POTW #2 Luxray

Luxray:

Tier: NU

Type: Electric

Overview:

Luxray is a rather unique Electric-type, sporting high Attack, low Speed, and Intimidate, which augments his decent bulk. This means that while most other pure Electric-types take on a sweeping role, Luxray is best suited to functioning as a wallbreaker. Luxray's offensive movepool — although he lacks a strong physical STAB move — is very good. With access to key wallbreaking moves in Superpower and Thunderbolt, and coverage moves like Crunch, Hidden Power, and Ice Fang, he can seriously damage just about anything with the correct move. Intimidate also lets him run defensive sets that play some niche defensive roles against physical Water- and Flying-types, making him a decent counter to the extremely troublesome physical rain sweepers.

Despite these strong points, Luxray is generally overlooked in favor of other wallbreakers such as Blaziken, Nidoking, and Magmortar, who have numerous advantages over him in terms of power, versatility, and special coverage. Luxray retains some advantages over his fellow wallbreakers, namely his physical power and ease with which he deals with Water-types. Keep this in mind when choosing Luxray over other Pokemon who compete for his team slot. Luxray is also somewhat let down by his low Speed stat, which limits his offensive ability to taking out walls and hitting things on the switch. Intimidate is useful in this regard, as it helps Luxray force switches. Overall, Luxray has the potential to be very useful to your team, but make sure you play to his unique advantages.

Best Moveset:

~ Discharge / Thunderbolt
~ Hidden Power Grass
~ Toxic / Thunder Wave
~ Protect / Roar


Intimidate is a great ability for Luxray, despite his rather average defensive capabilities. A few useful resistances allow him to take quite a few hits before fainting. When factoring in Intimidate, Luxray is capable of surviving Swords Dance-boosted Bug Bite from Scyther and Stone Edge from Kabutops to hit them back with Discharge. Unfortunately, with the removal of Crobat, Honchkrow, and Staraptor from the UU tier, this set has lost some of its relevance. Still, he makes a decent switch against physical Water-types, Scyther, and Swellow, while keeping the useful Electric-type STAB and acting as a status platform.