Introduction
Bellibolt is a prominent defensive pivot in the January 2025 metagame. Its solid mixed bulk of 109/91/83 makes it very flexible for what a team needs. With only a single weakness to ground and access to Slack Off, Bellibolt can be difficult to remove. Bellibolt’s primary purpose is as a slow defensive pivot thanks to its low base 45 speed and STAB Volt Switch. However, it can also hit quite hard with 103 special attack and the boost to its STAB moves provided by Electromorphosis.
Bellibolt’s primary weakness is ground types. Clodsire stonewalls most Bellibolts due to its Toxic immunity. Although Clodsire gets access to Water Absorb, Unaware was generally preferred to stop the plethora of set up sweepers. As such, Clodsire uses its massive special bulk to simply shrug off water coverage from Bellibolt. Despite this, Bellibolt will almost always get good value as a defensive pivot.
Physically Defensive
The most popular set for Bellibolt is a physically defensive variant. Full physically defensive Bellibolt can live any physical hit from max HP except for Adamant Choice Band Golurk Earthquake.
The primary purpose of this set is to make use of Bellibolt’s Static ability, which is excellent at punishing common U-Turn users like Scyther and Mesprit. Bellibolt’s longevity gives it many opportunities to fish for the Static paralysis, which can cripple any offensive Pokemon. Toxic and Muddy Water allow Bellibolt to hit targets like Golurk and Donphan. Volt Switch gives Bellibolt a way to safely bring in teammates, which is particularly useful against the common Shaymin which doesn’t fear the damage or status that Bellibolt dishes out.
Specially Defensive
This set is very similar to the physically defensive set, except that it opts for special defense for teams that are already covered on the physical side. This set pairs especially well with itemless Shaymin, which can cover for Bellibolt’s weakness to Golurk, Donphan, and Crawdaunt. This set opts for Electromorphosis over Static to boost Volt Switch into a move that most Pokemon do not want to take
Soak
Although seemingly gimmicky, this set is actually quite potent. The primary purpose of this set is to flip the matchup on Clodsire by using Soak to make it a water type. With max physical defense, Bellibolt can use Substitute in front of water-type Clodsire and the Substitute will not break due to Soak taking away Clodsire’s STAB on Earthquake. Once behind a Substitute, this set can be very annoying to get off of the field since it can threaten everything with the combination of Soak and electric STAB.
Written by Portobello
Grammar checked by Qbking