Competitive Pokémon History - Bronzong Quiz

Answer: Levitate

Levitate strips Bronzong of its weakness to Ground, replacing it with an immunity. Taking away a weakness for an immunity as about as impactful as an ability can possibly get, being highly appreciable for it. Registeel's abilities are generally not useful in juxtaposition.

It's stats outclass Bronzong's significantly, but the difference in ability is so great that Bronzong was night and day better than it, carving out a niche in the standard play environment that was not at all hospitable to Registeel.

Answer: Macho Brace

Life Orb didn't actually exist yet. If you had wanted to use a Choice Banded Steel/Psychic type, the Pokémon to use would've been Metagross, definitely not Bronzong. Macho Brace is a truly strange pick, as the only utility it had apart from this specific instance was helping the trainer to more quickly EV train a Pokémon, doubling their EV growth when held as an item at the expense of minimizing their Speed. Minimizing the holder's speed is the important thing to note, as Bronzong's key move for sweeping was Gyro Ball.

As Gyro Ball's power increases as the user's Speed decreases, and Bronzong's base Speed is an extremely poor 33, the idea was to minimize Bronzong's Speed, give it a Macho Brace, have it set Trick Room, then abuse the field conditions and wacky item setup to sweep.

Answer: Skarmory

The other three options will lose on the switch if Bronzong has Earthquake, a relatively common move for it to field. Skarmory, however, sits straight in Bronzong's face with not a single worry and will outstall it all the time. Moreover, Skarmory can take all day to throw entry hazards in Bronzong's face, while it cannot do a single meaningful thing in return apart from maybe set up its own a Stealth Rock or dual screens

Answer: Heavy Metal

Heavy Metal doubles Bronzong's weight. Of course, it was extremely useless, especially compared to Levitate, and even the gimmicky Heatproof. Levitate's utility was incredible for Bronzong, while Heavy Metal often didn't do a single appreciable thing for it.

Answer: Tank

Bronzong had a remarkably poor matchup against defensive teams, rendering wallbreaker and especially stallbreaker incorrect answers. With access to Stealth Rock and dual screens, Bronzong made for a great Tank. It could leverage its many excellent resistances and useful immunity to setup quite reliably. Frail offensive threats like Rayquaza and Lucario therefore benefited from its presence on the team a lot, enjoying Stealth Rock support to achieve KOs a bit easier, and utilizing dual screens to take hits they would've otherwise crumpled to.

The only other Pokémon in the meta with access to all three moves were Jirachi, Dialga and Smeargle, who were far less effective at utilizing it, and various formes of Arceus, who were far more strapped for moveslot options to make it work than Bronzong was. Thus, it easily obtained a niche with the setup.

Answer: Hard counter most support Arceus formes

Most support formes of Arceus tended to run sets consisting of Ice Beam/Defog/Toxic/Recover. Whatever typing it may be, Bronzong switched into those movesets for free, and could often afflict the Arceus forme with an extremely debilitating Toxic. Defog sets mostly got stonewalled, as Bronzong could simply keep resetting Stealth Rock in a war of attrition Arceus would never win. Dark Arceus was a notable exception, but support variants of Dark Arceus were quite uncommon anyway. Ground and Water ended up being the most common support formes, which Bronzong had particularly good matchups against.

Answer: Setting Stealth Rock

Nothing in the terrifying Uber meta feared Bronzong's lackluster Base 79 Attack. It also simply did not have instant recovery access, nor could it counter Xerneas completely. Out of all the Xerneas checks, only Primal Groudon and Bronzong were capable of actually setting Stealth Rock as well as checking the mighty Fairy type. Because P-Don could do so many things apart from just check Xerneas, it was therefore reasonable to just leave the job to Bronzong so that P-Don could achieve something else.

Answer: Dark and Ghost

The Steel typing resisted the newcoming Fairy, and hit it back super effectively. In order to not make the Steel typing too strong, the response to this was to remove its resistance to Dark and Ghost. Bronzong's secondary Psychic typing therefore made it now weak to Dark and Ghost, rather than take neutral damage from them like it had to this point.

This made dealing with Pokémon like Tyranitar, Gengar and Mandibuzz considerably harder for it. These three represented 50/50 matchups that were now firmly disadvantageous for Bronzong.

Answer: Necrozma-DuskMane

Necrozma-DuskMane could do practically every single thing that Bronzong could possibly imagine at a far more effective rate, boasting the same exact typing with superior base stats, reliable instant recovery and the terrifyingly strong Z-Move in Light That Burns The Sky. Bronzong could not hope to even try competing with it.

Answer: UnderUsed

Bronzong had spent the previous generation inhabiting RU, so it took advantage of being immediately ready to return, evading the infamous "DexIt", by being promoted by a tier. Here, it was mostly business as usual for the Bronze Bell, supporting its team with Stealth Rock and Toxic.