(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[Samtendo09]

You can definitely have both strong theming and roster diversity, but we usually only get one or the other. I generally like it when there's a strong and coherent theme beyond the obvious, even if it compromises the overall difficulty of a Gym or hideout raid or whatever, because it gives NPCs an identity. There's a kind of verisimilitude at play, where even if it doesn't make rational sense for members of an evil team or Gym to choose all their mons from a limited list of options, it feels right somehow. It's also a good game design choice because (in theory) it lets the devs up the power level of a boss battle based on the assumption that the player has a decent idea of what to expect and can plan accordingly.

Of course, you have to get a little creative with your theming to avoid having it get stale, especially for trainers or trainer classes that you encounter throughout the game. For me the worst offenders are the RSE Teams and the BW Gyms, which have such absurdly bland and predictable team rosters that they undermine what I think are otherwise great Pokemon games. On the other end of the spectrum, while I remember enjoying the roster diversity of the Aether Foundation when I played SMUSUM, I would not be able to tell you anything about the Pokemon used by any of them besides Faba and Lusamine.

That is certainly fair, and help the player to prepare for what is the “boss” of the Gym / Evil-Team, aka the Leader’s Ace. As long as it’s not way too repetitive to the point the player can end up unprepared against the leader’s other Pokémon, it will give them an antepiece on what would be coming up.

I certainly won’t excuse what was going on in RSE and BW in terms of minions’ teams. Now you told me about what is with Aether Foundation, though, I do think having a specific theme is definitely important. I can tell it may as well be time for any “evil” team or antagonistic figures to move on with type theming, because in the end, it just feels like another kind of type themed specialist but extended throughout the game.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Evil Teams have mostly been misses when it comes to mon selection.

RSE Grunts have no business running so many Poochyena, but at least you could see the occasional Carvanha and Numel.

Team Flare was straight-up embarrassing.

And honestly, Zubat should be outright banned from any evil teams. It really undermines any attempt of trying to build an identity.

 

[Hugin]

Bosses are supposed to be a challenge. That means the key is difficulty. A coherent theme is nice(Lusamine's all-beauty team of stally BS), but difficulty matters more.

Grunts are a resource sink. If you struggle with them, there's a problem. They can be tough(RBY has a Rocket hideout open with an overleveled Raticate as a warning to the player to back off if you need to grind more), but difficulty is not the goal. So you can use them to tell much more of a story than you'd otherwise get to.

So why do they not bother? Every evil team is "Poison, Dark, common mons, maybe 1 additional type". That's lazy. Where is the evil team getting their mons, how do the grunts treat them, etc? You can use team selection and a couple bits of dialogue to tell this story. Picture if Team Skull had all had a starter mon instead of their Team Rocket knockoffs? Team Flare could use various Payday mons as their basic army instead of all the poison types that don't even make sense for them. Yes, they'll be pushovers, but they already are, and this way it's at least not the same Zubats we always see.

 

[R_N]

Team Skull still told a story by primarily using unevovled Pokemon for so long that their "final boss" on Poni Island is literally a grunt with all their usual unevolved suspects on one team

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Team Skull still told a story by primarily using unevovled Pokemon for so long that their "final boss" on Poni Island is literally a grunt with all their usual unevolved suspects on one team

Team Skull is made of wimps that got folded like an omelet by the Island Challenge.
Now I finally get why.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

Last night, I had a dream where I was fighting a gym leader who did a lot of switching. If I was about to use a Normal move, they'd switch to Drifloon. If I was about to use an Electric move, they'd switch to Gligar or Manectric. They were supposed to be a Dark specialist, but their only Dark-type was Murkrow. I feel like this is relevant to conversations we've had here.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Last night, I had a dream where I was fighting a gym leader who did a lot of switching. If I was about to use a Normal move, they'd switch to Drifloon. If I was about to use an Electric move, they'd switch to Gligar or Manectric. They were supposed to be a Dark specialist, but their only Dark-type was Murkrow. I feel like this is relevant to conversations we've had here.

