Introduction
Sawsbuck is a pokemon that is in this month. Its stab types of normal and grass aren’t the best, but they do good work since nothing in this meta resist both. While it doesn’t excel at anything and most of its jobs can be done by others, it isn’t bad and hey at least it’s trying! (looks very angrily at Wugtrio).
Stats
With 100 Atk and 95 speed, ain’t the strongest, nor does it outspeed everything, but it’s still fast and hits hard (6th highest speed stat, 7th highest attack stat). And with its… mediocre HP of 80 it can take a hit or two if you really need it to. But the fun part? Sawsbuck has access to both agility and Swords Dance, and it will try to use them.
Abilities
As with most mons, Sawsbuck has 3,so let’s go from least to most useful (subjective)
Sap Sipper: The ability that usually makes sawsbuck viable, Sap Sipper is kinda mediocre this month; in theory there are mons that you can switch into, like Vileplume or Virizion, but it can’t do much with the boost because Virizion is faster and vileplume probably has a chlorophyll boost. Well, at least it causes problems for scarfed grass types. OH, SPEAKING OF:
Chlorophyll: Now this is a true ability — with Torkoal you can mostly guarantee that sun is up, meaning you reach speeds of ~500 without even that much investment and outspeed every scarfed mon (Jolly Infernape: 519) except Wugtrio! But it’s not like wug can do anything anyways. Welp, that sounds like a great ability, what could top that?
Serene Grace: Gambling. Just gambling. Typing, damage, it all falls to dust under the rain of flinches that Agility+Headbutt will provide. Nothing beats that, give up (what’s “priority”, what do you mean?) You’re thinking that ghost types can counter that? Well nu-uh, the most used ghost is Golurk, which will fold to your other stab, grass. Cursola seems kinda bad (at least on the physical side) and Spiritomb I’ll admit, might be a problem… But moving on:
Moves
It has a couple choices, but not everything is needed. For boosting, as mentioned before, you have Swords Dance and Agility. In addition, you do have Curse but honestly, you’d prefer to not lose speed, plus you’d probably prefer the extra boost from Swords Dance anyways. Alongside these moves, substitute can be used to help set up but ehhh i’m not an expert on that. For its Normal STAB, you have four good options: Headbutt, Return, Double-Edge and Body Slam. Headbutt and Body Slam both get used with Serene Grace, and Return is its highest damaging move (without drawbacks).
For Grass, you have basically 2 options: Horn Leech and Petal Blizzard. Petal Blizzard is the highest damage, with 90 BP, and Horn Leech provides some nice healing, which works well with Life Orb. There is Seed Bomb, but it’s literally just a worse Petal Blizzard, so there’s almost no reason to ever run it. Trailblaze is more of a setup option, and you already have Agility or Chlorophyll for that. ALSO there are some special moves, but the only ones worth mentioning are solar beam because of sun, and leaf storm because of the burst of damage it deals.
Its coverage is a bit lacking, but it also doesn’t need it that much. You have Zen Headbutt for the pesky Vileplumes (and flinching Clodsires), Jump Kick if some confused fellow uses Probopass, High Horsepower for spdf Clodsire and Play Rough just in case Spiritomb or Goodra shows up. You could go for some stall, if you so choose– toxic and leech seed are on the table but, again, not an expert on that as I prefer to not use stall. It also has Aromatherapy, which is nice for support, but there are better mons for that, like Comfey or Chlorophyll support Vileplume.
Items
Sawsbuck’s item choice mostly revolves around boosting its damage. You can go Life Orb and use Horn Leech to nullify the recoil, you can go with Choice Band Chlorophyll (you could also run specs as it does have strong special moves, but you pretty much only have grass stab and shadow ball…not the best options). Silk Scarf and Miracle seed are both options, with Silk Scarf being preferable as it boosts Sawsbuck’s most powerful physical moves. . Don’t bother with a Choice Scarf; there are better options.
You do have defensive items, however, like Chople Berry in case of Mach Punches or Big Root to increase Leech Horns/Leech Seed healing.
Interactions
Sawsbuck doesn’t have any hard walls, which is good, but there are some problems, for example: Clodsire. Holy shit, the Clod is problematic. While yes, if you have High Horsepower you 2HKO the bugger even with full investment defensive investment, but you might just get your face blasted full of gunk (stop thinking about that) and you wouldn’t like that, would you? Another problem child: Infernape. Mach punch will deal a SIGNIFICANT chunk of your health (78.7 - 93.2%), which probably results in your death, assuming you run Life Orb, but if you have High Horse Power it'll die. Same goes for Probopass – you’ll have a problem dealing with it unless you have High Horsepower and the opponent’s Sturdy can’t activate.
Written by Aryecki