A Comprehensive Guide to Inheritance
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Art by bro torterra.
Inheritance is one of the most recent Other Metagames (OMs) to receive a permanent ladder. While the mechanics are similar to other OMs such as AAA and Camomons, potential players often get stuck on the teambuilder, since in order to fully explore the possibilities of the tier, you need a unique and creative mindset to fully visualize your options. This guide will show helpful methods to make building more intuitive, as well as give an overview on current metagame trends.
What is Inheritance?
Inheritance is a metagame where Pokémon can "inherit" the movepool and abilities of other Pokémon, at the cost of replacing their own. Here's an example to illustrate this:
On top of what has already been explained here, you can't inherit from the same family twice on the same team (so no inheriting from Clefairy and Clefable on the same team), and the donor gets revealed when you send out your Pokémon. What this results in is a metagame that favors all the Pokémon with the best stats and typing available as inheritors, as now you can combine the movepool of Pokémon with lower BST or worse typing with their better stats and typing. At the same time, the good inheritors often have multiple sets with different strengths and weaknesses and are very flexible. Gholdengo is a great example of this, as it can inherit from Latios to become a Ground-immune pivot, from Alolan Persian to become a threatening bulky setup sweeper with Nasty Plot and Fur Coat, or from Bramblin to become an entry hazard setter and remover at the same time, among many other options.
The metagame also trends towards sets with better abilities. Not much beats the raw extra damage that Tough Claws gives, the extra bulk provided by Intimidate, or the recovery of Regenerator. Exceptions to this aren't too rare, however, as shown by Bramblin!Gholdengo, which settles for the mostly useless Infiltrator in exchange for excellent utility in Spikes + Rapid Spin on a Ghost-type and the fantastic recovery move Strength Sap. I encourage you to experiment and see what trade-offs are worth it and find new viable sets. But you might be wondering...
How do I build sets for Inheritance?
Since in Inheritance every Pokémon can choose from every Pokémon's movepool, it can be hard to visualize what to do with each Pokémon and the best way to go about it. Here, I'll show some methods to help you build sets from scratch for any Pokémon and how to work with the unique that constraints Inheritance has using some examples.
First, I'll pick the Inheritor I wanna use. For example, Sneasler:
It's fast, it's strong and it has a good typing. I wanna use it as a Choice Band pivot to click strong Close Combats and click U-turn on its checks.
With our inheritor defined, the second step is to define what moves I want my Pokémon to have to find the best donor for it. As I've said before, I want both Close Combat and U-turn, but many Pokémon learn that combo. I'd be good to find an extra move that i would want on this, such as a strong STAB move. Gunk Shot has 120 base power and decent accuracy, so I'll pick that. We don't have to pick all 4 moves yet, so lets keep our options open. With our three moves chosen, let's look them up on the teambuilder:
Now from these choices, we can see which one we like the most. Abilities tend to make more of an impact on a set, so let's see if there's any Pokémon with a good one. And there is!
Perrserker has the amazing ability Tough Claws, and if you check its movepool, it also has the great move Knock Off. With all of this in mind, we can put our set together:
Now here's a tip to import this set back to the inheritor: Click the Import/Export button and type between the name of the Pokémon and the "@" the name of the inheritor you wanted in the first place, in parenthesis, and then click Save, like so:
It is important that you make sure that the inheritor's name (the "(sneasler)" part) has a space separating it from the name of the donor (Perrserker in this case) and the “@”, as otherwise this trick won't work. Inheritance doesn't use the nickname to check for the donor, so you can nickname it whatever you want. With this trick, you can observe the full movepool of the donor and quickly transfer your desired choices back to your inheritor.
With the set on the inheritor, you can now EV it properly, since you can see what will the final stats be.
And just like, that we have our set!
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- Perrserker (Sneasler) @ Choice Band
- Ability: Tough Claws
- EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
- Jolly Nature
- - Close Combat
- - Gunk Shot
- - Knock Off
- - U-turn
With the method now in mind, here are some tips to further help you when building sets:
- For some attacking types, like physical Water- and Grass-types, there are many potential options that are usable for STAB moves, like Wave Crash, Liquidation, and Aqua Tail for Water-types, and Power Whip, Wood Hammer, and Leaf Blade for Grass-types. It can be difficult to remember all of the possible options, which is why I recommend using Smeargle to look up what attacks exist of a certain type. While Smeargle is very much banned, it does learn every move in the game, so you can still use it to search what moves of a type exist and sort them by power and what not.
