rain dance in the 5 gen

Waiting till hes the last pokemon and parish songing him is what I have been aiming to do often and tends to work. Also tricking him choice band has saved me a few times.

Question, though. Your Nat, do you prefer spikes or leech seed (considering you can only have one or the other)? I REALLY like the healing on leech seed but as you said, spikes really waste other Nats pretty easily...
I prefer spikes - he can comfortably run Gyro/Power Whip/SR/Spikes with a Rugged Helmet (especially if your passing wishes to him from Vappy) or lefties. Leech Seed<Wish, and you have it on Sect so its not needed for him to stall things out.

I'm surprised SD Scizor doesn't get a mention here. Swords Dance/Roost/Bullet Punch seems like beast, especially in the rain.

Also, for the playtesters out there, is Politoed the only weather inducer you're using or are you dropping rain dance on another pokemon as well?
No need for RD on another poke - waste of a moveslot - unless you're running offense and have a free one somewhere. Stall needs all the slots it has.
 
I'm surprised SD Scizor doesn't get a mention here. Swords Dance/Roost/Bullet Punch seems like beast, especially in the rain.

Also, for the playtesters out there, is Politoed the only weather inducer you're using or are you dropping rain dance on another pokemon as well?
At first I considered running a jolteon or an electrode with rain dance (merely for the speed of having a quick raindance for back up), and as I wanted to go more for rain stall I almost considered running a bronzong with it. However... I realized, as long as I play safe with toed, I am fine. I tend to have little problem with toed getting killed as long as I dont do anything too stupid with him.


I prefer spikes - he can comfortably run Gyro/Power Whip/SR/Spikes with a Rugged Helmet (especially if your passing wishes to him from Vappy) or lefties. Leech Seed<Wish, and you have it on Sect so its not needed for him to stall things out.
I ended up trying that out and liked it infinitely more than leech seed. Although leech seed has saved my Nat multiple times, I totally have an easier time against opposing Nats with spikes up. Much more worth it for sure.


So far, I look at this (rain stall) team and I don't see any replacements I'd like to change. That scarf gengar might be the only other option available I might try, but it seems to be pretty solid as it is right now. The last option I might uses is maybe using Burungeru over a Vappy and a Ghost type (for spinblocking), making room for another pokemon... However, I can't give up Vaporeon, and it doesn't quite fix the spin blocking problem against Starmie. And After I made this team, I tend to see a LOT of them, (or maybe I am just noticing them more).
 

The.Lost.Hylian

Conquer your Shadow
is a Researcher Alumnus
Any Rain team should always include a Spinner, as almost all of the good Spinners are Water or Steel, so they benefit. Rain offense falls apart too easily if you can't finish, which is why I prefer rain stall.

I'd post my team, but NOW I'm at my parent's house without my computer. I swear, when I get back to my computer at my apartment after break, I'll break down my Rain for you guys.

To get a jump start, I start with Politoed, and you guys can talk shit all day about how it may be bad, but realize this... with no Speed EVs, he's gonna be slower than Ninetails, so his Rain will counter the Sun. If you start off against a T-tar and the Sandstream prevails, then you know he isn't Scarfed. If you start off against Hippowdon, well, you already have the advantage, even if his ass has the Sand over your Rain. Boil Over if you have the advantage, switch if you'd take too much against the starter that you don't have an advantage over, and if you're pretty even or predict a switch, hell, Perish Song, so your opponent HAS to switch, giving you an opportunity to switch in your Pokemon to set up Toxic Spikes, Spikes, Stealth Rock, or set up for the sweep. It also does well to have a Wish user on a Perish Song rain team, since you can get the Wish passed as they switch on their 1 count.

In terms of Vaporeon, even though he has Hydration, since Water attacks do more damage in rain, I always run Water Absorb.


Best Spinners imo

Starmie vs Tentacruel
Starmie has speed and more offensive power, plus Natural Cure is awesome. My issue is that he's rather... frail, especially when you focus his EVs more on Speed and not defenses. I like Starmie because he can Thunder in the rain. I can also decide to make him physical or special defensive. But I also like Toxic Spikes, which Tentacruel has. His biggest problem is the Earthquake weakness. So long as I don't have to worry about hard physical hits, he's fine. And Rain Dish is AWESOME, holy shit. He can Spin and Toxic Spikes up, which leads me to selecting the next member of my team...

