Rabsca Gravity Sand TWO
by Mailiam
by Mailiam
Almost 2 years ago, I created my original Rabsca Gravity sand team. I peaked 1791 with it, but I felt like it could go higher. I’ve never been the greatest player, but this team felt like it gave me superpowers. That team had some major flaws, and it fell out of favor as the meta progressed. But with the ban of Tera Blast I saw an opportunity for my team to rise from the ashes. And rise it did, bringing me to my highest peak ever in OU.
This isn’t one of those RMTs that a good player pilots and brings to a high ladder peak. No, I’m definitely mediocre at this game lmao (this team raised my GXE on my main alt by like 6% since I started exclusively using it lol). I truly believe this team has some genuine merit to it in the meta. I make some genuinely bad plays pretty often, sacking win cons on risky plays that don’t always work out. But the beauty of this team is even if you fuck up, Rabsca is right there to get you back on your feet. Just keep in mind that Tera gets undone when you use Revival Blessing on a mon that used Tera!
Rabsca also helps with odds maximization, which is a huge part of this team. With Gravity, you make moves like Focus Blast and Hurricane 1.67x more accurate (and Zap Cannon lol, it’s 83.33% accurate). But even without Gravity, Rabsca can revive a mon if it misses a crucial move to let it click it again, so you turn the effective accuracy of Focus Blast and Hurricane into 91% and 75% for Zap Cannon in certain situations.
Every mon on the team appreciates being revived in one way or another. As I just mentioned, Darkrai and Zapdos love being revived to click their inaccurate moves without fear of death, Excadrill loves having two chances to sweep, Landorus is great to revive to help get needed chip on late-game Gambit, and Tyranitar is sometimes needed to revive to get sand up again.
It’s such a fun team to use and surprisingly good. Have fun!
Here’s the paste of the team that I primarily used to climb the ladder. I made a second version that uses Leppa Berry on Rabsca and has some minor changes to teras/moves/EVs, but both versions or even a mix between them I’ve found to work well on the high ladder, though I believe these combinations of the Drill or Rabsca sets fit together best, as I’ll explain below. Feel free to change Ttar to the new set if you want though, that’s mostly up to personal preference.
RabscaBill Clinton (Rabsca) @ Heavy-Duty Boots / Leppa Berry
Ability: Synchronize
Shiny: Yes
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 56 Def / 200 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Gravity
- Revival Blessing
- Psychic Noise
- Memento / Recover
Here’s the star of the show. When I was making my original version two years ago, I had the idea for a Gravity Sand team using Landorus, who is the best Gravity setter by far. But as I was looking for a secondary Gravity user, nothing really struck me as worth it. That is, until I scrolled down to ZU and saw Rabsca.
Revival Blessing really changes the game for sand. Giving Excadrill two chances to break/sweep teams is really helpful as it’s the only good sand abuser out there. And giving Tyranitar another chance to setup sand is huge. You need Tyranitar to eat a lot of hits defensively on this team, so in some cases it’s really helpful to get some progress with it at the cost of letting it die, then bringing it back and setting up sand for Excadrill.
As for Rabsca itself, it’s honestly surprisingly great defensively. The two top most used mons in high ladder, Zamazenta and Great Tusk, are easy to switch in on with Rabsca. It can even eat two Crunches from IDef Zama with the bit of defense investment it has. Psychic Noise is great to deal with these two as well as shutting down slow mons like Garg from using you as free recovery.
For the last slot, you can use either Memento or Recover.
Memento is Rabsca’s only form of momentum. It gives you a great way to setup for whatever mon you want to abuse Gravity with, giving it 3 turns to work with. The attack drops help you setup with Drill more easily, and I’ve found that I have more setup opportunities when I use that variant. The Memento set is best with Boots imo. Rabsca is almost always going to be coming in during the end game, so Rocks are fairly likely to be up. So Boots give you the best opportunity to be able to live a hit and get off your singular Revival Blessing or Gravity, or both on a weaker mon. The holy grail is after Drill dies and sand has 6 or 7 turns left, you send in Rabsca, revive Drill, get Gravity up, Memento into Drill, and get big progress during those Gravity turns.
For the Recover set, I think Leppa is the best item choice. Recover lets you heal off the Rocks damage and potentially have a chance for two Revival Blessings. The big downside to this is that it can be a bit of a momentum sink since it can’t reliably pivot to a Gravity abuser. However, after your opponent sees the Leppa Berry or even if they see Rabsca take Rocks damage, they’ll scramble to try to kill Rabsca so you don’t get two revives, which gives you better momentum into a Gravity abuser. Also worth noting that this variant finds itself using Tera a lot more often than the Memento variant.
Both sets are good and have their own niche, so it’s up to you which one you prefer.
LandorusGame Therian (Landorus-Therian) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Intimidate
Tera Type: Grass
EVs: 168 HP / 88 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Sandsear Storm
- Grass Knot
- U-turn
- Gravity
Lando is the glue of this team. It gets Gravity off consistently, and can use it itself or U-Turn to another abuser. Gravity lets you use 100% accurate Sandsear Storms, which is an insane move to be able to spam. It has a 20% burn chance, so sometimes you can just get lucky as they switch to a Ground resist like Rillaboom and burn it.