- Let's say you want to make an Intimidate wall set. The Inheritor doesn't matter; you just want it to have Intimidate and reliable recovery. But you can't look up all of the recovery moves at the same time in the builder. This is where the /ds command comes in handy. By typing into chat "/ds intimidate, recovery" we can find what Pokémon have a recovery move and the ability Intimidate. You can also look up individual moves and many different move categories, which is really useful when looking for the right donor.
- I've already said it before, but it's still important to state that stats are everything in this tier. For example, if you wanted to use some defensive set with Manaphy as the inheritor, you could upgrade it very easily by changing from Manaphy to Suicune, which has higher bulk at the cost of a slightly lower Special Attack and Speed, which you won't miss much. For optimizations like this, Scrappie's ".bulk" command comes pretty handy. Just PM the bot ".bulk [Pokémon]" and it will return a number that represents how good can a Pokémon take hits when fully invested. Little optimizations like this can go a long way on improving any team and should always be kept in mind.
What's the metagame like?
Before diving into the metagame, I believe it's important to talk about a very unique mechanic of Inheritance that has a massive impact in battle as well as in the builder.
Donor Reveal Clause
In order to make the almost infinite possibilities of every Pokémon more manageable, the donor of a Pokémon is revealed the moment they switch in. This gives you a lot of informaton about what their sets are, making the tier have a "pseudo-open teamsheet". For example:
Let's say my opponent sends the first Gouging Fire to the field with has Regidrago as its donor. I know for certain Regidrago has only one ability: Dragon's Maw. From there, I can look up Regidrago's movepool to piece together what kind of moves my opponent is running. The best Fire move Regidrago learns is Fire Fang, so it's probably carrying that. It definitely has some sort of Dragon-type STAB move like Outrage to go with the ability. Regidrago doesn't have a lot in the way of utility like recovery or a pivot move, so it's probably running some sort of Dragon Dance set with some extra coverage move at the end, maybe Earthquake or Thunder Fang. With this information, I will send in some sort of defensive Pokémon to deal with it accordingly.
Now, on another game, a different opponent sends out the second Gouging Fire with Hisuian Arcanine as its donor. At this moment, it already revealed Intimidate as its ability, so it's very likely that its a defensive set. Looking at Hisuian Arcanine's movepool, moves such as Morning Sun, Will-O-Wisp, Roar, and Stealth Rock stand out as moves it'd run on a defensive set, so I can assume it has some of those. Any attack it has is likely to be a reliable physical Fire-type STAB move. Will-O-Wisp can be very detrimental to many Pokémon, so I will avoid switching in my physical attackers in recklessly.
As you can see, with only the donor and its movepool, I can deduce quite accurately what its set is and play accordingly. What this means is that even though many Pokémon have many unique sets with different counterplay each, you can take measures against each and not get taken by surprise. It also means that any set can't just ride on the element of surprise alone; if you're going to try to gimmick me with some sort of weird immunity ability, I can know the moment you send that Pokémon out. Also, note that you don't exactly "choose" what donor is displayed there. Rather, the game determines what your donor is based on what Pokémon can have your combination of moves and ability, usually displaying the first Pokémon in dex number order. This can give you further information about what moves or abilities they may have. For example, the Arcanine-H!Gouging Fire mentioned earlier. Since it explicitly says Arcanine-Hisui is the donor and not Growlithe-Hisui, I can deduce it has some move that Arcanine-H learns but its prevolution doesn't. I can search what moves fit this description with the following command: "/ms arcanine hisui, !growlithe hisui". These are the results:
Inversely, If the donor was Growlithe-Hisui instead I could discard these moves from the possible options it might have.
Top Metagame Threats
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/Since the beginning of the generation, RegenVest users have been a staple of balance and stall teams alike for the amazing role compression they provide. Hisuian Goodra has been the most common of these since its introduction with HOME and one of the most common Pokémon in general. With Assault Vest and Cyclizar as its donor, it can take insanely strong special attacks like Choice Specs Mega Launcher Dark Pulse from Darkrai and Sheer Force Life Orb Fire Blast from Iron Moth with relative ease and use the opportunity to pivot, use Knock Off, or try to remove hazards with Rapid Spin. Oftentimes, Hisuian Goodra also carries Dragon Tail, meaning that you can't set up on it for free. Snorlax is also commonly used in this role as well, trading Hisuian Goodra's resistances for more bulk and a neutrality to Ground, as well as being able to utilize at using moves such as Fake Out and Body Slam to their full extent. Florges and other Fairy-types have risen in popularity as a way to beat common countermeasures for the first two, but they mostly lack any worthwhile resistances, the extra bulk, or the direct damage capabilities the other two have. The immense bulk of these Pokémon combined with their relative lack of exploitable weaknesses, and Hisuian Goodra's many resistances in particular, hamper the viability of many otherwise-promising special attackers in the tier. However, as we will see, they have plenty of exploitable weaknesses.
