Merry Christmas everyone. On this very special occasion, I am here to announce a discovery that will revolutionise the BH meta. I am become the Grinch, destroyer of Christmas. There is no joy to be had for what I am about to share with you. Let's now take a step back and look at the gen 9 BH meta. What was one of the most defining change this gem? The recovery PP nerf. Now I ask you: what is the best way to abuse this? That's right. SPITE. If you've never heard of this move I wouldn't blame you. Spite is a move that's only annoying in-game because it makes you run back to the Pokemon Centre after your 5 PP move is instantly deleted. But let's think about it for a second. Usually, your offensive mons force a Recover every move. Meanwhile, Spite instantly takes away 4 Recovers, making it effectively 4x as good as an offensive move. Of course it's not as easy as it sounds but a move that takes away 4/8 Recovers is probably broken, and with the right setup, we can make Spite exactly that.
Now the question everyone is wondering is what mons and sets can turn Spite into a broken move. Don't worry, I, as the Grinch of Christmas will not disappoint your desire to ruin Christmas for everyone. In my opinion, there are two types of mons that can make effective use out of Spite.
The first type of mons are tanky Ruination users. Ruination is guaranteed to half your opponent's hp which means they are almost always forced to Recover, unless it's a Regen mon. Because Ruination ignores offensive and defensive stats, any mon can utilise this combination. For slow mons, simply click Ruination and then Spite on the next turn if you predict Recover, or Ruination again if you predict a switch. At this point you might be wondering "hmm surely Ruination is better because it also forces Recover and takes up another turn". This is where you're WRONG. You see, Ruination is a 90% accurate move. The odds of hitting 4 Ruinations in a row is 65%. Also, it takes 4 whole turns to do it. This is at least 40 seconds of your valuable time that you're never recovering. Meanwhile, Spite removes the 4 PP instantly and with 100% accuracy. Mathematically speaking, the extra moveslot dedicated to Spite is definitely worth it.
Before I segway into the next type of mons that can use Spite, let's talk about what else Spite can do. Obviously Spite is extremely good at reducing 8 PP offensive moves. This ironically makes your own Recovers better because your opponent can run out of PP before your Recovers. For example, you only need to tank 4 Dragon Energies or V-Creates before you can Spite and never have to worry about then again. I'll briefly mention the synergy with Bulwark/Bunker as well which can further reduce the strain on your Recovers. Theoretically speaking you can Bunker twice, take an 8 PP move twice and Spite to remove all the PPs of the move. Another move you can Spite down is Stone Axe. Most people only run one "copy" of this move, sometimes two. I think three Stone Axes in one team is pretty overkill. Well, Stone Axe is an extremely telegraphed move. You always know that the Regen mon is gonna click it if rocks are not on your field. This makes it an easy predict to Spite if your mon is slower. If they clicked U-turn you're not too upset because that means you just denied them rocks. Of course you can also predict the U-turn and do something else. I think it's reasonable to land about 3-4 Spites. Factoring in the 90% accuracy, you can reasonably only have to deal with ~10 Stone Axes if your opponent only have one user. With Bulwark, this number is even less. I could be very wrong on these assumptions but I think it's not too far-fetched. Everything I just said about Stone Axe also applies to Mortal Spin. I think Rapid Spin has too much PP so if you want to go with this gameplan you should definitely have a Ghost spinblocker. Mortal Spin is also extremely telegraphed. If you set rocks on your opponent's field then obviously they want to remove them unless it's a Superman team (in which case you're better of Spiting Recovers). I think within the right team, it's definitely possible to PP stall out Mortal Spins so you remove your opponent's ability to clear hazards.
I think that covers the main purpose of Spite. You want to target Recovers or certain utility moves so your utility wins in the end. More examples of utility include setup moves like Take Heart, Victory Dance and Torch Song. Removing these moves' PP makes your Imposter extremely good since you autowin the setup war if the opponent can't even setup while you can. The other use for Spite is to remove 8 PP offensive moves to make walling easier. Bulwark/Bunker helps a lot with PP stalling.
