MOTW: Stealth Rock

Like a ninja in the night, here’s Stealth Rock dropping a bomb on your team building strategies. It has become a very strategic and interesting topic amongst professional battling, and has been considered even to be banned based on how ridiculous it is. Entire teams and strategies can be built around this one move, and I’m going to try and sum up what it can all do for you, or what it can do TO you in a battle scenario.

Stealth Rock is a fantastic move, but it hasn’t been around for very long. Introduced in Gen IV it has been a mainstay of teams in competitive battle for quite a while now. It is extremely easy to implement, as it only takes up one move and stays in effect the entire battle. Much more efficient than something like Toxic Spikes. There are a decent amount of Pokemon that can learn it with TM 76, so you should definitely take a look at your team to see if it’s applicable.

Stealth Rock is a great move overall. It takes one turn to get up and can guarantee about 12.5% of your opponents health off when they switch in. It does 25% against foes that are weak to it and 50% to foes that are x4 weak against it. Not bad, egh? It may not do direct damage, but the damage from Pokemon constantly switching in will add up, and it can turn a 2 Hit KO into a 1 Hit KO. Especially because it will never go away, with the only way to get rid of it would be using Rapid Spin.

Something interesting you may not know about Stealth Rock, but it is one of the only moves that no Pokemon can learn naturally, it must be learned by TM 76. You can get it in Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum by defeating Roark, and in SoulSilver and HeartGold you can just pick it up at your local drug store in Celadon for $2000, or find it on Mt. Silver. Another interesting thing about Stealth Rock is that when Gen V with Black and White are released the only way that any of the new Pokemon will be able to learn it is by leveling up!

Think about it. There’s not too much thinking to it. Stealth rock can just add that extra umph to a team that really needs it, and it can be seriously annoying if you’re facing it.

- aaronspriggs