(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

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.

And while it's undoubtedly powerful, I can't help but say "I think I've seen worse..."

Power creep sucks.

 

[Bakugames]

I think every pokémon should be like ursaluna
reason: it'd be funny

 

[MegaFlareon]

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.

Ursaring feels like it's made by people from Pet Mods who constantly violate the rules on buffing Pokémon, and redditors during Theorymon Thursday. "Let's decrease it's special attack, it won't use it anyway!"

Now for minor and petty annoyance, Naganandel's speed stat of 121 kind of irks me lol. I love that they have made great effort in making all Ultra Beasts', as well as Cosmog and its evolutions', stats all prime numbers, and then they did not with Naganandel's Speed lol. Yes, it's a prime power, but it's still not a prime number. I understand that they want it to end up with a round BST, but still.

 

[Bakugames]

I really do wonder if the hisuian pkmn will have stats adjusted for transfer. In a way, some feel like they were designed for the PLA experience, not a main game one

 

[Cobalt Empoleon]

I feel like Ursaluna's minmaxing is the only thing that makes it potentially usable in higher tiers of competitive. While its two immunities are neat, its weaknesses are all pretty rough to deal with, to the point where it gets OHKOed by a bunch of common OU physical attacks despite its great physical bulk (and even with full HP investment). A slow, tanky mon that doesn't have a great defensive typing kinda needs a truly insane stat distribution to make any headway with modern power levels.

 

[AztecCroc]

Ursaring feels like it's made by people from Pet Mods who constantly violate the rules on buffing Pokémon, and redditors during Theorymon Thursday. "Let's decrease it's special attack, it won't use it anyway!"

Now for minor and petty annoyance, Naganandel's speed stat of 121 kind of irks me lol. I love that they have made great effort in making all Ultra Beasts', as well as Cosmog and its evolutions', stats all prime numbers, and then they did not with Naganandel's Speed lol. Yes, it's a prime power, but it's still not a prime number. I understand that they want it to end up with a round BST, but still.

Fun Fact: Naganadel's Speed not being a prime number was likely done for balance.

Naganadel has 30 less BST than the other Ultra Beasts and 121 + 30 = 151 which is a prime number.

 

[Celever]

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.

I disagree to an extent, I think a small attempt at giving Ursaluna and Ursaring distinguishing roles a la the Porygon or Scyther families was done with one change they made to Ursaluna: replacing Quick Feet (great abil) with Bulletproof (not good abil, though decent for Ursaluna since it blocks all used special Fighting-Type moves). I think GF thought everyone used Ursaring as a SD Quick Feet sweeper, which isn't quite correct -- Ursaring's viability where it found it was with being able to either be a wallbreaker with Guts or a sweeper with Quick Feet and you'd only know which one it was when the status Orb activated. As a result, though, I think they made Ursaluna to be a Gen III version of Ursaring, where it was just a powerful, bulky Guts wallbreaker, and so gave it extra bulk and power to fit power creep, while letting Ursaring do its Quick Feet thing. I wish they'd boosted Ursaring's speed while they were at it to better fulfil that role, though.

Personally I'm skeptical Ursaluna will even end up being great in OU, though I think it will be in OU for sure. Always getting hit first with exploitable weaknesses isn't good. It's not quite bulky enough to be a powerful bulky ResTalk glue, so it's stuck to a wallbreaker role, but that runs risk as both of its STABs have common immunities (Ghost-Type and Levitate / Flying-Type), and it will want to run Choice Band to be a wallbreaker. It'll end up being pretty inconsistent.

 

[KalosianPorygon]

Fun Fact: Naganadel's Speed not being a prime number was likely done for balance.

Naganadel has 30 less BST than the other Ultra Beasts and 121 + 30 = 151 which is a prime number.

97, 101, 103, 107, 109, and 113 are also prime numbers.

