Cacturne. Its like Lucario with STAB Extremespeed!

A-Boy-And-His-Horse

I've been playing with a sandstorm team for a while and I wanted to use a favorite of mine, Cacturne. Cacturne has 115 attack with a great movepool and typing capable of dealing massive damage to a un-prepared player.


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@ Leftovers
Impish
252 HP / 252 Defense / 6 Special Defense

Earthquake
Ice Fang
Stealth Rock
Slack Off

Hippowdon sets up the sand, and ass bones most physical attackers. Stealth Rocks eliminates opposing Focus Sasher and tears open Gyarados and Salamences. Blah Blah Blah. Standard Hippo.


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@ Leftovers
Impish
252 HP / 252 Defense / 6 Special Defense

Knock Off
Toxic
Rest
Encore

Shuckle becomes nearly inpenatrable in a sandstorm. Only the strongest of attacks can bring him down. Shuckle paired with Hippowdon do a good job of walling nearly every pokemon in the game. Encore gives Cacturne and Relicanth free switch-ins as well as messing with stat-uppers.


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@ Choice Scarf
Adamant
252 Speed / 252 Attack / 6 HP

Waterfall
Earthquake
Stone Edge
Ice Fang

Scarf Gyarados is underrated. Starmie and Gengar are both outrun and easily 2HKOed. Gyarados can still hit moderately hard even without any real boosts. The blue worm helps me against things I would otherwise have trouble with, like SD Lucario, Infernape, Salamence and Garchomp. It has a annoying habit of dying though. Its comparably the most frail thing on my team when you consider how its used.


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@ Leftovers
Timid
Standard EVs

Thunderbolt
Ice Beam
Recover
Rapid Spin

Probably the least useful member of my team. He counters Gyarados and revenge kills non-DD Dragons. Not much else. Rapid Spin is nice, and really does help Gyarados and Shuckle but I can't help but think there are other pokemon that can fill this role better. Hell, Forretress can Rapid Spin and just Explode on the pokemon I want this Starmie to counter (Gyarados mostly). Actually Forretress would help my odd grass weakness.


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@ Choice Band
Adamant
252 Attack / 252 HP / 6 Defense

Head Smash
Aqua Tail
Earthquake
Yawn

With 252 HP EVs, great base defense and a SD Sandstorm boost Relicanth is remarkably tough. He can shrug off Starmie Thunderbolts and even Choice Band Earthquakes. His firepower is incredible, 2HKOing most things with a combination of Head Smash and Aqua Tail. Earthquake is sort of filler, but Yawn is sometimes useful. Relicanth tries to come in on Shuckles Encores then simply beats the incoming walls to death. Once Relicanth finally falls, its Cacturnes turn.


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@ Leftovers
Adamant
252 HP / 252 Attack / 6 Special Defense

Sucker Punch
Focus Punch
Substitute
Swords Dance

A real terror when set up. Cacturne sets up a sub, either from Shuckle's Encore or from forcing a switch. Then it either Focus Punches or Swords Dances followed by Sucker Punch. This is coming from a pokemon with more attack then Lucario, and with STAB Sucker Punch. You don't realize how scary STAB Sucker Punch is until it brings down a Gyarados is one hit. Once Cacturne is in a position to be hit, it switches out. By then it usually gains back the HP it lost from Substitute. Very few things counter this without good prediction. Even Hippowdon can be taken out, even though it turns into a prediction war (Sucker Punch and Focus Punch 2HKO when SDed. Hippowdon needs to switch between Ice Fang and Slack Off carefully).
 
Just a few things on sucker punch...

Not to pop your bubble or anything... but a phazer will phaze your cacturn. Sucker Punch wont hit it, chances are you wont focus punch if it's something like Suicune, Swampert, ect. because you know that STAB Sucker Punch after SD does a ton of damage to them, and you then are roared out with them taking no damage.

I don't see how a Sucker Punch is the same as ExtremeSpeed, expecially if you're SDing and Subbing, you'll draw the phazers and sucker punch will not work.
 
Focus Punch hits before Roar / Whirlwind.

