If Water Bubble gets ignored (for example by Mold Breaker), and the wielder gets burned, Water Bubble will cure the burn. It also heals burn when a pokémon gains this ability by Skill Swap, Entrainment etc.
Abilities before: user cannot be burned Abilities now: user cannot be burned and moves with burn chance give +2 to attack and sets up sunny day while also automatic burning the attacker back.
Ironically enough, Baxcalibur's signature ability Thermal Exchange makes it get an attack boost from fire type moves AND it is unaffected by burns from, say, Will-O-Wisp
New Abilities being either worthless or actually good but stuck to a weak mon is just frustrating. But then we also get stuff like Bloodmoon Ursaluna who definitely needed better Scrappy on top of having a 160 base STAB move but Tinkaton needed to have no base attack because it has Mold Breaker and a 160 steel move.
Abilities in the future: user cannot be burned and moves with burn will make the pokemon come down to the opponent's house and beat the shit out of them after turning their game off
Iron Fist seemed so cool when it first existed, and it just sounds a lot cooler than Tough Claws. Then you realize that there are only a handful (haha) of punching moves, whereas there are about half a billion contact moves. So clearly Iron Fist must have a way bigger boost if it works on way less moves right...? Right??
Poison Heal is strictly better than Immunity because it turns Poison into a beneficial status condition that heals you. You could technically make the case that you might rather have Immunity because if you're badly poisoned with Poison Heal and you lose Poison Heal from something like Entrainment or Skill Swap, you'll take whatever poison damage you would have taken from being badly poisoned if you didn't have Poison Heal, which would likely be a lot if you've been stalling with the Poison Heal healing for a long time.
@@itstomis poison heal also immediately deals late turns bad poison damage if you're badly poisoned for a few turns someone takes your ability away (via things like simple beam and worry seed)
@@itstomisrealistically that’s honestly the main use case of poison these days. With the recover nerf and how strong breakers are these day’s stalling isn’t really a thing so much anymore. Walls run attacking options so it’s less stall and more akin to gen 2 or 3 offense ( aka offense with longevity and bulk) so it’s b
I wouldn’t really consider that air lock and cloud nine are worse than terraform zero, not because of the idea that terrain can be useful (in fact let’s assume that you do want to remove terrain AND weather at the same time) but rather because terraform zero can only be activated once per match similar to supersweet syrup.
Agreed. You get rid of it once, and then you can’t again. Not to mention that the only Pokemon with the ability Teraform Zero is one you have to terastallize if you want to use the ability, which limits the utility of the rest of your team.
Supersweet syrup and i assume other abilities like intimidate, that act upon entry, also proc again upon skill swapping (malamar into contrary hydrapple)
Interestingly, where others may see abilities that obsolete other abilities, I see a means to balance Pokémon somewhat. Speed Boost and Steadfast are the perfect example. Speed Boost is an absolutely busted ability. It's why, for a time, the only Pokémon that got it were Yanma and Ninjask, rather low-tier bug Pokémon. That only changed with the introduction of hidden abilities, where it ended up on better Pokémon (looking at you, Blaziken). Meanwhile, Steadfast is introduced as an ability for the much stronger Lucario, giving it a speed-boosting ability without giving it a speed boost every turn. Also, if you want to be technical, Poison Heal is a sort-of upgrade to Immunity. Immunity makes it so that you can't get poisoned. Poison Heal means that you heal instead of take damage when poisoned, and being poisoned means you can't be affected by other statuses. The only reason I call it a sort-of upgrade and not a strict upgrade is that if the ability is removed and you are poisoned to heal then you are now actually getting poisoned.
Not sure if this would count, but Vital Spirit not only prevents the user from sleeping, it also increases the chance of encountering high-level Pokémon in the games with random encounters. Meanwhile Insomnia only prevents sleep with no drawbacks. I say this may not count because the drawback of Vital Spirit is exclusively out-of-battle and you're only covering the in-battle effects, but I thought I'd bring it up just in case.
For iron fist, if youre using the punching glove item it actually does have a niche over tough claws, as it stacks with punching gloves while tough claws does not due to punching glove preventing punch type moves from making contact. (Same deal with protective pads iirc as well)EDIT: Apparently protective pads work differently than punching glove, so tough claws DOES work with that but not punching glove
@@AIDcyt Yes, but it makes contact, which is a downside sometimes due to rough skin/rocky helmet/static/flame body/etc, and punching glove/protective pads protect you from any negative contact things while still stacking with iron fist while tough claws doesn't
@@kyouhei7731 You're right here, it's just punching glove for some reason, I thought it worked for both but apparently it's just punching glove for whatever reason, punching glove prevents contact while protective pads protect against negative effects from you using contact moves
Gargasalt is such a clever name. They somehow managed to find a way to put the chemical symbol for NaCl into each of their names in a totally seamless way, i love if
Nah coz Scrappy also makes you immune to Inimidate unlike Mind's Eye. This ability was buffed in gen8 along a few others because they wanted to prevent Intimidate spam (didn't really worked tbh).
Delta stream also negates weather but has the added effect of negating weaknesses of the flying type. Parentel bond, when it was initially released, could be seen as the same as attack doubling abilities, but it also would double special moves, and since it hits twice it has double the chance to crit, and counters sturdy/focus sash
Also power-up punch makes you go +2.. though pup mostly fell out of favor for higher bp fighting coverage, it was still an option in vgc2015 and vgc2014.
Delta stream doesn't actually suppress weather, It sets a unique weather condition called strong winds. This is also not strictly an upgrade because your opponent could be a flying type you want to hit super effectively. Parental Bond never doubled attack, it originally made you do 1.5x damage. So it was a better Gorilla tactics.
@@moosebones2000 not strictly better, parental bond takes double damage from rough skin/iron barbs/rocky helmet which helped with the difficult task of managing mega kanga in 2014..
Unsure if this has already been mentioned, but Teraform Zero isn't the same type of effect as cloud nine or air lock. while cloud nine and airlock both nullify weather, its a temporary effect and the weather isn't gone so much as suppressed similar to Neutralizing Gas. when a cloud nine pokemon leaves the field, the weather resumes.Teraform Zero differs there because it actually fully removes the weather and terrain effects, even after terapagos leaves the field. It is also only a single-use ability that cannot be activated more than once per battle, similar to dipplin and hydrapple's supersweet syrup. Both interact with weather, but do different things and its fair to say that cloud nine/ air lock have tangible benefits over teraform zero, since teraform zero does not stop your opponent from re-setting the weather or terrain through moves or simply switching around.
