State of the competitive metagame

[Dark-San]

I have gotten the game when it first releases. Now after having to complete the storyline, my next step would be to build a competitive team that would be able to survive online battling.

The only competitive teams that I have known so far are the ever broken Aegislash.

Anyone care to update on this? Also what about the traditional sandstorm, raindance and drought teams. Are they still viable or they have been toss aside due to the mega-evolution exploits or affected badly by the introduction of fairy type?

[Pokemaster Ash]

Well, I've never been much of a competitive player, but I do know weather teams have taken a little bit of a hit. Drought, Drizzle, Sand Stream, and Snow Warning all now only operate for a limited amount of time (5 turns) instead of through the whole battle. Also there are ways now to block the damage done by Sandstorm and Hail (the ability Overcoat does this, plus a new hold item called Safety Goggles does as well), so they aren't the annoyances they once were.

...Mega Evolution...well, I'd have to see the entire list to know what to expect from them. I get the strong feeling Game Freak is holding out on us with them.

Fairy-Type does add in an interesting twist, being the element that derails the almighty Dragon-Type completely (while Ice and Dragon itself were effective offensively against Dragon-Types, Fairy not only does that but has an immunity to back it up) as well as giving Sableye and Spiritomb something to fear as they now have a weakness (not that too many people use them).

[DarkestLight]

AFAIK Fairy is merely an offensive boon. It helped us all gain a new skill set to knock Dragons down a notch with, and opened up Dark and Ghosts to hit Steels for Normal damage-giving alot of Uber/OU pokemon a heavy boost. Weather teams are severely hampered nowadays with the lowering of weather effects. New Abilities really don't change much, and Mega Evolutions are still too random right now. I haven't seen many other than Mega Blaz and Mega Lucario tearing things up.

Spore Nerf is my main thing, Smeargle got hurt by that...and Defog is plain ridiculous...

[Loupeitak]

I've built my full team for competitive single battles, and have messed around before on simulators with great results. Some megas can be extremely OP (with the likes of Mega Gengar and Mega Kanghaskhan being banned to ubers by Smogon), even in the OU category (Mega Lucario is an absolute machine in the right hands).

Aegislash has pretty much been figured out by now, with moves such as Earthquake and Sucker Punch not triggering King's Shield. It's still a decent pivot, though.

As for defog, I love it when I know my opponent has it. I send in my bisharp with Defiant, getting a free swords dance on the switch and proceed to anihalate some souls.

Weather nerf has changed a lot about team building. The current metagame seems centralized a lot on physical moves and priority (Gale Wings Talonflame... Urgh...)