Pokémon Movepool Oddities & Explanations

Pikachu315111

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I realized after looking through move sets that Ekans and Arbok learn Poison Sting

So uhh, where's the stinger on them?
Also, if the anime is anything to go by, Poison Sting is more of a projectile move where it just fires the poison barbs; Arbok specifically firing it from its mouth. While Poison Sting is a Physical move, it also doesn't make contact supporting this.
 
I just learned about the craziness of Cryogonal's level-up movepool, which includes Solar Beam, Acid Armor, Ancient Power, Confuse Ray, and Bind.

Bind is the most perplexing one for me.



Like, what the heck does even it use to bind the opponent? That string of beads on its mouth?
 
I just learned about the craziness of Cryogonal's level-up movepool, which includes Solar Beam, Acid Armor, Ancient Power, Confuse Ray, and Bind.

Bind is the most perplexing one for me.



Like, what the heck does even it use to bind the opponent? That string of beads on its mouth?
Yes.
Pokemon White/X/Omega Ruby said:
"They are born in snow clouds. They use chains made of ice crystals to capture prey."
Pokemon Black 2/White 2/Y/Alpha Sapphire said:
"They are composed of ice crystals. They capture prey with chains of ice, freezing the prey at -148 degrees Fahrenheit."
Its sprite in the gen 5 games does show the chain of ice crystals at the bottom extending and contracting regularly, so it's probably not a stretch to assume it can extend them as much as needed to bind its target while it proceeds to chill them.

Solar Beam seems odd, though. You'd think trying to store the necessary sunlight would cause it to melt, and it certainly wants no part of strong sunlight considering that's just asking for a fiery bad time.
 

TMan87

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Solar Beam seems odd, though. You'd think trying to store the necessary sunlight would cause it to melt, and it certainly wants no part of strong sunlight considering that's just asking for a fiery bad time.
My guess about this is that it uses its shiny icy face to reflect light (that's how ice actually works, after all) and send it straight to an opponent.
That said, there are two problems: Cryogonal appears blue, meaning it actually absorbs part of the visible spectrum (unlike real ice, which is white), and I don't know where the "storing" part would come from either.
 

Pikachu315111

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I just learned about the craziness of Cryogonal's level-up movepool, which includes Solar Beam, Acid Armor, Ancient Power, Confuse Ray, and Bind.
To address the other moves:

Acid Armor's Japanese name is "Liquefy" which snowflakes are very good at doing. :P And if you're wondering why Liquefy is a Poison-type move its probably because it was primarily learned by Grimer and Muk in Gen I, though it oddly got more associated with Vaporeon. Not like the Type matters for what it does (aside what Z-Crystal it needs to power it up).

Ancient Power is a bit of an odd inclusion, then again what is a snowflake but frozen water and, aside from the minerals that make up the Earth itself, what is the oldest thing on Earth other then that?

Like with Solar Beam, Confuse Ray can also probably be explained by it reflecting light.

That said, there are two problems: Cryogonal appears blue, meaning it actually absorbs part of the visible spectrum (unlike real ice, which is white), and I don't know where the "storing" part would come from either.
Actually ice is translucent. Light can pass through it but it gets distorted and bent around resulting in it leaving at a different angle then it entered with.

But back to Cryogonal, underneath its ice sheets there seems to be some kind of energy creature that's preventing light from going through it. If anything the blue parts of Cryogonal isn't the ice but this creature which we partly see its blue eyes and "chains". Its using the ice to give itself a physical form, and absorbs light through this ice body to give itself energy to move and act.
 

Pikachu315111

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Ability oddity: Mold Breaker.

There's just some Abilities that it seems odd for Mold Breaker to "get through":
  • Levitate: Now for Ground-type moves like Drill Run, Earth Power, Mud-Slap/Shot/Bomb, and the Bone moves it makes sense (infact it would normally make sense for those moves to hit flying opponent's anyway but whatever). But how does Mold Breaker make Earthquake, Magnitude, Dig, Bulldoze, & etc. hit a Pokemon that's floating in the air?
  • Sand Veil & Snow Cloak: The context of these Abilities is just that the user is just so happened to be camouflaged when its a Sandstorm or Hailing. How exactly does Mold Breaker disable that?
  • Tangled Feet: Basically the user is so confused they're bumbling around making it hard to hit them. Once again, Mold Breaker somehow makes them stand still?
 
I would think that the concept of Mold Breaker is not as much as "disable enemy abilities" but rather being able to work around them / not be affected by them.

