Pokémon Top 5: Favourite Water Pokémon

After the really off-beat fire type favourites of last time it is time for a much more conventional list of pokemon this week! The water type is without a single doubt THE type all pokémon trainers , until recently always ran on their gameplay theme. Let’s see if my list holds water and can make a splash! These are my top 5 favourite water types.

Like every list so far, I follow four main rules. Only one entry per evolution line, and if the later stages are really disliked by me, while the first form adds little on it’s own it will not make the list. Such is the case with Sobble. I really love this little crybaby up to a point where it might be my favourite designed water starter. However it’s monotype evolution line with a creepily slender final evolution didn’t do anything for me. I have a problem with human-like starters, it takes away from their pet quality a starter should have. Water evolutions don’t often work for me as Oshawott, Mudkip Piplup and Totodile all are dear to me but I do not care for their final evolutions.

The second rule is a Pokemon has to feel like a water type to me, since like 90% off all water types are either blue or a fish they most of the time have this covered but one that really doesn’t feel like a water type to me is Golisopod. While it has powerful water moves , Surf and other powerful water moves have been available to the weirdest pokemon! Like Pikachu, Rhydon and Nidoking amongst others. So Golisopod having a water move doesn’t make it a water type and a fast bug monster that can switch itself out when taking damage, that liked priority moves doesn’t feel water to me in any way! The Legendary pokemon of space, Palkia is yet another one that missed the mark.

Finally I am not allowed to use temporary forms.  Some Pokemon gain a type or switch types like Meloetta for example. Yet in the case of water types there is a Mega Evolution I adore while not caring a lot for the base Pokemon. That Pokemon is Mega Slowbro.  While this pink creature is great at defence I think its look is a bit generic nowadays. It did not age that well for me. Galarian Slowbro  fixes this for me, but Mega Slowbro did it so much better. I love the commercial design and this take on mega evolution, evolving the former shellder on its tail to make it almost consume it whole. A great wall in its mega form and adorably awkward!

The fourth rule, a Pokémon can only be entered once! Cloyster  and Walrein are examples of earlier water type entries. Ducklett is excluded from this list for a similar reason. It already was on my top 5 favourite Pink Shines list. I mentioned it in a few posts in and outside of Pokémon so I do not think I have much more interesting stuffs to add to it hence it is not on my list either. I want to show as much love to as many Pokémon as possible! So if your favourite one did not make the list check out if was on an older list!  Gyarados and Lapras just fell short. Usually when I get Lapras I already have a water pokémon and Gyarados I think is fundamentally flawed with it’s water flying typing, making it more pointless to level up a Magikarp just to see it one shotted by a simple spark.Same goes for Ducklett.. but that is a baby Duck! I can accept that! Plus it has a pink Shiny!

When we got introduced to Feebas in Hoenn I firstly thought..beh just another Magikarp! Yet  there was so much more to this Pokémon than meets the eye! Quite literally! In these games to Evolve A Feebas into A Milotic it needed to be deemed beautiful! By having it participate and win Beauty Contests!  Feebas is quite an ugly fish but by showing it’s inner beauty this pokémon could unleash that beauty and transform into one of the most beautiful water pokémon designed. One that feels like a water pokémon but also one that reads that theme and it’s story very well. Pokémon Twilight Wings released a beautiful story about a Milotic as well and you can check that out by visiting the Pokémon Official Youtube Channel right here. It is a Pokémon that is all about obtaining beauty by being yourself and that is a message I’ll always support. It may be a bit fairytale like but just as every frog might be a prince to some.. every big lipped Bass with a triangle on its head can be a magnificent sea serpent!  It was one of the most interesting evolutions, and its a shame that over time it became easier to evolve taking away that theme a bit..which is why it isn’t higher on this list.

It is known as the most beautiful pokémon in the pokedex lore! They have scales that reflect the light differently depending on what angle you look at it , giving it a rainbow like glance over it’s entire body as all it’s scales are also in different angels! This has led the pokémon to become a muse for artists all across the pokémon world. Which again is reflected in the Pokémon Twilight episode, where both a model and the photographers use it to improve their career and create shots of true beauty. Yet Milotic is more than just about beauty. It’s beauty is said to be so vast that it will mesmerise anyone who looks at it. This effect causes people to lose any negativity in their heart, with hate and their will to fight being specifically highlighted. So not only is this a radiant pokemon it is also an envoy and a symbol of peace. If there is one supermodel in the world that CAN achieve world peace and happiness for everyone it is Milotic!

