Also I don't wanna hear shit about how I pronounce Arceus I don't care please don't be the kind of person who cares how people pronounce the name of the fake space horse it's not worth it
Mail is the best niche item. Mail’s only effect is that it can’t be gotten rid of via trick knock off ect but this can be pretty useful on bulky Pokémon because one of the more common ways people handle walls if by tricking them a choice item. If say your blissey has a mail and a alakazam tries to choice trick it it’s now locked into trick and they have to switch out or if it’s their last mon they just lose
@@weinerbarf4209 mail can’t be knocked off, it’s sometimes used because it shows up as a held item on the team preview, so your opponent might use knock off or trick on them then nothing happens
Weakness policy can technically be activated if shedinja uses endure or a focus sash, and then you can fire off a slightly less mediocre shadow sneak before you get hit again next turn.
I’ll share a niche item I found some success with. In the Ubers tier back in generation 7, I used to run Binding Band on Jumpluff. Binding band increases the damage that a Pokémon deals with the residual damage of a trapping move. With jumpluff, I ran infestation, toxic, strength sap and encore. The reason why this strategy worked best in Ubers despite jumpluff being in the PU tier was because it was an excellent counter to primal Groudon. Most Groudon sets would lead with stealth rock, rock polish or bulk up. Jumpluff would use infestation, the Groudon would use a set up move, and then Jumpluff would outspeed and use encore. Even if Groudon used rock polish, Jumpluff would still outspeed because I ran chlorophyll to use groudon’s sun against it. Thanks to the binding band, the damage from the trap and toxic would eventually kill the Groudon. Even against some other threats, this set could survive against some physical attackers using strength sap. But the main thing was to take out Primal Groudon, who I believe was considered the strongest Pokémon in the tier at the time. I even made it into top 500 at some point with this set. Sadly Jumpluff got the dex axe and even still Groudon isn’t as common as it used to be, so this set isn’t reliable in gen 8. Still, it was a ton of fun beating up earth gods with a cottonball.
I think while this is a good way to catch players off guard it’s the sort of thing that’d really struggle against certain players, I notice especially in lower levels players tend to just take kos whenever they see them even if they’d rather use a setup move, and primal groudon has a pretty easy ko on jumpluff with either a rock or fire move
Fun fact about Berserk Gene: In generation 2, wild Mewtwos are hardcoded to always carry a Berserk Gene. There's so such thing as a wild Mewtwo in Gen2, and if there were, it would just consume the item turn1 without you get to do anything.
Great video! Unfortunately, you missed my favorite niche item interaction; in generation Fuck, Scrunguschu can actually use the Red Bingus very well whereas it's a suboptimal choice for every other Pokemon. This combination took me far back in the old days of the Chudrucker Invitational which was run in an abandoned warehouse down by the docks where the old Friendly's used to be (you know the place), where I piloted it to victory against a janitor who didn't speak English very well and a small dog. Also, upon thinking about it a second time, we may have actually been playing Yahtzee. But I don't think that changes much. You should've still brought it up, and now that I've corrected you on this, it makes me superior. In conclusion, Syria is a land of contrasts. Thank you for reading my book report.
I think Blue Bingus is better for Scrunguschu because it boosts the Scrunganger point of the pokemon holding it by 20% instead of Scrogus point but it depends on your playstyle
@@obiwancannoli1920 the blue bingus isn't as niche though, as a lot of other pokemon like mega bloapan, eebidaz, and biborman can utilize it effectively. though neither of those are even close to as popular as the yellow or even green bingus. my favourite niche item example is the husamo chain, which is rarely used on atsamorb in generation shit CU, most people assume that atsamorbs all run poingus orbs, which is what makes the husamo chain special.
Fun fact : there is actually a use for the chillian (idk if thats how its spelled) berry in generation 7 overused, defensive zapdos sometimes runs it to survive a +2 z giga impact from kartana
My favorite trick in Gen 5 that I came up with was Light Ball on Tornadus. Most people would switch in something to check him, and I would use fling to chuck Light Ball and paralyze them. This also opened up my Acrobatics to do more damage and legit no one ever expected it. Was it optimal? Not really, but it is what got me into competitive Pokemon.
@@usernametaken017 I found Fling to be quite useful in Gen 4 on Poison Heal Breloom. You can Spore something, then you're poisoned with Toxic Orb. Then often an opponent will send in Rotom as it deals with Breloom pretty well and then you smack it with a super-effective Fling which, while only a 30BP move with Toxic Orb, will badly poison the opponent with better accuracy than Toxic. It also gets around the Rotom tricking a choice item onto you as you'll fling the choice item
I do wanna point out something that wasn't mentioned, a huge part of VGC's item diversity is due to item clause. There are definitely items that would be extremely prevalent in various historic VGC tiers without item clause, most notably Sitrus berry. It's actually part of why nature berries were such a huge deal in Gen VII, because they provided a 50% pinch heal that dodged item clause since their effect was spread over 5 berries. The aggressive nature of the tier definitely helps the viability of certain items like Gems and the unique nature of doubles helps create situations where items like Weakness Policy and Room Service are much more viable than in singles, but item clause is probably the main contributor of item diversity in VGC.
I honestly wouldn't hate having Item Clause in Smogon Singles. It would be really nice to see more creativity and item diversity than Leftovers/Black Sludge, Boots and Choice items on everything.
Think my most fun niche build I did was in Gen VI OU with an anti-meta Talonflame. Gale Wings, Sitrus Berry, Flare Blitz, Acrobatics, Roost, Bulk Up. Jolly nature with a 92/252/8/0/28/128 EV spread. Even HP so it procs Sitrus on Stealth Rocks, 180 DEF so it perfectly lined up with Bulk Up scalings, 181 SpDEF to make Download Pokemon get ATK boosts, and 352 SPE to beat Adamant Talonflames' by 1. I think I still have highlights of eating Tyranitar Rock Slides with that thing. Miss those days.
Important update! Gems have been banned in gen 5 OU. While it does kinda suck to lose them in the one gen they were available, they've been pretty toxic for a bit, but recently a sizable amount of high level team builders started making hyper offense teams bases around abusing them that were pretty much unstoppable without seriously crippling yourself against anything that wasn't a hyper offense gem abuse team, so yeah, bye - bye somehow more broken z-crystals
Some bizarre facts about type-enhancing items, specifically those enhancing Normal-type moves. In Gen II, there are two items, yes, *two*, that boost the power of the holder's Normal-type moves by 10%: the Pink Bow and the Polkadot Bow. Then Gen III happened and for some reason, instead of keeping either item, Game Freak created a third one, the Silk Scarf, which has the exact same effect as the Pink Bow and the Polkadot Bow. And to think as of Gen VIII, the Fairy type is still lacking an item with a similar effect...
@Bel Especially odd since they could easily head over to Pokemon Tower and dig up the ol' Pink Bow and, much like what was done with a handful of former Normal-type 'mons, make it Fairy-type related
Another more modern niche of not holding an item: plenty of Pokemon in lower Sw/Sh tiers like running no item to better counter Knock Off and Poltergeist. [If you're not familiar, Poltergeist is a 110 BP physical Ghost-type move introduced as a tutor in Sword and Shield's DLC that attacks the opponent with their held item, only if they're holding an item. Its distribution is entitely limited to Mew, the Rotoms, and Ghost-types that aren't named Mimikyu, Dragapult, Aegislash, or Spectrier. It's not very common in high tiers since there aren't a lot of incredible users of the move, but it's more than capable of tearing through teams in places like NU] Plenty of physical walls like Vileplume and Appletun can go itemless to avoid being smacked around by Knock Off, a move which is arguably at its strongest with the lack of Mega Stones and Z-Crystals, and a ton of Psychics and Ghosts will sometimes hold no item in order to not be weak to Poltergeist. In general, the lower down the tiering ladder you go, the greater diversity in items
I like running Poltergeist on Shedinja in OU, as it's a strong physical Ghost STAB that doesn't proc rocky helmet/flame body/etc. Yes I run Shedinja in OU, it's fun as hell to force a hard switch
There is actually one strat with normal gem in more recent gens, with Fake Out + Unburden for a one turn guaranteed speed boost unless the opponent has the rare Inner Focus
Inner focus won't stop the normal gem from going off since the damage still happens even though they won't be stunned. Queenly Majesty, Psychic Terrain, or ghost typing will, though. Also I absolutely hate fighting hitmonlee, it's got like 6 different strong offensive sets that you need to guess and react to. Ghost switchin's decent for many of them (reckless HJK, fake out normal gem, white herb+CC, etc.) but will also typically immediately die to choice band knockoff or white herb + curse knock off.
Hitmonlee is the only mon that ran non flying gem on unburden sets (probs bc it doesn't learn acrobatics) and only did so in gen 5 and somewhat in gen 6, although in the latter it wasn't its best set. In gen 7 its unburden sets ran curse+white herb to trigger unburden and in gen 8 it uses terrain seeds like hawlucha
@@mario-nk7be I played a ton of gen7ru, though most of it admittedly at and below 1500. Normal Gem Hitmonlee was maybe a third of the sets that I saw; completely free setup does have a real niche over curse, though I agree curse (or CC) is overall better, especially since hitmonlee's set variety should be enough by itself to generate free turns for you against cautious opponents.
My favorite niche item is the Custap Berry, a pinch berry that gives your move priority. It's best known for being used on Wobbuffett, which upon getting to low health can use Destiny Bond, which will gain priority and activate before the opponent's move, potentially scoring a free KO. It's also used on Wynaut on occasion, but since it's much less bulky it's more likely to get OHKOed.
