What Mega Evolution changes
Excadrill, number 530 in the National Dex and a Unova Pokémon,
holds Excadrite to become Mega Excadrill,
taking its total from 508 to 608. The biggest single gain is 40 Defense, followed by 30 Attack. Nothing goes down — HP and Sp. Def stay exactly where they were.
The typing does not change — it is Ground and Steel before and after — so the Mega is the same defensive problem as the base form, only bigger. Mega Evolving replaces Sand Rush, Sand Force and Mold Breaker with Piercing Drill.
What gets through
As Ground and Steel, 4 of the eighteen attacking types get through for extra damage. It resists 8 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 Excadrill is played on 0.11% of teams in the Regulation M-B VGC
ladder, which puts it 181th of the 277 Pokémon with enough games to
measure. The move almost every one of them carries is Iron Head at 98.1%.
The Champions module tiers it (OU).
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 Excadrill takes extra damage from.
- Incineroar — Flare Blitz (Fire, ×2), on 91.1% 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 — Heat Wave (Fire, ×2), on 99.9% of its sets
- Staraptor-Mega — Close Combat (Fighting, ×2), on 100% of its sets
Where it sits among the Megas
Of the 93 Mega forms in the dex, Mega Excadrill is 47th by base
stat total. Its best stat is Attack at 165, which is 8th
among Megas; its worst is Sp. Def at 65, 90th.
One other Mega shares the Ground and Steel typing and therefore this exact matchup board: Mega Steelix.
The unevolved Excadrill is itself on 4.5% of teams.
Putting it on a team
A Mega slot is a commitment: the stone occupies the held item, so whatever Mega Excadrill 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.
