Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Volcarona Banned]

[lucky333]

I was initially a little bit on the fence about Gouging Fire and if he is broken or not. I thoght there would be enough counterplay for all of his variants even the hard to switch CB ones. After experiencing the breaking swipe set (with both sides abusing it myself and playing aganist it), holy crap that shit is broken beyond belief. Even Gliscor and DOZO can become a set-up fodder for this thing. This most reliable counter to this is Heatran, Fairy Edge and.......Dachsbun.

 

[Just A Shroom God]

I was initially a little bit on the fence about Gouging Fire and if he is broken or not. I thoght there would be enough counterplay for all of his variants even the hard to switch CB ones. After experiencing the breaking swipe set (with both sides abusing it myself and playing aganist it), holy crap that shit is broken beyond belief. Even Gliscor and DOZO can become a set-up fodder for this thing. This most reliable counter to this is Heatran, Fairy Edge and.......Dachsbun.

said 'counters' when they guess the set wrong and get obliterated by DD earthquake
(not trying to detract from your post I just found this really funny)

 

[YubelVT]

said 'counters' when they guess the set wrong and get obliterated by DD earthquake
(not trying to detract from your post I just found this really funny)

Bulky Tera Grass Heatran has finally met his match: the Gouging Fire that runs both a dragon move and earthquake. Truly the end times have arrived and it is only a matter of time before we all perish

 

[lucky333]

said 'counters' when they guess the set wrong and get obliterated by DD earthquake
(not trying to detract from your post I just found this really funny)

+6 72 Atk Gouging Fire Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Dachsbun: 226-266 (71 - 83.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

At least there is one doggo left standing

The others I forgot to mention are Ting-Lu who can phase him out and Dirge but that is basically it. LU can get chipped away at easily especially if he is your main defensive check to other threats like Gambit or Bolt. Dirge is a bit more reliable I will admit as he is not as passive as Dozo.

 

[YubelVT]

+6 72 Atk Gouging Fire Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Dachsbun: 226-266 (71 - 83.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

At least there is one doggo left standing

The others I forgot to mention are Ting-Lu who can phase him out and Dirge but that is basically it. LU can get chipped away at easily especially if he is your main defensive check to other threats like Gambit or Bolt. Dirge is a bit more reliable I will admit as he is not as passive as Dozo.

Dirge is also relatively exploitable by the walking wake you'll find on sun teams alongside fire. Gouging Fire is gen 8 Kyurem 2 but without the stalling set isn't he

 

[heileone]

Dirge is also relatively exploitable by the walking wake you'll find on sun teams alongside fire. Gouging Fire is gen 8 Kyurem 2 but without the stalling set isn't he

Gouging fire literally does have a stalling set lol, in fact its probably the most broken set the mon has.

 

[YubelVT]

Gouging fire literally does have a stalling set lol, in fact its probably the most broken set the mon has.

holy shit Gouging Fire is just gen 8 kyurem 2

 

[CheesyBrie]

I think we should do something to get people who stopped playing the tier to still engage with surveys as they can express what they do not like about the tier, since their opinion matters just as much

I said I was done posting for this generation, but i just want to say thank you.
Even if people like me don't want to play the tier anymore, we want to try and make it more enjoyable (objectively for everyone, although our reasoning may be selfish in nature).
I haven't really stayed up to date on the surveys, but I know a fair amount has happened since DLC-2 dropped.
I think the surveys are decently accessible if players like me actually want to look for them. I guess they could be pinned at the top of the Forum or something for convenience? Idk.

Not metagame related, so I'll conclude this necrobump with
Hope everyone is having fun with their current strategies.

 

[Bold School]

(Originally meant for Views from the Council but the thread is closing soon and don't want my post to drown)

Hi everyone after 2 months of DLC 2 i feel the meta has developed into something great and it has been the most fun and balanced it has been for a while, however reading some of the discourse especially in the more recent post from Views from the council i cant wrap my head around some of the complained mon and have to ask.

why are people saying roaring moon and ogerpon wellspring broken? i don't see much of a valid reason in practice, in fact i would probably put dragapult and kingambit higher on the "Broken" scale, and i would be crazy to say those 2 pokemon are banworthy/bad for the meta.

there is one pokemon i didnt mention that i would be fine with a suspect, gouging fire is the closest thing to broken, and yea, its set up sweeping set can sometimes feel impossible to beat without something like dondozo, especially if it opts for tera poison or tera ghost and breaking swipe, it is probably the best anti-BO mon out there beating things like gliscor zamazenta and terastalized kingambit with ease, but it really is only that set thats broken. its booster energy set can be much more easily revenge killed with things like lando and great tusk, and the choice band set under sun is just a physical walking wake that is slower which can be beaten p much the same way one would try and beat walking wake. Personally i think this pokemon is fine, i would vote do not ban if it get suspect tested but i can see the reason as to why people find it BS (hell even Vert does) and might change my mind in the future.

