Hitmontop vs Scrafty --- Pros and Cons of each Intimidate Pivot?

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Hitmontop and Scrafty are great users of the eject button, cushioning and tanking attacks for teammates whilst also getting off an intimidate. Scrafty has higher bulk overall, boasting a higher HP, defense and sp.Defense stat whilst Hitmontop possesses higher attack and speed. However, Hitmontop also has access to match punch and bullet punch, and isn’t x4 weakness to fairy either.

Pleaselog inorregisterto add a comment.

Pleaselog inorregisterto add a comment.

You highlighted most of the big points, but I’ll just go through the pros and cons of each.

Hitmontop

Pros

Cons

Scrafty

Pros

Cons

I’d say that the common Hitmontop set is Fake out/Helping Hand/Close Combat/Your choice. You can run wide guard or quick guard if you’re worried about something in particular, but Togekiss, Tyranitar and Psychic Surge are gone so I don’t think it’s necessary. Usually Sucker Punch is valuable to hit ghost types, put with all of its priority moves, you’ll see weakness policy procs often as well.

Scrafty is a lot more varied. You’ll almost always see fake out, but other than than that, you can do a lot of things with it: Snarl, taunt, throat chop, brick break, and lots of coverage. since it’s fairly slow, an interesting but gimmicky thing to o would be to have it on a Dusclops Trick Room + Bulldoze team so you can bulldoze and lash out late game. Usually Scrafty will have more attack investment since it doesn’t offer as much support.

Overall, it really depends on the team you’re using. Hitmontop is used as a supportive pivot that can boost teammates' survivability and damage output. It has a good fit on teams with fast, frail early game Dynamaxers, especially those with weakness policy. On the other hand, Scrafty is more of a supportive mon for Trick Room teams, helping Trick room go up and often late game cleaning alongside Dusclops. (Intimidate + Snarl + Drain Punch can be annoying alongside Dusclops.) The 4x weakness hurts, but there aren’t as many fairy types anymore so it can definitely be utilized.

I hope this helps!