How GOOD was Charizard ACTUALLY? - History of Charizard in Competitive Pokemon

it's finally here the remake we've all been waiting for the original fan favorite you already know it's charizard and now before we get into the rest of the intro i just want to mention that i finally get to correct the mistake of what i deem my worst video ever a video titled did charizard actually in all caps suck this was the first video i ever made for fsg and it's abundantly clear that i had no idea how i wanted to structure these videos at the time other than being a very brief retrospective on charizard's competitive history but now with this remake i've come to correct this horrible mistake anyways let's talk about charizard i mean do i even need to say stuff about charizard i mean i will but people know charizard charizard is known by even non-pokemon fans as the coolest and greatest pokemon of all time from its origins as one of the mascots and one of the starters of the original pokemon games as well as ash's old not so faithful and an infamous honorary dragon appearing on champion lance's team in the second generation to the more modern day where it has two mega evolutions out of sheer popularity also it was even the only cantal starter available in pokemon sword and shield before the dlc expansion because i mean it's charizard it has to appear in every pokemon game like pikachu right charizard even appeared in the first iteration of smash bros via the pokeball item and eventually became a playable character in brawl alongside squirtle and ivysaur but then when smash 4 came out it was the only one of pokemon trainer's team to be playable because he's that special the power of nostalgia and popularity charizard boasts rivals and most likely surpasses even pikachus and fans have never forgotten it as seen by its appearance in everything even remotely related to pokemon for the past 20 plus years even a first edition base set psa 10 rated charizard trading card was sold for 150 000 very recently with even lower rated first edition cards costing at least 20 grand each and with these instances we have only seen the tip of the iceberg that is charizard's popularity but is it anywhere near as successful in the competitive realm today we'll find out because we're posing the question how good was charizard actually and in this video we'll be going over these competitive formats [Music] unfortunately the only reason you are realistically going to use charizard in gen 1 slash rby is because he's your beloved charizard if he wasn't your favorite pokemon you would spare him a passing glance unless you came across him while dumpster diving as sad as it may be in the defining pokemon generation where charizard debuted and won all of our hearts the dumpster is where he belongs at least competitively speaking if you have any interest in being successful in this tier even the most hardcore super fan must temporarily quench the flames of their affection because charizard is just not good or worth using at all in this generation charizard is even weak to ice because fire doesn't resist ice in gen 1. and blizzard and ice beams are everywhere to say nothing of thunderbolts and rock slides he's not good defensively against any pokemon and scaring exeggutor with stab fireblast doesn't do much good when it struggles to switch in and then struggles to get through the chansey snorlax ride on zapdos or starmie on the other team now there are worse pokemon for sure and if for some reason your life depended on it then yeah you would probably be able to squeeze marginal use out of charizard it does get swords dance after all however in a real competitive scenario you can easily do what he does with pokemon far better than him that will give great game to game performances as opposed to walking on eggshells and still struggling to make him do damage even offbeat choices like kingler and sandslash are superior in the swords dance role while moltres stabbed fireblast left much more of a mark sadly charizard just isn't at all a part of rbyou it wasn't any good in yuu either with all the waters in the tier however charizard was quite good in rby nu it was a fast fire type letting it abuse fire spin effectively and could threaten would-be fire answer kabutops with earthquake it was a great lead and paired well with the tier's other solid fire types working together to overwhelm their counters now rby nu is actually a pretty new metagame and if you're interested you can go explore it yourself as it's the only singles tier in existence where all three of charizard venusaur and blastoise are legitimately viable anyway in conclusion ou and uu charizard was an unmitigatable disaster but the recent addition of anu breathed life into it and gave it a home in the first generation charizard made a huge leap between generations from unviable gimmick to high maintenance but terrifying threat capable of shredding through any team it got a new special attack stat at base 109 and its old special stat became its new special defense a very respectable base 85. this may not sound particularly impressive alongside 78 hp but with all its eevees maxed out it wasn't bad it also crucially became neutral to ice turning it into a surprisingly solid makeshift jinx check zarg's defensive utility didn't stop there though it was a perfect hair cross answer and one of the best switches to standard steelix however though these were nice qualities that ensured charizard had actual mid-game use its primary purpose was to sweep with one of the most dangerous setup moves in the game belly drum it was dangerous for charizard as well since it halved its own hp but it also matched its attack out to the gsc cap of 999. its lack of physical stat meant it wasn't dropping everything in sight like a source dance marowak or belly drum snorlax might but charizard had several advantages over them first it had a great special attack stat and stabbed fire blasts meaning it easily won't hit kale skarmory unlike marowak and snorlax charizard also had a great speed stat meaning it required less paralysis support making it both more of a mid game threat against pokemon like exeggutor and allowing it to sweep more easily late game of course charizard did enjoy paralysis support as it allowed it to easily bypass the legendary electrics raiku and zapdos and in a pinch the chance of a full paralysis combined with the possibility of a rock slide flinch could potentially let it break past something that would otherwise check it such as sweet or healthy snorlax charizard's final advantage over its fellow 999 attackers was its spike's immunity which meant it could switch in and out of battle without compromising its ability to set up it had plenty of room to set up and sweep thanks to the prominence of resting pokemon within the metagame raiku couldn't do anything to stop its sweep if it was asleep sure charizard needed support but it wasn't anything out of the ordinary paralysis was easy to come by and spread to important targets with standard sets on the best pokemon like body slam or thunder snorlax thunder zapdos and stunsport exeggutor it could also have its counters lured in and exploded on as was done for other sweepers cloister would bait in and explode on starmie looking to spin its spikes away and stelix would curse up and explode on suicune some players made charizard even more dangerous by sliding in added support moves like light screen giving it the game breaking ability to withstand a thunder or surf even at half health as an added bonus charizard didn't necessarily need to actually use belly drum to be threatening the threat of belly drum in and of itself was scary for the opponent but his strong fire blast was enough to leave dents in teams especially as many of them lacked a fire resist overall charizard was a bit on the risky side and didn't fit on every kind of team but with the right blend of team support and aggressive play charizard was among the most devastating pokemon in the gsc ou metagame with the proliferation of amazing new threats that happened to be fireweek such as celebi jirachi and metagross alongside skarmory fortress and heracross getting even better charizard was able to find a nice role in advance ou especially since it packed the excellent base speed tier of 100 the importance of which could have its own video however hitting a lot of pokemon super effectively and being fast isn't enough to be good because these same qualities also apply to typhlosion the third generation was considered the generation of bulky water and other threatening pokemons such as tyranitar blissey salamance and flygon reigned so how was charizard able to succeed well a number of factors first off yes popular water types such as suicune and milotic definitely did not fear anything from charizard however also among those popular bulky waters was swamper who was crucial in staving off the powerful rock types of the tier that its brethren would easily succumb to and swampert happens to have a quadruple grass weakness thus since our fiery friend almost always runs hp grass swamper was actually a charizard weak pokemon it made for some nice pairings and if your opponent had a swamper to handle your choice ban aerodactyl it was unlikely he'd also have a milotic or sweet for your charizard and vice versa as for blissey and tyranitar they were quite vulnerable to one of charizard's main two sets the mixed focus punch variant would make quick work of them especially if it was running substitute in its fourth slot and nabbed one on the switch sometimes it