Intro
In a game that features giant boss monsters, incredibly obnoxious land snakes, and count'm TWO challenging trainer fights, Purrghast remains by far the single best thing about Coromon. In this guide, I shall hope to not just make you a fan of it but also allow you to hopefully destroy the competitive scene in ways noone thought was possible
Why Choose The Cat?
You may be asking yourself "sure this thing is cute, but why should I use it?". On first glance Purrghast looks to be a terrible mon, with pretty low stats aside from sp-a and a super limited pool with half of it being physical moves. In addition it has two pretty mediocre and polarizing abilities (tactical retreat being a discount regenerator?) and a ghost typing that doesn't offer much in terms of coverage. When you dig deeper however, you realise that appearances aren't everything.
Purrghast seperates itself from all of the other mons by being a bulky pivot capable of forcing switches while being unafraid of most things. Access to not one but two % current HP damaging moves allows it to widdle down walls that teams would otherwise struggle with, while multiple forms of healing in the form of ghastly nap and tactical retreat allow it to remain refreshed throughout fights. While it'll never be the mon who will 1v6 sweep a game, its ability to slot into a variety of teams and terrorize opponents quite effectively makes it an undervalued yet incredibly oppressive pick if used correctly.
How To Acquire
If you want to get this glorious cat in a perfect form, there's two ways:
Grinding
Much like every other mon in the game, you can get a perfect one by spending possibly hundreds of hours grinding the bushes. Luckily unlike other more annoying ones you can get the prevo in swarms of both the first and second stages making finding a perfect one less annoying (would reccommend the bushes in pawbury for that).
Buying One?
On the other hand if you're like me and are super lazy there is an option B to this. Very late into the game you'll access a snowy village. To the northwest of it there's a guy in some bushes looking for his own perfect mons, and is willing to give one of his spares in exchange for two potent essences.
Building The Cat- Moves
So now you have the cat with perfect potential, time to turn it into a killing machine. For movesets you will want to go with this (will explain why a little later on):
Kitty Claws
Your go-to move vs bulky tanks that need to be widdled down into "kill range". While Cat Scratch does way more damage, the lower accuracy makes it extremely risky and thus isn't reccommended.
Premonition
The big nuke, and something that can net surprisingly fast kills even with minimal sp-a investment.
Ghastly Nap
One half of what makes this set overpowered, being able to recover decent HP while dropping your opponent's accuracy will make them rip their hair out.
Disable
The other half of it, disabling your opponent's coverage move then "stalling" with nap and kitty claws allows you to get rid of a vast majority of threats.
Other Options:
Soul Swap?
A pretty decent option if you want to make this more of a supportive cat (would remove premonition for it). Since you're going to be stacking a ton of HP anyways it could allow you to give a teammate a new lease on life. That being said you get walled by a lot more things without the main nuking tool.
Building The Cat- Points/Abilities/Items
The piece de resistance and final part of the guide. For points, you'll want to devote as much into HP and defense as possible. Since Kitty Claws is a really good damaging tool that doesn't rely on offenses and Premonition has extremely high damage already, investing into offenses is a red herring and doesn't offer anything. In addition more HP allows for more abuse of ghastly nap/soul swap (if you go that route), making it a much preferred option.
Ability-wise you're suuuuper limited due to only having two. Tactical Retreat tends to be the preferred option as the HP gained when switching out synergizes with the rest of the build, and is more consistent than a 30% chance of living on 1HP. Plus with how tanky the cat will be, you'll never really hit a point in which surviving like that is necessary unless the game is already massively out of control.
Item-wise you'll want to go with revitalizer, for even more HP stacking nonsense. Other items could be useful like mull or juba fruits, but are only reccommended as niche options.
Strategies/Closing Thoughts
Battles with the cat tend to be dictated by what move you are able to disable. If you're against a set-up sweeper or a dedicated lead, saving disable for later and using premonition to force an early switch may be a better option than just tossing it out willy nilly. Speaking of which, set-up sweepers pair extremely well with purrghast due to its ability to cripple things and force multiple switches thanks to ghastly nap. Lucky Dugterra deserves special mention as after one streamline and some accuracy help it can become nigh unstoppable.
Ultimately, your success with the cat will entirely depend on whether you can capitalize on its strengths as a nuisance and not as an entire team destroyer. I hope this guide has helped show what a menace the innocent looking ghost cat can be. Also if you did find this guide useful, feel free to rate/comment. Was my first time doing one of these kinds of things, so any feedback would be nice.
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2788582639