What it does on the ladder
Gallade appears on 2.4% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 53rd of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Sacred Sword, on 99.3% of sets.
The item is usually Expert Belt at 30%.
The ability is split: Sharpness on 99%, Steadfast on 0.7% and Justified on 0.3%.
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
Gallade is number 475 in the National Dex, a Sinnoh Pokémon, Psychic and Fighting
with a base stat total of 518 — 84th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Attack at 125, 21st
in the format; its weakest is Sp. Atk at 65, 157th.
It can have Steadfast, Sharpness and Justified.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It sits in a 3-stage line: Ralts → Kirlia → Gallade.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Ralts and Kirlia are not.
What gets through
As Psychic and Fighting, 3 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 2. The board above
has all of it. One other legal Pokémon shares the same typing and the same board: Medicham.
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 Gallade takes extra damage from.
- Basculegion — Last Respects (Ghost, ×2), on 99.9% 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
- Pelipper — Hurricane (Flying, ×2), on 98.1% of its sets
- Staraptor-Mega — Brave Bird (Flying, ×2), on 83.4% of its sets
- Grimmsnarl — Spirit Break (Fairy, ×2), on 59.3% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Gallade 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 52 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
Gallade learns 152 moves in the Champions data.
84 of them do damage, across 17 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 Focus Punch at 150 base power.
It also has priority: Upper Hand at +3, Feint at +2 and Shadow Sneak 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.
