Breloom, The Mushroom Pokémon. Its short arms stretch when it throws punches. Its technique is equal to that of pro boxers. It scatters poisonous spores and throws powerful punches while its foe is hampered by inhaled spores. Breloom closes in on its foe with light and sprightly footwork, then throws punches with its stretchy arms. This Pokémon's fighting technique puts boxers to shame. The seeds ringing Breloom's tail are made of hardened toxic spores. It is horrible to eat the seeds. Just taking a bite of this Pokémon's seed will cause your stomach to rumble.
Overview
From being one of the most feared Pokemon in DPP and BW, Breloom's former glory days remains as nothing but a memento. Despite Breloom's mediocre stats, every new generation we came across to gave Breloom new toys to mess with the competition. While in RSE, Breloom was nothing but a mediocre Pokemon, it had access to Spore, a 100% accurate sleep move. However, Breloom's rise to fame was in DPP when Game Freak decided to give it Poison Heal: A fantastic ability that grants a 12.5% recovery from Poison status every turn, which allowed its Substitute + Focus Punch sets terrorize teams without a Celebi on their team. B2W2 made it even better and gave it Technician which allowed Breloom to destroy teams with Technician boosted Mach Punch, similar to what Scizor did in Platinum with Bullet Punch, but with a much better typing. Technician also made Bullet Seed a ridiculously strong STAB, especially if it was able to hit more than 3 times. XY didn't changed much with Breloom other than buffing Rock Tomb for a viable Technician boosted move, which also reduced Speed and granted Breloom extra coverage against Flying and Fire types. However, Breloom's fall starts in SM with the introduction of the Guardians of Alola:
The newly introduced terrain setters in Tapu Lele, Tapu Koko, and Tapu Fini mess with Breloom's usage, as Tapu Lele can prevent Breloom from using Mach Punch on opposing foes and both Tapu Koko and Tapu Fini make grounded Pokemon immune to Spore. It is worth mentioning that none of these Pokemon can switch into Breloom safely to set up their respective terrains. However, these terrains are still fairly common, making Breloom more difficult to use successfully.
Positives
A base 130 Attack stat makes Breloom able to hit very hard against anything that does not resist its STAB and coverage moves.
Despite its mediocre stats, Breloom's solid Grass / Fighting typing grants it resistances to Dark, Electric, Grass, Water, Ground and Rock giving it some nice switch opportunities.
Breloom has access to Spore, a 100% accurate sleep inducing move that will put to sleep any Pokemon that is not a Grass type, has the ability Insomnia or protected by Misty / Electric Terrain.
Poison Heal allows Breloom to recover health after being poisoned, allowing it to recover the HP used to made a Substitute in 2 turns while granting it immunity to status. Technician raises the power of moves like Mach Punch, Rock Tomb and Bullet Seed, making them very powerful and hard for Breloom's checks to switch into.
Negatives
60 / 80 / 60 defenses makes Breloom very frail and despite its good defensive typing, even strong resisted attacks may 2HKO it.
Breloom's typing grants it a nasty x4 weakness to Flying leaving Breloom very vulnerable to Pokemon like Tornadus-T and Charizard-Y if they switch into it safely.
The dominance of Terrain setters like Tapu Lele, Tapu Koko and Tapu Fini, makes things even harder for Breloom as it becomes unable to use Spore or Mach Punch, crippling it severely throughout the match.
Breloom’s speed tier is terrible and a base 70 Speed means that many significant threats like Volcarona, Tapu Bulu, Mega Alakazam and Tapu Koko outspeed it.
