Strider and Spider

 

 

 

 

Did you know that the Surskit and Dewpider lines were counterparts? I sure as heck didn't until I started researching for this post. Both unevolved and evolved forms share the same base stat totals, and in the Sun and Moon games they are both found in the same locations, though at different times of day. After Game Freak decided that these two species should be rivals, they took a look at Masquerain's absolutely trash tier stats and gave it the biggest generational boost that they've ever made so it could at least look Araquanid in the eye. Pretty wild that they were so down to make this natural competition a thing. Of course, while Araquanid makes fantastic use of its stats and abilities to hold its own in the lower tiers of competitive formats, Masquerain has Intimidate? In this post we'll see what makes Araquanid so awesome and how we can make it even better and what Masquerain needs to get close to that level.

On paper, it seems that Araquanid is pretty lackluster offensively with only base 70 Attack. But factoring in its Water Bubble ability, it is hitting like a truck with any of its Water moves and far outpacing Masquerain even with the latter's 100 base offense. While Masquerain can boost up with the incredible Quiver Dance, Araquanid has the advantage of hitting exceptionally hard right out of the gate. Of course, relying on its ability means that its non-Water moves are substantially weaker, so Masquerain gets a slight edge in coverage moves.

Defensively, Araquanid also runs away with the competition. With its low base offenses, it has plenty of stat points to throw around and boasts a stellar 132 Sp. Defense and good 92 Defense. It is held back a bit by only 68 base HP, but it can still take plenty of punishment from any Sp. Attackers. Masquerain, with only 70/62/82 defenses is entirely dependent on Intimidate and Quiver Dance to take hits. Intimidate being one of the best abilities in the game for Double Battles certainly helps, boosting not only Masquerain's survivability but its partner's too. At least its not hitting the field with only 60 speed anymore with those defensive stats, sweet geeze Masquerain was bad in Gen 3.

For Bugmerald, we're going to be boosting both of these mons stats to 489 total to better survive in this harsh world. Araquanid has it pretty easy, just a bit of HP and Attack to help it survive longer and hit harder. Masquerain on the other hand, needs a lot of adjustment. I've spread out its stats across every relevant stat except Attack. It needs enough Defense to take some hits in conjunction with Intimidate, enough Speed to start out-speeding foes after a Quiver Dance, and Sp. Defense that can take at least a little punishment before a boost comes out. One thing's for sure, at least, and that is Masquerain can deal some damage on the Sp. Attack side a lot faster than Araquanid can, whether or not it has a chance to boost.

Abilities

What do you get the kids that have everything? Obviously we are keeping the primary abilities Water Bubble and Intimidate with all their ridiculous power. But just for fun, let's see if we can throw in something actually worth using for secondary options. Araquanid will replace Water Absorb, which is doing a whole lot of nothing, with Hospitality, restoring ally HP by 25% whenever it enters the battle. In the Pokedex, Araquanid is actually just a big sweetheart and looks out for any weak Pokemon that might need help and tending to them. It's easy to think its allies can get a quick refreshing sip from Araquanid's water bubble, just like Sinistcha is offering up tea. It also uses its water bubble to keep injured or helpless Pokemon safe and protect them. Of course, if those Pokemon can't breathe water they end up drowning. WHOOPS. Hey, Araquanid's heart is in the right place. 

For Masquerain, I want to do something fun that ties directly into its Pokedex entries. Surskit is clearly based on a water strider, and while Masquerain looks like it spends all its time in the air it has some concept art that shows it can use its wings just like legs to stride along the surface of the water too. Add in the Pokedex lore that Masquerain gets too heavy to fly in the rain, and all the ingredients are there for an unnecessarily complicated weather-based ability. 

Waterlogged: Speed is doubled in harsh sunlight, speed is halved in Rain but evasiveness is sharply increased.

Masquerain is incredibly mobile with its four wings that allow it to quickly veer in any direction, but when it rains it gets too heavy and can't fly anymore. However, all the extra water around lets it use its water-strider abilities to flit around and dodge attacks. In sunlight when the moisture is dried up, Masquerain can make full use of its four wings and it gets a speed boost as a result.This will let the player choose to take the exceptionally powerful Intimidate or opt for something more fun and situational for weather strategies.

Movepool

Araquanid already has everything it needs to be successful. For flavor, we'll throw in Life Dew which goes along nicely with its Pokedex entries of trying to help injured Pokemon with its water. I may also throw either Clamp or Jaw Lock on the list as a reference to its deadly jaws. Masquerain needs a little more adjustment since we are moving away from the Flying type. It can keep Air Cutter and Air Slash, but I'll also be adding in moves like Icy Wind, Aurora Beam, Mist, Haze (the latter two Surskit learns but Masquerain doesn't?) and finishing up with Hydro Pump. Surf and Water Pulse will be the go to Water moves in-game depending on whether you want multi or single target damage, and I don't feel the need to add those to the movepool since they'll be available as TMs at appropriate places in the playthrough. I think some support moves like Torment, Taunt, and Fake Tears are also very appropriate considering Masquerain's use of its antenna to shock/spook opponents.

