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Makin' it Rain: UU Rain discussion
- Thread starter reachzero
- Start date
NITPICK: Fighting doesn't resist Poison.
Anyways, with Rain, for me, it usually comes down to a one v. one scenario. For every one of their Pokémon I get, they get one in return. Usually, it's either hax or a great prediction that decides it. Either that, or I can weaken something like Gorebyss enough to take it out with Krow, and beat the rest of the team.
Priority is vital against RD teams. That, and good resists.
Anyways, with Rain, for me, it usually comes down to a one v. one scenario. For every one of their Pokémon I get, they get one in return. Usually, it's either hax or a great prediction that decides it. Either that, or I can weaken something like Gorebyss enough to take it out with Krow, and beat the rest of the team.
Priority is vital against RD teams. That, and good resists.
First LN thanks for clearing that up... I totally missed that post, sorry :P.
Freak,
Rain teams can get past Chansey and Slowbro easily (gorebyss brings in Chansey and ko's it for example, not to mention Qwilfish OR Kabutops can put Slowbro in Ko range for the other to pick off if not Gorebyss). Registeel lacks reliable recovery so he cant wall rain for long at all. Milotic can be a problem, but that is why having an answer to her is a must and she isn't as popular as she once was because of her limited use agianst non rain threats.
Milotic has limited use against non rain threats? What are you smoking, i want some too...
Anyway, the better rain "checks" in UU, at least what i think, are in order:
Toxicroak
Milotic
Golduck
Registeel
Hypno
Chansey
Poliwrath
Quagsire
Clearly, Toxicroak is the most safe bet against Rain Dance teams. Milotic also does well.
Golduck comes next because of Cloud Nine(it can even put Ludicolo to sleep). Yeah, no one uses it. So what?
Registeel will paralize one or two threats before fainting. That's enough.
Hypno has worse stats than Registeel but can paralize and has Wish to cure itself. And can survive a physical attack if at high health. And takes Surfs really well.
Chansey walls the special threats, but dies against physical ones.
Poliwrath walls Kabutops and many others, but it takes too much from HP Grass, doesn't have a recovery move and can't dish out heavy damage or at least use Thunder Wave.
Quagsire has Recover and walls both Kabutops and Qwilfish, but every special threat has a grass move, which Quagsire horribly dies against.
One of them is certainly putting 1-2 pokes down by itself(or completely stop it like the "top 3" mentioned above).
Still, Rain Dance teams are great in UU... one of the reasons i will never use one lol.
Anyway, the better rain "checks" in UU, at least what i think, are in order:
Toxicroak
Milotic
Golduck
Registeel
Hypno
Chansey
Poliwrath
Quagsire
Clearly, Toxicroak is the most safe bet against Rain Dance teams. Milotic also does well.
Golduck comes next because of Cloud Nine(it can even put Ludicolo to sleep). Yeah, no one uses it. So what?
Registeel will paralize one or two threats before fainting. That's enough.
Hypno has worse stats than Registeel but can paralize and has Wish to cure itself. And can survive a physical attack if at high health. And takes Surfs really well.
Chansey walls the special threats, but dies against physical ones.
Poliwrath walls Kabutops and many others, but it takes too much from HP Grass, doesn't have a recovery move and can't dish out heavy damage or at least use Thunder Wave.
Quagsire has Recover and walls both Kabutops and Qwilfish, but every special threat has a grass move, which Quagsire horribly dies against.
One of them is certainly putting 1-2 pokes down by itself(or completely stop it like the "top 3" mentioned above).
Still, Rain Dance teams are great in UU... one of the reasons i will never use one lol.
As most everyone here probably knows, I've been using a Rain Dance team myself throughout most of the testing period, and I have to say, it's been extremely successful against most of the battlers I've encountered. As far as my team goes, I've been using Electrode / Ludicolo / Qwilfish / Kabutops / Omastar / Uxie, but I'll definitely give some input later on the suggestions you guys have provided.
As far as threats to Rain Dance go, the only thing that has been giving me constant trouble is Toxicroak (for obvious reasons, although it can be checked by Omastar's Earth Power) and Chansey if it comes in on Ludicolo or Omastar. The #1 threat though would have to be Curse Umbreon. Umbreon can easily take repeated assaults from Ludicolo and Qwilfish and Kabutops will be hard pressed to have to take a Payback in any attempt to actually take Umbreon out. Any suggestions for this?
As to making your own Rain Dance team, Electrode is always a decent lead as it will always be able to set up Rain Dance but Froslass does seem like an attractive lead as well (due to the Spike-stacking ability), but what do you guys do against Ambipom? Just switch to Uxie / Registeel / Raikou?
