What it does on the ladder
Skarmory appears on 0.02% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 269th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Body Press, on 71.9% of sets.
The item is usually Leftovers at 47%.
The ability is split: Sturdy on 89.5%, Weak Armor on 10.1% and Keen Eye on 0.4%.
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
Skarmory is number 227 in the National Dex, a Johto Pokémon, Steel and Flying
with a base stat total of 465 — 205th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Defense at 140, 12th
in the format; its weakest is Sp. Atk at 40, 228th.
It can have Keen Eye, Sturdy and Weak Armor.
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 and Flying, 2 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 8 and is immune to 2. The board above
has all of it. One other legal Pokémon shares the same typing and the same board: Corviknight.
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 Skarmory takes extra damage from.
- Incineroar — Flare Blitz (Fire, ×2), on 91.2% of its sets
- Charizard-Mega-Y — Heat Wave (Fire, ×2), on 99.2% of its sets
- Farigiraf — Thunderbolt (Electric, ×2), on 59.2% of its sets
- Archaludon — Electro Shot (Electric, ×2), on 98.6% of its sets
- Delphox-Mega — Heat Wave (Fire, ×2), on 99.5% of its sets
- Raichu-Mega-Y — Zap Cannon (Electric, ×2), on 98.8% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Skarmory 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 50.5 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
Skarmory learns 90 moves in the Champions data.
51 of them do damage, across 11 of the eighteen
types, and 18 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Sky Attack at 140 base power, though the biggest number in the pool is Giga Impact at 150.
It also has priority: Feint 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.
