CAP 24 CAP 24 - Part 2 - Typing Discussion

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I don't think to have a particulary different answer to the questions so I will jump to the type discussion.
I agree that Grass type sounds good, but I'm unsure about Rock type, becuase while a SpD boost sounds wonderful, it's a bad defensive type.
Also if the opponent tries to abuse of your sun using a Fire boosted move, a single resistance will not be enough (especially if CAP24 will be an offensive mon).
Also the Rock type remove the option to go fully special since the most special powerful move that we have is Power Gem with only 80 BP
 
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Special is already hard to pull off in Sand teams though, as any Rock that switches in gets extra bulky specially already. There is a problem I’ve been wondering that’s made me rethink Grass- Pelipper. If we don’t have a second type to resist Hurricane, we are just waiting for Pelipper to switch in, destroy our weather, and Hurricane is into oblivion and proceed to rain team sweep. That’s part of why I’m a fan of Rock in CAP24, it allows us to stop some counterplay before it stops us.
 
1: Now that we've narrowed down to Sun and Sand, what areas and roles do these two weathers struggle or lack in? Are any of these holes in their team frameworks shared?

As has been demonstrated, Sun needs speed control and Sand needs breakers. Particularly special breakers.


2: What typings address the weaknesses of Sun/Sand teams individually?

Firstly, Sun's best abilities are stuck on grass types, which are weak to the fire empowering that Sun provides. As such, I think that we need something that is not weak to fire (resisting it would be even better). This suggests Rock, Dragon or Water (water is not ideal, due to preferring Rain to Sun though).

Secondly, Sand's main two mon are both weak to Fighting. A Fighting resistance, or at least, neutrality could help as could a type that does SE damage to Fighting. This suggests Ghost, Psychic or Fairy.

Scaring away Pelliper and Alolan-Ninetails would help (with that order of priority), which suggests Rock, Electric (though I don't want CAP24 to benefit from Rain's boost to Thunder accuracy) or Steel.

People are also understandable scared of Ash-Greninja (Suggesting electric, dragon, grass, fighting or bug and discouraging types that are too weak to water), Tomohawk (Suggesting electric, flying, Psychic, poison or ghost and discouraging typings weak to Fighting and Flying) and Landorus (suggesting Ice or Flying and discouraging types weak to Ground, in particular, and Flying, to a lessor extent).


3: Is it better to have a different typing than the common Pokemon on current Sun/Sand teams, or to stack typings with existing abusers?

The only benefits Grass supplies are STAB Solar Beam/Blade (which cannot be relied on, due to weather switching), water resistance (which is supplied by Sun anyway) and Ground resistance. It comes with a bunch of problems though, like weakness to Ice, Flying and Fire. I think that most Grass typings should be avoided unless paired with something that helps deal with those.

Fire helps with Sun's boost, meaning a lot of power, but Sun needs speed more than power, so this might be less necessary.

Sand needs Rock, Steel or Ground to avoid chip damage, but abilities can overcome this dependency and eating chip damage can soetimes e worth it.

Those typings also gain a Sand Force boost that an additional STAB boost can lift to the large power needed for a breaker.

However, Sand Force also mitigates chip damage from Sand, and using it for coverage instead of STAB makes our breaker more versatile, which could be worth it, even at the cost of power.

EDIT: Professor Mesquite We don't need to worry about other Sand or Sun teams. If they counter us, they've become relevant and we've done our job.
 
Professor Mesquite said:
Grass/Fairy runs prey to both Weathers’ sweepers though. Excadrill can Iron Head it to death, and [insert cliche Fire type weather abuser] can wreck it. In fact, this mon would be dead walled against Charizard Y, who can then proceed to kill your teammates. If we want to look into Grass/Fairy, we need to decide if a fast Tapu Bulu would have a chance in the CAP meta. The answer is a swingy yes, but perhaps the most matchup dependent mon I could imagine. Toxapex appears? CAP24 can’t do anything. Cawmadore appears? CAP24 wishes it had a typing that could hit it. Steel is the best and bulkiest type, and if CAP24 ends up with no capability to counter it, defining it as a Stallbreaker or sweeper is pointless.

This brings up some of the unique typings. Ground/Fairy and Fire/Fairy patch up the Steel problem, with Ground being able to take on Toxapex and Fire taking on Cawmadore. They lose the Water-Shuriken resistance in exchange for a weakness, but if we demand a mon resistant to water, we really box ourselves in to avoiding so much. Fire, Rock, and Ground are all wonderfully benefited by the weather combo, but they are also the only types weak to water. This deviation from traditional weather types isn’t bad, but reminds me of perhaps one of the worst weather abusers I saw legitimately talked about. Hail Jirachi.

