I always thought that Flygon was one of the coolest Pokemon in Gen 3 hands down. I think a lot of people agreed with that sentiment because there was quite a pout online when Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire came out and poor Flygon had to watch Altaria, Flygon, and Sceptile get awesome Dragon mega evolutions. What's always been weird to me, though, is how Trapinch and Vibrava are very clearly based on the various real life species of antlions yet not even Trapinch managed to walk away with Bug/Ground typing. In Bugmerald, Flygon and family will finally be joining the Bug ranks, and I'll be making some other fun changes as well to truly congratulate what could have been the first Bug/Dragon type in a different timeline.
1. Stats
Flygon has always been a very capable fighter, with a base stat total of 520 and boasting good physical offense, speed, and decent bulk at the same time. It even has enough Sp. Attack to make use of some powerful special moves in its arsenal for coverage as needed. Flygon and Vibrava are both getting some small buffs in this game, mostly to counteract power creep and to cement their status as powerful Dragon Pokemon. Flygon is going up to a 555 base stat total with some buffs to everything but HP. Vibrava is just getting a little boost to Sp. Attack and Speed to bring it up to 355 from 340.
Now here's where things get wild. Antlions are well known for being absolutely savage and powerful predators in their larval stage, before growing up to be pretty innocuous spindly bugs that look a lot like damselflies and only live a few more weeks to mate and lay eggs. You can see a bit of that in Trapinch's stat layout, where it boasts a huge Attack stat that is tied with Flygon's. No other Pokemon that can still evolve twice has an Attack stat that high. We're going to run with this concept and crank it up to 11.
The new Trapinch boasts a respectable stat total of 455, with 135 Attack, and 105 in both defensive stats.With base 10 Speed and 45 HP, however, it certainly has a lot of exploitable weaknesses. If you'd prefer to take Trapinch all the way to the Pokemon League, however, just slap an Eviolite on this thing and wreck everything in your path. If you manage to get some Trick Room support, not many Bug types will feel more threatening. I love Trapinch feeling like the voracious predator its real-life counterpart is, and this adds some difficulty to raising it, too. Evolving to Vibrava will actually drop its stats by 100 points, before you get the eventual Flygon boost at level 45.
2. Movepool
Flygon has a fantastic movepool. We'll just add Lunge and Bug Bite to round out coverage for its new Bug typing and we are set. For Trapinch, some additional biting moves are in order. Fire Fang, and Hyper Fang will afford Trapinch some slight coverage in an otherwise fairly restrictive movepool.
3. Abilities
Flygon is one of those odd Pokemon that only ever has one ability, even though Trapinch has three different ones to choose from. I want to expand Flygon's options here. Starting off with Trapinch, I'm adjusting the ability spread to:
- Strong Jaw
- Arena Trap
- Sheer Force
Hyper Cutter is effective but a little dull, and no other Bug type gets access to Strong Jaw and I don't think it would really fit any Bug type better than it fits Trapinch.If you stumble into its hole, those jaws are going to be clamping down HARD. The other two abilities are both very fitting and useful abilities to have so I'll keep those unchanged. Now for Flygon:
- Competitive
- Levitate
- Sheer Force
I do want to keep Levitate on board as Flygon has long had an identity as an Earthquake user that is itself immune to Earthquake. But we follow up Trapinch's Strong Jaw with the Sp. Attack oriented Competitive, sharply raising Flygon's Sp. Attack whenever any of its stats are lowered by an opponent. Flygon doesn't have a natural way to boost its Sp. Attack, so this will let people really abuse the Special side of Flygon's movepool. Sheer Force is just an excellent ability that boosts so many of Flygon's moves that a player will have no problem finding a use for it.
Conclusion
There's not a lot that we had to change with Flygon, just some small boosts to let it keep up with the times. I think we did have a lot of fun turning Trapinch into a viable team option for the more adventurous players. I want the excellent qualities of the Flygon family to shine even brighter in Bugmerald than they ever have.
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