Haunter finds a niche as a wallbreaker that opens holes for its teammates with a unique STAB combination that benefits from the tier's lack of common resistances to Ghost-types. Unlike other Ghost-type wallbreakers such as Trevenant and Silvally-Ghost, Shadow Ball allows Haunter to bypass pseudo-Ghost-type checks like itemless Togedemaru and Weezing. This allows teammates to run item removal, which makes it more flexible than Trevenant. Furthermore, the ability to choose its item, access to a secondary STAB to break past Normal-types more easily, and consistent super effective coverage against bulky Dark-types like Alolan Persian gives Haunter a valuable niche over Silvally-Ghost. While Haunter’s secondary STAB is less spammable, the ability to beat Fairy-types like Silvally-Fairy and Clefairy is useful. A mix of good damage output, solid Speed tier, and Sludge Bomb, which poisons switch-ins, make it a unique special attacker over the likes of Vikavolt and Ribombee. Haunter outpaces several offensive threats such as Gallade, Mesprit, and Centiskorch. However, it is left lacking against faster threats such as Archeops and Charizard, both of which force Haunter out. It also has a Speed tie with offensive Silvally formes and Timid Galarian Articuno, which makes it inconsistent at threatening them. Despite three immunities and a 4x resistance to U-turn, Haunter lacks meaningful defensive utility due to its horrendous bulk and thus only takes advantage of passive Pokemon that it resists like Aromatisse. Haunter is also switched into easily by blanket special walls such as Gigalith, Lanturn, Audino, and Togedemaru.