Toxicroak Discussion

Phuquoph

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After the recent threads on Hitmonchan and Hariyama I decided to take a look at one of the new breed of Fighters.

http://www.serebii.net/pokedex-dp/454.shtml

Typing: Poison/Fighting.

Weaknesses: Ground (x2), Flying (x2), Psychic (x4)

Resistances: Bug (x4), Dark (x2), Poison (x2), Fighting (x2), Rock (x2), Grass (x2)

Traits

Dry Skin: Grants Toxicroak immunity to Water but you trade off for a weaknesses to Fire. During Rain he restores HP, while the Sun will sap his health. This is the most useful of his traits, even if you're not using Rain Dance on him or elsewhere on your team. However, if you're using Sunny Day on the same team as him or you simply prefer to be neutral to both Water and Fire, then go with...

Anticipation: Allows Toxicroak to know if his opponent has a super effective move. This isn't that great as Toxicroak's weaknesses to Psychic, Ground and Flying are quite predictable.

Physical Movepool

Cross Chop
Brick Break
Focus Punch
Revenge
Earthquake
Poison Jab
X-Scissor
Stone Edge
Sucker Punch
Pursuit
Bullet Punch
Fake Out
Faint Attack

Special Movepool

Focus Blast
Vacuum Wave
Sludge Bomb
Dark Pulse
Shadow Ball

Support Movepool

Swords Dance
Bulk Up
Nasty Plot
Flatter
Taunt
Torment
Me First
Snatch
Embargo

Plus the usual Substitute, Toxic and specifically Rain Dance gets a mention too.

Sample Movesets

Toxicroak @ Leftovers
Trait: Dry Skin
EVs: 244 HP / 252 Atk / 12 Def
Adamant Nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Focus Punch
- Sucker Punch
- Pursuit
- Taunt

This set requires near telepathic prediction skills to pull off, but looks like a lot of fun to use. It may end up being no fun at all if it doesn't work though.

Get in against something that'll run from Toxicroak for a free Focus Punch. If a Ghost or Psychic comes in, use Sucker Punch. If they try to stall you out by setting up, Taunt them so they're forced to attack so you can use Sucker Punch. If they switch, hit them with Pursuit or get in another Focus Punch.

Cross Chop over Focus Punch if you don't want to really entirely on prediction.

Toxicroak @ Magnifying Glass/Life Orb
Trait: Dry Skin
EVs: 80 HP / 252 Atk / 176 Spd
Jolly Nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Swords Dance
- Cross Chop
- Stone Edge
- Sucker Punch/Poison Jab/Earthquake/X-Scissor

Simple physical sweeper set. Wear down your opponent either with Toxicroak or your other team members until you're in a position to Swords Dance and sweep.

Cross Chop is his best Fighting STAB move, Stone Edge covers Flying types.

The last slot is personal preference. Poison Jab to hit Exeggutor and other Grass types hard, Earthquake for other Toxicroak and to hit Metagross and Jirachi a little harder. X-Scissor hits most Psychics hard and does more to Exeggutor than Poison Jab, is also stops Claydol walling you.

Sucker Punch is my favourite since it destroys Psychics like Azelf and Alakazam after a Swords Dance. Plus, it's the only thing that really gives him an advantage over most other Fighting types that can use a similar set.

Life Orb gives him some extra power, but I prefer Magnifying Glass to boost the accuracy of Cross Chop and Stone Edge.

Speed is to beat Absol, although you can go up to 286 (216 EVs) to outpace Jolly Blaziken, Mamoswine, etc.

Toxicroak @ Magnifying Glass/Life Orb
Trait: Dry Skin
EVs: 80 HP / 252 SAtk / 176 Spd
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Nasty Plot
- Focus Blast/Hidden Power Fighting
- Dark Pulse
- Vacuum Wave/Sludge Bomb/Hidden Power Flying

You're using the lower of his offensive stats here.

Focus Blast has power, but poor accuracy which is again why I suggest Magnifying Glass. However, Life Orb is a good choice if you use Hidden Power Fighting.

Dark Pulse to hit Ghosts and Psychics is an obvious choice and is prefered to Shadow Ball for it's flinch rate.

Vacuum Wave to take out Reversal/Flail users and other threats that are low on HP but faster than Toxicroak. Sludge Bomb for STAB. Hidden Power Flying hits Heracross hard, which is probably the best thing about this set.

Toxicroak @ Leftovers
Trait: Dry Skin
EVs: 244 HP / 48 Atk / 208 SDef
Careful Nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Rain Dance
- Substitute
- Focus Punch/Cross Chop
- Stone Edge/Sucker Punch/X-Scissor/Toxic

Abuse Dry Skin by setting up a Rain Dance and stalling with Sub.

Focus Punch from behind your Sub, or you can go with Cross Chop for something to use if you don't have a Sub up.

The last slot is mostly for type coverage. Toxic works well with the stally nature of the set, but without Stone Edge or Sucker Punch you can't even touch Gengar and most other Poison types will shrug off your Fighting attacks.