I wanted to quote the people making post on these 2 pokemon from the other thread but i don't know how to do it so i'll just write a few reason as to why ogerpon wellspring and roaring moon are not broken.



now, lets start with roaring moon. Roaring Moon is the biggest skill check in this generation. It can easily win against unprepared teams and bad players, however it really only have one set and can be beaten easily just by using commonly used pokemon. Roaring moon's main strength as a sweeper is with the right move and coverage, it can easily beat almost everything, brick break for kingambit, earthquake for bulky fire and steels, taunt for stall, and sometimes even random tera blast for matchup fishing. However, If it doesn't have the right move, it will at most knock off 1-2 pokemon, and maybe kill something, but you can just revenge kill it. If it doesnt have eq or brick break, go gambit and iron head it or garg and salt cure it, if it doesnt have taunt, go skarmory and just iron defense on it, there are even mons that can check/counter roaring moon 100% of the time like dondozo, gliscor and landorus-t even forcing it to tera. Roaring moon is also a tera hog, its typing defensive sucks againts a lot of defensive pokemon being weak to fighting and fairy, which forces you to turn flying every time you want to sweep, and this assumes you even have the right move to win. Even if you have all of that, you still have to worry about opposing tera, since theres really only one way to run roaring moon, everyone knows what it does and how to beat it, so if they see a roaring moon vs kingambit, they will know to check for eq or brick break by switching out to a defensive wall, then come back to revenge kill, or just terastalize to flying and kill it before moon can do anything. Amazing as this pokemon look, and the potential it has, it can still be easily beaten by some of the most common pokemon and good building disciplines (good defensive backbone, revenge killers, offensive synergy). its really no more anoyying than volcarona, iron valiant, kingambit or hatterene which has a bigger variety of sets and similar effectiveness. Remember, this pokemon was UU for a time, and in that meta pokemon like skarmory didnt even exist, yes it did get knock off but people are overstating how much of a buff it is. if you have a decent team, and know how to play around roaring moon, you're never going to lose to this more than you would lose to any other sweeper in the game. It has great usage stats on both SPL and on ladder because of how consistent of a sweeper it is on HO, but it has little variety in its set and any decently built team will have a way to beat it. If you don't, please build a better team, you will lose to it sometimes of course but please fix it.


Ogerpon wellspring is an even bigger head scratcher, its arguably worse than it was in pre-indigo disk with the abundance of dragon, and a rise of zamazenta and rillaboom post archaludon. I mostly see it on BO and HO with pokemon like kingambit, fast lando-t and roaring moon. It is one of the most dominant style of teams right now considering how well they synergize with eachother, but its not so dominant that it requires perfect play and counters to win. The main complain is coming from its coverage of Grass/Water/Fairy and with SD, it becomes almost unstoppable, but it needs a lot of support for it to work well. It has alright speed, and alright bulk, its easily revenge killed by some of the most common threats in dragapult, and it effectively doesnt have an item so hazards absolutely decimates it. It has a larger variety of sets than roaring moon but it also has an even bigger pool of counters. I'm not saying that ogerpon wellspring is a bad pokemon or anything, but from what pokemon we have it doesnt really stand out as overpowered, even stuff its supposed to beat like volcarona, garganacl, gliscor often carry tera that beats ogerpon without sabotaging its usefulness, it can be easily outsped and revenge killed by the dragons, and even stuff like iron moth, tornadus and iron valiant after a bit of chip. The rise of zamazenta and rillaboom i've mentioned before also heavily hindered its usefulness, since ogerpon gets turned into set up opportunity by zama and just dies to rillaboom, these teams often carry hawlucha too which destroys ogerpon. I've p much tried out every team style on ladder recently and i havent really struggled THAT much againts it, most teams have outs and it often comes down to whether or not you can outplay the opponent or not, which stands true with every pokemon. It has great defensive utility againts water, but with the lack of boots/item, bad match up vs tornadus slowking-g and the dragons, and its above average speed, its really not that hard to revenge kill or even just out maneuver it.

I saw some people clamoring for a raging bolt, gliscor and volcarona ban, i disagree with those as well but don't really have many thoughts on it and they dont seem to have as much support as the two i mentioned above.

Excuse me? Roaring Moon is absolutely ridiculous. The idea that it only gets 1-2 KOs if it doesn't have the right coverage move requires you to both predict this and to be lucky to be facing the exact set you team built for. Even in the better case scenario of 1-2 KOs, which is honestly debatable because many times it won't be just that, you often have to sacrifice core parts of your team that you would need to check other threats. Furthermore, Knock Off completely ravages your items. You can't even rely on something out of the box like Red Card to stop setup sweepers because Knock Off counters that. If Roaring Moon sets up, you wind up at a huge disadvantage the rest of the game even if you can manage to stop it. And that's a really big if. Like you are highly underselling just how easily Roaring Moon can sweep teams.