Movesets
THE TECHNICIAN
- Spore
- Bullet Seed
- Mach Punch
- Rock Tomb
Item Attached: Life Orb / Focus Sash
Ability: Technician
EVs and Nature:
4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant / Jolly Nature
This is pretty much Breloom's bread and butter set. While there are many threats that can nowadays stop Breloom on its tracks, it still deals respectable damage to many Pokemon that dare to switch into Breloom carelessly and get smacked by its strong Technician boosted STAB moves. Spore allows Breloom to put to sleep a potential switch-in and cripple it for the rest of the match. Bullet Seed is Breloom's main STAB and its incredibly hard anything that does not resist it. To give you an idea, after three hits and with Technician's boost, it becomes a 112.5 power attack (without STAB factored in) overpowering Seed Bomb significantly while with 2 hits, it is only 75 power (Only -5 pts less than Seed Bomb). More hits will simply be more pain for the opponent and a bonus for you. Mach Punch is Breloom's secondary STAB and it hits quite hard. It is so powerful that even 0 HP / Def Heatran is OHKOed by a +Atk Life Orb boosted Mach punch after Stealth Rock damage while Kartana has a 50% chance of being OHKOed by it. Finally, Rock Tomb is Breloom's main coverage move and it allows it to destroy Volcarona and Mega Charizard-Y while slowing down its switch-ins.
Maximum Attack and Speed are used to maximize Breloom's offensive potential and revenge killing prowess while outspeeding as much as possible. An Adamant nature is preferred as it allows Breloom to achieve the OHKOs on Pokemon like Heatran and Kartana or 2HKO Mega Latios with a 3-hit Bullet Seed. However, with a Jolly nature, Breloom becomes able to outspeed Tapu Koko and Mega Gengar after a -1 Speed drop (At Level 50, Breloom outspeeds fully invested base 130 Speed. Unfortunately at Lv.100, it speed ties with them). A Life Orb is the preferred item to further boost Breloom's power to ridiculous levels. However, due to its frailty, Breloom can also use a Focus Sash to survive an attack at the expense of power.
Other Options and Partners
Breloom can use Swords Dance in order to boost its Attack to jaw-dropping levels. However, due to Breloom's frailty, the great amount of type combinations that resist its dual STABs and the coverage it would have to lose to make space for the move makes the move highly unappealing.
Just like in the old days, Breloom can use a Sub Focus Punch set with Poison Heal and Toxic Orb to cripple vulnerable switch-ins with Spore while hitting hard with Focus Punch behind Substitute's safety. However, Tapu Fini is a common Pokemon in Singles and Misty Terrain prevents it from activating its Poison Orb as long as it is active. Also, this set is heavily walled by Tapu Bulu.
A Poison Heal attacker with Superpower and Facade can also be used to surprise most of its opponents as many will expect either a Technician set or a SubPunch set. However, while this set can easily break stall or balance builds, it is complete deadweight against offensive teams.
Breloom can use a Choice Band to gain an immediate boost without lowering its HP. However, Breloom's STABs are moves that can be easily taken advantage of, because of the abundant amount of Pokemon that resist them. Breloom usually prefers the freedom that a Life Orb grants.
VGC, & Double Battle Options
Unlike Singles, Breloom's history in Doubles isn't nearly as pleasant or nostalgic. Breloom's biggest claim to fame has always been its big offensive presence as a Spore user, but it's not often you find Breloom doing much in Doubles due to its awful Speed tier, and more recently due to its Fighting typing. In Gen 6 these were traits with some semblance of viability due to the omnipresence of Rage Powder along with the likes of Heatran and Kangaskhan, but even those could bully Breloom back then. Nowadays Breloom's viability is completely shot down by terrains and it's woefully outmatched both as a Spore user and offensive Grass-type by the likes of Amoonguss, Kartana, Lurantis, Tsareena, and Tapu Bulu, all of which notably don't suffer from being absurdly frail and weak to Fairy-type moves. Using a Choice Scarf to overcome its poor Speed and surprise foes no longer works as well as it used to either since Breloom really can't afford to lock into a move. Breloom enjoyed a short time in the spotlight in past VGC formats but nowadays it's lucky if it can be considered a very niche pick.
