[OVERVIEW]
- Solid all-around bulk with access to recovery and other defensive merits such as storm drain.
- Access to Stealth Rock, can switch in and set it up throughout the match
- Great blanket check to water, electric, and normal types; IE lanturn, ludicolo, rotom-fan, quagsire, and swellow.
- It is a notably good check to special water types that also has the ability to set rocks.
- It's rock and grass typing makes it capable of effectively hitting most immediate hazard removal mons such as pellipper, prinplup, claydol, kabutops, and xatu.
- Although having four weaknesses in bug, ice, fighting, and steel it definitely enjoys not having a 4X weakness that would allow it to be bopped by some hidden power or coverage move.
- The passive nature of cradily allows it to often be set up on whether it's a wall setting hazards like weezing or miltank, or a set up sweeper like malamar or mega-dino.
[SET]
name: Defensive
move 1: Stealth Rock
move 2: Recover
move 3: Giga Drain
move 4: Stone Edge / Toxic
item: Leftovers
ability: Storm Drain
nature: Bold / Relaxed
evs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpA
[SET COMMENTS]
Moves
========
- Stealth rock is the main utility cradily adds when putting it on a team. Setting hazards helps add passive damage to the opposing team. In addition, it breaks sashes which helps out a good number of sweepers or even just fast wallbreakers.
- Recover reliably heals Cradily and is useful for cradily to have the longevity it craves.
- Giga Drain is cradily's most reliable STAB, provides extra recovery, and threatens hazard removes like sandslash, kabutops, prinplup, and claydol.
- Stone edge is nice for the raw power and capability of hitting things like cryogonal, rotom-fan, jynx, magmortar and other mons weak to rock.
- Another option is toxic since cradily doesn't hit hard anyway and could appreciate spreading status. And dealing with common switchins like hitmonchan.
Set Details
========
- The EVs and nature give Cradily as much physical bulk as possible in order to tank hits from Pokemon such as all swellow sets, standard tauros, archeops, and kangaskhan.
- A Relaxed nature should be used if one opts for Stone Edge so that Cradily's Attack is not lowered
- Storm Drain turns Cradily into a decent check to the Water-types of the tier. It struggles due to it getting 2HKOd by most offensive water types's ice beams.
- Leftovers gives Cradily some passive recovery
Usage Tips
========
- Cradily is a fairly reliable switch into lots of normal types, electric types, and other powerful physical attackers like archeops and can use that time to set stealth rocks up and be a thorn in the side of you opponents team.
- It still has enough special bulk to boot allowing it still come in on things like pyroar, rotom, and ludicolo. That being said it is not a reliable switch-in like the special set due two it getting 2HKOd by fireblast, willohex, and ice beam respectively.
- Cradily can also set up rocks on things like vileplume and mega audino, who cradily can't do anything to hurt but for the most part it isn't afraid to stay in on the for a few turns.
- Cradily can discourage hazard removers from coming in, like prinplup, claydol, pelippper, kabutops, sandslash, and xatu, with the threats of giga and stone edge/toxic.
Team Options
========
- Cradily appreciates a teammate who can reliably, or even unreliably, switch into fighting types such as vileplume, xatu, garbodor, mesprit, musharna, pellipper, or weezing.
- Pellipper is a fun team mate who can defensively stop sawk, remove hazards that cradily hates, counters steelix, and is a nice alternative water resist so physically defensive cradily can focus on other things. (also resists bug/fighting/steel while appreciating the electric resist.)
- Grounded poisons, such as vileplume, skuntank and garbodor, are somewhat useful paired with cradily as they can remove toxic spikes and help keep cradily's status healthy.
- Offensive Fire-types actually are often good with cradily due to being small checks to steel types ice types, and bug types, while appreciating cradily being able to discourage the use of water attacks. Examples are magmortar, who can notably check jynx, pyroar who adds to the speed, and combusken, who likes anything that discourages aqua jet.
- Strong checks to ice types like magmortar and piloswine are imortant for physically defensive cradily as they slow down major threats like aurorus, abomasnow, and jynx.
- Things with heal bell really help cradily such as miltank, lanturn, musharna and vileplume. Cradily more then other things hates having to deal with residual damage as it's main positive it offers is it's amazing bulk.
- Things that discourage set-up sweepers will come in handy, such as quagsire who also helps with steel types, frost breath ice types, and powerful wallbreakers.
[SET]
name: Specially Defensive
move 1: Stealth Rock
move 2: Recover
move 3: Giga Drain
move 4: Stone Edge / Hidden Power-Rock / Toxic
item: Leftovers
ability: Storm Drain
nature: Calm / Sassy
evs: 248 HP / 8 SpA / 252 SpD
[SET COMMENTS]
Moves
========
- Stealth rock is the main utility cradily adds when putting it on a team. Setting hazards helps add passive damage to the opposing team. In addition, it breaks sashes which helps out a good number of sweepers or even just fast wallbreakers.
- Recover reliably heals Cradily and is useful for cradily to have the longevity it craves.
- Giga Drain is cradily's most reliable STAB, provides extra recovery, and threatens hazard removes like sandslash, kabutops, prinplup, and claydol.
