Moody Discussion

Flavor Text: Raises one stat and lowers another.

One of the most controversial abilities, Moody is a dreamworld exclusive, available to only Remoraid, Octillery, Smeargle, Snorunt, Glalie, Bidoof, and Bibarel. It raises one stat (Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, Speed, Accuracy, or Evasion) by 2 stages, and decreases one of the aforementioned stats by 1 stage.

The fact that it could raise Evasion by 2 stages caused players to deem it an "uncompetitive" ability, and so it was banned from OU in the first suspect testing round.

Moody is most definitely a double-edged sword. It can help or hurt the user greatly. A bad drop can mean a crippled attacker, a good boost can help you win the game.

How many of you use Moody? Any success or horror stories from using it or playing against it? Feel free to post anything GBU-related to Moody here!

In my experience, Moody is fairly rare in Singles GBU. This may be due to the fact that people don't have the time to stall in every match, item clause, or the possibility of an unspoken rule not to use it by some people.

Moody is still incredibly deadly, but with item clause and 3 Pokeslots to choose from, it is not as powerful as it is when it terrorized Smogon's metas. I've had one terrible experience of an octillery setting up on my Ferrothorn, though I've seen then been able to deal with it by getting Sandstorm out there ASAP so it can't just throw Substitutes freely. I've seen a Substitute/Protect/Dive/Return Bibarel but despite all that stalling it struggled to break through Ferrothorn's Iron Barbs + Sandstorm damage. Nevertheless, it's still very dangerous and may come to haunt you if you lack some way to take it out fast.

Moody is indeed rare, which is most likely because of the Pokémon who have the ability - out of Bibarel, Octillery, and Smeargle, only Smeargle has decent Speed and can actually do other things besides stalling while abusing Moody (Baton Pass to White Herb recipient, for example). Octillery is slow and frail, which means unless it gets a Speed or Evasion boost after the first Protect, it'll likely be outsped and killed the next turn. Bibarel is decent at taking hits and has good STAB, but again, it's slow; it absolutely relies on an Evasion boost to be useful.

In about 400 battles, I've seen maybe 20 Moody Pokémon, more than half of which were Smeargle. The ability may be good, but in my opinion, its users pretty much ensure that it's a bit far from broken.

Just my input.