Id actually say that mixpert with stealth rock is a better set than CB but otherwise agreed. Gastrodon is really a great utility counter. it counters things such as thundurus, which is a very large threat in the ou metagame. A lot of people run hp grass on certain pokemon ONLY to hit gastrodon/quaggy. Which says a lot.
Gastrodon and quaggy have recover and with an ev spread of 212hp 252def 44spdef with a calm nature gastrodon reaches balanced defenses.
I am actually having alot of success with it. Giving gastrodon life orb gives him the perfect mix of attack and bulk. Using life orb on pokemon with recovery moves is very underrated. Sandstorm on gastrodon is good even if you have a sandstream user because you can't always get the sandstream user on the field since the only pokemon who know that ability are weak to politoeds water attacks. Gastrodon works much better in many cases. You guys should really try these strategies. They work better than you think.
Trick Starmie and Latios are used too but ya Rotom-W is definitely the most common. Who doesn't expect Trick Scarf these days from Room-W?
Honestly it's not worth the surprise. StormDrain is what makes Gastrodon such an amazing "glue"-pokemon in a team: immunity to electric and water and access to recovery. Taking the water immunity away cripples it.
don't even think about it!
But due to Team Preview, Gastrodon can discourage foes to use Water-type moves anyway.
Not to mention when Rotom tricks the whole charade is up. What have you gained, one free turn in exchange for a water immunity? Not worth it at all.
It might be trivial, but according to the Novemeber stats only 91.2% of rotoms that are specs/scarf have trick. And thats probably an over estimate because there are probably quite a few people with something else but they still have trick, either my accident or by choice.
I don't see HP grass very often outside of myself. Rotom-W's that carry HP Grass will severely lack coverage on things like Dragonite, which could then set up on it, especially if Rotom-W was a scarfed variant. Unless you have Specs HP Grass with modest, it won't KO against max SpDef Gastrodon. But yeah, I can see it being a problem.
I also use Counter and also think it's quite effective! It can be kinda annoying giving up a moveslot for it though, but with a physically- or mixed-defensive spread it's possible to take basically any unboosted non-Grass physical attack and deal heavy damage back. Plus, the next time Rotom-W is in you might be able to Recover the health back.
The reason why Gastrodon was able to climb all the way up to OU was because of Storm Drain, giving it the ability to counter rain effectively. Though very cool if pulled off, but Sticky Hold simply isn't worth giving up for the general ability to absorb water type attacks and get SAtk boosts from them.
