Which is better: Lunala or Solgaleo?

Question

Which Pokemon is better competitively?

Answer 1

Well stat wise, both Solgaleo and Lunala are fairly similar as they have the same base stat for HP and Speed. As for the other stats, Solgaleo is your Atk and Def type, with moderately good SpAtk and SpDef, whereas Lunala has the opposite stats, therefore making it better in SpAtk and SpDef and moderately good in Atk and Def. Therefore, your decision should consider moves, weaknesses/resistances, and ability.

Solgaleo

To start of, Solgaleo's ability Full Metal Body prevents its stats from being lowered. This has the same effect as Clear Body and White Smoke; so if your a Metagross or Legendary Golem user, and you like this affect, Solgaleo would be a good start in your decision. Solgaleo also has a great amount of resistances as you'd get being a steel-type (9 resistances; 1 immunity), so having this, as well as great defenses, making this Pokemon not easily knocked out. Solgaleo can also learn great STAB moves such as Zen Headbutt and Sunsteel Strike, as well as other powerful physical moves such as Flare Blitz and Earthquake. However, you may want to use it's resistances and defenses and make it a status user, thus giving it moves like Cosmic Power and Noble Roar - and having it's STAB signature move can also be a great addition to this move set.

Lunala

With Lunala's ability, Shadow Shield, it reduces half the damage when its HP is full. It has the same effect as Dragonite's and Lugia's Multiscale, so you may consider Lunala if you like the way it works with these Pokemon. In terms of resistances, Lunala is fairly good (with 2 resistances and 2 immunities), but it's only 2 weaknesses are 4x as effective, so having it being hit by a physical move can be really catastrophic. Lunala can also learn great STAB moves like Psychic and Moongeist Beam, as well as other powerful special moves such as Hyper Beam, Ice Beam, Moonblast, Night Daze, and Thunderbolt. You may choose Lunala to be a status user by giving it moves like Confuse Ray and Cosmic Power, but there's not enough to make it a good status user.

Overall, both Pokemon in their respective games are great, but for 1v1, I would definitely choose Solgaleo > Lunala, because they are both similar stat wise, plus Solgaleo has more resistances, and still maintaining the same HP, Spd, and amount of its appropriate attack. This way, Solgaleo has a better chance of lasting longer in battle, while still getting the same job done in comparison to Lunala.

Your Choice! Hope I helped! :)

Comments

I don't think this is right. Lunala gets STAB from ghost type attacks, which are resisted by fewer types than steel or psychic are.

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Solgaleo 252+ Atk Choice Band = 552 Actual Attack stat.

Answer 2

Solgaleo and Lunala have different roles in competitive, so either is not directly better than the other, individually.

However, in all the tiers they are allowed, Necrozma-Dusk Mane is also present which is virtually better than Solgaleo in almost every regard—possessing a much superior ability, having access to Stealth Rock, as well as having access to Ultra Burst and Swords Dance, and later Dragon Dance in Gen 8+, which makes it a better offensive presence than Solgaleo. As such, you would normally not have a sufficient reason to consider using Solgaleo over Necrozma-DM. Lunala on the hand, can fulfill unique niches that others can not, making it decently usable across various tiers. It's also better than Necrozma-Dawn Wing thanks to Shadow Shield.

In Gen 7 Ubers and Gen 7 Anything Goes, Lunala is ranked A- and B, respectively in the viability rankings. This is because Ghost is a very good offensive option, and access to Calm Mind and Menacing Moonraze Malestrom via Lunalium Z make it one of the most threatening wallbreakers, being able to one shot many neutral threats. Lunala also has a lot of defensive utility, being able to handle many threats like Necrozma-DM, Ultra Necrozma, Mega Mewtwo Y, Zygarde, etc. thanks to its ability, Shadow Shield.

Meanwhile, Solgaleo is ranked D in Gen 7 Ubers and unranked in Gen 7 AG. It has a very small niche in being a Choice Scarf user that is not affected by Sticky Web, but outside of that it finds itself outclassed. Steel isn't great offensively, and Solgaleo does not have access to Swords Dance unlike Necrozma-DM. Defensively, Full Metal Body does not contribute much as it is not taking super effective hits like Hidden Power [Fire] from Xerneas, Heat Wave from Special Ultra Necrozma, Earth Power from Arceus formes, etc. as well as Necrozma-DM can, thanks to the latter's Prism Armor. Necrozma-Dusk Mane being one of the top ranked Pokemon in the tiers does not help Solgaleo either, as it's facing stiff competition for the Steel-type team slot.

