Blacephalon
Attack
Defense
Stamina
Best Movesets
Analysis
Blacpehalon is one of the apex Ultra Beasts, a clownish power-house with a huge Attack stat and access to many outstanding moves that come together to make this Pokemon a monster. It's also able to pull double-duty with Fire and Ghost alike, making it a great investment for newer players, as it's just a second charged moves and/or some TMs away from filling two roles in one. However, its performance isn't quite as balanced as some others.
Sure, this is a strong Ghost Type with a near-ideal moveset for the job, and it can put in the work when it's called to do the job. But it's on the Fire side where this thing becomes a monster. Blacephalon's signature move, Mind Blown, is basically a somwhat weakened Overheat... but 3 bars instead of 1. This means that Blacephalon hits explosively hard, outclassing just about everything in the game in terms of literal fire-power. However, it's not all fun-and-games for Blacephalon: Mind Blown is powerful, but it's also dangerous due to its very long animation. This means that Blacephalon will spend a good portion of its time on the field blowing up its own head, leaving it unable to dodge very often. Does this make it a bad move? Heck no! It's still the best move that Blacephalon can muster! But it does mean that Blacephalon's low bulk is a bit compounded. You're probably going to want to front-load it and ask someone on your raid team to front-load a Fire Type Mega Evolution to maximize its performance.
Offense
- Incinerate and Mind Blown* is a remarkably strong moveset, and it makes Blacephalon a remarkable Fire Type attacker.
- Astonish and Shadow Ball makes Blacephalon a powerful Ghost Type attacker, though it could be better if Astonish wasn't so bad in-and-of itself.
- Overheat and Mystical Fire fall behind in terms of damage output and utility.
Blacephalon is a fairly unique Pokemon in PvP thanks to its very, very strong moveset. This thing has Incinerate with its high average Damage Output and Energy Generation, Shadow Ball with its high damage for relatively low energy cost, and Mind Blown* with its absurd raw power.
So why isn't it top-tier? Because this thing has a poor stat-product due to its offensive weight and low bulk, Incinerate is slow enough to lock it into its animations for a fairly long time, it needs shields to be down to do its job to any great degree, and Mind Blown drops Blacephalon's Defense by an absolutely staggering 4 ranks when used. This means that it might get off one really strong blow, but then it's going to drop like a rock, especially if it's facing down something with high Fast Move damage. What this thing desperately wants is a super-fast Fast Move with absurd energy generation so that it can quickly spam Mind Blown.
See that Attack stat? Yeah, Blacephalon is so heavily Attack-weighted that it doesn't take much to take it down.
