lets talk about non-theorymony things for now, yes?
so for the hawlucha test i kinda just spammed ernesto's celebi-pass team (sub sd hawlucha / nidqueen / megastoise / sd bp celebi / assault vest entei / scarf jirachi) but i changed a couple of things around and discovered a couple of cool things. first is flame charge entei is really fucking dangerous if you manage to pass +2 attack to it, and since it doesn't have anything else to use besides sacred fire / xspeed / stone edge, you might as well run flame charge.
the more interesting thing, however, is that while ernesto ran leftovers on his celebi, i decided to try this set:
Celebi @ Weakness Policy
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 240 HP / 132 SpD / 136 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Seed Bomb
- Baton Pass
- Recover
- Swords Dance
obviously you can run timid, giga drain, and nasty plot/calm mind, if you prefer.
before using this set i saw weakness policy as nothing more than a gimmick that didn't really work most of the time... man i was wrong. this thing is incredible. celebi's natural bulk and plethora of common weaknesses make it so incredibly easy to pull this off, especially when the #1 used pokemon in the tier is hydreigon (LO dark pulse does 72.5 - 86.2% and u-turn does a little less). the key to this set is to know how to get weakness policy passed to something else (and to have good recipients obviously). there's two main ways you can do this:
1. because of celebi's tendency to draw in u-turn users, you can pretty easily get this in against whatever it walls, recover or sd on the switch, then click baton pass on the u-turn. they pick what they send out first as you're passing +4 attack to something that hopefully beats the shit out of it. just so you know, celebi tanks even darmanitan's u-turn 100% of the time without SR up and some of the time with it up (flare blitz OHKOs though so its risky, but the point is, it tanks every faster u-turn in the tier lol)
2. you can switch it into something slower using a super effective attack, then click baton pass. this is less nice, because they could decide to stay in and then you're stuck guessing what move they clicked and therefore what mon you should send out unless you have something that completely walls what they have out (but thats unlikely since if that was the case, they probably wouldn't be attacking with it in the first place).
what's really nice about this set is that there's like no reason /not/ not just slap WP on it. leftovers is nice but not exactly necessary for something with recover and natural cure, so the opportunity cost is small while the potential payoff is huge. the idea is to play it like a standard SpD celebi until you get the opportunity to pass, not to actively try to pass, btw.
the nature/EVs are set to be faster than non-scarf heracross, but slower than roserade/lucario. mostly because if you underspeed roserade/luke you can get off a BP on it after tanking a sludge bomb/crunch, and the 40 extra SpD allows you to do stuff like this:
252 SpA Life Orb Roserade Sludge Bomb vs. 240 HP / 132 SpD Celebi: 330-390 (82.2 - 97.2%)
252 SpA Life Orb Infernape Fire Blast vs. 240 HP / 132 SpD Celebi: 351-416 (87.5 - 103.7%) -- 18.8% chance to OHKO
252 SpA Chandelure Fire Blast vs. 240 HP / 132 SpD Celebi: 342-404 (85.2 - 100.7%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO
252 Atk Mega Absol Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 240 HP / 0 Def Celebi: 354-416 (88.2 - 103.7%) -- 25% chance to OHKO
252 Atk Crobat Brave Bird vs. 240 HP / 0 Def Celebi: 306-362 (76.3 - 90.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
it goes without saying that you should only let it tank these hits if your pass is going to lead to win/big advantage, don't waste celebi's HP just for the sake of getting the pass off lol