Offensive Calm Mind Primarina [QC 0/2]

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[SET]
name: Offensive Calm Mind
move 1: Surf / Hydro Pump
move 2: Moonblast
move 3: Calm Mind
move 4: Substitute / Psychic Noise
item: Leftovers / Custap Berry
tera type: Steel / Poison / Fairy / Water
ability: Torrent
nature: Modest / Timid
evs: 80 HP / 252 SpA / 176 Spe
ivs: 0 Atk

[SET COMMENTS]

Thanks to its high Special Attack, good Special Defense and amazing type combination both offensively and defensively, Primarina finds itself as one of the tier's strongest wallbreakers, as it mixes both a powerful offensive profile with some defensive utility in a single slot. Both Surf and Moonblast hit a big portion of the metagame for super effective damage, Hydro Pump is a less accurate but noticeably more powerful option over Surf that allows Primarina to score early KOs without the need to boost further with Calm Mind beforehand, such as having a good chance of OHKOing bulky Kingambit after a single layer of Spikes, cleanly 2HKOing Slowking-Galar and OHKOing Hatterene after hazards, all after a single Calm Mind boost. The last moveslot is between Substitute and Psychic Noise, Substitute can grant Primarina invaluable utility while forcing switches, as it will block any status and potential revenge kill attempts while it's up, which in combination with Calm Mind boosting Primarina's special bulk and the constant recovery from Leftovers, can make the Substitute hard to remove without taking massive damage in return, it can also be used to trigger Custap Berry yourself, while Psychic Noise can serve as useful Psychic coverage for the very few Pokemon that do resist Primarina's STAB combination, such as Water Absorb Clodsire, Toxapex and Amoonguss. While Psychic Noise isn't that strong of a coverage move compared to Psychic, it has the secondary effect of preventing its targets from recovering health in conventional ways, making playing defensively around Primarina significantly more difficult. The EV spread makes it so Primarina outspeeds 252 Spe Adamant Kingambit while maximizing its damage output, with the remaining EVs going into HP, a Timid nature is an option as it guarantees that Primarina will outspeed even Jolly Kingambit while also outspeeding Defensive Gholdengo and Landorus-T with no Speed investment. Alternatively, 216 EVs can be run on Speed along a Timid nature to outspeed most Gliscor variants. Tera Steel or Poison are both defensively oriented choices to make setting up with Calm Mind and potentially a Substitute much easier, with both typings granting useful resistances or immunities to types such as Grass, Fairy and Poison, while not compromising much of Primarina's defensive profile in the process, both Tera Water and Tera Fairy on the other hand, are more offensively oriented tera types, boosting one STAB of your choice while removing the weaknesses of the secondary STAB, it is ideal to use these Tera types if running Timid to compensate for the slight drop in damage output.

Primarina pairs well with Pokemon that appreciate its role as both a blanket special attacker check and a wallbreaker, Pokémon like Rillaboom that struggle against Dragon- and Fire-types that Primarina beats can bring it safely to the field with U-turn, scare away special walls that Primarina may struggle with and also provide additional recovery with Grassy Terrain, which also halves the damage output of incoming Earthquake, making Landorus-T unable to revenge kill it unless severely weakened. Great Tusk can provide invaluable support with Rapid Spin by removing hazards, which Primarina is very susceptible to, while providing an Electric immunity and being able to KO troublesome foes for Primarina, such as Blissey, Clodsire, Slowking-Galar and such.


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Last edited:
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[SET]
name: Offensive Calm Mind
move 1: Surf / Hydro Pump
move 2: Moonblast
move 3: Calm Mind
move 4: Substitute / Psychic Noise
item: Leftovers / Custap Berry
tera type: Steel / Poison / Fairy / Water (Decided to remove Tera Poison and keep offensive Tera types to cut it down to 3, Tera Poison can still be noted as an option in the description but not a main slash)
ability: Torrent
nature: Modest / Timid (Also removing Timid from the slashes, but it's again something which can be listed as an option in paragraph 1)
evs: 80 HP / 252 SpA / 176 Spe
ivs: 0 Atk