As far as threats to Rain Dance go, the only thing that has been giving me constant trouble is Toxicroak (for obvious reasons, although it can be checked by Omastar's Earth Power) and Chansey if it comes in on Ludicolo or Omastar. The #1 threat though would have to be Curse Umbreon. Umbreon can easily take repeated assaults from Ludicolo and Qwilfish and Kabutops will be hard pressed to have to take a Payback in any attempt to actually take Umbreon out. Any suggestions for this?
As to making your own Rain Dance team, Electrode is always a decent lead as it will always be able to set up Rain Dance but Froslass does seem like an attractive lead as well (due to the Spike-stacking ability), but what do you guys do against Ambipom? Just switch to Uxie / Registeel / Raikou?
So many things beat milo now that she is just good set up bait. Raikou sets up on, Blaziken and Gallade will beat her. Honch and Venusaur beat her. Toxic on many things like LO Arcanine cripple her without rest.The list goes on.
Also, She is pretty easy to force into a match with a rain team and shouldn't be hard to play around because she is one of the pokemon one must prepare for with extra care.
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All of the pokemon you listed can be OHKO'd by a rain pokemon... I dont know how they are supposed to "beat 1-2 rain pokemon by themself" when rain is played well.
(Im not listing Omastar, because like LN I find that there are more useful rain sweepers. However, it can beat several of the threats you have mentioned below as well)
Toxicroak- Gorebyss, Qwilfish can even blow it up, go to a tank (rain sweepers have legit trouble here)
Milotic- Ludicolo, Qwilfish Explosion (another true problem poke for rain though if the rain team is good it will be prepared for milo and will be able to handle it, Raikou/ Lanturn)
Golduck- Lol... not happening
Registeel- Kabutops can OHKO after SD unless it run Max/ Max in Def (unlikely). Registeel is something rain prepares for, shouldn't be too much of a threat and they certainly wont let their sweepers be paralyzed thats just stupid.
Hypno- Not tanking Kabutops with X Scissor, I highly doubt it takes a +2 waterfall in the ran from any +2 adamant rain sweeper in rain... I'd need to see a calc on that one.
Chansey- Loses to every rain sweeper I can think of besides Omastar
Poliwrath- Gorebyss, Qwilfish, Ludicolo
Quagsire- Gorebyss, Qwilfish, Ludicolo
All of these pokemon can easily be massacred by a rain team. Any pokemon that can tank the sweepers (a few of the ones you mentioned are legit problem pokes) should be beaten by a switch to a bulky pokemon on the rain team. Just wanted to point out to you that that list of counters is more like a list of checks.
Toxicroak would just use Vacuum Wave to finish Omastar unscratched, Then proceeds to OHKO/2HKO everyone with Vacuum Wave/Sludge Bomb while recovering a good amount of health thanks to Dry Skin.
About Umbreon... if it is Cursebreon with Wish and Protect, i agree in parts.
With Moonlight, really, no.
Anything with a fighting attack can take care of Umbreon(hinthintToxicroakhinthint)
BnE, no offense, but most of those are great checks for several reasons:
1) Toxicroak- So Gorebyss can come in and use Psychic, but that gives Honchkrow/Dark Type a free switch in because it's not only completely transparent what he's going to do because that's the only attack they carry that can actually do damage to him.
2) Milotic - Grass Knot doesn't really hurt it too much, even coming from Ludicolo, Energy Ball hits harded, and I haven't done the calcs on this one, but she can check most rain sweepers easily.
3) Golduck- it wastes turns of rain, but not much else...I've never used it so I'm not entirely sure.
4) Registeel - Paralyzes tops after it takes a hit (yeah, it's 2HKO'd but w/e) paralyzes Ludicolo and Gorebyss with little difficulty. Probably one of the main reasons why Rain teams want to run Dugtrio, immune to T-wave + traps Registeel.
The rest are iffy, and one isn't mentioned: Lanturn.
Lanturn can't take a boosted hit from Tops, obviously, but it can easily switch in to any special sweeper, has 4x resist to water, access to STAB Thunderbolt, Thunder Wave/Confuse Ray for parafusion, and high SpD to boot. It can stop a rain team in it's tracks by nullifying their speed advantage with T-wave and threatening with a STAB electric attack.
Edit: Also, Kabutops suffers from 4 moveslot syndrome: it needs SD and Stone Edge, then you have to choose between X-Scissor for Umbreon/Megnanium/etc, Return for neutral coverage, Aqua Jet to beat Priority, Earthquake for Registeel, and Waterfall/Aqua Tail for a rain boosted STAB.
Please d2m, my friend, allow me to explain myself and you will see I've said nothing incorrectly.
Also, I merely wanted to show him that his checks are by no means guaranteed to beat a rain team as he implied that they would. They are JUST checks, nothing more and that wasn't what he was implying in his list.
Also, about Registeel. I'm pretty sure Kabutops OHKO's with waterfall if adamant +2 and LO unless Registeel runs defense ev's... If I'm wrong could someone calc me because I ran some and got OHKO's. And where exactly is it written that the rain team has to keep their sweeper in to be paralyzed? thats a bad idea.
This was his statement that I was correcting in my post. That is all. I did not mean to tear down the list of solid checks in any way, and I don't think that I did. (please show me if I did so that I can fix it)
You are totally right, some of them were good checks (few are great, one or two are though and certainly MOST are not). I never faulted the good checks on his list ( I gave them credit for being legitimate problems), I only pointed out the ones that weren't really going to cut it.
Also, I merely wanted to show him that his checks are by no means guaranteed to beat a rain team as he implied that they would. They are JUST checks, nothing more and that wasn't what he was implying in his list.
Also, about Registeel. I'm pretty sure Kabutops OHKO's with waterfall if adamant +2 and LO unless Registeel runs defense ev's... If I'm wrong could someone calc me because I ran some and got OHKO's. And where exactly is it written that the rain team has to keep their sweeper in to be paralyzed? thats a bad idea.
Toxicroak will NEVER stay against Qwilfish... both stabs are resisted. That's enough reason to get the hell out.
And if Gorebyss switches in against Toxicroak, it will use Psychic. Certainly. So get the hell out too(unless you get 2 Nasty Plots as a Cristimas miracle or something).
Oh yeah: sorry d2m, but Kabutops can't learn Earthquake lol
And those who doubts of Golduck...
Gorebyss: You can use HP Grass. If you get a CM along the way, it is a OHKO.
Omastar: HP Grass.
Kabutops: HP Grass.
Qwilfish: Psychic.
Ludicolo: The only one that really scares Golduck off.
Floatzel: with the Smogon spread it will be outspeeded, so you can use HP Grass before it can attack you... provided Golduck is Timid, which it should be.
This is the list of rain sweepers in UU. Pretty much all of them except Ludicolo are handled just fine by Golduck.
Golduck doesn't do much against the walls(Lanturn) or electrics abusing Thunder(only Raikou and Lanturn, really), i agree, but against sweepers he's really good.
Believe me. I use Golduck in one of my teams. He's probably the best answer to rain sweepers, but not to Rain teams in general(because of the diverse walls and Ludicolo... once Ludicolo is gone, if there is only sweepers on the enemy team, Golduck will do what it needs to do).
Golduck@ Life Orb
Calm Mind
Surf
HP Grass
Psychic
Feel free to use it and to see if it's good or not.
EDIT: And yeah i forgot Lanturn. He is good to spread some Thunder Waves around and has a key typing and ability. But i wouldn't say that a base 76 sp.def is good... his HP is that makes up for Lanturn stat wise. Seriously, Lanturn should have a evolution, and a nice one, not ugly like Magmortar ot Togekiss... god, they are uglier than me lol.
And if Gorebyss switches in against Toxicroak, it will use Psychic. Certainly. So get the hell out too(unless you get 2 Nasty Plots as a Cristimas miracle or something).
Oh yeah: sorry d2m, but Kabutops can't learn Earthquake lol
And those who doubts of Golduck...
Gorebyss: You can use HP Grass. If you get a CM along the way, it is a OHKO.
Omastar: HP Grass.
Kabutops: HP Grass.
Qwilfish: Psychic.
Ludicolo: The only one that really scares Golduck off.
Floatzel: with the Smogon spread it will be outspeeded, so you can use HP Grass before it can attack you... provided Golduck is Timid, which it should be.
This is the list of rain sweepers in UU. Pretty much all of them except Ludicolo are handled just fine by Golduck.
Golduck doesn't do much against the walls(Lanturn) or electrics abusing Thunder(only Raikou and Lanturn, really), i agree, but against sweepers he's really good.
Believe me. I use Golduck in one of my teams. He's probably the best answer to rain sweepers, but not to Rain teams in general(because of the diverse walls and Ludicolo... once Ludicolo is gone, if there is only sweepers on the enemy team, Golduck will do what it needs to do).
Golduck@ Life Orb
Calm Mind
Surf
HP Grass
Psychic
Feel free to use it and to see if it's good or not.
EDIT: And yeah i forgot Lanturn. He is good to spread some Thunder Waves around and has a key typing and ability. But i wouldn't say that a base 76 sp.def is good... his HP is that makes up for Lanturn stat wise. Seriously, Lanturn should have a evolution, and a nice one, not ugly like Magmortar ot Togekiss... god, they are uglier than me lol.
Well, my point was that rain has checks, it's not un-beatable. You're saying that it's not completely countered by 1-2 pokes, so I think we're in agreement, the way I interpreted it was you were saying they were not good checks because X move on Y rain sweeper can beat them in Z situation, which is obviously flawed logic.
98% min Waterfall in rain if he's +2 adamant LO, and rain teams usually don't run a ground so T-wave is going to hit whatever they switch in anyway.
And yeah, I forgot he didn't learn EQ (I totally thought I used it with him at one point, though...) and I was under the impression Electric resisted water, but upon double-checking it does not :(
Edit: Also, I love Lanturn, ever since I solo'd the Elite 4 with one in adv. T-bolt/Surf/Ice Beam/Thunder Wave ftw.
As far as Umbreon goes, the most common set I've encountered is Curse / Payback / Wish / Heal Bell. I think I'll just depend on Gorebyss to KO it for now as LO max SpA Surf is a definite 2HKO under rain.
Ok so I'm going to call bullshit on like all of this post.
1. Yeah ok you've got me on that one, Honchkrow can come in on Psychic and threaten with Sucker Punch... But it can't hope to OHKO without both Stealth Rock and a round of Life Orb damage under its belt so you're still losing Honchkrow just to stop Gorebyss from sweeping. And even still, if you're willing to accept this as a viable check then we get into this weird mumbo jumbo about how you can bait attacks and go to shit that can revenge and I really don't think that's where we want to go with these arguments... and if you really want to get scientific about the whole process, we could go to the teammate stats and see that Honchkrow isn't even near Toxicroak's favorite teammate to be paired with so it's not unlikely that you would see toxicroak without Honchkrow on the same team... Not to even mention that it's very likely that we'll be saying goodbye to our Avian friend, so the use of him in any argument is a bit reaching if you ask me.
2. Ok so first of all, Grass Knot hits Milotic for 100 Base Power. I know this because I constructed a handy little chart for this page http://www.smogon.com/dp/moves/grass_knot that I expected people to look at before spouting out obvious bullshit like "Energy Ball hits it harder". Also, exactly what Rain Sweepers is Milotic checking again?
Kabutops' Swords Dance Life Orb Stone Edge versus Max / Max Milotic
722 Atk vs 282 Def & 394 HP (100 Base Power): 358 - 423 (90.86% - 107.36%)
That's an OHKO nearly 70% of the time with Rocks and Leftovers.
Qwilfish obviously 2HKOs with a Swords Dance Poison Jab, and to be quite honest, that's all it needs to do, especially because Hidden Power Grass is the overwhelming favorite compared to Hidden Power Grass (37% :: 9%), and even if it does run HP Electric, it fails to OHKO Qwilfish (only does at max 71%).
So really, there's only one Pokemon on a Rain team that Milotic DOES wall, and that's Gorebyss (not including Omastar because I find it to be worthless in today's Rain Dance teams).
3. Golduck is utter shit and shouldn't be used, and the evidence for this is the fact that it ISN'T used. There's a reason it's NU, and not being "discovered" for being a great Pokemon isn't that reason.
4. The most popular variant of Registeel is by far 252 HP / ~126 SpD / ~136 Atk. Only 7% of all people ran a Def+ Nature on Registeel last month. Kabutops easily OHKOs the most popular variant of Registeel.
722 Atk vs 336 Def & 364 HP (80 Base Power): 360 - 424 (98.90% - 116.48%)
5. (your edit)
Kabutops in no way has 4 moveslot syndrome. All it needs is Swords Dance / Stone Edge / Waterfall / Aqua Jet.
There is not a single set in the analysis for Umbreon that recommends ANY Defense EVs. And Kabutops easily OHKOs with a +2 Waterfall
722 Atk vs 256 Def & 394 HP (80 Base Power): 471 - 555 (119.54% - 140.86%)
Similarly, Meganium is OHKO'd 74% of the time with just Stealth Rocks, so there's really no reason to run X-Scissor ever. Especially considering that X-Scissor doesn't OHKO anything notable (it'll never OHKO a Tangrowth, you're better off trying to get a single layer of spikes and Stealth Rock on the ground and hitting it with Stone Edge, since that will OHKO too)
722 Atk vs 328 Def & 364 HP (100 Base Power): 306 - 361 (84.07% - 99.18%)
Also, Kabutops doesn't learn Earthquake, and there's no reason ever, EVER, to run Return because it's a shit move.
tl;dr - d2m try and put some thought into your posts.
