Closed Bastiodon - am I missing something?

[KillJoyNoel]

Hi everyone,

As someone quite new to competitive battling, I've got an absence of defensively orientated pokemon (because you don't need them for the story).

I came up against a Bastiodon in battle maison and it took a lot of punishment, so I checked it out and it looks pretty awesome in terms of stats and movepool.

On the tiering system it's down as "PU", what does this stand for? I can gather it's not regarded as particularly good given it's company in that tier.

Obviously the 4 x weakness to fighting and ground due to rock/steel typing is an issue, but I imagine that could be worked around.

It has base stats of 60/52/168/47/138/30.

A movepool including the following:
Protect, ancient power, iron head, toxic, block, protect, double team, sandstorm, rest, sleep talk, fissure, stealth rock, snore, magic coat, avalanche and loads of coverage options.

I was thinking something out of the following: Toxic/Protect/Block/Double Team/Avalanche/Stealth Rock

 

[SoIidSmok3]

Gliscor with poison heal and toxic orb. Toxic, protect, knock off, earthquake, ice fang, substitute, stealth rocks. Better wall then bastiodon, much better.

 

[Matt_192]

Hi everyone,

As someone quite new to competitive battling, I've got an absence of defensively orientated pokemon (because you don't need them for the story).

I came up against a Bastiodon in battle maison and it took a lot of punishment, so I checked it out and it looks pretty awesome in terms of stats and movepool.

On the tiering system it's down as "PU", what does this stand for? I can gather it's not regarded as particularly good given it's company in that tier.

Obviously the 4 x weakness to fighting and ground due to rock/steel typing is an issue, but I imagine that could be worked around.

It has base stats of 60/52/168/47/138/30.

A movepool including the following:
Protect, ancient power, iron head, toxic, block, protect, double team, sandstorm, rest, sleep talk, fissure, stealth rock, snore, magic coat, avalanche and loads of coverage options.

I was thinking something out of the following: Toxic/Protect/Block/Double Team/Avalanche/Stealth Rock

"PU" is a 'pu'n on the words 'pee-eugh' - at least, that's what I tell people lol. Technically, PU is an acronym of nothing.

Whilst, yes, Bastiodon has amazing defences, it is neutered by several different factors:

• An awful movepool - a lot of what you said doesn't really work on it. Sandstorm doesn't really help your team (it's for your own support really), Double Team is banned by Evasion Clause, Fissure is banned by the OHKO clause, Snore is an awful move in general as it relies on the opponent putting you to sleep, effectively wasting that move slot, etc. The attack moves I will get to in a second. This statement kinda contradicts itself later on (bullet point 3) but I have reasons for that as you will see.
• Horribly low speed - whilst this is alright on a wall, this means that it is outpaced by many of the ground/fighting type threats in the higher tiers, and even by some mons in PU itself (if you are going to use Bastiodon, use it in PU. It's really good there :] )
• Extremely low attacking stats - sure, it gets access to a few nice attacking moves like Earth Power, Fire Blast, Ice Beam, Iron Head, etc; but it really doesn't have the capability to do much with them. Base 52 and 47 are extremely low, and you'll be doing next to nothing with them. This next calc is a x4 hit: 0 SpA Bastiodon Flamethrower vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Eviolite Ferroseed: 112-132 (38.3 - 45.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO. Yeah....
• 60 base HP - for a wall, at least, in the higher tiers, this is relatively underwhelming. It suffers from the same case as Dusclops in my opinion - sure, it has amazing defences (both base 130, with access to Eviolite) but its HP is so low that it either a) can't tank enough hits or b) takes too large a percentage from attacks.

As for a set, you could try something like: Stealth Rock/Toxic/Roar/Magic Coat. Bastiodon is a very supportive wall, so you need a moveset to back that up, rather than opting in for its nice attacking movepool.

