Typing:
Stats: 100 Health Points | 110 Attack | 90 Defense | 85 Special Attack | 90 Special defense | 60 Speed
Habilities: Torrent / Damp (Hidden)
Weight: 81.9 Kg (80 damage from grass knot / low kick)
(Important moves for singles will be highlighted)New Moves
Chilling Water, Hard Press, Helping Hand, Knock off, Poison Jab, Scary Face, Smack down, Tera Blast, Weather Ball.
Lost moves
Attract, Aqua Tail, Confide, Darkest Lariat, Defense Curl, Dive, Double Team, Dynamic Punch, Echoed Voice, Hail, Headbutt, Iron Tail, Mega Kick, Mega Punch, Mimic, Power-Up Punch, Rollout, Round, Scald, Seismic toss, Snore, Strength, Superpower, TOXIC, Work up.
Current Movepool
Relevant Movepool
Rock Slide
Avalanche
Ice Punch
Poison Jab (New)
Liquidation
Earthquake
Stone Edge
Knock Off (New)
High Horsepower
Flip Turn
Hammer Arm
Hydro Pump
Earth Power
Ice Beam
Sludge Wave
Tera Blast
Protect
Bulk Up
Stealth Rock
Roar
Yawn
Other moves
Physical attacks
- Tackle
- Rock Throw
- Rock Slide
- Take Down
- Endeavor
- Low Kick
- Facade
- Bulldoze
- Rock Tomb
- Fling
- Avalanche
- Dig
- Brick Break
- Body Slam
- Ice Punch
- Waterfall
- Poison Jab (New)
- Stomping Tantrum
- Body Press
- Liquidation
- Earthquake
- Stone Edge
- Giga Impact
- Outrage
- Tera Blast (New)
- Sand Tomb
- Smack Down (New)
- Knock Off (New)
- High Horsepower
- Focus Punch
- Flip Turn
- Double-Edge
- Endeavor
- Hard Press (New)
- Rock Smash
- Hammer Arm
- Stomp
- Bite
- Counter
- Water Gun
- Mud Shot
- Water Pulse
- Muddy Water
- Hydro Pump
- Mud-Slap
- Chilling Water (New)
- Icy Wind
- Surf
- Earth Power
- Ice Beam
- Blizzard
- Water Pledge
- Hydro Cannon
- Focus Blast
- Hyper Beam
- Tera Blast (New)
- Uproar
- Weather Ball (New)
- Whirlpool
- Sludge Wave
- Sludge
- Mirror Coat
- Ancient Power
- Growl
- Protect
- Supersonic
- Amnesia
- Screech
- Scary Face (New)
- Endure
- Rain Dance
- Bulk Up
- Sleep Talk
- Rest
- Substitute
- Stealth Rock
- Helping Hand (New)
- Roar
- Curse
- Yawn
- Wide Guard
Pros
- Swampert has an amazing typing in Water/Ground, both on defense and offense.
- Great Stat distribution, with solid 100 | 90 | 90 bulk and 110 attack.
- Defensively It has both hazard with stealth rocks, pivoting item removal, sleep and
- It offensively has a deceptively good movepool, with strong Dark, Water, Ice, Poison, Fighting and Rock coverage.
- Due to passable 85 special attack it can go mixed if it feels the need for, most notably slapping Ice beam coverage.
- Is quite slow at 60 speed, which is quite bad for the offensive variants.
- It lacks reliable recovery, meaning it's prone to get wear down no matter the variant.
- An uninvested Swampert can be quite passive, especially with the removal of scald and toxic.
- It has a bit of a 4 Moveslot Syndrome, both on offense and defense.
- Defensive pokémon normally shouldn't be your choice of terastalization unless you really need to stop a sweeper.
- Swampert is also a terrible Tera Blast user; It already has quite diverse coverage, tends to suffer 4MSS, and is more physical than special so tera blast ends up being a wasted moveslot way too often.
- Swampert has decent power and a clear x4 weakness to Grass, making tera a more alluring option than with most pokémon.
- Swampert's defensive typing suggest there's 4 optimal non-STAB Teras: Poison, FireFairy, and Grass. Each of them are there to deal with that x4 grass weakness into a resistance, and add a benefit on top of it, or benefits so good you can consider it even if it doesn't cover your weakness.
- Poison makes Swampert Poison-immune, grass-resistant and powers up Poison Jab, giving it utility in both sides of the spectrum. It's preferred over Steel due to how common Fire and fighting is compared to Psychic.
- Fire is there to become burn-immune, which is more relevant on offensive variants and is still grass-resistant. Be careful with the Stealth Rock weakness though, because as I've said before it lacks recovery.
- Grass gives Swampert "Powder" immunity, which includes Spore, Sleep Powder and Stun Powder. Otherwise Grass is usually bad on defense, but there's always that "in a pinch" moment.
- Fairy is just an overall great tera, no questions asked. Resisting both Knock off and Close Combat alongside being immune to draco Meteor is just a great trait. That being said, it doesn't fix our grass matchup.
- Water and Ground can power up your STAB moves, but that's not usually an optimal tera use for a slow pokémon.
- Stellar teratype is not very worth on Swampert because it prefers the defensive utility of the tera, something Stellar doesn't give
(Besides, I suspect this tera will be quickbanned in a week or so), not to mention said tera doesn't work well in banded sets.
