Incineroar is the best Pokemon ever made. It’s not my favourite – nowhere near, in fact. It doesn’t have the highest base stat total either (530 is pretty standard for a starter Pokemon). But a certain combination of abilities and moves has transformed this anthropomorphic tiger into a beast that can overcome gods.
Let’s look at the stats. No, not Incineroar’s. Like I said, 130 Attack is pretty good, but that 60 Speed is terrible. Failing to outspeed its opponents but not really slow enough for Trick Room, Incineroar should not be viable while sitting in that awkward middle ground. Wait, I said not Incineroar’s stats.
Incineroar is one of just five Pokemon to have been on a World Championship winning team three times in the game’s official VGC format. Sitting alongside Legendaries and pseudo-Legendaries like Cresselia, Thundurus, and Salamence (Amoonguss is there, too), Incineroar has managed this feat in just six tournaments. You read that right, Incineroar has won the World Championship in half the tournaments it has been eligible for.
If you want to see that World Champ difference, 2016 winner Wolfe Glick entered seven Regional, International, or World Championship tournaments last year, according to LimitlessVGC. He brought Incineroar to six of those tournaments. The man widely considered as one of the best Pokemon trainers to ever grace the competitive circuit, who has won ten Regional, two National, two International, and one World Championship, brought Incineroar to 86 percent of his high-level tournaments in 2024.
Note: He won two of them. Both with Incineroar.
Why Were We Scared Of Mega Incineroar?
Incineroar is a scourge on competitive Pokemon. Firstly, it has the Intimidate ability. This is incredibly powerful in VGC, lowering the Attack of both your opponent’s Pokemon by one stage. You can repeat this every time you switch in, meaning that, with good positioning, you can effectively nullify any of your opponent’s physical attackers.
Parting Shot also helps here, a move that doesn’t deal any damage but lowers one opposing Pokemon’s Attack and Special Attack by one stage and then switches Incineroar out. This allows you to reposition in a match, resets your Intimidate, and generally makes Incineroar a very handy Pokemon.
There’s a third crucial move that makes Incineroar so abundant: Fake Out. This priority move doesn’t check for speed, so Incineroar will always go first when using it. It also causes the opponent to flinch, meaning they don’t get to attack that turn. Like Intimidate, you can only use this on the turn you switch in, but combined with Parting Shot or a good, old-fashioned pivot, you can keep pressuring your opponent with this.
A theoretical Mega Incineroar would have access to all of this utility that regular Incineroar has, but then could Mega Evolve on top of it. This means that you could get Intimidate off as many times as you want in a match, before Mega Evolving to change Incineroar’s ability and give it a drastic stat boost, bringing it up to par with pseudo-Legendaries.
If Mega Blaziken is anything to go by, Incineroar would probably reach a BST of 630. If those boosts focused on Speed, Incineroar could switch from a support role to a sweeper mid-match.
Mega Evolution may be a fan favourite mechanic, but that doesn’t make it the most competitively viable. It’s the most unbalanced system Pokemon has ever implemented. Even Z-moves, though horrendously powerful, were implemented into the competitive scene better. Due to the fact that you can Mega Evolve at any point, you effectively have two Pokemon in one plus a surprise attack that can be launched at any time.
Mega Evolving an Incineroar halfway through a match would make the strongest Pokemon ever, stronger. So I thank Arceus that we’re not getting Mega Incineroar in Pokemon Legends: Z-A.
Will Mega Incineroar Be In Pokemon Legends: Z-A?
It’s not looking likely that we’ll see Mega Incineroar in Pokemon Legends: Z-A. I believe that the Legends: Z-A starter Pokemon will get Mega Evolutions, although new Lumiosian forms of their final evolutions are not out of the question either.
I used my best Scott Steiner maths to work out that we had a 33 percent chance of seeing Litten, and therefore Incineroar, as a starter in Pokemon Legends: Z-A. I had some miscalculations in there (I didn’t think we’d have two starters from the same region), but it all came down to Litten, Scorbunny, or Tepig so I must have been doing something right.
It’s rare that other starters are included in games. We might see some of the Mega-capable starters in Z-A, or the original Kalos starters, but Litten seems unlikely. That makes Mega Incineroar even more unlikely. Thankfully, we seem to have avoided this potentially calamitous event. Despite the fact that it looks like we’re finally getting an official Pokemon Showdown that will change competitive Pokemon for the better, Mega Incineroar would have destroyed any semblance of a balanced metagame.
Let’s just hope Mega Emboar isn’t completely broken in its place.
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