I'm officially washed. Which is a shame, because I've felt really creative and excited in the builder in this meta post Muk. It's been really freeing in many senses to not have to worry about that mon and I'm currently having a lot of fun messing around with different ideas in the builder, although I can already feel the hate for Breloom, Chandy, and Rhyp creep in as the tier gets more constricted. This week I spent a lot of time looking at Rhyperior and I wanted to share some things that I feel is a way to push this meta forward a bit. Gonna start with a fun set for those who don't like reading and just want the tech and then I'll go into some builder theory I've been messing around with a lot more.
Rhyperior @ Assault Vest
Ability: Solid Rock
Tera Type:
Fairy
EVs: 244 Atk / 12 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Temper Flare
- Ice Punch
-
Tera Blast
I genuinely think Rhyp is broken af and I think this set is what began to do it even more for me. The cool appeal of Rhyp is that you usually pair it with a Steel-type rocker in this meta and allow it to really flex its wide movepool, but when looking at the builder, I realized that none of those other sets necessarily let Rhyp beat its common checks right now like Tauros, Scrafty, or Breloom beyond some SD variations in certain moments. I realized that, if it had it, Play Rough would solve those matchups in many ways, but since it didn't have it, Tera Blast + Tera Fairy would have to do enough of a job here and it does. Besides that it's a really strong defensive tera in general that lets you beat nearly every single physical attacker in the tier at the moment, an unexpected Fairy Blast can flip entire games when you OHKO a +1 Def Scrafty trying to set up in front of you or KO a Wetbull if it switches into an EQ into a Fairy Blast through Intimidate. Even in the Breloom mu, if it can +1 it just lives, but you either force a Tera or easily 1v1 it. A lot of people were looking at Dragon Tail, which is cool, but I think Tera Blast Fairy is a really awesome tech that I haven't seen yet.
On this set, I went with AV just to really 1v1 most things in the meta while soft checking mons like Chandy or Tox a bit better. 244+ Ada leads to a guaranteed KO in the aforementioned Wetbull scenarios, even with lefties, and 12 SpD is needed to take 49.7 from Tox Boomburst (wtf.) and Munki Psychic. I originally theorized this set when helping Dugza in slam and he mentioned that it possibly made sense to invest much more in SpD with everyone speed creeping that 179 mark, so feel free to bring the speed down to the 156 range around Sylv and Incin, but you can also go as low as 137 for Plume. Incin creeps you anyways.
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Now for some team building theory talk. Building with Rhyp has felt so shitty in the current meta and it shows when most people keep bringing some variation of the same Rhyp team over and over again. By committing to a Rhyp angle, your team is naturally going to be extremely slow as you try to fill in all the other "mandatory things" a team needs right now and it feels like there's nothing one can do about it. Most teams will look something like this:
1. Rhyperior
2. Steel rocker (Copper or Zong)
3. Removal (Tsareena or Altaria or Cram)
4. Dark-type (Scrafty or Incin or Overqwil)
5. Speed control (Munki or Flamigo)
6. Filler (usually a breaker or Fight-resist or further speed depending on team comp)
Congrats! Take any combo of this that makes sense to you and you've just made a current meta SV NU Rhyperior team! The obvious issue here is that this sucks. It's boring, repetitive, food to meta trends like Breloom, and generally ends up with you having a slow and semi passive team sitting in your builder that most users don't like to see. When looking at team compositions like this, I realized that if we could compress some of these slots, there would be a lot more freedom to mess around with. When considering how this could be done given the above checklist, I was mostly drawn to the combo of Cinccino + Rhyp to help accomplish this goal. This obviously isn't a new combo, but Cinccino as a mon has largely disappeared from the community conscious as people began to lean away from more offensive teams and it's now generally ignored by people nowadays. Despite this, I'd like to argue that there's a ton of untapped potential with Cinccino, but especially in regards to this duo, and that these two mons together is an under explored direction for Rhyperior teams that can work wonders. This is for three main reasons:
1. Dark-types are great right now, but pretty slow, and the main reason we've been calling them "mandatory" for the last few weeks has been the rise in Chandelure usage and ban calls. If we begin to use Normal-types to check Chandy Shadow Ball instead of trying to fit a Dark-type on there, especially a fast one like Cinccino which doesn't bring our speed down even lower when using Rhyp, we're left with a lot more builder freedom to mess around with. Other Normal-types like Dududnudfsfsnfsksksparce and Melo are cool as well.
2. Our removal options are extremely limited right now and mostly all defensive. Cinccino in that regard has really fallen under the radar and isn't considered as removal nowadays as people lean towards more defensive pieces, despite its early prominence. Even though it's fallen out of favor, it's still a viable form of removal and a fantastic offensive threat with Dice + coverage.
3. It pairs extremely well with Rhyp who helps break down a lot of its checks like Bronzong and vice versa. Cinccino is an extremely underrated and fantastic cleaner right now, especially with the Dice sets + Bullet Seed/Axel coverage, so with the slight chip being picked up by Rhyp on all of these mons, you can easily set up some good rat sweeps. It's really an offensive match made in heaven in many ways.
1. Rhyperior 2. Steel rocker (Copper or Zong) etc
Now that we've covered why Cinccino is worth considering, especially in conjunction with Rhyperior, when going back to this checklist with Cinccino in mind, I think it should become clear why I'm advocating for this duo. With Cinccino, you've gone ahead and compressed the removal, "Dark"-type, and filler speed guy all into one slot, opening up a ton of room in the builder for creativity. Essentially, you've gone ahead and opened up 1-2 spots on your team by just slotting in the rat chinchilla thingy over another form of removal. This suddenly gives Rhyp teams a ton more life and diversity that wasn't there before. For example, with this approach, balance cores get much more open, especially in regards to fitting an eeveelution alongside your tank Rhyperior, or any other form of bulky mon that couldn't fit before. There's also a BO or even an Offense angle that's now opened up as well with Cinccino as the partner, leading to a lot of potential for
Dr. Phd. BJ style teams to exist around this mon like they did in the past with those Cinccino + Scyther cores of old. I've spent some time with this concept in the builder and I've been really impressed. For those who are sick and tired of the same Rhyp teams, I highly recommend doing the same. I genuinely believe in this core and I've had a lot of builder and play success with it so far.
- super simple easy to pilot team with these concepts for those interested. Cinccino can be Bullet Seed>Axel and Tox can also be a Chandy :)
Gastrodon moved from NU to RU 
Muk-Alola moved from NU to RU 
Feraligatr moved from RU to NUBL 
Suicune moved from RU to NUBL 
Munkidori
Raikou
Kilowattrel
Chandy
