Hello, everyone! Time for your fairly standard
24-hour warning and feedback post!
(disclaimer: this is a weird time of night and I can make no promises of exactly 24 hours - you might have a bit of extra time if I need to close subs the following day instead XP)
I don't think there are any major announcements of future events, but there are two minor notes first:
There's a minor bug right now with Forgery and an unrelated minor bug with Masquerade right now, so I'll be trying to fix those
tonight now that I've posted this I wrote this when I didn't know I would be posting this at 4 AM, so uh-- actually I'm going to sleep now, but by the time subs close, I promise!! I have an idea of what to do for both and it shouldn't take long, but sometimes it takes time for any updates to be accepted and go live on both DH and Showdown, so it's still worth putting this down and noting that they may continue to cause problems for a few days.
First:
Mega Zoroark's Ability Forgery can potentially
deactivate for a given match. This happens if it's copying a consumable item and Forgery wears off at the same time that it's meant to use the item (such as if it's holding a Weakness Policy and is hit by a super effective move); Forgery will wear off first, and then it will be said that Zoroark "used its Zoroarkite!" rather than the item it was supposed to use. From this point, it is possible that Zoroark will be itemless and that Forgery will not activate any more; really sorry about this mistake!
This isn't abusable in any way, so it's fine to keep using Zoroark if this doesn't concern you - you just might want to avoid teams built around consumables like this until it's safe!
Second:
Mega Hawlucha's Ability Masquerade currently has a strange interaction with
Intimidate and presumably other Abilities that activate on entry, causing them to activate twice instead of once. I'm not really sure why this happens, but I have an idea of how to revise the code of the Ability for better interactions in a few ways, hopefully both fixing Abilities of this kind and allowing it to use Abilities like Magic Guard before the Ability currently activates (like getting hazard immunity from Magic Guard as it switches in, instead of waiting until it has switched in to gain Magic Guard).
As far as abusing this one... uh... I guess just please don't use Intimidate on Hawlucha teams? XP
But yeah, I think I can fix both of these pretty simply - it's just a matter of when those will go live! I will keep the Discord updated when I address these and again when they appear to be up, so keep an eye open there if you need. C:
Some of you may remember the
Submission Sandbox, a side format originally intended to test current submissions that are particularly unprecedented prior to voting. This is mostly being retired and kept to cases of
really strong uncertainty - submissions don't normally go there by request, but every once in a while, there's just something extremely unusual that can't be settled after a great deal of conversation, and it's worth it to make something playable and experiment with it in cases like that.
As
previously announced, this is just what we're doing with the nerfs for
Mega Toxtricity (Low Key Form) and
Mega Dragonite - both are playable in the sandbox to see how they pan out, so we'll hopefully be back with a final direction for those and a poll soon enough!
However, there's
one more Pokémon currently in the sandbox, and this one is a submission for the current slate! The people involved have already done plenty of testing for it and come to a decision on what moves to allow, so it's served its purpose well already - but hey, there's still a day left before voting if you just want to try it out!
The submission in question is
inkbug's
Mega Wishiwashi , and you can use it yourself by giving a Wishiwashi the item "inkbug" to hold in place of a Mega Stone.
This needed to be tested because it treads a lot of unprecedented ground for a Mega Evolution and for Pokémon in general - there's nothing else quite like the slow buildup of its form changes, which leave it helpless and quite vulnerable until it has the time to set up but have lasting returns throughout the game and don't reset when it switches out. It was hard for anyone to envision how the early turns when it's most vulnerable - and especially the need to run Protect - would affect the kinds of moves it could run.
These factors were most important when deciding on the kind of
recovery to give it
(the final call here was to give it Wish but not Recover!), as well whether or not its Ability should count
turns when Wishiwashi was switched in (the final call was that it should not! the Ability will work like Speed Boost instead, only taking effect if Wishiwashi has been around for the entire turn).
