Revisions - Pyroak discussion

[Fuzznip]

Don't give this thing Head Smash.

Here's a revised stat spread I had in mind for Pyroak:

117 / 105 / 102 / 80 / 96 / 70

Physical Sweepiness: 134 Rank 5: Good

Physical Tankiness: 197 Rank 7: Excellent

Special Sweepiness: 109 Rank 4: Above Average

Special Tankiness: 183 Rank 7: Excellent

Offense/Defense Balance: -10.4 Biased towards Defense

Physical/Special Balance: 5.72 Moderately biased towads Physical

Overall Rating: 345 Very Good

BST: 570

Ok, allow me to explain why I decided on this spread.

Attack/Special Attack/Speed: When thinking of a new stat spread, I immediately wanted Pyroak to be more physically biased. It needs to abuse those powerful 150 Base Power moves in Wood Hammer and Flare Blitz as much as possible. I decided to go with a decently high base 105 Attack stat. Also, this helps it become a much more effective Dragon/Swords Dancer should it receive them in its movepool, which it most likely will. Even though Pyroak is more physically based, I still wanted Pyroak to be able to use a mixed attacking set to good effectiveness, so it needs a decent Special Attack stat. For that reason, I went with base 80 Special Attack, which is definitely not bad, considering that Pyroak will most likely be using Leaf Storm/Overheat, which already have great power. I didn't change the Speed as much, but I bumped it up to 70 in order to tie with 0 Speed Metagross, Skarmory, and Breloom, and outpace 36 Speed Scizor and Vaporeon, and 68 Speed Tyranitar.

HP/Defense/Special Defense: In order to keep Pyroak not that broken, I had to lower its defenses by a bit. Base 117 HP is still a great number to hit, still giving it the ability to use bulky Substitutes and giving it excellent bulk in general. Base 102 Defense makes it take physical hits reliably well, while base 96 Special Defense makes it take special hits better than it did before.

I will include some damage calculations if needed.

Edit: Intimidate is a good ability on this thing for sure.

 

[Zystral]

@ Zarator - Just a few points at your Counters list;
ScarfRachi can hope to flinch Pyroak to death, although again, still risky.
Scarfed Flygon can't switch in but with Hasty and Max Attack, he can hit the current Pyroak for a 2HKO (assuming Stealth Rock and Life Orb) with U-Turn before letting something else take the hit.
Almost all variants of Heatran can come in on Pyroak bar Head Smash and threaten with neutral STAB Fire Blast which hits 120HP/90SpD base with 4HP/0SpD investment for roughly 61.42% - 72.44%

Also, given your calculations, I'm in favour of not accepting Head Smash but allowing Stone Edge. Low PP and Accuracy is enough opportunity for things that would normally 2HKO that are OHKO'd themselves to knock down Pyroak. Rock Slide has less power, so some OHKOs may become 2HKOs, although I am unsure.

 

[Raj]

I'm really rather fond of Pyroak's availability to use Lava Plume and Grass Knot in a moveset. There are not comparable Physical moves for Pyroak to use. I don't think we should lower its Special Attack at all

 

[BetterThanYourGod]

120/100/95/95/100/70

This way it maintains its bulkiness and special attack, yet also has the speed boost and Physical boost. I agree with dragonites, there really is no reason to lower the special attack, his movepool is fantastic. Head Smash is way to broken to be used. Salamence loses 78.3% - 92.8% with rock slide, a OHKO as long as stealth rock is in play, and stone edge does 104.8% - 123.5%. Ability wise, I'm good with either White Smoke or Intimidate.

 

[tennisace]

I was going to post a ton of calcs advocating 105 attack and 80 spa but fuzznip beat me to it. Very little investment allows an OHKO on Skarm with Fire Blast, and a 2hko on other steel types. The attack also allows you to OHKO Vaporeon with Wood Hammer, and with enough investment, Suicune/Hippowdon also.

 

[BetterThanYourGod]

tennisace, Pyroak 2HKOs skarmory with flare blitz anyway, and if he gets DDance, it's a OHKO with a +1 Life Orb Flare Blitz.

 

[Zystral]

tennisace, Pyroak 2HKOs skarmory with flare blitz anyway, and if he gets DDance, it's a OHKO with a +1 Life Orb Flare Blitz.

