Pokémon Annihilape

[Yung Dramps]

Base Stats: 110 / 115 / 80 / 50 / 90 / 90 (535)
Abilities: Vital Spirit, Inner Focus, Defiant
Notable Moves:

: Close Combat, Drain Punch, Gunk Shot, Ice Punch, Rage Fist*, Shadow Claw, U-Turn

: Bulk Up, Stealth Rock, Taunt
*Rage Fist: 50 BP Ghost move, 16 PP, +50 BP every time the user is hit by an attack

Pros:
-Incredibly solid stats all-around with great Attack and surprisingly good bulk, allowing it to tank hits and dish them out
-Defiant can pray on Defog to boost its power higher
-Superb Ghost/Fighting STAB combo that nothing in the game other than the unreleased Hisuian Zoroark resists, as well as giving it some useful resistances to power up Rage Fist including a 4x U-Turn resistance

Cons:
-Attack is only great but not amazing for modern standards
-Rage Fist needs some time and good prediction to get powered up
-Relatively low moveset variety

Terastral Potential:
-Annihilape will primarily want to use same-type Terastral to further capitalize off its already amazing STAB combo, although Poison with Gunk Shot could maybe be an alternative option to further prey on Fairy switch-ins

Potential Sets:
Choice Scarf
Annihilape @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Defiant
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Rage Fist
- Close Combat
- U-turn
- Gunk Shot

Bulk Up
Annihilape @ Leftovers
Ability: Vital Spirit
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Bulk Up
- Rage Fist
- Drain Punch
- Substitute

Idk I'm not good at set descriptions and am a little rusty. Sorry if these aren't that good but hey, it's Day 1

 

[Jaetheho]

I think you meant to say "resists" instead of "releases" in the zoroark sentence

 

[escarlata]

Under Pros I think you can mention that this thing is a surprisingly good user of SR because it blocks Spin and punishes Defog.
And having Rage Fist means that he can deal out some pretty decent damage with a bit more defensive investment.

 

[Montymontyy]

I think Annihilape is too frail to be running rage punch, especially with choice scarf(unless you're willing to use your terastral on it). Terra blast ghost or forsaking a ghost move for stone edge or ice punch is much safer from what I've seen.

 

[Eeveeto]

I think Annihilape is too frail to be running rage punch, especially with choice scarf(unless you're willing to use your terastral on it). Terra blast ghost or forsaking a ghost move for stone edge or ice punch is much safer from what I've seen.

110/80/90 is not frail for an offensive Mon. Take into account it has good resistances to U-Turn, rock moves and poison moves. Just being hit once boosts the move to 100 power (150 with Stab) , which is respectable. Not being hit at all still makes it 75 power with Stab, which is as strong as Stabless Ice Punch. I see this move a must for the ghost monkey, it's really strong.

 

[Sulfurian]

I could see endure+reversal+ rage fist being a set.

 

[STEELDRAGON]

Final Gambit definitely deserves to be mentioned, as it will OHKO almost every non ghost pokemon with that big base 110 HP

 

[Lectrys]

I've been having reasonable results with this RestTalk set:

Annihilape @ Leftovers
Ability: Defiant
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 Spe
Impish Nature
- Rage Fist
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
- Drain Punch

Rage Fist goes well with a RestTalk set because you want to get hit a fair few times in order to pump up Rage Fist, and you are going to get pretty injured in the process.

Drain Punch doesn't lower your defenses and lets you Rest less often, although it is rather weak.

Tera Fairy lets you get a sweet defensive typing that drops your initial weaknesses to Ghost and Fairy.

It's possible that I should be using a different defensive spread instead.

Thanks to the nigh-immunity to status and generous healing that Rest provides, along with how ungodly powerful Rage Fist can get, this set tears apart stall teams.

 

[Crocognawledge]

Annihilape seems like almost the perfect U-turn punisher, so sets with Rocky Helmet could be great. It's even neutral to Knock Off so it can get the chip damage and the Rage Fist proc. Ghost or Steel for Tera type for either Super STAB on Rage Fist or matchup flipping on Fairies/Fliers who get trampled by 150+ BP Rage Fist.

