What it does on the ladder
Gholdengo appears on 9.2% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 17th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Make It Rain, on 99.5% of sets.
The item is usually Life Orb at 58.7%.
Every one of them runs Good as Gold.
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
Gholdengo is number 1000 in the National Dex, a Paldea Pokémon, Steel and Ghost
with a base stat total of 550 — 16th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Sp. Atk at 133, 7th
in the format; its weakest is Attack at 60, 206th.
Its only ability is Good as Gold.
The Champions module tiers it Uber.
It sits in a 2-stage line: Gimmighoul → Gholdengo.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Gimmighoul is not.
What gets through
As Steel and Ghost, 4 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 9 and is immune to 3. The board above
has all of it. One other legal Pokémon shares the same typing and the same board: Aegislash.
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 Gholdengo takes extra damage from.
- Kingambit — Sucker Punch (Dark, ×2), on 99.8% of its sets
- Incineroar — Flare Blitz (Fire, ×2), on 91.2% of its sets
- Garchomp — Earthquake (Ground, ×2), on 85.7% of its sets
- Charizard-Mega-Y — Heat Wave (Fire, ×2), on 99.2% of its sets
- Basculegion — Last Respects (Ghost, ×2), on 99.9% of its sets
- Delphox-Mega — Heat Wave (Fire, ×2), on 99.5% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Gholdengo reaches
149 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
104. 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 30 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
Gholdengo learns 47 moves in the Champions data.
27 of them do damage, across 10 of the eighteen
types, and 9 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Steel Beam at 140 base power, though the biggest number in the pool is Focus Punch 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.
