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Name: Rayquaza Type: Dragon / Flying Abilities: Air Lock Base Stats: 105 / 150 / 90 / 150 / 90 / 95 Movepool: http://www.smogon.com/bw/pokemon/rayquaza/moves Stats and movepool unconfirmed
General Description:
With the likely disappearance of weather sweepers, Air Lock has lost a lot of utility beyond the guarantee of Kyogre's Drizzle never affecting his Fire-type attacks. Fairy-types mean that sets relying on cleaning up with Outrage, basically both his DD sets, have lost a lot of charm. However, for all these drawbacks Rayquaza maintains those nasty SD and Mixed Attacker sets that were effective at breaking down walls in BW2. On top of that, Defog can be used as a reliable solution to Stealth Rock, allowing Rayquaza to switch in more easily than it did before.
I don't see how Fairies are a huge problem for Rayquaza, they're all physically frail bar Xerneas and die to any of his coverage moves, especially when you're at +1 or +2.
I don't see how Fairies are a huge problem for Rayquaza, they're all physically frail bar Xerneas and die to any of his coverage moves, especially when you're at +1 or +2.
Please can we stop the silly argument "oh noez raicuaza is koed by fairies it must be weak now" and talk about his actual performance in the tier? I haven't used nor seen one in XY, so i'm particullary interested. Mixed seems like it should be the way to go.
Rayquaza @ Life Orb
Ability: Air Lock
IVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpAtk / 252 Spe
Nature: Hasty
- Outrage
- Iron Tail
- Extreme Speed
- Air Slash
Its a bit naive of me to have this set, but it works decently well and has good coverage, im thinking Fire Blast or Thunder replacing one of these maybe
Rayquaza @ Life Orb
Ability: Air Lock
Nature: Hasty / Naive
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
- Dragon Dance
- Outrage / Dragon Claw
- Fire Blast / Iron Tail
- Earthquake / Iron Tail
Fairy-types do trouble Rayquaza, but they are not an insurmountable obstacle to it. Offensive Xerneas sets have no recovery and are hit hard by coverage moves, and picked off by Extremespeed easily at low health. Sylveon is hit very hard by physical coverage moves. Defensive Xerneas sets, Fairy Arceus and Sylveon are also all very vulnerable to being trapped and removed by Mega Gengar.
Rayquaza's biggest problem is pulling off its sets and the competition it faces. The Swords Dance set is very diffult to set up, and even when it succeeds, it is only situationally better than Extremekiller Arceus, which has much weaker coverage moves to hit Extremespeed resists, but is easy to set up and has a more powerful Extremespeed. The Mixed set faces heavy competition, as the tier is full of potent wallbreakers, some of which have better defensive typing and other advantages, while its main advantages are its access to priority and a slightly better base speed. The Dragon Dance set is just as difficult to set up as the Swords Dance set, is vulnerable to priority moves and is still outsped occasionally by Scarf Pokemon such as Genesect. Also, all its sets are walled by some (if admittedly not very prominent) Pokemon in the tier; if it lacks Earthquake, Heatran walls it, whereas if it lacks Fire Blast or V-Create, Bronzong invariably walls it.
However, flaws aside, it has decent Speed, huge attacking stats combined with very powerful moves such as Draco Meteor and V-Create, access to Extremespeed and a healthy dose of unpredictability with three very different viable sets, so it can still present a veritable threat to most any team.
Rayquaza @ Life Orb
Ability: Air Lock
Nature: Hasty / Naive
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
- Dragon Dance
- Outrage / Dragon Claw
- Fire Blast / Iron Tail
- Earthquake / Iron Tail
Fairy-types do trouble Rayquaza, but they are not an insurmountable obstacle to it. Offensive Xerneas sets have no recovery and are hit hard by coverage moves, and picked off by Extremespeed easily at low health. Sylveon is hit very hard by physical coverage moves. Defensive Xerneas sets, Fairy Arceus and Sylveon are also all very vulnerable to being trapped and removed by Mega Gengar.
Rayquaza's biggest problem is pulling off its sets and the competition it faces. The Swords Dance set is very diffult to set up, and even when it succeeds, it is only situationally better than Extremekiller Arceus, which has much weaker coverage moves to hit Extremespeed resists, but is easy to set up and has a more powerful Extremespeed. The Mixed set faces heavy competition, as the tier is full of potent wallbreakers, some of which have better defensive typing and other advantages, while its main advantages are its access to priority and a slightly better base speed. The Dragon Dance set is just as difficult to set up as the Swords Dance set, is vulnerable to priority moves and is still outsped occasionally by Scarf Pokemon such as Genesect. Also, all its sets are walled by some (if admittedly not very prominent) Pokemon in the tier; if it lacks Earthquake, Heatran walls it, whereas if it lacks Fire Blast or V-Create, Bronzong invariably walls it.
However, flaws aside, it has decent Speed, huge attacking stats combined with very powerful moves such as Draco Meteor and V-Create, access to Extremespeed and a healthy dose of unpredictability with three very different viable sets, so it can still present a veritable threat to most any team.
Seriously lol, just because a champion used it 14 years ago doesn't mean it is a competetively viable move. However according to your logic Attract Miltank would be great in ubers, and alot of other things npc uses.
Seriously lol, just because a champion used it 14 years ago doesn't mean it is a competetively viable move. However according to your logic Attract Miltank would be great in ubers, and alot of other things npc uses.
Holy shit, I know I'm going to kill this but like half of you have no idea what sarcasm is. All things aside, I think Ray is pretty damn underrated considering it destroys every Fire-weak Pokemon in the meta and most of its sets curbstomp almost any wall in the game (Like SD can KO Donner with +2 Vcreate holy shit). Idk why everyone is mindlessly droning about it losing to Fairies when none of them like taking a V-create at all. I will concede that its Speed is what brings it down imo what with all these new speed demons like MegaBlaze, MegaGar, and the rise in usage of Mewtwo and stuff, but most of the Scarfers that stopped Ray are not used as much at all due to the bulkier meta (except for ScarfOgre this thing is so annoying), and most of its sets will pull its weight if you know what you're doing (unlike EKiller and GeoXern). Frankly, I really think that more people should try to give Ray a go instead of saying that it sucks without even trying it.
Also Hoenn remakes please make Mega Rayquaza with Aerialate so I can break meta with ESpeed.
