Why Pokémon Sword & Shield’s Zapdos Is Still The Best Legendary Bird

Pokémon Sword & Shield’s Crown Tundra DLC is built around the experience of hunting legendary Pokémon and that includes the return of the legendary birds of the Kanto region. For the first time, legendary Pokémon have taken on a regional variant with Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres’ Galarian forms. Introduced in Pokémon Sun & Moon, regional variants feature redesigns of old Pokémon with new types, moves, and abilities that are exclusive to certain regions. While Kanto’s legendary trio has received this treatment, the hierarchy remains the same.

Articuno and Moltres have always been a bit neglected in the context of Pokémon’s competitive scene. Neither Pokémon has had the offensive capabilities to counteract their incredibly frail type combinations, and as a result they’ve been relegated to niche roles within the metagame. Galarian Articuno received a massive upgrade in the form of its new ability Competitive, and a noteworthy jump in Special Attack and Speed base stats, but its shallow movepool will remain an issue for it. In a similar vein, Galarian Moltres is in roughly the same spot, with a great type change to Dark/Flying and a bulkier Special Defense stat, but its dreadfully bad movepool lacks the moves necessary for it to become a premiere support Pokémon.

Galarian Zapdos, on the other hand, effectively just mirrored its old self. With just a touch more Defense and flipped Attack and Special Attack stats, Galarian Zapdos is just a physical counterpart of its Kanto variant, which has always been the strongest of this legendary trio. Zapdos has always a prominent Pokémon within the competitive scene, and while its Galarian form isn’t quite as good as the original, it’s still really strong.

Galarian Zapdos is an Offensive Powerhouse

Zapdos loses the type matchup within the trio this time around, but it’s still the fastest of the three, has the deepest movepool and now has an incredibly strong ability. With a 125 base Attack stat and access to moves like Bulk Up, Close Combat, Brave Bird, U-Turn, Stomping Tantrum, Steel Wing, Blaze Kick, and its new signature move in Thunderous Kick, Galarian Zapdos looks like it’ll be a physical force in the metagame. And its new ability, Defiant, which responds to any stat drop inflicted on it with a two stage boost to Attack, is one that is in high demand within the game’s official competitive format. Galarian Zapdos has a ton of tools at its disposal, and it’ll make plenty use of all of them.

The unfortunate part of this whole thing is that regional variants are a great way to reinvent Pokémon that maybe aren’t quite as good as they could be and give them new ways to compete, but in the case of Articuno and Moltres, there just isn’t enough being done for that to happen. Both Pokémon got cool changes, signature moves, and exceptional visual redesigns, but that likely won’t be enough to bump them to the status that they should hold within the game. Game Freak could very easily do something about their lacking movepools at some point down the line, but it would have been nice for that to have happened alongside these new forms. So, for the time being, Zapdos will remain the king of this Legendary Bird trio for the duration of Pokémon Sword & Shield.

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