Hello, after about 1500 battles here are some set suggestions and improvements I came up with, forgive me if the expected format is 1 suggestion per post. I'll try to be concise, rather than writing a lengthy essay about all of my suggestions, but will happily provide more context and thought process for any one point in further discussion.
Hustle + Aerial Ace
Hustle is a great ability that allows to wallbreak with no setup, but its accuracy drop can cut a guaranteed sweep short.
My suggestion would be to add Aerial Ace to Delibird and Squawkabilly's Hustle sets to remedy this. This also brings the benefit of Flying STAB without recoil, and will still deal some impressive damage thanks to Hustle (Arboliva takes 94 - 110.8 from Squawk's Aerial Ace, Abomasnow takes 71.8-85.4 factoring Snow, and Amoonguss is a guaranteed OHKO !). To be clear I'm not saying Aerial Ace should replace Brave Bird ; rather, it should be a possible complement to it.
I'm less sure about Lilligant and Flapple. Both of these guys' only perfectly-accurate physical move is Aerial Ace, so they wouldn't have STAB like Delibird and Squawkabilly would ... The former would have to give up critical coverage in Ice Spiiner to hit Flying types that resist both its STABs. Flapple gets DD, Grav Apple, Outrage, and one of : Tera Blast (forces Tera Fire) to hit Steel types which resist both its STABs ; U-Turn which creates momentum (unless it misses ...) ; and Sucker Punch which remedies its under-average Speed of 173 before Dragon Dancing. Despite this, I think Aerial Ace could still be considered on these mons, as, again, after a Dragon Dance / Victory Dance, the opponent's only hope might rely in a critical Hustle-caused miss. I think it's at least worth a spin on some low-chance-of-generation sets.
Shuca Berry as an alternative to Air Balloon
AFAIK, Air Balloon is a possible item for
Revavroom* and Heatran, so I'll just make my case for these two. Not to say I'd like to
replace Air Balloon with Shuca Berry on them, but I think it's a good alternative.
*Seems Air Balloon was removed for Revavroom, but I still think Shuca would work well on it, and I don't want to fix the grammar on this entire part of my post
Air Balloon can put you in a bit of an awkward position. Revavroom and Heatran both have an impressive 9 resistances, and as such can make great switch-ins versus a lot of threats, even if they don't intend on staying (switch to tran to take Delibird's Brave Bird, then, on the next turn, switch to Charizard who is immune to Drill Run, compared to eating a STAB Brave Bird on Zard). But if they're holding an Air Balloon, it pops ! Shuca Berry circumvents this, allowing them to survive most Earthquakes (EQ isn't a guaranteed KO on Shuca Tran for the following mons: Rhyperior, +2 Salamence, +3 Altaria, CB Dugtrio, non-Life Orb Excadrill, and even Groudon's Precipice Blades !), and allows them to use their many resistances while keeping their item secret, which can be very tricky to deal with, particularly in the case of Heatran who can generate Choice Specs and Choice Scarf: if the opponent switches in Magnezone, thinking the Tran is Choice-locked into Flash Cannon, they might just lose it.
As this suggestion was inspired by DPP Shuca Berry Tran, I imagine there are quite a few notable Pokémon that could benefit from a type-Berry, but I'm not too familiar with modern gens other than in randbats so I don't really have other suggestions than Shuca. What really motivated me to post this, anyways, was Air Balloon's poor synergy with the mons' many resistances.
I know that Air Balloon has benefits over Shucca (escaping Duggy, avoiding Spikes), which is why I still think it's a good item for them. But I think Shuca could be a great addition to both of their item pools which would keep opponents on their toes !
Ceruledge
Ceruledge can turn into quite the scary sweeper once it gets a Swords Dance off with its great STABs and Bitter Blade's healing, but its Speed can often be an issue. Weak Armor remedies this problem, but Ceruledge's poor 75/80 physical bulk often prevents it from surviving the move that would trigger it. This could be remedied with a Focus Sash ! Swords Dance on an expected physical move, and attempt to sweep at +2 with +1 Speed.
I understand that forgoing HDB on a Stealth Rock weak mon is a big no-no, and as such this could be a lead-only set, like Eviolite Scyther (my beloved).
I also think that Ceruledge could pull off Flash Fire + Tera Fire + Bulk Up + Bitter Blade spam, but I haven't put much thought into it, so let's move on.
Pivot Squawkabilly
This doesn't need a lot of explanation. Squawks gets Intimidate, Parting Shot, Roost, and U-Turn, all of which make him a good candidate for a pivot set with HDB, with interesting other options like Tailwind, Feather Dance, Fake Tears, Copycat ...
