Battle Spot: Maractus Trick Room and Doubles strategy

Build set as of Gen 6

• Ability – Storm Drain
• Stats – Special Attack/SpA (252), Attack (252), HP (4)
• Nature – Quiet 
• Item – Focus Sash
• Move set – Energy Ball (stab), Sucker Punch, Spiky Shield, Endeavor/Hyper Voice/Hidden Power Rock

"Wtf is a Maractus?" is what you were prolly thinking. This poor cuter Cacturne version is a forgotten Gen 5 Pokemon from Unova and has terrible stats except for its SpA, why in the world would anyone use this lousy Pokemon right? Well, I'll tell you.

Besides Gastrodon being the most well-known Storm Drain user, another contender is Cacturne’s cousin, Maractus. Maractus is quite similar to Cacturne as they both share the same pathetic HP/Defence/SpD/Speed stats, but they both also have similar high Attack and SpA. Cacturne is much more superior as a physical attacker, whereas Maractus is more suited to use SpA. The difference is that Maractus is pure a Grass and it also has Storm Drain.

Strength

Ah, Storm Drain. That's one ability that everyone love and hate. In my previous post, I talked about how important it is to have a Storm Drain user to protect Mega Camerupt, and this is the Pokemon that I've chosen. Since not many trainers are familiar with Maractus, it can pull off a surprise on Water users granting it a boost in SpA. One free SpA boost is really deadly, because it can OHKO many tanky Water-types easily after just one SpA boost with Energy Ball.

To add on to that, it's highly recommended your team should have Surf user to further feed Maractus more and more power. It's a favourite against Rainy and Sand teams.

Being a pure Grass also means it can ignore those annoying powder moves like Rage Powder and Sleep, so that's another bonus there. However...

Weakness

Being pure Grass also means it's weak to 5 types which are Fire, Bug, Flying, Ice, and Poison. Fire, Flying (types, like Talonflame and Charizard Y) and Ice moves are already running rampant in the current metagame, so better protect your Maractus well because it's super fragile. And it's forced to wear Focus Sash at all times. 

Another serious problem is that it lacks a good third attack move. So because of this, it also faces a lot of limitations on several Pokemon that is resistant against it. You could say that it's a very niche Pokemon designed to take on a few types of Pokemon like those from Rainy and Sand teams. Hence, another good reason why it's almost non-existant in the current metagame.

Moveset

The reason why I fully pump on SpA and Attack is so that it can make use of Energy Ball and Sucker Punch as a decent back up punch to compensate for being slow. As for the third move, ideally the best move is Hidden Power Rock because it counters Fire, Flying, Ice and Bug-types, with Storm Drain it can gain power boost so that solves the weak power damage. 

Hyper Voice is another move to consider too since it does spread damage, and once again, it needs to rely on Storm Drain to boost up the power. Uproar is great for shutting sleepers down, but it targets randomly and gets locked for 3 rounds unless if it misses on a Ghost or protect so...that's kinda risky. 

My favourite one is Endeavor move because it greatly benefits from Focus Sash and it can proceed to use Spiky Shield to actually kill off the opponent. For example, if it was facing a Talonflame; Maractus will 100% win because:

• Talonflame will either use Brave Bird or Flare Blitz
• Maractus survives with 1 HP thanks to Focus Sash, and uses Endeavor bringing Talonflame’s HP down to 1 as well
• Final move is Spiky Shield (thank God for this new Gen 6 move!!) which will hurt Talonflame resulting a win for the cactus. If it was facing a SpA user, it should use Sucker Punch over Spiky Shield

Pretty sweet, huh. 

Closing thoughts

(image credit to zerochan.net)

Under Trick Room and the right match up, Maractus is actually a really scary Pokemon to face especially when it's not usually seen in the metagame (keeps the opponent clueless). It has become my staple Grass-type Pokemon in my Trick Room in ORAS and it has destroyed many teams amazingly whenever I fed it too much water with Surf from my Clawitzer. So there you go, next time you see one in Trick Room, best not to underestimate it if you have some Water, Rock and Ground Pokemon.

So Maractus, I choose you! Glhf!