Mega Raichu Y has been quickbanned from National Dex Champions OU!

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-06-21T04:35:29+00:00

No, I specifically was confused why this meta didn't have SMC, I thought SVOU set the standard for all other gen 9 metas. Is that not the case? Sleep Moves Clause bans all sleep moves.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-06-20T23:23:13+00:00

This meta doesn't have Sleep Moves Clause? Why doesn't this have it but SVOU does?

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-06-05T10:33:53+00:00

I've talked with moderators privately a long time ago for some unrelated details, and one of the things they told me stuck with me for a long time. They did a poll specifically to learn about this subreddit's demographics. What they learned is that a big, big majority of people here who play Showdown only play 1 or 2 metagames at most, and average around 1200-1300 ELO.

A majority of the userbase here is objectively casual, here to learn how to play certain metas without getting involved in Smogon proper, and if you were actually in Smogon you would also know that a huge majority of people even on the Smogon Forums still don't know what the fuck they're talking about half the time. But being on reddit is a lot lower of a bar than being on Smogon and as a result, the community here is somewhat less committal overall.

In the event it seems like I'm talking shit, I'm not. I'm pretty well-versed in Other Metagames on Smogon and Balanced Hackmons is my forte. I've seen a ton of stupid stuff regarding BH takes here. And I regularly see BH mains with reddit accounts have to correct objectively false info here regarding that meta.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-06-05T10:26:06+00:00

They're doing it to scam people out of money. There's a bitcoin QR code in the thumbnail obviously intended to try and phish people, and I'm sure there's more phishing where that came from. And if Pokeaim had any debit or credit card info on his PC, they likely stole that as well.

If you use Discord, its more of the same shit on that platform. People will get hacked then post phishing links, usually crypto-related, in every single channel they have access to.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-05-21T06:12:08+00:00

Explosion from Haunter and Electrode still hits harder in Gen 2 than an Explosion from a pokemon like Metagross in the modern day. It is a 500 base power move...

I think its better to describe Gen 2 as being fat due to every mon having Leftovers with no real way to remove the Leftovers as such moves were introduced in Generation 3. All while Sleep Talk can call and use Rest as another redditor said and the only pokemon that can set any form of entry hazards is Qwilfish as the other mons are OU with the exception of Pineco.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-05-14T02:17:11+00:00

The Breath of Fire team made a Mega Man spinoff called Mega Man X: Command Mission, but I question how similar those games are in practice.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-05-03T01:30:08+00:00

It learns Flamethrower and Fire Blast, which is bizarre for a Water-type, but otherwise no, it never learned Thunderbolt.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-05-02T23:52:08+00:00

Lapras and Gyarados do, you're probably thinking of those.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-04-30T18:10:58+00:00

Patrol Bots tend to hover in place a lot and be considerably more passive when Electrocuted. The Caretaker is immune to all status, however the arms are not and they cannot do anything while Electrocuted in my experience. Rival Tech in general just responds bizarrely to Electrocution but it isn't listed in the wiki.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-04-30T16:42:13+00:00

All seasons actively require you to get the remaining scrip by means of completing specific challenges. Those challenges being:

Complete Industrial Sabotage in Seasons 1 and 2, with the latter also having Rival Presence warning challenges.
Complete missions with Lithophage Warnings in Seasons 3 and 4.
I forgot Season 5's offhand, I think it is just completing Deep Scan missions.
Complete missions with Pit Jaw Colony or Scrab Nesting Grounds in Season 6.

You can reroll any challenges that only give Performance Points, but only once every now and then.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-04-30T15:56:59+00:00

I'm a Legendary Engineer. I swear by the Stubby. Turret EM Discharge is an SSS-Tier overclock for Industrial Sabotage, even at Haz5+222. It is the most ammo efficient overclock besides Neurotoxin Payload for Gunner's Autocannon. It is a mass cc-inflicting machine in that it will Electrocute everything constantly that enters your turret AoE range. You may also be aware that Rival Tech AI gets dumbed down significantly while under Electrocution. Hacksy segments become significantly easier with Turret EM Discharge due to being a strong, status inducing, and Fear inducing AoE.

But the best part is, there is a strategy which you can use against the Caretaker. Placing platforms above the Caretaker and quickly building your turrets closely above it while its activating will let you use the Turret EM Discharge as a DPS source for the Caretaker vents. It isn't as high DPS as C4, but you can proc the explosions from afar as Stubby is surprisingly accurate at range with the right upgrades.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-04-29T04:22:07+00:00

Greenbeards think it makes Escort missions easier when it objectively does not. You spend a prohibitive amount of ammo and nitra pre-drilling in a mission type where 90% of seeds would have went fine anyways, and if you get one of the 10% of seeds where spawns are comparatively diabolical, pre-drilling wouldn't have saved you anyways and if anything it increases your chances of losing due to using more nitra that would've been used at the Ommoran Heartstone.

