Kingdra
Attack
Defense
Stamina
Best Movesets
Analysis
With every passing generation, Kingdra slips deeper and deeper into obscurity, often wondering what would have been. Maybe a better moveset? Or a more favorable CP calculation? Regardless, it now seems that Kingdra is unlikely to ever rise in the PvE meta to any meaningful degree.
Offense
- Waterfall slightly edges out Water Gun*. Either should be paired with Surf for Water-type offense.
- Dragon Breath and Outrage make up Kingdra’s novelty Dragon-type attacking set.
- Blizzard, though it lacks STAB, but out-damages Outrage if hitting a target with a double weakness to Ice. That said, there are Pokemon that are leagues better at this job.
- You can skip Hydro Pump, Octozooka, and Swift.
Defense
- Waterfall is preferred for its high base damage.
- Hydro Pump is slightly favored over Blizzard due to its raw power and incredibly early damage window.
- Outrage, Swift, and Octazooka are Kingdra's 2-bar moves. Outrage is extremely strong, but is easy to dodge. Octozooka is weak, but it has an early damage window. Swift is generally okay thanks to its fairly wide neutral coverage.
Dragon Breath has high average performance, Outrage hits like a truck, and Octazooka is weak, but has a chance to cripple the opponent's Attack by dropping it by 2 stages.
A Dragon/Water typing is excellent for PvP due to only having two weaknesses, one of which Kingdra can also fight back against (Dragon). However, this wonderful advantage doesn't quite bring Kingdra up to speed with the meta at large, to the point where it's fallen off quite a bit.
