me ranting about some pokemon that i think are pretty solid right now:
now, this seems like a weird pick. i think sylveon actually still as it right now. Specs Pixilate Hyper Beam and voice are super strong, but thats not what i want to talk about. i want to talk about Weather Ball. this move is actually really good; base form it is a generic pixilate boosted move-albeit, not that strong. But, in the sun, you can tera fire weather ball and flip the matchup on steels like gholdengo and kingambit. you still kind of thud into archaludon without nuking it with hyper beam, so that's why you have torkoal to set sun and ursaluna as a backup for steels. I personally think specs is best, but cm or throat spray could work. you threaten a lot with just fairy moves too; annihilape, garchomp, dragonite, dragapult, hydreigon, kommo-o, gallade, etc. The lack of strong fairy attackers really presents sylveon with a good oppurtunity.
issue is: sylveon is a tera hog, especially because of how common stuff like ghold is. you also lose to sneasler if its sash guaranteed even with tera and only beat the others with hyper beam, which is kind of unfortunate. you also face competition for a more consistent and notably the water type primarina, BUT you have a better MU into rilla and amoonguss thanks to weather ball. tera blast also works over weather ball, but its funny when my opponent sets rain and i weather ball OHKO their ursaluna hahahhahahahaha
speaking of gholdengo, this mon is perfect to beat it (almost). Triple arrows is a stupid ass move (almost as stupid as dire claw) and scrappy makes you kind of like flamigo, but you threaten grass damage too. only issue with that is that grass damage isnt very relevant right now outside of dondozo and primarina and sometimes pelipper. i guess tera waters too but thats besides the point. the interesting thing about hdecid vs dozogiri is that not only can leaf blade or triple arrows crit through thanks to razor claw / scope lens + boosted crit rate, but you get haze (and coaching and tailwind but who cares about that right tchhh)
the one thing i hate about using hdecid is its speed. its too slow to be good outside of trick room, yet too fast to work reliably under trick room. now its in this weird speed tier where a owl with equal defenses to a pencil is underspeeding everything and getting OHKO'd (bad defensive typing constitutes to this. under tailwind, sneasler also outspeeds you. coaching is basically useless on this guy because, as i said before, you arent outspeeding anything. so, unless you want to risk your coaching beneficiary getting koed, you must protect it and then press coaching and pray you didnt get read. with all that said, this mon is really fun because it has some situational but really good matchups into the likes of dondozo, gholdengo, archaludon, kingambit, and sometimes more.
i havent played much regulation h and dont plan on playing too much of it either because i personally find it monotonous to build and play with a lot of mirrors and shit but this is just fun stuff ive played around with. im also a bit busy juicing out regulation i + playing smogon doubles and vgc uu (which is suuuuuper coool)
