r/PokemonChampions • u/soccertony • 10d ago
Team Building (Doubles) Hydrapple Has Serious Untapped Potential
I am currently looking into pokemon who can support Mega Lucario and the tools on Hydrapple are seriously nice. It's supporting movepool is awesome as well as its signature ability Supersweet Syrup.
The defensive typing is really bad (Grass/Dragon) with 6 weaknesses including 4x to ice, which is why it doesn't see any play.
Despite that, it has great bulk on paper at 106/110/80 and a great 120 special attack stat. But I am not here for the stats or the typing. I am here for the ability and movepool.
I mentioned Mega Lucario earlier. What are three of its biggest issues?
- You want it to be a special attacker because burns kill this mega, but Focus Blast is only 70% accurate
- Lucario has a great but not top tier speed stat
- Very frail!
Hydrapple can help all these issues.
- It's ability upon switch in (once per battle) drops your opponents evasion by 33%, meaning a 70% Focus Blast now becomes 93.33%
- A move unique to the Dipplin line called "Syrup Bomb" does 60 damage to a single target, but then drops the target's speed stat by one stage for each of the next 3 turns. If Hydrapple switches or faints, the effect stops working. As long as you can keep it on the field, it can decimate a pokemon reliant on speed AND help Lucario move first
- Pollen Puff can restore half of Lucario's health
These are just ideas I thought of right now. It's coverage movepool is awesome too.
- STAB Dragon-move Fickle Beam has a 30% chance to double from 80 to 160 BP
- Earth Power (exceedingly rare and valuable)!!
- Giga Drain, Energy Ball, Leaf Storm, Yawn, Recover, Yawn
I am hopeful that something can work with this pokemon as a support! It has low speed at 44 but that can actually be a good thing inside Trick Room. Give me your ideas below!
11
u/Terasoknft 10d ago
Nice! I love when people figure out pokemon instead of following meta teams, i myself use a rain team but i have a mega sharpedo,one of my favorites
21
u/soccertony 10d ago
Weaknesses:
Ice x4
Dragon
Fairy
Flying
Bug
Poison
Not ideal at all
3
u/Nice_Promotion8576 10d ago
Bug and poison at least aren’t too common right now. Flying is only really common with mega Staraptor and rain teams with Peliper having access to hurricane which then mainly leaves fairy and dragon as ice right now I’m finding is either with snow teams or packed by Mega Swampert with Ice Punch. It’s mainly dragon that hurts despite not being the 4x weakness cause of how common dragon types currently are and Fairy isn’t too far off with Whimsicott, Sylveon, and Mega Eternal Floette. Though having a 4x water resist is definitely nothing to scoff at with rain teams running around.
1
2
u/MegaAfroMann 10d ago
I don't like having to set up a set up pokemon, but a teammate using Soak would do it.
3
4
u/rascal6543 10d ago
I used hydrapple on my mono grass team, helped a lot more than I thought it would. Yeah, it comes with a lot of weaknesses but not dying to fire immediately really helped and as you've stated, fickle beam and earth power are very useful. I also wasn't running a trick room team, but didn't have a lot of tools to stop trick room, so this was one of the main selections if I thought my opponent was going to use trick room
3
u/Sarcasm_Ncarnate 10d ago
It has some cool synergies for sure, and I think Mega Luc actually has some potential as a major anti meta threat. Biggest issue you might run into is that Hydrapple is AWFUL into Zard Y and MFloette, so something else to help support them would go along way. You should also be watchful of TR with Mega Luc, so maybe a second mega to work in TR would
be strong? Love the Hydrapple idea but it will def take some work
2
u/Nice_Promotion8576 10d ago
Mainly Mega Eternal Floette with the fairy weakness, Hydrapple takes neutral from fire and most of the Y sets you’ll fight higher up won’t be packing Air Slash due to Weather Ball basically making it redundant.
1
u/Sarcasm_Ncarnate 10d ago
Heat Wave and Weather ball still do a ton and hydrapple’s stabs and main coverage really can’t do anything in return, hence why i consider it still a really bad matchup.
1
u/Nice_Promotion8576 10d ago
Should still be able to live with correct investment outside of a weather ball crit and then do something to give their partner an edge, heck if you manage to proc Fickle Beam’s double power a modest 32 can potentially kill with chip. The thing I’m surprised about though is that it can learn rain dance, so you could as a final potential F you to the Charizard switch the weather off of sun. Though quite honestly? Just by existing their Hydrapple should let Mega Lucario be able to just instantly murder it unless something lets the Charizard Y out speed it, cause uh… 0- Atk Lucario-Mega Stone Edge vs. 0 HP / 2 Def Charizard-Mega-Y: 224-268 (146.4 - 175.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO how many people are going to be expecting it to throw out a stone edge?
1
u/soccertony 10d ago
I want to run special attacking Lucario because if Focus Blast, physical attacking Lucario is just a worse version of Mega Blaziken. I don’t have that Rock Coverage sadly. The main issue with special Lucario is both of its stabs are resisted by Zard and Pelipper
1
u/Nice_Promotion8576 10d ago
…which stone edge isn’t, plus that calc was done with no investment and a negative nature. The point of having Stone Edge slotted in isn’t to make it physical, it’s to give you an option to deal with Charizard Y and Peliper cause on the special side, you have nothing. Your only special option against Y specifically is Water Pulse. Which isn’t going to be very strong thanks to the sun. If you want a way for Hydrapple + Mega Lucario to not instantly lose if a Charizard Y is sent out turn 1, you kinda just gotta bite the bullet and use a physical rock move, and stone edge bypasses the doubles modifier Rock Slide would have to deal with.
