>>18747827Gen 5 was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
I've used SwSwim Kingdra since gen 4, running various dedicated rain teams.
It's still good, but it's nowhere near as strong as it was in Gen4, where it was countered by Empoleon/Shedinja/rain counter alone, but reigned the true king of all Rain teams being able to both abuse and set it up reliably. It's not as good as it was in Gen 5, which gave it Drizzle then took it away immediately after, in the gen that introduced Ferrothorn.
Swift Swim Kingdra excels because of its good dual STAB. Despite the various ways to boost its damage, it's still just 95 base at the end of the day. It requires Life Orb to do anything significant (Specs functions as wallbreaker, but you lose the versatility in choosing from your high powered neutral STABs), meaning it's already on a timer; Toxic is an easy way to deal with any LO Kingdra and just ramps up that self-KO counter. It gets just enough speed to viably outspeed most things and then clean up with strong powered hits that are hard to resist altogether.
Gen 6 brought in more priority, nullifying Swift Swim's greatest threat factor. It's also hit hard by the existence of Fairy as another type that resists one of its STAB (Azumarill being able to OHKO back while Kingdra does jack also doesn't help + Whimsicott added to its list of type counters). All of its old counters in Ferrothorn, and to a lesser extent Empoleon, still exist. Drizzle is nerfed and is no better than Damp Rock setters since you'd be forced to use Politoed if you do to merely save a turn.
It's decent. It still has overall good strong, boosted/high power neutral STABs to hit from all sides of the spectrum against many other foes. But it's no longer the 'sheer destruction' under rain it once was. Can you still run it under a rain team to great effect? Yes. It'll always be one of the top 2/3 premier rain sweepers, but it still isn't enough for it to earn notable recognition.
