What it does on the ladder
Metagross appears on 0.32% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 119th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Psychic Fangs, on 89.3% of sets.
The item is usually Life Orb at 44.2%.
The ability is split: Clear Body on 100% and Light Metal 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
Metagross is number 376 in the National Dex, a Hoenn Pokémon, Steel and Psychic
with a base stat total of 600 — 8th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Attack at 135, 7th
in the format; its weakest is Speed at 70, 136th.
It can have Clear Body and Light Metal.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It sits in a 3-stage line: Beldum → Metang → Metagross.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Beldum and Metang are not.
What gets through
As Steel and Psychic, 4 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 9 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 Metagross 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
- Gholdengo — Shadow Ball (Ghost, ×2), on 99.1% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Metagross reaches
134 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
90. 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 550 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
Metagross learns 104 moves in the Champions data.
64 of them do damage, across 14 of the eighteen
types, and 16 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 Explosion at 250.
It also has priority: Bullet 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.
