Metagame Metagame Discussion

[Colin]

From my point of view, Gastly is a very important reason why the meta is overcentralized. Mienfoo and Vullaby are nearly mandatory on most good teams, in part because they're just that good into everything else too, but also in part because they're the only pivots that can both threaten all common Gastly sets (if tera isn't used) in a 1v1 when they're healthy, and be reliably good into the rest of the meta, unlike both Zorua and Elekid. Voltorb-hisui can also chip Gastly, but only if the Gastly is properly scouted to not be Choice Scarf. Gastly doesn't usually force otherwise bad Pokemon to be used, but it does make it much more difficult to use Pokemon such as Mareanie, Snubbull, Timburr, and Wattrel, limiting what types of teams can be effective into the meta. Other threats such as aforementioned Mienfoo and Vullaby, as well as Growlithe-Hisui and Shellder are also major pieces that limit team diversity, which is why this meta isn't as diverse as prior svlc metas. I support tiering action, even though there isn't a clear target that is near indisputably broken.


most teams boil down to Mienfoo + Vullaby + Vullaby switch in + 2 speed control/breaker slots, plus 1 of either another pivot, endgame wincon such as Shellder, or dedicated Mienfoo switch in. This format can be deviated from, but its difficult to make consistent and rarely has a distinct enough upside to be worth trying to do it. Hyper Offense can also be tried, but its generally inconsistent. There isn't a lot of room for creativity with which Pokemon you will use to glue a team together, especially as you must cover other threats such as Growlithe and Gastly with those slots too.

 

[Kipkluif]

Enough has been said about Gastly, there seems to be a sufficient sentiment for a suspect in my eyes, but that decision is not up to me. However, I would like to point out that LC Open is starting later this month (according to the tournament schedule), and it would probably be good to get action on it out of the way before that starts.

 

[Heatranator]

I support a gastly suspect purely because it means that gimmighoul roaming would be given an opportunity to shine. It has the same speed stat as gastly, slightly better bulk, decent special attack and nasty plot to boost its special attack to high heaven. Does have a piss poor movepool, but I've still had success with it.

 

[vndrevc]

gastly is just not healthy for the metagame oO

it's just bizarre being obbligated to run stunky or pawniard so you dont lose a pokemon everytime LO gastly enters the match, a suspect before open starts would be awesome for the tier and for the tournament

 

[crisiscloud]

So Gastly was banned today, correct? I'm hearing mixed signals. I pulled up formats.ts but wanted to make sure it was officially banned first.

 

[Hacker]

So Gastly was banned today, correct? I'm hearing mixed signals. I pulled up formats.ts but wanted to make sure it was officially banned first.

yes its banned

 

[crisiscloud]

yes its banned

thank you, commit made and pull request sent :]

 

[Heatranator]

So since gastly is banned, I'd like to talk about another ghost type that can fill its shoes a bit (you may have heard about it from me a bit).

Gimmighoul is a mon that has a lot of impressive traits in the meta and can do similarish things that gastly did. The main thing is that it has the same speed stat as gastly and slightly higher bulk, which means eviolite sets are better on it. Now of course, it does have a basically non existent movepool and much lower offenses, but it can still pull through most of the time.
Gimmighoul-Roaming @ Oran Berry
Ability: Run Away
Level: 5
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 76 HP / 236 SpA / 196 Spe
Timid Nature
- Nasty Plot
- Shadow Ball
- Power Gem
- Thief
This is the main moveset that works on gimmighoul for me. Firstly, you nasty plot up in order to raise your offenses and most likely the opponent will be hitting you and unless its super effective, which due to mono ghost typing it should be most of the time, you will survive the hit and get oran berry recovery (wish we had berry juice). Then, you can steal the item of your opponent, which will most likely be eviolite, permanently crippling your opponent while giving yourself a great item. From here, you can fire off powerful attacks that can do a lot of damage. For reference, a +2 shadow ball has a 6.3% chance to ko mienfoo. Not the most powerful, but with chip and a potential tera, it can work.
You can probably also try scarf, specs, LO or eviolite variants if this set doesn't work. I'll drop some sample sets for others to try out (due to the lacklustre movepool, a lot of them are similar)
Gimmighoul-Roaming @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Run Away
Level: 5
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 236 SpA / 76 SpD / 196 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Power Gem
- Night Shade
- Tera Blast
Gimmighoul-Roaming @ Choice Specs
Ability: Run Away
Level: 5
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 236 SpA / 76 SpD / 196 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Power Gem
- Night Shade
- Tera Blast
Gimmighoul-Roaming @ Life Orb
Ability: Run Away
Level: 5
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 236 SpA / 76 SpD / 196 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Power Gem
- Nasty Plot
- Tera Blast
Gimmighoul-Roaming @ Eviolite
Ability: Run Away
Level: 5
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 236 SpA / 76 SpD / 196 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Power Gem
- Nasty Plot
- Tera Blast

