THE BEST GARCHOMP BUILD GUIDE - POKEMON UNITE

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ITEM/EMBLEM BUILDS ARE THE SAME FOR BOTH SETS
Items: Rapid Fire Scarf, Scope Lens, Focus Band
– Rapid Fire Scarf + Scope Lens is the combination of damage items that provides the highest overall auto attack DPS for Garchomp specifically.
– Focus Band is necessary for living long enough on a consistent basis to take advantage of your brawling and diving.
– If you do want to go full damage and have good support/heals, then Muscle is third best option there if dropping Focus.

• Healers are very good to have on hand for letting you brawl longer in general. Blissey is especially effective with Garchomp since it’s Bliss Assistance can be an absolutely nuclear followup to a Dragon Combo. If it’s Safeguard + Helping Hand Blissey, Helping Hand can also be an incredible boost to Garchomp’s damage and sticking power.
• Although you should try to be as ahead of the curve as possible in terms of levels, Garchomp is much more able to provide impactful function when playing for a level deficit for what it is. Although you won’t be able to fight things as well when playing from behind, you can play harder towards Dragon Combo’s CC and engage potential to help create openings for a comeback.

About the Dragon Combo:
Garchomps main claim to fame in Unite is his Dragon Combo, so listen up. Upon reaching lvl 7, Garchomp will gain access to Dragon Claw and if you picked Dragon Rush before hand, this is where the fun begins as Garchomp’s engage potential skyrockets.

Here’s how to do it. Upon casting Dragon Rush, quickly cast click Dragon Claw right after during the startup of Dragon Rush. This will combine the two moves into one by basically turning it a version of Dragon Rush that has more damage, stun, and a potent 60% slow afterwards. This gives Garchomp a massive engage/displacement tool, some surprising burst damage, and three boosted auto stacks on sight if you get every hit. This also has some hefty CC on it so using Livid Outrage after is a true combo for even more immediate damage or you can just start swinging your auto attacks.

Remember that you can also use Eject Button during this, letting you readjust to people’s dodging and kiting to extend the range or just catching people out from an unexpected distance.

Once you get Dragon Claw, there is little reason to ever use this moves separately and not in the combo. Dragon Rush and Dragon Claw as standalone moves are vastly inferior to the combined version both in terms of damage and CC. There are however, a few fringe applications for standalone Dragon Claw exist due to its fast startup and CC for being emergency CC option for disrupting mobile dives. The most obvious example is using raw Dragon Claw to swipe a Dragapult’s Dragon Dance out of the sky.

About Auto Attack Stacks:
One of the names of Garchomp’s game is keeping your auto attack stacks up. You get stacks by hitting auto attacks and/or moves, all of which give one at a time per hit regardless how many targets you hit. The only exception is the Dragon Combo, which gives two on hit 1 and a 3rd one on the second hit. Your stacks will expire after 4 seconds of not hitting anything, but the timer will refresh on every hit.

At max of 5 stacks, your autos become boosted. They do more damage at base, come out much faster, has a huge extra 10% remaining HP damage bonus, and an appreciable increase to your lifesteal. Both the % HP and base damage can crit, so Scope is insane on this mon.

Your effectiveness relies on how well you can keep your 5 boosted stacks up, letting them fall off is when enemies can win trades. Use surrounding wild Pokemon to your advantage in this manner, an extra auto here and there can really help keep those 5 boosteds up. During laning phase, sometimes you may want to slow down on how quickly you’re hitting farm to keep your stacks up for whatever you’re going to hit next.

Gible Gaming – Early Game :
You want to run this thing in top lane. Sure your lv5 spike is good, but so is your laning potential.

Garchomps early game may seem bad a first Glance due to his weaker burst then other top laners like Luca or Zacian. While that is true, there is a golden rule for all top laners. Don’t fight the Gible. Gible is one of the best early game fighters in the whole game, while he can’t secure farm as well he can fight for it due to how fantastic his autos are.

Your main job in this point of the game is to abuse this and fight people as much as you can and rip people trying to early score for stack to shreds. If the farm is low, Bulldoze is acceptable burst to sometimes get farm. If you get level 5 before or during the first birds/bees in your lane, you can often run to the other side of them then drag them towards your side with Dragon Rush and snag them and other farms later on for yourself.

Sand Attack is also a surprisingly helpful move that’s great for managing stacks and fighting harder. On top of the vision reduction on enemies hit by it, you also get a stack, a short speed boost regardless of what you hit and if you hit an enemy it gives a short attack speed bonus too. Throw this in to shred even faster and stick to enemies more. Throwing out Sand Attack right before you kill a farm also helps you maintain stacks by letting you move to the next target more quickly and still have your stacks up for when you start hitting it.

