Hello guys, I wanna share some anti-Kyurem play that I have incorparated into my gameplay. You may ask, why now when it is getting suspected? I feel like it might help some struggling ppl against some oppressive mons and in general I feel might be useful against high variance mons like Valiant or Dragapult too. Do not mistake this as me being anti ban or something though.
In my experience I have very rarely lost to Kyurem. One thing I am suprised the pro ban side didn't mention as much is the rise of Assault Vest mons. During WCOP, we saw a rise of special spamming mons. However ppl adapted by slapping bulky AV mons to halt these special spamming mons progress temporarily and put the momentum on your side again. And these AV mons have an overlap with Kyurem c-play too. We already know about AV crown but why stop there? I have seen the rise of AV Mola mirror coat who 1vs1 most Kyurems and puts momentum on your side, AV slowking-g is the perfect scout with regen and can even tank a scale shot and my personal favorite AV Hatt. This is the spread I am using.
Hatterene @ Assault Vest
Ability: Magic Bounce
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 248 HP / 48 SpA / 160 SpD / 52 Spe
Modest Nature
- Mystical Fire
- Dazzling Gleam
- Psychic Noise
- Nuzzle
^ PsyNoise bypasses sub, dazzl chunks a good amount of health and she takes pittance from freeze drys. In case it is a physical setup variant, I tera fire and cripple it with nuzzle or in case I need to be careful of a ground tera, chip it for a priority user to finish it off. I mainly play sun teams and the combi of Nintales+Hatt is aboslutely dazzling against Kyurem(Tales can tank an EP too and cripple it with WoW or encore it). As much as I respect Srn, I have to resepctfully disagree with his opinion that Hatt has been just a filler for sun teams. In my experience, it was really hard to build sun teams without Hatt. Also because I play sun, I dont fear freeze as much. AV Hatt is also a good mon on non sun structures as she blocks non Samurott Hazard stacks to get their stuff going, can trade into the various special threats , provides a valuable dragon immunity and is a FS absorber. I have to give a user named Kittenlazers credit as he/she was the earliest AV Hatt user I have seen so I kinda just stole the idea. There are also other potential AV mons in the lower tiers like Goodra-H. who can provide valuable phazing too with d-tail and knock or AV Slither Wing that also provides a valuable ground resistance, momentum and priority. Here are some replays to let you see how to play.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2200847800-r8fdwyfwpx28xo5s5yprnbv7k1uhy9kpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2158168001
That said nothing walls this mon long term so all those mons will eventually succumb to Kyurem spamming its stab moves. Use these mons as a scout and position yourself so you can pressure the Kyurem user better. Do NOT think about checking this mon long term. Sometimes just letting go of a mon is something you will have to do. Trading health to find out its set is absolutely worth against Kyurem. You can also try to lure in the Kyurem(or any dangorous high variance mon) early game when you have most of your resources available with sth like Lando-T and see what moves it goes for and respond. Getting rocks up early will also help to determine possible sets. Balance users can use Lu,Skarm, Zama or Molt, tank a hit and phase it out if things go south. Mons is very much an information game. So having Kyurem out early can reveal some parts of the opponents gameplan. For example, calc the damage of freeze dry when he uses it on your scout. Mixed sets usually dont run max spatck and if they do, their other attacks are weaker.
Another thing, its tera type variety is also easy to predict on some sets(sub+tect usually runs ground, specs set mostly run ice, dragon or ground too.). Atleast for now. DD and mixed scale shot sets are a lot harder to predict though since they might run a defensive tera to bypass possible checks so keep that in mind.
As for what I am gonna vote for, I am probably voting BAN. Maybe I will post my thoughts later but for now that is all.