THE BEST CRAMORANT BUILD GUIDE - POKEMON UNITE

Items:
Dive + Air Slash Best Build :
Energy Amp , Slick Spoon , Cursed Incense /Shell Bell

Surf + Hurricane Best Build :
Energy Amp , Slick Spoon , Cursed Incense /Choice Specs
– Energy Amp is one of your two core items and is a perfect fit for Cramorant. Much of Cramorant’s teamfight impact revolves around use of Gatling Gulp Missile and Amp helps out with increasing its output on the first couple of Arrokuda/Pikachu it throws out. Additionally, the faster Unite Move cooldowns helps you a lot with having it up reliably for most to all teamfights and the flat CDR it offers is also great for a moveset that’s as spammy as Dive.
– Slick Spoon is your other core item due to it being your best item for increasing your overall damage output and almost all special attackers. Cramorant is no different in this regard, and Dive’s especially large reliance on boosted basic attacks for damage makes it an especially good choice for it.
– Third slot is pretty flexible, though your general go to options for more damage for a build that’s more focused for Dive are Shell Bell and Cursed Incense. Shell Bell offers a small amount of extra healing that’s on top of all your other Spell Vamp heals but more importantly, more CDR in its flat stats for getting more Dive.
– Cursed Incense is also another very strong option due to you throwing in boosted basic attacks often enough for good uptime with the Dive set. It also has very high uptime during Gatling Gulp Missile’s constant barrage of attacks, which is very nice for both sets.
– A build that’s more focused on optimizing the Surf set’s burst potential would run Choice Specs instead on this third slot.
– Buddy Barrier is another generally solid 3rd slot option for people who need the extra safety on their Unite Moves, though is usually not necessary if you’re using them well. Wise Glasses is an item more focused for Dive + Air Slash, as its your next best Sp.Atk item for increasing your raw damage numbers if CDR is not a concern.
Battle Items: Eject Button
– By far your best option for this character. The extra mobility enables you to have even more playmaking and escape potential on top of already having 3 dashes. For Surf Cram, this Eject Button is still a very bread and butter Battle Item for mages due to its quick repositioning that lets you escape danger. Very importantly too is that you can also cast Eject Button mid Unite Move, which can be massive for ensuring that you don’t stop dealing damage to opposing Pokemon and able to dodge a big attack coming at you while you’re using it.
Emblems: 7 Black 6 Green
– Classic CDR focused special attacker’s emblem set. Dive Cram is one of the most prolific users of CDR as a stat so this is naturally going to be a great fit while Surf Cram still very much appreciates lower cooldowns.

About Gatling Gulp Missile
While Cramorant is far from useless without a Unite Move, it is still very important to be able to use this Unite Move well since a huge part of your impact comes from it. Try to use this move after a fight’s started and it’s not easy for the enemy team to run from it because of them being occupied with fighting your teammates. If you have a strong source of sustain or damage mitigation, you can sometimes go into the thick of it for a massive Unite. Most of the time though, you want to take more of a midline position with this move where you’re still behind the protection of your frontline, but close enough to where its difficult for people to kite away from its huge range.

This move targets the closest opponent to you and the Arrokuda/Pikachu bounces to the next nearest thing to the initial target, so be sure to also keep that in mind if there’s something specific you want to be aiming at.

Eject Button is also usable during this move, letting you get some nasty repositions to keep people in range of your move or to avoid big burst moves coming onto you.

You also become unstoppable during this move, which lets you also use this as a means to punish a grabbing type move like Charizard’s Seismic Slam or just power through a big CC that would otherwise kill you. You can also cancel it early by pressing the button again in case you need to get out of potential danger. Dive + Air Slash Cramorant will probably Dive Away or try to get a big Air Slash+ heal, while Mage Cram may just walk away with the unite buff’s movement speed or surprise someone with its high burst and CC combo to stuff a potential dive.

Unite Move has a 123 second cooldown, making it a deceptively fast recharging move when used in tandem with Energy Amp. Be sure to farm hard between teamfights to get another Unite move ASAP.

