Drapion's good Speed and Defense make it a prime candidate for Swords Dancing, and Sniper is an amazing ability, especially with all the high-ratio critical hit moves that Drapion possesses. Night Slash is the main STAB attack here due to its high CH rate. Earthquake is there for coverage, particularly against Pokémon like Steelix, Toxicroak, and opposing Drapion. Ice Fang is the preferred option for Drapion’s final slot as it is Drapion’s strongest move against Altaria and opposing Grass-types like Vileplume and Meganium. Cross Poison gets a mention as an alternative to Ice Fang as it works well with Sniper and can help against certain Grass-types, but it doesn’t provide Drapion with any significant type coverage, besides doing slightly more than Earthquake against a few Fighting-types like Hitmontop. Scope Lens increases the chance of critical hit, although Life Orb is a great alternative as it gives a more reliable boost in power. Life Orb also means a Swords Danced Night Slash can 2HKO Quagsire and Blastoise.
Simple stuff—same as above, but with more outright damage potential. Earthquake, Night Slash and Ice Fang offer great coverage in UU, while the last move is up to preference. Cross Poison offers Drapion another reliable STAB move which benefits from Sniper, while Pursuit allows Drapion to pick off weakened foes who might attempt to flee.
Drapion's base Special Defense is substantially lower than its Defense but Drapion's typing affords its useful resistances to Dark, Ghost, and Grass-type attacks, as well as immunity to Psychic-type attacks, and thus allows it to counter a number of special-based threats. With these EVs, Drapion's HP and Special Defense reach 344 and 271 respectively. This means that a Timid Gengar can only 4HKO at best with Focus Blast, should it deal average damage. Watch out for Life Orb variants though, which 3HKO with Focus Blast, although there is only a 34% chance that Focus Blast will successfully hit three times in a row. With just 12 EVs invested into Attack, Drapion's Crunch OHKOes Gengar on average. Drapion does well against Psychic-types, such as Azelf, thanks to immunity to their STAB attacks; Azelf can only manage to deal a maximum of 77% damage after a Nasty Plot from a Life Orbed Flamethrower. Crunch provides a reliable STAB attack, hits the aforementioned Pokémon for super effective damage and is supplemented by Earthquake to provide good coverage in tandem, as well as turning Drapion into a good counter for the Boah variants of Tyranitar and Calm Mind Jirachi. Furthermore, Earthquake is a deterrent for the likes of Heatran and Lucario. Toxic Spikes and Whirlwind are two options that could replace Earthquake. In the case of the former, with Drapion's multiple resistances, it is relatively easy to find time to set up layers of Toxic Spikes, whereas Whirlwind enables Drapion to phaze out bulkier threats and scout the opponent's team. Rest and Sleep Talk provide Drapion with the durability to repeatedly counter the threats for which he is tailored to do so and is also helpful for soaking sleep-inducing attacks from Pokémon in both OU and UU that carry these attacks regularly, such as Gengar, Roserade, Hypno, and Vileplume, all of which are Pokémon that Drapion can wall relatively easily.
Drapion has pretty sturdy defenses and is immune to critical hits with Battle Armor, making it quite a decent wall in UU. Taunt stops opponents from phazing, statusing, or even recovering, which is always handy on a wall with Drapion’s Speed. Toxic Spikes is a neat move against the right teams, but there are many grounded Poison-types present in UU, so it's unlikely to be as effective in comparison to OU, where most of the Poison-types there are either part Flying or have Levitate. Crunch is used in the next slot over Night Slash due to its higher base power and the lack of Sniper on the set. You can switch to Poison Jab for your STAB move, but it has inferior coverage compared to Crunch. The only real benefit is the ability to poison Flying-types, as they are immune to Toxic Spikes. The last slot is entirely up to preference. Ridding an opponent of their item with Knock Off is always useful, Earthquake provides type coverage (and wears down Poison-types trying to absorb Toxic Spikes). Whirlwind is useful for phazing, and works well with Stealth Rock support. Other OptionsDrapion can use Payback to hit anything that's faster or anything that switches in with 100 base power move plus STAB. Drapion also learns Agility, which can be used without a single Speed EV, but due to Drapion’s mediocre Attack stat, it’s not generally a good idea. Acupressure is a fun move to try that can sharply boost a stat at random, but it is too unreliable as a move to form a moveset around. EVsMax Speed with a Jolly nature will work for most sets; 95 base Speed is decent but not overwhelming. At best in UU you're only going to outspeed Toxicroak and other neutral natured base 95 Pokémon like Jynx and Leafeon. Offensive sets should also max Attack as Drapion's Attack isn't stellar and you'll probably be relying on Sniper and critical hits for your kills. The defensive set should run max HP and max Defense, as it will be taking quite a few hits. You can however shift EVs from Defense into Speed if you wish to outspeed any specific threats. OpinionWith Sniper, Drapion is a great Pokémon to use when luck is on your side. For the most part, 3x critical hits are going to wipe out even neutral targets. The rest of the story is a bit bleak, however—while Drapion's typing only gives it a single weakness, it only has 5 resistances / immunities, all of which are types rarely seen alongside each other. However, due to the fact that Drapion is a Poison-type, it will absorb Toxic Spikes on impact. This alone also makes it a solid addition to any OU team that lacks a spinner or a Poison-type. CountersDirect counters in UU for Drapion are hard to come by due to Drapion’s great type coverage and above average defense. A defensive Steelix and Sandslash make decent counters, as they can 2HKO Drapion with their STAB Earthquakes while Drapion fails to 2HKO either of them even after a Swords Dance; however, a Sniper boosted critical hit would actually OHKO them. Quagsire also works decently as a Drapion counter, but it has a small chance of being 2HKOed by Life Orb Night Slash after a Swords Dance. |
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