Baxcalibur's signature ability Thermal Exchange is also strictly better than Water Veil as not only is Baxcalibur immune to being burned, it also gets an attack boost from fire type moves
0:44 already know that Transistor being is going to be on the list as a worse version of electric surge. Both increase the power of electric type moves but electric surge also prevents sleep and it being a field effect can support allies as well. Edit: ok was wrong. Haven't played since sun and moon so wasn't aware of the electric terrain nerf. Apparently it's a 30% boost to electric type moves now while transistor is a 50% boost.
6:47 Toxic Chain is not a strict upgrade or even necessarily better than poison touch. Regular poison does more damage than bad poison for 2 turns, its not until the 4th turn does bad poisoning outdamage regular poison.
One thing I've noticed that a lot of these "strictly better" abilities are on pokemon that are either weaker overall than the "worse" counterpart, or are on legendary or otherwise special pokemon, where the ability being stronger is justified by the pokemon being special in some way and intended to be better than a more "normal" pokemon.
Poison Touch isn’t always strictly worse than toxic chain, because based on damage, it might be better to poison vs. badly poison your opponent. If your opponent has 1/18th HP or lower left, it will die in 1 turn of poison damage but 2 turns of badly poison damage.
4:11 Also worse than current day Battle Bond. Although it’s unfortunate what happened to Greninja, its ability now just buffs Attack, speed, and Special Attack.
Levitate makes users immune to ground moves. Earth Eater makes users immune to ground moves AND heals HP Levitate has other useful properties though, being not grounded. So not affected by most hazards, terrains, and Arena trap.
Defiant could maybe be a proper subset of hyper cutter as well because there are no moves iirc that power attack by more than 2 stages, so you can never have your attack lowered as it will always be raised back up to even at worst
Huge power and pure power is balanced around the fact that the Pokemon that have it have paltry base attacking stats. Which is why only like three evolution lines get that ability, it is made for a particular kind of stat distribution.
I believe Delta Stream can be overwritten if Primordial Sea or Desolate Land comes in to overwrite it where Cloud Nine can't, although I could be wrong.
Poison touch isn't strictly worse than toxic chain because poison isn't strictly worse than toxic. Toxic poison only does 1/16th on turn 1, while standard poison does 1/8th.
My pokemon knowledge isn't amazing, but I think it might be a mistake to call purifying salt an outright superior version of other abilities that grant immunity to certain status conditions. If I'm running a rest/sleep talk set on a pokemon, it would be more beneficial for me to have magma armor, water veil, immunity, etc, rather than purifying salts. I'm not going to say that that's a likely or competitively viable scenario, but maybe for casual play. It's enough to say that purifying salt isn't strictly better in every possible case.
On the subject of Drought (and Drizzle), the signature abilities of Primal Groudon and Kyogre, respectively, are straight upgrades. The turn count is removed, the weather condition cannot be replaced by another (unless it is the opposing signature ability), and they nullify moves of their opposing type altogether. Similarly, Airlock and Cloud Nine are strictly inferior to Mega Rayquaza's Delta Stream, which nullifies weather conditions, and cancels out the weaknesses of the Flying type, converting them to neutral damage instead
All you have to do is make Vacuum Wave a punching move despite being special and non contact and now tough claws isn't strictly better than iron fist : ^)
I'd like to argue that toxic boost is better because it negates damage from poison. Guts has the status condition work as usual with the exception of burn, removing its damage debuff. To put it in simpler terms, toxic boost provides both boost and immunity to status conditions with no drawbacks. Guts provides the same, but the status conditions still affect the pokemon.
Delta Stream also nullifies all effects of weather, including the super duper rain/sun that primal Kyogre/Groudon can do, as well as removing all of Flying type's weaknesses
Iron Fist really needs to be buffed to a 50% damage boost like Strong Jaw to justify it's existence over just having Tough Claws instead. Though at the same time, that buff would instantly make Drain Punch extramely overpowered so I actually understand the reluctance here.
The volatile status condition immunities are also worse versions of Comatose, which provides immunity, with the only real downside being you can’t use rest
I'd say steadfast is the worse version of inner focus since they both have something to do with flinching but inner focus makes it so you don't flinch ever and ignores intimidate
Clear Body and White Smoke are almost strictly inferior to Mirror Armor as it reflects stat decreases rather than blocking them. Is almost strictly because of Mirror Armor being able to activate opposing Competitive or Defiant
5:05 Unless something proceeds to use Gyro Ball on you, in which case Speed Boost can still be better, since it won't boost you until after it hits. 7:00 Also, it fully removes it, rather than negating its effects. 6:00 Worth mentioning that the boost is negated when the weather/terrain ends, so switching into pre-existing sun can be crippling.
This was actually a change to the ghost type, not shadow tag as an ability. As of generation 6, ghost types cannot be trapped by any means, including moves like mean look and spider web. This means that shadow tag is still strictly better than arena trap, and magnet pull as well.
Then theres some that are mostly better but not strictly, such as desolate land for drought and primordial sea for drizzle. The one downside of those two moves is that it goes away immediately when the primals are swapped out of fainted, where as normal sun and rain may can last a couple of turns when the Pokemon swaps or faints.
In Gen 5 overcoat only prevented weather damage making in strictly worse than magic guard, which ofc prevents all indirect damage, including weather. I was very sad when i found a shiny solosis in my childhood BW save only to find out that it had the worse of the 2 abilities when in could get either overcoat or magic guard. This was remedied starting gen 6 when overcoat also gained the ability to prevent powder moves (most notably spore)
Gen 9 has absurd ability creep. Even levitate, a defining singles ability that makes you immune to all ground moves, is now strictly outclassed by earth eater, the signature ability of orthworm, which is ground type volt absorb. on an unrelated note defiant almost completely outclasses guard dog, but guard dog prevents getting forcibly switched out, so technically not
You're ignoring the hazard interaction portion of levitate as well as the grounded interactions. The ability pairs well with orthworms ground type so it's not going to get toxic spiked unless it's tera-typed to something besides poison but it is an interaction different from levitate.
It's extremely niche, but ordinarily poised can be better than badly poisoned. On its first turn, bad poison deals 1/16th. So, if less than 3 turns occur (fainting, healing, etc.) then ordinary poison deals more damage
Hey loved the vid, I'm not complaining, but what was the point of showing that soul heart correction for 1 millisecond? If it's not up long enough to read then it might as well be left out.
In theory steafast mightbbe better ehen flinching versus a move like electro ball, since the speed boost would lower the damage. The most reasonable way i see this happening is if a faster pokemon uses fakeout on one of your priority moves.
