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ck49
ck49
Makes sense, but is it worth running over Rock Slide? I'll slash it in, i guess.
soulgazer
soulgazer
for me its more about: what does rock slide do? earthquake hits the fire-types, and most flying-types won't enjoy taking the iron head. I could see it being useful against Pelipper and Mantine but i dunno :s it gets Thunder Fang after all.

I guess you could slash Rock Slide with Crunch as it is a decent option.
soulgazer
soulgazer
also about the subcm uxie part of my post, it is because when I build my stall teams and i am looking for a subcm uxie counter, I immediately think of Steelix. most of the things it wants to check (Psychic-types, Cryogonal, Electric-types, and some others) are Special attackers, and the physical attackers that steelix counters can't really scratch it either
soulgazer
soulgazer
even without using Relaxed, ence why most of us use Sassy Max SpDef. The spread with the phdef bulk isnt bad tho and I think you should put it in Sets Details
soulgazer
soulgazer
and yea Special Sheer Force might just be a good OO mention
soulgazer
soulgazer
Oh and the main issue that I have with heavy slam is how reliable it is lol. like you said, some stuff are surprisingly heavy or light, so sometimes it will be a strong stab when against other things it will do nothing.

like when i was testing it, it failed to 2hko a sawsbuck :(

iron head with sheer force is just more reliable damage in my opinion, and ~104bp isnt That Bad. I could go and pm the whole qc team to discuss about heavy slam vs iron head vs gyro ball if you want, but as far as I know reliability>power (ik it might be a bad exemple, but theres a reason people run waterfall over aqua tail)
ck49
ck49
I ended up slashing Crunch in with Rock Slide. I feel like a lot of this is just "what do you want to beat?" People talk about EdgeQuake because you can hit flying types hard. If they predict an Earthquake, unless they have rotom on their team, they'll probably send in a flying type, which is why rock slide is so useful. Granted, they could also send in Uxie or Rotom, so they both deserve a mention.

I'm not against running SpD, but I'm usually not using Steelix to counter special threats. It needs to stop physical attackers, and despite its great physical bulk, I feel like if you're playing it like that then special bulk isn't needed - especially given its lack of recovery. The spread depends on your goal with Steelix, and thus I don't really know what to use as the default spread. If you think MaxSpD is the way to, then I can add that as the main spread.
I'll add in the special set to OO, but it still feels really gimmicky.

Also, heavy slam has base 100 power against Sawsuck. Iron Head wouldn't have helped. There are very few pokemon which Steelix isn't significantly heavier than - consistancy really isn't a problem. Torterra, Avalugg, and Beartic might be the only real examples of Pokemon which would be harder hit by Iron Head than Heavy Slam. I just wouldn't stay 2 of them, and Avalugg is hit hard by rock slide anyways.
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