What it does on the ladder
Primarina appears on 3.1% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 44th of the 277 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Hyper Voice, on 98.6% of sets.
The item is usually Leftovers at 55.5%.
The ability is split: Liquid Voice on 98.7% and Torrent on 1.3%.
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
Primarina is number 730 in the National Dex, a Alola Pokémon, Water and Fairy
with a base stat total of 530 — 34th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Sp. Atk at 126, 12th
in the format; its weakest is Speed at 60, 169th.
It can have Torrent and Liquid Voice.
The Champions module tiers it OU.
It sits in a 3-stage line: Popplio → Brionne → Primarina.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Popplio and Brionne are not.
What gets through
As Water and Fairy, 3 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 6 and is immune to 1. The board above
has all of it. One other legal Pokémon shares the same typing and the same board: Azumarill.
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 Primarina takes extra damage from.
- Sneasler — Dire Claw (Poison, ×2), on 73.9% of its sets
- Charizard-Mega-Y — Solar Beam (Grass, ×2), on 64.4% of its sets
- Sinistcha — Matcha Gotcha (Grass, ×2), on 97.8% of its sets
- Farigiraf — Thunderbolt (Electric, ×2), on 44.8% of its sets
- Raichu-Mega-Y — Zap Cannon (Electric, ×2), on 99.7% of its sets
- Archaludon — Electro Shot (Electric, ×2), on 97.9% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Primarina reaches
123 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
80. Invested, it outruns 1 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 44 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
Primarina learns 88 moves in the Champions data.
53 of them do damage, across 9 of the eighteen
types, and 25 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Hydro Cannon at 150 base power.
It also has priority: Aqua Jet at +1.
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.