About Boosted Basic Attacks
Boosted Basic Attacks are an important part of Cramorant as a whole as on both sets they make up a substantial portion of your damage. Dive + Air Slash especially is reliant on them for damage due to Dive further enhancing boosted basic attack damage , though Surf + Hurricane still very much loves being able to weave in more of them whenever possible to considerably increase its kill ranges.

Cramorant has a variety of ways to use its mouth to grab Arrokuda or Pikachu, whether it be manually basic attacking until you get one for every 4th basic, standing in Whirlpool , touching Surf’s wave or by using Dive . When fired out via using a basic attack or forcefully spit out at an aggressor when Cramorant gets hit in its range, they do a pretty fair amount of damage. These boosted basics also bounces to one other nearby target for the same damage, so you can occaisonally take advantage of hitting farm that an out of reach enemy is standing nearby and hit them through that.

Arrokuda are caught when Cramorant is at above 50% HP and on hit. They reduce the enemy’s Defense by 20% and Sp. Defense by 5% for 3 seconds.

Pikachu are caught when Cramorant is at below 50% HP. They inflict a 50% slow and 10% reduction in attack speed for 1 second.

Both types of prey deal the same amount of damage and this rule also applies to while Cramorant is using Gatling Gulp Missile . The only difference between them are the different effects on hit. Although the Pikachu are quite helpful for ensuring that enemies can’t escape or chase you as well with the slow, you generally want to be aiming to have Arrokuda as much as you can. While 5% Sp. Def reduction is very minimal and doesn’t help Cramorant itself that much, the 20% Defense reduction is not insignificant at all and can help out letting your physical teammates chew through their targets faster.

Early Laning as Cramorant
Cramorant has a pretty solid laning phase, though it’s rather unorthodox in how its played. You start with Whirlpool and Feather Dance , and it pretty much all revolves around Whirlpool’s AoE of very high rip damage for that point of the game.

You lack a proper burst secure move yourself, so if you’re fortunate enough to be with an Exp. Share holding lane partner it’s ideal if they have a good burst secure of their own to do that for you while Whirlpool shreds the farm. Standing in Whirlpool gives you a free boosted basic attack that helps you shred farm even faster or can be used as a makeshift burst option of your own for securing farm in a pinch. However, getting it to come out when you want it to come out while you’re still on top of the farm can be unreliable at times as getting hit with a Arrokuda or Pikachu in Cramorant’s mouth also causes it to automatically spit it back out at them.

Once you reach level 4 and learn Air Slash or Hurricane , you become very solid at securing farm yourself during Whirlpool’s rip.

Air Slash requires you to be up very close to hit all the blades, but does have very good burst range if you do that can let you solo rip and secure farm very efficiently if you’re not getting body blocked or taking too much enemy fire. Bear in mind that 3 of Air Slash’s blades still go down the middle, so you can still get a burst range comparable to that of Hurricane’s even at longer ranges.

Hurricane is still okay secure range that can also be thrown out mid Whirlpool to help get a farm, though you can also opt to use it on your opponents trying to contest to stun them out of being able to even try. You can even hit both the farm and opponent at the same time if they’re close enough to the farm!

Feather Dance seems like a very useless move at first glance, as it’s just a simple 30% Attack debuff and 30% slow for 4 seconds on targets that get caught in its AoE. While still not a particularly good move overall, it should still be taken advantage of when applicable. The slow can still be helpful for making sure that enemies can’t get away from you or helping to keep them in a Whirlpool for longer, while the debuff to Attack stat can sometimes mess with a physical Pokemon’s ability to outsecure or outfight you.

Actually hitting Whirlpool on enemy Pokemon for fighting can be pretty awkward since it offers no slow or stuns of its own to actually keep people in its range. You generally want to try to bait your opponents into walking too close to you where it’s easier to place down a Whirlpool that has them in the center of it at the start or lets you utilize the free prey Arrokuda for more boosted autos. Playing to a teammate’s stun or distraction can also help with keeping enemies in Whirlpool to let you shred their HP bars and if you’re running Hurricane , you can also utilize its knockup for helping keep people in place for Whirlpool.

Which Moveset to Play? vs.

