[GatoDelFuego]

I still have my entire support behind Illusion. The only problem that I could ever see with it is using zoroark + CAP 4 on the same team, which may just turn out very, very cheap...I've made my point on this ability already. It's still my favorite.

A custom zen mode, seems to me, risky on the opponent's part. You don't have to "risk" anything at all to get some free boost/reduction at 50% or lower. Say that it lowers speed but raises offenses, which is stupid. That's why darmanitan-z is terrible. If it changed your offensive stats around, then you'd just have to rely on the boost to make the poke good. It would be like having meloetta with crap stats in normal forme but god stats in step forme. It would rely on the ability. But now, say it decreased bulk and raised speed? This is where things get interesting. I view that as risk on the opponent's side...are they going to hit you with a move that may raise your stats? You don't have much control about when you're getting the boost, unless you're switching in and deliberately taking SR damage...I just view that as a weak strategy and not how this poke should be played. Also, unless we ramp up the speed to base 200 or something or give it a base 100 power priority move, nobody is going to go for the transformation anyway, because the revenge killing will just destroy it. Nobody in their right mind is going to decrease something's HP to get a speed boost when you know they have a revenge killer. That's not risky, it's just stupid. And if you remove their revenge killer/priority user first, then there's no risk involved. It just seems to be more of an autowin/lose situation based more on the opponent's team than your playing.

Enough arguments have been made about no guard and I'm not keen on starting another.

I didn't really like moxie, but now that I think about it, if the poke relied on moxie to sweep, ie lower stats to begin with, then that I could see as risky. A poke with already high stats like salamence doesn't "risk" anything by killing something too early and being "robbed" of a sweep. Not when it could sweep to begin with. But have this poke need that moxie...that's something interesting. A custom moxie would work best, that raised both attacking stats, or the stat of the move that was used to kill the opponent. I think that would allow it to raise both stats on choice without being too cheap and getting a free boost in both offenses.