1st Zeta Kylo or Thrawn

Providing the rest of your arena team would be of huge help.

Right now I'm running

DN lead, EP, Vader, Dooku, Kylo.

I rank in the 170-190 range. Leaning a bit more towards raid usefulness

Neither for raid usefulness. Zylo isn't good anywhere anymore. Han and Luke are the gods of Phase 1.
Thrawn is good in P3, but he needs Shore at 7* as well. So I don't think this would help you.

If you're leaning more towards HAAT then I'd say Clones or Resistance.
My personal suggestion is, get your arena team ready first, more crystals = more gear = more geared toons. Get yourself a zThrawn, DT, Shore, DK/Tarkin, Stormtrooper/DN team.

OP, taking you at your word that you've narrowed it down to those two. If you had CLS I'd say sure, zeta CLS first, but I assume you don't!

I don't have Thrawn zeta'd yet, but I think they're both good. Looking at swgoh.gg meta report I think Thrawn is currently deemed much more useful in arena generally, but judge for yourself. I find zKylo useful even now, but I can't meaningfully compare gear 12 zeta Kylo with 7* gear 9 Thrawn without mods yet!

For you, I'd lean Thrawn.

Thrawn is much better i mean lets say you wanted to change your arena team thrawn is more versatile he can and will help you against kenobi zarris , luke lead and even against empire teams but if you use zylo kenobi zarris will f you up CLS leads and rex leads yes zylo is much better himself at haat but like @Crazylazyguy said better ranking more crystals more gear and more toons-shards
Thrawn DN combo lets you use annihilate more often too

Thanks all. Given that this is my first zeta I'm all over the map. Longer term I plan to get CLS. Also working in a Resistance team which I hear a zfynn is good. I still have to star R2 (hopefully this month) and RT so planned on zeta Fynn later. Wonder if I should look at other options.

Here is my current collection

https://swgoh.gg/u/sirlagzalott/collection/

While I commend your Dark Side loyalty, if you're looking across aisle, then you also have the makings of a solid Rebel team. Raid Han has a very solid zeta, for both Arena and Raids.

"Flakbait;c-1315738" wrote:
While I commend your Dark Side loyalty, if you're looking across aisle, then you also have the makings of a solid Rebel team. Raid Han has a very solid zeta, for both Arena and Raids.

Given the current unbalanced state of things favoring Rebel,

"Flakbait;c-1315738" wrote:
While I commend your Dark Side loyalty, if you're looking across aisle, then you also have the makings of a solid Rebel team. Raid Han has a very solid zeta, for both Arena and Raids.

Thanks. Probably makes the most sense. Given the current unbalanced state of things favoring Rebels that may make sense. With DS TB coming, I wonder if DS will get its due...

My first zeta was Kylo. I don’t regret it. He is still useful in many areas. He does suck on defense in squad because he just keeps doing th AOE attack over and over. He is very useful in hAAT P1. Then you can save CLS for the other phases. He is awesome in GW, team him with a cleanser and CLS can’t take him down with all the protection recovery. I’m not at the META level - 80’s in squad, 4-7 in fleet, but i’m working on my teams.

That being said, it’s all about Thrawn and CLS in my squad shard. Thrawn would be my choice if i had him.