What it does on the ladder
Houndoom appears on 0.11% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 190th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Heat Wave, on 96.8% of sets.
The item is usually Focus Sash at 96.7%.
The ability is split: Flash Fire on 98.4%, Unnerve on 1.6% and Early Bird on 0%.
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
Houndoom is number 229 in the National Dex, a Johto Pokémon, Dark and Fire
with a base stat total of 500 — 119th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Sp. Atk at 110, 44th
in the format; its weakest is Defense at 50, 228th.
It can have Early Bird, Flash Fire and Unnerve.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It sits in a 2-stage line: Houndour → Houndoom.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Houndour is not.
What gets through
As Dark and Fire, 4 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 6 and is immune to 1. The board above
has all of it. One other legal Pokémon shares the same typing and the same board: Incineroar.
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 Houndoom takes extra damage from.
- Garchomp — Earthquake (Ground, ×2), on 85.7% of its sets
- Basculegion — Aqua Jet (Water, ×2), on 96.6% of its sets
- Sneasler — Close Combat (Fighting, ×2), on 99.7% of its sets
- Staraptor-Mega — Close Combat (Fighting, ×2), on 100% of its sets
- Aerodactyl-Mega — Rock Slide (Rock, ×2), on 99.8% of its sets
- Blastoise-Mega — Water Spout (Water, ×2), on 96.4% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Houndoom reaches
161 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
115. Invested, it outruns 12 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 35 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
Houndoom learns 98 moves in the Champions data.
55 of them do damage, across 11 of the eighteen
types, and 24 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Overheat at 130 base power, though the biggest number in the pool is Giga Impact at 150.
It also has priority: Feint at +2 and 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.
