Pokémon X and Y/Species Strategies (Generation VI Families)

This page contains information on every Pokémon family first introduced in Generation VI, including stats, recommended movesets and evolutionary lines. All evolutionary lines are put together, even if an evolution or pre-evolution was not introduced in the same Generation as other members of its evolutionary family.

Chespin, Quilladin and Chesnaught
Chesnaught is rather unique for a bulky fighter due to its access to the exclusive Bulletproof ability. This ability grants it immunity to certain moves, many of which are popular attacks, such as Shadow Ball, Aura Sphere, Focus Blast, Energy Ball, and most crucially, Sludge Bomb. It has nice physical bulk and a typing that gives it helpful resistances to Water, Ground, Electric and Dark type attacks, but consequently leaves it vulnerable to Fire, Ice and Fairy moves, and a very bad double weakness to Flying moves considering the type's popularity. It has a range of support moves to help it set up hazards and keep itself alive, while it also has a decent Attack stat when it needs to fight directly. Its poor special bulk makes it vulnerable to strong special attackers, while its poor Speed holds it back offensively and makes it easy to shut down by faster Taunt users.

Chesnaught doesn't usually need more than one attack when playing a support role. Drain Punch is a great Fighting-type STAB move for a tanky attacker, as it lets Chesnaught sustain itself while damaging the opponent. Wood Hammer and Seed Bomb are straightforward Grass-type STABs, but they see less use outside of dedicated attacking sets. Chesnaught's high Defense and access to Spikes makes it a capable hazard setter, and it can even add on Leech Seed for added chip damage. It has both Taunt and Roar as measures against hazard removers, although it needs to use them preemptively as they switch in due to Chesnaught's poor Speed. Its exclusive move Spiky Shield is Protect that also counters contact moves, useful for scouting out enemy movesets. In addition to Drain Punch and Leech Seed, it can use Synthesis to keep itself healthy. Chesnaught can also use Belly Drum to sweep, staying alive with heavily boosted Drain Punches, but its poor Speed and many weaknesses mean it is easily revenge killed.

Fennekin, Braixen and Delphox
As a Fire-type, Delphox is a really conventional special attacker, having good special stats and Speed. However, given that fast special attackers are the single most common archetype of Fire-types, Delphox really has to struggle to differentiate itself from the rest. Delphox's Fire/Psychic typing is pretty uncommon and gives it a resistance to Fighting-type moves, but hurts Delphox more than it helps overall due to its weaknesses to Ghost and Dark. Delphox's Special Defense is also quite high for a Pokemon of its archetype, but its physical bulk suffers as a result. Unlike the other Kalos starters, Delphox's hidden ability isn't playstyle defining, or practical at all. Overall, Delphox is pretty good at what it does, its main issue being that its outclassed by too many similar Pokemon.

Fire Blast or Flamethrower serves as Delphox's primary STAB move, depending on whether power or accuracy is more important. Psychic and Psyshock are Psychic-type STAB options, and while they don't have much type synergy with Fire, their ability to hit common Fighting-types and the occasional Poison-type is still valuable. Psyshock's trait of targeting the foe's Defense stat in particular can help Delphox defeat special walls. Grass Knot offers great coverage with Flamethrower or Fire Blast, hitting Water, Ground and Rock-types super effectively. Dazzling Gleam is used to take down Dragons and provide Delphox some protection against Dark-types. Delphox's special bulk also lets it run Calm Mind to rack up boosts, with an optional Substitute for protection against physical or status moves. Lastly, Will-O-Wisp can cripple opposing offensive Pokemon with its chip damage and Attack reduction.

Froakie, Frogadier and Greninja
Greninja is one of the most popular Pokémon introduced in Gen VI, and that's not just due to its cool design. Contrasting other Water-type starters in the past, which pack on bulk while compromising Speed, Greninja is a glass cannon. With an awesome 122 base Speed and strong offensive stats, Greninja is a fairly threatening attacker. Most importantly, Greninja gets the nearly exclusive Protean as its hidden ability, which is where much of its potency comes from. Protean automatically changes Greninja's type to the typing of its move used before it attacks. This gives Greninja STAB on all of its attacks and makes it very unpredictable, due to its ability to constantly change its resistances and weaknesses. Greninja's major flaw is its frailty, and it will often have trouble entering the field into an attack. This also somewhat diminishes the defensive advantage of Protean. Both of Greninja's attack stats, although above average, aren't excellent, so it might not be able to KO certain opponents before they can hit back with a lethal move.

