Elite TMs, Rarity and the Problems with Too Much Choice

According to the Silph Road, a list of all the moves on Elite TMs has been revealed. Over 100 Pokemon are going to be able to obtain legacy moves, via the Elite TM. That’s a lot of Pokemon. the list of moves and Pokemon is huge, so we’ve got a big question on our hands? What the hell do we use these Elite TMs on? What is worth it and what isn’t?

Frankly, I don’t know. And the decision is even harder because these TMs are so inaccessible, and there are simply so many moves.

You currently can only get 1-2 Elite TMs, total.

You can get 1 Elite TM for reaching Rank 7 in the GBL… or you can get one in a special (and expensive) box over the Abra Community Day. That’s it. Two. Two Elite TMs.

So we have to pick very wisely here. Sure, we’ll be able to get more Elite TMs in the future. We’ll almost certainly be able to get more in future GBL seasons. But for now, we have a long, long wait on our hands and a lot of options to go through.

Luckily, we can dismiss a lot of these options.

I mean, do we really need to worry about using an Elite TM on an Igglybuff so it can learn Body Slam? A lot of the baby Pokemon and lower evolutions can be pretty safely ignored. There are a handful of exceptions, things that might be useful in PvP like Haunter with Lick and Rhydon with Megahorn, but most of the time there’s Pokemon you want to focus on.

There’s also less useful things on normal Pokemon. I mean, why would you want Yawn on Snorlax, since it doesn’t deal any damage at all?

But we are still left with a lot of options!

After all, Elite TMs let you get all the Community Day moves and special event moves too. This means you can put Shadow Ball on any one Mewtwo of your choice, or finally get a Metagross with Meteor Mash! You can also get moves like Sky Attack for Moltres and Thunder Shock for Zapdos, or even the recently disappeared Sacred Sword for Coballion.

But there are other, less obvious Pokemon that also benefit from an Elite TM. Dewgong is gearing up to be a monster in Great and Ultra League since it is a bulky Pokemon that will get Icy Wind, a spammy debuff move, and Machamp will have even more moves available to it.

If you are willing to wait, you can narrow your list of Elite TM Pokemon down further…

It is worth pointing out however that some of these moves can come back anyway. A lot of the moves that Elite TMs will bring are Community Day moves. But Community Day moves do become available again every December… or at least, they did in 2018 and 2019. So if you want to wait and don’t want to rush, you could always wait until December 2020. Because we’ll probably get another Community Day revamp like previous years.

Plus, with Community Day Pokemon, namely the starters, there are alternatives for each one.

Well, most of the time. Charizard is going to be getting a ton of extra moves, while Swampert (the bigger starter in PvP) will only have access to Hydro Cannon still.

So we mostly have it narrowed down to Dewgong and Legendaries.

But even then, we still have a big decision on our hands. I mean, Dewgong, Zapdos and Mewtwo are the real winners here, all of them getting access to better moves. This is still a big decision though because you only get 2. And Dewgong needs 2 for maximum PvP hell.

Maybe it’s just worth waiting then?

I mean, there’s no rush to use these Elite TMs. We can take our time and slowly accumulate more of them. Does it really matter if we don’t have everything? No, not really. Frankly, the only reason I’ll have an Elite TM in the first place is because I want it for my perfect Mewtwo.

My worry however is that these TMs will be exceedingly rare and make actual legacy moves hard to come by. I mean, they already are, but events in which Pokemon can permanently learn a formerly legacy move will become sparse. Why? Because “lol just use Elite TM”. Legacy moves are fine on Pokemon like Ponyta or Jigglypuff but on meta Pokemon? It’s going to hurt.

There will be more legacy moves in the future…

Even with Elite TMs though, there will be a constant need for them in the future. There are a LOT of Pokemon that don’t have their signature moves yet. And we’re going to need Elite TMs for those as well. The question is, will the supply of Elite TMs allow any catch up at all? Or will they always be a rarity?

I mean, how else am I going to get Precipice Blades on my level 40, 100% Groudon?