THE BEST CHANDELURE BUILD GUIDE - POKEMON UNITE

ITEM AND EMBLEM BUILDS ARE THE SAME FOR BOTH MOVESETS ON THIS CHARACTER.
Items: Slick Spoon , Choice Specs/Curse Incense, Wise Glasses
– Although conventional wisdom says that Slick Spoon effect loses a lot of value when it’s used with kits that reduce enemy Sp.Def, Chandelure’s Infiltrator doesn’t do that. It ignores a portion of enemy Sp.Def just like Slick Spoon does. Because of that, a full stacked Chandelure passive is basically just a second Slick Spoon for a massive 40% Sp.Def ignoring.
– Choice Specs is a frequent bread and butter item for mages to compliment their high Sp.Atk stats and reliance on their skills. Chandelure is no different here. His high uptime in AoE damage output in general also make him a great Curse spreader in group settings, especially now that the burn ticks also refresh the Curse debuff.
– Wise Glasses is a very solid third damage item that rounds out this build. Overheat has great total scaling on top of Chandelure’s naturally high Sp.Atk stat that gives overall great value out of Wise Glasses 7% Sp.Atk boost. This Wise Glasses slot is the one where you can get a little silly or experimental with while still being effective.
Battle Item: Eject Button
– Eject button is the tried and true snap mobility and repositioning tool that’ll help keep yourself safe against divers. This is never the wrong answer and almost always the right answer.
Emblems: 7 Black 6 Green
– Standard CDR set should be used here for maximum move uptime with some extra Sp. Atk.

Surviving as Litwick – Early Game Tips:
While jungle is preferred to hit your crazy strong 5 spike quicker, your early game is serviceable enough to survive in lane if and when needed. Litwick doesn’t have the best secure in the world (far from it), but Ember’s double-use and your passive burn on things allows you to rip wild mon relatively quickly before an enemy comes to contest it.

Also, Night Shade stun is a fantastic way of stuffing their secures (takes some finesse to stun them right before they go in for a secure), as well as making kill confirms on overextended targets much more feasible.

MOVESET 1: Flamethrower + Imprison/Poltergeist /
More of a longer range burst oriented set that can yield potentially higher output than Overheat, especially once you reach the plus version at level 11. However, the locked sweetspot distance makes the move struggle hard against more mobile opponents that can just dash at you or dodge it. Your output is highly dependent on getting only sweetspot hits to even be able to think of being able to keep up with Overheat’s output. Flamethrower is only really pickable when you have a strong frontline presence and there is a low or minimal amount of dashes on the enemy team that can easily break your spacing.

Poltergeist is the dev intended move to be played with Flamethrower, since the matchups where Flamethrower can be good are also matchups where Poletergeist’s AoE slow zone can actually be a more meaningful obstacle for enemies trying to run at you. That slowdown can help you space sweetspots more consistently, but overall not required. You’d also be giving up the insane playmaking potential and power of Imprison picking Poltergeist.

About Ignite Midnight :
Upon casting, Chandelure blinds all enemies in a huge AoE around it. Use it to cause chaos and uncertainty in the enemy team to help bail you out of a bad situation. The health of objectives are also hidden when this is in effect, so this can potentially be very powerful during objective flips. When recasting, you shoot out a very high damage death ray that can rip something or an objective to shreds. Just be wary that any sort of shove or stun will easily cancel this death ray.
About Infiltrator :
This is a very potent passive that enables you to ignore up to 20% of the Sp.Def of your enemies. Any instance of damage you do will build up a stack of 2.5% Sp.Def ignoring that lasts 4 seconds, refreshes when a new stack is gained, and can be stacked up to 8 times to total to 20%. You can keep track of them by looking towards somewhere on the bottom edge of your screen and see the icon for its duration and the number of stacks you have.
By any instance of damage, I mean ANY. The small ticks of burn damage all throughout Chandelure’s kit work very well for quickly building up stacks and maintaining them. Chandelure’s boosted auto attack, Ember, Flamethrower, and Overheat apply burns. When applicable and you need Infiltrator stacks at the start of a fight, it’s good to lead it all off with a boosted auto for an immediate Infiltrator stack and then some more burn ticks very soon after. That way, your Overheat/Flamethrower will be doing a little more damage than if you immediately led off with it.

MOVESET 1: Overheat + Imprison (BEST)
Overheat  is never the wrong answer over Flamethrower with its consistent and very high AoE damage. Stand behind your frontliners and rain fireballs down onto your opponents then blast them with the long range sure hit aim finisher while making sure to keep yourself moving around so you stay in a safe position. Just be wary of bushes, as the sure hit aiming of the finisher fireball can’t target someone that you can’t see in a bush.

