Blaziken

Blaziken

Right, so I've a lot to talk about with Blaziken as a Pokemon both as itself and as a mega evolution so lets start where we always do and talk about the bare basics of the Pokemon itself.

Blaziken was introduced way back in Generation 3 as the evolved form of Torchic and is the first of many Fire/Fighting types. Fire/Fighting as a typing is a two pronged sword, on one hand its terrible defensively resisting little to nothing but offensively its fantastic completely slaughtering steel types. Upon release this Pokemon only had the ability Blaze which is standard for starter Pokemon. In generation 5 with the introduction of dream ability's Blaziken was gifted with Speed Boost which raises it's speed by 1 stage at the end of each turn. Obviously this is much much better than Blaze and was abused immediately sending it flying to the Ubers tier in the Smogon ruleset. But no one cares about that do they? Lets look at its impact in doubles and the VGC15 metagame specifically.

Hp 80- Att 120- Def 70- Spa 110 -Spdf 70- Spe 80  

Blaziken didn't gain very much from the Gen V to VI transistion except the nerfing of its special attacks. But Matt! Its special attack is far inferior to its actual attack! Yep but it's attack is incredibly liable to be dropped by intimidate and it doesn't have a third move outside of Brave bird if you wanna roll that way. It's defences are way too low! I can't use it because it can't take a hit! Yep, It's defences are pretty poor but who cares? This thing moves way to quickly after a turn or 2 and can deal serious damage to the Pokemon threatening it. Blaziken is the definition of a  'Gotta go fast' glass cannon, almost akin to Greninja. The best way to run Blaziken in my opinion would be a mixed set with a Naive/Hasty with the moves:

Superpower Overheat Hidden Power Ice and Protect and with Life orb as the item.

For convenience sake I'll be a babe and leave a handy importable for PS complete with Ev's and move set for you all to try out and I'll talk about what the Ev's do as well so don't stress.

Blaziken @ Life Orb

Ability: Speed Boost
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 32 Atk / 24 Def / 196 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Superpower
- Overheat
- Protect

252 speed is used to maximise speed at all times, 196 spa is used to OHKO Aegislash and non AV Landorus-T with HP ice, 32 att is required to always KO Mega Kangaskhan with superpower and the rest of the Ev's are dumped into Hp and Def to reduce sucker punch damage ever so slightly.  Superpower is used over Low kick for consistent damage on neutral targets and also because Low kick falls short on the KO on Kangaskhan which isn't acceptable.
36 Atk Life Orb Blaziken Superpower vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Mega Kangaskhan: 213-252 (100.4 - 118.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO

High Jump kick can also be used but the risk of missing is something that I'd rather avoid and hopefully everyone reading this will agree. I personally find Blaziken to go very nicely with Kangakshan as it removes bulky steel types from the picture and aids the Kanga mirror immensely, it can also be used to remove Terrakion and other fast fighting types. Although I found the best use of it is being paired with Mega Venusaur as part of a Fire/Water/Grass core as it removes a bunch of Venusaur's main threats. Just be careful around Talonflame and paralysis as it will ruin Blaziken and have fun with this incredibly underrated Pokemon.



BUT!

Blaziken also has another option available to it and that happens to be the coveted Mega Stone, ( Mega Blaziken also referred to as Balziken by myself and friends ) 
has quite the BST increase but keeps Speed boost which is rather disappointing. 

It's stats are as follows: HP 80 - Att 160 - Def -80 - Spa 130 - Spdf 80 - Spe 100 

On paper its just a slightly better regular Blaziken and that holds true in practice. It does have a rather strong niche in being able to outspeed common scarfers like Landorus after 1 turn compared to regular needed 2 turns and destroying them with strong super effective attacks. The problem I have with it is that it isn't enough of an improvement over regular with the regular out damaging with a Life orb even after the boosts. Not to say I haven't personally been run into the ground by one of these monsters as with the correct support it can easily carry the trainer using it to easy wins. One massive plus point to using the Mega to me is actually freeing up the LO as an item for something else to abuse, as I myself find myself wanting the LO on loads of Pokemon.  It also looks really damn cool. While I wouldn't rate the mega as highly as regular, I 100% feel that this might be a Pokemon to watch out for later on in the metagame and could even be a strong call as Nationals rolls around. We'll have to wait and see won't we? I'll leave you with the rating and a funny 420 Blaziken since I'm immature and find it funny :p  

Rating ( Regular ) 8/10

Rating ( Mega ) 7.5/10