What it does on the ladder
Pikachu appears on 0.04% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 240th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Fake Out, on 77.5% of sets.
The item is usually Light Ball at 95.3%.
The ability is split: Lightning Rod on 89.7% and Static on 10.3%.
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
Pikachu is number 25 in the National Dex, a Kanto Pokémon, Electric
with a base stat total of 320 — 233rd of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Speed at 90, 74th
in the format; its weakest is HP at 35, 234th.
It can have Static and Lightning Rod.
The Champions module tiers it NFE.
It sits in a 4-stage line: Pichu → Pikachu → Raichu → Raichu-Alola.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Pichu is not.
What gets through
As Electric, 1 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 3. The board above
has all of it. 7 other legal Pokémon share the same typing and the same board: Raichu, Bellibolt, Jolteon, Luxray, Manectric and others.
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 Pikachu takes extra damage from.
- Garchomp — Earthquake (Ground, ×2), on 85.7% of its sets
- Swampert-Mega — Earthquake (Ground, ×2), on 73.4% of its sets
- Venusaur — Earth Power (Ground, ×2), on 77% of its sets
- Venusaur-Mega — Earth Power (Ground, ×2), on 95.6% of its sets
- Hydreigon — Earth Power (Ground, ×2), on 58.8% of its sets
- Excadrill — High Horsepower (Ground, ×2), on 56.9% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Pikachu reaches
156 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
110. 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 6 kg, so Grass Knot and Low Kick hit it for 20 base
power. That is a real consideration in a format where both are common.
Its move pool
Pikachu learns 123 moves in the Champions data.
63 of them do damage, across 13 of the eighteen
types, and 15 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Volt Tackle at 120 base power, though the biggest number in the pool is Focus Punch at 150.
It also has priority: Upper Hand at +3, Fake Out at +3 and Extreme Speed at +2.
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.
