OK I know many of you are going to laugh at this at first, but please read the entire post before making any judgments (don‘t just say tl:dr). I am proposing a set for Toxicroak (yes you heard me right, Toxicroak) in Ubers. Okay, here is the set:
Toxicroak @ Leftovers
Nature: Adamant
Ability: Dry Skin
EVs: 124 HP, 128 Atk, 76 Speed, 180 Sp Def
~ Focus Punch
~ Substitute
~ Poison Jab
~ Taunt
At face value this set doesn’t look like anything in the way of a potential threat in Ubers of all places, so I’m going to carefully break down each component of the set and address its purpose in the Uber environment.
I’ve been using this set regularly for the past week on the Shoddy Uber ladder after I realized my team needed a reliable switch-in to Kyogre’s monstrously powerful Choice Specs Water Spout at full health (even Blissey is 2HKO’d) and the idea of Toxicroak came to me almost immediately. I can claim from experience that it works incredibly well, far better than I initially expected. So many teams simply can’t handle it, especially if they rely exclusively on the rain themselves.
First things first, let’s take a look at Toxicroak’s unique typing. Poison/Fighting gives three weaknesses; 2x Ground/Flying and 4x Psychic. Out of these only Ground attacks are commonly seen in Ubers. Toxicroak more than makes up for this however with an amazing seven resists, most notably 2x Fighting/Dark, 4x Bug and a complete immunity to Water thanks to Dry Skin. This means Toxicroak can switch in on Water attacks with impunity, which is a valuable asset when facing common Choice Pokemon such as Kyogre and Palkia. It can also somewhat counter forms of Darkrai whose only attacks are Focus Punch/Blast and Dark Pulse after it has put something to sleep as it is one of only two Pokemon in the game to resist the combo.
A special mention should also go to Toxicroak’s Stealth Rock resistance and ability to absorb Toxic Spikes, which is quite a common strategy among Forretress users and can really screw over teams that don’t have many airborne/Steel Pokemon.
Anyway, moving on. In the OU environment, Toxicroak rarely gets the chance to abuse its amazing Dry Skin ability due to almost omnipresent Sandstorm and lack of infinite rain, but in Ubers the situation is completely different. Thanks to Kyogre’s Drizzle, the rain is potentially infinite, and with Dry Skin and Leftovers Toxicroak heals a whopping 3/16ths of its HP every turn (translating to 63 HP with this set)! However it is somewhat of a double-edged sword as Ubers also brings Groudon and its Drought ability to the fore, resulting in Toxicroak losing a net 1/16th of its health per turn instead. Groudon is therefore the bane of Toxicroak’s existence, but there are ways around it and I will address this point a bit later.
Now onto the set itself. SubPunching is nothing new for Toxicroak, but Substitute is far more efficient in permanent rain due to regaining three quarters of the lost HP in one turn. The HP EVs give 338 HP which allows for 84 HP Subs, and the Attack EVs generate 308 Attack which allows STAB Focus Punch to cause major damage to most things that do not resist it. Here are some damage calculations against some common Ubers that are hit for neutral or better:
120 HP, 0 Def, neutral nature Mixed Dialga: 97.03 - 114.82%
252 HP, 0 Def, neutral nature Bulk Up Dialga after one Bulk Up: 59.41 - 70.29%
252 HP, 0 Def, neutral nature Calm Mind/Sub Kyogre: 56.68 - 67.07%
240 HP, 244 Def, neutral nature ResTalk Kyogre: 44.55 - 52.72%
0 HP, 0 Def, - nature Choice Specs/Mixed Palkia: 73.21 - 86.29%
0 HP, 0 Def, neutral nature Kingdra: 75.60 - 89.00%
80 HP, 0 Def, neutral nature Manaphy: 58.45 - 68.98%
4 HP, 252 Def, neutral nature Blissey: 127.91 - 150.92% (sorry, couldn’t resist)
0 HP, 0 Def, neutral nature Darkrai: 162.99 - 192.88% (oops I did it again!)
252 HP, 0 Def, neutral nature Tyranitar: 193.07 - 226.73% (OK I’ll stop now I promise)
252 HP, 0 Def, neutral nature Metagross: 46.43 - 54.67%
252 HP, 252 Def, + nature Forretress: 33.90 - 40.11%
252 HP, 0 Def, neutral nature Groudon: 38.86 - 46.04%
Now I will discuss the secondary attack, Poison Jab. You might be thinking that Poison is an awful attacking type and this has little use, but in fact you’d only be half right. In an environment where the likes of Gliscor, the Nidos and other Poison types have (apparently?) little competitive value, the Poison/Fighting combo is only resisted by Ghosts, which in Ubers boils down to Giratina and the occasional Spiritomb or Gengar. Poison Jab is therefore a decent secondary STAB attack and is your strongest reliable option against Flying types and the many Psychics that populate Ubers, who are typically weaker on the physical side. Once again I have provided some damage calcs for typical scenarios:
