the Custap Club. It's performance in RULT playoffs sees it at 8th in usage, it's almost never dead weight and always brings high returns on it's offers. If not A+, then A.
C -> B-
Now this may seem like a large jump, especially for a mon practically unused in every previous RU. However, palossand has a distinct amount of tricks up it's sleeve that lets it have it's own specific archetype. It's the tiers best spin blocker vs the best spinner and most common mon in the tier, Cyclizar. Palossand spike stack is an archetype that has seen a decent amount of use in RULT, and in ssnl where even if it doesn't win, it shows just how good palossand is at forcing options down for the opponent. Usually paired with Deo-D, it forms an excellent hazards core to keep hazards up, while also not being dead weight itself. It's got reliable recovery in shore up, being the only ground besides hippowdon and gastrodon to have recovery. It's the only ghost with recovery that isn't trash ass pain split, and that's a big thing. Tier shifts have helped it too, since it does quite well into Jirachi, Zarude and Hoopa-U's ban helped it alot, and it's clicks with Scorching Sands&Hex does the job quite well. It's a one trick pony, but I think it has a large enough niche and tournament presence, above even things like Gatr and Conk, to put it up to B-
B- -> C+
Put it next to Ninetales.
B -> B+ / A-
Noivern has seen a return to form with the realization that it's traits are quite good in the meta still. It's a dragon faster than Cyclizar, which is already a huge boon for it already. It's a check to a good amount of pokemon, such as Volcanion, Infernape, and can revenge kill a plehtora of mons like Thundurus-T, Cobalion and more. It scored solid usage in RULT, outplacing pokemon like Gengar, and tying with Reuniclus. I'd argue it's a more splashable salamence, which trades raw stats for a better speed tier, and access to U-turn. I think it might be straight up better than mence, but it seems people still aren't ready for that conversation. What I will say, is Specs Boomburst Noivern is still a decent set this thing can pilot, Jirachi and Rhyperior be damned. It's got set variety with options like Taunt, super fang, hurricane, and switcheroo memes. It's a good for any team that doesn't need Cyclizar's specific talents, namely spinning and emergency checking ghosts and thundy-t. It's undersold at B, and I think many will agree with me on this.
A- -> B+
This thing is so fucking fraudulent man LMAO. This thing is bad as a dragon dancer, stonewalled by hippowdon and now Rhyperior can check it on a bucketload of squads, it's weak stabs suck for it, and it's a momentum drain alot of the time. Of course it's not bad, mixed draco sets are good at sniping hippo and it can run away with games if you let it, but are we really calling this thing A- material? It's side-grade noivern in alot of scenarios, and Noivern is a far bigger team player than mence is. You can make an argument that specs sets or extremely agressive special sets are good, but to me they are momentum drains, and again, bring less for a team than Noivern does. Sure, a DD mence will always be scary if your caught lacking on your checks, but there's alot of mons that fuck with each specific mence set that it can feel like a burden more than you'd like it to be, especially from a pokemon like Salamence. This one may be more biased than the rest but alot of my building, i'd usually prefer to slap a noivern on that a salamence on, and I really think that matters a lot.
UR -> C / C+
This thing has managed to carve out a niche as a setup sweeper with some valuable defensive utility. For the latter, it's resume includes being a check to Iron Leaves, unconditionally. This is already a large claim considering how annoying it is and most mons require to burn tera against it, but this thing doesn't. It's 4x fighting resist allows it to check things like choice locked Terrakion, call out CC conkeldurrs, and IDBP cobalion. What it does is function as a snowballing psychic type. A niche not truly unique, but Tinted lens Esper wing gives it the benefit of being a speed boosting snowballing psychic type, able to setup on and abuse non roar empoleon, eats knock from cyclizar with ease, and mops other things like Moltres. Esper Wing allows for a variety of setup opportunities other psychic types can't reach for, and the unique defensive utility is praiseworthy. For those who strictly follow the "requires a replay for all UR to ranked noms, yeah yeah here's a replay for
you.
B -> B+ / A-
Everything people thought mew would be, is what Cresselia is like i swear. CM is so diabolically good, and the annoyance by hippowdon is alleviated by superior bulk, generally good recovery with some caveats, and an actual non-worthless ability !! CM snowballs against a surprising amount of teams, setting up on a ton of common things like Cyc, Cobal without taunt, Moltres, no ww hippo (which is becoming more common since ppl realized letting in the best birds in the tier for free blows), fezandipiti (with covert cloak), Noivern, special mence, and far more. It's tera is quite diverse aswell, with me personally fancying tera Electric, as it resists jirachi iron head, while still being immune to EQ. And boosting an optional pick over moonblast, aka tbolt. In exchange for admitting you'll never kill a Krookodile or wo-chien worth a shit unless you lay up a tspike, you nail Empoleon, Jirachi, and bisharp for more reliable damage. This thing runs away with SO many games, it's so good. Please give it a whirl, I swear you'll be well inbursed for the time.
A- -> B / B+
Fraud. I regret calling this mon busted as fuck and complaining about it's unban this is budget necrozma on it's best days. I've seen takes of "oh its busted" "if people use this thing it's nuts!" yeah IF people use it. Nobody uses this thing and wowie I wonder why. This thing has competition out the ass, and even with mew's variety, every other psychic has a draw to use it over this. H-Braviary has it's speed boosting schtick and iron leaves checking niche, Cresselia has levitate cm and absurd obesity to snowball, Reuniclus has magic guard, Jirachi has a steel typing and more utility thats worth a damn (no , Necrozma has dragon dance and meteor beam, paired with far better stats for the job it tries to do. And mew has jack of all trades, master of fucking nothing, shit it's not even a veteran it's a novice in a stolen uniform. When you use it it's probably decent but like, it's not A- material even with that being said. DD sets are weak as shit and bad versions of Necrozma, NP sets are bad versions of a hero called azelf with a smidge of twave support, and you can probably curate a set that performs something better or unique to the others but it's fucking mew that's not impressive. Like gee you sure showed me with your sub bulk up throat chop leech life tera bug mew. Maybe once it gets off its ass and hopefully does something worth a damn during RUPL I'll rescind my statement but for now it's among the 3 heavenly frauds alongside salamence and the rats. If i want a spikes HO lead im using froslass or custap forretress you can't change my mind.