 

[R_N]

I really do wonder if the hisuian pkmn will have stats adjusted for transfer. In a way, some feel like they were designed for the PLA experience, not a main game one

Nothing about the new forms & evolutions really feels "designed" around PLA experience, though. Some get bulkier, some get stronger, some both, some get a mostly similar "overall" boost, some stay the same, some make such miniscule tweaks they may as well be the same.
None of these philosophies feel all that different from especially the past few generations.

E: Possible exception to the Origin forms, just because the way the math works out does kind of seem like they're meant ot "make up" for not having their orbs as held items (rip to giratina i guess?). But even then they could just run with that.

 

[Hugin]

Fun Fact: Naganadel's Speed not being a prime number was likely done for balance.

Naganadel has 30 less BST than the other Ultra Beasts and 121 + 30 = 151 which is a prime number.

73/73/73/127/73/121, BST 540
79/79/79/127/79/127, BST 570
73/67/73/127/73/127, BST 540

Now, maybe outspeeding Darkrai would break the game, I don't Ubers, but it does seem like they could have made it work.

 

[Samtendo09]

I think every pokémon should be like ursaluna
reason: it'd be funny

Minmaxing by itself isn’t dubious, so while I don’t agree entirely with your idea, I can tell that it can make for funny shenanigans.

Minmaxed stats was already a thing as far as in Gen 1, with the Shellder line, Jigglypuff + Wigglytuff, Diglett line, Gastly line, Abra line, Onix, Hitmonchan + Hitmonlee, Jynx, Eeveelutions, Chansey, Snorlax, and Mewtwo (Back then since Special is one stat instead of Special Attack and Special Defense, thus Mewtwo have effectively 154 Sp.A and 154 Sp.D)

That continued in Generation 2 with Shuckle, Sudowoodo, Wobbuffet, Sneasel (and Weavile from Gen 4), Donphan, Corsola, Hitmontop and Scizor which, while not as numerous, it will be a lie to say that minmaxing is non-existent.

For Gen 3, that will be Slaking, Aron line, Carvanha line, Wailmer line, Trapinch (and just Trapinch among it’s line), Absol, Ninjask, the three Regis, and especially all of Deoxys’ forms.

Same happening with Gen 4 and 5, but blatant minmaxing is still a rarity, but worringly common with Legendary and Mythical Pokémon, and the only Ultra Beast that didn’t minmaxed much is Celesteela, a titanic Ultra Beast who just happened to have balanced stats and not-that-low Speed.

Power creep mostly applies to the latter groups in particular, though a few standouts, with Dragapult and Toxapex for examples regarding Smogon tiers, but take note that those minmaxed Pokémon worked not just because of their minmaxed stats, but also because of their tools (high Speed, Clear Body and coverage for Dragapult, Knock Off and Regenerator for Toxapex), and there are some Pokémon that suffered BECAUSE of their minmaxing in addition of the tools not appropriate for such minmaxed stats, Stonjourner coming to mind.

It’s under agreement where true power creep happens is in Gen 8, and even then, it’s not because of “it just happens”, it’s a result of Game Freak’s horrible job at balancing, and as much as it’s impossible to make every Pokémon viable, there’s no excuse to just make a few new Pokémon too good for their own good.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

It’s under agreement where true power creep happens is in Gen 8

If we're going to be honest, a huge thing about Gen 4 was a lot of mons suddenly getting reliable STAB. Regardless of said newfound STAB being a high BP move or a physical/special option, a case can be made for Gen 4 introducing power creep to the franchise.

Obviously, it was a good thing at that point because frankly, having to run Hidden Power for STAB sucks.

If we're talking about when the power creep turned into a problem, I'd point to either Gen 5 introducing a bunch of mons with inflated stats for no reason, some of them being straight up better than older-gen counterparts like Conkeldurr. Not to mention the weather abilities being available to regular mons got so out of hand that Game Freak officially nerfed them.

By Gen 6, it was impossible to ignore it though. Between the Fairy-type and Megas bringing up flat 100BST increases, it was clear that the power level had spiked as if Pokémon had gone to planet Namek. It just got way too crazy.

To put it in perspective, just imagine Medicham with its Mega stats in RSE. You don't need to change anything about its movepool, just give it those stats. It would just snap the game like a twig.

