Why is Quaquaval still not good in OU?

Question

How many tools does this dancing duck need to succeed? It has Wave Crash, Brave Bird, Close Combat, U-Turn, Flip Turn, Swords Dance, Ice Spinner, Knock Off, and not to mention it's great snowball sweeping potential with Aqua Step and Moxie. Are its stats really that bad? 120 Attack is pretty good

Comments

It's probably walled by Dondozo so that's pretty bad. Valiant and Enamorus also exist.

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An SD set could probably break through with close combat + knock off

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Unaware and Rest.

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for Dondozo?

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You might want to wait a few weeks or a month for the metagame to settle down.

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Thanks for the help! Quaquaval is my favorite starter of paldea, so just wonderin'.

Answer 1

I asked this on the OU sqsa thread. Here's what they said

It has horrible 4MSS, you want stabs, rapid spin, bu, sd, uturn, roost, knock off, and gets walled by stuff like mola, pex, donzo, corviknight, amoongus, tera water tusk, tera water garganacl, and gholdengo if not packing knock off. Gets revenge killed by rillaboom and ogerpon unlesss fully set up, etc

It gained Knock Off in the DLC, so a theoretical rapid spin set with Knock off might be viable, depending on how much does it do to gholdengo, and its a decent check to kingambit, so I guess you can give it a try

Answer 2

Quaquaval is not the worst, like you previously mentioned, it has a belt full of useful tools at it’s disposal, but Quaquaval is still relatively new, and metagame players will be set out to find out how to crush it

Honestly, just wait a while, it will die down and then Quaquaval will be useful in the metagame

Comments

Your argument is that it’s new, so people have a special incentive to learn strategies against it?

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If your argument is valid, Kingambit and Great Tusk would not be everywhere.
@TTAW Do you want me to put this question back on the unanswered list?

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New? SV has been out for almost a year.

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I was thinking about that. "Honestly, just wait a while and it will be useful" isn't really a good explanation though.