[DISCUSSION] (somewhat) monthly sm ou metagame update

[croissant]

whats poppin party people its ya boy back from the dead after a few months of being done with pokémon. you might remember me as esteemed moderator écarlate or even elly if you're been here way back, i decided to come back because this place looks kinda dead lol. anyways, welcome to the somewhat weekly sm ou metagame update, where i will make threads about what is changing in the sm ou metagame, new sets that are being used, new trends, etc. lets get right into dis!

new mons!!!



-starting off we have naganadel which is imo very broken; nasty plot + dragonium z has very few counters (thunder wave chansey, av tyranitar (which is a horrible set because you give up ttar's amazing wallbreaking potential, but still checks naga so its usage is justified, but i really hate using it) and spdef heatran with protect to block the z move (somewhat)) and if it gets a kill, beast boost makes it almost impossible to revenge kill; banded weavile and adamant life orb mamo with ice shard and scarf protean greninja with ice beam are the only reliable revenge killers, because faster scarfers like koko i guess are unable to kill it without good chip damage. definitely a super scary mon, i love abusing this thing but i still think it would be healthier if ou got rid of that thing since its super centralizing and forces the usage of mons that would be otherwise pretty bad/not optimal or subpar sets like spdef heatran over max speed utility or av ttar over cb.



-blacephalon is a very cool pokémon actually, specs really gives balance a hard time and scarf is cool because it can run a naive/hasty nature + smack down to be a cool revenge killer that beats volcarona, which is a very useful niche on ou. however, naganadel's presence indirectly makes blace worse, because like i mentioned before, ttar is now very common and runs av over choice band, which is pretty bad since blace has no way to get past av ttar since it cant use hp fighting since it requires 4 imperfect ivs, and since its a legendary it has always at least 3 perfect ivs. but if/when naganadel gets banned, i expect av ttar usage to die down quite a bit, and thus making blace much better in the meta. very cool mon.



-i honestly expected stakataka to be horrible just like bastiodon (lol), but its actually pretty good: gyro ball combined with 13 speed and 131 attack makes this thing a really big threat actually, and it also gets trick room which makes it a very solid otr (aka offensive trick room) mon. you can also run a lonely nature with 14 defense ivs to get an attack beast boost. so far ive used both choice band on a full trick room team and otr with rockium z on full trick room and non-trick room teams, and i dont really like choice band because i think that trick room pokémon enjoy having the freedom to switch up moves to fully abuse trick room. however i think rockium z is really solid, both on dedicated trick room teams or on regular teams that just want to use it as a win con. the bulk is also fantastic since its hard af to ohko it, but the defensive typing is pretty bad so its definitely manageable. overall a pretty cool mon, not top tier or anything and it does have some really bad matchups but id recommend you try it out, i had a blast using it!

old mons with new stuff!!!



-like i said heatran has shifted from max speed utility sets to spdef sets and ttar has shifted from choice band sets to av sets during the transition from sm to usum. already talked about those so i wont really get too deep into those.



-mega latios is usually considered a bad mega, but i think it has a cool niche in this meta; with the attack boost it gains upon mega evolution, mlatios can lure in av ttar, a common lati switch in, with eq and heavily weaken it, making it much easier for teammates like blacephalon to get past it, and a regular latios wouldnt be able to do that as well due to latios having much less attack. it also can get a surprise ko on heatran, which is also usually a good lati check. it didnt get anything new, but i did get a new niche with the popularity of heatran and tyranitar, give this a try!



-a few mons got sticky web in usum (slurpuff, araquanid and ribombee) which is cool. ribombee seems cool on paper because its fast and has offensive presence and with moonblast + hp steel it beats magic bouncers like msableye and mdiancie but in reality its pretty bad since it doesnt really hit hard and cant really do much else than get webs up, unlike smeargle which can use rocks + webs and spore or shuckle which is even better since it gets rocks + webs but also encore which prevents stuff like kartana from setting up in its face. so yeah i dont recommend running ribombee at all.

someone told me to try belly drum + sticky web slurpuff and as expected, its pretty bad.

araquanid is actually pretty cool; it actually has good offensive presence with water bubble boosted liquidations and has access to magic coat which is cool, and its also really bulky and soft check stuff like ash gren which is great. it also cant get burned my mega sableye due to water bubble, making it able to 1v1 it (although you dont really need webs vs stall anyways), and with focus sash, which is the set ive been using, you can live diamond storm from diancie and kill it with liquidation, tho you are heavily weakened after and will probably have a hard time setting up webs. overall a cool addition, would recommend to try out that set!


(and also tornadus-t and hydreigon)

-so a bunch of new mons got defog, but i will only talk about those that are relevant in the current metagame since i dont want to repeat that x mon is bad 30 times. starting off with lando-t, a lot of people were saying "lando can literally do everything now, pls ban!1!1!" but i actually think defog lando is pretty mediocre; lando's best niche is being the best stealth rock user in the meta, being able to run offensive rocks to pressure stall builds and balance or defensive rocks to blanket check physical attackers in general while keeping some offensive presence. by running defog, you are actually just losing that niche, which doesnt make sense to me, and defog + stealth rock doesnt really fit on a mon where you really need your 4 moveslots. the only set which can effectively use defog in my experience is scarf lando; its a cool filler move, especially since scarf lando only really needs eq/uturn/hp ice for defensive landos, and it forces a lot of switches which makes for great occasions to defog away hazards. but overall, defog lando is definitely overhyped.

tapu koko is cool as an offensive defoger, especially since the well known core or kyurem-b + koko doesnt need a defoger like latios anymore since koko can use it, giving more options for the 6th slot on these teams which is cool. not a super big deal but its definitely a neat addition.

rotom-w is a pretty cool defoger actually, but i also think this got a bit overhyped; yeah defog is fun but it needs to give up either will-o-wisp, which makes checking things much harder, or pain split aka its only recovery (tho you can run iapapa berry to compensate for that, which is a decent set). also i think the power creep this gen was a bit too much, ands its the fact that it cant check prominent threats like the tapus and ash gren makes this mon rather underwhelming.

gliscor can now use defog in conjunction with poison heal, which makes it a solid defoger due to its good longevity; ive been using taunt/eq/roost/defog on a balance team and ive had good success with it, give this mon a try!

other mons like hydreigon and tornadus-t can use defog to decent success, but arent really top tier, so i thought id only give them a quick mention.



-i thought volcarona would get much better due to the new defogers, but av ttars surge in usage arguably made that pokémon worse since it can even eat a +1 savage spinout from volcarona, so thats unfortunate lol



-bisharp is cool right now because it really enjoys the new defogers since it can switch into them and get an attack boost, and it can also be useful against sticky webs, which became popular again due to the new mons that got the move, since it gains an attack boost when switching into webs too. cool mon.



-toxapex got knock off because apparently it wasnt annoying enough already lol

thats about it for now, probably missed some stuff but im tired, so if i missed anything please post it down below. i would also enjoy any feedback about this thread so i could make it better for next week, so let me know what you'd like to see in those threads. thanks for reading, have a blessed day!