32 HP, 0 Def, neutral nature Rayquaza: 34.26 - 40.39%
40 HP, 0 Def, neutral nature Mewtwo: 33.88 - 39.94%
128 HP, 0 Def, neutral nature Latias: 36.94 - 43.54%
4 HP, 0 Def, neutral nature Latios: 44.70 - 52.98%
252 HP, 0 Def, neutral nature Mew: 27.72 - 32.92% (meh)
252 HP, 52 Def, + nature Lugia: 18.99 - 22.60% (Ugh. Obviously worse with Reflect)
252 HP, 248 Def, + nature Giratina: do I really have to?
OK, so apart from Lugia, Giratina and to a certain extent Mew, almost all the common Fighting resists in Ubers take appreciable damage from Poison Jab. However, given the huge popularity of the first two in particular it seems that Toxicroak is too easily and readily walled to be effective. But wait, there’s more! There is one more reason why Poison Jab is useful, which is the 30% Poison rate. It is obvious that walls do not like being poisoned as they end up losing 1/16th of their health per turn rather than gaining it, however being normal Poison, the damage does not get worse over time. Nevertheless there is one advantage to it over Toxic poison, which is the fact that Pokemon with Leftovers experience a net loss of health on the first turn entering the field, and take slightly more damage over the first two turns. This can be potentially fatal for walls that rely on switching in to strong attacks and trying to kill the threat before being killed themselves, if that made any sense.
This is all well and good, but you may understandably point out that simply poisoning the opponent’s wall is useless if they happen to be adopting the role of status absorber with Rest/Sleep Talk, a tactic especially common in Ubers among Giratina. This is where the fourth move comes in; Taunt. With the given 76 Speed EVs, Toxicroak has 225 speed, more than enough to outrun almost any defensive Giratina, which typically do not run more than 8-12 speed EVs. Therefore, if Toxicroak manages to poison Giratina as it switches in and breaks the Sub, you can simply Taunt it to prevent healing and WoW, forcing Giratina to either attack again or switch out. On that note, let’s take a look at what damage the standard ResTalk Giratina does to Toxicroak:
0 Atk, neutral nature Giratina’s Dragon Claw to 124 HP, 0 Def Toxicroak: 36.39 - 42.90%
OK so that hurts quite a bit, but lets not forget that in the rain Toxicroak gains ~19% health every turn, therefore at the end of the exchange you will have no less than ~76% of your HP whilst Giratina is effectively locked into a relatively weak Dragon Claw, allowing for a comfortable switch and free setup for one of your other Pokes. What’s more, if Giratina switches out poisoned, it is going to find it tough switching in to wall something, especially with Stealth Rock taken into account.
What about the case for Lugia? Doesn’t it outrun Toxicroak and is therefore not completely crippled by Taunt? Well yes that is certainly true, however this is not how Toxicroak deals with Lugia. Here is where the special defense investment really comes into use. The only attacking move that Lugia commonly carries is Ice Beam, and often without any special attack investment. Now what does a minimum special attack Lugia’s Ice Beam do to this Toxicroak spread? Let’s see:
0 Sp Atk, neutral nature Lugia’s Ice Beam to 124 HP, 180 Sp Def Toxicroak: 20.71 - 24.55%
Now you see where this is going. This translates into 70-83 HP, which means any Lugia without Sp Atk investment will never break Toxicroak’s 84 HP Subs in one hit. Combined with Toxic immunity and Taunt to prevent the use of other non-damaging attacks, as well as making Whirlwind impossible, Ice Beam’s PP is slowly but surely drained, eventually forcing Lugia to Struggle to death while Toxicroak is left completely unharmed behind a Sub.
Works beautifully. That is, unless the opponent actually does run Sp Atk EVs on Lugia, which some do to have a better chance of OHKOing Rayquaza. In those cases, Lugia needs at least 80 EVs in order to break the Sub more than half the time, and at least 164 EVs to always break it. However, if they are running so much special attack then they are sacrificing a significant amount of Defense and/or Speed which something else on your team might be able to exploit. In such a case the best thing to do is adopt the same tactic as with Giratina; Poison Jab until it inflicts Poison, Taunt it then switch to something that can take Ice Beam and get a free turn.
One last note about Taunt. It prevents all slower support Pokemon such as Forretress, Deoxys-D, Spiritomb etc from setting up at all, and most of them have no decent means of offense against Toxicroak, therefore they are picked off or forced out very easily.
Now I said I’d return to the problem of Groudon as it is clearly the biggest obstacle standing in Toxicroak’s way. If Groudon switches in, which it probably will do if your opponent has it, Toxicroak’s functionality is greatly diminished, however you still have three options before switching out:
1) Dent it with Focus Punch before it breaks your Sub. As I have already shown, it does up to 46% to a standard Groudon.
2) Jab it in an attempt to Poison it (risky and not recommended unless you initially predict the switch)
3) If it’s a support/setup Groudon, Taunt it before it can use such a move.
The best option in most cases is No.1, but nevertheless there is not much Toxicroak can do to Groudon whilst constantly losing health, so make sure most of the rest of your team has a reliable way of dealing with it.
In conclusion, whilst Toxicroak is by no means game breaking in Ubers, it nonetheless fills a unique niche in the rain that allows for multiple opportunities to enter play, including Kyogre/Palkia’s choiced Water attacks, Thunderless Darkrai, Manaphy without Ice Beam, a Metagross that has just revenge killed with CB Pursuit, and a plethora of pure support Pokemon. This allows for effortless scouting with Substitute and likely denting/crippling something at no net cost to Toxicroak whatsoever. It is therefore a reasonable threat that should be taken just as seriously as anything else IMO when constructing an Uber team, especially if you do not intend to use Groudon.
Thanks for taking the time to read all this, and any thoughts, comments or criticisms are most welcome, particularly regarding the EVs as there might be a more efficient spread that I’m overlooking.
