What it does on the ladder
Houndstone appears on 1.4% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 67th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Last Respects, on 96.2% of sets.
The item is usually Sitrus Berry at 42.7%.
The ability is split: Sand Rush on 96.1% and Fluffy on 3.9%.
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
Houndstone is number 972 in the National Dex, a Paldea Pokémon, Ghost
with a base stat total of 488 — 160th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Attack at 101, 84th
in the format; its weakest is Sp. Atk at 50, 209th.
It can have Sand Rush and Fluffy.
The Champions module tiers it OU.
It sits in a 2-stage line: Greavard → Houndstone.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Greavard is not.
What gets through
As Ghost, 2 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 2 and is immune to 2. The board above
has all of it. 3 other legal Pokémon share the same typing and the same board: Cofagrigus, Polteageist, Banette.
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 Houndstone 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
- Basculegion — Last Respects (Ghost, ×2), on 99.9% of its sets
- Gholdengo — Shadow Ball (Ghost, ×2), on 99.1% of its sets
- Blastoise-Mega — Dark Pulse (Dark, ×2), on 93.2% of its sets
- Mawile-Mega — Sucker Punch (Dark, ×2), on 91.6% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Houndstone reaches
132 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
88. Invested, it outruns 6 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 15 kg, so Grass Knot and Low Kick hit it for 40 base
power. That is a real consideration in a format where both are common.
Its move pool
Houndstone learns 59 moves in the Champions data.
32 of them do damage, across 10 of the eighteen
types, and 7 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Poltergeist at 110 base power, though the biggest number in the pool is Giga Impact at 150.
It also has priority: Shadow Sneak 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.
