Charizard

As one of the most iconic Pokemon of all time, does Charizard live up to the hype? With Power Creep over the years, Charizard has steadily dropped in terms of viability and absolute power, and has become a bit of an obsolete Fire Type attacker overall in the face of powerful Legendaries, Mega Evolutions, and Shadows. That said, it's still near the top of the non-legendary/non-shadow Fire Type list, and it's definitely worth raising one with Blast Burn Mega Charizard Y, and/or one with Dragon Breath for Mega Charizard X.

Best PvE Offensive Moveset

• Fire Spin is Charizard’s best fast move and strictly superior to Ember.

• Wing Attack* is preferable to Air Slash and equal to Fire Spin if both have the same effectiveness.

• Blast Burn makes Charizard a great Fire Type attacker.

• Overheat is Charizard's best non-exclusive charged move and beats Fire Blast soundly.

• Flamethrower has less cycle DPS than Overheat and is just a worse Blast Burn, but has advantages due to multiple charge bars.

• Dragon Breath and Dragon Claw can work as a pseudo-dragon attacker, and are only useful for preparing a Mega Charizard X.
• Return has no purposes on offensive Charizard.

Best PvE Defensive Moveset

• Attackers may be inclined to throw Water-types at Charizard, in which case Air Slash edges out Fire Spin. 

• Ember and Wing Attack are worse versions of Fire Spin and Air Slash, respectively.

• Dragon Claw is the preferred charge move due its early damage window, wide neutral coverage, neutral damage to Rock Types, and 3 bars.

• Return is inferior in terms of damage, but is much harder to dodge. 

• Flamethrower is a decent alternative, but Blast Burn is decisively better.

• Fire Blast and Overheat are poor due to their late damage windows and charge time.
• Dragon Breath is inferior on defense.

Fire Spin is generally the preferred Fast Attack due to having superior parameters compared to its other options. Wing Attack was once Charizard's Fast Attack of choice, but it is relegated to being a niche option since its nerf on September 2024. Dragon Breath provides excellent damage and gives Charizard a better matchup against opposing Dragon-type Pokemon, but its moderate energy generation can make it difficult for Charizard to reach its powerful Blast Burn. Air Slash is just worse than Wing Attack, while Ember is worse than Fire Spin.

Blast Burn is a limited move obtained through Community Day events, but it's mandatory for optimal usage of Charizard. An incredible 2.2 DPE (Damage Per Energy) rating allows Charizard to output huge amounts of damage without paying high energy costs. Even when resisted, Blast Burn would still have a greater DPE value than neutral Dragon Claw, but not when it would be doubly resisted. Dragon Claw is recommended for its cheaper energy cost and Dragon-type coverage. The update to Overheat following the Dec 2019 rebalance makes it a decent choice if Blast Burn is unavailable, but a significant self debuff of -2 ATK makes it more risky and less reliable. Fire Blast costs too much energy, and Flamethrower is a direct downgrade of Blast Burn.