Pyroak used Flare Blitz / Dragon Dance!
Skarmory used Brave Bird / Whirlwind!


I'm liking your spread, Fuzznip, although more Speed would be nice.

 

[BetterThanYourGod]

Pyroak used Flare Blitz / Dragon Dance!
Skarmory used Brave Bird / Whirlwind!

Pyroak switches in on something, uses dragon dance on the switch. Whirlwind has negative priority, and Pyroak would outspeed Skarmory after a DDance.

 

[Gothic Togekiss]

I'm kinda liking Fuzznip's stat spread myself. Maintains it's bulk and Special attack, but gains some speed and a major increase in attack. Some damage calculations on how 105 Atk and 80 Sp. Atk works for this metagame since I seem to have missed them before giving on Tennis' comment.

 

[BetterThanYourGod]

Fuzznip should add just enough speed so that it outspeeds skarmory, metagross and heatran. Other than that the stat spread looks fine.
Edit: Outspeeding Heatran might be a bit too much

 

[Scoopapa]

I still don't see special attacking being that important. As earlier calcs have shown, offensive variants are going to OHKO Skarmory and Hippowdon, while defensive variants (i.e. not something you want to stay in to Roar away when it has a STAB SE attack) are still going to threaten a heavy hit (or Will-o-Wisp), not to mention such variants won't be threatened themselves. I don't see a need to drop his huge bulk to go mixed when he can just as easily keep it and go physical, and beat the same threats. Cyclohm is the only pokemon I can think of who is beaten by special Pyroak and physical Pyroak... but I doubt going mixed just to run Earth Power would be worth all of the other sacrifices.

Let's just say he gets Earthquake:
+1 LO EQ vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Bold Cyclohm: 52.38% - 61.9% (98.34% chance to 2HKO.)
Vs. Life Orb Earth Power from the 80 Sp Attack spread, 252 EV's.
53.81% - 63.33% (2HKO)
So the "swapped" spread does about the same damage after a boost as the mixed spread does without. However, the mixed spread is still slower than Cyclohm, so if the all physical version uses Dragon Dance on the switch, the matchup is about the same - both have to take a hit to stop Cyclohm. Note that Outrage, which Pyroak already has, could work similarly (and isn't unthinkable given most of Pyroak's other coutners), but carries the obvious disadvantage.

With Dragon Dance as a likely addition, I can't really think of anything he needs special attacks to beat. If anyone knows of any notable examples, please let me know (keep in mind physical sets have the advantage of Dragon Dance).

 

[BetterThanYourGod]

Scoopapa has a point, maybe a 120/100/110/75/95/80 stat spread? Lava Plume would still be practical on a support set, and he'd have more bulk.

 

[Raj]

Ah!! You guys are killing me! I don't see what's wrong with Pyroak as it is. At this rate I'm going to vote for no changes to be made. Everyone seems to be turning him all about. He doesn't need to be turned out.

 

[Fuzznip]

I don't see a point in giving Pyroak more base Speed points in order to outpace Metagross, Skarmory, and Heatran. Metagross is almost never seen running max Speed, as it is usually using defensive investement. AgiliGross is probably the fastest Metagross you'll ever see (who isn't extremely common anyway), and it doesn't even use max Speed. Skarmory literally never runs max Speed, only a tiny amount of Speed EVs are used. With that being said, Pyroak only needs to run a small amount of EVs to outrun the aforementioned threats. On the note of Heatran, Pyroak already can't do anything notable to it, so it doesn't matter if Heatran outpaces Pyroak or not. Also, Pyroak will have to use a huge amount of Speed EVs to outpace it, and that isn't really helpful since Pyroak can't invest in its defensive stats.

Also, just because Pyroak can beat stuff without going mixed, that doesn't mean its Special attack should be dropped. Having the ability to hit very hard with Leaf Storm/Overheat is definitely something not to be overlooked, since it can really hurt stuff, such as Gliscor, Gyarados, Skarmory, Metagross, Hippowdon, Suicune, etc. I understand that Pyroak already has Flare Blitz and Wood Hammer to use against them, but they can survive the assault and retaliate with their own powerful attacks, which could really damage Pyroak.

