What it does on the ladder
Watchog appears on 0.04% of Regulation M-B teams, which
is 233rd of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to measure.
The move it almost always carries is Hypnosis, on 97.2% of sets.
The item is usually Wide Lens at 50.8%.
The ability is split: Keen Eye on 51.2%, Analytic on 48% and Illuminate on 0.8%.
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
Watchog is number 505 in the National Dex, a Unova Pokémon, Normal
with a base stat total of 420 — 225th of the 234 Pokémon
legal in this regulation. Its best stat is Attack at 85, 131st
in the format; its weakest is Sp. Atk at 60, 179th.
It can have Illuminate, Keen Eye and Analytic.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
It sits in a 2-stage line: Patrat → Watchog.
Not all of that line is legal in this regulation — Patrat is not.
What gets through
As Normal, 1 of the eighteen attacking types do extra damage to it. It
resists 0 and is immune to 1. The board above
has all of it. 9 other legal Pokémon share the same typing and the same board: Maushold, Kangaskhan, Snorlax, Ditto, Audino 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 Watchog takes extra damage from.
- Sneasler — Close Combat (Fighting, ×2), on 99.7% of its sets
- Staraptor-Mega — Close Combat (Fighting, ×2), on 100% of its sets
- Blastoise-Mega — Aura Sphere (Fighting, ×2), on 34.2% of its sets
- Metagross-Mega — Body Press (Fighting, ×2), on 38.5% of its sets
- Raichu-Mega-Y — Focus Blast (Fighting, ×2), on 96.4% of its sets
- Annihilape — Close Combat (Fighting, ×2), on 65.3% of its sets
Speed and weight
At level 50 with a boosting nature and full investment, Watchog reaches
141 Speed; left uninvested with a neutral nature it sits at
97. Invested, it outruns 8 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 27 kg, so Grass Knot and Low Kick hit it for 60 base
power. That is a real consideration in a format where both are common.
Its move pool
Watchog learns 84 moves in the Champions data.
44 of them do damage, across 14 of the eighteen
types, and 16 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 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.
