New Generation, New Perspectives: A Preliminary Overview of the XY Metagame from Japan
Nearly a month into the release of Pokémon X and Y, many competitive players have already moved past the initial in-game and exploration stages and are starting to breed their teams to participate in Random Matchup to get a handle on the new environment. A nascent metagame has begun to take shape, and while it’s questionable how long conclusions drawn from it will remain relevant after things like the announcement of VGC 14’s rules or Pokebank’s release, I think it’s still a fertile ground for discussion because it is ostensibly the current best method for players to explore all the new possibilities that the new generation has provided.
Many of us English-speaking players have long been fascinated by the Japanese community, with their different community organisation, tournament structure and mindsets giving rise to a playstyle that can be incredibly unorthodox at times, by our metagame’s standards. Today, I bring to you a translation of a preliminary overview of the XY doubles metagame by Japanese player taroimo, half in an attempt to shed some light on this playstyle and half in an attempt to stimulate discussion and comparison. Please share your own Random Matchup experiences if you have any, and let the discussion begin!
____________________________________________________________________________
This is a translation of these two blog posts kindly reposted with taroimo-san’s permission.
A Brief Overview of the XY Doubles Rated Metagame
(Because I haven’t racked up all that many battles myself, I have relied on observations and information from others to bolster this overview, and as a result it may not be completely impartial)
Standard (Goodstuffs) Playstyle
In the process of trying out the various Mega Evolutions, the one Mega that has risen to the pole position in common usage is Mega Kangaskhan. Its ability, Parental Bond, allows it to attack twice and do 1.5x damage. The notable benefits of this are the capability of boosting its attack by +2 through use of the new TM move Power-Up Punch and knocking out opponents through Focus Sashes. Thanks to Power-Up Punch, it can tear through opponents even when afflicted by Will-o-Wisp burns. However, ignoring the mirror matchup and considering its performance, the vast majority of Kangaskhan are running Jolly, maximum Attack/Speed, and furthermore with it being Normal-type, individually Kangaskhan is not much of a threat. To compensate for this, other Pokémon must be called in for support. Examples of such Pokémon include Rotom (Will-o-Wisp and screens), Togekiss (Follow Me) and Intimidators. Kangaskhan can also use Fake Out, and this opens up the possibility for disrupting opponents by flinching them and getting off Will-o-Wisp, screens and Intimidate.
Rotoms and Togekiss nowadays are rather slow.
With the Fairy type’s immunity to Dragon attacks, teams based on breaking through opponents with physical offense are aplenty. Bearing this in mind, players can answer with things like Will-o-Wisp, Intmidators and Prankster Meowstic ♂’s Charm (there are instances of players using a Bold nature to perform this role).
If Rotoms are running slow sets, an Atk/Spe invested Metagross’s Choice Banded/Normal Gem boosted Explosion may be able to deal decisively with it.
Trick Room Teams
Hail Room
No big differences from Hail Room of the BW2 days here.
Pokémon like Abomasnow, Chandelure, Rhyperior and Hitmontop form the general structure. Cresselia is unavaliable, but Musharna, Chandelure, Slowking and friends get Trick Room set up just fine.
The traditional Life Orb max Attack/Special Attack Abomasnow is being replaced by Mega Abomasnow.
Rain-Trick Room Switch Teams
(Translator’s note: ‘switch’ is the term Japanese players use to refer to teams that incorporate multiple different playstyles. English-speaking players would simply call this Rain-room.)
The essential Trick Roomers are Trevenant (both Frisk and Harvest are strong options) and Gourgeist.
The metagame is devoid of Raikou and Thundurus, but Mega Manectric is worthy of attention. Manectric’s normal ability Lightningrod may be able to protect friendly Water Pokémon, but after Mega Evolution its Intimidate allows it to weaken the opponent’s physical Pokémon. By using Volt Switch to scatter Intimidate Attack drops, it is possible to do a Volt Switch-into-Trick Room strategy. Overheat gives opposing Grass- or Steel-types a good roasting. Hidden Power Ice, if available, lets it stand against Dragons. These are some of Manectric’s noteworthy capabilities. Being able to deal with Garchomp with its 105 speed before and 135 speed after Mega Evolution is another strong point.