It would be interesting to include some context for why some of these might be better/worse versions of others. While some do just seem arbitrary, others are signature abilities designed to help with balance or to make legendaries feel more powerful.
The primordial weathers go away immediately when the user leaves the field, so they aren't strictly better. You can't take advantage of primordial sea by switching into a swift swim user, for example.
Just curious, wouldn't all abilities that boost attack more than others in their subset not be strictly better because they are more vulnerable to swagger and foul play? I think this is worth addressing unless we always consider higher attack better
Doesn’t necessarily fit the subset criteria but I always found it silly how palossand’s water compaction boosts its physical defense but still takes the damage , like it’s weak to water? Lightning rod, wind rider, earth eater, volt absorb. All these nullify the damage and then boost the stat. The extra stage of defense is so overshadowed by the lack of damage negation. Could’ve been a way cooler signature ability for a pretty underwhelming Pokemon
Ways to make the inferior Abilities better without overshadowing their counterpart - Toxic Boost: Increases Attack and Speed by 50% on being poisoned. - Water Veil: Burn Immunity, Fire type Moves increase Special Defense but doesn't affect damage, similar to Thermal Exchange. (Adjusting Torrent would require adjusting the other start abilities) - Magic Guard and Purifying Salt have limited distribution so I'll give their 'lesser' abilities a pass (though perhaps Limber could prevent Speed from being dropped). - Iron Fist: Increase Punching moves power by 50% - Steelworker: Increase Steel type moves damage by 50%, reduces damage by Steel type moves by 50% - Battery: Power's up an ally's Special moves by 50%, Electric type moves increase Special Attack but doesn't affect damage, similar to Thermal Exchange - Hypercutter: Attack can't be lowered, Slicing moves have an increased Critical Hit ratio - Big Pecks: Attack can't be lowered, Flying type moves have an increased Critical Hit ratio - Full Metal Body has limited distribution so I'll give their 'lesser' abilities a pass - Hustle: Increase Attack and Speed by 50%, but lower accuracy by 20% - Gorilla Tactics: Increase Attack and Special Attack by 50%, locks user into first move used - Steadfast: Sharply increases Speed on being flinched. - Teraform Zero, Orichalcum Pulse, Hadron Engine, Mind's Eye, and Toxic Chain have limited distribution so I'll give their 'lesser' abilities a pass
Limber, Immunity, Magma Armor, Water Veil, Vital Spirit, and Insomnia are a basically proper subset of Komala's signature ability Comatose (minus a few niche exceptions like wake up slap dealing double damage), which itself is a proper subset of Purifying Salts. Power creep is nuts man.
In VGC poison is usually better than toxic since games are so fast and mons will rarely stay on field for more than 3 turns in a row, which is the turn toxic will out damage poison.
this does assume that you want the positive effects, for example you might want immunity to protect from being poisoned, but you also want to be burned for facade or sleep for rest, etc. there is no strictly worse or better in pokemon, just more or less niche
Toxic Boost I wouldn't say is strictly worse than Guts. Both you tend to self-trigger with Toxic Orb and Flame Orb respectively, so the specificity of the triggering is pointless besides maybe a real nich situation. Like you'd have to have the Orb Knocked Off, somehow get the status healed, and then get hit with Paralysis or something for it to matter. So while it's technically "worse" it has no meaningful difference for practical purposes
Toxic chain isn’t strictly worse as spread moves that hit your teammate now have a chance to toxic your teammate. Weird niche I know but strict is strict.
Toxic chain is not always better than poison touch bcs sometimes you want the extra 6% dmg initially from poison, instead of the 6% scaling from toxic.
I'd say you missed Aroma Veil (prevents self and allies from falling asleep) over Insomnia and Vital Spirit. I'd also say Insomnia and Vital Spirit are better than Early Bird (an ability that reduces the amount of turns you are asleep for)
Badly poison deals 1/16 on the first turn, while regular poison deals 1/8. So if the foe stays in only for 1-2 turns, poison touch is better only if you're using contact moves, as it woulve done more damage
Poison Touch is better than Poison Point, though it's a bit iffy so I can see why you didn't include it, assuming you thought of it. Poison Point has a chance to activate when the opponent uses a contact move on you. It requires the opponent to act, and thus they can avoid it with non-contact moves. If your opponent uses non-contact moves like Psychic or Thunderbolt then it will never work. If they don't, a smart foe could simply switch. If you don't want them to be poisoned, but were going to use Toxic for badly poisoning, or some other status, then this ability would be detrimental in that niche situation. Also, it requires you to take damage, which isn't ideal in most cases. Poison Touch gives you control. If you use a contact move then you can poison them, the foe can't get poisoned on accident. It's less random and less dependent on the opponent cooperating. Again, it's like, "Yeah, definitely an upgrade in most cases, but its not *as* big as the others on the list."
Idk if you were only talking about abilities in scarlet and violet, but desolate land is a strictly better drought and primordial sea is a strictly better drizzle
Teraform zero is not strictly better than air lock or cloud nine, and not even for the reasons you said. Teraform zero triggers to activate, the other two are passive. You can reset the weather after teraform zero activates and it only activates once. The other abilities keep working as long as it's user stays in the battle. Also "strictly less" makes no sense. "Usually better" is ... um, better. Also you forgot Desolate Land and Primordial Sea. Which are usually better than Drought and Drizzle. They add strong weather that cannot be removed, but the user has to stay in battle. The strong weather also stops any moves of the opposing type. Strong rain stops fire moves while Strong sun stops water moves.
I would say there might be some argument that toxic chain justvdoes more, since once in a blue moon poison can be better than toxic, as it always does 12% meaning against a heavy switchign mon that is always resetting toxic to 6% it could deal slightly more damage, but of course this is nitpicky
Wouldn't you rather have clear body if you were a special attacker though because defiant would put you in worse situations following swagger / Foul play by an opponent?
Heatproof is strictly worse than Flash Fire-Heatproof halves fire type damage, Flash Fire makes you immune AND boosts Fire type moves after getting hit by one. Edit here: Heatproof also apparently halves Burn damage, but as the only non-fire type to get Flash Fire is Rolycoly, this won’t come into play too often (Fire types can’t get burned). Of course, type changing can happen, but Flash Fire also blocks a lot of the moves that can cause a Burn (Will-o-Wisp, fire attacks with it as a secondary effect, etc.). Not all of them, Scald is a thing, but still. Very unlikely to encounter this Levitate is strictly worse than Earth Eater-Levitate is an immunity to Ground, Earth Eater is an immunity to Ground while healing 25% when getting hit by a Ground move. Hydration and Leaf Guard are also strictly worse than Purifying Salt due to their need for their respective weather conditions to be active for them to work. And for one that doesn’t really count, but is still interesting: Normalize and Liquid Voice are worse than all the other move-type changing abilities (Galvanize, Pixilate, Aerilate, etc.) because they don’t give power boosts to the moves they affect. So, not strictly worse, but still.
