Clefable’s Only 2 Weaknesses: How Magic Guard Neutralizes Nearly Everything Else

“Clefable is weak to Poison and Steel.” That’s the answer every quick-reference site gives, and it’s accurate as far as it goes — but it’s also the least useful thing you can know about this Pokemon. A pure Fairy-type with only two weaknesses should be an easy wall to grind down over a long game: land a clean type advantage, chip it with Stealth Rock on every switch-in, finish it off with a burn or a Toxic tick. That’s how it works for almost every other bulky Fairy-type. It is not how it works for Clefable, because its signature ability, Magic Guard, deletes every damage source except a direct hit — which turns “only two weaknesses” from a mild defensive perk into the reason Clefable has stayed in Smogon’s OU tier for over a decade.

This covers the full weakness/resistance/immunity chart, exactly what Magic Guard blocks (and the handful of things it genuinely doesn’t), and the practical answers to actually beating a Magic Guard Clefable — whether you’re fighting one in-game or building a team to break through one competitively. Verified against Fairy-type mechanics (unchanged since Generation VI) and current Generation 9 competitive data.

Clefable’s Full Weakness, Resistance, and Immunity Chart

Clefable has carried pure Fairy typing since Generation VI, and the chart hasn’t changed since:

No 4x weaknesses exist here, because Clefable is single-typed — a 4x weakness only happens when two separate types both take 2x from the same attack, and Fairy has no second type to stack the multiplier with. That already puts Clefable ahead of most walls before Magic Guard even enters the picture. Compare it to Ampharos, whose own weakness chart we’ve broken down separately: pure Electric has just one weakness, Ground, narrower even than Clefable’s two — but Ampharos has no ability erasing hazard and status chip damage, so that single weakness gets exploited over and over across a match. See our Ampharos weakness breakdown for the full picture, or our complete Pokemon type chart for every other matchup in the game.

It wasn’t always this way, either. Before Generation VI, Clefable was a pure Normal-type Pokemon with no Fairy typing at all — the retype (alongside a jump in base Special Attack from 85 to 95) is what gave it this exact weakness profile, the same as every other Pokemon converted to Fairy that generation. Two clean weaknesses aren’t an accident of Clefable’s design; they’re a side effect of Game Freak rebuilding the type chart around Fairy specifically to check Dragon, Dark, and Fighting dominance.

What Magic Guard Actually Blocks

Magic Guard’s official description is short — “protects the Pokemon from indirect damage” — but the practical list is long, and it’s the list that turns two weaknesses into almost no exploitable weaknesses at all:

• Weather damage — sandstorm and hail chip
• Status damage — poison and burn HP loss each turn
• Leech Seed and Curse drain
• Every entry hazard — Stealth Rock, Spikes, Toxic Spikes, Sticky Web damage on switch-in
• Recoil from Clefable’s own moves (except Struggle)
• Crash damage from a missed high-risk move
• Self-damage from Mind Blown or Steel Beam
• Life Orb recoil — Clefable keeps the power boost and pays none of the usual HP cost

That last one is why Magic Guard Clefable can run Life Orb as a damage item with zero downside, something few other special attackers in the tier can do without a recovery move propping them up every turn.

There’s a genuine misconception buried in the hazard/status immunity, though: Magic Guard doesn’t stop Clefable from becoming poisoned by Toxic Spikes — it only stops the damage. In Generation IV, Magic Guard blocked the poisoning itself on switch-in; from Generation V onward, the status still applies, Clefable just never loses HP from it. Functionally the difference rarely shows up (no HP loss either way), but it matters if you’re treating “Clefable can’t be poisoned” as fact — it can be, it just won’t feel it.

What Magic Guard Does NOT Block

This is the part every “Clefable weakness” listicle skips, and it’s the actual answer to “how do I beat this thing”:

• Confusion damage — if Clefable gets confused, the self-hit still counts as direct damage and lands normally
• Direct HP-loss effects that aren’t damage — Pain Split, Belly Drum’s HP cost, and Substitute’s HP cost all still apply in full
• Fainting from Destiny Bond or Perish Song still works — Magic Guard prevents damage, not a scripted KO condition
• And most importantly: nothing about Magic Guard touches the type chart. A Poison or Steel move that lands is still a direct attack, and direct attacks are the one category Magic Guard was never built to stop

Put plainly: Magic Guard doesn’t make Clefable harder to type-match against. It makes every other way of grinding it down over a match irrelevant instead. Those are different problems, and only one of them has anything to do with the two weaknesses in the chart above.

