The Z Megas · Absol

Mega Absol Z outruns everything and still dies to the number one

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Mega Absol Z arrives on 9 September at 151 base Speed, and with every Stat Point spent on it, it moves before everything in the top thirty — one point ahead of Mega Aerodactyl. It also carries a Close Combat that Sharpness does nothing for, and against Kingambit, the number one on the ladder, that move is what decides it. On a Life Orb, Absol Z kills first and Sucker Punch has a 56% answer; on the Chople Berry a third of them hold, nobody dies on the first turn and the second is a Sucker Punch read that Kingambit is favoured in. We ran the Z forme into the top ten and every Mega in the top thirty, both ways, before anyone could play it: it kills four, and ten kill it back.

Mega Absol Z · doubles · calculated against the top ten of the ranked ladder and every Mega in the top thirty, as they stood on 2 September 2026

This is not a reading of the ladder. The Z Megas arrive on 9 September and nobody has played one yet, so there is no usage to report — every number on this page is a damage calculation, run through the calculator on this site. What the ladder supplies is the opposition: the spreads, items, abilities and moves people are actually running, and that part is measured.

What the stone changes

Ordinary Mega Absol is pure Dark: 150 Attack, 115 Speed, Magic Bounce. The Z is Dark/Ghost, 154 Attack, 151 Speed, Sharpness. Read left to right that is four points of Attack, thirty-six of Speed and an ability swap, and none of it is the important part. The important part is the second type. Pure Dark was already immune to Psychic; Ghost adds Fighting and Normal to that, and takes away the Dark resistance pure Dark had, so every Dark attack on the ladder doubles against it. The number one on the ladder is a Dark type with a priority move.

Sharpness is the part we kept coming back to while writing, because it is why Night Slash at 70 base power is really a 105 — and because, something we only found on the way, Champions counts the claw moves as slicing too, which the damage engine under this site did not know until we told it. Shadow Claw is a Sharpness move here. And the one that is not is worth saying out loud, because we left it out of the first draft for exactly that reason: Close Combat does not slice, gets nothing from the ability, and is still the hardest thing Absol Z has into a Dark/Steel or a Dark/Rock: 120 base power at four times against 70 sliced at one and a half.

Defence and Special Defence stay at 60 apiece on 65 HP, which is what the second table below is about.

This is one of three. The index has what a Z stone is, the three formes side by side and a page on each. The other two are Mega Garchomp Z and Mega Lucario Z, written the same way against the same twenty opponents, so a number on one can be read against the same row on another.

Mega Absol Z, going out

Adamant, 32 points of Attack and 32 of Speed, holding its own stone — which is what this ladder gives every fast physical attacker without being asked, and the Speed section further down is where we explain why the reflex happens to be right. Each row is whichever of its moves hits that target hardest, and thirteen times out of twenty-one that is Night Slash. Sharpness is why that and not Throat Chop, which has ten more base power printed on it and does not slice.

Eight rows take something else. Psycho Cut is the same 70 base power sliced the same way, and Sneasler is Fighting/Poison — Psychic at four times, then Sharpness on top. Shadow Claw is the Ghost one, for Whimsicott and Mega Floette, because Fairy halves the Dark attack and does nothing to the Ghost one. Psycho Cut is neutral into them as well, and loses the row on the STAB it does not have. And Close Combat, on 46% of the Absols the ladder has today, is the row against both Dark/Steel and Dark/Rock and against Incineroar, without any help from Sharpness.

Why nineteen Pokémon and not ten. A Z Mega is competing for the Mega slot, so the list is the ten the ladder puts on top plus every Mega inside the top thirty — twelve of those, two of them already in the ten — with Mega Aerodactyl held back for a section of its own further down. The question is whether it is the stone to bring, and that is the comparison this list makes.

Every target is at 32 HP and 32 Defence, the most physical bulk 66 points allow, rather than the build it plays. Half of them are two-HP-point attackers, and a damage figure into a Pokémon built to die tells you about its spread, not about the move. So read every number here as a floor: what the attack does to something built to survive it.

Natures are each one’s most used, which is Bold on the two that invest in Defence. Three rows hold a berry aimed at exactly this attacker, and the berry is the opponent to measure against, so Farigiraf and Sinistcha are in the table twice, with it and without it, and a reader who runs it the other way finds their number as a row. Farigiraf’s Colbur Berry, on 19% of them, halves Night Slash from 88.1 – 104.0% to 44.1 – 52.0%; Sinistcha’s, on 22%, from 88.8 – 104.5% to 44.4 – 52.2%. Kingambit’s Chople Berry — its most used item, on 37% — halves the Fighting one; with a Life Orb, Close Combat reads 117.9 – 137.2% and kills on every roll.

