How to Counter Incineroar in Pokemon Champions

In Pokemon Champions, Incineroar is one of the most oppressive supports in duos, and one of the most versatile and dangerous Pokemon to face in single battles. Knowing how to counter it is key to surpassing most trainers in the current meta. While it doesn’t have the power of certain meta sweepers like Gengar, Incineroar is a versatile and powerful Pokemon, and skilled players use it to make others suffer a lot if caught unprepared.

Learn everything about Incineroar, how its kit works, the most used meta strategies trainers use with this Pokemon, and the best counters to defeat it in Pokemon Champions.

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Incineroar Abilities, Weaknesses, & Moves in Pokemon Champions

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Incineroar is an extremely powerful Pokemon, mainly because of its typing (Fire/Dark) and versatility. It can assume many roles depending on the builds trainers prepare, and thus, preparing a proper counter-strategy is a must.

Being weak to Ground, Water, Rock, and Fighting-type moves, Incineroar plays at a disadvantage against foes like Hippowdon and Sneasler (the latter, one of the top meta picks).

Now, talking about moves, Incineroar has access to Fake Out, Parting Shot, Flare Blitz, and Helping Hand. Trainers playing duos might also find this Pokemon and its Intimidate ability one of the most annoying things to face, more so if it has a Chople Berry or White Herb. What’s more, Incineroar might also be accompanied by Sneasler, or Sinistcha, tremendous duos that can cover for each other’s weaknesses and cause tons of trouble for inexperienced players.

How to Counter Incineroar/Sinistcha & Incineroar/Sneasler Duo in Pokemon Champions

When paired with Sinistcha, Incineroar will rotate with other Pokemon that use Intimidate, using Parting shot, and taking advantage of Sinistcha’s Hospitality ability (heals Pokemon on entry). The third wheel of this strategy is often Mega Manectric, which can use Volt Switch to rotate with Incineroar and constantly apply Intimidate and Healing on entry. Players can counter this by using Stealth Rock.
When paired with Sneasler, Incineroar will play in a much more aggressive fashion, but the main strategy will consist of ruining the timing using Fake Out, since Sneasler can also use this high-priority move. A decent strategy is to use a double Protect, but the downside is that if the opposing trainer.

Incineroar also works like a charm in Trick Room teams, since its low speed will put it right on top of the turn order. If the Double Protect strategy has a problem, it is the fact that Sinistcha can also become a Trick Room setter, and that could put players at a tremendous disadvantage here.

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Incineroar is one of the most used Pokemon in VGC, and in Pokemon Champions, it is considered an S-Tier pick in Duos, and A+ Tier in Single battles.

Ultimately, predicting is the only way to avoid a Trick Room and Switch in/out strategy from Incineroar. The other one is to have Pokemon with Defiant or Competitive, as these abilities will boost Attack or Special Attack stats by 2 stages when an ability or move that decreases stats activates. So, it is basically capitalizing on Incineroar’s ability to gain the upper hand. With that in mind, we will put on display a list of the best counters for Incineroar in Pokemon Champions.

Applying pressure by using strong Special Attackers is also a great way to deal with Incineroar before it can become a problem. Milotic with Competitive can ruin an Intimidate Incineroar since it is a free 2 Stage Sp. Attack Boost for Milotic, and this will lead to a powerful STAB Water-type Move like Scald or Muddy Water.

So, Milotic is an option, but what about Physical Attackers? In that case, Passimian or Kingambit are the optimal counters. Both have Defiant and have type advantage against Incineroar in the case of Passimian, and against Sinistcha in the case of Kingambit.

These Pokemon will gain two Stages of increased Attack each time Incineroar switches out with Mega Manectric (since both have Intimidate). So, the opposing trainer will have to rethink their strategy on the go, and that leaves them at a tremendous disadvantage.

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As players can see, it is actually quite simple to counter Incineroar in Duos. But in singles, that’s another tale. Most players believe Incineroar is only useful in Duos, so they might drop their Guard, thinking Switch/Intimidate teams cannot be used in single battles.

It is true that not having Sinistcha in the mix diminishes the impact of this strategy, but Mega Manectric, Incineroar, and Scizor are meta picks that have tons of coverage and can switch in and out, making players suffer from the effects of Intimidate.

Scizor has Technician (most of the time), so it will spam moves like Aerial Ace, Bug Bite, and Bullet Punch, which have great coverage and cause extra damage despite being low-power moves (Technician boosts them by 50%).

As with the SInistcha Duo teams, players should also use moves like Stealth Rocks to put pressure on rivals switching Pokemon all the time. It is the way to go to counter these annoying tactics. Plus, if they have Pokemon with moves like