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Pokemon Set: Stakataka

  • December 1, 2017

    Man, what a name. Anyway, Stakataka is a new Ultra Beast that's been revealed in Pokemon Ultra Sun and Moon, it's a Steel/Rock type (urgh) which is usually just about the worst dual-typing in the game, but Stakataka actually manages to make it work really, really well. What it does is say "hey, fuck it" and doubles down on everything that sums up a Steel or Rock type (high Defenses, low Speed, High Physical Attack) and turns it into a complete beast in very specific purposes. It is, technically speaking one of the slowest Pokemon in the game, with a Speed stat of base 13, but it makes up for it with over 200 base defense and a high attack.

    Basic Info and Counters

    Stakataka does one thing, and one thing only. It Gyro Balls...that's it, that's all it does. Anyway, I'll save that mostly for later. It's got some very basic counters, considering that it's 4x weak to Ground and Fighting (two very common types of attacks), and is insanely slow, Stakataka can be countered by anything that has a Special Attack that's either Ground or Fighting type. Well, okay that's a bit of a stretch but any of the competitive OU Pokemon with a stab-ground or stab-fighting attack that's Special is going to destroy Stakataka. Most physical attackers probably will as well. Yeah, counters to it are the following.

    Garchomp (AtK oriented)

    Heatran (either Physical or Special)

    Keldeo (With any move it usually runs..Scald, Hydro Pump, Secret Sword)

    Non-Mega Diancie can OHKO it (though will also be OHKO'd)

    You get the picture...some of these aren't even hyper-offensive Pokemon and will still OHKO Stakataka. It isn't really great at taking hits because of it'ss typing. If it's Pure Steel, then it's fine. If it's Pure Rock then it's really fine, but the combination makes his bulk less useful. It's still useful, but anything that can hit Specially for Super-Effective damage will probably take it out, and a lot of Physical Attackers won't have an issue.

    Heatran and Keldeo are probably the best counters there, Keldeo is better because Stakataka can't really hit it super-effectively (but it does pack EQ most of the time for Heatran). 

    Basic Stats:

    61 HP

    131 Attack

    211 Defense

    53 Special Attack

    101 Special Defense

    13 Speed

    First Set...Only Set

     

    Stakataka @ Weakness Policy/Chople Berry/Shuca Berry
    Ability: Beast Boost
    EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
    Brave Nature
    IVs: 0 Spe
    - Gyro Ball
    - Trick Room
    - Stone Edge
    - Earthquake

    Right, so this entire set is built off of destroying everything with GYRO BALL. Usually a super gimmicky move, it's actually insanely powerful with Stakataka because of his insanely low speed and the possibility for the 2x Attack from Weakness Policy. You could also focus more on AtK and remove some IV's from Defense so that you get a Beast Boost bonus to ATK but I prefer to focus on defense boosts there because it does mean that later on he can kind of cheese things as long as your opponent doesn't have a slower (heh) special attacker. 

    Now, there's actually some really interesting synergy that I'd like to test out one day by looking at Doubles and using a Pokemon with a physical water move and using Recycle instead of Earthquake to absolutely cheese Stakataka more by using Recycle on the Weakness Policy (to keep getting attack boosts without taking the 4x damage, or a powerful hit) but this set works perfectly in a Trick Room team as long as you've got some Flying support.

    Honestly, I can't think of many other sets that are even viable, let alone good. I suppose Air Balloon might work, and if you combine that with Trick-or-Treat (adds Ghost to your type giving you three types), you might be able to get rid of those pesky 4x weaknesses for a bit which could be interesting enough. Only works in doubles sadly, but with that, your only really weak to Ghost, Dark and Water...still better than Ground and Fighting and again that could be interesting with Recycle. Umm, Assault Vest could work if you've got other Pokemon to set up Trick Room, actually might be slightly better than Trick Room especially if you can take a singe special attack from anything. Maybe you could run a Choice Band set since you only need one move and CB Gyro Ball could be insane. 

    Stakataka is really situational I suppose but he's probably one of my new favourites on a TR team (please note...I don't use them often so there could be better options...I doubt it). I'll talk about Kommo-o sometime tommorow because he is insanely more interesting as of USUM and his new Z-Move.

     

  • December 4, 2017

    Man, Kommo-o was supposed to be out days ago now, but I've got insanely swept out in trying a few new things. Mostly it's just trying a few moves and testing out non Z-Move versions and saying 'Eh, that sucks' and moving on. At the moment I'm going through his counters (and there are a lot of them) and trying to figure out which ones are the most deadly. Shame he's got so many, with a few really good ones that kind of counter it completely. Mega-Mawile is a good counter, Mega-Altaria, Alakazam, Talonflame, probably Salamancer, maybe Dragonite, definitely Ferrothorn, Clefable possibly...basically anything that is immune to CSB is going to destroy Kommo-o.

    Might create a quick showing of my current team tomorrow instead. Definitely down to challenge anyone on Showdown as Dragonborn1721 (as either OU or just have fun with anything goes and use teams that are a bit more fun even if it means they aren't 100% competitive.) playing my team of favorites at the moment in OU and doing moderately well.