np: OU Suspect Testing Round 5 - Sandstorm (Excadrill/Thundurus Banned)

[Molk]

Why are you mentioning Pursuit? I can name 3 better Pursuiters:
Weavile
Tyranitar
Scizor

actually, that is true, i mentioned pursuit because it is an option in uu, there are better pursuiters out there, but it is still an option in uu.

as well as damage calcs.

banded stoutland ice fang vs 252/184 impish gliscor 252 - 300 (71.59% - 85.23%)

banded stoutland fire fang vs 252/48 relaxed ferrothorn 272 - 320 (77.27% - 90.91%)

banded stoutland wild charge vs 252/252 impish skarmory 154 - 182 (46.11% - 54.49%)

banded stoutland crunch vs 252/80 calm dusclops 120 - 142 (42.25% - 50.00%)

bar dusclops which you have to roll max damage for, you have a decent chance of 2koing all the aformentioned defensive threats with the respective coverage move.

 

[Pippy]

it gets what it needs (bar eq) thngs such as

crunch
fire fang (lol i deal 90% to ferrothorn)
ice fang (fuck you gliscor)
wild charge (die skarmory)
pursuit (you want to switch, TOO BAD!)

as i said, it's movepool may seem barren but it gets what it needs for the most part.

But he has a ton of trouble with ever-common steel types. (Fire Fang has what, 65 BP?)


Instead of Stoutland, I see Landorus taking Exca's place. With a scarf, Landorus is faster than Exca (I think) and has a lot more power and a much better movepool.

 

[Molk]

But he has a ton of trouble with ever-common steel types. (Fire Fang has what, 65 BP?)

out of all the steel types, the three most common are ferrothorn, scizor, and skarm, skarm has a chance of being 2hkoed by banded wild charge while ferrothorn and scizor are maimed by fire fang.

and no, i dont think landorus is faster than excadrill with a scarf.

 

[jas61292]

Personally, I don't think Stoutland maxes a good sweeper. Just slap Retaliate on it and make it a revenge killer. Band Retaliate kills stuff.

 

[Molk]

Personally, I don't think Stoutland maxes a good sweeper. Just slap Retaliate on it and make it a revenge killer. Band Retaliate kills stuff.

banded return already does enough damage to revenge kill the majority of things while still having consistent power, and yes stoutland is a revenge killer, it can only really sweep late game.

 

[alexwolf]

out of all the steel types, the three most common are ferrothorn, scizor, and skarm, skarm has a chance of being 2hkoed by banded wild charge while ferrothorn and scizor are maimed by fire fang.

and no, i dont think landorus is faster than excadrill with a scarf.

Skarmory walls Stoutland so hard it is not even funny.
The worst you can do to him is make him lose 50% of his health with Wild Charge while he then switches to something that can easily take the next Wild Charge.
Anyway the CB Stoutland needs very good prediction to be decent and even if you predict right you are not even guaranteed to kill the opposing steel.
Landorus and Terakion are 10 times better sand sweepers or wallbrekers than Stoutland.

 

[Pippy]

out of all the steel types, the three most common are ferrothorn, scizor, and skarm, skarm has a chance of being 2hkoed by banded wild charge while ferrothorn and scizor are maimed by fire fang.

True, but basically any other steel will wall it. But at least Stoutland has the giant beard. He should get at least some props for that. ;)

 

[Molk]

Skarmory walls Stoutland so hard it is not even funny.
The worst you can do to him is make him lose 50% of his health with Wild Charge while he then switches to something that can easily take the next Wild Charge.
Anyway the CB Stoutland needs very good prediction to be decent and even if you predict right you are not even guaranteed to kill the opposing steel.
Landorus and Terakion are 10 times better sand sweepers or wallbrekers than Stoutland.

stoutland is more of a revenge killer than sweeper, although it can sweep late game. I mentioned stoutland because it is really the only other sand rush abuser that is currently released.

 

[Adamant Zoroark]

Excadrill already has 2 counters:Gliscor and Skarmory.
So with DW Breloom we get another one,and also we get its best check in the form of DW Conk.
Btw the only thing that Conk need to ohko Excadrill with Mach Punch is Life Orb.Here is an Iron Fist Mach Punch with a Life Orb from Conk to 4 HP Exca:
416 Atk vs 156 Def & 362 HP (48 Base Power): 356 - 422 (98.34% - 116.57%)
1hko after SR.

Skarmory isn't a counter. It constantly relies on Whirlwind to "counter". What would Skarmory do if just Excadrill was left?

 

[Lee]

if you're looking to sweep with stoutland, the idea isn't to single-handedley take down all the physical walls but to have something else remove them on his behalf and then sweep with CB Return from 500+ Spe once the Rocks and Steels are gone. But even that is only really effective against offensive teams and he certainly can't be compared to Excadrill.

Btw the only thing that Conk need to ohko Excadrill with Mach Punch is Life Orb.Here is an Iron Fist Mach Punch with a Life Orb from Conk to 4 HP Exca:
416 Atk vs 156 Def & 362 HP (48 Base Power): 356 - 422 (98.34% - 116.57%)
1hko after SR.

cool story bro, when you have to cite an unreleased Pokemon holding an item that is terrible on him as a counter then you know you've got problems.

 

[Razza]

I feel like both these bans were bad decisions resulting from a large voter pool.

Excadrill was truly the only pokemon keeping Sandstorm's usage high, since it, along with Landorus, were the only significant abusers. Therefore, Sandstorm will probably follow a sharp declivity.

This, in effect, will also increase the usage of Rain, whether offense or stall. Rain has barely taken a hit in terms of viability since there are many Thunder abusers to take Thundurus' place. It still has Hurricane abusers, Tentacruel as a decent spinner, and boosted water attacks.