Item Clause is one of my favorite parts of Vgc, it really forces you to really consider your team comp and item usage because you can only use an item once on your team
Item Clause is something I used to hate about VGC back around 2011/12 when I started, but I think it's fine now that there are so many good items in the newer games.
Little correction for the gen 6 Normal Gem. It was used by one single pokemon very rarely because it has a better set with White Herb for the same ability. Hitmonlee could use Fake Out+Normal Gem to activate Unburden. However, it's far outclassed by White Herb+Curse because you actually boost your stats. But yeah, that's literally the only use for Normal Gem, activating Unburden, which other items do far better.
1 little correction, while it is true that hitmonlee used that in Gen 7, it actually can't learn curse in Gen 6. (even though it gets it via Gen 2 transfer, it is for some reason not obtainable in gen 6)
Two super niche items are TR71 and TR43. Fling is a pretty cool move that can have 130 base power if you're using Iron Ball, but that halves your speed. In Gen 8, Fling will copy the base power of the move that the TR has (TR71 is Leaf Storm and TR43 is Overheat). Because of this you can get a max-power fling without halving your speed.
The other cool use of Fling (used to be) Dread Plate. It had a similar interaction to Flying Gem Acrobatics, where the Plate would boost Fling's power from 90 to 108. Not on par with Iron Ball, but without the speed drop. I used it once or twice on some wacky unburden sets.
One I'm really fond of is gen 6 Kingdra. With the changes made to how Critical Hit boosting stages work, a Sniper Kingdra that uses Focus Energy while holding Scope Lens will _always_ crit after the Focus Energy. Cue Draco Meteor crit spam. It's not even that good, but man is it fun.
I actually did something not unlike the Leftovers-Thief interaction in Gen 8 some time ago! See, Knock Off is so powerful in Gen 6-onwards that some Pokemon opt to just not run an item specifically so they can take Knock Off more effectively. Slowbro was among these Pokemon, being a physical wall that is also weak to Knock Off. I was using Slowbro on a team with Indeedee-M, a Pokemon with the Psychic Surge ability. Psychic Surge causes the Psychic Terrain field condition when the Pokemon is sent into battle; Indeedee-M could use it with an attack called Expanding Force to put out some pretty solid damage. But terrains also trigger specific Seed items; one-use items that boost a defensive stat when the Pokemon is sent out into a particular terrain. The only one that ever usually sees use is Electric Seed on Hawlucha so it can trigger Unburden and get the Acrobatics boost when paired with Tapu Koko, itself an example of a niche item application. So, I slapped a Psychic Seed on my Slowbro. The end result was the same Knock Off resistance as running no item, plus a Sp. Defense boost the first time I sent it into battle. Paired quite nicely with the pressure put on by Future Sight, even if it ultimately wasn't game-changing. Experiment, kids! You might end up advancing the meta, or at least coming up with some heat anti-meta trick that ends up actually being decent.
People usually like colbur berry for that purpose because it's basically the same thing but the initial knock off is way weaker. No item is more for poltergeist than knock off if it's ever ran
Not sure if it's niche since honestly it's pretty terrible but I used to run a set with Shuckle using Binding Band. It would double the damage of binding moves damage and Shuckle happens to get 3 of them. Infestation, Wrap, and Sand Tomb and the 4th move would either be Toxic, Rest, or Power Trick depending what I was feeling. The idea was assuming you landed all 3 hits the opponent would have taken a minimum of 6/8th of their health of damage along with the initial hits and would die on turn 4. Binding Band was buffed to do 1/6th so on the 3rd turn assuming they didn't heal or you missed you should be able to kill them. The main idea being Shuckle should be bulky enough to survive, people would immediately try to Taunt it to shut it down and getting you a free turn, and they'd be trapped so they couldn't switch out. Of course there's a lot wrong with it like the low accuracy of Wrap, the fact if they're immune to Wrap/Sand Tomb you're down a move, if they have any recovery, and of course the threat of them setting up on you. But it was still a fun set to pull out on friends and troll with, even sometimes on those online competitions.
I like expert belt on Golurk, not for high ladder competitive play, just to mess with people because Golurk gets absolutely Bananas coverage, really fun to fake a trick set.
Throat spray is a very fun niche item w shit it’s genuinely good on. It gives u a special attack boost when using a sound move so many boomburst mons like to use it but also: clangorous soul is a sound move too and on Kommo-o the one mon who uses the move, it’s insane
10:10 yet another reason why Gen 5 is goated. The later gym leaders, Elite 4 members and post game bosses all had good relevant items on their pokemon that actually had an impact
They also uses Items quite creatively too. My favorite set is Iris Challenge Mode Lapras@Zoom Lens Hydro Pump/Thunder/Blizzard/Sing. Zoom Lens boost your Accuracy by 20% if you're slower, so Lapras will take a hit and then either put you to sleep or hit you with a really powerful Move. Not sure how meta it is, but it's quite fun.
@@Pika250 yeah, but you can just trip while walking down the stairs then proceed to Arthur Dent your way passed the all of that if you really want to, so it only half counts.
What's weird about the idea of own tempo + berserk gene is that there aren't that many Pokémon with the ability that would greatly benefit from it. If it were both attack and special attack raised by 2 stages (and then confused) then axing it would make more sense.
It kinda would’ve been cool in gen 3 specifically because only lickitung and spinda would’ve benefitted it, and the idea of spinda going berserk and sweeping teams is hilarious, even if would likely not work due to both mons having abysmal speed.
Wouldn't people try using Trick to force it onto an opponent like a permanent Swagger effect? It's already a luck based setup since your Pokémon might just keep hitting itself in confusion over and over anyway but if you do pull it off now your opponent is stuck with a perma-Swagger confused state. Swagger was banned a while back and I imagine people trying to avoid the ban by using the Berserk Gene and Trick in a similar way would get it banned anyway. Like imagine a prankster user like Liepard getting lucky on turn one and managing to Trick the Gene onto you even if you outspeed it. Then you're just stuck with this confused mon on your team waiting for it to die when it's out or trying to brute force through the confusion to do something. Throw it on a special attacker or an opponents wall especially and you've essentially gimped a core member of their team in a very luck based and annoying way as even if they try to power through the confusion they're unlikely to have a physical move to even benefit from it. Granted these are later gens but I imagine a few Pokémon with Prankster/Unaware could troll with it and make every game against them using the combo a dice roll.
@@Flaming_Rok Ah I wasn't aware it was actually consumed. Still a Klutz Trick user could make usage of it for a luck based strategy to piss the opponent off like you said.
I would like to thank you Big Yellow. My DPP OU Life Orb Empoleon and Choice Scarf Porygon-Z will not be appreciated in its time, but will be vindicated by history.
Quick claw and king’s rock are the funniest items because they can either do jack all or turn a game around if the stars align. Mousehold king’s rock was a war crime though.
The Magneton/Skarmory match up reminded me of the Shed Shell item to counter trapping abilities. It was an interesting dynamic of having a rarely used item for such an oppressive ability
Black glasses, the dark type boosting item is used in gen 8 over Life Orb on Bisharp, even though the boost is less adamant+black glasses is more than enough most of the cases and the lack of recoil lets bisharp stay against some not so strong fairies, survive moonblast and hit them with iron head
there has generally been a trend away from life orb and into items that offer no draw back in recent years though. I think Boots made people realize how good it is not to have your pokemon take chip damage.
I thought Knock Off was great in gen 7 when there are always two mons on a given team that can switch into it and not lose an item. In gen 6 it was definitely on the strong side, and gen 8/9 its OP.
@That's absolutely true, but since they also introduced one of the most OP items ever with heavy duty boots in Gen 8, I'm terrified to think of how hard it would be to break us all team if you couldn't remove some of their boots. DeathScyther006
I doubt the Berserk Gene was axed for balance reasons... GF has some really bizarre priorities concerning balance, and a one-off item in one generation isn't gonna be a target for balance adjustments. I think it's more likely that there was a mewtwo scenario planned but scrapped, and its programmed held item was left in rather than scrapped as well The idea for Berserk Gene would live on in Swagger, but the item itself would likely be seen as pointless, rather than OP
Not even mentioning the Little Timmy who was running Big Root Nidoqueen smh. (The backstory for this if you don't know, someone matched into this little kid on Showdown who was just using whatever because he wanted to because he was a little kid. His opponent posted screenshots to 4chan. Don't know what the intentions were, but the people in that thread crowned him a god amongst men and went and spectated his matches and trash talked his opponents until many of them gave up. It's a wholesome story)
My favorite niche item is light ball There’s actually a ton of random shit that occasionally runs light ball with fling in BSS to surprise something with paralysis. It’s super annoying but honestly kinda cool when you see it work
It's funny because even if Explosion was still an amazing and common enough move to warrant dedicating an item (Normal Gem) for, it would still be blatantly outclassed by Life Orb since the move KOs you anyway (unless you were trying to bluff I guess). That being said I have seen Normal Gem Explosion Lando-T this gen even, so the madmen are still out there.
Considering in vgc and bss, there are item clauses. I'd can totally buy that people would use the gem on the dedicated exploder so that the orb could be on a longer living attacker.
Coming back to this, Scrunguschu definitely did not need an evolution, Crugunbaschu with Red Bingus been a very oppressive presence in the current meta. Causing even Generation Fuck S-tier staple Golubaspecks to drop to the tier below.
