THE BEST ABSOL BUILD GUIDE - POKEMON UNITE

How to Play Absol in Pokemon Unite

Absol is a single target assassin with his play style rewarding picking off squishy or out of place opponents while avoiding getting caught in the middle of big fights. Absol’s mechanics reflect this with a kit full of gap closing moves, high critical hit rate and a  boosted auto attack that does extra damage when it hits a single opposing Pokemon.

When playing Absol in Pokemon Unite your game plan should be to identify ideal targets, use your high mobility to get close to the opposing pokemon, and then end the fight quickly. You also have a ton of mobility and should be abusing that fact into the late game by getting vision of the enemy team and flanking squishy characters for easy kills. Try to keep moving and avoid getting into prolonged fights, Absol’s relatively weak defensive stats means you can easily get into trouble if you give the enemy team enough time to converge on you and catch you by yourself.

Absol has a really strong level 5 spike with pursuit or night slash and jungle helps facilitate you to reach level 5 the fastest. You clear the wild pokemon quickly which lets you gank earky and you are hard to invade cause of your high dps. Your ganks are generally really potent as your damage is higher than most for that stage of the game. He also doesn’t have bad laning as he kills farm quickly and bursts enemies insanely fast which good at punishing people contesting farm on your side or to set up your junglers gank for a kill. It’s better toplane though because of the bushes and the shorter lane being generally safer for Absol. Getting to level 5 in lane going even with your opponents (let alone ahead) is generally pretty favorable for him. Feint is a good dash in the early game too that even does true damage, ignoring defense stat and shield effects.

When it comes to the best boost emblem loadout, building  6 brown +6white  emblems to grant a flat attack bonus will help you deal extra damage and end fights quickly.

Best Items for Absol – Held Items and Battle Items

Full Heal is Absol’s best battle item as he is a squishy diver that needs to get in, get his damage off, and get out which full heal facilitates really well. If you get stunned you are dead 90% of the time. If you are playing Night Slash and Psycho Cut, eject button could be considered as the extra dash can help extend your effective range for reaching people in a noticeable way or to outplay someone although Full Heal should still be the main item you look to run. There is very little reason to consider eject button for pursuit sets and should not be run there.

Scope Lens is 100% mandatory on this character and it’s the best held item for Absol’s damage. Since every source of damage in your kit is able to crit you want to hike up that crit rate and increase the damage of your attacks when they do crit. Scope Lens should never be taken off.

Razor Claw used to be mandatory and is still insanely good. Since you want amp after the ult buffs, razor claw now competes with Attack Weight for held item slots and it’s reasonable to go either direction. Razor claw plays into your low cooldowns that you constantly alternate to get tons of procs and plays into your burst while giving you a tiny bit more crit chance.

Pursuit also counts as a basic attack so it triggers your razor proc. As a physical speedster Absol has really high base attack for razor to work with.

Attack Weight gets large gains on Absol who has decent ratios that then get multiplied by crits (everything on Absol can crit) but it requires stacking. Absol ganks are generally effective enough to get these stacks, but it isn’t guaranteed. Both are great choices and weight gives you some better long term gains while razor is highly consistent and makes your early game even more potent (which can lead to snowballing).

Energy Amp has become a staple for Absol since the buff to his Unite move cooldown. Your ultimate turns into a bigger delete button and amp helps to close out a lot of kills you might otherwise miss. Amp makes you able to ult at EVERY single teamfight without worry of when it’ll be back up, or even ego ult a squishy carry at a random point to make a spontaneous push where you normally couldn’t. With some nice crits thrown into the ult, Amp turns it into a full team shredding nightmare.

Undesirable Items: Many people consider muscle band on Absol but he doesn’t get much value out of it. He has a lot of really good items he wants to run and you do not auto enemy players anywhere near enough for muscle band to be worth it damage wise. Float stone is also not great for the aforementioned reasons of really tight slots and is especially useless on pursuit as well which doesn’t need mobility help. Focus band is also generally not that great on Absol since he is too squishy to benefit from it most of the time and it doesn’t help you deal damage to opposing pokemon in any way.

Pursuit + Sucker Punch

Sucker punch is turning out to be an essential tool for dealing with the dominant picks right now. Sucker punch synergizes incredibly well with pursuit since it puts you on the opponents back and stuns them which guarantees you get a back hit which not only does more damage but also resets pursuit. Sucker punch screws with low cd ability spammers quite hard and after unlocking it at level 7 gives you a guaranteed access to Mews and more of their backline as well as giving you a way to outplay large single target damage. It is positioned well into the meta.

