>>34613962>>34615185It's a combination of so many SLIGHTLY broken things about the singles meta that have been building up for generations, all coming together to make Toxapex the perfect shitstorm.
Power of switching - in high-level play the most important move you have is the Switch. Most teams are built to handle the top threats, including your team, which means you need certain things to counteract them, which means switching. Every time Toxapex switches it gets free heals.
Power of hazards - See above, because singles forces you to switch so often, entry hazards are very strong. Toxapex is the premier tspikes setter.
Scald, and water types in general - Water is an amazing type, and Scald is a great move that has a chance to burn for free, plus respectable damage. Of course Toxapex has access to this.
Stalling and recovery - In singles, it's possible to just stall the enemy to death. Toxapex gets Recover, possibly the most reliable recovery in the game, on top of Regenerator.
Minmaxing - Gen 7 has a lot of Pokemon with minmaxed stats. Toxapex is one of these. It only has 495 BST, not so bad, right? Except almost 70% of its ENTIRE BST is dumped into defenses. Its stat distro is like Shuckle's, except it's a Water/Poison type with more than double the HP, Regenerator, Recover, hazards, Scald... Did I mention it's also a phazer? No setting up on it now!
Power creep - In the age of Megas and Z-moves, OHKOs are easier than ever to find. If you have Toxapex, all you have to do is eliminate the few things (probably only one or two) on your opponent's team that can break its stall. Once that's done, it's just a matter of waiting for your opponent to realize they've lost.
Frankly, this thing feels like it was created by Smogon for the Create-A-Pokemon project. There's no glaring flaw or weakness whatsoever. You just have to pray you still have something with a SE move that can break through it, and that it's special because le 30% face might still screw you.