Conceptual sets
Defensive Tank
Swampert @ Leftovers / Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Torrent
Tera Type: Poison / Grass / Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 100 Def / 156 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Flip Turn
- Stealth Rock / Knock Off
- Knock Off / Yawn / Ice Beam
- Earthquake / Yawn / High horsepower
- The EVs, IVs and sassy nature are there to pivot the slowest way possible, to Survive 3 Shadow Balls of unboosted Gholdengo and to survive Kowtow Cleave + Sucker punch of Kingambit after 2 enemies fainted or if packing glasses.
- The hability is torrent because there's no explosion user in OU.
- Leftovers is necessary to recover health with a pokémon without recovery, but it could be changed for Boots in case you want to avoid spikes damage.
- Flip Turn is our main move, our pivoting capabilities everyone overhyped back in gen 8 OU.
- Stealth Rock is the hazard that every team should have.
- Knock off is just an all-around great utility to deal with pesky choice items and boots, as well as good coverage against Dragapult and Deoxys.
- Ice Beam is a tool to deal with flying, Dragon and Grass types, which is preferred over Ice Punch due to not being vulnerable to burns and intimidade and barely losing power due to lack of attack investment.
- Earthquake is our strongest move and the way Swampert tries to not be passive. In case of being in a Rillaboom team you should replace it with High horsepower.
- Yawn is our status move after losing toxic, which should always be paired with stealth rock for maximum chip damage.
- Teras were explained beforehand. Fire is not good for defensive swampert though because it's already kinda vulnerable to water moves.
Swampert @ Choice Band
Ability: Torrent
Tera Type: Poison / Fire / Water / Ground
EVs: 36 HP / 252 Atk / 40 SpD / 180 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake / High Horsepower
- Liquidation / Flip Turn
- Poison Jab / Ice Punch
- Knock Off / Flip Turn / Stone Edge
- The EVs and nature are so we can outspeed Adamant Kingambit by 2 points, Survive an Specs Draco Meteor of Dragapult after stealth rocks and hit as hard as possible.
- Torrent increases our water damage in a pinch, which is more useful than expecting explosion.
- Earthquake is our main attacking move, which should be replaced with High Horsepower in case of Rillaboom.
- Liquidation is the strongest Water move Swampert has.
- Flip Turn rips all the benefits of Choice Band without any of the Problems.
- Poison Jab and Ice Punch are to deal with Grass, with Poison being stronger against Fairies and in generalbut vulnerable to steel switches, while Ice Punch is better against Dragons and flying types.
- Knock off is still a very good move on a banded set due to its sheer power against equipped foes.
- Stone Edge is an option who gives swampert great rock coverage to compliment its ground STAB, giving us the famous QuakeSlide combo.
- Teras are either to power up one of our STABs, make Poison Jab a 3rd STAB and remove our grass weakness or to make us burnproof alongside remove our grass weakness.
- Swampert's Special is just way too low for an special set in gen 9 OU.
Swampert @ Leftovers
Ability: Torrent
Tera Type: Poison / Stellar / Fire / Water / Grass
EVs: 236 HP / 76 SpD / 176 Spe
Careful Nature
- Bulk Up
- Liquidation
- Earthquake / High horsepower / Poison Jab / Ice Punch
- Poison Jab / Ice Punch / Knock Off / Rock Slide
- The EVs and nature are there to outspeed Adamant Kingambit and to survive 2 Specs Draco Meteor from Dragapult, while maximizing Leftovers recovery.
- Torrent boost our water moves, which in a pinch has utility, unlike Damp.
- Bulk Up is there to make us a setup sweeper.
- Liquidation is here because otherwise there's no reason to use Swampert over Great Tusk.
- Earthquake is to deal damage, with the obligatory high horsepower with Rillaboom.
- Poison Jab and Ice Punch are both there to deal with Grass types. Again, the choice is between fairies and power vs dragons and reliability, who is mostly team-dependant.
- Knock off is just a great move to use in general.
- Rock Slide is rock coverage for our ground type, and is preferred over stone edge due to higher PP, flinch against walls and higher accuracy.
- Tera is to either give us grass resistance with a bonus, Make Liquidation stronger or just makes us much stronger.
- Stellar increases the power of all moves as if they had tera bonus and makes tera blast basically a shadow move against tera pokémon, but with notable power drawbacks. Stellar Tera is very strong as a tool for a setup sweeper or all-out attacker, and this Swampert is the former.
- I'll be honest with you, this set is gimmicky, but I felt I needed to include something to showcase what Swampert could do outside the usual hazard + pivot duty using the new gen 9 tools given to it.
In general, I don't think Swampert will remain OU with how fierce the ground competition is, considering even Garchomp struggled... which I think is ultimately a good thing for the Starter, since that means the more creative Swampert sets will have chance to shine in other tiers. Still, is not like it'll be useless in OU, just limited in terms of use due to role compression. This is still your good old swampert, your archetypical bulky water who barely changed from gen 8 to gen 9, with most loses being filler outside 2 or 3 moves, which were more or less properly compensated but not something I would say buffed or nerfed.
Does anyone of you have something to add? If you do, please tell me about it.
Anyways, thanks for reading my post... In case you did it, Otherwhise, How dare you?
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