There usually isn’t any need to prematurely end the Overheat barrage as long as you’re still hitting people. You don’t get any real overall DPS increase from the lower CDs you get from doing that. The only time where you should do that is to finish off very low HP opponents that are only accessible from the finisher fireball’s higher range.

For small damage optimizations, keep in mind that you cannot use your boosted auto for a moment after using the Overheat finisher, so be sure to get that out before casting the finisher. However if you’re trying to quickly kill a squishy target, skip the boosted auto. It’ll probably be unneeded damage when you can just immediately finish them with the finisher instead.

Imprison  is where Chandelure players can really start to distinguish themselves from just being a damage machine to becoming an absolute menace at teamfights. This move places down a dark area where if people are in it during the immediate cast, they take a brief root so they can be stopped in their tracks, which already makes the move a nice option for fending off divers. More importantly though, an enemy being in this zone applies a silence (called “Move Lock” ingame) on them that locks them out of using their skills, Unite move, and any battle item not named Full Heal. They are pretty much only locked to walking around manually and using auto attacks in this.

This zone lasts a whopping 4 seconds and you’ll anywhere between 2-4 seconds of downtime depending on how much natural CDR you have at that point of the game. This is already a very long time in this game as is with good uptime, but those 4 seconds have even more weight to them when getting out of there in a timely manner is often easier said than done because of the fact that you can’t access your moves and battle items while in it. With this Imprison’s applications go far beyond just being a built in stop gap against assassins. It’s also very potent at basically not letting the enemy frontliners you’re firing down on play the game. When and how you use this move is huge for making bigger impacts and swinging a fight in your favor.

If you’re able to coordinate with your tank and support players, try to make sure your Imprison is not on cooldown while sources of peel from your teammates are also on cooldown. Especially with Imprison’s zone lasting as long as it does, this minimizes the amounts of openings potential divers have and can make Chandelure extremely difficult to dive when executed well.

MOVESET 2: Overheat + Imprison 
Overheat  is never the wrong answer over Flamethrower with its consistent and very high AoE damage. Stand behind your frontliners and rain fireballs down onto your opponents then blast them with the long range sure hit aim finisher while making sure to keep yourself moving around so you stay in a safe position. Just be wary of bushes, as the sure hit aiming of the finisher fireball can’t target someone that you can’t see in a bush.

There usually isn’t any need to prematurely end the Overheat barrage as long as you’re still hitting people. You don’t get any real overall DPS increase from the lower CDs you get from doing that. The only time where you should do that is to finish off very low HP opponents that are only accessible from the finisher fireball’s higher range.

For small damage optimizations, keep in mind that you cannot use your boosted auto for a moment after using the Overheat finisher, so be sure to get that out before casting the finisher. However if you’re trying to quickly kill a squishy target, skip the boosted auto. It’ll probably be unneeded damage when you can just immediately finish them with the finisher instead.

Imprison  is where Chandelure players can really start to distinguish themselves from just being a damage machine to becoming an absolute menace at teamfights. This move places down a dark area where if people are in it during the immediate cast, they take a brief root so they can be stopped in their tracks, which already makes the move a nice option for fending off divers. More importantly though, an enemy being in this zone applies a silence (called “Move Lock” ingame) on them that locks them out of using their skills, Unite move, and any battle item not named Full Heal. They are pretty much only locked to walking around manually and using auto attacks in this.

This zone lasts a whopping 4 seconds and you’ll anywhere between 2-4 seconds of downtime depending on how much natural CDR you have at that point of the game. This is already a very long time in this game as is with good uptime, but those 4 seconds have even more weight to them when getting out of there in a timely manner is often easier said than done because of the fact that you can’t access your moves and battle items while in it. With this Imprison’s applications go far beyond just being a built in stop gap against assassins. It’s also very potent at basically not letting the enemy frontliners you’re firing down on play the game. When and how you use this move is huge for making bigger impacts and swinging a fight in your favor.

If you’re able to coordinate with your tank and support players, try to make sure your Imprison is not on cooldown while sources of peel from your teammates are also on cooldown. Especially with Imprison’s zone lasting as long as it does, this minimizes the amounts of openings potential divers have and can make Chandelure extremely difficult to dive when executed well.

Favourable Matchup:

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

TREVENANT

SNORLAX

NINETALES

SCIZOR

BUZZWOLE

SLOWBRO

Unfavourable Matchup:

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

MEW

PIKACHU

VENUSAUR

INTELEON

GARDEVOIR

LEAFEON

CINDERACE

MACHAMP

DECIDUEYE