Extremely stupidly niche things in Pokemon are probably some of the funniest things to learn about. See also my single most favorite example of this, Ariados being viable in Gen IV Ubers against Darkrai. It is absolutely the stupidest shit I've ever heard and I _love it._ I'm picturing legendary of nightmares Darkrai sitting there just nervously leering at Spid.
Also Ariados had a pretty good match up against Deoxys-Speed which was probably the most common lead in gen 4 ubers (Ariados also has toxic Spikes so it actually had a niche in gen 4 ubers as a lead)
@@shudeepta Yeah, that's it. It kind of fucked the common DeoSpeed over while also being capable of screwing with Darkrai by busting its Focus Sash with Shadow Sneak and getting a Toxic Spike of its own before croaking, while being unable of being put to sleep thanks to Insomnia. Basically it was really good against two of the most common leads in the Ubers tier. And that's absolutely _hilarious._
I will say that in the recent games, they have given the boss Trainers held items. I mean, look at Cynthia's BDSP team compared to her DP team and it's almost night and day in terms of how viable either team is in competitive (provided you don't change a single thing)
A fun example in Gen 8 (which I know wasn't covered but is cool enough to mention) is that some boosting Galarian Slowbro variants run Quick Claw. If you run it alongside Quick Draw, the chance is around 44% to activate one of the two in any given turn. This can completely turn the tides against using fast aggression to try and beat or force out its boosting sets. Normally an item with more consistency to it would be more ideal, but this is just consistent enough to have merit. It currently runs this alongside Nasty Plot in UU and used to run it with Belly Drum in OU, with some pretty hilarious tournament matches coming from that.
As someone who has played competitive mons for a number of years and knows a lot of the game’s mechanics these videos still manage to be super interesting. Keep up the great work!
Charcoal Moltres is used pretty often in GSC though I don't know what the power boost actually allows it to hit. Definitely the biggest use for the type boosting items.
Pretty sure it's just for general damage. Molt in GSC is just good at spamming fire moves and being hard to switch in to, and since it's kind of hard to get in, it wants as much damage as possible when it does get in.
It's such a silly thing but Sneasler in Gen9 can theoretically run Big Nugget and have a reason for it. As of SwSh, Big Nugget causes Fling to have 130BP, matching Iron Ball's Fling damage without actually having to deal with the halved speed. In Gen8 I have no idea what it's used for, but in Gen9 you can put this thing on Jolly Sneasler to have a 62.5% chance to OHKO NP/choice variants of Gholdengo, which otherwise would be 2HKO even against CB Sneasler's Night Slash/Shadow Claw. It is kinda silly and inconsistent, but it's damn fun.
Once again, I enter an uneducated poke-scrub here for the fighting games, and leave an uneducated poke-scrub having watched a 22 minute video, hitting the thumbs up, and leaving a comment for the algorithm. For real though, as someone that has no real interest in the subject matter, I was once again entertained and informed. Good Work!
@@BigYellowSilly Just so you know what I appreciate so much about your content. I'm assuming that you're approaching your pokemon content with someone exactly like me in mind. I'm explicitly from your FGC audience, so rather then fill your video with impregnable jargon and already assume that I would have any prior knowledge, you really set out to educate exactly why everything works holistically in the bigger picture so I get a better sense of what's what. It gives me the feeling like you know that I'm brand new to things so you're catching me up from scratch with brief history lessons in between tactical maneuvers like I walked into a real life pokemon gym just in WAY over my head and you took pity on me.
Red Card is pretty interesting aswell: is a type of consumable held item introduced in Generation V. If the holder is hit by another Pokémon's damaging move, it switches out the attacker. I have met few Eject Button users too: is a type of consumable held item introduced in Generation V. It switches out the holder if it is hit by a damaging move.
Running itemless Pokemon nowadays has one other upside: immunity to Poltergeist. As a countermeasure for this, some Poltergeist users, especially Banded ones, run Trick to ensure the target will be hit by Poltergeist.
protective pads on blaziken is really cool imo.... you can just endure to get to 1hp (or sd if you expect a switch/ weak move)...get to +1 speed... have a 200bp reversal... bait in the rocky helmet mon or rough skin tank and kill it off. Once the opponent is out of priority users (or has one in the back) he will gladly send whatever is left of ferro, corvi or chomp to end you and save his offensive pressure. This little tech turned around more games for me than you would expect.
Power herb is a niche item I've used in the past, especially before Gen 7 when we had z moves. It's especially good for getting in a solar beam when using a fire type, using sky attack on hawlucha before the terrain seeds were created. Then again, maybe these days it's not considered niche given geomancy and meteor beam?
Unrelated to competitive, but Berserk Gene was mentioned outside of Gold/Silver/Crystal. In Detective Pikachu, the Berserk Gene is included in the R drug, which make Pokemon into powerful but uncontrollable beasts.
Some other Niche items to mention would be the Lens items (zoom, scope, wide) especially on mons running a lot of less accurate moves or high crit chance moves, very niche but I've seen it a few times especially the accuracy ones with pokemon running Stone edge. Also a fun little tech I'd do from time to time in gen 5 was Fling Iron ball Bisharp for a 1 time 130 base power stab dark type physical attack, managed to trip up a few people with it for some spicy OHKO's. Even then Iron ball is super niche and honestly outright bad in my opinion since it Halves the holder's speed.
I still remember using a leichi berry on golem in a modern generation (I don't remember which one, probably gen 7) Basically you would use rock polish and hope that the opponent would hit you hard enough to activate sturdy and make you eat the leichi berry so you had a +2 speed and +1 attack golem, I even gave it sucker punch to beat other people's priority moves Good times
On the concept of legal evasion a funny thing of item + ability is one of the nature berries with tangled feet, except the nature berry is for the wrong nature so you get confused
Back in gen 5 I used choice specs Blissey for a couple of weeks in ou battles. Several times I switched into a Latias or something and the players would use Trick, and they would be confused afterwards. It was pretty funny.
The brightpowder percentage u said was right on the money. That's impressive, I've been working on my mental math for a little bit and I woulda not known it was that 😅. Good vid. Seen it a few times already but keep it up
I had a friend who would run normal gem ambipom with fake out and then u-turn. Not the best but definitely could be a big chunk of free damage against some pokemon.
This was pretty viable in gen 6 because most teams didn't have pokemon faster than base 110 outside of scarf. It wasn't that great, but it was viable. Also notable is Ambipom's ability to 2hko Rotom-W with Double Hit if you run banded, but it needs adamant nature to guarantee so probably not worth it. Later gens see a lot more blistering fast pokemon, so Ambipom is way less usable.
I just found this channel and I love these types of competitive analysis/discussion videos! Im mostly a VGC guy so these types of videos for singles is super interesting!
Soft Sand is one of my favorite niche items to run specifically on Lando-T. You can run smack down as another niche move to go all in on EQ, letting you run your other 2 moves as support/coverage or good good ol' uturn.
Another funny niche item: Shell Bell. It can be used by level 1 Pokemon with endeavor and sturdy (Togedemaru, Aron) in order to bring them back to full and refilling the Sturdy ability (unlike Focus Sash, Sturdy can activate more than once) while dealing huge damage to the other Pokemon.
One of my favourite uses of a niche item is electric seed on hawlucha. When paired with tapu koko to set up electric terrain it lets you activate unburden and get the boost to acrobatics immediately. I enjoyed this so much that at the beginning of gen 8 before the tapus were added back I tried to recreate it with pincurchin because it's the only other pokemon with electric surge
@@mortomultiverse8778 Thats my bad, I phrased it wrong. I meant that the electric seed has little to no use outside of this one situation not that the strategy itself is uncommon (Because it is very common on hawlucha sets)
@@goronberry Yeah, got it. There's also a pretty cool set with Koko that runs calm mind, stored power, thunderbolt and roost with the electric seed. Of course it's not the most optimal set, but when it works it's pretty fire
a niche strategy is to use choice band on a fast special attacker(like alakazam)who also runs trick. nobody can see this coming,and they are almost always forced to switch.
Berserk gene would have been so cool to keep, especially for doubles. Here is how you fix the own tempo thing. Make the attack boost dependent on the confusion. Say it has 2 effects. 1 passive, and 1 consumable. 1. Whenever the holder switches in: confuse it. This is not one time use. 2. If the user becomes confused: raise attack by 2 stages. This consumes and deletes the item. I could see so many cool leads with berserk gene + a heal bell/aromatherapy partner in doubles. Would be neat to see, shame it never came back
Honestly I'd just keep it as is, there aren't exactly many pokemon with own tempo that could really take advantage of a big +2 attack bonus, like congratulations licklicky now gets a free swords dance, it still has a bad offensive typing and medicore move pool
I know you said that hail has never really been good, but it's been seeing some use recently in OU (and some LC). Mainly in tandam with the Slush Rush ability, Aurora Veil, Weather Ball, and Arctozolt's 'Bolt Beak' move (Sometimes Arctovish and Fishious Rend). It's so cool to see what had always been the "worst" weather see use in top tier OU matches!
@@BigYellowSilly It's crazy. It's actually considered by many to be the best weather right now. Arctozolt is so dangerous that just alolan ninetales + zolt is enough to make hail worth it without wasting a lot of team slots on something with hard checks like sand has.