While both of Greninja's attack stats are usable, most players prefer to focus on its special moves, given that its specially-based movepool is wider and that its Special Attack stat is plainly higher. Indeed, Greninja has a ton of moves to utilize Protean with. Hydro Pump is its main STAB move, boosting high power and decent accuracy, although Surf is a slightly more reliable alternative. Dark Pulse is a great secondary STAB that provides nice coverage alongside Hydro Pump, but is sometimes replaced by another move to deal with specific threats. Ice Beam is a vital coverage move to be used against Grass-types and Dragon-types which resist Hydro Pump. Extrasensory is another popular move that Greninja naturally learns, which let it break through some of its common threats, most notably Mega Venusaur. Finally, Greninja can be a speedy hazard setter with Spikes, while still being a capable offensive Pokémon.

Bunnelby and Diggersby
Bunnelby and Diggersby look like your average early-game rodent, with pretty terrible stats and nothing much going for them. However, Diggersby is one of the very few Pokémon that gets Huge Power, doubling its poor Attack stat into dangerously high levels. Its Huge Power boosted attacks are extremely hard-hitting, and its two STABs offer great neutral coverage, with Ground-type attacks able to break down the Rock and Steel types that resist Normal. However, it has some glaring flaws. It has poor Speed, which keeps it from being a powerful sweeper and means it must often sponge attacks before attacking back if it doesn't have a priority move. Both of its STABs also have common immunities, causing it to have trouble against Pokémon like Gengar, Drifblim, Skarmory and Bronzong, which have either partial or complete immunity to its main attacks. Despite that, Diggersby's sheer power lets it remain as a decently effective Pokémon for tearing through defensive teams.

If you want to use Diggersby, always have Huge Power as its ability, as it is a terrible Pokémon otherwise. Return is its strongest Normal-type attack without any drawbacks when at max happiness, and will be the attack of choice against Pokémon that don't resist it. Earthquake is Diggersby's strongest Ground-type move. While it has lower power than a maximized Return, it offers great coverage with Return as it is effective against Rock and Steel types that can tank a Return. Quick Attack gives it a strong priority attack to circumvent its subpar Speed. For coverage moves, either Stone Edge or Wild Charge can be used. Stone Edge has higher damage but lower accuracy, while Wild Charge does more damage to Steel-types that are immune to Earthquake, such as Skarmory and Bronzong, as well as offer some coverage, particularly against Water-types. Finally, U-Turn is an option to let you switch out while doing damage, useful when you find yourself up against a Pokémon that Diggersby has no hope of breaking through.

Fletchling, Fletchinder and Talonflame
Talonflame evolutionary family is the early bird Pokémon line of Kalos. Talonflame is quite unlike its predecessors not just in its type combination, but also its usefulness in battle. Talonflame's stats look uninteresting, with its only nice stat being its great Speed, but it also comes with the excellent Gale Wings ability, which increases the priority of every Flying-type move. This makes moves like Brave Bird, Roost or Tailwind move first, making Talonflame one of the best revenge killers and support Pokémon there is, and even a potential sweeper. Gale Wings also means that it can invest exclusively in Attack to maximize its power without worrying about getting outsped. While its high Speed may seem pointless with Gale Wings, it also means it will almost certainly move first against other priority users. While Talonflame is one of the most popular and useful Pokémon there is, it has some definite flaws. Its Fire/Flying type has several well-known weaknesses, including a terrible 4x weakness to Stealth Rock that limits its ability to switch in often. It also has poor bulk, made worse as it relies on recoil moves to do damage. Talonflame also lacks sheer power, as its 81 Attack means that sufficiently bulky Pokémon can take hits without fear.