It seems in-character for a Dark-type gym leader to prompt an exclamation of "you fucking asshole" from the player.

 

[Cobalt Empoleon]

Understandably, most difficulty complaints seem to boil down to 'I want human-level AI', but it's extremely difficult to program a high-level Pokemon trainer AI without:
a) establishing consistent (and therefore exploitable) patterns
b) inserting an element of randomness that makes it nigh impossible for the player to feel like they've genuinely out-manoeuvred their opponent (and which will also create heaps more content for the 'Dumbest AI Moments' thread)
or c) making a competitive assessment of every species of Pokemon and creating an exhaustive list of likely movesets/strategies etc that boss trainers can reference when making any decision, which will completely fall flat against someone being even slightly creative with their team setup

Heck, Sucker Punch on its own creates a million headaches for any dev (official or fan) trying to program a Pokemon game, whether used by the player or by an NPC. More proactive switching would be great, but doing so effectively kinda requires the AI to either risk giving the player multiple free turns of setup or literally cheat.

 

[Celever]

The thing that annoys me the most about Team Flare is that the first Pokémon you encounter a Team Flare Grunt using IS a Fire-Type Pokémon: Houndour. For the entire game I'd expect Team Flare to use Fire-Type Pokémon because that was the theme they set. Obviously, that never happened, as the Houndour line is the only Fire-Type Pokémon any Team Flare Grunt uses.

The thing that perplexes me the most about Team Flare is that it's accurate to say their team's theme was dog Pokémon. No really. Between the Houndour, Poochyena, and Electrike lines, dogs are tied for the most common shared trait between the families Flare uses with being Poison-Type (Zubat, Gulpin, Croagunk) or Dark-Type (two of the aforementioned dogs and Liepard). The only evolutionary line they use that has no previously mentioned trait is Scraggy, Yes, I just listed every evolutionary family Team Flare Grunts and unnamed Admins use. There are 8 of them.

While it may well be coincidence and whatever else, since Houndour and Poochyena are reasonable Dark-Type mook mons, Electrike is such an odd choice. It's the only Electric-Type used, and is mono-electric, and nothing to do with Flare's theming has anything to do with Electrike. And it's not a random one-off, Electrike and Manectric are common on Team Flare's team rosters throughout the game. And since Houndour being Fire-Type may literally be coincidental, since it's not actually a Fire-Type team at all, maybe there's something to the dog train of thought. IDK what it is, but there might be!

 

[KalosianPorygon]

Understandably, most difficulty complaints seem to boil down to 'I want human-level AI', but it's extremely difficult to program a high-level Pokemon trainer AI without:
a) establishing consistent (and therefore exploitable) patterns
b) inserting an element of randomness that makes it nigh impossible for the player to feel like they've genuinely out-manoeuvred their opponent (and can also just lead to some choices that'll definitely end up in the 'Dumbest AI Moments' thread)

I am a big fan of giving AIs a bit or randomness so they won't be 100% predictable.
For example, let's say you have a Flying-type Pokémon and a Ground-type Pokémon, and the opponent can use either a Ground-type move or an Electric-type move.
The "smart" AI tends to prioritize what's super-effective right now, meaning with repeated switches, you can PP stall the opponent without being hurt.
However, with a little randomness, you can lose a Pokémon while trying to switch on an immunity.

 

[BIG ASHLEY]

While it may well be coincidence and whatever else, since Houndour and Poochyena are reasonable Dark-Type mook mons, Electrike is such an odd choice. It's the only Electric-Type used, and is mono-electric, and nothing to do with Flare's theming has anything to do with Electrike. And it's not a random one-off, Electrike and Manectric are common on Team Flare's team rosters throughout the game. And since Houndour being Fire-Type may literally be coincidental, since it's not actually a Fire-Type team at all, maybe there's something to the dog train of thought. IDK what it is, but there might be!

i've always assumed houndour & electrike were there because their final forms both received mega evos & they were pseudo-counterparts (version-exclusive, iirc?). ofc, they don't do anything with that fact...