@@shellnut8224 ehhh that's slightly disingenuous. I mean its stats are shit, it gets outrun by literally any scarfer even in the hail, hell it has to run jolly just to outrun dragapult (which can potentially OHKO it with draco / fire blast) and zeraora (which is immune to bolt beak and can also OHKO it with CC), it's weak to rocks so you either have to run boots and not have a power boost or just have it die super quickly, also bolt beak gets neutered by priority
bro i just found your videos and straight up regardless of the info or how well theyre structured or whatever, i dont even stay for the pokemon content, your one liner deliveries are fucking gold. 100% might wanna persue stand up if youtube doesnt work out for ya man
when i used to play gen 8 i messed around with the new items it had to offer, like blunder policy (+2 speed after a miss) or throat spray (+1 spatk after using a sound move), my favorite users of them being hustle dracozolt and the powerful toxtricity, who even had a cool niche at some point using a mixed shift gear set, where it could smack blisseys with drain punch and melt every other thing w/ overdrive and boomburst. bonus thing: i really loved using specs magnezone with teleport to fill in its last move slot, so i could swap into a mon mag threatens, bait the switch, and teleport out (gen 8 changed the mechanics of port, making it a negative priority pivot move, pretty funny)
Kinda surprised you didn't bring up the Lopunny Swap strategy. Given its crazy good base speed, access to Switcheroo and Klutz it can easily dump an item like Iron Ball, Flame/Poison Orb or a Choice Item on a lead that really doesn't appreciate the sentiment.
It's pretty unviable, but I've recently been having a lot of fun with custap berry on sturdy shuckle with power trick. If I'm lucky, it can knock out 2 of an opponent's pokemon. Custap berry is a really fun item, but it's kind of a shame that the priority it gives is actually only 1. If the opponent uses a priority move to off the one health shuckle, it will be completely stopped in its tracks.
Have you heard about blunder policy Dracozolt? Since it often runs Hustle as its ability, missing any move will double your speed, allowing you to both hit with Bolt Beak's full power and use a boosted stomping tantrum
i legit had no idea Blunder Policy even existed until a week ago when some galarian articuno ran it with hurricane. odd item but he swept my ass with it so i guess it works
Hey! Time ago I read Heatran Gen 4 sets in its smogon set, and this video reminded me of Magnyfying Glass Heatran. I should test that in this newer gen You improve your trapping move with 75% accuraty, and you increase your Toxic accuricy, since is now 90% accurate. Cool video lad, i like when you talk about pokemon :)
My favorite goofy set with a niche item was subseed cacturne with brightpowder in the sand. Quite a bit like the froslass set discussed here, though it uses focus punch and seed chip to get it's KOs. In gen 4 it can run sucker punch as well.
Normal gem actually does have a use case post nerfs. In Showdown's 1v1 metagame, one of my favorite sets to run was normal gem Hitmonlee with unburden. This is great against choice scarf users as well as Sturdy users, both being popular in the format. Unburden boosted Hitmonlee outspeeds essentially every scarf user, and fakeout obviously counters sturdy, and the chip damage from the gem boosted fakeout. Of course this is a very untraditional metagame, but im sure it could still work as a niche option in whatever lower tier that Hitmonlee is in. No idea why I felt like writing this out on a 2.5 year old video
I remember when Rocky Helmet was a niche pick for Ferrothorns that wanted to be a bit more damaging, and then Mega Kang came out and they all started running the item and it never really stopped being ran, at least not in gen 6.
I remember seeing a fair bit of Unburden Fake Out Normal Gem Hawlucha in gen 6, because it would basically get a free agility into STAB Acrobatics. But that is literally the only instance of Normal Gem in gen 6 I can remember
Also I don't wanna hear shit about how I pronounce Arceus I don't care please don't be the kind of person who cares how people pronounce the name of the fake space horse it's not worth it
I wonder what child will say this when you put this down already, like the person under me
So nvm about my first reply to an extent because I pronounce it that way too.
i love playing red arceus in melty
@@free_playstation_2 I must admit that I get mildly annoyed when people call her "Arcade"
Arseus is the best pronunciation!
"I don't really care if fuckin Scrunguschu can utilize the Red Bingus pretty well in Generation Fuck"
This is a beautiful sentence
sonichu lore is getting pretty deep
1:05
@@3kojimbles895 both of these are legendary!
Best part of the video
Ah, of course, the legendary Red Bingus.
Mail is the best niche item. Mail’s only effect is that it can’t be gotten rid of via trick knock off ect but this can be pretty useful on bulky Pokémon because one of the more common ways people handle walls if by tricking them a choice item. If say your blissey has a mail and a alakazam tries to choice trick it it’s now locked into trick and they have to switch out or if it’s their last mon they just lose
Wait that's actually kind of nutty, what the fuck
And funnily enough I already have a counter to that
Klutz
Mail was actually used occasionally on chansey in gen 4 UU to prevent being tricked a choice item lmao
I believe mail actually can be knocked off/thiefed, it just can't be tricked.
@@weinerbarf4209 mail can’t be knocked off, it’s sometimes used because it shows up as a held item on the team preview, so your opponent might use knock off or trick on them then nothing happens
That's the dumbest, stupidest, most horrible idea I have ever heard.
You have a pokepaste link to a team with this?
My favorite item niche is Weakness Policy Shedinja.
life orb is more optimal imo
Don't act like Sticky Barb isn't the best Shedinja item around
Weakness policy can technically be activated if shedinja uses endure or a focus sash, and then you can fire off a slightly less mediocre shadow sneak before you get hit again next turn.
@@xmgaming2444 if its sash it cant use weakness policy
I prefer Life Orb Shedinja personally. Just gotta get that extra damage off!
I’ll share a niche item I found some success with. In the Ubers tier back in generation 7, I used to run Binding Band on Jumpluff. Binding band increases the damage that a Pokémon deals with the residual damage of a trapping move. With jumpluff, I ran infestation, toxic, strength sap and encore. The reason why this strategy worked best in Ubers despite jumpluff being in the PU tier was because it was an excellent counter to primal Groudon. Most Groudon sets would lead with stealth rock, rock polish or bulk up. Jumpluff would use infestation, the Groudon would use a set up move, and then Jumpluff would outspeed and use encore. Even if Groudon used rock polish, Jumpluff would still outspeed because I ran chlorophyll to use groudon’s sun against it. Thanks to the binding band, the damage from the trap and toxic would eventually kill the Groudon. Even against some other threats, this set could survive against some physical attackers using strength sap. But the main thing was to take out Primal Groudon, who I believe was considered the strongest Pokémon in the tier at the time. I even made it into top 500 at some point with this set. Sadly Jumpluff got the dex axe and even still Groudon isn’t as common as it used to be, so this set isn’t reliable in gen 8. Still, it was a ton of fun beating up earth gods with a cottonball.
That's crazy creative, love the idea
I've seen Binding Band on Heatran before, so Magma Storm + Protect does more damage before Heatran switches out.
the best thing is to look at the meta and do something pretty funny
I think while this is a good way to catch players off guard it’s the sort of thing that’d really struggle against certain players, I notice especially in lower levels players tend to just take kos whenever they see them even if they’d rather use a setup move, and primal groudon has a pretty easy ko on jumpluff with either a rock or fire move
I once ran a pain split bulky Mimikyu with Toxic, it bodied a Primal Groundon once.
Fun fact about Berserk Gene: In generation 2, wild Mewtwos are hardcoded to always carry a Berserk Gene. There's so such thing as a wild Mewtwo in Gen2, and if there were, it would just consume the item turn1 without you get to do anything.
My favorite phisical attacker, mewtwo
@@usernametaken017Submission Mewtwo is one of the most hilarious things in Gen 1 Ubers.
Great video! Unfortunately, you missed my favorite niche item interaction; in generation Fuck, Scrunguschu can actually use the Red Bingus very well whereas it's a suboptimal choice for every other Pokemon. This combination took me far back in the old days of the Chudrucker Invitational which was run in an abandoned warehouse down by the docks where the old Friendly's used to be (you know the place), where I piloted it to victory against a janitor who didn't speak English very well and a small dog. Also, upon thinking about it a second time, we may have actually been playing Yahtzee. But I don't think that changes much. You should've still brought it up, and now that I've corrected you on this, it makes me superior. In conclusion, Syria is a land of contrasts. Thank you for reading my book report.
I think Blue Bingus is better for Scrunguschu because it boosts the Scrunganger point of the pokemon holding it by 20% instead of Scrogus point but it depends on your playstyle
@@obiwancannoli1920 the blue bingus isn't as niche though, as a lot of other pokemon like mega bloapan, eebidaz, and biborman can utilize it effectively. though neither of those are even close to as popular as the yellow or even green bingus. my favourite niche item example is the husamo chain, which is rarely used on atsamorb in generation shit CU, most people assume that atsamorbs all run poingus orbs, which is what makes the husamo chain special.
@@StarrDust12 among us
In generation crap, the Red Bingus is actually a great item
the ultra bingus was banned in anything goes. just reminding u
Fun fact : there is actually a use for the chillian (idk if thats how its spelled) berry in generation 7 overused, defensive zapdos sometimes runs it to survive a +2 z giga impact from kartana
That's pretty sick, never dabbled in Gen 7 so that's really cool to hear
Really rare to see but it's a cool tech. Anything to actually check kartana.
@@BigYellowSilly Gen 7 OU is one of the most fun metas imo. I recommend it if you just wanna learn another gen.
