SS OU Claydol Balance

[Ehmcee]

Introduction:

This was my first post-dlc team, my goal was to try my best to create a balance team in this chaotic hyper offensive metagame.
Claydol is the main star of the team, having a good matchup against a few of the top titans, as well as guzzlord making an interesting appearance.


The Squad:



Keyable (Clefable) @ Leftovers
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 30 Spe
- Wish
- Protect
- Teleport
- Moonblast

Clefable is pretty essential to most balance teams, this one boasting the fairly standard WishPort combo, as well as Protect for reliable recovery as well as Moonblast so you're not entirely useless offensively.
I opted to go for physically defensive Clefable mainly for the Urshifu matchup, as well as tanking and fairly reliably beating Zygarde, KyuB, GZapdos and Pheromosa.
The 30 speed investment is mainly to underspeed other standard clefable's, could opt to go for a negative speed nature as well.
Wish support is also very important for the likes of Claydol, who lacks immediate recovery, as well as Magnezone and Dragapult, who are prone to getting chipped during the match.



Chick Magnet (Magnezone) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Magnet Pull
EVs: 252 SpA / 8 SpD / 248 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Flash Cannon
- Volt Switch
- Thunderbolt
- Toxic / Body Press

Magnezone is the team's main heavy hitter, running volt switch for viable pivotting as well as thunderbolt and flash cannon for immediate damage, the last moveslot is reserved for either toxic or body press, mainly to either give a pokemon some nice turnly damage, as well as helping dragapult with his hexes, or body press to deal the most damage possible to Blissey.
Magnezone is our main fairy answer, which both dragapult and guzzlord struggle with, as well as being able to trap and cripple or kill steel types such as Celesteela, Magearna, Corviknight, Skamory and Melmetal.
It's our best answer to water types, which we are fairly weak to without, and since we'll be pivoting around often to be able to deal with them, having wish support is crucial to it's longetivity.



Fort Knox (Toxapex) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def
Impish Nature
- Knock Off
- Scald
- Recover
- Toxic Spikes

Here's our second staple pokemon, Toxapex, deals with similar threats to Clefable but with the added goal to cripple the opposing team as much as possible.
Knock Off is our most spammable move, which heavily cripples pokemon that require their choice item, hdb or leftovers.
Scald and Tspikes are to spread status across the team and to provide Dragapult with much needed damage boosts.



BEEP BOOP (Claydol) @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 164 SpA / 92 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Ice Beam
- Rapid Spin
- Stealth Rock
- Earth Power

I stumbled across claydol when looking for an answer to prominent metagame threats.
Claydol acts as the team's ground type, which deals with regieleki and special Tapu Koko quite well, as well as dealing with heatran to an extent.
With levitate it also is a check to grounds in the tier with ice beam, it's able to come in on a Landorus and able to OHKO a rash natured Landorus.
164 SpA Claydol Ice Beam vs. 0 HP / 0- SpD Landorus: 320-380 (100.3 - 119.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO
With Ice beam, it also doesn't allow Zygarde to freely setup on it.
As role compression, it also acts as both our spinner and our rocker.



Imafirinmalasers (Dragapult) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Clear Body
EVs: 92 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 160 Spe
Timid Nature
- Draco Meteor
- U-turn
- Hex
- Thunder Wave

Dragapult acts as our main speed control, and in a tier where the fastest pokemon has 200 speed, dragapult now needs a scarf to reliably outspeed pokemon.
It's scarf allows it to outspeed regieleki, and 160+ allows it to outspeed timid scarfed spectrier.
I opted to run Clear Body over Infiltrator mainly to not be affected by sticky webs, which are fairly common combined with spectrier.
Dragapult however is not able to ohko spectrier without specs, so it does require some amount of chip to be able to do so.
Dragapult much appreciates tspikes, as it allows it to dish 130bp ghost moves against most switchins.



AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH (Guzzlord) @ Choice Band
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 236 Atk / 236 Def / 36 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Earthquake
- Knock Off
- Outrage
- Toxic

Guzzlord is definitely the most peculiar pokemon on the team, and it mainly acts a check to a few of the team's biggest problems.
1. Spectrier: while dragapult does outspeed spectrier, we don't actually have a switchin to it, 36 spdef allows us to avoid a 3hko by specs shadow ball.
2. Alolan Marowak: This team got demolished by alowak, Guzzlord acts as essentially a hard check to it, avoiding a 3hko by flare blitz, as well as outspeed in trick room and ohkoing with a banded knock off.
3. Excadrill (Kinda) Guzzlord acts as our best exca switchin, and being able to 2hko excadrill makes it an important mon, it however has around 50% chance of being 3hko'd by 252 attack excadrill, which is why it also appreciates wish support from clefable.


Threatlist


Mold breaker Excadrill is a huge problem for the team, claydol can't act as a ground answer against it, and gets 2hko'd by 252 attack earthquake. It full out sweeps the team if guzzlord is too weakned.


With a swords dance boost, Blaziken shreds through the team, our best hope is getting dragapult in before it gets to +3 speed.

SpinBlockers:

As our only hazard removal, we are very prone to getting hazard stacked against a solid spinblocker, which in turn threatens the rest of our team.


Importable

Claydol Balance

https://pokepast.es/ebf06e371c7c1873

Would much appreciate any feedback!​

 

[zedhatool]

This is an interesting team, and Claydol is certainly a cool (if niche) pick. Here are the changes I would make to this team.

Paste of the new team: https://pokepast.es/1ec5f24948a37451

Major Changes

1. ->
   1. Dragapult simply isn't strong enough to be a good scarfer in my opinion. It's very fast, but that's about all it has going for it. A better scarfer that can threaten Spectrier is Hydreigon. While it does not outspeed Spectrier, it does resist and take very little from Spectrier's attacks, and can revenge kill non-scarf variants with Dark Pulse.
2. ->
   1. This might seem like a weird pick, but let me justify.
      1. Guzzlord is doing nothing for your team. In the majority of games, it will be dead weight. It helps you in a few very specific matchups, but is otherwise useless.
      2. Your team has no real win-condition. Once you trap the steel type, what next? Guzzlord will most likely still not be sweeping, because they either have a Fighting type which will OHKO it or a Fairy type which completely ignores it.
   2. Enter Dragonite: this preserves a lot of defensive utility offered by Guzzlord's Dragon-typing, while having considerably better defensive typing, access to a boosting move, and Multiscale, one of the best defensive abilities in the game. Dragon Dance Dragonite also takes advantage of the steel type being gone much more effectively than Guzzlord does, because it has a STAB that can actually deal damage to fairies, and doesn't get OHKOd by something like Urshifu immediately.
      1. This improves your matchup against Excadrill, because now you have a real flying type, and a bulky one at that, it usually beats Blaziken, and it can threaten a sweep once their steel type is gone.
      2. The given spread outruns Modest Dragapult at +1 and has a chance to OHKO with +1 Dual Wingbeat. Excadrill gets messed up by Earthquake, so does Toxapex, Clefable requires a little chip before +1 Dual Wingbeat will 2HKO, but chipping Clefable isn't too difficult.
      3. Feel free to mess with the set on this one, I felt Dragon Dance is best, but I could see Roost + 3 attacks being what you want here. You definitely need Roost, Earthquake and Dual Wingbeat, but go wild with the fourth move.

Minor Changes

• The Spread on Claydol: remove the EVs from SpA and put them in either Def or SpD. Neither type of Landorus run Rash and Ice Beam does a good chunk anyway. Claydol resists every single common Landorus-I attack, so if you put in enough SpD to avoid the 3HKO from Focus Blast you should be good. The Spread I gave it avoid the 3HKO from Focus Blast, and has a better chance in the Excadrill 1v1.
• Toxapex set: Haze is mandatory on all Toxapex, without Dragapult you don't really need TSpike, gave it some SpDef so you don't autolose to Kingdra, but Tornadus and/or Zapdos rain is still gonna be a tough matchup with this team.
• Changed a lot of spreads because EVs were unnecessary. EVs should actually do specific things, if the EVs don't hit anything important, just go with 252/252.

Let me know how everything goes. If you have questions about how the team should work, or if you hate the changes and want to let me know that I'm a terrible, garbage player, I'll be interested to hear it.