This page was created as per request by Kelb4n redeeming a purchase at delideals.

Carnivine

November23

November2023 is known as the hyper offense month with little Pokemon being viable because of the huge power gap between the top and lower Pokemon. This means if you are on an off meta Pokemon, you need a good reason for it. And fortunately somehow, Carnivine found a decent niche for itself. There is one viable spinner this month being dhelmise, which makes any other hazard removal pretty valuable. To Carnivine's credit, it has defog for hazard removal. It has inherent competition with Dhelmise, who is most of the time a much better bulky grass type hazard remover, but Carnivine has a few traits that set them apart. The most obvious one, is that defog cannot be spin blocked, but more importantly it can remove Klefki's screens, which majority of teams rely on for bulk. The bigger reason to use Carnivine over Dhelmise is because of it's access to Sleep Powder, which is effectively an ohko if played well. It does however suffer from Sleep Powder's 75% accuracy, and can be a momentum sink at times. Carnivine would usually fill out it's last slots with Knock off, Leech Seed, or Power Whip for utility & power respectively. Because November2023 was a largely unexplored month, in turn especially niche picks like Carnivine suffered from being non optimized because of lack of much needed innovation. This leads to some sets which would have theoretically been good like bulky Sub Leech/Toxic having no usage, however they still exist in the back of the closet, and can be experimented with in the future.

Lilligant

March24

Lilligant at first glance is a prominent sun abuser, with quiver dance and chlorophyll it outspeeds the entire meta and threatens Fire Grass coverage with Weather ball & Solar Beam, and while it definitely does fill out this role very well, it has quite the unique history with Sun AND Rain. During the beggining of March24 a few people experimented with Seaking because of it's exclusive access to Swift Swim which allowed it to become a very powerful physical cleaner under Rain. Despite this, rain was not very popular because it had to be set manually, and Gallade was tearing the tier apart during this time with it's much more powerful and less costly sharpness boosted stabs, alongside Choice Scarf. Though this all held rain back, Seaking believers still believed in rain and continued to mess around with it. Consequently, innovation brewed and people began to look into pokemon with weather ball, which Lilligant (luckily) was one of the few Pokemon who possessed it. With Quiver Dance under Rain, Lilligant threatened the tier with GrassWater coverage, and Pollen Puff for grass types trying to wall you. Around this time, Sun was also being experimented with, and Lilligant inevitably also found a spot on these teams with essentially the same set, but with the added bonus of chlorophyll letting you out speed scarfers, and being able to drop Pollen Puff for Sleep Powder. Early into the month, Gallade was banned and rerolled into Politoed, and this was a tremendous buff to rain, eliminating Seaking's biggest competition and addressing it's largest set back by giving it access to auto rain setting in Politoed. While Rain took off initially, it did fall off once new toy syndrome wore off, and Lilligant in turn by innovation, was mostly dropped on rain teams, however it remained a niche pick still because of it's sweeping qualities under now auto setting rain. Instead of being a Rain mon, it was instead more common on sun for a few reasons. Of course as I've mentioned before; chlorophyll & Sleep powder, However crucially weather ball also plays a big role, as in the Rain match up it can still continue it's sweep even once sun is removed by politoed. With it's grass typing, it can threaten all the water mons, weather ball hits the non water's pretty hard under rain, and quiver dance lets you set up in front of the special attackers they like running. Of course it's not a perfect pokemon in the rain match up, seaking can outspeed and ko you if you play it wrong, and Cacturne can threaten sucker punch against you. Lilligant however does not need to be perfect, it has good enough qualities to soften the Rain match up enough, to carve a niche out for itself. So while Lilligant idiosyncratically found it's first home in rain, it by nature found it's final one in Sun.

Cherrim

May24

Cherrim at a glance looks extremely underwhelming, it has poor stats, a bad movepool, an unaccomplishing mono grass typing, and a non synergistic ability to go with it. However in May 2024, it's these traits that let it shine and stand out from other niche Pokemon. Torkoal is a widely utilized Pokemon in May because of it's sought after tools in stealth rocks and rapid spin, but more importantly by byproduct, it sets sun on entry which lets Cherrim consistently trigger Flower Gift. Because a lot of the defensive semi stall cores at the time primarily consisted of grass weak Pokemon like Milotic, Klawf, and Carbink; Cherrim's Grass stab was actually great offensively. Even Pokemon that weren't weak to grass often did not want to switch into Cherrim like Drampa who folded to Play Rough, Salazzle who barely took Return,  or Scrappy Miltank who got 2 hit by solar blade. Cherrim however was not without it's many..many issues. For one it was utterly walled by Torkoal & Shiinotic which were extremely popular Pokemon. Torkoal could be slowly chipped down with a combination of solar blade and stealth rocks, as well as teamates, but Shiinotic was much harder to get rid of, often lasting till the end game which made Cherrim harder to utilize if you saw it on the opposing team. Another big issue for Cherrim was the environment of May in general, it was super centralizing among the same handful of Pokemon and straying away from those is hard to justify. Naturally as a result of this building a team requires you to build around Cherrim rather than being able to slot it onto a team like you can do with most of the top threats that month. Despite the difficulty of team building, and the part match up fishing, Cherrim still managed to find a fit for itself in the tier as a niche wall breaker.

Bellossom

October24

Typically you would assume Bellossom would take advantage of Quiver Dance considering how scarce and strong the move is. And that is exactly what players did try initially when trying to make Bellossom work. However this quickly failed as Bellossom has a near non existent special pool, and grass stab was horrible by itself. Strength sap was also hardly a viable form of healing because of defiant Bisharp which was tearing the tier apart. Instead, Bellossom sets took a bit of a weirder approach with Swords Dance instead. Unlike it's special pool, it's physical pool had moves complementary to it's stab Leaf Blade. Most notably Triple Axel let it demolish Amoongus, who was also tearing the tier apart with it's spore turning games into 5v5's. With a life orb, you can maximize the damage Bellossom has after an SD, and with Weakness Policy you can switch into Amoongus's spore and bait a Sludge Bomb to kill Amoongus with triple axel. Some sets opted to run Drain Punch to hit Bisharp, but overall Sleep Powder was ironically more consistent because it could deal with both Emboar and Bisharp, which is valuable on a mon which threatens amoongus. Some players also tried Choice Banded Bellossom, with Leaf Blade, Triple Axel, Drain Punch, and Play Rough you theoretically hit most of the tier. Though Choice Band fell off from the few people using Bellossom because of how much of a momentum sink it became. With Sticky Web, Bellossom actually had a decent speed tier and coul threaten Sleep Powder on a lot of Pokemon. Unfortunately Bellossom suffered heavily from 4 moveslot syndrome. It would love to use drain punch and friends alongside sleep powder mainly, but it can only run so many moves, which lead it to having to just run Sleep Powder more often than not. Bellossom also just suffered a lot from the high power level of the month; Bisharp was on nearly every single time and would completely wall it, and sure you could put it to sleep but the sequence of events were pretty predictable and the opponent could out maneuver you and end up killing Bellossom with their Amoongus, Emboar was a monster and a pain to invite in for free. Overall despite Bellossom being a bottom 2 October24 Pokemon and it's various issues, it's a good example of how almost everything in October24 is viable to some extent. Well except ninjask of course. That guy is a massive bum.