by Doc – Owner, Founder, Is Expecting To Look Back On This Post In a Year and Go “Wow, We Didn’t Know Anything Back Then”
I wrote yesterday a piece introducing people to the early competitive 1v1 Pokemon Legends: Z-A meta insofar as it currently exists. There’s a lot up in the air but there’s generally some solid agreement that Garchomp and Gyarados are great, and some people include Metagross and Excadrill, and the meta waterfalls from there into a broader mess of less-concrete placements that are still up for debate. I don’t anticipate this disorder will last too long. It seems to me that there’s so much incentive to counter these specific Pokemon that everyone will plan to have an answer for these, and that while maybe these Pokemon remain the best in the meta until the DLC releases in February, much like Gen 3 OU Tyranitar they’ll be kept down by their competition centralizing around them.
Oh, and here’s their competition:
This is my personal Glaceon, though I’m nowhere near the first person to spot the potential with Glacey. Glaceon, packing Freeze-Dry and Shadow Ball, is double super effective against Garchomp and Gyarados (though only single super effective against Mega Gyarados) and many of their counters like Altaria/Mega Altaria, and can check Metagross with Shadow Ball. He’ll still lose the 1v1 against Metagross, but holding Focus Sash at least lets him survive a hit to cut Metagross out of the game with a Ball before both parties switch.
The exact EV builds would have to be ironed out so it can fare as well as possible against other types of attacks (I don’t think a berry would help here, as the Ice type is still vulnerable to… everything else) and that part of the meta will have to shake itself out, but at the very least this shows that the top players in the meta aren’t without theoretical counters, even if they are glass cannons.
Amiibo Doctor 