There's a running theme with these Gen 5 Pokemon: power creep has set in, and they are here to run a train on your shit. Darmanitan has Physical Attack for days, and decent speed to boot. Plus Sheer Force boosts attack power by 30%, so he hits like Hulk Hogan on fire.
But I also love his design. Giant flaming eyebrows? holy check, yes. And did you see his teeth? Darmanitan isn't any dumb herbivore, this boy is a straight-up carnivore. And what he eats is everything. See, it's based on a gorilla, but very loosely. The body retains that round shape of Darumaka, and it just looks like a natural evolution.
Now, I suppose I ought to talk about Zen Mode.
I'm not really sure what to think about this one. If Darmanitan has its hidden ability, when it goes under 50% health, it goes into Zen Mode. In this mode, it trades Attack for Sp. Attack, and loses its speed in exchange for pretty good defense. Also, gains a Psychic sub-type.
This is a strange sort of idea, and doesn't work very well in practice. You see, no matter how many beefy Sp. Attack moves you load it up with, you won't get to use them. It triggers at the end of the turn you lose more than half of your health, and on that next turn, you'll move too slow to do anything. That added defense doesn't help, because your health will be so slow.
If he could just switch forms whenever he wanted, with a unique move or something, that would be usable. But as it is, regular Sheer Force Darmanitan is just too damn good to waste time mucking about with Zen Mode.
So in the end, Darmanitan is absolutely great. Zen Mode is lame. But fortunately, it's completely optional, so no harm no foul. Still kicks ass.
Overall: 10/10
Yeah, zen mode is an alright idea, but nothing more.
ReplyDeleteThe gained psychic subtype is also pointless, since it doesn't really supplement the fire type all that well. Something like a water or rock sub-type to offset some weaknesses would have been fine, since the whole idea of the zen mode is to make Darmanitan much harder to kill after half its HP are gone.
Also, Darmanitan has amazing attack stats, which switches in strength with SP.Atk in Zen mode, which means if you want Zen Mode to hit hard, you'll need to waste a free move slot for a special attack, which is completely useless to him in the first time.
That might have been a good chance to introduce the awesome potential of a fire/water, but whatever
I like the idea of Fire/Psychic, mostly because we've never seen it and it would be cool to explore that kind of a pokemon, but I can see how having it half-the-time would be pointless.
ReplyDeleteOne cool idea would be to have the two Darmanitans be separate evolutions to Darumaka. Like Politoad/Poliwrath, or Vileplume/Bellosom. Especially with the diversity in offense and defense, would make it a big choice on which to evolve into.
Well, Victini is Psychic/Fire too. But it's a legendary so it doesn't really count.
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