by Doc – Owner, Founder, Groudon Is Cooler
As the Legends: Z-A 1v1 server has likely moved on to other small metas like Little Cup until the DLC hits, we are now coming upon the time in every metagame’s life that content creators enjoy the most… Wild speculation about the future! Please bear in mind that this information will include, and mostly consist of, leaked upcoming Pokémon for the Mega Dimensions update. Massive, unforgettable spoilers are ahead.
…
Seriously, spoilers ahead.
…
Okay, you’ve accepted the spoilers. Let’s assume that the metagame, now that there are over a dozen legendaries and mythicals available to be used in the DLC update, has legalized all legendaries and mythicals starting off and expects to suspect test them later. Basically, everything in this post is hypothetically available for use. This will also serve as my disclaimer – beyond looking at the leaked Pokédex, I don’t know about anything not publicly available besides the leaked Pokedex. If there are new game mechanics, new moves, etc that have not been released publicly by Game Freak, I’m unaware of them. So be nice.
We will also still assume that the items clause, where only one of each item can exist on a team, permadeath, Infestation ban and the one Mega Evolution clauses are still in play.
Mega Rayquaza
Okay… So who’s the most powerful Pokémon at this point? Currently, Yveltal, Xerneas and Zygarde are all banned from play while Diancie is legal – this is because Yveltal and Zygarde are so bulky and powerful they dwarf out the rest of the meta, and Xerneas is pretty powerful as well thanks to Geomancy. Also, screw Xerneas. Diancie, meanwhile, has a double weakness to Steel and a bunch of other weaknesses, and just hasn’t been… useful. Diancie aside, we have so many more legendaries and Megas coming, so will any of them power creep their way up to Yveltal or even Zygarde’s power level?
I think Yveltal’s level of power will become much more normalized, but the power creep won’t be enough for something like Mega Rayquaza to become legal. While it’s hard to say exactly who will be more powerful, Mega Rayquaza and Zygarde will most likely be banned. Mega Rayquaza runs a base stat total of 780, with 180 attack and special attack, and his only major type weakness being his double weakness to Ice type – but if you’ll recall, in Generations 6 and 7 Mega Rayquaza did not need a Mega Stone to evolve, just a move slot. We are likely to see another scenario where Rayquaza enters the battle holding a berry to reduce Ice damage just like some current Garchomp sets, uses Dragon Ascent to Mega Evolve, and from there he is the most broken thing in the game. As Mace Windu would say, he’s too dangerous to be left alive!
Zygarde, meanwhile, keeps his obscenely tanky 700+ BST in his 100% Forme, and obtains a suspiciously large and girthy cannon when he Megas that boosts his Special Attack to a very modest and humble 216 base stat. (Do you think he’s compensating for something?) So I think we can assume neither of them will be in the meta.
Regular Ol’ Rayquaza
I’ll admit that I’m not sure what to say about Rayquaza beyond that his Mega will be banned. He’ll definitely cover himself either with Assault Vest or a Yache Berry to cover his Ice double weakness, and having Dragon/Flying STAB makes for an absurdly powerful generalist that’s hard to beat, especially when he doesn’t have an Electric weakness like most flyers. It’s plausible that he may be banworthy even without his Mega. Options like Stealth Rock that have historically knocked him down a peg are significantly less viable in this game too, so…
I could imagine a scenario where, hilariously, Diancie serves as a nice counter to Rayquaza, as his Flying type attacks are resisted and his Dragon type attacks are useless, while both Fairy and Rock are super effective on Rayquaza. However, in the main games Rayquaza can learn Iron Head. If he gets that move, then Diancie becomes entirely dependent on very well-timed Protects, if she’s viable at all.
The Other Two
Up next I’ll consider the other two members of the weather trio – are Groudon and Kyogre going to be broken? Well… I don’t think so. They’ll sure be good, though. They were some of the most powerful options available back in the day, but that was due in no small part to their ability to set weather upon entering the field. Let’s assume for a second that they still set weather through use of Sunny Day and Rain Dance, but they no longer have the other effects of their actual abilities (you’ll recall they aren’t in Z-A).
