A constructive critique of Syclant in hope of further improving it's design.
!-Warning, very long post. Warning-!
(I apologize in advance for an spelling and grammatical errors. Also, sorry for the wordiness; I got a bit carried away.)
A constructive critique of Syclant in hope of further improving it's design.
First, I want to say good job and well done to everybody who has put work into this guy. The sprites look awesome and like a real Pokemon. The theme is top notch as well. Conceptually, I love it (mostly... see below)!
That said, there are some major flaws in his design, which I will outline below. I am doing this because I very much want to see this project succeed and sometimes a heavy dose of constructive criticism is what is needed for success. It is a good sign, actually, because if you can't find anything wrong with a design right out of the bag you aren't looking hard enough. I'm not the type to say "Good enough," I strive for doing my best, and then I try to do better. This is what is needed to design a custom Pokemon that not only the community will embrace, but perhaps beyond this community as well. Pay extra heed if you want this guy to actually be taken seriously by Nintendo, or in any official fashion. It would need to be better designed than most any Pokemon designed by Gamefreak to have them even look at it.
I. Stats: People like big numbers. Big numbers in offensive stats (attack, sp.attack, speed) doubly so. Besides appealing to the 10 year old kid in all of us they make a Pokemon very appealing for competitive play. But when designing a Pokemon, bigger does not always equal better. A Pokemon can be competitive without having a really high stat total (look at Skarmory), but more importantly a Pokemon doesn't need to be a huge competitive threat to be an interesting, well designed Pokemon. For example, Psyduck is a great, interesting Pokemon design (as is Golduck), but they have never been top of the line competitive, even in UU. Stop for a moment; don't think about what you want for Syclant -- think about what would Syclant be like if he was actually in a Pokemon game. How would Gamefreak distribute his stats given his flavor? WWGFD? :P I'm not saying we should make his stats like Golduck, or that we shouldn't make him fun and original, but if you can't stand Golduck's stats because they are too mediocre, then you might not be in the right mindset to design a professional-quality Pokemon. I'm also not discouraging originality and creativity when designing Pokemon by any means -- but like any art or design, it's all about balancing originality with practicality -- wielding creativity with utmost precision and expertise. It's a very tricky task to walk the line between "too boring" and "too out there."
The biggest, stand out problem with Syclant's stats, comes down to the simple fact that he is a bug type, unfortunately. Ice as a type is generally quite unrestrictive as far as stats, so it comes down to bug. I'm not going to take the time to average the stats of all the fully evolved bugs in Pokemon, but I imagine it would be somewhere in the low 400s. Almost all bugs are either really bad stats-wise (below 400 total) or really average (450-500ish). The highest base stat total seen on a bug Pokemon (not counting Arceus) is Yanmega, with a grand total of 515. After that things drop quickly, the all-mighty Shuckle (505), Heracross/Scizor/Scyther/Pinsir (500), Armaldo (495)... Forretress (465)... all the way down to Ninjask at 456, which is the lowest total seen commonly in competative play. Note that Heracross, one of the top competative Pokemon, doesn't have a particularly high stat total. Now look Syclant's 555 total -- it just doesn't fit aesthetically with the others. This is not the stat total for a bug Pokemon, legendaries excluded. In fact, 555 is tied with Arcanine for highest total of all non-legendary/uber pokemon, Slaking excluded. I don't like arbitrary limits, but anything over 525 starts to look too artificially inflated just because you want this guy to be top tier. Pokemon need a reason behind having high stats beyond the desire to make a powerful Pokemon. Syclant is quite dangerous looking, so given his bug typing and overall look/feel/style/story I'd peg Syclant between 500 and 525 stat total, probably 515 as a design brother to Yangmega, the Mega Bug Pokemon.
Please realize that all of the above has nothing to do with whether Syclant is or isn't overpowered in his current form. Stat balancing for competitive play is a whole separate issue.
Looking at each stat individually, I find speed to be the most overinflated stat on Syclant. Bug Pokemon should never be faster than Scyther unless they have a really good reason. Syclant doesn't look or feel like it should be faster than Scyther, possibly the same speed, but no faster. His Physical attack is just about right, but his Special attack is a little too high. I like the original idea of a Bug Pokemon that can attack well from both sides of the spectrum, but his high Special Attack and high speed give too much overlap with Yanmega. Special attack around 90-100 would be more appropriate and original, while still allowing decent returns from Tail Glow. His already low defenses most likely will need to be cut as well to balance the higher values in both attack; thus is the cost of being a mixed attacker.
