So I've been playing around with this in the 1400-1600 range (and hell, even low ladder but they fall for every gimmick) and it's seen a very, very surprising amount of success for what it's worth, even beating a few high-ladder players occasionally:
Sableye-Mega @ Sablenite
Ability: Magic Bounce
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Mean Look
- Calm Mind
- Dark Pulse/Shadow Ball
- Recover
I'm
absolutely certain someone has to have tried this out before, but here's a pretty basic breakdown of what it does:
- The IVs maximize its physical bulk, which helps considerably since it's gonna be surviving a ton with just a single boost anyway.
- Mean Look is the key to this set's success: more standard Mega Sableye sets tend to bait in an array of things that they cannot dent, but they're almost consistently setup fodder for this variant.
- Recover is mandatory. This is non-negotiable. If you're using this mon you're using Recover.
- Mega Sableye can only fit a single actual attack into its moveset, and the decision can be extremely difficult at times: Dark Pulse gives you a far inferior matchup against Hawlucha and Fairy-types but also boasts no immunities, while Shadow Ball's tradeoff is significantly better coverage at the cost of being hopelessly walled by any and all Normal types.
The premise is simple: Mega Sableye baits something it walls that would typically wall a different Mega Sableye set, it sets up the Mean Look on the predicted switch, and unless your opponent is packing some ludicrous Fairy damage under his or her belt or your opponent gets incredible RNG with crits or hax, Mega Sableye has an extremely high chance of just winning the game outright.
I've used this on two teams, and the first was a meme Stall team that basically gives all the Stall stuff incredibly offensive sets like CB Avalugg, Curse Quag, Counter Chansey, and SD+Weak Armor+Flyinium Z Skarmory. A lot of people ended up falling for the Mean Look stuff for some reason so I figured I'd try testing the waters by using this on a more dedicated Stall team when paired with Bulky Volcarona, and the stuff this ends up potentially walling after a boost (unless hax or crits) is insane.
Does anyone else see any potential in this set? I know it's extremely unorthodox but I feel like a far superior player to me could make some downright fantastic use of something like this either on the ladder or even in a tournament setting.
