|
-
Cute Charm
- Can infatuate Pokémon of opposite gender when struck. Higher chance of encountering Pokémon of the opposite gender.
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Magic Guard
- Prevents indirect damage.
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Statistics
|
Min- |
Min |
Max |
Max+ |
| HP |
95
|
- |
331 |
394 |
- |
| Atk |
70
|
158 |
176 |
239 |
262 |
| Def |
73
|
163 |
182 |
245 |
269 |
| SpA |
85
|
185 |
206 |
269 |
295 |
| SpD |
90
|
194 |
216 |
279 |
306 |
| Spe |
60
|
140 |
156 |
219 |
240 |
Thunderbolt and Ice Beam is moderately effective on everything except dedicated special sponges, Magnezone, Lanturn, and Shedinja. Sadly Clefable doesn't get STAB on any special move worth using. Softboiled and the defensive EVs make it pretty easy for you to Calm Mind up. You can't even get hurt by Toxic and such because of Magic Guard. While Leftovers would be the obvious choice for this tankish set, Life Orb is a very good choice as Magic Guard negates its recoil damage. Sandstorm and Hail don't hurt Clefable either, so that takes away the two main reasons why so many other Pokémon usually are too afraid of using it.
Alternatively, you can use Focus Blast and Shadow Ball as your attacks. Nothing resists both of them, and Focus Blast can 2HKO Blissey after 3 Calm Minds and when holding Life Orb. Its accuracy and PP are low though.
This is the second way Clefable can attempt a sweep with special attacks. With this set, you cover everything in the Pokémon world type-wise. Shadow Ball and Psychic are alternatives for Gengar and Dusknoir mainly. If you wish to use either of them, Flamethrower is the least necessary as Ice Beam can kill Grassers and Thunderbolt hurts most Steels well enough. Psychic has the advantage of killing Heracross and Weezing.
Choice Scarf can be used instead, so the EVs suggested have been tuned for that. You'll lose a buttload of offensive power, but you just might get the surprise jump on something.
Basically, any move that works on Blissey can work on Clefable. Clefable has no Natural Cure and no infinite HP and Special Defense, but at least it has Magic Guard and Reflect to work with. Paralyze fast threats like Alakazam and Azelf, shrug off hits with Softboiled, and support the team or wear the opponent down further.
This is a set where Stealth Rock can be put in. Wish is very good as well with or without Protect—the other sets need Softboiled to stay at high health, but this one usually has time to live through more attacks and therefore can afford Wish. The core of the set is Softboiled and very defensive EVs; everything else can be juggled with.
And this is another thing Clefable has and Blissey doesn't: Encore. This set is extremely tedious to bring down, especially now that Toxic no longer works on it. If you try to set up, you'll get paralyzed and Encored. If you attack Clefable, it won't take too much damage and shrug it off with Softboiled. If you do none of this, you eat 100 Seismic Toss damage.
Clefable's only wins over other Normal Choice Banders like Staraptor, Snorlax and Ursaring are its trait, Meteor Mash and more Special Attack. Magic Guard allows him to use Double-Edge with no drawbacks whatsoever. This set is mostly novelty, but the idea of Clefable mashing in heads is just too funny, and its Attack isn't half bad. Facade can be used if you want to absorb paralysis or poison—Magic Guard prevents the extra damage.
This set makes Clefable a pretty good lead. Protect kills three birds with one stone: it triggers Toxic Orb to prevent enemies from putting Clefable to sleep, it scouts enemy Choice Banders, or rather enemies in general, and it allows you to fire 140 base power Facades from turn 2 without taking any damage beforehand. Restore health with Softboiled or kill Steels like Skarmory and Bronzong with Fire Blast.
The moment Clefable puts up a Substitute, its opponent may laugh, cry or do both. Laugh because Clefable will only have three moves, limiting its versatility—cry because he still won't know what those three moves are, and whether they can hit his Pokémon hard. This set could work pretty well in Advance, but in Diamond/Pearl you will quickly find you'll always be stuck against too many things. Thunderbolt is for Gyarados, Starmie and Slowbro, while Meteor Mash covers (fragile) Ghosts and kind of hurts Rock-types if you don't want to Focus Punch them. There are myriad other moves you can use in the last two slots. Moral of the story: Clefable can beat Blissey and Tyranitar if it wants to.
