Just got my reqs and meloetta tbh is not that bad imo.
Now Melo is amazing dont get me wrong 2nd best mon(fight me) in the tier very easily with insane insane versatility only rivaled by its efficacy at how good it is in battle but in the end it is too hampered by its underwhelming physical bulk uninvested (it survives physical hits better than u expect but knock off sucker and uturn weakness and fighting neutrality) sucks limiting its breaking powers and the prominence of hazards are horrible when they are in your side of field and generally u should be able to check it ok-ish by smthn like dark+ghost combo and semi check it with steel types(all are doo doo btw and pray you dont get focus blasted to oblivion)are pretty neat against it aswell.
The speed tier also is in a bit of awkward spot. Melo does outspeed a lot of top mons like decid (decent decid pivot too)heattom and tatsu and certainly is a good speed tier but it also is underwhelming a times against other top mons like speedy arcanine and tauros. Scarf is almost entirely outclassed by Hoopa as melo without specs kinda at times suck at dmg (certainly not bad but it does no longer 3 hit ko copper with psyshock for instance. Not bad but the reduction in dmg is felt heavily). The speed is def upgrade but I value hoopa as scarfer more due to many stuff it does with its ghost typing. Sub CM is super scary but is also a bit of mu fish.
However pivoting around melo is not as easy as people say as 1 focus blast and that wo-chien and scrafty are chipped heavily melo goes crazy and punishes you hard for building slower builds (like Gastro coal bell combo just loses to sub cm melo)
Overall these make melo a great but balanced mon imo and adds more positive to the tier than negative(Also why arent people using her more?? She is not at all common in ladder for god knows why )
Now on the actual mons I want to talk about .
Shaymin @ Leftovers
Ability: Natural Cure
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Seed Flare
- Dazzling Gleam/Air Slash/Psychic
- Earth Power
- Synthesis
This is the set I have been using and its pretty fun mon.
https://pokepast.es/432d729a36e9e006
This is the Team I used to ladder and get reqs (shotouts to Oof for passing this team. I made quite a few adjustments on sets still )
The mon I was most surprised by just how solid it is definitly Shaymin. If Seed Flare had 100 acc/80% sp.def drop/16 PP mon is easily A+ material Alas she isnt blessed so however even then she was very solid in almost every match. The 1 major issue with this shaymin set is it just gets blanked by wish and synthesis varients of florges. You really want to fish for sp.def drops but also want to conserve PP and its really annoying aspect. A lot of the times shaymin has 5 mons it eats alive (coalossal wo chien bellibolt gastrodon rhydon tatsugiri and so on) but it gets blanked by either rotom heat or bulky florges. Now rotom heat is def wierdly enough easier mu since u do heavy dmg and 1 sp.def drop and bulky heat is forced into some annoying sequences of moves. Heattom is however not impenetrable and with smart play (if u have psychic seed flare drop+psychic almost kills heattom). Besides these 2 (admitingly very good and common stops) Shaymin doesnt have many bad mus. It blanks bellibolt (muddy water acc drops moment )and wo-chien (a mon many think beats shaymin)
Wo- Chien and venu are 2 really common switchins to shaym and that is why I sometimes ran Air Slash to hit them both aswell as both forms of decidyue [and flinch too lol] but imo Dazzling Gleam is better as it still handles wo-chien and H-Decid and now it has a fantastic mu into previous hard counters in bombardier, altaria and goodra and has an amazing synergy with tera fairy that shaymin loves to tera into (like vs scarf redbull and Goodra).
An underrated aspect of shaymin is thanks to leftovers it gives it significantly better longevity and is useful as a midgame switchin to threats like tatsugiri bellibolt and gastro and synthesis the damage off giving amazing flexibility. This means shaymin has a great mu into atleast 3 mons in 2/3rds of teams you find in ladder and its ability to chip in mons like bombardier Copperajah and wo chien makes it an amazing partner to likes of hoopa and meloetta in particular.