 

[HD]

I understand that Pyroak already has Flare Blitz and Wood Hammer to use against them, but they can survive the assault and retaliate with their own powerful attacks, which could really damage Pyroak.

However there is an easier way to fix this. Keep the defenses or even add to them. Having an average Offense but a strong Defense would keep Pyroak versatile. The only thing to do to Pyroak, in my eyes, is to add to Speed and Attack. Taking 5 points won't make a difference to the Defenses in the long run, but you should keep them relatively unchanged. A substantial amount would be needed to OHKO threats like Suicune and Gliscor, but that amount comes from one thing: the Defenses. Why bother doing that if we're severly damaged from their attacks and cannot switch in? Listen people: we are NOT making Nape 2.0.

 

[BetterThanYourGod]

120/105/105/95/90/70

The health and defenses allow Pyroak to maintain bulkiness, while the attack and special attack allows it to either go physical or mixed. Like Fuzznip said, he doesn't really need too much speed (I didn't check how many speed EVs the threats I listed actually used), but I gave him a little boost so that he can outspeed a couple of threats after a dragon dance or two (I'll assume he'll end up getting DDance).

 

[Raj]

Okay bruh, you just jumped Pyroak's Base Stat Total from 540 to 585.. that's 45 extra points you just added to make it super beast. That's morbidly unecessary. I suggest something along the lines of 120/90/90/95/90/60. Previous suggested sets have allowed Pyroak to both Tank and Sweep, which shouldn't be the case. With something like this, there are plenty of options to run: Physical Attacker, Special Attacker, Physically Defensive, and Specially Defensive. However, due to the spread, Pyroak would only be able to accomplish 1 of these in a successful set. That way we have a variety of Pyroak and jack of all trades without creating anything broken. Moderation.

All I did to alter the spread is take 15 points from Pyroak's Defense and add 20 to its Attack raising its BST from 540 to 545, nothing to drastic. Lowering Pyroak's Special Attack makes it unable to utilize Lava Plume and Grass Knot effectively. Grass Knot doesn't always OHKO Swampert as it is, why would we want to make it harder? The Speed remains the same as originally and with little investment can outspeed foes that neglect Speed -such as Skarmory, Metagross, Scizor, Vaporeon, and Tyranitar- and hit for Super Effective damage.

The Attack stat goes no higher that 90 for a couple of reasons: 1) I want it to keep a somewhat attractive Defense; and 2) Pyroak has 2 awesome high power STAB moves that are going to hit hard even at this mediocre stat. Furthermore, if Dragon Dance gets added to its movepool, any higher of an Attack might just prove Pyroak broken.

To explain the loss of Defense, the points have to come from somewhere. The spread I provided really rounds Pyroak off well. If needed to defend physically, it can with investment. It can fare specially just as well, but wouldn't be wise to invest between the two. Currently, no one even invests in Pyroak's Defense, so that should tell you why it's alright to take from here to add to Attack.

 

[Zystral]

All I did to alter the spread is take 15 points from Pyroak's Defense and add 20 to its Attack raising its BST from 540 to 545, nothing to drastic. Lowering Pyroak's Special Attack makes it unable to utilize Lava Plume and Grass Knot effectively. Wait WHY would you want to do this? Lava Plume is a great Burn tool that Pyroak could use for tanking with and Grass Knot has the option of hitting Rhyperior, plus if you're on a tanking set, it doesn't give the recoil of Wood Hammer. Lowering Pyroak's Special Attack is a bad idea because he can still run a mixed set as well as utilize more reliable special attacks on a defensive set. Grass Knot doesn't always OHKO Swampert as it is, why would we want to make it harder? The Speed remains the same as originally and with little investment can outspeed foes that neglect Speed -such as Skarmory, Metagross, Scizor, Vaporeon, and Tyranitar I'm sorry, Skarmory, Metagross and Tyranitar neglecting Speed? Skarmory's Standard set runs 16 EVs from a Base 70 as it is, Metagross depending on the set can and sometimes does have Maximum Speed, as is the case with Tyranitar. - and hit for Super Effective damage.

Comments in bold.
Base 60 Speed, with a +Nature and Maximum Investment hits 240 Speed. ~Nature gives it 219. ~Nature and no investment at all gives 156. If we're running a tanking set, good luck reliably taking down the likes of TTar and Skarm.

