Why is Gardevoir in RU in Gen 8?

Question

I would expect that it is there due to its poor physical bulk, but it also has 124 Special Attack, high Special bulk, and speed. I'm not sure why it's there, because the upsides clearly outweigh the downsides.

Comments

Because why use Gardevoir when you can use Tapu Lele?

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Gardevoir is in RU because it gets very little usage in UU. I think it's outclassed by Azelf, but you'll probably get a better explanation if you ask here: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/simple-questions-simple-answers-uu-edition.3657320/

Answer 1

Sadly, one of my all-time favorites has unfortunately fallen out of favor in the UU metagame. Some major detriments:

• Frail physical defenses (68 HP, 65 Def)
• Weak coverage against Steel types (walls psychic & fairy, not including 75 BP Mystical Fire)
• Average speed (80)

  However, Gardevoir is rather slow for a Choice Scarf user, so it can't revenge kill most other Choice Scarf users in the tier such as Heracross, which can easily pick it off with minimal chip damage.

• Most fairies generally outclass it due to both higher physical bulk (OU Tapu Fini, Uber Xerneas, AG Zacian-C)
• Quite a bit of psychics outspeed (Uber Calyrex-S, UU Azelf, UU Jirachi)
• Generally outclassed across the board in terms of SpD, SpA, and typing (OU Tapu Lele, UU Hatterene, Uber Xerneas)
• Literally just hit this thing with any physical move and it’ll fall down like the set of curtains it is.

All in all, quite the special wallbreaker/Trick set but only under very specific conditions. Gardevoir only exists on RU because there are much better versions of itself in every other format, so it just has no usage. Hope I helped!
Smogon‘s Gardevoir Page