Introduction
Welcome to my new Rate
Rock is one of my favourite types to play on mono ladder and I’ve found some success with this team (peak ~17xx) but considering all the weaknesses rock has, many games remain difficult. I’m posting here to hopefully get some new input in how to improve the team and ease at least some of the matchups.
Teambuilding Process
In a nutshell, the conclusion we reached is that rock needs at least 7 mons to comfortably go into most matchups but since that doesn’t work, let's try our best with what’s available.
Although sand is usually more associated with ground teams, rock heavily profits as well. As sandsetter, tyrannitar was the first pick of the team, additionally sporting a great movepool, good atk and great defences.
Considering all of rock’s weaknesses, most of the team is dedicated to patch them up. Mega-Diancie is the chosen answer to fighting types, also successfully threating dragon, dark and poison teams.
The next glaring weakness are steel types. Magnet-pull golem is crucial to eliminate key threats such as celesteela, excadrill, ferrothorn and scizor.
The list of weaknesses continues with water and storm drain cradily is the perfect answer to many water sweepers, especially mega-swmapert which otherwise may tear the team apart.
Depending on the movepool, nihiliego can check many different things. Here it functions as the only special STAB rock attacker, threatenin several flying types. Sludgewave as secondary STAB allows to eliminate many fairies and grass types including the dangerous Tapu Bulu.
While steel is a pretty hopeless matchup, fighting coverage at least gives a slight chance to score a few wins. Furthermore, terrakion is essential in beating normal teams and rock mirrors.
The lack of speed to effectively sweep types such as fighting and the inability to deal with certain setup mons such as kommo-o led to the inclusion of webs shuckle. Although I thought of all my teammates as essential, one had to be removed and the choice fell on cradily. Nihiliego received grass knot and tbolt to better deal with water and ground types.
Although sand is usually more associated with ground teams, rock heavily profits as well. As sandsetter, tyrannitar was the first pick of the team, additionally sporting a great movepool, good atk and great defences.
Considering all of rock’s weaknesses, most of the team is dedicated to patch them up. Mega-Diancie is the chosen answer to fighting types, also successfully threating dragon, dark and poison teams.
The next glaring weakness are steel types. Magnet-pull golem is crucial to eliminate key threats such as celesteela, excadrill, ferrothorn and scizor.
The list of weaknesses continues with water and storm drain cradily is the perfect answer to many water sweepers, especially mega-swmapert which otherwise may tear the team apart.
Depending on the movepool, nihiliego can check many different things. Here it functions as the only special STAB rock attacker, threatenin several flying types. Sludgewave as secondary STAB allows to eliminate many fairies and grass types including the dangerous Tapu Bulu.
While steel is a pretty hopeless matchup, fighting coverage at least gives a slight chance to score a few wins. Furthermore, terrakion is essential in beating normal teams and rock mirrors.
The lack of speed to effectively sweep types such as fighting and the inability to deal with certain setup mons such as kommo-o led to the inclusion of webs shuckle. Although I thought of all my teammates as essential, one had to be removed and the choice fell on cradily. Nihiliego received grass knot and tbolt to better deal with water and ground types.
The Team
big boi (Tyranitar)
@ Assault Vest
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 248 HP / 122 Atk / 136 SpD / 4 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Pursuit
- Avalanche
- Fire Blast
- Stone Edge
big boi (Tyranitar)
@ Assault Vest
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 248 HP / 122 Atk / 136 SpD / 4 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Pursuit
- Avalanche
- Fire Blast
- Stone Edge
Tyrranitar functions as sand setter and special wall of the team. By running pursuit and stone edge, it is capable of heavily punishing many defoggers such as latios, zapdos and mantine. Max hp and 136 sp.def EVs allow to survive 1 focus blast from LO landorus or Charizard y after stealth rock and hit back with either avalanche or stone edge. Fireblast punishes ferrothorn as well as the occasional greedy steel player. 4 speed EVs allow to outspeed neutral celesteela.
the beautiful one (Diancie-Mega)
@ Diancite
Ability: Clear Body
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Diamond Storm
- Earth Power
- Moonblast
- Psychic
The diancie set is pretty straight forward. Moonblast in combination with earth power OHKOs everything on fighting after sashes are broken. Diamond storm functions as secondary STAB and has the nice side effect of boosting defense, making it possible to simply stay in against certain switch ins if a lucky boost occurred as well as to not be completely walled by chansey. Psychic was chosen over hp fire to ease the poison and grass match ups, giving an extra move to wear down venusaur.
OH BABY (Golem-Alola)
@ Air Balloon
Ability: Magnet Pull
EVs: 124 HP / 252 Atk / 132 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Fire Punch
- Earthquake
- Thunder Punch
- Stealth Rock
A-golem is probably one of the most crucial members of any rock team. Magnet pull allows to trap and in many cases eliminate pesky steel types, running both earthquake and fire punch to successfully eliminate ferrothorn (grass), scizor (bug), cobalion (fighting), heatran and klefki (fairy). With 132 speed EVs golem is able to outspeed and kill neutral celesteelas. Air balloon allows to trap and eliminate excadrill. A jolly firium-z might be more favourable to outspeed and OHKO m-scizor before it u-turns out but I’d have to test that first.
