Pet Mod UmbreMons - Post Slate 3 (Playtesting)

[HydreigonTheChild]

Moves: Brine (SV), Heart Swap (SV), Life Dew, Outrage, Claymaker
Items: Weakness Policy (SV), Gems (SV), Friendship Bracelet, Mouth Wash, Muscle Band, Throat Spray
Abilities: Last Bastion (SV), Protean / Libero (SV), Ancient Core, Justified, Swarm, Moody
Adjustments: Gyarados (SV), Gourgeist, Arcanine, Mabostiff, sirfetch'd

 

[Lysion]

Moves
Life Dew/Moonlight/Morning Sun, Celestial Descent, Salt Cure, Brine
Abilities
Justified (SV), Stall, Ancient Core, Retribution, Slush Rush
Items
Weakness Policy, Friendship Bracelet, Gems, Muscle Band/Wise Glass
Adjustments
Wigglytuff (SV), Arcanine, Gyarados, Grapploct

 

[Samtendo09]

Moves
Life Dew / Moonlight / Morning Sun, Celestial Descent, Iron Tail, Brine
Items
Mouth Wash, Tera Shell Chunk, Friendship Bracelet, Leek, Muscle Band / Wise Glasses
Abilities
Slush Rush, Moody, Retribution, Ancient Core, Justified, Grass Pelt / Seed Sower
Adjustments
Arcanine, Gyarados, Grapploct, Wigglytuff (PQRDG)
Tsareena
Gekokeso

 

[Mynameisralsei]

(Did not realize this was still open)
Moves: Iron Tail, Claymaker, OHKO moves, Heart Swap, Moonlight/Morning Sun/Life Dew
Items: Taxi Whistle, Mouth Wash, Throat Spray, Friendship Bracelet, Leek, Tera Shell Chunk (SV)
Abilities: Last Bastion, Stall, Rampage
Adjustments: Arcanine, Wigglytuff (PQRDG), Grappleoct

 

[Gekokeso]

Moves
Salt cure, Life Dew / Moonlight / Morning Sun, Thrash and Co, OHKO moves, Electric Fence
Items
Friendship Bracelet, Weakness Policy, Mouth Wash, Throat Spray
Abilities
Stall (SV), Ancient Core, Rampage, Libero / Protean, Retribution, Slush Rush
Adjustments
Wigglytuff (Lysion), Gyarados, Overqwil, Garchomp
Tsareena
Gekokeso(SV)

 

[cat111ca]

everyone. Voting ends in a day
I remind everyone to vote for a tsareena as well!

 

[PQRDG]

Moves: Claymaker, Thrash (etc), Fissure (etc), Upside-Down Room [sv], Life Dew/Moonlight/Morning Sun [sv], Bonfire
Abilities: Swarm (cat), Protean/Libero, Stall, Lacerate, Multiscale [sv], Rampage
Items: Taxi Whistle, Mouth Wash/Throat Spray, Weakness Policy, Friendship Bracelet, Muscle Band/Wise Glasses [sv], Leek [sv]
Adjustments: Arcanine, Overqwil, Gyarados, Garchomp [sv], Grapploct [sv], Appletun
Tsareena: PQRDG [sv]

 

[koista12]

Moves
Claymaker, Powder Bomb, Heart Swap, Celestial Descent, Life Dew / Moonlight / Morning Sun, Salt Cure

Abilities
Slush Rush, Last Bastion, Retribution, Stall, Lacerate, Rampage

Items
Mouth Wash, Throat Spray, Type Gems, Friendship Bracelet, Weakness Policy

Adjustments
Gourgeist, Overqwil, Gyarados, Wigglytuff (PQRDG), Grapploct

Tsareena
Gekokeso

 

[cat111ca]

everyone. Voting ends in a day
I remind everyone to vote for a tsareena as well!