If these bans are not rescinded by the next round, people should begin to question whether weather is balanced anymore.

this

Now that an amazing revenge killer has gone, volcarona and dragonite are going to be even harder to stop, excadrill was a powerful threat but not unstoppable far from it, I never run gliscor bronzong or skarm and I rarely lost to it, no more than any other powerful sweeper.

The metagame is about to undergo a large shift and rain and sun teams are about to shoot up in usage

 

[alexwolf]

Skarmory isn't a counter. It constantly relies on Whirlwind to "counter". What would Skarmory do if just Excadrill was left?

It is a counter!
A poke is a counter to an other when it can switch in on all of his moves,can take a hit and either kill or force out the attacker.
Skarmory does the second.
If Excadrill is the last poke then chances are that either weather will not be on his side or that he won't get a chance to use SD.
In a few cases it can beat you but only in a very few cases.It's almost the same as a crit happening or a flinch hax to Gliscor.

cool story bro, when you have to cite an unreleased Pokemon holding an item that is terrible on him as a counter then you know you've got problems.

You didn't even read our whole discussion right?
I said that when DW Brelloom and DW Conk get released Exca needs another test in OU.
Also you cannot know if Life Orb would be good or bad in an unreleased poke when you have no experience with it.
If it nets him a bunch of kos that he would miss otherwise then it is a viable choice.

 

[Adamant Zoroark]

It is a counter!
A poke is a counter to an other when it can switch in on all of his moves,can take a hit and either kill or force out the attacker.
Skarmory does the second.
If Excadrill is the last poke then chances are that either weather will not be on his side or that he won't get a chance to use SD.
In a few cases it can beat you but only in a very few cases.It's almost the same as a crit happening or a flinch hax to Gliscor.

Yeah, because Skarmory can totally do significant damage to Excadrill with Brave Bird.

 

[alexwolf]

Yeah, because Skarmory can totally do significant damage to Excadrill with Brave Bird.

What does this have to do with what i said to you.
Excadrill cannot find infinite setup oportunities in a game.
If it is the last poke remaining then either chances are that it won't be able to SD,so you can kill him with one of your pokes while you sacrifice something to not let him setup.
When Skarmory Whirlwinds Exacadrill out it is countered.It means that it must find an oportunity to setup again and will be forced to take entry hazards again.

 

[Charizard92]

Ice Shard is going to be a fantastic move this generation. Look for Things with high ice STAB attacking stats to increase in usage (Mamoswine, Cloyster w/ shellsmash to name a couple. The only thing that would keep them from dominating is fighting STAB priority. I'd say this metagame's biggest winners will be Rapid Spinners (to help keep volcarona / dragonite alive), Skill Link Cloyster, Dragonite, Volcarona, SR users(to help counter volcarona / dragonite) and strong priority users.

Big losers are going to be things that were mostly there to counter Excadrill. See gliscor and bronzong to either go down in usage or heavily adjust.

 

[Adamant Zoroark]

What does this have to do with what i said to you.
Excadrill cannot find infinite setup oportunities in a game.
If it is the last poke remaining then either chances are that it won't be able to SD,so you can kill him with one of your pokes while you sacrifice something to not let him setup.
When Skarmory Whirlwinds Exacadrill out it is countered.It means that it must find an oportunity to setup again and will be forced to take entry hazards again.

Nothing is stopping Excadrill from getting to +6 against Skarmory. As I said, Skarmory can't do anything to Excadrill if Excadrill is the last Pokemon left. Excadrill can also flinch-hax Skarmory to death with Rock Slide if need be. It's not likely to happen, but it can happen.

 

[Pippy]

Skarmory can only wall Exca for a short period of time. When Skarm has to Roost, he's going to have to take a +2 stab SE Earthquake.

 

[Drifloon]

Skarmory can only wall Exca for a short period of time. When Skarm has to Roost, he's going to have to take a +2 stab SE Earthquake.

Skarmory is slower...?

 

[Thorhammer]

Even if removing Excadrill from the voting pool entirely wasn't an option, it seems completely wrong for it to be instantly banned after being voted OU four times. For a Pokemon in that situation, it really needed to have the % requirement for a supermajority increased, if not removed altogether.

 

[snowclaw1234]

So wait, who got banned? I can't find it :/

 

[NijaSkills]

@Pippy Considering that the main problem with excadrill is its obscene speed stat under sand, Skarmory is not going to be roosting before an EQ any time soon. The reason Skarm can't hard counter Excadrill is because it gets 2-3HKO'ed by +2 Rock Slide

and @^, Thundurus and Excadrill got banned, all others were totally in the clear

 

[AfroThunderRule]

What do you guys think about Latios and Terrakion?

Seems like they got way better now.

 

[snowclaw1234]

I guess that's kind of good. I never ran into them much anyways over wfii, but i guess they were used alot on PO.

Now i don't have to worry about sand as much, But what will replace thundurus on rain teams?

 

[Tobes]

I'm not going to lie, I'm a little disappointed with this outcome. I'm starting to think Smogon has become a little too banhappy. But, I don't have the right to complain since I didn't make the effort to make reqs, so w/e. Here's hoping we revisit our bans when our process is overhauled.

I'll be interested to see how the new meta plays out. I'm expecting a drop in sand until people realize it is still perfectly viable with Terrakion and Landorus, especially if/when Volcarona starts to climb in usage. Rain isn't hit hard by the loss of Thund, and although Sun can't deal with Terrakion as well as it can Drill it'll probably jump a bit too.

 

[Adamant Zoroark]

What do you guys think about Latios and Terrakion?

Seems like they got way better now.

Specs Latios is still easily pursuited by Tyranitar. I think Latios will only be ban-worthy once Soul Dew is released.

Scarf Terrakion makes a great check to Volcarona.