THE BEST BLAZIKEN BUILD GUIDE - POKEMON UNITE

**AMP AND BUDDY HAVE EXTENDED COOLDOWNS ON THIS CHARACTER, DON’T BOTHER**
Due to his short spammable unite move, Amp and Buddy’s internal cooldowns are doubled, to 30 and 60 seconds respectively on Blaziken. This is extremely restrictive in how fluid he is allowed to be in Unite usage and thus makes these items very ineffective.

Razor is a natural choice due to him effectively having 5 moves to press (6 if you count Firepunch double use) making him get a TON of Razor procs at all times. Very high output from this item, especially early game dueling power. It helps rip lane farm faster, and constant slow application also helps stick to people a bit better.

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Blaziken has excellent ratios on majority of his moves, as well as even his basic attack. Couple these with how he chains combos of both together in long strings, Weight and/or Weakness get huge returns on output. Weight is the natural choice for lane, but Weakness can be a jungle substitution if stacks don’t look possible.

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Due to his only form of sustain coming from Blaze passive proc healing, he tends to get blown up pretty quick before getting any of those procs, and does need a bit of help staying alive long enough to actually complete his combos and get his damage out. At least one defensive item is STRONGLY advised, and can even double upon them if desired.
Resonant Guard is the more accessible option for less effort throughout the match, but doublestacking with Cookie is a much higher-value option too, which gives much more up-front bulk to allow you to complete combos smoother as well as making your Blaze healing and ult shields a touch meatier all around, since they both scale on max HP.

Early Game :
So you actually have very respectable power as Torchic, and have the option to either focus on punishing enemy stackers with raw dueling power, or burning down lane farm very quickly before others can contest it.
Aerial Ace being a double-use move not only helps stack up Blaze for quick procs easier, but also helps in proccing your Razor Claw more often for very good output and can kill things surprisingly fast.
Torchic doesn’t have the most fantastic secure around in relation to other big hitting toplaners, but with some creativity he can hold his own enough to get some cheeky secures. If you manage your Blaze markers well and have Ember proc your 5th hit at the same time, it’s a rather large chunk of damage.
Being able to combo Ace with autos and Ember also makes him a pretty good anti-stacker, since he can chain 5 hits in quick succession with very little time in between for small dunks to squeeze in, making potential stackers have to take a ton of punishment for it.

You can do Aerial Ace > basic atk > Aerial Ace > basic atk > Ember for a super quick 5-blaze instant proc to melt a farm on the spot.
Conversely, if the enemy laner is doing a good job of bodyblocking the wild mon to where your Ember isn’t a viable last hitting option, you can also do Ace > basic > Ember > basic > Ace, which will fare better since Ace can go through them and still hit the farm.
Secure option without using Ember:
(2 blaze ticks primed on farm, Ace -> Auto -> Ace is 1000+ Damage secure that is VERY fast)

Long story short, your mission early game is to manage Blaze well, get any pieces of farm you can, and use your mobility to get some Weight stacks in and/or stop stackers. Make good use of Ace double-cast after dunking to dash thru a would-be interrupter, and then dash a second time to escape freely.

Getting lvl 5 as soon as possible is very important, as access to Blaze Kick is what will make the contest for 8:50 birds MUCH more in your favor. You likely won’t get 5 before then unless you heavily stomp early or your Expshare partner is a god and steals everything, but you’ll likely hit 5 DURING birds as the small ones die. Bkicking the big one towards your side is still very beneficial and worth doing, however always keep an eye out for bad enemy positioning, if they are near a wall and not paying attention that’s a free Bkick wall stun…and that can turn a gank around on its own.

Combusken phase is also not a bad dought as other mid-evo’s are…Bkick and Aerial Ace are still combo-able with each other as well! You can use one dash of Ace to Give your ensuing Bkick about an Eject’s worth of extra length, and there is no lag between casts so it’s basically instant, and hard to react to. Conversely you can also do an Ace immediately after connecting a Bkick (again, no lag after) for a near-instant 2-hit combo that will then give you that second Ace use right away.

Mid-game:
Getting lvl 7 gives you access to Overheat, and you have your first fully fleshed out moveset. The long charge time and stationary nature of this move may make it seem lackluster at the surface, but it’s very multifaceted. You can start more aggressively looking for good Blaze Kick angles, try to bait an enemy near a wall, and landing a wallstun will reward you with a (almost) free full charge Overheat on the target. It’s not TRULY a true combo, but with natural ping, the additional slow Bkick applies, and the super wide hitbox Overheat has, it’s rather hard for them to escape that giant Falcon Kick unless they have a very good dash.