is shooting for dragon claw which hit the dragon's heart and got around the hp ice vs hp grass dilemma although most variants of these two weren't fans of taking repeated fire blasts charizard's other more signature set was the sunny day variant a nuclear bomb of a pokemon with dizzying damage calculations that could even do the unthinkable and destroy its counters pure waters and blissey with fire blast here's how it works first bait tyranitar in and destroy it with duct trio it's not too difficult and you won't want it switching in and potentially ruining what would otherwise be charizard destruction next get charizard in on one of the many things it scares substitute on the switch to a slower pokemon such as the aforementioned counters then sunny day up unless the switch is suicune in which case you switch immediately before it gets a million combines and sweeps you generally forcing sweet to rest whether by peppering it with hp grass on the switch or with other pokemon such as salamance or metagross is preferable before trying to set up anyway if the switch in isn't a healthy suicune use sunny day and then either substitute down until your health is low enough to be in range for both blaze and potara berry or let your opponent knock you there with weak attacks while wailing on them and softening them up for the big blow once you reach this point fireblast is going to utterly eviscerate anything that isn't a flash fire hound you because you need an immunity to not take absolutely horrifying damage from it and that isn't even a good example because hound doom prefers to run an early bird to guard against hypnosis gengar some players eschew hidden power grass and go all in on their fire covers using overheat or even blast burn for the extra push against the waters if the opponent intelligently refuses to break your sub and instead keeps healing simply switch out and try again later charizard isn't the easiest pokemon to use but it's among the most terrifying if done correctly what's worth noting is that even if you can't pull off a sweep with it sunny day is also definitely useful for weakening water moves and removing tyranitar's oppressive sand stream which adversely affects even non-rock steel or ground in the tier which is many offensively it also benefits charizard without the need for the full sub pattaya blaze setup since it alone helps it blow through fire neutral generally bulky pokemon namely clado and defensive zapdos and not weakening yourself with substitute can potentially let you switch into a metagross meteor match and probably knock yourself into blaze pattaya range doing it the only pokemon that can really safely check this set are those that both outspeed it and resist fire blast because anything slower is going to get utterly melted this extensive list consists of starmie and aerodactyl both are admittingly fierce offensive threats but also take a minimum of forty percent from a modest fire blast and are cleanly three-hit ko even if charizard runs timid so as we may have been clear already charizard is a terrifying choice in advance especially when considering how many great pokemon are weak to fire and how well they tend to operate together on teams now of course it's not all sunshine for it well not literally but also literally since the mixed sets prefer to have sandstorm in play to help it with non-swampert waters blissey settlements and defensive zapdos charizard can sometimes struggle to break teams and while it's not completely fragile it's not exactly a defensive stalwart even with brutal weaknesses to common powerful attacks it also faces competition with multrus who is easier to use because it is stronger bulkier and packs the amazing willow wisp as well as other big moves like agility and morning sun charizard's incredibly important higher speed tier as well as access to focus punch and dragon claw and its bomb like low hp weapons make it a high risk but also high reward pokemon overall charizard was one of the best pokemon that could be considered underrated in the third generation not the easiest to use but capable of absolutely slaughtering a huge amount of standard teams and potentially blowing through even the bulkiest pokemon around definitely rewarding for the daring trainer charizard hating stealth rock is one of the most famous competitive pokemon memes of all time and it started here charizard has no niche whatsoever in oh you heatran and infernape are too good and even moltres has an actually decent niche charizard just isn't worth keeping stealth rock off at all costs for that's pretty much all that can be said about oyu sadly poor charizard never had a chance and speaking of moltres it is why charizard does not see much use in the next step down yuyu despite charizard's extra speed being useful to bypass the nature and speed creep wars moltres often finds itself frustrated by regarding pokemon like milotek venusaur and arcanine the power and bulk are just not comparable thus if charizard wants to be used in yuyu it must differentiate itself and it does so by going on the physical side with dragon dance its speed tier is great because it outruns common choice golfers such as rotom and moltres after a boost however it's still not that powerful and gets walled pretty easily in addition to finding it hard to set up safely and it even takes a ton from priority like toxic crows punch arcanine's extreme speed and azumaril and kabutops as aqua jet so frailer offensive teams are rarely too afraid of it swords dance sets are more difficult to wall but are easier to pick off with choice scarfers and while the most extreme variant the substitute selectberry belly drummer technically is the hardest to wall while avoiding choice scarf revenge killing it also has the toughest time setting up safely and must decide between earthquake and thunder punch thus choosing between losing to ryperior or losing to waters and it still loses to priority moves charizard is the epitome of high risk low reward and that's why it fell to end you speaking of venue charizard actually wound up destroying all the weak pokemon there think of the end of step brothers where will pharaoh and john c reilly beat up all the kids on the playground that's pretty much the equivalent of charizard everything is weak and slow and gets cooked by fire blast air slash or hidden power grass with the exception of slow king who is easily pursuited by skunk tank especially defensive regirock is the next best thing and charizard variants that has chewed roost for focus blast would send it packing assuming it hit spinning isn't too difficult in enu but charizard was so strong that even at half health it dominated teams it had plenty of variety in its sets too as it wasn't strictly beholden to running life orb or spec sets it could go with a bulky sub bruce toxic set which was excellent at crippling its defensive answers and if stealth rock was kept off the field it was also a great answer to opposing charizard so overall in spite of the sneaky pebbles charizard was unquestionably the best pokemon in gen 4 and u charizard faced the same problems in bgc as in singles namely a deadly allergy to geology sure there aren't any stealth rocks in vgc but the ubiquity of rockslide was almost worse for charizard to deal with ho'o's usage in 2010 proves that with the right power you could justify bringing a pokemon with such an awful typing but ho'o's power is quite a bit of a step up from what charizard brings to the table even with drought becoming part of ou and charizard gaining solar power it still had no part to play in the weather generation it simply couldn't threaten sand and rain teams the way other sun team staples such as venusaur victini and volcarona could even if the sun team won the weather war if it couldn't function on this super specialized style of team it couldn't function anywhere in ou it had no hope for any sort of niche in yuu or even ru and found itself once more as the king of enu this generation anu was more in the spotlight regarding top players playing it in tournaments and thus charizard was as well since it completely dominated the tier with its special attacking sets it was so good that despite its four-time stealth rock weakness and most teams not even carrying spinners due to a severe lack of them it still was the best pokemon some people even resorted to wartortle just to try and keep rocks off but most teams simply tried to exert enough offensive pressure to either prevent their opponents from setting them up or punishing them for doing so of course there was no stealth rock at the beginning of a game and the threat of charizard leading off and grabbing a ko meant players would almost always lead off with a pokemon that could handle charizard one-on-one like sturdy golem this allowed the charizard user to easily anti-lead the anti-charizard measure with mold breaker stock being a common partner as it could bypass golem sturdy and thus prevent rocks making charizard more dangerous it speaks volumes to how powerful charizard was that it would regularly only come in twice a game and still be considered the best pokemon even when hanging at one hp and if it managed to come in a third time that was usually lights out for the opponent the lack of spinners also worked in charizard's favor to an extent as it became even more difficult to switch into when everything was ravaged by entry hazards once again charizard was the king of nu it was absolutely terrifying and it shaped the metagame around it gen 5 vgc was no kinder to charizard on top of the same