It is entirely possible for dragons to live ice moves, and they do so frequently. Pokemon capable of out-speeding dragons are almost always frail, too frail to take an unboosted stab supereffective attack from a dragon. A stab attack from a dragon, boosted by dragon dance, will almost always OHKO these fast pokemon, and it may be the case that the dragon becomes faster than the top 10-15 speediest pokemon.

Between Dragonite's ability, Yache berry, subsitute and entry hazards, it is easy to set things up so that certain dragons cannot be one-shot by a powerful ice attack, and retliate with a powerful sweep. Much of the metagame does revolve around disrupting these set-ups and preserving one's counters to these dragons.

I don't think the entire metagame is based around this though, a fairy type isn't exactly necessary to "fix" dragons, but dragons are a dominating force in the game. There is no easy counter to them.

 

Depends almost entirely on if you're playing with Sand Veil banned or not. And no, just no. Use Slaking if you want, I'll just laugh as I win in the end.

 

Speed boosted t-tar or rhyperior, or bulky-gara far more intimidating than dragons.

They're still powerful, sure, but they have counters.

 

Step into my parlor.

 

Slaking is fine if you worry seed him in doubles but in singles I just set up all over him and laugh. You just need a decent physical wall like Drapion and some varied spikes.

 

Or any wish+protect ab--sorry, user.

 

People on Mawile.

You guys... You guys need to start thinking about running Trick Room teams.

Because bullet punch isn't going to do jack shit to you and you need psychic types to start it up so fighting types are going to have to play those guessing games or something.

Actually, on a list of pokemon that wrecks mawile's shit, azu's probably on the very top lol.

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you haven't played much of gen5, have you :\

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My CS terrakion's going to use stone edge and you're going to have a bad time.

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Also: you don't need megalutions or whatever to overturn the more dominant bits of the OU metagame (can't speak for ubers).

How do you beat weather? Give more pokemon with BSTs roughly equal to politoed or ninetales Cloud Nine.

How do you beat really fast things? Good typings. How do you beat setup sweepers? More moves like Dragon Tail?

The point is that they're thinking about a time a little bit longer ago. Dragons (other than Latios, who is less of a dragon and more of a FUCK YOU) are really not that dominant in an age where everything hits hard, fast and srocks breaking multiscale makes Dnite free.

And Our Walls Are Different. Gone are the days of I-get-two-hit-by-380-spe.atk Forry - now we have defensive monsters like Ferrothorn who can tank nearly everything. Ttar in the sand eats special attackers for breakfast, etc etc.

Basically if you have a pokemon that can tear through walls in OU and have good defensive typing or gimmicks like speed boost (looking at you, blaziken), you get shunted to ubers.

If you have truly dominant dragons that play guessing games like, 70-30 in their favor like Rayquaza, ubers.

If you have truly dominant dragons that play no guessing games, like Giratina, Draco Plate Arceus, etc etc go to ubers.

Anyway, gamefreak tried so hard to make bad pokemon useful with moves already - tailglow on some random bugmons?

Not Manaphy. Not useful.

etc etc.

You guys have to play against the pokemon, not against the meta. "What kills this pokemon effectively - who are they paired with and why?"

This is why I hate Fairy types being introduced to play against dragons.

tl;dr: handholding is bad.

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Also, people

Garchomp is not as good as you think. 102 base speed means that it's trolled by like, 90% of the things in OU.

Even if you get a substitute up or have a scarf, it really doesn't have the stopping power to really just killing a wall outright, and return KOs. LOL

Garchomp was banned because SandveilSubSalacSdance sets. You'd keep subbing until they missed because of Sand Veil or whatever the fuck you-miss-in-the-sand move they had. Then you'd sdance and sub again until you got the salac berry boost and sweep their team at +2/+1 with a sub on.

What seriously counters that? Changing the weather takes a crucial turn and politoed is paper to +2 chomp. Hail? You're going to make people run hail just to eat sandchomps? srs?

But now, rough skin chomp is out and it's unbanned. Surprisingly, the usage of it is pretty low. Or not so surprisingly, for reasons already outlined.

Also, STAB > surprise, 90% of the time. "Don't put ice attacks on ice types", seriously? Ice is one of the worst defensive typings in the game - KO them or die, pretty much :\

But uh, weavile is a POS anyway because dark moves do no damage and everyone and their mom has bullet punch/mach punch/scarf close combat for you.

@MonkeyEpoxy - if you're playing to kill the other team with balanced or more offensive play styles and 4 of your 6 pokemon can't OHKO haxorus, you're doing it wrong. 76/90/70 is just terrible. And 97 base speed is almost unusably slow.

 

The fact 97 speed is "slow" should be enough evidence to you that Pokemon is fucked for most players. Ferrothorn can "tank anything that isn't fire" but he's the exception, not the rule. I run Muk alot - he was amazing last gen. This gen? Pf, good luck getting a single acid armor up before I get obliterated. But last gen, before the weather shit, before the genies, all that other crap, he was at least usable. Dependable even, against many types of pokemon. The whole metagame shifted in a bad way with Black and White, not that it didn't bring a lot of improvements, just that, it marginalized like another 90% of the "usable" pokemon.

