#88 + #89: Grimer and Muk

Every time I hear someone extol the virtues of generation one and the designs over those of later generations, such as slating Vanilluxe, I love to point out that Grimer and Muk are literally poo...

Grimer is disgusting, and obviously poison-type. The ability stench was originally useless in battle, and purely lowered wild encounter chances, but now causes a 10% chance of flinching the foe when contact is made. Sticky hold prevents the foe from removing your item and increases the chance of bites when fishing, which is a great way to get shinies: stick this at the front of your party and chain fish for a greatly increased shiny chance. The hidden ability is poison touch: when you make contact with an enemy then you have a 30% chance of poisoning them.

'Sale at Primark?!'

As far as stats go, you get 80 HP, 80 attack, and the rest is pretty poor: 50 in both defences, 40 special attack and 25 speed (which is good for trick room teams).

Pound is a forgettable opening move as base 40 physical normal (this is weaker than tackle), and poison gas can poison all adjacent foes with a 90% accuracy. Harden boosts your defence, mud-slap is a weak special ground move (base 20 and can lower accuracy), and disable disables their last move. Sludge is a special poison move (base 65 with a decent chance of inflicting poison status), mud-bomb is a decent special ground move (base 65 with a decent chance to lower the foe's accuracy, but with 85 accuracy). Minimize increases your evasion, BUT it means that certain moves (stomp, body slam, dragon rush, flying press and phantom force) hit for double damage and will hit every time. Fling throws your held item at the foe for dark and physical damage that is dependent upon the item. Sludge bomb is a pretty powerful poison attack (base 90 special with a 30% chance of poisoning the foe) whilst sludge wave has more power (base 95) and a lower chance (10%) of poisoning, but can hit all foes. The last move before the chance to evolve is screech, which lowers the target's defence by two stages.

The moves that come after the chance of evolving are: gunk shot (120 physical with 80 accuracy and a 30% chance of inflicting poison), acid armour (two stage increase to your defence), belch (120 physical poison that can only work if you've eaten a berry) and finally momento (kills yourself and drops the foe's attack and special attack by two stages, unless of course they have contrary, in which case you make them a lot more powerful whilst needlessly killing yourself...).

Ignoring the standard TM moves, you could take venoshock, thunder(bolt), dig, shadow ball, flamethrower/fire blast, rock tomb, torment (stops the foe from using the same move twice in a row), thief, round, fling, incinerate, explosion, payback, rock slide, infestation, the much needed poison jab (you need a STAB physical move since your best option is physical attack), power-up punch and strength.

You can breed in the stockpile set (with spit up and swallow), and also get acid spray, shadow punch (not affected by evasion and accuracy modifiers and hits as base 60 physical ghost) as well as shadow sneak (base 40 ghost physical as a priority move) and some other moves that pretty much aren't worth the effort. The tutor gives gunk shot, as well as fire/ice/thunder punch, giga drain, shockwave and pain split (averages out the HP of the target and user).

Well, you've evolved into a larger pile of excrement, and now Muk comes with 105 HP, 105 attack 75 defence, 100 special defence, 65 special attack and 50 speed. That isn't too bad, other than the move list seems to prioritise the special side of things. Basically, you can set up as a special wall with decent physical attack, so there is a role for this if you can find the attacks to fill in the gaps. The abilities remain untouched, as does the typing.

When diarrhoea strikes!

Aside from hyper beam and giga impact, you can get dark pulse and rock smash from the TM list, which in no way makes up for no change in levelling list. The only thing new from the tutors is block, which is pretty dull.

If you're going to use this family, then consider using Muk as a hideous but sort of effective special wall. You can focus the special defence and HP, or attack as as an alternative, and a mix thereof, or you could boost your defence and almost make it as a tank. There are enough decent attacking moves (sadly mainly special) that assault vest is an option as a tank, since you have serious physical damage to work with rather than just going with toxic and stalling them. This is a surprisingly good Pokemon, in truth.

(All artwork presented by Ken Sugimori, taken from the Bulbapedia image archives)