Metagame Fervent Impersonation

[DosDogs]

Alright everyone, I have a slight restriction change that I want to propose and get thoughts on: reducing the number of shared move required between the base and nickname mon from 4 to 3. I'll give some example sets that are not legal but will be legal if this change goes through.

Arceus (Volcarona) @ Earth Plate
Ability: Flame Body
Tera Type: Ground
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Quiver Dance
- Bug Buzz
- Flamethrower
- Giga Drain

Miraidon (Raging Bolt) @ Booster Energy
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 64 HP / 28 Def / 252 SpA / 164 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 20 Atk
- Thunderclap
- Calm Mind
- Dragon Pulse
- Thunderbolt

Keep in mind that signature moves of restricted move such as Judgment and Electro Drift are still unavailable as they are not learnt by the base mons. You can also still choose to run 4 moves that are shared by both Pokemon if you wish. I'll now go over the reasonings and implications of this change. I'm sure that if you've tried making sets for this OM before, you'll find that a lot of the time, you're forced into running one or two suboptimal moves. I personally encounter this problem a lot, and even before this OM was approved I was told that this move pool issue might disincentives people to try this OM. Most of the time there are 2 or 3 moves that you're happy with running but you just can't find a good 3rd or 4th move. This restriction change's primary goal is to reduce the "feels bad" aspect of running bad moves.

Let's all be honest here: no one wants to run suboptimal moves. Adding suboptimal moves and using them in battle doesn't feel good. That's not all however, I think that certain moves are Pokemon-defining, and restricting access to those moves would ruin the Pokemon's viability and flavour. For example, the Volcarona set above. Let's take a moment and imagine running Volcarona without Quiver Dance. It's a dreadful thing to imagine isn't it? There are other examples like Ogerpon without Ivy Cudgel, Kingambit without Sucker Punch, Garganacl without Salt Cure and many more. To be frank, these moves are synonymous with the Pokemon. By forcing these mons to lose their iconic move to engage with the OM mechanic, they lose a large chunk of their identity.

Now that I have put out my opinions why I would want to go through this change, I'll now talk about the two primary reasons why I wouldn't go through with it. The first is the "flavour" of the OM. Were this change to go through, it would mean that the nickname Pokemon would have access to an illegal move. It might not seem like a big deal but I think it goes against what the OM was originally about. The second and bigger reason which is related to the first is regarding balance. I think that a lot of people can agree that strong Pokemon are fun to use because winning is more fun than losing. I think that this change would significantly increase the power level of the meta game because not only are the base Pokemon are buffed thanks to signature moves/better moveset, the nickname mon is also buffed because it can have an illegal move. I don't think I need to tell you how strong giving an Uber mon moves like Quiver Dance, Thunderclap, Recover and Shell Smash is. If we were to go through with this change, I do believe that a lot more Pokemon or Moves will be banned. For example, I think both Urshifus , Shell Smash and Belly Drum probably must be banned. You can also have stuff like Gigaton Hammer Zacian-C and Boomburst Terapagos which might be too strong.

As a final point, I would like to share some sets that would give you an idea of how big this change would be. Let's first talk about Miraidon . If you don't know, Miraidon is one of the best Pokemon in Ubers. It wants to run Thunderbolt, Volt Switch, Draco Meteor, Overheat, Calm Mind and U-turn. At the moment, the best Pokemon that can run this is Raging Bolt. With the new restriction, let's see what new Pokemon can effectively use Miraidon as a nickname.

can now run Thunderclap
can now run Shadow Ball
can now run Extremespeed, Hurricane + Thunder (rain)
can now run Wisp, Trick and Pain Split (no dragon move)
can now run Electro Shot

As you can see, not only is Raging Bolt better, but a plethora of other mons also become a lot better. Let's use another example: Ho-oh . At the moment, Ho-oh is limited to Blaziken and Talonflame but with the change, we'll have:

can run SD, Close Combat and EQ
can run Roost
can run Extremespeed
can run Rapid Spin
can run Magma Storm

I hope you have a sense of the magnitude that this change would bring to this OM. Now, I would like to hear your thoughts on it. Do you think the team building would be more fun? Are you alright with a lot more Pokemon and Moves being banned as a result? Do you think that the "flavour" of the OM would be ruined by letting the nickname Pokemon have access to an illegal move? Do you think it would overall be a good or bad change?

I think this is a pretty interesting idea. I also don't think it really goes against the original OM premise (at least how I view it). The mons still have to run 3 moves that share AND have to lose 50% of their health for the transformation to activate, and that seems like a fair trade off for bringing one piece of itself with it. On the balance side, this would definitely mean a lot of rebalancing would need to happen, but there's plenty of time for that to happen and a power level raise is by no means a bad thing. Personally I prefer metas with a high power level (like cross evolution) and would definitely be more interested in building for this meta with this change. I love the idea of making absurdly strong mons and then using crazy gimmicks only possible with an extra move to play with. Overall I would be on board with this change and think it'd be a general improvement to the OM

 

[The Guy Who Has Many Alts]

Alright people, we are fortunate to have this OM be selected as LCOTM. For now, we will keep the 4-move restriction as is and revisit changes to this rule in the future. The OM leaders have advised that drastic changes like it probably shouldn't happen considering we barely have an idea of what the meta will look like, and I agree. To celebrate our first ladder, I have a collection of extremely devious teams for you to try since I know team building can be challenging when no one knows what is good. After you try out some of these teams, I encourage you to come up with your own sets so you can post it here and claim that you invented it. I will personally give you free karma. One last thing, there is currently a bug where nicknamed Pokemon abilities will change into the primary ability after you switch out. Hopefully Dhelmise can fix it soon but in the meantime Pokemon that uses a secondary or hidden ability are slightly scuffed. Thankfully the majority of uber mons only have one ability though. Without further ado let's take a look at these teams.

rightclicker Teams
Screens HO

The first team is screens HO featuring base Grimmsnarl and a bunch of mons on the watchlist like Baxcalibur-KyuB, Gholdengo-CalyS and Iron Hands-ZacC. This seems like a great team if you just want to click your setup move and OHKO unprepared teams.

