It was while I was watching kevins recent fight night with JC, specifically during the gen 4 match, that I saw the glittering shiny sparkle of kevins big and bold raikou and i realized that "hey, raikou has always been my favourite nondescript legendary johto beast, how have I never thought about using it in the like third best meta game of all time gen 4?" and so I immediately started feverishly building a team and laddered with (mostly I do get bored easily) all the way to 1500 on the ladder (the highest ive ever been in gen 4 and one of my highest rankings in general) and I really felt how great raikou is. Unlike kevin I actually fit e speed onto it, although HP ice would have been very welcome as well for more coverage). Modest t bolt just smacks pretty much everything hard, aura sphere ohkoes or almost ohkoes most ttars and smacks heatran and shadow ball hits most peoples t bolt switch ins (latias, various floating home appliances, and ground types) (basically you hope they dont have ground types). Shadow ball also puts every azelf lead (at least that I encountered) into e speed range too. I usually play very fast and loose with raikou as a lead, usually just hoping to make big various predatory mammal shaped dents in the enemy team.
while watching kevin and JCs fight night I was actually in the middle of experimenting with a lead specs vaporeon and I gotta say I love super offensive waters in D double P OU, vaporeon, specs starmie, empoleon you name it (although not the lesser beast suicune, doesnt hit hard enough without boosting for me). so I decided to put one on this team since most people dont pack a good water resist, and suicune (most peoples) doesnt really want to switch into a water absorb hazer. I have watched this best-in-terms-of-human-pokemon-relations two shot starmies, do 52 to kingdra on a crit and 1v1 a few latias (I usually switch to scizor or sac it to draco though) vape functions as my gyarados, heatrans that raikou hasnt dealth with and suicune check. I gave it enough speed for a lot of ttars as well as some metagross which it can ohko or ohko with very little chip. I would run max speed but the bulk is helpful for the gyardos match up, and I dont want a "Unfortunate" doesn't begin to describe" situation on my hands against it. It also functions as a BP or meteor mash switch in from various steel types.
I really love physically defensive celebi, its just sooo tanky with recover. The twave support is really nice too, great way to deal with a bunch of opposing fast offensive threats and I love stifling most paraflinch jirachis with it. Its also a great way to deal with various ground types like swampert and quag, but unfourtunately with most flygon running u turn its not a good answer to them. With hindsight I probably would have preferred using some sort of hazard setter or remover because I did notice struggling with that a bit (especially for life orb d nite in sand) but that simply didn't occur to me during the teambuilding phase because all I was thinking about was "the gloriousness of raikou must be shown" which a grass type is a must to annihilate those pesky ground types (other than flygon and gliscor). HP fire is also a great way to deal with scizor, although I never directly switch it in unless I know its locked into a move because u turn could probably kill like 5 celebi.
I've always wanted to use Dragonite in dpp and i thought this would be a cool place to use it. Its a great way to lure in a lot of steel types wanting to tank a dragon claw or something or switch in on an expected dragon dance, but they usually can't withstand the onslaught of draco into fireblast. And then ttar thinks it can switch in safely to a special set only to be met with superpower. The way it can just force unexpected KOs with dracos into e speed is beautiful, which leads me into another point about it. Its also my second priority user to help pick off already fast threats or set up sweepers, usually though just enough chip for for scizor or luc to finish it off with their own stronger priority. It also functions as a sort of infernape check because I didn't really think of ape when building, and it all worked out pretty well in the end.
Scizor is great, scizor is beautiful. Bullet punch just does so much. And steel still resisting ghost in dpp makes it great as a pursuit user which helps out lucario in the back extremely well. And it can check most Latias and KO with pursuit? Magnifique. And I mean almost all, HP fire is not very common at all. Its really as simple as "did something get KOd? can it kill scizor? No? BP it or pursuit trap it." or "can this thing 2hko scizor? No? send it in to chunk it with u turn for somebody else or BP it". The big red bug is a favourite of mine, in most generations. Still trying to make it work in adv and gsc though. Not much luck there. Yet. One day.
What needs to be said about the blue furry bait? its a great endgame cleaner, it can get a lot of swords dance oppertunities but some games it can finish up without it if everything is weakend or slow enough. Its a great way to round out the team and really overwhelm the opponent with priority. I was tempted toput BP on it as well, but I thought crunch would be nicer to hit any ghosts I hadn't trapped or full health Latias because luc can live most hits from non scarf variants, even some from specs. It also helps hit celebi better.
Anyways here's the link, praise be lord Raikou and go check out BKCs movie <3
https://pokepast.es/f7518054d33f8829
I am relatively new here and hope Ive done this correctly