In combat Milotic works best as a wall.. it can tank a lot of damage due to it’s excellent defensive stats. It’s special defences are amazing and it’s physical defences are decent enough to take a hit or two as well. Having access to the move recover, which is considered a staple for Milotic will make it even better. Scald is the move that is placed on it for chip-damage and burns to make physical attacks weaker. Usually you equip the pokémon with leftovers for even more recovery and longer tanking. The other two moves are flexible and dependent on your team. Ice Beam is a favourite as it helps deal with pesky Ground and Dragon Types and usually Toxic is slapped onto it to give dots. Depending on your opponents team though Toxic might be swapped out with Haze..with resets set up moves like Swords Dance or Calm Minds and if you run the toxic stalling set , you might want to replace ice beam with Refresh for even more recovery and longevity. Whatever you build.. you can make it work with Milotic! It has a more supportive function in your team rather than a flat out offensive so adapts it move-set to your team’s strengths! But keep Scald and Recover!

Hoenn had some really good water Pokémon, which makes sense because of how much of the Region is covered in water. One of my favourite water types is the gigantic whale Pokemon Wailord. Why.. because it is so comically big and so ridiculously light for its size.. yet still heavy enough.. to be something incredibly memorable! Of course it famously breeds with Skitty ..the little cat pokémon too so there is already a lot of fun to be had with this pokemon. Skitty is 60 centimeters tall while Wailord is 14,5 meters tall. Respectively about 2 feet compared to 48 feet. Yet they can still make eggs together!  Wailord with it’s 398 kilograms of  877 pounds of weight has a Body Mass Index of 1.9.. compared to that of a human at 18 to 25 that isn’t very high! That being said, Skitty is not the only weird paring this whale of a pokémon can get it on with! Diglett is also a great partner. Wailord is just this really unique  water type who just for its size has taken a place in people’s hearts but he is still a pretty solid Pokémon as well!  Especially during Gameplay or the friendlier competitive scene this is a beast! Also it’s a symbol of friendship between me and this girl so I have lots of positive associations with it!

Pokedex wise there is mostly more stories about how big Wailord is and how much it can eat.  It can eat entire schools of Wishiwashi (which is a very tiny fish Pokémon) and if there is a pod (a group of whales)  Wailords near fishing beaches they decimated the pokéfish population so much that fisherman have to scare them off in order to keep their livelihood. The lungs of a Wailord are so big that it can dive 10.000 feet or +/- 3 kilometers deep and still have enough breath to come up for a new gasp of air no problem! It does this by breathing through its nostrils that it sticks above the water in it’s time of need. Wailords hunt in packs and heard their prey by leaping out of the water completely, which causes such big splashes that it can drive their prey in one direction or even flat out knock them out by the massive shockwave of a wailord hitting the water again. While it is the pokémon that is known as the largest one.. some smaller Wailords do exist. If it is targeted by Pokémon like Sharpedo or Dhelmise..all the Wailord in it’s pod flock together to deal with the treat to their smaller pack member. That smaller one probably is the child of a Diglett!

In the competitive Meta Wailord mostly uses its ability pressure and it’s fabulous healing to PP stall their opponents and making them unable to use moves!  While that is a good set to build it isn’t particularly my style. I prefer the “Moby Dick” set. Which uses moves like Curse, Waterfall , Rest and Avalanche to up it’s defences and rest up while becoming near immortal. Than just chipping away damage at the enemy. This works best with a Chesto Berry to make it snap awake early so you can do it all again! This set let’s your enemy despair. Since it’s health is insanely high , 170 base total using the move Water Spout  which deals damage based on how much health you have remaining is a good shout out as well. This usually means equipping it with a Choice Scarf for speed.. but I prefer to run this set on a sticky web team so I can boost the damage through the use of Choice Specs and see it kill everything! Fun and an excellent use of Wailords flavour! Both movesets also shout “big and clunky”  so you know it has my love!

