As many of you may have noticed, tanks are at a premium for the new Battle Villa. Their job is to take as many hits as possible to protect your more fragile strikers and utility units, and you’ll often go through many of them each day. But not all tanks are created equal.

In general, good tanks need to not only soak damage (with enough bulk to draw aggro), but also provide some degree of utility. This could be in the form of buffs, debuffs, status effects, or (in rare instances) actual damage. Another important and often underrated feature is the ability to help charge the sync count meter quickly, often with 1 bar moves (with move gauge refresh too, if possible).

Here are the pros and cons of each tank option, in no particular order, although I am starting with what I believe to be the 2 most prominent tanks for the current meta.

Professor Oak and Mew

Pros: Absurdly high defenses especially when promoted. Can hax with evasion thanks to Shifty Striker and Agile Entry. Swift is a spammable move for building sync meter that also randomly debuffs, and can be a very low gauge cost move if you’ve also got Move Gauge Refresh. Possible repeatable healing with First Aid (triggers every battle), especially with some additional healing backup. It even has Natural Remedy! Mew Pikachu is a prominent (and F2P!) combo for the massive amount of healing it provides.

Cons: Requires much more investment than most other options on this list. Needs promotion and also a ton of sync grid investment to really shine. Doesn’t have a 1 bar move so not as great as some other choices for farming sync meter.

SS Elesa and Rotom

Pros: Highest uninvested bulk in the game. Builds evasion quickly with Look Alive, and if you have 3/5 sync grid for Ridicure, she’ll have great self-healing too. Breathtaking is an amazing buff that lets you accelerate out mega evolutions quickly, and has MP Refresh so it can be abused. Leg Up and Third Act also help with sync count. Has Thundershock to spam for farming sync meter. With all that, it’s sometimes easy to forget she also has X Special Attack All.

Cons: Relatively rare gacha unit given that she’s competing with Red’s pokefair banner. Needs multiple copies for abilities like Ridicure. Without 3/5, she has no self-healing.

Leaf and Eevee

Pros: Good bulk, spammable 1 bar move, and can heal with potions. Gauge refill can be useful for gauge guzzling mons like Solgaleo. Sync move is potentially great, as a repeatable source of buffs.

Cons: Competes with mega evolutions for sync usage, and oftentimes will lose that competition. Also, Baton Pass is completely useless here for obvious reasons.

Rosa and Serperior

Pros: High bulk. MP Refresh on Time to Energize can be potentially absurd to allow for spamming high cost moves. X Special Attack goes without saying. Also F2P and doesn’t require much investment at baseline to be useful.

Cons: No self-healing (unless you’re wasting 3 bars on a weak Giga Drain), so actually has less survivability than most other options on this list. While she can keep the gauge filled, she can’t really spam moves for sync because her moves are so expensive.

Phoebe and Dusknoir

Pros: Dire Hit All is one of the best buffs in the game. Can also refill gauge and buff attack. Vigilance makes her a very reliable tank, without fear of enemy crits. Arguably the best support if you’re just going to kamikazi your units to take out a tough boss.

Cons: No tools to aid in survivability aside from Vigilance. No self-healing. Using Double Edge is suicide, so one of her best aspects (highest damage for a tank) is wasted. Can’t really farm sync gauge well.

Lyra and Meganium

Pros: Light Screen could potentially raise survivability by a lot. Passes out a lot of buffs, although they aren’t terribly strong. But crit is always appreciated.

Cons: Jack of all trades, master of none. Bulk isn’t that great due to lower defenses, especially that below average defense. Can’t contribute anything without expending MP.

Hilbert and Samurott

Pros: Fantastic attack buffer, and also gives speed too. Can flinch hax. Looks cool.

Cons: No tools to help with survivability. Very MP dependent. Doesn’t contribute efficiently to farming sync meter. Best used by spending everything against a single boss.

Rosanta and Delibird

Pros: Turbocharges move gauge. Might even get lucky with the random stat given (can always just reset).

Cons: No tools for survivability (barring random defense buffs). Fights often last too long and move gauge buff runs out. MP dependent. Not great for charging sync meter. Basically same as Hilbert.

Roxanne and Nosepass

Pros: Good for buffing special attackers on bosses. Can buff defense. Maybe Wide Guard can find a use too.

Cons: Low HP. Needs promotion for bulk. No healing. Not great at spamming attacks. Probably won’t last more than 1 fight.

