The Z Megas · Lucario

Mega Lucario Z hits the hardest of the three and guards the wrong half

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164 Special Attack makes this the hardest hitter of the three Z Megas by a distance, and 70 in every defence makes it the easiest of them to answer — except that Aura Guard halves every move that makes contact, and three of the four most played Pokémon in the game reach for one. What goes straight through is Fire, Fairy and anything special. It beats the number one on the ladder in both directions, it loses to Mega Charizard Y by a distance, and it is the only one of the three that wins the race with Mega Aerodactyl.

Mega Lucario Z · doubles · calculated against the top ten of the ranked ladder and every Mega in the top thirty, as they stood on 4 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 Lucario is 145 Attack, 140 Special Attack, 112 Speed, Adaptability. The Z is 70/100/70/164/70/151, still Fighting/Steel, so it is a special attacker with 164 behind it and the paper defences of the other two Z Megas. Its ability is Aura Guard, and it halves the damage it takes from a move that makes contact. Every number on this page has it applied.

The thing the stone takes away is easy to miss, and we missed it until the mirror was in front of us: Adaptability. The ordinary Mega’s Focus Blast into Kingambit is 247.3 – 289.9% off 140 Special Attack, and the Z’s is 210.6 – 245.4% off 164 — doubled STAB on a smaller number beats ordinary STAB on a larger one. So the Z is the hardest-hitting Z Mega, and it is not the hardest-hitting Lucario.

And the ability guards the wrong half. 70 Defence with contact damage halved is a real physical wall; 70 Special Defence with nothing in front of it is not, and the second table below is mostly Fire and Fairy attacks that never touch it.

And the Mega it has to answer is the one it cannot. Mega Charizard Y is the most played Mega on this ladder — ninth overall, ahead of every other stone — and it is the worst row on this page: Weather Ball in its own sun, into a Steel type, 299.3 – 351.0%. It makes no contact, so the ability is not in the sentence. Going the other way, Focus Blast off 164 Special Attack is 24.3 – 28.1%: Fighting is resisted twice by Fire/Flying, and there is nothing else on the set.

Nor is that this stone alone. Mega Absol Z takes 173.9 – 203.5% from the same move and gives back 66.5% at best. Mega Garchomp Z is the only one of the three that survives it, at 51.4 – 60.0% — and its Power Gem is four times into Fire/Flying and still does not kill, at 77.8 – 90.8%. Three new stones, and the Mega already at the top of the ladder is not beaten by any of them.

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 Absol Z and Mega Garchomp 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 Lucario Z, going out

Timid, 32 points of Special Attack and 32 of Speed, and the same benchmark as the other two pages: every target at 32 HP and 32 Special Defence, because that is the side the attack is coming at. Focus Blast is the row wherever Fighting is the answer, and it misses three times in ten, which no table can show. Aura Sphere never misses, and into the same Kingambit it is 70.5 – 82.1% — which is the trade, and it is not free. The Chople Berry halves a Fighting move, and it is the difference between the inaccurate move killing through it and the accurate one not.

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.

Mega Lucario Z · Timid · 2 HP / 32 SpA / 32 Spe · Lucarionite Z

Every target: HP 32 / SPD 32 / DEF 2

Damage dealt, as a share of the target’s HP

Three clean kills and two more on a roll out of nineteen, which is the best offence of the three Z Megas — and the row that matters is the first one. Focus Blast off 164 Special Attack does 105.3 – 122.7% to the number one through the Chople Berry it holds for exactly this move, and 210.6 – 245.4% to one without it. Kingambit is Dark/Steel and Fighting is four times on it, which is what Mega Absol Z tries too; the berry stops Absol’s Close Combat killing and does not stop this, and Sucker Punch is no answer to a Fighting type with Aura Guard.

And what the twenty do back

The same Lucario, receiving. 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.