 

[crisiscloud]

So since gastly is banned, I'd like to talk about another ghost type that can fill its shoes a bit (you may have heard about it from me a bit).

Gimmighoul is a mon that has a lot of impressive traits in the meta and can do similarish things that gastly did. The main thing is that it has the same speed stat as gastly and slightly higher bulk, which means eviolite sets are better on it. Now of course, it does have a basically non existent movepool and much lower offenses, but it can still pull through most of the time.
Gimmighoul-Roaming @ Oran Berry
Ability: Run Away
Level: 5
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 76 HP / 236 SpA / 196 Spe
Timid Nature
- Nasty Plot
- Shadow Ball
- Power Gem
- Thief
This is the main moveset that works on gimmighoul for me. Firstly, you nasty plot up in order to raise your offenses and most likely the opponent will be hitting you and unless its super effective, which due to mono ghost typing it should be most of the time, you will survive the hit and get oran berry recovery (wish we had berry juice). Then, you can steal the item of your opponent, which will most likely be eviolite, permanently crippling your opponent while giving yourself a great item. From here, you can fire off powerful attacks that can do a lot of damage. For reference, a +2 shadow ball has a 6.3% chance to ko mienfoo. Not the most powerful, but with chip and a potential tera, it can work.
You can probably also try scarf, specs, LO or eviolite variants if this set doesn't work. I'll drop some sample sets for others to try out (due to the lacklustre movepool, a lot of them are similar)
Gimmighoul-Roaming @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Run Away
Level: 5
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 236 SpA / 76 SpD / 196 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Power Gem
- Night Shade
- Tera Blast
Gimmighoul-Roaming @ Choice Specs
Ability: Run Away
Level: 5
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 236 SpA / 76 SpD / 196 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Power Gem
- Night Shade
- Tera Blast
Gimmighoul-Roaming @ Life Orb
Ability: Run Away
Level: 5
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 236 SpA / 76 SpD / 196 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Power Gem
- Nasty Plot
- Tera Blast
Gimmighoul-Roaming @ Eviolite
Ability: Run Away
Level: 5
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 236 SpA / 76 SpD / 196 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Power Gem
- Nasty Plot
- Tera Blast

See, this is interesting to me. The main use of Gimmighoul I’ve seen is Rattled shenanigans in its chest form, which still doesn’t get it fast enough to outspeed any meta threats in most cases and usually ends up setting up one NP and dying.
With 196 Spe and a positive nature it hits 18 speed, which is faster than max speed Zorua-H at 17 and so could have a niche as a faster ghost.
However, ghost types are…not super important in this meta? While they’re nice to have and have a good STAB attacking type, Gastly was good for other reasons besides its typing. Spin-blocking isn’t as big of a deal and knock off is everywhere, unlike evolved formats. They do, however, block common priority such as Foo Fake Out and Magby Mach Punch, but usually ghost tera on a sweeper like Shellder is used to achieve this.
Ghost STAB is also rather spammable and a max investment neutral nature SpAtk stat of 17 is not bad at all in combination with Shadow Ball.
I see the merits of this mon on paper by itself, but what keeps me from being sold on it is…why would I put this on a team?
LC teams have slot syndrome as it is. If a team needs a Ghost I usually would want to put Zorua-H, who not only is immune to Ghost instead of weak to it but also has an actual ability and a movepool.
I understand you like the mon, and it doesn’t seem instantly unviable, but it’s predicability (it can really only run four moves), mono-typing, weakness to Knock Off and Vullaby, etc hold it back. I’m curious: What does it do on a team? What teams have you built with Gimmighoul-R?

