Introduction:
Rock is arguably one of the worst types in the context of balanced hackmons.The tier from a defensive standpoint is utterly dominated by bulky Steel and Water Types, rendering most efforts at mounting an offensive laughable. From an offensive standpoint, it doesn’t get much better. If we look at the VR, the top physical wallbreakers are: Garchomp, Blaziken, Ash Greninja, Koriadon, and Lucario, all of which hit Rock for super-effective damage. That being stated, the endeavor of getting Rock types to the top 7 on the ladder is slightly less hopeless from a defensive standpoint because there exists far more methods to circumvent Rock's defensive shortcomings rather than its offensive shortcomings, hence the more defensive approach to the build.
Building the Team:
Mega Aerodactyl has a critical immunity to ground, STAB Flying Type attacks, and a blazing fast speed tier. All of the following traits are absolutely crucial for playing around some of the most threatening Pokémon to Mono-Rock.
Bastiodon has an important neutrality to Steel and is one of the few ways the team can defend against threats with strong Steel moves. Bastiodon is also crucial for absorbing Mortal Spin.
Shuckle has a measly 20 Attack and Hit Points, and so serves as a recovery denial mechanism.
Nihilego has an excellent match-up against threats like Normalize and Secret Sword, and so serves as our secondary special wall.
Arceus Rock, while having a terrible defensive type, still has excellent bulk. This will be the closest mono-rock can get to having a functional physical wall.
Carbinks' neutral match-up into Secret Sword and immunity to Dragon rounds out the team’s defenses.
The Team: Legend of Stonehenge:
Sandactyl (Aerodactyl-Mega) @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stone Axe
- Brave Bird
- Toxic Spikes
- Strength Sap
Sandactyl (Aerodactyl-Mega) @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stone Axe
- Brave Bird
- Toxic Spikes
- Strength Sap
As with any sane defensive build, you will want hazards to make incremental progress. For this team, a Magic Guard Mega Aerodactyl will serve as our hazard setter. This choice might seem a bit bizarre at first, as usually in Balanced Hackmons, the role of clicking Stone Axe is relegated to a bulky regenerator Pokémon. However, the issue is that if you click Stone Axe on a bulky regenerator Pokémon on mono-rock, you are basically giving wall-breakers like Koriadon, Ash Greninja, Blaziken, and Lucario a red carpet to come in and start wall-breaking. We never want these Pokémon to ever get the opportunity to enter the field for free and start clicking buttons as we set hazards, as they often will simply OHKO every single one of our Pokémon. So we use Aerodactyl's Life Orb boosted Brave Bird as a deterrent to keep the following Pokémon off the field as we set our hazards. Our secondary hazard is Toxic Spikes, as it is immensely painful for our opponents, while our entire team is immune or resistant to Toxic Spikes, meaning an Imposter copying our T-Spikes basically does nothing back. Lastly, Strength Sap allows Mega Aerodactyl to stay healthy and set our hazards throughout the course while reducing damage from the common utility moves it will likely be tasked with taking in the process, like Stone Axe, Salt Cure, Flip Turn, and Knock-Off.
Eroded Bastion (Bastiodon) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- U-turn
- Salt Cure
- Mortal Spin
- Dragon Tail
Since Mortal Spin is still legal for some reason (I still have no idea how this move is still legal, given how oppressive it is in teambuilding and playing patterns) and often paired with moves like Salt Cure and Knock-Off, a Magic Guard, Shield Dust, or Regenerator Steel type is a necessity to maintain a team’s hazards. Regenerator Bastiodon gives mono-rock a Steel type to block such attempts at hazard removal, while also granting mono-rock a neutrality to Steel. This Steel neutrality is vital, as otherwise Steel-Types moves like Sunsteel Strike, Gigaton, Hammer, Tachyon-Cutter, and Steel-Revelation dance will OHKO or 2HKO the entire team (which is bad for obvious reasons). Bastodian’s set is fairly standard as far as Regenerator Steel types are concerned. U-Turn for slow pivoting, the Salt Cure and Mortal Spin combo to remove hazards, and Dragon Tail to shuffle Pokémon into Toxic Spikes.
