Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Volcarona Banned]

[Bold School]

I didn't think of grassy seed, that could definitely be good.
HDB is moreso you can come in more often against anything, don't forget ditto has basically infinite pp so any recovery on the opposing team it can use. For example, corv gets pressure used against it. It isn't the best option, but it will be the most consistent option.
Although surviving to proc things could be an issue, a lot of things boost their defense's as well, such as Zama and volc. This means volc will only be a little bit worse defensively against them, and they likely have chip so it would be about even. Against something like moon/gambit, ditto ain't doing shit.
Another thing that really hurts ditto is the prevalence of priority, which means it's speed stat doesn't matter in avoiding hits as much. Maybe it could work on psychic terrain teams with psychic seed or scarf? That solves the priority issue.

So you mean like a PP stall? I didn't think of that, but HBD Ditto actually might be good on stall teams.

I assumed Volc wins because it has heals and a higher HP stat. Also, the Tera cannot be copied. So if it has any Tera Blast set, Ditto might not be able to use it the same way. Volc is one of the mons mons reliant on TB. The chances it can hit you harder might be high. Tera Water is particularly problematic. And unless you can find away to safely bring Ditto in multiple times against it, Volc also has more PP for heals. You'd probably have to sac a mon or something?

The problems with Psychic Seed is that Special Defense is far less useful for Ditto in most cases. Volc is one of the few special sweepers, with the rest mostly just being Stored Power types. Powering up their stored power to offset the special defense boost? Probably not too effective. You could Tera Dark to stop Stored Power, but you don't need Psychic Seed for that. The singular special defense boost probably isn't too impactful against Quiver Dance or Calm Mind users anyhow.

Choice Scarf Ditto on Psychic Terrain runs into the same Booster Energy issue. You just lose against BE speed. Basically, fast BE mons are death to PT teams. Choice Scarf Ditto takes up a slot as speed control that isn't good enough speed control. I have this same issue with many different mons on Psychic Terrain teams, including BE Valiant. Anything that was faster just wins against you. In that specific case, it was most commonly Roaring Moon, Iron Boulder, and Barraskewda.

Priority is absolutely an issue for Ditto. This is actually why I though Grassy Seed might be better. Most of the priority in the tier is still physical. Most of the setup sweepers you see are physical. I think you take the matchups Ditto can win and let the teammates handle the ones it can't. But to be honest, I haven't tested Grassy Seed Ditto nearly enough to know if it can win enough important matchups this way. That said, Grassy Seed + Terra Steel would probably have pretty good survivability for a Ditto. You can resist Grassy Glide, E-Speed, Bullet Punch, and Ice Shard. You resist Stored Power as well.

I think Focus Sash is the only other item we discussed that could potentially help with priority. Psychic Seed against Bolt is so niche that I would simply rather leave that to teammates.

 

[Heatranator]

So you mean like a PP stall? I didn't think of that, but HBD Ditto actually might be good on stall teams.

I assumed Volc wins because it has heals and a higher HP stat. Also, the Tera cannot be copied. So if it has any Tera Blast set, Ditto might not be able to use it the same way. Volc is one of the mons mons reliant on TB. The chances it can hit you harder might be high. Tera Water is particularly problematic. And unless you can find away to safely bring Ditto in multiple times against it, Volc also has more PP for heals. You'd probably have to sac a mon or something?

The problems with Psychic Seed is that Special Defense is far less useful for Ditto in most cases. Volc is one of the few special sweepers, with the rest mostly just being Stored Power types. Powering up their stored power to offset the special defense boost? Probably not too effective. You could Tera Dark to stop Stored Power, but you don't need Psychic Seed for that. The singular special defense boost probably isn't too impactful against Quiver Dance or Calm Mind users anyhow.