Absolutely not meta at all, but I actually ran one in an emerald rom hack to reduce damage from a swellow's boomburst
@@maagic2031 I would agree. Gen 7 OU is absolutely insane and it's super fun.
My favorite trick in Gen 5 that I came up with was Light Ball on Tornadus. Most people would switch in something to check him, and I would use fling to chuck Light Ball and paralyze them. This also opened up my Acrobatics to do more damage and legit no one ever expected it. Was it optimal? Not really, but it is what got me into competitive Pokemon.
Omg that sounds really cool actually.
And I bet you had so much more fun with that than an optimized strat
Dude this is actually so fucking cool
Fling is such a cool move, opens up a lot of interesting (niche) strats
@@usernametaken017 I found Fling to be quite useful in Gen 4 on Poison Heal Breloom. You can Spore something, then you're poisoned with Toxic Orb. Then often an opponent will send in Rotom as it deals with Breloom pretty well and then you smack it with a super-effective Fling which, while only a 30BP move with Toxic Orb, will badly poison the opponent with better accuracy than Toxic. It also gets around the Rotom tricking a choice item onto you as you'll fling the choice item
I do wanna point out something that wasn't mentioned, a huge part of VGC's item diversity is due to item clause. There are definitely items that would be extremely prevalent in various historic VGC tiers without item clause, most notably Sitrus berry. It's actually part of why nature berries were such a huge deal in Gen VII, because they provided a 50% pinch heal that dodged item clause since their effect was spread over 5 berries. The aggressive nature of the tier definitely helps the viability of certain items like Gems and the unique nature of doubles helps create situations where items like Weakness Policy and Room Service are much more viable than in singles, but item clause is probably the main contributor of item diversity in VGC.
As someone less versed in VGC, what *is* item clause?
@@JulieLamia No duplicate held items on your team.
I honestly wouldn't hate having Item Clause in Smogon Singles. It would be really nice to see more creativity and item diversity than Leftovers/Black Sludge, Boots and Choice items on everything.
@@FatherOfGray Even more than that, imagine Little Cup where only one Pokémon on each team could have Eviolite
@@CyberchaoX wait that's not already a rule?
Interesting to note: Berserk Gene *is* referenced in later games, specifically Detective Pikachu. The drug "R" is said to be made from it.
god damm I forgot the detective pikachu was a game like a year before it was a movie
Yeah, that was sick to have it not only mentioned again, but a major plot point
My new headcanon is that Berserk gene was outlawed which is why we don't find it anymore.
Think my most fun niche build I did was in Gen VI OU with an anti-meta Talonflame. Gale Wings, Sitrus Berry, Flare Blitz, Acrobatics, Roost, Bulk Up. Jolly nature with a 92/252/8/0/28/128 EV spread. Even HP so it procs Sitrus on Stealth Rocks, 180 DEF so it perfectly lined up with Bulk Up scalings, 181 SpDEF to make Download Pokemon get ATK boosts, and 352 SPE to beat Adamant Talonflames' by 1. I think I still have highlights of eating Tyranitar Rock Slides with that thing. Miss those days.
that sounds like some glorious ev testing that I wish I had the patience for
man out here with the emvee ev spreads
That sounds like a Romhack Set
chinese sitrus talonflame
Important update! Gems have been banned in gen 5 OU. While it does kinda suck to lose them in the one gen they were available, they've been pretty toxic for a bit, but recently a sizable amount of high level team builders started making hyper offense teams bases around abusing them that were pretty much unstoppable without seriously crippling yourself against anything that wasn't a hyper offense gem abuse team, so yeah, bye - bye somehow more broken z-crystals
Sitrus berry ferrothorn to check cloyster was wack to see
Some bizarre facts about type-enhancing items, specifically those enhancing Normal-type moves.
In Gen II, there are two items, yes, *two*, that boost the power of the holder's Normal-type moves by 10%: the Pink Bow and the Polkadot Bow.
Then Gen III happened and for some reason, instead of keeping either item, Game Freak created a third one, the Silk Scarf, which has the exact same effect as the Pink Bow and the Polkadot Bow.
And to think as of Gen VIII, the Fairy type is still lacking an item with a similar effect...
I never knew Gen 8 had no item like that, that's super odd but at the same time Fairy is busted enough as is lmao
@Bel
Especially odd since they could easily head over to Pokemon Tower and dig up the ol' Pink Bow and, much like what was done with a handful of former Normal-type 'mons, make it Fairy-type related
@Bel yeah this is actually super weird. Fairy Plate is now the only plate in the games because of this.
@@WhimsicottFanatic It's pink and it's cute, what more does Game Freak want.
@deadlyqueen3766 Are plates just not a thing anymore? I don't keep up with the newest gen. What about Arceus?
Scrunguschu was actually kind of broken though ngl
Goddamn that's obviously what he said now that I've read it
I kept thinking it was "Strongestchu" :|
Did Big Yellow give me permission to use Oran Berry Blissey to see if it would develop the metagame?
Go
Top the ladder
Believe in the berry
ORAN BERRY BLEESEY??!??
Oran berry garbodor
Blissey does work well with berry
Ah good old endeavour Blissey. Works well with berri.
Berserk gene with tangled feet would have been hilarious to see. Also probably ban worthy. Starting with an SD and Double team
Tangled feet is actually 3 double teams lol
Definitely would be banned (evasion clause)
Angry panicked Dodrio noises
i will call that strat cuntfusion
Same with Own Tempo and Unburden. Imagine Sand Rush Dracovish on Mist with the Berserk Gene…
Another more modern niche of not holding an item: plenty of Pokemon in lower Sw/Sh tiers like running no item to better counter Knock Off and Poltergeist.
[If you're not familiar, Poltergeist is a 110 BP physical Ghost-type move introduced as a tutor in Sword and Shield's DLC that attacks the opponent with their held item, only if they're holding an item. Its distribution is entitely limited to Mew, the Rotoms, and Ghost-types that aren't named Mimikyu, Dragapult, Aegislash, or Spectrier. It's not very common in high tiers since there aren't a lot of incredible users of the move, but it's more than capable of tearing through teams in places like NU]
Plenty of physical walls like Vileplume and Appletun can go itemless to avoid being smacked around by Knock Off, a move which is arguably at its strongest with the lack of Mega Stones and Z-Crystals, and a ton of Psychics and Ghosts will sometimes hold no item in order to not be weak to Poltergeist. In general, the lower down the tiering ladder you go, the greater diversity in items
That's true, I personally used no item Dhelmise to avoid beeing smacked by Poltergeist Golurks
Xatu in NU seem to pretty much entirely run no item to deal with non-trick variants of Golurk.
I like running Poltergeist on Shedinja in OU, as it's a strong physical Ghost STAB that doesn't proc rocky helmet/flame body/etc. Yes I run Shedinja in OU, it's fun as hell to force a hard switch
There is actually one strat with normal gem in more recent gens, with Fake Out + Unburden for a one turn guaranteed speed boost unless the opponent has the rare Inner Focus
Inner focus won't stop the normal gem from going off since the damage still happens even though they won't be stunned. Queenly Majesty, Psychic Terrain, or ghost typing will, though. Also I absolutely hate fighting hitmonlee, it's got like 6 different strong offensive sets that you need to guess and react to. Ghost switchin's decent for many of them (reckless HJK, fake out normal gem, white herb+CC, etc.) but will also typically immediately die to choice band knockoff or white herb + curse knock off.
Hitmonlee is the only mon that ran non flying gem on unburden sets (probs bc it doesn't learn acrobatics) and only did so in gen 5 and somewhat in gen 6, although in the latter it wasn't its best set. In gen 7 its unburden sets ran curse+white herb to trigger unburden and in gen 8 it uses terrain seeds like hawlucha
@@mario-nk7be I played a ton of gen7ru, though most of it admittedly at and below 1500. Normal Gem Hitmonlee was maybe a third of the sets that I saw; completely free setup does have a real niche over curse, though I agree curse (or CC) is overall better, especially since hitmonlee's set variety should be enough by itself to generate free turns for you against cautious opponents.
normal gem fake out hitmonlee is like... bad though. curse white herb is way better and both are so much worse than terrain seeds
Yeah I remember hitmonlee running it all the time
My favorite niche item is the Custap Berry, a pinch berry that gives your move priority. It's best known for being used on Wobbuffett, which upon getting to low health can use Destiny Bond, which will gain priority and activate before the opponent's move, potentially scoring a free KO. It's also used on Wynaut on occasion, but since it's much less bulky it's more likely to get OHKOed.
I remember using that on something for a priority Explosion after laying hazards, that was mad fun
Custap was also on Skarmory lead HO in Gen 5 to set up Stealth Rock, live a hit with Sturdy, eat the berry and then get Spikes.
I remember taking a level 1 yamask which had custap. It was on a level 1 only team, but I used it in another context as well.
Item Clause is one of my favorite parts of Vgc, it really forces you to really consider your team comp and item usage because you can only use an item once on your team
Item Clause is something I used to hate about VGC back around 2011/12 when I started, but I think it's fine now that there are so many good items in the newer games.
Little correction for the gen 6 Normal Gem. It was used by one single pokemon very rarely because it has a better set with White Herb for the same ability. Hitmonlee could use Fake Out+Normal Gem to activate Unburden. However, it's far outclassed by White Herb+Curse because you actually boost your stats. But yeah, that's literally the only use for Normal Gem, activating Unburden, which other items do far better.
