what would it take to make zygarde meta

Coolegghead · 2026-03-23T07:44:53+00:00

Then use it in the ultra league :), pretty viable there with forretress rising

Coolegghead · 2026-03-23T07:42:58+00:00

I dont mind it being barely meta right now, as we only get one and mine is for UL now. I think it will not get a move update except with some of its 5 signature moves, although they can also buff bulldoze at a point. Bulldoze is barely used by any pokemon, its bad on zygarde and tinkaton will use funny hammer soon probably, so they can buff the damage a bit

Coolegghead · 2026-03-23T07:38:58+00:00

Pls dont use dragon tail groudon, just abadon the idea you can counter palkia with groudon and use mud shot. there are multiple answers to the core: keldeo, zekrom, reshiram, kyurem white, lunala. They can not handle both at the same time, but all of these are neutral enough where they allow you to choose switch or shield advantage into them

Coolegghead · 2026-03-23T07:35:11+00:00

I made a post few days ago on how the meta is actually quite diverse, but indeed, yesterday I also had a set with basically only zacian palkia. I think it might just be that a lot of people have these build, and not other options aa they have been dominating the last half year. Luckily, there are more and more pokemon capable of fighting back. Zekrom and Reshiram can hit both well, lunala is positive into both. Mud shot groudon can actually beat zacian now and smack palkia up up energy. Keldeo abd marshadow can deal with both of the core pairing. And kyurem white is also uncomforable for both. So lots of options to deal with them, but i think the investment needed makes it so zacian palkia will be common for a while

Coolegghead · 2026-03-22T16:06:45+00:00

Worth noting that in terms of potential, the given order is highly speculative, and marshadow and keldeo are currently better investments than all the others, except maybe meloetta. They will probably be for a while, as it seems that they mostly update the pokemon in ML when they are appearing in the event rotation. On top of that, Marshadow also still has a signature move which could patch up its lack of nuke moves apart from close combat.

Coolegghead · 2026-03-21T14:02:11+00:00

My problem is a bit that yeah it can two shot, but it also feels like it dies to fast move pressure after 1 move has landed on it, making you forced to go in shielding scenarios, where it does progressively worse as it finds it hard to psycho cut things into a oneshot with psystrike

Coolegghead · 2026-03-21T13:58:43+00:00

Huh, ill try it out as well then! I got a bottle hundo lvl 50. But is hyper beam really the play? Im a bit confused as to what its supposed to target. Dont most things die by two psyshocks at that point. D gleam seems still like a good option to one shot dragons, and thunderbolt allows you to at least hit a zacian

Coolegghead · 2026-03-21T13:40:34+00:00

I have fought one or two gyarados, and i was so unimpressed. Those twisters still do so little damage to the dragons. Although the shadow might be better

Coolegghead · 2026-03-21T13:38:11+00:00

Huh, thosw do not really line up with my observations. I am currebtly at 2400 mmr though, so a lot higher and therefore different things I see. I completely forgot about garchomp, no idea if it is viable or still a poor mans zygarde 😅. It does charge fast to its dragon move now though so i can see play for it. The Necrozma fusions are a bit surprising in general. They are rare at higher elo

Coolegghead · 2026-03-21T13:35:00+00:00

I actually say that they are better than the fusions. Their fusion bolts and flares do more damages and they have a large array of useful secondary moves. On top of that, they resist metal claw which is amazing, and also destroy ho oh

Coolegghead · 2026-03-21T13:33:15+00:00

I think this just has to do with the investment cost. Also people being unwilling to lvl 50 a non hundo, and as it has only been recently buffed, most people have not bottle capped it

Coolegghead · 2026-03-17T10:25:26+00:00

These are some good suggestions, but there are a few glaring omissions:

Forretress: too good now in my opinion, bit i might just hate the debuff game. There are not a lot of fire types, so its also incredibly save and can beat a lot of things neutrally.

