YMMV / Pokémon Unite

• And You Thought It Would Fail: The initial reveal of the game angered many, many people, but when further details were revealed, people began warming up to it.
  • In a Pokémon Presentation released as the game entered it's second year of operation it was revealed that game was downloaded one hundred million times. Considering initial reactions, achieving those numbers in a year is remarkable.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Tsareena was the most polarizing character since her release in December 9, as she is a frail Pokémon who can actually sustain herself fast enough to win large clashes. People who doesn't like her say that, when optimized, she can win even 1v5 clashes. People who think she's actually fair points out that, even with her Queenly Majesty ability, which reduces the time of any Hindrance afflicted to her, it's easy for her to get shut down from any Hindrances, including Wigglytuff's Sing or Snorlax's Block+Heavy Slam, and even a few Attackers with CC can kite her to death from a distance. Downplayed but still a divisive topic after she was nerfed multiple times after her release.
  • Mewtwo has also been met with polarizing variance of hate. Some people argue that Mewtwo deserves to be overpowered as it is seemingly unrivalled in the base game as well as the anime. However, most people has also argued that lore reasons and base game stats should not be the basis for a Pokémon in a MOBA genre being powerful.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Expect almost every average player in solo queue that isn't Gengar to play with an Eject Button, a Battle Item with a long cooldown. This game has so many flexible uses as well as an instant invincibility frame; even if the developers plan to nerf either the range or the cooldown of the move, it is unlikely for people to quickly drop this item in favor of any other items (the only real exception is Full Heal, particularly for Speedsters that already have excellent mobility, as the ability to become Unstoppable and remove debuffs from yourself on demand is about as powerful).
  • Buddy Barrier is one of the best, if not the best, Held Items to level and wear in general as any Pokémon of any roles, even the Attackers, can and will benefit from the permanent HP increase as well as the additional Shield upon using their respective Unite Move making the user last longer in clashes. Even after the nerf, Pokémon who are "tanky" are still going to use it on their builds, as it is one of the items that gives a big passive HP increase as well as being able to give Shield bonus depending on the user's HP. This has since become downplayed as Buddy Barrier was nerfed, and later still when Umbreon was added with a Unite Move that could steal the shield provided by Buddy Barrier off of his opponents.
  • Slick Spoon is basically a guaranteed item for every single Special Attacker. Its effect of allowing the holder's Special damage to partially ignore the target's Sp. Def makes it easily the best passive damage booster for any Pokémon that relies on Sp. Atk, even after being nerfed.
  • With very few exceptions, most players will stick to one build for one character for a few good reasons: How many things a move can do and what a move can do in different scenarios. To cite one good example, some of Dragonite's movepool are Hyper Beam vs. Outrage. While Outrage turns Dragonite into a Garchomp that applies debuffs at every hit, it's easy to kite an Outrage Dragonite if you are prepared for it. In contrast, Hyper Beam is a safer pick as it does not force Dragonite to approach melee range but also has an additional HP-dependent effect that can easily secure objectives as well as finish off stragglers.
  • Glaceon is a particularly notorious case of a Pokémon having only one good build: Ice Shard + Icicle Spear. Icicle Spear's single target burst damage is pretty much the crux of Glaceon's viability since the alternative, Icy Wind, does next to nothing, and Ice Shard is always picked as the second move simply because it charges Icicle Spear quickly and reliably (whereas Freeze-Dry can miss).
• Fan Nickname:
  • The Eject Button is sometimes called "Flash", as its effect is similar to the spell of that name in League of Legends.
  • The central area in Remoat Stadium is referred to as the "jungle" by experienced MOBA players, even if official Pokémon pages has referred to it as the Forest. Conversely, Pokémon who are to spend a lot of the early game in the central area are called "junglers", officially calling them "Foresters" as well.
  • The Vespiquen and three Combees that spawn on Remoat Stadium's main paths are called "bees" for short. Similarly, the Altaria and three Swablus that serve as their counterparts on Theia Sky Ruins are simply called "birds".
  • Eldegoss has been called as "Eldegod" for being the best Support Pokémon in the game due to not only having a lot of shielding, healing and speed boost moves, his offensive skills are surprisingly powerful for a defensive Support, being not only able to finish or steal objectives but also good at dealing damage, while keeping himself safe by having a long ranged basic attack and the damaging part of his moves scaling well with his Sp. Attack stats. Similarly, an Eldegoss whose kit is built to maximize his damage output is called "Eldeglock".
