BH Balanced Hackmons

On Nuzzle
Since the discussion it is resurfacing, I just have a question: what are the ways of handling Nuzzle?
(It is not about paralysis overall since it was a subject matter in the past I don't want to come back on it. Or maybe it is still something most have hard time realizing and the subject is seated on.)

The scenario I see happening almost anytime:
Team preview and you are certain that your opponent will get a Nuzzle off on you.

I'm always asking myself how I am able to handle Nuzzle more effectively in my matches. Being one who is still learning the tier, I looked for responses and wanted to see if they are just as effective or complex; skimming through posts I was not able to have a direct answer but concrete ones I wanted to mention:

often a risk-free punish, runnable on almost anything, and the counterplay is fairly limited with a whole 3 viable Nuzzle sponges (by typing) and solutions being 'just run heal bell you tool' (which I personally think is shit advice when PH is arguably the best legal ability).
Electric and ground types aren't overly common given that mons like Zekrom and Don aren't super-tippy-top-of-the-meta and aren't as immediately horrifying as others like Blace, but really the main ways of dealing with this are poison heal, bounce for glare, typing, sacrificing a mon to it, and to a more nebulous extent simply putting on the pressure.
Now to start, Nuzzle is one thing i think everyone deals with in BH. Nuzzle is only blocked by ground types or of course the magic guard toxic orb mons or poison heal mons. Nuzzle is very free to use as the risk of using it is near 0 and then can fully disable a mon from actually countering other mons. There is times where you can be paralyzed twice and in both occasions it could've been a deciding factor to the match.
Most thought of resources when dealing with Nuzzle
  • Groudon
    / Zygarde
    / Zekrom
Referencing Lunatic Hai's post
I have liked how Groudon has being evolving into a solid mon for the meta. From defensive sets in Pranster to offensive sets with Adaptability, it has showed how it could be one of the mons you have to think about when building. It takes advantage of vast defensive Nuzzle users to help the team.

Zekrom also has been evolving, though more in the hands of those who know how to use its full strength. I personnaly consider it horrifying immediately when I see one but I am still unsure why it is not used more with Nuzzle around. Its set of Magic Guard Life Orb can overwhelm teams when used correctly but there is nothing other than that.

Zygarde-Complete has somewhat of an in-between situation where there are just better utility mons. Being one that is a consistent anti Nuzzle while having defensive utilites helps it stay on top I would say. Maybe it has been seen enough to the point people immediately know what it will accomplish.
  • Poison Heal:toxic-orb:
Always free to have, the moment it is activated it will force interactions which can be used in different ways. It can be used on defensive mons and still be as profitable. I always wondered how one would go on the step of its activation because I was proved it is not the same for everyone.
  • Heal Bell / Aromatherapy
Is it as useless as people say? Doesn't the fact that any of your mon can be paralysed by Nuzzle be a reason to use this move? Is it that much of a wasted slot compared to what it is usually used? I personally find it as a no cost move since you have plenty of utility in the rest of the team, and it helps reduce the consistent Nuzzle issue.

These are the main resources used to handle Nuzzle. There are other ones some may not know about or just don't consider in their building because of how the main ones are more useful. Here what I considered:

  • Flare Boost + Flame Orb:flame-orb: (notable user: :eternatus:/:spectrier:)
  • Guts + Flame Orb:flame-orb: (:regigigas:)
  • Lightning Rod / Volt Absorb (:eternatus:/:celesteela:/:ho-oh:/:zamazenta-crowned:)
  • Psycho Shift (:toxic-orb::Regigigas:/:eternatus:/:ho-oh:/:lunala:)
  • Jungle Healing (:giratina:/:kartana:)
  • Magic Guard + Toxic Orb:toxic-orb: (:ho-oh:)
  • Normalize + Entrainment / Skill Swap (:dragapult:)
  • Comatose (:zamazenta-crowned:)
  • Misty Terrain (:giratina:/:zamazenta-crowned:/:kyurem-black:)
  • Flower Veil (:kartana:)
  • Quick Feet (Prankster alternative. Trust.)
  • :thundurus-therian:

I believe those can be incorporated into a team when building for specific matchups but I just wanted to share how they can be considered as other utilities against Nuzzle.


Paralysis is nice in that it provides speed control, but it also turns every turn you click a move with the paralyzed Pokemon into a gamble. Part of playing the game when you're paralyzed is to minimize the amount of risks you need to take (which I definitely didn't do in my game lol), but it feels like a very low risk high reward status to be using. Not only is the speed control absolutely phenomenal in a metagame where status removal is difficult to fit, but it has a shot at providing you free turns to boot and it's no small percentage either. With all of that in mind, ways of dealing with this status seem fairly limited to me at first glance. I looked at Comatose and Poison Heal as surefire ways of countering Paralysis, but the issue with the status is that having one Pokemon that can absorb paralysis doesn't necessarily mean that I can check the opponent's way of spreading it. What do you guys do when playing against this, aside from what I've stated?
Since then things have... not quite changed? I have seen people try plenty of things and still getting back on how paralysis is a problem. But just, are we in a point where the meta is considered good enough there is no other things to look out for? It helps understand a loser's point on it

While the meta is fairly balanced at the moment, I find that building right now is terribly stale. The stranglehold that Xerneas, Regigigas, paralysis, and to somewhat lesser extents Eternatus and Zamazenta-C have on teambuilding has pretty much killed any motivation I have to build new teams. Building in BH has always kept my intrigued, wanting to innovate more and try new things out to see what sticks. But lately I've just been reusing teams that range from several months to over a year old because I find that almost every team revolves around the same dynamic.


I also believe the Belly Drum ban helped shift the focus on Nuzzle and its impact on the tier it had for a while.
Makes me wonder if Nuzzle is prominent enough to have teams preparing for it especially.
There is also the consideration of using it as a tradeoff since the opponent has it thus making a match mostly at the same level of interactions.

Though, I believe it is somewhat unexplored? Most of the time you will get a Nuzzle off and be happy with it, not knowing what will be the appropriate next move: Double Nuzzle on their potential switch, using another move, hard switch one of your mon, or even seek a fullpara risk allowing other possibilities.

Also make me wonder:
Is your team relying on exclusively Nuzzle to slow down the opposing team? (is it the best way a Nuzzle team has to play where there is no concrete counterplay?)

I'm approching these as someone who want to know more about the tier current's state, as I believe it is fine as it is and there is room for exploration and exploitation. Seing what others are doing to show how the tier has still this unexpected factor helps its image of diversity, in my oppinion.

End note
For me Nuzzle is similar to Knock off where you just don't know what opposing mon has it. It's like the little beneficial progress Nuzzle has. I find items more important in matches that I am more scared of losing an item than to get Nuzzled. I see it as more important since just loosing items going from Heavy Boots to Leftovers can change the pace of the match.
sorry for many nuzzles
 

Tea Guzzler

forever searching for a 10p freddo
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a couple things:
hey, kinda started out playing bh seriously (instead of just using random gimmicks on low ladder).

https://pokepast.es/9c924608165751f0

any advice? very straightforward team, click 4v4 button and spam setup sweepers. xern has sd+boom to delete someting when i don't need it/to damage imp, and revenges impostered yvel with espeed. cele improofs etern, xern abd sorta itself as well while being a good cleaner.
for this team:
  • eternatus isn't really improofed. this is because core enforcer, whilst being resisted, still hits celesteela for about half - in addition, if you're using oblivion wing to heal against imposter (assuming you live 2 core enforcers in the first place), you will attack first and so core enforcer will surpress triage, meaning you now move second and get 2hko'd. imposter's bulk also means you probably aren't actually healing much with owing.
  • there's also the issue of having no hazard control, swords dance on xerneas being mostly redundant (as explosion/boomburst should be KOing or heavily denting basically everything bar ho-oh, and if you're blowing up xern then you can't revenge yveltal easily), and having no yveltal improof (imposter's sheer bulk means that you can't bank on extreme speed to finish off imposter yveltal, regardless of defense drops).
  • if you wanted to improve this team, i'd likely ditch the 2 gambit mons altogether (since, with gambit in general, the things you're hitting with gambit vary massively game-to-game and so you can't really have reliable teams with it), and have teammates that can better improof the offensive mons or otherwise punish imposter from using them. there aren't many good simple etern improofs for HO but going for the speedtie -> prankster mon with glare can work (maybe consider unaware calyrex-ice with shift gear), and a ho-oh can both improof the xerneas and act as an offensive threat.
  • i don't really know of any HO mons that improof the yveltal (the only resists to all 3 attacks are ttar, carbink and diancie), so it might be worth dropping it just to make the team work, or running a move to punish imposter on the set such as nuzzle.
On Nuzzle
Since the discussion it is resurfacing, I just have a question: what are the ways of handling Nuzzle?

Most thought of resources when dealing with Nuzzle

  • Groudon
    / Zygarde
    / Zekrom
  • Poison Heal:toxic-orb:
  • Heal Bell / Aromatherapy
  • Flare Boost + Flame Orb:flame-orb: (notable user: :eternatus:/:spectrier:)
  • Guts + Flame Orb:flame-orb: (:regigigas:)
  • Lightning Rod / Volt Absorb (:eternatus:/:celesteela:/:ho-oh:/:zamazenta-crowned:)
  • Psycho Shift (:toxic-orb::Regigigas:/:eternatus:/:ho-oh:/:lunala:)
  • Jungle Healing (:giratina:/:kartana:)
  • Magic Guard + Toxic Orb:toxic-orb: (:ho-oh:)
  • Normalize + Entrainment / Skill Swap (:dragapult:)
  • Comatose (:zamazenta-crowned:)
  • Misty Terrain (:giratina:/:zamazenta-crowned:/:kyurem-black:)
  • Flower Veil (:kartana:)
  • Quick Feet (Prankster alternative. Trust.)
  • :thundurus-therian:
  • :groudon::zygarde-complete::zekrom:type-immunes: theoretically the best nuzzle solution is to use some of these. the issue with these is that they all have common faults (average special bulk, low speed, common weakness to ice), as well as the fact that you're relying on one mon slot to sponge status that virtually anything can run. there's also the issue that, whilst these sponge nuzzle, they probably aren't stopping other initiatives from the nuzzle users (such as pivoting, hazards, or even just raw damage from something like regigigas), and whenever the situation of "will they click nuzzle or not" arises the opponent is basically always getting the better end of the deal.
  • :gliscor: poison heal blanks nuzzle, and you get the free recovery, but similar to the above this comes at the cost of you likely not being able to limit whatever the enemy is doing. for most teams, there's also an additional risk factor when using pheal mons as a status sponge since these are usually the team's primary form of progress, and so you're risking your gameplan just to dodge para.
  • :lilligant: as you've quoted me saying, aromatherapy is really not good counterplay. the main reason is that you have anti-synergy with poison heal (and regigigas is currently, imo, the best thing in the meta), however you also have issues with the mons running aroma, as these tend to end up as incredibly passive and often let big threats in for free whilst you cleanse para. you've also only got 8pp, meaning you're actually still not countering nuzzle in the long term, and the opponent can simply just para you again (unless you're running a HO, which still doesn't really want aroma as it drains any momentum you have) and force you to give up more turns/momentum to cleanse again.
  • :drifblim: etern is the only good flare booster (spectrier misses far too many important kills without life orb), yes it can come in to block nuzzle but also needs to choose between recover's longevity (meaning, as an offensive tool, you have gimped coverage) and blue flare/earth power's damage (meaning you get hard punished for mis-predicting nuzzles). has to choose between long-term nuzzle answer and being able to break walls.
  • :machamp: guts is purely an offensive tool, and it's not a staple one at that. most of the things you're running guts on (kyurem-black, dusk mane, groudon, kartana) don't *want* recovery so they can actually make good use out of guts' improved imposter matchup, thus rendering them mostly irrelevant as long-term answers. guts is never seen on balance too so there's that.
  • :rhydon: there is only 1 situation where an elec-immune ability is good, in lightningrod eternatus, and it does indeed block nuzzle / can boost up with electrify. however, etern wants every ability in the game, doesn't appreciate glare bypassing it's ability, and lrod often crutches solely on black sludge + electrify spam to heal so doesn't appreciate the 50/50s when coming in to block nuzzle.
  • :alakazam: unless you're running poison heal (so you can poison walls), this is a wasted move slot in a meta where most mons have severe 4mss. at most, the mon running it transfers 1 para, since the opponent can just freely switch to a nuzzle sponge/immunity on the second go due to your gimped moveset.
  • :zarude: jungle healing is another HO-only tool, as in longer games the reduced recovery (compared to recover/sap) really digs in. it's really funny on HO, as your mon can just freely set up in front of nuzzle spammers (usually fur coat lunala), but this is the only useful situation.
  • :reuniclus: toxic orb is absolutely not worth running over life orb imo. the damage dropoff is massive and you go from annoyed by core enforcer to mortally afraid of it. if you're running mguard ho-oh (the most common user), you're probably already running a zyg-c to improof it, so ho-oh needing to eat nuzzles is less necessary.
  • :delcatty: normalize doesn't help block nuzzle in most circumstances, because you don't switch in. giving the opponent normalize stops pult from being parad, but makes grounds vulnerable to it, plus pult itself is niche and requires the majority of the team built around it to make the mon work. pult also gets ruined by glare much more than nuzzle.
  • :komala: comatose's only purpose is to block nuzzle (it beats normpult i guess), there are other abilities that do something other than blocking nuzzle. don't use this, there are so many better options.
  • :tapu fini: misty surge is weird. in theory, you can use it to block nuzzle, limit etern's damage output and also stop pheal from going off. however, you don't actually stop pheal going off (toxic orb attempts to activate after terrains expire, so if the user is in on the last turn of terrain they get the toxic), you limit your own ability to use eternatus / your own status / pheal (which are very good things to be able to use), and the mon running misty surge is probably really bad (especially if terrain extender). imo it's too high maintenance to make good use out of given the opportunity cost of the mon running it and that you yourself are negatively impacted by the terrain.
  • :flabebe: flower veil does work. there is one whole user of flower veil, and it's got a very rough defensive profile on top of really badly wanting steely spirit. kartana just doesn't switch in safely enough to warrant using it to stop nuzzles for everything on the team.
  • :granbull: quick feet does not work as an alterative to prankster, given every setup mon besides etern, spect, zac and zama is boosting it's speed (meaning even after the quick feet boost you are unlikely to be going first). if you're using quick feet without flame orb (so you're relying on opposing nuzzle to activate it), the mon you're using has a severe opportunity cost, can still get full para'd and only really catches the opponent off guard once (similar to psy shift).
  • :thundurus-therian: barely clinging to viability as-is, has poor bulk so won't be switching in safely. you're basically shoehorned into 2 different sets (-ate breaker, triage sweeper), neither of which is unique / they can be done better by other mons.
i believe the core issue with nuzzle is how splashable it is - given that basically everything can run nuzzle well, there is massive variance in the things that are trying to force para, and so the "one-mon-blocker" strategy often falls through because you aren't reliably countering every nuzzle user you run into. running nuzzle has virtually no opportunity cost due to it's massive impact, whereas the counterplay methods above (with the exception of don/zygc/zek and pheal) have very high costs to using or are just objectively bad. nuzzle also hinders a much wider variety of mons a lot more than knock does (exception being regenvest mons), and is more splashable than knock / isn't prone to getting hard-blocked (eg. griseous orb giratina bricks virtually every knock user).

so, to answer the question, the best ways of handling nuzzle are through running multiple immunities / mons that don't care too much about it, and/or to just spam it yourself and try to limit the massive benefits that the opponent gets out of spamming it against you.
 
