Boltund
Base Stats: 69 HP / 90 Atk / 60 Def / 90 SpA / 60 SpD / 121 Spe [BST: 490]
Abilities: Strong Jaw (1) / Strong Jaw (2) / Competitive (H)
| TM | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr. | Acc. | PP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | TM08 | Hyper Beam | Normal | Special | 150 | 90% | 5 |
| | TM09 | Giga Impact | Normal | Physical | 150 | 90% | 5 |
 | TM14 | Thunder Wave | Electric | Status | — | 90% | 20 |
 | TM15 | Dig | Ground | Physical | 80 | 100% | 10 |
 | TM21 | Rest | Psychic | Status | — | —% | 10 |
| | TM24 | Snore | Normal | Special | 50 | 100% | 15 |
| | TM25 | Protect | Normal | Status | — | —% | 10 |
 | TM29 | Charm | Fairy | Status | — | 100% | 20 |
| | TM31 | Attract | Normal | Status | — | 100% | 15 |
| | TM39 | Facade | Normal | Physical | 70 | 100% | 20 |
| | TM40 | Swift | Normal | Special | 60 | —% | 20 |
| | TM41 | Helping Hand | Normal | Status | — | —% | 20 |
| | TM66 | Thunder Fang | Electric | Physical | 65 | 95% | 15 |
 | TM68 | Fire Fang | Fire | Physical | 65 | 95% | 15 |
| | TM76 | Round | Normal | Special | 60 | 100% | 15 |
| | TM80 | Volt Switch | Electric | Special | 70 | 100% | 20 |
 | TM85 | Snarl | Dark | Special | 55 | 95% | 15 |
| | TM90 | Electric Terrain | Electric | Status | — | —% | 10 |
| | TM93 | Eerie Impulse | Electric | Status | — | 100% | 15 |
Noteable moves:
* - Affected by Strong Jaw
Pros:
- Fantastic base speed stat with good coverage options boosted by strong jaw would allow Boltund to serve as a decent cleaner and revenge killer, while having the potential to break through defensive cores such as toxapex + ferrothorn + corsola-galar, as shown in the calcs below, due to the coverage it possesses.
- Speed tier one point higher than dugtrio makes it unable to be trapped by dugtrio unless dugtrio is holding a focus sash or a choice scarf, as life orb crunch will OHKO.
Cons:
- Mediocre Attack stat means that Boltund will struggle to break through Pokemon that it cannot hit supereffectively, even with high base power moves. Boltund can also only 2HKO Bulkier pokemon such as Toxapex and Corsola-Galar, limiting the opportnities it finds to wallbreak, and forcing good prediction. No coverage to hit Hippowdon supereffectively further compounds this problem, leaving it completely walled by it.
- Terrible Bulk leaves Boltund unable to offer any defensive utility to a team, and forces it to need to OHKO a lot of Pokemon it wants to attack. Boltund also has a poor offensive typing, leaving it without a secondary STAB such as Dark that it would appreciate to go with its coverage.
- Limited special movepool and poor bulk makes competitive hard to use, leaving it struggling to break through electric resists, and especially ground types, as its only coverage is hyper voice. This leaves it further outclassed by Heliolisk as a special attacker, who has a better SpA stat, STAB hyper voice, and coverage in surf.
Sharpedo has been set to 90 Base Attack with a pure electric typing to simulate Boltund, Misdreavus was set to 100 Base Defence to simulate corsola-galar.
252 Atk Life Orb Strong Jaw Sharpedo-Mega Thunder Fang vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 174-205 (57.2 - 67.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Black Sludge recovery
252 Atk Life Orb Strong Jaw Sharpedo-Mega Fire Fang vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Ferrothorn: 260-307 (73.8 - 87.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Life Orb Strong Jaw Sharpedo-Mega Crunch vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Eviolite Misdreavus: 140-166 (43.2 - 51.2%) -- 98% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252 Atk Life Orb Strong Jaw Sharpedo-Mega Thunder Fang vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 174-205 (57.2 - 67.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Black Sludge recovery
252 Atk Life Orb Strong Jaw Sharpedo-Mega Fire Fang vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Ferrothorn: 260-307 (73.8 - 87.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Life Orb Strong Jaw Sharpedo-Mega Crunch vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Eviolite Misdreavus: 140-166 (43.2 - 51.2%) -- 98% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock
Potential Movesets:
(Physical Attacker)
Goodest Boi (Boltund) @ Life Orb
Ability: Strong Jaw
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Thunder Fang
- Fire Fang
- Crunch
- Psychic Fangs / Play Rough / Volt Switch
A Physical Life Orb set makes the most of Boltunds coverage options and good speed tier, allowing it to act as a strong revenge killer. Thunder Fang with Strong Jaw is more powerful than Wild Charge without the recoil, and comes with a token flinch / paralysis chance. As mentioned before, Electric-Fire-Dark coverage allows you to nail some defensive cores at the moment, while also hitting one of the more popular ground types in excadrill supereffectively.
