Competitive Pokemon History - Swampert Quiz

Answer: Hidden Power Grass

Electric types normally run Hidden Power Ice, as to best strike out at Grass, Ground and Dragon types who resist their STAB. As a Water/Ground type, Swampert is only neutral to HP Ice while being immune to Electric, meaning HP Ice is not enough for Electric types to fend it off. HP Grass is inferior to HP Ice at doing anything other than beat Swampert, but the existence of Swampert got just about any Electric not named Zapdos to start running HP Grass, lest they be hard countered. Even non-Electrics who Swampert could handle, like Tyranitar or Salamence, might be packing HP Grass specifically with Swampert in mind.

Answer: Substitute + Salac Berry boosting set

Swampert's immunity to Tyranitar's sand lets the set shine, preventing a stray T-Tar switch in from causing Swampert to instantly faint once at 1 HP. Swampert's access to Endeavor of all things means Tyranitar becomes a premiere partner for the set. The idea is that Swampert should use Substitute until it reaches 1 HP. From there, Endeavor will bring anything that isn't a Ghost type to 1 HP, where T-Tar's sand would then immediately KO the target if they weren't a Rock, Steel or Ground type. Salac Berry would enable Swampert to outspeed anything which hadn't boosted their own Speed, and if Swampert remained behind a Substitute while being able to boost, it would be impossible to stop this set from KOing at least one Pokemon, and preventing it from KOing two required intervention from Arceus, or maybe Rayquaza to stop the sand or something. What's more, Swampert wasn't exactly countered by Gengar; Torrent-boosted Hydro Pumps would pack one hell of a punch, and Swampert would be able to outspeed Gengar and Ghostly friends after a Salac Berry boost to dish out this pain.

Answer: Torrent

Torrent was a pretty okay ability for Swampert. Its sweeping set certainly enjoyed smacking things around with Torrent-boosted Hydro Pumps, and even its defensive sets could make an admirable last stand with Torrent-boosted Surfs, as a last-ditch effort to check something not resistant to Water. All told, Swampert certainly could have received a worse ability.

Answer: Reliable recovery

If Swampert had Recover, it could've put Skarmory to shame for being an amazing physical wall. Sadly, it did not. It either had to resort to the unwieldy Rest + Sleep Talk, or go without recovery entirely, either severely constraining its utility and making it one dimensional, or very susceptible to getting overwhelmed trying to do its job. Thus, Swampert fell many notches down in the fourth generation, though it was definitely still viable for the tier.

Answer: Gyarados

The thing to note is, despite Swampert's 4x weakness to Grass, if wielding a Rindo Berry and remaining in good health, it can survive a single Grass move pretty reliably. If it catches a Grass type with Ice Beam as it switches in, it could use Rindo Berry to tank a hit and then generally remove them with the second Ice Beam. While gimmicky, this was an effective countermeasure at stopping opponents from freely exploiting Swampert's massive weakness to Grass.

However, Swampert had nothing in its repertoire that would allow it to defeat Gyarados. Gyarados could switch in on whatever Swampert threw out, Taunt it to prevent it from fazing with Roar, then endlessly boost against it with Dragon Dance, to threaten a game-ending sweep. Thus, Pokemon like Zapdos became near-mandatory partners to defend against this.

Answer: Damp

Damp prevents the usage of sacrificial damaging moves, which is pretty much just Explosion and Self-Destruct. If you were playing single player, about to farm Electrodes and Voltorbs searching for either a shiny one or one which you could mold onto a competitive team, perhaps Damp would help you ensure the Electrode or Voltrob couldn't KO themselves with Self-Destruct and ruin your efforts. On the competitive scene, however, this ability was not consistently helpful. Worse yet, the fifth generation introduced new mechanics to Explosion and Self-Destruct, making the moves themselves a lot less threatening and, by association, less profitable and less common.

Therefore, Torrent was still the preferred ability.

Answer: No

Swampert's Attack stat is is 110, while its Special Attack is a much lesser 85. However, many of Swampert's special attacks, namely Scald and Ice Beam, offered more utility than its physical ones, and as a defensive Pokemon, utility is generally preferred over raw power, thus giving them the nod. Clearly, on more offensively oriented sets, Swampert's physical moves would be featured.

However, Swampert is definitely better with its defensive sets, which explains why its specially offensive moves tended to see more use.

Answer: Swift Swim

Swift Swim doubles the user's Speed when it is raining on the battlefield. Combined with the fact that rain sweepers tend to be specially offensive, and Mega Swampert's physically offensive talents off its nice Base 150 Attack stat would be unique and heavily valued, as it returned to standard play prominence once again. Swift Swim was great for patching up its abysmal Base 70 Speed, and the fact that its Waterfalls would be getting further boosted by rain meant that it would always be hitting anything that didn't resist Water quite hard.

Answer: Power-Up Punch

Power-Up Punch, while an incredibly weak base 40 power, has a 100% chance to grant the user a +1 to Attack upon being used. It also happened to hit Ferrothorn super effectively, which could make switching it in a dicey affair. This was how Mega Swampert could overcome physical walls, like Skarmory or Slowbro, when in the rain; boost against them, then hammer them with strong attacks. Phazing was risky for Skarmory to do, as it ran the risk of accidentally bringing in Politoed or another specially offensive teammate, like Moltres or Kingdra, who would beat the absolute daylights out of the metal bird, forcing it out when at low HP, so that Mega Swampert could come back in and try to boost again later. Thus, Mega Swampert was a key component for rain teams trying to overcome stall teams.

Answer: Ash-Greninja

Ash-Greninja's rain boosted Water Shuriken did a minimum of 75% damage to Mega Swampert. This was a huge problem, as Mega Swampert had absolutely no way to heal itself, and taking damage while it boosted with Power-Up Punch was inevitable, as the move didn't boost its Attack by enough to let Mega Swampert at least avoid chip damage as it boosted.

Ferrothorn was already a great contributor on rain builds, but the existence of Ash-Greninja meant keeping it healthy was absolutely mandatory, so that it could reliably switch in to Water Shuriken and then defeat Ash-Greninja. As Ferrothorn was commonly used as rain's entry hazard setter, this could present some problems, as it would be hard pressed to simultaneously stay healthy enough to defeat Ash-Greninja and consistently keep entry hazards up. This was often a problem for Mega Swampert rain teams, as Ash-Greninja became an offensive standard play staple in the seventh generation.