Mega Absol Z · Adamant · 2 HP / 32 Atk / 32 Spe · Absolite Z

Every target: HP 32 / DEF 32 / SPD 2

Four clean kills out of nineteen Pokémon and two more on the high roll, both of them the berry rows without their berry. Everything it kills, it kills through a type advantage: Psychic at four times on Sneasler, Fighting at four times on Mega Tyranitar, Dark at twice on Mega Delphox and Basculegion. Kingambit would be the fifth if it were not holding a Chople Berry: the same Close Combat is 117.9 – 137.2% into a Life Orb one. Into anything that hands it no type advantage, the range is a fifth to a half.

And what the twenty do back

The same Absol, receiving, and one row per attacker: whichever of its published moves does the most. Twenty rows coming back rather than nineteen, because Dragonite is in twice: with its stone, and with the Life Orb 17% of them hold instead. It is the one Mega on the list whose unevolved form anybody plays with a damage item; the rest hold their stone on nearly all of them, and a Life Orb row for those would be a number with no opponent behind it.

The four built to hit — Kingambit, Garchomp, Sneasler and Basculegion — are on a Life Orb and an attacking nature, which for most of them is not what they most often play. This table is what has to be survived, so it is the version of each that is trying to kill you: the rank two Garchomp plays Jolly with a Life Orb 51% of the time and swings Adamant here, and the Orb alone is about a third of the row it sits on. Charizard and Staraptor hold the stones that make them the Megas they are calculated as, and Charizard’s brings the sun with it. The four support Pokémon are left exactly as they play — a berry or a sash, a defensive nature, no damage item — because a Careful Incineroar is not built to hit.

Mega Absol Z · Adamant · 2 HP / 32 Atk / 32 Spe · Absolite Z

Damage taken, as a share of its own HP

Ten of the twenty kill it outright and three more on a roll. A 65/60/60 body on two HP points is not a Pokémon that takes a hit; it is one that has to have moved first — and the number one is on that list, which no spread on the page fixes.

And what does not work at all

Nine of the nineteen are carrying a move that does nothing to it. One of them is the most common attacking move in the top ten; two more are the Fighting coverage two of the special attackers carry. Dark/Ghost is immune to Fighting, to Psychic and to Normal, and this field brings all three.

Mega Absol Z · Adamant · 2 HP / 32 Atk / 32 Spe · Absolite Z

Damage taken, as a share of its own HP

Close Combat is the most common attacking move in the top ten — Sneasler runs it at 98.5 per cent and Mega Staraptor at 98.7 — and against this forme it is a wasted turn. So is Mega Raichu’s Focus Blast, on 84% of them, and Mega Blastoise’s Aura Sphere with Mega Launcher behind it. One move each: several of these carry a second one that fails the same way.

The Z stone swaps which half of the ladder kills you

The immunity has a cost, and it comes from the other side of the type chart. Ordinary Mega Absol is pure Dark, so it resists Dark. The Z forme is Dark/Ghost, and Ghost does not — the two cancel out, and every Dark attack on the ladder doubles against it. We knew that going in. What we did not expect was how completely one Pokémon would carry the whole argument on its own.

Kingambit at rank one has both halves of the trade in its own four moves. Its Kowtow Cleave does 57.0 – 66.2% to Mega Absol and 113.4 – 132.4% to the Z forme: a comfortable two-turn problem becomes a kill on every roll. Sucker Punch goes from 46.5 – 54.9% to 93.7 – 109.9%. And in the other column, its Low Kick kills Mega Absol outright at 107.7 – 126.1% and does nothing at all to the Z forme, which is Ghost and immune to it. Same Pokémon, same set; which of the two is the right button depends on which Absol is across from it.

Those are the Life Orb figures, which is the Kingambit the tables above are built to survive. On the Chople Berry a third of them actually hold, everything is about a quarter smaller — Kowtow Cleave is 87.3 – 102.1% and kills on one roll in five, Sucker Punch is 71.8 – 84.5% and does not — and Low Kick stops killing the Mega outright.

Run it the other way and the ordinary Mega is the one that cannot stand up. Mega Staraptor’s Close Combat does 254.9 – 297.2% to Mega Absol and nothing whatever to the Z forme; Sneasler’s does 314.8 – 368.3% and nothing. The stone does not make Absol tougher or frailer. It decides which half of the ladder is allowed to kill it — and the half the Z forme hands over, the Dark half, is led by the number one.

