Gen 6 Rayquaza

I think it's pretty obvious that people run Surf/Waterfall solely to OHKO Pdon and that is enough of a merit to run it given how common Pdon is.

Is Surf/Waterfall completety viable? Maybe not. But saying it is completety useless is silly. It doesn't belong in a set with DD or SD but it can see use in an all out attacker, CB or mixed set.

Draco on ray is mainly for physical wall, the most relevant one here being Pdon anyway. DA and EQ provide good coverage so it is not neccesary pressed for a moveslot.

Read before posting next time pls.
I do understand your point, but it is better to be clear and direct. Most people are not going to spend more than a min trying to decipher your wall of text in a Pokemon site.
 
I think it's pretty obvious that people run Surf/Waterfall solely to OHKO Pdon and that is enough of a merit to run it given how common Pdon is.

Is Surf/Waterfall completety viable? Maybe not. But saying it is completety useless is silly. It doesn't belong in a set with DD or SD but it can see use in an all out attacker, CB or mixed set.

Draco on ray is mainly for physical wall, the most relevant one here being Pdon anyway. DA and EQ provide good coverage so it is not neccesary pressed for a moveslot.



I do understand your point, but it is better to be clear and direct. Most people are not going to spend more than a min trying to decipher your wall of text in a Pokemon site.
I am being clear and direct: Rayquaza does not need Surf at all. Does Xerneas use Flash Cannon to OHKO Diancie when Moonblast 2HKOs it anyway? No. This is literally what Surf is: a move that can OHKO one thing while offering nothing else, while being heavily outclassed by a move that Rayquaza already runs. Also please stop repeating "It OHKOs PDon so it has merit", you all are repeating the same argument that I have kept addressing every time I post.

Stone edge kills ray before earthquake kills pdon in a 1v1 situation, so bringing ray in to check Pdon doesn't really work if you run EQ.
That's why Rayquaza is a check, and it can switch into both of PDon's STABs while threatening it from coming in on it at all. I would really appreciate it if you guys could stop being broken records and actually learn from my argument.
 
He's right, I'm not sure why this is difficult to understand.

Right so there's a few issues with this line of thought. For starters, Primal Groudon might not want to stay in on Rayquaza anyway; Draco Meteor is common enough and Primal Groudon is valuable enough in most given matchups that it might not even want to stay in on an unscouted Rayquaza, and if you reveal Surf as it switches out then the move's gonna be useless for the rest of the game (not to mention the fact that it's likely gonna hit the opponent's Rayquaza switch-in for very little damage anyway). Of course there are exceptions to this but if I see my opponent switch Rayquaza in on Groudon and I have a decent Rayquaza switch-in then I'm not gonna wanna stay in with Groudon, anyway.

The next issue is the opportunity cost of Surf; I've said in the past that Rayquaza wants all of Swords Dance / Extreme Speed / V-Create (or Fire Blast) / Dragon Ascent / Earthquake / Draco Meteor / Outrage but it can't fit all of this, leaving very little space for an eighth possible coverage move in Surf. Extreme Speed and Dragon Ascent are already mandatory on most every Rayquaza, so in the last two slots you want something to fit your team's needs best and if you feel like you need Surf on Rayquaza as a crutch to compensate for Primal Groudon, then there's either a massive underlying structural issue with your team that needs fixing or you don't need the move nearly as much as you think you do.

Finally, I find it interesting to note that while Primal Groudon is the most commonly used Pokemon on the ladder, it only had 50% usage in week one of SPL, and it's important to note that SPL is generally the leading factor that shapes a tier's metagame. If any of the opponents of some of the best players in ORAS Ubers (Jibaku/Evuelf/Edgar/Steve Angello/Donkey) used a Surf Rayquaza (nobody actually used Rayquaza in w1 of SPL but that's kind of irrelevant), it would have been a total waste of a moveslot. While Primal Groudon "sun" is definitely the most common playstyle among the general community right now, it stands to reason that once SPL ends and the meta settles down that Sand/Primal Kyogre teams will almost definitely become more common (though admittedly I find it unlikely that they will eclipse Primal Groudon teams in usage, the point I'm making here is that there will be even less of a use for Surf in the future).

This is like running Waterfall on Primal Kyogre to 2HKO Blissey, but maybe even a little worse. You're running a weak Special move with a single target on a Pokemon with Choice Band (if you use Surf to finish off Primal Groudon with your Choice Band Rayquaza then you're setup fodder for legitimately everything commonly used on offense, and have fun breaking Primal Groudon stall used by a half-competent player with Choice Band Surf). It's a little more acceptable on a Life Orb set, but if even you admit that it probably isn't 100% viable then it doesn't deserve a mention anywhere except the OO section of an analysis, if that.

This is 100% irrelevant and I don't know why you'd bother mentioning it. tl;dr, and I'm sure I've mentioned this to you before: lurk more, toshhy.
You see this is what I'm talking about. You rise some good points, let me summarize it because summarizing is not too difficult.

Pdon might not want to stay in on ray, making surf/waterfall less reliable way to dispose of it.

Ray has a massive case of 4mss so surf carries massive opportunity cost. Good teambuilding negate the need to have surf/waterfall to ohko pdon.

Pdon use less in spl. Sand/porge becoming more common after spl? Lol

CB Ray lock into surf/waterfall makes it set up fodder.

My conclusion: I never said surf/waterfall is really viable and anybody must use it. It's good in clutch time. It is not completety useless and deserve a mention somewhere.
 
My conclusion: I never said surf/waterfall is really viable and anybody must use it. It's good in clutch time. It is not completety useless and deserve a mention somewhere.
Not completely useless ≠ deserving of a mention. People get where you're coming from, just not why you keep lauding a lesser option. Yeah, you can use it, but why would you? It'd be best if you just put down the shovel and said "yeah i guess you guys are right, it IS kinda meh".
 

Aberforth

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I'm not lauding it, and would only run it under extreme conditions (ie, my team only has one soft check to pdon, which would be a bad team anyway), but it might deserve a mention.
 
Sorry guys sidetracking a little, would a jolly Nature outspeed anything notable that adamant would not on Swords Dance Rayquaza? Since I am quite frustrated when I get outsped by Arceus and Lugia and get smacked with an ice beam before I can do anything
 
tbh i feel like Adamant is the superior choice overall because a) you really want Rayquaza to hit as hard as possible and b) it has ES anyways to hit things would normally outspeed it. Also, Arceus if it's jolly (guess you were speaking about EK Arceus, even if the Ice Beam variants are bad, SE still hits Mence while it hits Lugia and Yveltal at the same time) will outspeed you regardess of your nature. I guess that you can run Jolly if you feel like Lugia is a big problem but tbh I'd just fit a mon that can deal with Lugia on the team (Gengar, Klefki or Kyu-W to make some examples), and use Adamant Rayquaza has it's the most solid nature on it (if you are speaking about the SD set ofc, otherwise for example Naive is better on mixed variants)
 
tbh i feel like Adamant is the superior choice overall because a) you really want Rayquaza to hit as hard as possible and b) it has ES anyways to hit things would normally outspeed it. Also, Arceus if it's jolly (guess you were speaking about EK Arceus, even if the Ice Beam variants are bad, SE still hits Mence while it hits Lugia and Yveltal at the same time) will outspeed you regardess of your nature. I guess that you can run Jolly if you feel like Lugia is a big problem but tbh I'd just fit a mon that can deal with Lugia on the team (Gengar, Klefki or Kyu-W to make some examples), and use Adamant Rayquaza has it's the most solid nature on it (if you are speaking about the SD set ofc, otherwise for example Naive is better on mixed variants)
Thanks!
 

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