[SET COMMENTS]
Thanks to its high Special Attack, good Special Defense and amazing type combination both offensively and defensively, Primarina finds itself as one of the tier's strongest wallbreakers, as it mixes both a powerful offensive profile with some defensive utility in a single slot. Both Surf and Moonblast hit a big portion of the metagame for super effective damage, Hydro Pump is a less accurate but noticeably more powerful option over Surf that allows Primarina to score early KOs without the need to boost further with Calm Mind beforehand, such as having a good chance of OHKOing bulky Kingambit after a single layer of Spikes, cleanly 2HKOing Slowking-Galar Galarian Slowking (Naming convention) and OHKOing Hatterene after hazards, (Hatterene after hazards is a little bit of a shaky benchmark as Hatterene usually denies hazards) all after a single Calm Mind boost. The last moveslot is between Substitute and Psychic Noise, (Fluff) Substitute can grant Primarina invaluable utility while forcing switches, as it will block any status and potential revenge kill attempts while it's up, which in combination with Calm Mind boosting Primarina's special bulk and the constant recovery from Leftovers, can make the Substitute hard to remove without taking massive damage in return, it can also be used to trigger Custap Berry yourself (Note that it's also helpful to get it into Torrent range), while. (I think this flows better if you break up the sentences a little) Psychic Noise can serve as useful Psychic coverage for the very few Pokemon that do resist Primarina's STAB combination, such as Water Absorb Clodsire, Toxapex and Amoonguss. While Psychic Noise isn't that strong of a coverage move compared to Psychic, it has the secondary effect of preventing its targets from recovering health in conventional ways, making playing defensively around Primarina significantly more difficult. (I'd switch the order of these, as blocking recovery is more meaningful than hitting these targets) The EV spread makes it so Primarina outspeeds 252 Spe Adamant Kingambit while maximizing its damage output, with the remaining EVs going into HP, a Timid nature is an option as it guarantees that Primarina will outspeed even Jolly Kingambit while also outspeeding Defensive Gholdengo and Landorus-T with no Speed investment. (This set isn't in the dex so idt it's worth listing. Also, does Timid miss out on any key damage benchmarks?) Alternatively, 216 EVs can be run on Speed along 40 HP / 252 SpA / 216 Spe can be ran with (It's best to list the full spread here, to clarify which stat the extra EVs are being taken from) a Timid nature to outspeed most Gliscor variants. Tera Steel or Poison are both defensively oriented choices to make setting up with Calm Mind and potentially a Substitute much easier, with both typings granting useful resistances or immunities to types such as Grass, Fairy and Poison, (Which Pokemon do these types help against beyond the type chart? For example, Tera Steel turns Slowking-G into setup fodder. Can also cut this down to just Tera Steel with Tera Poison listed last in the paragraph as a non-slashed alternative) while not compromising much of Primarina's defensive profile in the process, both Tera Water and Tera Fairy on the other hand, are more offensively oriented tera types, boosting one STAB of your choice while removing the weaknesses of the secondary STAB, it is ideal to use these Tera types if running Timid to compensate for the slight drop in damage output. (You can use these types with any spread imo. Also, what damage benchmarks do Tera Water and Tera Fairy hit, do they help to win any matchups in particular)

(Add some description of the item choices to paragraph 1)

(Start this paragraph by discussing what team styles offensive CM Primarina fits on - Terrain offense is definitely good, but a more offensive CM Prima set like this one can also fit on HO) Primarina pairs well with Pokemon that appreciate its role as both a blanket special attacker check and a wallbreaker, Pokémon like Rillaboom that struggle against Dragon- and Fire-types (In general, it's much better to include examples of this than just the type chart. Primarina is good against some Pokemon in this category like Volcarona but it isn't beating Raging Bolt, Kyurem, even Booster Gouging Fire 2HKOs Prima with Heat Crash / Blitz.) that Primarina beats can bring it safely to the field with U-turn, scare away special walls that Primarina may struggle with and also provide additional recovery with Grassy Terrain, which also halves the damage output of incoming Earthquake, making Landorus-T unable to revenge kill it unless severely weakened. (I think this whole latter part of the sentence is better phrased as "which also weakns Earthquake from [Pokemon that might try and revenge kill Primarina]" if it's included at all. The Landorus-T interaction in particular is uncommon with EQ only doing ~65 outside Terrain, and GTerrain halving EQ damage is dex information so that can be removed) Great Tusk can provide invaluable support with Rapid Spin by removing hazards, which Primarina is very susceptible to, while providing an Electric immunity (Note that Tusk is not a very safe switch-in to Raging Bolt and the only other slightly relevant Electric-types (Zapdos and Rotom-W) also beat Tusk, so this immunity isn't the most helpful here) and being able to KO threaten troublesome foes for Primarina, such as Blissey, Clodsire, Slowking-Galar Galarian Slowking and such. (Changed this to threaten as Tusk isn't inviting in and weakening or KOing these Pokemon, it can only switch into and force them out. Also note that Clodsire isn't a great Primarina answer unless it's Water Absorb, which isn't even listed in the dex.)

(I think there's a lot more that can be listed in this second paragraph as it only really covers Rillaboom and Great Tusk. What teams does Primarina fit on? What offensive partners can help weaken shared checks for Primarina and vice versa, what other Pokemon appreciate Primarina being a one-time Val / Volc check?)

[SET CREDITS]
Written by:
https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/username.XXXXXX/
https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/username.XXXXXX/
Quality checked by:
https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/username.XXXXXX/
https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/username.XXXXXX/
Grammar checked by:
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Tag me once this is implemented!
 
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