The meloetta post by QuentinQuonce in the other thread made me realize once again how much I dislike battle-only form changes.
I can tolerate castform (since the stats are the real issue here) and Minior, but Cherrim, both Darmanitans and Meloetta annoy me to no end, because they waste cool designs and what would be additional intersting mons by being bad both ingame and in competetive.
Meloetta has to run a suboptimal special move to change into a physical-oriented form, and poor Darmanitan goes from a fast and frail physical attacker to a bulky and slow special attacker...when under half health. Did they expect you to run a half physical and half special moveset for a thing that will probably not activate anyway because Darmanitan has paper defenses? Not to mention when it does activate it probably dies anyway because it has 55 Base Speed.
Galar version fares a bit better but in that case the stats are super similar and the typing is the only unique thing (and why run Zen Mode when you can have a free Choice Band?)
If these were permanent form changes you'd have some cool stuff to play around with. I doubt Zen Mode Darmanitan would be any good but it seems fun to use ingame if it wasn't so cumbersome to use. Zen Mode being a post game thing in BW felt laughable since it is a complete downgrade
I can tolerate castform (since the stats are the real issue here) and Minior, but Cherrim, both Darmanitans and Meloetta annoy me to no end, because they waste cool designs and what would be additional intersting mons by being bad both ingame and in competetive.
Meloetta has to run a suboptimal special move to change into a physical-oriented form, and poor Darmanitan goes from a fast and frail physical attacker to a bulky and slow special attacker...when under half health. Did they expect you to run a half physical and half special moveset for a thing that will probably not activate anyway because Darmanitan has paper defenses? Not to mention when it does activate it probably dies anyway because it has 55 Base Speed.
Galar version fares a bit better but in that case the stats are super similar and the typing is the only unique thing (and why run Zen Mode when you can have a free Choice Band?)
If these were permanent form changes you'd have some cool stuff to play around with. I doubt Zen Mode Darmanitan would be any good but it seems fun to use ingame if it wasn't so cumbersome to use. Zen Mode being a post game thing in BW felt laughable since it is a complete downgrade