Choice Scarf Ditto on Psychic Terrain runs into the same Booster Energy issue. You just lose against BE speed. Basically, fast BE mons are death to PT teams. Choice Scarf Ditto takes up a slot as speed control that isn't good enough speed control. I have this same issue with many different mons on Psychic Terrain teams, including BE Valiant. Anything that was faster just wins against you. In that specific case, it was most commonly Roaring Moon, Iron Boulder, and Barraskewda.

Priority is absolutely an issue for Ditto. This is actually why I though Grassy Seed might be better. Most of the priority in the tier is still physical. Most of the setup sweepers you see are physical. I think you take the matchups Ditto can win and let the teammates handle the ones it can't. But to be honest, I haven't tested Grassy Seed Ditto nearly enough to know if it can win enough important matchups this way. That said, Grassy Seed + Terra Steel would probably have pretty good survivability for a Ditto. You can resist Grassy Glide, E-Speed, Bullet Punch, and Ice Shard. You resist Stored Power as well.

I think Focus Sash is the only other item we discussed that could potentially help with priority. Psychic Seed against Bolt is so niche that I would simply rather leave that to teammates.

I have used ditto on a stall team once and it's not horrible, just kinda meh. Against bulkier teams it thrives for example against glowking teams, but against more offensive teams it sucks.
Ditto can't win 1v1 against most setup sweepers, but it can if they are chipped, which most of the time they will be. And while you are right about the tera issue, I was going to mention that myself, ditto can use a defensive tera like steel, water or ghost to beat that attacker. Let's say Zama. Due to it's HP stat being higher, it should win. However, ditto could tera ghost and now it can blank most attacks since they do like 5% max. From their you could start sweeping with ditto while you still have a Zama in the back.
There are multiple other special setup sweepers. Off the top of my head, there is Darkrai, deoxys speed (surprised you didn't say that), primarina, serperior and enam. So psychic seed could work. Scarf Ditto on P-Terrain teams though, yeah that probably doesn't work.
I do agree that sash and grassy seed are probably the most viable items for ditto besides scarf, but if you are using ditto, you're already being gimmicky, so leaning harder into that wouldn't hurt too much.

 

[Morkal]

Morkal if you're still here, could you do us a favor and look into dewgong and what its optimal place in the meta would be? i'd do it myself but i'm at work right now

Sorry I haven't been active; I don't think I've ever been this busy with schoolwork in life practically... well ever tbh. I'll try to get on to play more but I've only been able to do some bits of meta work here and there. definitely has potential but I'd need to get caught up on current meta trends before I start putting out niche analysis posts again. I'll keep you all updated, cheers folks!

 

[Bold School]

There are multiple other special setup sweepers. Off the top of my head, there is Darkrai, deoxys speed (surprised you didn't say that), primarina, serperior and enam. So psychic seed could work. Scarf Ditto on P-Terrain teams though, yeah that probably doesn't work.

Most of those mons tend not to boost speed, though. So this actually isn't as much of an issue for Ditto. It wouldn't necesarrily be at a disadvantage to face Calm Mind or Nasty Plot on mons that aren't also BE Speed. Though Enamorus often runs Scarf and would be an issue. I guess Serp could Scale Shot if it wanted to run a non-Contrary set? Anyways, Volc, Enam, and potentially Iron Moth are the main ones I see Ditto particularly struggling with.

I didn't mention D-Speed because I don't run or see sweepers. It likes to run moves like Psychoboost and Superpower that lower its offensive stats on one side. This makes outright sweeps much harder. Something like Nasty Plot would still get outrun by BE speed mons. You could maybe run Cosmic Power or Calm Mind and Stored Power. But it would take multiple turns of setup to get going. I honestly don't know what would be most optimal for a D-Speed sweeper set. I do know of the PP stall set, but you aren't trying to damage with that one.

IMO, Psychic Seed would be best to try on something like Gouging Fire, where many players try to hit it with special attacks since the base defense is so high.

