Rating: 8/10. Build details in description.
Pairs w/ Clefable Support Build : https://youtu.be/MEfoKUr-7xs
Gyarados @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Intimidate
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpD
Adamant Nature
– Waterfall
– Rain Dance
– Dragon Dance
– Rest
Vitamins: 25 HP Up (or Health Mochi), 25 Zinc (or Clever Mochi)
Feathers: 2 Health Feathers, 2 Clever Feathers
Stats at lvl 100 w/ perfect IVs:
HP : 394
Attack: 314
Defense : 194
Sp.Def. : 299
Speed : 198
Support Requirements : removing unaware from skeledirge (e.g. skill swap, gastro acid). negating the special attack buffs from torch song (e.g. skill swapping unaware onto gyarados). healing (e.g. life dew).
Strategy: waterfall or rain dance. heal cheer if you or supporter need HP. after your stats get reset rest (and then heal cheer to wake yourself up if your ally isn’t doing it for you). 6x dragon dance (do an extra one if intimidate was skill swapped onto skeledirge). charge tera orb with waterfall. rain dance. terastalize. waterfall to victory.
Notes : if supporter is using skill swap to transfer gyarados’s ability onto skeledirge, it must be intimidate because the alternative is moxie, which will give skeledirge attack buffs whenever it KOs NPCs. the tradeoff is that you have to do an extra dragon dance since skeledirge will intimidate gyarados once, but that’s totally worth it. if you’re worried about taking too much damage from hyper voice and shadow ball while your ability is suppressed, you can replace either rest or rain dance with protect, but this carries the drawback of making it harder to recover from a critical hit later on (no rest) or making it harder to finish the match on time (no rain dance).
Pros: supereffective tera type matching base type, excellent HP, attack, and special defense stats, immune to stomping tantrum before terastalizing, resists flame charge and torch song. no weaknesses. rest heals full HP bar. dragon dance buffs attack 1 stage and speed 1 stage. waterfall has 80 base power, 100 accuracy, and deals supereffective STAB (tera-boosted when terastalized) damage. rain dance makes it rain for 5 turns, which boosts waterfall damage by 1.5x. when used at the start of the match, it can help reduce damage taken right after your stats get reset by discouraging torch song and its special attack buffs. covert cloak prevents special defense debuffs from shadow ball (normally 20% chance).
Cons: mediocre defense stat, outsped by skeledirge when it uses flame charge and gyarados hasn’t dragon danced yet. intimidate debuffs gyarados when skill swapped onto skeledirge, which makes setup with dragon dance take 7 turns, leading to a slow run.