After season four’s content drought, Pokémon UNITE is unloading a lot of new material for its first anniversary. With a new Pokémon in Glaceon, a major balance patch and the emblem system, what changes are in store for the meta?
S Tier:
- Empty
A Tier:
- Glaceon – 11% (NEW)
- Tsareena – 10% (+2)
B Tier:
- Blissey – 9% (+5.5)
- Dragonite – 8% (+4)
- Zeraora – 8% (+6)
- Lucario – 6.5% (-2.5)
- Machamp – 6% (+5)
- Cramorant – 5.5% (+2)
- Cinderace – 5.5% (+3.5)
C Tier:
- Hoopa – 4% (-14.5)
- Sylveon – 4% (+4)
- Greedent – 3.5% (+/-)
- Gengar – 3% (+3)
D Tier:
- Greninja – 2% (+/-)
- Espeon – 2% (+2)
- Azumarill – 2% (+2)
- Duraludon – 1.5% (+1.5)
- Pikachu – 1% (-0.5)
- Blastoise – 1% (-1)
- Garchomp – 1% (-0.5)
- Decidueye – 1% (+/-)
- Wigglytuff – 1% (+1)
- Mamoswine – 1% (+/-)
- Gardevoir – 1% (+1)
- Mime – 1% (+1)
- Slowbro – 0.5% (-6.5)
Absol (-14.5), Delphox (-6), Snorlax (-3.5), Talonflame (-2), Venusaur (-0.5), Aegislash (-1), Ninetales, Trevenant (-1), Charizard (-0.5), Crustle and Eldegoss all saw no significant usage among top players.
Below is the monthly moving average for the top 10 Pokemon:
Winner: Every Pokémon
The new emblem system is still getting field tested by players to mixed results. So far the two best uses of emblems are on Pokémon that can utilize either increased critical hit chance or cooldown reduction. Combining Razor Claw and Scope Lens with the right emblems can give a 17.1% critical hit rate while combining Shell Bell and Energy Amplifier with the right emblems can give a cooldown reduction of 17%. As players continue to experiment with emblems more optimizations will be found, but for now it’s the wild west.
Loser: Casual Players
While the emblem system isn’t much of a pay-to-win mechanic, players who have put a lot of time into the game and have been stockpiling energy rewards are currently at a significant advantage. Once a player has enough emblems to get all of the color bonuses, they need they should be good, but that could sometimes require 40 or 50 emblems to achieve. For players who haven’t been stockpiling energy rewards that could take a few more weeks to achieve. Everything will taper off soon, and the stat changes aren’t that great, but that doesn’t take away the bad feeling from narrowly loosing and exchange and then wondering if its because the other player was able to get a full white color bonus.
Winner: Zeraora
Zeraora has always been a great Pokémon in this game with one fatal flaw: a level 10 unite move. This used to be common until patch 1.3.1.2 moved all but Zeraora’s unite move from level 10 to nine. While learning a unite move a level earlier likely won’t allow a player to use it more often it does matter in the first Drednaw fight. At seven minutes it is expected that a jungler is able to hit level nine so they can use their unite move in that first major team fight. If the jungler isn’t playing optimally it can be tough to hit level nine, and even playing optimally it is impossible to hit level 10. Milestones matter, and for Zeraora this one is massive.
Loser: Absol
Patch 1.6.1.2 went pretty far in nerfing Absol. The patch even took on a mind of its own and introduced inadvertent punitive bugs that needed to be removed in patch 1.6.1.3. Now that Night Slash’s hit box and life steal have been fixed Absol might rebound a little bit, but with so much else going on it would be surprising if the edgy dog made it back to the top of the heap.
Winner: Glaceon
Glaceon enters the game as the most used Pokémon of the last week, but that comes with a caveat: 11% is the lowest usage statistic for a most used Pokémon in the history of the game (though April 12th was close). This isn’t to discount Glaceon as something suffering from new toy syndrome though: with fierce damage output, this Pokémon is able to absolutely shred fragile opponents and sustain itself decently well through its spell-vamp.
Loser: Delphox
Delphox’s Fire Spin is the bane of a disorganized teams existence; homing in on a player and then dealing damage with an area of effect stun around them can stop a team fight dead in its tracks. Fire Spin can still do that, but both its damage and the time it persists on the battlefield have been reduced. Additionally Delphox has lost its ability to land critical hits with its moves. Delphox is able to utilize the black emblem bonus exceptionally well, but so can other special attackers.
Methodology: This data is collected using both the rankings tab in Pokémon UNITE and the Pokémon UNITE API. A Pokémon is considered a “main” of a player if is it the most played Pokémon in their most recent 16 ranked matches. In the event of a tie or near tie the data will reflect that. If more than two Pokémon are tied, the 32 most recent matches will be considered instead.
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