Politoed
Frog Pokémon
At nightfall, these Pokémon appear on the shores of lakes. They announce their territorial claims by letting out cries that sound like shouting.
Base Stats
Type Effectiveness
Abilities
Held Items
Evolution Chain
Moves
Details
Sprites
Competitive
Strategy Overview
Politoed is one of the primary rain setters due to Drizzle alongside decent defensive typing and stats, although it has lackluster offensive presence. It can often survive long enough to set rain multiple times, maintaining weather control. Attackers like Urshifu-R, Zapdos, Kingdra, and Tornadus take advantage of rain, and Helping Hand boosts their strength even further. Scald burns and support moves such as Icy Wind and Encore give Politoed further utility value beyond setting rain. A major drawback Politoed faces is matching up poorly against a plethora of common Pokemon, such as Rillaboom, Tapu Fini, Kyurem-B, Amoonguss, and Dragapult, among others. The aforementioned teammates, along with others like Genesect and Tsareena, can help this, though. Politoed's relative passivity can also clash with the typically fast-paced nature of rain teams. Therefore, it faces competition from Pelipper as a rain setter, which has Hurricane to deal with troublesome Grass-types and Tailwind, making it more offensively suited than Politoed.
Common Teammates
Competitive data from Smogon University via data.pkmn.cc