Tangrowth (Utility)

Tangrowth

[SET]
name: Utility
move 1: Sleep Powder
move 2: Giga Drain
move 3: Hidden Power Fire
move 4: Knock Off / Leech Seed
item: Leftovers
nature: Bold
evs: 252 HP / 48 Def / 20 SpA / 188 Spe

Why this set deserves to be on-site?

• Very good physical bulk
• Amazing ability, which allows it to heal without giving time to your opponent to set up
• Stops most Volt-turn teams
• Sleep Powder
• With Sleep Powder, HP Fire, and the Speed investement this Tangrowth avoid being set-up bait against its usual enemies like Skarmory, Ferrothorn and Forretress
• Fares excellent against Sand teams, checking stuff like Landorus, Terrakion and Ferrothorn
• Knock Off is a very underrated and useful move to cripple opponent's while also scouting their sets
• Leech Seed is good for additional recovery to you and your teammates, and is an excellent move to spam when expecting a switch

Additional Comments:

• The Speed evs allow Tangrowth to outspeed maximum Speed Timid Wobbuffet and everything below, which means Skarmory, Band Scizor, Jellicent, etc
• The SpA evs are to ensure the 2HKO on Landorus after 2 SR switch-ins with Giga Drain and give a ~50% chance to 2HKO Skarmory after SR and Lefties, or 100% chance to 2HKO Shed Shell Skarmory after SR
• The rest evs are dumped into HP and Defense with a Bold nature to maximize physical bulk
• Hidden Power Ice is an alternative over HP Fire but not really recomended since without HP Fire Tangrowth is huge Spikes bait and is unable to stop Volt-turn teams.
• If you want a way to deal with Dragons AncientPower is an alternative over Knock Off. With these evs it allows Tangrowth to 2hko Salamence after SR, and OHKO Volcarona after SR. It also gives you a way to deal better damage than any other move of Tangrowth to Dragonite and Gyarados, while also having a small chance of raising every single stat
• Focus Blast is also an option in the 4th slot to maim Heatran, Tyranitar and Hydreigon

Teammates and Counters:

• Teammates that are able to deal with Dragons and Fire types are very useful. Heatran is the only poke capable of dealing with both so it's one of the best partners. Physically defensive Gyarados is also a very good partner, as it is able to take every single fire poke in OU and most physical Dragons that trouble Tangrowth, while also providing some much needed special bulk to the table. Other good options are specially defensive Skarmory and Jirachi
• Dragons and Fire types are big problems for this set, particularly specially based. Latios, Latias, Hydreigon, Haxorus, Dragonite, Infernape, Heatran and Volcarona are all pokes that can switch into Tangrowth after Sleep Clasue is activated, and set up on it or simply fire powerful attacks
• Any decently powerful special attcker is a good check as it will force Tangrowth out, due to its abysmal SpD. Some examples are NP Celebi, Jolteon, Tornadus, Gengar, etc.

Here are some logs of this set in action. I have been playing with this set for the last month and it has taken me to a 1330 max rating.


Logs:

Putting aside the merits of the set, there are several things besides Dragon and Fire-types to worry about(though that in itself is pretty big). Jirachi and Celebi take little damage from HP Fire, can heal it off with Wish/Recover respectively even if you Knock Off their Leftovers, on top of possibly paralyzing you or hitting back with HP Fire in Celebi's case. Tentacruel doesn't take a whole lot from Giga Drain and has Rain Dish if you take away its Leftovers(or Liquid Ooze I guess lol). Defensive Gliscor can recover off Giga Drain damage and hit you with Toxic. That atrocious Special Defense makes it hard to stay in on almost any special attacker; it takes a ton of damage from basically any neutral special attack and doesn't have many useful resistances that it can take advantage of(Grass/Water types often pack HP Fire/Ice Beam which maim you and Jolteon/Magnezone routinely carry an HP that hits you).

Again, I'm not saying anything about the viability of the set, just that its problems extend beyond just Dragons and Fire types in terms of "things your team needs to cover".

