THE BEST SABLEYE BUILD GUIDE - POKEMON UNITE

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Write-up by Morganas:
MOVESET 1:
This is Sable’s best overall set. It turns him into a set up mon for his team. Knock Off’s 3-part stun combined with Confuse Ray’s versatile CC can lock down multiple enemies and make them easy for your allies to follow up. Thanks to Knock Off’s Damage Mitigation, this set is also good for stalling the enemy while your allies are doing objectives. Use this to your advantage to quell any and all attempts of enemies stealing your team’s objectives.

Early game:
This early game applies for all of Sable’s movesets no matter what. First things first: Never 1st Rotation invade as Sableye. Unless you are in a coordinated stack, attempting to invade at the very beginning of the game is a net loss for your team. Sableye’s amazing scaling and value from Attack Weight allows him to both deny enemy stackers early game and gain a massive powerspike from stacking. This damage rivals Mime in terms of lane pressure and can easily allow Sableye to fight most Junglers, even at a Level disadvantage. No Jungler wants to eat a raw Attack Weight boosted Astonish early game. Even while facing Sable the move’s damage is nothing to scoff at. Sableye, as a whole, has amazing revenge pressure in lane thanks to Attack Weight and Float Stone. Wasting all of this pressure to potentially throw off a Jungler’s opening rotation just isn’t worth it. On average, a Sableye that has started in lane and then invades on the enemy Jungler’s 2nd or 3rd rotation has more overall pressure on average than a Sableye that 1st invades and then tries to run to lane with their spoils.

Mid game:
This part is the fun part! As soon as objectives begin to spawn, you now become an expert deterrent and time waster for the enemy team. Ignore the enemy Tanks for the most part. Your targets are the squishy backliners who want to follow up on their tank’s CC. A Trevenant hurts, but a Trevenant with a free casting Delphox will hurt exponentially more. Shutting down and stalling key targets is your goal during the mid and late game. Approach teamfights from off-angles and play to harass the backline while their frontline is diving. Knock Off’s aoe stun becomes King here. If you know that a specific squishy target has a problematic attack, move, or CC, make sure to throw your Confuse Ray at them. Make the enemy A9 freeze her own allies, make the enemy Absol crit his carries, make an Ulting Delphox anti-heal her own team, etc. Confuse Ray itself is just a very versatile tool. I would highly suggest you practice hitting it.

Late game:
Basically the same motions as the Mid game but now the stakes are much higher. Don’t worry though, this is what Knock Off is for. When your team seems ready, appear from nowhere and Knock Off stun as many grouped up enemies as you can. You can combo this into either Ult or Confuse Ray depending on your team comp (Or both if you want to make sure the enemy dies).

• PRO TIP: Sometimes the full CC of Knock Off is unnecessary. Using the move again while dashing will cancel the 2nd hit into the 3rd knock back hit. Learning when to cancel Knock Off is key, especially with allies with beam or Aoe attacks. Sometimes the little bit of extra damage you would do with the move is worse than knocking the enemy into your allies.

MOVESET 2:
The nerfs and bugfixes to Sneak and Sable’s passive finally makes this move manageable for enemies. It’s still a very strong tool but how you support with this moveset is different from Knock Off.

While Knock Off plays to rush in and stun the enemies Sneak plays more to Ambush and trap targets. You use your stealth to get behind problematic enemies and proc your fear on them to cancel their moves and move in a direction you wish then, you vanish again and re-engage seconds later to do the process again. This is harder to hit on multiple enemies and thus operates slower than Knock Off.

This set is good for whittling down and displacing enemies and chasing down scattered targets. If Knock Off excelled in teamfights, this set excels in more 3v3 scenarios at worst. The more enemies that are grouped together, the less powerful this moveset is. Combine this with the drawback that this move’s bonus damage and utility is prevented if Sable is stunned in any way during the cast and this move no longer being Sable’s “Best in Slot” is a no-brainer.

Overall, while no longer being Sableye’s best set, you can still play a Hit-and-Run game with this set and sow chaos with Confuse Ray. Be sure to pay attention to the enemy’s team comp and note how many enemies have stuns in their kits. Let that tell you whether or not you want to use this set.

Oh, and before I forget: Boosted Attack -> Sneak Boosted -> Confuse Ray -> Ult -> Sneak is still a strong combo but it now takes a lot longer to perform and you may need Blue Buff to pull it off consistently…

Re: Feint Attack – Simply do not. Do not run any variant of Feint Attack at all. The opportunity cost is not worth it. You are sacrificing one of the strongest and most versatile single target CC attacks in the game for a mediocre vision detector that slows and does damage over time.

• PRO TIP: Sneak does not count as a dash. If you see an enemy Clefable go Gravity, feel free to take this move so you aren’t hard countered by Clefable peel. Follow Me will still cancel the move though.

Favourable Matchup:

These are Pokémon that our team has determined SABLEYE is strong against. SABLEYE will generally be able to shut down these opponents playstyle's or have the advantage in a one on one fight.

Unfavourable Matchup:

These are Pokémon that our team has determined SABLEYE is weak against. These Pokémon will have the upper hand in a fight or be able to exploit SABLEYE's weaknesses.