Pokemon of the Week: Politoed

[Kirby]

Politoed
Type: Water
HP: 90
Attack: 75
Defense: 75
Special Attack: 90
Special Defense: 100
Speed: 70

Abilities: Damp / Water Absorb / Drizzle

Recently Politoed took the crown as the number one pokemon away from Scizor since... like 5 years ago. Why? It got drizzle, which means instant rain for the rest of the match. Swift swim abuse + drizzle got banned over a year ago, but one can still use that great boosted water stab on many things and hurricane abuse, it even has defensive niches to decrease fire stab, getting rid of sand, and rain dish tentacruel abuse. Politoed also gets a few nice moves like perish song and encore for support and can be a beast with specs, but lets be honest here, your using it for drizzle.

Common sets:

Defensive

Politoed @ Leftovers
Trait: Drizzle
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SDef
Bold Nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Scald
- Toxic
- Perish Song / Encore
- Protect / Ice Beam

Yeah the most common Politoed set, goal: stick around to keep rain up. Personally I prefer the specially defensive version to take on special attackers, but this gives it good mixed bulk I guess. Scald gives the chance to burn which is amazing, toxic can cripple things automatically. Perish song can win endgames and cripple set up sweepers, but on move offensive teams encore can be used to force switches outright. Protect gains leftovers recovery and toxic stalls, while ice beam can kill incoming dragons.

Choice Scarf
Politoed@ Choice Scarf
Trait: Drizzle
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Hydro Pump
- Ice Beam
- Hidden Power Grass / Perish Song / Toxic
- Surf / Perish Song / Focus Blast

A great check to a ton of things when equipped with a scarf, in rain your effectively at +1 so hydropump still hurts. Ice beam gives good coverage against dragons types. After that your in filler land, HP grass is a popular option to hit Jellicent and Gastrodon, but its doing pathetic damage so sometimes, option for perish song or toxic is better. If you thought that was filler, the best option for the last slot is surf so that if needed you don't miss on the thing your revenging without using unstabbed ice beam. Perish song is always an option, focus blast can hit Ferrothorn or a switched in Tyranitar for pathetic damage, don't use it.

Choice Specs
Politoed @ Choice Specs
Trait: Drizzle
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
- Hydro Pump
- Ice Beam
- Hidden Power Grass / Perish Song / Toxic
- Surf / Perish Song / Focus Blast

Instead of revenging, this set walls breaks, for example with hydropump in the rain Politoed has a chance to 2HKO Blissey after rocks (retarded physically defensive Blissey, but still). One can use it to weaken walls so that something like Keldeo or Tornadus-T and sweep itself. Outside of modest > timid, everything else is the same from the scarf set as far are movepool goes, the only real chance is HP grass and focus blast are stronger which makes them slightly better options, still they are crap though.

Ill do this every monday I guess.

[Pants]

i hate this thing because it changes the game so drastically, and pretty much makes the only 2 viable gameplay options sun or rain. back in 4th, hail was very scarce, and sandstorm wasn't all too popular, seeing how only about 1/4th of OU avoided damage from it, and only 5 OU's could effectively abuse the sp. def boost. it was a time when you could really vary your options to more than just weather gimmicks. now weather is almost mandatory in elitist play.

[Kirby]

Meh, if your having issues with rain hyper offense, you need to fix your team up. And sand still plenty viable, and even than there is nothing that states sand must be viable as much as hail should be viable.

Overall, Politoed is cool, leave it be.

[Pants]

empoleon resists major rain offenses besides toxicroak and rotom. the problem it has is a lack of anti-water attacks because grass knot isn't so great on lighter pokemon such as politoed or rotom. i dont know much of anything else that resists water and flying beyond it, lanturn, and rotom wash. kind of sad honestly.

having to REQUIRE yourself anti-rain pokemon on a team is part of my example. its just become too detrimental to anything that's not useful in sun/rain.

[Kirby]

You really don't need to use anything like that if your offensive honestly, and you don't need to resist both flying and water at all, Gastrodon can handle itself well as with Chansey and Blissey. Jirachi can deal with Tornadus-T. Pretty much anything can take one hurricane. Its just as much of a centralizing forced as lets say Latios.

[Pants]

those hurricanes are the biggest threat imo. water's always there, but its rarely focused as offense outside the occasional rotom. Dnite and Tornadus are just terrifying if you dont pack a steel.