problems as before and now had to contend with unfriendly meta games full of heat ran and dragon types two of its biggest weaknesses as a rock neutral fire type heat ran also strictly outclassed charizard and its competition with the genies meant it wasn't anywhere near best in class as a flying type either while it saw some nice usage as a solar power boosted pokemon under sun these strategies were pretty rare with the introduction of mega evolutions charizard not only got a new lease on life but immediately jumped to a place it never been before being not just a viable threat but one of the premier threats in the metagame at the forefront of everyone's tier list being the fan favorite it was charizard got two mega evolutions and in terms of metagame ramifications this made it even more terrifying because it wasn't enough that both megas were exceedingly powerful but also that the opponent didn't know which one it was when first seeing it at team preview and this was especially terrifying because both forms used entirely different sides of the attacking spectrum and thus for the most part had entirely different counters now it wasn't unreasonable to discern what form it was based on its teammates the most notable example was mega charizard why commonly being paired with pursuit but you could never be 100 certain and their power was such that one turn of uncertainty and sending in the wrong pokemon could entirely swing the tide of the game for example if you expected zard y and sent ladies in to check it and desire turned out to be zard x and just used dragon claw you were dead meat similarly if you sent in landorus therian expecting to counter zard x then you would get roasted by zard wise fireblast then there was of course the matter of them being so effective because even if you knew their form they were still quite difficult to check due to sheer strength in the beginning of the generation some players experimented with bulky various who were quite tough to take down with willows crippling earthquake users and with special defense investment it was one of the best counters to thunderus and volcarona however zardax's bread and butter set was always its offensive dragon dance variant its stabs were only resisted by heatran and kum oras megadianci both of whom dropped to earthquake zard also outran the most popular choice scarfer landorus t after a single dragon dance meaning it had an easy time running through most teams hippeldon and slobro increased in popularity largely due to their ability to stave it off over the course of a game the options were incredibly limited otherwise and slowbro wasn't even a true counter without status as otherwise zard would just keep boosting and mow it down scarf ladies started popping up almost solely because it was the only halfway decent scarfer that could outrun and one hit kozar x and of course it was still terrified to switch in zard x fit on balance and hyper offense teams alike and was consistently one dragon dance away from ripping many common teams apart now on to zard y it was famous for having exactly four counters in oyu the lady twins talonflame and chansey so in other words it was uncountable with the support of tyranitar's choice banded pursuit the lady twins were easy to slap on every team but when they were supposed to counter zard y and keldeo who zard y was commonly paired with then they were basically useless as they switch in and get pursuited to death and if they double switched out they wouldn't be able to withstand a second hit from zard y talonflame was great against zard y but it was of course incredibly vulnerable to stealth rock and it wouldn't want to stay in on choice bantar as even a burnt stone edge would do approximately a million percent so tyranitar would pursue it for tons of damage and then it wouldn't be able to switch into zard y anymore chansey wasn't nearly as vulnerable to stealth rock but it would still get pursuited into the danger zone by choice band tyranitar so how did people handle zard y if it was so unbeatable alongside choice band tyranitar while gen 6's hazard removal is famously not great and zara dwight still had his crippling quadruple stealth rock weakness meaning it often had to choose between roosting off the attack or launching an attack it also was not the bulkiest or fastest thing in the world meaning it could be out offense by the many other fast powerful forces in the tier especially other megas like metagross diancie and lapane finally bulky teams could often withstand one hit in a one-on-one and it with status usually thunder away from clefable or toxic from heat wrench however make no mistake a well-supported well-played zard y was one of the scariest sights in the tier whenever it came in there was a high chance it was taking something out the drought zard why summon also made it even more difficult to deal with beyond just boosting its fire blasts and allowing it to use solar beam even choice spec's kel deals hydro pump couldn't kill it from full and tornados tyrion's hurricane accuracy was reduced to a paltry 50 percent zard y was absolutely brutal then again both zards were and much of the gen 6 ou metagame was shaped by their presence regular charizard returned to nu and despite no longer being the tier's undisputed best pokemon it still tore up the metagame up something fierce for the third consecutive generation gen 6 lowered the base power of both fire blast and hidden power grass but zarg's classic life orb set was undeterred it was as menacing to switch into safely as ever as a bonus it had never been easier for it to deal with stealth rock in addition to rapid spin hitmonchan and you also packed several defoggers to get rid of rocks as well as magic bounce zatu to prevent them from going up in the first place zard was held back from true dominance by a few things first the addition of assault vest which allowed pokemon like lantern and hariyama to weather its hits a few times second the increase of faster revenge killers not reliant on a scarf like scythe third pyro and swellow meaning it was easier to out offense and third strong fire type competition in the two pokemon with only a singular stealth rock weakness meg mortar who also had some nice defensive utility with the salt vest and the aforementioned faster pyroar however in spite of this charizard was still a massive threat it was still quite fast it was still strong it had all the coverage it needed especially if it went with earthquake to lure a saltvis lantern and was generally difficult to stop when it got a free turn which wasn't difficult with all the u-turn and vault switch in the tier as well as all the slower grass types charles came in on and threatened out zard wasn't a one-trick dragon either it's bulky source dance roost set offered great support with the possibility of a sweep by going item-less it both had great flying stab and acrobatics and made an excellent knock-off absorber against shiftry and hareyama and before it was ready to sweep it easily spread ship damage with willows this set's effectiveness was boosted by the fact that the opponent had to respect the possibility of the standard lifeform but even when it was revealed the set was still solid overall charizard was a tremendous iconic nu pokemon once again in gen 6. remember how we mentioned earlier that ho-oh could justify its awful typing due to the sheer power that offered well charizard's mega evolution finally gave it the same incendiary strength and charizard found itself launched into the stratosphere of usage in 2014. 2014 provided an ideal meta game for charizard to thrive as dragon types were heavily nerfed via draco meters power drop the introduction of fairy types and the band of ladies with fewer dragon types to resist its fire type moves and a nifty new meta relevant resistance charizard was perfectly poised to become a top tier vgc pick specifically as charizard y while charizard x's additional bulk and ability to set up with dragon dance benefited it in singles charizard y was a more popular doubles pick for the overwhelming immediate damage it brought to the team a sun boosted heat wave was more than enough to annihilate entire teams and charizard also packed respectable coverage in the form of solar beam protect was an obvious must to keep charizard functional especially against opposing fake out but most players didn't offer additional coverage in their last slot instead they doubled up on firepower by packing overheat for one specific reason mega kangaskhan players had very quickly figured out that kangaskhan's parental bond boosted fake outs and power-up punches made it the de facto strongest mega pokemon what charizard brought to the table was a chance to one-hit kl kangaskhan even through its good bulk with a devastatingly powerful overheat making it a solid kangaskhan answer if not a counter some players might drop a move for hidden power coverage but in general heat wave solar beam overheat and protect were the go-to set charizard y quickly established itself as one of the top three megas in the game early on in vgc 2014 along with the aforementioned kangaskhan and its fellow kangaskhan answer mega mall while speaking of mega mall while charizard also enjoyed a nice matchup against it for reasons you can probably guess that which ended up being very important in the long run which we'll get to in a second charizard enjoyed heavy usage at the start of 2014. finding a place on 20 of all top cut teams between spring regionals winter regionals and japan's battle gloria tournament these teams