"The BDSP Elite Four is the hands-down the BEST one in the mainline series so far"

Now I'm sure some of you would say to yourselves, "But don't they use the same team with exactly the same levels as D/P? If anything, they're way easier in BDSP because of the Exp Share!"I thought the same as well - until I actually fought them.To illustrate, here's a comparison of Cynthia's Garchomp from 16 years ago, to now.VersionLevelAbilityItemHPAtkDefSpASpDSpeNotesD/P66Sand VeilSitrus Berry238176150130137174BD/SP66Rough SkinYache Berry24723815099137212Has Swords DanceAs you can see, compared to D/P Garchomp which was already terrifying, BD/SP Garchomp now deals 40% more damage, outspeed all of your Pokemon, can tank an Ice attack thanks to its Yache Berry, and one-shot your entire team after a Swords Dance.If you were to scale old Garchomp's level to match its current Speed/Atk stats, it would need to be Lvl 80 to reach the same speed, and Lvl 90 to reach the same attack.So what changed? Well, in D/P, all Trainers had 0 EVs - in BD/SP, Garchomp is now fully EV trained, with 52 HP/252 Atk/204 Spe.And it's not just Garchomp - in fact, every Pokemon of Cynthia, the Elite Four, Gym Leaders, and important Trainers now have EVs, unique hold items, and competitive sets in BD/SP.While recent games have been giving some EVs to Gym Leaders and the Elite Four, in every game before BD/SP, important NPC Pokemon never held any items, except for the odd Sitrus Berry for certain ace Pokemon (like in Sinnoh E4). This is huge.Since I want to gush about this, I've be detailed the strategies used by the BDSP Elite Four's first round.I'll gloss over most of the Gym Leaders since most have barely any EVs and a lot are pretty simple with using berries to remove key weaknesses, using damage-boosting items, and having coverage moves for weaknesses. Most notable ones are Crasher Wake abusing rain, and Maylene abusing screens and her Lucario's Drain Punch build.Moving onto the Elite Four, things start looking like sets you'd use on Showdown.Elite Four AaronSince he is a Bug-type specialist, most of these strategies won't actually work on paper, but hey, at least he tried.Dustox has a Toxic stall build using Moonlight and Black Sludge for recovery, and maybe set up a Light Screen for its friends.Beautifly uses a Quiver Dance set and focuses on outspeeding and "sweeping", if it survives.Vespiquen is heavily invested in HP, becoming kinda bulky after a Defend Order, and deal good damage with Acrobatics after eating its Sitrus Berry.Heracross is heavily invested in speed, so if you let it live for a turn, it could potentially sweep you with its Guts boost from its Flame Orb and great coverage against its weaknesses.Drapion uses a crit build - with Scope Lens, its moves Cross Poison, Night Slash, and X-Scissor now have a whopping 50% crit chance, and thanks to its Sniper ability, its crits now deal x2.25 damage, pretty much giving it a 50% chance of OHKOing any of your Pokemon.Elite Four BerthaQuagsire has a Toxic stall build with Lefties/Recover with high Def investment, and covers one of her team's weaknesses with Water Absorb.Sudowoodo has fully invested Attack and can spam Head Smash thanks to its Rock Head.Golem is able to abuse its Sturdy ability to tank a hit while doubling its mediocre speed by using Rock Polish, to then sweep you if you're lacking any priority moves/speedy Pokemon.Whiscash is designed to lure in and get rid of your Grass-type - after tanking a hit thanks to its Rindo Berry, it can OHKO back with Belch or Ice Beam with its max SpA.Hippowdon focuses on offense, but is also able to fully heal itself thanks to Rest+Chesto Berry.Elite Four FlintRapidash has Wide Lens to boost the accuracy of its Iron Tail and Hypnosis.Steelix's moves all get augmented by Sheer Force, and it also uses Life Orb - whose recoil damage is actually skipped if Sheer Force is activated! This boosts its damage by 69% with almost no drawbacks, which is sure to hurt with its perfect attack stat.Drifblim is one of the most interesting mons here. Initially, it'll spam Will-O-Wisp if you're a physical attacker, and then use Minimize 1-3 times. It's already fast enough to outspeed most Pokemon and land the WoW or Minimize before getting hit, but its speed also doubles after eating its Sitrus. It can also Burn-stall you by