ive been playing a fair bit and have a solid opinion on most of the relevant mons. big noms incoming:



Arceus-Ground to A-/B+:

Dont get me wrong, this is still the best and the most versatile Arceus form in the meta but I believe that the support set is straight up horrible rn and the offensive sets arent good enough either to justify its A rank. This applies for every other Arceus and not just Ground in specific. I just dont think that any form of Arceus is super good this gen (as in A/A+ rank worthy) because they are almost entirely outclassed by other mons offensively as well as defensively. I'll go over this in detail since my next couple of noms will also be based on this. Unlike the previous gens, supportceus isnt the staple on balance teams because it fails to check majority of the top threats in the meta. Its a set up fodder for the dynamax mons: gives a free geomancy to Xerneas, does almost 0 damage to Yveltal, does like 35% to dynamaxed dusk mane and activates weakness policy for it, Zygarde boosts its special defense with max quake and easily tanks a 2-3 Ice Beams later. Also cant check Unecro and gets *hard walled* by Ho-Oh, Lunala and Kyogre which leaves us with just 3 other relevant threats: Eternatus, Zacian and Groudon. Out of these 3, it can only reliably switch in vs Groudon because:



252 SpA Life Orb Eternatus Dynamax Cannon (100 BP) vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Arceus-Ground: 199-234 (44.8 - 52.7%) -- 80.9% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock

minimum chip (2 rounds of stealth rock or a spike) and you cant switch into this :(



+1 252+ Atk Zacian-Crowned Behemoth Blade (100 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Arceus-Ground: 210-247 (47.2 - 55.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock

+1 252 Atk Zacian-Crowned Behemoth Blade (100 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Arceus-Ground: 190-225 (42.7 - 50.6%) -- 45.7% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock

i was told that this is a Zacian switch in but I really wouldnt want my switch in to rely on a 50/50. fwiw Judgment doesnt even OHKO Zacian back so in a 1v1 scenario when rocks are up on both sides, groundceus is more likely to lose to the mon it is supposed to 'check'.

I'm assuming rocks up on both sides because balance teams in the current meta dont prioritize defogging the rocks (unless one of them has spikes/toxic spikes), which brings me to the next point that the other role which supportceus did last gen, get rocks up or defog them isnt rlly big this gen either. The standard balance teams these days have Ho-Oh/Don/Dusk Mane/Zacian/Lugia/Lunala/Supportceus/Yveltal. None of these mind stealth rock damage, unless HDB is knocked off in the case of Ho-Oh and Lunala. Even when it comes to performing these roles, theres again other mons which outclass them. Ho-Oh and Lunala are excellent defoggers and actually check things. Primal Groudon, Dusk Mane and ferrothorn are really good SR users because they can also run Toxic (Groundceus has to forgo Ice Beam or Recover to run Toxic Rocks).

This probably sounded extremely harsh but I just really dont feel the need to run an arceus anymore. Last gen I'd just brainlessly add in 2-3 Arceus formes because I knew that I couldnt go wrong with these on my team. A core of 3 good arceus formes soft checked almost every threat in the meta. This might be because last gen was overly centralized around just 5 specific threats (Ray, Unecro, Marsh, Zygarde and Don) which werent extremely hard to cover. This gen its just the exact opposite. Whenever I'm adding a support arc I wonder if its worth running an entire mon just to have a chance at checking a few threats. Do I really wanna give free switch ins to Ho-Oh? or Dusk Mane? or let Xerneas or Yveltal set up for free? This gen theres just SOOOOOO many offensive threats you have to cover that your teambuilding is extremely narrowed down and as a result you have to be extremely cautious regarding what youre gonna use. This just isnt the same mon as last gen which you could add on any team and know for sure that it will actually put in work. as I said earlier, this applies to other arceus formes as well and isnt a personal attack on Groundceus. I wouldve tried to explain more but im a bit tired atm so if anyone doesnt get what im trying to say/disagrees with this ill happily explain it again. I just wanted to say that arceus isnt the staple mon anymore and comes with huge opportunity cost. While it still checks a fair number of pokemons in the B ranks, its just not good enough for A or even A- if it fails to check pretty much every threat in the higher ranks.

fwiw at this point if we switch to a meta with most of the relevant mons minus arceus, i seriously wouldnt mind at all >:)



That being said, the offensive groundy sets are not /as/ horrible as the support set. but I still think that theyre outclassed by other dynamax mons and eternatus/zacian and other stuff. I'm not sure about this since I havent used them too much but I'm pretty convinced that Groundceus isnt any better than SD ghostceus (and maybe ekiller too) since ghosty has a fair chance to improof itself. CM + 3 atks actually sounds hot , wouldve been great if ground Judgment became Max quake tho >_>. Still sounds good when paired with Xerneas or some other good attacker.



next 2 noms should have an obvious reasoning if you read the para above ^



Arceus Water to B+/B

i actually like this one, toxic rocks judg/liquidation is a good set and rere Toxic is super annoying to face. idk if it should be same rank as groundy though, since groundceus has 2 pretty ok offensive sets and waterceus has 0 versatility.

Arceus-Dark to B-

faces competition from Yveltal and Tyranitar. CM isnt great atm and support set is pretty awful too :|



Zekrom to B+/A-

THIS is actually very good, Bolt strike and Outrage combination is great with DDance and Sub. you also get plenty of set up opportunities (vs Ho-Oh, DM and Ferro) so if you can afford to spend your dynamax on this then you totallly should. only complaint is that sometimes you'll be forced to dynamax (e.g. when you get locked into Outrage and they go to a fairy) so you have to play carefully if youre saving your dynamax for Xerneas/Yveltal/DM. this is the only reason why I slashed A- with B+. I do think that the defensive set also has potential since Zacians dont rlly run Play Rough anymore from what ive seen.



gonna reply to the other noms too because why not:



Kyogre to A-

I personally disagree with this one but tbf I really havent used it too much so Im neutral on this one. Its speed tier is pretty sad but it still gets multiple kills vs unprepared balances so I wouldnt mind seeing this in A-



Ditto to A

disagree. meta is shifting to balance from what ive noticed. less HO in the meta is always bad for ditto and its also a bit hard to fit ditto on balance.



Gar higher or lower

definitely not lower, Its a great teammate for sure but the A+ mons atm are just extremely good and gar isnt as good as them. but balance gaining popularity is always good for gar so I'd wait for a week or so before giving my views on this.



KyuB lower

ofcourse, we really didnt put much thought into this one while making the VR iirc



Grimnsnarl to B-

should be ranked for sure, b- sounds too high but C+/C sounds fair.



Zygarde to A+

sure, Ive always loved the defensive set. the only problem is that the dynamax 50% forme -> complete form has a weird mechanic. im not sure if its intended to be like that but dynamaxed zygarde loses HP when it transforms into 100% forme which is uncool.



Yveltal lower

no LOL, this thing is borderline broken in dynamaxed forme.



still unsure about Zacian. Its obviously not as good as xern but I cant decide if it should be dropped to A+ since its slightly better than the A+ mons. but again idk if good enough to deserve an S- rank of its own. ill make a post next week anyway if this gets better or worse.