frequently feature charizard paired up with its fellow starter venusaur who appreciated charizard's drought to immediately get his chlorophyll going and lay down the hurt a fairly standard core evolved around charizard consisting of charizard venusaur a fighting type a ground type to hit water and dragon types rodem and a filler pokemon sometimes packing wide guard to protect charizard from errant rocks some of the most frequent wide guard users were aerodactyl and age slash while its other support squad included mammoth swine garchomp lightning rod right on and scrafty charizard may have been strong but it still needed considerable team support to work due to its crippling rock and electric weaknesses versions and variants of these charizard-centric teams whether with that archetype or not were a common sight in early top cuts including omari travis's first place finish at the long beach regionals gavin michael's runner-up performance at the same tournament and its second and third place finishes in saint charles courtesy of wesley morioka and ashton cox respectively going into spring charizard continued to show up with some of its best showings being a fourth place finish in seattle courtesy of matt douglas second at brisbane masters on brendan button bash w's team and one particular salt lake city regional where it was on half of all top cut teams placing third fourth fifth and seventh on the teams of bridger snow chase library alberto lara and eduardo mendes and if i didn't mention your charizard team listen it was on a lot of teams special shout out to ashton cox who used charizard on pretty much every team of his 2014 season with ridiculous partners such as diggersby and clawitzer and continued to perform however come summer charizard's usage started to dip dramatically many of charizard's best allies were also its biggest counters including garchomp rotom heat tyranitar and aerodactyl and as their popularity rose charizards fell by u.s nationals charizard had fallen to 10.87 usage behind mega venusaur and his best placement was in 11th place of course at the hands of ashton cox who paired it with heliolisk and gigalit in typical ashton form ashton also had a neat tackle swapping out overheat for substitute to take advantage of how frequently teams would double protect in fear of charizard's power giving him a huge momentum boost if he pulled it off nevertheless u.s nationals seemed to confirm what everyone was thinking charizard had exited the building in fact the u.s nationals winner alex ogozilla brought a scarf rain dance poly told specifically to counter charizard after it tried to switch the weather people really had it out for this thing of course one of the hallmarks of a great competitive pokemon player is reading into these expectations and it was due to that that charizard had its best showing yet at worlds while charizard was still only on 13 of world teams it had an impressive list of placements including second place on jody azarelli's team fifth place on the team of ryosuke kosuge and of course lucker number 13 with none other than number one charizard devotee ashton cox while you would have been crazy to think ashton wasn't bringing charizard both jody and ryosuke brought it specifically as an anti-meta pick both players had the read that the world's metagame would revolve around kangaskhan and its best counter ma wild an entirely correct read as ma wild was by far the most popular mega pokemon of the tournament with kangaskhan just behind what handles kangaskhan and beats the kangaskhan counter why charizard of course as jody explains it he knew there would be a lot of kangaskhan hate at worlds primarily in the form of steel types such as ma wild angel slash and lucario and what did she know it still types happened not to like eating up heatwave too much this specific usage of charizard was reflected in a change to its build which all three of those players implemented while previous versions of charizard have focused on high special attack investment to inflict the most damage what these players realized was that a sun boosted overheat was plenty strong enough to roast a kangaskhan or malwa without any special attack investment as such all three ran a fast bulky variant of charizard with slightly different spreads but all of them prioritize speed and hp over special attack jody was the only one to run 252 speed which others had abandoned as it was only relevant to outspeed high dragon and garchomp however jody also explains that with rock slide damage he could one hit kale what would be a big threat to his team ryosuke meanwhile had only four special attack evs which was still enough to one-hit kill mega kangaskhan and sun seriously overheat is strong the rest of his evs also went into countering high dragon but via additional hp investment that allowed him to live a spec draco meteor guaranteed both jody and ryosuke ran the standard overheat solar beam heatwave protect set while ashton stuck with substitute jody and ryosuke's final piece of innovation was bringing a double mega team while double mega had been experimented with a great deal beforehand it had generally fallen out of favor by world by bringing a second mega pokemon jody and ryosuke were able to easily adapt in best of three situations especially if facing a kangaskhan both additional mega pokemon were counters with jody bringing lucario and ryosuke bringing malwa this flexibility allowed them to pilot charizard's destructive power more carefully and effectively securing them their great placements of course jody's anti-meta read would fall to an even more legendary anti-reed in the finals in the form of sage and park's pachirisu but charizard y had re-established itself as a top vgc 14 pokemon and even enjoyed some usage in the tournaments afterworlds such as chase leibert's fun phoenix winning squad which had lightning rod raichu and prankster sablite to keep zard safe cedric bernier also took first at houston fall regionals with charizard and david mancuso took first in fort wayne charizard wyatt's 2014 season was a great example of how pokemon's usage shifts over time and how making correct meta reads can win entire matches it went from almost exclusively being used in sun modes with chlorophyll venusaur to finding an identity as a reliable counter to the format's top dog megas sure it may have been running similar move sets the entire time but just the change in its evs and use cases gave it an impressive second wind it could be proud of while the vast majority of charizards used in 2014 were mega charizard y there were a few rogue mega charizard x players mega charizard x operated very similarly in doubles as in singles hit the dragon dance and then annihilate the opposition with tough claws boosted flare blitzes and dragon claws charizard x was frequently used to bluff charizard y as it matched up very well against a good portion of wise counters such as garchomp and rodem heat la jos koaluski who took home fifth place at the germany national championship recounts a story from that tournament when he faced eventual 10th placer florian verdick seeing charizard and venusaur on the other team lajos was confident he was facing charizard y and sent out his two counters ronam heat and gujar once he saw the blue flames and saw his thunderbolt go into a now dragon type charizard he knew it was curtains that mix up was what gave charizard exits power and florian used the same team to win the italian regionals harry boucher employed the same tricks venusaur charizard set up to make top cut at the australian nationals while japanese player rey used a double dragon team with salamance to make second at the battle royal gloria national final charizard x also had one world's appearance at the hands of alberto genie who placed 19th but its most important uses might be by a player we already mentioned ryosuke and wait you say how did ryosuke use both zard y and zard x on the same team well he did it but he still used the mind game as ryosuke reports in his recap of the tournament he had noticed before that his team had problems with the rotom heat plus fairy's archetype as counterplay ryosuke bought a mega charizard x plushie for 2000 yen and would promptly display it to his opponents before matches attempting to imply he would bring mega charizard x and thereby dissuade his opponents from bringing rotom and that trumps charizard x up really even though it was worse than why its ability to strike fear into the hearts of opponents was so great that it could influence games it wasn't even involved in as vgc 2015 opened up the meta game to include the national decks charizard had a brand new cohort of pokemon with which to compete some of these key players included cresselia sylveon mega metagross and mega salomons the first two were both positive for charizard's place in the meta for one thing it shrugged off their attacks with ease and for another it paired very well with them cresselia's moonlight became a formidable recovery tool in sun and it could support charizard with icy wind support while sylveon's pixelated boosted hyper voices made for a devastating spread move combo alongside charizard's heat waves meanwhile mega metagross and mega salomon started to contend for charizard's mega slot on many teams while charizard could melt metagross with ease salamence was one of its most formidable opponents due to the good type matchups but in keeping with this 2014 performance charizard's best counter and best teammates were often one and the same the two most notable additions to