What it does on the ladder
Garganacl appears on 0.07% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 204th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Salt Cure, on 90.1% of sets.
The item is usually Leftovers at 66.4%.
The ability is split: Purifying Salt on 89.7%, Clear Body on 6.5% and Sturdy on 3.8%.
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
Garganacl is number 934 in the National Dex, a Paldea Pokémon, Rock
with a base stat total of 500 — 122nd of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Defense at 130, 17th
in the format; its weakest is Speed at 35, 215th.
It can have Purifying Salt, Sturdy and Clear Body.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It sits in a 3-stage line: Nacli → Naclstack → Garganacl.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Nacli and Naclstack are not.
What gets through
As Rock, 5 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 4. The board above
has all of it. 4 other legal Pokémon share the same typing and the same board: Lycanroc-Dusk, Rampardos, Lycanroc, Lycanroc-Midnight.
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 Garganacl takes extra damage from.
- Kingambit — Iron Head (Steel, ×2), on 67.8% of its sets
- Garchomp — Earthquake (Ground, ×2), on 85.7% of its sets
- Charizard-Mega-Y — Solar Beam (Grass, ×2), on 82.2% of its sets
- Basculegion — Aqua Jet (Water, ×2), on 96.6% of its sets
- Sinistcha — Matcha Gotcha (Grass, ×2), on 97.9% of its sets
- Sneasler — Close Combat (Fighting, ×2), on 99.7% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Garganacl reaches
95 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
55. Invested, it outruns 0 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 240 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
Garganacl learns 60 moves in the Champions data.
38 of them do damage, across 9 of the eighteen
types, and 10 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Meteor Beam at 120 base power, though the biggest number in the pool is Explosion at 250.
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.
