Quote:
Originally Posted by Fat ClubbingSealCub
I personally don't like Toxicroak because of two reasons - it sort of "forces" us to use a rain team and it becomes a liability if team 2 decides to use sun. I would honestly prefer a Lucario or even a Bisharp, since both of them have priority, swords dance and good coverage (Bisharp has STAB on Sucker Punch to boot).
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While it's true that introducing a rain sweeper into the team at the start is a little restrictive, is that really such a bad thing? Toxicroak is amazing under rain, so by restricting ourselves, we're kinda restricting the opposing team to running a weather of their own that isn't rain (they may decide against using weather at all, but this just means Toxicroak will be extra threatening.) Rain is also simply amazing in the current metagame and I think it would be a good idea to create a rain team. Yes, Toxicroak is bad against sun, but sun really isn't too great in the current metagame (especially with Gene gone) and there are alot of ways to hard counter common sun pokemon (eg. Shed Shell Heatran) and there are pokemon that can easily sweep common sun teams (eg. Sheer Force Rock Polish Landorus), not to mention strategies like hazards + spin blocking often spell doom for sun teams. And to be fair both Bisharp and Lucario aren't too great against sun anyway, as there are multiple fast fire types (especially considering if we run Lucario then they'll make sure their Ninetales outspeeds it) and multiple chlorophyll sweepers that carry fire-type coverage that'll make their lives hell. There are some pretty major problems with both Lucario and Bisharp in terms of coverage, standard Swords Dance Bisharp runs Fighting (Brick Break, which is weak and doesn't heal like Drain Punch does) / Dark coverage (Sucker Punch), that's just walled by so much in OU it's ridiculous. If Lucario doesn't run Bullet Punch, it's easily taken out by Terrakion, fast ghosts etc but if it doesn't run Ice Punch then it's walled by the likes of Gliscor, and if it doesn'r run Crunch then it's walled by the likes of Slowbro, Jellicent etc. Toxicroak doesn't have 4 slot syndrome like Lucario, it can have Dark, Fighting, and Ice coverage on the same set, while it's true that like Lucario's Extremespeed, Toxicroak's priority move doesn't hit the likes of Terrakion either, Toxicroak simpy resists Terrakion's dual STABs and then takes it out with Drain Punch. Toxicroak overall has much better typing and coverage and there are multiple reasons to use it over Lucario.