 

[Nitro Indigo]

The only evolutionary line they use that has no previously mentioned trait is Scraggy

Scraggy is Dark-type.

 

[Cobalt Empoleon]

I am a big fan of giving AIs a bit or randomness so they won't be 100% predictable.
For example, let's say you have a Flying-type Pokémon and a Ground-type Pokémon, and the opponent can use either a Ground-type move or an Electric-type move.
The "smart" AI tends to prioritize what's super-effective right now, meaning with repeated switches, you can PP stall the opponent without being hurt.
However, with a little randomness, you can lose a Pokémon while trying to switch on an immunity.

Me too! I actually think it's by far the best option of the ones I listed. It's just that against a very straightforward player (i.e. 95% of children playing the games) the randomness is a bit of a waste. Arguably this is great, because it modulates the difficulty in a way that makes things easier for less experienced players and harder for veterans, but it's tricky to execute well.

I think it'd work if they created a dynamic randomness variable that's only activated after the player successfully switches into a resistance/immunity/etc, but one of the key problems with the Pokemon battle system (from an in-game perspective) is that setup is so powerful that the momentum gained by a single successful pivot is often decisive anyway. EDIT: Although tbf killing PP stall cheese is a good enough reason on its own to incorporate randomness into the AI.

partially random AI in a game that's genuinely tough would also kill a lot of gimmicky challenge runs lol

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Understandably, most difficulty complaints seem to boil down to 'I want human-level AI', but it's extremely difficult to program a high-level Pokemon trainer AI without:
a) establishing consistent (and therefore exploitable) patterns
b) inserting an element of randomness that makes it nigh impossible for the player to feel like they've genuinely out-manoeuvred their opponent (and which will also create heaps more content for the 'Dumbest AI Moments' thread)
or c) making a competitive assessment of every species of Pokemon and creating an exhaustive list of likely movesets/strategies etc that boss trainers can reference when making any decision, which will completely fall flat against someone being even slightly creative with their team setup

Heck, Sucker Punch on its own creates a million headaches for any dev (official or fan) trying to program a Pokemon game, whether used by the player or by an NPC. More proactive switching would be great, but doing so effectively kinda requires the AI to either risk giving the player multiple free turns of setup or literally cheat.

Counterpoint: Give a good AI trainer pivoting moves like U-Turn and see what happens.

The thing about Pokémon AI is that they literally do not switch out of bad matchups for some reason, but they can and will do so if they got a move that allows them to do it.

I kinda remember Stadium 2 leaders being a little too obnoxious with frequent switches though, so I'm guessing they were trying to avoid that.

 

[Siggu]

The thing about Pokémon AI is that they literally do not switch out of bad matchups for some reason, but they can and will do so if they got a move that allows them to do it.

There are some incredibly specific cases where they do switch out.

In the Battle Tree I found out they switch out if they are locked to a move that deals no damage to their target. Reasonable, but it actually caught me off-guard.

Cynthia in BDSP really likes to switch to a Pokémon that resists the STAB move you used the previous turn if her current mon doesn't (second-turn switch Spiritomb into Gastrodon against a Pokémon that used an Electric-type move, for instance). She likes to do it so much it can be exploited.

 

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

The thing about Pokémon AI is that they literally do not switch out of bad matchups for some reason

In the Battle Tree I found out they switch out if they are locked to a move that deals no damage to their target. Reasonable, but it actually caught me off-guard.

It became more clear to me after being explained to me some months ago but it seems the Pokemon AI tends to prioritize offensive match-ups but tends to not be concerned about defensive match-ups.

Pokemon AI will only switch a Pokemon out if said Pokemon in question has no moves that can do any damage to your own Pokemon, not if the Pokemon is weak to your Pokemon's STAB. For example, say the AI has a Fighting-type that only knows Fighting and Normal moves while you have a Ghost-type out on the field: in this case, assuming the AI has a Pokemon who has a move that can hit the mon, even moreso if another AI member has a move that can hit your mon super effectively, the AI will switch out. However, it only checks for offensive matchups, aka "can this mon hit the Pokemon the player is using". So in this case, it's not switching because their mon is weak to yours, they're switching because the mon they had has no way of doing any damage to said Ghost-type.

