Introduction
Due to it’s great support movepool, good defensive stats and an amazing typing in fairy/steel, Tinkaton is one of the most common Pokémon in the April meta at the moment. It can also use gigaton hammer to dish out some pretty good damage, as long as you’re not facing Alomomola that is.
Support
Tinkaton most commonly runs a support set with thunder wave, stealth rock and knock off as common moves. It has solid defensive stats (85 Hp, 77 Def and 105 Spdef) for a meta such as 35Pokes. With special defense investment, Tinkaton can become one of the premier special walls in the format, tanking hits from common threats such as Gengar, Mismagius, Roserade, Slowking, Frosmoth, Manectric, Glaceon, and Accelgor and threatening most of them back with gigaton hammer. Normally Tinkaton will use leftovers for semi reliable recovery in this set.
Offensive
Offensive Tinkaton is a lot rarer then support Tinkaton, but that doesn’t mean it’s less viable. Offensive Tinkaton uses it’s signature move, gigaton hammer, to it’s maximum potential. With 252 atk and an adamant nature, gigaton hammer hits like a truck. It often uses assault vest to keep it’s special defence high even without the investment. However, substitute + swords dance tinkaton has also seen use, a powerful set able to break through it’s best counter, Cobalion. With swords dance + substitute, Tinkaton can also break through premiere defensive walls like Hippowdon and Alomomola.
Good Teammates
The premier Tinkaton teammate has to be Alomomola, the most popular mon in the format. Alomomola can wishpass to Tinkaton for good healing while also covering Tinkaton’s main weaknesses: physical moves and fire type moves. Other good options include Charizard, who can cover Tinkaton’s weaknesses while being a good offensive threat. Roserade can help deal with Tinkaton’s greatest counter in Alomomola and finally there’s also Slowking, who can tank fire moves while also being an offensive threat using choice spec
Positive Matchups
Tinkaton is one of the best answers against some of the top metagame threats. For example, it can counter popular mons like: Lokix (due to it's 4 times resist to first impression), Stoutland (if it gets choice locked into a normal type move tinkaton beats it), Abomasnow (easy OHKO with gigaton hammer while resisting blizzard and leaf storm), Fezandipiti (resists or is immune to it's STAB combo, while OHKO'ing with gigaton hammer), and can even do pretty well agaisnt Cobalion using thunder wave to slow it down. It also excels at forcing out many of the frail special attackers in the tier such as Gengar, Mismagius, Roserade, Glaceon, Frosmoth, and Accelgor.
Overall Role
Tinkaton is most often used as a support mon, using tools like thunder wave and stealth rock, with enough bulk to also act as a special wall. However, due to it's versatile movepool it can also take on a role as an offensive sweeper using swords dance, a wallbreaker, etc.
Samples
Substitute Swords Dance Tinkaton
Written by Terribleplayer