Pokemon Unite: Top Win Rate OP Pokemon Breakdown Analysis

Recently, some statistics revealed on Pokemon Unite data bases showing off the win rates for Masters top 100 players. These stats essentially tell players the strongest, most powerful picks in Pokemon Unite. At least in regards to the top levels of play, since the Pokemon Unite Top Win Rate focus around only the top of the top master ranked players. This piece will analyze and break down why these specific picks/builds are so strong. But keep in mind, these strategies are only broken with the proper knowledge and team play. Click here to see the percentiles for the win rates of specific picks, and here for the highest win rate builds.

A Fair Warning

Be warned, these picks are definitely really good. But a 78% win rate over 202 games, no matter how realistically good a player is, definitely manipulates the match results. They’re not necessarily cheating, but these stats undeniably indicate some form of exploitation.

What does this mean? Pokemon Unite allows entire teams to queue up together for ranked games. This places those players undeniably at an advantage over players venturing into ranked by themselves. As most players who play substantial ranked games by now should know, the matching making in Pokemon Unite isn’t perfect. Since the function is built into the game, there’s legit nothing stopping such fierce competitive try hards from abusing it.

In other words, the game attempts to match people up in the same circumstances. But there’s not enough premade 5 man parties to find games, so the match making inevitably places that particular 5 man into unsuspecting duo or even trio queue parties. Perhaps even solo. And even these players match against another 5 man, the chances of that 5 man actually having played together and discussed/planned strategies is highly unlikely.

When a team of 5 stays on comms, with strategies that have proved to work time and time again, they’ll inevitably win more games. And since these players attempt to secure their rankings in the ladder, there’s no way they would even try to risk losing in solo queue, where such variables remain fickle. In essence, players cannot control randoms in their games, an inevitability of solo queue.

In essence, even though these stats make these pokemon seem super busted, and therefore abusable for ranked games, they’re not nearly as powerful as the numbers make them seem. The pokemon are definitely really strong, but very much not enough to warrant the absurd stats. Anyway, here’s a breakdown of the pokemon’s strengths and playstyles.

Lucario

This pick is really interesting. According to game8, Lucario sees play in 22% of games within the top 100 Master Rank players. That’s the highest play rate out of every pokemon within this pool, and boasts a 78% win rate. Why is Lucario so strong, when the pick received multiple nerfs?

The thing is, Lucario carries leads in oppressive ways. This rings especially true during the early game. From the very beginning, Lucario gains access to an area of effect crowd control move that pushes the enemy away. Abusing this with his fast movement alongside score shield essentially allows Lucario to bully the enemy from early on. By constantly dunking on the enemy, and pushing them away to take control over Wild Pokemon on their side of the map, the pokemon diminishes the enemies’ impact and delays their scaling.

Since winning in Pokemon Unite relies heavily on scaling fast enough to contest those big team fights for Dreadnaw, Zadpos, and even Rotom, the Lucario pick is quite oppressive. Time to get into his moves.

And when comboed with bone rush and power-up punch, Lucario excels at permanently locking down the enemy. Both moves push the enemy around, allowing Lucario to take control of the tides of a fight. Since this can all be realistically performed on multiple targets at once, a skilled Lucario play creates some pretty unplayable circumstances for the enemy. This allows the rest of the team to essentially capitalize on the clear weak point in the enemy’s composition.

Greedent

A perfect pokemon for exploiting the opening created by Lucario is Greedent. This pick performs a job that most Pokemon Unite players are completely oblivious of. Even the typical Master rank player doesn’t know how to deal with this, and it’s counter jungling. By simply walking into the enemy’s jungle, Greedent screws up the enemy’s scaling by being a complete nuisance.

Taking players off guard, especially from the early game, Greedent proceeds to steal the enemy’s camps and just bother and prevent the enemy jungler from scaling. Typically, the jungle, also known as center, is a role meant for pokemon to scale. Therefore, a lot of mid lane pokemon tend to be ones requiring some base solo farming to evolve. Greedent effectively denies this with this strat.

What makes Greedent so great at performing this function is his sustainability alongside immunity to crowd control. For those who don’t know, Greedent literally becomes unstoppable when he uses Covet. Snorlax can jump on it, Slowbro can spam its CC, but Greedent will proceed to run as if nothing happened. In addition, the CC Greedent provides while just driving around makes for unbearable play circumstances for its enemies. After all, it’s really hard to ignore a squirrel that drifts through at 100 miles per hour, hitting all in its path.