Talonflame is decently flexible in the moves it can use. Brave Bird is its best Flying STAB, having great neutral coverage and getting Gale Wing's priority boost. Flare Blitz is a good secondary STAB move for Steel-types, and has equivalent power as Brave Bird. U-Turn is a good utility move for scouting out possible switches or to bail out of unfavorable matchups. Roost is a great healing move if it finds the space to use it, being boosted by Gale Wings and letting heal off damage taken from its recoil moves. Tailwind is another great priority move for supporting teammates instead, and it is even better in double or triple battles. Talonflame can run Will-o-Wisp as for supporting, useful for crippling its usual counters, which are usually physical attackers packing a Rock move. Taunt can be used if you fear its defensive counters instead, being able to shut down walls that rely on status moves. Finally, Talonflame gets a variety of boosting moves, from Hone Claws to Bulk Up to Swords Dance. Bulk Up is probably the best, as Talonflame is far too frail to setup with any other boosting move.

Scatterbug, Spewpa and Vivillon
Although there have been many early-game butterflies before Vivillon, it is designed to perfect this usually terrible archetype. Vivillon has pretty terrible stats, but it gets a bunch of useful tools. As a butterfly-like Pokemon, it can use Quiver Dance to boost its Special Attack, Special Defense and Speed at the same time. It also gets the handy Compound Eyes and Hurricane combination, which increases the accuracy of Hurricane enough to make it a reliable attack. Alas, it is still held back by the same weaknesses as other Bug Pokemon of its kind. It has terrible defensive stats, so it has trouble switching in and is very vulnerable to getting revenge killed while sweeping. Its Bug/Flying type is highly exploitable, and leaves it with a terrible 4x weakness to Stealth Rock. It also lacks power, since as strong as Hurricane is, it can still be walled due to Vivillon's average Special Attack.

The hardest part about using Vivillon is pulling off the first Quiver Dance. Vivillon is extremely frail and has poor unboosted speed, so it is best brought in against Pokemon that fear Hurricane, such as most Grass-types. It's a good idea to give Vivillon a Focus Sash to ensure it survives long enough to pull off a boost. Vivillon also commonly carries Sleep Powder to incapacitate an opponent, using the free turn from the switch to set up a Quiver Dance. Once the Quiver Dance is up, all it has to do is fire off powerful Hurricanes. Energy Ball is a decent coverage move for Rock-types that Vivillon is extremely weak to, but unfortunately it lacks the movepool to deal with Steel-types, which resists both its STAB Hurricane and Energy Ball.

Litleo and Pyroar
Pyroar is one of the myriad of specially-inclined Fire types in the game. With poor bulk, unfitting abilities and a poor special movepool, they are terribly outclassed by plenty of other Fire-types. Pyroar is decent at what it does, with respectable Special Attack and great Speed that gives it a strong offensive presence. It has the exclusive type combination of Fire/Normal, which gives it a helpful immunity to Ghost but an extra weakness to Fighting. While the STAB combination of Fire and Normal has great neutral type coverage, but is stopped handily by Rock-types. Pyroar's typing also leaves it vulnerable to Stealth Rock and popular priority moves, chiefly being Mach Punch.

Fire Blast, Overheat or Flamethrower are the obvious choices for Pyroar's primary STAB. Fire Blast deals more damage, but Flamethrower is a lot more reliable, while Overheat has great power but forces Pyroar out early. Hyper Voice is Pyroar's best Normal-type STAB, and has the added bonus of hitting enemies behind Substitutes. If you need more power, Work Up is Pyroar's best boosting move, primarily for its Special Attack increase. Will-o-Wisp weakens and wears down enemies, whereas Taunt is more threatening to opposing defensive teams. Unfortunately, Pyroar doesn't learn any strong moves for dealing with Rock-types, so it's weak to them both offensively and defensively. Your best bet is to go through the trouble of manipulating IVs to get Hidden Power Grass, which isn't worth the effort in Pyroar's case.

