Poliwrath
Tadpole Pokémon
Poliwrath in the Alola region are strong swimmers that use the breaststroke. Many children learn to swim by imitating Poliwrath.
Base Stats
Type Effectiveness
Abilities
Held Items
Evolution Chain
Moves
Locations
Details
Sprites
Competitive
Strategy Overview
Poliwrath is a strong option in the PU metagame thanks to its unique defensive typing and ability, which allow it to combat many of the tier's top threats including Alolan Sandslash, Lycanroc, Omastar, and Skuntank. Aside from extreme role compression, Poliwrath also has a diverse enough movepool to allow it to run a range of offensive and defensive sets as both a physical and special attacker while still managing to keep the aforementioned threats in check. Poliwrath is also one of the few Pokemon with access to moves and abilities such as Circle Throw, Vacuum Wave, and Water Absorb, which are extremely useful for phazing in conjunction with Spikes, revenge killing Omastar, and checking Water-types, respectively. However, Poliwrath's stats are incredibly average, meaning that it can't specialize or excel in any offensive or defensive roles outside of checking the same list of Pokemon. While Poliwrath's typing is extremely good for checking specific Rock- and Water-types, it also leaves Poliwrath vulnerable to a wide range of common Grass-, Flying-, Electric-, and Psychic-types, meaning that almost every team will naturally have multiple Poliwrath checks such as Oricorio-E or Eelektross. Lack of reliable recovery means that Poliwrath must use unreliable means such as Rest or a combination of Leftovers and Protect to avoid being worn down too quickly. Poliwrath also faces some competition from other Fighting- and Water-types such as Gurdurr and Lanturn, but while it will usually be outclassed in terms of raw bulk or strength, its niche is incredibly solid because nothing can compress roles quite like Poliwrath.
Most Used Moves
Competitive data from Smogon University via data.pkmn.cc