Pokemon Of The Week!

by - Sun May 31, 2009 3:25 pm

This week it's a: Drapion

item: Leftovers
ability: Battle Armor
nature: Impish
Moveset EVs
~ Taunt
~ Toxic Spikes
~ Crunch
~ Knock Off / Earthquake / Whirlwind
252 HP / 6 Atk / 252 Def

Drapion has pretty sturdy defenses and is immune to critical hits with Battle Armor, making it quite a decent wall in UU. Taunt stops opponents from phazing, statusing, or even recovering, which is always handy on a wall with Drapion’s Speed. Toxic Spikes is a neat move against the right teams, but there are many grounded Poison-types present in UU, so it's unlikely to be as effective in comparison to OU, where most of the Poison-types there are either part Flying or have Levitate. Crunch is used in the next slot over Night Slash due to its higher base power and the lack of Sniper on the set. You can switch to Poison Jab for your STAB move, but it has inferior coverage compared to Crunch. The only real benefit is the ability to poison Flying-types, as they are immune to Toxic Spikes.

The last slot is entirely up to preference. Ridding an opponent of their item with Knock Off is always useful, Earthquake provides type coverage (and wears down Poison-types trying to absorb Toxic Spikes). Whirlwind is useful for phazing, and works well with Stealth Rock support.

Pokemon Of The Week! Drapion