As far as Ditto is concerned, I do still think the physical sweepers are more numerous/tricky to matchup with. You can certainly try Psychic Seed Ditto if you want to. Good luck running Ditto on Psychic Terrain. Good luck running Psychic Terrain in general. Also, good luck running Ditto in general. Personally, I don't think it will be good based on my experiences with Psychic Terrain teams. But I would love to be proven wrong.

 

[Heatranator]

Most of those mons tend not to boost speed, though. So this actually isn't as much of an issue for Ditto. It wouldn't necesarrily be at a disadvantage to face Calm Mind or Nasty Plot on mons that aren't also BE Speed. Though Enamorus often runs Scarf and would be an issue. I guess Serp could Scale Shot if it wanted to run a non-Contrary set? Anyways, Volc, Enam, and potentially Iron Moth are the main ones I see Ditto particularly struggling with.

I didn't mention D-Speed because I don't run or see sweepers. It likes to run moves like Psychoboost and Superpower that lower it's offensive stats on one side. This makes outright sweeps much harder. Something like Nasty Plot would still get outrun by BE speed mons. You could maybe run Cosmic Power or Calm Mind and Stored Power. But it would take multiple turns of setup to get going. I honestly don't know what would be most optimal for a D-Speed sweeper set. I do know of the PP stall set, but you aren't trying to damage with that one.

IMO, Psychic Seed would be best to try on something like Gouging Fire, where many players try to hit it with special attacks since the base defense is so high.

As far as Ditto is concerned, I do still think the physical sweepers are more numerous/tricky to matchup with. You can certainly try Psychic Seed Ditto if you want to. Good luck running Ditto on Psychic Terrain. Good luck running Psychic Terrain in general. Also, good luck running Ditto in general. Personally, I don't think it will be good based on my experiences with Psychic Terrain teams. But I would love to be proven wrong.

Yeah, Ditto probably wouldn't be any good in OU. Imma try to use it in OU on a psychic terrain team on my alt account (I don't want my ELO to potentially tank a lot).
This is the team btw, I might change some members around though.
https://pokepast.es/6ed9a7d5369939c4
Edit: Already got a use case of ditto working well, against a gholdengo which is usually a bit of a difficult matchup for psychic terrain teams.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2093398535

 

[arnimacarni]

Me waking up on April 1st to no shenanigans and losing to a Pincurchin team:

 

[Conflux123]

I see. That just sounds like it would still be too problematic for me. Roaring Moon with BE speed is the bigger problem for most teams that aren't defensive.

Yes I struggled with it as speed control against a good hyper offence team. It wasn’t great.

 

[Bold School]

Yeah, Ditto probably wouldn't be any good in OU. Imma try to use it in OU on a psychic terrain team on my alt account (I don't want my ELO to potentially tank a lot).
This is the team btw, I might change some members around though.
https://pokepast.es/6ed9a7d5369939c4
Edit: Already got a use case of ditto working well, against a gholdengo which is usually a bit of a difficult matchup for psychic terrain teams.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2093398535

Scarf Indeedee is decent, but you might want to run Trick for the stall matchup. You can cripple a wall that way.

Dark Pulse may be better coverage on D-Speed, particularly if you are keeping Tera Dark. I primarily run that Tera for Knock Off. But Expanding Force over Psycho Boost is interesting since it avoids the drop. The speed EVs in particular can probably be better optimized.

I don't have much to say on the team other than it seems like it was made for testing speed control on PT. You just put Scarf Indeede, Ditto, and 4 fast mons on it. I also noticed you were testing Psychic Seed on a third mon on Roaring Moon. Moon has fairly decent special bulk already so it might be decent. I do similar things when creating test teams, but you might not want half your team to have Psychic Seed in a finalized version.

 

[Heatranator]

Scarf Indeedee is decent, but you might want to run Trick for the stall matchup. You can cripple a wall that way.

