SS OU Sand Balance (Peaked 1877) Feedback welcome!

[michael209]

Introduction

**Hi everyone, I used to battle a lot on PO/Showdown back in Gen 4 and 5 and this is the first time I've built a team in a while. With a lot of rain, sun, and general HO teams going around in gen 8, I wanted to build a balanced offense team focused around sand and Sand Rush Excadrill. This team is really good for learning the current SS OU metagame because it tests your battling skills more than just team matchups. The main gameplan revolves around clearing the path for Excadrill to sweep by setting up hazards and weakening checks with the Hippo/Clef/Ferro core. **

The Team

Bernie Sanders @ Smooth Rock
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def
Impish Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Whirlwind
- Slack Off
​

**Hippowdon is the best sand setter in the game due to it not being scared of Dugtrio, its ability to wall out most physical attackers, and phazing ability in Whirlwind. Max defense allows it to switch into Conkeldurr, Obstagoon, Terrakion, Bisharp, etc. with no problems. Smooth Rock is important to keep sand up as long as possible, even though it is often knocked off. This is one of our crucial pokemon, make sure to keep him healthy to the end.**

Excadrill @ Life Orb
Ability: Sand Rush
EVs: 56 HP / 252 Atk / 200 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- Iron Head
​

**Excadrill in sand is a scary thing to see. Earthquake and Iron Head are classic STAB coverage while rock slide lets us hit Rotom-H for SE damage. Rock slide also lets us hit Corviknight and other rotom forms harder than the other two moves. Swords dance gives us enough power to break through walls in the late game such as Seismetoad, Mandibuzz, and Ferrothorn. Jolly nature and 200 speed EVs is preferred over Adamant because it lets us outspeed +2 adamant cloyster and scarf Dragapult in sand. It's also enough to outspeed opposing Adamant sand rush Excadrill so we don't have to rely on a speed tie. Life orb provides the power to KO weakened opponents in the late game and enough power to break through physical walls after an SD. This Pokemon should be used sparingly until your opponent's checks are weakened or removed. **

Clefable @ Leftovers/Heavy Duty Boots
Ability: Unaware
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Wish
- Protect
- Moonblast
- Aromatherapy
​

**Most people are running Magic Guard but Unaware is a sleeper pick. It lets us wall out most calm mind set up sweepers, beats Nasty Plot Rotom-H (which has become widespread to beat MG clef), NP Hydreigon, and can switch into specs Kyurem at full health. It also acts as our cleric to heal nasty burns or poison on itself or its teammates. This beats most Dragapult sets (even DD steel wing) due to unaware and is a an overall solid SpecDef wall to hold the team together. Heavy Duty Boots can be used over Leftovers to feign a Magic Guard set and prevent hazards from killing itself**

Ferrothorn @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Impish Nature
- Spikes
- Leech Seed
- Body Press
- Iron Head
​

**Hazard setter and general nuisance to the opposition. If they lack a Magic Bounce/Rapid Spinner, the goal is to get up hazards as soon as possible to chip away at their switches or force a Defog. Max defense and rocky helmet gives Adamant Band Dracovish a 27% chance of 2HKOing. Meanwhile, each fischious rend hurts it with tons of passive damage due to iron barbs + rocky helmet while I can either leech seed it or set up spikes. Since this team has no water absorb Pokemon, this is the next best thing. Body press OHKOs Bisharp who like to set up SD, and Iron Head is to threaten specially defensive clefables and hatterene switch ins.**

Bisharp @ Black Glasses
Ability: Defiant
EVs: 80 HP / 252 Atk / 176 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Iron Head
- Knock Off
- Sucker Punch
​

**Since I have both SR and spikes on this team for Excadrill to sweep, I needed a way to discourage defog users. Bisharp maintains momentum on the defog and threatens a +2 knock off. This Pokemon also checks aegislash and can come in clutch in the late game with sucker punches. Iron head hits the fat fairies hard and does a lot of damage to defensive Kommo combined with knock off at +2. This is usually enough for Excadrill to sweep it later on.**

Dragapult @ Leftovers/Metronome
Ability: Infiltrator
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Hex
- U-turn
- Will-O-Wisp
​

**Wisp/Hex Dragapult is so good. Besides everything that it does well, it also burns and forces out/weakens Corviknight with Hex which is the #1 barrier to an Excadrill sweep. Metronome prevents the opponent from Roost stalling out Hex or Recover stalling with Toxapex, since the damage piles up. Leftovers is the other option for better all-around passive recovery. U-Turn gives us momentum on the switch and its natural speed is great in this metagame. Its typing allows us to play mindgames with Conkeldurr and hits it hard due to Hex. **

