Competitive Pokémon History - Bisharp Quiz

Answer: 125

125 with access to Swords Dance can make Bisharp very threatening against defensive teams- its Steel typing grants it an immunity to Toxic, which can also make it hard for stall teams to immediately threaten it. As a result, it became a deadly threat in UU off the strength of this stat.

Answer: Defiant

Defiant activates whenever the user's stats are lowered by the opponent. Upon activation, the user will be granted an immediate +2 to their Attack stat. As a result, Pokémon with the Intimidate ability would actually be feeding Bisharp a +1 to its Attack rather than the -1 the ability typically imposes.

When Defog got buffed in the sixth generation, Defiant became even better due to Defog having the side effect of reducing the target's evasion by one stage.

Answer: Cobalion

Cobalion resists both of Bisharp's STAB and has very high Defense to boot. Additionally, Cobalion's Justified ability means it profits from switching in to a Dark type move Bisharp uses. Once switched in, it can immediately destroy Bisharp with Close Combat, Focus Blast or Sacred Sword which hit it for 4x super effective damage. Even a super effective Low Kick followed up by priority Sucker Punch will not come close to KOing even a Cobalion without any defensive investment whatsoever, securing its status as a sure fire Bisharp counter.

Answer: Knock Off

One of Bisharp's biggest issues was dealing with Dark-weak Pokémon who outsped it, which was close to every single thing weak to Dark. Gengar, for example, could play a deadly mind game with Bisharp to get around being OHKOed by Sucker Punch. By using Will-o-Wisp or Substitute, it could neutralize Bisharp and then KO it on the following turn, as a Gengar behind a Substitute or dealing with a burned Bisharp would now be able to survive Sucker Punch and KO back with Focus Blast.

Bisharp still had some problems dealing with these threats, but Knock Off made the matter significantly easier to handle. For example, rather than use a middle ground approach of using Iron Head on Gengar, Bisharp could now straight up OHKO it with Knock Off. This also applied to Alakazam, the Lati twins and other Dark-weak threats. With Substitute being less of a problem, Bisharp could now more reliably use its strong Attack stat and good movepool.

Answer: Hyper offense

Hyper offense teams typically employ a suicide entry hazard lead, such as Azelf or particular flavors of Landorus-T or Garchomp. Because this lead almost always gets KOed within a few turns, they cannot come back into the game later to reset their entry hazards. If they get removed, they're gone for the game and hyper offense teams will have a tougher time generating their precious momentum.

Bisharp's ability to greatly deter the user of Defog to remove entry hazards, thanks to its Defiant ability, means opponents are under a massive amount of pressure dealing with these entry hazards. This makes tough offensive threats such as a Mega Charizard, Azumarill or a Choice Banded or Specs threat even scarier, improving the outlook of the team as a whole. As such, Bisharp was not only great at generating its own offense, but also at enabling the offensive prowess of its teammates, making it an obvious pick for hyper offensive strategies.

Answer: Assault Vest

An Assault Vest gives the user a +1 to their Special Defense in exchange for preventing them from using any non-damaging moves. The focus of this set was to use Bisharp's powerful Pursuit trapping potential to remove threats such as Gengar or the Lati Twins from play. Thanks to the Assault Vest, Bisharp could now survive a Focus Blast from Gengar as well as shrug off any commonly used attack from Latias or Latios with ease, enabling it to KO them back by Pursuit trapping them into oblivion.

In general, Bisharp could also typically square off with a specially offensive threat that did not have an obvious advantage against it as well.

Answer: Darkium-Z

Darkium-Z based off of Sucker Punch becomes Black Hole Eclipse with a base 140 power. The only Pokémon who could comfortably take this nuke were particularly bulky resists to it, such as Cobalion, Mandibuzz or Tapu Fini. Threats not resistant to Dark or who were not extraordinarily bulky would get annihilated.

Answer: Beat Up

Beat Up calls upon all of Bisharp's active teammates to launch a base 70 physical Dark type attack at the target. It's main utility was helping to better play around Substitute, threatening immediate damage to Substitute users who tried to play around Sucker Punch. In general, it did decent damage as well.

Answer: Steel Beam

Steel Beam is a base 140 Steel type special attack whose drawback is causing the user to lose half their max HP in recoil. The idea was to give Bisharp a Focus Sash, Stealth Rock and Steel Beam. Bisharp could set Stealth Rock and, when it got on low health, it could KO itself with Steel Beam to cause Rapid Spin to fail before freely bringing in a teammate who could pressure the Rapid Spin user.

Answer: Dragapult

Tyranitar had a difficult time properly checking Dragapult, as Dragapult could very simply use U-Turn on it to bring in a more appropriate teammate. Bisharp, however, threatens to OHKO Dragapult with Sucker Punch if it tries this, or if it aims to KO Bisharp with Fire Blast. Switching out manually gives Bisharp the opportunity to use Knock Off to greatly hinder Dragapult's team, as seldom would a standard play team come with a Pokémon who could comfortably function without its team while simultaneously taking hits from Bisharp easily.

As such, Bisharp's general qualities combined with its great Dragapult matchup gave it wings in standard play.