There a Way to Beat Galarian Darmanitan Zen mode, it's Accelerock, Mach Punch, Vacuum Wave, Aqua Jet and other super effective priority moves STAB Boosted useless if it has Queenly Majesty or Dazzling to block it. However, it can be ignored using Mold Breaker, Turboblaze or Teravolt.

An Jolly Zamazenta and Pheromosa can outspeed Max Spe Galarian Darmanitan Zen. but not when Darmanitan-Galar-Zen is speed boosted, it can go for a Technician Mach Punch instead. Pheromosa can run Sturdy so it doesn't have to worry giving up a Focus Sash.

Prankster Haze and Unaware ruins Belly Drum + Unburden sets.

here's some calcs:

252+ Atk Choice Band Turboblaze Tyranitar Accelerock vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Darmanitan-Galar-Zen: 504-592 (121.7 - 142.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252+ Atk Hard Stone Technician Tyranitar Accelerock vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Darmanitan-Galar-Zen: 600-708 (144.9 - 171%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252+ Atk Choice Band Tough Claws Urshifu-Rapid-Strike Aqua Jet vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Darmanitan-Galar-Zen in Rain: 474-560 (114.4 - 135.2%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252 Atk Pheromosa Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Darmanitan-Galar-Zen: 458-542 (110.6 - 130.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252 Atk Life Orb Tough Claws Zamazenta Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Darmanitan-Galar-Zen: 749-884 (180.9 - 213.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
 
There a Way to Beat Galarian Darmanitan Zen mode, it's Accelerock, Mach Punch, Vacuum Wave, Aqua Jet and other super effective priority moves STAB Boosted useless if it has Queenly Majesty or Dazzling to block it. However, it can be ignored using Mold Breaker, Turboblaze or Teravolt.

An Jolly Zamazenta and Pheromosa can outspeed Max Spe Galarian Darmanitan Zen. but not when Darmanitan-Galar-Zen is speed boosted, it can go for a Technician Mach Punch instead. Pheromosa can run Sturdy so it doesn't have to worry giving up a Focus Sash.

Prankster Haze and Unaware ruins Belly Drum + Unburden sets.

here's some calcs:

252+ Atk Choice Band Turboblaze Tyranitar Accelerock vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Darmanitan-Galar-Zen: 504-592 (121.7 - 142.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252+ Atk Hard Stone Technician Tyranitar Accelerock vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Darmanitan-Galar-Zen: 600-708 (144.9 - 171%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252+ Atk Choice Band Tough Claws Urshifu-Rapid-Strike Aqua Jet vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Darmanitan-Galar-Zen in Rain: 474-560 (114.4 - 135.2%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252 Atk Pheromosa Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Darmanitan-Galar-Zen: 458-542 (110.6 - 130.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252 Atk Life Orb Tough Claws Zamazenta Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Darmanitan-Galar-Zen: 749-884 (180.9 - 213.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Do you think it is worth running Turboblaze Accelerock Tyranitar to have “””counterplay””” against DGZ? Every Pokémon has counterplay, what matters is if that counterplay is reasonable. If you’re forced to use Tyranitar or Pheromosa, two Pokémon with almost zero usage outside of almost kinda not really beating DGZ, that’s a sign that a Pokémon is broken.
 

cityscapes

Take care of yourself.
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alright i have a 1 year old meme team and a dream. lets get this bread

first of all, regarding nuzzle i think people are looking at the counterplay thru too direct of a lens. for example i can attribute much of my recent success to +spa pixie plate xerneas often w espeed (vamos sanae) (vamos lilith), which i would say is really good vs nuzzle regi/xern. if they come in and try to nuzzle you, you hard punish them with an incredibly strong move, which especially hurts if they have regi who can't recover it all off in a single turn. then you can fairly simply take advantage of them not being able to use one of their best mons for some time. this of course is in stark contrast to the toothless timid boots variants, who do 50 and are completely shut down by nuzzle. whenever i see boots xern it just yearns to do more damage rather than be tied down as a passive hazard remover that still loses to bounce hooh and any manner of aggressive play; most people who use it should be convicted of animal abuse. "you can spin on giratina" is such a 2021 way of thinking.

in a (kinda) similar vein i have this weird thing with nuzzle where i think it's almost never the best option on regi/xern if you're looking for consistency. paralysis goes on your non-wincons, except for lunala. xern can use espeed; regi can use dd or shift gear. as for utility regi (nuzzle spikes facade non-setup), i think that's just a very flawed mon mostly because of its susceptibility to getting chipped down throughout the game and reliance on passive play to stop things from opening up (this regi will lose most 1v1 brawls and can never set up to win). sd nuzzle regi just gives imposter way too much space to win. just use poltergeist force palm (lol) and get seven kills like a normal person.

the esoteric erin lore knowers here will recognize that i felt similarly about mons like darm, calyrex, and many other super-powered breakers of the past: if you use them, people will randomly pull out one of the ridiculous forms of counterplay, your team will be too reliant on them to win, and you'll get put in the ground, so if you want consistency you must shy away from those massive attacking stats. the difference, of course, is that i would hardly call today's counterplay "ridiculous". it feels like everything is flowing naturally, people are encouraged to run active mons rather than garbage walls that lose to everything else in the meta. one example of this is regen no vest on mons that intend to get in, absorb a hit or para, threaten back with some sort of status (also carrying defog), then get out. i love these guys so much. another example is...

:xy/tapu fini: :xy/suicune: :xy/cresselia: :xy/celesteela: :xy/chansey: :xy/zygarde-complete:

i've been procrastinating this for ages, but the rainbow offense post had to come sooner or later.

here is the team:
Cresselia (F) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Ice Scales
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Quiver Dance
- Worry Seed
- Future Sight
- Strength Sap

Celesteela @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Triage
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Nasty Plot
- Oblivion Wing
- Earth Power
- Toxic

Chansey (F) @ Eviolite
Ability: Imposter
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Careful Nature
- Anchor Shot
- Spectral Thief
- Roost
- Aromatherapy

Tapu Fini @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Fur Coat
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Fishious Rend
- Taunt
- Recover

Zygarde-Complete @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Careful Nature
- U-turn
- Thousand Waves
- Spectral Thief
- Rapid Spin

Suicune @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Core Enforcer
- Quiver Dance
- Imprison


here is the sequel. it's called 8 desires because it's like touhou ten desires except you only have 8 of them. this is worse than the first one through no fault of hydra, who brings a fascinating new "goth" aspect to the team, but moreso due to lack of imposter and reliance on lunala to beat every physical attacker in the game.

:xy/celesteela: :xy/groudon: :xy/suicune: :xy/lunala: :xy/victini: :xy/hydreigon:
Celesteela @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Triage
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Nasty Plot
- Oblivion Wing
- Doom Desire
- Leech Seed

Groudon @ Safety Goggles
Ability: Ice Scales
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Careful Nature
- Thousand Waves
- Spectral Thief
- Heal Bell
- Shore Up

Suicune @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Quiver Dance
- Scald
- Core Enforcer
- Imprison

Lunala @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Fur Coat
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Roost
- Nasty Plot
- Core Enforcer
- Astral Barrage

Victini @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Future Sight
- Spectral Thief
- U-turn
- Lava Plume

Hydreigon @ Black Glasses
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
- Haze
- Rapid Spin
- Dark Pulse
- Soft-Boiled

alright so what's going on here? neither of these teams are especially good (in particular the poor hazard removal and opps bouncing sap will really hurt), but they're stronger than one might expect at a glance. the wide use of fc, scales, and generally bulky mons alongside non-passive setup results in a team that's very good at taking space. what i mean by this is that opposing progress makers will have a hard time finding something to force out: you'll have steela or fini or cress in, maybe with a boost on the opponent's teleport, and the regi or whatever that comes in will end up taking more damage than it deals in return (which is quickly recovered off). it's similar to hyper offense never giving your guys an opportunity to set up.


for the record, taking space is also the main principle behind the pressure zama-c (coil/sub/shield/anchor leftovers). like if you get a coil up with your guy and they can instantly force you out with someone like cb don, xern, or prank glare, then the set is garbage. you're just letting your opponent turn the tables on you. pressure zama attempts to take space against prank by having sub and the ability to pp stall haze, against cb don by sub stalling, and against xern by hitting it with anchor. winning against all these threats forces the opponent to rely on passive measures like prank parting shot to stall out coils. this can still work out for them if their breakers are good enough in return (stopping zamac from coming in & forcing it to low hp), so winning with this set involves outplaying that.

here are some replays with rainbow offense:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1383029621-f50m4fm2wruts0dxnko8x32h8z45zv0pw
vs idea, just an insane game all around
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1382992375-ktma2hrm8xrma5ha0teq3a1ln5ajm1xpw
this one is extremely illustrative. look at what happens each time the opponent gets in one of their sweepers. it just lets in my sweeper.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1382930930-ts5k13swnolfphi71fi1rn86z5qiwzcpw
see above

unrelated but the reason it's called "rainbow offense" is actually because of the way breaking with it works. as you can see i've chosen pokemon that don't have the highest attacking stats, so if you want to get through the traditional wall setups you often have to develop super complex plans involving several pokemon, such as leveraging future sight to get a toxic on a specific mon with celesteela, then breaking through with taunt fini, all while staving off a nuzzle zama-c with suicune and removing hazards with zygc. there's a lot of switching with colorful mons that goes on, and it kind of forms a rainbow as all of them attack in tandem.

ANYWAY so i know this team is from last year, all the replays are from last year. a modern zoomer might be asking "what about nuzzle? doesn't all of this just lose to nuzzle users?" and the answer to that is not immediately (you have regenvest zygc + ph suicune + imposter for regi), but in the long term, yeah. status definitely throws off these fc/scales sweepers, obviously the most devastating example is fini losing its beloved 170 power rends but all of them can get caught by the inability to strike or recover and suddenly the whole rainbow plan isn't really going so well anymore while the opponent has more than enough time to get their hazards and go for much more achievable objectives.

this is where you use heal bell.

i used to be in the camp that thought heal bell was stupid and ridiculous and there was no good place for it outside of accursed boomer teams in bw and oras bh, which was where the move first popped up. then i was playing around with a lot of mons that were really good at taking space but hated status, and it started to become a lot more appealing as an option. if you want to remake rainbow offense for a more modern era, heal bell is the best option you have to beat paralysis.

even though it's a different sort of team, i think best of my worms (updated ver that doesn't auto lose to fish) stands out as a good example of a modern team that benefits from heal bell. you have regi, yes, but you also have this auxiliary brigade of xerneas + reshiram that depend on not being paralyzed to properly function. bell can undo a lot of opposing progress at once, while regi can get its orb re-activated as necessary.

fc/scales setup can be used by an incredibly wide range of mons to various powerful effects. the first one i used in gen 7 was fc qd lele (vamos black lotus), and in gen 8 there are a bunch of rainbow offense mons as you see here, but in terms of getting modern success and taking this strategy to its limit, i think you can do a lot better than an outdated team that was cobbled together pretty carelessly in the first place. i wholeheartedly encourage other people to try out these wonderful mons that shut down typical offensive counterplay and allow for incredible and complex positions.

man i can't believe i put off talking about nuzzle for this long and that's how it turned out. i guess you can never only talk about nuzzle, it's so intertwined with everything else
 
Simple gets countered by stat Lowering moves, especially priority boosted by Prankster (but that doesn't work on Dark Types since Gen 7).

Venom Drench is worse lowering Attack, Sp. Attack and Speed of a poisoned pokemon by -2 with Simple.
Memento Lowers Attack and Special Attack by -4 with Simple.
Parting Shot lowers Attack and Special Attack by -2 with Simple.

