PokéSpreadWhen you design a defensive spread, the question is usually "how many Stat Points do I need to survive this hit?". But if your team sets up a wall, the honest answer can be very different: a wall is worth more bulk than your entire Stat Point budget could buy on its own. It is also easy to get wrong, because walls look like a stat boost without being one, and because there are three of them that seem like they should add up.
This guide covers what each wall does, how it compares to a stage boost, whether the walls combine, and how to use all of this when you analyze a Pokémon.
What each wall does
| Wall | Reduces damage from | Requirement |
|---|---|---|
| Reflect | Physical moves | None |
| Light Screen | Special moves | None |
| Aurora Veil | Physical and special moves | Can only be set up in Snow |
All three protect your whole side, so the partner next to your Pokémon benefits too. They last a limited number of turns, which a Light Clay extends, and they are one of the few effects here that depends on the format: the reduction is smaller in Doubles than in Singles.
Wall multiplier
In Doubles a wall removes about a third of the damage, in Singles half. The multiplier is applied near the end of the damage calculation, after the random roll, STAB and type effectiveness (see the damage formula guide).
Two more rules complete the picture. A critical hit ignores walls completely, and a wall only applies to the category it covers: Reflect does nothing against a special move, and Light Screen does nothing against a physical one.
Are walls the same as stage boosts?
In terms of the size of the effect, they are close, but not strictly equivalent. A +1 Defense stage multiplies your Defense stat by 1.5, which divides the damage taken by about 1.5. The Doubles wall multiplies the damage by 2732 ÷ 4096, which is about 0.667, so it is nearly the same thing as a +1 stage, give or take rounding. In Singles, a wall that halves the damage is nearly the same as a +2 stage, which doubles the stat. So a wall is roughly +1 stage in Doubles and +2 stages in Singles, for the matching category.
Here is the same hit with each effect applied. Incineroar (Adamant, 32 Attack SP) uses Flare Blitz on a Farigiraf with no Stat Points and a neutral nature, which has 195 HP:
| Format | Defender's situation | Damage range |
|---|---|---|
| Doubles | Nothing | 138 – 163 |
| Doubles | Reflect | 92 – 109 |
| Doubles | +1 Defense | 93 – 109 |
| Singles | Reflect | 69 – 81 |
| Singles | +2 Defense | 69 – 82 |
The ranges are almost the same but not identical, which tells you the mechanisms differ. The main differences:
- Where they act. A stage changes the Defense stat, at the start of the calculation. A wall multiplies the final damage, at the end. Rounding happens at different moments, which is why 93 – 109 and 92 – 109 are not exactly equal.
- Who they protect. A stage belongs to one Pokémon and disappears when it switches out. A wall protects every Pokémon on your side until it expires.
- What gets around them. Walls are ignored by Infiltrator and removed by moves such as Brick Break, Psychic Fangs and Raging Bull. Stages are ignored by Unaware and by moves such as Sacred Sword and Darkest Lariat, which do not affect walls.
- Critical hits. Here they behave the same: a critical hit ignores the wall, and it also ignores a positive Defense stage. In the example above, a critical Flare Blitz deals 207 – 244 whether Reflect is up, a +1 stage is active, or neither is.
How walls and stage boosts combine
Because they work through different mechanisms, a wall and a stage boost stack with each other. The interesting question is how much the combination is worth compared with plain stage boosts, for instance whether Reflect plus +1 Defense is the same as +2 Defense.
It is not, and the reason is that the two scale differently. A stage multiplies the stat by (2 + stage) ÷ 2, so each extra stage adds the same 0.5 to the multiplier: +1 is ×1.5, +2 is ×2, +3 is ×2.5, +4 is ×3. A wall, on the other hand, multiplies whatever you already have. Here are the results on the same hit in Doubles:
| Defender's situation (Doubles) | Effective multiplier | Damage range |
|---|---|---|
| +1 Defense | ×1.5 | 93 – 109 |
| +2 Defense | ×2 | 69 – 82 |
| Reflect + 1 stage | ×2.25 | 62 – 73 |
| +3 Defense | ×2.5 | 55 – 66 |
| Reflect + 2 stages | ×3 | 46 – 55 |
| +4 Defense | ×3 | 46 – 55 |
The multiplier column is the combined factor on the Defense stat (the wall counts as ×1.5 in Doubles). Actual ranges differ by a point or so because of rounding.