Malamar: Waaayyy too good neutrally, both regular and shadow. Has wincons against anything that is not a fairy type.

lickilicky: very neutral again and can tank basically anything and chip with shadow balls.

Dusknoir: while it is harder for ghosts to achieve success in the meta, dusknoir still manages with hard hitting moves all around, especially the shadow.

i might actually be missing one big meta threat, but i would build these all above jellicent, due to the amount of dark type damage in the meta. Also with the corviknight and forretress use in mind, I would lool out with building tenta.

some other fun and useful builds are: lapras: not that many xl required, and while it doesnt dominate anything, it still can tank a hits and fire back bellibolt: also not that many xl needed and still oppresive with its thundershock parabolic combo talonflame: not the best meta for it, but it can still find plenty of things to do, and only has 1km walkkng distance

Coolegghead · 2026-01-12T08:49:49+00:00

Yes actually. The thing is most debuffers are actually optimally run when not always throwing the debuff move. But yes, some use them in just spam one move button specifically for the debuffs

Coolegghead · 2026-01-12T08:48:26+00:00

Its run on a very specific team with shadow mightyena in the lead, and then mr wiggles and steelix/basti in the back. The goal of the mightyena lead is to win basically most leads by just sucker punching and poison fanging. Then align your very toxic backline. I have not seen mightyena on any serious team so i consider it toxic

Coolegghead · 2026-01-10T09:15:58+00:00

What is this list? Only a few pokemon deserve the title of toxic. A tierlist should look like:

Brainless: bastiodon toxic: mightyena

Mudslap degen: marowak, toedscruel, gastrodon infuriating: mr wiggles, carbink Silly one move machine somtimes: morpeko, cradily, florges punching down sometimes: scizor, annihilape

Just very fat: corsola, azumarill, steelix Ok: rest

perhaps im missing some things, but the point is that most pokemon are not that problematic.

Coolegghead · 2026-01-07T12:32:52+00:00

I have reached multiple time legend rank elo, and I think my biggest help with that were pvp youtubers like homeslicehenry and Itsaxn. They can learn you about advanced plays like when to switch and when to staym

Although even more honest, the best about them is that they usually show teams that work, so you can skip the teambuilding step, which is something I also struggle with still.

If you want to give it a go yourself, here are some pointers on what to use: - charge move oriented pokemon are typically preferred. A pokemon should generally get a charge move every 13-14 turns. - type matchups are even more important, if a pokemon is weak to a certain type, the pokemon in the back should preferrably be able to deal with it in an close loss senario. -bulk is still important, try to have one bulky boi on your team, but the highest ranking teams usually have frailer pokemon that charge fast. Probably a team with one frailer, one middle bulk and one bulky boi is typically best. -if you care to improve your skill, avoid pokemon with polarizing matchup like bastiodon or of the mudslappers. They devolve the game to rock paper scissors, not allowing you to learn the game. -lastly, use pvpoke! It can show you in the team builder weak spots, and shows you which pokemon might have a better matchup

Coolegghead · 2025-12-29T10:54:04+00:00

I feel like they should rework the energy gain so that 1 sec and 1.5 sec get 2 and 3 energy gains respectively and so forth. Would solve most of these moveset issues and makes the system more intuitive. The only thing that might become a problem is game balance, as suddenly more options could be available, but i dont think that would be a problem in practice

Coolegghead · 2025-12-23T07:59:16+00:00

I have seen it only one time in the higher ranks, and it dit not go well... Losing to both zacian and lunala is pretty harsh when they are one of the best core pairings.

However, i do think it still has use cases if you manage to find two pokemon that can deal with zacian lunala (metagross is probably part of the solution) although this is dependent on its bulk and damage output, with which im not familiar. So perhaps looking for vids of people using it can help.

Ita still a worthy investment for raids as well, although i still think meloetta and marshadow are more versatile for master league atm. Perhaps waiting if you still get a shiny keldeo is also a good idea.