The EV spread may seem a little excessive but it will allow Toxicroak's Subs to always survive an unSTAB Ice Beam from 266 Special Attack, which many Water types aim for in order to kill off Garchomp. If this doesn't concern you, you can invest more EVs in Attack and Speed. Which, to be honest is probably a much better idea.

Heracross Counter?

Calculations for 368 HP/166 Defense Toxicroak and 383 Attack CB Heracross.

Stone Edge 34 - 40%
Megahorn 30 - 36%

Nice.

Close Combat 61 - 70%

Not so nice.

It was worth checking. Besides, Hidden Power Flying is his best shot at actually killing Heracross anyway. Life Orb Poison Jab can kill after a Defense drop from Close Combat but you're risking giving Heracross a Guts boost if it manages to survive. Bit disappointing really.

Competition for Fighting types both in UU and OU seems to be pretty fierce so Toxicroak might have a hard time finding a niche. Unique typing and a good trait in Dry Skin make him quite an interesting choice though. Some really useful resistances help him get in, sadly his defenses are just a little low to fully take advantage of this. Cool little Pokemon, in my opinion.
 
Very cool. (: A Swords Dancing Fighter with Stone Edge, Sucker Punch and X-Scissor should have no trouble becoming at least a potent UU sweeper.
 
I, too, was just noticing last night that Toxicroak was the only Pokémon to resist all four of Heracross's standard attacks. Of course, there could easily be a Heracross with Earthquake.
 
I love that prediction set. Sometimes that's how I play, just predict the hell out of my opponent. Prediction is very powerful when you do it right.

The SD and Scheme sets I don't like as much because Toxicroak doesn't have the speed to pull them off very well.

Though here's something interesting. Dry Skin makes it have immunity to water under Rain Dance? Oh that is nice because that means it can survive the second most powerful special attack in the game without even a scratch (Kyogre's Double-STABed Water Spout at full health). And since there's a high risk of Kyo holding Choice Specs or Choice Scarf it can be nice to block it if you can predict.
 
The Nidoroyals also resist fight/bug/rock but not pursuit, so Nidoqueen would have an edge walling Heracross over Toxicroak anyway.
 
It also has a resistance vs. Grass, which might be *something* in this era where Grass will become slightly more powerful than it used to be =\

I like the fact it can Fake Out/Pallett Punch, which can give you something to work with in uu, where we will see the reversaling blaziken amongst others.

mueh, I don't like this brittle thing too much =\ 85 speed isn't going to anything in OU .. I mean ye, it could be doing something, but it will be more a surprise factor. I guess it's safe to use this in UU/BL where it can do more. MORE.
 
Toxicroak has a really unique resistance set, and a lot of them are useful, especially the water immunity from Dry Skin. And I guess with those defenses, it will need them. I see this being an interesting choice in UU but I wouldn't let it anywhere near OU, Heracross or no Heracross.
 
Toxi is also 2x Resistant to grass. (And if you wanna count Status, he is immune to Toxic/Poison/Poison Spikes).
 
I think Toxicroak will be useful in OU, with its nice trait that not only give its a water immunity, but actually healing in rain. Normally I'd say Azelf/Alakazam would stop it from being useful, but Sucker Punch is such a nice move =]
 
Toxicroak@ Life Orb or Cband

Me First/Sucker Punch
Cross Chop
Stone Edge
Pursuit/Eq/Scissor Cross

1st move deals with low speed, last move is for Coverage.

P.S. I like Me First Best because unless the foe is resistant to it's own attacks (Skarmary's Drill Peck, etc.) you will basically gain stab b/c u do 1.5x damage.

The types which resist their own attacks are Grass/Bug/Steel/Fire/Ice/Dark/Electric/Water/Psychic/Poison

No1 will use a Grass/Bug/Dark/Poison/Water (With Dry Skin Trait) against Toxi anyways, so that cuts down half the types anyways.
 
Phoquoh, fix your calcs. Heracross Close Combat and Megahorn do the same damage. Poison has the ever so useful fighting resist, the reason Weezing was the Heracross counter in the third generation. Unforntunately, it can't do anything except die becuase of HP Flying being the only reliable kill.

Why must such a cool pokemon be so useless?
 
Care to explain the reasoning behind your association of 3 Pokemon? Because from what I can see, it's just a bunch of Pokemon stuck together with their only similarity being 4x resists to Bug.
 
Great Sage said:
Care to explain the reasoning behind your association of 3 Pokemon? Because from what I can see, it's just a bunch of Pokemon stuck together with their only similarity being 4x resists to Bug.
Click to expand...


They cover 5 types.

Also, Mainly Toxi and 'Blim, because Drifblim covers Toxicroaks weakness.

I was wondering if a decent set up could be made from those 3, as I would like to start forming a team soon, and those are 3 of my major choices.
 
yay! someone else uses toxicroak. i'm basing my whole team on that first moveset (substitute instead of pursuit). and yes, i'll be using him in OU. i like challenges.
 
