Rock/Steel
Base stats: 61 HP / 131 Atk / 211 Def / 53 SpA / 101 SpD / 13 Spe
Ability: Beast Boost
Gyro Ball
Heavy Slam
Earthquake
Superpower
Iron Head
Stone Edge
Rock Blast
Stealth Rock
Trick Room
High Horsepower
Heat Crash
Body Press
Toxic
Magic Coat
Heavy Slam
Earthquake
Superpower
Iron Head
Stone Edge
Rock Blast
Stealth Rock
Trick Room
High Horsepower
Heat Crash
Body Press
Toxic
Magic Coat
Pros:
- Extremely high Defense stat, giving it the strongest non-STAB Body Press in the game.
- Extremely low Speed stat works in its favor under Trick Room and/or when using Gyro Ball; it will almost always be faster than anything else under Trick Room and its Gyro Ball will reach its peak base power of 150 extremely frequently.
- Beast Boost is an excellent ability that allows Stakataka to snowball as it claims KOs, and no longer requires extremely specific IV spreads to be a dangerous offensive ability thanks to Body Press.
- High Attack stat with an excellent offensive Rock typing allows Stakataka to wallbreak very well
- Great coverage options in Earthquake/High Horsepower, Superpower/Body Press
- Received Heat Crash in the transition to Generation VIII; combined with its extremely high weight, Stakataka hits the majority of Fire-weak targets with a base 120 power Fire move.
- Extremely powerful anti-offensive countermeasure under Trick Room
- Can set its own Trick Room, allowing it to function as a standalone Offensive Trick Room sweeper without needing to depend on its teammates to set up for it.
Cons:
- Extremely poor defensive typing, giving it a weakness to common Water-type attacks and a quadruple weakness to even more-common Ground and Fighting-type attacks. This poor defensive typing simply cannot be understated; the relative defensive anti-synergy of this dual-typing makes Stakataka neutral to many, many common offensive typings in OU
- Special bulk is deceptively poor; with its poor base 61 HP stat, Stakataka can easily be overwhelmed on the special side
- Its Speed is a liability outside of Trick Room; Stakataka will almost always have to take a hit before it can set up Stealth Rock or Trick Room or just hit in retaliation.
- Frightening case of 4MSS; Stakataka greatly wishes it could run Trick Room, Stealth Rock, Gyro Ball, Heat Crash, Body Press, Stone Edge or Rock Blast, and Earthquake or High Horsepower all at once.
- Trick Room as a whole is somewhat of a gimmicky playstyle, although Stakataka functions rather well as a standalone threat too.
- The loss of Z-Moves severely hampers Stakataka's ability to land crucial OHKOs needed to begin snowballing.
Potential Sets:
OTR (Offensive Trick Room)
Stakataka @ Shuca Berry / Chople Berry / Air Balloon / Lum Berry / Metal Coat
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Lonely Nature
IVs: 15 Def / 0 Spe
- Trick Room
- Heat Crash
- Gyro Ball
- Earthquake / Stone Edge / High Horsepower
This is perhaps Stakataka's most well-known set from the previous generation, and for good reason: Stakataka's passable natural bulk, great Attack stat, insanely powerful STAB Gyro Ball, and abysmal Speed stat allow it to function well as its own Trick Room setter. Heat Crash gives Stakataka valuable coverage against Ferrothorn without needing to run Superpower, Gyro Ball is Stakataka's strongest attack on neutral targets by a very considerable margin as it usually reaches its maximum power due to Stakataka's low Speed, and Stakataka has plenty of coverage or its secondary STAB to choose from in its final moveslot, although it'll find itself being walled by something regardless of its choice. This set can run plenty of viable items, ranging from a Chople or Shuca Berry to potentially allow it to survive a move it is otherwise 4x weak against and set up to an Air Balloon to pseudo-eliminate its Ground weakness temporarily to a Metal Coat to beef up its Gyro Ball to even more absurd levels.
The IVs here are to ensure that Stakataka's Defense stat is equal to its Attack stat, ensuring that its Beast Boost functionally becomes Moxie and allows it to snowball better.
DTR ("Defensive" Trick Room)
Stakataka @ Shuca Berry / Chople Berry / Air Balloon / Lum Berry
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Trick Room
- Heat Crash
- Gyro Ball
- Body Press
Due to its newfound access to one of the strongest Body Presses in the game thanks to its tremendous Defense stat, Stakataka can now viably run a Trick Room set without sacrificing a considerable amount of its physical bulk to solidify its sweeping capabilities since Beast Boost will boost its physical bulk, thus boosting its Body Press damage by a tremendous amount. Few things in OU are capable of stomaching a boosted Body Press, and those that are able to will generally crumple in the face of its coverage options.
Choice Band
Stakataka @ Choice Band
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Gyro Ball
- Stone Edge / Rock Blast
- Heat Crash
- Earthquake / High Horsepower / Superpower
Taking a page from Rhyperior's book, Choice Band Stakataka overwhelms potential switchins with its incredibly powerful STABs and coverage options. Its Choice Band-boosted STAB Gyro Ball is capable of 2HKOing virtually all neutral targets, including Physically Defensive Landorus-Therian after Intimidate, and always OHKOs max-HP Garchomp, thus drastically limiting its would-be switchins to a select few incredibly bulky Steel resists. As with all Choiced sets, this set depends greatly on one's ability to predict one's opponent. A Brave Nature with 0 Speed IVs is run because Stakataka is too slow to warrant much of anything else and with this set's hit-and-run nature has zero reason to compromise its bulk by running a Lonely nature and dropping its IVs.
Stealth Rock
Stakataka @ Leftovers / Shuca Berry / Air Balloon / Chople Berry / Passho Berry / Mental Herb
Sassy Nature
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
IVs: 0 Spe
- Gyro Ball
- Rock Blast / Heat Crash
- Stealth Rock
- Protect / Toxic / Heat Crash
Stakataka's seemingly-high Physical bulk is usually far too compromised by its extreme weakness to the tier's powerful Earthquakes, Close Combats, Thousand Arrows, and Body Presses to warrant heavy investment, and this is even moreso the case when taking into account that its bulk is otherwise good enough to sponge surprisingly-strong neutral hits without much investment; as such, maximum Special Defense investment is preferred to patch up its somewhat lacking special bulk. Gyro Ball still hits incredibly hard with no offensive investment, while Rock Blast breaks past Substitutes and can hit Rock-weak targets very hard. Protect provides Stakataka with crucial free Leftovers recovery as well as the ability to scout for Choice-locked moves directed towards it.
Because of its newfound access to Body Press, Stakataka might have an argument for running full Defense investment and Body Press on a Stealth Rock set, although this may prove impractical long-term due to the amount of special bulk being foregone to do so.
Additional Commentary:
Overall a really cool mon, but I personally can't see this doing too well in OU once the meta settles and the tier becomes infested with Garchomp/Landorus-T/Zygarde/Galarian Zapdos without a huge amount of support.
Stakataka's offensive typing is quite good and Heat Crash is the best addition to its movepool it could've possibly wanted, but its defensive typing is more than just a bit lacking. It's a prime target for the tier's many, many powerful Ground and Fighting-type moves and has only a handful of resistances, few of which are able to offset just how poor its defensive typing is in other areas.
That said, Stakataka does have a very specific but potentially-incredible niche: thanks to its good bulk and Steel typing, it hard-counters every non-Trick Clefable set and turns Clefable into complete setup fodder, which could potentially be a massive niche compared to its past and present competitors.
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