What it does on the ladder
Quaquaval appears on 0.10% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 185th of the 277 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Close Combat, on 97.4% of sets.
The item is usually Life Orb at 40.2%.
The ability is split: Moxie on 92.8% and Torrent on 7.2%.
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
Quaquaval is number 914 in the National Dex, a Paldea Pokémon, Water and Fighting
with a base stat total of 530 — 42nd of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Attack at 120, 36th
in the format; its weakest is Sp. Def at 75, 144th.
It can have Torrent and Moxie.
The Champions module tiers it OU.
It sits in a 3-stage line: Quaxly → Quaxwell → Quaquaval.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Quaxly and Quaxwell are not.
What gets through
As Water and Fighting, 5 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 7. The board above
has all of it. One other legal Pokémon shares the same typing and the same board: Tauros-Paldea-Aqua.
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 Quaquaval takes extra damage from.
- Charizard-Mega-Y — Solar Beam (Grass, ×2), on 64.4% of its sets
- Sinistcha — Matcha Gotcha (Grass, ×2), on 97.8% of its sets
- Whimsicott — Moonblast (Fairy, ×2), on 96.7% of its sets
- Farigiraf — Psychic (Psychic, ×2), on 72.4% of its sets
- Floette-Mega — Dazzling Gleam (Fairy, ×2), on 97.8% of its sets
- Staraptor-Mega — Brave Bird (Flying, ×2), on 66.2% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Quaquaval reaches
150 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
105. Invested, it outruns 9 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 61.9 kg, so Grass Knot and Low Kick hit it for 80 base
power. That is a real consideration in a format where both are common.
Its move pool
Quaquaval learns 69 moves in the Champions data.
42 of them do damage, across 8 of the eighteen
types, and 18 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: Upper Hand at +3 and 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.