You’re usually good to rotate down to first objective if you hit level 7 and get Dragon Claw. If you’re doing really well and your jungler lets you take a jungle rotation the way down, level 9 is also a feasible gamechanger by then. However, feel free to match enemy numbers and continue to bully the enemy top laner trying to farm.

Mid to Late Game:
At this point of the game, you as a Garchomp should be at worst level 9. This is when you can really start to be go ham on this character and really be able to outbrawl almost everything in a melee fight. You will be either doing 3 things at this point, farming, off laning to protect a goal or shredding and finding engages on enemies at teamfights. Garchomp at level 11 will also gain the ability to have unstoppable on his Dragon Rush and Dragon Combo, which allows you to take far riskier engages and or allows you to disengage easier when you can power through CC.

Keep in mind as Garchomp you are a hypercarry. You are a massive source of damage and you should value your life. Fighting may be fun and while your character is great at it, this does not mean you should ignore the farm on your side of the map because it’s still a consistent source of EXP to stay ahead and get your needed level with. Sometimes it’s best to sit down and take a breather and just let the enemies scramble to find some way to catch up. Being a hypercarry, your life is a lot more valuable due to how much exp will be fed into you. This is very important to know because if you die, you can change the tide of the battle and cause your team to lose. Don’t power trip. Don’t die.

Especially at mid and lategame fights, you want to focus on being a a constant and powerful frontline damage presence. Keep in mind that YOU ARE NOT A TRUE TANK. You can take quite a bit of hits once you’re in and swinging. But, it’s not to the point where you can replace an actual defender with your positioning and be a damage sponge when the teamfight is still in a neutral state.

Usually to get to what point, most characters look for CC engages from your teammates to play off. Garchomp is special in that it sometimes can just be THE CC engage for its team with the Dragon Combo’s massive displacement and slow. Be sure your teammates will be in a spot where they can follow up after this big engage and have some patience so you can wait for a juicy engage after some enemy defensive resources are used up. Use Eject Button to extend or adjust the range of this for more unpredictability, using Eject’s Range boost to surprise and pop enemy backliners, or even ejecting behind some frontliners then dragging them into your team with the Dragon Combo. Get creative!

After you land your Dragon Combo, you can start going ham with your auto attacks to really take advantage of the the gapclose, slow, and enemies getting clumped up from the combo. Very importantly, you can opt to true combo it into Livid Outrage for some more immediate burst damage and start going ham with the unstoppable and damage reduction. It’s excellent tool for diving backliners or just doing a lot of damage all over the place without having to worry about CC. If you still have Eject Button, you can use it during Livid Outrage to extend its range and it’s especially potent with the high damage + knockup finisher hit.

You don’t really have any good applicable objective secure when you rip an objective though. Be sure to have a teammate that can secure for you during flip scenarios and or make sure enemy secures are dead or zoned out before you start/finish ripping. If you must secure, the best you can do for reliable burst damage is to try to time Dragon Combo or the first hit of Livid Outrage, both of which are at best mediocre for objective secure.

Same general gameplan and build as the Dragon set, but just WAY worse. Less impactful CC from no displacement, less upfront damage than Dragon Combo , painfully long animations, and no special Ground Combo exists. Don’t play this build if you care about winning.

Dig is the main draw of this set if you do want to play it. On hit, it provides a a very sizable defense boost and a solid knockup that becomes a lot better at level 11’s Dig+. This makes Groundchomp more specialized towards taking a lot of hits and could maybe make Potion an okay battle item option for playing off that.

The CC of this move being a knockup may also make it easier for teammates to follow up on in some scenarios, but before the plus version’s enhanced knockup, the enemy can act again before Garchomp is able to. Even with Dig+, it’s still not exactly good in terms Garchomp being able to follow up on its own move which is a huge downgrade from the Dragon set.

Earthquake is where the set really starts to fall apart. The whole animation is very long which makes it harder than it should be for you to even land it or effectively follow up on your own Earthquake, especially considering the aforementioned lag issues with Dig. In terms of upfront damage, it’s also pretty underwhelming and only starts becoming okay if both aftershocks hit. The AoE 30% can be helpful, but it’s also less slow than raw Dragon Claw. At Earthquake+ learned at level 13 the slow gets upgraded to 45% to match Dragon Claw.. if people get hit near the center.

The only real draw of Earthquake is that the aftershocks can help you build up auto attack stacks quickly since each aftershock gives you an boosted auto attack stack on hit. But, it is worth mentioning you still get only 1 stack per hit no matter how many people you land the move on.

It may even be worth considering running Dragon Claw with Dig if you want to play Dig despite Dragon Claw also not really being a good standalone move. Dragon Claw at least has much more immediate CC presence and a little bit of displacement that can do more to help your team than Earthquake. Landing both hits of raw Dragon Claw is still 2 boosted auto stacks too, so it’s not exactly terrible for that either.

Favourable Matchup:

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

Unfavourable Matchup:

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