Infernape

SD Nape is good until you run into you run into those Scarf Pokemon that don't mind a Close Combat or a +2 Mach Punch. Unfortunately that defines Rotom-W & Landorus. And on top of that, you have Latios, Latias, Dragons in general really, and even Gengar who can wear you down by LO recoil until he can KO. Oh and of course Rain in OU doesn't help one bit. It's tough for Fire-types not named Volcarona to safely score a boost this Gen. Due to Thunder Wave & Leech Seed even Ferrothorn's not always safe to switch a sweeper in to.

If you add everything that stopped him in 4th Gen as well, you to have to remove 2 or 3 Pokemon of most common teams before Infernape can sweep. That's a really tall order for any team and honestly isn't worth it.

alphatron said:
I'm not too fond of just using scarftar as a partner though. Alakazam has been getting more common and scarftar doesn't outspeed him at all. I guess Rotom-W and Scarf Hydreigon could be of assistance instead. I might try it out later on.
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Somewhere Weavile is whispering to himself "I hate this place. I hate this place. I hate this place. I hate this place."
 
In my experience with Nasty Plot Infernape, the only thing that could possibly stop me were scarfers, whom I employed the help of a most reliable ally, disposing of scarfers and netting setup oppurtunities for myself was easy.

As for rain, unless the politoed is scarfed, infernape can just close combat/focus blast him into oblivion provided you have a boost.

Weaville, huh? I tend to forget about him pretty often due to him being on my top five list of most disliked pokemon (#1 being zangoose). Hmmm....
 
Here's a set that really has my panties in a bunch after I lost to it in a +6 -26 ladder match. (Some speculation here, though.)

Infernape @ Choice Scarf, Jolly, Blaze
4 hp/252 atk/252 speed
U-Turn
Mach Punch
Flare Blitz
Close Combat

Looks weird, right? That's exactly what I thought until it handed me my ass.
The general philosophy seems to be run until you can sweep, then fire off mach punches at 519 speed.
Due to this insanely fast priority, you need heavy hazards to wear it down, then powerful Extremespeed to KO it.
It's fast enough to outrun Deoxys-S, but falls just short of beating Cloyster after a smash.
As for stabs to get choice-locked into, you could do worse. Activating blaze with fb recoil on a good day is nice.

Lacking the power of life orb, this set NEEDS entry hazards and teammates that can eliminate common users of ES.
Due to it coming in and out quite a bit, you'll want a spinner as well.
 
Unbreakable said:
Here's a set that really has my panties in a bunch after I lost to it in a +6 -26 ladder match. (Some speculation here, though.)

Infernape @ Choice Scarf, Jolly, Blaze
4 hp/252 atk/252 speed
U-Turn
Mach Punch
Flare Blitz
Close Combat

Looks weird, right? That's exactly what I thought until it handed me my ass.
The general philosophy seems to be run until you can sweep, then fire off mach punches at 519 speed.
Due to this insanely fast priority, you need heavy hazards to wear it down, then powerful Extremespeed to KO it.
It's fast enough to outrun Deoxys-S, but falls just short of beating Cloyster after a smash.
As for stabs to get choice-locked into, you could do worse. Activating blaze with fb recoil on a good day is nice.

Lacking the power of life orb, this set NEEDS entry hazards and teammates that can eliminate common users of ES.
Due to it coming in and out quite a bit, you'll want a spinner as well.
Click to expand...

Are you sure it actually works, though? What's the point of Mach Punch if you're using a Choice Scarf? It's not as if Lucario's common or something. But if Mach Punch actually does work, I think a slash in the Choice Scarf set would be enough, to be honest.
 
Unbreakable said:
Here's a set that really has my panties in a bunch after I lost to it in a +6 -26 ladder match. (Some speculation here, though.)

Infernape @ Choice Scarf, Jolly, Blaze
4 hp/252 atk/252 speed
U-Turn
Mach Punch
Flare Blitz
Close Combat

Looks weird, right? That's exactly what I thought until it handed me my ass.
The general philosophy seems to be run until you can sweep, then fire off mach punches at 519 speed.
Due to this insanely fast priority, you need heavy hazards to wear it down, then powerful Extremespeed to KO it.
It's fast enough to outrun Deoxys-S, but falls just short of beating Cloyster after a smash.
As for stabs to get choice-locked into, you could do worse. Activating blaze with fb recoil on a good day is nice.