Giratina OU Stall

What if you're someone who doesn't like engaging with OM mechanics? What if you believe that Giratina is the missing piece that would have made OU stall absolutely unbeatable? Well, here is the team for you. Featuring no less than 5 standard mons, you can show your opponent that a true stall enthusiast doesn't need more than Giratina to wall forever.

My Teams
Indeedee Psychic Spam

Who needs strategy... when you can simply run the 3 fast psychic nukes under psychic terrain. This team runs all of CalyS, DeoA and Mewtwo to hopefully overwhelm your opponent. Indeedee sets up Psychic Terrain to enhance damage and take away priority for a while.

Archaludon Rain

What better way to play a new meta than to run the classic Archaludon + Barraskewda + Iron Treads Rain? This is a tried and true core that was so broken in OU that Archaludon was banned. CB Swift Swim Barraskewda does one million damage and you can flip turn on water resists to Archaludon who is a menace with Electro Shot.

Ho-oh Balance

I wouldn't recommend this team right now since Ho-oh's Regenerator will break after your first switch, but it's still a solid balance team featuring Torkoal-Terapagos and triple setup in DD TTar-NDM and Dnite as well as Bulk Up Lando-T.

Bliss Mola Big Stall

Another Stall team but with more new mons. This team also features a Ho-oh so I would recommend swapping it with something else atm.

Anyways that's all for the collection of legendary teams. I hope you will enjoy building and playing this OM over the next month. The council will monitor how the meta develops and we will bonk broken stuff with our ban hammer if needed.

 

[Scepticskep]

Indeedee Psychic Spam

Who needs strategy... when you can simply run the 3 fast psychic nukes under psychic terrain. This team runs all of CalyS, DeoA and Mewtwo to hopefully overwhelm your opponent. Indeedee sets up Psychic Terrain to enhance damage and take away priority for a while.

Just letting you know, the link to this one's broken, it's linking to the Bliss stall team

 

[rightclicker]

early thoughts after playing like 8 games



This guy is fucking dumb and should go ASAP.
I already have games where I outplayed the opponent for the entire match with several layers of hazards up while they just positioned Gholdengo!Caly-S correctly once and then instantly 6-0 with 0 counters. Worst thing is that anything (and i mean anything) with Psyshock + Shadow Ball just gets free access to this guy - so you can have like Cresselia setting up all the Calm Minds in the world and then suddenly, 6-0 because you accidentally chipped it below 50% or didn't deal enough instead of OHKOing it from like 80%!! Also Darks don't even work that well because haha funny Tera button.

 

[Ezael_Stormblood]

hath I finally found it? is my journey over? a format where reshiram is actually good?

 

[rightclicker]

What an unbelievably retarded format. There's next to no point in changing mons when all the moveset is the same and you change below 50% HP. Not to mention being unable to choose which ability you want from the nickname Poke without convoluted pairing. To each their own, but when there's only one spot for OM of the month and it gets wasted to trash like this tier it's a real problem. Whoever made this meta should be shot for wasting a month of my potential OM games I could've enjoyed. Pathetic.

just because you don't like it doesn't mean others don't/won't enjoy it lol

 

[TeaThymeLine]

Hello, I fought a few minutes ago against a Mimikyu user... which gave its Mimikyu its own name as a nickname. As long as its HP were under 50%, its ability was looping, giving it a pseudo-sub to any offensive moves. I wonder, considering that the change of form is supposed to be definitive, then this Mimikyu would have been able to use its ability only twice, right ? Or am I missing something ?

 

[The Guy Who Has Many Alts]

You're right, this behaviour is not intended. It's a bug related to how the mechanic is coded so unfortunately we'll just have to wait for it to be fixed. At the moment there are several ways of beating this strategy though, including Substitute, multi-hit moves, Taunt, Mold Breaker, Knock Off, Poison and some others. Of course at the end of the day it's still a bug so hopefully it will be fixed soon.

 

[berry]

My initial thoughts on FI are that it's better to create a team with a bunch of coincidental transformations rather than trying to build around transformations- It's pretty difficult to intentionally cut your own HP, with substitute + 3atks or bulky Life Orb users being able to take advantage of the gimmick most effectively. Here are some Day 1 sets I've come up with that I'll try to build some teams around:

Eternatus (Goodra-Hisui) @ Leftovers
Ability: Sap Sipper
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Dragon Pulse
- Sludge Bomb
- Flamethrower
- Dragon Tail / Flash Cannon

Eternatus is ridiculous when facing anything other than other Ubers, so getting hoodra to transform into one after firing off attacks is huge. Substitute can also be run in the last slot to try and get into impersonation range faster, while something like Protect can help you heal up your Eternatus after hoodra takes a big hit.

Kyogre (Latias) @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt

CM Latias is already strong enough with boltbeam coverage, but it's unfortunate that Kyogre doesn't learn any of lati's stab moves. After getting enough CMs up and a strong hit, a boosted Kyogre will just sweep any standard team.

Reshiram (Hydreigon) @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Earth Power
- Flamethrower
- Focus Blast

My attempt at a fast Life Orb user, but maybe Kyogre (Latios) may be better. I like Dragon + Ground coverage a lot to deal with potential threats like Dialga and Eternatus, and Reshiram shares many of the moves that Hydreigon already uses.

 

[GravitysGone]

Bruh somebody get Mimikyu the fuck out of this meta until that bug is fixed