The Flying Forretress Bomber

 

 

 Some Bug types actually have a very well defined identity that I want to preserve in this hack, and Forretress absolutely fits that bill. The premier physical wall in the Bug pantheon can tank any physical hit head on, spread spikes around, hit back decently hard with Gyro Ball, and even sacrifice itself with an Explosion to take out major threats. The only thing it fears is the searing inferno of fire moves. Of course, with only 60 base Sp. Def it actually is afraid of any strong Special attacker. Forretress did pretty well for itself starting out in the earlier gens, but eventually Ferrothorn came around and did everything Forretress wanted to do but even better. Bother. In this post, I want to give the power back to this literal floating fortress with quad-cannons and explore some options that will let it thrive in a more challenging game.

1. Stats

Forretress doesn't reach the upper echelon of 500+ base stat total Pokemon but it does quite well for itself with 475 distributed where it needs. It has massive defense, passable attack and HP, and only really struggles in Sp. Defense. I don't want to change much here, so we are just going to take a page out of Ferrothorn's book and drop the base Speed from 40 to 20 so we can pad up Sp. Defense to a much more respectable 80 while simultaneously giving it an even more threatening Gyro Ball. This will help Forretress stay on the field for more than a moment against threatening special attackers.

2. Movepool

Again, not much to change here as Forretress gets access to some great moves. Solid attacking options in Gyro Ball, Explosion, and Payback. Through TMs it can get coverage moves like Seed Bomb, Earthquake, Body Press, and Ice Spinner. It has utility moves up the wazoo with things like Spikes, Toxic Spikes, Rapid Spin, Volt Switch, Gravity, and dual screens. It can even do things like boost up with Curse, or heal itself with Pain Split. The only change I'm making for moves will be to swap Pin Missile from its Egg Move list to the Level Up list instead. Depending on what TMs end up making the final cut, I may move some of its current TM moves to its Level Up list too.

3. Abilities

Here is where vanilla Forretress really falls flat. It has Sturdy, to let it take a single fire move and stay at 1 HP, which I guess is ok. In the Double Battle format, however, it is pretty easy to work around this by having one opponent use a fire move and another use a spread move to wack off that last HP, meaning slow-as-molasses Forretress is now gone without getting a single move off. Then it gets Overcoat that gives it...immunity to powder moves. That's right, because Hail is no longer a thing and its typing already gives it protection from Sandstorm, Overcoat becomes just a worse version of Insomnia for poor Forretress. We can definitely improve things on the Ability front.

First up, we're expanding the Ability list to three so Forretress has some additional options. We're already buffing Overcoat by combining it with Shield Dust, so we'll keep that on as the Hidden Ability in case someone really wants that defensive utility to shrug off Spores, Flinches, and many statuses. But now let's make things a little more interesting. As an intimidating fortress with built in cannons, I'm looking for options that let Forretress defend itself, support its allies, or do some damage. Overcoat fills the defensive niche, so the next two abilities will fill the other roles.

For support, we're going to give the excellent ability Battery to a Pokemon that can actually utilize its power. Forretress already has some cool electrical capabilities with moves like Magnet Rise, Zap Cannon, and Volt Switch, so I feel perfectly justified from a lore perspective giving it an electrically themed ability. Battery boosts the special moves of its allies by roughly 30%, which gives it some fantastic utility for any Sp. Attackers on your team. Couple that with Forretress's natural bulk and the opponent will have a hard time shutting down that devastating power boost. And all the while Forretress can chip away with its own attacks or disrupt with its utility moves. This is such a cool ability and I'm still mad that no fully-evolved Pokemon can have it, so I'm glad to finally right this mistake.

For offense, let me introduce Bombs Away. This is the offensively-oriented counterpart to Bulletproof. Instead of granting immunity to ball and bomb moves, it increases their power by 50%. This will give a huge boost to a number of Forretress's moves such as Rock Blast, Seed Bomb, Zap Cannon, and most notably, Gyro Ball. Speedy sweepers beware, as Forretress can smack you with up to a 150 base power move that now is boosted an even further 50%. Sweet genius, that's gonna hurt. Steel is still a pretty flawed offensive typing, however, and its coverage moves aren't that great, but if a player wants Forretress to actually be threatening some damage they now have an option.

Conclusion

This turned out to be a nice, quick, and easy post. Forretress already had all the main tools it needed to succeed with solid stats and moves. We just gave it the leg up with some better abilities and a small buff to Sp. Defense. If you loved using Forretress before, I think you'll be very happy with its performance in this game. And if you were never a Forretress stan, I hope these changes give you a great reason to try it out!