 

[NightEmerald]

Question, why is Stench not banned in Little Cup? Came across a Stunky that flinched me with knock off, and I thought that would be banned as it is in other metagames.

 

[crisiscloud]

Question, why is Stench not banned in Little Cup? Came across a Stunky that flinched me with knock off, and I thought that would be banned as it is in other metagames.

I'd assume it's the same reason that (iirc) evasion abilities aren't banned. Flinch-hax isn't a prevalent enough "strategy" in Little Cup for Stench to receive tiering action over other, more high-priority and usage threats (such as the recent Gastly ban).

 

[Coconut]

Question, why is Stench not banned in Little Cup? Came across a Stunky that flinched me with knock off, and I thought that would be banned as it is in other metagames.

Stench is not banned in any other metagames, nor is it any good to my knowledge.

 

[NightEmerald]

Stench is not banned in any other metagames, nor is it any good to my knowledge.

I must have been mistaken, then. Thanks for the clarification!

 

[Éric]

Today i wanna talk about a mon i think deserves a chance, and most of you might already know:

Currently, Aipom is on the LC banlist. I do think that should change, not now necessarily, but whenever.

a bit of backstory

Aipom got banned the moment it dropped with DLC 1. At that time, SCL was right about to start, and the LC council decided that it was best for the sake of the tier and the tournament to not allow it, as it was a mystery if it would be broken or not, and that metagame was only gonna last for the duration of the tournament anyway. I do support that decision, and I understand what happened after and is probably gonna happen after this anyway.
For more context, Aipom has always been a fine Pokémon (A- in DPP, B- in BW and B2 in the unofficial ORAS VR) in the LC metagame, at least up until it got Tail Slap in USM. That allegedly broke it (i never played that metagame), and it got quickbanned and from what i'm told it was the most stupid thing there has ever been.

This is a Pokémon with 19 speed, which makes it the second fastest in the metagame, only behind Voltorb and tied with Diglett-Alola. That, coupled with a multihit stab and a good movepool, makes it very scary at first glance. However, in my opinion, there are many factors that would actually make it a very balanced mon.
For starters, while Fury swipes is an okay move, it is NOT Tail slap. Tail slap absolutely broke this mon, but Fury swipes just never has. Historically, this Pokémon has never been that much of a menace. I know, different metagames and all of that, but really, we have been able to deal with this thing pretty effectively, even without actually wanting to, with the same mons pool basically. Things like being unable to OHKO Mienfoo and Foongus, faster mons (as it is very frail), trapping, Intimidate and priority have always been good enough to keep it in check, and SV LC does not lack in these resources.
Furthermore, we have new, very good stuff that deals with it very effectively. Glimmet, Growlithe-Hisui, Voltorb-Hisui, Tinkatink and Mudbray being as good as it is are very potent forms of counterplay.
I also think this mon would suffer from a 4MSS if it was freed. Obviously Fury Swipes, Fake out and Knock off are a given, but you probably would want all of U-turn, Grass knot, Brick break and Fire punch. Without them, it would always get checked by something on the opposing team. This is not to say you can't alleviate this issue with your teammates, but i do think its something to consider.
It also would have to deal with massive Life orb recoil and Stealth rock weakness which make it much frailer than it actually is, and more easily revenege killed by stuff like Sucker punch, Voltorb and scarfers like Growlithe or Gothita.
It would obviously have its strengths, being the 2nd fastest mon in the tier and having Fake out, U-turn and Knock off give it massive utility, but not to the point where it would shred teams like it allegedly would. It would also have to deal with Fury swipes' terrible accuracy, and the fact that it would get paralyzed on a game to game basis by Voltorb's Static.
Lastly, i wanna address the elephant in the room: Tera Normal Aipom is supposed to have massive damage output. Sure, it probably OHKOes half the tier i dont deny that. But having to waste your tera to normal STAB in each given game to actually break doesn't seem that game breaking to me. Losing the ability to tera defensively is a massive hinderance, and relying on a STAB tera would just make offensive counterplay much more reliable, while admittedly making defensive counterplay pretty limited.