That may give up a move slot to do this and screw up Simple Shell Smash Users, But Unaware also works as well and Haze too.
 
ight so i made some overhauls to the team.

https://pokepast.es/95661833c7edd8c0

xern now has spin for hazard control while yvel is triage owing (with fiery wrath because otherwise lunala might be a problem). yvel's improofed by dialga, which has bounce to check norm pult and bounce back leech seed and topsy for answering setup (it also can topsy yvel's boosts before it tries to fiery wrath it because max spe)

scales don can check an impostered xern (not long-term but this is ho so), which has dstorm to beat ho-oh without don worrying about it, while being a threat itself. it's also a good nuzzle sponge. considered switching scales for soundproof to take boomburst better, though it means it struggles taking hits from other non-ate special attackers. both it and etern are improofed by caly, which also traps imp and sets up on it while pp stalling it. it helps that ice+ground has great coverage.
 
following on from the current convo on abilities, I realized that whilst i've been saying what abilities are good, i've not really elaborated much on why, nor does an existing resource exist for judging how good an ability is without making up sets and seeing what sticks. thought i'd put together a bit of a tier list on what (generally) i'd say is viable or not.

NOTE: To an extent, the tier list is ordered, though ordering abilities with completely different use cases (eg. Magic Bounce, Fur Coat, Adapt) isn't exactly definite. The easiest way to use the list is to gauge how close an ability is to the start and end of a group, rather than the positions relative to other abilities. The list is also a guideline first and foremost, as I am aware I lack experience with all of these and so abilities in niche and below may be debatable.

View attachment 440623
Each of the dropdown lists has the abilities in that tier, along with the same icon as the list above, so for example :drapion: indicates Sniper. Whilst this gives you a general idea of what abilities are good or not, nothing can substitute for gameplay. Some abilities have explanations, but the majority will assume you know how the abilities work.
IMO, these are the 2 best abilities in the tier. They have by far the most defining presences and completely shape the metagame.

:breloom:I personally believe that Poison Heal is the better of the 2, and therefore the best ability in BH. This is for a few reasons - you have completely free recovery at the end of every turn (regardless of whether you've been on the field for the whole turn or not), aren't dependent on an item beyond getting one safe turn, have an immunity to status conditions, and Imposter is unable to benefit from your recovery (unlike Regenerator) unless they specifically run Toxic Orb (at which point they are crippled against anything else). In addition, this recovery is infinite, meaning that in drawn out games you're never at risk of being starved of recovery, which is very important in BH as everything is massively bulky and games take significantly longer than most other tiers. The fact that answers to common PH users like Regigigas and Xerneas are basically mandatory, as well as sets going out of their way to be bad in order to counter PH (Knock + Purify, Entrainment specifically for PH, non-STAB Core Enforcers), also speak to it's dominance.

:ditto:Imposter is a close second. To address the elephant in the room, Imposter has a significantly more defined presence than PH, to the point where teams are built with all 6 mons having accounted for Imposter in the builder. It's ability to throw around it's obscene bulk to completely change the flow of games cannot be ignored, and with the various item choices in Eviolite, Shed Shell, Toxic Orb and Light Ball it can mix up what it wants to disrupt, on top of having limitless PP through transforming. To add on to this, Imposter users won't transform into a transformed target, so in many cases you have access to a Chansey that's never running out of PP, which you can use for various means (mostly being a free way to Improof your own mons). I think Imposter's slightly lower than PH mainly due to the fact that Imposter is completely in control of the other player, and so with good Improofing you can sometimes find that Imposter becomes mostly deadweight bulk - even though being completely deadweight is an unlikely situation, the enemy can still heavily limit what this can do. Imposter also has the disadvantage of hating item loss more than anything in the tier (excluding Toxic Orb Imposter), whereas PH in most instances isn't bothered.
These are all abilities that heavily shape the meta and need to be accounted for in the builder. Mons running these can be expected to perform well and can usually fill multiple niches on a team.

:sylveon:Pixilate makes all Normal-type moves into Fairy-type moves, and then gives them a free 20% Base Power boost - what this means is that Pixilate Rapid Spin becomes unblockable and Pixilate Boomburst has 168 base power BEFORE STAB and also only has 1 fringe drawback (being a sound move means it can get blocked by Soundproof). When the singular most defining meta threat runs this ability (Pixilate Xerneas), it's definitely worth this spot. Compared to the other -ate abilities, Pixilate's the best simply because Fairy is a completely busted type, especially in BH where the massive majority of the high-BST threats are Dragon-type, there are 2 usable Poison types (one is part-Dragon and the other has 0 physical bulk), 2 usable Fire types (of which 1 is part-Dragon) and the Steel-types tend to be slow and passive.

:espeon:Magic Bounce thrives in BH specifically due to the greater emphasis on hazards compared to any other tier. Having the ability to completely reverse the enemy's attempts (often their primary way of doing so) is by itself great, but then you also account for the fact that Magic Bounce reverses other status moves too, including Glare, Parting Shot, Strength Sap and Worry Seed, to name a few. Bounce's main application as an anti-hazard tool works extremely well into Spikes-oriented balance (a large part of current meta) and bulky Bouncers such as Zygarde-C and Ferrothorn can make life hell for these teams if they don't prepare specifically for these.

:porygon-z:Adaptability turns the STAB boost from 1.5x to 2x, which basically means that running Adaptability makes your STAB moves 33% stronger. This is excellent as the obscene power of STAB attacks from mons like Palkia and Blacephalon is further increased, to levels as silly as Adapt + Life Orb Blacephalon being able to OHKO Regigigas from full with V-create. Unlike other options, such as Tough Claws, Hustle or the now-banned Intrepid Sword, Adaptability also benefits every STAB move, not just moves on one side of the spectrum - this means that Adaptability is the go-to choice for Mixed Attackers, which themselves are excellent for having built-in workarounds for Fur Coat and Ice Scales / RegenVest. Simply put, Adaptability is as high as it is due to the massive damage buff it provides to already-excellent attackers.

:mienshao:Renegerator jumps on the same bandwagon as PH in terms of a passive recovery ability - you effectively gain the item slot and higher instant recovery in return for not being able to heal without switching (regen mons don't normally run recovery moves), being easier for Imposter to exploit and being vulnerable to status. Regen also has a notable advantage over PH in that it isn't dependent on poison, so immunities like Dialga and Eternatus can benefit. Mostly, if you're using Regen, then you're using it on something which can't run PH but wants passive recovery, or you give it Regen specifically to be a slow pivot (creating what is known as RegenVest - Regenerator + AV). Passive recovery in general is busted, which is why this and PH are so high.

:furfrou:Fur Coat is pretty simple in how it can be used, as it just straight doubles Physical Defence, and so if you're running Fur Coat then your main intention is being a physical wall. With the massive attack stats running around in BH (such as Kartana, Kyurem-Black, Regigigas and Groudon), having a way to effectively halve these mons' damage output is phenomenal, and is often the sole reason why they sacrifice other damage-boosting abilities like Adaptability in order to ignore FC with Mold Breaker. The only real issues with Fur Coat are that, against these Mold Breaker threats (or Kartana with Sunsteel Strike), Fur Coat is basically useless, on top of most Fur Coat mons being relatively passive (not helped by the fact that Fur Coat doesn't boost Body Press' damage). Still, great ability.

:bidoof:Simple is the main form of explosive setup now that Belly Drum is dead, and enables some very fearsome threats to start causing havoc with their boosted hits. SimpleGear, SimplePlot and SNR (Simple + No Retreat) are the main 3 you'll all be seeing, and these all use their massive attack increases to punch through walls and completely destroy targets that aren't walls. Additionally, Unaware is uncommon (as you'll see later) and Prankster is less necessary after Drum ban, so Simple is only really held back by most users' vulnerability to paralysis and the Imposter matchup. The power of instantly getting to +4 Sp. Atk and dropping whatever's in front of you cannot be understated, especially unlike Drum where you can do it multiple times.

:comfey:Triage gives healing moves +3 recovery - chief of these moves is Oblivion Wing, enabling flying types like Yveltal, Rayquaza and Celesteela to boost with Nasty Plot and then use an attack that always outpaces Extreme Speed and any Prankster-boosted moves like Haze. The main purpose of Triage attackers is as a cleaning tool, since you'll always be attacking first and so you can pick off targets before they can recover or strip your boosts. It's worth noting that Oblivion Wing, despite the seemingly-low 80BP, is actually very strong after a boost, further augmented by Life Orb. However, since Drum was banned, Triage lost one of it's best abusers in TriageDrum Kartana (Horn Leech/Drain Punch) and Prankster is less common, so the niche of going before it might be less important than before.

:clefable:Magic Guard blocks all indirect damage, including that of hazards and status effects. In such a hazard-laden metagame, where indirect damage has such a big impact, having an immunity to this is great. Notably, Ho-Oh is excellent with Magic Guard as not only does it benefit from being immune to Stealth Rock but it also can use Brave Bird without any recoil - Life Orb also doesn't give recoil, meaning with Fire Lash and Brave Bird, Ho-Oh can break past a large amount of walls. There's no real disadvantages to Magic Guard, but the pool of mons that both can run it and want to run it (ie. they don't prefer another ability) is fairly slim, mostly capped at Ho-Oh and Zekrom.

:whimsicott:Prankster is a hot topic lately after Drum's ban. Prankster is by far the best glue in BH, with Prankster + Haze making for setup control that's easy to fit on teams and is relatively reliable (emphasis on relatively - Triage out-prioritizes it, Core Enforcer silences it and it doesn't help against unboosted threats). However, an issue with Prankster is that the majority of Prankster users tend to end up as highly passive mons, notably things like Giratina, Darmanitan-Zen, Tapu Fini and the like - this is significant to a point where Prankster users are often chosen based on how non-passive they are, with Groudon being the most common as Thousand Arrows is excellent. This passivity is the limiting factor of Prankster, which is why it's not nearer the top of the meta, but is still an important factor that needs to be addressed during the builder.

:frosmoth:Ice Scales halves incoming special damage - this isn't the same as doubled Sp. Def, as taking halved special damage also means that your ability can't be "ignored" by Psystrike and Secret Sword (because Fur Coat doubles PhysDef, these moves also run into that). Ice Scales is similarly simple to Fur Coat, in that anything you give Scales becomes a special wall. Most often, you're using Scales to help with walling Xerneas and Eternatus, the 2 primary special attackers (more niche ones like Rayquaza or Spectrier either hit with mixed attacks or, in Spectrier's case, ignore Ice Scales altogether with Moongeist Beam). This is still good, though due to there being multiple options for special walls (whether being through natural bulk, like Ho-Oh, or through RegenVest) there's less of a need to run it, so it's lower than Fur Coat.
These are abilities that will likely perform well if you run them, and all have their own use cases, but may not offer the same consistency or impact as abilities in the above tiers.

:salamence-mega:Aerilate is similar to Pixilate, in that it's a good offensive type that likes to abuse Boomburst. However, Aerilate isn't as good mainly due to the users - Yveltal, Celesteela and Rayquaza are the primary choices and tend to be harder to use than Xerneas or Magearna. Celesteela is a Steel-type but it's also slow and not massively offensive, whilst Yveltal is mostly locked down to Boots if it wants to be a Xern reskin, and mixed attacking Ray/Yvel are both defensive liabilities. The Spikes immunity can help in the hazard control department, but the worse typing is why it's a tier lower (Flying's weak to common physical options like Bolt Strike and Glacial Lance, whereas Fairy is only really hit by Eternatus and weak Anchor Shots it can Sap/Pivot on).

:groudon-primal:Desolate Land removes all Water-type moves from existing and boosts Fire damage by 50%. It's mostly an offensive application, as the amount of offensive Water-types that DesLand can check is relatively low (Palkia probably kills whatever's running it and Barraskewda with 0 anti-Fire coverage is asking for a MU fish), and usually you'll be seeing it on Ho-Oh as a way to make V-create deal absurd amounts of damage whilst also functioning as a Palkia "check" with the immunity to Fishious Rend. Other applications include Heatran, which just clicks Lava Plume and Anchor Shot, and Reshiram which just clicks Blue Flare and something else, I don't know. DesLand is good for overriding Primordial Sea and for the Fire damage increase, but basically only as an offensive tool because Water attackers will have ways around, limiting how effective it is.

:cranidos:Mold Breaker is one of what i'd call "anti-counterplay" abilities - these don't really aim at making the user any stronger, but focus on limiting the opponent's capability to respond to you in some way. Mold Breaker/Teravolt/Turboblaze (they're the same) is one such ability because it's primary use case is to snuff Fur Coat, Ice Scales and Flash Fire, in order to allow offensive threats to do as much damage as possible. This is most often used on Choice Band attackers like Kyurem-Black to basically ensure that, if the enemy doesn't predict your attack, something takes 90%+, though also sees some use on Nasty Plot Eternatus as a way to run Blue Flare and still kill Flash Fire users. Running Mold Breaker basically means you want to limit counterplay to your threat as much as possible, and as you're giving up a damage-amping ability these threats need to be sufficient without one such ability. Mold Breaker also sees limited use to ignore Magic Bounce, but only on offensive spikers like Groudon and Eternatus. (DO NOT RUN MOLDY HAZARD LEADS, THIS IS NOT GEN 4 UBERS, YOU DO NOT HAVE A DEOXYS-SPEED THAT CAN SET PERMANENT SPIKES.)

