This is venusaur. He's gotten everything he could ever have wanted out of the dw metagame. Allow me to show you:
Venusaur @ Life Orb
Chlorophyll
Timid Nature
4 HP /252 SpA / 252 Spe
- Giga Drain
- Hidden Power Fire
- Sludge Bomb
- Growth
Thanks to the DW metagame venusaur can finally tap into some of his better sets, which he cannot in standard OU. With access to egg moves Venusaur can learn the best Grass-type move this generation: Giga Drain. With a pumped up base power and restoring the the health which Life Orb has sapped away while attacking. What the use of Giga Drain does is also give Venusaur something to run outside of mixed (let's face it Energy Ball sucks); so you no longer have to invest a certain about of EVs into SpA to KO Ferrothorn in the sun with HP Fire, since that's where they all are. STAB Sludge Bomb will hurt anything that isn't resistant to it (or immune, damn steels). Growth, for those who don't know, gives +2 to SpA and Atk in the Sun.
Venusaur @ Life Orb
Chlorophyll
Lonely Nature
252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
- Power Whip
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power Fire
- Growth
Probably Venusaur's second best set in the metagame. However unlike OU Venusaur gets the bonus of having Power Whip in his movepool with Chlorophyll! The main issues with this set is that there is absolutely no way to harm any of the common Dragon-types in the tier. Dragonite can come in for basically free and set up Dragon Dance all day and night long.
So anyone been playing around with venusaur? What have you liked / disliked? I do dislike the coverage which the mixed set gives, however if you remove the Dragon-types from the field then it gets much, much easier to sweep with it. Of course Venusaur is ran on a Drought team -- which people say aren't as powerful as Drizzle or Sand Steam teams but I beg to disagree. With powerful sweepers such as Blaziken and Venusaur (not to mention Heatran and Chandelure), Drought teams have a pretty stable mark in the metagame. I myself got to top 10 using a Drought team, if that says anything.
The best thing about Venusaur is that it gives Rain teams a complete run for their money. Beating both Keldeo and Manaphy, rains most dominant sweepers, with +2 STAB SE moves. Venusaur also will cripple most Tyranitar, stop Excadrill from coming in, and can even take out +1 Blaziken (if the sun is out and you're running the mixed set).