1 little correction, while it is true that hitmonlee used that in Gen 7, it actually can't learn curse in Gen 6. (even though it gets it via Gen 2 transfer, it is for some reason not obtainable in gen 6)
Two super niche items are TR71 and TR43. Fling is a pretty cool move that can have 130 base power if you're using Iron Ball, but that halves your speed. In Gen 8, Fling will copy the base power of the move that the TR has (TR71 is Leaf Storm and TR43 is Overheat). Because of this you can get a max-power fling without halving your speed.
I actually didnt know about the tr fling thing, that's really cool!
The other cool use of Fling (used to be) Dread Plate. It had a similar interaction to Flying Gem Acrobatics, where the Plate would boost Fling's power from 90 to 108. Not on par with Iron Ball, but without the speed drop. I used it once or twice on some wacky unburden sets.
One I'm really fond of is gen 6 Kingdra. With the changes made to how Critical Hit boosting stages work, a Sniper Kingdra that uses Focus Energy while holding Scope Lens will _always_ crit after the Focus Energy. Cue Draco Meteor crit spam. It's not even that good, but man is it fun.
Gen 8 inteleon does something similar but without dragon meteor. Damn is it fun to run
Name the kingdra "fair & balanced"
@@usernametaken017 a tf2 joke?
@@cyanideytcuriousseadoggo yes
People have been doing this with inteleon for awhile
I actually did something not unlike the Leftovers-Thief interaction in Gen 8 some time ago! See, Knock Off is so powerful in Gen 6-onwards that some Pokemon opt to just not run an item specifically so they can take Knock Off more effectively. Slowbro was among these Pokemon, being a physical wall that is also weak to Knock Off.
I was using Slowbro on a team with Indeedee-M, a Pokemon with the Psychic Surge ability. Psychic Surge causes the Psychic Terrain field condition when the Pokemon is sent into battle; Indeedee-M could use it with an attack called Expanding Force to put out some pretty solid damage. But terrains also trigger specific Seed items; one-use items that boost a defensive stat when the Pokemon is sent out into a particular terrain. The only one that ever usually sees use is Electric Seed on Hawlucha so it can trigger Unburden and get the Acrobatics boost when paired with Tapu Koko, itself an example of a niche item application.
So, I slapped a Psychic Seed on my Slowbro. The end result was the same Knock Off resistance as running no item, plus a Sp. Defense boost the first time I sent it into battle. Paired quite nicely with the pressure put on by Future Sight, even if it ultimately wasn't game-changing.
Experiment, kids! You might end up advancing the meta, or at least coming up with some heat anti-meta trick that ends up actually being decent.
People usually like colbur berry for that purpose because it's basically the same thing but the initial knock off is way weaker. No item is more for poltergeist than knock off if it's ever ran
I paired Hawlucha with Pincurchin for the same effect!!
Slowbro-g used to run no item when it was in a lower tier (I believe ru) because Golurk was so terrifying due to stab poltergeist
No item is for Poltergeist. Colbur Berry is for Knock Off.
Not sure if it's niche since honestly it's pretty terrible but I used to run a set with Shuckle using Binding Band. It would double the damage of binding moves damage and Shuckle happens to get 3 of them. Infestation, Wrap, and Sand Tomb and the 4th move would either be Toxic, Rest, or Power Trick depending what I was feeling. The idea was assuming you landed all 3 hits the opponent would have taken a minimum of 6/8th of their health of damage along with the initial hits and would die on turn 4. Binding Band was buffed to do 1/6th so on the 3rd turn assuming they didn't heal or you missed you should be able to kill them. The main idea being Shuckle should be bulky enough to survive, people would immediately try to Taunt it to shut it down and getting you a free turn, and they'd be trapped so they couldn't switch out. Of course there's a lot wrong with it like the low accuracy of Wrap, the fact if they're immune to Wrap/Sand Tomb you're down a move, if they have any recovery, and of course the threat of them setting up on you. But it was still a fun set to pull out on friends and troll with, even sometimes on those online competitions.
This sounds so evil I need to try this sometime lmao
(Tauros named “Otis for NASB”)
Nice.
Also, never considered the bluffing that the Expert Belt could facilitate, that’s pretty interesting.
How would you feel if they added Eugene instead?
Belt is pretty good on dracozolt
I like expert belt on Golurk, not for high ladder competitive play, just to mess with people because Golurk gets absolutely Bananas coverage, really fun to fake a trick set.
Throat spray is a very fun niche item w shit it’s genuinely good on. It gives u a special attack boost when using a sound move so many boomburst mons like to use it but also: clangorous soul is a sound move too and on Kommo-o the one mon who uses the move, it’s insane
Throat spray was made for toxtricity, it runs boomburst and overdrive, and has the ability punk rock which boosts sound moves
10:10 yet another reason why Gen 5 is goated. The later gym leaders, Elite 4 members and post game bosses all had good relevant items on their pokemon that actually had an impact
Fr Gen 5 was tough at points and it was great to see
Cheren as well in BW.
They also uses Items quite creatively too.
My favorite set is Iris Challenge Mode Lapras@Zoom Lens Hydro Pump/Thunder/Blizzard/Sing.
Zoom Lens boost your Accuracy by 20% if you're slower, so Lapras will take a hit and then either put you to sleep or hit you with a really powerful Move. Not sure how meta it is, but it's quite fun.
bdsp? looking at certain sets belonging to especially the endgame bosses, particularly elite four and cynthia
@@Pika250 yeah, but you can just trip while walking down the stairs then proceed to Arthur Dent your way passed the all of that if you really want to, so it only half counts.
What's weird about the idea of own tempo + berserk gene is that there aren't that many Pokémon with the ability that would greatly benefit from it. If it were both attack and special attack raised by 2 stages (and then confused) then axing it would make more sense.
They probably just decided it wasn’t really a fun item to begin with.
It kinda would’ve been cool in gen 3 specifically because only lickitung and spinda would’ve benefitted it, and the idea of spinda going berserk and sweeping teams is hilarious, even if would likely not work due to both mons having abysmal speed.
Wouldn't people try using Trick to force it onto an opponent like a permanent Swagger effect? It's already a luck based setup since your Pokémon might just keep hitting itself in confusion over and over anyway but if you do pull it off now your opponent is stuck with a perma-Swagger confused state. Swagger was banned a while back and I imagine people trying to avoid the ban by using the Berserk Gene and Trick in a similar way would get it banned anyway.
Like imagine a prankster user like Liepard getting lucky on turn one and managing to Trick the Gene onto you even if you outspeed it. Then you're just stuck with this confused mon on your team waiting for it to die when it's out or trying to brute force through the confusion to do something. Throw it on a special attacker or an opponents wall especially and you've essentially gimped a core member of their team in a very luck based and annoying way as even if they try to power through the confusion they're unlikely to have a physical move to even benefit from it. Granted these are later gens but I imagine a few Pokémon with Prankster/Unaware could troll with it and make every game against them using the combo a dice roll.
@@caldw615 Berserk Gene is activated and consumed when the Pokemon comes into battle, but a Pokemon with Klutz could make use of it.
@@Flaming_Rok Ah I wasn't aware it was actually consumed. Still a Klutz Trick user could make usage of it for a luck based strategy to piss the opponent off like you said.
I would like to thank you Big Yellow. My DPP OU Life Orb Empoleon and Choice Scarf Porygon-Z will not be appreciated in its time, but will be vindicated by history.
Big Yellow: *mentions most items return every gen*
BDSP: “Ha! We’ll get rid of Assault Vest and Eviolite”
Gradually working my way through the Big Yellow filmography and I gotta say it’s rewarding
15:19 i like how he doesn't even react to the fact that he called the pokemon Obamasnow like it's most normal thing ever
And you see everyone giving MDB shit for it. Really makes you think...
It’s funny how Beserk Gene is just Swagger.
Swagger on *yourself*, which is even funnier
Quick claw and king’s rock are the funniest items because they can either do jack all or turn a game around if the stars align.
Mousehold king’s rock was a war crime though.
I'd rather deal with Red/Green Blizzard than King's Rock Maushold.
The Magneton/Skarmory match up reminded me of the Shed Shell item to counter trapping abilities. It was an interesting dynamic of having a rarely used item for such an oppressive ability
Yet it became more common as trapping strategies became more oppressive.
Black glasses, the dark type boosting item is used in gen 8 over Life Orb on Bisharp, even though the boost is less adamant+black glasses is more than enough most of the cases and the lack of recoil lets bisharp stay against some not so strong fairies, survive moonblast and hit them with iron head
That was more common in gen 6 and 7 because Bisharp had Pursuit and you might reliably see triple dark + Iron Head
there has generally been a trend away from life orb and into items that offer no draw back in recent years though. I think Boots made people realize how good it is not to have your pokemon take chip damage.
I’m proud to report that through my time playing Gen 2, I finally found someone who ran Berserk Gene, and it was on a Blissey of all things!
That blisseys going places
Now I imagine a muscular, high testosterone blissey at the gym
Think fast knuckle head!
*egg bomb*
I was literally just thinking about this topic today while building a quick claw Kingler
The red bingus deserves a video of its own, to be fair.
History of Red Bingus in competitive Pokemon
How GOOD was Scrunguschu ACTUALLY?
I disagree I really like the knock off buff what I don’t like is the crazy distribution of it.