ElCee said:

Putting aside the merits of the set, there are several things besides Dragon and Fire-types to worry about(though that in itself is pretty big). Jirachi and Celebi take little damage from HP Fire, can heal it off with Wish/Recover respectively even if you Knock Off their Leftovers, on top of possibly paralyzing you or hitting back with HP Fire in Celebi's case. Tentacruel doesn't take a whole lot from Giga Drain and has Rain Dish if you take away its Leftovers(or Liquid Ooze I guess lol). Defensive Gliscor can recover off Giga Drain damage and hit you with Toxic. That atrocious Special Defense makes it hard to stay in on almost any special attacker; it takes a ton of damage from basically any neutral special attack and doesn't have many useful resistances that it can take advantage of(Grass/Water types often pack HP Fire/Ice Beam which maim you and Jolteon/Magnezone routinely carry an HP that hits you).

Again, I'm not saying anything about the viability of the set, just that its problems extend beyond just Dragons and Fire types in terms of "things your team needs to cover".

Click to expand...

Yeah you are right, but all those pokes you mentioned can't do anything back to Tangrowth, while Tangrowth removes their item. Gliscor esepcially has to be very carefull to not have its Toxic Orb removedm since after this it will be left without any form of recovery and prone to stauts. Finally you are absolutely right about special attackers. Any decent special attacker will put the hurt on Tangrowth so i am going to mention it.

alexwolf, nice skeleton and set, but I just don't see this functioning any differently from the physical tank on-site. I can truly appreciate the extra Speed you have invested on Tangrowth, but an AC mention of your faster spread, as well as Knock Off, under the Physical Tank set is sufficient, imo. I watched the log replays, too, and other than being faster, it doesn't play much differently.

You certainly have a point Pocket, so let me explain myself. The truth is that i don't either believe that those 2 sets play different enough to get seperate analysis, however i do believe that this set is better in the current meta and the one that should be mentioned in the AC is the on-site.

One big advantage this set has, that can't be overlooked, is the speed. I think that speedy Tangrowth is much more viable in this meta than the fully defensive one for 2 reasons. The first and most important is of 'course Volt-turn teams which commonly carry Scizor, Rotom-W and Landorus, and how well Tangrowth handles them. I won't say he easily breaks the chain, but he certainly does a very good job pressing the opponent and forcing them to also play the guessing game or else suffer heavy consequences. HP Fire has a small chance to OHKO CB Scizor after SR and always does after 2 SR rounds, while Giga Drain always 2hkoes Landorus after 2 SR rounds, so even after Sleep Clause is activated, you can break the chain again.

The other reason that speed is essential is because it prevents you from being Skarmory bait while you 2HKO him more often than not. Also even when not factoring Volt-Turn teams, outspeeding CB and Specially Defensive Scizor is always a plus. Finally picking off Jelliecnt when she is at ~46-47% before she can burn you or Taunt you is also very good.

Ah and also i believe that Knock Off is a very potent move, which deserves a main slash, since it cripples many pokemon that would switch into you after Sleep Clause is activated.
Take for example Gliscor, which would otherwise switch into you and start boosting with SD. Now he will get his Toxic Orb dropped and be left without any form of recovery and no status immunity. Shed Shell Skarmory will now be rdy fro your Magnezone to trap. Specs Latios is really weak without it's Specs. Dragonite will really miss his Lefties healing him back to MS in Sandstorm.

Also something to note in comparison with Stun Spore is that Knock Off can't be prevented by status absorbers, has perfect accuracy, can't be Taunted, everything hates Knock Off while many things don't care about paralysis, and Knock Off can't be undone if the opponent has a cleric. This is a huge deal especially against stall teams, which don't really care about status, as long as their cleric is alive, but definitely value their lefties.

Any QC member opinion, or any opinion at all?

Your Gliscor argument doesn't work. Once Toxic Orb activates, Gliscor gets Poison Heal, period. You'd either have to hope he doesn't switch in in the middle of a turn or you predict the Knock Off. Also, while I almost never see Tangrowth, isn't HP Ice rather common on him for Dragons since he's such a sturdy physical wall? Switching in to be 2HKO'd even after Protect/Poison Heal doesn't sound like a good idea.