Lotad , the basic form of Ludicolo was the first pokémon I ever caught in Hoenn after starting with Torchic .. I did a Mudkip run as well but since I never knew what kind of animal Mudkip was I felt closer to the fire chicken.. which was blatantly wrong.. but hey without that mistake I would not have loved Lotad as much or Ludicolo if i had started ..properly.. with Mudkip. A Water and Grass type pokémon combined was an excellent idea, and to base it around a lillypad.. that .. kind of becomes like a dancing Pineapple with a duck bill is amazing.  Because all ducks are amazing! Ludicolo even became more special to me when I played trough Colosseum and Gale of Darkness XD.  I actually started with Gale of Darkness XD for some reason and encountered a man named Mirror B! Who used mostly Ludicolo and dancing based themes. When I faced him in Colosseum  though he had this amazing conga-line like music theme. It became Ludicolo’s theme for me as it fits it so well! A pocket monster with it’s own music theme is amazing! 

Ludicolo is just the epitome of cheerfulness which is reflected by it’s lore.. which mostly a single entry across almost all generations. It loves to dance! It loves to dance so much that whenever it hears music it’s muscles become so charged with energy that it can not help not to dance. It grows stronger through dancing as well as it actually gives it energy rather than take it away. Any little happy beat will trigger this as well.  It is said to love dancing so much that it can be summoned by children, who hum just for fun! It will join them and dance on their merry melodies! Which I take as a lesson to never completely grow up! When we are adult we don’t hum a lot anymore! At least not like we did as a kid! We might mimic what Kanye song is hip .. or do whatever song is now a meme.. but we don’t really do our own melodies anymore! Like we used to. Ludicolo is a Pokémon that is a very odd duck that dances to the beat of it’s own drum.. and whatever drum people choose to walk to. So it teaches us a lesson to just do it! Go Ludicolo!

As a moveset, Ludicolo is very versatile again.. it functions best when it is in the rain as it activates it’s abilities Swift Swim, which speeds it up in the rain. Or Rain Dish which lets it heal in the rain.  The Rain Dish set is more often used in competitive using leech seed, giga drain and moves like that to keep sapping and gaining health.. a near immortal pineapple duck lily pad that never stops dancing. The Swift Swim set is usually quite aggressive with powerful water moves such as Hydro Pump, Giga-Drain again and two other offensive moves.  I personally like the aggressive Ludicolo a lot,  and if you make it set up the rain it is a great teammate on any rain team. With Dynamax setting up the rain is easier than ever so this pokémon is great!  The healing one is definitely more versatile though and helps you much better if you  your opponent lacks a bug type or another good counter for Ludicolo. It stats are lackluster compared to most of the other pokémon here, as it only has a 480 base stat total which is in the lower end of a fully level monster but given how easy it can boost itself this pokémon is still a keeper! 

Blastoise and I have a kind of weird relation. While it is not my starter of choice and nowadays I rarely pick it up anywhere, I still love it dearly… I just love another starter more. As a kid me and my sister used to play with Legos and at one time there were these Pokémon Gashapons which you can get.. we combined with lego’s to play Pokemon. The pokemon toys were about the right size so me and my sister would spend an entire day to build our pokémon same including a battlefield and a gym puzzle. My sister got Pikachu and Charmander, I got Blastoise and Gengar.  Our Gym leaders would visit each others gym, solve the puzzle and battle the gym leader.. which my sister always won..because if not she would break my gym!  But it was fun! We played our Pokémon talking to each other after the fight was done and Blastoise was my hungry lovable oaf. Gengar was an edgelord and he never got a lot of love! One time I won a gym battle and my sister got angry and tossed Gengar away and I did not find it again for a very long time.  So Blastoise was all I had. I grew super close to that toy so it will always have a warm place in my heart.

I played plastic Blastoise as someone who was always taking of it’s next apple as we had an apple toy as well!  Which neatly blended in with lore that was added during Pokémon Gold and Silver. A Blastoise likes to eat and keep being fat. It does this so that it is not jetisonned when it fires it’s own cannons. For these water cannons are powerful enough to punch a hole into thick steel plates. It can use it’s cannon to create water bullets that are so precise it can hit a tin can 160 feet or 53 meters away. It can use the pressure of it’s cannons to launch itself into a highspeed tackle and it likes to  crush it’s opponents with it’s heavy body until they faint. So that is already a lot of fire power! However if Blastoise Mega-Evolves the additional cannon it grows is about equal in strength to that of a tank!  Still very accurate. If it Dynamaxes however it loses all sense of accuracy for some reason so instead it just fires it’s 31 cannons over and over again, with the central cannon being powerful enough to blast holes into mountains.. once more proving that Pokémon hate steel vehicles like Dump Trucks and tanks but hate mountains even more…. I think it’s all the Zubat!

