This is the only one I have just nothing to say about, but come on. There's gotta be something, right? This thing has coverage for almost everything, a monster Attack stat to hit everything else, a good enough Speed tier and a lot of boosting options. Not a lot of people have found reason to run this but I feel like we all know this isn't even close to as bad as it gets here. I get that it's hard to boost and so I get people not wanting to experiment with it but something weird like a Scarf set could be fine as well.
To me, probably the most enticing Pokemon without any usage. The centralized state of this meta leaves little room for experimentation so most of these will be fairly negative, but I have a lot to say about Aggron. Goes without saying that Choice Band Head Smash is ridiculously strong, doing 40% minimum to max Speed Kingambit and having a slim chance of 2HKOing with Rocks, and it 2HKOs both it and most Iron Hands variants with Banded Earthquake. Clicking Head Smash at most points in a game means risking letting Iron Hands in fairly easily though so you need to account for this when building and might get less value then you'd hope for out of this thing in practice. Also gets Stealth Rock, and obviously dropping your Choice Band is going to greatly reduce your damage output but you still have a much better offensive presence than any other hazard setter save Kingambit. Orthworm also exists as a switchin to Head Smash + Earthquake although those typically are used near the start of a game and you definitely have the moveslots to slap Body Press in or something. Might be a bit unwieldy but there's a lot to potentially like here.
If you can manage to get it on the field without taking any damage, Typhlosion's Eruption is impossible to switch into. This can be said about both the current meta and most iterations of OU. The problem is getting it on the field without any chip damage since hazard removal is difficult, but something like Mandibuzz may support this super nicely on some offense teams. You get forced out after killing something by Latios or Dragapult, and Ceruledge having Flash Fire really sucks, but you can Shadow Ball Ceruledge and Eruption does big damage to the other two. Even without Eruption or Choice Specs this might just be solid enough, as the Speed tier and coverage options look really solid here, although it of course will be difficult to get in because of just how aggressive the meta is. Also has a place on Sun teams which are a bit more fringe.
Could easily end up getting into its usual Centiskorch shenanigans here. Its special bulk is legitimately not that bad, could end up soft checking Latios and any Iron Hands variant without an Electric move, which sounds stupid but has shown up a fair amount. This thing completely abuses Slurpuff and Orthworm, plus Fire Lash is generally just a pain to switch into. You also have Bug STAB for Slowbro and Knock Off just to piss people off. On the off chance Sun takes off this would also be able to handle that alright with Flash Fire, but otherwise you can just run Flame Body to seriously mess with basically most things we see in the meta. I don't think there's any Pokemon that combines all of those defensive traits while also having this much offensive presence so that's pretty cool.
The three times I've seen people run it have all been Coil sets that have failed each and every time. One got close to doing something, but I don't think it would have gotten too far in the end. This set as a whole just does not like Iron Hands at all and feels like it needs too much to go its way to do anything. I think a better use for this could be just a more general pivoting set, maybe pairing well with Barraskewda since it can Volt Switch on Slowbro and Knock Off alongside all of its coverage is generally awkward to switch into as is. I can see why a few people have gravitated towards this mon though, it's a pretty fun one to use and doesn't look awful here.
This is here because I think it could make Sun worth using. I've actually laddered with this thing in OU a while ago back before Venusaur got Weather Ball + Chlorophyll. I remember it feeling very strong, although now it's probably slightly worse than Venusaur offensively, but way more brittle and difficult to utilize because of that. Meta's very fast-paced right now and fat Poisons being prominent is very annoying for it but I could see a Sun team being alright, or at the very least better than the stuff below this would allow.
Obviously not nearly as good as it would be with Arena Trap but I don't think Dugtrio is completely awful, at least compared to the other stuff here. If you look at the top dogs of the meta, half of the top ten most used mons are outright WEAK to Ground, and three of the remaining five are weak to Dark. You also have a Speed tier that outpaces everything except for Dragapult and Barraskewda not counting boosts. Slowbro, Mandibuzz, and Orthworm are all extremely hard stops to this even if it opts to run Swords Dance, and you'd need Substitute to at best force a nasty 50/50 with and not automatically lose to Kingambit's Sucker Punch, so I don't really think offensive sets by themselves have much merit even if they alone would make it better than some Pokemon on this list. Sash lead sets with Rocks and Memento though? Those might not be completely terrible.
