What is Lucario's best ability?

Question

Question is asking for competitive in Sword and Shield. I don’t think Justafied is its best ability, because besides sucker punch it really takes no dark type hits, and I run it as a special attacker anyways.

Comments

What format/rules are you playing with?

Answer 1

While you have said you don't like Justified, it's quite common in Doubles specifically, on Pokemon like Lucario and Arcanine.

The strategy is to pair a Justified user (like Lucario) with a physically very weak support Pokemon (like Whimsicott) to use Beat-up on Lucario. Between type resistance and the inherently feeble physical stats of Whimsicott, you can max out Lucario's Attack stat on the first turn while receiving minimal friendly fire damage. Have the Lucario use Agility on that turn and you've gotten 8 total stat increases out of just the 1 turn, and you're in a wonderful position to blast through several opponents in the following turns.

The gamble is whether or not the opposing team is able to pound Lucario super-effectively that first turn.

Comments

Good strategy

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Instead of Agility, another approach is to Dynamax your Lucario or other Justified Pokemon right away so that it's more resilient to focused fire and you're not spending a full turn with no hindrance to the opponents at all.

Dragapult is another possible Beat Up user. It hits harder than Whimsicott, but Lucario doesn't really care about its damage output anyway, and Dragapult is so fast that it can go before Adamant _Scarf_ Lucario and put the boosts up soon enough to get a turn-1 Earthquake with 418 speed and 1400 attack. You won't want to use Dynamax if you're using Scarf, but a Dragapult + Dynamax Lucario lead pair has the advantage that the opponent can't do anything productive with Fake Out to deny _either_ of your team members their turn.