jellyfish jelly (Nihilego)
@ Choice Scarf
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Power Gem
- Sludge Wave
- Grass Knot
- Thunderbolt
Nihilego functions as scarfer and cleaner of the team. Once ferrothorn is eliminated, nihilego can run through grass almost by itself. The scarf is necessary to outspeed scarf bulu as well as dangerous set up sweepers such as Charizard X. If webs are up, it also successfully eliminates threats such as m-swampert. Initially, I was running dazzling gleam for an easy time against dragon and fighting but after the removal of cradily, nihilego had to take over several of its roles. Grass knot can also take out weakened hippowdon/seismitoad and 2HKO gastrodon while surviving 1 earth power from it.
goof ball (Terrakion)
@ Rockium Z
Ability: Justified
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Substitute
- Close Combat
- Stone Edge
- Taunt
At this point, the normal matchup was still a nightmare and terrakion’s fighting STAB is exactly what it takes to break through it. Furthermore, close combat can break through mons such as empoleon or heatran which otherwise may severely threaten the team. We opted against a scarf set, to give terrakion more versatility. Z-stone edge can score Kos which might otherwise not be possible (and will actually hit the opponent which is an otherwise constant struggle with rock moves). Taunt allows to pressure and force out more defensive pokemon such as toxapex, mandibuzz and porygon2. Although originally running earthquake, substitute was chosen for a better matchup against ditto. Since sticky webs do not apply to it, facing an opposing scarf terrakion is one of the worst things that can happen as rock has almost no viable checks for scarfed close combat.
Playdoh (Shuckle)
@ Mental Herb
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Impish Nature
- Sticky Web
- Encore
- Toxic
- Knock Off
Shuckle provides the essential sticky webs to win vs fighting and ease many other match ups such as bug, steel, water and psychic. With cradily being removed, I needed at least one toxic user and shuckle was the best choice for it, allowing to wear down pokemon such as rotom-w and slowbro. Encore punishes greedy set up mons or traps others in overall unfavourable attacks, forcing a switch. Knock off prevents shuckle from being full taunt bait and removes dangerous items such as eviolites or dittos scarf. Mental herb allows to at least set webs or strike back with encore against taunt leads such as deoxys-s, aerodactyl and cobalion.
Key Threats
M-Scizor
Scizor is probably the most dangerous pokemon for any rock team as +2 bullet punch OHKOs pretty much anything rock may can come up with. While the banded scizor often seen on bug teams is not too much of a problem as it can be trapped by golem, m-scizor may bail out with uturn if webs aren’t laid out yet. Furthermore, my current golem set cannot OHKO any remotely defensive scizor set, relying on additional chip damage.
Ditto
Previously, if ditto managed to copy terrakion, the game was basically over as it outsped and killed any of my mons with a single hit. After switching to substitute as well as adding knock off shuckle, I have at least two potential answers, although both are certainly not optimal.
Azumarill
If Azu gets the chance to click belly drum, the game is basically decided. It is important not to set webs vs fairy so that golem and ttar stay slower and can OHKO azu on its set up turn after the belly drum. On the other hand, terrakion and nihilego can OHKO it while being faster if it attempts to set up vs them.
Rain sweepers
Without sticky webs or if nihilego falls, rain teams may simply sweep the whole rock team. This applies especially to m-swampert but also kingdra and priority attackers such as crawdaunt.
Conclusion
Thanks to those who read this far! If you have any suggestions on how to have an easier time in certain matchups without compromising any others, I would greatly appreciate that. While the steel matchup is the most difficult one, I think it is ok to not focus on it too much and instead just be as successful as possible against other types. Nonetheless, if you have additional ideas on how to annoy steel, that would be nice as well.
big boi (Tyranitar) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 248 HP / 122 Atk / 136 SpD / 4 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Pursuit
- Avalanche
- Fire Blast
- Stone Edge
the beautiful one (Diancie-Mega) @ Diancite
Ability: Clear Body
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Diamond Storm
- Earth Power
- Moonblast
- Psychic
OH BABY (Golem-Alola) @ Air Balloon
Ability: Magnet Pull
EVs: 124 HP / 252 Atk / 132 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Fire Punch
- Earthquake
- Thunder Punch
- Stealth Rock
jellyfish jelly (Nihilego) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Power Gem
- Sludge Wave
- Grass Knot
- Thunderbolt
goof ball (Terrakion) @ Rockium Z
Ability: Justified
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Substitute
- Close Combat
- Stone Edge
- Taunt
Playdoh (Shuckle) @ Mental Herb
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Impish Nature
- Sticky Web
- Encore
- Toxic
- Knock Off
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 248 HP / 122 Atk / 136 SpD / 4 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Pursuit
- Avalanche
- Fire Blast
- Stone Edge
the beautiful one (Diancie-Mega) @ Diancite
Ability: Clear Body
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Diamond Storm
- Earth Power
- Moonblast
- Psychic
OH BABY (Golem-Alola) @ Air Balloon
Ability: Magnet Pull
EVs: 124 HP / 252 Atk / 132 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Fire Punch
- Earthquake
- Thunder Punch
- Stealth Rock
jellyfish jelly (Nihilego) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Power Gem
- Sludge Wave
- Grass Knot
- Thunderbolt
goof ball (Terrakion) @ Rockium Z
Ability: Justified
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Substitute
- Close Combat
- Stone Edge
- Taunt
Playdoh (Shuckle) @ Mental Herb
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Impish Nature
- Sticky Web
- Encore
- Toxic
- Knock Off