These questions have all been answered now and you can see the final take on the submission in the post above! It just seemed important to give an official update on its inclusion in the sandbox and let people know that it could be tested out. C:
Now for the actual feedback post!! Thank you guys for your patience with this as always! C:
If I don't mention your sub in this post, it's probably fine balance-wise and you're not required to make any changes! It doesn't mean I forgot!
Okay so first
I just want to say I LOVE THIS?? This is such a creative way to push it to take advantage of Dig and an incredibly cute and clever reference to Whac-a-Mole - I love how it directly shapes its playing style into something so flavorful and fitting
This is genuinely an amazing idea holy heck
That said, I had a small concern on the balancing front: I think it would probably be a safer call
not to raise Attack on turns when it uses a status move - mostly because I'm worried this Ability can be exploited too easily by using moves like Protect, Substitute and Dig in tandem, and it's fast enough that raising Attack quite that much scares me a little.
I don't plan on vetoing this either way - I'm kind of conflicted myself, and it's hard to wrap my head around how it compares to a more conventional form of setup in terms of practicality
I think if I had been writing this post sooner, I would probably have wanted to put this in the sandbox too, and I am beating myself up for not thinking of that in time OTL - but that's a change I would
strongly encourage if you're willing!
Oh, uh... uuusually just combining the complete effects of three Abilities in one is something to be avoided;;
Because of the context that Falinks is made up of multiple Pokémon and it could be seen as sort of similar to the existing As One Abilities in flavor, I won't veto this one or
require any changes - but I still feel like noting that this is generally discouraged and that you should consider whether you actually need to stack all three of these Abilities, what they're accomplishing for it as a Pokémon and whether you could get by with just one of the three; it might benefit your sub to stick with one of them!
I think I mentioned this on the Discord, but this Ability kind of makes me wary because it interacts somewhat poorly with the way Showdown simulates battles (since Showdown doesn't normally have you select team order - whether you even know your opponent's team order depends entirely on whether they have specifically a Zoroark on their team, which feels like a really weird form of variance to introduce to an Ability like this), and I'm also not completely sure if I can track the party slot Falinks was in before it entered.
In addition, the value of a totally free Attack or Speed boost seems pretty dangerously high even on the assumption that you and your opponent know when it will happen and it happens at the correct time.
I'm still not sure if this is an Ability I can really support adding and I would sort of urge you to reconsider it if you can;;
(that said: I love your so much and I am completely for them!!
Cry for Help especially is a really clever way to work around Solo Form's innate limitations and I respect that a lot)
okay just because BitBitio "angry"-reacted the post I feel a need to confirm - could you possibly verify whether he's okay with you using his Ability Decelerate on your Falinks sub? I am okay with this balance-wise, but I feel like it would be unfair to allow this if he was saving it for something specific or anything;;
(I can also check with you both on the Discord! half of the reason I'm putting this here is just so I don't forget when I'm compiling subs XP)
I'm kinda concerned about the Ability on this one, and I don't think I can allow it;;
The first part is just a minor optics issue and not the main reason, but it's still advice I feel like I should give (this is something that's come up for a few other people in the past as well!) - but I think an Ability that varies based on how much damage a move
would have done but then changes the amount of damage the move does is a bit unrealistic (like it's something a real Ability wouldn't do) and mostly unintuitive to players. But I think the more important thing is just how extreme the effects are themselves, with Wishiwashi being completely immune to some moves for no clear reason and being outright one-hit KOed by others out of the blue.
Part of this is because - if you don't meet the all-or-nothing 1/4 HP cutoff - it's impossible to tell how close to it you were or how much damage your moves are doing; more importantly, because damage can vary by up to 15%, it's possible for the same move to make the cutoff sometimes but not other times and there's not really any way to tell. (For example, if a move is right on the cusp of 1/4, it could be enough to hit Wishiwashi half of the time and not enough the other half - if you get unlucky, you might think the move doesn't work at all. Similarly, if a move does just about half, it's a 3HKO if it does just under half just KOs Wishiwashi instantly if it does just over half, and there's no way to tell.)