This also happens when it comes to deciding which mon to send out next when you KO an AI mon. It will check for the best offensive matchup, aka which mon they have that has the most moves that can do damage to your mon, especially for moves that hit your mon super effectively. Offense is the priority when it comes to AI switching and sending in Pokemon, aka "which mon can do super effective damage to the player's mon". Defensive match-ups on the other hand tend to be very rarely acknowledged by the AI unless 1) you hit the AI mon with a super effective move 2) the mon survives and 3) the AI has a mon who resists the move in question.

There's probably more to it but these seem to be the patterns when it comes to how Pokemon AI works in terms of type matchups.

 

[Sonikku A]

Kind of hate that despite Explorers bringing QoL updates to RT, it regressed in some ways

-Removing Friend Areas. I can understand RT being clunky, but the menuing at Chimecho or the Watering hole was already a good way to remove that. You could've combined both, instrad of just removing it entirely

-Level Bonus Recruitment rates being spread worse. In Mystery Dungeon, your level adds a bonus to recruitment percentage depending on your level range

In RT the recruitment rate was this

Generally well spread for post game where you're expected to beat Rayquaza around Lvl 22-25, despite slow start, it ramps up nicely the rest

Explorers is this

Where a solid 48 levels you're stuck at 12.5%, and the max bonus being only 2 levels (99-100). I get Main game you end around 40s, but come on!

Friend Bow already was nerfed (10 to 8). At least there are technically easier ways to get to level 100, and Golden Mask also boosts rate

Speaking of

-IQ group. Unlike RT where all mons learn the same skills, Explorers randomly made specific classes dependent on specie. They aren't balanced well (Supermobile is better than 90% of skills in the game, limiting it is annoying), but the IQ Skill Fast Friend, which is REQUIRED to get Kecleon, is also limited to certain groups

-No Wishing no, Bidoof's wish in Sky doesn't count. So RIP using those to get hard to recruit mons

-Removing species unique dialogue when talking to teammates in dungeons, or leveling up. This was something I really miss. Again, they could've combined those with the current one

But at least we have eggs and are able to recruit fully evolved mons (that aren't Tentacruel or Porygon 2) in Explorers, and not have to worry about teammate space

 

[Pikachu315111]

All those normal/flying type birds.

Mons like braviary should be fighting/flying instead

• Pure Flying: Pidgey family, Taillow family, Swablu (Altaria of course remains Flying/Dragon), Pidove family, & Pikipek family. Unless there's a reason for the Normal-type, now that Rookidee shown we can have a normal bird as pure Flying there's no reason this change can't be done with the others.

Special Cases:

• Spearow family: Flying/Dark (cause they're mean)
• (Normal) Farfetch'd: Flying/Normal (This is a case where I think part Normal fits. Farfetch'd isn't that good of a flyer, though it uses a plant as a weapon it doesn't have the characteristics of a Grass-type, and combined with its mediocre stats & doesn't evolve makes it pretty plain (And arguably Normal/Flying is worse than Pure Flying). And it goes along with the type change I suggest for Spearow, you give a con artist a Flying/Dark-type (which isn't that bad of a Typing) for a Flying/Normal which really gives no major benefits.
• Doduo family: Flying/Ground (they're fast runners)
• Hoothoot family: Flying/Psychic (it's been 6 gens, I get not making it Psychic in Gen II as there was the Natu family, but let it be part Psychic; you had a gen where you introduced two Ghost/Grass-types, Gen II can have two Flying/Psychic-types)
• Starly family: Flying/Fighting (WELL, maybe just make Staraptor Flying/Fighting and make Starly & Staravia pure Flying. When every fangame makes Staraptor Flying/Fighting, I don't think I need to explain my reasoning (watch now as someone posts in the Unpopular Opinion thread they don't think Staraptor should be Flying/Fighting))
• Chatot: Flying/Normal (Normal Moves have a lot of Sound-Moves assigned to it, so I think it just makes sense to keep Chatot part Normal to get STAB for them)
• Rufflet family: Flying/Fighting (Because AMERICA!)

