Poliwhirl – A True Test of Luck

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Update: since I completed my testing of this Pokemon, many of Showdown’s replays were lost (occurred Nov/Dec 2023). Consequently, some of the replays I used as a showcase may no longer work- apologies!

Following on from my experiment with Kadabra, I decided to test another NFE, this time Poliwhirl. Poliwhirl is easily the next most notable NFE after Kadabra, and has an entirely different premise to Kadabra. Rather than being run alongside its fully evolved form, Poliwhirl actually has the best argument to picked over its fully evolved version out of any NFE in RBY.

It’s pure Water rather than Water/Fighting, therefore not weak to Psychi, and it’s also substantially faster. However, although Poliwrath’s Water/Fighting type adds weaknesses, it also gives it STAB Submission, effective against the 3 best Pokemon in RBY. Furthermore, Poliwhirl’s stats aside from Speed are significantly worse meaning it’s less effective as an attacker and prone to revenge killing. Also base 90 Speed still falls short of basically every relevant fast Pokemon in RBY, though it at least cleanly outpaces Cloyster and Victreebel.

This is honestly one of the most adorable sprites in all of Pokemon. Look at the little guy, he looks so nervous!

Both Poliwhirl and Poliwrath build their niche on the combination of Hypnosis and Amnesia. Any sleep move in isolation is pretty solid, but pairing it with a boosting move as potent as RBY Amnesia is incredibly dangerous. They do have limited coverage, and as such tend to rely on the sheer power of Amnesia boosted Hydro Pumps to overwhelm their checks. That dependence on the 80% accurate Hydro Pump, coupled with the 60% accuracy of Hypnosis, means they are extremely susceptible to luck.

Teambuilding

Obviously, the first thing to consider is Poliwhirl’s set, and I don’t think there’s any other option besides Hypnosis/Amnesia/Hydro Pump/Blizzard. Poliwhirl needs to hit as hard as possible, especially given its low stats, and it doesn’t really have any other options for maximising damage. Key considerations when building around Poliwhirl are:

  • I had a very mixed status plan.
    • Faster Pokemon are obviously a high priority to paralyse in order to prevent revenge killing (and to break through Star/Zam).
    • Slower Pokemon I’m (mostly) not fussed on paralysing though. I want to preserve opportunities for Poliwhirl to use Hypnosis
  • Obviously, Electric types are a massive threat
  • Finding scenarios where Poliwhirl shines is also notable
    • Punishing freeze fishing works well
    • Rhydon does not want to tangle with Poliwhirl
    • Psychic types aside from Starmie and Slowbro give Poliwhirl a chance to showcase its worth over Poliwrath
    • Cloyster is notable to an extent. Although both it and Poliwhirl resist each other’s attacks, Poliwhirl is faster and has Amnesia, giving it an edge here

I then immediately decided to add the 3 Normals. Tauros and Lax I consider mandatory, while Chansey is just too valuable as a special wall. The first of their sets that I decided on was Lax’s. With Whirl providing zero defensive utility, I wanted a solid backbone to compensate for that. This ended up being Reflect/Ice Beam. I figured my ambivalent approach to status meant I could afford to do a little freeze fishing myself, and it helps that this is the best option for dealing with opposing Lax.

This sprite is a bit of a funny one. The posture suggests an oath of vengeance, but the eyes just seem chilled out.

With RefIB Lax in tow, I decided to drop Blizzard for Thunderbolt on Tauros. I’m not particularly concerned about Don with Poliwhirl being effective against it, and I figured that Cloyster would be annoying with Ice Beam Lax. Another option to consider here is Fire Blast, in fact it might even be better. Potentially burning opposing Tauros can stop it from revenge killing Poliwhirl. Meanwhile you could in theory use Poliwhirl reactively against Cloyster (I did list it as a potential opportunity for Poliwhirl after all).

