NationalDex
ludicolo
#272

Ludicolo

Carefree Pokémon

WaterGrass

If it hears festive music, all its muscles fill with energy. It can’t help breaking out into a dance.

Base Stats

HP 80
Attack 70
Defense 70
Sp. Atk 90
Sp. Def 100
Speed 70
Total 480

Type Effectiveness

Abilities

Held Items

Evolution Chain

Moves

Details

Category Carefree Pokémon
Height 1.5 m
Weight 55.0 kg
Base Exp 216
Growth Rate Medium Slow
Capture Rate 45
Base Happiness 70
Gender 50% ♂ / 50% ♀
Habitat Waters Edge
Egg Groups Water1 ,Plant

Sprites

ludicolo Front Front
ludicolo Back Back
ludicolo Front Shiny Front Shiny
ludicolo Back Shiny Back Shiny
ludicolo Front ♀ Front ♀
ludicolo Back ♀ Back ♀
ludicolo Front Shiny ♀ Front Shiny ♀
ludicolo Back Shiny ♀ Back Shiny ♀
ludicolo Official Art Official Art
ludicolo Official Art (Shiny) Official Art (Shiny)

Competitive

Rain Dance
Item
Life Orb
Nature
Modest
EVs
SpA 252
SpD 4
Spe 252

Strategy Overview

Ludicolo is the definition of a Rain Dance sweeper in the NU tier. With access to Swift Swim, which doubles its Speed under rain, it can easily sweep teams late-game, especially offensive ones, which tend to be more fragile. On top of that, Ludicolo sports an amazing secondary typing in Grass, which greatly helps it deal with other Water-types that could switch into it, like Lanturn, Poliwrath, and Prinplup. Finally, its good special bulk coupled with a decent defensive typing means that it can also act as a soft check to some Pokemon and even set up Rain Dance on them, including Steelix, Lilligant, and Samurott lacking Megahorn. Unfortunately, while Ludicolo is incredibly fast under rain, in a weatherless situation, it can only dream of outspeeding common threats due to it sitting in a bad Speed tier for an offensive Pokemon, Ludicolo might have trouble setting up Rain Dance against offensively inclined teams, usually relying on support given by its teammates to work properly. As if that weren't already bad enough, it struggles to get past common Pokemon such as Mantine, Ferroseed, and Abomasnow, with the first two not minding Ludicolo's assaults at all and the latter even being able to cancel rain.

Most Used Moves

Ice Beam
87.5%
Surf
37.6%

Most Used Items

Life Orb
54.8%
Leftovers
10.4%

Competitive data from Smogon University via data.pkmn.cc