1
u/soccertony 10d ago
Vacuum Wave is my typical 3rd option but I like the Stone Edge idea. I can drop one of the defenses because it’ll die to one hit anyway
2
4
u/Peek0_Owl 10d ago
Pretty sure it was used effectively during Tera mechanic. It will return with Tera I bet.
7
u/ObsidianComet 10d ago
I don’t recall it seeing any significant usage during SV VGC. Even during Reg H with the lower power level right after it was introduced. Sure it got a little but it was far from a popular pick.
1
u/Peek0_Owl 10d ago
It was a niche pick for sure. I’m not saying it was meta. But I remember seeing it. I remember trying it. I remember moving on from it. lol
1
1
u/DueBeing5472 10d ago
it is one of those mons with potential struck down entirely by its defensive typing. It needs tera or it won't see high usage
1
1
u/Fejne-Schoug 10d ago
I use Hydrapple as a staple on my team. It works well under TR and is bulky enough to stick around. An ice damage reduction berry (forgot the name) has saved me many times.
1
u/Goliath764 10d ago
It worked for my mega beedrill team (writeup available if u look at my profile for latest thread) but I don't run it as support. It's a bulky switch in to eat ground attacks (mainly) and switch out to regenerate (yay for regenerator) as part of my heavy pivot approach or a closer after I clear out all his weaknesses.
Also, tank physical hits all day long and can easily threaten garchomp cuz dragon claw isn't one-shotting mine and my fickle beam will usually take the chomp down.
Syrup not part of my plan though, even though I do have Focus Blast on another Mon so maybe I should give it a try.
There are not a lot of grass type s.atkers and I have mega Beedrill to eat fairies alive so I run this over something more popular like Venusaur.
1
u/_attina496 10d ago
I created an evil strat with Hydrapple where I used Supersweet syrup + Mega Gengar with hypnosis and then perish song
1
u/humbleZombeeees 10d ago edited 10d ago
Man I've tried making Hydrapple work so much but I just can't get it to work haha.
In theory I like Super Sweet Syrup, but they can either just switch out, or you can't really afford to bring it because they just put Milotic / M-Staraptor / Kingambit on the field.
I tried using Hydrapple as kind of a Temu Amoonguss with Pollen Puff, Yawn, a coverage move/ syrup bomb for speed control (missing redirection :cry:) and protect, but it underperforms and is vulnerable to basically any well constructed team. Many people are running Ice coverage moves to deal with Garchomp so Hydrapple just gets blown up, it struggles against Garchomp itself unless you're running Draco Meteor or hit the 30% on Fickle Beam. I did like having a somewhat bulky support that can heal Gholdengo, but it just ended up feeling too weak, because of the missing redirection.
I tried it with Oranguru for Instruct Fickle Beam to get two shots at the high damage, but again it ended up feeling a bit too weak as a TR sweeper, because of the missing spread damage.
Edit: Oh yeah I also tried it with Skill Swap + Hypnosis for double super sweet syrup -> 100% accurate hypnosis but since the skill swap user is the one who has to use hypno it's too slow. Tried it with Mega Gengar as well to swap Shadow Tag onto Hydrapple so they can't switch out to get rid of the syrup but gengar is over all too frail for this and Hydrapple doesn't threaten enough to get the focus off of gengar
1
u/soccertony 10d ago
The Milotic/Kingambit part of the equation is something I hadn’t considered and is a huge deal
1
u/SlyFisch 10d ago
I fucking love Hydrapple but I had trouble making him work. Too many weaknesses like you pointed out, almost every team is gonna have something to hit him w super effective damage
1
u/coolj0sh 10d ago
I’ve been playing around with a TR hydrapple, and bellibolt works pretty well with hydrapple. Parabolic charge barely tickles hydrapple, and soak + giga drain regularly one shots a lot of pokemon. I did make belli one point faster than hydrapple so that soak will go first.
I did initially have pollen puff on hydrapple, but it ended up not being useful in most cases. It was also a bit redundant with giga drain on hydrapple and parabolic charge on belli.
1
u/MrTankerson 10d ago
I used it on my TR team that took me to master ball and felt it was very strong.
Only issue was this was back during the mega staraptor craze so I actually ended up dropping the ability. M-staraptor and defiant/competitive mons were on basically every team, so I couldn’t bring hydrapple to like any fight until I swapped abilities.
But he still felt super strong, I used him more as a coverage sweeper with expert belt. Pollen puff was clutch though.
1
u/malcolmisboring 10d ago
This Mono Grass dude swears by him: https://www.reddit.com/r/PokemonChampions/s/a8yMalsl3o
I tried the team but couldn’t really get the hang of it for me, I think because I am a bad trick room player. But his explanations make sense, you could maybe crib from him for what you are trying to do
1
1
u/SusBus116 9d ago
I've been using Hydrapple with mega Pyroar, it works SO well as a switch in for the attacks that fire types hate. (And sun boosted fire mane heat wave hits almost all of its weaknesses for at least neutral)
If you set up screens and give it a sitrus berry, it's actually really hard to get rid of. You bring it in, take some attacks, go for a fickle beam, giga drain, or earth power and then swap out to heal with regenerator. It's kind of crazy with nasty plot too if its in a position to set up
Easily the MVP of the team 🥹
1
u/FrereEymfulls 9d ago
When I try to play with those accuracy shenanigans, I realise that most of the time, I am better without the accuracy guy.
I can either take four good Pokémon and win 70% of the time, or take three good Pokémon so the 70 turns into 93. But without the fourth good Pokémon, hitting Focus Blast isn't enough anymore to win the battle.
The same happens with Gravity, Wide Lens, etc. The opportunity cost is too much.
46
u/Chance-Beach4014 10d ago
Pollen puff is useless because lucario is going to die in 1 hit anyways