TL;DR Aipom deserves a chance. Not saying now, not saying before, but at some point. I think this mon is unjustly banned from when we actually thought it would get Tail slap, and it has no reason to stay like this. However, I'm not saying "the council is doing a terrible job" or "the tier leaders just dont listen to the playerbase". This tier has been well handed pretty quickly this time around, and I would understand it if there was "no need" of an Aipom suspect test rn. However I, and many others actually, really think it deserves a chance eventually. Also, I'd love it if this sparked some support or even discussion, as I'm actually curious as to whether or not I'm just crazy lol

 

[westSasori]

I would like to comment on vullaby, with gastly output, vullaby NP is becoming a problem, vullaby limits teams and causes big problems, this is nothing new, it was already banned in the last generation for the same reason, vullaby is above the others , we didn't see his full potential due to gastly who was even stronger, vullaby makes me sick, you can simply lose 6-0 if you activate your weak armor at the wrong time, if it was already powerful before imagine now with tera, there is perfect coverage, in addition to the flinch to go with it and beautiful defensive stats, the vullaby is broken, it was restricted to the physical set due to the gastly, but now there is no one to restrict it, and that is a big problem.

 

[vndrevc]

i think it's time for us to start thinking about a shellder suspect test.

the way that it wins games is so unhealthy, it forces a lot of weird positioning, makes teambuilding kinda restrictive with the teras/mons and it can setup in front of almost everything. it is so hard to keep the right mons healthy for shellder, and even then it might not be enough, like, i can have a healthy fast mienfoo with eviolite, but what if it is tera water/ icicle spear? i can have my mareanie full and w evio but what if it is tera rock? ok, ill position my voltorb/stunky so it cannot setup, but what if it is tera fairy? the discussion might come down to "oh, so tera is the problem right?" i mean, it could be, but even without tera shellder can get stupid, since a LOT of teams rely on tera water mienfoo/mudbray to deal with it. we just had gastly banned but even then i think it is fair that shellder gets a suspect test.

im tired of losing games on ladder/watching tournament games that shellder just straight up wins after the shellder player forces a weird posicioning.

"but if we ban shellder, some threats might get hard punish, like growlithe", we have some growlithe answers still land it is not that hard to deal comparing to shellder.

thats my opinion on it, of course it is not like porygon but it is still really strong against a lot, and since we are not going to ban tera, i think a suspect test on shellder should be fair.

 

[Hacker]

I do not think that right now we are in need of an immediate suspect test anything but I do support a suspect test on Gothita.

Banning Shellder basically kills all forms of HO, which in itself isn't really an issue but like... I haven't had any trouble with Shellder/HO over other guys like Gothita which can make teambuilding a massive headache with it just being able to delete checks for some of our best mons like Hisuian Growlithe and Voltorb. I don't really see the problem with Shellder right now when we have excellent options like Stunky, Pawniard, and the uptrending Grookey that all check it really well with priority. Alongside that, Shellder never can really tell if its gonna win or not because you will always have the options to defensive Tera vs it and if you drop Icicle Spear for like Substitute you lose the ability to kill stuff like Mienfoo as long as your opponent preserves their Eviolite on it.

The best checks to Hisuian Voltorb are Foongus and Mienfoo, which Gothita smokes. The best check to Hisuian Growlithe is Mareanie, which Gothita smokes. Isn't exactly rocket science to realize how Gothita could be problematic. When you read through this you could just ask why not just ban those two instead but, I think it's much more easy to handle those type of mons when there isn't some magical pokemon that can delete its checks with no problem. Mienfoo + Gothita + Hisuian Growlithe / Hisuian Voltorb (you can also easily fit both dog and holtorb) is very oppressive and makes both playing around and building around them challenging because you'll have to use your defensive Tera to not get owned by Gothita, but that leaves you vulnerable to the rest of your opponents team most likely as well as the fact that if you defensive Tera, checking these guys becomes even more difficult and its just a lose lose situation for whoever is fighting Gothita.

While on topic and since its been brought up in the thread NP Vullaby is a niche at best set, and should be incredibly easy to tell whether it is or not on team preview. If you think its NP its really not hard to play around unless you built poorly which I don't really think is a fault of Vullaby itself.

tldr ban goth​

 

[Laroxyl]

I completely agree with my bro hacker gothita is really broken atm, I also didn’t have problems vs shellder, it seems difficult fitting it in a team beucase it needs a lot of support.
Shellder finds problems setting because of its slow speed, because of priorities, Tera water or steel mons and so on.
I found more annoying voltorb-h and growlithe-h than shellder, maybe also these two could be suspected, especially if we ban gothita.

