The number that describes the format: Incineroar on 52 percent of teams, 25 percentage points ahead of #2
The April 2026 usage data from Pokémon Champions Reg M-A top-level play closed on April 22 with Incineroar at 52 percent of teams, a number that puts him on more than half of all competitive teams the ranked ladder saw this month, and the second-most-used Pokémon of the format at exactly half that rate. Sinistcha at 27 percent. Garchomp at 21 percent. Urshifu at 19. Rillaboom at 18. Whimsicott at 16. The drop from the #1 position to the #2 position is 25 percentage points. The drop from #2 to #20 is about 22 percentage points. The structural gap at the top of the usage chart is bigger than the entire rest of the top-20 combined.
This is not an unusual number for Incineroar historically, it is the highest usage share he has ever posted, but it is not the first time he has broken 40 percent usage in a format where he was legal. Compile the usage data across every format Incineroar has been legal in since 2017 and the numbers are: VGC 2017 at 45 percent (Sun/Moon debut, the format where Intimidate-plus-Fake-Out was first identified as a broken combination), vGC 2019 Ultra at 33 percent (in a format dominated by restricted legendaries, Incineroar still held a top-5 slot), vGC 2020 Sword/Shield at 51 percent (the year he was the #1 teammate on every World Championship podium team), vGC 2024 Reg G at 42 percent (even after Gamefreak deliberately expanded the Regulation format to include more Paldea-dex options), and now Champions Reg M-A at 52 percent. Every format he has been in has posted him at top-5 or higher. Every format where his usage has dropped below 30 percent has been a format where he was either banned or temporarily removed from the legal list.
A 25 percentage point gap between the #1 and #2 pick in any competitive format is a sign that the format is not in structural equilibrium. For comparison, the Magic: The Gathering Modern format considers a card card at 40 percent meta share to be an urgent ban candidate. The Overwatch League considers a hero at 60 percent pick rate to be an urgent balance-patch target. In chess opening theory, a single opening at 55 percent tournament presence is treated as an openly unbalanced line. Incineroar at 52 percent in Champions Reg M-A is, by the metrics every other competitive game uses, a solved problem that the game's balance team has not yet addressed. The question this piece is about is not 'why is Incineroar so dominant?', that question has been answered across five formats of accumulated data. The question is why, after eight years of the same pattern, the dominance has not been addressed.
Incineroar is on 52% of top-level Champions Reg M-A teams, the highest usage share in any VGC format in 8 years
The three mechanics that compound, Intimidate, fake Out, parting Shot, and why the combination is the problem
No single mechanic on Incineroar is broken in isolation. Intimidate exists on 15 other Pokémon in the current Champions dex, hitmontop, landorus-Therian, staraptor, mightyena, pyroar, luxray, arbok, gyarados, mawile, scrafty, krookodile, salamence, zeraora, qwilfish-Hisui, and Ting-Lu all carry it as an ability option. Fake Out is on 20+ Pokémon in the dex including Incineroar, hitmontop, kangaskhan, maushold, persian, meowth, perrserker, rillaboom, liepard, sneasler, weavile, mienshao, and others. Parting Shot is Incineroar's signature move but mechanically similar moves exist, u-turn, volt Switch, teleport, flip Turn all pivot out, and Memento is the high-commitment -2/-2 equivalent on Whimsicott and a few other mons. If any one of the three mechanics were the sole issue, one of the other Intimidate users or one of the other Fake Out users would have taken over the format. None have.