Sandstorm-Trick Room Switch Teams
Generally composed of Brave Tyranitar, Brave Intimidate (Mega) Mawile, and the essential Trick Roomers. Due to the low number of encounters with this type of team, many details are still unclear.
Overall, if you are aiming for a high rating, you can expect opponents to throw Will-o-Wisps, Thunder Waves and Swaggers (Prankster Klefki/Meowstic ♂) at you frequently. Because of this, Safeguard is worthy of consideration.
If you have Swagger, you can use it to boost friendly physical attackers as well.
_______________________________________________________________________
I shall continue on from the overview in my previous blog post. I shan’t focus on specific teams for the time being, but rather on individual things and gimmicks that left an impression on me.
Rocky Helmet
An item that returns a fixed percentage of damage back to attackers who used a contact move on the holder (basically most physical moves, but take note that the special Grass Knot is a contact move as well). With the physical-centric metagame and the popularity of Mega Kangaskhan, the usage rate of this item has gone up. Ideally this should be held by a Pokémon with superior endurance on the physical side (In Rated Singles it seems that there is a high-ranking player using Impish Rocky Helmet Gyarados, and Rocky Helmet Roost Skarmory is also a common thing). Another noteworthy property of this item is its ability to break Focus Sashes.
Disquake
The Discharger role is played by Levitating/Flying Electric Pokémon, mainly Rotom and Zapdos, and the Earthquaker role by Garchomp. Sometimes appears in teams even though it is unrelated to the main strategic focus of the team. There have been cases of people giving Rotom Choice Specs to expedite the strategy. The Zapdos currently in Rated Doubles have no way to learn Heat Wave, but plenty of high-ranking players seem to have taken the trouble to get hold of high IVed Zapdoses with Hidden Power Ice, so Salamences and Garchomps should tread carefully around them.
The common moveset on Zapdos would probably, I dare say, be Thunderbolt(Discharge)/ HP Ice/ Thunder Wave / Roost.
Rotom’s Various Sets
There are Bold and Calm bulky Rotom with recovery items going around spreading Will-o-Wisps, but there are also offensive sets and Modest Choice Specs sets going around (and Modest but reasonably bulky Rotom with recovery items like Sitrus Berry and Leftovers straddling the middle ground).
If it were me, I’d want to allocate my Speed EVs for Rotom in the following manner: If Bold/Calm, 20 EVs to speed creep on 4 EV Rotom, and if Modest, then at the minimum enough speed to get the jump on mirror matchups, standard Tyranitars and Hitmontops. With Electric-types” newfound immunity to paralysis, if not using other speed control methods such as Trick Room, Icy Wind or Tailwind, I would want to invest as many EVs in Speed as I could possibly afford.
Mega Evolutions
Mega Kangaskhan and Mega Mawile are aplenty, but I see various other Mega Evolutions around as well. Mega Lucario hits a maximum speed of 180 after evolving, and before that it doesn’t get flinched by Fake Outs thanks to Inner Focus which should be kept in mind. Memorizing the base speed stats of the various Mega Evolutions is a must.
Weather Pokémon
There is an extraordinarily low amount of rain teams. There are a few Sun- and Hail-dependent teams going around, but due to the ease with which Tyranitar denies other teams their preferred weather, my impression is that the situation will revert its previous state, where weather inducers were included in teams depending on their base stats and their general utility. The flinching that comes along with Choice Scarf Tyranitar’s Rock Slides is strong as well.
Garchomp
A utility Pokémon. I get the feeling that a lot of players using it are thinking something along the lines of “Garchomp may not be related to the rest of my team, but if I put it in it’ll probably manage to do some work for now”. Initially, due to the presence of Fairys in the metagame there was some debate over the use of Iron Head/Tail and Poison Jab, but in reality Dragon move / Earthquake / Rock move ends up more or less covering all the bases. Compared to the days of BW2, I feel that there has been a marked increase in the usage of Rough Skin. I’m rather uncertain about Sand Veil at the moment due to its inherent large amount of randomness.
About the Author
tanzying is a VGC player hailing from the tropical island of Singapore. Previously involved mostly in translating Japanese VGC blog articles for the rest of the world, organising official VGC events and friendlies with other countries for Singapore has come to be his primary role.
