Reserving Rain Dance
Rotom-Wash @ Damp Rock/(Expert Belt*)
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 32 HP / 252 SpA / 224 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Rain Dance
- Hydro Pump
- Thunder
- Pain Split/Volt Switch/(Nasty Plot*)
Corviknight, Landorus-T, Tornadus-T, Heatran, and Garchomp. These are some of the very best rockers and defoggers respectively in the tier. What they all have in common is not a single one of them resists the water/electric stab offered by Rotom-W, and they mostly lack ways to significantly threaten you back. Coming off a rather decent base 105 Special Attack, and a nice speed tier to boot, Rotom-W is well poised to make a dent in teams that can struggle to kill it quickly. This set differentiates itself from Nasty Plot breakers in that it's boost is not negated by Haze effects or Unaware, and the prolonged turns of rain can in turn support traditional rain mons like Barraskewda, or bolster the defensive profile of your Ferrothorn, while providing a back up option for rain teams in case their Pelipper goes down. As a bonus this breaker can serve as a way to stifle non-rain Weather teams, while resisting a lot of the common mons on rain itself and threaten with its Thunder.
Damp Rock is the item of choice to maximize your turns of rain. The EV spread is to outrun up to Modest Tapu Lele, max invested attack, and the rest into HP. Your main two buttons after Rain Dance are Hydro Pump for it's weather boosted damage and Thunder for its now perfect accuracy. Pain Split is preferred to give you a way to stick around longer, thus utilizing more turns of rain to break, and to have ways to interact with some of your primary threats in Blissey and Ferrothorn. Volt Switch is an option that you can run as well to function like a traditional pivot, and run from your bad match ups to better answers.
*Nasty Plot could be run over both Pain Split and Volt Turn, giving you double set up a la vintage tail glow rain dance Manaphy (we all miss you). However, it should be noted that you give up not only the utility in pivoting/recovery, but it doesn't improve your match ups against any of your threats. In my opinion this would primarily be an option to consider when running this set on rain teams since you will more often be coming in with rain already set, and can then Nasty Plot to elevate your power even more if necessary. Similarly, Expert Belt becomes an option in the item slot if you are running this on rain and desire a bit of extra power.*
Threat List:
You don't do anything to this. If you're low you may catch it on the switch with a pain split, but otherwise volt turn can at least give you a bit of tickle chip to go out to something more threatening. She doesn't threaten with much except toxic, but you won't ever break her even if she is lacking it.
Your stabs don't do much here. Volt Switch is more reliable to get a favorable position than Pain Split. Maybe get a thunder para on the switch?
The water immune ground types, while not always running the corresponding abilities, can full stop you if they are packing it.
You have less than a 1% chance to 4hko after rocks, it's not a good look against this mon.