by Doc – Owner, Founder, Hopefully It’ll Be One of Those Long-Term Permanent Metas Like Gen 3 OU Or Something
I’m not usually the type to play competitive Pokemon (though Jimothy Cool is a good Youtuber to listen to), but when Legends Z-A came out I had this urge to produce a tier list of some kind for it based off of whatever niche minigames and strats I could find, much like the Tera Raids tier list I spent hundreds of hours putting together. Yeah… aside from Rogue Mega Evolution repeat battles there’s nothing to do that on.
Until now! A Discord has been formed for Pokemon: Legends Z-A competitive 1v1 battling, and I’ve taken it upon myself to dig into the early meta as best I can and get a feel for however it shapes out. There’s a tournament set to run every Sunday, so I’d encourage you to hop in the server and start discussing! It’s really quite a fascinating thing to watch unfold.
Competitive Legends: Z-A Discord Server
The Early Competitive Legends: Z-A Meta
There’s two things to remember:
- The meta is in flux, because much like Pokemon competition in other games, your ability to win is often determined by what your opponents bring to the table.
- The early meta seems largely determined by a handful of Pokemon, primarily:
- Garchomp
- Excadrill
- Gyarados
- Skarmory
- Electric Types
- Water types
Results may vary, of course, as this thing is just a week and a half old and there’s only one tournament that’s occurred thus far. I just watched the finals of the first tournament (Angel v. Person, best of 3, Person’s victory), and neither player ran Garchomp but both had Gyarados, and only one ran Mega Gyarados. This shouldn’t be too surprising, as while Garchomp has precious few counters, all of whom can be stopped by a Steel-type, Gyarados’ Ice Fang shuts him down fast if he doesn’t switch. So if a player were to run Garchomp and, say, Excadrill, they’d have to contend with Gyarados, a Pokemon that answers both of those quite handily.
As is the case with Pokemon, things counter things that counter things, so I don’t expect this framework to last long. But it’s still a great start for the meta!
For posterity’s sake, here is Angel’s teamsheet and the clips of Angel’s perspective in the tournament:
Amiibo Doctor 