- For simplicity,
Repulsive works
exactly like Defiant: it doesn't matter how many stages a stat is lowered, but it does activate individually for each different stat that's lowered.
That means a move like Acid Spray gives -2 Special Defense and also just -1 Defense, because it lowers Defense once for the whole Sp. Def debuff,
while a move like Memento gives -2 Attack, -2 Sp. Atk and -2 Defense, because the Ability activates to lower Defense once for the Attack debuff and a second time for Sp. Atk debuff.
If a move like Crunch or Leer lowers Defense, the Ability will activate and lower it again by an additional stage.
- I used a Skuntank on an in-game team last year and have very fond memories of playing with it, so I wanted to make a Mega that would play to a similar set of strengths and highlight the things I liked about playing with it.
That's kinda where this Mega came from - to me, Skuntank is all about support and relying on "tricky" debuffs from moves like Snarl and Acid Spray, and I really enjoyed the flexibility of debuffing opponents either to increase its own offensive pressure or to create openings for other teammates to switch in and set up more easily.
I wanted to design a Mega around taking that feeling into a competitive environment, so my main goal here was to make a similar supportive Mega that turned debuffs into another source of offensive pressure, just like the Skuntank I used in-game. C:
- Competitively, this is built around a playing style that works a
lot better in VGC than in singles, so I understand if it doesn't sound that exciting to singles players. However, there are a couple of cool selling points I think help justify it:
- As a support Pokémon, Skuntank's main tools in singles are always ones like Defog, Pursuit and Sucker Punch. Its new Ability Repulsive comes in handy here: Defog normally lowers evasion, which means now it also activates Repulsive and lowers Defense. That means that every time you clear hazards, you can follow up with a really hard-hitting Pursuit or Sucker Punch depending what your opponent's switch-in calls for.
Skuntank also comes with Taunt to make it more useful as hazard control in general (and it's another tool that can feed into making Pursuit and Sucker Punch more reliable, of course), and this one also has quite a lot of bulk and Toxic immunity, which can probably give it a lot of entry points to support a more offensive team.
- In the lategame when you're done using Mega Skuntank supportively, you can potentially use Memento to help either eliminate a threat completely (by bringing in a Band Pursuit user like Weavile or Tyranitar into a target that's now only doing half the damage and taking double the damage) or get a major momentum swing in your favor to help set up a sweeper of your choice.
- Crunch is also just a very silly STAB that has a 20% chance to lower Defense by two stages now P:
Okay but this is still mostly a doubles Mega so um. I hope that's okay asdfhg
What does Skuntank do there?
- For those who are unfamiliar, debuffs are, like, really relevant in VGC; passive Abilities like Intimidate, attacking moves like Snarl, Icy Wind and Electroweb, and even status moves like (spread) Cotton Spore and (single-target!) Eerie Impulse are widely used by some of the best support Pokémon in the game, and similar effects like Tailwind that affect the user's side of the field are also a way bigger deal.
There are a lot of reasons for this:
- On one hand, dedicating a move to set up a stat modifier is a much smaller commitment since you have more than one Pokémon taking actions per turn;
at the same time, it's much higher-reward, in part because you're often buffing or debuffing more than one target at once compared to a single battle (the effect of the moves is already basically doubled!) and in part because your ally Pokémon can take advantage of the debuff even before your opponent has an opportunity to react to it or attempt to clear it by switching.
- Plus, even when they can switch, that's a much less "free" action than in singles!
In singles, you're probably switching, like, every two or three turns anyway and you only need to worry about coming in on one move at a time;
on the other hand, the pace of VGC is much faster and switching safely is a lot more difficult, because a) you have to have something that can switch in on two Pokémon instead of one, b) your backline is much smaller (in singles, you start with 5 options to switch to; in VGC, the most options you could have off the field is 2), and c) most of the popular ways to debuff are spread, which means you might be caught in a position where you have two Pokémon that are suffering debuffs and you sure as heck won't want to switch both of them out in the same turn!
