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I've not really spent much time in the Gen 4 version of the Battle Tower, but....
Rain and sun teams/strategies are a lot easier to make use of from Gen 5 on due to the existence of legal automatic weather summoners. Eating up a turn to manually set up your weather gives the opponent a free turn basically.
EVs and Natures are something you'll want to take into account as well, since those help a lot to get the most out of your Pokemon.
You will have to fight Palmer at certain points in your tower runs, and he always uses the same two teams, which are Milotic/Rhyperior/Dragonite and Regigigas/Heatran/Cresselia, so your team needs to be prepared for those.
Isn't the Battle Tower limited to no duplicate items, meaning you can't use two Sitrus Berries?
Either way, I'll more or less mirror what Nah is saying. A rain team in this setting or generation isn't really as reliable or good as it would be in later generations. It doesn't help that your only Rain setter is Omastar, and once that gets knocked out, you can't benefit from rain anymore. Dry Skin is such a risky ability because you're better off just having the health regen from Black Sludge without having it take up your ability and only function under rain. The risk comes from the fact you're going to take extra Fire damage, and Toxicroak's weaknesses are already some pretty common types. Ground and Psychic aren't very comfortable weaknesses to have. A lesser problem is without Rain, your Drifblim's Thunder drops back down to 70 Accuracy, and if Omastar is gone, there's no way to really buff it back up.
I'd only say a rain team is reliable if you can reliably keep rain around, and unfortunately, Drizzle isn't widely available in Gen IV like it is in future generations.
Depending on how high you want to go in the Battle Tower, having to fight Palmer is inevitable and you need to make changes every so often to keep yourself prepared. I went in with the purpose of fighting Palmer, so I built my teams mainly to counter his, and I built my team mainly offensively because that's just what I preferred. Here's what I did my first 21 battles with, if you'd like:
Spoiler:
Garchomp @ Life Orb
Ability: Sand Veil
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Naughty Nature (+Atk, -SpD)
- Dragon Claw
- Earthquake
- Stone Edge
- Fire Fang
Tyranitar @ White Herb (I honestly don't remember what Item I gave it, but I feel like it was White Herb?)
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def
Brave Nature (+Atk, -Spe)
- Crunch
- Earthquake
- Stone Edge
- Superpower
Vaporeon @ Leftovers
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 SpD
Modest Nature (+SpA, -Atk)
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Toxic
- Aqua Ring
It's really simple and just based off what I saw were good competitive sets at the time, and the EV spreads are simple because I was just being lazy. EVs are a nice little boost to whatever stat you'd like, so it's good to invest in them if you can. Since Palmer used Dragonite, I picked a faster Dragon type to win against it, as well as giving Vaporeon Ice Beam in case anything happened to Garchomp. For Rhyperior, I gave Vaporeon Surf, and made sure the other two had Earthquake just in case. For Milotic, I used Vaporeon, which as high Special Defense and won't take damage from Water moves in order to completely nullify its attacks, and gave Vaporeon Toxic and Aqua Ring to outlast it. Just in case I needed to, I made sure the rest of my team were physical attackers because Milotic has a higher Special Defense than Defense.
I think the most important thing is to be ready for anything. Whenever you lose, learn from it, and remember that you can always try different things if you'd like. It took me a long time to get used to the Battle Tower, so try not to get discouraged. Hope this helps.~