RSE Grunts have no business running so many Poochyena, but at least you could see the occasional Carvanha and Numel.

Team Flare was straight-up embarrassing.

I don't get what was up with Aqau & Magma. You have a team whose theme is SEA and LAND, that wasn't enough to make a roster of Pokemon to spread among the grunts? Using just the RS Regional Dex (it's going to be uneven as I just gave Aqua all the sea/ocean Water-types and Magma most of the Fire, Ground, and Rock-types; but still that's 15 families for Aqua and 10 for Magma!):

• Aqua: Carvahna family; Wingull family, Goldeen family, Magikarp family, Tentacool family, Wailmer family, Barboach family, Corphish family, Staryu family, Clamperl family, Relicanth, Corsola, Chinchou family, Luvdisc, Horsea family,
• Magma: Numel family; Geodude family, Aron family, Slugma family, Sandshrew family, Trapinch family, Baltoy family, Vulpix family, Phanpy family, Rhyhorn family

As for Team Flare, what they should have done was given Types to the Team Flare Scientists and Lysandre and then had grunts "assigned" to them which is shown by using the same Type of Pokemon as them (for the girls I'm going by their hair colors, for Lysandre went with the Types of Pyroar & Legendaries, and Xerosic because of his Malamar and figure he'd be an Electric guy; if you want to have a theme with any meaning sadly XY would need to give the girls actually character).

• Xerosic: Psychic/Electric
• Aliana: Ground/Rock
• Bryony: Grass/Bug
• Celosia: Poison/Ghost
• Mable: Water/Ice
• Lysandre: Fire/Dark/Fairy

On the other end of the spectrum, while I remember enjoying the roster diversity of the Aether Foundation when I played SMUSUM, I would not be able to tell you anything about the Pokemon used by any of them besides Faba and Lusamine.

Yeah, Type diversity is really all they had going for them (also most of their Pokemon are just mid stage/fully evolve 2-stage; only exception is one having a Stoutland in B2W2). Neat when you're battling them as it makes them feel more like a threat compared to Team Skull, but nothing to really remember. Not sure what I would do to make them memorable, maybe have each grunt use 3 Pokemon and all their Pokemon share a theme?

New Complaint: So, they're having the final Sword & Shield online competition. It's essentially a free for all, you can use any number of Legends & Mythicals, can have multiple of the same Species, and multiple of the same Item. It's appropriately called:

Oh yeah! It's the Ultimate battle of ultimate destiny! And the prize for such a tremendous occasion, surely a competition that'll leave SwSh with a big bang:

50 BP.

... You know, previously they had given away the Shiny Galarian Birds as a price for a random online tournament, maybe they could have done that. Wasn't there a space dragon that was Shiny Locked? Oh, yeah, Eternatus, what a prize that would have been, a Shiny Eternatus to mark the end of SwSh...

TOO BAD IT WAS A POORLY THOUGHT OUT CODE DISTRIBUTION FOR GAMESTOP WHERE IF YOU DIDN'T GET IT FIRST THING THE STORE OPENS THE SCALPERS CAME IN AND TOOK ALL OF THEM CAUSE THE STORE EMPLOYEES AREN'T PAID ENOUGH TO CARE!

"Hey, this was also the last SwSh giveaway for game stores like GameStop, they probably thought it would be nicer to give them the special Pokemon..."

