Quagsire, The Water Fish Pokémon. It has a sluggish nature. It lies at the river's bottom, waiting for prey to stray into its mouth. This carefree Pokémon has an easygoing nature. While swimming, it always bumps into boat hulls. Quagsire hunts for food by leaving its mouth wide open in water and waiting for its prey to blunder in unaware. Because the Pokémon does not move, it does not get very hungry.
Overview
Quagsire is an interesting Pokemon, being neither good nor bad since its release. Quagsire is gifted with great typing and some solid abilities but is held back with its average stats. However, even with subpar stats and competing with its big brother Swampert, Quagsire still manages to carve out a niche for itself on defensive teams like stall in just about every Singles format you can find it.
Positives
Durability - Quagsire is a chunky boy, despite the fact that its defensive stats have been powercrept much like its brother Swampert. However, with access to Water Absorb and Unaware, Quagsire patches up some of its defenses allowing it to be more aggressive with switch-ins and answer more threats.
Movepool - Quagsire has a decent movepool to work with. The biggest boon to its movepool is Recover, allowing it to heal off damage. This in combination with Unaware allows Quagsire to beat a lot of attackers as long as they cant 2HKO Quagsire. Beyond this, Quagsire also has access to Curse to boost its Defense as well as allow Quagsire to hit a bit harder. Finally with access to Scald and Toxic, Quagsire can spread around status with ease.
Negatives
Low Speed - Quagsire has terrible Speed, meaning that its always going to get outpaced. This is a problem as it means Quagsire has to survive 2 hits to really get in and do anything, and then if the Pokemon hits really hard you need to use Recover, making Quagsire predictable and can easily be forced back out.
Low Special Defense - With 65 base Special Defense, Quagsire has a hard time checking special attackers. This compounds with Quagsire's weakness as well as neutral types such as Grass, Water, and Ice, as most of those types come off the Special side.
Abilities
Damp - Prevents Self Destruct and Explosion - A bad ability since the nerf to Explosion, please don't use it for any competitive reason.
Water Absorb - Heals 25% HP when hit with a Water move - A strong ability, this allows Quagsire to gain another immunity which is never a bad thing for a wall. While most of the time Unaware is better, Water Absorb provides a valuable option that may actually be better based on how you build your team.
Unaware - Ignores stat buff and debuffs - Quagsire's best ability in most situations, this enables Quagsire to stop boosting sweepers and wallbreakers such as Kommo-o and Honchkrow, as well as check some higher tier threats such as Mega Charizard X and Salamence.
Movesets
Tank
-Recover
-Scald
-Earthquake
-Curse / Toxic
Item Attached: Leftovers
Ability: Unaware
EVs and Nature:
Relaxed Nature
252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Recover is the best move of the set and allows Quagsire to stay around and annoy the enemy team. Scald is the primary STAB move and a good spamming move as not a lot likes the burn that can come with the move. Earthquake is the main damaging move and allows Quagsire to check Steel-type threats such Doublade as well as hit things with Quagsire's higher Attack. The last slot is open to Curse to become more bulky and allow Earthquake to deal more damage, though Toxic can also be used to allow Quagsire to cripple other walls.
Other Options and Partners
-Ice Beam - While overall a weaker option, this allows Quagsire to poke at Grass-types that switch into it, picking at their weak defenses but gives up some of the utility and options that Quagsire normally has. Ice Punch also functions similarly but hits on the physical side.
-Stockpile - In a similar vein to Curse, this makes Quagsire bulky on both sides but with a limit of 3 boosts. While boosting its Special Defense might not be as important as the Attack boost from Curse, it can be useful to give it some durability on both sides.
-Healing Berries - If Item Clause is a factor, a berry like Sitrus Berry or Figy Berry can give Quagsire some more burst healing at once. However, Leftovers will generally be superior if you have the option.
-Umbreon - With its amazing ability as a cleric, Umbreon does well working around one of Quagsire's major weakness to status, such as Toxic, with Heal Bell as well as pass Wish to heal Quagsire when it switches into a threat. With its strong defenses, Umbreon does well answering Special attackers that are a major problem for Quagsire while Quagsire can handle some of the Fighting threats that scare off Umbreon.
