What it does on the ladder
Arcanine appears on 0.27% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 130th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Protect, on 82.4% of sets.
The item is usually Sitrus Berry at 56.1%.
The ability is split: Intimidate on 85.9%, Justified on 8.3% and Flash Fire on 5.8%.
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
Arcanine is number 59 in the National Dex, a Kanto Pokémon, Fire
with a base stat total of 555 — 12th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Attack at 110, 58th
in the format; its weakest is Sp. Def at 80, 118th.
It can have Intimidate, Flash Fire and Justified.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It sits in a 2-stage line: Growlithe → Arcanine.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Growlithe is not.
What gets through
As Fire, 3 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 6. The board above
has all of it. 5 other legal Pokémon share the same typing and the same board: Torkoal, Ninetales, Typhlosion, Flareon, Simisear.
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 Arcanine takes extra damage from.
- Garchomp — Earthquake (Ground, ×2), on 85.7% of its sets
- Basculegion — Aqua Jet (Water, ×2), on 96.6% of its sets
- Aerodactyl-Mega — Rock Slide (Rock, ×2), on 99.8% of its sets
- Blastoise-Mega — Water Spout (Water, ×2), on 96.4% of its sets
- Swampert-Mega — Wave Crash (Water, ×2), on 97.6% of its sets
- Venusaur — Earth Power (Ground, ×2), on 77% of its sets
Against its own formes
Arcanine has 2 legal formes in this regulation and they share a
typing, so the only thing separating them is the stat line.
This one has the highest Sp. Atk at 100 and Speed at 95 of the 2.
It has the lowest HP at 90 and Attack at 110.
The others are Arcanine-Hisui.
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Arcanine reaches
161 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
115. Invested, it outruns 12 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 155 kg, so Grass Knot and Low Kick hit it for 100 base
power. That is a real consideration in a format where both are common.
Its move pool
Arcanine learns 93 moves in the Champions data.
58 of them do damage, across 12 of the eighteen
types, and 14 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Burn Up at 130 base power, though the biggest number in the pool is Giga Impact at 150.
It also has priority: Extreme Speed at +2.
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.
