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If You Could Change a Pokémon...

Can Cinderace please have different arms? Those tiny ones look so strange to me, and are what hold it back from being a perfect starter evolution for me. I still love my boy but... ;_;
 
Aggron's evo line is a great evo line, because mainly of there defences! Aggron's stats are pretty good also, with having a very high defence stat at bs: 180 in the Rgl Def, with a base 110 attack stat on the physical side! the reason I am talking about aggron is because of its mega! it has a good ability, but a bland type. it is pure steel, making one if it's restances: fire a weakness! and the design, cool but a little dull. the only changes I would make to mega Aggron would be to change its type to pure steel to Steel,Dragon. that = 2 weaknesses, no fire weakness,& no x4 weakness. the final change would to make it look like a steel dragon, almost like Dialga, while still being, and looking like aggron! other than that, great line!
 
I think I would change Zacian and Zamazenta a bit. First, I would have liked for their Abilities to work differently: Intrepid Sword would act like a combination between Sniper and Super Luck, giving the user both an increased chance to land critical hits AND said critical hits would get powered up; Dauntless Shield meanwhile would act like a combination between Battle Armor and Magic Guard in that it negates critical hits against the user altogether and also prevents the user from being hurt by passive damage. This way both wolves' Abilities would truly cancel each other out, because as they currently are Zacian has an overwhelming advantage (any and all defensive boosts are rendered entirely moot by critical hits, which in turn are made more powerful with offensive boosts).

Secondly, I would let Zamazenta learn Body Press (seriously, why the hell doesn't it get this move. They introduce a Fighting-type move that works off the user's defense in the same Generation as a Fighting-type Pokemon themed entirely around defense... only for those two to not be compatible for some inexplicable reason) so it wouldn't have to rely on the defense-lowering Close Combat for Fighting-type STAB.

Finally, I'd leave the Attack/Defense-raising effect to the wolves' exclusive held items, the Rusted Sword/Shield, respectively. Just because I feel like it makes sense lorewise.

That's probably changing them more than "a bit" lol but it doesn't matter because everything you've said here is 1000% correct. I especially like the last bit - it makes more sense to me that the Rusted weapons be the source of their upon-entry stat boost, meaning it's exclusive for their Crowned forms, rather than that being an innate Ability even for their "naked" forms.

Fundamentally, I just don't understand how Game Freak managed to get a Shield Pokémon so, so wrong. I'm not normally one for accusing incompetence, but it's like... Zamazenta seriously makes me question if the person or persons behind it really know how the game actually works.
 
I think I would change Zacian and Zamazenta a bit. First, I would have liked for their Abilities to work differently: Intrepid Sword would act like a combination between Sniper and Super Luck, giving the user both an increased chance to land critical hits AND said critical hits would get powered up; Dauntless Shield meanwhile would act like a combination between Battle Armor and Magic Guard in that it negates critical hits against the user altogether and also prevents the user from being hurt by passive damage. This way both wolves' Abilities would truly cancel each other out, because as they currently are Zacian has an overwhelming advantage (any and all defensive boosts are rendered entirely moot by critical hits, which in turn are made more powerful with offensive boosts).

Secondly, I would let Zamazenta learn Body Press (seriously, why the hell doesn't it get this move. They introduce a Fighting-type move that works off the user's defense in the same Generation as a Fighting-type Pokemon themed entirely around defense... only for those two to not be compatible for some inexplicable reason) so it wouldn't have to rely on the defense-lowering Close Combat for Fighting-type STAB.

Finally, I'd leave the Attack/Defense-raising effect to the wolves' exclusive held items, the Rusted Sword/Shield, respectively. Just because I feel like it makes sense lorewise.

Heck no. Zacian is already OP enough as is. It doesn't need to have increased crit chances and them getting powered up either. This only makes the OP legendary even more OP instead of balancing it out a little.
 
Heck no. Zacian is already OP enough as is. It doesn't need to have increased crit chances and them getting powered up either. This only makes the OP legendary even more OP instead of balancing it out a little.
Tbh I don't really care much about Legendaries being "balanced", since I feel like them being ludicrously overpowered is the whole point. My idea wasn't to balance out Zacian so much as it was making Zamazenta more of a true equal to it, though I suppose with the changes I made I'd give the wolves a lower BST more along the lines of 50% Zygarde in their "Hero of Many Battles" forms and then only add an extra 70 or 80 points in their Crowned Forms to make them more "balanced" as you say.

If we're going to bring up overpowered Pokemon, though, then why not nerf the ones that aren't supposed to be literal gods like Dracovish? Heck, that guy is actually not that hard to fix in that front: just lower Fishous Rend's power to something like base 65 so, or remove the "deals double damage if it goes first" effect. Either change would be fine, since Dracovish would still be a decently strong Pokemon, just not one that can murder literally everything that isn't immune to water.
 