Shaymin for how solid its bulk and power are also sits at a very speedy benchmark in 100 meaning it ties with redbull and worst case scenario make a 50 50 and outspeeds things like jolly arcanine and isnt having nearly as bad mu as +1 tera normal espeed never OHKOs shaymin and seed flare/epower pre tera does high dmg to arc. (again not great mu but arc shouldnt really find it too easy to pivot in esp consider sp.def drop from even resisted seed flare).
The speed also gives shaymin ability to outspeed special sponges like meloetta and even a not bad mu into AV meloetta(esp if u get sp.def drops).
Overall shaymin is an extremly underrated mon that is imo B+/A- atm and is only not higher because its bad mu are terrible (you def can beat them on your own but its really luck dependant and I generally use othermons like arcanine to deal with them). However it helps that many florges are not wish/synthesis insteada are offensive and a lot of teams do not have heattom and these structures are often forced into risky doubles with mons like salazzle and tauros to not collapse.
Overall Shaymin was not a mon I was expecting to be this solid but the scyther ban helped immensly for it as no longer needing Air Slash is really big (that did less than 40 to scyther btw) and def should be given a lot more credit than it is getting currently.
Now however is the superstar mon
You might know that I am a big hoopa believer [I am an even bigger meloetta believer]and this mon continues to star . Tera blast fairy is imo one of the most fun sets I have ran. It is a tera hog but a really good one. Catching that bombardier or Sneasel or Grimmsnarl is really fun and it still chips midgrounds like meloetta or bellibolt hard. A scarfer with this level of breaking power should be illegal. Now Scarf hoopa has 1 fault in its not that fast compared to other speed boosting mons. (it is just 1 point shy from 130 base speed) and thats why twave persian and espeed arc form fantastic pairing with it.
Hoopa also has immense utility especially its scarf set which thanks to its good bulk and fantastic immunities aswell as the new found speed lets It pivots around threats like paldean tauros and meloetta most importantly which you need smart play for this team to deal with aswell as an emergency check to bu grimm and most importantly curse arcanine.
Hoopa is the best trick scarfer into arcanine because it always can get trick vs that arcanine who cursed as you could pivot into all but blitz(especially extreme speed which is big) and you can trick lock k9 into curse and barrage it with psychic. This happened to me countless times and there was never a single game where I felt hoopa was a liability.
The issues it has mainly that mediocre physical bulk meaning stab flare blitz and eqs do a lot of dmg is annoying and its always going to be under the shadow of meloetta aswell as being a tera hog a lot of the times to really break or be forced into using focus blast (which sucks)
However despite these I value Hoopa very highly and an easy A tier mon atm imo.
Now some of my thoughts on some cool mons I used/faced
Fantastic mon that due to its fat bulk is able to trade well vs almost everything (tera blast fairy helps it very well ofcourse) but is especially dangerous when it gets download boost and plays a major role to not collapse against meloetta for this team.
Yeah this mon that used to rule PU 2 years ago yeah it still does all the same shit it used to and those stuff are never bad but esp with Twave mons like tauros which it forces in so easily it absolutely leads to annoying sequences for opponents. Super fun Mon fs.
This mon is unfortunately not that great but I could see it in B-/C+. Good emergency check to everything and is pretty strong with body press and mountain gale and compresses hazard setter+spinner role.
Its also a spinner that scares every ghost besides houndstone which is great aswell.
Overall like not amazing but decent enough mon.
Annoying shit thats super good atm (defogger bullies gastro is icing on the cake !!!)
Overhated mon thats pretty good. Sometimes its passive as hell I wont lie but the defensive value is very good.
Fat
Really good Mon Got bullied by my team(I have Tera fairy on 3 Mons) too bad prob speaks to how effective it is scary Mon.
Underexplored insanely threatening wincon that is prob S tier if we didnt have florges, Crits werent a thing,Hax wasnt a thing in general and it had 24 PP moonblast instead of the terrible 16 PP alluring voice(it gets stalled a lot more than you think) . Still solid mon B- is fine for it(Tera poison is pretty neat)
Thats All I think I have to say from my reqs experience and Hopefully you have a nice day :)
See ya later.
And sorry for making this lengthy paragraph didn't really want to.
Edits: Grammar+added some stuff I forgot to mention.