- Stone edge is nice for the raw power and capability of hitting things like cryogonal, rotom-fan, jynx, magmortar and other mons weak to rock.
- Another option is toxic since cradily doesn't hit hard anyway and could appreciate spreading status. It also lets it cripple common switchings like hitmonchan and non-guys hariyama.
Set Details
========
- The EVs and nature give Cradily as much special bulk as possible in order to tank hits from Pokemon such as floatzel, pyroar, and lilligant.
- A Sassy nature should be used if one opts for Stone Edge so that Cradily's Attack is not lowered.
- Storm Drain turns Cradily into an amazing check to the Water-types of the tier. Specially bulky cradily can far more reliably switch into most waters. However you still have to watch out for getting 2HKOd focus blast ludicolos that are often on rain teams.
- Leftovers gives Cradily some passive recovery.
Usage Tips
========
- Cradily is there to set stealth rocks and with recovery it has lots of opportunities to get rocks up, potentially multiple times in the same match.
- It is good at coming in on special attacks or being a safe response to kanga fake outs. Switching it in on volt switches if and only if you have responses to anything that might want to set up on cradily.
- If at all possible don't let cradily get poisoned because then it can commonly be stalled out by other walls if ur opponent isn't able to bring in their offensive threats who have grown too weak to take a weak hit from even cradily. Being poisoned simply isn't fun.
- SpD cradily has enough bulk to take a +1 hurricane, even if the uncommon life orb set, from vivilion and hit back with stone edge. Because of it's grass typing, which makes it immune immune to sleep powder, cradily can be used to pivot in and out of powder moves from the likes of lilligant and vivillon but struggles to actually beat these boosting sweepers due to both 2HKOing and cradily needing to hit them twice to kill.
Team Options
========
- Cradily wants a team mate who can reliably, or even unreliably, switch into fighting types such as vileplume, xatu, garbodor, mesprit, musharna or weezing.
- Offensive Fire-types actually are often good with cradily due to being small checks to steel types ice types, and bug types, while appreciating cradily being able to discourage the use of water attacks. Examples are magmortar, who can notably check jynx, pyroar who adds to the speed, and combusken, who likes anything that discourages aqua jet.
- Grounded poisons, such as vileplume, skuntank and garbodor, are somewhat useful paired with cradily as they can remove toxic spikes and help keep cradily's status healthy.
- Bulky things that can handle archeops tend to work well with SpD cradily such as ferroseed, rhydon, and steelix.
- Things with heal bell really help cradily such as miltank, lanturn, musharna and vileplume.
- Things that discourage set-up sweepers will come in handy, such as quagsire who also helps with steel types, frost breath ice types, and powerful wallbreakers.
- Obviously strong switchins to cradily's other type weaknesses are nice such as piloswine, hariyama, lanturn, and magnet pull probopass.
- Other hazard removers that hate water can also hugely help cradily out IE: sandslash, or claydol.
[STRATEGY COMMENTS]
Other Options
=============
- Weakness Policy allows Cradily to take advantage of non-STAB super effective coverage moves such as floatzel's Ice Beam, garbodor's Drain Punch, swellow's U-turn, and kangaskhan's Drain Punch. Earth Power is recommended on this set for coverage on more threats such as garbodor, skuntank, mawile, klinklang, and pawniard. The main problem is it is less effective at getting rocks up because it misses out on passive recovery.
- Dual Dance cradily is an interesting set that can be a nice alternative to rhydon and torterra, the main benefit being it's access to storm drain and stab stone edge. For the most part the other two will be able to hit relatively harder making this a less favored choice.
- Earth Power as a coverage option is nice as it hits muk, garbodor, skunktank, klinklang, mawile, probopass, and pawniard.
- Rocky Helmet physically defensive cradily is an option that can be a viable counter to things like all swellow sets, kanga, archeops, non iron head tauros, non cross chop e-vire, meanwhile even if they do do those moves they have to do them as cradily switches in since they both do about 50%.
- It does have access to mirror coat for surprise factor but's it's often not able to fit it in.
Checks and Counters
===================
**Stab Super-Effective Moves**: Although there are quite a few, the most notable ones are hariyama who can counter cradily anytime while easily living the whole match, sawk who is hard to stop with other mons, aurorus who is in the same boat, piloswine since it hits physically hits very hard. Some other examples that hit hard physically or are specially se such as abomansnow, zangoose, pawniard, mawile, scyther, pinsir, primeape, gurdurr, combusken, and jynx.
**Bulky Walls**: Bulky walls that aren't weak to cradily's coverage. Miltank, weezing, ferroseed and vileplume can all ignore cradily and go about their business.
**Taunt Users**: This one is just universal but taunt users tend to through cradily into a pickle. Examples are mismagius, weezing, and skuntank.
**Set-up Sweepers**: Things like malamar and mega-audino have no trouble setting up on the relatively passive nature of cradily.
**Poison/Steel Types**: If cradily is not running ground coverage things like garbodor, mawile, and klingklang will go about their buisness with little to no consequence.
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