Don't even get me started on Gen 7.

I honestly don't know what Gen 8 brought to the table power-creep-wise, but it'd be pretty hard for it to surprise me at this point.

 

[Magcargo]

I disagree to an extent, I think a small attempt at giving Ursaluna and Ursaring distinguishing roles a la the Porygon or Scyther families was done with one change they made to Ursaluna: replacing Quick Feet (great abil) with Bulletproof (not good abil, though decent for Ursaluna since it blocks all used special Fighting-Type moves). I think GF thought everyone used Ursaring as a SD Quick Feet sweeper, which isn't quite correct -- Ursaring's viability where it found it was with being able to either be a wallbreaker with Guts or a sweeper with Quick Feet and you'd only know which one it was when the status Orb activated. As a result, though, I think they made Ursaluna to be a Gen III version of Ursaring, where it was just a powerful, bulky Guts wallbreaker, and so gave it extra bulk and power to fit power creep, while letting Ursaring do its Quick Feet thing. I wish they'd boosted Ursaring's speed while they were at it to better fulfil that role, though.

Personally I'm skeptical Ursaluna will even end up being great in OU, though I think it will be in OU for sure. Always getting hit first with exploitable weaknesses isn't good. It's not quite bulky enough to be a powerful bulky ResTalk glue, so it's stuck to a wallbreaker role, but that runs risk as both of its STABs have common immunities (Ghost-Type and Levitate / Flying-Type), and it will want to run Choice Band to be a wallbreaker. It'll end up being pretty inconsistent.

Yeah, I use to run Quick Feet Ursaring back in gen 5 NU. Its a good ability and could be seen as a distinguishing factor for Ursaring, but imo it has become quite lackluster in the recent times due to speed creep and forcing Ursaring to run a Toxic Orb, since Quick Feet does not remove the attack drop from burn. I do agree that a speed boost for Ursaring would have been nice too since it would also let it compete w/ other Status wallbreakers like Zangoose better and distinguish it a bit from Ursaluna w/ Quick Feet but alas.

I think Ursaluna will get by just fine running a Guts set in OU seeing that a Guts boosted STAB Facade is just a strong delete button against most of the metagame. You 3HKO Physically defensive Skarmoy w/ STAB Facade which is actually kind of insane. While I don't think it will be viable, a Restalk set seems like it'd be fun since it'd have recovery and get benefits from Guts simultaneously. Its typing is a mixed bag, but being immune to Ghost while having some tangible defensive utility in other areas is quite a nice trait, seeing as how Ghost-types are ravaging the tier currently.

 

[Divine Retribution]

A Normal type that can fit onto offensive teams is actually pretty huge when it comes to dealing with Ghost spam. Obviously Ursaluna's premier role will probably be as a Guts wallbreaker, but I could legitimately see Assault Vest having some use on bulky offense teams as a blanket check to things like Dragapult, Blacephalon, Gengar, etc. (whichever of those Pokemon end up being in S/V, anyways). Even without AV, having the ability to pivot into Specs-locked Shadow Balls and fire off punishing attacks would be pretty huge.

 

[Sonikku A]

If we're going to be honest, a huge thing about Gen 4 was a lot of mons suddenly getting reliable STAB. Regardless of said newfound STAB being a high BP move or a physical/special option, a case can be made for Gen 4 introducing power creep to the franchise.

Obviously, it was a good thing at that point because frankly, having to run Hidden Power for STAB sucks.

If we're talking about when the power creep turned into a problem, I'd point to either Gen 5 introducing a bunch of mons with inflated stats for no reason, some of them being straight up better than older-gen counterparts like Conkeldurr. Not to mention the weather abilities being available to regular mons got so out of hand that Game Freak officially nerfed them.

By Gen 6, it was impossible to ignore it though. Between the Fairy-type and Megas bringing up flat 100BST increases, it was clear that the power level had spiked as if Pokémon had gone to planet Namek. It just got way too crazy.