The worst part is you can often even brute force your own opportunities to set up. Roaring Moon has base 105 HP and 101 special defense. It's fairly bulky even with no investment. Most unboosted mons aren't going to be able to 1 shot it without a super effective hit, particularly on the special side. You come in on a choice locked mon into the wrong move, a more passive mon, or behind screens, Tera in their face to live a hit if necessary, and get up the DD. Anything except highly offensive teams with choice locked mons will almost certainly have an opportunity for Roaring Moon to set up. HO with screens might be able to set up their faces anyways.

You say to just beat them with priority after chip. But Grassy Glide, Aqua Jet, Shadow Sneak, Sucker Punch, and Thunderclap are all naturally resisted by Roaring Moon's typing. So pretty much only normal, ice, and fighting priority remain in the tier as moves that aren't naturally resisted. And this is before Tera. So if your team just happens to have the wrong type of priority, you just lose to Moon for relying on that strategy. If your team has one of the 3 right types of priority, but Moon has a Tera that counters it like fighting into Flying Tera, you just lose. And if your priority isn't damaging enough or you can't get enough chip before hand, you also just lose. This is a very situational thing and you are acting like every team can do it. Only teams with the right type of priority built into them for Roaring Moon specifically can do it. If that isn't over centralizing, what is?

There are some teams and pokemon that you simply cannot use just because of Roaring Moon's existence. For instance, I tried my hand at psychic terrain teams lately. You literally can't use choiced mons with Psychic STAB because opposing Moon will come in and win the game. It's basically like playing a 5 vs 6 game because you cannot properly use that mon. You also have to have an answer for Gambit on the switch, which every team honestly needs anyways. But that's much more manageable than dealing with a Roaring Moon after a Dragon Dance.

...

Waterpon was arguably OP before the latest DLC. Now it doesn't seem to be as bad. However, it is still a monster lurking in the back. I don't think people are wrong for at least looking at it suspiciously. It is more of a problem for balance cores, though. So when people bring up variety of teams or the pressure on the teambuilder, they talk about mons that might limit teambuilding. A stall team has a more complete defensive core and can check more threats. But a balance team cannot afford to run that. Furthermore, you cannot talk about the number of dragons in the tier to counter Waterpon if the thing still gets Play Rough.

Personally, I don't think Waterpon is OP in this current meta game. But it really shouldn't be too head scratching considering what it can do. And if certain mons get banned, it is possible that could open things up too much for Waterpon again.

 

[heileone]

I personally think that the talk of roaring moon being broken is really overblown. Its very rare that I outright lose to this mon in a way that feels unfair, and I can always trace back the moment I lost to a crucial mistake I made earlier in the game.

Looking at the counterplay that different styles have against this pokemon shows that there is an abundance of ways to shut this thing down. It isnt at all unwallable, with pokemon like corv, skarm, clef, and dozo all more than capable of switching in on the dd and pressuring it. Sure, they will lose an item and have your wall chipped, but thats what roaring moon does. Without the ability to do that it would be literally useless. Its a good supporting attacker into defensive styles that can force item removal and chip before ultimately dying or being forced out, in which case it isnt nearly as threatening anymore.

On the offensive side of things, the counterplay is the same as it would be vs hawlucha or teapot: dont give it free turns. This takes a slight amount of forethought and planning, but its extremely easy to make sure this thing doesnt get a free turn because of its incredibly poor physical defenses. Even just a good amount of chip usually puts into even resisted priority range. If it does get a free turn vs you consistently, then either a teambuilding or in game mistake was made. Of course, this means you will end up having to sacrifice slower pokemon when it comes in to attack it as usually you cant risk it getting a free dd, but the good news is youre playing offense, and you probably have something in the back that can outspeed it and kill it. So the result here is just that moon ends up being a good revenge killer into offense. Hardly broken, especially compared to other threats that can shut down entire styles or threaten to end the game on the spot unless youre running a specific style(WOGER AND GOUGING FIRE).

Anyway, if youre struggling against moon make sure youre thinking whenever you look down a line or try to make a play "Will this make me lose to moon?". Unless its a team problem even just that much should ensure you dont get swept by this mon most of the time.

 

[Heatranator]

I personally think that the talk of roaring moon being broken is really overblown. Its very rare that I outright lose to this mon in a way that feels unfair, and I can always trace back the moment I lost to a crucial mistake I made earlier in the game.

Looking at the counterplay that different styles have against this pokemon shows that there is an abundance of ways to shut this thing down. It isnt at all unwallable, with pokemon like corv, skarm, clef, and dozo all more than capable of switching in on the dd and pressuring it. Sure, they will lose an item and have your wall chipped, but thats what roaring moon does. Without the ability to do that it would be literally useless. Its a good supporting attacker into defensive styles that can force item removal and chip before ultimately dying or being forced out, in which case it isnt nearly as threatening anymore.

