Alternate Item Options: Doublescreen, Drill, Hacked Microchip (niche), Bait, Snare, or any other logical defensive item that suits your team.
What is Ukama's Role in PVP?
Ukama is a great stat stick with limited coverage but high potential. It can lead well with several different kinds of tems, it can be used as a scalpel independant of allies to take out threats weak to water, and it can be either fat or frail depending on your desires.
It is very flexible for how straightforward it is to slot onto a team and use.
What kind of teams appreciate Ukama?
Most teams that are not stall can consider Ukama to either compliment its allies for nice lead combos or to act as a stopgap to specific weaknesses. Is your team digital weak? Earth weak? Fire weak? Consider ukama. Do you have Toxic types and/or Water Cutting Lily users? Believe it or not, Ukama.
Ukama also has an unusual niche for the off-meta Venom Spread setups. Ukama is naturally speedy and applies poison, so even with Venom Spread having 3 Priority, a Ukama that is properly speed-staggered for its ally can naturally apply 2 Priority Water Cannon synergy before Venom Spread is used.
What is the goal of this specific Ukama build?
The last move-slot can be Sharp Rain if you want a more stamina-efficient option, Blizzard as a failsafe "sometimes useful" option for if you predict Toxics swapping in, Turbo Choreography in the specific Turbo team archetype (for allies such as Granpah), and Cooperation for memes. Please do not run Major Slash, for obvious reasons.
This build is a variant of what is often called "Bulkama". Ukama TVs are as flexible as its ally options are. You can take max special attack, 300+ speed, and dump the leftover TVs into HP if you want. But this one is a bit more nuanced. This Ukama build assumes you have multiple toxic allies, which allows it to get a free +12.5% damage per Water Cannon on synergy. This assumption lets you take a bit less in offense and put more into bulk, making this Ukama extremely annoying.
285 total speed allows Ukama to move before fast Innki, Vulcrane, Mouflank, Aohi, etc even with just 2 Priority moves. Aquatic Whirlwind will outspeed Aohi and Mouflank's 3 Priority moves as well, and with Toxic Synergy you psuedo-bypass Heater Tulcan's burn damage reduction and still pick up 2HKOs reliably.
Speaking of 2HKOs, with toxic synergy you kill most non-advantaged matchups in 2-3 hits. Frail tems will fall to the true damage applied through a turn 1 poison tick, and bulkier tems can take 2 Water cannons just to die before moving thanks to Aquatic Whirlwind.
This HP lets you live for 3 turns into non-advantaged matchup damage, likewise. You will 2KO mouflank, and mouflank will only 3KO you, allowing you to survive important double-ups when facing higher damage opponent leads. It also lets you use Turbo Choreography right before Ukama falls, because it will live on a sliver of health and can still move quickly enough.
You can adjust this Bulkama to have lower special attack damage or lower speed and start laughing when Nox Bombs take 3 hits to kill you, but the lower offensive power can sting unless your entire team is built around the concept of lower damage bruiser-archetypes (while still not reaching stall). I don't recommend that in this meta, but it is a niche option if you want to pursue it.
Final Words
This is a simple but great all-around tem. There hasn't been a meta where it was outright bad, and it has enjoyed being above average for most of the game's lifespan. The most interesting part about Ukama is how versatile its TV spreads can be without necessarily having a "wrong" spread option.
