What it does on the ladder
Garchomp appears on 33.2% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 3rd of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Dragon Claw, on 91.6% of sets.
The item is usually Life Orb at 61.2%.
The ability is split: Rough Skin on 97.7% and Sand Veil on 2.3%.
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
Garchomp is number 445 in the National Dex, a Sinnoh Pokémon, Dragon and Ground
with a base stat total of 600 — 1st of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Attack at 130, 11th
in the format; its weakest is Sp. Atk at 80, 127th.
It can have Sand Veil and Rough Skin.
The Champions module tiers it OU.
It sits in a 3-stage line: Gible → Gabite → Garchomp.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Gible and Gabite are not.
What gets through
As Dragon and Ground, 3 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it, and Ice lands for quadruple. It
resists 3 and is immune to 1. The board above
has all of it. No other legal Pokémon has this typing.
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 Garchomp takes extra damage from.
- 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 — Ice Fang (Ice, ×4), on 60.6% of its sets
- Swampert-Mega — Ice Punch (Ice, ×4), on 84.6% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Garchomp reaches
169 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
122. 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 95 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
Garchomp learns 94 moves in the Champions data.
65 of them do damage, across 14 of the eighteen
types, and 20 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 Giga Impact at 150.
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.
