What it does on the ladder
Malamar appears on 0.19% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 146th of the 277 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Superpower, on 98% of sets.
The item is usually Roseli Berry at 40%.
The ability is split: Contrary on 100%, Infiltrator on 0% and Suction Cups 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
Malamar is number 687 in the National Dex, a Kalos Pokémon, Dark and Psychic
with a base stat total of 482 — 180th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Attack at 92, 109th
in the format; its weakest is Sp. Atk at 68, 153rd.
It can have Contrary, Suction Cups and Infiltrator.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It sits in a 2-stage line: Inkay → Malamar.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Inkay is not.
What gets through
As Dark and Psychic, 2 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it, and Bug lands for quadruple. It
resists 0 and is immune to 1. 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 Malamar takes extra damage from.
- Whimsicott — Moonblast (Fairy, ×2), on 96.7% of its sets
- Floette-Mega — Dazzling Gleam (Fairy, ×2), on 97.8% of its sets
- Grimmsnarl — Spirit Break (Fairy, ×2), on 66.7% of its sets
- Toxapex — Infestation (Bug, ×4), on 98.3% of its sets
- Mawile-Mega — Play Rough (Fairy, ×2), on 99.3% of its sets
- Primarina — Moonblast (Fairy, ×2), on 94.6% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Malamar reaches
137 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
93. 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 47 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
Malamar learns 94 moves in the Champions data.
47 of them do damage, across 12 of the eighteen
types, and 18 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Future Sight at 120 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.
