Flash Cannon

Flash Cannon
Type	Steel
Category	Special
Base power	80
Accuracy	100%
PP	10
Priority	0

What it does

Has a 10% chance to lower the target's Special Defense by 1 stage.

At 80 base power it is the 25th strongest of the 39 damaging special moves that appear in this format.

Who carrys it

13 of the 277 Pokémon measured on the Regulation M-B ladder carry Flash Cannon. The one that matters most is Mega Blastoise, which is on 10.9% of teams and carrys it on 0.1% of its sets. The full list is above, ordered by how much of the format each one is.

What it hits

As a Steel move it is super effective against Fairy, Ice and Rock, resisted by Electric, Fire, Steel and Water. 4 other Steel moves appear in this format: Iron Head, Bullet Punch, Heavy Slam, Iron Defense.

Who could and does not

40 Pokémon legal in this regulation can learn Flash Cannon at all, against the 13 that actually bring it. The gap is the interesting number: it is the set of Pokémon that have the option and decline it. The most-played of those are Kingambit, Gholdengo, Corviknight, Scizor, Armarouge and Tinkaton — each of them measured on the ladder, each of them leaving this move on the shelf.

How concentrated it is

Across the ladder, Flash Cannon accounts for an expected 0.10 of the six slots on an average team, which makes it the 49th most-brought of the 121 moves this format runs. 0% of that comes from Mega Blastoise alone, so it is spread across the field rather than propped up by one Pokémon. Its carriers are mostly Steel (7), Dragon (4) and Water (2).

Where these numbers come from

Usage is Smogon's published statistics for the Regulation M-B VGC ladder, and the description is the one shipped in the Pokémon Showdown data set. Both are regenerated on every build rather than written by hand, so this page follows the format instead of trailing it. Take any of it to the team builder or the damage calculator.