FACTS I should have mentioned that that's my biggest issue with it, it was so cool when having the move could make a mon viable
Well I hope you are enjoying BDSP cause Weavile with no knock off hurts my soul
@@YouThinkWho im happy ive never bought it after hearing that... what have they done:::
I thought Knock Off was great in gen 7 when there are always two mons on a given team that can switch into it and not lose an item. In gen 6 it was definitely on the strong side, and gen 8/9 its OP.
@That's absolutely true, but since they also introduced one of the most OP items ever with heavy duty boots in Gen 8, I'm terrified to think of how hard it would be to break us all team if you couldn't remove some of their boots. DeathScyther006
I doubt the Berserk Gene was axed for balance reasons... GF has some really bizarre priorities concerning balance, and a one-off item in one generation isn't gonna be a target for balance adjustments. I think it's more likely that there was a mewtwo scenario planned but scrapped, and its programmed held item was left in rather than scrapped as well
The idea for Berserk Gene would live on in Swagger, but the item itself would likely be seen as pointless, rather than OP
All I want for you is to get a 36 hour special on curiosity stream, or Netflix, talking about pokemon
Not even mentioning the Little Timmy who was running Big Root Nidoqueen smh.
(The backstory for this if you don't know, someone matched into this little kid on Showdown who was just using whatever because he wanted to because he was a little kid. His opponent posted screenshots to 4chan. Don't know what the intentions were, but the people in that thread crowned him a god amongst men and went and spectated his matches and trash talked his opponents until many of them gave up. It's a wholesome story)
Where can I find this story
That's actually adorable and I wanna read that story at some point.
My favorite niche item is light ball
There’s actually a ton of random shit that occasionally runs light ball with fling in BSS to surprise something with paralysis. It’s super annoying but honestly kinda cool when you see it work
It's funny because even if Explosion was still an amazing and common enough move to warrant dedicating an item (Normal Gem) for, it would still be blatantly outclassed by Life Orb since the move KOs you anyway (unless you were trying to bluff I guess). That being said I have seen Normal Gem Explosion Lando-T this gen even, so the madmen are still out there.
Considering in vgc and bss, there are item clauses. I'd can totally buy that people would use the gem on the dedicated exploder so that the orb could be on a longer living attacker.
Coming back to this, Scrunguschu definitely did not need an evolution, Crugunbaschu with Red Bingus been a very oppressive presence in the current meta. Causing even Generation Fuck S-tier staple Golubaspecks to drop to the tier below.
Extremely stupidly niche things in Pokemon are probably some of the funniest things to learn about. See also my single most favorite example of this, Ariados being viable in Gen IV Ubers against Darkrai.
It is absolutely the stupidest shit I've ever heard and I _love it._ I'm picturing legendary of nightmares Darkrai sitting there just nervously leering at Spid.
Also Ariados had a pretty good match up against Deoxys-Speed which was probably the most common lead in gen 4 ubers (Ariados also has toxic Spikes so it actually had a niche in gen 4 ubers as a lead)
@@shudeepta Yeah, that's it. It kind of fucked the common DeoSpeed over while also being capable of screwing with Darkrai by busting its Focus Sash with Shadow Sneak and getting a Toxic Spike of its own before croaking, while being unable of being put to sleep thanks to Insomnia. Basically it was really good against two of the most common leads in the Ubers tier.
And that's absolutely _hilarious._
I will say that in the recent games, they have given the boss Trainers held items. I mean, look at Cynthia's BDSP team compared to her DP team and it's almost night and day in terms of how viable either team is in competitive (provided you don't change a single thing)
I really don't watch Pokémon content often, but whenever I do, I always find myself binging your videos. Thanks for all the good content man.
A fun example in Gen 8 (which I know wasn't covered but is cool enough to mention) is that some boosting Galarian Slowbro variants run Quick Claw. If you run it alongside Quick Draw, the chance is around 44% to activate one of the two in any given turn. This can completely turn the tides against using fast aggression to try and beat or force out its boosting sets. Normally an item with more consistency to it would be more ideal, but this is just consistent enough to have merit. It currently runs this alongside Nasty Plot in UU and used to run it with Belly Drum in OU, with some pretty hilarious tournament matches coming from that.
As someone who has played competitive mons for a number of years and knows a lot of the game’s mechanics these videos still manage to be super interesting. Keep up the great work!
Charcoal Moltres is used pretty often in GSC though I don't know what the power boost actually allows it to hit. Definitely the biggest use for the type boosting items.
Pretty sure it's just for general damage. Molt in GSC is just good at spamming fire moves and being hard to switch in to, and since it's kind of hard to get in, it wants as much damage as possible when it does get in.
It lets it 2HKO Snorlax with Fire Blast in sun with spikes up.
AH! It's pre-yassification Large Ochre
Generation Fuck was the absolute peak of competitive Pokémon. Hands down.
I liked the new tier smogon added to it, FU
It's such a silly thing but Sneasler in Gen9 can theoretically run Big Nugget and have a reason for it. As of SwSh, Big Nugget causes Fling to have 130BP, matching Iron Ball's Fling damage without actually having to deal with the halved speed. In Gen8 I have no idea what it's used for, but in Gen9 you can put this thing on Jolly Sneasler to have a 62.5% chance to OHKO NP/choice variants of Gholdengo, which otherwise would be 2HKO even against CB Sneasler's Night Slash/Shadow Claw.
It is kinda silly and inconsistent, but it's damn fun.
Once again, I enter an uneducated poke-scrub here for the fighting games, and leave an uneducated poke-scrub having watched a 22 minute video, hitting the thumbs up, and leaving a comment for the algorithm. For real though, as someone that has no real interest in the subject matter, I was once again entertained and informed. Good Work!
Thank you! I really do love when people who wouldn't normally be interested in this kinda stuff happen to enjoy it, feels good
@@BigYellowSilly Just so you know what I appreciate so much about your content. I'm assuming that you're approaching your pokemon content with someone exactly like me in mind. I'm explicitly from your FGC audience, so rather then fill your video with impregnable jargon and already assume that I would have any prior knowledge, you really set out to educate exactly why everything works holistically in the bigger picture so I get a better sense of what's what.
It gives me the feeling like you know that I'm brand new to things so you're catching me up from scratch with brief history lessons in between tactical maneuvers like I walked into a real life pokemon gym just in WAY over my head and you took pity on me.
Red Card is pretty interesting aswell: is a type of consumable held item introduced in Generation V. If the holder is hit by another Pokémon's damaging move, it switches out the attacker.
I have met few Eject Button users too: is a type of consumable held item introduced in Generation V. It switches out the holder if it is hit by a damaging move.
These are definitely more common in SwoSh VGC to screw Dynamax. You Trick the Eject Button on them and then yeet them away
Sometimes in OU I like bluffing light clay on my klefki so when they hit my klefki they get swapped out and is funnier if they set up beforehand
Mew commonly runs red card to get stealth rock and spikes up
Eject button is great for teams that have intimidate users.
Running itemless Pokemon nowadays has one other upside: immunity to Poltergeist. As a countermeasure for this, some Poltergeist users, especially Banded ones, run Trick to ensure the target will be hit by Poltergeist.
In Gen 5, I *loved* giving Forretress a Red Card due to how common lead Volcarona was.
protective pads on blaziken is really cool imo.... you can just endure to get to 1hp (or sd if you expect a switch/ weak move)...get to +1 speed... have a 200bp reversal... bait in the rocky helmet mon or rough skin tank and kill it off. Once the opponent is out of priority users (or has one in the back) he will gladly send whatever is left of ferro, corvi or chomp to end you and save his offensive pressure. This little tech turned around more games for me than you would expect.
Power herb is a niche item I've used in the past, especially before Gen 7 when we had z moves. It's especially good for getting in a solar beam when using a fire type, using sky attack on hawlucha before the terrain seeds were created. Then again, maybe these days it's not considered niche given geomancy and meteor beam?
It's the standard on a good few mons rn so I would agree.
Power herb became one of the better items on nihilego due to meteor beam
@@kimyona9746 also xerneas exists
I used to love power herb heatran
I absolutely wish that Berserk Gene stuck around just because of how much I love Tangled Feet.
Unrelated to competitive, but Berserk Gene was mentioned outside of Gold/Silver/Crystal.
In Detective Pikachu, the Berserk Gene is included in the R drug, which make Pokemon into powerful but uncontrollable beasts.
That's really cool, kinda gives me ideas that the item was blacklisted in-universe for being potentially too dangerous or something
“I don’t really care if fuckin skrunguschu can utilize the red bingus pretty well in generation fuck” this is the best sentence ever crafted
Some other Niche items to mention would be the Lens items (zoom, scope, wide) especially on mons running a lot of less accurate moves or high crit chance moves, very niche but I've seen it a few times especially the accuracy ones with pokemon running Stone edge.
Also a fun little tech I'd do from time to time in gen 5 was Fling Iron ball Bisharp for a 1 time 130 base power stab dark type physical attack, managed to trip up a few people with it for some spicy OHKO's. Even then Iron ball is super niche and honestly outright bad in my opinion since it Halves the holder's speed.
"Gems being niche" is so funny in retrospect
I still remember using a leichi berry on golem in a modern generation (I don't remember which one, probably gen 7)
Basically you would use rock polish and hope that the opponent would hit you hard enough to activate sturdy and make you eat the leichi berry so you had a +2 speed and +1 attack golem, I even gave it sucker punch to beat other people's priority moves
Good times
wouldn’t weakness policy rock polish golem just be better since you would be +2 in both attack and speed
My friends used Weakness Policy Golem to the same effect
On the concept of legal evasion a funny thing of item + ability is one of the nature berries with tangled feet, except the nature berry is for the wrong nature so you get confused
Back in gen 5 I used choice specs Blissey for a couple of weeks in ou battles. Several times I switched into a Latias or something and the players would use Trick, and they would be confused afterwards. It was pretty funny.