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Tbh I don't really care much about Legendaries being "balanced", since I feel like them being ludicrously overpowered is the whole point. My idea wasn't to balance out Zacian so much as it was making Zamazenta more of a true equal to it, though I suppose with the changes I made I'd give the wolves a lower BST more along the lines of 50% Zygarde in their "Hero of Many Battles" forms and then only add an extra 70 or 80 points in their Crowned Forms to make them more "balanced" as you say.

If we're going to bring up overpowered Pokemon, though, then why not nerf the ones that aren't supposed to be literal gods like Dracovish? Heck, that guy is actually not that hard to fix in that front: just lower Fishous Rend's power to something like base 65 so, or remove the "deals double damage if it goes first" effect. Either change would be fine, since Dracovish would still be a decently strong Pokemon, just not one that can murder literally everything that isn't immune to water.

Dracovish being the real God of the Pokeworld is the number 1 thing Pokemon mythology has decided to stay quiet about cause the region's governments don't want you to know that though.
 
I’ve been thinking about it a lot because of this thread, and you know, it’s kind of interesting the degree to which the Z-wolves aren’t really pitched as a duality of some kind, despite being a duo and having simple, title-worthy concepts. The naming scheme of Sword and Shield (as well as some of the lore bits and that introductory CG video depicting them as sparring rivals) make you think they’re supposed to fall in line with previous cover duos that represented diametric or even complementary opposites (land/sea, time/space, yin/yang, life/death, sun/moon). But within the story, the wolves are actually allies that serve essentially the same function - rushing into battle and fending off a big threat. They’re not, like, the living embodiments of the very concepts of offense and defense or some such. I think that perspective helps make a little more sense of Zamazenta’s wonkiness.

Let’s see if I can sell this... so, let’s look at the wolves’ stats in their naked hero forms:

HP: 92
Atk: 130
Def: 115
SpA: 80
SpD: 115
Spe: 138

That’s for both of the wolves. They’re identical! And slightly more geared toward physical offense, but they each have solid defenses of both flavours as well. In fact, their highest stat is their speed.

It’s not until they draw their weapons that the differences emerge. Crowned Zacian changes to:

HP: 92
Atk: 170
Def: 115
SpA: 80
SpD: 115
Spe: 148

While Crowned Zama gets buffed to:

HP: 92
Atk: 130
Def: 145
SpA: 80
SpD: 145
Spe: 128

Interesting things to note here. Zacian goes all out on physical offense (not giving a single shit about special) while also raising its speed a bit to make even better use of that offense. Meanwhile, its defenses don’t change at all (well, in theory anyway - I’ll get to that). Which makes sense with how it’s designed - the gold accents don’t cover any significant part of its body, leaving everything just as exposed as it was before.

As for Zamazenta, its offenses don’t change, but it gets an increase in both defenses in exchange for a small drop in speed. (Again, looking at Zama’s design, this is logical - all that armor gives it more coverage, but is going to weigh it down.) This is one reason why Zacian supersedes Zama structurally - Zacian makes a smarter investment by putting all of those extra stat points into one kind of offense and a bit into speed fully committing it to the role of a physical sweeper, while Zama splits the value of its extra points by funneling them into both of its defense factors, which is nice, sure, but doesn’t elevate it in the same clearly focused way.

But I think the fact that its offenses don’t change is the detail that reveals what’s really going on here. Zamazenta... is an attacker. It’s not “all about defense” as you would expect the opposite of “the Sword Pokémon” to be. Without their weapons, the two are statistically indistinguishable, remember? Equally as good as each other at attacking and defending, but both are still slightly more predicated toward attacking (130 Atk vs 115 Def/SpD).

And this makes sense with other aspects of Zamazenta. Its signature move is Behemoth Bash. Its best Fighting-type move is Close Combat, which gets up close to the opponent to deal a lot of damage, but risks exposing your weak points (signified by the defense drops) to the opponent. It doesn’t learn Body Press which is fundamentally rooted in the Defense stat, and would be absolutely amazing on Zama... if it made the same kind of total investment in physical Defense as Zacian does in physical Attack. But it doesn’t - because it split the value of those extra points to raise both of its defenses, Body Press isn’t going to be that much stronger than Close Combat. (Actually, is it even going to be any stronger at all? Genuine question, I’m not good at those kinds of calcs. In the most basic scenario, you’re comparing STAB 80 base power + a one-stage boost from Dauntless Shield working off of 145 Defense, versus STAB 120 base power working off a 130 Attack stat.)