All thirty-two, and only just

Every table on this page spends 32 points on Speed, because that is what this ladder gives a fast attacker without thinking about it. On a base 151 Pokémon the reflex turns out to be exactly right, which is not obvious until you widen the table.

The top ten is the wrong place to check. It tops out at Sneasler on 189 and its bottom half is walls — Kingambit moves at 70. Widen it to the top fifty and the picture changes: Mega Aerodactyl reaches 222, on the Aerodactylite half of them hold, and Mega Delphox reaches 204.

A base 151 Z Mega with a Speed-raising nature and no Speed points at all reaches 188, which loses to Sneasler by one. Twelve points reach 201 — past Mega Raichu and Mega Gengar, still behind Mega Delphox. Only the full thirty-two clears the field, at 223 against Aerodactyl’s 222.

There is one cheaper build worth knowing, and it is bounded by Delphox at 204. Sixteen points reach 205, which is past every other row on that list — so a Z Mega that concedes Aerodactyl and nothing else spends 32 on its attack, 16 on Speed, and has eighteen left over where the full build has two.

What eighteen buys, for this Pokémon, is nothing that matters. Ten of the twenty kill Mega Absol Z at two HP points, and eight of the ten still kill it at twenty-two. The two that drop to a roll are Kingambit’s Kowtow Cleave, 113.4 – 132.4% to 99.4 – 116.0%, and the rank two Garchomp’s Dragon Claw, 104.9 – 123.2% to 92.0 – 108.0%; the same eighteen points take Mega Aerodactyl’s Dual Wingbeat, in its own section below, from 98.6 – 115.5% to 86.4 – 101.2%. Every other row that kills is further above the line than any of them.

So there are two spare points and no third option, and that is the finding rather than a footnote: Absol Z cannot buy its way out of anything. The eighteen the cheaper build frees are real points and they do not cross a single threshold, because the things killing it are killing it by thirty points, not by three.

The nature is not optional either. Adamant or Modest with all 32 points reaches 203, nineteen short of Aerodactyl, so a Z Mega that wants to move first is Jolly or Timid before it is anything else — and that is nine per cent off every figure in the first table on this page.

Where a base 151 Z Mega lands

The fast half of the top fifty, at the build each one plays, against a Z Mega that has spent all thirty-two of its Speed points. The top row is the only one nothing has played yet: all three Z Megas are base 151 and all three reach it.

A Speed table that ran to the bottom of the top ten would be mostly walls — Kingambit is on 70 and Incineroar on 80 — and outrunning those is not a fact worth printing. A fast attacker only needs the rows above it.

Speed at level 50, at the build each one plays

  1. Z Megas: 223 (all 32 Spe)
  2. Mega Aerodactyl: 222 (#17)
  3. Mega Delphox: 204 (#21)
  4. Mega Raichu Y: 200 (#12)
  5. Mega Gengar: 200 (#36)
  6. Talonflame: 195 (#35)
  7. Meowscarada: 192 (#49)
  8. Sneasler: 189 (#3)
  9. Whimsicott: 184 (#5)
  10. Mega Staraptor: 178 (#10)

All three Z Megas are base 151, so all three reach 223 with a Speed-raising nature and the full thirty-two points — and 222 is Mega Aerodactyl, which is what the whole investment is for. Half of it buys nothing: twelve points reach 201, which is past Raichu and Gengar and behind Delphox.

And the one it spent the budget to outrun

Every Speed point on this page is there to beat Mega Aerodactyl to the punch, which is why it is not a row in the tables above. What does the punch do?

Not enough. Absol Z moves first and hits it for 53.5 – 62.6% with Night Slash, and Aerodactyl answers with Dual Wingbeat for 98.6 – 115.5% — Tough Claws on a contact move, and a kill on most rolls. One point of Speed, and the Pokémon that spent its whole budget on it loses the exchange anyway. The sixteen-point build does not fix that either: at twenty-two HP points Dual Wingbeat is 86.4 – 101.2%, a kill on the high roll instead of on most of them, and Absol Z has given up the one point of Speed it bought the whole budget for.

Mega Aerodactyl, going out

Mega Aerodactyl · Jolly · 2 HP / 32 Atk / 32 Spe · Aerodactylite

Absol Z at the build the rest of this page gives it, not at a benchmark: this is the Pokémon the report is about, on the receiving end of the one it spends its Speed on.

Mega Absol Z, into the other two

All three at the build their pages give them — two HP points, 32 in the attacking stat, 32 in Speed — and all three at 223, so none of them moves first on purpose. A Speed tie is a coin toss, so the numbers below are what happens after the coin.

