Is Dragonite's Hidden Ability, Multiscale, useful in competitive?

Question

Dragonite's Hidden Ability, Multiscale, reduces damage taken from damage-dealing moves by half when at maximum HP. It does not reduce the amount of HP taken from moves that deal direct damage.

Comments

Multiscale is really good for taking advantage of Weakness Policy, and can be easily regenerated with Roost and/or Leftovers. Dragonite can also get off an almost free Dragon Dance. Biggest check is probably Choice Scarf Mold Breaker Haxorus.

---

What format/rules are you playing with?

---

I really just want to know Dragonite's HA's usefulness in competitive overall. If you must have a specific format, let's call it a single battle with no restrictions.

---

Well, obviously. It gets more use than Inner Focus. That wouldn't be the case if it wasn't very useful.

---

Also, added in the specification as to what the ability was, as well as Bulbapedia's description of the move, in case someone should find this and be unaware of what you are referring to. Hope that's okay. :)

---

In that case, all Dragonites are useless because they're outclassed by Rayquaza.

---

I don't know if what he said is actually what he meant, sumwun. Let's not immediately jump to the conclusion that we're including Ubers.

DelphoxOracle, if we were in fact including Ubers, yes it would quite obviously be less effective than Rayquaza. You're not including these kinds of legendaries in your consideration, unless I'm mistaken?

---

To be honest, I'm new to competitive battling. I'm still learning the ropes of team building and battle formats. When I asked the question, I meant to compare Multiscale to Dragonite's other ability, Inner Focus. After learning a bit more and receiving input, I think I'll change my criteria to include how Multiscale works in opposition to other OU Pokémon, including legendaries.

---

You're asking about generation 7, right?

---

It would be reasonable to assume so. It doesn't appear in Gen 8 yet, so it would make sense.

---

Yes, this is for generation 7.

---

Thanks for the flag. This question is fine. Plenty of clarification was given, and you can pretty easily interpret 'useful' to mean whether the ability does anything to help Dragonite achieve its role.
It might sound rich coming from a mod, but I think we were being a bit pedantic in this thread. Let's chill out a bit.

Answer 1

Yes. Of course it is. Sadly, Dragonite and Lugia aren't in SwSh, so you'll have to use it in gen 7.

The reason it's great is because most attacks won't KO in one hit, allowing you to set up a dragon dance nearly every time. While I'm here, you can have a Gen 7 ou set.

Dragonite @ Flyinium Z
Ability: Multiscale
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Fly
- Earthquake
- Extreme Speed

I just got it off of Smogon lmao.

Edit: A comment on the Original Post said it's good for weakness policy, so have that and get rid of fly if you're using policy. The replace fly with dragon STAB I guess?