I would argue that Hydration has a use case that makes it better than Leaf Guard and Purifying Salt. While Hydration *cures* status effects at the end of every turn, Leaf Guard and Purifying Salt outright *prevent* status effects from being inflicted. This distinction is important because pokemon with abilities that prevent Sleep (Vital Spirit, Insomnia, Comatose) *cannot* use Rest, while pokemon with abilities that cure Sleep (Early Bird, Shed Skin) *can* use Rest. In the rain, a Hydration user can use Rest to recover all of its HP, and then its Sleep will be cured at the end of the turn. It's basically a free Full Restore as long as rain is up.
Levitate isn't strictly worse than Earth Eater. Levitate gives you traits of a Flying type, meaning all hazards immunity(except rocks), not affected by Terrain, immune to Arena Trap
Please also include an image of the pokemon when you mention them by name Cant expect a fella to remember what pokemon exactly is a whampersnooper-dinglebangle Other than that, great video!
Tera Shell and Shadow Sheild both being better multiscale, Prism armor being better Filter and Solid Rock, Arena Trap is just Shadow Tag but Flying Types are immune, Intrepid Sword and Dauntless Sheild being worse of their respective embody aspect. Also the Clear body vs Hyper Cutter + Big pecks technically isn't true because sometimes pokémon want lower stats especially in doubles with trick room there are have been situations where being speed dropped is a good thing, another play sometimes used is side parting shot as it covers both opponents protecting and both opponents attacking and safely gets a teamate in and parting shot fails on Clear body pokemon but not pokemon that have hyper cutter or big pecks.
Badly poisoned is no longer strictly better than poisoned. The early tic difference can be the difference between a knock out and none. It used to be irrelevant but 12% is good.
Doesn't download boost your stat based on the opponent's lower defensive stat? if you're a physical attacker, you definitely would prefer having intrepid sword in many situations, making it not strictly better.
nah take that rock head slander back, most Pokémon with rock head are offensive Pokémon with stab recoil moves. alolan marrowak, golem, rhyperior, Hisuian arcinine, etc go crazy with rock head letting them keep their health but keep dishing out massive damage with flare blitz, wild charge, double edge, And head smash. some of the hardest hitting physical moves of their respective types. context of the abilities matter too.
Grim Neigh is arguably also worse than Beast Boost, since Grim Neigh is strictly for one stat, while Beast Boost is for any stat, allowing for more customization
Poison Point only works when the enemy makes contact with you when they attack. Poison Touch only works if you make contact with the enemy during your attacks.
I clicked on this because i thought it was dumb how bad iron fist was compared to tough claws, but tough claws is basically only an ability on 2.5 pokemon. only barbaracle, dusk form lycanrock, and perrzerker get it that aren't megas, but perzerker might just want to run steely spirit. Like if they just gave every iron fist pokemon tough claws instead then that would make a bunch of pokemon busted. Like infernape would go crazy with tough claws close combat and flare blitz.
If Water Bubble gets ignored (for example by Mold Breaker), and the wielder gets burned, Water Bubble will cure the burn. It also heals burn when a pokémon gains this ability by Skill Swap, Entrainment etc.
Water bubble really built better jfc
Wtf? It's broken as hell.
@kyouhei7731 It's broken, but fortunately it's tied to a Pokémon that isn't
@@peco595 at least it's decent in VGC.
Mycelium might makes it so you can use spore on vital spirit pokemon. They instantly wake up so are asleep for 0 full turns
Abilities before: user cannot be burned
Abilities now: user cannot be burned and moves with burn chance give +2 to attack and sets up sunny day while also automatic burning the attacker back.
And this ability is stuck on either the most dogshit niche typing 430 bst mon or a legendary
Ironically enough, Baxcalibur's signature ability Thermal Exchange makes it get an attack boost from fire type moves AND it is unaffected by burns from, say, Will-O-Wisp
New Abilities being either worthless or actually good but stuck to a weak mon is just frustrating.
But then we also get stuff like Bloodmoon Ursaluna who definitely needed better Scrappy on top of having a 160 base STAB move but Tinkaton needed to have no base attack because it has Mold Breaker and a 160 steel move.
As one: *profuse perspiration*
Abilities in the future: user cannot be burned and moves with burn will make the pokemon come down to the opponent's house and beat the shit out of them after turning their game off
Iron Fist seemed so cool when it first existed, and it just sounds a lot cooler than Tough Claws. Then you realize that there are only a handful (haha) of punching moves, whereas there are about half a billion contact moves. So clearly Iron Fist must have a way bigger boost if it works on way less moves right...? Right??
Should be 1.5
I thought it was 1.5. Guess not. Feel like they could make it stronger 1.2 is pretty low.
Considering that the elemental punches only have 75 BP
Fuck It DOUBLE THE DMG
@@Drakorreledian would be too powerful
@@Drakorre252+ Atk Choice Band Iron Fist Tera Fighting Ledian Drain Punch (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Chansey: 602-710 (85.5 - 100.8%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO
LET'S GOOOO +6.3% CHANCE, LEDIAN IS COOKING, WE'RE SO BACK!
Mind's Eye also has the effect of the ability Scrappy.
Scrappy also prevents attack drops from intimidate which mind's eye does not, so scrappy is not a subset of mind's eye
@eljtru That was a buff to Scrappy in Gen 8, so technically Mind's Eye has Gen 4 - 7 Scrappy in it, but not current Scrappy.
@@eljtrumaybe they can make Mind's Eye protect from SATK drops instead?
@@TaLeng2023dear god no more buffs to ursaluna 💀💀💀
@@TaLeng2023 no, it's already strong enough
Poison Heal is strictly better than Immunity because it turns Poison into a beneficial status condition that heals you. You could technically make the case that you might rather have Immunity because if you're badly poisoned with Poison Heal and you lose Poison Heal from something like Entrainment or Skill Swap, you'll take whatever poison damage you would have taken from being badly poisoned if you didn't have Poison Heal, which would likely be a lot if you've been stalling with the Poison Heal healing for a long time.
