Pokémon Legends: Z–A
Season 07 Rumination
Happy Z–A Season, everyone!
When this season was announced, I earnestly thought it would be the final season. This season happened to take place over the course of Pokémon Day, which I expected to coincide with a reveal for the Pokémon Champions release date. Champions would later come out a month after this season ended, and this would not be the final season. This context is important because I had to make a decision based on my misconception: Do I...
- Build as powerful a team as possible and try to end on my most successful season yet? Or...
- Build a team around a Pokémon I'll probably never have a chance to play in VGC, meaning this might be my final chance to use it?
The smart option would have been the former, but the more fun option would be the latter.
I've briefly talked about this before, but one of my favorite teams I've ever played was a VGC Justified team. To summarize, Justified was an ability that increased your Atk stat when hit by a Dark-type Pokémon. When mixed with using Beat Up on yourself, you could have a Pokémon with +4 Atk on the first turn of the game; At +4 Atk, that's the equivalent of 6/2 an increase, or increasing your Atk by 300%. That's high enough for simply Burning a Pokémon to only barely make a difference (and you're still stronger than you are by default at this point).
The issue with this strategy? It uses your Physical Attack stat. Could you use a Pokémn whose stats are made for Special Attack? Of course you could, but your Physical Attack will still be lower and less effective until you activate Justified, so if the opponent finds a way to undo or prevent the stat modifier, you're out of luck, especially if that Pokémon's Special Attack is significantly higher.
That is the case for Keldeo, with a whopping 129 Base Special Attack and eh 72 Base Physical Attack.
It's a good thing Z–A doesn't use most abilities, right? This is probably my best chance to make Keldeo work, even if it's probably not the most optimal build.
Table of Contents
Team Comp
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I already explained earlier why I decided to build around Keldeo. Keldeo has access to Calm Mind in this game and can quickly build up the stat points it needs to snipe out Dragons and You'd-Think-They're-Dragons in the distance. All of its moves were either beams-from-a-distance or target tracking moves. It unfortunately has a large number of weaknesses (Electric, Grass, Flying, Dark, & Fairy), but that would be easy to cover.
And by "easy to cover" I mean Magearna covered almost every one of them for me. Magearna halves every single one of those typings except for Electric and fills the exact same role it did last season. Calm Mind, then hit from a distance. It... uh... huh, the exact same thing as Keldeo with better typing. Imagine if Mega Magearna gets Justified; it'll be the only Justified user to naturally resist Dark-type moves with only two (albeit common) typings to worry about.
Finally, we have Rayquaza. Rayquaza doesn't help cover Keldeo's weaknesses (it turns one into 1/4th damage and keeps one), but I wanted to see how effective Mega Rayquaza would be. A better option would probably have been one of the Mega Garchomps or potentially Mega Excadrill to negate that Electric weakness, but I knew I'd use Garchomp in VGC and wasn't sure if I'd ever use Rayquaza.
(Spoiler alert for when Mega Excadrill's ability is later revealed: It looks good on the surface, I don't know if I'd play it but it's definitely something I'd expect to face a lot at least.)
Win Rate & Team Performance
A
First Place |
14 58.3% |
Second Place |
8 33.3% |
Third Place |
2 08.3% |
Fourth Place |
0 00.0% |
| Game | Me | P2 | P3 | P4 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rank Z | #1 | 12 | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| Rank T | #2 | 6 | 7 | 3 | 8 |
| Rank R | #3 | 13 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Rank N | #4 | 7 | 3 | 5 | 2 |
| Rank L | #5 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Rank K | #6 | 6 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| Rank J | #7 | 8 | 12 | 1 | 2 |
| Rank I | #8 | 11 | 2 | 4 | 3 |
| Rank H | #9 | 8 | 3 | 4 | 4 |
| Rank G | #10 | 8 | 3 | 6 | DQ |
| Rank F | #11 | 5 | 4 | 7 | 4 |
| #12 | 8 | 5 | 4 | 2 | |
| Rank E | #13 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 3 |
| #14 | 6 | 5 | 2 | 5 | |
| Rank D | #15 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
| #16 | 6 | 6 | 8 | 0 | |
| #17 | 6 | 1 | 7 | 3 | |
| Rank C | #18 | 7 | 0 | 4 | DQ |
| #19 | 9 | 3 | 2 | 4 | |
| Rank B | #20 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 5 |
| #21 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 6 | |
| #22 | 8 | 4 | 3 | 2 | |
| #23 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 6 | |
| #24 | 5 | 1 | 9 | 4 |
Team Recap & Moving Forward
This team did much better than I expected. If you look purely at the math then it only barely did better than my team last season did. But if you actually break it down by rank, this team only had trouble in Rank D (where I consistently barely missed First Place) and Rank B (which I often end up ruining and still mostly got second places, albeit more one-sided this time). I think with a better Mega choice in the back this could have been an actually good team. Probaably Mega Garchomp, though I'll lean towards Garchomp Z since next season will require only new Mega Evolutions.
If I were to specifically redo this season and had access to a Restricted Pokémon, then I'd probably use Mega Zygarde instead. Hindsight is 20/20 on that one, I'll admit.
Keldeo and Magearna did exactly what I wanted them to do. I can't complain about that whatsoever.