:barbaracle:Tough Claws is a pretty standard damage amp ability: 30% BP to contact moves. It mainly sees use on sweepers like non-PH Regigigas and Zacian as these have TC-boosted STABs which allows them higher damage output, compared to other things like Kyurem-Black (Glacial Lance isn't contact) and Kartana (probably wants Steely Spirit or Tinted Lens) who have enough raw power, particularly with Choice Band, to drop things regardless and so would usually prefer anti-counterplay abilities. It's worth noting that, despite TC affecting a wider scope of moves than Adaptability, it's only affecting contact moves and Adaptability's damage boost is slightly higher, so if something doesn't need non-STAB coverage or wants to run a special STAB move, Adapt is stronger.

:kyogre-primal:Primordial Sea removes Fire-type moves and increases Water's damage by 50%. Compared to DesLand, PSea tends to be used in a much more defensive profile as the Fire immunity is significantly more valuable because V-create is on so much (there is the exception of Barraskewda who uses the damage boost to make Fishious Rend unfairly strong, but this is basically the only offensive application). A notable use of PSea is the PSea Steel, which takes Steel type's great defensive profile and adds a Fire immunity, which also can't be ignored by Mold Breaker (this is because PSea sets a weather condition, whereas Flash Fire is tied directly to the user and so gets ignored) and some users like Zamazenta-C can threaten the Ground types that still look to be effective with rain-boosted Fishious Rends. Generally, though, PSea Steels tend to be passive defensive mons used as Improofs to high-power threats (usually Eternatus) so are limited in this regard, similar to Prankster.

:flareon:When posting this the first time, I disregarded that FF doesn't announce itself and forgot that it still beats DesLand users if they switch in to you. Both are similar enough to where they can share the same tier placement, though i'd always personally opt for PSea since I tend to use Mold Breaker more than average and so get paranoid about it more.

:venomoth:Tinted Lens doubles the damage of not-very-effective moves, effectively meaning that you get to ignore 1 resistance on the target. This is another anti-counterplay ability, but tends to be used as a way to ease predictions since "clicking a move that's NVE against the target and losing damage" isn't a thing that happens - you can't "predict wrong". It's most commonly seen on Kartana, who already basically has Mold Breaker due to it's STAB Sunsteel Strike, so it can use a Banded 100BP STAB move that ignores both Fur Coat and a resistance. Outside of Kartana, however, it's mostly "just another ability you'd see on a band breaker" and as these don't have access to STAB Moldy Moves (Moves that ignore abilities - Sunsteel, Photon, Moongeist), these tend to opt for Mold Breaker or Adaptability, limiting how high this can go.
These are abilities that have their use cases, but only really work well on one mon or team structure. Usually, these play predictably, have significant flaws and don't offer as much consistency as other options, but are still effective when used right.

:skitty:Normalize turns all of the user's moves into Normal-type, and gives them a 1.2x boost. The most common setup is Dragapult with Normalize, Entrainment, Ghost Memory Multi-Attack and 2 filler moves used to disrupt the opponent, creating NormPult. Normalize is in this tier as NormPult is it's only good application, plays predictably and doesn't have significant room for mix-ups, though it's presence still needs to be respected and it can completely dominate teams that forget to bring checks for it such as a bulky Magic Bounce user.

:regidrago:Dragon's Maw is almost exclusively an Eternatus tool - there's one thing you're using it for, being to make Dragon Energy deal as much damage as is physically possible. SpecsMaw Eternatus, despite it's inflexibility, has obscene damage output that must be respected, with sacking the Specs for something like Dragon Fang barely leaving you dry for power. It's one note, but that note is dealing 100% in one hit on something that's usually going first, so whilst the inflexibility holds it back the threat of SpecsMaw alone puts it here.

:perrserker:Yet another ability you basically only see on Kartana, Steely Spirit boosts the mon's team's Steel Type BP by 50%. The emphasis on the user's team is important as, not only does Kartana gain a 50% stronger Sunsteel, but it also allows teammates to benefit - most commonly, this is RegenVest Dialga's Doom Desire, which can create some nasty setups that can mow through almost anything in front of it. Steely has this one singular application, but it's such a good application that it's this high up the list.

:aurorus:Mostly a Kyurem-White tool, Refrigerate is used to make it's Ice STAB as powerful as possible, using it's base 170 Sp. Atk to break past even resists. It helps that Ice is a great attacking type, teams tend to only run 1 or 2 resists and the ubiquity of Nuzzle means that most teams like using Ground-types to block it, meaning lots of targets. FridgeSpin can technically exist on things like Calyrex-Ice, but these have the same Rocks weakness as Aerilate users and Calyrex doesn't really have a Fridge-boosted physical option outside of the low-PP Extreme Speed which isn't massively strong unboosted. Overall, it has it's own niche as "the Kyu-W enabler" and can be used to great effect in the right structure.

:machamp:No Guard is a tool used to abuse the strong but inaccurate moves like Zap Cannon, Magma Storm, Blizzard and Focus Blast - it's essentially used as a way to try and mix in spreading status whilst being a special attacking threat (there aren't very many physical moves you'd want to use, Dynamic Punch is about the only one and confusion isn't that good). The main issue with No Guard is that you're putting it on mainly to abuse Zap Cannon, but there's the issue of "what if I just ran a bulky Nuzzle user like a RegenVest mon", and the fact that No Guard users tend to diminish in how useful they are as the game goes on. Typically ran by Mewtwo.

:drifblim:Flare Boost increases your Sp. Atk by 50% when burned - this is useful as the thing you're running this on (usually a fast special attacker like Eternatus or Spectrier) can't get para'd, which is huge, but also that Imposter isn't able to benefit from Flare Boost unless you've burned them. The power of Nasty Plot + Flare Boost is equal to that of Simple + Nasty Plot (3x boost to Sp. Atk), so it's an alternative that lets you block status. However, Flare boost means you need to ditch the item slot, meaning either Eternatus loses Black Sludge for recovery or Spectrier loses Life Orb to get guaranteed OHKOs on basically everything - in additon, you either put yourself on a permanent timer or stint your coverage to fit a recovery move, which isn't an ideal choice to have to make.

:tapu lele:Basically used by Mewtwo and only Mewtwo, PsySurge blocks priority from hitting grounded targets, increases Psychic's damage by 30% and boosts Expanding Force's power. M2 normally runs either a Specs set or a Nasty Plot set with EForce and Photon Geyser in order to abuse the terrain, which is also useful as it prevents Extreme Speed and Triage from being used as revenge-killing tools, and stops Prankster + Parting Shot spam from cutting your damage. PsySurge is mostly a mid-tier ability because Psychic just isn't a very good type and Mewtwo's the only good abuser, and the anti-priority niche isn't perfect as Haze doesn't target the foe and so Prankster Haze still works normally in terrain.

:nidoking:Sheer Force is an excellent ability, but in BH it's mostly limited by a lack of abusers. Physical attacks are often non-SF boosted and stronger than SF-boosted counterparts, and there aren't too many special abusers with Eternatus and Mewtwo being the main ones. Mewtwo in general is underexplored but Eternatus doesn't benefit from SF on it's Dragon STAB. Could see this rising with more experimentation and is still worth considering, but a lot of the common moves in BH with dodgy secondary effects like Core Enforcer aren't boosted.

:exploud:Soundproof blocks all sound moves - you're basically always using it to block Xerneas, if you have a team structure that for some reason can't find an Ice Scales user. The most common users, Zygarde-C and Groudon, are capable of completely nullifying Xerneas as they're able to block the ubiquitous Volt Switch as well as being immune to the main STAB (Groudon is more offensive but is vulnerable to Fishious Rend coverage), on top of helping check random threats that might be problematic such as mixed Rayquaza or Specs Kyurem-White. However, Soundproof is fairly limiting as it's almost useless outside of checking -ate users and the common users of it tend to give up lots of healing through Strength Sap, so they limit Xerneas' damage but in turn give it HP.

:kyogre::kingdra:Lumping these 2 together as they play the exact same role - rain teams. Rain teams are niche in that you'd require the entire team to be built for rain in order for it to work as well as it can, and with weather in general it's usually a case of "it works brilliantly" or "it doesn't work at all". I think rain as a playstyle has the more "works well" matchups than sun or hail, mainly due to how absurdly powerful Swift Swim Palkia is under rain (there basically isn't a thing you can't OHKO), but also how easy it is to shut down with priority like PixiSpeed can't be ignored. These 2 rain abilities are probably the most successful of the weather abilities (which outside of primal weathers are all niche), so that's why they're above sun and Snow Warning.

:tentacruel:Liquid Ooze works by damaging the target for anything they'd heal from you - the main reason you'd be using this in BH is to punish Strength Sap spam, which is ran by the mjaority of offensive threats as the instant recovery is unmatched. With a high Attack user, typically a Steel-type such as Necrozma-Dusk-Mane or Melmetal, a Sap into these often spells death for the healing target, and they get to abuse status moves more than they should as they can purposefully Sap into Magic Bounce users and force damage on them, leaving them hesitant to switch in. There isn't really a use case outside of meming on Sap spam and Magic Bounce users, but it's funny none the less and can be effective in matchups where the enemy needs Sap to heal multiple mons.

:rhydon:Lightning Rod's good because you get to completely forget Nuzzle exists, and instead use it as a way to set up (Lightningrod's +1 SpA is more valuable than Volt Absorb's recovery or Motor Drive's +1 Spe). Lightningrod also benefits from Electrify, which can force the target to activate your ability, not damaging you in the process. Calyrex-S used to run it back when it was freed, but in current meta you'll only really see it as an Eternatus ability due to it's high speed and bulk, shown best in this thread (week 6). Electrify is nice because it also pierces Magic Bounce. It's not ideal because Glare is Normal-type and so isn't blocked, and without the threat of boosting to oblivion there's not tremendous punishment for the enemy spamming status moves and not activating your ability.

:drapion:Sniper exists in 2 forms - Focus Energy + Scope Lens, or Shift Gear + Autocrit moves. The SG sets are probably the weaker of the 2, as the mons that have STAB on them (the Urshifu forms) don't have stellar base Attack and the mons themselves are frail defensive liabilities. Scope Lens sets are almost always an Eternatus, which runs Focus Energy, Draco Meteor, Sludge Bomb and Overheat - the main idea is that, after a Focus Energy, you have 100% crit rate meaning that you're a "setup" Eternatus that is immune to Topsy-Turvy and Haze (Haze doesn't remove Focus Energy crit buff), with Imposter additionally only having a 50% crit rate. However, the main issue with this set is the complete dependance on the item and lack of recovery, whilst also only having a 2.25x damage modifier so some Ice Scales Steel-types can stall out Overheat.

:conkeldurr:Guts is odd, because you see the massive physical profile of the meta and you'd think that having 50% stronger moves'd be great, 50% is the Gorilla Tactics boost and that got banned. However, the primary issue with Guts is that you give up both the item slot and ability slot for 50% power, which isn't as much raw damage as other alternatives (eg. Life Orb + Tough Claws is a 69% boost). It still has it's niche use case due to lower chip than Life Orb, affecting all physical moves and blocking status, but other item/ability combinations simply do more damage and so are usually preferred.

:bruxish:Dazzling/Queenly Majesty block priority from connecting with you. It's like PsySurge, except you trade the Psychic damage for the infinite duration of the effect, it's generally not excellent but you're mostly going to be using it for counter-teaming in a tour setting as running actual ladder teams with Dazzling isn't very effective. Blocking Priority attacks like Extreme Speed and Triage isn't massive as they're not really common enough to run a dedicated check for, plus since you lack a damage-amp ability you're not normally able to punish the bulky attackers running these abilities like Xerneas and Yveltal.

:meowstic:Competitive gives you +2 SpA if you have a stat lowered. It's main use is to help limit Parting Shot spam, as you get a net +3 SpA, whilst also being able to switch in on and punish other stat-lowering tools such as Thunderous Kick and Fire Lash. This is another mostly-Eternatus ability as it has the speed and power to be an offensive threat without being completely reliant on Competitive going off, and it has the bulk and typing to allow it to switch in on stat-lowering attacks. The interaction with Defog isn't as important as it is in standard play due to Defog simply being the lesser-preferred hazard clearing option. Defiant's not included here because I think it just doesn't have the abusers necessary to be good.

:delibird:Hustle boosts physical damage by 50% but cuts accuracy by 20% - basically, you'd be using this if you want to run Choice Band Hustle in an attempt to regreate Choice Band Gorilla Tactics, with the drawback of missing. Generally, you'd be running Hustle Kyu-B, after which point it's another case of "why would I not use Mold Breaker and kill everything by ignoring Fur Coat", and turning every move to Stone Edge isn't that desirable a trait given Band Kyu-B already basically OHKOs everything anyway. Super-powered moves like V-create, Glacial Lance and Wicked Blow also only have 8PP so running out can be a genuine risk.

:porygon2:Very similar to the above in that you'd be using Download to try and replicate a banned ability, this time Intrepid Sword. Download also has the benefit of being able to raise Sp. Atk, meaning you can use it on mixed attackers like Palkia to gain a slightly larger boost than Adaptability for certain attacks, and can also Baton Pass this boost to a teammate. However, Download's main issue is that you can't actually control which stat the boost goes into without throwing yourself into risky situations, meaning that if you're using it as an ISword substitute then it mighn't actually do anything (if the enemy is a physical wall, you don't get the +Atk to help blow past). Furthermore, in order to benefit from both boosts you need to run it on mixed attackers, to which point you're basically only clicking STABs so Adaptability is normally preferred.