Passable explanations would be not getting confused by the dancing / camouflaging, being able to use the quaking to make stuff fall on the floating thing, etc. Levitaters in general (aside some exception) don't actually fly but rather hover somewhere around ground so it's not impossible to make things fall on them.
 

TMan87

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For reference, here's how we in BBP describe the Ability:
"Whenever this Pokemon attacks, it emits an invisible, blindingly quick pulse preceding the attack that disables the opponents natural abilities. (e.g. Levitators plummet towards the ground before Earthquake hits, etc.)"

While it admittedly doesn't make more physical sense than in-game, it at least provides some sort of explanation: the Pokémon just manages to disable Abilities right before it moves. To take Sand Veil/Snow Cloak for example, suddenly the opposing Pokémon isn't able to camouflage itself in the weather and the accuracy debuff is ignored.

Though, since we're on the subject of Mold Breaker, why are the Gen VII Legendaries' Abilities not affected by Mold Breaker? What makes them special?
 
Though, since we're on the subject of Mold Breaker, why are the Gen VII Legendaries' Abilities not affected by Mold Breaker? What makes them special?
That they are alien. Mold Breaker-like abilities simply have no idea how to disable them.
 

Pikachu315111

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Though, since we're on the subject of Mold Breaker, why are the Gen VII Legendaries' Abilities not affected by Mold Breaker? What makes them special?
Not just them, but also Zygarde's, Komola's, Minior's, and Magic Guard.

Now for the Legendaries I understand. At first it seems odd, but then read the list of moves Mold Breaker blocks: none are Signature for Legendaries. Now this is mostly because other Legendaries either have normal Abilities or their Signature Ability doesn't effect moves that target it, but with the Legendaries who do having their Abilities listed as exceptions feels like the message is Legendary's Abilities are too strong to be bypassed (though odd this isn't the case for Turboblaze and Teravolt).

Komola I also get, Comatose it already a complex Ability and what if it gets afflicted with Sleep? It would makes no sense contextually so they just made it an exclusion.

However for Minior and Magic Guard I have no idea.
 
Komola I also get, Comatose it already a complex Ability and what if it gets afflicted with Sleep? It would makes no sense contextually so they just made it an exclusion.

However for Minior and Magic Guard I have no idea.
I think aside from potential coding reasons, it goes about like this:
Those abilities don't actually affect the attacker, but rather the defending pokemon.
- Komala counts as always Asleep, so status doesn't work because he's asleep and Pokemon says you can only have 1 status at time. It's not that the pokemon is *immune* to say, Toxic, simply Toxic doesn't work cause he's Asleep.
- Magic Guard doesn't actually affect the Pokemon either, but rather the status damage. It's not immune to a Mold Breaker Toxic or Will-o-Wisp, nor to Toxic Spikes for example, simply those status or entry hazards do nothing to it.
You can think of similar fashion of the interactions with say, Insomnia (the defending pokemon can be put asleep, but will istantly wake up on its turn) and other similar abilities that Mold Breaker "kinda works on" but actually doesn't.


However, Minior's ability is purely stats changes for Minior itself + status immunity. Now, I'd assume the status immunity could be a case of "this should be ignored", but since my guess is Mold Breaker is coded to "either ignore or don't ignore the ability", they don't have a code that says "ignore only part of the ability", so they just decided to make it not be ignored to not need new code for Mold Breaker.
 
I assume Minior is unaffected just because all form change abilities can't be negated for coding reasons.
This can't be correct because Mimikyu's Disguise is affected by Mold Breaker. (and yes, Disguise triggers a form change - Mimikyu changes to its busted form with the "broken neck" after Disguise has taken a hit for it)
 
The only effect of Shields Down that it’d make sense for Mold Breaker to ignore is the status immunity of Meteor Form. The ability otherwise just behaves like Schooling, being characterised by a reversible form change dependent on HP loss/gain, with a corresponding change in stats.

Maybe they just didn’t want to have this weird partial negation of an ability, and it was simpler to make it completely unaffected by Mold Breaker?

Edit: although multi-part abilities like Water Bubble are negated by Mold Breaker where appropriate, so idk lol. The fact that Shields Down is exact be copied by most means and doesn’t even work on Pokémon besides Minior probably has something to do with it too.
 
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This can't be correct because Mimikyu's Disguise is affected by Mold Breaker. (and yes, Disguise triggers a form change - Mimikyu changes to its busted form with the "broken neck" after Disguise has taken a hit for it)
Except busted Disguise doesn't change Mimikyu's base stats or vulnerability to status or whatever. A busted Mimikyu, an ability-less Mimikyu and a Mimikyu facing Mold Breaker will behave the same way.
 

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