Now that we've established fat mons with Ruination and/or Bulwark can make for good Spite users, let's talk about the other users of Spite which are non-choiced offensive mons. Obviously you don't want to lock yourself into Spite since it does no damage. This means you have to run it on MG or SF LO mons. The idea is the same. You hit the wall hard on the switchin. You hit them again as they Recover. Then you Spite to reduce their Recover PP to 3. The next time your offensive mon comes in, their wall can't wall anymore because they will run out of Recover PP. MG and SF mons are inherently weaker than Choiced mons so they usually only do about 28-35% to a dedicated FurScales wall. Spite expedites wallbreaking a lot. Just do the maths. Normally it would take 8 turns of attacking to remove 4 Recover PP, and your opponent gets a free turn every other turn. Meanwhile, Spite achieves that instantly. Spite is also arguably less MU fishy than a coverage move because its always useful if youre getting walled by something with Recover, and every non-regen wall has recovery. I will also mention that you should run Spite on mons that aren't walked by RegenVests. RegenVests don't run recovery so Spite is useless against them. You want your offensive mon to force a FurScales mon in.
Finally I'd like to talk about the disadvantages and counters to Spite. I think it's important to address these so you can understand the challenges in teambuilding and what to watch out for so you can maximise the power of Spite. The first big problem is switches. A switch completely counters Spite. This means you have to know when your opponent will switch and to plan accordingly. As mentioned previously, some moves are very telegraphed and predictable so it's pretty safe to Spite. Although I think the timing if Spite is a relatively large hurdle that players have to overcome, the upside is high enough given the current context of the meta that it can be an extremely effective move to force progress expedite games that players will enjoy using. There are several teambuilder options that can be used to ease the predictions. Firstly you can always run Magic Bounce/GaG or trapping/partial trapping moves like Spirit Shackle and Thunder Cage which removes hard switches. Alternatively you can also run hazard stack which discourages switches and forces your opponent to click removal moves. As mentioned above you can also just run offensive mons which naturally force recovery. Now the other and larger obstacle is Imposter. Imposters have infinite PP if they can switch so that's definitely really annoying. It's not completely terrible though. There are a few ways you can punish Imposters that copy your Spite mon. The easiest way is to run your own Imposter with Block. This allows you to PP stall out the opponent Imposter and make them struggle to death. Another way is to run the hard trapping move on another mon. This means Spirit Shackle on one of your mons. You can run double regen and just switch back and forth. If your Spite mon is offensive, you can make it hard for Imposters to switch in, especially if you have no recovery on it. I'll probably post a team later when I have built a team or found some good mon combinations that are improof.
That's the end for this advertisement sponsored by Big Spite. I'll just end off with some sets that you can yoink and twist. I'll also briefly mention running Eerie Spell on your RegenVest mon which might be viable but I think there are better moves to run. Eerie Spell is 8 PP and only reduces the opponent PP by 3 instead of 4. The damage is usually negligible so I think it's a lot worse than Spite.
Blissey (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Wish
- Burning Bulwark
- Ruination / Parting Shot
- Spite
Giratina @ Leftovers
Ability: Prankster
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Burning Bulwark
- Spite
- Wish
- Parting Shot
Audino-Mega @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Ice Scales
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Ruination
- Shore Up
- Spite
- Spikes / Topsy-Turvy
Miraidon @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunder Cage
- Recover
- Spite
- Burning Bulwark
Sceptile-Mega @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Grass
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Torch Song
- Chloroblast
- Dragon Energy
- Spite
Kyurem-Black @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Glacial Lance
- Sunsteel Strike
- High Jump Kick
- Spite
Necrozma-Ultra @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Eerie Spell
- Dragon Energy
- High Jump Kick
- Gigaton Hammer
Koraidon @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Triple Arrows
- Dragon Tail
- Strength Sap
- Spite
Tldr: Spite "removes" 200% of your opponent's HP in 1 turn.