Pokémon Bronzong

[Aragorn the King]

Bronzong - The Bronze Bell Pokémon

X Flavor Text - "In ages past, this Pokémon was revered as a bringer of rain. It was found buried in the ground."
Y Flavor Text - "Ancient people believed that petitioning Bronzong for rain was the way to make crops grow."

Pokédex Number - #437 (National) | #--- (Kalos)

Type - Base Stats - 67 HP / 89 Atk / 116 Def / 79 SAtk / 116 SDef / 33 Spe

Abilities:

Levitate: Levitate renders the user immune to Ground-type moves (except Sand Attack), Spikes, Toxic Spikes, Misty Terrain, Grassy Terrain, Electric Terrain, Arena Trap, and damage from Sky Drop. These immunities can be lost if the user is holding an Iron Ball, is under the effects of Smack Down, Gravity, or Ingrain or if the opponent has Mold Breaker, Teravolt, or Turboblaze.

Heatproof: Heatproof halves the damage done by Fire-type attacks and the burn status ailment.

Heavy Metal (Hidden): The user's weight is doubled. This increases the user's base power of Heavy Slam and Heat Crash, increases the damage taken from the opponent's Low Kick and Grass Knot, and also lowers the damage taken from the opponent's Heavy Slam and Heat Crash due to these moves being calculated by the target's weight.

Notable Moves (Bold indicates STAB):

- Gyro Ball (Lvl 36, TM 74)
- Toxic (TM 06)
- Light Screen (TM 16)
- Rain Dance (TM 18)
- Earthquake (TM 26)
- Reflect (TM 33)
- Trick Room (TM 92)
- Zen Headbutt (Transfer)
- Stealth Rock (Transfer)
- Trick (Transfer)

General Analysis:

When Aegislash got banned, many Pokemon became much more viable - some simply because they don't have to deal with Aegislash's antics anymore, and some because they check or counter Pokemon that are more effective without Aegi. Bronzong is a little of both. Bronzong has three weaknesses when it has Levitate, and the main spammer of Ghost-types moves is gone. Additionally, Gardevoir is a fantastic Pokemon without Aegislash, and Bronzong is able to handle it well. Bronzong is also able to handle Landorus and sand offense well, which is very nice for its viability. However, it definitely has its flaws, the biggest being a lack of recovery outside of Rest + Leftovers.

Movesets:

Defensive

Bronzong @ Leftovers
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Def / 252 SDef
IVs: 0 Spe
Sassy Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Gyro Ball
- Protect / Toxic

Set Description:

With this spread Bronzong is able to wall Gardevoir and check Landorus and hit hard back with Gyro Ball. Despite Bronzong's mediocre Attack stat, it can still hit pretty hard with Gyro Ball thanks to how slow it is. Stealth Rock is one of the best moves in OU because it limits the effectiveness of Pokemon such as Mega Pinsir and Talonflame, and Bronzong is a great user of it. Earthquake is also a necessary move on Bronzong, since it allows it to hit Sand Rush Excadrill, a Pokemon that it walls. Protect is good final move to gain extra Leftovers recovery, scout for moves, and make Medicham's High Jump Kick, but can be replaced with Toxic to all Bronzong to beat bulky waters like Alomomola and Quagsire 1v1.

Trick Room

Bronzong @ Mental Herb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 188 HP / 252 Atk / 68 Def
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spd
- Trick Room
- Stealth Rock
- Gyro Ball / Earthquake
- Explosion

Set Description:

Bronzong makes an excellent lead for Trick Room teams. It provides Stealth Rock, which is useful for every team, as well as the obviously necessary Trick Room. It also packs Explosion, which provides necessary early momentum for the team. Its Gyro Ball is significantly stronger with this spread, but Earthquake can be used instead to surprise Heatran. Mental Herb is the item of choice to evade Taunt from opposing leads.

Other Options

• You can use a Dual Screens set, but there are better setters.
• Rest Talk provides recovery, at the cost of Stealth Rock, Protect, and Toxic.
• You can always use just rest, but it leaves you as a sitting duck.
• You can Trick crippling items to your opponent, like Toxic Orb, Choice Scarf, Iron Ball, etc.
• You can use Bronzong on a rain team, and can consider using a Rain Dance set.
• Heatproof is a niche ability, but it's never worth considering.

Overall, Bronzong certainly isn't the best Pokemon in OU. However, it checks Landorus-I and counters Mega Gardevoir, as well as Earthquake users like Sand Rush Excadrill and Garchomp, and thus is a viable choice on stall teams. Additionally, it has a much more niche Trick Room lead set that supports an unexpected and underrated type of team. Please discuss Bronzong's viability in OU; what does it do? What are its short-comings? What teammates work well with it? Also, please tell me if there are more efficient spreads for this cool bell!

