Medicham

Fighting/Psychic · Pure Power · C tier · base 60/60/75/60/75/80 — the tier’s single hardest-hitting wallbreaker per click, a Choice Band nuke whose Pure Power doubles an already-amplified Attack to OHKO-or-2HKO the entire defensive backbone. It does not sweep and it does not switch in; it walks onto the field, deletes one wall, and dies. On aggressive offense that is exactly the contract you want from a one-shot breaker — provided you pair it with the trapping that covers its frailty.

Typing & role

Medicham is a Fighting/Psychic-type, and on the surface base 60 Attack is laughable. Pure Power doubles its Attack stat outright — the equivalent of a permanent, free Swords Dance baked into the ability — and then you bolt a Choice Band on top for another ×1.5. The result is a number that out-hits almost everything in the format on a neutral click and turns its super-effective hits into deletions. This is the whole pitch: Medicham is a nuke, not a Pokemon you play a long game with.

Everything else about it is a liability. Base 80 Speed is mediocre — under Tyranitar-tier base 100s, under Gengar (110), under Aerodactyl (130), under Jolteon/Starmie. The 60/75/75 bulk is paper for an attacker that wants to switch into things: it is weak to Flying (2×) and Ghost (2×) — and note that despite its Psychic half, incoming Psychic attacks are only neutral (1×), not super-effective. You never bring Medicham in on an attack. You bring it in on a forced switch, on a double, or after a teammate faints, and you make the one or two turns it lives count.

The defensive upside is narrow but real for an entry tool: Fighting/Psychic resists Fighting (0.5×) and Rock (0.5×). That Fighting resist matters for mirror-matching other breakers, and the Rock resist softens sand-chippers’ coverage; then it threatens to 4× Brick Break TTar back. Its 2× weaknesses are limited to Flying and Ghost, so the most common incoming attacks it shrugs off are the Fighting and Rock it halves.

The site embeds a TypeProfile widget above this section — use it to eyeball Medicham’s full Fighting/Psychic resist/weakness sheet (resists Fighting/Rock, weak to Flying/Ghost, and only neutral to Psychic) while you read the calcs below.

Why it matters to aggressive offense

The central problem of ADV offense is that the defensive backbone — SkarmBliss, a bulky Water, Snorlax — recovers all day and cannot be brute-forced (see building aggressive offense). Medicham’s answer is to hit so hard that a single click removes a wall before recovery matters:

• Brick Break is a 2HKO-to-OHKO on the special-wall axis. Fighting is super-effective on Normal (2×), so Pure-Power CB Brick Break flattens Blissey and Snorlax — the two fattest special sponges in the tier — far faster than a normal attacker. Take Blissey off the board and every special attacker you own gains a clean win condition; that is the marquee reason an aggressive team pays a slot for Medicham.
• Brick Break is 4× on Tyranitar. Fighting hits both Rock and Dark for 2×, so it is 4× super-effective on the tier’s #1 Pokemon — a clean OHKO on standard spreads. Medicham deletes the sand-setter and gravity-well that half the ladder is built around — just don’t count on tanking TTar’s Crunch on the switch, since Fighting/Psychic does not resist Dark.
• It punishes the Steels neutrally. Brick Break is only 1× on Skarmory (Steel 2× × Flying 0.5×) and Metagross (Steel 2× × Psychic 0.5×) — not super-effective, but off a doubled-and-Banded Attack a “neutral” hit is still a heavy dent. Medicham forces these walls to respect it rather than sitting freely.
• Coverage closes the holes Fighting can’t. Shadow Ball (Ghost — and physical in Gen 3, so it runs off that monstrous Attack) hits the Ghosts and Psychics that wall Brick Break; Rock Slide hits the Flyers; Focus Punch is the second, even-harder Fighting button when you’ve forced a switch.

What Medicham gives an offense is guaranteed wall removal on demand. Its weakness — frailty plus mediocre Speed — is solved the same way Heracross’s and Snorlax’s are: pair it with a trapper. Dugtrio traps Medicham’s checks (a chipped Skarmory-less Steel, or the Psychic/Ghost it fears) so Medicham can click Brick Break into a guaranteed kill, and Medicham in turn breaks the fat walls Dugtrio can’t OHKO. It is a premier wall-removal partner, not a self-sufficient threat.

Key sets

Medicham ships several legal sets — Choice Band, a Bulk Up bulky-sweeper, an All-Out Attacker, and a Substitute/Salac Reversal build. For aggressive offense the Choice Band nuke is the one that earns the slot: it leans hardest into Pure Power’s doubled Attack to delete a wall on the turn you bring it in. The other builds trade raw breaking power for setup or longevity; the entire value proposition of the version below is “switch in, click once, win the trade.”