In summary, here are some more thoughts:

• In OU, it gets destroyed by the amount of Landorus-T, Conkeldurr, Mega Lopunny, etc - Pokemon that define the metagame
• UU contains many many strong, bulky water types that can easily take Bastiodon apart, not to mention one of the most common mons there having access to Earth Power (Hydreigon).
• Bastiodon seems pretty underwhelming in RU when you compare it to the other walls that you could be using like Cresselia (good HP and good Speed, backed up with decent special attack to get hits off).
• NU contains a lot of ground and fighting types which take apart Bastiodon - Hariyama, Claydol, Gurdurr, (Feraligatr, though it will be moving up, not to mention it being a water type), Primeape, Sawk, Virizion, etc
• Which sadly leaves it in PU, although it does do extremely well there.

 

[KillJoyNoel]

Gliscor with poison heal and toxic orb. Toxic, protect, knock off, earthquake, ice fang, substitute, stealth rocks. Better wall then bastiodon, much better.

It doesn't look as cool though, and for some reason, I've never liked flying types even if they're dual.

I'm willing to compromise a little on quality if it's something that I like more

 

[KillJoyNoel]

"PU" is a 'pu'n on the words 'pee-eugh' - at least, that's what I tell people lol. Technically, PU is an acronym of nothing.

Whilst, yes, Bastiodon has amazing defences, it is neutered by several different factors:

• An awful movepool - a lot of what you said doesn't really work on it. Sandstorm doesn't really help your team (it's for your own support really), Double Team is banned by Evasion Clause, Fissure is banned by the OHKO clause, Snore is an awful move in general as it relies on the opponent putting you to sleep, effectively wasting that move slot, etc. The attack moves I will get to in a second. This statement kinda contradicts itself later on (bullet point 3) but I have reasons for that as you will see.
• Horribly low speed - whilst this is alright on a wall, this means that it is outpaced by many of the ground/fighting type threats in the higher tiers, and even by some mons in PU itself (if you are going to use Bastiodon, use it in PU. It's really good there :] )
• Extremely low attacking stats - sure, it gets access to a few nice attacking moves like Earth Power, Fire Blast, Ice Beam, Iron Head, etc; but it really doesn't have the capability to do much with them. Base 52 and 47 are extremely low, and you'll be doing next to nothing with them. This next calc is a x4 hit: 0 SpA Bastiodon Flamethrower vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Eviolite Ferroseed: 112-132 (38.3 - 45.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO. Yeah....
• 60 base HP - for a wall, at least, in the higher tiers, this is relatively underwhelming. It suffers from the same case as Dusclops in my opinion - sure, it has amazing defences (both base 130, with access to Eviolite) but its HP is so low that it either a) can't tank enough hits or b) takes too large a percentage from attacks.

As for a set, you could try something like: Stealth Rock/Toxic/Roar/Magic Coat. Bastiodon is a very supportive wall, so you need a moveset to back that up, rather than opting in for its nice attacking movepool.

In summary, here are some more thoughts:

• In OU, it gets destroyed by the amount of Landorus-T, Conkeldurr, Mega Lopunny, etc - Pokemon that define the metagame
• UU contains many many strong, bulky water types that can easily take Bastiodon apart, not to mention one of the most common mons there having access to Earth Power (Hydreigon).
• Bastiodon seems pretty underwhelming in RU when you compare it to the other walls that you could be using like Cresselia (good HP and good Speed, backed up with decent special attack to get hits off).
• NU contains a lot of ground and fighting types which take apart Bastiodon - Hariyama, Claydol, Gurdurr, (Feraligatr, though it will be moving up, not to mention it being a water type), Primeape, Sawk, Virizion, etc
• Which sadly leaves it in PU, although it does do extremely well there.

So in short, there are just too many things wrong with it

A certain amount of it due to clauses (which I was otherwise unaware of). I wasn't too bothered about the low attacking stats, but yes you're right in saying it's low HP and low speed combined with abundance of fighting/ground type pokemon and moves makes it a non-starter.

So my search continues!

Thanks for the responses guys.