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Official 6th Generation Competitive Metagame Discussion

The Master Chief

Well-Known Member
I just noticed that unaware Quagsire serves as a decent check to common set up phsyical sweepers like lucario , gyarados, etc. I was using it earlier and it just wouldn't die to a phsyical hit.
 

MedievalMovies

Absolute Power
Avalugg would make an amazing pokemon with an assault vest. It can at least somewhat help with the horrible base sp.def

If he runs Assault Vest, he loses Leftovers, which cripples him to no end. I think you're better off just running a special wall for that, stuff like Florges and Sylveon work so very well with him.
 

MedievalMovies

Absolute Power
I am not sure where this belongs, so i decided to put it there. I have IV bred a scyther (31/31/31/x/31/31). I have not started Ev training it yet because i am not sure if my moveset is good. I will evolve it soon. Can someone tell me if this is good or not.
Scizor
Item: Scizornite
Ability Technician
Ev 252 atk/252 HP/4 Spe
Moves: Swords dance
Pursuit
Bullet Punch
Iron head

It's ok but you're failing to carry one of his most vital assests. Toss away Iron Head because it doesn't give you Technician boosts and throw in Bug Bite. Other than that I think you're all set.
 

Hakunamawatta

Poké Earth Traveller
It's ok but you're failing to carry one of his most vital assests. Toss away Iron Head because it doesn't give you Technician boosts and throw in Bug Bite. Other than that I think you're all set.
But i wont be able to do that until Poke Transfer is out
 

ajgrocks100

The Loomer

ajgrocks100

The Loomer
Talonflame should be uu. Even with Gale Wings it doesn't have the base attack to effectively abuse it plus it's walled heatran.[/QUOTE]

Heatran isnt out yet.
Your arguement is invalid.
 

Honus

Well-Known Member
Would having a spinner and a defog using poke in the same team have benefits?

The only benefit would be on a team with up to 2 hazards, where you can have an easy way to spin plus one that preserves your hazards. Honestly though Defog is probably a lot better on stall teams since there's no longer a huge task to kill the spin blocker and keep your team safe from the hazards that its walls hate, and people just arent using Spikes as much on stall anymore [Forre and Skarmory aren't particularly fantastic this gen with all the megas]. On spike stacking offense rapid spin from Excadrill or Greninja is better since Spikes is a lot of reason for your pressure, plus a good number of Defog mons are slow and kill momnentum. Defog might come in handy at times for spike stacking offense but its definitely not worth going out of your way to include on such a team.
 

McDanger

Well-Known Member
Talonflame should be uu. Even with Gale Wings it doesn't have the base attack to effectively abuse it plus it's walled heatran.

Till it sits there and sets up swords dance on it

just cause heatran "stops it" doesn't mean it should drop, if we followed that logic terrakion would have been UU cause nidoqueen walled it

Has anyone noticed this: walls are now becoming more potent stat wise than type wise.

Before, steels like skarmory, ferrothorn, heatran, and bronzong ruled.
But now, with the decreasing popularity in dragons, stats are becoming more important.
I can now see ferro becoming BL, and walls like avalugg and goodra taking over OU.

I`m going to shut this down now, if you think skarmory and such where common just for dragons, you didn't play good enough players. All of them are strong defensive pivots, setting up hazards, blocking common threats, spreading status, and leech seeding in ferrothorns case. Avalugg is so outclassed is laughable, despite its high defense is special defense is so low it makes it all void as its can't switch in easily to anything, as well as its weakness to common threats such as mega charizard, talonflame, mega lucario, mega gengar, scizor, and aegislash. Goodra is honestly crap, its outclassed by florges and sylveon, its lack of recovery hurts it a lot, and there really is no need for a special dragon wall, hence why latias isnt common anymore
 
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Kitsuneko

Well-Known Member
So I'm hearing trapping moves have become more effective now, particularly infestation. It hits 4-5 times at 1/8 (1/6 with the binding band) of the target's HP, right?
If so, Galvantula and Shuckle seems to be good solid users of them, as well as using a Sticky Web hazard.
I know Galvantula is probably going to work as a suicide lead with setting up Sticky Web, but infestation can prevent switching while you can bring out a proper counter after setting up the hazard (if given the chance). With shuckle, you can bundle it with toxic and trap stalling to annoy your opponents.
 
