Anonymous asks:

Do you like Cherrim?

Eh. Ambivalent. Cherrim shares Sunflora’s main flaw – namely, that she’s a Grass Pokémon whose most interesting characteristic (her love of and dependence on sunlight) is shared by… well, all Grass Pokémon. Now, in Cherrim’s case, Game Freak gave her a transformation gimmick so that her sun theme would actually matter and so that her dependence on sunlight would be more dramatic than that of other Grass-types, which is great. The trouble is that, because of that amazing Flower Gift ability, they felt they needed to smack her with a rare double dose of Grass Pokémon Don’t Get Nice Things in order to make absolutely sure she wouldn’t somehow be overpowered, and as a result Cherrim is beyond terrible (of course, Flower Gift applies to her partners as well, so I imagine in doubles and triples you must be able to make something out of her, with appropriate team composition). But I applaud the concept. Cherrim is basically Sunflora done right, if you ask me.

Anonymous asks:

What would you do to give Beheeyem a bit of a boost? Do you think widening its movepool to give it a niche that’s not already filled by Reuniclus is possible, or is an evo (mega or otherwise) the only way to save them from the metaphorical Tartarus that is forgetabiity?

Let’s see… at the moment, what Beheeyem is good at is slow, powerful special attacks, often within a Trick Room, which Beheeyem himself can set up. Which is fine, and Beheeyem’s not even bad at that, really; if he can get a power bonus from Analytic, stacked on top of an item boost, his attacks seriously sting. It’s just that Reuniclus, as you note, is significantly better at exactly the same things, being tougher, and protected by either Magic Guard or Regenerator, which makes spamming Calm Mind a solid option. And to be honest, I don’t really think movepool stuff really changes that. You could add Focus Blast, I guess, but that’s just copying Reuniclus more; Dazzling Gleam or Flash Cannon might be justifiable, but I’m not convinced they would help much. Zap Cannon would be hilarious, but of questionable value. Beheeyem’s support movepool already has just about everything you could ask for, except maybe Hypnosis (…come to think of it, why doesn’t Beheeyem get Hypnosis?). The trouble is, being as slow as Beheeyem just doesn’t work for a Pokémon that physically frail. I think at minimum you have to rejigger his stats… swap his special attack and physical defence, maybe? Dunno if that makes him better; I mean, it helps on the “different from Reuniclus” front, I guess, but those souped-up Analytic special attacks are most of what he’s got going for him at the moment. To make matters worse, Beheeyem’s base stat total is at an awkward spot where getting another evolution seems really unlikely… I don’t know. Mega Evolution might be the only way to go with this one.

Anonymous asks:

Could you try to fix carnivine for me? I quite like the concept as a beginning but wish there were a bit more…

Like, mechanically speaking? Eh, I can give it a shot, but no promises…

So, what’s wrong with Carnivine? Um. Well. Just about everything, to be honest, but the short list would be rock-bottom speed, mediocre defences, and a terrible offensive movepool (which does a brilliant job of mitigating the one useful thing about Carnivine, its good – but by no means excellent – attack stat). So, um… what do we do with that?

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Anonymous asks:

Do you think fairies do a good job at balancing dragons? And in a semi related question, do you think fairies are overpowered?

Gnyyyerrgh. If anything I think they’re a bit much; Dragon is actually kind of a bad type now, just in and of itself, since its main advantage was always that it was so difficult to block. Particular Dragon-types are still really, really good, obviously, but mainly ones like Garchomp and Dragonite who are really, really good pretty much regardless of what you do to the type. On the other hand, most Dragon-types are quite powerful on their own merits. The weakest ones were Druddigon and Altaria, and Altaria now has a kick-ass Mega form, and Druddigon… well, Druddigon sucks, but there’s sort of not much you can do about that anyway. So basically it just winds up making life seem very unfair for Flygon, Tyrantrum and Noivern. It could be worse.

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Anonymous asks:

Gamefreak have tried before to design insanely powerful pokemon with a shockingly bad ability (Regigigas, Slaking, Archeops) and they’ve generally failed or at least turned out pretty shakily. Do you think it would be possible to ever do this and make a consistently usable pokemon?

Hrrm. Tricky.

I feel like it has to be possible, because we have items that give their users severe disadvantages, and those get used all the time. If you imagine for a moment a Pokémon with really high attack and special attack scores, maxing out somewhere in the 550-600 region, and decent stats elsewhere, whose ability locks it into using only one attack until it switches… people would almost certainly use that, right? Because people use Choice Band and Choice Specs, and that’s basically what I’ve just described, in ability form. Obviously this particular example is impossible because if a Pokémon like that existed, people would stack choice items on top of its existing advantages for no extra cost, and all hell would break loose, but the point is that some disadvantages are clearly worth it. The trouble is that I’m pretty sure the competitive multiplayer environment is not really on Game Freak’s minds when they playtest these things, and that’s the only way you’re ever going to draw the line between broken-because-good and broken-because-bad, both of which will be serious possibilities whenever you create a Pokémon like this. I mean, Archeops is fine in single-player; I used him in my first playthrough of Black and he was fantastic. Slaking has the potential to be ridiculous in the right hands because the AI doesn’t know how to exploit his weakness. So the designers are kind of firing shots in the dark here, I think. That makes it unlikely that they’re ever going to get it exactly right, but sooner or later they’re bound to get something that falls on the overpowered rather than the underpowered side if they keep trying.

VikingBoyBilly asks:

There’s a fair bit of ninja pokemon: Greninja, Ninjask, Accelgor, Toxicroak, etc. Just for fun I’m going to add a Ninja Type. The pokemon that gamefreak chooses to exude ninja-ness are mostly composed of Poison, Bug, Dark, and Fighting types, so if we put those traits together, it’s weaknesses include fire, flying, ground, fairy… oh no! Those are the worst common type weaknesses, and we should throw in a weakness to pirate type attacks, but at least it resists fighting and ghost.

