What it does on the ladder
Aerodactyl appears on 3.2% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 44th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Rock Slide, on 99.7% of sets.
The item is usually Focus Sash at 94.2%.
The ability is split: Unnerve on 95.5%, Rock Head on 3.2% and Pressure on 1.3%.
Those are Smogon's published usage figures, not anything measured here, and they describe what
the ladder plays rather than what is strongest. The full set is in the panel above.
The Pokémon itself
Aerodactyl is number 142 in the National Dex, a Kanto Pokémon, Rock and Flying
with a base stat total of 515 — 86th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Speed at 130, 2nd
in the format; its weakest is Sp. Atk at 60, 170th.
It can have Rock Head, Pressure and Unnerve.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It has no evolutions on either side; what you see is the whole line.
What gets through
As Rock and Flying, 5 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 5 and is immune to 1. The board above
has all of it. No other legal Pokémon has this typing.
What threatens it
Smogon publishes no head-to-head checks-and-counters data for doubles formats, so this list is
computed, not measured: the most-played Regulation M-B Pokémon carrying a damaging
move of a type Aerodactyl takes extra damage from.
- Kingambit — Iron Head (Steel, ×2), on 67.8% of its sets
- Garchomp — Rock Slide (Rock, ×2), on 75.9% of its sets
- Basculegion — Aqua Jet (Water, ×2), on 96.6% of its sets
- Farigiraf — Thunderbolt (Electric, ×2), on 59.2% of its sets
- Archaludon — Electro Shot (Electric, ×2), on 98.6% of its sets
- Aerodactyl-Mega — Rock Slide (Rock, ×2), on 99.8% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Aerodactyl reaches
200 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
150. Invested, it outruns 18 of the 20
most-used Pokémon in the regulation when they are invested too — which is the comparison that
decides who moves first.
It weighs 59 kg, so Grass Knot and Low Kick hit it for 80 base
power. That is a real consideration in a format where both are common.
Its move pool
Aerodactyl learns 99 moves in the Champions data.
58 of them do damage, across 14 of the eighteen
types, and 16 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Sky Attack at 140 base power, though the biggest number in the pool is Giga Impact at 150.
It has no priority move, so it moves in Speed order every turn.
That pool is what the team builder reads from when you seat it, and the
damage calculator will take it as the attacker with
the form already chosen.