the vgc metagame by far were landorus t and heatran who both had the honor of being some of the best charizard answers in the game landorus through its speedy rock slide and heat ran through its incredibly good typing and access to flash fire on the flip side landorus's intimidate was capable of patching up charizard wise mediocre physical defense while he ran greatly appreciated sun to power up its own powerful fire moves even more the standard doubles charizard y set of heatwave solar beam overheat and protect was still by far the most common thing you might run into but by now players had caught on to the idea from 2014 that the best charizard sets for your team might necessitate more both there were many charizard builds to choose from we can see this in effect at that year's 2015 uk nationals where charizard players placed first fifth and seventh while first player philip de souza ran a max special attack charizard whose bulk was an afterthought certain charizard's respect so bulky that they could guarantee liv a land through styrian rock slide such as yan soga king sims charizard who placed fifth along with one of charizard's old pals aegislash aegislash's wide guard dealt nicely with landris and another potential charizard counter in tarrakyan who saw widespread usage early on in the format other players however forward that extra physical bulk such as andy wado who placed seventh at the same uk regionals with the charizard that invested more into general hp in order to tank special hits better model's reasoning was that even if you were expect to live a landorus rock slide you might lose the turn to flinch and making a play that only works if you don't get flinched might lose you the match whereas a play that works no matter what is sound logic regardless needless to say the choice of how to build your charizard was a complex one that players didn't come to consensus on throughout the entire season alberto lara who used charizard throughout the season along with sylveon to win the utah regionals shifted from a physically bulky build to an hp centric build mid-weight through 2015. alberto's charizard also featured one of the rare deviations from charizard's standard moveset dropping overheat for a hidden power ground so charizard wasn't completely walled by heat ran charizard put up a few other good results throughout the season especially in europe where it enjoyed a 23 pick rate as the second most used mega behind kangaskhan and won another regional at the hands of marcus steffen in germany however as heat ran and landrush grew in popularity charizard fell and it faced a new enemy with the development of the japanese sand team a build that threatened charizard on two fronts with its inclusion of salamance and its usage of a rival weather to shut down the sun nevertheless charizard was still sometimes used as an anti-meta pick due to its capability to answer many common mods such as aegis sylveon and thunderous and it managed to put up a third and seventh place finish at u.s nationals on the teams of blake hopper and angel miranda but we can see the shape of the metagame to come in charizard's last big tournament win of the year at the japanese national championships where shoma shade viera hanami used charizard as the sixth pokemon alongside the infamous chalk core of cresselia heatran amungus landorus and kangaskhan a build that actually had quite a few pokemon charizards synergized remarkably well with by the time worlds rolled around shade vieira had taken his chalk core all the way to the throne of world champion but he'd abandoned charizard for the most common thunderous and there was neriuzar to be seen in the choc dominated top 8. however charizard y was still the second most picked mega pokemon at world but its inability to deal with a properly supported kangaskhan meant its results were far inferior to his 2014 performance the highest placing charizard player at worlds was 2013 world champion arash amadi who finished 11th while a small selection of other players put out respectable performances behind him long time charizard user blake hopper took 15. nikolai zelinski placed 20th and christian che nubrata ended in 24th in the end charizard y was still a solid pick for 2015 but the introduction of heatran and landorus greatly threatened its power in fact charizard x almost outperformed charizard y at worlds at the hands of none other than wolf glick charizard x had seen the same limited use in 2015 as 2014 usually in the form of the same dragon dance set that took advantage of opponents expecting wyatt to set up and it saw the same modest success at the last year with his performance being jamie blight's top four placement at uk regionals but wolff had a different idea as opposed to pigeonholing charizard into its setup based gameplay wolff took advantage of charizard x's natural book to make a more support based charizard x that could handle kangaskhan and even landorus therian the solution was still firepower but in a more subtle form burn wolf's charizard x ran enough speed to outrun adam and kangaskhan and landorus and hamstring them with a willow whisk at which point it could easily live whatever attack came its way and roots back up to continue to be annoying similar to drought boosted overheat tough claws boosted flare blitz was so strong that wolf only needed modest attack investment and instead could dump into hp and speed to ensure his cycle of burning flare blitzing and healing up could continue with protect in the last spot for extra safety wolfe also saw incredible synergy with milotic who deterred rival intimidators due to its competitive ability and brought icy wind support and special bulk to pair nicely with charizard x's physical durability wolfe brought his team which also featured landorus therian zapdos scrafty and agerslash all the way to 10th place just one spot beneath a rashford's charizard y while wolf's out of the box build was the best performer of the year the more typical dragon dance charizard x still managed a few other nice placings including james tarbox 19th place at the uk regionals and i'm on istrix second place at the malaysia regionals but charizard x still continued to play second fiddle to its orange brother the fact that wolfe chose to emphasize x's unique traits as opposed to playing it as a slightly worse attacker is what let him take charizard x to new heights although not high enough to dodge earthquakes and of course you'd have to be bonkers to use charizard in 2016. what you're going to take this thing as a drought setter and have it just fail against a kyogre fat chance so as expected charizard took a well-deserved rest from vgc in 2016. both charizards continued their excellence in sun and moon despite the new toxipax completely walling zard why it was otherwise an absolutely enormous threat destroying most everything else including the dangerous new megirna and was once again incredibly tough to switch into even dominating three of the four tapus one on one talonflame's gale wing's nerf completely killed its usage and there goes one from charizard's limited pool of counter drought was also incredibly useful in slowing down the furious assault of the dangerous ash greninja and many players eschewed roost in favor of hp ice to destroy zygarde and garchomp which were otherwise great checks meanwhile zartx pounded everything on the other side of the spectrum zard y at least had some hard counters and talks effects chansey and the mega laddie twins sword x however was a battering ram nothing was safe switching into the closest you could get quagsire and pukemuku were one outrage away from getting slammed and were found exclusively on hard stall teams everything else would get absolutely slammed even tapoffini's most common variants were often two-hit killed by dragon dance flare blitz terrains both helped and hurt charizard grassy terrain would weaken its earthquake but with the recovery helping offset its recoil it was in turn much more able to throw out flare blitz and it was also much better protected against opposing earthquakes misty terrain would weaken its dragon steps but it would also protect it from status meaning that toxopex was unable to it with a toxin now it had some decisions to make with picking three of dragon dance roost earthquake and a dragon stab to go alongside the obligatory flare blitz depending on its player and team but one of the great things about charizard x is even if it doesn't have ideal coverage it hits so hard that it's going to leave a sizeable dent anyway defensively both zards were useful thanks to their ability to hold off attacks from top of bulu cortana and heat ran while using their terrific speed to offensively check tapulele and kiran black breaking through celestila without much trouble is also an incredible trait for an offensive team with the necessity of defensive grasses such as tank growth ferrothorn and the aforementioned top of bulu in order to stave off the incredibly dangerous ash greninja of maghirna and zygarde the charizards always have a fairly easy opportunity to get on the field and cause havoc in ultra sun and moon everything and its mother gained the fog and getting stealth right off the field had never been easier and this obviously let them function even more effectively charizard x is definitely more reliable game to game but it's not uncommon at all for why to get a match up against an otherwise perfectly good team that ends up being just ko after ko they're both integral parts of the ultra sun and moon ou meta game that fit into