Choice Band (the nuke)

Medicham @ Choice Band
Ability: Pure Power
Adamant Nature
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
- Brick Break
- Shadow Ball
- Rock Slide
- Focus Punch

The canonical Choice Band set, resolved for maximum breaking power: Brick Break over High Jump Kick (no recoil-on-miss when you’re locked in), and Focus Punch over Fake Out (the harder Fighting button when you read a switch). Every move is a physical type — Fighting, Ghost, Rock, Fighting — so all four benefit from the Choice Band, exactly the discipline a CB set demands (note that in the Gen-3 split Shadow Ball is physical and runs off Attack; a special-typed move here would be dead weight). Brick Break is the spammable STAB that 4×es Tyranitar and 2×es Blissey/Snorlax. Shadow Ball is the coverage that hits the Ghosts and Psychics immune-or-resistant to Fighting: it is 2× on Gengar (Ghost 2× × Poison 1×), 2× on Starmie (Psychic 2×), and 2× on Claydol/Celebi (Psychic 2×) — the mons that would otherwise wall Brick Break cold. Rock Slide handles the Flyers: 2× on Salamence, Gyarados, Zapdos, and Aerodactyl, and 4× on Charizard. Focus Punch is the highest-damage Fighting button — used when you read a switch into something Brick Break already beats, or to break a wall that can’t be 2HKO’d by Brick Break alone; with the Band locking you in, it is a prediction tool, not a default. Adamant maxes the already-doubled Attack; max Speed creeps the rest of the base-80 bracket and slow base-85/90 walls.

Two things to internalize about the lock-in. First, Choice Band means Medicham is married to one move the moment it attacks — a wrong read (Brick Break into a Gengar, which is immune) wastes the entire mon, so play it like a prediction puzzle, not a spam-bot. Second, Brick Break breaks screens as a rider, which occasionally matters against a Reflect/Light Screen team but is incidental to its job.

How an aggressive team uses it

Medicham is a spend-it piece, like Dugtrio or a Choice Band Metagross Explosion — you bring it in to remove one specific obstacle and you accept that it probably dies doing so.

1. Identify the wall your wincon loses to. If your closer is a special attacker (Suicune, Zapdos, Starmie, Jolteon), that wall is Blissey. If it’s a physical sweeper, the obstacle is often Snorlax or Tyranitar. Medicham’s Brick Break 2HKOs or OHKOs all three.
2. Bring Medicham in for free. It cannot switch into attacks on its 60/75/75 frame, so it enters on a forced switch, a slow pivot (a fainting teammate, a Zapdos Baton Pass), or a hard-predicted passive turn. A clean entry against a Fighting- or Rock-clicker is fine — it halves both — but never against a Flyer’s STAB or a Ghost move.
3. Click the kill, or predict the switch. Against the wall it threatens, Brick Break removes it. If you read the opponent pivoting to their Ghost/Psychic answer, Shadow Ball punishes the switch. The Choice lock makes this the skill ceiling of the mon.
4. Cash in. With the wall gone, your real win condition sweeps. Medicham has done its job whether it lives or not.

The model is identical to the rest of the break-then-clean plan: Medicham is the wallbreaker, something faster and setup-capable is the cleaner. The reason it sits at C rather than higher is purely that the lock-in plus the frailty plus base-80 Speed means it often gets exactly one productive turn — but that one turn is the hardest single hit an aggressive team can buy.

Pairings

• Medicham + Dugtrio — the trap-the-counter core. Dugtrio traps and removes the grounded Psychic/Steel that checks Medicham (or chips it), and Medicham clicks Brick Break into the fat wall Dugtrio can’t break. Between the two you can dismantle a defensive core in two turns. Dugtrio also revenge-kills the faster mons that would otherwise punish Medicham’s mediocre Speed.
• Medicham + Magneton. Magneton traps and deletes Skarmory — the one physical wall Brick Break is only neutral into and that phazes Medicham out — opening the field for Medicham to muscle through what’s left. The standard Steel-removal package applied to a Fighting breaker.
• Medicham + Spikes. Medicham turns 2HKOs into OHKOs with chip; a Skarmory/Cloyster/Forretress Spiker plus Medicham means Blissey and Snorlax fall to a single Brick Break after a layer or two (see common cores).
• Medicham + a special sweeper closer. Because Medicham’s headline job is removing Blissey, it is the physical complement to a Calm Mind Suicune or special Zapdos that wins the moment the special wall is gone.

Load-bearing interactions

These are the matchups that decide whether Medicham gets to do its job. Effectiveness multipliers are computed against the Gen-3 chart; damage mechanics live in the calc reference.