+2 252+ SpA Xerneas Hidden Power Fire vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Solgaleo: 226-266 (47.2 - 55.6%) -- 77.3% chance to 2HKO

+2 252+ SpA Xerneas Hidden Power Fire vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Prism Armor Necrozma-Dusk-Mane: 147-174 (36.9 - 43.7%) -- 99.6% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

In Gen 8 Ubers and Gen 8 AG, Lunala is ranked B in both. While a fall in viability may be expected due to Calyrex-Shadow's new dominance as the offensive Ghost-type, Lunala still retains its defensive niche of checking multiple threatening physical attackers. Morever, with the introduction of Heavy-Duty Boots, Lunala does not have to worry much about hazards while switching in, which makes it even better defensively. Solgaleo on the other hand has a slight niche of being a Xerneas/Zacian-C check that is not trapped by Magnezone or Gothitelle via Teleport, but it still can not setup Stealth Rock like Necrozma-DM nor use Dragon Dance sets, which makes it not a very good contender for the Steel-type. Morever, it does not like facing Crunch Zacian-C again, due to not having Prism Armor unlike its competitior. Thus, not much has changed for it and it still languishes in the depth of D rank in the above tiers.

In Gen 9 Ubers UU, Solgaleo is a decent specially defensive wall that is ranked at B-. That's pretty good right? Well, the catch is that Necrozma-Dusk Mane is not allowed in Ubers UU due to having high enough usage in Ubers. So the reason it's any good and is in Ubers UU is simply because of lack of better options, and it not having any niche whatsoever to be worth using in Gen 9 Ubers.

In Gen 9 Ubers, Lunala benefited a ton from Calyrex-Shadow getting banned which freed up its offensive sets very much. Not only that, after the recent Miraidon's ban, Ting-Lu has seen a massive decrease in usage which is a good news for Lunala, as Ting-Lu is capable of shrugging off Lunala's STABs easily and then threatening to phaze it out via Whirlwind, or chip it enough for revenge killers like Koraidon. All of these make Lunala a very scary offensive threat, due to which it is ranked A- in the viability rankings (at the time of writing this). Terastilization also helps Lunala as it can Tera Fairy against Dark-types, 2HKOing or OHKOing them with STAB boosted Moonblast. Alternatively, Tera Ghost Moongeist Beam provides it a convenient way to 2HKO Ho-Oh at +1 (from Meteor Beam or Calm Mind).

tl;dr almost everywhere Solgaleo tries to be good, Necrozma-DM ends up outclassing it. Lunala has more useful tools that make it a viable choice across different generations of AG and Ubers.

Answer 3

In terms of competitive usefulness, Lunala is better than Solgaleo. But in terms of 1v1, Lunala still wins.
Do note that there's no competitive format where there would be these two could face off alone.

In a hypothetical 1v1 battle, Solgaleo has access to crunch, which Lunala is 4x weak to. However, Lunala's signature ability is Shadow Shield, which would cut Crunch's base power in half provided it's at max HP. This would make Crunch's damage output only slightly above Sunsteel strike. On the flip side, Moongeist beam is super effective STAB and Full Metal Body will do nothing to affect it (It can definitely be stressed that Solgaleo really got the short end of the stick when it comes to abilities), so basically Lunala can do a lot more damage to Solgaleo than vise-versa. Lunala will almost always 1-hit kill Solgaleo provided they're both using offensive sets.

We could get into more technical sets or how Solgaleo could strategically counter Lunala, but Lunala still wins out overall when the fight is fair. It's still important to note that Solgaleo and Lunala do very different things in competitive environments. Solgaleo pretty much never uses crunch competitively, and without it Lunala will always win 1v1. Therefore in an Uber battle, it's Solgaleo who switches out. Several reasons why Solgaleo isn't as good as Lunala in Ubers is because Steel isn't a great attacking type while Ghost is one of the best, most would consider Shadow Shield to be much better than Full Metal Body, and while both of them have their share of exploitable weaknesses, Lunala is much better equipped to deal with them.