Nattorei vs Forretress
Both benefit from Rain's halving fire damage. If I run Tentacruel, I go with Nattorei, since Nattorei can take hits from both spectrums better than Forretress, who is heavily physical defensive. If I run Starmie, I go with Forry so I can have a spinner and a TSpikes user. Nattorei should have T-Wave for the Dragons he'll be switching in on after they DD Outrage. Forry is pretty worthless against so many Pokemon, as Spin/Hazard/Hazardormove/move limits him, especially when his movepool is BALLS. NOTE! Volt Change Forry is AWESOME. Switch in, then Volt Change out when you expect the Shanderaa. It hits a lot of Waters that switch in on him, and allows you to scout for their Shandy or Spinner ;)

I mix and match to see what works better. Sometimes I try Tentacruel and Skarmory. I've thought about Roserade, but since I've not much experience with her, I didn't want to mention her yet.

Anyway, once you set up TSpikes, two Perish Song Pokemon (Toed and Celebi) will slowly wear away your opponents' sanity. I've been playing my Rain Stall for a few weeks, and it's great. I just wish I had my computer here so I can go into MORE detail.

Edit: Zapdos was MADE for this gen's Rain. Holy fucking god. With T-Spikes out, and you switch on the Thunder(bolt), sub as they switch, then sub/roost while the Toxic wears them away, and then finish with a +1 never miss Thunder. SEXY.

Edit 2: Dragonite with Hurricane/Thunder/Draco Meteor/Super Power @ Scarf... rape
 
No need for RD on another poke - waste of a moveslot - unless you're running offense and have a free one somewhere. Stall needs all the slots it has.
I tend to use more offensively-oriented rain teams which is why I asked this. I can't imagine that type of team in a situation where all I have is Politoed. I'll have to try out a stall team variant for sure, though.
 
Toxic Spikes seem to be the death of any Rain team I run without Tentacruel, so I thought some offensive Rapid Spinners would be worth a mention:

w/ Leftovers
Swift Swim
Jolly
252 Atk, 252 Spe, 4 HP
Stone Edge
Earthquake/X-Scissor
Swords Dance/X-Scissor/Stealth Rock
Rapid Spin

Armaldo is a great offensive Rapid Spinner on Rain teams, able to 2HKO Nattorei with X-Scissor if you set up a Sword Dance. It also has the famous X-EdgeQuake set that makes Doryuuzu so dangerous, except Armaldo has STAB on Stone Edge and X-Scissor. It can also set up Stealth Rock, should you want it too.

w/ Leftovers
Swift Swim
Jolly
252 Atk, 200 Spe, 56 HP
Stone Edge
Waterfall/Superpower
Swords Dance/Aqua Jet/Stealth Rock
Rapid Spin

Another offensive Rapid Spinner, Kabutops is similar to Armaldo in many ways. It's offensive typing is arguably worse, but it is faster than Armaldo, allowing you to run a bulkier set. Like Armaldo, it gets Stealth Rock, and it can break through Nattorei with Superpower. Unlike Armaldo, though, Kabutops can't take a hit from Power Whip and so must KO Nattorei with the one hit it gets.

EDIT: 150th Post! Woot!
Armaldo is unable to learn Stealth Rock AND Rapid Spin with Swift Swim.
 

alphatron

Volt turn in every tier! I'm in despair!
Timid max sp. attack Shandera's Flamethrower vs. 248/0 Adamant Scizor with Occa Berry in the rain.
77.6% - 91.5%

Oh boy...I'm gonna try and play around with this for a while. While not STAB, I noticed that Scizor gets a technician boost off of Acrobat, which is stronger than Bullet punch. Assuming it still gets the tech boost after you've used up your Occa Berry, could it be an option on Scizor at all? It hits Grass type pokemon at least...
 
