Don't forget, on top of having 107 speed Blace has a higher attack stat than Heracross. A special wall switching into Blace gets blown up by a potential Knock Off and Explosion.
Fun fact: on pokemon showdown, there's a format called AAA, or "almost any ability". As the the name suggests, you can give a pokemon any ability within reason (no huge power or wonder guard, for example). In AAA, Blacephalon is absurdly broken. In AAA, Blacephalon runs Magic Guard, meaning that it receives no recoil from mind blown, and also negates stealth rock. Combined with knock off to remove the assault vest of regenerator pokemon, Blacephalon was banned for the fact that it was too powerful. The only counter is Flash Fire Blissey, which is a terrible and niche as it sounds.
I’ve been playing Pokémon since 99, and Blacephalon has become one of my favorites for how its design balances the “character-based” designs of recent gens (think how Cinderace and others look like anime characters) while maintaining the inhuman vibe and mild cheekiness of older gens.
I think it helps that the ultra beast design philosophy lets it get away with more off the wall designs that would be out of place in the main Pokémon world. Additionally unlike the “character based”/jobmon design, the human based attributes or roles is not a dominant attribute either which is what made cases like Cinderace pretty bad while Passimian works well with a similar idea. the latter treats the rugby aspect as a tertiary extension to a trait that is common in many animal species especially the one that passimian is based on rather than the rugby aspect being the dominant trait to the design.
@@cowgirltheworld the type of design that basically boils down to "[animal] that looks like a [occupation]" eg. meowscarada is a cat that looks Iike a magician
@@batmanbad5091 I think both fairy and psychic are fine on victiny, I'm just making a joke on how some iconic mons suffer from weird typing for the sake of coolness
To think you used to have 15 minute videos for gen 1 mons, and now in 15 mins you cover 2 gens only. Your content really stepped up since then, your videos are amazing, keep it up
The Ultra Beasts were such an amazing cutscene I would’ve loved to know more about, but now we’ll never know because the franchise is so focused on creating new gimmicks that get tossed aside in the next entry.
Even though the most popular sets of this pokrmon where specs or scarfed, lets not forget Blacef substitute set absolutely destroys stall In gen 7 ou too because the main special wall, chansey could not break the substitute and let him calm mind
@@skeetermania3202 m-sableye forces it out and is the premier mega in stall, limiting it from breaking and making it get chipped by rocks+ sub blaceph is not the greatest against fast teams
A quick thing to note: Blacephalon's eyes are on the sides of its head. In nature, prey, such as deer and rabbits, also have eyes on the side of their head. If Blacephalon is the prey, *then who is the predator?*
If I were a Gym leader, I’d be a Fire/Ghost leader. Whether it’s a mix of Fire and Ghost types or a full team of Pokémon with both types, I’d love to be able to battle like that.
One thing Kellen missed was Blacephalon’s sub cm set in SM with Ghostium Z to set up on chansey and blast through Toxapex and the EVs to boost speed. That thing was terrifying on Hyper Offense
Blacephalon is one of my all-time favorites, just a fun mon that's easy to fit on a lot of teams. I actually ran a set briefly that DID use Mind Blown that utilized a combination of substitute and a recovery berry to squeeze out three uses before fainting.
@@pengwino828 that balance sucks since a lot of pokemons are screwed for not having enough to be used as híbrid but at the same time have too much that his other stats makes them subpar pokemons
@@pengwino828 oh I fully agree it’s a good balance choice. I’m just saying how stupid broken it would be if it was even faster or just bulky enough that it didn’t fold to a priority attack
For the next Ultra Beast covered, I’d recommend covering how Beast Boost worked. At least a few people were confused when, in the Naganadel video, you said Beast Boost would raise its Speed when it simply just boosts the UB’s highest stat, which, due to a Timid Nature, would indeed be speed for Naganadel. Some clarification as to why a stat is boosted would probably be welcome.
Fire/Ghost is my favorite combo! Blacephalon is so goofy but is also one of the best glass cannons in the game. Thanks for the upload! Great work, FSG!
Fire fairy wouldnt be able to hit opposing fire types for at least neutral damage. Blacephelon has great coverage and fairy is a broken type, but in this case ghost is probably more viable as it can spam shadow balls instead of the otherwise wallable moonblast. Sure it would be great against Tyranitar, but thats considering the fact that mega charizard Y still existed in OU in gen 7 which would completely wall it. As well as Heatran which has the added benefit of hitting fire fairy blacephelon for super effective damage with iron head or smthn. Also heatran is immune to fire thanks to flash fire. I doubt the upsides are better than the downsides, hope that helps!
