ORAS UU: A Last Look (Currently on break for SUMO)

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Hey party people,
As my internet won't be working for the next few days, I'll start of the week a bit early and hopefully give you a few ideas on how to use gastro:

As far as I can tell, gastro is quite weak witout a few curse boosts and fails to wall many important mons, so it's almost a necessity to pair it with a backup check to certain threats. After using both the curse set, aswell as the clear smog set (and even giving the offensive one a shot lol), I came to the conlusion it works best when paired with another water type(stoise,cruel in particular). It's passitivity is really hindering for the most part and you really have to be careful so it doesn't end up as setup bait (especially vs substitute mons), though I've had several games where its useful typing came quite in handy. Water/ground still remains a really good type combination and paired with storm drain gastro certainly can put in work.

Still, I feel like the amount of support it requires to make use of these positive traits (such as a pursuit trapper/backup checks) is simply too much to justify its use. People always bring up celebi/grass types in general when it comes to explaining why gastro doesn't get more screentime, but the main reason lies in its awful stats, the inability to learn SR and other water/ground types simply outclassing it. I openly admit I had some trouble building with gastro, cause finding the balance between running mons that are redundant and ending up weak to certain threats, was kinda challenging.
I started off with a rather semistall inclined team that I wont bother explaining cause its shit,
IMG_20161110_020326.jpg

but shifted my focus towards a more balanced approach:

IMG_20161110_020345.jpg

The team revolves around aero+dreigon, with the rest of the team providing hazards and a defensive backbone to work with. Signal beam zong is the main celebi lure/mamo check and helps weakening steel types with psywave, while tenta backup checks fire types with grass coverage(such as nape). Gastros role on the team is to check most water types, while also keeping stuff like entei in bay (to some degree at least). No clear smog here cause the rest of the team can keep setup mons in check for the most part. Offensive Empoleon is a pain to deal with though.
Gastrodon @ Leftovers
Ability: Storm Drain
EVs: 252 HP / 148 Def / 108 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Earth Power
- Recover
- Toxic

Tentacruel @ Black Sludge
Ability: Liquid Ooze
EVs: 252 HP / 160 Def / 96 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Rapid Spin
- Toxic Spikes
- Haze

Aerodactyl-Mega @ Aerodactylite
Ability: Tough Claws
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stone Edge
- Aerial Ace
- Pursuit
- Earthquake

Hydreigon @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Dark Pulse
- U-turn
- Fire Blast/Super Power

Bronzong @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Signal Beam
- Gyro Ball
- Stealth Rock
- Psywave

Sylveon @ Leftovers
Ability: Pixilate
EVs: 252 HP / 224 Def / 32 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hyper Voice
- Wish
- Heal Bell
- Protect


For the laddering part:
Screenshot_2016-11-10-00-29-50.png

I hope I could get some of my points across, even though the formatting sucks (I'm on phone you feeling me sniperr ?). Also shououts to nv and Panther-T for helping me with the team. Looking forward to your ideas on using this mon, but for now
See you all later
 

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Gastrodon is the most crit-weak pokemon i've ever used LOL. Sometimes you'll be in front of physical attackers thinking you sweep with Curse but you'll be crited to death. It's also because of its disapointing bulk, i swear i've been losing it to scarfed Darmanitan because it got a crit with Flare Blitz... I can totally relate to what Miven^ said, i ended up pairing Gastrodon with another water type on all my teams. But tbh i think it's not that bad because water types can be very different and Gastrodon doesnt stack an electric weakness. It allows you to run a set on the other water type that can pressure/lure the grass types, like Gyarados, Empoleon with Ice Beam, Tentacruel with Sludge Wave, Suicune with Ice Beam/Signal Beam etc. However even with the opposing grass type gone it ain't that easy to sweep because of common dangerous threats like Choice Specs Sylveon, Bulk Up Conkeldurr, Taunt Hydreigon. I've been using the Curse Set with Toxic instead of Scald to beat Cresselia and Hydreigon and it's not that bad since most steel/poison don't switch into you anyway. I used the simple bulky water set too and yeah it's passive as fuck but Yawn is a cool move on it that helps mitigating this a lot especially when Yawn + Recover works kind of like Yawn + Protect. The offensive set is really bad imo i tried it and you can't switch into anything anymore, most people aren't dumb enough to let you get a boost and its offensive presence is really disapointing compared to other attacker in the tier.