-Dragalge - With its Poison/Dragon typing Dragalge does extremely well at checking Grass types and some Pokemon that carry Grass coverage moves, such as Salazzle, and apply pressure with its impressive Special Attack. On top of this, its Poison typing allows Dragalge to absorb Toxic Spikes to help Quagsire.
VGC, Double, & Triple Battle Options
Quagsire is not a Pokemon you will ever really encounter in Doubles, nor is it something that's ever really had a niche for it. The competition for a Ground-type has always been rough with the likes of Garchomp and eventually Landorus-T, while the Water-type role is often filled by Tapu Fini, Milotic, and even Mega Swampert. Its stats are bad all around for a Doubles setting and it doesn't have any moves to really support a team either. Water Absorb is always convenient for a rain check, but this doesn't help it actually win against any common rain sweeper at all, while Damp and Unaware don't have enough viability to justify using them either. Unfortunately for Quagsire there's virtually nothing it can do that another Pokemon doesn't do better, as it just isn't strong enough or bulky enough to stand up to the Doubles environment.
Happy to be Around
- Earthquake
- Waterfall
- Icy Wind
- Protect
Item Attached: Figy Berry
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs and Nature:
252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Adamant Nature
Earthquake is a strong spread move that gives Quagsire a way to hit both foes as hard as possible with its middling Attack stat. Waterfall gives it a single-target STAB that hits harder than any of its other options, preferred over Scald since relying on burns in a format with Tapu Fini is not really worth the slot. Icy Wind is Quagsire's only form of team support, providing speed control for teammates to help them outspeed faster foes. This also hits Landorus-T as well as Grass-types, but between spread damage and Quagsire's weak Special Attack this is not really being used for the damage. Protect is standard fare for Doubles, but since Quagsire has no other moves it can really use here this slot doesn't really have any competition to begin with.
A 50% healing berry is used to give Quagsire some HP, Figy is listed since Quagsire is unlikely to be dropping its Attack stat. However, any of the berries are fair game, including Sitrus Berry if you're not comfortable with the riskier HP benchmark. Water Absorb gives Quagsire another immunity to try and use as switch-in opportunities, which is far more consistent than its other abilities. Meanwhile all EV investment goes into HP and Attack to give it as much bulk and power as possible, with an Adamant nature used to buff its Attack further./p>
Other Options & Team Ideas
- Scald can be used if the burn chance is desired, but that's really the only use it's going to have coming off of base 65 Special Attack.
- Toxic can be used to shut down a bulky setup sweeper like Snorlax, but it doesn't have many safe opportunities to be used with Tapu Fini around.
Locations in Games
Red/Blue/Yellow:
Not in game
Gold/Silver/Crystal:
Route 32, Ruins of Alph, Union Cave, Mt. Silver, Route 10, Route 12, Route 13, Route 14, Route 15, Route 26, Route 27
Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald:
Safari Zone (Emerald)
Trade from Emerald/FireRed/Colosseum/XD (Ruby & Sapphire)
FireRed/LeafGreen:
Evolve Wooper (FireRed)
Trade from Emerald/FireRed/Colosseum/XD (LeafGreen)
Colosseum/XD:
Snagged from Bandana Guy Divel in Pyrite Town (Colosseum)
Evolve Wooper (XD)
Diamond/Pearl/Platinum:
Route 212 South, Great Marsh
HeartGold/SoulSilver:
Route 10, Route 12, Route 13, Route 14, Route 15, Route 26, Route 27, Route 32, Ruins of Alph, Union Cave, Mt. Silver, Cliff's Edge Gate, The Cliff Cave
Black/White:
Evolve Wooper (White)
Trade from White/Black 2/White 2 (Black)
Black 2/White 2:
Route 8
X/Y:
Route 14, Route 19, Friend Safari
Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire:
Trade from X & Y
Sun/Moon:
Trade from Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon
Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon:
Ultra Space Wilds
Animé Appearences
