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Kimikozen

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    [PSL 8] Finals - Congratulations to the Hungry Salamences!!

    in Competition Archive

    Posted · Edited by Kimikozen
    added spoilers it was eye rape

    I want to give some thoughts on SM OU and showdown tiers in general. In my opinion, the reason why SM OU turned out to be a shitty tier is for 2 factors.


    1.

    Spoiler

     

    The skill level of the players was very low for a PSL level calibre player.  I don't mean this in the way that players were consistently making bad plays or having no game plan, but rather there was a massive lack of knowledge about Gen 7 specific mechanics and even more importantly, some of these players had an extremely low grasp on the metagame and the changes that occurred during the season. First, to state the obvious, in PSL the players should know basically all the mechanics of their respective gen. Not knowing the mechanics of the new terrains, or not even knowing abilities that some Pokemon get is pretty ridiculous. I will give this a pass as Gen 7 is complicated as fuck and its the first time its in this PSL. But hell, I know a bunch of players who don't even play SM and just spectate during PSL who know the gen 7 mechanics better than some of the players. Secondly, the metagame knowledge was very low, and adaptions to the evolving meta were almost nonexistent during the weeks of SM. To give an example of this lack of metagame knowledge, the teams brought during the first week were pretty standard. The standard for the smogon SM OU metagame around the time of PSL week 1 were either stall, or bulky offense that had a few stall breakers. SPL Cancer stall or Ciele/IlovePinkMons stall were the common stall builds (I gave Cogeid both those teams, and he used those to victory the first 2 weeks of SPL.). And for bulky offense builds, the standard offensive mons to break stall and other offense builds were SD Z Bulu and Lando, Protean Gren, Setup Mag, Garchomp, Mega medi, mega pinsir builds, etc. These teams typically had AV Mag, AV growth, or helmet lando as the pivot/tank. The tier had massive metagame changes, yet most of the players did very little to adapt. The metagame shifted HEAVILY to bulky balance, which had mons like Clefable/Toxapex/Celesteela/Mega venusaur/Mew/Mega Scizor/Zapdos. The new offense included Mega-Charizard,  Kyurem-B/Koko, Trapping with Tran/Dug and many more innovations that were popularized by tournaments like SPL, WC, and OLT. But I noticed, in PSL we kept seeing the same Tangrowth bulky offense, the same exact bulky offense webs RMTs,  and Tapu fini balance builds. A lot of these builds phazed out of the metagame hard, yet they still were getting more usage than the new innovations. I have to give massive props to Raptori, who was imo the best SM player of this season. He really impressed me with his psychium Z gren which is a cool metagame item to beat the more common Toxapex and Keldeo as the main Greninja counters. I can also respect all of the players who made their own teams, and tried to work best in such a hard tier to make their own teams in. I'll get to that in point 2.


     

    2.

    Spoiler

     

    The tier is currently in a rough state for teambuilders and has massive centralization problems. It is literally impossible to effectively prepare for every single different archetype of team in this metagame, and there is always more of these archetypes popping up as new mega evolutions and new metagame innovations come to fruition. I'll give a brief list of all of the archetypes, these include: Stall, Rain, Webs, Aurora Veil HO, Celetsteela/Pex/Clef or Celesteela/Pex/Mew balance, Dugtrio trap, Volt switch, Zard-Y balance, Volcarona sweep, Magearna sweep, and probably a fuck load more that are currently slipping my mind. The ones I put in bold are the archetypes that are especially stressful on teambuilding, as you need to put 1 OR MORE mons on your team that are dedicated to fighting these archetypes. The reason why everyone that played SM used a known entity smogon team/ tourney winning teams at least once is because they are some of the few effective teams at actually dealing with every single one of these archetypes. I shit on Frexa for never building his teams, but that was simply just for hype and to make a cool narrative. It is so fucking hard to teambuild in this SM metagame and have a team that doesn't lose at team preview. Hell, during that match I brought my the standard.zip version of SMOU Rain except I put taunt stallbreaker Lele > Hawlucha to break stall. I think SM OU is going to slowly start to correct itself over the next few months as the official ladder tournament ends and before the smogon snake draft starts. I expect Dugtrio to go, which eliminates matchup losses to stall and other bullshit that make the tier uncompetitive imo. (sry I think revenge trapping 50% of the tier is kinda bullshit.) Magearna should also be taking its leave, as it is just way to centralizing to stay in the tier. It can wall, pivot, sweep, provide trick room support, and carry a z move for every single one of its counters and basically not have any downside. Scratch that, it gets revenge killed by dugtrio jajajaja.


     

    It is of my opinion that we should wait to see how the tier evolves and what bans occur over the next few months before PSL 9. If the tier stays the same, scrap it. If the players that want to play the tier in the next PSL don't prove their level on the ladder or replays, scrap it. I do agree with gunthug though that the level of the tier should raise next season similarly to DPP. I actually didn't play DPP except for last season so I am trusting he is probably right that DPP used to be shit. Finally, sorry for the wall of text but I think it is important. I also made HUGE generalizations and left out a bunch of shit in the metagame part that is very important and very hard to articulate if you don't play the tier, but you get my point.

     

    TL;DR SM OU was shit. its shit bcuz players didnt know metagame/mechanics and the tier is fundamentally broken rn for teambuilders. give it a chance but if no changes occur, scrap. DPP is best showdown tier but imo only 1 DPP pls.

    The Pokemon Showdown Thread

    in Competition Alley

    Posted

    2 hours ago, londark said:

    suggestion for a solid check/counter for magearna?

     

    I've been having lot's of issues stopping it cause after a set up it's pretty much GGWP due to the stats, ability, and coverage....And it's not really that hard for it to set up a Shift Gear...

    It really depends on the set. Celesteela, Heatran, and Ferrothorn are all pretty solid at checking Mag, but you NEED to be able to pivot effectively into the Z-moves. Mega venu and Toxapex are pretty solid but again, can be easily destroyed by a giga volt havoc or steelium z respectively. Chansey and Jirachi are its only true counters, and even then, Mag can just pivot out on you.

     

    imo ban magearna its lame as shit

    [TV] Dragonball

    in Multimedia

    Posted

    My favorite TOP episode so far. Kinda wish Roshi died to make the moment more impactful, but I guess Goku going apeshit rage new transformation wouldn't be a good plot device when there is still a lot of fodder in U3 and U4. Still need jobbers for Tien and some development in Frieza/Frost. 

     

    Overall amazing episode, lot of great old nostalgic techniques and references. Classic Roshi and some badass fights.

    [PSL 8] Finals - Congratulations to the Hungry Salamences!!

    in Competition Archive

    Posted

    3 hours ago, XPLOZ said:

    "guy who got swept by +1 ttar vs the playoffs chokelord jijij"

    b-but I was sleep talk waterfall roar and I missed my two sleep talk against ttar (who switches in vs gyara for some reason).

    Not sure it's worse than getting rekd by a machamp lead ice punch (which is the standart set) if you're going this way :-D

    i switched into gyara bcuz i knew u were the kevin garrett variant and would do nothing to ttar anyway. i was expecting switch into hippo bcuz u wanted to take banded/scarf stone edge. so I set up with ttar knowing I had shuca and could easily sweep. also i see typically stone edge > ice punch, although even if i expected ice punch I had no counterplay to lead machamp with it.

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