Empoleon Set

[Barnold]

Right now I have

Incineroar

Ampharos

Honchkrow

Roserade

Camerupt

 

 

I just got a Defiant piplup from the "Rare Candy" event and i was wondering what moves i should run on my Empoleon,

 

 

 

 

[DistantBliss]

Hi there,

It all depends if you wanna leave it defiant and go for an attack based moveset or build it around special attack. As for the moveset; you seem to have decent type coverage on your team already which allows for a lot of liberty there. For an attack based moveset, you could consider Swords Dance, Drill Peck, liquidation/waterfall & steel wing/brick break/earthquake/rock slide; just what you like/need most. For a special attack build things like scald, flash cannon, ice beam/blizzard and signal beam are desirable i reckon.

 

As a little side note  and build idea that you absolutely do not need to follow about the defiant (and competative) ability; the stat increase doesn't happen from self inflicted stat decreases; only from opponents using them AND terrain influence. Which means you can set up a swamp by using grass pledge and water plegde in the same or consecutive turn and every turn after your speed decreases at the end of the turn and as a result your attack stat goes up by 2. To counter the speed drop you could set up a trick room effect to make your mostly already slow base speed team comp always go first against speedy mons which will increase their survival chances ofc. In this case empoleon would need to learn water pledge and you'd need a slow grass starter to use grass pledge. Torterra and chesnaught come to mind for that. You'd need to teach trick room to someone though, and a gothitelle would benefit doubly from that by having slow speed and competative so every turn she is slowed she gets +2 sp.att. increase.

[Rendolf]

Empoleon's primarily a special attacker, so for your main Water move you'll probably have either Hydro Pump, Scald, or Surf (HP for the most damage, but unreliable; Scald for the nice burn chance; Surf for the utility in the overworld, decent damage, and hitting everything in doubles). You can also run Aqua Jet in addition to one of those special moves since priority is always nice and it can make use of your ability. Eventually you're gonna want to teach Flash Cannon since its one of the only special Steel moves out there, but unfortunately you don't get the TM until your 17th gym battle, so you might be waiting a while. In the meantime, I usually leave it with Metal Claw since its the only Steel move you get and its better than nothing, especially since its physical and works with Defiant too. I'd generally say this last slot would be for Ice Beam, but since the TM for it isn't available yet, I usually use the tutor in Agate Circus to teach it Icy Wind since it's a pretty good move even with the lack of power. You could also use the last moveslot for another special move like Grass Knot or another of the above Water moves, or you could go with an extra physical move like Brick Break or Shadow Claw. (The above reply also makes a good point about the Swamp Field activating Defiant, and I've even found, probably a bug, that the field actually activates Defiant twice per turn for some reason, so if you come across a Grass starter you'd like to use maybe keep that in mind)

[Seel The Deal]

Apart from what everyone else said - Silvally gets all the pledge moves, so you don't need to teach Water Pledge at all if you're going with a physical Empoleon. And since Silvally can be any type, you can just slot it over whichever of your current members you need to.

 

A special set needs water STAB and Flash Cannon, and imo the best coverage move is Grass Knot for coverage against opposing Water types (which hardwall both STABs, as well as Ice coverage, and are the most common type). The final move can be Agility, whichever you don't already have of Scald or Surf, Icy Wind, Aqua Jet, Stealth Rock, Defog or Mist - they all have their own uses, it just depends on what your team benefits from.

 

A physical set in a Swamp field should run something along the lines of Waterfall, Aqua Jet, Steel Wing (does this get Iron Head?), and Grass Knot yet again. You have no physical coverage against Water types and even uninvested, your Special Attack is still excellent so it's worthwhile to tech into the final slot. Aqua Jet does nuts damage at +6, OHKO'ing anything frail and removing the need for Trick Room. The other two moves are just your standard STABs.