Needs to be more mention of Pokemon immune to Electric attacks (Thunder is on almost all special attacking pokemon concerned with PermaRain: ESPECIALLY in Ubers where Kyogre is a threat). I considered Gorrugo because he can also spin-block and Swampert b/c of SR. But I'm unaware of any others that would be useful.
Edit: I was also using Encourage LO Nidoking for a little while but replaced it for Genosekuto because it was faster and because it didn't mind the Water Attack boost as much.
 
Needs to be more mention of Pokemon immune to Electric attacks (Thunder is on almost all special attacking pokemon concerned with PermaRain: ESPECIALLY in Ubers where Kyogre is a threat). I considered Gorrugo because he can also spin-block and Swampert b/c of SR. But I'm unaware of any others that would be useful.
Edit: I was also using Encourage LO Nidoking for a little while but replaced it for Genosekuto because it was faster and because it didn't mind the Water Attack boost as much.
I'm not sure what you mean by Thunder being on a lot of pokes - maybe in Ubers but that's rarely the case in OU.

Goruggo is pretty bad in Rain tbh - he has an exacerbated water weakness and cannot spinblock Starmie whatsoever. Swampert is OK but has a Grass weakness - probably the best Electric Immunes are those with abilities.

Zapdos when it is released, will be an amazing absorber, for example, but we will have to make do for the time being.
 
Also, Tentacruel is unable to have Giga Drain and Rain Dish.

And Benlisted: Yeah, I'm mostly playing DW Ubers where everyone is running around with Thunder just in case Kyogre is nearby (which he is for me).
 
i don´t think the set listed for dragonite is going to be very effective tbh, it is very slow so it is prone to revenge killing and doesn´t have any bulk as well meaning that roost is pretty much wasted, not to mention that it is totally walled by doryuzu and by an extent magnezone.


dragonite@ life orb
ability : multi scale
40 hp, 252 satk, 216 spd
modest
-Agility
-Surf
-Hurricane
-Thunder

This way it gets perfect coverage outside of Lanturn,Shedinja and Dialga and surf is boosted by rain giving it a pseudo-STAB. The speed is for outspeeding scarfchomp and scarf sazandora after an agility. It can use roost or dragon pulse for another STAB instead of thunder or surf but it loses some coverage.
 
This is cool...getting walled by blissey and nateri sucks though...maybe a waterfall/outrage/superpower can work? You can also go mixed and run thunder over superpower. BTW 200th post...took me long enough i joined way befor nov 2009 just never posted much
 
Man, I really need to start checking my movesets. That's the second time I've been corrected in this thread. :/ I peaked at number 3 on the Smogon Dream World leaderboard with my Rain Team around a week ago, so I'm formatting the team for an RMT right now. I'll put it up under "Other Teams", I suppose, then slap the link right here.

Also worth noting is Gen. Empoleon's Warstory about Parasect's stalling abilities in the 4th Gen Uber tier. I would also like to mention that in a previour match I was able to stall out a ScarfChomp and Scarf Ononokuso in one match with Parasect. He takes around 66% at MOST from Scarfchomp's Outrage, and around the same from Ononokuso's Dragon Claw. Then I lost to crit hax. :(
 

lmitchell0012

Wi-Fi Blacklisted
i don´t think the set listed for dragonite is going to be very effective tbh, it is very slow so it is prone to revenge killing and doesn´t have any bulk as well meaning that roost is pretty much wasted, not to mention that it is totally walled by doryuzu and by an extent magnezone.


dragonite@ life orb
ability : multi scale
40 hp, 252 satk, 216 spd
modest
-Agility
-Surf
-Hurricane
-Thunder

This way it gets perfect coverage outside of Lanturn,Shedinja and Dialga and surf is boosted by rain giving it a pseudo-STAB. The speed is for outspeeding scarfchomp and scarf sazandora after an agility. It can use roost or dragon pulse for another STAB instead of thunder or surf but it loses some precious coverage.
Unless you have espeon, a VERY fast taunter, or a rapid spinner (starmie is probably the best) on your team, I wouldn't recommend using dragonite (with multiscale anyways). Stealth rock/spikes/toxic spikes appear to be quite common in the new metagame and if any of them are present multi scale becomes completely useless.
 