Squish (Shuckle) @ Leftovers
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Bug
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Pain Split
- Burning Bulwark
- Leech Seed
- Salt Cure
Since the vast majority of recovery moves have been nerfed to 8 pp, moves like Strength Sap and Pain Split have become common occurrences to heal Pokémon without the pp drawback. However, both alternative methods of recovery do have some glaring flaws, both of which Magic Guard Shuckle exploits very well. For one, Shuckle has an attack stat of 22 with a minus attacking nature, meaning Strength Sap recovers next to nothing. The healing prospects for Pain Split don’t get much better, as the most common user of Pain Split Flutter Mane has only ⅔ the HP of Shuckle so it will consistently struggle to retain its Hp throughout the game. Shuckle’s moveset is centred around keeping itself healthy while annoying our opponents with chip damage. Pain Split and Leech Seed consistently chip down our opponents while keeping Shuckle healthy, while Salt Cure punishes Steel types to force non-immune Pokémon into the Toxic Spikes set by Mega Aerodactyl. The last move, Burning Bulwark, is perhaps one of the most important for Mono-Rock. The reasoning for this importance is twofold:
1.) In Balanced Hackmons, most of the breakers are choiced, and Burning Bulwark blocks most breakers from using Shuckle as an entry point.
2.) Burning physical attackers at no cost to Shuckle. Since almost all physical attackers in Bh use contact moves, that means if they take the bait that Shuckle presents, they are basically ruined for the duration of the game.
Why is this insane move is still legal? I have no clue. Regardless, we abuse it to the fullest here.
Hollow One (Nihilego) @ Smooth Rock
Ability: Sand Stream
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Burning Bulwark
- Parting Shot
- Revelation Dance
- Shore Up
Slumbering Stones (Arceus-Rock) @ Earth Plate
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Take Heart
- Judgment
- Revelation Dance
- Strength Sap
As terrible as mono-rock is into physical breakers, we still cannot abandon the key defensive role that Fur Coat has to offer. As such, while Arceus Rock isn’t a good Fur Coat user by any stretch of the imagination, it is the best mono-rock has, and so is what mono-rock uses. Arceus Rock uses a non-standard Take Heart set to grant itself resilience to status moves and Toxic Spikes, and to enable it to double as a late-game win condition. Rock-type Revelation Dance is the best STAB special move for Rock, so Arceus uses that as its primary attack. Ground-type Judgment complements the Revelation Dance by forming the Edge-Quake combo to hit most foes for neutral damage. Additionally, Ground-type Judgment enables Arceus Rock to hit its own Imposter for super-effective damage, allowing it to potentially win the 1 v 1 if it positions itself correctly. However, even in the event it does end up in a disadvantageous position against Imposter, the team always has a resist to all of Imposter Arceus-Rock's moves in Bastiodon. Bastiodon will consequently reliably stop anything an Imposter tries to exploit in the copied Arceus Rock.
Dancing Diamond (Carbink) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Prankster
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Haze
- Destiny Bond
- U-turn
- Shore Up
Carbink’s secondary Fairy Typing gives it a crucial neutrality to Fighting and an Immunity to Dragon, both of which are critical for checking the various set-up sweepers it is tasked with taking on. The neutrality to fighting enables Prankster Carbink to take on threats like Nasty Plot Secret Sword Arceus Ghost, Koriadon Variants that lack steel type coverage, Nasty Plot Eternatus, and Necrozma-Ultra variants without super effective coverage. All of the listed threats would otherwise overwhelm the rest of Carbink's teammates with enough boosts or supereffective damage. Destiny Bonds further plays into Carbink's role as a last-ditch attempt to control setup and other various problematic threats by allowing Carbink to trade with threats like Arceus Steel, Sunsteel Strike Abusers, Kyogre, and Arceus Water that the team has few to no mechanisms to defeat otherwise. The rest of the moves on Carbink keep it healthy and enable it to consistently clear boosts throughout the game. Shore-Up, of course, is used as the healing move of choice as it is boosted by Sand, the Prankster and Haze combo is the most consistent method to keep boosts off the field, and lastly, U-Turn allows Carbink to act as a secondary slow-pivot if Bastiodon is knocked out.