Here the ability earns its mention and then stops mattering. Close Combat and Wave Crash make contact and are halved. Earthquake does not — it is the ground, not the Pokémon — and neither do Weather Ball, Heat Wave, Focus Blast or Light of Ruin. That is the ability’s real shape on this list: the two hardest rows on it after Charizard are the rank two Garchomp’s Earthquake at 166.0 – 196.6% and Mega Swampert’s at 142.9 – 167.3%, and Aura Guard is in neither sentence. The immunity is to Poison, and it is a thin one next to Absol’s three: Sneasler’s Dire Claw and Venusaur’s Sludge Bomb are the only published moves on the list that do nothing to 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 Lucario Z · Timid · 2 HP / 32 SpA / 32 Spe · Lucarionite Z

Damage taken, as a share of its own HP

Nine of the twenty kill it outright with the halving already applied, and three more on a roll. Mega Charizard Y is 299.3 – 351.0%: a Fire attack in its own sun, into a Steel type, and it makes no contact at all. Fighting/Steel is nine resistances and an immunity, and none of them is to the thing that kills it.

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 here is closer to Absol’s answer than Garchomp’s. Nine of the twenty kill Lucario Z at two HP points and three more on a roll; at twenty-two, eight still kill it and two need a roll. One row moves from a kill to a roll — Mega Staraptor’s Close Combat, halved, from 108.8 – 127.2% to 95.8 – 112.0% — and two rolls stop rolling. The things killing it are killing it by too much for eighteen points to reach.

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. On the other two pages the punch turned out not to be worth it. Here it is.

This is the one race a Z Mega wins. Flash Cannon is 110.8 – 129.9% into Mega Aerodactyl at its own build — Steel into Rock/Flying — and what comes back is Dual Wingbeat halved to 42.9 – 49.7%. The 3% of Aerodactyls carrying Earthquake do 81.6 – 95.2%, because Earthquake does not make contact and Aura Guard does not see it; the other 97% lose the exchange on the first turn.

Mega Lucario Z, into Mega Aerodactyl

Mega Lucario Z · Timid · 2 HP / 32 SpA / 32 Spe · Lucarionite Z

Aerodactyl at the build it plays, not at a benchmark — the Jolly 2/32/32 half of them hold the stone on — because this is the exchange, not the floor.

And Mega Aerodactyl back

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

Lucario Z at the build the rest of this page gives it. Dual Wingbeat makes contact and Aura Guard halves it; without the ability this row reads 85.7 – 99.3%, which is the whole of what the ability is worth in the one race it wins.

Mega Lucario 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.

Aura Guard is the whole of the Absol matchup and none of the Garchomp one. Everything Absol Z would want to use makes contact — its Dark attacks, and the Close Combat that is still the row after the halving — so the ability is worth about half of what comes in from that side; Garchomp Z never touches it at all, and the Fire attack that kills it would be on the set with or without this page.

Mega Lucario Z · Timid · 2 HP / 32 SpA / 32 Spe · Lucarionite Z

A roll into Absol Z off the Steel attack, because Dark/Ghost takes nothing from Fighting or Psychic and Flash Cannon is what is left. Focus Blast into Garchomp Z is a two-turn number, and it misses three times in ten.

And the other two back

Mega Lucario Z · Timid · 2 HP / 32 SpA / 32 Spe · Lucarionite Z

Damage taken, as a share of its own HP

Absol Z’s best answer is a Close Combat that Aura Guard halves, and it still does not kill. Garchomp Z does not have to reach for anything: Fire Blast is on the set already, and it kills on every roll.

What to do with it

If you are bringing Mega Lucario Z, you are bringing a special attacker that moves before everything on the ladder and gets, on most of that ladder, one turn. Kingambit is the reason to: 105.3 – 122.7% with Focus Blast, through the Chople Berry most of them are holding, and what comes back is Low Kick at 46.9 – 54.4% after the halving — the number one on the ladder, cleanly beaten in both directions. Mega Charizard Y is the reason not to: 299.3 – 351.0%, no contact, and it is faster than nothing on this page needs to be because Weather Ball only has to land once.

The ability is worth having and it is worth knowing what it is not. It turns Sneasler’s Close Combat from a kill on every roll into 135.4 – 157.1%, which is still a kill; it turns Mega Aerodactyl’s Dual Wingbeat from a kill into a survivable hit, which is the one exchange it decides. Everything Fire, Fairy or special goes through it as if it were not there.

The Speed decision is the same as the other two pages and the answer is the same as Absol’s: eighteen spare points move two rows from a kill to a roll and nothing out of range. Take the 223 and the Aerodactyl race, because on this Pokémon the race is a win.

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