Player and Torchic

Pros: Still great at buffing your offensive stats.

Cons: Needs promotion for bulk, and really reliant on using MP to be worthwhile. Also, why aren’t you using Potionchu instead?

Flannery and Torkoal

Pros: Burn status lowers enemy attack. Can spam Ember (with MGR!) for great sync meter buildup. Because of MGR, she can practically generate more meter than she consumes. And unlike other tanks with spam attacks, Flan can actually do appreciable damage! I recommend taking double Burn Synergy instead of Critical Strikes, for less setup cost (you might not want to use MP for crit) and to save points for MGR. Works great with Regen providers.

Cons: Requires heavy investment. Needs promotion to 4 star for the bulk and heavy grid investment.

Erika and Vileplume

Pros: Great bulk when promoted and buffs it even further on both the physical and special fronts. Paralysis can randomly hax enemies. Energy Ball provides debuffs (especially with On a Roll) and if you’ve got MGR, it’s actually surprisingly spammable. Like Flannery, she can do appreciable damage thanks to Paralysis Synergy, her own debuffs, and a 81 bp Energy Ball. Just wait til she reaches 3/5 sync and she can really shine with those extra instances of On a Roll and MGR.

Cons: Requires heavy investment, including both promotion and sync grid. Waiting on 3/5 before she can go all-out.

Cheren and Stoutland

Pros: Fills move gauge and also provides regen, which (if you haven’t used yet) is extremely good for Battle Villa. Regen heals about 6% of your max health per action and lasts for 8 actions, so it’s close to a 50% heal for your entire team. Full Heal is situationally useful, but if Stoutland gets afflicted, just let it remain and watch your move gauge skyrocket thanks to Outrun 4 (it’s like a permanent Delibird buff!). Always great to have another F2P option.

Cons: Good physical bulk but unimpressive special bulk. Can’t farm sync meter well. While Regen is great in theory, he can’t spam moves often enough to really abuse it.

Glacia and Glalie

Pros: Unironically good for her Regen skill. She even has a spammable 1 bar move to take advantage of it. Maybe you’ll even freeze hax! Works great as a backup tank, using her taunt to redistribute damage and then healing it off the whole team with X Regen All.

Cons: One of the worst bulk stats on this list. Works better as a backup tank for someone else who can spam, like Mew or Torkoal.

Misty and Starmie

Pros: Provides Regen (1 target only), can provide evade hax, buffs special def, and also can remove status ailments from the party. Also works better as backup tank, similar to Glacia.

Cons: Can be awkward if she’s main tank, since you want to use her buff on herself, but she doesn’t have cheap moves to really take advantage of the Regen.

Viola and Masquerain

Pros: Makes up for her slightly lower than average bulk (relative to the rest of this list) with her ability to debuff both attack and special attack. Between Struggle Bug and Fantastique which raises her special def and also provides Regen, she can become a a fantasique tank vs enemy special threats.

Cons: Only has 2 bar moves, so while Struggle Bug is nice to spam, it’s hard to keep it going for both sync meter generation and self healing with Regen.

Cheryl and Blissey

Pros: One of the best healing abilities in the game (second only to Pikachu because the rat has MP Refresh). Also has X Special Atk All.

Cons: Rolls over and dies to any physical attack. Just don’t use her as your main tank. Also, no spammable move for sync gauge.

Skyla and Swanna

Pros: If you want a tank with potions but don’t have Leaf, here is your best bet. Much better main tank than Cheryl. Take Flight is also a useful group buff. Has a spammable 1 bar move.

Cons: Really wants promotion for the bulk.

Brock and Onix (yes really)

Pros: At first he looks like a worse Skyla, with potions but no Take Flight buff. However, with his Stoic ability he can potentially crank up his defense while spamming rock throw to become a decent physical wall. Also, how does this guy have better speed than Skyla?

Cons: Needs promotion even more than Skyla does. Stoic and higher speed still isn’t as good as having Take Flight. His special bulk isn’t impressive.

To summarize, based on my personal opinion:

Best survivability: Prof Oak (promoted with grid), SS Elesa (3/5 with grid)

Best buffs for bosses: Phoebe, SS Elesa (if you get the MP refresh on Breathtaking)

Best damage: Flannery (also best at farming sync meter) (Erika might also make it here once she gets 3/5)

Best backup tanks: Glacia, Misty, Cheryl

Best options for F2P with zero investment: Rosa, Cheren, Viola, Skyla