Absol Z is the one the other two are built to beat. Draco Meteor is neutral into Dark/Ghost, and 141 Special Attack into 60 Special Defence needs no help; Lucario Z loses its Fighting and Psychic moves to the typing and still has a Steel one that rolls to a kill.

Mega Absol Z · Adamant · 2 HP / 32 Atk / 32 Spe · Absolite Z

Neither row kills. Into Lucario Z the move is Close Combat and not the Dark attack: Night Slash and Shadow Claw make contact and Aura Guard halves them, and so does Close Combat — but Fighting is twice into Steel, and 120 base power halved still beats a sliced 70 halved.

And the other two back

Mega Absol Z · Adamant · 2 HP / 32 Atk / 32 Spe · Absolite Z

Damage taken, as a share of its own HP

Garchomp Z kills it on every roll and Lucario Z on the high one. On the coin toss for the first move, Absol Z is the one with the least to gain from winning it.

What to do with it

Start with the one the headline is about, because there are two of it. Absol Z moves first against Kingambit either way, and what happens next is the item. On a Life Orb, Close Combat is 117.9 – 137.2% and kills on every roll, and Kingambit’s only answer is Sucker Punch: 93.7 – 109.9%, priority, a kill on 56% of its rolls — so on the turn Absol Z attacks, the number one wins a little more often than it loses. On the Chople Berry, which more of them hold than anything else, the first Close Combat is halved to 58.9 – 68.6% and spends the berry, and Sucker Punch comes back for 71.8 – 84.5%: both still standing, both in range of the other. Then priority decides it. The second Sucker Punch goes before Absol Z’s second Close Combat and kills — unless Absol Z does not attack that turn, in which case it fails, and the third turn’s Close Combat, at full strength, does. So the Life Orb Kingambit is a 56% roll and the Chople one is a read, and Kingambit is the favourite in both, because Sucker Punch goes first regardless of Speed.

The matchup it wins without a coin is Sneasler. Close Combat does nothing to it, Sneasler’s next best is Dire Claw at 52.1 – 61.3%, and Psycho Cut goes back the other way for 173.3 – 203.2% — Fighting/Poison takes Psychic at four times and Sharpness is on top of that. The only clean win on the page.

Mega Staraptor is not the same matchup, and the immunity is what makes it look like one. Close Combat is a wasted turn against Absol Z and Brave Bird is not: 127.5 – 148.6%, against the 62.5 – 72.9% Psycho Cut sends back. Walling one of its moves is not the same as beating it.

One clean matchup, one that comes down to an item, a handful of turns it does not lose, and a field that mostly kills it. It is an improvement on the ordinary Mega, by a measurable amount: the Mega has the same Close Combat and the same two Kingambits in front of it, 58.0 – 67.6% and 115.9 – 135.3% off 150 Attack; it kills one of the nineteen and rolls on two more, where the Z kills four and rolls on two. Only two of the three it adds are the Dark half — Mega Delphox and Basculegion, which Sharpness turns from a roll and a miss into kills. The third is four points of Attack: the same Close Combat into Mega Tyranitar is 98.6 – 115.9% off the Mega and 100.5 – 117.9% off the Z.

The Speed decision is the first one and it has two answers. All 32 points and a Jolly nature reaches 223 and beats Mega Aerodactyl by one, leaving two points for everything else. Sixteen reaches 205, beats everything below it, and leaves eighteen — enough to turn Kingambit’s Kowtow Cleave from a kill into a roll, and not enough to do that to anything else. If neither trade appeals, the Speed tier is not what you are bringing a Z Mega for, and the ordinary Mega is the better stone.

No, then. For all the Speed and for all that Sharpness does, we do not think Mega Absol Z earns a clear place in this meta. Its offence is all type advantage, half the field kills it, the Speed does not win the one race it was bought for, and it is competing for the Mega slot with four Pokémon in the top thirty that do more with it. What it does have is a niche, and it is not one these tables can show, because every figure here is one hit into a full-health target built to take it. Absol Z is a closer. It moves before everything, three of the most common moves on the ladder cannot touch it, and against two damaged Pokémon late in a game, 154 Attack with Sharpness behind it ends things. With Kingambit off the field, half of its problems leave with it. That is a job, and a real one. It is not a place in the meta, and it does not justify the Mega slot.

Two reports sit beside these three. Champions Stat Point spreads is where the 32-and-32 reflex comes from and what the ladder does with its last two points; Mega Staraptor is the other case on this ladder where a stone changes the ability rather than the numbers, and that report is what the players did about it.

Method and limits