What it does
Has a 30% chance to burn the target. The target thaws out if it is frozen.
At 80 base power it is the
28th strongest of the 40 damaging special
moves that appear in this format.
Who carrys it
7 of the 282 Pokémon measured on the
Regulation M-B ladder carry Scald.
The one that matters most is Milotic,
which is on 7.1% of teams and carrys it on 52.5% of its sets.
The full list is above, ordered by how much of the format each one is.
What it hits
As a Water move it is super effective against Fire, Ground and Rock, resisted by Dragon, Grass and Water.
8 other Water moves appear in this format: Wave Crash, Aqua Jet, Flip Turn, Life Dew, Liquidation, Muddy Water and others.
Who could and does not
34 Pokémon legal in this regulation can learn Scald at all,
against the 7 that actually bring it. The gap is the interesting number: it is
the set of Pokémon that have the option and decline it.
The most-played of those are Sinistcha, Pelipper, Toxapex, Politoed, Primarina and Dragapult — each of them measured on the ladder, each of them leaving this move on the shelf.
How concentrated it is
Across the ladder, Scald accounts for an expected
0.04 of the six slots on an average team, which makes it the
87th most-brought of the 126 moves this format runs.
92% of that comes from Milotic alone, so it is really one Pokémon’s move rather than the format’s.
Its carriers are mostly Water (6) and Psychic (3).
Where these numbers come from
Usage is Smogon's published statistics for the Regulation M-B VGC ladder, and the description is
the one shipped in the Pokémon Showdown data set. Both are regenerated on every build rather than
written by hand, so this page follows the format instead of trailing it. Take any of it to the
team builder or the damage calculator.
Milotic
7.1%
52.5%
Mega Starmie
0.51%
5.8%
Mega Dragalge
0.48%
9.4%
Mega Slowbro
0.15%
47.6%
Vaporeon
0.13%
48.4%
Slowking
0.11%
80.6%
Simipour
0.02%
62.7%