The hidden genius of the "hoenn special" megas. (And why one of them fails)

"the hoenn special" the classic "mixed offenses with nothing in terms of speed or defenses". It's always been laughed at and mocked, and rightfully so as it's usually a terrible fate for a pokemon.

But I think that (most of) the megas cursed with this stat spread were dealt a better hand than what you might think. And it all comes down to their abilities.

First we have the poster child for this, mega scovillian. Who embodies the core theme of this post. We all mocked scovillian when we first saw its stats, + 30 in both offenses and +20 in both defenses. Pretty underwhelming...and then we saw it's ability, spicy spray. An ability that burns anything that attacks it.

This ability singlehandedly changes the game for scovillian. Now, unless they're a fire type or have guts, NO physical attacker is going to want to come near this thing, because it's going to get crippled for trying.

This forces physical attackers to dance around it to try and pivot into something else that can deal with it. This generates free turns for scovillian to either unleash it's offense, or to harass the opponent with leech seed.

These pokemon, statistically are struggling to both take hits and move first. So the solution? Make so that the enemy doesn't want to hit you in the first place, giving you more turns to move for free.

Victrebell is another example of this with innards out, arguably taking this to a stronger extreme.

You can't OHKO victrebell or else you're going down with it. But if you don't, and try to chip it down to make it more manageable, you now have to deal with it harassing your team with strength sap, leech seed, toxic, or its own offense.

It's the same principle, it doesn't want to be taking hits, so make it so that you never want to hit it. With victrebell, you're forced to either take the bait and get the double KO, or worry about it crippling your team or getting its own KOs.

Banette is in a similar vein, many people laugh at mega Banette for being a noob trap, and maybe it is, but I think that, because it's more commonly associated with noob players, people haven't quite been experimenting with it enough.

With how people use it now, it's basically just a suicide destiny bond merchant. When in reality, destiny bond is supposed to be a tool.

The threat of destiny bond works the same way as innards out in victrebell. It forces you into a bad situation, either you have to take the bait and take the double KO, or leave it alive to stall out destiny bond 's PP/chip it down with passive damage, giving it the oppretunity to throw out it's powerful stabs or threaten burns with will o wisp.

It's just that people who use mega Banette are usually less experienced and therefore, a lot more predictable

And then we get to the black sheep of this bunch. Eelektross....yeah this one doesn't really work.

Eelevate gives it no weaknesses, which is nice, but it's defenses are so bad that it's not exactly protecting in from being easily KO'd by neutral attacks (or becoming a mold breaker Excadrill victim). And the stat boosting aspect helps it's offense more than anything, but it's hard to snowball when you're not tanky enough to take a lot of hits, or fast enough to keep the snowball rolling. So it, at best, gets a KO and is then sparked out. Unlike innards out, spicy spray, and prankster destiny bond, eelevate doesn't make attacking it any less awkward, which makes it all the more exploitable.