This kind of extreme variance - combined with a lack of clarity and responsiveness to the players - feels uncompetitive to me, although it's admittedly hard to put the reason for it into words and I can only hope this makes sense. OTL
I think it would maybe be best to think about what
specific moves you would want to do less to Wishiwashi (and what you would want to do more to it), and try to find an effect that's just as specific. For example, as you have it, your Wishiwashi can't nullify Chansey and Blissey's Seismic Toss, but you
do have it nullifying Toxapex's moves, most notably Scald - a lot of offensive Pokémon really hate coming in on Toxapex, so you could tailor your Wishiwashi to take advantage of that and make it as easy as possible to take on bulky Water-types like that instead.
If that's the kind of Pokémon you want to beat, I think an effect like
Water Absorb or Storm Drain (to keep it fully immune to Scald - so it can come in as safely as possible on Toxapex and a lot of other bulky Water-types) paired with a useful coverage move for dispatching them (Wishiwashi already has Earthquake, and it's not a stretch to say it could use Earth Power too if you want to use the boost from Storm Drain) would achieve a lot of what you want more reliably and in a way that's easier to understand.
You can also deal with chip damage by, say, making it Steel-type
(submarine Mega?) - that nullifies sand and poison and reduces damage it takes from Stealth Rock, so it does a lot for you at once - without needing to make it an extra clause of your Ability, which feels less realistic to me.
That's just an example, of course! You could single out any kind of move you want to be able to nullify and build the result around whatever you decide. The important thing is mostly that the Ability should be more specific in function than it is - I tried to give example advice based on the kind of Pokémon I think you've been wanting, so hopefully it's some help, but you could take it in almost any direction you want! - and especially that it's really clear to the players when it will and won't stop a move from working.
Just the same thing I asked of @A Random Person earlier - is there a reason this needs to be a new Ability that's two entire other Abilities in one? I think you would be better served by just giving it either Infiltrator or Unseen Fist, personally
actually the idea of Unseen Fist Dugtrio is hilarious, because the implication is that it even has a fist and you literally can't see it-- sorry. It's just something we really prefer to avoid here - while I won't require it, I will
strongly encourage for you to replace it with just one of the two Abilities.
This one is flagrantly illegal, so please read the stat rules in the first post about minmaxing first; that aside, we generally avoid making clones of Abilities that already exist without any functional differences
(regular Simple would do just fine), and perhaps more importantly, Simple is
unquestionably far too strong an effect to give to a Pokémon with stats like this and as many setup options as Falinks. I'm just gonna veto this one out of hand and won't include it unless you replace it with something completely different, sorry; this uh... really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
This sort of feels to me like it adds an unnecessary layer of RNG to using Dugtrio, and especially for a status like freeze, that's something I would really rather not allow when it can be avoided. There's a section about using RNG while still being competitive in
the guide at the top of this post if it's any help, but here I think it is uncompetitive and I don't think I can allow it;;
This has the same problem as a few other subs in being three Abilities in one
(mostly for no reason at all - what does Aura Break have to do with Wishiwashi?), and Intimidate is already a very good Ability in itself - a version that lowers both Attack and Special Attack just feels unnecessary to introduce, especially since we have a doubles metagame as well and Intimidate is game-defining there. I would normally advise you to pick one of the three effects, but we do already have
a perfectly good Intimidate Wishiwashi and I feel it would be better to support that one if it's already taking the approach you want (and politely give feedback if there's just something small you wish were different about it!) rather than post a competing sub that's almost identical.
:wishiwashi-solo: There's, uh, a bit of a common misconception when it comes to stat changes like this that I think is important to have in mind. You might be expecting this Wishiwashi to have 148 Attack and Special Attack and 132 Speed, but when you multiply a stat, you're also multiplying EVs and IVs along with it. In actuality, this is sort of the equivalent of a Wishiwashi that has base 181.5 Speed (faster than Deoxys-Speed!) and 296.5 Attack and Special Attack (higher than... anything!!) as long as it Mega Evolves while its HP is low enough, which feels... uh... yyyeah, I'm not gonna allow that, sorry - it's just the kind of Pokémon that either gets absolutely nothing done or wins the game on the spot depending on how prepared your opponent's team is for it, and that's not a good addition to the metagame.
