Sunday, July 20, 2014

Fighting a Fairy? Pick your Poison (Type)

In Generation VI, a new type was added for the first time in 14 years. This addition added some good balance to the competitive scene, weakening the extremely strong Dragon type. It also gave a new advantage to the Poison type, which was lacking many offensive capabilities, only possessing an advantage to Grass.

In my recent play-through of Pokemon X, I used a Pokemon I've never used before- Drapion. With the introduction of Fairy type, I decided to add a Poison type to my team, and I thought Drapion looked cool, so I chose to use it, and after the play-through I was impressed.


It's typing allows it to be immune to a common weakness of Poison, as Dark is immune to Psychic. The Poison typing also allows it to be damaged neutrally by Fighting, instead of Super Effective damage if it was a pure Dark. This typing allows it to only be x2 weak to Ground.

Stat wise, it is surprisingly Defensive. with base 110 Defense. It is also rather fast with base 95 speed. And it also has a base attack of 90.

It has a good move-pool, with coverage in the form of the Elemental Fangs. It also has access to the move, Knock Off. Many people consider this the most powerful move in the game, as it gains a 50% power boost if the target is holding an item along with STAB.

It also has the ability Sniper. This ability takes advantage of the new Critical Hit mechanic of Gen VI, increasing the strength of Critical Hits from 1.5 to 2.25 the normal damage. In conjunction with moves that get increased Critical Hit ratios, such as Cross Poison, Night Slash, or the egg move Slash, and a Scope Lens, Sniper Drapion is at Critical Hit stage of 3, meaning 50% of the time it will get a Critical Hit.

My personal Drapion is Adamant with 252 Evs in Attack and Speed and 4 in HP.

I hope you all enjoyed my ideas on Drapion, and I hope it works as well for you as it has for me.

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