Skiddo and Gogoat
As a Grass-type Gogoat does not have any outstanding qualities. Its high HP is nullified by its poor bulk, and for an offensive Pokemon, it has really poor Speed. Gogoat is usually played as a Bulk Up attacker, using the boosting move to improve its Attack and patch up its terrible Defense. Sap Sipper works well with this playstyle, as it can let Gogoat switch into a predicted Grass-type move for a free Attack buff. It has a good movepool with nice type coverage and many ways to prolong its survival as well, which is vital due to Gogoat's poor bulk and Speed. Ultimately, Gogoat's low Speed is its biggest issue, since it is easy to revenge kill and cut its sweep short. While its Grass typing gives it some useful resistances, it also leaves it with weaknesses to Fire, Flying and Ice type attacks, all of which are common on fast attackers.

Bulk Up is a common move for Gogoat, since its power is rather average and its really vulnerable to physical attacks. Horn Leech is Gogoat's STAB move of choice. While it doesn't hit as hard as Leaf Blade, it drains HP from Gogoat's foe, helping it to stay alive. Gogoat has some nice coverage attacks as well. Earthquake and Rock Slide covers a wide range of Pokemon, especially those that either resist Gogoat's Grass moves or can threaten to strike back super effectively. Additionally, Gogoat has the option of sacrificing coverage for added survivability. It can learn both Milk Drink and Synthesis, with Milk Drink's constant recovery being the more reliable healing option unless you can fit Gogoat into a sun team. Gogoat also learns Leech Seed, letting it further leech health for itself in conjunction with Horn Leech. Lastly, Gogoat benefits a lot from Substitute, since it is crippled by status ailments like Burns and Toxic, as well as Taunt and Encore.

Honedge, Doublade and Aegislash
The Honedge family contains one of the top contenders in battle introduced in X/Y, Aegislash. Much of Aegislash's effectiveness stems from its unique Stance Change ability. By default, Aegislash is in its Shield Forme, giving it amazing defenses but poor attacking stats. The moment Aegislash uses a damaging move, it turns into its Blade Forme, swapping its defenses with its offenses to turn it into a deadly glass cannon. It can revert back to its Shield Forme by switching out or using King's Shield, and exclusive move that blocks attacks and even lowers the Attack of a foe that makes contact! This makes Aegislash extremely versatile and unpredictable, able to fill in a variety of roles depending on its moves. Additionally, it has a unique Steel/Ghost typing that gives it 3 immunities and 9 resistances, while leaving it with merely 4 weaknesses. Aegislash still has some minor flaws. It has lackluster Speed, which can be fixed by running a priority move. It is also very fragile during Blade Forme, and is weak to common attacking types like Dark and Ground, so it can still faint easily if used carelessly.

Aegislash is usually used as a purely offensive Pokémon, due to its sky-high attack stats in Blade Forme. Shadow Ball is an almost mandatory move for Aegislash, being its strongest Ghost-type move and hitting a wide range of Pokémon neutrally. King's Shield is another common move on many Aegislash, as it lets Aegislash neutralize an attack, regain the great defenses of its Shield Forme while possibly neutering opposing physical attackers. Flash Cannon is a secondary STAB, its main purpose being to take down Fairy-types. Shadow Sneak is a useful priority Ghost-type attack that circumvents Aegislash's terrible Speed, and can still hit fairly hard without any Attack stat investment due to Blade Forme Aegislash's great base Attack. Sacred Sword can be seen occasionally, and is mainly used for potentially threatening Dark-types or to break through special walls like Blissey. Pursuit is another uncommon move that takes advantage of Aegislash's tendency to force switches. Aegislash also gets Swords Dance, which can make it a powerful foe that can sweep with Shadow Sneak, with Shadow Claw and Iron Head to complement the Attack boost. Finally, Aegislash can run a fairly potent stalling set with Substitute, Toxic and King's Shield, using Substitute and King's Shield to stall turns out and increase Toxic damage. All in all, Aegislash has a ton of moves to choose from, making it one of the most flexible and unpredictable Pokémon to face.

Swirlix and Slurpuff
Slurpuff has not recieved a very positive output from many people, with many disliking it for it's design, it's strange expression, and it's origin lying within a meringue. However Slurpuff's saving grace is it's ability Unburden, which DOUBLES it's speed when it loses it's item, making Slurpuff faster than Greninja. Through Belly Drum, a Sitrus Berry and Unburden, Slurpuff can destroy teams, maximizing it's attack, eating the Sitrus Berry to replace half of the health it lost and getting it speed doubled.Because of this it's a choice you should consider for your team.

