What it does on the ladder
Hippowdon appears on 0.11% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 183rd of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Yawn, on 62.6% of sets.
The item is usually Leftovers at 62%.
The ability is split: Sand Stream on 98.8% and Sand Force on 1.2%.
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
Hippowdon is number 450 in the National Dex, a Sinnoh Pokémon, Ground
with a base stat total of 525 — 65th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Defense at 118, 29th
in the format; its weakest is Speed at 47, 200th.
It can have Sand Stream and Sand Force.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It sits in a 2-stage line: Hippopotas → Hippowdon.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Hippopotas is not.
What gets through
As Ground, 3 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 2 and is immune to 1. The board above
has all of it. 2 other legal Pokémon share the same typing and the same board: Mudsdale, Sandaconda.
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 Hippowdon takes extra damage from.
- 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
- Aerodactyl-Mega — Ice Fang (Ice, ×2), on 60.6% of its sets
- Blastoise-Mega — Water Spout (Water, ×2), on 96.4% of its sets
- Swampert-Mega — Wave Crash (Water, ×2), on 97.6% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Hippowdon reaches
108 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
67. 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 300 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
Hippowdon learns 73 moves in the Champions data.
42 of them do damage, across 10 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 Earthquake at 100 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.
