What it does on the ladder
Sceptile appears on 0.02% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 249th of the 277 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Earth Power, on 81.2% of sets.
The item is usually Focus Sash at 60.6%.
The ability is split: Overgrow on 54.4% and Unburden on 45.6%.
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
Sceptile is number 254 in the National Dex, a Hoenn Pokémon, Grass
with a base stat total of 530 — 46th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Speed at 120, 11th
in the format; its weakest is Defense at 65, 197th.
It can have Overgrow and Unburden.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It sits in a 3-stage line: Treecko → Grovyle → Sceptile.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Treecko and Grovyle are not.
What gets through
As Grass, 5 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 4. The board above
has all of it. 5 other legal Pokémon share the same typing and the same board: Tsareena, Serperior, Simisage, Leafeon, Meganium.
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 Sceptile takes extra damage from.
- Incineroar — Flare Blitz (Fire, ×2), on 91.1% of its sets
- Sneasler — Dire Claw (Poison, ×2), on 73.9% of its sets
- Charizard-Mega-Y — Heat Wave (Fire, ×2), on 99.9% of its sets
- Staraptor-Mega — Brave Bird (Flying, ×2), on 66.2% of its sets
- Delphox-Mega — Heat Wave (Fire, ×2), on 99.6% of its sets
- Venusaur — Sludge Bomb (Poison, ×2), on 92.6% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Sceptile reaches
189 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
140. Invested, it outruns 15 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 52.2 kg, so Grass Knot and Low Kick hit it for 80 base
power. That is a real consideration in a format where both are common.
Its move pool
Sceptile learns 120 moves in the Champions data.
77 of them do damage, across 12 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 Frenzy Plant at 150 base power.
It also has priority: Upper Hand at +3, Quick Attack at +1 and Vacuum Wave 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.
