Skarmory

Skarmory is one of the key defensive pillars of UU thanks to its sky-high Defense, reliable recovery, and amazing defensive typing, checking dangerous offensive threats like Excadrill, Zarude, Scizor, and Gyarados with ease. Skarmory has a bevy of utility moves. Spikes wears down defensive threats like Hippowdon and Chansey for its team, and Skarmory can set Spikes easily thanks to its defensive utility and good matchup versus Excadrill. Furthermore, Whirlwind prevents Pokemon like Dragon Dance Gyarados and Swords Dance Scizor from setting up, while Iron Defense alongside Body Press allows Skarmory to improve its matchup versus threats like Azumarill, Swords Dance Scizor, and Conkeldurr. Skarmory can even run Defog on stall teams thanks to its great matchup against entry hazard setters like Excadrill and Hippowdon. These traits, in addition to its synergy with top defensive picks like Amoonguss, Slowking, and Chansey, allow Skarmory to fit on a wide range of archetypes ranging from bulky offense to stall. However, Skarmory has an extremely vulnerable Special Defense stat, making it a Steel-type that can't check specially offensive Fairy- and Psychic-types like Hatterene, so it faces competition from other Steel-types like Celesteela. Common threats like Thundurus-T, Rotom-W, and Moltres also limit Skarmory's consistency due to its passivity. Skarmory also often struggles to fit all the moves it likes at once. For example, it wants Iron Defense to be reliable in a 1v1 last Pokemon scenario versus Scizor, but it then becomes extremely passive and unable to punish Defog users such as Moltres and Salamence without Toxic.