Meanwhile, Zamazenta does learn Reflect and Light Screen which can reinforce it for several turns while it uses itself as a battering ram, which is its actual goal. To articulate the philosophical difference between them, it’s not “offense versus defense” so much as it is a question of, is it better to go all-in on offense, or should you also spare some effort to protect yourself while attacking?

The problem is... stats aren’t the only factor. You also have to consider type. And from that perspective, Zacian still benefits more from its Crowned form defensively than Zamazenta does. Crowned Zacian is only weak to Ground and Fire, whereas Crowned Zama is weak to Ground, Fire, and Fighting. They’re both immune to Poison, but because Zacian is also part-Fairy, it gets an immunity to Dragon, too. Zacian even gets to resist an extra type (Psychic) in addition to the seven resisted types that they both share (Normal, Flying, Rock, Bug, Grass, Ice, Dark) and the one that is unique to each one (Zacian resists Fairy, Zamazenta resists Steel).

I think I can almost see what they were going for. But I think for the sake of that vision, it was a mistake to put Steel on Zacian. As a mono-Fairy, it would be far more exposed, and I think even from a lore aspect, you could justify only giving Steel to Zamazenta. For Zama, Steel would represent how it’s using that giant shield to better defend itself. But Zacian’s metal accents aren’t covering any weak points, they’re just resting there until they need to be transferred to the blade. They shouldn’t be providing it any defensive support. Plus, like, if Sirfetch’d wielding a leek doesn’t make it partly a Grass-type, then why does Zacian holding a sword in its mouth make it a Steel type? (And, I picture the wolves in battle against Eternatus: Zacian is focusing on the high damage output, but it’s susceptible to Eternatus’s Poison attacks - unless Zamazenta, which is immune to Poison, steps in to defend it, as a shield is meant to do.)

(I suppose under this paradigm I’d also change the typing for Behemoth Blade and Bash - you want them to still have STAB, of course. But Zacian is using an enchanted blade or whatever, so, Fairy, and Zamazenta is physically rushing in to ram the fuck out of the opponent. Ergo, Fighting.)
 
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I'd like to make some changes to the Midnight and Dusk Lycanroc forms.

First, Midnight Lycanroc should have Sturdy as one of its Abilities because it would have great synergy with Counter, which is supposed to be its signature move. I'd probably have that in place of Keen Eye. Being the nocturnal version, it makes sense for Midnight Lycanroc to keep Vital Spirit. Besides, the Midday form already keeps Keen Eye, so there's a sense of balance: Rockruff can have either Keen Eye or Vital Spirit as a regular Ability while the two main evolved forms only get to keep one or the other.

Dusk Lycanroc would have completely different changes. First, it's design because I don't like that it's essentially just recolored Midday form with part of Midnight's hair slapped on top. It just feels like it has way too much of Midday and way too little of Midnight, so ideally it should have been a roughly equal blend of both. So I'd have one of Dusk's ears be floppy (because Midnight Lycanroc's ears are floppy while Middays are upright, so Dusk would have one of each), a tail that was somewhere between Midday's and Midnight's tails' lengths (Midday has a long tail while Midnight's is a tiny little stub), and the ability to switch between bipedal and quadrupedal stances though it would usually lean towards the latter.

I'd also change Dusk's stats a bit because as it currently is it's once again too similar to Midday. So I'd give it this:
  • HP- 75
  • Attack- 115
  • Defense- 70
  • Special Attack- 55
  • Special defense- 70
  • Speed- 102
This way Dusk Lycanroc would be slower and bulkier than Midday, but faster and frailer than Midnight and they'd all share the same offensive stats. It's Ability would still be Tough Claws, though, because I really like that for it.
 
Give Dedenne access to Disarming Voice and/or Draining Kiss through level-up and swap its Attack with Special Defense so Play Rough isn't totally useless.
 
Give Dedenne access to Disarming Voice and/or Draining Kiss through level-up and swap its Attack with Special Defense so Play Rough isn't totally useless.
At least it has Dazzling Gleam now. Considering that it was an TM since gen 6 I'm surprised they didn't gave acess to it sooner. And both Electric and Fairy are better on the special side too.
 
if I could change a legendary pokemon, that legendary would be regigigas. what I would do is make it more bulky, have higher base HP, make it's Physical attack stat way higher, and give it a hidden ability that when its hp goes below 50%, its speed goes up by 2 stages! now that would be a monster to deal with!
 
ok looking at regigigas stats, it may not need as many buffs as i thought, but there still needs to be changes to it in order for it to no longer be the worst legendary pokemon ever!
 
and even if it was same tier as mega rayquaza, it still may get destroyed, because you know, its mega rayquaza, and mega rayquaza is an absolute monster!
 
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Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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