There’s a variety of factors to consider when knowing which moveset to play once you start loading into the game and can see the enemy team’s comp in relation to yours. Generally though, Dive + Air Slash   is very rarely or never the wrong answer IF you’re very proficient at it as the overall mobility and damage impact will always let you make some nice plays and have an easier time finding great positioning for Gatling Gulp Missiles. Cramorants that decide to be the junglers for their team should also more than likely always be playing Dive, as the extra bit of damage and survivability gained from Jungle’s higher EXP yields tends to be a lot more beneficial for that set over Surf. Against higher mobility or dive heavy setups that you may have a lot more trouble hitting Hurricane or Surf on, Dive also becomes more favored. Dive is also very good if you want to be able to increase the damage output of other physical attackers on your team due to it being able to have much more constant Arrokuda output.

For all the more experienced Cramorant players that one tricked the Dive set for a time, you guys are still eating.

However, the Mage Set of Surf + Hurricane is still very much viable and has a strong place in Cramorant’s arsenal. This set offers much higher immediate damage impact outside of Gatling Gulp Missile and with its great stuns, can range from being very disruptive towards enemy frontliners trying to do their thing or locking down an enemy carry’s movement for an easy pick. This makes this build preferable when you want/need to have another strong source of burst damage and/or crowd control out of Cramorant.

With those factors in mind, figure out your moveset choice on the fly!

Moveset 1: Dive Cram – Dive + Air Slash (BEST)  

Dive Cram has been traditionally an often forgotten but slept on Pokemon. In the occasions that it sees play, it was often in the hands of more skilled players that put a lot of time in the set. Overall, it still does great at being a very mobile and hard to kill thorn in the side of enemies that chips away at enemies until they’re open for a point blank Air Slash or getting mowed down by Gatling Gulp Missile. As possibly the most unique attacker in Pokemon Unite, it’s currently finding a comfortable place in the meta after it has been buffed to have Spell Vamp naturally starting at level 9.

Be sure to check out the Builds and Gameplay Section for seeing how to optimize your early game with this character!

About Dive  
Dive is a very low cooldown dash that also gives Cramorant unstoppable while using it. Up to 3 uses are kept in reserve. While the distance doesn’t seem particularly crazy at first glance, it’s enough for Cramorant to go through EVERY wall on Theia Sky ruins with relative ease to allow for some criminal escapes or entries. It’s very good to play to walls when possible when playing this set so you can take escape and entry routes that other characters can’t.

Although the cooldowns between uses of Dive are very low, it does still take about 4.5-6 seconds for Cramorant to get another Dive back in its reserves depending on your CDR at any given moment. Be sure to keep that in mind when making more aggressive plays with the move and make sure that you’ll have enough uses of Dive left for escaping or closing out kills. Blue Buff from Accelgor is also extremely good for you for making sure you have enough CDR to Dive around even more, and level 13 is also still an important power spike for you just because of the large natural CDR boost you get then.

Each time you use dive, Cramorant catches a prey to get a free boosted auto . For the next 5 seconds after using Dive, Cramorant’s next boosted basic attack will also deal substantially higher damage (about 50%) to make sure that your safe damage output can keep up, and these can also do surprisingly large chunks of HP out of squishies.

The actual hit of the Dive dash itself when Cramorant appears does fairly low damage and is only really for maximizing damage when going all in on a target, so it makes up a pretty low portion of Cramorant’s damage profile overall. However, it is very worth noting that it has a very small shove on hit away from Cramorant, which is enough to cancel moves that would normally get cancelled out by a stun in general. While it’s difficult to time, that very small stun can sometimes be enough to stuff out a potential skill or throw off an enemy when safe to do so.

The unstoppable portion of Dive also can be utilized for not getting stunned by otherwise difficult to avoid or last second CCs coming onto you.

About Air Slash
Air Slash can be described to function like a shotgun . Cramorant shoots out a fan of 5 blades that each deal damage and reduces its own cooldown by .5s  per blade hit, which can have some pretty respectable burst damage for a character with this much safe damage and mobility. While this makes it sound like it should only really be used when making all in dives to assassinate or finish off a target, Air Slash still has great uses outside of that, especially once you unlock the plus version at level 11.