Dark Pulse may be better coverage on D-Speed, particularly if you are keeping Tera Dark. I primarily run that Tera for Knock Off. But Expanding Force over Psycho Boost is interesting since it avoids the drop. The speed EVs in particular can probably be better optimized.

I don't have much to say on the team other than it seems like it was made for testing speed control on PT. You just put Scarf Indeede, Ditto, and 4 fast mons on it. I also noticed you were testing Psychic Seed on a third mon on Roaring Moon. Moon has fairly decent special bulk already so it might be decent. I do similar things when creating test teams, but you might not want half your team to have Psychic Seed in a finalized version.

Yeah, I literally created in 5 minutes, so I'll use your suggestions. Moon was kinda an experimentation because P-terrain teams struggle a lot with gambit and dark types in general, so moon is a great counter to them.
Edit: Implemented the changes. For Deo-S specifically, I went 152/252/104+. It's basically the spread I normally use for speed, but maxed out special attack because you mainly are going to be spamming expanding force. I'm thinking of using agility metagross instead of hawlucha cause it gets knock off and is a beast offensively with boosted psychic fangs.

 

[Heatranator]

They redid the april fools joke again.
Some of my favourites

And specifically for Just A Shroom God

Man, I love april fools day. What are your favourite april fools sprites?

 

[Moyashi]

Holy shit that Breloom sprite is gold (I love the sprite that pops up for a mon behind a substitue). But I also love Ursaluna's sprite.

 

[Heatranator]

Holy shit that Breloom sprite is gold (I love the sprite that pops up for a mon behind a substitue). But I also love Ursaluna's sprite.

Holy shit, it is great. I also love how when it dissapears, there is a sniper mark on it.

Also, wtf are these nightmare sprites.

 

[j0nathan]

They redid the april fools joke again.
Some of my favourites
View attachment 620885View attachment 620886View attachment 620887View attachment 620888View attachment 620890View attachment 620891View attachment 620892View attachment 620893View attachment 620894View attachment 620895View attachment 620896
And specifically for Just A Shroom God
View attachment 620897
Man, I love april fools day. What are your favourite april fools sprites?

My favourites rn:
(haven't looked at everything)

happy april fools day

 

[RainWaiv]

Happy april fools day.
Surprise the OU council didn't unban all the D-Tier ubers to prove it's a shitty idea. I had a team prepped for that too.

 

[Heatranator]

Holy shit, the shinies also have sprites. That's why there were two different darkrai sprites.

 

[Conflux123]

Holy shit, it is great. I also love how when it dissapears, there is a sniper mark on it.
View attachment 620912
Also, wtf are these nightmare sprites.
View attachment 620903View attachment 620908View attachment 620909View attachment 620910View attachment 620911

lol that iron hands is a homage to some tcg players’ panic when the ex got revealed.

 

[YubelVT]

I’ve actually tried ditto in OU and it wasn’t that bad on balance.

The difference between OU ditto and Ubers ditto is that Ubers ditto has like 1-2 juicy targets on nearly every team and just isn't as consistently good in OU.

 

[Tio Chico]

 

[BolTingBlazie]

Happy april fools day.
Surprise the OU council didn't unban all the D-Tier ubers to prove it's a shitty idea. I had a team prepped for that too.

I mean most of them are pretty obvious on why they shouldn't be tested, no one here is asking for a Reshiram, Arceus Bug, or Dialga Origin unban for very obvious reasons as they all would steamroll the tier.

Would have been funny since I think Lugia would unironically be the worst of the D tier ubers down here if we dropped them all for April fools at once for the day, considering that if every D rank was freed for a day Lugia would have to worry constantly about Reshiram obliterating it thanks to turboblaze making Reshiram hearthflame at home

Would have been a chaotic april fools, but hey at least we got the sprites

Also Natdex actually is testing Lugia and they made sure to announce it before April fools even started...

Would have thought we would have tested it first considering it doesn't have toxic or thunder wave in SV...

