What it does on the ladder
Volcarona appears on 1.2% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 70th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Protect, on 74.1% of sets.
The item is usually Sitrus Berry at 44.8%.
The ability is split: Flame Body on 98.9% and Swarm on 1.1%.
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
Volcarona is number 637 in the National Dex, a Unova Pokémon, Bug and Fire
with a base stat total of 550 — 17th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Sp. Atk at 135, 3rd
in the format; its weakest is Attack at 60, 208th.
It can have Flame Body and Swarm.
The Champions module tiers it OU.
It sits in a 2-stage line: Larvesta → Volcarona.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Larvesta is not.
What gets through
As Bug and Fire, 3 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it, and Rock lands for quadruple. It
resists 6. The board above
has all of it. No other legal Pokémon has this typing.
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 Volcarona takes extra damage from.
- Garchomp — Rock Slide (Rock, ×4), on 75.9% of its sets
- Basculegion — Aqua Jet (Water, ×2), on 96.6% of its sets
- Pelipper — Hurricane (Flying, ×2), on 98.1% of its sets
- Staraptor-Mega — Brave Bird (Flying, ×2), on 83.4% of its sets
- Aerodactyl-Mega — Rock Slide (Rock, ×4), on 99.8% of its sets
- Blastoise-Mega — Water Spout (Water, ×2), on 96.4% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Volcarona reaches
167 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
120. Invested, it outruns 12 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 46 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
Volcarona learns 79 moves in the Champions data.
50 of them do damage, across 8 of the eighteen
types, and 22 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Overheat at 130 base power, though the biggest number in the pool is Giga Impact 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.