I`m going to shut this down now, if you think skarmory and such where common just for dragons, you didn't play good enough players. All of them are strong defensive pivots, setting up hazards, blocking common threats, spreading status, and leech seeding in ferrothorns case. Avalugg is so outclassed is laughable, despite its high defense is special defense is so low it makes it all void as its can't switch in easily to anything, as well as its weakness to common threats such as mega charizard, talonflame, mega lucario, mega gengar, scizor, and aegislash. Goodra is honestly crap, its outclassed by florges and sylveon, its lack of recovery hurts it a lot, and there really is no need for a special dragon wall, hence why latias isnt common anymore

I could see Goodra work as a decent special wall in rain with Hydration rest, but the lack of recovery hurts it a lot as a wall, and dragon type, while not bad per-se, it fails to do anything to fairies, which are pretty common right now. Avalugg, while fantastic vs a lot of physical moves, doesn't wall nearly as well because ice-type makes it weak to almost all the common physical types, so count it at half defense for all intents and purposes. Put in the fact that it gets shredded by ANY special attack, especially if it's super effective, and it's niche at best.

As for older walls falling to newer ones, it's possible, but highly unlikely. Skarmory will always have a place as a physical wall due to its solid typing, stats AND movepool. Dual entry hazards is rare, and it also has recovery with Roost, psuedo-hazing with Whirlwind or Roar, and a solid backup STAB in the form of Brave Bird. While it may not be the best in any one category, the fact that it has all of that makes it a threat.

Ferrothorn has spikes + leech seed, and a type that only leaves it weak to special fire-type moves. It can use the curse + gyro ball combo arguably better than anything else, and Vine Whip is a solid stab that hurts hard. It's a solid pokemon, and one of my favorites.

Plus, while this game has come out with several new special walls in the form of Goodra, Sylveon and Florges, let's not forget that Chansey will return with the advent of Pokemon Bank, and it will still probably be as good as ever.


So I'm hearing trapping moves have become more effective now, particularly infestation. It hits 4-5 times at 1/8 (1/6 with the binding band) of the target's HP, right?
If so, Galvantula and Shuckle seems to be good solid users of them, as well as using a Sticky Web hazard.
I know Galvantula is probably going to work as a suicide lead with setting up Sticky Web, but infestation can prevent switching while you can bring out a proper counter after setting up the hazard (if given the chance). With shuckle, you can bundle it with toxic and trap stalling to annoy your opponents.

That's possible, and gives a little extra power to certain walls. You could also potentially trap in a support pokemon with Infestation + taunt, taking it out of the fight before it can do much more unless they instantly switch out before the infestation gets off.
 
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Eaglehawk

Banned
Tyrantitar is still going to be a beast in this generation, despite all the weaknesses and new fairy type threats. The assault vest gave it more options and less predictability to go with it.

I see it as an effective check or counter to MegaGengar where he can potentially KO with pursuit, crunch, or EQ since it lost its levitate. According to calculations, with careful nature, sandstream, and assault vest, it can reach up to 738 sp. def. So yeah, it's more specially tanky than Blissey. From other sources, it's able to survive a focus blast or two from MegaGengar, as well as about 5-6 hydro pumps from Rotom Wash which makes it a bit ridiculous. Though with that setup, it leaves it a bit weak on the physical defense side, where bullet punch from Scizor can give it trouble.

Anyway, at the very least, without frisk, you'd think it could be running a choice band/scarf set. MegaTTar is also something else as dragon dance is an option for it once again in this generation, but it'll at least tell you what item it has.

To be honest, MegaTyranitar doesn't really have anything significant over Tyranitar. With Assault Vest, Tyranitar becomes significantly more bulky than MTyranitar and gives it more chances to set up DD than MTTar. Though MTTar does have a larger power boost and a higher Speed tier, the Assault Vest can potentially allow TTar to accrue more DD boosts (2-ish) and become equally threatening. Besides, in terms of a Mega Evolution spot, Tyranitar faces stiff competition from MCharX, MCross, and MGengar (a.k.a. the most broken piece of crap in the meta rn).

With the defog buff, Crobat will probably be used even more now as it's so much faster than lots of other pokemon and can Taunt+Defog and U-Turn out if necessary. Not sure if this will make it rise up to OU, but it's definitely looking very promising right now.

For Mega Evolutions, Mega Garchomp and Mega Gengar are extremely good right now. Mega Garchomp is the ultimate wallbreaker. He hits so hard not many pokemon can take just one of his hits (save for Mega Aggron) and Mega Gengar is just so good as a revenge killer right now. Shadow Tag works so well on him and makes me love Mega Gengar so much more.

I really don't see Crobat making it into Ou simply because it is a faster Defogger. As many Smogonites have said, the changes that X and Y have brought about pushes the metagame to a more Bulky Offense/Balanced state, which means that Speed becomes of lesser importance and Bulk becomes the chief factor. Although Crobat isn't frail by any means, it has nothing compared to OU staples such as Gliscor and Skarmory. However, it may land itself a niche in the metagame if it does shift to a more outspeeding kind of metagame. Personally, I ran a Crobat before due to the early hype of Protean Greninja and other super-fast things, but that fell out of usage pretty quickly and I found myself resorting to Skarmory.