Hi! Uh, mostly I'm sort of confused by what you're going for with this one?
It looks like your Ability explicitly changes Wishiwashi from its School Form (its stronger form) into its Solo Form (its weaker form) whenever its HP is above 1/4 - but then its HP is also restored by 1/4 when it changes form, so it goes back above that threshold right away and can't stay in School Form.
Being able to be in its strong form while at the absolute lowest possible HP is already a pretty harsh constraint (even Archeops is allowed more than twice as much HP and has a lot more Speed, and it's already considered hard to use), and with the Ability as you've described it, restoring its HP would just change it back? The effects definitely work against each other, even in addition to how debilitating the Ability is (and how hard it is to manage your HP with something so frail - Solo Form is more likely to faint than to get within a specific 1/4 of its HP), and I thought you might want to reconsider this;;
Iii have concerns with the balance on this one and I think I'm going to veto it, sorry;;
The risk of missing a move is just not reliable as a balancing factor, and a chance for something to go wrong outside of either player's control doesn't make an otherwise broken Pokémon balanced. The Hustle Mega Evolution we do have, Gumshoos, is nowhere near as strong and fast as yours - I think it would help to point out that this is hitting almost as hard as incredible wallbreakers like Mega Mawile while having a full hundred points more Speed than Mawile does.
I'm...
debating how important it would be to enforce the usual stat rules in this case
(see the first post for those) on account of being a
total role shift, but still be aware that this is something we at least normally wouldn't allow at all and I feel like it demands some kind of justification - what makes you think this belongs as a Dugtrio Mega in the first place...?
There are plenty of other Ground-types whose stat spreads are already suited to a role like this, but Dugtrio's existing stats
(both its low defenses, which you've seen fit to raise by 195 points to get the level of bulk you wanted, and its HP, which is one of the lowest for a fully-evolved Pokémon in the entire series) work against this pretty strongly; and it doesn't seem like the change actually has anything to do with Dugtrio, which is
all about being fast and frail
hence... why you had to go so far out of your way and also out of the rules to change that. It would be one thing if there were a compelling reason this Mega had to be Dugtrio to work or if you gave any justification beyond "Just got bored and made an interesting trick room mon," but I don't think I have any reason to allow this and I don't think I will, sorry.
Okay so uh
I do just have to veto all three of these, sorry;;
This Ability is extremely complex and unintuitive, changing the way type matchups work in discrete and relatively inconsistent ways on top of a flat damage modifier; for an example of a similar Ability, you should look at Mega Tyrantrum's Prehistoric Rage (which bypasses immunities to Dragon and does absolutely nothing else) or maybe the canon Regidrago's Dragon's Maw (which just boosts the power of Dragon and does absolutely nothing else). There is no reason for an Ability like this to have a different interaction with every level of type effectiveness; I would suggest just running with one of those two Abilities that already exist.
I personally would lean towards Prehistoric Rage on account of its high Speed; if you chose to give it Dragon's Maw, I would also require you not to give it Nasty Plot.
As a general rule of thumb, if your Pokémon can't change between its forms and the way to decide between them is entirely within the teambuilder, they are functionally just separate Pokémon.
In this case, what you have is just six entirely separate Mega Falinks (if six separate Mega Falinks with no Abilities) that can't be distinguished at team preview; there's no compelling reason here to accept all of these at once. We don't accept multiple Megas for the same Pokémon without
very good reason, pretty much the only common one being if the base form already has multiple forms and it's a necessity; the quantity of different Falinks here is not a good thing, and the only way this is going to be accepted is if you pick one stat spread and make a single Mega around it.
