Dracovish [QC 1/2]

[Iura]

[SET]
name: Rend
move 1: Fishious Rend
move 2: Rock Tomb / Sleep Talk
move 3: Psychic Fangs / Ice Fang / Crunch / Rock Blast
move 4: Low Kick / Ice Fang / Crunch / Outrage
item: Choice Band / Choice Scarf
ability: Strong Jaw
nature: Jolly / Adamant
evs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe

[SET COMMENTS]

* Dracovish is a potent raw damage machine with Fishious Rend and Strong Jaw working in tandem to crush many Pokemon in one hit.

* Rock Tomb slows Pokemon that are faster than Dracovish and can help set up for the Pokemon after Dracovish if it is in an unfavorable matchup.

* Psychic Fangs breaks Screens for your team if that is better than trying to muscle through with Fishcious Rend and comes with the added benefit with hitting Toxapex hard.

* Low Kick hits Ferrothorn and Hydreigon and becomes Max Knuckle for the very rare occasion when Dracovish Dynamaxes.

* Ice Fang hits Dragapult, Hydreigon, and Rotom-C, among others, greatly increasing its coverage across the board.

* Crunch hits Dragapult harder and comes with the benefits of also hitting things like Jellicent.

* Choice Band is used for maximum power and can be run with max Speed or no Speed to play under Trick Room.

* Choice Scarf is used to be more independent, but loses some significant amount of power.

* If using Sleep Talk is taken for Dracovish to absorb sleep, a different approach needs to be taken.

* As Fishious Rend is usually the only move that Dracovish wants to use out of Sleep Talk, all other filler moves are taken out.

* Be careful to not Sleep Talk too much or Dracovish will be at risk of being locked into it as it wakes up.

* If Dracovish is to be used against many Water resists and immunities, consider using its plethora of coverage moves, namely Outrage and Rock Blast.

EV Spreads
========

* 252 Atk / 252 Spe / 4 Def Adamant or Jolly: This is the standard spread for doing the max amount of damage and being the fastest it can be.

* 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def Adamant: This is an alternate spread for a mid-speed Trick Room build to maximize bulk and damage with Choice Band.

* 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def, IVs: 0 Speed Brave: This is a spread for underspeeding base 60s to fully take advantage of Trick Room.


[General Team Options]

In particular, Dragapult is one of the biggest thorns in Dracovish’s sides. It can easily OHKO Dracovish and outspeeds even Choice Scarf Dracovish. Its middling speed also makes it highly appreciate pivots and speed control to make sure it comes in safely and can outspeed its target. Many of the Fairy-type Pokemon are problems as they have no problem taking Dracovish out, so checks to those will greatly help it out. Lapras-Gmax can be an issue due to Freeze-Dry before gigantamaxing and setting up dual screens after, while also resisting Fishious Rend. Lastly, Trick Room will allow Dracovish to use its middling speed to its advantage and if used should be paired with similar teammates capable of abusing Trick Room.

Dragapult Checks:
Pivots / Speed Control:
Fairy Type Resistances:
Lapras-Gmax Checks:
Trick Room:

 

[1_TrickPhony]

1. For teammate options, explain why each of those subcategories are useful.
2. My personal sleep talk set uses rock blast and outrage as well, and I think its useful to have a move other than rend in order to not get hard walled by water immunities. I'd include them as moves for 3/4 and state in the bullets you can drop them to ensure sleep talk always uses Rend.
3. Sleep talk set should have the HP/Atk spread as well for under trick room, maybe even as the main set.

 

[zapper22001]

The Trick Room Choice Band set should have 252 HP/252 Atk/ 4 Def Brave 0 Spe IV as an option. You mention a no speed EV spread in the set comments so it should be posted as an option for an EV spread even if it is obvious what it should be.

It would be beneficial to specify if you go 0IV or 31IV on the Adamant mid-speed spread. The 31IV spread is good and I think is the one you are referring to but the 0IV is too awkward and in my opinion should be avoided. This can be counterintuitive compared to other common trick room EV spreads so it is worth pointing out.