Frankly, one of the reasons why knock off is rarely seen, is because often it doesn't do enough-- where as something like stun spore is almost always devastating when it hits something that's not a status absorber (and really, the only thing that can absorb it is something already status'd).

I don't think stun spore is that inferior to knock off (if at all).

I'm sure you have a good reason, but why not use evolite tangela over this? It has higher speed so needs less investment and has better bulk. You may say leftovers balances this out, but you would need to show us how tangrowth is better. It also has only 10 less base sp atk which isn't that much.

You can't really argue with Tangela since it doesn't even have an OU analysis, and quite frankly, the QC team's (a few and I) having a hard time trying to find reasons to use even the SubSeed set.

As for my opinion on this set, I barely have one. I attempted to use to 160 Spe variant of this set from the Creative Sets thread with so-so results, which is all I can bring to the table as far as experience is concerned.

I wasn't trying to say that either poke is that good in OU. I was just saying that if you insisted on using this set, I think tangela would outclass it, just because it doesn't have an OU analysis it doesn't mean it can't be better than tangrowth if it was using this set. (I'm also not trying to say that tangela should have an OU analysis).

Lord of Bays said:

Your Gliscor argument doesn't work. Once Toxic Orb activates, Gliscor gets Poison Heal, period. You'd either have to hope he doesn't switch in in the middle of a turn or you predict the Knock Off. Also, while I almost never see Tangrowth, isn't HP Ice rather common on him for Dragons since he's such a sturdy physical wall? Switching in to be 2HKO'd even after Protect/Poison Heal doesn't sound like a good idea.

Click to expand...

Yeah i meant before Toxic Orb activates... HP Ice deserves a mention in AC, since as you said it is very useful for dragons and Gliscor but without HP Fire CB Scizor, one of the main pokes that this set is supposed to beat, walks all over you.

Chou Toshio said:

Frankly, one of the reasons why knock off is rarely seen, is because often it doesn't do enough-- where as something like stun spore is almost always devastating when it hits something that's not a status absorber (and really, the only thing that can absorb it is something already status'd).

I don't think stun spore is that inferior to knock off (if at all).

Click to expand...

I didn't say that it was inferior, it is just that i feel that Knock Off fits better on this set. However Knock Off is by no means the absolute option for the 4th slot, so i am going to put whatever the QC team decides. Knock Off/ AncientPower/Stun Spore and Leech Seed all seem like good options.

Knight of Cydonia said:

I'm sure you have a good reason, but why not use evolite tangela over this? It has higher speed so needs less investment and has better bulk. You may say leftovers balances this out, but you would need to show us how tangrowth is better. It also has only 10 less base sp atk which isn't that much.

Click to expand...

The bigger speed doesn't matter because of the smaller SpA. The SpA that Tangrowth reaches with these evs is very important as it allows him to OHKO and 2HKO certain threats. So if we were to use Tangela, we should have to invest more in SpA and less in Speed but in the end we will have spent the same evs, since Tangela's Base Speed is 10 more, and so is Tangrowth's SpA.

Now for the defensive part. Tangela is slightly bulkier in both spectrums iirc, but this is largely offset by Leftovers. Leftovers recovery is very important as this set doesn't have Leech Seed and your only mean of healing will be Regenerator and Lefties. Put in the table SR, Spikes and SS damage and you will quickly realize why Tangrowth is superior.

Sorry I misread the speed stat of tangrowth on my iPod (very small). Yes you are right about the evs just being switched around for speed and sp atk.
To show the defense of tangela, I used this spread which achieves the same speed and sp atk, factoring in HP fire 30 speed iv.
Bold
252 HP/ 48 Def / 100 sp atk/ 108 spe
This yields 334 HP, 305 Def, 261 Sp atk, 116 sp def and 182 speed.
Factoring in evolite, tangela has 457.5 def ( rounded up?) and 174 spd (spd hardly matters)
This plays your tangrowth's 404 HP, 326 Def and 136 sp def.
Anyway I'd rather have tangela switch in and take a hit then switch back out 1 or 2 turns later, but tangrowth is probably better if you are staying in for longer.
I don't want to argue about this anyway, my main point about speed and sp atk has been disproved, so I guess you are right. Btw I used this and it is good against volt turn, but it didn't seem to me to excel at much else.
You also have 4 unused EVs.