Conclusion​

**That's it! Feel free to use try out the team on the ladder yourself, and please suggest any changes you'd like to see!*

Importable

Hippowdon @ Smooth Rock
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def
Impish Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Whirlwind
- Slack Off

Excadrill @ Life Orb
Ability: Sand Rush
EVs: 56 HP / 252 Atk / 200 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- Iron Head

Clefable @ Leftovers
Ability: Unaware
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Wish
- Protect
- Moonblast
- Aromatherapy

Ferrothorn @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Impish Nature
- Spikes
- Leech Seed
- Body Press
- Iron Head

Bisharp @ Black Glasses
Ability: Defiant
EVs: 80 HP / 252 Atk / 176 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Iron Head
- Knock Off
- Sucker Punch

Dragapult @ Leftovers
Ability: Infiltrator
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Hex
- U-turn
- Will-O-Wisp

Replays:

Replay 1
Replay 2
Replay 3 (Metronome would have been helpful here)

 

[michael209]

Thanks

Heyyos! Your team is such a bomb ass team. I took it for a couple of runs and I must say that I really really love the synergy going on. Considering that the team is build around focusing on cleaning up with excadrill, it does it's job super duper well and I must say it's well built~ Not much suggestion I can give here to improve on your team but I did notice a few things.

Firstly, it is quite weak to Facade Conkeldurr. Facade has a clean chance to knock Clef out from close to full and if you lose hippo at any point of time, you might just get completely neutralized by Conk. Speaking of neutralizing, how about we try Neutralizing Gas Galarian Weezing over clefable? let's look at your team, the mons that you will be wish passing to are most likely going to be hippo ferro or dragapult (excluding clef itself). Hippo has it's own recovery and ferro has a way of steady recovery. The only mon that will really truly miss the wish passing is dragapult and even then you wont be letting pult eat a lot of hits anyway since you want to be crippling opponents and running away. Therefore, you should give Gweezing a chance! Since this change means that you wont need to worry Conk as well as opposing weathers that might hinder your game plan since neutralizing gas stops those abilities as well. Furthermore Gweezing gets aromatherapy and pain split too so it has a form of pseudo semi-reliable recovery as well and can also help spread status for your pult.

Next is just some small time changes that you might find a bit interesting. Your team is actually ironically pretty weak to opposing excadrills as well. Since you alr have a form of pseudo check in the form of jolly drill as well as hippo, I think a small extra change that would be helpful would be to run Assault Vest Bisharp. This set is actually a relic from ORAS OU where a famous stall team used AV Bisharp to a very large effect, this is an interesting pick since it would allow you to tank specs Ice Beams from kyurem. Honestly, it's really hard to find checks for Kyurem on balance teams and it's rlly annoying but this set helps your retain Bisharp's defiant niche as well as giving you a pseudo check to Specs Kyurem.

Alright! That's all I really have for you! Not much changes since your team is already pretty strong and with how many threats there are in the metagame, our best bet is just to play around them. Cheers!

set

(Weezing-Galar) (M) @ Black Sludge
Ability: Neutralizing Gas
EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpD / 8 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Pain Split
- Strange Steam
- Sludge Bomb
- Will-O-Wisp

Bisharp @ Assault Vest
Ability: Defiant
EVs: 80 HP / 252 Atk / 176 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Iron Head
- Knock Off
- Sucker Punch

Thanks so much for the reply and test run of the team. I love the Galarian weezing suggestion, I'll try it out! I'm scared of getting walled out by nasty plot/calm mind pokemon but we'll see :)

I also like the assault vest idea. Specs Kyurem is really annoying if there's hazards up since I need to decide what to sack, so this is a super good change. Hopefully the lack of glasses doesn't hurt it too much. Thank you!!

 

[Mismo_YT]

Heyyos! Your team is such a bomb ass team. I took it for a couple of runs and I must say that I really really love the synergy going on. Considering that the team is build around focusing on cleaning up with excadrill, it does it's job super duper well and I must say it's well built~ Not much suggestion I can give here to improve on your team but I did notice a few things.

Firstly, it is quite weak to Facade Conkeldurr. Facade has a clean chance to knock Clef out from close to full and if you lose hippo at any point of time, you might just get completely neutralized by Conk. Speaking of neutralizing, how about we try Neutralizing Gas Galarian Weezing over clefable? let's look at your team, the mons that you will be wish passing to are most likely going to be hippo ferro or dragapult (excluding clef itself). Hippo has it's own recovery and ferro has a way of steady recovery. The only mon that will really truly miss the wish passing is dragapult and even then you wont be letting pult eat a lot of hits anyway since you want to be crippling opponents and running away. Therefore, you should give Gweezing a chance! Since this change means that you wont need to worry Conk as well as opposing weathers that might hinder your game plan since neutralizing gas stops those abilities as well. Furthermore Gweezing gets aromatherapy and pain split too so it has a form of pseudo semi-reliable recovery as well and can also help spread status for your pult.

