Tapu Lele
Land Spirit Pokémon
This guardian deity of Akala is guilelessly cruel. The fragrant aroma of flowers is the source of its energy.
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Competitive
Strategy Overview
Tapu Lele easily sets itself apart from a jungle of powerful wallbreakers in OU due to its unique ability: Psychic Surge. Said ability sets Psychic Terrain automatically, boosting Tapu Lele's Psychic-type attacks for free and making them wickedly difficult to tank or switch into directly. The Terrain also protects grounded Pokemon from priority attacks; as many priority users such as Mega Mawile, Ash-Greninja, and Mega Scizor rely on their respective attacks to stop faster threats, Tapu Lele can limit their actions and allow itself or teammates to completely overpower these threats. With these traits combined with great offensive stats and a good typing, Tapu Lele is a frightening force of nature, capable of utterly breaking numerous team archetypes while boasting unique threat coverage along with downright scary flexibility in its item and set usage. However, Tapu Lele dislikes the fact that many bulky Steel-types, especially Magearna and Celesteela, can easily switch into both of its STAB attacks. The coverage attacks it usually runs to address them as well as other checks and counters tend to be too weak or shaky to use consistently without fair prediction or prior damage. Tapu Lele's average physical bulk and good—but not fantastic—Speed also tend to hold it back, making it often vulnerable to revenge killing. Regardless, as Tapu Lele is always rather unforgiving in its power and versatility, all team archetypes must exercise caution against it.
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Competitive data from Smogon University via data.pkmn.cc