Crobat Pokémon: Best Moveset and Counters Guide

Crobat has been the bane of many teams, with its hard hitting combined with top speed causing issues, even for very defensive teams, particularly featuring Chandelure, Kyurem, and Suicune in Pokémon. Let’s look at a guide for assembling the best moveset and counters for Crobat.

The best moveset is Brave Bird, Super Fang, Roost, and Taunt. To use it as a counter attacker or revenge killer, you can go with Heat Wave and Air Slash.

Let’s explore how you can train your Crobat and the moves needed to do the best in competitive play, as well as consider what Ability would be best to complement these moves.

Is Crobat Good for Competitive Play?

With Poison- and Flying-type able to be used, Crobat can smash Grass-, and Fairy-types, as well as Flying moves being great against Fighting-, Bug- and Grass-types.

However what really sets Crobat apart is its Speed stat. Crobat can not only pick off specific Pokémon due to getting the first move in, and even functions perfectly as a revenge killer.

On top of that, the Ability Infiltrator allows it to sneak past the Substitute of certain hard to kill Pokémon like Gengar.

The Taunt and Super Fang combination is also great to get rid of annoying Pokémon like Alomomola, Mega Aggron, and Blissey.

Overall, it can get countered by Zeraora, Mega Aerodactyl, and Mega Manectric and is not particularly useful against taking down heavy sluggers like Latias and Terrakion. Crobat also doesn’t deal particularly well with Stealth Rock.

However, good timing with a Taunt will prevent Stealth Rock strategies in their tracks. This is a viable strategy given the heavy use of Stealth Rock, seemingly not going out of fashion despite many trying to play around it.

The speed of Crobat also enables you to get the first move in, possibly even pushing an Aerodactyl off the strategy completely.

What Is Crobat’s Best Moveset?

Leveraging the Flying-type boost from Sharp Beak, one of the best movesets for Crobat involves Brave Bird, Super Fang, Roost and Taunt.

Combining with the Infiltrator Ability, Roost enables longevity that works nicely with Crobat’s Speed stat.

Use the Jolly Nature to ensure further a boost to Speed while lowering Special Attack.

With the EV spread, you’ll want to pump up Attack and Speed stats, leaving the rest into Defense.

Otherwise, you can look more at a more-rounded damage dealer by going with a held item of a Life Orb and Ability of Inner Focus combined with a Timid Nature focusing on Special Attack and Speed, using Air Slash and Heat Wave as your damage output.

You can supplement with Giga Drain and Nasty Plot, the former giving a nice health boost and damage and the latter being the much-needed stat boost to Special Attack.

Finally, if you want a true defense destroyer, go with Defog and Roost to allow Crobat to remove entry hazards, totally dismantling the Hippowdon and Cobalion matchups that can cause so many issues against a Crobat-based team and others weak to it.

Toxic can also be a great substitute for a damage dealer, as when combined with the high Speed and Roost abilities, the longevity of Crobat can leave an opponent with few options. Sludge Bomb gives a lesser chance at 30% chance of poisoning, but does hit harder.

Whirlwind allows you to blow away the opponent, and in tandem with Toxic can quickly infect a whole team based on Crobat’s Speed. If you’re going with a Stealth Rock or other entry hazard strategy yourself, you can get another dimension of depth to your team with this.

What Is the Best Ability for Crobat?

Crobat can choose between Inner Focus and the Hidden Ability of Infiltrator. While Inner Focus does prevent flinching (although not from Focus Punch), there’s likely not a lot of play you can get out of that from the current metagaming around using the secondary effect.

However, given Crobat’s role in doing revenge killing or targeted takedowns, Infiltrator is perfect for countering Substitute, Reflect, Light Screen and Safeguard, moves of which can cause serious defensive walls that are very hard to get past.

If Crobat is in your team as a revenge killer, your move choices can differ significantly if you’re going to also add a crowd control such as Taunt, with Roost a solid choice for swapping out as you won’t be fulfilling a long-term role on the field.

What League Is Crobat Best In?

Crobat has been found to do well in the Great League and Ultra League. In the end, Crobat is useful for many different tournament levels and is powerful in a wide variety of team compositions.

You can bring a properly toolled Crobat to many different battles and use his Speed to punch a  massive hold in many teams who cannot take the heavy hitting opener of Brave Bird.