Hail Jirachi is a relic from infinite hail days, and is what I can only define as ill suited. It was recommended to carry Leftovers to prevent chip, run Serene Grace, and spam Iron Head. Where does Hail fit in? To benefit from Chip damage. I’m not saying Hail teams didn’t benefit from it- they don’t have a lot to begin with, but now that weather is so finite, CAP24 needs to use it before it’s gone, and use it creatively. Thinking defensively is great, Pokémon tend to enjoy surviving more than one hit, but we have the opportunity to make a Pokémon explicitly for utilizing weather to full potential, and that potential is more than resisting Water moves. I think my main problem with rejecting fire or rock typings is that without them, we are just building an Ash-Greninja counter, rather than a weather user. Abilities that benefit from weather are all fine and dandy, but when they only help you against one threat (I guess Argohnaut too but that’s for another time) instead of the meta as a whole, you begin to move away from Drew’s concept too much, and begin a Decentralizer concept instead of a Dual-Weather user.
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You misunderstand though. A fast Tapu Bulu is not the same thing. For one, Tapu Bulu lacks a Fairy-type STAB, which already makes the comparison flawed. Additionally, CAP24 has the capacity to be more specially-biased as well. I'm not propping up Grass / Fairy solely because it counters Greninja-Ash, though it is a huge positive. I certainly do think this typing enables Sun and Sand based teams to function well, as they, again, currently lack good answers to Water- and Grass-types. CAP24, if it ends up Grass / Fairy, can have coverage to work past Steel-types, especially because this is partly a Sun-based concept, which can take advantage of Fire-type coverage easily (hopefully more than Hidden Power Fire). Threats discussion exists for a reason. Sun teams need a Grass-type on the team to get past bulky Water-types like Arghonaut as well; Grass / Fairy fits the bill here. Yes, Arghonaut gets Gunk Shot, but Arghonaut has terrible 4MSS as it is right now, trying to fit on Circle Throw, Spikes, Recover, Scald, Knock Off, etc. so it's not likely to run Gunk Shot, and if it does, it's missing out on some serious utility.

I'm also not rejecting Fire-, Rock- and Ground-type combinations; I simply don't like Water-weak type combinations, especially 4x weak combinations. Ash-Greninja is a common, powerful threat that we have to be able to work around in some capacity, as Sun and Sand teams at the moment lack solid answers for it. However, we also have to account for the fact that Fire- and Rock-type combinations are weak to Ground-type attacks, which Sun and Sand teams struggle with too, particularly Sand because of Tyranitar and Excadrill. How many type-combinations does that leave us? I think it's clear that Water- and Ground-type attacks threaten current Sun-based and Sand-based teams, and I really do think a good Grass-type will be able to patch up these team's common weaknesses. Venusaur just doesn't cut it these days on Sun-based teams, and Tangrowth just makes the Tomohawk weakness even worse because it gets walled by it alongside Tyranitar and Excadrill. We can make a CAP that abusers weather in a way that has reasoning behind it. An abuser that's more than just trying to take advantage of every type of boost that weather probides. An abuser that can actually help the teams it's supposed to appear on. Again, who cares if we make a CAP that abuses weather but can't fit on the teams based around that weather? It's not at all a decentralizer that's specifically trying to get around Greninja-Ash; it's trying to better enable the Sun and Sand based teams that it wants to fit on.

Professor Mesquite said:
Special is already hard to pull off in Sand teams though, as any Rock that switches in gets extra bulky specially already. There is a problem I’ve been wondering that’s made me rethink Grass- Pelipper. If we don’t have a second type to resist Hurricane, we are just waiting for Pelipper to switch in, destroy our weather, and Hurricane is into oblivion and proceed to rain team sweep. That’s part of why I’m a fan of Rock in CAP24, it allows us to stop some counterplay before it stops us.
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There are four actual common Rock-types in the Metagame: Tyranitar, Diancie Mega, Mega Crucibelle, and, to an extent, Stratagem. The "wow Rock-types get a special defense boost" point really needs to be not so over-hyped. Going special is basically mandatory to break through Tomohawk and Landorus-T, two physically defensive Pokemon that wall Sand-based teams already. Also, Pelipper is really slow and specially-weak, so hitting it before it can use Hurricane would be optimal, as CAP24 will hopefully be faster than Pelipper. And if Pelipper decides to avoid that special attack, the rest of the team (commonly Mega Swampert, Greninja-Ash, Kingdra, Ferrothorn, etc) isn't going to want to deal with a STAB Grass-type (or Fairy-type, in which case Tomohawk can be added to the list) attack or a Fire-type coverage move that, again, CAP24 is likely to get because it's trying to abuse Sun. If anything, Grass-typing helps there.
 