The 0IV spread hits a speed stat of 80 which ties Base 60 Neutral nature Pokemon with no investment. That speed tier is extremely competitive especially now with the release of Pokemon HOME. Granted many are running speed creep for Pokemon in this tier (somewhere between 20-28 EVs has been most common in my experience on cart the past two seasons), but there are still spreads with no speed investment so you are put into a bind on whether or not to go trick room mode in team preview. I would not want to risk a speed tie with Pokemon like Primarina, Sylveon or Clefable. Doubled Fisheous Rend is not a guaranteed KO vs 252 HP/ 0 Def Primarina (only 75%), but it is on the others, which definitely affects whether or not you win the matchup.

Crucially I have never seen enough speed creep to outspeed the 31IV spread, so you can more easily determine whether or not you can go with the Trick Room strategy, but I am curious what others may have experienced. The most speed creep I have seen in this tier is for Neutral nature Corviknight.

This whole discussion about IVs might be too niche and unsuitable for this analysis. If that is the case, feel free to ignore this.

 

[1_TrickPhony]

The Trick Room Choice Band set should have 252 HP/252 Atk/ 4 Def Brave 0 Spe IV as an option. You mention a no speed EV spread in the set comments so it should be posted as an option for an EV spread even if it is obvious what it should be.

It would be beneficial to specify if you go 0IV or 31IV on the Adamant mid-speed spread. The 31IV spread is good and I think is the one you are referring to but the 0IV is too awkward and in my opinion should be avoided. This can be counterintuitive compared to other common trick room EV spreads so it is worth pointing out.

The 0IV spread hits a speed stat of 80 which ties Base 60 Neutral nature Pokemon with no investment. That speed tier is extremely competitive especially now with the release of Pokemon HOME. Granted many are running speed creep for Pokemon in this tier (somewhere between 20-28 EVs has been most common in my experience on cart the past two seasons), but there are still spreads with no speed investment so you are put into a bind on whether or not to go trick room mode in team preview. I would not want to risk a speed tie with Pokemon like Primarina, Sylveon or Clefable. Doubled Fisheous Rend is not a guaranteed KO vs 252 HP/ 0 Def Primarina (only 75%), but it is on the others, which definitely affects whether or not you win the matchup.

Crucially I have never seen enough speed creep to outspeed the 31IV spread, so you can more easily determine whether or not you can go with the Trick Room strategy, but I am curious what others may have experienced. The most speed creep I have seen in this tier is for Neutral nature Corviknight.

This whole discussion about IVs might be too niche and unsuitable for this analysis. If that is the case, feel free to ignore this.

I agree with this point for banded TR. Either no Spe investment Adamant, or Brave 0IV are the play, to outspeed base 60s no investment outside of TR or underspeed base 60s inside TR. Shouldn't be a difficult fix.

 

[Iura]

1. For teammate options, explain why each of those subcategories are useful.
2. My personal sleep talk set uses rock blast and outrage as well, and I think its useful to have a move other than rend in order to not get hard walled by water immunities. I'd include them as moves for 3/4 and state in the bullets you can drop them to ensure sleep talk always uses Rend.
3. Sleep talk set should have the HP/Atk spread as well for under trick room, maybe even as the main set.

1. Ok yeah I’ll do that when I wake up. I did forget that. Do I need any other specific categories (I wanted to mention I didn’t put Aegislash for Fairy Resist down since all top 4 fairies have a tendency to slam it with coverage, but seems unnecessary)
2. Sure I’ll add that in, but as a mention instead.
3. Probably if you’re trying to underspeed Butterfree, yeah I guess it’d probably be main in that case. But then again I’d probably still want to be fast for Rend, ehhh mention it is.

 

[Iura]

The Trick Room Choice Band set should have 252 HP/252 Atk/ 4 Def Brave 0 Spe IV as an option. You mention a no speed EV spread in the set comments so it should be posted as an option for an EV spread even if it is obvious what it should be.

