**To use Salamence effectively in the current VGC format, leverage its Dragon/Flying type typing and build around its top-performing movesets.** Salamence appears as a prominent choice in the current Pokémon Champions format, with usage data pulled from competitive teams, tournament results and Showdown-ready pastes tracked by MetaVGC. This page brings together its most common moveset, nature, ability, item, teammates and type weaknesses so you can judge where Salamence fits in a VGC team.

The most common build highlights Aerilate, Salamencite and Timid 2/0/0/32/0/32. Its frequent moves include Protect, Hyper Voice, Tailwind, Draco Meteor, Double-Edge, and Dragon Pulse. Treat those choices as a data-backed starting point: they show what players are bringing, while EV spreads, Tera Type and the final move slot should still respond to your expected matchups.

Defensively, Salamence has important weaknesses to ice 4x, dragon 2x, fairy 2x, rock 2x. That matters during teambuilding because a strong composition needs ways to cover those attacks without giving up offensive pressure. Partners such as rillaboom, sneasler, incineroar, kingambit, and basculegion-male appear often because they can add positioning, type coverage, speed control or safer switches into common checks.

MetaVGC tracks recent teams using Salamence. Open the Salamence teams page to compare complete structures, copy Showdown pastes and see how players combine Salamence with other Pokémon in the active format.