- Not only that, but because your opponent can double-target (use both of their attacks on the same Pokémon to eliminate it more easily) and because there are so many forms of Speed control making it difficult to count on going first, you really don't want to be in a position where you telegraph that only one of your Pokémon is a threat and the other is going to play passively or switch out to get rid of its debuffs, because that puts all of the attention on the one that's in the better position (read: the one you don't want to give up!!) and is probably something of a death sentence for it.
There's also always stuff like Fake Out and Protect to nullify one move at a time, so... like, it's really easy to punish opponents if you get them into a position where they feel like they "have" to switch just because they were debuffed too much, even if it's only one of their Pokémon in that position (let alone both at once!!!).
Tl;dr debuffs are really, REALLY important!!
- So... I'm sure people have picked up on how many Attack, Sp. Atk and Speed modifiers there are in VGC, but how many Pokémon are there with the capacity to lower Defense reliably?
Especially in a format with so much more offensive pressure - where everything is exerting constant pressure and you need pivots with stuff like Intimidate and Snarl to keep them in check - how valuable do you think it could be to debuff a whole side's Defense at once?
With the right moves, Skuntank can basically do this passively while still making progress in other ways - after all, Repulsive-boosted moves don't just lower Defense but compound Defense drops on top of other drops, so it can get a crazy amount done at once.
Check out some of its supportive tools:
- HAVE YOU ever wanted to cut an entire team's Defense in half for your physically offensive partners' enjoyment?
Leer + Repulsive is a 100%-accurate -2 Defense to two Pokémon at once O:
- HAVE YOU ever wanted a form of reliable Speed control that also amplified your offensive pressure significantly?
Scary Face + Repulsive is a 100%-accurate -2 Spe and -1 Def to two Pokémon at once, letting you wipe out any threat easily before it takes any more turns O:
- HAVE YOU ever been caught in a position where you needed to debuff a specially offensive threat in the short term, but letting up offensive pressure by focusing on it would give its partner too much freedom in the long term?
Snarl + Repulsive can not only protect your side from special moves but debuff the whole opposing team's Defense at the same time O:
Snarl is an incredibly spammable move and this is almost definitely Skuntank's biggest supportive tool, and it even shores up its slightly weaker SpD compared to its Defense, which is neat and gives you a lot of leeway with EVing!
- It's not seen anywhere near often enough, but Acid Spray!!! is also a really cool midground option that inflicts -2 SpD and -1 Def at the same time, so you can support a specially offensive partner in the short term but easily leave room for a physical partner to pick up where it left off as soon as you need, or even let a special attacker do big damage one turn and then have Skuntank follow up with a Sucker Punch itself.
You basically always want to have both physical and special options available to you, or you're super easy prey for stuff like Snarl, Intimidate and screens that can focus on just one defense at a time, so a move that reliably lowers both defenses at once is a pretty exciting niche in my opinion and I bet it would come in handy more often than you'd think!
- I was talking about this Mega with Blue like I mentioned, and there are a couple more things I wanted to bring up because I value his judgment a lot!
- One other thing we discussed was that it would be really interesting to see Mega Skuntank usage evolve across different formats.
For instance, he highlighted a couple of factors specific to the Gen IX VGC metagame that made the use of poison (the status condition) more popular: with extremely bulky Pokémon like the Dondozo/Tatsugiri combination making it possible to control the pace of the game, Garganacl similarly excelling in defensive play and adding value to chip, and Pokémon like Glimmora making it easier than ever to spread, we've seen a very unusual rise of poison in VGC compared to past Gens where it was probably the weakest status.
On top of that, there are no Misty Surge users in Gen IX even though every other terrain is present in some form, which means far fewer teams have counterplay to poison than earlier. This in particular stands out because it's also true of Kalos - in a Kalos-based VGC format, poison spread is not something most teams will naturally prepare for!
