GC Sand Team Talk: Gyarados Replacement

What is Gyarados purpose in the team?

As a disruption Mon are you only running it because it's typing?

Pretty much, Gyarados plugs all the right holes- another fighting resist, a ground immunity, specially defensive, water type damage, intimidater, but it really isn't coming to games that much.

Looking at a type chart, Araquanid may be worth using; i'm keeping the same amount of rock weaknesses, gaining an ice resist, losing a bit of electric weakness and only slightly losing on ground checks.

Plus it hits like a truck

That's true, water bubble is a hell of a drug

liquidation/leech life/scary face/protect?

Scary face is interesting.

Yeah, speed control, but I know wide guard is really useful too

four moveslots my beloathed

Yeah but it's only lowering it for a single Mon

Which is the issue I have with it. It would be good to like, slow down a basc or chomp

But all over speed control it lacks too much

also true, i was mostly thinking in terms of replacing thunder wave

so wide guard instead?

Mirror coat and soak are both interesting

Punish special attackers and remove stab from attacks

You won't have the single Mon speed control, but those two would give you options to punish mons for letting it stay

Would be really fun to remove yards heat wave stab in sun by making him water type or doubling his dmg back into him haha

Same for any special spread attacker really

yeah lol, the only issue is soak doesn't have priority so i'd be taking at least one blast- i can't do same turn soak-thunderbolt either

mirror coat might be worth a shot, should i ev for hp or spdef in that case

I mean you're trying to replace gyarados

Which you have built for bulk and disruption over damage

I mean to maximise mirror coat damage, i don't know how that calc works

It just doubles their special attack dmg they dealt back into them

Not yours

yeah ik that it uses their spatk, i'm asking should i invest in my hp or spdef?

I would invest in both

You're building for tr so you don't really need speed

• spe +spdef nature

Go mostly bulk

Just like you did with gyarados

i'm not building for tr tho? not exactly planning on counteracting base 42 but still

or are you saying i should build for opposing trick roomers?

I mixed up thread titles mb

ah np lol

He gets icy wind btw

oh yeah

Sorry I've been thinking about him in tr this whole time lmao

honestly building for trick room is not a bad idea- i just played a bo3 against trick room and won 2-1, but minimising my speed further probably hits some vital tiers

that's fine haha, it is a very trickroomable mon

Well if he runs mirror coat he will be going last anyways

true

Gives him more opportunities to soak special damage

araquanid itself is def the shout anyways, not to base a whole judgement off one match but it feels amazing and does great se damage even with an intimidate, barely takes anything from side earthquake too

I would build him to survive heat wave and dazzling gleam

Run icy wind, mirror coat, protect leech life/liquidation

And that would be literally his entire purpose

Special damage sponge/speed control

Tho tbh dazzling gleam is the biggest spread threat

Blizzard isn't gonna ohko

His ability alr puts in natty fire counter

Eq doesn't ohko

good lord that i don't believe in, uninvested it lives a max spatk modest mega floette dazzling gleam in fairy aura

Yes I'm just talking of all the spreads

That one would hurt the most

So I would build him for max dmg single target special so that doesn't nuke him then spread out the rest

yeah i don't think i can get that to a 3hko without taking too much out of attack evs, but i shouldn't have to

You shouldn't

But that would fix the bulk issue

And let those stat spreads out a bit more

i really like the stupid amounts of water damage, so i'm gonna start with 32/32/2 in hp/attack/def and go from there

there's a tournament in a couple hours i can try a couple rounds in

Sounds good lmk how it works

will do, thanks for the help!

ok so I had to unregister from the tournament last night because i managed to forget to acquire the araquanid in-game, but i played a few more games on ladder and bo3d with a friend and it feels really comfortable- i did change mirror coat for wide guard, i'm mostly just clicking liquidation and protect anyways but there have been times where it's useful opposed to never having a good shot at mirror coating something, then I registered for the gc and won 4/5 first games!

I actually just turned my phone on to come here and say I fought an araquanid wide guard Scizor combo that just completely walked me haha

lol, it's a sign