While you’re at it, I have a few additional new Pokémon types to suggest:

– Light (blinds you with bright lights; Grass-types are immune)
– Sound (deafens you with loud noises; Grass-types are immune again, because f&%$ you, that’s why)
– Taste (incapacitates foes with overpowering spices; strong against Psychic)
– Steam (because we have Water and Ice)
– Science (Fairy and Science are weak against each other)
– Antimatter (using one against a Pokémon of a different type annihilates both of them)
– Human (is actually an enslaved Pokéfan in cosplay)
– Potassium (like Steel but weak against Water and strong against bananas)
– Furniture (is good to sit on)
– Scottish (strong against Rock, Steel, Dark and alcohol, weak against the English)
– Spiders (not like Ariados or whatever; actually made of millions of tiny spiders)
– Hard Cheese (should require no explanation)
– Soft Cheese (similar to Hard Cheese but obviously is softer)

Anonymous asks:

How do you feel about a “Luck” stat being added, something that can contribute a small boost to critical hits, dodge chance at no evasion stacks, possibly a side effect that works like the move Endure, you get a small chance that an attack that would KO your Pokemon will leave it with 1 HP, but only if it has more than 1 HP. The percent chances of these things would be determined by your opponent’s luck, and could be given to weaker Pokemon like Farfetch’d and Furret

For the most part, I think my reaction to this would be basically analogous to what I said here about the idea of making accuracy and evasion into concrete, trainable stats rather than just bonuses and penalties. More to the point, I’m not sure the effect on Pokémon who would receive high Luck stats would be terribly beneficial, overall – it would encourage a perception of them as Pokémon best suited to inferior players who value luck over skill, and perhaps ultimately lead to even greater marginalisation than they experience now. Luck is always a tricky thing to play with in games of skill and strategy – the possibility of calculated risks for greater payoff is an interesting concept that can make games more varied, but adding too many luck-based elements just makes every move a risk, and then you lose the whole point. It’s… awkward.

Anonymous asks:

I don’t know if you’ve been following the VGC world championships, but if not (or still if so, I suppose), there’s a guy named Se Jun Park who just won the video game Masters’ division with a surprisingly effective Pachirisu on his team. While it is admittedly still a rather redundant Pikachu clone, does the fact that it’s actually somewhat competitively useful make you feel any better about Pachirisu?

Well, that was really quite spectacular.

See, this is the thing that’s quite nice about Pokémon. In a lot of games that have… shall we say ‘issues’ with balance, the inferior option is completely and unarguably inferior all the time. Pokémon just has so damn many attacks and abilities that practically everything has some skill or combination of skills that nothing else can imitate. Se Jun Park has found Pachirisu’s: only a bare handful of Pokémon can learn Follow Me, which is an incredibly easy attack to screw up but very dangerous if you’re good with it, and of those, Pachirisu is the only one who can actually restore health while using it (via Volt Absorb). Super Fang also means that her nonexistent attack scores don’t really matter, while her defences are actually pretty solid – not great, but she only has one weakness anyway. Stick a couple of powerful Electric-weak, Ground-immune Pokémon on the team – Gyarados and Talonflame – to force your opponent to bring out powerful Discharges and Thunderbolts while messing up their Earthquakes, and you’re all set. I mean, she’s still useless in singles – it’s just not the same game, and you’d never pull off that kind of $#!t without the right partners – but hey, it’s something Pachirisu’s good at! This calls for celebration!

Anonymous asks:

I was just playing Pokemon X, and my Bellossom’s Sleep Powder missed four times, which got me thinking: What if a low accuracy move’s accuracy goes higher (temporarily) when it misses? For example, I use Sleep Powder once, and it misses. It’s accuracy now goes from 75 to 85 (For Ex), so that it gives me (the user) a better chance at hitting, and gives missing something of a bonus. I mean, the Pokemon (Bellossom, in this case) should get the hang of it. Missing four times is kind of ridiculous.

Would you also implement the logical corollary – that moves become less accurate after a successful hit? After all, if you manage to hit three targets in a row with Focus Blast, your opponent is surely going to get the hang of dodging the damn things. In any luck-based system, things sometimes just don’t go our way, and that would still be the case with these revisions – your Bellossom could still miss three times in a row, and although it would happen much less often, that very fact would make it even more frustrating when it did. I don’t think it’d be a harmful change, but I’m not terribly enthused about it either.

Anonymous asks:

Just rereading your comments on Farfetch’d in the “worst pokemon” category, and I thought of how gen. VI boosted him somewhat with the changes to the critical hits mechanics, which makes him one of very few pokemon who can consistently deliver 100% critical hits all the time. Sure, he’s still far from being strong in any sense of the word, but do you think that this at least gave him a niche to excel in? Or is it merely a single step in the right direction, with many more to go?

Explanation for anyone behind on this: critical hits only do x1.5 damage in X and Y, not x2, but the critical hit rate scales more rapidly with bonuses like a Scope Lens or the Super Luck ability, to the point that many combinations will actually give you a 100% critical hit rate. For most Pokémon, using Focus Energy is the way to do this, but Farfetch’d has the distinction of being able to achieve 100% right out of the box, without having to buff himself first, by using his signature item (the Stick) and sticking to moves that already score a lot of critical hits, of which he has four – Slash, Night Slash, Leaf Blade and Air Cutter (the last of which is unfortunately special and therefore doesn’t work so well with the other three). Even his other attacks will still have a 50% critical hit rate.

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