Breloom @ Life Orb
Trait: Technician
EVs: 252 Spd / 252 Atk / 4 Def
Jolly Nature
- Spore
- Bullet Seed
- Mach Punch
- Low Sweep/ Sword Dance
Role: Physical Sweeper
What It Does: With the release of Technician, Breloom began to shine even more.
His main selling point over other sweepers, is his access to maybe, the best move in the entire game : Spore. This 100% accuracy sleeping move, given the new sleeping mechanism and the fast paced metagame, can be compared to a killing move. Moreover, with Low Sweep you cripple the pokemon switching in, and with Sword Dance you put the enemy is a tough situation if he doesn’t switch.
But limiting Breloom to Spore would be a mistake. Sporting a massiv 130 base Atk, a godsend in Technician, and a moveset made to abuse this ability, Breloom sweeps a large part of the OU metagame and is fairly hard to revenge kill since he has access to a Stab, Technician boosted priority.
Good Teammates: There are two things that Breloom hates over all. The pokemons resisting his Stabs, and the Pokemons faster than him.
Tyranitar is a perfect team mate, he can switch on any Psychic move (or Fire, Ice) casted toward Breloom, and Pursuit the wrongdoer (Ghosts immute to Fighting moves, Psychic pokemons etc.)
Starmie is another good team mates. With his blazing speed and its movepool, the star can take care of anything threatening Breloom. His resistance to Ice Shard and Bullet Punch patches another of Breloom’s weaknesses. All in all, they share a perfect typing synergy (like Tyranitar).
What Counters It As mentioned, pokemons resisting Stabs like Lati@s, Celebi, Skarmory can switch in pretty easily thanks to their bulk, and even kill it. Dragonite and Salamence can also switch on a Grass attack and kill Breloom.
Priority users like Weavile and Mamoswine (jolly) are faster, and kill Breloom with Ice Shard. Scizor can take a +2 Mach Punch and deal a solid ~80% to Breloom.
Gengar, while frail, have a good shot at survive a Bullet Seed, and can Disable it (or just switch on a predicted Fighting move). His immunity to Mach Punch allows him to always move first, some Gengar’s versions can also just kill Breloom with HP [Fire].
Any Additional Info: An Adamant version is viable, but the user must be aware of the Speed tiers (you don’t outspeed Tornadus-T after Low Sweep anymore for instance), however the boost of power helps a lot to get some extra kills. Rock Tomb is a possible move over Low Sweep since it gets the boost from Technician but the accuracy isn’t perfect. Fight Gem is anoher viable option but you lose a lot of power overall in comparison of Life Orb, this can only be considered if the recoil is too annoying (for instance in a Sand Storm summoned by Tyranitar).