Minior the Meteor Pokémon. This Pokémon is born in the ozone layer. It falls to the ground once the outer shell enclosing its core grows heavy. It will react when touched or called to, but it's unknown whether such responses indicate consciousness. Minior that fall to the ground try to return to space, but their wish will not come true-all they can do is fade away. It feeds on dust in the atmosphere. The color of its core is said to be determined by the composition of the dust it eats.

Overview

After taking the eighth generation off, Minior returns as one of the more consistent Shell Smash sweepers in the game. This is enabled by Minior’s gimmick, which is Zen Mode Darmanitan done right. Shields Down ensures Minior starts out in its bulky Meteor form allowing it to reliably tank an attack while setting up before shifting into its far faster and more offensive Core form, setting up a vicious sweep. This setup is hard to stop too, with Shields Down providing status immunity, preventing opponents from pre-emptively crippling Minior. Minior Core Form’s excellent base 120 Speed stands out after setup, outspeeding even popular Choice Scarf users and even weather sweepers like Scarf Meowscarda, Speed Booster Energy Iron Moth, Chlorophyll Venusaur and Sand Rush Excadrill, making it very difficult to outstrip. Minior is hardly lacking for moves ether. In addition to the rare STAB Acrobatics that is whose itemless condition is easily fulfilled by White Herb + Shell Smash, Rock STAB and Ground coverage leave few safe switch ins to a setup Minior.

Unfortunately, while Minior is one of the most consistent at setting up Shell Smash, it is far from the best at using it. Rock Flying is an underwhelming typing defensively boasting common Water, Electric, Stealth Rock and Ice weaknesses while offering only uncommon Bug, Poison, and Normal resistances alongside an admittedly valuable Ground immunity. This exasperates Minior’s lacking stats. 60 HP is well below average and base 100 defenses while in Meteor Form means it is not that hard to knock out Minior from full HP given its myriad weaknesses. Even Core form suffers from lacking stats, with Base 100 offenses being barely acceptable by current standards, causing Minior to miss a lot of one hit knock outs. Knock outs Core Minior can’t afford to miss given its atrocious base 60 defenses across the board causing even resisted priority attacks to threaten a knock out. This is not even getting into the flaw of the gimmick of Shields Down. Barring Substitute, when Shields Down triggers is mostly in control of the opponent who can knock Minior to just above half health and then go for KO, since pre-Shields Down Minior’s base 60 offenses don’t threaten much even after a Shell Smash boost. As a result, Minior suffers in comparison to most setup sweepers who offer greater power and actual defensive utility such as Cloyster, Blastoise, and Polteageist. Nonetheless, Minior’s unique traits do make it a fun Pokémon to use and have it stand out among the stars.
Positives
Shields Down is a decent ability, providing status immunity and bulk while Minior’s health is high and speed and power when its health drops.
Small but concise moveset with STABs and Ground coverage providing near everything Minior needs offensively in conjunction with Shell Smash.
Absurd Base 120 Speed in Core Form makes Minior nigh impossible to outspeed after setup.

Negatives
Rock Flying is poor defensively with common weaknesses, a vulnerability to Stealth Rock and uncommon resistances.
Poor HP prevents Meteor Form from being as resilient as it would like to be and exasperates Core form’s fragility.
Only usable offenses in Core form has Minior miss a lot of KOs even after a Shell Smash, and struggles to apply pressure at all in Meteor form.
Shields Down is largely under control of the opponent for when Minior changes form.

Movesets

Lucky Star

-Shell Smash
-Acrobatics
-Stone Edge
-Earthquake
Ability: Shields Down
Item: White Herb
EVs and Nature:
4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature

Minior’s flagship Shell Smash set is a simple but effective late game cleaner. Once Minior’s checks have been removed, setup a Shell Smash while your opponent breaks down Shields Down and proceed to lay waste to the opposing team. Acrobatics is a terrifying STAB having fantastic neutral coverage and well above average base power post Shell Smash setup makes it very hard to deal with. It speaks to the strength of Acrobatics that Stone Edge is the secondary STAB choice, which boasts terrifying coverage, though the flying Acrobatics is rather synergistic in obliterating the Fighting and Ground types that resist Rock while Stone Edge chunks Flying Resistant Electric types. Earthquake is last but not least, given it is Minior’s best answer into the Steel and Tera Steel types that resist both STABs.

Minior slots itself nicely into hyper offense teams that excel at breaking down Minior’s checks before it comes in for the sweep while such teams are less bothered by Minior’s all but nonexistent defensive utility.