:tyranitar:Sand Stream has a very limited use spread, as only Nihilego, Tyranitar and Diance can make use of it (all of which are incredibly niche). Sand Stream is useful as it boosts the Sp. Def of these by 50%, allows sand chip to dig into anything on the field, and allows you to benefit from boosted Shore Up healing by spamming it across multiple mons. Sand chip works both ways, however, so unless you're Ground/Steel spamming you're going to be taking some chip too, and these Rock types themselves are pretty niche so you don't get many chances to work with Sand. Stream is the only Sand ability here as the other 2 aren't worth running at all (Sand Force is bad, Sand Veil is bad).

:bibarel:Unaware is an odd one. Theoretically, in a tier with as much setup spam as it has, you'd think Unaware'd be a godsend as you can simply ignore anything that these monsters want to do. However, Unaware is massively limited because outside of setup it's completely redundant (and can actually harm you as you can't benefit from atk/def drops on the enemy), and it's usually pretty obvious that you're running Unaware after the first run-in with a setup mon, so they can simply decide not to set up and exploit your otherwise lack of an ability to make progress. It can offer you some free turns if the enemy doesn't know yet / realise, or if they're too reliant on setup as a means to make progress, but generally you'll struggle to get a lot of use out of it.

:groudon::vileplume::sunflora:Lumping these all, same as rain - sun teams generally don't offer the same power as rain teams due to V-create and Fishious Rend being similar in power, yet V-create is significantly less spammable and there are few Fire-types that are explosive as rain abusers. Sun seemingly has even less longevity due to a Stealth Rocks weakness (which you probably aren't running Boots spam for), and Solar Power's constant chip digging into already-frail mons especially given Life Orb. Overall, sun is fringe and IMO worse than rain but it can still work if you don't load a hell matchup.

:salazzle:Corrosion can be used to poison Steel-type users; it's primary use is on Eternatus, so you can use a Toxic that won't miss and put the Steel-types on a timer so other teammates like PH Regigigas can have an easier time breaking through them. You risk poisoning Imposter and giving them an Eviolite-boosted, 704HP PH Regigigas which can somewhat limit how much use you get out of Toxic, and there's also the conflict between running Corrison x and being able to use a different ability x / being able to use Nuzzle more easily, to which the Nuzzle route is normally easier as Steel-types still dislike paralysis. It hasn't been seen in a while, but still has it's niche and is nowhere near as bad as the stuff in the tier below.

:abomasnow:Snow Warning is used exclusively as a means to activate Aurora Veil - halving how much damage your team takes sounds like it's an excellent ability to run, however it has it's drawbacks of hail chip digging into your team, Imposter being able to steal your screens unless you run other weather users and the setter (which typically needs to be something really fast) not being that useful outside of setting. Additionally, simply running dual screens is a viable alterative that doesn't sack the ability slot and Veil in general doesn't fit many team structures as the window to abuse it is typically very small (whereas screens can handily fit on a Prankster user in the 2 free slots after haze/recover).

:regieleki:Transistor is significantly less applicable than Dragon Energy because there's not any super-powered STAB to exploit, Bolt Beak is banned and Bolt Strike can miss / only has 130BP. It does have it's uses, namely on Zekrom who's able to OHKO a large amount of targets after a Shift Gear, but other than that you don't really have a use case for it. Transistor Xurkitree technically can be used but this mas major issues with speed and flexibility.

:buneary:Klutz has one singular application, which is AV + Klutz + Trick. This works as Klutz turns off your AV, meaning you can Trick it where you normally wouldn't be able to - the main target for sending the AV to is the enemy's Prankster, so you can more easily spam setup and get away with it. However, the strategy by itself is flawed as the mon using Klutz is basically useless outside of this one tech which mightn't actually go off correctly, and some mons like Prankster Giratina can carry untrickable items such as Griseous Orb, meaning if you load a bad matchup you can basically be down 5-6 at preview.

:absol:Pressure stall has only ever worked once, and it was from cityscapes' demonic team that can be found in this thread (week 1 team). With Pressure and Lunar Dance support you're able to stall out the PP of the enemy's important moves, namely Haze which is the unfortunate fate I experienced. However, outside of this one team (from the tier's best player none the less) i've never really had issues with pressure-stall structures as these need the entire team oriented around them and playing optimally over the massive game duration pressure stall requires can get difficult after a while. This barely borders bad/outclassed, here based on city alone.
These aren't recommended for use at all. They're either decent but other options are simply upgrades, or they don't really have any use case at all and shouldn't be used unless you want to specifically use them. I've refrained from putting every non-above ability in here just because the ones listed here are ones I see somewhat regularly on ladder.

:tapu fini:Misty Surge'd be so much better if, like every other terrain, it increased damage output. Instead of increasing Fairy-type damage it instead halves Dragon-type damage and blocks status from happening, except it doesn't actually block Toxic Orb from going off since this attempts to activate status after terrain expires (evidence). Whilst theoretically you can use it as a means to nullify Nuzzle, you also can't benefit from it and the duration is too short to use it to end games by completely voiding paralysis (even with extender).

:haunter: Levitate seems good because Ground is a great typing in BH, until you realise that Thousand Arrows is spammed by Groudon (the best Ground-type) and not only does TArrows hit through Levitate, it grounds you AND Levitate means you take Ground-type damage rather than the always-neutral damage you take if you were Flying-type.

:ninjask:Speed Boost has basically one application - Swords Dance + Speed Boost Kyurem-Black. To be honest, it's mostly fringe just because Simple + Shift Gear is basically the same, but with SD/SB you get to spam V-create without having your speed dropped. Other than this it's outclassed, and with SimpleGear you still get to V-create twice before you're at neutral speed. TTTech thinks it's better than Simple so ask him for more info.

:florges:Flower Veil prevents Grass-types from having their stats lowered and from being hit with status. There's only one good Grass-type, in Kartana, though Flower Veil actually synergises well with it because you can't get burned and paralysed (which'd limit 2 stats Kart is dependent on). However, it's only applicable on Kartana (who might prefer other abilities to deal damage like Steely Spirit) and, whilst it stops the Attack drop from Strength Sap, it doesn't actually stop the recovery.

:komala: Comatose seems nice because you're completely immune to status and it can't be removed by Entrainment (so the user can block NormPult), but there's ways of blocking paralysis that are significantly better (see PH) and blocking Entrain isn't reason alone to use this.

:scizor: Technician was outlined in my post a couple days ago, but generally it's just outclassed as the primary moves it boosts (Triple Axel, Dragon Darts, Bonemerang, Storm Throw, Gear Grind, Draining Kiss) have stronger or similar-power alternatives achieveable by using other abilities that can have more of an impact. Technician also barely exists for special attackers, Kyu-B is basically the only physical Technician user and Band Pheromosa exists to do STAB Storm Throw I guess but it's Pheromosa so it keels over to literally anything.

:cinccino:Skill Link is just unnecessary. Of the moves it boosts that you'd use (Bullet Seed, Tail Slap, Icicle Spear, Rock Blast, Water Shuriken, Scale Shot, Pin Missile), moves that are similar in base power exist for these even before any ability boosts (Glacial Lance, Multi-Attack, Steam Eruption/Fishious Rend, Dragon Darts/Energy), or are just bad attacking types (Rock, Bug, Grass).

:clawitzer:Mega Launcher sees some limited use on Palkia because Dragon Pulse and Origin Pulse are boosted, but 1. Adaptability Palkia is just better and 2. there are 3 whole usable moves to choose from in DPulse, OPulse and Aura Sphere. Offensive Kyogre'd much rather Sheer Force + Steam Eruption or Poison Heal + Quiver Dance, and both of these are just better than ML Ogre too.

:chesnaught:Bulletproof is a meme. The only common move you block is Eternatus' Sludge Bomb, to which 1. just use a Steel-type and 2. your mon is completely invalidated if it uses Sludge Wave instead. The only other instance is if you use SimplePlot Spectrier with Shadow Ball and use Bulletproof to Improof, but then you don't have Moongeist and so are asking to miss kills.

:primarina:Liquid Voice isn't good for the reason that other options like SF+Steam and Adapt+Rend are just better, but also that it only affects Boomburst (not Rapid Spin) and doesn't give the in-built 20% boost to affected moves that -ate abilities do.

:necrozma-ultra:I want to like Neuroforce so much, but having it just be Expert Belt as an ability isn't enough as 20% is just too low to only apply to super effective hits. Maybe if it was 33% then it could be considered over other damage-ampers like Tough Claws, but otherwise it's irrelevant.

:toxtricity:Punk Rock cuts incoming sound damage by 50% and raises outgoing sound damage by 30%. Theoretically you can use this on Normal-types like Porygon2 to both sponge Boomburst form things like Xerneas and also deal high-ish (it's a P2) damage in return, but generally Ice Scales is simply superior as it walls every special attack, not just Boomburst. and the damage output isn't stellar even after the 30% boost because it's not STAB on anything good,

:togekiss:Serene Grace is a cheeser's best friend, but in reality it accomplishes basically nothing. Most often, you'll be seeing it on Regieleki in an attempt to flinch-hax it's way past threats, but the fact is that it's clicking a weak move and not actually doing anything to progress the game. Using SGrace to use Sacred Fire with 100% burn rate also isn't worth it just because burn is comparatively low-value in BH.

:zamazenta:Dauntless Shield is worse Fur Coat. Whilst you could justify it as a PhysDef-boosting option that can limit Mold Breaker and also boosts Body Press, the extra defence offered by FC and also not having the boost removable by Spectral Thief or Haze makes this basically irrelevant.

:kangaskhan:Scrappy's main use pre-Drum-ban was either on Belly Drum + ESpeed Regigigas, or on Scrappy + Scarf Final Gambit. ScrappySpeed is dead and GambitSpam is pretty easy to counter if you know what you're doing / have any priority (especially PixiSpeed), so Scrappy in general doesn't see any good use. Scrappy SubPunch Zama-C has been used once I hear but nothing else.

:toxapex:Merciless gives you 100% crit rate against poisoned targets (PH users), whilst always critting against PH Gigas/Xerneas seems cool the reality is this is the only application of the ability and other things like Fur Coat + Entrainment also deal with PH whilst doing other things. Poisoning everything to benefit more from Merciless also means you can't spam Nuzzle for free progress and speed control, which is also a disadvantage.

:calyrex-ice::nihilego::spectrier::glastrier::scrafty::magearna:Limping these all here as "stat-on-kill" abilities. These are all generally bad, gaining a boost from a kill usually isn't enough to snowball into a kill chain unless you've basically already won and so you're almost always running with a dead ability. As One is the highest because it can't be removed by Entrainment and the like, but this isn't reason to use it.

:amoonguss:Effect Spore seems like a nice way to activate the now-banned sleep, but the restriction of contact moves only combined with the 30% activation chance (also combined with the chance to give the target a non-sleep status) hold it back from being useful. You're basically only connecting this with RegenVest users or Magic Guard Ho-Oh.

:mudsdale:Stamina is like Dauntless but you actually need to get hit to get the boost. Not useful as a physical walling option, if you want to spam Body Press then just use Cotton Guard as Prankster, Spectral Thief and Ghost Types limit how useful DefencePress can be to begin with.

:exeggutor:Harvest + Sitrus Berry can *theoretically* net you 25% recovery every turn by recycling your Sitrus Berry, which sounds good as it's double what PH recovery. However, the chance for it to activate is only 50% (meaning you can get completely screwed by RNG), and if your berry is Tricked or Knocked Off then the ability fails for the rest of the game. You also don't get a status immunity or boosted Facade unlike PH.

:slakoth: Truant + Skill Swap exists to where you use Skill Swap to give the target Truant, trap it in, use Protect to be immune to damage and aim to kill it off (usually with indirect damage such as Infestation). The issue here is that you completely fall flat against Magic Guard, non-Sap recovery, Teleport and simply by switching the turn after you recieve Truant as, to not suffer a lost turn, the Truant user has to Skill Swap first.

:bouffalant:Sap Sipper gives a Grass immunity and then raises your Attack by 1 if you get hit by one, which theoretically sounds nice as Strength Sap is a Grass-type move, however Grass is a really bad, and thus uncommon, attacking type (Kartana's the only relevant Grass-type and it almost never runs Grass STAB). Most Sap users also have the raw power to simply kill the thing in front of them, and Magic Bounce is more effective as a Sap blocking tool as you get Sap recovery from the user instead.

:tyrantrum:Strong Jaw boosts biting moves by 50%. The only biting move you're ever using is Fishious Rend, and in this case Primodial Sea is strictly better as it can be used to override Desolate Land's Water immunity, provides a functional immunity and other Water attacks like Flip Turn also get a boost.
These are too good for the tier. I'll give some reasoning as to why they aren't balanced, some like Huge/Pure Power and Wonder Guard'll be pretty obvious but some aren't as clear. If you're after more information as to each, you can look in old OM suspects to gather people's reasonings.

:dugtrio::magneton::wobbuffet:Trapping is usually seen as uncompetitive in a game so oriented around switching (particularly BH, to which the games go on for ages and so more switching tends to be done than other tiers), so having a way to automatically trap and eliminate targets is peak uncompetitive as it's unreasonable to force everything to run Shed Shell or pivoting.

:malamar:Contrary is banned because moves like V-create, Fleur Cannon, Draco Meteor and Overheat are free and available on everything. Contrary Kyu-B spamming V-create and Eternatus spamming Draco is not balanced at all, whereas in standard play it's limited by it's users being slow and having access to not that many moves.

:darmanitan-galar:Gorilla Tactics is banned because 2 Choice Bands is completely unfair in terms of raw damage output, mandating Fur Coat on every team as a complete bandage check that barely even works well isn't balanced, especially with the physical monsters in current meta like Kyurem-Black, Kartana and Groudon.

:azumarill::medicham:Simply put, having doubled Attack isn't balanced. Huge Power + Choice Band gives you a functional +4 Attack instantly and does not result in good gameplay as the user can literally drop everything on the field in one hit.