That being said if you can support this pokemon with a way to deal with status, this can be done with Heal Bell support but personnaly i used Healing Wish Celebi and a Guts pokemon to help versus status. As well as a way to lure and destroy grass types and strong special attackers, you're going to do fine. Some pokemon that i found made good teammates : most bug types, Forretress, Heracross, Escavalier (both running Pursuit to trap Celebi, Mega-Sceptile, Roserade etc), other water types, Sylveon obviously. I started to ladder using the bulky water set in a team with Forretress but i don't remember it, then the offensive set but it's not worth remembering and then the Curse Set it was Gastrodon/Gyarados/Metagross/Celebi/Crobat/Heracross and i found the Curse set to be the best set. I had only 36 battles with Gastrodon though... I might continue if i feel like laddering but idk when this ends?



Something i found funny with Gastrodon : it's light enough so that it can tank Grass Knot from the likes of Infernape and Heliolisk and ko back with Earthquake.
 

esche

Frust kommt auf, denn der Bus kommt nicht
is a Tiering Contributor Alumnus
hey so i've been laddering a bit but probably wont make it anywhere near the top of the ladder due to time constraints. anyway, here are my thoughts:

gastrodon is in a really weird spot in uu. its flagship set, curse, has the advantage over cursepert being immune to scald at the cost of being more vulnerable to entei's sacred fire and wow from various mons. instant recovery is nice and all but i feel like gastrodon is unbelievable pressured by status, especially toxic, so that you are pretty much obliged to run cleric support alongside it unless you run rest which i dont see a reason to at all since curse gastrodon with rest is just an inferior version of cursepert. i didnt bother using offensive bc of its subpar attacking stats and decreased bulk. utility options include clear smog and yawn but im not convinced of their effectiveness yet, probably needs more testing. if gastro got rocks that would be interesting (rocks+reliable recovery is hard to come by in uu). overall, curse is definitely the set to go for imo. yandaud's suggestion to replace scald with toxic on the curse set is actually a really neat idea that lets it pressure mons that usually counter it. he mentioned cresselia and hydreigon but it also helps vs milotic and various grass types on the switch in (chesnaught, sceptile, rotom-c, whimsicott for example). obviously, celebi is a huge pain the butt for gastrodon that you need to be well prepared for. escavalier is definitely on of gastrodons best partners being able to take any hit from celebi and trap it with pursuit. protect on the last slot also helps to scout entei/waste some sacred fire pp. but oh well this isnt about escavalier, so back on topic. unfortunately, without a curse boost gastrodon doesnt actually stand well against common phyiscal threats that bulky waters are usually supposed to check (entei, darm, m-aero, m-pert, ...) so it will have to be paired with something that can take that burden off of it. another point that has to be considered is that, while neutral hazards dont do much harm to it thanks to reliable recovery, toxic spikes pose a major annoyance to gastrodon. i think buidling around gastro atm is highly restricted to a number of pokemon/team composition that support it sufficiently. since it doesnt fit too well on anything bar balance/semi-stall/full-stall (imo) the team composition should look sth like this:

gastro + sth able to deal with entei (pref. bulky water) + steel type able to deal with celebi + t-spikes absorber/reliable defogger + cleric + 1 filler (possible grass lure)

tldr; gastrodon needs a ton of support and is restriced to more bulkier builds (i encourage you to proof me wrong, i'd love to see some gastrodon offense) but nonetheless has potential in uu, especially its curse set that can be a great win condition.

teams i used on my short run:

* my master chef cycle 7 team which featured gastrodon:

* a signal beam cune balance team that i quickly put together:

click teams for imports
 
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