This Ability just has way too much going on, and it's entirely unnecessary to introduce a new field effect to do all of this. Broadly speaking, field effects are much harder to get right than any other kind of Ability, and because their impact on the metagame and its complexity is so large, we have to enforce much higher standards for them;
there's a very detailed explanation of this in the spoiler at the bottom of this post (there are three in a row - it's the last one), but this one definitely does not warrant it.
(small heads-up also:
The Ability on this one can only possibly activate within an
extremely tiny range of HP - between 20%, below which it stops working, and 25%, above which Wishiwashi won't enter Solo Form - and I'm not sure what the point of that is; realistically, whether you get into that range at all is more likely to depend on the rolls your opponents gets with their moves' damage rather than anything at all in either player's control. If the effect is too strong to happen reliably, you should be balancing that by making it weaker, not less reliable - I would remove the 1/5 HP requirement entirely if you try to amend this submission and then weaken the Ability itself.)
This is hilarious, but I do still have to give serious feedback if it's meant as a serious submission and you want it to be included as an option (I can't really tell)
Uh, on account of this Ability being RNG-based, I'm going to encourage you to read
the guide at the top of this post - specifically just the section about using RNG effectively - because I think this in its current state is uncompetitive and doesn't really warrant the random chance here at all. I would not allow this in its current state, though; it's not the kind of Pokémon that can effectively "make its own luck" and instead just adds unnecessary variance to the game in a way you can't really plan around or
use.
(I
love your
though!! That's a
really cool way to interact with No Retreat and sounds super engaging to use!)
sorry, I know we talked about this on the Discord and I think I said it was okay, but I'm looking at it again and I'm having second thoughts;;
Wooould you be comfortable with like a 1.3x modifier instead of 1.5x? It seems like this hits extremely hard - particularly with Hydro Pump, which I had neglected to take into account because I don't run it often myself, but I think it's the attack this Wishiwashi would be using the most and it's sort of scary how much it does. OTL
Holy heck, I
really love the premise of this and the way it makes use of both forms (Legion being so much faster is so neat and completely changes the form dynamics compared to something like Aegislash)
but I think I would still recommend toning down the stats a little?;; Especially when it has a strong STAB like Close Combat, the fact that it
can use that 180 Attack and that 135 Speed in the same turn feels pretty extreme to me, and it has multiple kinds of setup. The main benefit of Stance Change is being able to get the best of both forms, so rather than giving each one such extreme highs and lows, I think it would be a good call to tone down each form individually since they're kind of parts of a whole - it feels safer to assume that Falinks will be in the best form for any given situation and decide its stats accordingly than to make each form individually quite minmaxed.
(Wow I actually
love your
This is a really cool way to make use of both forms and take advantage of its access to pivoting moves to keep it safe
I support this)
I'm slllightly wary of this one, even with the HP requirement, just because this does get Swords Dance
man I wish it didn't have this - your idea sounds so much cooler with just No Retreat in mind and STAB on a move as strong as Close Combat. Base 90 at +1 by default is a pretty amazing Speed tier, and getting there and then being able to use Swords Dance afterwards makes me think this might be too good at cleaning?;;
If you are gonna go with an Ability like this, I think maybe giving it a bit less Attack and Speed would be wise - my instinct is to put its Speed at base 65
(-10 from base) and bring its Attack down by 20 to 25 points
(110 to 115) as well to be safe, but I think the Speed drop is more important if you would rather do just one!
I do actually like the idea of trapping opponents while Falinks itself is trapped - it's an interesting effect that pairs well with No Retreat! That said, I feel like some of the rest of the Ability is extraneous - adding on the effect of Steelworker just makes it feel like two Abilities in one (which is something to avoid) and isn't related to the effect itself at all. The residual damage also feels kind of unnecessary when compared to how every other trapping Ability works, but I would be okay with it if you wanted to keep that part since this also comes at more of a drawback than other kinds of trapping and the extra edge is justifiable.
