Pok�mon of the Week

Toxicroak, The Toxic Mouth Pok�mon. Its cheeks hold poison sacs. It tries to catch foes off guard to jab them with toxic fingers. Inflating its poison sacs, it makes an eerie blubbering sound for intimidation. It rarely fights fairly, but that is strictly to ensure survival. It is popular as a mascot. Fluid squeezed from its finger, albeit poisonous, is a significant ingredient in remedies for lower back pain.

I've always liked Toxicroak. I used to use Nasty Plot Toxicroak a lot. It's a cool guy. It has a pretty cool movepool and one of the best rain abilities in the game, Dry Skin. It makes Toxicroak into a pretty bulky Pok�mon with enough offence to sweep. It has a cool typing too, though its Poison STAB isn't used that much. With Swords Dance, Nasty Plot, Substitute, Fighting STAB, Sucker Punch, Bullet Punch, and many other great moves, Toxicroak is surprisingly decent. Of course, you will want to be using it under rain, as otherwise you lose one of its main selling points.

Anticipation: it's alright, but nothing compared to Dry Skin.
Dry Skin: rain is arguably the best weather around at the moment, and you should pretty much be using Dry Skin Toxicroak regardless of what team you are running, unless you are using like... sun. Works like Water absorb and Rain Dish in one. Watch out for Fire attacks though, they deal double damage.
Poison Touch: really not too good. All your physical attacks have chance of inflicting poison on the opponent. Poison is a pretty bad status when it isn't Toxic, so I'd just stick with Dry Skin all the time.

- Swords Dance / Bulk Up
- Sucker Punch
- Drain Punch / Cross Chop
- Stone Edge / Ice Punch / Bullet Punch / Poison Jab / Gunk Shot
Item Attached: Life Orb / Leftovers / Black Sludge
Ability: Dry Skin / Poison Touch
EVs and Nature:
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature (+Spd, -Satk) / Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)

Swords Dance gives you crazy offensive power and makes you a genuine threat. Bulk Up makes you more durable, which is cool when combined with Dry Skin. Sucker Punch is a great priority attack, due to its 80 base power. However, make sure you prediction isn't off as Sucker Punch only works if the opponent uses a directly damaging attack. Drain Punch gives you some recovery and is a relatively powerful attack. Cross Chop has great base power and a high critical hit chance, but less than ideal accuracy. Stone Edge covers things like Gyarados, Salamence, whereas Ice Punch mostly handles Dragons and Gliscor. Bullet Punch is another priority attack. Poison Jab and Gunk Shot get STAB and hit hard. Gunk Shot is much stronger, but has a high chance of missing.

- Substitute
- Focus Punch
- Sucker Punch
- Taunt / Ice Punch
Item Attached: Leftovers / Black Sludge
Ability: Dry Skin / Poison Touch
EVs and Nature:
EVs: 24 HP / 252 Atk / 232 Spd
Jolly Nature (+Spd, - SAtk)

You have a much strong Fighting move at your disposal now. Substitute and Focus Punch combine perfectly. Sucker Punch gets priority and hits Psychic types hard. Taunt is a great move on... everything. Ice Punch helps take out Gliscor, Landorus, things like that. It's pretty simple. Use Taunt to stops phazing, set up and healing, whilst hiding behind a Substitute throwing off STAB Focus Punches.

- Nasty Plot
- Vacuum Wave
- Sludge Wave
- Shadow Ball / Dark Pulse
Item Attached: Life Orb / Leftovers / Black Sludge
Ability: Dry Skin
EVs and Nature:
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk) / Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)

Special Toxicroak is rarely seen, sadly. Nasty Plot gives you a large Special Attack boost. Vacuum Wave is STAB priority, which is awesome. Sludge Wave is slightly stronger than Sludge Bomb, with less chance to poison. Shadow Ball or Dark Pulse... it doesn't matter which you choose really. They both do the same thing, basically. Stop Ghosts and Psychic Pok�mon, combine greatly with Vacuum Wave, both have the same power. The only thing they do differently really is Shadow Ball reduces Special Defence sometimes, whereas Dark Pulse can flinch.

