Competitive Pokemon History - Camerupt Quiz

Answer: Tank

To be clear, there are a series of tangible differences between a Tank and a Wall. In future generations, a Tank generally needed to be able to set or remove entry hazards, to offer up the most utility. Sadly, Camerupt did not have access to Spikes, which would've made it far more usable. Nevertheless, Camerupt was strong enough and did have enough offensive utility to where a Tank role was doable, albeit rather unspectacular. Its good 100 Attack and 105 Special Attack enabled it to be a bulky mixed attacker, threatening Skarmory, Forretress, Celebi and Jirachi with strong Fire Blasts, while keeping Raikou and Tyranitar at bay with reasonably strong Earthquakes, both getting STAB as well.

For the next two moves, a player would outfit their Camerupt to fit the model of the team. Defensive teams preferred Camerupt run Rest + Sleep Talk. This would reduce Camerupt's utility, but increase its longevity and enable it to switch in to battle more frequently, and easier at that.

Offensive teams would equip Camerupt with Rock Slide or Hidden Power Rock and Explosion. The former got coverage on Salamence and Gyarados, who hard countered Camerupt otherwise, while the latter enabled Camerupt to go out with a bang, inflicting heavy damage to an opponent when Camerupt was on its last limb.

Other options for either teambuild included Hidden Powers Electric (to better hit Gyarados), Grass (to hit Swampert), Ice (to hit Salamence harder) and Toxic, to hassle bulky Water types more than anything else Camerupt could muster.

While it wasn't necessarily a bad Pokemon, its actual valuable in practice was somewhat questionable; it lacked the power to wallbreak consistently, absolutely didn't have the Speed to sweep, and its bulk (70/70/75) wasn't necessarily horrible but, when mixed with its terrible Speed, meant Camerupt could be quickly overwhelmed if it switched into a couple strong attacks without being able to heal.

Answer: 40

Base 40 Speed is absolutely putrid. Combined with Camerupt's iffy defenses, and it can have trouble effectively switching into battle. Its massive 4x weakness to Water and weakness to the common Earthquake also meant most offensive Pokemon had means to hit its average defenses hard as well, further inhibiting its ability to switch into battle, and making it frailer than its defenses would make it seem.

Answer: Magma Armor

Magma Armor renders the user immune to being frozen. Ice Beam and Ice Punch only have a 10% chance to freeze anyway, and there is no move which applies freeze manually to a target, meaning the ability is generally not the most useful for Camerupt.

Answer: Trick Room

Under Trick Room, the Speed of all Pokemon in play is essentially inverted, and the slower Pokemon move before the faster ones. With Camerupt's abysmal Speed, this means it is just about always moving first, barring priority, when Trick Room is in play. This gave it a niche as a wallbreaker on Trick Room oriented teams.

Sadly, Trick Room archetypes are extremely niche and difficult to effectively utilize. Thus, Camerupt was no longer standard play viable, though it at least had a niche in UU thanks to it fitting Trick Room teams very well.

Answer: Rock Polish

Of all the Fire types in the game which were not banned to Ubers, only Camerupt had access to Rock Polish. Moltres had Agility, which was essentially cloned by Rock Polish for doing the same thing. However, Camerupt isn't weak to Stealth Rock, can deal with Rock types via its Ground type STAB moves, do the same to Electric types, and can equip Explosion to kamikaze into Chansey, who would stop Moltres dead in the water, so it definitely distinguished itself as a UU sweeper from Moltres.

Answer: Anger Point

Anger Point immediately gives the user a +6 to their Attack stat if they suffer a critical hit. Unfortunately, Camerupt's iffy bulk and horrible Speed means it has a tough time surviving a critical hit. Even if it manages to do so, its horrible Speed would make it easily revenge killed before it could get far with the boost. Even if Camerupt could somehow overcome these two deficiencies, its physical movepool is incredibly sparse, which would still make a sweep unlikely anyway. That said, Camerupt's old Tank sets generally preferred the Solid Rock ability, while its rarer wallbreaker sets also preferred this ability.

Answer: Sheer Force

Sheer Force removes the secondary effects of any move Mega Camerupt uses. In exchange, moves which initially had secondary effects are granted a 30% power boost. This directly benefited Camerupt's Fire Blast, Earth Power and Rock Slide if running the move. A consistently useful offensive ability is just what Mega Camerupt needed, and it would certainly put the ability to good use.

Answer: 20

As a point of reference for how terrible this is, a Pokemon who literally has no legs and is stuck inside of a cacoon, Kakuna, is 15 points faster than Mega Camerupt. If you broke your legs and had to crawl to get around, you'd probably be faster than Mega Camerupt.

Answer: It was outclassed by other Mega Evolutions

Mega Swampert and Mega Aerodactyl can set Stealth Rock like Mega Camerupt can, while both are faster, the former is far bulkier, and both offer more general utility to their respective teams. Both can sweep, both can wallbreak, and the latter can even offer Pursuit trapping utility should the trainer desire it.

As such, there was absolutely zero reason to ever use Mega Camerupt over them, and because you cannot wield two Mega Evolutions on the same team, Mega Camerupt saw absolutely no serious use in sixth generation UnderUsed.

Answer: RU and Untiered

Mega Camerupt was just not that great in seventh generation RU. It could boast that it thoroughly checked Salazzle, Raikou and Registeel while also offering Stealth Rock-setting utility, but its advantages end there. It is difficult to justify using it over Mega Sceptile or Mega Blastoise, as both of them are stronger, far faster, and the latter offers more helpful and highly sought out utility. It can't deal with bulky Water types, and gets run all over by offensive teams, featuring strong Pokemon like Tyrantrum, Rhyperior and Araquanid. Because of this, Mega Camerupt was not viable for RU. It was unfortunately too strong for NU, and thus, lingered in Pokemon Purgatory.

Base Camerupt was also genuinely terrible in PartiallyUsed, the lowest tier in the game. Poor speed and poor bulk were a recipe for disaster in the Z-Move era, as Camerupt was one of few Pokemon with good Attacking stats who made for a poor Z-Move user due to its drawbacks. Its old Tank set was abysmally outclassed by the likes of Regirock and Mudsdale, leaving it to try and wield a mediocre Choice Specs wallbreaking set, which was easily revenge killed due to its aforementioned weaknesses. Thus, Camerupt did not see the usage to be natively PU, and was dubiously honored with the distinction of being Untiered.