What it does on the ladder
Delphox appears on 0.06% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 216th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Heat Wave, on 97.5% of sets.
The item is usually Focus Sash at 81.8%.
The ability is split: Blaze on 93.6% and Magician on 6.4%.
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
Delphox is number 655 in the National Dex, a Kalos Pokémon, Fire and Psychic
with a base stat total of 534 — 31st of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Sp. Atk at 114, 28th
in the format; its weakest is Attack at 69, 180th.
It can have Blaze and Magician.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It sits in a 3-stage line: Fennekin → Braixen → Delphox.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Fennekin and Braixen are not.
What gets through
As Fire and Psychic, 5 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 7. The board above
has all of it. One other legal Pokémon shares the same typing and the same board: Armarouge.
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 Delphox takes extra damage from.
- Kingambit — Sucker Punch (Dark, ×2), on 99.8% of its sets
- Incineroar — Throat Chop (Dark, ×2), on 44.4% of its sets
- Garchomp — Earthquake (Ground, ×2), on 85.7% of its sets
- Basculegion — Last Respects (Ghost, ×2), on 99.9% of its sets
- Aerodactyl-Mega — Rock Slide (Rock, ×2), on 99.8% of its sets
- Gholdengo — Shadow Ball (Ghost, ×2), on 99.1% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Delphox reaches
171 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
124. Invested, it outruns 15 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 39 kg, so Grass Knot and Low Kick hit it for 60 base
power. That is a real consideration in a format where both are common.
Its move pool
Delphox learns 106 moves in the Champions data.
53 of them do damage, across 12 of the eighteen
types, and 23 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Blast Burn at 150 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.