Hyra said:
Phoquoh, fix your calcs. Heracross Close Combat and Megahorn do the same damage. Poison has the ever so useful fighting resist, the reason Weezing was the Heracross counter in the third generation. Unforntunately, it can't do anything except die becuase of HP Flying being the only reliable kill.

Why must such a cool pokemon be so useless?
Click to expand...

It's only useless if you want to define useful as having 600 base stats. Toxicroak is a fine Pokemon with a nice trait, good stab, good attacking stats, and a good movepool. 106 base attack with stab on Cross Chop, Sucker Punch to counter its Psychic weakness, Stone Edge for flying types, and Swords Dance, a move other fighting types would kill for? Dry Skin seems like a really nice, underrated trait, especially if Sandstorm is as popular as it seems like it's going to be since that should prompt more people to take control of the weather themselves. Really, at least give [pokemon] a chance before writing it off as useless, just because it isn't Salamence 2 =[
 
Hyra you are wrong, Megahorn and Close Combat have the same base power and are both STAB from Heracross thats correct, however Toxicroak is 4x resistant to Bug attacks(Poison and Fighting both Resist Bug) but only 2x resistant to Fighting Attacks(Poison Resists Fighting, but Fighting vs Fighting is neutral). They would not do the same amount of damage

Edit: I have a feeling I know the response to the following but I am going to ask about it anyway... What does everyone think about using Me First with Toxicroak?
 
tenchi17 said:
It's only useless if you want to define useful as having 600 base stats. Toxicroak is a fine Pokemon with a nice trait, good stab, good attacking stats, and a good movepool. 106 base attak with stab on Cross Chop, Sucker Punch to counter its Psychic weakness, Stone Edge for flying types, and Swords Dance, a move other fighting types would kill for? Dry Skin seems like a really nice, underrated trait, especially if Sandstorm is as popular as it seems like it's going to be since that should prompt more people to take control of the weather themselves. Really, at least give [pokemon] a chance before writing it off as useless, just because it isn't Salamence 2 =[
Click to expand...

Same thing as I believe with Gastrodon. Arcanine has base 540 total. The legendary trios have base 580 total. Then you have freaks of nature that randomly have 600 total base stats. Nothing else that is non-legendary/freak of nature has the same total as Arcanine. So there is a gap of at least 40 total base stat points between legends/freaks and all other pokemon. Now consider giving a fully evolved Pokemon under 500 total base stats. That is a margin of 100 total stat difference. Either you have a dramatically specialized wall such as Blissey or Shuckle, or the Alakazam style sweeper that can compete against this base stat monsters. Then Gamefreak adds ubers. The point is, they cannot have such radically different total base stats and expect a 'balanced' metagame as they claim in Nintendo Power.

Toxicroak has something like 500~510 base stats. Gastrodon has 495. How can they compete with things with 600 and 580 base stats? Don't forget movepools and the fact that Gamefreak likes to repeat typings (which there is an underutilized potential amount of combinations). Now tell how do you expect stuff like this to compete with stuff like even the least used base 600 stat pokemon, Dragonite.
 
I already told how I expected it to compete. I think its trait will allow it to fit nicely on Rain teams, Swords Dance, good stab etc etc.
 
Blissey has a base total of 540, I believe. Alakazam has a base total of 490. While the base number of stats on a Pokemon is important, it's not the sole thing indicating a Pokemon's power. Lower stat Pokemon are perfectly capable of competiting with higher stat Pokemon if people would change the way they think.
 
Base stats aren't everything. You can't just discount typing, movepool, trait and actual distribution of base stats. Toxicroak can indeed compete with plenty of Pokemon that have higher base stats than him. Taking your example of Dragonite, Toxicroak can take him out with a Swords Dance Stone Edge or two (even one if Draggy has skimped on the HP EVs) CBed Stone Edges. Yes, I am aware of his inability to switch into Draggy safely.

That's not to say that Toxicroak is a good choice to use in OU, I honestly don't think he is. But should you choose to pit him against the stronger Pokemon for the sake of variety or for a challenge, he'll be far from useless.
 
Base stats matter less than the way they're distributed, Kingdra also has 540 total and nobody's saying he's as good as say Heracross, whose total is only 500. The key is a more extreme version of what natures do, take from unneeded stats to boost the stats you want. Heracross has a measly 40 spatk in this case.

If a hypothetical pokemon had stats of 60/110/75/5/85/115, you'd say it's as good as Starmie, but it only has 450 points total (less than Piloswine).

Not that's off my chest, I really need to see how well Swords Danced Sucker Punch from this guy does to Dugtrio, his bane. He resists Duggy's Sucker Punch, sooo...
 
It 2HKOs Dugtrio even before a Swords Dance, so after it's an easy OHKO. Also, with Adamant and max Attack and Life Orb it's got a shot at a OHKO too (89 - 100% to a 4 HP EVed Dugtrio).
 
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