I'm changing my final submission for Pyroak's stat spread, and it's a tweaked variant of Fuzznip's.

115 / 105 / 100 / 80 / 95 / 78 BST: 570
Physical Sweepiness: 146 / Rank 5: Good
Physical Tankiness: 191 / Rank 7: Excellent
Special Sweepiness: 116 / Rank 4: Above Average
Special Tankiness: 179 / Rank 7: Excellent
Offense/Defense Balance: -7.54 / Moderately biased towards Defense
Physical/Special Balance: 6.08 / Moderately biased towads Physical
Overall Rating: 352 / Rank 7: Very Good

Basically I took Fuzznip's spread and gave it 78 Speed.
The extra points came out of HP, Defence and Sp.Def
This will allow it to outspeed Heatran as well as Max Speed Tyranitar (provided Pyroak is Adamant and has Max Speed). Metagross is almost always outsped as well, and 16 Spe Skarmory is outsped with Adamant nature and no investment.

The Attack stays at 105, thus, any physical calculations remain untouched, as with the Special Side, allowing Pyroak to pull off a Bulky Sweeper set more efficiently, be it Physical DDance, Pure Special or Stallbreaking Mixed. In fact, the boost in speed ties Pyroak allows Pyroak with 228 Speed EVs and 1 Dragon Dance to outspeed Azelf, Starmie and other Base 115's.

In terms of Defence, the lowered HP and Defences shouldn't affect Pyroak too badly in tank terms. He is still able to generate 101HP Subs with the right investment.
Pyroak can still take attacks quite well, Standard Skarmory's Brave Bird 2HKO's 1% of the time, Max Attack Metagross' EQ 3HKO's 6% of the time and Scarf Heatran's Earth Power never 3HKO's either.

 

[Fuzznip]

Pyroak does not need anymore Speed. Even base 70 (the one in my spread) is a lot. It can do its job effectively without base 80 whatever Speed. Pyroak has the bulk to utilize Dragon Dance multiple times, so if you are planning on giving it Speed based on Dragon Dance numbers, that's silly. Not everyone will be using Dragon Dance in the first place.

I'm going to stick with this: 115 / 105 / 102 / 80 / 96 / 70

 

[BetterThanYourGod]

Wow, I've posted a lot of stat spreads.
120/110/100/80/90/70. BST 570
This going to be my final stat spread. It has more attack than the others, but manages to not sacrifice from its fantastic HP. It takes only five away from its defense, and keeps its special defense the same. I'm basically trying to get a relatively mixed sweeper, with less defenses but more health (than the other spreads).

And dragonites, Pyroak only needs 80 SpA. He still OHKOs Skarmory with Overheat 100% of the time with no EV investment and OHKOs Swampert with Leaf Storm 100% of the time (still with no investment). And as for Lava Plume not being practical, the burn rate is still the same. You could still easily make a support set with lava plume using any of these stat spreads.

 

[Umbreon Dan]

The first Pyroak poll is up.

A couple of abilities were left out. Immunity, for example, made no sense when Poison Heal was already on the poll.

I also feel the need at this point to reiterate one of the rules that one or two users have been breaking:

No thread-hogging. This is a big project with a lot of opinions, and everyone wants to be heard. Most CAP threads are used by community leaders to gauge overall community consensus on a topic. If one user spams a thread repeatedly with posts, it makes it difficult to see the overall community opinion. Please be respectful of the rest of the community, and do not treat CAP threads as your personal soapbox.

I know some of you have got a lot to say, but try to do it in fewer posts, thanks.

 

[BetterThanYourGod]

Does Poison Heal seem a little broken on a Pokemon like Pyroak? Breloom has terrible defenses, so it works on it, but Pyroak has massive HP and great defenses. So he'll have
1/8th of his health resotred every turn, and he'll be immune to any statuses.

 

[Korski]

@BetterThanYourGod: I'll assume you've exhausted everything you have to say in your 13 posts in this thread. If not, then you've clearly not thought out any of your posts and have just been vomiting out unhelpful one-liners, in which case, you should stop. I think your stat spreads, amongst a few others, are both bloated and inefficient, which isn't uncommon in CAP, but are certainly over-the-top and undesirable in your case.

