Makin' it Rain: UU Rain discussion

After reading through this thread, I've been using a Golduck with Surf/Psychic/HP Grass/Signal Beam (thanks a ton, SJCrew. :D). Expert Belt is probably the best bet for the item, and a Timid 252/252/4 in Spe/SpA/HP lets it tie with Toxicroak. Not sure what everyone else is using, but that's my choice.

Golduck isn't the epitome of "bulky", but it can take a hit or two, from the few battles I've played with it. I suppose HP Ice could work better for coverage, but HP Grass does allow it to hit the RBY Fossils.

It might be possible to run Focus Punch to deal with Chansey and the like (outside of Weather teams), but you lose coverage somewhere if you do so. Although FP over HP Grass still allows it to hit a fossil on a switch, SD, etc... You'd have to change some of the EVs around, possibly, and it'd require more prediction.

I'm a newb to UU, so I'm probably overlooking a lot. :P

there would be no need to use FP on goldduck when he gets cross chop.
 
See, I forget the most common things. >.<

Focus Punch does hurt a bit harder than Cross Chop though, if you manage to predict correctly. 70 more base power doesn't exactly warrant an immediate dismissal of the idea, in my eyes. Plus it can keep more of the EVs in SpA, where you might have to use more in Attack if you choose Cross Chop.

I'm too lazy to run the damage calcs, though, so you might not need that many EVs in Attack after all.
 
It might be possible to run Focus Punch or Cross Chop to deal with Chansey and the like (outside of Weather teams), but you lose coverage somewhere if you do so. Although FP over HP Grass still allows it to hit a fossil on a switch, SD, etc... You'd have to change some of the EVs around, possibly, and it'd require more prediction.
Why compromise Golduck's ability to do it's main job which is destroying Rain or Sun teams by lowering its coverage? You have 5 more team members to deal with Chansey and "the like"... HP Grass also allows for you to kill Bulky Waters... weakened or without recovery.
 

shrang

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When using Golduck to counter Rain, HP Grass is pretty much a must as it hits water Pokemon for Super Effective damage, obviously. It will OHKO Kabutops and Omastar, and deal a hefty amount to Gorebyss.
 
I'm changing conclusions that rain isn't overpowered anymore. The metagame appears to have shifted to counter it. There're so many Milotics and Azumarills and Venusaurs and Uxies and even Golduck's made an appearance, rain can't sweep teams as easily anymore. Players have also gotten better at beating it, and in fact recently I've even lost more games than won. Either the metagame's adapted to rain or I've suddenly started playing worse (which is possible).

Btw Flare I'm beginning to think Gorebyss rather an inferior sweeper. Sure it does big damage, but it's also pretty slow, making it useless outside of rain. It can also be outsped by Scarfers even in rain (unheard of by other rain sweepers), and against a fellow rain team it's basically dead weight. Just one game recently Stallion swept me horribly because his Ludicolo was faster than my Kabutops (???I wasn't running max speed, but still???) and he also had Qwilfish, so I lost rain or no rain.
 
I ran 144 speed EVs with Adamant nature, so it's certainly possible that Ludicolo outspeeds ... it just surprised me, because I thought all the rain sweepers ran just enough speed to outspeed common Scarfed Pokemon and dropped the remainder into HP / defense. Even if I'd know though I couldn't win the game; he had faster sweepers and all my Qwilfish could do was Explode on them.

I guess it's one of the things you learn everyday. Next time, I'll run more speed on Kabutops.
 

shrang

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I'm changing conclusions that rain isn't overpowered anymore. The metagame appears to have shifted to counter it. There're so many Milotics and Azumarills and Venusaurs and Uxies and even Golduck's made an appearance, rain can't sweep teams as easily anymore. Players have also gotten better at beating it, and in fact recently I've even lost more games than won. Either the metagame's adapted to rain or I've suddenly started playing worse (which is possible).

Btw Flare I'm beginning to think Gorebyss rather an inferior sweeper. Sure it does big damage, but it's also pretty slow, making it useless outside of rain. It can also be outsped by Scarfers even in rain (unheard of by other rain sweepers), and against a fellow rain team it's basically dead weight. Just one game recently Stallion swept me horribly because his Ludicolo was faster than my Kabutops (???I wasn't running max speed, but still???) and he also had Qwilfish, so I lost rain or no rain.
Yes, which is why I haven't seen anywhere near as many Rain teams on the ladder these few weeks. People have realised that Rain isn't actually that successful once people know how to stop it.

Anyway, you should always run max or close to max Speed with Kabutops. I run Jolly whenever I run Kabutops anyway, mainly because when rain stops, it doesn't make Kabutops dead weight (Can at least tie with Venusaur and stuff like that, and outspeeds Modest Moltres).
 
