By RigelStarlight
Hello Trainers!
Pillar Cup provided a comforting spin on the current open format mixed with several historically dominant – now approaching retirement – sidegrades and past staples. After something so familiar and nostalgic, Devon felt it was time for something a little jarring to steal the nerves of the player base. Please welcome to the stage: Ingot Cup!
Ingot Meta: February 2025
The Rationale:
Ah, Fire types. There’s so much to say about you, and so little of it is a compliment. So few of your Pokémon have good neutral play in wider metas, so many have high attack weights and clunky fast moves, a number of you are powercrept by each other. It’s no wonder you have such historically poor representation. The nature of Pokémon Go really doesn’t give them a chance to burn as brightly as their name would imply.
The Ingot Cup is engineered to put fire types at the forefront. By reducing the meta to types that encourage a copresence with fire, we hope to give the spotlight to some underappreciated picks. The allowed types, additional allowed species, and bans can be categorised near-exclusively by their relationship to Fire.
The Meta:
- Allowed: The remaining allowed types are Dark, Electric, Poison, and Steel. Poison, Dark and Electric tend to have neutral relationships into each other. Notably, Poison and Electric types share a common weakness to Fire in the Ground type and benefit from the removal of Grounds more volatile younger cousin, Rock. Electric in particular finds itself struggling for representation in Pokémon Go for similar reasons to Fire. Steel has been included to help mitigate what would otherwise be an overwhelming presence of Poison based fast move damage. Despite their weakness to fire, Steels typically have the bulk and coverage to stand a fighting chance against them.
- Air Drops: The species airdropped into the meta are defined by their lack of coverage into Fire types via fast moves. Waters such as Araquanid, Cloyster, Tentacruel, Toxapex and Rotom-Wash take a long time to build up to their Water charge moves. Rocks such as Amaura, Archen/Archeops, Armaldo, Cradily/Lileep, Hisuian Avalugg and Lairon have seen very limited historical success and offer some coveted Rock coverage whilst also sporting a typing or stat distribution that make them reasonable to prepare for. Grounds such as Camerupt, Nidoking/Nidoqueen, Steelix, Ursaluna and Wormadam-Sandy provide some dedicated checks to Electric without overwhelming the meta with Ground fast move pressure. Galarian Stunfisk has access to a Ground fast move in Mud Shot, however, its low damage output and additional Steel typing makes it a strong but manageable force. Munchlax acts as a big beefy generalist that can make use of the recently reworked Bulldoze. Arctibax and Tyrunt provide scarcely found Dragon coverage and have interesting dynamics with other Pokémon present within the meta.
The Bans:
Species: Grimer, Heliolisk and Vikavolt possess the oppressive Mud Slap so they were removed. Drapion functionally puts any other Dark-Poison out of a job with its fierce combination of Poison Sting, Aqua Tail and Crunch. To give room for Pokémon such as Hisuian Qwilfish and Skuntank to shine, Drapion was banned. Pachirisu and Salazzle each have some availability concerns tied to their presence. Morpeko’s terrifying damage output and unique Aura Wheel mechanic has given it permission to sit this cup out. Corviknight’s very recent addition and access to Ground fast move pressure have warranted it a slot on the banned species. Malamar and Mandibuzz dwarf many other Dark types in terms of damage output and bulk respectively. Bellibolt sports unique fast-charging Water coverage and respectable bulk, making it standout among the many other Electrics. Finally, Nidorina’s fast access to Dig mixed with reasonable bulk and difficult to build status resulted in it being excluded.
Typing: Water, Rock and Dragon were banned for their particularly troublesome relationship with Fire. Ghost and Fighting types typically have unhealthy relationships between themselves, as well as forming an super effective loop with Dark types. The removal of Ground types allowed for the healthy co-existence of Electric types and helped bring value to the Pokémon who possessed Ground type coverage.
Closing Remarks:
We hope you have as much fun playing the Ingot Cup as we had smelting it down and crafting it into its current form. The strong foundations of Pillar Cup have left us a durable workstation for team builds full of heat. Do you have what it takes to smoke out the competition and dig out a name for yourself? Join the official Discord and sign up for Devon tournaments to find out.
Thank you,
Devon Corporation