On the offensive side of things, the counterplay is the same as it would be vs hawlucha or teapot: dont give it free turns. This takes a slight amount of forethought and planning, but its extremely easy to make sure this thing doesnt get a free turn because of its incredibly poor physical defenses. Even just a good amount of chip usually puts into even resisted priority range. If it does get a free turn vs you consistently, then either a teambuilding or in game mistake was made. Of course, this means you will end up having to sacrifice slower pokemon when it comes in to attack it as usually you cant risk it getting a free dd, but the good news is youre playing offense, and you probably have something in the back that can outspeed it and kill it. So the result here is just that moon ends up being a good revenge killer into offense. Hardly broken, especially compared to other threats that can shut down entire styles or threaten to end the game on the spot unless youre running a specific style(WOGER AND GOUGING FIRE).

Anyway, if youre struggling against moon make sure youre thinking whenever you look down a line or try to make a play "Will this make me lose to moon?". Unless its a team problem even just that much should ensure you dont get swept by this mon most of the time.

Making one mistake shouldn't mean "lol, I lost the game". If you have to play extremely carefully around moon to that point, then that is not healthy. You also say "don't give it free turns" when that is the easiest thing for moon to do because it threatens a lot of tier staples. Ghold, tusk, glowking all are threatened by it. Many others can not do a lot of damage to it, so let's extend that list to include Gliscor, Rillaboom and Ting-Lu. There are most likely others I am missing, but the point is that the free turns it gets are easy to attain. Then, if you are having to sacrifice a slower mon all the time against it, that still isn't healthy, because you should be able to check a mon without sacking something.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Making one mistake shouldn't mean "lol, I lost the game". If you have to play extremely carefully around moon to that point, then that is not healthy. You also say "don't give it free turns" when that is the easiest thing for moon to do because it threatens a lot of tier staples.

someone's going to inevitably respond to this with "but both of those are true about [insert threat here] too", so i'm gonna pre-empt that: the fact that it's true about multiple mons doesn't mean that roaring moon is balanced, it means that the other thing you're thinking of is also broken

"wait, but that's only the case for [threat] because it abuses tera to generate free turns! tera is the problem!" all right, sure, that's what you believe. but that doesn't make [threat] not broken now. would you rather go into the tera suspect with broken things or without? me, i'd prefer to have things properly balanced before we hold a vote that important, so people like me can't cheese their way to reqs. if this meta isn't fully balanced before the suspect, you have to open yourself to the possibility of me, daddybuzzwole, casting the deciding vote between keeping tera or banning it. is that what you want?

 

[Rekka's Backend]

Making one mistake shouldn't mean "lol, I lost the game".

this is my biggest gripe with the meta game at the moment. Obviously I am not the most expert player to exist and don't memorize every single EV spread or roll on moves, but more than once I'd had games steamrolled by the virtue of making one little mistake that lets set up sweeper #37 get one turn and mess up the game. Never in a fair or fun way, like accidentally boosting on an encore mon alone. It feels like having to switch to counter each sweeper gets them their free turn unless you have the correct tera answer for all of them.

And then if you do manage to phase it out/redcard/whatever, you end up opening the way for gambit because you have to burn tera earlier in the game to deal with Moon/Uglier Entei/Etc. It feels fucking awful to play, and I really would like to keep trying the tier but between hazard management and the endless onslaught of sweepers it feels impossible to set up teams that won't end up being bait for any of the endless stream of them.

Course, 1500 scrub here but the sheer vibe of the tier post DLC-2 feels substantially worse. And that's before select annoyances like Waterpon or even Ghold that sit in the back while the big boy cause a ruckus.

 

[ianlazerbeem]

roaring moon didn't have knock off pre-DLC and people beat it before by hitting it as it sets up then going into priority / a 'mon that tanks the hit. the knock off buff doesn't change this major flaw roaring moon had pre-DLC. it is not an easy pokemon to set-up safely so not sure why you think weavile revenge killing roaring moon isn't a common occurence. that's what i mean by skill check. but if you'd like me to elaborate roaring moon has much more counter-play than what you listed.