Annihilape @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Defiant
Tera Type: Ghost/ Steel
EVs: 160 HP / 252 Atk / 96 Def
Adamant Nature
Rage Fist
Drain Punch
Stealth Rock
U-turn

Chip machine that can grab momentum and do crazy damage given good positioning. EV split is to get to 401 HP, then Def to buffer against U-turn/Knock and make Drain Punch marginally more effective in its use-cases.

 

[earl]

Annihilape @ Leftovers
Ability: Defiant
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 248 HP / 248 SpD / 12 Spe
Careful Nature
- Rage Fist
- Drain Punch
- Bulk Up
- Taunt

Been spamming this on the ladder to incredible success. 6-0s stall teams while generally preforming in most other matchups, Swampert bulk is truly incredible at times. Tera normal always gets the Flutter Mane. Speed is for Timid Kingambit

 

[ninth]

I can't believe they added Lavos to the game. GF recognizing singles more now?

(for real though Final Gambit from base 110 HP is, I believe, the strongest FG in the game. With max HP investment it does 424 damage, which is enough to kill max HP Hippo and I believe uninvested Tusk and Hands.)

 

[everybody]

Annihilape @ Leftovers
Ability: Defiant
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 220 HP / 44 Atk / 244 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Bulk Up
- Drain Punch
- Rage Fist
- Taunt

I feel like your bulk up set could use a bit stat tweaking. As a stall breaker, it wouldn't need to be so defensively oriented as all it's taking are quag/clod earthquakes, corv uturns, avalugg avalanche, and blissey shadow balls. Running speed allows it to outspeed the myriad of base 80-88 speed pkmn, most notably great tusk, baxcalibur, gholdengo, and glimmora. Outspeeding them allows you to get to +1 def or ko them before a powerful hit/crippling mortal spin. This basically makes Annihilape more flexible for a team.

Defiant to take advantage of defog (no need vital spirit cause taunt), HP evs hit a leftovers number, speed creeps adamant chomp, but you can just go for max if you believe annihilape dittos will be meta. The rest are just extra.

I also ran 160 hp / 104 attack to 2hko leftovers fairy avalugg with only +1, using a lv4 rage fist into lv5 rage fist combo

 

[skyleriscool]

I think that Assault Vest Annihilape is great for powering up rage punch. Combined with Drain Punch and Defiant, it can take down unprepared teams.
Annihilape @ Assault Vest
Ability: Defiant
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Rage Fist
- Drain Punch
- Gunk Shot
- Ice Punch
The only downside of this set is that it could easily become set-up bait once the opponent knows what is going on, and rocky helmet Corviknight could deal chip damage even if it doesn't have Brave Bird. EVs are optimal in order to take as much hits as possible.

 

[Mom Lover]

After playing with Annihilape for the last day or so this set below seems to put in some insane work currently. I've been pairing it with shed tail + screens.

Annihilape @ Leftovers
Ability: Defiant
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 220 HP / 64 Def / 128 SpD / 96 Spe
Careful Nature
- Drain Punch
- Rage Fist
- Taunt
- Bulk Up

96 speed careful still lets you outspeed base 70s without boosting nature and below which mainly is for adamant breloom. With the bulk investment it lets you live specs shadow ball from dragapult which seems to be a likely counterplay with infiltrator. Also if you tera you can live a life orb freeze dry from iron bundle and get a drain punch regen back. Taunt and bulk up are there to completely wall palafin while tera water. The water tera type also helps vs things like Chi-Yu.

 

[Zsy6]

There's a funny doubles strategy you can run with Annihilape and Maushold. Maushold's new move Population Bomb hits 10 times (use wide lens to increase chances) so if you tera Annihilape into say a steel type, you can have its partner Maushold hit it 10 times for a theoretical Rage Fist power of 500. Surely there is a cap on Rage Fist's power though right? Has anyone done the research on this?

 

[GaileOxstain]

There's a funny doubles strategy you can run with Annihilape and Maushold. Maushold's new move Population Bomb hits 10 times (use wide lens to increase chances) so if you tera Annihilape into say a steel type, you can have its partner Maushold hit it 10 times for a theoretical Rage Fist power of 500. Surely there is a cap on Rage Fist's power though right? Has anyone done the research on this?