I think the thought that rain is now dead or something is ridiculous. I still have a CRE of approximately 1600 and I use exclusively rain. I know that a few other people on the leaderboard use it as well. Even teams that devote a lot of space to combating rain still lose to it often enough. Waterfall is such a ridiculous move in rain...The 20% flinch chance and the 6.25% critical hit chance means that 25% of the time you will get a free attack in, so some really bulky mons like registeel or uxie that don't have a waterfall resistance but still are used to check rain are easily defeated often enough. It is a very powerful, cohesive, and explosive strategy that also has a lot of ways to screw you out of a deserved win. The only disadvantage is that it is a fairly linear strategy. There are few tricks available to the average rain team and the sets are fairly standardized. It has been mentioned that there is no such thing as a "perfect log" for showing a standard team against a rain dance team, but I disagree. If the opponent's team is adequate and is reasonably teched against rain then it is possible that the rain player always loses even if they make no mistakes. If both players don't make mistakes, or at least understandable ones based on an incorrect "coin flip" call, then you certainly can have a perfect game! Of course, flinch or crit hax should be present on an appropriate level (25% of waterfalls hax). I think that rain is far too powerful at current levels, but I believe that banning Damp Rock is too drastic. Just ban Ludicolo and/or Kabutops and rain is not nearly as strong but fairly viable, especially as people tech against them less. Rain's main advantage is usually that people prepare for normal teams and sometimes forget about rain. Although that isn't the case anymore, it is still a very powerful strategy that punishes any mistakes, mispredicts, or misses, and has an excellent chance of haxing you too. Far too powerful of a strategy in my opinion.
 

FlareBlitz

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Ban Ludicolo/Kabutops and you might as well ban Damp Rock. No one will be using it to support Lumineon. And of course, banning Kabutops would mean that you ban one of the best leads in the current metagame. Banning Damp Rock is just much better.
 
There is still Omastar and Gorebyss and Qwil if you really like rain. Froslass was nearly banned because it was too powerful in the lead position, and that obviously would have taken out one of the best leads, so using the argument that kabutops shouldn't be banned for that reason is sort of ridiculous. If something is broken, you remove it, and I think that it is Kabutops and Ludicolo that are broken and nothing else especially is in rain. If you take these two out you have a fairly powerful but not overly powerful team strategy that will still be playable simply because people will prepare for it less. Banning Damp Rock just totally destroys rain, more than removing the best sweepers does.
 

FlareBlitz

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Omastar and Gorebyss are outsped by common scarfers. Qwilfish is nice, but it doesn't have the power or the STAB options to ohko Milotic, Slowbro, or Venusaur, which is vitally important in a physical sweeper rain sweeper.

You are correct in that "if something is broken, you remove it". Kabutops is not broken; Kabutops in the rain is. Ludicolo is not broken; Ludicolo in the rain is. The common denominator here is not the Pokemon, but the supporting condition, so it makes no sense to say "let's ban the Pokemon".
 
Omastar and Gorebyss are outsped by common scarfers. Qwilfish is nice, but it doesn't have the power or the STAB options to ohko Milotic, Slowbro, or Venusaur, which is vitally important in a physical sweeper rain sweeper.

You are correct in that "if something is broken, you remove it". Kabutops is not broken; Kabutops in the rain is. Ludicolo is not broken; Ludicolo in the rain is. The common denominator here is not the Pokemon, but the supporting condition, so it makes no sense to say "let's ban the Pokemon".
Perhaps. However, that goes both ways--in much the same way as banning the individual Pokemon wouldn't be the most ideal solution if they're only broken under Rain, banning Damp Rock offers a similar problem: it's affecting RD teams, regardless of the Pokemon on them. Whether the combination of Pokemon would have actually been broken with Damp Rock or not, it still gets affected and would be hindered by their absence.

While they both have that same problem to some extent, banning just Kabutops and possibly Ludicolo seems to be the better solution, as necessary. Yes, they may not be broken except under Rain. However, banning just them does still give you the option of running a decent RD team with stuff like the aforementioned Qwilfish, Gorebyss, and Omastar, in addition to things like Floatzel and Relicanth, whereas banning Damp Rock would still hinder a team with such Pokemon. Thus, just banning the more broken Pokemon under Rain (Kabutops and Ludicolo) seems like the better move to me.
 

FlareBlitz

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Banning Kabutops and Ludicolo affects the viability of rain dance teams far more than banning Damp Rock, making them go from "broken" to "worthless". At least without Damp Rock, you could still use the best rain sweepers, even though they fact that they can only sweep for 3-4 turns makes them significantly less overpowered.