Air Slash+ is another pretty important power spike for Cramorant, as it adds a pretty nice amount of healing per blade hit for Cramorant to live longer and be able to take more risks with. With combined with the recent addition of 12.5% Spell Vamp to Cramorant’s statline, this healing can be VERY substantial when every blade is hit.. like a ~40% HP heal when every blade is hit! Just like the old days..

The move is also still pretty handy even at not close ranges, as 3 of the blades of Air Slash still travel in a pretty straight line down the middle of the fan you shot it out in. This means that even at around your basic attack’s ranges, you can still pretty feasibly hit 3/5 blades for a helpful bit of extra damage and still a fair amount of healing in a pinch. Just keep in mind that the travel speed of the blades are deceptively slow, so you may still need to lead your targets a bit when going for this. The blades are also body blockable, so be sure to keep that in mind for your positioning and timing as well.

Air Slash also pushes Cramorant backwards a bit on use, which helps with creating distance or a bit of extra kiting when using it to keep yourself safe with. Cramorant can also go through most walls with this backwards movement as well if you use it while hugging a wall, which can occasionally let you make some very neat plays when you don’t have or want to use Dive or Eject Button for whatever reason.

General Combat Flow   
Contrary to the name of the move, you are usually NOT using Dive to dive into the enemy. You will often Dive backwards, in place, or to the side to help create or maintain space between you and your target while catching Arrokuda or other prey to throw out at your enemies as boosted basics. With that mobility, you can kite enemies out quite hard and wear them down, especially if a physical attacker is also attacking that target. When you want to try to save your Dives for a bit to prepare for a bigger moment where you’ll need more, you’re still fine to throw in regular basic attacks  and weave in longer range Air Slashes to hit the middle 3 blades for extra damage. (and healing if Air Slash+) If you do manage to manually basic attack up to another boosted auto, try to throw out the boosted auto before using Dive again , as you can basically get off 2 boosted attacks in quick succession in doing so since Dive always gives you a new one.

If you’re trying to coordinate with other sources of physical damage, be sure to try to throw in your Arrokuda   when your physical attackers are about to hit their targets or are actively hitting them so you can ensure their defense shred’s value. 20% is pretty good and can be similar to a physical Slick Spoon for them.

While doing that, you’re also looking for for a good chance to dive in to burst down an injured target or make a hit and run play for more damage with Air Slash . The basic combo is: Dive in > rip Air Slash and a boosted basic attack  for surprisingly great burst, then Dive back out if needed.

Air Slash+ enables you to have more windows to do this thanks to the healing it provides letting you walk off some of the damage you took while hit and running. During larger teamfights where you have Gatling Gulp Missile up, you’re essentially also looking for windows where you can get a huge ult once you think you can find a positioning and window of opportunity where your enemies won’t be able to easily walk away from it. You likely want to try to wait out and bait some resources out until then too, to really make sure that they won’t have copious amounts of Unite Buff shields to survive your onslaught.

Especially in situations where you have to be on the ready for a potential enemy dive or dodging a really painful skillshot like Solarbeam , always try to keep your cooldowns managed in a way that you always have at least one dive up. Having the move’s aiming UI already pulled up and aimed ahead of time when you feel something coming is also a helpful skill to learn, especially for Switch players who have to deal with this game’s terrible auto targeting mechanics, to ensure that you can react and dodge fast enough with the unstoppable dash of Dive.

While Cramorant normally plays in the back and midlines during a teamfight because its more conducive for the Unite Move and spreading boosted attack damage and shred, Cramorant is also a serviceable assassin that can flank to pick off squishy backliners that are weakened a bit as well with a Dive + boosted  + Air Slash combo and even still have the option to rip your Unite Move afterwards to clean up everything else. While it’s not particularly great at assassin angles to the point where it should be the way you’re actively playing a lot of the time, it’s still something to keep in mind that you can adjust your gameplan to include on the fly when the situation permits. You can also go for very gusty Unite Moves in the thick of it if your team gets a huge CC engage or you know something like a Bliss Assistance will help keep you alive through it.

Moveset 2 Guide: Mage Cram – Surf + Hurricane  

Mage Cram has been struggling hard for a long time but is finally beginning to find a solid footing in the meta after Hurricane got a solid 1s cooldown buff that synced it up with Surf prompted players to explore its strengths more. This helps combos flow out better as well as acting as a good buff to the issues with its cooldowns being a bit too long for how slow the moves were animations were. The cooldowns are still pretty long, but after the buff got a lot more bearable after natural CDR starts kicking in and seeing the massive CC and damage reward you get for landing the combo successfully.

