Time to artificially rise Bibarel's usage. - Tauntarel

Yeah, so I was very disappointed with Bibarel's usage for February, so I've decided to reveal the Bibarel that I've been using for pretty much all of DP. It's undergone a lot of changes throughout it to adapt, but I think I've pretty much finalized it now. I just want to show everyone the set I've been able to put to work in OU, and to make any tweaks if anyone makes a good enough suggestion.

Anywho, here's the set:


Bibarel@Leftovers
EVs: 232 HP/80 Def/80 SDef/116 Spd
Ability: Unaware
Jolly Nature

- Super Fang
- Taunt
- Waterfall
- Yawn

If you're cool enough to use Bibarel in OU, then try this out. The EVs allow for 357 HP for maximum leftovers recovery plus a little more, 176/176 defenses (at least it's like a base 70 defense now) and 227 speed.

Bibarel has 4 very useful resistances in Fire, Water, Ice and Steel to switch, plus an immunity to Ghost, and coupled with the above average HP of this set and the acceptable defenses, it can take a hit or two, which is a misconception that most people would have towards Bibarel.

The speed is at 227 for two reasons, and that's BulkyGyara, and outspeeding min speed base 95s. Being higher than BulkyGyara allows you to Taunt it before it can Taunt you, forcing it to attack with moves that will only at most 3HKO, while you bust it in half with Super Fang, or Yawn it to sleep. That, or you could just Yawn first before it can Taunt you, and then it's totally screwed.

Now, the great thing about this set is that it gnaws at walls like they're fresh meat.

All walls below 227 speed are going to find incredible trouble against this Bibarel, because they will get easily Taunted, and since they don't normally invest a lot in their offenses, they'll get their life gnawed out of them very quickly by Super Fang, or they'll be snoozing. The only walls that can really hurt this are Celebi and Jirachi, which are little buttholes.

Let's look at the common walls in OU and see what Bibarel can do to them:

Blissey - Taunt so it can't Thunder Wave or Softboiled, Super Fang til it's low enough, kill/Yawn to force a switch

Bronzong - Taunt so it can't Hypnosis, Gyro Ball can only do about 20% back, Super Fang til it's low enough, kill/Yawn it to sleep

Swampert - Taunt to stop Stealth Rock, Yawn and get out

Gliscor - Taunt to stop any attempts to Stealth Rock/set up, Yawn, get out, Earthquake will hurt you a lot, but is still only a 4HKO with Leftovers

Skarmory - Taunt to stop any setting up/phazing, Yawn or Super Fang, depending on if it has Brave Bird/Drill Peck

Celebi - Problematic, but if you can catch it on the switch with a Yawn, it'll still be forced to switch out

Forretress - Taunt, Super Fang til it's low enough, kill

Cresselia - Watch out for Charge Beam if it gets a boost (won't matter once Unaware works), but generally Yawn. Taunt any attempts to Thunder Wave/Rest, and then Fang away.

Jirachi - Thunderbolt is a pain, but if you can catch it on the switch with Fang, or a Yawn then do so and get out.

Vaporeon - A big problem since it can't actually be killed by this Bibarel, but it can be severely injured from Super Fang, and can be Taunted so it can't Wish/Protect/Baton Pass/Sub or something like that.

Hippowdon - Yawn up, Super Fang and finish off with Waterfall.

Dusknoir - Just Taunt it so it can't Wisp you, Yawn it to sleep and switch out.


Yeah, so the only walls Bibarel can't get past very well are Jirachi and Celebi, both of which are a pain. Otherwise, it does a great job breaking most of the walls in OU.

The great thing about this Bibarel is that it's quite hard to switch anything in on it. Everything that switches in fears something from Bibarel, whether it be a Super Fang to strip off 50% of the opponent's health (obviously not Ghosts), Yawn to put something to sleep, Taunt to screw up any attempts to set up, or any attempts to status Bibarel. You name it, and I can guarantee you that it's not going to enjoy switching into this.

One way to make this set work to its fullest potential is to have some switch-in hazards up (Stealth Rock/Spikes/Toxic Spikes), because this set can force switches like a pro with Taunt/Yawn. While they're pulling those switches out, they're not only taking Stealth Rock/Spikes damage, but they're also taking Super Fang damage, which is quite a bit for just switching in. That, or instead of Super Fanging the switch-in, just Yawn until they finally get it through their head to let something fall asleep, and then start Fanging the house up.

Once Unaware works on Shoddy, this set will honestly get twice as good, but it's still pretty awesome even without an ability, since even with the little bulk it has, that little bulk goes such a long way when allowing it to Super Fang.

Another thing I like to do with this set is pair it up with an Encorer like Shuckle, and catch a stat-upper or set-up move with Encore, then switch over to Bibarel to basically guarantee that the opponent is going to either lose 50% of their health, or go to sleep. If the opponent is stupid enough to leave their pokemon in though, it'll most certainly get killed.

I don't think there were many calcs needed for this post, because we all know that Super Fang takes off 50% of the opponent's remaining health, and Waterfall won't really hurt much, but is just there as a finishing move after Super Fang's done enough. It will however hurt with a type advantage, but that is a given.

Like a lot of the sets that I try to introduce, this does require a good level of prediction, but if you know the common sets of most pokemon in OU, it shouldn't be too hard to use.