While he posted his later than you did
(I can vouch that he wasn't copying you, for what it's worth - he'd been talking about his idea for a few days before he posted it), I think
Magmajudis had the right idea with
this simpler version of the effect and I think it would be better for you to do the same. As always, I'm also inclined to suggest that you discuss your ideas together and see if you can come up with a joint submission both of you like, although I would understand if you'd prefer to keep them separate since you seem to have pretty divergent visions for the rest of them!
I also feel like suggesting that you rename the Ability - I can see how you ended up with "Anchor Infestation" when the Ability is a combination of Anchor Shot and Infestation, but the phrase itself really doesn't make any sense OTL
But uh, yeah,
the built-in Steelworker effect is the part that I'm questioning the most and I would rather not accept this unless you removed it - having three STABs is unusual and sort of a big deal by itself (especially for a setup sweeper like this) and it just has nothing to do with the rest of the premise as far as I can tell.
Yeah, this is, uh... this is definitely not just one Ability - the part that modifies Dig feels completely isolated from the part that modifies Dark moves, and it's also really unlike an Ability to overhaul the effect of just one specific move so radically. In addition, the multi-hit effect is only really relevant in the case of moves with secondary effects (it's actually often detrimental for moves without secondary effects, particularly if you're using contact moves specifically), and the only moves you would have Dugtrio use that fit the bill are biting moves - with that in mind, I think this is pretty redundant to the Ability Savage that already exists, and I would suggest just using that instead of making something so similar to it with no extra purpose.
The emphasis on flinching here is not something I support in the first place, though - making a Pokémon
primarily to add RNG to battles and make the opponent flip a coin every time they want to move (and flinching is, in fact, the only purpose you've given for the effect) does not make the game more fun and does not benefit the mod, so I kind of wouldn't suggest fixing this.
Instead: when you asked about your first idea on the Discord, Aquatic and Earl gave perfectly good suggestions on how to achieve the original purpose you had in mind without modifying the UI for no reason.
Aquatic's suggestion was this:
If I may suggest something to keep your goal of beating roost and using bulldoze
Make it so it moves last when using attacking moves with 60 or less bp
and Earl's was this:
could also make it where 60 BP and lower moves have a gravity/tarrows effect
and both of these are more competitive and more interesting than what you've done instead - I would really just take one of their suggestions, since they serve exactly the purpose your original idea was meant to fill, instead of going further down this route.
I actually totally support the idea of making a Fighting/Ghost Falinks, if not for the reasons you would think!
Ghost is a really interesting type for Mega Falinks because of the way it interacts with Falinks's signature move, No Retreat (No Retreat is a strong move, but it has the drawback of trapping the user; meanwhile, Ghost-types can't be trapped, so it can use it basically for free instead). It's one of the best ways to exploit the effect, so I would really like to see a Ghost Falinks do well, personally!
That said, Ghost is also a
really strong type to pair with Fighting, in addition to No Retreat being a very strong move if you get rid of its key drawback, so that has to be handled with a lot of caution, and I thiiink this takes it too far.
The first thing is pretty minor, but if you'd like to keep this Ability, I would not include the part that super effective hits deal 3/4 damage - this is an entirely different Ability's effect, and making customs that are an entire existing Ability and then some is something we try to avoid. I also would change it from a random stat to a specific stat, although it's up to you what stat that should be; there's not really any need for that kind of variance here and it definitely doesn't make equal use of all of its stats, so just picking one of them and sticking with it would be better, I think.
More importantly, I do not feel comfortable with this having Poltergeist; that's the strongest Ghost-type move you could give it, and the combination of Poltergeist and Close Combat is perfect coverage made of two moves that are already extremely good individually. Adding Ghost at all helps Falinks so much that I think this is a case where it doesn't actually need good physical STABs of both of its types; Fighting/Ghost STABs are really dangerous on a setup sweeper because they can't be resisted, so while you probably want to give it a STAB for its new type, giving it a strong physical STAB to pair with Close Combat is actually probably a bad idea. I would let it rely on Shadow Ball or Hex instead, since you've given it the Special Attack it needs to work with those anyway!