Use Calm Mind or Light Screen to put your opponent into a dilemma: hit Clefable's mighty Special Defense, or have a go at its physical Defense and risk a Counter to the face. Clefable survives all sorts of Choice Banded hits at near full health, and Softboiled makes sure it stays there. If you're using Calm Mind, you should use Ice Beam. With Light Screen, you can pick any of the three moves in the fourth slot.
Counter is pretty good on its own on Clefable and can be put into a lot of sets. Just don't combine it with Thunder Wave. You don't want to spoil your Counter surprise on a full paralysis. Protect is very good to combine with Counter to see if your opponent does what you're expecting. It prevents embarrassing moments where Clefable takes a Salamence Draco Meteor to the face and then looks dumb using Counter.
Clefable is immune to Toxic damage and other hindrances fellow Belly Drummers like Linoone and Poliwrath do not enjoy. If you feel you are prevented from sweeping (like you're about to get phazed), Softboiled off the damage and sound the retreat. You can set yourself up with Thunder Wave if you like, but it'll cost you versatility. Better leave Clefable's Speed issues to Salac Berry and your team's paralysis support.
Jolly allows you to outspeed base 70 Pokémon without a Speed boosting nature before Salac Berry triggers and guarantees you beat 110 base and lower after Salac kicks in, whereas Adamant lets you tie all these 100 base Speed Pokémon with a +Speed nature at 328 Speed, which might just cost you your sweep.
Other Options
Nine movesets are already listed, and Clefable still has other moves that haven't been touched yet. Toxic is good for status if paralysis isn't your thing. Elemental punches are also optional, but you need Emerald for that. Snatch and Psych Up can grab you stat boosts in some situations. Whether Clefable's average stats can get it to win a one on one war with Calm Minders or Swords Dancers is questionable though. Clefable can set up Gravity for itself and its teammates, but you should be wary of your opponent taking advantage of it. When Gravity is active, Thunder, Fire Blast and Blizzard become superior over their 95 base power counterparts. You may want to stick to the safer side though, as Gravity may not always be active when you want to attack.
Drain Punch or Brick Break might help against Tyranitar and Weavile. Grass Knot is hands down his best option for fighting Rhyperior and Swampert, but don't ever let it be its only attacking move, both because Grass is a horrible offensive type and because lightweights such as Azelf will use the spare time to set up.
Unlike many other Pokémon, Clefable can afford to sacrifice Leftovers recovery and use Life Orb instead, because it doesn't take damage from Life Orb, Stealth Rock, Sandstorm, poison, burn, Hail or Spikes.
EVs
You should usually just take what's suggested and play around with that. There's a few general guidelines, but not much beyond that. If your Clefable is playing defensively, you should max out HP before touching its defenses. In this case, using a nature that boosts Special Defense tends to give you more stat points than one that boosts Defense, simply because Clefable's Special Defense is higher.
If you're playing Clefable offensively, pay attention to magic numbers. 236 Special Attack to KO 4 HP/0 Special Defense Salamence, ~240 Attack to 2HKO Blissey and OHKO Tyranitar with Focus Punch, etc. Run some damage calculations and see what works the best for you.
Opinion
Clefable hands-down wins the entertainment award in Pokémon Diamond/Pearl competitive play. With a movepool out of the wazoo, offensive and defensive stats barely enough to exploit it and Magic Guard to prevent enemies from getting rid of Clefable in uncool ways (read: Toxic), Clefable is a one-man(?) show. It'll keep you guessing again and again what to do and you'll likely be wrong. If you're in for something different in your standard team that is good enough to get away with, but cool enough not to get yelled at for using, Clefable is a top recommendation.
Counters
Since Advance, a 100% counter was impossible to most things that were a threat. For Clefable, you would only have 20% counters percentage-wise. It's as unpredictable as a suicidal murderer that escapes from prison. Fortunately, Clefable's attacking stats are decent but not too special, so a mistake will usually not cost you the game. It learns a lot of moves, but in Pokémon you only get to use four of them, so after you discover Clefable's set it will be quite easy to handle. Your best bet is switching to something with all-around good durability and type that doesn't get screwed up too quickly to check what Clefable's opening gambit is. Most physical sets can be stopped by Rhyperior, Steelix, Skarmory, Metagross, and Dusknoir, while special sets often have trouble with Blissey. Cresselia and Celebi tend to take little damage from either side.