Using an item slot to confuse the player instead of a Pokemon, truly genius
The brightpowder percentage u said was right on the money. That's impressive, I've been working on my mental math for a little bit and I woulda not known it was that 😅. Good vid. Seen it a few times already but keep it up
I had a friend who would run normal gem ambipom with fake out and then u-turn. Not the best but definitely could be a big chunk of free damage against some pokemon.
IIRC Ambipom actually uses Silk Scarf to take advantage of STAB Technician Fake Out and Double Hit but I'm not sure either.
This was pretty viable in gen 6 because most teams didn't have pokemon faster than base 110 outside of scarf. It wasn't that great, but it was viable. Also notable is Ambipom's ability to 2hko Rotom-W with Double Hit if you run banded, but it needs adamant nature to guarantee so probably not worth it. Later gens see a lot more blistering fast pokemon, so Ambipom is way less usable.
I just found this channel and I love these types of competitive analysis/discussion videos! Im mostly a VGC guy so these types of videos for singles is super interesting!
Porygon doing part of the LTG rant had me dead
Soft Sand is one of my favorite niche items to run specifically on Lando-T. You can run smack down as another niche move to go all in on EQ, letting you run your other 2 moves as support/coverage or good good ol' uturn.
No kings rock + skill link mention. I Bullshitted my way trough a lot of games with Cincino and Cloyster.
Yeah I thought about it but decided against it cause it really is Skill Link that makes that work
@@BigYellowSilly technically beat up is also an option but skill link is more common
You know it’s good video when you fall asleep watching it and then come back and watch it again when you’re actually awake
Another funny niche item: Shell Bell. It can be used by level 1 Pokemon with endeavor and sturdy (Togedemaru, Aron) in order to bring them back to full and refilling the Sturdy ability (unlike Focus Sash, Sturdy can activate more than once) while dealing huge damage to the other Pokemon.
I've done this with Aron but had no idea you could do the same with Togedemaru, might have to try that
@@BigYellowSilly todegemaru arguably does it better, with access to spiky shield, it can do it more than once
@@BigYellowSilly Another nice thing about toge is that u can use fake out with shell bell to restore your sturdy after taking stealth rock damage.
"StrongestChu can use the Red Bingus really well in Generation Fuck" The hard hitting commentary we come to Big Yellow for.
One of my favourite uses of a niche item is electric seed on hawlucha. When paired with tapu koko to set up electric terrain it lets you activate unburden and get the boost to acrobatics immediately. I enjoyed this so much that at the beginning of gen 8 before the tapus were added back I tried to recreate it with pincurchin because it's the only other pokemon with electric surge
Well, it's not niche at all. Pretty sure it's the primary OU set, and Koko is his best partner. But besides, it's an awesome set.
@@mortomultiverse8778 Thats my bad, I phrased it wrong. I meant that the electric seed has little to no use outside of this one situation not that the strategy itself is uncommon (Because it is very common on hawlucha sets)
@@goronberry Yeah, got it. There's also a pretty cool set with Koko that runs calm mind, stored power, thunderbolt and roost with the electric seed. Of course it's not the most optimal set, but when it works it's pretty fire
Misty seed is the only other seed i see hawlucha run
Bright Powder saved my latest Nuzlocke.
a niche strategy is to use choice band on a fast special attacker(like alakazam)who also runs trick.
nobody can see this coming,and they are almost always forced to switch.
Berserk gene would have been so cool to keep, especially for doubles.
Here is how you fix the own tempo thing. Make the attack boost dependent on the confusion.
Say it has 2 effects. 1 passive, and 1 consumable.
1. Whenever the holder switches in: confuse it. This is not one time use.
2. If the user becomes confused: raise attack by 2 stages. This consumes and deletes the item.
I could see so many cool leads with berserk gene + a heal bell/aromatherapy partner in doubles. Would be neat to see, shame it never came back
Honestly I'd just keep it as is, there aren't exactly many pokemon with own tempo that could really take advantage of a big +2 attack bonus, like congratulations licklicky now gets a free swords dance, it still has a bad offensive typing and medicore move pool
@@textnumbers22 and if for whatever reason one or two mons get out of control an appropriate ban of the combination could come into play
I know you said that hail has never really been good, but it's been seeing some use recently in OU (and some LC). Mainly in tandam with the Slush Rush ability, Aurora Veil, Weather Ball, and Arctozolt's 'Bolt Beak' move (Sometimes Arctovish and Fishious Rend). It's so cool to see what had always been the "worst" weather see use in top tier OU matches!
That's sick, I'm not familiar with Gen 8 but seeing something like Hail put in work is awesome!
@@BigYellowSilly It's crazy. It's actually considered by many to be the best weather right now. Arctozolt is so dangerous that just alolan ninetales + zolt is enough to make hail worth it without wasting a lot of team slots on something with hard checks like sand has.
Only took adding a mon with a spammable Z-Move and BoltBeam coverage that gets a speed boost in Hail to make it viable.
@@shellnut8224 ehhh that's slightly disingenuous. I mean its stats are shit, it gets outrun by literally any scarfer even in the hail, hell it has to run jolly just to outrun dragapult (which can potentially OHKO it with draco / fire blast) and zeraora (which is immune to bolt beak and can also OHKO it with CC), it's weak to rocks so you either have to run boots and not have a power boost or just have it die super quickly, also bolt beak gets neutered by priority
bro i just found your videos and straight up regardless of the info or how well theyre structured or whatever, i dont even stay for the pokemon content, your one liner deliveries are fucking gold. 100% might wanna persue stand up if youtube doesnt work out for ya man
when i used to play gen 8 i messed around with the new items it had to offer, like blunder policy (+2 speed after a miss) or throat spray (+1 spatk after using a sound move), my favorite users of them being hustle dracozolt and the powerful toxtricity, who even had a cool niche at some point using a mixed shift gear set, where it could smack blisseys with drain punch and melt every other thing w/ overdrive and boomburst.
bonus thing: i really loved using specs magnezone with teleport to fill in its last move slot, so i could swap into a mon mag threatens, bait the switch, and teleport out (gen 8 changed the mechanics of port, making it a negative priority pivot move, pretty funny)
Kinda surprised you didn't bring up the Lopunny Swap strategy. Given its crazy good base speed, access to Switcheroo and Klutz it can easily dump an item like Iron Ball, Flame/Poison Orb or a Choice Item on a lead that really doesn't appreciate the sentiment.
That strats main use is assault vest trick to disable haze users on baton pass teams ( mainly pex
It's pretty unviable, but I've recently been having a lot of fun with custap berry on sturdy shuckle with power trick. If I'm lucky, it can knock out 2 of an opponent's pokemon.
Custap berry is a really fun item, but it's kind of a shame that the priority it gives is actually only 1. If the opponent uses a priority move to off the one health shuckle, it will be completely stopped in its tracks.
archeops users mourning the loss of flying gem after gen 5
Have you heard about blunder policy Dracozolt? Since it often runs Hustle as its ability, missing any move will double your speed, allowing you to both hit with Bolt Beak's full power and use a boosted stomping tantrum
Using dragon rush with this is pretty funny. Makes blunder policy happen pretty frequently and it can usually sweep provided it doesn't miss.
i legit had no idea Blunder Policy even existed until a week ago when some galarian articuno ran it with hurricane. odd item but he swept my ass with it so i guess it works
Hey! Time ago I read Heatran Gen 4 sets in its smogon set, and this video reminded me of Magnyfying Glass Heatran. I should test that in this newer gen
You improve your trapping move with 75% accuraty, and you increase your Toxic accuricy, since is now 90% accurate.
Cool video lad, i like when you talk about pokemon :)
That's a cool idea actually, thanks!
My favorite goofy set with a niche item was subseed cacturne with brightpowder in the sand. Quite a bit like the froslass set discussed here, though it uses focus punch and seed chip to get it's KOs. In gen 4 it can run sucker punch as well.
Thief is so fun in Gen 2. I love running it on lead Jynx, especially since it forces a lot of Snorlax switches.
Normal gem actually does have a use case post nerfs. In Showdown's 1v1 metagame, one of my favorite sets to run was normal gem Hitmonlee with unburden. This is great against choice scarf users as well as Sturdy users, both being popular in the format. Unburden boosted Hitmonlee outspeeds essentially every scarf user, and fakeout obviously counters sturdy, and the chip damage from the gem boosted fakeout. Of course this is a very untraditional metagame, but im sure it could still work as a niche option in whatever lower tier that Hitmonlee is in. No idea why I felt like writing this out on a 2.5 year old video
Gotta say I absolutely love your content
I remember when Rocky Helmet was a niche pick for Ferrothorns that wanted to be a bit more damaging, and then Mega Kang came out and they all started running the item and it never really stopped being ran, at least not in gen 6.
Post urshifu ban ferrothorn ran helmet for a bit too
Big props for liking the Boxing Dino Roo Shroom thing. Fave of mine as well.
I remember seeing a fair bit of Unburden Fake Out Normal Gem Hawlucha in gen 6, because it would basically get a free agility into STAB Acrobatics. But that is literally the only instance of Normal Gem in gen 6 I can remember