Ou, Nu, Uu...
There is a lot discussion about the usability of Pokemon, but just what does that word mean? Why have Pokemon like Starmie and Gengar remained overly used from the start while others slipped through the cracks? When one looks at the most used pokemon, it starts to become apparent that there are two major factors at work here: Versatility, and Efficiency.
Versatility is the number of jobs a Pokemon can do. The poster child for this would be Scizor. Let's look at the standard Scizor moveset:
Efficiency is how well a Pokemon can do its job. This is a very simple idea, but maybe the most important. To examine it, let's pick up the case of Excadril.
"Well that's great and all," you say, "But why did you post this in Other Metagames?" Good question.
So here's the discussion I propose: What if every fully evolved Pokemon was altered through a consideration of it's versatility and Efficiency to create a meta with by far more usuable, flavorful, and diverse Pokemon? This means looking at a pokemon and asking:
What theming/flavors are apparant?
What uses does its Moveset, typing, and abilities afford?
What changes should be made to bring out those flavors and uses?
Here's an example, starting from the beginning.
Blastoise has alot of good things going for it that make it very interesting. Decent Bulk, Pure Water Typing, Rain Dish, Aqua Jet, Dragon Tail, Fake Out, Mirror Coat, Rapid Spin, Refresh, Roar, Scald, and yawn. This opens it up for a whole plethora of utilities for the team including taking hits, removing hazards, and phazing. Clearly Blastoise is not an offensive monster, but a defensive support type. With a diverse dependable move pool, all it would need is a small buff to HP (79-->99) and it would be that much more efficient at doing the many things it already wants to do.
Current Pokemon Under Consideration: Butterfree
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4621996&postcount=5
There is a lot discussion about the usability of Pokemon, but just what does that word mean? Why have Pokemon like Starmie and Gengar remained overly used from the start while others slipped through the cracks? When one looks at the most used pokemon, it starts to become apparent that there are two major factors at work here: Versatility, and Efficiency.
Versatility is the number of jobs a Pokemon can do. The poster child for this would be Scizor. Let's look at the standard Scizor moveset:
U-Turn
Bullet Punch
Superpower
Pursuit
What does adding Scizor to your team give you? From the top, it gives you volt-turn, Priority, a fighting move, and trapping. It also has useful resistances due to its typing, and can sweep with swords dance. This means that Scizor can be used in many, many situations. You could also describe versatility as number of niches, in which case Scizor would fill and entire room.
Bullet Punch
Superpower
Pursuit
What does adding Scizor to your team give you? From the top, it gives you volt-turn, Priority, a fighting move, and trapping. It also has useful resistances due to its typing, and can sweep with swords dance. This means that Scizor can be used in many, many situations. You could also describe versatility as number of niches, in which case Scizor would fill and entire room.
Efficiency is how well a Pokemon can do its job. This is a very simple idea, but maybe the most important. To examine it, let's pick up the case of Excadril.
With Sand Rush it has incredible speed. With high attack and the ability to fairly consistently get in a swords dance, it's attack is through the roof. It wasn't too shocking to hear that Excadril was banned when it often times could be found offing entire teams with 270 Atk and 176 speed. Sure it has rapid spin, but for the most part it did one job and it did that job very well: Sweeping.
"Well that's great and all," you say, "But why did you post this in Other Metagames?" Good question.
There are often attempts at increasing the usability of weaker pokemon. These methods are typically increasing stats, like a boost to each stat depending on how low in tiers a Pokemon is, or making all stats uniformly add up to one number. The problem with these methods though is that they are very lazy quick fixes that can create odd situations. For example, let's say I wanted to use Charizard. Well all right then, let's give it plus 30 to all stats so that it has 139 SpA, and 130 Spe. With these boosts, Charizard can now do what everyone has always wanted it to do: Kill everything. But what if I want to use Mawile? Buffing all the stats through the roof has stranger concequences. Mawile is a small deceiving Pokemon, and to see it with 115 Atk and 80 spd is very strange. Sure Mawile could abuse sheer force to sweep, but it wouldn't be very much in that Pokemon's spirit.
So here's the discussion I propose: What if every fully evolved Pokemon was altered through a consideration of it's versatility and Efficiency to create a meta with by far more usuable, flavorful, and diverse Pokemon? This means looking at a pokemon and asking:
What theming/flavors are apparant?
What uses does its Moveset, typing, and abilities afford?
What changes should be made to bring out those flavors and uses?
Here's an example, starting from the beginning.
Blastoise has alot of good things going for it that make it very interesting. Decent Bulk, Pure Water Typing, Rain Dish, Aqua Jet, Dragon Tail, Fake Out, Mirror Coat, Rapid Spin, Refresh, Roar, Scald, and yawn. This opens it up for a whole plethora of utilities for the team including taking hits, removing hazards, and phazing. Clearly Blastoise is not an offensive monster, but a defensive support type. With a diverse dependable move pool, all it would need is a small buff to HP (79-->99) and it would be that much more efficient at doing the many things it already wants to do.
Current Pokemon Under Consideration: Butterfree
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4621996&postcount=5
