It may once have been easy to call Magikarp the worst Pokemon of all time and Mewtwo the very best, but times change. With over 1,000 Pokemon now in existence, determining the series' strongest creatures is now way harder to work out. In fact, if you want to approach it scientifically, you're looking at over 1.8 million battles worth of data in order to rank them.
That's what YouTuber Astroid Videos (AKA Frank Redisi) found, anyway. Redisi simulated a whopping 1,810,053 battles, pitting every Pokemon (including Mega Evolutions and significant alternate forms) against each other, with each pair fighting three 1v1 battles. This ended up creating an enormous list from one to 1098, ranked using each Pokemon's overall win/loss ratio accumulated during the 30 hours of matchups.
Before unpacking the whole thing, it's worth noting that this experiment wasn't perfect – some Pokemon, like poor Flabébé, were forgotten and left out entirely, while other forms were omitted because, as Redisi says, "my hand hurt after manually inputting sets." As such, some of the exact rankings might not be perfect, but when it comes to the best and worst Pokemon, there's still little room for doubt.
So, how did it work? Before the battles began, Redisi made sure each Pokemon was given its most popular competitive battling set as listed on fan-site Smogon, albeit with some alterations to ensure that they actually worked for a 1v1 battle format. Other than that, it's worth noting that Z-Moves, Dynamaxing, and Terastalizing were all banned.
Starting at the bottom of the ranking, you might be surprised to find not one, but two Legendary Pokemon: Cosmog and Cosmoem. Despite their 'Legendary' status, this makes sense – neither of them learn any attacking moves, so they can't do anything to harm their opponents. After this came Caterpie, and then Magikarp, which actually won 92 battles (slightly less impressive when you take into account its 3,199 losses, but still).
During these fights, Magikarp was somehow able to fell the Ultra Beast Pheromosa and even Mega Heracross by hitting them with a super-effective Bounce. As you'd imagine, this required some serious luck – the usually underwhelming fish was able to hit Mega Heracross with paralysis before dodging a Close Combat (thanks to it holding Bright Powder to lower its opponent's accuracy) and going in for the kill – something which somehow happened twice during the simulations.
Other spectacular feats like this include Sunkern (which, looking at base stat totals alone, is tied as the second-weakest Pokemon of all time) managing to defeat Groudon after dodging a deadly Stone Edge, and a measly Scatterbug taking down Kyogre after inflicting paralysis, and surviving what'd normally be a brutal Water Spout attack.
On the other hand, some Pokemon you'd expect to be strong competitors ended up performing horribly thanks to some seriously questionable AI decisions. For example, the Gen Eight Legendary horse, Spectrier, ended up ranking at 1083 since the AI controlling it would spam the move Curse, forcing it to repeatedly cut its health before inevitably dying to oncoming attacks. Equally, strong Pokemon like Whimsicott - which normally serves as a support Pokemon during battles - didn't tend to fare well (with that particular creature coming in at rank 1031).
But who's the very best? If you guessed the literal Pokemon god who created the series' universe, Arceus, you'd be wrong, as it was actually in 10th place. If you thought Mewtwo, you'd be even more wrong, as its base form was 93rd, while its Mega Evolution X was 41st, and its Mega Evolution Y was 69th. No, following Reshiram, Mega Rayquaza, Koraidon and then Miraidon was none other than Eternamax Eternatus.
If you have no idea what the hell an Eternamax Eternatus is, there's really no wonder. It appeared solely in Pokemon Sword and Shield as a boss battle near the end of the game, with a whopping base stat total of 1125 (for reference, the second-highest base stat totals belong to the Mega Mewtwos and Mega Rayquaza, at 780). What's more, you can't even catch it – you can only capture regular ol' Eternatus, which ranks 25th on this list.
All things considered, it's no surprise this thing won, even if it's too bad it's not a Pokemon anyone can actually use. If you want the second strongest though, I guess we now have proof that Pokemon Violet is the best out of the two most recent mainline games.
While you're here, be sure to check out our ranking of the best Pokemon games.
