What it does
If the target lost HP, the user takes recoil damage equal to 33% the HP lost by the target, rounded half up, but not less than 1 HP.
At 120 base power it is the
4th strongest of the 42 damaging physical
moves that appear in this format.
Who carrys it
6 of the 282 Pokémon measured on the
Regulation M-B ladder carry Wave Crash.
The one that matters most is Basculegion,
which is on 30.2% of teams and carrys it on 88% 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: Aqua Jet, Flip Turn, Life Dew, Liquidation, Muddy Water, Rain Dance and others.
Who could and does not
8 Pokémon legal in this regulation can learn Wave Crash at all,
against the 6 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 Empoleon and Blastoise — each of them measured on the ladder, each of them leaving this move on the shelf.
How concentrated it is
Across the ladder, Wave Crash accounts for an expected
0.35 of the six slots on an average team, which makes it the
14th most-brought of the 126 moves this format runs.
75% of that comes from Basculegion alone, so it is really one Pokémon’s move rather than the format’s.
Its carriers are mostly Water (6), Ghost (2) and Fighting (2).
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.
Basculegion
30.2%
88%
Mega Swampert
8.5%
97.3%
Palafin
0.48%
88.6%
Basculegion-F
0.36%
2.4%
Tauros-Paldea-Aqua
0.26%
28.1%
Quaquaval
0.06%
2.9%