So, given the above, something like 70/ 116/ 68/ 96/ 60/ 105 would be a good spread, in my arbitrary opinion. There can still be a lot of variance with the stats of course, so by no means am I saying my opinion on how the stats should be are the gospel, just that his stats needs some fixing and this is why, and this is what I would do to fix them.
II. Ability: I look at the abilities and all I can think is no, just no. The stats make me queasy, but the abilities make me mad. Ok, not mad, but they have numerous issues. First and foremost, neither of them fit the concept of a Ice/Bug Pokemon. Mountaineer is certainly an interesting design idea, but this is the wrong Pokemon for it. Mountaineer seems mostly slapped on there arbitrarily for the same reason people like putting Levitate on Fire/Electric made-up-mons, and the same reason Syclant's speed is just 1 point higher than Dugtrio's. It's bad design, and it's not professional or creative.
Now, Compound Eyes isn't horrible, but there are much better choices, premade or not, considering all the sprites indicate that it does not in fact even have Compound Eyes. I know it's an ant, and ant's (like all insects) have compound eyes, but that alone is a poor reason to give it compound eyes. I again feel like this ability was tacked on to make Blizzard into pwnsauce. Which is - again - bad design. Look at Butterfree and Venonat, they both have absolutely huge eyes. The other users of compound eyes, Nincada and Yanma, have smaller but still very buggy eyes. Sycant has small eyes with pupils, which is great -- I love his look -- but compound eyes he has not. Additionally, compound eyes is a very powerful ability that is only given to very weak and/or unevolved Pokemon.
I'm not going to even suggest what Syclant's ability should be, because I think the community should decide and I haven't gotten any immediate inspirations for it. But I know we can do better.
III. Move Pool: The move pool is important both as a flavor choice and a game balance choice. What moves a Pokemon learns is an interesting thing; they are usually logical choices, but sometimes moves you think would be a shoo-in for a specific Pokemon aren't learn at all, and moves that seem like really bad choices for said Pokemon are there instead. I think part of this is translation issues and part of it is to make move pools not seem stale and boring. However, this issue of wtfmovepool is mostly gone in recent generations and things have started to make a lot more sense. With an increased number of moves in existence Pokemon can have variety without sacrificing flavor.
So, Syclant's move pool is overall not bad at all, but there are a few questionable choices. Right off the bat Fire Fang, Superpower and Earth Power jump out at me as big NO!s. I don't know if Fire Fang is an error and it should be Ice Fang, but giving a Pokemon 4x weak to Fire and Fire move is a big no for flavor and balance reasons. The only Pokemon that learn Fire Fang and are weak to fire are Steelix and Mawile, both steel type and both only 2x weak. Superpower and Earth Power make very little sense to me, and considering that they are both moves only learned by a small number of Pokemon we should be very cautious when deciding if Syclant should learn it. I see nothing about Syclant that indicates it should get these moves in any way. They are off-flavor choices only put in to give him uncharacteristic type coverage for a Bug or Ice. Brick break is already there for fighting type, and it makes sense. Hidden power should probably be a necessity for Syclant to get good special coverage.
Other moves that I think are debatable but can probably stay are: Bug Buzz (no buzzy wings?), Taunt, Light Screen, Reflect, Roost, Focus Blast, Drain Punch, Stone Edge, Crunch, Tail Glow. The ones in bold seem particularly unthematic and only added to increase is type coverage without concern for if it is the right move for Syclant. However, I can see at least a vague argument for why it should learn them. Tail Glow is interesting, and I think it makes perfect sense; I don't think it's overpowering if the stats are addressed.
The only addition I can think of off the top of my head is Ice Fang.
IV. In Conclusion: Syclant is a great concept and overall the design is very good -- but it can be better, and I don't think we should call it done until we feel it could hypothetically exist in one of the Pokemon games seamlessly. I love the idea of designing a Pokemon as a community. It's so much better than any designs I have come up with on my own.
A lot of my criticisms for Syclant are probably a result of the voting process favoring the immediate oomph -- trying to make really powerful Pokemon, rather than a really well designed Pokemon. Yes, you can most certainly have both, but it is unlikely for Syclant, given it's unique yet defensively weak typing. As the first custom Pokemon design, it shouldn't necessarily strive to be a top tier Pokemon, but rather a balanced and interesting Pokemon that's fun to use. Perhaps later designs can explore more powerful options. I think the place for Syclant will be one of those BL Pokemon that can be still used to great effect by a skillful player on the right OU team.
Thanks for reading. :)
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