**NOTE**: You can buffer the Overheat cast mid-Blaze Kick so that Blaziken immediately starts charging it on frame 1 AS SOON AS Bkick animation ends. Makes the combo a lot tighter and eliminates any ping errors on your end as well.

Use Cases of Overheat:
– Securing farm and/or objectives near you or in teamfights
– Follow-up after a Bkick wallstun for big burst
– Extending Unstoppable frames to eat incoming CC
– Survive dives in small areas with dmg reduction and punish with large hitbox
– Cut off retreat paths and force redirections/resource expending
– Surprise ambush from inside bushes

How NOT to use Overheat:
– Raw charging it mid-fight with no other cooldowns
– Walking up to a ranged enemy to charge in their face
– As an objective ripping tool to get it lower faster while not having ult swap to refresh

Generally lvl 7 is where you’ll be hovering around at the 7:00 mark as a laner, so just keep in mind Overheat’s securing ability and be ready to use that when that objective gets low.
Not only does the above buffer method make the combo quicker, but the Unstoppable of Bkick flows seamlessly into the Unstoppable of Overheat, making you fully Unstoppable for the entire combo…don’t be afraid to utilize this to get yourself in for a steal when the enemies are zoning you out of an objective.

About Unite Stance Switching :
Level 8 (which technically is still considered midgame) is where you become 100% online and have access to all tools needed to be fully operational, while most other carries will need one more level at least.
Punch stance gives you a state to be in that allows for some lower-cooldown consistent fighting, as well as some poke and burst finishing in Focus Blast.

With Blaziken, you just really have to try to think at least 5-8 seconds further ahead of what you’re currently doing, so you need to think about whether your present situation with smoothly flow into your your upcoming switch as well, and if any incoming hurdles require tools from your current stance, or the other.

The neat thing about stance switching is that all cooldowns are refreshed upon entering a new stance…regardless of how long the move’s base cd is. This means, if we look at BKick for instance, if you use the move, it goes on its base 10 sec cooldown, instantly Unite, you just need to wait the 5 seconds of Unite’s cd and switch BACK to Kick stance, and you have another BKick ready to go, 5 whole seconds sooner than normal.
Because of this, I’ve found that engaging in Kick stance is much more efficient, since you’re able to get 2 chances at making a big BKick play in a much shorter timeframe. You go in with your big unstoppable displacement move, which forces a reaction from your target. More often than not the reaction is either some form of CC or a burst response, both of which Overheat is great at eating for you. You generally have no reason to stay in Kick stance once both moves are done, so you’ll want to immediately switch to Punch after that, and get Unite on cd. Kick got you in, now Punch lets you knock some heads around close up.

Keep in mind that using Unite move INTO Punch stance is 2 hits on its own, as opposed to 1 hit on swapping to Kick. This plays even more into the idea of going Kick >Punch, since the swap itself requires very close range, and gets you closer to a Blaze proc which helps burst and keeping you healthy.

Once you’ve switched to Punch, you have 2 uses of FirePunch, and Focus Blast to rack up more Blaze procs and outplay enemies with, which I’ll cover individually later. After 5 seconds of brawling, you now have the privilege of swapping BACK to Kick and either Bkicking the poor unfortunate soul into another wall/your team, or just Bkicking away if things aren’t going well…whereas if you start an engagement in Punch, you only have one Bkick playmaking chance and would have to effectively wait 12 seconds for another rotation.
You obviously don’t always have the luxury of choosing when and how you start a fight, and throwing a Focus Blast from afar to slow and following up with some fists will absolutely work in some matchups.
As stated before, this is just a matter of thinking further ahead than just your current stance, which is why I advise to start in Kick, so that playmaking power is available again at the tail end of an encounter.

Punch stance, unlike Kick stance, is actually one that Blaziken doesn’t mind sticking around in longer if he feels like it. Thanks to Fire Punch’s low cd and the 30% extra permanent atkspeed while in Punch, you have really good sustained damage and good Blaze proc generation long term. This is generally the stance you’ll be passively farming and rotating in, as it makes for quicker wild mon ripping.

About Fire Punch :
SHORYUKEN
Fire Punch is likely Blaziken’s most skill-intensive and optimizable move in his kit. This moves allows you to change direction after each individual hit, giving you great skillshot-dodging ability when in an enemy’s face and they are scrambling to respond. It does need to connect at least once in the first use in order to be able to use again, so for this reason it’s generally best used to STAY close to your target and stick to them rather than GETTING in initially.
This move is 4 total hits in very quick succession, and on a relatively low cd overall, so this will be where the majority of your Blaze proc generation will be made.

