Seven and a half minutes have elapsed since you and your teammates collectively mauled a bunch of pathetic Aipom while en route to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pokemon Unite’s weird basketball hoops. You can’t tell what the exact score is - an issue that is compounded by 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Unite&rs๊quo;s misleading scoring messages - but given that the𝐆 level economy is firmly in your favour, it’s ෴reasonable to assume you’re around 200 points in the clear.
30 seconds pass and the Legendary Bird of Thunder drops into the middle of the map with a majesty the mainline games never manage to muster. Along with your companions, you whittle its health down until only a sliver of red is visible above its mighty visage. Zapdos goes down, but the clairvoyant arrow paths denoting the quickest way to the nearest goal don’t appear. A rogue Scorbunny on the enemy team has managed to r♛abona a stray fireball at the last second, catching Zapdos just as it breathes it last, designating a collective 110 points to your opponents. Given that the final two minutes of a Unite match award double points for all goals scored, and your zones are currently defenseless, Scorbunny and co. slam dunk 220 points’ worth of orbs. You lose.
It’s frustrating, isn’t it? That no matter how well you play in the first eight minutes of a Pokemon Unite match, the last two are the only ones that really count. There are solid arguments that run counter to this - if you’re really stomping the other team, they should not have the opportunity to defeat Zapdos. Even if they do manage to steal the kill, how can they get all the way to your goal zones if they’re underleveled? You should be able to easily rack up a team wipe and score 500 points while all of your adversaries are set to 25-second spawn counters. It’s not that simple, though - while I'm not sure I agree that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Zapdos is completely broken, it’s certainly not implemented in the most efficient way possible. Pokemon Unite could keep Zapdos and actually use it to brilliant effec🌱t if it was willing to make some extremely minor changes.
Zapdos spawns in a ring in the middle of the map, but the ring is mostly pointless. It means that melee characters need to enter through the front, although ranged attackers like the aforementioned Scorbunny can just pelt it with fireballs from a safe distance - hell, Talonflame can straight up fly over the wall. If you’re winning, right, and the enemy team snags a Zapdos kill in the middle of a team fight, that’s good play by them and poor play by you. In order for the Zapdos kill to actually register, the attacker who lands the last hit should need to be inside the ring. Nothing to do with the percentage of damage done, or the amount of ‘mons from each team in the general vicinity of combat - whoever is in the ring and successfully manages to cᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚonnect with the killing🔥 blow should get the points. People outside, though? Nah, those hits shouldn’t register.
The reason this is important is because as well as being potentially game-breaking, Zapdos represents an opportunity for ♕redemption in what might otherwise ﷺbe a total stomp. If Zapdos was removed from the game, the amount of surrenders after five minutes would ramp up so dramatically that you’d never play a full ten again. The actual premise behind Zapdos is brilliant - it’s just the implementation that’s lacking.
I understand the frustration with Zapdos. The amount of times I’ve played a blinder only to stumble at the last hurdle due to some cruel twist of fate is innumerable. I have bellowed profanities at my Switch while my dog looked on in confusion more times tꦑhan I can count in the weeks since Unite launched. But this is me being a sore loser far more so than it is me feeling particularly hard done by. Of all the times I’ve lost the battle for Zapdos, I can count the number of occasions in which it felt truly unfair on one hand - and I’d need nearly 40 hands to count all of the matches I’ve played.
I like the idea of Zapdos in Pokemon Unite. I think, once you consider it with a bit of critical distance, you’ll probably be able to appreciate it too. It’s certainly not perfect - far from it, in fact. But with a couple of minor adjustments, it could easily become the de facto element of what makes Pokemon Unite such a brilliantly frenetic MOBA. At the moment, it’s just a bit unrefined - unpolished and incapable of reaching its potential. Introduce a clause where you need to be in the ring to land the final blow, though? Unite would instantly become home to the most chaotic battles in Pokemon history.
Or you can just get good at Slowbro 💜and totally ruin Zꩵapdos killers - at least you have✤ the agency to accomplish that by yourself, eh?
