Greetings to you all, I come here to express the belief that Manaphy is extremely underrated due to its movepool which includes tail glow, a status curing calm mind, scald and u-turn along with solid stats across the board, I personally find it crazy that it isn’t even UU by usage given its wallbreaking potential, its flaws like average speed and reliance in tail glow to do massive damage really aren’t too severe even in a power crept metagame like Gen 9 OU and prevent from being top tier, not viable.
Manaphy @ Leftovers
Ability: Hydration
Tera Type: Grass
EVs: 40 HP / 252 SpA / 216 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Tail Glow
- Energy Ball
- Surf
With one turn of setup it becomes a wallbreaker that is near impossible to switch into and has solid bulk that prevents it from being deadweight against faster pokemon, even utilising this to hit them back for massive damage that often KOs them. With two turns of setup, most defensive pokemon will fold in one or two hits.
if they even if they aren’t caught on a switch, a 2HKO will not be favourable since most defensive pokemon won’t be able to do much against it since manaphy will shrug off most attacks from these pokemon that do not invest their offenses, can use substitute to avoid harmful moves like toxic or salt cure and its fast enough to avoid getting locked into tail glow via encore from most of these pokemon after using it the turn after whilst hitting the specially defensive pokemon extremely hard.
+3 252 SpA Manaphy Surf vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Slowking-Galar: 207-244 (52.5 - 61.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+6 252 SpA Manaphy Surf vs. 252 HP / 96 SpD Assault Vest Slowking-Galar: 276-325 (70 - 82.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+6 252 SpA Manaphy Energy Ball vs. 80 HP / 0 SpD Assault Vest Primarina: 384-452 (119.6 - 140.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+3 252 SpA Manaphy Surf vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Vessel of Ruin Ting-Lu: 384-452 (74.7 - 87.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+3 252 SpA Manaphy Surf vs. 252 HP / 24 SpD Tinkaton: 288-339 (77 - 90.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+3 252 SpA Manaphy Surf vs. 252 HP / 204+ SpD Garganacl: 492-582 (121.7 - 144%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+3 252 SpA Manaphy Surf vs. 252 HP / 204+ SpD Tera Fairy Garganacl: 246-291 (60.8 - 72%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+3 252 SpA Manaphy Energy Ball vs. 252 HP / 204+ SpD Tera Water Garganacl: 328-388 (81.1 - 96%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+6 252 SpA Manaphy Energy Ball vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Toxapex: 183-216 (60.3 - 71.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Basically, tail glow sets have ways around almost any defensive pokemon that isn’t blissey, eviolite chansey, clodsire or terastallizated skeledirge due to their vast options for coverage and high power, allowing them to make solid progress for its teammates by weakening or breaking their checks.
+6 252 SpA Manaphy Surf vs. 4 HP / 252+ SpD Blissey: 286-337 (43.8 - 51.6%) -- 10.9% chance to 2HKO
Ok, at least blissey can avoid a 2hko most of the time, but non calm mind sets won’t be able to do much back due to their passivity.
Manaphy @ Leftovers
Ability: Hydration
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 HP / 104 Def / 152 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Acid Armor
- Take Heart
- Stored Power
Whilst Take Heart sets are harder to use since they are meant to be full on sweepers and are vulnerable to fast encore users, they are still solid on hyper offense teams due to manaphy’s solid bulk that can be boosted by acid armor and take heart, the latter of which making attempts to paralyse or poison it pointless, to make it hard to dent on both sides whilst boosting its special attack.
Since each turn of step up makes manaphy bulkier and bulkier, it can begin to snowball out of control as hits start to do less and less damage. multiple boosts will not only make manaphy near invincible, but will also make stored power do insane levels of damage capable of getting clean OHKOs on multiple pokemon.
Whilst manaphy is undeniably flawed and not as viable as it was in dlc 1 where some players thought it was suspect worthy, it does have a unique role that it can fill out on OU teams as a tail glow wallbreaker, with take heart sets also being surprisingly good on some HO teams.