I kind of disagree on your point about MegaGarchomp. In its current state, MegaGarchomp is a pretty bad Wallbreaker simply because of its lack of power compared to regular Garchomp, mostly because of its inability to use items outside of Garchompite.

Adamant MegaGarchomp has 482 attack.
Adamant Garchomp with Life Orb (for wallbreaking sets) has 512 attack.

Modest MegaGarchomp has 372 special attack.
Modest Garchomp with Life Orb (for wallbreaking sets) has 369 special attack.

As you can see, the power difference between the two is rather negligible. Furthermore, MegaGarchomp is SLOWER than regular Garchomp. Offensively, the speed benchmark for this generation's OU is undoubtedly going to be set somewhere in the Base 100s, and having a Speed lower than that on an offensive pokemon is undesirable (unless it has a Speed boosting move, which Garchomp does not have). You may want to argue me on the point about the bulk, but what sets it apart from other slow, bulky offensive Pokemon (Landorus-T) is its lack of Leftovers, which makes it easier to wear down.

But I completely agree about MegaGengar. That thing is a prick.

Avalugg is really something special. It's sad they gave him such a crappy type for 184 Defense, but that's what helps cover up his weaknesses. Fighting, Rock and Steel are usually all physical. To prove my point, did you know that if you had a CB Technician Scizor with Bullet Punch, it would 3HKO Avalugg? It's amazing how bulky this Iceberg is, although it's let down by it's special defense. However, it can still take a non SE special hit and live, as in-game against Wulfric, my Yveltal was lvl 63 with max EVs in SpAtk and I could not one-shot Wulfric's Avalugg with Oblivion Wing. It's sad people were writing him off as NU tier, because he can truly pull a team out of a crazy spot, together with Florges or Sylveon.

He also gets Rapid Spin, which is a gigantic plus since Sticky Web doesn't affect his already terrible speed.

At first, I thought that Avalugg would be the Blissey of this generation. However, I was wrong.

First and foremost, Avalugg is weak to Stealth Rock, which is already a big no-no for Defensive walls. In fact, many of the defensive 3HKOs and 2HKOs from CB Scizor or some other SE moves get turned into 2HKOs and OHKOs with Stealth Rock on the field, which really invalidates Avalugg's defensive stability. However, I definitely do not see him completely ending up in NU simply because its physical Defense is just way too good to pass up. I can see it as a Bulky Attacker in the lower tiers because if its base 117 Attack and insane physical bulk.

Avalugg @ Life Orb (or Leftovers w/e)
Trait: Sturdy
Nature: Adamant (+Att, -SpAtt)
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Att / 4 Spe
- Avalanche/Ice Fang
- Stone Edge/Crunch/Gyro Ball
- Earthquake
- Recover

I'm going to bet money that this is going to be its flagship set. With life orb, it really does an insane amount of damage with its amazing coverage. Ice Fang is for the consistent damage output and STAB. However, I also included Avalanche simply because Avalugg is bulky enough to take a hit and allow Avalanche to turn into a base 120 Attack. Earthquake is just standard fare and forms a really strong Ground/Ice coverage. Stone Edge just makes QuakeEdge (nothing new), Crunch allows you to nail Ghost types (which are super common this metagame), and Gyro Ball nails Fairies pretty hard (I don't think there is a Fairy that has a Speed under 50 bar Granbull).
 

KillerDraco

Well-Known Member
To be honest, MegaTyranitar doesn't really have anything significant over Tyranitar. With Assault Vest, Tyranitar becomes significantly more bulky than MTyranitar and gives it more chances to set up DD than MTTar. Though MTTar does have a larger power boost and a higher Speed tier, the Assault Vest can potentially allow TTar to accrue more DD boosts (2-ish) and become equally threatening. Besides, in terms of a Mega Evolution spot, Tyranitar faces stiff competition from MCharX, MCross, and MGengar (a.k.a. the most broken piece of crap in the meta rn).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Assault Vest actually prevent you from using DD? As far as I'm aware, you can only use direct damage attacks with Assault Vest, as though you had Taunt inflicted upon you. And therein would lie the difference; Mega TTar can boost with DD and support with things such as Stealth Rock, whereas AV TTar gets insane special bulk. That's the trade-off.
 

Kitsuneko

Well-Known Member
Well, the assault vest doesn't allow support moves such as Dragon dance or stealth rock, so all Tyrantitar can do is go all out attacking. The assault vest is basically a permanent taunt. There is also a gimmick with it too, which is basically get a Pokemon with Klutz (Such as Lopunny) where held item effects are ignored and trick it onto your opponent's support/wall. Thus, that support wall is basically dead weight for the entire battle.
 