I don't see a need to throw in a bunch of coverage here for either Pokemon. Their role on the team will be to use their Water typing effectively for both offense and defense, and any holes this leaves will need to be patched up by other team members. Either Bug can play a more tanky, support role or instead focus on offense by hitting hard defensively or sp. defensively respectively.

With the additions being made to the Bug type, there are actually quite a few that could qualify as Bug/Water so we'll see if the ranks of Araquanid and Masquerain swell a bit. But before we get into those newcomers I wanted to make sure that these two trendsetters got some love that will keep them relevant throughout the game.

Kings of the Cambrian: Kabutops and Armaldo

 

 Some of the first arthropods to ever exist, part of the explosion of life in the Cambrian period, the Kabutops and Armaldo lines represent a time when bugs ruled the known world. Trilobytes were everywhere and diversified into every niche available while anomalocaris ruled the seas as apex predators. Too bad the same can't be said for their Pokemon counterparts, but we're going to fix that in this hack. I want the player to reap some serious rewards for tracking down the respective fossil, bringing it back to life, and leveling it up at a time when most of their team would be much higher leveled. 

Looking at Kabutops first, it's no surprise why its not doing much in the base games. 495 as a stat total is decent on paper, but it's just not able to utilize them very well. 80 Speed is pretty forgettable, and while its Defense is good, 60 HP and 70 Sp. Defense mean it is pretty easy for a faster Pokemon to immediately send Kabutops packing. It has Swift Swim and Weak Armor as its only options to patch speed outside of a Choice Scarf, and they're honestly pretty bad. It's weak to Water, so while it can complement some rain teams with strong Rock coverage it is also ensuring that any Water move sends it straight to the bench. Weak Armor is inconsistent and even when you can pull it off it leaves Kabutops incredibly vulnerable to priority moves that can revenge KO it. It would much rather boost with something like Shell Smash, but alas, it is one of the only shelled Pokemon out there that still doesn't get access to the move.

Fortunately, I think there are a lot of small tweaks that can vastly improve Kabutop's effectiveness in battle. First off, we're buffing its stat total to a very respectable 535, making it more on par with your typical Starter Pokemon and a much better reward for the latter half of the game. This comes with buffs to HP, Defense, and Speed to improve its survivability and offense. Next, we're absolutely throwing some better abilities in here. Sharpness and Anger Shell will be your two options if you want your Kabutops to be offensively oriented, with the former boosting moves like Razor Shell, Slash, and X-Scissor to dangerous levels. Anger Shell, meanwhile, lets you pull off a high risk high reward scenario to boost its offenses to prime sweeping levels. You could trigger it with Substitute, or Endure, or just play recklessly and hope a move brings you down to half HP without knocking out Kabutops outright. Finally on the defensive side, we're making a huge buff to Battle Armor to not only block critical hits but also halve damage from Rock and Steel moves. I think this fits very well thematically (isn't the whole point of armor to protect you from swords and clubs?) and it makes a forgettable ability actually worth considering.

In summary, we now have a Kabutops that can actually out-speed any defensively oriented Pokemon while either hitting harder or taking hits better than it could before depending on what ability you're utilizing. I may end up giving back Swift Swim to replace Anger Shell again, as it is nice to give the player options for weather-based strategies. We'll see how Anger Shell feels in practice once I get some play-testing in. Next, Armaldo!

I was probably one of five kids in the world when Gen 3 was released that was super hyped to find out they included a badass Bug type based on anomalocaris. Like the absolute nerd I still am, little baby me was watching hour long documentaries on how they reconstructed anomalocaris after several identification blunders from their bizarre fossils. What a thrill to see the archaeologists reconstruct a model of it with working mouth parts in order to bite a clay trilobyte and finally get a matching bite mark to real fossils they were examining. Too bad nowadays that whole experiment has been thrown under the bus and now the scientific community is pretty sure that they never hunted trilobytes because of their mineralized shells that would be too hard for anomalocaris mouth-parts to pierce. Boo, lame. Oh well, even if they weren't chomping trilobytes, they were still absolutely an apex predator that terrorized the seas for animals with softer bodies, and we can make sure Armaldo stays king in our game.

While Anorith is pretty much a straight anomalocaris copy with its design, Armaldo changes it up with legs and huge arm/claw things and a very dinosaur-esque feel complete with a long tail. This thing is big, it's tough, and you should be scared if you see it back from the prehistoric grave. Starting with stats, forget a base 75 HP. Look at this huge thing, we're buffing it straight up to 105. And forget this blundering 45 speed stat, we're taking the rest of the investment and pouring it all into Speed. Hello 100 speed tier, heaven knows Armaldo needs it. Just these two changes bring Armaldo's base stat total up to an incredible 580, so we don't need to adjust anything else. Armaldo is the true king of the Cambrian, and I want that to be reflected in game.

