What Mega Evolution changes
Pinsir, number 127 in the National Dex and a Kanto Pokémon,
holds Pinsirite to become Mega Pinsir,
taking its total from 500 to 600. The biggest single gain is 30 Attack, followed by 20 Defense. Nothing goes down — HP stays exactly where it was.
The typing changes: it gains Flying, which rewrites every matchup below. Mega Evolving replaces Hyper Cutter, Mold Breaker and Moxie with Aerilate.
What gets through
As Bug and Flying, 5 of the eighteen attacking types get through for extra damage, and Rock lands for quadruple. It resists 3 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 Pinsir is played on 0.11% of teams in the Regulation M-B VGC
ladder, which puts it 186th of the 282 Pokémon with enough games to
measure. The move almost every one of them carries is Body Slam at 93.7%.
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 Pinsir takes extra damage from.
- Incineroar — Flare Blitz (Fire, ×2), on 91.2% of its sets
- Garchomp — Rock Slide (Rock, ×4), on 75.9% of its sets
- Charizard-Mega-Y — Heat Wave (Fire, ×2), on 99.2% of its sets
- Farigiraf — Thunderbolt (Electric, ×2), on 59.2% of its sets
- Archaludon — Electro Shot (Electric, ×2), on 98.6% of its sets
- Pelipper — Hurricane (Flying, ×2), on 98.1% of its sets
Where it sits among the Megas
Of the 91 Mega forms in the dex, Mega Pinsir is 56th by base
stat total. Its best stat is Attack at 155, which is 17th
among Megas; its worst is Sp. Atk at 65, 79th.
No other Mega Evolution has the Bug and Flying 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 Pinsir 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
155 points of
Attack actually change a
knockout.
