One lunatic's love-hate relationship with the Pokémon franchise, and his addled musings on its rights, wrongs, ins and outs. Come one, come all, and indulge my delusions of grandeur as I inflict my opinions on anyone within shouting distance.
You should give Z-Splash a try. Use Normalium-Z on the move Splash and see what happens. 😉
Oh my god I hadn’t even thought of that
I’m doing it right now
…
Huh. I’m… not sure what I was expecting, but… hmm. I guess I figured either it would turn into a devastating super-move, or it would still just be completely useless. +3 attack isn’t even bad, though – just not really worth using your Z-power. I feel like this is a missed opportunity for some really kooky easter egg.
why do bugs resist fighting? i mean, they’re fragile af and powerful fists should crush them. i just noticed this when my butterfree singlehandedly effed the saffron dojo up, quadresist and all.
Not sure, but I think it’s probably something similar to the logic of Bug being strong against Dark – in Japanese popular culture, insect-themed heroes are very common, so it makes perfect sense for Bug-types to be strong against the “evil” type. In the same way, Fighting and Bug are both “heroic” types, but in very different ways and with different fighting styles, so they’re not very good at attacking each other. But that’s mostly a guess.
How do you envisage the ability Speed Boost working? Most other boosting moves and abilities have a description of how they work; Agility’s move description states that the user relaxes to lighten itself; Calm Mind is a meditation; Autotomize has the user shed body parts to reduce its weight. But Speed Boost just… happens, without the user doing anything? Any theories?
I suppose it just takes them a while to get “warmed up,” as it were. It could also vary between species – Blaziken perhaps entering a sort of martial trance that rapidly improves her reflexes, Sharpedo going into a battle frenzy, Scolipede gathering momentum as he rolls around the battlefield (not unlike the logic behind Rollout).
Game Freak often do event giveaways of Pokemon with special moves. What if they did the same thing, but with abilities? I.E. a Pikachu with an ability it couldn’t normally get (say Adaptability, for example) that it couldn’t pass on by breeding? I think this would make the games even more interesting, and be another way of giving older Pokemon access to newer abilities.
Eh… to be honest I’ve never really been fond of event-exclusive Pokémon; it annoys me when companies put things in their games that you can’t get by playing the game. I don’t quite see what those things add.
If you were tasked to think of one idea to make Eevee completely overpowered and broken without evolving, what would you come up with?
…well, without thinking too hard about why we’re doing this, I’d probably give her an ability that sort of combines Conversion 2 with Protean – Eevee, the ultimate adapter, automatically shifts her type to gain resistance or (if possible) immunity to all incoming attacks. That’s immunity to 8/18 types and resistance to everything else. Slap an Eviolite on that and it’ll survive damn near anything, up to and including Primal Kyogre’s Origin Pulse. Of course, I don’t exactly know what you’d do with Eevee at that point other than maybe Baton Pass some Curses, but you said “one idea” so that’ll have to do.
Would Regigigas be more usable if instead of Slow Start, it began with very low Attack and Speed, and very high Defense and Special Defense- but every turn, the offensive stats go up +1 and defensive go down -1?
I feel like the answer is probably “no,” because I think with a set-up like that you run into the Darmanitan problem, where you have one Pokémon with two radically different strategies and it’s impossible to commit your moveset and EV spread entirely to one or the other. Also, part of the problem with Slow Start is that the clock resets when you switch out, and in a game between two human players it’s actually not all that easy to guarantee that Regigigas will be able to stay in play without being killed for long enough to turn off his ability – this way of doing Slow Start has the same difficulty. You can’t really play defensive because you get weaker the longer you stay in, and you can’t really play offensive because it takes you so damn long to set up.
A common problem of turn-delayed moves (things like Fly, Bounce, Dive, Dig) is that they’re too predictable. I wonder, would that remain so if these moves had variants whith different typing? Things like Secret Blade (steel dig), Vine Trap (grass dig), Burning Dive (fire fly) meteor drop (dragon fly), etc, whith identical preparatory turn but different execution. Also, do you think such additions would be justifiable fluff-wise? And what would it say of a pokemon to be specialized in such moves?
So, if I’m understanding this right, the idea would be that the move looks exactly the same on the first turn? Fly and, say, Meteor Dive or whatever we call it both give the message “the Pokémon flew up high”? I think that does help a lot, at least for Pokémon that can learn multiple versions of the same move. You can’t see “the Pokémon dug underground” and just say “HAHA I’ll switch in a Flying Pokémon and their attack will do nothing!” because it might turn out that your opponent is actually using, like, Stalagmite Crush or something. I think you’d probably find that there are a lot of Pokémon for whom it wouldn’t be possible to justify including two versions of the same move (like, clearly you can’t give a Fire-type Fly variant to Delibird) but in most cases it’s probably no crazier than a typical Pokémon movepool (I mean, Pidgeot already gets Heat Wave). You don’t even need to teach a Pokémon more than one of these moves to get the benefit, because it’s the possibility that you might have that deters the opponent from trying to exploit the delayed attack. Adds a whole new dimension of bluffing and mind games. Of course, you still get royally screwed over by Protect, but I think that’s sort of fine; this addresses what is probably the most important reason that Fly, Dig et al. don’t get used.
Why doesn’t rampardos have Rock Head or Reckless?
Billy I think this is another one for the pile of questions to annoy Game Freak with when you make your pilgrimage to their offices in Tokyo.
I just noticed Wide Guard is a rock type move. What is the logic behind that? I always assumed it was Fighting like Quick Guard.
I suppose because rocks are wide and block things.
The name ‘Tough Claws’ is such a waste, in my opinion. It could and should have been used for an Ability that increases the damage output of scratching or clawing moves, like Scratch, Cut, Metal Claw, Shadow Claw, etc. (like Iron Fist or Strong Jaw) rather than use it for an Ability that raises any generic contact move. What do you think?
Well, I only think the name would be a “waste” if it meant that they couldn’t then make another ability like that at a later point, if they so choose. They could just call it something different – “sharp blades,” maybe? Potential ability names are a pretty broad possibility space. “Tough Claws” is not the greatest naming choice, I’ll give you that; I think I would have called it something that sounded less specific, like “Brute Strength,” but I’m not particularly bothered by it.
Pokémaniacal 