Pursuit is a good choice into fleeing speedsters and backline mages as well since they need to turn around to kite making it difficult to avoid backstabs. Pursuit has incredibly good mobility and is one of the best mobility spells in Pokémon Unite making it easier to keep pace with them.

Finally between the synergy with sucker punch guaranteeing a reset if it stuns and the fact that it is a sure hit that drags you on top of the target, it is rare for players to be able to escape Pursuit and Sucker punch sets.

Pursuit burns objectives rather well, with them never moving it’s very easy to just get backstab after backstab and take them off the map quickly.

All of Absols moves individually are quite powerful so it’s hard to go wrong with any set you pick. That said pairing Pursuit with Psycho Cut is generally worse than pairing it with Sucker Punch because of the lack of synergy and “parry” that sucker punch offers and it’s generally harder to get pursuit resets on this moveset. It burns objectives absurdly quick, however. It also gives you access to psycho cut + ult combo which knocks out grouped enemies more effectively than anything else Absol offers.

Night Slash + Psycho Cut

Psycho Cut applies an incredibly potent slow that applies 3 marks that make your next basic attack or skill deal increased damage that can also crit. This both keeps enemies locked down and the damage is incredibly high. Absol has a pretty solid critical-hit rate and the 3 procs on top of your night slash combo gives you many chances to crit making you a bit more rng proof compared to Pursuit and Sucker Punch sets.

Night Slash is a highly flexible move that has two dashes that deal large amounts of damage, some healing, and is incredibly fast making it difficult for players to react too. Since the dashes themselves deal damage and it is on a very mild cooldown, you have a lot of outplay potential on this set. The hit box for the second dash is also forgiving so if your character model overlaps with an enemy, you will hit them regardless of the direction you dash in giving you a lot of opportunities to mix up your movement.

Your general combo is Psycho Cut > Night Slash > auto >2nd Night Slash. This triggers all of your psycho cut procs while the enemy is stuck being slowed and the burst damage is incredible. This makes even bulky characters like Snorlax or Blastoise lose a majority of their health and you can make quick work of all rounders let alone any squishier targets you hit.

The burst on this set is so quick and has such high amounts of damage it oftentimes can just catch out normally really bad matchups for absol such as defenders or crowd control heavy characters like Buzzswole. If you can catch them with cooldowns off such as when they attack and teammate and you land the combo you usually win on the spot. You hit multiple times and they all can crit making this set fairly rng proof as well.

Psycho Cut also has the added benefit of working with your ult and also being a large slow making it the highest synergy move when you click your Unite. After energy amps and with a few crits alongside your psycho procs you are putting out some of the highest burst in the game.

Psycho Cut -> Midnight Slash is an incredibly potent combo that you should really consider doing if you can ever catch more than one person in the hitbox as it deletes them off the map 99% of the time. You can also do this on objectives if the situation calls for it since you can do a massive amount of the objectives health pool in a small amount of time throwing off enemies secure timings. You could easily do like a third or more of regi or rayquaza’s bar.

All of Absol’s moves individually are quite powerful so it’s hard to go wrong with any set you pick. While it isn’t as good pairing Sucker Punch with Night Slash over Psycho Cut, the moveset still offers some neat perks. Teleporting onto characters is powerful and it gives you pretty insane degrees of flexibility on where to go with your two night slash dashes as a result.

You also can just mix it into your rotation of attacks pretty much whenever the time calls for it since you don’t really need it to set you up like you do on pursuit sometimes. Sucker Punch being a parry and a stun are also just generally pretty powerful and is on a very small cooldown.

You lack a majority of the raw dps psycho cut offers you in exchange for a bit more utility and even more tech you can do. You give up Psycho Cut + ult synergy as well as the ability to instantly delete all rounders or close defenders health pools in exchange for more flexibility and safety and at that point you usually should go pursuit if you are concerned about getting in on people safely. Night Slashes biggest selling point is the very tiny timeframe in which it kills people which psycho cut does well and sucker punch does less well.

Favourable Matchup:

These are Pokémon that our team has determined ABSOL is strong against. ABSOL will generally be able to shut down these opponents playstyle's or have the advantage in a one on one fight.

MEW

INTELEON

DODRIO

DELPHOX

Unfavourable Matchup:

These are Pokémon that our team has determined ABSOL is weak against. These Pokémon will have the upper hand in a fight or be able to exploit ABSOL's weaknesses.

UMBREON

LAPRAS

NINETALES

BUZZWOLE

SLOWBRO