 

[Conflux123]

The difference between OU ditto and Ubers ditto is that Ubers ditto has like 1-2 juicy targets on nearly every team and just isn't as consistently good in OU.

Yes. Especially given HO in Ubers does not utilise a lot of Booster speed users.

 

[YubelVT]

Yes. Especially given HO in Ubers does not utilise a lot of Booster speed users.

Given that miraidon is still legal in ubers for some reason that's not really an issue either because electric terrain still exists and I'm pretty sure that ditto's stolen quark drive should still be activated. That's the last of the ubers related postings in the OU thread tho does anyone like heatran!

 

[Conflux123]

Given that miraidon is still legal in ubers for some reason that's not really an issue either because electric terrain still exists and I'm pretty sure that ditto's stolen quark drive should still be activated. That's the last of the ubers related postings in the OU thread tho does anyone like heatran!

When I’ve played against it with something like HO it always stopped something but would then be too chipped to stop other sweepers later. Tera grass opens up moon as well.

 

[YubelVT]

When I’ve played against it with something like HO it always stopped something but would then be too chipped to stop other sweepers later. Tera grass opens up moon as well.

The thing about the bulky tera grass set is that it's meant to either completely hard wall some things (like non tera ground iron moth) or force unfavorable 50/50s with stuff like roaring moon which packs the moves that beat both of the types it can be but has to predict correctly or its eating a wisp. Notably it does completely wall gouging fires that aren't running both dragon stab and earthquake while 2hkoing back with earth power. Genuinely my favorite pokemon to use outside of h-zoro in pre-home format

 

[Fusion Flare]

what, no gimmick for this april fools? not even a suspect?

oh, haha finch, i get it, with a tier like this, who needs jokes?

 

[Duck Chris]

This weekend in Smogon Tournaments

in the Offical Smogon Tournament Semifinals
Storm Zone vs Thiago Nunes - Replay
Storm Zone vs Thiago Nunes - Replay
Two very interesting games here with some strong aggressive offence from Storm Zone facing off against Thiago's choices of even more aggressive booster spam and some Volt Turn galore featuring a few too many UUs. Really fun games emphasizing how many different flavours of offence are viable right now.

Antonazz vs DugZa - Replay
Antonazz vs DugZa - Replay
Antonazz vs DugZa - Replay
Close set between two Landorus/Slowking enthusiasts featuring some cool techs. Tera Fire Cinderace is an absolute monster to switch into even without Choice Band, very cool choice.

Great run from the eliminated players, Finals this week should be amazing.

in Smogon Premiere League
Trosko vs hellom - Replay
An insanely close and dramatic balance vs balance match coming down to lucky breaks and moves just barely failing to kill. Luck being a factor may be demotivating for the players but I think it just goes to show how insanely close these players are in skill and teambuilding ability. This game truly looked like two of the top players in the metagame giving it their all.
myjava vs xavgb - Replay
This game got ugly with luck at the end which spoiled an interesting matchup between fat balance and Rockpon offence. Myjava remains very hard to build against with team choices ranging from all out HO to Fat Balance like this and even stall earlier in the semifinals. Xavgb played really well and got spoiled by hax but otherwise showed that they still have what it takes to play at the top level of SV OU after an up and down season.

in Smogon Tour - it was SS week so no SV games.

The week ahead - Two Trophy Finals
Storm Zone vs Antonazz - OST Finals
This should be a crazy banger matchup between two ladder players who seem to be weaving the meta together wtih innovative and solid offensive teams backed with smart play. Storm Zone has the creative edge here so I put them in the driver's seat.

SPL
JJ09LIE vs Mada
Storm Zone vs myjava - Highlight match
S1nn0hC0nfirm3d vs Poek
Trosko vs Luispeikou
Four bangers!!! Tune in to smogtours server Sunday to see the best of the best face off for their team trophy.

edit: the best april fools sprite is Ronaldhino Soccer 64 Rabbit