The special Mythical Distribution has been announced for the US, Canada and Australia
In the US and Canada, Genesect and Volcanion will be available from October 16th through 29th at Gamestop, while Marshadow will be available from October 30th through November 12th at Target in the US or Gamestop in Canada
In Australia & New Zealand, they will be given at JB Hi-Fi from October 16th through November 18th

So... not only did GameStop not even NEED to give away Shiny Eternatus (well, "GIVE AWAY" in massive quotes), now they're "GIVING AWAY" Genesect and Volcanion WITH THE SAME CODE METHOD THAT MADE GETTING SHINY ETERNATUS IMPOSSIBLE! Oh, and also Target for some reason wants to get in on the being scalped action as if a game store's employees couldn't care if all the cards are taken by a few con men what makes you think Target's employees will?

 

[Nitro Indigo]

Removing species unique dialogue when talking to teammates in dungeons, or leveling up. This was something I really miss. Again, they could've combined those with the current one

Eh, I didn't like how teammates only had a limited amount of dialogue. Also, it seems that there's a pool of dialogue options for certain groups of species in Explorers; I think Magnemite always speaks in CAPITALS, for example.

 

[Cobalt Empoleon]

Counterpoint: Give a good AI trainer pivoting moves like U-Turn and see what happens.

The thing about Pokémon AI is that they literally do not switch out of bad matchups for some reason, but they can and will do so if they got a move that allows them to do it.

I kinda remember Stadium 2 leaders being a little too obnoxious with frequent switches though, so I'm guessing they were trying to avoid that.

I don't actually think pivoting moves solve that particular problem. U-Turn and Volt Switch are great for preserving momentum when you've already got a good matchup and you're predicting a switch, but they don't really work as a pure replacement for switching unless they're being used by a mon that's extremely fast. Volt Switch is also extremely exploitable for obvious reasons. Teleport is a great way to use a defensive Pokemon's bulk to get a frail offensive threat in safely, but if you're just trying to escape a bad matchup it's categorically worse than hard-switching.

The only AI trainer I can think of who has varied types and a pivoting move is Barry, whose Staraptor uses U-Turn seemingly at random to virtually no effect. HGSS Bugsy, Elesa, and ORAS Wattson use pivoting moves as their signature TMs, but when they're fought the 70 BP is much more significant than the switching effect, which doesn't offer much utility when their Pokemon have so much overlap in typing and coverage.

Idk I think I'd rather have them program in some reasonable assumptions about the player Pokemon's movesets and make NPCs more inclined to switch out of, say, a potential SE STAB move, rather than rely on selecting and executing U-Turn without getting outsped and KO'd.

There are some incredibly specific cases where they do switch out.

In the Battle Tree I found out they switch out if they are locked to a move that deals no damage to their target. Reasonable, but it actually caught me off-guard.

Cynthia in BDSP really likes to switch to a Pokémon that resists the STAB move you used the previous turn if her current mon doesn't (second-turn switch Spiritomb into Gastrodon against a Pokémon that used an Electric-type move, for instance). She likes to do it so much it can be exploited.

They definitely ramped up these conditions in later gens but I believe both of them have existed since at least Gen 3 in some form. At the very least I have traumatic memories of Platinum Cynthia predicting my Luxray's Thunderbolt after I'd already used it and switching Spiritomb out for Garchomp.

Pokemon AI will only switch a Pokemon out if said Pokemon in question has no moves that can do any damage to your own Pokemon, not if the Pokemon is weak to your Pokemon's STAB. For example, say the AI has a Fighting-type that only knows Fighting and Normal moves while you have a Ghost-type out on the field: in this case, assuming the AI has a Pokemon who has a move that can hit the mon, even moreso if another AI member has a move that can hit your mon super effectively

It's interesting to note that in that specific example the AI will switch even if their Pokemon knows Foresight, which adds even more layers to how useless it is as a move for in-game trainers haha. Also, while it makes sense on paper, in practice this switch condition usually just exposes the incoming Pokemon to a chunk of damage that makes it incapable of effectively checking your Ghost mon (or whatever).

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Counterpoint: Give a good AI trainer pivoting moves like U-Turn and see what happens.

The thing about Pokémon AI is that they literally do not switch out of bad matchups for some reason, but they can and will do so if they got a move that allows them to do it.