Next is just some small time changes that you might find a bit interesting. Your team is actually ironically pretty weak to opposing excadrills as well. Since you alr have a form of pseudo check in the form of jolly drill as well as hippo, I think a small extra change that would be helpful would be to run Assault Vest Bisharp. This set is actually a relic from ORAS OU where a famous stall team used AV Bisharp to a very large effect, this is an interesting pick since it would allow you to tank specs Ice Beams from kyurem. Honestly, it's really hard to find checks for Kyurem on balance teams and it's rlly annoying but this set helps your retain Bisharp's defiant niche as well as giving you a pseudo check to Specs Kyurem.

Alright! That's all I really have for you! Not much changes since your team is already pretty strong and with how many threats there are in the metagame, our best bet is just to play around them. Cheers!

set

(Weezing-Galar) (M) @ Black Sludge
Ability: Neutralizing Gas
EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpD / 8 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Pain Split
- Strange Steam
- Sludge Bomb
- Will-O-Wisp

Bisharp @ Assault Vest
Ability: Defiant
EVs: 80 HP / 252 Atk / 176 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Iron Head
- Knock Off
- Sucker Punch

Swords Dance on AV Bisharp is if they knock off the AV? Or maybe we can give it a 4th attack?
EDIT: I love GWeezing, it's awesome vs. Guts breakers and other things! :D

 

[Mismo_YT]

I honestly think Bish with dual stab is fine as is. So SD / Sleep Talk for the 4th attack is fine if you asked me and yeah the 4th move is for knock off sponging, since this team runs smooth rock hippo, you dont want to jump in willy nilly to absorb a knock off with your Clef / Hippo! so having bish as like a compressed check is pretty fun.

Bruh I am a major advocate of Gweezing. I bloody love it.

I see, seems a good idea, and yeah, GWeezing got me in love :D

 

[Seronius]

Great Team. I love balance. I'm a new player gen 8 is my first attempt at competitive pokemon. I find balance is the best play style to build fundamentals on. Like you said this team test your fundamentals and makes you play the game without gimmicks. Thanks for the Team https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1078527867

 

[michael209]

Great Team. I love balance. I'm a new player gen 8 is my first attempt at competitive pokemon. I find balance is the best play style to build fundamentals on. Like you said this team test your fundamentals and makes you play the game without gimmicks. Thanks for the Team https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1078527867

I’m glad you found competitive Pokémon and this team! Thanks for trying it out :)

 

[Robot7620]

love this team, but a few nitpicks
disclaimer, i've been out of the loop for about 1 month now, so take this w/ a pinch of salt
pult really appreciates spell tag, it has to the ability to pick up on a few key KO's, the most notable one being 2hkoing physdef pex so i'd run spell tag over lefties
i'd also suggest perhaps using metronome excadrill.
The ability to run rapid spin over rock slide (because w/ metronome you break through non/body press corv) and function outside of sand, is honestly, such a big boon for sand rush drill. Granted, this works much better on webs due to mold breaker, but i'd suggest taking it out for a spin (haha get it rapid spin but seriously your team lacks hazard removal so )
however, since your team does have a bit of an awkward MU vs heattom (only a bit) it might not be worth it
you should always run metronome drill on webs but that's a whole different ballpark
also im confused why you lack hazard removal
this makes the MU vs stuff like webs just a really downhill battle

 

[michael209]

love this team, but a few nitpicks
disclaimer, i've been out of the loop for about 1 month now, so take this w/ a pinch of salt
pult really appreciates spell tag, it has to the ability to pick up on a few key KO's, the most notable one being 2hkoing physdef pex so i'd run spell tag over lefties
i'd also suggest perhaps using metronome excadrill.
The ability to run rapid spin over rock slide (because w/ metronome you break through non/body press corv) and function outside of sand, is honestly, such a big boon for sand rush drill. Granted, this works much better on webs due to mold breaker, but i'd suggest taking it out for a spin (haha get it rapid spin but seriously your team lacks hazard removal so )
however, since your team does have a bit of an awkward MU vs heattom (only a bit) it might not be worth it
you should always run metronome drill on webs but that's a whole different ballpark
also im confused why you lack hazard removal
this makes the MU vs stuff like webs just a really downhill battle

Thanks for the rate. I don't have a defogger because I have a ton of my own hazards as that's part of my core plan. Defog on the other team doesn't bother me because they would remove their own hazards as well. If they hazard stack and have a rapid spinner, it's really hard to play around but I can spin block with Dragapult if needed. I like your idea about metronome drill but for a sand rush team I can't bother bringing drill out early (loses health due to hazards) when its purpose is for late game sweeping. Webs is hard yes, sand rush drill still outspeeds most things though. Defiant helps in that MU as well. I'll try out metronome rapid spin drill and see what happens though, thanks again!