Bluffing HDB
If you hadn't noticed by now, I LOVE bluffing sets in Pokémon, so I'd like to suggest HDB Unaware Clefable (appears to be Magic Guard, so the opponent might not bother with status moves), as well as HDB Heatproof Bronzong (appears to be Levitate, so you can counter hit your opponent's Fire Pokémon with EQ thanks to Heatproof's fire damage reduction. I use this a lot as a lead in DPP with Custap + Explosion). Admitedly these sets work better in constructed thanks to specific EV investments that take advantage of the bluff, and with randbats EVs might not be worth the opportunity cost, but was worth mentioning.
King's Rock + Beat Up / Triple Axel
I don't know if movesets that abuse hax are against randbats' philosophy (not that I can tell at least, see: Jirachi, Dunsparce), but when I saw Fezandipiti with Beat Up my first reaction was to be excited for it to have King's Rock. With 6 mons, King's Rock gives Beat Up a 46.8% Flinch chance, and synergizes very well with Toxic Chain by locking down the foe while it takes Poison damage.
This could also work with Weavile, giving it a King's Rock set with Beat up and Triple Axel, but the absence of Toxic Chain makes this worse and comes at a high opportunity cost given Weavile's excellent sweeping potential. Weavile is also much frailer than Fezandipiti and lacks recovery, so not getting a flinch has much worse consequences in its case.
Flygon
Flygon's current possible moves are Dragon Dance, EQ, Outrage, Stone Edge, and U-Turn. Any set generated by these 5 moves is stonewalled by Bronzong, Skarm, and Corv, all of which take heavy damage from Fire Blast, so I would suggest adding it to its non-Choice Band movepool.
I'd also like to suggest a Mixed Attacker set for it. Possible generated moves could be Outrage, Meteor, Fire Blast, Quake, U-Turn and Stone Edge, with Life Orb or Expert Belt. The latter is especially good at punishing enemies expecting to be fighting a Choice-locked Flygon. This set is straight from DPP OU.
AV + Drain Punch Bulky Fighting types
e.g. Hariyama and Conkeldurr. Iron Hands already gets it ; Drain Punch really helps their survivability. I personally really like Guts with AV + Drain Punch as it turns your mon into a fantastic status absorber, but from what I can tell randbats doesn't really like giving Guts to mons who lack a status orb or Rest ; still throwing it out there.
Tera suggestions for mons with Adaptability
I think this is the third time I post about Basculin in this thread, I really hate Tera Water on it. For those who don't know, Tera-ing to a type you already have on a mon with Adaptability provides a laughably tiny damage boost to STAB, from x2 to x2.25. The bonus is so small that in many cases, it doesn't secure kills that you already had a shot at with a high damage roll (example: Basculin's Wave Crash goes from 85.9-101.2 against Falinks before Tera to 96.7-113.6 after). IMO Basculin would be much better off with Tera Normal to be able to swap to spamming Double-Edges as strong as its Wave Crash in a pinch (which deals 57.4-67.9 to +0 Dondozo, followed by 38.6-45.8 at +1: a total of 90-110.7 taking into account Leftos). I'm not even saying we have to drop Tera Water ; but there's clear value in adding Normal to its Tera pool.
Basculegion suffers from the same movepool issues as Basculin so a Tera other than Ghost and Water is hard to come up with. Perhaps Normal + Double-Edge could be worth trying out ?
Note that Gumshoos, Crawdaunt, and Dragalge already have Teras that allow them to snap to a new, equally devastating attacking type with Tera (Ground, Fighting, and Water respectively). I just think the little fishies should be given that same opportunity.
Magnezone
Magnet Pull is indeed an extremely powerful ability, but it rarely gets to shine. A lot of steel types carry Earthquake which obliterates Magnezone, or can Tera out of their Steel type, and sometimes, the opponent's team doesn't even have a Steel type, making Zone functionally lack an ability.
Due to this, I'd like to make the following suggestions to improve M-Zone :
- Add another "role" for M-Zone as a bulky Analytic attacker with Assault Vest, Shuca Berry, Sub + Leftovers (its myriad of resistances is sure to create a lot of switches), or Air Balloon.
- Add Air Balloon and/or Shuca Berry to its list of possible items, and Magnet Rise + Sub with Magnet Pull to circumvent the frequent carrying of EQ by its targets.
Tweak team generating algorithm to consider Freeze-Dry when avoiding weakness stacking
As far as I know, the team generation algorithm will prevent having more than 3 mons that share a weakness. I'd like to suggest considering weakness to Freeze-Dry during this process: this is obviously anecdotal, but illustrates my point: I once generated a team with 3 mons weak to Ice and a Water type, so an opposing Iron Bundle with Freeze Dry would've been awful to deal with.
That's all folks ! (for now)
Thanks for taking the time to read my mammoth post ! These set ideas had been picking up dust in my phone's Notes application for a few months, and I'm happy I finally took the time to type all this out. I'm very open to any of these opinions being challenged, and I'm very interested in hearing what yall think of them. Cheers !
Edit : Grammar
Edit 2 : Clarity