  • Alolan Ninetales is shortened to "A9" since typing out her whole name is too long and shortening it to Ninetales might be confusing since she has a Kanto variant.
  • Duraludon is shortened to "Dura", or is referred to as "fridge" for being a blocky, metallic dragon.
  • Aegislash is called "sword" because he's a ghost possessing a sword.
  • Trevenant is shortened to "tree" since he's a ghost tree.
  • Mr. Mime is "Mike" or "Mr. Mike", due to a misspelling (likely due to K and M being next to each other on the keyboard) that quickly became popular on Reddit.
  • Mewtwo is often shortened to "M2".
  • "Buddy Barrier Meta", as well as "Post-Buddy Barrier Meta" is a nickname understood by people who were playing the game since the launch of Pokemon Unite but only properly coined after Buddy Barrier has finally been nerfed. The Buddy Barrier has been infamous for three things: Buddy Barriers can stack with each other, Buddy Barrier has no downsides, and Buddy Barrier can be stacked with Score Shield, which makes the game seem more Boring, but Practical as they revolve around the "Score Meta", making the gameplay too restricted to tanky Pokémon as they give more HP than usual or making Pokémon like Talonflame (before his Unite move got nerf) and Pikachu more practically tanky than they are supposed to be. Either way, it has been particularly egregious when every Pokémon in the lineup will always have Buddy Barrier as a mandatory Held Item instead of a niche item that Supports and/or Defenders can use. Any dates after the April 2022 Patch has been coined as the "Post-Buddy Barrier Meta" as this was when Buddy Barrier was nerfed to the way it is now.^note Buddy Barrier was nerfed to provide less HP, meaning that frailer Pokemon could not really run it, and more crucially, Buddy Barriers became unable to stack with each other.
  • "Score Meta" is a meta coined in 4chan after noticing that Japanese players are more likely to play around the additional Shield Bonus of the Buddy Barrier being stacked with Score Shield, making their move more about collecting points from wild Pokémon than actually engaging in fights, only saving up their Unite move when they fail to capture Zapdos. See Scrappy Mechanic for other details.
  • "Over-capping" is when players score as much points as possible by scoring a lot of Aeos energy on an enemy goal zone that has a few points left, like scoring 50 points on a goal zone that has 1 point left.
  • "Fast Food" for Orange/Purple Unite Style Holowear, due to how easy it is to misinterpret the uniforms as ones fast food workers wear. In a similar vein, scoring points is sometimes referred to as "serving up burgers".
  • Coinflip/Zapdos Coinflip for games on Remoat Stadium, because the Zapdos boss is so impactful that the whole match is often decided by who manages to land the last hit on it.
  • The Legendary Titan that spawns near the bottom lane of Theia Sky Ruins, which can randomly be a Regirock, Regice, or Registeel, is often referred to by casters as the "basement Regi."
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: One of the biggest cardinal sins in the current Unite community is to call the current Unite pay-to-win. While the community accepts that Unite at launch was a pay-to-win game, they have pointed out that various updates and balance patches have steered the game away from the pay-to-win model it had previously, and many sources that are used as evidence are unreliable due to using bad movesets and strategies/playmaking that would easily allow players to lose a game.
• Game-Breaker: In the right hands, the Eject Button item can be this, as it can give anyone a good chance to escape and survive losing skirmishes or can be used to chase down fleeing opponents.
• Gateway Series: Pokémon Unite served as a gateway for some people into giving the MOBA genre of video games a chance.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Alolan Ninetales has the Snow Warning Ability which automatically casts an icicle, dealing AOE damage whenever either Ninetales approaches the enemy or wild Pokémon, or vice versa. During Switch Launch, the icicle can also work on any enemies hidden in bushes, which originally makes this ability a double-edged sword as you are likely to discover any enemies hiding in the bush but you risk exposing yourself when you try hiding in the bush while this Ability is still active. A few weeks after, enemies hidden in the bush are no longer affected by Snow Warning, which makes the Ability more of a liability as a result.
  • Unite Moves in general can be interrupted during the small, vulnerable start-up time through Crowd Controls. However, if you interrupted Wigglytuff's or Crustle's Unite Move, it is possible to retain 90% of the charge as opposed to the move going back to 0% charge. Some Wigglytuff and Crustle players manage to exploit this bug by using their Unite Move on top the 4 jump pads leading to the central area, allowing the Jump Pad to interrupt the Unite move by timing the wind-up time to launch the users with the vulnerable window. This bug is notorious since both Wigglytuff's and Crustle's Unite Moves give them a very large amount of shield enough to last the whole period before the Unite move charges again. An equally notorious move is using this exploit to bump their shields up with the addition to Score Shield and Buddy Barrier, making them prime candidate for counter-scoring before and after killing Zapdos. This exploit alone justifies the reason most unofficial tournaments tend to ban both Wigglytuff and Crustle. It would later become an Ascended Glitch by making all Unite Moves retain 90% charge if interrupted, but making Unite buffs only apply upon successfully executing the move, removing the exploit.
