Nidoking

[Boarbaque]

Nidoking

With Sheer Force Nidoking becomes an amazing sweeper, but he has rather low speed and a few common weaknesses.​

Base Stats:
HP: 81
ATK: 92
DEF: 77
SPATK: 85
SPDEF: 75
SPEED: 85​

Abilities:
Poison Point - Contact with the Pokémon may poison the attacker. (Opponent might become poisoned if they use a physical move on Nidoking)
Rivalry - Deals more damage to a Pokémon of same gender. (Nidoking would do more to a Male pokemon)
(DW) Sheer Force - Removes added effects to increase move damage. (Secondary effects are removed and attacks do 30% more)​

Sets:
Sweeper:
Nidoking @ Life Orb/Choice Scarf
- Earth Power/Earthquake/Bulldoze
- Thunderbolt/Thunder
- Flamethrower/Fire Blast
- Ice Beam/Blizzard
Ability: Sheer Force
Nature with Earth Power: Timid
Nature with EQ or BD: Naive
EVs with Earth Power: 4 Hp/ 252 SpAtk/ 252 Spe
EVs with EQ or BD: 40 Atk / 244 SpAtk / 224 Spe​

When Sheer Force pokemon use a Sheer Force boosted move they do not take Life Orb recoil. Since Sheer Force already acts as a LO boost you can use Choice Scarf for added speed.​

Thunderbolt, Flamethrower and Ice Beam are all boosted by 1.69 (Life Orb + Sheer Force) but Earth Power/Earthquake/Bulldoze are all boosted by 2.535.​

Earthquake or Bulldoze can be used over Earthpower for dealing with pokemon like Chansey, or any special wall, trying to stop your sweep. Earthquake rises to 253 BP but doesn't remove LO recoil. Bulldoze remoeves LO recoil, but only reaches 152 BP.​

Flamethrower, Ice Beam and Thunderbolt can be swapped with their more powerful but less accurate counterparts for OHKOs that wouldn't be possible without them. This also allows Nidoking to be great on every weather team.​

Baton Pass Quiver Dance Venomoth is the best partner for Nidoking because after 2 Quiver Dances its speed and special attack rise over 500, which allows Nidoking to be dangerous to any team.​

 

[Abacus]

I've seen Nidoking used as a shell smash recipient to great effect. Immunity to thunder wave and toxic help a lot, as well as its excellent coverage.

On your set, you should probably remove blizzard, thunder and bulldoze. Those options are generally inferior (unless in weather, which the person using nidoking will obviously be aware of).

Why do you have the 40 attack evs if you are using earthquake? Does it hit Chansey for >50%?

There is of course the option of setting up spikes or toxic spikes, but nidoqueen does that better in general... It could be nice though to have a spiker that still has offensive presence.

 

[Reliking]

I feel as if Nidoking has to end up deciding on whether it wants to spike or sweep; it has trouble doing both. However, its a kickass tank on most occasions.

Still, I prefer Queeny.

 

[GTS]

In addition to access to T-Spikes, he also gets Sucker Punch, Super Fang, Taunt, Stealth Rock, and I guess Megahorn, Dragon Tail and Outrage though they don't work with Sheer Force.

A Lead set could be something like
Nidoking @ Leftovers
Timid, Poison Point
6 HP/252 SpA/252 Spe
~taunt
~Stealth Rock/Toxic Spikes
~earth power
~ice beam/sludge wave/super fang

taunt for slower hazard leads, or set uppers or w/e

second slot is your choice of hazards, toxic spikes can get soaked up but if they dont have a poison, it could rack up mad residual damage and we all know what Rocks do.

earth power to abuse STAB and Sheer Force

Last move is for team coverage, and IB and SW get Sheer Force boosts, with the latter getting STAB too. Super Fang because if they decide to try and wall or something, it will make easier work for a team member to clean them up.

 

[Gerard]

NidoQueen is better at spiking, whit baetter defenses, but King is a great late game cleaner or scarfed revenger bacuse of his great BoltBeam *Earth Power + filler (mostly Flamethrower)

 

[Fire Blast]

Nidoking is an excellent Baton Pass receiver. I have used Nidoking to great success. Although, it can be used as a standalone sweeper also.

I am pretty sure that only 20 Atk EVs are needed to deal with Chansey.

 

[Rakan]

Stealth Rock is illegal with Sheer Force as Stealth Rock is a 4th Gen TM and Nidoking is only male.

 

[GTS]

Stealth Rock is illegal with Sheer Force as Stealth Rock is a 4th Gen TM and Nidoking is only male.

ah true, i forgot about all that. it doesnt really matter.
you can use the same moves with poison point, or you can go physical if you want

with EQ and a coverage move.

 

[TM13IceBeam]

Earthquake isn't boosted by Sheer Force...

 

[breh]

just don't use physical nidoking, trust me

if you're using physical nidoking, you're working with a base 85 92 attack instead of an (effective) base 125 SpA all of the time that you're not using poison jab.

 

[PokéMontage]

^Nidoking has base 92 Attack, but I agree that special Nidoking is the way to go. It's powerful and the coverage is delicious.

 

[alexwolf]

if only nidoking ever got gunk shot...

 

[tomtom5858]

It wouldn't use it....

 

[Jaxx]

This Pokemon is beautiful. BP a quiver dance from Venomoth, sit back and watch Nidoking rip through teams like paper. Being immune to both Toxic and T-wave makes Nidoking extremely difficult to stall out especially since it takes no Life orb recoil with Sheer force boosted moves. Probably one of my favourite Pokemon in UU.

 

[TM13IceBeam]

it isn't immune to Will-o-Wisp, but special Nidoking hardly cares anyway.

