PokéBase - Pokémon Q&A
1 vote
11,087 views

Had a thought for excadrill. A high speed jolly nature might work with excadrill. It won't come close to the sand sets in power, but might have potential.

Ability: mold breaker
nature: jolly
item: air balloon/razor claw
moves:
stealth rock: heard this works well with MB. Useful for volcarona switch-ins.
drill run/earthquake: STAB, of course. Prefer drill run for crit. rate with razor claw.
iron head/shadow claw: more STAB, or decent coverage. SC works with razor claw.
swords dance/ x-scissor/ rock slide/ rapid spin/ shadow claw: coverage, power or support.

Basically trying to break walls normally unbroken, relying more on luck than raw power. drill run sets are viable in doubles as MB nullifies allies levitate & sturdy too, making it potentially fatal. iron head hits cryogonal, and smacks aerodactyl and a few others around. Shadow claw is for gliscor, as it would wall it other wise. Plus, between MB, drill run and razor claw, can catch battle armour 'mon off guard. Last move is coverage, I like swords dance here. if stealth rock forces a switch, it can power up the mole. this should work beautifully on forretress, as when the opponent swaps it in to spin stealth rock away, a +2 mold breaker drill run could KO through sturdy. Plus after a boost it should be very hard to phase out.

Razor claw is for the reasons above, but air balloon is good against garchomp. Garchomp may fire off earthquake, and the miss will give excadrill the chance to hit back. MB allows it to ignore sand veil too. This should also work on sturdy donphan.

Main problem is lack of recovery, and lower speed compared to sand rush. It may have have to forfeit rapin spin too, which is a shame. The pluses are being able to take out 'mon it would usually have trouble with, harass the ones you can't with stealth rock and say "screw you" to forretress. possibly even a viable mold breaker set for doubles that doesn't shoot you in the foot if you like using levitate. The crit rate. stuff is to try to compensate for the power loss compared to sand force, and with a little luck, bypass defense boosters. The immunities to toxic and thunder wave are the icing on the cake. Best of all, with mold breaker heavy mole here can KO gengar and mismagius through levitate, who would normally spin-block it.

I've been itching to try this one but i'd like a second opinion before I start. Any thoughts?

And yes, I know I just wrote excadrill war and peace, so thanks for bearing with me.

by

1 Answer

3 votes
 
Best answer

Ok, so the thing is that Excadrill is Ubers, and that Razor Claw is banned in competitive, so Air Balloon is the superior option here. I really think Sand Rush > Mold Breaker because Sand is common in Ubers. Nature is good. Stealth Rock is good. Earthquake > Drill Run, Rock Slide (EdgeQuake) > Iron Head / Shadow Claw, Rapid Spin / Iron Head (Rapid Spin if you need it) > All the other options. Mold Breaker works in a place where there is some Magic Bouce users.......Nobody uses Espeon / Xatu in Ubers. That's about it.

by
selected by
Stupid Excadrill. Exca shouldn't be Ubers IMO. Really sucks.
Swords Dance + Sand Rush + STAB EQ = Overpowered.
Hmm. Probably the only combo I'd think was awesome for it, I always fail with it.
the idea was the that ground moves and mold breaker work well on levitators, typically as they have low defence. As far as i know, excadrill is the only fully evolved mon with mold breaker and stab ground. A jolly nature gives it good enough speed too. Besides, it's unconventional, and i love catching team previewers off guard.
Sand Rush is the reason it became Uber, not Mold Breaker.
Wait a minute!cmndr.gresh,were you talking about me and what for?LOL!

P.S-Excadrill cant learn stone edge JCM
yeah, but sand rush is predictable. guess we'll see if my idea works in practice. Who knows? it just might,,, or maybe it won't.
Sand Rush is the only kind of Excadrill that should be used unless you are running Bulky Excadrill which works more as a Rapid Spinner than a sweeper.
if you only do what you read on smogon, yeah. a new approach might be interesting.
It will also get you killed by another Excadrill, a V-create from Rayquaza, or another equally powerful attack from a pokemon that Excadrill would outspeed and KO with Sand Rush.
i think any excadrill vs. rayquaza fight would be onesided, but your criticism is noted. Feel free to offer your own solutions. I always keep an open mind.
Mech, not really. We're not doing what Smogon says. Smogon isn't one person btw. It's a whole lot of people. Anyways, Mold Breaker is not the best option for Excadrill.
Also, there's nothing more predictable than Mold Breaker. ''Excadrill breaks the mold!''
but you can't see that in team preview. Because when they see excadrill in team preview they assume sand rush. And yes, the way it says that is annoying.