Clauncher and Clawitzer
Clawzitzer is an incredible Pokemon, and it"s not just thanks to its cool design. Mega Launcher, its ability allows it a 1.5 power boost to Aura Sphere, Water Pulse, Dark Pulse and Dragon Pulse. This, when coupled with its already incredible Base Stat Total of 500, which, surprisingly, is almost as good as Charizard's 534 Base Stat Total. With this power, Clawzitzer can 2HKO pretty much anything. Its variety of pulse moves give it many options and you shouldn't ignore that thanks to  Mega Launcher and S.T.A.B. Water Pulse has 135 Base Power!

You can defeat Dragons (who have a resistance to Water) with a Mega Launcher Dragon Pulse, whilst taking care of Specially Defensive Pokemon with Crabhammer,one of the strongest moves to have a High-Critical Hit Ratio.

However Clawzitzer has it's flaws. It is somewhat frail, making him vulnerable to 2HKOs from moves like Earthquake. Another problem is it's terrible speed, making it vulnerable to being outspeeded almost always. Luckily it can learn Aqua Jet which solves this problem.

Helioptile and Heliolisk
Though Heliolisk isn't one of the more well-known X and Y Pokemon with the right moveset it can do a lot of damage. The ideal set would be to have Dry Skin, and the moves Rain Dance for HP recovery,Thunder due to it's incredible power and the fact that it can't miss in rain, Surf, which deals with Ground-Types as well as getting a power boost from the rain, and Parabolic Charge/Electrify. Parabolic Charge serves as another source of HP recovery as it is a HP-Draining move, while Electrify, Helioptile and Heliolisk's Signature Move,which makes the opponents move Electric-Type, can mess up strategies, such as an Electrified Machamp using Seismic Toss instead dealing an attack that Heliolisk resists as well as there being a power drop due to lack of S.T.A.B.

While this is a good moveset, Heliolisk still has it's problems.Firstly, it's Defense is downright abominable, making it take a lot of damage against physical attacks.Another problem is it's Normal-Typing, as it has no protection against fighting attacks which will usually 1HKO it.

Amaura and Aurorus
Aurorus has a pretty unique type combination as well as the exclusive Refrigerate ability, which increases the power of Normal-type moves while turning them into Ice-type moves. This gives it interesting options for STAB, with Nature Power and Return being the most common. The former summons a 104 base power Tri Attack in link battles with a chance to inflict status ailments, while the latter at max happiness is the strongest STAB attack it can have that lacks any drawbacks. While terribly impractical, an Ice-type Hyper Beam with a whopping effective 195 base power is a terrifying attack to take, and can be used as a surprising last resort. Rock STAB isn't really needed as Ice already achieves great coverage, other than hitting Fire-types super effectively. Freeze Dry is good against Water-types, while Reflect, Light Screen, Haze, Thunder Wave and Toxic can be good support moves.

Despite being the more defensive of the Kalos fossil Pokémon, Aurorus has possibly the worst defensive typing in the game. Rock and Ice give it a terrible quad weakness to common Steel and Fighting type attacks as well as four other standard weaknesses. Its offensive stats and speed are also quite mediocre, which really prevents it from playing an offensive style. Even with a unique ability and fairly good movepool, Aurorus' poor typing single-handedly prevents it from being usable against common encountered Pokémon.

Hawlucha
With its luchador wrestler design and the exclusive Fighting and Flying type combination, Hawlucha is one of the more impressionable Pokemon introduced in X and Y. While most of its stats are rather mediocre, it has nice Attack and great Speed. However, Hawlucha's claim to fame is its combo of Unburden and Sky Attack. When equipped with a Power Herb, Hawlucha can use a one-turn Sky Attack to deal massive damage, activating Unburden at the same time to let Hawlucha outspeed anything without a boost. Its Fighting/Flying STAB combination grants it amazing type coverage, being able to hit every Pokemon neutrally with the exception Aegislash, Rotom and Electric/Flying types such as Thundurus. Hawlucha's Attack isn't very good, so it's best to start sweeping later in the match, when many of the opposing Pokemon have been weakened sufficiently.