on balance / bulky offense teams:

weavile - ice shard
landorus-t - rocky helmet pivot
sticky barb clef - beats all the sets, actually has use for other 'mons like booster tusk val boulder and good synergy with knock support
kingambit - walls taunt sets, air balloon checks earthquake variants
ting-lu - whirlwind beats non taunt sets. the offensive ting-lu sets just straight up beat it which are popular, stuff like stone edge and payback which we see in SPL
dragonite - multiscale, extreme speed
hatterene - tanks even +1 tera acro, nuzzles, and draining kiss
garganacl - beats non eq sets, and with tera, you beat every set
gliscor - can toxic, only fears taunt, however on stall teams gliscor often runs poison jab or sd to alleviate this weakness
zamazenta - turns roaring moon into set up fodder, can tera to beat acro sets
dondozo - you mentioned this, yes it will lose its boots in the process but i don't find that a bad thing. i find the unaware 'mons in SV uninteractive with their insane stats. i think it's fair to lose your boots to a stationary HO 'mon but we can agree to disagree there.
skarmory - see above, only loses if they have both taunt AND use tera-flying early, any well-built team shouldn't have this as their sole moon answer
corviknight - see above, can even do rocky helmet + u-turn into priority 'mon of your choice to not give up momentum
tera-great tusk
tera-fairy skeledirge - run alluring voice commonly, wisp still threatens also
zapdos - rare, but it's picking up in usage. CTC made a good zapdos team which won in spl yesterday. first arch but with a possible gouging ban too it'll be used more, zapdos is a pokemon that improves with bans.
toxic spikes - good into roaring moon teams, the only absorber offense has is glimmora a suicide lead and iron moth which is UU
cinderace - sucker punch revenge kills once you force it to tera, you can even wisp it

on offense teams you not only have some of the pokemon i mentioned above but also:

iron boulder
scarf meowscarada
scarf darkrai - you can go hard and if they dragon dance, trick. if they attack then chip.
focus sash dragapult
focus sash darkrai
raging bolt - only dies to earthquake, revenges post-tera
iron treads - same as raging bolt, does a lot with ice spinner
hawlucha terrain
^ rillaboom with tera glide does a ton

weather teams:
sun - lilligant, sun up means acrobatics is 55bp
rain - raging bolt checks non-earthquake, revenge kills a tera'd version. barraskewda is faster.
sand - tyranitar walls taunt sets, excadrill is faster

then you have stall and i know a lot of stall players and they don't find roaring moon that hard to beat compared to something like gholdengo

these are just revenge killers and checks, ingame you can easily make plays and doubles with mons like dragapult, speed iron val or zama, and even lure roaring moon with stuff like play rough + trailblaze ogerpon

these are all good pokemon, you are not using bad stuff. but here are some lesser used pokemon you can try:

quick attack band dragapult - made an appearance in SPL, can work in dire situations
scizor - rare SD sweeper thats largely outclassed by gambit, but still has a niche
physdef weezing (both forms) - Storm Zone popularized it on ladder, unless you let moon get +3 its not gonna win vs weezings
alolan ninetales - you tank its hits with snow + veil and you can easily revenge kill with freeze dry or foul play, or even encore it to dragon dance
comfey - hellom popularized it in SPL, triage + grassy seed do be scary
Mandibuzz - very low usage but has peaked ladder twice this week in the hands of Omari P, it takes 0 from roaring moon and revenge kills with foul play
Talonflame - underused stall mons, its faster than moon and can burn it

if i mention more things it would probably be considered spam, these pokemon can beat roaring moon with ease, and if you take it into practice, even if you only have checks like lando-t + dragonite on a team, you seriously feel how easy it is to beat roaring moon. i'm not saying its a bad mon, theres a reason its top 10 usage on ladder and spl, but it is incredibly overrated considering how easy it is to fend off againts it.

Thanks for sharing this Mimi, I definitely agree that Roaring Moon's so called impossibility to check is exaggerated and definitely find it a relatively easy Mon to revenge, I personally find it a healthy presence but don't agree with your woger analysis right now, I still think it's a crazy difficult Mon to switch into and it limits fatter teams a great deal, are you able to elaborate on woger counterplay and why you believe it's acceptable if you have time?

 

[TurquoiseLink]

The arguments seem to be that Roaring Moon forces a really tight momentum game, some players love this as its highly skill testing and some people hate it, that the game should never be that momentum focused.

I personally enjoy the high importance momentum matches. They're way more interesting than the usual surface analysis of "uturn is momentum" and never looking further.

 

[ant4456]

When did the metric for "check" become "doing 40% and then dying to the Pokemon in return" in regards to MMQ's post

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

When did the metric for "check" become "doing 40% and then dying to the Pokemon in return" in regards to MMQ's post

when people realized the alternative was accepting that their favorite mons are broken

 

[Heatranator]

When did the metric for "check" become "doing 40% and then dying to the Pokemon in return" in regards to MMQ's post

When people think that a mon with some small weaknesses that do not stop them from destroying most teams is not broken because our minds were rotted by flutter mane/last respects/iron bundle/palafin.

