Communication Got The Biggest Buff In The New Pokemon Unite Update

thegamer.com:

There’s been a lot of buzz about the big Charizard and Garchomp buffs, but the real winner of the most recent Pokemon Unite patch is the Quick Chat menu. It doesn’t matter how strong your fireballs are or how many points you can score if you can’t work with your team, and the new Quick Chat options have the potential to dramatically improve teamwork and communication in your games - if they’re used correctly.

Before the update, there were only a few things you could say to your teammates in game. You could tell them what lane you're heading towards, ask for back up, tell them to group up, tell them to retreat, and tell them to keep the pressure on. Those commands are essential tools for coordinating with your team, especially when it's time to group up and take objectives, but they’re extraordinarily limited in the context of a complex game like Unite.

Say for example you want to bait the enemy team into collapsing on you so you can use a Unite Move. You may want to start attacking Dreadnaw to get their attention. That way, you can Unite when they arrive and your team can come in from behind to clean them up. The problem is that there’s no way to tell your team the plan, so as soon as you start attacking Dreadnaw, a good teammate will come over to help you. This increases the chance that the enemy team will steal the Dreadnaw, since its health is now lower than you anticipated, and you’ve lost your opportunity for an ambush.

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This is just one of countless examples of specific plays that the Quick Chat system isn’t equipped to handle. Telling them to retreat would only confuse them, and telling them to keep the pressure on or group up would ruin your plan. Luckily, Patch 1.4.1.2