What it does on the ladder
Dragonite appears on 2.5% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 51st of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Extreme Speed, on 89.6% of sets.
The item is usually Life Orb at 33.9%.
The ability is split: Inner Focus on 56.6% and Multiscale on 43.4%.
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
Dragonite is number 149 in the National Dex, a Kanto Pokémon, Dragon and Flying
with a base stat total of 600 — 5th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Attack at 134, 8th
in the format; its weakest is Speed at 80, 102nd.
It can have Inner Focus and Multiscale.
The Champions module tiers it OU.
It sits in a 3-stage line: Dratini → Dragonair → Dragonite.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Dratini and Dragonair are not.
What gets through
As Dragon and Flying, 4 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it, and Ice lands for quadruple. It
resists 5 and is immune to 1. The board above
has all of it. 2 other legal Pokémon share the same typing and the same board: Altaria, Noivern.
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 Dragonite takes extra damage from.
- Garchomp — Dragon Claw (Dragon, ×2), on 91.6% of its sets
- Whimsicott — Moonblast (Fairy, ×2), on 93.9% of its sets
- Floette-Mega — Dazzling Gleam (Fairy, ×2), on 95.9% of its sets
- Archaludon — Dragon Pulse (Dragon, ×2), on 82.8% of its sets
- Grimmsnarl — Spirit Break (Fairy, ×2), on 59.3% 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, Dragonite reaches
145 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
100. Invested, it outruns 10 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 210 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
Dragonite learns 140 moves in the Champions data.
91 of them do damage, across 14 of the eighteen
types, and 18 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Draco Meteor at 130 base power, though the biggest number in the pool is Focus Punch at 150.
It also has priority: Extreme Speed at +2 and Aqua Jet at +1.
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.
