What Mega Evolution changes
Banette, number 354 in the National Dex and a Hoenn Pokémon,
holds Banettite to become Mega Banette,
taking its total from 455 to 555. The biggest single gain is 50 Attack, followed by 20 Sp. Def. Nothing goes down — HP stays exactly where it was.
The typing does not change — it is Ghost before and after — so the Mega is the same defensive problem as the base form, only bigger. Mega Evolving replaces Insomnia, Frisk and Cursed Body with Prankster.
What gets through
As Ghost, 2 of the eighteen attacking types get through for extra damage. It resists 2 and is outright immune to 2. 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 Banette is played on 0.32% of teams in the Regulation M-B VGC
ladder, which puts it 115th of the 277 Pokémon with enough games to
measure. The move almost every one of them carries is Poltergeist at 92.9%.
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 Banette takes extra damage from.
- Kingambit — Sucker Punch (Dark, ×2), on 99.9% of its sets
- Incineroar — Throat Chop (Dark, ×2), on 51.4% of its sets
- Basculegion — Last Respects (Ghost, ×2), on 99.9% of its sets
- Blastoise-Mega — Dark Pulse (Dark, ×2), on 91.8% of its sets
- Froslass-Mega — Shadow Ball (Ghost, ×2), on 91.7% of its sets
- Gholdengo — Shadow Ball (Ghost, ×2), on 99.2% of its sets
Where it sits among the Megas
Of the 93 Mega forms in the dex, Mega Banette is 87th by base
stat total. Its best stat is Attack at 165, which is 6th
among Megas; its worst is HP at 64, 82nd.
No other Mega Evolution has the Ghost typing, so this matchup board is unique to it.
Putting it on a team
A Mega slot is a commitment: the stone occupies the held item, so whatever Mega Banette 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
165 points of
Attack actually change a
knockout.