a variety of teams provide both great offensive and defensive utility and will reward intelligent aggressive playing regular charizard initially fell to pu it did not hold either of its mega stones and as such it could make use of z moves however rather than the one time powering up of a stab or coverage move charizard took a different route it would use hold hands with normalium z which would give it a plus one boost in all stats and allow it a shot at a sweep this set destroyed the early pu metagame setting up and sweeping with ease it was an incredible strain on team building as it was nearly impossible to stop without lychen rock's a solid rock and was quickly banned to publ sadly zard wasn't able to replicate this ferocity in enu it wasn't a bad sweeper and some players were able to succeed with it but it didn't sweep easily and consistently enough to justify its lack of defensive utility which made it tough to fit on teams especially when it had excellent more consistent fire type competition in incineroar and mag mortar nevertheless czar's niche was still good on occasion it was especially good against some standard teams since it outran the most common scarfer passimian after a boost it was a shame that a streak of new excellence was broken but gen 7 was another great one for charizard overall the next time charizard was available for vgc was 2018 and charizard y immediately resumed its role as an unparalleled special attacker that throne came with familiar threats and landorus tea tyranitar and heat ran but the most prominent new pokemon charizard had to contend with were the generation defining tapus charizard generally handled tapuffini nicely via solar beam and both bulu and lele were in general not huge threats but tapukoka was a nightmare for charizard to deal with with monstrously powerful electric moves and enough speed to run circles around charizard tapu koko was capable of deleting the dragon from the game immediately even europe attacks wouldn't keep charizard safe from the force of tapu koko's gigabot havoc of course such overwhelming power paired extremely well with charizard the pair of topokoko and zardwein was absolutely terrifying to stare down the new metagame meant that landorus therian was absolutely mandatory to charizard y's success landorus and charizard's already good synergy only got better on top of intimidate helping with charizard's low physical defense landorus could additionally superpower opposing tyranitar's earthquake without remorse and most importantly remove opposing tapu koko to prepare for charizard's sweep another old ally to return was crosselia however 2018 cresselias offered a slightly different flavor of support for charizard while icy wind and moonlight were still standard fare the new speed tiers introduced in gen 7 necessitated another form of speed control trick room charizard wise base 100 speed perfectly positioned it to take advantage of all forms of speed control whether it be icy wind trip room to flip the tables on opposing hyper offense or even its own tailwind to boost up its lander's teammate by far the most common charizard core was charizard y landorus tea topococo or another electrotype and a trickroom setter which could also then be pivoted to let another trickroom sweepers such as snorlax have free reign cedric bernier took this archetype to first at dallas regionals using porygon 2 and it had a wealth of other good results and even a few first-place finishes including michaela gavelli's win at the sheffield regionals and brandon meckley's win in costa mesa charizard even performed well internationally with alberto laras taking fifth place at the oceana internationals and a pair of top eight finishes at the latin america international courtesy of melvinka and juan paul lopez melvin cave would take the exact same team featuring lele snorlax and milotek alongside the familiar landorus coco and charizard corps to fifth place at the north american international championship where jackson finch also made top bait with a surprising team including raichu and braviari however as its tradition charizard's influenced wayne over the season part of this was due to the mart release of intimidate incineroar a pokemon that absolutely dominated the format while incineroar and charizard served very different purposes its status as a rival fire type who didn't require a mega slot and a strong charizard counter in its own right meant charizard's uses slowly lowered going from 24 percent pre-incineroar to 16 percent after the cat got out of the bag thanks to vgc stats for the detailed record keeping by the way incinerator centralizing effect knocked charizard down a peg but it still found modest success at worlds where federico toronto took eighth place melvin ked took 12th place with the same team he had been using all season and paul chula took 15. but it was still no longer top dog of fire types the cat had taken that position definitively meanwhile charizard x did the same thing it always did showing up way less than charizard y but with some good scattered results wolf glick used an altered version of his worlds 2015 team to win charlotte regionals utilizing the same willowis set as before to burn big threats such as landorus snorlax tapabula and tyranitar this version of the team was supercharged by wolf's edition of his own topaboola which ameliorated charizard x's earthquake weakness while simultaneously removing opposing misty terrain that might stop its burns the classic dragon dance set also saw some success via jamie boyce first place at the malmo regionals and megan hyman's top eight in sao paulo other top placements where the sets are unknown include one aquil's second place at the malaysia regionals and eric reals and alex gomez is getting third and fifth respectively at the sao paulo international australia also carried on a small love affair with charizard x as brian and mehdi and ike marvin gilcher took fourth and sixth at the perth regionals respectively and top australian player graham and maddie piloted a unique set consisting of skydrop roar tailwind and flair blitz and thus ends charizard x's vgc career for the foreseeable future with no mega evolutions in the new generations it seems unlikely it or its wide counterpart will ever see the light of a double battle again however it wasn't quite charizard's end in gen 7. despite all evidence that charizard had no place in a 2019 meta game where two of the top three most used pokemon were incineroar and primal groudon and made one singular appearance in 2019 and what's more at the biggest tournament of the year satoshi abe brought regular charizard to a metagame full of primals and xerneas on a truly unique team featuring the crosma dawn wings primal groudon topule stack attacker and smeargle abe's logic was that with the ubiquity of groudon charizard's solar power would enable it to remove huge enemy threats with ease especially with a z crystal at its disposal this charizard served as an incredible source of offensive firepower with its solar power boosted z overheat capable of outright one hit ko and offensive groudons in sun and leaving its special attack stat fully intact for the next round as this charizard's primary use was to fire off overheats and heat waves and maneuvering a solar beam kyogre would be very tricky abe used his last move slot after protect for tailwind which gave his team additional speed control along with his stack attack as trick group while aid finished fairly low at 37th place you have to applaud his creativity in making a functioning team with base charizard at the biggest tournament of the year and any team that can make day 2 at worlds is no slouch generation 8 removed charizard's mega evolutions and its time in ou were thought to come to an end on the bright side heavy duty boots allowed it to finally bypass stealth rock and it turns out fireflying is a pretty great defensive typing without that minor inconvenience an early sword and shield uu once pokemon home re-gifted it roost zard made use of a bulky utility set that could defog hazards away and check some huge threats in surface and lucario at the same time zard was ru where it used the fog sets as well however here it wasn't restricted to its bulky variant it could also use an offensive set making use of the new flying stab it received in gen 8 hurricane this set was a great blend of support and offense and made zara a great fit on many teams zard became incredibly popular after mankind rose to yuyu as its defogging abilities were made even more valuable since the only other option was so volley who preferred to use more offensive sets as a result of his excellent utility provided by its defensive typing and access to the fog charizard established itself as one of the tier's elite pokemon then the isle of armor came out drought became available in ru and charizard decided to have some fun in the sun with solar power and choice specs its power was absolutely staggering as it had a brutal new stab in the form of weatherball it also appreciated its newfound access to scorching sands which allowed it to blow away an otherwise great sun check colossal it was so strong that yuyu took notice and zard established himself as a nuke there too weatherball was just ridiculously strong too hit ko and even calm slow king and zar didn't even have to run a modest nature in order to do so it didn't end there either for the first time since gen 3 a non-mega charizard saw high ou play as it utterly throttled just about everything in sun even the mighty toxipex and