Lacking the power of life orb, this set NEEDS entry hazards and teammates that can eliminate common users of ES.
Due to it coming in and out quite a bit, you'll want a spinner as well.
Click to expand...

I personally prefer Overheat or HP Ice over Flare Blitz to hit Gliscors harder, as they would otherwise wall physical ape in general. I don't really see the point of Mach Punch after you already have so much speed via Scarf. Stone Edge is also something else that should be considered as it allows you to hit Volcarona hard, or otherwise become set up fodder for it.
 
Black Rain said:
I personally prefer Overheat or HP Ice over Flare Blitz to hit Gliscors harder, as they would otherwise wall physical ape in general. I don't really see the point of Mach Punch after you already have so much speed via Scarf. Stone Edge is also something else that should be considered as it allows you to hit Volcarona hard, or otherwise become set up fodder for it.
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Flare Blitz KOs Volcrona in sun, though, so Stone Edge is only useful for Gyarados who would have a Substitute on anyway.
 
Mach Punch is useless on the Scarf set IMO. Stone Edge would bring better coverage and allow you to revenge stuff like Volcarona and Dragonite.
 
I run an ape along with a mixrachi and I use:
Infernape @ Life Orb, naive, blaze
128 atk / 128 spa / 252 spe
Close Combat
Grass Knot
Fire Blast
Hidden Power Ice

Evs allow for a 2HKO on gastrodon always with grass knot and an OHKO an max defensive blissey with CC. I use hp ice in conjuction with jirachi hp ice to deal with dragonite or Salamence. Very effective lure for gastrodon, and is an ideal partner for rotom-w.
 
After seeing all this, I want to post my infernape set, purely physical:

Infernape (M) @ Focus Sash
Trait: Iron Fist
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SDef / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Swords Dance
- Fire Punch
- Mach Punch
- Earthquake / Stone Edge

With a Sash, Ape has at least one turn to set up, which is mostly all you're going to need. Fire Punch, obvious reasons (Iron Fist boosted too).And, yes, I run just Mach Punch for fighting STAB. With Iron Fist it makes it juuust a bit stronger and, hey, it's priority. Earthquake I run specifically for Heatran, but Stone Edge is a viable option as well. This set really works for me, and when I say really works I mean REALLY works. Any suggestions or opinions would be great :]
 
alphatron said:
I haven't really given SD Infernape a fair chance this generation due to not being able to use Iron Fist with thunder punch, not having a high base power physical fire typed STAb attack that doesn't give you tremendous recoil, and sometimes having coverage issues depending on what you're facing.

Blaziken was able to get away with SD+FB, so I guess infernape can do it too...aside from getting revenged by scarfers of course.

I'm not too fond of just using scarftar as a partner though. Alakazam has been getting more common and scarftar doesn't outspeed him at all. I guess Rotom-W and Scarf Hydreigon could be of assistance instead. I might try it out later on.
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well as of now it does not but bw 2 may come out with move tutors and hopefully thunderpunch and firepunch will be available to infernape
 
Ive never understood why people need to give Infernape an expansive movepool to pathetically hit everything super effectively, it has u-turn for a dam reason. I don't even think thunderpunch 2HKOs Gyarados.
 
Scarfwynaut said:
Ive never understood why people need to give Infernape an expansive movepool to pathetically hit everything super effectively, it has u-turn for a dam reason. I don't even think thunderpunch 2HKOs Gyarados.
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SD set 2HKO's Full Investment Gyarados even after Intimidate and without Iron Fist or SD boost.
 
Yeah idk, sorry. For some reason I had experiences with a thunder punch Infernape that barely 2HKOed Gyarados. I don't know what that was about, maybe it was a special Infernape?
 
Meh, it's fine. I had a bad experience with an Adamant, full ATK investment CB Abomasnow not OHKOing a Salamence with Ice Shard. My rage was felt throughout the land that day.
 
TBH I have found Infernape dissapointing as of late. No one runs Skarm-Bliss anymore because VoltTurn absolutely destroys it, so Infernape lost a pretty big selling point. There are now solid counters to Infernape: Jellicent, Rain Dish Tentacruel, Lati@s, and MS Dragonite are the cream of the crop. Drizzle Toed doesn't help either, putting a damper on its more potent STAB. Since rain stall (I beleive) is the most common form of stall, which always carries a RD Tentacruel, Infernape's mixed attacking prowess isn't getting him very far.
 
