What it does on the ladder
Aurorus appears on 0.14% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 165th of the 277 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Freeze-Dry, on 91.7% of sets.
The item is usually Never-Melt Ice at 47.6%.
The ability is split: Snow Warning on 78.4% and Refrigerate on 21.6%.
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
Aurorus is number 699 in the National Dex, a Kalos Pokémon, Rock and Ice
with a base stat total of 521 — 72nd of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is HP at 123, 3rd
in the format; its weakest is Speed at 58, 181st.
It can have Refrigerate and Snow Warning.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It sits in a 2-stage line: Amaura → Aurorus.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Amaura is not.
What gets through
As Rock and Ice, 6 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it, and Fighting and Steel land for quadruple. It
resists 4. The board above
has all of it. One other legal Pokémon shares the same typing and the same board: Avalugg-Hisui.
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 Aurorus takes extra damage from.
- Kingambit — Iron Head (Steel, ×4), on 56.7% of its sets
- Garchomp — Earthquake (Ground, ×2), on 85.1% of its sets
- Basculegion — Aqua Jet (Water, ×2), on 96.8% of its sets
- Sneasler — Close Combat (Fighting, ×4), on 99.9% of its sets
- Charizard-Mega-Y — Solar Beam (Grass, ×2), on 64.4% of its sets
- Sinistcha — Matcha Gotcha (Grass, ×2), on 97.8% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Aurorus reaches
121 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
78. Invested, it outruns 1 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 225 kg, so Grass Knot and Low Kick hit it for 120 base
power. That is a real consideration in a format where both are common.
Its move pool
Aurorus learns 85 moves in the Champions data.
50 of them do damage, across 11 of the eighteen
types, and 17 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Meteor Beam at 120 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.
