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From what I can tell, it seems the Hisuian form is better since it can hold eviolite and is much tankier. Both have intimidate, and Hisuian Qwilfish seems to have a better typing. It only has one weakness, ground, which regular Qwilfish also has, and it has a psychic immunity. Regular Qwilfish has more resistances, but Hisuian Qwilfish can hold eviolite which should compensate for that. The only major move pool differences I see are Regular Qwilfish has Flip Turn and Thunder Wave. Is there something else I am missing, or are Flip Turn and Thunder Wave just that good?

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You'll probably get a better answer by asking here: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/simple-questions-simple-answers.3717253/
What format are you talking about? Neither Qwilfish form is relevant in Gen 9 RU which you listed, but both of them currently get enough usage to hold NU: https://www.smogon.com/stats/2023-12-DLC2/gen9nu-1500.txt
I'm assuming OP is talking about why Qwilfish is NU while Hisuian Qwilfish is PU.

2 Answers

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Best answer

There are a couple of reasons why Qwilfish is in NU while Hisuian Qwilfish is PU, and they all have to do with the November and December metagame in NU.

Qwilfish

I'm going to start off with Johto Qwilfish. Qwilfish having Flip Turn was nice, but the reason Qwilfish was used more than Hisuian Qwilfish was its typing. Qwilfish being a Water/Poison type allowed it to check the dominant Fighting-types of Hariyama, Tauros-Paldea-Blaze (November), Tauros-Paldea-Aqua (December), Flamigo (December), and Heracross, as well as physical wallbreakers such as Glastrier and Bruxish locked into a water move. Since Qwilfish could use an item that isn't Eviolite, it could use Rocky Helmet, which was nice to punish the Fighting-types in NU. Qwilfish's typing also helped to create cores such as Copperajah/Qwilfish or Gligar/Qwilfish, both being nice hazard stacking cores.

Hisuian Qwilfish

As for Qwilfish's Hisuian cousin, it just wasn't good in the previous metas. Yes, Poison/Dark does have its perks over Water/Poison, but in the context of the November and December metas, Hisuian Qwilfish's typing didn't help it much. Since Hisuian Qwilfish was a Poison/Dark type, it wouldn't check Fighting-types as well. Unlike nowadays at the time of the post, back in November, there weren't as much special Psychic wallbreakers back then. There were only Hoopa (which could still use Knock Off to cripple it), Mesprit, Indeedee (who wasn't seeing much use), and Galarian Articuno. Hisuian Qwilfish's typing was only useful for specfiic Pokemon such as Decidueye and specific Mesprit sets. Hisuian Qwilfish was also worn down easily. Hisuian Qwilfish depends on Eviolite for its good bulk, which wasn't good since Knock Off was somewhat omnipresent in previous metas. In addition to Knock Off, hazard removal wasn't the best, meaning Hisuian Qwilfish taking hazards chip in addition to losing its Eviolite easily wears it down. In addition to these negative traits, Johto Qwilfish was the better Qwilfish, making Hisuian Qwilfish hard to fit on teams. With Hisuian Qwilfish not getting used due to its problems it faced, Hisuian Qwilfish dropped to PU.

TL;DR Qwilfish remained in NU due to its typing being useful in the previous metas, checking relevant Fighting-types. Hisuian Qwilfish dropped to PU due to its typing not being useful in the previous metas, being worn down easily, and being hard to fit on teams.

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They have the exact same stats, so I don't think Hisuinian Qwilfish "depends" more on the eviolite than Johto Qwilfish does.
What I meant was Hisuian Qwilfish needed Eviolite in order to have better bulk in order to "check" Pokemon it wanted (tried) to check such as Hoopa and Mesprit.
0 votes

Its because of qwilfish being mostly useless anyway, so it needs moves like flip turn and thunder wave, and also the johtonian qwilfish gets a stronger stab option(aqua tail and hisuian qwilfish gets crunch).
Also the eviolite doesnt really matter because qwilfish already got bad defences and hp.

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Qwilfish isn't useless in lower Smogon tiers that the question talks about. Have you played those formats before?