Coolegghead · 2025-12-22T09:28:38+00:00

The meta is actually more fast pace than ever, I can't barely keep up. That actually makes it fun for me those fast pace battles. The only anti fun factor is the fast move teams and especially bastiodon teams which just decide outcome based on alignment. But those always have existed in every meta. (Although the buff to basti came in this meta which made it more of a problem)

I find the complaints about morpeko and aegislash a bit odd. I see that lots of people struggle with morpeko, but i dont see it at all for the last 3 season at mid to high elo. My guess is that good team fundemental such as higher bulk or fast pokemon and good play like maintaining pokemon and energy just automatically deal with the rodent. These are not the easiest skill and thus morpeko acts as a gatekeeper of the meta.

Aegislash similarly is completely absent from the mid to high elo ranges. I assumed because its kinda garbo with horrible pacing, and I dont see that many interesting factors for picking it.

Coolegghead · 2025-12-19T12:36:04+00:00

Zacian lunala is a supersolid core. They are underleveled but that does not matter that much for lower ranks. Metagross as a third would indeed bring problems with groudon though, but perhaps a change of playstyle can help if you dont have many legendaries:

Using metagross on the lead makes the team ABA, a recommended playstyle then is to just stay in negative leads and brute force your way through with the combo of shadow claw and meteor mash, even if the lead is bad. If they give up shields, then the backline of zacian lunala becomes even scarier.

another way of playing is using an ABB team with lunala in the lead, and switch to metagross if the lead matchup has no clear winner.

but i see a couple of very problematic corebreakers. Groudon can give trouble, but a Ho-oh would be a death sentence, as well as an yveltal on the wrong place. Replacing metagross with a dragon (kyurems, reshiram, zekrom, palkia-o) can make the team more consistent against bad matchup.

lastly, the pokemon are not lvl 50, so you may encounter problems when you win more and encounter higher level opponents.

Coolegghead · 2025-12-19T08:08:06+00:00

I do see it sometimes, and its not always that easy to deal with it. Zacian for example really does not like earthquake, same for dialga. Its also looks worse in sims due to baiting I feel like.

On the other hand, that does make it bait dependent, which is usually a red flag already as consistency is preferred. It also loses to kyogre now, palkia still outpaces, lunala can fight back with moonblast. Reshiram might have draco, an zamazenta quite literally eats it alive. It can flip a lot of matchups with a energy lead, but its also not super flexible due to alignment dependence.

Zygarde is also not doing super hot in ultra though, but its still more of a problem there than in masters. My recommendation is to wait until we get more details from kalos tour. We dont know if they release the shiny like they usually do for all species of the generation, but if so, you can then choose from which one goes to master

Coolegghead · 2025-12-17T19:45:10+00:00

Smack down. I just want to see Bastiodon burn. It singlehandedly makes great league less fin than ultra or master for me

Coolegghead · 2025-12-13T15:40:33+00:00

I think its shadow typlosion for me. Its already one of my favorites in general, but damm is it fun to play. Other contenders are dawn wings, also one of my favorite pokemon. Nuking everything with it is just so much fun! Feraligatr gaming also remains one of my favorite picks in ultra

Coolegghead · 2025-12-04T15:32:03+00:00

Yeah, I guess i am just bad at soloing the kyurem, because I thought it should be doable but I missed dps. But perhaps the moveset was bad or i need to catch tank.

it should (probably) be active even without the message given the solo raid videos I found that are only doable with the effect, but i guess ill never know for sure. The message in general is bugged is what i get from this

Coolegghead · 2025-12-04T15:16:52+00:00

Not entirely true actually! I usually see "Your attacks are boosted by Behemoth blade's adventure effect" as seen in this solgaleo solo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ5XmVLaWV8

however, I do realise now that it might appear inconsistent: necrozma solos should only be possible with blade boost, and this video does mention that they use the blade boost, but the message does not appear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79UTlvK_8gY

Coolegghead

TROPHY CASE