Knight of Cydonia said:

Sorry I misread the speed stat of tangrowth on my iPod (very small). Yes you are right about the evs just being switched around for speed and sp atk.
To show the defense of tangela, I used this spread which achieves the same speed and sp atk, factoring in HP fire 30 speed iv.
Bold
252 HP/ 48 Def / 100 sp atk/ 108 spe
This yields 334 HP, 305 Def, 261 Sp atk, 116 sp def and 182 speed.
Factoring in evolite, tangela has 457.5 def ( rounded up?) and 174 spd (spd hardly matters)
This plays your tangrowth's 404 HP, 326 Def and 136 sp def.
Anyway I'd rather have tangela switch in and take a hit then switch back out 1 or 2 turns later, but tangrowth is probably better if you are staying in for longer.
I don't want to argue about this anyway, my main point about speed and sp atk has been disproved, so I guess you are right. Btw I used this and it is good against volt turn, but it didn't seem to me to excel at much else.
You also have 4 unused EVs.

Click to expand...

Tangela is 16% physically bulkier and 5,7% specially bulkier.

But most of the times this bulk is offset by ss damage and entry hazards.

Even if you stay in only for a little bit (i myself only stay in 1-2 turns with Tangrowth), Tangrowth is still better most of the times as Lefties really makes a difference. Tangrowth also counters much better Volt-turn teams, since doesn't care about being forced out as much as Tangela.

For example Modest 252 SpA Rotom-W does 23.01 - 27.22% to Tangrowth while it does 21.85 - 26.04% to Tangela.
Now if you factor in SR then Tangela will have lost 34,35% at least, and Tangrowth will have lost 29,26% due to lefties.
Now the opponent can bring in their counter to force you out. Rinse and repeat and Tangela will be losing 1,35% at least every turn and 5,54% at worst, while Tangrowth will be losing 0,47% AT WORST which means that practically he won't be losing any HP.

I could keep on with calcualtions under common battle conditions, but anyone knows that Tangrowth is overall better if you are not using him for SubSeed (and even then sometimes).

EDIT: Yeah i fixed the evs thing, thx for noticing!

I'm not gonna jump in and talk too much about how Tangrowth is much better than Tangela because it has Leftovers and a higher HP stat. Instead, I'd like to focus more on the EVs. Is all that speed really necessary? Yes, out speeding Scizor and killing it with HP Fire is great, but you sacrifice so much bulk in the process. Can this Tangrowth take things like two Close Combats from Scarf Terrakion after Stealth Rock?

I've found that Ancient Power is really good, as it puts pressure on Dragonite. I think it warrants more than a AC mention.

I have just had this thread brought to my attention with a bit of surprise, because this is almost identical to the one I posted in the creative moveset thread. Me and Alexwolf have come up with the same idea completely separate from each other it would seem. The only difference is that I have a little more invested in defense whereas he has a little more invested in Speed and power. I have to say, I might try these new evs, as I do find myself falling prey to stall teams fairly often.

I can also vouch for the usefulness of Knock Off over Stun Spore, having used both myself. I find myself using Knock Off far more often than I use Stun Spore simply because it can hurt more things and is far more reliable. The only real dangers in using it is that you *could* give something a justified boost or something you've already knocked off could come back in again.

I have to say though, this Tangrowth (or at least the one I use) is a seriously underrated threat. It's a full stop to most physical attackers (at least with the spread I use), and has the tools to hassel pretty much any team. It doesn't just muck with volt-turn; offense in trouble has issues dealing with it, since every time they switch in a special attacker to off it, it just pulls right back out none the worse for the wear.