:zoroark:Illusion is banned because, in a tier with as much offensive potential as BH, having this be disguised and forcing you to guess between not only if the target is an illusion or not but also what it is if it has Illusion isn't balanced. Illusion also blocks Transform/Imposter, meaning that a disguised setup mon not only hides what it is but also completely eliminates one of the most common forms of setup control, potentially also invalidating the other in Prankster because it doesn't know what attacks it'll be expecting to run into.

:pyukumuku:Innards out is banned because of Chansey and Blissey. In a meta where poisoning the enemy is reletively low-value, having to constantly play against what is basically an instant Destiny Bond doesn't create balanced experiences as they can be hard to wear down with indirect damage and physical attackers have to risk instant death in order to actually do damage.

:zacian:Intrepid Sword offers too much power to physical attackers. Realistically, it's basically the same as Gorilla Tactics except harder to Improof as it activates again when Imposter copies you. Similar argument to GTactics in that having Fur Coat mandatory on every team doesn't result in very inventive gameplay nor a fun tier.

:cinderace::greninja:Having every attack being STAB isn't balanced given the absurd power of the moves available, and unlike GTactics and ISword can be abudes by special attackers as well as physical, so a Protean metagame becomes heavily offence-dominated because every attack deals ridiculous amounts of damage.

:smeargle:Banned under Smogon's Moody Clause. Otherwise, it's another element of complete randomness that isn't healthy for the game. Basically mandates Prankster and/or Spectral Thief spam on every team in order to handle it easily, as SubPass teams'd be common beneficiaries and Substitute blocks Imposter.

:weezing-galar:Neutralizing Gas isn't like Mold Breaker - instead of ignoring abilities when you attack, NGas simply turns off every ability. What this means is that every ability used to accomplish anything simply ceases to exist, which is notable with Shift Gear attackers as every response to these (Fur Coat, Prankster, Imposter, Unaware, Primal weathers) simply doesn't activate. In a meta where the ability defines the set so much, completely removing this aspect of the game is completely unbalanced.

:kangaskhan-mega:Parental Bond is unbalanced not only for the functional 25% damage increase it provides but also for the fact that it procs secondary effects twice, meaning that Fire Lash/Thunderous Kick drop Defence twice, Ancient Power threatens a boost twice, Sludge Bomb becomes a poisoning machine, and the like. Nothing's really switching into offensive Parental Bond Zamazenta-C outside of omega-passive Giratina, also I didn't know this but Nature's Madness does 75% so yeah.

:gumshoos:In a meta where switching is so important (with BH, the thing switching in to you is usually threatening to eliminate you and so you need to switch yourself), instantly doubling your damage against anything switching in isn't balanced as it completely invalidates switching as an option, further backed by you not knowing if the enemy actually has Stakeout or not.

:araquanid:It's like Huge Power but only affects water moves. Even still, having Fishious Rend be a functional 340BP move, especially boosted by Palkia's Lustrous Orb, is absolutely unfair damage output. Water Bubble also blocks burns so you can't even Will-O-Wisp the user to cut it's damage, and also provides a Fire resistance so switching into V-create becomes even easier for Barraskewda.

:shedinja:Wonder Guard is completely busted, having every damage dealer needing Mold Breaker or a Moldy move isn't balanced. Shouldn't need much explanation, if you aren't convinced how centralising this becomes then look as Pure Hackmons which has a completely separate VR for Wonder Guard users.
If there's anything that isn't on this list, then chances are it's not recommended for use or has never been seen to be successful outside of one specific use case. There are a couple with theoretical use cases that almost made the list, like Galvanize, Water Absorb and Iron Barbs, but I don't think that these are good enough to be here.
yo i spent far too long writing this, i wrote the first half friday and it didn't actually safe anything after regen so i am mad lucky i copied this into some random word doc
Turboblaze and Teravolt are on the same viable tier due to having the same effect of ingoring abilities.

Also Queenly Majesty is in the niche tier, it has the same effect as Dazzling. Defiant could have been in this tier too just like with Sand Rush and Slush Rush.

Electric Surge and Surge Surfer could been a good combination in BH.

Quick Feet ingores the Paralysis speed drop, but the pokemon still subjects to Paralysis interrupts.

Multiscale and Shadow Shield could been good with Heavy-Duty Boots, they help avoid an OHKO by halving damage taken.

Misty Surge can be an Counterplay to Poison Heal (before getting poisoned by Toxic Orb) since it prevents grounded pokemon from getting statused and halves the damage taken from Dragon type moves.

Hex can also counter Poison Heal pokemon by taking advantage of its poison status. Merciless can be also used through

Thick Fat could been the true counter of Darmanitan-Galar-Zen. someone with this ablility could switch safety into an V-Create or Glacial Lance if it resists them.

Like I say, Harvest works 100% of the time while the weather is sunny.

Cloud Nine and Air Lock can be an counterplay to Desolate Land and Primordial Sea and other opposing weather.

Sticky Hold protects the pokemon from Trick, Switcheroo and prevents its item being knocked off, useful for pokemon that are weak to Stealth Rock and rely on Heavy-Duty Boots.

Maybe those situational abilities that can counter some pokemon and they could change the metagame widely. Or is the pokemon that has the power to change it?
 

tzaur

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is a Tiering Contributor
Turboblaze and Teravolt are on the same viable tier due to having the same effect of ingoring abilities.

Also Queenly Majesty is in the niche tier, it has the same effect as Dazzling. Defiant could have been in this tier too just like with Sand Rush and Slush Rush.

Electric Surge and Surge Surfer could been a good combination in BH.

Quick Feet ingores the Paralysis speed drop, but the pokemon still subjects to Paralysis interrupts.

Multiscale and Shadow Shield could been good with Heavy-Duty Boots, they help avoid an OHKO by halving damage taken.

Misty Surge can be an Counterplay to Poison Heal (before getting poisoned by Toxic Orb) since it prevents grounded pokemon from getting statused and halves the damage taken from Dragon type moves.

Hex can also counter Poison Heal pokemon by taking advantage of its poison status. Merciless can be also used through

Thick Fat could been the true counter of Darmanitan-Galar-Zen. someone with this ablility could switch safety into an V-Create or Glacial Lance if it resists them.

Like I say, Harvest works 100% of the time while the weather is sunny.

Cloud Nine and Air Lock can be an counterplay to Desolate Land and Primordial Sea and other opposing weather.

Sticky Hold protects the pokemon from Trick, Switcheroo and prevents its item being knocked off, useful for pokemon that are weak to Stealth Rock and rely on Heavy-Duty Boots.

Maybe those situational abilities that can counter some pokemon and they could change the metagame widely. Or is the pokemon that has the power to change it?
He likely did not include Turboblaze/Teravolt BECAUSE they have the exact same effect as Mold Breaker; adding all three just would have been unnecessarily redundant. Mold Breaker was likely the pick of the three since that's just the universal go-to name when referring to the ability. Same with QM.

Defiant/Competitive is not very good outside of maybe some highly niche improofing tactics (one of Nihilslave's submissions, for example was a very interesting application). Pretty bad outside of that.

Somewhat agree with E-Surge; have seen some neat applications, but it's niche and tough to build around--especially with monsters like Zekrom not having access to Bolt Beak. Same with Misty Surge. Regarding Misty Surge, though, I don't think it's a reliable way to counter PH on its own. Have used a triple Toxic Orb team vs. a Misty Surge one at some point vs. a pretty solid player and was still able to get all three orbs activated although it took longer than normal + some careful play. I will say that it does force PHers to play more conservatively in the early game and foils early-game Nuzzle spam-centred gameplans. The reduced damage from Dragons is nice, too.

Abstaining from Quick Feet. Have never used it or seen it used, but i could see it maybe having some niche on very specific mons.

No reason to run Multiscales/Shadow Shield over FurScales. Forces you to run HDB and burn your recovery moves more liberally to keep it intact. Only tiny niche SS has over FurScales and Multiscales is that Mold Breaker and moldy moves (Moongeist Beam, Sunsteel Strike, Photon Geyser) do not bypass it. It's not really worth wasting an ability over, though.

Hex from the likes of Giratina-O, Lunala, and Spectrier can put some fat dents in PH non-Ghost resists, especially the latter, but I don't think that keeps PH from being one of the best abilities out there by a pretty significant margin. Also, Regigigas, the best PH user, isn't touched by Hex and can paralyse and/or brute force its way through all three of the aforementioned Hexers aside from Nuzzle Tina-O FC. Merciless is cute, but I don't think it's very good in any serious setting.

Thick Fat is pretty garbage; no real reason to use that over FurScales IMO. Mold Breaker DGZ tears both to shreds either way.

Sticky Hold is also bad. If you want to be trick-immune, run Griseous Orb Tina/Tina-O or Rusted Shield Zamazenta-Crowned. Most if not all SR-weak mons don't like having their entire ability slot dedicated to not losing boots. Either way, in some cases, even with Ho-oh, they can afford to drop HDB for the immediacy of something like Sharp Beak, LO, choice item, etc.

Both Harvest and sun (Drought) are bad. The latter can maybe have similar applications to that semi-rain team Cityscapes posted for OMPL, but that's really it.

Weather cancellation abilities are also bad. Primal Weathers are nowhere close to being common enough to sacrifice an ability slot for it and can make your mon dead weight most of the time. Even when loading into primal weathers, it's better to run better checks to it (Zyg-C vs. most DesoLand breakers, bulky Water-types vs. most physical PrimSea breakers, etc.) or bring your own primal weather.
 
Hello friends, I hate to break up this lovely discussion but I have a big announcement to make. To no one's surprise, and long overdue, it's my honor to announce that Tea Guzzler will be joining the BH council. The discussions he's sparked in OM discord, and the very informative and insightful posts here on this thread have had an unparalleled impact in keeping an active discourse within the BH community. He's demonstrated a strong understanding of the bh metagame, and the council is very excited to begin working with him on developing not only the gen8bh metagame, but also the gen9bh metagame when that rolls around. Thank you for everything, and congrats Tea!
 
figured i would post some sets that i think are pretty cool and unexplored atm because this meta is sick and im SO GLAD i played in bh ssnl

:ss/rayquaza:
The Prophecy (Rayquaza) @ Life Orb
Ability: Aerilate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Boomburst
- V-create
- Extreme Speed
- Strength Sap
this is a mon that i have absolutely loved spamming. rayquaza has been one of the most fun mons i've ever had the pleasure of using. if your opponent does not have scales etern, its likely that everything on their team gets 2hkod by one of boomburst or v-create. it's especially potent if you can get spikes down with pivot gigas or ph xern, because if you do, that puts things such as scales zamac into v-create to espeed range much faster. ofc, it does have issues, mainly being a complete liability defensively and terminally afraid of nuzzle, but thats not too hard to make up for in a ph meta. i encourage all of you to start spamming ray as soon as possible, because these calcs are insane.

252 SpA Life Orb Aerilate Rayquaza Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Zamazenta-Crowned: 220-259 (56.7 - 66.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Life Orb Aerilate Rayquaza Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Regigigas: 294-347 (69.3 - 81.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Poison Heal
252 SpA Life Orb Aerilate Rayquaza Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Xerneas: 317-374 (69.5 - 82%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Life Orb Aerilate Rayquaza Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Eternatus: 324-382 (66.9 - 78.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Black Sludge recovery
252 SpA Life Orb Aerilate Rayquaza Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Ho-Oh: 208-247 (50 - 59.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Life Orb Aerilate Rayquaza Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Zygarde-Complete: 324-382 (50.9 - 60%) -- 87.5% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

:ss/dialga:
old outdated mess (Dialga) @ Leftovers
Ability: Fur Coat
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 248 Spe
Modest Nature
- Core Enforcer
- Nuzzle
- Spikes
- Shore Up
fur coat dialga is criminally underrated in the current meta. its a fur coat wall that, unlike lunala, never relies on nuzzle to do damage. base 150 spatk core enforcer HURTS, especially common stuff it likes 1v1ing like regigigas and defensive etern. it spams nuzzle and spikes with ease, too, and obviously eats every physical attack in the game easily. aside from Tea Guzzler's ray nihi team, i have never seen this mon used anywhere, so def try experimenting with it a bit.

:ss/zamazenta:
KAGUYA SHINOMIYA (Zamazenta) @ Life Orb
Ability: Adaptability
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Close Combat
- Glacial Lance
- Strength Sap
finally, we have zamah. another tea invention, this thing is what i'd consider to be the best offensive fighting in the tier(although admittedly, thats not a hard title to reach). adapt +2 cc slams everything that isnt an fc lunala, glance usually hits all the non-lunala targets that would eat your ccs(tina, zygod, etc). because of forme clause, you can also run this alongside zamac, so you arent sacrificing losing out on the best steel. if you want a fast fighting, this is your best choice by far.
 

tzaur

فلسطين حرة
is a Tiering Contributor
Dropping two teams I've used a lot as of late before work takes over my life for the next few months. Feel free to alter to your liking.

Complete FormeMagearna
First one is a team built around Taunt + Wisp + Adapt-boosted Hex Spectrier. Very scary guy late game who benefits from the hazard stack and status spreading. Bounce Zyg-C as the improof. Initially had Magic Powder > Taunt to shred Regigigas or other Ghost-resists trying to come in to sit on it, but I ended up never clicking it--plus, Taunt at least slows down Regigigas and prevents it from setting up on your switch/right in your face. Also punishes a lot of passive shit and denies recovery which is nice. The set was inspired by the Spectrier set on this submission; had no clue how to pilot that team, but that Spect made progress for days no matter how poorly I played it. Also inspired by this Magic Powder set I ran into some time ago on ladder and subsequently saw somewhere on here even though I ultimately dropped the move.

