Gothitelle, The Astral Pokémon. Starry skies thousands of light-years away are visible in the space distorted by their intense psychic power. They can predict the future from the placement and movement of the stars. They can see Trainers' life spans. When it learns its Trainer's life span, it cries in sadness.
Overview
Gothitelle is a Pokémon where your original thought would genuinely be "Who would use this?", but then when you go online and face a trainer with it, you get defeated handily by it and its many gimmicks and realise just how much of an odd, yet highly useful, Pokémon it is. It's capable of quite a lot, with significant bulk and decent support movepool & abilities that allow it to be a force to be reckoned with, should it get used correctly. If not used correctly, then it is essentially outclassed by many of its Psychic-type brethren. In the Generation VI shift, it gained a new ability that makes it incredibly useful, but changes to Shadow Tag allowing for Ghost-types to escape from its grip, meaning the Generation VI shift both benefited and hindered it somewhat.
Positives
+It has decent bulk with 70/95/110
+It's slow enough and bulky enough to set up and use a Trick Room successfully
+Its abilities are top notch
+It has a fantastic support movepool. Magic Room is barrels of fun and it can set up Trick Room and dualscreens with ease.
Negatives
-Its Hit Points and Special Attack could be higher. It'd be far more useful if they were
-Its offensive movepool coverage is somewhat limited.
-Its niches require a little bit of set up which leave it open
-Its Speed is in the dead-zone
Abilities
Frisk: Reveals the foe’s held item. - This is always handy to scope out what the opponent is likely to do. With Magic Room and that knowledge, things can get very evil
Competitive: Raises Sp. Atk stat by two stages whenever a stat is lowered. - Gothitelle's brand new ability is very handy, especially in this age of Intimidate. It turns Gothitelle from a moderately useful Special Attacker into an absolute beast.
Hidden Ability (Available):
Shadow Tag: The opponent cannot run nor switch while this Pokémon is in play. The opponent may still switch by using Baton Pass, U-turn or Volt Switch, if it is holding a Shed Shell or is a Ghost-type. - Absolutely evil if you have the right Pokémon out. Many people wanted this ability banned for good reason.
Movesets
Gothitelle me where you got your specs
- Psyshock / Psychic
- Thunderbolt
- Grass Knot / Energy Ball
- Hidden Power Ice/Fire
Item Attached: Choice Specs
Ability: Shadow Tag / Competitive
EVs and Nature:
EVs: 252 SAtk / 252 Speed / 4 SDef
Modest Nature
This is a standard Choice Specs set. All these moves will hit hard against the opponents. Psyshock and Psychic hit hard with STAB. Psyshock is a nice option if you wish to have something that can jab at the physical Defense of a Pokémon while Psychic is your standard trustworthy Psychic-type move. Thunderbolt, Grass Knot, Energy Ball and Hidden Power will just give Gothitelle lots of coverage so it can deal with whatever threats it encounters.
Calm your mind
- Calm Mind
- Psychic / Psyshock
- Shadow Ball / Dark Pulse
- Hidden Power Fighting
Item Attached: Leftovers
Ability: Shadow Tag / Competitive / Frisk
EVs and Nature:
EVs: 252 SAtk / 252 Speed / 4 SDef
Modest Nature
Another standard set that uses Gothitelle as a Special Attacker. Using Calm Mind to set up, you can then start attacking with ease. Psychic/Psyshock again provide the powerful STAB. Shadow Ball and Dark Pulse provide some decent alternatives typewise, hitting Psychic and Ghost-types that can be used to attempt to wall Gothitelle, while Hidden Power can be used to deal with any Dark-type Pokémon that attempt to screw Gothitelle over
"It's just a phase"
- Reflect
- Light Screen
- Thunder Wave / Toxic /Taunt
- Psychic
Item Attached: Light Clay
Ability: Shadow Tag
EVs and Nature:
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SDef / 4 Def
Calm Nature
This is your rather standard Dual Screen set for Gothitelle. Both Reflect and Light Screen will bolster your teams defences while Taunt will prevent your opponent from doing any setting up of their own, but you can also use Thunder Wave or Toxic to inflict status on the opponenet. Final move is in case Gothitelle itself gets Taunted and will do decent damage and STAB
Trick Room
- Calm Mind
- Trick Room
- Psychic / Psyshock
- Shadow Ball / Dark Pulse / Thunderbolt
Item Attached: Leftovers / Life Orb
Ability: Shadow Tag / Competitive / Frisk
EVs and Nature:
EVs: 252 SAtk / 252 HP / 4 SDef
Quiet Nature
Setting up a Trick Room is something that Gothitelle can do well. While not as well as say Cresselia, Gothitelle can run it comfortable and then monopolise on it somewhat. As such, you need to make sure that Gothitelle is as slow as possible so as to attempt to get out of the dead zone it finds itself in generally. The rest of the moves are pretty standard for power and coverage when you're finally in the fast lane.
