>>31266227If you've watched enough games to notice it, you've probably watched enough games to see why it's useful.
One reason would be to see what your opponent is likely to do so you can play with more information the next turn
Another is to avoid an opponent's fake out or waste a turn of their tailwind/trick room
Another is to protect one of your Pokémon while the other sets up speed control (for instance, the classic Oranguru/Torkoal lead; turn one, Oranguru uses Trick Room while Torkoal protects, next turn you have an unharmed Torkoal in Trick Room, which you wouldn't be able to have otherwise
Another is to give your other Pokémon a chance to KO a threat (for instance, if you have Gyarados and Garchomp against an opponent's Tapu Koko, you can protect Gyarados, Tapu Koko goes for the Thunderbolt on Gyarados, which fails, then Garchomp gets the KO on Tapu Koko with Earthquake. Without Protect, Gyarados would have fainted.
For that matter, it protects your Pokémon from your own spread moves. You can have Marowak protect while your Garchomp uses Earthquake and gets rid of a pesky Muk that you would otherwise struggle to get rid of, and Earthquake won't knock out your own Marowak.
It's just so endlessly versatile that it's almost better to think of VGC Pokémon as having three moves and Protect, unless you specifically have a reason to remove it.
