some thoughts on
it’s a very good Pokémon right now due to ghost spam. Lele spam, and Kyurem.
basically right now, the top choice item breakers are:
near-uncontested speed, and a 20% chance to break most of its checks
uncontested power, forces 50/50 choices for offensive teams
uncontested speed and power, unless you can change the weather. Funnily it’s completely shut down by a few Pokémon, but otherwise it just rails flip turns on offensive teams until the late game liquidation s
this is not necessarily overwhelming. However it is particularly versatile defensively against other offensive juggernauts, particularly weavile.
this is the first thing you need to prepare for in teambuilder if you have any intention of going past 1900 ELO. The ice beam is disgusting and it’s partners usually easily weaken its checks.
currently blacephalon is possibly the most dangerous matchup based Pokémon, due to most of its non-passive checks being unpopular. If a team is running blissey or something similar, it’s easy to play around it.
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if you are running an offensive team and need to break past 1900 elo, youll have a really hard time without very good checks to the top 6 because of all the 50/50 situations you’ll be forced into.
Tyranitar helps against 3 of the biggest choice threats, and can easily be partnered with something to deal with barraskewda and lele (such as a regenerator slowtwin). Urshifu is a little harder to cope with, but that’s less of a massive thorn in most teams due to the fact that it can be worn down more easily.
It also comes in handy when trying to reset weather, deal with threats like sponging a hurricane, or chip a multi scale dragonite (to make it worse at checking your partnered Kartana/urshifu/volc/etc).
if you’re willing to forego stealth rock, you can really tech on just about every Pokémon. With its massive move pool.
the set that got me to rank 1 on ladder is below:
Tyranitar @ Leftovers
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 236 HP / 52 SpA / 148 SpD / 72 Spe
Gentle Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Rock Blast
- Flamethrower
- Thunderbolt
its a very customisable Pokémon. In this set up, it has enough speed for corviknight and paralysed base 110 speed Pokémon. Corviknight can 2hko with body press, but it usually needs to become sub 70% HP for that due to flamethrower being used first, making it near useless and easy for the rest of the team to take it on.
ive attached a screenshot of the rank, and there’s bonus replays, all are above 1900. These show how it can put in work vs offensive threats.
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replay 1: Tyranitar shows how it can break some hyper offense structures. It walls blacephalon, wears down latios into revenge range, and finally trades hits with Celesteela.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1432134404-vgypdcoqplso74rbozilu3nrah08avwpw
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Replay 2: Tyranitar and Tapu fini work in tandem to wear down two very strong attackers. The double switching from Storm Zone put massive pressure and they still somehow opened up the team. A replay against one of the best players in OU!
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1432120430-udhmzfs7bqrgqnbia5dxhqj65jsreinpw
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there are battles against other weathers where the disruption is very handy. For example, tanking strong weather hits like hurricane, heatrans eruption, and annoying ice teams by easily switching in on most Ninetails
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Long story short, Tyranitar is a great tool to help you cope better against some of the biggest threats right now. Unfortunately it is very susceptible to pressure, but it’s usefulness against some of the scariest Pokémon can’t be understated!
it’s a solid A Pokémon now, the bullet points:
- sand storm chip damage is a big deal right now
- great stealth rock candidate, makes it a good overall nuisance
- checks some of the scariest choice Pokémon right now! You can use it with regenerators to help a little better against some of the ones it can’t do alone
- surprisingly easy to partner with
- Blacephalon is one of the best offensive Pokémon now and too many teams that are built with it have ways to get around its other checks
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Warning: Tyranitar in a weather based team is going to struggle because the high pressure meta means Tyranitar doesn’t work well as a Pokémon to preserve for lots of sandstorm turns, and you don’t want to stack weaknesses, so Tyranitar won’t be able to properly check what it needs to!
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this is the closest Pokémon to S I think, but not quite S. It’s really the most useful “offensive defensive” Pokémon right now. It’s best set is a defensive one, but it ends up doing heavy work offensively as well.
sets that aren’t 252 HP / 252 Def with a bold nature will seriously struggle verse the sheer power of all the offensive threats that it switches into. For example an urshifu/Weavile double whammy will easily overwhelm any variant that isn’t max defense.
it’s important to have high defense so you can properly check dragonite, dragon dance dragapult, and garchomp as well. Although garchomp is a semi-exception, due to the scarfset checking it better.
there are a lot of teams weak to Tapu fini nature’s madness spam, and throw in taunt to make fini a great Pokémon to open up stall teams.
The best thing about using fini? It baits in glowking, toxapex, Melmetal and Ferrothorn like flies to honey! So get something on the team to take advantage of these.
I hesitate to say it’s S because it doesn’t feel as perfectly useful as a landorus, or as threatening as a heatran/dragapult/garchomp. It also can’t be slapped onto any team as those fine specimen 600+BST threats can be.
It also sucks that’s it’s weak to every other terrain Pokémon, including lele. But the support it provides to teams as well as the ability to check some of the strongest Pokémon in OU right now is a big deal.
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bulkarona variants are already good. With misty terrain support, bulkarona is simply
the best switch into kyurem. This is because draco meteor is no longer a 2hko.
Bulkarona can also switch into potential thunder wave + protective pads variants of Melmetal risk free. This is assuming it’s not teching a rock slide.
Bulkarona also has a chance to set up status-free once you’re ready to sack fini. This is a big deal because a LOT of teams rely on ground type + toxic as their most reliable check to Volcarona.
bulkarona is already a top check to Kartana and Rillaboom, both of these are threats fini really dislikes. Specially defensive Kartana is a nuisance as it easily switches in on fini, and can use a risk-free knock off on bulkarona. Rillaboom will most likely knock off or grassy glide after it switches in on fini, both will usually leave Volcarona with the upper hand (only risk the knock off if you can keep pressure up on the other teams stealth rock user to prevent stealth rock!)
the anti synergy is that unfortunately Volcarona can’t threaten burns with flame body, however the majority of the time this is only relevant vs Melmetal, due to the other common fini switch ins not minding a burn anyway.