Tera Grass helps a ton in the Ogerpon-W matchup (probably the hardest thing for this team to deal with) and vs Rain. If I see either of those two on preview, I often lead Landorus and Tera and U-Turn out just so I have a good pivot for the rest of the game. It also gives a power boost to Grass Knot, which I have on the set in order to pick off Great Tusks, which can otherwise be annoying to deal with. If you can surprise them with that, Excadrill’s window for cleaning becomes wide open.
ExcadrillSecond Stint (Excadrill) @ Soft Sand
Ability: Sand Rush
Tera Type: Grass / Ground
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Rapid Spin
- Iron Head
- Swords Dance
Excadrill is your main win-con 80% of the time. Ground/Steel coverage is only really resisted by Corviknight, Skarmory, Moltres, Zapdos, and Balloon Gholdengo, and with Gravity, all five of those get destroyed by Soft Sand EQ. The other notable mon that resists Ground and Steel is Ogerpon, but this is where Drill’s Tera comes into play.
Tera Grass is great for setting up on Ogerpon or clicking EQ twice as long as it’s chipped a bit, as that kills Ogerpon after Rocks or adequate Sandstorm chip. Tera Ground is another way to deal with Ogerpon by getting a surprise kill on it as it does 57-67%, which is more than banded non-tera boosted.
I’ve found that Tera Grass is best with Memento Rabsca, while Tera Ground is best with Recover Rabsca. The Tera Grass set is more focused on setting up vs Ogerpon anyway, so having that additional -2 attack really helps with that. On the other hand, Tera Ground is better with Leppa/Recover Rabsca because you’re more focused on brute forcing your way through their team, and having a dual revival of Drill and Tyranitar along with the Tera Ground boost lets you maximize that aspect of Drill. However, I have found success with Tera Ground and Memento together, as that can give you the best momentum possible into spamming three turns of strong ass EQs. But I really wouldn’t recommend Tera Grass and Leppa/Recover, since you’re not guaranteed to get a good opportunity to SD and also have enough turns of Gravity to be able to hit Ground-immune mons.
ALSO, a cool trick vs Dragonite is that you can Tera Drill early to break, then when you revive Drill in the endgame, you’ll resist E-Speed since you get your regular typing back again.
DarkraiBuried Bodies (Darkrai) @ Expert Belt
Ability: Bad Dreams
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Focus Blast
- Ice Beam
- Thunder
- Dark Pulse
Darkrai with Dark Pulse/Ice Beam/Focus Blast/Thunder hits almost everything hard with Expert Belt, except for Fairies like Clef and Hatt. Gravity helps this set be more consistent, but it isn’t necessarily reliant on it. A surprise Focus Blast or Thunder can get a stray kill on something like Kingambit or Corviknight, so often just hitting one 70% move can be enough. But having Gravity up makes your deadly coverage consistent and spammable.
TyranitarStormserver (Tyranitar) @ Smooth Rock
Ability: Sand Stream
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 24 Atk / 232 SpD
Careful Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Knock Off
- Ice Punch
- Low Kick
Tyranitar is just a really basic sand setter set. You can choose between Ice Beam or Ice Punch depending on if you want to hit Tusk or Gliscor more respectively. I opt for Ice Punch personally because Gliscor is more annoying for this team and most of them are SpDef. I also think Tera Water is better than Flying since you don’t like taking the extra Rocks damage so you can set sand as many times as you can, but if you’re really worried about Tusk, you can use Ice Beam or Tera Flying or both.
ZapdosThe Zapper (Zapdos) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Static
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA
Modest Nature
IVs: 30 Spe
- Hurricane
- Zap Cannon
- U-turn
- Roost
This is my personal favorite set here. Hurricane is obviously great under Gravity, but Zap Cannon is the real kicker here. You can use Thunder if you’re lame I guess, but that only has a 30% chance to Para. Zap Cannon Paras 100% of the time, it’s 120 bp vs 110, and it’s 83.33% accurate under Gravity. I know that might not sound ideal, but the benefit of getting a strong ass hit off and getting a Para 83% of the time is too good to pass up. Even if you’re not under Gravity, Zap Cannon is annoying but not impossible to hit. If you miss, Zapdos is bulky enough and has the recovery to be able to go for multiple, and if you just hit one you can often Roost back to full.
I always run 30 speed IVs on my Zapdos to get slow U-Turns on opposing Zapdos, but you can run 31 if you want to speed tie other Zapdos. Doesn’t seem super worth it on this set since you have Zap Cannon tho.
Thanks for reading through my team analysis! I had a lot of fun making and using this team, and I hope you all can enjoy it as much as I have. If you have any suggestions for changes let me know, especially the Ttar set since that one is pretty basic.
Proof of peak:
(My ELO peak and rank peak were different after some decay, sorry if I clickbaited u lmao)
will prob add more replays later, specifically vs weather but I gotta go to bed rn and wanted to get this out there
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