What Mega Evolution changes
Houndoom, number 229 in the National Dex and a Johto Pokémon,
holds Houndoominite to become Mega Houndoom,
taking its total from 500 to 600. The biggest single gain is 40 Defense, followed by 30 Sp. Atk. Nothing goes down — HP and Attack stay exactly where they were.
The typing does not change — it is Dark and Fire before and after — so the Mega is the same defensive problem as the base form, only bigger. Mega Evolving replaces Early Bird, Flash Fire and Unnerve with Solar Power.
What gets through
As Dark and Fire, 4 of the eighteen attacking types get through for extra damage. It resists 6 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 Houndoom is played on 0.12% of teams in the Regulation M-B VGC
ladder, which puts it 179th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to
measure. The move almost every one of them carries is Heat Wave at 99.3%.
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 Houndoom takes extra damage from.
- Garchomp — Earthquake (Ground, ×2), on 85.7% of its sets
- Basculegion — Aqua Jet (Water, ×2), on 96.6% of its sets
- Sneasler — Close Combat (Fighting, ×2), on 99.7% of its sets
- Staraptor-Mega — Close Combat (Fighting, ×2), on 100% of its sets
- Aerodactyl-Mega — Rock Slide (Rock, ×2), on 99.8% of its sets
- Blastoise-Mega — Water Spout (Water, ×2), on 96.4% of its sets
Where it sits among the Megas
Of the 91 Mega forms in the dex, Mega Houndoom is 55th by base
stat total. Its best stat is Sp. Atk at 140, which is 30th
among Megas; its worst is HP at 75, 51st.
No other Mega Evolution has the Dark and Fire typing, so this matchup board is unique to it.
The unevolved Houndoom is itself on 0.11% of teams.
Putting it on a team
A Mega slot is a commitment: the stone occupies the held item, so whatever Mega Houndoom 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
Special Attack actually change a
knockout.
