Online Competitive Pokemon Battle Showdown Happy Fun Times

[Jerichi]

Wow I guess I never really realized that the only thing keeping Jirachi out of OU was Aegislash.

also lol uu salamence.

[Mercutio]

I am similarly confused about UU Salamence.

[Emi]

Salamence was actually BL during X&Y, it got kinda shit on with Fairies coming out.

I'm surprised everyone glossed over UU Terrakion. Fucking Megagross man.

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by blazeVA

What is even happening

(Mega Pinsir was Quickbanned from UU)

Side note: UPN really needs to re-allow native nested quote boxes. I hate quote-replying to someone and losing the quotes inside of their post. -.-

This list is really surprising. I don't agree with all of your choices (bold formatting lost and too lazy to put it back in), but certainly the list is by and large surprising.

Celebi: Not surprised. In fact, kind of sitting over here with a smug face on my face as I look at you guys who were only 48 hours ago so smugly talking about how Celebi is a UUmon. Celebi was a relevant presence in OU for a long time either in late BW2 or early XY (I forget which; probably BW2) even if its official rank did not reflect this. I don't think there's any doubt that it'll be bottom tier OU, but the fact that it's OU now instead of UU is an "all is right with the world" kind of correction for me. I would not be at all surprised to learn that the upgrade comes from the OU side of things (i.e. OU usage putting it in Top 50 and thus auto-banning it to OU) rather than from the UU side of things (i.e. UU ban council banned it), but I also would not be surprised by the reverse. Basically I'm not surprised.

Heracross: Oooooooooooooooodd ... Not because Heracross's presence in OU is strong but because he's always been a solid, OU-viable choice and I can't imagine the UU meta being ready to handle him -- or at least not the UU I remember. Given that Gen 6 UU, more than any UU before it, feels like Gen 3 OU, I guess this is just another step in that conversion process.

Salamence: Very surprised. Not because I know much about Salamence in OU past or present, but simply because of all the hullabaloo Smogon and its proponents were raising when Mega Salamence was unveiled. We had people clamoring for a quickban to Ubers for the thing, and now you're telling me that it's falling down to UU. That's crazy. So crazy I had to question if this was not in fact simply a demotion of Ordinary Salamence and that Mega Salamence would comfortably remain in OU. But seeing names on this list like Diancie (who I can only see being OU if it's Mega Diancie), I have to assume that the entire Salamence family has been demoted to UU. Which is just crazy.

Here's the thing: according to Smogon, Salamence's OU usage was just 1.385% last month, putting it at 81st place on the usage ladder. And that's with Mega Salamence. To put this into context, EVEN EMPOLEON WAS USED MORE. (1.778%, 75th place.)

So yeah. This is a pretty hilarious, pie-on-their-face situation for Smogon. "OH MAN, MEGA SALAMENCE IS GONNA BE SOOOOOOOOOOOO BROKEN! TO THE QUICKBANMOBILE!" All that sky-is-falling doom and gloom over nothing. I'm surprised it's turned out to be nothing, so I'll take a share of that pie on my own face I suppose (even if I was never clamoring for the ban for other reasons), but man. Man oh man oh man. So weird.

Terrakion: *table flip* I'm done. No, seriously. It's bad enough that legendaries like Terrakion with great typing, great stats, and great moves have been chipping away at the OU I knew in Gen 3 for the past three generations in a row, but now we're going to have them bubble on down to UU!? Crazy. This is simply crazy. The line has to be drawn somewhere. Bad enough that I can't play in OU without seeing teams of 66% legendaries but now I can't even escape Terrakion if I were to self-exile to UU? This is insane. (And before anyone tries to smack me down about legendaries, can it. Personal gripe. Not forcing it on you, nor saying "legendaries are categorically broken." Straw men unwelcome.) What business does Terrakion even have being in UU? Yes, I can understand that "lololol usage stats" may have meant he bubbled out of OU, but then he should be auto-BL, simple as that. There is simply no room for the sheer wrecking power of Terrakion in a format defined by the likes of Suicune and--

Raikou:





... what the fuck? This has to be something coming from the UU side of things. It just has to be. I cannot believe for two seconds that Raikou made Top 50 in OU--

Originally Posted by Smogon

 | 37   | Raikou             |  4.883% |

...

...

...

... so ...

... someone want to fill me on what the fuck has changed between XY and ORAS to make the original posterchild of UU catapult up to 37th place in the OU usage charts?

