Type: Water / Ice
Stats: 50 / 95 / 180 / 85 / 45 / 70
Ability: Shell Armor
Key Moves: Explosion, Hidden Power, Ice Beam, Icy Wind, Protect, Rain Dance, Rapid Spin, Refresh, Rest, Return, Screech, Spikes, Surf, Toxic
One of the other truly meta-defining Pokémon, yet much more one-dimensional, most of its sets are variations on a similar theme. By far and away the best Spikes-user, due to its massive defense and ability to Rapid Spin and Explode, Cloyster is a Pokémon dominated by the utility aspect. Spikes support is fairly exclusive in this tier.
The most standard set, I find, is Ice Beam / Toxic / Spikes / Rapid Spin. This functions as a Spiker, with Toxic to gain advantage in Cloyster vs Cloyster and pressure Dusclops/Misdreavus that prevent it from spinning, Ice Beam to punish Dragonite, hurt Grass-types such as Venusaur, and provide it a non-suicidal damage option. Rapid Spin has its obvious utility. Surf, Rest and Explosion are three very good moves to try and fit on it if you can afford it - Surf means Houndoom cannot Pursuit-trap you so easily, and lets it pressure Steelix, Rest is useful on Stall teams in terms of keeping hazards up in stall vs stall, though I think it's overrated as I feel Cloyster's moveslots are too valuable to do a slightly better job at the hazard game at a time when you can use your clerical support much more easily. Explosion is obviously awesome for taking out a piece, and lets it naturally check a lot of threatening Pokémon such as Slowbro.
EV-wise, it has a couple of options, but most of the time it wants to be maximally specially defensive. Physical defense investment is worthwhile to help with threats such as Ursaring and Swellow, but due to its absence of resistances on the physical side, most teams prefer the special investment to live hits such as Dragonite's Thunder(bolt)s, and various Fire Blasts, Hidden Power Grasses, etc. Minimum Speed is a worthwhile option on defensively-inclined Cloyster, to spin and spike after opposing Cloysters. Minimum speed Cloyster, however, is outsped by things such as uninvested Chansey, Donphan, Hariyama, Omastar, Registeel, Umbreon, and Weezing, which is an important consideration when reducing Cloyster's Speed.
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