Iron Valiant

Iron Valiant stands out as a top-tier offensive Pokemon in OU, able to utilize its Speed; high attacking stats; and a wide movepool of setup, coverage, and utility to devastate any Pokemon that might attempt to check it. Its various sets, such as Swords Dance, Calm Mind, mixed, and Choice Specs, have very different counterplay from each other, and thus a well-played Iron Valiant can take out Pokemon such as Zapdos and Galarian Slowking that might want to check its Swords Dance and Calm Mind respectively. With Booster Energy, Iron Valiant becomes an incredible late-game cleaner and revenge killer, able to outspeed and subsequently threaten Pokemon such as Zamazenta, Dragon Dance Dragonite, and Darkrai. Choice Specs takes advantage of Moonblast's spammability and lets Iron Valiant break through and even 2HKO otherwise common Iron Valiant answers such as Assault Vest Hatterene, Galarian Weezing, and specially defensive Gliscor due to its sheer power. Iron Valiant can furthermore dip into its utility movepool, with options such as Encore, Destiny Bond, and Trick either to give it more setup turns, allow it to surprise typical counterplay even further, or emergency check opposing offensive threats. However, Pokemon such as Hatterene, Moltres, Tinkaton, and Corviknight as well as Tera Poison Pokemon such as Ting-Lu and Hisuian Samurott can check the vast majority of its sets, while Pokemon such as Dondozo and Galarian Slowking are able to reliably take on specific sets such as Swords Dance and Calm Mind, respectively, once they have been identified. This above issue is made worse, as Iron Valiant also struggles to fit all the coverage options it wants into one set, especially if it decides to utilize both its setup and utility options. Furthermore, its low bulk impedes its sweeping potential, as priority users such as Dragonite, Rillaboom, and especially Scizor can revenge kill it once it has been weakened. This low bulk also means that Iron Valiant can struggle to find safe setup opportunities, as while it can theoretically force out Pokemon such as Zamazenta and Heatran, they can simply stay in and trade with it due to its lack of immediate power and can potentially win against it outright. Iron Valiant also has limited defensive utility; while it can check Pokemon such as Kingambit and Lokix, it is lacking compared to other sweepers such as Dragonite and Zamazenta, which means that Iron Valiant can only really slot on more offensive teams as a result.