Initially had a regular Pixi Xern set > Mage, but I felt Mage fit the team better. Even though Ho-oh improofs either one more than sufficiently, I do like the semi-self-proofing element of this Mage set; If you can catch the Imposter, you can start spamming your spins/anchors + recovery (just enough to keep out of crit range) and start stacking Metronome boosts to those Boombursts. By the time Imposter drops, Boomburst typically has four stacks at the very least and becomes difficult to manage. Have won many matches on the spot from that kind of interaction.

Zyg-C improofs Spect, Ho-oh, and Gigas; thing is, that could pose a problem since that means the team gets aggravated by Imposter coming in to mirror the Zyg-C--and Mag doesn't love being para'd. Didn't have too many issues with Imposter, but if it's a concern to you, you may run Glare > Nuzzle and 1k Waves > Volt to self-proof. Utility Gigas isn't my favourite, but I think it enables Spect on this team quite a bit. Stacks Spikes which makes switching into Spect very difficult if the opponent is already statused, the user of the team can keep them up, and since Gigas spreads para which Spect also loves.

Weaknesses include: Crittern (honestly, a lot of my structures are weak to that damn thing lol) which is why I just slapped Dbond on Melm; SD Regigigas with Nuzzle, Steel-shredding move; Banded Mold Breaker Kyu-B if 1: anything other than Spect is in front of it, 2: Will-O misses, 3: Spect is severely weakened; FridgeSpeed shit with Fire coverage. May have only dropped one or two games (completely my fault IIRC) out of some 30.

Crowned Shield FormActive ModeBlack Kyurem
Easily the funn(i)est team I've ever built. This was something I kinda just threw together at three in the morning my time and it just...worked. Obliterates stall. Blace is one of my favs in this format and IMO one of the most underrated. I found myself randomly calcing things trying to figure out ways in which Blace could OHKO both Regigigas and Xerneas, and this became the result. More or less a budget DGZ. Adapt Band VC OHKOs Xern, Gigas, non-Fire Immune Zama; Poltergeist destroys Lunala, Tina, and is a good overall midground if you're half-expecting a switch since it 2HKOs most targets VC fails to. Glance is strictly for Zyg-C. 50% chance to KO on non-PDef from full. You can easily run Blue Flare/Overheat if you're worried about FC Zama-C (though I'm pretty sure VC just shreds it esp. if it's paralyzed). Kyu-B tags along Blace as an early mid-game breaker. Deletes Zyg-C more reliably, deletes Fini, deletes pretty much every single Steel-type without PSea. Itemless Zama-C improofs both.

Main objective is to blow holes in the opposing team as quickly as possible with Blace and Kyu-B for Xerneas to exploit in the end-game. You may run Volt Switch or Nuzzle. While Volt Switch does help bridge Blace and Kyu-B better, I prefer Nuzzle. Zama-C, especially offensive variants can be annoying to deal with since it outpaces Blace, Xern, and Kyu-B, traps Imposter, and dents Zama-C and Regi. Relying on your own Zama to para the opposing one can suck especially if you still need it to proof Blace and Kyu-B.

Very obvious who inspired the 0 attacks dual screens Prank Regi set. Was incredibly skeptical of it when I first saw it, but it's way more useful than I could have imagined. The extra layer of bulk the screens provide has saved my ass multiple times in late games especially if the Light Clay was still intact. Huge fan of that set.
Screen Shot 2022-09-05 at 1.55.06 AM.png

Weaknesses include: opposing Psea Zama depending on the set. If you can Para it/give it your Band, Blace can handle it. Self-proofed Plot + Triage Steela. Offensive Zama-C.

Edit:
Active Mode
Another team I used frequently. Wouldn't recommend, though since I feel it's a bit dated, and I feel there are way too many things that give it trouble. Registeel, Tina, Fini sets are all very adjustable, and I'd even say Fini is completely replaceable--just not sure with whom. Have gotten some good wins with this one as well, but I definitely had to play out of my mind to do so compared to the other two. Will revamp it/make a better version of it whenever I have time since stall/semi-stall is an archetype in this format that very much intrigues me.
 
Last edited:
Dropping two teams I've used a lot as of late before work takes over my life for the next few months. Feel free to alter to your liking.

Complete FormeMagearna
First one is a team built around Taunt + Wisp + Adapt-boosted Hex Spectrier. Very scary guy late game who benefits from the hazard stack and status spreading. Bounce Zyg-C as the improof. Initially had Magic Powder > Taunt to shred Regigigas or other Ghost-resists trying to come in to sit on it, but I ended up never clicking it--plus, Taunt at least slows down Regigigas and prevents it from setting up on your switch/right in your face. Also punishes a lot of passive shit and denies recovery which is nice. The set was inspired by the Spectrier set on this submission; had no clue how to pilot that team, but that Spect made progress for days no matter how poorly I played it. Also inspired by this Magic Powder set I ran into some time ago on ladder and subsequently saw somewhere on here even though I ultimately dropped the move.

Initially had a regular Pixi Xern set > Mage, but I felt Mage fit the team better. Even though Ho-oh improofs either one more than sufficiently, I do like the semi-self-proofing element of this Mage set; If you can catch the Imposter, you can start spamming your spins/anchors + recovery (just enough to keep out of crit range) and start stacking Metronome boosts to those Boombursts. By the time Imposter drops, Boomburst typically has four stacks at the very least and becomes difficult to manage. Have won many matches on the spot from that kind of interaction.

Zyg-C improofs Spect, Ho-oh, and Gigas; thing is, that could pose a problem since that means the team gets aggravated by Imposter coming in to mirror the Zyg-C--and Mag doesn't love being para'd. Didn't have too many issues with Imposter, but if it's a concern to you, you may run Glare > Nuzzle and 1k Waves > Volt to self-proof. Utility Gigas isn't my favourite, but I think it enables Spect on this team quite a bit. Stacks Spikes which makes switching into Spect very difficult if the opponent is already statused and Gigas can keep them up and spreads para which Spect also loves.

Weaknesses include: Crittern (honestly, a lot of my structures are lol) which is why I just slapped Dbond on Melm; SD Regigigas with Nuzzle, Steel-shredding move, Facade; Banded Mold Breaker Kyu-B if 1: anything other than Spect is in front of it, 2: Will-O misses, 3: Spect is severely weakened; FridgeSpeed shit with Fire coverage. May have only dropped two or two games (completely my fault IIRC) out of some 30.

Crowned Shield FormActive ModeBlack Kyurem
Easily the funn(i)est team I've ever built. This was something I kinda just threw together at three in the morning my time and it just...worked. Obliterates stall. Blace is one of my favs in this format and IMO one of the most underrated. I found myself randomly calcing things trying to figure out ways in which Blace could OHKO both Regigigas and Xerneas, and this became the result. More or less a budget DGZ. Adapt Band VC OHKOs Xern, Gigas, non-Fire Immune Zama; Poltergeist destroys Lunala, Tina, and is a good overall midground if you're half-expecting a switch since it 2HKOs most targets VC fails to. Glance is strictly for Zyg-C. 50% chance to KO on non-PDef from full. You can easily run Blue Flare/Overheat if you're worried about FC Zama-C (though I'm pretty sure VC just shreds it esp. if it's paralyzed). Kyu-B tags along Blace as an early mid-game breaker. Deletes Zyg-C more reliably, deletes Fini, deletes pretty much every single Steel-type without PSea. Itemless Zama-C improofs both.

Main objective is to blow holes in the opposing team as quickly as possible with Blace and Kyu-B for Xerneas to exploit in the end-game. You may run Volt Switch or Nuzzle. While Volt Switch does help bridge Blace and Kyu-B better, I prefer Nuzzle. Zama-C, especially offensive variants can be annoying to deal with since it outpaces Blace, Xern, and Kyu-B, traps Imposter, and dents Zama-C and Regi. Relying on your own Zama to para the opposing one can suck especially if you still need it to proof Blace and Kyu-B.

Very obvious who inspired the 0 attacks dual screens Prank Regi set. Was incredibly skeptical of it when I first saw it, but it's way more useful than I could have imagined. The extra layer of bulk the screens provide has saved my ass multiple times in late games especially if the Light Clay was still intact. Huge fan of that set.

Weaknesses include: opposing Psea Zama depending on the set. If you can Para it/give it your Band, Blace can handle it. Self-proofed Plot + Triage Steela. Offensive Zama-C.

Edit:
Active Mode
Another team I used frequently. Wouldn't recommend, though since I feel it's a bit dated, and I feel there are way too many things that give it trouble. Registeel, Tina, Fini sets are all very adjustable, and I'd even say Fini is completely replaceable--just not sure with whom. Have gotten some good wins with this one as well, but I definitely had to play out of my mind to do so compared to the other two. Will revamp it/make a better version of it whenever I have time since stall/semi-stall is an archetype in this format that very much intrigues me.
Maybe I'll drop some of my teams here

Guzzlord
Dialga
Xerneas
Metagross
File:718CMS8.png
Palkia

https://pokepast.es/ed46524af3dd9929
I had an idea with Imposter Guzzlord (has the 3rd highest HP). and also here's the gen 7 Doom Desire Dialga with Tinted Lens, A Metagross with Ice Scales is odd (it has the same HP as Magearna but higher attack and defense stat with less special defense) it can trap special attackers with Anchor Shot. Unaware Zygarde is perfect against Simple Shell Smash users and steal their stats with Spectral Thief. lastly, a Poison Heal Palkia with Fishious Rend.
 
Hello friends! I'd like to let everyone know that we are openly taking sample submissions right now. Although, many of the sample teams still hold well as there hasn't been much of a meta shift, I believe that many of the teams that have been built post OMPL are more refined. Below you can find guidelines for sample submissions!

Follow the below guidlines when submitting, and please make sure that you have actually tested the team on the ladder before submitting.
  • Your name of the team
  • A generic one-liner description of what the team does, which will be put with your name above the screenshot. If you don't provide a name, I am planning on just using this inside the screenshot too if it fits. If you don't provide either of these, we will make a description for you.
  • Your team on pokepaste (try to include the above two points in pokepaste, but anything else is up to you).
  • How to use your team: try to answer the following - what are the effective combo pieces, what should you open with, what are some popular threats or playstyles your team is able to answer. Don't worry too much about this being a whole RMT though!
  • What sets or playstyles your team is weak to: maybe some quick changes that are suggested with a note about how it changes your matchup, but this is not required.
  • How effective is your team: why should someone use it? here you can add an rmt if you've written one but definitely some ladder/tour experience, possibly with a replay or two.
Cheers!
 

Tea Guzzler

forever searching for a 10p freddo
is a Site Content Manageris a Social Media Contributoris a Forum Moderatoris a Community Contributoris a Tiering Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Smogon Media Contributor
sample subs weewoo we got 2 weewoo

Team name: super dog
Synopsis: Adaptability Zamazenta-H + Swords Dance Regigigas BO
Paste: https://pokepast.es/ef81d5710f87fda2
How to use: Regigigas and Zamazenta work great together as Regigigas' coverage in Wicked Blow and Glacial Lance lets it eliminate virtually every common Fur Coat user (Lunala, Giratina, Zygarde-C, Solgaleo) except Zamazenta-C, which your own Zamazenta excels at beating. Crack Gigas' Toxic Orb early and put as much pressure on the opponent as you can, use Groudon's bulk and Nuzzle immunity to scout any dodgy threats. Zamazenta-C and Lunala shouldn't be coming out too much, Lunala more so as it threatens paralysis. Going for game usually involves chipping opposing Xerneas into Zama Glance range, grabbing an SD on something you threaten out, and cleaning the team (you can OHKO basically every non-FC mon except Xerneas). Lunala Improofs Zamazenta, Zama-C improofs Regigigas and Xerneas, Groudon improofs Lunala, Zama-C and itself via Glare.
Other options:
  • :xerneas: Bounce Ho-Oh + hazardspam can get annoying, so Boots, Fishious Rend, Diamond Storm or even Recover can remedy this.
  • :regigigas: Zama-C can get real annoying, so switching coverage to Blades/Glance can solve this (You need a different Improof, however). You can also do Poltergeist over Wicked Blow and have itemless Lunala Improof.
  • :Zamazenta: If going Blades/Glance Regigigas, Wicked Blow on this is advised. You can also go Tough Claws with Triple Axel, which sacks accuracy but can OHKO non-FC Zygarde-C unboosted.
  • :zamazenta-crowned: Going all in on passivity and running Aromatherapy can work, provided you aren't bothered about cleansing Regigigas' poison.
Weaknesses:
  • :urshifu: Wicked Blow weaknesses is a cost of using FC Lunala. Zama-H has surprising bulk and so can eat hits from most users, but usually you find out they have Wicked Blow as they kill Lunala.
  • :ho-oh: You're running no-coverage Xern, so you resent Bounce Ho-Oh's existence. Shift Gear sets are also problematic.
  • :pikachu: Para on Zama-H removes any sweeping chances. You can maybe try Guts or Simple + Lum, however these have lower damage output. Aromatherapy can also help but has anti-synergy and Zama-C becomes a cursed mono-anchor set (the momentum drain isn't as bad as it usually is).
  • :barraskewda: Zama-H outspeeds the fish, but otherwise you can get completely done out due to the lack of a Giratina.
How effective: Laddering with it got me to 1500 with only 3 losses. Some other replays are below:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1643892996-x49yxpxvjqbydn555867s88io81hqvrpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1646487052
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1653636070
(note: double dogs breaks the UI)



