Sharpedo

Sharpedo cements itself as one of the best leads in the DPP NU metagame. Sharpedo has good mixed wallbreaking power with winning lead matchups versus Charizard and common Stealth Rock users such as Regirock and Nidoqueen. Sharpedo has good utility in other lead matchups as well, using Rough Skin with Focus Sash to punish contact moves from opposing leads like Tauros, Hitmonchan, Medicham, and Floatzel combined with Aqua Jet for a good priority move to pick off faster opponents and check opposing priority from Hitmonchan and Skuntank. Sharpedo can run two different lead sets, which have different counterplay, making opponents guess between it having Taunt for entry hazards or Ice Beam for Grass-types like Vileplume, allowing it to be unpredictable from the first turn. Sharpedo's secondary Dark typing enables it to usually beat a common Water-type check in Slowking, meaning it's a Water-type that can beat common Regirock + Slowking cores that hold most bulky offense teams together.

However, the success of Sharpedo as a lead means that Pokemon that can beat Sharpedo also count as good leads. Pokemon that are faster than Sharpedo, such as Floatzel and Tauros, can win against it by trading an early hit and checking Sharpedo's Aqua Jet with their own priority move or Intimidate respectively. Poliwrath can also give Sharpedo fits by walling its STAB combination and setting up Substitute or pressuring switches with Toxic, making momentum swing heavily towards the Poliwrath user.