spamming Strength Sap to fully recover and further cripple your physical attacker. Now, after Minimizing, it then Baton Passes the evasion boosts to his ace Infernape, which will then probably destroy your team without getting hit. I was honestly amazed when the AI did this to me.Lopunny's offenses are kinda meh, but it has a full HP investment and Mirror Coat to bait and kill your special attacker before he sends out Drifblim, whose main weakness is a special attacker.Infernape has Iron Fist which boosts most of its moves, and high Speed investment to outspeed most Pokemon. Thanks to Focus Sash, it's able to dish out at least 2 Close Combats despite the defense drawbacks. This becomes even more problematic if it got the evasion boosts from Drifblim because now you have to win the accuracy roll, against a rampaging monkey, twice.Elite Four LucianYou might notice that for some reason, 3 of Lucian's Pokemon have 0 IVs in speed, and speed hindering natures - yup, Lucian here is using a Trick Room team!Mr. Mime is a classic dual-screen lead extended by Light Clay to help the team setup Trick Room, or survive out of it.Girafarig is his Trick Room Setter. Not much else to say besides its high bulk to guarantee TR comes up, and Light Screen in case the mime wasn't able to set it up.Medicham is Lucien's Trick Room Sweeper - thanks to Pure Power, its perfect Atk, and Muscle Band, its Atk stat effectively becomes an absurd 321 which will destroy your team whilst TR is up.Alakazam is his backup in case the TR strategy fails. Its high speed will outspeed pretty much anything, and it will melt your team if it's able to Nasty Plot behind the screens.Bronzong is his secondary TR sweeper; can set up TR by itself, is pretty much guaranteed to go first under it, and hurts like a truck with its Gyro Ball.Champion CynthiaEvery E4 member so far have been only using up to 300 EVs, but with Cynthia, all of her Pokemon are fully EV trained with perfect IVs!Spiritomb now has one weakness unlike its original incarnation, but will now pose a bigger problem to those unprepared due to its high SpA, HP, and Sitrus Berry.Roserade is a glass cannon designed to one-shot almost anything it's super-effective against thanks to its Expert Belt and high speed.Gastrodon is a physically bulky tank with Scald to cripple physical attackers, and Rock Tomb to slow down any speedsters from outspeeding anything that's switched in after it faints.Lucario is almost as threatening as Garchomp with it being able to melt anything after a Nasty Plot. In my experience, Lucario was always sent before Garchomp, and it just happens to have the perfect coverage to eliminate any Ice or Steel threats to Garchomp.Milotic naturally has a very high SpD but low Def, but Cynthia remedies this by giving it max Def investment and a Flame Orb which procs its ability Marvel Scale which boost its Defense by x1.5, turning it into an almost impossible to kill wall when coupled with Recover. When trying to hit its now relatively "low" SpD, it can also throw it back at you with Mirror Coat.Garchomp is now always sent out last, to clean up your probably half-dead team. With Yache Berry, it now covers its biggest weakness of being one-shot by an ice move and now can one-shot your entire team instead after a Swords Dance (which it also always uses if you try to lower its Attack stat). To add insult to injury, it now also has Rough Skin to deal a little more chip damage to your Pokemon, as if it needed it.Now despite all this, I'm sure a bunch of people still breezed through the E4 without noticing all these strategies - after all, strategy only works when you're on an even playing field (and the AI sometimes don't commit to them lol). I personally play in Set mode with no in-battle items to give the NPCs a fair fight, which made it really clear how much tougher this incarnation of the E4 is compared to all the ones before it. So if you're looking for a challenge, I highly recommend doing that!Lastly, if you think all these teams are interesting, just wait until you get to the post-game. But I won't spoil them here, and leave it to you to experience them yourselves. :)Sources:BDSP Trainer Data from @GhostsSoup and @Kaphotics, sheet by HematitePearl Trainer Data from DP speedrun community via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/3xajJSR