Bugmerald Starters, meet the Trio

 

 Believe it or not, it was actually pretty difficult to pick the starters for this hack and I have gone back and forth quite a few times. I'm feeling pretty comfortable now, though, and it's time to introduce the cast. These three offer a good mix of offense, defense, and utility and should give players some great options for crafting a fun team. For starting Pokemon, you'll get the choice between Sewaddle, Blipbug, and Grubbin.We've already talked about Grubbin and its family, so let's go over how we'll be updating Sewaddle and Blipbug for a more challenging game.

Yes, I know they don't make the pretty super effective type trio, but it was hard enough to find three good Bug evolution families with three stage evolutions that aren't Butterfree equivalents. I think these choices will give the player a lot more fun options for team building.

1. Stats

Vikavolt has a new identity as a speedy, hard hitting Sp. Attacker. Leavanny will not be quite as fast, but still decently quick and decently strong on the physical side with 123 Attack and 102 Speed. While it sounds like a fun idea to be a more defensively oriented support type mon, Leavanny's awful Bug/Grass typing means it needs to focus on speed and offense to be able to offset its weaknesses somewhat. It desperately wanted to be above the 100 speed mark so it can get some moves off before any foes can throw a super-effective hit at it.

Orbeetle has always been focused more on the defensive side and it will receive a 20 point HP buff to help out its worst defensive stat, bringing it to a very respectable 80/110/120 spread. The last couple points are dropping into Sp. Attack to leave it at 89. Orbeetle won't be breaking through any defensive walls, but it can hit hard enough with powerful moves and it makes its boosting moves even more threatening. 

2. Abilities

I'm not touching Leavanny's typing (as a bug that is covered in leaves, what can you do besides Bug/Grass?), so it is instead getting a huge buff in its available abilities. The Sewaddle line will now all have access to the following:

• Friend Guard
• Chlorophyll
• Grassy Surge

With Friend Guard, suddenly Leavanny has a huge defensive presence on the field without having to throw out a move. It can use Protect to stall for time for a powerful teammate and put the foe in a tough spot where they either have to focus down Leavanny and waste turns or have their moves weakened while Leavanny hits back hard with its buffed Attack stat.

Grassy Surge is the other big new addition here, which again allows Leavanny to provide huge defensive or offensive support to its team just by switching in. Even if Leavanny gets knocked out quickly, the opponent still has to deal with the effects of the Grassy Terrain for several more turns.

Chlorophyll stays from its old ability set for players who want to work in a weather strategy, and with this trio of abilities I think there is actually a very strong reason for a player to pick up Sewaddle right away. 

Orbeetle will also be swapping in most of its pretty boring ability pool for the following set:

• Telepathy
• ESP Waves
• Psychic Surge

In the double battles of Bugmerald, Telepathy becomes a very useful ability that allows your other Pokemon to run moves that normally damage the whole field. But we're moving that to a normal ability to allow Psychic Surge to take the hidden ability slot. Orbeetle certainly appreciates the damage boost this provides to its plethora of Psychic moves and especially Expanding Force, and its team can benefit from immunity to priority moves. While you'll only find one other Bug/Psychic type in Bugmerald (and it is quite strong if you decide to pair it up with Orbeetle) plenty of other available Bug types in the game get access to Psychic moves and can take advantage of the power boost.

The new ability ESP Waves rounds out the basic ability slots, and gives Orbeetle the unique ability to target all foes with its single target status moves. This may sound incredibly broken, but I believe it is balanced out by the fact that 1) you won't be able to access it until mid-game when Dottler evolves (it will be Compound Eyes before then), and 2) Orbeetle gets access to scant few status moves anyway. We'll go over moves next, but in the normal games Orbeetle only learns Confuse Ray and Hypnosis from leveling up or TMs. Pretty scant! Of course, I won't lie, a Hypnosis that can hit both foes is incredibly, incredibly powerful. After a little play-testing I may end up changing this ability around a bit.

These abilities should make for some very fun options for the player to craft their team around. I also love how all three starters will have the terrain surge abilities as their hidden abilities to really tie them together as a set. Chef's kiss!

3. Movepool

Leavanny will be getting a number of support/utility moves to enhance its role as a mothering Pokemon and give it something to do besides spamming Protect and Leaf Blade. Floral Healing and Grassy Glide are no-brainers to give some synergy with its newfound access to Grassy Terrain. Growth and Synthesis will let it take advantage of the sun to become a deadly physical or mixed sweeper. Otherwise, Leavanny actually has quite the nice movepool when including TMs. If you can utilize teammates to keep it alive, it can put in some work for you.

Orbeetle will be getting some fun new moves to round its kind of boring level-up learnset. Mystical Power, Expanding Force, and Twin Beams are all great new damaging moves beyond plain old Psychic. Kinesis and Miracle Eye give it a few more status moves to play with its new ability. Cosmic Power and Dream Eater I like as a nod to its extra-terrestrial design. 

Conclusion

There you have it, three new starters to try out for Bugmerald! Vikavolt is certainly the most offensively potent of the three, but as a drawback it offers very little during the early game as Grubbin and Charjabug. It can't provide much support against Roxanne or Flannery, and can only hit for neutral damage against Brawly and Wattson and has a lot of trouble with Magneton, though it at least can resist Wattson's spread Electric moves. You also can't evolve Charjabug until you get access to the Thunderstone, which happens mid-game only after you've defeated Flannery.

On the other side, while Sewaddle/Swadloon and Blipbug/Dottler don't provide any resistances to Roxanne or Flannery, they can provide fantastic support to their team with Friend Guard and Reflect/Light Screen to help your whole team survive better against these very difficult opponents. Once the end-game rolls around and you're up against the likes of the Elite 4 and Wallace, then things will probably be a bit more difficult for Leavanny and Orbeetle though we have given them at least some options for long term success.

 Regardless of which starter is picked, the player will have lots of fun choices to make to bring out the best in their team, and that was the end goal here all along.