What it does on the ladder
Castform appears on 0.01% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 274th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Weather Ball, on 91% of sets.
The item is usually nothing at 47.2%.
Every one of them runs Forecast.
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
Castform is number 351 in the National Dex, a Hoenn Pokémon, Normal
with a base stat total of 420 — 226th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is HP at 70, 170th
in the format; its weakest is Speed at 70, 143rd.
Its only ability is Forecast.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It has no evolutions on either side; what you see is the whole line.
What gets through
As Normal, 1 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 0 and is immune to 1. The board above
has all of it. 9 other legal Pokémon share the same typing and the same board: Maushold, Kangaskhan, Snorlax, Ditto, Audino and others.
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 Castform takes extra damage from.
- Sneasler — Close Combat (Fighting, ×2), on 99.7% of its sets
- Staraptor-Mega — Close Combat (Fighting, ×2), on 100% of its sets
- Blastoise-Mega — Aura Sphere (Fighting, ×2), on 34.2% of its sets
- Metagross-Mega — Body Press (Fighting, ×2), on 38.5% of its sets
- Raichu-Mega-Y — Focus Blast (Fighting, ×2), on 96.4% of its sets
- Annihilape — Close Combat (Fighting, ×2), on 65.3% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Castform reaches
134 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
90. Invested, it outruns 6 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 0.8 kg, so Grass Knot and Low Kick hit it for 20 base
power. That is a real consideration in a format where both are common.
Its move pool
Castform learns 72 moves in the Champions data.
39 of them do damage, across 11 of the eighteen
types, and 13 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Last Resort at 140 base power.
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.
