Nominating MR CRABS! (Crawdaunt)
B- -> B or B+
After playing both cycle one and two, and getting number one on ladder around 2150+, crawdaunt is a really, really good againts the current meta trends, not just stall.
In OLT i would expect a lot more stall than usual since it is a consistent team that from my small experience on playing stall requires more of a play pattern than plays (tho making plays is still an option) as you would always play passively to win most of the time. Crawdaunt of course, destroys any stall team lacking in buzzwole, itemless tangrowth, poliwrath, and random fast pokemon. Yesterday, towards the end of cycle two, around 5-2 hour before deadline there were 6 or maybe 7 people using stall, 4 of which were using a variation of
The Ox Stall whether it be nasty plot glowking or thunder wave blissey and the others were using the cresselia skarm quag stall and skooma using their cteam stall. During this time i was able to get from 1800 to 2100 very quickly just by sniping the stall players as with
lead hazard mew + crawdaunt, theres nothing stall can do about it, this alone can honestly be a good enough reason to make daunt rise due to its unrivalled stall breaking potential, but.
There has also been a rise in other threats such as
SD Protect Blaziken,
Rotom Wash,
Gastrodon,
Sand in general,
Slow Bulky rillaboom,
Weavile,
Blacephalon.
Koko + Fat balance and
Clefable + Melm/Heatran core. All of these cores get destroyed by crawdaunt, be it SD or Choice band.
-You can rkill ken with jet
-You outspeed 0 speed rotom (not the most common, but its there)
-You beat gastrodon
-Most of the waters nowadays loses to daunt with less fini in the mix
-You have a good mu vs sand
-You have a good mu vs stall
-You break most of the balance core lacking in rillaboom/fini/shifu/buzzwole
-You check weavile and blace
an example of which is this
Xray bulky rillaboom + blaziken BO that is extremely popular at the moment. where at first glance, crawdaunt doesnt seem to be a threat, but it can get in on things like slowbro and get a free setup/knock on something, and can revenge kill the threatening blaziken. now you may see rillaboom, torn and garchomp and think that they beat crawdaunt. no, they do not, torn cant really touch you, chomp's EQ is weaken by the grassy terrain and you can do mind games on the rillaboom like knocking on SD.
now, lets talk about sand. There has been a lot of new sand and theyre rising in usage which is great since i do think sand was pretty underrated, two of the most popular sands are these two
https://pokepast.es/a1c5387406394d75 https://pokepast.es/fb9b188c5c22759a both of which dont exactly have the greatest switch into daunt, cause you can get in freely on ferro/ttar/pult sball/drill or glowking/ttar/clef/drill and either set up to nuke the upcoming switchin or just attack. you have to do a merry dance around to just be able to not get 6-0d by this mon.
Againts fat and balance.... well.
Here are some replays to show why its really good. (there are more but i didnt save them or just too lazy to find)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1638058699
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1637909481
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1636605134
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1638036926
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1629180485
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1627904619
The stalls on those replays are among the two most used one which is the Ox Stall and the Baboboy Stall. Not much to say, crawdaunt is really just the mon you think of when you say "stallbreaker" maybe behind heatran.
so yea, in this meta, crawdaunt has very good matchup againts most teams, with the rise of blaziken, gastrodon, slowbro, clef, you have more chances to get in and sweep. Yes the rising of rillaboom definetly hurts it but thats just one bad match up in a sea of great matchup.
ive gotten top one on ladder by mostly spamming crawdaunt with some other teams on the side, proof of it is....
View attachment 446818
with my last game being this vs HO and daunt dominating.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1638141415
So yea, this mon underrated. Rise it up