Voting is dead. Winners in a bit

 

[cat111ca]

!!WINNERS!!​

Moves

Name: Life Dew / Moonlight / Morning Sun
Power: -
Accuracy: -
PP: 12
Category: Status
Type: Water / Fairy / Fire
Effect: If an ally is on the field, heal user and ally 25% of max HP. If no ally, or if ally cannot be reached (e.g. semi-invulnerable state such as Fly/Dig/Sky Drop) heal user for 50% of max HP.
Priority: 0
Potential Pokémon With This Move: Current +
Life Dew:
Moonlight:
Morning Sun:
Justification: Combining two styles of healing move to create an interesting combination. Allows a solid support move for this doubles format, while also giving you a benefit when alone. Changing Moonlight and Morning Sun because there is already a move that heals big under sun, that being Synthesis, so this allows certain Pokemon to provide supportive healing to allies, such as Arcanine.

Name: Claymaker
Power: 80
Accuracy: 100%
PP: 16
Category: physical

Type: Rock
Effect: 20% chance to lower target's defense by 1 stage
Priority: 0
Flags (ex: Contact, Sound): contact, punching
Potential Pokémon With This Move:
Justification: Wip

Name: Celestial Descent [RESUB]
Power: 80
Accuracy: 100%
PP: 16
Category:

Type:
Effect: Gains a secondary effect according to Weather. Hits both opponents.
30% chance to inflict Burn under Sun
30% chance to inflict Paralyzis under Rain
30% chance to lower target's Defense by 1 stage under Sand
30% chance to lower target's Special Defense by 1 stage under Snow
30 BP higher under Strong Winds
Priority: 0
Flags: Protect, Metronome, Wind
Potential Pokémon With This Move:
Pokémon That Should NOT Get This Move: ()
Justification: Reliable Flying STAB for some Pokémon that lack it and also an interesting way of engaging with the Weather Wars, letting Flying mons work as a Support option on any weather. Powers up Blizzard for snow mons and Equake/Rock Slide for Sand

Name: Salt cure
Power: 40
Accuracy: 100%
PP: 12
Category: Physical

Type: Rock
Effect: the target takes 1/8th of max hp every turn, 1/6th of max hp if water or steel type.
Priority: 0
Flags: Protect
Potential Pokémon With This Move: (in the future MUST get it)
Justification: this was mostly @Hematite's and @ausma's idea to rebuff salt cure and give it to more pokemon

Name: Brine (RESUB)
Power: 75
Accuracy: 100
PP: 10
Category: Special
Type: Water
Effect: +25 BP for each Pokemon on the field that has less than or equal to half of its maximum HP remaining.
Priority: 0
Flags (ex: Contact, Sound):
Potential Pokémon With This Move:
Justification: Brine can now function in doubles by now racking up in power for each pokemon on the field having half hp or less. With that it can ramp up to quite a powerful move especially since it counts the user

Items

Name: Friendship Bracelet
Effect: Prevents the user from taking damage from an ally's attack (same as Telepathy)
Can Be Knocked Off: Yes
Ignored by Klutz: Yes
Fling Power & Effect: 60 BP, deals no damage to allies
Justification: Niche item that allows for an easier time building with Earthquake, Discharge and the like

Name: Mouth Wash
Effect: After the Pokémon holding Mouth Wash uses a biting move, it consumes the item and its Attack is raised by one stage.
Can Be Knocked Off: Yes
Ignored by Klutz: Yes
Fling Power & Effect: 30bp, none.
Justification: physical alternative to throat spray for crunch users like mabostiff & offensive Grimmsnarl, the theoretical base metagross and the vishes in the future (yes I'm giving it another multiplier and you can stop me by not voting)

Name: Throat Spray
Effect: After the Pokémon holding Throat Spray uses a sound-based move, it consumes the item and its Special Attack is raised by one stage.
Can Be Knocked Off: Yes
Ignored by Klutz: Yes
Fling Power & Effect: 30bp, none.
Justification: WE all love throat goat the giraffe. so I brought this item back for more offensive giraffe. also gives Sylveon more item freedom.