*Update* The animation cancel bug on Fire Punch has been fixed! It is now no longer possible to cancel and lose a hit of Fire Punch by using a basic atk too quickly, each dash will always complete 2 hits no matter what. You can still animation cancel an auto with a Fire Punch use however, so you can still speed up your combos nicely and not be afraid of losing any damage output or Razor procs.

Walls that can be passed with Fire Punch:

A usual usage of Fire Punch is to use it once to slap them around a bit, weave a Razor proc auto in there and hold onto the second use, see what they do about it/where they go and use the second part to react to that and go the way they go. The ball is always in your court with this move, as I said mega flexible.
If you don’t expect the enemy to be too skittish or they simply don’t have mobility options to get away, you also do have the option to just double-spam both uses of Fire Punch right away for a superquick 4 Blaze stacks.
In times where burst is needed and time is short, I like to quicktap the 4 hits of Fire Punch and animation cancel the last hit into an instant Focus Blast, which as the 5th hit will also trigger Blaze, or a super fast and high output frontloaded combo. *This is not the main or standard combo, please do not say “Joe told me this is the best way to use Fire Punch!”* This will take away a lot of your decision making routes and leave you resource-less very fast, it is only a fast Blaze proc option.
But that combo finisher transitions us perfectly into…

About Focus Blast :
HADOKEN
This also just may seem like a standard skillshot ball of damage, but like everything else on this chicken it has multiple methods of use.
First thing to note about this move is that the explosion the ball has upon impact gives it a bit more range than the skillshot reticle implies, and should be kept in mind when you think it’ll be just out of reach…it probably isn’t, so let it rip.

The most effective use of Focus Blast seems to be either a burst combo finisher (as mentioned above, since FB’s high single hit combined with a Blaze proc is a huge chunk of dmg most would be surprised to receive), or as a chaser on retreating targets. Once Blaziken has engaged in with Blaze Kick and started to knock heads around with Fire Punch, those too squishy to handle the heat will often times start attempting to create space between you and them as they get lower. So what Focus Blast serves in this is the final chunk of dmg to finish off a wounded Pikachu limping away to find Ash, or if it doesn’t outright finish them the AoE slow on it will give you another chance at saying “Nuh uh, where you goin” and wrapping em up.

The large AoE explosion on it is a great way to apply Blaze marks on a group of enemies/farm, as well as a decent way to chunk some finnicky enemies down that are tiptoeing around before a teamfight.
I would not say that it is a great engage tool on its own, as a slow in general is relatively easy to recover or adjust to in the beginning of a fight, and you are more or less still forced to switch to Kick stance to get to work on time anyway. Keep in mind Focus Blast does have a 9 sec cd, so it’s not the most spammable thing ever.

Late Game:
Overall, Blaziken prefers smaller scale fights of 1-2 targets at a time, where his maneuverability can outshine and outplay more freely and he doesn’t get caught in a CC blender too much. This of course is not always immediately plausible in lategame teamfights, but flanking around the edges and identifying outer angles away from the frontline will allow you fragmentate the enemy team, and break up the group in smaller more digestible chunks to go in on. Wait for frontlines to engage, wait for big cooldowns to be used, and try to come in as the clean-up janitor or weak-side (read: non main side) flanker for them to have to split their attention between dealing with you or the teammates coming head on.
Engaging is where your decision making process begins with more scrutiny late game, since everyone will start to have to responses to your tricks, and closer together to be able to assist in quicker time; so here is where you need to decide:
1) which target should I try to Bkick towards
2) do I need any Unstoppable right now or incoming soon,
3) should I swap stances immediately or do I have time to auto weave,
4) do I frontload my combo damage and dip, or do I stay for another rotation
5) do I need my mobility tools to chase this target or do I need them to get myself out

As mentioned earlier, Blaziken needs to be mentally operating 5-6 seconds ahead of the current situation…this is especially essential in lategame teamfights.

Blaziken doesn’t exactly shred tanks all too well and doesn’t quite have the sustain to keep up with the bulky folk, so if given the choice he absolutely does prefer engaging onto squishies or other assassins that can’t handle rushdown.
I would not outright call him an assassin at this point in time, but if there was a sliding scale between assassin and bruiser, Blaziken is more towards the assassin end of the spectrum.
Assassin——–—————Bruiser

Kinda like that.

Chicken is still relatively new, he is very skill intensive and we’re literally learning new aspects about him every day so this write-up will evolve and change over time as well.

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Favourable Matchup:

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

FALINKS

GARDEVOIR

ESPEON

CRAMORANT

AZUMARILL

Unfavourable Matchup:

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

MEWTWO Y

GOODRA

SCIZOR

GARCHOMP

BUZZWOLE