Since the thing is pretty cool I gave it a chance and some dust, even before the leagues. And I will be honest, it’s not good. Astonish is one of the worst fast moves in the game, bite does give you some non-stab dmg output but it takes forever to charge its charge moves (in fact both moves charge pretty slow). Its charge moves aren’t that great either, and on top of that Mawile is a bit squish. The best role I found for it was biting its way through Dragon Breath spammers. And in the Twilight cup Bite does not work with Mawiles role of dealing with Fairy and Dark types.
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Mawile's Use in Twilight Cup
After reading the Twilight Cup meta article, i was curious to see Mawile had zero mention in the discussion. i figured its Steel/Fairy typincg was decent against the popular poison types and has super effective charge moves to hit Dark and Fairy types equally, giving it a nice niche role. does it lack the power and speed to keep up with everything else or can it be reliably plugged in as a 6th pokemon to fill in a slot against teams heavier on Dark and Fairy types?
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Answers
Probably a few reasons why Mawile is not getting the love:
1) Availability - only through raids, meaning many are not going to have a lot of candy for it, made worse by the next point
2) Expense - you want to go into Silph Arena with unlocked 'mon, and unlocking Mawile will cost 75 of those tougher-to-get candy, and 75,000 dust. Moreover....
3) Sizing - its max CP at 1634 means you will need to get pretty high up there to power it up as high as possible for Great league. Even a perfect caught from a boosted raid is going to have to go from level 25 to level 34, using another 90 candy or so (plus all the dust)
4) Balance - Mawile leans to attack stats. Even if you had one with a low attack and high IV, that makes it balanced. And PvP calls for more bulk than balance (and certainly more than weighting to attack)
Mawile does have limited weaknesses, an impressive list of resistances, and access to Play Rough as STAB.
Nevertheless, you are going to spend a lot of resources getting it to a point where other likely Twilight candidates beat it anyway.
I had a poor original lucky at ~75% so I yolo'd. As previously mentioned iron head and play rough are terribly slow to charge. I haven't TMd it but I suspect vicegrip might actually be better as many people probably have not faced one and may be unfamiliar with the charge move time intervals and could spook your opponent into burning shields.