Tera Types:
While Minior may not directly require Terastalization to perform its sweeping duties, it can be rather Tera reliant, using defensive Teras to punish opponents looking to get around Shields Down, having Minior survive an otherwise lethal blow and go for the sweep. Tera Flying is the most offensive option, turning Acrobatics into a veritable nuke, but offers little defensively beyond removing Minior’s Water weakness and restoring its Grass and Fighting resistances. Tera Ground is another offensive option, pushing Minior’s Ground coverage in line with the rest of its STABs while offering an Electric Immunity and Rock resistance, though unfortunately shares the same Water and Ice weaknesses. Tera Grass is a popular defensive/offensive option, giving Minior an invaluable Water resistance and a Tera Blast that obliterates the bulky Water types that can stop a Minior sweep before it starts. Tera Water is more defensive, granting both Ice and Water resistances at the cost of a shared Electric weakness, but lacks an option to directly deal with opposing Water types beyond Minior’s natural SABs.

EVs and Items:
For this purely physical set Max Attack and Speed investment are recommended to get the most out of Shell Smash. Minior’s key claim to fame is its ability to outspeed opposing Choice Scarfers and weather sweepers post setup, so while its speed can be overkill, you don’t want to drop too much speed, especially if you need Core Minior to outspeed an opponent. 80 Speed is all that is needed to outspeed Swift Swim Kingdra, while 216 Speed is required to outspeed Adamant Floatzel in the Rain post Shell Smash. Damage boosting natures are recommended, as Minior’s Speed in Core form is quite sufficient, and needs all the help it can get with damage. If running a Special or Mixed set, Special Attack investment would is recommended as is going for either a Modest or Naughty nature. If running Substitute, you want Minior’s HP to be evenly divisible by 4 so that two Substitutes drop it down in Shields Down (or Substitute and Stealth Rock damage). 32 HP EVs (or 8 HP EVs if at level 50) are sufficient to get Minior an HP stat evenly divisible by 4. White Herb is highly recommended as the item since it both removes the downside of Shell Smash and removes itself to power up Acrobatics. It is hard to advise any other item as Minior can’t afford the dropped defenses in either of its forms and needs an item to remove itself to get the most out of Acrobatics.

Partners:
Bulky Water and Ground types are particular banes to Minior, so teammates that can handle them are invaluable. Rotom and its forms are great for this, possessing Electric STAB for Water types while able to freely switch into Ground types thanks to Levitate and cripple them with Will-o-Wisp or weaken them with Rotom’s secondary STAB for Minior to clean up later. Base Rotom particularly excel at this thanks to Rapid Spin blocking and maintaining hazards such teams like to employ. Decidueye also deserves mention for being a powerful Grass attacker and spin blocker. Hazard setters do so much for Minior in chipping targets down to OHKO ranges. Whether it be Smeargle with its box of tricks, Froslass whose high speed and access to Taunt obfuscates opposing setup, getting as many hazards up as possible is paramount for Minior’s function. Staraptor is a great partner for Minior, being an immediate attacker with many of the same checks as Minior, luring them in and softening them up for Minior to crush later, allowing for a soft bird spam strategy.

Other Options:
Power Gem is a reliable Special Rock STAB option with perfect accuracy, and good for Special/Mixed Minior though the power drop from Stone Edge is painful. Earth Power is Special Ground coverage which is fantastic into the often high defense Rock and Steel types like Duraludon, and Alolan Sandslash, but the difference in most cases isn’t so great that Earthquake can’t pick up the 2HKO as well. Substitute is Minior’s best way of reliably getting down to Shields Down range while simultaneously providing insurance against revenge killing, but requires giving up STAB or coverage, making Minior far easier to wall.

Doubles and VGC Options

Minior’s disadvantages continue to haunt it in doubles. While Shell Smash is an insane boosting move, and STAB boosted Rock Slide a fantastic payoff, having to deal with two opponents is too tall a task for Minior. Even Minior-Core’s insane speed does not fully account for these problems. The prevalence on Intimidate in Doubles does not help matters, either consuming the White Herb pre setup or blunting Minior’s offense post setup. Minior being unthreatening pre–Shields Down, and relative fragility make it easy to either ignore or focus down, making it even hard for Minior to exercise the impressive prowess of its Core form. Shields Down not protecting from volatile status conditions is another pain point, with common disruption tools like Taunt, Encore, and Fake Out capable of rendering Minior a non-entity and turning the battle into a 2v1 in the favor of your opponent. Minior can be made to work, but the effort required can be too much to ask for.

