Alright, after a painful journey lasting for about half a year (or 4?), I guess I have finally made my way to Alola. Guess the most important thing for me is to try to wrap my head around how to use the starters then.
- I noticed that the hidden abilities are actually hidden this time around, so the one I picked at the start are not going to have those. While I'm willing to endure SOS chaining for other mons, for the purpose of not annoying myself with not being able to use my picked buddy, I'm just going to cheat those HA in for them. The following texts will assume that HAs are available.
The Alola starters are one of the few exceptions; they and the fossil mons can have their hidden abilities as a regular ability, so you can switch to them with an Ability Capsule.
- From my basic understanding of totem battles being really scary battles with lots of unfair automatic stat boosts, I am going to say that Incineroar is gonna be my main pick of choice as a dedicated debuffing mon, which is kinda an unusual way to use a starter. The combination of Intimidate + Parting Shot + Fake Out + Knock Off, besides being useful support tools in doubles (which I assume is going to be a thing given how EXWY goes), should probably be pretty good in dulling most of the attack powers from totem mons and deleting their Lum Berries for another support mon to setup even more status effects, like paralysis or burn.
That would definitely help with a lot of the totems; burning them helps a lot too. Double battles are less common in PSPM as I didn't add any new ones; IIRC it couldn't be done/didn't work properly at the time.
- For the sake of amusement and exercising my PMD-related fantasy, I'm going to cheat in a Popplio besides Litten at the start of the game. The addition of Recover does suggest that Primarina would serve decently as a generic bulky attacker with 3 attacks + Recover, packing quite some power behind her attacks too with the Sparkling Aura buff, nice typing and her great Spatk. Lack of useful ability seems to be her biggest downside here (haha Liquid Voice), and I do kinda wonder if it's going to harm her much in the whole bulky attacker deal.
Yeah, I still haven't found a fitting ability for Primarina that's useful without being horribly broken. It's still pretty strong even without one though.
- As I simply love Serperior too much, I'm not going to use Decidueye. I guess that he's kinda decent though, for finally gaining the speed and extra coverage move that he really needed. Overgrow is the ability of choice, since Long Reach and Liquid Voice are kinda about as useful as Delphox's Magician.
Long Reach is nice for Rocky Helmet and things like that, but yeah not the best ability.