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Carracosta Discussion

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I don't think any of the good item choices outright outshine one another, but I agree that specific items can be found more useful than others, depending on the situation. Life Orb is probably going to be the primarily used item among good players as the damage output complements Carracosta the most among achieving consistent OHKO's on walls and frail Pokemon alike via priority. Liechi Berry, Lum Berry, and as Punchshroom have briefly mentioned, Splash Plate should also be among the more optimal of the choices to consider since they also benefit Carracosta's primary goal in the form of sweeping in one way or another.

As for items like Air Balloon or White Herb, as strange as this may seem to some players, I generally find these choices less superior as they tend to detract away from its ability to sweep, break through wall, or just have poor amount of distribution in general. Dodging Earthquake with the use of Air Balloon may seem nice, but most Pokemon that makes use of this move tend to have losing match ups anyways due to the common weakness of its Water STAB or lacking the ability to deal particularly significant damage to it with the help of Solid Rock. White Herb also sounds, but it doesn't really help out from the ways that it's commonly revenge killed or walled by and likewise it doesn't provide any additional power boost, something that Carracosta really appreciates.
 
Yeah, as I mentioned previously, I quite like running Liechi Berry on Shell Smash Carracosta. I occasionally run into many of the same issues that you guys do; while Carracosta can take a hit or two while setting up, after Life Orb recoil, its sweep can be short lived. Liechi Berry can take the damage that Carracosta suffers and use it to its advantage. I've even been known to use Waterfall against a Kangaskhan rather than Aqua Jet, knowing that it's going to Sucker Punch and put me into Liechi range. There are a lot of ways you can manipulate your opponent and use his/her attempts to take out Carracosta to your advantage, rather than allowing it to hinder its sweep. Of course, Liechi Berry can be a lot more difficult to play with than what Life Orb is, so that may be off-putting for some players. It's the reason why I don't use Liechi Berry on every team, to be honest. Sometimes it yields great results, but ultimately, it's pretty inconsistent compared to classic Life Orb.
 
Holy shit, just how often do people even pull off Shell Smashes with Carracosta? Here's an instance where it looks like I could've gotten an easy Smash but guess what.

My Jynx managed to Trick a Scarf onto a Mantine. Later on in the match, I predict its Air Slash which it will use to hit Jynx, so I switch in Carracosta with the intention of cleaning the match. SR (12%) and Air Slash (22%) put me at 66%, a 3HKO from Air Slash at that point. Let's look at that: a pokemon locked into a move that deals a measly 22%, that's enough to safely setup, right?

Dead wrong, because 1) my defenses would be lowered, 2) I'm taking LO damage and 3) there's no guarantee that I'll be faster than Scarf Mantine after +2 because Carra is slow as balls. All this equates to the next Air Slash screwing me over before I even KO Mantine, much less his 2 other pokemon. Oh and Stone Edge. Should I outspeed Mantine after the Smash (more likely), if Stone Edge decided to miss there, boom there goes my sweep because Air Slash would do too much against my -1 Special Defense, so it was the safer option to simply smack Mantine right there instead of Smashing. Don't give me any 'accuracy doesn't factor into a pokemon's viability' arguments, because Rotom-F would've been so much better off if Blizzard wasn't so ass about cooperating (guess who was in A-Rank during the Snover period?).

Carracosta still emerged victorious in the end thanks to its awesome Aqua Jet, but that battle left me thinking about how (often) Carra is supposed to get its Smash, or if Carracosta is even better off Smashing in the first place. All you nay-sayers may disagree, but I actually find a non-Smashing offensive Costa to be infinitely more useful because it can actually use its bulk. Thoughts on this, or perhaps you can list calcs on how easily Carra is "supposed" to Smash for it to be deserving of S-Rank (Yes, I'm going back there again, sue me).
 
ok then if you don't like Shell Smash Carracosta don't use it!! :D


also:

Modest:0/0/0/252/0/252 7.442% | Modest:4/0/0/252/0/252 6.120%

about 13-14% of all Mantine run max Speed investment. The rest run 0.
Modest max Speed Scarf Mantine hits the same Speed as Carracosta.
so considering there is a (let's say for the sake of making this easy) 13.5% chance the Mantine is running Modest max Speed. You speedtie with it, so after the Smash, there is a 50% chance of winning the speed-tie and beating it.

That means 13.5% chance of it running that spread times 50% chance of losing the speed tie means you had about a 6.75% chance of possibly losing to that Mantine.

I'd say you were fine.
 
Good to know, but the risk of missing Stone Edge and getting hit harder was still there as opposed to not Smashing and surviving 2 hits + 2 LO recoils.

It's a shame really, all I wanted was to see all the halloballoo that Shell Smash is all about, and never saw the results. I can safely say I'm not the only one with this problem however.
 
Welp, finally pulled off the fabled sweep :3. Took like every hazard but the 2nd layer of Toxic Spikes to do so though :I

Edit: I guess yeah. It's still not particularly user friendly though: conditions have to be near perfect. I also missed a Stone Edge on that one (whaddya know) but luckily Alomomola was too preoccupied by poison and hazards to try and bring me down.
 
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