Okay, Beautifly's is terrible, but I think it's still decent enough to deserve something other than a joke analysis. If necessary, I'll provide logs, but I hope I don't have to since it's pretty difficult to get decent UU matches now =/.
Also, please give ShinyAzelf some credit when this is uploaded, since he wrote the Checks and Counters sections, and helped write the Overview and second paragraph of AC.
Beautifly
Status: QC 2 / 2 Gp 1 / 2
Changes:
-Removed Choice Specs. Beautifly is simply far too slow, frail and weak to use it effectively, and 4x SR weak doesn't help. However, should I simply put this back in because it's pretty much "decent" for Beautifly standards?
-Merged Stun Spore and Stun and Swarm. SubPetaya is generally frowned upon to my knowledge, but Substitute is a very useful move on Beautifly, especially when paired with Stun Spore.
[Overview]
<p>One of the weakest Bug-types around, Beautifly is simply a terrible Pokemon to use competitively. Her many terrible qualities, including a horrible typing that causes her to be 4x weak to Stealth Rock, poor stats, and a shallow movepool all make her to be a rare sight to behold in battle. Beautifly's only decent stat is her Special Attack, which even then, isn't that great because it's hindered by her poor Speed stat. In addition to this, her only real boon over other Pokemon such as Mothim is her access to Stun Spore, which, due to her frailty, isn't really that much of an advantage. Overall, don't expect Beautifly to be a Pokemon that you can simply throw onto a team and hope that she works; you truly need to base most of your team around her, and even then it's probably not worth it since there is almost always a better Pokemon that can take her place.</p>
[SET]
name: Offensive
move 1: Bug Buzz
move 2: Hidden Power Ground
move 3: Shadow Ball
move 4: Stun Spore / U-Turn
item: Life Orb / Choice Scarf / Choice Specs
nature: Modest / Timid
evs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
[SET COMMENTS]
<p>Boasting a usable base 90 Special Attack stat, Beautifly makes a decent user of a Life Orb or Choice item. The power or Speed boost from these items greatly assists Beautifly in dealing with her shortcomings. Bug Buzz is Beautifly's strongest attack, and after STAB and an item boost, it packs reasonable power. Hidden Power Ground damages Steel-types who otherwise wall Beautifly; however, it should be noted that Hidden Power won't be able to break through the omnipresent Registeel unless it has been severely weakened beforehand. Shadow Ball nails Ghost-types for decent damage, and is Beautifly's best bet against Flying-types such as Moltres. The last slot depends on your item choice. Stun Spore works alongside Life Orb, and is a fantastic option to cripple faster switch-ins. However, if you opt for a Choice item, then U-turn is the better option to scout the opposing team for Pokemon who resist Beautifly's attacks.</p>
[ADDITIONAL COMMENTS]
<p>While the EVs on this set are extremely simple and cookie-cutter for a special sweeper, choosing between a Timid or Modest nature can be difficult. Modest generally works well with both Life Orb and Choice Specs as they allow Beautifly to hit as hard as possible, while Timid goes with Choice Scarf to allow Beautifly to outspeed max Speed Base 120s. However, Timid is still a reasonable option alongside Choice Specs or Life Orb to nail some Pokemon, such as neutral-natured Blaziken, before they can KO Beautifly with a super effective attack.</p>
<p>Because this variant of Beautifly will be worn down quickly from switching into Stealth Rock, Rapid Spinners are useful to preserve Beautifly's health. Hitmontop and Donphan are great partners, since they can both deal with common spinblockers in the UU metagame. Beautifly also enjoys entry hazards of her own since they allow her to reach some 2HKOs and OHKOs. Pokemon who can abuse U-turn are also useful; since Beautifly is so frail, U-turn assists Beautifly by potentially giving her a free switch-in. Swellow, Scyther, and Uxie are good users of the move, the first two packing a strong U-turn to weaken walls with, and the last having bulk and a potentially slow Speed stat to get Beautifly in unharmed. However, if you use Swellow or Scyther, it should be noted that you're compounding your team's weakness to Stealth Rock, making one of the aforementioned Rapid Spinners a necessity. Additionally, Beautifly is troubled by special walls such as Chansey and Registeel, so strong Fighting-types can also be good partners.</p>