Unless you have espeon, a VERY fast taunter, or a rapid spinner (starmie is probably the best) on your team, I wouldn't recommend using dragonite (with multiscale anyways). Stealth rock/spikes/toxic spikes appear to be quite common in the new metagame and if any of them are present multi scale becomes completely useless.
nite is immune to spikes and toxic spikes. but yes, he does need to be wary of SR to get the most out of multi scale
 
Unless you have espeon, a VERY fast taunter, or a rapid spinner (starmie is probably the best) on your team, I wouldn't recommend using dragonite (with multiscale anyways). Stealth rock/spikes/toxic spikes appear to be quite common in the new metagame and if any of them are present multi scale becomes completely useless.
Very fast taunters can prevent setting-up more hazards but not setting-up hazards. You have to switch-in the Taunter and then you need 1 Turn for Taunt, in the switch-in turn the opponent can lay down 1 stock of hazards. So 1 stock of hazard is guaranteed.

Espeon, on the other hand, can shut down laying hazards from the turn on it was switched in - no more turns needed for Taunt or Encore. But there are hundreds of pokemon that are able to bring hazards and Espeon can't stand a chance on all of them. For example LeadTyras will normaly have SR and some very strong STAB attacks (Pursuit etc.) and they can kill pretty easily incoming Espeons.

So a Spinner is IMO much more effective. All Spinners have there opportunities to come in savely and spin away the hazards.
On my SemiStall Rain Team, I ran a very good alliance of Roserade and Forry. Roserade will mostly set-up 2 layer of TS and can absorb them too. Forry will setup SR or Spikes and spin away opposing hazards.
I also tried out Tentacruel but it doesn't pay out for me.
 
This is cool...getting walled by blissey and nateri sucks though...maybe a waterfall/outrage/superpower can work? You can also go mixed and run thunder over superpower. BTW 200th post...took me long enough i joined way befor nov 2009 just never posted much
yea.. blissey walled it to death so it could run superpower and get some coverage with hurricane maybe...

@lmitchell0012: i use blastoise as my spinner, it has rain dish which is kinda useful. maybe tentacruel could work too...
 
yea.. blissey walled it to death so it could run superpower and get some coverage with hurricane maybe...

@lmitchell0012: i use blastoise as my spinner, it has rain dish which is kinda useful. maybe tentacruel could work too...
Superpower is unfortunately illegal with Multiscale, not sure if you knew but thought it best to point it out.
 
This is super gimmicky to the physical blissy extent, but you could always use t-tar:

Tyranitar
Quite/brave
Tension
Evs arnt mah thang
-thunder
-surf/aqua tail
-dark pulse/crunch/pursuit
-stone edge/ice beam/rain dance

I don't know if this will work, but who would expect it?
 

alphatron

Volt turn in every tier! I'm in despair!
Tension tyranitar can't learn aqua tail or dark pulse. And I'm pretty sure t-tar can't learn surf at all.
 
Tension tyranitar can't learn aqua tail or dark pulse. And I'm pretty sure t-tar can't learn surf at all.
The first part is true bit tyranitar dors learn surf, I know that for a fact.

Damn dream world...why did they get rid of the useful tms and leve us with troll and ice breath, not to mention the complete crap that is incinerate!
 

alphatron

Volt turn in every tier! I'm in despair!
Getting rid of Dark Pulse was horrible...and I should have expected t-tar to learn surf with stuff like rhyperior doing it.

Tension tyranitar exists mainly to show you just how bad tyranitar is without sand. In the rain, I don't expect him to be doing much better.
 
Whoa, whoa, whoa. WHOA. Tyrannitar is BAD without sand? I mean, yes, it loses that awesome 100/150 Special bulk, but it's still killer. Of course, that Special bulk is part of what makes it such a great Pursuit user, so I'm not sure it would be as effective as, say, Scizor, who has it's one weakness cut down in Rain.

As a HUGE Tyrannitar fanboy, it hurt to say that. :(
 

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