[Guide] [Competitive] Barand

[Tanamar]

Oh no Tan, I can't believe you did that.

Dude, you just started the Age of Barand. #BarandForUbers

Jokes aside, pretty good guide, man! What I would expect from the most avid teambuilder I've ever saw. Barand can hit like a truck, but it's defenses make it much less viable then it could be. I can see nuclear form seeing some love though; that thing will die to almost any neutral hit, why should I care about being weak to almost every type in the game, right? Nuclear Barand can be terrifying [i]if[/] it finds the opportunity to do it's job of demolishing stuff.

But you know, I expect nothing more of you than you using a [shiny] Barand team on a tournament. Once you do that, I'll have nothing but the utmost respect for you. Although I know you wouldn't do it because of how unfair it would be.

At least he didn't recommend giving it its signature item, the Stick.  That'd make it even more broken.

In all seriousness, another item I might consider listing in Other Options is a Life Orb, if only because it's great at boosting power without sacrificing versatility, and you're frail enough that the recoil won't matter so much in the long run.  Risky for sure, but if you can find an opportunity to properly set up without relying on a Focus Sash, it could make the DD set terrifying (or make it so you aren't entirely reliant on DD for boosting your power).

Another thing that might be worth mentioning is Rivalry can actually be useful in a simulated environment.  Genders tend to be defaulted to male in simulators when possible, and if someone doesn't specifically change them, then there's a good chance that Rivalry will have a positive effect against most of their team.  Again, risky, but incredibly powerful if it works (the risk versus reward is higher than using Tough Claws or a Life Orb, though, and the Ability does nothing against Genderless opponents)

I originally considered a SubPunch set with Life Orb, but couldn't really see it being more useful in any scenario than Dragon Dance or CB ^^ although it could make a replacement for Choice Band to not rely on Prediction to deal serious damage, so i'll add it to Other Options

On the topic of Rivalry... really not the biggest fan of it tbh xD Barand lives and dies by it's damage output and N-Barand can THKO most things that would be effected by Rivalry anyway. But then again it might help against Beliaddon and Tubareel (cause yeah there is no way getting past Laissure xD) and the fact, that if you are playing Barand, you are already taking risks so i can see a few points for using Rivalry on the Nuclear set (not on the regular set though since Tough Claws is just objectively better ^^)