Sunday, January 5, 2014

More thoughts on the Carbink-Diancie connection

(Read the last entry if you don't know what I'm talking about.)

After suggesting a Phione-Manaphy sort of relationship for these two (the difference being Carbink can be found in normal gameplay), I took a look at Phione's and Manaphy's movepools to see what we could expect for Diancie. And... well... it's not pretty. Looking at the level-up lists, they're both identical, except for Manaphy getting Tail Glow, a quasi-signature move, and Heart Swap, a full-fledged signature move. The rest is all extra TMs. This means that barring a surprise, I'm expecting any move that's not a TM to be off-limits for Diancie. Since Diamond Storm is a physical move, the worst part is no Play Rough to complete its physical dual STAB - you'll have to make due with Moonblast if you want a Fairy move. Heck, it's not like it's all that much better in Carbink's offensive movepool otherwise - there's Power Gem, Return, Psychic, and that's about it.

Do you see the problem now? Diancie's meant to be exactly identical to Carbink, aside the fact that it can actually attack. And with such a terrible offensive movepool, let's just say it's not going to be a whole lot of an improvement. Hopefully Gamefreak took notice of that and gave Diancie a few extra TMs. Like Earthquake. And yes, I know with that stat spread Diancie's still going to be all about the defense anyway, with dual screens, Stealth Rock, Trick Room and other such moves. I'm just saying if Carbink is this bad, and Diancie retains the same terrible movepool bar Diamond Storm, extra attack isn't going to do jack. And that's just terrible.

12 comments:

  1. Again, other than maybe Volcanion, the selection of event Legendaries is sorely lacking in potential. Then again, we need to know how they'd perform...This time, we have to wait until they're released...or until Serebii or whoever comes out and reveals everything...

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  2. Carbink does get STAB from Power Gem.

    We don't know these Pokemon's abilities yet, right? I wonder if those will be interesting. Maybe we'll get some new abilities.

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    1. Manaphy gets the same as Phione, though, so I wouldn't even be surprised if it was just Clear Body (since events don't have DW abilities). Fingers crossed. (Why did the hacker not show anything? That's just mean.)

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  3. I've been thinking about this, and while there is a striking similarity in what is known about the movepool and the base stats, I can see a big flaw in the possibility of Carbink and Diancie being related, Pokedex position. Diancie is almost certainly going to be number 719 in the National Pokedex and, if the pictures are accurate, number 151 in the central Kalos pokedex. By contrast, Carbink is 124 in the Coastal Kalos pokedex and 703 in the national, meaning it's nowhere close. Game Freak likes to put related pokemon right next to each other in regional pokedexes and, providing they were introduced in the same generation, national pokedex.

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    1. Yeah, but how would you place Carbink if you plan on having it be available through normal gameplay? Dead last, after Zygarde, like how Chimecho was in Ruby and Sapphire's code (but not the actual Pokédex, oddly enough)? Nah, Gamefreak likes having their Pokédexes roughly in the order of how you gain access to Pokémon, they've been doing so since gen 3. (Don't ask me how they did it in the first two.)

      Besides, Keldeo is immediately related to the musketeer trio, and they weren't next to each other. Same with Giratina, Landorus and Kyurem vs. their respective counterparts.

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    2. And for that matter, how the hell is Hoopa before Volcanion in the Central Kalos Dex? When Serebii accidentally leaked them, he had Volcanion as #720 in the National Dex, and Hoopa #721... maybe he screwed up?

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  4. You know, I just remembered that Diamond Storm is literally a signature attack from Digimon that appeared relatively long ago. Personally, I couldn't care less, but things could potentially get messy once this knowledge get more widespread. Funny thing is... if the attack had appeared in any other show or game than Digimon (or used as an inspiration by anything else than Pokémon), people probably wouldn't have cared at all.

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  5. Is it more like a mew-mewtwo relationship? Not stat-wise, what I mean is, mewtwo can't breed to make mew eggs, but lore tells you it's a genetically mutated mew.

    We know carbinks have genders, but Diancie is completely genderless. That must make Carbink envy even azurill. Poor thing has to get neutered by evolution =(

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    1. Not true! I bred a bunch of them with a ditto!

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    2. Please tell me that you're just kidding. It probably should be obvious, but with the current state of the internet, I don't know what to believe anymore.
      Because genderless Pokémon CAN be bred with Ditto, it's the ones from the "undiscovered" egg group which can't.

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    3. To the exception of Phione and Manaphy, which for some reason belong to two egg groups yet can only breed with Ditto.

      Either way, if you stop and think about Ditto breeding, it's really stupid. If it's a perfect copy of its mate, then shouldn't it transform into the same gender, making reproduction impossible?

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