Justification:
I latched onto the possibility of Psychic Surge Mega Malamar literally the day after Z-A base stats leaked, when everyone else was insisting its stat distribution was aimless and could never amount to anything, and have loudly been its #1 advocate ever since
Then it didn't actually get Psychic Surge,
but since I already made Psychic Surge Mega Malamar my entire personality, let's do something about that!
Okay, let me explain properly:
When Mega Malamar's stats came out, it was obvious that the +30 Sp. Atk was a really weird choice on the assumption that it was
supposed to be a dedicated physical attacker that leveraged Contrary (pre-Mega or not).
- Mega Malamar's stats were nowhere near on the level of even other Contrary users like Enamorus-Incarnate, let alone other Megas;- on the other side, the +10 Attack is actually tied with only Salamence and Metagross (two of the strongest ones!) for the single
smallest offensive boost of any Mega to the attacking stat they're expected to actually use;- and while other Megas like Gardevoir and Glimmora
have intentionally discarded points into their weaker attacking stats, the difference with Malamar is that...well...while Mega Gardevoir's Sp. Atk is still 80 points higher than its Attack,and Mega Glimmora's Sp. Atk is still 60 points higher than its Attack,Mega Malamar's Attack is an incredible...
4 points higher than its Sp. Atk.It's just not the same thing!!I fully believe not every Mega should be designed to make full use of every point of the +100 BST, so I wouldn't bat an eye at a genuinely useless +30 Sp. Atk under different circumstances,
but to me, it doesn't make sense to look at a Pokémon whose offenses are a mere 4 points apart and still
think, "this is
supposed to be a specialized physical attacker that has no need to engage with its Sp. Atk, and the +30 Sp. Atk is a waste on purpose."
It just seemed obvious that Mega Malamar was supposed to be a mixed attacker to begin with, so the first thing I did was check its movepool to see what special moves it was trying to engage with.
In a VGC context, an obvious reason for it to suddenly become a mixed attacker would be if it had something strong and important that only existed on the special side.
For instance, Mega Salamence regularly goes mixed to run Hyper Voice because it's a strong spread STAB and the physical side has nothing like that, so I was thinking Mega Malamar would also have a relevant spread move to make sense of its new Sp. Atk.
It really seemed like the pieces just fit together when I saw
Expanding Force - even in terms of raw damage out of context, it fits perfectly on the level of several other spread-attacking Megas:
Mega Gardevoir with Pixilate and its base
165 Sp. Atk...
252 SpA Pixilate Gardevoir-Mega Hyper Voice vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD typeless Mew: 82-97 (46.8 - 55.4%) -- 72.7% chance to 2HKOMega Malamar with Psychic Surge and its base
98 Sp. Atk:
252 SpA Malamar-Mega Expanding Force (120 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD typeless Mew in Psychic Terrain: 82-97 (46.8 - 55.4%) -- 72.7% chance to 2HKOyes. you read that correctly. this is quite literally the
exact same calc.plus a bonus Mega Floette with Fairy Aura and its base
155 Sp. Atk:
252 SpA Fairy Aura Floette-Mega Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD typeless Mew: 76-91 (43.4 - 52%) -- 14.1% chance to 2HKOyes Mega Floette does
less spread damage than Malamar.
Of course, this Mew calc isn't a relevant situation - it's just to show how hard they hit in a vacuum, but other factors like their types, Speed tiers and general matchup spreads make a difference in practicality -
but the point is that Mega Malamar's unremarkable-looking 98 Sp. Atk is
entirely sufficient to put Expanding Force is up to par as a Mega designed to use a spread move!
Okay, but why Malamar
specifically? What makes it worth singling out as a Psychic Surge candidate, outside of the obvious takeaway of "wow Psychic Surge Expanding Force sure is a strong move on literally anything?"
This is where being a mixed attacker with pre-Mega Contrary becomes really cool!!