 

[Mimikyu Stardust]

SNIP

Yes, there are more mons that counter moon then I said, I'll give you that, but most that you provided have to either 1. Be in pristine health or 2. Not switch in to a Moon attack. This means that most likely, it will still pick up a ko. Again, lots of these should beat it on paper but they in practice do not. Now, you may be thinking "But Heatranator, most of these reasonings are based on +1 calcs, that won't be the case." That is wrong, moon can easily get to +1 as it threatens a lot of common mons such as ghold and tusk extremely hard.
Oh, these are also for jolly moon, if you go adamant, then it is even better into a lot of these mons like skarm.

first thing first, adamant moon doesnt exist, i just refuse to believe it. im probably a hater tho.

second thing,

its less of
"But Heatranator, most of these reasonings are based on +1 calcs, that won't be the case."
but more of
"But Heatranator, roaring moon can only get its sweep off once in a game, so even if in theory it has the ability to beat every pokemon that you have mentioned, finding the opportunity to set up and go for a sweep is not easy. even againts pokemon that it should be able to set up on and scare out in theory like you mentioned with great tusk, cinderace or gholdengo, it still have to fear them staying in and crippling it with burns, twave or just straight up killing it."

You talk a lot about stuff "in practice" when your example relies so much on roaring moon having +1 attack, +1 speed, Booster energy, no hazard damage and also tera being available and that its also a 1v1. Thats just never gonna happen in serious games. Landorus-therian loses 1v1 vs roaring moon in theory, but if lando u-turns into another pokemon like kingambit, now the roaring moon is forced to attack, in which the landorus can come back and neuter it even more. If the moon switches out, thats it, its booster is spent, it took a ton of damage and its almost impossible for it to sweep now. For roaring moon to get its full potential off you need to use A LOT of support which in most games is just too much work, so you just stack these sweepers together and take out the opponents one by one.

Take a look at these 2 replays i have.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2063382121
first one is of webs, and upon seeing it i knew that i couldnt use lando-t as my main counter because theres a zamazenta, and that mon can get really dangerous so i opted to keep primarina and kingambit for roaring moon. Now he actually got a safe switch into samurott and set up, but this was a very risky play as samurott can have sacred sword and one shot moon or as the replay shows, encore. After that the roaring moon is neutered and i win late game with this same samurott.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2062641169?p2
in this game, i choked early game because i let my lando died vs iron valiant, and my opponent brought out his roaring moon vs iron crown, but he didnt set up, he killed it. why? because iron crown can focus blast to kill it, chip with tachyon cutter or volt switch out. Terastalizing doesn't solve this issue either cause if he terastalizes into tachyon cutter, he just wasted it. So the safest play was to kill the iron crown and effectively neutering the sweep potential, as later in the game it couldn't even kill a tera ghost gambit with knock off.

punishing roaring moon's set up is much simpler than it sounds.

those are just replays i remembered saving, you can probably find more roaring moon games in the SPL Replays thread,

even the winrates are below avg

week 6 win-rate
| 6 | Roaring Moon | 10 | 25.00% | 40.00% |
week 5 win-rate
| 8 | Roaring Moon | 8 | 20.00% | 50.00% |
week 4 win-rate
| 10 | Roaring Moon | 7 | 17.50% | 28.57% |
week 3 win-rate
| 6 | Roaring Moon | 8 | 20.00% | 37.50% |

Most of the other checks are valid, but I wouldn’t really use the 3 Tera mons and 2 Sash mons as examples since 2 of them need to have rocks off at all times and only really splashable on offense and 3 of them are only available if you haven’t burnt Tera.

True but i was just showing how even if you're stubborn and dont want to run defensive mons, you can still beat roaring moon. in OST recently i saw vert using tinkaton as a counter to roaring moon, primarina and iron valiant which was neat.

When did the metric for "check" become "doing 40% and then dying to the Pokemon in return" in regards to MMQ's post

which part?

 

[Heatranator]

first thing first, adamant moon doesnt exist, i just refuse to believe it. im probably a hater tho.

second thing,

its less of
"But Heatranator, most of these reasonings are based on +1 calcs, that won't be the case."
but more of
"But Heatranator, roaring moon can only get its sweep off once in a game, so even if in theory it has the ability to beat every pokemon that you have mentioned, finding the opportunity to set up and go for a sweep is not easy. even againts pokemon that it should be able to set up on and scare out in theory like you mentioned with great tusk, cinderace or gholdengo, it still have to fear them staying in and crippling it with burns, twave or just straight up killing it."

You talk a lot about stuff "in practice" when your example relies so much on roaring moon having +1 attack, +1 speed, Booster energy, no hazard damage and also tera being available and that its also a 1v1. Thats just never gonna happen in serious games. Landorus-therian loses 1v1 vs roaring moon in theory, but if lando u-turns into another pokemon like kingambit, now the roaring moon is forced to attack, in which the landorus can come back and neuter it even more. If the moon switches out, thats it, its booster is spent, it took a ton of damage and its almost impossible for it to sweep now. For roaring moon to get its full potential off you need to use A LOT of support which in most games is just too much work, so you just stack these sweepers together and take out the opponents one by one.

