~Rain Analysis~
Rain offence has always been a potent play-style throughout the generations, usually appealing as a hyper offensive, quick paced play-style. Your overall goal with rain is to clean your opponents team as fast and efficiently as you can without having to play as reserved as you might normally. Rain is usually composed as: Rain Setter / 2 or 3 Rain abusers / wallbreaker for rain / hazard setter
which brings onto the next point.
The Common Faces
sprites are clickable for sets!
- Pelipper is the primary Rain setter in the tier, bearing decent defence and having access to great utility moves such as Defog to provide role compression or U-turn, providing much more momentum for its teammates. Thanks to Drizzle giving it much more powerful STAB attacks and 100% accurate Hurricanes, it has the options to run a more offensive set to hit foes as hard as possible.
- Kingdra is arguable rain's best wincon. Outrunning all of the non-scarfed meta as well as some scarfers in the rain, hammering a lot of unresisted foes with it's choice specs boosted STAB attacks in the rain making it one of rain's greatest assets.
- Mega-Swampert is rain's premier mega of choice, granting an electric immunity whilst being a viable, strong physical attacker that Rain generally lacked before without having to resort to Kabutops. Also taking on bulky Grass-types more efficiently in comparison to Kingdra, which risks the 50/50s of switches with being choiced locked and taking wearing down common rain checks as well.
- Ash-Greninja's already sky high special attack stat in tandem with Drizzle boost from rain boosts its Water-STAB to ridiculously powerful levels makes it one of Rain's top threats, also having priority in Water Shuriken is extremely useful for common revengers whilst dealing hefty damage.
- Keldeo offers great offensive coverage for rain, hitting Ferrothorn super-effectively with powerful STAB and having the room in its movepool to run useful coverage such as Hidden Power Electric for bulky Waters like Mantine. And much like the others, rain makes its Water STAB exceedingly powerful.
It is worth noting a sizeable amount of other mons like Omastar and Kabutops can also be some of Rains predominant abusers, but the Kingdra, Mega-Per and Keldeo are the most effective and have seen the most usage recently.
Checks & Counters
clickable too :3
- Bulky Grass-types like Ferrothorn, Tangrowth, Amoonguss or Mega-Venu are notable nuisances towards rain, resisting their most spammable Water-type attacks and either cripple them with status ailments, chip away at foes in tandem with leech seed or hit them with super-effective STAB.
- Mons that have access to weather somewhat invalidates rain as a whole, for example, Alolan-Ninetales can come in and nullify speed boosts from rain thanks to Swift Swim and set up Aurora Veil to take hit more efficiently while also firing off super-effective Freeze Drys to deal massive damage to the rain abusers. Charizard-Y can weaken Water-type attacks, lessening their damage output from STAB and utilising Solar Beam to exploit them, Tyranitar can also change the weather and invalidate Drizzle's affect to somewhat hinder the team but should be weary of the strong Water STAB.
- Bulky Waters can tank practically any hit Kingdra or Swampert throw their way, with Mantine and Gastrodon being immune to Water-type attacks, regaining it's health whenever it's hit by one, can stall them out with Toxic + Recover. While Alomamola isn't immune to Water-type attacks, it can still take most hits and do the same as the others by Toxic stalling.
- Scarf Kartana, gives rain an incredibly hard time, outrunning Mega-Swampert in rain, hitting Ferrothorn super-effectively in tandem with STAB, outrunning all the tapus and taking advantage of Rain weakening Fire-type attacks, lessening the damage output of any Fire coverage the team might be holding.
Teammates for Rain
guess what? clickable oo
- Tapu Koko + Hawlucha synergies extremely well with each and wth rain. Koko can partner well with Pelipper providing a VolTurn core, also certain sets being tailored to take on bulky Grass-types like Tangrowth or Amoonguss with Mean Look + Tapunium Z, or just a more offensive set for 100% accurate Thunders to break through the bulky Waters that rain heavily struggles against. Hawlucha takes advantage of Electric Terrain with Electric Seed to obtain +1 defence, burning an item for unburden. In addition to this Hawlucha deals with pessimistic Steel or Grass-types like Ferro, Tang, Kartana, Bulu, Mega -Venu and Amoonguss effectively with its respectable STAB attacks.
- Steel-types that are notably weak to Fire-type attacls make great use of Rain weakening the damage from Fire attacks. Ferrothorn sets up hazards to support the team while becoming formidably bulky with its 4x weakness being mitigated. Magearna can set up easier against the likes of Heatran, Charizard-Y and Magnezone becoming a formidable threat, while Kartana can either set up or just all out attack, not having to worry so much about its inherit weakness against Fire-type attacks. Mega-Scizor can become the teams form of hazard removal if Pelipper opts to not run it.
Some honourable mentions include; Zapdos, which can remove hazards against the likes of Ferro whilst taking on bulky Waters like Mantine and Alomomola, Dugtrio can trap pessimistic specially defensive mons like Chansey which rain can fall short to if Mega-Pert or Keldeo have been eliminated also trapping other weather setter like Tyranitar or Alolan-Ninetales, Mega-Gardevoir can break through a lot of the defensive mons like Ferro, Amoonguss, Tang whilst taking on more passive Waters.
Tips & Get Out There!
Pelipper can be used as a good lead, setting up weather instantly for teammates, but it should be played quite conservatively and reserved. You should only eve sack Pelipper when you're confident that you have enough rain turns to win with a Rain abuser.
- team provided by
njnp, This team is a great example of how to exploit the Rain abusers weaknesses in Koko + Hawlucha, eliminating mons like Mega-Venu or Ferro to let Kingdra and Swampert come in and sweep. Also Ferrothorn providing hazard stack support and wearing down foes for others to do their job more efficiently. You can read much more about the team
here and a better, in-depth explanation of the team.
you guys can now feel free to post!
i really hoped this helped ;w;