Primal Groudon
Primal Groudon would probably be midtier at best, as he’s packing a double weakness to the Water type that was previously made irrelevant by his ability, and he also has a weakness to the Ground type (which is objectively hilarious). With 100 HP and 90 special defense, all it would take to crush Primal Groudon is a nice Surf to the chin and then he’s either an instant switch out or gone for good… and I’ll bet you Kyogre will be right there to deliver that. That double weakness is killer, and unlike Mega Rayquaza he cannot hold a berry to mitigate it. Primal Groudon only becomes possible if Kyogre is entirely banned, and even then… Swampert’s still kind of an obstacle.
Now, you can make the argument that he’ll reduce the effectiveness of the Water type to basically only being singularly super effective against him instead of double super effective, so he’ll be more viable than I’ve suggested, and that’s a fair point. But consider this – everyone and their mother has Water type attacks, and many of them have Special Water attacks. He’s bulky, but I don’t expect that he’s bulky enough to fend off, say, Greninja, or Totodile… or Kyogre. We can’t ignore that at the end of the day Kyogre is super effective against Primal Groudon, rain or shine.
Primal Kyogre
Primal Kyogre, however, is a different story. While Primal Kyogre has similar stats but rearranged, with 100 HP and 90 physical defense, there’s not that many physical Grass or Electric options to put him down (as I explain in a second). Unlike Groudon, he remains purely a Water type so there’s not a whole lot that he needs to sweat over… pun intended. I can imagine a scenario where, depending on the available moveset, Kyogre is a centralizing force in the meta due to his restrictive typing, wide range of options (let’s assume he has Ice Beam and possibly Thunder/Bolt, which he pretty much always does) and absurdly generous stats in everything but physical defense. Primal Kyogre is the one to keep an eye out for, and so long as he has Ice Beam or a similar Ice-type move he’s got the coverage he needs to squash a good chunk of the meta under his sheer weight.
What about regular Groudon and Kyogre?
Let’s pretend for a moment that weather can be set by Groudon and Kyogre, and that it has basically the same effects in these games that you would expect translated from the main games – type advantages, move changes and so on. Suppose it’s through Sunny Day and Rain Dance instead of happening immediately upon switch-in, because abilities are gone.
Groudon
If Groudon has Sunny Day, and sun produces the same type advantages that it does in the main games, then options like Solar Beam suddenly become quite viable. A Plus Move Solar Beam already shoots off pretty quick. When Solar Beam is used under harsh sunlight in the main games, it shoots off immediately – how quickly might Solar Beam shoot off against an opponent when the right conditions are set?
I know Groudon is expected to be a lethal Ground type attacker, and his access to Earthquake does make that a reasonable prediction… But we can’t ignore the possibility that he may turn out to be a very fierce Grass type attacker. The Grass type offensively has been non-existent in the meta up to this point, due in no small part to the omnipresence of Steel and Dragon types that can simply ignore them, and the lack of need for Water types. If we have a Ground + Grass type attacker of this magnitude, I can’t honestly say what happens. It does seem likely that this gives him great ammunition against Kyogre specifically, who seems largely unthreatened otherwise.
Additionally, the sun would nerf Water type moves and boost Fire type moves, at least until the weather is overridden by someone else setting weather. So Groudon users would have to carefully weigh whether they would want to include other Steel types on their team for fear of boosting Fire type moves against their own team and potentially becoming vulnerable to a Salt Cure (more on that later). Pretend for a moment we dropped Groudon into the current meta – you would not want to run Groudon alongside Skarmory, because you’d be boosting Fire type moves against the best Pokémon in the game! That’s a bad idea.
Groudon might pair well with Steel types, as, just like in the existing meta, the Ground type basically stuffs whatever counters the Steel type (besides Fighting). Remember how Metagross and Garchomp were paired extremely well, and Metagross was eventually replaced with Skarmory? Garchomp covers both of their problems pretty effectively. Well, Groudon does the same thing with Steel types, by and large, it’s just the rest of the impacts of Groudon that make him question bringing a Steel type on as his secondary.