 

[AM]

I would like to mention M-Ampharos as a partner for Bronzong as I've seen the core pop up here and there and it's quite solid. Either from a defensive typing or being used as a pair for Trick Room, they have decent synergy enough to warrant a mention. One of its biggest short comings is the steel nerf, which makes it susceptible to Knock Off in general, pursuit trapping, among some of the other issues defensive psychic types usually have to begin with. Speaking of bulky psychic types it has the ability to check things like non-Taunt Mew, Cresselia, Celebi to a lesser extent through the use of Toxic. Bronzong has issues with set up sweepers such as CM Clefable and M-Gyarados to name a few, as generally Bronzong is designed more for Stall or TR and doesn't have an adequate offensive presence or tools to handle offense that doesn't care about Bronzong.

I only have experience with Bronzong in Ubers but Rest as a stand alone move without Sleep Talk can be used for recovery if you have cleric support, which should be mandatory on stall anyways. Something like Gyro Ball, Toxic, Stealth Rocks, Rest for example. It frees up a move slot and Sleep Talk on Bronzong is pretty iffy anyways. I don't think I would ever consider Trick-Scarf as a possibility, maybe only for the surprise factor where you would miss having Leftovers in the first place. Hm that's my thoughts for now I'll have to play around with it more in OU now, cause I do enjoy using underrated stuff.

 

[Scubasage]

Rather than Trick Scarf, tricking something like Full Incense, Lagging Tail, Toxic Orb, Iron Ball, Ring Target will likely be more useful. Full Incense/Lagging Tail do the same thing, and force a pokemon to move last, even in Trick Room, priority moves notwithstanding, Toxic Orb obviously Toxic's the opponent regardless of whether they have a cleric or not (since it will retrigger whenever the pokemon comes in), Iron Ball makes normally ground immune pokemon...no longer immune, as well as making them slower, and Ring Target can let Fairies be hit by Dragons, Dark be hit by Psychics, etc. etc.

You also get their item in return, and unlike Trick Scarf, you won't be locked into a single move until you get the Trick off.

 

[DAD TIME]

The Pokédex entries you provided both mention Bronzong's connection to rain, but you didn't in the body of your post! Losing its fire weakness in rain is useful, and it provides Grass resistance, which is useful on rain teams. It can set rain and rocks on the same set, and it can even act as a sand check, like OP mentioned. So it's something to consider when teambuilding.

 

[Aragorn the King]

The Pokédex entries you provided both mention Bronzong's connection to rain, but you didn't in the body of your post! Losing its fire weakness in rain is useful, and it provides Grass resistance, which is useful on rain teams. It can set rain and rocks on the same set, and it can even act as a sand check, like OP mentioned. So it's something to consider when teambuilding.

That's really solid! Most rain teams consider Ferrothorn or Scizor > Bronzong as a rain team's Steel-type, but Bronzong lack of a 4x weakness, neutrality to fighting, and ability to viably run Rain Dance + Damp Rock make it seem pretty cool. I think Rest, like AM145 said, would be necessary on this set, since it lacks Lefties + Protect.

I would like to mention M-Ampharos as a partner for Bronzong as I've seen the core pop up here and there and it's quite solid. Either from a defensive typing or being used as a pair for Trick Room, they have decent synergy enough to warrant a mention. One of its biggest short comings is the steel nerf, which makes it susceptible to Knock Off in general, pursuit trapping, among some of the other issues defensive psychic types usually have to begin with. Speaking of bulky psychic types it has the ability to check things like non-Taunt Mew, Cresselia, Celebi to a lesser extent through the use of Toxic. Bronzong has issues with set up sweepers such as CM Clefable and M-Gyarados to name a few, as generally Bronzong is designed more for Stall or TR and doesn't have an adequate offensive presence or tools to handle offense that doesn't care about Bronzong.

I only have experience with Bronzong in Ubers but Rest as a stand alone move without Sleep Talk can be used for recovery if you have cleric support, which should be mandatory on stall anyways. Something like Gyro Ball, Toxic, Stealth Rocks, Rest for example. It frees up a move slot and Sleep Talk on Bronzong is pretty iffy anyways. I don't think I would ever consider Trick-Scarf as a possibility, maybe only for the surprise factor where you would miss having Leftovers in the first place. Hm that's my thoughts for now I'll have to play around with it more in OU now, cause I do enjoy using underrated stuff.

Thanks for the teammate! Mega Ampharos is very dangerous under Trick Room; 477 Special Attack (iirc) is nothing to mess with. You can run the standard agility set, but replace Agility with Hidden Power Ice or Fire.

