Mandibuzz
Bone Vulture Pokémon
They adorn themselves beautifully with bones. This is supposedly an effort to attract males, but no male Mandibuzz have ever been found.
Base Stats
Type Effectiveness
Abilities
Evolution Chain
Moves
Locations
Details
Sprites
Competitive
Strategy Overview
Dark
Mandibuzz's access to Defog, fantastic 110 / 105 / 95 bulk, and access to reliable recovery in Roost make it a necessity for every balanced Dark team and even some offensive ones. Its access to good utility moves like U-turn, Taunt, and Toxic only helps it. It also has a good enough Speed tier to revenge kill massive threats like Belly Drum Azumarill with Foul Play. Mandibuzz's Speed helps it against most other walls as well, since it can outpace Pokemon like Mantine and Chansey and shut them down with Taunt. Mandibuzz's slow U-turn is especially amazing, as it gives teammates like Hydreigon the opportunity to break walls. Mandibuzz's great defensive typing and immunity to Ground are huge for Dark, since the type heavily struggles with attackers like Landorus and Excadrill. Its neutrality to Fighting and Bug also allows Mandibuzz to handle threatening Pokemon like Heracross and Mega Scizor. Mandibuzz, when used in conjunction with Mega Sableye and Tyranitar, forms one of the best defensive cores in the tier. The core has the potential to flat out wall a good number of attackers while providing important utility like Will-O-Wisp, U-turn, Toxic, Stealth Rock, and Defog support for the rest of the team. Mandibuzz specifically is able to provide offensive teams with a switch-in to fast Ground-types like Choice Scarf Excadrill and a more reliable way to check Belly Drum Azumarill. It can also provide all of the aforementioned utility as well. However, the Stealth Rock weakness cripples Mandibuzz greatly, especially on Rocky Helmet sets, as being pressured to remove Stealth Rock as well as check attackers like Heracross can be overwhelming. Mandibuzz also struggles to do anything against special sweepers like Calm Mind Mega Diancie and Calm Mind Suicune. Although Mandibuzz has a great Speed tier for a wall, it struggles against faster Taunt users like Heatran and Gliscor. These cripple it with a faster Taunt and wear it down easily.
Common Teammates
Competitive data from Smogon University via data.pkmn.cc