  • At the beginning of the second Battle Pass, Lucario's Extreme Speed accidentally dealt far more damage than it should, allowing it to completely screw one or more foes rather quickly. Add the fact the move can possibly strike more than twice, and you got yourself a hell of a sweeper. Thankfully, this got patched as of 26/27 September 2021.
  • Blastoise's Rapid Spin used to be able to use his Basic Attack while holding the Water Spout, therefore making him stronger than he's supposed to be, enough that players start coining him as a mislabeled All-Rounder. Another part is the Rapid Spin slowing down the opponent even after the Water Spout is finished channeling. Both of these are considered bugs which were fixed at the Mobile Release on 22 Sept 2021.
  • While it's likely to be patched out with a similar rework in the future, but Hoopa and Machamp, Zeraora, Venusaur, or Mamoswine can 90% replicate the the infamous Io + Pudge strat by using Hyperspace Hole a few seconds before Machamp, the most consistent example, catches their opponent on their special grab animation via Submission. Its most useful application is bringing the final Rotom to the allied Machamp's base as your teammate/s are almost guaranteed to kill the Rotom without any interruption from the opposing team. It's not a 100% replication, since Pokémon Unite does not have any fountain that attacks any nearby opponent Pokémon, so the affected ally Pokémon will still have to work for the kill.
  • During Boss Rush mode, Regigigas' third phase has him trap your allies with a Crush Claw attack, forcing your teammates to attack the titan to save them. However, if the inital grab is a killing blow, Regigigas will get stuck in the grab animation and be unable to defend itself.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Lucario received a special skin for this game, which capitalized on the jackal basis by giving it Ancient Egypt-style apparel in reference to Anubis. Then came the release of Palworld and its Cast of Expies to various Pokémon which first started development a year before the skin was added, where the Expy of Lucario outright is Anubis.
• High-Tier Scrappy: Now has its own page.
• Just Here for Godzilla: There are people that don't play MOBAs who play Unite just for the Pokémon and the Holowear they each get.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Trevenant is a Defender whose skills grow more potent the more HP he loses. Unfortunately, in practice, this also means he is not as effective as most of the other Defenders as they are not punished for having more HP than their opponents in the first place.
  • Decidueye is an Attacker whose basic attacks, boosted attacks and moves are more powerful the farther he is from his opponent(s). On paper, his moveset parallels Greninja and Cinderace, since all three of them rely more on their Basic Attacks than their skills to deal consistent damage. Unfortunately, what sets Gren and Cinder from Decidueye is their mobility, with Greninja having three mobile skills and Cinderace having two gap-closers, one of which allows him to relocate right after the close-up animation, one skill shot and one skill that turns him invincible for a quick period of time. Poor Decidueye not only has HP as low as Greninja's, but neither of his two moves are enough for him to run away from Pokémon with bursty movesets.
  • Scyther / Scizor was one of the worst performing Pokémon in the game so far, with only an average win rate of 40% across all tiers. In particular, Scizor was derided as much worse than Scyther with its extremely mediocre damage not making up for the increased bulk and lack of mobility. Both were eventually buffed, with Scyther becoming powerful ironically and Scizor later carving out a niche of its own, though Scizor's Skill Gate Character status (read: it dies to anything that stops it from spamming Bullet Punch) means that evolving Scyther is still widely considered a dubious option.
  • Comfey was hyped up to be incredibly busted, due to having mechanics that seemed to make it an expy of Leagueof Legends champion Yuumi, whom was known to be extremely powerful in the right hands and hated. Come Comfey's release, it was found that outside of attaching to another Pokemon, it was comically fragile and bad, forcing players to rely on their teammates, which proved to be relatively difficult - getting wins with Comfey on Unite's notoriously bad solo queue became very hard. Comfey was eventually buffed... which resulted in it becoming just as busted as was initially predicted.
