Second place in the tour so I suppose I gotta post my thoughts on the meta.
1: You do need Horn: Horn is exceptionally mid on most matchups: It can trade for half a Meowth's HP if it didn't crit, it can switch kinda OK vs Charm and deal some damage, and that's kinda it. Depending on the HPs you could Rock Slide the Golbat but Drain makes it very awkward and you might not even make progress. However, Orb is really, really good - you really do need to run Horn from time to time in order to not be orbspammed, which is very scary. Orb is an exceedingly scary mon if it can get in so minimizing the amount of games it's brought vs you, even if it means sometimes you have to run Horn, is a net positive in winrate I feel.
2: No, you do need Ivy: Cutting Ivy is bad. Period. Ivy on itself is a really strong mon: Sleep is death in this format so it's at least trading 1-for-1. Body Slam could para something on the switch-in, which in this format is essentially being marked for death. Razor Leaf also does great damage to very important targets like Meowth or Clef. Not only is Ivy an amazing mon in on itself but also - it makes your Orb matchup so unbelievably better. Seriously it's worth it to run Horn just to make the Orb matchup better, you do NOT want to be caught Ivyless vs Orb. If you don't have Ivy then Orb becomes the strongest mon in the tier and there's literally nothing you can do to trade well vs it.
3: Ivy is worth booming on: It's turn 2 and your Voltorb is facing an Ivy that was damaged by Tbolt. You boom here. 100% of the time you boom here. You CANNOT switch here. Here's the thing: If you switch the Voltorb out, whatever you switch in has a 75% chance of being put to sleep. And if that does hit what are you going to do? They have a healthy Ivy at 100% and one of your mons is asleep - it already traded 1-for-1. They can then retreat their Ivy to 1v1 Meowth, going 2-for-1 on mon economy.
And you still have Voltorb!!
You have a team of six. One of them is asleep, one is Voltorb and the third is Meowth. Half of your team either already died to Ivy (the mon asleep) or has very small chances of trading evenly vs the Ivy (Meowth and especially Voltorb). Switching the Orb out to Charm or Tent 75% of the time leads to an almost unwinnable game for the Orb player, on
That is exceedingly early to lose the game. If you boom with Orb you don't kill the Ivy outright except for a crit - however both Charm and Tenta have ways to kill it froma minroll Explosion so that Ivy is as good as dead.
4: Flamethrower Charmeleon is legit: I've ran Flamethrower on my Charm for the vast majority of the tour and I can say it works. Fire Spin is a really, really bad move; let's assume optimal Fire Spin usage here: IE, you only clicking it when you would lose the game on literally every other line. That's a really rare scenario that doesn't come up very often; I didn't come across it during my games, at the very least, and if I did it required multile fire spins to connect in a row. Also, clicking Fire Spin midgame or earlygame is suicide and you may have a gambling problem.
Back to Flamethrower, it's a really nice option; I've found several instances in my game where both Fire Blast and Flamethrower are guarantee'd KO's but Slash isn't. Most notably a Voltorb's Explosion never puts Ivy in Slash's range but it always puts it in Flamethrower's (and FBlast's) range. Clicking FBlast there, missing and getting put to sleep is game-losing so avoiding this 15% of the time nightmare scenario is very, very nice. Voltorb lead teams in particular would like Flamethrower on Charm I feel.
Another use case for Flamethrower is vs Clefairy. FBlast, Flamethrower and Slash are all 3HKOs - Flamethrower is a 80% chance to 3HKO but you can sprinkle a Slash if you get the lowrolls or FBlast if you get really bad lowrolls. Flamethrower is great here due to both avoiding the 15% miss chance of FBlast but also the Counter punish of Slash, all while not sacrificing too much power on this matchup. I highly encourage swapping Fire Spin for Flamethrower on your sets and on the damage calc, they really do come up from time to time.
5: Confuse Ray has to go: Everyone already knows this, but I want to add another wrinkle to the discussion: The Ivy matchup. With Confuse Ray banned the Bat - Ivy matchup is really solidly in Ivy's favor while with it allowed it's an RNGfest of ungodly proportions. Ivy hitting itself, Sleep Powder misses, it's genuinely unbearable. Ban this thing next tour for the love of god, or if you're feeling merciful Sabelette next week so I don't have to play against it in friendlies either.
6: Clefairy is really good, Hitmon is really good but people run it less than they should me included, Bee is terrible and so is Shellder: Clefairy has basically no bad matchups, other than Ivy and Hitmonchan on top of spreading deadly status and some great super-effective moves. Hitmonchan hits important targets (Clefairy, Meowth, Tentacool) and can spread status via Body Slam; really fast, really nice. Bee is terible - specially setup sets. I could see a future with 3 damaging moves Bee or even 4 damaging moves bee, but it's definitely a 8U mon. Shellder has no business being in 7U; I once was Shellder's strongest soldier but I'm sorry little buddy, but you're just not bulky enough and doesn't do enough damage. You'll forever be in my heart but your Blizzard can't damage Ivy enough.
So if there's one thing to take from this, is
TAKE IVY MORE SERIOUSLY.
Seriously, Ivy is a menace and easily top 5, arguably top 4 and I'd be willing to even call it top 3 - specially if CRay ban goes through. It can extremely easily pay off its team slot going 1-for-1 (something you can't say for a ton of the lower tier mons here), has extra usefulness with Body Slam para's and Razor Leaf can deal with several top threats.
Look over at my post: Almost every paragraph mentions Ivy. It's that important to 7U and the recent developments that have arizen during this second tour - almost all of it is in Ivy's favor. Clef being great? Ivy outspeeds and Razor Leafs or Sleep Powders it. Bee going down? Ivy no longer has to worry about it. Orb everywhere? Ivy's here. Ivy got a bit of a bad rep after the first tour since Golbat Confuse Ray could hax through it and that was the main innovation on the first tour but with Clef and Orb rizing on this second tour you really can't sleep on it.
If your team has Orb in it, specially on the lead spot, failing to respect Ivy can lead to unwinnable games. If you give Ivy too many spaces, too many free turns - heck, I'd even say giving it one free turn already is too much - then you're very much behind. One of your mons got KO'd for free, another is Body Slam Para'd and some of your key generic progress makers - Clef, Orb and Meowth - are all intimidated by Ivy. Even Golbat can be put in a tight spot vs Ivy: They're both really bulky so Ivy gets a lot of oportunities to Body Slam paralyze Golbat, and a para'd Golbat loses a lot of its bite.
Seriously, Ivy is top 5 easily. It is extremely good and has a ton of tools. And no you can't replace it with Gloom, hitting Meowth and Clefairy with Razor Edge is really good. I got 20 bucks out of respecting Ivy and all you got from playing Gloom was clown makeup. We are not the same.
Eitherway thank you and good night.
