Just taking a look at him, you can already tell he's a great Pokemon. Just look at how cheerful he is! And you know he's going to be a great dancer and maraca player. (See, this is why some stereotypes can be good. Ludicolo isn't a dirty immigrant stealing American jobs, and Jynx isn't unintelligent living in the ghetto. Boo to political correctness).
On a more serious note, he's got pretty damn good typing. Weak only to Bug (only really used in the form of U-Turn, Megahorn on Heracross, and Bug Buzz on Yanmega, but SR takes care of Yanmega easily), Poison (even poison types doesn't use it) and Flying (not really seen much at all in the current metagame outside of some Bounceados. Apparantly Breloom beats Dos too much without it). Plus, he resists Ground (not that anyone uses Earthquake anymore), Steel (lets him come in on Bullet Punch, but risks U-Turn from Scizor. Metagross is an easy switch in, though) and 4x Resistance to water makes him king of anti-bulky waters. This typing lets him come in fairly easily (albeit, with some prediction) on:
- Swampert
- Metagross
- Scizor
- Vaporeon
- Gyarados (watching out for Bounce, though)
- Milotic
And so on. Plus, offensively, Grass and Water are pretty good STAB types, letting him hit everything except Dragon or Grass for at least neutral, and those two types are both covered by Ice Beam. Fill out the last slot with Rain Dance, slap on Swift Swim as the ability, and viola, you've already got a basic sweeping Ludicolo. With Rain up, he has an effective base speed of 140, easily enough to outrun all non-Scarfed Pokemon not named Ninjask and Electrode (talking OU here for the moment, so don't bring up Deoxys just yet).
However, he has another very powerful ability, Rain Dish. Although his special defence is acceptable, neither his HP or his Defence are very flash. This leads to another, probably more famous set for Ludicolo: the Stallicolo. Set up with Protect or Substitute (or both!) and Leech Seed, Stallicolo can go for quite some time. However, its not really as impressive at that as the new and improved Breloom EV spread, so its not used as much as the sweeper set. It can catch alot of people off-guard, though.
Ubers is where that set really shines. Stallicolo has a fairly nice Special Attack. Its not amazing, but its not terrible either. When equipped with Grass Knot, he can hit Kyogre like a truck, with a base 120 STAB move. It isn't a definite KO, but it will definitely 2HKO, hitting for at least 51.6%. In addition to that, Ludicolo's 4x resistance to Water and nice special defence let it survive a Water Spout off of Kyogre, letting it switch in on that with some prediction and set up Seeds on whatever they switch to. In addition, poison and flying are useless in Ubers, and so won't worry Ludicolo at all. The only real users of Bug are Scizor and the occasional Heracross, as well, so its fine on the front. Protect helps for scouting, but Sub protects from status. In ubers, however, I wouldn't be too worried about status on a Ludicolo. Burns aren't too common, and with, say, Garchomp, predicting TWave is easy to solve. Only really Toxic harms Ludicolo in this case, and a Blissey could solve that and TWave. Either option works.
Lastly, you can just give him Choice Specs. If Rain is up, you don't need additional speed on him, so Scarf doesn't mean much, and with the nice coverage from the dual STAB, it doesn't take much prediction. With max speed and neutral nature, Ludicolo in Rain can outrun a max neutral Salamence after a DD, and OHKO even the bulkiest EV spreads for Salamence around, so its a fairly good counter for DDMence. However, be wary of getting hit be a Meteor on the switch, as it'll hit for quite a bit, as it does against anything that doesn't resist it.
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