Using one OP move to make another move OP? I am beginning to think Gamefreak underestimated the creativity of competitive Pokemon players this generation. Starting to think they should hire players like us just to do quality oversight to avoid incidents like what happened with grave doggo.

 

[ShadesOfSolomon]

Using one OP move to make another move OP? I am beginning to think Gamefreak underestimated the creativity of competitive Pokemon players this generation. Starting to think they should hire players like us just to do quality oversight to avoid incidents like what happened with grave doggo.

GF don't balance the game for singles 6vs6, which is the only context in which Houndstone was broken. The game is balanced for VGC only, as it is the only competitive mode recognised by GF. We've got to stop pretending that the game developers care about ensuring the continuation of our spin-off customised meta game.

IMO, Maushold + Annihilape is too gimmicky in doubles/VGC. You're wasting your terra just to make Annihilape take the hit, and given the power of Population Bomb, even resisted you'll be lucky to survive long enough to abuse the power boost.

 

[ShiznazTM]

There's a funny doubles strategy you can run with Annihilape and Maushold. Maushold's new move Population Bomb hits 10 times (use wide lens to increase chances) so if you tera Annihilape into say a steel type, you can have its partner Maushold hit it 10 times for a theoretical Rage Fist power of 500. Surely there is a cap on Rage Fist's power though right? Has anyone done the research on this?

I was hit with a 4x bullet seed in Scarlet/Violet and it seemed like Rage Fist only got boosted once. It didn’t 1 shot the mon I was facing and it 100% should have if it got raised to 250.

It was the only time I was able to test it so far, still clearing the story.

It should definitely be tested in-game to make sure it’s accurate.

 

[pika pal]

Do we know what Rage Fist caps its increases at regardless? This could be relevant for bulkier sets or for switching into weak chip-hits or simply tanking multiple moves.

Also it occurs to me, does Rage Fist reset its stacks of Annihilape switches out?

 

[Mom Lover]

Do we know what Rage Fist caps its increases at regardless? This could be relevant for bulkier sets or for switching into weak chip-hits or simply tanking multiple moves.

Also it occurs to me, does Rage Fist reset its stacks of Annihilape switches out?

the boost does not reset upon switch out but i am unsure on whether it caps out at a certain bp or not

 

[Zsy6]

I was hit with a 4x bullet seed in Scarlet/Violet and it seemed like Rage Fist only got boosted once. It didn’t 1 shot the mon I was facing and it 100% should have if it got raised to 250.

It was the only time I was able to test it so far, still clearing the story.

It should definitely be tested in-game to make sure it’s accurate.

This would be disappointing if true.

 

[Zsy6]

GF don't balance the game for singles 6vs6, which is the only context in which Houndstone was broken. The game is balanced for VGC only, as it is the only competitive mode recognised by GF. We've got to stop pretending that the game developers care about ensuring the continuation of our spin-off customised meta game.

IMO, Maushold + Annihilape is too gimmicky in doubles/VGC. You're wasting your terra just to make Annihilape take the hit, and given the power of Population Bomb, even resisted you'll be lucky to survive long enough to abuse the power boost.

Maushold has Friend Guard which should mean Annihilape takes 25% less from all attacks, even Population Bomb.

 

[GaileOxstain]

Maushold has Friend Guard which should mean Annihilape takes 25% less from all attacks, even Population Bomb.

True, but sacrificing Technician means Maushold's own offensive niche will be compromised from a potentially base 300 attack to 200. Better to have two OP teammates on the field instead of one after all.

 

[viol and bass]

Punching Gloves are imo one of the better item choices on this thing. It doesn't boost Close Combat, but it boosts Rage Fist, Drain Punch, and the elemental punches, while preventing Rough Skin / helmet damage and Flame Body burns. I've been running Taunt/Rocks/Rage Fist/Drain Punch @ Punching Gloves. It'd be cool on a Bulk Up set too.

 

[skyleriscool]

True, but sacrificing Technician means Maushold's own offensive niche will be compromised from a potentially base 300 attack to 200. Better to have two OP teammates on the field instead of one after all.

Ok, if you do the math, 500 + 200 is 700 for unresisted hits, better than Maushold's 300 power from Population Bomb. Plus Maushold can still use Tidy Up if it wants to deal more damage.