Why do people choose Will-O-Wisp over Toxic sometimes competitively?

Question

Toxic badly poisons the target, which means it will keep increasing the damage dealt, unlike Will-O-Wisp, and Toxic has higher accuracy. So why do people choose Will-O-Wisp instead of Toxic sometimes, when the Pokemon can learn both?

Answer 1

Halves attack

I frequently use both, but I use WoW over than Toxic for some reasons.

• WoW makes the opponent's attack decrease by 50% (except Guts Pokémon), so if the Pokémon is a physical attacker, if will be walled by physically a bulky Pokémon.
• While WoW only affects attack and not Sp.Atk, toxic is preferred for stalling, as it racks up over turns, while WoW does fixed damage every turn.
• Only fire-types are immune to WoW, while Steel and Poison types are immune to Toxic.

I like running a set with EVs in HP and Sp.Defense and WoW.
One of the bests pokémons for this works is Giratina; it has high HP and defence stats, good RestTalk user with WoW or Toxic.

Giratina @Leftovers
Careful Nature
EVs - 252 HP / 200 Sp.Def / 56 Def
- Will-o-Wisp
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
- Dragon Tail

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Hope this helps.

Comments

I forgot about the attack decrease! I suppose that's a good reason to use will o wisp, as well as less immunities.

Answer 2

Because Burn halves the opponent's attack, and burn can affected both poison and steel types, something which toxic is not capable of doing.

Basically, burn cripples any physical attacker (there are exceptions like Guts Conkeldurr). Additionally, will-o-wisp is only learned by a select few Pokemon, mostly ghost and fire types, while practically everything has toxic, so if you're Pokemon is one of the few that gets will-o-wisp, you might as well take advantage of it.