Strengths:
None :). It’s mono-rock. I don’t know what you’d expect this to be strong into.
Weaknesses:
Sunsteel Strike: Sunsteel Strike goes right through Arceus Rock’s Fur Coat. You basically have to Bulwark / Destiny bond and pray to win.
Doom Desire: This is essentially an instant loss. Even under Sand Rock types basically get nearly one-shot by Doom-Desire. Bulwark, Destiny Bond, and Bastiodon also can’t get you out of this either.
Gigaton Hammer: Sunsteel Strike, but worse, as it can’t be punished by Burning Bulwark. If it is a Copy-Cat Gigation hammer, that also usually translates into an instant loss.
Mega-Garchomp: Can’t be forced out so easily by Mega Aero. Basically, you Bulwark and pray it gets burned or you attempt to play around the Choice lock until you can wear it down with residual damage.
Replays:
Unfortunately, I didn’t expect this to go as well as it did, so I don’t have many good replays saved. Here are the replays I have, though:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9balancedhackmons-2454069215-h78ehnet1bpfn0nk8q3lnjeobfm65qfpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9balancedhackmons-2454038851-w14yonqa1wsjiiopaf0xsclm8bu4xuopw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/...53461165-80yd15puujmrf7k1smpfjyte8j2p2kxpw?p2
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/...54176072-gi3rmda16bx6bs37mq34gu823xq8t80pw?p2
Proof of Laddering Peak:
As can be observed in the following screenshot, the alt I used was Mr. Natas 666, and I obtained a rank 6 placement on the ladder.
Before I begin my concluding statement, I would like to shout out The Guy Who Has Many Alts for laying the groundwork for many of the strategies I used on my team.
As bad as mono-rock appears on paper in Balanced Hackmons, it has a surprisingly high amount of ways to circumvent its weakness and contest meta teams. The Water and Grass weakness can be mitigated through the use of Sand to boost special defense and counterplay like Assault-Vest Bastiodon. Burning Bulwark, and measures like Mega-Aerodayctl, Destiny Bond, and the Fur Coat and Strength Sap combo, can greatly limit the opportunities that physical breakers have in practice to break mono-rock. Carbink and Aerodactyl shore up the otherwise frightening fighting weakness. It also has many Pokémon that are very well positioned in the current metagame, like Shuckle to cut off recovery options most teams use, and Aerodactyl with its combination of offensive pressure, longevity, and Toxic Spikes. The only things mono-rock really struggles into are Mega-Garchomp and offensive Steel types. Thus, mono-rock is a deceptively usable (albeit definitely far from good) monotype given the correct approach in teambuilding.
Images:
Mega Aero by 9tailsfoxyfoxy: https://www.deviantart.com/9tailsfoxyfoxy/art/Diabolical-Mega-Aerodactyl-528782167
Bastiadon by autobottelsa:
https://www.deviantart.com/autobottesla/art/Day-130-Torideps-Bastiodon-482046047
Shuckle by Al-La-Moe:
https://www.deviantart.com/a-la-moe/art/Shuckle-784957476
Nihilego by SanjulWhiteShadows:
https://www.deviantart.com/sanjulwhiteshadow/art/Nihilego-677911844
Arceus Rock by autobottelsa:
https://www.deviantart.com/autobottesla/art/Day-305-Arceus-Rock-518884599
Carbink by trubbish101:
https://www.deviantart.com/trubbish101/art/Die-Spiegelhoehle-1198692218
Last edited:
