Buizel @ Berry Juice
Ability: Swift Swim
Level: 5
Tera Type: Ice
EVs: 236 Atk / 36 SpD / 236 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Aqua Jet
- Bulk Up
- Wave Crash
- Ice Punch
Buizel is now a premier rain abuser like it was in DPP. It has a 18 (19 with a plus nature) speed stat so it’s valuable outside of rain, gets the brand new Wave Crash to have it hit even harder, and can become even more dangerous with bulk ups. Similar to Ponyta in SwSh, you can use the recoil of your strong stab attack to proc Berry Juice and get you back up to full health. It might have a shot outside of rain just because of 19 speed stab wave crash, but this set works pretty well for me already.
I’m running Tera Ice with Ice Punch for 2 reasons. First, you can deal with grass types that would otherwise wall you. Second, you don’t need Tera to function with it. You also get Ice Spinner, which is an idea, but unless there’s some weird calcs like Abra’s Submission versus Drain Punch rolls in SwSh, I’ll keep it on Ice Punch for now. Getting a Freeze is better when there’s basically no terrain being set.
Now that we have a rain abuser, what are we going to do for a rain setter?
Voltorb @ Damp Rock
Ability: Static
Level: 5
Tera Type: Grass
EVs: 36 Def / 236 SpD / 196 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Rain Dance
- Thunder Wave
- Volt Switch
- Taunt
Tera type doesn’t really matter, it’s not going to do that anyway.
I tried it with Explosion, but it can’t do that because it’s too late in its learnset. Very sad. Instead you can use Rain Dance, T wave, Volt Switch, Taunt. Taunt is pretty good for being able to deny hazards in a metagame where it’s hard to truly remove them due to the lack of rapid spin and defog. Thunder Wave is to prevent an opposing 19 speeder (such as Missy, Murkrow or Gura) from being able to run wild and instantly set up, as well as some pretty alright speed control. Volt Switch is for momentum and Rain Dance is to set Rain. I’ll need to test out rain to see if it’s even good, but so far it’s pretty fun. Good luck to everyone else in discovering the meta.