What it does on the ladder
Staraptor appears on 1.4% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 59th of the 277 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Brave Bird, on 98% of sets.
The item is usually Choice Scarf at 98.1%.
The ability is split: Intimidate on 65.6% and Reckless on 34.4%.
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
Staraptor is number 398 in the National Dex, a Sinnoh Pokémon, Normal and Flying
with a base stat total of 485 — 167th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Attack at 120, 31st
in the format; its weakest is Sp. Atk at 50, 207th.
It can have Intimidate and Reckless.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It sits in a 3-stage line: Starly → Staravia → Staraptor.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Starly and Staravia are not.
What gets through
As Normal and Flying, 3 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. 2 other legal Pokémon share the same typing and the same board: Toucannon, Pidgeot.
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 Staraptor takes extra damage from.
- Garchomp — Rock Slide (Rock, ×2), on 84% of its sets
- Farigiraf — Thunderbolt (Electric, ×2), on 44.8% of its sets
- Raichu-Mega-Y — Zap Cannon (Electric, ×2), on 99.7% of its sets
- Archaludon — Electro Shot (Electric, ×2), on 97.9% of its sets
- Froslass-Mega — Blizzard (Ice, ×2), on 99.2% of its sets
- Aerodactyl-Mega — Rock Slide (Rock, ×2), on 99.4% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Staraptor reaches
167 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
120. Invested, it outruns 10 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 24.9 kg, so Grass Knot and Low Kick hit it for 40 base
power. That is a real consideration in a format where both are common.
Its move pool
Staraptor learns 68 moves in the Champions data.
39 of them do damage, across 10 of the eighteen
types, and 27 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Giga Impact at 150 base power.
It also has priority: Quick Attack 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.