• Brick Break vs Tyranitar — the 4× delete. Fighting hits Rock/Dark for 2× each = 4×, a clean OHKO on standard Tyranitar. This is one of the best raw matchups any breaker has into the tier’s #1 threat — just respect that Medicham does not resist Crunch or Pursuit, so it cannot freely tank a Dark move on the switch the way a pure Fighting-type would.
• Brick Break vs Blissey / Snorlax — break the special wall. Fighting is 2× on Normal; off a doubled-and-Banded Attack, Brick Break 2HKOs Blissey and heavily dents Snorlax (Thick Fat doesn’t help against Fighting). This is the line that frees your special attackers — the single most valuable thing Medicham does on aggressive offense.
• Brick Break vs Skarmory / Metagross — neutral, not super-effective. Both are 1× (Skarmory: Steel 2× × Flying 0.5×; Metagross: Steel 2× × Psychic 0.5×). It’s a real dent off that Attack, but Skarmory walls the follow-up and Roar/Whirlwind phazes Medicham out, while Metagross threatens a Meteor Mash back — these are checks, not free kills. Remove Skarmory with Magneton rather than expecting Medicham to break it.
• Brick Break vs Gengar — zero. Fighting is 0× into Ghost (Gengar’s Ghost half makes it immune to Brick Break and Focus Punch). This is the trap a Choice Band Medicham can walk into: click Brick Break, Gengar switches in for free, and you’ve wasted the turn. Shadow Ball is your only Gengar answer — and Gengar is 2× to it.
• Shadow Ball vs the Ghosts/Psychics. Ghost is 2× on Gengar (Ghost/Poison), Starmie (Water/Psychic), Claydol (Ground/Psychic), and Celebi (Psychic/Grass) — the precise set of mons that resist or dodge Brick Break. It is only 1× on the Steel/Psychics Metagross and Jirachi (Steel 0.5× × Psychic 2×), so Shadow Ball is not your Steel answer.
• Rock Slide vs the Flyers. Rock is 2× on Salamence, Gyarados, Zapdos, and Aerodactyl (each Flying-typed), and 4× on Charizard (Fire/Flying). It is the coverage that lets Medicham revenge a chipped Flyer that would otherwise outrun and OHKO it.
• What beats Medicham back. It is weak to Flying (2×) and Ghost (2×) (Psychic attacks are only neutral) and outrun by the whole base-95+ bracket. Aerodactyl, Gengar, Starmie, and Jolteon all move first and OHKO or near-OHKO its frail body; Salamence/Gyarados Intimidate halves its (already-doubled) Attack on the switch and the Flyers resist Fighting; Skarmory walls and phazes. Sand chip from Tyranitar wears its 60/75/75 frame every turn it’s out.

Counters & checks

Medicham is frail, slow, and Choice-locked, so “checking” it is mostly about presenting the right immunity or simply outspeeding it:

• Gengar and Ghost-types — immune to Brick Break and Focus Punch (Fighting 0×), faster (base 110), and they OHKO Medicham’s frail body. The cleanest hard answer to the Fighting STAB. The catch: Gengar is 2× to Medicham’s Shadow Ball, so a Gengar that hard-switches in on a predicted Brick Break eats the punish if you read it — but Gengar wins the straight 1v1.
• Salamence / Gyarados / Flying-types — resist Brick Break (Fighting 0.5× into the Flying-paired types), shrug it off, and Intimidate drops Medicham’s Attack on the switch. Rock Slide is 2× back, so they don’t switch in carelessly, but they check it cleanly and revenge it.
• Faster offense in general — Aerodactyl (130), Jolteon (130), Starmie (115), Gengar (110), and the base-100 bracket all outspeed Medicham and OHKO or near-OHKO it. With no Choice Scarf in the tier (speed is fixed by base stats), Medicham simply loses the race to most of the relevant offense.
• Skarmory — Brick Break is only neutral, Skarmory survives, and Roar/Whirlwind phazes Medicham out while it racks Spikes. The textbook physical wall that Medicham’s STAB can’t crack; remove it with Magneton before leaning on Medicham.
• Dugtrio — traps Medicham (it’s grounded) and OHKOs with Earthquake before Medicham can act if Dugtrio is faster on the field. Fighting/Psychic is neutral to Ground, so there’s no resist to lean on.
• Just don’t get Choice-locked wrong. A defensive team’s best line is often to pivot in the immunity: bait Brick Break with a Normal/Steel wall, switch to Gengar, and Medicham has thrown away its turn.

For the aggressive pilot the takeaway runs the other way: scout the Choice lock and protect Medicham’s entry. Removing the opponent’s Medicham is cheap — anything faster kills it — so the danger is letting it click once for free. Bring a Ghost (Gengar) to blank its Brick Break, a Flyer with Intimidate to check it, or simply revenge it with your faster offense. To pilot your own, never click Brick Break blind into a possible Ghost, and spend Medicham the moment removing its target wins the match.

See also

• Cores & teams: common cores, sample teams, building aggressive offense.
• Key partners: Dugtrio, Magneton, Suicune, Zapdos.
• Key matchups: Tyranitar, Blissey, Snorlax, Gengar, Skarmory, Salamence.
• Mechanics: the physical/special-by-type split & Choice Band, type chart & damage formula, viability tiers.