How to unlock Volcarona
There is no direct purchase for Volcarona. It appears on the Unova banner inside the 4★ pool. The 4★ band takes 6.5% of all pulls and holds 211 partners, so one specific Volcarona works out to about 0.0308% per draw. The 70-pull pity counter only applies to 5★ results, so Volcarona has no floor of its own and no targeted pull. A duplicate Volcarona refunds 120 coins at the 4★ rate.
Volcarona stats and rank
The sheet lists Volcarona at 108 HP, 120 speed, ×1.44 attack, ×1.03 physical and ×1.44 special, with 65 defense and 105 special defense — 550 base-stat total. On the three-stat percentile this is 84.7 out of 100, which puts Volcarona at rank 43 of 966 and in tier S. Relative standing explains more than the total here: its strongest slot is special multiplier (97th percentile) and its weakest is physical multiplier (30th percentile), so it is a specialist rather than an all-rounder.
Best moves in Volcarona's pool
At move level 5 the pool is led by Fire Spin at 33.6 damage per 0.30s (161.4 effective DPS, ×1.44 multiplier), then Body Slam at 75.6 damage per 0.71s (109.3 effective DPS, ×1.03 multiplier), then Hyper Beam at 126.2 damage per 1.76s (103.2 effective DPS, ×1.44 multiplier). 10 of its 19 damaging moves scale with the physical multiplier and 9 with the special one, alongside 4 support moves. Its special multiplier is the higher of the two (×1.44 against ×1.03), so special moves convert better. The top option beats the second by 52.2 DPS, which decides slot one and leaves slot two as a judgement call.
Evolution cards for Volcarona
Its starting move, Bug Bite, evolves into X-Scissor once the move is at level 5 and you hold the Power card, which boosts attack for that run. If Power never appears in that run's level-up offers, the move stays at level 5 and unevolved. 19 of its 23 moves carry an evolution card, across 6 distinct cards (Vigor, Sprint, Power, Reflexes, Armor and Synthesis). The strongest of them is Fire Spin at 161.4 effective DPS, so that is the one worth holding a card for first.
Volcarona compared to similar partners
The two closest stat lines in the roster are Iron Moth (-2 HP, +4 speed, +0.03 attack, +20 total) and Munkidori (+2 HP, +3 speed, -0.02 attack, +5 total). Against Iron Moth, Iron Moth is 4 speed faster and Iron Moth hits harder by ×0.03, and the rank gap is 3 places. Those differences are what you actually trade when swapping partners, not a straight upgrade path, so neither side is a strict upgrade and the move pools have to break the tie.