Zoroark- The Captain Obvious of Pokemon.

[Takaki]

What are people's thoughts on the use of Zoroark in a competitive team? In my opinion, it is just too obvious to any player who is even reasonably experienced and concentrating. Perhaps on Pokemon Online it can trick some of 'You can't use legendaries' people, though. In addition to this, I'd say it has reasonably underwhelming offensive stats and funny bad defenses. Moreover, he is also weak to Breloom's stab Mach Punch which is becoming more common and also takes a significant chunk from Scizor's Bullet Punch and Dragonite's Extremespeed. Zoroark's main appeal to me is in his movepool. Access to both of the +2 offensive boosting moves and also offensive moves such as flamethrower, dark pulse and hidden power (also substitute which supports Zoroarks awful defenses and plays on the fact that he is great at forcing a switch).

Although I feel that there are many superior options to Zoroark, I have been running him with reasonable success in conjunction with Haxorus.
I generally bring him in disguised as Haxorus. This immediately forces a switch to a bulky steel type such as Skarmory or Jirachi, allowing me to Nasty Plot and then surge through with flamethrower. With the pairs mass weakness to Scizor, I've been running them with a Choice Scarf Magneton which also makes up for the pairs lackluster speed. With them all being able to force many switches, I think that hazard support is essential and also a rapid spinner to give Haxorus more switch-ins.

Has anybody else found any ways to make Zoroark a threat?

 

[dig]

I don't bother using him. It just relies on a gimmick that isn't all that great, there are better team options.

 

[Fabled]

In the past, I have run Zoroark well combined with a Chandelure as a lead. A surprising amount of people that I've battled don't realise that Chandelure doesn't get Dark Pulse or Nasty Plot like most Ghost types, and I've been able to set up Nasty Plot first turn because they either switch or generally use a resisted move, and then I can sweep a decent amount of their team using Dark Pulse, Flamethrower, and HP Fighting.

I've also used him as a late game sweeper, because I usually run a Choice Specs/Scarf Chandelure. If my opponent knows I've used a Choiced Chandelure, but doesn't know I've used Zoroark, then there are times that I have been able to switch in Zoroark disguised as Chandelure, feign being Choiced, and then sweep a weakened team. This is a bit more gimmicky and situational though, but it's still useful.

Using Zoroark with U-Turn has worked for me as a good scout before, because you can disguise one of your biggest threats, see what they will try to do against said threat, and U-Turn in your counter. Not to mention, playing mind games with Zoroark combined with Pokemon like Blissey is just fun.

 

[Takaki]

That still never really works against decent players especially if you are laddering near the top. Most good players see Zoroark in team preview and have a good knowledge of the moves Pokemon can learn.

 

[Fabled]

That still never really works against decent players especially if you are laddering near the top. Most good players see Zoroark in team preview and have a good knowledge of the moves Pokemon can learn.

Even so, you switch in a Zoroark disguised as a Chandelure and throw around a Hidden Power or Flamethrower, they won't know what to counter. And even regularly, if you switch in Zoroark mid-game disguised as one of your regular team, i.e. Swampert etc., You still get the free turn where they switch to a counter for Swampert or use a move effective against Swampert, but isn't as effective against Zoroark.

 

[Data-Roxas]

That still never really works against decent players especially if you are laddering near the top. Most good players see Zoroark in team preview and have a good knowledge of the moves Pokemon can learn.

Even so, you switch in a Zoroark disguised as a Chandelure and throw around a Hidden Power or Flamethrower, they won't know what to counter. And even regularly, if you switch in Zoroark mid-game disguised as one of your regular team, i.e. Swampert etc., You still get the free turn where they switch to a counter for Swampert or use a move effective against Swampert, but isn't as effective against Zoroark.

This is true. While I've never tried to use Zoroark competitively, it's always good to get a free turn. My preference, mostly in-game, at least, is to disguise him as a poison type, preferrably one immune to ground, so that it attracts a psychic move, as opposed to bug or fighting.

 

[Takaki]

Although he gets a free turn, he can't really use it to set up because he is wrecked by the ever increasing use of priority. For this reason, his best set is like now Sub + 3 attacks to fire off hard hits at the opponent.

 

[Plumbum]

I've had a lot of success putting it in my Gym team (don't look at me funny, it's a small server I play on and we're allowed one and exac tly one off-type mon), since Dark and Ghost's resistances cover each other perfectly. I like disguising it as Gengar to bait out a Psychic attack but it works well with any Ghost really.

Zoroark also functions well for obvious reasons in any no-preview tier, especially (as mentioned) if it's paired with a ghost to bait out a NVE attack or a switch to supposed-counter.

Also, if you take out the main priority abusers before you bring out Zoroark you haven't even got that problem any more. You do have to play a little to get it to work, but I find it to work well, having good enough stats to work even without Illusion making it even better.

 

[Fabled]

Although he gets a free turn, he can't really use it to set up because he is wrecked by the ever increasing use of priority. For this reason, his best set is like now Sub + 3 attacks to fire off hard hits at the opponent.

But most of the things that carry moves that are deadly to Zoroark can be countered easily enough due to that turn of Illusion. Any Steel Type that carries Bullet Punch almost always goes down in one/two hits to a Special based Zoroark's Flamethrower. You can also switch out against something that carries Mach Punch/Extremespeed in that free turn; If your Illusion is broken and you're expecting a priority attack, you can get a safe switch in against that priority move, after you've managed to weaken your opponent with something like STAB Dark Pulse.

 

[Lord Clowncrete]

The best way to use zoroark is to lure out an important wall or mon in your opponent's team and remove it with zoroark's coverage power. Someone gave the haxorus + zoroark example. Haxorus lures out steel types like Skarmory, Forretress, Ferrothorn, etc. Disguise zoroark as haxorus and lure out the above-mentioned mons and kill them.

Imo, team preview pretty much killed zoroark. Without it, it would have been deadly and protect might have been more common.