agreeing on Lucario; i made a joke-ish team with
ZoroarkForever once that had metagame monsters like flyceus or fully special groudon + SD lucario. iirc zf opted for jolly but i ran adamant. My point - this team was fun as hell to use but could be improved in every possible way, yet Luke seemed to carry it mostly by itself and threaten so many teams it's not even funny.
I'd actually go far enough to say it's unique "mix of everything good but you won't get it nowhere else" niche makes it a viable contender for a powerful, wallbreaking AND sweeping type of a megamon.
It's by no means Mence level or something but its pretty rare and ungodly strong STAB moves including priority Bulletpunch that threatens one of the best mons right now+decent/good speed+possibility of setting up+okay coverage make it legit enough, let's see:
it hits everything you want; 200bp irontail does a whole lot to random stuff but for the unlucky people like me -
- Crunch hits Giratinas+Lugia+Lati twins+ghosty(very rarely switches on you if ever if it's faster it wins anyway)
- Ice Punch still hits Giratinas and Lugia but you trade hitting Ghostceus for killing Salamence/hitting yveltal without a defense drop which is kinda important when against prio users like Ray, overlooked thing. if you're one of the lucky spawn, there's a tasty 10% freeze chance. don't be fooled though - CC hits Yveltal harder but following moves might or might not kill you regardless of drop which is why i pointed it out;
- Stone Edge yet again hits Lugia, Yveltal, Mence and on top of that Ho-Oh + neutral hits on everything else mentioned above. Accuracy isn't perfect which is why my "ho-oh coverage" was a good Stealth Rock setting teammate and Adamant Close Combat.
It's important to note that +2 240 BP Close Combat has enough power to KO certain resists and really fat neutrals too, with aid of hazards obviously but it's mandatory and common anyway(latis/ho-oh anyone?)
tl;dr = stuff that can't match max/max+ defense Vanilla Groudon's level of bulk and doesn't resist CC has to accept the sad fate of being owned. Said Groudon is just an example - after one layer of Spikes +2 Close Combat takes it out, unboosted 2hkos with spikes too. With SR instead numbers go down a little - 56 and 11% respectively. The fact that most Primal Groudons run lesser defensive investment than that is helpful too.
By no means I'm trying to make a demigod out of this mon because it has some big flaws that can't be overlooked
- bulk of a wet tissue with main stab making it even worse
- has to pick between either more speed or more power, both being important enough (i went power route tbh, adamant is insane)
- it's still not the fastest gun around even if it has +Speed nature, clocks at 355 which is quick but not yet there, it'd love having 384+
- loses to most arceus formes
- usually hard to setup(debatable, even without wobbufet - i don't have one). Why debatable? It is indeed true that it loses to a lot of stuff unboosted/pre-mega and its bulk doesn't help there either but SD* is surprisingly NOT the one people expect and with it's STAB combo and quite a number of Pokemon weak to them/frail physically, you'd be surprised how often i found myself setting up SD on a forced switch, having enough power to slay whatever comes in as long as it doesn't resist CC**. It's tricky and a LOT harder to pull off than stuff like DD Mence(no speed boost smh) but surprise factor itself and the fact that not many teams actually take Lucario seriously means it's doable and about as rewarding, only with some different target Pokemon it kills*** and slightly different approach to shitting on typical Ubers teams - can't recklessly setup on a lot like a certain dragon can, doesn't forgive mistakes at all, rewards plays and free turns won through outplaying
imo a little bit more than some other similar mons that are slowly getting overprepared for, giving Lucario more room
*set we're/i am talking about all the time, should be main imo
**spooky plate suspect when
***ass shuca dialgas and ttars kept whole game just to stop your mence ain't a problem anymore. your edge over the adamant croissant dragon is the fact that you kill stuff like lugia after SR under appropiate boost without losing half of your own health - return doesn't kill, and if it's 248/252+ - neither Dedge adamant dragon or Lucario kill it but one of them laughs at common toxic/icebeam Lugia and at worst gets phazed - isn't this a check-all 'mon that's supposed to prevent that from happening?
In return, mence gets a speed boost, recovery and amazing ability before mega+almost double the bulk. But that's the whole point, it's not mmence-level mon and it won't ever share ranks with it but it's way better than shit ranked down there next to it.
It's main selling point imo is abusing current metagame trends and it's bloody good at it, also(or mostly?) vs builds currently known as 'solid'. I probably sounded like a fanboy but people should really consider thinking outside the box for once, especially if it's not some ass PU pokemon used for the sake of being used but something that actually works and kills stuff. And it's immune to Toxic too, that automatically makes it a top super-viable pokemon.
tl;dr
c -> c+/b- , not a toptier godlike killer but definitely not a 'terrible utter ass garbage useless' mon like it's called now
big sorry for typos but i'm abs and i do them often, oh and it ended up kinda long imo. all that to kick a shitmon up a rank