What makes Incineroar the problem specifically is that he has all three mechanics on the same chassis with above-average bulk, a typing that resists 9 of the 18 move types in the game, and a stat distribution that is 'good-but-not-great' in every column so the Pokémon is hard to 2HKO and hard to outspeed-and-kill. Every other Intimidate user is either too frail (Pyroar, staraptor) to survive the KO pressure that follows the debuff, or has a typing that trades badly into the top of the metagame (Krookodile dies to Fighting, luxray dies to Ground, salamence dies to Ice 4x), or lacks the secondary disruption tools (Landorus-Therian has no Fake Out, no Parting Shot, just Intimidate and STABs). Incineroar is the only Pokémon in the dex that combines the passive debuff (Intimidate), the active tempo denial (Fake Out), and the active pivot debuff (Parting Shot) on a single chassis with a defensive profile that keeps him alive long enough to cycle all three over a 5-turn game.
Mathematically, the compound value of Incineroar across a 5-turn game is approximately: -1 Atk drop on switch-in (saves ~33% of damage taken that turn), -1 Atk flinch on Fake Out (saves ~50% of damage taken that turn since the opponent loses their whole action), -1/-1 Atk/SpA drop on Parting Shot exit (saves ~40% of damage taken on the incoming switch-in turn). The total defensive value across a match where Incineroar enters twice (once on lead, once mid-game via pivot) is approximately 120-160% of an extra team member's worth of HP, Incineroar does not directly add HP to his team, but he removes that much effective HP from the opposing team's attackers through his debuff chain. That is the advantage the rest of the dex cannot match. The other Intimidate users do the first part; the other Fake Out users do the second part; no other Pokémon does all three, and it is the compounding of all three that creates the 52 percent usage floor.
The three balance levers that exist and why none of them will be used this season
There are three balance changes that would meaningfully reduce Incineroar's meta share, and all three have been publicly discussed by VGC community analysts for multiple format cycles. The first is a typing change from Fire/Dark to mono-Fire, which would remove the Ghost/Psychic immunity Incineroar currently gets from the Dark side of his typing and add a Fighting weakness, estimated to drop his usage from 52 percent to approximately 28 percent because the Psychic immunity specifically is what lets him pivot into Sinistcha and Farigiraf with no risk. The second is capping Intimidate to one activation per match instead of one activation per switch-in, which would prevent the Incineroar-cycle play-pattern where the same Pokémon switches in multiple times across a game to re-trigger the ability. The third is the obvious one: remove Incineroar from the legal list for Reg M-A, same way Gamefreak has removed other format-dominant mons (Urshifu-Single-Strike in VGC 2021, kyogre in VGC 2022 Reg A, calyrex-Shadow in VGC 2023 Reg C).
The probability that any of these three changes happens during the Reg M-A season is functionally zero. Typing changes to existing Pokémon are essentially never implemented in live formats, gamefreak has changed typings between generations (Clefable gained Fairy in Gen 6, azurill gained Normal in Gen 4) but has never retroactively changed a typing in a competitive format mid-season. Ability changes to existing Pokémon have happened (Gengar lost Levitate in Gen 7) but also only between generations, not mid-format. The only one of the three fixes that is structurally available within the current Reg M-A timeline is a format ban, and Gamefreak has historically reserved format bans for restricted-legendary-tier Pokémon that break the game in multiple dimensions, not for flagship-character Pokémon that are format-dominant but not unbeatable.
Incineroar is a flagship character. He is the starter-evolution promotional mascot from the Sun/Moon generation, he has been featured in every VGC promotional campaign since 2017, he has Pokémon Unite and Pokémon TCG appearances in every relevant set, and he is the default opponent in the Pokémon Stadium 2026 single-player campaign. Banning him from Reg M-A is not a balance decision, it is a marketing decision, and the marketing department has a much stronger institutional voice than the competitive balance team. The 52 percent usage is going to stay at 52 percent for the rest of the Reg M-A season, and it will probably stay at 45-55 percent for the Reg M-B and Reg M-C seasons that follow. Competitive players should build on the assumption that Incineroar is a permanent feature of the format, not a temporary problem to wait out. Every team should have an Incineroar answer because every opposing team is going to have an Incineroar. The 52 percent is not a meta call waiting to be corrected. It is the stable equilibrium of a character design that the people who run Pokémon have decided to preserve.