  • July 2021 Update:
    • In Ver 1, while there is no such thing as an unviable Pokémon, Venusaur is notably worse than the other attackers for having a kit with moves that barely synergize with each other, as well as a mediocre Unite Move. Petal Dance and Giga Drain, while a decent combination, do not synergize well with Venusaur, as it is a Glass Cannon who is better fighting at a distance. Sludge Bomb, while also a decent combination with Petal Dance, does not slow down its opponent enough for the Solar Beam to launch. Unsurprisingly, it got a buff in the August 4th, 2021 update.
    • Ver 1 Wigglytuff is notable for being too squishy for its kit. Almost every kit for Wigglytuff, including its auto-attack, requires it to be near its opponent and, unlike other Crowd Control skills in its game, takes a lot of time and luck to fully reach their potential, which makes Wigglytuff a mild liability even in pre-made teams. It was given some buffs in the August 4th, 2021 update, giving it a period of versatility before sliding back down toward "below-average".
  • Absol has been an almost perennial resident of the bottom tier. In addition to being saddled with miserable survivability even for a Speedster (having the lowest HP of any melee Pokémon in the game and a playstyle that demands it to get up close and personal, with nothing in its kit to improve its staying power), its moveset can charitably be described as Difficult, but Awesome but without the "Awesome", as playing Absol well makes it still less impressive than other Speedsters and All-Rounders but playing it poorly leads to it being mostly worthless. It had its five minutes in the spotlight when Psycho Cut was buffed to near-broken levels, but after being nerfed, the poor Disaster Pokémon went right back into the trash heap. As of August 2023, Absol has the dubious honor of holding the worst win-rate in the game and an almost non-existent pick rate. Fortunately, Absol would later get some proper TLC in October 2023 and shed its bottom-tier status.
  • Blaziken is an oddball, receiving buffs shortly after launch due to being an underperforming Pokémon, yet a lot of players deemed the buff unnecessary due to his absurdly loaded, combo-oriented kit. The main problem is that while Blaziken is quite powerful and versatile, he also has a very high skill floor. After he later received a slight nerf, his ability to KO an opponent was noticeably more off-put by the increased demand for more commitment to a clash that could potentially leave him more vulnerable to be taken out in return. While he is strong on paper and is an above-average Pokémon in the hands of a skilled player, anyone who can't perform at that level just ends up unceremoniously feeding.
  • The game's meta drift has not been kind to Cinderace. While previously viable, it's since dropped off sharply due to notoriously having one of the worst early-games out of the entire roster, making it very easy to bully Cinderace in lane or invade the jungle and prevent it from hitting its Magikarp Power in a timely manner; when queueing for unranked, expect half the Cinderace players you encounter to not understand this and feed all game long. It also doesn't help that the development of the meta more heavily favors burst damage and dive, and Cinderace is a squishy, ranged basic attacker - exactly the sort of Pokémon that's most disadvantaged in such an environment, especially since its own burst damage with Pyro Ball is mediocre and unreliable, and its invincibility-centric Feint has too long a cooldown to function well alongside said Pyro Ball.
  • Similar to the case with Cinderace in the meta, Greninja has since taken a huge tumble from grace and now resides in the lower tiers. Part of this is due to better Attackers and Speedsters popping up and Greninja's versatility not being good enough to make up the difference, leaving it as a Master of None in comparison. Worse still, many Pokémon started coming out that were hardy enough to make it outright dangerous for Greninja to lean into its melee-centric kit (such as against Umbreon's Mean Look) or harder-hitting sweepers that threatened Greninja's range focus (such as against Mewtwo Y). With no footing left to fall back on except mobility, it's rare to find a Greninja player in Unite's solo queue that can actually perform well enough to justify its selection on a given team composition.
  • While Gengar has some notoriety in pubs, picking it against even moderately coordinated players might as well be making your team fight 4v5. While it can poke people from a decent range, it absolutely has to dive into the enemy team in order to make an actual impact. In games where people rotate around in groups, Gengar will not live long enough to do meaningful damage before getting blown up, and that's assuming its moves don't just get body-blocked by a Defender.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Near the end of the game, if a player manages to score a lot of points on a dunk, the announcer will exclaim "What a goal!" And they'll shout it over and over no matter how many players score.^note More specifically, it happens every time a player scores 50 points or more in a single goal, which requires the scorer to be at least Level 12 or a point-doubling to be in effect (which entails being in the last fifth of the match except for Auroma Park). Additionally, if a buzzer-beater is scored, the visual "What a goal!" cue is visible specifically to that player, even if they only scored two points. It's at its absolute worst when the enemy team gets Zapdos and every member manages to score on the other side's goals. The added insult to injury the announcer brings screaming it every time a dunk occurs during this has led to this quote widely getting memed and mocked.
