Just announced: Deino Community Day is finally coming!
The awesome PvPoke already has a (speculative) Brutal Swing, the coming Community Day’s new exclusive move, loaded up on their site. (Thanks to Mr. PvPoke!)
So… let’s take a super brief look at what Hydreigon with Brutal Swing MIGHT look like!
Hydreigon
DarkDragon
Speculative stats are 40 energy for 65 damage. The damage has already been revealed by Niantic, but we’re guessing at the cost. Seems reasonable, though… 40e/65p is a clone of Surf and Drill Peck.
35 energy is possible too, making it a Body Slam clone that deals 5 additional damage, or a Leaf Blade clone that deals 5 less damage, depending on if you’re a glass half full or half empty person.
🥃 I suppose going the other direction with 45 energy is also possible, but would honestly be disappointing. That would make it a clone of Discharge, which is okay, just underwhelming for a Community Day move.
So, assuming 40 energy is accurate (and it makes a lot of sense), here’s what we’re looking at. Again, this is just a high level pass to get some idea.
- Master League is where we’re most likely to want Hydreigon, and yes, Brutal Swing would be a marked improvement over current Hydreigon, with new wins over Metagross, Excadrill, both varieties of Landorus, and perhaps most encouragingly, Focus Blast Mewtwo. Good stuff! It does still unfortunately lose to basically all meta Dragons (and Fairies, of course), as well as Fighters and even things like Lugia. So it’s still not GREAT, but at least it’s not totally crazy to consider bringing now.
- It DOES look more encouraging in Master League Premier Classic, should Niantic ever bring that back. (And it’s very frustrating we don’t have Classic OR Premier this GBL season… but that’s a topic for another day.) BIG gains here (as compared to current Hydra), with new wins versus Walrein, Glaceon, regular and Shadow Metagross, Excadrill, Electivire, Ice Fang Hippowdon, Milotic, Shadow Magnezone and more. BIG winner here.
- It’s BETTER in other leagues, just still not all that great. Again, slightly better in Premier Classic metas, but still a bit middling. I think Master League is really THE way to go with Hydreigon in PvP.
- And that goes for Great League too. It is undoubtedly BETTER with Brutal Swing (again, with the speculated cost of 40 energy), but still not good. Great League is still the realm of Zweilous instead.
As for PvE… well, I don’t have those resources readily in front of me at the moment, and others are more experienced in that analysis field anyway. But I’ll take a look when I type up my eventual FULL analysis article, once we have confirmed stats for Brutal Swing.
AKA, when PokeMiners finds Niantic has updated the cost about 39 minutes before Community Day actually begins. 😂
Until then, you can catch me on Twitter or Patreon. Or here on The Hub, of course!
Cheers! 👋