I also feel like there are a lot of moves here that aren't necessary to add at all. The one I would consider most important to remove is Teleport, which lets the base form switch out of No Retreat anyway - it defeats the purpose of the most interesting part of making it a Ghost-type and kind of undermines the Mega - but I think
most of these additions were just made with Ghost flavor in mind and don't really suit regular Falinks at all. I would encourage you to remove however many you're willing, personally;;
I know we talked about this on Discord already, but this does not need all of these moves. This is way too many additions; please prioritize the ones you expect it to use.
There's a reason why, as you put it, nothing actually strong has Stakeout - on as threatening a revenger as this, I think it might actually be broken? I'm going to ask others' thoughts on the Discord and will make a final decision tomorrow when voting closes, but it strikes me as probable that I will need to veto this and I would encourage you to consider other routes;;
I will need you to specify in your post exactly when Wishiwashi's Cry for Help is supposed to activate, but if I'm interpreting it right, your Wishiwashi can potentially be healed by 75% for free every time its HP falls below half. No matter how weak its Ability makes it offensively, that sounds like it could go horribly wrong and create borderline infinite loops; this sounds really broken as a defensive Pokémon and I don't think I'll allow it unless you clarify (or revise) the meaning of the Ability to something else.
I can't tell if this is just a joke submission or if you expected it to be accepted, but total immunity to contact moves is uh
not allowed, no
sorry
(It might be worth clarifying or rewording your Ability - at the moment, I'm interpreting this as "Mega Falinks always moves first on its first turn in battle," but is this correct or did you mean something else?)
But uh
I dooon't think this needs to have
ten new moves - please prioritize the ones it actually needs! no other Mega has this many and I guarantee this will not use all of them - and it's also not allowed within the rules (nor necessary, since this has plenty to work with already and doesn't really need the minmaxing) for you to lower its Special Attack by 10 to get more points to spend elsewhere. I would personally encourage you to take those 10 points out of Speed so that its Ability is at the forefront, but you can take them out of anywhere you want - you just can't (and don't need to) lower Special Attack like that.
That said, the premise of the Ability itself is cool! I would drop the part about flinching, because that's just Inner Focus
(but plenty of Abilities come with Intimidate immunity on top of their usual effects - that's totally fine!), but I really like the core of the Ability and think it sounds really cool as a revenger! If you can adjust this to be a legal submission and preferably tone down the movepool additions, I would like this quite a lot!
We're not going to do itemless Megas, and the requirement for Falinks to Mega Evolve will just be to hold Falinksite like every other Mega Evolution in the mod, sorry;;
That said!! United Front is a really intuitive and
really clever effect for this and I would totally encourage you to go with that one, if you're still unsure between the two options you presented. That's a super elegant Ability, and I love that it adds a risk to using Falinks but comes with a hidden upside because of its signature move - at least personally, I will totally vote for this if you go with that!!
Whew! Okay, that's all of the ones I needed to cover (I think)!!
Submissions will close and voting will begin
in 24 hours (or perhaps a bit longer - again, weird hour for me to be giving an exactly-24-hours warning XP), and I'll make a compilation of all of the legal entries then! If you've gotten feedback here, it would be best to implement it as soon as possible with that in mind.
(No worries if you can't quite make it by then! If you need to make changes, then as long as you can do that before voting closes
just leave enough time for people to vote for you!, I'll be happy to make the amendments you need!)
Mega Wishiwashi
inkbug, 
Ausma and 
kakaks, and slate 25 went on to include 
BlueRay's favorite Pokémon as well. That leaves four council members left - and a super fun and diverse array of Pokémon to represent them!
Mega Floatzel, 
Mega Simisear, 
Mega Krookodile and 
Mega Cinccino - the Pokémon that represent Mossy Sandwich, Hematemesis, BitBitio and IsoCon in the thread's first post! 
