What it does on the ladder
Gengar appears on 0.15% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 166th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Shadow Ball, on 90.2% of sets.
The item is usually Focus Sash at 76.8%.
Every one of them runs Cursed Body.
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
Gengar is number 94 in the National Dex, a Kanto Pokémon, Ghost and Poison
with a base stat total of 500 — 118th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Sp. Atk at 130, 10th
in the format; its weakest is Defense at 60, 211th.
Its only ability is Cursed Body.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It sits in a 3-stage line: Gastly → Haunter → Gengar.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Gastly and Haunter are not.
What gets through
As Ghost and Poison, 4 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 4 and is immune to 2. 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 Gengar takes extra damage from.
- Kingambit — Sucker Punch (Dark, ×2), on 99.8% of its sets
- Incineroar — Throat Chop (Dark, ×2), on 44.4% of its sets
- Garchomp — Earthquake (Ground, ×2), on 85.7% of its sets
- Basculegion — Last Respects (Ghost, ×2), on 99.9% of its sets
- Farigiraf — Psychic (Psychic, ×2), on 54.4% of its sets
- Gholdengo — Shadow Ball (Ghost, ×2), on 99.1% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Gengar reaches
178 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
130. Invested, it outruns 15 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 40.5 kg, so Grass Knot and Low Kick hit it for 60 base
power. That is a real consideration in a format where both are common.
Its move pool
Gengar learns 125 moves in the Champions data.
67 of them do damage, across 12 of the eighteen
types, and 17 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Gunk Shot at 120 base power, though the biggest number in the pool is Explosion at 250.
It also has priority: Sucker Punch 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.