For abilities, Armaldo can of course opt for the newly buffed Battle Armor to pad its incredible defenses even more. Or for offense, it can utilize Compound Eyes to fire off incredibly powerful moves like Stone Edge and Iron Tail with near perfect accuracy. As an apex predator at the time, anomalocaris had some of the most advanced compound eyes ever evolved at that period of history so I think it makes perfect sense to give Armaldo some of that action. For moves, not much needs to change. Stone Edge, Iron Tail, and Megahorn are all added as some very late level up moves that will let it devastate foes that dare go up against it. It already has access to Swords Dance or Rock Polish if you'd like to boost up, and Leech Life can allow it to stay healthy against foes that don't resist it. All in all, a terrifying package that will be a fantastic reward if a player sticks with Anorith into the late game.

And there you have it, some terrifying fossils that just became worth using on your team. We still have one more prehistoric-inspired Bug in Yanmega, and of course everyone's favorite futurized fossil with Genesect. But for these classic find a fossil and resurrect them Pokemon, I think a player will be pretty happy choosing either one of these in Mirage tower.

Bugmerald Type Matchup Chart

I've made several references now in other posts to the fact that I plan to change the type matchup chart for this hack. Before we go much further, it's time that I detail those changes before everybody gets confused. I do think that the vanilla Pokemon type chart is in a pretty good spot. I realistically could make no changes at all and the game would be fine, but this is a project all about Bug types and a lot of people who play the game a lot more than I do agree that Bug is probably the worst type in the entire game. I think we can do better than that.

Changes to Bug Resistances

Pretty simple buff here, Bug types will now resist Psychic and Dark type attacks. Psychic and Dark are already weak to Bug, so thematically its not a big jump to add in these resistances. It's pretty easy to headcanon that Psychic types have trouble concentrating with one of their big fears on the field facing them down, affecting the strength of the their moves. Likewise, Bug types are not standard fighters and kind of just do their own thing, so a Dark type trying to be sneaky or underhanded would not be as effective as against a more standard type.

I'm also throwing in a resistance to Fairy. This is one of the best types in the game already so having a resistance here will really help out the Bugs that want a secondary type weak to Fairy. All the above changes boost Bug types up to 6 resistances and 3 weaknesses, which is mirrored by the Fire type funnily enough.

Changes to Bug Attacks

In my initial draft, I set up Bug to hit super effectively against Fairy types. While I think this would be fair from a competitive standpoint, it was definitely too strong for a single player experience when I did a test play-through. Instead, Fairy will just lose their resistance to Bug moves so Bug types will hit for normal damage. I'm doing the same thing for Fighting, whose Bug resistance was always odd to me anyway. But to make sure things don't get too easy, I'm adding a resistance to Bug for Rock types. That's right, Rock types somehow do not already resist Bug moves, a fact that I have shocked my friends with that have been playing Pokemon for decades. These changes move Bug attacks to 3 super effective match-ups and 6 types that resist them. So not fantastic, but at least they're better than Grass moves now.

Changes to other types

The only other type that I decided to adjust here was Ice. They did get a nice buff in the newest games with snowy weather now giving Ice types a 1.5x defense boost, but from a type matchup perspective they are still struggling defensively. I don't want to shake it up too much, so I'm just adding two new resistances to Water and Flying moves. There will be some very cool (ha) Bug/Ice types available and hopefully this small buff can make them a little more usable despite their 4x weakness to Rock moves.

Final Notes

I've based a lot of these changes on type analysis videos by Wolfe Glick so definitely give him a watch over at https://www.youtube.com/@WolfeyVGC. He's got some great videos if you're a Pokemon fan. With the above changes wrapped up, where does the Bug type sit? Offensively, not much has changed but going from a net 7 types that resist Bug to 6 will make Bug moves at least a little stronger. Defensively, they're in a much better spot. Bug types can offer some great resistances to pair with secondary types that will erase a lot of weaknesses and make it easier for teammates to switch in.

When you consider abilities, Fire is probably the most manageable weakness at the moment. Water Bubble and Flash Fire both allow select Bug types to take Fire moves very well and hit back with something hard. For Flying, on the other hand, there is currently no way for any Bug type to resist a Flying move. Fortunately, Flying moves tend to be a lot more rare outside of Flying types, and there are a lot of very powerful options to deal with those Flying types such as Rock Slide and Discharge.

The player will realize quickly that the greatest struggle in this game will be finding a way to deal with Rock attacks. Like Flying, there is no way to resist a hit from Rock moves outside of certain Ability/Type combos, but the danger is that Rock moves are everywhere. Rock Slide is a strong move with very wide distribution that hits your whole team. Even if a Bug has a strong Defense, the extra flinch chance can be devastating. Rock Tomb, Rock Blast, and Stone Edge will also be very dangerous to the team. It will be nearly essential that at least one Pokemon with Steel, Ground, or Fighting types be on a team so the player can have some way to tank a Rock attack.

And with that, we're done! Here a sample of what the new type chart will look like, assuming nothing else changes in development.