I can only imagine that this is coming from kiddos who follow YouTube stars like Shofu or ShadyPenguin and that one of these stars decided to use a Raikou on his team because why not; and he happened to make it work, thereby convincing hordes of little children to go onto Showdown and field Raikous of their very own.

Or at least -- I would believe this, but for the fact that Smogon's cutoff for these usage scores is an Elo of 1695. So we know for a fact that there are few to no of the supposed children influencing these results. That, by and large, the results stem from really good battlers, regardless of age. And really good battlers have little reason to throw in their lot with a Shofu or a ShadyPenguin.

So man. Man, man, man, man, man. This is so weird. >.< A world in which Terrakion and Mega Salamence fall to UU while Raikou jumps up to OU. Just ...

Wow.

[Emi]

Mega Salamence was banned to Ubers and Heracross was UU last gen too lol. I thought that meant Mega Heracross was UU. Turns out Heracrossite was already banned and this is just the normal form going back to UU.

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by blazeVA

Mega Salamence was banned to Ubers and Heracross was UU last gen too lol. I thought that meant Mega Heracross was UU. Turns out Heracrossite was already banned and this is just the normal form going back to UU.

Oh, so this list really is just for the ordinary forms and not for any megas? Well then ...

Salamence: Cross off just about everything I said save some pie on the face for me. I can well appreciate a Salamence drop to UU. There are better generic dragons to choose from in 6v6 Singles than plain ol' Salamence, whether it's Kingdra on a rain team or Dragonite on any ol' team or what have you.

Diancie: This girl now deserves a mention. Before, I brushed right past her upgrade because it made sense to me if it was coming from the mega side of things. But if this is defense forme Diancie who has migrated up to OU, then you can color me very surprised. I'll hold off on saying more for now since ...

Your message: ... since I realize that I may still not be quite reading you right, and what you may have been trying to say is that the list speaks about regulars and their megas in the same package in some cases (as with Diancie) but that in other cases it only speaks about the regular form (where it is assumed that the reader already knows the fate of the mega form) (as with Salamence).

Diancie (cont): Circling back to her, though, I can't help but to note that I had a very hard time making her work in OU when we first got to (FINALLY) take Diancie out on a test spin. The 4x weakness to Steel royally sucks; for a Pokémon whose base speed and attack aren't that great and whose entire selling point is her defense, Ordinary Diancie really suffers for being OHKO-able. When we got to toy around with the mega form, the problem I kept encountering was that she lacked the might necessary -- even with a Calm Mind -- to OHKO any checks or counters that were switched in. And worse still, mega evolving her proved to be very difficult for similar reasons to Beedrill: she goes second the turn she megas thanks to her low speed but then takes a beating thanks to her transformation succeeding in giving her same-turn shit defenses.

I haven't looked back into Diancie since then. I wonder if Protect+Mega Evolve has become standard for her in much the same way that it is for other megas. If it has, that means she's really only rolling with three moves. I'd be interested to see what those moves are and how well she does with them.

[Emi]

I'm kinda surprised to about Diancie. I know she was popular in Mega Salamence's brief span in OU because of the fact that she checked it really handily, but I don't know why she's so popular now. I should build a Meguka team.

[Sparkbeat]

Celebi: Cool I guess. I enjoyed using it last gen, and it should be a fair shot for certain bulky roles of a grass type without losing offensive presence like Amoonguss does once Spore is used.

Heracross: Cool to see one of the kings of UU last gen back there. Not too surprised though, since Mega Heracross kinda shot up with usage with Aegislash being banned until people realized it really isn't that great, or at least isn't as good as other megas. Same deal with Pinsir I presume.

Salamence: Usage spikes while Mega Salamence was legal, then plummeted after the quick ban. Not surprised at all because it only has a small niche over Dragonite and other dragons in OU, and that niche isn't enough to keep it OU. Won't be surprised if it gets sent to BL though.

Terrakion: Welcome to BL.

Raikou: For the vast majority of this tiering cycle, Raikou was extremely popular as an answer for Greninja for offensive teams. It kept offensive presence while being able to handle Greninja with its AV set. This is why it rose to OU, so I expect it to drop back to UU, or come close to doing so, with the next tiering cycle.

Jirachi: Eh, not too surprised, but I still don't think Jirachi will be as good this gen as it was last gen.

Diancie: It basically just rose because of the popularity of its Mega evolution, which is a pretty nifty wall at the moment since it can handle the Latis and bird.

Manaphy: Weird to me since I haven't really seen it much, but meh, haven't played too much recently so what do I know.

