THE BEST GYARADOS BUILD GUIDE - POKEMON UNITE

Dragonbreath Builds:

Attack Weight : Just a general flat increase to all your damage is always a welcome addition to any carry. Gyarados’ damage output is done in large part by the raw hit of the Dragonbreath, followed by the empowered basic attacks it provides which also have heightened ratios, so Weight just brute force outnumbers everything by far. The way the effort gauge works also sort of encourages stacking at some point in your early life anyway, so it’ll work on both ends if you’re able to get them.

Weakness Policy : See above for why boosting attack stat helps this moveset. The extra chunk of health helps a tiny bit with taking punishment while swinging away deep in enemy lines as well. Only thing to note is if you are going for a Unite Move-enabled backline flank for a quick blow-up kill, your damage will all come out well before Weakness can stack itself up (since you are invulnerable during ult, of course), so be wary of that.

Energy Amp : So Gyarados’ Unite move is on a 112 second cooldown, which is already good grounds for using this item, but there is something more. Normally Amp’s buffs are activated upon pressing the Unite button for most characters, but for some reason on Gyarados the buffs do not take effect until the button is RELEASED. Meaning, you can swim around freely while holding it down without worrying about time limits, and THEN once you have the perfect position you can make full use of the 4 second damage buff upon emerging. **NOTE** if you hold the Unite button for the entire possible duration and let Gyarados re-emerge automatically, Amp will not be triggered at all. You do need to manually let go of the button to get the buff.

Honorable Mentions (fringe case uses):

Muscle Band : Muscle serves two purposes here, one being giving Magikarp’s basic attacks some semblance of damage, and letting him hit farm somewhat more manageably. The other purpose is to augment the objective contribution Gyarados is able to provide, when more shredding is demanded by the team comp. Dragon Breath’s attack speed increase actually does not apply when used on bosses like the Regi’s or Ray, so Muscle helps shore up that missing shred with its passive procs, and get your rip cooking if and when needed. Still inferior to raw attack increases in enemy player interactions.

Scope Lens : You are endlessly basic attacking all day with this moveset, so naturally Scope is going to fish out quite a lot more crits for you that can dramatically swing a fight on a dime. Gyarados’s attack stat is also extremely high, making the extra proc on Scope also very meaty. While not fully optimal, if you enjoy gambling it can make for some surprisingly early kills on the right targets.

Aqua Tail Builds:

Attack Weight: This set will appreciate attack stat buffs just as much, if not even more than Dragonbreath would, since the majority of your damage comes from the move itself, which has VERY large ratios (895% for landing 3 swipes plus the boosted swipe!)

Weakness Policy : See above for why boosting attack stat helps this moveset. The extra chunk of health helps a tiny bit with taking punishment while doing those swipes as well.

Full Heal : Without this item, your Aqua Tails will be cancelled all day left and right, and you’ll be a sitting duck with nothing to do. That’ll still happen even with this move due to its long cooldown, but at least you can assure a full Tail at a few crucial points in a match when it really matters.

Name of the game here is “survive and smack things”. Building that effort gauge is of utmost priority, but dying in the process is not advised. Magikarp’s passive that gives movespeed upon being hit along with Splash lets him get away after dunking more times than not, but again do NOT trade your life for small dunks. The effort gauge value given for dunks less than 10 points is very small, and not efficient to try to spam those as a route for fast evolution.

Unfortunately your clear speed in jungle is too slow and you don’t achieve evolution from a full clear so jungling is not a viable option for fishy. Since that first gank pressure is so influential to a team’s early game presence, it’s generally better off giving that jungle to a hard-pressure carry jungler, who can come stomp your lane as hard as possible and feed Magikarp some assists to speed up his process.

There’s no real easy secrete way of getting through this phase, it’s just a hope for the best but expect the worst type of deal. Smack your safe-side farm a lot, but don’t risk losing the secure if your lanemate is not around to protect or secure for you…Karp’s slow farm killing speed gives enemies YEARS to react and get ready to attempt a steal. One thing to note is that Flail deals surprisingly good damage if you are around half/third HP, and can get some surprise secures and even kills if enemies are not careful. Not something to rely on, but something to keep in mind. Good luck lmao

Once you do evolve, getting Dragonbreath and Bounce at the same time lets you start looking for fights basically immediately. Even if you’re relatively even in levels it does am amount of damage anyone needs to respect and react to.

How you use Bounce will depend on where you are engaging from and where the enemy is in relation to you. If you’re flanking from across a wall or trying to jump over the frontline to reach the back squishies, you’re gonna probably need to full charge max range Bounce first, and then follow up with Dragonbreath and start going to town.
HOWEVER, if the target is in somewhat closer quarters, there is another method that is not explained in-game, which is if you Bounce on a target that is afflicted with Dragonbreath’s paralyze, they will be knocked up and stunned, allowing you to lay into ’em much harder and with less retaliation off the bat. It won’t be very often that you are able to Dragonbreath something first before Bouncing, but it is a very valuable piece of CC utility that can change the course of a fight if done right.

Anyway, you generally will always want to full charge Bounce, so that you have that nice lil shield upon landing to help you continue your assault, where Gyarados’s sustain is otherwise nonexistent. In a pinch you CAN just quick-tap the Bounce jump if a burst of damage is needed, since the charge-up does not change the damage amount and is always full power numbers-wise either way.

Most of the time, Gyarados will want to stick to focusing on squishy targets for his assaults, since most of the brawlers can interrupt his output enough to outpace him and his lack of sustain to take him out, but with even a small level lead Gyarados can also turn that right around if they do not manage their cooldowns well.

Lining up your Unite move knockup and then using Dragonbreath > Bounce knockup on the group right after is a decent amount of cc all at once and can shake up a teamfight considerably.

Aqua Tail is mostly useful into comps that don’t have a ton of disruption or movement to interrupt or get away from the swipes…which also happen to be comps that would get wrecked by Dragonbreath’s dps all the same. So…idk this move is weird af.

What Aqua Tail *does* have going for itself is much better objective secure power, especially on the + upgrade version which gives it % missing HP damage on top of its already huge empowered ratio. Hitting 3 Tail swipes is a project on its own, but if you do manage to get that second empowered usage, the charge-up is Unstoppable and the AoE is practically impossible to miss (on objectives, at least). The setup and time it takes to get to that hit is not exactly practical or easy in the heat of things, but the hit is numerically VERY good secure.

You can cast Aqua Tail in between Waterfall dashes, but you cannot split up Tail swipes in between different dashes. If you stop casting Aqua Tail for another Waterfall dash at any point, Aqua Tail is cancelled. so it *can* technically be a momentary reposition of sorts, but ultimately just very clunky and unintuitive for flow…pretty much the motto of this character as a whole.

Favourable Matchup:

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

DURALUDON

DECIDUEYE

Unfavourable Matchup:

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

GOODRA

GLACEON

DRAGAPULT

DELPHOX

BUZZWOLE