About bulk, I think there are a few points which make 36a's bulk unique compared to other mons:
1) We should not be concerned with EV investment into bulk and can go ham with defensive stats without risking dropping CAP song
We have neither healing nor hazard setting/control, the most popular ways of utilising your bulk to consistently provide value across a game or when you need to. Even most mons which use a status spreading strategy like us do so with a backbone of healing themselves up, such as Moltres, Zapdos, Cresceidon or Pecharunt. There are exceptions to this, like Dragapult or Tinkaton, but they have other advantages in a supreme speed tier or arguably the best defensive typing in the game.
Hisuan Goodra, I think, is a more comparable example for our base, with a similarly good but vulnerable typing. Even with its gargantuan SpDef, bolstered by an AV, it still languishes in the lower tiers because it is sort of directionless (term courtesy snake) in what it wants to achieve. Our cleaner forme, however, gives us this direction and thus encourages at the very least very good investment into Speed for it, and SpA in most cases. So even high bulk on base would be what the kids call "fake" nowadays, in that the optimal play is to never to invest heavily in it because we lack models for defensive pokemon being very successful without amazing extra utility/healing or Tank-level offensive stats.
Which leads to...
2) 36a's bulk should be thought of as an expendable allowing us to reach and implement cleaning
Our ideal scenario to be brought in is with a slow-pivot (including a teammate fainting, lol) to something that can't pressure us. Our second best case is to be brought in against one of our designated switch-ins (Gholdengo, Pecharunt, Dragapult). In both cases, we want to be taking neutral or resisted hits, or no damage at all with the slow-pivot as we ourselves force a switch on the opposing side due to the pressure of our Inferno or Ice move. I don't think we are ever trading if we want to preserve enough HP to clean, unless we want to sac and give up on that part of our function entirely (which might be the play in certain scenarios).
Good natural bulk allows us to both come in multiple times into our best-case scenarios while losing an acceptable % of health, as well as actually setup endgame on our switch-ins (or some other mons) even if we have a lower percentage of health remaining.
As an example, if we lose ~15-25% of health to Shadow Ball (and a bit less to Hex), even getting hit twice might be acceptable for us to come in again and set up on these mons or something else as well. This requires an absurd level of bulk (ST was 200-210 in this case) but I do believe that this might be warranted (perhaps with some penalties with Knock or Thunder).
I also think we should bias ourselves towards either physical or special bulk, rather than being above-average bulky on both sides. Mixed mons are rare, and we want to pick and choose what we come in on anyway, so better to dump it all on one side because we don't want to take hits on the other side anyway.
Physical bulk doubles down on the Burn Attack drops from Inferno, while our typing naturally is better against Special mons. I personally prefer special but either is viable.
1) We should not be concerned with EV investment into bulk and can go ham with defensive stats without risking dropping CAP song
We have neither healing nor hazard setting/control, the most popular ways of utilising your bulk to consistently provide value across a game or when you need to. Even most mons which use a status spreading strategy like us do so with a backbone of healing themselves up, such as Moltres, Zapdos, Cresceidon or Pecharunt. There are exceptions to this, like Dragapult or Tinkaton, but they have other advantages in a supreme speed tier or arguably the best defensive typing in the game.
Hisuan Goodra, I think, is a more comparable example for our base, with a similarly good but vulnerable typing. Even with its gargantuan SpDef, bolstered by an AV, it still languishes in the lower tiers because it is sort of directionless (term courtesy snake) in what it wants to achieve. Our cleaner forme, however, gives us this direction and thus encourages at the very least very good investment into Speed for it, and SpA in most cases. So even high bulk on base would be what the kids call "fake" nowadays, in that the optimal play is to never to invest heavily in it because we lack models for defensive pokemon being very successful without amazing extra utility/healing or Tank-level offensive stats.
Which leads to...
2) 36a's bulk should be thought of as an expendable allowing us to reach and implement cleaning
Our ideal scenario to be brought in is with a slow-pivot (including a teammate fainting, lol) to something that can't pressure us. Our second best case is to be brought in against one of our designated switch-ins (Gholdengo, Pecharunt, Dragapult). In both cases, we want to be taking neutral or resisted hits, or no damage at all with the slow-pivot as we ourselves force a switch on the opposing side due to the pressure of our Inferno or Ice move. I don't think we are ever trading if we want to preserve enough HP to clean, unless we want to sac and give up on that part of our function entirely (which might be the play in certain scenarios).
Good natural bulk allows us to both come in multiple times into our best-case scenarios while losing an acceptable % of health, as well as actually setup endgame on our switch-ins (or some other mons) even if we have a lower percentage of health remaining.
As an example, if we lose ~15-25% of health to Shadow Ball (and a bit less to Hex), even getting hit twice might be acceptable for us to come in again and set up on these mons or something else as well. This requires an absurd level of bulk (ST was 200-210 in this case) but I do believe that this might be warranted (perhaps with some penalties with Knock or Thunder).
I also think we should bias ourselves towards either physical or special bulk, rather than being above-average bulky on both sides. Mixed mons are rare, and we want to pick and choose what we come in on anyway, so better to dump it all on one side because we don't want to take hits on the other side anyway.
Physical bulk doubles down on the Burn Attack drops from Inferno, while our typing naturally is better against Special mons. I personally prefer special but either is viable.
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