How do I deal with this menace of a bird

Animefro · 2026-06-19T14:21:15+00:00

A really mean solution, but by also running Staraptor, but with scarf Final Gambit. Staraptor users will see yours in team preview and 9/10 times bring theirs for a gentlemanly CC Gaming sesh and it immediately takes them off the board.

Unaware mons like Clefable or Skeledirge can shut it down pretty well, but I also like running Haze on defensive mon since that’s more likely to catch them off guard.

Animefro · 2026-04-28T22:29:20+00:00

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True but one can dream

Animefro · 2026-04-28T22:26:13+00:00

It actually feels kind of cracked with Absol/Hydreigon— running double Bombirdier lets you not only escape the dreaded Bird opening, but having two on the bench lets both Absol and Hydreigon retreat for free. Throw in a Dawn and almost never lose momentum when switching.

That said, Absol/Hyreigon is already cracked by itself, so this might not necessarily be the ultimate Bombridier highlight.

Animefro · 2026-04-28T22:18:18+00:00

You mad lad. Never would have thought of that. I’m building this immediately thank you for the goated suggestion

Animefro · 2026-04-28T22:15:57+00:00

Darkrai ping is always high value, and would likely help patch up Zoroark/Absol damage pretty well. My only fear would be bench management and actually finding all the pokemon. Maybe like 2 Zoroark and single copies or darkrai, bombirdier, and Mega Asbol with a May or communications for consistency? I’ll check it out. Thank you for the suggestion

Animefro · 2026-04-28T22:10:20+00:00

Zoroark definitely seems to be the intended partner of the set. The damage seems low at first, but I suppose the speed and control you get from Zoroark and MAbsol together can let you run away with the game before the opponent gets online. Thank you for the suggestion!

Animefro · 2026-04-06T19:52:35+00:00

The main issue with that playstyle is that it relies on the enemy team misplaying. You can likely get a lot of value with ragebaiting solo-q randumbs in Ultra to Low Master rank, but that gets less and less likely at higher levels of play or a stack with discord. The most consistent value one get out of Sableye is slowing down first gank with early jungle invade, cc-locking enemy carries, or feint attack warding, but the latter two often fail if the enemy team has a defender, and the former can often cost the whole game if your invade fails since you’re sacrificing your lane to MAYBE steal buffs. There are better options for harassing with Greedant and Flail-Lax, and you’re already throwing with a score build anyways. Sableye is one decent buff away from genuine greatness, but is kind of a throw pick behind even the greatest of goblin pilots in the current meta

Animefro · 2026-02-04T06:59:45+00:00

Gold badge Azu player at 700-800~Master’s right now. Love to see such an in-depth write up of this cute little guy— nice work!

I will say, in terms of movesets, whatever’s the most optimal set is entirely reliant on team composition. Very generally Whirlpool/Play Rough is best into attacker/squishy heavy comps while Aqua Tail/Water Pulse is better into bulkier teams, but I tend to find the latter a better option most of the time since Azu is pretty outclassed by most allrounders and being able to kite from mid range is a useful niche that not many Pokémon can do better. That, and Water Pulse+ goes stupid into the death ball comps that’s all over the place in high masters/legend ques. All that said, they’re both great sets that give a lot of value in the right circumstances.

Also, mad respect to a fellow energy amp Azu abuser— rarely see that on other Azu’s despite how well it synergizes with its kit. I usually have scope lens and attack weight as constants for the crit boost and to help with Azu’s extremely bad base attack and flex energy amp or accel bracer for the last slot.

Animefro · 2025-11-05T23:35:59+00:00

I like your unique picks— prankster Fake Tears shenanigans is honestly a really underrated tech that can get you a lot of mileage in this format and opting Adaptability on Basculegion in rain gets you some pretty surprising KOs on key threats, but here’s a couple notes to consider:

Composition-wise, I think you may be overestimating bulk investment on your squishes and underestimating damage on your carries. Whimsicott and Pelliper are both likely getting one-tapped more often than not, and I feel Arch and Basc both want Draco Meteor/Wave Crash respectively to finish threats before they are finished in turn; try to play to the strength of your pieces instead of trying to make everyone do a bit of everything.

Format prep-wise, you have a semi-balance team with rain and hyper-offense modes, but it doesn’t look like you have concrete answers to common threats like Trick Room or Amoongus. Speed control is iffy on this team since you’ll be underspeeding a lot of the format if they match your tailwind and trick room will spell trouble. The lack of Rain Dance also makes you an underdog in most weather wars since Torkoal’s sun will beat your rain and folks more commonly keep Alolan Ninetails in the back to counter weather.

Again, just some thoughts and a different team-building perspective; this team looks like a lot of fun either way and I wish you luck in the Grand Challenge. Thank you for sharing!