 

[sufys]

Heyyos! Your team is such a bomb ass team. I took it for a couple of runs and I must say that I really really love the synergy going on. Considering that the team is build around focusing on cleaning up with excadrill, it does it's job super duper well and I must say it's well built~ Not much suggestion I can give here to improve on your team but I did notice a few things.

Firstly, it is quite weak to Facade Conkeldurr. Facade has a clean chance to knock Clef out from close to full and if you lose hippo at any point of time, you might just get completely neutralized by Conk. Speaking of neutralizing, how about we try Neutralizing Gas Galarian Weezing over clefable? let's look at your team, the mons that you will be wish passing to are most likely going to be hippo ferro or dragapult (excluding clef itself). Hippo has it's own recovery and ferro has a way of steady recovery. The only mon that will really truly miss the wish passing is dragapult and even then you wont be letting pult eat a lot of hits anyway since you want to be crippling opponents and running away. Therefore, you should give Gweezing a chance! Since this change means that you wont need to worry Conk as well as opposing weathers that might hinder your game plan since neutralizing gas stops those abilities as well. Furthermore Gweezing gets aromatherapy and pain split too so it has a form of pseudo semi-reliable recovery as well and can also help spread status for your pult.

Next is just some small time changes that you might find a bit interesting. Your team is actually ironically pretty weak to opposing excadrills as well. Since you alr have a form of pseudo check in the form of jolly drill as well as hippo, I think a small extra change that would be helpful would be to run Assault Vest Bisharp. This set is actually a relic from ORAS OU where a famous stall team used AV Bisharp to a very large effect, this is an interesting pick since it would allow you to tank specs Ice Beams from kyurem. Honestly, it's really hard to find checks for Kyurem on balance teams and it's rlly annoying but this set helps your retain Bisharp's defiant niche as well as giving you a pseudo check to Specs Kyurem.

Alright! That's all I really have for you! Not much changes since your team is already pretty strong and with how many threats there are in the metagame, our best bet is just to play around them. Cheers!

set

(Weezing-Galar) (M) @ Black Sludge
Ability: Neutralizing Gas
EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpD / 8 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Pain Split
- Strange Steam
- Sludge Bomb
- Will-O-Wisp

Bisharp @ Assault Vest
Ability: Defiant
EVs: 80 HP / 252 Atk / 176 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Iron Head
- Knock Off
- Sucker Punch

Assault vest doesn't work with swords dance. Bisharp is also meant to SD and sweep, and it is not an effective check for kyurem as if kyurem runs earth power, whether you run assault vest or not you will go down. Besides the main point of bisharp is to put pressure on your opponent as well as set up on them and with AV you are not going to be able to do that.

 

[StepC]

Yo bruh, I agree with many observations you have made, for this reason I believe that some improvements that I am going to make are based on almost similar reasoning with the aim of making it even better.

The first thing that stands out with team compliance is that you don't have ground immunity, Ground-Types as Mamo is bad threat for u, moreover known that you can not count on a defogger nor a spinner, bad choice in my opinion especially if you prefer to play with Clef with Unaware.
In my opinion Bisharp does not have a good usage in the Sand Team due to the fact that a Ferrothorn or a Corvknight with Body Press would be enough to knock him out.

over Bisharp is very good to Have more control vs Ferro n Corv, moreover it is a better pivot especially if you abuse a weather condition.
Nasty Plot is used to boost n win the 1vs1 vs Clefable n Togekiss.
Overheat is the best Stab move to hit Mamoswine, Excadrill or Kyurem.
Volt Switch is uset to volt turn vs Hydreigon, Kommo-o n Dracovish.
The last slot that i advise is Toxic vs Semistoad and Gastrodon that can wall him.

The last change I want to make is really about

.
I think you are forced to take advantage of Rapid Spin (for a possible speed boost even in end game) and in my opinion it is better to give it leftovers to ensure a better recovery of HP.
Optional:

Being able to extend the durability of the sand can be vital, but I believe that the possibility of having HP gradually recover here too can be strategically better.

Having expressed the necessary considerations, the team should be:

Team here

https://pokepast.es/03d1f65dac57ca95

 

[michael209]

Love the suggestion, I’ll try them out!