Why is Annihilape in Ubers?

Question

So I was playing some Pokémon Showdown and had the greatest fight of my life. Don't know how to link the fight, but it was EPIC(please tell me how to link fight. I saved it). Anyways, I noticed Annihilape is in Ubers. Now I know I said Annihilape was better competitively than Skeldirige, but I didn't expect such a huge difference. Skeldrige is in UU. What makes Annihilape good enough for Ubers?

Comments

It's mostly due to a combination of Rage Fist boosts being separate from Attack boosts, Ghost being a top 3 offensive type, and Tera enabling it to fight would-be counters.

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Annihilape has great bulk, ability to boost its attacking power and physical bulk, Unresisted STAB except Hisuian Zoroark, decent recovery in drain punch, and Rage Fist which is pretty much a broken move. It's not that Annihilape is good enough for Ubers, it's because the mon is too good for OU.

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Okay. You should put that except a little more detailed as an answer. Can anyone tell me how to link a Showdown game though.

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You have to type the command "/savereplay" in the battle chat before you close out of the tab.

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I did save the replay. I'm wondering how to post it here. It was a vey epic comeback.

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The replay should have its own URL -- you can just paste that into the question body or a comment and it'll auto-link for you.

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What a lot of people don't know is that Ubers is not a usage based tier, its a tier for pokémon banned form OU, kinda like a OUBL of sorts

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Thanks! file:///C:/Users/Friends/Desktop/Gen9OU-2023-07-25-tacoridingcamel-brojeezy.html Behold, the battle. If it's bad,  don't laugh at my team. It was made in a rush. Also, I'm not good at or knowledgeable about competitive Pokémon fights. I still can't believe I won.

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I don't think you can watch it, but Amoongus saved my life and I poisoned his Pokémon to fainting.

Answer 1

Basically, it's just great typing, great bulk, great rounded movepool, and a tendency to abuse Tera.

Annihilape escaped most people's sights before the tier was formally released and during the chaos of the first few days, but it quickly emerged as one of the most important threats of the metagame. Rage Fist is a hellish move to face off against, as it forces Pokemon to withhold damaging Annihilape if they don't do significant enough damage to either OHKO or put it out of commission for the rest of the game. Against the common Bulk Up / Rage Fist / Drain Punch / Taunt (or sometimes Rest) set, using weak moves against it can not only make little progress on your end but directly enable Annihilape itself to become a bigger threat. With very servicable natural bulk of 110/80/90 and decent offensive stats, once it gets Bulk Up boost or two while shutting down status moves through Taunt it becomes surprisingly tough to take down and incredibly strong at the same time. Passive sources of damage such as Rocky Helmet or Gargarnacl's Salt Cure (the latter especially against a Water Tera Annihilape) can be very effective against it, but are highly specific and not particularly difficult to overcome anwyay. Annihilape also has access to Stealth Rock and Final Gambit and can be used as a potent and highly forceful hazard lead for more offensive teams, giving it another useful niche albeit not a particularly broken one.

Despite its typing being one of the best possible offensively, hitting every Pokemon at least neutrally, it can be fairly lackluster defensive. This is where Terastallization comes in - Annihilape is one of the best abusers of Terastallization in OU. Most commonly Terastallizing to Water, but feasibly being able to become other types such as Steel, Fire, Normal and more, the ability to change checks and potential stops while changing into a harder to OHKO type on a whim is particularly powerful on a Pokemon as punishing as Annihilape. Reducing the amount of non-lethal damage Annihilape takes or making extremely powerful moves such as Chi-Yu's Overheat no longer lethal makes Rage Fist stronger and lets Annihilape stick around and potentially recover anyway through Leftovers and Drain Punch. This is a very common way Annihilape spirals out of control against teams that don't overprepare for it, and sometimes even those can be very much overwhelmed.

Hope I helped!

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