Don't you also take the bonus damage from Venoshock/Hex if you're poisoned with Poison Heal?
So not strictly better, just better ~99.9% of the time.
@@itstomis poison heal also immediately deals late turns bad poison damage if you're badly poisoned for a few turns someone takes your ability away (via things like simple beam and worry seed)
@@itstomisrealistically that’s honestly the main use case of poison these days. With the recover nerf and how strong breakers are these day’s stalling isn’t really a thing so much anymore. Walls run attacking options so it’s less stall and more akin to gen 2 or 3 offense ( aka offense with longevity and bulk) so it’s b
poison heal and being poisoned means you cant be afflicted with the other statuses
Swords dance/substitue gliscor with poison heal was goated in gen 7
I wouldn’t really consider that air lock and cloud nine are worse than terraform zero, not because of the idea that terrain can be useful (in fact let’s assume that you do want to remove terrain AND weather at the same time) but rather because terraform zero can only be activated once per match similar to supersweet syrup.
Agreed. You get rid of it once, and then you can’t again. Not to mention that the only Pokemon with the ability Teraform Zero is one you have to terastallize if you want to use the ability, which limits the utility of the rest of your team.
Correct, I realized that right after uploading this video
Another important thing is: Terraform Zero REMOVES Weather and Terrain, Air lock and Cloud Nine not. They only remove the effect of the Weather.
Delta stream almost does the same thing plus removes weaknesses of flying types
Supersweet syrup and i assume other abilities like intimidate, that act upon entry, also proc again upon skill swapping (malamar into contrary hydrapple)
Interestingly, where others may see abilities that obsolete other abilities, I see a means to balance Pokémon somewhat. Speed Boost and Steadfast are the perfect example. Speed Boost is an absolutely busted ability. It's why, for a time, the only Pokémon that got it were Yanma and Ninjask, rather low-tier bug Pokémon. That only changed with the introduction of hidden abilities, where it ended up on better Pokémon (looking at you, Blaziken). Meanwhile, Steadfast is introduced as an ability for the much stronger Lucario, giving it a speed-boosting ability without giving it a speed boost every turn.
Also, if you want to be technical, Poison Heal is a sort-of upgrade to Immunity. Immunity makes it so that you can't get poisoned. Poison Heal means that you heal instead of take damage when poisoned, and being poisoned means you can't be affected by other statuses. The only reason I call it a sort-of upgrade and not a strict upgrade is that if the ability is removed and you are poisoned to heal then you are now actually getting poisoned.
Not sure if this would count, but Vital Spirit not only prevents the user from sleeping, it also increases the chance of encountering high-level Pokémon in the games with random encounters. Meanwhile Insomnia only prevents sleep with no drawbacks. I say this may not count because the drawback of Vital Spirit is exclusively out-of-battle and you're only covering the in-battle effects, but I thought I'd bring it up just in case.
For iron fist, if youre using the punching glove item it actually does have a niche over tough claws, as it stacks with punching gloves while tough claws does not due to punching glove preventing punch type moves from making contact. (Same deal with protective pads iirc as well)EDIT: Apparently protective pads work differently than punching glove, so tough claws DOES work with that but not punching glove
A Hitmonchan's Punching Glove Ice Punch will deal more damage if it had Tough Claws instead of Iron Fist
I saw someone in smogon said that protective pad doesn't prevent tough claw from boosting damage. I will check the damage to see if it's true
@@kyouhei7731 using the damage calculator confirms it
@@AIDcyt Yes, but it makes contact, which is a downside sometimes due to rough skin/rocky helmet/static/flame body/etc, and punching glove/protective pads protect you from any negative contact things while still stacking with iron fist while tough claws doesn't
@@kyouhei7731 You're right here, it's just punching glove for some reason, I thought it worked for both but apparently it's just punching glove for whatever reason, punching glove prevents contact while protective pads protect against negative effects from you using contact moves
Gargasalt is such a clever name. They somehow managed to find a way to put the chemical symbol for NaCl into each of their names in a totally seamless way, i love if
6:14 Scrappy could also be included as a lesser version of Mind's Eye because all it does is enabling Normal and Fighting type moves to hit Ghost mons
Nah coz Scrappy also makes you immune to Inimidate unlike Mind's Eye. This ability was buffed in gen8 along a few others because they wanted to prevent Intimidate spam (didn't really worked tbh).
Delta stream also negates weather but has the added effect of negating weaknesses of the flying type. Parentel bond, when it was initially released, could be seen as the same as attack doubling abilities, but it also would double special moves, and since it hits twice it has double the chance to crit, and counters sturdy/focus sash
Also power-up punch makes you go +2.. though pup mostly fell out of favor for higher bp fighting coverage, it was still an option in vgc2015 and vgc2014.
Delta stream doesn't actually suppress weather, It sets a unique weather condition called strong winds. This is also not strictly an upgrade because your opponent could be a flying type you want to hit super effectively.
Parental Bond never doubled attack, it originally made you do 1.5x damage. So it was a better Gorilla tactics.
@moosebones2000 delta stream is also ironically shut down by air lock.
Funny how regular Rayquaza ability still says no to even his mega form ability
@@moosebones2000 it was nerfed in gen 7 to where the second hit was half power. But it gen 6 it just hit twice.
@@moosebones2000 not strictly better, parental bond takes double damage from rough skin/iron barbs/rocky helmet which helped with the difficult task of managing mega kanga in 2014..
2:33 good to remember that comatose is essentially the same thing in this case
Comatose makes it vulnerable to Dream eater, Nightmare, Bad dreams and Hex
As a math major, I very much appreciated the A subset of B example
Unsure if this has already been mentioned, but Teraform Zero isn't the same type of effect as cloud nine or air lock. while cloud nine and airlock both nullify weather, its a temporary effect and the weather isn't gone so much as suppressed similar to Neutralizing Gas. when a cloud nine pokemon leaves the field, the weather resumes.Teraform Zero differs there because it actually fully removes the weather and terrain effects, even after terapagos leaves the field. It is also only a single-use ability that cannot be activated more than once per battle, similar to dipplin and hydrapple's supersweet syrup. Both interact with weather, but do different things and its fair to say that cloud nine/ air lock have tangible benefits over teraform zero, since teraform zero does not stop your opponent from re-setting the weather or terrain through moves or simply switching around.
Baxcalibur's signature ability Thermal Exchange is also strictly better than Water Veil as not only is Baxcalibur immune to being burned, it also gets an attack boost from fire type moves
0:44 already know that Transistor being is going to be on the list as a worse version of electric surge.
