What it does on the ladder
Starmie appears on 0.04% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 235th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Protect, on 60.1% of sets.
The item is usually Life Orb at 36.8%.
The ability is split: Natural Cure on 76%, Illuminate on 18% and Analytic on 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
Starmie is number 121 in the National Dex, a Kanto Pokémon, Water and Psychic
with a base stat total of 520 — 81st of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Speed at 115, 15th
in the format; its weakest is HP at 60, 206th.
It can have Illuminate, Natural Cure and Analytic.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It sits in a 2-stage line: Staryu → Starmie.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Staryu is not.
What gets through
As Water and Psychic, 5 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 6. The board above
has all of it. 2 other legal Pokémon share the same typing and the same board: Slowking, Slowbro.
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 Starmie 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
- Charizard-Mega-Y — Solar Beam (Grass, ×2), on 82.2% of its sets
- Basculegion — Last Respects (Ghost, ×2), on 99.9% of its sets
- Sinistcha — Matcha Gotcha (Grass, ×2), on 97.9% of its sets
- Farigiraf — Thunderbolt (Electric, ×2), on 59.2% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Starmie reaches
183 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
135. Invested, it outruns 16 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 80 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
Starmie learns 103 moves in the Champions data.
55 of them do damage, across 10 of the eighteen
types, and 21 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Hydro Pump at 110 base power, though the biggest number in the pool is Self-Destruct at 200.
It also has priority: Aqua Jet 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.