Focus Punch actually hits harder then Sucker Punch, so most of the time its a better attack. Sucker Punch is only for after my sub is down or against ghosts / psychics etc.

Why would they even switch Suicune or Swampert in on me? Unless they know all my moves, they will be in total fear of Seed Bomb.
 
Sucker Punch has 80 base power.

Thus, 120 with STAB. Focus Punch has 150.


Also I wouldn't Sucker Punch either one of those. Swampert could just Stealth Rock or Roar and Suicune could Calm Mind.
 
Alakazam, Jumpluff and Clefable make good use of Encore.

However, these guys are misinformed. Shuckle is amazing. Although it's offensively retarded, you can easily support the team with Knock Off, Stealth Rocks, Encore and stuff. Shuckle should really see more use.
 
Shuckle is really quite a wall. I speak from experience because I fought this very team with my Sandtrick team and it took three Earth Powers (one being a crit, otherwise it probably would've been 4) from my LO'd Camerupt to take it down. It's really impressive how well it takes hits.

I actually used the same Cacturne he has on my team, and it ended up sweeping his team haha. It's really quite a beast. However, it's definitely for late game sweeping, after when any possible counters could possibly be known of or have been taken care of, which actually was probably his problem. He brought it out too soon and I was able to outpredict it...

But yeah, anyone who thinks Shuckle is terrible, try facing it in sandstorm. It's really crazy.
 
monkymeet said:
Shuckle is really quite a wall. I speak from experience because I fought this very team with my Sandtrick team and it took three Earth Powers (one being a crit, otherwise it probably would've been 4) from my LO'd Camerupt to take it down. It's really impressive how well it takes hits.]

But yeah, anyone who thinks Shuckle is terrible, try facing it in sandstorm. It's really crazy.
Click to expand...
That is nice and all, but this team is for OU play. Shuckle will be facing Heatran Earth Powers, Garchomp Outrages, and Breloom Focus Punches. It just can't take these kinds of hits. Even in a sandstorm, it can't wall too well in OU since its defense is still penetratable when combined with its very low hp. I think that you should change shuckle to another support Pokemon.
 
SD Yache chomp Outrage=37.30% - 43.85
SD Yache chomp Outrage +2=73.77% - 86.48%

Specstran=20.08% - 23.77%

Subseed Breloom=46.31% - 54.51%

That's from metalkid.
 
If you must insist.

Choice Specs Heatran's Earth Power does 29.51% - 34.84% to this Shuckle. (Not including the SDef boost in sandstorm)
Choice Band Garchomp's Outrage does 51.64% - 61.07% to this Shuckle.
Choice Band Breloom's Focus Punch does 64.34% - 75.82% to this Shuckle. (Impractical, but the idea is gotten across)

I don't think I know of many pokes that can take this much damage and still support this team that well. I say it can take the hits pretty well, especially from the special side.

EDIT: Done by the previous poster. Slightly different results, but you get the idea.
 
muna said:
That is nice and all, but this team is for OU play. Shuckle will be facing Heatran Earth Powers, Garchomp Outrages, and Breloom Focus Punches. It just can't take these kinds of hits. Even in a sandstorm, it can't wall too well in OU since its defense is still penetratable when combined with its very low hp. I think that you should change shuckle to another support Pokemon.
Click to expand...

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34323

This is a warstory showing just how well Shuckle can take hits. Shuckle can easily take Earth powers if for some reason Heatran fails to Fire Blast it and as shown in the warstory, it can asorb outrages.

However, the team seems to have problems with Breloom (Your best switch in is Gyarados and Spore, SR and SS wear it down over time) if it gets a Sub up (As Muna kinda brought to my attention). To fix this to a degree, I suggest possibly a Restalk Heracross as it provides a needed Grass resist and itss weaknesses are covered by the rest of your team.

Sorry for the quick rate and I'll see if I can give it a better analysis tommorrow.
 
I wonder if I should use something over Relicanth. It rocks, but could be replaced for something better.

Maybe as Puggy said, Rest / Talk Heracross?

Or just make Gyarados Rest/Talk/Waterfall/Taunt and replace Relicanth with some random scarfer. Porygon Z or lol even Relicanth work.
 
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