Been gone for a little bit and I feel it's time to weigh in on this Hoopa U business. So, I've messed around a little here and there with it, and I was a bit unhappy with my results. I honestly was hoping for it to be this awe inspiring behemoth that was going to absolutely demolish the tier. What I got was a Pokemon, that can beat most balance builds and demolish stall. . . So, cool, it's a stallbreaker that flat out gets bent by Heavily offensive teams. I really didn't think going in that speed would be nearly as much of a hindrance as it actually is. Most wallbreakers are slow, but not that slow. 80 is a terrible base speed if you're not fat enough to take attacks from all sides of the spectrum, and with that 60 Defense and 80 HP, it really shows that Hoopa just can't take physical hits, which is really what makes Hoopa's speed so underwhelming. Basically, it loses to physical threats, and there are a lot of them out there at the moment. Now, up until now, I have been pointing out all of Hoopa's downsides. I have yet to even begin to scratch the surface of this Monster's good points. So what are its good points? Stall is dead, it has exactly 0 things for Hoopa and will likely become very scarce in its wake. Balance has an obnoxiously hard time dealing with it as well since essentially nothing can come in on its hard, as absolute fuck, attacks. 160 Atk and 170 Spa is nothing to scoff at. They are absolutely AMAZING base offenses, think of how hard KyuB hits on the physical side and realize that Hoopa can hit that hard from either side. Hoopa is a serious force to be reckoned with for these two archetypes. Thing is, Hoopa's introduction could not have possibly come at a better time. The meta started to slowly become very centered around Balance and Bulky Offense, making it what a lot of people have considered "stale". Now, with Hoopa's inclusion, that could all change, it made Offense all the better while Balance and stall took a pretty major hit, since if you see Hoopa on the other end, it could very well be over before it even begins. Hoopa is a MASSIVE threat to anything that isn't HO. I honestly don't feel Scarf Hoopa is all that great, as, even with a Scarf it's slow as absolute dog shit, and choice locking it really takes away from its absolutely massive offensive stats and amazing coverage and movepool.
so where do I think it should be placed? Well, that's something I've kind of been teeter-tottering on. It should definitely not be any lower than A+, that's for sure, but I'm not quite sure if S is completely fitting for it just yet. I'd say we give it a little more than 10 days and see if and how the meta changes to fit its needs and go from there. But, either way I can honestly say, with exactly 0 doubt in my mind, Hoopa is for sure an A+ 'mon.