Last move feels fairly optional depending on the team ig, Psychic Fangs would offer coverage to hit Conkelldur and Kommo-o supereffectively, and have the added benefit of breaking through screens.
Play Rough instead hits dark-types like Grimmsnarl, Hydreigon and Tyranitar supereffectively, and also hit Dragapult supereffectively, while still killing Kommo-o, but doesn't recieve a Strong Jaw boost or break screens.
Volt Switch obviously would let you pivot out of bad situations, but the coverage sounds better most of the time.
Potential Other Options - Nuzzle would allow you to paralyse swap ins, but is very weak and Boltund has coverage for a lot of the non-grounded swap ins. Bulk Up instead would offer you the ability to boost up and break through some more defensive cores, while also offering some sweeping with dynamax, but boltund is fairly frail and will likely struggle to find opportunities to set up, and will miss the ability to hit pokemon such as Kommo-o and Tyranitar supereffectively.
(Competitive - Lower Tier Set)
usain boltund (Boltund) @ Life Orb
Ability: Competitive
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hyper Voice
- Thunderbolt
- Volt Switch
- Protect / Discharge / Snarl / Sleep Talk
This feels totally unusable in OU, but since there is very little chance Boltund will be OU, this may possibly have potential in lower tiers such as NU as a defog deterrant if Boltund drops far enough. Shallow coverage really hampers it however, and it will most likely only be usable in a tier where Primary defoggers are pokemon such as Corvisquire, Silvally(-Steel), Xatu and Cramorant.
The last slot again would be full of options, Protect allowing it to scout choice-locks, and Discharge allowing it to potentially paralyse things on swaps. Snarl would offer coverage to hit things such as Runerigus, which would otherwise wall Normal + Electric, but is very low base power. Sleep Talk could be interesting on it if it ends up in a lower tier, where Shiinotic might be a viable pokemon with access to Spore.
While this sounds useless in higher tiers, provided Boltund drops far enough, it would be able to act as essentially a Budget Heliolisk with this, with the added benefit of Competitive, which could be decent in a lower tier.
usain boltund (Boltund) @ Life Orb
Ability: Competitive
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hyper Voice
- Thunderbolt
- Volt Switch
- Protect / Discharge / Snarl / Sleep Talk
This feels totally unusable in OU, but since there is very little chance Boltund will be OU, this may possibly have potential in lower tiers such as NU as a defog deterrant if Boltund drops far enough. Shallow coverage really hampers it however, and it will most likely only be usable in a tier where Primary defoggers are pokemon such as Corvisquire, Silvally(-Steel), Xatu and Cramorant.
The last slot again would be full of options, Protect allowing it to scout choice-locks, and Discharge allowing it to potentially paralyse things on swaps. Snarl would offer coverage to hit things such as Runerigus, which would otherwise wall Normal + Electric, but is very low base power. Sleep Talk could be interesting on it if it ends up in a lower tier, where Shiinotic might be a viable pokemon with access to Spore.
While this sounds useless in higher tiers, provided Boltund drops far enough, it would be able to act as essentially a Budget Heliolisk with this, with the added benefit of Competitive, which could be decent in a lower tier.
Overall Thoughts:
While Boltund may potentially get some usage in OU with a Physical cleaner set, I expect it will most likely drop at least 1-2 tiers, and mainly be viewed as a fairly niche option in OU. In a lower tier such as UU/RU, i expect the Physical set to be potentially quite potent due to its speed tier however, especially when it drops below problematic pokemon such as Hippowdon.
Competitive sets won't find any use in higher tiers, but provided it drops far enough it could potentially act as a decent competitive user, especially if it finds itself at home in a tier where the main defoggers are flying-types or passive pokemon unable to hurt Boltund too much, or where sticky webs end up being popular ( in which a scarf set could see some usage I guess?).
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