I'd also like to put forward Gyarados as a brilliant partner for it. Intimidate takes it's already high walling capabilities and catapults them to nigh-untouchable levels. I personally prefer using a psyically defensive sleep-talk set that can both phaze boosters and provide a safe switch for Tangrowth to recover HP. Thanks to Rest, it's almost as durable as Tangrowth is, allowing it to work with Tangrowth all day long. Latias is also a good teammate, simply by virtue of having resistances and a stat distribution that compliment it. It can also roar out boosters that might give Tangrowth trouble, and even though they're both weak to Ice, CM Latias can set up on most users (since so few of them get STAB on it).

I'd also like to say that if you weren't having success with it you probably didn't have the right support and/or weren't using it the way it's meant to be used. Tangrowth relies on switching a lot, so you NEED Pokemon that it can switch with. This isn't the sort of set you can just slap on any team. Rapid Spin support is also really appreciated to deal with both varieties of Spikes, which can eliminate Regenerator's advantage if you let them build up.

This set really does play different than the simple tank because it's less focused on removing threats and more focused on grabbing momentum and crippling. I don't really know how to describe it exactly, because used properly this Tangrowth really doesn't play like any other Pokemon I've used. The best way I can describe it is "switch stall", where switching isn't just ok, it's the goal of the strategy. I'm sorry I can't explain better but it's a really odd Pokemon to use.

@Sir

Yes the Speed evs are kind of necessary. I am not sure about outspeeding Wobbuffet, but with Leech Seed you can actually beat him, and even cripple the switch-in, so you basically prevent set-up or greatly hinder it. I also think that outspeeding Skarmory is a very good thing, preventing him from setting up Spikes, as you 2hko, most of the times. However i want the QC team's opinion about outspeeding Skarmory and Wobbuffet.
But outspeeding Band Scizor is absolutely essential, since one of this set's biggest selling points is the ability to break Volt-Turn chains. Also even if i were to put enough Speed to outspeed standard CB Scizor, could i do this? I mean wouldn't this considered as speed creep? Because Scizor runs 8 Spe evs, so i would have to run 1 more...

And yes Ancientpower is a good option, but it still doesn't deal to much to Dragonite so i am not sure. It deals 29.72 - 35.29% to offensive Dragonite which most of the times is pretty low, and your best option when Dragonite comes in, would be to switch out instead of carrying mediocre coverage moves to scratch it. Of 'course AncientPower does some nice things like 2hkoing Mence and Volcarona after SR, but i still think it is too situational to be in the main set. Once again the opinion of the QC team, would be appreciated.

Also even with little defense investement, Tangrowth's bulk is enough to do the things it should do. You can still comfortably avoid the 2hko from Scarf Terakion after SR, as CC does 35.14 - 41.58%, and you can still scout CB Terakions attacks, as CC does 52.22 - 61.63%. So after SR, lefties and Regenerate, you will have lost a max of 34,88% damage after switching out, and locked Terakion into a move that can easily be abused by many if your pokes like Gengar, Jellicent, Reuniclus, Gliscor, Dragonite and Celebi to name a few, without the fear of Stone Edge.

@ Jimera

Thx for the feedback, and for the help in explaining how this set works. The beauty with this Tangrowth, as Jimera said, is that it is a quite defensive pokemon that doesn't kill momentum, since switching out often actually benefits it. This means that this Tangrowth can be used in many bulky offensive teams, that want a good pivot against Terakion, Landorus, and Volt-Turn teams in general, that also stops the most common Spikers from setting up (Ferrothorn, Forretress, Skarmory) outside of rain.

About the partners that you mentioned i think that Gyarados is a nice option, as his Intimidate helps him take the hits that it couldn't before, and Gyrados can take some pokes that Tangrowth can't like Infernape, many physical dragons if you are going with max defense, Volcarona, Heatran and some others. Finally he can also use Taunt so that he can also prevent setup making it very difficult for your opponent to set-up hazards against your defensive core, from where most set-up oportunities usually arise.

I could also mention Latias but i am not so sure. While Latias can take Fire attacks aimed to Tangrowth and handles the special side quite good, they share similar weaknesses to Bug and Ice moves and they also both fail against the extremely common mixed Ttar with Fire Blast. I will wait for some input before including this but thx anyway!

yeah this is no different than the onsite analysis with more speed, and it can't even take physical hits anymore