  • "We're REALLY struggling!" due to this being the message that pops up when your team is losing by a large margin, which is widely considered incredibly obvious and unhelpful.
  • Triple Glasses is a Fan Nickname for a specific set of Held Items recommended for a few Sp. Attack-based Pokémon, namely the Choice Specs, Wise Glasses, and Sp. Attack Specs. Since it does looks ridiculous when actually worn, there are a few artworks around where Gardevoir, the Pokémon who has the highest Sp. Attack in the game, wears all three of them for humor.
  • Chuntwo ^ExplanationA holowear Mewtwo has resembles a blue Qipao with yellow accents, much like the one Chun-Li wears.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • The August 8, 2021 patch increased Wigglytuff's Health, Defense, and Sp. Defense, so it is now more than durable enough to properly utilize its moves. The stat increase in particular made Sing, which effects are also buffed, a threat against any melee-reliant opponents, making Wigglytuff a major threat to any Speedster with a gap closer, which consequently makes Wigglytuff a great, but not mandatory, roster pick as an anti-meta.
  • The August 8, 2021 patch improved a lot of Venusaur's movepool in terms of strength, effects, and cooldowns, including its Unite Move, making Venusaur a very good pick in a team for clearing/finishing, or else stealing, the objectives, including the Zapdos.
    • The Mobile Release patch further improved half of Venusaur's movepool by not only giving his Petal Dance move a faster movement speed, better damage and lower cooldown, but also gives his Giga Drain higher damage reduction, finally making him tanky enough to momentarily use his Petal Dance move. This makes him a way more solid pick in winning team fights, as almost all of his moves synergize with each other.
  • The Mobile Release has been nice to the Speedster role: first for nerfing Blastoise and Wigglytuff, and for giving Talonflame higher attack power and buffing his Fly as well as buffing Absol by lowering the cooldown of Night Slash and Sucker Punch.
  • Pikachu has been notorious for being one of the Crutch Characters in the roster. The new Mobile Release has been graceful to his kit by introducing Choice Specs, a Held Item that grants bonus damage to every move that successfully hits its opponent, which fixes his problem of his moves scaling poorly from his Sp. Attack. While this will still require Pikachu to be holding a very specific set of Held Items, a Pikachu will no longer be much of a liability in the end-game.
    • The Halloween 2021 Patch increased the power of both Thunder and Thunder+, finally making Pikachu useful in the late-game as well.
  • While Talonflame is actually decent in securing and/or stealing objectives, as a Speedster, he gets mostly overshadowed by Zeraora, who is bulkier and kills more consistently as compared to Talonflame. The Mobile Launch patch improved two of Talonflame's moves, which are: the basic Attack stats of Talonflame, the movement speed of Fly and the Charge speed of his Unite Move, Flame Sweep. Increasing the movement speed of Fly mainly alleviates the problem of his fragility by making him more able to quickly get away from fights or quickly finish an enemy to his team's advantage, while increasing his Attack Stats solidly lands him into a usable combined playstyle of a Glass Cannon and a Fragile Speedster.
  • Charizard used to be a terrible late-game Pokémon that barely contributes in fights until he gets his Unite move. Subsequent patches, while nerfing his reliance on auto-attack, also improves the synergy between his skills and auto-attack. While his melee skills are no slouches, his ranged skills are more used for allowing him to avoid melee fights as well as help finish stragglers.
  • Potion is notorious for healing only 10% of a Pokémon's life and having a cooldown of 30 seconds, which is bad in a game that favors Pokémon with strong burst damage. People who are running in Ranked match with teammate/s that run Potions will groan and sigh as the item is comparably suboptimal to Eject Button. The Halloween 2021 patch buffed the item so it heals more than 21% of the user's HP so it is now a viable crutch item for low-ranked plays, and it even has its niche use for Defenders like Slowbro, Blastoise, and Lapras.
  • The Christmas 2021 Patch (9 Dec 2021) finally tones down the level requirement of three of the worst Pokémon in the game; in other words, Gardevoir, Garchomp, and Mamoswine now evolve at Level 5 then Level 9, as well as lowering the required level for obtaining nearly all of their moves (the exception being their first two moves).
