Anonymous asks:

how broken would a grass/dragon mega serperior w contrary and draco meteor be?

Hmm. Well, Serperior is pretty good now with just Contrary, Leaf Storm, and basically no other special movepool to speak of, and Grass has terrible type coverage. The only other point of comparison is Malamar’s Superpower, which is a lot weaker for several reasons. I don’t know if it’d quite be broken broken because un-STABed Draco Meteor isn’t going to be that much better than Leaf Storm a lot of the time, but it’d definitely be top tier.

EDIT: Derp, misread the question. Eh, a Grass/Dragon mega evolution would be strong, but I don’t think *that* much more ridiculous than a bunch of other mega evolutions, and you get eaten alive by Ice Shard. Also, would Serperior actually be able to learn Draco Meteor anyway? Only Dragon-types can use the move tutor, and Ampharos can’t, despite having a Dragon-type mega evolution.

Anonymous asks:

It would be nice if Swift Swim activated when fighting on watery terrain.

That would certainly make sense.

Anonymous asks:

what are your views on ledian and how can you make him (i really see ledian as a him) good or actually viable? because i, for one, was disappointed back when i was playing the gen 2 games for the first time because i thought ledian’s whole “ladybug that punches things with its four boxing glove arms” design was awesome.

Better stats.

I mean, that’s a dull cop-out answer, but… like… that has to be step one. The boxing/punching thing seems to be a fairly important element of Ledian’s design, but they gave him an attack stat that’s outclassed by baby seals, some caterpillars, seaweed, and f&#%ing Bidoof. Continue reading “Anonymous asks:” →

Rockcutter64 asks:

Since they seemed to have abandoned mega evolution for the moment, any idea what you’d do with megas of the 2nd gen starters?

Not really… I’ve never been wild about any of the generation II starter Pokémon (not even Meganium, who enjoys the benefit of my blanket fondness for all Grass Pokémon), and honestly I don’t really like designing mega evolutions very much. Typhlosion in generation VII actually got an interesting little almost-signature-move (she shares it with Moltres, and it can be bred into Growlithe, but hey, who’s counting?) – Burn Up, which gives you one really powerful Fire attack and then strips you of your Fire type, which in Typhlosion’s case makes her typeless. I’d sort of like to give Meganium and Feraligatr something new to match, and then maybe these putative mega forms could have new abilities that mesh with the signature moves somehow. For Typhlosion, you could have her automatically regain her Fire type at the end of the turn after losing it (for any reason – Burn Up, but also Soak, or anything else added to the game in the future that can cause a Pokémon to lose its original type) and increase her special attack whenever that happens. Meganium ought to have something better than Sweet Scent that emphasises her ability to quell violence and conflict or restore life… maybe a kind of mass Wish, a delayed full restore that affects everything in play, with an ability that causes all healing from Meganium’s moves to recur one turn later, with reduced effect. And Feraligatr can just… I don’t know, be able to bite everything in half, or whatever.

Anonymous asks:

Why is it that if I challenge a Gym Leader like Misty, who carries 2 Pokemon, that I’m allowed to use up to six against her? Surely the people that makes the rules don’t honestly believe she or any other Gym Leaders have strong enough Pokemon and strategies to contest a potential 2 vs 6, right?

I know people hate it when I do this, but my instinct here is to point to the anime and say “well, they do restrict the numbers available to the challenger; that fact just gets elided to produce a smoother gameplay experience.” Besides, a single Pokémon can and will wreck an entire team’s $#!t if you don’t know what you’re doing (looking at you, Whitney’s Miltank and Winona’s Altaria), and the Gym Leaders are, for the most part, supposed to be testing a trainer’s basic/intermediate/advanced proficiency, not trying to block them or halt their progress.