Rather than Trick Scarf, tricking something like Full Incense, Lagging Tail, Toxic Orb, Iron Ball, Ring Target will likely be more useful. Full Incense/Lagging Tail do the same thing, and force a pokemon to move last, even in Trick Room, priority moves notwithstanding, Toxic Orb obviously Toxic's the opponent regardless of whether they have a cleric or not (since it will retrigger whenever the pokemon comes in), Iron Ball makes normally ground immune pokemon...no longer immune, as well as making them slower, and Ring Target can let Fairies be hit by Dragons, Dark be hit by Psychics, etc. etc.

You also get their item in return, and unlike Trick Scarf, you won't be locked into a single move until you get the Trick off.

Thanks! I mentioned some of those items as possible ones you could trick. Tricking a Toxic orb sounds really awesome! It misses Lefties a bit, but it'll often gain them. Plus, even if it doesn't gain lefties, I'd say Bronzong w/ Eviolite > Chansey w/ toxic orb.

 

[Lickalatapus]

DeLaMuerte (Bronzong) @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 192 HP / 252 Atk / 32 Def / 32 SpD
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Gyro Ball
- Zen Headbutt
- Stealth Rock
-Rest

I had to replace Metagross finally. My team was susceptible to EQ and he was given a balloon. Needless to say, Bronzong gives me the same typing plus immunity from non-mb quakes. Zenbutt has given me some hilarious kills.

I'm not sure why I have evs spread the way I do, they are not specific calculations.. I do not know what I should be calculating really.


He handles lando awesomely, counters hawlucha, some conkel sets get demolished if they incorrectly assume you will switch. Gyroball and Zen hit hard on switchins, but most fairies are naturally slow.. so another steel move may be prefered

 

[Karxrida]

I'm mostly gonna talk about Pokemon that still give the bronze bell trouble.

Bisharp is a major problem for Bronzong, since it can switch into anything it does and threaten a Knock Off, Pursuit trap it, or screw with your Trick Room abusers thanks to Sucker Punch.

It's not a complete fail-safe check for Lando-I due to his tendency to occasionally carry Knock Off or U-turn, both of which screw you in different ways (losing your Lefties to a random Knock Off sucks, while U-turn lets it bring in Bisharp, a good Lando partner :/).

Lando-T are more likely to carry Knock Off than the Incarnate form, and it hurts way more due to the higher attack stat. It also carries U-turn so it can get free momentum off of you.

Gengar like to carry Will-O-Wisp (preventing Gyro Ball from hurting anything) and Taunt (stopping TR and SR). Shadow Ball now hurts a hell of a lot more, especially coming from a LO Gengar.

Mega Scizor uses Bronzong as set-up bait and also screws with TR teams thanks to Bullet Punch.

Excadrill outside of Sand run Mold Breaker (and sometimes an Air Balloon), can spin away your Rocks, and threatens you with one of the most powerful Earthquakes in the tier.

I'll probably come up with more later. Typing this all up on a phone is a chore.

 

[Askeia]

Digging this back up from page 3 because holy fuck Bronzong is amazing right now. A simply specially defensive set with Toxic easily beats Salamence which is one of the greatest threats out there. Metagross, Diancie and Sceptile struggle to get past it while it can hit back with EQ, Gyro Ball and Gyro Ball respectively. Mega Altaria's is walled unless it has Fire Blast, at which Bronzong still has a good chance of surviving, and KO-ing return with Gyro Ball. SubCM Mega Latias cannot set up effectively on Bronzong because it 4x resists Stored Power, and can consistently break its subs, and eventually Toxicing it when it is forced to heal up instead of subbing. Oh, and it shits on sand offense too.

 

[Karxrida]

Digging this back up from page 3 because holy fuck Bronzong is amazing right now. A simply specially defensive set with Toxic easily beats Salamence which is one of the greatest threats out there. Metagross, Diancie and Sceptile struggle to get past it while it can hit back with EQ, Gyro Ball and Gyro Ball respectively. Mega Altaria's is walled unless it has Fire Blast, at which Bronzong still has a good chance of surviving, and KO-ing return with Gyro Ball. SubCM Mega Latias cannot set up effectively on Bronzong because it 4x resists Stored Power, and can consistently break its subs, and eventually Toxicing it when it is forced to heal up instead of subbing. Oh, and it shits on sand offense too.

Substitute and Refresh variants use you for setup bait and lack of recovery outside of Lefties means it can muscle past you at +6 easily.

 

[Askeia]

Substitute and Refresh variants use you for setup bait and lack of recovery outside of Lefties means it can muscle past you at +6 easily.

Refresh does, substitute doesnt, because you can break its subs very consistently.
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