by Doc – Owner, Founder, Is Praying That Stall Ends Up Balanced and Not Boring Like It Is When Umbreon Is In the Main Games
In my last post regarding the second Legends Z-A 1v1 tournament, we examined the overall usage of all the Pokémon between the 18 trainers that participated (this one). There were a few surprises, chief among them being the prominence of Chandelure, but nothing that stood out too much… Yet. I took the liberty of going to the bracket itself and making my own usage list from the top eight trainer placements instead of everyone’s placement, and what I got was a relatively unusual data set compared to what you would expect given the current state of the meta. Here is my data released below:
See that? Compare that to what you saw yesterday:
That’s right – Umbreon, Chandelure, and Skarmory are the most popular Pokémon among the winners, but Umbreon and Skarmory weren’t that popular among everyone else. Beneath them are the very expected and predicted Garchomp and Metagross, but still, for less than half of the teams to be running what is currently believed to be the most powerful Pokémon… They must not be the most powerful Pokémon! I think this is a pretty surefire sign that the nature of the 1v1 meta is sophisticating, and sophisticating quickly, and so too are the top players.
Skarmory’s not all that surprising, so let’s break down Umbreon and Chandelure a bit more than we did yesterday.
Umbreon and Chandelure: Stall?
Umbreon and Chandelure both participate in stall one way or another, with Umbreon being probably the more potent stall of the two (you’ll notice all four users of Umbreon made it to top 8). Umbreon runs both screens, perhaps a Toxic and Moonlight, perhaps Shadow Ball, Wish, or any other of his whole host of moves. He has such a wide utility move pool compared to other Pokémon that it’s difficult to see how you would be able to counteract those options without your own Umbreon stalling them out, preparing with something like Safeguard, or bringing a specific Umbreon counter (Lucario?) just to make sure he can’t get you. Toxic is presumably a requirement for this set, but everything else can likely be up to the preferences of the user.
Chandelure, meanwhile, can pull double duty both as a general special attacker and as cleanup crew for stall, especially with Mega Chandelure. Mega Chandy’s got that immense Sp. Atk stat that I mentioned the other day. It’s not so much a stall Pokémon as it is support for a stall Pokémon, and Whirlipede seems to be the favorite pairing for those two. That’s a fairly complicated discussion that’ll require me to watch some footage and interview some people, so we’ll talk about that in future content, and if this pairing takes off then we’ll see the only viable middle evolution in the meta emerge from it.
Either way, holy cow! Umbreon and Chandelure being two of the three most used in top 8, that’s pretty crazy. I’m more concerned about Umbreon being corruptive to the meta than I am Chandelure, though. Based on what I watched in the finals, where both teams ran an Umbreon stall set and ended up trying to stall each other out, it seems to me that without dedicated Umbreon counter options sets could easily turn into Toxic, screens, and running away. That’s kind of the fighting game aspect of competitive Legends Z-A as compared to other Pokémon games – matchups don’t matter if you’re out of range. And since both players have the same reticle range, you have the option to play keep away and burn out the clock.
Gallade? Gallade.
Beyond that, there’s really nothing unusual about seeing Garchomp, Metagross, Glaceon, Gyarados and Clefable in the top 2+ spots… But Gallade! Gallade, of all Pokémon, came from nowhere to occupy two of the top eight slots. I’m stealing content from my future self by saying this here, but he was also in both of the top two teamsheets specifically. I don’t know what his moveset was, but considering he has extremely wide physical attack coverage typings available to him, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was the general coverage option should there be an unexpected attacker. Still, we won’t know for sure until next week’s tournament which will feature open team sheets, so we’ll check back then.
Excadrill Excuses Himself
I only just realized as I was about to hit “Publish” on this post, but… where’s Excadrill? Seriously, nobody’s using him. It’s not clear if that’s because he was only useful for his Steel-typing and Metagross filled that role easily, or if that’s because Ground just isn’t needed thanks to Garchomp taking that role, or if people are just more excited about running other Pokemon. Admittedly, he doesn’t have anything that really shines against the most used Pokemon in this top 8, so it’s not absurd that he’d be absent, but still… that was quite a switch up from last week and the week before. I never did post that first tournament analysis I promised last week but if memory serves, Excadrill had quite the presence in that one. It was enough that in the earliest days of the meta it looked like he’d play a large role in beating other Steel-types and keeping Metagross down, but that’s evidently not the case.
Gyarados… Is Here.
Gyarados makes me sad. I’m glad that at least two of them made it to top 8, because hey, I really juiced this guy up last week. But it’s looking like he’s not as viable as some of the other top placers. You’ll notice that of the 7 uses of Gary Dos… only 2 of them made the cut. That’s an astronomically bad ratio.
It could just be that some entrants were trying to play Gary like it was the FFA meta, and Gyarados is pretty good in FFA but that playstyle won’t work in 1v1. It could be that there’s a lot of Electric protection now. I think both of these are reasonable, but mostly… I just think there’s less necessity for Gyarados than there was. Need to hit Fire and Ground types? Oh, no you don’t anymore, because Excadrill isn’t here and Garchomp isn’t weak to Water. There’s no Fire types, either. Until we see something like Emboar emerge as a counter to, say Drampa or Umbreon, or Chandelure to become a staple in the meta to suffer under Crunch, I don’t think we’ll be seeing much of Gyarados in the spotlight.
Other Meta Comments
There were a few interactions I’d like to point out, specifically regarding Viathan and his performance. Viathan won the tournament, but I think part of the reason he did that is because he has spotted a Pokémon that seems to be overlooked by everyone else – Drampa. His Drampa is running Heat Wave, Ice Beam, Earth Power and a fourth move that I wasn’t able to identify. That is obscenely good type coverage, because it covers Metagross, Garchomp, Skarmory, Excadrill and it does so from a very bulky Dragon/Normal type. You wouldn’t think he is bulky, but during one of his matches he tanked a Close Combat from Emboar and survived to win the interaction. Not bad for a 485 base stat total. I don’t know what kind of role Drampa would play beyond being a catch-all option for a predicted unpredictable switch, but much like Gallade he seems to have the ability to dole out special attack damage above his pay grade. We’ll see if more Drampa is to come.
Of course, Viathan also relied heavily on Metagross in the matches I watched and rightly so, as Metagross being his lead is a pretty safe bet. It forces your opponent not to be weak to whatever you’re offering, and Metagross doesn’t have to worry about that nearly as much as the other options. Just… Make sure your lead has an answer for him.
Overall, having watched some of the battle footage and looked at some of this data, I don’t think this tournament told us that there’s too much different going on, the meta is just expanding. More roles and more loadouts are being experimented with, and as people are getting a feel for what they have to prepare for they’re all preparing in different ways. Yes, we’re probably still going to see Metagross, Garchomp, Gyarados being prevalent (I have my doubts about Gyarados though thanks to more Electric usage coming into play) and those three are being joined by Clefable, Skarmory, Umbreon and Chandelure. It’s a mark of a healthy meta when there are more viable options for a team than there are slots for a team, and I think we are well equipped for that scenario.
Amiibo Doctor 