It would be beneficial to specify if you go 0IV or 31IV on the Adamant mid-speed spread. The 31IV spread is good and I think is the one you are referring to but the 0IV is too awkward and in my opinion should be avoided. This can be counterintuitive compared to other common trick room EV spreads so it is worth pointing out.

The 0IV spread hits a speed stat of 80 which ties Base 60 Neutral nature Pokemon with no investment. That speed tier is extremely competitive especially now with the release of Pokemon HOME. Granted many are running speed creep for Pokemon in this tier (somewhere between 20-28 EVs has been most common in my experience on cart the past two seasons), but there are still spreads with no speed investment so you are put into a bind on whether or not to go trick room mode in team preview. I would not want to risk a speed tie with Pokemon like Primarina, Sylveon or Clefable. Doubled Fisheous Rend is not a guaranteed KO vs 252 HP/ 0 Def Primarina (only 75%), but it is on the others, which definitely affects whether or not you win the matchup.

Crucially I have never seen enough speed creep to outspeed the 31IV spread, so you can more easily determine whether or not you can go with the Trick Room strategy, but I am curious what others may have experienced. The most speed creep I have seen in this tier is for Neutral nature Corviknight.

This whole discussion about IVs might be too niche and unsuitable for this analysis. If that is the case, feel free to ignore this.

I think adding Brave IV 0 is a fine one, but yeah Adamant 0 IV is finicky due to just being a speed tie with base 60s. If it’s not mentioned, IVs are assumed to be 31, so it shouldn’t be a problem. The only reason Brave 0 wasn’t in before is because from what people ran for 0 EV Speed Vish, it’s been mostly just Adamant 31 IV, so I’ve held off on it. Free Iron Ball Vish so it can underspeed Rhyperior.

There’s nothing under 60 of relevance that it underspeeds (Gourgeist-XL, Pangoro, Scrafty, Trevenant, Golurk, Machamp, the Arctos) (Technically Type: Null and Crawdaunt too, but min speed on Null and 252 speed on Crawdaunt makes the point kinda moot), so yeah it’s purely for underspeeding base 60s in TR.

 

[Theorymon]

Alright time to check this! Sorry, I should have KNOWN playing Mario Maker while being on this page was a bad idea lol

- For Trick Room teammates, I'd remove the non TR setters from the list, since if you want more TR teammates, you can click on the Pokemon's Minisprite when this is uploaded so you can see actual TR teammates that way!

- I'm sorta iffy on Conkeldurr being a Gigantamax Lapras check. Lapras does a lot to flame orb variants, and while AV Conkeldurr can sorta stall out AV Gmax Lapras, it gets 2HKOed by Weakness Policy Gmax Lapras.

Otherwise, Dracovish is a pretty simple mon, so QC Approved 1/2 from me!

 

[Iura]

Alright time to check this! Sorry, I should have KNOWN playing Mario Maker while being on this page was a bad idea lol

- For Trick Room teammates, I'd remove the non TR setters from the list, since if you want more TR teammates, you can click on the Pokemon's Minisprite when this is uploaded so you can see actual TR teammates that way!

- I'm sorta iffy on Conkeldurr being a Gigantamax Lapras check. Lapras does a lot to flame orb variants, and while AV Conkeldurr can sorta stall out AV Gmax Lapras, it gets 2HKOed by Weakness Policy Gmax Lapras.

Otherwise, Dracovish is a pretty simple mon, so QC Approved 1/2 from me!

I agree on Conkeldurr being somewhat shaky as a check, but I think it still deserves a spot as it still deals with it relatively well depending on what one or the other is running.
And snapped on the non TR setters but man having only two there is unsettling, is there any TR setter I’m forgetting

 

[marilli]

I know the slashes can be a bit annoying but I really do think these two don't need to be a separate set... if there should be a different set it should be a Trick Room attacker set. Even then they generally do the same things. I swear I mentioned this the last time...