I've been using Infernape on a team I recently built for fun (usually my bad teams), and I think it's not bad, but it's not good either. What really disappoints me about Infernape is its mediocre offensive stats. For example, Scarf Infernape is great against sun teams since it's faster than Modest Venusaur under sun, but without full investment in a stat and no Choice Band or Life Orb, it feels pitifully weak against everything else. I remember when MixApe was awesome (this was in DPP), but nowadays it doesn't feel that useful. Grass Knot is for the most part useless nowadays due to the fact that Swampert is virtually nonexistent in OU nowadays, and SD Lucario no longer needs to fear Mach Punch because of ExtremeSpeed having priority over Mach Punch. Stone Edge is... Well, it's Stone Edge. No one likes Stone Edge. Its only true niche is being able to beat Skarmbliss, but since most Infernape are easily stopped by a simple switch to Jellicent, that point is moot in my opinion. This isn't GSC or RSE anyway, SkarmBliss isn't really that common.
 
Grass Knot on ape is actually relatively useful for Jellicent, which is surprisingly obese.

Infernape is really only useful for sun teams. Otherwise something like Terrakion can take its role, and Terrakion beats Skarmbliss anyways.
 
I have really come to love infernape and its wall breaking abilities, but I feel that it really needs a lot of team support to excel. Most standard infernapes are hard walled by tentacruels(in the rain is even worse) and dragons like salamence and dragonite(if you lack stone edge), and this can really hurt infernapes chances of suceeding as these pokemons are common in the BW OU metagame.
 
I ran Infernape a lot last gen, as in like every third team, (and more than that on teams that were actually remotely good) but I've barely been able to find places for it at all this gen.

Like everyone has been saying forever, it's just not fast enough anymore. Pretty much every team can either outspeed or wall it in at least two or three ways, and even when it's not being checked it's just not as effective as it used to be because of the overall shift in which defensive pokes are used, because of how both defense and offense have changed. Most sets require too much support, either in the form of direct support or just in terms of dictating what the rest of your team has to be synergystically (since ape has like no defensive value) to be worth it. The disappearance of dedicated leads has also hurt ape, I think. Fake out, SR, and blaze made it a really grand sash lead.

The exception is, I think, the scarf set. Fire attacks have good synergy with u-turn, since steel resists bug, and the momentum from a fast u-turn helps ape fit into teams that normally couldn't sustain him. I actually prefer stone edge to HP ice on the scarf set since between multiscale and extremespeed Dragonite is probably going to beat you anyway, and it's nice to be able to catch gyara, who is otherwise like the most solid switch-in ever, on the switch and start wearing him down. I don't really see the point of mach punch on the scarf set. The only time scizor or lucario are going to come in on you is to revenge you, so you won't be able to use punch anyway, because you'll have used something else.
 
Ive used infernape in the past as a well breaker/denter, have it take out a wall or two or atleast do massive damage on them. Then proceed to sweep with your other sweeper. Infernape is to slow and weat to sweep alone most of the time, but it greatly facilitates other sweepers.
 
If Salamence can run Roost why can't Infernape run Slack Off? Slack Off would be good this Gen because of the increased amount of Sandstorm and Infernape's ability to force switches would let him Slack Off easily. Surely it could since the moveslot that takes up Grass Knot is not as important this Gen with the lack of Hippowdon and Swampert. Grass Knot's only good target now is Jellicent, but I doubt Infernape would stay on him anyway because of the lack of Sp. Atk investment in MixApe. Would the utility of U-turn be equal to having more longevity with Slack Off?

Edit: This could be his moveset:
Overheat / Close Combat / Stone Edge / Slack Off with Life Orb
 
alphatron said:
In my experience with Nasty Plot Infernape, the only thing that could possibly stop me were scarfers, whom I employed the help of a most reliable ally, disposing of scarfers and netting setup oppurtunities for myself was easy.

As for rain, unless the politoed is scarfed, infernape can just close combat/focus blast him into oblivion provided you have a boost.

Weaville, huh? I tend to forget about him pretty often due to him being on my top five list of most disliked pokemon (#1 being zangoose). Hmmm....
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Firstly, zangoose is amazing, if not from a competitive standpoint. I mean, crush claw, and sheer badassery... god yes.
Also, starmie beats down NP nape, so that's important to mention. And i don't think bulky politoed has a problem with CC's or possibly even FB's.
 
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