Both increase the power of electric type moves but electric surge also prevents sleep and it being a field effect can support allies as well.
Edit: ok was wrong.
Haven't played since sun and moon so wasn't aware of the electric terrain nerf. Apparently it's a 30% boost to electric type moves now while transistor is a 50% boost.
Actually Transistor got nerfed in Gen 9 and now only gives 30% boost to electric type moves
6:47 Toxic Chain is not a strict upgrade or even necessarily better than poison touch. Regular poison does more damage than bad poison for 2 turns, its not until the 4th turn does bad poisoning outdamage regular poison.
I want to see magma armor have a similar effect as well baked body, triggered by a water move instead.
One thing I've noticed that a lot of these "strictly better" abilities are on pokemon that are either weaker overall than the "worse" counterpart, or are on legendary or otherwise special pokemon, where the ability being stronger is justified by the pokemon being special in some way and intended to be better than a more "normal" pokemon.
Poison Touch isn’t always strictly worse than toxic chain, because based on damage, it might be better to poison vs. badly poison your opponent. If your opponent has 1/18th HP or lower left, it will die in 1 turn of poison damage but 2 turns of badly poison damage.
4:11 Also worse than current day Battle Bond. Although it’s unfortunate what happened to Greninja, its ability now just buffs Attack, speed, and Special Attack.
Levitate makes users immune to ground moves.
Earth Eater makes users immune to ground moves AND heals HP
Levitate has other useful properties though, being not grounded. So not affected by most hazards, terrains, and Arena trap.
Very nice analysis video! Thanks for uploading!
Defiant could maybe be a proper subset of hyper cutter as well because there are no moves iirc that power attack by more than 2 stages, so you can never have your attack lowered as it will always be raised back up to even at worst
Great video. Great editing. Informational, educational, and straight to the point. Looking forward to a part 2 (or more?)
Huge power and pure power is balanced around the fact that the Pokemon that have it have paltry base attacking stats. Which is why only like three evolution lines get that ability, it is made for a particular kind of stat distribution.
Delta Stream does the same thing as Cloud Nine but also removes all flying type weakness.
I believe Delta Stream can be overwritten if Primordial Sea or Desolate Land comes in to overwrite it where Cloud Nine can't, although I could be wrong.
Scarppy and Minds Eye are missing. Minds Eye is only mentioned on its other part.
Scrappy is immune to Intimidate
Poison touch isn't strictly worse than toxic chain because poison isn't strictly worse than toxic. Toxic poison only does 1/16th on turn 1, while standard poison does 1/8th.
Surprised you didn’t mention scrappy when talking about mind’s eye.
Mind's Eye isn't exactly better than Scrappy, since Scrappy is immune to Intimidate, it works moreso as a counterpart.
When half the abiltiies which were strictly better come from gen 9 you know this gen power creep was a mistake
My pokemon knowledge isn't amazing, but I think it might be a mistake to call purifying salt an outright superior version of other abilities that grant immunity to certain status conditions.
If I'm running a rest/sleep talk set on a pokemon, it would be more beneficial for me to have magma armor, water veil, immunity, etc, rather than purifying salts. I'm not going to say that that's a likely or competitively viable scenario, but maybe for casual play. It's enough to say that purifying salt isn't strictly better in every possible case.
Minds eye also combines what you mentioned with Scrappy
On the subject of Drought (and Drizzle), the signature abilities of Primal Groudon and Kyogre, respectively, are straight upgrades. The turn count is removed, the weather condition cannot be replaced by another (unless it is the opposing signature ability), and they nullify moves of their opposing type altogether.
Similarly, Airlock and Cloud Nine are strictly inferior to Mega Rayquaza's Delta Stream, which nullifies weather conditions, and cancels out the weaknesses of the Flying type, converting them to neutral damage instead
All you have to do is make Vacuum Wave a punching move despite being special and non contact and now tough claws isn't strictly better than iron fist : ^)
I'd like to argue that toxic boost is better because it negates damage from poison. Guts has the status condition work as usual with the exception of burn, removing its damage debuff.
To put it in simpler terms, toxic boost provides both boost and immunity to status conditions with no drawbacks. Guts provides the same, but the status conditions still affect the pokemon.
Delta Stream also nullifies all effects of weather, including the super duper rain/sun that primal Kyogre/Groudon can do, as well as removing all of Flying type's weaknesses
I like Toxic Boost as part of the Zangoose Seviper lore
Iron Fist really needs to be buffed to a 50% damage boost like Strong Jaw to justify it's existence over just having Tough Claws instead.
Though at the same time, that buff would instantly make Drain Punch extramely overpowered so I actually understand the reluctance here.
The volatile status condition immunities are also worse versions of Comatose, which provides immunity, with the only real downside being you can’t use rest
I'd say steadfast is the worse version of inner focus since they both have something to do with flinching but inner focus makes it so you don't flinch ever and ignores intimidate
Clear Body and White Smoke are almost strictly inferior to Mirror Armor as it reflects stat decreases rather than blocking them.
Is almost strictly because of Mirror Armor being able to activate opposing Competitive or Defiant
5:05 Unless something proceeds to use Gyro Ball on you, in which case Speed Boost can still be better, since it won't boost you until after it hits.
7:00 Also, it fully removes it, rather than negating its effects.
6:00 Worth mentioning that the boost is negated when the weather/terrain ends, so switching into pre-existing sun can be crippling.
power creep been going insane lately
In earlier gens shadow tag is just arena trap that can also trap flying types. (this was changed later so shadow tag doesn't effect ghost types)
This was actually a change to the ghost type, not shadow tag as an ability. As of generation 6, ghost types cannot be trapped by any means, including moves like mean look and spider web. This means that shadow tag is still strictly better than arena trap, and magnet pull as well.
Then theres some that are mostly better but not strictly, such as desolate land for drought and primordial sea for drizzle. The one downside of those two moves is that it goes away immediately when the primals are swapped out of fainted, where as normal sun and rain may can last a couple of turns when the Pokemon swaps or faints.
Abilities really are just getting more and more overloaded aren't they?
In Gen 5 overcoat only prevented weather damage making in strictly worse than magic guard, which ofc prevents all indirect damage, including weather. I was very sad when i found a shiny solosis in my childhood BW save only to find out that it had the worse of the 2 abilities when in could get either overcoat or magic guard.