- What does poison have to do with Mega Skuntank?
Well... there's this really rarely-seen but really fun move called Venom Drench, which is a spread move that lowers three of each target's stats - Attack, Sp. Atk and Speed - but only works on targets that are poisoned. In tandem with Repulsive, this would be an absolutely insane debuff of -1 Attack, -1 Sp. Atk, -1 Speed and -3 Defense (that's 2.5x the damage from physical moves!), but it only works on archetypes that are able to build around efficient poison spread and capitalize on it.
- Skuntank's type combination actually happens to be really good for a poison-spread-oriented team, which can help bring Venom Drench into the limelight once in a while!
A lot of the popular Steel-types in VGC are Pokémon like Metagross and Aegislash, which are conveniently weak to Dark.
Moreover, Blue didn't specifically mention this so I'm sorry if it's not as applicable to VGC as I think but having a Dark-type can help with Psychic-type Pokémon that would usually make life harder for Poison-heavy teams; this is something that comes up a lot in other formats like Evolution Project, where ink runs a lot of Toxic Spikes-heavy teams with a lot of Poison-types and Merciless users but already likes to pair them with Dark-types to cover their weaknesses. Poison and Dark complement each other super well!
Skuntank also theoretically has Fire coverage that helps with other poison-immune VGC threats like Amoonguss and Kartana, but moveslots are more limited in VGC because many Pokémon need to carry Protect, and it takes a lot of investment for Skuntank to beat Amoonguss that it probably isn't worth spending. Instead, Blue drew attention to Arcanine as a popular partner for poison-spread teams in Gen IX; Arcanine often runs Safety Goggles to help it beat Amoonguss, and with access to its own Snarl, Intimidate and Will-o-Wisp, it can help slow the pace of the game in a way that makes poison's strengths and other chip users really shine.
- Poison spread aside, Blue had some very helpful input on the value of the Ability in VGC and focused a lot on the combination of Snarl and Sucker Punch.
Snarl is a move that's been used a lot even on offensive Dark-types that you wouldn't expect to play support at all, because lowering Sp. Atk is just that valuable, especially in formats with strong special attackers. (His examples were also Gen IX-oriented - Hydreigon, Iron Jugulis and Chi-Yu have run Snarl to keep threats like Armarouge and other Chi-Yu in check, for instance!)
In addition, with all of Skuntank's best ways to lower Defense being spread, he highlighted that it could be really awkward for opponents to predict which of their Pokémon is in danger of being targeted down with a Sucker Punch.
- As limiting factors go, Blue noted that he appreciated Skuntank not being especially fast. Fast debuffs (like ones from Prankster users, Icy Wind on Iron Bundle, or Electroweb or Eerie Impulse on Regieleki) have a more immediate effect, as the support Pokémon's partner can capitalize on them in the same turn, but Skuntank's relatively average Speed gives opponents leeway to attack at least once before it manages to debuff them while delaying its partner's ability to take advantage of the debuffs.
In addition, he highlighted that it was an important balancing factor that Skuntank has to be the one to inflict a debuff. For instance, it would be super dangerous to allow a partner's Intimidate to proc Skuntank's Repulsive, which would lower both the Attack and Defense of all opponents while giving Skuntank the freedom to attack and utilize the debuff (maybe even with its priority) in the same turn.
Blue's feedback gave me a lot of reassurance that this was a compelling enough concept to sub, and I hope it pans out well if it gets in!
I'm definitely aware that it probably wouldn't make as big a splash in singles, which might limit its appeal to some people, but I'm hoping that's okay since Kalos does already have one (very strong-looking!) Poison/Dark Mega in Seviper so it's not like it feels as urgent for Skuntank to be designed for the same format as it.
I'm not sure if this fits into M4A's current design philosophy either way, so no pressure P: but yeah I just thought this was kinda neat!