Gamefreak has their own official tournament rules. You could see that in the official tournament a few days ago. They obviously view the game through their own odd lense, but even there, most of what I'm saying still applies. Dragons are dominant and most pokemon aren't usable. Like Charizard, for instance. I'm glad he's getting a megaform. You're right that I hope it doesn't just propel him into Ubers.

 

You're putting too much emphasis on the "surprise" part. I'm not fooling anyone unless I run Smeargle or field a fucking Raichu that can Surf/Fly. The point is that literally every Pokemon with the Ice type is made of tissue paper and the songs children sang to Frosty the Snowman. I'd rather die in two shots than one, and that's what we're talking when we deal with Ice types. When you talk "one hit kill or die," you're talking quickdraw metagame. The rules are different in quickdraw. If you aren't trying to Special Sweep, you shouldn't be using Ice Types, just Ice Type attacks.

 

I don't know what this "quickdraw" metagame is - the metagame is pretty much all encompassing. :\

 

Watch them make it fucking Fairy. I double dog dare you.

Quickdraw is building sweepers and speccing just enough attack to OHKO and training everything else for speed using stat boosters, held items, and EV counting.

Quickdraw is the idea that a battle lasts no more than twelve turns, because there are no more than twelve Pokemon in play. Every turn, something dies. You either oneshot your enemy, or they're faster than you and you get oneshotted.

It was a metagame unto itself up until Gen V. I don't know how it fares currently, because that's where I bowed out, and this is where I'm coming back in. It may not exist anymore, because some Pokemon look as though they were designed specifically to stymie quickdraw style gameplay.

That being said, I'm pretty sure it's still around.

 

Ehhh, I've never heard of pokemon being played like that. Because you know, switching is a Thing.

 

I've been out of the metagame for a while (BW2 metagame is a complete dark area for me), but the idea of the so-called Quickdraw isn't truly alive. That said, it's not without merit.

Lungs does have a point in that most battles in the Gen V metagame are played in the Wifi style - which is based on the official rule system of showing all 6 Pokemon of your party to your opponent and choosing X number of Pokemon to battle with (handheld battling is usually 6C3, whereas PO rules are usually 6C6).

In such a system, it becomes crucial to understand the synergies between different Pokemon teams and to be able to correctly identify which Pokemon fill which roles, which of your Pokemon will be able to dismantle the other team the most effectively, predict how your opponent will attempt to deal with your team using their lineup, and choose your combatants appropriately.

The notion of the Quickdraw metagame Raine is advocating falls apart in that, as Lungs has said...

What Raine is talking about seems to be a single strategy within the current metagame in which the objective is to out-hit, out-speed, and dominate the opponent in as few turns as possible, which was much more viable in the Gen IV metagame, before Pokemon with obscene walling capabilities, as well as the outrageous inflation in offensive hitting power came about in Gen V. The Hit Hard Hit Fast Don't Look Back style of playing is just one strategy in a multitude of successful game plans in the current metagame, and it's very easy to predict and deal with.

If you run a Ferrothorn or a Jellicent, or fucking hell, Tyranitar, Latias, or any half decent wall, you can survive an otherwise one-hit kill move and deal devastating detrimental effects to the primary enemy heavy hitter. Jellicent's Cursed Body, combined with Recover, pretty much means that as long as you can take two hits, you can successfully wall a heavy-hitting Pokemon provided you don't get Crithaxxed. Same with SubSeed Ferrothorn, or any variety of Berry-holding Pokemon. Evolite Chancey. Et cetera. I'm partial to trolling with Audino. Audino is a fucking bawse. Bitches never expect the Audino Inquisition.

Then there are the Trick Room parties - and these don't have to built solely for slow Pokemon's benefit - there are enough fast and heavy offensive teams out there that will fall apart with a single TR use.

And on and on it goes.

TL;DR: Quickdraw metagame was pretty much the only important aspect of the Gen IV metagame if you played to win - this is no longer true. While still a very important aspect of the competitive ring, it's no longer the end-all be-all of the Gen V metagame due to massive inflation of attack power and walling capability, as well as the emergence of Dream World abilities and the increased availability of weather teams.

EDIT: Also, @Raine: Fennekin's final evo is Fire/Psychic, and has been announced as such for a while. Do your research, dude.

EDIT 2: Audinos win at everything.

 

/me raises eyebrow.

 

A Bullet Punch from my Scizor would one-shot that.

 

Didn't you try that once against me and then was surprised that he survived? And then the Outrage started.

 

I can't remember, but I'm willing to check again if you're up for it. D:

 

I don't even have the computer that I used for PO anymore. And it really would clog up my system since no one really plays anymore.

 

I've been thinking of installing PO on this computer. I'd be up for a few games, though I don't know the B/W metagame at all.

 

Pokemon Showdown is much better. I'd be up for a game or two. Online in your browser pokemon battling.

Clicky