Name: Weakness Policy
Effect: (Same Effect aka Unchanged) If holder is hit super effectively, raises Attack, Sp. Atk by 2 stages. Single use
Can Be Knocked Off (Yes or No): Yes
Ignored by Klutz (Yes or No): Yes
Fling Power & Effect:
Justification: I like the item and I think it should be here. It gives options for offensive pokemon as well as puinshing the use of weak moves like icy wind, electro web, while also helping against spam like rock slide depending on the pokemon

Name: Muscle Band / Wise Glasses
Effect: The user's Physical/Special moves do 1.2x damage, but the holder takes 1.2x damage from Special/Physical moves.
Justification: New alternative to Life Orb that gives you a damage boost on one type of move, but in exchange results in you taking more damage from the other damage type. A good offensive buff on two underwhelming items with an interesting drawback.

Name: Tera Shell Chunk
Effect: When using Protect (or a similar move), remove all weather/terrain. Single use.
Can Be Knocked Off (Yes or No): Yes
Ignored by Klutz (Yes or No): No
Fling Power & Effect: 60 BP, changes enemy type to Normal.
Justification: With how dominated by weather and terrain Champions as a whole has been, giving both weatherless teams a piece of tech to help them in some very obnoxious matchups or as a last line of defense in the event you lose the weather war would be a very helpful tool for builders.

Abilities

Name: Retribution
Effect: If an ally faints while this Pokémon is on the field, this Pokémon raises its own Attack and Special Attack by 1 stage.
Permanent: No
Potential Pokémon With This Ability: WIP (primarely intended for Support mons that get scary after a boost) (also considered )
Justification: Intended to let some support mons snowball if you ignore them for too long to focus on the team's offensive threats

Name: Stall (RESUB)
Effect: Under trick room, this pokémon's speed stat is halved.
Permanent (Yes or No): No
Mold Breaker (Yes or No): Yes
Potential Pokémon With This Ability: +
Justification: Swift Swim clone for trick room. Can serve to make already slow pokémon even slower or to make faster mons be usable in both tailwind and trick room modes without hurting your speed investment.

Name: Justified
Effect: Dark damage against this Pokemon is dealt with 1/2 offensive stat; Atk raised by 1 after it is damaged by a Dark-type move.
Permanent (Yes or No): No
Mold Breaker (Yes or No): No
Potential Pokémon With This Ability: Existing distribution +
Justification: Cool ability to make Kingambit think twice about clicking its powerful Sucker Punch.

Name: Rampage
Effect: If an opposing Pokemon is knocked out by one of this Pokemon's single target attacks, do 50% of that attack's damage to it's ally.
Permanent (Yes or No): No
Mold Breaker (Yes or No): No
Potential Pokémon With This Ability:
Justification: This ability provides new roles to a lot of these mons who are deceptively unthreatening directly (and also Tyrantrum) allowing them to play into their more monstrous appearance while being fun to play with. This also opens up a few fun options to play around it involving death fodder.

Ability: Ancient Core
Effect: User's moves have gen 1-3's physical / special split. Fairy is physical. If a category change occured, boost move's BP by 20%.
Potential Users: Mega Houndoom, Hydreigon,
Code: Already coded in VGC 20XX-

Explanation:
- Mega Houndoom has an interesting movepool to take advantage of the ability, like Foul Play, Beat Up, Flareblitz, Psychic Fangs, Sucker Punch, etc. Fwiw, Foul Play scales off of the target's SpA. Ancient Core leans hard into Houndoom's potential as a Dark type Pokémon where it would face less competition as Fire Pokémon have topugh competitition at the moment, see Charizard, Delphox, etc.
- Hydreigon also has many Dark movse it can access to, like Assurance, but it can also rely on Dragon moves, like Breaking Swipe, Dragon Tail, Outrage for disruptive or wallbreaking purposes.