Ultra Beasts are the best thing to happen to this franchise. How do you just casually introduce public eyes to alien dandelion clowns and expect to top that sheer exciting confusion of what you’re even looking at? Blacephalon is mind-blowingly good, I remember thinking they’d be Fighting/Fairy when they were first revealed!
Omg!! I’m so happy you’re doing Blacephalon!! One of my favorite Pokémon, and my favorite Ultra Beast!! 🤍🤍🤍 0:21 I don’t think it’s evil at all. It does that to survive, as it feeds on the surprise of others! It’s just a survival tactic! Also, my shiny, naturally Timid natured Blacephalon, actually has Hidden Power Grass!! Now if ONLY they would bring Hidden Power back so I could show it off 😭
I ran a really fun set with this in gen 8 Balanced Hackmons. With life orb + magic guard it was able to do insane damage with Mind Blown, astral barrage, and steel beam. It’s 4th move was a great catch to any special wall wanting to wall it. Head smash. No one expects its base attack to be that good. So many times people would send their specially defensive fire types like reshiram and Ho-oh and be blasted by a 150 bp super effective move
This was probably too small of a gimmick to be worth including in the video but i would just like to mention that Blacephalon did have a fun synergy with Coalossal in VGC. Choice Scarf Mind Blown was used as a way to enable Coalossals Steam Engine (raising it's speed by a ton, think it was +6 but i don't remember exactly) as well as doing great damage of course.
Here is a funny story about myself, the first time I played Pokemon Moon. When I found Blacephalon I thought I had discovered a new pokemon that nobody else had seen. So I thought until I found out that Blacephalon was a pokemon actually in Pokemon Moon and Sun. So I felt like a fool in a funny way.
It says a lot about the speed of power creep across the generations that Game Freak gave Chandelure base 80 Speed and didn't release its Shadow Tag hidden ability to prevent it being too OP, and then two gens later, gave Blace even higher Sp. Atk and ridiculously high Speed
I don’t get why Blacephelon has a base 127 attack stat when it mainly uses/knows special moves. It’s okay for special attackers to have low physical attack.
Well, its gimmick was that it was hyper offensive with awful defensive stats. But it also has to keep the same base stat total as other UBs; so either it has a decent secondary attack or its special attack becomes deoxys-A levels. Besides, physical or mixed blaceph wasn’t UNHEARD of in OU, since it got knock off and flame charge. Definitely not as good as scarf but it wasn’t an unset.
Probably due to how every UB (not counting Naganadel’s 121 speed stat and its BST of 540) has a stat value that is a prime number and they have a skewed stat distribution except Celesteela. How every UB must have a BST of 570 as well.
Blacephalon is in my list of top 125 favorite Pokémon. Of course, its no Gardevoir [Kayla, 1st], Scizor [Simon, 2nd], or Breloom [Barry, 3rd], but it's solidly in the top 125, being at 56th place, even if Chandelure [Charles, 6th] has it beat. It sits right next to Greninja [Gerry, 55th] on the list, just in case it gets any rebellious ideas.
There's a Miles Edgeworth joke to be made here, but we don't talk about Turnabout Big Top. Turnabout Big Top never happened, and all accounts of it theoretically existing will be stricken from the record. _"In West Clownadelphia, born and raised....."_ *[mirror cracks]*
A fun set I used to much success in the past: Explosion/Fire Blast/Knock Off/Encore, Focus Sash w/ Lonely Nature and max Spe/Att EVs. The idea of this set is to KO a mon with fire blast or the occasional Knock Off, get an attack boost (if lucky or skilled enough, you get more boosts) and when something like, I dont know, some Lando swapped in, BOOOM.
Blacephalon's got an awesome name and a really cool design concept. I just wish it had a different typing or a less concise movepool. You can't tell me this thing wasn't supposed to be half-Fairy at some point in the design.
Or Reckless. That would just be pure fun. And it wouldn't affect the *amount* of recoil, since it's always a fixed amount. Would it last long on the field? No. Would it have an easy time getting at least 2 kills? Heck yes.
Unsettling in both design and strength. This video made me realize Blacephalon was the only ultra beast with a signature move, even if it never gets used.
I loved using specs overheat as a wall breaker. Itd come out go surprise im not a sweeper, and use overheat. Then the "free switch" can also get picked off by a second surprise overheat.
252+ SpA Choice Specs Tera Fire Blacephalon Overheat vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Blissey in Sun: 458-540 (64.1 - 75.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery Still not as strong as Chi-Yu, unfortunately.
On the bright side its apparently going return in the DLC where it doesn't suffer the other two existing ghost/fire being straight upgrades, although I guest the new Tysploison will be faster in exchange for a bit of power
@@rossthemoss6827 it’s likely it that’s it’s going to fall to either UU or RU and terrorize those tries instead. Or GF could give it shadow tag so it can bludgeoned Ubers lmao