This was remedied starting gen 6 when overcoat also gained the ability to prevent powder moves (most notably spore)
Teraform Zero only works once, while Air Lock and Cloud Nine can work multiple times
Correct, I realized that after posting
Gen 9 has absurd ability creep. Even levitate, a defining singles ability that makes you immune to all ground moves, is now strictly outclassed by earth eater, the signature ability of orthworm, which is ground type volt absorb.
on an unrelated note defiant almost completely outclasses guard dog, but guard dog prevents getting forcibly switched out, so technically not
You're ignoring the hazard interaction portion of levitate as well as the grounded interactions. The ability pairs well with orthworms ground type so it's not going to get toxic spiked unless it's tera-typed to something besides poison but it is an interaction different from levitate.
It's extremely niche, but ordinarily poised can be better than badly poisoned. On its first turn, bad poison deals 1/16th. So, if less than 3 turns occur (fainting, healing, etc.) then ordinary poison deals more damage
Hey loved the vid, I'm not complaining, but what was the point of showing that soul heart correction for 1 millisecond? If it's not up long enough to read then it might as well be left out.
In theory steafast mightbbe better ehen flinching versus a move like electro ball, since the speed boost would lower the damage. The most reasonable way i see this happening is if a faster pokemon uses fakeout on one of your priority moves.
It would be interesting to include some context for why some of these might be better/worse versions of others. While some do just seem arbitrary, others are signature abilities designed to help with balance or to make legendaries feel more powerful.
Missed ability relations that seem pretty obvious.
Drizzle vs Primordial Sea
Drought vs Desolate Land
Air lock vs Delta Stream
The primordial weathers go away immediately when the user leaves the field, so they aren't strictly better. You can't take advantage of primordial sea by switching into a swift swim user, for example.
Just curious, wouldn't all abilities that boost attack more than others in their subset not be strictly better because they are more vulnerable to swagger and foul play? I think this is worth addressing unless we always consider higher attack better
If there was a chart that displayed power creep during the generations, the chart would spike at the llatest generation.
Doesn’t necessarily fit the subset criteria but I always found it silly how palossand’s water compaction boosts its physical defense but still takes the damage , like it’s weak to water? Lightning rod, wind rider, earth eater, volt absorb. All these nullify the damage and then boost the stat. The extra stage of defense is so overshadowed by the lack of damage negation. Could’ve been a way cooler signature ability for a pretty underwhelming Pokemon
i think you should mention other abilities even if they don't fit and explain why, like Levitate and Earth Eater
Ways to make the inferior Abilities better without overshadowing their counterpart
- Toxic Boost: Increases Attack and Speed by 50% on being poisoned.
- Water Veil: Burn Immunity, Fire type Moves increase Special Defense but doesn't affect damage, similar to Thermal Exchange. (Adjusting Torrent would require adjusting the other start abilities)
- Magic Guard and Purifying Salt have limited distribution so I'll give their 'lesser' abilities a pass (though perhaps Limber could prevent Speed from being dropped).
- Iron Fist: Increase Punching moves power by 50%
- Steelworker: Increase Steel type moves damage by 50%, reduces damage by Steel type moves by 50%
- Battery: Power's up an ally's Special moves by 50%, Electric type moves increase Special Attack but doesn't affect damage, similar to Thermal Exchange
- Hypercutter: Attack can't be lowered, Slicing moves have an increased Critical Hit ratio
- Big Pecks: Attack can't be lowered, Flying type moves have an increased Critical Hit ratio
- Full Metal Body has limited distribution so I'll give their 'lesser' abilities a pass
- Hustle: Increase Attack and Speed by 50%, but lower accuracy by 20%
- Gorilla Tactics: Increase Attack and Special Attack by 50%, locks user into first move used
- Steadfast: Sharply increases Speed on being flinched.
- Teraform Zero, Orichalcum Pulse, Hadron Engine, Mind's Eye, and Toxic Chain have limited distribution so I'll give their 'lesser' abilities a pass
Limber, Immunity, Magma Armor, Water Veil, Vital Spirit, and Insomnia are a basically proper subset of Komala's signature ability Comatose (minus a few niche exceptions like wake up slap dealing double damage), which itself is a proper subset of Purifying Salts. Power creep is nuts man.
Comatose is not a subset of purifying salts, due to the fact that it allows you to use sleep talk (komala doesn't get sleep talk, however)
Guts also negates the less attack from burn
In VGC poison is usually better than toxic since games are so fast and mons will rarely stay on field for more than 3 turns in a row, which is the turn toxic will out damage poison.
this does assume that you want the positive effects, for example you might want immunity to protect from being poisoned, but you also want to be burned for facade or sleep for rest, etc. there is no strictly worse or better in pokemon, just more or less niche
Toxic Boost I wouldn't say is strictly worse than Guts. Both you tend to self-trigger with Toxic Orb and Flame Orb respectively, so the specificity of the triggering is pointless besides maybe a real nich situation. Like you'd have to have the Orb Knocked Off, somehow get the status healed, and then get hit with Paralysis or something for it to matter. So while it's technically "worse" it has no meaningful difference for practical purposes
Toxic chain isn’t strictly worse as spread moves that hit your teammate now have a chance to toxic your teammate. Weird niche I know but strict is strict.
Good as Gold is such a broken ability it could be a better version of most mentioned in the video
Gholdengo: *laughs in Good as Gold
Damn, I thought Tough Claws only boosted moves with Claw in their name.
The hell were the devs thinking of?
6:42 Lous- Loyal three. 😅
Toxic chain is not always better than poison touch bcs sometimes you want the extra 6% dmg initially from poison, instead of the 6% scaling from toxic.
I'd say you missed Aroma Veil (prevents self and allies from falling asleep) over Insomnia and Vital Spirit. I'd also say Insomnia and Vital Spirit are better than Early Bird (an ability that reduces the amount of turns you are asleep for)
Early Bird can let you use Rest
Badly poison deals 1/16 on the first turn, while regular poison deals 1/8. So if the foe stays in only for 1-2 turns, poison touch is better only if you're using contact moves, as it woulve done more damage
Power creep is real. Lots of abilitys from gen 8 and above.
Poison Touch is better than Poison Point, though it's a bit iffy so I can see why you didn't include it, assuming you thought of it.
Poison Point has a chance to activate when the opponent uses a contact move on you. It requires the opponent to act, and thus they can avoid it with non-contact moves. If your opponent uses non-contact moves like Psychic or Thunderbolt then it will never work. If they don't, a smart foe could simply switch. If you don't want them to be poisoned, but were going to use Toxic for badly poisoning, or some other status, then this ability would be detrimental in that niche situation. Also, it requires you to take damage, which isn't ideal in most cases.