Subbing in for a Star

-Shell Smash
-Rock Slide
-Acrobatics
-Substitute
Ability: Shields Down
Item: White Herb
Tera Type: Flying
EVs and Nature:
8 HP / 252 Atk / 84 Def / 80 SDef / 84 Spe
Adamant Nature

Minior’s Shell Smash set can be quite threatening in Doubles, with Minior’s absurd Shell Smash boosted Rock Slides causing significant damage and their impressive flinch chance is likely to go off given Shell Smash Minior Core outspeeds virtually everything. Acrobatics makes for a fine single target STAB, doing absurd damage and threaten the many popular Grass types like Rillaboom, Amoonguss, Meowscarada as well as exploit the popularity of Tera Grass. Substitute is vital for this set’s functioning, protecting Minior from repeated Intimidates and Parting Shots aiming to ruin its attack, prevent revenge killing from priority like Rillaboom’s Grassy Glide and Dragonite’s Extreme Speed and most importantly of all, getting Minior down to its Core form without relying on the opponent.

EVs are quite specific. Max Attack is a given considering Minior’s just usable base Attack, while 84 Speed ensures Minior outspeeds popular weather sweepers like Venusaur and Excadrill as well as Scarf users like Meowscarada. 8 HP EVs gives Minior 136 HP, which causes two Substitutes to activate Shields Down, with everything else going into defenses to make Minior as bulky as possible. Tera Flying is recommended to turn Acrobatics into a veritable nuke, while maintaining Minior’s levitating status for allies who want to use Earthquake and deal with the Steel types that wall Minior. Tera Rock is worth consideration given the huge amount of spread damage Shell Smash Minior would be able to push out.

Preferred Partners:
Minior makes for a niche pick on Sand teams, who appreciate its Acrobatics dealing with opposing Grass types, especially considering Grass types never carry Flying resistant Teras, while enjoying the boost to its Special Defense. Tyranitar and friends also appreciate having an ally that is immune to Earthquake, allowing them to spam the spread attack without worry. Allies that can ward off Intimidate users are great in keeping preventing Minior’s offense from being blunted. Empoleon and Milotic are notable for having positive matchups into popular Intimidate users Incineroar and the Arcanines while being able to threaten most opposing Steel types naturally with their STABs. Flamigo may seem redundant given its own predilection for fierce Flying offense, but it loves copying Minior’s Shell Smash with Costar.

Other Options:
Explosion is a last-ditch option once Minior’s use is at an end, since its relative fragility and the nature of Shell Smash do not lend themselves to alternate forms of setup. Protect possesses endless utility in Doubles formats and if not running Substitute, Minior should be running Protect.

Countering Minior

Minior is very much a do or die Pokemon, and handling its setup and gimmick go a long way in handling Minior itself.

Methods to punish setup sweepers bar direct status work wonders on Minior. Taunt from Bombirdier, Skunktank and Froslass all prevent the initial Shell Smash, while Encoring Shell Smash with Delphox turns Minior into setup fodder, though it should be noted none of these like eating even an unboosted Stone Edge from Minior’s Meteor form bar Skunktank, who still has a small chance of being 2HKOd.

Even when setup, Minior still cannot muscle through everything. Unaware walls not named Clodsire (who is actually completely walled by the Meteor form) and Skeledirge can comfortably tank all of Miniors attacks and dispatch it with ease. Given Minior’s lack of Special Flying STAB, sets are predominantly physical, so physical walls work well against it. Mudsdale is a clear standout, weathering even +2 Acrobatics with ease and wiping away Minior’s boosts with Roar, though it can struggle to deal damage to Tera Flying Minior without Rock coverage. Bronzong is also a hard wall given its immunity to Ground and resistances to both STABs. Eviolite Duraludon is also bulky enough to tank a boosted Ground attack and OHKO with Steel STAB, though it can’t tank two.

Outspeeding Core Minior post setup is nigh impossible, but the form’s fragility is easy to exploit. Lycanroc’s Accelrock, Frosslass’ Ice Shard, Hitmontop’s Mach Punch, Tauros-Aqua’s Aqua Jet, Skunktank’s and Bombirdier’s Sucker Punch, and Decidueye’s Shadow Sneak all easily KO Minior-Core with their priority ignoring Minior’s absurd speed.

The best way to handle Minior is to never let it get to Core form. Stealth Rock does a great job of chipping Minior down to OHKO range without triggering Core form, while attackers like Banded Flamigo, Banded Heracross, Banded Golurk, and Kilowatrell all do with ease.

Anime Appearences

Minior has made an appearance in the anime. In its appearance, a group of Minior crashlanded in Alola and then passed after befriending Ash's group and Poipole # -English Episode Name- -Jp. Episode Name- Pics 1022 Showering the World With Love! Minior and Poipole: A Promise that Got Lost in the Starry Skies! Pics 1027 The Shape of Love to Come! The Shape of Family: Poipole's Feelings! Pics 1033 Securing the Future! Connect to the Future! The Legend of the Blinding One!! Pics 1135 Getting More Than You Battled For! Battling & Getting! Mewtwo Comes Back Pics