What Mega Evolution changes
Barbaracle, number 689 in the National Dex and a Kalos Pokémon,
holds Barbaracite to become Mega Barbaracle,
taking its total from 500 to 600. The biggest single gain is 35 Attack, followed by 20 Sp. Def. Nothing goes down — HP stays exactly where it was.
The typing changes: it gains Fighting and drops Water, which rewrites every matchup below. The ability stays Tough Claws.
What gets through
As Rock and Fighting, 7 of the eighteen attacking types get through for extra damage. It resists 6. 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 Barbaracle is played on 0.13% of teams in the Regulation M-B VGC
ladder, which puts it 169th of the 277 Pokémon with enough games to
measure. The move almost every one of them carries is Close Combat at 96.5%.
The Champions module tiers it UUBL.
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 Barbaracle 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, ×2), 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
Where it sits among the Megas
Of the 93 Mega forms in the dex, Mega Barbaracle is 51st by base
stat total. Its best stat is Attack at 140, which is 32nd
among Megas; its worst is Sp. Atk at 64, 82nd.
No other Mega Evolution has the Rock and Fighting typing, so this matchup board is unique to it.
The unevolved Barbaracle is itself on 0.01% of teams.
Putting it on a team
A Mega slot is a commitment: the stone occupies the held item, so whatever Mega Barbaracle 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
140 points of
Attack actually change a
knockout.
