Announcement LC Suspect - Gold Digger

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Corporal Levi

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The next Pokemon we are suspecting in Little Cup is Trapinch. This Pokemon's decent bulk and power combined with Arena Trap allows it to put severe amounts of pressure on an opposing team because of its ability to reliably trap several key checks for threats such as Abra and Vullaby, potentially pushing them over edge. It is being suspected instead of Arena Trap as a whole because the other Arena Trap abuser, Diglett, generally isn't seen as problematic in the current metagame, as it isn't unusually strong and can't reliably come in on and remove threats the way Trapinch can.

The voting requirements are a minimum GXE of 83 with at least 40 games played. In addition, you may play 1 less game for every 0.2 gxe you have above 83 gxe, down to a minimum of 30 games at a GXE of 85. (This is in response to several high GXE ladderers simply forfeiting their last few games to reach the 40 game minimum in the last suspect.) As always, needing more than 40 games to reach 83 GXE is fine.

GXEminimum games
8340
83.239
83.438
83.637
83.836
8435
84.234
84.433
84.632
84.831
8530

For this suspect test, we will be using the regular LC ladder, so you must create a new account that begins with LCTS to qualify. The suspect will end on April 1st, 11:59 EST.

This can be seen as a follow-up to the Abra suspect, where the general sentiment was that Trapinch was what caused Abra to be arguably broken; furthermore, no noticeable metagame shifts bar a relatively unimpactful Torchic drop have occurred since then. We are putting the suspect up so soon afterward for these reasons to ensure a balanced metagame in preparation for the upcoming LCPL tournament.

When posting in this thread, please keep in mind these rules:
1. No one liners or uninformed posts
2. No discussion on other potential suspects or the suspect process
3. Be respectful

Your post will be deleted and possibly infracted if you fail to follow them.
 
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Luthier

Don’t get mad, get even.
is a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Two-Time Past SCL Champion
Yo I got a bit of time so I wanted to drop my two cents on this issue of trapinch. Instead of doing the usual "it's broken cuz of a)" or "its not that busted cuz of blah blah", I wanted to try to approach this from a more impartial perspective and try to understand what exactly this mon does in this meta that makes it so defining. Starting off, I just decided to look at a bunch of replays for LCWC and and some stuff I could find from exhibition.

Why Trapinch is Good:
Probably one of my earliest memories of using trapinch came from my LC open run. I used a bunch of teams by Shrug and dcae and I wanted to share a couple of replays of what exactly trapinch did in that case and how it influenced the game in general.
1) https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-395432 me vs fitzy LC open (quarterfinals?) So idk why but i never really uploaded my slam run videos even though I spent a really long time commentating on them and showing my thought process. Anyways ill just go over what I was thinking in the game and show why trapinch can be so good especially when used in conjunction with the correct mons. The team I brought was scarf mag scarf abra and trapinch with the usual ferro spritz core. My game plan was pretty straightforward with backups for a failed a) plan:
Plan A: get rid of dark types and win through psychic spam with my modest abra. Although you have to be careful around meowth, keeping ferro in check and healthy will allow u to freely pivot around.
Plan B: Assuming I cannot freely get rid of Vullaby, use trapinch to get rid of pawn and then lure in magnemite with ferro, force it to use hp fire and then get rid of mag as well by using trapinch. This way, I can freely spam flash cannon with magnemite and win.
As you can see, on turn 4, I am able to get rid of pawniard, leaving my gameplan A and B completely available. Now, you might be wondering what makes trapinch special? Why are we suspecting Trapinch instead of diglett? Its simply because of this calc:
156 Atk Pawniard Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 156 HP / 236 Def Eviolite Trapinch: 9-12 (39.1 - 52.1%) -- 0.4% chance to 2HKO
Possible damage amounts: (9, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 12)
156 Atk Pawniard Iron Head vs. 156 HP / 236 Def Trapinch: 10-13 (43.4 - 56.5%) -- 59.4% chance to 2HKO
Possible damage amounts: (10, 10, 10, 10, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 13)

This allows trapinch to switch into pawn without rocks being up and live pawn knock off into iron head assuming no 1/16 rolls.
Right after turn 7, I successfully am able to lure in magnemite and then am able to live the hp fire and proceed to get rid of the magnemite which completely opens up the free win from there. I don't think I played this game that amazingly, but with trapinch, that doesn't have to matter because it limits opponent gameplans. From fitzy's side, he was probably thinking about getting rid of ferroseed and then proceeding to kill everything else with meowth and scarf magnemite. However, with trapinch, you have to disregard your game plan and think about how the pillars of your team can stand up with the support slowly crumbling down (Pawniard and Magnemite in this case).