Other Options
Future Sight, Heal Block, Magic Room, Rest, Trick
Future Sight is good to get some damage at a later point, and with Shadow Tag, the opponent can't switch out.
Heal Block can prevent the opponent from healing. Tied with Shadow Tag, this makes it all but inevitable for Gothitelle to clamor for victory.
Item play is one of the fun things Gothitelle can do and so Magic Room makes it so all players hold items do nothing for 5 turns. That's always evil and fun to do.
Rest is always an option for Gothitelle to recover any lost health and remove any status condition is is inflicted with.
Trick is also a nice trick if you're running a Shadow Tag Gothitelle. By using it and an item such as Choice Specs, you can potentially screw over an opponent by making them unable to move and unable to switch out from it. Very gimmicky, but also hilariously brutal.
Double & Triple Battle Options
Gothitelle is a terror to stare down in team preview. Usually some nasty strategy accompanies it like Perish Trap, or Trick Room with Mega Mawile. These strategies are made possible and are effective because of its hidden (and scarcely distributed) ability, Shadow Tag. Shadow Tag prevents the opponent's non Ghost type Pokemon from switching out of battle which at least makes predicting moves easier knowing they can't switch. Shadow Tag will be the focus of the set.
Gothitelle
Trick Room / Thunder Wave
Heal Pulse / Helping Hand / Charm / Tickle
Protect
Psyshock / Psychic / Helping Hand
Item Attached: Leftovers
Ability: Shadow Tag
EVs and Nature:
EVs: 252 HP / 156 Def / 100 SDef
Calm Nature
Gothitelle blocking off switches is going to be very annoying for the opponent, so they may make it top priority to get Gothitelle off the field. The EV's are designed to make it difficult to accomplish that. 252HP and 156 Defense survives Adamant Mega Kanghaskhan Double Edge from full health barring the unfortunate instance of a crit. 100 SDef is for Special Bulk.
The first move is Speed Control, Trick Room usually needs a team built around it, but Thunder Wave is pretty splashable. The second slot is for supporting Gothitelle's partner through various methods. Trapping a physical threat and Charming it into oblivion effectively makes the match 2 vs 1 under certain circumstances. Heal Pulse will be the worst move you ever misclicked, but assuming you targeted properly, Gothitelle's partner who was in OHKO range may be in 2KO Range now, definitely game changing. Protect is for stalling with leftovers and dodging heavy attacks, it's hard to go wrong there. The last move is either an attacking move to avoid being Taunted into Struggle, OR to help Gothitelle's partner deal more damage through helping hand. Psyshock combos very well with Tickle as seen in the 2014 World Championships.
Gothitelle's better partners will deter Hydreigon and or Aegislash from having a complete hayday. Mammoswine has the immediate type advantage on both. But really, Gothitelle partners well with just about anything depending on which Pokemon are on the field.
Gothitelle falls short when its partners aren't able to pick up the slack entirely in terms of dealing damage to the opponent and or setting up winning conditions. Gothitelle generally won't be winning games by itself either as it's a support Pokemon, it's heavily dependant on its partner. Definitely a frustrating Pokemon to deal with, but if one puts pressure on the partner Pokemon then Gothitelle will likely fall too.
Countering Gothitelle
One word, well two hyphenated words. Ghost-types. While Gothitelles are prone to running Shadow Ball, with its Speed you'll be likely to scout if it does and switch out, even within Shadow Tag, if you're too threatened. Gothitelle's physical Defense is its weakest point so you need to go for that. Physical Ghosts such as Dusclops/Dusknoir are a fantastic option here as they have the defenses to withstand Gothitelle's onslaught and do enough damage to make Gothitelle suffer. Unfortunately, with Gothitelle's gimmicks, it's often tricky to see how it is going to be used, so you just need to go physical as much as humanly possible. Taunt is key, though. Most Gothitelle will be using some form of set up, if they're not playing item games, and as such a Taunt can really screw it up. Alternatively, just go for the Bug/Dark-type possibilities, even through a Shadow Tag, and Gothitelle will soon fall faster than expected.
Locations in Games
Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald:
Not in game
FireRed/LeafGreen:
Not in game
Colosseum/XD:
Not in game
Diamond/Pearl/Platinum:
Not in game
HeartGold/SoulSilver:
Not in game
Black/White:
Route 9 (Black)
Trade from Black/Black 2 (White)
Black 2/White 2:
Route 9 (Black 2)
Trade from Black/Black 2 (White 2)
X/Y:
Evolve Gothorita
Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire:
Evolve Gothorita
Animé Appearences
