Substitute or Iron Head for mega Mawile?

Question

My Mawile knows
-Play Rough
-Substitute
-Sucker Punch
-Swords Dance

Should I replace Substitute with Iron Head or keep it the way it is? Keep in mind I use Substitute to I have turns to set up.

Answer 1

Substitute in my opinion is better.

Here are some reasons:

• Mawile gets a lot of switch initiative i.e it can force switches with ease. Which means it gets a lot of opportunites to set-up Substitute
• Protects it from burn
• Helps it get an attack boost with Swords Dance
• Even though Steel does have some use offensively, it doesn't have enough to actually do much use, and Play Rough is usually enough.
• Is extremely unexpected with Focus Punch (if you ever wanted it instead of Swords Dance)

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However you can both if you want, as Mawile already has extremely high attack, so Swords Dance can be forgone. Instead of Iron Head on that set though, the better move could be Fire Fang.

Hope I helped!

Answer 2

Go for Iron Head.

Swords Dance
Nature: Adamant
Ability: Intimidate -> Huge Power
Item: Mawilite
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Sdef
- Swords Dance
- Play Rough
- Sucker Punch
- Iron Head/Ice Punch/Stone Edge/Thunder Punch

Attacker
Nature: Adamant
Ability: Intimidate -> Huge Power
Item: Mawilite
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Sdef
- Play Rough
- Sucker Punch
- Iron Head
- Ice Punch/Stone Edge/Thunder Punch

Sub Split
Nature: Adamant
Ability: Intimidate -> Huge Power
Item: Mawilite
EVs: 252 ATK / 172 Def / 84 Spe
- Substitute
- Sucker Punch
- Pursuit/Play Rough
- Pain Split

Answer 3

It actually depends whether its an attacking or defensive one.
Attacking, Iron head for obvious reasons.
Defensive, go for Substitute because its huge defense can stall out anything if invested in.

Here's a defensive good set:

252 Hp/200 Def/56 Atk
Intimidate --> Huge Power
Iron Head
Substitute
Focus Punch (only after you set up the substitute)
Iron Defense (only for stalling) OR Play Rough so you cant be shut down by taunting Steel type or those Prankster Taunt Thundurus variants which are more common than you think.

Physical set:

252 Hp/252 Atk/4 Def
Hyper Cutter--> Huge Power
Play Rough
Swords Dance/Rock Slide to cover that Fire weakness.
Iron Head
Sucker Punch
Pretty standard Physical Mawile set actually. All out attacking set if you didn't guess by the ability.

Hope I helped!
-demat