What it does on the ladder
Talonflame appears on 3.5% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 41st of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Tailwind, on 98.4% of sets.
The item is usually Sharp Beak at 53.2%.
The ability is split: Gale Wings on 98% and Flame Body on 2%.
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
Talonflame is number 663 in the National Dex, a Kalos Pokémon, Fire and Flying
with a base stat total of 499 — 127th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Speed at 126, 4th
in the format; its weakest is Sp. Def at 69, 182nd.
It can have Flame Body and Gale Wings.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It sits in a 3-stage line: Fletchling → Fletchinder → Talonflame.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Fletchling and Fletchinder are not.
What gets through
As Fire and Flying, 3 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it, and Rock lands for quadruple. It
resists 6 and is immune to 1. The board above
has all of it. One other legal Pokémon shares the same typing and the same board: Charizard.
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 Talonflame takes extra damage from.
- Garchomp — Rock Slide (Rock, ×4), on 75.9% of its sets
- Basculegion — Aqua Jet (Water, ×2), on 96.6% of its sets
- Farigiraf — Thunderbolt (Electric, ×2), on 59.2% of its sets
- Archaludon — Electro Shot (Electric, ×2), on 98.6% of its sets
- Aerodactyl-Mega — Rock Slide (Rock, ×4), on 99.8% of its sets
- Blastoise-Mega — Water Spout (Water, ×2), on 96.4% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Talonflame reaches
195 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
146. Invested, it outruns 18 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 24.5 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
Talonflame learns 73 moves in the Champions data.
41 of them do damage, across 8 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 Sky Attack at 140 base power, though the biggest number in the pool is Giga Impact at 150.
It also has priority: Upper Hand at +3, Feint at +2 and 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.
