Sandslash, The Mouse Pokémon. It's body is covered by tough spikes, which are hardened sections of its hide. Once a year, the old spikes fall out, to be replaced with new spikes that grow out from beneath the old ones. It can roll up its body as if it were a ball covered with large spikes. In battle, it will try to make the foe flinch by jabbing it with its spines. It then leaps at the stunned foe to tear wildly with its sharp claws. It curls up in a ball to protect itself from enemy attacks. It also curls up to prevent heatstroke during the daytime when temperatures rise sharply. It is adept at attacking with the spines on its back and its sharp claws while quickly scurrying about.
Battle Moveset
A Good Moveset for Sandslash would have to be this:
Attacks:
Earthquake
Rock Slide
Sword Dance
Focus Punch / Hidden Power [Bug] / Substitute
Items Attached:
Leftovers OR
Salac Berry
Preferred Nature:
Impish
Strategy Using Sandslash
Sandslash. It's pure Ground, it has a lot of defence, two physical resistances, no physical weaknesses, Sword Dance and STAB Earthquake. Keep special attacks at bay and it'll do fine, let it get Surfed and it's value is severely damaged. The physical sweeper set up here is very straightforward. Sword Dance and sweep. EQ and Slide cover most things but Focus Punch can hit particular Pokémon for more damage and is essential in OU for Skarm. HP Bug can take out pure Grass types, Solrock and in OU hits Celebi for good damage. Sub can block Wisp and Toxic and if you choose to use Salac, help activate it. It's worth in OU is questionable since, for the most part, it's inferior to Marowak but it's still usable there. It's (near) worthless trait does it no favours however.
EV Corner:
With Sword Dance and a naturally high attack stat the need for Attack EVs is marginal. Devoting EVs to Defence and HP is much more valuable. Some EVs could be allocated to Special Defence in case it finds itself in a situation where it needs to take a special attack but situations such as that are few and for the most part Sandslash can't take more than two special hits.
EVs: 180 HP / 76 Atk / 252 Def
Impish Nature (+Def, -SAtk)
The other way to go with Sandslash is Sub-Salac. With this arrangement Sandslash will be taking few hits and will have no means of self recovery so a lot of EVs should be dedicated to Attack to make sure after a Sword Dance, everything will be KOed. 227 Speed with a Salac Boost allows it to outrun Timid Manectric among other things and is achievable without Nature Boost,
Other Optional Sets
Sandslash @ Leftovers
Trait: Sand Veil
EVs: 244 HP / 196 Atk / 68 Def
Impish Nature (+Def, -SAtk)
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- Rapid Spin
- Swords Dance / Focus Punch / Hidden Power [Bug] / Rest
Mini Donphan set-up. Since there aren't many Spikers in UU this set isn't particularly useful but still viable, even if it pales in comparison to Donphan in an OU environment. If you choose to use Sword Dance as the final move you should use a similar EV spread to the sweeper since less Attack is needed to pack a punch.
Sandslash @ Choice Band
Trait: Sand Veil
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- Hidden Power [Bug]
- Focus Punch
CB-Slash. Outruns a fair few things at Max Speed and has a rather versatile move pool combined with power. Perfectly viable with proper prediction.
Other Optional Moves
Flail, Counter, Iron Tail, Fury Swipes. Flail could go with a Sub-Salac set but without STAB it'll be hard to pull off. Counter works nicely with it's defence and HP. Iron Tail can hit Solrock a bit harder for a accuracy sacrifice. Fury Swipes can break Sub. It's not much to work with and short of Counter none of these are really valuable enough to be put onto Sandslash.
Strategy Against Sandslash
A burned Sandslash can't do much even with Sword Dance support. Most special attack will leave a huge dent in it, Super effective ones especially. With an absence of HP Bug (or Iron Tail) Solrock, Claydol, Lunatone and several others wall it effectively. Gligar and Flygon wall it entirely but the later won't like Focus Punch. With HP Bug absent almost all Grass can wall it to some extent provided they don't have a secondary type making Earthquake do neutral damage. In OU Weezing and Skarmory are the number one choices to wall it, the former being able to Burn it and latter able to set up Spikes on it when it doesn't have Focus Punch.
Contest Moveset
A good Contest Moveset for Sandslash would have to be this for the Tough Contest best with Impish, Lax, Relaxed or Bold Nature:
Attacks:
Swords Dance
Rock Smash
Sandstorm
Earthquake
Items Attached:
Yellow Scarf
Strategy Using Sandslash
If you do the attacks in this following order you should have very few problems; st - Swords dance, 2nd - Rock smash, 3rd - Sandstorm, 4th - Earthquake, 5th - Rocks smash
Locations in Games
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Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald
Evolve Sandshrew
Colosseum/XD
Trade from RSELGXD (Col.) Evolve Sandshrew (XD)
Fire Red/Leaf Green
Trade from RSELGXD (FR), Evolve Sandshrew (LG)
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Animé Appearences
Synopsis
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