So in Doubles, Reflect plus one stage is better than two stages (62 – 73 against 69 – 82), though not as good as three. Reflect plus two stages matches four stages. The more boosts you already have, the more a wall is worth on top of them: it is about one stage on its own, about 1.5 extra stages on top of a +1, and two extra stages on top of a +2. In Singles the wall counts as ×2, so it is worth even more: Reflect plus +1 Defense (46 – 54) already matches +4 Defense (46 – 55).
Friend Guard, which also multiplies the damage, stacks with a wall the same way: it takes Reflect's 92 – 109 down to 69 – 82.
Can you combine all three?
They can all be active at the same time, but the effects do not stack. Aurora Veil on its own already covers both categories, so Reflect and Light Screen add nothing on top of it. Here is the result of a physical hit (Incineroar's Flare Blitz) and a special hit (a Modest Gardevoir's Moonblast) on the same Farigiraf in Doubles:
| Walls up | Physical hit | Special hit |
|---|---|---|
| None | 138 – 163 | 117 – 138 |
| Reflect | 92 – 109 | 117 – 138 |
| Light Screen | 138 – 163 | 78 – 92 |
| Reflect + Light Screen | 92 – 109 | 78 – 92 |
| Aurora Veil | 92 – 109 | 78 – 92 |
| Reflect + Light Screen + Aurora Veil | 92 – 109 | 78 – 92 |
Two things stand out. Aurora Veil gives exactly the same protection as Reflect and Light Screen together, in a single move. And adding Aurora Veil to a team that already runs both of the others changes nothing at all.
Which one should you plan around?
Aurora Veil is cheaper in actions and move slots, but it needs Snow, so it only fits teams built around a Snow setter. Reflect and Light Screen cost two moves, but they work in any weather and let you set only the one you need. Putting all three up is never useful: there is no extra protection to gain, only wasted turns.
How much is a wall worth in Stat Points?
It helps to put walls on the same scale as your investment. Farigiraf's Defense with 0 SP and a neutral nature is 90. A Doubles wall behaves like a +1 stage, which brings the effective stat to about 90 × 1.5 = 135. The best Farigiraf can do with 32 Defense SP and a neutral nature is 122. In other words, a single wall is worth more than the entire Stat Point budget for that stat, and in Singles it is worth even more.
That has three practical consequences when you plan a team:
- It can free your investment. If you reliably have a wall up when the hit lands, you can invest heavily in Attack/Special Attack and Speed while still avoiding KOs that you would otherwise need Defense or Special Defense to avoid.
- It can add extra hits of margin. Combined with an investment in HP, Defense and Special Defense, a wall lets your Pokémon take one or more additional hits. That helps with positioning, and makes it easier to accept being wrong about what your opponent will do.
- It is conditional. A critical hit, a Brick Break or an opposing Pokémon with Infiltrator takes the bulk away. If a threshold is your last line of defense, check it both with and without the wall.
Using walls in PokéSpread
In the Default battle conditions section, the walls are split by side. The checkboxes under My side (Reflect, Light Screen, Aurora Veil, Friend Guard) protect the Pokémon under analysis, so they are the ones that matter on the Defenses tabs. The checkboxes under Opponent side protect the Pokémon you are trying to knock out, so they matter on the Physical attack and Special attack tabs. Changing them updates every Pokémon already added, and each Pokémon also keeps its own battle conditions in its edit window.
The Battle type selector (Single or Double) switches between the two multipliers, and the Critical hits toggle on each tab lets you check the worst case in which the wall does not apply. Stage boosts are set separately, so you can reproduce the stacking example above by combining a wall with a stage. Note that the calculator does not check whether Snow is up when you tick Aurora Veil: it assumes you have already set it.
The one thing to take away
A wall removes about a third of the damage in Doubles and half in Singles, only for the category it covers, and only on hits that are not critical. That is comparable to a +1 or +2 stage on the matching defense, but it protects your whole side and does not stack with itself: two walls on the same category, or all three at once, are no better than one. Include it in your calculations whenever your team can set it, and keep a without-wall check for the thresholds you cannot afford to miss.