blissey couldn't switch into weatherball lest they be fried into some delicious shrimp and eggs sun established itself as an immensely threatening playstyle capable of toppling the titans of ou zard paired up with venusaur once again using its fearsome power to break open holes in the opposing team for venusaur to sweep late game with chlorophyll and growth the two were made even stronger by the presence of another starter cinderease of course charizard necessitated choice specs meaning it couldn't run heavy-duty boots and thus had to be wary of south rock especially since solar power would cut into its hp each turn sun was active however this was nothing that couldn't be overcome sun had a choice of solid anti-hazard tools a major boom was the sunset or torque hole packing rapid spin but it had some help to ensure rocks stayed off either defog corva knight or a magic bouncer got the job done with both hatterin and zatu being solid choices another boon for charizard was the presence of teleport which allowed it many free switch-ins in spite of its poor bulk both zatu and blissey could spam it to easily get zard in while corvonite did the same with its slow u-turn once zard was in something on the opposing team was going down charizard could even come in on a non-full health toxipex and threaten it out or straight up koa with the sheer power of overheat which did minimum of 76 and went up to a whopping 90 percent overheat was also effective for making hippadan think twice about trying to switch in and ruin weatherball sun was a defining playstyle in the isle of armor oyu even after cinder race was banned and this was largely thanks to the stupefying strength of charizard but sadly the release of the crown tundra dlc has shoved charizard to the wayside as eruption heat ran has taken its place on some teams however there's no forgetting what zar did when it had the chance there was truly nothing quite like spamming weatherball and utterly destroying stall teams with both blissey and toxipex as for the lower tiers the crown tundra saw charizard drop to anu and once again it was devastating alongside drought it mauled just about everything with its fire moves and its vicious air slash ripped through flash fire's center scorch zard's power was a major catalyst in the tier banning drought as a whole it's likely to return to its boots the fog sets now but who knows perhaps players will even make use of manual sun just to facilitate the auto ko that expects solar powers art but whatever ends up happening charizard has already had an amazing generation 8. for all its years of vgc results charizard reached a new level of sheer destructive force with the arrival of giganomax but before we get to that charizard was actually a fairly formidable force even before his gigantic max was available the limited early meta of sword and shield did include both whimsicott and torkle and solar power charizard paired with either of those enablers was a strong threat in the nascency of the format if not dynamaxx solar power boosted heatwave could circumvent the ubiquitous redirection of togekiss giganomex could be an even bigger boost via gmax wildfire but when the format first started it was only legal with blaze a power drop that many players didn't see as worth it especially since wildfire made charizard unable to set its own sun nevertheless dynamaxx alone was a huge help to charizard the extra hp from dynamaxing made solar power's hp penalty a bit less steep and max moves in general meant solar beam was a feasible coverage option even outside of sun what's more charizard's stabbed flying attacks meant that it could snowball its lead with speed boost from airstream hitting extremely hard and generating momentum at the same time charizard brought some of the most heavy hitting damage to the format as well as impressive speed control making it a potent threat this charizard was actually more commonly paired with sunny day whimsicott for the heaps of utility it brought tailwind helping hand taunt and safeguard were all greatly appreciated by charizard and his quest to blow away the opponents whimsicate could even forego sunny day if the player was secure in zart setting up its weather on its own however this zart still struggled with teams such as hard trick room or sand and was unable to hit certain threats such as tyranitar or ryperio if it didn't have access to overgrowth charizard whimsicott was certainly a team that players had to be prepared for but it wasn't the top threat by any means and then came dallas regionals like i said most players didn't think blaze was worth the tradeoff for giganomex but the team building trio of aaron trailer wolf blick and justin karis disagreed and boy did it pay off here's the thing yeah solar power is a big damage boost and it's way easier to stomach it when you've got that dynamax boost but let's look at the damage from g-max wildfire 1-6 hp every turn for four turns to two pokemon each that's 133 damage in total just from wildfires residual damage and that's just from using it once that's absurd and more than makes up for the damage dropped from solar power plus it's not reliant on weather and it'll be especially effective against the bulky fire resistant mods that charizard would struggle with otherwise as such justin wolfe and aaron built a team that could take advantage of the overwhelming pressure charizard put out and made some really clever adjustments to ensure it got all the value it could instead of sunny day whimsicott they fit theirs out with charm and fake tears fake tears gave them a huge boost in offensive pressure especially relevant in situations created with another change they made blast burn on charizard this power boost comboed with fake tears led charizard one hit kl specially defensive togekiss guaranteed even if it didn't die to the attack itself wildfire would take care of it another combo between whimsicott and charizard came from winzicot's charm and charizard's charty berry which gave it an unexpected amount of survivability against rock type threats it was able to take max rockfalls from the likes of extradro and mudsdale as well as any rock slide even if boosted by helping hand and lifeform while actual rock types and durant could still threaten charizard whimsicott's charm could potentially neuter those threats so charizard could get going in addition to tailwind and charizard's own airstream speed control the team also carried a trick room mode with jealousy and other powerful threats in concelter and lightform to ralodon which could also take advantage of fake tears long story short aaron trailer ended up winning the dallas regionals afterwards spending all of his time on stream talking about how great the team they had built was you can check out the in-depth team report in the links below as well special thanks to aaron traylor for the information dallas also features some other good charizard results andrew burley actually gave solar power charizard it's best result yet with a third place that took advantage of the disruption provided by gmax butterfree of all things and devin singh used his own solar powered charizard team to place knight aaron's finals matchups did showcase some of charizard's potential threats however durant for example was a big threat to charizard because of its access to max rockfall and its higher speed tier while aaron was able to play around benji wang's durant in dallas finals it represented a problem for czar fast pokemon that could threaten it immediately zard might bring an unparalleled amount of and i swear this is the last time i'll use this word firepower but its speed tier of 100 wasn't quite good enough to always justify using it for the defenses it had it brought speed control to the table yes but it necessitated setup before that it could really struggle against faster pokemon the rise of togekiss tyranitar extra joe also severely handled charizard and in general people became more prepped for the damage it could bring to the table if you can stop the glass cannon from ever firing all you have left is a very pretty piece of glassware so even though aaron justin and wolf's team was quite popular post dallas it wasn't like charizard was suddenly ruling the format it still had some good results as daniel thorpe managed to place ninth in collinsville and jamie boyd top cut mammal regionals but it was contending for the spot of top team with many other powerful archetypes what's more new series only introduced more threats to charizard series 3 brought in lapras and venusaur who could outspeed charizard and dispatcher with sleep powder and it also introduced two fire types immune to wildfire damage in incineroar and gmax colossal who not only had a good matchup against charizard but also brought its own residual damage to the table to outclass zart along with its good defenses series 4 introduced libero cinderes another fast threat to outrun zart and series 5 brought in yorshifu who could enable colossal or threaten charizard with sucker punches that's not to say zara died completely it got a big power boost from the fact that it could now combine solar power and wildfire although bear in mind that if it was running wildfire charizard couldn't set its own sun this type of team was popular in japan where kohei sakura took first at the japan decisive battle with his sun team and in the victory road may challenge it managed to take three of the top eight spots courtesy of jiangsung adrian hurley and alan martinez over in spain emmanuel berea paired solar power gmac with dusk class