As team support, having a Malamar on the field at all lets it punish both Intimidate and Fake Out on its teammates' behalf at the same time;
in fact, since switches (and Intimidate) always take place before Mega Evolution, Malamar still gets the Contrary boost even if it Mega Evolves to block Fake Out on the
same turn that an Intimidator switches in.
Then it's at +1 Attack, so it can punish it an Intimidator like Incineroar with a boosted move like Superpower!
Even an uninvested Malamar (because it's a special attacker) vs a relatively bulky Incineroar does a pretty impressive chunk because of pre-Mega Contrary:
+1 0 Atk Malamar-Mega Superpower vs. 244 HP / 44 Def Incineroar: 144-170 (71.6 - 84.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKOThis matchup is especially important because being a Psychic Surge user implies being part of psyspam, not just being run by itself - it's kinda awesome to have a setter with such a solid matchup into Dark-types, you know?
What other targets are there for Malamar's physical moves?
Exactly how much you can manage to chunk them depends a lot on how much you want to invest in Attack and also if you actually get a +1 before you Mega or not, but these ones feel worth listing:
4 Atk Malamar-Mega Superpower vs. 252 HP / 16 Def Kingambit: 156-188 (75.3 - 90.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO252 Atk Malamar-Mega Superpower vs. 252 HP / 16 Def Kingambit: 200-236 (96.6 - 114%) -- 75% chance to OHKO+1 4 Atk Malamar-Mega Superpower vs. 252 HP / 16 Def Kingambit: 236-280 (114 - 135.2%) -- guaranteed OHKO
(note: Kingambit often runs Chople Berry, so take this with a grain of salt - but even if you're not KOing, note that Mega Malamar is also blocking Sucker Punch, which is pretty nice!)4 Atk Malamar-Mega Superpower vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Tyranitar-Mega: 136-160 (65.7 - 77.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO252 Atk Malamar-Mega Superpower vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Tyranitar-Mega: 164-196 (79.2 - 94.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO+1 4 Atk Malamar-Mega Superpower vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Tyranitar-Mega: 200-236 (96.6 - 114%) -- 75% chance to OHKO4 Atk Malamar-Mega Rock Slide vs. 252 HP / 16 Def Charizard-Mega-Y: 104-124 (56.2 - 67%) -- guaranteed 2HKO252 Atk Malamar-Mega Rock Slide vs. 252 HP / 16 Def Charizard-Mega-Y: 132-156 (71.3 - 84.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO+1 4 Atk Malamar-Mega Rock Slide vs. 252 HP / 16 Def Charizard-Mega-Y: 156-184 (84.3 - 99.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
While most of these aren't clean oneshots or anything, I think they're
definitely pretty nice for it to be able to slot in on a whim,
at least acknowledging that it's primarily a support Pokémon and special spread attacker and these are relatively low-commitment tech options!
Its Sp. Def can also help a lot with the Charizard Y matchup
(tanking one move is easy, but you can also very reasonably tech to live two Heat Waves, for instance),
but admittedly I don't know exactly what EVs you're going to want since it kinda has use cases for every stat and I'm not great at that :'D
Psychic Surge also makes it a particularly good candidate to receive Tailwind support, which might be an even easier way to deal with Charizard than living two hits from it, so you have a lot of different options for how to swing a matchup like that in your favor!
There's a really important dynamic I want to bring up in terms of why I
like Mega Malamar being a mixed attacker and preferred this to other (non-Contrary but physically specialized) options back when we were still just speculating.
On one hand: by designing Mega Malamar around a special move (Expanding Force), we can downplay its reliance on pre-Mega Contrary to function.
I think it would be really unwieldy and impractical to
need to use Superpower as base Malamar before Mega Evolving
every game,
and if the Mega relied on pre-Mega Contrary boosts for its primary form of offense (instead of just a one-off bonus in specific matchups with Intimidators like above), then if you ever had to switch it out, it would be dead weight for the rest of the game, wouldn't it?
(Plus, in the case of a pure-physical/non-Psychic Surge Malamar, we'd be talking about a mid-Speed single-target physical attacker with no item slot, no Fake Out immunity and pretty weak STABs; pre-Mega Contrary was
absolutely not going to carry that! It would have nowhere near the kind of payoff you'd need to justify that level of commitment.)
