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This has gotta be my and most everyone else’s favorite gen 4 pokemon. In terms of the overlap between aesthetic appeal and competitive viability, it’s arguably the best-designed pokemon of all time. Garchomp’s whole deal is that it’s extremely strong, very fast, and formidably bulky all at the same time. Its Achilles’ Heel is the 4x weakness to ice, which sure betrays how bulky it truly is, given how easy it feels to remove it from the board because of it. God help you if you’re running MEGA Garchomp, as that makes you unable to run Yache berry, which you’ll basically always need in this counter-team-ass context.But I digress. Provided you’re not just sticking it with Yache berry, Garchomp can make use of a lot of different items. I’ve had fun using Rocky Helmet with Rough Skin to get extra chip damage on physical attackers with a strategic switch. Assault Vest is always good since this pokemon is built to launch tons of coverage moves like Rock Slide, Iron Head, Poison Jab, and the like. And of course, it has access to plenty of good special attacks if you want to run Mega Garchomp for some reason. I like to rag on Mega Garchomp and it’s really just because I feel losing 10 points in speed and gaining so much Special Attack is kind of a waste and getting stuck with the Sand Force ability locks you into a very specific kind of mode. That said, if you are running a sand team (like, say, if you wanna draft Hippowdon), you’d be a fool not to go for Garchomp. The aforementioned Sand Force combined with the ungodly 170 Attack makes you an absolute beast if you mega evolve. But even if you don’t, Sand Veil is a reasonably annoying strategy to employ if you like gambling, giving all attacks a 20% chance to just miss you. You could combine that with Bright Powder to bring it up to about 30% and become a true piece of shit. Though, I will say I have tried this before in Pokemon Champions and it’s not as consistent as it sounds tbh. Most of the time, Garchomp benefits most from simply having Life Orb to increase damage output or Assault Vest to allow it to live longer. (But really just use Yache Berry)

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