Camerupt

Camerupt is a solid utility Pokemon in the DPP OU metagame due to its unique typing and good movepool. Camerupt’s Fire / Ground typing and Solid Rock ability give it great durability despite its poor defensive stats. This durability, along with its neutrality to Stealth Rock; immunity to Electric, sand, and Will-O-Wisp; access to Explosion; and prowess against defensive Jirachi make Camerupt a great choice as a Stealth Rock user on hyper offensive teams. Unlike the other most common check to Electric-types on these builds, Dragon Dance Tyranitar, Camerupt has significantly more longevity and can’t be worn down by repeated Thunderbolt. Camerupt also has underrated raw bulk—with investment, it can survive attacks such as mixed Flygon’s Earthquake and Starmie’s unboosted Surf and retaliate with Explosion.

Unfortunately, Camerupt is a flawed Pokemon and limited to its niche, as it is extremely slow and is OHKOed by all offensive Water-types such as Gyarados, Kingdra, Swampert, Empoleon, and offensive Starmie. Being weak to Ground also means many sweepers, such as Dragon Dance Tyranitar and Dragon Dance Dragonite OHKO it through Solid Rock with a boosted Earthquake. Tyranitar is also a much better Pokemon; whereas Camerupt is more specialized, Tyranitar can fulfill many more potential roles from sweeping to wallbreaking in addition to checking Electric-types. Lacking sand makes match-ups against builds that use multiple offensive Water-types such as rain teams almost unwinnable, as Camerupt will get OHKOed as soon as it comes in and everything else on the team is at least 2HKOed by rain boosted attacks. Camerupt is also weak to both Spikes and Toxic Spikes and, despite its good longevity, can be worn down fairly easily by especially poison. Camerupt relies heavily on Explosion to prevent set-up and deal with faster foes who expect to OHKO it but don’t; it is quite vulnerable to baiting it to use Explosion and then switching out to something that can absorb the Explosion.