To put it in perspective, just imagine Medicham with its Mega stats in RSE. You don't need to change anything about its movepool, just give it those stats. It would just snap the game like a twig.

Don't even get me started on Gen 7.

I honestly don't know what Gen 8 brought to the table power-creep-wise, but it'd be pretty hard for it to surprise me at this point.

Gen 8s powercreep is kind of negated given the move reduction and dexit. Yes, Zacian and Eternatus are broken as hell, but they're Ubers
Urshifo, G Darm, and Dracovish were broken, but the latter 2 were banned

The bird Trio Galar forms, Corvinknight, and SirFetch'd/Cursola are better than their counterparts, but that's really it

Gen 8 has a lot of cruddy pokemon, much like Gen 7. But for the ones that do well, they REALLY do well

Either that, or the new mechanics of the Gen are abused by older mons (Ditto abusing Dmax)

 

[Hugin]

A Normal type that can fit onto offensive teams is actually pretty huge when it comes to dealing with Ghost spam. Obviously Ursaluna's premier role will probably be as a Guts wallbreaker, but I could legitimately see Assault Vest having some use on bulky offense teams as a blanket check to things like Dragapult, Blacephalon, Gengar, etc. (whichever of those Pokemon end up being in S/V, anyways). Even without AV, having the ability to pivot into Specs-locked Shadow Balls and fire off punishing attacks would be pretty huge.

Someone upthread said Bulletproof is a meh ability, and I disagree. Immunity to Sludge Bomb and Focus Blast as a normal walls Gengar and basically every Special Ghost. Blocking Gyro Ball, Energy Ball, Aura Sphere, and Seed Bomb on top of that makes it a good switch into a bunch of things that it normally shouldn't. It's not perfect defenses, but combined with AV and it's offenses, it's going to be seriously punishing until someone figures out a workaround.

 

[Samtendo09]

Gen 8s powercreep is kind of negated given the move reduction and dexit. Yes, Zacian and Eternatus are broken as hell, but they're Ubers
Urshifo, G Darm, and Dracovish were broken, but the latter 2 were banned

The bird Trio Galar forms, Corvinknight, and SirFetch'd/Cursola are better than their counterparts, but that's really it

Gen 8 has a lot of cruddy pokemon, much like Gen 7. But for the ones that do well, they REALLY do well

Either that, or the new mechanics of the Gen are abused by older mons (Ditto abusing Dmax)

That’s what made me think if the power creep is really that bad since many fans did not accounted for how many new Pokémon that just plain sucks (competitively at least), compared to the amount of top tier Pokémon introduced.

As I said, not all Pokémon have to be viable. But if more than 50% of new Pokémon sucks, and not, say, 50% of them just okay, then that just proves how horrible GF go for balancing.

I can imagine they never bothered to playtest the new Pokémon, even given the short schedueled releases.

 

[R_N]

I'm wiling to say most pokemon are Just OK but there's so many that there's layers of Just OK in the ever increasing sea of Just OK

 

[MagmaVinnillla]

Don’t even get me started on this

Just don’t.

 

[Hugin]

The thing about power creep is that there's 3 options:
A: Mon is better than similar previous mons
B: Mon is roughly the same as previous similar mons
C: Mon is basically always worse than similar mons

If it's C, then the power level doesn't change because the new stuff just isn't used. If it's A, then older stuff vanishes and the new mons are all that's used, everyone complains about Power Creep. But if it's B, that's still power creep. Because even if the mons are roughly similar, they still open up new options. Maybe they avoid a key 2-hit or the usually worse-typing avoids doubling up on a key weakness, but just having them makes the average power level worse.
The end result is that even if everything is perfectly balanced with existing mons, teams as a whole would get much better every gen just by adding ~20 viable options. And everything can't be perfectly balanced, the devs aren't perfect, so the 3 mons that are better than anything else get added to the "Stupid BS OU" pool, the actually balanced stuff makes teams that refuse to use Lando/Incin significantly better even without adding brokeness, and the trash gets ignored.

 

[A_Wild_Noob_Appeared!]

