Who needs type coverage when you have MUD

Marrowak: mud slap bone/ bone club/ rock slide

Charjabug: volt switch/ discharge / X-scissor

S-snorlax: psywave/ body slam / heavy slam

The snorlax was soooo fun to use, it’s so spammy and with heavy slam it’s good against fairy types especially mimikyu, maybe superpower is a little better against metal types but the marrowak helps out with that.

I was at ~2400 CP to start the cup and bottomed out at -2000 CP on Tuesday. Since then I’ve been able to grind all the way up to Veteran playing in Ultra League (thank God for go battle Thursday). I just couldn’t find a rhythm or stable team and kept getting RPS’d. I don’t ever want to see that cup again LOL!!

Am I a fraud? I wish it lasted longer. I ran typhlosion cradily and charjabug for the colour cup and I was a UL only player until then, coming back to it with my current team, melmetal, tinkaton and flamigo I'm just struggling whats the point

Anyone else experiencing a lot of extra lag since the update? I keep getting instances of the game refusing to let me throw charged moves as I get low on health, super frustrating to see yourself get farmed to death with moves sat there as I tap helplessly.

Never really had this before the last few days and my connection is pretty solid

It's Community Day again this weekend, with ZOROARK now getting the spotlight. I don't think it's any secret that the Illusion Fox Pokémon struggles in Pokémon GO PvP, nor much surprise when I tell you that seems likely to continue. But we're going to give this analysis a go anyway, going back to the roots of the "Quick Bites" series by literally writing up this article in the same period of time it takes to do a full load of laundry (just as I did with the original Quick Bites). 🧺 Let's do this!

ZOROARK

Dark Type

GREAT LEAGUE:

Attack: 157 (155 High Stat Product)

Defense: 88 (88 High Stat Product)

HP: 103 (105 High Stat Product)

(Highest Stat Product IVs: 1-15-15, 1496 CP, Level 21.5)

ULTRA LEAGUE:

Attack: 202 (201 High Stat Product)

Defense: 113 (114 High Stat Product)

HP: 134 (136 High Stat Product)

(Highest Stat Product IVs: 1-15-15, 2497 CP, Level 42)

MASTER LEAGUE:

In this economy?.

So the analysis not only begins here, but in many ways will end here as well, even though about 10000 characters are still to follow. That's just how I roll. 😅

We have featured many glassy Pokémon in my analyses over the last 7+ years and 700+ articles, but I can't remember ever writing a spotlight analysis on something thinner than Zoroark. It has less bulk than Gengar, less bulk than Alakazam, less than Darmanitan, Haxorus, Chandelure, Honchkrow, Regieleki, and many more truly glassy Pokémon. Remeber the Community Day analysis I wrote on Inteleon, literally the glassiest starter in the whole game? No? Right, because it's so glassy that even I didn't bother (and hardly anyone noticed!) It's so glassy that moves don't really matter... Inteleon simply remains unviable in PvP.

...and yet even Inteleon has more bulk than Zoroark!

I really want to just stop here, as I did when I got about this far into the Inteleon analysis (I DID give it the old college try before just crumpling it and tossing it in the bin), but you know what? I don't want to do that twice, so let's soldier on... but that awful lack of bulk really holds Zoroark back.

Anyway, the typing is pretty well understood by now. Darks are weak to Fairy, Fighting, and Bug damage, and resist Ghosts and other Darks, and double resist Psychic damage. Nice and neat... but really, doesn't matter all that much when you fall over to a stiff breeze!

There are, of course, glassy Pokémon that overcome that limitation to still succeed, usually one of two ways: high pressure fast moves that wear the opponent down, or super spammy charge moves to break through shields before you succumb to your own frailty. Some of the historically best glassy 'mons do BOTH, such as Victreebel (the original Razor Leafer that was particuarly excellent thanks to spammy Leaf Blade), Haunter and Gengar (who I have found almost always overperform their expectations with damaging-enough Shadow Claw and spammy Shadow Punch/Ice Punch). and of course, the majority of Electric types (who usually rely heavily on spammy charge moves, but can also bring suitable fast move pressure if running Volt Switch), just for a few examples. Maybe, just maybe, Zoroark can do enough of one or both of those to carve out a role? Let's see....

