Ditching poliwraths
I've got a bubble/submission, ice, and hydro. I was keeping up with all of them but it is far too costly since passing level 30. I know there is no correct answer.
I just want a quick vote on which you prefer personally. Assuming the are all relatively the same IV.
Thanks
Added note: I favored my submission Poli but it was stuck in a gym for weeks and fell behind so I powered up my ice Punch. Now it's out and I need to choose. I got lucky and evolved a high cp/iv hydro that's on par with both.
Answers
I own a Poli with Bubble and Ice Punch, he is a wonderful defender. If you do the maths, the most damaging version of Poli is Bubble and Hydropump. In some cases I look and keep the most damaging movesets of my favourite pokemons but in other cases I look for those movesets that will annoy the attacker, Ice Punch is that move, I think that almost all strong attackers are likely to use exeggutor against my Poli and with Ice Punch it will give suppereffective attack into Exxegutor or any other grass. I know that HydroPump would do more damage even is "not very effective" but I like to let my attacker feel fear with the supereffective sign over his exeggutor.
For offense of defense?
If you are talking offense, I hate bubble with anything. If you are looking for a pokemon to do water attacks, I would pick one with water gun/hydro pump. I do like my Poliwrath with mud shot/submission. It isn't the quickest killer, but is a solid Lapras counter. This would get my vote because it is the most versatile and gets STAB with submission. I don't have experience with ice punch, but based on other pokemon I generally don't care for moves with more than 2 bars, so I would pick a pokemon with ice beam for ice attacks. Anyways, for attacking, I don't like bubble at all...so none of those...
Defense...bubble is great here. I think submission and ice punch are the best. Hydro pump is easy to dodge (with any kind of experience.) Ice punch will be SE against a lot of the common attackers, so I would vote for that.
looking at your sets, I assume they're all for defense. In that case, go for at least 1 ice punch and 1 submission. both are great defenders.
Most people would say go for Ice punch because of the current strong grass attackers and I agree. But also consider future generations where submission could be super/double super effective against strong attackers (Tyrantinar on the top of my head) which would increase submission's value.
I would recommend you don't power up Pokemon over level 30, that's when they start getting half the CP for each power up and the Stardust costs start to get ridiculous.
As for the Poliwrath, I personally think Ice Punch is better simply because it hits opposing Dragonite and Exeggutor really hard and forces them to play carefully and dodge.
I disagree with the above statement. I rarely power up attackers above lvl 30 because they are good enough to kill any defensive Pokemon already.
But for defenders, I power up to max my top 10 at least. especially middlish maxCP very strong pokemons like poliwrath, slowbro. They need to be fully powered up to be in a good position in the gym
I don't really see a Sub Poli having any sense, considering an attacker is most likely going to send in a Dragonite, Exeggutor, Victreebell or Venusaur to counter your mon. Bubble has a strength of 25, while Sub is at 24 against any of those 4 due to double resistance, nullifying any possible advantage of STAB.
I dont see a big difference between IP and HP, since Bubble itself is already strong enough to make up for the "being less annoying" disadv. of HP compared to IP, while obviously IP has the type advantage on its side. I also would say that HP is the most difficult full bar move to dodge, because you only have maybe 1.5 sec to actually avoid the damage. IP is a lot easier to dodge in my mind and is also doing significantly less total damage.
It's probably your personal preference, but I dont think you can really go wrong with the HP or IP one.