Butterfree has pretty much always been on my top 10 list of favorite Pokemon since I started playing as a kid. Its horrific stats, of course, made actually using it on any of my teams pretty painful. Queue Generation 5, a new region with a whole slew of new and interesting Bug types and on top of them all one of the best boosting moves in the entire game: Quiver Dance. With a more literal translation from Japanese as "Butterfly Dance" it stood to reason that Butterfree and the whole gang of butterfly and moth mons that had come since would get access to this crazy move. I was ecstatic. Suddenly Butterfree was collapsing its foe with a near perfect accuracy Sleep Powder and getting 2-3 boosts from Quiver Dance for free whenever you wanted. It was fantastic, for a time. And then the sad realization set in that this was the only thing Butterfree would ever be able to do, and its brethren and sistren didn't even get that. They just had to figure out a time to try and boost their horrible speed and defenses while the opponent was wide awake. And finally Game Freak saw what we all were trying to do with Butterfree and gave us a butterfly that did exactly that but slightly better in every way, a la Vivillon. Sigh.
I've already mentioned that I want to figure out a way to differentiate early game Bug types, and you can see four of them already in the above picture all desperately trying to find a way to boost safely on the battlefield so they can lend some kind of offensive presence to your team. Well I say enough is enough. Quiver Dance is a cheap tactic to try to make weak mons stronger and that is not what we are about here in Bugmerald Hack. Rather than slapping on the best boosting move and praying something will align, we're going to redo our butterfly battle philosophies from scratch and give space for each of these mons to shine in their own way. Yes, even Mothim, poor sap.We've got a lot of ground to cover so I won't be going as in-depth as some of my previous write-ups, but I hope you'll be able to see at least the broad strokes that the following reworks will accomplish.
Butterfree
Starting out with the OG butterfly Pokemon, it's time to let go of the offensive sweeper dream. Maybe I'm the only one who ever had that dream, but gosh, baby me wanted Butterfree to kick Gary's Blastoise right in its turtly ass. But with age comes maturity, and I can see now that Butterfree is a stand up guy. It wants love, not war. It wants to pave the way for its friends to shine and it gets a tear in its compound eye when they succeed. It already has a great support movepool with status-inflicting powder moves, Tailwind, and Rage Powder, but we'll lean in even harder with Helping Hand, Pollen Puff and Powder. To help it actually survive on the field long enough to help anyone, we have modest buffs to HP, Def, and Speed along with removing its Flying secondary typing. Finally, we're giving Butterfree access to Shield Dust as a secondary ability and heavily buffing it so you have some reason to use it over Compound Eyes. Shield Dust is getting combined with Overcoat meaning Butterfree will have protection against:
- Secondary move effects (i.e. flinching)
- Sandstorm damage
- Powder and Spore moves
It ain't moving mountains, but Butterfree is going to be fast enough and bulky enough to offer some valuable support to the rest of the team in a combination that no other Pokemon in this hack can.
Venomoth
Ah yes, the stronger, faster, Butterfree that only gets 75% accurate Sleep Powders instead of 97.5%. What do we actually know about Venomoth? It has poisonous scales. Yep, that's it. There are a grand total of 3 Pokedex entries since the first game in the whole series that mention something besides "it has poisonous scales," and those 3 just tell us it flies at night and eats little bugs. But as my fellow GenWunners will remember, Venomoth is definitely a Bug ninja, and in Pokemon that means poisoning the crap out of anything in its way. Ninja Venomoth will replace Shield Dust with Corrosion, meaning nobody is safe from its poison scale antics. Then we're shaking up the movepool with awesome ninja moves like Camouflage, Spikes, Disable, Poison Gas (hits both foes in doubles!), Venom Drench, Simple Beam, Rage Powder, and if you stick with it all the way to level 63, Strength Sap.Poison, disruption, and frustration is the name of the game with the pro ninja Venomoth. To reflect how it usually is only available mid-way or later through the game, and its relatively high evolution level, we're also buffing up its stat total to reflect that.
Beautifly
You probably think that Beautifly is a cute little fairy-esque butterfly that dances around and hugs its teammates. Well, where Butterfree will give you the shirt off its back, Beautifly will strangle you with that shirt, slit your throat, and drain your lifeless body of all its internal juices. Beautifly is actually Garbador on the inside, just like that weird lady who you can say... exists... in the plot of Sword and Shield. To reflect its incredibly aggressive and cruel nature, we're updating Beautifly to Bug/Dark typing and swapping out Quiver Dance for Nasty Plot. How is it actually going to get any use out of Nasty Plot with its horrible base 65 Speed? It turns out Beautifly is very well versed in healing, so the Triage ability will give it priority on all of its healing moves. Too bad it only cares about patching itself up. It already has quite a few draining moves, so the only other movepool updates I'm throwing in are Jaw Lock for thematic reasons (I imagine it's hard to move when a butterfly has stabbed you through the shoulder with its proboscis) and the ultimate draining move Oblivion Wing as its final late level up move. I'll be honest, I may change my mind on Oblivion Wing but even with all these buffs Beautifly doesn't have a ton going on for it so I don't think its overpowered.
Dustox
Another poison moth, another case of completely forgettable Pokedex entries. There's not a lot to say here, but I wanted to give Dustox users two good options. On one hand, they can opt for a slower, bulkier Venomoth that spreads poison and is surprisingly resilient with a buffed Shield Dust. On the other hand, I'm replacing Compound Eyes with Merciless to give Dustox an offensive niche. Tank some hits while boosting with Quiver Dance while another mon (like Venomoth) spreads poison, then go on the offensive with guaranteed critical hits. With its stats I've kept the focus on defense, but threw just enough love in Sp. Attack to have something to sniff at after a Quiver Dance boost and Merciless proc.
Mothim
Digging through some Bulbapedia and Wikipedia, we find that Mothim quite possibly draws a lot of inspiration from the real life Death's-head hawkmoth. And one of the most fascinating things about this moth, is that it is one of very few bugs that produces a loud noise not from its wings or legs, but by blowing air out of their mouths. They're actually singing! Of course it really sounds more like a weird squeaky dog toy that's been half chewed up, but that's enough justification to me to make Mothim's niche Sound based moves! I actually got the idea before I found out about the Death's-head hawkmoth so I imagine that this is the universe telling me that this idea is super correct and I should double down on it. Backstory out of the way, Mothim is a basic-ass name so it is now a Bug/Basic-ass Normal type to take advantage of Echoed Voice, Round, Hyper Voice and possibly Boomburst (pending some balance testing). It has also been blessed by my unrelated buffs to the Wormadam line that allow me a lot more base stat points to work with. New Mothim is a decently fast, decently strong special attacker that will scream at you until you faint.
Vivillon
Finally, we arrive at really the only competent Compound Eyes + Quiver Dance setup sweeper. Now that everyone else has been diversified out of the Quiver Dance hole, I actually feel OK letting Vivillon keep its gimmick. I've buffed its defenses a tiny bit so it hopefully won't immediately fall over dead now that it has to deal with double battles where it can only Sleep Powder one foe at a time. Of course, the player will have a lot of other tools that can make Vivillon successful such as Rage Powder. It will also be keeping its suspect Bug/Flying typing so it can make full use of Hurricane.
And that does it for the butterflies and moths. For the ones I skipped today, Volcarona, Frosmoth and Masquerain (not really a moth anyway) all have big enough changes being made that they'll get their own posts in the future. If you have any thoughts on my design process or have a better idea than what I've outlined above, leave me a comment! I'd love to hear it.
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