 

[lars]

Agreed, special Nidoking is really the only viable way to go. I'm not sure if a Sheer force Nidoking can have sucker punch, but that is really the only way a mixed set would even be reasonable. EQ and megahorn don't get Sheer Force boost and poison jab has outclassed coverage.

Besides, baton pass a shell smash to him (also holding life orb) and flamethrower will ohko all (pretty sure) ferro even in the rain.

 

[Juice!]

This Pokemon is beautiful. BP a quiver dance from Venomoth, sit back and watch Nidoking rip through teams like paper. Being immune to both Toxic and T-wave makes Nidoking extremely difficult to stall out especially since it takes no Life orb recoil with Sheer force boosted moves. Probably one of my favourite Pokemon in UU.

This. He almost always only needs one Quiver Dance to sweep. If you actually manage to get two, it's game over, you OHKO everything except like.. Chansey.

 

[Forsety]

Special Nidoking with BP support is so freakin insane it could almost be considered borderline broken, even without a boost he'll still rip holes through most defensive Pokemon. Good god seriously why don't people use this guy more? He is like the equivilent of UU's Tyrannitar or Starmie imo.

Only half effective way I've seen of dealing with a Nidoking is a special defensive Lickilicky/Hariyama who can at least Knock Off to kill its LO before phazing it. Or special defensive Quagsire/Gastrodon which like...never exists and Rotom-H who thankfully resists/immune to all of Nidoking's attacks but still gets hurt pretty badly.


Theres Chansey too but she actually is broken...

 

[Scoopapa]

If you're using Nidoking as a shell smash recipient, Focus Blast probably deserves a mention to 2HKO Chansey and OHKO some versions of Snorlax. Also you'll OHKO Rotom-H, unless its a SpDef variant (don't know if anyone runs that) . I'm not entirely sure what you're hitting with flamethrower - Heracross is the only thing that immediately comes to mind, but you have ~50% chance to OHKO with Thunderbolt and you resist all of his attacks anyway.

 

[breh]

Only half effective way I've seen of dealing with a Nidoking is a special defensive Lickilicky/Hariyama who can at least Knock Off to kill its LO before phazing it.

Azumarill Aqua Jet? Banded Mamoswine Ice Shard?

 

[Forsety]

Aqua Jet from Azumarill does not kill Nidoking it is only around 77% absolute tops and even LO Aqua Jet fails to score the kill. You need CB to pull it off and thats often more than a liability with things like Slowbro, Milotic, Suicune regularly running about.

Considering Mamoswine vs the average LO set has a 50% chance of getting mauled by a very powerful neutral hit (or killed if SR is up) and a 25% chance of getting outright OHKO'd. I really don't think I'm going to chance switching in Mamoswine just to have it crippled and Nidoking run off like some little prick. Or in another scenario if I'm seeing a Mamoswine come in after something is dead you probably couldn't telegraph a revenge kill any more obviously.

EDIT:
Having bothered to check the calcs even Banded Jolly Mamoswine fails completely to kill Nidoking with its Ice Shard doing even less damage than LO Azu. Knowing this Mamoswine is good as dead anyway unless its Adamant.

 

[Whimsicott]

Aqua Jet from Azumarill does not kill Nidoking it is only around 77% absolute tops and even LO Aqua Jet fails to score the kill. You need CB to pull it off and thats often more than a liability with things like Slowbro, Milotic, Suicune regularly running about.

Considering Mamoswine vs the average LO set has a 50% chance of getting mauled by a very powerful neutral hit (or killed if SR is up) and a 25% chance of getting outright OHKO'd. I really don't think I'm going to chance switching in Mamoswine just to have it crippled and Nidoking run off like some little prick. Or in another scenario if I'm seeing a Mamoswine come in after something is dead you probably couldn't telegraph a revenge kill any more obviously.

CB Azu is used more than LO and priority isn't the only way to kill Nidoking; he isn't goign to be taking the metagame with sub-par speed.

 

[alexwolf]

It wouldn't use it....

Yes sure...An 156 stab move wouldn't be of any use for a mixed sweeper...Especially when he can use hone claws to further raise its attack,and at the same time raise the accuracy of every of nido's moves!.f.e.:

nidoking@life orb
nature:depends
sp.atc/atck/speed
-hone claws
-gunk shot
-blizzard/fire blast
-thunder/earth power

This set would make for a superb mixed sweeper without any recoil from life orb at all(encourage boosts all of nido's moves!).
The biggest selling point of gunsk shot is that it enables nido to defeat it's most common counters like rotom-h and chansey...Rotom-h is ohkoed after a hone claw while chansey is always 2hkoed and can do nothing in return except from launching 100 damage before it dies.Pass to this nido an agility or a butterfly dance and almost nothing can stop this beast...!

 

[TM13IceBeam]

This. He almost always only needs one Quiver Dance to sweep. If you actually manage to get two, it's game over, you OHKO everything except like.. Chansey.

I can attest to that. Venomoth is a fucking god at BP'ing Quiver Dance, and it is immune to Fake Out's flinch so it can spam Sleep Powder in your face. I think only Chansey can win a +2 Nidoking, or else you'll need to pray that you get your p-hazer in BEFORE the Baton Pass.

I've been running Nidoking as the standard Earth Power/BoltBeam/Fire Blast and its really been owning a whole lot of stuff.

Mixed Nidoking is terrible imo. You are sacking Nidoking's somewhat respectable bulk. Might as well just focus on 1 attack stat, since only Chansey walls you, and frankly that is why you have other people like Hitmontop, Azumarill, etc.

 

[Whimsicott]

I've used Earth Power/BoltBeam/Sub to some success. I can't think of anything that can resist this besides Shedinja...