Team name: Criminal Enterprises
Synopsis: Utility Regigigas Defensive Balance
Paste: https://pokepast.es/5e015179f269d1cd
How to use: Regigigas is your main progress maker - it either threatens raw damage or to cripple the target with Knock / Spikes. Pivot spam across the team gives you ample chances to crack the Toxic Orb or get Xerneas/Yveltal in safely to cause havoc, as well as limiting how often you're on the back foot. Zygarde-C sponges most physical threats and provides valuable Bounce support, and when combined with Melmetal can help limit the majority of the physical tier. Your main goal is to get Spikes up and then start slamming Xerneas as much as possible, playing the long game to force enough chip if necessary. Chansey improofs Yveltal and Xerneas (preferably use Melmetal for Xern, but Chansey does work), Zygarde improofs Regigigas and itself, Melmetal improofs Itself.
Other options:
  • :regigigas: Nuzzle is still fully improofed, so if you want you can swap it for Knock. Neither's significantly better than the other.
  • :melmetal: Opposing Yveltal aren't usually a massive issue, but if you're still paranoid, go Haze. You can also run Glare over Entrain since you're already fine against Normpult.
  • :yveltal: Knock over Volt Switch is an option to cut off items, however I personally prefer Volt Switch's momentum.
Weaknesses:
  • :palkia: Doesn't come in easily, however you need to play really careful with Melmetal against it as this is your only real switch-in.
  • :reshiram: Relying on Melmetal as a Steel-type means Blue Flare users are problematic. Reshiram and Adapt Eternatus are particular problems.
  • :calyrex-ice: Glance users with Fire-type coverage are real rough, so you need to limit the chances these get as much as possible.
How effective: made this for OMPL so i don't have many replays, ask quojova for some he uses this more than me lmao
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1579358809
 
Team Name: cringe ass edgelord
Synopsis: Aerilate Rayquaza + RegenVest Dialga Balance
Paste: https://pokepast.es/0f27dad0b1c88da3
How to use: The simple goal here is to never let Rayquaza eat a Nuzzle. Easier said than done, but it's not that hard. If you suspect they have something faster with Nuzzle(Zama-C, Etern, +spe Xern, etc), try checking them with one of Dialga, Ho-oh, or Regigigas. None of these mons mind eating Nuzzles too badly, with Regigigas in particular being immune to them thanks to Poison Heal. While you're preventing the opponent's paralysis, be sure to throw out a lot of your own Nuzzles. They give Rayquaza many more opportunities to break through, and let Regigigas set up an SD easier against targets it scares out. Don't be afraid to click core on Dialga, it's a very good tool for forcing switches(i.e. FC Lunala getting very scared of gigas threatening a knock once FC is nullified) and you can capitalize off of that with Nuzzle or Doom Desire or U-turn. Tl;dr spread paralysis as much as possible, keep paralysis away from your side as much as possible. Xern improofed by Ho-oh, Gigas self improofs, Chansey is the imp that your opponent is proofing for, Ho-oh self improofs, Ray improofed by Dialga, Dialga self improofs(Ho-oh and Dialga really like getting free para on the imp if they can!)
Other options:
  • :regigigas: Consider Nuzzle over Knock Off here. There's already a lot of Nuzzles and it makes you worse against Lunala, but guaranteed para can't be understated.
  • :ho-oh: If you're worried about rocks, use boots over lefties. I think lefties would overall be the better choice for most scenarios, but you might be less cavalier switching your Ho-oh in to bounce the rocks.
Weaknesses:
  • :palkia: Palkia is rough for this team to handle. If you ever go against it, keep Dialga as healthy as possible and NEVER let it eat a Knock.
  • :kartana: Though much less common, Kartana is still pretty scary to this team if it's running Tinted. Try to para and kill it with Ho-oh whenever you can.
  • :kyurem-black: :calyrex-ice: The biggest weakness here is lack of an Ice resist. If anything like a Regigigas is running Glacial Lance as its coverage move, play very carefully.
How effective: won g1 against potato in bh ssnl. no replay sadly
 

Career Ended

Whatever happens, happens
is a Community Contributoris a Tiering Contributoris the defending Other Metas Circuit Champion
Whats up I'm here to submit my team for a sample.

Team name: Telemarket Scammers
Synopsis: Double Regen Bulky Offense
Paste: https://pokepast.es/0063aa0885fcfaeb
How to use: This team revolves around scouting and gathering information early on using strong tools like Imposter and the Regen Volt-Turn Core of Melmetal and Eternatus to determine your opponents win paths early and prevent them, while supporting setup Poison Heal Xerneas as a dangerous Mid-Late game threat. Prankster Copycat Ho-oh and Trick Black Sludge provide incredible Utility to take on opposing Threats as Trick Black sludge can be used to basically nullify Poison Heal Pokemon's biggest asset and put them on a timer so they can be dealt with easier and Prankster Ho-oh has the great volt turn capabilities paired with the Slow U-turns and Volt switches provided by the Regen pokemon. Prankster Ho-oh also offering prankster haze is very strong setup counterplay, especially when paired with Nuzzle / Glare Lunala and Imposter. Brave Prankster V-Create also has the great benefit of always 2HKOing both Regigigas and Xerneas after Poison Heal Recovery. Lunala acts as a final glue as the dedicated Regigigas Check (Watch out for Wicked Blow) and providing the team with a Fur Coat blanket check for physical attackers and it clicks the para button. Good Luck Scamming the opps!
Other options:
  • :xerneas: Different moves work on PH Xerneas. I think MB, QD, Rapid spin and Tcage is the most effective variant, since it takes some pressure off of melmetal in hazard stack matchups, being able to spin on most lunala and giratinas. Zap Cannon + Magma Storm is a much more aggressive win condition with caveat of having to hit your inaccurate moves. Finally lava plume also works in lieu of rapid spin if you're not frightened of facing spin blocking hazard stack teams
  • :lunala: the item is mostly up to preference, helmet is nice to punish uturn, boots is good if you're running a xern set lacking spin and wanna take on spikes regis better, leftovers is always good. I prefer glare on this team usually, since para'ing the bulky ground types like groudon and zygc helps literally everything else on the team muscle through them, but nuzzle is also fine. Just be careful of Magic Bounce grounds
  • :chansey: The imposter set should be run to improof the xern in case of toxic orb imposter. so for example if you're running the zap cannon set you should run jungle healing on chansey. otherwise topsy teleport healing + utility so either trapping / nuzzle / knock / aroma.
  • :Ho-oh: can be made +spdef to help with the triage matchup, running leftovers over boots also works (provided your double spin to not get completely bricked by hazard stack)
  • :melmetal: I've run Core enforcer over spin or spectral to help vs regigigas, but i heavily prefer the 4 moves in the paste.
Weaknesses:
  • :regigigas: the right Regigigas set will walk over any team in BH and this team's particular weakness is Nuzzle + SD + Wicked Blow, as it can nuzzle Imposter and Etern and Simply OHKO Lunala after some Chip and an SD. Another Dangerous set is DD + Wicked Blow + Precipice Blades. Typically opponents will bring in Regi on Ho-oh and you can trade 60% for the first V-create and if they're unaware of the set maybe you can 2HKO them. Definitely scouting the Regigigas early is beneficial and you can decide the best course of action. Another good way to deal with them is to Trick your Black Sludge onto the Regi hopefully while not taking a nuzzle or a boosted glance / pblades.
  • :yveltal: Triage can be problematic. Typically Imposter Is very strong vs it, harding to melm on suspected triage is and paralyzing it will usually mean imposter can beat it. Ho-oh can also stall Owings from Yveltal specifically (not rayquaza) but Tcage will destroy it. Fire +Elec + Owing coverage is hard to play around so just be aware.
  • :ferrothorn: Hazard spam teams can be problematic depending on the team makeup, but certain builds with Entrainment Regen Lunala can really be a difficult match. The team doesn't have a knock user so teams that stack HDB can endure long games but mostly once you've revealed trick with etern you can spam trick to hopefully take away their boots and give it to something like their life orb magic guard or their imp.
  • :Barraskewda: The Fish can be difficult if they have something to bring it in on xern, but everything else can do something to do it if the fish gets in on them. Imp is fat, Ho-oh can prankster copycat (hopefully a volt switch 252 SpA Ho-Oh Volt Switch vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Barraskewda: 162-192 (49.6 - 58.8%) -- 99.6% chance to 2HKO) melm can nuzzle then you can go hard etern. Etern will be 2hkod if the fish is faster however.
  • :dragapult: can be difficult to play around, Trick from etern is really good way to deal with it, but if u can also hope to glare it with lunala. Sometimes though the pult will get in on imp or xern or melm and you might need to sack a pokemon.
How effective: I got my nuzzle reqs using this mostly team, it didn't lose on ladder over the course of probably 25 games, have also brought it multiple times to BH ssnl and its yet to lose. I haven't gone for a peak yet, but its definitely sat at #5 on the ladder for a lot of games.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1615254305 vs Drampa's Grandpa using French Dispatch
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1639914134-dv3nb8fmqi5zsfzcaos601yocpmtrfspw Vs Longhiep for BH SSNL
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1615274187-qfdtzhav4ytrwtik3afy5h4jophnsh8pw VS Ladder player using Dragapult
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1637068370-juqmqd57zpefqzq70fn33euqjkmfcv9pw vs TTTech
 
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https://pokepast.es/ebf4c70e4a330022
• How To Use: Using this team is simple. Use your imps to waste pp, make sure to safely proc toxic orb on Xern, deny enemy progress while keeping healthy.
• Weaknesses: Magic Bounce Is an irritating ability to go up against since most progress you try to gain is instantly flipped back onto your side. The best answer is to waste pp with imps and use your others to try to abuse them later on.
• Effectiveness: Here are a few ladder games to show the prowess that this team can have against opponents. (Some may be lengthy so hyperspeed is recommended.)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1659584735
 
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:xy/xerneas: :xy/zygarde-complete: :ss/zamazenta-crowned: :xy/palkia: :xy/ho-oh: :xy/chansey:

Here's a team I've been running vs the ladder. The Idea is to use your pivots such as Imposter Chansey and RegenVest BigZyg to get in your breakers such as Adaptability Palkia (The Strap™) and Poison Heal Xerneas. One thing to watch out for is Imposter mons coming in on Palkia, as many things can't handle it. Xerneas would be your main switch in, but it's a guessing game, so watch out.
 

TTTech

My fate is a haunted curse!
is a Pre-Contributor
Here's my submission for a stall team I've been using for months

Team Name: End of The World 2.0
https://pokepast.es/12754ab6ae32f9e9

Team Description:
Similar gameplan to the original EoTW, it's stall designed to beat other stall and common cores but to a more advanced degree. Tina and Fini are the hazard setters and status mons. Ho oh is the Tina and Fini improof while handling most xern sets unless it has coverage. Null is just a really good all rounder for the team by getting off items and keeping physical walls in check. Imposter does imposter things, but beats/takes advantage of ph mons like regi, xern, and others. Registeel is the prank mon of the team keeping etern, xern, and set up sweepers in check with haze and topsy for both scenarios where either or would work or be better.

Weakness:
Same weaknesses as the original being blac, etern, coverage gigas (if both registeel and tina are low), bounce ho oh (or offensive shift gear with lance), triage yvel, taunt (sometimes, not a big deal though tbh), tends to lose to parahax if you get really unlucky on ho oh or null, and losing to timer because you're doing other things.

Effectiveness:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1638002405-pna2xixw3zuly39wq228dk5o0j81tcjpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1608189963
 

Tea Guzzler

forever searching for a 10p freddo
is a Site Content Manageris a Social Media Contributoris a Forum Moderatoris a Community Contributoris a Tiering Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Smogon Media Contributor
I'm new to this forum.
https://pokepast.es/e1f8f52c33b4269c
Could y'all rate my team?
couple things:

:ss/chansey:
Chansey (F) @ Eviolite
Ability: Imposter
Imposter chansey is a threat that must be dealt with when building a team. From the looks of things, the Dragapult self-imposter-proofs (ie. it can beat Imposter Chansey by itself), and the Type: Null imposter-proofs the Kyurem, however the Eternatus, Kartana and Pheromosa have no real imposter-proofers.
  • Having multiple choice-locked mons is never ideal, Scarf is also kind of bad since even with Tinted Lens Sunsteel Strike Kartana's not doing enough damage to break through bulky neutral targets like Zygarde-C. 4 Choice locks seems overkill.
  • Pixilate Xerneas absolutely shreds this team. Nothing switches in to Boomburst, and 3 mons get absolutely bullied by Extreme Speed from it.
  • Refrigerate Kyurem-B is kind of just bad. Without a damage-amp ability like Mold Breaker, Banded Kyurem struggles to reach a damage output where it can OHKO targets reliably, as well as Refrigerate simply being redundant due to Glacial Lance's existence (Kyurem excels at forcing switches, so having priority is mostly unnecessary). I'd drop this mon completely.
  • Blue Flare exists, so Fusion Flare on Eternatus isn't needed.
  • Normalize makes Dragapult's Dragon Darts Normal-type, so it's not STAB anymore. You can run a stronger move like Fishious Rend.
  • Relying on Strength Sap to heal your Prankster mon is risky as Dark types or opposing Magic Bounce users can completely deny you recovery. Same goes for Dark types blocking your Defog.
  • The team has very little in the way of defensive play. You're relying almost entirely on Type: Null to tank hits, which itself isn't able to punish the opponent from just switching around, eating away at it's recovery and preventing you from switching to an offensive mon (due to lack of a pivot move). I'd recommend some defensive mons on the team, which can also function as better Imposter-proofers and can give chances for your offensive mons to actually come in.
 

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