and torquel to win the first qualifier of the serkito gallard other players who still gave charizard good results were david kodesh in the player's cup eu qualifiers jiang hyun gyun and kim min suk in the korea trainers cup and sean ronzani in the oceana players cup 2 qualifiers but if you need any evidence that charizard had fallen off from grace look at the players cup 2 itself shawn brought his same tsar team there and placed 13. charizard was still an undeniable meta threat but it seemed like it might be destined to repeat its patterns of inconsistency and short-lived relevance of flaring ember living fast and then burning out that fate seemed especially sealed when series 6 made the unprecedented move abandoning the most used pokemon to add insult to injury it wasn't even charizard that was banned but its most important partners in torco venusaur and whimsicott so charizard was just left on its own a dragon with its wings clipped and then just when all seemed lost series 7 brought the sun back out from behind the clouds slowly but surely charizard teams re-emerged it still wasn't the format's biggest threat and it had to contend with old foes like landorus steering and new nuisances like reggie leckie but as series 7 continued on charizard managed to poke its head back into the top cuts a player's cup qualifier here a regional league there and then at the beginning of the new year came series 8 and with it restricted pokemon and with them groudon vgc 2020 series 8 charizard might be the strongest the pokemon has ever been in vgc charizard and groudon have been available together in past formats but never in a way that allowed charizard to take advantage of solar power to gain the stats it desperately needed through mega evolution it would sacrifice that ability but with dynamaxx available to it charizard and sun became undoubtedly the premier archetype for all of series 8. charizard also greatly appreciated the heavy presence of zasian who it had an incredible matchup against and could even partner well with as we'll see later on eliza m kicked off series 8 with a bang by winning the women's tournament 2 with the formidable groudon zard combo and from there it was off to the races for a little bit players seemed loath to put the full sun combo of groudon fetasaur and charizard together and though charizard showed up multiple times throughout the victory road circuit qualifiers it was usually lower down then in march a sea change charizard took up four of the top six spots in the winter series qualifier number five with jose rodriguez establishing what would be the baseline team for sun for much of the format groudon umbreon grim snarl regilecki venusaur and charizard although jose finished with the bronze medal at that tournament his undefeated swiss record made other players take notice of the team because the sun trio was so strong and no longer had to pack double fire types the rest of the team could use self-sufficient like reggie leckie or pure support like umbreon umbreon was amazing on sun teams for its great matchups against many of venusaur and zard's threats such as dragopal reggie leckie thundurus landurus and the calirex duo we should also briefly note that in that charizard heavy tournament samuel placentini showed that zard could work without groudon by putting it on a zazian team often your opponent would be bringing sun anyways and then czar could just play with that or use its own good matchup against opposing exhaustion mateo agostini proved that concept at the next victory wrote winter qualifier winning the whole thing with his own zaussian team and then at the grand finale of the entire circuit kevin salvero took home the grand prize with the team that paired zard and zasia and its oldest son partner in torquel kevin would go on to use zard for pretty much the rest of the entire format and he showed his charizard expertise by kidding his out specifically to beat other charizards his charizard brought ancient power to win the mirror matchup as well as a wacon berry to handle opposing nalecki and thundurus as it turns out kevin's instincts to prepare for the charizard mirror were dead on second and third placers eric rios and kyle geffner both also brought charizard teams and eric's team was actually identical to kevin and charizard also showed up at 8th and 11th place 2. if charizard's return wasn't any doubt before that was gone now the players cup 3 qualifiers were absolutely littered with charizard players many of them using some combination of the exact same mods groudon elecki venusaur and then two of the viable support mods such as incineroar umbreon porygon2 and grimstar zossie and varence would typically bring a torquel along as well for sun players cup 3 runner of leonardo bononi can lend some insight into what made charizard quote one of the best mods in series eight end quote in his words although charizard's capabilities of sweeping were in no doubt you could also just fire off a wildfire turn one to let groudon or reggie like you sweep even though reggie like it was the biggest threat to charizard it was also an incredible partner for his ability to sweep through teams that had already been crisped up we also can't overstate that charizard wasn't even the main beneficiary of the sun it was venusaur's fast sleep powders that were the biggest threat and so charizard was allowed a certain degree of freedom and how it operated just on the basis of having such strong synergy with other incredible mods although it was jonathan evans's kyogre torquel double weather team that won the players cup 3 there was no doubt that charizard was one of the kings of the format with series 9's removal of restricted pokemon charizard stepped back into the shadows a bit series 9 has the same rule sets as series 7 and as such its results look pretty similar to its series 7 results limited to torquel and the occasional nine tails as a sunsetter again charizard simmered down a bit although charizard's had its ups and downs in gen 8 vgc no one can deny it's been one of its most successful generations so far it was perfectly poised to take advantage of the generation's defining mechanic and made good on that promise series 10 is just on the horizon and it gives charizard back part of what it loved groudon but it takes away dynamaxx completely odds are that without wildfire charizard will dwindle in usage even more but i'd say it can do so with its head held high and that's it so how good was charizard actually well it's the subject of a lot of jokes about stealth rock but it's actually had quite a decorated competitive career sure in rby it was awful in ou but then it was an underrated threat that was capable of absolutely devastating perfectly good teams two generations in a row now admittedly it was awful to the point of being a straight-up meme two generations in a row after that but then it became the poster child for mega evolution redemption with its two forms being utter staples in ou ever since their inception it's been amazing in vgc ever since receiving its megas as well not to mention it's gigantic max 4 at least for the early series of vgc 2020. even when zard lost its megas in gen 8 it still found a way to shine with solar power boosted attacks burning the entire ou metagame to a crisp so overall charizard's had its ups and downs but the vast majority has been on the upside plus that was just considering its ou performances even in the pre-mega gens where it was ravaged by stealth rock it was still the king of nu in both gens and its base form has been terrific in the lower tiers and gen 638 too as it's one of the most iconic and new pokemon in history so rest easy charizard fans despite the sneaky pebbles the pseudo mascot of the pokemon franchise has been a huge threat competitively thank you so much for watching everyone we finally gave charizard a proper video and i hope you all enjoyed it because it took a lot of time to put this together i actually wanted this out before sword and shield came out but then game freak announced that it was getting yet another form and i knew something good was gonna happen with it so i figured i'd just wait until i was completely sure that we were gonna cover its new form properly so with all that said i hope it was worth the wait and again thank you so much for watching and as always if you like the video and you wanna see more be sure to subscribe to false white gaming for more weekly pokemon content and in the comments i want to know what do you think about competitive charizard what do you think about his journey would you buff it again are you going to give it another new form what do you think about heavy duty boots whatever it is let me know in the comments also thank you so much to our patrons for continued support of our videos and thank you to everyone else watching as well and follow my amazing crew on these social media platforms and that's all i got see you next time everyone [Music] you

Channel: False Swipe Gaming

Views: 2,153,674

Keywords: Pokemon, Pokemon Go, Pokemon Red, Pokemon Blue, Pokemon Yellow, Pokemon Gold, Pokemon Silver, Pokemon Crystal, Pokemon Ruby, Pokemon Sapphire, Pokemon Emerald, Pokemon Diamond, Pokemon Pearl, Pokemon Platinum, Pokemon Black, Pokemon White, Pokemon X, Pokemon Y, Pokemon Ultra Sun, Pokemon Ultra Moon, Pokemon Sword, Pokemon Shield, Competitive Pokemon, Smogon, VGC, False Swipe Gaming, Charizard, Mega Charizard X, Mega Charizard Y, Gigantamax

Id: 7hb6IwJKDTA

Length: 66min 32sec (3992 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 18 2021