Bep
- Mach Punch
- Spore
- Bullet Seed / Rock Tomb
- Protect
Item Attached: Focus Sash
Ability: Technician
EVs and Nature:
4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
Breloom doesn't bring too much to the table in the current Doubles format so its best attempt is to capitalize on its STAB moves and access to Spore. Bullet Seed is Breloom's strongest Grass-type STAB but has the added bonus of breaking through potential Focus Sash users. Mach Punch provides a powerful priority move backed up by Technician, though it's not necessarily strong enough to take on foes on its own without some support. Spore lets Breloom harass foes that it otherwise can't touch and adds an extra element of pressure with its Focus Sash, making the foe think twice about how to deal with it if they lack terrains. Rock Tomb is difficult to make room for but can provide useful speed control and a powerful coverage move with Technician's boost. Protect can be dropped to make room for it but it's hard to recommend dropping Protect on something so frail and reliant on Focus Sash pressure.
An Adamant nature with maximum Attack and Speed investment is chosen because honestly none of Breloom's other stats matter. Breloom sits in a very awkward Speed tier that doesn't outspeed much, so Jolly doesn't provide too much utility over the extra power. Focus Sash is realistically the only option for an item since Breloom is slow and reasonably frail, Choice Scarf is difficult to pull off these days but is otherwise the only potentially viable alternative. Technician is necessary for any of the offensive moves to be dangerous, and its other abilities don't provide much utility in Doubles, if any.
Other Options & Team Ideas
- There's really not many other options to consider for Breloom. Feint can be used for some team utility to break through Protect for a partner but this alone isn't going to help Breloom's viability.
- Counter has some surprise value with Focus Sash but the risks of using this in Doubles far outweigh the utility it would potentially provide.
- Helping Hand is an unusually useful team support option to give a teammate an extra push to KO something, but this is not a unique trait to Breloom and is best used by something more support-oriented that can actually make room for it.
Countering Breloom
As mentioned before, the abundance of terrain setters like Tapu Lele, Tapu Koko and Tapu Fini takes a huge hit on Breloom's usage due to their terrain effects heavily crippling Breloom. Under Psychic Terrain, Breloom becomes unable to fire its Technician boosted Mach Punch making it even easier to revenge kill. Tapu Lele also threatens it heavily with STAB Psychic and Moonblast. Under Tapu Koko and Tapu Fini's terrain effects, Breloom can't put to sleep its opponents if they are grounded. Neverless, none of the Guardians of Alola can switch safely into Breloom taking into consideration that Bullet Seed will put a heavy dent on them.
Celebi is Breloom's best counter thanks to its Grass/Psychic typing and bulk with access to Recover, making it immune to Spore, resistant to Bullet Seed and the ability to OHKO back with STAB Psychic. While it doesn't resist Mach Punch, Tangrowth has an incredible physical bulk that allows it to check Breloom reliably with Regenerator. Mega Gengar, Tapu Koko, Charizard-Y, Mega Latios and Tornadus-Therian are Pokemon that can easily switch into Breloom, however, they must be wary of Rock Tomb as otherwise if Breloom is using a +Speed nature, it will allow it to cripple them with Spore first if they are at -1 Speed.
Locations in Games
Red/Blue/Yellow:
Not in game
Gold/Silver/Crystal:
Not in game
Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald:
Evolve Shroomish
FireRed/LeafGreen:
Trade from Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald
Colosseum/XD:
Evolve Shroomish (XD)
Trade from Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald (Colosseum)
Diamond/Pearl/Platinum:
Evolve Shroomish
HeartGold/SoulSilver:
Safari Zone
Black/White:
Evolve Shroomish (Black)
Trade from White/Black 2/White 2 (White)
Black 2/White 2:
Hidden Grotto - Pinwheel Forest
X/Y:
Friend Safari
Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire:
Evolve Shroomish
Sun/Moon:
Transfer from Generation VI
Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon:
Transfer from Generation VI
Animé Appearences