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What I meant earlier by Fire/Dragon providing a different offensive threat is that Sand teams currently don't use them often. ScarfChomp has generally fallen out of favor, and it mostly used Fire moves as a prediction tool rather than direct offense. Dragon would often see it Outrage-locked. A Fire/Dragon CAP that could operate in Sand would avoid those issues and threaten some of Sand'd more defensive answers.

What gives me the most pause about Grass-Fairy is it seems to be papering over the fact it's going to have difficulty switching into Tomohawk (defensive runs Air Slash which isn't weather reliant) and if it doesn't actually set sun Pelipper to an extent. I think even Hawlucha was mentioned, but Hawlucha mauls Grass/Fairy with Acrobatics, no setup required. Being able to hit super-effectively or exploit coverage does not a good typing make.

Generally speaking I'd like to prioritize Flying resistance over Ground resistance because there are two items which supply a situational ability to switch into Ground attacks (Shuca Berry and Air Balloon), plus a,support move if they come in after the fact (CAP appears to have room for 3-Attack or 3-Attack coverage on most types suggested) and Earthquake is one of the more predictable incoming attacks to deal with. If Landorus-T switches into Tyranitar, it is unlikely its next move is going to be scouting Air Balloon with Hidden Power Ice. It might try to set up SD, might try to set up rocks, or might U-turn (which *is* a problem for Air Balloon CAP) but usually it is going to want to remove a very threatening Tyranitar in front of it.

Grass / Fairy's strongest point wasn't mentioned though. It's about the best switchin you can get to Zygarde.

The bigger threats to me of our big 3 are Tomohawk and Lando-T because they actually serve as pivots we might have to switch into, at least from our Sand setter. Ash-Gren by contrast is a revenge killer or something pivoted into via VoltTurn.
 
Solarbeam, Solar Blade and Weather Ball are not good moves. They don't even have extraordinarily high base power to compensate for their total dependancy on your weather going undisturbed. Power Whip is much better. Weather Ball has a small niche in being the strongest special rock STAB, but that's about it. It would be extremely shaky to rely on as your main STAB move.
 
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Everyone, don't forget that without being ground, rock, or steel, the CAP will slowly die in sand. We can't give it steel cause it would get destroyed in the sun, so we should be sure to give it either ground or rock. Also, we should try to avoid talking about abilities; it's about typing right now.
 
1: Now that we've narrowed down to Sun and Sand, what areas and roles do these two weathers struggle or lack in? Are any of these holes in their team frameworks shared?

I wrote a pretty sizable post about this in Concept Assessment, but I think it's worth repeating how disappointing Venusaur is; whenever I've used Sun I've been saddened by it's utter lack of killing power and very sketchy coverage. Sand is more about punching through things that Tyranitar and Excadrill have issues with-- Celesteela, Greninja, Tomohawk.... I feel that having strong STABs is a must for this, as both of its important roles are distinctly offensive in nature.

More importantly, I'd like to address an annoying trend I've seen here with regard to role. We do not need to have a great individual matchup with Rain, especially when CAP 24 is used on Sun. Sun in particular can run Thunder Punch (or HP Electric) Charizard-Y, which is an absolute matchup nightmare for practically every Rain team. Sand has a harder time, certainly, but Sand also has more team flexibility to work with as well. I'm not saying that we should have a *bad* matchup with Rain, but I am saying that Rain doesn't dominate this metagame, and how CAP 24 performs against non-Weather will be more important the great majority of the time.

2: What typings address the weaknesses of Sun/Sand teams individually?

Sand teams tend to most appreciate Grass and Water types, because they are vulnerable to Greninja (especially Protean, though typing doesn't really fix that), Volkraken, and Zygarde. They also appreciate types that can break Tomohawk and to a lesser extent, Landorus-T.

Sun really appreciates having Ground, Water and Fire resistances, due to the prevalence of Fire types on Sun teams. Fire is the least important of these due to the high likelihood of having at least one and probably both of Heatran and Volkraken.