Counterplay

The enemy has two options to deal with this strategy. They can either:

• rotate to help the center laner
• ignore Greedent and let it do as it likes

More times than not, players will attempt to rotate to help the center to help the jungler. But by doing so, especially in the early game, those side laners lose their opportunity to push a lead. After all, Pokemon Unite is all about pushing forward towards the enemy. Only by killing and contesting those wild pokemon, alongside dunking on the enemy team, can a team realistically create opportunities to carry a lead. The moment the enemy team rotates to help, pokemon like Lucario just abuse the side lanes. And Lucario’s specific early game strategy is already so strong on. Imagine if the rest of the team synergized and played off of it.

Eldegoss

This pokemon is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, support in the game. In regards to healing and utility, Eldegoss probably outweighs even Wigglytuff. Why is Eldegoss so strong?

To break down this pokemon’s strengths, taking consideration of the build is very important. Check out the most popular Eldegoss build, according to Unite-db.

For those who don’t know the moves just by looking at the picture, the recommended move set is Cotton Spore and Leaf Tornado. Leaf Tornado increases allies’ movement speed while decreasing the afflicted enemies’ accuracy, while Cotton Spore knocks enemies up in an area of effect. Both of these moves do not heal Eldegoss’s allies, so why is this build seeing play in the top 100?

Remember the note from before: The top 100 plays typically abuse full parties. And in a full party with something like Lucario and Greedent, they’ll likely be stomping the enemy team. What they want and need in a team composition is a pokemon to accelerate their plays, to increase the speed at which the game snowballs. What better way to do that than additional movement speed and area of effect CC?

When playing solo queue, this Eldegoss isn’t the greatest. In fact, it can be really difficult to pull off, since Eldegoss can’t heal its allies. And if the allies just cannot communicate with Eldegoss’ play objectives, huge problems begin to arise. But in the top 100, where players more often than not either recognize the strategy in play or are in direct communication with one another, the moveset puts in work.

Cotton Spore deals amazing damage, and the massive area of effect knock up and damage creates wonderful opportunities for the allied team to follow up. In addition, Leaf Torando speeds allies up. This is huge for increasing team synergy, especially with pokemon like Greedent and Lucario.

For those inexperienced with the support role, and specifically Eldegoss, avoid this build. It’s definitely not for amateurs, requiring immense game knowledge.

Dragonite

[related: Dragonite Build]

This pokemon will be the last one mentioned in this analysis of Pokemon Unite top win rate picks. All the previous pokemon aren’t necessarily damage carries. They deal good burst damage, but they begin to fall off when it comes to dealing consistent damage over time. Dragonite fills the role of a consistent damage dealer rather perfectly, filling in the gaps of team composition.

What makes Dragonite a good damage dealer, despite technically being classified as an all-rounder? Well, the previous three pokemon function pretty decently during the early game. Dragonite, on the other hand, definitely requires some levels and evolutions to scale into the game. But once it does, the auto attack damage alongside mobility on the pokemon is overwhelming. Combo this with Hyper beam, which deals really absurd amounts of damage.

Why is Dragonite stronger than other conventional damager dealers, like Cinderace? Well, this is thanks to Dragonite’s high health stats and map pressure. For a pokemon that deals so much damage, once achieving its final form, Dragonite becomes surprisingly tanky. And since the pokemon’s base health stats are rather high, it doesn’t suffer like Cinderace from the risk of being 100 to zeroed by assassins like Zeraora. Lastly, Dragonite’s ultimate is broken.

When getting used to Dragonite’s unite move, it seems a little too delayed and therefore hard to time. But the more a player practices with it, the more its uses really open up. Its Unite Move allows Dragonite to pressure distances up to halfway across the map. And if players understand the tides of the team fight, maximizing Dragonite’s Unite Move proves very beneficial.

In Conclusion

As previously mentioned, take the list of the Pokemon Unite top win rate picks with a grain of salt. They’re definitely strong choices, but not without the proper team coordination. These stats are definitely influenced by spamming premades, queuing up as a full five man. Therefore, don’t expect such win rates when trying the pokemon. What they do provide, however, is an insight as to what the most effective way of manipulating the meta is. In essence, these picks are definitely still quite strong and abusable, but definitely still require specific conditions. Hopefully this analysis helped break down the Pokemon Unite top win rate “OP” picks in a way that makes more sense.

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