I kinda remember Stadium 2 leaders being a little too obnoxious with frequent switches though, so I'm guessing they were trying to avoid that.

In the Gen III Battle Frontier (and presumably later iterations) NPCs will, very occasionally, switch their Pokemon out if you have previously used a move one of their other Pokemon resists.

An example would be if they were using Dragonite and Aggron with Dragonite as the active participant and I just used Ice Beam, which Dragonite survived - sometimes, they will anticipate you using Ice Beam again and switch in Aggron to take the hit. It's still not generally very effective but shows an appreciable degree of smartness.

The tradeoff is that Frontier opponents in Gen III don't switch if they're locked into a move that does no damage, whereas opponents in Gen V onwards (not sure about Gen IV) usually will. It sometimes takes them a couple of turns to "realise" that they're doing no damage, though.

 

[Sonikku A]

Eh, I didn't like how teammates only had a limited amount of dialogue. Also, it seems that there's a pool of dialogue options for certain groups of species in Explorers; I think Magnemite always speaks in CAPITALS, for example.

When I said combined, I mean having both species specific dialogue of RT, and the adventure/dungeon based dialogue Explorers on had
So say, talking to them is 35% RT dialogue, 65 Explorers

Magnemite consistently being caps is nice though. I think Palkia/Dialga are similar

 

[MoonlightRose]

I can't figure out where this is actually supposed to be used. Even in-game, TBolt is a much more reliable option for the big fights, which are the ones that matter.

Don't most Pokémon that learn Electro Ball, at least by level up, learn it as their sort of middle move the way fire types have flame wheel before they have flamethrower/flare blitz?

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Ursaluna is extremely minmaxed.

When Teddiursa evolves into Ursaring, all its stats are boosted by a hefty amount, about what you'd expect from an evolution. But when Ursaring evolves, its Special Attack drops to below that of Teddiursa's. And this is a Pokemon whose BST is at the highest echelons of non-legendary Pokemon. If Ursaluna had kept Ursaring's Special Attack, it would have a BST of 580, as high as most minor legendaries.

To my knowledge, Ursaluna is the only Pokemon that does this. The only thing I can think of that's comparable is Mega Beedrill, and in that case they were working with a strict +100 boost and Beedrill's stats are so pitifully low that they needed all the points they could spare.

 

[Magcargo]

Ursaluna is extremely minmaxed.

When Teddiursa evolves into Ursaring, all its stats are boosted by a hefty amount, about what you'd expect from an evolution. But when Ursaring evolves, its Special Attack drops to below that of Teddiursa's. And this is a Pokemon whose BST is at the highest echelons of non-legendary Pokemon. If Ursaluna had kept Ursaring's Special Attack, it would have a BST of 580, as high as most minor legendaries.

To my knowledge, Ursaluna is the only Pokemon that does this. The only thing I can think of that's comparable is Mega Beedrill, and in that case they were working with a strict +100 boost and Beedrill's stats are so pitifully low that they needed all the points they could spare.

What I find weird is that its speed also drops by 5 points for... no apparent reason. Normally if an evolution has a stat lowered, it is lowered by 10+ points. Furthermore, its usually only 1 stat that gets lowered, not multiple stats (unless its like Defense + Special Defense).

I'm all for minmaxing stats in evolutions to make them as strong as possible, so I don't really mind the decrease to Special Attack. I do like a lot of the "regular" Pokemon with high BST's like Arcanine, Archeops, and Volcarona, and Ursaluna is a nice addition to this family. However, I do admit that its stat spread might be a bit too powerful. Ursaring's evo is also a bit of an anomaly compared to other high BST evoltuions like Porygon2 -> Porygon-z or Scyther -> Scizor since Ursaring doesn't have any tangible advantages compared to Ursaluna despite having higher stats in two mostly irrelevant areas. I think in this case, Gamefreak should have made a regional variant of Ursaring with the stat spread elements that Ursaluna presents, albiet with a slightly more toned down spread.