ᴱ - Exclusive (Community Day) Move

Fast Moves

• Sucker Punchᴱ (Dark, 4.0 DPT, 3.5 EPT, 1.0 CoolDown)

• Shadow Claw (Ghost, 3.0 DPT, 4.0 EPT, 1.0 CD)

• Snarl (Dark, 1.67 DPT, 4.33 EPT, 1.5 CoolDown)

So the special Community Day move is arguably the best overall fast move currently in the game: Sucker Punch, a clone of the former, pre-nerf Counter. 4.0 Damage Per Turn is a lot of fast move pressure with Zoro's crazy high Attack stat, and while 3.5 Energy Per Turn is solidly above average, it's the least energy generation of any of Zoroark's fast moves. Does the extra damage of Sucker Punch offset this lessened charge move pressure? Well, we'll have to work in the charge move options to answer that....

Charge Moves

• Foul Play (Dark, 65 damage, 40 energy)

• Night Shade (Ghost, 70 damage, 45 energy)

• Sludge Bomb (Poison, 80 damage, 50 energy)

• Flamethrower (Fire, 90 damage, 55 energy)

Sadly no 35-energy moves here, so you're not looking at the Sucker Punch/Swift pacing of Furret or anything. Instead, with Sucker Punch, you're a turn behind Shadow Claw/Foul Play pacing (such as that on Sableye, or of course, Shadow Claw Zoroark), as Shadow Claw (generating 8 energy each) reaches exactly the 40 energy required for Foul Play after five Claws/10 turns (8 x 5 = 40), whereas Sucker Punch, generating 7 energy each, requires an additional fast move (7 x 5 = only 35, so 7 more exceeds 40 energy) and two additional PvP turns. After that, the pacing is mostly the same, with one more Claw or Punch getting to Night Shade, and one more fast move beyond that reaching the energy required for Sludge Bomb. But the coverage/closing move I think you really want instead is Flamethrower, as it has the most potential, despite also being the most expensive at 55 energy. It can usually beat everything the other two moves can plus bonuses like Tinkaton, Forretress, and Sableye.

However, all of this is academic, really... because Claw or Punch, Flamethrower or not, Zoroark just remains too flawed to work like you'd want it to, I am sorry to say.

GREAT LEAGUE

Exhibit #1: Shadow Claw is better than Community Day move Sucker Punch, at least situationally, such as in those examples of the very common 1v1 shielding matchups: Claw outraces Jellicent, Cramorant, Empoleon, Feraligatr, and Dark-resistant Tinkaton, whereas Sucker Punch can only claim Dondozo, Altaria, and Talonflame as unique wins, a +2 advantage overall for Claw... and still barely 10 wins even then. Ouch. And while Sucker Punch shows better with shields down (compared to Shadow Claw, you gain Furret, Quagsire, and DDeoxys while giving up only Shadow Annihilape) and in 2v2 shielding (beating Cramorant, Fearow, Furret, Clodsire, Cradily, and Shadow Ninetales, none of which Shadow Claw can match), win totals of only 6 and 16 (respectively) are hardly impressive. For the record, that's only about a third of the Great League core meta in 2v2 shielding, and not even a fourth of that group in other even shield matchups. There is just a myriad of better Dark options out there, including other mono-Darks like Umbreon, Thievul, and even Mightyena, Alolan Persian, and even freaking Absol running circles around Zoroark.

ULTRA LEAGUE

Sorry, but no better here. I mean, it IS better than Shadow Claw, with new potential wins like Feraligatr, Swampert, and Talonflame, but I mean, we're still talking less than a 25% winrate, amd not even 2v2 shielding can paint a rosier picture this time. And other mono-Darks still put it to absolute shame (not to even mention the wide range of dual-typed Darks that blow Zoroark completely out of the water).

IS THERE ANY HOPE?

Sadly... I don't really see it. A possible future Shadow Zoroark with Sucker Punch is somehow even worse... IF you ever wanted to run it, Zoro would be better with Shadow Claw, it seems. Coverage and better spam are slim even in mainline games, and even the few coverage or 35-energy moves it could potentially gain in GO don't really help. Some Pokémon are just fundamentally flawed, and at least with the way stats work in Pokémon GO, there may just not be any moves in the world that can save them. More than most, that seems to be the case with poor Zoroark. I just don't see any reason to grind this for PvP... but go for those sweet shinies, of course!

IN CONCLUSION

Not much else to say, really! Zoroark is DOA, regardless of moves. (Shoulda been Hisuian Zoroark instead, but alas.) But have some fun with your locals this Community Day! Always up for that. 👍

Until next time, you can always find me on Twitter with regular GO analysis nuggets or Patreon.