Yeah, so give this a try and tell me what you think!

This thing is terribly underrated. It has two of the best abilities out there but I'm not to sure if it could handle the OU environment. If only shoddy would let us try it out. I bet this thing would be good at stopping UU walls like Hypno and Grumpig though.

Believe me, I've been testing it for a very long time to say the least, heh I can tell you from experience that it works very well in the OU environment. It works pretty well even without traits.

I support any increase in the crazy beaver pokemon. Once the trait actually gets implemented, it could be useful. Super Fang is an awesome move for hitting everything without an instant recovery move.

Can it actually take stuff out though with Waterfall? I don't doubt it stopping power for a second, but I fear what may happen after you taunt, but hey, I have never used it.

the idea is to super fang them down to <20% then waterfall, its not "taking anything out" otherwise with base 85 attack

And the analysis says Taunt isn't a great option. ... Yeah.

By the way, 232 HP / 80 Def / 80 SpD maximizes Bibarel's defenses. Is there a particular reason Bibarel needs an optimal Lefties number? (because I'm not seeing it)

Yeah, max Lefties is usually most useful for long stallish battles. However, in the D/P era, long stallish battles tend to take place under Sand, which negates Lefties anyway. Oh well, your pick. You won't get THAT much better Defense/SDef either way, nor will your Lefties recovery increase be all that much. I'm guessing you use Wish Support to take on stall teams right?

Another execllent Bologo creation.

I know there were some implementation problems of Bibarel's traits on shoddy, have they finally been fixed?

It's kind of too bad it can't learn Brine...

It would be very awesome to see this thing Fang then hit the opponent with a 130 BP STAB attack :o

But anyway, it's cool :D I'd like to train myself one

Beautiful. Just beautiful. I might train one for Wi-Fi use so that I can get the most out of Unaware (I'm not holding my breath on Shoddy fixing any of its bugs).

This is a bit of a tangent, so I hope you'll forgive me, but this reminded me of the time I was swept by a Simple Bibarel on PBR. The thing is the best Ninjask Baton Pass receiver. If it gets passed one Swords Dance and one Speed Boost, it gets tripled Attack and doubled Speed. Pair that with its almost perfect STABed type coverage of Normal and Water and you've got a nearly unstoppable sweeper. No idea what the other two moves were, but Taunt was probably one.

I was around when you tested this alot.

Good times.

Looks really nice on paper. I might try this out. Your Bulkraptor worked great for me, hopefully this works just as good. :D

This is an interesting set, but the way you make it sound it's meant to tank/attack, but it lacks a recovery move.

I still hate Shoddy for not implimenting either of Bibarel's abilities in the game yet.

CardsOfTheHeart said:

And the analysis says Taunt isn't a great option. ... Yeah.

Click to expand...

I really, really hate it when people feel compelled to do this, as if they had any better idea a full nine months ago when the analysis was written. Do you think Phuquoph had Bibarel at his competitive disposal for months before having to write the analysis? Posts like this make me sicker than actually infractable posts do, almost as if I have to write a rule against them specifically though it's really common sense to not question the strategy behind analyses that had to be written almost a year ago.

I seriously love this set and have used it to lots of success. When you told me about this set, I thought it was a random gimmick and wouldn't work, but now I Super Fanged switch-ins. After that, Yawn forcing a bunch of switches won me the game lots of times.

I love the idea,can´t wait to try this set out!

Jumpman16 said:

I really, really hate it when people feel compelled to do this, as if they had any better idea a full nine months ago when the analysis was written. Do you think Phuquoph had Bibarel at his competitive disposal for months before having to write the analysis? Posts like this make me sicker than actually infractable posts do, almost as if I have to write a rule against them specifically though it's really common sense to not question the strategy behind analyses that had to be written almost a year ago.

Click to expand...

You mean it didn't make sense nine months ago that Taunt allows Super Fang to cripple walls by prohibiting their recovery moves? Taunt screws up walls, Super Fang tears through them; I thought that was apparent...

man, you don't know when to shut up man...

Bibarel is awesome, I used this kind of set many times on my UU/OU team and it worked out amazingly well.

It doesn't matter. The oversight doesn't detract from the work the site stuff puts into these analyses. Besides, it's not like anyone with imperfect information can factor EVERYTHING.

Hm, I wonder what else Taunt could be good on...

I've used a similar bibarel. I'm the kind of person who if something has a fad, I seem to turn opposite of it. (Using gabite over chomp, or happiny over blissey, ETC)

When SimpleBarel was very common I started experimenting on Unaware bibarel. (Using simpledoof is the same fricken thing)I had a similar set with this just mainly set on offense and taunt. With taunt/waterfall/return/superfang. Max hp and speed mostly. Some hp evs towards atk. This set worked great. I'm guessing your set works better since its more built for a special puporse and is EV'd/move set leaning towards it.

You could at least say a small sorry in there?

I might try this if I can find room but there's so many other stuff I want to test. This does look like fun, especially since the other day we (me, Dak, aldaron, Jth) were holding a draft using the worst possible Pokemon and Bibarel was picked (then again, he was 2HKOing about everything we used with Quick Attack).

I might make a new team just to use this. I always did like Super Fang. Any wall without a reliable recovery will fall to this. Even those with a reliable recovery will fear a taunt. Restalking wont be so hot if this things usage rises.