  • Absol's kit makes him a solid choice as a Speedster, as he can actually kill one or two frailer Pokémon on the back end. However, he was outclassed by three other Pokémon by either having ranged moves that makes him enter the fight safer than other Speedsters (Gengar), being able to deal damage while tanking a few hits or else being invincible (Zeraora) or, the worst of which, not only being able to swoop in and out of battle but being relevant to the previously notorious "Buddy Barrier meta" by having one of the fastest Unite Charge in the game (Talonflame). Post-Buddy Barrier Meta, Absol rose up to become more viable but still underwhelming, as his best kit happens to be a move that has invincibility frames, then damages you, as well as a move that can be used twice. Finally, the June 2022 buff made Absol a menace by buffing his Psycho Cut, which, on paper, should make Pursuit more potent, but only made Night Slash more overused, as Psycho Cut also makes both Night Slash and his Unite Move more lethal, to the point that it can take objectives like Drednaw, Rotom, or Zapdos in less than five seconds. Finally, both Night Slash and Psycho Cut was nerfed down, and meta shifts ultimately plunged Absol back into the scrappy heap as it simply goes down too quickly and has poor matchups against most of the high-tier threats (most notably Glaceon), until another buff in October 2023 fished Absol out of the scrappy heap again with buffs to its Unite Move cooldown and damage output, allowing it to better excel in its playstyle of outmaneuvering and shredding opponents.
  • Slow Smoke is an item that slows down the opponent. The main problem with this item before it got its huge buff was how quick the debuff lasts as well as its useless side effect of blinding its user's opponent within the smoke's radius. The December patch reworked this item so now, while the item no longer blinds anymore, it now slows the opponent/s in a longer duration and the debuff lingers even after they come out of the radius. This item almost quickly became one of the more used items since the duration is so long, it can quickly shut down would-be stragglers enough for any nearby ally to quickly finish the opponent.
  • Zeraora was considered completely unviable for a time as it suffered from having a terrible level curve. It received its first move upgrade at level 6, much later than most Pokémon, and unlike Pokémon like Cinderace and Decidueye it had no power spike to make up for having a much slower early-game than other Speedsters. July 2023 threw it a bone by letting it learn all of its move upgrades 1 level earlier, allowing it to actually keep up with other junglers and finally making it playable (for all of five minutes before Mewtwo came along).
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The Zapdos. While it may seem to be a good idea for a Comeback Mechanic, the execution is one-hundred and fifty one flavors of wrong. The team that delivers the finishing blow gets 20 points up front, quick dunking of their Aeos charge, and double points; what makes it horrendous is that "finishing blow" means "the very last hit", meaning that one team could have their men waiting at the baskets of the other team while the last waits for Zapdos' health to dwindle before K.O.-stealing the other team, effectively rendering the entire match up to that point completely meaningless and pissing off the entire other team. On paper, it's a decent, if half-baked, means to ensure the losing team might be able to return from the brink; in practice... even a team◊ that scores absolutely nothing in the first 80% of the match can come back to win it all.
  • The Final Stretch gives every dunks twice the points it carries, which is a broken Comeback Mechanic as it almost invalidates the scores of the first eight minutes of the game and puts a bigger emphasis on scoring within the final two minutes, which is why it turns "The Zapdos" from a decent but optional side-event to an almost mandatory Golden Snitch where the winning team is forced to defend the Zapdos from being knocked out in the backdoor and the losing team is almost always expected to strike it down to make a comeback in a short amount of time. Even if nobody went to get the Zapdos, it is still possible for the losing team to make a major comeback with an overwhelming score.
  • The surrender vote. There is no problem in principle with the idea, but the obtrusive nature of the voting interface (requiring one to hold '+' and press one of the shoulder buttons to vote) and the fact that forcing surrender votes quickly became another way for griefers and other liabilities to harass players already suffering from their incompetence made the latter group want it to die in a fire.
  • Score Shield. See more details about the "Score Meta" in Fan Nickname. This Meta has been nerfed in the April patch by making Score Shield no longer be able to stack with every other shield, including Blissey's Safeguard, Wigglytuff's Unite Move, or Eldegoss's Cotton Guard.
  • There's a reason many former players consider the game to have died in 2023, and that's due to the introduction of EX Pokemon. EX Pokemon are a title given primarily to legendaries where only one can be selected per game, but each EX Pokemon is vastly stronger than the other Pokemon around it. Originally marketed as a method by which to build a team around, with the EX Pokemon given to team leaders to allow them to more easily spearhead actions, it instead turned to a way for the developers to justify the additions of ridiculously overpowered Pokemon that would end up endlessly dominating metas and would almost always end up banned in one way or another.
