Unusual Sub-Punchers?

I Was browsing earlier and saw that aboatloadof Pokemon can learn Focus Punch, and practically any Pokemon can learn Substitute, so can anyone tell me why most of these Pokémon are unviable as Sub-Punchers?

Links:SubstituteFocus Punch

Pleaselog inorregisterto add a comment.

This is because people use more of fast Pokemon than slow ones.So for any slow Pokemon its Okay but for fast one’s if they first use substitute then the opponent may just break the Substitute after that. So overall at the end you just loosing HP.Also opponents can see this coming and switch into a ghost type or a resistant Pokemon with Poison,Bug,Fairy,Psychic or Flying type.

Firstly, loads of these aren’t fully evolved, so that’s a factor. You’d usually want the highest stats possible, and on lower stage evolutions most of the time you use the Eviolite as an item, which means you can’t passively heal away the Substitute cost of 25%.

Secondly, stat wise, it’s just unviable for many of them. Yes Mega Alakazam can learn it, but you may as well hit your opponent with his multitude of spoons instead, it’d do more damage. You also have to consider getting the Substitute up as well, either a threatening Pokemon to set up on the switch (such as Mega Mawile) or a bulky one like Conkeldurr.

Finally, is it worth it? To pull off such a set, you have to dedicate 2 moveslots to a 150BP Fighting attack, whilst sacrificing 25% of your HP and the possibility of simply not being able to set up. In most cases, the Fighting type STAB users have moves that are much better for them, such as Drain Punch to recover Conkeldurr’s health or Close Combat on Infernape to quickly KO the opponent. For those that use it as coverage, again they usually have access to more viable Fighting type moves that are more beneficial, or they sometimes don’t need the coverage, such as Charizard.

TL;DR