Our cannon turtle is a bit difficult to build because it really depends in what generation you build your set. Blastoise is often used as a Rapid Spinner, which means he should know the move Rapid Spin, which removes hazards your opponents sets! In  Generation VIII this move has become so much better due to the increased base power and speed boosting effect of this move.  Next you’ll want Scald in the pokémon to inflict burns and render physical move users pretty worthless! Dragon Tail gives you momentum control by forcing your opponent to swap out and Ice Beam is nice weakness coverage, which you can take advantage off because of the speed boosts.  This also works nice with Dynamaxing as it gives you access to four offensive Dynamax moves, even losing the low priority of Dragon Tail once you upgrade it to Max Wyrmwind. If you play a generation where you can Mega Evolve Blastoise you want to go hyper offensive with moves like Hydro Cannon and Dark Pulse.. as well as ice beam again.

Both my number 2 and number one pick aren’t even the characters I prefer to choose but these Water Pokémon are amazing.  Initially I was on Team Popplio when Sun and Moon where announced but I fell for the charm of Rowlett. It felt more consistent. However where I really love Rowlett so much it is in my top 5 of next week.. I did not particularly care for it’s evolutions. Primarina though… is amazing.  A water Fairy Type.. based on an seel who opera sings who gets her own sound based water move?! Sign me up for this this! I love the fairy type and Primarina is no exception!  I spend 5 hours mystery trading so I could add a Popplio on my team next to my Rowlett just so I could have a Primarina.  So it came to be that I became the first champion of Alola with all three starters in my squad! Heck I even wrote a little story about Popplio which is a testament on how much I like this evolution line! It still can not hold a candle to Rowlet on it’s own but throughout the entire evolution line this one is my clear winner.  In fact I dare say this is my final fully evolved starter ever.

Having not been around for long in the pokémon world it’s pokedex lore is a bit lackluster but this Primadonna requires a lot of it’s trainer.  As allegedly Primarina uses its singing voice as it’s main weapon, it is up to the trainer to maintain his poke-partners throat at all costs. So I bet Primarina stays perfectly hydrated and gets to eat lots of yummy ice cream to cool it’s throat. With song a primarina controls water balloons filled with sonic waves which form the basis for its attacks. These songs are passed down down for generations , thus a Melody should be able to tell you if Primarina are family of another or maybe if  they have been captured to early. Primarina is the Idol Girl, the Hatsune Miku, if the pokemon world as well. They don’t really care about battle, they battle simply so they can set foot on the “stage’ to display their songs. On moonlit nights it goes out in the see and looks quite mystical as it searches for other Primarina as they burst into song together!  That seems like a very on brand water pokémon for me!

Primarina is another one of those pokémon that is is a bit version specific. The Alola starter for example works best with Sparkling Aria, it’s signature water move that does that exact water Balloon thing we mentioned earlier, Moonblast which is the most powerful Fairy Type Move, Ice Beam  for weakness coverage against grass  and Psychic for weakness coverage against Poison. Equipped with a Primarinium Z to give it access to it’s signature and very powerful and good looking Z-Move, Oceanic Operetta. In Sword and Shield Surf is the better option over Sparkling Aria because it’s equally as reliable and powerful but functions better in Double Battles as well. It has one of the highest special attacks of all the pokémon on this list so it works best as a physical sweeper. Good items to equip it if you aren’t going for the Z-moves are items like a Life Orb or Choice Specs.  The latter may prove to be tricky though as Primarina is rather slow. Choice Scarf can make it faster but not enough so stay away from that. If your opponent doesn’t have many counters for Primarina you may want to consider putting an Assault vest on the pokémon.. which increases her defensive stats in trait for her not being able to use non offensive moves. 

Water Pokémon are a bit of a weird brand for me, I always feel a bit forced to use them so they do not always impress me as much, plenty are a hassle to evolve  or require you to commit hard to a single direction. Primarina is an amazing easy to start , easy to learn Pokémon that can offer joy to everyone! Her moves all by herself is pretty amazing so no need to hunt for moves to make her decent!  The design is resonates really well with me and it’s one of the most unique fully evolved starters out there that even can get rookies pretty far in their journey! This pokémon really sings to me! The winner! Primarina.

So who is your Favourite Water Pokémon? I do expect a lot of Lapras and Gyarados answers here but I have been wrong before! What is your favourite starting type? Next week we will cover the last of the starting types with the grass type! Let me know your thoughts in the comments and see you next time!