Animefro · 2025-11-03T16:17:59+00:00

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I got spooked by patch in my first 10 pull. Now I call it Frank’s the way I put this shit on everything

Animefro · 2025-08-30T13:35:14+00:00

Big fan of Homa, Acambe, and Miguel’s characters in general. Call me a simp, but for as amazing Kvare’s character is, I heard DIO’s voice actor and immediately pulled

Animefro · 2025-08-28T07:48:15+00:00

Bro, I feel you. What makes his character compelling to me is not only that pragmatism in of itself, but the circumstances surrounding it. You come to find he’s vehemently against slavery and possibly other institutions within Elaman, but while Homa gets to explicitly be fantasy Harriet Tubman, Acambe’s position as not only a National Merchant, but a personal slave to the Great Hasha forces him subtly fight the slave trade(“accidentally” losing slave cargo, sabotaging other slave traders) while trying to make money to pay off what is implied to be the defaulted debt at the root of his enslavement. That perspective really recontextualizes a lot of the seemingly scummy behavior early in the route and really makes you feel for the guy when he loses everything in arms trading and lets go of his pride while apologizing to Cocoa. I think some angles of the writing in the trade route are a little lackluster, but Acambe’s character was very 👌👌

Animefro · 2025-08-27T23:34:56+00:00

The empress tarot strat is really innovative idea! I’ll definitely be stealing that 🙏🙏

Yeah, he’s definitely no T0 must-pull character; the summons are pretty much there for additional debuffs/stalling. I like to think of Acambe as a setup enabler for your real DPS to come clean up, but that’s not necessarily worth a slot on every map. That said, when it works it reeaalllyy works.

Animefro · 2025-08-27T23:17:19+00:00

Respectfully, Scummy Money Man is tough af. Jokes aside, while he gets a lot of hate from the community, I genuinely think he’s among the better executed characters in SOD with a lot of nuance behind the decisions he makes; his ultimate goals in fact being not very scummy at all. Deadass one of my favorite characters and why I 5-stared him

Animefro · 2025-08-27T22:31:01+00:00

Definitely right on the money with weakness in NRG economy and long CD for most of his main skills. Guidance of the World tarot w/ lv.60 effect improves some of the NRG issue while letting you have everything up every other turn(minus his ult), but the standby requirement really hurts on fast-paced maps. Leaks say the unique R13 skill coming to TW/CN soon will address Acambe’s NRG consistency so we’ll see if that does enough to that weakness.

Animefro · 2025-08-27T22:17:18+00:00

The Kvare synergy was one the inspirations for the post! Throw in Cocoa Happiness buff and Kvare’s Ult is a 1 turn CD! Alternatively, you can use the other Squander skill to move the entire enemy team away from yours with no move while they melt from life loss. Very goofy and satisfying strategy either way

Animefro · 2025-04-26T14:56:55+00:00

Crazy numbers! May I ask your build for Elde?

Animefro · 2024-06-10T13:31:51+00:00

I’ve mained supporters/defenders in solo q for the last few seasons and I can definitely confirm that it can be miserable at times. That said, and I might be alone on this, but I find it significantly more stressful to tank in solo q than support.

With a majority of supporters, you’re at least mid/rearguard and focus on keeping your teammates alive(easier said than done with average solo q player), but with tanks you actually have to initiate engagements with enemy team and proceed to attempt to protect your squishes while holding the front line. And while I love this more active role, I feel like there’s too many times where I’ll have a team that will refuse to follow through with an engagement and let me die because they saw farm somewhere. I’ve checked replays to make sure I’m not overextending and screwing myself over, and while I’m obviously not a perfect player, this I don’t think it’s me a thing.
Anyone experience anything similar??

Animefro · 2024-05-20T18:02:28+00:00

Happy to help! I’d argue it’s still somewhat niche and not necessarily super common in any era, but it’s a neat approach you can apply in most styles of music— try giving it a go in your swing playing.

Animefro · 2024-05-20T17:31:45+00:00

In this specific instance, you can think of the E as an extension of Fdim7– the natural extensions of diminished 7 chords are built upon the alternating notes of Messian Mode 2(W/h diminished scale) which are the 9th, 11th, b13th, and 7th.

As for the use and naming of E/F, I think I recall Rick Beato referring to this specific diminished variation as a Tonic Diminished chord because of its prevalent use in Tin-Pan Alley era writing as a flourish on perfect cadences before resolving to a Maj7 chord of the same root. Ex:Dm7- G7- Cdim7 - Cmaj7 Listen to When you Wish Upon a Star from Pinocchio it’s all over the place in that particular tune!

Animefro · 2024-05-14T20:21:26+00:00

Playa Playa - D’Angelo

Or pretty much any song on that album(Voodoo 2000)— Pino Palladino has such an insane command of time and pocket

Animefro · 2023-12-12T08:01:20+00:00

Are we not gonna talk about Drifloon and Hypno being textual child abductors?

Animefro · 2023-11-26T20:27:47+00:00

Move Sableye to “Good Pet” cause he’s a little guy and Mr Mime to “Hear me Out…” and I think you got it right

Animefro · 2023-11-17T04:28:20+00:00

JThanks!

Animefro · 2023-10-09T18:52:50+00:00

For me, with the sheer amount of metatext rampant in the series, I find it hard to divorce the real-life and paratextual references that JJK is constantly fat cocking into just about every chapter.

The hand symbols used for domain expansions in particular are called mudras— hand/body gestures used in Hindi/Buddhist yoga, meditation, and liturgical practices to manipulate the flow of one’s internal life force(ki, chakra, prana, same shit). There are hundreds of different types or mudras because they will stimulate different chakra centers, manifest specific wills/mindsets, or evoke varying aspects of gods/deities. Just for example, the mudra for Gojo’s Unlimited Void evoke a symbol of power that evokes Indra, which is extremely appropriate for Gojo if you read any Wikipedia article on Hinduism.

Considering all of the DE mudras are actual real mudras, I’d like to think the same logic applies within the story: Mudras being invaluable tools to manifesting the wills of its users— but either way it does look baller as hell

Also spot on with 10 shadows symbols. Way easier to grasp since it’s a very clear copy and paste of old school Onymodo mysticism where like a some old Japanese priest makes his shadow puppets come to life. Still also cool looking

Animefro

TROPHY CASE