We all know how the insane power of Box Legends dominating the SV ubers meta, while the speed tier is also dominated by few mons including the box legends. Things like Recover nerf, Gholdengo, wallbreaker like Great Tusk, Chien Pao and all else just make stall looks stupid in the first day of the SV ubers, let alone teralization.
It seems from day one that stall is unviable, but surprisingly some stall actually dominates the ladder in the first few days as people is still figuring out the attacking combo, and recently some stalls also thrive quite well with one of my friend making astonishing 41-2 in the ladder.
Stall seems so powerful , until that day when annihilape show its fury and rage fisting every stall team.
Annihilape does not seem to be an uber relevant mon in the first impression. To start with, a nearly no resistantce typing combination is bad even with its good bulk with 110/80/90, as we all know how high the netural damage are right now in the SV ubers, let alone Flutter Mane seems killing it ten thousand times with its stab. On the other hand, unlike the former Ghost-fighting, Annihilape is slow, and its atk base is just a decent 115, while its only boosting move is Bulk up. It just doesn't seem attractive at all although I know it is stall breaking as F, I didn't see any viability of it in the current meta.
Thanks to
Separation video introducing it, and while I was suffering in the ladder, I asked Separation for a standard Annihilape set in OU and randomly snap it into one of my offense team, and it just starts shining.
Annihilape @ Leftovers
Ability: Defiant
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 248 HP / 240 SpD / 20 Spe
Careful Nature
- Bulk Up
- Rage Fist
- Drain Punch
- Taunt
Miraidon Specs Draco? 80% and one drain punch pulls annihilape out of 2HKO range.
Flutter Mane? not even close to kill, and rage fist just 0HKO it all the time.
Iron Bundle? doing at max 35 without specs LOL
Specs Chi YU? TANK and Drain punched :)
Chien Pao? do barely 55% and get 0HKO by drain punch :)
You name it. It just TANKS ALL.
Besides tanking, its signature move Rage Fist gets 50 BP boost everytime when it get hit by a damaging move, cap at 300 (or 350 i am not sure) BP. This means stalls can't spam attacking move because in stalls the attacking moves are so weak Annihilape just take it all day and has its rage fist count boosted up to full power where the unaware trios are just papers in front of that insane BP.
On the other hand, it only needs 2 hits to become a stab 150 bp move which already hits very hard against offense, let alone the ability of it to take hit, and ofc, the Teralization, providing it some useful resistance/immune in this meta, for instance, Fairy for fighting/Dark resist + Dragon immune or ground type for Electric immune.
It is such a great late game sweeper/ Stall breaker as a whole, especially its ability of shutting down stall is just insane. It nearly singlehandedly denied a play style, and with Annihilape existing, you can only play semi-stall, which also has tough time VS specs Miraidon, let alone Annihilape. All those mon that theortically tank box legends and flutter mane are just a bait for annihilape. Dachsbun, Scream tail and Even Ting Lu are good examples that how a passive mon will suffer against annihilape, to name a few.
And Ofc Annihilape is not perfect and the way to counter this mon is actually not hard. Just don't play stall or avoid using passive mon and Annihilape is nothing more than a sp-def tank. Hazards hurts especially Toxic Spikes, status limiting its output and longevitity, and powerful attack such as Great Tusk headlong rush and Flare blitz from koraidon also threatening annihilape and its teammate.
A few last words.
Annihilape is a weird mon. It obviously does not have the ability of two box legends and flutter mane to be generally threatening all the time, but its ability to dominate stalls and passive mons is just beyond the sky. I am not sure is that healthy to the tier with one mon denying a playstyle completely, and I am not going to comment on this as well.
I believe stall in pre-home ubers is definitely a much less viable playstyle if there is no signficant changes in the meta.
Thank you for reading.
Last Edit: I dont know how it is still OU