Other Second Charge Moves + Their Uses
A-Golem - Wild Charge and Rock Blast or Stone Edge? Lets you swap between two effective type profiles at will. Dirt cheap, too. The same can be said of K-Golem, which picks up the no-longer-shitty Ground for PvP but adds double weakness.
Breloom - Any two of the three? Three completely different profiles for Ultra League, where a perfect hits 2497 at level 36.5.
Mew - Well, it's Mew. Wildly unpredictable and sure to keep your Great League opponent off balance with a perfect coming in at 1492 at level 16, which any Mew owner can hit. Very heavy investment in RC though.
Kingdra - Outrage + Blizzard. Typing severely limits weaknesses (Fairy + Dragon only) while the two have different eeffectiveness profiles and a perfect doesn't reach the CP cap for ultra until level 36. The fact that both moves focus on dragons may fail to justify the 50K/50 candy cost.
Slowbro/Slowking - Psychic + Ice Move. Different effectiveness profiles, and walls several types. Plus, a perfect doesn't reach the cap until level 38.5
Any other thoughts?
Answers
A combination of boredom and an excess of TMs led me to tweak Mew until I got it Shadow Claw/Ice Beam and power it up a few times to 1499 (it's 80%). So far I've been pleased with its performance. I think Dragon Claw or Wild Charge/Thunderbolt would be good second charge moves but only if you have candy to spare.
Granbull | Play Rough + Close Combat | Ultra League (Up to LvL 38.5)
While not Tier 1, it does provide a 'surprise' for several challengers I see in my area. With limited vulnerabilities it certainly helps against the dragon types I see in most leagues. Admittedly, there is a certain 'fun factor' that has been sorely lacking in the game.
Mew is well worth it. Excellent stats and most everyone has one. Personally, I use shadow claw, dragon claw (which I'm going to change hopefully to flame charge), and rock slide, which charges exceptionally quickly and provides great coverage for my current team comp.
As for other pokemon to consider for 1500, which is where I've done most of my research, a surprisingly nice pokemon to include is Drifblim. Has access to both Ghost and Ice type moves for pretty nice coverage of a lot of things, although dark type moves will still wreck him. Another great mon is Scyther, and if you do raid battles there's a chance to get one with decent IVs that comes out at 1498, something I was lucky enough to pick up.
For alolan golem, since I use him on my 2500 team and I've played a bit with him, definitely Rock throw + wild charge + rock blast. Stone edge is a great move, but if your opponent has a shield when you use it, you might not get another off before a-golem faints. I personally find blast to be more consistent.
Slowking, consider fire blast as well to completely throw off players and potentially add super effective damage in addition to the ice type or psychic type move.
Another surprising pick that many people overlook is Armaldo, who has fantastic stats with a horrible movepool for raids/gymming. In pvp, I find Armaldo with cross poison and rock blast is very, very useful if you lack a strong water type attacker, and it has access to water pulse as well, which I may consider replacing cross poison with. Still testing him out.
At the end of the day, your team can be anything you want it to be. What's great about pvp right now is that all moves are viable to a degree because of the limited shields and no dodging, so you can guarantee a hit if you plan things correctly. Have fun with it and experiment with a bunch of pokemon!
Sad owner of a maxed Mew here. At least it made me happy at the time to make it.
One neat second charge move for extreme optimization in raids would be DT/DM/OR Dragonite. DM and OR are optimal in different cases (with OR being optimal more often) depending on how much leftover energy you have when you die, so by having both you can always get the best possible DPS in raids.
