“That One Pokémon You Just Have Beef With”

[bdt2002]

I despise Calyrex Shadow Rider with every bone in my body. I don't think its particularly interesting design wise, but I hate the way its designed gameplay wise.

It has the offensive stats of a glass cannon, but not terrible defensive ones. The only thing holding it back defensively is its typing, which can be solved by tera. It just feels so braindead to fight with and against because it's just lets out speed and ohko both pokemon with my 165 spatk 120 bp spread move that has no downsides.

I just don't like what it represents balance wise, I think ice rider is better designed because it has a bigger drawback that can't just be solved by tera, its low speed. But that can also be played around with strategically with trick room. I think it requires more thought put into playing it, and is a lot more interesting and fun to fight against.

Calyrex-Shadow is emblematic of a lot of the problems with Pokémon’s core game design. The structure of battle is by nature biased towards offensive threats that can make progress against the opponent as opposed to defensive play that is actively discouraged and cannot keep up with offensive power creep. Even the strongest and most controversial stall teams can be broken through with cores consisting of broken offensive threats like these whereas it is much, much harder for the other way around to happen.

Speed has always been a hilariously overturned stat in these games and I think it’s that Ghost typing, Astral Barrage paired with As One and specifically that base 150 Speed that makes Calyrex-Shadow so dominant. Similar to Dragon-Types, being a fast Ghost-Type means you can threaten opposing Ghosts which can lead to decreased parity between the amount of viable Pokémon in the metagame. Calyrex-Shadow is the fastest Ghost-Type in the game and gets the jump on even Zacian-Crowned’s base 148 and almost all other manner of restricted Legendaries and stuff like Paradox Pokémon, and it can still hold an item unlike Zacian-Crowned. That Speed and Ghost’s lack of resistances outside of Dark are what allow Astral Barrage spam to spiral out of control too quickly. What this also means is that you have to play the mental guessing game of what item the opposing Calyrex-Shadow has if you’re also running one, since if it’s Scarfed and yours isn’t, you can’t try and reliably use it as an offensive check to the rest of your opponent’s team. And if both of you are Scarfed and/or if you’re an Imposter Ditto against one that is also holding Choice Scarf, it goes back to being a Speed tie anyway. There’s a reason Gen 8 Ubers runs through this and the Big 3 and it’s banned outright in Gen 9.

The idea of Calyrex-Shadow not looking as overpowered as you might think it is reminds me a lot of Zacian-Crowned and the Paldea mascots relative to a Mega Rayquaza or something like that. Koraidon and Miraidon bother me for a few reasons but that high Speed and strong typing is something they all have in common, leaving little to no room for anything else to surpass them in viability. Should Primal Groudon make a return that could help with and against those two, but it’s also going to be just another Astral Barrage magnet, since I don’t see Primal Kyogre or the Dark-threatening Xerneas (for Calyrex teams) being good if they make it to Champions. All of this while ignoring Mega Rayquaza, who probably won’t be able to use Max Airstream to help in the Speed-centric effort to get rid of Calyrex-Shadow early and often.

And I STILL haven’t mentioned that Calyrex-Ice is weak to Ghost just to make things even worse around this thing. This and Lunala are both popular in modern Trick Room teams in VGC and Calyrex-Shadow requires those teams to play on the back foot until they’re absolutely certain they can set up.

 

[Castersvarog]

I despise Calyrex Shadow Rider with every bone in my body. I don't think its particularly interesting design wise, but I hate the way its designed gameplay wise.

It has the offensive stats of a glass cannon, but not terrible defensive ones. The only thing holding it back defensively is its typing, which can be solved by tera. It just feels so braindead to fight with and against because it's just lets out speed and ohko both pokemon with my 165 spatk 120 bp spread move that has no downsides.

I just don't like what it represents balance wise, I think ice rider is better designed because it has a bigger drawback that can't just be solved by tera, its low speed. But that can also be played around with strategically with trick room. I think it requires more thought put into playing it, and is a lot more interesting and fun to fight against.

Calyrex Shadow, and honestly Koraidon, Miraidon and Flutter Mane to, feel like a 5 year olds idea of a strong pokemon. Just put a ton of stats into attack and speed and win, there's no balance or nuance of anything interesting behind it beyond Giagantic unga bunga damage

 

[Ironmage]

Should Primal Groudon make a return that could help with and against those two, but it’s also going to be just another Astral Barrage magnet, since I don’t see Primal Kyogre or the Dark-threatening Xerneas (for Calyrex teams) being good if they make it to Champions.

Koraidon, Miraidon, and Calyrex-Shadow are all currently banned in Natdex Ubers where Primal Groudon never left. As the resident Bulky GroundTM of the format, it already has its hands full. Though I wouldn't be that sure Xerneas is out, it also managed to get itself banned.

 

[pika pal]

For me the things that bothers me are regional variants themselves. They just take an existing Pokemon and make a similar looking one but usually just better instead of improving the original. The worst ones for me are ones from Galar again due to Gen 8 onwards being pretty much everything that prevents me to get into new Pokemon.
With the Beta Pokemon of Gen 2 being revealed with the Spaceworld 97 demo, we saw for example Farfetch'd should have gotten an evolution Madame. After 6 generations, we finally got what Farfetch'd should have gotten... only turning out it is for the alternative regional form of Farfetch'd (pretty much a new Pokemon). Regional form exclusive evolutions are really annoying. Not only are the regional forms often better, they also get even more buffs with an evolution on top of it. At least Galarian Linenoon doesn't have Espeed I guess.

The Galarian Regional Evolutions infuriate me similarly because it feels like such a transparent way to say "we give up" on the Old Pokemon's design without wanting to totally abandon its branding for marketing (because, you know, most of them are Kanto Pokemon).

Cross Gen evolutions were some of the hypest shit to see when it could bring an old mon back into the limelight, maybe complete its design in gameplay if it was just missing "that one thing" like Honchkrow giving Murkrow's line offenses to justify its glassy build pre-Prankster. They were still great in Gen 9 whether they were amusing "bigger" versions like Dudunsparce, or legitimate game changers like Annihilape's added Ghost Typing or Kingambit's Supreme Overlord.

Now have fun having the old mon you liked just replaced by it. My only solace is that it SEEMS this method wasn't very popular, considering GF stopped doing it in Gen 9 (unless one counts Dipplin exclusively evolving to Hydrapple, which I do take issue with despite enjoying said Final Evo) after Gen 8 seemingly experimented with it in SwSh and a few in LA (Overqwil and Basculegion).

I'm mixed on regional evolutions for the "same" form like G-Weezing or Alolan Marowak ("one is a better version" cases no withstanding) since stemming from the exact same base should entail giving it an identity beyond what the original bore, but still has that "replace the old version" issue they keep hitting. I think the Gen 9 Convergent/Similar Species are their best take on it (Wugtrio's typing and ability distinguishes it far more than 90% of Type-Changed Regionals even with a shared stat line), followed by Regionals with Evolutions that are separately named but essentially a regional variant of the original Evo (Clodsire, Sneasler).