Adjustments

RESUB
Name: Gyarados(-Mega)
Type: Water / Flying (Water / Dark)
Abilities: Intimidate / Aerodynamism / Moxie (Mold Breaker)
New Moves: Wave Crash, Knock Off, Tailwind
Removed Moves:
Justification: Wanted to give gyara some time again esp since it has some VGC placements in oras and sv. With tailwind + wave crash it gives base gyara a lot more utility. Alongside having the buffed mold breaker on the mega form to work with. With a sweeper set it can see uses

Name: Arcanine
Type:

Abilities: Intimidate / Flash Fire / Justified
New Moves: U-turn, Prevailing Wind, Sacred Fire
Removed Moves: None!
Justification: Everyone is fairly familiar with how Incineroar has, generally, usurped Arcanine as the Fire-type Intimidate user. While it's not completely outclassed by any means thanks to access to moves like Howl and a fast Flare Blitz/Snarl, Arcanine has wanted one or two things to let it stand out a bit more. A very organic change that has recently come about that I think is noteworthy is Incineroar losing U-turn. While mostly inconsequential, Parting Shot has some noteworthy pitfalls, mainly its vulnerability to Throat Chop from opposing Incineroar, its ability to be Taunted and, crucially, it being barred off by Assault Vest. With Assault Vest having returned in this mod, Incineroar losing part of what made it a good Assault Vest user is tragic, but also a prime opportunity to fill a niche once lost. I think this is a perfect opportunity for Arcanine to shine, especially as it once had a pivoting move in Teleport. Gaining a new pivoting move that is actually compatible with AV lets Arcanine serve as a more reliable AV user than Incineroar that can help with Intimidate cycling and Snarl spam, while having access to some juicy coverage moves to keep the opponent on their toes. It also defensively has great synergy with AV, resisting Make It Rain and a lot of dangerous spread moves in general like Heat Wave and Dazzling Gleam, all while being able to threaten with its offensive profile and Speed tier.

A move I think was mechanically quite interesting for Arcanine and also works with AV sets is Prevailing Wind, a move that has been exclusively distributed to Flying-types thus far. Having an additional and more reliable tool to combat the likes of Whimsicott Tailwind and Charizard Heat Wave seems very compelling, especially as Arcanine itself resists Heat Wave and Blizzard, letting it have some leverage in getting a turn wrong. Being a pure Fire-type as a Prevailing Wind user is also a cool dichotomy with the main users while respecting the balance of its original distribution pool, as it's weak to Ground-type moves and resists Ice-type moves, but notably, both are still weak to Rock Slide from the likes of Aerodactyl. I also think paralleling Incineroar Fake Out while not actually having Fake Out and working into different things is kinda cool.

For people who I know are going to scream about Prevailing Wind from a flavor perspective:

In addition to this, Arcanine is also known for being extremely resilient and travelling literally thousands of miles over a small period of time. Although it literally cannot cast winds itself, the fact Pokemon like Whimsicott that just fly on winds can learn moves like Tailwind feels like fine enough reason to allow this. Also its name is Windie in Japanese.

Sacred Fire I added after some deliberation on Discord; people seem to like the idea of it given the AV set focus with this sub, and as far as legendary move distribution goes it's probably one of the better candidates with a move that already has tenuous flavor and suits Arcanine as a "Legendary" Pokemon of sorts. Obviously, this would be a very strong addition in its kit that doesn't really move the needle too far out of favor for what Arcanine already does, while calling back to its use of Will-O-Wisp as a common option of it in the past.

All in all, I don't think Arcanine needs too much! Just a couple of extra nice tools to let it be a more consistently applicable damage mitigating sidegrade that can make use of some tools like AV that Incineroar no longer can as well.
All of this was originally by @ausma.

Name: Grapploct
Type: Fighting/Water
Abilities: Technician / Contrary / Mimicry
New Moves: Aqua Jet, Aqua Ring, Flip Turn, Life Dew, Rain Dance, Upper Hand
Justification: Octopus gains the Water type and some new priority and utility moves. Technician will likely be its primary set, but access to STAB Contrary Superpower will also be solid, whereas Mimicry will provide it some potential defensive utility.

and...

