Meta reports

28 September 2026 — Mega Garchomp Z was written off, us included. Then it won two Regionals in one weekend. — Plenty of players wrote off Mega Garchomp Z, and so did we. It barely showed up at Baltimore, then won Brisbane and Frankfurt on the same weekend — and the set that did it carried a move only one Baltimore Garchomp Z had tried: Earth Power.
20 September 2026 — Two regulations changed the roster. Thirteen names never left the top twenty. — Champions has finished five seasons under two regulations, and the ranked roster grew from 213 Pokémon to 262. Thirteen Pokémon placed top twenty in every one of them, and the regulation change that rewrote the roster moved the top twenty by an average of 5.9 places.
16 September 2026 — Five of M-C’s six stones were taken at once. The sixth split Garchomp in two. — Regulation M-C brought six Mega stones. Seven days later five of them are on nearly every Pokémon that can hold them. Garchompite Z is on 42.5%, and it is the only one that takes away the type its holder’s best move is made of.
12 September 2026 — Rillaboom did not climb to second. It arrived there. — Regulation M-C put Rillaboom straight into second place, the highest debut the ladder has recorded. Grassy Surge is why: 30% on its own Grass moves, priority on Grassy Glide, and every Earthquake aimed at its team cut in half.
11 September 2026 — Mega Golisopod swaps three weaknesses for one, and the one is Fire — Golisopod is eighth on the ranked ladder and its stone makes it Bug/Steel: Electro Shot, Hurricane and Head Smash stop killing it, and six of the nine Fire attackers in the top thirty start to. We ran the field and its own most common matchups into it both ways, with the Tough Claws this calculator only gave it on 11 September.
5 September 2026 — Thirteen of M-B’s fifteen Megas are held less than the day they arrived — Regulation M-B handed out fifteen Mega Evolutions across sixteen stones. Two are held more often now than in season M-3 and thirteen of the fifteen Megas are held less — and the ones being dropped fastest are not the ones the ladder plays least.
4 September 2026 — Mega Lucario Z hits the hardest of the three and guards the wrong half — Lucario’s Z stone brings 164 Special Attack, 151 Speed and Aura Guard, which halves the damage of every move that makes contact. Run into the top ten of the ranked ladder and every Mega in the top thirty, both ways, at the builds those are actually played on.
3 September 2026 — The three Z Mega Evolutions, and what each stone actually changes — Absol, Garchomp and Lucario get a second Mega Evolution on 9 September 2026. What a Z stone is, the three formes’ base stats, typings and abilities side by side, and a report on each one calculated against the same twenty opponents.
3 September 2026 — Mega Garchomp Z gets Levitate, and not much more — Garchomp’s Z stone trades the Ground typing and forty points of Attack for 141 Special Attack, Levitate and 151 Speed. We ran it into the top ten and every Mega in the top thirty, and then into the Ice attacks the ladder uses to remove a Garchomp.
2 September 2026 — Mega Absol Z outruns everything and still dies to the number one — Absol’s Z stone brings 151 Speed, Sharpness and a Dark/Ghost body. We ran it into the top ten and every Mega in the top thirty, both ways: it outruns all of them, and the number one still beats it, because Sucker Punch does not care who is faster.
1 September 2026 — Liepard is rank 146 and its favourite partner is rank 10 — Liepard sits at rank 146 on the Champions ladder and its single most common teammate is Mega Staraptor, the tenth most-used Pokémon in the game. It is there to lower Staraptor’s stats on purpose — and a third of Staraptors are built as though attacking is not the point.
31 August 2026 — A debut rank is a ceiling, not a floor — Season M-3 added 22 Pokémon to the Champions ranked ladder. Two seasons later 18 of them sit lower than they debuted and none has gained more than eleven places — a first-season ranking is close to the best a newcomer ever manages.
30 August 2026 — 66 points, 32 cap, and two left over — Champions gives you 66 Stat Points and caps each stat at 32, so most builds max two stats and are left holding two. Twenty-one of the twenty-three top-30 builds that get there spend both on HP, where the stat formula halves them into one.
29 August 2026 — Steelix climbed 17 places. The top thirty didn’t move. — Nine days of the Pokémon Champions ranked doubles ladder, read from the game hourly. Steelix went 111 → 94 while the top thirty barely moved — and the movement is a trend, not noise.