Kartana @ Choice Band
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Leaf Blade
- Smart Strike
- Sacred Sword
- Knock Off
Not that I've discussed this with anyone, but I'd prefer it if you were to slash return in front of smart strike, if not remove it entirely; I honestly think that Smart Strike is generally pretty niche in application. I also want you to change the move order to Blade, Knock, Sacred, and then Return / Strike to reflect the importance of each move.
Kartana's huge Attack, good Speed, great typing, and a perfect ability for it in Beast Boost allowing it to snowball out of control make it one of SM OU's scariest wallbreakers. Kartana's STAB moves let it threaten Pokemon like Gliscor, Clefable, Tapu Bulu, and Toxapex,
The topic of this point shouldn't be its stab combination when it rarely ever runs a steel move, focus on what makes it actually annoying to play against (strong grass stab + solid coverage that punishes most, if not all grass resists). I'm also not a fan of a lot of these mentions; Tapu Bulu in particular isn't really the strongest of mentions given how it's mostly taking on an offensive role in this meta, so you can drop this mention entirely. Finally, I want you to order this by viability, mostly because we've been doing that in the c&c section for years now. and when boosted by a Choice Band, allow it to 2HKO a big part of the metagame. Sacred Sword lets Kartana not be walled by Steel-types like Heatran and Ferrothorn, and is its best move against other Steel-types in Mega Scizor and Skarmory. Lastly, Knock Off is aimed at targets like Jirachi, Victini, and Zapdos.
Replace the Jirachi and Victini mentions with Mega Latias and Celesteela; neither rachi nor victini should ever switch into a kart to begin with and crippling steela and punishing lati (esp. pre-mega) is really huge Tapu Bulu is a very good teammate, with Grassy Terrain boosting Kartana's Leaf Blade and allowing it to 2HKO Magearna and max Defense Toxapex
nobody actually runs max def pex outside of some really niche or jank builds; replace this mention zapdos instead. Magnezone is a good teammate as well, trapping and removing Steel-types like Skarmory and Mega Scizor for Kartana. Offensive hazard setters like Z-move Heatran
replace this mention with offensive garchomp; you've got actual synergy here given that both more or less share the same defensive checks and you're rarely going to be using cb kart alongside z tran anyways and Ash-Greninja can set Stealth Rock and Spikes respectively, wearing down some of Kartana's checks and helping it break through more bulky teams. Finally, Kartana doesn't have good bulk, so slow pivots like Assault Vest Magearna and Mega Scizor can bring it in safely via their respective pivot moves.
Honestly I think replacing the offensive hazard setters section with pursuit trappers could be worth it, especially since hazards aren't really important for cb kart to begin with, but that's just my personal preference.
