Latios, The Eon Pokémon. A highly intelligent Pokémon. By folding back its wings in flight, it can overtake jet planes. Even in hiding, it can detect the locations of others and sense their emotions since it has telepathy. Its intelligence allows it to understand human languages. It has the ability to make its foe see an image of what it has seen or imagines in its head. It will only open its heart to a trainer with a compassionate spirit.
Overview
Latios is the more offensively inclined of the Lati twins, although the difference between the two is somewhat minimal. Despite a relatively acceptable Base Stat total of 600, Latios clears its way comfortably into the Uber tier, helped by a good stat distribution, a great move-pool, a good ability and the added bonus of Soul Dew giving a 50% boost to its Special Attack and Special Defence. It may not match up to the unmistakable heavyweights of the tier, but it can still play comfortably amongst them; and unlike Latias, it doesn't look like there's any hope of it making a Soul Dew-free skip down to the Standard tier (mostly as a consequence of its superior Special Attack when matched with its sister).
Ability
Levitate: keeps Latios immune from Ground moves. They aren't as common in the Uber tier as they are in other tiers but it's still a useful immunity.
Move Sets
Calm Mind Sweeper
- Dragon Pulse
- Calm Mind
- Recover
- Thunder / Grass Knot
Item Attached: Soul Dew
Ability: Levitate
EVs and Nature:
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Spd / 252 SAtk
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
With the aid of a 50% Soul Dew boost and a Calm Mind boost (which isn't always necessary), Latios succeeds as a strong attacker in the Uber tier. STAB Dragon Pulse provides most of the offensive might (benefiting from a lot of super-effective Dragon coverage and almost complete neutral coverage) and Recover keeps it nice and healthy through its sweeping attempts. Another attack rounds out the move-set. Thunder suffers against Groudon and Tyranitar (its accuracy takes a severe hit in Sun and Sand) but its primary use is to strike Kyogre (whose Rain Dance keeps it nice and accurate), with secondary uses against Steel types, Ho-oh and Lugia, as well as a neat 30% paralysis chance. Grass Knot on the other hand nets an equally strong hit on the aforementioned Kyogre and a similarly strong hit on Groudon and Tyranitar, however, it sells you rather short against Steel types.
Calm Mind Sweeper - Mono-Attack
- Dragon Pulse
- Calm Mind
- Recover
- Safeguard / Refresh / Psycho Shift
Item Attached: Soul Dew
Ability: Levitate
EVs and Nature:
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Spd / 252 SAtk
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
It's a very similar story as above, except you're relying on just STAB Dragon Pulse to do the attacking work for you (which isn't too bad - since Dragon type coverage is only thwarted by Steel types). In place of that extra attacking move, Latios benefits from a move designed to keep away statuses, which are a threat to the previous move-set. Safeguard provides Latios and its team with protection, although there's a risk of Latios picking up a status before it can throw up a Safeguard (e.g. picking up paralysis from switching into a Thunder). Refresh is the safer route to stay status free, although you can't pre-emptively block statuses like you can with Safeguard and you won't provide your team with any support. Psycho Shift transfers any statuses Latios has to its opponent, if they don't have any statuses already affecting them. It's not as reliable as Refresh but it does provide Latios with the ability to trouble its opponents.
Direct Attacker
- Draco Meteor
- Grass Knot
- Thunder
- Recover
Item Attached: Soul Dew
Ability: Levitate
EVs and Nature:
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Spd / 252 SAtk
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
It's a bit like a Choice attacker, but without the Choice Specs, and with the added bonus of Recover too. Draco Meteor is the new addition here. At the cost of sharply lowering its Special Attack (and since it's intended to play like a Choice attacker, that extra burden of switching should be of little consequence) you get a really strong one-off move. Dragon Pulse is, of course, a perfectly viable alternative.
Memento + Screen Support
- Memento
- Light Screen
- Reflect
- Draco Meteor
Item Attached: Soul Dew / Light Clay
Ability: Levitate
EVs and Nature:
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Spd / 252 SAtk
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
A bit of an oddity but still viable, a Memento and Screens move-set provides a different twist on the threat Latios can pose. Latios can switch in and, thanks to its great Speed stat, can set up both screens pretty swiftly.
Memento is the stand out here. It “sharply” (two stages) lowers Special Attack and Attack. The idea behind it is it leaves a Pokémon very crippled but still in play, allowing a team-mate a face-to-face with a weakened Pokémon that should pose minimal threat to its survival. Ideally that team-mate would be built to abuse this situation, after all, you'll be sacrificing a Pokémon to give them that opportunity.
The theme behind this set is minimal focus on the long term, and fittingly, Draco Meteor is the sole attack to go on this move-set. It'll cut your attack in the long term but in the short term it's your strongest attack.
This is one of the few situations where you might want to overlook Soul Dew. It's still useful, particularly for boosting Draco Meteor, but the added three turns of defensive screens gained from Light Clay would usually make it the preferred item.
EVs and Nature:
252/252 with Timid is the recurring theme. The Speed is understandable. It isn't the fastest Pokémon in the Uber tier but it's one of the faster ones, and Timid is ideal to fully exploit its Speed advantage, whilst the maxed Special Attack mostly compliments the offensive focus of most move-sets (except the Memento set, but that one isn't overly concerned with its survivability anyway). Sadly, defensive investment will most likely make minimal difference, especially with Soul Dew boosting your Special Defence in most cases.
Other Options
Hidden Power [Fire], Shadow Ball, Thunder Wave, Dragon Dance.
There's not much else to add here. Hidden Power [Fire] is a viable way to strike most Steel types, particularly if you have Groudon's Drought support. Shadow Ball can give you a super-effective hit on Psychic and Ghost types, but it only mildly out-powers a neutrally-effective Dragon Pulse, minimising its value. Thunder Wave has some potential to ruin some other speedy Pokémon, but Latios should be able to threaten them more with direct offence. Finally, Dragon Dance makes for a usable novelty in the “element of surprise” category, but in the grand scheme of things it leaves little of an impression and plays far away from Latios's strengths.
Countering Latios
Blissey armed with Toxic is an effective counter to a Latios without the means to handle status moves. To a lesser extent, that applies to a Thunder Wave equipped Blissey, which can cripple Latios badly, and up against a Calm Mind-based Latios, Psych Up is also a useful tool.
Metagross can take on Latios to an extent, benefiting from a Dragon resistance and the ability to strike strongly against its weaker defensive stat (although, Thunder can cause problems, especially with the 30% chance of paralysis). The same applies to Steel Arceus, and to a lesser extent (due to a significant difference in defensive capabilities) Scizor, who also benefits from super-effective Bug STAB.
Tyranitar benefits from a Sandstream boosted Special Defence and poses a major threat with STAB Crunch or Pursuit for any Latios that tries to run.
As a final note, if you can get rid of Soul Dew via Knock Off, Thief or Trick, you can rob Latios of a major boost to its special stats.
Locations in Games
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Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald Roaming Hoenn (Ruby/Emerald) Southern Island (Sapphire/Emerald) Colosseum/XD Trade from RSE Fire Red/Leaf Green Trade from RSE Diamond/Pearl/Platinum Transfer from RSE
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Animé Appearences
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Latios has had a few Animé Appearences, most of which are simple cameos. Its main appearance had it appear with Latias in AltoMare, protecting the city from Annie & Oakley.
Heroes - Latias & Latios |
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