What it does on the ladder
Polteageist appears on 0.03% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 244th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Shadow Ball, on 95.7% of sets.
The item is usually Focus Sash at 74.7%.
The ability is split: Weak Armor on 88.8% and Cursed Body on 11.2%.
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
Polteageist is number 855 in the National Dex, a Galar Pokémon, Ghost
with a base stat total of 508 — 105th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Sp. Atk at 134, 6th
in the format; its weakest is HP at 60, 208th.
It can have Weak Armor and Cursed Body.
The Champions module tiers it UUBL.
It sits in a 2-stage line: Sinistea → Polteageist.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Sinistea 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: Houndstone, Cofagrigus, 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 Polteageist 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, Polteageist 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 0.4 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
Polteageist learns 54 moves in the Champions data.
23 of them do damage, across 5 of the eighteen
types, and 5 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 Self-Destruct at 200.
It also has priority: Sucker 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.