Name: Tsareena (RESUB)
Type:
Abilities: Leaf Guard / Queenly Majesty / Sweet Veil
New Moves: +Close Combat, Ice Spinner, Life Dew, Wood Hammer
Removed Moves: None
Justification: Tsareena is one of the few mons with the immunity abilities, and while it has its very specific niche when compaired to Farigiraf, the giraf tends to be used more. Changes are meant to make the mon stand out a bit more by giving it more consistent offensive options as well as a secondary stab that better helps it carve a niche vs the giraffe by beating steel types like gambit or Arch. Can either serve as a pivot scarfer with techs like round or as a mid speed support mon with powerful options like Life Dew. Resubbing just cause I got not much more right now.

these are the winners!! have fun in slate 5 coming who knows when

 

[PQRDG]

I will be honest, I knew I was cooking, but I did not expect literally everyone to vote for my Life Dew/Moonlight/Morning Sun buff. Obviously council will probably narrow down my proposed list of recipients but I think this should be an interesting change for the format.

 

[Lysion]

Life Dew & co buff is very interesting, and opens up a lot of options. Sky Drop being a thing is also very funny for a 50% HP heal. I like this one.
Yeah finally a fully accurate Rock-type physical move, boring but effective, Barbaracle-Mega and Lycanroc-Dusk are great winners of this one.
Curious to see how much it'll be used in practice, but interesting move.
Salt Cure was really cancer in Singles with Tera Garganacl, so good thing we don't have Tera and this is not Singles! Will depend on the abusers, but I could see it being interesting, for example on the Toxic teams that used to be a thing during M-B if they still exist.
For now I fail to see how interesting it could be, but on the other hand it's not like special Water mons have a lot of options lmao.

Telepathy is rarely seen, and having it as an item is very cool and allows to potentially run moves like Boomburst, Surf, or Discharge way more easily.
I don't know how many biting move users we get rn, none of the Unburden users seem really good, hell even the Crunch users all seem pretty bad, Sharpedo-Mega obviously can't run that, on paper I really like the item but in practice I don't think we'll see it be used at all until new abusers arrive.
I think it could see a bit more abusers? I can imagine stuff like Sylveon, or Skeledirge (?), or Kommo-o run it.
An addition I really appreciate, Weakness Policy is cool.
Interesting item that is a fine replacement for Choice Band and Specs, benefits the mons that wanna click more than one STAB (or else you'd rather run a STAB item), that won't go mixed, and don't need the Speed, I can imagine something like Wise Glasses Torkoal in TR.
OK this one is potentially very huge. Potentially turning the tides on the likes of Rillaboom, Indeedee-F or Charizard-Y is potentially game changing, and I can imagine it on a Sneasler that would want to prevent an opposing Sneasler from unlocking Unburden. Just in general, this item can be game changing.

Will heavily depend on the abusers, but I can see it be very good. Also I can imagine similar strats compared to Magearna, with something like a Final Gambit Scarf Staraptor/Annihilape and the other Pokemon getting a boost.
Very interesting ability, I'm mostly interested for something like hybrid Tailwind/TR teams that could have some mons fit both playstyles.
My sub. I chose a resistance and not an immunity because I didn't want to kill Beat Up strats, and I think they get even stronger. Also always good to have Kingambit counterplay.
Can be threatening but you need abusers that can already be threatening to score anything at all. Tyrantrum would be the most interesting I think, with a good typing in the metagame, and running DD, being able to threaten the likes of Zard-Y, MegaMence, or Chomp Z.
We'll see, but it could possibly open interesting options, special Foul Play being one.

Simple buff yet I could see it being interesting in the current metagame.
Very simple buff that I'm glad one this time around, another Incineroar sidegrade that has a distinct niche compared to Big Cat and Luxray.
I wished it focused more on Technician ngl. Grapploct is surprisingly good this time around (which you wouldn't think in a metagame filled with PsySpam and MegaMence and Floette and stuff), so it should give it more options to be terrifying under the right conditions.

I already said what I think about type changes, so I'll just say that I wished it got Jungle Healing and not Life Dew. Minor nitpick I know, but it's way more fitting lore wise, and healing status can be a game changer (especially when Arcanine Sacred Fire is a thing that could potentially be huge). Otherwise pretty neat.