Introduction
Flapple is an underrated wall breaker/sweeper with the unique ability hustle which gives it a choice band boost at the cost of lowered accuracy. It also has the signature move grav apple which lowers the opponent’s defense by 1 stage each time it hits which when paired with a good 110 base attack, allows it to reliably 2HKO most mons. Though the only dragon STAB Flapple gets are outrage, a move that locks you into using it for 2-3 turns which can be easily punishable, and dragon rush, a 75% accurate move that becomes 60% accurate after hustle, it makes up for this by having good coverage in the form of acrobatics and dual wingbeat to deal with grass types that would resist grav apple, sucker punch to deal with trick room threats like Reuniclus, and u-turn to pivot out of bad matchups.
Choice Band/Scarf
With choice band, non-adamant Flapple can go from 474 attack with hustle to 632 attack. Still, the only interaction that really changes is turning a 3HKO against physically defensive Dachsbun into a 2HKO. For this reason, it’s better to use scarf Flapple to help it outspeed faster threats like non-scarf Infernape, Goodra, and Kingdra. It gets a free speed boost without using a turn to set up which is useful for a wallbreaker set. Flapple can even be paired under gravity to mitigate its accuracy loss and make grav apple from scarf sets hit as if they were boosted by choice band or to make choice band sets hit even harder.
Life Orb
While it doesn’t provide as much of a damage boost or increase speed, Life Orb allows Flapple to set up with dragon dance and not be choice-locked. Not being choice-locked is especially beneficial when there are 3 fairy types and 2 sap sipper mons. This allows Flapple to slot in outrage more easily, but it can still use sucker punch to deal with Reuniclus under trick room.
Lum Berry
While being locked into using outrage for 2-3 turns isn’t great, its aftereffect of making the user confused can be used to consume lum berry. Afterwards, acrobatics becomes a 110 base power move which is stronger than the less accurate dual wingbeat. This set may not have the same immediate power as Life Orb, but it doesn’t have to worry about chip damage putting it in range to be killed by a priority move.
Wide Lens
This set may have the lowest damage, but it makes up for it with consistency. With a wide lens, every move that would normally have 80% accuracy from hustle becomes 88% accurate, which makes it less likely that a random miss loses you the game. Dual Wingbeat also goes from being 72% accurate to 79.2% accurate.
Flaws
Though Flapple has great wall breaking and sweeping potential, it’s held back by consistency issues from hustle. Its speed stat is also not the greatest without a scarf, being outsped and OHKOed by Infernape, Scyther, Goodra, Kingdra, and potentially even Megahorn Virizion. It also can’t break through Torkoal which is a top 10 mon currently, so Flapple needs teammates that can do so like Golurk or Goodra.
Written by AlfrexFrostStaff