HP - 125 / ATK - 73 / DEF - 91 / SPA - 137 / SPD - 89 / SPE - 75
Notable moves:
Calm Mind
Discharge
Draco Meteor
Dragon Pulse
Dragon Tail
Roar
Solar Beam
Substitute
Taunt
Thunder
Thunderbolt
Thunderclap
Thunder Wave
Volt Switch
Weather Ball
Pros:
- An incredible HP stat backed up with good defence makes raging bolt incredibly bulky for its attacking stats
- Raging bolt has the 4th highest spA stat of all OU viable pokemon, behind only hoopa-unbound, thundurus-therian, and iron moth
- Raging bolt's typing leaves its stabs resisted by only 6 fully evolved pokemon, none of which are very powerful in OU
- Its typing has good resistances attached to it, notably being able to take on predicted water and fire moves and wall zapdos' entire moveset
- Raging bolt has the unique trait of being faster than kingambit while having access to a strong stab priority move that hits it neutrally, allowing it to use thunderclap on predicted sucker punches or kowtow cleaves to take down its healthbar with relative safety, outside of the gambit mu thunderclap is useful for revenge killing threats such as iron valiant or ogerpon-wellspring
Cons:
- Despite its potent offences, raging bolt has close to no coverage - its only good coverage moves being reliant on the weather, which may leave it walled by naturally specially bulky pokemon that it has no options of hitting, such as blissey or clodsire taking advantage of it lacking psyshock
- Raging bolt is almost required to leverage its strong bulk as it's very slow for an offensive pokemon, with base 75 speed leaving it outsped by every other viable offensive threat
- Despite having great bulk, raging bolt lacks any form of recovery aside from leftovers and rest - the former it often can't use due to it wanting to run boots or booster energy on most of its sets
Tera Potential:
Raging bolt doesn't appear to care much about tera, though it can certainly make use of defensive tera such as tera flying in order to avoid being hit by ground moves, its natural typing is good enough defensively that it likely won't want to do this. On the offensive side, bolt can make use of tera dragon to boost draco meteor to dizzying levels of power, tera electric to boost its priority, or tera into the type of one of its limited coverage moves to get an extra kick against cocky ground types trying to take on one of its stabs. Tera stellar does not appear to have any use on it.
Potential Sets:
Choice Specs
Raging Bolt @ Choice Specs
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Dragon / Electric
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderclap / Weather Ball
- Thunderbolt / Thunder / Weather Ball
- Draco Meteor
- Volt Switch / Weather Ball / Solar Beam
This is a very standard choice specs set, boosting an already powerful special attacker to nuclear levels. This set requires dedicated special walls to stop, however many of those walls are extremely strong - most notably ting-lu and, for instance, which is immune to bolt's electric stab and take little damage from draco meteor, although using solar beam on sun or weather ball on a team with one of the slowkings will punish ting for trying to come in - both 2hkoing with minimal chip damage beforehand. If your prediction is on point, choice specs raging bolt is a good choice on teams that want the power it provides while not being too concerned with its low speed, while also being able to afford the potential loss of momentum if you guess wrong.
Offensive Pivot
Raging Bolt @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Flying / Dragon
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderclap / Weather Ball
- Discharge / Weather Ball
- Draco Meteor
- Volt Switch
This set is rather similar to the choice specs set, only with more utility and less reliance on prediction for success. This set is very similar to offensive zapdos, with the main differences being an incredibly powerful draco meteor it can fire off, and the ability to 1v1 zapdos. This set is overall very simple, it's like zapdos but trades out longevity and a ground immunity for power and the defensive utility of dragon.
Offensive Calm Mind
Raging Bolt @ Booster Energy
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Flying / Fairy
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Thunderclap
- Thunderbolt
- Dragon Pulse
This is a rather basic calm mind set that makes use of booster energy to be able to punch massive holes in teams after just a single boost. You aren't going to be sweeping entire teams with this set, as raging bolt is far too slow to be able to survive long enough against most offensive teams to be able to grab multiple kills, though thunderclap's priority does allow it to perform similarly to a special kingambit.
Defensive Calm Mind
Raging Bolt @ Leftovers / Booster Energy
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Thunderbolt
- Dragon Pulse
- Substitute
A bulky variant of the calm mind set that makes use of substitute for added safety against revenge killing attempts and lowering its reliability on thunderclap. Leftovers allows it to set up substitute multiple times, while booster energy allows it the power that it traded out for its bulk, as with max def investment it will have exactly one point higher in spA than def.
Specially Defensive
Raging Bolt @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Flying
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunder Wave
- Thunderbolt
- Draco Meteor
- Volt Switch
This set makes use of its ability to pivot in on zapdos, heatran, choice locked greninja and walking wake, gholdengo's make it rain, ogerpon-w, and cinderace to threaten paralysis on the opponent's pokemon and slow pivoting. Draco meteor is used here to take out key offensive pokemon that tbolt would fall short on, though you can swap it out for something else if you feel the need to. Obviously this set faces issue with having no recovery, especially since it runs boots to maximise its pivoting potential in the face of gholdengo hstack teams, so you may want to use alomomola for wish support, but this isn't necessary in the slightest.
Edit: Maximum speed investment is used on most sets here for the highest possible chance of outspeeding gliscor
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what with thunderclap being a sucker punch clone? What could I do to basically run two gambits on one team.