Quagsire: Easily the biggest surprise for me, just because of how great of a wall Quagsire is. I guess the massive amount of Grass types in RU were enough to push it down, but regardless of his tier, he'll always be a fantastic wall in all of them, except probably Ubers and AG.

[Raves]

>Johto starters events with hidden abilities confirmed for 27th February

SHEER FORCE GATR

ITS BEEN MILLENIA

[Emi]

And NU was never the same.

(Is Feraligatr still NU?)

[Talon87]

See, these are things I'm pretty sure we Random Battlers are already long used to. ^^; Sheer Force Life Orb Feraligatr has long been a thing there. With level adjustment. Dragon Dance, Waterfall, Coverage 1, Coverage 2 or Aqua Jet tends to be his set iirc. Probably Crunch and Earthquake. Earthquake sounds correct since I feel like most of the physical Sheer Force users are given a coverage move that doesn't work with Sheer Force and thus makes Life Orb still give them their recoil damage.

And I know Flash Fire Typhlosion has long been a thing.

I don't really remember what Meganium's ability is other than that it's one of the shitty ones. Aroma Veil or whatever it's called? Meganium'd much rather have an ability like "You're no longer weak to anything. lol" Oh well.

[Emi]

I don't see Gatr staying in NU long to be honest, considering the last time I checked Gatr was already an S-rank threat in the metagame. It will probably rise into RU and it could possibly rise into UU although I doubt it at this point.

[Talon87]

I dunno. I have rarely played the lower tiers and not yet played them even once since Gen 6 began. All I'm saying is, it feels funny to hear people talking about playtoys being unlocked for use that I have been using (and having used against me) for a very long time in Random Battle. I sometimes forget that Random Battle differs from the other tiers in more ways than just the OU ban list.

[Raves]

According to calcs, Jolly SF Gatr hits a bit harder than Adamant Gyarados. He also has Swords Dance to differentiate from Gyara as a wallbreaker, and iirc has enough speed after a DD to outrun 135s.

[Emi]

Are you factoring Life Orb into that? I remember seeing somewhere that Feraligatr with Sheer Force Life Orb had an attack that was equivalent to like base 219 or something.

[Snorby]

+1 252+ Atk Mold Breaker Mega Gyarados Waterfall vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Mew: 246-289 (60.8 - 71.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

+1 252 Atk Life Orb Sheer Force Feraligatr Waterfall vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Mew: 286-337 (70.7 - 83.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

It hits significantly harder than Mega Gyarados, has access to stuff like Swords Dance and Aqua Jet, has Ice Punch as a more powerful alternative to Ice Fang, has some nice niche options like Low Kick and Agility, can afford to run a Jolly Nature, and has an arguably better defensive typing. Oh, and it doesn't take up the mega slot. All this at the price of Mold Breaker and STAB on Crunch makes Feraligatr look rather appealing.

[Emi]

Yeah Feraligatr is really powerful with Sheer Force.

[Raves]

And in unsurprising news and keeping with their ideals of not letting the fucking metagame settle down following a ban, Smogon's got MegaGross on the suspect list. Thoughts?

[Heather]

MegaGross is really tough to deal with, as it has high defense and offense physically and Tough Claws makes it worse. Though I'm surprised this is being sussed and wasn't quick'd, it's a seeming pattern that the release event mega (Blaziken and now Metagross) is generally seen as a bit too good for OU. Given that Gross is a pseudo legend already, making its mega that much more of a physical juggernaut with Tough Claws Meteor Mash as a STAB...You need the best of the best at stall to handle that, because it's physical side is defensive and specially...Greninja got banned.

[Emi]

You really just need to keep pressure on it. It's really good, but I honestly don't think its bannable on being broken alone.

It is however nearly impossible for stall for handle and that's a massive issue.

[Heather]

It's physical defense is high enough to devalue a lot of pressure from that side of things, though (to give an in game ballpark example, I took on Steven's MegaGross with my own, and was about 7 or so levels higher, and an EQ was a 2HKO (60% maybe?)), and special Darks that aren't murdered by it or are faster either don't exist or are banned.

[Emi]

No really don't use in-game stuff. We have a damage calculator, use it.

[Heather]

jfc blaze it's called a ballpark example for a reason, it's an estimate

[Emi]

Well I mean you don't need to and it can be misleading. Damage calculators are great things and people don't use them nearly as often as they should.

[Heather]

If only they were so great on mobile devices, you know, where 99% of my internet life happens. I would LOVE to use SmogCalculator on my phone or even my iPad but about half the time I spent writing up that DNite thing a while back was getting it to load and waiting on lag.