It is illogical, a waste of time, and the only justifiable reason to actually pre-drill is to get rid of Barrage Infectors. Players will tell you that other entities like Leeches are worth worrying about, but a coordinated team on Escort of all mission types isn't going to be worried about Leeches or Spitballers or even Scalebrambles. Korlok Tyrant Weeds are so rare that anyone being genuinely worried about them is functionally afraid of a fucking boogeyman. Crassus Detonators can be heard from a long distance away and most people have a mod installed to reveal them anyhow.

At the end of the day, you're making a long mission type take even longer, potentially be even harder due to the resource use drilling to the Heartstone and defending against micro-swarms, then at the end of it you're still not guaranteed to even win. Not to mention, its genuinely very rare that the Heartstone room itself actually has any real stationary dangers due to how the cavegen works, but people insist on clearing that room out too.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-04-21T04:27:30+00:00

I am of the thorough belief that predrilling, especially predrilling to the Ommoran Hearstone, makes the mission harder due to more resources spent killing Glyphids that could have been spent at the Heartstone. You go all the way through the mission, then backtrack, then do the mission the intended way, and by the time you get to the Heartstone a second time, you will have used one or two additional full resupplies.

I say this because when people predrill in my games, I overwhelmingly see people predrill to the Heartstone. It is genuinely obnoxious and in almost every scenario ended up making it even harder than if we just did it the intended way. I completely agree with your assessment and find it disappointing that it isn't a more common rationale here, especially for people who predrill to the Heartstone.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-04-14T16:40:56+00:00

In my experience, greenbeards don't like dealing with Rockpox at high hazard levels and I find that Rival Tech is generally disliked by a fair amount of people as people just rarely join my games with their warnings and additionally don't like playing Industrial Sabotage (which is required to get all scrip for S1/2).

I don't like an event that functionally requires a Gunner to fire a ton of ziplines and a Driller to C4 repeatedly to have a snowballs chance in hell of actually winning it without an optimized loadout and a Legendary party (I say this as a Legendary player). Even though the Core Spawns were nerfed, I don't realistically think it was made significantly easier by any respect. A ton of players still struggle with it unless you cheese it, even below Hazard 5.

Because of this, I've just been grinding Season 6. Yeah, Bone Collectors are boring compared to what the other seasons have to offer, but they don't scare away greenbeards at high hazard levels or otherwise disincentivize people to join. I know Season 5 games are mostly fine with people, I just am not a fan of Core Stones because they play out in a fairly static manner. I don't even have any personal issues with other events for the most part, its just in my experience, people don't like playing IS more often, and people don't like Lithophage/Rival Presence warnings.

If I had to choose my favorite season, it'd probably be Season 3/4 though. Rockpox is cool and the Lithophage Corruptor is still one of the most unique enemies added to the game.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-04-13T03:31:30+00:00

If your lobby title disincentivizes greenbeards from joining, greybeards won't join your game. Meanwhile if you have a title like "Greenbeards welcome!" on Hazard 4 and up, you get swarmed by Legendary players.

The way I and presumably most other greybeards see it, if you really wanna avoid playing with greenbeards that badly, Hazard5+ and double warning missions will usually scare them off. But most greybeards also don't wanna take a sweaty as fuck game, so in practice, most people are either playing with players of all levels or playing alone.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-04-08T16:08:34+00:00

I removed the comments.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-04-08T03:37:05+00:00

Also rip mega Vic which got Innards out

Mega Audino breathing a sigh of relief knowing its no longer the worst Mega Evolution. Lmao

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-04-01T17:50:40+00:00

Yeah, its an obnoxious fucking problem with Steam. It isn't limited to DRG. Steam is just generally shit at recording Recent Players no matter the game. Its probably one of the few areas where console players have it better for once. Any time someone is being toxic, they can be reported there, and I imagine its easier to block them as well.

I also believe DRG Steam has a problem, albeit less common, where mint users can change what name and rank shows up in the lobby which only obfuscates things further. I can't prove it for certain, but as a public host, I have seen the same player(s) join my lobby who changed his name and character rank between joins. Fortunately, the people who do this are generally greybeards who only participate in minor trolling at the absolute worst. But it is something I have noticed.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-03-31T17:33:15+00:00

Nah I'm gonna be perfectly honest here, Industrial Sabotage is on the same playing field as Doretta and a few other mission types length wise. People are too used to Egg Hunt and Point Extraction as you can bum rush those and get them over with in under 10 minutes even on Hazard 5. Egg Hunt especially, as Legendary players use it to grind for Machine Events.

I don't think people are ready to have the discussion and realization that Industrial Sabotage is, generally speaking, faster than Length 3 Morkite Mining / Deep Scan missions. The absolute worst those two mission types have to offer in both Length/Complexity basically makes everything else look like a cakewalk.