It's probably not a coincidence that this is the fourth Pokemon this early on with access to EdgeQuake coverage and STAB on one of the two. Unironically I'm most curious what would happen if you ran this thing without always having the expectation of getting to click Shell Smash. Like yeah, maybe you'd get to use it against Slowbro or Muk or something but then you'd be met with Kingambit's Sucker Punch or Ceruledge's Shadow Sneak or Skuntank's Sucker Punch, so on and so forth. It does get above the dreaded "base 50 Speed tier" with Kingambit and Iron Hands and can manage a three shot against Iron Hands. Slowbro hard stops this and there's still Latios, Hawlucha, or Dragapult that can revenge kill it just as example, but it looks vaguely threatening.
Crustle has access to Spikes, Stealth Rock, Knock Off, and Sturdy. That's it. It can't knock itself out or do anything to block the opponents' attempts to remove its hazards but hazard removal isn't that common in this meta. Mandibuzz is the most common form of removal with 20% usage and an abysmal winrate anyways. Maybe you could try pulling an Ubers Cloyster kind of deal with Spikes, Shell Smash, Rock STAB and either Earthquake or Stealth Rock? Completely stuffed out by Orthworm and you'll never get too far with that because of how aggressive the meta is and how priority-focused it is, but it's still much less exploitable than Orthworm for a Spikes setter.
Crabominable is, in a vacuum, way worse than any of the Pokemon around this part of the list. I considered putting it in the bottom five at first. That may be a bit surprising but this thing just seems legitimately detrimental to do stuff with a lot of the time. Iron Hands has made having a Fighting resist all the more important, and a lot of the top dogs of the meta also don't care about its Ice STAB for one reason or another, and Earthquake does make up for this but you're having to guess between three moves. Using this just seems like it'd be a guessing game where the Crabominable user always loses, and that's assuming there's no Slowbro involved. Even if you make a correct guess you're even slower than Kingambit and Iron Hands so those two get to boost for free or at least threaten to kill you. You really should just be using Pangoro instead most of the time, with the one exception being Trick Room. Trick Room has shown some alright use in some Pet Mods and there are definitely some alright setters in here. It's also bulky enough or has the resists to not care about most of the priority in this meta. If Trick Room ends up being good this could have a place, otherwise it's atrocious.
This is a very physically-oriented meta, and so Jellicent mostly just ends up being a worse Slowbro on paper, who already is a bit weird to use but hasn't seemed that bad from the matches I've watched of it. Munkidori is a notable matchup where I feel Jellicent does a lot better, and someone might be able to argue it having a better matchup into Latios since it's not been running coverage for this. You technically don't die to two Luster Purges from full if you're max Sp. Def but it's not like you can immediately kill it back in one turn since Latios has good special bulk. This does have a few cool things in its movepool like Toxic and Taunt. Maybe someone could find a real use for all of this. I certainly wouldn't know of one.
The biggest problem with this Pokemon is that it just doesn't do a whole lot special on its own. Bulk isn't bad for a breaker but that doesn't do you a whole lot when you have no resists outside of Ghost and Grass, and just the general "blanket check everything" physical breaker is already covered by several of the meta's best Pokemon. Grass resist does nothing here and Pangoro is a lot better if you want a breaker with a Ghost resist since it also covers Dark and Psychic, which are both very relevant here. Banded Reckless Head Charge seems annoying to switch into, 2HKOing Iron Hands and coming close to it against max Speed Kingambit, but that just invites Dragapult in who doesn't really have any full counters in this meta and can do a lot with one switch in. Not worthless, really not good though.
My opinion's gone down from the already low point it was at on Jumpluff to begin with mostly because Dragapult has not been shown to be an auto-lock for most teams. I still will maintain that Jumpluff's main use is for Screens and the legitimate case that many teams will have to use Dragapult as their Screens setter makes this thing's life harder than it was when its biggest competition was Uxie. Now it has Uxie and Dragapult to deal with at the same time. The utility movepool might still give it some stuff to worth with, particularly Sleep Powder, but that may be my bias towards Jumpluff and against Sleep Powder talking.
Once again, this meta has a lot of very prevalent priority users that can all severely damage this thing's core form, and even assuming you run Substitute or something to get yourself into core form's range there's no way you're keeping a Sub up while also getting off a Shell Smash. Something with Meteor Beam instead looked interesting to me but this still runs into the same priority issue while now being slower than Dragapult as well. This all might sound really bad and you might be expecting me to drop the positive that I have for this, and, well...I've got nothing. Its stats just are not good enough and the meta is really hostile towards it, even ignoring all of the regular issues Minior has. The only reason it's not lower is because I think the Pokemon get way, WAY worse from here.