3: Is it better to have a different typing than the common Pokemon on current Sun/Sand teams, or to stack typings with existing abusers?

We should absolutely diversify typings here--it's a major disadvantage of both Sand and Sun that their counters use common attacking types (Water, Ground) and frequently have recovery (Sun struggles with Cyclohm a lot).


With this in mind, a feel the qualities we ought to look for include:

--not being easily walled offensively
--resisting Water and ideally Ground as well
--being helped by Fire and/or Rock attacks being boosted, either with STAB or coverage.

Because of these, I feel the strongest combinations are Fairy typings combined with a second type that resists Water and one of Fire or Ground--in other words, Water/Fairy, Grass/Fairy or Dragon/Fairy.

snake_rattler already made a really compelling argument for Grass/Fairy, so I'd like to address Water/Fairy and Dragon/Fairy.

Water/Fairy sounds like a strange type to propose for a Pokemon that should see use on Sun, but Fairy is such a good offensive type that on a Sun team the second STAB is unnecessary, given even basic Fairy and Fire coverage. Water would provide crucial Water and Fire resistances, neutrality to Bullet Punch and only add weaknesses to Grass (an uncommon attacking type) and Electric, both weaknesses Malaconda can cover for.

For Sand, Water/Fairy would be an even greater asset, protecting against multiple Water type threats while threatening Tomohawk and Landorus-T. There are doubtlessly some who would worry about a Water type encouraging Rain, but these fears are baseless. Rain teams are far more motivated to use Water Pokemon that have Weather abusing abilities or types that protect against common Rain weaknesses; Water/Fairy is weak to common threats to Rain like Ferrothorn and Tapu Bulu, and has no realistic use for even HP Fire if Rain is active.

Dragon/Fairy resists both Water and Fire as well, but it adds a weakness to Ice, which is fine for Sun, but potentially hazardous for Sand, which rarely has many Ice resists. Still, the offensive potential of Dragon/Fairy is amazing, especially in Sun.

As a final note, I feel that Rock is being overrated as a type, especially in the Grass/Rock combination. Getting the Sand SpD buff sounds good until you realize that we are asking this Pokemon to perform offensive roles and that the major of special attackers will be hitting us supereffective if they hit us at all. Rock could be okay in the right type combination, but I feel that it is being substantially overrated, particularly for Sun.
 
BARABOY said:
Everyone, don't forget that without being ground, rock, or steel, the CAP will slowly die in sand. We can't give it steel cause it would get destroyed in the sun, so we should be sure to give it either ground or rock. Also, we should try to avoid talking about abilities; it's about typing right now.
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Question: Why is Life Orb Chip damage fine and Sandstorm damage not?
 
Project_Mars said:
Question: Why is Life Orb Chip damage fine and Sandstorm damage not?
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because life orb's increased damage output outweighs the negative of losing a little health. Taking sand damage has to positive attributes unless you have a sand based ability, but even then you can have the sand ability without the sand damage.
 
Mod Post: A brief note about what is and is not polljumping, as there has been a little too much rules lawyering in this thread:

It is perfectly fine to mention that abilities exist which provide sand immunity without specifically saying a phrase like "Ability <Insert Typing>." Suggesting a "Typing with <Insert Ability/Abilities>" is a polljump.

Thus, specific ability discussions even if they are groupable are beyond the scope of this discussion. Mentioning they exist as an argument your type is not inherently anti-concept is acceptable. Theorymoning a proposed typing would be awesome with an ability-based immunity or boosted sand move coverage or double speed in sand or sun is not acceptable.
 
Water/Fairy seems like an extremely shaky idea. We're asking our offensive mon that's supposed to be good in the Sun to have typing that neuters half of its STAB moves while in the Sun. It's not like Toxapex, where Water mostly serves to add bulk and it only really throws off Water moves to get Scald burns. This is a mon that we've already identified as "not defensive" and "intended for speed and breaking purposes". Are we really intending to fire off Hydro Pumps under Sun?
 
BARABOY said:
because life orb's increased damage output outweighs the negative of losing a little health. Taking sand damage has to positive attributes unless you have a sand based ability, but even then you can have the sand ability without the sand damage.
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The concept is a weather abuser, meaning it'd abuser weather, meaning ti gains some offensive or defensive value from being in weather, meaning it is directly equivalent to Life Orb if you really want.
 