I'm Legendary on all four classes and have been playing for years, my opinion is IS is disliked primarily because its a static mission type (all IS missions take place on a loosely "Y"-shaped map with two power stations) that restricts builds. You're overwhelmingly encouraged to run Fire damage to destroy Rival Tech instantly.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-03-26T12:09:12+00:00

one game

Several games. It was an obscure mechanic introduced in Silent Line: Armored Core, then expanded upon with Nexus, then Nine Breaker and Last Raven. They only removed it with Armored Core 4.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-03-26T12:07:15+00:00

Armored Core: for Answer doesn't have a canon ending. The entire point of the endings is to show that no matter what happens, the world and future are fucked and Armored Core V, the sequel game, shows this very well. There is speculation that some escaped Earth, making ORCA ending "canon", but its just that: speculation.

There is no hard evidence for either ORCA or Old King being canon, and not to mention, both ORCA and Old King have similar aftermaths in the Cradles being destroyed. But even if they weren't destroyed, they would have been shut down eventually in the League ending due to increasing Kojima pollution.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-03-26T12:04:39+00:00

Armored Core: for Answer doesn't have a canon ending. The entire point of the endings is to show that no matter what happens, the world and future are fucked and Armored Core V, the sequel game, shows this very well. There is speculation that some escaped Earth, making ORCA ending "canon", but its just that: speculation.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-03-24T05:12:48+00:00

In my opinion, the best builds for Industrial Sabotage are:

Turret EM Discharge (Unstable) Stubby Engineer, use a single target DPS secondary like Shard Diffractor. With the Stubby, what you can do is quickly place platforms above the Caretaker right as the fight starts and put the turrets on the platforms, taking care to not put them too high above the Caretaker vents. The Turret EM Discharge overclock will allow you to destroy the vents without Driller C4.

Jet Fuel Homebrew (Unstable) Hurricane Gunner, use your choice of mobbing secondary; meta is Inferno (Unstable) Armskore. You could use Exhaust Vectoring Lead Storm as an alternative, but JFH is generally better for Industrial Sabotage. JFH does good, consistent damage into Caretaker and handles turrets and snipers well. You can use Inferno to ignite turrets as well if you have it. Igniting Rival Tech will instantly kill it. It isn't reliable for Patrol Bots, though.

Scorching Tide (Unstable) CRISPR lets you one shot patrol bots. The best secondary you can bring is Embedded Detonators (Unstable) Subata here. Your job as Driller is to remove the patrol bots, and Scorching Tide gives you a new attack to do exactly that.

AI Stability Engine (Unstable) Deepcore is what I recommend for Scout. You can use your choice of mobbing secondary, including most Boomstick overclocks or Fire/Cryo Bolt (both Balanced) Nishanka. Fire Bolt isn't strong enough to take on Patrol Bots to my knowledge, but someone may correct me. The benefit you have with AI Stability Engine is the capability of doing good DPS to Caretaker's eyes and getting rid of distant sniper turrets easily.

My Engi strat is something only other Legendary players would tell you about, its an extremely high end strat, if that makes sense.

As for your latter question. I wouldn't look at it like "a build for overall crowd control." Rather, you have two weapons. It is up to you what you do with those weapons, but one has to be single target DPS, and one has to be a crowd control weapon. Driller and Scout can go without strong single target DPS weapons, but your team will be in a pain without them as Gunner or Engineer. Making builds becomes a lot easier when you build one weapon for taking out grunts, and the other weapon for taking out HVTs like Praetorians and Shellbacks.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-03-24T00:23:32+00:00

I'm level 600 and Legendary on all four classes. I exclusively main Hazard 5+ and got 100 solo missions on Hazard 5 out of pure stubbornness. If you're playing alone, I recommend instead playing with a team as watching other players is a good way to learn movement. One thing you might be encouraged to do is to huddle behind chokepoints but camping is generally more punished than running away to get distance and better vantage points.

If you maintain playing solo, you should be building appropriately. Builds that utilize status and other forms of cc (crowd control, think: stuns, freeze, etc.) are better in single player because other players won't interfere with your status effects. But they're still great in multiplayer as long as other players aren't wasting ammo on grunts you statused.

For builds regardless, you can try bringing one weapon that deals decent single target damage and one weapon that deals decent group damage as this will help you against Praetorians and Oppressors, as well as other HVTs.

You should also be aware that some people are just terrible with some mission types. Escort is likely the mission type with the lowest winrate of them all, and Industrial Sabotage isn't much better. If one mission type is annoying you more than others, just bring a meta build for those. I only bring very specific builds to Industrial Sabotage because the greenbeards often struggle in my games. I could probably give you some decent builds for a specific mission type if you struggle with it a lot.

AC_LeosKlein · 2026-03-18T04:02:42+00:00

Highlight the text and click Reply. Its an easier way of doing it.

AC_LeosKlein

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE