What it does on the ladder
Orthworm appears on 0.11% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 188th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Body Press, on 90.7% of sets.
The item is usually Sitrus Berry at 79.5%.
The ability is split: Earth Eater on 100% and Sand Veil 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
Orthworm is number 968 in the National Dex, a Paldea Pokémon, Steel
with a base stat total of 480 — 185th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Defense at 145, 8th
in the format; its weakest is Sp. Def at 55, 224th.
It can have Earth Eater and Sand Veil.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It has no evolutions on either side; what you see is the whole line.
What gets through
As Steel, 3 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 10 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 Orthworm takes extra damage from.
- 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
- Sneasler — Close Combat (Fighting, ×2), on 99.7% of its sets
- Staraptor-Mega — Close Combat (Fighting, ×2), on 100% of its sets
- Delphox-Mega — Heat Wave (Fire, ×2), on 99.5% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Orthworm reaches
128 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
85. Invested, it outruns 5 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 310 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
Orthworm learns 45 moves in the Champions data.
28 of them do damage, across 5 of the eighteen
types, and 4 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 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.
