What Mega Evolution changes
Altaria, number 334 in the National Dex and a Hoenn Pokémon,
holds Altarianite to become Mega Altaria,
taking its total from 490 to 590. The biggest single gain is 40 Attack, followed by 40 Sp. Atk. Nothing goes down — HP, Sp. Def and Speed stay exactly where they were.
The typing changes: it gains Fairy and drops Flying, which rewrites every matchup below. Mega Evolving replaces Natural Cure and Cloud Nine with Pixilate.
What gets through
As Dragon and Fairy, 4 of the eighteen attacking types get through for extra damage. It resists 7 and is outright immune to 1. The full board is above; the short version is that the
types listed under ×2 and ×4 are the ones worth planning around.
On the Regulation M-B ladder
Mega Altaria is played on 0.40% of teams in the Regulation M-B VGC
ladder, which puts it 105th of the 277 Pokémon with enough games to
measure. The move almost every one of them carries is Hyper Voice at 89.5%.
The Champions module tiers it UU.
Those figures come from Smogon's published usage statistics rather than from anything measured
here, and they describe what the ladder plays, not what is strongest.
What threatens it
Smogon publishes no head-to-head checks-and-counters data for doubles formats, so this list is
computed, not measured: these are the most-played Regulation M-B Pokémon carrying
a damaging move of a type Mega Altaria takes extra damage from.
- Kingambit — Iron Head (Steel, ×2), on 56.7% of its sets
- Sneasler — Dire Claw (Poison, ×2), on 73.9% of its sets
- Whimsicott — Moonblast (Fairy, ×2), on 96.7% of its sets
- Floette-Mega — Dazzling Gleam (Fairy, ×2), on 97.8% of its sets
- Archaludon — Flash Cannon (Steel, ×2), on 95.7% of its sets
- Venusaur — Sludge Bomb (Poison, ×2), on 92.6% of its sets
Where it sits among the Megas
Of the 93 Mega forms in the dex, Mega Altaria is 60th by base
stat total. Its best stat is Attack at 110, which is 58th
among Megas; its worst is HP at 75, 50th.
No other Mega Evolution has the Dragon and Fairy typing, so this matchup board is unique to it.
The unevolved Altaria is itself on 0.42% of teams.
Putting it on a team
A Mega slot is a commitment: the stone occupies the held item, so whatever Mega Altaria would have
wanted from an item, it does not get. Drop it into the
team builder to see what the rest of the six then have to cover,
or take it to the damage calculator to find out whether those
110 points of
Attack actually change a
knockout.