Anonymous asks:

What do you think of giving Magcargo Desolate Land as a Hidden Ability? I KNOW it’s Primal Groudon’s but come on, that “18,000 degrees Fahrenheit” line should be implemented somehow! Plus, Drought was exclusively Groudon’s until it wasn’t, so I see no reason why Desolate Land should remain exclusive to Primal Groudon. It’d get rid of Magcargo’s double weakness to Water and jack up its Fire attacks. Add Trick Room support and we might make Magcargo usable then.

I don’t think I’m wild about it. For one, I would prefer to keep Desolate Land just for Groudon. It’s true that Drought and Drizzle were exclusive to Groudon and Kyogre until they weren’t, but I also think it matters that, even in generation III, Tyranitar had Sand Stream, so auto-weather as a concept was never exclusive to them. That, and I’m inclined to take the “18,000º F” line as the Pokédex just plain making stuff up. Continue reading “Anonymous asks:” →

Anonymous asks:

Not sure if you’ve done this before but it strikes me that there are a number of gen 2 pokemon that are severly lacking and in need of some love. Which design out of Sunflora, Dunsparce and Delibird do you think is most worthy of being saved and how would you make the one of your choice relevant again?

Well, I actually did ramble about Sunflora and Delibird long, long ago when I did a Top Ten Worst Pokémon Ever list, the point of which was mostly to bitch about Pokémon who got the short end of the stick with respect to… well, everything, but partly also to try and fix them. I actually love both Delibird and Dunsparce; my suggestion for Delibird was to rewrite Present into a sort of souped-up Fling, that would have made him into a bombardier Pokémon whose specialty was fighting with dangerous items like Iron Balls and Toxic Orbs (as well as just giving him a pile of extra attacks and better stats). Dunsparce… well, Dunsparce seems like an obvious candidate to evolve into some huge derpy dragon-thing with too many wings and cool magical powers. Dunsparce makes sense already and has a cool thing going with Serene Grace; better stats and access to Dragon attacks (especially some kind of signature move that works with Serene Grace – Dragon-type Ancient Power variant, anyone?) might just push him over into actually being useful.

Anonymous asks:

I think they should de-nerf Hyper Beam (and all its variations like Giga Impact and the starter types’ “ultimate moves”) back to Gen I mechanics where it doesn’t need to recharge if it knocks out an opposing Pokémon. What do you think?

Not sure. I don’t think I’d be opposed to that for Hyper Beam and maybe Giga Impact specifically – Hyper Beam gets used on just about everything in generation I, to the extent that you could maybe argue it’s oppressive, but that’s partly because so many Pokémon just don’t have anything better to do in generation I (there are no really good Fighting, Rock or Ghost attacks, no Bug or Poison ones that are even decent, and basically no Dragon attacks at all), which is no longer the case. I don’t think allowing everyone to have a good Normal-type special attack is going to break all that much; Normal attacks are terrible anyway. Even Rock Wrecker is probably fine; Rhyperior’s probably too slow to abuse it. However, I am extremely antsy about giving, say, Blast Burn with these mechanics to Infernape and Blaziken, or Hydro Cannon to Greninja (for that matter, Roar of Time might be worth a raised eyebrow, but hey, if we care about balancing Dialga, the ship has sailed on that one). That might be asking for trouble.

Anonymous asks:

I think that Game Freak should have made an Ability that’s Chlorophyll but with a different name (a la Insomnia/Vital Spirit), and made THAT Blaziken’s Hidden Ability instead of Speed Boost. Something like ‘Blazing Legs’. This would address Blaziken’s big weakness (Speed) and encourage players to use it in sunlight, which strengthens its Fire attacks, thus powering it up in competitive without making it crazy broken like Speed Boost does. What do you think?

I kinda want it to be something more unique… I don’t know that it particularly fits Blaziken to be especially dependent on sun. Maybe something Technician-esque that gives priority to low-power moves, so she gets, like, priority Aerial Ace and priority Double Kick? Or something Motor Drive-esque that absorbs Fire attacks to gain speed (it worked for Electivire in his day, after all)?