The Other Arachnids

It's pretty funny that out of all the scorpion-esque Pokemon in the game, only one really looks much like a classic scorpion and that one happens to be the only one to have Bug typing. Little Skorupi loses that uupon evolving, but we're bringing it back to its big form, Drapion, along with Gligar, Gliscor, and the vaguely scorpionish Dunsparce line.

Just like in real life, these Pokemon have pretty much everything they already need to be very successful, so we'll be making just a few tweaks to bring them in line with the Bugmerald vision. Thank goodness there aren't any flying scorpions in reality.

1. Stats

Somehow, they nailed Gliscor perfectly the first time. It still performs very well in competitive battles, though perhaps not quite as well in doubles. I'm leaving Gliscor as is and if we end up needing to buff Sp. Def or something, so be it.

Drapion, however, has definitely been feeling the pressure from power creep. First we'll let it ascend to the coveted base 100 speed tier to give it a little bump. Then small buffs to HP and Attack will hopefully give it that edge it's been looking for the past couple of generations.

Dudunsparce looks like it has a great spread on paper but it's so new I'm having trouble determining if it's performing well in actual use. I can't imagine a Pokémon that can hit through Protect with a powerful STAB move could be bad, but I suppose it is probably held back in the Scarlet/Violet meta by the popularity of Ghost and Steel tera types. Terastillization will not be in Bugmerald, but just to be safe I'm giving it a little boost to HP to help patch its  otherwise middling defenses.

2. Abilities

As long as Gliscor has Poison Heal that's going to be it's primary choice. Sand Veil we'll keep for use on weather teams, but Hyper Cutter can be swapped out for Toxic Debris. There are definitely situations where the player can get great benefit from switching in Gliscor to tank a physical hit and spread a layer of toxic spikes in one fell swoop. I love options!

For Drapion, Battle Armor certainly becomes more attractive with the buff it is receiving to give resistance to Rock and Steel moves. Sniper is decent enough and Drapion has plenty of moves that can benefit from it. For the hidden ability, I'm going to swap to Merciless as a different way the player can utilize critical hits and the name certainly fits Drapion's nature.

Dudunsparce

Serene Grace is a rare and phenomenal ability, but Run Away and Rattled are less useful. Run Away will now change to Berserk when it evolves. Dunsparce has strangely powerful options on the Special side and this will give the player potential to run a mixed attacker Coil set to hit hard with normally inaccurate moves on both sides of the damage spectrum. Rattled I'm very tempted to replace with Simple, but this might be a little too overpowered. A Pokémon that can double its Attack, Defense, and Accuracy with one move seems pretty scary, though on the flipside you do have to watch out for Intimidate sharply dropping your Attack stat too. I'll probably need to do some playtesting to see how it handles. Otherwise, Rattled can work a little better now with Dudunsparce's new resistance to Dark moves and better distribution of moves like Beat Up. 

3. Movepool

Not much to be done here for Gliscor, Drapion, or Dudunsparce, honestly, they have tons of good moves already. I might let Drapion have something like Wide Guard, but otherwise no changes. 

Conclusion

This is a weird, motley crew I've assembled for this post, but they all vaguely fit into the scorpion archetype and I wasn't changing much about any of them so it worked well enough. They're pretty tanky, but can hit hard with strikes from their stingers if you foolishly give them the chance to boost. Give them a try in your next play through!