Don't listen to anything magic9mushroom says.
Hahaha, you can talk.
Raichu really is worthless. Its only perk is that it's an Electric that isn't walled by Goldon, except it both hits and takes hits like a wet noodle so it doesn't scare anything else anyway. Zapdos is good precisely because it's very threatening to everything except Goldon, whereas Raichu is equally worthless because the price it pays for getting around them is that it threatens absolutely nothing else.
Yes, Raichu is shit and shouldn't really be used. So's everything in D-rank.
I agree with everything m9m said except maybe kangaskhan, what's its selling point over tauros/snorlax?
Over Tauros, Counter and Mega Kick. Over Snorlax, speed. And yeah, it's only really useful if you've already got both - Persian's no different, though, when you get down to it. Should have said "maybe" and not "probably", whatever.
Haven't used raichu, but I guess it has a niche in being able to get past the rocks (though most special attackers hit them hard anyway so i'm not sure what raichu has over them- maybe raichu should be compared to other special attackers rather than zapdos/jolteon since it doesn't really have a great physical offense- body slam and submission are all it has, and they're pretty weak)
Pin Missile's utterly useless except when it's 4x super-effective, and Jolteon's Double Kick is a lot weaker than Raichu's Submission:
Raichu Submission vs. Chansey: 294-346 (41.8 - 49.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
Jolteon Double Kick (2 hits) vs. Chansey: 186-220 (26.4 - 31.2%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
So yeah Jolteon isn't in the same breath as Zapdos either. Raichu shouldn't really be using Body Slam (neither should Jolteon), because it doesn't really solve any of their problems. Raichu should be using either Submission (for Chansey) or Seismic Toss (for Egg), not trying to do both.
If you want a specific niche for Raichu, it'd be as a (STABbed) specialist with no special weaknesses that doesn't get rekt by Slowbro
or Rocks. But in reality it's shit, like most of D-rank (lol Dodrio).
My two cents on how to define the ranks:
S-rank: Mandatory mons. A team without these is considered nonstandard.
A-rank: Cream of the crop. Great mons that'll pull their weight every game.
B-rank: Threats. Scary 'mons that can do work and need to be respected.
C-rank: Minor threats. You can counter these by accident, but they're unique enough to be useful on some teams and teams weak to them exist.
D-rank: Mediocre stuff, not exactly BAD but thoroughly unimpressive.
E-rank: Shit-tier, should never be used. No point actually naming these in a list, they're literally "the rest".
Hmm, looking at my most recent
list, I did put Kanga in D. But Jorgen did some talking about how it's potentially on par with Persian and I found it somewhat compelling.
Translating that list to this ranking system and alphabetical order it'd be like S: Egg/Taur A: Zam/
Chan/
Lax/Mie B:
Cloy/Gar/
Golem/Pras/Don/Bro C: Coon/
Nite/Jolt/
Jynx/Persian/Bel/
Zapdos D: Fable/Gyara/Hypno/Kabutops/Kangy/Kingler/Raichu E: da rest. Moving all of the bolded ones of a given tier to the next tier up wouldn't bother me particularly, that's a matter of cutoffs (ie, Nite to B or Jynx/Zap to C would both be fine by me). And like I said maybe Kangy to C or Persian to D. IDK what to do about those two.