Another aspect im not sure if could be broken or not is the combination of shellder, magby, vulla in screens.
I would probably suspect screens but I’m not sure if they could be broken or not, these two mons magby and shellder look broken when they are together with screens imo.

 

[Éric]

maybe IM just crazy but if ur gonna claim something as bold as this goth test you probs need replays to back it up. non gaslty meta has been out for two weeks and weve already had voltorb, shellder and gothita ban discourse. i cannot even begin to comprehend why would gothita suddenly be even close to broken when nothing has changed for it to even get that better. it is still a dream matchup for dark types to face. stunky and vullaby are already the two scariest mons to face, and giving them free turns is HORRIBLE. let’s just play the metagame and form opinions through high level building and gameplay instead of theorymonning for a week and feeling overwhelmed by the small pink girl.
this reads way too condescending i think but i dont know how to rephrase it dont take it personally at all

 

[Colin]

imo Shellder right now is kinda shoehorned into running Substitute Tera Rock due to Stunky/Pawniard and bulky Water types, unless it tries to run Tera Fairy which is okay but can't boost its power. This leaves it vulnerable to other priority users such as Trapinch and Grookey, and it also can't immediately threaten a KO on Mienfoo. Its really good because sub tera rock is insane rn, but its also predictable and easy to tech rn.

Gothita feels fine to me, but it for sure got way better with the Gastly ban. I kinda just load offenses that can kinda power through it and force favorable trades, but the pivot support for it is really reliable right now. Stunky, Vullaby, Growlithe-hisui, and more can all punish a trap, but I will admit that an early game trap is usually more valuable. Defensive tera is annoying vs goth but probably good for the Gothita team, unless they try to trap Mienfoo before the poison type. If goth gets/stays problematic it might also just be a Voltorb and Mienfoo thing as well.

Growlithe-hisui forces fire resists and/or surprise fire resist teras on every team bc tera fire is really good, but its easy enough to limit with rocks and Mienfoo that its just strong and predictable, not broken.

Screens teams are weird, because Shellder is debatably broken in screens, but apart from NP Vullaby which is okay, all the screens abusers are bad and can't dependably pull their own weight, so the oppo can pool most of their resources into beating Shellder and Vullaby, and position safely vs the screen setter.

I have limited experience with the new meta but I am slightly concerned with Voltorb Hisui.

 

[Kipkluif]

Can we finally stop pretending tera has any place in any metagame that tries to be competitive
Fille already explained it in his post a couple months ago really well, guessing teras is speculative at best and in reality boils down to hoping they are what is reasonably expected instead of a wild option that swings the game and wins on the spot. Games feel like they are won by whomever gets the tera turn right and I hate it so much, why even play the rest of the game.
I'd also say tera doesn't even give more options as it restricts at least as much as it enables, since suddenly a grass type isnt good enough to handle voltorb anymore, or a shellder check might just get tera water liquidationed.
I don't care we're late in the gen, I don't care other tiers have it too. It has sucked since the beginning and it sucks in every other tier as well. Can we please make lc the only current gen that's actually fun to play

 

[Colin]

Vullaby @ Eviolite
Ability: Weak Armor
Level: 5
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 236 Atk / 76 Def / 196 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Knock Off
- Brave Bird
- Roost
- Protect

Underrated set in current meta in my opinion. Protect not as generally applicable as U-turn, and dropping U-turn hurts, but running this set gives you a better matchup vs lead Mienfoo, so you don't have to sack Vullaby to recoil to go one for one at best. I find it useful on teams where keeping your Mienfoo's Eviolite is a better strategy than to trade Knock Offs on lead with your opponent's Mienfoo, and you don't have something such as Foongus to be a threatening anti lead. Tera isn't important with this interaction, so it can be generally flexible to whatever. The main weakness with this set is that without U-turn, its much more difficult to chip Mudbray and many other Pokemon, so you're generally likely to need removal or great counterplay to the other pivots to make up for that weakness since you won't be racking up as much chip long term. It shouldn't be the standard set, but I think it has a solid niche in this meta.