NumberCruncher, you'll notice my post explicitly said we wouldn't even need Water STAB in Sun with Water/Fairy--Fairy/Fire/Ground already hits everything in the metagame, so even one coverage move would make Water STAB completely superfluous for Sun teams
 
The more I look at this CAP, the less imperative I think a Fire resistance is. I know I'm flip-flopping here, but it's extremely difficult to sponge Fire-type attacks in the Sun, even when you resist them. We're building an offensive Pokemon, so we can probably assume this isn't going to be the bulkiest Pokemon in the world. Not to say it will be frail, but we agreed stall tactics aren't really worth exploring. So let's see what a Fire resistance gets us. These calculations assume 90 HP and 90 SpD, uninvested, which is about Keldeo-level bulk.

4 SpA Heatran Magma Storm vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD CAP24 in Sun: 110-130 (34 - 40.2%) -- 39.5% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and trapping damage
252 SpA Heatran Magma Storm vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD CAP24 in Sun: 134-158 (41.6 - 49%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and trapping damage
252 SpA Charizard-Mega-Y Flamethrower vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD CAP24 in Sun: 140-165 (43.4 - 51.2%) -- 59% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252 SpA Charizard-Mega-Y Fire Blast vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD CAP24 in Sun: 171-202 (53.1 - 62.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252 SpA Volkraken Fire Blast vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD CAP24 in Sun: 151-178 (46.7 - 55.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252+ SpA Choice Specs Analytic Volkraken Fire Blast vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD CAP24 in Sun: 322-380 (99.6 - 117.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock

I said in my previous post that coming in on Heatran, Charizard Y, and Volkraken would be nice. But that just isn't going to happen in Sun, and Sand doesn't care all that much about Heatran. This Pokemon should not be trying to sponge Fire-type attacks in the Sun unless it has a 4x resistance or can do so through an Ability, which I'm not getting into.

I think, for that reason, that Water isn't as good a typing as its being made out to be. Water gives two important resistances: Water and Fire. While the Water resistance is nice, the Fire resistance is a little overrated. If we want a typing with the same offensive capabilities as Water, how about Fairy? Fairy hits one of Tomo and Lando super-effectively, and hits their partner Colossoil pretty good too. Grass/Fairy is a solid defensive typing for what we're trying to do, as is Fairy/Flying. It is frustrating that there is a lack of powerful Flying-type Special moves, but the Earthquake immunity and U-Turn resistance (4x on Fairy/Flying!) is really nice. And Sand and Sun teams both have pretty solid Rapid Spinners in Excadrill and Malaconda, so I am not as worried about the Stealth Rock weakness as I normally would be.
 
NumberCruncher said:
Water/Fairy seems like an extremely shaky idea. We're asking our offensive mon that's supposed to be good in the Sun to have typing that neuters half of its STAB moves while in the Sun. It's not like Toxapex, where Water mostly serves to add bulk and it only really throws off Water moves to get Scald burns. This is a mon that we've already identified as "not defensive" and "intended for speed and breaking purposes". Are we really intending to fire off Hydro Pumps under Sun?
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No, we would not intend to. Reach put it to me this way: "Dragonite has went without Flying STAB for generations." Also, it still would use Hydro Pump, just only in Sand or outside of weather.
 
ZardX said:
How did you get the calcs when CAP 24 doesn't even have its stats?
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In my post, I specified 90/90 defenses. They're just an approximation. The point of the post is that even if we make CAP24 moderately bulky, it still takes enormous damage from resisted Fire-type attacks.
 
ZardX said:
Grass/Ground is a decent choice for this concept. It doesn't have the chip damage from Sand and can benefit from sun too, albeit still being quite weak to Hail. The typing can allow it to take neutral from Fire attacks and allow it to hit the Fire with a STAB Earthquake to knock most of them out. Sun allows it to ignore the charge up on moves like Solar Beam or Solar Blade while Sand allows it to boost its Ground STABS.
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Sorry, but a bunch of this is just factually wrong. Ground type does not resist fire. Sand does not confer a boost to Ground moves without Sand Force as the ability. We aren't really considering Hail (as discussed in Concept Assessment) and it isn't a common enough playstyle to make note of.

I don't really have much else to note other than I think getting mired in the nuance of CAP 24 must abuse weather vs. aid weather is a bit pointless. By helping weather, you help the playstyle to work, which allows for better abuse of multiple weathers. Additionally, as was mentioned in earlier posts, although sand does inflict a small percentage onto non-Steel, Ground, Rock types, Shore Up is boosted in the same weather; given the offensive nature we seem to want to take, I can't exactly advise this, but I simply note it to show there are ways to counteract sand damage if that is your primary concern about a non-Rock/Steel/Ground type.
 
