Name: Ability breaker
General Description: This pokemon is meant to change and alter the abilities of pokemon in play to ones less favorable to the opponent.
Justification: Pokemon battles are fought on many fronts; hit points (obviously), items, statuses, stat alterations, and even eliminating or limiting the opponents move options. Very little, however, exists in the meta to alter abilities and change them to your favor. Pokemon currently exist in the OU and CAP meta's that are played not necessarily because of their stellar stats or move pools, but because their otherwise mediocre moves/stats are more than compensated for by an outrageously good ability that launches them into becoming a viable, or even top tier, pokemon. What can also be the case is a pokemon that is good, however with it's ability becomes so unbelievably good that the entire metagame has to adjust because of that one pokemon. Examples of this are Talonflame, Greninja (pre ban), Aegislash (pre ban), Mega Gardevior, Sylveon, Rotom-W, Landorus-T, Tomohawk (CAP), Azumarill, Mega Sableye, etc. Keeping the latter pokemon in mind, not to mention the others I didn't write down, it seems like there is a necessity in the OU and CAP meta's to make pokemon's abilities more of a target in the realm of pokemon battles.
Questions to be Answered:
-How does a pokemon target and alter the ability of the opponent's pokemon in a way that is not too powerful, but still good enough to become useful?- How do we create a pokemon that doesn't abuse one kind of pokemon's abilities over another? For example, how do we make this pokemon a threat to both Talonflame's ability and Mega Sableye's ability?
- How would this CAP fit into the OU metagame and what would it change it?
- Do we want this pokemon to turn this pokemon into a counter to a specific kind of strategy, or should it equally effect all kinds of strategies?
- What type of abilities will become more viable as a result of this pokemon being created?
-How would this help to improve the metagame?
-Will pokemon with good stats but awful abilities (ie. Regigigas, Slaking etc.) become more viable as a result?
-What kind of abilities will be affected the worst by this pokemon?
Explanation: This concept is meant to bring abilities into focus more in the battle. We should be looking for ways to change the way pokemon is played, and there are entire strategies and different playing styles that can be opened up by creating pokemon that alter abilities in different ways than the extremely limited way we currently have available to us. Since I am allowed to be specific in my explanation, I feel like the best way to create this kind of pokemon is to have a prankster user with skill swap or simple beam.