The Master Chief

Well-Known Member
Well, the assault vest doesn't allow support moves such as Dragon dance or stealth rock, so all Tyrantitar can do is go all out attacking. The assault vest is basically a permanent taunt. There is also a gimmick with it too, which is basically get a Pokemon with Klutz (Such as Lopunny) where held item effects are ignored and trick it onto your opponent's support/wall. Thus, that support wall is basically dead weight for the entire battle.

Lopunny is the only pokemon that can use assault vest that way.
Idk about you guys but i'm going to be limited to only attacking moves then i would just band or scarf it. That's just me tho.
 
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Zachmac

Well-Known Member
Looks like Noivern gets switcheroo and U-turn, which means it could make a decent choice user.

The only problem is the competition between Flamethrower, Boomburst, and Draco Meteor for it's last three moves...
So I'm hearing trapping moves have become more effective now, particularly infestation. It hits 4-5 times at 1/8 (1/6 with the binding band) of the target's HP, right?
If so, Galvantula and Shuckle seems to be good solid users of them, as well as using a Sticky Web hazard.
I know Galvantula is probably going to work as a suicide lead with setting up Sticky Web, but infestation can prevent switching while you can bring out a proper counter after setting up the hazard (if given the chance). With shuckle, you can bundle it with toxic and trap stalling to annoy your opponents.
Galvantula is so fast, if it survive the first blow, it would probably be better off using Volt Switch to bring in the appropriate counter.

And trapping in general sounds like an iffy strategy to me. I mean, it sounds great trapping a pokemon which Shuckle can wall, but I'd image they'd try to swap it out on turn one. Shuckle isn't very difficult to swap into.
 

Eaglehawk

Banned
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Assault Vest actually prevent you from using DD? As far as I'm aware, you can only use direct damage attacks with Assault Vest, as though you had Taunt inflicted upon you. And therein would lie the difference; Mega TTar can boost with DD and support with things such as Stealth Rock, whereas AV TTar gets insane special bulk. That's the trade-off.

My bad entirely then. Smogonites can be trolls by telling you its only status moves like Thunder Wave and Toxic.

I guess in that case, they serve completely different niches.
Lopunny is the only pokemon that can use assault vest that way.
Idk about you guys but i'm going to be limited to only attacking moves then i would just band or scarf it. That's just me tho.
I wouldn't say so. Assault Vest makes it a better Pursuit Trapper because it can safely switch in to prominent Ghost and Psychic pokemon this metagame and Pursuit trap them despite Focus Blast.
 

~Sam~

Trader and Battler
Weakness Policy is my favorite item that was added this generation. Aegislash and Dragonite can abuse it SO well. I had no idea what to put on my Aegislash and weakness policy really works. Espicially after a swords dance, a +4 shadow sneak is very powerful.
 

Sparkbeat

FLASH! AAAHHHAAA!
Goodra thoughts - At the moment, Goodra is pretty much the poor man's Lati@s, since at the moment they're unreleased. It may not have the fire power or the speed, but mono-Dragon typing is arguably better than the added Psychic typing, since it is neutral to Dark, Bug, and Ghost. It also has better special bulk, and has very useful abilities in Gooey, Sap Sipper, and to an extent, Hydration. In addition, it has amazing coverage between Draco Meteor or Dragon Pulse / Fire Blast / Sludge Bomb / Filler. Really, the only thing keeping this guy down is faster physical attackers and the fact it has no great boosting moves, but it can serve as an effective offensive pivot, much like LO Latias was in Gen 5, just lacking reliable recovery. My bet for it at the moment is UU, with a small niche in OU as a Fairy lure.
 

Kitsuneko

Well-Known Member
Looks like Noivern gets switcheroo and U-turn, which means it could make a decent choice user.

The only problem is the competition between Flamethrower, Boomburst, and Draco Meteor for it's last three moves...Galvantula is so fast, if it survive the first blow, it would probably be better off using Volt Switch to bring in the appropriate counter.

And trapping in general sounds like an iffy strategy to me. I mean, it sounds great trapping a pokemon which Shuckle can wall, but I'd image they'd try to swap it out on turn one. Shuckle isn't very difficult to swap into.

I know, it really depends on the situation, but that can apply to everything else though. Galvantula is fast, but there are many other things that are faster that can give it trouble, and it's also very frail. Priority moves, rocks, and especially Talonflame/Aerodactyl if they don't switch into thunder. Infestation has its flaws that it can't trap everything; ghost types and stuff with baton pass/u turn/volt-switch/etc. If they lack any of those and even switch into it, it can give you the upper hand in bringing a proper counter in which they can't switch out to avoid. Infestation just has the ability to hit almost everything compared to like fire spin and whirlpool.
 
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