Boiling Water and Bulky Waters

[CRC]

I actually don't think this move will be very useful. It only have a 30% chance to burn. That means it will end up like body slam which is rarely useful.

Tentacruel will probably use it about as much as it will end up using surf. It won't change much because the chance of burn is so low.

It will be very useful on vaporeon. Vaporeon stalls a lot and it fits vaporeon very well.

Lanturn just won't be useful with the new pokemon with insane stats. It might work to some degree in uu...

Slowking already resists fighting type offence. It might show up some, but people use slowbro more, and on slowbro thunderwave is more useful.

It will not be useful on suicune at all. Suicune will be a sweeper. Hydro pump will probably be seen as much as surf. Suicune will nto stay crocune. It will probably have a sweeping set. It wil lrevenge kill the insane attackers iwth ice beam and a water attack. It will need power, not a chance to burn...

Swampert will use it perhaps. It won't burn intended targets. It will probably burn celebi most of the time... Also, quagsire usage will probably rise because unaware is a good ability for a water ground pokemon.

Boiling water will be very useful on milotic. Its use will probably be restrained to the lower tiers...

The fire type pokemon is slow. It isn't bulky enough to make up for this. I don't even know if it will be used.

The water ghost pokemon will probably get will-o-wisp. Ghost types get that...

The big fish thing has horrible stats. Nothing will make it useful.

All in all, boiling water will have a couple of very specific uses on certain sets, but it won't define the metagame. Its burn rate is bad, and people will like using will o wisp more. Look at body slam and thunderwave...

 

[Bogmire]

Its burn rate is bad, and people will like using will o wisp more. Look at body slam and thunderwave...

You know all those times your Gengar's focus blast missed? well, that's how often this move will burn. certainly not bad by any means. Why use up a moveslot for will-o-wisp when you can get a STAB move AND a potential statuser in a single moveslot? WoW doesn't even hit 100% of the time, so it's not comparable like twave is to body slam.

 

[CRC]

@ bogmire, focus blast isn't effective on most things because of its accuracy. it wouldve changed the meta game if it had had 100% accuracy. 30% accuracy wont change anything if 70% accuracy doesnt do anything except make an attack somwhat viable to gengar.

 

[Denchura]

isn't this the same as lava pulme which is never used anyway? I guess it's the only way waters can burn things. I can see this being useful only vapereon and milotic.

You know all those times your Gengar's focus blast missed? well, that's how often this move will burn

It has twice the chance of missing of focus blast, don't see this being game breaking.

 

[IcyMan28]

^Consider that lave plume is resisted by fire, who are immune to burn on top of that. Boiling Water hits the only type immune to burn super-effectively, making it much more useful.

 

[Epic Cherubi]

Lava Plume isn't learned by anything bulky enough to enjoy it besides Heatran. Boiling Water will nearly make Surf obsolete on defensive water types.

 

[Super Mario Bro]

Bulky waters are meant to be run with Toxic/Toxic Spikes, hands down! This move is okay on teams that don't have Toxic, but the lowered base power leaves something to be desired.

Like Lava Plume and Discharge, "meh".

 

[Vaz]

I can see many pokemon using this move with great effect. Does anyone know if it affects opponents and team mates like Lava Plume, I presume so.

 

[Farewell]

I hope they make an Ice-type version of this and call it Frost Burn... Now, that would be awsome, as no type is immune to Ice! And imagine that coverage!

 

[Little Green Yoda]

Bulky waters are meant to be run with Toxic/Toxic Spikes, hands down! This move is okay on teams that don't have Toxic, but the lowered base power leaves something to be desired.

Most of the stuff that will utilize it well aren't going to sweep so the drop in power isn't going to be that bad. The 30% chance of halving the opposition's Attack should be more than worth that ~15% power reduction. And why not run both Toxic Spikes and Boiling Water on the same team? As the OP mentions, there's a number of things that avoid Toxic Spikes - think of the Burn as a nice secondary status to take advantage of if Toxic Spikes fail.

 

[bludhoundz]

It's not that much weaker than Surf -- and bulky waters focus more on survivability than damage output really -- and seems to be in a fairly wide number of movepools.

I think it will get some pretty decent usage.

 

[SJCrew]

Geez, Emboar gets this too? It's almost as if Gamefreak is forcing me to pick the cool-as-hell Fire type every gen.

 

[Rykard]

well it has stockpile, but apparently it can't learn boiling water so my bad on that

 

[Super Mario Bro]

Most of the stuff that will utilize it well aren't going to sweep so the drop in power isn't going to be that bad. The 30% chance of halving the opposition's Attack should be more than worth that ~15% power reduction. And why not run both Toxic Spikes and Boiling Water on the same team? As the OP mentions, there's a number of things that avoid Toxic Spikes - think of the Burn as a nice secondary status to take advantage of if Toxic Spikes fail.

In Gen IV, why were Rotom/Magnezone with Discharge exceedingly rare? The extra power from Thunderbolt helped them give their attacks an extra punch, and sometimes that's necessary, even on Pokemon that aren't meant to deal so much damage. Anyway, the main switch-ins to bulky waters are Grass Types and Electric Types (both of which utilize special attacks a majority of the time).

 

[Deck Knight]

As far as comparisons go, Discharge of last gen is actually a better comparison than Lava Plume. Heatran is the only Fire type whose stats and resistances are remotely conducive to Lava Plume usage, and even then it has such impressive SpA that it's often more threatening to use Fire Blast.