Speaking of minmaxing/power creep...

It's annoying how absurdly optimized this Pokemon is:

• 116 Atk / 65 SpA / 119 Spe stat spread, which is significantly more optimized than most starters (though to be fair all Gen 8 starters are similar in this regard).
• Getting a signature move which is purely meant to be a top-tier STAB with minimal drawback. The most offensive part is how boring Pyro Ball is compared to the other starter signatures; at least those try to do something interesting.
• Getting a signature clone of a powerful ability because the flavor of the original doesn't match. And unlike Greninja, which has to split its stats with good moves in both attacking categories, it gets basically everything it wants on the Physical side (high BP coverage, pivot move, strong priority).

Sure, we've had designated favorites in Charizard and Greninja, but at least those weren't given the designated favorite tools in their debut generation.

 

[Bakugames]

Sure, we've had designated favorites in Charizard and Greninja, but at least those weren't given the designated favorite tools in their debut generation.

I mean I get your point but Greninja did have protean from the start. Pretty important tool there

 

[Sonikku A]

I mean you can say the same for Infernape to Blaziken
Higher bst and speed, hyper coverage (freaking Grass knot), it was pretty much superior to Blaziken despite having weaker attack stats due to more tools

Then Gen 5 Speed Boost happened, and Blaziken shot up to Ubers :V

 

[Magcargo]

Speaking of minmaxing/power creep...

It's annoying how absurdly optimized this Pokemon is:

• 116 Atk / 65 SpA / 119 Spe stat spread, which is significantly more optimized than most starters (though to be fair all Gen 8 starters are similar in this regard).
• Getting a signature move which is purely meant to be a top-tier STAB with minimal drawback. The most offensive part is how boring Pyro Ball is compared to the other starter signatures; at least those try to do something interesting.
• Getting a signature clone of a powerful ability because the flavor of the original doesn't match. And unlike Greninja, which has to split its stats with good moves in both attacking categories, it gets basically everything it wants on the Physical side (high BP coverage, pivot move, strong priority).

Sure, we've had designated favorites in Charizard and Greninja, but at least those weren't given the designated favorite tools in their debut generation.

I'd argue the lack of a secondary typing and being a physical attacker makes Cinderace straight up worse than Blaziken or Infernape for an in-game playthrough. Libero is a non-factor for most of the game (unless you get lucky with wonder trades) and you barely get any strong moves besides Pyro Ball, which imo is a fairly mid move for an in-game run due to its low PP. High Jump Kick isn't an easy move to get due to the breeding requirement and Gunk Shot requires grinding for raids or getting lucky with TR salesman in the wild area, so most players will be stuck running weak moves like Double Kick, U-Turn, etc. for most of the game. You at least get Acrobatics in Ballonlea as another strong move, but frankly, its not gonna be too good vs Cinderace's worst match-ups like against Rock-Types.

I felt that Infernape was a much more versatile Pokemon in BDSP due to getting much stronger moves much earlier, being great on both sides of the spectrum (letting it run stuff like Grass Knot and Flamethrower as a more reliable STAB move), and having secondary Fighting STAB, etc. etc. Not having a min maxed stat-spread isn't a huge detriment since Infernape's attacking stats and speed are still quite serviceable.

 

[Hugin]

Mixed offenses are one of those things that's a waste in the meta, but fairly good in-game. If a mon gets good coverage with both sides of their movepool, then suddenly bad natures are a lot less common, you can just pick moves based on how your mons stats line up. If the mon doesn't get good coverage with both sides, you can usually run a mixed set fairly happily.

Coalossal is a fun example. I've ranted about it's movepool issues before. Because seriously, it gets NOTHING by level-up. But it learns a huge amount of TMs/TRs for it's STABs. And it's offenses are perfectly balanced. So you can do one fire and one rock raid, and probably get a useable movepool out of that. And if that means Heat Wave/Stone Edge/SR/Scald, that's fine. But if you don't do raids, you're looking at Ancient Power/Incinerate/Tar Shot/Rapid Spin for FAR too many levels.