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)Mixed attackers are the most straightfoward way to get past RegenVest Pokémon. Most commonly inheriting from Clefairy for the overall great utility or Rampardos for the raw power, these sets carry a physical Fighting-type move of choice to blow past Hisuian Goodra and Snorlax and amazing coverage that allows them to threaten a lot of the tier's defensive staples. The most prominent right now is the recently unbanned Enamorus, thanks to its good Speed, great mixed offenses, and fantastic typing, with Clefairy being its donor of choice. Both forms of Thundurus are also quite common in this role due to having STAB on Thunderbolt, which allows them to make use of Sheer Force, inheriting from the likes of Tauros and Rampardos, further boosting its power. The Incarnate forme is the preferred one due to its higher Speed, but sometimes the extra power from the Therian forme is desired. Both have to deal with an overall lesser defensive typing, however, and the Sheer Force sets have to deal with its Stealth Rock weakness. Other options for this role do exist, like Infernape, which has STAB on its Fighting-Type moves, and Landorus-I, which has STAB Ground-type attacks, but they're more niche overall. While they're terrifying against balance cores and the like, they tend to struggle against faster opponents and can be adapted to with the right Pokémon, like Florges.
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)You don't need to be a mixed attacker to still be a good special attacker in the tier. Darkrai stands out among the powerful special attackers in the tier for having both excellent Special Attack and Speed. Very few Pokémon can switch into Mega Launcher-boosted Dark Pulses, and with coverage moves like Aura Sphere, Sludge Bomb, and Ice Beam, it can run over unprepared teams with extreme ease. U-turn at the end means it can generate momentum even against its switch-ins. Clefairy!Iron Moth bypasses its hazard vulnerability and can bait RegenVest users in and remove their item, opening them up to Pokémon like Darkrai or even itself. Sandy Shocks's incredible offensive typing is further bolstered by Sheer Force and newfound access to Ice Beam, notably 2HKOing Assault Vest Hisuian Goodra with Earth Power.
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)A common weakness between all RegenVest users is that they can't really stop foes from setting up if they can't use Dragon Tail, so Substitute users can use them as free setup bait. Gholdengo can tank weaker Knock Offs with Fur Coat courtesy of Alolan Persian, allowing it to set up in the face of defensive staples like Iron Hands and Hisuian Goodra, with the added bonus of also blocking Rapid Spin. The spread shown above has enough physical bulk to prevent Snorlax from ever breaking Substitute with Knock Off and outspeeds uninvested Gliscor, with the rest dumped on Special Attack. Zapdos is also a fantastic Alolan Persian donor, brandishing a more threating STAB combo and a different defensive profile. The showcased set has enough Speed investment to outspeed Jolly Great Tusk while maximizing its bulk. Enamorus is already immune to Dragon Tail but still uses Substitute to protect itself from status and Knock Off in conjunction with Tinted Lens Moonblast to bypass Fairy-resistant foes like Corviknight more easily.
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)Due to the amazing movepools of the Unaware Pokémon, the ability has become a pretty common sight in the tier. The Wooper family is the star of the show, with their access to Toxic, multiple entry hazards, and a solid array of attacks to choose from on top of recovery. Clefable trades Toxic and Spikes for Knock Off, even more attacks to choose from, and other goodies like Thunder Wave, Encore, and Calm Mind. Skeledirge brings Will-O-Wisp and Torch Song to the table, trading in hazards and having smaller selection of attacks. All of these desirable traits make them very easy to fit on balance and stall and makes strategies such as Multiscale Dragon Dance and Unburden very unreliable. Setup has to rely on extra power with damage boosting abilities, naturally good type matchups, Taunt, or some combination of all them.
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)Inheritance is home to many strong Fighting-types, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Sneasler's great Speed and Attack allow it to become a very threatening cleaner and revenge killer with Choice Band and Tough Claws-boosted attacks, all courtesy of Perrserker. Guts Great Tusk, often inheriting from Ursaring, is an incredible Swords Dance wallbreaker, with very few Pokémon being able to take its unboosted STAB moves alone and the few that can often falling to whatever its last coverage move is. Urshifu-R is more commonly seen with Crawdaunt as its donor, giving it Adaptability, which goes great with its solid STAB combo, priority in Aqua Jet, strong setup with either Swords Dance or Dragon Dance, and amazing utility with Taunt, Switcheroo, and Knock Off. It's also the most solid Contrary sweeper with Substitute + Taunt and Inkay as its donor. Galarian Zapdos is arguably the best at exploiting Hisuian Decidueye as a donor, being content with only Brave Bird as coverage and taking advantage of Triple Arrows to the fullest to cheese past would-be checks. Stacking any of these together can make for a very effective wallbreaking core and is a very effective strategy.