However Boiling Water on bulky waters has parallels in at least two Pokemon from last gen, Rotom-A, Porygon2, and Defensive Zapdos to an extent. These Pokemon used their excellent defenses/typing with Discharge's high paralysis rate to threaten many pokemon that would otherwise threaten the rest of their teammates. Because they still had decent SpA (both at 105) they also were still somewhat threatening on a type advantage basis. Boiling Water operates in much the same way, except there have always been a plethora of sturdy Water types with few parallels to their Electric and Fire brethren. Many bulky waters have access to Revovery, and chances are if you can use Boiling Water three times in any given battle, it will net you that burn. It's never guaranteed because each time is a 30% chance, but 30% is still one of the highest effect chances in the game.

As far as Suicune, 90 Special Attack/85 Speed isn't going to sweep any time soon. Offensive Suicune sets did exist in Gen 4 and were fairly effective, but they had a lot more competition from the likes of Kingdra and Starmie. A Crocune that can burn opponents will be a sight to behold, as it cripples much of the overwhelming physical offenders that tried to dominate it last generation. Boiling Water is a great gift to the tanking Suicune sets.

 

[IcyMan28]

Boiling Water also directly affects an attacking stat with Burn, and does it more effectively than Lava Plume.

Bulky waters that have higher base SpD will appreciate it, such as Milotic, Vaporeon, and especially Tentacruel.

 

[Little Green Yoda]

In Gen IV, why were Rotom/Magnezone with Discharge exceedingly rare? The extra power from Thunderbolt helped them give their attacks an extra punch, and sometimes that's necessary, even on Pokemon that aren't meant to deal so much damage. Anyway, the main switch-ins to bulky waters are Grass Types and Electric Types (both of which utilize special attacks a majority of the time).

Perhaps because WoW is a fairly common move on Rotom-A and Burn is very useful to inflict on incoming Pursuit users? Not to mention the fact that Thunderbolt has a 10% chance of paralyzing already so the extra 20% chance given by Discharge isn't as great as the 0% to 30% of Burn provided by Boiling Water over Surf?

Some 93% of Magnezone used in August 2010 used max Spec Att EVs and all the sets in the analysis are sweeper based so it's not surprising Thunderbolt is used more often on Magnezone.

 

[CRC]

boiling water is for stall. It will be next to impossible to use stall with the ridiculous attack and special attack stats. I honestly think things will start carrying hydro pump over surf.

 

[Calculus Man]

http://stuff.veekun.com/bw-sprites.tar.gz

All the 5th gen sprites to update your OP.
You need winRAR.

Delete this post when you're done, if you want.

 

[ungulateman]

Welp, I'm going to go build another team based around CroCune with this new addition. It's always been my favourite Water-type competitively, and now it's all but unstoppable.

 

[Super Mario Bro]

Welp, I'm going to go build another team based around CroCune with this new addition. It's always been my favourite Water-type competitively, and now it's all but unstoppable.

Not quite, Grass Types still wall the hell out of it. :P

I would run this thing with a Crobat. That would honestly be hard to stop. (And obviously, I'm using Surf)

 

[Chateau]

I'm gonna go against what people are saying here. This move will be less game-changing and more annoying. 30% is nice, and could give you a surprise burn, but you can't rely on it. It's not like Crocune can just burn everything that comes in. No, the move wil lbe very helpful, but not reliable enough to net a significant number of wins for stall.

 

[Soda]

LOL this is stupid. 30% is terrible and its stupid to rely on it. It doesn't hurt, but it's not gonna be any better than Lava Plume/Discharge were.

 

[Deck Knight]

Well it would indeed be "stupid" if you only ever expected to use Boiling Water once in a battle. The reason most of these Pokemon are called "Bulky Waters" is that there's an expectation they will be able to attack or stall out opponents for multiple turns. Most of the Bulky Waters can do this quite well, and only used Surf because it was reliable and had decent PP.

Put another way, Hydro Pump has a 33% lower chance to miss then Boiling Water has to Burn. In addition to its PP drawbacks, Hydro Pump does 0 damage 20% of the time. I'm not buying Swimming Goggles until I get comprehensive item data, and it just sounds too trollish at this point (I would believe it if it were a speed and accuracy boosted on water types, but the added sleep effect on non-Water types? Get real).

Given a battle where you used all of your Boiling Water PP (+PP Ups), you could expect to burn 4 of your opponent's Pokemon (7) with the attack. by the most conservative possible statistical estimate you will Burn an opponent on your 4th(120%), 7th(210%), 10th(300%), 14th(420%), 17th(510%), 20th(600%), and 24th(720%) usage of the attack.

So the real question is, can you expect your Bulky Water Pokemon to attack three times per battle (90% cum. chance to inflict a burn.). If you can, Boiling Water is an excellent choice. Otherwise use Surf or Hydro Pump.

 

[M BLADE]

As far as comparisons go, Discharge of last gen is actually a better comparison than Lava Plume. Heatran is the only Fire type whose stats and resistances are remotely conducive to Lava Plume usage, and even then it has such impressive SpA that it's often more threatening to use Fire Blast.

On lower tiers Entei can pull off a "Cro" set with Lava Plume extremely well.

Anyway, one Thing: Lava PLume/Discharge/Body Slam are "defensive" attack moves, often used by... defensive pokes.

Bulky Waters are the epitome of defensive pokes.

You know: about Crotei, it was very bulky from the physical side and Lava Plume burn rate was exactly what Entei had going for it. If you managed to burn something like Rhyperior on the switch, you could set up on it since Earthquake could only, like, 4HKO it!
Then you just CM until you get to +6, and you're nearly unbeatable! Or not.

Now think about this on Suicune. FFFFFFFF

Also, Vaporeon and friends could also prefer to use Boiling Water over Surf. The burn rate is too good to pass up on a bulky water.

Also: Finally fire pokes can use a water attack. WOOT