2) https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7lc-426851 me vs shrug exhibition. Here is yet another example of how trapinch can support your team. However, this case was one that is rather unexpected. (s/o to Shrug for creating this set)
Trapinch @ Groundium Z
Ability: Arena Trap
Level: 5
EVs: 76 HP / 196 Atk / 196 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Feint
- Giga Drain/Superpower
- Protect


So my team is a fairly simple team from the opponent's side. scarf snivy, sashbra, shrugaby, defensive spritz, and then trapinch (which i reveal later to be Z). With the team I used, opponents are easy to assume the possible sets that you have. Although shrug actually did know my trapinch set since he was the creator of it, its fair to assume that most people would have no idea that I would be z trapinch. The game plan was p simple: get rid of pawn, knock off vull and get rocks up so i can 2hko it, and then somehow manage to get rid of foongus so scarf snivy can sweep. While the first two might be easy, the third isnt easy at all - which is what the opponent thinks. However, thats why I had trapinch in the first place.
196+ Atk Trapinch Tectonic Rage (180 BP) vs. 124 HP / 160+ Def Eviolite Foongus: 18-22 (72 - 88%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Possible damage amounts: (18, 18, 19, 19, 19, 19, 19, 19, 19, 21, 21, 21, 21, 21, 21, 22)
196+ Atk Trapinch Tectonic Rage (180 BP) vs. 124 HP / 160+ Def Foongus: 27-33 (108 - 132%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Possible damage amounts: (27, 27, 28, 28, 28, 28, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 31, 31, 31, 31, 33)

what Im trying to say here is that trapinch has the firepower along the bulk when needed. the ability to just switch between the two makes the mon super good when people who know how to use it properly use it. Im not gonna bother explaining my moves in the game because I think if you knew my team everything is quite simple to understand. The feint on trapinch even made it possible to break the sash on abra (if shrug was running that).

3) Refined metagame: the famous PonyPinch.
Yea idk how i didnt find any good replays of pinch putting in good work while being on a ponypinch team, but I just wanted to explain the concept of the team - use pinch to get rid of all of pony's answers and just win. Going through the list for pony answers - the best ones are always going to be onix and tirtouga. In most cases, trapinch beats both of those mons and then allows pony to go on a rampage. Furthermore, Pinch traps diglett and beats it 1v1 so you dont have to worry about pony getting trapped the other way. However, this seemed simplicity is what makes trapinch so vulnerable sometimes, which leads me into my next points

Why Trapinch can be Bad:
1) After long discussions with shrug about trapping in general and learning how to teambuild and just dealing with teams weak to trapinch, he came to the realization of how easy it is to take advantage of trapinch sometimes.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7lc-829441542 - kinda forgot where this was from lol. i think it was LCWC Corporal Levi vs vooper. The importance of this battle is basically how to lure in trapinch, take advantage of the fact that it's in front of you and then win the game from there. This all really occurs on turn 23-24. By forcing the trapinch to come in, you are giving yourself a free opportunity for snivy to set up since it wouldn't have been able to do so safely on the other two mons on viper's side (pawn and mareanie). As a result, snivy is able to clean up the rest of the game rather cleanly. Its pretty fair to say that snivy isnt the only mon that can do this: Corphish is able to set up, leading it to being able to knock out pillars of defense such as mienfoo or foongus (with a z move). Ferro can come and get up rocks rather safely since superpower is almost never run on trapinch. Staryu can come in and fire off moves depending on whats on the side of the trapinch. Vulpix can come in and set up screens. Basically what im trying to get at is that trapinch cant freely claim kills - everything comes at a price, and if you teambuild properly, you can make the price that trapinch has to pay much higher than what you pay to let trapinch claim one.

2) the repeated use of trapinch as a standard answer to certain mons can make it vulnerable to unexpected techs on teams.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7lc-845379402 - Jox vs Fille LCWC. the mu seemed to favor jox slightly simply because onix could be taken out of the picture once trapinch comes in and removes the only flying resist for fille. however we see on turn 2-3 how that changes.
236+ Atk Onix Earthquake vs. 156 HP / 236 Def Eviolite Trapinch: 7-10 (30.4 - 43.4%) -- 100% chance to 3HKO
Possible damage amounts: (7, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 10)
236+ Atk Onix Tectonic Rage (180 BP) vs. 156 HP / 236 Def Eviolite Trapinch: 15-18 (65.2 - 78.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Possible damage amounts: (15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 18)

Trapinch has 23 HP so kills all the time assuming no 1/16 roll on the first eq or if rocks are up

With trapinch gone after the z move on onix, fille only has to play to not lose to win the rest of the game - without trapinch, abra doesnt become a problem anymore since grimer + diglett should be able to deal with abra and staryu. onix is able to deal with vullaby and timburr is able to deal with magnemite while mareanie is able to deal with shellder.

This point is very similar to the first point I made - the ability to punish trapinch becomes a very huge turning point in any game in which trapinch is used. The fact that people rely on trapinch so much means that once that reliance is gone, your team becomes incredibly vulnerable to things that you dont account for. In this replay, grimer becomes a large issue for jox to break since he now longer has trapinch to do that for him. Although the game result ended differently, jox had to revamp his entire game plan as a result of losing that trapinch.

Conclusion:
Although I dont know how I feel about trapinch specifically, I do think that the trapping mechanism is quite a pain in the butt to deal with. Especially when teambuilding, it is incredibly hard to make teams that dont just autolose to diglett because of people who pivot into it on a switch to something like mareanie or grimer. However, that being said, just because of how (unfairly) amazing trapinch has been for me for the past couple of months, I do think that trapinch deserves to be banned.
 
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