• Scrappy Weapon: The game as a whole is very reliant on player skill more than the held items they equip to their mon, though they are still appreciated for the effects they add to what can already be done. However, some items fail to bring any impactful effects to the table despite this fact:
  • Rocky Helmet's requirement of taking instantaneous burst damage to take effect gives players the instantaneous decision to never bother using it in any of their builds.
  • Drain Crown provides healing to its holder through their basic attacks, scaled to the holder's Atk stat. While 10% (later buffed to 13%) of the damage inflicted converted into healing seems like a good minimum baseline on paper, in practice the healing provided proves insufficient in properly sustaining most any mon in the burst damage-based meta, outside of maybe a few of them that mainly relied on spamming basic attacks while also having high basic attack speed. However, while pairing the Drain Crown with the Rapid-Fire Scarf that it was released alongside is a workable combination, almost every single Pokémon that might consider running it, including the aforementioned ones with high basic attack speed, would still prefer running almost any other held item to Drain Crown so that they could increase their damage output, leaving the item to be derided in the metagame as a case of wasted potential.
  • Leftovers gives passive regeneration over time while the holder is out of combat. Not only is the healing very slow, but the game's fast-paced format actively penalizes idling around to heal using Leftovers as opposed to fighting wild Pokémon, trying to score goals, or even simply retreating to the team base momentarily, making it a waste of an item slot.
  • Goal Getter temporarily allows you to score goals twice as fast while active, which sounds neat for backdooring but has the drawback of using up your Battle Item slot on something that's completely useless in an actual fight. The extra goals you score using it (which will almost always be against undefended goals anyway) almost never tip the score enough to make an actual difference compared to having an item that helps you win the Rayquaza/Zapdos fight or gives you an easier time in the game building up to that.
• Tainted by the Preview: The game was very divisive on its announcement. The two main contributing factors to that were Tencent's involvement and the announcement method itself; The Pokémon Company had finished off a Pokémon Presents (the one which announced Pokémon Smile, Pokémon Café Mix and New Pokémon Snap) by teasing one more reveal, to happen at another Presents in a week's time. As usual, this led to a week's worth of Wild Mass Guessing over what the reveal could be, anything from the then-unannounced Diamond and Pearl remakes to Let's Go-style remakes for Generation II. Then the actual Presents dropped, showing that they'd spent a week getting hyped for a spin-off MOBA on mobile, and a lot of fans were left disappointed and angry, feeling that the company had tried to get the game more fan excitement than it deserved. Pokémon Unite's announcement has often been compared to Blizzard's infamous announcement of Diablo Immortal for mobile as The Climax to BlizzCon 2018, which was similarly seen as an Anti-Climax by BlizzCon's PC-centric attendees.
• That One Attack:
  • In Panic Parade, more runs have likely been killed by the Zapdos boss's Shock Wave attack than everything else in the mode combined. Shock Wave creates an electrical aura around players that deals massive damage to every other ally around them, including the Tinkaton players have to protect, and despite the game giving ample warning (including a line of text explicitly telling players to stay away from everyone else), a lot of players simply don't get the message and end up wiping their own team and/or shredding Tinkaton's health. A single badly-handled cast can easily cost 20% or more of Tinkaton's HP, so mishandling the attack once is often enough to either kill Tinkaton or leave it low enough on health that it won't survive the next waves.
  • All Unite Moves are supposed to be powerful, but Slowbro's Unite Move Slowbeam really stands out for single-handedly justifying its existence in competitive play pretty much from day one. It's effectively a channeled stun and damage over time that also grants Slowbro a shield, has no windup time or travel time, cannot be interrupted, and works on Unstoppable targets (think Fiend's Grip, but mounted on a Stone Wall rather than a Squishy Wizard and uninterruptible). Getting caught by Slowbeam is a death sentence if Slowbro's team is even slightly coordinated, easily letting it turn a teamfight into a 5v4, and not even things like Blissey's Unite Move or Full Heal will save you.
  • Another Unite Move that gets on many a player's nerves is Mewtwo's Infinite Psyburn. While most Unite Moves target only either a single opponent or an area for damage, this one targets every enemy on the map, no matter where they might be located. This can cause several grievances, from giving away the location of every enemy on the map when they're hit, to interrupting a return to base, to stopping a superjump from base without invincibility, to finishing off someone inside their own base to heal from low health, to sniping Zapdos/Rayquaza right from under them. While anyone already moving might be able to avoid taking damage from it, it's a lot harder to do so when it's used during teamfights when there might be multiple reticles bunched together in a tighter area. Many players are thus incensed to dislike Mewtwo even further than it already drives them to.
