What it does on the ladder
Politoed appears on 3.9% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 37th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Protect, on 96.3% of sets.
The item is usually Sitrus Berry at 71.9%.
The ability is split: Drizzle on 99.7%, Water Absorb on 0.3% and Damp on 0%.
Those are Smogon's published usage figures, not anything measured here, and they describe what
the ladder plays rather than what is strongest. The full set is in the panel above.
The Pokémon itself
Politoed is number 186 in the National Dex, a Johto Pokémon, Water
with a base stat total of 500 — 113th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Sp. Def at 100, 44th
in the format; its weakest is Speed at 70, 135th.
It can have Water Absorb, Damp and Drizzle.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It sits in a 3-stage line: Poliwag → Poliwhirl → Politoed.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Poliwag and Poliwhirl are not.
What gets through
As Water, 2 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 4. The board above
has all of it. 8 other legal Pokémon share the same typing and the same board: Milotic, Palafin, Blastoise, Vaporeon, Feraligatr and others.
What threatens it
Smogon publishes no head-to-head checks-and-counters data for doubles formats, so this list is
computed, not measured: the most-played Regulation M-B Pokémon carrying a damaging
move of a type Politoed takes extra damage from.
- Charizard-Mega-Y — Solar Beam (Grass, ×2), on 82.2% of its sets
- Sinistcha — Matcha Gotcha (Grass, ×2), on 97.9% of its sets
- Farigiraf — Thunderbolt (Electric, ×2), on 59.2% of its sets
- Archaludon — Electro Shot (Electric, ×2), on 98.6% of its sets
- Venusaur — Solar Beam (Grass, ×2), on 34.5% of its sets
- Raichu-Mega-Y — Zap Cannon (Electric, ×2), on 98.8% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Politoed reaches
134 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
90. Invested, it outruns 6 of the 20
most-used Pokémon in the regulation when they are invested too — which is the comparison that
decides who moves first.
It weighs 33.9 kg, so Grass Knot and Low Kick hit it for 60 base
power. That is a real consideration in a format where both are common.
Its move pool
Politoed learns 90 moves in the Champions data.
55 of them do damage, across 8 of the eighteen
types, and 12 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Hydro Pump at 110 base power, though the biggest number in the pool is Focus Punch at 150.
It has no priority move, so it moves in Speed order every turn.
That pool is what the team builder reads from when you seat it, and the
damage calculator will take it as the attacker with
the form already chosen.