The concept here is built around the fact that
pre-Mega Contrary is still allowed to be useful as a one-time thing, but
post-Mega Psychic Surge + Expanding Force can stay relevant for the whole game and can continue to function just as well if it leaves and switches back in to reset terrain;
I really like the idea of it embracing a specific, short-term, high-reward use case for pre-Mega Contrary and pairing it with an entirely separate, more consistent long-term niche so you get the best of both worlds.
Importantly, the situation when Contrary is the most relevant (the Incineroar matchup) is one that
doesn't ask it to spend even one turn on pre-Mega setup, because it's just punishing an Intimidator and it can get the boost even if it Mega Evolves turn one!
On the other hand: because there are matchups where Superpower is valuable either way, mixed Mega Malamar can be more flexible to delay its Mega Evolution on a case-by-case basis.
It's definitely still true that getting off a clean Contrary Superpower in the early-game is a big buff to the post-Mega state, and I think that opens up some really cool layers of skill expression!
Since it's
not something you "have" to do before Mega Evolving in every game, I think knowing when to attempt it at all is a much more interesting call to have to make.
Earlier, I already shared some +1 calcs of the Mega's physical moves with minimal investment, and this is exactly what I had in mind with them: if your opponent doesn't give you a free +1 off of Intimidate, you
can still just take it for yourself if you find an opening!
Interestingly, since your opponent
knows you can Mega Evolve for Psychic Surge at any time, it's
still extremely risky to click a priority move with Malamar on the field - even if Psychic Terrain isn't currently up - which means as long as you call it right, it's
still doing its job of blocking priority even while leveraging pre-Mega Contrary to set up like this!
Other little highlights:
- Malamar can learn Trick Room, which Psychic Surge supports nicely!- On the other hand, it can also learn Taunt, which can help with opposing Trick Room users (and neither of the Indeedee forms has it!) if Malamar is on a Tailwind team- While Superpower helps it with most opposing Dark-types that would threaten its teammates on psyspam, being a Dark-type itself - and one that isn't weak to Fighting - can also help its team's matchup against opposing psyspam if it exists- The only other Mega Evolution with a Surge Ability is Raichu X
(... it's also the only terrain autosetter at all right now, which is a bit silly, but it seems like people are already moving to fix that P:); since Mega Evolution takes place after switches, and Malamar is slower than Raichu and will Mega Evolve after it, this gives Malamar one turn that
100% guarantees Psychic Terrain is up and denies every other terrain setter
Is this the
strongest Mega Evolution just because of Psychic Surge?
YesOkay probably not
But is the
coolest and most fun and nuanced and engaging and perfect Mega Evolution?
Absolutely. Yes. Fight me. I will die for Psychic Surge Mega Malamar
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) + 
(Over Rock Head) 
(Over Own Tempo) 
, 
, 
Aromatisse, 
Audino-Mega, 
No one mourns the wicked.
Infinite amounts of possiblities with this ability, I do wonder what people will cook with it.
Its fine, having counter play to sun, snow and scovillain is always appreciated.
You are as beautiful as the day I lost you.
See my above comments on healer.
Contrary (heh) to popular belief, including mine at first, Malamar is still useful despite the copperajah in the room. It having fighting stab and dark type neutrality is a huge boon for psyspam as an archetype.
If you wanna talk about a mon fucked by the pink fetus, talk about this guy lol. The biggest niche that it had with opportunist to check staraptor is completely gone since I expect mega raptor to become unviable now. It will be usable in psyspam, but i think its a bit outclassed by Alakazam in that department.
The most creative of the adjustments so far. I like that its naturally a fantastic supporter for a lot of tailwind mons with inner focus and fake out, and in general is fun how it fits into many existing archetypes.
, 
(over Steadfast)
when it comes back.)
(over Leaf Guard)
(instead of Levitate)
)
(tried to give it to one of every type...)
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