[Other Options]
<p>Beautifly's shallow movepool doesn't give her many other options to abuse, but she does have a few interesting ones regardless. One of these options is Substitute, which Beautifly can take reasonable advantage of. Depending on what role you want Beautifly to serve, she can act as a SubPetaya sweeper with Swarm, or a simple paralysis spreader with Stun Spore. However, Beautifly is simply far too slow to use such options effectively, and her frailty and weakness to Stealth Rock undermine both efforts. Beautifly also has other special attacking options in Energy Ball and Psychic, but they only hit specific targets (Water- and Poison-types, respectively), and have worse coverage overall. Finally, Beautifly has access to Tailwind as an option to boost her poor Speed, but its effect doesn't last long enough to be effective.</p>
[Checks and Counters]
<p>Stealth Rock is the bane of Beautifly's existence, stripping off half of her health each time she decides to switch in. Outside of that, Ghost-types such as Rotom do well against her, being able to take any hit except for Shadow Ball without much trouble, and proceed to retaliate with Thunderbolt. A Ghost-type can also act as a spinblocker, preventing Beautifly’s teammates from Rapid Spinning Stealth Rock off the field. Special walls can easily switch in and wall Beautifly all day long. Chansey takes little from even Beautifly’s strongest attack, Bug Buzz, while she can set up Stealth Rock or cripple Beautifly with Thunder Wave. Registeel performs similarly to Chansey, but has to watch out for Hidden Power Ground, though even Hidden Power Ground isn't too much of a threat unless Registeel has been already weakened. Overall, Beautifly needs prediction to deal significant damage, so predicting one step ahead of her, along with having Stealth Rock on the field, will easily defeat Beautifly.</p>
Also, please give ShinyAzelf some credit when this is uploaded, since he wrote the Checks and Counters sections, and helped write the Overview and second paragraph of AC.
Beautifly
Status: QC 2 / 2 Gp 1 / 2
Changes:
-Removed Choice Specs. Beautifly is simply far too slow, frail and weak to use it effectively, and 4x SR weak doesn't help. However, should I simply put this back in because it's pretty much "decent" for Beautifly standards?
-Merged Stun Spore and Stun and Swarm. SubPetaya is generally frowned upon to my knowledge, but Substitute is a very useful move on Beautifly, especially when paired with Stun Spore.
[Overview]
<p>One of the weakest Bug-types around, Beautifly is simply a terrible Pokemon to use competitively. Her many terrible qualities, including a horrible typing that causes her to be 4x weak to Stealth Rock, poor stats, and a shallow movepool all make her to be a rare sight to behold in battle. Beautifly's only decent stat is her Special Attack, which even then, isn't that great because it's hindered by her poor Speed stat. In addition to this, her only real boon over other Pokemon such as Mothim is her access to Stun Spore, which, due to her frailty, isn't really that much of an advantage. Overall, don't expect Beautifly to be a Pokemon that you can simply throw onto a team and hope that she works; you truly need to base most of your team around her, and even then it's probably not worth it since there is almost always a better Pokemon that can take her place.</p>
[SET]
name: Offensive
move 1: Bug Buzz
move 2: Hidden Power Ground
move 3: Shadow Ball
move 4: Stun Spore / U-Turn
item: Life Orb / Choice Scarf / Choice Specs
nature: Modest / Timid
evs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
[SET COMMENTS]
