What it does on the ladder
Sylveon appears on 17.5% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 10th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Hyper Voice, on 99.9% of sets.
The item is usually Fairy Feather at 92%.
The ability is split: Pixilate on 99.9% and Cute Charm on 0.1%.
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
Sylveon is number 700 in the National Dex, a Kalos Pokémon, Fairy
with a base stat total of 525 — 54th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Sp. Def at 130, 8th
in the format; its weakest is Speed at 60, 167th.
It can have Cute Charm and Pixilate.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It sits in a 2-stage line: Eevee → Sylveon.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Eevee is not.
What gets through
As Fairy, 2 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 3 and is immune to 1. The board above
has all of it. 6 other legal Pokémon share the same typing and the same board: Clefable, Alcremie, Aromatisse, Floette-Eternal, Florges and others.
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 Sylveon takes extra damage from.
- Kingambit — Iron Head (Steel, ×2), on 67.8% of its sets
- Sneasler — Dire Claw (Poison, ×2), on 63% of its sets
- Archaludon — Flash Cannon (Steel, ×2), on 94.9% of its sets
- Gholdengo — Make It Rain (Steel, ×2), on 99.5% of its sets
- Venusaur — Sludge Bomb (Poison, ×2), on 97.2% of its sets
- Metagross-Mega — Iron Head (Steel, ×2), on 66.6% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Sylveon reaches
123 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
80. Invested, it outruns 1 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 23.5 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
Sylveon learns 86 moves in the Champions data.
41 of them do damage, across 9 of the eighteen
types, and 8 share a type with it and so get the same-type bonus.
Its hardest-hitting same-type move is Misty Explosion at 100 base power, though the biggest number in the pool is Giga Impact at 150.
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.