I've been using grass knot over energy ball for a little while now. It hits most waters for at least bp equal to that of energy ball. Most things you want to hit with energy ball will be hit harder by grass knot. Guess the tier must have gotten heavier slowly since not many people have noticed.
So the fact it isn't used is a reason to say that Golduck can't check some pokes under the rain? C'mon, don't be stupid...
And everyone saying that a SD Waterfall KO Registeel... like getting the SD is guaranteed...
Speaking if Golduck, it got Encore in HG/SS, which can go some way to making it more viable against Rain or otherwise, particularly on a Calm Mind set for getting possible free setups. You can come in on a bulky Pokemon's SR or Rain Dance and Encore before Thunder Wave or something else crippling, or Encore the odd SD or SubPunch Toxicroak, or even come in after Ludicolo uses Surf / Ice Beam and Encore that when the opponent expects an easy KO with Energy Ball.
The only problem with this is that with Calm Mind + Encore you are left with just Surf and Psychic to sweep with, meaning that stuff like Gorebyss cannot be OHKO'd at +1 without multiple hazards among other things.
The only problem with this is that with Calm Mind + Encore you are left with just Surf and Psychic to sweep with, meaning that stuff like Gorebyss cannot be OHKO'd at +1 without multiple hazards among other things.
Jolly Kabutops can do a pretty good job off taking down opposing r.d teams. just the standard s.d, waterfall, aquajet, stone edge set is capable of running through much of the team after a little spikes damage. Jolly lets you beat other kabutops, ludicolo and gorebyss in terms of speed since as they were designed to be used under rain all the time, they will likely just focus on maximum power.
note that he cant ohko other kabutops and gorebyss off the bat, but if you lead with a decent spiker then you can easily pull them into range, as rain very rarely has spin support.
s.d kabutops is also just a very threatening sweeper. Although it benefits from having rain, it definitely does not need it to be effective.
note that he cant ohko other kabutops and gorebyss off the bat, but if you lead with a decent spiker then you can easily pull them into range, as rain very rarely has spin support.
s.d kabutops is also just a very threatening sweeper. Although it benefits from having rain, it definitely does not need it to be effective.
not many rain dance teams have toxicroak on them.
Correct me if I'm incorrect, Kalec, but it seems that you meant that Toxicroak can be used against Rain Dance teams, not on them. This, however, shows how important it is to have a way to take down Toxicroak before it has time to set up.
Personally, I've found that by stacking Uxie and Gorebyss few Toxicroak are able to survive long enough to destroy my team strategy--the double Psychic strategy stops Toxicroak cold if it hasn't boosted too much.
total theorymon here but a scarf Raikou (541 speed) with
Thunderbolt
Shadowball
Hp grass
Thunder
would pretty much destroy rain teams. With a timid nature you outspeed neutral 252 qwilifish( 538 Speed)
Sweeper ludicolo which is neutral and has the highest Sp Def from the sweepers takes 59.80% - 70.76% from a timid Thunder
Although
Modest Life orb Ludicolo does 79.75% - 94.39% in return
Adamant Life orb Kabutops 50.47% - 59.81% with Aqua Jet
Thunderbolt
Shadowball
Hp grass
Thunder
would pretty much destroy rain teams. With a timid nature you outspeed neutral 252 qwilifish( 538 Speed)
Sweeper ludicolo which is neutral and has the highest Sp Def from the sweepers takes 59.80% - 70.76% from a timid Thunder
Although
Modest Life orb Ludicolo does 79.75% - 94.39% in return
Adamant Life orb Kabutops 50.47% - 59.81% with Aqua Jet
Yuggles
hey that second guy isn't too bad
I'v tried heavy offense rain in both UU and OU and honestly I like it much better in OU even though most of the rain abusers are UU anyway. Maybe because there's much better Rain Dance users in OU, not sure.
On my current team I use Poliwrath to come in on physical rain users (Kabutops can't do anything, Qwilfish is a good bet too) and Sub up and just start beating down anything that switches in. CS Mesprit is also a decent check against slower ones (Gorrebyss, Omastar) and of course, Registeel can come in on grass, electric, and ice attacks to spread paralysis.
On my current team I use Poliwrath to come in on physical rain users (Kabutops can't do anything, Qwilfish is a good bet too) and Sub up and just start beating down anything that switches in. CS Mesprit is also a decent check against slower ones (Gorrebyss, Omastar) and of course, Registeel can come in on grass, electric, and ice attacks to spread paralysis.