The question is "do we make rain last only five turns or we do we completely ban two pokemon, neither of which are broken if rain only lasts five turn?". The answer should be apparent.
 
There is still Omastar and Gorebyss and Qwil if you really like rain. Froslass was nearly banned because it was too powerful in the lead position, and that obviously would have taken out one of the best leads, so using the argument that kabutops shouldn't be banned for that reason is sort of ridiculous. If something is broken, you remove it, and I think that it is Kabutops and Ludicolo that are broken and nothing else especially is in rain. If you take these two out you have a fairly powerful but not overly powerful team strategy that will still be playable simply because people will prepare for it less. Banning Damp Rock just totally destroys rain, more than removing the best sweepers does.
Ludicolo himself isn't broken, it's the 8 turns of rain that is. Without Damp Rock Kabutops and friends have less time to spam waterfall/surf and are much more manageable. To me banning rain's best sweepers seems too drastic; the better option would be to cripple it.
 
Ludicolo himself isn't broken, it's the 8 turns of rain that is. Without Damp Rock Kabutops and friends have less time to spam waterfall/surf and are much more manageable. To me banning rain's best sweepers seems too drastic; the better option would be to cripple it.
But the thing is Rain sucks with only 5 turns. Have you honestly ever vs'd a Rain team without damp rock. Maybe reducing the amount of turns damp rock keeps rain on the field to about 6 or 7 might weaken it without making it useless
 
I have never tried rain dance without Damp Rock but if removing it proves to be too much then maybe limit a team to only one or two Damp rock(s)? We can't change the amount of turns of rain that Damp Rock provides or else we would be changing actual game content.

Banning X pokemon because it is too good in a certain situation seems silly when we can remove that situation entirely. It's like banning Latias because it is too good with Soul Dew, instead of just removing the item that makes her broken.
 

shrang

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I've played Damp Rockless Rain team (And dual weather without Heat/Damp Rock as well), and it is no easier to beat than one with Damp Rock, actually. Basically, since you force them to, the Rain sweepers can just stick Rain Dance on instead of SD or something. Just say Kabutops. He can run Rain Dance/Waterfall/Stone Edge/Aqua Jet with a Life Orb and he is actually no less dangerous than if he had SD in Rain Dance's place. The reason is that he is not dependent on other Pokemon set Rain Dance up for him now, he can set it up when he needs it. When you actually play SD on Kabutops in Rain, chances are that you're not going to be able to use it because people wouldn't let you. Therefore, SD on Kabutops is almost a waste, really.

Physical Ludicolo would not be anywhere near as dangerous, but he can still use the Special set. Damp Rockless Rain team is still very dangerous, and I really don't think it is any less dangerous than the current Rain teams. If we were to ban Damp Rock, Rain teams can just adapt to that easily, something people are refusing to do when playing this metagame, I'm afraid (Whether it is against Rain, Raikou, whatever).
 
I find ample opportunities to SD with Kabutops, with Ambipom being the one that sticks out the most to me. Even Low Kick does like 40%, so you are pretty safe to come in and SD up. Having SD on all of the sweepers seems more and more important to me the more I play rain dance in fact. There are plenty of opportunities to set up with them, and often it is very hard to break certain members of teams without the SD if not impossible.

Regading FlareBlitz's rebuttal to my statements, I recognize that banning pokemon would reduce the effectiveness of rain dance severely ; you don't have to tell me what is wrong with the other sweepers available. I see what you mean completely but the thing is that if we are banning Damp Rock we might as well be banning Rain Dance because we are destroying the way the theme works, but if we just limit the power of the sweepers the mechanics are the same, and we can still have a decent amount of rain in the metagame rather than none at all. As I have said before, rain will be viable once again when people stop preparing for them and lose experience in fighting against them, as Gorebyss and Omastar and the others are still very powerful in rain.
 

shrang

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Interesting. Here's the Ludicolo stats for March:

| Ludicolo | Usage | 8898 | 7.1 |
| Ludicolo | Ability | Swift Swim | 89.0 |
| Ludicolo | Ability | Rain Dish | 11.0 |
| Ludicolo | Item | Life Orb | 61.9 |
| Ludicolo | Item | Leftovers | 18.7 |
| Ludicolo | Item | Damp Rock | 14.0 |
| Ludicolo | Item | Choice Specs | 5.5 |
| Ludicolo | Nature | Modest | 48.8 |
| Ludicolo | Nature | Adamant | 30.0 |
| Ludicolo | Nature | Calm | 13.3 |
| Ludicolo | Nature | Other (5) | < 2.5 |
| Ludicolo | HP EV | None | 48.3 |
| Ludicolo | HP EV | Low (50-100) | 13.3 |
| Ludicolo | HP EV | Max | 13.1 |
| Ludicolo | HP EV | Very Low (<50) | 10.7 |
| Ludicolo | HP EV | Other (3) | < 9.5 |
| Ludicolo | Attack EV | None | 64.2 |
| Ludicolo | Attack EV | Max | 32.0 |
| Ludicolo | Attack EV | Other (2) | < 2.6 |
| Ludicolo | Defense EV | None | 88.4 |
| Ludicolo | Defense EV | Very Low (<50) | 8.2 |
| Ludicolo | Defense EV | Other (2) | < 2.3 |
| Ludicolo | SpAttack EV | Max | 50.5 |
| Ludicolo | SpAttack EV | None | 41.1 |
| Ludicolo | SpAttack EV | Low (50-100) | 8.4 |
| Ludicolo | SpDefense EV | None | 85.5 |
| Ludicolo | SpDefense EV | Medium (100-150) | 7.0 |
| Ludicolo | SpDefense EV | Other (3) | < 3.6 |
| Ludicolo | Speed EV | Max | 43.0 |
| Ludicolo | Speed EV | None | 13.7 |
| Ludicolo | Speed EV | Very High (200+) | 13.2 |
| Ludicolo | Speed EV | High (150-200) | 11.7 |
| Ludicolo | Speed EV | Other (2) | < 9.2 |
| Ludicolo | Move | Ice Beam | 56.9 |
| Ludicolo | Move | Surf | 53.8 |
| Ludicolo | Move | Rain Dance | 43.0 |
| Ludicolo | Move | Waterfall | 33.1 |
| Ludicolo | Move | Seed Bomb | 33.1 |
| Ludicolo | Move | Swords Dance | 32.9 |
| Ludicolo | Move | Grass Knot | 31.7 |
| Ludicolo | Move | Energy Ball | 27.1 |
| Ludicolo | Move | Ice Punch | 17.4 |
| Ludicolo | Move | Zen Headbutt | 15.5 |
| Ludicolo | Move | Leech Seed | 14.3 |
| Ludicolo | Move | Hydro Pump | 9.4 |
| Ludicolo | Move | Other (7) | < 7.1 |


It looks like SD Ludicolo has risen, but still not enough to overtake the Special set.

EDIT: Anyway, has anyone tried Phione as Rain Dancer/Abuser?? It's probably one of the best status absorbers for a Rain team ever, due to being able to cure it with Hydration. Say a 100% Registeel comes in, and you know you can't kill it. Thunder Wave is coming right?? Go to Phione, who would just soak up the Thunder Wave and laugh at Registeel. He would then slowly chip down Registeel with boosted Waterfalls (Doesn't do all that much, but Registeel can't kill you without Exploding anyway). Phione also has U-Turn to give your Rain sweepers a good switch. Here's the set:

Phione @ Damp Rock
Ability: Hydration
EVs: 4 HP/252 Atk/252 Spe (Could use a bulky version like 252 HP/4 Atk/252 Spe, I guess)
Nature: Jolly
-Rain Dance
-Rest
-Waterfall
-U-Turn
 
Phione @ Damp Rock
Ability: Hydration
EVs: 4 HP/252 Atk/252 Spe (Could use a bulky version like 252 HP/4 Atk/252 Spe, I guess)
Nature: Jolly
-Rain Dance
-Rest
-Waterfall
-U-Turn
So like a Dewgong with worse Bulk but better Attack (is the attack really relevant though? With the inevitable monster offense available to a Rain team a Pokemon whose purpose is to "Slowly chip down Registeel" doesn't really need amazing Attack does he?) and better defensive typing?
 

shrang

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1) Phione definitely has better typing. Dewgong is weak to Stealth Rock.
2) Phione has U-Turn, something which is priceless on a Rain team, giving you a free switch to a Rain sweeper.
3) The point of Phione is not to "slowly chip down Registeel", although the option is there (You can soften him up so your sweepers can just plow through him). The true purpose is to be a status absorber and Rain Dance setter. Although he isn't as bulky as Dewgong, the better typing does make up for it somewhat.
 
1) Phione definitely has better typing. Dewgong is weak to Stealth Rock.
That's what I was getting at.

2) Phione has U-Turn, something which is priceless on a Rain team, giving you a free switch to a Rain sweeper
U Turn is the main advantage.

3) The point of Phione is not to "slowly chip down Registeel", although the option is there (You can soften him up so your sweepers can just plow through him).
I was being silly. What I meant was Phione's better offensive stats don't really matter.

The true purpose is to be a status absorber and Rain Dance setter. Although he isn't as bulky as Dewgong, the better typing does make up for it somewhat.
I'm not sure if the typing makes up for the bulk or not.
 

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