Poison Touch gives you control. If you use a contact move then you can poison them, the foe can't get poisoned on accident. It's less random and less dependent on the opponent cooperating.
Again, it's like, "Yeah, definitely an upgrade in most cases, but its not *as* big as the others on the list."
i was thinking about an ability that lowers your defense instead of getting a status but gargnacl just has that with no drawback 💀
Wait, if you use double edge with a pokemon, you do not suffer recoil damage?
when you mentioned mind's eye I'm surprised you didn't also talk about scrappy because it is a combination of keen eye/illuminate + scrappy
No, Scrappy is immune to Intimidate
Oh, right. It's very close then
Idk if you were only talking about abilities in scarlet and violet, but desolate land is a strictly better drought and primordial sea is a strictly better drizzle
Teraform zero is not strictly better than air lock or cloud nine, and not even for the reasons you said. Teraform zero triggers to activate, the other two are passive. You can reset the weather after teraform zero activates and it only activates once. The other abilities keep working as long as it's user stays in the battle.
Also "strictly less" makes no sense. "Usually better" is ... um, better.
Also you forgot Desolate Land and Primordial Sea. Which are usually better than Drought and Drizzle. They add strong weather that cannot be removed, but the user has to stay in battle. The strong weather also stops any moves of the opposing type. Strong rain stops fire moves while Strong sun stops water moves.
I would say there might be some argument that toxic chain justvdoes more, since once in a blue moon poison can be better than toxic, as it always does 12% meaning against a heavy switchign mon that is always resetting toxic to 6% it could deal slightly more damage, but of course this is nitpicky
Sharpness are better than both iron fist and tough clows
Defiant is better then clear body,white smoke and full metal body since it increases your attack when one of your stats would be lowered
Wouldn't you rather have clear body if you were a special attacker though because defiant would put you in worse situations following swagger / Foul play by an opponent?
Heatproof is strictly worse than Flash Fire-Heatproof halves fire type damage, Flash Fire makes you immune AND boosts Fire type moves after getting hit by one.
Edit here: Heatproof also apparently halves Burn damage, but as the only non-fire type to get Flash Fire is Rolycoly, this won’t come into play too often (Fire types can’t get burned). Of course, type changing can happen, but Flash Fire also blocks a lot of the moves that can cause a Burn (Will-o-Wisp, fire attacks with it as a secondary effect, etc.). Not all of them, Scald is a thing, but still. Very unlikely to encounter this
Levitate is strictly worse than Earth Eater-Levitate is an immunity to Ground, Earth Eater is an immunity to Ground while healing 25% when getting hit by a Ground move.
Hydration and Leaf Guard are also strictly worse than Purifying Salt due to their need for their respective weather conditions to be active for them to work.
And for one that doesn’t really count, but is still interesting: Normalize and Liquid Voice are worse than all the other move-type changing abilities (Galvanize, Pixilate, Aerilate, etc.) because they don’t give power boosts to the moves they affect. So, not strictly worse, but still.
I would argue that Hydration has a use case that makes it better than Leaf Guard and Purifying Salt. While Hydration *cures* status effects at the end of every turn, Leaf Guard and Purifying Salt outright *prevent* status effects from being inflicted. This distinction is important because pokemon with abilities that prevent Sleep (Vital Spirit, Insomnia, Comatose) *cannot* use Rest, while pokemon with abilities that cure Sleep (Early Bird, Shed Skin) *can* use Rest. In the rain, a Hydration user can use Rest to recover all of its HP, and then its Sleep will be cured at the end of the turn. It's basically a free Full Restore as long as rain is up.
Levitate isn't strictly worse than Earth Eater. Levitate gives you traits of a Flying type, meaning all hazards immunity(except rocks), not affected by Terrain, immune to Arena Trap
@@Archualudon Oh, right. I always forget about that stuff
At this point, game freak is more interested in making abilities sound cooler rather than focusing on game balance
we playing stabmons with this one
Please also include an image of the pokemon when you mention them by name
Cant expect a fella to remember what pokemon exactly is a whampersnooper-dinglebangle
Other than that, great video!
Tera Shell and Shadow Sheild both being better multiscale, Prism armor being better Filter and Solid Rock, Arena Trap is just Shadow Tag but Flying Types are immune, Intrepid Sword and Dauntless Sheild being worse of their respective embody aspect. Also the Clear body vs Hyper Cutter + Big pecks technically isn't true because sometimes pokémon want lower stats especially in doubles with trick room there are have been situations where being speed dropped is a good thing, another play sometimes used is side parting shot as it covers both opponents protecting and both opponents attacking and safely gets a teamate in and parting shot fails on Clear body pokemon but not pokemon that have hyper cutter or big pecks.
most of these examples are probably 99% better and you can think of the 1%
Badly poisoned is no longer strictly better than poisoned. The early tic difference can be the difference between a knock out and none. It used to be irrelevant but 12% is good.
Huge power vs any other ability that boosts attack
Download is better than Intrepid Sword, since it reactivates each switch in, and gives you a choice to run a Special Attack boost
Doesn't download boost your stat based on the opponent's lower defensive stat? if you're a physical attacker, you definitely would prefer having intrepid sword in many situations, making it not strictly better.
5:35
Nu uh
Teraform zero is once per game and only when acticated
While others negate it fully.
nah take that rock head slander back, most Pokémon with rock head are offensive Pokémon with stab recoil moves. alolan marrowak, golem, rhyperior, Hisuian arcinine, etc go crazy with rock head letting them keep their health but keep dishing out massive damage with flare blitz, wild charge, double edge, And head smash. some of the hardest hitting physical moves of their respective types. context of the abilities matter too.
another great video!
Grim Neigh is arguably also worse than Beast Boost, since Grim Neigh is strictly for one stat, while Beast Boost is for any stat, allowing for more customization
Isn't Poison Point a worse version of Poison Touch? Or am I wrong on that?
Poison Point only works when the enemy makes contact with you when they attack. Poison Touch only works if you make contact with the enemy during your attacks.
Pokemon ability tier list
Forgot the Desolate Land and Primordial Sea over Drizzle and Drought
They arent strict upgrades. In single battles being able to switch and keep your weather can be very powerful
I clicked on this because i thought it was dumb how bad iron fist was compared to tough claws, but tough claws is basically only an ability on 2.5 pokemon. only barbaracle, dusk form lycanrock, and perrzerker get it that aren't megas, but perzerker might just want to run steely spirit. Like if they just gave every iron fist pokemon tough claws instead then that would make a bunch of pokemon busted. Like infernape would go crazy with tough claws close combat and flare blitz.