Kyogre
Kyogre, meanwhile, would be an ideal buddy for somebody running a Steel type centric team. Kyogre setting rain would result in Fire moves weakening, and Water moves becoming stronger, placing more pressure against Ground type users to switch out or face a flash flood, and basically negating the super effectiveness of one of the three counters to a Steel type, so it need only worry about its Fighting weakness. Additionally, Kyogre setting rain would cut the power of Solar Beam in half, shunting Groudon if he were on the other team. So there’d be pressure on Groudon’s part to either be the second one on the field, or (if weather is set using a move and not automatically) to get Solar Beam off before the weatherman gets out his umbrella.
Kyogre only needs to be afraid of Electric types and Grass types, so pairing him with a Dragon type partner is also a pretty good idea. While there’s plenty of options available (don’t say Garchomp – I know he’d probably still be the best option), one wonders if it would not be prudent to consider pairing him with somebody like Baxcalibur to switch into (Virizion and the Lati twins also come to mind). Alternatively, Swampert seems like a stellar option – he’s immune to Electric, but can still apply pressure to Groudon on both types. He just has to watch for blades of grass coming his way, lest he die.
Not that I anticipate Kyogre or Swampert will have much to fear… Aside from Sceptile’s Leaf Blade posing as a possible Grass type threat, and the possibility of Virizion or Groudon Solar Beam, I don’t anticipate there will be a lot of Grass type interference in the meta. Nor do I anticipate many Electric types either – Zeraora has most of his base stat total invested into speed, not power, and I don’t see hardly any other Electric types in the leaks. Certainly nothing worth fretting over (Toxtricity pun). It’s entirely possible that we end up in a scenario where the Electric type is rare, having basically only been represented by Ampharos, Raichu, Eelektross and the one or two types that emerge from the DLC, and those Electric types simply aren’t strong enough to really do much more than everyone else. That would be a difficult outcome, and would likely result in Kyogre centralizing the meta around itself. I’m hard pressed to find something that can kill a Keeogree, besides the obvious Gyarados Crunch.
I do think, to conclude my comments on the weather trio, that if weather can be set, functions like how one would expect it to based on the main games, and it stays out for at least 30 seconds, the weather trio will centralize this metagame around themselves. They are absurdly bulky, absurdly powerful, and may have the ability to dictate type effectiveness even once they’re off the field.
Alternative Weather Setters
I’ll stick in one comment on Baxcalibur and Garganacl while we’re discussing weather. Most people forget about Baxcalibur, as he’s the pseudo legendary Dragon from the Paldea region, which will take several years before everyone realizes they were wrong for disliking, were mindlessly following the negativity of the moronic content creators that told them to talk trash on it, and go back to Scarlet & Violet with all the affections it deserved in the first place.
But I digress.
Baxcalibur is an Ice/Dragon type, granting him a resistance to Water, Grass and Electric, and neutrality to Fire. In the main games, Baxcalibur can set snow, and that’s his primary use. In the snow, Ice types gain a 50% defense boost and a speed boost, but no types are affected in terms of power when their weather is up. That’s a pretty great set of type resistances for someone who can also set weather.
Garganacl is primarily known as the “Salt Cure guy” because he has a form of Toxic that is significantly more effective on Steel and Water types than on anyone else. While I imagine Salt Cure would be extremely effective at shunting Steel and Water types, that’s not why I mention him here – I mention him because he has the ability to set Sandstorm in the main games, which boosts the defense of Rock types by 50% and does chip damage to anything that isn’t a Rock, Ground or Steel type Pokemon. Between Sandstorm and Salt Cure, he’s quite the threat to Water types (though admittedly weak to them as well).
I mention them because it’s conceivable that, if someone wished to reset the weather without putting their legendary at risk, they have the option of throwing out one of these less central weather types. Let’s say you are running Groudon, and you want to create an environment where your Groudon can switch in, baiting Kyogre to switch in just in time to receive a Solar Beam hit – you would toss in Garganacl, set up weather or Salt Cure, and threaten the Kyogre in the way of Groudon coming in. Kyogre switches out upon seeing the weather/Salt Cure, Garganacl brings in Groudon, and Kyogre sees a chance for an easy KO so he comes back in… just in time to take that Solar Beam hit. There’s some element of synergy here. My point is that there’s other weather options available in theory, and other weather setters, and they might function in some creative team building way to supplement Groudon and Kyogre.
Amiibo Doctor 
I agree, Groudon is cooler
LikeLike