Today, I'd like to present you all with an underexplored set on an underexplored Pokemon, that surprisingly has a fantastic place in the current meta:
Toxic Toxicroak
Toxicroak @ Leftovers
Ability: Dry Skin
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 176 Atk / 236 Def / 96 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Close Combat
- Encore / Gunk Shot / Sucker Punch / Thunder Punch / Ice Punch / Drain Punch
- Earthquake
- Toxic
Somehow, this NU Pokémon that barely hits 1% usage can threaten every single team with a defensive core without Altaria (which gets wrecked if you're running Ice Punch anyway). To illustrate, imagine how difficult Quagsire is to switch into. EQ + Toxic already is very threatening, but there are some Pokémon like Scizor and Taunt users that can shut it down quite easily. But, what if Quagsire had a strong Close Combat to make even those Pokémon tough to switch in? That's basically Toxicroak. Try to set up Stealth Rock? Get Encored. Switch into a bulky Flying or Ground to take a Close Combat? You just got Toxic'd, and are currently on a timer. Switching into Toxicroak is one of the most difficult things to accommodate for in the teambuilder.
And that's not even mentioning - It's one of the best offensive Floatzel / Barraskewda answers that we have! You have an even better Poison Heal in rain (3/16 of your HP every turn, including leftovers!), meaning that even if you take 50% on the switchin from some random attack, you can still avoid the 2HKO and strike back, staying healthy for your next switchin. Other defensive utility includes absorbing Toxic Spikes, 4x resisting First Impression & U-Turn, switching into Tsareena, non-Terastalized Wo-Chien, and Tyranitar's STABs, as well as checking Quaquaval sets that only run STAB moves.
Want to use Toxicroak, but not sure how to build with it? Take a look at this team:
https://pokepast.es/9221bfd8c31eb105. It uses Toxicroak's ability to bait in and cripple bulky Ground-types to set up Dragon Dance Tyranitar for the easiest sweep possible. The given EV spread for Toxicroak lets you survive two choice band Floatzel Ice Spinners outside of rain, with enough speed for Tinkaton + speed creep and the rest put into Attack.
And this is the point where I'd normally put replays, and I did play a really good match with Toxicroak... which I forgot to save. So, I'll just say to try it out yourself and pass it off as community interaction. If I get any good replays, though, I'll edit my post and put them here.
So, yeah. Good Pokémon. I would definitely recommend experimenting with it as much as you can, because Toxicroak has a really big movepool and I only covered one set here.