Piplup: Best Moveset, Weaknesses & Counters, Stats, and Evolution

The world of Pokémon has been a growing phenomenon since 1996, when the first pair of video games came out in stores. Pokémon started off as a video game series and although new creatures are primarily introduced in the video games, the anime series has become as popular as the video games. As of December 2021, there are almost 900 individual Pokémon identified by the PokéDex and in this article, we are going to tell you everything you need to know about one of them – Piplup.

Piplup is the Water-type Starter Pokémon first introduced in Generation IV of the core video games, alongside Chimchar (Fire) and Turtwig (Grass). Piplup further evolves into Prinplup and finally into Empoleon, its last evolution stage. As a pure Water-type Pokémon, it is weak to Electric- and Grass-type moves, and is super effective against Ground-, Rock-, and Fire-type Pokémon.

In this article, we are going to tell you all the information you’ll need if you want to breed a Piplup in any of the games. You’ll find out about its type, its powers, its strengths and weaknesses, its evolutions, and its moves. We’re going to focus on both the core games, as well as other popular video games based on the Pokémon franchise.

Best moveset

In the Pokémon GO videogame, the best moves for your Piplup are Bubble and Drill Peck if you’re battling Pokémon in Gyms. Namely, this moveset gives you the highest total DPS and is, likewise, the best moveset for PVP battles. The official description for Bubble reveals the following: “This move can’t be used. It’s recommended that this move is forgotten. Once forgotten, this move can’t be remembered”; as for Drill Peck, the attack is described as follows: “A corkscrewing attack that strikes the target with a sharp beak acting as a drill.”

Weaknesses and Counter

As a pure Water-type Pokémon, Piplup is weak against Electric- and Grass-type moves, and is super effective against Ground-, Rock-, and Fire-type Pokémon. It is not immune to any specific type. It receives normal damage from Normal-, Fighting-, Flying-, Poison-, Ground-, Rock-, Bug-, Ghost-, Psychic-, Dragon-, Dark-, Fairy-type moves.

Powers and Abilities

Piplup’s Stats, based on the most recent available data, are:

In Pokémon GO, Piplup has a Base Stamina of 142, a Base Attack of 112, and a Base Defense of 102.

As for its abilities, they are:

• Torrent: Powers up Water-type moves when the Pokémon’s HP is low.
• Defiant: Boosts the Pokémon’s Attack stat sharply when its stats are lowered. (Hidden Ability)

Evolutions

Piplup is the first stage of the Water-type Starter Pokémon from Generation IV. A player can evolve their Piplup into Prinplup by leveling up, starting at Level 16. After that, they need to level up your Prinplup to Level 36, at which it is going to evolve into an Empoleon. Empoleon doesn’t have any additional stages.

In Pokémon GO, Piplup has the same evolution pattern, which means that you start with evolving Piplup into Prinplup first, for which you need 25 Piplup Candy, and after that, by evolving Prinplup into Empoleon, for which you need 100 Piplup Candy.

Moves

As of Generation VIII, the movies that Piplup can learn are:

• Bold indicates a move that gets STAB when used by Piplup
• Italic indicates a move that gets STAB only when used by an evolution of Piplup
• × indicates a move that cannot be used in Generation VIII

By leveling up

By TM

In Pokémon GO, Piplup can learn Bubble and Pound as Fast Attacks, and Bubble Beam, Drill Peck, and Icy Wind as Charged Attacks. Some of these attacks depend on when you caught and evolved your Piplup, as they are event-only attacks.