  • Delphox's Fire Spin is one of the nastiest move in the entire game. It's a ~1 second disable that affects all enemies caught in it, so its power is evident in the MOBA genre. But unlike most disables in the genre with a Necessary Drawback, Fire Spin automatically homes onto the enemy, and while it's slow and can be avoided, it can be cast right under the enemy's feet and affect them immediately. Dropping one into a chaotic brawl can immediately turn the tide in your team's favor, and dropping it in front of a pursuer makes them choose whether to run from it or risk getting caught in it.
  • While Zeraora is otherwise not considered overpowered, its Wild Charge gets on a lot of players' nerves for being by far the most spammable Invulnerable Attack in the game. The high single-target damage it deals doesn't help either, as it means Zeraora is almost impossible to fight one-on-one (which is a big deal in Quick Battles due to the smaller team sizes, especially Auroma Park with its 3v3 format) and there's no real counterplay to being hit by it other than "hope you can stun Zeraora to death before it uses Wild Charge in the first place."
  • Miraidon made an immediate showing in the meta upon release, coming packed with four powerful moves such as Charge Beam and Parabolic Charge. However, the most infuriating for many players has been its Thunder, which summons a thundercloud that causes area-of-effect damage, chases down a target, immensely slows those that are struck, and even lingers after Miraidon is taken out. This in turn made the supposedly squishy Miraidon extremely difficult to approach, let alone knock out, with one of the few safe options being Mimikyu's Shadow Sneak immediately followed by Play Rough. Thunder was thus understandably nerfed in the days following its release, particularly going from 50% slowdown effect to 20%.
• That One Level: Shivre City leads to more one-sided stomps than just about any other map. The small map size with lanes close together, no bounce pad, and essentially one way out of spawn makes it prime spawn-camping material, especially since the Mercy Invincibility upon respawn runs out long before a player makes it to their goal zone. Once one team establishes a solid lead, they can quickly take over the map and make it impossible for the opponent to even approach their own goal zone without being massacred, much less try to grab objectives and attempt a comeback.
  • Catch 'Em quickly becomes this for players stuck with bot allies. As detailed under Artificial Stupidity on the main page, in addition to the usual miserable playmaking that plagues their AI scripts, the enemy AI script is much smarter in their own coordination. Between bot allies' indecisive behavior and the map-exclusive ability to control objective mons, there's a high chance that they will steal the last hit on the boss^note assuming, of course, that the much more efficient enemy bots don't do so instead (itself also very likely to happen) that can make a goal defenseless only to waste the transformation as soon as they get close to the goal so that they can score. The worst part of the map, however, is that because it's a quick match map, the chances of starting up a queue for it only to end up with bots are all too likely, depending on when the map is played in the rotation. Many a skilled player has potentially suffered a loss on this map at some point in their history, even if they care to never bring it up on their own.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The multitude of balance changes to the Theia Sky Ruins map. Ever since it was introduced back in September 2022, it has gone through many balance changes, such as having the top lane have two berries instead of one, removing a trio of Natu spawns at the top lane, as well as modifying Rayquaza to give stronger buffs to players. These changes were lambasted by community, as it was seen as TiMi regressing the map into old Remoat Stadium-like gameplay (which was disliked by the community due to stagnant gameplay and also the overwhelming requirement of the Golden Snitch central objective).
• Unexpected Character:
  • Out of all Pokémon to represent Unova, pretty much nobody would've expected Crustle to be playable. At the very least, it did give the otherwise-forgotten Stone Home Pokémon a boost in popularity.
  • Greedent also became a pretty surprising (and divisive) pick as a playable Pokémon, especially due to being tied to a Halloween event and not being a Ghost- or Dark-type unlike fellow Halloween Pumpkin-inspired Pokémon Gourgeist, who many agree would've been a more sensible choice.
  • For the first new Pokémon of 2022, not many were expecting Trevenant, given that its counterpart Gourgeist is generally more popular with the playerbase.
  • While Hoopa is popular for their status as a Mythical Pokémon, nobody expected them, a Glass Cannon in their original iteration, to be a Supporter in Unite.
  • While Scizor and Mew were obvious picks due to their popularity, Dodrio, who released that same month, was not since it's often overshadowed by other, more-popular Bird Pokémon, like Pidgeot and Corviknight.
  • In a time where the soul of the developers seems to have vanished, with only popular Pokemon being added in, and with the beliefe that no Unexpected Character would be added, there was a huge shocker in April 2024 with the introduction of the semi-unpopular Falinks into the roster.

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