I felt that Chansey needed to be BoltBeam in order to maximise efficacy against opposing Water types. That then left the lead and 5th slots. Looking to supplement my team’s defensive backbone, there were really only 2 options I considered: Starmie and Exeggutor.

Exeggutor is by far the most logical pick from a type standpoint, resisting both of Poliwhirl’s weaknesses. The only caveat is that I don’t want another sleeper on the team that could interfere with Poliwhirl, and I personally am not a fan of sleepless Exeggutor. Starmie on the other hand compounds Poliwhirl’s weaknesses, but is just so versatile defensively, and its Speed and moveset enable it to perform well even in bad matchups (it’s also why I didn’t consider other Water types).

Ultimately I opted for Starmie with Blizzard/Psychic to maximise its damage vs Zapdos, Lax and Jolteon, and paired that with a Jolteon lead to help compensate for the Electric weakness this created. Having said that, sleepless Exeggutor could still be worth exploring, and would be a worthy alternate option. That gave me the final team below. The full importable can also be found here.

Pin Missile lead
Blizz/Psychic
HPump/Blizz
BoltBeam
RefIB
Tbolt>Blizz

Results

Putting Poliwhirl to the test, I can fairly say that it plays out in about the way you’d expect. It’s a deeply flawed Pokemon, but is absolutely capable of being a potent threat. It has 3 major limitations:

  • Struggles to break Chansey and Starmie
  • Susceptible to revenge killing
  • Extremely unreliable

Poliwhirl is simply incapable of handling a healthy Starmie or Chansey, as its damage output isn’t enough to overwhelm their recovery. If they’re paralysed it has a reasonable shot, but it’s still dicey. At +6, Hydro Pump has a 78% chance of 2HKOing Chansey, which is definitely promising. However Poliwhirl needs to break through with just 8 PP on an 80% accurate move, on top of which it’s almost certainly been paralysed by the time it reaches +6 against Chansey, adding another layer of RNG to contend with. Starmie is cleanly 2HKO’d by +6 Hydro Pump, but everything I just said about Chansey applies here, plus Starmie has a solid chance to crit and KO.

As mentioned previously, Poliwhirl’s base 90 Speed ensures that every fast Pokemon in RBY outspeeds it, while its terrible defenses means it’s also quite frail. This means that if it takes some chip damage setting up, it will often find itself in range of a Tauros Hyper Beam. That’s by far the most notable threat, but also many of the Pokemon faster than it have powerful Thunderbolts. Amnesia does mitigate this threat, but that’s not the case if they land a crit.

Yellow’s sprite adopts a much lighter shade of blue which looks much better. It’s just a shame the sprite loses a lot of personality imo

Then there’s the unreliability of Poliwhirl. This is easily its most defining flaw, and over the course of my testing I encountered a whole range of scenarios. Probably one of the biggest lowlights was this tournament match against zf. I had a textbook scenario to bring in Poliwhirl and let it run amok, and instead it died without achieving anything. Another example from a tournament match, this time Poliwhirl managed to land sleep and was looking poised to claim a KO, but died while whiffing its attacks (Tauros would’ve revenge killed anyway).

There were a couple other replays I saved. There was this oddball of a match- I don’t think my opponent’s team was good, but it does showcase how Poliwhirl can be effective against Victreebel, a distinct niche it has over Poliwrath. Poliwhirl’s top performance came in a tournament match, and ironically it did the most damage switching out. I leveraged the threat of Amnesia to bait Explosion from Cloyster, and Hyper Beam from Tauros, with both predictions paying off. Along the way Poliwhirl did also break through Chansey, despite luck being against it.

Overall, I consider Poliwhirl to be a sufficiently potent threat to be viable… barely. Its extreme inconsistency sees it just narrowly scraping over that threshold, joining Magneton as one of the worst Pokemon that are still worth using. Of course, when I say worth using, you should take that with a heavy dose of salt. That cutoff is highly subjective and my standards in that regards are, well, loose.

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