What it does on the ladder
Tyranitar appears on 3.3% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 42nd of the 277 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Rock Slide, on 98.2% of sets.
The item is usually Choice Scarf at 47%.
The ability is split: Sand Stream on 99.9% and Unnerve 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
Tyranitar is number 248 in the National Dex, a Johto Pokémon, Rock and Dark
with a base stat total of 600 — 5th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Attack at 134, 9th
in the format; its weakest is Speed at 61, 164th.
It can have Sand Stream and Unnerve.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It sits in a 3-stage line: Larvitar → Pupitar → Tyranitar.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Larvitar and Pupitar are not.
What gets through
As Rock and Dark, 7 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it, and Fighting lands for quadruple. It
resists 6 and is immune to 1. The board above
has all of it. No other legal Pokémon has this typing.
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 Tyranitar takes extra damage from.
- Kingambit — Iron Head (Steel, ×2), on 56.7% of its sets
- Garchomp — Earthquake (Ground, ×2), on 85.1% of its sets
- Basculegion — Aqua Jet (Water, ×2), on 96.8% of its sets
- Sneasler — Close Combat (Fighting, ×4), on 99.9% of its sets
- Charizard-Mega-Y — Solar Beam (Grass, ×2), on 64.4% of its sets
- Sinistcha — Matcha Gotcha (Grass, ×2), on 97.8% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Tyranitar reaches
124 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
81. Invested, it outruns 4 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 202 kg, so Grass Knot and Low Kick hit it for 120 base
power. That is a real consideration in a format where both are common.
Its move pool
Tyranitar learns 134 moves in the Champions data.
91 of them do damage, across 14 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 Stone Edge at 100 base power, though the biggest number in the pool is Focus Punch at 150.
It has no priority move, so it moves in Speed order every turn.
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.