Take a look at these 2 replays i have.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2063382121
first one is of webs, and upon seeing it i knew that i couldnt use lando-t as my main counter because theres a zamazenta, and that mon can get really dangerous so i opted to keep primarina and kingambit for roaring moon. Now he actually got a safe switch into samurott and set up, but this was a very risky play as samurott can have sacred sword and one shot moon or as the replay shows, encore. After that the roaring moon is neutered and i win late game with this same samurott.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2062641169?p2
in this game, i choked early game because i let my lando died vs iron valiant, and my opponent brought out his roaring moon vs iron crown, but he didnt set up, he killed it. why? because iron crown can focus blast to kill it, chip with tachyon cutter or volt switch out. Terastalizing doesn't solve this issue either cause if he terastalizes into tachyon cutter, he just wasted it. So the safest play was to kill the iron crown and effectively neutering the sweep potential, as later in the game it couldn't even kill a tera ghost gambit with knock off.

punishing roaring moon's set up is much simpler than it sounds.

those are just replays i remembered saving, you can probably find more roaring moon games in the SPL Replays thread,

even the winrates are below avg

week 6 win-rate
| 6 | Roaring Moon | 10 | 25.00% | 40.00% |
week 5 win-rate
| 8 | Roaring Moon | 8 | 20.00% | 50.00% |
week 4 win-rate
| 10 | Roaring Moon | 7 | 17.50% | 28.57% |
week 3 win-rate
| 6 | Roaring Moon | 8 | 20.00% | 37.50% |

True but i was just showing how even if you're stubborn and dont want to run defensive mons, you can still beat roaring moon. in OST recently i saw vert using tinkaton as a counter to roaring moon, primarina and iron valiant which was neat.



which part?

Firstly, I have used adamant moon and while it is slower, it can brutalise more defensive teams as it can just raw damage past its counters. Like if you really are scared of skarmory, then you can ko it as soon as it switches since knock does 75% max. But lets just talk about jolly moon.

Secondly, while yes these mons can threaten moon, moon can do the exact same thing. And most of the time, these are really great mons that you don't want to risk losing by staying in. Nobody wants to lose a tusk by just trying to predict the moon will dd.

Thirdly, yes, it is taking all of these things into account because of how many mons it threatens. Your opponent has to do a 50/50 on whether you decide to attack or set up, and if they predict wrong, they will be losing an important mon. Yes, you do have to have tera available, but I think that is an alright thing when in return you get a mon that can flip its bad matchups and destroy the opponent outright. Technically that's for every mon, but moon is more extreme in that case.

Now let's look at those replays.
The first one, the opponent fumbled the bag hard. They could have easily set up sticky webs a few times, and if they just tera flying acro, they could of destroyed the Hammurott. Dd there was just asking for something bad to happen. The lando was chipped and thus couldn't take many hits, and the dragapult would have to be specs to take it, as dragon darts doesn't even ko a tera flying moon. You would have had to do some serious switching between lando and others to beat it, which one predict could have ruined. Maybe you could have gone to kingambit, but that again was your main answer and would have still taken massive damage on gambit.
The second one, is a better demonstration. Yes, he did have to be threatened out by the dragapult, but even after that the moon had a huge amount of value. It ko'd the iron crown, finished off the primarina and heavily chipped the gambit before finally getting ko'd. Yes it did not sweep, but it still was amazing in this match.

 

[ant4456]

first thing first, adamant moon doesnt exist, i just refuse to believe it. im probably a hater tho.

second thing,

its less of
"But Heatranator, most of these reasonings are based on +1 calcs, that won't be the case."
but more of
"But Heatranator, roaring moon can only get its sweep off once in a game, so even if in theory it has the ability to beat every pokemon that you have mentioned, finding the opportunity to set up and go for a sweep is not easy. even againts pokemon that it should be able to set up on and scare out in theory like you mentioned with great tusk, cinderace or gholdengo, it still have to fear them staying in and crippling it with burns, twave or just straight up killing it."

You talk a lot about stuff "in practice" when your example relies so much on roaring moon having +1 attack, +1 speed, Booster energy, no hazard damage and also tera being available and that its also a 1v1. Thats just never gonna happen in serious games. Landorus-therian loses 1v1 vs roaring moon in theory, but if lando u-turns into another pokemon like kingambit, now the roaring moon is forced to attack, in which the landorus can come back and neuter it even more. If the moon switches out, thats it, its booster is spent, it took a ton of damage and its almost impossible for it to sweep now. For roaring moon to get its full potential off you need to use A LOT of support which in most games is just too much work, so you just stack these sweepers together and take out the opponents one by one.

