Unofficial Pokémon Legends: Z-A Season 2 Tournament dominated by Xerneas

The Legendary Pokémon Xerneas is now legal to use in Season 2 of Pokémon Legends Z-A's Ranked Battles, and in a similar fashion to its performance in the Video Game Championships (VGC) from 2016 to 2019, it's swiftly dominating its competition. In an unofficial 32-player tournament run by content creator and VGC player Phillip Wingett (also known as THATSAplusONE), Xerneas appeared on four teams in the Top 8, including the winning team.

The event was won by a player by the name of Mastaroth alongside their three Pokémon of choice: Xerneas, Chandelure, and Metagross. More details on the top teams and most-used Pokémon from the tournament can be seen below!

Winning Team​

Aside from Xerneas' obvious overwhelming power, both Chandelure and Metagross provide great utility to this team as well. As partial Fire- and Steel-types respectively, they both resist the incredibly powerful Fairy-type attacks that opposing Xerneas threaten. These two Pokémon are unfortunately both weak to powerful Ground-type attacks, such as the powerful Earthquakes from Garchomp and Excadrill that defined Ranked Season 1. The team does have ways around this, though, mainly threatening Excadrill with supereffective Fire-type attacks from Chandelure and Garchomp with supereffective Fairy-type attacks from Xerneas.

Xerneas holds the Expert Belt to boost supereffective attacks by 20%, and uses Focus Blast to deal with pesky Steel-type Pokémon, Thunderbolt for coverage, Moonblast for huge Fairy-type damage boosted by the Same-type attack bonus (STAB), and Calm Mind to boost its Special Attack and Special Defense even further. It boasts a huge Special Attack stat thanks to a Modest nature and 252 Effort Values (EVs) in its Special Attack, as well as increased bulk with 252 EVs in HP and 4 EVs in Defense.

Chandelure holds the Charcoal item to boost the damage of its Fire-type attacks by 20% while firing off huge attacks in Shadow Ball, Energy Ball, and Heat Wave, boosting the damage even further after setting up with Calm Mind. It uses a Modest nature alongside 252 EVs in its Special Attack, accompanied by 252 EVs in its HP, and 4 EVs in its Defense.

Metagross holds the Life Orb to increase its damage output by an impressive 30% alongside powerful attacks in Earthquake, Ice Punch, Heavy Slam, and Iron Head. In a similar fashion to the two other members of its team, Metagross' Effort Value investments are rather simple, with 252 EVs in Attack alongside an Adamant nature, 252 EVs in HP, and 4 EVs in Defense.

Results​

#​	Trainer​	Pokémon​
1st​	Mastaroth​
2nd​	Tigeraura_​
3rd​	logue​
4th​	Anarchy​
Top 8​	n7unseen​
	fouriethree2​
	sableyeenjoyer​
	jojov41​

Top Pokémon​

50% Usage (4 Teams)​
25% Usage (2 Teams)​
12.5% Usage (1 Team)​

 

okay so this is stupid. so many people use xerneus but no one uses iance, it is so good. I think

 

okay so this is stupid. so many people use xerneus but no one uses iance, it is so good. I think

It gets oneshotted from 1 singular heavy slam from Metagross

 

It gets oneshotted from 1 singular heavy slam from Metagross

bro I logged in with my greninja and there was a whole gang of xerneas', bro I get so scarred that I have to just hope that the next season will have another op legendary so we can get over this. I don't even care if its mega Rayquaza x, I will never forget about the horrors of xerneus.