Related Posts
New Mechanics Introduced in VGC 2016 →
VGC ’16 Pokémon Speed Tiers →
Hyper Offense Analysis – BadIntent’s Evil Thoughts →
Greener Grassy Terrain: A More Balanced Future For VGC? →
20 Responses to New Generation, New Perspectives: A Preliminary Overview of the XY Metagame from Japan
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
bidoof, I’m not the only one that was using 20 Speed EVs on Rotom, haha.
I’ve only been playing with Kalos-dex-only things so far, and the lack of good fast Fighting types has been noticeable. Mega-evolving is pretty cool, but I think that a useful Item is the better option over a Mega-stone in the majority of cases. One of the few Pokémon worth Mega-evolving is the Kangaskhan though as mentioned, which is pretty nasty with the lack of good Fighting types (aside Conkeldurr, but this only fits certain teams) and Sucker Punch for the Ghosts.
The first team I made was a Trick Room team because they’re really easy to put together, so I’m not surprised there’s a fair few of these around.
Will-o-Wisp is much more viable now, so Burns are pretty common. I think people are starting to realise that Talonflame doesn’t really KO much too, although it and Vivillon are much better than the other random Bug and bird Pokémon we get at the start of games. There’s a lot of Azumarill too, now that Aqua Jet and Belly Drum are legal together…
Fun times…
I thought Mega Mawile was supposed to be another big one. I’m predicting Mega Scizor usage will really take off though once you can transfer up ones with Bug Bite, get it a SD and good game. As for Mega Lucario, I dunno…Adaptability is no doubt sexy, but even in Mega form he’s kinda frail…I think it’s more of a case of there being better options generally, though Lucario is still more than effective with what he has.
I thought Mega Mawile was supposed to be another big one. I’m predicting Mega Scizor usage will really take off though once you can transfer up ones with Bug Bite, get it a SD and good game. As for Mega Lucario, I dunno…Adaptability is no doubt sexy, but even in Mega form he’s kinda frail relatively speaking…I think it’s more of a case of there being better options generally, though Lucario is still no doubt effective with what he has.
I generally agree with a lot of the info with a few differing ideas. When the kalos only rumor started I switched my team up to match the ruleset but after around 90+ games I’ve played so many different things I cannot make any conclusive results( I still have not played a single rain team).<br></br>
<br></br>
However I think mawile is the biggest winner this gen. This mon has a amazing comeback favor doing ridiculous amount of damage and having intimidate pre mega makes him great in such a physical metagame. Not to mention how good fairy/steel is. I have not used it yet but I do plan too with my next team.<br></br>
<br></br>
While fellow Megamon Kangaskan follows second( I’m ignoring non kalos mons like togekiss who would probably be here). Having a Choice Band without the restrictions is always great and people tend to forget kangs pre mega ability scrappy which can definitely surprise ghost like Gengar.<br></br>
<br></br>
There are so many winners but I think Azumarill takes the 3rd for winners this gen. It greatly benefits from fairy typing and now that it has drum+aqua jet I see it being another big threat.<br></br>
<br></br>
Also Megagar I feel was extremely overhyped. Though I use him even with the lorb boost he surprisingly misses out on a lot of KOs still missing out on ohko on most fairymons and abamasnow with his strongest stab sludge bomb. I like it for it immediate pressure with the presence of Shadow tag( Though I rarely megavolve because I’m normally saving it for a later mon), but I still prefer Gothitelle for trapping. Megazor also feels overhyped too as the megaboost really is small. I prefer Lum or Occa as main options for scizor as the mga stone is best left to other pokemon.<br></br>
<br></br>
Water types are even better. Water has always been a good type but in this gen I’ve seen players run 2-3 on a team. With such amazing choices like Azumarill/Gyrados/Rotom-w stacking water types isn’t really bad. Rotom-w has found it’s spot in the top 3 and maybe would be #1 in usage from my results. Gyrados having intimidate helps in such a physical meta and megados is pretty decent. Though it feels odd when there aren’t many fighting type attacks to tank in this meta. Azumarill is really liking gen 6 and belly drum aqua jet is crazy. Even OHKOing Yzard in sun( Yeah it’s +6 but it’s a pretty good measure). It also is deceptively bulky<br></br>
<br></br>
Im also surprised at the lack of rain which theoretically got even better even with the lack of staples like thundurus and terrakion. Kingdra remains mostly unchanged and STAB LO hpumps in rain ohkos a good portion of this game on a sober day of course. I still thought this would of led to more rainroom with heavy hitters in iron ball toed+Mawile(or metagross).<br></br>
<br></br>
Also the lack of fighting types is also noticable to where I dropped chople berry on tar and am experimenting with other items like sitrus.<br></br>
<br></br>
I can go on and on lol, but I am really enjoying 6th gen and so many things can work right now. I just love testing and am having fun using pokemon I never thought I’d be using Pokemon like Gardevoir or Charizard let alone on the same team.
