Thanks everyone. I think part of my issue when building is when I think of checks, I think of “can repeatedly come in without losing eventually,” which I suppose is more in line with a counter as opposed to a check. Stacking checks and/over pivoting seems like a great way of looking at it. I struggle to find the balance between putting stuff in that reliably deals with what it needs to deal with, and not trying to overdo it and becoming super weak elsewhere.
Something I’ve tossed around as a concept (and this makes me sound like I build my teams entirely around beating heatran alone, but I promise I don’t lol) -
Spikes (unless it runs boots in which case its longevity isn’t an issue as much) definitely can hurt Tran with how much it comes in, so my thought was that putting spikes specifically on something that Tran and corv can’t easily come in on would be useful. That way they don’t just come defog in your face or blow you up. I’m not sure if there is one that does both, but in theory you could set up spikes, pivot to a check to the incoming corv/whatever (and use a pivot that invites in Tran), then just continue pivoting. This is all probably obvious to everyone already, but the thought stemmed from - if you wanna hit certain stuff with spikes, it’s not ideal that the thing can come in on the spiker, you want it to come in after.
Like I said, probably obvious and I sound like a child, but yeah, just a thought lol. To add a question, do you think there are any spikers not currently used much that could serve an interesting role in this tier? Intimidate Qwilfish and maybe like specs Omastar in rain seem interesting