As mentioned before, Sky Attack and the Power Herb item is Hawlucha's standard combo. This combination effectively gives Hawlucha a single-turn 140 Base Power STAB move that also increases its Speed. However, it can only be used once per battle, as the attack is very unwieldy without the Power Herb. Acrobatics also works incredible well in conjunction with Unburden, being a powerful Flying move itself once Hawlucha has consumed its item. High Jump Kick is Hawlucha's Fighting-type STAB of choice, hitting very hard but with the small chance of terrible recoil if it misses. Stone Edge is a good coverage move for hitting Flying-types and Bug-types. Hawlucha can also use a combination of Substitute and Sitrus Berry instead to activate Unburden safely, since it is both frail and crippled majorly by status. Hawlucha can learn Swords Dance to improve its middling Attack, which is more successfully pulled off when using Substitute. Alternatively, Hone Claws both increases its attack and makes Sky Attack and High Jump Kick more likely to hit, so it's better for the all-out attacker.

Goomy, Sliggoo and Goodra
Goomy,Sliggoo, and to a lesser extent, Goodra, are some of the strangest Dragon-Types introduced. But don't be fooled by it's looks, Goodra is actually a Pseudo-Legendary! It has a great ability in Gooey, and this makes Goodra capable of moving before Pokemon like Pyroar, who have far better Speed than it. It can function as a Specially Defensive Pokemon due to it's great Sp.Def and can hit hard with it's high Attack.Dragon Tail switches out threats whilst doing a lot of damage due to it being Physical and Dragon Claw can be quite powerful, with no downsides, and, once there are no Fairies left on opponent's team, you can deal an incredible amount of damage.

Klefki
Being basically a living keychain, Klefki is certainly an oddity, and its stats are pretty unimpressive compared to its appearance. However, this key collector is notorious for being one of the most effective status-inducers in the game, mainly due to its ability Prankster, letting it use status moves first regardless of speed. It also has an above average Defense, letting it fare better against its main target, physical attackers, while its Steel/Fairy typing gives it a ton of helpful resistances, including an immunity to Dragon, while leaving it with only a Fire and Ground weakness. Klefki also has a great movepool full of support moves that take advantage of Prankster, but the primary ones are Swagger and Thunder Wave, both taught via TM. This lets Klefki pull off an effective parafusion strategy that can nearly shut down most physical attackers, turning their sheer power against themselves due to Swagger's Attack boost. Additionally, it learns Foul Play at level 27, which circumvents its average attack stats to hit Swaggered foes hard. With just these three moves, it can cripple its opponent, then knock them out with a strong Foul Play. Teach it Substitute, and it can Foul Play in safety as its opponents knock themselves out.

Outside of its most common parafusion strategy, Klefki has plenty of other status moves it can try out. It can set down Spikes, use Torment against move-locked opponents or set up Reflect and Light Screen. In doubles or triple battles, it also provides useful support with Safeguard, Magic Room, Fairy Lock or Crafty Shield. Fairy Lock and Crafty Shield in particular are two moves exclusive to Klefki. Fairy Lock is basically a single-turn Mean Look that affects every Pokémon in battle. Crafty Shield protects Klefki and its allies from status moves in a manner similar to Quick Guard and Wide Guard, though Prankster makes Safeguard a superior move despite Crafty Shield's own extra priority. In terms of attacks, Klefki doesn't have a lot of options, with Play Rough, Draining Kiss and Dazzling Gleam for Fairy STAB and Flash Cannon for Steel STAB. However, its poor attacking stats mean you're better off using Foul Play to do direct damage.

Bergmite and Avalugg
If you had a look at Avalugg's stats, you'd doubt that it was an Ice-Type.Avalugg has an insanely high Defense, the highest of all Ice Pokemon, but at the cost of low Sp.Def and Speed.

Avalugg serves as an incredible Physical Wall, with a reliable recovery in Ice Body and Hail, as well as Recover. If you want,you can use it's terrible speed as an advantage with Gyro Ball, and whittle down attackers health with Hail and use Recover.