Poor ampharos and absol. I really don’t predict them getting much usage in vgc.
The reason I come to this site is to read about unofficial metagames. I am so glad someone stole an article from a Japanese player to talk about a metagame that doesn’t matter.
Maybe next we can steal an article from smogon about X&Y OU singles?
Yeah, I’d rather read more of your articles that you write.
don’t worry tanzying i appreciate your observational translations and definitely find them interesting. i think having a general idea of how other non American players are finding the game is important, at least for myself and a few others. keep up the good work
nobody has to click any links they aren’t interested in after all
Battle Spot features official formats of play. Matt, your trolling is getting worse. Try to at least base it in some sort of fact. Would you like to try your snark in an easier thread? The Kalos one is still open.
I’m sorry you found the article unpalatable, but I must insist on defending myself against this particular accusation. I did ask the original author for permission before posting this translation, and not only was he happy to give it to me, he also told me how much of an honour it was to make the front page.
Maybe what’s putting you off is that this piece isn’t in Nugget Bridge’s usual style of official tournament-centric articles, but I assure you I anticipated this as well and posted it in the workshop section to get an idea of whether this would make a good front page article, or if it would just be better to make a normal forum post with it.
Since battle spot singles is an official format of play now, does that mean nugget bridge will start covering the singles metagame? I really look forward to reading some articles about this.
Also, I think more articles about the VGC metagame should be released before the actual rules get announced. That way everyone will know ahead of time what pokemon they should use based off the opinions of nugget bridge posters.
Also, the only reason for your post was because my post made you mad. So mad that you felt you needed to put me in my place. If that isn’t the definition of a successful troll, I don’t know what is.
I think you’re usually supposed to make people mad without making yourself look like a moron, though. You’re supposed to make other people look stupid.
I for one really appreciated this article. Not only is it cool to hear about Pokemon from a different perspective (arguably the main point of a website like Nugget Bridge) but it is really cool to hear from someone participating in a metagame that is, often, very different from our own. There is a lot to be learned from other metagames and other views on specific Pokes. Just look at the increase in Mamo usage after Arash’s Worlds win! Japan of all places could offer some really interesting insight.
After all, they did completely dominate the game at one point!
At ONE point? Have you SEEN the top 100 player chart lately?
Also, I knew I was on to something putting kangaskhan on my team.
So does this mean the singles article is going to be written?
After actually reading this article, it is what I would expect a metagame article written a month after game release to be. The entire metagame is just random new crap people wanted to try and things that were good in BW2.
If you need to churn out articles for site revenue maybe you shouldn’t ask permission to translate Japanese captain obvious’s observations. But I guess adding the word “Japan” to the title really increased page views. People love stupid Grimer from Japan.
I’d just like to know a good place to check out some replays of vgc matches. To see what we have in store you know?
While we don’t have official rules yet for VGC ’14, there’s a lot of new things that people need to play with to get an idea of where to start their teambuilding once we do. How big is the nerf to most special moves’ power, the nerf to the Overheat series of moves? How good is Fairy looking offensively, defensively? New mons in general?
There’s so many new or slightly changed levers to pull and you can theorycraft all you want but there’s no substitute for actual playtesting. You’ll get off to a better foot going into “srs bsns mode,” once we know competitive rules in full, going off what you’ll learn now than trying to start with the BW2 metagame and working cross-generation (especially myself since this is the first time I’ll be taking it seriously). If anything, I’d have liked more to read here.
The best utilization of Rocky Helmet I’ve seen is on Follow Me / Rage Powder Pokemon like Togekiss and Amoongus. You can read things like a Khan Fake Out coming from a mile away and it’s really quite painful to deal with.
A blast to read… thanks for the translation.