What it does on the ladder
Espathra appears on 0.32% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 114th of the 277 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Protect, on 98% of sets.
The item is usually Focus Sash at 33.5%.
The ability is split: Speed Boost on 99.4%, Frisk on 0.5% and Opportunist on 0.1%.
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
Espathra is number 956 in the National Dex, a Paldea Pokémon, Psychic
with a base stat total of 481 — 182nd of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Speed at 105, 33rd
in the format; its weakest is Sp. Def at 60, 210th.
It can have Opportunist, Frisk and Speed Boost.
The Champions module tiers it UUBL.
It sits in a 2-stage line: Flittle → Espathra.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Flittle is not.
What gets through
As Psychic, 3 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 2. The board above
has all of it. 6 other legal Pokémon share the same typing and the same board: Meowstic, Alakazam, Reuniclus, Espeon, Musharna 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 Espathra takes extra damage from.
- Kingambit — Sucker Punch (Dark, ×2), on 99.9% of its sets
- Incineroar — Throat Chop (Dark, ×2), on 51.4% of its sets
- Basculegion — Last Respects (Ghost, ×2), on 99.9% of its sets
- Blastoise-Mega — Dark Pulse (Dark, ×2), on 91.8% of its sets
- Froslass-Mega — Shadow Ball (Ghost, ×2), on 91.7% of its sets
- Gholdengo — Shadow Ball (Ghost, ×2), on 99.2% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Espathra reaches
172 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
125. Invested, it outruns 13 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 90 kg, so Grass Knot and Low Kick hit it for 80 base
power. That is a real consideration in a format where both are common.
Its move pool
Espathra learns 65 moves in the Champions data.
37 of them do damage, across 10 of the eighteen
types, and 8 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Psychic at 90 base power, though the biggest number in the pool is Giga Impact at 150.
It also has priority: Quick Attack 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.