While I am starting to see the appeal of Grass/Fairy, I'm not fully convinced yet. My chief concern is that Grass/Fairy takes damage from Sand, and while there are certain non-descript Abilities that shall not be named which can shield us from Sand, I feel like choosing our Typing with the assumption that one of these Abilities will be chosen runs the risk of either restricting our Ability choices down the line, or forcing our nominally Sand-abusing Pokemon to take damage in Sand. While yes, these Abilities are a natural fit for our concept, and yes they will almost certainly be brought up in the appropriate discussions, they aren't nessesary or required choices, and basing our Typing on the assumption that one will be picked is, I feel, an unwise decision.

Furthermore, I'm not sure of Grass/Fairy's wall breaking potential. In particular, Grass/Fairy is, without coverage, walled by a fairly large collection of Pokemon, including your typical Steel-Type walls, opposing Fire and Grass Types (Such as Charizard Y, Heatran and Volcanrona), and a handful of relevant Poison Types. On the other hand, Grass/Rock is only really walled by Steel Types, and a few other Pokemon. While yes, we will probably have coverage moves to help with this issue, I feel like having more Types covered by out STABs makes it easier for CAP 24 to achieve it's Sand-orientated goal of wall breaking. Along those lines, filling fewer move slots with attacking moves gives us more options for any utility we might decide CAP 24 needs, in particular the speed control Sun teams need, or recovery moves like Shore Up or Synthesis. I know we said this isn't going to be a defensive Pokemon, and I'm not trying to make it into one, but a little extra role compression never hurt anyone, and (unless I'm mistaken) we also said CAP 24 should have use outside of weather, as well. If we can cover our bases with our STABS, that gives us two slots for recovery/speed control/whatever.

Fire/Dragon sounds like an interesting concept, but like with Grass/Fairy, it makes me worry about assuming we're going to give this thing certain abilities to prevent Sand damage. Just because we don't need Rock/Sand/Ground to avoid Sand damage doesn't mean they shouldn't be considered. If we can find a typing, whatever it ends up being, that does what we need it to do and avoids Sand damage, that gives us more options later in the Ability section.

Finally, to address the issue of Rock getting a SpDef boost in Sand: I for one am not particularly interested in this point. Is it a nice, albeit situational, perk that could potentially help us tank a few more Special hits than normal? Absolutely. However, in my opinion at least, the main reason to use Rock is that it 1) Doesn't take damage in Sand, and 2) is a solid attacking Type with good wall breaking potential, which is something we said we wanted.
 
Mr Holiday said:
Fire/Dragon sounds like an interesting concept, but like with Grass/Fairy, it makes me worry about assuming we're going to give this thing certain abilities to prevent Sand damage. Just because we don't need Rock/Sand/Ground to avoid Sand damage doesn't mean they shouldn't be considered. If we can find a typing, whatever it ends up being, that does what we need it to do and avoids Sand damage, that gives us more options later in the Ability section.
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Sand Damage will not mean anything in the long run for us, imo. Fire/Dragon, unlike Grass/Fairy, has a lot of wallbreaking potential, as nothing resists that STAB combo, helping out Sand and Sun alike.
 
There are a few abilities that can circumvent sand damage. Taking residual damage from sand should not absolutely force us to make a Rock, Ground, or Steel-type, especially because those typings immediately make us weak to Water- and/or Ground-types, moves that Sand teams have trouble facing. Not all Pokemon on Sand-based teams are immune to Sandstorm; I don’t think we should necessarily expect CAP24 to be immune by typing too. Note that I’m not trying to exclude these types, just pointing out that there’s more to Sandstorm than being immune to chip damage.
 
Here’s another type to give thought: Grass/Electric. It’s neutral to Flying and Ground, and resists Water. It blows Tomohawk away, as 130 Special Attack Modest Thunderbolt has a 3 in 5 chance to OHKO Tomo. I’m on Mobile so I can’t show it, but if either a mod can edit it in this post or someone else to post it, that’d be great. With Grass/Electric, STAB moves alone take down Ash Gren, Mega Swampert, Pelipper, Hawlucha, and Tornadus-Therian. Basically, only Kingdra resists our STABs on rain teams, so there’s that. As for use in Sand, Grass helps break Ground-types that usually eat Sand for lunch. In Sun, it has Solar Beam, or we could go with a fun ability for Sun. Overall, Grass/Electric is a rather decent type to consider.
 
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