Why This Combination Makes Clefable One of OU’s Longest-Running Walls

Smogon’s own strategy team frames Magic Guard Clefable’s value as role compression: a Fairy-type with above-average mixed bulk (95 HP / 73 Def / 90 SpD) that only takes damage from attacks it actually gets hit by, checking a wide range of threats without needing a second Pokemon to cover the gaps Stealth Rock or Toxic would normally punish. The most common competitive set pairs Calm Mind with Thunder Wave — Thunder Wave cripples common switch-ins like Heatran and Mega Metagross with paralysis, while Calm Mind turns Clefable from a pure wall into a slow, hazard-immune sweeper once the opposing team’s answers wear down. Soft-Boiled or Wish keeps it topped up for as long as the game runs, and current competitive guides still lean on a bulky HP/Defense spread to make that recovery loop reliable.

The hidden ability, Unaware, trades that Magic Guard chip-immunity for a different kind of wall: it ignores every stat change on both sides, which shuts down Swords Dance and Calm Mind sweepers outright regardless of how many boosts they’ve stacked. Smogon notes Unaware Clefable shows up almost exclusively on dedicated stall teams for exactly that reason, while Magic Guard Clefable fits balance and semi-stall builds, where the hazard immunity lets it switch in for free, again and again, next to a Spikes setter doing the actual chip work.

How to Actually Beat a Magic Guard Clefable

The right answer depends on what you’re playing:

Beyond direct super-effective hits, Encore locks Clefable into a support move it’s already used, and phazing (Whirlwind, Roar, Dragon Tail) drags it out before it banks a Calm Mind boost — both bypass Magic Guard entirely because neither deals the kind of damage the ability was built to stop. That same Fairy typing cuts both ways, too: it’s why Clefable hard-walls Dragon-type sweepers like Dragonite outright, taking zero damage from Dragon-type STAB no matter how the rest of the matchup goes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Clefable immune to poison?

No — this is the most common mix-up. Clefable can still be poisoned by Toxic, Poison Point, or Toxic Spikes; Magic Guard only cancels the HP loss from being poisoned, not the status itself. If it’s badly poisoned, the Toxic damage counter keeps climbing in the background even though Clefable never actually loses HP from it — and it still counts as “poisoned” for any opposing move that checks status, like Hex.

What’s the single best way to break a Magic Guard Clefable in competitive play?

Taunt before it sets up. A Calm Mind Clefable with heavy Special Defense investment and Wish support can outlast almost any single answer over a long game, but it has no way to punish Taunt — it can’t heal, can’t set hazards, and can’t boost, leaving it as a pure attacker you can then out-damage with a hard-hitting Poison or Steel move.

Does Clefable have any 4x weaknesses like some dual-type walls do?

No, and it never will as long as it stays single-typed. A 4x weakness requires two types that both take 2x from the same attack, which is only possible on a dual-type Pokemon. Compare that to a dual-type Pokemon like Charizard (Fire/Flying), which is genuinely 4x weak to Rock because Rock hits both of its types for 2x each. Clefable’s single Fairy typing caps its worst-case matchup at 2x, no matter what attacks it.

Key Takeaways

Two weaknesses on the type chart and a near-total immunity to everything else are two separate facts about Clefable, and conflating them is why “it’s just weak to Poison and Steel” undersells what actually makes it hard to beat. Type advantage still works — a direct Poison or Steel hit lands exactly as hard as the chart says it will. Everything else a normal wall relies on to grind an opponent down over time — hazards, status, weather, recoil — simply doesn’t apply here. Plan around that distinction and Clefable stops looking unbeatable; ignore it and you’ll spend a match chipping away at a Pokemon that was never taking that damage in the first place.

Sources

• Fairy type Pokemon — Pokemon Database (pokemondb.net/type/fairy)
• Magic Guard (Ability) — Bulbapedia (bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Magic_Guard_(Ability))
• Clefable Pokedex — Pokemon Database (pokemondb.net/pokedex/clefable)
• Clefable (Pokemon) — Bulbapedia (bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Clefable_(Pokémon))
• OU Spotlight: Clefable — Smogon University (smogon.com/articles/ou-spotlight-clefable)
• Clefable Movesets and Best Builds — Game8 (game8.co/games/Pokemon-Scarlet-Violet/archives/429521)
• Electric type Pokemon — Pokemon Database (pokemondb.net/type/electric)

Verified against current Fairy-type mechanics and Generation 9 (Scarlet/Violet) competitive data, July 2026.

Michael R.

I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.