<p>Boasting a usable base 90 Special Attack stat, Beautifly makes a decent user of a Life Orb or Choice item. The power or Speed boost from these items greatly assists Beautifly in dealing with her shortcomings. Bug Buzz is Beautifly's strongest attack, and after STAB and an item boost, it packs reasonable power. Hidden Power Ground damages Steel-types who otherwise wall Beautifly; however, it should be noted that Hidden Power won't be able to break through the omnipresent Registeel unless it has been severely weakened beforehand. Shadow Ball nails Ghost-types for decent damage, and is Beautifly's best bet against Flying-types such as Moltres. The last slot depends on your item choice. Stun Spore works alongside Life Orb, and is a fantastic option to cripple faster switch-ins. However, if you opt for a Choice item, then U-turn is the better option to scout the opposing team for Pokemon who resist Beautifly's attacks.</p>
[ADDITIONAL COMMENTS]
<p>While the EVs on this set are extremely simple and cookie-cutter for a special sweeper, choosing between a Timid or Modest nature can be difficult. Modest generally works well with both Life Orb and Choice Specs as they allow Beautifly to hit as hard as possible, while Timid goes with Choice Scarf to allow Beautifly to outspeed max Speed Base 120s. However, Timid is still a reasonable option alongside Choice Specs or Life Orb to nail some Pokemon, such as neutral-natured Blaziken, before they can KO Beautifly with a super effective attack.</p>
<p>Because this variant of Beautifly will be worn down quickly from switching into Stealth Rock, Rapid Spinners are useful to preserve Beautifly's health. Hitmontop and Donphan are great partners, since they can both deal with common spinblockers in the UU metagame. Beautifly also enjoys entry hazards of her own since they allow her to reach some 2HKOs and OHKOs. Pokemon who can abuse U-turn are also useful; since Beautifly is so frail, U-turn assists Beautifly by potentially giving her a free switch-in. Swellow, Scyther, and Uxie are good users of the move, the first two packing a strong U-turn to weaken walls with, and the last having bulk and a potentially slow Speed stat to get Beautifly in unharmed. However, if you use Swellow or Scyther, it should be noted that you're compounding your team's weakness to Stealth Rock, making one of the aforementioned Rapid Spinners a necessity. Additionally, Beautifly is troubled by special walls such as Chansey and Registeel, so strong Fighting-types can also be good partners.</p>
[Other Options]
<p>Beautifly's shallow movepool doesn't give her many other options to abuse, but she does have a few interesting ones regardless. One of these options is Substitute, which Beautifly can take reasonable advantage of. Depending on what role you want Beautifly to serve, she can act as a SubPetaya sweeper with Swarm, or a simple paralysis spreader with Stun Spore. However, Beautifly is simply far too slow to use such options effectively, and her frailty and weakness to Stealth Rock undermine both efforts. Beautifly also has other special attacking options in Energy Ball and Psychic, but they only hit specific targets (Water- and Poison-types, respectively), and have worse coverage overall. Finally, Beautifly has access to Tailwind as an option to boost her poor Speed, but its effect doesn't last long enough to be effective.</p>
[Checks and Counters]
<p>Stealth Rock is the bane of Beautifly's existence, stripping off half of her health each time she decides to switch in. Outside of that, Ghost-types such as Rotom do well against her, being able to take any hit except for Shadow Ball without much trouble, and proceed to retaliate with Thunderbolt. A Ghost-type can also act as a spinblocker, preventing Beautifly’s teammates from Rapid Spinning Stealth Rock off the field. Special walls can easily switch in and wall Beautifly all day long. Chansey takes little from even Beautifly’s strongest attack, Bug Buzz, while she can set up Stealth Rock or cripple Beautifly with Thunder Wave. Registeel performs similarly to Chansey, but has to watch out for Hidden Power Ground, though even Hidden Power Ground isn't too much of a threat unless Registeel has been already weakened. Overall, Beautifly needs prediction to deal significant damage, so predicting one step ahead of her, along with having Stealth Rock on the field, will easily defeat Beautifly.</p>