Take a look at these 2 replays i have.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2063382121
first one is of webs, and upon seeing it i knew that i couldnt use lando-t as my main counter because theres a zamazenta, and that mon can get really dangerous so i opted to keep primarina and kingambit for roaring moon. Now he actually got a safe switch into samurott and set up, but this was a very risky play as samurott can have sacred sword and one shot moon or as the replay shows, encore. After that the roaring moon is neutered and i win late game with this same samurott.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2062641169?p2
in this game, i choked early game because i let my lando died vs iron valiant, and my opponent brought out his roaring moon vs iron crown, but he didnt set up, he killed it. why? because iron crown can focus blast to kill it, chip with tachyon cutter or volt switch out. Terastalizing doesn't solve this issue either cause if he terastalizes into tachyon cutter, he just wasted it. So the safest play was to kill the iron crown and effectively neutering the sweep potential, as later in the game it couldn't even kill a tera ghost gambit with knock off.

punishing roaring moon's set up is much simpler than it sounds.

those are just replays i remembered saving, you can probably find more roaring moon games in the SPL Replays thread,

even the winrates are below avg

week 6 win-rate
| 6 | Roaring Moon | 10 | 25.00% | 40.00% |
week 5 win-rate
| 8 | Roaring Moon | 8 | 20.00% | 50.00% |
week 4 win-rate
| 10 | Roaring Moon | 7 | 17.50% | 28.57% |
week 3 win-rate
| 6 | Roaring Moon | 8 | 20.00% | 37.50% |

True but i was just showing how even if you're stubborn and dont want to run defensive mons, you can still beat roaring moon. in OST recently i saw vert using tinkaton as a counter to roaring moon, primarina and iron valiant which was neat.



which part?

you're right, you listed a check that does 27% or 40%

252 Atk Choice Band Dragapult Quick Attack vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Roaring Moon: 82-97 (23.3 - 27.6%) -- 78.5% chance to 4HKO

252 Atk Choice Band Tera Normal Dragapult Quick Attack vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Roaring Moon: 123-145 (35 - 41.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

+1 252 Atk Protosynthesis Roaring Moon Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Tera Normal Dragapult: 409-483 (129 - 152.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO

+1 252 Atk Protosynthesis Roaring Moon Acrobatics (110 BP) vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Tera Normal Dragapult: 310-365 (97.7 - 115.1%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO

you also named things like rillaboom and said to tera grass, (which is also funny because spending tera asw)

252+ Atk Tera Grass Rillaboom Grassy Glide vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Tera Flying Roaring Moon in Grassy Terrain: 112-132 (31.9 - 37.6%) -- 91% chance to 3HKO

252+ Atk Choice Band Tera Grass Rillaboom Grassy Glide vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Tera Flying Roaring Moon in Grassy Terrain: 167-197 (47.5 - 56.1%) -- 82.4% chance to 2HKO

why do people always try to fluff up the number of answers by just putting shit like this in, if the tier was actually deep enough that just throwing a few good mons together covered most of the tier, then we wouldn't be complaining

 

[Copland]

Calcs exist in a vacuum. I could pull calcs of Life Orb Zoroark-Hisui that make it look like some unwallable breaker. But the game isn't played in the damage calculator. There's a cost to Roaring Moon setting up a Dragon Dance. It likely takes hazard damage, and using DD over attacking leaves it vulnerable to being picked off by priority, revenge killed by something faster, or forced to trade with something bulky. As Mimikyu Stardust was trying to point out, sometimes it can't even set up a DD at all because what's in front of it might have a move to cripple or outright kill it.

There does come a point where the argument boils down to "skill issue" -- do we balance the game around 1500s ladder kings or by tournament players? When it comes to Moon's balance, honestly, I struggle to see what it adds to the tier that the 30 other set-up-and-sweep-you mons don't. However, I can't argue that it's too much for the tier in the way that, say, Iron Hands in UU has been all generation. If you find yourself constantly swept by Roaring Moon, consider what Pokemon you're using that grant it safe set-up, or if you have enough offensive counterplay to turn the tables on it (or outright prevent it from setting up at all).

Tournament replays are shared in a very accessible format--I've learned more about the game from watching those replays than I could from laddering alone. Go see what builds the top players are using, take note of how they're positioning their pieces, question why they make the plays they do. Not saying that you'll change your mind about Roaring Moon, but maybe you'll come to understand that just because a Pokemon can do big damage on paper doesn't mean it's broken in practice.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Go see what builds the top players are using, take note of how they're positioning their pieces, question why they make the plays they do. Not saying that you'll change your mind about Roaring Moon, but maybe you'll come to understand that just because a Pokemon can do big damage on paper doesn't mean it's broken in practice.

top players can adapt around basically anything. i can't really put too much stock in a top player saying "just play around it bro" because that's like an olympic gold medalist saying "just run faster"

 

[Finchinator]

likely gonna be 8 pkmn + tera on the survey btw

 

[Copland]

top players can adapt around basically anything. i can't really put too much stock in a top player saying "just play around it bro" because that's like an olympic gold medalist saying "just run faster"

Yeah, but unlike the 100 yard dash, it doesn't take a lifetime to get better at Pokemon. Study popular builds, review your games, be self-critical. More times than not, you beat yourself--not your opponent.