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)Iron Hands is far and away the best physical wall in the tier, thanks to its enormous natural bulk, relative lack of weaknesses, and its superb Attack stat preventing it from being too passive. Hisuian Growlithe as its donor creates its flagship set, with its unparalleled bulk thanks to Intimidate. Will-O-Wisp allows it to blanket check every physical attacker in the tier vulnerable to it; even Ground-types can lose if they lack a boost like Choice Band or Adaptability. Stealth Rock is always useful and a Fighting-type STAB move is notable for dissuading Hisuian Goodra from using Rapid Spin, even if the selection is less than ideal. Illumise gives it the combination of Prankster + Encore, making it an arguably better counter to setup than Unaware, and it can capitalize on the forced switches with a slow U-turn. For a set like this, an EV spread that maximizes its mixed bulk like the above is recommended. Any bulky Pokémon can make for a solid Naclstack inheritor, but Iron Hands stands out here as well with its sky-high bulk and STAB on Body Press. While it might not be as adept as its Fighting-type brethren as an attacker due to its poor speed, its defensive capabilities and versatility on this role are second to none.
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)Like a lot of generation 9 tiers, hazard stacking is a very effective strategy. At a first glance, you might think that the prevalence of RegenVest users with Rapid Spin might make hazard removal an easy job, but those sets tend to struggle to scare away bulky Ghost-types like defensive Gholdengo and Annihilape despite their access to Knock Off. Gholdengo is especially good at this since its variety of great sets and solid defensive profile means it can fit on many teams easily, while Annihilape's better bulk and lack of a weakness to Dark makes it an overall better spinblocker, although it's harder to fit due to being less flexible. Hazard setters are plentiful and easy to fit, and many like Great Tusk, Ting-Lu, and Iron Hands naturally scare away Pokémon like Hisuian Goodra that might want to spin away their hazards and often carry status to also punish Defog attempts from the likes of Fletchinder!Gliscor. Of special note here is Bramblin!Gholdengo, which can set Spikes, remove opposing hazards, deter spinblock attempts with a fast STAB Shadow Ball, and shrug off Knock Offs from spinners and Earthquakes from setters with Strength Sap, making it a fantastic all-in-one Spike-setting machine. Its EVs spread outspeeds uninvested Gliscor and has the rest in physical bulk.
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)Primarina is a fantastic wincon with a great defensive profile that makes it hard to force out. Its Magic Guard set is the standout, with its ability giving it both immunity to entry hazards as well as passive damage from Toxic, Salt Cure and even its own Life Orb, allowing it to accumulate many boosts with ease. Alternatively, it can become a solid speed control option with Triage, becoming able to immediatly threaten Pokémon Roaring Moon and the many Fighting-types with a +3 priority Draining Kiss while also powering through Unaware and RegenVest Pokémon with Calm Mind and Stored Power. While its bulk might be a bit below average for the tier, its typing more that makes up with it, only giving it 3 somewhat uncommon weaknesses and resistances to Fighting-type attacks and other common attacking types in the tier. This all combines to make it very tough to force out once it enters, regardless of set, and circumvents a lot of conventional counterplay to special attackers. One of the main ways of dealing with it is with strong supereffective Physical coverage on your defensive Pokémon, like Poison Jab from Alolan Muk, as well as carrying Calm Mind users that naturally beat it, such as Zapdos or Pokémon with Calm Mind + Taunt. You can slow pivot out of Clefairy!Primarina into Pokémon like Sneasler or Meowscarada!Roaring Moon to force it out with supereffective coverage, and Comfey!Primarina is vulnerable to all sorts of passive damage like Toxic, Entry Hazards and Salt Cure, as well as being somewhat weak without any boosts. Overall, Primarina's typing and solid stats make it a premiere metagame threat and it's important to always keep it in mind when building, as it can easily get out of hand.
Explore the Tier!
Inheritance is a metagame with endless posibilities and lots of unexplored potential. Every Pokémon has a lot of potentially viable sets waiting to be found, and with OMPL going on as we speak, the meta could shift immensely. If you're interested in the tier, you can check out the Inheritance metagame thread, which holds resources and discussion about the meta, or the Other Metagames discord server, where Inheritance has a dedicated channel and more active discussion tends to happen. SmogonDex also hosts many sample sets for the tier to further help you out when starting out. The Other Metagames room in PS! is another great place to discuss Inheritance as well as any other metagame of your liking. Lastly, as said before, Inheritance has a permanent ladder on Showdown, so you can go queue up right now. While it's not an easy meta to get into, it is a very fun to play, so go have fun!
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