Type - Fire / Dragon
Stats - 78 / 130 / 111 / 130 / 85 / 100
Ability - Tough Claws
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Notable Status Moves:
Dragon Dance
Roost
Swords Dance
Will-O-Wisp
Notable Attacking Moves:
Dragon Claw
Earthquake
Flare Blitz
Outrage
Thunder Punch
Suggested Set:
Charizard @ Charizardite X
Ability: Blaze
Level: 50
EVs: 32 Atk / 2 Def / 32 Spe
Jolly / Adamant Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Flare Blitz
- Dragon Claw
- Roost
For right now this is probably the most optimal set. Coverage such as Thunder Punch and Earthquake are extremely unnecessary as common bulky waters, such as Rotom-Wash and Primarina don't actually like switching into its stabs to begin with. Meanwhile typical checks that you would've needed the coverage for (Slowbro, Toxapex, Heatran) either fell off due to losing important moves or simply do not exist at the moment. Dragon Claw is also way too important to give up due to the need to hit Dragonite, Dragapult, Garchomp, and Rotom-Wash hard. One could argue dropping Roost for coverage on hyper offense structures, but Roost is extremely valuable for maintaining longevity against threats such as Clefable and Slowbro. Side-moves such as Outrage and Swords Dance are a little sub-optimal since the trade offs (move locking / loss of speed boosting) are harder to compensate for in the teambuilder.
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Pros:
- Combination of Power, Dragon Dance, and its defensive profile make it a very sturdy win-condition for HO and more balanced teams.
- Great at abusing popular Pokemon such as Mega Meganium, Mega Scovillain, Corviknight, and Rotom-Wash for very easy setup.
- Its pre- and post-Mega formes having different typings allow one to setup against things it normally couldn't when Mega Evolving (Excadrill primarily).
- Its pre- and post-Mega formes having different typings allow one to bluff being the more explosive Mega Charizard Y depending on how the team is built. Which can put opponents off guard.
- There are very few common scarf users that match or outrun its speed tier after a Dragon Dance Boost.
Cons:
- Adamant being slower than Jolly Excadrill and Arcanine-Hisui isn't great, but being Jolly can more often than not put one into weird damage roll scenarios (primarily against Clefable).
- Crippling Stealth Rock weakness mandates the usage of certain hazard denial partners (Corviknight and Hatterene) due to the lack of removal options.
- Attempting to mitigate the Stealth Rock weakness by Mega Evolving has a trade off of losing its Ground Immunity and making it susceptible to Toxic Spikes.
- It's extremely susceptible to being Paralyzed by Thunder Wave users as it fails to cleanly KO them from full without picking up boosts beforehand.
- Uses up the Mega Slot, thus in competition with Dragonite. Whos structures can offer more potent sweepers such as Mega Blastoise.
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Partners:
The first two make up the mandatory removal core alluded to previously, covering most of the common setter options except Garganacl. Offensive Primarina is really potent as a tool to wear down checks like Clefable, Rotom-Wash, and Toxapex for Zard-X. Dragapult and Meowscarada are good fast guys to make sure that Xard teams aren't egregiously slow in order to better get out of danger into sweepers like Garchomp and Mega Blastoise. Garchomp and Gliscor offer good non-passive checking to Ceruledge, which is broken. More offensive options could include Samurott-Hisui or Azumarill.