In terms of direction for Pyroak, I don't really see much potential for defense. It has a notable resistance to Bullet Punch, which, I would argue, is better-suited for an offensive poke, and a resistance to Electric, which would be more useful if Electric attacks weren't always accompanied by powerful STAB attacks that hurt Pyroak a lot (see Latias, Starmie, etc.). The Grass resist is really quite meh, certainly not defensive unless your team is run over by Leech Seed. As good walls/tanks rely on resistances or outrageous stats (Blissey) to be effective, Pyroak just doesn't have the tools to pull it off as well as OU's current best offerings. Its SR weakness only amplifies this lack of defensive potential. Even SubSeeding is hard if you have to sub down to 50% health with no other damage to get the Leech Seed off.

Offensively speaking, Fire/Grass typing is ideal for taking out the bulky Water/Ground/Steels that are often depended upon to counter offensive teams and many, like Hippowdon, Gliscor, Suicune, Swampert, and Skarmory, are defensively dedicated one way or the other. Add to this the overwhelming superiority of special Fire moves over physical ones in the metagame and you've got a good argument for wanting a quality SpA stat to complement a solid, primary Atk stat. With that said, I support moving Pyroak in the bulky offense direction with SubSeeding as a viable secondary option.

Dragon Dance and Leaf Blade should certainly be added to the movepool, along with Rock Slide and possibly Dragon Pulse. Dragon Dance screams bulky offense, and Pyroak certainly has the bulk to abuse it. Leaf Blade gives non-Rock Head Pyroak a reliable physical STAB move (which it sorely lacks; Power Whip should be excluded because Oak should be more or less forced to use Rock Head with its most powerful attacks, imo), and Rock Slide is a good coverage move and complements its STAB attacks. Dragon Pulse would be an interesting option if you're really worried about Dragon types walling you and could prove useful in that regard, although it's a very specific coverage move and will leave you exposed elsewhere (as if Heatran needed another reason to switch in).

I'm not really satisfied with any of these stat spreads that are trying to lower Pyroak's SpA in order to beef it up elsewhere. Pyroak already has the potential to be an excellent mixed attacker with a useful niche, so let's not tear it down to the bare bones because it might all of a sudden have a viable DD set. I say we improve it.

I have a tentative stat spread that goes more mixed than most while allowing for viable DD sets and also maintaining enough bulk to invest in and make useful should one desire to run a defensive set:

110/110/90/100/80/65

PS: 131; 5 - Good
PT: 168; 6 - Very Good
SS: 123; 4 - Above Average
ST: 149; 5 - Good
ODB: -6.24 - Moderately Biased towards Defense
PSB: 3.89 - Slightly Biased towards Physical
OSR: 312; 6 - Very Good
BST: 555

It's basically a juiced-up Swampert build and can play relatively the same way, with the added potential of Dragon Dance. A spread like this could run somewhat like DDTar, TBoah, generic bulky Water/Ground/Steel counter, Swampert-esque lead, defensive SubSeeder or SubStatuser, RestTalk shuffler/stat-upper, or whatever, depending on investment. It's still pretty giant, stat-wise, but not so much that it's overwhelming or ridiculous, and is on par with Syclant, Fidgit, and Arghonaut. I'll edit the spread depending on any response I get from the community and also based on the outcome of the current ability poll. I'm still on the fence about it, though, because it might still be too "big," so I may just scrap it altogether.

EDIT: I've been thinking about Curse as a cool addition to the movepool. Pyroak can definitely pull off both a Curse set and a DD set, which would greatly increase its versatility. I also can't think of a single pokemon in the game that can threaten both a DD set and a Curse set (besides maybe TTar), as both require different counter strategies, which could be a rather interesting addition to the metagame.

 

[Raj]

Zystral, you weren't paying attention. I'm not lowering Special Attack, I was saying it would be silly to lower it because it needs that power. And are you serious? 16 EVs on Skarm is nothing.... Pyroak only has to invest past that.

 

[tennisace]

The poll is up for Abilities. Keep the discussion on abilities.

I chose Intimidate simply because it's not too powerful, but it's a definite improvement over Battle Armor.