Personally I've been having fun with the tier at the moment, the introduction of a lot of new tools in the metagame makes for a pretty refreshing experience in my opinion. I think someone earlier in the thread asked what under-the-radar mons have people been trying out, and while I've been messing around with rain teams, there's been one mon in particular that's been a blast to use:
Poliwrath @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Swift Swim
Tera Type: Steel/Fighting/Ground
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Close Combat
- Liquidation
- Knock Off/Earthquake
- Belly Drum
Poliwrath's a pretty cool mon on rain teams. Probably not very good, but nonetheless still cool. The appeal of Poliwrath on rain teams lies in its ability to compress the roles of a high risk, high reward rain wallbreaker and cleaner in addition to serving as a decent check against specific threats in the meta, most prominently Kingambit. On paper, Poliwrath's primary goal is to find an opportunity to set up Belly Drum and lay waste to the opposing team. In practice, finding this opportunity can be rather difficult, as factors that can impede Poliwrath's sweep first need to be eliminated, in which case a savvy opponent can simply endeavor to preserve these answers. Under the right circumstances, however, a Belly Drum Poliwrath can feel downright oppressive.
There are two general opportunities for Poliwrath to set up a Belly Drum: against particularly passive mons that can't do much to prevent Poliwrath from setting up (e.g. Ting-Lu lacking Whirlwind, Corviknight lacking Brave Bird) or against a mon that Poliwrath can check once switched in (e.g. Kingambit, Heatran). Mons that can pivot to give Poliwrath a potentially free switch in naturally serve as strong partners as a result. While 90/95/90 on the defensive side isn't exactly impressive, Poliwrath's base bulk in conjunction with its pretty useful Water/Fighting typing gives it a decently useful defensive profile. Even in matches where setting up a Belly Drum just isn't feasible, Poliwrath is far from being deadweight due to its useable bulk making it a serviceable switch-in against several mons in the tier capable of firing off respectably powerful Close Combats and rain-boosted Liquidates.
With all of this in mind, Poliwrath unfortunately has quite a few flaws that make it rather lackluster. For starters, Poliwrath is pretty slow. A base 70 spd leaves a lot to be desired, and even with Swift Swim Poliwrath can find itself getting outsped and revenge-killed by speedsters such as Booster Energy Iron Valiant or Choice Scarf Meowscarada, an issue that fellow physical rain abuser Floatzel does not have to deal with. As a rain breaker and sweeper, Poliwrath is decidedly more dependent on rain being up than other rain abusers, as it effectively only has one shot to get work done after setting up Belly Drum. Whereas a mon such as Floatzel or Basculegion-M can come in when there's only two turns of rain left, click Wave Crash and delete something, then switch out to wallbreak and clean in the late game, Poliwrath's "All or nothing" playstyle just doesn't allow for this, as Liquidate and Close Combat are only
decently powerful rather than absolutely destructive. On that note, when compared to its contemporaries, Poliwrath just lacks immediate power to be threatening without Belly Drum, making it much more telegraphed and restricted to use as a result. There are also several methods a player might utilize to halt a Poliwrath sweep in its tracks; changing the weather via Alolan Ninetails or Torkoal, revenge killing with strong priority such as Rillaboom's Grassy Glide, keeping an Unaware mon alive, and using defensive tera are all effective ways to stop Poliwrath's potentially dangerous momentum.
So why even use Poliwrath? What does it offer compared to its fellow rain abusers? Perhaps most notably, its secondary STAB in Close Combat allows it to bypass certain mons that would halt other physical rain abusers, specifically defensive mons using tera Water. It also allows Poliwrath to smack around the likes of Ogerpon -Wellspring, something that neither Floatzel nor Basculegion-M can do all that well. Poliwrath's offensive prowess also typically does not necessitate the use of tera to successfully wallbreak. Poliwrath's aformentioned defensive profile also generally gives it a lot more survivability, being able to switch in against quite a few notable mons in the tier, something that a mon like Floatzel can't do without a lot of risk. Being able to tank Kingambit's Sucker Punch even after a Belly Drum use, for instance, is pretty nice.
Set details are mostly self-explanatory. Tera Steel lets it try to dance around things like Scarf Meowscarada, Booster Energy Iron Valiant, and Alolan Ninetales trying to revenge kill it, and generally makes it the preferred tera. Tera Fighting gives Poliwrath a bit more punch against a weakened Dondozo, but probably isn't worth giving up the defensive applications of tera Steel. Tera Ground can be used to thrash Toxapex, giving a guaranteed OHKO with +6 Earthquake, so it can be used if your matchup against Toxapex is particularly weak. Otherwise, Knock Off gives Poliwrath added utility in matchups where setting up Belly Drum isn't feasible.
So yeah, Poliwrath is a very high risk, high reward rain abuser that I've been loving to use recently. While it's far from reliable and is therefore on the fringe of viability in the metagame, it's still been plenty of fun to utilize.