Be sure to check out the Builds and Gameplay Section for seeing how to optimize your early game with this character!

The Surficane Combo and General Gameflow

The combo is fairly straightforward, as landing one move will CC your target(s) hard enough for you to easily land the other. Generally though, most combos will start from Hurricane and go into Surf due to Surf’s long travel time that makes it very awkward to hit people from a distance and the first outgoing wave not doing any hard stun or knockup. Surf first combos will generally happen from a following up on another CC that makes your targets easier to hit or when being used from a bush to hide the first bit of Surf’s animation.

Surf attacks with a wave that goes forward then back. You gain a boosted basic  when casting Surf, and the user can also catch Arrokuda again for another one by entering the wave when it comes back. This means that when its safe to do so, you can opt to make sure that you’re able to touch the wave again while hitting your combo to ensure that you can get a second boosted basic attack in one combo to add a very substantial amount of damage.

So overall, the typical full damage combo would consist of Hurricane > Surf > Boosted Basic Attack > Surf Return Wave > Boosted Basic Attack . That should kill or severely maim most enemy attackers and some all arounders.

Energy Amplifier can also be utilized for when you REALLY want to maximize your combo damage. Because of how long the animations take, if you know you’re going to hit your moves you can cast Gatling Gulp Missile immediately after throwing them out, which will make some of the moves in your combo get that 21% damage buff from Energy Amp for HUGE damage. This can be great for guaranteeing a kill on a carry target that’s being sustained hard or ensuring that you can punch through enemy frontliners before they can move again.

Hurricane as a whole and Surf’s returning wave also offer some great CC potential as well. Hurricane’s knockup is HUGE and can create a huge opening on the target it hits, while Surf’s returning wave’s stun is also no slouch and also pulls targets hit in towards where it started which can also be quite disruptive or throw people out of position. Be sure to play to this as well to disrupt enemy frontliners or other targets from being able to do their jobs properly. Your cooldowns are also still pretty long until you get to later in the game where you have more natural CDR, so also be judicious in the targets you go for and timings you throw your combo at.

Because the returning wave of Surf pulls people in towards where it started, it may also sometimes be good to throw out Surf towards the direction you’re running in if you’re trying to run away from something, as the wave can cover your path out and the return wave will push people away from you rather than towards you. Hurricane can also be dropped on top of yourself as well to knock up and punish any diver about to jump on top of you. In general though, you’re quite vulnerable when your moves are on cooldown.

But these moves are so SLOW! How do I hit them?  

Um.. practice? Prediction? Aim good? For real though, these are indeed skillshots that feel slow enough to the point of being unreliable at times, and while it can be the case, there’s still one really important skill that you can take advantage of to have a much easier time hitting higher impact skillshots in general that is just as applicable to Mage Cram.

That skill isn’t a particularly difficult one to pick up either, and that’s just simply playing to or waiting an extra moment for distractions, stuns, and engages from your teammates or the fight in general to throw out your moves. Many people will be able to easily dodge a raw Hurricane or Surf when they aren’t focused on other things, rooted from using a move, stunned, or slowed. However, someone’s ability to avoid these moves becomes much lower or zero once they’re actively fighting or being locked down by other things. For easily reactable skillshots like these, there is massive value in being able to wait a moment or two for enemies to be in a situation where they either have to move predictably or can’t move to guarantee a hit. When doing this, you’ll also probably find more opportunities to catch multiple people at once with your combo for both massive fight impact and spell vamp value

Against more wary enemy backliners, you may also just end up having to play to constantly disrupt and disable the easier to hit enemy frontliners at teamfights. This still puts on nice damage towards them while also preventing them from doing their jobs, which could potentially open up opportunities for your teammates elsewhere in the fight.

Favourable Matchup:

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

GARDEVOIR

DELPHOX

NINETALES

BUZZWOLE

Unfavourable Matchup:

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

BLASTOISE

SYLVEON

LEAFEON

ABSOL

URSHIFU