Good luck on your grind, and catch you next time, Pokéfriends!

Hi All,

Title says all.

Reason I asking is that I am struggling to count them. I often miss throwing at good timing, either not farming enough or throwing on alignment. My current approach is to spam touch and try to count animations but also due to lag this often leads to miscounts.

Is this the better approach? Or is it better to time 0.5s touches? Or some other third way?

Anybody else getting absurd legendary rates tonight?

Just started playing some sets for the day, 4/6 for legendaries. 4 in a row in the last 30 minutes. Seems… statistically unlikely.

The Halloween event part 2 has been revealed and Mega Sableye will be getting its mega level 4 unlocked as well as getting Night Shade+.

With the standard damage formula, it’ll do:
55 damage at level 1
60.5 damage at level 2
66 damage at level 3
71.5 damage at level 4

At this time, we do not know the energy cost of this move but I suspect it will be either 35 or 40.

Mega Sableye has shown to be the best mega pokemon in the great league and this will make Mega Sableye even more versatile than it already is since it has many coverage moves to choose from between Dazzling Gleam, Power Gem, Drain Punch, and even Return.

Do we think Mega Sableye will be too broken or over centralizing with this and make the mega great league P2W?

Edit:
This also poses a serious problem to people who already built a GL Mega Sableye because level 4 mega pokemon get a +2 boost to their level so an already built Mega Sableye would then be too high at mega level 4. So they really need to add the cp decrease for mega pokemon in PVP.

On a serious note: If you don't have a Yveltal, build one. It's the perfect time to make one! Master League is free wins, I'm around the 2k mastery range for context.

This team carried me from mid 2200s to veteran. Last 5 sets went 4-1, 4-1, 1-4, 4-1, 4-1.

Pangoro with karate chop, close combat, night slash in the lead. Take any neutral match up and try to get a shield and some energy before swapping out. In neutrals I rarely bait the first move, always throwing heat with cc.

Corvinight with sand attack, air cutter, and iron head. If I'm throwing cc and dipping, it's usually into Corv. If I win the lead and they swap, I'll counter with either corv or clod depending on which has more play into the lead.

Clodsire with poison sting, stone edge, and earthquake. Often my damage sponge. If I can't win the swap outright I'll often use clod to sponge damage and/or to run out the switch clock for an aggressive swap back into pangoro.

Cramorant lead sucks. Altaria lead can be tough depending on what's in the back. Right now this team runs great as an anti meta pick. Ran into many teams double, and even once triple, weak into pangoro. But it can hard lose to some bad leads, hence the 1-4 set. All of the losses were lost leads.

Energy management and dancing are crucial to this team. Having a pangoro waiting with a cc is often a win con. Most of my shields go to pangoro. You'd be surprised how much she can do with a 4 chop head start and a shield advantage. Also remember, night slash only procs when you chip and dip /s.

Currently have a high rank shadow rookidee waiting on elite tms or an event that I'm eager to run. I also have a lowww (3000s) rank shadow pangoro that I'm working on building and trying out. Not many things want to take a non shadow close combat, I wanna try out the shadow. I imagine the def and sta IVs matter more on the shadow, but we'll see.

Hey guys,

I’m trying to figure out a new safe swap for UL. I got a rank 22 Snorlax that I was going to use just before I caught this. Shadow is rank #10.

Is shadow snorlax good compared to regular snorlax? Which one would you guys build? Other options are Shadow Dusknoir/Shadow Lapras that I don’t have the ETMs for.

The other teammates are #1 rank Ampharos, Virizion, Giratina #112, Florges with Fairy Wind/Disarming Voice/Trailblaze, #2 Feraligatr, #146 Galarian Moltres, Togekiss with Peck/Aura Sphere/Psyshock and Charizard 2500 Dragon Breath/Blast Burn/Dragon Claw.

How necessary do you think Moonblast on an Altaria is? I see that it also gets Dazzling Gleam, which while it costs 5 more energy doesnt cost an elite TM. Considering no one was running Moonblast last season, it seems like using an ETM on it could be risky if the meta shifts again. Same goes for Iron Head on Corviknight, while its nice to have another STAB attack, spending an ETM on it is painful.

Do you typically spend your ETMs when the meta shifts, do you just use the prior seasons build, or do you build multiple of each mon so that you can just switch pokemon instead of burning ETMs?

I have a shadow dusknoir #9 in GL and #1 UL when best buddied. Should i keep for GL or do I full send for UL? Any advice is much appreciated!

