Underrated Prestigers #4: Jumpluff is the tankiest prestiger against Vaporeon and Rhydon

I hope you enjoyed the Grass event and caught, among others, a lot of Hoppip.

The reward will be Jumpluff, which is a very revive-efficient prestiger against two of the most common defenders in current gyms: Vaporeon and Rhydon.

Stats

Attack = 118, Defense = 197, Stamina = 150

That leads to a tankiness ratio P = sqrt (D x S) / A = 1.43.

This is the 4th-highest stats ratio for Pokémon in prestiging range after Blissey, Umbreon and Steelix.

Movesets

Solar Beam is a must-have. Both Infestation and Bullet Seed are good because their EPS is 12.7 (higher than average) and their main purpose is to charge Solar Beam as fast as possible.

Solar Beam’s main limitation, being a single-bar charge move, is not so critical because Jumpluff’s high durability makes it able to fire Solar Beam multiple times before fainting, reducing relative wastage.

In/SB is better against Vaporeon because Infestation being neutral doesn’t delay the charge move warning text. BS/SB is better against Rhydon because of its much higher DPS (due to Grass being 1.56x Super Effective).

Typing

As any Grass type, Jumpluff resists Water moves and is Super Effective against Water, so it’s one of the many possible choices against Vaporeon.

Moreover, Jumpluff’s unusual typing, Grass / Flying, makes it particularly good against most of Rhydon’s movesets, since it double-resists Mud Slap and Earthquake, resists Rock Smash and is not vulnerable to Megahorn unlike pure Grass types.

Performance

According to my CP efficiency calculator, here is the relative performance of Jumpluff (in terms of combined time and revive efficiency) against some of the most common defenders gym sitters:

	Defender	Charge move	Jumpluff's best moveset	Performance (time & revive efficiency combined)		Benchmark	Revive effectiveness (excl. Chansey/Blissey)
	Vaporeon	Hydro Pump or Water Pulse	Infestation / Solar Beam	87%		Tangela / Parasect	100%
	Vaporeon	Aqua Tail	Infestation / Solar Beam	75%		Tangela / Parasect	96% (Kingdra = 100%)
	Rhydon	Earthquake	Bullet Seed / Solar Beam	91%		Parasect	100%
	Rhydon	Stone Edge	Bullet Seed / Solar Beam	72%		Tangela	91% (Azumarill = 100%)
	Rhydon	Megahorn	Bullet Seed / Solar Beam	81%		Ivysaur	100%
	Snorlax	Earthquake	anything / Solar Beam	85%		Poliwrath	90% (Umbreon = 100%)

These rankings are done with a 0%-70%-30% dodge setting, i.e. dodge only specials and more likely to dodge if using a non-Super-Effective fast move (because it doesn’t delay the “Defender used Charge Move” message).

Limitations

• Jumpluff is vulnerable to Stone Edge, so especially against RS/SE Rhydon there are better choices like Ivysaur, Azumarill and the “VVV” trio.
• In general, the downside of Jumpluff’s tankiness is that it’s very slow. So use it if you are low on revives, but not if you are in a hurry. And against Snorlax, dodging all moves may lead to a timeout.
• Jumpluff’s max CP at level 30 is 1332. A realistic CP cap for Jumpluff is therefore 1250 CP, which makes it less efficient to prestige power-creep gyms with 2900-3000CP defenders in the three bottom slots.

EDIT:

• Added the CP cap as a limitation.
• Minor Text Fixes™.