I think Ariados has a legitimate argument to be made for it not being bottom 5 on a list like this, that being that Sticky Web and Toxic Spikes together could make this a workable lead. Most teams will have one of Skuntank or Muk but teams that don't really hate Toxic Spikes, and teams that are built to handle those two might get some mileage out of this. You can chunk Kingambit with Megahorn or keep it from boosting too much with Lunge and Iron Hands won't appreciate being hit with Toxic even if ultimately you'll still then need to have a response for boosted Iron Hands on your team as well. Yeah when I said the Pokemon get way worse from here I truly meant it, this thing is awful. I can still see a world where you could build a decently successful team around this though, which is more than what can be said about the stuff below this.
So this is just a blatantly worse Typhlosion to me. Typhlosion has access to Focus Blast, Extrasensory, Eruption, and an extremely similar stat spread. Ghost immunity might be handy but I doubt you'd see a team so desperate for both a fast, specially offensive Fire and a Ghost resist that you'd drop everything else that Typhlosion has just to run this. Maybe it could happen but I'm not seeing it. I could see someone running Pyroar alongside Typhlosion for Sun but that's not even a good playstyle to begin with and I'm sure Sun would have more valuable ways of using its teamslots. So what you're left with is a Pokemon that's near directly outclassed by a different Pokemon that already isn't even close to as broken as this meta gets. I think not being good is one thing, but being outclassed is way worse here.
Yes, Belly Drum is scary, and yes, the meta being more physical is good for Eiscue. This does not save it. Latios and Dragapult are still extremely prevalent and will hard stop anything this tries to do, and priority being as commonplace as it is doesn't make things any easier for it if Ice Face needs broken. It's very weak without Belly Drum and doesn't like the lack of hazard removal options here. Ice Shard could have completely changed things here but unfortunately it doesn't learn it.
Delibird may seem like it'd have some merit thanks to Spikes, Rapid Spin, and Hustle giving it a serviceable offensive presence, but I don't think there's much weight to that. The moment your opponent sees a Delibird they'll know what you're going to try to do with it and won't waste any time killing it so it can't get too many hazards off, or for some mons potentially even set up in its face. Rapid Spin is a non-factor since this is a suicide lead and, for as few as there are, the other suicide leads in the tier just kill this. Purely offensive roles will not have any merit because of how difficult it is to get in, its Speed tier not being great for that, its inconsistency thanks to Hustle, and so on. I truly do believe it gets worse than this because at minimum this will probably end up with a Spike or two which isn't that bad when Spikes are as rare as they are, but I still think Crustle and Orthworm are just better.
So I think most people reading this by now will know that Yoshiblaze tried running this as a fast Rain setter with presumably Defog. Interesting use case for it and I like the thought, but Rain is such a fringe playstyle and opting for this just for Defog instead of Uxie doesn't seem worthwhile to me. Actually even with Defog I think you just run Mandibuzz instead since the Speed difference isn't super bad. Outside of Rain I think the issues speak for themselves - way too frail, not strong enough, nothing else to really set itself apart outside of the admittedly pretty interesting movepool.
There are so many Pokemon I've already mentioned in this list with the same few positive attributes Klawf has. Everything near the top of this list has access to Stealth Rock and what equates to the same coverage options that this does, with a lot of those having some other tangible benefits to running them. Klawf's is Regenerator, which I don't think does anything for it here because this Pokemon doesn't really check anything. Maybe Muk but it's so easy to check Muk that you really don't need something that technically does it more persistently. Aggron is similarly resilient to chip damage and has a much more realizable offensive presence than this. There is just nothing to latch onto here.
I don't have much experience with Mightyena and its typing with Intimidate looked potentially interesting for this meta, so I thought I'd at least check it out even if I didn't expect much. I mean, hey, Muk and Slurpuff are both top threats here, if there's anywhere Mightyena could have a place to shine it'd be this one, since its typing is genuinely very good here. Problem is that this thing just does not check anything it's supposed to. Not only are its stats atrocious, its movepool is absolutely terrible, with all of its attacking options having very low base power and its utility options largely being gimmicky at best when put together. This thing's only way of even checking Kingambit is by clicking Yawn, which now that I've told you this it makes the move entirely a liability to click because you know the secret strat to killing this is just to smack it and then switch out when Yawn forces you to. Sucker Punch is the one thing of note but there are so many other Pokemon with better priority moves in this meta that there is no weight to that. So with all of that, you end up with a Pokemon that just cannot deal any damage or pose much of any threat maybe outside of fishing for Poison Fang and just invites in some of the most dangerous Pokemon in the meta instead of checking them. Be my guest if you want to use this thing, and if it ever manages to do something, seriously ask yourself if there was anything better you could put on your team. I bet you there'll be at minimum two other Pokemon you come up with unless you're seriously kidding yourself.
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