- Cross Chop / Drain Punch
- Poison Jab / Gunk Shot
- Sucker Punch
- Stone Edge / Ice Punch / Bullet Punch
Item Attached: Choice Band / Choice Scarf
Ability: Dry Skin / Poison Touch
EVs and Nature:
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk) / Jolly Nature (+Spd, -SAtk)

It's all about the automatic power. No need for set ups, just straight in and BAM. Cross Chop hits crazy hard, and you have the higher critical hit chance. Drain Punch gives you some more recovery and hits pretty hard. Poison Jab is nice and reliable, whereas Gunk Shot is risky but potentially devastating.

Gonna make them croak
You could bulk Toxicroak up and run less Attack and Speed, so you can abuse Dry Skin even more, but I prefer all out offence.

SubPunch
Again, you could bulk it up. It'd make Substitute more useful and you get more recovery from rain.

Nasty Toad
It's all about sweeping. Max offence is what you want, and max offence is what you get.

Choice Toad
Is there any point in anything but 4/252/252? I can't see why you wouldn't go for max offensive output.

Choice Specs, Acupressure, Counter, Fake Out, Focus Blast, Knock Off, Me First, Pursuit, ThunderPunch, Work Up
Choice Specs can be used for an instant special threat. It's an option.
Acupressure can give you great boosts, but it is crazy random. You might as well just focus on Swords Dance or Nasty Plot.
Counter can be used on a lead set with Focus Sash for an interesting sort of suicide lead.
Fake Out is priority that flinches. Great considering it breaks Focus Sash, allowing for another attack afterwards.
Focus Blast could be used with Choice Specs for a hugely powerful attack.
Knock Off is a great support move. Removing the opponent's item is a surefire way of ruining their strategy.
Me First is a cool move, useful for stuff that uses Earthquake but is also weak to it.
You could run Pursuit on the Choice Band set to help revenge stuff.
Super Fang... I didn't even know Toxicroak had fangs. Whatever, this is always a good attack. Taking 50% from an opponent is always useful, and it could help you take down a Pok�mon that is normally a counter.
ThunderPunch doesn't really add much to coverage, It's just another option.
Work Up is another boosting move, which could be useful. I'd rather use Swords Dance, Bulk Up or Nasty Plot though. It could work for a mixed set I guess.

With Dry Skin, Toxicroak can work well in a rain team. It has access to nice moves such as Fake Out and Taunt, even Rock Slide. Honestly, without Dry Skin Toxicroak is pretty useless. Dry Skin means Toxicroak recovers insane amounts of HP, and combine that with the possibility of Surf and Black Sludge, you have a lot of HP recovery.

POLITOED. Drizzle is Toxicroak's best friend when combined with Dry Skin. Zoroark makes for a good partner, considering Zoroark is immune to Toxicroak's biggest weakness, and is special where Toxicroak is mostly physical. Toxicroak finds it quite hard to break down strong physical walls like Skarmory and Hippowdon. Using something like Magnezone can help break down things that would wall Toxicroak to hell. Thanks to Toxicroak's great coverage, it can do well against most things.

Gliscor, Skarmory, Hippowdon, standard walls like that work great. A key counter is weather. Sandstorm, hail but especially sun, weather aside from rain destroys Toxicroak. It relies on the rain for healing so much. Fast Psychics do well for destroying Toxicroak, but be very careful of Sucker Punch. Ghosts also do well as long as they avoid Sucker Punch. Alakazam, Espeon, Starmie, Gengar, stuff like that. Metagross, Bronzong and Jirachi do well too, considering they can ruin Toxicroak with a STAB Psychic attack whilst avoid major damage thanks to only being hit neutral by everything it has. Steel Bugs also work well, like Forretress, Scizor, Escavalier and Durant. Being hit with burn ruins Toxicroak's Attack, and its recovery. Be cool and use Prankster Sableye, it's pretty effective. Toxicroak really improved with 5th gen, but mostly because of Politoed. Infinite rain is really helpful in keeping Toxicroak alive, and it really does make Toxicroak worth using.

Locations in Games

Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald:
Not in Game.

FireRed/LeafGreen:
Not in Game.

Colosseum/XD:
Not in Game

Diamond/Pearl/Platinum:
Great Marsh

HeartGold/SoulSilver:
Safari Zone

Black/White:
Evolve Croagunk