What it does
If this move is successful, the user must recharge on the following turn and cannot select a move.
At 150 base power it is the
1st strongest of the 39 damaging special
moves that appear in this format.
Who carrys it
6 of the 277 Pokémon measured on the
Regulation M-B ladder carry Hyper Beam.
The one that matters most is Sylveon,
which is on 18.4% of teams and carrys it on 62.5% of its sets.
The full list is above, ordered by how much of the format each one is.
What it hits
As a Normal move it is super effective against nothing, resisted by Rock and Steel, and does nothing at all to Ghost.
16 other Normal moves appear in this format: Protect, Fake Out, Weather Ball, Encore, Hyper Voice, Swords Dance and others.
Who could and does not
213 Pokémon legal in this regulation can learn Hyper Beam at all,
against the 6 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, Incineroar, Garchomp, Basculegion, Sneasler and Sinistcha — each of them measured on the ladder, each of them leaving this move on the shelf.
How concentrated it is
Across the ladder, Hyper Beam accounts for an expected
0.12 of the six slots on an average team, which makes it the
44th most-brought of the 121 moves this format runs.
99% of that comes from Sylveon alone, so it is really one Pokémon’s move rather than the format’s.
Its carriers are mostly Normal (3) and Fairy (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.
Sylveon
18.4%
62.5%
Mega Gardevoir
2.9%
2%
Zoroark-Hisui
0.81%
6.7%
Drampa
0.37%
4.6%
Aurorus
0.14%
7.7%
Mega Pidgeot
0.10%
5.6%