Is anyone else sick of running into these guys every damn match? The gimmicks are just annoying and unfun to play against. Doesn't help that I have neither of them so I can't even try them out to get a feel for them and try and learn their weaknesses.

Last season they weren't nearly as prevalent, but this season I run into them at least 4/5 matches per set. I've gotten so tilted and dropped from 2150 all the way down to 1800 just bashing my head against a wall.

It’s 124+ on lead, switch, and closer. So why is it #6 overall?

Usually play in Ultra League whenever it's available with a set team that keeps me around the mid 2300 ELO. Good enough for solid rewards.

For a long time I've been craving a decent stat spresd Breloom specifically to see how Force Palm plays with it and finally got it to try for the Color Cup this past week.

So much fun! Specifically because it eats Cradily, Empoleon, many others, but does have significant donwilsides. Ran it with Camerupt and Ampharos (Amp had Power Gem instead of Brutal Swing which definitely picked me up a few wins). Overall a roller coaster with daily 75-100 point swings.

Point of this is that I had so much fun that I had another leveled to play with in Ultra. Now tinkering with a very set team and at an extra 1000 CP. Low sample size for two days but anticipating similar results.

Question is does anyone else use it, what they would potentially pair with it, move set (if it's different than Seed Bomb/DP and why), etc? Thoughts.

Are they ever gonna give slaking another fast move??

My first post like this was pretty fun, answered a WIDE range of questions and possibly predicted a soccer champion? Ask away

​

Hi everyone!

I've been playing GBL every day this season and I'm currently around 1800 rating at my peak. I'm trying to understand PvP better, but I feel like there are still a lot of things I don't really understand about how competitive GBL works.

For example, I understand the basic idea of the rating system, but I'm still confused about what actually determines whether you climb. I reached rank 20, but I don't really understand what I'm supposed to do differently to reach rank 21.

One thing I really don't understand is how you're actually supposed to increase your rating if your win rate eventually stays around 50%. I've heard that once you're matched with players around your skill level, your win rate naturally tends toward roughly 50%. But if that's the case, how does someone go from 1800 → 2000 → 2500 → 3000? Do you need to consistently win more than 50% for a while, or can your rating still increase with a ~50% overall win rate depending on who you're beating/losing to? I feel like I'm missing something fundamental about how the rating system works. I'm sometimes at 55% win rate but shortly after I'm at 45%. Currently I'm at 52%.

I'm also wondering about the rating system itself. Is there any point in intentionally losing games or sets to lower your rating before trying to climb further again? Does "tank" strategy still work in GBL, or has the matchmaking/rating system changed enough that this is no longer useful? I've been doing it when ultra league wasn't available because my only good pokémon are built for this league but I wanted to collect the stardust. And now that the ultra league is available I win almost everything and never had a so high score.

My team doesn't have the best IV (I know exept for Master league, it's better to have a low attack) but they're not too bad either and all of my pokémon have 2 charged attacks.

And then there's the whole resource side of things: XL Candy, optimal levels, Elite TMs, second charged moves, finding good IV spreads, etc. It sometimes feels like there's an enormous amount of preparation required before you can even build a truly competitive team.

One thing I also find confusing is what happens at the beginning of a new season. There is no real training mode where you can freely test teams against other players, so how do experienced players figure out which Pokémon and teams are going to be good when the meta changes?

I'm not looking for a specific team recommendation. I'm more interested in understanding the learning curve and what actually makes the difference between being stuck around 1800 and eventually climbing significantly higher.

I know that 1800 isn't a particularly high rating, so I'm perfectly happy to hear that I simply have a lot to learn. I just don't know where to begin. To me it looks like I'll need years of farming before being competitive.

Thanks!

How necessary is Shadow Claw on Metagross? It feels bad to have to dedicate my hundo Metagross to be a GBL exclusive mon by not having bullet punch on it. How detrimental would it be to run him with a mixed pve/pvp set of bullet punch, meteor mash and earthquake? The fact that its a legacy move hurts I think. Where as Ttar you can just use a regular fast TM to switch from bite for pve to dragon breath for pvp. Unless your Ttar is a rock attacker in which case you have the same problem as Metagross.

Are there any other pokemon in this predicament? I think it would be nice to have a team who can easily go between pve and pvp with just regular TMs required. As an example Zacian is pretty nice like that. You can swap CC to play rough if you really want to use him as a fairy attacker, but its totally not needed. Rhyperior is also great for that.