Pokémon Politoed

[Sultan]

(Art by Magistrum)
Water
90 / 75 / 75 / 90 / 100 / 70
Water Absorb / Damp / Drizzle (HA)

Notable moves:

• Belly Drum
• Blizzard
• Brick Break
• Earth Power
• Earthquake
• Encore
• Facade
• Focus Blast
• Haze
• Hydro Pump
• Hypnosis
• Ice Beam
• Liquidation
• Perish Song
• Psychic
• Surf
• Waterfall
• Weather Ball

Pros:

• Decent bulk, especially on the special side.
• One of only two OU-legal Drizzle users.
• It lacks Pelipper's weakness to Stealth Rock and 4x weakness to Freeze-Dry from Alolan Ninetales.
• It has access to a couple of support moves that Pelipper doesn't, like Encore and Haze.

Cons:

• Unlike Pelipper, it has neither recovery (besides rest) nor a pivoting move, both of which are essential for having it set rain multiple times and bringing sweepers in respectively.
• Its offensive stats are mediocre and outclassed by many other Water Pokémon, so there's no reason to use it in any non-weather role.
• Rain as a whole hasn't been doing the best lately, with Sun and Snow being at the strongest they've ever been.
• It lost a lot of important moves, like Toxic, Scald, and Whirlpool.

Tera potential:

• There's virtually no reason to Tera this thing, as it's just a weather setter. But if you must:
• Steel helps it go face to face with Alolan Ninetales.
• Grass and Dragon turn both of its weaknesses into resistances.
• Poison to absorb Toxic Spikes, and Flying to avoid spikestack.
• Water, if you want it to hit harder in the rain, instead of teraing a weather abuser with an actually impressive attack stat.

Set potential:

Weather Setter (Politoed) @ Damp Rock
Ability: Drizzle
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 248 HP / 8 SpA / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hydro Pump / Weather Ball
- Encore
- Haze
- Perish Song

A weather set that takes full advantage of Politoed's differences with Pelipper. It does have a better Alolan Ninetales matchup due to Encore and a lack of a 4x weakness, Haze makes it not complete setup bait, and Perish Song does force things out (eventually). Still, Pelipper's pivoting and recovery are still probably better for rain teams to have.

Belly Drum sweeper (Politoed) @ Salac Berry
Ability: Drizzle
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Belly Drum
- Liquidation
- Earthquake
- Facade

The set you run if you want to be funny. Hey, maybe this will win one out of one hundred games... at 1400 ELO.

Verdict: Just use Pelipper. This will have a niche only if there exists a lower tier where Drizzle is legal but Pelipper is not. However, since this is likely dropping to PU at the end of the month, rain teams will be legal in all of the lower tiers. That will be fun.

 

[Melons-N-Soda]

Politoed's kit actually fits a bit more with Doubles than Pelipper at the very least so maybe Rain teams there are happy its back?

In lower tier scenarios where Drizzle is banned yeah this guy is mostly outclassed even down there. I guess by PU standards it'd be one of the very few bulky Waters available, but anywhere higher, even the likes of Vaporeon and Poliwrath are better.