Poor Xerneas, a Pokemon with no real usable moves

Xerneas is a cool Pokemon. It’s a massive deer that has rainbow antlers whenever it’s in battle. It’s so stupidly powerful that it kicks the shit out of its fellow Legendaries. On top of being an amazing Fairy type, Xerneas has an ability that makes its fairy powers even stronger. Yeah, sure, Zygarde does have an aura-nullifying ability. But Zygarde is still a dragon type. And Dragon types get their asses handed to them by fairies on the regular.

However, with Xerneas’s arrival in Pokemon GO, turns out things aren’t that bright and sunny for the pretty deer.

Xerneas’s moves suck.

Xerneas comes with a grand total of one fairy move, a single charge move. Moon Blast IS a cool move, but it’s one that requires a lot of build up to use. All of Xerneas’s other moves lack the same type attack bonus, meaning they do little damage. But even then, these moves are all so bad that they’re utterly useless. Megahorn, Giga Impact, Close Combat and Thunder? We couldn’t even get Draining Kiss as a secondary but shit Fairy move?

All of these moves are completely useless to Xerneas, aside from maybe using Close Combat against a Steel type. But even then, the only Steel types Xerneas will probably see are Metagross, Genesect and Scizor, to whom Close Combat isn’t actually super effective against.

Its lack of fast moves really hold it back.

Not having a Fairy Fast move is bad enough. But Xerneas only has two options for fast moves and they are both awful. We have a Legendary Pokemon with only the fast moves Zen Headbutt and Tackle. Yeah. Tackle. I suppose at least Zen Headbutt might be useful against Fighting types, but that’s about it. Zen Headbutt is resisted Dark types and Tackle is resisted by Fighting types, and that’s two of the three types you’d even consider using Xerneas against.

Both these fast moves also build up charge moves INCREDIBLY slowly. It’s a good thing Xerneas has at Legendary stats, so it has some potential later on. Right now though, Xerneas ends up being so bad that it can’t even be used in PvP as a silly pick. Heck, you can’t even use Xerneas against Yveltal, because its fast moves are THAT bad.

Of course, we’ll get better moves later on.

That’s generally the way Pokemon GO works. We get a new Pokemon, but it doesn’t get its fancy move until a later date. But the question is, how long will that take? Ho-Oh suffered for years, being a far, far worse version of Moltres (a Pokemon Ho-Oh is SUPPOSED to be better than), because it was stuck with bad moves. But with the additions of Earthquake and Incinerate, Ho-Oh finally found some love and a use.

There’s a bigger question though. Will Xerneas ever even get its signature move? After all, we’re still waiting on signature moves for Rayquaza, Groudon and Kyogre. Sure, Groudon and Rayquaza did get exclusive moves, but they are still lacking their signature ones. Heck, even Ho-Oh is missing its signature move, Sacred Fire.

So how long will it take for Xerneas to get ITS special move? Who knows?

In the mean time, we’ll just have to use other Fairy types, like Gardevoir or Togekiss. Or, well, we’ll just continue using our normal counters to Dragon, Bug, Fighting and Dark types. Which all work perfectly fine.